Cleaning Up Mini Orchard. 11.25.22

 I've been pulling weeds and putting down tree leaf mulch in the mini orchard.  A few mini trees needed moving to make room for a planned pepper planter.

So far, I removed weeds from the North, East, and West fences / tree rows.  Some of the middle is done as well.  After removing weeds, I lay a thick layer of tree leaf mulch.  The areas that are not cleaned up yet, in the center rows, will have a weed barrier topped with wood chip mulch, for pathways, and thatvplanned pepper planter.

This is one of the minitrees that I moved, SummerRed apple on Bud-9 rootstock.  It had two big shoots emerging from underground, below the graft.

I removed those shoots.  Their connection to the node is brittle.  They just break off.  They will give some rootstock to play with.  They don't have much root, but it doesn't take much. Some of the originals that I bought didn't have much root either.

I planted those temporarily in a raised bed.  

I moved two of the columnar apples on Bud-9, to the duck yard. They didn't have enough room now in the mini orchard, and one was replaced by the SummerRed.  

I had said in a previous comment that most of the columnar on Bud-9 were about three feet tall.  Now that I'm working with them, I have to correct that.  Only one is only about three feet tall.  The others are about 4 1/2 to 7 feet tall.  I think that's about perfect for me at this stage.  Columnar trees on vigorous rootstock grow way to big for my mini-orchard, and it's too challenging to keep them pruned down to seven or eight feet tall.  These will stay shorter.  Some had a few apples this year.  One of these was made from a Golden Sentinel apple tree, the other from a North Pole apple tree.  They are both tasty apple varieties.

The Bud-9 roots are not extensive at all.  I had to prune some due to bad shape or placement, but not as much as bare root trees this size are sold as.

Holiday Bulbs. 11.20.22

 I planted these last week.  A red amaryllis and some paperwhite narcissus.  

Fun to watch them grow.  The potting medium is "coir peat", which I assume is coir processed to be like peat, but could be a mixture of coir and peat.  Since there is no nutrition in that, I watered with dilute bloom food.

Overwintering Hot Pepper Plants. Update. 11.20.22

 This "Early Jalapeño" plant didn't grow large in the garden, so I had left the leaves on it when I dug it up to overwinter.  Even though I had washed the roots pretty thoroughly, I noticed now it had aphids.

After spraying with the Dr Earth herbal spray, I reconsidered and cut off all of the leaves.  There are no peppers on this plant to ripen, so I probably should let it go dormant.

After trimming.

Before trimming.

Meanwhile, the plants I left leaves and peppers on, to ripen, still look pretty good.  No aphids, gnats, or whitefly that I can see.  The two larger plants are Thai Dragon and the smaller on is Tabasco.

It's still early, many months to go.  It's an interesting experiment.  It would be nice to get a jump start on peppers next year.  And also, potentially, more productivity from the overwintered plants.  

More Bulbs. 11.17.22

 Today I was at the hardware store, and saw these bulbs for half price.  So I bought them and planted them.

Overwintering Pepper Plants. Update. 11.17.22

 I check the pepper plants every two days.  They have indoors now for 3 to 4 weeks.  A few are in the sunroom, to ripen remaining peppers (Thai, Tabasco, a Serranno).  The others are in a 50s to 60s cool bright room.

I am moving the rest into the cool, bright room too.  I want them to be dormant.

Here are a Tabasco (left ) and Serrano (right)

They look about the same as when I transplanted them.  The stems are still green.  The peppers are about the same.  That's fine.  I want dormancy, not growth.

The Serrano had tiny fuzzy things on the soil.  I think they are whiteflies.  Not very active in the coolness.

I sprayed the plant and soil with this stuff.

Most of the fuzzy things disappeared immediately.  There were a few remaining, so I sprayed with some old Safer brand neem spray too.

Here are some of the other pepper plants.  Left to Right, Cayenne, Banana, Early Jalapeño.

The Cayenne is pushing a few buds.  So is the Banana.  Not much, but you can tell they are alive.  The stems are still green.  I didn't defoliate the Jalapeño.  It's mostly just sitting there, but the nodes are a little knobby, like some buds want to show.

Closeup of the Cayenne.

So far, so good.  They still have a long way to go.