As noted in my last post I got to spend as much time as I wanted in the garden yesterday, which ended up being five hours or so. Weeding, planting, pruning -- that last one reminded me that it's time again for that fun meme "In a Vase on Monday".
I've been following a fun garden blog meme closely for the past several months, enjoying the creations that friends Loree and Peter have been creating every week. It's called In a Vase on Monday and is brought to you by Rambling in the Garden. Every Monday I see some of the wonderful vases that my friends put together and show us, and every week I think "I'm going to do that next week". Then I forget and the next Monday's posts remind me again. Sigh.
Winter that is. It's not that the cold weather has me down, although if pleasant temperatures would hurry along that would be fine with me.
One of the ways that I continue gardening over the long winter months is through cuttings. It's one of my overwintering strategies for tender plants: take cuttings and root them instead of trying to overwinter the entire (sometimes large) plant.
Time for more random observations.
One thing that I do every autumn as the first freezing temperatures are forecast is take cuttings of plants with fragrant foliage. I keep them in a jar of water in the kitchen window, just to have them available for an occasional rub and sniff.
I did a little spur-of-the-moment plant shopping the other day while picking up building supplies at Home Depot. I certainly was not intending to even look at plants while there, as the houseplant selection is usually pretty uninteresting to me. The succulents though, they sometimes surprise.
I've got a couple of things to update you on. First, I recently put some lettuce cuttings into water after reading that you could regrow lettuce this way.
I saw an article recently that was one of those "10 things..." type of lists that are so popular these days, as if something isn't worth learning about until it's in a list, but I digress. The article was something like "10 vegetables you can use and grow again forever", and since I already have experience with this sort of thing with my kitchen counter green onions, I eagerly read through the list.
Back at the end of November I did some major houseplant pruning when I hacked one of my lanky Dracaena into pieces.
Although I'm quite proud of my garden and have a good amount of success with most plants I try, the indoor greenery is another story. Too little light and a maddening design that puts all of the heater vents right in front of the windows means that houseplants face a challenge in my home.
As I mentioned recently, the cuttings that have been rooting in clay pellets (and water) have been looking a bit yellow, a sure sign that they need to get into some potting mix and soak up some nutrients!
You already know I overwinter cuttings indoors under lights. You've also recently read about me taking more cuttings for fun and to get more plants.
In a post a few weeks ago I mentioned taking Euphorbia tirucalli 'Sticks on fire' cuttings, and Loree at Danger Garden wondered what I did to get good success when propagating this plant.
Besides taking cuttings as part of my yearly overwintering strategy, I also overwinter some grass divisions, mainly purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum'). I did the same thing this year, but in a different way.
A while back I wrote about some houseplants I was trying to save. Then more recently I potted up some clippings that had been languishing in water for too long. Today I'll show you what's going on with them. First up is this ZZ plant:
I received those bamboo rhizomes the other day and I've got some plant cuttings rooted in water that I've been meaning to get into some soil, and since the temperature outside is about the same as the temperature in the garage (low to mid 40's F) it seems like the perfect day to do some potting. Yes, I could pot these up in the garage any day, but it's much nicer and simpler if I can leave the garage door open for more light and easier access to pots that I left outside this winter.
I've written before about how I hate throwing away plants. I may have way too many tomato seedlings than I can plant, or more potted bamboos than I know what to do with, but I feel like I owe it to the plant to give it a chance. Sometimes that even means saving plants that you don't even really think of as plants.
A few weeks ago I took some cuttings of tender plants that wouldn't survive our early hard freeze, then put them into water to root. Two of the three plants I was certain would root, but the third I wasn't sure about.
The other day I spent some time moving various non-hardy potted plants into the garage before the temperature got down to 25ºF in order to save them. The second part of that plant-saving effort was to dig up some in-ground plants and take some cuttings.
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