Dealing with the Weather

Well, we have been growing our plants against the desire of the weather. Although it was cool and rainy throughout all of May, June came with 100 degree weather and blazing sunlight. Though our plants need sunlight, this means we have to constantly monitor the plants as they grow. Unfortunately, you can't do this while on trips. We had planned a two-week trip over the summer, and we had to do something with the plants. We figured out a system where the irrigation where we put showers on the ends of posts and put the plants all around the showers. We got most plants watered and healthy through the two week period, but half of my thyme got burnt to a crisp. Hopefully this weather will get better soon.

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.