🌱🇳🇿 Which herb would you plant first for a simple tea garden? Chamomile, lemon balm, mint, or something else entirely?
@gardeningfriend.com
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Which herb would you plant first for a simple tea garden? Chamomile, lemon balm, mint, or something else entirely?
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Lavender is in the mint family, alongside rosemary, sage and basil. Many plants in that family have aromatic oil glands, which is why crushing a leaf releases that sharp, familiar scent.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Do you save seeds from your own garden? Calendula is one of the easiest to start with, the dried seed heads practically hand them to you. Which plant's seeds have you saved, or which would you like to try?
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 A single teaspoon of healthy soil can hold billions of microorganisms, as many as the people on Earth by some estimates. Most of what makes a garden thrive happens where we can't see it.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Question for the patient gardeners: what do you do while you wait for the soil to warm up? Start seeds indoors, plan the beds, or just stare out the window at the empty garden?
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Cool weather doesn't have to mean waiting. Calendula and chamomile are both cool-tolerant and can be sown early in the season, so they're a good first choice when the soil hasn't fully warmed up yet.
@chefsfleming.bsky.socialGetting ready for Thanksgiving
#gardenersofbluesky
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Before moving indoor-started seedlings outside, harden them off: a few hours outdoors each day for 7-10 days, increasing gradually. It prevents the transplant shock that kills many young plants.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Waiting for the weather to warm up? Go by soil temperature, not air temperature. Many seeds need soil around 10-15°C (50-60°F) to germinate reliably, and a cheap soil thermometer tells you when it's safe to plant out.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Early North American colonizers learned about echinacea's traditional use from Indigenous peoples, who used it more widely than any other plant on the continent for a range of purposes.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Calendula flowers track the sun throughout the day, a behavior called heliotropism, the same trick sunflowers are famous for, just on a smaller, less dramatic scale.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Chamomile belongs to the daisy family, and its name comes from the Greek "chamaimelon," meaning "earth apple," a nod to the faint apple-like scent of its crushed flowers.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Genuinely curious: what's the biggest struggle in your garden right now? Pests, weather, soil, time, something else entirely? Trying to understand what actually trips people up most.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 California poppy was declared the state flower in 1903, partly because it was so widespread that entire hillsides would turn orange every spring, early settlers reportedly used the color to navigate by.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Stages of seed buying: "I'll just get a couple" → ends up with a dozen packets → mild panic → suddenly researching raised beds at midnight. If you want to skip straight to the garden part → medicinalseedkit.com/kit/#aff=kij...
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Gardener logic: "I don't need more plants" *buys 6 more seed packets 10 minutes later* We don't make the rules, we just break them.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Calendula petals were once called "poor man's saffron" because cooks used them to add a similar golden color to dishes, at a fraction of real saffron's cost.
@gardeningfriend.com🌱🇳🇿 Echinacea's name comes from the Greek word "echinos," meaning hedgehog or sea urchin, a nod to the spiky, cone-shaped seed head at the center of each flower.
@chefsfleming.bsky.socialThere's still some squash left in the field, and not including the 5 hubbard squash and 5 pumpkins I harvested last week, this is about 50 kilos of squash. It should see me through to next year's harvest. Very pleased.
#vegetable #gardenersofbluesky
@chefsfleming.bsky.socialYou know it's a big squash when your secateurs won't fit around the stem to harvest it!
#gardenersofbluesky
