#18 Tongues in Trees
Vertical Farming, Lemon Myrtle, Greenhouses, Another Jezebel, Ticks, Native Lemongress
Welcome to the 18th Tongues in Trees.
Big news! The format is changing. Tongues in Trees is moving to YouTube.
You’ll still get all the same features, but you can listen and watch instead of reading! More on that in future…
This week:
Good News: Vertical Farming
Plant Profile: Lemon Myrtle
Permaculture Tip: Use and Value Renewable Resources with Greenhouses
Wonder: Another Jezebel
What is that!? A Tick
Free Read: Australian Bush Tucker Bites presents Native Lemongrass (Cymbopogon ambiguus)
Traditional agricultural techniques use a lot of arable land, but there’s a revolution coming… and it’s vertical. Vertical farming isn’t new, but it has had limits… until now.
Jones Food Company in the United Kingdom has announced the construction of the biggest vertical farm in the world. Their new space will be equivalent to 96 tennis courts stacked on top of each other.
It aims to reduce the United Kingdom’s carbon footprint by supplying many of the crops that the country imports. Considering that around 46% of food consumed is imported, any reduction will be good for the planet!
But the good news doesn’t end there. Vertical farming uses up to 94% less water and fertiliser than traditional agriculture because runoff is recaptured and recycled through the system. And here’s another benefit, captured fertiliser is not allowed to run off into rivers, reducing pollution of our precious waterways.
Projects like this are great news for us all. If we can find more sustainable ways to grow and harvest fresh, healthy food close to the consumers who will eat it, we will all reap the benefits in many ways!
Curious to know more? Click here.
Lemon Myrtle is one of my favourite plants. It looks lovely, smells amazing and is versatile in the kitchen. It has the highest naturally occurring levels of citral, the active component that gives it that lovely lemon smell and flavour. In addition to antibacterial and antioxidant properties Lemon Myrtle contains calcium and a number of vitamins.
It is relatively easy to grow, as long as it gets enough sun and water. It can get quite tall in subtropical and tropical climate zones, but in temperate zones it only grows to between 2 and 6 metres.
Lemon Myrtle prefers a medium to heavy soil rich in organic matter but well-drained. These plants do not like wet feet. While reasonably drought-hardy once established, they will need watering in dry periods to maintain leaf growth for harvest.
A full sun position suits Lemon Myrtle best, but it will also grow in partly shaded areas of the garden.
Whether you grow it for its ornamental value or to use the leaves for teas and baking, it’s a wonderful addition to the garden and will certainly bring bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects as well!
Permaculture Principle Five is Use and Value Renewable Resources. There are so many renewable resources in the garden that it’s hard to choose just one, but this week let’s look at capturing sunlight and using it in greenhouses.
Don’t have room for a greenhouse? I think you do! More about that in a minute.
A greenhouse allows you to convert sunlight into heat to create a microclimate. That microclimate depends on a number of factors including the materials used to create your greenhouse, the flooring, the choice of plants and so on. Regardless, the environment inside a greenhouse is likely to be warmer and more consistent than the outside temperature.
A greenhouse also captures moisture which means less watering and higher humidity which most plants will enjoy.
A greenhouse also gives the home gardener another level of protection against animals and pest insects. Some people even encourage certain insects, such as solitary bees into the greenhouse to harness their pollination expertise.
A greenhouse can be any size, from the grandest botanical garden superstructures to a tiny plastic dome.
I like to keep plastic bakery and vegetable containers to create mini-greenhouses to protect some of my plants, particularly as seedlings. For example, today I planted some grass seeds, Cymbopogon ambiguus, or Native Lemongrass. The first few times I planted this grass, it germinated easily and then disappeared. I think it was being eaten by marsupials overnight. So I tried placing a plastic dome over the seeds and they germinated quickly and grew into lush grass with little effort from me.
To plant the grass seeds I mix them with perlite or sand. They are small light seeds that need to stay close to the surface so the perlite or sand are perfect to weigh them down a little without suffocating them. After putting the seed/perlite mix on top of already moistened soil in an old bakery container, I gently spray with water. I seal the container and then poke two or three small holes into the top to allow air to circulate. It will now function as a small greenhouse and I don’t need to water until I can see that the morning condensation is less evident.
A tiny greenhouse! This is a great way to utilise the benefits of a greenhouse without taking up a lot of space in the garden, but if you have room, why not have a big one too!
This week’s moment of wonder is a moment that I have been waiting for ever since we moved to our new house. I have been watching white butterflies flutter and fly through the canopy, but every time I try to take a photo, they disappear.
The other day I was sitting on my front porch when I saw a movement on my Blue Tongue plant and there was the butterfly. Thankfully, my camera was on the chair beside me and I managed to get a few photos.
After that, it was off to iNaturalist to identify the species. It is another Jezebel! At our old house we enjoyed the company of Jezebel Nymphs but they don’t live this far North. This is the Red-banded Jezebel, a true jezebel that the jezebel nymphs merely mimic.
I can’t wait until Spring and Summer. If we are seeing them now in the cooler weather, I hope there will be many more in the warm air!
It’s a paralysis tick! Endemic to Australia’s Eastern Coastline, it’s a nasty little critter that can spread disease and cause paralysis. I found the nymph in the photograph on my knee last week. My first clue was itching. I thought it was a mosquito bite until I inspected the welt and discovered a tiny dot in the middle that was only a millimetre or two long. I removed it with tweezers, but it continued to itch for three days.
These little arachnids attach on to mammals for a blood feed to go through each of their life stages. It’s unusual to find one in Winter. Spring and Summer are tick season and then it’s the larger adults that are usually found on the host.
This species can kill smaller mammals but is usually just an irritation for humans. Having said that, I have experienced headaches when an adult has managed to hide in my hair feeding for a few days.
They are part of the ecosystem and there are a number of predators, mostly birds.
This week’s free reading link is inspired by the greenhouse story and is a short profile of Native Lemongrass, from a weekly series that I write for the online publication, The Daily Cuppa.