Corymbia citriodora is supposed to work very well for repelling mosquitos. In my experience, it does nothing whatsoever, but I’ve also never seen a healthy tree, so your experience may be different.

Thanks! There’s still way too much grass for my taste, but it’s getting more lovely all the time. More durian would be nice.

Plenty of rain lately, so almost everything is growing a lot. Some of the jackfruits that I planted last year are still struggling, but most of them had some root damage during transplant, so I’m not surprised. Some of the new engkalas are really taking off now, despite everything in the world trying to kill them. I recently direct-seeded some Flemingia macrophylla as an alley crop in one area, but it hasn’t come up yet… I’m mainly doing maintenance this month: pruning some bigger trees, removing all of the little guavas that sprout up, and planting more pinto peanut. The grass is growing back in many areas, but I’ll keep chopping it down and uprooting it in front of the pinto peanut so that that can take over.

Edit: I smell a ripe jackfruit. I guess I’ll be eating that today.

Experiences like that are worth remembering. :)

Never heard of those dogwood fruits, but sounds like something that I would eat if I ever found it growing. Cool that you were able to educate those folks!

I’d be interested to know how they turn out!

All solid choices by the sound of it. I’ll need to read up on loquat some more.

How fortunate that you experienced an abundance of fruit at an early age!

And the tree doesn’t get too big and out of control?

Good to know. Different plants probably have different sensitivities to it also.

Ah. I didn’t want to assume anything about your level of knowledge/experience. Apple trees and most nut trees can take a long time regardless, so time will tell how they perform…

Just so you know, being planted near black walnut trees also makes things grow slower. But yeah, I imagine that Maine would depress just about any tree…

Diversification is key to any successful investment strategy.

Depending on the GPU model, it is possible to use an AMD GPU without installing non-free drivers or firmware, though the designs are not actually copyleft and so not fully libre in this sense. Every AMD CPU since 2013 comes with the Platform Security Processor (PSP) which is a hardware backdoor, so choosing a modern AMD CPU is ill-advised regardless of whether you want a fully libre hardware configuration.

On the CPU side, the most libre options are probably RISC-V CPUs. I don’t know if the Sophon SG2042 is fully free, but that might be one example. (Note, however, that its Xuantie C920 cores are vulnerable to GhostWrite.) On the dedicated GPU side, I’m less familiar with the options. You’d be more likely to find a libre system-on-a-chip (SoC) that pairs RISC-V CPU cores with some sort of integrated GPU. Someone else might be able to provide real-world examples. (I’m not looking to invest in new hardware any time soon, so I haven’t researched the latest and greatest.)

My understanding, without looking up any definition, is that libre hardware is freely licenced, meaning that anyone is free to manufacture the original design or a modified version or hack the hardware to meet their needs; and libre hardware is designed to work with 100% libre software, right down to the firmware and drivers and BIOS.

Nothing using a CPU from Intel or AMD could meet this definition, but RISC-V and OpenPOWER are more promising.

You don’t. Bamboo is not your friend. Bamboo is not anyone’s friend.

Kill it before it can escape and consume everything that you hold dear. Fire helps. Dynamite is better.

put out a sucker below the graft

We tell the trees to grow, and they do grow, but just to spite us. (That’s called “malicious compliance.”)

(non-native) purslane species

I don’t think that it matters at this point. Native or not, it really is a useful plant, not only for the garden, but also for those sidewalk cracks where nothing else seems to grow.

I’d be worried about runoff.

You’d only need to prevent the water from spreading it around until it breaks down. If you compost it on a small raised platform with a roof over it, you shouldn’t have much issue. For any minor spillage, you can plant something around the compost platform to absorb it. Once the compost breaks down, runoff would be a concern only due to the loss of hard-earned nutrients, which you could also reduce with vegetation and mulch.

I’d also like to do some cover crops and chop-and-drop this fall for mulch.

I’ve heard that buckwheat can work as a winter cover crop, though I’ve never actually seen it done. Do you have any Acer negundo popping up? That would probably be choppable and droppable, though more suitable as mulch for the fruit trees than the garden beds. If you have any Elaeagnus umbellata in your area, you could cut it down for woody mulch as well, but I don’t recommend planting it. For mulching the garden beds, some large herbaceous plant probably makes more sense, but I don’t know the cold-climate equivalent of banana, and the closest things to Tithonia diversifolia probably wouldn’t grow back very well. I do NOT recommend grass.

As an honourable mention… Robinia pseudoacacia is another potential source of woody mulch, but it’s probably the nuclear option. I don’t know if there are any cow pastures or old copper mines near you, but if so, then this could probably reforest them if you let it grow up to produce seeds. The neighbour’s lawn wouldn’t stand a chance. If it isn’t already growing in your area, exercise extreme caution. This plant is not a toy.

Good doggies. Now plant trees.

Kill it before it can reproduce.