Use mulches when growing tomatoes

     By Bob Morris
     View columnist
      The following are issues our Master Gardeners deal with daily at the Nevada Cooperative Extension. If you have gardening questions, call the Master Gardeners' hot line at 257-5555 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, or send an e-mail to ExtremeHort @aol.com.
     
      We are seeing a lot of blossom end rot on tomatoes now.
      This is due to irregular soil moisture or uneven watering practices. Use mulches when growing tomatoes.
      The problem might also be due to growing tomatoes in locations that are just too hot and they can't keep up with the water demand that the environment places on them.
      They do best when protected from late afternoon sun.
      Leaf Cutter Bee is very common now. Leaves of roses, crape myrtle, privet and others have that perfectly shaped circle cut out of the leaves. Don't try and control them.
      These are good guys and usually don't cause enough damage to worry about. If you have to, try netting important roses to keep the insect away.
      Grape leaf skeletonizer on grapes is also popping up.
      These are insects that skeletonize the leaves and leave them with just a netting of veins when they are done. Use the Bt sprays from your local nursery or garden supplier. ...
      Question: I moved here 20 years ago from Boston and gave up trying to grow lilacs after many failed attempts. After reading your article, I would love to try again. Could you tell me what is the name of the most comparable to the basic purple, fragrant type of lilac found all over New England?
      Answer: It's hard for me to give you one cultivar of lilac that would work here since there are hundreds of different kinds of lilacs and the chance that the one I would recommend would be available to you in stores is remote.
      The best suggestion I can give you is to go to your plant supplier and get the Persian lilac in whatever color they might have. The scientific name you will look for is Syringa persica.
      The persica name just means the Persian type. The color of the flowers will range from pinkish purple to a light purple. They will be fragrant. The common lilac, Syringa vulgaris, does not seem to do as well here, so I would stay away from this type unless you have talked with someone who has had success with a particular ultivar of the common lilac.
      The Japanese tree lilac also seems to work here but doesn't have the fragrance and is usually white flowered.
      Care of lilacs is about the same as any other shrub that's not adapted desert climates. Keep it in mulched soil, use lots of organic matter, fertilize in the late winter, prune after it blooms if it needs pruning and water deeply and frequently. In midsummer this might mean twice each week.
      In winter you should be able to get by on watering every 10 to 14 days if the plant is mulched.
      Q: I am not a gardener and don't know what kind of tree it is, but it is about 6 years old and has always been healthy and strong. The other day I noticed some leaves with half circles taken out of them, like a bite out of a cookie. Next, I noticed a stream of black ants running all the way up the tree trunk. Can ants eat leaves? Now, a few days later and they have devoured entire leaves. What can I do to get rid of whatever is doing this?
      A: You have several things going on and they are probably not related. First of all, the half circles are from a solitary, wild bee called the Leaf Cutter Bee.
      They remove perfectly clipped circles or partial circles from leaf tissue to use for nesting. Please do not try to control these bees since they cause little damage and are so beneficial in pollinating our flowers and food crops.
      We have enough trouble with our bee populations due to diseases and infectious mites that are decimating these essential creatures. The ants are climbing your tree in search of food or they are using the tree as a bridge to get somewhere else where there is food.
      The typical food they find in trees is the sugary excrement produced by aphids which may be sucking plant juices from the tree and using it for food. They have established a convoy to transport food back to their colony.
      If there are aphids present and you control the aphids, you will stop the ants from climbing the trees. Try using some insecticidal soaps or just hosing the tree to dislodge the aphids. Weekly rinsing should help if the tree is small enough to accomplish this.
      If you must use an insecticide, then spraying a band of insecticide on the trunk about 12 inches wide and completely circling the trunk will force the ants to go somewhere else and abandon that route.
      Try using an insecticide like Neem which is a botanical insecticide.
      Q: My lawn is fine but there is a low spot that I want to fill in. I was told there were two ways to do this. One way is to use peat moss to build up the low spot. The other way is to remove the grass that is growing, fill in the bare spot with top soil and then use sod. Is there a best way?
      A: This is a bad time of year to try to correct this problem. You would be better off if you could wait until fall, maybe around the middle of September or early October when it starts to cool off.
      There are two approaches you can use. One is to remove the sod, apply some soil in the low spot and relay the sod or purchase some new sod. Or you can very carefully apply a sandy soil to the low spot, no more than about one-half inch every other month.
      The first approach is to cut the grass out of the low spot. If this is a small area you can do this with a round-nosed and flat-nosed shovel. Cut the grass in 18-inch squares with the round-nosed shovel or linoleum knife.
      Push the flat-nosed shovel under the sod after you have cut the sod with the round-nosed shovel or knife. The flat nosed shovel is used to cut the roots under the freshly cut grass.
      It is important to cut the sod first with a round-nosed shovel or linoleum knife because of the plastic netting used in growing the sod. Do not remove the plastic netting.
      After you have pushed the flat-nosed shovel under the 18-inch square grass, lift the grass to the side and place it so that you know exactly how it came out. This will allow you to replace the sod in the exact same position as before.
      After you have removed the grass from the low spot, bring in the same type of soil that you have in the yard. If it is a sandy soil, then bring in a sandy soil to raise the height.
      Remove any rocks larger than one-half inch from the new soil. Take the new soil and apply it to the low spot. Mix some starter fertilizer with this soil. A fertilizer high in phosphorus would be good.
      This soil should be firmed in some way before you replace the sod. Sod and seed both do better in a firm bed of soil. This can be done with a water roller that you can rent from most nurseries or you can water the soil to firm it and settle it in.
      You can either replace the grass you removed or replace the old sod with new sod. Lay the sod back in the same order and same orientation that you had before you started.
      Even though this is the same sod, this may require that you cut some of the sod to make it fit better. This is best done with a knife like a linoleum knife or similar type.
      Now this is important: The newly installed sod should be rolled after installation to knit the sod with the soil. The soil beneath the sod should be wet enough so that wet soil oozes up between the seams in the sod. This will insure a good knit between the sod and the soil.
      The other way is to apply a soil as a top dressing to the low area. The idea is to slowly apply soil to the low area and then water and fertilize the grass so that new roots are established in the slowly rising soil profile.
     
     Bob Morris is a horticulture specialist with Nevada Cooperative Extension.
      This will take time. Apply no more than one-half inch of soil every other month until you raise the height to the level you want. Aerate the area that you are topdressing with a hand aerifier or gasoline driven aerator a month after topdressing each time.
      The soil to use depends on the soil in your yard. Use a soil very close in texture to the existing soil. This, and aeration, will help prevent soil layering and aid in water drainage until the grass can get established.