Gardenmaster's board-to-board with Raffi

Welcome back! The project sounds great, and it will be very helpful to add the seed sections for the vegetables. I've been on the road a lot, so sorry about the delay. Thanks very much for the good news, and hope you have a great year as well!

Hi Raffi.... I know I went MIA there for a very long time - got too busy. Wanted to let you know that one of the projects I started is called SLOLA - Seed Library of Los Angeles. We've only had a couple of meetings, but the database committee will be using Gardenology as _the_ source to quote on seed saving procedures and we are going to have a committee of several to post the proper seed saving techniques for each vegetable that we have in our library so library members uncertain on how to save the seeds will know that this is the 'official' source.

Hope you have had a good year and I hope to have more spare time to go back to my California Native Tree list. Among other things. And may this email find you well and prospering.

david

Yes, I know, there is always so much to be done! Anyway, if you get some breathing room and want to put some of it on here, I can suggest some new pages. I'm hoping to make it to Anza Borego as well, and want to catch the peak of the poppies. But I don't know if I'll be able to get out there or not yet. This is supposed to be a phenomenal year out there!

Thanks for the good words - where would I post most of it though? Hmmmm.... more work... a lot of stuff will have to wait until after Earth Day - too much to do! And, to top it all, I'm leaving town for 10 days (20 March to 30 March). Going to see wildflowers in Anza Borego before heading on out to Tucson to visit (and try to catch a Dodger spring training game!). david

Hey David - you've been quite productive with the great advice on your blogs. You're certainly welcome to add some of that info on here, as you know. It is finally Spring again, and gardens are looking nicer already... if there's an ideal time for me to swing by your community garden in Venice, just let me know. It would be fun. Hope all is well...

Hey there, hope all is well... I have another propagation question (or two) and was wondering if you could help. I have some rooting hormone (Rootone) that's at least 5 years old now. It doesn't appear to have an expiration date, so I'm hoping that means it doesn't lose effectiveness with time. Do you know? I am also curious if you have tips on Aristolochia cuttings. Let me know if you can! Thanks...

No worries, I seem to have had some decent luck with transplanting them into soil. I've tried before, but I was having trouble keeping the right level of moisture in the soil, and it didn't help that they were outside during a cold snap. This time they're indoors (in LA) and seem to have taken to the soil pretty well so far. I had never tried water before for vines and shrubs, but I must say it was so easy to get the roots growing in the water, I couldn't believe it. I'd just change the water when it started to look a little old, and put in a drop or two of peroxide.

Glad you like the changes to the CA native trees page, and don't worry about formatting issues. That's the beauty of a wiki - it's collaborative :-)

Hi Raffi - sorry I haven't signed on for a few days (!) Thanks for the changes on the formatting of CA trees - I seemed to have messed up the last one I put in... I'm sorry I missed your post on the cuttings - did you get started on that already? I have little experience with Chalice Vine cuttings but I'm game to ask a friend who does work with vines like that. Most vines are really easy - probably a little bottom heat (you are in San Diego, right? - which means you are even warmer than I am). I do all my cuttings in a soil medium, not water.

I changed the formatting of list of Trees Native to California, but if you prefer the old way, we can change it back. It is now a table that is sortable either by latin name (by default) or by common name, which I think will make it easier for some people to find the tree they are looking for. I included the author name as a separate column, though it can be attached to the end of the latin name as well. Hope you like the changes. There's a lot of interest in natives these days, so this list will be great to have available.

Hi David - I was also worried about being too conversational with you, so it seems we have no reason at all to worry. Everything you're talking about sounds great to me, so please don't worry about writing to me about anything.

You are completely correct about the formal text vs. growing info. The site is first and foremost intended to be there to educate people on how to grow any plant out there, and that is the really big task that needs to be tackled. It would be so great to have your students create some propagation information for some of the plants. And you're right, they'll probably be quite happy that their paper is immediately going to expand the body of plant knowledge on the web, and if they want to come back to add more, they'll already know how.

The book reviews and a book of the month are also great suggestions that I couldn't manage to do on my own. I will be happy to create a page for you where you can put book-of-the-month, and it will show up on the main page of the site. You can also add all the book reviews you like, or send them to me to add if you prefer. Each book can have it's own page, or we can structure it however else works for you.

And finally, thanks for your invite to the Venice HS Learning Garden. I will have to take you up on that. I've already wandered through the Venice community garden, and I've also walked by a small school garden a few times, so the VHS would be a pleasure. I can also put some photos of it on the site, which the students will probably like as well.

So yes, please feel comfortable adding material, and don't worry about formality. This is a wiki, and texts will always be evolving, and hopefully becoming much less formal over time. They are only formal now because of the sources they are coming from being so.

Talk soon :-)

Hi again, Gardenmaster. I think a lot of people are going to be interested in the Cali natives and Chinese medicinals (I know I will). Also, I saw the new Quercus photo you uploaded and added it to the corresponding page :-)

Thank you, Raffi, I am glad to know they got posted - I was getting frustrated in that! I've got a lot more California native plants and Chinese medicinal plants I'll be posting. Including more of the Platycodon. (Glad you got the species - I don't know what happened to my brain on that one!) david

Hi there Gardenmaster, it's great to have you here! The photos are quite helpful, I've added them to the relevant oak pages and Platycodon grandiflorus page - where they've really brought the article to life. I totally agree with you - everyone who can should try and grow some of their own food. There's nothing like it, and it's great for our health and the environment. Aren't we lucky to be living in Southern California where the climate is so great? I'm off to check out your sites now...