Plant Propagation - Stem Cuttings

Last year my aunt sent me some small grape vines that she started from stem cuttings. Unfortunately, with the unfavorable spring, only 2 of them took. But these grape vines did spark my interest in propagating by stem cuttings. I have done a bit of this before with various house plants. These have been no brainer plants though - you pull off a piece, stick it in water or dirt, and it grows like mad.

What I am interested in trying is propagating things that are a little trickier - bushes, trees, more grape vines, etc. With all of the landscaping and berry planting I would like to do yet, it could get quite expensive. (If you have just read my husband's newest post, you will see that our land is pretty bare right now - and that we will need to figure out a happy balance with trees!) So last fall I bought some rooting hormone, and I have started my research. This is what I have gathered:

• A lot of plants propagate best with hardwood cuttings - which need to be taken when the plant is dormant.
• Some plants will propagate with the cutting from new growth taken early in spring.
• It takes just a little bit more than dipping the cutting in rooting hormone and then sticking it in dirt.

And that is about all I know so far! Obviously, I have a bit more research to do, and I need to do it rather quickly if I want to get cuttings while plants are still dormant - which I do! I want to get started this season since I realize that my plants are going to be a bit behind plants that I would buy, but they will be cheaper. :)

With that said- has anyone out there propagated from cuttings? I'd love to hear what worked for you and any advice or sites you might have for a newbie!

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Canning Organizing and Planning

I will be the first to admit that sometimes I get a little carried away with wanting to have things organized. With that said, 2 years ago I started a canning notebook. Here is kind of the overview of it.

• Each year/canning season I record what I canned and how much.
• I keep a tally of how many pints and how many quarts.
• I keep this notebook with my canning supplies so it is convenient while I am canning. Otherwise I would probably forget to record things.
• At the end of canning season (I consider my canning season to reset as soon as I can something from the garden) I make note of how much I used and what I had leftover.
• Anything that is left over gets transferred over to the next year's canning list and marked as leftovers.

Why do I do this? Like I said, we have limited space so I want to make the best use of my pantry where I store things I have canned. If I find out I don't use 30 quarts of tomatoes, I don't want to store 30 quarts of tomatoes. Which takes me to my next reason. Time. It takes a bit to can things so I don't want to spend the time canning more than I need. The third reason is garden planning. If I find out that I'm running out of things consistently, I can rearrange my garden plans. And lastly, I hope it will help out a bit financially. If I am able to plan my garden better for our families needs, I will need to purchase less from the store - and I guess health can be put in there too since what we grow will be better for us that what we purchase!

As for this past canning season, my notebook isn't too impressive. (The photo was taken in Nov. so my list has changed a bit.) If you are from the area or have followed my blog, you may know that many gardens left much to be desired last year due to constant spring rains and weeds taking over. Most of what I was able to can was fruit that was given to me and things that I can in the winter. (This winter I pressure canned dried beans with seasonings, ground beef, and soups. I usually cook and freeze ground beef but our home freezer got turned into a business freezer, and I wanted some ready for casseroles and soups for when our little one came.)

I haven't been canning very long, and I'm still figuring out the whole process and how I want to go about planning what I can. I'd love to hear some things that you do!

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Rearranging

If you haven't noticed, I have rearranged my blog a bit. Feel free to check out the changes, especially the pages bar above. (There may be a few more changes coming too.)

More importantly than that, however, our lives are being rearranged a bit. Ethan and I are hopeful that as this rearranging continues, we will continue on with our farm. You can read more about our recent changes on Ethan's blog.

Dreaming of Spring

Sometimes winter can be long . . . very long. It seems like no matter how much dreaming of spring and summer you do, it is always just beyond reach. I'm sure like many others, I have been doing my share of dreaming of warmer weather lately.

On my windowsill I have a little plant that keeps me dreaming. It's a little sweet potato vine in a jar of water. For quite a few years in a row, I have started my sweet potato cuttings from, well, sweet potatoes. (You can read more about that by searching "sweet potato" on the right sidebar of my blog -which if you want to do, now would be a good time to start). This year I decided to try something different to see if I could skip a step - using an established vine to get my cuttings for garden starts.


Before the weather turned bitter, I took a cutting from my sweet potato plant in the garden. I brought it inside and stuck it in a jar of water. I was quite excited because I was starting out with a beautiful looking vine. The leaves were big, green, and abundant. Before I knew it, however, the leaves started to fall off one by one. Pretty soon I was looking out my window at winter weather with a virtually leafless vine in a jar of water. With only a couple of leaves left, no bigger than my thumbnail, I didn't have much hope for the little vine.

I would have almost thrown it away if I hadn't seen what was going on under the water though. I noticed a few white bumps on the vine. And as I continued to watch them, they continued to grow. Into roots. And not just little roots. Long, healthy, white roots.

As these roots were growing, there wasn't much going on above the surface of the water. Just a few little leaves that continued to hang on. But as time continued to pass, and as the roots continued to grow, a few new leaves started to emerge. Although little at first, they were beautiful to see. These little leaves soon grew bigger, and a few more little leaves burst forth.

Sometimes it seems like this snow and cold is here to stay, but when I look out the window I am first greeted by my little sweet potato vine reminding me that spring IS coming. And although above the surface it might still look a little rough, it has been lucky to have had the winter to do some growth under the surface so that when spring does come, it can take off and be used to produce fruit . . . err . . . vegetables.

Jonathan Thomas Book

Crooked Gap Farm is pleased to introduce our newest farm hand - Jonathan Thomas Book!

Jonathan was born January 6th and is doing great. He was 10 days late, helping him grow to be our biggest baby - 7 lbs, 9.8 ounces. (Caleb, our first born, had to give up his record of 7 lbs 1 oz.)

Jonathan is doing great, and Caleb (6), Hannah (5), and Isaac (2) are each enjoying him immensely.

Christmas Projects

Each year I like to make something for the kids for Christmas. As I was looking at the photos of last year's projects (one is similar to what I'm doing this year), I remembered I started a post last year that I never published. So here it is. I will admit, I wish I could have made as many gifts this year, but since tomorrow is Christmas Eve, I will be happy to just get done what I have planned for my kiddos. I'm close! Now back to work!!

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This Christmas (2009) I wanted to make some gifts, but with watching spending and with fabric stores 45 minutes away (Walmart no longer has fabric) I decided I would have to do it from the fabric on hand. Making gifts is sometimes tricky for me - trying to think of something that someone will appreciate and that matches who they are. Right now my main "homemade" skill is sewing, but hopefully I'll pick up some more skills down the road.

Here's what I made:
This is a Tic Tac Toss game for our son, Caleb. (5 yrs old in 2009)

A bib for our son Isaac. (Just turned 1 in 2009)

A blankie and pillow to go with our daughter, Hannah's, baby doll. (Just turned 4 in 2009)

"Grandma's Memory Gameboard/Placemat" This was for my mom. I made it out of scraps from my grandma's (my mom's mom) fabric stash. Memories for her of her mom and for her to make memories with her grandkids. The spring side: My grandma always had a cheery flower bed in the spring and summer.

The fall side: This is the other side of the placemat. My grandma's kitchen was deep browns and yellow.

A gardening apron for my mom. This was actually for her birthday, which is right before Christmas.

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Absence = A Glimpse

If you have been following my blog, you have probably noticed my absence. As much as I would like to blog more, I think that my lack of blogging compared to when me moved to the farm paints a bit of a picture of what life is like as a beginning farmer's wife. I could pass it off to homeschooling, pregnancy (which I'm in my 9th month now), or a variety of other things.

The reality is that any free time I had before we moved to the farm has now been given to the farm: marketing, juggling meat and inventories, deliveries, monitoring our business Facebook page, outside work, etc. Please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. Most of the time I really enjoy farming related things as my "free time" activities. All of this to say though, keeping a journal - which is what I wanted my blog to be for me - has fallen lower on the list. Instead of recording my farmer's wife activities, I'm just doing more of them. :)

If you are a follower of my husband's blog, The Beginning Farmer, you may have noticed the same pattern with his blog since we moved to the farm. He is going to try to get it up and going again though, for farm reasons rather than journal reasons (although it will definitely still have journal type entries), so I encourage you to hop on over and follow along. By the way, it's definitely not because he has more free time than I do. He's just able to get less sleep than I can. And he has a wife who will wake him up in the middle of the night encouraging him to come to bed after he has fallen asleep from working too late.

Also, don't give up completely on me. I hope to sporadically post yet. (If you want to catch them all, you can subscribe to my blog on the right and receive them by e-mail.)