Sabji : do you have any fenugreek seeds? I have some variegated basil if you are interested Magick: Re you still looking for Stella d oro lily? Would like your white rebloom azalea. Or maybe you would like a variegated basil? Gail, I am jealous! Get something awesome! I will be joining everyone next year for that event. Camelialover: I have set aside purple balloon flower seeds, yellow iris, and Persian shield for your thalictrum, agapanthus, and spirea

Karen Hause, have you seen the flowers of this sedum? If so what color are they? We don't have a fully authoritative answer but have some strong leads regarding its identity. We'll write more about this, but the flower color would provide additional clarification. Incidentally, side-by-side comparison makes us more convinced that your blue sedum is S. hispanicum not 'Blue Spruce'. We'll write more about this, too.

Here's our first report on successful removal of those stupid fake flowers (from the summer). Parodia magnifica a.k.a. Notocactus magnificus has been on our wish list for a while, so we were delighted and abhorred at the same time when we saw one at HD: One message we got from the removal videos referred above was that isopropanol was applied many times over the course of several minutes. In order not to waste so much time, we performed one generous application on the glue and put the whole plant and pot into a plastic bag to soak: After about 15 min, the flower was easily separated: The glue mass appeared more flexible after this soaking, but it clearly wasn't dissolved. Many spines were embedded in it at the attachment site and ended up being torn away, but no damage was done to the surface of the plant. After 2 months, the plant has grown from the center and its balloon has expanded - the damaged/missing spines were visible as an 1 inch wide circle:

According to this interesting video about Arundo propagation, rooting takes place at nodes, so internode cuttings are actually good propagation material. This suggests that if a stem is severed at ground level, without any roots, it is likely to end up being cut above the root node and the next higher node may be above ground when such a stem is planted vertically. In such a case a spurt of growth from the stem's remaining reserves could occur but it would not be followed by root formation and the stem would die off. Those stems that survive would be likely cut deep enough to preserve enough of the root node to be able to form new roots. So to obtain more successful propagation of Arundo, two paths could be followed: 1, deeper digs and divisions containing larger chunks of tubers with roots and rooting nodes; 2, stem cuttings with exposed nodes laid flat on the rooting medium, like in the video. The stems that we received at the swap seem to fall in the crack of not having enough roots to be bona fide divisions on one side, and not having a buried internode to be able to root as cuttings on the other side.