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GA, in Idaho the soil is so rocky one much use a pick to dig out rocks to plant things. It is crazy.
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My grandmother used to say that illicit cuttings always grow better, I've got some lovely cactus and succulents from the people I use to clean for :)
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Cuttings. I am just back from a sobering survey of how this autumn's batch are doing, and here is a small mystery.

My sole surviving rosemary out of about fifteen - painstakingly selected, trimmed and inserted as described in the book in good quality free-draining compost enriched with sharp sand - is hanging on by the skin of its little green teeth. The others will be joining the compost later this morning. I fail again.

In the next pot are three of an unidentified climber. Back in August or September, a friend came to visit and she and I went for an amble round the town. I paused to admire a plant rampaging through a privet hedge, very pretty flowers on small arrow-shaped leaves. J glanced right and left to check there were no witnesses, yanked off three sprigs, said "there you go, pot them up" and handed them to me. Well for one thing I couldn't approve - theft of cuttings! - and for another I was deeply sceptical; but in spite of misgivings I put them in a poop-scoop bag, brought them home and shoved them in a pot.

They're doing great. What is the secret? What is the magic twist of the fingers that she's got and I haven't? This is so unfair!
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GA I'd forgotten about the slug pub! You used to be able to get them specially designed with a supposedly unclimbable lip on them. I just wonder if the reason they fell out of fashion was that slug colonies got wise to them and gardeners realised they were subsiding alcoholic slugs with new improved appetites.

A @&!** wasp flew into my glass of red wine a few weeks ago and ruined it for me - I was livid, thought "let the little sod drown then" and sat back to wait for that to happen before going to fetch myself a replacement. Ten minutes later it was still buzzing, I was bored and thirsty, so I sloshed out wasp and wine together: the angle it flew off at, and the thought of "Wasp With Hangover" scenes back at the nest, made it almost worth the wait if not the waste of a perfectly good glass of Rioja.
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CW, the $2 packet has - what, 250? 400? upwards of that? - lettuce seeds in it, and you only need a pinch per half tray: so your two dollars will keep you in arty sprinkly leafy garnishes all winter long.

As long as you're organised about it, of course. Cough cough. Fortunately we have a good greengrocer at the market round the corner...
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Ali, try growing alfalfa sprouts in your kitchen. Very easy and very tasty...no dirt or planting required. Google regrowing...you'll find directions for regrowing green onions. Kind of fun to have a little growing in the winter.
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Send, those moves might be even sooner given the protests now taking place in several cities.
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Can't believe that I was out in shirtsleeves spraying weeds on the 9th of November! I have irises blooming, a clematis that I cut back in August because it was finished has now climbed all the way up the trellis and is blooming more than it did this summer. Picked 21green peppers from my 8 plants today and have im patients blooming right next to the mums. My azalea has rebloomed and my morning glories are going crazy. I have never had a year like this!
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Havent heard of it ...microgreens.
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Microgreens is a trend I hadn't heard of until today, so I've been doing some reading. With seeds starting at $2 a packet and yields infinitely small, I have to say I don't get the point?
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Send, I suspect a lot of people are talking about moving to Canada after the events of yesterday.
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CM, I had forgotten but just remembered that drowning snails in beer is another way to dispatch them, and perhaps they even leave this earth in a happier state of mind.


Stacey, I LOVE dahlias, especially the massive dinner plate ones. And they're available in such stunning colors, beautiful intense solid colors or more softly blended pastel ones.

That must have been such a nice discovery, to find a dahlia lover in your area.


Ali, I like your Thanksgiving avatar - so reminiscent of the fall season with its dynamic colors.

What we compulsive and addicted gardeners do is begin planning our next year's garden as soon as we've harvested, mulched and brought everything inside for the winter.

When the snow covers the ground, it's especially heartwarming and enjoyable to get garden catalogues and start the daydreaming and bed layout process.

I grew miniature roses and eventually lost every single one, but I later lost some of my beloved David Austin roses. Eventually I realized that it was because the rose bed garden is on the south side of the house with open exposure from prevailing west winds. And, shame on me, I had forgotten to corral them in burlap to protect them from the winds.

You can also set up a schedule to document first frost, first killing frost, and last frost dates, especially now that climate change is affecting them. We now have one whole extra month at the end of the season; I plan to grow melons which sometimes don't completely ripen otherwise in a shorter growing season.


Sharyn, I plan to take cuttings of all my plant when I move. So definitely take those irises!


CM, I was just reading an article on growing microgreens and how nutritious they are. It was either in Country Garden or Fine Gardening. I haven't grown sprouts in years so that's something I should begin doing this winter as well.
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I am watering my camellia, it should bloom soon.
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Stacey, what a great man he was. I would love to come across someone like that here locally. I would so love for you to take a picture of your garden and put it as your avatar so we could get a glimpse of it.
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LOL!! It is a sad day for our country for sure and without debating politics, I hope to take the irises with us when we move to Idaho...a very republician state....but Agricultural check point like we have here coming into California. Eh!!!
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Hi Sharyn! That is good news-Iris can be so pretty-I just love it when nature takes care of most of the gardening.
In one planter there is narcissus growing again this year-forgot they were even there.
I may not be able to take any plants with me if I immigrate to Canada.
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Send, surprise!!! I have a few irises growing from the bulbs I planted last autumn!! I am surprised. The bare root rhizomes are thriving, will probably not grow much taller now until spring, but am pleased with how they are progressing. While bare root rhizomes are more expensive to purchase, I recommend it if possible to anyone wanting to have an iris garden of their color choice.

The orchid is doing great, the flowering stem is coming along with little tiny buds that will hopefully grow to beautiful flowers in the coming weeks.

Our weather here is still quite warm with 70's during the day....this blows me away really as I remember growing up how we would be shrouded in fog with high 50's temps after the first rain.
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CW, oh, I'm all too aware. Decided against replacing dead dogwood (in front yard) in Fall, instead hoping for a "for sure" thriver next Spring. I don't know how to start and stop the gardening according to the seasons around here -- that's much of the problem. My neighbor lady's got it all on lock. She gets cuttings of flowering perennials that do well around here, plants a couple, a few years later she has a more than she can handle - all for free - and they're no-maintenance. I'm watching her, learning.

I killed several small rose bushes the past few years that I think I should have put in pots and brought inside for over-winter... and they would've lived.

So... really... I'm on this thread now in preparation of my next gardening faux pas. Instead of screwing up and killing things, I'll be asking for input. ;-)
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There's always micro greens under glass on a sunny window sill? Seize the day, Ali!
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Sweetie, in case you haven't noticed winter is approaching and you are in Chicago, not a lot of gardening going to be going on for a while lol !
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I want to be a better gardener, so I'm posting here so I can follow the thread.
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One year, I was out driving and noticed this yard, filled with Gorgeous Dahlia's, and I stopped by to admire. There was a man outside tending to his garden and we got to talking. It turned out that he was the President of our local Dahlia Association and at the end of every growing year, he sold off his tubers produced by this year's flower crop. He was quite organized about it, had an order sheet and everything, and I bought about 12 tubers (and so nice to be able to actually see the ones that I liked and wanted), to be retrieved in the spring. So the next Spring, I recieved them, planted them, and being an amateur, most of them were lost from the slugs that Loved their tender shoots! Waaaa! So, lesson learned, and I've since bought several more from him, and I just Love those mass producing plants! We don't dig them up, as our winters aren't to cold, usually, and we still have about 8 in our garden, now 10 or so years since we originally planted them. We do dig them up in the spring and thin out the and give away the new tubers. We don't have room for more in our already overpopulated gardens. The man has now passed away, but Wow, he had the most Amazing garden!
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We do have blackbirds, but no thrushes or mistlethrushes; and the hedgehog who helpfully dealt with most of the slugs seems to have decamped before he got round to the snails. I've got sharp grit round a few plants (you can almost hear the little beasties going 'eek! Ow! Ootch!" but the grit didn't save that dahlia) but the Fullers' Earth and the sheep wool barriers I got conned into buying were worse than useless. I won't use slug pellets but boy! - is it tempting sometimes!

I was chatting to the Chaplain the other day when suddenly we heard a brief, high-pitched squeak and a zoom of wings, and he said "wow! Was that a merlin?"

So we may have had mice, too. But not now we haven't.
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CM, are there any bird eating snails in your yard?

I'm sure you probably know that their underbodies are sensitive to sharp objects, and that surrounding beds with stones can be a preventative measure. Those who succumb would probably just quietly fade away behind any stone borders that you could erect to prevent the rapping librarian to be cross with you.

(Your comment reminded me of Poe and his rapping Raven.)
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Grump! I won't mind a bit if the population plummets - I spent most of this summer causing my thriving snail community to "plummet" over the high stone wall between my garden and the library, until one of the librarians caught me in mid-throw and rapped crossly on the window.

After that I put them in a bucket and took them down to the river, but evidently rumours that ducks and geese love them are groundless, sigh.
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Fifty years hence... due to the escape into the environment of mutant, "lefty" snails the population of snails in the environment has plummeted dramatically, causing unforeseen environmental chaos...
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🐌
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Here is a story to cheer everyone up. It was first reported as a lost cause a couple of weeks ago, but thanks to the internet...

"Suitors come out of their shell for the lovelorn snail.

It was thought to be condemned to a loveless existence after being born with a one-in-a-million anatomical abnormality.

But now Cupid's arrow has found Jeremy the garden snail after a global campaign to find it a mate elicited two suitors.

To mate, snails - all of which are hermaphrodites - slide past each other while facing the same direction so that their genitalia meet.

However, due to a rare genetic mutation that means its shell spirals anticlockwise, and therefore everything was on the wrong side, it was never going to happen for [Jeremy]. Angus Davison, at the University of Nottingham, wanted to learn about the genetics of left-sidedness, or 'sinistral mutation', and appealed for a partner for Jeremy so the offspring could be studied.

Two snail enthusiasts responded to say they had found fellow sinistral mutants, and now Jeremy is in Ipswich with one suitor, "Lefty," while he awaits the arrival of another from Mallorca. Ms Melton, snail enthusiast and Lefty's keeper, reported "flirting of the snail kind."

Next in line is Tomeu, found by snail farmer and [gulp! - Ed.] restaurateur Miguel Angel Salom in Mallorca. Rescued from the kitchen, Tomeu is now on its way to Britain."


Half of me thinks not more flaming snails! And the other half goes awwwwwwww
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Linda, I think that is great idea for your granddaughter!!!
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Every year, I plant seeds from beans that were grown by my granddaughter's maternal gma, now passed. I'm hoping to grow some every year so that when my GD has her own garden, she'll have viable seeds originally grown by her gma.
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