Mixing the soil with vermiculite. Then into the flower boxes, plant the seeds then cover with a layer of vermiculite and water …et vóila! Tag the flower box: I finally have these in bloom. The first one was on 2 feb last year:
Sjoerd Good job on the new planting style. I use vermiculite for all my new seeds. It’s been a long wait to start new pots for seedlings and plants. What a handsome beauty. Hellebores are a treat to see blooming, color finally popping up from the winter garden.
What kind of beans are Tuin bonen? I figure they are beans since Dutch and German have many words in common and bonen means beans in German.
Good to see Sjoerd I bought a huge bag of vermiculite for the fireplace I'm putting in, hope there's some left for plants when it's finished
Sjoerd, we reckon those must be broad beans because it's not time for others yet. We're expecting a frost tonight by all accounts Have you got plans for keeping the blackfly at bay? My grandad taught me that it was preferable to plant those in October as they're pretty tough and don't then have so much blackfly to bother with. He also told me I should soak peas in paraffin so that the mice wouldn't eat them
Annie—Ahhhh I wondered where you saw the word, “tuinbonen”. Haha. On the end of the planting box. Tuinbonen are broad beans. Sorry for that confusion. Hello Zigs— Fingers crossed for you. Hiya Tetters— You are right, they are indeed broad beans. I have planted them in october of the preceding year in the past. My fav sort for that was Aquadulce. One year I lost about half of the plantlets, so I rushed to plant more in feb or march and discovered that by June, both of the planted sorts were the same size. Because of this revelation, we began planting in march or february. The blackfly always comes. What I do about it is to check the plants several times each day, I spray the tops with a mix of green soap ans spiritus. At a certain moment, I simply remove all the tops of all the plants. I go a bit overboard perhaps, but blackfly is not a simple beast that one can simply shrug-off and assume that all will be oké…as you know. I have heard of waxing the pea seeds, but never done it. I just remove the pea seeds of each plant before it goes into the ground, in fact I do this for every bean and every pea sort I plant each year. It is a lot of extra work, but necessary over here. I germinate almost all of the veg seeds that I grow because of the voles. If I do not, the little rascals simply dig up the new plantlets to get the half-spent seeds from which the seedlings have sprung, often biting through the tiny stems in the process. Always a challenge of some sort on the lottie.
You are not kidding. It's been the same here. Last year seemed like a complete wipe out because (mostly) the slugs took over like a ***** tsunami! Not only that, the sky seemed darker than ever it has been, and there was little sunshine where our veggie plot is. The onion crop was a total wipe out, and most of the shallots (I think it was) had to be re-planted in the hopes that they might actually grow. We're hoping this year might yield better results. As for slugs, I intend to try a new kind of trap for them this year. It involves ice cream tubs and fermenting yeast dough. When I've made a start on the project I'll get Zigs to take some photos for me. As for voles - and rabbits, I'm surprised you have any, I thought they all lived here.
I swear that soaking your peas and/or beans in paraffin overnight will definitely deter mice from eating them, and it is a quick and easy method of pest control. They may stink, but will be protected. The other plus is that they will probably germinate more quickly as well. The following crops will be perfectly ok to eat, and will not smell of the original paraffin. It may have been many many years ago that I learned this from my grandfather - about 76 -77 years ago to be precise. He had many mouths to feed in the family, and they always had peas galore It didn't kill any of us off
Is your paraffin the same as ours? Here it is candle wax, doesn't have an odor, and is quite solid at room temperature. I was wondering if it is what we call Vicks Vapor Rub. It's petroleum jelly (or pertolatum), softer than paraffin, infused with camphor. Mothers traditionally rub it on children's chest when they have colds. The camphor fumes are meant to help with congestion.
No. Where you are it's called kerosene. It's premium fuel and we call it paraffin - which stinks. My mum used to sing about the camphor, camphorated etc to the tune of ''glory, glory, hallelujah'' as she put Vicks rub on my chest and back when I had a cold. Memories !! I still have some of that in the medicine cabinet. It's much easier to soak the peas in a drop of that. I couldn't be bothered with wax - it would take forever to put that on them. The peas will germinate quite quickly after soaking them overnight too.
