Some plants don’t grow well in rock, and roses are one of them. Nearly all landscape plants in the rose family like soil improvement and a moist environment when planted in desert soils.
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Be careful when putting cactuses on an automatic water or irrigation timer. They are watered so infrequently that it sometimes makes sense to water these plants manually with a hose rather than automating the task.
The active ingredient in Roundup and KnockOut is glyphosate. This active ingredient alone doesn’t produce any results for four to seven days after it is sprayed.
Bicycles and running shoes shouldn’t be relegated to garages for the next 3½ months of our Hades-like temperatures. They just need to be let outdoors at the proper times.
Some plants grow suckers at the base of the plant and others produce suckers, or new growth, a distance away from the plant. So far, the only practical way to eliminate them is to slice the roots and remove these plants, roots and all.
Q: I have just about reached my maximum frustration level with my 35 Italian cypresses. Between spraying them down weekly in the summer to keep the mites off and them not standing on their own without staking and guy wires for 2½ years, I am ready to give up. I am thinking about replacing them with 5-gallon dwarf golden arborvitae because they are smaller and easier to spray.
Cactuses, particularly agaves, are rotting and dying from damage by the agave weevil, which that lays its eggs at the base of agave leaves. As their young hatch from the eggs, they burrow into the stem of the agave and all through it, including the roots.
The Joshua tree was useful to American Indians, who wove baskets and sandals from the strong leaves and ate the flower buds and seeds, both raw and roasted.
One easy way to tell the difference between a bay laurel and a Carolina cherry laurel is to crush the leaves and smell the herbal aroma. Bay laurel leaves have a pungent aroma. When you crush the leaves of Carolina cherry laurel, they have an aroma of maraschino cherries rather than herbal.
Every hiker who has heard of it dreams of walking the Bright Angel Trail, the famous footpath that snakes from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon all the way to the Colorado River on the canyon floor, with spectacular scenery almost every step of the way. If you’re going to hike it, May is one of the best months to do so, with average daily highs at 72 degrees on the rim and in the 80s about halfway down, at Indian Garden.
A fruit tree should be solid in the soil and not wiggle after it is planted. Staking helps but doesn’t replace proper planting.
If you deploy pheromone traps in early May, the principal insect pest caught in the trap will be the peach twig borer. The peach twig borer causes wormy peach, nectarine and apricot.
Aphids are a big problem on new growth this time of year. Curling leaves is a spring indicator that aphids are present.
It is not uncommon for early apricots to set fruit first, followed shortly thereafter by leaf and shoot growth.
Much like people, snakes are eager to explore desert as weather warms.
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