All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.
See also our Environment community, which is focused on weather, climate, climate change, and stuff like that.
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[Image description: small black seeds attached to white fluff have taken the place of the purple flowers that adorned this Sweet Joe Pye Weed]
I'm out collecting seeds from some Sweet Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium purpureum) with our newborn in a wrap, rockin' that Kuato vibe pretty hard.
If you haven't yet, pop over to this pinned thread to shout out a nursery that you've had a good experience with, possibly even one that's local to your area.
What's growing on with you all?
Harvested my sunflower heads this week! I probably waited a bit too long since they had worms and a bit of mold, but lesson learned for next time. I took all the seeds out, sorted out the bad ones, and I'm going to let them dry for a while longer in mesh bags before roasting and shelling or whatever.
Any advice on processing sunflowers?
I'm a little surprised your local birds let them get to that stage, to be honest! I've only threshed them once, for reseeding purposes, but did so with ¼" hardware cloth, framed with 2" sides, over a wheelbarrow. The mesh catches the seeds but lets the duff fall through with a little agitation. Otherwise I've hung them upside down within reach of the birds we raise for them to enjoy.
Have any of you seen hollow joe pye (Eutrochium fistulosum) in the wild? It gets absolutely enormous, I've seen it 8-9' tall and supposedly it can exceed 11' in height. I want to get some for my garden but I suspect unless I really crowd it like it would be in its native environment, it'll get really tall and get knocked over by the wind.
Can you dedicate a few square feet / a square meter in the garden for a few transplants? Having clustered colonies of these tall plants has treated us well, and if you're doing the starts yourself it's easy enough to multisow a few cells to get a head start.
I'm working on converting my entire yard to natives eventually, so I'll make sure to get a bunch of seeds or plugs for it when I do. Joe pye is so awesome. Absolute butterfly/bee magnet.