Hi All MG Lovers! I'm a new member to join this forum. It's great to find so many MG enthusiasts out here. Some time back while I was going to a friend's place, I saw this tiny house which was sort of 'lit up' with an unusual shade of blue flowers. It was love at first sight! Just to have a look at those flowers I would often drop into my friend's place. Finally, one day not being able to resist myself I stopped the car right beside that house (with blue flowers) and walked up to the door to ring the bell! I could see the surprise (annoyance?) on the face of the girl who opened the door. I apologized thoroughly but explained that I simply HAD to know the name of the flower (MG plants are not at all common in Kolkata, India)! Her face broke into a smile and she told me those beauties were known as Morning Glories, but she couldn't help me any further with information such as method of propagation etc. WellÂnever mind I thought, since I had a clue I'll find more about the love of my life. I looked up on the net and bingo there it was - tons of information! I hunted quite a bit till I stumbled upon this small, dark shop where I found MG, Heavenly Blue seeds. It's exactly seven days now I had sowed them and four of them have popped up! I'm waiting very eagerly to see them grow and bloom with blue flowers (I fell in love with) on the strip of garden infront of my house! So, please wish me a lots of luck! P.S. I went back to my friend's place a couple of weeks back and on the way saw the MG plants were no longer there in that house and it looked ugly and naked. Hope the owners realize their mistake and let the MG grow back. Even if it attracts a few bugs like me!

Peak the Tufa God---thank goodness you're back. After months of being forced to lie in bed and dream of the things I wanted to do, I attempted a two-layered grot and a casting of a hosta leaf. I did not do this directly on to the patio----remember...I'm the one whose new husband had to use a crowbar to get my first project off the cement. I'm also the (semi)fool who made bowls in the sand and allowed the tides of Puget Sound to set them. They are fine--probably because I did what Tufa God told me to do----used tons of rinse water after taking them off the beach. I've been trying to collect Dena's instructions on casting......Marly's general knowledge---all of which I have printed on scads of paper and stored in notebooks, which are now in a thousand different places. My wonderful husband's face looks pinched and worn as I stumble around and collect "shapes" for tufa production--and he just called from Home Depot, while I scrolled up this page to tell him which kind of tape to bring home. They're going to have to cut off my arms before I give up...but I feel much more secure now that Peak is back. By the way, Peak, would it not work to decorate the side of that gorgeous hunk with cement-soaked tulle? What might deter it from sticking?

I will try to condense this because I could pontificate for hours on this! My love for gardening came from my father. He was the ultimate green thumb-he didn't have formal training that i know of, but he was a street tree gardener for two of the communities we grew up in, and always had a vegetable garden as a way to supplement our large family's food budget.(Six kids) He was a school music teacher and when summer vacation began he was always found out back tending the garden for pretty much the whole summer. Of all six children I seemed to be the most interested in what he did-and my first memory of my own interest was when he gladly allowed me to plant marigolds around the border of his garden to keep pests away(this was a fairly large plot and now I know why he jumped at my offer to help him!)I was in elementary school at the time. Also eating a tomato whole and sprinkled with salt always brings dad's tomatoes to mind. And asparagus and homemade pickles.... That was my first taste of working in a garden. It wasn't until I was a first-time homeowner that I knew I was going to be a gardener but I chose to go the route of flowers instead of vegetables. The saddest thing, though was that the year before I moved into my new home, my dad developed Alzheimer's disease and everything I needed to ask him for gardening advice about trees and organic gardening was completely gone-he was just a shell of my father-quite sad. Not a day goes by when I'm in my yard and garden that I don't think of Dad and the gift he gave me. I just wanted to share it with him. He passed away two months ago. Just an interesting note; Our family surname has it's origin from Poland and it means 'gardener of an estate' I find that kind of neat. Maybe it's in our bloodline to be gardeners! * Posted by: pkock Zone 6 (My Page) on Tue, May 28, 02 at 2:44 So glad to find this thread - hope it lasts, because it's fun! Honestly, I am not sure what got me hooked. I think it's my tendency to love "scientific" stuff - I never pursued it professionally, but I'll make anything into a science experiment. I got through two pregnancies with that attitude. ;-) My grandma was the gardener in our family. She lived with us, and each year we had to have a veggie garden. My dad wasn't into yard work much, but was "forced" into the labor required, turning over the clay soil with a spade and protesting the entire time. Always basic stuff - tomatoes, peppers, pole beans, but they sure tasted good. We had strawberries for a couple of years, and there was a big apple tree in our yard that grew "cooking" apples. Grandma made lots of pies and applesauce. Then there was Girl Scouts - one year we had a hike with a knowledgeable person who pointed out all the fantastic wild plants along the trail. I absorbed it all like a sponge. This is rare, this is edible, this is a cure for poison ivy, etc. I still remember most of it, teach my daughter, and soon will teach her scout troop too. I was voted "Miss Outdoorswoman" in high school. Isn't that neat? Some things never change. :) --Pam * Posted by: Lucy2 Z7Atlanta (My Page) on Wed, May 29, 02 at 8:23 I love reading these. I remember going to visit my grandparents in Texas every summer. We lived in New Hampshire and would fly down and my grandparents would meet us at the airport. The first thing we would do when we got to Grandma's house was run to her garden. Every year she planted a watermelon JUST FOR US! Oh, how special that was. We would walk into the garden and she would "double check that it was ripe and time to pick it and she would let us watch as she "ever so gently" plucked the watermelon from the garden and we would sit on her front porch all afternoon eating the best watermelon we had ever tasted and spitting seeds as far as we could. Sadly, my Aunt burst my childhood memory bubble (when I was in my 40's but it still hurt!) by telling me that my Grandparents would go to the grocery store the night before we flew in, buy a watermelon and lay it in the garden "just for us", pretending they planted it and grew it all along...I guess I'm in denial because I still tell my children about those fond memories! * Posted by: becki3 z5 IN (My Page) on Tue, Jul 23, 02 at 20:34 Can I still step in here? This is such a wonderful thread, brought back some great memories. But now I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes and a big lump in my throat. One of my first garden memories is of my next-door neighbor when I was very small. She had a gigantic (to me) gooseberry bush that she would make pies for us from, if I would pick the berries. And she also had a thick grape vine that she would sit down with me in the middle of the yard and eat grapes from right off the vine. We always sat on the other side of it so my mom couldn't see us from the window. I don't think she would have minded, but my neighbor made it fun, thinking we were being secretive. She also had about a million plants in her house that she would show me all the time. Thinking back on it now, I realize they were mostly African violets. She was in her late 80's, early 90's, and I thought she was the best neighbor a girl could ever have. (still do) :) Then there was my grandpa. When he was a teen in the service, he had come home to visit his mom just before being shipped overseas. He took ONE little segment from her Christmas cactus, which had been a wedding present 25 years before that, and put it in his wallet. He then drove all the way across the country (took a few days), all the while sitting on this wallet. Just before being shipped out, he stuck this one little smashed, dried up piece of Christmas cactus and stuck it in a little pot of dirt from the ground outside his barracks. I'm not sure what happened to it (where it was, who took care of it) while he was in the war. But I do know that when he died in 1994, that Christmas cactus was not only alive, but very, very, VERY big. He had built a planter for it on wheels so he could move it outside in the summer and back inside for the winter. He also had a ramp leading up to his patio door, which he had to remove to get it through. This "planter" was 5 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 4 feet deep. Filled all the way with soil and thick, long roots. And the plant filled every inch of the top of the soil and hung down to the floor all around. He had to give it a "haircut" every time he moved it in or out so he wouldn't run over it with the wheels. I now have a pretty good size pot of this same plant in my husband's office, where it sits in front of a huge window all year long and blooms from Oct to around May every year. I ask about or stop by to check on this plant about once a week. I'm always terrified I might lose this plant, I feel like somehow I would be losing my grandpa all over again. Or that he might be disappointed in me for letting his precious plant die after having survived 4 generations in our family. But my all-time favorite childhood memories (of any kind) come from my Aunt Julia and Uncle Bill. They had a big farm in Missouri with a couple horses, a coop full of chickens, and about 300 head of dairy and beef cows at any given time. Along with the usual couple of dogs and a barn full of cats. And I remember one time my Aunt sent me out with the horse to get a few apples from the big tree out in the east pasture to make a pie for dinner. She told me to get a sack out of the barn to carry them in. Well, being about 8 or 9 at the time, I had no idea how many apples it took to make a pie. So I took 2 big gunny sacks, and me and Ginger (the horse) set out to find that big tree. Ginger was so patient with me as I stood on her back on the blanket that I rode with (never used a saddle) to pick all the apples that I could reach. I tied these two gunny sacks across her back and filled them up full. (poor horse!) When I got back, I didn't think my Aunt and Uncle would ever stop laughing. Instead of a few apples for a pie, I had just picked enough apples for an entire week of non-stop canning, freezing, and baking everything we could think of that contained apples. Then there were the times that Aunt Julia and I would pack a picnic basket to take out to my Uncle Bill when he was working the fields. We would sit under a big tree and just watch him disking the field, or baling the hay until he noticed us in the distance. Then he would come get me and let me drive the big tractors for a while before we ate. But one of my most vivid and comforting memories is of me and Aunt Julia sitting on the porch swing snapping beans or shelling peas. I can't remember who picked those beans and peas, or what she did with them afterwards. But just sitting there snapping and shelling, not even having to speak, but feeling like the most loved person in the world. I just started to garden seriously for myself last year, and this year I had to have those green beans and peas. And I think of my Aunt Julia and Uncle Bill every time I go out to the garden. I almost started crying when my daughter (5yo) asked me the first time if she could help me shell the peas. She had so much fun with them I didn't even mind the ones that kept flying across the kitchen to land under the cabinets or off in a corner with the dust bunnies. And I can just see my Aunt and Uncle smiling now (more like giggling probably). Right now I think I need to call them (they live in Arizona now) and tell them how much I love and miss them, and maybe thank you for teaching me about all the things I love the most. Then I think I will sit down and start crocheting an afghan for Aunt Julia (she taught me how to do that when I was 6). Luckily I learned to crochet a lot better than I learned how to milk a cow (sorry Uncle Bill)! Thanks for letting me take this stroll! Becki :) * Posted by: Mirri 5 (Finland) (My Page) on Fri, Jul 26, 02 at 3:06 My first attempt to garden vegetables was when I was 9. I loved peas, so I wanted to grow them. My father formed me a lot saying it would be too hard for me, turning the thick soil. Then I sow the peas and watered them for about 2 weeks. Then my first dog - who died of old age a few years back at 13- had a friend over. They were just puppies back then, running and playing. My daddy warned me, but I wanted to let them play on our rather tiny lot. They run over my pea-lot several times, breaking all those tender 15cm pea shoots. Oh, how I cried. Then I took little sticks and tied the shoots back up. Most of them recovered. Then the dogs, Roope and Olga, run the pea shoots down again after a week or so. And I gave up. I quit gardening for about 10 years. I only had a few cacti which I killed and bought new ones. But now I am a horticulturist. Working, ironically, in a greenhouse that produces pea shoots! I think that the wonder of growing, seeing the shoots come up from earth was a positive thing in the end. Even though I didn`t get to harvest the peas. This year I have a tiny pea-lot again, the first time after I was 9. I have harvested some, but my dog keeps steeling the pods before I find them. When I was 17 I found gardening again, in the form of houseplants. I was living in a tiny oneroom flat without balcony. The houseplant hobby lead me into studying horticulture. Now I have a son and 2 dogs. If Pyry wants to be a little gardener, I will build a fence around his lot. * Posted by: prairie_rose southalta (My Page) on Tue, Aug 20, 02 at 23:56 my earliest memories. being sat in the potato patch with a coffee can with some kerosene in the bottom and picking potato bugs and putting them in the can. i think that was the way my mom and grandma kept us out of their hair on wash day ( the old wringer washer, rinse tub, mangler days.) i remember the smell of the compost heap, and i never thought it was nasty. my grandpa and i spent lots of time there, spreading things out, turning it over occasionally. i think i must have got compost in my veins, replaced all the blood, cause i still don't find the compost heap all that nasty. (compost tea, well that is a different story. lol) i remember i hated bringing kids to our house in the fall cause you could smell the crocks of sauerkraut brewing. we lived on the edge of town, and i swear my mom was the only one who canned. but i couldn't wait for it to be ready and eating the stuff till i was sure i would burst. i remember we were the "poor kids" but we ate better than any of my friends, and were healthier than most of my friends. the garden was a way of life, and everyone was expected to pitch in. and when harvest happened, everyone was expected to come home to can. my mom would pick the weekend and as young adults, we all showed up. 5 women in a kitchen!!!!! lots of hard work, but lots of laughs, too. and when it was over we all got our share to take home. now, i am a single mom with two kids, and all those lessons are paying huge dividends. my two are the "poor kids" but they eat better than most of their friends and are healthier than most, too. what i save at the supermarket because of the garden pays the morgage and the extras for the kids. and this year, my daughter is taking an active part in the canning. i just wish my grandma, mom and sisters were here, too. * Posted by: lynne_s z5ny (My Page) on Mon, Sep 9, 02 at 22:23 I remember planting potatoes on my grandfather's farm in the early spring when i was about 4 years old. We weren't just planting a little garden patch...I swear this field must have been at least an acre. I remember the fun we had, laughing and running around in the dirt...getting dirty, but it was ok..we were doing something productive. I remember Grampa explaining the different types...we even planted purple potatoes from Russia. Later in our visit to his farm my brothers and sisters and I helped plant the seeds that would become carrots, corn and beans. I remember trudging through the brambles in search of the elusive blueberry bushes...after a morning of picking berries, we'd stop and have lunch...Grampa would take a fishing line and hook out of his pocket and catch small trout from a nearby stream and we'd roast them on a stick over a fire...just like a hot dog. He amazed me...the man could survive in the wilderness with nothing, and probably live better than most of us do today. lol The outdoors was his church; where he prayed, pondered and planned his life. My grandfather, retired by this time still loved gardening and sold his veggies every summer from his down-sized farm. We spent the entire spring and summer there. Everything we ate and drank came from that farm. I still remember how wonderful everything tasted...the taste of fresh food was foreign to me then. I went back to Grampa's farm many times until he passed...there, I worked hard, enjoyed the freedom of being in the outdoors and learned how important it was to treat our planet with respect, for it is what feeds us. It seems I forgot a lot of his wisdom until quite recently. Now that I'm a Mom of 5 boys, with many mouths to feed as well as many personalities and value systems to help develop, the things he taught me are returning. My husband and I have purchased a home out in the country trying to create an environment for our boys that my Grampa created for us...one of fresh air, sun, fun and respect for all things living...an I'm proud to say, we are well on our way! * Posted by: KCtomato1 z5/6 KC, Mo (My Page) on Sat, Sep 14, 02 at 0:36 My grandfathers both got me started. My first memory is of dark purple tulips and tulips that were taller than I. I recall what a joy it was grandpa let me pick one. Somewhere in the family, someone has a picture of it. I was 2-3. Both gardened but it was my paternal grandfather that let me try everything. He introduced me to raw veggies. I still prefer them over cooked. He would also let me in the berry patch - which is what really got me growing. He made a deal with me - if I picked 2 I could eat one. He'd go in and I would pick 'em clean of course taking the best for myself. We both walked away thinking we got the better deal. My maternal Grandfather taught me more on the "how's" rather than the "whats". He grew to sell and was not keen on kids picking things he could potentially sell. When I was small I would go out to the garden where he was working just to be with him and I'd watch. I would have worked but he wouldn?t let me. He thought I was nuts for wanting to work. He told me there were snakes in the berry patch in an "effort" to keep me out. Most the time he ran me off I was just looking for the snake. Him teaching me things came at a much older age. Im grateful for the time I did spend with them and the gift they passed on. Keith * Posted by: bizmhamama CA z10 (My Page) on Tue, Oct 8, 02 at 15:09 This answers your interest in childhood memories in a roundabout way. My parents and I immigrated to the United States when I was four years old and I never really knew my expanded family. My mother, who grew up on a sugar plantation, cared absolutely nothing for getting her hands dirty. Our back yard was concrete! Her only gardening interest was roses. I became interested in indoor plants as a teenager and then became obsessed with succulents once I moved out of the house & had a patch of dirt of my own. I even wondered what it would take to go back to school for a landscaping degree, and daydreamed about owning a nursery. My maternal grandmother came to America only a few years ago. I was fairly shocked to learn that she loves gardening! She grows guava trees from seed. In her 80s, she still derives incredible enjoyment from simply watching living things grow. I realize now my passion for gardening would have been sparked much earlier in life if geography (& politics!) hadn't intervened.

I've made progress, but I'm getting the stink-eye from DW. I'll finish later tonight. You'll have plenty to think about. Let's talk pruning.... my Japanese Maples! So I will put a description above each picture for some backstory, but as a summary these are all trees that I got in 2018. Half of them are transpotted into gritty mix, the rest are not but drain pretty well when I water them. I fertilized them but stopped fertilizing at the end of Fall. I must have gotten my first tree around July. I would like to get advice on how to prune these guys to get ready for the 2019 growing season because I should have pruned them in late Fall but I did not. I would like it if they grew vigorously, but not too tall. Thick and wide. Most of them are grafted and I could ground-layer them if you think it would be wise. Let me know if you have any opinions on that. In any case, here they are: JM#1 My first tree ever, so JM #1, still not transplanted or repotted. It was growing very thin and tall. The label said "Japanese Maple Upright". Really don't know what to do with this one except maybe cut it down to 25% of its current height. The rootstock under it gave me two rootsuckers, which I planted in other pots. The next 2 pictures are of them. This one really puzzles me though.... The first thing I have to tell you is, it's exceedingly difficult to analyze a tree's problems and offer work-arounds or solutions when working with 2-dimensional images. The second thing is, what I would do might be too much for you to bear. For instance, I would probably chop the first tree back to the first branch above the graft union that favors a vertical orientation, and start building the tree from that. I'm assuming you don't want to do that, so I'll assume you want to keep at least 1/2 of the trees ht as it appears now. First, prune off any/all branches on the understock (below the graft). That's very important. Then, wherever there are a lot of branches concentrated in one area - like 2 or more branches from almost the same spot, they need to be thinned to 1 branch. If you don't, you'll soon have an ugly swelling/bulge on the trunk that will be a magnet for your eye. Maples grow in trifurcations (think of a pitchfork with 3 tines) with the central leader of the branch running through. Review the image below. The natural growth habit of a maple is on the left. The branch grows and produces 2 buds which become branches. Above left is a line drawing of what occurs. Try to avoid structural trifurcations by pruning to create bifurcations (think of the 'Y' of a sling shot). You can do that at every node by removing the central leader or a lateral branch or bud as the image at lower middle and right show. If you do that, you'll end up with a bifurcated structure as you see top right. So, where the trunk bifurcates into the 2 large branches, you should decide which of the large branches you want as the leader and which will be subordinate. if that part of the tree is too messed up, you can pinch out the center of the tree below that bifurcation. This makes a new bifurcation with 2 small branches. There's no sense in going further on this tree until you decide how you're going to proceed. JM#2 Root sucker #1 of the tree above. This one when I planted it took to the transplant very well and was quite vigorous, I see this as a good potential for shaping a certain way. Let me know. ^^^ Starting from the bottom: remove one side of any trifurcations I can't see. When you get to the first pair of bar branches (directly across from each other, one side should be removed. I would remove right side, then snip both of the smaller branches on the left back to the first pair of buds. The 2 little branches on that left branch will be short stubs. Moving up, to the next pair of small branches - remove 1 of the branches and keep the one that grows in a favorable direction. Look at other branches and think about where they are growing. The branch you keep should be growing into the void created by where the other branches are not growing. It should point to where the most light will be as the tree grows. Moving up, it looks like either of the next 2 branches will be the leader - doesn't matter which. The rest of the tree above that longer branch moving to the right will not be a part of the tree, but leave it as a sacrifice branch for now. It will feed the rest of the tree and help thicken the trunk. JM#3 This one is the second root sucker I got from the rootstock part of the tall Japanese Maple "Upright" of above. Not much pruning to do on this one? What do you think? Also this one was not very vigorous after I separated it and planted it. ^^^ Starting from bottom going up the left side. You want a branch to grow toward the left at the bottom of the lowest bifurcation (bottom of the first V. That should occur naturally. If it doesn't, I can show you how to thread graft a branch there. The rest of the left side above that will be a sacrifice branch to be removed later. As I mentioned above, you keep it so it feeds the tree and thickens the trunk. If you get that branch I mentioned, it will form a trifurcation, so at that point - the sacrifice branch should be pruned. Remove the stub above the long branch growing left on the left side. Hint: When you're utilizing sacrifice branches, keep them pruned as they grow so they don't shade branches you're going to keep. Leave it grow after that, but keep an eye on things to head off problems. You can always ask for advice. JM#4 This one is a Japanese Maple Katsura. I have three different angles of it because I figured it would be better to have many angles since this one has so many branches. This tree was extremely vigorous when I got it in the Fall. It also looked amazing. I really don't know what I want to do with this one as far as shape goes but I'm sure it needs quite a lot of pruning. Also there are no cut marks anywhere. I think this one has never been pruned since its birth/graft. Another shot from the side of JM#4: An aerial shot of JM#4. This one should really help to understand the branching and shape? JM#5: This one really caught my eye at the store when I got it. It had red/purplish leaves. It was labeled as JM "Bloodgood" but it is doubtful it is one from discussions we had on this forum about it. I repotted this one without root pruning into gritty mix and cared for it well with watering and fertilizing. Like JM 1 and 4, it has a graft and I'm not sure if that is bad for the tree or not. In any case maybe half of the top should be pruned so that it becomes wider and thicker at the bottom and doesn't keep on growing so tall, what do you think? tree #6: Blueberry tree. Not sure if I should prune this one at all as it did not seem to be very happy when I got it. I mean it did not have a lot of leaves. The green branches that you see here appeared most of them when I got it so it was doing better. Sorry for the poor picture quality on this one. Out of focus... Thanks for looking at my trees and any advice on they pruning, layering an anything would be very welcome. I do intend on repotting #4, #1 and the Blueberry tree (#6) into gritty mix, sometime soon when I'll have another batch made. Enjoy and have a nice day.