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.
Q: I have a golden barrel cactus that has grown to 3 feet wide in a place where I cannot leave it . It’s a beautiful specimen, but I have to remove it. Any ideas on how to move it? The thorns are lethal.
Question: Will either dwarf lime or lemon trees do well here?
Lawns are getting toasted right now. This is a stressful time of year for plants, particularly those that are not truly desert plants. Temperatures are out of their “comfort zone” and they become susceptible to diseases because they are less capable of fighting through a problem.
Question: I’ve seen garlic at outdoor markets where the garlic is actually braided.
Q: Is using wood from a commercial orchard safe for smoking meats? I don’t know whether you use any of these, but I figured you might have an answer .
Question: My mother’s mimosa tree was fine May 24. Something has attacked it. I attached before-and-after photos, with close-ups of a couple of damaged areas.
The current high temperatures will have a big effect on plants’ water use and stress. Make sure landscape plants are deeply watered during this time of high stress. It is best that plants enter into the heat of the day with plenty of water rather than applying it at the end of the day.
Question: I saw your blog and was wondering if you would help us with a saguaro problem. We bought a healthy saguaro in December and transplanted it ourselves.
Q: Do desert-adapted shrubs like Texas rangers, cassias and others benefit from adding sulfur to the soil? Will they perform better in a pH around 7.5 as opposed to 8? I know it’s probably not necessary but I’m just wondering if the additional sulfur in the soil will help them thrive better or if it’s overkill.
I noticed what appears to be some kind of white fuzz on my pear tree’s leaves.
Q: I attached a couple of pictures of my peach tree. It’s growing like gangbusters (I did a pretty good job pruning it back after your class), but something is going on with it because it’s dropping leaves and has this brown-leaf-edges thing going on. It had major growth (about 3 feet) after I harvested the peaches this month. Thank you for any help you can give.
Question: How do I separate the worms from my compost? I bought 1,000 worms from a worm farm online. They have multiplied into the zillions, but I don’t want to give them to my neighbors when I give away the compost. Is there an easy way to separate worms from compost?
Question: Every year, my zucchini plants are infested with grey-colored beetles that destroy my zucchini. How do get rid of the beetles?
Q: I can’t get my Bermuda grass lawn to look good. I would like it more like a golf course grass. I think one of my problems has been mowing too low, believing it would green up if I did this. During the past two weeks I’ve raised the height of my mower and fertilized. It is looking much better, but it probably needs another week of growing. I’m getting small patches of darker green grass with a wider leaf. I think this is what they call Poa. There’s probably little I can do to stop this Poa weed.
Question: I found this “thing” under my Joshua tree this morning. It is about 6 inches long. Is it mold? I only water three times a week for five minutes.
