Every winter, we are the lucky recipients of a bounty of citrus from both family and neighbors.
My fruit bowls and pantry are full of blood oranges, grapefruit, and lemons.
Citrus generally ripens during the winter and the cold snap that we had last week had many people picking the citrus fruit from their trees so that the fruit wouldn’t be damaged by the frost.
The problem arises that either I have too many lemons in winter and none in the summer unless I want to spend a ridiculous amount of money on lemons.
So, what do you do?
Well, I juiced them a week ago and made “lemon ice-cubes.”
Then, I promptly forgot about them until I was searching in the freezer for the chicken to thaw out for dinner.
So, I took them out and put my lemon ice cubes into freezer bags.
have three freezer bags full of lemon ice cubes, which will last me through the coming year.
What do I use them for? Well, many of my favorite dinner recipes call for a tablespoon or two of lemon juice, and they are great for making ice tea.
You can also save the lemon zest, (just before you juice them), and freeze the zest too.
My kids love grapefruit (I don’t) and have been eating some for both breakfasts and a snack. They have also been taking the blood oranges to school in their lunch boxes.
My friend, Becky, from Tucson, made ‘Orange Peel Vinegar’ which she uses as a cleaner with her extra oranges.
What do you do with an overabundance of citrus?
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The temperatures outside are not just chilly – they are COLD (21 degrees outside yesterday morning in my garden).
You may recall that I wrote about picking the green tomatoes off my vines a few weeks before the first frost appeared.
I had quite a few.
Well, I decided to let them ripen indoors. So, I placed the tomatoes on a cookie sheet and left them alone.
And this is what they look like four weeks later.
They are starting to ripen!
Every day as I check on them, I find more starting to turn yellow and then red.
I love that you can pick unripened tomatoes and let them ripen on their own.
If I had left them on my tomato vine, they would have frozen during our first freeze of the season.
Now, we can enjoy them in salads or even in making pasta sauce 🙂
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The cold weather has arrived in my neck of the woods with even colder temperatures on their way later this week.
When temperatures dip below 32 degrees, you will find me wearing warm socks, slippers, a sweater, and cardigan when I’m indoors. But, besides me – frost-tender plants are also affected by the cold temperatures.
Have you ever wondered why your plant’s leaves turn brown and crispy after a freeze? Well, ice crystals form on the top of the leaves, which ‘sucks’ out the moisture from the leaf, leaving it brown and crispy.
Many plants handle cold weather just fine and have no problems with frost. However, if you have frost-tender plants, such as bougainvillea, lantana, or yellow bells, you face a choice; Do you leave them unprotected from freezing temperatures and live with the unattractive frost-damaged growth? Or do you protect them when temperatures dip below freezing?
Either choice is fine and is a matter of personal preference. Frost-damaged growth can be pruned back once the last frost of the season has passed (early March where I live). But, if you don’t want to live with brown, crispy plants for a few months, then protecting your plants when temps dip below freezing is necessary.
In the daytime, the sun shines on soil, warming it. At night, the soil releases the warmth from the ground. When you cover your plants – the heat is captured keeping your plants warmer.
Plants aren’t fussy about what type of covering you use (with one exception); old sheets and towels are usually on hand and are easy to use. Burlap and newspaper are also useful as coverings. Cover your frost-tender plants in the evening, making sure that there aren’t any gaps where the heat can escape. You can use large rocks or clothespins to secure them in place. In the day, remove the covers once temperatures have risen above freezing, and allow the sun to warm the soil again.
Don’t keep the coverings on your plants for more than two days in a row without removing them in the day since this can cause water to become trapped underneath, leading to fungal diseases and can cause plants to produce new growth that can be easily damaged by cold.
The best type of frost protection is frost cloth, which is a breathable fabric because it can ‘breathe,’ you can leave the frost cloth on your plants for a longer period. But, use it only when there is a threat of frost. After three days, uncover your plants during the day to allow the sun to reach your plants.
My neighbor made things worse by using plastic as a covering for his citrus trees.
One type of covering that you shouldn’t use is plastic, which transfers the cold to your plants and damages leaves when it touches the plant itself.
In my garden, I only protect my frost-tender trailing lantana which is in a high-profile area next to my entry. The rest of my frost-tender plants, I leave alone until it is time to prune back their frost-damaged growth in spring.
So whether you cover your plants or not, the choice is yours 🙂
For more information on frost protection, check out the following link from the University of Arizona: Frost Protection
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HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL! I just finished watching the Rose Parade with my mother. It’s a tradition in our family and reminds me of when my grandparents took me when I was a child.
We didn’t have tickets to the parade, so my grandfather carried a ladder from their house (which was close by) and set the ladder up at the edge of the parade route. Each of us kids would take turns climbing to the top of the ladder to watch the parade.
Even though we didn’t see much of the parade, it is still such a special memory.
Well, Christmas is over and the decorations have all been put away. But, we had a wonderful time over the Christmas holiday.
Here are a few highlights…
Baking Christmas cookies with my kids along with my young nephews. Every year, I have all of them come over and we have so much fun making the cookies. Then they get to take some home for ‘Santa’.
Christmas Eve. Every year, my mother-in-law makes her famous lasagna. It is delicious. But, she says that this is the last year that she will be making it. So, I took a picture of it just in case no one else takes up making it in her place.
Each year, on Christmas Eve, all my kids (those that still live at home), ask me to read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’. The dogs enjoy the story too 🙂
Christmas morning at our house.
After Christmas morning at our house, the entire family gathers at Double S Farms. My granddaughter, Lily is excited about opening more gifts. Well, not really. She just likes to tear the tissue paper up into tiny pieces.
Our family just keeps getting bigger.
After we finished opening gifts, it was time for our ‘treasure hunt’. This is a family tradition where my mother writes clues, which eventually lead us to our last Christmas gift. We all work together to solve the clues.
This year’s hunt took us to the chicken coop and to my mother’s vegetable garden…
Doesn’t it look fabulous for December?
Anyway, here is where found one of the clues…
There was a note inside this broccoli plant.
After gifts were all opened, it was time to play outside. The men and boys played football. My twin nephews had fun on the toy tractor being pushed by their mom.
Lily wanted to play ball, but Johnny wasn’t going to share.
So, her aunt and cousins decided to give her a ride in the toy tractor.
Trees were climbed by my nephew, Oliver.
The ‘men’ had fun talking.
And my 2-year old nephew, Danny, finally got to ‘climb’ a tree with a little help from my daughter, Rachele.
My mother got her wish…a photo with all of her grandchildren and one great grandchild.
Although, this was a wonderful Christmas for me, it was also a little bittersweet.
My daughter, Rachele, holding her niece.
You see, my second oldest daughter, Rachele, is entering the Navy in April. While I am so proud of her, I will miss her. She will probably not be with us next Christmas.
And so, every memory from this past Christmas are extra special to me.
*************************
I have lots of plans for the garden this coming year and some road trips. So I will have lots to share with you.
https://www.azplantlady.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/IMG_0547.jpg480640arizonaplantlady@gmail.comhttp://www.azplantlady.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/favicon.pngarizonaplantlady@gmail.com2013-01-01 19:21:002023-02-20 12:15:42Happy New Year!
The gifts are wrapped and the house is decorated for Christmas.
I do still have to clean my house and start baking goodies for Christmas Eve dinner. My mother-in-law is bringing her famous lasagna, so I only have to focus on side dishes and dessert – yum!
I am fairly prepared for the holidays at this point. Tonight, we are expected to experience our first freeze of the season. I needed to harvest the remaining green peppers and tomatoes today before they were harmed by the frost. So, I went out this morning to my vegetable garden to harvest the remaining green bell peppers on my two pepper plants and my tomatoes.
Green Vegetable
I had some big peppers left along with some smaller ones…
It is amazing how hidden the peppers are under the leaves of the pepper plants. But, I got them all.
Then I got to work on my tomato plants. They are over a year old and I decided to start over with new tomato plants this coming season, so I will let them go ahead and freeze.
I did however, pick off the green tomatoes.
When I came inside and poured out my bounty, I was surprised at how many green vegetables I had.
I got to work at cutting up my peppers and diced them before putting them into freezer bags.
Over the next 8 months, all I have to do is take out as many diced peppers as I need.
I realize that I probably should have ‘flash frozen’ them by placing the diced peppers on a single layer on a baking sheet until frozen before putting in a freezer bag. That way, they are separate and come out of the bag easily.
But, I am a bit lazy and don’t like to wash extra dishes so when I need some diced peppers, I simply bang the freezer bag on the counter, which loosens them so I can take out the amount I want.
Now, all I have to do is decide what to do with all those green tomatoes.
I could make a green tomato salsa OR I could let them ripen.
This morning, I spent some time outside in one of my vegetable gardens with my granddaughter, Lily.
While I worked, she had fun with the plants in my containers.
cool-season containers
My cool-season containers are in full bloom. Leaf lettuce, petunias, garlic, parsley and nasturtiums are growing very well.
My 1-year old tomato plants are huge. They extend over the fence between my containers.
There is even a small tomato seedling coming up in front of the yellow container.
They have taken over this part of the vegetable garden. I admit that they aren’t particularly beautiful with the dead, brown area in the middle (the result of sunburn before I got my shade cloth up this summer).
There are a few green tomatoes on the vines, but they won’t have time to ripen before the first freeze. So, I plan to keep an eye on the weather report and pick my green tomatoes just before a freeze is scheduled.
The green tomatoes will ripen indoors in my kitchen.
My bell peppers are doing just fabulous.
Last summer, I treated them with epsom salts, which helps to promote fruit production. (You can read more about my experiment with epsom salts and my pepper plants here).
The epsom salts did their job. I have over 6 bell peppers ready to be picked. I’ll pick them before the first freeze, dice them and freeze them until I need them for making my Mexican rice.
Both tomato and pepper plants are damaged or killed in freezing temperatures in my zone 9a garden. I will protect my pepper plants from frost by covering them with old sheets.
I will not do the same for my tomato plants because they are very large and it would be hard to cover them all. The other reason that I won’t bother to protect them is that many gardeners report that the size of tomatoes decreases as the plant gets older.
I will start again with new plants in late winter.
*****************
I hope you are enjoying this holiday season. You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting as often. Partly this is due to the fact that I get busier in December preparing for Christmas.
The other reason is that I am having tendon trouble in my thumb. I wear a splint, which helps somewhat – but it is very hard and laborious to type one-handed.
I do have some new posts coming up though, so stay tuned 🙂
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The other day, my son Kai asked me what mistletoe was. I explained that it was a little plant that grew on trees that people hung over doorways during the holidays. At this point, he looked a little puzzled at why people would want to hang a plant over the door. But as I went on to explain that couples would then kiss each other if they were underneath the mistletoe, Kai’s expression turned into one of disgust……evidently kissing girls is not something any 8-year old boy wants to do 😉
On the other hand, if you mention the word ‘mistletoe’ to an arborist or desert-dweller, you are likely to get similar expressions of unhappiness on our faces. Not because we don’t like kissing our sweethearts underneath the mistletoe – but because visions of a different type of mistletoe comes to mind which has absolutely nothing to do with kissing or the holidays.
Desert Mistletoe (Phoradendron californicum)
You may notice that this type of mistletoe does not resemble the mistletoe that we traditionally see during Christmas. Well, it is a parasitic plant like the traditional holiday mistletoe and they both belong to the same genus Phoradendron which means ‘thief of a tree’.
If you happen to see mistletoe growing in your tree, I doubt that you are experiencing a surge of Christmas cheer, but rather the opposite. You may want to get rid of it if at all possible. Among some people this can be somewhat controversial. The argument for not removing mistletoe arises from the fact that mistletoe is naturally occurring and is part of the natural desert and birds love to eat the berries. On the other side of the argument, mistletoe does not usually kill the tree, but does stress the tree because it does steal nutrients from the tree, leaving the tree more susceptible to disease and other stresses which can eventually kill the tree over time.
Mistletoe on a Mesquite tree growing in the desert.
My first experience with the mistletoe debate occurred about 13 years ago. I was serving an internship with the Water Conservation Office for the City of Mesa and we were working on recommendations for an existing Botanical Walk, which had many beautiful specimens of desert shrubs and trees. Along the Botanical Walk was a huge Mesquite tree that had large clumps of mistletoe hanging from it. The tree was beautiful and was a favorite among the birds who would feast upon the mistletoe berries.
Now the Mesquite tree was representative of the natural desert and displayed the mistletoe that occurs in the desert. For that reason, the mistletoe on the tree was left alone.
Now my personal recommendation of whether to keep or remove mistletoe is this….
Remove mistletoe as soon as you see it growing on your tree in a residential or commercial landscape setting.
Now, it may take years for a mistletoe infestation to seriously stress a tree but my main concern is that mistletoe is easily spread to neighboring trees.
Large amounts of mistletoe growing in a Mesquite tree in the Tonto National Forest.
Even if the idea of having some mistletoe growing in your tree doesn’t bother you….it may bother your neighbors. Mistletoe is easily spread by birds. They love to eat the berries that the mistletoe produce. Well, you may have guessed what happens next – a cute little bird eats a berry….then flies to your neighbor’s tree…..and ‘poops’ out the berry onto a branch along with a nice little pile of fertilizer. Soon the seed within the berry sends roots (haustoria) into the branch that the bird landed on and soon a new mistletoe plant is born.
How do you know if you have mistletoe? It is not always easy to see an early infestation – especially during the warm season when your trees are fully leafed out.
I find many instances of small mistletoe infestations in my client’s trees, especially those people who live in the outskirts of the Phoenix metro area – near the relatively untouched areas of the desert.
I took this photo at a client’s home. He had no idea that his Mesquite tree was infected. Palo Verde, Ironwood and Acacia trees are also types of trees that are also infected.
Mistletoe is much easier to spot during the winter months when trees do not have as many leaves. Each year on the golf courses, we would do an inventory of all the trees to determine which ones had mistletoe so that it could be removed by pruning.
If the infestation is rather small like the one in the photo above, then you can try pruning the branch at least 1 ft. beneath where the mistletoe occurs. This helps to remove the interior haustoria (roots) of the mistletoe.
If you have a large branch infected and do not want to prune the branch, you can dedicate yourself to brush off the mistletoe. It comes off very easily by just rubbing it off with your hands. This method does NOT get rid of the infection inside of the tree branch and the mistletoe will regrow – meaning that you will have to remove the new growth as part of your garden maintenance.
And so, I encourage you to enjoy mistletoe…..as long as it hangs above a doorway AND you can find someone to kiss 😉
Most of my job as a horticulturist and garden writer is fun.
But sometimes, I have to be the bearer of bad news.
Last week, I was called to a home where the homeowners were worried about one of their citrus trees. Although I am a horticulturist, I am also a Certified Arborist, which can also be very helpful – especially when I am dealing with trees.
There was a large lemon tree in their front garden. They were concerned because they had some branches dying back and wanted to know what the cause was.
So, I stopped by and took a look at the lemon tree. At first glance, it looked fine – the homeowner had had the dead branches removed.
But, I had to look more closely, which meant getting close to the interior branches and the trunk.
What I saw in one of the remaining branches wasn’t good…
Can you see that the branch on the left is missing bark and is colored black?
What is this you may wonder?
Sooty Canker.
Sooty Canker is a fungal disease that infects many different species of trees including citrus. It spreads through fungal spores. The spores enter the tree through damaged areas on the branches or trunk, forming lesions and eventually causing the bark to peel off.
It is called ‘sooty canker’ because of the black color of the fungal spores. The branches almost looked as if they have been scorched by fire.
In this case, the lemon tree had experienced severe frost damage 1 1/2 years ago. Frost can cause splitting and other damage in the bark. Sunburn damage can cause similar problems as well. The fungal spores enter through these damaged areas and begin to grow.
If only branches are affected, they can be pruned 6 inches to 1 ft. below where you see evidence of the sooty canker. Pruning tools must be disinfected with a 20% bleach solution to keep the disease from spreading between each pruning cut.
I was hopeful that I could tell the homeowners that all they had to do was to prune the affected branches.
But that was before I looked down at the trunk…
The entire trunk was infected with sooty canker. Unfortunately, this almost certainly means that the tree will die.
In this case, the tree should be removed to avoid spreading it to other trees.
I hated to tell the homeowners that they would have to have their tree taken out. Especially after they told me how much fruit they had enjoyed over the years from this tree.
After I told them the fatal diagnosis of their lemon tree – I offered to look at their other four citrus trees. I wanted to make sure that they weren’t infected as well.
Well, the good news was that their Meyer lemon tree was healthy.
The bad news was that their two orange trees and pommelo tree were all badly infected with sooty canker.
Did I mention that I hate being the bearer of bad news?
I must say that the clients accepted the bad news very well.
In fact, they said that they had gotten tired of picking up dropped fruit AND that one of them couldn’t even eat citrus any more due to dietary constraints.
They will be removing their five infected citrus trees while keeping a close eye on their disease-free Meyer lemon tree. At the first sign of a lesion, they will prune it away to help keep it safe from infection.
Guess what?
They asked me to return in spring to design a new landscape area in place of their citrus trees. I like being with people who see things as “a glass half-full”.
*************************
If you suspect that your tree has sooty canker – have a professional confirm the diagnosis and discuss with you the treatment options. If the trunk is not affected, you may be able to save your tree.
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One of my favorite memories as a child was visiting antique stores with my mother. We usually did this whenever we went on vacation. My dad would stop the car whenever she saw a store that looked promising.
Now that I am an adult, my mother and I have fun visiting antique stores when we travel together. I don’t have a lot of antiques myself, but I do have some special pieces.
One of the pieces that I got was an old, antique watering can.
I had a vision of seeing it full of flowering annuals.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t plant in the summer because it was too hot for plants to survive in the container. (It can be very hard to grow plants in smaller containers in summer because the outer 6 inches of soil is often too hot for roots to grow.
However, once fall arrived, I was ready to plant my new (old) container.
First, I had to make some holes on the bottom for drainage. Then I filled it with planting mix and then my annuals…
I planted alyssum, violas and lobelia. The watering can is now sitting in the middle of my vegetable garden. I added a drip emitter, so my new container is watered whenever my vegetables are.
I must admit that I am quite pleased with how it turned out.
Have any of you used old, antique containers in the garden?
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Too Many Lemons? Freeze the Juice…
Arizona garden, California desert garden, Citrus, desert gardening, Fruit TreesEvery winter, we are the lucky recipients of a bounty of citrus from both family and neighbors.
My fruit bowls and pantry are full of blood oranges, grapefruit, and lemons.
Citrus generally ripens during the winter and the cold snap that we had last week had many people picking the citrus fruit from their trees so that the fruit wouldn’t be damaged by the frost.
The problem arises that either I have too many lemons in winter and none in the summer unless I want to spend a ridiculous amount of money on lemons.
So, what do you do?
Well, I juiced them a week ago and made “lemon ice-cubes.”
Then, I promptly forgot about them until I was searching in the freezer for the chicken to thaw out for dinner.
So, I took them out and put my lemon ice cubes into freezer bags.
have three freezer bags full of lemon ice cubes, which will last me through the coming year.
What do I use them for? Well, many of my favorite dinner recipes call for a tablespoon or two of lemon juice, and they are great for making ice tea.
You can also save the lemon zest, (just before you juice them), and freeze the zest too.
My kids love grapefruit (I don’t) and have been eating some for both breakfasts and a snack. They have also been taking the blood oranges to school in their lunch boxes.
My friend, Becky, from Tucson, made ‘Orange Peel Vinegar’ which she uses as a cleaner with her extra oranges.
What do you do with an overabundance of citrus?
What’s Happening to My Green Tomatoes…
Vegetable GardeningThe temperatures outside are not just chilly – they are COLD (21 degrees outside yesterday morning in my garden).
You may recall that I wrote about picking the green tomatoes off my vines a few weeks before the first frost appeared.
I had quite a few.
Well, I decided to let them ripen indoors. So, I placed the tomatoes on a cookie sheet and left them alone.
And this is what they look like four weeks later.
They are starting to ripen!
Every day as I check on them, I find more starting to turn yellow and then red.
I love that you can pick unripened tomatoes and let them ripen on their own.
If I had left them on my tomato vine, they would have frozen during our first freeze of the season.
Now, we can enjoy them in salads or even in making pasta sauce 🙂
Frost Protection: To Cover Plants or Not?
Arizona garden, California desert garden, desert gardening, Las Vegas gardening, Southwest gardenThe cold weather has arrived in my neck of the woods with even colder temperatures on their way later this week.
When temperatures dip below 32 degrees, you will find me wearing warm socks, slippers, a sweater, and cardigan when I’m indoors. But, besides me – frost-tender plants are also affected by the cold temperatures.
Have you ever wondered why your plant’s leaves turn brown and crispy after a freeze? Well, ice crystals form on the top of the leaves, which ‘sucks’ out the moisture from the leaf, leaving it brown and crispy.
Many plants handle cold weather just fine and have no problems with frost. However, if you have frost-tender plants, such as bougainvillea, lantana, or yellow bells, you face a choice; Do you leave them unprotected from freezing temperatures and live with the unattractive frost-damaged growth? Or do you protect them when temperatures dip below freezing?
Either choice is fine and is a matter of personal preference. Frost-damaged growth can be pruned back once the last frost of the season has passed (early March where I live). But, if you don’t want to live with brown, crispy plants for a few months, then protecting your plants when temps dip below freezing is necessary.
In the daytime, the sun shines on soil, warming it. At night, the soil releases the warmth from the ground. When you cover your plants – the heat is captured keeping your plants warmer.
Plants aren’t fussy about what type of covering you use (with one exception); old sheets and towels are usually on hand and are easy to use. Burlap and newspaper are also useful as coverings. Cover your frost-tender plants in the evening, making sure that there aren’t any gaps where the heat can escape. You can use large rocks or clothespins to secure them in place. In the day, remove the covers once temperatures have risen above freezing, and allow the sun to warm the soil again.
Don’t keep the coverings on your plants for more than two days in a row without removing them in the day since this can cause water to become trapped underneath, leading to fungal diseases and can cause plants to produce new growth that can be easily damaged by cold.
The best type of frost protection is frost cloth, which is a breathable fabric because it can ‘breathe,’ you can leave the frost cloth on your plants for a longer period. But, use it only when there is a threat of frost. After three days, uncover your plants during the day to allow the sun to reach your plants.
My neighbor made things worse by using plastic as a covering for his citrus trees.
One type of covering that you shouldn’t use is plastic, which transfers the cold to your plants and damages leaves when it touches the plant itself.
In my garden, I only protect my frost-tender trailing lantana which is in a high-profile area next to my entry. The rest of my frost-tender plants, I leave alone until it is time to prune back their frost-damaged growth in spring.
So whether you cover your plants or not, the choice is yours 🙂
For more information on frost protection, check out the following link from the University of Arizona: Frost Protection
How to Protect Plants From Frost
Happy New Year!
AZ Plant Lady, az plant lady family, azplantlady, Baking, Double S FarmsHAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL! I just finished watching the Rose Parade with my mother. It’s a tradition in our family and reminds me of when my grandparents took me when I was a child.
We didn’t have tickets to the parade, so my grandfather carried a ladder from their house (which was close by) and set the ladder up at the edge of the parade route. Each of us kids would take turns climbing to the top of the ladder to watch the parade.
Even though we didn’t see much of the parade, it is still such a special memory.
Well, Christmas is over and the decorations have all been put away. But, we had a wonderful time over the Christmas holiday.
Here are a few highlights…
Baking Christmas cookies with my kids along with my young nephews. Every year, I have all of them come over and we have so much fun making the cookies. Then they get to take some home for ‘Santa’.
Christmas Eve. Every year, my mother-in-law makes her famous lasagna. It is delicious. But, she says that this is the last year that she will be making it. So, I took a picture of it just in case no one else takes up making it in her place.
Each year, on Christmas Eve, all my kids (those that still live at home), ask me to read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’. The dogs enjoy the story too 🙂
Christmas morning at our house.
After Christmas morning at our house, the entire family gathers at Double S Farms. My granddaughter, Lily is excited about opening more gifts. Well, not really. She just likes to tear the tissue paper up into tiny pieces.
Our family just keeps getting bigger.
After we finished opening gifts, it was time for our ‘treasure hunt’. This is a family tradition where my mother writes clues, which eventually lead us to our last Christmas gift. We all work together to solve the clues.
This year’s hunt took us to the chicken coop and to my mother’s vegetable garden…
Doesn’t it look fabulous for December?
Anyway, here is where found one of the clues…
There was a note inside this broccoli plant.
After gifts were all opened, it was time to play outside. The men and boys played football. My twin nephews had fun on the toy tractor being pushed by their mom.
Lily wanted to play ball, but Johnny wasn’t going to share.
So, her aunt and cousins decided to give her a ride in the toy tractor.
Trees were climbed by my nephew, Oliver.
The ‘men’ had fun talking.
And my 2-year old nephew, Danny, finally got to ‘climb’ a tree with a little help from my daughter, Rachele.
My mother got her wish…a photo with all of her grandchildren and one great grandchild.
Although, this was a wonderful Christmas for me, it was also a little bittersweet.
My daughter, Rachele, holding her niece.
You see, my second oldest daughter, Rachele, is entering the Navy in April. While I am so proud of her, I will miss her. She will probably not be with us next Christmas.
And so, every memory from this past Christmas are extra special to me.
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I have lots of plans for the garden this coming year and some road trips. So I will have lots to share with you.
AZ Plant Lady’s Christmas and New Year Newsletter
Green Vegetable Harvest
vegetablesThe gifts are wrapped and the house is decorated for Christmas.
I do still have to clean my house and start baking goodies for Christmas Eve dinner. My mother-in-law is bringing her famous lasagna, so I only have to focus on side dishes and dessert – yum!
I am fairly prepared for the holidays at this point. Tonight, we are expected to experience our first freeze of the season. I needed to harvest the remaining green peppers and tomatoes today before they were harmed by the frost. So, I went out this morning to my vegetable garden to harvest the remaining green bell peppers on my two pepper plants and my tomatoes.
Green Vegetable
I had some big peppers left along with some smaller ones…
It is amazing how hidden the peppers are under the leaves of the pepper plants. But, I got them all.
Then I got to work on my tomato plants. They are over a year old and I decided to start over with new tomato plants this coming season, so I will let them go ahead and freeze.
I did however, pick off the green tomatoes.
When I came inside and poured out my bounty, I was surprised at how many green vegetables I had.
I got to work at cutting up my peppers and diced them before putting them into freezer bags.
Over the next 8 months, all I have to do is take out as many diced peppers as I need.
I realize that I probably should have ‘flash frozen’ them by placing the diced peppers on a single layer on a baking sheet until frozen before putting in a freezer bag. That way, they are separate and come out of the bag easily.
But, I am a bit lazy and don’t like to wash extra dishes so when I need some diced peppers, I simply bang the freezer bag on the counter, which loosens them so I can take out the amount I want.
Now, all I have to do is decide what to do with all those green tomatoes.
I could make a green tomato salsa OR I could let them ripen.
What would you do with green tomatoes?
Grow Vegetables in Pots!
Vegetable Garden Before The First Frost
Vegetable GardeningThis morning, I spent some time outside in one of my vegetable gardens with my granddaughter, Lily.
While I worked, she had fun with the plants in my containers.
cool-season containers
My cool-season containers are in full bloom. Leaf lettuce, petunias, garlic, parsley and nasturtiums are growing very well.
My 1-year old tomato plants are huge. They extend over the fence between my containers.
There is even a small tomato seedling coming up in front of the yellow container.
They have taken over this part of the vegetable garden. I admit that they aren’t particularly beautiful with the dead, brown area in the middle (the result of sunburn before I got my shade cloth up this summer).
There are a few green tomatoes on the vines, but they won’t have time to ripen before the first freeze. So, I plan to keep an eye on the weather report and pick my green tomatoes just before a freeze is scheduled.
The green tomatoes will ripen indoors in my kitchen.
My bell peppers are doing just fabulous.
Last summer, I treated them with epsom salts, which helps to promote fruit production. (You can read more about my experiment with epsom salts and my pepper plants here).
The epsom salts did their job. I have over 6 bell peppers ready to be picked. I’ll pick them before the first freeze, dice them and freeze them until I need them for making my Mexican rice.
Both tomato and pepper plants are damaged or killed in freezing temperatures in my zone 9a garden. I will protect my pepper plants from frost by covering them with old sheets.
I will not do the same for my tomato plants because they are very large and it would be hard to cover them all. The other reason that I won’t bother to protect them is that many gardeners report that the size of tomatoes decreases as the plant gets older.
I will start again with new plants in late winter.
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I hope you are enjoying this holiday season. You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting as often. Partly this is due to the fact that I get busier in December preparing for Christmas.
The other reason is that I am having tendon trouble in my thumb. I wear a splint, which helps somewhat – but it is very hard and laborious to type one-handed.
I do have some new posts coming up though, so stay tuned 🙂
Got Mistletoe?
AZ Plant LadyThe other day, my son Kai asked me what mistletoe was. I explained that it was a little plant that grew on trees that people hung over doorways during the holidays. At this point, he looked a little puzzled at why people would want to hang a plant over the door. But as I went on to explain that couples would then kiss each other if they were underneath the mistletoe, Kai’s expression turned into one of disgust……evidently kissing girls is not something any 8-year old boy wants to do 😉
On the other hand, if you mention the word ‘mistletoe’ to an arborist or desert-dweller, you are likely to get similar expressions of unhappiness on our faces. Not because we don’t like kissing our sweethearts underneath the mistletoe – but because visions of a different type of mistletoe comes to mind which has absolutely nothing to do with kissing or the holidays.
Desert Mistletoe (Phoradendron californicum)
You may notice that this type of mistletoe does not resemble the mistletoe that we traditionally see during Christmas. Well, it is a parasitic plant like the traditional holiday mistletoe and they both belong to the same genus Phoradendron which means ‘thief of a tree’.
If you happen to see mistletoe growing in your tree, I doubt that you are experiencing a surge of Christmas cheer, but rather the opposite. You may want to get rid of it if at all possible. Among some people this can be somewhat controversial. The argument for not removing mistletoe arises from the fact that mistletoe is naturally occurring and is part of the natural desert and birds love to eat the berries. On the other side of the argument, mistletoe does not usually kill the tree, but does stress the tree because it does steal nutrients from the tree, leaving the tree more susceptible to disease and other stresses which can eventually kill the tree over time.
Mistletoe on a Mesquite tree growing in the desert.
My first experience with the mistletoe debate occurred about 13 years ago. I was serving an internship with the Water Conservation Office for the City of Mesa and we were working on recommendations for an existing Botanical Walk, which had many beautiful specimens of desert shrubs and trees. Along the Botanical Walk was a huge Mesquite tree that had large clumps of mistletoe hanging from it. The tree was beautiful and was a favorite among the birds who would feast upon the mistletoe berries.
Now the Mesquite tree was representative of the natural desert and displayed the mistletoe that occurs in the desert. For that reason, the mistletoe on the tree was left alone.
Now my personal recommendation of whether to keep or remove mistletoe is this….
Remove mistletoe as soon as you see it growing on your tree in a residential or commercial landscape setting.
Now, it may take years for a mistletoe infestation to seriously stress a tree but my main concern is that mistletoe is easily spread to neighboring trees.
Large amounts of mistletoe growing in a Mesquite tree in the Tonto National Forest.
Even if the idea of having some mistletoe growing in your tree doesn’t bother you….it may bother your neighbors. Mistletoe is easily spread by birds. They love to eat the berries that the mistletoe produce. Well, you may have guessed what happens next – a cute little bird eats a berry….then flies to your neighbor’s tree…..and ‘poops’ out the berry onto a branch along with a nice little pile of fertilizer. Soon the seed within the berry sends roots (haustoria) into the branch that the bird landed on and soon a new mistletoe plant is born.
How do you know if you have mistletoe? It is not always easy to see an early infestation – especially during the warm season when your trees are fully leafed out.
I find many instances of small mistletoe infestations in my client’s trees, especially those people who live in the outskirts of the Phoenix metro area – near the relatively untouched areas of the desert.
I took this photo at a client’s home. He had no idea that his Mesquite tree was infected. Palo Verde, Ironwood and Acacia trees are also types of trees that are also infected.
Mistletoe is much easier to spot during the winter months when trees do not have as many leaves. Each year on the golf courses, we would do an inventory of all the trees to determine which ones had mistletoe so that it could be removed by pruning.
If the infestation is rather small like the one in the photo above, then you can try pruning the branch at least 1 ft. beneath where the mistletoe occurs. This helps to remove the interior haustoria (roots) of the mistletoe.
If you have a large branch infected and do not want to prune the branch, you can dedicate yourself to brush off the mistletoe. It comes off very easily by just rubbing it off with your hands. This method does NOT get rid of the infection inside of the tree branch and the mistletoe will regrow – meaning that you will have to remove the new growth as part of your garden maintenance.
And so, I encourage you to enjoy mistletoe…..as long as it hangs above a doorway AND you can find someone to kiss 😉
A Sneaky Tree Intruder and Recovery Update
DIY Tomato Cage Christmas Tree
DIYYou’ll never guess what I made this Christmas tree out of…
A tomato cage, mini-white Christmas lights and a hair band is all that it took to create this festive Christmas tree.
I brought out my tomato cages and grabbed some Christmas lights and took the hair band out of my hair 😉
I used the hair band to wrap the top of the tomato cage. Then all I had to do was to begin wrapping lights around the cage, starting from the bottom.
This is what it look like when I was finished.
I decided to use them in my vegetable gardens since I can see them from the house.
My son, Kai, had fun helping me get all the lights up and connected.
Before we connected the lights, Kai said “This is like the movie Christmas Vacation just before the plug in the lights.”
I must say that I am so happy with how they look.
I liked it so much that I did the same thing in my other vegetable garden…
holiday decoration
Who knew that a tomato cage could turn into something so beautiful?
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How about you?
Have you ever transformed an everyday object into a holiday decoration?
Blue Booties, Hot Wheels and Christmas Decorations….
The Bearer of Bad News…
CitrusMost of my job as a horticulturist and garden writer is fun.
But sometimes, I have to be the bearer of bad news.
Last week, I was called to a home where the homeowners were worried about one of their citrus trees. Although I am a horticulturist, I am also a Certified Arborist, which can also be very helpful – especially when I am dealing with trees.
There was a large lemon tree in their front garden. They were concerned because they had some branches dying back and wanted to know what the cause was.
So, I stopped by and took a look at the lemon tree. At first glance, it looked fine – the homeowner had had the dead branches removed.
But, I had to look more closely, which meant getting close to the interior branches and the trunk.
What I saw in one of the remaining branches wasn’t good…
Can you see that the branch on the left is missing bark and is colored black?
What is this you may wonder?
Sooty Canker.
Sooty Canker is a fungal disease that infects many different species of trees including citrus. It spreads through fungal spores. The spores enter the tree through damaged areas on the branches or trunk, forming lesions and eventually causing the bark to peel off.
It is called ‘sooty canker’ because of the black color of the fungal spores. The branches almost looked as if they have been scorched by fire.
In this case, the lemon tree had experienced severe frost damage 1 1/2 years ago. Frost can cause splitting and other damage in the bark. Sunburn damage can cause similar problems as well. The fungal spores enter through these damaged areas and begin to grow.
If only branches are affected, they can be pruned 6 inches to 1 ft. below where you see evidence of the sooty canker. Pruning tools must be disinfected with a 20% bleach solution to keep the disease from spreading between each pruning cut.
I was hopeful that I could tell the homeowners that all they had to do was to prune the affected branches.
But that was before I looked down at the trunk…
The entire trunk was infected with sooty canker. Unfortunately, this almost certainly means that the tree will die.
In this case, the tree should be removed to avoid spreading it to other trees.
I hated to tell the homeowners that they would have to have their tree taken out. Especially after they told me how much fruit they had enjoyed over the years from this tree.
After I told them the fatal diagnosis of their lemon tree – I offered to look at their other four citrus trees. I wanted to make sure that they weren’t infected as well.
Well, the good news was that their Meyer lemon tree was healthy.
The bad news was that their two orange trees and pommelo tree were all badly infected with sooty canker.
Did I mention that I hate being the bearer of bad news?
I must say that the clients accepted the bad news very well.
In fact, they said that they had gotten tired of picking up dropped fruit AND that one of them couldn’t even eat citrus any more due to dietary constraints.
They will be removing their five infected citrus trees while keeping a close eye on their disease-free Meyer lemon tree. At the first sign of a lesion, they will prune it away to help keep it safe from infection.
Guess what?
They asked me to return in spring to design a new landscape area in place of their citrus trees. I like being with people who see things as “a glass half-full”.
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If you suspect that your tree has sooty canker – have a professional confirm the diagnosis and discuss with you the treatment options. If the trunk is not affected, you may be able to save your tree.
For more information, check out this link.
An Old, Antique Watering Can Re-Purposed
AZ Plant LadyOne of my favorite memories as a child was visiting antique stores with my mother. We usually did this whenever we went on vacation. My dad would stop the car whenever she saw a store that looked promising.
Now that I am an adult, my mother and I have fun visiting antique stores when we travel together. I don’t have a lot of antiques myself, but I do have some special pieces.
Last summer, our family traveled to Prescott, which I blogged about back then in “Antique Junk for the Garden”.
One of the pieces that I got was an old, antique watering can.
I had a vision of seeing it full of flowering annuals.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t plant in the summer because it was too hot for plants to survive in the container. (It can be very hard to grow plants in smaller containers in summer because the outer 6 inches of soil is often too hot for roots to grow.
However, once fall arrived, I was ready to plant my new (old) container.
First, I had to make some holes on the bottom for drainage. Then I filled it with planting mix and then my annuals…
I planted alyssum, violas and lobelia. The watering can is now sitting in the middle of my vegetable garden. I added a drip emitter, so my new container is watered whenever my vegetables are.
I must admit that I am quite pleased with how it turned out.
Have any of you used old, antique containers in the garden?