Heat tolerance of avocado varieties
When you see comparisons between avocado varieties, often discussed are the flower type, size of the tree and its fruit, peel color, and cold sensitivity. Rarely, however, do you get a clue as to a variety’s sensitivity to heat. (See, for example, Table 5 on page 30...
Growing sunflowers in Southern California
Sunflowers are on my mind these days, in part because these sunflowers almost bonk me on the head every time I walk down the path in the photo above. Bees get scared as I get close, and they jump off the flowers to buzz around me. But I just can’t get myself to cut...
Should you get a wood chipper?
After collecting the branches I’d pruned from my Valencia orange tree, I knew just what I would do with them. I could have sent them away in a trash can. I could have stacked them in a brush pile in a far corner of the yard. I could have chopped them into small pieces...
Thank you, Floyd Zaiger
I never met the man, but Floyd Zaiger made my yard taste better. I grow some of his apriums, like Cot-N-Candy. Cot-N-Candy aprium. I’ve got a tree of his nectaplum, SpiceZee. SpiceZee nectaplums. I’ve got his cherry for warm-winter places like Southern California,...
Comparing tomato supports: cage versus stake-and-string
After joining Roy Wilburn to harvest tomatoes in his garden last June, which I wrote about in the post, “Learning from the California Gardener of the Year,” I was spurred to try his method of supporting tomato vines. Roy uses a specific style of stake-and-string...
The Hass avocado tree: a profile
Everybody wants to beat Hass. The world over, breeders are looking for that golden ticket: to create a new avocado variety that has a combination of characteristics superior to Hass. There are some contenders. Who will eventually knock King Hass from the throne? This...
Natives at the roadside, 2020 update
On Monday morning I was watching the bees feed on the flowers of a black sage plant at the edge of my yard by the road. Two of my neighbors walked by, and one said, “Your plants are beautiful.” “Thanks!” I said. Then I thought, The beauty of these plants has nothing...
My watering schedules for vegetables and fruit trees
Every year in spring I get amnesia about watering my vegetables and fruit trees, as if I have to figure out anew how much and how often to water them, as if I have no record of my irrigation schedules that have worked in the past. Relax, Greg. Use those records to...
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