The Stakes Are High

This is the brother in the family of gardeners. Who my mother refers to as "B". This last week, I was given some larger Japanese Maples, or Acer palmatum plants, than the ones that I have potted, but the sister of mine that had been taking care of them had left them in the shade, which allowed their trunks to stay floppy and leaning. I re-potted the trees that I could, and I also put up stakes in the pots to keep the trees from leaning. The stakes that I found were much higher than the plants that I had, but I'm hoping that my plants will grow to reach the top of the stakes. I also put them in the sun to make their trunks more sturdy. Another happy thing that happened in the plant world this week is that we got a new shipment of plants (Thank You, father!). This allowed me to pot more plants. Unfortunately, none of the pots were the right size for growing trees in. Instead, I learned how to clone plants. This last Saturday, I was taught by my mother how to clone thyme, or Thymus vulgaris. I just cut branches off of an existing thyme plants and potted them. To help these plants to take root faster, my mother let me use some of her root-growing hormones. These hormones are man-made but are based on the chemical structure of a real plant hormone. I potted two trays of 32 pots of thyme on Saturday, and continued to potting today, on Sunday. Today, I potted one tray of Rosmarinus officinalis, otherwise known as rosemary. Although the branches I cut off of the rosemary were quite a bit bigger than the branches of thyme, the basic cloning technique is the same. Cut, apply growth hormone, pot. After getting the hang of it, it was pretty easy.