By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
We Master Gardeners have been propagating all year, and now we are ready to share with you the fruits of our labor. Okay, maybe I haven’t done my part, but the others have. I’ll do better next year. I promise.
Just show up at the Henderson County Senior Citizen’s Center this Saturday and we will sell you some great plants at great prices and you can meet some of the best people you would ever want to meet who would love to tell you how to grow stuff yourself.
Propagation is just a big word for creating new plants. One way of course, is to plant a seed, tend to it till it makes a nice plant. Other ways include taking a stem or a leaf or maybe a piece of root, and treat it just right until it turns into a rose bush or a hibiscus or fig tree or a coleus. Of course, a coleus is a pushover. Anybody can do that. But some of those others take some real know how. We know how to do, and not only that, we will show you how to do it too. Maybe not Saturday, because we will be too busy selling you stuff, but get a hold of us later, or sign up for some our classes or talks. Because that is our mission: to spread the word about growing things.
Yesterday I saw the enormity of the propagation effort coming together. It is overwhelming. Members have been growing stuff at home, but also, the Master Gardeners operate the greenhouse at TVCC, and many members have been working all year on this. You will see so many wonderful plants you won’t know where to start – you may even see something exotic like the elephant ear plant indoors australia which you may want to consider for your own home. We are specializing in native and naturalized plants that are easy to grow and maintain, but you will see some of everything. There are tons of annuals and perennials as well as herbs, pot plants, shrubs, and some trees. If you are interested in making your own greenhouse, you may want to visit somewhere like Pro-Tect Plastics which might be able to give you the coverage you may need for your plants to develop and strive.
And this year there is a section of things like hand painted pots and bird/bat houses. I know about the pots, because my neighbor Shelly is just one of the pot painters, and she has painted dozens of them. They kicked off the pot painting effort with a risqué event the called a pot party, where they painted a few pots and laughed a lot.
I have not done as much as I should have for this sale because of my preoccupation with selling the Humble family excess worldly goods to send those two girls to Ireland, but I have made some contributions: I have potted a number of American Beauty Berry bushes and some nice daylilies. I had plans for making a big splash with some of those huge horse feed tubs, which sold like hot cakes last year, as they make great planters. I thought that would redeem me for not propagating more. I bugged my kids, Tina and Randy Norwood, to gather me up some from their pasture, and they did. However, they were stuck together, and we just yesterday got them pulled apart. Shelly sat on one end of the roll of them, and Jimmy Carter pulled. Now, can we get the molasses out of them and get holes in them in time to make it to the sale? I don’t know. But if I don’t, they will be available soon, somewhere. I’ll let you know.
The Henderson County Master Gardener’s annual plant sale will be held on April 28, 2018, from 9:00 am – 2:00 pm at the Henderson County Senior Citizen’s Center, 3356 State Hwy 31 E, Athens (next to the rodeo arena).