May Lotito

It's interesting how the same plant can be well behaved in one place and be a nuisance in another.  Goji berry bushes are welcomed in my garden, pollinators and birds like them. I even plant cuttings to form an edible hedge but it takes lots of amendments to creat the soil type they like. If they get too big and messy, I just cut them down to the ground in winter. Long arching branches can be trellised or pruned to reduce layering.

Osage oranges are sporadic where I am and they are tall trees with thick trunks, sometimes even as a specimen tree in the yard. I tried to grow a hedge along my property line with hundreds of seeds with zero germination.

Invasives such as Japanese honeysuckle, burning bush and multiflora rose are my worst enemies.

If you'd like to experiment with more pickling with home grown veggies, how about potato? I have never tried it, also mines are already sprouting, it's said when LAB fermented then baked or fried, they are essentially pickled potato chips! Not the fastest way to consume lots of potatoes but it sounds fun to do.

Brackens can tolerate acidic and poor soil. One place I remember seeing lots of brackens is a subtropical secondary forest with high soil iron oxides. The red clay mountain has very limited diversity, dominated by pines and brackens.

I cut down a eastern red cedar early this year to make room for more fruit trees. I found out it was being infested by pine bark beetles. Then I saw lots of tiny ant-like insects crawling around the barks. I thought those were pests at first. I took some pictures and looked online. Turned out they were checkered beetles (Enoclerus nigripes), the beneficial predators of bark beetles! I left the wood piles in place for a few months. Hopefully the good guys had finished up and found new food sources nearby.

Hi Nick, what is the phosphorus level in the report? Since you are encouraging soil microbes, you don't need as high level of phosphorus as suggested. Too much soluble P will discourage arbuscular mycorrhizae association instead. My soil test a few years ago came back at 17 lb/Ac (8.5ppm) for M3 P2O5 and the same amount of recommendation (3 lbs/1000 sq ft). I have several free ranging chickens fed partially on commercial feeds and so far I haven't seen any typical P deficiency symptoms.

As for wood ash to add potassium, maybe you can look around and ask from people using wood stove. I've seen huge piles of wood ash outside car repair shops and the like. Those places are more likely to burn wood to heat up large spaces.

Also, I agree with Doug about micronutrients. Is there any sign some might be lacking?

Those white dots don't seem to be on the surface, but from hollowed mesophyll tissues. If you look closely, are there leaf miners inside the white spots?

Thanks for the recommendations!  I only tried black mission figs from the store before and home grown figs are much better. I am really interested in adding more figs with different flavor profiles.

Do you have tips to speed up the ripening process? I lost 1/4 unripe figs when the freeze hit. I am hoping a fast regrow from protected crowns would get the fruits to set and ripen a few weeks early.

I harvested over 150 figs from the two bigger bushes and a couple of other small plants had fruits unripe when first freeze hit. Hopefully those will grow stronger and faster to actually produce.  It is going down to teens /-10C this weekend so I made each fig a 6" deep soil mound to protect the crowns.

I left some garlic unharvested two years ago. Since each bulb contains 7-9 cloves for this variety, by this year, dozens of skinny plantlets came up in each clump. I transplanted some to a bed for spring greens and it only took 5 clumps to cover 100 sq ft. It's been three weeks and they just looked the same. Maybe they are regrowing some roots and will then go dormant for the winter. I also potted one big clump to bring indoors so I can harvest fresh leaves throughout the winter.

Good to know it's working. One difference in my jar is that the skins are on, where plenty of lactobacteria dwell on. Leaves of soil grown brassicas have healthy colonies of beneficial microbes too, so they lacto ferment spontaneously without any starter (just salt added to keep kahm yeast down). Maybe your cabbage leaves are from hydroponic farms and have lower LAB to kick start the fermentation? Do you still have some fresh leaves of rutabaga? Try those as if making sauerkraut and use them to kick start future pickling.