Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Harvesting Sunflower Seeds. Sweet Irrigation/Rain From Heaven.

We had a sweet portion of rain fall last night, after a warm windy dusty day. I placed three buckets out to collect rain and had 1.5 cm in each this morning. Not a lot but more than the past rains recently! It was good enough to wet the vege patch and the pots. I am sure the veges and herbs and fruit trees were grateful for it. The coming of the rain last evening was made even more exciting as it happened the same time when I was reading the book 'Plants without Poison' by a Tasmanian farmer and writer, Paul Healy in which he says, rain, especially the slow-falling and fine type, absorbs nitrogen as it falls onto the plants. The plants got a feast from heavenly irrigation! God, thanks for sending rain!!! This morning, I was inspecting the garden as usual and found that the small sunflower's seeds have been half-ransacked. When God says he provides for the birds of the air, he really does! :) Through gardeners like me! The opened husks are lying on the ground and on the ledge of the fence next to the sunflower. I did not wrap up this sunflower and sure enough, the birds were here for a feast. Nevermind, I have lots seeds to spare.
This is the small sunflower with almost half the seeds stolen. The seeds are those under the yellow 'florets'. I fed the florets and shrivelled petals to my worms.
I decided to cut down all the three heads. This is one of the huge ones with full head of seeds.
Samuel and I were busy wriggling and digging out the seeds. Marco was on standby to chew the left overs. He even chewed the whole stem (4cm thick) which I pulled out from the ground. It was tough but his teeth were tougher!
Some of the seeds from the small sunflower. Two large ones awaiting to be worked on. It is not easy work. The birds are seriously better candidates doing this job. Also the sunflowers have since became habitats for many ants when they were growing and I had to wait for the residents to crawl off.

No comments:

Blog Archive

"All that mankind needs for good health and healing is provided by God in nature...the challenge of Science is to find it." - Paracelcus, the father of Pharmcology, 1493 - 1541