Gardens Gardens Gardens! :D

Lucid Lounge
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It’s Springtime! In the northern hemisphere, at least!

I have become fascinated lately with the growing of plants, especially vegetable gardens, although I have had little hands-on experience with it throughout my life! The growing of plants has been the backbone of humanity ever since time immemorial. It is necessary for our survival, health, and is wonderful for recreation. Unlike having to resort to slaughtering animals for food, plants willingly give forth their fruit with their hearts wide open, and the consumption of their fruits by animals often helps plants, for it carries their seeds to new places.

If you garden flowers, that is nice too,

but this year I’m concerned with creating gardens with beans, carrots, corn, and even one bell pepper plant! I bought the bell pepper plant already growing, for everything else I bought seed packets.

Originally I really wanted to grow beans, because even as a kid, I used to take beans from a bag in our kitchen drawer and try to grow them, and I some success on one occasion!

But when I was looking at seed packets, I saw one of a sweet red corn hybrid that looked absolutely fascinating to me, much more fascinating than white and yellow corn! I am now eager to grow a garden of red corn someplace in my backyard; I have plenty of room, a decent sized plot should be no big deal!

Is anyone else around here a gardener? :grin: Anyone want to share tips, experiences, or just wanna talk about gardening?

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i remember in grade one we grew some bean plants

and mine was one of the best

they awarded me as a green thumb

i started to think on it, that one time i saw a green aura around me while working with my house-plants ,

they are very satisfying to work with

i like growing a house plant, making a cutting, sprouting roots in it, then putting it in a new pot and growing it again !

the coleus plants are very beautiful
it would be great to flood my backyard as a jungle full of them! they have such vivid flowers!

sage plants are lovely too! and cactuses !

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A jungle of coleus would be such an awesome backyard! :happy:

Yes, working with plants is very satisfying, that’s why I can’t wait! :grin:

Last year my mom bought these angel trumpets,

three were in the backyard and one was in the front,

and while the three in the back were growing normally, the one in the front was little and yellow, maybe from having too much sun in the front yard? but I took it to the backyard and sat with it, and sent it meditative love on a regular basis, and within weeks it was totally transformed! it went from being yellow and dinky to having these huge deep green leaves, they were soooo healthy looking, and much larger and of a much deeper shade of green than any of the others, and it grew so fast, nearly reaching the size that the others have been spending all summer to achieve in just a matter of weeks!

it was astounding, and I wanted to do the same with other plants.

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It’s not much, but I just bought a little cactus for my room yesterday. I like it, a lot. It’s very pretty. :happy:

EDIT: Found a picture :happy: :happy: :happy:

cactiguide.com/graphics/m_lemairei_600.jpg

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Thanks to you know who for notifying me of this topic. ive been going alot of plant work. growing of rare cacti, ethnobotanical plants, and naturalism/botany study all over my local area. all plants are grown for collection purposes only.

here are some garden shots

Notocactus vanvlietii

img13.imageshack.us/img13/7320/img1984z.jpg

Mammillaria deuwii

img23.imageshack.us/img23/1829/img1991gfs.jpg

Calea zacatechichi

Chamaecyparis obtusa “Dwarf Hinoki”

img22.imageshack.us/img22/2381/img2001r.jpg

Cynara cardunculus - Artichoke plant

img8.imageshack.us/img8/6191/img0745w.jpg

Salvia spp.

img11.imageshack.us/img11/5967/img1575iyj.jpg

Calendula spp. - Marigold

img27.imageshack.us/img27/2989/img0758n.jpg

Chrysanthemum, Aptenia cordifola, Petunia, Lobularia maritima

img22.imageshack.us/img22/2315/img0765t.jpg

Coryphantha spp.

Echinocactus rapa

img10.imageshack.us/img10/9739/img1581z.jpg

img18.imageshack.us/img18/2110/img0576k.jpg

Thelocactus bicolor

Ariocarpus retusus

img13.imageshack.us/img13/4893/img0348q.jpg

Trichocereus pachanoi

img18.imageshack.us/img18/2241/img0604v.jpg

Trichocereus bridgesii

Trichocereus peruvianus “variegata” - this is a genetic mutation that only occurs in about every one out of 500 seedlings. extremely rare, and priceless IMO.

img16.imageshack.us/img16/6034/img1586i.jpg

Pelargonium cordifolium

img7.imageshack.us/img7/5783/img0762p.jpg

Cucurbita spp. - Pumpkin, about 2 feet across

img9.imageshack.us/img9/4913/img0759twj.jpg

Brugmansia spp.

img25.imageshack.us/img25/9210/img1603o.jpg

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Wow. You have many a pretty cactus there. I rage in silent jealousy.

A question, if memory serves me right, the Echinocactus rapa is a succulent, not a cactus, correct?

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it is a succulent…but its a cactus

all cacti are succulents but not all succulents are cacti

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Oh, thanks for the clarification :smile:

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Ive allways wanted to have a Zen garden with plants, and flowers, and a rock garden in the middle of it. I want to have a fountain, and lots of windchimes. I love the sound of windchimes. If I ever can afford to do it it would be the ultmate place for my meditation.

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Hey Daylight, thanks for the garden photos. See, we had brugmansias last year that my mother ordered, same color variation as you have, but she didn’t like them because ours didn’t produce too many flowers, plus the flowers were too discrete at the time for her taste. I liked them regardless.

And Kava, your goal sounds excellent! That reminds me to get some windchimes for my house, I’ve always loved them. I don’t recall our family ever getting some. Maybe this year I’ll change that. :happy: What an excellent atmosphere they create, especially for meditation.

Today I sowwed some beans in my garden with me mam. I also transplanted my bell pepper plant.

I’ve read that carrot seeds can take a while to germinate, and like cooler tempuratures, so I just put some seeds in a moist paper towel and in a ziplock bag a few minutes ago. Ahh, if only I’d done that earlier! Oh well!

I’ll be moving on to corn tomorrow. :smile:

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I drew out my planes for my Zen garden, Im going to have a spiral formation with the plants, and flowers, and in the middle Ill have the rock garden, and two fountains on each side, or statues of religious figures. Im allso going to have a stereo playing Zen music, and about 30 windchimes through out. I hope to have it done in two years. Ill try to post my planes when I get a scanner so you can see it.

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Excellent Kava!

Wind-chimes are constantly giving their blessing, and imparting serenity,

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see if you can get wind chimes that are all in the same key as the music you are playing

that would be sweet

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Cool :smile: I’ve been a bit more interested in this lately. Actually I have NO experience with gardening, but… I don’t know. Just looking for myself.

Anyway, I was thinking of doing WWOOF! www.wwoof.org it sounds really neat. :content:

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A picture i took today out in the garden - so many flowers! the delosperma has created a massive purple carpet, both mammilaria cacti are in bloom and my thelocactus loydii opened the bud yesterday that has been slowly growing for the past month. these are orchid flowers.

Epidendrum ibaguense

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…I fail to see what purpose plants have in our daily lives, expect converting carbondioxide into oxygen.

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^ and that they provide food for us and food for the animals whose meat we eat, maybe?

Loving the pictures in this thread. I’ve never gardened in my life-- the only thing I’ve ever grown from seeds is a small catnip plant that I keep in my bedroom. But this summer I decided to try growing something edible for more than just my kitties, so I got some big 5-gallon buckets and have been trying to grow tomatoes and beans in them. The first fruits appeared on the tomato plants today :smile: I am so excited.

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Then you’re probably going to fail biology and literature in high school. :open_mouth:

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that is the most ignorant thing i have heard a person say in a very very long time. human society has been built upon a symbiotic relationship with the plant world.

most obviously, plants are our main source of food…much more essential to health than meat, though i am not claiming meat is unhealthy or not a part of a balanced diet…it is…its just that the nutrients found in the plant world are much more beneficial and necessary.

even meat comes from plants. yes…meat comes from plants…what else are the animals supposed to eat? energy moves from the sun, into the plants, and into animals, and then us…with no plants there would be no meat

are you living in a house right now? if so you are living within a structure made of dead trees.

most things have roots in the natural world…even synthetic things like plastic or rubber had to start somewhere…

up until very recently the medicine of the world has been plant based. much of it still is. many medical advances have come out of the plant world, such as many strong painkillers that make peoples lives bearable, and Digoxin, a life saving glycoside found in the foxglove plant. it is a heart medication. were it not for plant based medicine in the past we would not have any of our current technology.

plants have been a huge part of religion for centuries. tribes in north an south america have entire religions built upon the use of psychedelic plants such as ayahuasca, peyote or magic mushrooms. The sacred drink kykeon of the eleusinian mysteries is said to be an infusion of the hallucinogenic ergot fungus growing on grains. Bruno might be framilar with the Brazilian church União do Vegetal, and their recent supreme court victory allowing them to use the plant based hallucinogen ayahuasca. besides the use of psychedelic plants many religions are based around the spirits in plants and nature as a whole.

do you(or your current/past girlfriends) wear perfume? the history of that material has its roots in fragrances distilled mainly from leaves and flowers.

and then the symbology. many countries have used the olive branch as a symbol of peace and goodwill, including Ancient Greece, USA, and on the UN seal. In eastern religious art the lotus is often depicted surrounding beings who are meditating or have attained enlightenment. Corn poppy is used to honor fallen veterans on veterans day. and the christmas tree is an obvious one.

on a recent trip to the desert i had the opportunity to find a copal tree and burn some of the sap later that night. this is a traditional incense. many plants are burned for their aroma for pleasure, odor control ,or religous ritual.

christ was brought frankincense and myrrh, both plant based products.

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Guess it’s true what they say — you mess up with the plant, you mess up with the florist. :grin:

That’s not true for a great many countries out there.

It still is: even with those fancy substance banks they consult for synthetising new drugs, they need to hear about a medicinal use of this or that plant (and duly break the plant down to its active ingredients) in order to start the process of synthetizing a new substance.

…seen as they were kind enough to kidnap the farm my father used to work in, while I was there to visit.

We knew they were a strong lobby, here in Brazil, but it really came as a surprise when they got a binding judgment from the US supreme court — of all courts! — legalising the ceremonial use of the huasca.

Some substances involved with, for instance, and while we’re at it, perfumes don’t yet have decent synthetical substitutes. Every time you buy a Channel nº5, you’re helping destroy one of the Amazon’s most precious plants, the rosewood, seen as how the perfume fixer is an extract from illegally extracted rosewood.