Nature rocks!

[Matt2584]

Hi folks,

Some of you may remember that last year I had my very own bed to plant what I wanted to.

We first set up the bed by putting all the carbon/nitrogen as the bottom layer (branches, straw, saw dust = carbon. Green leaves, flower = nitrogen).

2nd layer was all discarded fruits/veggies and unwanted peels.

3rd layer was our home made compost AKA worm poo.

So that was the bed set, time for planting.

I actually planted onions, kale, pumpkins, sunflower and I think there was something else too. Anyhow, I didn’t get exactly what I planted.

Kale didn’t grow at all neither did the onions. In their place was completely different plants.

The pumpkins did grow but not where I had planted them at all and the same happened with sunflower.

The sunflower was doing really well but we had horrible whether by the end of summer and the sunflowers got saturated and turned to mush. I was looking forward to having some seeds :).

So in Autumn and Winter I don’t really go out into the back garden but now the weather is getting nicer now I stepped out into the garden the other day.

Where the sunflowers were growing, my mum dug up a load of, what looked like ginger! And I mean heaps of ginger.

We did grow ginger last year but this was in a completely separate pot.

So how the ginger got there we have no idea.

I wonder what gardening will be like this year? :).

[Activity2004 Administrator]

Wow, Matt2584 ! That’s interesting that the ginger grew in a different spot.😀👍 Did your mom cut some of it and some seeds fell in other parts of the garden bed to replant itself?

[Matt2584 in reply to Activity2004]

No Leah.

I have no idea how all that ginger got there.

Not sure if it was the compost underneath the soil or if birds had dropped seeds onto the bed.

Bit of a mystery. But whatever the weather, nature really is amazing.

[Activity2004 Administrator in reply to Matt2584]

Yes! Nature is very good at taking care of itself— and us if we can help it, too!😀👍

[Matt2584 in reply to Activity2004]

Yes, and I actually believe that nature can take care of most of our health problems.

[INK45]

Amazing !!! Besides, I love fresh ginger and it's hard to find. Let us know if any new unexpected goody grows.

[Matt2584 in reply to INK45]

I will let you know :).

[TheAwfulToad]

ha .. someone has been moving stuff around to mess with your head

I've found that ants sometimes move seeds around. They steal them for food and then get bored with them and drop them several feet away from where they were planted.

The 'ginger' may well have been sunflower roots. They do form tuberous roots under some circumstances. They're probably edible.

Another possibility is that you were sold Jerusalem artichoke seeds (they look pretty much like sunflowers - same family). They're not normally grown from seed, and I'm not sure why you would have been given Helianthus tuberosus instead of Helianthus annuus, but it would explain what you got!

[Matt2584 in reply to TheAwfulToad]

I think you are on the right track with the sunflowers.

My mum is the one that bought the sunflowers so she would most likely have picked up the packet of seeds, read “sunflower”, but didn’t take much notice of the family name.

But by having a brief look on wikipedia, the flowers looked exactly what I was growing. The only difference seemed to be that the stem of the plant, near the earth attracted wasps (according to wiki) and I had no wasps and the picture of the roots/tuber was different. On wiki they looked like cigar-shaped but I have a load of clusters in different sizes.

So helianthus tuberus has many flower heads on it (like what I had) and helianthus annus has one big flower head on it.

Thanks for the help :).

And the ant thing, that could be a possibility.

[TheAwfulToad in reply to Matt2584]

If they are Jerusalem artichokes, you'll know about it next year ... apparently they're impossible to get rid of once planted!

I'm not a fan personally, but many people reckon they're delicious ... if you still have the tubers.

[Matt2584 in reply to TheAwfulToad]

I and my mum have been looking up more information on the subject and it definitely looks like what I was growing last year were Jerusalem artichokes..

I saw a picture of some pan-fried tubers and they looked really nice. Kind of looked like roast potatoes.