The Schlumbergera bus are opening. It's a nice show so far.
They don't get much special treatment. I keep them on the North side of the house for the summer, bring them in during fall. Give a little flower fertilizer. Several are cuttings from older plants that became too big, a couple of years ago.
Edit - here's one more.
A couple of others are not blooming yet. That will extend the show.
Lots of fall color this year.
This is a Japanese Maple that I dug up as a volunteer from my old yard, on the left. On the right, the lower yellow leaves are a ginkgo I grew from a seed, and the higher yellow leaves are an aspen tree that I planted ten years ago.
Here my truckload of leaves from my generous neighbor.
Some of these went onto the refurbished, topped off, raised bed, after I mixed chicken bone meal, crushed eggs, and coffee grounds into the top layer of soil. Now that will sit until Spring to mellow and settle.
More will go around the miniature fruit trees and onto containers, as a mulch, then the rest onto the fig tree and forsythia and wildflower border.
Tree leaves are the best soil protector, enricher, weed prevention, soil conditioner on this green earth.
I harvested the last of the ripe chili peppers. They were a mixture of about 1/2 Serranos, and the rest about half Cayenne and half Thai with some Tabasco peppers too.
This is the recipe I used, mostly. It's from the this website.
1 pound washed and sliced chili peppers (as above)
1/2 cup peeled garlic cloves, sliced into 1/8 inch thick slices.
1 1/2 cups distilled white vinegar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp fine sea salt.
I sliced the chili peppers to about 1/4 inch slices. Then mixed in the salt, sugar, and garlic in a pyrex bowl. Then I added the vinegars, stirred, and covered with plastic wrap. The recipe called for letting the mixture sit in the fridge for one day. I let it sit for two days, because I needed some rest the next day.
Then I transferred the mixture to a stainless steel pot, used the outdoor stove to bring to a boil, and simmered for 40 minutes with occasional stirring.
Then I carefully transferred to the big blender, put on the top, put a towel over that, and blended to make a smooth puree.
Here's how it looks.
I pruned and cleaned up the main clump of Triple Crown blackberry. I removed all of the spent canes from this year. I had already tipped the new canes at about 5 feet high. I left those in place.
The main weed problem is a wild clematis. It vines around everything and sends long underground runners. I pulled out and cut off all I could. Then I applied a tree leaf carpet, about six inches or so thick. I left last year's in place, they have mostly rotted away.
That's most of the maintenance I do each year. Maybe two hours today, maybe an hour of little things in the summer.
I also cleaned up the newer clumps, the same way. That area has two younger Triple Crown clumps and a dwarf variety, Ponca. I didn't add the leaves yet, because some grass clumps need to be removed.
Here is the Nikita's Gift persimmon tree at ten years old. It doesn't really get any maintenance now, other than minor pruning.
Here is the Saijo persimmon tree, same age.
Now I just need so e good persimmon recipes.
I was able to collect some tree leaves from the yard. Most are yet to fall. It was enough to cover the garlic beds.
Now the work is completed. They are ready for winter. The leaves will even out the soil temperature and prevent weeds. This year's garlic needed almost no weeding at all for the entire growin season, a big benefit.
This raised bed is completed now. I finished stapling in the plastic chicken-feed bag liners. In total, I've added ten 5-gallon bucket loads of good garden soil, to raise the level. I mixed in some chopped marigold "green manure". The soil surface is now smoothed.
I'll add more eggshell, then cover with a nice layer of tree leaves. Then it's ready for winter.
When dry season begins in Spring, I'll stain the "new" treated (reused) 2x4 braces. I think this is the strongest, most likely to last, method to keep the sides vertical and square for the long term.
About every ten days, I make a big batch of dog food with chicken thighs as the main meat ingredient (for the taurine). I portion it out into 7 oz portions, refrigerate a three day supply, and freeze the portions to because later. As a vegetarian, I don't have bones from my own meals.
The chicken thighs are slow cooked overnight, and the bones just fall off. I dry the bones. In the past, I threw them into the woodstove, to supply minerals in the ash, which I scattered onto the garden beds. We decommissioned the woodstove (breathing is a good thing), so now what to do with the chicken thigh (femur) bones?
After drying thoroughly, I pounded and ground them using a granite mortar and pestle. The came out like this.
They are a bit crunchy and a bit fluffy. Not that different from purchased bone meal, except less dense.
I also grind eggshells the same way.
Bonemeal is mainly a phosphorous source, especially good for bulbs, roots, flowers. From wikipedia, the NPK is about 3:15:0 and calcium content is about 12%. (a sobering, sad, macabre comment in Wikipedia, "In desperation, farmers collected the bones from major battlefields like the Battle of Waterloo and the Battle of Austerlitz to crush them and refertilize the soil.")
From The Spruce, bone meal promotes flowering, fruit, and seed production, and is slow release over about four months. I imagine that is slower in winter months, and is retained in the soil for later. There is also some magnesium and zinc. Acidic soil (which mine is) is needed to break down the bone meal.
Eggshells are mainly a calcium source. They are 95% to 97% Calcium Carbonate (Wikipedia). My soil tests low for calcium, due to Pacific NW rains and other factors. Eggshell is also a soil conditioner.
Here I added both additives to the recently planted German garlic bed.
It would be better to add before planting the garlic, but I didn't think of it. I used about a cup of each. Then used a small stirrup hoe to work it into the top inch of soil, well above the planted garlic cloves.
