Xtremehorticulture

Xtremehorticulture of the Desert

Yes. You Should Fertilize Plants During the Summer

Leave a Comment / can you fertilize plants in the summer, flowers. lawns, fruit trees, vegetables /

Many people believe you can’t or shouldn’t fertilize during the summer months. That is incorrect. Fertilizers are important to apply when plants need them, not according to the weather. The reason people are told not to is because fertilizers can be more dangerous to plants during hot summer months. This is how you can and should fertilize during the heat. It is not magic. It is common sense.  Ammonium sulfate can burn plants, is fast in its release and dissolves totally in water. I use it but you must be very careful using this fertilizer in the summer. The major problems with fertilizing during summer heat is the combination of high temperatures and fertilizer salts. Salts in fertilizers can be damaging alone but in combination with high temperatures, they can be lethal. The amount of fertilizer you can safely apply is much higher in cooler months than in hotter months. You are not going to change the temperatures, but you can apply less fertilizer. Rule No. 1. Apply less fertilizer during hot weather.  Salts are all around us. They are in the food we eat. They are in the water we drink. They are in the soils we use to grow vegetables. Most organic fertilizers release fertilizer salts more slowly than conventional fertilizers. Not always, but generally speaking. So using organic fertilizers is usually a safer thing to do than using conventional fertilizers. Rule No. 2. Use organic or slow release fertilizers during hot weather. Fertilizer salts are salts. Salts can damage plants in two ways. First, drying out plant roots and stems through dessication or pulling water out of the stems against the desire of the plant to keep water inside the stems. Salt applied to living tissue pulls water out of the tissue. This type of damage to plants is much more severe when soils are dry. Never apply fertilizers to dry soils during summer months. When you are finished with a fertilizer application, water the fertilizer into the soil. Blood meal is an organic fertilizer, safer to use than ammonium  sulfate but you still need to be careful. Rule No. 3. Irrigate soils first. Apply fertilizer next. Then water in the fertilizer. Fertilizers applied 1 to 2 inches next to the stems of plants can damage or kill. Salts in fertilizers pull water out of stems. If fertilizer is accidentally applied too close, don’t panic. Either scrape it a few more inches away from the plant or push the fertilizer away with a stream of water and water it in. Apply fertilizers near the water source and no closer than 4 to 6 inches from small plants. Whether you think dry fertilizer landed on plant leaves or not, it is always safest to wash the leaves with water after a fertilizer application. Rule No. 4. Keep applied fertilizer a safe distance from plants. Temperature is important when fertilizing plants. Apply fertilizers in the cool morning hours or when there is a break in the summer heat. Osmocote is a slow release conventional fertilizer but a safer fertilizer to use in summer months. Rule. No. 5. Apply fertilizers to plants during the cooler times of the day.

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Insecticides Applied to Soil Not Good Idea Around Food Plants

Leave a Comment / bugs, control insects, fruit trees, lemon tree, systemic insecticides, whats eating leaves /

Q. Something is eating the leaves on my lemon tree. What can I use to prevent this? I found a product at the nursery and it says you can apply it to the soil to control bugs. A. If something is eating the leaves I would not be too concerned unless it is really eating a lot of leaves. We really have to be careful when we apply these types of poisons on the soil and around the food we eat.             If this insecticide is taken up through the roots and spread through the plant to kill a bug, we might also have small amounts in the fruit as well. The insecticide dissolves in water and moves down through the soil where it is absorbed by the roots. Once absorbed, it moves up through the plant providing protection from insects.             These types of products are called systemic insecticides and move into new growth after the application. The insecticide stays inside the plant and gives it protection from bugs. Rain or water cannot wash off this internal protection and you cannot wash it off by scrubbing the fruit.             There is an old saying, “The dose makes the poison.”  Insects, because they are small, require less of a poison to kill them than larger animals.  Even though insecticides have a label to tell you what you can or cannot apply it on, it does not mean that the product is entirely safe.             If you have to use an insecticide to control damaging insects, then I would recommend something that you spray on the outside of the plant rather than something which is taken up by the plants through its roots. In many cases, these insecticides which are sprayed on the plant will wash off or degrade in the environment.             It is up to you as the consumer whether you want to purchase this product and use it. As for me, I would not eat the fruit from a tree where an insecticide was applied to the soil and taken up by plant roots.

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Where to Get Pheremone Traps

Leave a Comment / fruit trees, insect trapping, organic pest control, phermone traps /

Delta trap with pheremone inside Q. Do you know where I can get pheromone traps for insects that cause damage in our area and also for thrips that damage nectarines? A. Try Peaceful Valley at http://www.groworganic.com/weed-pest-control/organic-pest-control/insect-lure.html             Pheremone traps can be used to identify what insect problems you have in your backyard orchard and when to spray. Commonly we use them for peaches, nectarines, apples and pears. You will want a trap for each insect and about three or four lures for each trap since they have to be replaced regularly. You will replace the lures about every 4 to 5 weeks until harvest then you can stop. Wing trap with pheremone inside             There are no traps for thrips. For thrips you will need Spinosad biological insecticide which you can get from local nurseries. The label may not say spinosad but may say something like borer, bagworm control. You may have to look at the ingredients to see the spinosad.

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Watering Santa Rosa Plum in the Mojave Desert

Leave a Comment / drip irrigation, fruit trees, how many gallons, irrigation /

Q. I read your gardening articles faithfully, and I just searched your blog for some help, but I would like more information.  I just purchased a Santa Rosa plum, but I am not certain how much I should water it.  I haven’t yet planted it, and I want to make sure to give it enough emitters as it is located in the front yard which is mainly desert landscape plants and therefore do not require as much water as this will (I think).  Santa Rosa plum The tag indicated how much water in inches, and I wasn’t certain how to convert that into gallons.  Also, although there is rock mulch in the front yard, I am more than happy to remove that in this are to give the plum the best chance.  Is that necessary?  Finally, your article on planting fruit trees from your blog mentions a “slurry” but I don’t know what that means, and I wasn’t able to find a definition on your blog.  I would really appreciate some help.  Thank you.  A. Plums are not desert plants and should not be irrigated as if they were desert plants. Mixing desert plants with non-desert plants on the same valve can lead to watering desert plants to frequently or, the flip side, watering the non-desert plants not often enough. But this may be a moot point. In this town desert landscaping means surrounding any type of plant with rocks. This is kind of like calling tofu, meat. Just because people put rocks around plants does not make it desert landscaping but does give it the appearance of desert landscaping. Hopefully your Santa Rosa plum will be on a valve that has other drip emitters on it. The first thing to do is determine your current run time for that valve on your irrigation clock; the number of minutes or hours that station or valve operates. It will be more difficult to irrigate your plum if the valve irrigates other things on it that are not on drip. Drip irrigation is designed to give small amounts of water over long periods of time, usually hours. Other types of irrigation such as bubblers or sprinklers are designed to operate in minutes, not hours. Mixing the two together on one the valve makes it very difficult to accurately apply water to either one. I like to see true drip irrigation operate a minimum of one hour. Let’s assume that the valve for your plum will operate for one hour. (Now I am going to give you some misinformation and tell you a couple of lies so that I can make my point. I will clear up the lies and misinformation later.) So, if the plum was purchased in a 5 gallon container, then make sure it gets irrigated with 5 gallons of water in that one hour. If it was purchased in a 15 gallon container, then give it 15 gallons in one hour. As a tree in a 5 gallon container gets bigger, you will need to increase the amount of water applied to it in one hour to perhaps 10 gallons or 15 gallons next year. You can do this by adding additional emitters; perhaps a second one next year and the third one maybe three years from now. If the plum is really growing fast you may have to add emitters sooner. This is a judgment call. Mature plums at the Orchard are getting 30 gallons every time they are irrigated. This 30 gallons is applied once every 10 days to two weeks during the winter to as frequently as twice a week in midsummer. As it gets hotter, the frequency of applied water changes, not the amount per application. Let’s say you now have discovered a problem. The valve which will irrigate your plum runs for 15 minutes, not one hour. And everything on that valve is designed to be irrigated in 15 minutes. This means we have to enter the dark side of irrigation; bastardizing drip irrigation to get it to do something it was never intended to do. Adjustable drip emitter: the dark side of drip irrigation. Now we enter the realm of adjustable drip irrigation emitters. These emitters can be adjusted with flow rates of zero (shut off) to a lot. Oh, they like to say it is 0 to 10 gallons per minute but in actuality who really knows? I don’t care what they call it but this is no longer drip irrigation. But in some cases it will get the job done and you may have no other choice. Plants surrounded by rock mulch use more water than plants surrounded by wood mulch. Any type of mulch will help but rock mulch will get hotter than wood mulch and drive water use up. Some plants should never be planted in rock mulch. Your plum is one of them. Others include roses, lilies, Photinia, mock orange, heavenly bamboo and many others. It might be okay for a couple of years but I will guarantee its health will decline living in rock mulch after just a few years. Organic mulches like wood mulch will help your tree a lot. This wood mulch should cover an area not less than 6 feet in diameter around the plum tree and be at least 4 inches deep. Be sure to keep wood mulch a foot away from the tree trunk the first four or five years. There is 7 1/2 gallons in one cubic foot of water. 1 inch of water covering one square foot is a little bit more than half a gallon, actually 6/10 of a gallon. Since rain is measured in inches of precipitation and sprinklers are also measured in inches of precipitation per hour there is a tendency to give watering advice in inches rather than gallons. They leave it up to you to determine how many square feet you are going to irrigate. A penstemon might be irrigated over an area of

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Bird Scaring Tactics to Keep Them Out of Your Fruit Trees

2 Comments / bird damage, fruit trees, netting, scaring devices for birds /

Q. Do you know where we can get the shiny silvery streamers for our fruit trees? The birds are upon us, (or them). We have the mesh covering, but would like to try something different.  If there’s anything else you can suggest, we would appreciate that as well. Thanks for your help. An electronic bird scaring device A. We have tried streamers, tinsel, CD’s, DVD’s, (no VHS tapes yet), electronic bird scaring devices (which work for about two weeks when in constant use) and not much seems to work over the long run. Scaring devices MAY work over the short haul if discontinued after a couple of weeks and restarted again next season. But if you expect something to keep birds out of fruit trees for months at a time you will be very disappointed. The best is netting the trees but the netting must be attached firmly to the ground with no entry points or the birds will find it. You would net the trees about two weeks before the fruit is ready. They don’t seem to bother fruit until they get to a certain stage of ripeness unless they are REAL hungry. That being said.. try…. http://www.groworganic.com/weed-pest-control/animal-bird-control/bird-control.html

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Watch Out for Deadly Fireblight on European Pear, Asian Pear and Quince

1 Comment / black disease, dieback, fire, fruit trees, scorch /

Frequently I see this problem pop up on fruit trees in May or June. Readers pear tree Q. I have a pear tree which is about 10 years old.  Up until this year, it has been pretty healthy.  This spring it got a disease. I am hoping you can identify it for me from these pictures and tell me what I can do to treat it so that it won’t be a problem in the future.             I thought at first it might be fireblight but it is not with the new growth.  It seems to have attacked all the places where there would have been fruit. I have inserted pictures for you and hope that these are helpful. It is not receiving any overhead spray.  It is watered with a drip system.    A. This is fire blight. This is a bacterial disease which is more rare than fungal diseases on plants. One way it is spread is through the flowers either by blowing wind during rainy weather or by pollinators such as honey bees.             Flowers of apple and pear come from spurs which are short shoots on older wood. If the disease enters through the flower then it will spread through the older growth and into the new growth if it is present. It does not necessarily have to attack new growth. Fireblight in pear             It can be seen on older growth as well. On new growth if it is present it will show the textbook picture of shepherds hook which I posted on my blog. If new growth was not present then it will simply die back and demonstrate a blackened, scorched, fire appearance.             This disease is extremely virulent and must remove as soon as possible from the tree and the growing area. Cut out the infected limb to 12 inches below the visible infection. Sterilize pruning instruments with a dilution of bleach and water both before and after the cut has been made.             Put the cut limb into a plastic bag, tie the bag and immediately put it into the trash. Do not try to mulch or compost this infected limb. Oil your pruning tools after you disinfect them with bleach so they don’t rust. Classic fireblight shepardshook and black scorched fire symptoms             Wash your hands after you have finished pruning. This disease is fairly rare here due to our isolation from orchards and low humidity. It attacks European pears like Bartlett, all Asian pears and Quince but does not damage Keifer pear. I hope this helps.

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Orchard Watered with Greywater and Fertilizer Injector

Leave a Comment / fruit trees, laundry detergent, problems, wastewater /

Q. First off I want to thank you for the inspiration and motivation to get my backyard orchard project off of the ground. I planted 22 bareroot fruit trees this winter, 20 of which have budded out! I am still hopeful on the remaining 2.             I have also installed a greywater drip irrigation system using the water from my laundry, the system I am using waters the whole 20’x30′ orchard area rather than each individual tree. What I am curious about now is if I should utilize the surge tank in my system to apply any fertilizers or possibly something to combat the alkalinity of our native soil? I am noticing chlorosis (yellowing) already on the new trees this spring. Do I need to worry about that now? A. Congratulations on your mini Orchard. Be careful with the type of laundry detergent that you are using in combination with your greywater system. Make sure it is biodegradable and plant friendly.             You might want to do some checking on the state regulations on the use of greywater for irrigation. This would be overseen by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection and much of that information should be online or a quick phone call away. Nevada Division of Environmental Protection Website             Using a fertilizer injection system is very convenient and adequate as long as your irrigation system is designed and installed well. If your irrigation system applies water evenly, then the fertilizer will be applied evenly as well. Make sure you incorporate a 150 mesh screen filter somewhere at the front of the system. Mesh filter for drip irrigation paired with pressure regulator             The advantage of fertilizer injection systems are that they can apply small amounts of fertilizer continuously through the growing season (through most of August). It sounds like a fertilizer injector would apply more fertilizer than applying fertilizer by hand once in the spring but this is not necessarily so.             Applying small amounts of fertilizer on a regular basis is much more efficient and can lead to significantly less fertilizer applied if you manage the irrigation system and very small amounts of fertilizer applied closely.             You do not need to inject anything to combat alkalinity of the soil. Select acid forming fertilizers and use organic mulches. If you use organic mulch on the soil surface it will do a lot to improve the soil and combat alkalinity. One brand of iron chelate EDDHA             You could inject an iron chelate into your irrigation system to combat yellowing due to chlorosis provided the water is below a pH of 7.5. If you cannot guarantee this pH in your water then use the iron chelate EDDHA which is stable through the alkaline pH range. The other sources of iron fertilizers  are not stable under alkaline conditions and will drop their iron once they are put into water with a high pH.             If you decide to inject fertilizers into your irrigation system then start the injection cycle after the water has been delivered to the plants for a few minutes. Water is not delivered evenly during the first few minutes of the drip irrigation cycle. Once the drip system is fully pressurized, well-designed drip systems then apply water evenly.             Stop injecting fertilizer several minutes before the irrigation system shuts down. Several minutes of uninjected water will clean out the irrigation system of fertilizer that might be stuck in the irrigation lines.             Water that remains in your irrigation system containing fertilizer will lead to the growth of algae and bacteria in your irrigation lines. Algae and bacteria are major culprits in plugging your irrigation system if you are using drip or even sprinklers.

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Putting Rock Mulch on Top of Composted Soil/Wood Mulch for Fruit Trees

1 Comment / covering wood mulch with rock mulch, desert fruit, desert landscape, fruit trees, heart problems /

Q. In my backyard in 2010 I planted a semi-dwarf Early Elberta Peach tree and a Katy Apricot.  I hand-watered them and left their tree wells uncovered until I completed the irrigation system around April 2011.  Now each tree has drip emitters. I put a thick layer of Dr. Q’s Pay Dirt potting soil on top of each tree well and then covered the potting soil over with a layer of the ruby red stone that I have throughout the floor of my backyard.  Both trees are doing very well and I want to be sure to do everything I can for their long-term health.             Per your View article, should I move the red stone back off the top of the tree wells to a radius of 6 feet away from each tree, and then cover each tree well with a layer of wood mulch instead?  A. One soil problem we have when growing fruit trees in our desert is the small amount of organic matter in our soils. This miniscule amount of organic matter is not enough for nearly all plants including so-called desert plants.             Fruit trees, and nearly all other plants, perform much better in our soils if organic matter (compost preferably) is added to the soil surrounding the roots. I hope that you added a lot of amendments to the soil at the time of planting, not just the surface.             I have compared two application methods when compost is applied to fruit trees: mixing it only to the soil at the time of planting and adding it only to the soil surface after planting. Adding it to the soil, not just the soil surface, dramatically improves plant growth in our desert soils.             The best soil amendments to use to use when increasing organic matter in our soils are homemade composts. Commercially made composts, available in bags or bulk and extremely variable in quality, would be next. The good ones (there are good ones out there now thanks to the explosion in organic gardening) are expensive. The cost of enough good quality compost, added to the hole at planting time, in some cases might rival the cost of the plant itself.             If trees are planted in amended soils and then the soil surface covered with rock, over time, the organic matter in the soil is “used up” so to speak by soil microorganisms. When the majority has been used up, we say the soil has become “mineralized”. Without addition of organic matter to the soil surface every two to three years, the soil slowly reverts back to its previous desert condition.             From my observations of fruit trees and nondesert landscape plants growing in our desert soils amended only at the time of planting and mulched with rock only, the soil is typically “mineralized” by the fourth or fifth years. Cacti and desert plants are much more tolerant of mineralized soils but still grow better in amended soils.             By placing wood mulch on the soil surface where the soil is wet, it slowly decomposes. Through its decomposition it adds organic matter to the soil. Through their decomposition, mulches add a lot of organic activity such as beneficial microorganisms and earthworms leading to improved plant health. Rock mulch cannot add organic matter and so in a few years none of the benefits of organic mulches will be present.             I am guessing your trees will be fine for several years with rock mulch covering the soil surface. But what may happen in the fourth through the sixth years, as the soil becomes mineralized, is that they may begin to decline in health.  The trees may become more and more yellow, leading to leaf scorch, followed by branch dieback and insect attacks such as borers.             Borers come into play due to a decline in tree health. Decreased plant health causes a thinning of the tree canopy leading to an increased amount of sunburn damage to the limbs. Sunburn damaged areas are the ideal locations for borers damage to occur.             My concern would be how you might add organic matter to the wet soil surfaces as it decomposes. If you can do this then it will probably not be a problem.  It is best for the trees if you can put wood mulch in the wetted area under the trees. In the drier areas under the tree the wood mulch will not decompose.

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Lower Limbs of Fruit Trees Too High Off of the Ground

Leave a Comment / fruit trees, make smaller, orchard pruning, prune back, re-establish limbs, reestablish /

Q. I watched your videos on pruning your peach trees for a lateral orchard.  We planted some bare root plums and peach trees last Saturday. I want to do a lateral orchard but there are no branches down at knee level.  They are at about hip level.  Would I still cut the trunk off at knee level?  Would branches or buds form down lower if I did that or would it just kill my trees? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tctjMa7aHEQ A. It should be a ladderless Orchard since what we are trying to accomplish is to keep the trees close enough to the ground that we don’t have to use ladders for pruning or harvesting the fruit. I could see how listening to the word ladderless on a video might be heard as lateral.             If a peach or plum has been in the ground for a while, I would not recommend cutting the trunk at knee height. You will run the risk of severely damaging or even killing the tree. It depends on the tree but with plum or peach it would be very risky to cut an older part of the tree to reestablish the scaffold limbs. Now, if your tree was an almond then you could cut larger diameter wood and it will regrow below the cut.              You will have to work with the tree structure that you have. Maybe you will not be able to keep it at 6 1/2 to 7 feet tall but you certainly could keep it under 10 feet tall and still have a sizable harvest. My videos are available on Youtube by searching for Extremehort. I will be posting some new ones next week.

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