The offseason still feels pretty busy

Well- it was 5 degrees for the low today and snow, so no going out for a drive today. The off season feels just as busy as the garden season as a bunch of tasks I didn't finish during the season continue in the off season. I've continued with winter cuttings out in the rose garden even though those aren't the most successful cuttings. 

However, the facts are that I was too busy during spring/summer/fall to get to this, so it's now or not at all. Additionally, I have empty plant shelving inside this time of year because I won't start my tomatoes and peppers until the first week in March. By the first week in March, most of these will have decided whether they are going to rot or root and I imagine less than half will root because it's the wrong season for cuttings. Usually you wouldn't do any pruning this time of year- however, the deer are pruning my roses either way and winter is killing back a lot of canes. Might as well try cuttings as these canes won't be here for spring between the deer and winter.

For the season so far, I've taken 103 rose cuttings from 48 varieties. I have 174 more varieities I would like to take cuttings from- we'll see though. Today's low will mean I have less viable canes to work with. There have already been 7 that are either eaten too low by deer or killed back by winter where there was no viable cane material to take a cutting of- but, hopefully better luck in the remainder. 

Now, something that has been surprising is the success rate with the chrysanthemums. Like the roses, I was too late taking cuttings of the chrysanthemums and was told that cuttings from this time of year simply wouldn't take because they weren't in active growth. Unfortunately, I needed to gamble it anyways because I'm in zone 5a and even the hardy chrysanthemums are barely hardy here. I watched the leaves wilt and the sticks turn brown and dry. I was going to toss them, but, I went to pull one and met resistance. At first, I thought it was just buried leaves, I thought I had stripped the leaves, but, maybe I forgot some. So, I tugged another, again, resistance. Went ahead and grabbed the cup with the most cuttings and pulled one up and it had 1" long roots. How about that, pretty cool. 

Anyhow, so I've got these wilted leaves, brown sticks but they have roots. I wasn't sure whether they would grow new leaves on the existing, seemingly dead stalks or if they would send new growth from the base. Well, got my answer today. 

Tadaa!

The answer is, the new growth comes from the base. I'm not sure how long I have to wait before I can trim back all the really dead sticks above ground, but, I guess I will wait until they all have nice growth at ground level and then trim- just in case they are deriving some benefit from those leaves/stalks which seem completely gone to me.

In other news, the veggie seed plan is completed, very happy about that, I have all my start dates and methods plotted out- whether they are being winter sowed in January or started on a heat mat in March or direct sowed in May - it's all written out for easy reference in my spreadsheet. 

I need to tackle the native seed list next because some of those have really unusual requirements, already ran into a couple that need to be double stratified, so I need to hurry and find the rest of those in my list so I still have time to start them this year.