Hybrid swarm factory😂
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your moschata population is trending! 
I liked her pastel side, and now she has decided that the new fashion is in warm colors…
I too am becoming trendy 
by never having opened an account on any social networks… thank you all who come out of it…we do not need this shit to be in touch, share our joy in the garden and love for other good people who live in this beautiful earth !
PS : some of your videos are not playable on 2 différent computer… codec error ?
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this weighing work that comes out of the garden is great… thank you it will allow us to argue about landrace productivity in the workshops presentation with real numbers! 
congratulations on having carried all this by bike! it’s amazing ! 
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I had a little help from my boyfriend’s car with the pumpkins😂
Well done for resisting the social media temptation!
Not sure what happens with the videos, they all just come from my phone, all in same format, but this platform is not great when it comes to photos and videoes. I wonder if @polarca can do her coding magic again?
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Still in the process of unboxing after a move. I don’t have a codecave yet. What’s the hypothetical task, I can’t find it on the phone😈
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Hope the move is going great!
The video function is terrible, some times they work other times not, and I dont know why.
I’m afraid we don’t have control over how embedded videos play; it’s most likely an encoding issue.
The key factors are:
— What device recorded the video?
— What settings were used (format, resolution, and codec)?
— What browser and operating system are being used to view it?
Different browsers handle video playback inconsistently, and some formats/codecs might not be universally supported. This issue is unrelated to how videos are uploaded or where they are displayed on the page. If we can identify a pattern in the problematic videos (e.g., a specific file type or codec causing trouble), we might be able to suggest a workaround.
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I had to laugh because I’m not cool at all. I am part of a photography group on instagram, so I am there every day! And tiktok. And youtube. And facebook. And some reddit. I might be a very sad human, but soon the weather will be warm enough to just be outside, and things will be better.
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Sorghum ultra cross project this year. I’ve never grown sorghum before, so I got hold of as many varieties I could find, including three perennial varieties, which should increase my chances of finding some that’ll do well in my garden. And hopefully get some crosses with the perennial versions at the same time. I like the idea of a perennial bread patch.
The growing season is quite long in mallorca, and I might even be able to get two harvests in one season, so the patch won’t need to be very large.
I sowed the seeds in a small but deep tree seed tray with 77 plugs , added the 3 perennial varieties in each hole and 1 of the others, to grow them in small clumps to ensure more chances of cross pollination.
Hopefully I’ll be able to show a homegrown sorghum bread later in the year🤞
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More barrier breaking to get new varieties of staple crops. This is sweet potato true seeds, and sanding a little hole in the seed coats and soaking for an hour normally ensures near 100% germination.
The seeds this year mostly came from the okinawa variety with white skin and dark purple flesh, a giant variety (3-4kg each tuber) of deep purple skin and flesh and my own lavender seedling with lavender skin and flesh colour.
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It takes some barrier breaking to get new staple crops. These canna hybrid seeds created by Shane Simonsen need boiling water to crack the seed coat for germination to happen.
The result is worth the extra work - beautiful, multicultured rhizomes for flour making and pretty yellow, red and pink flowers.
They produce a few kilos the first year from seed, but are perennial and left in the ground will form 1x1 meter patch of rhizomes the second year.
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Rainbow potatoes from Vreeken, cut, sprinkled with wood ash and now nesting for a few days beforing getting planted in the garden.
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everything seems exponential also on the side of Majorca…super job!
My sorghum will not miss new friends.
In your later selection prefer the most white grain, I had read somewhere that it was the most digestible for human consumption
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That is good to know, I hadn’t even considered there might be differences in digestability, and would naturally go for as much colour as possible as that’s normally a sign of more antioxidant content.
But maybe it can also be solved by processing, sourdough fermentation etc.
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it’s also sometime a sign of more tannin content (proanthocyanidines) which result in a decrease in nutritional value of food. After some research it is obviously not related to the outer color of the grain but more to the inner texture of the sorgho’s grain.
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So much to learn. Gardening will never get boring!
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Garden diary day 208 - more rainbow potatoes
The challenge was turning the 30 meter long patch in the second video into the potato row on the third and fourth video. It was easier than it looked with the help of a good sharp hoe!
I got the most beautiful mix of seed potatoes from Vreeken.nl in all kinds of colours and shapes, hopefully some of them will like it here and produce a good crop.
I had leftover potatoes to make another row in the old plot that is now mostly perennial.
This was way easier as the row had a broad weed cover, that I just folded in half to clear a row, hoed it lightly, placed the potatoes on top and covered with composted horse manure as a no dig trial.
The difference in soil between the two plots is night and day. The perennial plot had a cover of wood chips the first year, plus I have been layering leaves and mulch from under the carob tree and lots of artichoke mulch under the weed cover, so the resulting top soil smelt of a beautiful forest floor.
I’m super curious to see which potatoes will do better, as eventhough the perennial plot has better soil, it’s full of tuber eating bugs that drilled holes in all the sweet potatoes growing there last year. I’m hoping by simply laying the potatoes on top and covering with composted horse manure will fix this issue.
All the seeded and self seeded giant rainbow daikons in the other old perennial plot are in full bloom and buzzing with insects. The roadside almond seedlings I rescued 2 years ago are now taller than me and are just starting to leaf out and the @skillcult apple tree row are looking like they might flower this year.
I plan to clear the weeds and daikons, after harvesting the seeds, in between the tree rows to plant moschata pumpkins again, as that plot was my first 100m2 pumpkin patch 3 years ago. The plot was mostly left to rest last year as I was busy planting the new one, and it seemed like a forest of daikons, yacons and weeds enjoyed the freedom.
Garden harvest:
3kg of broccolish shoots
100g kumquats-ish
100g wild chard leaves
500g sweet potatoes
1kg spring onions
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Chayote ready for sticking it’s feet into garden soil.
I’ve been growing a version of this for 5 years now and every year it seems to get more green speckled and warty looking. But also slowly more day neutral producing for longer through out the season. I’m so fascinated by this transforming perennial vegetable. Is anyone else growing chayote?
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Garden diary day 209 - summer crop planting
I cleared the lima bean row and planted all your colourful dry beans and slicing cucumber grex from the serendipity box in their place.
I found a good amount of lima beans that had dried perfectly in their pods over winter, so I planted these on a sturdy, but slightly shaded by perennial spinach, trellis. I like this trait of drying down mold free despite cold and rainy winters, and since they refuse to be perennial in my frost pocket of a garden, this seems to be a fair trade off worth selecting for by simply planting the best looking winter dried beans.
I’ve been doing the same with sweet potatoes, planting slips from the natural survivers sprouting back in spring, so now I have very little problems of them rotting in the ground, and can harvest ground stored sweet potatoes until april, despite light winter frost.
I wanted to try a milpa style planting of corn, pumpkins and beans, and have the perfect weedy patch to test it on. I had a leftover bag of composted horse manure, so instead of digging up the weeds, I covered them with banana and cardoon leaves, and spread a spiral of compost on top. With my little Japanese garden knife, I made sure to cut through the leaves to make a compost pocket for the grain corn. A mix of my bug survivers plus the serendipity grain corn mix. The outer layer of corn got company of mixed beans, and all long the 13 meter edge of the patch, I planted the serendipity tasty maxima pumpkin grex plus @ThomasPicard Nepal long keeper. How was the taste of this one? Maximas normally die in the heat of summer here, so in theory (if they produce at all) I will be able to harvest the corn, pumpkins and beans all together in july, and do a second planting of beans, corn and zucchini or sweet potatoes in their place.
I did another patch of maxima pumpkins with long storage ability plus some seeds from my mom’s garden in the row next to perfume chilies from @camillaplum, that turn out to be very perennial here without much die back. The idea is that the pumpkins will make a weed suppresing ground cover, and die off in late summer when the chilies are ready to harvest.
Next to the allium alley, I planted melons and cucumber melons. And I filled a large seed tray with seeds of @Rosma mangelwurzel beets, the serendipity beet grex, and mixed greens from the box - giant goosefoot, Atriplex hortensis, NZ spinach, parsley grex and achocha.
The pigeon pea tree that survived last winter, looks like it survived again, at least the trunk, so I’ll cut of the dead branches and hope that I finally have a reliably cold hardy perennial pigeon pea for the mediterranean.
Garden harvest:
2kg purple sweet potatoes
2kg broccolish shoots
1kg fava beans
300g wild chard and fennel shoots
200g kumquats-ish
