Good for you, Melissa! I’ll soon be joining you in my first try at propagation! Lisa

Wow! I thought I was the only one popping seeds and cuttings into my pockets and purse! It seems that you don't forget about yours, though. : ) Do you have a special way you propagate? Lisa, are you going to try the "pop-bottle" method? I didn't realize 'til reading last night that the burrito method works best on dormant cuttings which really opens up the possibilities for me. I have a few recent cuttings I'm going to try to root over this winter, but I'm undecided what medium to use. Play sand was a total bust. I had much better results with perlite, but I'm wondering about adding some peat. Do either of you have any thoughts on that?

Good for you to have found a way to help yourself cope with a frustrating and worrisome time,Melissa. I can definitely relate to what seems to be your present state of mind: "there are various sources of worry in my life which make me want to do
something positive--for me, planting plants and helping them grow is a
positive, morale-raising action--but am stymied in most of my usual
gardening activities." Wow, can I ever relate to that! I myself seem to be doing a bit better (fingers, legs, arms, etc all crossed) and am beginning to do a few jobs out at my land, but it is very slow going and I seriously wonder if I'll ever be the same again. However it is definitely NOT the right moment for me to take on any new projects just now; if and when I get some strength back my utmost top priorities are to finish up these various projects that are still sitting around half-done. So for the present I've gotta just hang in there. This wretched drought is not helping matters at all...

Cheering everyone on with their propagation projects! I've emptied my pockets of hollyhock, poppy and daylily seeds. We'll see what takes. I'm thinking of preparing a few OGR burritos again, too. There's something magical about creating new life and making the earth a greener, more beautiful place! I've always wanted to rewrite Frankenstein into a story about rebirth and a chance to begin anew. Now I'm rambling.... Carol

Vaporvac, you do have lots of company. Most gardeners I know love to propagate. Bart, I hope you continue to improve, and can get some of your projects moving forward. This has been a frustrating year, I know. The drought has been extremely frustrating, though thank goodness for the neighbors' pond, and them for letting us use it. On my regular Sunday walk yesterday with DD I found another rose: the owner was in the yard and I asked for and got cuttings. The rose looked like an old-fashioned Hybrid Tea of a shrubby sort: tall, well-branched, with large creamy blooms of a loosely elegant form. showing the Tea influence, something like 'Cl. Mrs. Herbert Stevens', though I'm pretty sure this is a different variety. The two plants were about two meters tall. They were doing quite well, in spite of drought and neglect, and had a very respectable flowering to show. I hope my cuttings catch; if not, I'll probably be back.

Hear, hear, Carol. Making more plants is the most respectable form of greed.

One of the great joys of gardening is that "you can have your cake and eat it too", once you learn to propagate. You can give plants away and keep them too. Melissa, you deserve more credit. That is generosity not greed.

Cath

It is a joy, Cath. I wish I had more people to give plants to.

It is sad that more people don't appreciate the old garden roses, even to the point of destroying established gardens. However, the work you are doing in establishing a large garden of old roses (and the propagation that goes with it) will contribute to their eventual renaissance. Because your collection is large, I think that it is likely to have enough surviving roses that it will have an impact on future gardeners. Yet even those of us with small collections may end up sheltering a cultivar that would otherwise be lost.

Cath

I so agree, Cath. Reading about the old cultivars is what captured my imagination years ago, but I thought they would be too difficult to grow. Now I'm finding they're the ones doing best!

One of our local gardens has one of the oldest public rose gardens that grew out of a garden Darwin mentioned!, but you'd be lucky to find 5 OGRs or 10 roses total. It's really tragic. I like baptisia, but there are other plants to go in an OLD ROSE GARDEN! (which is what the name plaque says), such as ROSES!

I'll admit that I'm a seed filcher also. I put stuff in my purse, and later wonder what I might have. If I get new plants, THEN I'll try to figure out what they are. I gathered seeds from one of my namesake plants, Chrysogonum virginianum, and really hope they will succeed. A nifty native vining groundcover that should do well in my dappled shade.

I have some rose cuttings also, but not sure yet if anything will take. It's been warm and dry here, though, so I may have some luck.

I have been planting out some spready Irises that I assumed were the I. virginica shreveii that I had planted (unfilched) seeds of, but a friend suggested that it could be the shade-loving hybrid, Iris 'Nada'. Either way, I'm hoping for blooms finally, now that they won't be crowded in pots.

Good luck with you propagating,

Virginia

PS Vape, I also think an old rose garden ought to have old roses. Which roses do you think they should add, given your local knowledge? Oh, and coarse builder's sand is usually a better bet for cuttings than play sand, although if you're having success with perlite, I'd keep trying that also.