Saturday, March 10, 2007

The Tale Of The Curly Willow

With two ponds on our property, we can grow lots of willow trees because they need lots of water and you can plant the willows close to the water. A good friend of ours gave us some curly willow branches (tree shown here). We put them in water as directed and waited for them to leaf out. With leaves on them we put them in a big pot to develop stronger roots. And then they died; we didn't water them enough. So she gave us some more branches. We managed to kill them too.

Everything I read on Google said that anybody can grow these things. Well, not us.

But our friend did not give up on us; that's why she's a friend. A few months ago she and her husband arrived with a large load of very tall (many over 6 feet) curly willow branches; seventeen branches in all. We were determined to get these puppies to leaf out. We filled a large plastic garbage can with water and stuck all 17 in there.

About a week ago I noticed that all of them were leafing out. No cheering yet; we still had to get them into pots and get them to grow more roots. Well, they have been in pots for two days and they are still leafing out. I'm watching them like a hawk.

We are going to give them a month in the pots and then plant them at various places around the ponds. I want to get them in the ground long before our first heatwave hits. Now would be a good time to pray to the curly willow goddess.

1 comment:

dykewife said...

why not leave them to get roots while they're in the water and then plant them right near the water ponds directly instead of going through the pot stage? that way you avoid the horrors of forgetting to water them.