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,…