MASTER GARDENER: Propagating plumeria cuttings, controlling hydrangea color

Q. I have loved plumerias since I first saw them in Hawaii and brought home a few cuttings. My question is: Some of the plants I have were inherited, were not well cared for, and are extremely 'leggy'. Can I cut some of the branches and re-root them? I wouldn't mind sacrificing the 'mother plant' if it meant getting several off-spring and hopefully fuller plants. Please advise if this is possible, the best time to take the cuttings and the procedure for doing it.

A. The plumeria, Plumeria rubra, is a beautiful shrub or small tree that has colorful, exceptionally fragrant flowers. Although it is considered a tropical plant, it seems to grow very well outdoors in Southern California, whether planted in a pot or in the ground, as long as it is protected from hard frosts. Although the plumeria is usually a rather expensive plant to buy, it is a surprisingly easy plant to propagate from cuttings.

Plumeria cuttings will root best when the temperature is at least 60 degrees, so spring is a good time to start making your cuttings. Simply cut piece of a branch 12-18 inches long. The cutting may be a single length or branched, with the branched cuttings likely to make the bushiest plants. You will find that a milky sap will immediately start dripping from the cut surfaces. Avoid getting the sap on your skin as some people are sensitive to it and may develop a rash. Allow the cut ends of the branches to dry in a cool shady location for at least a few days. This drying time drastically reduces the chance of rot occurring.

Remove all but the top few small leaves from the cuttings (they will drop off eventually anyway). If you are making multiple cuttings from one very long branch, then be sure to keep track of which end is up. Plant each cutting about three inches deep in a one-gallon or larger pot filled with an artificial soil mix that will drain quickly. A general-purpose mix with almost an equal volume of perlite or vermiculite works well for me. There is no need to use a rooting hormone. Place the pots in a bright location but avoid direct sun, and keep the soil moist but not soggy. Depending upon the time of year, rooting will take one to three months. Once the cuttings develop roots you will notice top growth beginning, and you can gradually move the new plants to a location with brighter light and increase watering.

Dont fertilize during the fall and winter to avoid promoting tender growth that could be damaged by cold weather. During the first winter, the young plants may require more protection from frost than the parent plant. Regardless of age, plumerias require little water during the winter; give them just enough to keep the branches from shriveling. When spring arrives, begin fertilization and increase watering. Before long, the colorful, fragrant flowers of the new plumeria plants will be ready to fill your garden with color and fragrance.

Q. Several years ago you told how to control the color on hydrangeas, but I've forgotten how to do it. Would you repeat the instructions?

A. The color of the hydrangea will vary according to the pH of the soil in which it is growing. Blue flowers are produced by adding aluminum sulfate to the soil to make the soil more acidic. Pink flowers can be assured by a heavy application of superphosphate to the soil to make the soil more alkaline. Either treatment must be begun well ahead of the blooming season to be effective so as soon as you notice spring growth, you should begin application. In our Southern California soils, untreated hydrangeas are likely to be pink, unless the soil is treated to produce blue flowers.

Ottillia Toots Bier has been a UC Cooperative Extension master gardener since 1980. Send comments and questions to features@pe.com.

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MASTER GARDENER: Propagating plumeria cuttings, controlling hydrangea color

The X Factor drama has dominated this week's headlines

The number one story in showbiz goss this week isnt how rough and pathetic those contestants on The Bachelor NZ are (although they totally are!) but the abrupt departure of Natalia Kills and Willy Moon from The X Factor NZ after just one live show.

The married judges, of course, werent backward in coming forward with their over the top criticism of X Factor hopeful Joe Irvine. The blowback was immense, and after protests from viewers, sponsors, and other celebrities TV3 sent the pair packing from their on-screen roles. New judges announced on Thursday drummer Shelton Woolwright and X Factor Australia judge Natalie Bassingthwaite.

As an artist who respects creative integrity and intellectual property, I am disgusted at how much you've copied my husband, Kills declared to Irvine after his performance.

RELATED: Fired X Factor judge Natalia Kills accused of stealing her looks

From the hair to the suit, do you not have any value for respect for originality?

You're a laughing stock. It's cheesy, it's disgusting, I personally found it artistically atrocious, she continued.

I am embarrassed to be sitting here in your presence having to even dignify you with an answer of my opinion.

(None of us knew it, but apparently Willy Moon invented the phenomenon of performing wearing a suit with slicked back hair. Dont tell Frank Sinatra.)

Moon chipped in, telling Irvine his look was cheap and absurd and comparing him to famous big-screen psycho Norman Bates.

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The week in gossip

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ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT: Active retail and service company has position open for customer service, scheduling and marketing person. Experience in any of the building trades helpful. Salary plus benefits. Send resume, jcm@oceanspraypoolsandspas.com (S)

AUTOBODY POSITIONS: Painter and heavy combo. Experience necessary. Rich, 516-852-2532.

BARTENDER: F/T, P/T. Creative people pleaser, simple point of sale system. Salamanders, 631-477-2878.

BARTENDER: Responsible and experienced. Call Lennys, 631-722- 8589.

CASE MANAGER: F/T, temporary through December 2015. For our Bridges to Family program located in Hauppauge, NY. BA in social work or related field and 1-year related experience required. MSW or related field and related experience pre- ferred. Valid NYS drivers license required. Little Flower Children and Family Services in Wading River, N.Y. Send resume, wadingriver-jobs@lfchild.org or fax 631-929-6203 EOE.

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Every time he hunts, Peter Williams sends a silent message to his prey before he squeezes the trigger: Please give me your life. Ill eat some of your meat, and Ill make something beautiful out of your hide. On a cold afternoon in mid-January, Williams, who is 33, was kneeling on the barnacle- and birdshit-encrusted rocks of an uninhabited island. On all sides was Sitka Sound, a narrow stretch of water off the coast of southeast Alaska. Williams wore an orange raincoat and earmuffs; his rifle rested in a dip between rocks. About a hundred feet away, a dozen sea otters were bobbing in the water. He wanted a stray, at the edge of the group. He was moving with the sureness of ritual. For him this is ritual. When he scans the water for targets, Williamss eyes get unnaturally wide, like a mask, and his head starts to swivel.

His prey seems to have evolved for heart-melting cuteness. Black beseeching eyes, soft triangle nose, puckered little mouth: sea otters look like puppies or human babies encased in fur. Pairs hold hands, paw in paw, to stay together. As Williams says: Theyre very human-like, not only their physical appearance but also their behaviour. Theyre very social, theyre very family-oriented. Theyre intelligent, theyre playful. Sea otters float on their backs, limbs in the air, up to a hundred massed in a raft. Snoozing, they tuck themselves into stringy beds of kelp, to keep from drifting out to sea.

Williams is after their fur, which is the densest and softest in the animal kingdom. Russian traders once called it soft gold. There is no material like it. The black, silky, lustrous stuff is so instantly comforting that it hardly seems like fur at all. Few human heads have more than 150,000 hairs, but sea otters stay warm with a double layer of never-moulting fur, up to a million hairs per square inch.

Williams designs and sells clothes and accessories, made from the otters he hunts. By reviving a forgotten and forbidden market for their fur, he sees himself as restoring a wounded culture. His father was Yupik, from the largest tribal group of Alaska Natives who suffer as a whole, disproportionately, from poverty, substance abuse, suicide and rape. The tradition of marine mammal hunting runs deep among the indigenous peoples of the state, but beginning in the 18th century, white settlement brought the forced conscription of Native hunters and the near-eradication of many species.

Out on the rocks, a muffled shot cracked the stillness. The raft split up, a dozen black heads adrift in seemingly random motion, and Williams picked off a second. A shot to the head is the quickest and cleanest way to kill, according to Williams. Theres a sound when it hits, a thump you can hear when the bullet stops. It mushrooms out, expands, and fractures, he said of the 55-grain, soft-point .223 rounds he fires.

Williams made for the Jenna, his ramshackle aluminium skiff, docked just off the island. He bailed out a few buckets worth of water and set the outboard motor, racing after the harvest before it could sink or float away. Wild little islands lay scattered across Sitka Sound, which opened wide on to the freezing North Pacific in the distance. A volcano stood glazed with snow.

Theres times when I go out to pick up the animal and its still alive. Life is a powerful force

A few minutes later, the Jenna pulled up alongside two floating bulges of sleek fur. Both females: a sub-adult (or teenager) and a hefty old-timer, with distinguished white hairs, maybe 5ft 6in long. Theres times when I go out to pick up the animal and its still alive, said Williams. Thats what I bring the aluminium bat for. Life is a powerful force. He maintains that clubbing is a really efficient way of killing something, especially if you do it right, you club it in the head.

He grabbed the otters by the scruff and dropped them in the skiff. One had blood on its whiskers, and its eyes were filling up with blood. Williams guided the Jenna into a sheltered bay of foam-flecked green water and towering spruces, known as Pirates Cove. On this cold cobble beach, Williams would do the skinning. Blood dripped on his waders as he pulled the corpses onshore. Then he lifted each otters maw in turn and gave the dead their last drink of water, following an old Yupik custom he learned from an anthropologists study. The idea is that spending their life in the salt water, they get really thirsty, he told me later. If they know that the hunter will give them their last drink of water, theyll give their life to the hunter. The spirit of the animal, reincarnated in another body, will visit the hunter again. Williams took a swig of water himself.

I dont really like to do it, said Williams not of the skinning, but of the plastic gloves he was pulling on to do it because of the disconnection. But he wasnt taking any chances: some months earlier he had contracted seal finger, an infection common among people who handle the bones or pelts of seals. First his left thumb blew up like a balloon; he went on antibiotics for months; then came the tingling, the burning feet, insomnia, pain in every joint a possible autoimmune reaction. Work had become almost impossible, whether hunting, designing, or sewing. Still, he had little choice but to continue. Deep in debt, Williams had managed to network, charm, and spend his way into a foothold during New York fashion week in February. Living well below the poverty line, he saw it as his last, best shot to get his business off the ground. Fashion week was less than a month away, and he had a to-do list 37 items long.

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Why would anyone want to shoot a sea otter?

Tree Pruning Services Enhance Your Landscape

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Tree Pruning Services - Tree Trimming and Tree Care Services

Feb. 17, 2015, 4 a.m.

The paulownia trees in the car park of the Bathurst Library have grown too big for their boots.

WRONG CHOICE: Damage to the car park of the Bathurst Library caused by paulownia trees.

THE paulownia trees in the car park of the Bathurst Library have grown too big for their boots.

They have been maturing into large specimens for the past 20 years, giving much-needed shade to vehicles at the popular public facility off Keppel Street. However, their days now appear to be numbered.

Although the trees are in good health, it turns out theyre now not suited to that type of location with their invasive roots damaging the sealed road pavement and ripping gutters apart.

After receiving several complaints from users of the library about the problem, Bathurst Regional Council has now decided its time to act.

A report to tomorrow nights ordinary monthly meeting for February details the saga of the paulownia trees.

It recommends the trees be removed from the car park ahead of the restoration of the road pavement and concrete kerbing around the traffic islands.

There are also plans to upgrade all garden bed areas, incorporating new shade tree plantings, associated shrubs and ground covers.

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Council gets to root of library car park mess

Brugmansia or angel's trumpet. Photo: Robin Powell

Plant common names are annoyingly imprecise but they often capture the appeal of a plant better than their real names. Take Brugmansia, better known as angel's trumpet. For once this isn't a case of common hyperbole. The flowers really are the size of a trumpet, albeit a small one, and have an angelic elegance about them. Some even have petals that curve upwards in slender, wing-likeribbons. The flowers are so lovely it seems a shame their real name comes from a Dutch physician, Sebald Justinus Brugmans, who was an expert in the treatment of gangrene.

While Brugmansia have nothing to do with gangrene, they do serve as medicine for indigenous people in Central and South America. They are used as medicine; in negotiations with the spirit world; and in what ethnobotanists describe as "chemically-triggered ethno-psychotherapy". All parts of the plants are poisonous, and they contain psychoactive substances. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in what is now Bogota, Colombia, in 1537, the locals drugged them with a Brugmansia-laced drink, and sent them all into wild hallucinations. Attempts by Australians to experiment with this aspect of the plant (median age 18, 82 per cent male) have led to hospitalisation for tachycardia and delirium, with associated accidental injury.

The history and cultural uses of the plant are fascinating (find out more in Huanduj: Brugmansia, written by Australian expert Alistair Hay and published by Florilegium) but the best reason to grow is that it is a fantastic adornment for Sydney gardens. Every drenching rain is followed a few weeks later by an amazing show of flowers that covers the whole plant. In my frost-free garden, Brugmansias flower all year, or until I prune them. They are apt to drop leaves and flowers when the chill sets in and are at their dramatic best now and into autumn. The most common form is apricot, though there are also white, gold and any number of shades of pink. Bees love them and a big shrub in full bloom is abuzz with action.

Brugmansia can be grown as a multi-stemmed shrub, or trained to a single stem like a small tree. They can be pruned and kept to a desired size or left alone, save for the removal of dead growth and rubbing branches. You can arrange for a canopy of flower atop a border, or for flowers right down to ground level, depending on how you use the secateurs from early in the plant's life. They need sun for good flowering, and though a hot summer afternoon will make them limp they'll bounce back at dusk. As night falls they will start to release their perfume, which given their common name, I just have to describe as heavenly.

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Angel's trumpet is heavenly

Part one of this series was titled, Fall Yard Care; Lawn & Leaves. Still within the realm of nature, this second article will focus on fall care of your trees and shrubs. Trees and shrubs in our yards and outdoor rooms are landscape specimens to be shown off and admired. Dont forget to protect these lovely focal points in your yardscapes by doing a bit of autumn maintenance.

Autumn is just about the best time to plant or transplant a shrub or tree. This is the time of year when a tree or shrub naturally stops expending energy to produce leaves, flowers or fruit, and transfers that energy to the development of its root system. Considering that when you first plant (or transplant) any living thing, it needs to get its feet firmly established in the ground before it starts showing off, the timing of a new planting in fall is perfect. Your new tree or shrub will also do better in autumn because it wont have the stress of scorching summer heat and soil that constantly dries out. Just one caveat. Dont forget to use a nice thick layer of shredded leaves or mulch around the base (but not touching the bark) of your fall transplants, especially if you live in an area where the ground freezes and thaws throughout the winter. The expansion and contraction of the soil that occurs with freezing and thawing of the ground will play havoc with new roots that are trying to take hold, and in severe cases could even kill your specimen

You definitely want to trim your trees and shrubs in the autumn. What you dont want to do is prune them.

Pruning your trees and shrubs in the fall is discouraged for a couple of reasons. First, in the fall, many shrubs have already formed the buds that will flower in the spring. If you prune them now, youll destroy the shrubs ability to show off any color next year. In addition, pruning now will delay the hardening off process that some trees and shrubs must go through before winter, making them susceptible to various cold weather injuries and desiccation.

To trim your trees and shrubs properly in the fall, you want to thin them, not shape them. Deadwood is pretty easy to spot at this time of year, and should be removed by cutting down close to the branch or trunk from which it begins. If you cant tell whether a branch or twig is dead, just scratch it a bit. If its green (wick) inside, its alive. If its grey (wood), then, well . . . you get it. You might also want to remove branches that cross and rub against one another you only need to remove one, (the least healthy) not both of these. Dont forget those suckers! These persistent pests are aptly named, as they suck the nutrients from healthy limbs. Be sure to cut them down to where they start.

As long as the ground is not frozen, you still need to provide your trees and shrubs with water. In the early fall, water your trees every couple of weeks, and keep in mind that new plantings need more frequent watering. Unless your shrubs are newly planted or wilting, they can go without the extra watering autumn rains will take care of them.

By mid-October, you can stop watering your trees and shrubs so that they can harden off by winter. When all the leaves have fallen from the deciduous trees, give all your trees and shrubs one last deep watering. Set your hose at the base of the tree and run the water slowly just a trickle for several hours. Pay particular attention to your evergreens at this time. They dont go dormant during the winter like deciduous trees do, making the extra water particularly important for them. Keep in mind that if you have an unexpected mid-winter thaw, you should deep water your evergreens again during that time.

Whether you should fertilize your trees and shrubs in the autumn will depend on several factors. Well established trees and shrubs dont tend to need much fertilization. However if they are in any kind of mulch bed they can usually do with a few nutrients by fall. The decomposition of the mulch will have been depleting them all spring and summer long. If you really want to replace nutrients for your mature specimens in the fall, your autumn leaves can be shredded and spread underneath them. Their decomposition will release nutrients that your plants need.

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Fall Yard Care; Trees and Shrubs - My Yard Rocks ...

Looking for work? Check out the Times/Review classified section.

Looking for work, or know someone who is?

Times/Review classifieds offers local companies a place to advertise their job openings each week, and this week close to 50 positions are availablefrom plumbers, marine technicians to drivers.

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Check out the listings below:

BARTENDER: for local golf club. April-October. $15-plus/hour. Call Harry, 631-749-0416.

BARTENDER: Mature and experienced. Call Lennys, 631-722-8589.

BUS SERVICE POSITION: F/T. Sunrise Coach Lines, located in Greenport, is looking for a qualified self-starting person to service and clean our buses. CDL license preferred but will train the right person. Prior experience a plus. Union position with benefits. Please inquire, 631-477-1201. Ask for Jim or Karen.

CASE MANAGER: F/T, temporary through December 2015. For our bridges to family program located in Hauppauge, NY. BA in social work or related field and 1-year related experience required. MSW or related field and related experience preferred. Valid NYS drivers license required. Little Flower Children and Family Services in Wading River, N.Y. Send resume, wadingriver-jobs@lfchild.org or fax 631-929-6203 EOE.

CASE MANAGER SUPERVISOR: F/T, temporary through December 2015. For our bridges to family program located in Hauppauge, NY. BA in social work or related field and 5 years related experience required. MSW or related field and related experience preferred. Valid NYS drivers license required. Little Flower Children and Family Services in Wading River, N.Y. Send resume, wadingriver-jobs@lfchild.org or fax 631-929-6203. EOE

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With Dirr's Hardy Trees and Shrubs and Dirr's Trees and Shrubs for Warm Climates, Michael Dirr set the gold standard for horticultural reference. This season, Timber Press is proud to publish his seminal work, Dirr's Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs, the most comprehensive visual reference on this important subject. A combination of Dirr's bestselling books under one cover, adding new plants, new photographs, plus all new commentary in Dirr's signature style, it is the bible of woody plants.

From majestic evergreens to delicate vines and flowering shrubs, Dirr features thousands of plants and all the essential details for identification, planting, and care, plus full-color photographs showing a tree's habit in winter, distinctive bark patterns, fall color, and more. In a class by itself for its quality of information, the best researched recommendations for hardiness in the industry, beautiful photography, and Dirr's own preeminence as a master plantsman, Dirr's Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs is a critical addition to any garden library.

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Dirr's Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs: Michael A. Dirr ...