#Rjalker trains its gardening skill

[rjalker]

Plant terms compared to dogs so people understand them:

Species: That's not a dog, that's a wolf. (Takes millions of years of evolution. or sometimes not. yk, those mosquitoes in England lol)

Variety: Different breeds of dog, (created over generations of the species in question being changed through selective breeding)

Cultivar: they cloned the dog and they all have the same name (can happen at any time, can keep going on as long as one clone is around to be clone again. It must be stressed that science fiction bullcrap does not apply here. You can keep cloning plants indefinitely. There is no ''point of no return'' where they magically stop being able to produce fruit or just randomly stop being viable. Those are constraints created by authors who don't want to make things overpowered. Nature doesn't give a shit!)

Hybrid: Two species, or breeds, made babies together. Like wolfdogs or labradoodles.

Grafted: uh. uhhhhh........I. there's no non-horrifying comparison for this. A twig is taken from a plant you like a lot, which is called the scion, and then gets quite literally taped into place on part of another plant where a cut has been made in the right shape. The plant being grafted onto is called the rootstock. The two plants go hey! Help me, I'm hurt! Oh no, let me help you!! and fuse together, sharing nutrients. Usually the scion and rootstock are either from the same species, or at least related species, otherwise it doesn't work as well.

The rootstock helps handle temperature changes and other factors the scion would die in, and the scion produces the fruit / flowers that you liked about it in the first place. Most cultivars are propagated this way if they're trees or other woody shrubs.

#plants #gardening #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #since people use them interchangeably and that's not how this works!!!!

[rjalker]

one of these days I'm gonna grow a tree from seed and after multiple years it'll flower and reveal it has a mutation for double or triple or more petals and I'm gonna be so disappointed.

Edit: Here's why:

Wild flowers tend to have only a "single" layer of petals, leaving the center of the flower open for pollinators to reach, giving them nectar, and helping the plant reproduce by being pollinated.

Most cultivated flowers on the other hand are chosen from mutations that give the plant multiple layers of petals, making it almost, if not outright impossble for the flower to be pollinated at all, meaning pollinators don't benefit, and the plant can't reproduce, either.

This is done because the extra petals look cool, and, nowadays, because if your only choice is to go and buy more plants because you can't save seeds (and it's usually illegal to clone these ones, too), it makes companies more money because you have to keep buying from them when you want new plants.

[ID: Two photos of roses. One is a wild cherokee rose, with a five-petaled white flower with a golden center. The other is a cultivated rose with many layers of overlapping petals which are pale pink on the outermost layer, and golden yellow towards the center, where the petals are so tightly folded together the center of the flower cannot be seen. End ID.]

Also as a fun fact, apples and pears and a lot more plants than you'd think are in the rose family!

Edit 2: Also PSA both photos of the roses used are public domain, as is this combo, so feel free to save and us it if you want, for anything you want.

#gardening #plants #Rjalker trains its gardening skill

[rjalker]

one of my successfully transplanted American persimmon seedlings planted in the woods

[ID: A photo of a young American persimmon tree, less than a foot tall, in a forest floor covered in pine needles and fallen sticks. The persimmon has smooth, round, light green leaves, with yellow central-leaf-veins. Behind it and in the foreground are small, young sweetleaf shrubs, with darker, skinnier leaves. End ID.]

BTW

Here's my free American / common persimmon identification guide:

Feel free to share the link wherever you want!

#guerilla gardening #American persimmon #common persimmon #Diospyros #Diospyros virginiana #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #described images #native plants

[rjalker]

that "paint rocks to look like strawberries so birds hurt their beaks on the rocks and learn to stop stealing your strawberries" post is going around again and no, do not do this.

Training native birds to avoid their natural food sources is bad. End of discussion, no ifs ands or buts about it. You don't want to share? Fine, figure out another way to keep birds away without forcing them to alter their natural behaviors, especially about something as literally life or death crucial as food.

If you have the time to paint a bunch of rocks to look like strawberries or blueberries, you have time to set up a chickenwire cover over your fucking berries.

#sigh #gardening #birds #gardening pests #pests #not fucking really but so people see it #Rjalker trains its gardening skill

[rjalker]

if you ever see someone throwing away dead potted plants you better take those. reuse those pots. reuse that soil. There's no such thing as "dead" soil. IDK what they were growing in them. Take that soil and reuse it. Mix it with other potting soil, add some cheap granular fertilizer, add some kitchen scraps. do not fucking throw away potting soil!!!!!

your parents buy those hanging baskets from the hardware stores that always die at the end of a year? Reuse those containers! Just break off the stems of the dead plant, stir around the dirt with a shovel, and you're good! There's literally nothing wrong with that potting soil!!

#gardening #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #we only buy new potting soil when we're already using the rest #which we literally never throw away #it gets mixed together and dumped into a big bin whenever whatever we had in that container dies #and reused.

[rjalker]

the "throw stuff in and see if it does anything" pot has worked for both palm species!

I only just noticed now but we now have like, 30+ Butia palm seedlings!

apparently the trick to growing them is not to bury the seed, just lay it on top of the soil!

It took me so long to notice because the sago palms got their typical leaves quickly, but the butias are slower so they just look like a tall single blade of grass. A few have a second narrow blade of grass.

A few of the seeds sprouted multiple shoot!

None of the pecans that were also in this container grew, so I was right that they were dead lol...too bad.

I'm going to try to sell these seedlings since these ones all came from a tree with smaller fruit, I want to keep the ones from the giant tree.

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill

[rjalker]

American persimmon trees, despite being able to live for hundreds of years, can start flowering as young as 2 years old... Ask me how I know :)

Just kidding you don't need to ask, the answer is that Morgana, who is 2 years old as of March 20th, is now growing flower buds :) :) :)

[Image description start. A close-up photo of new growth on an American persimmon tree, with a light hand behind it for contrast, showing a fresh green stem with light green leaves, and very small, green flower buds emerging at the base of the leaves. Image description end.]

Since there are multiple buds forming at each base here, this means that this tree is male! Female flowers will have only one per node.

I cannot wait for these flowers to open. They attract so many bees and I have not been able to get any good videos of bees visiting persimmons because all of the other ones around here are like 50 ft tall.

Now means that once we figure out how to graft, we can graft branches of female trees with good fruit onto this one and get fruit with some nice pollination.

Updated to fix the age lol,,,,I am bad at math, this plant is 2 years old, not 3!

Thank you timeanddate.com

[ID: text that reads: "From and including: Tuesday, March 29, 2022, to, but not including Friday, April 12, 2024: Result: 745 days. It is 745 days from the start date to the end date, but not including the end date. Or 2 years, 14 days excluding the end date. Or 24 months, 14 days excluding the end date. End ID.]

#Described images #Rjalker trains its gardening skill

[rjalker]

[ID: Two cropped photos, showing the front and back of a seed packet for "Wild Luffa". The front has a round logo that reads, "Native Seeds Search" in the center, with a stylized drawing of a person running through a plain with the sun above. The top of the seed packet reads: "M012, Luffa - Wild Luffa from our Seed Bank Collection.". Below the logo reads, "A nonprofit organization conserving arid-adapted crops to nourish a changing world." with the website address of www.nativeseeds.org. The back of the seed packet has more information, reading: "M012: Wild Luffa

From dooryard gardens along the Rio Mayo. Produces copius quantities of 2-3 inch fruit. Removing the thin skin reveals the small scrubber 'sponge'. In low desert, plant with summer rains. Small yellow flowers and full vines make this an attractive trellis plant. Contents: +/-25 seeds (1 g). Luffa - Luffa operculata. Various species of Luffa are grown worldwide for food and to produce natural sponges. Culture: Scarify and presoak seeds for 24 hours. Sow 1 inch deep in the spring when temperatures are warm. May take several weeks for germination. The long climbing vines require plenty of room, plant next to a fence or trellis. Required plenty of water throughout the long growing season. Seed Saving: Annual. Varieties will cross-pollinate. Fruits should mature on the plant until dry and seed can be loosened by shaking."

The very bottom of the packet reads in smaller print: "Germ Date: 06-22-2023. Sell By: 06-30-2024/ ID: 16021. 3584 E. River Rd, Tuscon, AZ 85718/ Written sideways next to the barcode is text that reads, "Acceptance of these seeds is an agreement that they will not be used for commercial breeding purposes with a patent outcome unless there are written agreements with the originators of teh seeds in Native Seeds Search's collection". End ID.]

Clickable link to the site: "www.nativeseeds.org"

#described images #Luffa operculata #L operculata #native seeds #Rjalker trains its gardening skill

[rjalker]

see, the plan is to grow luffa so we can give people free biodegradeable sponges. but we can't do that if we can't save seeds!!

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill

[rjalker]

So now we know it can take 5 months between germinating a canna lily seed and the first flowers :) has already been visited by a gulf fritillary and...one of the big yellow butterflies whose names I don't know yet because they always fly away when I try to get pictures.

[ID: a small spike of thin red canna lily flowers and buds against a blue cloudy sky. End ID.]

Fun fact. This species is called "Indian shot" because it was used to replace buckshot in a war in India. And they have edible roots. And a whole bunch of other stuff. So much stuff it's absurd.

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker takes pictures #canna #canna indica

[rjalker]

>:D small-flower pawpaw fruit created with pollen from a common pawpaw!

[ID: Two photos taken with flash, showing tiny green fruits just starting to form on two small-flower pawpaw stems, with a hand in the background for scale. The fruits are tiny and pale green, shaped like little clusters of bananas. They are growing on dark brown twigs with green new growth at the top. In the second photo, a green flower is still growing below the fruits, with three longer petals hanging down like a skirt. End Id.]

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #asimina parviflora #asimina triloba #pawpaws #asimina #small-flower pawpaw #small flower pawpaw #smallflower pawpaw #pawpaw #pawpaw tree #pawpaw fruit

[rjalker]

literally started jumping up and down and screaming in excitement when I realized my cross pollination between the common and small-flower pawpaws worked!!!!!

There's at least 5 baby fruits forming from two flowers I pollinated last week, and I just finished pollinating three more which will also hopefully form fruit!!!!!!!!!

The seeds of which will produce the hybrid, Asimina x piedmontana!!!!! Which I will then be able to study in detail and most importantly, take public domain photos of for everyone to learn from!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Asimina x piedmontana #Asimina piedmontana #Asimina triloba #Asimina parviflora

[rjalker]

Peeled 6, going to try and get the other 6 to dry on their own to see what happens. Maybe the seeds will mature more.

[Image description start. A photo taken with flash showing a drying setup for loofah gourds and sponges made from them. The gourds are large, ranging from dark green to light green.

The gourds are sitting on wire racks, and the sponges are elevated above and behind them on a wheeled trolley.

Some of the sponges are sitting on a wire rack, others are in a plastic mesh bag.

There are two wire strainers with seeds in them.

Image description end.]

Okay speech to text really wants to spell it and loofah instead of luffa and both ways are perfectly fine so whatever, my posts are just going to be inconsistent depending on whether I'm typing or not.

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #luffa #luffa aegyptiaca #described images

[rjalker]

fuck yeah!!!!!!!!!

my luffa operculata seeds got here!!!!!!!!!!

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #!!!!!!!!

[rjalker]

what should this canna lily seedling be named? Edit: Now named Casimir!

It (and its two other siblings that have germinated so far) have indeed inherited some of the traits of the parent plant, with red at the margins and pale green! Can't wait to see what it looks like when it gets bigger.

All the canna lilies we grow from seed are each going to get an individual name, since they'll eventually become cultivars when they're old enough to clone.

This is from the species Canna indica, and a...variety? cultivar? called "Warscewiczii" named after a botanist from 18-something.

[ID: A photo of a hand holding a small canna lily seedling, which still has the hard round seed attached at the side, one leaf still curled up in a tube, and small roots covered in soil. The leaf, rather than being bright green, is a pale yellowish green, with red fading in at the top and along the edges. End ID.]

#described images #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #canna lilies #canna indica #gardening #Canna indica var. Warscewiczii #Canna indica var Warscewiczii #Casimir the Canna lily

[rjalker]

Kk canna lilies will germinate a million times faster if you file through the hard outer coat and then either soak in water or plant directly.

There will be a spot on the seed where the root will naturally emerge. It might be flatter or slightly discolored. Don't file here, pick another spot.

You can use a nail file (worst option) sandpaper, or an actual metal file if you can find one.

File only deep enough to show some white. This will bypass the natural few months the seeds would wait in the wild.

#Gardening #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Canna lilies