Nature and Gardening

This is my first attempt at regrowing (baby) bok choy from kitchen scraps. The growth is great but the outside is super wet and mushy. Is there any fixing this, or is this stalk a total goner?

This plant that is endemic to SE continental Australia, was named by Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, the first director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Melbourne. The genus Banksia is named after Joseph Banks, a naturalist who was on Cook’s first Pacific voyage in the 1770s. Its binomial name is b.ornata.

For anyone who plays Wingspan, the board game, this is one of the types of plant that the nectar food source comes from.

We've seen a number of small insects visiting this member of Anthemideae and I managed to get a picture of just a fraction of the diversity. It's an important reminder of the value of plants that flower late into the season.

I wish I could be more specific in naming the plant but it was given to me by someone who had the ID wrong. It's great to swap plants with folks but if you're unsure of their accuracy it's worth potting up their gift until you can observe further identifying characteristics. This one will definitely be planted this fall.

cross-posted from: https://pixelfed.crimedad.work/p/crimedad/623917328555745099

'Tis the Season

Christmas decorations are already up in CVS. The War on Thanksgiving never ends.

#autumn #fall #sky #leaves

@crosspost@lemmy.crimedad.work

Folks who know me closely know that I'm kind of a geek for patterns - I see them in behavior, in housing, in gardens and natural structures, everywhere. They are at play all around us at varying levels of scale, and anyone who's ever said "oh this again" can hopefully relate.

Christopher Alexander (author along with others of A Pattern Language, The Nature of Order, Notes on the Synthesis of Form), the speaker in this video, has been formative in my understanding of patterns in a way few others have. His approach to design as a conduit for improving the lives of people and the world writ large have been an inspiration.

I want you to forget that he's talking to a room full of programmers. Some of it is abstract, and heady, but think about the patterns in your lives and how even slight alterations to them can influence the course of things. I'm coming to this talk from the aspect of a gardener, of a nursery owner interested in restoration ecology, of someone who wants each of us to have a closer connection to the natural systems at play. Bring who you are to this, and (hopefully) let it inspire you. I'll leave you with this quote from the talk (punctuation mine):

"I want you to help me. I want you to realize that the problem of generating living structure is not being handled by architects or planners or developers or construction people now; there is no way that they're ever going to be able to do that because the methods they use are not capable of it.

The methods that you have at your fingertips and deal with every day in the normal course of events are perfectly designed to do this ... if you have the interest, you have the capacity, you have the means.... And what I'm proposing here is something a little bit different from that which is a view of ~~programming~~ as the natural genetic infrastructure of a living world which you are capable of creating, managing, making available - and which could then have the result that a living structure - in our towns, houses, workplaces, cities - is an attainable thing. Which it has not been for the last 50 to 100 years.

That is an incredible thing! I realize that you probably think I'm nuts because this is not what I'm supposed to be talking about to you. And you may say, 'gosh great idea but we're not interested' but I do think you are capable of that and I don't think anybody else is going to do this job.

Does anyone know what kind of tree this is? I'm guessing some kind of fruit tree?

Paul Heydon is the horticulturalist for Grow Wild!, a native plant nursery in Omemee, Ontario. In this webinar he discusses seed collection and examination, dormancy requirements, storage, and growing out the seeds you've collected. If you're looking to grow more of the natives in your region, this is a great primer for getting started for low to no cost.

This is growing under my seed feeder so I can only assume this pretty little gift was sent to me via bird booty lol

This was an interesting presentation covering use cases for various water slowing techniques like BDA's (Beaver Dam Analogues) and PALS (Post Assisted Log Structures), along with recommendations for implementation. There were also some fantastic slides showing some of the patterns that emerge in streams and rivers as they move towards equilibrium from repair work.

cross-posted from: https://pixelfed.crimedad.work/p/crimedad/614187164035072286

That's a bee trapped in there.

I watched it crawl inside. I think it's done for.

#carnivorousplant #bee #macro

@carnivorousplants@lemmy.world

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/2643215

ABSTRACT

Biochar is not a structured homogeneous material; rather it possesses a range of chemical structures and a heterogeneous elemental composition. This variability is based on the conditions of pyrolysis and the biomass parent material, with biochar spanning the range of various forms of black carbon. Thereby, this variability induces a broad spectrum in the observed rates of reactivity and, correspondingly, the overall chemical and microbial stability. From evaluating the current biochar and black carbon degradation studies, there is the suggestion of an overall relationship in biochar stability as a function of the molar ratio of oxygen to carbon (O:C) in the resulting black carbon. In general, a molar ratio of O:C lower than 0.2 appears to provide, at minimum, a 1000-year biochar half-life. The O:C ratio is a function of production temperature, but also accounts for other impacts (e.g., parent material and post-production conditioning/oxidation) that are not captured solely with production temperature. Therefore, the O:C ratio could provide a more robust indicator of biochar stability than production parameters (e.g., pyrolysis temperature and biomass type) or volatile matter determinations.

No clue what variety of cactus it is, but it's one of my favourites.

My soil is full of clumps of clay and I'm wondering if this is the answer. Any issues with using it?

Not sure if this is the right space for this question, but gonna try anyway - please forgive me if it isn't!

So, first thing’s first - I know Lomi isn’t actually good for composting. I bought mine secondhand for a fraction of the price because there’s no food scrap drop off near me, and I am not interested in doing a proper home compost. I don’t have any plants; I’m only interested in reducing my food waste.

One question that I keep coming back to, and that I’ve had a lot of trouble getting the answer to, is does Lomi actually reduce methane emissions? The website says yes: “With Lomi, food waste undergoes aerobic break down (in the presence of oxygen), meaning methane isn’t produced. Then, when Lomi fertilizer is used in plants, carbon is sequestered in soil and plant matter.” However… I’m not using it for fertilizing plants. I just use it to process food waste so I’m not just throwing it directly into the trash.

Does it compact the trash? 100%. We usually throw out the output after maybe 6 cycles; that’s the equivalent of 5 freezer bags full of food scraps (mostly banana peels tbh). One thing I am 100% sure of is the fact that it reduces the frequency of my household taking out the trash, since it’s not full of smelly food or attracting pests, and it weighs a ton less. But… is it actually reducing methane emissions? If my trash bag ends up in the landfill, will that aerobically-processed compacted food still release the same exact amount of methane emissions now that it’s trapped in a bag with tons of trash above it?

Any help on this is appreciated. Thanks!

I don't mind the caterpillar eating the Oregano. But I am curious what this is a caterpillar of. I am in Sydney, Australia.

[Image description: Rhyssa lineolata, a type of Ichneumon wasp, rests on a leaf.]