Tomatoes, Southern Green Stink Bugs and Fennel Flowers - The Polyculture Project - Week 22

The tomatoes are really coming thick and fast now, and I have yet to taste a tomato as delicious as the ones grown here in Bulgaria. With a slice of local goats cheese, a few basil leaves and a dash of olive oil, you have a lunch fit for a Thracian king!

Tomato - Solanum lycopersicum - growing in our polyculture Zeno. I believe this is popular Bulgarian cultivar 'Giant Rose'

Unfortunately, for the last 3 years the tomatoes have been affected by the persistent predation of the Southern Green Stink Bug - Nezara viridula. 

Life Cycle of Nezara viridula, taken from Topics in Subtropics

The young are easier to spot being black, but the only real way that we have found to deal with them is to manually remove them which is quite time-consuming. Stink bugs are on the menu of pest predators we have in the garden but they don't seem to be having an impact on these bugs. According to UC- IPM   predation can be enhanced for short distances from plantings of nectar plants such as alyssum and others as long as the flowering of these plants begins early in the season (April–June). We 'll try introducing some more support plants within the tomato planting that flower during that period  

On the left you can see the young, probably just at the 1st instar stage of development, but already causing problems, and on the right a damaged fruit. 

Chinese Lantern - Physalis alkekengi growing in the home garden. This decorative herbaceous perennial grows well in the shade and produces tasty fruit very rich in vitamin C. The plants produce papery bright-orange calyxes that develop around the ripening fruit earning the plant its common name Chinese Lantern.  

The plants spread quickly to form an attractive and dense ground cover in a shady area, as you can see in the below image taken from the forest garden section of the home garden. These plants are around 3 years old.

The view from another part of the home garden, on a late summer's evening:)

We're well and truly into Blackberry season now, and the image shows fruits from a thornfree cultivar growing in the home garden. It's anthocyanin, a plant pigment and powerful antioxidant, that gives blackberries their dark colour, and it's this that has been shown to have numerous beneficial health effects, with reportedly useful roles in dementia and cancer protection.  The good news is that some studies have shown that blackberries have one of the highest antioxidant contents per serving of any food tested - good to muse over while enjoying them in the garden :)

Fennel - Foeniculum vulgare about to burst into full bloom

The flowers of Fennel attract an astonishing amount of organisms to the garden and we're always quite amazed by the sheer volume of visitors. In particular, a variety of flies seem to visit the blooms, including Hoverflies - (Syrphid flies/flower flies), which are in fact very valuable pollinators as well as pest predators. Some species produce larvae that feed on aphids and other soft-bodied insects. The adult female hover fly will find a location where aphids are present and lay her eggs nearby. When the caterpillar like larvae emerge from the eggs, they move along the plant surface, lifting their heads to grope for prey, seizing them and sucking them dry. A single larva can consume hundreds of aphids in a month. Hoverflies are reported to be excellent at detecting and attacking even low numbers of aphids. Check back next week for some images, as I hope to capture the activity during this week.

We'll end this post with an update on the ducks - it's quite unbelievable how quickly they've grown, and 2 'batches' of ducklings have now been introduced into the garden.  The final 'batch' still requires the safety of the cage for now, as they are just 1 week old, but mother and babies are doing very well :)

Welcome to our Online Store where you can find Forest Garden/ Permaculture plants, seeds, bulbs and Polyculture multi-packs along with digital goods and services such as Online Courses, Webinars, eBooks, and Online Consultancy.  We hope you enjoy the store and find something you like :) It's your purchases that keep our Project going. Yuu can also find our full list of trees. shrubs and herbs for forest gardens on our website here 

 Enter Our Store Here

Plants, Seeds, eBooks, Consultancy, Bulk Fruit and Nut Tree Orders for Permaculture, Polyculture, Forest Gardens and Regenerative Landscapes.

We have a webinar coming up on the Saturday, 28th of November 2020 - 19.00 GMT+3. we cover the basics of how to Design and Build A Forest Garden.  It's a live session where we'll go through step by step what you need to know to get started and end with a Q&A session. We'll send you a recording of the webinar when it is finished along with our design spreadsheets and plant lists to help get you started with your own Forest Garden Design.  

The webinar will be hosted on zoom and you can book your place here - Looking forward to it!

Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course 

Want to learn how to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes?  Join us for our Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course from May 1st to Sep 13th, 2023. 

We're super excited about running the course and look forward to providing you with the confidence, inspiration, and opportunity to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes, gardens, and farms that produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity.

Regenerative Landscape Design Online Course

You can find out all about the course here and right now we have a 20% discount on the full enrollment fees. Just use the promo code RLD2023 in the section of the registration form to receive your discount. 

We are looking forward to providing you with this unique online learning experience - as far as we know, the very first of its kind. If you are thinking of reasons why you should do this course and whether this course is suitable for you, take a look here where we lay it all out. Looking forward to it!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We offer a diversity of plants and seeds for permaculture, forest gardens and regenerative landscapes including a range of fruit and nut cultivars. We Deliver all over Europe from Nov - March. - Give a happy plant a happy home :)

Our Bio-Nursery - Permaculture/Polyculture/ Regenerative Landscape Plants 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Support Our Project 

If you appreciate the work we are doing you can show your support in several ways.

• Make a purchase of plants or seeds from our Bionursery or Online Store 

• Consider joining us for one of our Courses or Online Courses

• Comment, like, and share our content on social media.

• Donate directly via PayPal to balkanecologyproject@gmail.com or via FTX Pay

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Design and Create Webinars - Forest Gardens, Urban Gardens, Permaculture, Regenerative Farming   

We're hosting a range of online learning sessions including how to create habitat to enhance biodiversity, how to design and build a forest garden, polyculture design software tutorials, regenerative farm, and landscape design, urban gardening and much more. If you would like to be notified when our next sessions are coming up please add your email below and hit subscribe and we'll be in touch.

You can also register for our online training, services, and products directly here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------