By George! - A Blog!

Because the temperatures are rising; because rain is falling;because the days are getting longer we tell ourselves that spring is with us, or is not too far off.  The bees know this and, to their benefit, a consequence of these natural happenings is another—flowers appear.  Sometimes the flowers are what we call weeds, sometimes they are simply a sign that  our vegetable plants have matured. and sometimes they are part of the natural cycle of tree development.  Looking around our plots of the community gardens we see flowering radishes, broccoli,cabbage and cauliflower and also bees flitting from one plant to another–a true sign of spring.

It’s amazing that the bees that live in the commercial hives are living in the dark, yet they know what’s going on outside.Tucson does not have a hard winter that requires us to keep the hive warm by giving them a blanket to retain their own body heat so the hive responds by not going completely dormant, yet the bees don’t come out until the day has warmed up.  Some flowers open early in the morning so it’s surprising to see adventurous bees busily leaving the hive while the morning is still cold.  They are coming back with their pollen sac on their hind legs full of colored pollen.  Those bees that gathered nectar don’t tell us quite so plainly that they have finished the first shift of their work day.

Why are they doing this instead of staying indoors until the day has warmed up?  It’s a  mystery because, as much as we know about bees, the queen lays eggs when life is favorable and the workers build new cells to accommodate her activity. Part of the motivation is forecasting the massive flowering of citrus trees and desert acacias, mesquites and palo verde.  The bees live in the dark, so how do they know how get ready for a vigorous pollen and nectar collectiing campaign?

As a beekeeper I try to manage their instinctive urges and this is what I’m doing right now.  I’m feeding the hive with sugar water in an effort to fool them to think there’s lots of food to be collected.  They are responding by  taking up the offering a little more quickly as the days go by.  The sugar water disappears more rapidly as new baby bees are produced, first by the queen laying more eggs (somebody told her about the abundance of food) and secondly by workers tending to the increasing number of developing grubs.  My rough assessment of the situation could be inadequate as I anticipate the citrus trees to flower.  I think they should be in flower right now, but they aren’t.

There’s a danger in making wrong judgements.  Having stimulated the bees to “wake up” for an event and the event has not taken place, there’ll be a crowded hive and that is something we humans don’t understand.  The bees simply follow  instructions and relieve the crowding by swarming– half the hive leaves with the old queen and half stays with a new queen that was produced and nourished in optimism that I created by feeding sugar water.

What can I, as a manager, do about this?  First, I can provide more room by adding another box of  waxed foundation and the bees will overflow into it.  Secondly, I can open up the hive on a sunny afternoon to see whether new queen cells have been created in anticipation of a swarm.  Those baby queens will have to be destroyed to relieve the pressure of preparing to split off.  Probably both measures should be taken. I shouldn’t have to lose half of my bees because I fed them too early! and too liberally.

And I’ll hope that the current rains will stimulate my citrus trees (and all of my neighbors) to flower, thus giving the bees something to do.  I must remember that they’ll collect nectar and pollen for themselves, and not for me, though I shall be happy to take some.  I mustn’t be greedy and take all they gather, just a little for me without robbing the store for their own future well-being.  And if I make a poor judgement call we both will suffer.

Beekeeping shouldn’t be a stressful activity for me, or for them.  Hopefully we’ll understand causes and effects and do the right thing for us both.

Our desert trees have gone through a year of inadequate rainfall, which is something we cannot do anything about. That’s bad enough a handicap to good health. What we can see, now that the leaves have fallen off is a widespread scourge that we can do something about.  Those lumps of green that infest the branches are a parasite, stealing the juices of water and of nutrients in the tree itself.  They are very visible while the tree is leafless but when warm weather returns and the tree puts out fresh leaves we won’t see the mistletoe and we might forget them.  That would be unfortunate for the host, mesquite.

Where do mistletoes come from?   Birds bring them and the story goes like this.  Mistletoe is a dieacious plant, meaning that there are male plants and female plants, just as in dates and hollies.  The female plants bear berries and though they are small and insignificant, they carry a small seed nesting in a sticky juice. Birds know this, or they quickly find that the berries are difficult to eat so they wipe their beaks on branches of trees. This “cleansing of the beaks” often pushes the seed into crevices between the rough bark where it is safe and secure.  A little gentle rain or morning dew is all that the seed needs to start germinating.  The young root burrows into the bark and begins extracting moisture and nutrients from the tree and it stays there until it is quite a vigorous parasite.

You’d think that a parasite would be foolhardy to actually kill its host because that would mean the end of life for the parasite, but that is what happens.  In years when we get good rains the tree might not suffer very much but two years of inadequate rain puts a load of stress on the tree, and that’s where we are now.

The point is that we can easily see the mistletoe whereas when the leaves come out we won’t.  So, if we want to keep our desert vegetation, now is the time to take action.  Mistletoes can easily be pulled off, though the roots left in the tree will sprout again–and the green stuff will have to be pulled off again. Keep this up for a year or two and the pest will be defeated. Some landscapers wrap black plastic over the branch where the pest was and any sprouts rejoin this world in the dark and they die more quickly.  There are situations where the pest has lived off its host for several years and is thoroughly entrenched in the wood of the tree.  Then the remedy is to prune out a branch that is so heavily infested.  Hopefully this severe action will not you with a mutilated tree.  I have two large shade trees that were so badly infested that new mistletoe shoots burst through the bark lower down on the trunk and it became necessary to cut the trees almost to the ground in order to get rid of the pest.  The landscaper who did this work said that the trees would sprout again, clear of the pest–and indeed they did.  Both trees were serving a very useful shading of the house and the driveway.

When you pull off the pest, don’t leave it lying on the ground if it has little white berries.  Birds will find them and they’ll re-infest your vulnerable trees.  Put the stuff in the garbage to get it off your property

Community Gardeners realize that  gardening is a full time activity that calls for a lot of planning.  Just now, in early February, winter leafy plants and roots are doing well and are probably using all the space that’s available.  Further, that space will be needed for summertime crops.  Already a lot of onions have been planted and although the cool season crops are doing well we are getting close to opening our summer programs.  This means it’s really not worth sowing seed of radishes, carrots and beets because the cool season will be finishing by the  end of this month.  On the other hand, setting out plants of lettuce, chard, broccoli and cabbage (but not the slower-growing cauliflower) is a possibility until the end of February but after that it will be our summer season.

So, it’s planning time for summer vegetables and the universal favorite summer vegetable is tomatoes,( if it isn’t zuchinni squash! ).  This month, the soil is too cold for successful tomato planting.  We need to wait until the soil temperature stays above 65 degrees. and that may not happen until the middle of March  Go and buy a soil thermometer!  It will be a most useful garden “gadget” all year round because every plant has its own optimum soil temperature that determines success.There is a list of vegetables and their soil temperature preferences on page 171 of my book “Desert Gardening” and it should determine your planting plans.

There are two ways to go for tomatoes; first, raise your own plants from seed, (but this should have been started at the beginning of January) and second, buy your plants from a good nursery.  Bear in mind that it’s too early to set out tomato plants in spite of the fact that some nurseries already are displaying beautiful plants that were grown in a greenhouse.  Avoid such plants in spite of being tempted and, at any time, don’t buy tomato plants that are showing flowers or little fruits.  A good size for a plant ready to be put in the ground is about twelve inches tall.

If, after early March the soil is still too cold you can warm it up by laying clear plastic sheet on the prepared soil and putting the plants through a slit in that plastic.  This is just as a starter, because the same soil will be too hot in June and it will be advisable to keep the sun off the soil by  laying down a three inch layer of alfalfa hay.  This mulch can be laid over the plastic, though it’s better to pick it up carefully so that your plant is not damaged.  Another trick is to put a “Wall of Water” ( purchased at your nursery) round the plant.  It acts as a small greenhouse, capturing the sun’s rays and encouraging growth.  Even after the soil temperature has reached a suitable warmth there’s a trick that you can use to advantage.  It is well known that tomato plants grow roots from their stems if they are covered with damp soil and some magazines encourage gardeners to plant deep to enable this to happen.  It’s better to use the upper soil layers where the spring sunshine has warmed if.  Lay the plant on it’s side in a shallow trench after a few leaves are removed.  This “trick” will let the plant grow an extra set of roots and give more power to the plant later.

It’s important to know the difference between Determinate and Indeterminate because these words are used to describe plant performance.  Commercial growers like determinate plants because they produce at one time, enabling fields to be cleared and replanted. Home gardeners want a continued production over the lifetime of the plant. Most tomatoes for the home garden are indeterminate, and good examples are the cherries and the pears. Patio is a determinate tomato that produces for a short time only.

There are numerous varieties and each year many more are added to the catalogs.  A general rule for selection is to avoid those kinds that display their fruit above the foliage but select those that produce their fruit under a canopy of leaves where the sun does not blister the skin or creates leathery skin that cracks.  Under the foliage there is humidity and this gives us fruit with thin skin that stretches as the fruit gets bigger.

Ask seasoned gardeners which varieties they like.  Try two plants of three varieties and keep a journal so you’ll know what to plant next year. Tomatoes need a lot of room because in the desert we don’t prune them like gardeners in New Jersey do: we prefer an uncontrolled bush to get the shade that protects the fruit during the hottest, sunniest months of July and August.

There’s more to growing tomatoes in the desert than this blog can tell you.  In my book “Desert Gardening” there’s a chapter on growing tomatoes with pictures.  Look it up!!

Maybe you have relatives coming from colder places and they think the weather is superb. It may be superb for the golfers because of our sunny mornings but our night-time temperatures are hovering close to freezing. It’s that seasonal night temperature that colors up the citrus fruit on our trees in the backyard; not the ripeness of the fruit, so be cautious when your houseguests cheerfully ask “Can I have a grapefruit?” Or an orange or a tangerine or a tangelo”.

So, if rind color is not measure of ripeness, what is it determines when the fruit can be eaten?

Lemons. Skin color is not much of a guide because green lemons can be ready but its usually better to wait for some yellow color to appear.

Tangelos. Skin clor is of some use but the fruit can stay on the tree long past Christmas because the fruit is so ornamentally seasonal.

Tangerines. Strong color is a helpful guide but this fruit, though perhaps the first to be ready, quickly loses quality and the whole crop should, perhaps, be eaten up rather quickly or given to friends and neighbors.

Oranges. Wait until after Christmas to get the best value. Those called “Arizona Sweets” are winter crops whereas Valencias are more summer fruits. Sour Oranges (if you are a marmalade maker) are ready soon after Christmas.

Grapefruit will not be ready until long after Christmas and, in fact, improvethemselves right through until May.

The universal test you need to apply is to try one or two fruit and if the taste is sour you ‘ll have to be patient and try again a couple of weeks later. When the fruit is acceptable take from the tree only what you need for the moment. Picked fruit does not keep its freshness anything like the fruit still on the tree. Start harvesting by picking exposed fruit, in case we get a series of hard frosts. The inner fruit will be protected by the leafy branches and it will stay undamaged longer by being so protected. Frozen fruit is soft and puffy and not nice to eat.

Our funny weather ( warm November, and even December) has kept our trees growing and there are reports that some citrus actually has fruit buds starting to open. This tells us to be ready with a sheet for covering as much of the tree as you can on a cold night. The stronger the cold (down to 28 degrees for a few hours), calls for additionally placing a forty watt light bulb in a metal bucket on the ground in the middle of the tree. The covering should be taken off in the morning to let any sunshine warm things up and then put over the tree again before the sun goes down.

It’s no the time of year to plant citrus trees, despite the temptation of discounted prices. Wait until beginning of March to plant. Meanwhile you can make the most of cool weather ( and perhaps your house guests!!) by getting the planting holes dug. There’s every reason to dig one five feet square and five feet deep.

At a talk I gave the other evening a member of the audience offered a testimonial to such an effort by telling me a story. He dug a hole of this size, whereas his neighbors followed the lazy man’s more recent advice to dig no more than the size of the container the trees came in. Later in the summer a strong wind went through Green Valley and blew over his neighbors’ trees, leaving his trees to stay upright.

You’ve got a few weeks to dig a decent hole. Dig a foot at a time for five weekends–and you’re there, in good time for planting.

The cool-season vegetable garden starts with new plants or seeds. If you are an early operator there may not be the right plants for you in the nurseries so you have to sow seeds. Because there’s usually a wide range of varieties in seeds packets that are available it’s often the way to go..

Now, in late October or early November, you are presented with a choice between sowing seeds indoors or out in the garden. My own preference is to sow seeds in the garden because the soil is warm after a hot summer, and if it is not, you can warm it by covering the sown seeds with clear plastic. A plastic cover also preserves soil moisture and you don’t need to come to the garden every day to water. Furthermore, there is better light out in the garden while light indoors is seldom adequate. Seeds sown in little containers by the kitchen window usually start their life by leaning towards the light and this weakens them–they seldom make strong plants this way.

You’ll be more successful if you sow seeds at the right depth and the rule of thumb is to put them in the ground at three times their thickness.There is an exception, though, in the case of lettuce which, for some reason, needs to be sown very near the surface. Some people even say that lettuce needs to see the light of day in order to germinate.

But here is a rule that will serve you very well, especially if you start early. Don’t sow all your seed at one time, but make a succession of sowings so you subsequently spread your harvest over time and thus avoid too much of anything by sowing the whole packet at once.

Also, don’t sow your seed in Vee shaped drills because they tend to fall down to the botttom where they sit on top of one another. Instead, avoid resultant crowding and attendant competition by preparing a wide drill that allows seed to rest side by side. Sow lightly.

If you don’t use clear plastic over the seeds you will have to visit the seedbed every day to water, maybe twice a day if the weather is unseasonably warm, windy and dry. When watering try to hold the nozzle up so the water gently comes out and falls like rain. Don’t blast the young seedings as with a fire hose. Birds, such as quail and thrashers, will be tempted to eat up your seeds as soon as they appear. You can protect them by spreading a light sheet (or even better, Floating Row Cover that you buy at a nursery) or by building a little box of small-meshed chicken wire. The floating row cover comes in handy later when we get frosts

There’s a very effective way to raise seedlings, and at the same time get an early harvest of “greens” by scattering seeds quite lighty in a square foot space. As time goes by you thin out those smaller seedlings and eat them. Keep the larger stronger plants as long as you can and eat them when they are mature. In this way you avoid pulling up a young plant and shocking it and you let them send their roots down without trsnaplant shock.

Most of our cool-season vegetables have small seeds, but peas and faba beans have large enough seeds for you to measure the spacing by using a measuring stick. Large plants need more room to avoid crowding. We tend to sow seeds too thickly.

Seed sowing can go on until early March using interval sowing, but the growth will slow down in December and January when both the weather and the soil is cold. A way to sidestep this period of temporay dormancy is to erect a tunnel of clear plastic over a part of your garden using tubing as supporting framework. You’ve made a little greenhouse and you’ll need to open it up if we get days of bright sunshine. But close it up again before the sun goes down to conserve the warmth.

At the end of October we had weather forecasts that warned us of early cold weather. That should have been a “wake-up” call. Are you ready for the steps needed to save your plants from frost damage? Our plants have enjoyed warm weather and they have put out new shoots. These are prime targets for Jack Frost. An early frost catches our plants before they have naturally gone into dormancy as the temperatures drop day by day.

First, there is no need to worry about winter vegetables, they won’t suffer. Being slowed down by the cold will be good for them because their flavor will improve. Its the remnants of summer vegetables that should draw our attention. It’s a fact that tomatoes and peppers are perennials, and many gardeners have had their plants live through two or three seasons, especially if they were dug up with plenty of roots and stored for the winter in a five-gallon container that were brought into a shelter during a freezing night. If you are growing citrus, Bird of Paradise and Bougainvillea you might think of helping them by hardening them off. This means slowing down their growth by not watering as liberally as previously. It’s a judgement call because you don’t want the plants to wilt but nor do you want them to produce new shoots–which are more sensitive to freezing temperatures than old growth.

Tomatoes and peppers out in the ground that are producing need to be covered at night with an old sheet that is taken off each morning to let the sunshine provide energy. This becomes quite a chore but this can be lessened by covering with a material called Floating Row Cover that can be left on all the time because it lets in more light than does a sheet. Nurseries and hardware stores sell it.

It’s common knowledge that some parts of the city are colder than others and you need to know about your own backyard. The weather forecasts that we get usually refer to the situation at the official weather reporting station–the airport in our case of Tucson. In general, sloping areas are warmer than the flat low-lying ones because moving air is less cold than still air that has “ponded”. A small garden that is surrounded by a high wall is another kind of cold “pond”.

You can easily find out the relationship between your yard and that of the airport by using a Maximum-minimum thermometer.As the mercury is moved by shrinking (or expanding) a little metal rod is also moved but stays put when the mercury returns. You don’t have to get out of bed during the coldest part of the night to read the thermometer, you wait until after breakfast and, using the magnet that comes with it, restore the little metal bar to the current temperature ready for the next night. Nurseries and hardware stores sell this useful thermometer for less than twenty-five dollars. Place it in an open area away from a warm wall and not under a tree or a shelter to truly measure what’s going on.

Keep a record of each morning’s reading, together with the previous day’s forecast, to give you a comparison. If your yard is five degrees warmer each night there’s no need to panic when a forecast predicts freezing. If, on the other hand, your place is consistently five degrees colder you’d better watch out and be prepared to take action when you hear the forecast.

If you are concerned about a citrus tree you need to know that limes are the most sensitive and grapefruit are the more hardy with tangerines and oranges in between. Twenty eight degrees of frost for a few hours will cause damage otherwise a cold night merely slows down the tree’s activity. There’s seldom any need to take off the fruit.

You’ll be listening for the forecast some time in the evening, after dark, so you need to know just where to quickly find the extension cord, a 60 watt bulb, a metal bucket and a sheet to cover the tree. The bulb goes in the bucket and the bucket, on the ground and under the tree, holds the heat in a little, but you want the heat to float up through the tree’s foliage. The covering will hold in the heat. Some people think that Christmas tree lights are helpful but in fact they merely warm the cold night air as long as you can see them. If you can stuff them among the foliage where they don’t show, they’ll do a better job of keeping the tree warm.

If you notice “frost on the pumpkins” next morning don’t panic and spray it off. It’s better to let the morning sunshine melt it off.

By now you will have planted the winter crops you are interested in eating:

If you sowed seeds, you may be wondering why you haven’t seen any seedlings yet.  If you planted small plants, you may be wondering why all of the leaves are gone.  Both disappointments are caused by the same culprits.  We had a very poor monsoon this year and many of the birds and animals are hungry and your newly planted gardens are too tempting to pass up.  In most cases around our city, the damage will have been caused by birds.  You need to evaluate your area to determine what type of critter has eaten or is likely to eat your crops.  Are you going to have trouble with javalina, domestic cats, pack rats, deer, birds, rock squirrels, gophers, ground squirrels, rabbits or humans?  Each varmint requires a different strategy.   

Cats might like to use your garden as a litter box.  The easiest solution to discourage them is to place chicken wire or hardware cloth on any exposed soil.  If you have sown seeds, you need to prop up the mesh so that the plants can grow without becoming distorted.  The cats can’t dig because of the mesh and they will find someplace else to do their business.

Birds are the biggest problem right now.  One option is to make an arch or a teepee out of chicken wire or hardware cloth.  Plastic bird netting can protect your seedlings but it also tends to snare lizards.  The best choice is a floating row cover.  This is a cheesecloth-like fabric that lets air and sunlight and moisture through but keeps out birds and insects.  It has an advantage over other materials in that it generally does not kill any creatures.  In addition, floating row covers provide some protection from frost.  The lightest covers provide about 3°F protection.  The heaviest covers provide about 12°F protection.

Rabbits can damage both your plants and your irrigation.  A low vertical fence of chicken wire or hardware cloth will keep them out.  Chain link fencing is not a rabbit-proof barrier because many rabbits can squeeze through the chain link openings.  Rabbits will sometimes dig under a fence and this is more of a problem once they figure out that it is possible, so it is best to keep them from learning how.  Try lining the bottom edge of the fencing with rocks or boards, burying the bottom edge slightly below the surface or folding the bottom edge out about 6 inches.

The jury is still out on the best methods to exclude ground squirrels and gophers but the proposed method is to bury fencing at least 18 inches deep.  Again, chain link won’t work.  It has to be fencing with smaller openings.  Since it is a bit of work to bury fencing so deep, you may want to use fencing made of heavy gauge wire so that it won’t rust through too quickly.  In extreme cases, it could be necessary to completely line the planting bed with hardware cloth.  Leave some of the fencing above the ground so that you have a place to securely attach more fencing to cover the planting bed.  Since squirrels climb, it is necessary to either completely cover the planting bed with fencing shaped in an arch or you can try a vertical fence, about 24 inches high, with a band 8-12 inches wide around the bottom made of a slick material so the squirrel can’t get a grip.

Excluding varmints from your garden requires vigilance.  Be observant as you approach and work in your garden and you may see which critters are getting to your plants and how they are getting in.  When you know which critter is eating your plants, you can tailor a solution.  Remember, once your plants get big enough, they will be able to sustain a little damage and still provide you with a great harvest.

(Written by Gene)

This story relates more specifically to the Sabino Vista Garden, but I feel it won’t be long before our other gardens are invaded by gophers and ground squirrels.  Our gardens are surrounded by empty desert land which is a natural home to these animals.  Furthermore, our gardens provide food and moisture for them.

Remember that ground squirrels run over the surface of the earth although they make a home deep down.  Gophers, on the other hand, live underground though they do at times travel over the surface.  We don’t have moles in Arizona.

Any kind of control calls for a continuous and methodical effort. This control can be compared to brushing your teeth or cleaning house. A partial one shot deal will not work.

My choice of control starts with trapping. There are gopher traps that you put in the underground runs that the gophers make. Snap rat traps will catch squirrels and you will have to be mindful about the possibility of catching birds, cats and other pets.  Gophers can be trapped by digging into a recent run. You can find one by looking at the freshness of mounds that they push up.  Leave the mounds alone but between two fresh ones carefully excavate into the run.  Put down two traps–one to catch a gopher going one way and the other to catch a gopher coming the other way.  These traps are set off by a gopher pushing against a plate. This releases a spring that pinches the gopher and kills it.  You need to inspect your traps for success every day or so. No bait is required.

Squirrels can be caught with the large rat trap that snaps on to the animal when it disturbs the trigger mechanism.  This is done by the animal eating the bait.  Good baits include pieces of apple or peanut butter.

Any trapping program needs to be extensive (say using ten traps at any one time) and frequent attention to remove dead animals and to set the traps in other places. Setting one or two traps is not going to be effective.

Here are some measures that gardeners have taken but have not proved effective:  1.  Using dry ice in the burrows. The idea is to asphyxiate the animals in the ground.  Dry ice is put into the burrows and the holes are sealed with dirt to prevent the carbon dioxide from evaporating.  2.  Putting bubble gum down the holes. The soft kind is what is used and the shiny Chiclets are ineffective. 3.  Putting water down the holes of gophers in an attempt to drown them has had mixed success and we want to avoid the use of poison chemicals.  Efforts of using poison gas by the City Parks at Hummel Park for one time only was not effective.

Here are three or four suggested measures to try: 1. Build boxes of hardware cloth, bury them in the ground, fill them with dirt.  You have to be careful to bend over the sides towards the middle to make a wire cube because squirrels will climb up the sides and go down inside the cube and eat your plant.  Gophers might well do the same.  If you don’t like to make a number of cubes, then you can dig out your plot to two feet, lay hardware cloth on the floor and the sides and return the dirt to your plot.  You will need to do a surface covering to make your garden pest proof.

It has been suggested and without conviction that if we plant castor bean seed on the perimeters of our garden we will make a barrier that gophers will not pass.  Another plant to consider is Gopher Spurge (Euphorbia lathyrus). These will need to be irrigated to induce germination but they are dryland plants.

In driving around town there are an increasing number of palm trees that have been mistreated. The sight of these poor trees makes me get out one of my Soap boxes, get onto it and deliver a harangue.

Palm trees are beautiful assets to our landscapes but only if they are allowed to grow they way they want to. They are no longer beautiful if a tree trimmer takes off most of the leaves. It’s hard to know why they do it. They wouldn’t do it if they understood how a palm tree grows. Trees need all the leaves they can produce. Leaves capture energy from the sun, they shade the tender bark up at the top of a tree It’s an understanding among good tree trimmers that you don’t remove green leaves from palm trees. It’s alright to take off the dead brown leaves and dead flower stalks (though this is not necessarily called for–they will fall off on their own) but healthy green leaves are needed on the tree. Unprofessional tree trimmers take off more leaves than they should because, I believe, they can say how hard they worked and therefore can charge higher.

If someone comes to your door and tells you that your palms need trimming, ask them some questions. How much foliage are they wanting to remove? How will they know when to stop? You could start by telling them that you don’t want any green leaves to be cut off. This is the simplest and easiest messge to give the trimmer but you could ask at what degree removable leaves sit on the tree because even those fronds pointing down are often totally green and should stay on the tree. Frond color is the best indicator. Those that are yellowing are good candidates and those that are dead brown are better. When the job is done there should be no green fronds in the trailer headed for the land-fill

Another opportunity for a second box came to me after visits to two of our community gardens (and we could say any two because its a common problem). Harvest-time gives us an opportunity to say whether our hard work is well rewarded or wasted. Say the gardener shared a piece of cantalope and it was delicious. You’re bound to ask “What variety is this?” and very often comes the answer “I don’t know, I didn’t write down the name, I don’t even keep a journal”. If the taste and size of the harvest is a good one most people thank their lucky stars but if the taste is disappointing the thought that goes through the gardener’s head is “I’m not going to grow that one next year”. But the question remains–what variety was that?

Collectively a hundred of our gardeners have a wealth of trial experience that could be so useful in planning our yearly activities, but we’re missing the opportunity

If every gardener kept a journal, and let us read it, we would have a record of what went on, good and bad. It would tell us that Seed Catalogs don’t always tell the truth because their descriptions describe what happened at their trial grounds in a different situation than ours and we were completely led astray by the descriptions and the pictures.

Even better, if every gardener used a weatherproof label and wrote down the name of the vegetable, the other gardeners would get an immediate message regarding the performance of the plant. Later a harvest taste test would complete the asessment and we’d all be the wiser. Many people have a good memory and they can rely on it but more gardeners , me included,are not equipped well enough and need some written evidence.

Let’s all make a resolution to use labels when we sow and plant our cool-season vegetables. starting at the end of August. Make an order for good quality labels now.

The other day I was watching a husband-and-wife community gardener team searching for ripe tomatoes. They were puting their hands into a thick bush of foliage and bringing out ripe tomatoes. As I watched I was reminded of an “incident” when an assistant was doing the same thing in our trial plot of vegetables. She came running into the office (quite the wrong thing to do, actually, but she was frightened and she was recently from New York) saying “a snake bit me on the hand” She had been poking in tomato foliage.
To continue with the story I took her to the nearest hospital and the young doctors didn’t know what to. They said I was to go back to the garden, find the snake and bring it to them. Then they would know what to do. Of course, I couldn’t do that and felt anxious about the care she was to receive, but all turned out well. It was not a rattlesnake that bit her and she was back at work the next day..

Anyway, please don’t go searching for the ripest tomato in a dense bush without first poking a stick around in it. There could be a rattlesnake in that tomatow bush, keeping cool.

Snakes are good for our gardens because they eat small animal pests such as gophers and squirrels, but we don’t want rattlesnakes because they are dangerous. If you come face to face with a snake the right thing to do is to quietly walk away and watch to see where it goes. Some Fire Departments will send a team to catch rattlesnakes and turn them loose in the desert, where they belong.

Bird netting is not always efficient in protecting our fruit from birds but it’s an effective trap for lizards and snakes. We don’t like to use it.

The most useful covering is an old white sheet spread completely over the bush. Birds won’t see the fruit if you get it over before the fruit ripens and puts out that inviting smell. Our sun is so strong that enough light comes through for the bush to continue its life. It may not look very tidy, but its effective. If you like you can buy special fabric from a nursery, but it’s a bit expensive.

Landscapes are thriving with the rains and the humidity. Hedges become unitidy and need trimming. The best way to deal with this problem is to remove only a little of the extra growth at a time. This lightens the work load and makes clean-up easier. Remember that hedges look best when they are broad at the base and narrower at the top.It helps to use a straight-edge to guide you away from carving too much out of a piece of luxurious growth. Start with a string marker on the ground along the length of the hedge and use the straight-edge against this string to get a uniform finish. Don’t remove a lot of new growth at any one time but come back later.

There my be residual old flower stalks hanging on to agaves and aloes. Flower stalks on agaves tell us that the plant is finished and it’s time for a clean-up. In a similar, but smaller, way the dead stalks on aloes tell us that the plant has done its best for the time being. The plant is not dead, but removal of the dead stalks seems to rejuvenate it. A watering may be necessary too, if you want your plants to “shine” with new energy.