The Seasons of the Garden

GLEANINGS

Are you nuts about nuts? Well then, by all means send an 18--stamp for the Leslie H. Wilmoth Nursery catalog (Dept. TMEN, Route 2, Box 469, Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701). Mr. Wilmoth features 38 black walnut cultivars and also has a wide variety of pecans, butternuts, hickories, Persian walnuts, and hicans (the pecan/hickory hybrid). The nursery is sold out for this year, and you'll have to order by October to reserve a tree for next spring . . . . Don't forget, in the heat of the summer, that your compost pile needs water as much as your garden does . . . . Take geranium cuttings in August, let the cuts callus, dip the stems in rooting hormone, and plant them indoors for fall and winter color.

OFELIX SALIX

The Avant Gardener, that gold mine of horticultural information (it's available, at a cost of $15 for a year of twice-monthly issues, from Horticultural Data Processors, Dept. TMEN, Box 489, New York, New York 10028 . . . and well worth the price), recently reported on the discovery of a potent root-promoting compound that comes from willow tree (genus Salix) cuttings. The substance, which is not a rooting hormone but greatly increases the effects of such products, is said to produce dramatic results. In one test, for instance, hard-to-start yellow birch cuttings failed completely when rooting was attempted with a standard 0.3% hormone treatment, but achieved 100% success when the willow extract was added to the hormone.

If you'd like to try the extract yourself, discoverer Prof. Makota Kawase-of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center-suggests the following procedure: Soak willow cuttings, in enough water to cover them, for 48 hours . . . then remove the sticks and place cuttings of a woody species that you want to root in the "willow tea" for 24 to 48 hours. After their soak, dip the cuttings in 0.3% hormone powder (Hormodine is one commercially available brand) and plant the sticks in the cutting bed. Professor Kawase also suggests soaking seeds of woody plants in the fluid, and even watering transplants with the liquid. Give the technique a try . . . and let MOTHER know the results!