🥰 it’s just the two of us today so we’re playing in the dirt pulling strawberry runners for markets this weekend

Wicked cute, thank you for sharing!

Tbh I sometimes wake up with a crick in my neck and do this to work it out

Look at those pollen pants!

They always do, in spite of me asking them to stay tiny and fluffy

In my experience, the ants that nest in our pots tend to favor the species we let have dry periods between waterings - in other words, our driest pots. If we can get the ants out of the picture, the aphids will lose their defenses and your predators can have a field day.

One method we’ve had some success with is submersion in water, using medium to large storage totes depending on the size of the pots. The tunnels flood and sometimes collapse, and you can flush them out.

Something else you could use is diatomaceous earth, which is generally available in garden and hardware stores. Make sure to liberally coat the soil surface and stem, and try to dust the aphids as well. Don’t inhale it. You’ll need to reapply it whenever it gets wet, so I’d recommend bottom watering whatever you can - I have a few small (1m x .3m) rubber boot trays I use for that. Something to note is that the DE is a broad-spectrum tool, so it won’t discriminate between the ants, aphids, or the predatory insects.

I really love that awkward phase! Their adult colors start coming in, and they’re super adventurous.

So I didn’t spot any other girls frequenting the greenhouse, which leads me to believe they could all be hers. Our two boys are ‘chocolate’ and ‘pied’, so with her ‘pied’ genetics they could all be hers and the colors might be crazy.

Generally speaking the yellow bits will be light and the brown parts will be black or brown, with browns and sometimes green or an iridescent purple being kore common on the yellow ducklings.

She bit me a little but a few of them weren’t hand shy at all and I scritched a few duckling bellies today

600G of strawberries retails for £4.50 (Tesco). If this whole setup cost only a million pounds, a producer would have to grow 133,333,332G worth of strawberries to pay it off, and this assumes nothing breaks (ever) and that there is some way to harvest that many strawberries without paying labor, packaging, licensing, and other costs. I feel like this was a cool tech demo but that’s about it

We’ve grown butternut and pumpkins on trellising with no significant weight issues - one or two huge guys that I cut off to cure elsewhere while the others kept growing, sure. If you’re doing cukes, zukes, or other summer or small squash you should be good to go though.

I’m so glad the exclusion barrier is working for your squashes! Can you train them up some trellising with any sort of ease?

I think that whst I thought were Brussel sprouts are actually cucumber, and what I thought was cucumber is Brussel sprouts so neither is where I wanted them

Oh no …

I am stunned by how crisp those hoverflies in the photo are! And those lovage flowers are spectacular

I mean this as constructively as possible: that’s not a composting toilet and the practice you’ve described raises health risks for you and the people to whom you give food.

I usually prefer non-human animal manures for that sort of thing. Are you using a composting toilet or some other mechanism to reduce pathogenic potential?

That is a good morning!

They can get pretty gigantic. They don’t all grow to that size, but a rhubarb plant that’s been in a spot it likes for a few seasons can be massive. Since the stalks are the edible part. We use those leaves as a chop and drop mulch to smother and cover weeds

One of our market friends is a mom & pop bakery, and she asked this past weekend if we had any 😂

I agree, it’s amazing

At first I had a little trouble but then I saw the telltale “V” of ripples in the water. You might have wanted a different picture but I think you captured the mood perfectly.

I adore how consistently I get to learn about unfamiliar plants when you post! Your space sounds so lovely 💕