Marigold update 🌺 They are in ❗️ The tagettes and marigolds have been planted in the large greenhouse. We plant in clumps and they have always done well ✅ Hopefully they will be three or four times the size by the time we plant the tomatoes 🍅 #Allotment#Gardening#GrowYourOwn#Today
Tulip Heaven at Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania ~
<The Tulip was actually originally a wild flower growing in Central Asia. It was first cultivated by the Turks as early as 1000AD. Mania in Turkey struck in the 16th century, at the time of the Ottoman Empire, when the Sultan demanded cultivation of particular blooms for his pleasure.>
Photo Credit: Scott Hummel #Flowers#Tulips#Garden#Gardening#Photography
A lovely close up of one of my Orchids. I only have two, but I love them immensely. Such an incredible gift from nature! Take some time to appreciate the flowers of the earth. They always make you smile!
Back to cleaning out my folder of over 2,000 unsorted photos. I was so mad at this little dude last year for hurting my Meyer lemon, but being too pretty to hate. #nature#gardening#insects
Here’s why we should stop weeding. "Many of our weeds are intricate parts of the food web. They flower at the right time of year to be important sources of pollen and nectar for pollinators, and their leaves, roots and seeds act as larval food for other insects."
Last toot for today 😮 The marigolds are being planted tomorrow in the large greenhouse. They’ll sit in front of the tomato plants 🍅 Doing them now they’ll have time to settle in before the tomatoes are ready to go in 😊#Allotment#Gardening#GrowYourOwn#Today
Asparagus update 😊 Three of the five stations have thrown garlic spears up at last in the lower more shaded second bed. Just two stations to go ❗️The first bed has loads of asparagus, too much to keep up with at times 😮 #Allotment#Gardening#GrowYourOwn#Today
They’ll be fine 👍 The overwintered garlic 🧄 in the long bed always struggles this time I of the year. Yellow leaves 🍂 suggest lots of things - under and over watered - too little or too much feed - too hot ❗️ By June they’ll be sound. The spare garlic 🧄 we planted in February (in the strawberry beds) are green and lush…….. #Allotment#Gardening#GrowYourOwn#Today
I FINALLY got my tomato starts in yesterday after all of this unusually cold weather and there will now be a short heat wave for the next 3 days 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
THEN the temp will drop 30 degrees and maybe lightening storms. This is getting quite frustrating.
Good luck little friends! I did put up an umbrella to shade them from them the afternoon heat, I hope that will be enough.
Made plant markers for the garden. Printed them in #PETG. No idea how these are going to hold up…I’m not expecting much. I don’t have the setup or the materials for ABS but if I like these maybe that’s where I’ll go next.
My strawberries don’t seem to have minded the light frosts of the last few nights, they’re growing rapidly. Potatoes looking rough but there’s enough foliage that the damaged tops have protected the lower leaves so hopefully they’ll make it #gardening#southyorkshire
Milkweed, plant it once and you never have to plant again. I cut mine back in the fall and it comes back every spring.
I have an entire bed for Monarchs and pollinators, I’ve already had a Swallowtail stop by this week 💛
In the fall there are Monarch chrysalis EVERYWHERE in my garden. I love it!
How to cut your lawn and give space to native animals and plants - my landlady's garden here in Ireland! She only mows a small path so she can reach everything (this is the apple tree garden).The rest will grow high during summer and will become a beautiful meadow.
Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO) are captured & cultured by burying a box of cooked rice in the ground surrounded by leaf litter and fungal matter. White fuzz forms on the rice , this is IMO#1, add this to brown sugar and ferment it & you have a refrigerator stable IMO#2.
I added a tablespoon of IMO#2 to approx each 15 L of rainwater and mixed into bran until I had the right moisture level (i.e. when I squeezed the bran in my hand I had one or two drips of water between my fingers).
I used 35 kgs of bran. This should now heat up to 40°-50°C, will need turning to avoid going hotter. In a week this should be covered in white fuzz (IMO#3). 🤞
I’ll then add equal quantity of soil to the bran and again this should grow a white fuzz in a week. This will be IMO#4 and the end of the process. This can be stored and used as a biologically rich soil amendment.
That’s the IMO#3. Nine days in the temperature is now falling below 40°C it’s maintained a high enough (I hope) heat and I’ve just peeled back the hay outer layer for a peek and look at all that white fuzz!
Today has to be IMO#4 making day. It’s the only chance I have in the coming days to do so. I’ll take it all up to the allotment this morning and mix it with an equal quantity of soil and compost, adding litres of rainwater and some FPJ, humic acid, basalt & gypsum, crushed eggshell, brown rice vinegar, vermicast, dried kelp and anything else rich in biology I have to hand.