Cuttings and More Cuttings!

When most people are watching the last bits of their once lush gardens succumb to the autumn changes, we are already full steam into the next growing season. The work is hard and often tedious, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

In the past 10 or so days, I have done approx. 3200 cuttings of a variety of plants (but who's counting?). About a third or so of those were done with help from my friend Cindy. We spent 2 full evenings working with these tiny pieces of plant material, dusting their sometimes thread-like stems with rooting powder and sticking them into potting soil in plug trays. Some of the little sprigs looked pretty sad, but we gave them a fighting chance. Of course, after a few hundred you need some kind of relief, so margaritas were in order. It didn't have any negative effect on the planting quality, but it did increase the giggle factor exponentially!

Here are the fruits of my/our labor:

Needless to say, I'm almost cross-eyed and am going through the motions of sticking these little sprigs in my sleep! But hey, I can't complain - it's improving the profit margin!!