Dawn, you're more than welcome! You were one of the people who helped me have success with my first veggie garden a few years back (2009) & I'm honestly just in awe of your knowledge & experience. As far as I know from reading the threads of the forum, we live the closest to each other & if it wouldn't seem like a strange thing to offer, I'd love to come help you in your garden if you ever needed help. You seem to really know your stuff & be very interested in your plants, planted & native to your property alike, which I think is awesome. I'm always checking out interesting plants in my yard & in the woods around here on the refuge. I can only hope one day to be the expert that you certainly are. :) I had never seen the Lunas before, but they are very beautiful. My son finds them fascinating & my dogs try to catch them, LOL. I'm pleased to know there is an upside to the spikey balls from hell, besides the fall foliage show. The one in our new yard must be very old, it's so huge that I can't wrap my arms around the trunk & the roots wouldn't be that far exposed if it wasn't, I don't think. It's roots run the entire length of my house. I ran into some when I was hoeing out the side & back flowerbeds & was like "Wow, that's an impressive root system." I think that commelina would be an ideal cover for the shallow soil & I certainly know that it would grow tall enough to cover up those roots. My mom's goes crazy every year & she's already griping about it's height. Usually, she has her yard guys weedwhack it down several times a summer. I told her to let me do it this year & take the cuttings. I'm kinda wanting it to be semi-invasive, because the section I want it to take over is beneath that tree & also the other side of my front yard in the shade of the tree, which is all infested with sticker grass. I had ambitious plans to dig it all out by hand b/c I'd heard that's really the only way to get rid of it...until I realized that about 500,000 of them were scattered all over the whole yard & digging them up is no easy task. They have underground spreaders that break easily & each new place I broke has, within a week, sent up new spikes. Grrr. I've read that stickers don't do well at all with competition, so hopefully the commelina will outcompete & do what I want it to do. I figured I'd try it, anyway. What have I got to lose? It's all free, so no waste of money. This post was edited by faerybutterflye on Wed, May 1, 13 at 9:50

I do something similar, but I use a big Rubbermaid container and put the cuttings in individual clear cups. Each container can hold 25 to 40 cups according to the size. I water the soil before sticking the cuttings and try to be sure it is not too dry or two wet, thin line between the two. Once I put the cups in the big container, I cover the whole thing with Plexiglas that I already had, because I got the containers really cheap but they had no lids. I try not to start looking in the big container for a week or two. I do not water the cuttings again unless the little pots look dry. I use a turkey baster to put a few drops of water in the dry cups when needed. Since it is a somewhat air tight environment, they might not ever need more water. The key is don't look in it too often, if you can resist! I have used this method successfully with roses, lantana, salvia, altheas, forsythia, etc. There are pictures in one of these chains of my system. I had Westerland rose root in 5 days, but usually takes 4 or 5 weeks. Once I see lots of roots, I begin to acclimate them. I have extra containers that I use for this as they don't all root at the same speed. The reasoning for using the cups is I don't have to up root them to transfer to pots. Oh, I usually use MiracleGro soil.

Donna, A fan blowing air across them does the same thing. Yes I've tried it and it does work :) All you really need is plant movement to force strengthening of the stem. That is one of the purposes for those large fans you see in big commercial growing operations. nyssaman, Yes it can be done very easily. Just use a shallow container and put multiple holes in it for the pot wicks. I was thinking one of those 2 foot by 3 foot under the bed plastic containers, but I'm sure there are many options. I will probably do something like that the next time I do seedlings. This time I was just fooling around with Balloon flowers and didn't realize how well they would do or how quickly they would bloom. John

This may be more of a crafty item but the kids love it. This works great in the spring and Easter. In empty, clean egg shells Draw faces on the outside of the shell., In the egg shell put in potting soil and them grass seed. Water when needed. When the grass grows out of the top of the egg shell, Let kids give there "Egg Head" a hair cut. Notes When breaking the egg shells try to break near one end so you have more room to draw a funny face and have more soil and grass seed on the inside. Also, store the Egg Head in the egg carton, so they will sit up straight.