Upright Fuchsia Cutting and New Passionflower Seedlings

One of the four semi-hardwood fuchsia pieces my neighbor gave me looks like it is rooting already. This particular cutting is the biggest of the semi-hardwood pieces she gave me and was planted directly in the long back yard border where gorgeous two toned pink fuchsias are planted on either end of the border. The original fuchsia from the neighbor's yard has giant sized flowers of dark purple and red and are really beautiful. This past weekend I gently pulled on the cutting stem and it seemed rooted. I noticed some new bright green growth forming all over the stem. I'm hoping this cutting does well since the original plant is a large upright and the new fuchsia would look great in the center with the two-toned pink fuchsias anchoring the border on either side. The fuchsia cutting is a good two feet tall and was placed behind a newer heather with pale pink flowers. Eventually this heather should become good sized and add some softness underneath the new upright fuchsia. Once this new fuchsia is established and growing next season I will take cuttings and root them in water for new plants. I'm excited to see how this new upright fuchsia will perform next summer in the garden.

While working in the garden this weekend I went on a hunt for passionflower seedlings to add to the trellis boxes in the front yard. The passionflower seedlings are all over the front yard lawn but they are very small spindly looking seedlings of three to five inches tall from the purple and green flowered passionflower vines on the front fence. These passionflower vines also managed to seed in the back yard near the back fence. We have a flower border that needs to be torn down and is mostly dirt and rock for the moment. I found two larger passionflower vine specimens there that were a good foot long with large leaves. I decided to dig the passionflower seedlings up and see if there was enough root system to transplant them to the front yard trellis boxes. Happily I found these seedlings easy to dig up with a large root system already established. The roots of the passionflower vines looked like small sized carrots. I had no idea what the root system was like for these vines since any passionflower vine I've encountered here was already in place when we moved here. I planted one of each of the seedling passionflower vines in the trellis boxes. Currently I have a darker purple flowering passionflower vines in the boxes but some of the vines are dying off this season and unfortunately these vines don't produce many seedlings. The new vines look like they will be vigorous, if they are anything like the ever growing evergreen passionflower vines on the front fence they should grow well there. If the passionflower vines flower in the trellis boxes I'd be very happy but even the added green of the leaves would help the display for next summer since its looking poorly this year. Here's hoping the new vines take root well and get growing for next season.