Creating Borders the Lazy Way

With my new border as finished as it is going to be until spring, I turned a critical eye today to the back border. Like the others, I created it a couple of years ago when I had no idea what I wanted to do there, and like the others, it turned out to be way too narrow.

I had mentioned this problem to the household management on numerous occasions before, and had secured permission to expand it to a width of about ten feet, and so I thought it best to get to work sooner rather than later. (This is sound advice anytime you have permission to do something that you want to do. Waiting is never to your advantage.)

I got the idea that, since I won't be planting anything there for at least a year, why not make the entire border into a giant compost pile, 60 feet long by 10 feet wide, and keep adding stuff to it over the next year? By the time I'm ready to plant, that soil ought to be so rich that I can just throw plants on top of it.

I put down some newspaper first, then covered it with sod dug up from the other border, and finally covered the whole thing with the leaves that I appropriated from my neighbors' curbs. Andy supervised the process.

See, if I were smart and patient, this is what I would have done from the beginning: mark out my beds and borders, pile compost on top of them, and let them sit for a year while I sat on the deck drinking tea and leafing through gardening books deciding what I wanted to plant and where.

In other news, remember those weigela that I rooted? I planted them today. Check out these roots! (This photo says more about the plant's adaptability than it does my skill at propagating.)

I saw a Baltimore Oriole at the feeder today. I was so surprised that for several minutes I couldn't think of the bird's name--all I could think was, "orange bird, orange bird." Orioles are uncommon in Greensboro, although I did have one visit the feeder last winter. Here's a photo from last year; it's not very good, but it just seems wrong to write about an oriole without posting a picture. Maybe I'll get a better one if he comes back!

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.

Propagation by Cutting

Saturday afternoon I snipped a few cuttings from a friend's weigela and brought them home to see if I could root them. I've had varying success in propagating different kinds of plants, but I don't think I've ever tried weigela, so we'll see what happens.

First, I take a small cutting from the plant and remove all but one or two leaves.








Then, I wet the stem and dip it in some powdered rooting hormone.







I plant it in a mixture of sand and peat moss, water it, and cover it with plastic to keep the moisture in.
Then I wait. Sometimes it thrives, sometimes it dies. I always try to take several cuttings, knowing that all of them aren't going to root successfully.

I don't really know why this appeals to me; other than the obvious fact that I can get free plants. That in itself, though, is hardly worth the trouble because the new plants are so small--you could buy larger plants for just a few dollars. There is a bit of mystery, I suppose, in taking a little cutting and growing an entirely new plant from it. It doesn't seem like it should work, but often enough, it does.