Sassafras tzumu

Three cuttings of Sassafras tzumu is all we had, we are hopping to quadruple our inventory from 1 to 4 :^)..

A new cutting season begins..

Davidia involucrata 'Crinson Spring'

We fired up the Mist System this weekend, Davidia's were first on the list of cuttings to stick!

Weird & Wonderful Leaves!

New grafts of Quercus robur 'Cristata'

The Brains behind Plantmad!

The Hardie Touch Command TC-2400 LXII

The brains behind Plantmad Nursery, this time clock was made in the 1980's & as a stand alone time clock it's still hard to find something today that can out perform it. 24 stations can be attached to any number of the 24 programs. Each station has 8 start times with up to 99 possible repeats & delay times. Run times from 1 second to 9:59:59.

Ours controls 8 different garden zones, 8 greenhouses & 2 mist systems, oh & it also tops up the bird bath each day :^)...

A Gunnera forest!

Gunnera tinctoria (syn. Gunnera chilensis)

Our Gunnera tinctoria liners, not sure how we are going to be able to keep them in these pots for long :^)...

Stachyurus chinensis 'Magpie'

Stachyurus chinensis 'Magpie'

This is by far my favorite Stachyurus, we are hoping to have it back into production soon.

Sweet tea anyone?

Hydrangea serrata 'O amacha Nishiki'

So we picked up this cultivar of Hydrangea serrata at the Spring Oregon Hardy Plant sale. From the name we learned about Hydrangea tea! Apparently Amacha (甘茶 ) is a sweet tea that is made from Hydrangea leaves & Nishiki (錦 ) means Brocade or fine cloth but the name is often given to plants that have variegated foliage. 

Before you go out & brew yourself a cup though caution is advised, some sources say the leaves have to be fermented before dried otherwise they may be poisonous. I have no plans to brew up a cup in the near future anyway ;^)..

Saved from the dead!

Last summer a friend brought us a short 3" piece of maple wood showing many years of growth. It was a very slow growing unnamed seedling of Acer palmatum 'Shishigashira'. The plant had broken off from it's roots & we were charged with seeing if we could put some new roots on it & save it! We cut the short piece of wood into three 1" pieces & grafted them with mini veneer grafts. One died right away, one died over the winter but the third one made it!

Another fickle variegated Ginkgo!

This is an unnamed variegated Ginkgo seedling that we have had for a few years but have no plans to propagate! There are already enough variegated Ginkgo's with names & none that stay reliably variegated from year to year. Perhaps the answer is to have them all then at least one would be variegated each year :^)..