Recent searches
Search options
The greenhouse full of soil blocks. It’s sow time. #GrowYourOwn #SeedStarting #SoilBlocks #GreenManures #Gardening #Allotment
@Broadfork Congratulation on the 2025 spring gardening milestone of soil blocks! Can you share your starter mix recipe? Ernie is happy. This is his happy face. #gardening, #growyourown, #soilblocks.
@Pollinators Oh no, this is definitely his when are we going to do something else face.
The mix I use is roughly similar quantities of coir and sifted home made compost. A quarter of that quantity of worm casts, vermiculite and perlite. I’d usually add quarter of leaf mould too but I’ve already run out of that.
The watering gives the consistency of the blocks I’m after but that’s done by eye. I err on making the blocks on the wet side to start off. They hold their shape better.
@Broadfork Thank you and Ernie. We are going to make soil blocks for the first time after seeing them in action on Mastodon. The peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes starts will be our test vegetables. We have the ingredients. Though the leaf mould is not well aged. And the compost was frozen wedges. We are looking forward to the less stress potting up. #soilblocks, #gardening, #growyourow, #compost.
@Pollinators This photo from last year illustrates what I do to “pot on” larger plants from soil blocks. I just add more soil block mix to the outsides into a rough elongated ball shape.
#SoilBlocks #Gardening #GrowYourOwn
@Broadfork Yes. The soil block mix is a wetter mix than we are used to.
I have learned that minor damage to the roots when pricking out stimulates root growth.
@Broadfork That's a great sight! I'm still a few weeks away from getting my greenhouse going. 
@richrollgardener A little later than I usually am but I am stuck for indoor plant storage space these days. The seedlings will have to hope their hats will keep the frosts at bay.
I’ll be sowing in earnest this coming week.
@Broadfork Yes, for me it's always a balancing act with timing the space vs. weather issues. I can't afford to keep the greenhouse warm at night in very cold weather and yet the plants must get started because the weather will flip to "warm" very suddenly. I can't start the warm weather stuff until I can plant out some of the early plants to make room... It's an inexorable chain of events.
@richrollgardener The extra thing about timing for me is also by using soil blocks I can reduce the compost use a lot by sowing later and transplanting plants out when younger.
I find as their roots are air pruned the small plants suffer little in the way of transplant shock and grow on pretty well.
Our spring climate is a slow burn compared to yours where the changes all happen very quickly. I understand why grow lights are so useful to you.
Here, plants sown later will quickly catch up.
@richrollgardener @Broadfork This is reminding me of hotbeds. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this method helped grow things like melons in winter for stately homes.(Rabbit holes here: https://www.gardenhistoryinfo.com/gardenpages/hotbedhistory.html; https://video.allotment-garden.org/65/victorian-hotbed-garden/)
Oh, just found a clip of Monty Don doing one: https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/monty-dons-outdoor-melon-trial-part-one/
Maybe you could make a similar bed under the shelves and get enough heat to help overnight
@TheDonsieLass @richrollgardener @Broadfork I had never considered where the expression "a hotbed of activity" came from until right now.
@TheDonsieLass Thanks for this. @richrollgardener A hotbed would add a nice bit of residual heat to a greenhouse. Not sure it would be enough for a New England winter but it is a fascinating skill the French market gardeners of the early 20th Century used to great effect, getting their produce to market earlier to fetch high prices.
@Broadfork I always wondered how Freud found strawberries for his seriously ill daughter in February. When I first heard that story, I determined that if it were true, they perhaps came up from Italy
@TheDonsieLass I have a great little book by Jack First “Hot Beds How to grow early crops using an age-old technique.”
This photo from early in the 20th Century is one of the French hot bed systems called “lining.”
você chega na estufa e encontra um cachorro na entrada. O que vai fazer?
[ ] esticar a mão com o pulso fechado pro cachorro cheirar
[ ] começar a conversar de igual pois sabe que ele é o chefe do local
[ ] tira uma foto e posta no mastodon: 'gente, vocês não vão acreditar no que encontrei na minha missão'
@Broadfork Ernie reminds me of Lolly our brindle from many years ago
May the sowing commence!
@kellyromanych He really keeps me going and is a joy to have around. He’s very daft with lots of quirks.
This week he has once again discovered sticks are fun after growing out of playing with them a long while ago. The joys of spring again, I guess.
Sowing time at last. Patience is not one of my virtues. I will now spend what will seem a ridiculous amount of my life watching and waiting for seedlings germinate and slowly grow.
My wife bought me a soil-block doohickey for Christmas and I must admit, I’m intrigued. All the cool kids (like yourself) are doing it, which is usually my massive red flag - I’m deeply allergic to being cool - but it’s gardening, so I’m obviously joining in.
Manly, though, we’re stuck in a cycle of nightly frosts right now. For a part of the world which sometimes doesn’t get a single frost in a winter, the last dozen nights or so have been really weird. So I’m holding my nerve for a few days yet, and just sieving material down ready for takeoff.
@Badgardener You say that. I am the only person I know IRL who is using soil blocks.
I’m the only person I know IRL on mastodon…
@Badgardener Aha! Choose your third option wisely to somehow make these into a venn diagram.
@Broadfork that's a lovely collection of propagators! I've already learnt that I would definitely benefit from more 
@kashcah This is their once a year outing but I would be lost without them.