Jump Start Your Garden with Seedlings & Cuttings

Article by: Bruce Ballard

The arrival of March typically has gardeners itching to get outside , 5 Tips for Taking Care of Your Water Garden Pond and start digging, but with many final frost dates well into May it's just too early to do any real planting outside--as so many of us have learned the hard way. To satisfy the gardening , Make your Hardwood floor Dazzle bug at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, landscape , How To Choose A Freezer For Home staff members are mulching and pruning, , Let your wall art define you while the exciting work of planning the year's garden , Water Flowrate Comparisons displays for the coming year is taking shape in our minds and on our planning tables. One of the most important jobs landscape , Rock Gardens … A Different Kind of Garden staff is currently involved in is growing , Surfing in Cornwall - A historical Primer seedlings and rooted cuttings for use in summer , Rock Gardens … A Different Kind of Garden displays.

When starting plants , Gardening Your Personality: The Greens Of Growth from seed, , A Guide To Japanese Gardens we prepare flats , Make your Hardwood floor Dazzle with soil , Surfing in Cornwall - A historical Primer amended with peat, perilite and a little bit of pine bark. We then scatter seed , Mulch Your Flower Bulbs in the Fall for a Beautiful Spring Display over the soil , Landscaping: The Concept of Foundation Planting (not in it) and top dress with a thin layer of fine sand. , River birch Trees - A Great Tree For The Buckingham Pa. Area We label each flat , The Beauty of an Antique Murphy Bed with the plant , Let your wall art define you name and date we sowed. The flats , Get Your Home Ready for the Holidays then go on propagation benches , How To Choose A Freezer For Home lined with heat , A Guide To Japanese Gardens mats. If you'd like to try this at home , Carpenters - Significant Points and don't have heat , The Hope Of A Single Crocus mats, try substituting electric heat , Flower Bulbs: Where to Buy them from? tape used to keep pipes from freezing. Once the seeds , Replace the White Birch With River Birches In The Doylestown Pa. Area have germinated and put out their first set of true leaves, the flats , Decorating, Where There's a Will There's a Way come off the heat , A Guide To Japanese Gardens mats. Throughout, we water , The Magic of Color our seedlings with permanent misters mounted over the benches. , Helpful Ideas For Designing A Flower Garden At home, , Have you been looking for the latest help witrel="nofollow" h reference to you can use a mist bottle four or five times daily. Make sure your new plants , 5 Tips for Taking Care of Your Water Garden Pond are getting plenty of sunlight and if it's only from one direction, turn your flat , Let your wall art define you at least once a day.

Once seedlings have two to three sets of leaves, we transplant them into a larger container--either cell-packs or small pots. , The Beauty of an Antique Murphy Bed Putting a new seedling into too large a pot , Power Outages: How Can Homeowners Prepare? will allow excess water , Hydroponic Plant Systems... What, No Dirt? to collect and could rot the plant. , Power Outages: How Can Homeowners Prepare? Pansies, petunias or other cool weather plants , Top 10 Lawn and Garden Care Tips can go onto a porch , Water Flowrate Comparisons or covered area in mid to late March. Summer , The Hope Of A Single Crocus annuals shouldn't go out until danger of frost has passed (when planting at home, , Handy Wood Size Chart count backwards using the germination time on your seed , Surfing in Cornwall - A historical Primer packets).

For cuttings, we start with a two- to four-inch stem from the plant , Relaxation in the garden starts with a Hammock we want to propagate. We strip the bottom leaves, being careful not to damage the plant, , A Primer of Popular Traditional Furniture Styles and then dip the stem into a root , Tips For Spring Gardening hormone to give it a jump-start. We place , Selling Your House? Trim Your Shrubs! the cuttings in a flat , How to Modify Your Landscaping to Protect Your House from Bu using either a sand/bark mixture (good if you over water) or the same peat/perilite mix we use for seedlings. When placing a cutting in soil, , Flower Bulbs: Where to Buy them from? we make sure at least one node (where a leaf was removed) is in the soil, , Is An Old Home for You? – The Pros - Pride of Ownership as it will root , Growing Occidentalis -American Arborvitae in Solebury Pa more easily. We gently press the soil , Power Outages: How Can Homeowners Prepare? around the stem so the cuttings are stable. If we're rooting something with large leaves, we cut half of each leaf off so the stem can put more energy , Flower Bulbs: Where to Buy them from? into rooting and less into maintaining leaves. Again, we use a heat , Surfing in Cornwall - A historical Primer mat and mist, mist, mist since plants , A Primer of Popular Traditional Furniture Styles that already have leaves are more prone to water , Selling Your House? Trim Your Shrubs! loss, especially in bright sun. , Make your Hardwood floor Dazzle After two to three weeks, we gently tug on the plant , Hydroponic Systems... What, No Dirt? to see if it feels firmly rooted. When the roots , Power Outages: How Can Homeowners Prepare? are secure, we transplant into a 3"-4" pot , Vegetable Gardening Tips At Your Backyard or container. Once we've stepped up to a larger pot, , Garden Leaf Blowers - More Power to Your Elbow it's time to pinch the new plant , Get Your Home Ready for the Holidays back at least twice so it will be full and bushy when it goes into the ground.

For both cuttings and seedlings grown at home, , River birch Trees - A Great Tree For The Buckingham Pa. Area it' best to harden the plants , Helpful Ideas For Designing A Flower Garden off outdoors , A list of power tools that women should have in their toolbox for general home repair and emergencie before placing them in the ground. You can acclimate plants , Helpful Ideas For Designing A Flower Garden by moving them onto a porch , A list of power tools that women should have in their toolbox for general home repair and emergencie or a covered area for a week, then move them into dappled sunlight, then partial sunlight until they are at last ready for full sunlight. Happy gardening! , Organic Lawn Care

About the Author

Bruce Ballard, Biltmore Estate Landscape , Growing Occidentalis -American Arborvitae in Solebury Pa Supervisor, has worked in the gardens , A Primer of Popular Traditional Furniture Styles of Biltmore Estate, George Washington Vanderbilt's turn-of-the-century home, , River birch Trees - A Great Tree For The Buckingham Pa. Area for more than fifteen years. Encompassing both formal and informal designs, , Have you been looking for the latest help witrel="nofollow" h reference to the 75 acres of gardens , Selling Your House? Trim Your Shrubs! and grounds are at the heart of the nearly 8,000-acre estate. Ballard oversees the day-to-day operations of three garden , Flower Bulbs: Where to Buy them from? crews, responsible for approximately 100 acres of garden , Landscaping: The Concept of Foundation Planting and roadway.

What's Inside
Carpet Cleaning isn’t All That Difficult! - It used to be that carpet , Gardening - Lawn Maintenance Chores Part I cleaning took all day and was a long, painful process. Carpet , Are you in search of the most informative advice relating to cleaning isn’t just for the professionals anymore. In fact,...
Burning Bushes Do Well In Buckingham Township, PA - Burning Bush (Euonymus alatus) A deciduous shrub , Planting Hydrangeas For Late Season Color from the Staff-Tree Family (Celastraceae) The burning bush grows , Advice about the most up-to-date help pertaining to faux woo well in most areas of Buckingham Township in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Burning Bush, a non-native species from China and Korea, h...
Winter Gardening Tips - Winter Gardening , Emerald Green Arborvitae for West Point Pa. Tips Winter can be a bleak hard time of the year for the grower of nursery stock. The days are short and the nights are long. Yet grow , Herb Gardening ing plants , Accent lighting - Adding the right touch to your home lighti is a year round activity that does require the grow , The Nigra Arborvitae s Well In Doylestown Pa. er to be performings tasks. Water , The Advantages of Stone Fireplace Mantels ...
How to Tell If You've Got a Rodent Problem - Older houses , Caring For Christmas Trees are most vulnerable to rodents, but it's possible for them to crop up in just about any neighborhood. There are often large r...
Decorate Your Fireplace for Easter - Sure you decorate , The Dawn Redwood Tree - Beyond Fast Growing your fireplace and mantel for the winter , Home Medical Supply: A Necessity holidays, but don’t forget this important focal point in your room , Decorating Color Schemes as Spring , Lights, Camera, Action . . . Design?!? approaches....
Pros and Cons of Upright Vacuum Cleaners - The term “upright” vacuum cleaners came into existence when the Hoover Company attached the bag where the debris from the carpet , This Plant Grows Like a Green Rocket was deposited onto th...
How to Transplant Lilacs - Lilacs are exceptionally easy to transplant. I have transplanted many lilac bushes from the original bushes that my grandmother planted on our Wiscons...
A Gift Idea for Some of the Hardest People to Shop For -- Yo - (ARA) - Coming up with gift ideas for kids is easy. They’re always appreciative of toys;but what do you get for your parents' anniversary, birthday,...
Growing White Pine Trees In The New Hope Pa. Area - Planting White , Montgomery County Pa Bucks County Pa Roofing Pine Trees , Shop and Personal Safety In the New Hope Pa. Area White , Some Facts To Consider Before Growing Tea Roses pines. Whenever I think of white , How to Buy Used or Surplus Circuit Breakers pines, I remember hunting when I was a kid and standing near trees , Rock Gardens ... A Different Kind of Garden that were giants. Now every pine tree , Montgomery County Pa Bucks County Pa Roofing I plant, , Growing Great Tomatoes I can invision those days in the deep woods , An Italian lifestyle project a...