greenjeans | Network

It's been busy times in the garden! I got the last of my cold-stratified seeds planted last night. On Sunday we took on the big project of replacing the old wooden bed out by the street that's been slowly rotting away and was full of grass anyway. It's all concrete underneath, and the bed was too shallow to be able to plant anything substantial, much less anything that I'd feel comfortable harvesting. In it's place we put in four 2x2 corrugated steel beds that are much taller, and there's space for another 3-4 small beds of that size if we decide we like how these first ones are working. Still some cleanup to do from that, but otherwise it's looking much better.

I've gotten the feverfew, oregano, and thyme settled in those new spaces, with the last bed ready for the tulsi seedlings whenever they're big enough to transplant. The nights are still getting quite cold, so I'm waiting a while longer before making the little things have to brave the weather. It's supposed to be a temperate variety that can handle our cooler temperatures, but I've previously only grown the more tropical tulsi, which makes me a little more cautious than I maybe need to be. I'll be curious to see how the varieties differ.

The elecampane officially survived the winter, which I'm very happy to see! I thought for sure I had lost it. It's much slower to wake than the rest of the garden. I'm not sure if that's just how it is, or if it's a function of the place where it's been planted. It seemed to lag behind other plants in growth last year, too, but I imagine the second year will tell me quite a bit about how it feels where it is.

There's plenty of maintenance work to do in the garden, but in terms of plants, it's back to a waiting game. All the big plant sales and swaps won't happen until May, and none of the seedlings are quite ready for transplant yet, so I shall bide my time and be patient. I still haven't quite decided where everything will go, or what else I'll buy when the sales come along. There's a real risk I'll run out of space, but at least the soil is amended and weeded and ready to go. Hurrah for warmer days!

Current Mood: chipper

rebeccmeister posting in

gardening

This is largely cross-posted from my personal blog, since I figure a lot of us spend a lot of time thinking about soil quality and composting! I love worm bins because they can be made to work for all kinds of lifestyles, including people who live in apartments, since a well-managed bin does not smell and can be designed to fit in all kinds of spaces.

I think I'm reaching the stage where there's something of a steady-state for managing my new-ish worm bin bench. To begin with, by myself I generate around 1 batch of kitchen scraps a week that can go into the bin. My kitchen scraps mostly include spent coffee grounds, banana peels, apple cores, and vegetable trimmings from whatever I happen to be cooking that week. Eggshells now get handled separately, and citrus goes into the yard compost outside because citrus is toxic to worms.

( photos and description below the cut... )

angrboda posting in

gardening

The below is a crosspost from my own dw. Has anybody else experimented with a garden journal? What sort of stuff did you write in it?

For Christmas Husband gave me a nice Critical Role notebook as 'something to go with', so I have been vaguely pondering what to use it for. I have now decided to have a go at making it a garden journal.

I have no idea how one does that. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm basically just putting stuff in there and seeing where it goes. I don't even know how long I'll be able to keep it up,* but we're having a go anyway. So far I've put in a list of what's in the different beds off the top of my head, I've put a todo list of tasks I'd like to get done during the spring (lol!),** and I've put in a number of ideas for how I would like to do the terrace pots and a list of other plants I might like to try and plant.

It occurs to me that it might also come in handy when we go to the garden center because I can take it with me and look up what I was considering, which feels far more attractive than a note on my phone, and I could potentially also put in things that I saw at the garden center that might be interesting later on, especially if I remember to also bring a pencil.***

This decision coincides, or is probably partially born from, the effort Husband is currently making to get through a vast stack of garden magazines that have piled up. We tried putting them in a specific place, so that they weren't always lying around on the dining table. This worked splendidly for me because it was more tidy, and not at all for him because the magazines tended to just accumulate and he'd never actually get around to looking in them. So now the magazine storage situation is a bit unclear. Anyway, he's making his way through them, tearing out the pages he wants a closer look at, and I got trough after him and do the same.

On one page, I was mainly interested in a small bit in the bottom third, so in a fit of inspiration I cut it out and glued it into my journal. I had a bit of leftover hobby glue that was still good, so I used that. I discovered that the paper is really too thin for this to be an ideal solution, but on the other hand, I'm kind of enjoying the tactile way the paper has gone a bit crinkly now where it has dried. Might acquire more unsuitable glue and do it again.

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*But it is giving me some opportunity to use highlighters. I have far too many highlighters. But they come in so many colours, and you obviously have to have one in each colour. I mean, obviously!
**If I do a third of them, I'll call it a success.
***Not a pen. A pencil. And definitely not a mechanical one. An old fashioned one that you have to sharpen. I've been favouring them for years now. I think it has something to do how it feels to write with it.

ysabetwordsmith posting in

common_nature

King Charles III England Coast Path

The King Charles III England Coast Path (KCIIIECP), originally and still commonly known as the England Coast Path, is a long-distance National Trail that follows the coastline of England. Opened on 19 March 2026 by King Charles III, the trail extends for 2,689 miles (4,328 km).

Sections of the English coast already had established walking routes, most notably the South West Coast Path. However, the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 required Natural England, under section 298, to create a continuous coastal path. The first section, along Weymouth Bay, opened in 2012. The walking route is the longest coastal trail in the world, and its total length increases further when considered alongside the Wales Coast Path.

Those of you who live in or visit the United Kingdom may wish to explore this amenity.

Current Mood: busy

bookscorpion posting in

common_nature

a comedy in four acts:

greylag goose flyrunning on the water

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