#dry plants

[whisperofherbs]

My botanical kitchen 🌾

[margocooper]

Заросли сухих трав на берегу реки. Начало ноября 24. Thickets of dry grass on the river bank. Beginning of November 24.

[blue-eyes-never-lie]

[im-ms-nerdy]

[k00323570]

I've collected some plants from around the area, which I plan to dry. Walking through the forest inspired me to make one of the miniature rooms forest or plant-themed, and I'm planning to use these plants as my primary reference.

[gustedesign]

Barely Controllable

[dilfslayer1080p]

"he died for our wins" - 2024, LIDL Oil paint on LIDL canvas

[geopsych]

We’re under water restrictions but so far the spring fed stream in the woods is still running. I saw birds drinking from it.

[jillraggett]

Plant of the Day

Sunday 17 November 2024

Opuntia engelmannii var. lindheimeri (prickly pear) was previously identified as Opuntia cantabrigiensis by Richard Lynch, Cambridge Botanic Garden Curator, in 1903. It has grown outside at the Botanic garden since it arrived in the late 1800’s. Here it was growing in the dry garden of the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Hyde Hall, Essex, where it forms a clump of prickly pads which produce pale yellow flowers.

Jill Raggett

[balkanradfem]

So, you might remember I started fixing my abandoned garden, and I said I was going to do it in small increments, and then I never said anything about it again. This is because, after I started doing it, suddenly the temperatures dropped below zero, and we had frost! This is appropriate in November, but it was so sudden I didn't expect it. I hadn't even planted garlic yet! And now it was too cold to work the soil. Oopsie.

However this morning I woke up, opened the window, and realized the southern wind was blowing, which means it got super warm! I immediately dressed up, grabbed my garlic, and went to the garden. I couldn't plant my garlic in the area I had already cleaned, because it's the outer area of the garden, and garlic is the #1 crop that gets stolen, so I have to plant it sneakily behind other things, invisible to prying eyes. That means I'd have to clear off another area. Here's what I'm dealing with today!

I know this looks like such a flop but honestly, this is so good for nature. All of the plants have lived their life cycle, housed little bugs and insects, produced flowers for the bees, and then got obliterated by the frost, as it should be. If I just left them be, they would slowly decompose into the soil and make it more fertile. It looks chaotic but nothing bad is going on here! I am going to make space now because there are some regulations for how community gardens should look like, and if one looks abandoned for too long, it gets taken away. I'm off to work :)

I've been working on this for 20 minutes and I found some produce in here!

I'm shocked there's a whole zucchini in there, even after the frost, I've never seen that. She's a bit of a weird texture, because she's gotten frozen, but otherwise looks good! Certainly the slugs love it. I also found a little potato plant, there could be potatoes underneath her. And in the third picture, I'm holding young garlic! I usually find this in the spring, it's interesting it's already so big, I love that.

Another little task I had planned was to find basil seeds; basil will usually grow flowers when it's allowed to grow naturally, and then the flowers create little seed packets inside of them, and after those get nice and dried up, they're ready to harvest. Here's how it looks like:

If I rubbed all those little pods together, I would be able to find tiny black-brown seeds in there! I used to do that before, extract all of the tiny seeds and store them, but later I got lazy and figured I can just save this entire mess and plant it and basil still germinates just the same.

An hour of work later, I have dug out a giant lemon balm plant out of the soil, because it was taking up too much space (no worries about her, she'll grow back in no time, they're immortal), and took out most of the grass, dead plants, and weeds. Here is the cleared garden!

I've freed two small kale plants that could still thrive during the winter, and there's a few brassicas that look willing to go to seed, which would be great for me to have more seeds from them. Now I can finally focus on the task I've come here for; to plant my garlic.

I made little holes with my spoon, and grabbed two biggest heads of garlic to plant the cloves. I'm not too fussed about it, as long as the bulbs are underground, you can't stop them from growing. If they're not in too deep, then it's easier to pull them out later! And my soil is more fertile on the surface as well. Usually during the winter, little rodends will dig a few of these out, to see if they're delicious, but when they realize it's not yummy, they just leave the bulbs on the top of soil. So I have to check on them a few times to make sure I plant them back! And they're so forgiving and strong, they just go right back to growing, bulbs are incredible.

I counted the garlic here, and there's 22 cloves, which should give me 22 heads of garlic in the late spring/early summer. I couldn't take any more pictures, because my hands were too muddy, but I planted additional two rows in a different location (in case thiefs find one location), and then I also had some of the 'spring garlic', which is a late variety, meaning it grows later, but lasts longer. Usually normal garlic will start sprouting in december, after which point it starts getting inedible, but late-variety garlic will stay fresh until spring. Planting garlic is so easy! The entire venture took me 15 minutes, and you could do this anywhere, and would be guaranteed some heads of garlic.

So watching these pictures you might think 'there's still so much weeds in here, you did not clear this off' and you're correct, I don't clear everything off! This is because I employ a different tactics in stopping weeds from growing; usually during the winter, I will cover the ground in a thick layer of dry leaves, so that light won't reach any of those weeds, and they stop growing just due to lack of sunlight. I'm not doing it this year because of one particular reason, and this reason is slugs. If I cover the ground in leaves now, they won't only protect it from the light, but also protect it from the cold. They'll prevent the ground from freezing as badly as it would usually freeze. And usually I love doing that, but this time, there are so many slugs in the ground that I want cold to eliminate. I'm going to leave my garden like this, and hope that we have an exceptionally cold winter and that slugs get deleted.

I planned to make a lentil soup today for lunch, so I'm grabbing some chives, and some kale to add to it! Kale is still thriving, and I'll be able to harvest it all winter. At this point I've been working for two hours and my pain started acting up, so I figured it was enough for today, and headed home. Here's all the stuff I brought home for lunch!

Zucchini, kale, potatoes, chives, young garlic. All great additions for my lentil soup! I love being able to get fresh food in November. The soup turned out amazing, I love lentils with potatoes and kale and garlic.

[seabeck]

From today!

Left to right: either a chocolate lily or a speckled (probably the latter), a gall (I got an ID on it but idr), aster (not blooming but maybe soon?), pacific sideband, a big carpenter ant (a guard/drone), variegated trailing blackberry, beetle, dense flowered rein orchid (finally got an ID!!), ground cone (parasitic plant)

[whisperofherbs]

Crown of summer

[margocooper]

Сухие травы вдоль грунтовой дороги под пасмурным осенним небом. Ноябрь 24. Dry grasses along a dirt road under a cloudy autumn sky. November 24.

[nikswonderland]

bujo by me !

[im-ms-nerdy]

•Foggy day in the fields•

[housecow]

Have you ever accidently dropped a fossile?

haha omg i used to work in collections and let me tell you. YES. so many echinoids and mollusks… thankfully though they’re not hard to glue back together so it’s never much of an issue!!