We are located in northern Arkansas between Bull Shoals Lake and Norfork Lake in Zone 6b. Our last frost in the Spring is usually about April 10th. and we normally don’t experience our first freeze until about the first of December.
With our long hot growing season we do some things a little different than is often recomended for those north of here. For example, we don’t use sand as a medium for rooting cuttings. We start right out using a potting mixture of peat, perlite and shredded pine bark. To this mixture we add one cup of 14-14-14 slow release fertilizer per 30 gallons of mix. We start our first cuttings in the middle of May, under intermittant mist, which are usually rooted in 3 to 5 weeks, then the fertilizer kicks in and releases over a 3 to 4 month period which promotes fast growth for the rest of the summer. We don’t crowd our cuttings. We start them in 2.5 inch form pots or spaced 2 inches apart in trays. By September we must start selling the plants or re-pot them into larger pots to avoid root bound conditions.
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