By JoAnne Skelly — In Master Gardener Michael Janik’s July Fruit Tree Care and Gardening Newsletter he reminds readers that University of Nevada Cooperative Extension is holding their annual horticulture classes for those wanting to volunteer as Master Gardeners as well as for the general public.
They will be held weekly from August 7 to Sept. 18 via Zoom. If you want to increase your gardening knowledge, this is an excellent way to do it. For information and to register, go here.
JoAnne Skelly
Michael also wrote about fire blight disease in apples and pears that is starting to show up now as dying or dead branches or as burned looking “shepherd’s crook” curls to the end of young twigs. It is a bacterial disease, not only of apples and pears, but also of other rose family plants, such as mountain ash, hawthorn, crabapple, cotoneaster, and occasionally roses.
It can be devastating and eventually kill affected plants. Find out more from my fire blight publication at here. I have noticed it killing branches on my 50-plus year old apple tree. Be careful about pruning it out, because it spreads readily on pruning tools within the same tree and from tree to tree.
Always disinfect your tools with rubbing alcohol when pruning out diseased parts. Spray it on your tools between cuts on the same tree and when using the tools on other trees and plants. Do not compost or save diseased wood.
Michael reports that squash bugs have invaded his garden. He says to check squash, cucumbers and melons at the base of the plants. My publication on squash bugs: can be found here.
Michael says he picks them off and disposes of them. Find them by checking the underside of leaves and removing the eggs — he tears off that piece of leaf — and discards it. He repeats this management technique every week.”
I’ve observed something interesting this year. It was a stellar year for wild lupines in our neighborhood. They are large plants, dense across the fields with prolific blooms. In most years they are thin with just a few stems and flowers.
This year the blooms are a deep purple in color, rather than their usual light purple. Another plant, black mullein, with its three feet to four feet tall flower stems and yellow flowers, is also abundant with hundreds across the landscape. Why this year? It didn’t rain that much, but perhaps it rained at just the right time. Nature is always fascinating.
— JoAnne Skelly is Associate Professor & Extension Educator, Emerita at University of Nevada Cooperative Extension skellyj@unr.edu.
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