Gardening

We like Gardening and as in any activity, DIY is present. With DIY in gardening we refer to guides and tutorials for make tools and objects for our garden.

What we want is that when you have an idea for your garden, from an automatic irrigation to the construction of a flowerpot, a greenhouse or a tool to sow seeds, do not look where you can buy it but look here and think how can you do it yourself.

The Gardens of Monforte

The monforte gardens in Valencia

In this article you will find 2 types of content, the information to get to know the gardens and a diary of those that I find and discover in my different visits to it.

history of the gardens

garden sculptures of monforte

Garden of Monforte or Garden of Romero, is a neoclassical garden with 12.597 square meters. The Marquis of San Juan, D. Juan Bautista Romero, bought this recreational house with his orchard in 1847 and commissioned Sebastián Monleón to transform this orchard into a garden.

Depending on the source where we investigate, he presents them as neoclassical or romantic style gardens with neoclassical episodes.

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Copper barrier for snails

prevent snails from climbing trees

Snails and small conches are the worst pest I have right now in the garden. It is a serious problem because they kill the crops.

Also with the new padding system you have to be careful because it seems that they like it a lot and are going to reproduce a lot.

There are different methods, products and techniques to combat them. Today I come to tell one technique to prevent snails from climbing trees or tall-stemmed plants and ideas for improving and using it in more ways. It is a sweep to prevent them from going up to the plants.

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How to cultivate with mulching and without plowing

garden with mulching or mulching

Every year I have the same problem with the garden. We prepare the land, we already plant after a few weeks weeds or adventitious grasses have taken over everything. Besides, I don't have any tractor and everything has to be worked with the hoe.

This year I am going to try to solve these two problems. I have tried to prepare the land by covering it with mulch and leaving it ready to cultivate without plowing. The first results, as you are going to see, have been promising.

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How to compost

homemade compost and composter

I return to the topic of composting from some videos that I have seen of Charles Dowding which is based on the philosophy of No Dig, No Dig (which we will talk about in another article). Dowding only uses compost in its garden. Compost for everything. And it teaches you both to create it and to use it and as a plant and take care of your garden.

Compost recipes There are dozens, although all are based on the same principle but each one does it in their own way.

I have seen and read a lot of related content and there are people who try to speed it up as much as possible to make the process faster, others who add meat, even cooked food leftovers, but I just can't see that. Adding meat seems like a mistake for this type of aerobic decomposition, another thing is that you compost from urban solid waste, such as those collected in bins, but they are usually done with anaerobic processes and we are talking about something totally different.

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Cayenne

cayenne in orchard

Cayenne, another variety of capsicum chinense It is one of the best known and most used spicy, possibly because although it has a high heat, it is tolerable for most people.

It has many common names: cayenne, cayenne pepper, red pepper, chili pepper.

It has 30.000 to 50.000 SHUs in the Scoville scale.

Moment It is the spicy that best suits the palate that we have at home. It offers an intense itch but without being overdone. Others like the habanero they are already going to scale and itch too much and caroline reaperThey are unthinkable for human consumption, hahaha.

This year I want try the jalapenos.

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Carolina Reaper or Carolina Reaper

Carolina Reaper or Carolina Reaper

El Carolina Reaper or Carolina Reaper was the hottest pepper in the world in 2013 with a value of 2 Scoville Units, although its normal range varies between 220 and 000 depending on the scoville scale. A real outrage that will make it inedible. Now there are other spicier varieties like Pepper X.

It is a variety of Capsicum chinense specifically the HP22BNH obtained by Ed Currie from the company Pucker Butt Pepper Company. It is a cross between the Habanero chili and the Naga Bhut Jolokia (which I was about to buy this year in a nursery)

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Heating blanket to germinate seeds

Heating blanket and seeds to germinate

I am using a heating blanket to germinate seeds. It is an electric (thermal) blanket that raises the soil temperature by about 10ºC and accelerates the birth of seeds and the rooting of cuttings. I have gotten really good results with the seeds of Habañero pepper. Making them germinate in just 8 days

There are different models, in addition to the size they differ by power. There are those of 17,5W that usually raise the ambient temperature by 10% and those of 40,5W that rise between 10 and 20 degrees. When you put it into operation you have to wait about 20 minutes until it heats up to the final temperature. They work very well for the cravings or to advance the seedlings. This year as always I have been late planting things, but hey. I already have the blanket for next year. I have bought this.

Even if you want to have everything perfectly controlled you can put a thermostat like this, or make one based on Arduino and a relay (it is a project that I have pending).

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Scoville scale

The Scoville scale was devised by Willbur Scoville to measure how hot peppers are. Evaluates the amount of capsaicin, which is a substance present in plants of the genus Capsicum. He did it through an Organoleptic test where he tried to standardize and find a way to buy different products. Even despite the limitations as it is an organoleptic analysis where people's subjectivity and their sense of palate influence, it was an advance.

Today (since 1980) quantitative analysis methods such as High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPCL) are used that directly measure the amount of Capsaicin. These methods return values ​​in "units of pungency or hotness", that is, in one part of capsaicin per million of dried pepper powder. The resulting number of units is multiplied by x15 to convert to Scoville units. It would not be necessary to go to Scoville but it is still done out of deference to its discoverer and because it is a system already widely known.

The different varieties of a species can contain more or less Capsaicin, but even the cultivation methods and / or environmental factors can determine that a chili is more or less hot even if it belongs to the same variety.

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Habañero pepper

It is a variety of Capsicum chinense.

Within the habaneros there are also a large number of varieties

Seeds and germination

The seeds of chili peppers and peppers can take a long time to germinate, especially if the temperature is not adequate, but if we put it above 30 degrees we will get them to germinate between 7 and 14 days, the seeds germinate and the cotyledons appear.

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Capsicum chinense

Within the capsicum chinense we find different varieties of chili peppers. The best known are the Habañero pepper, cayenne, the ají panca and the ají limo. Here for the moment we are going to talk about the Habaneros who are the ones we are cultivating.

Sonalaceae family

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