Sedum, the September wildlife crowd-pleaser. Grown from a gift from my neighbour Tommy when we lived in Dublin. It's all over the garden now and it reminds me of him every time.
have you ever had an orange/jamaican lilikoi (passiflora laurifolia)?
they're quite different from yellow/purple passionfruit. the shell is soft-ish. the inside is mild & perfumed. not sour at all.
they have beautiful purple flowers & cover everything (like other passionfruit). it seems like the flowers & fruits only occur on the "outside" of the plant curtain, so maybe i should thin it out a bit to get more fruit..
One of many reasons we bought the property next door is that it will afford me space and earth for a vegetable garden. 1st photo: most of the current vegetable garden at the bottom of a long driveway. 2nd photo: behind the ugly fence that will come down one of these days, the flat, sunny area that will soon be weedwhacked and buried in cardboard, compost, leaves, and straw to gestate during the winter into beautiful #gardening@gardening space.
Only a quick visit last night from the fox kit. @margaretgarigan referred to her as intrepid, which is very apt, so she now has a name. Not sure where the rest of Interpid's family is, as she looks a little young to have ditched mom, but maybe not. (As you can see, we still have piles of gravel, but the guys are here working today, so maybe this particular mini-hell will end, too.) #wildlife#fox#gardening@gardening
2 self seeders in bloom at the old place. The vine in unknown, as we've grown squash, cucumber, & pumpkins. The other is a white nicotiana. #gardening@gardening
Had to let the cleaners in at the old place & my fav rose was in bloom. It was on the edge of death when we moved in, having had the last rites, but over the years, it regained its will to live. Much smaller than the others, of course, I was tempted to dig it up & steal it, as it'd been so neglected before. But I didn't. However today, I broke off a cutting, just in case. Never wanted to before, as it was so small, but last chance & all. We'll see. #gardening@gardening
Should I mow the wild lawn or leave it?
I usually mow it for the winter but I'm wondering. Is there benefit to leaving it? Would I be able to mow before the spring flowers started? #gardening@gardening
Fox Kit's so curious about our mud room non-secure door, we put down a door stop. After it scratched to get in last night, I moved the wildlife cam to film the mudroom. This caught the kit's attention & after this first encounter, it kept coming back until the camera ended up in the middle of the garden. The only thing that saved the camera from further migration was being strapped to a stake which spooked the kit. It kept visiting the cam until nearly 5am. #wildlife#fox#gardening@gardening
I make my final push this month to clear these areas of invasives and start prepping them for fruit trees, berries, grapes and their companions.
It doesn't look like much pictured from above - and without having a comparable before image - but we've been at it since March and it feels, finally, like the home stretch.
@plants@nature#FlowersOnFriday#InsectFriday#FlyDay
This week saw days of 10-25C, nights 0 to 10C, some rainy days. The coming week is forecast for low 20sC, nights 2-7C- sounds like typical fall weather! Sunny days should be good for farmers with crops to harvest.
This week is #autumn#blues (okay, you know I grew up calling these purple, now I might say lavender or violet!) but we're still in the #pink too! #bloomscrolling#florespondence
@plants@nature
Top left- rebloom on Geranium himalayense with #bumblebee Right- native aster Canadanthus modestus in the #bush with bumblebee #WildflowerHour Centre, Achillea/Yarrow cultivars/hybrids mainly flower earlier, though there are always a few..there is another notable wave in late summer/early autumn, #gardening
continued-
Found this great #opensource#plants maintenance app called Florae. It's #android only. Since #ios notifications are appearantly a pain in the butt. The app provides reminders for when to water on fertilize your plants and is available on the play store and #fdroid. @plants#gardening
any tips for fertilizing plants that are mostly or entirely in the air?
i have some #vanilla plants that are crawling their way through the forest. i have no idea where they touch the ground, but they have plenty of air roots.
i was thinking of fertilizing them, but realized i don't know what to do. maybe a mist or spray bottle? but then what goes in the bottle? at what concentration?
Joy takes Root is a mesmerizing picture book sharing the love of family, gardening and the respect of Nature, Earth and Ancestors. In her grandmother's garden, a young Black girl learns about mindfulness and herbal medicine in this soothing intergenerational story about our connection to nature.
TL;DR: Is germination rate a good indicator of edibility?
I found a long forgotten bag of checkpeas at the back of my cupboard the other day, the best before date surpassed by at least half a year.
I also had a strangely empty pot with soil that had bothered me for some time, and I decided to sow a small handful of chickpeas to see if they were still alive — which they were (of course): without counting before or after, I'd say that most of the chickpeas germinated withing just a few days.
I made a batch of cranberry blondies that were delicious. All gone now! 😋
So this made me wonder: Completely disregarding the best before date, would you say that a high germination rate could be a good indicator for edibility? I mean, if the seeds are still alive and able to germinate into healthy looking seedlings, their combined biochemistry cannot be off by a lot, right?
I could be a littler worried about rancid fatty acids, but it's not like chickpeas have a lot of fatty acids (dry ~6%, canned ~2.5%), and wouldn't a viable seeds have mechanisms for preventing those fatty acids from going all rancid?
[Thread moved from the Vegan group because it is no longer about edibility]
Have you guys ever tried sowing chickpeas?
Less than one and half month ago I did, in order to see if a bag of “expired” chickpeas were still viable. Today the plants are ~40 cm tall and I have seen the first flower. Amazing metabolism! In a warm climate it must be possible to harvest chickpeas at least two or three times annually.