It’s seed starting time! And I want to show you why and how I get my seedlings in the sun as soon as possible. One of the common questions I get is how to keep seedlings from getting leggy and flopping over. Almost always, this happens from growing them indoors in weak light. Maybe you […]
Sometimes, it’s just useful to take the lazy approach, right? Like propagating cuttings in water. Yeah, you’ll read a lot online about how you should dip cuttings in rooting hormone and place them in a sterile medium, waiting several weeks to see if the roots are growing. But sometimes, it just works to put them […]
We’ve been starting seeds for the past couple of weeks. Isn’t is exciting to watch them sprout and develop? I find myself checking on them five times a day or more, waiting for the surprise arrival when those first seedlings pop out of the soil. The paper towel-baggie trick One of the tricks I’ve used […]
It’s that wonderful time of the year again; the snow has melted (finally!), the perennial flowers are just starting to poke up through soil, and I’m feeling the urgency to get things started in the greenhouse. I decided to try winter sowing again to get some seeds sprouted, and then I’ll transfer seedlings into the […]
Here’s another followup to my posting on GardenWeb about caring for Japanese maple seedlings. I think I’ll try this. I already had the same idea with two other young trees last summer — I took a seedling from my Autumn Blaze maple and a Golden Rain Tree seedling and put them in a shaded corner […]
A few days ago, I was walking in downtown Salt Lake City, and I saw some very cool Paperbark maples at the LDS Church Conference Center. I like small maples. Well, I actually like all maples. These ones have a papery, peeling bark that gives them some visual interest even when they’re dormant in the […]
Someone posted a followup on a message I placed last July on Gardenweb.com about Japanese maple seedlings. The followup asked for more advice about stratifying the seeds and getting them to sprout. This guy posted a response about his method of sprouting them, and it sounds faster than what I did in 2007. He also […]
I’ve tried to raise maybe a dozen Japanese maple seedlings over the past two seasons, and almost all have died. I’m down to only one left now — one just died this week. I don’t know if I’m giving them too much water or not enough. Or if they need more humidity or more shade, […]