Propagating Camellia Plants

My husband's grandmother allowed me to take a few clippings of her pink camellia bushes so I could try to grow them at my home. She originally took clippings from her home back in Lumberton, NC, and did this exact same process at her current home in Ashland, VA. I snagged a few white camellia clippings from my mother-in-law. 

So I have a total of 6. I was told to take each clipping and plant it in the dirt. Nothing special. Put a little miracle gro around the base of the plant (I used planting soil with miracle gro in it), and cover it with a jar. Here, I used wide-mouth quart-sized jars we had around for canning. 

I planted them around April 1st. So, currently, they have been going for about 2 weeks now. 

I will tell you that propagation is not for the impatient. There is really no way to check to see if these clippings have sprouted any good roots without yanking them out of the dirt to look. The leaves are still green on them, but the blossom has fallen off most of them and turned brown. Apparently, that is ok. I believe that I need to leave them at least for another month before I should look at them. 

Stay tuned for propagation updates soon!

Rescuing the plants from the cold

Before we were able to get our plants in the ground, we had a couple of nights where it dipped below 40 degrees. We brought ALL the plants in, the trees and bushes included. I have never seen a blueberry bush look so pretty with its cute little white flower clusters.

Or our peach and apple trees, which have beautiful pink buds that transition into a white blossom. 

Or the fact that we started already getting baby beans growing on the bean plants. We were so excited to see the small pods on there. These little guys are the main reason we wanted to get our plants finally in the ground. They needed their trellis. Once the bean pods start growing, they are pretty heavy, so they weigh the vines down.

Most of our plants survived the transition of being brought in from the cold. Our carrots didn't look TOO swell, but we salvaged as many as we could. Some of the strawberries were victims to some very curious felines that live in the house. 

 

Nature is pretty cool!

We have found some critters along the way so far. Some we don't mind, and others, well....let's just say they are neat until they start eating my plants. 

While getting our soil prepped, I found this little bugger that apparently is the North Carolina State Salamander. (Didn't know we even had such a thing.) This is a Marble Salamander. He stayed here in the corner of our garden for a couple of days. I guess he really loved the moist soil over there. We did hunt for him before we started tilling the dirt and we were unable to find him. We had a couple of days where it got above 80 and the dirt dried out a lot more than he probably liked, so we are guessing he moved on to better places. 

Our first sighted pest. This is a cabbage worm. Butterflies and moths will lay eggs near these types of plants (specifically broccoli, cabbage, etc). This broccoli has only been in the ground for 2 days and already has visitors and chomping up the leaves. I captured them and we have placed them in caterpillar jail. No cabbage worms were harmed in this transition. 😁 The kids love these things so much, we are going to keep them, feed them our salad scraps, and put them in a butterfly house. Turning our garden pests into a fun science learning activity. We are going to watch them grow!

I am sure this will not be the last of our pests. We are certain it will be a long battle throughout the summer. We research for the best methods and try multiple things. For cabbage worms, we are probably going to try either planting thyme around the broccoli which these critters don't particularly like, or we will sprinkle some cornmeal on the leaves of the plants and the cabbage worms will eat these instead of the broccoli leaves and they will probably swell up and die. That last one is not really our preferred method, because nature has been good to us, but we also want to make sure we are doing our best to protect our garden.

What we are planting

 What are we planting????

Way too many things! But we wanted to take a stab at different things we wanted to try. Hopefully, we have enough space for it all.

Pole Beans

Corn

Broccoli

Carrots

Cucumbers

Garlic

Onion

Lettuce Mix

Cabbage

Radish

Spinach

Yukon Potatoes

Red Potatoes

Watermelon

Bell Pepper (3 varieties)

Strawberries

Yellow Squash

Zucchini

Blueberry Bushes

Raspberry Bush

Peach Trees

Apple Trees

Did I forget anything? This seems VERY overwhelming when I write it out, but honestly, we have things laid out pretty well and have companion plants put correctly. We have Garlic and onions in several places, since we read that those would help deter animals. We shall see...

Putting Down Roots

This weekend was a big and busy one! 

As of this moment, our plants are almost all settled into their designated spots where we hope that with enough time, water, and TLC, they'll yield us a good amount of food. Let's take a little tour, shall we? 

We have a few other pots of plants, and the kiddos have their own planters with strawberry plants and some lavender and other flowers, so it's safe to say that the backyard is now quite literally overflowing with plants and blossoms. The only things we have left to do to be done with planting is laying down mulch in the main garden (the stuff not in raised beds), and finishing up weeding and tilling the bed where we'll be planting some yellow squash and zucchini. So close!

We took some time to look around after finishing the bulk of our work (which was completed by the sweat of our collective brows over last Friday and Saturday--we've got the aches and sunburns to prove it). We even took some time to pray over our garden space, which was a really nice way to end a substantial amount of work. 

So here we go, friends! We're ready for this growing season, and we're extremely hopeful that we'll see a generous yield from all of our hard work. Come along on the journey with us!