Mulch. My mother tried to get me to eat this when I was still under her wing in the kitchen. Yuck.

You can, but first you have to turn the item into compost.

Here they like my green beans and small kale more than anything, but deer and groundhogs eat everything, the crows seem to like the little pepper and tomato plants. I have "invested" in old milk crates, I buy them at the local on line auction and will not pay more than $2 each. I have over 100 now and when I put a small plant in the ground I plop a milk crate over top. The light, water and air can get through and the plants grow until they no longer fit. I remove the crates and stack them in the barn until next year. Things like rows of corn and green beans are on their own, although I have had some success with that "liquid fence" stuff, the granules.

The crates stack nicely and are sturdy so if I do too much canning I can get 9 quarts of whatever in one crate and I can stack them up in my back room, overflow pantry storage, LOL. If you want what's on the bottom of the stack, though, that can take some work.

Annie

Oh man, now I'm impatient. I got about a dozen Stanley plums last year, my first harvest. I have two Montmorency cherry trees that bear a prodigious amount of cherries, but they have been here for 20 years or so. I planted a Ebony Pearl and an Emperor Francis in 2020 and last year the Emperor bloomed but not the Ebony, so no pollination and no fruit. This year we are just now getting leaves, but I'm hopeful. I have two Delicious apple trees and a Wolf River that are prolific most years and two peach trees of unknown variety that my Dad planted. They took 17 years to bear, but the last two years they've done well. An odd variety, though, they are clingstones and don't ripen until late September. They bloom late, which is good here, because they sometimes excape the late frost that can get in early May. Temperatures here today are a high of 39F and a low of 31F, so I'm happy nothing is in bloom!

Annie

Lovely story, Olychick. Thanks for the link.

It took a long time for the US to accept the concept of Hospice. I think it only blossomed once hospital conglomerates embraced it, making it financially viable. It wasn't available when my DM was dying of leukemia in 1978. I remember donating to an early hospice in Chicago that accepted patients dying of AIDS -- whenever that was. Americans can be so slow to adopt anything Not Invented Here.

Not much Produce this year, but lots of Hummingbirds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8dlEg5v17k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am8YQPSt55Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8552fk97FP4