You will want to place your stems in a spot that gets some decent sun (never full sun), is warm and is fairly humid. The reason why you want high humidity is because you have stems and leaves that are really good at sucking water from the roots, but no roots to provide that water. If the humidity is high, the rate of water moving through the stems and leaves will be very low and will give your stems a better chance to catch up with the root formation. Unfortunately, high humidity is also a problem. Warm and humid climates are great for fungal spore germination. (also another good reason to have several cuttings...some may succumb to fungal disease) To increase the humidity, you can simply place the stems in a plastic ziplock bag on your window sill. This means the pot would have to be fairly small. It's also important to NOT close the ziplock bag. Your plants will want to breathe. Pour about 1 inch of water at the bottom of the bag. This will create a little microclimate of high humidity which is perfect for rooting cuttings.

Take the broken branches and cut the stems so that you have the 2 top leaves still on the stem. Note: if their are flowers on the stem, you should move down the stem until you get to a part of the plant that does not have any flowers. The flowers are really small too. The reason why you would do this is because you want stems that are going to produce more stems. A stem that produces flowers will basically stop growing. Anywho, as soon as you make that cutting, dip the bottom part of the freshly cut stem into the rooting compound. Then place the stem into some pre-moistened, airy soil. I generally will make an indentation in the soil with my pinky finger so that when I place the stem into the soil as little of the rooting compound rubs off as possible. I would try to repeat this several times. Not all stems will produce new roots, so it's best to have several repetitions.

Hey Barbara...I'm sorry to hear about your Perilla losing some limbs. Luckily, many plants can be easily propagated vegetatively (that just means that they can reproduce without having to resort to producing seeds). Perilla isn't all that different too (there is one thing about Perilla that is different, but I'll explain that later). You can make what are called herbaceous, or softwood, cuttings. This time of year probably isn't the best to be making such cuttings, but if you have a fairly sunny spot indoors that is protected from cold it might be perfect for this. You will also want to get some rooting compound for this. Most garden centers will have rooting compound. I usually go for the powdered compounds. They're fairly easy to use.

There are obviously some tools that can help with weeding. The one tool that I've always thought was great goes by several names, but I have always called it the Scuffle Weeding Hoe. It is like a typical hoe, but the business end of the tool has a 'D' shaped ring that you drag through the topsoil. It's easy to use and can slice through the roots of weeds if need be. When you first use it, it will turn over the topsoil which is generally a good thing. When you overturn that soil, you may also be exposing some long buried seeds from weedy plants to the sun though. Those newly exposed seeds may start to germinate, but it's a easy fix with the weeding tool to hack through the weedy mess. Eventually the "seed bank" (that is the term for all the dormant seeds in the soil) will get smaller and smaller and you will not see many weeds popping up as you did before. I hope this is helpful to you. Let me know if you have any further questions. Happy Gardening!!! Robby

Now I know that not many people enjoy weeding, and if someone says that they do, they are probably lying. :) Weeding is a tedious job, but it is fairly important. The best way to handle weeds is through constant vigilance. As soon as you see a weed, remove it. Over my career I have traveled to many different nurseries, gardens and other horticultural institutions. Each time I have gone, it has usually been with a mix of people from many different disciplines: business, gardening hobbyist, engineering, and of course horticulture. You can always pick out who in the group of people touring a horticultural facility are horticulturalists because you will see them picking weeds during the tour. It's kind of a mind frame that a horticulturalist adopts, and I think it is based on one simple thing...the sooner the weed is picked, the easier it will be.

Hey Alex...well...there's no real easy answer for this. It's going to require some weeding and pruning to remove the dead vines and weeds. I would like to mention that it is a good idea to do this even though there is some labor involved. Dead plant tissue harbors disease causing microorganisms, and watermelons are fairly susceptible to fungal and bacterial infection. By removing the "vectors", you can stimy the life cycle of some of these diseases. Your chances of having a once healthy watermelon quickly degrading to a diseased watermelon will go down by removing dead vines and weeds.

Having said all that I would also like to point out that, it is currently October and cold weather is fast approaching (if not already here for many parts of the nation). Roses are semi-evergreen plants. In other words they will drop their leaves and go dormant in winter, but if the temperatures are warm enough they will not drop their leaves and continue producing through winter if they can be kept warm. This is how roses are available for Valentine's Day in February, in the dead of winter. Those roses are grown in greenhouses or shipped in from South America. I suspect that your rose may have received a double shock of transplantation and colder weather recently. I would not be too concerned though. Like I said earlier, roses are very resilient. If the yellowing continues to happen as temperatures dip, just feel good that the rose is sequestering those valuable nutrients in the leaves so that when spring comes around it can have a flush of new growth. I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any further questions. Happy Gardening!!! Robby

Hey Maria...Oh, the rose! Queen of the flowers! :) I love roses! They are stunningly beautiful. They do take a little bit of care, but they are rather resilient otherwise. I like roses so much that my PhD research was almost solely based on rose production. My rose research took place in greenhouses and artificial growth chambers where I could specifically manipulate the environment around the roses. Every time I planned research where I would transfer roses between either the growth chamber and the greenhouses or if I was merely repotting the roses, I would have to add about 2-3 weeks time to the beginning of the research proposal to allow for rose acclimation. When the environment around a rose drastically changes, they can go into shock and can start dropping leaves. Especially if you repot a rose. When you repot any plant, one will invariably damage the roots even with the utmost care. After a repotting the rose can recognize that there is an imbalance of roots as compared to the shoots (shoots equals stems and leaves). Since there are no longer the roots to support the above ground parts of the plant, the plant can sacrifice some parts to keep the growth going. If I had to guess, I would assume that the leaves that turned yellow and probably eventually dropped from your rose were at the bottom of the plant (the oldest leaves). The rose is removing the nutrients from those leaves (which is why they turn yellow) and then moving the nutrients to the new and growing parts of the plant. Also, flowering is an "expensive" process in the plant world. If there is some type of stress, the plant may stop flowering until that stress passes. (Note: not all plants work this way...some may flower due to a stress.)

Hey Elizabeth...I will be adding Epilobium angustifolium shortly. As for the California Fuschia, there are actually several subspecies within that that species that are all deemed California Fuschia or Hummingbird's Trumpet as their common names. Is there any reason why you think that the plant in our database would be subsp. angustifolium and not subsp. canum? To me it looks like subsp. canum, but of course I open to hearing your insight into the taxonomy of this species. As always we appreciate your feedback. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do for you. Cheers...Robby

Hey Nick...Luckily this is true. Their cultivation needs are slightly different, but close enough that you should be fine until we get your plants into the database. When it comes down to it, these plants are carnivorous for a reason: they live in nutrient poor soils and have to get their nutrients via "other means". Trees and other tall plants cannot really thrive in nutrient poor soils, which means that they will not be providing too much shade for your little carnivorous plants. Thank you for your patience in getting those plants into the database. Happy Gardening!!! Robby