FredL

Ouch!! Leesa, you just poked me in my Achiles heel!

You are Soooo right! Quality counts and I am a compulsive gatherer of indifferent material, seeds, end-of-season cats and dogs at Wamart etc, etc, etc. What am I to do! Is there a 12 step program for people like me! I find myself full of dreams for every seedling or budding stump I see in the roadway here and I just can't stop gathering seeds of every tree I see in the Fall, even those of the most questionable merits as bonsai!

Well hopefully, I'll soon reach some sort of limit that even I can see there is no further payoff in collecting every dying seedling that Nature clearly intends a swift and merciful end to.

On a more positive note, you know, I really am pleased with the progress many of my bedraggled little orphans have made in just one year, A number of year-old Hop Hornbeam seedlings I collected a year ago last Fall are now 2 - and really looking kind of nice! I can really imagine them developing into something in 3-4 years. Four little J. procumbence (2 "nana", 2 "Green Mound") that I bought in 1 Gallon cans at Walmart last Spring and left in their cans have grown quite a bit, and with a year or two more in grow beds and then into grow boxes look to be pretty promising. And so on.

I think my condition is somewhat "self-limiting". I expect to gather a few more trees from the wild this Spring, but to be much more selective now that I have about 80 pots, boxes and cans with material in them. And to work with the material I have. If some of it gets discarded in the process........well, it got to live longer than it probably would have before I collected it!

Best regards, Fred