Did a long, hot day at the farm. It's warm enough all the reptiles are moving around a lot. Saw a spotted king snake, a ribbon snake, and a broad-head skink.
All were using our dead hedges for habitat. Even though we're changing the landscape, we're maintaining biodiversity, which makes me happy.
Fave stetch of spring in garden
Cool damp weather has all the greens popping.
Image Description: at center is Lady's Mantle, just blooming yellow flower above flat leaves, with dark red astilbe to left, also just about to bloom, with drooping Solomons Seal, back center and the loveliest white Siberia iris about to bloom in back left
A neighbor very kindly offered me the contents of his compost pile which I gladly accepted and used to finish off mulching around the tomato plants. I gave him a head of lettuce in return for two carts of compost. What a deal! 😀 #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening #compost
Well, as I said a few days ago, as an experiment I stopped cutting off the flower stalks of the very mature rhubarb I have and this is the result. It's teeming with hover flies and other small flying insects that I could not identify. #BloomScrolling of a sort! #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening
43 #tomatoes in. Bring the rain. Didn’t have the energy to tackle the #peppers. Maybe Wednesday between rainy days. The #fennel is the best looking I’ve ever grown. #BokChoy is bolting. 2/3 of the #broccoli starts have croaked. But, speaking of croaking, I encountered two adorable wee #toads that made me glad I was there. ❤️ Bless their warty little souls! Sorry no pix because gloves and chicken poo fertilizer and just hot and tired. #gardening#OrganicGardening#GrowYourOwn#SeedToTable
I talked with @ruby about doing this recently but I'm only now getting around to posting about this:
Fedi folks who are into #gardening#plants#peppers etc.! We are looking for folks to participate in a Fediverse-based Pepper in a Can challenge!
The Pepper in a Can challenge is simple: between February 11th and September 30th, you grow a pepper plant (your choice of pepper) in a 12oz (or smaller) drinking can, like a standard soda can. Starting October 1st, everyone shares their best can and everyone votes on their favorite (More detailed rules in a followup post).
The only problem with the original Pepper In A Can competition? It takes place via Facebook, which is something a lot of fedi folks are not particularly fond of! So, we thought it'd be fun to run a fedi-specific offshoot of this contest.
Because it is already mid May, we are thinking of this year as "Year 0". If you can start a pepper in a can now, go for it! If not, catch us next year! This will also serve as a trial run to figure out the best way to go about the voting. Because of the way federation happens on here, it may not be as straightforward as just "most likes in a thread" being the way to judge this (and frankly with the way Facebook works I'm not so sure about this method there either lol). So we'll get creative and come up with the best way to go about the voting sometime between now and October. This is the "let's figure out how to do this" year to hopefully set us up for a solid Year 1 next year.
The plan is to use the hashtag #PepperInACan for this, it's encouraged to post progress pictures as you go (and that's some of the most fun stuff anyway).
Yesterday was our garden club's plant sale. We have held this event every year for 25 years (other than during COVID). It's a totally crazy thing as nearly all the plants come from our members' gardens. We pot up plants they donate (usually as they are splitting them for maintenance) throughout April and a few members grow from seed (mostly tomatoes and peppers). These photos are from just before opening including the line up of customers. 🙂 #gardening@gardening
I built this "Little Free Art Gallery" for my wife a few years ago. She's turned into a prolific artist over the years and creates way more art than our house can handle, and she's run out of friends to gift them to. So now she can give her art away to the neighborhood.
Hello little friend! This ladybug investigated my giant swiss chard quite thoroughly before settling in a leaf curl. #gardening#insects#ladybug@gardening
#today I got my garden cart back from the neighbors so I was able to move all of my mature compost and use it to mulch around my tomato plants. This used up all the compost that I currently have, so the remaining area will be mulched with a mixture of leaf mold and grass clippings over the course of the season as they become available. While I was doing that, #BeetBear spent some time with his beet crop, cultivating and weeding. 😀 #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland @gardening
Up bright and early (as always… can’t sleep!) to go so the same: I’ve used one compost bin hut pretty sure the other will be full of black gold if I turn it so that’s where I’m going right now…
Up bright and early (as always… can’t sleep!) to go do the same: I’ve used one compost bin but pretty sure the other will be full of black gold if I turn it so that’s where I’m going right now…
Any recommendations for books with just beautiful pictures of gardens? Wilder the better? I'm looking for inspiration 🤩 Pacific Northwest specific would be amazing but open to whatever.
@Christine_Broesenhuber I know it! Two of my squashes have been munched overnight... little feckers! I use wool pellets where I expect trouble and they seem to be effective
I’ve just turned over a compost heap and then planted out an overgrown cork oak. I bought it as a novelty about 4 inches high. It’s been 6 ft and pot bound for a couple of years, and while I definitely do not want a full size cork oak in my garden, pruning is my friend. The hole for the oak was under two old stumps. Took off the first one and my mollusc problem was exposed! Took a bucket of them to the nearby field…
Good morning, Friday! The first of the new geraniums to be what it was meant to be. Meet Birch's Double. Does a good imitation of an African violet with the bloom. #gardening@gardening
I’ve got a recurrence again this year of what looks like a fungal disease on my purple sprouting broccoli: anyone know what it is? And can I compost it?
@PostcardsFromParadise If I touch them, a fine white powder clouds off them... I've seen it previously and it comes when the brocolli is pretty much done anyway so not the end of the world in a sense. But I don't want to be building up a bad fungus by being slow to deal, if I ought to...