Orders will start shipping in May, 2011.
Shipping is $7.95 / first item, $1.00 / each additional item.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
SmokeysDaylilyGardens
Spring is almost here!
Orders will start shipping in May, 2011.
Shipping is $7.95 / first item, $1.00 / each additional item.
Orders will start shipping in May, 2011.
Shipping is $7.95 / first item, $1.00 / each additional item.
Be Down-To-Earth Beautiful With Apple Cider Vinegar
People have been using natural apple cider vinegar for centuries as both food and medicine. In 400BC, Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, used apple cider vinegar mixed with honey, as an energizing tonic and a healing elixir.
It’s probably the first natural medicine known to man.
Born in 1906, my grandmother used diluted apple cider vinegar to treat any common cut, blister, sore, or abrasion. From upset stomachs to sunburn to swimmers ear, my grandmother would run for the apple cider vinegar and cure these everyday ailments quickly and effectively.
It’s probably the first natural medicine known to man.
Born in 1906, my grandmother used diluted apple cider vinegar to treat any common cut, blister, sore, or abrasion. From upset stomachs to sunburn to swimmers ear, my grandmother would run for the apple cider vinegar and cure these everyday ailments quickly and effectively.
Are you ready to garden?
Will you join me in welcoming back the Guardian gardening blog? After a hiatus - during which time I got my first shed, planted my first green roof and had a baby - I am back in my stripy deckchair at Guardian Towers,
committed to bringing you the very best blogging about gardens, gardening, plants and all things horticultural. And all just in time for Easter, the traditional time to get out in the garden and start growing.
Rock Dust For Bigger, Better-Tasting Veggies & Showier Flowers
The use of rock dust in the garden is not new. It is over 420 million years old to be exact!
Rock dust contains two thirds of all non-synthetic minerals known to man, and is a natural method of adding essential trace elements to your soil.
Benefits include high yields, tastier fruit and vegetables and increased resistance to pests and drought.
A Scottish couple discovered that if they added crushed rock dust to their garden, the resultant produce had ten times the nutrients of store bought ones.
Rock dust contains two thirds of all non-synthetic minerals known to man, and is a natural method of adding essential trace elements to your soil.
Benefits include high yields, tastier fruit and vegetables and increased resistance to pests and drought.
A Scottish couple discovered that if they added crushed rock dust to their garden, the resultant produce had ten times the nutrients of store bought ones.
Trees as Time Capsule
I romanticize about gardening and landscaping sometimes, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I often fantasize about what impact I can leave on this world, what I can build that will exist after I am gone.
Trees live for hundreds or thousands of years, and since they reseed, your actions in planting a tree, even if the tree doesn’t live that long, can affect the environment for, well, forever so long as man doesn’t get in the way.
There is a small public wetlands/park area by my house, it is public land and is completely enclosed on all sides by development. It is probably about 1 square mile and is trisected by walking paths. I’ve planted wild flowers back there before, and I know other locals have too, even a few trees. Some guy has put up bird houses. The people who live by it tend to take care of it.
It is the perfect place for bald cypresses, none of which grow near it, and which are beautiful trees that get quite large, and can live a long time. I know they can live in this climate, there is one in town someone has in their yard that is probably approaching 70 feet. I bought some seeds on eBay that I will start them into the Spring after I have given them the necessary cold treatment. Then, one they’re growing, next summer or fall, I will transplant them back into that area and pray the couple deer don’t eat them.
I won’t live in this area forever, I’ll probably move in 5 years, so I won’t get to enjoy the trees once they grow (if they grow) but someone will, and the animals will. In a hundred years, I will be gone, but those trees could still be there, and people may wonder how bald cypresses ended up growing there East Lansing Michigan. Well world, it was me, I did it.
My parents live a few hours north of me in a rural area and live more or less in the middle of the woods. There are a lot of deer, a lot of deer, rabbits, turkeys, opossums, raccoons, all the woodland animals. But not a lot of squirrels. There are also no oak trees in their forest. I have no idea why, but there isn’t. They have a lot of birch, of poplar, of hemlock, fir, and spruce, but no oaks. Meanwhile, down here in the suburbs where oaks have been prolifically planted, we have squirrels all over the place. I have always thought it was odd that more squirrels should live in the suburbs (where they get routinely flattened) than in the forest.
So I collected a bunch of acorns and sent them up for my brother who still lives at home to plant. Trees grown from seed always grow faster, especially initially, than those grafted. Additionally, with oaks, when grown from an acorn they have a better chance of growing a good taproot, thus being stronger and harder to uproot. To plant them you just pretend you’re a squirrel and dig down 2 or 3 inches and drop them in like you’re hoarding for winter (the same deal with walnut or pecan). Not all will grow, but some will, and if they mature they will be the first oaks in the forest, perhaps eventually spreading and colonizing more areas. The trees will provide habitat, and the acorns food for many forest animals.
The squirrel population will explode.
It will be many years before that happens, the house may still be in my family, though, and even if it isn’t, the oaks will be providing wildlife habitat, I will have changed the local ecosystem like Johnny Appleseed, the effects of which could be felt for hundreds or thousands of years.
I’m sure there are some people who think “interfering” in nature is wrong, but I’m not one of them, if I want to plant a tree I’ll do it, it isn’t as if I’m planting something invasive. They may not naturally grow in the area, but they wouldn’t be wholly out of place. It is one way I can change the future, and I think that is pretty cool.
There is a small public wetlands/park area by my house, it is public land and is completely enclosed on all sides by development. It is probably about 1 square mile and is trisected by walking paths. I’ve planted wild flowers back there before, and I know other locals have too, even a few trees. Some guy has put up bird houses. The people who live by it tend to take care of it.
It is the perfect place for bald cypresses, none of which grow near it, and which are beautiful trees that get quite large, and can live a long time. I know they can live in this climate, there is one in town someone has in their yard that is probably approaching 70 feet. I bought some seeds on eBay that I will start them into the Spring after I have given them the necessary cold treatment. Then, one they’re growing, next summer or fall, I will transplant them back into that area and pray the couple deer don’t eat them.
I won’t live in this area forever, I’ll probably move in 5 years, so I won’t get to enjoy the trees once they grow (if they grow) but someone will, and the animals will. In a hundred years, I will be gone, but those trees could still be there, and people may wonder how bald cypresses ended up growing there East Lansing Michigan. Well world, it was me, I did it.
My parents live a few hours north of me in a rural area and live more or less in the middle of the woods. There are a lot of deer, a lot of deer, rabbits, turkeys, opossums, raccoons, all the woodland animals. But not a lot of squirrels. There are also no oak trees in their forest. I have no idea why, but there isn’t. They have a lot of birch, of poplar, of hemlock, fir, and spruce, but no oaks. Meanwhile, down here in the suburbs where oaks have been prolifically planted, we have squirrels all over the place. I have always thought it was odd that more squirrels should live in the suburbs (where they get routinely flattened) than in the forest.
So I collected a bunch of acorns and sent them up for my brother who still lives at home to plant. Trees grown from seed always grow faster, especially initially, than those grafted. Additionally, with oaks, when grown from an acorn they have a better chance of growing a good taproot, thus being stronger and harder to uproot. To plant them you just pretend you’re a squirrel and dig down 2 or 3 inches and drop them in like you’re hoarding for winter (the same deal with walnut or pecan). Not all will grow, but some will, and if they mature they will be the first oaks in the forest, perhaps eventually spreading and colonizing more areas. The trees will provide habitat, and the acorns food for many forest animals.
The squirrel population will explode.
It will be many years before that happens, the house may still be in my family, though, and even if it isn’t, the oaks will be providing wildlife habitat, I will have changed the local ecosystem like Johnny Appleseed, the effects of which could be felt for hundreds or thousands of years.
I’m sure there are some people who think “interfering” in nature is wrong, but I’m not one of them, if I want to plant a tree I’ll do it, it isn’t as if I’m planting something invasive. They may not naturally grow in the area, but they wouldn’t be wholly out of place. It is one way I can change the future, and I think that is pretty cool.
Fargesia Nitida Bamboo is Flowering.
Now, up where I live, there is only one bamboo that can really grow. Fargesia Nitida, a clumping Chinese mountain bamboo that is hardy to zone 5.
The thing about bamboo, it doesn’t flower, it doesn’t flower for decades, a century, then it flowers and dies. this makes it very very very hard to hybridize bamboo because the generation period is so long.
It also has a bit of a plant memory, when you take a clone, a cutting, from bamboo, it isn’t “born again” it is the same age as the original. So my 6 or 7 year old clump of Fargesia Nitida, which was finally getting big, was really like 100 years old since it was an original from the first discovered clump. I knew this was possible, because Fargesia Nitidas have been flowering worldwide in recent years, but I was hoping…
Anyways, so now it will die, because once bamboos flower, they die. The seeds can be valuable though, because, they’re a once in a 100 year harvest. But I will have to start all over again, and that does kind of suck.
The thing about bamboo, it doesn’t flower, it doesn’t flower for decades, a century, then it flowers and dies. this makes it very very very hard to hybridize bamboo because the generation period is so long.
It also has a bit of a plant memory, when you take a clone, a cutting, from bamboo, it isn’t “born again” it is the same age as the original. So my 6 or 7 year old clump of Fargesia Nitida, which was finally getting big, was really like 100 years old since it was an original from the first discovered clump. I knew this was possible, because Fargesia Nitidas have been flowering worldwide in recent years, but I was hoping…
Anyways, so now it will die, because once bamboos flower, they die. The seeds can be valuable though, because, they’re a once in a 100 year harvest. But I will have to start all over again, and that does kind of suck.
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