I know most people dont sharpen, adjust or sanitize their equipment but plants are alive. You are cutting into living tissue. Would you like it if your doctor didn’t have sharp or didn’t sanitize his/her equipment? You are now a plant surgeon. Sharpen, adjust and sanitize your equipment before pruning. If a plant is obviously diseased, sanitize before moving to the next plant. Do these three steps at the beginning of each new day pruning. Pruners should be the bypass-type, not the anvil-type. Bypass pruners cut by passing the sharpened flat blade past a bar. The other type, called an anvil pruning shears, is not preferred. An anvil type pruner cuts by pushing a sharp blade through a stem by pushing against the opposite side of the stem with a bar. The anvil type is not prefereed by reasoning that this pushing of the bar against the stem damages the stem where it is being cut. Hand shears and loppers. Recommended brand names include Corona, Felco and Fiskars. Sharpen. Sharpen one side of the blade only (the beveled side) holding the stone at a consistent angle and running it along the beveled edge as you slide it across the bevel. If you are not comfortable using a stone then you might consider something like an Accusharp Gardensharp tool designed for pruning shears. These can be purchased for $10 or less and are much easier to use. Make sure you buy one for garden shears NOT the one for scissors or it will ruin your pruner’s blade. It sharpens only ONE side of the blade unlike the one for scissors which sharpens BOTH sides of the blade. http://www.accusharp.com/products/index.html  If you are doing alot of trees you might have to stop and “put an edge” on the blade (just a two or three slides across the blade). Adjustment and Lubricate. An adjustment nut that holds the pruners together is tightened or loosened to allow for easy opening and closing of the shears and lopper. Too loose and the shears or loppers tears the branch. Too tight and it creates early fatigue of the person pruning. Use a wrench to tighten the bolt until the blades move with some very slight resistance. You may need to tighten this nut a few times during the course of a day’s work so carry the wrench with you. Sanitize. Alcohol is sprayed or wiped on the cutting blades of the hand shears and lopper. You can use bleach but be sure to oil the equipment after its use or it will corrode the metal. I sometimes just use alcohol in spray bottle. A chef friend had no alcohol when we were pruning his fruit trees so he used Absolut vodka. Now you are ready to prune.

Pruning Cuts. There are only two types of pruning cuts; thinning cuts and heading cuts. Thinning cuts are made where two branches or sems come together. No stub is left after the cut is made. Thinning cuts are made anywhere where two branches come together. The thinning cut totally removes one of the branches without leaving a stub. Thinning cuts result in a less dense canopy and less regrowth since terminal buds of the remaining stems remain after the cuts. New growth easily grows from the remaining terminal buds which helps minimize growth from side or lateral buds. Heading cut – removal somewhere along the stem just above a bud Heading cuts are made anywhere along a branch NOT at a location where two branches come together. Heading cuts result in several new branches at buds growing immediately below the cut since the terminal bud is removed. Heading cuts are used to shorten the past season’s growth to increase a branches girth. Heading cuts encourage the development of short shoots that support fruit called spurs in fruit trees that grow fruit on spurs. If you do not cut back too severely and you make the cuts at the right time of year (around July or August) you may be able to get spur producing fruit trees to produce fruit a year or so earlier. This growth resulted from a heading cut. Once the terminal bud was removed the side or lateral buds grew to replace it, fighting to see which might take over and dominate the new growth. The buds closest to the cut usually grow more erect (more straight up) than buds lower than this one. The lower buds tend to not grow as erect as the one closest to the removed terminal bud (the cut). 45 degree angles above horizontal are the best angles for fruit production. Here limb spreaders are used to push the limbs into a 45 degree angle. The most productive branches for fruit growth and development are at 45 degree angles above horizontal and should be preserved whenever possible. Branches are less productive as they are grow more vertically (more upright or downward). By the way, a branch that is at a 45 degree angle can be directed to be more upright and its growth will actually speed up (at the expense of fruit production, the energy goes to growth rather than fruit) and branches directed to be more horizontal will have slower growth (you can actually slow down its growth but it will still not put its energy into fruit production).

Here is a publication which is also posted at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension website on vegetable gardening in the Moapa Valley. The Moapa Valley is located about 60 miles outside of the Las Vegas Valley, on the eastern edge of the Mojave Desert, with a very similar climate to the Las Vegas Valley. Planting dates will be similar but the soils of the Moapa Valley are typically much better than those in the Las Vegas Valley. Open publication – Free publishing – More desert Here is the planting calendar that I pulled out of the publication so that you can use it without having to open the publication. Open publication – Free publishing – More calendar

Roses do well in the cool times of our hot desert Mojave Desert climate. They struggle during the heat but rebound nicely in the spring and fall months, about 7 to 8 months of the year. The lack of humidity and relative isolation helps keep insect and disease problems low. Here is a recommended list of roses from Weeks Roses, Inc., a top quality producer of garden roses. Open publication – Free publishing – More care

This is a presentation I made to the South Valley Rose Society in Las Vegas, NV, on November 17, 2011. Open publication – Free publishing – More control

Q. My tree is 30’x 25′ and it is in a lawn area. We follow the SNWA guidelines for watering our lawn. Very little die back has occurred on this tree, and the only fertilizer it gets is what it steals from the lawn. Tree dieback after the lawn was removed and rock landscaping replaced the lawn. A. Watering enough for a lawn is not enough for a tree planted in the lawn if you are not overwatering the lawn. Watering a lawn is enough for the lawn only if you are watering it correctly.             When you put a large tree on it then you must deep water the tree as well as water the lawn. Different types of trees require more or less water than others. Tree water use is dictated by the size of the tree and the type of tree. Size is most critical. The only time trees do well in lawns is when the lawn is overwatered. The reason trees did well in lawns in the previous years is because lawns were overwatered. New growth is often a different color from the older growth             As the price of water has gone up, people have chosen to conserve more and follow lawn watering guides more closely. This has caused some trees to be underwatered even though they are in lawns.             Lawns are big fertilizer hogs, particularly nitrogen. If you apply fertilizer to the lawn then the lawn is what is going to get the fertilizer due to its extensive fibrous root system. Trees should be fertilized separately from the lawn with applications in the rootzone, just below the rootzone of the lawn so that the lawn does not burn.             You can judge if the tree is growing enough by looking at its new growth this past year. It will be a different color than the older wood. Or you can see where the previous year’s growth stopped. On a tree that size you should get 12 or more inches of new growth each year. If not, then something is wrong. It might be a lack of water or lack of fertilizer or both. Modesto ash decline             I don’t know the type of tree you have but make sure you do not have Modesto ash decline if the tree is Modesto ash. I sent to you a picture of Modesto ash decline and have posted it on my blog. It is common here but does not hit every Modesto ash. I have been working with this problem for over 25 years with other professionals and no one has been able to determine its cause. This is why I no longer recommend this particular ash tree.

Q. I know that this is not the time of year to fertilize plants, but I have a few questions regarding that subject now that it is on my mind. Do you have any suggestions for good way to apply fertilizer to plants that are in rock mulch? It’s somewhat of a hassle to move the rock from around the plants, apply granular fertilizer, work it into the soil, and then replace the rock. I’ve used Miracle-Gro for foliar feeding, but they recommend that you feed the plants every 7 – 14 days. Is there another liquid option that only needs to be applied once or twice a season? A. Let’s cover a few options that you can use to fertilize plants in rock mulch.             The liquid drench method. You can take a fertilizer which is soluble in water and dissolve it in a bucket of water and apply it to the root area where it is irrigated. This works very well with iron products that should be applied to the soil provided the product dissolves or is suspended in water.             The dry fertilizer drench. Apply a dry fertilizer to the rock mulch between the plant and its source of water. Take a hose with a nozzle and wash it into the mulch. Make sure the fertilizer is not applied too close to the plant or the fertilizer might damage or even kill a plant. One type of fertilizer stake with a plastic cap for driving the stake into the wet ground with a hammer.             The fertilizer stake method. Take a fertilizer stakes and either push them or hammer them into the soil after an irrigation and in the area close to the source of water. Of course you will use the plastic cap that comes with the stakes when you hammer them into the soil.             Foliar applications of fertilizer. This works quite well but as you mentioned it is short-lived compared to a soil application. Make sure you use a wetting agent with the foliar spray.             Install a fertilizer injector. These can be very pricey. Remember that with an injector the fertilizer is applied in proportion to the amount of water that is given to a plant. Those plants which receive more water, receive more fertilizer. It is important to have an irrigation system which applies to water correctly if this is to work well.

Q. We have a pomegranate tree which grows fruit but not to the size of those that sell in stores or larger, they are very small.  This tree is growing on a slight hill and gets watered for about 20 to 30 minutes a day, plus my wife gives it an additional 2 gallons of water almost every day during the summer months.  What can I do to get larger fruit and more of it? A. Increasing the size of your pomegranatefruits is more about pruning, watering and fertilizing than anything else.  Larger fruit will be produced on older wood so pruning a pomegranate to be more like a tree than a shrub will help.              During fruit formation it is very important to make sure pomegranate receives adequate water.  Water shortages during fruit development will result in smaller fruit at maturity or split fruit before the fruit matures.  Irrigations should not be daily but they should be applied in larger quantities but less often. One fruit has already formed. The flowers arising from the same point of attachment are removed to cause the remaining fruit to get larger.             Fertilize pomegranates lightly or in moderate amounts in February.  More fertilizer does not translate to more fruit or larger fruit.  But adequate amounts of fertilizer will.  Mulching with organic mulch around the tree will help. We do some thinning of the trees when the fruits are about the size of walnuts. The only thinning done is when the fruits are arising from the same point of attachment. Then they are thinned to just one fruit. This has to be done all through the flower and fruit development period and not just thinning once but several times.