Transplanting roses, berry stalks with potatoes

Gasp, an actual garden post! Nearly forgot.

When the season starts, and you want to make new rose plants, find a good, clean, healthy, green shoot, or few. Cut them just below a bud, and cut about 10 inches of a straight area. Carefully remove most of the leaves--I like to leave a few at the top to help the plant gather sun/energy. LEAVE the thorns.

This leaves you with a straight, thorned, stalk with an inch or so of leaves. Carefully cut an X with a knife into a large baking potato. Do not use yams or small boiling potatoes. Carefully, so as to not break your rose stalk piece, fit the end into the potato. When your ground plot is ready with some sharp soil and maybe some fluff from your vacuum/dusting up (it provides needed nutrients, and easily composts, and hey who doesn´t have too many dust bunnies they´d like to bury!?), then cover up with dark healthy soil, about 6 inches apart. Leave til maybe October or November (maybe December in a cold climate, but then cover to protect), and transplant where you want it, if you didn´t plant it there in the first place.

This works well with blackberry plants, depending on the variety, and some berry stalks.

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When I do this, I like to companion plant, which is to say, I plant other things which imho are helpful to the rose, such as basil herbs, catmint, catnip, chocolate mint....whatever you think best and like. I like the scent, look, etc of the herbs and/or flowers, so there´s also not just a green bare stalk sticking up, and the space is not wasted. It´s lovely to pull up a chair, and maybe even a table, to sit back and enjoy the garden plants, in nice weather or not.

To keep out the African slugs, you can use copper guttering, as they don´t like that. For ticks, if you have ticks in your area, like we do, cinnamon bark and fresh cloves, clove oil, dried cinnamon helps lots. For sand, say if you have a sandbox for your kids, add some dried cinnamon to it, to keep out fleas, which luckily we don+t generally have here. I think ticks are worse, ick! hate them!! with a passion! Every year, the second it gets warm, they´re out--teeny tiny, bitty barely noticable they´re so small, but you know they´re there:(.

Now, back to study. Enjoy your gardens! Cottage garden if you can, by mixing your fruits, flowers, veggies, herbs together with seating, a water feature, encouraging wildlife, butterflies and bees, birds, ladybugs into your garden.

It´s not as easy for me to snap my fingers and magically always have a fantastic garden here in Norway as it was in other warmer climes, but the challenge is mindfully interesting, and luckily I adore gardening. Slow food has always been naturally an interest, passed on from my father and farming family before anyone used vocabulary as Green, Environmentally-Aware, Planet and Earth-Friendly, Globally-aware...we just did it, it was how we were. I never use harsh poisons and such, always try to do more natural things such as companion planting, encouraging diversity, planting in a diverse manner for both plant health, mutual benefit to plants, and to encourage bugs such as ladybugs, praying mantis, spiders who help by eating the unwanted pests, etc.

My dream garden is an eclectic mix of Italian, English cottage, and French potager, amongst other bits and pieces, and things I learned from those with allotments, reading, talking to other gardeners.

Study break is over! and has been for a while. Supper must be finished also. Am making black bean and black-eyed pea chili, and a finely-grained polenta corn bread made with thick creamy Norwegian yogurt.