Xtremehorticulture of the Desert reached a milestone over the past month with over 33,000 visitors in one month. Visitors are from all over the world but dominated by the United States, followed by Russia and the Ukraine, France, Canada, Australia, India and China.
Xtremehorticulture Reaches Over 30,000 Visitors a Month Read More »
Q. I enjoy reading your gardening articles in the RJ. I liked the one about the Butternut Squash as I had planted one in early April and did not record the planting date. I have one squash almost 10 inches long that looks as if it might be ready to harvest, while there are two other smaller ones. I call the vine as a “Monster” as it has taken over my raised bed planter. How long should I wait before harvesting the larger squash? Butternut squash ready to harvest A. When to harvest really depends on what you are going to do with it. If you plan to eat it soon after you pick than just wait until the squash is a dark tan color, cut it or separated from the vine, prepare it and eat it. If you plan on keeping it in storage for a while before you eat it then I would wait until it is a dark tan and check the hardness of the skin before you harvest it. Butternut squash at an expo in Zimbabwe. It looks like the seed was saved because of all the different shapes and sizes You can do this with your thumbnail. If the skin is really hard and difficult to puncture with your thumbnail than it is ready to harvest. Immature squash will have a softer skin that is easier to penetrate with your thumbnail. Also, it won’t be a dark tan color. If you plan on keeping it for a while, cut it from the vine with a pruning shears leaving about two or 3 inches of vine still attached to the squash. Harvesting it so that the vine slips from the squash leaves openings in the squash and it will not keep as long. It will store at room temperature for a couple of months if the skin hasn’t been damaged and the vine is still attached.
Harvesting Butternut Squash Read More »
Q. I wrote you about my Meyer lemon tree back in early spring. I water 3 times a week plus give extra water during extreme heat. It doesn’t seem to be growing at all. In the spring there were some flowers. I put fertilizer and composted new dirt. Any thoughts. Your help is appreciated. A. I looked at your pictures and I think I get it. You have a bubbler, probably 1 gallon per minute. So you flood the area where the lemon tree is. I could not figure out what mulch is on the soil surface. It looks like colorized wood chips. It was hard to tell the condition of your soil. It certainly is not performing very well. So here goes. From the sound of it, it sounds like you’re giving it plenty of water. When you have bubblers it’s best to construct the basin around the tree. Those types of bubblers release water so fast it can go everywhere and not penetrate the soil very well. Secondly, from the look of other plants in the picture I don’t think the organic matter content of the soil is high enough. So this is what I would do. I would buy some decent compost and start adding it to these areas. I do some consulting for Viragrow in North Las Vegas. They have the best compost in Las Vegas in my opinion. I would buy four or five bags of their compost. They are one cubic foot bag’s and they will cost you about $2.50 a bag. I would apply the compost to the soil around fruit trees and gently start mixing it into the soil surface. Then construct some basins around the trees to collect the water from the bubblers. Put compost around the tree but not touching the trunk Next, I would cover the soil around the fruit trees with 3 to 4 inches of wood chips. You can get the wood chips free from the University Orchard in North Las Vegas. It is located 100 yards east of the intersection of North Decatur and Horse Drive. You can get it any Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday morning for free. The compost should improve the soil if you lightly scratch it into the soil surface. If this were the winter time you could scratch it in deeper but during this heat I would be a bit careful. Wood chip mulch at the base of fruit trees I think the problem is a lack of soil aeration because the organic matter content is too low. You will add organic matter to the soil by incorporating compost and covering the soil with organic wood mulch. You will not see an improvement over night. But you should see a flush of new growth after you do all of this in two or three weeks. Let me know how it goes.
Poor Growth on Meyer Lemon Read More »
Q. This is a picture of the worms we find on our PaloVerde tree in the back yard. We would like to get rid of them but do not know how. Is there something besides spraying the whole tree which is huge, a systemic maybe, that would do the trick and not kill the tree. They make a mess of the sidewalk and other stuff under the tree. Any help would be appreciated. A. These critters have been reported elsewhere in the desert Southwest. Must be because of our wet spring weather. They should disappear in a matter of a week or two or less. It is a larva or caterpillar of a moth. I am not sure which one. Some caterpillars fold or roll leaves together with silk to form shelters. Others feed on leaves beneath a canopy of silk, sometimes creating “nests” in foliage, and others devour entire leaves along with stems. Your tree can get a lot of damage from these critters and still be fine. If there is enough of them you should see a lot of their poop on the ground because they eat a lot, voraciously, before they pupate and begin the change into a moth. You can spray with an organic pesticide such as BT or Spinosad but as far along as they are I think it’s a waste of money. Even if they defoliate the tree it will relief again and come back out. Relax and have a glass of lemonade but don’t put your lemonade under the tree.
Worms in Palo Verde Read More »
Q.I found this at the base of my plant. What is it? A. This looks like crown gall. Not a big problem. It is a cancer like growth that is woody caused by a bacterium which lives in the soil, Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Note the second name resembles the word “tumor” because it produces a tumor like growth. Just clip it out (with a sanitized pruning shears) and don’t worry about it. Somehow the bacterium was transferred from the soil to the stem when it was cut. Most likely the pruning shears was laid on the soil and got dirty and was not sanitized before it was used to cut the branch.
Cancer like Growth on Tree Is Crown Gall Read More »
Viragrow Delivers! : Mulch and Sprays Reduce Black Fruit Rot on Tomato: Q. I planted tomatoes in late feb. in my raised boxes..The cherry tomatoes have been doing great.. producing almost more then I can handl… I also address this on some previous posts. http://xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com/2014/05/tomatoes-with-black-bottoms-now-being.html http://xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com/2014/06/pepper-brown-spots-could-be-irrigation.html http://xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com/2011/06/container-grown-tomato-black-bottoms.html
Viragrow Delivers! : Mulch and Sprays Reduce Black Fruit Rot on Tomato Read More »
Q. I put four African sumac trees in our backyard last September. I am watering them now every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for 20 minutes. About two weeks ago the leaves turned brown and fell off. If this continues will the tree lose all its leaves? A. You can be watering newly planted trees and they can be suffering from drought at the same time. Container and boxed trees are grown in soils that are totally different from the soils in the landscape. Container soils are looser and lighter than landscape soils. When these trees are planted, the soil is pushed in around the root ball and, if you are lucky, the plants are watered in twice with a hose. A basin is placed around the trees so they can be given additional water until they are established. Irrigation emitters are sometimes placed too far from the trunk and the water from the emitters wets the landscape soil but it does not move into the root ball because the soils are totally different from each other. How to correct this? Always, always, always water newly planted trees and shrubs with water from a hose directed on top of the soil and at the base of the tree. Never, never, never rely on an irrigation system by itself to deliver the water where it is needed after an installation. Hand water with a hose twice a week. Supplement the water from the hose with your irrigation system on the same days you water by hand. Select your irrigation days and give the plants a rest (no applied water) for one or two days between irrigations.
Water Every Day and Still Not Enough Read More »
Our spring this year was cool and wet. Even our early summer was that way. This kind of weather was good for producing a lot of tomatoes but not necessarily for high-quality tree fruits. Early apricots and even some peaches can be harvested in mid to late May in our climate. The best early-season fruit bright, sunny skies and warm temperatures. This year our skies were overcast and temperatures were cool all the way into May. Earlitreat peach, one of the earliest peaches, can be harvested in mid-May in the Las Vegas area. This is even before most apricots are ready. On a five star scale, this is a four-star peach. Temperatures below 95° F are great for setting tomato fruit but not necessarily the best when it comes to producing high quality tree fruit. The taste of fruits is complex. It isn’t just about sugar content. Devices like refractometer Refractometers measure total soluble solids which is a “reflection” of sugar content. But sugar content may not tell you anything about quality. s only measure total soluble solids which can be equated with sugar content. Sugars only provide sweetness. We need other tastes to provide a good flavor profile to fruit. Flavor begins with a balance between sugars and acids that we find favorable.This includes a mixture of organic acids such as acetic, tartaric and malic acids to balance flavor and aromatic volatiles that provide that first whiff of the fruit even before it enters our mouth. This is Indian blood peach which has a wonderful floral taste and aroma when grown in our desert climate and allowed to tree ripene. It has been around for a long time and is implanted much anymore.Most people pick it too soon and you do not get all of those floral notes. Cool temperatures and cloudy skies do not promote good sugar development. Under these conditions sugar content stays lower than normal and the acid content remains high. So the ratio of acids to sugars is not the best. When we have bright, sunny skies and warm to high temperatures then sugar content is boosted and the ratio of sugar to acids becomes delicious. The only other thing we need to make this a perfect fruit is to allow it to mature so that those volatiles fill our noses. This is why when I shop for fruit I use my nose before I buy it. You can smell good fruit before you taste it. Ask any fruit loving bird.
Why Apricots and Early Peaches Were Bland This Spring Read More »
Some thin barked trees and shrubs will get sunburned if they don’t have enough protection from strong sunlight. This reddish-brown discoloration is sunburn. In the first stage of sunburn we see the beginning of death onsides exposed to the South and West Plants that typically get sunburn include many of our fruit trees, mostly peach and apples. Ornamental trees and shrubs also get sunburn. I get a lot of pictures of sunburn sent to me with sunburn and include Japanese blueberry, locust trees, ash trees, Indian Hawthorn, and others. This is the trunk of an ash tree on its west side. It first got sunburn. After sunburn the borers attacked it. What you see now is loose bark covering dead wood killed by borers. You can take your fingers and just pull this bark off of the trunk easily. You should do it anyway. You will not hurt anything. That site is already dead. The tree is still alive because the trunk is alive on the other side of the tree. The natural way to protect these plants from sunburn is to allow these plants to shade their own trunks and stems with leaves. Not providing enough water can thin out the canopy of trees and shrubs and encourages sunburn. When you pull this bark away from the trunk you will see oval-shaped holes in the wood. These are exit holes of the bores. Removing the bark also removes hiding places and birds have a better chance picking them off when they emerge. Having rock mulch around plants that do not like rock mulch also reduces the number of leaves and increases the chance of sunburn. Plants that do not like rock mulch, like the ones I mentioned above, will develop an open canopy, leaf loss, and sunburn. This is sunburn on a bottle tree. The leaves drop from the canopy and expose the trunk and limbs. High sunlight intensity causes sunburn once the leaves are gone What’s the problem with sunburn? When we get sunburn we recover. When plants get sunburn, particularly in a desert climate, they frequently decline and die. Attack by boring insects, or borers, is the first phase after sunburn. The borers create more damage and more leaf loss and more sunburn. After that, the plant falls into a death spiral. Sunburn caused the top of this Japanese blueberry to die. Then the top had to be removed and it was pretty ugly. Japanese blueberry should not be in rock mulch. They should have wood chips around them. Use surface mulches particularly wood chips and not bark. Don’t water trees and shrubs daily but water them two or three times each week during the heat of the summer. Reduce the number of times per week during the cooler months. When you do water, give them adequate amounts so that the soil is wet to at least 12 inches and preferably 18 inches.
Prevent Plant Sunburn with Adequate Water and Wood Mulch Read More »
Q. How often and how many minutes of water should I give my pine tree? A. Regarding your pine tree, it will do best if you can give the tree lots of water all at once very slowly and then hold off on your watering.To do this, it is sometimes best to construct a basin around the trunk 2 to 3 feet wide to hold the water. When I pine tree looks sparse and not fall it is usually because of a lack of water. Add water to the base of the pine tree with a hose once a week during hot weather or add more drip emitters Because of how irrigation systems are designed, sometimes you can reschedule your irrigation clock and sometimes you cannot because it’s tied to other plants and their watering schedules. If you can hold off your watering to twice a week it would be better for the plant. As far as the number of minutes goes, I don’t know. Trees drink gallons of water, they don’t drink in minutes. If you feel like the trees are not getting enough water then I would not increase the number of minutes. I would increase the number of drip emitters or, if you are not using drip emitters, increase the number of places that deliver water so that the tree receives more water during each irrigation.
Pine Trees Need More Water in the Summer Read More »