Well, after showing the successful results of dividing the hosta and the tradescantia, I have to admit I checked on my sea holly after work today and, not only was the very small piece clearly hopeless (so I watered it and left it to see what would happen) but the second piece that I thought might have a chance is looking awful, so not all is success. Actually, even the main section (I only got three sections total and one had almost no roots, which, given the fact that successful division survival is directly proportional to the amount of roots, didn't stand much of a chance from the git-go (sometimes when you try to divide things you're left standing there with a mini-piece saying "oh....")) isn't all that great, but should survive.

So, it ain't all many baby hostas.

The main housekeeping thing I need to point out is that this blog seems to be set on Pacific time and I am set on Eastern daylight time so I am not sending out posts at 3:30 AM. I may or may not be able to reset the clock but haven't figured that out yet.

Tomorrow I hope to talk a bit about what I hope to accomplish with this blog, and maybe some of my semi-rules about how I'm going to approach it (racing into the 21st century). I woud have done so today but (1) I'm still not sure and (2) I had to watch "So you think you can Dance" and can't type while there's a dance on.

Tradescantia - final divisions

Here are the plants all potted up (recycled pots!). The two on the right have modest root systems and the three on the left have small root systems--this way I can see if I was too aggressive in separating the crowns.

They're in the shady spot with the Grandprize Hostas and we'll see how they do.

Tradescantia continued

This shows some of the divisions and the size of their roots. I may have gone a bit far in dividing , but the books agree this is a pretty tough plant, so we'll see. The key is to just keep them moist and shady and see what happens.

Tradescantia (trad-es-KANT-ee-uh) divisions

I have to go in to work earlier than normal today so am putting this on now. It got cool overnight after two days of heat so it'll be a nice day at the garden center. I need to try not to "find" anything else to get! :-)

I'm not sure where I'm going to put this plant but it has nice flowers and it looked like a good plant to get to learn and, again, the ability to divide it and make many little plants from one pot is always appealing to someone who has to be careful about how many plants they buy.

This is Tradescantia 'Marielle Andersoniana'.

Here is the plant out of the pot. The roots are sort of fleshy which is usually a good sign for dividing, especially in summer.

Dividing a White Flower Farm Grandprize Hosta

This Grandprize hosta from White Flower Farm sucked me in with its pretty lavender flowers, despite the fact that we have lots of deer on the property (I use a spray repellent). Of course, the other thing I liked about it was that it had plenty of offshoots so I was able to divide it into eight smaller and three larger plants.

These are the divisions four days after they were split. Kept in the shade and well-watered they all look to be doing fine. I had to cut off the flower stalks, so the plants would concentrate on root growth, but I'll be able to enjoy the flowers next year.

Mallard Daylily

Last fall I decided to start growing some interesting daylilies and this one, named Mallard, put out it's first bloom today. It's a pretty strong red which is what I was looking for from this variety.