White hibiscus flower up close

I’m also growing some Japanese maples from seed, and this is my first attempt at doing it. These are from seeds off my red Japanese maple in front of my house. I had to put them in the fridge for a few months to “stratify” and then plant them. I have nine of these babies…

For my birthday, I got a great Sigma 70-300mm APO DG zoom lens for my Canon digital SLR. With this digital camera, that lens is almost an 11x zoom! Pretty darn cool. It has a nice macro function that allows you to take these ultra closeups from four feet away. I’m having a lot of…

Last night, my remote thermometer says it got down to 26° (actually it was this morning at 6:30 that was the coldest). I’m concerned about my cherry and nectarine blossoms. Mostly, it’s the cherries that concern me, because not many of the nectarine blossoms have opened yet. I’ll keep an eye on them, but I…

I’m having some troubles trying to grow some flowers and trees from cuttings. I have succeeded before in getting cuttings of flowers and shrubs to grow by putting them in one-gallon pots with a plastic bag over them to keep the moisture in. I dipped the stems in rooting hormone and planted them in peat…

Last fall, I took some cuttings from my Japanese maples and put them in cups of water with willow cuttings. The willow branches are supposed to release a rooting hormone into the water. I left them in the water all winter. Some got a bit moldy or mildewy. Today, I dipped them in rooting hormone…