Smart Gardening Ideas

Interesting talk about vitamin D

Learn more about Fertigation and nutrient absorption rate!! 💭 ☘️ 🖼cto

Plants you can grow from just one leaf T.me/TheNatureApothecary T.me/TheNatureApothecaryChat

#DaysOfLearning #Mullein Mullein is used for cough, whooping cough, tuberculosis, bronchitis, hoarseness, pneumonia, earaches, colds, chills, flu, swine flu, fever, allergies, tonsillitis, and sore throat. Other uses include asthma, diarrhea, colic, gastrointestinal bleeding, migraines, joint pain, and gout. It is also used as a sedative and as a diuretic to increase urine output. Mullein is applied to the skin for wounds, burns, hemorrhoids, bruises, frostbite, and skin infections (cellulitis). The leaves are used topically to soften and protect the skin. In manufacturing, mullein is used as a flavoring ingredient in alcoholic beverages.

#DaysOfLearning #Mullein Common mullein lives one to three years, very rarely longer. It grows as a rosette of leaves, the leaves getting bigger and more numerous until the plant has enough energy to flower. The rosettes of soft leaves can be very abundant in a neglected field or on a roadside, making practically a carpet. The rosette shape is an effective way for a plant to monopolize a spot on the ground. The growing rosette crowds out or covers its neighbors. When the rosette has stored enough energy, common mullein puts all the energy it has stored for several years into flowers. The tall flower stalks, up to 7 feet (2.1 m) high, support attractive yellow flowers the size of a dime (1.8 cm) that produce abundant seeds. The plant holds nothing back and so dies after flowering. (It is monocarpic, see discussion of monocarpy in previous post, Flowering Agaves).The flower stalks dry out and are visible through the winter.     The seeds--small, numerous and durable--have spread the plant across the world.      Since it is a conspicuous plant, common mullein has a rich collection of additional common names. In England, Ireland and the United States, those names include: Aaron’s rod, Adam’s flannel, beggar’s blanket, beggar’s stalk, blanket-leaf, blanket plant, bullocks lungwort, candlewick plant, common mullein, cowboy's toilet paper, feltwort, golden rod, great mullein, hag’s taper, hedge-taper, Jacob’s staff, Jupiter’s staff, Mary's candle, mullein dock, old man's flannel, our lady's flannel, Peter’s staff, Quaker rouge, shepherd’s clubs, shepherd’s staff,  torches, velvet dock, velvet plant, and witch’s candle.  Oh, good grief. Seems like every person who wanted to talk about common mullein made up their own name. The old stalks standing in a field look like brown candles, but in fact mullein was traditionally used as a cheap torch. The dry flowering stalk can simply be lit and carried as a light source. It works even better if dipped in tallow. In addition, the dry leaf and stem material will readily ignite and so common mullein was used for lamp wicks before cheap cotton was available.    Although nobody else seems concerned about the hairs, Grieve warned to filter mullein tea carefully because the hairs of the leaves can be extremely irritating in the mouth. A more positive use for the irritating properties of the hairs was captured in the common name Quaker rouge. Martin said Quaker women rubbed mullein leaves on their faces to make their cheeks pink. Brill added the comment that people using common mullein as toilet paper were "again creating a beautiful red flush on their cheeks." I had heard that from other sources.      Soaked in water, the flowers were reportedly used by Roman ladies to dye their hair yellow. That would require gathering a lot of flowers. Note on my photo that not all the flowers open at the same time. That is characteristic of common mullein.     Grieve went on to say ashes from the plant, made into soap, “will restore hair that has become gray to its original color.” Mullein treated with sulfuric acid makes a permanent green dye, something I hope to try.  I've used common mullein leaves to make dye, mordanted with iron or alum, and gotten attractive but ordinary yellow and olive shades.    The seeds contain small amounts of rotenone and coumarin. Eaten by fish, they can make the fish  inactive enough to be hand-caught, so the plant was used as a fishing aid.

#DaysOfLearning #Mullein Mullein grows along the roadsides in my area. This is the first yr I've brought it into the garden. It's growing nicely amongst the sage 🌿 Common mullein, Verbascum thapsus, is a European plant that has made its way all over the world. The USDA plant distribution maps show it in all the U.S. states and all but Arctic Canada. It is a member of the Scrophulariaceae, the snapdragon family.     The name mullein may be from mollis, Latin for soft, a description of the big hairy leaves, but it is possibly from the Latin malandrium, a disease of cattle, for which mullein was a remedy. There are several points of confusion about common mullein (see below). But clearly it has been known so long that its common name is based on Latin.

Them: How dedicated are you to regenerative agriculture? Me: So much that I was out there this morning chopping dog fennel with a machete in pastures, and pulling it up by the root so I don't use any herbicides where our cattle graze. Thats what regenerative farmers do to keep from using chemicals on their farm and keep your food safe. You want to know why their food is more expensive than the trash in the store? This is one of the thousand reasons why. The first picture is the "before" in that paddock and the last picture is "after". One paddock down and 33 more to go. Lol.

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Yellow Faced Bumble Bee of West-Coast North America. Ever notice these large bumble bees digging around in an open soil spot? These beautiful pollinators are some of the earliest to emerge after winter, when the queen begins her hunt for subterranean ground nesting. Yellow-faced bumble bee is a eusocial ground nester, meaning they have their colonies in ground often under trees or shrubs or in old rodent tunnels even. They are great little diggers as seen here moving soil. The queens can have up too 300 bees once all of the eggs have hatched in the underground nest. These yellow-faced Bumble Bee beauties are an important agricultural pollinator, especially for tomatoes pollination. They are generalists feeders, preferring to forage from areas rich in flower diversity. The more diversity the better! They are fascinating to watch if you catch large queens searching out a new home in spring. @PLANTFORCHANGE https://t.me/plantforchange (Come Make Change With Us! 🐝)

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You can crash your yard's mosquito population without spraying a single chemical with a Mosquito Bucket of Doom. Fill a 5-gallon bucket about two-thirds with water. Drop in a handful of grass clippings, leaves, or hay. Let it sit for a day, then drop in a Bti dunk (also called Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, sold at any hardware store as "mosquito dunks," about $10 for six). Mosquitoes are powerfully attracted to fermenting water and will lay their eggs in your bucket. Bti is a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a toxin that kills mosquito, blackfly, and fungus gnat larvae only. This method doesn't harm bees, butterflies, fireflies, fish, frogs, birds, pets, or people. BTI dunks are EPA-approved for organic use and safe in animal water troughs and birdbaths. The bucket becomes a mosquito magnet and a dead end. Compare that to fogging the entire yard with pyrethroids, which kills every insect in it, including the predators that eat mosquitoes. Doug Tallamy's Homegrown National Park has been running the "Mosquito Bucket Challenge" since 2021. The more buckets in a neighborhood, the bigger the dent. One bucket per yard is a great start. 🄳🄾🄾🄼🄿🤖🅂🅃🄸🄽🄶