Pruning Sarracenias in Petaluma. 1.5.18

Among unpruned Sarracenia.  1.5.18

Midway Through Pruning.  1.5.18

Last weekend I accompanied my friend Jacob, of Sarracenia Northwest, to the nursery of one of his suppliers, Lois Van Ochs in Petaluma, California, to help with cleanup of her nursery stock.  The Sarracenia plants needed to have the pitchers from last year's growth pruned off, and general tidying. 

It was a lot of fun, and the plants are now ready for good growth in 2019.

After returning, I gave my own Sarracenia plants a nice haircut too.  I think this year, I'll come up with a better display for them on the front deck.

Visiting the Baker Creek Petaluma Seed Bank. 1.5.18

Petaluma Seed Bank, Baker Creek Seeds.  1.6.18

 Last weekend I was in Petaluma, CA, and remembered the Baker Creek Seed Bank store is there.  So we visited.  What a cool place!  It's like the catalog, but in person.  Very helpful staff.  I left with another dozen packets of seeds for this year's kitchen garden.

Petaluma Seed Bank, Baker Creek Seeds.  1.6.18

Petaluma Seed Bank, Baker Creek Seeds.  1.6.18

Using Bone Ashes in the Garden. 12.9.18

I was thinking about what to do with the beef bones after Rufus is done with them. Most people would throw them into the trash or bury them, but I like to see if things are useful. Since I do much of the heating with a wood stove, I wondered if I could mineralize the bones and spread that in the garden along with the wood ashes. It appears the answer is yes.

First, bone ash is considered an organic fertilizer and is mostly calcium and phosphorous. In my soil tests, calcium was very low, and phosphorus was somewhat low. So at least in the small amounts that I use, these are needed mineral nutrients. The wood ashes are also mostly calcium, so it's kind of more of the same thing, similar to adding lime. Except wood ashes are also high in potassium and there are some other nutrients.

Here is a link to someone who wanted to use human ashes in their garden. I imagine those are mostly from bone, with the other parts going up in smoke. The problem with using some human ashes in gardening, is they might contain lead or mercury.  I'm not interested in getting any of those.

I added a couple of Rufus's beef leg bone chunks to the wood stove, as I fed more logs, and just let them burn along with the wood.  It turns out, the very small chunks that survived the fire were much more brittle and flaky, than the original bone.  Most of the bone had disintegrated. So I just put the intact pieces back into the woodstove for the next go-round.  As for the rest, it will just be part of the mineral supplement that I add to the gardens during this winter, to replenish what is removed in the process of growing plants and removing their products.

At an atomic level, next year when I admire the bearded irises, or eat some figs, I'll ponder these cycles of life, and imagine that some of the atoms in those flowers and fruits, last resided in some Bessie the cow, or were trees on the back woodlot, collecting sunshine for 45 years (I counted the rings), before warming my sore joints in the woodstove.  This gives me a nice feeling, about the continuous process of renewal.

Collecting scion. And a Graft failure. 12.4.18

 Today I collected some scion for late winter grafting.  In this case, it was Pristine apple.  Pristine is an excellent PRI (Purdue Rutgers Illinois) disease-resistant apple, early season, really delicious with a delightful flavor. 

Unfortunately, this branch basically fell off the tree this summer.  It managed to hang on by a small amount of bark on one side, apparently living bark.

Today I removed some scion to try

 grafting late winter, onto another tree.  It appears viable.   I wrap in foil, then place into zip-lock bag and refrigerate until some time in March.

 I will remove this branch some time this winter.  There isn't much holding it onto the tree.

From the wound, it's obvious that there was never much connection.

There will be some more scion to collect.  I also want to collect some from North Pole apple.

A graft failure.  "Pristine" apple.  Unknown Semidwarfing Rootstock.  12.4.18

More Visitors. 12.4.18

Today a family of deer - three - was hanging out in the kitchen garden / orchard area.  They are skittish, and too far away for a decent I-phone photo. So I only caught this one "on film".

I think I have most of the browsing under control and can enjoy them better as a result. 

This was the first time that i really got a good look at their tails.  They are definitely  black tailed deer.

So far, only slight buck damage to one cypress tree.  I'm watching regularly.  Any further damage, and I'll want to do some protective fencing trees on some of the trunks.