I'm still watching!

Just like to say how much I'm enjoying all of your lovely mg blooms, sorry I have little time to comment on your individual posts. The knowledge and information in this forum is quite incredible and warrants a huge thank you from me. this year will be my first serious year growing mg, yep I think I've caught the bug, I'm hoping to have something to show you all later in the season, if I do, it will be thanks to you all on this forum.

Jon

Jon, in your area, this summer, there will not be an exhibition of MG ?

Soon your Asagao garden look like this !

Dany, I wish. Hey dany I wish I wish!!

Do the Japanese have a method to repel squirrels from containers of JMGs, Jon? I plan to try putting hot pepper flakes on the soil surface tonight. Last night the squirrels dug up 3 of my precious children.

Joseph

gerris, put mothballs in the containers

That chemical does not harm the plant?

hasn't harmed my clematis

if you think it might harm the plants put a bunch of plastic forke in the soil, tines up in the air

Joseph we don't have squrrels in this part of Japan. I'm not sure why!

Ah, no squirrels, a gardener's dream.

the chipmonks keep digging my clematis, and my gloriosa lilies

Joseph, you have certainly asked a timely question, so I'm going to put in my 2 cents for anyone reading this as well as for you.

I don't know why, but the squirrels have been unusually atrocious this spring for us, too (I suspect that racoons may have been helping them out). Whatever the critter is, it has ripped all my plants (not mgs, yet) out of their pots and tossed them all over the place more than once - no way to match labels to cultivars after that. After trapping and relocating the 5th racoon this spring, that stopped.

However, other critters abound around here, so my garden might become Chicken Wire City, because I have found in the past that laying pieces of chicken wire on the surface of my pots around the plants has successfully kept our cats out of indoor plants, as well as critters out of potted bulbs and plants outdoors. (Laying sheets of chicken wire over newly planted seeds and bulbs outdoors - especially crocuses - has helped here, too.)

For newly germinated seedlings (especially mgs), I plan on making a chicken wire tunnel and putting it over the trays of seedlings until they get big enough either for the ground or a larger pot.

Also for morning glories, after they get a few true leaves, I will put a cylinder of chicken wire around their bases after they get to either a larger pot or the ground in the garden. At that time, I also hope to have acquired some concrete reinforcing wire (possibly 6" gauge) so a 6' cylinder can be placed around the vine - this will be especially important to foil woodchucks, as well as to double up as a trellis.

And, as a further precaution, for morning glories I couldn't bear to lose, I will be trying to root cuttings as I pinch them. Eventually, I hope they cascade over the arbor again, later on this summer, but this is a nice way to increase very special mgs, of which perhaps you may only have one seed.

After 35 years of doing battle with squirrels, possums, deer, racoons, woodchucks, busy bird beaks, slugs, burrowing toads, skunks, etc., - not to mention learning from the great gardeners on this and other forums on DG - I hope the tricks I've picked up may be helpful to someone else.

Good luck,
Karen

Cuttings! I had not thought of that, a little unusual to take cuttings from anuals like mgs. What's the method you use Karen?

Chicken wire works very well for me as well. I am also using the lids of the 5 gallon pickle buckets and drilling out a center hole for the MG vines to grow through. No squirrels have figured out how to get into them yet! LOL!

I've tried rooting cuttings to no avail Karen. All mine withered and died. How did you get yours to root?

It turns out that the critter invader who violated my MG container was a racoon instead of a squirrel. My neighbor witnessed the carnage wrought by its little paws. Fortunately, the varmint has not returned. I put a couple repellents on the potting medium surface (hot pepper flakes and chili powder). Maybe the repellents worked on the 'coon? One thing I learned the hard way is not to get the chili powder directly on tender leaves because it burns them.

Joseph

Joseph, Yes the hot pepper and chili powder works. I used them with
great success a few yrs ago, the squirrels mainly were the problem.
Becky, the nils should root in a small vial of water, like a medicine bottle. I root my broken tops of mg's like that all the time. One that wont root in water is pandy. The stems are not soft and fibrous, they're hard and woody,
so much more difficult to root
Karen, thanks for your good ideas. I used to have to use the chicken wire on some beds that were too large to use the pepper deterrent.
Becky, one of my broken mg's rooted in water.

I wondered what happened to the squirrel-racoon-chicken thread - somehow the following comments didn't show up for me, until patootie's last post.

Well, glad I found y'all. Jon and Becky, My experience parallels Patootie's, in that I have rooted mg cuttings accidentally in water (as well as by layering.) Remember all those stems of pods I brought in after fall frost to ripen seeds? Some of those actually rooted, even though those were old vines. Patootie, do you remember sending me seeds labeled "Mt. FujiNOT - dark blue"? Out of all the mgs I did this with, only your "FujiNOT-dark blue" rooted, in spite of bearing seed pods already. Just goes to show how much specific cultivars/seedlings vary from each other.
--------------------------------

As far as rooting cuttings on purpose goes, I'm going to have to experiment with the various techniques I rounded up in the MG sticky index. (See the mg sticky index under cuttings for how to prepare a cutting - you do not want any leaves left on the cutting below the point where you stick it into the rooting medium and I trim leaves on top so they do not touch each other and I put about 2/3 or 4/5 of the cutting beneath the surface of the rooting medium.)

The technique that has worked best for me, in general, has been to stick cuttings in a pot that is watered from the bottom and drained immediately once a day. With mgs, maybe I might have to bottom-soak more than once during the day - will have to see. Since those forming roots need air/oxygen, never let them sit in water longer than necessary for the pot to get wet.

If that doesn't work, then I might try keeping the pot described above under an inverted glass jar or maybe inside a large baggy (vented) kept in the shade (sun will cook seeds and plants through plastic).

Layering might be the most foolproof.

I would want to use a porous medium for rooting, since rooting cuttings need oxygen (the more porous the medium, the more air or oxygen between the particles of which it is made) - so including Perlite in my rooting medium would be useful - I think the sticky index has some specific recipes for that.

water with a tad of hydrogen peroxide (H202) is oxygenating...coir has good porosity, not to mention is sterile.

-------------------------------
Joseph, I'm glad your racoon hasn't returned - hope he stays away - and thank you for the tip keeping those hot pepper flakes off our precious mg beauties. As I mentioned we trapped and relocated 5 so far with our Havahart cage, but a neighbor who loves all animals is feeding racoons in his backyard, and DH is very attached to our tiny muffin pond which I think is also attracting them. We both love the summer symphonies of toads and peepers singing and dragonflies ...

Jon, do you get much toad and frog singing where you are with those nearby rice fields? How about the rest of you?

Well, I hope I said something useful,
Karen

Karen, I do remember sending you the Mt Fuji Not, Dark blue. I
have also rooted that one in water.
We have a symphony of bullfrogs and toads singing. I love to
hear them. The only thing missing is the crickets.

Oh! Karen, the frogs drive us nuts!

Jon, the frogs must be pretty loud!

So, just how would you say "the frogs drive us nuts" in Japanese (Romaji)? Inquiring minds wanna know!

Joseph

Good question! As there's no direct translation for drive us nuts, I'll consult my wife for the nearest.
Frog is keiru.


This message was edited Jun 3, 2010 12:27 PM

Joseph, kaeiru urusai desu (frogs are noisy) I don't think you'll find that in the phrase book, LOL

My thanks to you and Akie for fulfilling my request, Jon!

Jon, thanks from me too for translating about noisy frogs. Years ago, we were plagued by noisy dogs around the clock. So, after we were forced to fill in our well when water and sewer came around, we made a tiny waterlily pond on top of all that fill in the old well shaft (22' deep, 4' wide, lined with stone and various unmentionable critters). At the peak of our toad chorus, I counted 19 one night in a 4' x 4' 'pond' - and the revenge was so sweet as to how they outcroaked those woofs and barks nearby.

Jon, I'm trying to imagine 19 croaking toads multiplied by all the frogs that must live in the large expanse of rice paddy near where you live - must be quite a spectacle for the ears :)

Becky - don't you have some interesting croaks where you live, too?

Jackie - that's good to know about the FujiNOT - dark blue

Karen

Hi Karen, You can't believe just how much noise the frog chorus makes! I have to turn up the volume on the TV to drown them out! As for trying to sleep well, counting sheep is inefective, perhaps counting frogs (in Japnese)
would work? Sen = Japanese for a thousand.

Croak, croak.............!

Jon

Lol! Jon. So, next time I admire an old Japanese woodcut of iris growing wild in shallow water, I can silently enjoy the sound track of croaks you describe -

http://www.hiroshige.org.uk/hiroshige/triptychs/MiscTriptychs/images/IrisHorikiri.jpg
(Hiroshige_I_Horikiri Iris Garden_1852

Karen

You two are croaking me up!

Jon, you're getting my imagination going here...what was on the tv that drowned them out? A singing French chef cooking frog legs? Dany, how do you say croak in French?

Japanese:- Keru keru. Joseph, hop it back to ya Lilly pad, LOL!
Karen, LOL! The horikiri iris garden is quite close to where I live! here's a link to some photos.
http://photoguide.jp/pix/thumbnails.php?album=693

Jon

Joseph & Jon - Lol - Croaking and keru-ing back atcha - rainy day here today, but too cold for our toads and peepers to sing