Category: Wine Cellars

Many cactus species create orange flowers. Besides cosmetic uses, the flowers play significant roles in their ecosystems and have culinary uses for humans. Some kinds of cacti that may grow orange flowers consist of prickly pear, barrel cactus, organ pipe cactus and Christmas cactus. The striking blossom color together with fine blossom fragrances help attract pollinators, such as bees and bats.

Cactus Flowers Are Edible

A lot of men and women realize that cactus fruits, such as prickly pear, are edible or useful for making beverages. They are fairly common in Mexican and Central American cooking. Fewer people know that cactus flowers are often creamy too. For example, Native Americans boiled young barrel cactus flowers to consume like cabbage. They also boiled old barrel cactus flowers to make into a beverage. Barrel cactus flowers come in many different colours, such as yellow, orange and red.

Cactus Flower Structure Facts

Flowers are reproductive structures for cacti, succulents and many other types of plants. Sepals and petals safeguard the inner areas of the blossom and manual pollinators, such as bees, toward the inside of the blossom. The flowers have male and female parts. Anthers are male parts that contain pollen, and stigmas are the sections of the female pistils that get the pollen. After the stigma receives pollen, the basal region of the pistil produces seeds. Some cacti flowers blossom throughout the afternoon, while some — such as the organ pipe cactus — blossom during the night.

Cactus Flowers Make Tasty Wine

Wine Maker Magazine recommends using prickly pear flowers — that is orange, yellow, red or pink to make wine. A recipe for cactus blossom wine contains sugar, cactus flowers, white grape juice, water, grape tannin and yeast, among other ingredients. Cactus flowers often have bees inside of these, therefore gardeners should be careful harvesting the flowers.

Bats Feed on Night-Blooming Cacti

Night-blooming organ pipe cacti and saguaro cacti have orange or yellow flowers that open at night. As these and other kinds of cacti begin to bloom each year, lesser long-nosed bats migrate from Central Mexico to Northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. The bats fly from blossom to blossom, feeding on the flower nectar. They get pollen on themselves and pollinate the cactus flowers as they fly around feeding. Later in the summer, the bats will eat the cactus fruit and deposit the seeds. They play a significant role in cactus reproduction, in the same way the cacti flowers play a main role in the diet of their bats.

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Flowers add an element of beauty to the vegetable garden and with the right selection, you can attract beneficial insects and discourage some of the harmful ones. With just a little preparation, a few trellises and the openness to jump putting in formal rows, your vegetable garden may double as a flower garden and be a gorgeous addition to the landscape.

Planing Ahead

Developing a gorgeous garden starts with good preparation. Rather than planting large regions with rows of vegetables, plan to plant in a scattered pattern, mixing different kinds of vegetables together. A couple of trellises — tipi kind trellises scattered across the garden or tall trellises round the perimeter — add height to your garden, making a visually interesting element. Trellises are ideal for growing crops such as beans and peas, summer squash, melons and vine tomato plants. Creating raised beds from wood, stone or other aesthetically pleasing substances is a great way to make the flower and vegetable garden stand out nicely and makes weeding easier.

Pick Your Crop for Color

Not all cabbage is green and not all strawberries are reddish. Think colour combinations when planting a gorgeous vegetable and flower garden. Yellow tomatoes mixed with crimson tomatoes bring colour variation from the tomato section while eggplants, purple cabbage, and orange, yellow and red hot and sweet peppers add colour throughout the backyard. A stand of sunflowers adds height and color, while chives, squash flowers, nasturtium, calendula petals and violets offer edible flowers. Rose petals can also be edible and a growing or bush rose from the garden adds elegance just like few other flowers may.

Companion Planting Principles

Companion planting is a way to reduce the demand for pesticides by attracting beneficial insects to the garden. Flowers like marigolds, nasturtiums, chive flowers and pot marigold, also referred to as calendula, attract insects that deter some of the worst garden insects. Strongly fragrant herbs, such as rosemary, oregano, mint and catnip, can also be great at deterring garden pests. Incorporating companion planting clinics from the vegetable garden helps keep insects away and you get the added advantage of the herb garden mixed in with the grasses and creamy flowers.

Great Companions from the Garden

Plant nasturtiums one of the plant and cucumbers the cucumbers beneath the sunflowers; the sunflowers provide shade for the cucumbers and the nasturtiums maintain cucumber beetles away. Marigolds are a wonderful ally of eggplants, melons, tomatoes and raspberries. Borage, love-in-the-mist and thyme are great companions to this strawberry, and chives paired with celery, carrots and lettuce form a fantastic combination. Plant a couple of added chives around roses to keep aphids at bay and revel in the purple chive flowers one of your favorite roses.

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Hibiscus sorrel (Hibiscus sabdariffa), also called Jamaica sorrel and roselle, is indigenous to India, but can grow as a yearly as in most climates. The plant has fleshy, red calyxes that encircle the foundation of its yellow blooms. The red calyxes possess a flavor similar to cranberries or currants and are used to make tea, jellies and used in salad dressings, drinks and frosting.

Identification

Hibiscus sorrel can grow up to 7 feet tall using 3-inch-long oval, three- to five-lobed leaves. The stalks and leaves are thin using a reddish-green shade. The calyxes are green when immature and turn into a bright red when ripe. Calyx size may vary and range from 1/2 to 1 1/2 inches in diameter. The yellowish flowers are 5 inches wide using a rose-colored or maroon center that fade into a pink as blooms fade at day’s end.

Climate and Soil

Hibiscus sorrel needs long, hot summers for fruit to ripen and the plant is frost-sensitive. An early frost may prevent a harvest. Rainfall is vital, as blooms thrive in places that receive at least 72 inches of rain each growing season. Hibiscus sorrel grows best in loamy, sandy soil. Necessary growing states are similar to those for tomatoes and the plants need spacing of 18 to 24 inches apart in rows. The plant begins producing blooms since the days shorten during the growing season.

Propagation and Planting

Hibiscus sorrel is usually propagated by seed, but you can also propagate the plant from cuttings. Propagation from cuttings often results in shorter plants and fewer calyxes. The plant may reseed itself, therefore it has the potential to become invasive in some places. You can start seeds indoors and transplant seedlings when they grow to approximately 4 inches tall, or direct sow the seeds at the expanding region, planting in hills with three to six seeds per hill.

Harvest and utilize

When ripe, the fruit is plump and tender and should be harvested before woody tissue grows on the calyxes. Fruits can easily be snapped off the plant by hand early in the day; when harvesting is delinquent the stems toughen and you’re going to need clippers to eliminate fruits. The fruit has many uses other than teas and frosting. After washing, you can chop the fruit and then apply in fruit salad, or cook to make into syrup, marmalade or pie fillings.

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For celebrity stylist and interior designer Estee Stanley, fashion and home decor move hand in hand. Known for her chic brushstroke when dressing Hollywood starlets and their cool homes, Stanley has now awakened with her celebrity customer and friend Justin Timberlake at a venture called HomeMint.

HomeMint

“Home decor is similar to fashion — it is the small things that count. Just as we accessorize in vogue, there are things we could do in our house to earn a statement and freshen up a space,” says Stanley. The stylist-designer (here with Timberlake) carved out some time from her hectic schedule to give us a few suggestions on how to create a comfortable, fresh space in the house with a few simple additions.

Update your lifestyle accessories. Journals in your bedside table, a pair of colors on the entryway console and the iPad situation on the kitchen counter tops — all these pieces add visual interest to your insides, even if they are small enough to fit into your handbag.

“Mixing up your accessories is really a discreet and subtle way of upgrading your decor; these are pieces that generally sit around your house anyway. Prove your fashion-forward design with accessories and perform a small color obstructing by mixing up a pink journal cover with sorbet-hued luggage tags and passport cases,” says Stanley.

Embrace the energy of this pillow. Stanley is a self-confessed throw pillow addict. She “loves, loves” cushions and considers that only the tiniest improvement can truly shift the appearance and energy of a room. “muster a throw cushion by getting one that actually pops with a geometric pattern or one that’s two-tone and may be a bit more flexible,” says Stanley.

HomeMint

Bring character in with vibrant blooms. Although displaying blossoms seems like the most instinctive means of bringing the outdoors in, Stanley is astonished at how folks still do not maximize the punch of colour that blossoms can bring into the house. Her favorite flowers are peonies, roses and hydrangeas; the latter since they last for months, are simple to often and grow their best in the colour. “Don’t purchase flowers open. Permit them to come into full blossom in your house — you will love watching them change and blossom on your own space,” she states.

Consume at least one tall vase. Along with constantly having greenery around the home, Stanley highly recommends that apartment dwellers and homeowners with low ceilings invest in tall vases for added elevation in a tight space with low ceilings.

Invest in artwork that’s ideal for you. She is known for being an advocate of homegrown, American gift, therefore Stanley and Timberlake’s HomeMint art collection includes the work of Kelsey Brookes and Sage Vaughn. In regards to artwork, she proposes finding pieces that fit your budget and your lifestyle. “Ask yourself if the artwork piece fits your overall aesthetic and if it is something that you’d want to have with you while you proceed later on,” says Stanley.

HomeMint

Stone Montecito Washed Linen Duvet – $239.99

Prioritize comfort over aesthetics. “It’s very important to always feel comfortable in almost any room of your property. Whether it’s the bathroom, the kitchen or your bedroom, then I believe these rooms deserve equal attention and thought when decorating. I really believe your house is a representation of who you are,” says Stanley.

Incorporate a fresh scent into the mixture. Reflect the current year or the transition from 1 season into the next with candles. Stanley proposes having a select lineup of candles that may bring a “very specific feeling” that’s particular to a time of season: Smell can signify the shifting of the seasons or the joy of a memorable summer with a whiff.

HomeMint

Arcadia Melon Blanket – $249.99

Live and love with linen. “Linen makes spaces feel lighter and more breathable. The best thing about lace is the fact that it appears just as good unmade for a more casual look and if you do not have enough time to tidy up,” says Stanley. Her favourite linen pieces are fabrics in the weavers at Brahms Mount at Maine; she’s comprised their day blankets, towels and cries inside her HomeMint collection because her customers have not stopped asking about them because she peppered their homes with Brahms Mount pieces.

Anticipate to entertain. The summertime and the holiday season consistently attract guests into the house. Have plenty of folding tables and flexible seating options and structures according to who’s coming over for supper.

Change out blah towels into luxury prints. Stanley loves plush, sumptuous towels — especially for the backyard deck along with the pool area. “There are great alternatives for towel cloths, such as bohemian styles, patriotic stars and stripes, and Union Jacks, all in theme for the upcoming Olympics,” says Stanley.

Go for routine and colour when it comes to your towels; they behave as little, plush tapestries when thrown above a deck chair or left on the floor as you’re taking a dip in the pool.

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