00:00so today we're going to be talking about we're just going to focus on one plant today i was
00:21going to do this throughout the summer and that plant is honesty and if there's one plant i'd
00:28recommend for flowering and then for use afterwards it would be this one as you can see here we have
00:35some dried seed heads that i've been shelling and this is all the shells and you can see on them
00:46the different seeds
00:49and what you do and i'll show you in a moment so these are all these are all cut from the garden
00:55they produce purple flowers over the spring and they're biennial so you sow them one year and
01:03they flower the next and they've flowered in april when very little else is flowering so they're an
01:09early food for the bees the bees love them you can see how tall some of the stems get there
01:14and then once you start shelling them and we'll just take a little one on with this and you end up with
01:28this these pearlescent uh white discs look like stained glass whenever the light hits them
01:37it's a bit of a dull morning here but you have these papery
01:44seed seed pods inside the seed pods actually you get these papery white
01:50um discs that give the plant its name lunaria name for the moon and then it's also known as honesty
02:01and silver pennies which is self-explanatory when you look at it and then
02:08all i don't and here as well i've got some dried bunny grass and see there
02:14they work quite well together but a great dried plant and they will keep for a couple of years
02:23and how i have worked with it was once the seed heads have formed i left them on the plant out the
02:31back for about a month so that i can collect the seeds as well and replant more over the next few weeks
02:38for next year and then just chop them down and hung them up to dry like this
02:48and then you'll know when they're ready to go because you'll feel that they're able to they're
02:55papery and they're able to shift and the outer leaves will just come off so you take off the two
03:02outer leaves and if you're rubbing them rub them like from that part of the plant rather than the delicate
03:15and our leaf and then just gently pull them apart
03:19you can see underneath there is the silvery white
03:27inner part and that's the part where the seeds are held
03:30they should stick to the other leaf with that seed pod and there you go and that's how it works
03:42so we'll shell a few now that's a good idea to have a basin or a bucket or something underneath
03:49see why you do this because the seeds tend to go everywhere and let's see if i can do that here
04:02tricky holding the camera so i've just one branch here a really small branch and all you do is
04:11just rub it and you'll see there that should come off just drop it in the bucket
04:20and then you take that
04:25the outer shell rub that again and then go right around the edge
04:30you don't want to damage the you will damage some of them but
04:34there's usually so many that it doesn't really matter if you snap any off
04:39go right around
04:40and then this is you need two hands for this really
04:52look at that
05:00now you can see
05:01that's the new one we just did and they'll have a greenish tint from the outer coating they start
05:08with but after it they are so they'll turn this much more
05:13it's lighter much more brilliant white
05:20for it has some white color and that's
05:24glenaria honesty and as i say great for crafts i've seen people make reefs from them as well
05:31and they're supposed to be good fortune as well honestly
05:39very unusual plant i've never seen anything else like that that produces seed heads like this
05:44so
05:44and they grow really well in our climate in ireland as well so
05:50very easy to grow from seed don't need any special treatment and it's now june i will
05:56or sorry it's now the start of july and i will get more of these sown
06:03this month before next year and plant them out they survive the frost no problem
06:09you can put them in pots they have a taproot so they prefer being on the ground
06:12so the taproot can go right down and pull up nutrients and that improves the soil as well
06:18so when i cut them down i left the plant underground just leave it there that'll still
06:24keep feeding the organisms in the soil uh over until as it decomposes and
06:33and all these here once i collect the seeds from them i'm going to leave them to dry out just a
06:38wee bit more and the seeds will naturally fall off to the bottom anyway there's a load of seeds at
06:43the bottom but uh i will go through them and pick off any other seeds and then just sew them so you
06:50don't have to buy any more and you can do that then year on year you might see some honestly
06:57growing wild they were a very popular plant back in the 70s and 80s but they've fallen out of flavor
07:04and and i think with all the arts and crafts things going on they will come back in favor
07:11is one that didn't make it on the stem and these are some leaves as well you can just pull these off
07:18as you're drying but these make a great mulch as well so once you have these done just throw these all
07:24over your soil and they will decompose quickly because they're so thin and name honestly comes
07:32from the fact that when you hold them up to the light you can see how many seeds are in them when
07:39they're on the stem so i have that this one there
07:51that's the way they look on the plant but they're stunning in the landscape as well if you want to
07:55just leave them there but the only thing is that the wind and the rain here would damage them and
08:01you'll get some caterpillars and things i'm feeding on them too so you could leave some uh but they do
08:12look quite quite nice these big discs swaying in the wind and the stems are quite sturdy as well
08:19um but as i say you won't get as many clean dried plants
08:24as you would otherwise but that's honestly let me just go back over it and look at them again
08:38close
08:40so happy soon
08:54happy soon
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