Some stress and frustration led me to gardening planting lots of seeds. During this period around 3 to 4 weeks (removing old weeds/plants, preparing the soil, planting and watering everyday) I have started to feel reconnected to my home and neighborhood as a result. So if you are lucky enough to have a garden/grass, space for pot plants, plant some seeds and watch them grow and/or join a community garden in your local area.
These photos I took today of the current progress of the seeds growing. Sunflowers, Native Australian Sunflowers, Cosmos Flowers, Nasturtiums flowers.
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Sunflower Seedlings (planted in extremely great fertile soil and added horse manure (bought locally for $1 a bag) and mushroom mulch from a store. I let horse manure sit on top of soil watering it for around 1 week letting it decompose. Then mixed it into the soil using a shovel and fork then added the mushroom mulch on top (wear a face mask and gloves) and mixed that in as well). Then putting seeds in and watering seeds everyday to keep the soil moist. Soon I will water seedlings with seaweed fertiliser maybe once a month. (this is my first time growing sunflowers) I have read that once roots get established a long tap root can grow straight down as far as 1.5m long deep! Create long root/s by watering a lot so water sinks deep into the earth, and only water in the mornings to prevent the roots staying wet at night, constantly wet roots can rot, so plant needs to dry out during the day and night. And if you only water the surface soil when roots are forming the roots will not grow deep down, will just form roots at surface level.
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Native Australian Sunflower Seedlings are much smaller than other varieties of Sunflowers. These native seeds can be scattered on the soil surface and lightly covered with a thin layer of dirt, water to keep moist. (I think I read the direct sunlight and heat helps the seeds to germinate and grow). While other sunflower seeds you need to dig small hole maybe around 6mm to 9mm deep, with fertile soil to give them a boost. I added no manure and no mulch or fertiliser to these native Australian Sunflower seeds, just relying on the original soil that was already there.
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Cosmos flower seedlings native to Mexico. I love Cosmos flowers but I have never grown them before. I did have a cosmos plant with orange flowers in my garden as a child so it has strong but faint memories. I only thought they were orange flowers (because I haven't seen many cosmos plants in Australia and when I do they are always orange) but now I know there are many colours of cosmos. They are basically scatter seeds when planting or plant maybe 3mm deep in soil that is light weight so the sun light will help to germinate the seeds to grow. If you plant the seeds 6mm deep in soil/dirt that will quickly get thick when wet no sun light can penetrate through to help germinate the seeds, so the seeds will not grow or struggle to grow. If this happens to you like it did me, I used a rake to gently disturb the thick soil so gaps appear in the soil and can let the sun light through. Or just scatter the seeds over some dirt/leaves and keep it moist by watering with sun light for most of the day. Cosmos are self seeding so they will eventually drop seeds onto the ground so more will grow. No manure, no mulch, no fertiliser is needed for cosmos plants, they can grow in very bad dry soil, with full sun light and little water, drought resistant. If you can buy some rare cosmos plants named chocolate cosmos (chocolate cosmos seeds are extremely hard to find, buy a small plant when possible) then defiantly get a chocolate cosmos.
Photo I took of an orange cosmos plant with a bee on the flower, not my plant. So you should get some bees and butterflies visiting your garden because of cosmos flowers. Maybe some native bees local to your area as well.
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Nasturtium Seedlings. Extremely easy to grow from seeds. Plant seeds maybe around 4mm deep in fertile soil or bad normal soil and keep moist until seedlings emerge and grow into plant, lovely red, yellow, orange flowers, can get different colours as well including white. Once fully grown the plant takes care of it self, not much watering required at all, possibly quite drought resistant as it loves full sun light, flowers just keep growing high turn over, more replace each other for months over and over. Like a small bush and can get a creeper vine variety as well. I have been told they are self seeding as well so they will drop seeds and more will grow. I have read you can eat Nasturtiums, the flowers, the leaves, seeds, and stems. I have eaten the leaves before and they taste hot like black pepper. The flowers have little pollen tubes at the base of each flower, pinch the end off of the tube and suck out the pollen straight from the flower, sweet!
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Also check out any wild flower seed mixes available to buy, great for bees, butterflies, ladybird beatles, insects, etc. I scattered lots of seeds in the garden will taken some photos of them next.