A look at my garden with new eyes...

I had cataract surgery last summer, and I am often distressed by what I can see now;  spiderwebs on the ceilings, for instance.

However, I am not distressed by what I am seeing in my garden lately.
I have been working on my pottery for about 3 years.  Learning, learning, learning, and while I am not done learning, I can finally take a time to pay attention to other things.
 
The first thing I am doing is getting rid of all those little trees that have been flourishing among my treasured plants.  Not little, as in seedlings;  Little trees, as in 5-6', REAL TREES!  The seeds of hackberry, mulberry, Spanish mulberry, pecan, and even oak have happily germinated in the fertile soil of my flowerbeds and are now lush specimens.  I pull what I can, whack what is too large to pull, and dose those stumps with stump killer.  Then Bobby comes along and digs them out if he can, trying to not disturb anything growing close to it.

Two years ago, we had a severe winter (for us), several consecutive days when the temperature held at 17 degrees.  We had the most severe drought ever last summer, months on end of no rain, and soaring temperatures.  I lost a lot of plants in my garden. 

Looking at my records of what was in my garden, and when it was planted, etc., etc., I realize that much of what was lost was what I call 'exotics'.  I love those plants that nobody else has, nobody 'round here has ever seen, and while they can be kept easily enough if you are vigilent, they will decline if left to their own devices.  Neglect is out of the question.  Sadly, my garden has been neglected.

On the bright side....and there is always a bright side...

Everything in my garden now is tough as nails.  I have roses that could be killed, but you would need intent.  They are nicely established, and not going to keel over any time soon.  Lots of iris, day lily, lantana, esperanza, salvia, oleander, orchid trees, gardenia, althea, plumbago, Barbados cherry, fire bush, cestrum,and hibiscus are thriving.  I was weeding (!) last weekend, and pulled some grasses that were just plain ugly, and hidden under them was the prettiest little 'Red Sail' hibiscus that has not seen the sun for a long time.  I was so happy!

Most of my ferns have multiplied many times, including holly fern, river fern, and Ming fern.  I am very pleased that the Ming fern is so hardy.

I still have lots of grasses, and things like confederate rose, and bougainvilla.  My husband would just as soon that bougainvilla was elsewhere, but it is getting bigger and bigger...

Needless to say, I have planted some pots, but I am using plants that are easy to care for, and that do not mind if I am not sitting with them daily.  Coleus, bulbine, vinca, portulaca, and purple fountain grass are growing fast.

AND.....I should confess, I have planted a couple of new things in the garden.  A candlestick plant, Mexican hummingbird plant, Mexican salvia, and a delicious Hawaiian Sunset vine!  Talk about exotic!  But a beauty too, pictures when it blooms!

I still have this ribbon lily.  Bobby found it at the dump and potted it up.  We have divided it many times, and it is one of my favorite plants in the garden.

We still have a lot to do, but it will get done.  We can sandwich it in, with workshops, and making pott-ry, building a shop for Bobby, and remodeling the bathrooms.  Next week, I want to clean the pond and add some new fish!

I started a post yesterday, and saved it, thinking I would come back to it today when I was not so busy.  Well, they have changed blogger, I can't find my drafts.  I can't find much of anything that was here when I was here.  Does anyone know where my drafts are, and how I could access them?  I know I am a PITA because I am such a ninny about this stuff, but I get soooooooooo aggravated when they change things!

That dreadful plant- Butterfly vine.....

Ancient one has complained about the honeysuckle vine that plagues her garden. I countered with my very worst problem, the Butterfly Vine.

My MIL innocently gave me a start of this vine. It lives on my fence and offers marvelous privacy; nothing can see through it, nothing can go through it. Birds blissfully build their nests in it, knowing they are safe from cats, as it is not sturdy enough for the cats to climb on.

It does not freeze, stays green all year long. When it blooms, it is a lovely yellow blanket, and it blooms for a long time. I have never seen a seedling, so I suspect the seeds are sterile, BUT....it roots very easily, anywhere it touches the ground.

I have found vines as long as 40' long, and would not doubt they grow much longer. This is a tough vine.

The seed pods are a real novelty. They are a lime green butterfly, and it is very exciting to see all those butterflies on the fence.

The lime green butterflies dry to a golden brown butterfly and will stay in that form for years. They do not break down and fall apart. They can be painted with acrylic craft paint, glued to a stick and used as a decoration for a pot plant, or worn in your hair as an adornment. If you look at the first photo, you can see a really good dry seed pod.
This is one of those plants- you like it, you hate it.

Honeysuckle does at least have a lovely fragrance. Butterfly vine does not smell good.

We are harvesting! Nom, nom, nom!

This is that squash I was talking about. I have cooked it, and already given our first mess of squash away. I am activily seeking persons willing to take some squash. I am harvesting a half dozen squashes a day. The funny looking thing in the middle of the bed is 'Flamingo Fred', one of the birds Bobby makes.

You get out and work a little, you have to set awhile. Bobby made this bench for me from an old iron bed. It is comfortable when the cushion on it, I am protecting the cushion at this time, as we have a 4 legged thief in the neighborhood.

The cucumbers are full of small fruit, I am picking enough every day for salads and to satisfy my cucumber desires. I love cucumbers, and it is one crop that I seldom have enough to give freely. I will share the cucumbers, although grudgingly sometimes.

The broccoli is done, Bobby has pulled it by now and replaced it with 3 pepper plants and a bumch of butterbeans. I can taste them already!

One of the birds is in the broccoli plants here. That is Buttercrunch lettuce in front of the broccoli, and tomatoes to the left of him.

This is 'He Who Waters'. It seems that he always has a watering hose in his hands.

Our tomato plants are huge, and they are loaded with tomatoes! I am painting golf balls, tennis balls and ping pong balls bright red, so we can hang them in the tomato plants. We need to get this done this week. The birds peck on a golf ball a couple of times, and they will pretty much leave the ripe tomatoes alone.

Tomorrow, or the next day, the zinnias will bloom. What a picture that will be!

Cucumbers!

We have cucumbers on the vines! They are about 2" long now, we should have some in a salad this weekend, unless I eat them all before they make it into the house.

We will have tomatoes by the end of April. We have lots of nice tomatoes on the vines, and a ton of blooms. I grow only indeterminate vines, as I will have more than enough to eat, preserve, and share from them. I don't look forward to having all my produce come in at once, so I have to do something with 3 bushels of fruit at once. Lazy me.....

Some of the tomatoes from the generic sales are Brandywines and some are Large Red Cherry, (one of my favorites!), so I am very pleased with that deal. No cardboard tomatoes so far.

I am going to be in trouble with the squash. I planted lots of seeds, with the idea that I could share some plants with friends, but I had no takers, and now the plants are too large to transplant, so I am going to be sneaking around in the dark, putting squash on people's porches. I will probably get dog-bit...

I will be giving zuchinni away too, but I should not have any problem with eggplant. I only have one eggplant plant. That will be plenty for us.

My Dad planted a whole pack of eggplant seeds one year. He was going crazy with all that eggplant, LOL. He said people were avoiding him...he finally put it on the side of the road with a sign that read "FREE! PLEASE HELP YOURSELF!"

We planted okra last Saturday, along with purple hull peas. I am racking my brain, trying to figure out what to plant after the lettuce and broccoli are done. My mind goes blank when I realize that it is going to be May already, and I really don't have any ideas. Maybe some yard long beans, or maybe I will broadcast a cutting garden and grow flowers.

Slow me down, please.....

We now have squash and zuchinni growing in the garden! Everything planted to date is doing very well, I am encouraged. The spinach, Swiss chard, cucumbers, et al have true leaves now, and I am feeding them with a weak 'tea'. They love it!

I planted 5 packs of zinnia seeds in front of the pole beans growing on the trellis, and behind the 1015y onions. There was just enough room there to create an island of bright colors.

The birdhouse gourd seeds that we planted last week are up already and Bobby says you can see them growing! That is a scary thought!

I also planted some Armenian cucumbers. I have not grown them before, and I hope they are as interesting to look at as the pictures in the catalogs, and I am interested in their flavor. I cannot imagine a cucumber that tastes like anything other than the regular cucumbers....

We set out the hyacinth bean plants that Bobby has grown in 4" pots. They will fill the fence line and give us some desirable privacy. They are pretty to grow too. I have a cazillion seeds, and I would be very happy to share, if anyone wants some of them. I certainly cannot use all these seeds, and I hate for them to go to waste. It is a pretty vine, dark green leaves on top, with purple on the underside of the leaf. They bloom in the early fall and put on the most BEAUTIFUL, SHINY, PURPLE seed bean you ever saw. I love the beans as much as the flower! Anyway.....PLMK.

Progress......

Raining today. It is supposed to rain most of the day, with wind gusts up to 35 mph. We NEED the rain, not the wind, tho.

Long white radishes are up. Buttercrunch, romaine, loose leaf, Red Sails- lettuce is up. Spinach is up. Cucumbers are peeking out. 'Bright Lights' Swiss chard is up and looking very bright, with it's stems of red, orange, pink, yellow, and pale green.

Harvesting cabbage, cauliflowers, and broccoli when it quits raining.

Bobby planted his pepper plants, and something promptly ate one off at the soil level. It is gone, he is outraged! Not funny, but I get so tickled at him. He thinks that just because it is HIS, it is safe from the normal chances we all take when we assign something to the ground. LOL

I have lilies up in the flower beds, and my chaste trees are budding. Lots of things that I thought were dead for sure are putting on leaves. Some things that are in pots survived- I think that surprises me more than anything.

Copper Canyon Daisy is BEAUTIFUL! Not blooming yet, but all leafed out. Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow has buds. It is going to be a spectacular Spring!

Name unknown, unknown variety....

We were in our local WalMart last night, looking at their seedlings. Bobby wants to buy peppers now, as they are already plants, and he doesn't have to wait for warm weather for them to germinate.....

Anyway, there was this huge cart full of beautiful tomato plants, marked 'tomato'. No variety, no common name, just 'tomato'. Generic tomatoes, for the non-discriminating gardener. They were very cheap.

I bought 3 and I can't wait to find out what kind of tomatoes they are. I just hope they are not those that remind me of eating cardboard.

And we did find pepper plants. Cowhorn, cayenne, jalapeno, giant jalapeno, serano. Still looking for the 'Ghost' pepper........

"No, wait!" I said, "don't till there, I think ...."

Too late. He had already tilled up the asparagus bed. The lovely, tender shoots were gone. Of course, he had to weed eat the bed first. THEN he tilled it up!

It looks great, tho. All fluffy soil....

I am going tomorrow afternoon to do some trading with a friend. She has some different varieties of tomato plants, and I am going to trade some of mine for some of hers.

Planted seeds of spinach and mustard today.

It was supposed to rain every day this past week. We have not seen a drop of rain yet.

A good thing, we hauled a whole truckload of weeds to the dump this afternoon.

Planting, planting, planting!

I am planting! Vegetables, flowers, shrubs!

Mostly veggies right now, with a few flower seeds, and I have relocated some shrubs that have looked bad for awhile. Actually, EVERYTHING has looked bad for a long while! I cannot stand it any longer.

We have cabbages and cauliflower, and broccoli, peas, and onions. That is all the winter stuff that I will eat, and I have decided that I don't have enough time to take care of things we won't eat.

In a couple of weeks, I will set tomatoes in the ground, with lettuces, and beans. In about 3 weeks I will plant squash, cucumbers and zuchinni. In a month, or 6 weeks, I will plant peppers and okra. That is all I am going to grow. I love to eat all of that stuff.

AND...zinnias! I am going to put zinnia seeds in at mid-March. They are my favorites!

I am still doing 'pottree', as the guy from Louisianna says. He is a fabulous potter, so he can say it any way he wants to say it.

I took a 4 day workshop back in January, and had a ball. Learned to throw BIG pots, in 3 pieces, sculpted the ugliest lady you ever saw, and learned Raku! from the 'Pottree' guy. And I learned that I love handbuildings! I am having a great time.

It felt so good to have my hands in the dirt again.

Well, I am still here. I come here to read all your posts, and check on everybody, but I seldom find enough time to actually post anything.

I started taking a couple of classes at the college last winter; Ceramics I quickly turned into Summer Ceramics, and then Ceramics II. I have been seduced by the clay, captured into the bondage of needing to do that every day! I have become a pottery junkie.

This is the first big coil pot I made. Big is great in pottery!

Bobby is an enabler, too. He has donated a nice portion of his shop to set up a studio for me. We have purchased a kiln, have a couple of pottery wheels, and he is busy building a slab roller and an extruder for me, AND a Raku kiln. He is really fascinated with that Raku firing. I have so many tools already, and he is busy making more, making more. Talk about obsessive compulsive!

I call this the 'Fox Pot', but have been accused of making a 'rat pot', an 'armadillo pot' and the latest, a 'chupacabra pot'. No, that is a fox, in my mind, LOL.

His tail is a spout, but what such a big pot needs a spout for is beyond me. My inspiration for this pot was a picture of a pre-Columbian pot, c. 100-500 BC. It turns out the the pot in the picture was a little tea pot, and only 5" tall! My 'Fox Pot' is about 20" tall. He has been pit fired since these pictures were taken, and is black and terracotta now. He is also being exhibited in an Art Show right now, along with my porcelain bird's nest.

I am also taking a Spanish language class, and I really enjoy that. I always wanted to learn to speak Spanish, but couldn't seem to grasp what was going on with it. Now I have a Spanish friend who helps me, and I get to speak the language daily.

Of course, my garden has suffered terribly. We have just finished getting the winter garden planted, so I feel a bit better about it, but my flower beds need an army of gardener's attention. I would hire someone to help me, but right this minute, I don't have time to do it myself. I am looking forward to Christmas vacation, to have some time to catch up on stuff.

AND....I have been watching what I eat, and have lost 25 lbs. so far! I am thrilled, thrilled! Still some to go, but I have it in my head now, and I can do anything once I get my head on straight.

Thank you so much for thinking of me. You made my day!

An afternoon very frustrating....

I have not been here for awhile. Too hot to be in the garden just now, I am longing for the cooler days of autumn.

I have just finished an afternoon of computer training for my husband. He is a very bright and intelligent man who just turns to jelly in front of a computer. "It makes me feel stupid..." he says. I have quit telling him that it does that to everyone.

I just look at him.

This computer is a new HP laptop with Vista in it. He is using an Excel spreadsheet. This is work related, and he is EXTREMELY protective of the formula set into the spreadsheet. He keeps telling me how I can mess it all up if I hit the 'wrong thing'.... Really? I just look at him.

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Sooooo...I am supposed to teach him all I know about the computer, but I should not even LOOK like I was going to touch his computer....???? He says "Why are you looking at me like that?"...

Finally, we got through two email exercises with attachments successfully. He wants to do that again. Amazing how enthusiastic he gets when something goes right. Amazing how he has just told me that I am a less than adequate teacher.

Amazing that I have not made equally complimentary remarks.

And when we are done, (because thankfully, the computer ran our of juice and shut down), he says that I am a better teacher than he is a student. I suspect he wants clean sheets, clean clothes and food next week. He has to say that.

I am not forgetting his snide remarks. I have a very long memory.

He has had a computer for years. He has a new computer that he got last Christmas. Why has he waited until now to learn something about it?

GRRRRR!!!

AND.....he insists on typing in all caps. I have gently explained that it is tacky, and people will think he is yelling at them. He says he doesn't know how to type....excuses, excuses.

I am going to throw some clay.

Does anyone doubt for a minute why I love 'throwing clay'?

My garden is weedy. I am frustrated by the fact that it is over 100 degrees every day, and was 81 degrees at 6:30 am- this morning. I can't work in that kind of heat, so I just water and water, and it will be o.k. until it cools off.

I hope your garden is flourishing.

Yes, there are herbs in the garden!

Nell Jean at Secrets of a Seedscatterer has a neat poll about herbs we grow in our gardens. Reading the post, the poll and the comments had me chuckling, thinking about some of the herbs I have grown.

Someone asked if dill counts as a herb. Most certainly it does, and there are many varieties. As a matter of fact, most plants will qualify as herbs, although we don't think of them as such. Roses are considered herbs, but I'm not gonna cook my chicken with the leaves.....

Some herbs are such thugs, I have to seriously consider how I can grow them before I will plant them. Oregano is one, as is mint of any kind. Lemon balm is another. I often plant herbs in big containers, and watch how they grow for a couple of years before I will plant them in the garden.

Mexican marigold mint isn't really a mint. We call it Texas tarragon. It will layer, but I don't have seedlings everywhere.

Cilantro is grown in my garden for flavoring the Mexican food I like to cook. I let it flower, because I love the pretty white flowers that look like lace waving in the breeze. It is a cool weather herb, and goes to seed quickly as the weather warms. We gather the seeds and save them as comino, or coriander. I grind them with a mortar and pestal to use in my carne guisada. Que rico!

We have garlic, common small garlic, and the Elephant garlic. (Garlic is a manly crop, as are the hot peppers, so the Man grows them.) Chives with delicate onion flavor, and the garlic chives, with the decidedly more robust garlic/onion flavor are both easy to grow.

Rosemary loves our hot sun, as does basil, and tansy. I tuck the thyme under another plant for protection. Sage is the same. Nothing is as good as poultry cooked with fresh sage and thyme...
or fish cooked with rosemary.

Comfrey is used as a medicinal plant here. It is great as a poultice; mash the leaves and apply to minor injuries. ( See a doctor for major injuries...) I don't think people eat comfrey, but it has lovely little pink flowers and big leaves. AND...comfrey is one of those plants that "Once you have it, you always have it.".....like crape myrtles.

Yarrow, wormwood, and horehound are ornamentals here. I grow them in my garden for the foliage. We can grow the common white yarrow, and the horehound grows wild. The wormwood has a pretty grey/green foliage. They are all thugs, and I have to pull them all about every other year. It doesn't matter one whit to them, they are back with abandon very quickly!

Parsley, curly and flat grows well here. My plants are huge, waiting for the butterflies to come eat them. The fennel too, is awaiting the butterflies. It is 4' tall now and beautiful. I wonder how long it will last if we ever get any butterflies...

The lemon grass is growing so fast now that we can almost watch it grow.

Alas, I cannot grow lavender. It does not appreciate our heat and/or humidity.

But I can grow lemon verbena, and I love it! I speak for large groups quite often, and the lemon verbena is fantastic for calming jittery nerves. I break a piece with a couple of leaves, and keep it in my pocket. The fragrance is very pleasing, and a couple of sniffs just calms me right down. Everybody knows who the speaker is; She is the one sniffing the lemon verbena!

Look at what is blooming.......

I passed this again this morning, and just had to turn around to get a picture. I have been wanting to post it for you to see for a couple of weeks, and I know it will be gone soon. I love this time of year.

This is what is blooming for us.
Our wildflowers are fantastic this year. We just got back from a road trip to Dallas, and the wildflowers were just gorgeous.

to my eyes, thrilling.....

We are going to have some nasty, cold weather blow in very soon. Like, in about 15 minutes, the temperature is going to drop from a balmy 63 degrees to about 45 degrees real quick, and we expect a freeze tonight. Hopefully, this will be the last freeze of the year.

So, in advance of all that, I was out trying to take care of some of my new tender foliage that I am so proud of, and I found this.
Tucked in among many weedy things is this little clump of Dianthus. They have been here for at least 3 years, and they just flourish. I will tend to this area this weekend, after the weather clears.

It is here. The cold, the wind, the rain. Yuk.

But I do have this patch of dianthus. It doesn't take much for me.

Signs of Spring

I have seen many signs of Spring here lately.

I saw Mr. Robin RedBreast. He is so fat he can't fly. I worry that a cat might get him.

I see new foliage, decorating stems that I thought were dead, and that have yet to be cut back.


I saw the first shorts of the season, and a halter top as well. It was
76 degrees F after all! I was NOT wearing either, by the way.

I see tractors in the field, planting that corn. I think most of the farmers
are done with the planting.

I saw crop dusters working already! That's always exciting!

I see all the students out of school for Spring Break, including ME! WhoopEE!

I see roses blooming, but that is about all. I am very fearful that my
gardens took a major hit this winter. It could well be "Time to Shop"!

I see tomatoes and marigolds in the vegetable garden; also peas, onions,
cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, cilantro, dill, oregano, mints,
Laura Bush petunia (although they are not blooming yet), and volunteer
pepper plants.

We are having lovely weather; pleasantly warm during the day, but a
little cold at night. Actually, it has been downright cold at night, but
that will change, and I am asleep then, so I don't care a lot. However,
cuttings don't root very well until the night temps are consistently
above 70 degrees.

We have seed racks full of wonderful packets of seeds, the packages being
small works of art. We have plants in the nurseries, and the nursery keepers
are looking forward to having a good year.

Life is good.

Starting to whine.....

It is raining at my house. It has been raining since midnight, and will continue to rain all day, all night tonight, and most of tomorrow. Ordinarily, I would not mind the rain, but it is also February, and that means it is also COLD! I hate cold! My feet hurt, they are so cold.....

It seems it is either Feast or Famine for us. This past summer, we were without rain for about 5 months, maybe longer. Crops died in the fields, the cattle were being fed hay brought in from North Texas. We had green grass in our yard, but we have St. Augustine, and it can go awhile without rain. We were running sprinklers every day for awhile, every other day at least, but only in the vegetable garden or the flowerbeds; never the grass. It was a terrible drought.


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It finally started to rain around the first of September. I know we were happy! We had nice rain, an abundance of rain. Plenty of rain, lots and lots of rain! The ground is soaked, the farmers are ready to plant, but the fields are so wet they can't get in them! We are not complaining, because I would almost bet that that is what caused the drought....

However.....it is raining again. This is our little river, the Lavaca. Normally, it is a small river, peaceful, nice to tube, or canoe on. Good fishing in this river, good place for a picnic.

It is about 4 times it's normal size now, out of it's banks and about to cut off traffic. We have seen it where the road was completely covered over, and the water was running pretty fast. I swear, catfish were swimming across the road!




As soon as it warms up a little, the banks of this swollen river will be covered up with people with fishing poles.





These last two pictures were taken from the bridge.

I just want my feet to warm up.

Not complaining, tho.

Gardening in the Dead of Winter.....

This time of year, propagating violets is a good thing to do to keep yourself in practice, and to make a bunch of new and good plants for your window sill.

Propagating violets is so easy and so rewarding! Anyone can do it, with minimal equipment and almost no effort. Violets are usually easy to find now, as they are a romantic little flower and Valentines day is right around the corner. Also, many box stores stock them as people like to grow them inside the house. I have very few plants in my house, because I worry about the silly cat eating them, but I do keep violets. The cat will just have to learn not to eat the violets.


Supplies needed include a healthy violet plant.
1 Styrofoam cup, and 1 plastic disposable cup (as shown)
a wooden skewer, or a sharpened pencil
about 1/3 cup perlite
about 1/3 cup vermiculite.
Rooting hormone powder
Distilled water, if you have 'city' water.

With the wooden skewer, poke 4 holes in the side of the Styrofoam cup, close to the bottom. Site them opposite each other. Then poke a row of holes about 1 1/2" up from the bottom, about 1/2" apart.

The bottom holes are to allow the rooting medium in the cup to pull water into the cup. The top row of holes is for drainage. If the water gets that high, it should be able to drain out.

Pour the vermiculite into the Styrofoam cup. Pour the perlite on top of the vermiculite. Do not mix them together. Place the Styrofoam cup inside the plastic cup (as shown), and add water up to (but not above) the top row of holes. Cut a leaf from the mother plant, including as much stem as possible. Dip the stem in rooting hormone, tap off the excess, and stick into the perlite in the cup.
Set the cup on a sunny window sill, but not where it will get direct sun on it. Bright light is needed here, not hot light. I use a window on the SE side of my house. Just remember to keep the plant watered.

After 6-8 weeks, you will see little leaves like this coming up through the perlite. I usually let them grow out a bit before I transplant them into their very own violet pot.

It is amazing how many different violets there are. Smooth leaves, curly leaves, flowers of all colors. Try this, it is fun.

Propagating bulbs is the MOST fun!

I love to propagate plants, and when I learned how to propagate bulbs, I just thought there was nothing more I could learn that would make me so happy. I was wrong, of course, for I find every day that there is always something else to learn. So maybe you will enjoy learning about taking a bulb and turning it into lots of bulbs, too!

There are different types of bulbs, and the main difference in propagating them is how you cut them. Please bear in mind that we are talking about bulbs; not corms, as in gladiolus or crocosmia, and not tubers, as in cannas or 4 o'clocks. We will be working with a daffodil bulb, which is built like an onion, and a lily bulb, which is built kind of like an artichoke, although the artichoke is not a bulb at all, but a fruit.

Don't let me get off on that path.....

Both types of bulbs have, at the bottom of the bulb, a 'basal plate'. This is what joins all the parts together and where the roots emerge from the bulb. The basal plate is how we get baby bulbs.

Propagating lily bulbs is done by 'scaling'. Daffodil type bulbs are propagated by 'chipping'.

This is what you will need:
Bulbs
a sharp knife
paper plates- Please note that this is a paper paper plate, and not a foam plate.
wettable sulfur powder
liquid fungicide, mixed according to bottle directions.
Clorox wipes- for wiping your hands, the daffodil bulb, and your knife, if you are cutting more than one bulb.
Ziplock bags
damp perlite and/or vermiculite
a label, so you can identify your bulbs later.

Working with lily scales
This is a lily bulb. Lily bulbs look rather unkempt, messy even, but they are easy to work with.
The first thing I do is cut off the roots. If you were going to put this bulb in the ground, you would be careful of those roots, but they are not needed or desirable in this application. I like the little paring knife, but you could use a scissor if you prefer.
Cut the roots close, but don't cut into the basal plate. Discard any damaged or soft parts of the bulb.Use the tip of your knife to lift a scale to start. Very carefully, pull the scales from the bulb, being sure that you get a part of the basal plate with each scale.








From this small bulb, we will have 15 new bulbs. Each scale will produce one baby.

Pour a small amount of the sulfur powder into a dish, and dredge the scales in the powder.


Pack the scales into a ziplock bag of vermiculite. I have found that vermiculite works best for the scales. Store them in a warm, humid, dark place until you realize they have the little bulbs. Most lilies take 6-8 weeks to multiply.


Chipping the daffodil bulb
I love daffodil bulbs; nice big fat ones, like come from Brent and Becky's bulbs. They are so pretty!
Start by peeling the bulb. Cut off the top, but these bulbs usually don't have a root mass, so you don't have any to trim. Do not cut off the bottom of the bulb!I use the clorox wipes to wipe down the bulb, to ward off the yukky stuff that can get on the bulbs when they are missing their protective cover.
Set the bulb flat on the bottom, and cut all the way through it.Then cut each half in half again.and again, until you can't half them any more.You will have slices, like this. We are getting 12 new plants from this one bulb. You can see the basal plate attached to each little slice of bulb.Dip each slice into a solution of the fungicide, which is mixed according to the directions on the bottle. Don't dry them off.
Just pop them into a ziplock bag of perlite.

Store the daffodil as you do the lily.
You will check on your precious packages often, if you are like me, and one day, you will see black stuff on them. Do not worry about this. Do not throw them away! They are fine, and will continue to develop even with black stuff on them.

If you live in a climate where you have to dig your lily bulbs in the fall, you can just pop off a couple of scales before you store them for the winter. Put them in some vermiculite to grow babies, while you store the rest of the bulb for the winter.

When you have baby bulbs, you can pot them up in pots, or you can put them in the ground. Baby bulbs that are put in the ground grow faster, but you also risk damage from varmits.

Most bulbs will put up foliage the first year, and will bloom in the third year.

Most of all, Have Fun with this project!

Yes, that secretive old Tiger Lily....

Here I am again, remarking after a post that Nell Jean has posted. She spoke of the secret life of Lily bulbs, and indeed, I too think they have a secret life.
This is the tiger lily, and it is a good example of a lily with secrets. When you grow tiger lilies, you will notice little black bulb looking things at the intersections of leaf and stem. These are in truth little bubiles- baby bulbs, or seeds, of the tiger lily. They will fall off eventually, and will lay on top of the ground. If you leave them there, they will make little roots, which will furrow into the ground and which will pull that baby bulb underground. They will go deeper and deeper, until finally they reach the depth that tiger lilies like to grow, and THEN they will start to develop into a bulb that is large enough to bloom. How do they know when they are deep enough? This picture I found on the internet, remember my resolution to document every flower in my garden? Next year, it will be my picture. Find this picture here-
www.ontariodaylily.on.ca/Photo/WhiteGarden/pa.

Anyway, Nell Jean suggested that the next propagation post could be about bulbs, so that is what it will be. Now, let me see if I can remember where I put the pictures of chipping and scaling bulbs......