by Greg Alder | Sep 10, 2021 | Fruit |
(Originally written on October 13, 2017, I’ve updated a few parts of this post here in 2021.) Last week, I took my boys to the San Diego Zoo and we headed toward a less crowded area where the giant Galapagos tortoises reside. As often happens, on our walk I...
by Greg Alder | Sep 3, 2021 | Avocados |
Breaking up is hard to do, but sometimes you’ve got to give up on an avocado tree. Last week, I gave up on three. I’ll show you which and I’ll tell you why. Little GEM with gopher damage The first was the GEM shown above, which hadn’t even been...
by Greg Alder | Aug 20, 2021 | Citrus, Fruit, Pests |
Back in the winter of 2015, a neighbor noted how poor my lime tree looked. She said her lemon tree didn’t have those “curly leaves” because she sprays it. A couple days later she brought over a blue bottle of the stuff she uses: Bayer Advanced...
by Greg Alder | Jul 23, 2021 | Avocados |
In the spring you see flowers on your avocado tree that soon become green fruitlets. Wonderful! Your tree is making avocados! Then they start dropping. What did you do wrong? Why is this happening? When will it end? How many are going to fall? Why avocados drop:...
by Greg Alder | Jul 16, 2021 | Fruit |
Gave my neighbor some Snow Queen nectarines from our tree the other day and she sent me this text: “Greg, those nectarines were by far the most delicious things we have had in our entire life.” Now, my neighbor is really friendly, and maybe she just wanted to...
by Greg Alder | Jun 25, 2021 | Berries and Vines |
Most of my raspberry plants have come from friends and family who live where raspberries grow best. The Sunset Western Garden Book says that raspberries grow best in Zones 3-6 and 15-17. These Zones cover the central and northern California coast, and then western...
by Greg Alder | Jun 25, 2021 | Avocados |
It’s exciting to see a small avocado tree flower and set fruit. But should you allow it? My rule of thumb is to remove all avocados from a tree until it’s nearly as tall as me. What this means is that if you’ve recently planted an avocado tree from a...
by Greg Alder | Jun 18, 2021 | Avocados |
“Does not the spraying of the foliage of the trees protect them to some extent in hot weather?” asked J.B. McLaughlin, rhetorically. He had seen the effects of this practice for mitigating heat when he tried it during the devastating heat wave of more than a century...
by Greg Alder | Jun 11, 2021 | Fruit, Vegetables |
My five-year-old son didn’t want to sit in front of a computer for another school session. “Can I do work for money?” he asked. “Sure. Let’s go harvest garlic.” With teamwork, I forked the dirt to loosen it around the bulbs and then Miles pulled the tops and shook the...
by Greg Alder | May 28, 2021 | Fruit, Pests |
Earlier this spring, a friend from Fallbrook was visiting and he mentioned that his peach tree had had a lot of leaf curl last year but this year there was no infection. “I finally got the spraying right!” he said. Slowly, I said, “Those results might not be just...
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