February is here, which means it's time to start paying attention to the soil. January wasn't cold - to my recollection it barely dropped below freezing in the daytime - but it's a few degrees warmer now as the nights shorten and the dawn comes sooner, and plants start to make plans and suggestions.
Through sheet of soggy cardboard, the purple tips of crocuses emerge:
And here's a lovely surprise: jelly ears! An edible fungus that found a place in my heart a few years back and after various ventures in which I've suggested it might want to make my allotment its home, a place on my allotment too.
Meanwhile, comfrey. I got myself a tiny little cutting in March last year, which through the year blossomed from this:
into this:
It comes up frequently in permaculture contexts as an excellent "compost activator", very high in the nutrients soil needs to make great plants like - more comfrey! See, it's also very easy to propagate. Clearing away some of the sludgy mulch the leaves rot quickly into at the end of their life cycle, reveals this sort of thing:
New life from sludge. I snapped off a piece, by accident, but immediately remembering that's what was supposed to happen.
I've potted this, and I'm feeling optimistic about it. It's all part of a plan I still need to post here about. Watch this space.
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I loved to point out the jelly ears on trees to kids. I told them that the trees were magic and were listening to everything they said
ReplyDeleteHehe, watch out kids, the tree have ears! I like it.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to be able to cultivate them, somehow. Help them to spread. Any ideas? They're just growing on the side of an old wooden pallet I use for compositing.