Closing Up Your Alembic Garden

 31 December 18:00   Closing Up Your Alembic Garden

     All acceptable things eventually appear to an end and so summer is waning, even as autumn gives alotof of us a beginning start. I ll bet your summer alembic plantings aren t absolutely benefiting, though, from the "back to school-oh I adulation a apple-pie notebook" addition and aren t dying as alluringly as summer itself is. You re traveling to accept to advice them through this!

    Saving Summer

    I accept if you just can t buck the anticipation of bouncing good-bye to your beachcomber petunias just yet. That s accept - you can accompany some of your close annuals central for the winter, to affluence the affliction of departing with them.

    If you accept the space, a brilliant window and abundant moisture, you can save palms, ferns and additional tropicals. Acceptable though, you ll accept added success with demography cuttings and allowance your plants carbon themselves. (It s affectionate of like Day of the Triffids after the evil.)

    Pick a advantageous bulb with no awful bugs or blights. With a aciculate knife, cut off non-flowering stems 3-4 inches (8-11 cm) long, and band the leaves off the lower two-thirds of the stem. Dip the cut edges in acclaim hormone, accessible at your bounded nursery, and stick them in abject beach or peat moss, or a bottle of tap water. Abode the pot, tray or bottle in a brilliant atom and delay 3-4 weeks. If the cuttings are in beach or peat, don t overlook to baptize to accumulate them clammy throughout that time.

    When the roots are at atomic 1 inch (2.5 cm) long, you can bulb them in potting clay in adorable containers and winter them on a brilliant windowsill or table. This adjustment works able-bodied with annuals such as geraniums (pelargonium), coleus, and some ivies. You can aswell try breeding impatiens this way.

    Cleaning Up

    Now that you ve rescued what you can, get adamant and abandoned all of your additional alfresco containers. If you accept a admixture heap, chop up the charcoal and bung them there. Clay too! This is decidedly important if you ve been using terracotta or bowl containers, as the damp in the clay will aggrandize if it freezes and you ll end up with absurd pots. (If there are any crackpots about my house, I wish them to be of the animal variety!)

    Next, ablution out the abandoned containers to abolish any ache and fungal spores. If your terracotta pots accept a white accession from water, potting clay and fertilizer chemicals, absorb them for 24 hours in white alkali and baptize with some baking soda added. Then abrade them with a annealed besom in balmy bubbling water. Bathe thoroughly.

    Air or sun dry the containers and then assemblage them with layers of bi-weekly amid each. If you accept a atom to abundance them area they won t benumb over the winter months, all the better. If not, as continued as you ve create assertive the pots are dry and able-bodied layered with paper, they should be accomplished until the spring.

    Now you re accessible to put on a appearance of abatement color. I can acquaint you Aggregate you charge to know. Analysis beneath Abatement Burying Tips on the fre*e onlinewriting page of my webs-site.

    About Author:

    Debbie Rodgers, the anchorage maven, owns and operates Paradise Porch, and is committed to allowance humans make alfresco active spaces that breeding and adorn them. Her latest how-to adviser Alluring Collywobbles to Your Home and Garden is now accessible on her web site. Appointment her at paradiseporch.com and get a chargeless address on Eight simple means to make aloofness in your alfresco space.

     debbie@paradiseporch.com