The Hosta - Hosta spp. started flowering in the home garden this week, and with it brought a sense of peace in an otherwise hectic week. The dense, basal leaves of this plant are striking and highly attractive, overlapping each other to form a spreading mound of foliage. A highly ornamental plant, it's perfect for shady borders, as grown here, but also for woodland gardens or shade gardens. It can be planted as an understory to a shrub layer, and we're planning to use this plant in the centre of Shipka when we plant out a shady area. Ground cover plants play an important role in the forest garden, protecting the soil, providing refuge for wildlife at ground layer, preventing unwanted plants from establishing and can provide some food such as berries or leaves.
A tomato ripening in the home garden. We haven't had many of those this year, and this one is huge, possibly weighing in just shy of a kilogram. The plant was given to us by a local elderly man, and we'll be saving the seeds to grow next year, share, and add to a seed bank that we're starting as part of the ESC project. To see what the volunteers have been up to, you can check out their personal blog here.
Another seed we'll be adding is that of this heirloom squash, which we call 'Victoria's Granny'. One of the participants of our past Polyculture Market Garden study, Victoria Bezhitashvili, gave us some winter squash seed that originated from her Granny in Belarus. Year on year they provide a reliable harvest of bright orange, tasty fruit, and we save seeds from the next generation every year too. To avoid cross contamination with neighbouring courgettes, sometimes we use rubber bands to protect the newly emerging male and female flowers, the next morning removing the rubber bands to pollinate the female flowers with the uncontaminated pollen from the male flower, and then protect the pollinted female flower by replacing the rubber band and tying a piece of wool or ribbon around the stem so that, rather like a piece of luggage at an airport, it can be easily identified and the seeds from that particular fruit saved. We learned this from Real Seeds who have a wealth of great information on their website as well as quality seed.
In the below photo you can see the Victoria's Granny squash migrating into the forest garden area of the home garden, making itself at home on a Guelder Rose.
Here are some of the other plants in the wider polyculture
We've been harvesting figs from all the gardens and drying them on baking trays in the car. They take around 10 -12 hours to dry in a dehydrator and around 2 -3 days on top of the car dash board (parked in a sunny spot). Dried figs can be stored for six to eight months.
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
Figs must be allowed to ripen fully on the tree before they are picked. They will not ripen if picked when immature. A ripe fruit will be slightly soft and starting to bend at the neck. The fruit should be harvested gently to avoid bruising. Fresh figs do not keep well and can be stored in the refrigerator for only 2 - 3 days.
A note on Fig reproduction and pollination, which is fascinating but not great news for fig loving vegetarians :)
What we call the fig fruit is actually a flower or to be more precise an inflorescence - a cluster of many flowers and seeds contained inside a bulbous stem. Because of this unusual arrangement, the seeds—technically the ovaries of the fig—require a specialized pollinator that is adapted to navigate within the fruit and here begins the story of the relationship between figs and fig wasps.
The queen of the fig wasp is almost the perfect size for the job and enters through a tight opening in the fig called the ostiole.
Once inside, the queen travels within the chamber, depositing her eggs and simultaneously shedding the pollen she carried with her from another fig. This last task, while not the queen’s primary goal, is an important one: she is fertilizing the fig’s ovaries. After the queen has laid her eggs, she dies. Once the queen’s eggs hatch, male and female wasps assume very different roles. They first mate with each other and then the females collect pollen while the wingless males begin carving a path to the fig’s exterior. This activity is not for their own escape but rather to create an opening for the females to exit. The females will pollinate another fig as queens. The males will spend their entire life cycle within a single fruit.
Bad news for vegetarians thus being when you eat fig you probably eat wasp, however, common fig types have all female flowers that do not need pollination for fruiting as the fruit can develop through parthenocarpic means. Black Mission, Brown Turkey, Brunswick, and Celeste are some representative cultivars. More from our Essential Guide - Dig the Fig here.
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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'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.
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| 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!
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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
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
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| You can also register for our online training, services, and products directly here. |
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