May Lotito

When the raw silk fibers are stretched and stacked and made into batting, they are airy and have good insulation.

USGS has a soil survey for various elements, including essential and toxic ones to plants.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2017/5118/sir20175118_geo.php
The color is national percentile based as well as absolute values for top 5 cm. At least I found it correlates with my soil test results fairly well. (Utisol of Ozarks is very low in fertility.)

Look up the interactive maps for a general idea of soils in your area. If something essential is significantly low, now is a good time to amend it before you grow perennials. Or if the contamination of heavy metals is high, you may want to avoid eating root crops.

Indoor environment isn't what the peppers like without extra light and heat. It's not surprising they turn more suseptible to pests. I usually let the remaining fruits ripen a bit before cutting the plants down to the second  branching nodes in December.

The challenge for me though, is to regrow 2nd year bell pepper to have the similar scaffold as a first year plant. New growths are naturally bushy, which is fine with small-fruited peppers but large bell peppers need stronger structure. I have seen many yt videos showing pruning bell peppers for over wintering but none gives an update.

The last time I use citric acid powder was for pickling hides. It requires an acidic solution of pH3 to kill all germs and soften the tissues. Vinegar cannot get that low because it's a weaker acid and also so diluted.

The same winter kill repeated for several years and finally I am seeing the chance to break the cycle this time. The mulberry tree/bush survived -1 F /-18 C in ground and the barks are green and healthy. I took a few cuttings indoors and they are pushing out buds. I am not sure what made the difference and it could from multiplefactors:

it's old enough
better nutrient management
favorable weather last fall (one month gap from first frost to first hard freeze so trees had time to acclimate)

The strongest trunk grew about 15 ft last year from ground and I count over 60 leaf nodes in the leader. Hopefully that is enough for juvenile to mature phase transition. If the new shoots don't get killed by late frost, I might be able to finally taste some Pakistani mulberries this year!

Here is my first seedling peach tree sprouted in 2020. One of the lowest branch was damaged when young and sent out several water sprouts because of it. I should've cut them off but they looked so strong and I just trained one to go sideways. Now I think I made a big mistake.

The tree has a diameter of 10 inches at the base now and the trunk grows against the nearest water sprout, compressing tissues in between. Hopefully this tree has reached maturity and won't grow any bigger. I also see some bumps around the sucker branch. Are those root initials? They don't look like burrs or galls.

I will just let it be and look out for any disease that might stem from the tight crotch area.

Neat observations. Are those multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora)? I don't see them having a second flush of growth in fall here, but they usually bloom in June and mature the hips during the summer. If in your area they fail to set fruits in early summer, and weather is favorable in fall, it may coax them to grow and bloom again.

It's quite a pretty bush! Do hummingbirds come to visit the flowers?

How high is the pH? Finished compost would have a pH of 6-8. Is used diluted, every 10x dilution will change pH by 1 unit. I am not sure about hydroponics,  but in soil with good biology, the pH around the root hairs is lowered to facilitate nutrients uptake even though the soil solution is alkaline.  Besides pH, another possibility for deficiency is phosphorus being too high. It is common in compost made from manure as cations are tied up by high level of phosphorus and less available to plants.

I added two peach trees grown from seeds, both are white peaches. They are in native soil with little amendment so they are rather small: one is 2 ft tall and the other barely 1 ft. But I don't think white peach or donut peach are inferior to yellow peach becausethey grow slower, their genetic potential is severely limited by soil condition.

The most vigorous peach tree (yellow peach) I have had its first year amidst a veggie garden with plenty of compost and active soil biology.  I am thinking the adequate and balanced nutrients made available by soil microbiome is the key to its healthy root system. Even though I didn't put much resources on it later on, it was still able to retrieve deep down the ground. Until it is limited by the reserve of the soil. I have identified the three most limiting elements and am working on remineralizing my yard. I'd like to find out if the tree will have better resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses afterwards, and has less cold and PC injuries the coming season.