Q: I enjoy your column, but you never write about roses. We inherited 14-year-old bushes. The bushes are important, and they should look nice.
Bob Morris
Bob Morris is a horticulture expert living in Las Vegas and professor emeritus for the University of Nevada. Visit his blog at xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com. Send questions to Extremehort@aol.com.
Basil, cilantro and Italian parsley are easy to grow here if you prepared your soil adequately and grow them at the right time of year.
Leafhoppers are very small and jump rather than fly. There can be hundreds if not thousands right about now on grapes. They cause some leaf yellowing, black specks on the leaves and fruit.
Question: I want to plant potatoes here in Las Vegas. Our season is timed different than others, though, so there aren’t seed potatoes available now for a mid- or late July planting.
Q: I read with interest your column in the Review-Journal on watering. Our small lawn seems to be dying in patches. We water four days a week for 20 minutes at 11 p.m. We regularly feed with Turf Builder Plus and Ironite. What should we do?
Q: I took your advice and am treating pill bugs in my garden like slugs. I have drowned them with beer but they keep coming back. My neighbor is giving me his old cans of beer. I had to dig up the rhubarb plants and put them in pots. This is sure a frustrating year.
The freeze is coming. Remember that the coldest is just before dawn. Clear, cloudless skies are more likely to give us lower temperatures and freezing; windy cold is worse than just cold. Cover tender plants before you go to bed and uncover them when it is no longer freezing.
Q: This last year we have had very little fruit on our kumquat, although the tree had been ample with fruit before. The tree appears to be healthy, just no fruit. The only difference I can think of is that in previous years I covered the tree whenever the temperature was below freezing.
Q: We have 14-year-old pine trees with large water berms under them for collecting water. The inside of these berms are full of pine needles that I hoped would help hold moisture but they do not deteriorate. Should they be left under the trees or be removed?
Q: I am having trouble finding a tree to replace ash trees. I want something that doesn’t grow so tall and does well in our climate. We took out our ash trees because they were giant and the roots were all at the surface. I am now guessing we have a soil issue. True?
Q: I have two 20-year-old ash trees that appear to be dying. I have attached pictures. The smaller tree is a Modesto ash and it started losing limbs about a year ago. The bark is now separating and it looks like an old stump with a few sprouts. The other is a Rayburn ash. Its limbs started dying this summer, but the limb deaths are accelerating.
Question: Would you please tell me what type of mulch is not recommended to put in flower beds? I thought I remembered it being redwood mulch, but I can’t find anything on that. Could it have been cedar? My landscape guy says the shredded cedar is not a problem for vegetation.
Question: What is your favorite apricot to grow in Las Vegas?
Question: I have two Santa Rosa plum trees planted in my backyard. One is planted in a lawn, and the other is in a rock landscape. Both are doing well with numerous large plums growing on them. The one in the lawn area has about 25 percent small yellow plums that fall off when I flick them or shake the branches. The remainder of the larger plums look great.
Question: I have a recently planted ocotillo. It is tied together by wire. When should I cut the ties? Also, I heard that I should spray the plant with water frequently. What’s frequently?
