May Lotito

For the peach tree, I put down gypsum and lime in and around the planting hole early this spring.  Hopefully this tree started out with strong roots and will be healthier than the previous peach trees.

You can still plant daikon seeds now since hard freeze is still over 2 months away. The roots will be fine in light frost, especially with some mulch near the base.

Many weather related issues are fundamentally nutritional ones. Calcium and boron are components of cell walls and also involve in transport of sugar, but they are not phloem mobile so constant supply in soil solution is very important. Too much water or too little water both adversely affect their assimilation. If the soil has higher and balanced level of both elements, plants can mitigate the fluctuations better. Otherwise, the gardener has to supplement them when needed.

I don't have hollow heart with my potatoes, probably because I grow them early in the season, from March to June, while the soil has abundant calcium and boron from organic source of plant residues. Last year I had mild symptoms in one of the garden bed that produced heavily the previous year and probably was more exhausted. Some turnips and potatoes were cracked because of weak cell walls. The symptoms can be fixed easily with added minerals.

Good to see the procedure repeated well. It seems to settle much faster this time. Just pour carefully as much top water off as possible. If the sediment is disturbed, keep the jar tilted and let it settle before pouring or sucking with a syringe again. Resuspend in the same jar with water instead of going through a filter.

The advantage of using younger shoots is that the more you pinch the tops, the more side shoots are sprouting. Just like cultivating and harvesting leaves from a tea bush. That way the plants can be harvested several times in a year, less risky than one big extraction at the end of the season. The leaves after soaking can be safely put back to the soil and feed the plants since no harsh chemicals are added.

Field mice are common and they will try to get indoors for warmth in early winter. Somehow I am able to tell if there is a mouse in the house from the smell and set up traps promptly. They are dumb and we usually clear them up within a day or two. Rat is rare in my area but we did have one encounter. That rat was smart and if a trap failed to catch it in the first try it never will. After weeks of failure, a friend gave us some snakeshots. I hid behind a cardboard blind, put bread in a bag tie to a dumbbell in the middle of the kitchen floor one night. The rat came out and tried to steal the bread but had to stay still chewing through the bag and I finally got it! No hole on the floor! As for entry point, I did find a gap between water heater intake pipe and the floor in the closet.
Hopefully you will get rid of the vermin asap.

At least it's cooling down. In my town, yesterday was near 100F, today is low 90s, tomorrow in 80s, the days after that will be in 70s. Frost or hard freeze in sight in 3-4 weeks. Still no rain for almost 2 months.

The Indian blood peach is at 7ft. I started some daikon seeds in pots but they are way behind compared to the ones sowed in August.

Here are videos showing two different traditional ways of making indigo dye from P. tincoria with some simple explanation of the mechanism.



The Japanese awa-indigo use fresh green leaves. The chopping and bruising disrupt celluar compartments and the indigo precursor reacts to enzyme and oxidizes internally.  After oxidative decomposition similar to hot composting, part of the plant tissues break down and gases off, the volume reduces. The residues then undergo anaerobic fermentation in alkaline solution. Metabolism from bacteria provides reducing power and releases indigo from insoluble complex into the liquid for dyeing.

Liziqi's "life of the bluegrass"


This is the traditional Chinese way. Older plants are harvested and soaked in water to partly break down plant tissues. Indigo precursor and enzyme are released and the resulting indigo remains largely in the soluble reduced form. It then is oxidized by aeration and precipitated by calcium (quick lime or hydrated lime). The blue mud or paste is retrieved and stored. Reducing power comes from rice wine culture. Various fungi break down starch to sugar and ferment it into alcohol as the reducer.

From my experience, if green leaves are soaked anaerobically too long, the indigo binds to chlorophyll and probably other hydrophobic molecules as well. The precipitation is not as pure and has a green tint. Those impurities make subsequent reduction and solublization difficult. So what I have experimented is to find the sweet spot of leaching condition in which there are maximum indigo precursor, some enzymes, and minimum chloroplast. Then I proceed to use common household chemicals and utensils to extract the pure indigo. It can be an overkill for simple dye project but it's fun.

I have no experience with the legume Indigofera. tincoria as it needs warmer climate to grow. It seems the extraction is much simpler with this plant. Oxidized indigo just associates with the foam on top of the water in large quantities, making collecting easy. I guess it contains higher surfactant than other indigo plants.

Traditional woad processing is somewhat similar to sukumo.  Woad leaves are kneaded and balled for slow fermentation. I still can't find the way the extract indigo from fresh leaves. Maybe the yield is just too low.

Carla, you don't need to get it in the ground. People have success with potted figs all the time. I feel your potting mix might be low in calcium and pH. Many are high in peat and pine barks for drainage. Usually certain forms of calcium is added to correct that but they would be washed out over time. To think of high quality figs are grown in Mediterranean regions with calcareous soil! I am suspecting figs growing better near the house are benefiting from the alkaline concrete foundation. My figs and grape stopped growing in July and the terminal leaves turned small and deformed. Their situation got worse in August when there was no rain. I worried about acidic soil moisture got drawn up from subsoil (pH <5).  I made some bold moves by watering in hydrated lime with little bit of boron. It was a temporary fix and could go wrong but luckily both grapes and figs bounced back with healthy growth. In the long term I will do that with slow release natural minerals (gypsum/ag lime/dolomite/wollastonite). The point is, making the growing medium closer to the plant's native soil and it will be happy and healthy. I will message you the rate if you want to give it a try. Good luck.

OkI got 12 ears out of 12 plants of heirloom corn seeds from Judith in Arkansas Ozarks, 5/6 mountain morado from the 3rd planting. Zero from 9 giant Inca: 4 of them snapped in the storms and 4 tasseled without ear, one had normal ear but died later in drought and heat. The corn kernels are a little over 4 lbs.

The Arkansas heirloom seeds out perform the other two that are originally from very different climates, one with very short growing season and the other requires very long season. Yet I feel I can improve my soil mineral content to get all the varieties to grow better and healthier. The bloody butcher can go from 8-row to 12-row, for example. Despite low to no yield, Mountain Morado and Inca Giant provide valuable information about soil nutrition so I will still trial them next year.

I started picking figs from Chicago Hardy since mid August. Production is peaking right now for both CH and Olympian. Two more varieties are fruiting for the first time this year: pingo de mel and kadota. Another two varieties only have breba fruit buds. I lime the soil around each bush and that seems to help a lot, figs form early and those at the very tips are of good size. They will likely mature in the next few weeks, well before the first frost.

I like to pick the figs when they droop and feel soft. I leave them on the counter to continue ripening and eat the softest ones first. If I keep them on the twigs too long the ants will get to them.