Beautiful flowering on the crabapple! I do worry that an out-of-season flowering will really sap the vitality of the tree or make it more susceptible to infection. This is the third year that my apples have had a fall flowering. And this year I had two - one just after harvest on both my Gravenstein and Cinnamon Spice - and one just a couple of weeks ago on the Grav. I've been pulling the blossoms off, even though I'm pretty sure the trees couldn't set fruit this time of year. Fortunately only the apples seem to be affected. But all our trees, including stone fruits, are very slow to lose their leaves, which makes me worry about mildew and fungi. I'll cross my fingers and keep the neem spray ready.

Nothing beats peat for potting up carnivorous plants and planting blueberries. I prefer coir's moisure-retaining properties, as it forms a nice crust on top that keeps the moisture at soil level. And we use it to keep the moisture level of our worm bin perfect. We humans eat a whole lot of coconuts - milk, meat and juice. We'll continue to have a lot of coir as a byproduct, so it's a good thing we are using it.