Do you have insurance? Companies selling insurance are betting you will not have a problem. You, on the other hand, are betting you might. Fungicide use follows the same reasoning. Fungicides, unlike most insecticides and weed killers (herbicides) protect the new growth of plants and keep diseases from starting or spreading. Because the disease doesn’t occur, you may not be convinced it did any good.             We collectively use the term “fungicide” to describe any pesticide aimed at preventing a disease from fungi, bacteria, virus or mycoplasma like organisms (MPO). Most diseases are caused by fungi but there are a few, like fire blight, which are caused by bacteria and others like Ash yellows or Ash decline caused by MPO’s.             Desert climates like ours have a low humidity so plant diseases aren’t frequently seen unless we do a poor job choosing plants for the wrong landscape spots, planting, watering, or managing them. Agriculturally Las Vegas is isolated and that also works in our favor. We have far fewer fruit and vegetable diseases here than in agricultural hotspots.             What can you do to prevent plant diseases? Clean and disinfect tools and equipment. Whether you are doing it or someone else, make sure these tools are clean and sanitized. Make sure supplies you are using are clean. Clean any used pots and containers with bleach and let them air dry for 24 hours before reusing them. Don’t compost diseased plant parts or reuse them. Instead, securely wrap them in plastic and put them in the garbage. If the disease is known to be virulent such as fireblight, get diseased plant parts off the property as soon as possible. Thin out dense plants to improve air movement through their canopies. Whether you are growing tomatoes, fruit trees or shrubs, when they are dense they need to be thinned by selective pruning and growing vigorously to prevent diseases. Some diseases (biotic, coming from pathogens) I have found in the desert include: Fireblight – Asian pears, European peers and apples and including many ornamental plants in the rose family including Pyracantha Fireblight on Asian pear Root rot and collar rot – many different fruit trees and ornamental trees and vegetables Chokes the tree or plant at or beneath the soil because the soil is cold or too wet, poor drainage or all three Ash decline – most ash trees Limbs dying in established ash trees Other suspected plant diseases probably encountered are: oleander leaf scorch, Pierces disease on grape, Verticillium wilt on vegetables and, Fusarium wilt on palms and vegetables, white rot on onion and garlic, summer patch on tall fescue, to name a few. Always use sanitized equipment and sterile soil and containers when possible. By the way, my favorite sanitizer is alcohol after everything has been cleaned with soap and water.

 Q. I have been looking for replacement of my sabadilla dust that is just running out now. I have been unable to find it. Pyrethrum (Chyrsanthemum) grown on a farm in Kenya and sold to a European company who makes natural pesticides (pyrethrum powder). A. I did an extensive search for sabadilla as an insecticide. It is now sold mostly as a homeopathic treatment for sinus congestion. As you know it has been around for decades. I remember it as an “organic” pest control measure before the organic movement began. It is made from the seeds of the sabadilla plant (Schoenocaulon officinale). Others in that old group of plants that served as sources of insecticides include rotenone (aka, derris, from seeds and stems of several legumes) and pyrethrum (extracted from chysanthemum flowers).  Pyrethrum is now being synthesized industrially (called pyrethroids) and has morphed into manufactured insecticides like permethrin, resmethrin, and others. Pyrethrin morphs are used mostly by the interior pest control industry to control termites, ants and mosquitoes. Some claim the morphs were over profits and others claim it was for effectiveness and the targeting of specific insect pests. Sabadilla is now sold mostly as a homeopathic medicine for allergy symptoms.  It has come full circle and is sold for outside pest control use only by one supplier (to my knowledge) and the formulation has changed over the years from a dust (D) to the more popular wettable powder formulation (WP). https://www.mgk.com/product/veratran-d/

Q. I am a special education teacher and gardener in Sonoma County, California, and I’ve been searching for Copena V1 or F1 cacti to cultivate here in Santa Rosa. I have been doing some research and learned from Everardo Zamora at USON that you had acquired some specimens of this variety some years ago. I would like to pick your brain about their cultivation and potential as an easy-to-grow food source in my area. Copena flower and fruit production in the Mojave Desert at UNR Research and Demonstration Orchard in North Las Vegas Bob Morris (Xtremehorticulture) and Everardo Zamora (USON) talking about Copena nopal cacti growth and production in the Mojave Desert A.  Bird damage to copena nopal cacti fruit (tuna). Flower from Copena nopal cactus. Winter freeze damage to Copena nopal cacti. Cochineal scale damage to Copena cacti pads A. Nice to hear of your interest in the Copena nopal cactus. I consider Everardo a good friend. Copena cacti are very easy to grow but it’s just too cold during the winter in Las Vegas.  They will have freeze damage a little bit below freezing temperatures (maybe about 30F). Regardless, they produced high quality fruit and pads to use as fresh vegetables, fruit and for livestock feed even after a freeze event. Freeze damage was our biggest problem in the eastern Mojave Desert. These are high quality eating cacti (nopalitos and tuna) from the Sonoran desert and developed by the University of Mexico. The biggest problems I experienced with them are: Cold (freezing) damage from winters colder than the Sonoran Desert Bird damage because they are so sweet (may require netting) Rabbit damage during the winter because they are spineless and not much out there for rabbits to eat in the winter (may require rabbit protection) Constant spraying with streams of water to keep the cochineal scale at bay (no commercial insecticides were applied) Controlling leaf-footed plant bugs (a growing problem in the Mojave Desert) I irrigated them about every 3 weeks with a bubbler in basin type of irrigation to push new growth for harvesting and fertilized them for production once a year in the spring. Plants were established by pads donated from USON. They start flowering in their second or third year after planting.

Q. I accidentally cultivated up a bunch of daffodil bulbs. When is the best time to replant them in Las Vegas? They show no signs of green. A. If these daffodils have been in the ground in your landscape for several years then chances are you can just replant them and they will continue to flower next spring and probably every year thereafter. If they did not flower last year, or they flowered erratically (some years you got beautiful displays and others were disappointing), then you should read the rest of this information.  To get consistent flowering year after year, you may need to put them in the refrigerator through the rest of the winter to get consistent flowering. You can also opt to buy “prechilled bulbs”. But be forewarned: this refrigerator treatment may need to be done each year to get reliable blooming. This is also true of tulips and some other very popular cold climate bulbs.  Replant them on the east side of the house so that they get morning sun but are protected from late afternoon heat. Amend the soil with about 20 to 30% compost when planting. Never cover them with rock. Woodchips are okay but not rock. They will not grow well in total shade or in hot bright locations. They will also not grow well in rock. It takes the right variety of daffodil for it to bloom every year here. Local nurseries rely on their suppliers to sell them the right daffodils for this climate. Las Vegas, climate-wise, is halfway between a tropical climate (think Hawaii) and a cold climate (think Minnesota). Las Vegas lies in the northern belt of climates termed loosely “semitropical”: Cold winters to the north and warm winters to the south.  It lies in the transition zone between the two. Did you see flowers from them before? If you did, then just replant them. There is never any advertising on my blog. It runs off of donations so here is stuff I found helpful. Here is another article about this topic. Here is a source for daffodils that will do well in warm climates. Just enter your zip code. A second source of bulbs for warm climates. A third source of bulbs for warm climates.

 It’s very simple. Prune flowering trees and shrubs after they finish flowering. Now learn why and how to prune these plants in the desert. Texas Ranger on the right was pruned with a hedge shears in June.

One reader looking for sabadilla and having no luck finding it. Sabadilla was very popular maybe 40 or 50 years ago as a “natural” pest control product. You can read more about other natural products including sabadilla by clicking here. Since that time other products (insecticidal soaps, Neem, spinosad products, pyrethrum, Bt and others) have grown in popularity. At one time sabadilla could not be found for sale in the US. It is back and growing in popularity.   It might have some potential against the leaf footed plant bug since it has been very effective in the past on squash bugs. But like any label for an insecticide, the crop you are spraying MUST be on the label in some way (even if it says vegetables or fruit trees!) and preferably the insect you are trying to kill as well. Leaf footed plant bug   Squash bug on the underside of a squash leaf. About the same size as the leaf footed plant bug. Q. I have a small amount of sabadilla dust leftover from about 30 years ago. It was the only thing I found that was very effective on squash bugs. I am having trouble finding it. Do you know where I can get more? A. Sabadilla was made from the ground seeds of the sabadilla plant (S. officinalle). Sabadilla was not available in the US for a couple of decades but it is back. I remember it from my past but I had never used it. Now it is sold mostly for homeopathic treatments for allergies and runny nose.  I did find one source (I think it might be the only one) online here available from MGK as a “USDA organic” insecticide. It is now a wettable powder (WP) and not a dust (D) anymore (dusts for the most part went by-by years ago and now you can find a few available to homeowners) so it must be mixed with water and applied as a suspension (some sort of agitation of the WP solution is required to apply it evenly). Suspension can sometimes be achieved if you stop and shake a hand sprayer regularly (keep the solution in motion) when you apply it. Remember, “dose makes the poison” so anything considered “natural” or organic can be lethal if used the wrong way. I figure that if something can kill bugs, then it can kill me. That’s true of anything including soapy water and table salt! So use any so-called “natural” or organic product with the same caution you would use with anything that can kill. Wash your clothes and take a shower right after you apply it. That is true of your dust product as well. And wear gloves at least! Always apply insecticides on a still, warm day.

 There are over 600 varieties of pomegranates with all sorts of flavors and colors that make this a unique and hardy fruit tree for desert climates.  Yellow pomegranate near northern Tajikistan

Q. My oranges haven’t ripened on my two-year-old tree. Some are green and others yellowish with very hard skin and last year’s fruit wasn’t very sweet or soft.  Should I cover them tonight? It will be freezing. Its possible to get oranges in Las Vegas if the weather cooperates, you have a warm microclimate in your landscape and we dont get a hard freeze. A. The fruit of many oranges attached to the tree are damaged at temperatures of 30°F or a few degrees lower.  The type or variety of sweet orange is highly variable to freezing temperatures. If you think winter temperatures will drop low enough for damage, then throw a sheet or blanket over the tree to protect it from cold and wind. Go outside at night and look at the sky. Clear skies are more likely to contribute to lower temperatures than cloudy skies. If there is wind combined with freezing temperatures, fruit damage is worse. Even though these oranges are ripe they are green. Thats because they are in the Philippines, a tropical country. Your oranges may not be ripe yet. Ripeness depends on the variety and when it’s supposed to be harvested. Cold weather will get them to turn orange as they ripen. Oranges grown in tropical climates never turn orange when they are ripe. Consumers know this and their green color is acceptable. If they are ripe enough, put them in a paper bag with a few ripe bananas for a day and they will soon turn orange. My guess from their color is they should stay on the tree longer. If they are sweet, they may handle some temperatures down to about 28F or so. Citrus grown in US commercially are found in in Yuma, Arizona, Rio Grande Valley in Texas, mid to south Florida and southern California. These places seldom freeze.             Ripe fruit handles temperatures a couple of degrees lower than unripe fruit because of their natural anti-freeze; higher sugar content. The sweeter the orange, lower temperatures by a few degrees are needed to freeze them. If you want to measure the sugar content, follow my blog and type in the word “refractometer” in the search line.             Our desert climate creates winter temperatures too low for growing and producing citrus. You might have a couple of warm winters in a row followed by low winter temperatures that may wipe out the citrus. Will citrus grow in Las Vegas? Some years, depending on where they are planted and your choice in citrus. Will they produce fruit here? Sometimes, depending on when they flower and the temperatures just before and after flowering.  Talk to your neighbors and look around your neighborhood. If your neighbors were lucky at growing oranges, you might have the same luck. Be suspicious of neighborhoods that have no citrus growing in them at all. There might be a weather and climate related reason for that or you might be the pioneer who starts something. Pay attention to the type or variety of orange you have. You call yours an “orange”. This orange has a name or variety besides just “orange”. These different varieties of oranges flower and are harvested at different times. Some perform better here than others. The “University of Arizona” published a fact sheet that you can retrieve online called, “Low Desert Citrus Varieties”. If this link is broken, use your favorite search engine and type in these words in quotations and look at the last two pages. This fact sheet tells you the harvest time for different varieties of citrus. Avoid varieties that are ready to harvest in the middle of December or later in the season.    

Q. We did a landscape conversion, removed the lawn and now our tree-sized specimen, multi-trunked photinia, is declining. The trunk has cracks, it’s gray and looks ugly. We bought Tree Secret fertilizer and applied water per the directions and it seems to be better. We added more lines around the basin to increase the amount of water and have mulched around the tree. When is the right time to trim it? Tree-like photinia after landscape conversion Grey and cracked trunk of photinia due to sunburn and possibly borer damage. A. The photos you sent regarding the photinia were eye opening. I will post them on my blog as well, Xtremehorticulture of the Desert. These cracks in the trunk and gray color are from intense desert sunlight shining on the tender trunk. This might also include borer damage under that grey, cracked area of the trunk. The grey cracked bark is covering the dead side of the trunk so go ahead and remove the bark and see. This is sun damage (advanced sunburn) to the trunk of a locust tree and the tree is surrounded by rock. Very similar to the damage on your photinia trunk. In my opinion, you would have improved the plant by just applying water to a larger area under the canopy and not an expensive fertilizer. Applying a quality compost to that area gives the same benefit as any well-balanced fertilizer. In fact, a well-balanced fertilizer is formulated to substitute for what a compost does naturally. There are no “secret ingredients” when growing plants, just marketing and “time savers” similar to “Hamburger Helper” used in some kitchens. This intense sunlight shining on a tender trunk results in sunburn, then death to the part of trunk that faces this intense sunlight. This damage is oftentimes followed by attacks by boring insects starting the same year as the damage. Sunburn is known to attract boring insects which has been the consequence of sunburned plants over and over for eons. Desert plants like palo verde and mesquite do the same thing if their tender trunks are exposed like your photinia. What does photinia look like in a milder climate? There are two problems going on. Photinia, native to Japan, is not a desert plant and its trunk sunburns easily when exposed to intense sunlight. The other is the landscape microclimate, i.e.,  where it is planted in the yard. What to do? Obviously, this plant can’t be moved to a cooler microclimate in the yard. And it appears to have done well in that spot before the landscape conversion. I would expand the area irrigated to as much of the area under its canopy as possible. Ideally, irrigating the entire area under the canopy is best.  Secondly, root prune the plant to the edge of its canopy by slicing into the wet soil at the canopy edge with a sharp shovel. The photinia has this fall, winter and spring to grow new roots just inside its canopy before it gets hot again. These new roots will find the water. The direct harsh sunlight caused significant damage to the exposed trunk. Microclimate. I think exposing the tender trunks to direct sunlight may have burned them. Not much you can do that looks nice. You could paint the trunks with a very light coat of paint (light colored latex diluted half and half with water) but that might look kind of weird considering. If there are suckers that are growing from that area then leave enough to shade the trunk until it heals. Plant other plants in that area to shade the trunk.  The trunk will heal in a year or two if this problem hasn’t already strangled the trunks.  You might consider planting something tolerant of the heat to shade the trunk and give it a chance to heal. You might consider lightly draping some burlap between the sun and the trunk to shade it until it can provide its own shade. But whatever shade you can create to keep the sun from damaging the trunk will help.

 Q. What should I do to increase the size of my pomegranate fruit next year? My soil has a red color. Pomegranate flower Pomegranate small fruit developing next to each other. Leave only one when they are small. Some varieties are more prone to this than others. A. Red soil tells me you are probably not from around here and secondly, your soil has a lot of iron in it. This type of iron is not available to most plants because it is low in organics and the acidity is wrong.  I also assume you are a backyard producer and not a farmer. My recommendations might be different if you had 50 or more pomegranate trees and were local. Right now, since it is late Fall and it is getting colder and there are still leaves on the trees, there is nothing to do. To increase the size of fruit, focus on pruning, a fertilizer application, and don’t let the plant get droughty. You will see some smaller benefits by removing a flower for small fruit growing right next to another, some thinning and pest control. First, don’t forget to sanitize your pruning equipment.  Sanitizing loppers with 70% ethyl alcohol. About a month before new growth begins in the spring, prune the pomegranate to 5 or fewer (yes, as few as one) larger stems coming from the ground. Remove all the remaining growth to the ground as well. From the remaining larger stems remove all side branches up to your knees. After this is done, spray the plant and the soil directly at its base twice with dormant oil before it begins flowering.             When flowering first starts, apply fertilizer to the tree 12 to 18 inches from the stems and where the soil is wet. Use vegetable or rose fertilizer if you do not have a fruit tree fertilizer available. Because your soil is red and not brown, consider applying compost instead of mineral fertilizer. If you apply compost, apply one cubic foot of it in a circle 18 inches from these large stems. Apply compost to fruit trees, not pomegranate but you get the idea. You might see a smaller benefit by removing flowers during the first couple of months which are produced very close to each other (if your variety does this alot) and controlling pests when you spot problems. If you are an organic gardener, consider using a Dust Buster for removing larger pests instead of insecticidal sprays.