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Where am I?
Location: South Western British Columbia, Canada. Pacific North West.

USDA Hardiness Zone: 7b-8a

Climate: Wet Really wet!. Not dissimilar to that of the British Isle. There is usually one or two months of glorious dry, sunny weather between May and September. It goes downhill from October onwards.

Soil: Compacted silt with river rocks. Minimal top soil.

Site:170x65 South facing slope. All season shade provided by a large solitary cedar, about 100 tall in the backyard. Originally predominantly lawn with low mainatainance beds of junipers, dwarf cedars, contoneasters.

Gardening Style: Indeterminate!! (Meaning: chaotic) Fitfully - as time permits.

Propagation Facilities: Home made progation unit, with heating cables, four 48" tubes of fluorescent grow-lights. Cold, lean-to green house.

Favourites Plants:
Perrenials: Hostas, Hellebores, Dicentra spectabilis
Roses: A Shropshire Lad, Heritage, Evelyn, Eglantyne, America, Parade, Pierre de Ronsard, Madame Isaac Pereire
Vines: Wisteria
Annuals: Zinnia Profusion series
Ornamental Grasses: Miscanthus sinensis Variegatus

Most Wanted Plants List:
Perrenials: Dicentra scandens
Bamboo: Physostachys Nigra
Roses: Pierre de Ronsard, Madame Isaac Pereire, Rouge Royale, Cressida, Fragrant Cloud, New Dawn
Fruit trees: Persimon Yuko

GARDEN GALLERY
Digital Cameras:(1) Canon G2 (2) Nikon Coolpix 995 (3) Sony DSC

My favourite pictureRosa A Shropshire Lad

Peace

Texture

"Man Eating Plant"

MY GARDEN PROJECTS
Completed Projects:
1. Front courtyard small pond with waterfall and pebble beach. Completed in 2002.
2. Cold green house. Completed in October 2004

Current Projects: Arbour with bench, inner courtyard. Project started in August 2005.

Future Projects:
Redesign courtyard with the following themes: "round", "white", "Asian"

Gardenweb Forum Thread Archives
The following is a collection of some of the more memorable Gardenweb Forum thread I have come across.

Most Memorable Thread:

Posted by Anita z8 Seattle (anita@is2inc.com) on Fri, Oct 22, 99 at 14:44

The following apparently appeared recently on one of the newsgroups, rec.pets. It sounds pretty believable to me--though its so funny, Im not sure that I care. Its pretty long, but its worth it.
---------------------

Anne V - 01:01pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1318 of 1332)
Okay - I know how to take meat away from a dog. How do I take a dog away from meat? This is not, unfortunately, a joke.

AmyC - 01:02pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1319 of 1332)
Um, can you give us a few more specifics here?

Anne V - 01:12pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1320 of 1332)
Theyre inside of it. They crawled inside, and now I have a giant incredibly heavy piece of carcass in my yard, with 2 dogs inside of it, and they are NOT getting bored of it and coming out. One of them is snoring. I have company arriving in three hours, and my current plan is to 1. put up a tent over said carcass and 2. hang thousands of fly strips inside it. This has been going on since about 6:40 this morning.

AmyC - 01:19pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1321 of 1332)
Oh. My. God. What sort of carcass is big enough to hold a couple of dogs inside? Given the situation, Im afraid youre not going to be create enough of a diversion to get the dogs out of the carrion, unless they like greeting company as much as they like rolling around in dead stuff. Which seems unlikely. Can you turn a hose on the festivities?

Ase Innes-Ker - 01:31pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1322 of 1332)
Im sorry Anne. I know this is a problem (and it would have driven me crazy), but it is also incredibly funny.

Anne V - 01:31pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1323 of 1332)
Elk. Elk are very big this year, because of the rain and good grazing and so forth. They arent rolling. They are alternately napping and eating. They each have a ribcage. Other dogs are working on them from the outside. Its all way too primal in my yard right now. We tried the hose trick. At someone elses house, which is where they climbed in and began to refuse to come out. Many hours ago. I think that the hose mostly helps keep them cool and dislodges little moist snacks for them. hose failed. My new hope is
that if they all continue to eat at this rate, they will be finished before the houseguests arrive. The very urban houseguests. Oh, god - I know its funny. Its appalling, and funny, and completely entirely representative of life with dogs.

Kristen R. - 01:37pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1324 of 1332)
Im so glad I read this thread, dogless as I am. Dogs in elk. Dogs in elk.

Anne V - 01:41pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1325 of 1332)
Its like that childrens book out there - dogs in elk, dogs on elk, dogs around elk, dogs outside elk. And there is some elk inside of, as well as on, each dog at this point.

Elizabeth K - 01:57pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1328 of 1333)
Anne, arent you in Arizona or Nevada? There are elk there? Im so confused! We definately need to see pics of Gus Pong and Jake in the elk carcass.

Anne V - 02:03pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1329 of 1333)
I am in New Mexico, but there are elk in both arizona and nevada, yes. There are elk all over the da*n place. They dont look out very often. If you stand the ribcage on end they scramble to the top and look out, all red. Otherwise, you kinda have to get in there a little bit yourself to
really see them. So I think there will not be pictures.

CoseyMo - 02:06pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1330 of 1333)
"all red;" Im not sure the deeper horror of all this was fully borne in upon me till I saw that little phrase.

Anne V - 02:10pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1331 of 1333)
Well, you know, the Basenji (that would be Jake) is a desert dog, naturally, and infamous for its aversion to water. And then, Gus Pong (who is coming to us, live, unamplified and with a terrific reverb which is making me a little dizzy) really doesnt mind water, but hates to be cold. Or soapy. And both of them can really run. Sprints of up to 35 mph have been clocked. So. If ever they come out, catching them and returning them to a condition where they can be considered house pets is not going to be, shall we say, pleasant.

CoseyMo - 02:15pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1332 of 1333)
What if you stand the ribcage on end, wait for them to look out, grab them when they do and pull?

Anne V - 02:18pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1333 of 1333)
They wedge their toes between the ribs. And scream. We tried that before we brought the elk home from the mountain with dogs inside. Jake nearly took my friends arm off. Hes already short a toe, so he cherishes the 15 that remain.

Linda Hewitt - 02:30pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1336 of 1356)
Have you thought about calling your friendly vet and paying him to come pick up the dogs, elk and letting the dogs stay at the vets overnight. If anyone would know what to do, it would be your vet. It might cost some money, but it would solve the immediate crisis. Keep us posted.

ChristiPeters - 02:37pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1337 of 1356)
Yikes! My sympathy! When I lived in New Mexico, my best friends dog (the escape artist) was continually bringing home road kill. When there was no road kill convenient, he would visit the neighbors house. Said neighbor slaughtered his own beef. The dog found all kinds of impossibly gross toys in the neighbors trash pit. I have always had medium to large dogs. The smallest dog I ever had was a mutt from the SPCA who matured out at just above knee high and about 55 pounds. Our current dog (daughters choice) is a Pomeranian.A very small Pomeranian. Shes 8 months old now and not quite 4 pounds. Im afraid Ill break her.

Lori Shiraishi - 02:38pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1338 of 1356)
Bet you could fit a whole lot of Pomeranians in that there elk carcass! Anne - my condolences on what must be an unbelievable situation!

Anne V - 02:44pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1339 of 1356)
I did call my vet. He laughed until he was gagging and breathless. He says a lot of things, which can be summed as *what did you expect?* and *no, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog.* He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home. Thanks, Lori. I am almost
surrendered to the absurdity of it.

Lori Shiraishi - 02:49pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1340 of 1356)
"He is planning to stop over and take a look on his way home." So he can fall down laughing in person?

Anne V - 02:50pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1341 of 1356)
Basically, yeah. That would be about it.

AmyC - 02:56pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1342 of 1356)
No, there is no such thing as too much elk meat for a dog." Oh, sweet lo*d, Anne. You have my deepest sympathies in this, perhaps the most peculiar of the Gus Pong Adventures. You are truly a woman of superhuman patience. wait -- you carried the carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside?

Anne V - 02:59pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1343 of 1356)
The carcass down from the mountains with the dogs inside? no, well, sort of. My part in the whole thing was to get really stressed about a meeting that I had to go to, and say *yeah, ok, whatever* when it was suggested that the ribcages, since we couldnt get the dogs out of them and the dogs couldnt be left there, be brought to my house. Because, you know - I just thought they would get bored of it sooner or later. But it appears to be later, in the misty uncertain future, that they will get bored. Now, they are still interested. And very loud, one singing, one snoring.

Lori Shiraishi - 03:04pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1344 of 1356)
And very loud, one singing, one snoring. wow. I cant even begin to imagine the acoustics involved with singing from the inside of an elk.

Anne V - 03:04pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1345 of 1356)
reverb. lots and lots of reverb.

Anne V - 03:15pm Sep 9, 1999 PDT (# 1347 of 1356)
Ill tell you the thing that is causing me to lose it again and again, and then I have to go back outside and stay there for a while. After the meeting, I said to my (extraordinary) boss, "look, Ive gotta go home for the rest of the day, I think. Jake and Gus Pong are inside some elk ribcages, and my dad is coming tonight, so Ive got to get them out
somehow." And he said, pale and huge-eyed, "Annie, how did you explain the elk to the clients?" The poor, poor man thought I had the carcasses brought to work with me. For some reason, I find this deeply funny.

(weekend pause)

Anne V - 08:37am Sep 13, 1999 PDT (# 1395 of 1405)
So what we did was put the ribcages (containing dogs) on tarps and drag them around to the side yard, where I figured they would at least be harder to see, and then opened my bedroom window so that the dogs could let me know when they were ready to be plunged into a de-elking solution and let
in the house. Then I went to the airport. Came home, no visible elk, no visible dogs. Peeked around the shrubs, and there they were, still in the elk. By this time, they had gnawed out some little portholes between some of the ribs, and you got the occasional very frightening glimpse of
something moving around in there if you watched long enough. After a lot of agonizing, I went to bed. I closed the back door, made sure my window was open, talked to the dogs out of it until I as sure they knew it was open, and then I fell asleep.

Sometimes, sleep is a mistake, no matter how tired you are. And especially if you are very very tired, and some of your dogs are outside, inside some elks. Because when you are that tired, you sleep through bumping kind of noises, or you kind of think that its just the house guests. It wast the
house guests. It was my dogs, having an attack of teamwork unprecedented in our domestic history. When I finally woke all the way up, it was to a horrible vision. Somehow, 3 dogs with a combined weight of about 90 pounds, managed to hoist one of the ribcages (the meatier one, of course) up 3 feet to rest on top of the swamp cooler outside the window, and push out the screen. What woke me was Gus Pong, howling in frustration from inside the ribcage, very close to my head, combined with feverish little grunts from Jake, who was standing on the nightstand, bracing himself against the
curtains with remarkably bloody little feet.

Here are some things I have learned, this Rosh Hashanah weekend:
1. almond milk removes elk blood from curtains and pillowcases,
2. We can all exercise superhuman strength when it comes to getting elk carcasses out of our yard,
3. The sight of elk ribcages hurtling over the fence really frightens the nice deputy sheriff who lives across the street, and
4. the dogs can pop the screens out of the windows, without damaging them, from either side.

Anne V - 09:58am Sep 13, 1999 PDT (# 1401 of 1405)
What I am is really grateful that they didnt actually get the damn thing in the window, which is clearly the direction they were going in. And that the nice deputy didnt arrest me for terrifying her with elk parts before dawn.

AmyC - 09:59am Sep 13, 1999 PDT (# 1402 of 1405)
Imagine waking up with a gnawed elk carcass in your bed, like a real-life "Godfather" with an all-dog cast.

Anne V - 10:01am Sep 13, 1999 PDT (# 1403 of 1405)
There is not enough almond milk in the world to solve an event of that kind.

My Funny Stuff
Another true story, right in my own backyard (13 December 2004)

"Revenge of the roses...................(Part I)
Posted by Cactus_joe 7b (My Page) on Fri, Dec 17, 04 at 22:55

Here is a true story, which unfolded as I was putting the finishing touches to our "new" greenhouse. (It was Monday, the 13th Dec)
My cute little mutt, of unknow progeny, is always curious. And he is a bit of a hunter and a gatherer. Caught him once crunching on a bird he had just captured (which would account for the mysterious appearances of clumps of feathers in our garden, and the distinct scarcity of birds!). Had unexplained diarrhoea for a few days .... until we caught him "reaping the harvest" of all those over ripened plums that had dropped from my neighbours rather bountiful tree. But his hunter/gatherer prowess was no match for his encounter with a rose bush the other day. Here is what happened.........

He had been observed to be loitering around the roses pot ghetto all morning. He finally made his choice and settled to chow down on the brand new canes of a "found" climber (may well be New Dawn). A flutter of a bird flying by caught his attention, and he made the mistake of making a sharp turn of his head to follow the flight path of this bird (potential mid-morning snack, he thought!). In doing so, he smacked his nose right into a carefully positioned cane of this rose ("carefully", because you could well believe that the rose planned it that way). Now, this rose, might I say, is no whimp. It features half a dozen 6-8 foot arching-trailing canes, armed with wicked, curvy prickles. The unexpected close encounter between his nose and one such prickle made him swing his head backwards, at which point, the prickles of a cane above him caught him by his fluffy, droopey ears. His next reaction was to lift his hind legs up to scratch this evil tentacle off his ears, at which point, he sat on another tentacle of this diabolical thing called a rose. This made him jump up with a start.............

By now, he was in a panic. You could see the look in his eyes. They were huge!! He then started to thrash and wriggle vigorously. A big mistake! In the process, his luxiant fur snarled another two canes around his torso. This made him turn round and round in a circle, which served to wrap the canes around his trunk...... By now, he was yelping and whimpering!

You would think that I was a sadist, watching all this in glee without any thoughts of rescuing him. In truth, the whole thing took place in all of 5 seconds, by which time I had reached him to provide him with much needed reinforcement and an escape route. Reaching my hands in to extricate him drew a malacious snarl and much show of teeth from him. He must have thought that I had something to do with all of this (in truth, he is right - after all, it was me who planted that monster!). Not wanting to draw friendly fire, I withdrew and was looking for a stout stick ........not to put him out of his miseries (you fools!), but to knock those overpowering rose canes off him. Before I could grab hold of a 3x4 nearby, the whole scene ended as quickly as it had started, as, with a mighty leap, he managed to escape from the tangle. He ran off, tails between his hind legs, ears all droopy, shoulders slinking in defeat, whimpering and cowering into the certain protection of the house.

Round one to the roses."

GARDENING TIPS AND METHODS

1. POTTING UP CONTAINERS
1. Growing media
I use Sunshine #4 soilless potting mix.
2. Amendments
To this I add water absorbent polymer crystals (according to instructions), 3 fistfuls of bone meal to every 15 gallons, Osmocote (according to instructions), and 1 part in 3 of composted bark mulch. The respective purposes of these additional ingredients are moisture retention, promotion of root growth, feed, and improving drainage and aeration. This is pretty much the universal mixture I use for all my container grown plants, except for acid loving plants.
3. Potting Up
I check the root ball periodically by tipping the growing media out of the pot. In general, its easy to do this at least up to the 1 gallon pot size. I prefer to pot up to the next size as soon as lots of roots are visible. Waiting for roots to grow out of the drainage hole, I find, is waiting too long - the roots are often crowded by that time, and the progression through larger containers becomes slower.
4. Early start
I get a jump start on the growing season by growing on in our unheated greenhouse - generally starting April. Finding a sheltered spot with good sun would be an alternative.
5. Feeding
The plants will get additional osmocote as I will be adding more enriched growing media as I pot up. However, they will need additional feeding to get continued growth and good root formation. I provide this with soluble fertiliser (Miracle Gro) at least onece a week later in the season - usually starting from July (the Osmocote I use has an average release time span of 4 months)).
6. Feeding
Providing adequate moisture is the key - the containers are mulched and watered through a system of minidrippers. My experience is that a single lapse in allowing the growing media to dry out could set the plant back as much as a months growth!
7. Keep Cool In The Heat
Excessively high temperatures in the growing media likely impedes growth. I get better results by taking the effort to shield the containers from being heated by the sun in the middle of summer. (I have measured temperatures as high as 50-60 degrees celcius in containers exposed to direct mid-day sun in the summer!)
8. Drainage
Good drainage is also vital - excessive water retained in the bottoms of the containers has caused problems for me with containers 3 gallons or larger. For containers of these sizes, I put some rocks, bits of bricks, whatever I can get my hands on over the drainage holes, and use a piece of landscape fabric over the rocks.

My aim is to get the plants from little whips in 3 inch pots at the start of the season to root balls that will fill out 3 gallon containers by the end of the season.

Propagating Bamboo From Aerial Rhizomes (layering)

I am trying to put those airborne rhizomes to good use instead of turning into those skinny culms-wanna-be. Here is what I did, pictorially. Have a look and tell me what you think.

(1) I striped the sheaths off the young rhizome (in this case P nigra). Made a few shallow longitudinal scores through several nodes and internodes with a sharp knife, taking care not to damage the buds.

(2) Applied rooting hormone to the scored areas. I use a rooting gel - its easier to use in this situation.

(3) Pushed the rhizome through a drainage hole of a 2 gallon pot.

(4) Secured the pot (I improvised) and filled up with soil-less mix.

(5) I then watered it well, and I waited....................

(6) ..............for a year. Here is my first "success" - one that I did in August of 2004. It has lots of roots, but it will be another year or two before I will find out if it will produce new shoots. The presence of healthy "buds" from the rooted nodes seem promising.

Rooting hormones and cuttings
It really depends:
a. on the type of plant you are trying to root
b. on the success or failure rate you are prepared to accept to make rooting as a method of propagation worth your while.
To understand the role of rooting hormone, you will first need to understand a bit about how vegetative propagation works. The active foliage of most plants produce hormones called auxins (Indole-3-acetic Acid) which are transported down the petioles to the leaf axils and then down the stem. At the point where the cutting or leaf had been cut from the parent plant, there is no where else for the auxin to go. It accumulates and stimulates the cells there to multiple rapidly to form a callus. A callus is a new growth of multipotential cells (meristematic and perenchymal cells). These cells are undifferentiated and have the potential to differentiate to other parts of the plants, e.g., shoots or roots. If nothing else were to happen, the callus would continue to grow in size and not differentiate. Auxins accumulate in higher and higher concentration, in the callus. With the increasing concentration of auxin, these cells are triggered to differentiate into roots. The roots themselves produce another chemical messenger - cytokine. In a leave cutting, African Violet and Kalanchoe e.g., it induces shoot production at the end of the leaf stock. In a stem cutting, the cytokines gets to the leaf axils or where-ever there is tissue that has potential for shoot production and triggers shooting. Occassionally, I have noticed shoots come out near the callus itself.

There is always a potential for the above sequence of events to happen, as long as the cuttings remain healthy.

The ability of different plants and cuttings taken from different parts of plants to produce auxins is variable. For most plants, the presence of some green photosensitizing material - leafs, green bark - probably is important. Depending on how capable the cutting is of producing auxins, the cutting may be "easy" or "difficult" to propagate.

The use of rooting hormones attempts to swing the odds in favour of root production by using chemicals with similar actions to naturally occuring auxins - the 3 that are commonly used being indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), indole-3-
butyric acid (IBA), and a-Napthalene acetic acid (NAA).

However, it is not as simple as it looks. For one thing, the concentration of the rooting chemical may be critical to successful rooting. What might be a perfect concentration for rooting one plant may actually inhibit the rooting of another plant. And, of course, we all assume that the rooting hormone will be absorbed into the callus. But the rate that this happens probably depends on the cutting, the soil, and the form in which the chemical was presented. It is also possible that one chemical may work better than another for rooting a specific plant.

Suffice to say, therefore, that using a rooting agent increases your odds and may accelerate and increase root production, but there is still many other variables involved. I wont use rooting hormones on plants that I know are certainties when it comes to rooting - coleus and fuchsias, for example. But for all other plants that has a somewhat more "iffy" chance of rooting (and that includes roses), I use a root stimulant all the time. For those difficult to come by cuttings or cuttings of those "must have" plants on my list, I prefer err on the side of using rooting hormone.

As an aside, the roots start to form after callus tissue has formed. This may take a number of days. For a particularly challenging plant to root, i.e. Stewartia japonica, I decided to try applying rooting hormone after the callus has formed. To my pleasant surprise, I got rooted Stewartia cuttings for the first time in 3 years of trying!

MY PLANT LIST

MY BAMBOO LIST
Indocalamus tessalatus
Phyllostachys nigra
Phyllostachys rubromarginata
Phyllostachys vivax Aureocaulis
Phyllostachys heterocycla pubescens or P edulis whichever is botanically correct these days
Phyllostachys aurea
Shibataea kumasaca
Pseudosasa japonica

MY ROSE LIST
A Shropshire Lad

Ferdinand Pichard

Miniature Roses
Irresistible

Evelyn

MY HOSTA LIST

MY HELLEBORES LIST

MY PERENNIAL LIST

MY ORNAMENTAL GRASS LIST

MY FRUIT TREES

GARDEN TRAVEL
UK
The British Isles
My "staple" of gardens to visit every time I go to England:

1. Kew - in London - dont miss their rose garden. There is a large collection of climbing roses and you might still catch some of the once bloomers in mid June.

2. Wisley - RHSs own garden. There is so much to see here. I usually spend a whole day there - the first one in, the last one out.

3. Queen Marys Rose Gardens (not Saint Mary) - good collection of climbers. Effective mass planting of some of the more popular and well known HTs. But a visit to Regents Park has to be more than the rose garden. Walk to the canal to London Zoo, and take one of the water launches for a trip through the canal to Little Venice. Its a very pleasant change from street level London.

Gardens I visit on a less frequent basis:
1. Sissinghurst - IMHO, every gardener should visit Sissinghurst at least once. But, do read "Sissinghurst: Portrait of a Garden by Jane Brown before you visit the place. You will appreciate what you see more and seek out the less obvious features of the garden if you have a knowledge of the history of the place. You will have to plan for this one because the opening hours are a bit "irregular" (Monday, Tuesday and Friday - 11.00am to 6.30pm, last admission 5.30pm; Saturday and Sunday & Bank Holidays, 10am to 6.30pm, last admission 5.30pm).

2. Leeds Castle - you must visit Leeds Castle, in Maidstone, Kent (not anywhere near the city of Leeds!). The Castle has been meticulously restored and refurbished - by an American heiress, Lady Baillie. There are a couple of very nice gardens there - Lady Baillie has a special interest in gardens. Its popular enough amongst tourists that there should be coach tours starting off from the major stations in London.

3. Gardens in to Cornwall - Here is a corner of UK that is over flowing with gardens to visit. In fact, our visit there 3 years ago was the only time when I could describe myself as feeling "gardened out"!! If you are there, dont miss the Biodomes at the Eden Project. A truely unique place to visit. And then there is the "The Lost Gardens of Heligan". And do read the companion book by Tim Smit. If you are in Cornwall, you might as well visit St Michaels Mount. Marazion, near Penzance. And then go all the way to Lands End.

Gardens I would like to visti:
1. Great Dixter
2. Hidcote Manor
3. Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum
4. Mottisfont Abbey Garden - I would like to see the National Collection of OGRs. Wouldnt it be great to have Jon showing us around! I will buy you a pint for your troubles, Jon. Just take me to your favourite local watering hole.

Shows I go to once every 2-3 years:
1. Hampton Court Palace Flower Show
2. BBC Gardeners World Live
3. Wisley Summer Flower Show

MY FAVOUIRTE GARDENING SHOWS

My "all time favourite" is BBC Gardeners World, when Geoff Hamilton was the host. He is such an enthusiastic gardener, it is difficult not to get rivetted to that program. Unfortunately, we dont seem to get that program here anymore. And I have not seen any of the new episodes since Geoff Hamilton passed away unexpectedly. Mr. Hamilton was in the middle of filming his series Hamiltons Cottage Gardens before he passed away. I thought it was a really good series. His brother had to fill in as the narrator in the final few episodes after Geoffs death.

I used to watch David Tarrants Canadian Gardener. But they have stopped making new episodes of it. David is another close to the dirt gardener and he is local, with episodes filmed right here at the Univ of British Columbias Botanical Gardens. One cant help but have a full sense of loyalty for the local lad, but in reality, the shows were really good. The odd shows have a bit of cooking stuff thrown in (which I cant understand - more about this later. I watch his series "Spring", but I wont classify that as a true "gardening" progra unexpectedly.

Right now, my favourite is Kathy Renwalds Gardeners Journal but I have not seen any new episodes of it lately. What a pity!

More recently two British series that was really good watching were Quest for the Rose by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix, and A Year in Kew with Alan Titchmarsh narrating. I love series like those, even though they are more entertaining than they are instructive. Still, a bit of history is always a good thing. A Year in Kew is of interest to me because the Kew is one of the gardens I visit regularly.

And finally, for those in the Pacific Northwest, within ear shot of KIRO from Washington State, a half hour with the hyperactive Cisco Morris in his programme Gardening with Cisco is as good as a cup of coffee in waking anyone up! Now, I do understand it if some of you simply cant stand that chap, but I am a great fan of his. His half hour is entertaining, and I do get some great plant tips form Cisco.

Then there is the perennial Victory Garden, which underwent major facelifts a few years ago. Now, I dont know what to make of this show. There is nothing that those guys are showing that is anything new to me. However, I can see that they likely are useful to the less experienced gardeners. But the greatest put off for me is the cooking section that seems to be a part of every episode. Why cant a gardening show be a gardening show, and leave the cooking to the Food Channel instead? Really annoying. For that, its been stricken off my list of shows to record.
Taking A Division Off a Clump of Bamboo If you have a well established clump of bamboo, dont divide it completely. If you do, each division will take a few years to mature to the same majesty and culm (cane) size. What you can do is to take small divisions off the main clump. A new division does virtually nothing for the first year, as it puts all its energy into re-establishing a system of new roots and rhizomes. You may get a few shoots the second year. But it will take till its 3rd to 4th year to really start to shooting more mature culms. The best time to make divisions is in the spring, but before new shoots have started to appear. It is generally easy to slice a good sized root ball off the edge of the parent clump. Here, the only rhizomes that you are likely to have to deal with are the one or two that came off the parent clump to establish the new clump, and any new rhizomes that might have arisen from the clump you want to divide. You want to choose a clump with at least one cane that is more than a year old, ideally 2 or more culms. In general, the larger the division, the faster it will establish itself in the new location. I use a spade with a sharpened edge to slice through the roots. Any rhizomes that gets in the way are divided with a pair of loppers. Once you have dug around the clump in a complete circle, the root ball should pop out easily - the roots and rhizomes travel in a horizontal direction and are usually not that deep - about 12 inches, maybe 18 inches maximum depending on the age of the clump. How big of a root ball? Well as big as you can dig and handle. I aim for a minimum 12 inch diameter rootball for single culm clumps, and up to 18 to 24 inches for 2-3 culms. This will also depend on the size of the bamboo (height and diameter of the culms). You can divide the main clump if you wish, but you will be dealing with a denser, more solid mass of roots and rhizomes. It can be done, but you will need that sharp spade, plus an axe or a machette. I make good use of my electric reciprocating saw fitted with a pruning blade - this usually make short work of slicing through the root ball. But even it may have difficulty dealing with an old crowded clump. You must keep the roots moist and well watered at all times if you are not going to plant it immediately. I usually cut part of the top off to reduce foliage and, therefore, evaporative water loss. When planting, make sure that the bamboo is well staked - wind rock to the root ball is a significant problem for a newly planted bamboo. If the can is more than 6-8 feet tall, I use use 3/4 ropes/strong ties secured at three different directions to reduce the swaying motion of the culms.

I live in: Canada

My zone is: 7b PNW

My Birthday is August 10 .

First registered on February 27,2001.