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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 24, 2009 5:52:20 GMT
Gardeners are always looking for more plants and propagate from their own gardens or from what they can beg or snitch from here and there. Right now I'm waiting for some decent cool, wet weather so I can plant the cuttings I took from my pure white pelargonium. But today I really scored. I got one of these > , which I'd been wanting for ever so long. This was growing between the sheets of rusted tin around a tumble-down adobe house in my neighborhood. I always scrutinize this place when I go past, since it has some interesting, out-of-the ordinary plantings. I looked around for someone to ask for permission and finding no one, snapped off a 9 or 10" piece. It snapped right off, and walking home I knew I'd identified it correctly as every glochid worked its way into my skin.
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Post by spindrift on Jul 24, 2009 9:56:54 GMT
That's an interesting looking cactus that I've never seen before.
Mrs Baz has given me several cuttings that are now taking off and doing well - 2 cactus (lovely shapes), a prostrate rosemary, an everlasting daisy type thing and a choyisia. I'll take a pic of the cacti and you can tell me whether you recognize them, Bixa.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2009 12:52:39 GMT
Here's a tried and true recipe for rooting cuttings( far better then Rootone): chop or cut up some young twigs,not too green though ,from any type of WILLOW tree(Salix) and make a "tea" with water (preferrably rainwater) in a jug. Allow to steep for at least 3 days or so. Use this tea to water your cuttings with. You can leave the twigs in the jug and just replenish the water as needed. Add some fresh twigs every so often. I swear by it. I believe that the salicylic acid in the willow acts as a rooting hormone.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 10, 2010 0:25:49 GMT
Today I went to the big Tuesday produce market because I badly needed onions and other vegetables. This is a monster weekly market that attracts vendors of all kinds of things. The first plant-related score was a bag of huge chiles canarios ( Capsicum pubescens). This is a thick-walled hot pepper that I like, but that I mostly wanted for the seeds, as I want to establish a healthy plant or two of it in my garden. On my way to the meat market section, I was attracted to an orange-flowered Crossandra. It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, since I'd barely started to shop for food. Anyway, I practically hurled it aside when I saw that the vendor had an Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop'. I snapped up that little beauty for 20 pesos! And now for simultaneously the biggest gloat, the biggest guilt, and the biggest frustration. Frustration, because my camera is totally dead and I know nothing about orchids. Gloat, because I scored at least 20 blooming orchids with their root bulbs (if that's what it's called), all wrapped in damp Spanish moss, for 10 pesos. And guilt because I know stuff like this is ripped from the forests with no regard for sustainability. Also, because the extremely young woman, probably from the state of Chiapas, with the baby strapped to her, fully expected me not to pay the princely sum of less than a dollar for all this ecologically disastrous treasure. I'll try to ID them online, and perhaps take them to a friend's house so she'll photograph them for me. She lives near the orchid pavilion, so I'll swing by there first.
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Post by myrt on Nov 10, 2010 21:39:09 GMT
Good haul, Bixa! I love Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop'. I have several and hopefully I have finally worked out the best way to keep them alive over the winters now...haven't lost any for a while anyway! Absolutely beautiful shades aren't they? It's horrifying about the plants being ripped out from the forests though...scary....and how can you be sure that labels stating that plants are ecologically grown etc are true anyway? In the UK the recent vogue for fungi forays to pick and eat is apparently causing concern now as gangs of workers descend on particular areas and strip ALL the fungi, whether edible or not, and it is destroying the ecology of local areas wholesale. We never seem to be able to get the balance right....
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 11, 2010 1:04:30 GMT
Thanks, Myrt. Any tips on keeping A. arboreum perky would be greatly appreciated. When I got home from the market yesterday, I breathlessly phoned a friend to report on my purchase: me ~ You know, the one with the leaves the color of eggplant. her ~ Yeah, yeah, succulent, tall, some green, merging into almost black. me ~ That's it! her ~ I know the plant. It's the one that always dies. And that is in fact our mutual experience with it. I thought I'd killed a regular A. aboretum because I let it go to seed, so now I knew what to do. My friend reminded me that we'd both have several Zwartkps because we like them so much even though they always die on us. *sigh* So true about wholesale taking of every bit of wild foods, flowers, etc. It's really an ethical minefield here, if you have any knowledge whatsoever. For instance, when I moved I wanted "hoja" -- the fluffy, only partly broken-down leaf matter used to mix with dirt for potting soil here. I wanted the straight stuff so all the plant pots I was moving would be lighter. They might call it hoja, but I know it's forest duff -- stuff that shouldn't be scraped up off the forest floor. And those same forests yield all the popular live plants used at Christmastime around here. Look here, starting around the middle of the page. It's all so beautiful and soooooo ecologically disastrous. I'm sure all or almost all of that stuff is from the wild.
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Post by myrt on Nov 11, 2010 7:14:24 GMT
Almost total neglect seems to have worked for me......I chuck a bit of water at the plants every so often when they start to look sad and repot them every so often but that's about it..
I got distracted by the fantastically colourful world you live in on the link, Bixa but then I saw all those plants - eek, are they all just ripped up and sold then? I know they are all beautiful and desirable plants and selling them displayed like that is really interesting to someone like me but it's pretty terrible isn't it? I can imagine the destruction it causes in their natural environment..
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 16, 2011 17:41:51 GMT
Yesterday I ran into a neighbor who came over & was exclaiming over my plants. I gave her a couple of things & she said, "Oh, I must bring you some cuttings of my geraniums!" I do love geraniums, but am not eager for more right now. However, when she explained where she lived, I realized that I walk by her house all the time and covet her geraniums. Anyway, she left & came back shortly with all of this: This beauty, is a cutting, but with all kinds of roots coming off it. It's easily 3' high. I should know the name, but don't. Can someone ID it, please? But what I wanna know is what is this ~~ It looks sort of shrimp plant-y, doesn't it? In a perfect universe, it would turn out to be a Megaskepasma, which I came across in a book just yesterday & went into frenzies of lust over it. I'm not looking any of these gift plant ponies in the mouth, though, except for the usual worries about imported diseases. Some of what she gave me either replaced plants I love but no longer have (yellow Brugsmania), or common plants that I like but don't have (spider plant, Spathiphyllum, Kalanchoe blossfeldiana).
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Post by mickthecactus on Mar 17, 2011 14:36:02 GMT
A.arboreum is a winter grower here when it turns much more green then goes black in summer. Don't try to take cuttings in summer - they won't root. Take them in autumn.
Ther is very rare variegated version which I look out for but haven't seen in years.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 11, 2011 5:38:48 GMT
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Post by tod2 on Jun 11, 2011 12:43:12 GMT
I am sooooo jealous! It is such a delightful little flower and I do like your yellow one better than the red one. I think it would be perfect for my sunbirds!
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 11, 2011 15:10:34 GMT
Thanks, Tod. I cut quite a swathe of jealousy as I maneuvered it through the market. At least the branches were bundled and tied together, but it's four feet tall and covered the handle of my little cart. I did give away a couple of cuttings to people who admired it, in the hope of good growing karma for the darling. The flowers are exactly the shade shown in the photos. It's a good thing I've been following your wonderful trip down memory lane, because now I know what sunbirds are!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2011 19:08:09 GMT
My dear friend in Georgia,a horticulturist who works at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens in the propagation dept.has been incredibly generous in offerings to me via first class mail some wonderful plant specimens. Through her generosity I have been gifted a fabulous crinum,some unusual, rather difficult to find in the trade Salvias, some unique colocasias. Soon to be en route is a fairly rare,very new to the trade if indeed available at all right now,cutting edge rooted cutting of a tree that's a cross between a Franklinia and a Gordlinea,named Gordonia Grandiflora. According to some sources close to the staff,at the JC Ralston Arboretum in North Carolina,this small tree should do well in my garden zone. We shall see... I am so amped about this. To be continued.... Here she is...... My friend said she looks a bit like a fried egg,now I know why she said that!!!! ;D
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2018 13:20:09 GMT
Here's a tried and true recipe for rooting cuttings( far better then Rootone): chop or cut up some young twigs,not too green though ,from any type of WILLOW tree(Salix) and make a "tea" with water (preferrably rainwater) in a jug. Allow to steep for at least 3 days or so. Use this tea to water your cuttings with. You can leave the twigs in the jug and just replenish the water as needed. Add some fresh twigs every so often. I swear by it. I believe that the salicylic acid in the willow acts as a rooting hormone. In keeping with the post in "Something I Learned Today" in Waterfront Park I wanted to add the info about using cinnamon as a rooting accelerant as it is more apt in this thread. Yesterday, I rode my bicycle around the neighborhood and snipped a half dozen heirloom rose cuttings that I have been lusting after for some time now. I have been refurbishing my front flower bed (mainly because my dog has a tendency to position himself on top of smaller plants and crush them. No matter what "baffle" I incorporate to deter him). So, I plan on putting in a small rose garden with the idea that the thorns surely will not make for a pleasant place to bed. (as an aside, I am going to use the "willow water" method on some of the cuttings and cinnamon on the others. Just out of curiosity to see the results).
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 2, 2018 4:10:05 GMT
Really curious (& optimistic!) about this experiment.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Apr 5, 2018 21:10:48 GMT
My sister was feeling well enough for a little excursion today, so we visited three garden centres...
I bought three pyracantha plants for growing up a south facing fence, I plan to train them to grow along wires.. three different varieties, a red, a yellow and a fiery orange. Also got some bargains (50% off) 2 glorious hellebores, an alchemilla mollis and a couple of thymes...AND yesterday I ordered 4 trillium plants, 2 little red ones and 2 white ones. Fabulous.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 5, 2018 21:14:50 GMT
What a perfect outing to celebrate her feeling well!
I miss pyracantha, which doesn't grow around here. Your other acquisitions sound scrumptious. Will the trillium eventually carpet an area?
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Apr 6, 2018 16:51:31 GMT
Hopefully because I've bought four there is a chance that the trilliums will spread....fingers crossed
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2018 15:16:41 GMT
Oh how I would love to see trilliums in bloom again...
I wanted point out in my recent post about propagating some heirloom roses that I collected from the neighborhood.
(I had received permission from the different people who's roses I cut a long time ago but never until now acted on doing it). One of the real advantages to have procrastinated about following through is that during the time that has lapsed I have been able to see how these different roses perform here. There were a couple in the original mix that I eliminated because of "fussy" flaws and growth pattern etc. And so, I procured cuttings that met my satisfaction. Not something one can do when purchasing roses from a nursery or mail order and goodness knows we can never trust what the descriptions given by the sellers claim. "Performs well in humid climates, Graceful growth pattern" etc. Yeah right....
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 7, 2018 15:40:47 GMT
Right!
And we all know that "tolerant of black spot" translates to "Doesn't die. Looks like shit."
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2018 16:00:35 GMT
"Spot on", (pun intended).
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Post by breeze on Apr 7, 2018 16:01:39 GMT
Casimira, what are those roses you took cuttings of? I hope they're putting out new little roots like mad.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 7, 2018 16:41:43 GMT
Right! And we all know that "tolerant of black spot" translates to "Doesn't die. Looks like shit." Hahaha! Talking of cadging the botanical garden of Gibraltar are sending me Moroccan Stapeliads. I just asked nicely!
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Post by whatagain on Apr 7, 2018 16:59:21 GMT
Had to climb over my fence to retrieve branches I had cut. Pyrancathas have grown quite a lot. Ouch.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 7, 2018 17:38:41 GMT
Talking of cadging the botanical garden of Gibraltar are sending me Moroccan Stapeliads. That's great, Mick. Probably your reputation preceded you and they know you're a worthy recipient.
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Post by mickthecactus on Apr 7, 2018 18:11:35 GMT
Talking of cadging the botanical garden of Gibraltar are sending me Moroccan Stapeliads. That's great, Mick. Probably your reputation preceded you and they know you're a worthy recipient. How I love you....
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2018 22:15:01 GMT
Casimira, what are those roses you took cuttings of? I hope they're putting out new little roots like mad. Of the six thus far I acquired a Madam Isaac Perriere, Buff Beauty, a lovely pink noisette whose name escapes me, The Fairy and two others that I haven't ID'd yet. I'm not as keen in my knowledge of many of the heirlooms as I once was. A little brush up is what needs to happen to regain what I knew. I use The Antique Rose Emporium's catalogue as a guide. They are located in Texas and I've purchased a few of their roses over the years mainly for clients. The catalogue is indispensable to me and as good as any rose reference guide out there. I just need to dig it up out of the pile/stacks of stuff in my study.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 7, 2018 23:15:02 GMT
Oh, Casimira ~ you got the most glorious of the glorious old roses!
The Antique Rose Emporium's catalog is solid gold. They're still issuing the paper version?
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Post by bjd on Apr 8, 2018 5:34:32 GMT
I have a Fairy rose in my garden here, planted in a terrible place (north-facing and surrounded by lilacs) and it still blooms for months at a time. I put one in my garden at the coast too.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 13:46:50 GMT
Oh, Casimira ~ you got the most glorious of the glorious old roses! The Antique Rose Emporium's catalog is solid gold. They're still issuing the paper version? I knew you would be familiar with these Bixa. My ARE catalogue is at least 20 years old. Something worth hoarding. I'm not sure if they issue them anymore. Their website is very thorough but there's nothing like having a hand held reference guide at the ready. I always loved "The Fairy" BJD. Good to hear it performs so well for you. I noticed up in NY how they seem to be used a lot in commercial properties. The local library has a hedgerow of them planted and it is stunning.
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