The HPSO Plant Sale

The Hardy Plant Society of Oregon's Spring Plant Sale is a fixture on most plant nuts calendars. Small specialty plant vendors selling plants from all over the world, the latest & greatest new cultivars as well as the truly obscure! We came away with a box of new treasures that included everything from a few miniature daffodils, a yellow leaved Corylopsis & a new form of Banksia integrifolia that may be hardy enough for us to try growing.

Banksia integrifolia monticola.

Little & Large

Two photos from last Friday, first a new graft of Picea abies 'Pusch'. It's not going to be in production but a friend shared a few scions with me so I had graft them up!

At the other end of the scale, for the first time we have Spring flowers on our Musa bajoo. Normally I let these die back to ground level each year but last Winter I put 2 in a cold greenhouse for the winter & while the leaves didn't survive the stems did. A flower in the Spring means we should get some (inedible) but cool looking bananas! Normally when they have to come up from ground level each year we don't get flowers until October which are then quickly frozen off.

About time!

The Paeonia lutea that we sowed in 2010 has decided to germinate after all!

Beggars can't be choosers!

This Spring we were given 5 scions of Acer palmatum 'Hupps Dwarf'. The scion wood was small even for this cultivar! We had to make the graft cut on 4 & 5 year old wood but we did get 1 of them to take!

Enough already!

March 22nd was our 4th snow storm of the month, all told we had 15" of snow. Previously even a dusting of snow in March was a rare event! The photo above is the Acer palmatum 'Corallinum' that we planted 4 days earlier.

Not your Grandfathers Buckeye!

The emerging foliage of new Aesculus grafts.

Planted twice in 25 years!

I first planted this Acer palmatum 'Corallinum' from a 1 gallon pot in 1987. I got to plant it a second time last week 25 years on!