Just in time for winter to finally look and feel more like a proper winter, Gail and I are sliding headfirst towards spring. We started the new year by looking through magazine back issues for inspiration. (Do you do that too? It’s as if I never saw them before – and in some cases I hadn’t. Who has time to read anything in May and June – or October for that matter?) And in the last couple of weeks we’ve moved along to seed catalogs. At first it seemed like there was nothing new and then suddenly everything old was new again and everything forgotten was remembered fondly and wanted desperately. The more we go through the catalogs making choices, the more our momentum and excitement builds, so much that it’s hard to know when to quit.

Same thing with taking cuttings – but then I always have a hard time not taking more than we need if there are more to take. I started whacking back the scented geraniums (Pelargonium, that is) yesterday and it’s a good thing we have a plan for these next year, because we’ll have plenty of plants now thanks to me being obsessive about sticking every possible cutting.

Pelargonium are so easy to root and now is a fine time if you haven’t cut yours back yet. Take the growing tips and prepare them by cutting below the second or third leaf node from the tip. Cut that leaf off right at the stem and then place the cutting end-out of a plastic bag for a day. They root more reliably if the wound has a chance to callous first. Once the cut looks dry and slightly crusted, dust or dip it in rooting hormone and stick in dampened perlite, vermiculite or sand – whatever you like to use for rooting. If the remaining leaves are large, cut them in half to reduce transpiration. Keep them out of direct sun and the  medium from drying out. A few weeks waiting should do the trick.

Are you sliding down a slippery slope to spring too? Are you ordering more seeds or taking more cuttings yet than you have room for?

Gardeners are reputed to be an optimistic group but I think we might just be stubborn. Most of us at least are prone to occasional – usually weather related – bouts of pessimism, gloom-and-doom opinion competitions, and worry. But no matter how dire we guess things will be, giving up is never an option. (And doesn’t the garden always surprise us by being beautiful beyond our wildest dreams?)

Never mind that wild temperature swings have caused the marginally hardy trumpet spur flower’s (Rabdosia longituba) pipes to burst. We should have left the stalks standing as protection… and I’m mentally preparing myself to replace the plants if they die. An unusually warm December caused the quince’s (Chaenomeles speciosa ‘Contorta’) flower buds to swell and open just in time to be blasted by an arctic freeze. The buds on Cornus mas are perilously fat too and it looks like the acorn-deprived squirrels have eaten most of the tulips. Will spring still be lovely? (After Tropical Storm Irene blew the color out of the leaves last August, I worried that we’d have a lousy fall. It wasn’t lousy by a long shot.)

In any case there’s absolutely nothing we can do but wait and see and enjoy what we have in the meantime. In honor of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (yesterday) hosted as always by Carol at May Dreams Gardens, here are a few indoor distractions. Who cares what it’s doing outside when the sweet olive is scenting the whole house? Our Brugmansia should have gone into dormancy down cellar ages ago but I won’t deny it or myself one last bloom. If we can’t grow Camellias outside, might as well have them in. And the razzleberry has just pulled ahead of its witch hazel cousin (running fast this year – what if they’ve finished before Valentine’s Day?!) in the race to bloom.

Are you worried about spring or are you distracting yourself with an abundance of blooms inside?

I’m still on seedheads. Yesterday afternoon Gail and I attended a workshop on propagating Rhody Natives (in caps because it’s an initiative spearheaded by the RI Natural History Survey and the New England Wildflower Society to get commercial nurseries involved in propagating Rhode Island’s own native plants both for conservation projects and to sell in garden centers. Really exciting stuff.) We learned a few tricks from Kate Pawling, plant propagator at Nasami Farm Nursery, Harry Chase a wholesale grower in Portsmouth, RI, and Dr. Bryan Maynard, professor of horticulture at URI.

So much about propagation involves a kind of science that makes my artist’s right-brain spin but when it comes right down to it, the most important thing is to simply pay attention to the way the plant works. For instance, plants native to New England that set seed in the spring need a warm stratification period before a cold one to germinate. Interestingly, a lot of spring seeds cannot be stored dry. Some plants, like native ginger (Asarum canadense) coat their seeds in a fatty substance ants love to eat and when they’re finished they discard the cleaned seed in their rubbish pile, which happens to be a perfectly situated nutrient rich place for a new plant to grow. For best results, spring seeds should be sown as soon as possible after collection. Makes perfect sense.

The opposite may be true of fall-set seeds. They often have a tough seed coat that needs to go through winter’s freeze and thaw cycle to crack and germinate. Try to sow them without stratification and they probably won’t come to anything. By leaving seedheads up in the garden to ripen we’re giving Nature the chance to do it her way and we love seeing where they’ll sow themselves next. Whenever we want to take the reins, we just need to mimic nature’s processes as much as possible.

At Nasami farm, Kate sows seeds in December, covers the trays in quartz filter sand to suppress moss growth (it still lets light in for the seeds that need it), puts the flats in a cold greenhouse, and makes sure the soil temperature in the trays hovers just below freezing. The only tricky thing she does is pay close attention to soil and water pH. When Harry sowed his Rhody Native seeds last year, he treated them with the same TLC he gives his commercial crops of annuals and perennials, kept them from freezing and nearly killed them with kindness.

Have you tried sowing wild seeds? Did you give them the tough love they require? Would you buy more locally grown native plants if they were available?