Q. I am on the Board of Directors of a local HOA and we need to replace our plum and pear trees. We have lots of wind. Our landscaping company recommends a pistachio tree to replace the ornamental pear. Will that do well planted in the strips along our entrance and throughout the community? Pistache like this ‘Red Push’ is a good mesic tree for HOAs with two story homes. A. The Chinese pistache is a good choice in the desert as a general landscape tree, street, or lawn tree. The pluses: It has fewer problems than the pear tree and uses about the same amount of water. It handles wind better than pear or plum trees. Chinese Pistache Negatives             The negatives are possibly its size and water use. Chinese pistache is not a big tree and it’s not a small tree. It’s in between. It is mesic in water use, grows to about 30 feet in height and the same size in width. Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t use as much water as the large Mulberry with its big leaves and fast growth. Chinese pistache has great fall color but it is not a “small tree” suitable for single story homes. Remember, big trees use more water than small trees. Single Story Homes Should Use Small Trees             In terms of its size, it is best suited for a subdivision that includes two story homes. If your HOA has all single-story homes, then consider smaller mature trees in the 20-foot “at maturity” height range. Smaller trees growing among smaller homes is visually more appealing. Smaller mesic trees use less water than medium-sized mesic trees when mature. Smaller xeric trees use even less water when irrigated less often! These trees were small when they were planted but now are out of scale with the single story home. Grow a Mixture of Trees             A word of caution when you are selecting replacement trees. Select a mixture of different kinds of trees in a community landscape. Having a mixture of trees reduces potential costly  outbreaks of diseases or insect pests that could sweep through a community of identical trees in the future. Losses from tree diseases like ash decline can be minimized with a diversity of trees grown in an HOA.             If you are having trouble selecting a plant, look online at the plant database found at SNWA. Cross reference your selection with Arizona State University’s plant database in Tempe Arizona. Select important trees used in your landscape that survive a low winter temperature of 20° F. Use a minimum temperature of 25° F for plants that you can afford to lose every few years.

U.S. and Japan Expand Organic Trade Opportunities Livestock Added to Arrangement Effective July 16, 2020, the U.S.-Japan organic trade arrangement adds livestock to the list of products that may certified to either country’s organic standards for sale as organic in both markets. “Opening new markets for America’s organic farmers and ranchers continues to be a priority for USDA,” said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Marketing and Regulatory Programs Under Secretary Greg Ibach. “Japan is already one of the top export markets for U.S. organic products. This agreement opens additional opportunities for everyone involved in the international supply chain for livestock, from farm to table.” “Japan is a key international partner in the organic market sector,” said U.S. Trade Representative Chief Agricultural Negotiator Gregg Doud. “This expanded arrangement protects and increases access for American organic farmers, ranchers, and businesses to the third largest U.S. organic export market.” Equivalency arrangements reduce required certification costs, fees, inspections and paperwork for American organic farmers, ranchers, and businesses across the supply chain. See the Japan International Trade Policies web page and the USDA press release for details. Organic Integrity from Farm to Table. Consumers Trust the Organic Label. Organic Insider Archive

Q. I read that summertime is when roses “sleep” in the desert heat. The question popped into my head a few days ago, “Can I prune my roses bushes in June and let them grow and flower through the winter months?” A. I wouldn’t. Roses don’t really “sleep” or become dormant during the summer months, but they “struggle” instead with the heat and intense sunlight. Therefore, they might stop flowering and look bad. The ideal temperature for most roses is around 65F and “comfortable growth” can range as high as 82F. Temperatures higher than this range produce increasing plant stress. Don’t Prune Roses in Summer              Intense direct sunlight causes considerable damage to previously shaded stems if roses are pruned and opened up in the summer.             Allowing intense sunlight inside the plant canopy is the major reason I wouldn’t prune roses during the summer. If you were living in Seattle or San Francisco I would tell you to go ahead and prune in the summer

Q. I have 11-year-old, 4-foot tall palm trees that are in 25- or 30-gallon pots in my backyard that get direct sunlight every day. What kind of watering cycle should they be getting during the hot summer and throughout the year? Also, what kind of nutrients should I be adding to them and how often? Even though not really a palm, sago palm or cycad makes a great container plant. A. Containers will dry out faster on the south and west sides if they are in full sun. Those sides of the container are notorious for getting super hot and killing roots. Shading the container or putting the existing container in a second, but larger container, prevents that. Note: windmill palm and pygmy date palm make great container palms! Watering Plants             Always water in the morning before it gets hot. How much and how often to apply water depends on the soil in the container. Buy an inexpensive moisture meter used for monitoring houseplants to gauge when to water again. Push the tip of the moisture meter in the soil about four inches deep. Do this in three different spots so you can get an average reading. When the average reading is near 5, water again. Inexpensive moisture sensor for houseplants does a pretty good job telling you how wet or dry the soil is. Fertilizing Plants Fertilize container plants more often than plants growing in the ground. The application frequency varies from once a month to three or four times a year. The same amount is applied over the course of a year, but the amount applied each time is split into monthly or quarterly applications. The best way to judge when an application of fertilizer is needed is using leaf color and plant growth as indicators. Plants with enough fertilizer are dark green and have strong growth.   Controlling Soil Salts             When you water, a little bit should always come out the bottom of the container. This helps remove salts that might otherwise accumulate in the soil. Apply fertilizer after every 40 waterings.

Q. My Chaste tree bloomed beautifully once in early spring but nothing since. Now it just has seeds where the blooms were. Do I need to cut the spent spikes off? This is a mature vitex tree. It can grow quite large when it gets all the water and fertilizer it wants. A. Vitex blooms once in about June. Most vitex varieties have blue flowers, but some are white and some rose colored. The flowers turn to seed. The seed germinates anywhere there is water. Some think these seed pods are unsightly. If you agree, cut them off but it is not necessary. This common vitex (blue flowers) survives in rock aka desert landscapes. Planted too close to that driveway btw. Read what Dr. Chris Martin at ASU says about this tree.             Vitex isn’t considered a desert tree (xeric) but mesic instead, is small and grows very nicely in the heat of the desert if it gets water. Make sure it gets lots of water the month prior to flowering and the flowering will be spectacular. The rest of the year water as you would any other plant in your landscape. Some people dont care for how vitex looks in the winter. BTW this tree was pruned too high.

Q. I am interested in air layering my peach tree. What time of year would it be best to do air layering? Also, would it be bad to try during the hot summer? Air layering…sometimes called marcottage…is used mostly on plants that are difficult to propagate from cuttings. Here I would put this in the interior shade of the tree and not in full sun. A. Air layering, also called marcottage, is a way of growing roots on a stem while it is still attached to the mother plant. Air layering is used frequently when plants are difficult to propagate from stem cuttings. The best time to air layer plants is the same time as planting them; spring and fall months. This video on air layering is pretty good. But I would use black plastic and not aluminum foil in the desert. And remember to sanitize your knife!             You can also propagate peach and nectarine from stem cuttings. The size that works best is pencil diameter and taken during the winter months after leaf drop. These “hardwood” cuttings grow roots best if a rooting hormone is applied soon after the cutting is made and “stuck” into a propagation medium. This is an apricot rootstock (bottom) grafted on to a Blenheim apricot. The rootstock imparts some very important characteristics on to the apricot that is lost if grown from cuttings.             When propagating peach and nectarine either by air layering or stem cuttings, the important advantage of a grafted rootstock is lost. The rootstock on peach and other stone fruits can play an important role. It can control the tree’s eventual size, how soon it starts to bear fruit, resistance to some diseases, and even affects the fruit flavor.

Q. We have been growing fruit trees in Vegas for 5 years and we want to grow about 30 to 40 fruit trees on some new property we bought. The area may have been sprayed with Roundup earlier this year. What do you recommend to neutralize or leech out the Roundup before planting the orchard? A. The science behind Roundup says it does not persist long in hot weather and in our types of soils. It has an agreed upon half-life ofless than two months and the longest half-life reported in research is six months. I don’t think you need to do anything to the soil but prepare it for planting this fall and next spring. Any remaining Roundup in the soil will be nearly gone and, at best, be negligible by then.             The USDAOrganic Program recognizes food production to be “organic” after the soil has not had any unapproved fertilizers, pesticides and soil amendments applied for the three years before and up to harvest. Since your fruit trees will not produce a substantial amount of fruit for about three years after planting, you are fine.               After three years from planting, if anything applied to the area meets the Departmentof Agriculture’s approved organic list, then anything harvested from these trees will meet the requirements for the USDA’s Organic Program.

Q. I have been living in Nevada about one year and originally from Utah. I saw that you are recommending Windmill Palm but my landscaper with 20+ years of experience was against it, recommending Mediterranean Fan Palm instead. What’s your thoughts on the two? A. Both palms do well here but they fill different roles in the landscape. The Mediterranean Fan Palm handles hot locations better, but it occupies a bigger space and is more of a visual screen when unpruned.  This is a pretty young Mediterranean fan palm. It can get much bigger than this but what is important is not only its size but you cant see through it. If you remove alot of the suckers from the base then you can see through it and reveal the furry trunk of this palm. Windmill Palm, on the other hand, doesn’t like the heat from West or South facing walls but has a single furry trunk, so it’s narrower and open so you can see on the other side of it. Both are considered accent plants, look tropical, and good around pools and water features. This is windmill palm. The fronds will get some brown tip burn but they have a single trunk and you can see around them. They fulfill two very different roles in the landscape. jSee what Dr. Chris Martin from ASU says about this palm in the desert             Where I see a problem with Mediterranean fan Palm is when homeowners try to grow and prune it like the single-trunk Windmill Palm. Why not just get a Windmill palm? The multiple furry trunks of the Mediterranean Fan Palm look nice when kept pruned annually. To me that’s just more maintenance. with some annual pruning and sucker removal you can get them to look like a multi trunk windmill palm.             There is nothing wrong with Windmill Palm and growing it here. It is a cold hardy palm taking temperatures down to 10°F. It may be a little harder to find in nurseries than Mediterranean Fan Palm and a bit more expensive. windmill palm will show some leaf tip burn when it is exposed to hot dry conditions. No doubt they do look better in more humid climates but they will grow in the Mojave Desert.             Selection depends what you want the plant to do for your landscape. If you want a palm that can handle hot locations and acts as a visual screen then get the Mediterranean Fan Palm. If you want a single trunk palm tree that requires little maintenance, get the Windmill Palm.               All palms like the soil amended at planting time and covered with wood chips, not rock. If someone tries to convince you to plant palms in sand then that’s B.S. Water palms like any other tree or shrub of a similar size and with the same frequency. 

Q. I planted the long Armenian cucumbers and they came out so big and beautiful BUT SO BITTER all through it. Why is that? Armenian cucumber is more closely related to melons than cucumber. You can identify it from its ribbing all down its sides. Harvest them when they are 12 to 15 in long. A. Armenian cucumber is USUALLY less of a problem growing them in the desert than actual cucumber varieties like Straight 8 and Marketmore. But cucumbers in general can get bitter with hot temperatures and when grown on the dry side. This is a large bag of horse bedding available from farm supply stores. You can buy small amounts from any pet store.             Try mulching the soil (apply a thin layer on top of the soil) with something like wood shavings (horse bedding comes to mind you can get from a farm supply store) or shredded newspaper to keep the soil cooler and more moist and water more often when it gets hot. The old fruit may still be bitter but new fruit should not if it works.  Here on this raised bed onions were mulched with animal bedding to conserve water. Just a thin layer was applied, enough to shade the soil from the sun.              With Armenian cucumber ,if you don’t keep the soil moist while its producing fruit, they can get bitter but it is more rare than a common cucumber.

Q. All my trees send sucker shoots up around their base. I have a drip system and water three times a week for 20 minutes. What am I doing wrong and how can I stop this sucker growth? A. It is a mixed bag. Sucker removal, and how often it’s done, depends on the plant, how old it is and how the suckers are removed.             Trees that normally grow as shrubs tend to sucker a lot. Others don’t. When oleanders are grown as multi or single trunk trees, the suckers must be removed just about all its life. Mediterranean fan palms are in the same boat. Cutting suckers off and leaving behind stubs just makes more suckers.             Some plants produce a lot or suckers when young and rain this characteristic in as they get older. Most suckers, like weed control, stop sending up more if the suckers are removed as soon as they are seen instead of waiting until they get larger. Sucker removal must be done as soon as you see them rather than wait.             How they are removed is also important. If you remove suckers when they are young you can hand pull them or rub them off with your hand or fingers. That’s easy. It’s  more work if you must get hand pruners and remove them by cutting. Not only that, but if you leave stubs behind new growth will come from those. When you leave stubs, figure three new shoots for everyone cut. If you remove suckers while they are still young you can pull them off at the point where they grow from the tree and leave no stub behind. No stub means no sucker growth.             There are sprays you can apply that decrease the suckering. They have names like “Sucker Punch”, “Sucker Stopper” but these sprays may be just a “band aid” for the problem, a temporary fix. Any time you use these follow the label direction to the letter.