By George! - A Blog!

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.