Xtremehorticulture

Xtremehorticulture of the Desert

Can Myers Lemon Do Well in Rock Mulch?

Leave a Comment / desert landscape, fruit trees, rock /

Q. I live in the far western area of the Las Vegas valley.  I have a good sized area covered with rock mulch. A flowering plum tree (soon to be removed) is struggling in this area. Can a Myer’s lemon tree do well in a rock mulch setting? Loquat in rock mulch A. I would not recommend it. It might do okay for a few years, maybe 3 to 5, and then it will start to take a dive. You will have much better luck if you can pull the rock away from fruit trees, including your flowering plum, perhaps 6 feet or so from the trunk and putting down wood mulch instead of rock.             If you decide to plant some citrus, I would highly recommend adding a lot of compost to our desert soil at the time of planting. It is much more effective to mix it in the soil then it would be to try to add it to the soil after it has been planted.

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Special Deal on Fruit Trees on My Twitter Causes Frustration – For Me!

Leave a Comment / coupons, fruit trees, notices, plant selection, progressive harvest, sale, twitter /

Q. Your twitter feed mentioned a good deal on peach trees which we are going to now purchase. Which two peach trees to get for a 10 x 10 space? I’d like to keep the harvest staggered so we can enjoy the fruit longer. I also have a five-gallon Bonanza dwarf peach in a whiskey barrel that I started last October. https://twitter.com/ or go to my home page and follow my Twitter there. Stark Saturn peach with some bird damage. For some reason birds LOVE this particular fruit. Problem: SO DO WE! A. This was a special deal on ten fruit trees for $199 plus $35 shipping on Groworganic.com. On the peaches that they had available, I would recommend that you look at Red Haven (yellow acidic), Babcock (white subacid) or Stark’s Saturn (donut, white, subacid, but birds like it alot). For an earlier peach, mid July or so, and Indian Free (late august, beautiful flesh turning nearly blood red and subacid) or O’Henry (early august, yellow, favorite at roadside stands and farmers markets) for a later peach.             It is hard to recommend just one or two peaches since they can be so different from each other. There is not really a June peach in the group that I know well enough to recommend.

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When to Transplant Fruit Trees?

Leave a Comment / citrus, desert, fruit trees, grapefruit, planting, time of year /

Q. With this unusually mild LV winter, when is the best time to transplant dwarf grapefruit trees? A. By transplant I take it to mean you are moving a grapefruit from one location to another location. Planting or transplanting can be done now. You will have more success if the tree has not been in the ground more than three years. You will have even more success if the tree has been watered by drip irrigation in a fairly small basin or area next to the tree. You will have even more success if the tree was root pruned last fall around mid to late September. Roots of M111 on 12 yo Anna apple. We remove fruit trees from the orchard as we learn about them and then move on to those varieties we have not explored. Root systems can get large quickly and make it no longer feasible to relocate older fruit trees to new areas after about three years in the ground             Root pruning just means you went around the entire tree with a shovel and severed the roots in the approximate location where you are planning to dig and transport it. Given all that, prepare your hole for planting first before you move the tree. Dig deep enough to accommodate the root ball but not much deeper.             It is more important to dig it wide than it is to dig it deep. Get your soil amended and add some phosphorus to the soil. Move your tree as quickly as possible to its new location and try to orient it in a similar orientation, north to south, as it was in the old location.             Backfill around the tree. During planting, run a hose in the hole at the same time you backfill to remove air pockets. Drive a stake next to the tree and into the bottom of the hole into solid ground. This stake will immobilize the roots if tied to the tree tightly.             I usually use rebar pounded into the soil next to the tree after it has been planted. I wrap the tree and rebar together with green nursery tape to immobilize roots. This leaves the top to move in the wind.             The trees should be planted the same depth as it was when it was removed from the soil. No deeper and no shallower. If you have rabbits, protect it with one inch chicken wire after planting. Mulch the soil around the tree with wood mulch keeping the mulch away from the trunk a foot. After one season of growth, remove the stake.

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Pruning Fruit Trees to Control Their Size

3 Comments / backyard, fruit trees, orchard pruning, small spaces /

These full-sized peach trees are 17 years old and lowered each year to 6 1/2 feet tall Pruning at our orchard is a two step process: first for size control and secondly to enhance production. Pruning for size control is done the same way for all the fruit trees but pruning for production varies among the different types of fruit and how and where the fruit is produced on the tree. We keep the size of all fruit trees so that the orchard is ladderless, easy and safe to perform work and harvest. This also allows us to plant trees closer together and get more fruit production in a smaller area. It also reduces our work load so we can get it done faster. The tallest branches are identified visually. These branches are visually traced to where they join another branch somewhere around 6 to 6 1/2 feet off of the ground. Initial pruning for size control can begin before leaf drop, usually in November when leaves are beginning to turn color and we are sure all tree growth has stopped for the remainder of the year. If you have only a few trees to lower then you can wait until after all the leaves have dropped. If leaves are hanging on even into December you can turn off the water to the trees for two weeks and then turn the water back on again. This will stress the trees moderately and accelerate leaf drop. Trees heights are lowered to 6 to 6 ½ feet tall using vutually all thinning cuts. The tallest limbs are identified, followed visually down to a point of attachment around 6 feet off of the ground and lowered to the proper height with thinning cuts. The pruning cut is made at a “crotch” or where two branches come together. This leaves terminal buds intact to resume growth next spring. Since we have our trees in rows, we must create space around each tree so that we can spray and harvest. We create space between trees by identifying limbs that are encroaching on a neighboring trees “space” or need to be removed so we can get between them. We trace these limbs back to a point of attachment (crotch) with another limb and remove it with a thinnning cut, not a heading cut. Limbs that do not support fruit high enough to keep the fruit off of the ground or out of the reach of rabbits is removed with thinning cuts.

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