Great question. I long for more Old Garden Tea roses, and their immediate hybrids. I've often wished I could cross the disease resistant pale yellow Tea roses 'Souvenir de Pierre Notting' or 'Etoille de Lyon' with a Pernetiana such as 'President Herbert Hoover' or 'Etoille de Feu' or 'Duquesa de Penardana.'I never can remember how to spell that name... theres a tilda there somewhere too. all of these roses are disease resistant plants in a local no-spray garden. I'd like to see a flame hued, fragrant ever-blooming Tea-Hybrid that is disease resistant with the rapid re-peat of the Tea class. Locally 'Lady Hillingdon' gets powdery mildew in each of the 4 seasons, but continues to bloom through all, but it is barely fertile. It has been such a popular rose for a hundred and two years, I think another Tea-Hybrid of similar but deeper hues would be a success. A white Tea-Hybrid rose that holds up well as a cut flower would be sublime. I'd like to see a cross between the Tea-Hybrid cl.'Mrs. Herbert Stevens' with the fragrant 'Westside Road Cream Tea' both of which are disease resistant, in my no-spray garden. Or W.R.C.T. X 'Snowbird' or 'White Christmas', which has a sweet fragrance. Alba Semi-Plena for disease resistance, and beautiful foliage, I imagine a white Tea-A.S.P cross through several generations to produce a remontant hybrid. 'Niphetos'X white 'Rose of York'=heaven. I sure do love Tea roses, and Albas. Luxrosa p.s. plan9, look to Groundcover roses from 1990 and onward, many were bred from R. wichurana, and hortico.com sells several of them. I suggest you look for "disease resistant' roses under Groundcovers and then look up their parentage on helpmefind.com I have Ralph Moores 'Simplex' a small remontant wich. hybrid that has apricot buds that open to show white wild- appearing rose blossoms.

Here's what you need: 6 pack containers (what you bought your Wave petunias/whatever in) A bucket Chlorine bleach A medium ("soil") to stick the cuttings in Rooting hormone 1 gallon ziplock plastic bags Here's what you do: Put 1 cup of bleach and 9 cups of water into the bucket, and wash your previously enjoyed 6 pack containers thoroughly in the solution, gettin all old dirt off. Rinse extremely well, until you can't smell the bleach on them anymore. You've now sterilized your containers. For your medium, go to Home Depot or Lowes and get a good potting mix and a bag of perlite -- both sell perlite, just ask for it. Mix the potting mix and perlite together about even -- 1/2 mix and 1/2 perlite. Put this into your sterilized containers and moisten until water flows out the bottom of the cells. Don't pack down the mix, though -- you want it light with a lot of air in it. This prevents rot of the cutting, a common problem when using plain potting mix. Poke a hole in the middle of each cell with a pencil to receive the cuttings. The last thing you do is take your cuttings. For both species, use the growing tips. Cut off about 3 nodes worth below the littlest baby leaves (nodes are where the leaves come out of the stem) and cut the leaves off the bottom two nodes. If remaining leaves are large and might be in the way, cut them in half on an angle. The allamanda has milky sap, as I recall, so let that sap stop oozing before you dip the cut end in rooting hormone. Don't wait at all to stick the thunbergia -- you never want a cutting to wilt. Dip just the cut end in rooting hormone and insert into the holes you made, one cutting per cell, getting at least one node below soil level. Gently firm the medium around each cutting. When all are stuck, water in with a gentle spray. Then put the 6 pack in a gallan ziplock bag (bottom of the cellpack on the bottom of the bag, not sideways) and zip it shut. Keep in a shady spot (no sun or you'll cook your cuttings) and check daily to see if it needs a little venting. Often you won't need to open it up until the cuttings are rooted. All decent garden centers around here carry Rootone, but if you can't find it check out AM Leonard online -- they're a big horticultural supplier. Soeur

Hi Vettin, thanks! I'm happy you're finding the blog and cutting wrapping interesting and useful! You know when a climber or a polyantha forms the wood at the end of the cane which carries all the flowers? In the link below, it's the photo on my blog of the Shadow Dancer cuttings, enlarged for best detail. Notice the branched cutting to the right of the center of the photo. It's the one with the actual root sticking out to the right of the bottom of the cutting. The ends of the branches of that cutting carried the individual flowers in the cluster. If you are familiar with polyanthas, think their actual flower clusters. It's the wood which holds or carries the flowers. These are rooting faster and easier than actual stem or "normal" cane types and are generating growth from invisible buds. This address will show you growth from a flower cluster cutting. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kqFwNC_LFu8/TfZYYrvC0_I/AAAAAAAAAF0/J73QHnJOO8w/s1600/shadow+dancer+wrapped+cutting.JPG Once they callus or form roots, I use my potting soil of choice (I hesitate to suggest a brand because our conditions are likely very different. Whatever holds moisture for you without being soggy, until you can conveniently water it) and plant the cuttings deeply, leaving only the top few growth buds exposed to the elements. You want to keep them damp, cool, moist and dark as light and heat simulate growth and flowering at the expense of rooting. I'm sure with any experience, you'll find cuttings breaking into growth and blooming without forming roots, then completely collapsing. Keeping most of the cutting buried in the soil is like heeling in a bare root at planting time. Keeping it cool, dark and moist triggers the plant to grow roots. Slowly uncovering it when you see new growth forming at the cane ends allows the wood to absorb light (to stimulate photosynthesis) and to heat up which stimulates growth and flowering. What I would have said about watering when I lived in the mid desert is very different from what I now practice living one ridge inland from the ocean. It all depends upon your rate of evaporation. As with any potted plant, you want them moist to keep them growing, without being soggy, causing them to rot. Same goes for soil type. If I used the moisture control soil I use here at the beach, they'd probably rot due to staying too wet. Here, I need that extra water holding capability. We're having "June Gloom" now, with heavy overcast, damp, cool mornings then clearing with high seventies air, much hotter in the direct sun. Light soil, like something very sandy or a seed starter type, would need watered almost daily. When it heats up even more, which should be shortly, light soil may not hold a day, particularly when the winds hit and humidity drops to single digits. You have a much better idea what soil type and brand to use in your climate and microclimate than I would. Same goes for water schedule. Don't let them dry out fully, but don't drown them and rot the forming roots off before they get going. If it's cloudy, over cast, foggy, cool, damp, misty, rainy you can get away with what would be sunny to full sun. If it's getting sunnier and warmer, you're going to want filtered sun or early morning sun with protection from the hot, burning sun, until they break into growth and can shade their wood with their foliage. HOT will dry them out faster than they can absorb water through their immature root system. It can also heat up the pots to the point of both drying them out and even cooking the tender roots. I am using 16 oz foam cups with holes poked in the bottoms for drainage. They are readily available; inexpensive; easy to poke holes in; disposable; light weight; insulated so the soil warms from the surface and not "cook" from the sides where the sun may shine on them; and something I don't mind handing to someone if I give a rooted plant away. They are reusable as long as you don't write on them or otherwise damage them. The ones I'm using right now have had four sets of cuttings run through them, so they certainly are inexpensive and durable enough for the purpose. I use the cups for portability and ease of sliding out the soil ball in one piece to check for root formation, too. If I can see roots infiltrating the soil ball, I know it's time to pot them up into larger pots. If they were in the soil, unless they are where I intend them to grow, how would I know? I know others have found fertilizer already incorporated into the soil may burn new roots. My soil is Miracle Grow Moisture Control which has time released food in it. So far, I'm not noticing any problems with it. If I weren't using a fertilized soil, I would wait until a decent root ball was formed in the pots, then begin feeding with a dilute solution of a water soluble type. Probably at quarter to half strength, after a good, thorough watering. You can always add more fertilizer to a pot, but it's hard as heck to take some out. As with us and most animals, smaller, more frequent feedings are better than huge ones as in feast or famine. As long as you water sufficiently so the plant has all it needs, you can't burn anything with a light feeding applied at more frequent rates. If it says feed a tablespoon full in a gallon of water every two weeks, consider giving a quarter tablespoon every week in a gallon of water. Just make sure the soil remains moist and not soggy and you water well before you fertilize. It's the same logic you're probably already using for your established plants, only massaged for smaller, less mature ones. Think "baby" and "baby food". You might eat a steak but you won't feed your infant one. I think I got it all...what else? Thank! Kim Here is a link that might be useful:

Dry shampoo is for oil control and sometimes a boost for volume on 2nd or 3rd day hair that the individual doesn’t have time to wash or is trying to delay washing. The ‘no poo’ bunch (people who don’t use a traditional shampoo in favor of home concoctions or co-washing which is only using conditioner to wash the hair) often talk about going through a period where nothing is helping the greasiness as they attempt to re-acclimate their scalp to more normal oil production after daily washing had been amping it up for quite a while. Many give up, but some swear that after time, it gets better and they continue to no-poo and find that dry shampoo helps in the way the product is intended to. Fine hair (even if you have a ton of it) will need washing sooner no matter what, it’s just the way that hair texture wants to be regardless of any interventions. I don’t like most of the drugstore ones I’ve tried, tresemme made my hair tangle and knot up like nothing I’ve ever seen before and I’ve had hair brushes literally get stuck and had to cut them to get the things out after my stylist untangled as much as she could so all I had to do was switch my part for a few months while my hair grew enough to switch back. Batiste is okay but I can’t muck with additional styling afterwards or the top goes flat and the static goes wild and I’m shocking or being shocked for the rest of the day/night. I knew a girl who used baby powder when she had applied too much hair smoothing oil and didn’t have time to start all over with a wash, dry and style. She was a very light blonde so it didn’t look noticeable after a light brushing to distribute it through her hair. Mostly the stuff makes my head itch. I wash every other day, sometimes if I won’t be going anywhere I’ll only wash every 3rd day. I suppose one could dry their hair after sweating and then apply dry shampoo, but I wouldn’t just put it on hair that is wet or damp from sweat and then try to dry it with a blow dryer, might as well just do a real wash in a hurry. Not easy with long hair, or wavy/curly, much less long wavy/curly hair.