Contact state forest nursery for help with windbreak

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The Growers Study Guild will hold its monthly meeting at 10 a.m. on Wednesday at the Nevada Garden Club Center, inside Lorenzi Park at 3333 W. Washington Ave.

The program will be another in the series on Becoming a Desert Gardener and is open to all gardening enthusiasts. The program will be given by Susan Kent of Turner Greenhouses following the meeting at about 11 a.m. For further information, call 257-5555.

Question: I need to minimize wind damage to my Santa Rosa plum tree. The Anna apple and the peach tree are more resistant to the wind. I got plenty of fruit on them after the recent winds, but the plum tree lost most of its fruit. I also want to try to minimize the smell from my horse stalls, plus hide them from view.

Answer: The Master Gardeners Orchard always suffers from wind damage due to its openness. We have oleanders for a partial windbreak, which are not good for your horses, I am guessing. We also are using a privacy barrier with a century fence that is 6 feet tall.

With windbreaks, you want to achieve about an 80 percent density, which allows wind to pass through but slows it down. The area affected by a windbreak is down wind about five to eight times its height, which is called the quiet zone. Semi-solid structures, such as fences with slats or fabric, work well for small areas without using water. Also, vines on fences, rather than trees, work well. Living plants may always be a problem around horses due to their destructiveness.

For windbreak plants, you can contact the Nevada state forest nursery for plant materials. Their intent is not to compete with local nurseries, so the plant material they carry is limited and you probably will not find many of the very ornamental types of plant material you might be looking for. Their primary focus is on larger acreages.

The more effective windbreak is a double and triple row windbreak rather than a single row if you have the room. This way, you will get a faster fill in with a double row planted on a triangular spacing. You also can interplant in a triangle spacing a shrub row in front of the cypress and it will give you a faster and more effective windbreak.

Q: After much procrastination, I bought some Amzoy zoysia grass plugs for the backyard via mail order. We converted the front to xeriscape. I welcome any suggestions you have, and I appreciate any help you can provide.

A: In Las Vegas, we live in what is considered to be the transition zone for turfgrasses. We can grow warm-season grasses, like Bermuda and zoysia, and cool-season grasses, like tall fescue. Because it gets hot, we do have some limitations on the cool-season grasses, and they do perform better in the winter.

This opens up the possibilities to include cool-season grasses, like tall fescue and ryegrass, and warm-season grasses, like the Bermudas, buffalograss, zoysia, St. Augustine and Seashore paspalum. The real question is what is available to you.

Most places are going to have tall fescue available and possibly some others on special order. There might be an occasional place that will have buffalograss and maybe even a seashore paspalum. By the way, in both the buffalograsses and seashore paspalums, there are newer varieties that are gorgeous. That was not always the case in the past.

The warm-season grasses brown in the winter due to cold and the cool-season grasses, if they make it at all, struggle during the summer heat here. Tall fescue among the cool-season grasses has been the consistent performer in this climate, even with its drawbacks, such as high water use and summer diseases.

Bermudas have been the most available warm-season grass, but buffalograss is now supposed to be available here. Zoysias have been available off and on here over the years. The problem is that people in the past didn't like the brown winter lawn you get from the warm-season types.

Bermudas can be overseeded with ryegrass for winter color. Buffalograss and zoysia probably should not be overseeded. Tall fescue is cheap to maintain, except for its water use.

The warm-season grasses typically are more expensive, discounting water, to maintain. Buffalograss might be the exception.

If I were you and I did not want maintenance issues, I would probably opt for tall fescue, but put in the smallest area that I needed and not go hog wild and cover the whole yard. Make it functional and estimate how much you would really need to have for whatever purpose you were planning it for.

The nice thing about turfgrass is that it is the easiest landscape feature to remove if and when you decide to remove it. In the meantime, well-cared-for grass does help to improve the soil where it is growing.

I do not know your particular zoysia grass and I do not know how it would perform here. There are zoysias that perform better than others out here in the hot, arid West. That is not one that has been tested out here, to my knowledge.

If you ever have to pick again, I would chose El Toro zoysia, which has been tested here and performs well and is a relatively quick establisher compared to others.

Q: I live in Pahrump and am trying to grow tomatoes from seed. They are growing spindly from seed. Why does this happen?

A: You did not tell me how you are growing them, but I am assuming they are being grown from seed in pots and then transplanted into the garden.

The primary reasons are not enough light, too hot or both. When tomatoes are grown from seed, they can be grown in a greenhouse, cold frame or under lights. In any case, they need at least six to eight hours of sunlight each day or the equivalent under lights.

If using lights, you can make up for a lack of light intensity by increasing the total number of hours under lights per day. The lights should be just a few inches above the growing plants, preferably fluorescent light. Incandescent bulbs are too hot when they are that close to the plants.

If you do not have enough light, you can compensate for this lack of light by decreasing the air temperature. Lower air temperatures mean the plants will grow slower and not need as much light. Higher air temperatures will force faster growth, which translates into more light needed. Of course, colder temperatures mean a longer growing time before they are ready to plant outside.

You also can start tomatoes from seed in hot caps or other enclosures, such as wall-o-waters, which will protect seedlings to about 26 degrees Fahrenheit outside air temperatures without damaging them. I have grown them under plastic this way, as well as using the soil as a solar collector and releasing heat at night. But the primary culprit is lack of light.

Q: Do you recommend using evergreen tree fertilizer spikes? Should the tree be a certain age when you use them?

A: There is nothing wrong with tree stakes. It is a tidy way of adding fertilizer to trees without the mess. They can be used at any age. They are more expensive than fertilizing out of a bag, but you pay for the convenience. If using drip, place them under the drip emitters. If using a bubbler emitter, place them close to the bubbler.

Bob Morris is an associate professor with the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.