x - Hawaii Chapter, American Rhododendron Society

Favorite Things -- Garden Related
by Jane Adams
We all have our favorites…especially when it comes to gardening! Tools, fertilizers, herbicides, weeders, pruners,
loppers, mowers, weed whackers, chain saws, potting media, pots…you name it, we’ve all got an opinion on it.
The true mark of something being a favorite is when you replace it when worn out with the identical item!
This is the last of the “Favorite Things” columns on this topic. I’m sure another topic will crop up in the months
to come, especially if I get some requests (hint….hint...hint…) This time I’m going to turn to “what’s on my
potting bench that I can’t do without.”
Pots:
We use 3” square pots for rooting cuttings. They fit in trays of 18, making them easy to transport around
the greenhouse. Normally, roots fill our 3” pots in 4-6 months. In some cases when the well-rooted cuttings
are ready for our real media mix, but are naturally very small plants, we’ll repot into the 3” pots for another
round before moving them up to the next size. You do not want to over-pot vireyas! We use 6” azalea pots
for the next step after the cuttings are rooted. We like the round, short stature of the azalea pots, as we
observed over the years that the roots rarely would go all the way down to fill a standard gallon container.
Larger Pots: We would next step up to an 8” azalea pot, chose for the same reason expressed above. This
gives about an inch around for the plant to grow into new media.
Media:
Being a certified nursery, we cannot use any true soil. All the media in our pots on the benches must be of
non-soil content. We use a mix of coconut chips, perlite with a small amount of vermiculite added for
better fertilizer/mineral retention. There are provisions for using specially treated cinder, but that way is
fraught with danger. A year or two ago the entire dracena foliage group of nurseries on the Big Island were
shut down because burrowing nematodes had been found in a shipment in California. The local purveyor of
cinder had switched their storage area, which was not as pristine as the previous one. Now, cinder must be
steam-treated to very high temperatures to be used. I am glad we went the route we did with nothing that
had been in the ground!
Miscellaneous tools on the bench:
Fertilizer -- a tub of fertilizer to give each newly-potted plant a nice dose.
Knives -- No, we haven’t gone all violent on you! They are used to scrape the stem of the cuttings so that
the rooting hormone gets to the cambium layer and provides a good point for rooting to start.
Plant stick tags -- Seems obvious, but then again we’d be lost without them. We get them in several colors
to mark plants for various purposes. Our local source is Nursery Things where we buy them in quantity.
Stakes -- everything from bamboo shish-kabob sticks for very small plants to larger bamboo ones for more
mature plants. Oh, and of course the plastic tying tape to connect the plant to the stake.
Database List -- This may seem extreme to many of you, but we’d be lost without it. If I’m going to toss a
plant out, I can check to see whether I need to shift it to stock for planting out, take cuttings, or simply toss
it. We also make notations on the list and do data entry from those notes.
And all the stuff that needs to be close by:
Bin of mixed up media
Open sack of perlite for cuttings
Water in hoses (up off the ground to keep nematodes away!)
Brush to clean off the bench
Buckets for prunings and weeds pulled from pots
WD-40 to keep those pruners working properly
Pens, pencils and sharpies
Spray container for bleach solution (in case a tool falls to the ground, and things need cleaning).
Finally, I do want you to know that there is never ONE way or ONE product that is better than any other. A
lot of this discussion has been about what works for us. If something is working well for you, keep at it, or
try something new. Variety and experimentation is the spice of the gardening life!
Viva Vireya Page 4 September 2012