I don't have a greenhouse for cuttings. All I've got are tall shelves with double shop lights as a seed starting setup. One unit is in an unheated but enclosed building. The other is in my house. I have root stimulator and plenty of pots.
How complicated is it going to be to get these tender salvia to stay alive and root over the winter and early spring before they can be planted out? I don't dare trust leaving them to the vagaries of winter under mulch of any kind as we have a lot of ice, heave and thaw cycles that lost me a bunch of plants last year. Is the whole procedure the same for the penstemon and agastache?

With Salvias, you need robust growth as well (green wood), and bottom heat works well. Seasons are not as critical as is the robustness of growth.

Your plans will be more compact in the unheated space. In the heated area, I hope you like a cool house. Otherwise, the plants will be thin, leggy, and prone to spider mites.

Please use a sterile rooting medium, not dirt or water. The grittier and airier the media the better. Do not use beach sand, which has rounded sand grains. Builders sand is washed, and should have sharp edges to the grains.

I've kept sage cuttings under lights in the basement for some years now and mostly successfully. My success with Agastaches has been much more mixed; they seem to hate being indoors and those that survive are never happy. I find it better to get ahead of the game and root cuttings from vigorous spring growth. Those cuttings are usually ready by about July 1st and in bloom by sometime in August. Some of High Country's agastaches are quite hardy here at the edge of zone 6 & 7 - especially X Desert Sunrise and its parent rupestris.

Again, I am interested in which sages you are growing? The ones from High Country have all proved hardy in my sandy soil.

I do not have sandy soil. I have added granite grit to my silty loam but am not convinced that I have enough there to make the soil optimum for these plants year round. I'm zone 6, but not close enough to zone 7 to be a transition zone.

I found that my agastaches/zauchneria sulked for quite a while when I planted them at the end of May and really didn't get going until August.

So, do you think it is too late with the agastache? What about a cold frame approach?

I use tarps to stop the flow of heat in either direction, especially at night. My cold frames have 8 x 4 feet sashes and I have 3/4 blue foam or aluminized yellow foam (wall insulation)cut to fit in the sash frames for the coldest nights. I have kept tropicals alive in such cold frames.

A radio frequency thermometer sensor inside the cold frame is a good idea, especially if the receiver has an alarm for too cold or too hot.

Send me an email if you want construction details. I hope to have them available on my web site in a few months.

For all I know the jury is still out of Zauschneria in the east. I have latifilia v. etteri growing and blooming although it is still very small. How has it done for you? Several friends report being able to keep another species of the genus alive but also report it did not flower.

What about putting a modified "cold frame" around the entire bed? I thought I read somewhere that the western salvias would rather be mulched with grit than plant materials. I don't know--it's such a mix of hardy and non-hardy at this point!