The dianthus family was known as early as 300BC; Dianthus is a genus of about 300 species of flowering plants in the family Caryophyllaceae, native mainly to Europe and Asia. Common names include carnation (D. caryophyllus), pink (D. plumarius) and sweet william (D. barbatus).

Origin of name: from the Greek ‘dios’ which means divine and ‘anthos’ meaning a flower.

The species are mostly perennial herbs, a few are annual or biennial, and some are low subshrubs with woody basal stems. Most Dianthus produce richly fragrant flowers in the spring or summer, sometimes extending right up until the first frost, and most varieties will grow 18″ to 24″. The flowers have five petals, typically with a frilled or pinked margin, and are (in almost all species) pale to dark pink.

Growing Conditions: Can be grown from seed or from cuttings. If using seed, you can either use them directly, or grow them indoors and transplant later. Given that they prefer warm weather, if planting outdoors, start in spring once the weather turns a bit warm. Dianthus seeds can be started indoors around 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost is expected in case you want same year blooming. Once the seeds are sown, they should be covered lightly with soil, and planted around 10- 11 inches apart. But, you can even plant them with a bit of crowding since they look good in clumps. Do not mulch them.
Should be planted such that they receive 4-5 hours of sun a day. There should not be water-logging, so avoid too much water; so the soil should be fast-draining, fertile, and mildly alkaline (pH of approx between 6.7 - 6.8). Water them during dry periods, once or twice per week. Fertilizer should be added monthly. Once flowers have bloomed and then dried, the spent flowers should be removed, and the plant pruned to stem level.

Carnations (one of the varieties): The plants have grayish-green foliage and fragrant, semi-double rosy, purple or white flowers. There are many hybrid varieties in a variety of colours and sizes with no fragrance. They are great plants to grow in gardens and can be used as cut-flowers.
Cuttings can be taken off any carnation, but the best shoot come from cuttings off a year-old plant after it has bloomed (what helps is that this is the part of the plant where there is enough length of the stalk to form a cutting).

Planting: Strawberry plants (crowns with roots) should be planted only half way up the crowns. Any deeper and they rot and die. Any shallower and they dry and die. The plants need to be about 10-12 inches apart and, planted either in rows about the same width or a little wider. Because they do well in weedless area, they need to have some sort of protection against weeds.

Types: If they are June bearing types, they produce only a single crop per year, and love very rich soil. If they are everbearing types, they will produce throughout the summer, but usually are smaller and less berries.

Propagation: Most plants will send out runners. These look like long stems and will start to form new leaves and roots at their tips. Usually they should have all the runners picked off and removed in the first season, so the plants can put more energy into the berries. After about two years, the crowns tend to get longer and ‘leggy’. Usually after the third year, these older leggy plants need to be replaced. Because a single plant can send out several runners in all directions, you can have small pots positioned under each small plant runner, so the roots will take in the small pots. The same fall, these small plants can be cut off from the mother plant and transplanted the following spring. You will eventually have an endless supply of plants if you allow them to root the runners. If they grow unchecked, they will soon over take the patch nearby the runners and if planted too closely, these tend to produce smaller berries if crowded.

Pests: Birds like these as do chipmunks, and they can both carry away a whole berry. One way is to paint some small rocks with bright red paint and set these around the plants to act as decoys. Also rat traps baited with grapes can get rid of many of the other pests. You wil be on your knees a lot, so get used to crawling and weeding, picking and thinning.. Spider mites are an enemy of these plants.

Winter care: Usually they need no covering in winter, but do benefit if there is a heavy weight white platic fabric put down over the plants for the winter months. Covering them over in winter with plant mulch or leaves tend to cause rotting, so should be avoided.

I found a great site that explains all about grafting, and is good information for a newbie who really wants to learn, but does not know enough. The site is available at this link. An extract from the site:
“The major methods of asexual propagation are cuttings, layering, division, and budding grafting. Cuttings involve rooting a severed piece of the parent plant; layering involves rooting a part of the parent and then severing it; and budding and grafting is joining two plant parts from different varieties.”
The site explains in detail about what cutting is, basically a small section of the original plant cut in order to grow into a new plant. And then it explains about how to prepare cuttings, including cleaning, inserting into a medium, and then explains about the various types of cuttings such as stem cuttings, tip cuttings, medial cuttings, cane cuttings, single eye, double eye, heel cutting, leaf cuttings, root cuttings.
The site also explains about layering, (which is basically using a section of stem that can grow new roots), about grafting, budding.