In moist rocky areas, moss, mildew and lichen growth can be encouraged by painting rock surfaces with nutrient rich food paste. I have done this accidentally when food waste got all over rocks surrounding a garden.
I know someone who takes moss and uses a blender to make a "smoothie" with yogurt, then paints it onto flower pots and other things. This works quite well and surprisingly fast.
I have many mosses of many different shades of green and have long thought, but never gotten around to doing (damn those only 24 hours in a day), mixing up a palette of greens and using them to paint pictures, patterns etc. on rocks, green roofs or basically anywhere the imagination and conditions permit.
Kota, your place is beautiful. I'm sure I've read where you are but I can't remember, please remind me.
I love moss, but it doesn't love me and my alkaline, sandy, dry, seaside place!
Leila, we're in southern Quebec, in the green mountains, just north of the Vermont border. This is really moss country, acid soil, shallow with weepy shale bedrock close to the surface. It is very beautiful, but maybe you should be happy that you cannot become addicted to the practice of tending to it. My partner spends about an hour a day mossing (weeding) it. He does it at the end of the day while I make supper. He finds it Zen, a physical form of meditation. I just took some new photos this weekend and I'll post them when I dump them from my camera.
We have loads of moss in the Pacific NW. Here's a pic of the Sol Duc River on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State taken by my cousin Mark. I caught a steelhead in that river once a few years back.
Lots of nice images!
Kota- I envy you the rocks, though I know they can be a lot of work to deal with, I'm a rock gardener, so they idea of sheets of rock just sitting there are very appealing!
We are somewhere in the middle on moss- lots of it around here in wooded or shady places, even under grasses etc in open woods- but obviously less than places like the West Coast!
Love those huge sculptures shown in a couple of pics- I've seen (pics of) one like that that is on Prince Charles' property (might be one of those shared here?) and I believe the body of the sculpture was made with 'mud' (clay?) I'd love to do something like that I'm thinking of ways to do in situ art in the forest, could be ephemeral, or something that grows ....
Hey Cohan I'm a rock gardener too, got them growing everywhere
The reason we have ledge showing there is because the big machines ripped off the soil when we built the dam. Watching nature try to re-colonize it since then has taught me a lot about how these systems work. The reason the moss does so well is that there is almost always water draining across it because the shale bedrock weeps.
You have the rock gardens growing everywhere, or just the rocks? lol
Interesting habitat with the always moist rock surfaces- you could grow some very cool plants on those- some saxifragas and primulas might like that, I bet Pinguicula and Drosera (carnivorous plants) would love it, and of course some ferns etc. A lot of alpine gardeners would kill for a spot like that..lol
Cohan, I meant the rocks are growing, or at least it seems like they are. Mostly I use them for building terraces since I'm on a mountain side.
I never thought of using Pinguicula, but we do have a native Drosera that gets to be about the size of a quarter. The primula do love it though. I've got P. denticulata and P. veras. 2 years ago we had to go to the niece's wedding an Vancouver, and whilst visiting the Van Deusen botanical gardens I picked up a package of their "candelabra" primula seeds. They were already a couple of years old and I didn't get a very good germination rate, about 6 in total. They should bloom for the first time this year; I'm looking forward to it.
In this area the other plants that do very well are lobilia cardinalis, meconopsis betonicifolia, iris ensata and all the wild volunteers. I'm sure the small stature of most alpines would get them overrun in my wet areas, but we do have crumbling shale outcroppings that we plant with sedums, saxifragas' and the like.
A friend tried this, can't remember the exact measurements but she basically mixed up some moss, some buttermilk, water and sugar and painted it on the her garden wall. A toxic free alternative to graffitti
This tar and gravel roof that I recently serviced (gutter cleaning and a drain trench) is 53 years old. The moss protects it and gives some insulation value, particularly in summer when it is like a big dry heat shield. Roofs without moss, don't last this long.
Jocelyn Campbell wrote:Want. (But probably too dry for this in Montana.)
Pic from FaceBook.
I'll bet that if you make an effort to drip just a bit extra each time, you'd be fine. That's awesome! There must be a way to make the form from concrete -- maybe forming it over a tray of some sort? -- then planting the moss inside. I hope it works for you!
Julia Winter wrote:I wonder how much light something like that would require? I want one too!
But first I have to train my family not to bury it in discarded clothes. . . .
Most of my native moss grows in the shadows,so I would think any natural light through a window would work.The moss here likes to stay damp.Problem here is,I take my showers at the gym,my son doesn't need a bath often,and his mom doesn't need a bath often either.To much bathing is hard on our skin,especially if we use hot water and off the self soaps.
Of note- As I understand it, moss does not take much nutrition or water through its primitive "roots", they are only for anchoring, so the yogurt/buttermilk/nutrient supply are not necessary. Moss gets what it needs from the sun and the air through its leaves. THe big thing moss has going for it are that it's nutrient and sunlight needs are low and it can grow in most places where other plants can't. It grows slowly but many varieties are drought tolerant.
I am very fond of moss and have been experimenting with propagating it for a while with some success, some failure. Moss takes patience! When I'm good at it I hope to sell it to some local florists and sell moss gardens at the farmers market.
Jocelyn Campbell wrote:Want. (But probably too dry for this in Montana.)
Pic from FaceBook.
On a recent pruning job, I worked on fruit trees that had thick mats of moss, ferns and lichen growing together. When pulled from the tree, it comes with some dead bark attached. It seems like an easy plant community to transplant to baskets or pots. This is a similar plant community to the ones shown in your photo of the river, but the fruit trees are in drier, brighter places. They get dry as a chip in the summer sun on trees surrounded by suburban lawns. This mix might work as a bath mat or in a basket in a well lit bathroom. I will gather a box of it and mail it to the farm if you like. The postage is my donation to the cause. Stuff growing on apple might be a good choice since you will find it easy to obtain more more apple bark for further propagation.
I'm going to experiment with one inch thick gabion mats with a substrate of coarse sand and pea gravel, for grow your own mats and wall hangings.
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