Cleaning Up / Rejuvenating Chive Clumps. New Weeding Tool. 3.24.22

I finished cleaning up the chives and garlic chives.  Growing them in containers helps a lot, but once grasses get in there, it's a job for sure.  

Here is the tool I bought.  I want to call it "Klingon Toothpick" but Star Trek might not like that.  I'll just call it "That weeding tool".

This was the best tool I've ever used for close-in weeding of tough weeds.  It's difficult getting close to the chive plants without harming them.  This helped a lot.

After clean-up, I put in about 1/4 cup of organic vegetable fertilizer, filled in the missing soil, and topped with a fine compost-topsoil mix that I hope will be free of weed seeds.

The garlic chives are about 20 years old.  They have been through multiple transplanting and dividing.  I let them bloom last year, which stresses them.  The plants I grew last year from seeds are growing better than these.  A rejuvenation usually get them going again.

The regular chives are from I clump I started ten years ago. I've divided and rejuvenated them a few times.  They usually like that, it's kind of a chive spa treatment.  Next time, they'll will need a good dividing again. 

I did other chores-

Planted two six-packs of sweetpea seedlings I started a few weeks ago.

Planted the remaining half dozen Echinacea, a half dozen Rudbeckias, a few Coreopsis in the wildflower garden.

Planted a row onions that I had started in Jan,  "New York Early".

Moved a daylily clump so I could plant that climbing rose there.

Transplanting A Cutting-Grown Climbing Rose. 3.24.22

 I started this rose from a cutting last year.  It was very easy.  I just pushed the dormant stick into the soil in a vegetable raised bed, as a row marker.

I think I pushed them in too deep.  The roots emerged from the bottom, and grew downward from there.  I dug one out last fall and didn't get enough roots, and it died.

This time I tried to dig as deeply as possible, without disturbing the neighboring garlic plant.

I think I got enough roots.  Also, it's barely Spring yet, so it shouldn't get too much sun yet, until it settles in.  I did give it about 1/3 cup of organic vegetable fertilizer.

It was frosted in the last freeze.  New growth has started.  I pruned about one foot from the floppy growth.  Fingers crossed.  I'll be watching for new growth.

Garden Puttering. 3.23.22

 Today I didn't do much.  It was raining and I'm feeling the full effects of a COVID vaccine booster.  However, I did do the following:

(1)  Re-cover the sides of the recovered cedar planter box, with clear plastic.   I want them to not-be rained on for  few weeks so they will be dry, when I stain and water proof the wood.  Especially the inside - that way I can start setting up the filling for plants.  I can stain the outside later if needed.

(2) Planted some Crocosmia "Lucifer" corms in the deer park / hell strip border.  I bought five via mail order.  This fall I should dig up some of the big clumps growing elsewhere, and divide them.  It would mean a lot more plants, for free, and it would be way too expensive otherwise to buy that many new ones.

(3) Moved a Sisyrichium striatum clump from the edge of the fenced garden, to the deer park border.  I like them but they are messy looking.  Better to grow out of the main view.  I prepped the old location for planting some colorful, modern bare root Echinacea plants that came yesterday.

(4)  Planted a short row of carrots and another of radishes.

(5) Scattered slug bait around the emerging sweetpea seedlings, and also around most of the snowpea and snappea plants.  Slugs like those.  Also around the Rudbeckia, Echinacea, and Coreopsis seedlings and rhubarb divisions.

(6) Mostly I walked around, looking at swelling tree buds, plants emerging from the ground, and taking in fragrance from hyacinths.

Sage and Forsythia Cuttings. 3.23.22

I saw a page on the internet that showed starting sage plants, in water, from cuttings.  So I took some sage cuttings.  Also I took another batch of forsythia cuttings to start in water too, like I did last year.  

Cuttings -

I cleaned up the bottom stem portions of the sage cuttings.  Then they all went into jars of water in an East facing window.

They say that it's best to start cuttings in potting soil and use rooting hormone.   These are what gardeners of the previous generations referred to as "slips".  Not everything can be started that way, but some can.    That is part of grandparent and great grandparent and further back garden lore.  Last year when I started forsythias, the water method actually worked better, with more success, faster, bigger plants, and less trouble, compared to using seed starting medium.  If it doesn't work, well, the cost was free and it wasn't that much effort.

Starting Rosemary From Cuttings. 3.21.22

 A few weeks ago, I collected some rosemary sprigs and made them into cuttings.  I scored the lower couple of inches of stem, dipped into dip-and-gro, and packaged in moist seed starting medium.  I tied the bags so there was a tie around the mis point of the stem, with the tops still in open end of bag.

The past few days, I noticed roots.

I took them out of the bag.  Four cuttings had grown roots.  Four did not survive.

So I potted the four good ones in some of that new potting mix.  It's sort of a leap of faith but there isn't another choice right now.

I cut the top inch, so they will branch out.  I hope in a few weeks, these will establish well enough to move outside.   These will either be extras in the herb border, or replace any non-survivors among those I transplanted and cleaned up.

Rosemary has an amazing scent.  According to wikipedia, rosemary leaves are 0.05% to 0.5% camphor, and essential oil from rosemary is 10% to 20% camphor.  The other essential oils include "rosmarinic acid, camphor, caffeic acid, ursolic acid, betulinic acid, carnosic acid, and carnosol."  Whatever those are.  Deer don't seem to touch it.