Slowly Coming Back Around

I'm still far from being back to normal.  I guess it'll just take a little while.  That's okay.  I'm trying to listen to my body and take it slow, but still want to try to do a little more each day so that there's progress.  It hasn't rained in several weeks, so it is real dry.  The garden is suffering a bit, but there are still crops coming in.  I picked some purple hull peas and shelled them and then picked a bunch of Ozark Razorback Peas.  Although I do have some seeds saved, this just comes up year after year.  The peas were mostly dried so they shelled real easily.  I like the speckled color of the Ozark Razorbacks.

I'm not the only one that's slow.  Belle has a thick coat.  She rotates between a few places where she lays up and naps all day.  That's a pretty good plan in the dog days of summer.  In the late afternoon, Belle will come out from her cool hiding spots and try to jump up in the chair with us.  Tricia was telling her here, "Belle, it's not relaxing to have your hot breath in my face."

Since we had great success starting new plants from cuttings on our Vitex or Chaste tree, I've had something on my to do list for quite a while that I got done today.  That task was: Start new blueberry bushes from cuttings.  Our blueberry bushes have been very productive.  Even though we've lost a third of them over the years, the ones that remain grow taller and wider.  I think we put up about four gallons of berries this year.

But with unknown weather, I want to make sure that we have more plants to fill the void should some of our blueberry bushes die.  I walked past our existing plants today with some clippers and clipped of some new softwood growth.

I made 12 cuttings, roughly four inches long, from new growth.  On the bottom of the cuttings, I clipped a diagonal cut just beneath the node on the stem.  Then I clipped off all the leaves except for a couple on top.  I dipped each cutting in water and then dipped the wetted cutting into some rooting hormone.  Then I planted each cutting in some potting soil.  This was the same medium I used in starting the chaste tree cuttings.  They are really thriving right now.

It is very important to keep the soil where you are trying to get the cuttings to root always moist.  So I  have a fool proof system I use in which I put the pot of cuttings into a wagon that has the bottom inch or so of rainwater.  The pot acts as a wick and wicks up the rainwater, keeping the soil moist.  It's also important to keep the cuttings out of the direct sunlight, so I've positioned the wagon under the dense canopy of the pecan tree.

I will keep tending to these and hopefully in a couple of months, we'll see fresh new root growth.  It's very interesting to learn to do new things like this.  Not to mention the fact that, if successful, this will save some serious money.  A blueberry bush, the last time I checked, was running $35 per plant.  I know ALL of the 12 cuttings we're trying won't all take, but if we get ANY of them to root, it will be a successful venture in my book.