February 2, 2026

It’s been a fairly productive week for us, especially with the warmer weather. I set up a bunch of seeds, including Pacific dogwood, loquat, jujube, pawpaw, and blue sausage fruit (also called by the less-than-enticing Dead Man’s Fingers). I’ll be setting up some more tree seeds this week, along with wintersowing some hardy perennials.

I also set up a tray of osmanthus cuttings after pruning our gallon pots. I’ve never actually done these before, but figured it’s worth trying them as hardwood cuttings since they needed pruning anyway. I’ll be sticking a bunch more cuttings this week as I prune our gallon plants and our stock plants in preparation for new spring growth. Our little stick farm is taking shape!

I also started cleaning up our sunny plant area and realized there are a couple of places where I need to replace the landscape fabric. I ripped out some pretty large pieces, and Joe took that opportunity to grub out some large roots left by the cherry tree we had to take out after it started dying. We loved that tree and still miss it.

We also got a pickup load of gravel to spread over the ground after we fill in the hole and before we lay down new landscape fabric. We’ll use the old landscape fabric in our garden this year to help cut down on the weeds (last year we had an epic pigweed year).

Lessons learned: pomegranate trees really need to be in gallon pots before winter sets in. I lost two cell trays, unfortunately. As many know, I don’t usually baby my plants, because I want to make sure they’ll survive well in our customers’ yards. I should have babied these babies, though, and will baby them and other warmer climate little ones in the future. As long as they can survive after they’ve had a chance to grow on a bit in their pots, I’m good with keeping them. Our olive trees that we kept protected last year in their cell trays are doing quite well in their pots this year.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll be getting a fresh load of our favorite potting mix, and then we’ll be potting up hundreds of plants pretty much every day. We’ve got thousands of plugs, liners, and seedlings just waiting for their new digs. You’d think it would be tiring just thinking about how much we have to do before spring sales start, but it’s actually rather energizing being outside and getting things done.

Keep on growing!
Andrea