Buckwheat

I have often considered growing buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum), but never got around to it until recently.  I enjoyed growing buckwheat, I saved a little seed, and I plan to grow it again.

Buckwheat seed is eaten by people, animals can eat the leaves, it apparently grows well in soils lacking fertility, people grow it as a cover crop to increase soil organic matter and biological activity, and bee keepers overseas often rave about buckwheat.

This year has been another dry year, so I decided to plant some things to help my bees leading into winter and decided to add buckwheat in the mix.

I know what you are thinking, growing a few square meters of flowers won’t make a lot of difference. That is true, it won’t make a huge amount of difference, but making a little difference may be the difference between starvation and having my hive just making it through. Feeding sugar syrup is good, feeding sugar syrup plus planting extra flowers is better.

Buckwheat starting to flower

There was not much time before frosts came so I needed something that grows fast. I have heard that buckwheat can flower in as little as four weeks. That sounds unrealistically fast, but I thought I would give it a go. I had a few garden beds that would be empty until spring, I planned to dig compost and manures through them in winter, so they were perfect for autumn planted buckwheat. I am told that buckwheat produces large amounts of both nectar and pollen. My bees need both of those. As my hive was pretty close to the buckwheat, and the next nearest hive was about a kilometer away, my bees should collect the vast majority of the resources.

I planted some buckwheat seeds, I wasn’t sure what density would provide the largest nectar yield, perhaps spacing them too close would make them grow slower and have less flowers overall, perhaps planting them close would mean the same number of flowers per plant and more nectar per square meter. I don’t know, so in one bed I planted them thickly, and in the other they were planted further apart.

The more dense planting appeared to provide more flowers overall and oddly enough more flowers per plant.

Buckwheat cotyledons low planting density

Buckwheat cotyledons high planting density

The seeds germinated in a day or two, which was faster than expected, the cotyledons were odd shaped little things. Then they started to grow true leaves, these were heart shaped and look similar to fish mint. At first I stressed that my fish mint somehow invaded these two beds, smelling the leaves quickly dispelled my fears. There was no doubt, this was certainly not fish mint.

I keep hearing how fast buckwheat grows, and how quickly they flower, but mine didn’t look like they had done much after germinating. Two weeks after sowing seeds most plants only had 2 or 3 true leaves and were not very tall. Then I looked closer, even though they only had 2 or 3 true leaves and were only about 2 inches tall they also had flower buds! How can such tiny plants have flower buds forming? How remarkable.

Apparently they begin flowering when still tiny, and continue to flower as they grow. This is perfect for my bees as it means they had extra resources to forage on leading up to winter. Not only will they have extra resources, no one else is growing buckwheat nearby so it increased the diversity in their food. I have no proof of this but I think giving bees diversity in food helps the colony stay strong.

Buckwheat with heart shaped leaves

The frosts killed the plants before they got a chance to set seed much, so this crop was mostly for the bees and as a green manure to feed the soil. Next time I will try to plant earlier so I can also save more seed and will never have to buy seed again.

White flowered buckwheat

Light pink flowered buckwheat

Mixed colour buckwheat flowering

My buckwheat grew a mix of white, pink, and red flowers. Most of the flowers were white, but I prefer the pink and red ones. The pink or red flowered buckwheat tended to have red stems while the white flowered ones had green stems.

I only saved seed from the darker pink to red plants. I would love to stabilise a variety of pink or red flowering buckwheat, but to do that I would prefer to save seed from a lot more plants.

Pink flowered buckwheat producing seed

White flowered buckwheat producing seed

For now I don't sell buckwheat seeds, perhaps one day I will have stabilized a pink flowering buckwheat variety and will sell seeds from them. Or maybe I will sell mixed buckwheat seed that has a high percentage of pink flowering types. If I ever do sell buckwheat seeds they will be listed on my for sale page.

How to Grow Muscari Grape Hyacinth from Seeds

Over the years I have grown a lot of things from seed that I have been told are not possible, or are too difficult, or will have poor results, and are simply not worth my time.  Quite often this advice is given rather aggressively by people who have never attempted this, and never researched this, but are basing their rather strong opinions on - I don’t actually know what.  All I know is that they are usually overly aggressive in their advice and claim that anyone who considers otherwise is foolish.

I often try these things that I have been told not to try by these aggressive naysayers, but keep quiet, at very worst I will learn from the experience.  Usually I collect the seeds from fruit myself so it costs me nothing more than time.  I think spending a little time on a hobby and learning something is well worth the investment.

Sometimes the results are ok, other times they are rather poor, but more often than not my results are spectacular and I wonder why so many people tell me and everyone else not to try.  If our survival depended on crop success I could understand being over cautious and never trying anything new, but crop failure is not life and death here at the moment, so I don’t understand the reason not to be adventurous.

I mostly grow edible things, every now and again I dabble in ornamentals.  One thing that almost no one does anymore is grow flowering bulbs from seed.  Many are surprising easy to grow, while others are far more difficult.  Depending on the type of bulb it can take a few years before they can flower when grown from seed, others flower the year the same year the seed is planted.

One type of flower I have never tried to grow from seed before is muscari (Muscari armeniacum) also known as "grape hyacinth".  They are small, there are a few varieties around to cross, and they occasionally self-seed with no outside help, so this should not be a terribly difficult task. 

Grape hyacinth Muscari armeniacum seedlings

From looking on the internet it appears that very few home growers bother to grow grape hyacinth from seeds, and even less have written instructions on how they did it.  I did some research to try and find the best way to germinate muscari seeds but the advice was not consistent and was rather vague.

I found some vague instructions that said the seeds need cold stratifying, while others that say they do not need stratification but actually need cold germination.

Other than that I have found very little information, so I gave it a go anyway and figured that I would learn from it.  The seeds were from my existing plants, so I had little to lose.

I had a very limited genetic stock to work with the first year, so my crosses will likely end up looking much like the parent stock.  This is ok, this was about learning how to make the cross and germinate the seeds.  After I learn that I can try to get a few different varieties and aim to create something new.

Much like in fruit and vegetable breeding, I removed anthers from flowers before they matured and bagged the flowers from then until seed pods had formed.  This meant that any seed set was a result of my cross pollination attempts.  Collecting pollen was difficult as the flowers are small and the plants are low to the ground, I wiped the tip of my pocket knife across anthers and gently dabbed pollen on the stamens. 

You don't have to do any of this, but I wanted to learn how to cross different varieties in the future.  This year I have just allowed the plants to flower and set seed without intervention from me.  I will collect this seed when it is ripe.

I enjoyed a good success rate and ended up with a decent number of seeds to use. Once the flowers had finished I left the stalks with the seed pods on the plant to dry, then I collected their seeds.

Grape hyacinth seed pods - I had collected seed from all the good looking ones before I thought to take a picture

I was not certain how to germinate the seeds but figured they should go through the fridge.

I put seeds on damp paper in a plastic zip lock bag in the fridge, I had intended to take some seeds out after six weeks to see if they would then germinate in warm soil, but time got away from me.

Two months after being in the fridge the first seed germinated.  I planted that seedling and a few of the other non-germinated seeds in a pot of soil.  Those other seeds I planted never germinated.

Muscari seeds on damp paper towel and put in the fridge until they germinate

Around two and a half months a lot more seeds germinated in the fridge and were planted out, again I also planted out some of the other non-germinated seeds.  Again none of the other seeds have ever germinated.  They either germinate while they are in the fridge or they never germinate.

I left the remainder of the seeds in the fridge and they all germinated around 3 months after they were first put in the fridge.

Muscari seeds germinated and ready for planting

So far seeds have only germinated while they were still in the fridge, none of the seeds that had been in the fridge for a few months and then planted out prior to germinating have done anything.

They may need more time, or they may only germinate while cold, I don’t really know.  What I do know is that I can get most of my muscari grape hyacinth seeds to germinate if I just leave them in the fridge on damp paper and check on them every now and again.  That is pretty simple.

Three months seems like a long time to wait for germination.  Then again, leaving seeds in the fridge for three months and doing nothing works well and is simple enough.

Another batch of seedlings, I should use a larger pot but I ran out of them

From this I have learned to emasculate, pollinate, and bag muscari flowers to achieve high rates of seed set.  I have learned how to collect ripe seed and germinate a large percentage of the seeds.  I count this as a success.

I don’t know the best time to plant seeds, and I don't know anything about muscari genetics, so I still have a lot to learn. The young seedlings are best kept out of hard frost the first year, and they need reasonable watering the first year.  From year two I treat them the same as any flowering bulb.

I had assumed that most blue muscari grape hyacinth bulbs were pretty similar genetically meaning they would be pretty genetically homozygous and the seedlings would all be reasonably similar.  I am happy to say that this does not appear to be the case. 

Even at a few weeks old some seedlings were more robust and producing a thick bulbous base, others were still very spindly and grass like.  Some grew reddish stems while others were green.  Perhaps some of the flowers might look a little different, only time will tell.

Grape hyacinths - normally I wouldn't dig them at this time of year

More muscari bulbs - not great to dig them when actively growing like this

From here I need to find a few different muscari varieties so I can try some interesting crosses, then grow out the crossed seed and wait a few years and see what their flowers look like.  Being so small I should be able to fit a lot of muscari plants into a small amount of space.  They are pretty low maintenance, so the wait should not be unbearable.

It should only be about three years before I get to see the first flowers.  Once they flower I can divide the bulbs of the ones I like best.

If you want to grow grape hyacinth from seed you will either need to collect the seeds yourself, which is simple if you have a plant, or try to buy some seeds.  I can't find anywhere that sells muscari seeds so if you find somewhere even mildly reputable please let me know (not ebay as many ebay seeds are fake and the sellers are thieves).

I sell muscari seeds through my for sale page, they are simple to grow.  Unlike bulbs you get a lot of seeds for very little money, the only down side is they take a few years to flower. 

Until I learn how long grape hyacinth seeds remain viable I will only sell fresh seeds that are less than a year old.  My plants have now finished flowering again and I am waiting for the seed pods to dry a little more before I collect them.

Mentha australis - native river mint

A number of years ago I found a small herb for sale that was labelled as: native river mint - Mentha australis. There are about 25 species and countless interspecific hybrids and varieties of mint (Mentha), only about six species are endemic to Australia.

I had always heard that there were a few species of mint native to the area I lived, I spent much of my life outside in the bush and have looked for them but I had never actually seen one in the wild.

This native river mint plant was small, it had long thin wiry stems, it only had a few leaves and they were all rather small. Overall this plant looked pretty weak. I smelled one of the leaves and it smelled strongly like peppermint. That was enough to make me try growing native river mint.

I bought this plant and excitedly took it home that day. I did some research and it appears to be correctly labelled. Even though I had never seen one in the wild it is indeed one of the species that is, or at least was, native to my area. Who knows, perhaps these are locally extinct in the wild now.

Typical stems of native river mint

From what I read this plant used to be really common and was used as bush tucker or medicine as well as food for the first Europeans. Native river mint is pretty rare in the bush now, it is said to persist as seeds in the soil on ephemeral flood plains where it springs up after rains and may be lucky to flower and drop seed before it is grazed to death. I still hope to see it growing in the wild near a stream one day and I plan to take a small cutting if it is growing where that is allowed.

I grew my plant in a pot sitting in some water, many types of mint have huge weed potential as they spread by underground runners as well as drop masses of incredibly tiny seeds. Mine grew rather well as an emergent water plant with the roots in water and the leaves in the air, it grew far better as a normal terrestrial plant that is never submerged and is just watered infrequently. Like most types of mint, this needs a bit of water to really flourish. Native river mint does spread by runners, and it does set tiny little seeds, but it doesn’t seem to spread very far by itself and doesn’t appear to pose a weed threat. While I don’t have any seedlings from seed fall I assume the seeds are viable. Perhaps it may need a second (genetically different) plant in order to set seed, but I doubt it.

Native river mint is a civilised variety of mint that is simple to contain and if you put in some work can actually be grown in the garden without it taking over. You can’t honestly say that about many varieties of mint!

Native river mint leaves - front and back

Based on what I have seen from growing this for a few years I can say that native river mint always has long thin stems, and always has small leaves, this appears to be its normal growth habit. The small leaves smell and taste very strongly of peppermint, and are simple to strip from the stems for use. My plant always has leaves and does not appear overly bothered by heavy frosts.

I assume it is very healthy to eat but have no evidence of this. My kids enjoy herbal tea made from native river mint and sometimes they mix different herbs together. I grow a lot of different herbs and things so they have plenty of choice.

I have never tried to collect/grow its seed so can’t comment on how easy they germinate or how much diversity they have from seed or even if one plant can set seed without cross pollinating.

Native river mint is native to my area, which means that if its seed ever gets into bush land it will actually be a good thing and it won't be adding to the weed burden in the area.

These grow very easily from cuttings, I take cuttings of this when I remember and they root easily in moist soil or even in a glass of water.

Mentha australis cuttings ready to plant

Native river mint flowers for me each year and feeds several species of native bees and other native insect pollinators. They possibly also feed honey bees but I have yet to see them working its flowers, which means it is not their preferred source of food so the native bees get a greater share of its nectar and pollen resources.

Many of our country’s native bees and other insect pollinators are becoming increasingly rare. I don’t know if this is due to competition by introduced honey bees, or lack of suitable foods due to land being cleared for housing/crops, or lack of appropriate nest sites, or wide scale pesticide use, or any number of factors. Many of the native plants people grow are not native to this area and have larger flowers and are very attractive to honey bees. Growing small flowering native plants such as native river mint provides suitable food for native insects and may give them a competitive advantage over the larger and more aggressive honey bees. By growing organically you are not adding to the pressures these native insects face from wide scale pesticide use.

Perhaps growing small native plants like this organically will help the local ecology in a small way. If enough people in an area grew one or two things like this I think it would make a big difference. Native river mint is a useful edible herb that is easy to grow and doesn’t pose a weed threat, which in itself makes them worth growing. If growing native mint helps the local ecology in some way then that is an added bonus.

Native river mint is simple to grow, is good to eat, is good for the environment, but can be difficult to find for sale because few people know about it. I sell native river mint plants through my for sale page and can post it to much of Australia.

Golden Orb Weaver Spider

A few years ago a Golden orb weaver (Nephila edulis) spider made her web on our deck.  She grew huge.  Her web was largely out of the way so we left her where she was, it was too high for the kids to accidentally hurt her but close enough that they could watch her doing her thing.

My kids liked watching the spider and the way she neatly organised her pretty yellow web.  Our baby was fascinated with that spider, when he was grizzly I would take him outside and he would look at the spider and calm down.

Golden orb weavers have a remarkably short life for such a large spider.  They hatch in spring, live through summer, then they lay eggs and die in the autumn.

Once or twice she disappeared and when she returned she was skinny, I assumed she had laid eggs somewhere safe.  Eventually autumn came and it was time for that beautiful spider to die.  One day she was simply gone, and we never saw her again.

The following spring a golden orb weaver made a web in our chicken run.  Given its location and the timing I imagine she was the daughter of the original spider. 

Female golden orb weaver

From time to time I would see male golden orb weaver spiders in her web.  They never lasted very long, male golden orb weaver spiders are tiny and the females tend to eat the males.

As you can see above she grew rather large and fat, this meant she was full of eggs.  Her time to lay eggs was close.

Then one day she was skinny, which meant she laid her eggs somewhere in a protective golden nest.  I looked around until I found the egg sack, it is made of golden silk.

Golden orb weaver after laying eggs

Look how skinny she was!

Golden orb weaver egg sack

I like the colour of their silk

Egg sack protected from rain etc

Golden orb weaver - everything is neat in her web

Then the spider grew large and fat again.  I hoped she may survive long enough to lay more eggs but time was against her.  Autumn was upon us and it was almost her time to die.  If frosts came early she would die, if frosts held off she would be able to lay her remaining eggs before she died.

I checked on her one day and I actually got to watch her lay her eggs!  I took some pictures towards the end of the experience, by this stage she was exhausted.

Two egg sacks

The spider died not long after laying her second egg sack.  Her time had come to an end, she climbed up over the roof and died there that afternoon.  With time her beautiful web eventually fell apart and the only reminder we have of her are her two golden egg sacks.

Now spring is here again I eagerly look at the egg sacks for signs of spiderlings hatching.  So far there has been no activity, but hatching day can't be far away.  I would love to see one hatch, but the chances are that I won't know about it until it is over.

I really hope one of her daughters takes up residence in our yard somewhere.  In order to grow so large so fast golden orb weavers catch and eat a lot of insects.  Even though they grow so large they really pose no threat to my kids, and they are a generally lovely spider.

It is almost time to hatch little spiderlings, I can hardly wait.

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Update 23/11/2019 - the baby spiders are hatching today!  Even though they were laid weeks apart both egg sacks are hatching at the same time.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny fat baby golden orb weaver spiders.  It is both really exciting and kind of creepy.  I hope at least one of them decides to stay in my yard.
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Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die".

Parsley as a vegetable rather than a herb

Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is a great plant that is highly nutritious, undervalued, and underutilised. It should be grown and used as a leafy vegetable. Like many people I grew parsley on and off for years. Like many people we initially used it as a garnish/herb so we didn’t really value this plant.

Parsley is usually biennial, meaning it grows leaves one year, then the second year it flowers and dies. This is frustrating because it means alternating years of feast and famine. Every second year is great for leaf production, and the alternate years are pretty light as the plants are flowering.

I say 'usually biennial' because it varies. Eventually some seed germinates late, or a plant flowers early, and you end up with a self-sustaining patch of parsley that always has some plants in their first year as well as some that are flowering.

Like many people I used to grow curly varieties of parsley, which demands reasonably high levels of attention for a small reward. Many varieties of curly parsley (there are many but most are unnamed) look pretty and have a relatively mild flavour. What they lack in productivity and taste they make up for in fancy looks. Hmmm, not a great trade off.

Parsley is relatively hardy though, and they drop a lot of seed, so while the first years you plant them and tend them and put in a lot of work to keep them going, eventually seed falls somewhere just right and they take care of themselves from there. Low productivity but no work is an ok trade off, so I kept growing parsley while never getting the most out of it or ever really appreciating it.

Eventually I grew some flat leaf parsley, I don’t recall when or why, and it changed the way I view parsley. The flat leaf varieties (again, there are many but they are usually unnamed) often grows much larger than the curly parsley, it produces far more leaf from the same amount of soil/water, and it has a stronger taste. We started using parsley in bread rolls and things as we had more of it.

Then we started using parsley as a vegetable rather than a herb, and began to value its highly nutritious leaves more highly. I am talking about using its leaves as a vegetable here, not the roots.

Regular flat leaf parsley on top, my parsley lower, 30cm ruler for scale

Somehow this became a slippery slope, and when we had enough parsley growing we would use its leaves as a spinach substitute in all kinds of meals. In my mind, this is how parsley should be used. Parsley should be a leaf vegetable.

The common inclination to grow fancy varieties that are low yielding, rather than highly productive flat leaf forms appears to be the only factor that is limiting this use. Many common plants that are grown as ornamentals were once important vegetables, I guess parsley is part way through this transformation from being a useful and nutritious vegetable to being just another pretty ornamental.

As we started using parsley as a leaf vegetable I started to breed bigger and better plants. I have never seen the point in growing food that doesn't suit me, I prefer to grow superior plants, if superior varieties don't exist then I will breed them myself. This has gone surprisingly well, it appears that flat leaf parsley still has the genes required to be a productive leaf vegetable. 

My larger parsley is not stable and seed grown plants still throw a mix of large, extra large, and huge leaf plants. Most of the giant leaf parsley varieties such as 'Giant of Italy' are puny compared to my improved plants.

My parsley is a monster compared to regular flat leaf parsley

As well as these improved plants I grew one plant that had massive leaves. At this stage I don’t know if it is a hybrid with skirret or if it is just the perfect parsley, but I suspect it is the latter. The plant had large leaves comprised of massive rounded leaflets, it flowered in its first year and produced copious amounts of seed. Even if this is not a hybrid it is displaying all the traits I want from parsley.

At this stage I don’t know what percentage of its seedlings, if any, will display the massive leaf and flowering in the first year traits. I allowed most of it to open pollinate and have sown a lot of that seed. I bagged a small number of flowers before they opened so they would be self-pollinated to see if many of them retain the massive leaf trait. I am yet to plant the self pollinated seed.

Massive Leaf Parsley - just a seedling

Perhaps one day I will start selling seed for my mixed giant parsley and my massive leaf parsley. When they are ready they will be listed on my for sale page along with various other interesting vegetables.

Stencils on Apples Using Sunlight

Have you ever looked closely at the skin of a red apple?  Have you ever noticed how it is red where the sun hit and green where it was shaded by a leaf or something?  I have.

Noticing this made me wonder if I could put shapes or even words on apples using nothing other than sunlight and shade.  It would be pretty cool if this was possible.  So I gave it a try.

As it turns out, it is possible, and I can put words or shapes on an apple using nothing other than sunlight and shade.

I had high hopes of how they might turn out, and they were even better than I had even imagined!  These apples were picked from my tree looking like this.  Aren't they remarkable...

Love hearts and other shapes can be put on apples using sunlight

 
I don't know what you would call this, a "stenciled apple" perhaps?  An "apple tattoo" maybe?  I have no idea.

I don't seem to be able to google this because I can't google anything containing the word "apple" without returning nonsense about the computer brand.  Including the search term 'stencil' or 'tattoo' made things even worse.

That meant that I had to teach myself how to do this and can't learn from other people's experience.  I think I did OK for a first try, I had fun, and I certainly learned a lot.

Stenciling and apple, or tattooing an apple, or whatever it is called is a bit fiddly, and it takes time, these took about two months from start to finish, but I did it and I am really happy with the results.

I have some big ideas to try this year.

What does azolla taste like

Azolla is a free floating fern that has a symbiotic relationship with a filamentous cyanobacteria called Anabaena.  This symbiotic relationship allows azolla to sequester atmospheric nitrogen and makes azolla a valuable little plant.

Azolla doesn't look much like a fern, but it is a fern.  I can't think of many free floating ferns, there are a few species of Azolla, and a few species of Salvinia.  Salvinia also doesn't look much like a fern.

Azolla is useful for many different things.  It is excellent high protein animal feed, it can be used to clean water, it has been proven to reduce mosquito survival, it is high in nitrogen and great in composts.  I keep some containers with azolla so my bees can collect water without drowning.  Azolla is even edible by people.  I have eaten azolla.

A bee collecting water from azolla

How do you describe the taste of fresh Azolla?  I read on the internet that azolla “has a crisp texture, smells a bit like moss and has a slightly tart taste, that is somehow earthy and reminiscent of forest”.  Yep, that just about sums it up.  I am not sure I agree with the 'tart taste' part, but the rest is spot on.

Azolla isn't the most amazing thing you will eat, but it isn't too bad.  The taste is underwhelming but I don't particularly like the texture.  When I eat azolla it breaks into tiny pieces that feel bad in my mouth.  I guess you could mix in in with a salad and it would be pretty good.

If you eat anything that grows in water you must take care that it was grown in water that was not polluted, and that it is free from snails.  Water snails carry a bunch of parasites that are best not to eat raw.

Over summer bees collect water without drowning

Azolla is easy enough to grow and will double in size very quicky under ideal conditions.  I put water in a container, put in a piece of azolla, and it takes care of itself from there.  All I need to do is scoop it out to feed the poultry or to add to compost or whatever. 

As azolla sequesters nitrogen from the atmosphere I grow it with Chinese water chestnuts, duck potatoes, and other water vegetables where it reduces issues with mosquitoes and fertilises these plants. 

I have heard that overseas Azolla is often grown among rice paddies to fertilise the crops and feed fish.  Interestingly enough azolla is only grown on a large scale in Communist countries.  I am not sure what to think about that?

I sell azolla through my for sale page along with various perennial vegetables, heirloom vegetable seeds, edible herb plants etc.