Azaleas

Two winters ago I planted a bunch of seeds of east coast native azaleas. These are deciduous and fall into two main color groups: pink to white and yellow through orange to red. I joined two azalea societies so I could buy from their members' seed exchanges and staff from a couple of arboretums kindly shared some seeds. I've written about the perils and plagues of the seed starting elsewhere. These have been in trays or pots through two seasons. I wintered them over in the basement last year and ended up with 18 well rooted, well grown 1 gallon sized plants and 10 more smaller ones.

From TTH200905

The runts are in the basement under lights again but the larger ones are planted in Hagen's Woods, a large island of trees and shrubs in my backyard.

From TTH200910

The small things in the foreground are azaleas. There's also a Franklinia alatamaha to replace the one in my front foundation bed that struggled and died.

From TTH200910

I still have to make more chicken wire fences to hold off the rabbits. If I don't protect young trees and shrubs they will eat them to the ground during the winter.

Basement Light Cart
This is a shelving unit I bought at Lowes. Shelving.com sells the same sort of shelving in any dimensions you can think of. I added wheels to this set and for now am using some honking big compact fluorescents. I bought a bunch of long 'shop light' fluorescent fixtures and tubes and when I have time will hang those instead.

From TTH200910

From TTH200910

From TTH200910