By George! - A Blog!

The middle of November has given us some cool night-time temperatures–and the daytime temperatures are also cooling, but a little more slowly. This is good news for man and beast, and our plants.
Leaves of deciduous vines, shrubs, and trees will be falling soon, and its the cool weather that triggers this change. As […]

All of us expect a return on the investment of energy we spend on plants as well as the money we used to buy them. We need to plan ahead,and to do this sensibly we need to know how long it will be before we get the expected return.
In the case of annual vegetables […]

In the middle of September things start looking and feeling better. There’s a general cooling with the shorter days and we’re getting cooler nights–which is always good for man and beast and plants, too.
But the days are sunny and this helps to keep the soil warm for the next month or so. The soil […]

Wintertime, when the trees are leafless, is when mistletoes comes to our attention. During the summer, when the trees are full with foliage, the parasite is hidden but all the time it is stealing nutrients and water.There are several kinds of desert mistletoes and each kind has male and female plants. If you look closely […]

Because of the continuing cold weather it???s appropriate to write yet again on the effects of frosts and freezes. If it warms up next month I???ll write about something else.Recently, I was invited into a lady???s bedroom. This was in the middle of the day and there were witnesses, so it???s not what you might […]

// // // // // // // With the night-time temperatures we are getting, lower than forty degrees in some parts of Tucson, you???d expect everything that lives to be dormant. Many of our trees and shrubs, […]

Many of us were caught by surprise at the end of last month when we got a mere two nights of frost. Our plants, too, were surprised because they had been enjoying mild sunny weather and were not expecting anything as cold as it got.
Don???t panic, because our plants are not panicking. They may look […]

Reader Questions
Q: I found your earlier article on dates very interesting but I’m not sure how much I need to thin the many bunches I have on my tree. I’ve lost your article and I wonder if you could please go over the procedure again.
A: Better than that, I now send you a […]