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ysabetwordsmithToday we visited the Charleston Food Forest. These pictures show the front and right side. (See the left side, and the Coles County Community Garden.)
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ysabetwordsmith
Photos: Charleston Food Forest
Nov. 8th, 2025 10:53 pmysabetwordsmithToday we visited the Charleston Food Forest, Coles County Community Garden, and Lake Charleston. These are the food forest pictures. What started out as a beautiful fall day, sunny and cool, clouded over by the time we got out of the house. So the lighting isn't great, but at least the pictures look okay. (Continue with the community garden and the lake.)
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ysabetwordsmithThese are pictures from the Charleston Food Forest. (Continue with Part 2: Left Side, Coles County Food Forest.)
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Photos: Charleston Food Forest
Jun. 21st, 2025 02:04 amysabetwordsmithThese pictures are from Thursday. I went foraging at the Charleston Food Forest. It's across the parking lot from the Coles County Community Garden.
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Photos: Dark Gardening
Jun. 12th, 2025 12:01 amysabetwordsmithI enjoy growing dark-colored plants. I have black flowers, bronze leaves, black fruits, all kinds of interesting things.
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ysabetwordsmithThese pictures are from the left side of the Charleston Food Forest. See Part 1 Right Side.
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ysabetwordsmithToday we visited the Charleston Food Forest. I took pictures and rescued some plants that were growing in the paths so they don't get trampled. These pictures are mostly from the right side. See Part 2 Left Side.
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What I'm Growing
Nov. 12th, 2024 06:33 pmysabetwordsmithAlmost everything in the Charleston Food Forest is something I'm growing, would like to grow, or at least recognize from edible plant studies. So I thought it would be fun to break that down, listed in approximate spatial order moving through the lists of pictures ...
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ysabetwordsmithThis concludes the tour of the Charleston Food Forest. (See Part 1: Right Front. Part 2: Right Back, Part 3: Left Back.)
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ysabetwordsmithThis continues the tour of the Charleston Food Forest. (See Part 1: Right Front. Part 2: Right Back.)
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ysabetwordsmithThis continues the tour of the Charleston Food Forest. (See Part 1: Right Front.)
( Walk with me ... )
( Walk with me ... )
ysabetwordsmithMy partner Doug spotted this place recently, and today we explored the Charleston Food Forest and its plants. (See Part 2 Right Back, Part 3: Left Back, Part 4 Left Front, and What I'm Growing.) It's a skinny rectangle, and not all that big. If you cut it in half and lined the halves up as a square, then it would fit in a typical town yard around here. It has a LOT of plants in it, thoughtfully chosen and arranged. I wouldn't call it a food forest myself, because while it has multiple layers, it is really short. I doubt anything is more than about 10-12 feet tall. That's sensible in a garden this small. But when I think of a forest, I'm thinking one that at least has a canopy layer. Mine has emergents, the main canopy, the subcanopy, and then all the shorter stuff as shown here (understory trees, shrubs, herbs, groundcovers, roots, fungi, vines, etc.). So I'd probably call this one a permaculture garden. (See the layers of a food forest and permaculture design principles.) I didn't spot actual guilds, but everything is arranged in logical order. Someone has done an amazing job setting this up in the space available.
The really subversive thing: it's not a garden to be looked at, it's a garden to be used, for free, by everyone. A little slice of Terramagne, or Turtle-Island-That-Was, especially since it's located right next to a government building with several human service offices. So I helped myself to some seeds. Sure, I might come back later for things to eat. But what I am really interested in is gathering things from here that I can grow at home.
I could only think of two things I'd really add to make this even better:
1) A Little Free Seed / Plant Library so folks could swap things.
2) A community bulletin board, chiefly for people to post their Have / Want lists for trading, but could also be used to announce things like plant swaps or sales, garden open houses, etc. There is an Events section on the back side of the welcome sign, but it's under glass.
( Walk with me ... )
The really subversive thing: it's not a garden to be looked at, it's a garden to be used, for free, by everyone. A little slice of Terramagne, or Turtle-Island-That-Was, especially since it's located right next to a government building with several human service offices. So I helped myself to some seeds. Sure, I might come back later for things to eat. But what I am really interested in is gathering things from here that I can grow at home.
I could only think of two things I'd really add to make this even better:
1) A Little Free Seed / Plant Library so folks could swap things.
2) A community bulletin board, chiefly for people to post their Have / Want lists for trading, but could also be used to announce things like plant swaps or sales, garden open houses, etc. There is an Events section on the back side of the welcome sign, but it's under glass.
( Walk with me ... )
Peach/Nectarine Leaf Curl
May. 20th, 2011 11:19 ammiss_s_bBecause of the weather we have had in the UK this year, my little nectarine tree has had a very severe leaf curl infection. I figure I'm probably not the only person that this has happened to, so I thought I would share the results of my fairly extensive research on the matter.
There are a lot of websites detailing what leaf curl is, but few giving detailed instructions on what to do about it. The best one I found which tells you why the infection occurs and why various treatments work is this one, but it is very US specific - for instance, it tells you that you can't buy Bordeaux mixture in the shops; in the UK you can, it's made by Vitax and should cost you about £3. Also, if you know a friendly science teacher or chemist, you might be able to get hold of some copper sulphate to make up a solution yourself; the important thing for controlling leaf curl is a solution containing copper ions, which will kill the fungus.
One reason for getting Bordeaux mixture rather than just making up copper sulphate solution, though, is that Bordeaux mixture is also useful for other plant problems - for example powdery mildew on apple trees and potato blight - and I doubt any of us here are single crop growers.
This forum has a useful timetable for application of the medicine and other actions you can take to help your tree along, which I am going to quote in full:
There are a lot of websites detailing what leaf curl is, but few giving detailed instructions on what to do about it. The best one I found which tells you why the infection occurs and why various treatments work is this one, but it is very US specific - for instance, it tells you that you can't buy Bordeaux mixture in the shops; in the UK you can, it's made by Vitax and should cost you about £3. Also, if you know a friendly science teacher or chemist, you might be able to get hold of some copper sulphate to make up a solution yourself; the important thing for controlling leaf curl is a solution containing copper ions, which will kill the fungus.
One reason for getting Bordeaux mixture rather than just making up copper sulphate solution, though, is that Bordeaux mixture is also useful for other plant problems - for example powdery mildew on apple trees and potato blight - and I doubt any of us here are single crop growers.
This forum has a useful timetable for application of the medicine and other actions you can take to help your tree along, which I am going to quote in full:
1. Don't remove the leaves, TOTAL WASTE OF TIME, and it doesn't help the tree at all if you do it. Use your time to do other things instead like the ones that follow.I hope this helps if anyone else's tree has been suffering like mine has.
2. Come early summer when it is getting hot, and no more rains, apply loads of fertilizers, especially high in Nitrogen. And supplement with Epsom salts. Supply adequate irrigation. The idea here is to help your tree recover vigorously to replace the infected leaves which will fall off. The biggest mistake of homegrowers is not to fertilize their trees when they have PLC infections. The new vigorous leaves will not be infected in the drier months, and it will help your tree prepare much better for next year.
3. Let the infected leaves fall, but promptly remove all the leaves that fell down at most weekly, and cart them off into the streets for yard waste pick up by the city to be composted properly where those pathogens will surely die.
4. Around the fall season, always remove the fallen leaves before they decay.
5. Apply your first batch of PLC fungicide around thanksgiving. Spray also the fences and the soil and nearby trees where possible splashes from the rain could go into your trees.
6. Around Christmas day, be sure to remove all the leaves hanging on the trees if you still see some of them. remove also the mummified fruit trees. Then spray with the strongest fungicide that you have, like lime sulfur.
7. Around super bowl time after the holidays, when the buds are starting to swell, apply the last batch of PLC fungicide.
8. If you happen to have brown rot and twig blight, it might be good to spray diluted concentrations of copper on your blooms when it is rainy during the bloom time.
