Ac Baker

This is such a great project!  I'm so excited to see what this revived tunnel can help you achieve!

I've been pondering the wiggle wire cover fitting technology you've used.  It's technically re-useable, which makes re-adjusting the cover, or re-covering the tunnel so much more practicable.

I think on balance I would lean towards wearing protective goggles over my spectacles although of course my (wood frame!) specs do provide a degree of protection.

Anyhow, getting so far with this project is fantastic!! So looking forward to your planting thread!!

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Robin Wall Kimmerer has done work on sustainable harvesting of free-living plants as an Indigenous botanist.  She observed that there are many different sustainable relationships between plants & harvesters, depending upon the plants needs, the local conditions, the benefits of the plants to the harvesters etc.

I believe the first plant Robin Wall Kimmerer studied explicitly in this way was Turtle Island sweetgrass.  Without appropriate traditional harvesting, the Sweetgrass dwindled.  I believe the term Robin Wall Kimmerer used from botany was "compensatory growth": traditional harvesting stimulates sweetgrass to thrive rather than be out-grown by other plants.

Fascinating!  Assuming this is seed from last autumn .. could it be significantly different in terms of moisture levels or retained warmth?

It looks like they're doing some rather interesting experiments e.g. in how to insulate Nissan huts, at Cultybraggan: https://www.ads.org.uk/case-study/cultybraggan-camp-hut-one

We're using potatoes to prepare a good section of the plot for autumn down veg.

Fitting around our capacity, and what's available, I'm going for sheet mulching, no/low-dig potatoes.  We'll mound up with a mixture of compost, and high nitrogen leafy greens particularly nettles.  We'll bulk up the compost with comfrey cuttings (the non-seeding Bocking types) and woodchip.

We've "fed" each seed potato with a either a big handful of freshly cut dandelion leaves & stems, or a cupped palmful of spent coffee grounds along with the garden compost you see them planted in. There's also still decomposing grass & other greenery under the mulch.

We've put a light top dressing of fresh poplar woodchips on the cardboard sheet-mulch so it looks a bit less ugly for the allotments committee!

We'll further balance out the carbon in the cardboard & woodchip by making sure there's plenty of nitrogen in the earthing up layers.

If you look very carefully you might just see a few of the chit tips peeking out of the compost! Fingers crossed.

Yes!  One if the joys & challenges is working out what urban "waste" can safely be diverted to the community garden.  

I'm hoping to get more organised this summer with picking up from the local indrpendent mini-supermarket when they're scrapping off greengroceries.  

People are keen to know we're growing fresh veg & fruits with compost made by "closing the loop" on that one!

We've been planting our chitted potato tubers at last today, slightly delayed due to some health wobbles around the group

We are celebrating today, though, having had a free drop of freshly chipped poplar wood for the community.  The gardening company would have had to pay to take this to the municipal processing plant.  Lots of organic matter saved from a tree being radically cut back. So this is a win-win-win!

Already, five community members have rapidly & happily claimed their barrowloads!

Very exciting! Looking so good!

That does look a lot like a flowering camellia, which are apparently Japanese camellia varieties.

As for tea making, I think the short answer is, no?

Camellia sinensis has apparently been selectively bred for tea making for centuries.

Whereas, there are apparently triterpenoid saponins in Camellia japonica L. leaves water extract:

Enrichment process, structural prediction, isolation, in vitro cytotoxic and anti-inflammatory effects of triterpenoid saponins in Camellia japonica L. leaves water extract through UPLC-Q-TOF based mass spectrometry similarity networking, Lou et al. 2024
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814624000086