I have a winemaking class on Saturday afternoons beginning this week for five weeks. We actually will be making wine and discussing making wine the old-fashioned way -- by using wild yeasts. You will be joining Vito Lonardo and Norma Poole to learn this ancient method of winemaking and contrasting it with the more technical approaches to small-scale winemaking.
Each week, students will be tasting and evaluating not only their own wine in progress, but other wines as well. There will be discussions centering around these wines and how they were made. There are fees associated with these classes. To register or for more information, please contact me at morrisr@unce.unr.edu.
Question: I have a Hula Girl Hibiscus planted in the ground next to my house. It's in a partly shady spot, which gets about an hour or two of sunlight in late afternoon. It seems to be doing well, blooming and all, but it keeps getting yellow leaves. Is this normal? I really don't think so. What am I doing wrong?
Answer: There basically are two types of plants that we refer to as hibiscus -- one is the tropical or Chinese hibiscus which originates from Malaysia, and the other sometimes is referred to as hardy hibiscus or Rose of Sharon. Your hibiscus, Hula Girl, is a tropical hibiscus and will not take temperatures much below 25 degrees Fahrenheit for more than a couple of hours.
Since it is tropical in origin, it prefers a heavily amended organic soil, along with organic mulch on the surface. It should be planted in a warm part of the yard out of winter winds and protected during times of freezing weather. Once established, it may freeze to the ground during winter months, but come back from the crown area if the crown is protected. It will not tolerate a soil that drains poorly. If it is planted too close to a hot wall, it might burn.
There are a couple of things that could be causing the yellow leaves. If the yellowing leaves originate from old growth, but the newest leaves are still green, this could be due to a lack of nitrogen fertilizer. In this case, make sure you fertilize every couple of months with a high quality fertilizer, or use compost. If you are using good compost, you will not need to add a fertilizer. Stop fertilizing in August to help prepare it for winter weather.
Yellowing leaves also can be due to a lack of sunlight. Hibiscus needs a lot of light, but in our climate, direct sunlight for extended periods or in the late afternoon could cause leaf scorching. This plant should have no more than 50 percent shade. To determine how much shade your plant is getting, look at the ground when the sun is overhead. The ground will be speckled with sunlight. Roughly determine how much of the ground is speckled from sunlight versus dark with shade. If there is 50 percent or more shade you will have to increase sunlight into the area by thinning the plants providing shade.
Yellowing leaves can indicate drainage problems. Make sure your plant has good soil drainage and is surrounded by organic mulch that can decompose and continually improve the soil. Tropical hibiscus prefers a rich, well-drained soil.
Your plant should have a minimum of two drip emitters if it is being watered by drip irrigation. If the soil is a sandy soil, you may need three emitters placed in a triangular pattern around the plant, no more than 12 inches from the center of the plant.
Q: We just had a pool put in mid-summer last year. Hauling dirt out and bringing pool materials in has compacted the soil where I want to put landscaping. I can't believe how hard it is. I would like to put in a small lawn area in that area. I had problems with grass not establishing a strong and deep root system at this residence before. Is there something I can mix in with the soil to help the grass and keep the soil from getting so hard? Also, what type of sod would you recommend for the desert?
A: Hopefully, the soil was not wet when it was compacted. Wet soil that has been compacted is much harder to remedy than dry soil. If the soil was dry when compacted, it will only be compacted down to a depth of a few inches. If the soil was wet when compacted, the compacted depth could be much more.
The ideal way to remedy your compacted soil would be to rip it with a tractor, add soil amendments and rototill it to prepare for a seedbed or sodbed prior to installing a lawn. Another method that can be used in smaller areas is to trench the compacted soil to a depth of about 10 or 12 inches, with trenches 12 to 18 inches apart, add soil amendments and cultivate or rototill the area.
If the soil is bone dry, irrigate it a few days before trenching. The soil should be moist but not wet or muddy. This will help you trench and rototill more easily in our soils. Dry soils that are nearly impossible to rototill can be softened first with water, allowed to drain and dry down a bit and then rototilled. It is much easier to till than a dry soil.
Your choice of sod most likely will be limited to what is available at the nurseries.
Q: I have a Chilean mesquite in the backyard that seems to be in a coma. It is green on every little branch I've checked, but there is not yet a single little green shoot. Seems late, since others are already in full leaf. I have deep watered it, but nothing has happened. Anything I can or should do?
A. I think what you are telling me is that your mesquite has dropped its leaves due to cold and has not yet sent out any new growth and other mesquites have. This can happen if buds for spring growth were damaged during a winter freeze.
It also can happen if the tree is pushing new growth in the spring and we get a freeze right at bud break. We did get freezing temperatures the first week of March in some parts of the valley this spring.
In late summer and early fall, leaf and flower buds are set up for the next year's growth. Even though mesquite is considered evergreen in warmer climates, during the winter, if it is cold enough, you can get leaf death and leaf drop due to low temperatures. Newly emerging spring growth is very sensitive to cold. If a freeze hits just as new growth from buds is emerging, or as the buds are swelling, it can kill new spring growth before or as it emerges.
If your tree had bud death due to a late freeze, then the tree has to produce new buds to initiate spring growth because all the buds that were going to do it are now dead. These new buds are so-called adventitious buds and arise from deeper inside the plant tissue.
You can either wait it out or selectively remove some limbs to give the rejuvenation process (adventitious buds) a kick in the pants. We have an old saying in horticulture: if a plant is not performing well and we think it can do better, we cut it back and try to force it to perform.
Q: One of my apple trees has developed some strange-shaped growths among its branches. The best way to describe it is kind of a curly cue but flattened growth on the tree. I was worried it might spread to others.
A: Thanks for trying to send a picture, but unfortunately the picture was not forwarded to me. I think I know what it was from your description. There is some unusual growth on some plants that resembles a flattened fan of compressed stems, sometimes curved. It is very grotesque-looking.
This type of growth is called a fasciation. No one knows what causes this growth and it is not serious, but it does happen to many different types of plants, not just fruit trees. Just remove it about a foot below this growth. It should not return.
If you have gardening questions, call the master gardener hot line at 257-5555 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, or contact Bob Morris by e-mail at extremehort@aol.com.
Bob Morris is an associate professor with the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.
Archived Editions| Advertising | Contact The Staff
