FRIDAY FINDS

In case you were wondering, I refuse to acknowledge that it is getting rather far into August. Please do not remind me.

One of these days I'm going to take on the enormous project of making my basement into something other than a storage space (half of it is finished space and there's a fireplace down there), and one of the daunting aspects is what to do with the vinyl flooring. This post has some ideas (it's actually about vinyl tile but I think it applies to sheet vinyl as well).

Garden Matter photo

These fragrant firestarters are so cute look to be very easy to make.

At my day job, I've been interviewing candidates for a couple of positions lately and on a couple occasions I've been a bit taken aback by things applicants have said in interviews. Here's a list of things you should never say in an interview. My personal addition to this list would be to not criticize the product produced by the company you are interviewing with. Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are things you offer later, after you've proven that you know what you are doing and your opinion should be valued.

I want to get more into propagating plants because I always need more plants than I can afford. Here's a tutorial on propagating rosemary from cuttings.

If you loved the garden I showed you earlier this week, check out Linda's post on the Cleveland Botanical Garden, also awash with amazing conifers.

Theresa at Seasonal Wisdom is giving away a set of Troy-Bilt gardening tools. Go enter. And if you don't win, check back here next week because I might just be giving you a second chance.

Have a great weekend! What's on your agenda?

EXPERIMENTS IN HORTICULTURE (WINTER BOREDOM EDITION)

I have a few horticultural experiments going on in my house right now. This is unusual for me because I rarely have the patience for such things, but this time of year calls for finding new things to amuse ones self.

All of the cuttings are currently residing in one pot, but if they root successfully I'll pot them on in their own personal pots. If it all works I should have trees in like 15 years. Ha!

About six weeks ago, maybe a little less, I took cuttings from the new white spruce (Picea glauca 'Hudsonii') we planted last year. So far it's been a lovely little tree and one I wouldn't mind having a few more of. It's the first time I've tried to propagate an evergreen and from what I've read, it will take up to 13 weeks for the cuttings to root, so I've not even tried to check on them yet. The good news is that they appear to still be alive in their little mini greenhouse (i.e. a plastic bag over the pot).

The cuttings live in their own mini greenhouse while they hopefully root.

If it works, I'll be sure to tell you what I did, but I don't want to share a method that is a failure if it doesn't work.

The other experiment going has to do with sweet peas. According to my little seed chart, sweet peas are not scheduled to be sown until March 15 at the earliest in my area, but I want to do everything I can to make sure that they are successful.

There is some debate as to how to start sweet peas. OK, there is a lot of debate involving everything from timing to the type of pots you should start them in to what to do with the seeds before you sow them. The last bit is what my mini experiment focuses on.

Some people say to soak the seeds. Other suggest nicking them. And several of the British gardening television presenters suggest doing absolutely nothing to them other than sticking them in the soil.

Blog reader Casa Mariposa reminded me to soak the seeds overnight and said hers sprouted in just a couple days by doing that. The growing instructions that came with my Owl's Acres Sweet Peas order (yeah, I'm the freak who orders seeds from England the first time I try to grow sweet peas) strongly suggest nicking or soaking, going so far as to say they don't recommend even trying them without doing one or the other.

Since I ordered too many seeds (I'll probably end up giving away whatever I don't use, so stay tuned if you're interested in that sort of thing), I'm starting six of them early. I took three of a Spencer variety (long-stemmed, meant for showing and bouquets) called 'Lake Windemere' and three of grandiflora 'Fire and Ice' and potted them up, one pot per variety (which is how I intend to sow them in March). For each variety, I nicked one seed, soaked another for 22 hours and did nothing to the third seed.

My sweet pea experiment is underway in the basement where the two pots are on a heating mat and cardboard makes sure that all light (not that there's much down there) is blocked.

The two pots are currently on the seed-starting mat (set to about 60 degrees but it's having a hard time getting to that temp for some reason, maybe because the pots are somewhat large) and I'll be keeping an eye on what happens.

Of course I'll report the results to you when I have some, which maybe be in a few weeks because it can take some time for sweet peas to germinate.