Birdfeeding
Mar. 12th, 2025 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithToday is another beautiful day, sunny and warm.
I fed the birds. I've seen a small mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, several blackbirds, and a male cardinal.
I put out water for the birds. I watered the seed pots.
I set the two pots of crosne knotroots outside to get some sun.
More crocuses are blooming, including the purple striped ones. :D Honeybees are swarming them.
EDIT 3/12/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.
EDIT 3/12/25 -- The mulch pile in the south lot is all but completely gone. I managed to rake up a small pile of wood chips in hopes of attracting detritivores to cluster there. I found a flat slab of tree trunk near the log garden. It already had a centipede, a millipede, and several tiny beetles living in it. I put that over the little mulch heap, then watered both the mulch and the wood. The small globe terrarium is too small for me to add predators purposely, but the bigger cylindrical one could probably support a millipede. Mostly I'm hoping to get pillbugs, and I'd love to get springtails although they're so tiny that they're hard to see -- about 1/16 to 1/8 inch long.
EDIT 3/12/25 -- A package came in at the post office, so we went out to get that and lunch. It's a bag of seeds. :D
While we were out, we checked Rural King for compost. They don't have it either. WTF even. >_< But they DID have a big area marked FREE WOOD that contained whole pallets along with loose boards, posts, and other stuff. I grabbed a bunch of the loose posts (round, half-round, and oblong) to use for my potting bench plans. So that just saved me a ton of money. :D 3q3q3q!! I'm starting to suspect that the Universe feels guilty about the crapsack world here, so when I start mulling over ideas to build something, it's throwing materials at me because that's something it can do. A potting bench may not save the world, but it'll make my job easier, and I am actually working to salvage what I can of the biosphere, so that's sorta the same thing. \o/
On the way home we stopped at the Charleston Food Forest. It's already starting to wake up! I think the green shoots in front are chives or garlic chives. The cherry and plum trees have buds swelling. The strawberries are just starting to leaf out. The asparagus isn't up yet. The garlic chives and Egyptian walking onions are up. The French sorrel is leafing out and almost harvest size. The hardneck garlic is not only up but has a bunch of plants seeding into the path where they will be in the way. I want to go back and dig up some of those, if I get there before someone else nabs them. And there's a bit of moss at the edge of the parking lot that I may pick up. Sadly, no pictures as this was not a planning visit there, but I'll try to bring the camera for next time.
Awesome outing. \o/
EDIT 3/12/25 -- I planted the Cascade Gold raspberry in the patch along the south fence of the ritual meadow. Then I mulched around it and watered it. While I had the can, I watered the hollies and the Colorado blue spruce. Naked lady lilies are sprouting leaves. :D
I've heard a crow and a killdeer, but haven't seen them.
EDIT 3/12/25 -- I planted the Marionberry Blackberry in the patch at the west end of the prairie garden. I mulched around it and watered it.
As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.
I fed the birds. I've seen a small mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, several blackbirds, and a male cardinal.
I put out water for the birds. I watered the seed pots.
I set the two pots of crosne knotroots outside to get some sun.
More crocuses are blooming, including the purple striped ones. :D Honeybees are swarming them.
EDIT 3/12/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.
EDIT 3/12/25 -- The mulch pile in the south lot is all but completely gone. I managed to rake up a small pile of wood chips in hopes of attracting detritivores to cluster there. I found a flat slab of tree trunk near the log garden. It already had a centipede, a millipede, and several tiny beetles living in it. I put that over the little mulch heap, then watered both the mulch and the wood. The small globe terrarium is too small for me to add predators purposely, but the bigger cylindrical one could probably support a millipede. Mostly I'm hoping to get pillbugs, and I'd love to get springtails although they're so tiny that they're hard to see -- about 1/16 to 1/8 inch long.
EDIT 3/12/25 -- A package came in at the post office, so we went out to get that and lunch. It's a bag of seeds. :D
While we were out, we checked Rural King for compost. They don't have it either. WTF even. >_< But they DID have a big area marked FREE WOOD that contained whole pallets along with loose boards, posts, and other stuff. I grabbed a bunch of the loose posts (round, half-round, and oblong) to use for my potting bench plans. So that just saved me a ton of money. :D 3q3q3q!! I'm starting to suspect that the Universe feels guilty about the crapsack world here, so when I start mulling over ideas to build something, it's throwing materials at me because that's something it can do. A potting bench may not save the world, but it'll make my job easier, and I am actually working to salvage what I can of the biosphere, so that's sorta the same thing. \o/
On the way home we stopped at the Charleston Food Forest. It's already starting to wake up! I think the green shoots in front are chives or garlic chives. The cherry and plum trees have buds swelling. The strawberries are just starting to leaf out. The asparagus isn't up yet. The garlic chives and Egyptian walking onions are up. The French sorrel is leafing out and almost harvest size. The hardneck garlic is not only up but has a bunch of plants seeding into the path where they will be in the way. I want to go back and dig up some of those, if I get there before someone else nabs them. And there's a bit of moss at the edge of the parking lot that I may pick up. Sadly, no pictures as this was not a planning visit there, but I'll try to bring the camera for next time.
Awesome outing. \o/
EDIT 3/12/25 -- I planted the Cascade Gold raspberry in the patch along the south fence of the ritual meadow. Then I mulched around it and watered it. While I had the can, I watered the hollies and the Colorado blue spruce. Naked lady lilies are sprouting leaves. :D
I've heard a crow and a killdeer, but haven't seen them.
EDIT 3/12/25 -- I planted the Marionberry Blackberry in the patch at the west end of the prairie garden. I mulched around it and watered it.
As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.
Wait, planting out already?
Date: 2025-03-13 12:39 am (UTC)I am intrigued!
Re: Wait, planting out already?
Date: 2025-03-13 01:17 am (UTC)However, planting season has phases.
The early planting season is for dormant plants, like the raspberry and blackberry I put in today, although the blackberry already has leaves. It runs from spring thaw to when things leaf out, so March to April here.
The middle planting season is for things that like cool spring weather, such as peas or pansies, along with many wildflowers. It's mostly April here.
The last planting season is for things want warm weather and won't tolerate cold feet, like sweet corn, tomatoes, and many decorative bedding plants. It runs May to early June here. You can put these out with protection, but it's risky and they may sulk on your anyhow.
Something else I tried this year was planting some wildflower seeds in pots, outside, in winter when the seeds arrived. I'm curious to see what happens. I think it'll give them a head start. I need to get out and pop the tubs over a couple of trays to see if that'll speed things up. I'm experimenting.
We were in Rural King today. The bareroot plants are in, like bagged roses and peonies. I really want to go shopping but I exerted all my won't power to avoid looking at plants, because I already had some at home to plant. But soon. These will mostly be the category of things that should be planted before leafing out. Once things leaf out, you're into a different group of plants, and also it gets really fucking difficult to get a shovel in the ground when the roots are active.
Re: Wait, planting out already?
Date: 2025-03-13 05:19 pm (UTC)So I am eager for any gardening advice, because I think Saraphina's got more gardening SKILLS than I do.
Re: Wait, planting out already?
Date: 2025-03-14 02:11 am (UTC)Watering issues kill a lot of houseplants. It helps to use a good potting soil with the right amount of drainage for the plant type. However, there is also moisture-balancing potting mix that buffers overwatering and underwatering, which is suitable for many plants that aren't at one extreme.
I also like to use self-watering pots or put a water tray under each pot. This allows giving the soil a good soak without leaving the roots sitting in water which many plants hate, or spilling water everywhere.
If you look up each houseplant's needs, then you can group similar ones together, which helps keep up with their care schedule. Start with tough plants that are hard to kill.
No growing pains: the 20 houseplants that are hardest to kill
You might also try a terrarium. Many wild mosses are very easy to keep, and you can make a terrarium out of a reused jar. Look up "make a free terrarium" on YouTube for a relaxing view. :D The lid retains moisture with varying security depending how much you tighten it. Once you get the moisture level right, a terrarium can be a "set it and forget it" houseplant.
>>So I am eager for any gardening advice, because I think Saraphina's got more gardening SKILLS than I do.<<
Skills and techniques are things you can learn. Don't try to learn them all at once. Choose 1-2 skills per season to practice.
10 Innovative Gardening Techniques to Try in 2024
23 Practical Gardening Skills Every Gardener Should Have Handy
Gardening for Life: A Guide to Garden Adaptations for Gardeners of All Ages and Abilities
List of Gardening Techniques to Help New Gardeners
What Skills Do You Need for Effective Home Gardening?
Browse some tools and supplies. You don't need all the things all at once. A few basics will get you started. It helps to understand your options so you can choose mindfully.
12 Best Online Gardening Stores to Bookmark Now
12 Essential Garden Tools for the Beginner
40 Gardening Tools List With Pictures and Their Uses
The Best Soil Test Kits According to Our Tests
Organic Soil Amendments
Soil Additives and Amendments
Soils, Mulches & Planting Media / Gardening
General instructions:
Gardening 101~How to Start Growing Things Yourself
How to Start a Fruit Garden
How to Start an Herb Garden
How to start a small vegetable garden and make the most of it
How To Start A New Garden Successfully In Your Backyard
Kitchen Gardening 101: How to Grow Your Own Food
My Step-by-Step Guide to Starting a Garden
Tips for success:
20 Essential Home Gardening Tips for a Thriving Garden
30 Best Gardening Tips of All Time
50 Tips, Hints, Tricks and Facts for Natural Gardening
Free Gardening Books Online:
Books about Gardening (sorted by popularity)
Free Gardening Books
Gardening Books for Beginners PDF
How to Grow Practically Everything
The Resilient Gardener Complete
Some personal advice:
* Containers make it easier to grow many things. You can use potting soil that won't have weeds in it. Plastic containers are lightweight. Again, the self-watering kind will help. You may find cheap pots at thrift stores or yardsales. Then look for seeds for plants that say "bush" or "container" because there are lots made for this purpose.
* Grow plants that are hard to kill. Some herbs (e.g. mint) and vegetables (e.g. zucchini) grow extra well. Wildflowers native to your locale will require minimal attention as they are used to taking care of themselves.
20 Impossible-to-Kill Outdoor Plants
23 Hard-to-Kill Plants for Busy or New Gardeners
32 Low-Maintenance Plants for Gardens and Landscaping
The Best Herbs to Grow at Home for Beginner Gardeners
No Green Thumb Required: Our 10 Hardiest Wildflowers
* Grow edibles that require no prep, you can just pick them and eat them. Strawberries, cherry tomatoes, sugar snap or snow peas, most edible flowers like bergamot or borage, etc.
* Watch for genetically diverse plants that can reproduce themselves, adapt over time, and may be less fussy than modern hybrids. Look for heirloom, open-pollinated, antique, grex, landrace, etc. cultivars.
* Seed saving can be fun and frugal.
* These are some of my favorite nurseries:
American Meadows (wildflowers)
Breck's (bulbs)
Buffalo Seed Company (landrace of herbs and vegetables, wildflowers)
Edible Landscaping (permaculture plants)
One Green World (permaculture plants)
OPN Seed (wildflowers and native grasses)
Pinetree Garden Seeds (vegetables, herbs, and flowers)
Prairie Moon (wildflowers and native grasses)
Select Seeds (vegetables, herbs, and flowers)
* Make friends with other gardeners. Spring is the main recruitment season for gardening clubs, so most will have flyers or workshops. Look at garden centers, libraries, community centers, etc. for announcements. Garden friends can share seeds or plants, exchange local advice, and make success easier.
What kinds of things would you like to grow? Vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers?
I've got Shithouse Marigold seeds that should grow almost anywhere. The zinnias from the food forest I'm not sure if they'll grow, I'm testing them this year. Cypress vine is pretty and a favorite of hummingbirds.
Re: Wait, planting out already?
Date: 2025-03-14 02:52 pm (UTC)The goal is to create a food forest that AT LEAST supports my daily fruit needs (2 servings per day, estimating 4 servings per lb as a diabetic, means about 180 lbs total production in a year) and to learn enough pressure canning/no sugar canning techniques to minimize waste, too.
That's a fairly easy goal to reach: one dwarf apple tree yields at least 45lbs of fruit when mature (45-100 lbs estimated). A pound of apples is easily 3, preferably 4 servings of fruit, so a single dwarf apple tree COULD answer the goal, with zero variety or buffer for error or weird weather.
Growing enough snap peas to meet my preferences is rather like growing enough basil to make pesto: good luck, Optimist! But that's a secondary goal. Other goals require more knowledge, more ability to bend or stand for more than a minute, etc. Which is what pushed me toward permaculture, frankly.
With your lovely "road map," it's time to get out my gardening notebook and start gearing up for the last frost date!
Re: Wait, planting out already?
Date: 2025-03-14 07:00 pm (UTC)*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service!
>> The goal is to create a food forest that AT LEAST supports my daily fruit needs <<
Okay, with that in mind I can provide more specific resources.
Articles:
Designing a Food Forest: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started
Permaculture Food Forest: How To Grow A Luxurious Garden
Books:
Edible Forest Gardens
Forest Garden Technical Manual
>> learn enough pressure canning/no sugar canning techniques to minimize waste, too.<<
Canning is an excellent skill. Watch for classes in it starting when fruits ripen in summer -- around here that's June for strawberries. Do note that if you wish to preserve your harvest, sometimes that means selecting different varieties than if you wish to nibble for weeks on end. Look for cultivars that say "canning" or "preservation." They will give you one bumper crop all at once, then if they are perennials they rest and if they're annuals, you pull them up and plant something new (e.g. something that will bear a fall crop).
However, there are many other preservation options. Freezing is easy if you have a freezer, albeit vulnerable to power outages. Drying is ideal if you wish to avoid added sugar, and there are budget dehydrators around $40-60. I am keeping an eye on freeze-dry equipment but the prices there still range $2000-4000. Fermenting is another option if you like pickles or other cultured foods. You will likely find that different foods preserve better with different methods.
Pressure Canning 101- The Basics
Complete Guide To Home Canning
Low Sugar Preserving
General Preservation Articles:
Food preservation
National Center for Home Food Preservation: Home Page
Ways to preserve food
Books:
Getting Started in Food Preservation (4-H guide)
Handbook of Food Preservation
Home and farm food preservation
>>That's a fairly easy goal to reach: one dwarf apple tree yields at least 45lbs of fruit when mature (45-100 lbs estimated). <<
While some apples are self-fertile, most bear a bigger crop with a pollinator. There are charts to tell you which ones go together based on bloom time. So you'd likely do better with two smaller trees than one big tree, and some dwarf trees are still ladder territory, while others can be grown in a large tub. Note that smaller trees fit closer together and actually yield more fruit per area. A challenge is that all the tiny trees are made so by grafting onto a dwarfing rootstock. That makes them a lot more expensive, and also limits your choices what you can grow -- which means modern commercial varieties, and those things expect to be coddled. Heritage varieties are much more robust, but hard to find on dwarfing rootstock. I recommend that you find a nursery with experienced staff and discuss your needs; they can help you figure out what should work for you.
Fruit Trees: What to Plant and How Many
The Best Apple Tree Varieties for Home Orchards
One good way to start a food forest is with a single guild, such as an apple guild.
Apple Tree Guilds: Getting Started
Mini Fruit Tree Guild for Small Gardens
Midwest Permaculture Presents: Plant Guilds
Designing a fruit tree guild
This article has a diagram for a guild with 2 oak trees, to give you an idea of how a 2 apple guild could look.
Apple Tree Guild picture
>>Growing enough snap peas to meet my preferences is rather like growing enough basil to make pesto: good luck, Optimist! <<
True, but snap peas have a great advantage: vining ones grow vertically so you don't have to bend over to pick them and they take up very little footprint. Same is true for other vining crops such as hardy kiwis.
>>Other goals require more knowledge, more ability to bend or stand for more than a minute, etc. Which is what pushed me toward permaculture, frankly.<<
Here you have an advantage because you can start permaculture immediately by observing your territory -- how the light falls, the water moves, etc. -- before planting. However, now is the time to plant bare-root dormant things (e.g. trees, most shrubs, some perennials). Fruit trees or bushes take time to mature so starting them this year would be helpful, if you can learn fast and decide what you want where within a month or so.
Permaculture Design Principles
Zones and Sectors, Efficient Energy Planning
How to Design a Permaculture Backyard: Step by Step Instructions
Permaculture
Permaculture Design: A Step-by-Step Guide
>>With your lovely "road map," it's time to get out my gardening notebook and start gearing up for the last frost date!<<
Yay! :D
Bear in mind that planting season has phases.
* Early -- ground thaw to leafing out (plant dormant things)
* Middle -- cool spring with chance of frost (plant cool-season crops like peas or pansies)
* Late -- after frost with warm ground (plant sensitive summer crops like tomatoes)
So it's already planting season for some things.
Re: Wait, planting out already?
Date: 2025-03-14 10:30 pm (UTC)- I am quite proud of keeping a pothos plant alive for more than three months (not quite four).
- I had help to plant a raspberry cane last year... and now I can't identify it to trim the weeds.
So it's going to be a long-term project.
Re: Wait, planting out already?
Date: 2025-03-15 04:06 am (UTC)Go you!
That's why I suggested easy plants and projects yesterday.
Then you mentioned apple trees, which are more challenging and labor-intensive, but they were a priority so I added information on them.
>> - I had help to plant a raspberry cane last year... and now I can't identify it to trim the weeds. <<
Before things leaf out, the older canes are often easy to spot as they tend to be reddish to purple with thorns. New ones are a pale creamy green. Many varieties arch and will root where the tips touch down, but some are shorter and don't do that.
https://www.plantsnap.com/blog/guide-to-raspberry-identification/
https://www.foragingcoursecompany.co.uk/post/foraging-guide-raspberry
http://identifythatplant.com/blackberry-or-black-raspberry/
For future reference, if you lay down groundcloth and cover with mulch, that helps keep a space around plants so you can find them.
>> So it's going to be a long-term project.<<
All permaculture and most gardens in general are that way.
As I suggested earlier, look for things that are easy to grow, pick, and use. Easy fruits include blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries. You might consider goldenberries, I love those things.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-03-14 12:13 am (UTC)