Loofah/luffa is so fun! I've posted pictures of mine here before, but I recently did a writeup of my experience growing them on the little personal website I've been making for fun - https://xylemphloem.xyz/blog/luffa/
This week I brought in a pot from outside to plant some pothos cuttings, forgetting it was the pot I had grown dill in last year! So now I have some baby dill seedlings popping up alongside my pothos!
Good to know! A contractor we had doing some work on the house last year left behind a roll of thick poly sheeting so I was thinking about using that to make some floating row covers anyway.
I'll be sure to post lots of pictures this year! I also started a personal website recently for fun so I'll probably be putting stuff there.
I'm planning to devote about half of my fenced garden space to trying a three sisters patch, and this year I'm going to be more strategic about where I put my potatoes so they don't shade out everything around them early in the season. I haven't grown beans or corn before but my squash did great last year so I'm looking forward to more of that!
I didn't have great luck with brassicas last year so I'm hoping to do better by starting earlier and figuring out how to fight the cabbage moths.
I also have tentative plans to build out a patio/fire pit area on the site of a pool and deck I tore down last year. I want it surrounded by raised beds with various perennials like blueberry bushes, and maybe someday a grape trellis. I have plenty of wood from that deck so I may also build random stuff like a bench to go inside my squash tunnel (:
This was a good reminder that I should start putting together a planting schedule and a seed order soon!
Tea is the goal! It's been growing from seed since February of 2023. I've made all of one cup of tea so far, from some prunings last spring. It was nice (:
I don't expect to be able to harvest in any sort of quantity for a couple years yet, so for now I guess it's mostly decorative. The flowers were pretty!
I recently harvested and processed my luffa! Four good gourds, plus a few smaller ones that'll just be compost. All but one were very green still, so I roasted them in the oven at 250F for an hour to make the skins workable, squeezed out the pulp and seeds, cut them into a flat sheet, and then soaked in a bleach solution overnight to kill any mold/bacteria before leaving them to dry. I'm excited to make some sponges!
I'll be definitely be planting more next year, the super long vines are very fun, especially the one that grew along the top of my garden fence this year.
Harvested my sunflower heads this week! I probably waited a bit too long since they had worms and a bit of mold, but lesson learned for next time. I took all the seeds out, sorted out the bad ones, and I'm going to let them dry for a while longer in mesh bags before roasting and shelling or whatever.
I was in NM for work and didn't get to explore too much, but I definitely got some great night skies! Desert ecologies are always interesting to visit as someone from the northeast, I especially liked seeing a bit of the riparian ecosystem around the Rio Grande.
I'm definitely doubling the number of sunflowers I plant next year! Might try some of the varieties that have multiple blooms as well, as fun as the mammoth ones are.
First time here as well! Currently away on a trip and hoping that when I get back the sunflowers will be ready and the birds will have left some for me.
I was just visiting New Mexico, and I enjoyed seeing all the wild sunflowers growing everywhere in the desert.
My experimental Loofa plants are starting to produce! They were strange - sent out female flowers way early in the season, then a run of only males, and now finally I'm getting a mix.
I'd like to try making some biodegradable sponges out of them.
Physical anti-tamper, while important for this type of device, wouldn't have helped for this particular attack. It's an electromagnetic side channel, so they don't even have to be touching the the thing to collect data.
Thinking about propagating some wild black raspberry I have in my yard - when would you recommend cutting canes, and should I root them before planting out? I've seen people store dormant canes over winter and plant out in the spring, what are the advantages/disadvantages there?
It's been cool and wet enough recently (thank goodness) that some self-seeded lettuce and arugula from the plants that bolted at the end of spring have sprouted - I had been missing the fresh greens!
I've also been enjoying seeing the joe-pye weed, goldenrod, and all the other summer wildflowers in full bloom!
I've been playing the new Solium Infernum with a friend - the first playthrough I did not particularly enjoy (partially my fault for not playing the tutorial first) but once I learned the mechanics my second game was more fun. The UI is not very smooth to use and there are some mechanics I don't like, but overall pretty good.
I also picked up Mindustry again last night - it's an open source Factorio + Tower Defense + RTS that is rather addicting... The new campaign they added a couple years ago is better than the original too.
Loofah/luffa is so fun! I've posted pictures of mine here before, but I recently did a writeup of my experience growing them on the little personal website I've been making for fun - https://xylemphloem.xyz/blog/luffa/
This week I brought in a pot from outside to plant some pothos cuttings, forgetting it was the pot I had grown dill in last year! So now I have some baby dill seedlings popping up alongside my pothos!