this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
8 points (100.0% liked)

Nature and Gardening

7164 readers
55 users here now

All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.

See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.

(It's not mandatory, but we also encourage providing a description of your image(s) for accessibility purposes! See here for a more detailed explanation and advice on how best to do this.)

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
NataliePortland@beehaw.org
LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org
alyaza@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
8
What's growing on, Beehaw? (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 days ago by LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org to c/greenspace@beehaw.org
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I spent a huge chunk of yesterday helping a friend transplant bits of his garden from his old house to his new house. We must have dug up at least forty irises and tons of peonies, marigolds, and various other plants. He was kind enough to split some of the clumps with me, and he's planning to split me some white dutch irises that are already growing at his new place.

What's growing on with you all?

top 13 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Duckworthy@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago

I haven’t been pooping in a banana hole. Instead I’ve been in the battle against squirrels. I’m in a great biodiversity hotspot so I have both ground squirrels ( who’ve decided to adapt and climb my fruit trees) and tree squirrels.
I’ve been excited to eat my nectaplums, so I was cautious and bagged them when they were very small. The squirrels have decided that even though they can’t get into the bags, I deserve punishment so they still knock them out of the tree still green in the bags, and leave a few tooth marks in each.

I just bought some pie plates to try and add baffles and I fully expect some new horror they think of next.

[–] salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Lovage is blooming, and teeming with little hoverflies and ladybugs.

[–] LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I am stunned by how crisp those hoverflies in the photo are! And those lovage flowers are spectacular

[–] salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 3 points 1 day ago

Thanks! Take enough rapid fire photos, you have a decent chance of getting a good one. 😅

I did not expect the lovage to be such a hit with the bugs! That was a pleasant surprise. I think it's the most ladybugs I've seen on one plant.

[–] SteevyT@beehaw.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Chicken wire fence worked well to keep the groundhog away from the squash. Squash is going nuts again, not sure how I'll keep it in the garden bed. Green beans are going well, replanted a bunch of carrots to replace the ones that died hopefully. I think that whst I thought were Brussel sprouts are actually cucumber, and what I thought was cucumber is Brussel sprouts so neither is where I wanted them. Raspberry bushes are also coming in very quickly, blueberry bushes are being very slow.

[–] LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm so glad the exclusion barrier is working for your squashes! Can you train them up some trellising with any sort of ease?

I think that whst I thought were Brussel sprouts are actually cucumber, and what I thought was cucumber is Brussel sprouts so neither is where I wanted them

Oh no ......

[–] SteevyT@beehaw.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, I do have a couple stair rails with 550 cord strung between them to attempt to get them to climb. My wife is a bit afraid that the vines wont be able to support the weight of the squashes when they start coming in though.

[–] LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org 3 points 1 day ago

We've grown butternut and pumpkins on trellising with no significant weight issues - one or two huge guys that I cut off to cure elsewhere while the others kept growing, sure. If you're doing cukes, zukes, or other summer or small squash you should be good to go though.

[–] wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I dug a hole. For banana. But first I must poop in it multiple times.

[–] LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I usually prefer non-human animal manures for that sort of thing. Are you using a composting toilet or some other mechanism to reduce pathogenic potential?

[–] wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't exploit non-human animals, so it's 100% humanure. When it's raining or night time, I poop in a bucket, which we can call a composting toilet, but when I can, I prefer to poop directly in the hole. Less work that way. What's the saying? "You say pathogen, I say vitamin B12"?

[–] LallyLuckFarm@beehaw.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I mean this as constructively as possible: that's not a composting toilet and the practice you've described raises health risks for you and the people to whom you give food.

[–] wolfyvegan@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I would have thought the same thing years ago when I was reading the humanure handbook. I used to only use fully rotted compost in the holes for the plants, and that usually wasn't available in anywhere near sufficient quantity (as I was planting hundreds of trees back then), so I'd need to go into the forest and scrape up the 1cm layer of topsoil and carry it back in buckets (usually uphill) to mix in when back-filling the holes. It's a wonder that I could sustain that as long as I did. Meanwhile I'd empty the toilet bucket into a ~1m^3 pile with metal mesh around it to keep it upright while allowing for aeration and a sheet of metal or hard plastic roofing over the top to keep the rain out, and I'd wait patiently for it to break down, only to have the neighbours' chickens or some other animal get into it and scatter it everywhere, and I'd need to start the pile again. Eventually I discovered that if the hole didn't hold water after a rain, and if there was sufficient dry organic material mixed in, composting in place worked quite well without it going anaerobic. Keeping it covered in the ground meant no chickens, no smell, no maintenance. As I get older, I crave simplicity more and more, so this method just makes sense.

I've since travelled around a bit, and it turns out that quite a few people also compost in-ground after discovering, as I did, that trying to compost the "proper" way didn't work very well in this climate. Some people even sheet-mulch with the contents of their toilet bucket, but I prefer not to do that in order to avoid any potential messes. (I have chicken trauma.) The only people I've met who continued to maintain aboveground compost piles long term (with underwhelming results) were those who had a fear of "germs" and ate cookery and took vitamin B12 supplements.

The one advantage of maintaining proper compost bins was being able to harvest tomatoes out of them. Now on the rare occasions that I eat tomatoes, the seeds get buried too deep to sprout.

Of course everything that I've written here only applies to the places I've lived in the wet tropics. Someone in a colder or drier climate would almost certainly need to do things differently.