This was a great "wage" to earn!
Up in Wisconsin, I've got a friend. I helped start some dreads in his hair a long time back so whenever I'm around he wants me to do some maintenance on them.
Since my time was really short, I was only able to concentrate on the most needed areas and then I had to call it quits to take care of some other business. Thankfully, he understood and blessed me with some cuttings from some of his plants as a way of saying thank you for the help that I was able to give him. His head did look nice, for sure!
PREPARING MY NEW PLANTS FOR TRAVEL
I received a very nice sampling of great plants that produce edible fruits; some grapes, two kinds of raspberries, and a kind of blackberry. In order to set them up for the best chance of actually making it to my land alive and being able to grow once they got there, I had to do some work.
The "tools" that I needed were pruning shears, paper towels, water, plastic bags, and stretch wrap.
First I removed the dead leaves and twigs and then cut them down to size.
Then I wrapped the bottom ends of the cuttings with paper towel and wet them with water.
Next I wrapped a plastic bag around each of these groups to keep the moist paper towel in place.
Finally, I tightly secured the cuttings and the plastic bags in place finishing my travel preparation for them.
Like many other food-bearing plants, these cuttings can actually root themselves and be used to create entire new plants. Since the weather in Wisconsin has been colder for the most part, the plants were still dormant. That is usually the best time to try to take cuttings, since the plants have basically "been asleep" for the winter.
At each node on these cuttings, growth can occur. It can be a leaf, flower, new branch, or a root, since all the information to create such different forms of growth are available in the nodes. If the plant "wakes up" from its dormant state and the node is below the soil level, then the plant amazingly chooses to grow roots from those nodes rather than leaves, branches, or flowers. This is where people can make things work for our advantage.
I'll do my best preparing the planting site and keeping you updated on how these do, but so far I am optimistic. Also, I'll have to get back up to Wisconsin to finish my friends hair sometime!
As always, I'm
and here's the proof:
proof-of-preparing-plants-for-travel