Barbara, Thanks for the vote of confidence! I do not recommend causing anymore injury/open wounds on the basil end and/or stem of the cuttings as this is an avenue for infectious diseases to enter the stem tissue. Always use very sharp pruning clippers when taking the cuttings. Sterilize these clippers also. A clean cut leaves no ragged tissue upon which disease can enter the cuttings. The chemical rooting compounds generally do contain a fungicide. I prefer liquid rooting compounds which normally require soaking the basil end of the cuttings for a given period of time. There are different strengths/concentrations of these compounds depending upon whether you are propagating herbaceous or the many stages of woody materials. Powdered rooting compounds tend to excessively clump on the basil end of the cutting which burns the tissue and disease sets in which can contaminate your other cuttings in the propagation media. Follow the instructions on the label. When collecting cuttings, do not let the basil end of the cuttings become contaminated. Think clean from beginning to end. For those of you who want the no nonsense advice, use my e-mail address above.

Only those who are facebook members can see your photos, so if you want more info, you may want to post phots directly to this thread so more folks can see them. See the FAQ photo thread for help on how to post photos. A couple of general comments. Live with it for a year before cutting back most things too severely or removing too much. See what the plants look like in all seasons. For instance the gray-green leafed plant has a fountain of beautiful gold flowers for a few weeks in the spring and the grayish leaves provide foliage contrast for much of the season, including winter. Whoever planted this garden really seems to have worked to provide more than just a few pretty flowers, working to create a garden with nice foliage, though many plants seem to have gotten a bit out of control. It would be very expensive to replace much of this, so before doing too much ripping and tearing, see what you like and want to save. Many of your plants can be improved with proper thinning or pruning. Spend the year looking at other gardens to see what you like, either by wandering around neighborhoods with nice gardens, online or getting books out of your public library. If something is in the way, for sure prune it back, but since you will now know the names of most, look them up to see how to best prune them. For some plants it doesn't matter, but for some, poor pruning can ruin them. Invasive - often used to mean a garden thug, one that will smother other plants in the garden. Legally (as in invasive plants that are illegal to sell) and the way I use it means that it will seed into wild areas and replace native plants. I remove these types of plants. 1 is a bit blurry, but looks like a Chamaecyparis. Slow growing, easy care, and not invasive. 2 can't ID without a closeup 3 weed that I have, but don't know the name of. remove before it goes to seed; Rose top left; on the right gold Alyssum, with yellow spring flowers. Sedum of some type with the bluish needles-like foliage by the rocks 4 Spirea will seed some, but not invasive. fewer seeds if you trim after flowering. If needed can cut back to 6" or so in early spring and it will fill back in quickly (a couple of weeks and you'll have a mound of foliage if it's warm enough for foliage to emerge.) 5 Hosta doesn't need dividing now unless your HVAC person says that plants need to be farther from your AC 6 gold Alyssum, with yellow spring flowers. Mine never seeded around at all. 7. Rose. 8 Sedum drought resistant ground cover. Yours looks like it is one that spreads, but it's easy to rip out where you don't want it. Wait to see if it has attractive flowers before removing all of it. 9. A different sedum, probably Autumn Joy, which has pink flowers in late summer, early fall. Easy. 10. Nice rock! Barberry is invasive, and that one may have been planted like so many . . . a bird eats the berry, but the seed goes through the digestive tract untouched and get deposited with a dose of fertilizer wherever the bird lets loose. Prickers, so remove it with gloves. This is one you can remove and not feel guilty. 11. Groundcover Juniper. If mulched under, easy, not invasive, though it will get larger. Can be pruned, and is nice for late fall early spring green color. 12 More hosta-does best in shade 13 Rose does best in sun 14 another Chamaecyparis (with ivy underneath it looks like), perhaps Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Crippsii'. It looks like it has several trunks. The gold color is another thing that will add interest when there aren't flowers during the growing season and in the winter when most things are gray. 15 I think Ilex glabra, common name inkberry. The shiny green evergreen leaves are the interest for this plant - berries are black and flowers basically invisible. 16 creeping euonymous AKA wintercreeper. Evergreen. might be invasive in some areas, not sure. Feel free to prune back as much as needed since you can't hurt it. 17 More Alyssum 18 ivy will spread forever, so decide if you want this as a ground cover or get rid of it. It is invasive in some areas. If you decide to remove, do a wev search on how to remove ivy (Hedera species). Rhododendron in the upper left corner. spring flowers on rhodie 19 rip out bind weed, as often as it sprouts. don't let it go to seed or you'll have even more. invasive 20 common name ribbon grass. Put some in a container in the middle of other plants for a highlight. I have it in an old chimney tile standing on end in a perennial garden. Looks great, I don't let it go to seed, and it doesn't spread 21 More juniper - a green kind and a bluish kind. Behind a dark green globe of Chamaecyparis. Small reddish barberry. On the far right at the back the leaves and shape look like it might be burning bush, an invasive Euonymous. If so, you'd so well to remove this as it will see around. 22 This is the barberry on the left and the Chamaecyparis on the right as mentioned in 21 24 another form of wintercreeper Euonymous, this one variegated. See 16 25 The" little green bud" are the seed capsules. This is either a deciduous azalea or an Enkianthus campanulatus. Either one has spring flowers and colorful fall foliage. Easy care as long as they like the soil and have a few hours of sun. 26 Pieris japonica, common name andromeda. Spring flowers, evergreen foliage. sometimes new foliage is brightly colored. Happy gardening and welcome to the New England forum. Congrats on having the foresight to post pictures and ask before doing too much.

'Bill, I guess we are both beginners in propagating conifers. My god I didn't know it was this hard to grow conifers...' We all have to start somewhere. Don't give up. I think the methods Dave O. gave to us really simplifies things. Next time, I'm going to do mine that way. It will cut down on a lot of the work. This time, I spent a lot of time checking temperatures and that's because I didn't have a thermostat on my mat, so I used a timer and had to continually check and change the on/off cycles to coincide with what ambient temps were doing. The colder it got outside, the more heat it took to keep 70d bottom heat (remember I'm zone 3 brrr) :) . Next year I definitely will have a thermostat. I also spent time buying/configuring lighting, next year, I won't have to fool with that. Built myself an insulated rooting chamber, should work just fine 'as is' next year. And the reading. I must've read certain articles 10x before it totally sunk in, then you have to sort through all the contradictory and incorrect information found on the internet. So yeah, first time around is always the hardest. Keep us posted on what you do next time, I find it interesting. I still don't know how my stuff will turn out but I'll keep posting on my "Rooting Tsuga Canadensis" thread as things develop. Good Luck! :-) Hey Dave! When you finally set your tank outside in the shade, is it still sealed? Or do you have it vented by then?

Goldilocks Larger oak in woodlands area.The pine in the center/right is a tri-trunked Vanderwolf pyramidal pine. A deer snapped the main trunk down to the ground (dont ask me? :), but luckily three branches also happened to be coming out right at ground level. (replace ground with mound, all my conifers get planted on large mounds). 4 years later and looking good. Somewhere on here is a pic of right after the deer snapped it. close up of Vanderwolf Note dead leaders on P. Abies. What do you recommend for for borers that get into leaders and work their way down? Thanks! Yep, that’s a Rottenhausi alright. One helluva soecimen, dont you think? :) P. Pungens Bakeri to right and a mint truffle to right(need to move but reaaaalllly dont want to). Little guy below is P. Pungens Thume. Ill try to get a pic of “conifer island” this winter/spring. Do these look like happy conifers or what? P. Pungens Baby Blue. I have a major, major problem with groundcover weeds hence my pizza box experiment. For all practical purposes, my entire property is woodlands. If you know what those little lily pad(bottom left of tree and all the dead ones from roundup) weeds are, let me know, they choke out everything. Looking for solutions. Until two years again I did nothing. Then i realized my smaller conifers were getting completely enveloped with vegetation. I also have various other larger types vines with leaves as well. P. Abies Skylands probably planted in the shadiest spot anyone on here has tried to plant a skylands in. This is in front of my front fence but before the street. When I bought the place in 2012 it was a 30’x80’x25’ rectangular prism of honeysuckle. I cut out all but the largest 15or so. Then cleaned up everything below 6’ so I could walk freely. Most everything above that (which made a 85-90% canopy coverage) stayed, Over the years Ive realized it is a lot of work to keep trimming, honeysuckle grows like crazy, even with the bottom 6’ of branches removed. Their are also a lot of tall trees just south of this in my front yard so this skylands could definately use more sun. In the ground for 4 years(when I cleared the honeysuckle out). Volunteer Ohio Buckeye on right. There are 2 other volunteer buckeyes in this area.