Main Menu
Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - David Pilling

#1
Current Photographs / Re: October 2024
November 01, 2024, 10:07:05 AM
Quote from: Wylie on November 01, 2024, 04:31:50 AMTrying to photograph Nerines is very difficult for me. They tend to over saturate the image

Turn down the exposure setting - negative value. Photoshop cannot get back what is not recorded. Although RAW format can capture a bit more. Getting the exposure right is the key.

https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/PhotographyHints

#2
Seemingly people do put hippies in the dark for 8-12 weeks, but it is optional and about shifting flowering time. As soon as, or if any growth appears they should be taken to the light. But if you bought the bulb with no roots this period may give them chance to form.

See:

https://extension.umn.edu/houseplants/amaryllis#control-blooming-858665


I thought it was more exciting, compared to their usual fate, that they could be left to grow continuously.

"Unlike some other bulbs, amaryllis do not require a rest or dormant period. They will bloom again if allowed to continue to grow."

#3
General Discussion / Re: Tupistra nutans
October 27, 2024, 10:58:44 AM
"In India, the entire inflorescence of open flowers and buds makes a delightful slightly bitter curry, which tastes like button mushrooms!"

https://www.plantdelights.com/products/tupistra-nutans

#4
Current Photographs / Re: October 2024
October 22, 2024, 04:28:21 AM
Quote from: Martin Bohnet on October 19, 2024, 12:07:04 AMBeautiful black Nerine

Looks very desirable. There's only one place on the Google that knows about "black Nerine" as a flower - and that is here. There's only one other mention and that is a dress on ebay "Black Nerine Knit"
#5
General Plants and Gardening / Re: Peanuts
October 17, 2024, 04:40:57 PM
Quote from: Lee Poulsen on October 15, 2024, 02:39:44 PMthe flowers don't bury themselves in the ground as I had read

Thanks for that and the information that follows. Provides me with encouragement and confirms my limited experience.
#6
General Discussion / Mice eat freesia bulbs - who knew?
October 14, 2024, 04:35:39 PM
A sad discovery today was that the pots of freesia bulbs which grow many leaves all through the Winter, and then if I am lucky throw up a flower or two had been ransacked by mice in the Summer. Previously they have been left untouched and I never thought they were at risk.

It brought to mind a poem by Eudora Welty which Jim McKenney used to quote the final lines of when as often happens rodent woe featured in the PBS list.

Squirrel, squirrel, burning bright,
Do not eat my bulbs tonight!

I think it bad and quite insidious
That you should eat my blue tigridias.

Squirrel, Sciurus vulgaris,
Leave to me my small muscaris,

Must you make your midnight snack, mouse,
Of Narcissus Mrs. Backhouse?

When you bite the pure leucojum,
Do you feel no taint of odium?

Must you chew till Kingdom Come
Hippeastrum advenum?

If in your tummy bloomed a lily,
Wouldn't you feel sort of silly?

Do you wish to tease and joke us
When you carry off a crocus?

Must you hang up in your pantries
All my Pink Queen zephyranthes?

Tell me, has it ever been thus,
Squirrels must eat the hyacinthus?

O little rodent,
I wish you wo'dn't!


#7
General Plants and Gardening / Re: Peanuts
October 12, 2024, 04:47:12 PM
Quote from: CG100 on October 12, 2024, 12:09:04 AMA lot is sown uner floating cloche to get as early a start as possible.

Thanks for that, I've seen transparent plastic in the fields early in the year and not been able to understand what it is.

Plenty of maize around these parts, even though Google says the West coast is marginal. I always assumed it reached maturity - although now you mention it, I've never seen that. Interesting.

Maize mazes are a popular attraction here.

A quote because I didn't know:

"Sweetcorn is a variety of maize with a higher sugar content. Unlike field corn varieties, which are harvested when the kernels are dry and mature and used for grain, sweetcorn is picked when immature and prepared and eaten as a vegetable."
#8
General Plants and Gardening / Re: Peanuts
October 10, 2024, 02:08:14 PM
Quote from: CG100 on October 10, 2024, 04:38:32 AMa minimum of 20C for the entire growing period,which wouldn't happen in any greenhouse anywhere in the UK without heating.

That was where I went wrong with most crops this year, it was cold but I didn't keep the greenhouse shut up.

When I had the idea, I thought, peanuts are available everywhere, but then you find they are often roasted. They're not supposed to have long viability.

I still hold out hope, in a good year, maybe in a warmer spot in the UK than here.

Have to mention  Tanganyika groundnut scheme
a failed attempt by the British government to cultivate tracts of its African trust territory Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania) with peanuts.
Launched in the aftermath of World War II by the Labour Party administration of prime minister Clement Attlee,[1] the goal was to produce urgently needed oilseeds on a projected 3 million acres (5,000 sq miles, or over 12,000 km2, an area almost as big as Yorkshire), in order to increase margarine supplies in Britain and increase the profits from the British Empire


Notice they didn't try doing this in Yorkshire.

#9
General Plants and Gardening / Re: Peanuts
October 10, 2024, 03:30:14 AM
Quote from: CG100 on October 10, 2024, 12:22:05 AMfun plants for kids to grow but given how large they should grow - a couple of feet high

Yes they sell them for kids, and I wondered about how dispiriting the first three packs of seed which rotted would be.

Mine never got beyond 6 inch pot size, they were not root bound either. Again perhaps due to the weather. But interesting to read how big they should be.

The tomato plants only got to normal size late in the year.

'pod' good word - escaped me.

Good crop of peanuts in the video, South Utah, sounds more the place than UK.
#10
General Plants and Gardening / Peanuts
October 09, 2024, 02:35:59 PM
2024 was the year of growing peanuts. The first three packets of seed all rotted (well known vendor). The next packet (ebay) almost all germinated.

Interesting plants - similarities with peas. Flowers appear on stalks from near the ground and are supposed to plunge back into the earth when (self) pollinated and grow a nut.

I got quite a few flowers, but none seemed to set seed. Not far past mid-summer the plants appeared to succumb to powdery mildew in the greenhouse.

Today I got around to tipping out the pots, which I'd abandoned outside. I did find two nuts (shells? with three nuts in) - see photos. Also plants which had attempted to produce many nuts. There also seem to be nodules on the roots, not to be confused with nuts.

It's been a bad year - cold and wet in Spring. In 2022 and 2023 there were more tomatoes than one could deal with, in 2024 one questions if it is worth growing them.

So everything has been hard work - I will try again next year. The well known vendor sent me some replacements, and I've got the nuts I grew, soon I will have bred a peanut tuned to the coastal climate in the North West of England.
#11
General Discussion / Re: Gloriosa superba seed
October 07, 2024, 03:22:55 AM
Quote from: CG100 on October 07, 2024, 12:03:30 AMI am pretty sure the ones that I have seen have used the word ephemeral.

This very PBS for example, in this list post:

https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/2023-August/20hssdsm33p4jqsa01lncm5b66.html


"Ephemeral seed distribution organizer
Jan Jeddeloh via pbs (Tue, 15 Aug 2023 13:05:12 PDT)

I know there was someone on this list you had volunteered to deal with ephemeral, short viability seed. "

Ephemeral seed or ephemeral plants.
#12
General Discussion / Re: Gloriosa superba seed
October 06, 2024, 05:43:22 PM
Quote from: CG100 on October 06, 2024, 01:50:42 AMSeveral societies have specialist ephemeral seed distributions, where the viability of the seed is extremely short

Do you mean "specialist recalcitrant seed distributions"
#13
Current Photographs / Re: October 2024
October 05, 2024, 01:45:19 PM
Hi Uli, I suppose bloom from 2017 isn't quick, but I have been growing some Amaryllis belladonna seed since 2010 with no flowers. Also of course full size purchased bulbs.
#14
General Discussion / Re: Gloriosa superba seed
October 05, 2024, 01:42:38 PM
I looked them up, because I didn't really know

Ephemeral plants survive by passing unfavorable periods as seeds. Their seeds are well-adapted to their habitat and can remain dormant for a long time.


Recalcitrant seeds are seeds that are unable to survive drying and freezing, and therefore cannot be stored for long periods of time. They are also known as desiccation-sensitive seeds.
#15
Current Photographs / Re: Worsleya bloom
September 26, 2024, 07:59:10 AM
It is the dream, find expensive plants and grow them for profit. But you'd have to have the knack of growing them.

Like being a professional.

Whatever field of interest you may have as a hobby, if you're good enough it can be a career.

The UK nursery Rare Plants feels like that.

"change in supply due to increase in price is called Expansion of supply"

No good saying it will take you 14 years either.