From The Old Farmer's Almanac.
Simple. Apparently....
Watch this video:
Basically it involves the same practice as Vegiforms. Rather than try and get the fruit into the bottle once it's mature, the bottle is placed over the fruit blooms and the fruit grows inside the bottle.
Once the fruit is fully ripened then the bottle can be removed. Then it's just a matter of filling the bottle with your favourite liqueur and storing. And these can be stored for years - the longer the better.
Hits & Misses: Popular plant arrangements & tight spaces
Question of the Week: Why are plants green?
Science & Technology: Potassium deficiency
The Path to Enjoy 2009: Sustainability
Sometimes nothing is a better than lip service. Case in point, being the ‘lip zone’ in a plant pot. Hilary Allan, one of our growers, and I were walking through the greenhouses the other day, and she pointed out that she always leaves a two-centimeter, soil-free zone at the top of the Easter lily pots. The reason she does this is so that customers will have just the right size water reservoir to ensure that their lilies get water and their kitchen counters and floors don’t. It may not sound like a big deal, but I think those little details make the difference between thoroughly enjoying a plant and wishing that you hadn’t bought it. I am the first to admit that I can be sloppy with the watering can at home (call it the curse of growing up in the greenhouse where water on the floor wasn’t a big deal), so I’m happy to take all the help I can get.
Hits & Misses
Hit: Popular Plant Arrangements
Indoor plant arrangements are hot items this Christmas, and I think their popularity can be attributed to their simplicity and ease of design. All you really need to create a great arrangement is an attractive pot, some quality potting soil and an assortment of small indoor plants. Add decorative rocks for top-dressing and a tiny ornament, and presto!—a terrific holiday centrepiece is born.
Miss: Tight Spaces
Heat and low light levels are a bad combination for plants. Each year, because of a lack of space, a few plants manage to find their way beneath the hot water pipes in the greenhouse. The problem with that scenario is that the heat encourages the plants to grow, but the light source doesn’t provide enough energy for them to assimilate nutrients. The inevitable result is soft, stretched and weak plants—the kind that usually topple and fold like cheap umbrellas in a wind storm.
Question of the Week
Why are plants green?
My daughter is studying light and lenses in her Grade 4 class and asked me why plants are green. The short answer that I gave her was that plants are green because they hate the colour green. Of course, that’s not exactly the truth, but I was going for drama. What I went on to explain was that while plants don’t hate green, they don’t get a big charge out of it either—literally. Plants prefer to utilize light in the red and blue spectrum and to reflect light in green spectrum. And that reflection of light accounts for why our eyes perceive most leaves as green. So the next time you are admiring the verdant leaves of your favorite shrub, remember that it is doing its best to give it away.
Science & Technology
Potassium Deficiency
Researchers in the department of Horticultural sciences at Texas A&M have determined that Phalaenopsis or moth orchids, as they are commonly called, do very poorly when grown in soils with low levels of potassium. The bottom line is that if you grow this type of orchid in your home, give it regular feedings with fertilizer that has a high last number on the label. A good indicator that your orchid might be a bit low in potassium is when it displays yellowy or bronze lesions on its leaves.
The Path to Enjoy 2009
Sustainability
Can art make a greenhouse more energy efficient? Well, maybe it will in our new location. We are working with a glass-blowing studio and various experts in the sustainable energy field to explore the possibility of recapturing the waste heat from the glass blowing furnaces. The heat would be used to warm the water in the greenhouse, and the vases manufactured in the studio would be sold in the Floral Design department. We think the answer is Yes!
Did You Know?
Compass plants (Silphium laciniatum) orient their leaf blades parallel to the sun.
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”
–Albert Einstein
The Fuschia from Tatton park trying out the new cold frame. Hil's kindly donated it to me and I spent over two hours yesterday wrestling with it in the falling light. I was frozen by the time I had completed it in the darkness. It will be used to extend the growing season by two months, one before in Spring, and the other in Autumn. I saw some Rosemary bushes nearby which I will acquire some cuttings to see if they will root over the winter in my coldframe..
The cold frame in situ. I am thinking of moving it to under the kitchen window so the warmth from the house can get into the box. It is constructed of metal frame with double plastic sheets slid into runners. It is quite roomy at the moment. It needs to be filled with plants!
This is inside the Outhouse, I love the play on words. It was formally a toilet, which has now been removed and a combi boiler placed in it. It has a power supply, lagged pipes around the floor, and a fitted shelf to one side. I cleared out all the refuse and binned it. Swept the dust and snail shells out then put in a few pots, the garden tools, my green box for potting up, and hung a few tools on the wall.
