How Licorice propagates

How Licorice propagates

Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra L., 1758) is a perennial herbaceous plant, which grows up to one meter, of the Fabaceae family.
Licorice is extracted from the roots of this plant.
This plant native to the eastern Mediterranean and south-western Asia is also cultivated in Italy and is cultivated and sometimes wild in the southern region. Calabria is the region that boasts a centuries-old tradition in the production of licorice. Before understanding how to propagate this plant it must be said that this plant can be grown from sea level up to about 1000 meters above sea level.
However, licorice is a plant that reproduces by seed but can also be propagated by division of the tufts.
For the details of the cultivation technique, refer to the following sheet.

Propagation by seed –
The sowing of licorice must be carried out in a seedbed or in a box during the month of February, or directly in the open ground in March.
The seeds must first be soaked for about 24 hours in warm water; once softened they can be sown about 1 cm deep in a medium organic and well worked substrate.
If broadcast sowing is done after germination, the new seedlings will be thinned at a distance of 60 cm from each other, to allow all the weeding and periodic elimination of unwanted herbs.

Propagation by division of tufts –
The multiplication by division of the tufts is the most practiced; this technique consists in dividing a very developed rhizome (about 10-15 cm long) into several portions which will then be rooted in a mixture of equal parts of peat and sand.
When we see the first new shoots emit, it means that these tufts will have rooted and in this case it is possible to transplant with the same distances indicated above.
The plants obtained from seed or by dividing the tufts must be transplanted in the ground during the spring period, in holes more than 30 cm deep.