Thanks for keeping up with the blog. I LOVE it and always rely on it every time I need advice. You awesome! I do have a question for you and I’d really love your input.   Q. You have covered on one of your post about nematodes. Last fall, I pulled one of my cucumber plants. There were 4 plants in a row. One of the plants definitely had strange roots which I am almost positive were caused by root knot nematodes. I didn’t do any solarization because it was cold during the time and I have read that it is best to do it during the hottest months. Are these nematodes harmful to humans and my dog? Will it give me a disease or a worm if I touched the soil? You have covered that the only other way to fix this completely is through fumigation–which I can’t really do since I only do organic gardening. Can I at least plant any other vegetables in the same raised bed, or will it cause me any ill effects after I eat the fruit/veggies that it bears? I was also thinking of maybe removing the soil from the raised bed and move them to the big pots where I will be planting citrus plants. Then I will replace the raised bed with new soil. Would this work well or will it just cause problems to my citrus plants? I’d love your input. THANK YOU SO MUCH, Bob! I appreciate your the you are taking to read this. A. Nematodes are very tough to impossible to get rid of if you have them. I should say they are basically impossible to get rid of. Be careful and do not move soil from this spot to other areas or you will move the nematodes as well. Root knot nematode on tomato   Nematodes only infest plants, not animals so all animals are safe around these guys. Soil solarization will help knock back the populations but not get rid of them. There are some products like Clandosan (a naturalproduct) which are supposed to help but I would not be too optimistic. Even with fumigation it does not get rid of them buy just knocks them back. Root knot nematode on mulberry roots Use vegetables that are nematode resistant and fruit trees on rootstocks that resist nematodes. On vegetables they will have the designation “N” below the name somewhere. Other letters might also appear like “V” “F” and the like which just stands for resistant to other pest problems like verticillium (V) and Fusarium (F), two prominent disease problems. Nematode resistant rootstocks for fruit trees include Nemaguard, Citation, Viking, Atlas, Myrobalan, and Marianna. Hope this helps.

Q. I cant get my bermudagrass to look good, like the golf courses do. I think one of my problems has be mowing too low, believing it would still green up if I did that. I dont overseed it for a winter lawn. I just let it turn brown. Over the last two weeks I’ve raised the height and fertilized. Looking much better, but probably need another week for it all to get up to the same height. I’m getting small patches of darker green wider leafs, presumably poa.  Probably little I can do to stop the poa.   A. Depending on the bermudagrass it could be mowed up to one inch tall. However most bermudagrass would like to be at about 1/2 inch in height. Lower than this is for the professionals in my opinion and requires very frequent mowing to look good. The lower you mow, the more often  you have to mow to look good. When you have a thatch problem, mowing low will make it look worse. You really have to address the thatch problem this fall. If you don’t overseed, the best time to do it would be in late summer (August) so that the grass has time to mend before winter sets in. After dethatching, fertilize and water heavily to speed up the repair process. Poa will leave dark green spots when it invades bermudagrass like it has in the right side of this picture. It grows more upright than bermuda, soft and usually a darker green unless the bermuda is young and succulent. There are fewer weed problems when the grass is opened up from dethatching in the fall than the spring. When you open up a lawn in the spring there are lots of spring weeds that can invade. Yes, the small dark green patches with seedheads on many of them now is Poa. Poa is tough to control. The seed is everywhere and tracks with shoes. If your bermudagrass is an improved type you can green it up more with nitrogen and iron and this way the Poa is not as noticeable. But it will always grow a bit faster and is wider bladed than the fine bladed improved bermudagrasses. Poa is a cool season grass so if you don’t overseed the Bermuda you could spray it out in December or January with Roundup when the Bermuda is dormant. The problem will be the Poa seed that is everywhere in your lawn. It WILL come back. This is a poa seedhead or inflorescence. Poa seeds heavily and can be seen as a discoloration or graininess to the poa. I was just looking again at your response to my email. One benefit of overseeding is that it helps to eliminate some of the thatch because you must dethatch the lawn sufficiently for the seed used in overseeding can make good contact with the soil for germination. May years ago common bermudagrass would be burned in the winter to get rid of the dead surface grass and in the process any thatch accumulation. It is still recommended that bermudagrass hayfields be burned for numerous reasons including thatch removal and reduction of insects and diseases. Years ago bermudagrass lawns were also burned in the rural areas. We didn’t have a thatch problem when bermudagrass was burned in the winter. Because we cannot burn dead grass any more due to local ordinances, this dead grass remains and adds to the thatch layer. We now substitute a gasoline-driven machine (called a dethatcher, vertical mower or verticutter) instead of burning the dead grass. This of course uses petroleum, adds pollutants to the air and leaves this bermudagrass thatch that we have harvested for dumping somewhere. A  tool I have used in the past is the Red Dragon propane torch to burn debris. The model with higher BTU’s will burn grass even if it is wet. This is an advantage because you can wet down the bermudagrass dead lawn and still burn it which makes it more safe to use. There are lots of advantages to burning bermudagrass thatch but local ordinances may prevent you from using it. The burning is done just before spring growth.

Q. Some of the leaves on my Thompson Seedless grapes have started to curl/cup …see attached pictures.  There is more curling on the newer leaves; the older leaves are OK and the curling is only on one side of the plant.  The Red Flame grapes planted adjacent to the Thompson Seedless grapes are OK and no sign of curling or cupping.  These 5-gallon plants that I planted 2 years ago.  All of the plants are on a dripline system and are watered three times a week, one hour each time.  Each plant has two 1-gallon drippers so each plant is receiving 6 gallons of water per week … is that sufficient?  The plants are in a raised bed approximately 18 inches deep of premium mulch/soil.  Both of the plants have several bunches of grapes and I have already pinched off the bottom 1/3 of each grape bunch.  Any advice would be appreciated. Leaf cupping on grape. Possibly from 2,4-D or a close relative, a phenoxy herbicide known for its effects on regulating growth of plants at very low concentrations but acting like a weed killer at higher doses. A. Sounds like a great job and from the looks of it your plants are thriving. Six gallons a week is a bit light in my opinion but watch the plants and they will tell you. If you are getting some good vigorous growth from six gallons then it is enough and I would not change it. Grapes are normally deep rooted plants and can have roots that go down dozens of feet. In our landscapes this doesn’t make much sense to water deeply to accommodate roots like this so your raised bed sounds like a good depth for the plants. You are watering only to a depth of maybe 18 inches or so, so watering three times a week right now on grapes with this rooting depth makes sense to me. After grape harvest, you could cut back on the frequency of your application (times per week) if you want to but it is not necessary. But you need to maintain good soil moisture during and up to fruit harvest. It sounds like you are doing everything right. We do have two types of grape thinning; one is removing grape bunches that are too small and spacing bunches so they are not too close together (8 to 10 inches apart) AND reducing the bunch by pinching off the bottom third of the bunch. This is done as early in bunch formation as possible. You didn’t mention any pest control such as grape leaf skeletonizer, leafhopper or hornworm control so I guess you haven’t seen any. There is a fourth pest of grapes we see sometimes but not very often and that is the fleabeetle. They are small, dark blue/black rather round looking insects that chew holes in the leaves. They are usually not that devastating so we just ignore them but once in a while they can cause considerable leaf damage in the spring and fall. Now regarding the leaf cupping. Leaf cupping has to occur on developing (young) leaves since the cupping results from leaf growth in the center of the leaf while the leaf edges either don’t grow as fast or are damaged so don’t grow at all. There are three primary reasons leaf cupping can occur. First is damage from a chemical growth regulator that drifted on to your vines. Thompson seedless from reader next to affected grapes but no signs of damage. Grapes can be quite sensitive to these chemicals. One common growth regulator used by homeowners for lawn weed control is 2,4-D and sister compounds that are also growth regulators. Commonly these chemicals are used to control dandelions and other “broadleaf weeds” in lawns. If this chemical were applied to a nearby lawn (could even be 100 yards away) and there was a wind that blew this chemical from the lawn to your grape vine then that would explain the cupping. This type of damage is usually not deadly but just causes leaf distortion. The leaves are not just distorted but weirdly distorted. The leaves will not un-distort or grow back normally. They will be like that until leaf fall. The fruit is safe to eat. A second possibility are insects that cause plant leaf cupping when they are feeding. The most common insects that do these sorts of things are aphids. The feeding of aphids on plant leaves that are still growing can cause the leaves to cup downward (this is called epinasty in horticultural terms). It is thought that this type of plant reaction to the feeding of aphids is a protection for these insects from predators. Aphids of course secrete honeydew, a sugary substance made from the plant juices they suck, which attracts ants. The ants in turn use the honeydew as a food source and help protect the aphids from predators in exchange for “harvesting” the honeydew. Aphids are not common on grapes. Aphids feeding on new growth of plum causing the cupping of the leaves due to their feeding on expanding new growth. Aphids are also covering the stems. This leaves the third possibility and the one I am leaning towards. If the leaves were just coming out and expanding and if there was suddenly a very hot wind OR it got hot quickly and the grapes were tender enough to get some damage to the leaf edges then this would explain the cupping. The leaf edge would dry out from high temperatures or a hot wind and dessicate or dry out. The damaged leaf edge would not be able to grow or grow slowly. The rest of the leaf would be unaffected and would expand or grow. The growth of the center of the leaf while the leaf edge remained unable to grow or grow as fast would begin to cup. The cupping would be worse as it grew more. And of course this would happen only to young

Cathy and Bill think they have the largest ocotillo in Las Vegas. Does anyone want to challenge them? It is about 22 feet tall. Keep your eye on this posting. I will update it as I learn more. They sent me a picure of its base.