"Compost your enemies!"    I love David the Good!

Hello, Wyldflower/Tracy here! My friend, Vicktorea Miller, was introduced to your site and sent me the link. They are a member of the Reddit community, I think. 

I'm just a simple gardener with two green thumbs or, as some of my friends have claimed, two green hands, lol. I'm originally from Florida, and my love for plants started with what I kept indoors because I lived in apartments mostly. But now I have rural property in the mountains of Western North Carolina. I'd never had this much space to grow in/on before, and I kinda went nuts with ideas for the yard. lol. 

It was quite the learning curve coming from a place where I could grow just about anything with ease year-round, moving to a place with four actual seasons. We initially started a garden in ground beds with no success. We thought it was just the clay-dominant soil, then we learned that ours and the properties surrounding us all used to be a golf course. That meant major soil repair needed to be done. So, we pivoted, built raised beds, and filled them with healthy soil so we could still grow food, then I began my journey down the rabbit hole of environmental repair. We don't have a big spread of land, just a humble acre & a third, but we are deeply devoted to being good stewards of the land and environment.

Here we are six years later, the raised beds started at three, then seven, and we are in the process of adding five more, after we finish clearing out the bamboo invasion that's coming from the farm property to the north. We have managed to establish blueberry bushes, grapes, muscadine, blackberries, elderberry, and raspberry. We've lost some of the fruit trees that were already here, so we added some replacements and managed to revive some of the originals. The wood from the dead trees has been used for smoking meats. We have 2 varieties of apple, peach, cherry, goumi berry, and now avocado (in pots). Eventually, I'd like to expand into growing culinary and medicinal (reishi & lion's mane) fungus.

I also have a worm farm, grow my own microbiome, make my own natural fertilizers using the KNF method, and let the comfrey, dandelions, and wildflowers take care of the rest of the soil repair. Our non-farming/ranching neighbors with their manicured lawns hate us, lol.

We've never taken a single class for any of this. It's all been trial, error, and research when something failed. We've made mistakes but have learned so much through this journey toward our manifesting our dream garden.  We're also getting up there in our years and want a layout we can work with ease as we age. There's no "flat" ground in these mountains, and the last thing we need is a fall that topples us down the slope in our sixties or seventies, potentially breaking more than a hip, lol. So, with the battle of the bamboo almost complete, we're taking the opportunity to remodel the entire garden area, move some earth to flatten the space, correct some mistakes, add irrigation, and establish a bed layout that has more coherency and visual aesthetic. What isn't part of the raised beds area will become food forest and pollinator beds, as we also plan to get a couple of beehives.  The raised beds will be ready for the 2027 planting season. In the meantime, I am working on finding & propagating the best local perennials and herbs to fill the pollinator beds with.

Our kids are grown and gone (we have six boys between us), so it's just my husband and me now, with his 90-year-old mother in her own little cottage on the property. He runs the equipment and builds what we need when he's home from the road (OTR truck driver). I do all the research, collect the seeds, plant, tend, and harvest the garden, then process what we know we can use. But we always have far more than we can personally consume, so our goal is to turn this into a 'giving garden', providing fresh, organic produce to people with food insecurity. This plan was born after the paper mill closed down in our town in 2023, leaving thousands out of jobs, which was then exacerbated, exponentially so, by the devastation from Helene in 2024. We recognize that we are blessed here as we were not impacted by any of that, and we're just here to BE a blessing to others the best way we can.

 That about sums it all up in a coconut shell, lol, I'ma go poke around and read a bit now. Thank you for reading this, and I hope you have a wonderful day. 

Can anyone ID these freebies from Succulent Source? T. Bridgesii?

I can't ID it, but i am 95% certain it is not a bridgesii. the way the ribs bulge out at the areoles is not a trait of bridgesii.
It's a beautiful little plant though <3

edit:
it could be an Echinocereus pentalophus?
i can see one on succulent source, if i am looking at the same site. It looks the same to me.
Might be worth sending them an email and asking them, maybe they will know.

Can anyone ID these freebies from Succulent Source? T. Bridgesii?

Hey new wisdom, don't bail on us now!

Hi! Nice Loph. What veggies are you growing?
Happy Summer!

Is anyone even using the Reddit forum of Share the Seeds,  last I was on there it was deader than dead!  Same with the Discord Channel that was started.

I should have a few different things to share end of season,  and could share Myco stuff through privatre messages with others

i actually don't know how many people use the reddit, i have never been a member on there, nor the discord. i assumed that was the case (i should never assume), but i guess it is wrong. i assumed based on the post on here a while back about the reddit page being set up.
i wonder where everybody went. i hope they are okay!

edit:
yep, you are right, i checked the reddit and there seems to be a post every 3-4 months now. it was active for a little while when it was set up but then it died.

a lot of people migrated to reddit, but i hate places like that so i am sticking around here and waiting for the fashion to cycle back around once everybody realises what those places are like

Is anyone even using the Reddit forum of Share the Seeds,  last I was on there it was deader than dead!  Same with the Discord Channel that was started.

I should have a few different things to share end of season,  and could share Myco stuff through privatre messages with others

welcome back! <3 maybe you need to change your name to old wisdom now
it's great to see others returning too. looking at your profile it looks like you stopped posting just before i joined, so we probably never crossed paths, but it's nice to meet you now.
I would love to see this place pick up again, please bring everybody you know!

It seems we can't upgrade the forum (and i assume we are limited in a lot of other things we can do too) without seedmaster, who has not been online for about 2 years. maybe you are still in touch with seedmaster?
a lot of people migrated to reddit, but i hate places like that so i am sticking around here and waiting for the fashion to cycle back around once everybody realises what those places are like

I'm also interested in what veggies you are growing. I grow more veg and herbs etc than i do sacred plants, but i am trying to change that as i get far more satisfaction from plants with a deep cultural history, vs plants for food. If you are anything like me you probably grow too many to easily list

You could graft one of those buttons up,  then invest in some BAP (6-Benzylaminopurine) and Lanoline cream and use this plant hormone to encourage your grafted button to produce pups to be used for more grafting stock. 

Once your button is grafted and activly growing that plant hormone if used correctly will give you lots of new buttons to play with!

Thanks! <3
I think i read about this once when i first got my first button, but i was way too new to really take it in and was still trying to figure out what kind of soil to use let alone anything else. Can you recommend a correct way of using it?