Starting with an idea
Product Information
Starting with an idea
Many a hobby gardener may have been irritated by all the back and forth. However, regardless of its general approval as a plant protection product, the use of glyphosate on sealed surfaces remains prohibited.
Because the pesticides could get into our drinking water with the runoff surface water via the sewer system, explains the consumer information service aid. "In crops, the active ingredient is broken down after the waiting period has been observed if everything is handled correctly."
Alternatives to the chemical club
To kill weeds on pavement and paths, you have to forego the use of the chemical club. But working with the joint scraper is tedious and time-consuming. A simpler method is to scarf the weeds with the weed burner.
"This has the advantage that all residues are burned and a clean appearance is created. In addition, the joints are spared, as no filling material is pulled out with the roots"explains the aid.
Use plant protection products correctly
Even where they can be used, pesticides are not always useful. Because neighboring crops can also suffer. For example, nettles, ground elder and bindweed can often be found next to ornamental trees. When using chemical weed killers, there is a high risk that they too will be damaged.
Often the agents can therefore only be applied with a spray hood and in a very targeted manner. It is mandatory to follow such instructions for use. But often weeds and ornamental plants have mixed up so much that they can hardly be treated individually. Then it is better to do without the use of pesticides.
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Winkelsett (dpa) – Frits Deemter loves to surprise his guests. That’s why he serves flowers such as camellia or daylilies – or freshly picked leaves. Dumplings filled with linden leaves are on the plates that evening.
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He calls it "Wild vegetables": "Otherwise people have ready-made opinions. I want to let the tongue decide." The physiotherapist and his partner Gisela Töllner regularly let up to 40 guests in the 4.5 hectare orangery"Dining garden"in Winkelsett near Wildeshausen, southwest of Bremen, try vegetables that are otherwise not on the menu.
Turn off thoughts and suddenly a lot is edible
Deemter’s garden is believed to have one of the largest collections of edible shrubs, trees and flowers in Germany. At least no one has contradicted the 59-year-old Dutchman when he says so. Over 1,200 edible plants grow there, including exotic plants such as nashi pear, Indian banana and Japanese raisin tree. But also known ones like bamboo, peach and magnolia. Or weeds such as ground elder and nettles, which he also likes to offer on his menu evenings.
One of the guests that evening was Gisela Meyer from Westerstede, who took a seat at one of the long tables with her family. She is open to the unusual and even eats the raw linden leaf on which the puff pastry bag is draped. "It’s a pure mental matter", she says. "You have to turn off the thought that you can’t eat that." She doesn’t regret her courage. The linden leaf is spicy and goes well with the dumpling. Your husband doesn’t dare. He leaves the sheet untouched.
Unusual recipes and always the same question
"Can you eat that?" Frits Deemter and Gisela Töllner often hear this astonished question. The answer is yes. At least one component of your plants is suitable for consumption: In addition to the fruits, these are often the shoot tips, the bark, the young leaves, the flowers and sometimes the roots. "With the Japanese raisin tree, it’s not the fruits, but the stems. They are cute, can be dried and eaten all winter long"says Deemter.
In order to convey to as many people as possible that it doesn’t always have to be tomatoes, cucumbers and carrots, he offers garden tours once a month from May to October. "People like to be inspired"says Deemter. Twice a month he also serves unusual dishes such as hollyhock lasagna or barberry rice in fig leaf. Around a thousand visitors come to his garden every year. Soon he wants to quit his job as a physiotherapist and devote himself only to his garden.
Starting with an idea
It all started over 20 years ago. The Dutchman lived with his family in Bremen, but was no longer interested in city life. The family bought a house in the country with a lot of fallow land around it, Deemter started sowing seeds of 500 species: "I had no idea, but a lot of energy." He read many books, also about what native peoples took from nature to eat.
Because he wanted to be able to eat as much as possible from his garden. Now even Chinese Szechuan pepper grows with him. The daylily buds turned out to be particularly tasty. "Every year we look forward to the first steamed bud pan"says Deemter. His family subsists almost exclusively from the rich offer of the garden. At some point he realized: "We are never sick."
Award-winning cookbook for those interested
He wanted as many people as possible to participate in his hobby, which is why he had a huge winter garden built in which he invites to gourmet evenings. He also wrote a cookbook with his ex-wife Heike Deemter, which won the 2018 award "German Garden Book Prize".
There is also a recipe with ground elder and nettles. Gisela Meyer is now hooked: "We always have so much groundweed in the garden." She was constantly pulling the weeds. Now she wants to use it in the kitchen. "Once you have eaten ground elder from your own garden, you suddenly see it with completely different eyes"explains Deemter. Meyer wants to try it – and her husband promises her to eat the dish too.
Veitshöchheim (dpa / tmn) – You can walk across a meadow overgrown with daisies in the truest sense of the word like a carpet of flowers. On a short lawn, the small, white-yellow flowers are not only particularly eye-catching – they are also particularly robust. Because daisies take the opportunity when the competition is affected by a cut.
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"If the lawn is mowed low, the rosette plants have the advantage that the main leaves are preserved", explains Gottfried Röll from the Bavarian Garden Academy. The "lasting beauty"as its botanical name "Bellis perennis" it promises, is also characterized by a particularly long flowering time.
"It is relatively untypical for a native flowering plant that it keeps appearing from January to December", says Achim Baumgartner from the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation Germany (BUND). This means that the daisy can be a constant source of food, especially for insects.
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Enjoyment for animals and humans
In addition, the little flower tricked its visitors, because what looks like a single flower is an inflorescence. This means that the yellow area in the flower is made up of countless small individual flowers, each of which only contains a little nectar. With this, the daisies try to appear more attractive to insects, explains Baumgartner. Apart from the nectar, the plant also serves as food for larvae of various butterfly species.
Humans can also help themselves without any worries: daisies are healthy and make a good decoration for the salad, Baumgartner assures. Of course, they should be washed beforehand.
A thousand beautiful or a little flower
"It used to be used as a medicinal and aromatic plant"says Röll. Much knowledge about the little flower has been lost over time, the expert notes. But their meaning can still be read from the variety of their German names. Röll lists a few: Depending on the region, they are known as Maßliebchen, Augenblümchen, Tausendschön, Angerbleamerl or even rain flowers.
Incidentally, other plants also have the daisy in their name, the blue daisy (Brachyscome iberidifolia) for example. These plants have a similar appearance and, like Bellis perennis, belong to the sunflower family (Asteraceae). But they belong to a different genus. But also Bellis hybrids, i.e. cultivated further developments of the daisies, can be found next to pansies and primroses as potted plants at flower dealers.
Like grasses, daisies love humus-rich, slightly moist soils. They are common in Europe as well as Asia Minor and North America. Since they need a lot of light in addition to a relatively large amount of nutrients, they quickly fall behind compared to higher-growing plants. In nature, therefore, they mainly occur where grazing animals or geese keep the grass short, says Baumgartner.
Blümchen contributes to biodiversity
They also benefit from frequent lawn mowing and thus contribute to biodiversity on heavily used areas. The plants are perennial and reproduce mainly via seeds. However, those who want to harvest this could have difficulties.
Since the seeds ripen unevenly and fall off quickly, the seeds are difficult to obtain and therefore relatively expensive to buy, explains Baumgartner. In order to establish them in your garden, you only need a small amount of it, because daisies spread themselves very quickly.
If this is not desired, Röll recommends not allowing them to bloom and mowing the lawn less short. "It is better to only trim to six centimeters, then the grasses have more leaf mass to regenerate"he advises. If the daisies get out of hand, they should be cut out and grass re-sown where necessary.
Baumgartner advises simply using the daisies regularly for a salad and thus keeping them in check.
An old saying goes "weed does not pass". What is meant by this is that some people survive anything. But it also seems to be the case in the garden: The hobby gardener can do what he wants, weeds don’t go away. Especially not if he wants to do without aggressive chemistry. Do professionals confirm that?
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What are weeds actually?
They are just plants that are undesirable in one place. Typically, professionals and hobby gardeners consider dandelion, clover, moss, but also speedwell, gundermann or hornwort for it. And even the pretty daisies. That’s why environmentalists prefer to speak of wild herbs rather than weeds.
These are strong plants that quickly take up space for themselves. And it is above all clever plants that exploit the weaknesses of their competitors or the opportunities that the hobby gardener gives them.
Fight weeds safely – the popular weed killer is prohibited here
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This is how moss comes through in the lawn if the property is not well cared for or if the grass is not cut enough. That matted the surface. Or the grasses do not grow strong enough to suppress weeds due to a lack of nutrients. According to the German Lawn Society, unsuitable soil or a location that is too shady can weaken the grass so that weeds gain the upper hand.
Nevertheless, the hobby gardener has realistic chances of not only achieving stage wins against weeds, but also of minimizing them permanently. He just needs to remove the weak points in the garden and poor conditions for the desired plants. Because even herbicides against annoying greenery only eliminate the first generation. If the deficiencies in the lawn persist, new weeds keep settling.
So what can the hobby gardener do?
First of all, he should weed existing weeds. The Naturschutzbund Deutschland (Nabu) advises you to do this in dry weather. Because then plant residues will not grow back on. It is good to remove the plants with roots before their seeds ripen.
According to the German Lawn Society, the best way to keep lawns strong in the future is through optimal fertilization, less deep cutting of the grass and, in shaded areas, by sowing suitable lawn mixtures.
In beds or under tree tops, however, weeds have a lot more opportunities: There are plenty of free areas in the ground to colonize. There are no competitors here who would first have to eliminate the weeds.
But bark mulch and ground cover, for example, don’t give them a chance. The Federal Association of Gardening and Landscaping (BGL) only recommends weeding until the green cover has closed. The closer these plants are, the faster it happens: In the case of weakly growing species such as hazel root, there should be up to 24 plants per square meter, four specimens of ivy are sufficient.
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