PBS Forum

Hi Mark, it appears no one seems interested in what is...The Soil Food Web! But I am! Years ago I had a discovery...after a period of acquiring many rare plants, and keeping them in pots for my eventual landscape vision, I started putting compost I was making in some of the pots, but I wasn't making enough compost for all the pots. After a while (maybe 6 months to a year) I became convinced there was something going on with the plants I was feeding the compost to. After some time of digging around and talking to people, someone pointed me to the book "The Soil Food Web". Which was a dry read through parts of the book, but after reading through the book about 3 times, it opened my mind to a whole different understanding of plants' roots, soil, compost, fertilizer, and so on, etc., etc. It's ALL about the Microbiology! After learning some more, I started pursuing compost Tea. One day I'm going to get myself a nice big professional compost Tea brewer! Over the years I've fed Great White mycorrhizae, as well as other brands. We moved to a different city, and I've had a harder time making compost, but eventually, when my honey-do list gets down to just a few things I'll endeavor to get my composting down. I've also got into Vermicomposting a bit too. My challenge there is getting the worms to stick around through our hot dry summers.
Cheers 

A CAUTIONARY Silverhill Seeds ORDERING HEADS UP... a friend (a long-time SH customer) and I placed a larger order (almost $400 US) with Nina @ SilverHill seeds in May 2023. Per Nina's recommendation, we had our order go via S.A. Post. After about 3 months of trying to track our order, we corresponded with Nina and found out it was stuck at the S.A. PO. Then after a couple more emails, Nina told us the PO is now defunct and going under. Our order along with many others sent via their PO are now stuck in limbo at their PO. After MANY correspondence back n forth with Nina, she recently stated they're now making efforts to try and retrieve their stuck customer orders. We continue to hope and cross our fingers...

Some of our recent bulb activity...our Gladiolus (heirloom hybrid?) finishing. We've had these Moraea Polystachya really setting up shop (naturalizing) in our garden for the last couple years! So far, I've tracked them flowering at least from August through February. And this Amaryllis was sold to us by an old-timer plant collector as an Amaryllis X Crinum hybrid.

Thanks for the help Martin!

Hi, new member here. I don't know how or where to use, get involved, view, which platforms, post, or how to know when bulbs/seed will be offered!?! I have freshly collected seed of a few species from my garden that I was hoping to share too. One of the main reasons I joined was to have opportunities to acquire new genera/species, and I have no idea how that works either. If there was a tutorial somewhere on how to use the key aspects of your membership, that would be great. HELP...