If It's Still Summer, I'll Keep Rooting Stuff

The weather has turned cooler..."cooler" being a relative term. Temperatures have been in the 80s, which is normal for August but not October, but at least you can go outside and do some work without "the monkey" getting you. (Do people outside the South say that, or is it just one of our colloquialisms?)

A while back, I tried to root some cuttings from my white hydrangea, something I've never been successful with before. Two of them did develop roots, so I transplanted them into some potting soil today.

Since winter shows no signs of arriving anytime soon, I took some cuttings of a Silver King Euonymus, which is easy to root, dusted them with the magic rooting powder, and set them in pots. Just for fun, I also took a piece of my Koreanspice Viburnum, another plant that has survived the drought admirably, to see if I could root it. At least with these, if water restrictions get too severe, I can fill up a coffee cup at the sink and keep them hydrated!

Remember the weigela I rooted over the summer? Check it out!

I also put up Teresa's iron fence for her "Charleston Garden." She named it that because it will be very narrow, like the gardens between the houses along the Battery in Charleston (where, as the natives say, "the Ashley and Cooper Rivers merge to form the Atlantic...")

The fence came from Lowe's, and was relatively easy to put up. The hardest part was pounding the base stakes into the clay. I loosened up the soil with a mattock before I started, but that only took care of the top layer. Yes, it is a little crooked, but you know what? Once we have some clematis growing up it, and flowering perennials stuffed in that 12 inch strip of dirt, you'll never be able to tell. Besides, all those houses in Charleston, their fences are crooked too. I call it "character."

Weigela Rootings

A few weeks ago, I snipped some cuttings of a friend's weigela and set them in pots to root. I've diligently kept them covered in plastic so the soil would stay moist, and all four cuttings have rewarded me with new leaves. This morning while the day was cool, I transplanted them into potting soil. Two had developed excellent roots, one I would call mediocre, and the roots of the fourth were almost nonexistent.

I'll keep them in pots this fall so their roots can develop more; If I need to, I'll transplant them to bigger pots in the spring and wait until next fall to put them in the ground. (I've about decided not to plant anything in spring, because I'll spend the entire summer watering it. If I set out plants in October, however, they have three months of not-very-cold and hopefully wetter weather to establish their roots in the ground.)

Buoyed by my relative success in rooting the weigelas, I took some cuttings of my pretty white hydrangea to see if I could root them. This is another plant that gets 5 suns on my drought-tolerant scale. I've watered it maybe twice all summer and it looks great, even in several hours of direct sunlight.