Seeds, tomato blossoms and bees.

As one assignment, i wrote and told about collecting seeds, and i just went through my picture files and found some photos i had taken last October, when we collected and washed seeds like rosa rugosa and chokeberry, so i thought i'd share some of them here.

We made quite a mess.

We washed the seeds and poured out the pulp with the water several times, so that all we had left was the seeds.

The chokeberry seeds sink to the bottom. There's still some pulp left.

But, the seeds of the rosa rugosa float on the water.

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Oh, and on Wednesday we went to look at the tomatoes we had planted the week before. 

They had grown quite a bit, but they were planted a tad too early, they should have had one flower already open when they were planted, because now that they got some new soil, the plants might get exited and start growing like crazy and forget to make flowers. So, the gardeners try to slow down the growing with keeping the soil dry. It's always risky to do such a thing, but slowly the flowers start blossoming.

I found about five blossoms that are nearly open...

...and only one fully open.

There was the bumblebee-box/house there and one guy was already flying around, looking for blossoms to pollinate. There's one queen and about 50 to 60 workers per box, and one box costs about 75 euros. 

About last week

Last weeks Monday i finished making the little shelf in the woodwork classes.
Tuesday was all work, no theory classes. We planted some summerflowers in pots, like hundreds of them, and then sowed some herbs, such as dill and basil.

On Wednesday we had english, it went fine, but after that we were supposed to have some theory about raising chilis with Tiirikainen, but we had to go plant some tomatoes in the greenhouse, i wasn't dressed properly for that, i wasn't expecting any physical work for that day, so i was a bit pissed. And i was kind of pissed off also because we have so little time with Tiirikainen, only two hours a week, and then we have to go do something else during her lessons... After that we had some finnish lessons, where we did nothing, the teacher was arguing with couple students about what is a vocational skills demonstration and what is a competence-based qualification, because they didn't know the difference, so we just sat there doing nothing.

On Thursday morning we had Pessis classes where we listened about plants that bind nitrogen and nurture soil. After noon we had bussiness classes where we did some unfinished assignments. 

On Friday we had Pessis classes again, but this time it was about seedlings and sapplings. We went to look at the seeds of flowering quince that we had put in the cooler in November, i think, and they had germinated. In November the seeds needed a cold-treatment, so we had put some fine sand in a plasticbox and we moistened it and sowed the seeds in there and then covered it with plastic. Some of the seedlings had a disease in their roots caused by Fusarium-fungus and in the box there was also some grey mold, but many of the seedlings were fine, so we planted the healthy ones in seedlingtrays. We also put some cuttings of saintpaulia in pots to grow. After lunch we had fruits and berries -classes where we presented the assignments, that we had done about different plants. I did it about appletrees and how to defend them from pests, diseases and weeds using organical means.


...I'll edit this at home, and add some of my photos of those germinated seeds of flowering quince...

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edit: 9.3.2013

Well, here's the photos that i promised.

 Here's a couple of seedlings with the root disease. The roots are clearly brown and droopy.

And these are healthy seedlings, the roots are white and firm.

Here's the box where the seeds had been for five months. I had remembered wrong, we collected and sowed the seeds in the beginning of October, not November.

And here they are, almost a week later, in the seedling tray.

Monday

It's monday morning and the winterbreak is over.
Last friday i went to Tapolas community garden for a job interview. It's quite far away, so my brother drove me there, and if i can go work there, this spring, i'm going to have to take two buses there, from Lahti to Niinikoski. One bus goes there in the morning and one bus goes back to Orimattila in the afternoon. They have all kinds of vegetables there and appletrees and currantbushes that we're going to trim. They also have eighteen milkcows, one bull, some calfs and chickens (hens). The woman who interviewed me talked a lot, i almost didn't get a word in, but she seemed nice.

A week before that i went to an interview at Korso, Vantaa. It was at Vantaas Steiner-school and the fields are right next to the school. It was Rudolf Steiner who established biodynamic agriculture. And both of the gardens i'm applying are biodynamic gardens. It means they use compost, manure and preparations. Crop-cycling is an important thing and they use astronomical planting calendar, meaning they plant and harvest the crop when the mooncycle is appropriate for the plants. It's also about the diversity of the nature, maintaining and enhancing the ecological harmony and life in general. In these communities people work closely together and respect the animals and see them as workmates, not as production units. I can't say much more about it yet, i'll see what it's really like, in practice, at the workplaces.

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My favorite vegetables:

sweet corn and
broccoli.

Favorite berries and fruits:

cherries,
avocados,
blackcurrants and
watermelons.

Favorite flowers:

poppies,
sunflowers and
cornflowers (aka batchelor's button).

Favorite trees:

larch,
cherry- and appletrees, and
lilac.

Favorite herbs:

basil,
lemon balm,
rosemary and
thyme.

Alliums and other favorites:

garlic,
artichokes hearts (as food),
chickpeas.

edit:

I changed the title of the blog, but the address is still the same.

"A picture heavy post"

I don't get to make that mushroom stool, because the teacher said that it's too much work. So, i started (and almost finished) making a small shelf.

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Here's some photos (that i have taken myself) of flowers, from last year. I don't even remember all of their names, let alone their scientific names. We haven't dealt with flowers that much lately, just with poinsettias and hyacinths, but these sure are pretty. (I'll try to look them up and find their names.)

Now, that's a white lily, i'm sure of it.

Poinsettias. The lighting is on, that's why it's all yellow-looking.

And here are some summerflowers from last May.

Fuchsia. (Fuchsia triphylla)

The herbs from the previous "open house" -day, in May 2012.

Sunflowers can be used as fallow plants in Finland, but it's kind of useless to grow them for oil or seeds, there's not enough of processing business going on here. Or, so i've heard.

 A Swallowtail?

Here's the corn from the schools samplefield. 

And here are some members of the cabbage family.

Schools sample field. I don't know how else to call it.

Peppers. Capsicums. These are the cone-shaped ones, and i'm not sure what is it's full name. I'll try to look for it.

...

There are some many different kinds of peppers, that i just can't find the exact one.

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I'll probably post some photos next time as well, but i'll try to write something about every picture. 

I don't really know what else to write. Perhaps sometime later i will write about the planting plans we've made.

New Blog

Hello, you all. This is my new blog and i'm doing this for my english class. I'm going to write here about my studies in study programme in Horticulture. So, i'm becoming a gardener, and graduating in spring of 2014.

When people think of gardeners, they usually think that we're moving the lawn and planting rosebushes, i guess, but what i do is grow vegetables, fruits and berries (or flowers) in greenhouses and in the fields, so i could say i'm becoming more like a farmer. That word gives you a better picture of what i'm doing, i think.

On wednesday and thursday, i have interviews for work practice places, in Orimattila and Vantaa. My work practice starts in April and lasts five months. I've also applied in other places, but i haven't heard from them, so i should probably call them, i case they have forgotten me.

In these past few weeks we've made planting plans for peppers and for open land vegetables and we started this english course and woodwork classes last week. I'm looking forward to making a small shelf and a mushroom bench (stool?), but those nailguns are scary.

(This is not my picture, it's from http://www.taitomaa.fi/k%C3%A4sity%C3%B6t/K%C3%A4rp%C3%A4ssienijakkara/7860 ,but that's what it's going to look like.)


I'm going to put here a lot of pictures that i've taken in school, but if i post others photos, i'll try to remember to put whose is it, or a link to the original page.

'Till next time,
Sam.