soil amendments – Xtremehorticulture

Strawberry Guava for Las Vegas?

Leave a Comment / Florida, freeze tolerance, Guava, soil amendments / xtremehorticulture

Q. I am interested in growing strawberry guava in Southwest Las Vegas and wish to know if these are good choices. Can you tell me what fruit and evergreen tree varieties have the best chance to survive in our desert? Strawberry guava is a guava with red fruit. It is cold or winter tender and should only be grown on the east side of a house or tall wall. The soil MUST be amended with compost. It requires a lot of water (mesic) and can grow over ten feet tall. Here it is growing at our farm in the Philippines where it is warmer. Strawberry guava doesn’t taste like strawberries. A. Our desert can be a place to grow strawberry guava except for our cold winters and occasional snowfall. The fruit grows on new growth from a small tree, 10 to 20 feet tall. If they are kept warm or from freezing and planted in a part of the landscape that gets afternoon shade, then strawberry guava will work here. During the very low winters of 1989 to 1990 it got from 10 to 15F but those are 25-to-50-year lows. So short term, temperatures of 25F or below is expected occasionally. Fully grown, they will survive freezing temperatures to about 25F for short periods of time. How to Grow It Here Its not easy or cheap. My suggestion, if you plan to grow them here, is to pick a non-windy place (windy locations make temperatures colder in my opinion) in your landscape. This protected location should get at least six hours of direct sunlight in the morning. Protect them from the wind with a constructed wind barrier. Not a solid wall. Solid walls create “dust devils”. Pick a location that is either on the east side or north side of a building or wall, not hotter locations found on the west or south sides. Plant them at least five feet from a wall or building. Make sure the planting hole is about 3 to 4 feet wide and dug as deep as the roots. Amend the soil with compost or use composted soil when planting. Make sure the soil is wet, not dry. Plant in a hurry. Cover the soil with a 3-to-4-inch layer of wood chips when finished. Stake the tree after planting. Protect it from rabbits or other vermin if they are seen. Applied water should wet the soil to 18 inches deep to at least half the area under the tree canopy as it gets bigger. Avoid planting seeded types but instead pick pink or red varieties like ‘Homestead’, ‘Barbie Pink’, ‘Hong Kong Pink’, ‘Blitch’ and varieties recommended by the University of Florida that have proven successful there. Green varieties are picked before they are ripe and red or pink varieties are picked after they ripen. Guava is a climacteric fruit so it will ripen further after the fruit is hard but near ripe.

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Soil Amendments and Backfilling Fruit Trees

Leave a Comment / Desert soil, planting fruit trees, soil amendments / xtremehorticulture

Q. I’m planting new fruit trees this year. I’ve noticed there seems to be a consensus that backfilling should be done with only native soil, without any amendments. However, is there an exception in Las Vegas where the soil is exceptionally poor? Planting fruit trees in Las Vegas directly in amended desert soil. A. Yes there is, and you are correct. Our desert soils normally need amending at planting time but they are full of nutrients if they are not poisonous to plants. If you watch online videos or get information from outside sources, they may tell you it’s a waste of money to improve the soil at the time of planting. They may be correct in other locations but under our desert conditions it usually isn’t true. Planting 3000 fruit trees directly in amended desert soil at an orchard in Las Vegas, Nevada. In cases cited by outside sources, the soil already had enough organics in it that it made no difference; 2% organic content or higher. The research at Oklahoma State University during the 1970s clearly showed that no amendment to the soil was needed and mixing organics such as compost into the soil at the time of planting was a “waste of money”. This original research was repeated at Arizona State University where the researchers used an agricultural soil with a similar organic content; 2% or more. The researchers came to the same conclusion; the addition of organic matter (compost) was a waste of money. Ipso facto, no soil amendments are needed! Very practical original research often proves what we already know It is common knowledge that if the soil has an organic content more than 2% that no organic addition is needed and it’s a waste of money to mix in additional compost when planting trees and shrubs. What about soils with organic content much lower than 2%. Is organic matter still needed? That research is never been done. Many of our Mojave desert soils have an organic content much much lower than 1%. How do you know if your soil has an organic content above 2%? Send it to a soil testing lab (pay $70 and wait two weeks) where they can accurately measure the organic content of your soil and tell you its percentage. Or you can look at its color and approximately judge for yourself. The color of a soil darkens as the organic content increases. If your soil has a light tan color, the color of “creamy coffee” then it has a very low organic content; probably less than 2%. You can also do a “jar test” of your soil. The organics of a layer (if they are large enough) will float to the surface of the water. Soil jar test

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Coffee Grounds and Flower Beds

Leave a Comment / Coffee grounds, soil amendments / xtremehorticulture

Q. Is it a good idea to work coffee grounds into soil in flower beds? Does it help? A. Yes, coffee grounds are good. They add some, but not all, nutrients needed by plants and improve soil structure for better water drainage and air movement to the roots. This, in turn, improves plant growth. Coffee grounds are better if composted first, but adding them “raw” is one step in helping improve the soil as well. Don’t rely on coffee grounds alone. For instance, don’t go to your local Starbucks and add 100 lbs. of coffee grounds to a 4 x 8 planter or raised bed and call soil preparation done. Adding only coffee grounds is like eating only corn and expecting to maintain a healthy diet. You need a variety of different foods to remain healthy. Your garden also needs a variety of healthy ingredients from different sources for plants to remain healthy. A variety of minerals are needed by plants. Provide this variety by decomposing a wide variety of things in your garden soil besides coffee grounds. A very good article was written by Sunset Magazine about the nutrients in coffee grounds. https://www.sunset.com/garden/earth-friendly/starbucks-coffee-compost-test Probably the take-home lesson from this article about coffee grounds is about available nitrogen. There is plenty of nitrogen in raw coffee grounds but this nitrogen isn’t yet released or available for plants. Releasing this nitrogen to plants is done through composting or letting it sit in the soil and “rot” or decompose. That’s what composting is. It’s “controlled rotting”. Other things to add to flower beds in small quantities that round out available plant nutrients include wood ashes (not ash from coal or a petroleum sources), finely ground kitchen scraps (use a blender with a little bit of water to grind up kitchen scraps to a small size), shredded paper with black, not colored, ink, shredded cardboard, sawdust from wood but not particle board, leaves and grass clippings. When added to garden soil, all these “rot” over time and release minerals and nutrients. But make sure they are pulverized. The smaller the pieces, the faster they “rot”. Stop and think about it. Compost piles are mixtures of a wide variety of things but lumped together and managed so they “rot” faster. Finished compost makes a soil amendment with a wide variety of plant nutrients. The nutrient almost always in short supply by plants is nitrogen. Animal manure is added compost because of its high nitrogen content. Vegans use green plant parts which provides exactly the same kind of nitrogen.

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