We’ve been doing a lot of plant propagation lately, preparing for a long nursery season. Mulberries, potato mint, Chinese artichoke, tomatoes, peppers, honey locust… and all kinds of other things.

Some we are growing from seed, others from cuttings. It’s fun to help create thousands of new trees and plants.

On Tuesday, my son Perry and I went to see our friend Randall and take cuttings from a huge fig tree in his grandmother’s yard. While there, he asked what rooting hormone we were using to root cuttings. I told him we just used the inexpensive powder you get at nurseries and garden centers. It’s always seemed to work well.

He told me that the pros he’s been reading use Hormodin, so he bought some “Hormodin 3” and has had very good luck with it.

I found it on Amazon for a better price than I could find it at a nursery supply and bought some yesterday. I’ll let you know if it works better than what we’ve been using.

Today we’re working on cleaning up the greenhouse and opening up an area of bare soil in there so Rachel can plant tomatoes in the ground. She’s started about a hundred Romas and wants to make all of our tomato sauce for the year from them. We’ve never tried growing tomatoes in a greenhouse but some of our friends had great luck with greenhouse tomatoes last year. The pounding rains here really wreak havoc on the fruit, so the main gift a greenhouse gives your plants is relief from the rain. We’ll also plant some in pots and see how they manage.

Tomorrow we’ll share the details on our Saturday plant sale in Pensacola – stay tuned.