[Image description: a small green crab pauses on the sand among some seaweed]
I helped some family friends clean up their little slice of beach today and saw this little friend.
[Image description: a small green crab. The photo is taken from the crab's front left side.]
[Image description: a picture of a small green crab taken from above.]
A general rule of thumb is aged 1 year, especially if you don't know what they use or if they board/breed horses since there's a lot of variability there. If the part of the pile you're digging into had a good worm population that's a good sign for that section, but if you get into another area and the worms vanish then don't include that in what you take
That sounds wonderful! I really enjoy letting our lettuce cross and seeing the patterns of the next generation.
Got a horse farm nearby
Always ask what their deworming schedule is like, or how long they've aged their manure. It's good stuff, but even a few ppm of common deworming treatments can persist and cause problems for gardens and especially worm bins
Have you tried telling your sage how proud of the fig you are? That and some additional nitrogen inputs might get them to bounce back too
Huzzah! That sounds like such a neat tree!
Each bundle of flowers will contain several dozen individual blooms (see below)
I land more on the "ten iterations on every iteration that works" model of evolutionary pressures and the arms/gills race that ensues but I think this is appropriate regardless
People who know these kinds of things are particularly neat to me (like you!) I know they have a long life cycle if they make good decisions but didn't realize they were considered different creatures based on their developmental stage
We're lucky in that we have two ponds and many seasonal vernal pools in our wooded property, so we get to see a lot of really cool amphibians
We surprised each other in the garden today. Best guess is Notopthalmus viridescens, but the species has a lot of variation within the population apparently.
That's my misunderstanding. Didn't know people could follow, but here is a splendid dagger I was able to photograph:
I'm up to 215 observations and 136 identified species 😁
I hear you, I try to get pictures of every critter my nearsighted self can see. I've gotten good close-ups of a few Ichneumonid wasps and I think two or three different cuckoo wasps (Chrysididae), but our state is awash in hoverfly species too. I did try to get a good close up of them but the resolution blew out to the point that iNaturalist didn't see anything. We're LLYLCK on iNat if you're curious to see who we've been able to spot
That's possible, but a quick look through the members of that family in our area suggests that they're larger than the individuals pictured here. Each of the flowers in the picture is about the size of the head of a pin. Either way thank you for introducing me to a new term
If you zoom in there are so many tiny pollinators
I brought home several many more plants than I donated, plus another book I have no space for. It's been nice knowing you plant nerds o7
This morning's plant sales got pushed to next weekend because of high winds and low temps, so I brought home all the shallow tomatoes that were donated so I could repot them. They'll go back to the donations tomorrow, but I took a few pictures for you all to help explain how and why to do this.
Here we have an example of what we're starting with. The plant itself is about a foot tall, but the pot is only 1.75 inches. The plant itself looks healthy but a little stressed. The square pot helps, but the whole thing is very top heavy. Planted as-is, this plant will need immediate staking and support or it will uproot itself. It will still have to expend energy creating new roots, and will be susceptible to summer heat. Let's move on to repotting.
Here's a top-down of our tomato in a 1-gallon pot. We're doing this with the original pot in place so we can determine which leaves will be removed and then safely lift the plant to do the pruning. Once we've pruned off a few leaves we'll place the roots at the very bottom of the pot and then fill the pot with substrate.
So, why do this? Every little hair on the tomatoes is an adventitious root - a specialized structure that will turn into a root in the right conditions. And we've just provided the right conditions. By giving the tomato a larger root ball, we're increasing the amount of surface area from which it can draw water and nutrients to produce tomatoes. This will not only improve the number produced, but also each one's nutritional value.
And here we have our plant repotted. It will have the whole week in a greenhouse with folks watering it to grow more roots before the plant sale. If someone asks me for advice on planting it when they get home, here's what I'll tell them:
If you're planting it in a pot, give it at least a 5 gallon pot, but 10 is better. Place the root ball at the bottom of your pot, and fill with your potting mix and fertility. If you're planting it in the ground, bury it as deep as you can, even up to the bottom of the very top most leaves. Then enjoy your tomatoes.
[Image description: roughly twenty American Persimmon seeds show off their taproots in varying stages of development while resting in my palm awaiting their turn to be transplanted]
I'm really excited that these germinated! We got a notice of poor germination tests from the folks we got the seeds from, so they shipped another ounce of seed out to us but far too late to let them naturally stratify over winter. So these bad Larry's got to stratify in our seed fridge through April.
I am more of a forest person than a beach person, but rarely turn down a chance to stock up on seaweed for the compost and gardens. If they're the european ones then I'll feel less bad about the one that found itself near trees unexpectedly =D