Firstly, I was in the sun with my shirt off for thirty to forty minutes. Secondly, it's not full blown Summer yet, in fact it's barely what one might graciously call the end of Spring (it's absolutely heaving down at the moment, and has done since the morning). As such I thought it might be safe to stand around outside for a while, but I was completely wrong as it turned out.
I have no idea how many species are in there, but with those strange flowers I should imagine a fair few insects would like to rummage around – assuming an area large enough to sustain an ecosystem. Of course these two small bags are not big enough by a long shot, but the amount of plant stuff going on in there with zero care is preeeeetty coooooool.
In the meantime I'd been growing up some strawberries from seed. I found out the usual method for growing strawberries was from the runners they produce (kind of like the spider plant I assume) which are coerced into a nearby pot, then snipped once the new plant is growing. This umbilical system ensures a new plant sprouts very quickly, which is great, and it means that if you get in early in the year you can have a fruiting plant the same year, which is also great. The problem is I can't find anywhere around me that sells them. I also couldn't find anyone that sells the seeds (the aforementioned method being so much preferred that no one bothers with seeds). As such, I had my mum purchase some seeds for me, which ended up coming from China of all places, which she then sent to me.
Modern sustainable sourcing of plants at its finest.
Anyway, they were up and running, and needed a new place to live.
While growing these strawberries I was also doing this:
Which is to say taking very blurred pictures. Quality aside, these are beans. Or at leas they will be in the future. Hopefully. These went into the now empty bags of compost to create this:
If my melon disaster has told me anything it's that there's no way to tell how this will turn out, even if they grow twenty feet tall like the melons did. Just as things are flowering, fruiting and so on, there's sure to be a disaster of melon ending proportions.
I really, REALLY didn't want to use chemicals to control the insects last time (not because of holistic therapeutic arm wavey pseudo scientific hippy bullshit, but because it feels like cheating) but without a surrounding ecosystem to support the animals that could predate potential pests, there's really no way of getting around their use.
With the crowded strawberries replanted into individual pots we'll see how things turn out. With the amount of rain we've had today I don't think the dozen small holes I poked into the bags will be enough to allow all the water to drain away. Then again, a ten foot diameter pipe would probably have trouble draining all that rain away.
Anyway, that's all for the flowers at the moment. The strawberries grew quickly at first but slowed down. The beans come out guns blazing, with roots and leaves absolutely everywhere within a week. We'll see which one ends up being the winner by the end of Summer, if indeed either survive.
