#Rjalker trains her gardening skill | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rjalkerspictures · 4 years

Photo

These are going to be in completely random order, by the way.

#Rjalker trains her farming skill #Rjalker trains her gardening skill #Persephone the Pommegranate tree #Squirrels #Dani the cat #Rani the cat #butternut #black walnut #Rjalker plays Fallout 3 #Fallout 3 screenshots...of a sort #seedlings #plants

0 notes

rjalker · 3 years

Text

[Image description: Several pictures, showing the processing of a yellow pumpkin in an attempt to get the seeds out for saving.

The first photos two show the medium sized yellow pumpkin sitting in a stainless steel sink, with a white hand holding it still, first on the side, then on the front, to show the size. The pumpkin is taller than the hand, by a few inches, but not a very large pumpkin overall.

The third picture shows a pair of cuts that have been carved into the pumpkin, intersecting at a wide angle.

The fourth and fiftth picture shows that the cuts have been connected by another cut to form a triangle, and the peice that was cut out has been shoved into the pumpkin to form a hole. It is shown first from an angle off to the side, and then head on. The flesh of the pumpkin can be seen through the hole, and it is very thick.

The sixth picture shows the white hand holding the pumpkin next to the hole, so show how big it is. On its longest side, it is almost as long as the thumb being used for scale, but it has a sharp angle, and isn’t very wide.

The seventh picture was taken with flash on, to show the inside of the pumpkin through the hole, and the flash has given everything a green tint, and some flesh and seeds are visible.

The eighth picture shows the pumpkin now on its side in a metal colander, with the hole facing upward, and filled with seeds.

The ninth picture shows the white hand again, now holding some of the seeds, which are white and clean. The fingers are slightly wrinkled from the water.

The tenth and last picture shows a metal mixing bowl filled with the many seeds that have been sucessfully removed from the pumpkin.

End Image description.]

--------------------------------

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

God this pumpkin hated me but that's TOO BAD!!!! I'm clever!!!! Hahaha!!!!!

This pumpkin was so hard to cut that I was afraid that knife would break. Or just get stuck in it and not come back out.

I managed to cut a small hole and then shoved the chunk in word with a wooden spoon, and then I stuck the handle of the wooden ppoon in the pumpkin and just kind of scraped it around a bunch and then I was just going to try and dump the seeds out, but that wasn't working very well, so I was like wait a second... seeds float...

So I set the pumpkin in a colander, and then I filled the pumpkin with water. So that the seeds floated to the top and fell out and fell into the colander.

He has.

The only nice thing I have to say about this pumpkin so far as that I didn't even need to clean the seeds at all. They weren't actually sticking to the guts or anything. Very nice.

And it is possible to bake pumpkins entirely whole without cutting them open or taking seeds out, so it's in the oven as it is right now without being cut up anymore, because that's not going to happen unless a chainsaw magically appears.

The seeds are on a labeled paper plate to dry.

#Rjalker trains her cooking skill #pumpkins #seed saving #gardening #yellow pumpkin #no idea what kind it is.#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #aaaaaa #roasting pumpkins #idkkkkkk

7 notes · View notes

rjalker · 3 years

Text

This one started to get soft, so skinned it, chopped it up, and it's in the crockpot.

No idea what kind it is, but I'm calling it in patient bastard, because two of the seeds were not only starting to sprout, they had leaves. Inside the pumpkin one of them was broken in half, but the other one is now in a plant pot.

You don't actually need to skin pumpkins, since the skin is edible, and if you cook it long enough it'll just kind of dissolve, especially if, unlike us, you have an actual good blender to make your puree with, but I like having sacrifices for my other plants.

This pumpkin gets a D for the number of seeds, (more is better) but and A+ for how easy they were to take out and clean.

Also gets an A+ for how easy it was to carve, and a C how easy it was to skin.

We now have a functional dehydrator, so I'm going to use this to make fruit leather >:)

It's in the crock pot with like approximately 2 cups of water just to help it steam, you can make it in the oven as well, but our oven is terrible and doesn't work and this way is just so much easier.

.... and I've just realized that I forgot to put in a Crock-Pot liner so... Whoops oh well.

Here's one of the seeds that sprouted:

Edit: it has 105 seeds. Still gets an F.

#undescribed images #food #pumpkin #pumpkins #red pumpkin #flat pumpkin #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her cooking skill #squash #gardening #plants #seedlings #STUPID IMPATIENT HILARIOUS SEEDLINGS #seed saving #trying to tag it sp i can qctuslly find it lster #pumpkin seeds #seeds

6 notes · View notes

rjalker · 4 years

Text

Julia the common milkweed plant, from top to bottom, with newer flowers and leaves at the top and older at the bottom. From a week or two ago.

Milkweed is a host plant for Monarch butterflies, which means they lay their eggs on the leaves, and when the eggs hatch, the caterpillars eat the leaves as the grow, eventually turning into butterflies themselves.

There are many types of milkweed plants, with common milkweed being, as the name implies, common.

If you want to help Monarch butterflies (and the several other insect species that rely on milkweed as an essential step in their life cycle), one of the best things you can do is grow milkweed.

Google which species are native to your area, and learn how to identify them. You can buy seeds and sometimes plants online, and if all else fails you can search for wild growing plants and collect some seeds from those.

Also the flowers smell amazing which I've never seen mentioned anywhere at all

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her farming skill #common milkweed #asclepias syriaca #julia the common milkweed plant #long post #milkweed

20 notes · View notes

rjalker · 3 years

Text

[Video description, made with speech-to-text,

Two halves of a pumpkin sitting on a black wire rack over top of a chest freezer, colored golden brown, and one of the haves much darker and almost burnt looking.

A voice narrates, "This is the skin of the pumpkin I attempted to carve yesterday, period."

A white hand reaches out and taps their nails along the skin of the pumpkin, creating a hard sound like they are touching plastic instead of a pumpkin.

"That's the sound it makes!"

They tap their nails again, emphasizing the sound produced, before grabbing half of the shell and flipping it over as they lift it up, to show the underside, which is pale yellow, and lightly textured.

"It's completely solid." They sit the half of the pumpkin back down, and it creates another hard sound as it hits the wire rack.

The narrator then taps their nails against the darker half of the pumpkin skin, and flips thay over as well. This side has a darker patch on the inside, matching the burnt marks on the outside.

"You'd think it's plastic!" They set this half down, and it again makes a hard noise as it returns to the wire grate.

End video description.]

As you can hear, I forgot for a second that I wasn't using speech to text, lol.

Apparently this type of pumpkin is called a mellow yellow pumpkin, and yes it is yellow, no it is not mellow. I barely managed to carve a tiny little hole in it, and then I couldn't do anything more without being afraid that the knife would snap in half. How is that mellow. You practically need a chainsaw to open this thing.

Only reason I was able to collect the seeds is because I realized that I could stick the handle of a wooden spoon in and Scraper on the inside, and then still the pumpkin with water so that the seeds floated to the top.

Which is really freaking clever, if I do say so myself. I am proud. I wanted those seeds and I got them.

And now we're keeping the shell to dry, because it's so ridiculous that it's it's it should just be kept. It's a freaking trophy. It's weird as heck. I want to see how long it lasts. If you told me it was plastic I would believe you.

If I hadn't pulled the guts and seeds out of that pumpkin myself, I would think it was fake.

When I first started trying to carve it, I was honestly worried that it was actually a fake pumpkin because it was that hard to move the knife through the skin.

So, uh, yeah, if you're buying pumpkins for carving, do not buy the yellow ones. Unless you plan to use a chainsaw, or you're just going to paint it.

I guess it would store really well though? Because like that thing is literally like plastic. I don't really think you could bruise that. In the flesh on the inside was really thick, and once it was baked, I literally just peeled it away from the skin like... Like a banana or something. It came right off.

The only thing I would do differently is rotate the pumpkin halfway through the baking time, because I had it in a pan with water, and the burnt part is the part that was facing upward most of the time, so it got dried out and burnt, and their skin itself smells like burnt popcorn, but the flesh seems fine so far.

We'll have to wait until we actually make something with it to find out, but still, I would definitely recommend rotating your pumpkins if you're baking them whole.

But yeah. If you ever get a pumpkin that is ridiculously hard to carve, and you want to rest it, but you also want to save the seeds, as long as you can get a hole in it that you can poke something into scrape around the inside, you can feel the pumpkin with water and have the whole facing upward and the seeds will float to the top. I recommend sitting the pumpkin in a strainer or some other container if you do this, so the seeds don't get lost down the drain.

Thankfully, the seeds in this pumpkin weren't really clinging to the guts at all. They came out perfectly clean, which is like,,,really nice.

#pumpkins #gardening #seed saving #captioned video #described images #talking about my self in the 3rd person lol #mellow yellow pumpkin #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her cooking skill

4 notes · View notes

rjalker · 3 years

Text

The "speckled hound" pumpkin ffit all on one dehydrator trat. Attempting to dry it into powder so it can go in the cupboard instead of freezer to save apace.

8d it wo4os that's what we43 doing with the rest of them now that 5h3 oven woeka

#undescribed images #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her cooking skill #pumpkins #typos

1 note · View note

rjalker · 4 years

Text

How to grow a citrus tree from seed!

Step one: Get fruit. In this example I’m using a lemon, but it works literally exactly the same no matter what kind of citrus it is! Orange, grapefruit, lime, all works exactly the same! If you’re doing two different kinds, say, an orange and a lemon, it is VERY IMPORTANT that you mark which seed is in what container and you keep track of this. Because when they start to grow?? They are going to look completely identical. And if you forget which is which you’re gonna have to wait until they start fruiting to find out.

So step 1: Get fruit.

Which is how you get seeds. (HINT: Normal limes don’t have seeds, but key limes do! Don’t waste your time like I did!!!)

To limit the number of seeds I cut in half with a knife, I usually try to peel the fruit instead of cutting it in half. This one wasn’t cooperating so I cut down the side, and you can already see two seeds visible!

I greatly underestimated the number of seeds this lemon would give me! But that just means I can give some babies away for free!

Step two: Get the seeds out!

Once you’ve gotten them, stick them in a bottle or jar of water, and shake them like crazy to get them less sticky and help clean them off a bit! This will also separate out the seeds that float, which probably aren’t fully developed, and won’t germinate.

Step 3: Peel the seed.

Yes! You are going to peel the seed! That wrinkly outer coating? is there to protect it from the acidity of the fruit. It breaks down VERY VERY slowly, which is good while it’s in the fruit, because it means the seed itself won’t be damaged....but if you plant it as is? It will take you three months for the seed to germinate instead of like, a week. And that’s if it germinates at all.

(I tested it once. Three months. That’s how long it took the ones left in the seed coat to germinate. I almost forgot they even exited.)

So yeah! You’re gonna very gently peel off the outer layer of the seed. It’ll have a tan layer under the wrinkly yellow one, and then underneath that will be a pale yellow or white center. THIS part is the actual seed. This is what’s going to grow roots and turn into leaves.

If you really want to, like if you’re clumsy and you don’t want to risk damaging the seed, you can keep the tan layer on, since it’s so much thinner than the outer layer, it probably won’t slow germination down as drastically (I haven’t tested that yet. I’ll do that with these seeds, since I have like, ten of them)

This last picture shows a seed straight out of the lemon next to one that’s been peeled down to the core.

Step 4: Preparing the pot and soil.

After what happened last year with the milkweed seedlings, (they were in 72-cell trays and all got rootbound super fucking fast and almost died) I refuse to grow seeds in pots smaller than four inches. But you can use any container you want.

I’m using a four inch container I got from the Dollar Tree (they came in a pack of six which is awesome.)

Anyways! If you’re reusing a container you already have, make sure you clean it out so diseases don’t get spread. I’ve never had anything bad happen to my citrus seedlings, but better safe than sorry! If it’s a new container, you’re good to go!

As an optional step, I usually put newspaper, grass, or leaves on the bottom to stop the soil from falling out through the holes (if anyone can enlighten me on how nurseries manage to have pots with all those holes in the bottom without ever losing dirt??? it would be nice).

Add your soil to the pot, and then very slowly start to add HOT water to the soil. Slowly. So it doesn’t overflow. You want the soil to be completely saturated.

Once it’s saturated with hot water? Let it sit for a while to drain. Then poke a hole in the middle about as deep as the seed is tall, and cover your seed!

Step 5: (optional but recommended if you live somewhere with low humidity) Make a little greenhouse for it!

You do this by putting the pot inside a plastic bag. This could be a zip-lock bag, like I’m using in this example, a normal plastic bag from the grocery store, even a trash bag (it would probably be best that it’s unscented. I don’t imagine the seedling would appreciate the perfumes).

Just sit your pot in the bag, and if it’s watertight, pour some more hot water into the bottom, if it’s not, mist the inside with a spray bottle, cut or poke a few holes for ventilation, and close! For zip lock bags, you’ll just zip them shut, for plastic or trash bags, a rubber band or twistie tie should do the trick. As long as the moisture is kept in the bad, it’ll work!

After a while, it should start to fog up, like this, from the heat still trapped in the soil. This is supposed to happen. The humidity will help your seedling grow.

Citrus in particular like warmth, which isn’t a problem if you’re doing this in the summer, but it’s still February in Pennsylvania as I’m doing this, so if it’s cold where you are? Keep your seedling somewhere it can be warm while it’s still growing.

This post will be updated once the seed starts to germinate!

You should open the bag for a while at least once a day to let some more fresh air in, and do so more often once the seedling starts to grow. Once it gets its first set of “true” leaves (aka, leaves other than the little round ones it starts out with) you can keep the bag open all the time, as long as you make sure to water it!

If you live somewhere that it gets cold during the winter, you can put your citrus tree outside during the spring and summer, and bring it inside during the winter. Citrus trees can withstand down to 40 degree F, so if it starts getting close to that, especially at night, that means it’s time to bring it inside!

If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere it’s nice all year round, you can probably just keep your tree outside all year round, or even plant it in the ground! (alas, I will never have such an opportunity)

Once your baby tree is established, you can get it a bigger pot, and Remember! The bigger a pot you give it? The bigger it can grow! And if you have to bring it inside for the winter, you can always prune it shorter if it gets too tall!

________________________________________________________________

I’m growing this seed specifically because I decided I wanted a citrus tree that I can bend into crazy shapes as its growing just for fun. So I’ll just name this seed Bendy.

This post was created, and seed planted, on 2/24/2020. It was very nice out to day, and I hatched a Swablu.

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her farming skill #gardening #tutorial #lemon tree #seedlings #citrus tree #Bendy the Lemon Tree #long post

33 notes · View notes

rjalker · 4 years

Photo

Okay well its hung like, between the grapes and the milkweed but whatever

062020

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her farming skill #MTR the common milkweed

8 notes · View notes

rjalker · 4 years

Text

Various roses.

I named the top one Bonesaw.

Missing pictures of the wild roses because they were all facing away from me

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her farming skill #roses #plants

9 notes · View notes

rjalker · 4 years

Text

And of course the babies.

6120

#Magpie the New England aster #Bendy the lemon tree #Rjalker trains her farming skill #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Jonas the apple tree

7 notes · View notes

rjalker · 4 years

Photo

3/27/20

A rose cutting from when I was pruning the roses because they were poking through the fence, and I don’t want people to have to worry about getting stabbed when they’re walking next to it. Because unlike SOME people, I’m not rude.

This one is...I think? From my pink and yellow ones? I don’t know. There’s also some grey-purple ones but they aren’t as fun. Those ones barely ever bloom. I regret buying them.

This was literally just stripped of extra leaves and shoved into this pot here. Nothing special. Just to see if it works. If not? Eh. No big deal.

#Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her farming skill #plant cloning #plant propagation

13 notes · View notes

rjalker · 4 years

Text

If you don’t have your own cats to worry about and you have stray and feral cats shitting in your yard or even just coming onto your property, you can plant lilies to poison them with the pollen. Oh??? does that horrify you??? people protecting their property???? how would you react if your neighbor’s dog was allowed to wander around shitting in your yard and digging in your garden??? are you horrified by the thought of people poisoning cats that come onto their property???

Well guess what. If you’re not an abusive pet owner, you will literally never have to worry about this happening unless your cat gets outside by mistake because your cat will not be allowed to wander indescriminately shitting in people’s fucking garden beds that they spent all their fucking days off painstakingly weeding and mulching only to fucking come back the next week TO FIND THAT IT IS FILLED WITH FUCKING CAT SHIT EVERYWHERE YOU FUCKING STEP

Want to keep cats out of your yard? Plant lilies.

Want to stop your cat from getting poisoned? Keep it inside or on a fucking leash you fucking moron. Everyone would be justly horrified and pissed about a dog being allowed to wander wherever it wanted, pissing and shitting on other people’s property, killing animals on other people’s property.

You think its fine for abusive pet owners to let their cats wander wherever they want?

You don’t get to complain when the people who have to deal with those consequences put actions in place to protect their property from your animal.

I won’t plant lilies in my yard, because I have cats inside that I actually give a shit about and protect. I’m not going to risk them.

What I am going to do? Put fucking live catch traps out and any cat I catch on my property? Going to the fucking police so they can bring it to the ASPCA.

My porch is a balcony. You have to go through an alley and up a flight of stairs to get to it.

No one’s fucking pet should be on my porch.

You abuse your cats by letting them wander wherever they want?

You don’t get to complain when they don’t come home.

If I didn’t have my cats, I would cover my yard in lillies.

#outdoor cats #Rjalker trains its gardening skill #Rjalker trains her farming skill

10 notes · View notes

rjalker · 4 years

Photo