someone wanted to put insect-attractive flowers because they have bats around, I suggested (Germany area):

- white clover, zero effort, works great, flowers many months, makes the soil more nutritious too
- lavender
- big flowering basils til they get woody, especially if you can protect them during the cold months
- all the kitchen herbs you want (mints, thyme, rosemary, etc.)
- big borage
- pincushion flower (scabiosa)
- campanula rotundifolia (glockenblüme)—takes some care but lots of little insects like this, I just got a type of bee that *only* eats campanulas

for early in the year (as soon as late winter):
- crocus
- lots of muscari (grape hyacinth)
- can also do poppies, narcissus, hyacinth proper, snowdrop, märzbecher; but these aren't as powerful attractants as the other 2.

and for late in the year
- hornklee (lotus corniculatus) (serves like more than 50 species of bees)
- centaurea jacea
- hippocrepis comosa
- stachys recta (hard to sprout, if you can get saplings it's easier)
- kornblume (not that many species but it's very easy to grow and v pretty, I think you can still seed them even now!)

these flower well into october, useful these apocalypse days because with the warmer weather many insects wake up from hibernation too early / stay up until too late

#gardening #wildGardening #NaturGarten

companion gardening is frustrating because there's very little research on it, and there's so many compounding factors involved that it's super hard to do the research. but it's also the kind of thing that anyone gardening has seen effects—positive and negative—so you know there's something there, and especially for people like me that do high-density high-biodiversity wild gardening it's very relevant. I'm not the kind to dismiss lore as superstition, a lot of gardener's lore is just stuff that works, but the lore on companions is too contradictory to know what works or not. and I like testing things myself but again, compounding factors.

so thinking on first principles, reasons why companion gardening may work:

- mechanical. "three sisters" principle: a tall plant, a low bushy plant and a climber, together, means they can all share in the sun.
- compatibility of needs. basil likes a lot of water and sun, so does tomato, so if you add both you can just strive to keep that pot well moist.
- overpowering plants. mint grows so much so fast that it can literally overshadow other herbs. but nothing's stopping you from planting it under something tall like corn, or say next to an ivy that's climbing a wall, or to nettles with can stand up to it in growth rates.
- biome/ecology. wild strawberry grows in forests, so it should have evolved to negotiate with a forest-type soil food web, which is fungus-centric. make a foresty soil with lots of wood/bark and leaf mulch etc. and it will probably be happy with other foresty plants like waldmeister or bear garlic. by contrast rosemary grows on sunny dusty meadows and exposed rocks in the Mediterranean, so it will be more bacteria-oriented, so maybe make a sunny pot with thyme and sage. mints are happy with wet boggy soil meaning they're adapted for anaerobics; could probably share a bog-pot with forget-me-not and spring-snowflake, for example (as long as you contain her spready tendencies, e.g. with a lil fence).
- cross-pollination. maybe don't plant dill next to angelica or fennel, because the resulting hybrids are unlikely to taste good. (or do it on purpose to develop your own varieties, but you'll need some guided selection until you develop a tasty hybrid or heirloom.)
- insect repellents: I'm rather sceptical of the idea that if you plant this or that aromatic herb insects wouldn't come because the herb itself is a repellent. rather in my experience plants are able to defend themselves from insects almost perfectly, _as long as_ you have living soil with rich microbiome and the plant is healthy enough (you can proxy this by measuring sugar production with a brix refractometer). what I suspect is happening is that when people plant savoury next to their tomatoes or etc. they're increasing biodiv and general health of the tomato, which is then able to produce more secondary metabolytes and become unpalatable (or just flat-out thicker cell walls, which is enough to shake off aphids).*
- and the one everybody imagines: specific species of plants having evolved compatible or detrimental chemistry together. e.g. allelopathins from sunflowers or brassicas are said to be especially effective at hindering the growth of nightshades.

but there's very little reliable information on this, and I wonder how big of an effect it is, compared to what you get from the basics: plenty of sunlight, adequate watering, and a richly alive soil microbiome that you feed with living things (organic compost, worm tea etc.). like doing periodic drenches of worm tea is like night and day, you can test it yourself in two pots at similar positions, but you'll feel guilty for the plant you deprived of friends when you see how much more the other one grows. I'm not sure how much the companion factors matter if you nailed everything else your plants need. like onions are said to inhibit the growth of beans, but if you plant beans next to onions and they don't grow, it's hard to be sure if *that's* the reason they didn't grow, it could be so much else.

#wildGardening #Naturgarten

so far I haven't been able to successfully grow Pulsatilla pratensis var. nigricans. Time to give it another go—they're a Kaltkeimer so I should put them on the fridge right now, to have them ready to seed indoors in March, to adapt them to the rock garden outside in April. this time I want to try to sprout a lot of seeds and see what takes.

P. p. nigricans is all of endangered, native, good for bees, *and* goth, so I really want to get some going.

#Naturgarten #wildGardening

hiii! I'm elilla the federated glamtifa influencer~ ​

I'm:

- in my 40s now, a literal mom, and also something of a queer mom at my local scene;

- trans woman, Latina travesti, sapphic, used to be notoriously promiscuous but kinda calmed down these days (edit: well, about that...)

- white-privileged Global South immigrant in Germany, loved by many, hated by authority, noncitizen untermädchen forever risking deportation but cannot resist the thrill of aktion;

- anarchist antifa vegan radical extremist detained, profiled and monitored by the German state, has a facial scar from literally fighting nazis, cops go "oh it's that one again" at this point;

- plantgirl organic hippie, into urban #wildGardening #naturGarten for nature restoration, insect support, and herbal medicine;

- ex-academic japanologist, worked with writing systems and the history of dialectal tonology, still horny for linguistics and always will be;

- sociable, party girl, loves dance, crowds, noise, people, smalltalk, fashion, talking with strangers, being touched, summer sunlight heat and I'm neurodiv, yes some neurodiv people are like this too;

- sadly, tech professional.

might be a bit obvious looking at the list above, but I'm plural. some of my plurality is religious, drawing from the Brazilian tradition of umbanda, only not like the white bleached type of umbanda.

I post about all these topics without any editing or chill. early on in transition I decided to focus on trans joy in my online presence, and when I ran a survey, many people said they follow me because the way I write makes them feel good about queer life.

I've been using Mastodon for a long time now, and my tutorial got some notoriety in 2023:
https://wordsmith.social/elilla/a-futuristic-mastodon-introduction-for-2021

follow reqs, CWs and boundaries: https://transmom.love/@elilla/110073152267390757

for info on the gender identity of Latina travesti, see:
https://transmom.love/@elilla/107875845516788083

#reintroduction #introduction #altHier