Garden Journal

Female. 30s. Gardening in Transylvania. 🌻 Main blog All Things Soulful 🌻

[allthingssoulful-garden]

Getting closer to 1 kg 🍅

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Summer dinner.

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Another harvest of beefy tomatoes.

Mostly between 500-600 gr, the largest one weighing 775 gr.

[allthingssoulful-garden]

Your micro orchid growing set up looks really cool !! May I ask how you attached the moss to the ollas/how you planted the orchids in there? I’d love to look into doing smth like this myself :0

Thanks! And please let me know if you ever try it :)

Unfortunately I don't have any progress pictures.

I completely submerged the ollas in water for about 15 min to soak well, then mixed some garden soil with water until it was very watery, almost liquid, and smeared it all around the surface of the ollas. I think this step is extra, but I thought it might help the moss adhere better to the ollas. Then I wrapped them in moss and secured it by tightly wrapping sewing thread all around it. I mostly used a very similar shade of green so it's barely visible. I was lucky I had those large sheets of moss so attaching it was very easy, they were actually too large and had to cut some off. You can do it as well with smaller pieces, I have done that a while back on a smaller vase, it's just a little more complicated to attach them. I've also seen people only wrap small shreds of moss and then wait a couple of months until the moss grew and covered the entire surface and only then added the plants.

As for the micro orchids, I attached them the same way, with sewing thread, after I had the moss secured in place. The ones that have those thick, firm, typical orchid roots I attached them bare to the moss, but I have a couple that have very thin, fragile roots and those I covered with a patch of moss before wrapping the thread around them. You can also add a little bit of bark under them, I didn't. I chose micro orchids, but there are a lot of other plants you can do this with, whaterver you like. Or you can leave it with only moss, that'd look pretty as well. In a few months the moss and orchids are supposed to attach themselves to the porous surface of the ollas and to each other, so as the thread decomposes it won't be needed anymore. Hopefully.

I'll add a couple of close-up pictures to see better.

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I've not posted about this Haemanthus in so long, but it's still here and kicking. This plant is older than me. I separated the pup on the right a few years ago.

It's hard to tell the size, but that's a 80 L trashcan on the right of it.

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And this is the project I needed the moss for. As if I don't have enough plant things going on in my life as it is, but I've been wanting to try something like this for a couple of years now.

One 2 L and one 5 L watering ollas (the biggest I could find, if there'd have been a 20 L one I might have gotten that was well, haha).

The 2 L has 7 micro orchids on it (Dendrobium fuscifaucium, Dendrobium parvulum blue, Aerangis punctata, Acianthera crinita, Anathallis linearifolia, Schoenorchis tixieri, Masdevallia nidifica) and the 5 L has a Dracula Benedictii that I've split in two. On the larger one I might add a few tiny ferns, maybe some forest or rock plants as I come across them in time.

I know this is not the traditional growing medium for micro ochids, but I've never really paid much attention to planting or care rules in my garden anyway and things usually work out fine, so I'll give them a try. I did get a very pretty, twisted and hollow tree stump from the forest as well, as a backup if this doesn't work.

They're going to take a very long time to show signs of distress or growth, so it'll require a lot of patience.

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Drove to our forest yesterday after work, to get some moss for a little project. I was worried it might be too late in the afternoon but I ended up catching the golden hour, so it was perfect. The sounds and the smells of a warm, late afternoon in the summer, few things beat that.

Might have blacked out in there and gotted a lot more moss than I needed, but I have some damp, mossy corners in the garden, so the extra moss went in there, it wasn't wasted.

Also there's so, so much moss in that forest, the spots I took these from were barely noticeable. I think it might be part of why I didn't realize how much I had until I got home, haha.

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The water hyacinth has flowered for the first time and it's so pretty.

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Nothing beats eggplants roasted on open wood fire, even if you have to do it in the rain.

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Quick harvest in the rain.

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7 weeks' worth of growth.

Fingers crossed it'll get at least one aerial leaf this year 🤞🏻

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All sunflowers this year are volunteers. They're scattered all around the garden.

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Chicory flowers from the orchard.

There are large clusters of chicory scattered through the orchard that we've intentionally skipped while cutting the grass.

Picked some flowers this morning, though left most of them as they're full of bees.

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how many berry varieties do you have growing? for a beginner berry grower, which would you recommend?? 🥺👉👈

I have a list on my phone 😂 made a while back, to keep track of them, so here it is.

- strawberry

- framberry

- pineberry

- balloonberry

- alpine strawberry

- yellow alpune strawberry

- blueberry

- honeyberry

- blackberry

- polarberry

- raspberry

- yellow raspberry

- orange raspberry

- purple raspberry

- black raspberry

- tayberry

- wineberry

- red currant

- pink currant

- white currant

- black currant

- gooseberry

- jostaberry

- gojiberry

- blackthorn berry

- mulberry

- white mulberry

As for a beginner berry grower, it depends on what grows well in your climate. Maybe I'll recommend something that would struggle were you are and it wouldn't be worth it for the first time. So read a little about what grows well in your area. Take into consideration the amount of space you have as well and how much maintenance work you're willing to do.

If you want vines, you'll need to constantly prune and train them on trellises. If they have runners, you'll be constantly cutting or training them to not spread everywhere. Canes are a little less work. Even less work would be berries that grow on high trunk bushes, if you can find them in your area. Thorns or no thorns, as they're a big annoyance when you harvest or handle the vines.

None of my berries are particularly hard to grow. It all depends on what kind of maintenance work you'd rather do and which grow well there.

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I was minding my business doing nothing in the hammock when I heard some shuffling at the front gate and saw a neighbor hang a bag on it.

Now my evening plans have been altered.

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And the result.

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I was minding my business doing nothing in the hammock when I heard some shuffling at the front gate and saw a neighbor hang a bag on it.

Now my evening plans have been altered.

[allthingssoulful-garden]

Homemade 🥒