Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Red Maple Tree Propagation DIY

I have no idea if this will work. I also make no claims to be a horticulture expert by any means, but I have a little plot out back and I figured I would give it a shot. I ordered two apple trees from the Arbor Day Foundation and my purchase of "any amount" earned me a free Red Maple tree along with the two apples. I planted them all near the same area and I noticed these little sprigs coming off the base, right at the mulch of my tree, and I thought I might clip them and try to root them.

I used a regular kitchen knife to cut them from the tree and bring them into the house. I left a longish stem on for the first cut, but later made a more precise cut with very sharp scissors. Excuse the weird light effects and awfully chipped fingernail polish. The rooting gel I used is the brand Rootech, I don't know anything about them or the quality of different ones, but we will see how well this one works, but you can use anything. For the growth medium I used rockwool cubes and soaked them for a few hours beforehand in a gallon of water at pH level 6 and with one milliliter of Superthrive. You should be able to find all this stuff in your local garden supply store for about $10, but you can root a lot of clippings for that price.











After I had the clippings in cubes I put them into a ziplock bag and sprayed the inside of the bag with a little of the water from earlier and zipped it up trying to squeeze out as much air without hurting the plants and unzipping a small corner and blowing air full of CO2 into the bag to give the babies a better chance. I am gonna leave it in a sunny window for about a week and then check on the roots and see how they are doing. When I see that the cubes are not as wet in a few days I will add a little water to the bag and spray the foliage and bag again. We'll see how this works!

Update: I left these in there for about a month and checked on them about once and week and there were never any roots sprouting from the stems so it was unfortunately a fail :(

Friday, July 22, 2011

Garden Update

So, I officially have one watermelon without rabbit teeth marks in it and one that has been nibbled, I have lots of flowers and about 5 cucumbers, but hopefully that will increase, as I have tried to pollinate them myself, but I don't know how that turned out. 


Monday, June 27, 2011

Garden!!!

I have been working on my garden and making sure that those slimy slugs stay away from my precious zinnias. Here are some pics of my handiwork.

Golden Marigolds


Organic Cucumbers....not organic because I am health conscious, but because they were the only cucumber seeds Home Depot had



The whole of my garden. I have some sunflowers, zinnias, bachelor's buttons, orange fleshed watermelons and sunflowers that are coming along beautifully :)



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