Quote of the Week

"Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.."
~ Hal Borland
Garden America
This Week's Radio Show

Saturday, January 7
8-10 am PST / 11am - 1pm EST


Robert C. Crane is the president of C. Crane Company, a mail order business that specializes in radios and related products. Bob will tell us about his new "garden" radio that is solar and can charge your cell pone! Remember a time when radio was the only reliable and widespread audio source available?

Bob not only loves the radio, he is also an avid gardener, and this morning the topics will be radios and some of his favorite plants and what his garden plans are for 2023. CLICK HERE to see a video of Bob at the Consumer Electronics Show. 
For more great gardening info, please visit our website at www.gardenamerica.com

Did you miss the show? CLICK HERE to watch our Facebook live episodes.
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DID YOU KNOW?
Plants commonly known as hellebores belong to the genus Helleborus, which consists of about twenty species of perennial flowering plants Ranunculus family. The family includes well-known plants such as delphinium, anemone, buttercup, and columbine. Most of the common hellebores are clump-forming, low growing evergreens with toothed, palmate foliage. Most popular and easiest to grow are the Oriental hybrid hellebores. Their common names are Lenten rose, winter rose, and Christmas rose but they are not related to the rose family. Legend says that after learning about the birth of the Savior, the Bethlehem shepherds decided to bring gifts to the baby Jesus. All the shepherds gathered everything they could, but one shepherd could not find a worthy gift. He wept with great sorrow and in the place where his tears fell, a beautiful flower grew, which became a gift to the infant, a Christmas rose. CLICK HERE to see a video about hellebores by Pine Knot Farms - hellebore experts.
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What's Growing in Our Gardens?  
Spiral Aloe seedling, Aloe polyphylla
Steve - Simi Valley, CA
Winter Rose at Gardens of Villa d’Este
Sharon - Tivoli, Italy
Osteospermum '3D Purple'
Tony - San Diego, CA
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6 EASY STEPS FOR GROWING ROSES FROM SEED

by John Bagnasco

Professional breeders go through complicated procedures to produce new varieties of roses. Jackson & Perkins used to plant about 300,000 seeds in order to get three to six new roses to introduce. I've found these simple steps can give some great new plants.

1. Allow rose hips to ripen (do not harvest when green). Since the flowers were pollinated by insects, the seeds you harvest will grow into a plant with different characteristics., especially if harvested from a hybrid rose variety.
2. Cut the hips open and remove the seeds. Cut open the rose hips with a knife or pair of pruning shears revealing the seeds inside. Pull these out with the tip of your cutting instrument. The number of seeds in each rose hip varies greatly between rose varieties. There may only be a few per rose hip, or several dozen.

3. Wipe the pulp off the seeds. The easiest way is to let the seeds dry for a couple hours and then rub between your hands. Gently blow the chaff away after each rubbing.
 
4. Fill a container with sterile seed starting mix. Small seedling starting trays make it easy to germinate many seeds at once or use plastic drinking cups with a hole punched in the bottom. Regular soil is not recommended, as it may allow the young seedlings to die from damping off disease.

5. Plant the seeds. If planted in January, seedlings should emerge within a couple months. Seeds of some varieties may take two or three years to emerge, so don’t discard the pots.

6. Enjoy the new plants! Outdoors, the new rose plants should bloom in 8-12 weeks. The plants will be unique, so transplant to slightly larger pots and evaluate as the year progresses. 
We'd love for you to share pictures of what's currently growing in your garden. Please send photos to john@gardenamerica.com