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.

Rain

Well, I told you I had moved my Japanese Maples, or Acer palmatum plants, to a new location, but I never got to tell about it. I moved them to a new and more sunny place, but its not like that is going to help much anymore because we have rain. That's right. I don't have to water them that much anymore because they are getting rained on. A lot. The rain is nice because I don't have to worry about water plants that much and they can just grow on their own. Unfortunately, there is a problem with Fall that comes with the joys of rain. This problem is... leaves. There are two reasons why leaves make me made. Reason number 1 is that leaves on my Japanese Maples started to fall off. This makes my small little plants look like twigs sticking out of the ground. I feel like they all are dying! It makes me worry about the plants. The other problem is that leaves fall from other trees. We have a real big tree that is to the right of my Japanese Maples, and leaves start falling all over the place. Namely, inside the pots of my plants. My mom and I have spent a lot of time pulling leaves out of those pots and it is quite annoying. On other garden news, there are three very large vegetables that have been growing in our yard. My mom says that they are called Upo plants, or bottle gourds. These things are huge for any vegetable to ever grow in our garden and they scare me at how huge they are and how fast they grow. That's about all the amazing garden news for now.

Persistence

This last week, I went to Effie Yeaw Nature Center for a club that I am in. While there, I saw one of the most amazing trees that I may ever encounter. This tree, once strong and large, fell over a while back, but kept growing. It still had roots in the ground and leaves in the trees. A while before I got to the nature center, there was a small fire in which the tree got severely burned on the lower part of its fallen trunk, yet when I got there, the roots were still firmly planted and the leaves were still growing. I was amazed at how persistent and strong that tree was. Also, I moved my Japanese Maples to a new location, which I will talk about 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.

New Additions

Yesterday, I was able to get more Japanese Maples, or Acer palmatum, plants into my plant population. A couple of days ago, my family went on a trip to see our grandparents. My grandmother is also an great gardener, and when we told her that we were growing plants, she gave my sisters some succulants. Along with that, she found some pots that were the size that I used for my Japanese Maples, and gave me 15 of them, the size of one tray of seedlings. On the saturday after wecame back, I potted some more seedlings. I also had a 16th pot lying around the house, and I accidentally put a strawberry seedling in it instead of a Japanese Maple seedling. Along with being able to make another tray of seedlings, I also found out that my mother had potted some seedlings a long time ago, and my sister had taken them and put them in the shad

e. When I found out about this, I repotted them into larger pots. I know have about ten new additions to my set of maples that are outside of trays. On other news besides Japanese Maples, the chives are rapidly growing tall. Also, my older sister has been working on growing Mint plants, but she grew them from parts of roots, so she wasn't able to see if they were growing, but now, the first leaves are peeking out of the dirt. actually, that happened about a week ago. Right now, there are leaves popping out all over the place.

Into the Sun

For the past couple of days, my Japanese Maple seedlings, or Acer palmatum seedlings, have been hidden from the sun in an area protected by bushes, trees, and other large plants. We left the seedlings in the shade because seedlings go through a lot of stress in their roots when they are being moved into pots. This is because the roots become exposed, and also might have ripped while being transferred into pots. These seedlings may wilt if we put them in the sun straight after they are transferred to pots. So for the past five days, my Japanese Maples have been in the safety of the shade. Now that the roots are coming back to normal and there are no big wilting problems, we have now moved the pots into the sun, allowing the Maple Trees to collect sunlight. With luck, the plants will grow quicker now, and not wilt. Along with the movement of the seedlings, there is also news about the newly potted chives. After three days of being potted, the chives have started to have new growths. This is good news! Maybe we will have chives for later on in the year!

Starting with Seedlings

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).