Hello. I am one of the three children writing in this gardening blog. I am the only son out of the three. When the three of us children started to grow plants, I wasn't the first one. It all started with my older sister, who is now a senior in highschool. She decided to plant some plants to sell at farmer's markets. She decided to plant succulants, which are like cactuses, but without the thorns, so we got a lot of pots, and our mom taught her how to plant succulants. When I saw the succulants in all those pots, I decided I wanted to grow something to, so I looked around the garden and remembered our Japanese Maple in the middle of our backyard. This Japanes Maple is a variety known as
Acer palmatum, a green variety of the tree. Around the base of the tree, there were dozens of seedlings just starting to grow, so I took some of the many leftover pots from my sister's stash, and, with the help of my mom, I started to put the Japanese Maples into pots and trays.That day, I planted two trays of plants, with each tray holding 15 plants. I would have planted more, but we had run out of soil, so two days later, we got more soil, and I was able to plant 3 more trays of plants, leaving me with 75 Japanese Maple seedlings
which I water twice a day. Having seen me and my older sister both start potting plants, my younger sister decided to start propogating plants as well. My older sister now has potted four or five types of succulants and two trays of mint, I have my Japanese Maples, and my little sister has potted one tray of Christmas Cactuses. Along with this, we have one tray of chives that we all help take care of. This gave us the idea to start a blog, which is the one you are reading now. Along the way in this blog, you may here us talk of how our plants are doing, what problems we are having with them, and some new plants that we will pot (after we get more pots to put them in).
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 taug
ht 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.
