Orchard sanitation is a No. 1 priority right now. If you have fruit on the ground or damaged fruit on the trees, you need to get them out of there. The dried fruit beetle is a particularly bad pantry pest that will get into soft fruit ripening on the tree or cause figs to sour. Sanitation is the key to controlling this pest.
Believe it or not, Memorial Day is one of the days I tell people to fertilize lawn grasses. The big growth surge in the spring is over on tall fescue, and hybrid Bermuda is just running out of steam from late fall fertilizer applications if it wasn't overseeded with ryegrass. Apply it in the cool of the morning and water it in. Use half of what the bag calls for if it is only a fertilizer and not a fertilizer weed killer combination. By the way, it is too late to apply weed killers now anyway. It is too hot and the weeds won't die easily any more.
If you aren't mulching your grass clippings into the lawn with your mulching mower, then why not? If you aren't, then you need to catch up on the times and get our Don't Bag It fact sheet by calling 257-5555. It will tell you how to do it. You will buy less fertilizer, apply less water and your lawn will look better.
Just around the corner is summer patch disease on tall fescue. That's the patch disease that occurs during summer rains or cloudy weather in June, July and August. I will tell you more when it is getting close.
Ugly looking tomatoes? Are they distorted? Temperatures below 50 Fahrenheit during flowering can interfere with pollination and result in catfacing of fruit. The best temperature for tomato fruit set is between 65-80 Fahrenheit. At temperatures below 55 Fahrenheit, tomato fruit may get misshapened or catfaced. At temperatures below 50 Fahrenheit, there may be no fruit set at all or very little depending on the variety. At 95 Fahrenheit, tomato fruit set is reduced due to high temperatures.
Remember how variable our temperatures were these past few weeks? Low temperatures experienced by the plant, weeks before flower buds were visible, also can affect later flowering and fruit set.
A tomato plant which experiences temperatures below 60 Fahrenheit for extended periods of time will begin to flower profusely. These flowers may remain open on the plant for several weeks at these temperatures without fruit being formed.
Larger flowers and increased branching of clusters can show up as a result of low temperatures experienced by the plant weeks before flower buds are visible. Daytime temperatures of 60 Fahrenheit with nighttime temperatures of 50 Fahrenheit, four to five weeks before a tomato flower cluster blooms, may result in misshapen or catfaced fruit.
Question: Can you tell me if the Japanese Red Maple will survive in Las Vegas? Any information you can provide on the Japanese Red Maple would be appreciated.
Answer: The first reaction that anyone would have if they have not lived here very long is that it will not grow here. I have lived here long enough and have seen things growing here that shouldn't.
I have seen Japanese Maple growing here. It was about 10-12 feet tall and growing on the north side of a home in about 80 percent shade. It was doing beautifully. That was about 15 years ago. However, the homeowner did not know which cultivar it was, which gets us to my point.
When these impossibilities are seen here, it is usually by accident it was planted and often by people who are not gardeners. They just happen to plant it in the right place in the right way.
Now regarding your Japanese Red Maple, I think it has a reasonable chance if you buy one small enough or start it from seed, prepare the soil adequately with lots of organic amendments such as the Nevada dairy manure I have been talking about and locate it on the north side, in the shade and out of the wind. A second possibility is on the east side, out of the wind.
There are well over 100 different Japanese Maples and the red form is one. There are weeping forms, ribbonleaf types, variegated forms, green ones, ones with red streaking through the leaves and it is endless.
The botanical name for a Japanese Red Maple tree is Acer Palmatum Autropurpeum. It can all be grown easily from seed. Japanese Maples are actually easy to grow from seed, but you've got to pretreat the seeds in a process called stratification.
Q: Can you please tell me why the leaves on my Dwarf Pink Oleanders are turning yellow?
A: Two questions. Are the leaves in the interior of the plant, all over the branches or on the ends? Secondly, did this just happen or has it been this way since winter?
Cold winters will cause oleander leaves to become off-color and yellow. This is will be over the entire branch. Yellowing on the interior leaves can be normal if it still has a dense canopy. Yellowing on the inside can be from lack of water if the canopy is not dense.
Yellowing on the ends can be from salts, too much water, poor nutrition. Yellowing in general also can be from improper watering. Oleanders should be watered once a week deeply this time of year, provided the soil is not real sandy. If it is sandy, then twice a week. If you are on drip emitters, then I would water once or twice a week depending on the soil and apply about 10 to 15 gallons of water each application.
Oleanders are not low water users but they are very drought tolerant. You can reduce the frequency of watering to save water but it will affect the quality of the plant. It will thin out and you may start to see some leaf scorching but it will survive for a long time like this.
Oleanders should be fertilized with a complete fertilizer such as 16-16-16 or 20-20-20 in January. You should remove one fourth to one third of the plant when you prune every other year. You would select two or three of the largest branches and remove them at soil level any time during the year since they bloom on current season wood. This will cause lots of new growth.
Bob Morris is a horticulture specialist with the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.
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