It's Re-potting Time

It's that time of year -- early Spring -- new growth is beginning to sprout, but it's not yet time for flowers or fruit. I had 3 fuchsia cuttings that I started a few months ago when I pruned the mother shrub. They grow so strongly in my garden and it's a satisfying experience to work with them.

Nice, strong roots have developed:

I also had a bamboo cutting that was ready to pot. The Daiso pots that I've been collecting for the last few years look strange with actual dirt in them!

This strange fellow is a fuchsia cutting I took last year. I didn't think a cutting with such a thick circumference would take, but it's done very well, even if it looks a little lopsided! I needed to wire it to keep it from falling out of the pot. Even though I don't work with bonsai much anymore, I learned some valuable techniques that I can use with normal plants. For some reason I forgot to take a photo of him in his new pot, but it looks basically the same, just larger! I also pruned off a few of the dead twigs in the hopes it will grow bushier. If I were Adam of Adam Ask Why, most of it would be lopped off, but I'm not that brave!

Even the Fuchsia can have beautiful bark. Well, I hope that's how it's supposed to look!

While I was working, I noticed some new growth in the offcuts from the rose bushes that I'd pruned a few months ago. It seems some of them had their bases in the water pooling in the bottom of the wheelbarrow and had started to grow.

They wanted to live, and who am I to argue? So I put them in the jars recently vacated by the fuchsias. One was so tall I had to work my wiring techniques on it to stop it from falling over. I have no idea whether you can successfully grow roses from cuttings, but it's always fun to experiment.

Lastly, I fertilised the fruit trees. I took a tip from last week's episode of Vasili's Garden for improving fruit trees. The larger trees are doing very well, but the two we planted ourselves -- a cherry and an olive -- were not quite growing as well as I'd hoped. Vasili advised to spread mulch around the base of the trees, as the roots are still quite shallow and the grass can compete with the roots for nutrients. I also spread the fertiliser further out from the base of the trees, to encourage the roots to grow further.

I'm excited to find out the results of my work!