Betty Lamb

I just looked it up a little and one website said that vermiculite alone was superior to fibers

http://stfc.org.au/air-layering-marcotting
scroll down to Rooting Media

I'll definately try this, I can't afford $30 a tree to tree up an entire acre. I can wait a bit and propagate the trees I like.

I really appreciate the advice!

that's interesting, here's a question from a neophyte, can I use vermiculite instead of sphagnum?

what is air layering?

So, I wish I had read up about this in the fall... apparently when you start a new apple tree from a cutting you have to take the cutting in the fall when the tree is dormant, is this true? Because I have my shears and I'm heading out to the orchard right now at the end of April to take a bunch of suckers off my fave trees. I've got fresh suckers all around the bottom and suckers all over a branch (that I am glad I didn't prune last year - because these are what I'm taking today). It's an experiment, I'll take the cuttings now in the spring and plant them in the ground next spring and then in the fall I'll take new cuttings like all the advice says to do. I wish I had known, or actually had thought to ask, last fall when I actually had about ten spare minutes on my hands with nothing to do...

If anyone has taken their suckers in the spring and propagated their trees I'd love to hear how it turned out.

tally ho!

I might take some pics of what I'm doing and upload them later...

Paul, you've been on my mind, how are you doing today? I think the last post updating how you're doing was a week ago.

laughter is the best medicine so here is one of my faves:

I happened to find a tincture that is good for pain, especially for nerves, it's teasle root. I found this mysterious plant all over the place and with the help of permies, identified it. Then obsessively looked it up, dug it up, cut it up and made medicine out of it (doesn't everybody?). It might be something that can help with the pain. For me though, it's the nightshades, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, those purple disgusting things that people eat the name just escapes me at the moment. EGGPLANT that's what it is, can't eat any of that stuff or my bones and joints start to hurt. The thing about nightshades is they cause inflammation which can affect your nerves as well. When I eliminated them, my acne cleared up completely (that's just one of the signs that one can't tolerate that plant group) and the pain went away. Also another tincture that is good to for reducing inflammation is tumeric. My brother is in a lot of pain from gout and tumeric helps to ease the pain. Teasle is more specific to nerves and tumeric is for inflammation.

I hope you're feeling better soon.

why are you in pain? what did you do to your arm and shoulder? Inflammation? injury? looking up those books, spanks)