November, 25, 2023

On and off all summer and fall we have been clearing out a mess of cedar trees with a large dead one in the midst of it. When we started the idea was to plant more native type wildflowers and hopefully the bees would find them. If not, other pollinators and butterflies would definitely use it.

This idea changed after visiting Battlefield Lavender located near Centralia, MO. This place is amazing. They are open year-round. While there you can visit the store, walk through the lavender field, and, in season, pick some to take home. The store has more lavender products that I knew existed.

During the winter months, they distill their lavender into essential oil. We hope to visit during one of the distillation demonstrations.

On top of all that, they have at least six bee hives that you can observe.

We spent a lot of time with Jason Lockwood – one of the owners. After he learned we were beekeepers and might be interested in growing lavender, he gave us a lot of information that we hope to put to good use.

With this information in hand, we decided a better use for this soon-to-be cleared space would be a lavender garden.

After a little research, we found that lavender is fairly easy to propagate from cuttings. The instructions basically said to cut off a piece of lavender, pull off the lower leaves, dip in a root stimulate, and place in potting soil. So, even though it was very late in the season and there had been one light frost, we decided to try and took several cuttings from the plants we have in the Rose Garden. The worst that would happen is the cuttings do not grow.

We had to obtain a few things. We found some RootBoost at Ace Hardware. We had a set of Burpee Seed Starting Trays (paid link) from last year that were in great shape. And then bought a Desk Grow Light (paid link). To put the grow light on a timer, we bought this Matter enabled Smart Switch (paid link) and paired it with Home Assistant.

Before the grow light arrived, we had started the cuttings. For the first few weeks they looked like they were going to make it, but now we think they have all dried up. It was an experiment and failure can be expected.

Now the hard work begins. Most of the trees are cedar — meaning very messy to cut. Small limbs get in the way, stuff flakes off, but at least it smells good. There is one rather large dead tree that will have to be dealt with – this won’t be fun.

The cedar tree went down fairly easy.

I did manage to get the saw unstuck.

The last tree

The last tree had been dead for several years and many pieces had broke off. Looking these over I saw the wood was either going to be rock hard or mush with little to no warning.

I was not disappointed. The tree put up a fight. In places the wood was so hard that sparks flew off the chain – even though it was well oiled. In other places the wood fell apart so quick I almost lost my footing.

Since I had really bad footing and no good position to do a “normal” cut, I decided to to a V cut and push it over.

We’re glad this part of the task is over. Linda spent the next few days cleaning up the brush and I rested my back.

Still have to rake it off and probably till it in. Waiting for spring for this to happen.

Last modified: