219 Summer Fruit Tree Pruning. Lemon Verbena. Tomato Troubles.

Show Transcript

GB 219 TRANSCRIPT Summer Fruit Tree Pruning. Lemon Verbena. Summer Tomato Troubles.

Farmer Fred  0:00

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original, lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred  0:31

Yes, it’s August, and it’s hot out. Still, there’s plenty of work in the garden despite the heat. There’s harvesting fruits and vegetables, more diligent irrigation, deadheading flowering annuals, perennials and shrubs. And, pulling weeds, of course. Of course. And wise gardeners throughout the country have added another chore that will help guarantee future garden success: summer pruning of deciduous fruit trees. We’ll tell you why now nipping back your peach, plum, apple, apricot, cherry, nectarine and other fruit trees that will be leafless in a few months will lead to better production next year.

Have you heard of lemon verbena? It’s an herb, which can get five or six feet tall, has showy early summer flowers, and produces leaves that can liven up a lot of your dessert recipes, with a taste that your guests won’t forget.

And since it’s summer, there are summer tomato issues to contend with. We revisit from Episode 127, tips for dealing with August’s tomato pests and diseases, as well as too much sun and heat.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Potsand Dave Wilson Nursery. And we will do it all in about 30 minutes. Let’s go!

Farmer Fred  1:55

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. We always turn to America's favorite retired college horticultural Professor, Debbie Flower, to help us out in this conundrum. And Steve from Rocklin, California writes in. Rockin is in Placer County, California, and he writes in about his peach, nectarine, and plum trees. He says, “I’ve been trying to keep them manageable and they are really sprouting out a lot of new limbs and  are getting taller and wider. And now before harvest, I was wondering if pruning the non fruit producing limbs is okay to do, or should I wait until winter after the leaves fall?”

Debbie, there is certainly a move afoot, when it comes to deciduous fruit trees like nectarines, peaches and plums, to do a lot of summer pruning. And I can't disagree with that.

Debbie Flower  2:45

Same here, because that helps. Pruning is always a dwarfing process, but the plant in summer has not had all the time it can take to make food and stash it in the roots and the stems over the winter. And that food that stashed is used to regrow in spring and so if you cut off some of its ability to make food in the summertime, it reduces the amount of food it stores not so that it dies unless you prune way too much but it reduces the amount of food it stores and so your regrowth and spring is smaller.

Farmer Fred  3:16

There are a lot of good reasons to prune in the summertime. And one of the best is, as Steve said with the perfect word, manageable. Keep the tree at a size that you can reach the fruit from the ground without having to get on a ladder for your own safety.

Debbie Flower  3:32

Ed Laivo, who you've heard, I'm sure, on Fred's show. I attended a talk he gave once and he stood in front of the room with  hand pruners, hand shears in his hand and said, “the best height for your fruit tree is this”. And he raised his hand with the pruner in it above his head and that was the height, whatever that is for you.

Farmer Fred  3:55

Exactly. That is the perfect height to keep your trees and yes, you will have a bountiful supply of fruit. Just because you are keeping that tree six or seven feet tall and wide doesn't mean you won't have enough fruit to feed your family.

Debbie Flower  4:09

One thing that Steve says is he wants to remove the non bearing branches and that sounds like a great idea but I'm wondering where those non-bearing branches are. I have an apricot tree and for me, some of the non-bearing branches are, at least most of them are, very low on the tree where I'd love to see fruit because I can just walk by and pick it and the reason they're non-bearing is there's a branch above them that is shading them. And so my pruning on this apricot will be to remove the large branch above that is shading the branches below so that I can get more sun to those lower branches and they will produce fruit. I have to be very careful though. I will do it probably in the next week or two. My apricot is a very early bearing apricot and it is completely finished having fruit. So I'm in that after-harvest season. But I have to be very careful with the wood that is newly exposed to sun. And I'm going to have to probably paint, either wrap it with some paper or paint it with a wash, 50% interior latex paint in a light color and 50% water, to reflect the sun that is now all of a sudden going to be hitting these pieces of wood. Otherwise I could get sunburn.

Farmer Fred  5:23

And where would you make the cuts when you're pruning that fruit tree in the summertime? Generally speaking, by the way, you do it twice a year, you do it once when you're thinning the fruit in the springtime. And then after harvest in the summertime,

Debbie Flower  5:36

I want to make one cut, I want to make what's called a thinning cut, which is removing the branch at its origin. And there's a place, I've been out there multiple times as you can imagine, examining this tree from the ground. There's a place where there's a “Y”, two branches split off from one, they're both strongly attached, but only one is hanging out over the lower branches. And I will go back to that “Y” where the one branch is attached and take it at that location, I'll take the whole thing.

Farmer Fred  6:05

do you have to worry about going into the branch collar for a branch like that or not?

Debbie Flower  6:09

In that case, there will be a collar where the two meet. Well, there'll be a branch bark ridge where the two meet, I need to be careful, it's a neck, it's an apricot in my case, which needs to be pruned during dry weather only. If it's too humid or we're getting rain, then we could get a disease called Eutypa, also called “Dead arm”, and it will kill the entire branch. So this is a good season for that. But I want to leave the branch bark ridge. If I were cutting a branch back to a major trunk and there was a collar and you have to know the collar, what it looks like, then yes, I want to preserve the collar.

Farmer Fred  6:47

The collar looks kind of like a turtleneck collar, it just kind of sticks out from the bigger branch. And that is where the band-aid for that branch is. So if you removed that branch collar you're slowing down that plant's chance to heal. So you want to just make that cut just slightly out from that bigger branch. And what's great, too, when you're removing a branch that way, with the thinning cut, it's going to spur quicker growth on new buds for the next year.

Debbie Flower  7:16

Hopefully. Because I'm doing it so early and some may say too early, but I think for my tree, it's fine. I will still get fruiting buds on the lower branches it will stimulate their production. I will also go in, though there are some very tall upright sprouts. I wouldn't call them water sprouts. They're not that vigorous. a water sprout is an upright sprout that grows really fast and really thick. And they tend to be vegetative only for years before they start bearing fruit. Most of these are fruit bearing, but they are going straight up and I don't want to get that high. I don't want the plant to get that tall. And so, in the “Home Orchard” book, which is a University of California Ag and Natural Resources publication, Chuck Engels, is the author, recently deceased, but a very knowledgeable, wonderful guy. Chuck Engels writes that with peach and nectarines you should remove 50% of last year's growth.

Farmer Fred  8:08

And I know he always used to advise, especially with cherry and apricot, to do your pruning by mid-August, to thwart the possibility of rain driven diseases like Eutypa.

Debbie Flower  8:21

Yes, you know, we can get hot around here and I don't love working in that heat. So I'm going to do it all when we have a respite in the heat here.

Farmer Fred  8:29

And what's nice too, is that summer pruning controls the growth rate of the plant, which is if you're trying to keep that plant at a manageable height, that's going to make it a heck of a lot easier. And you won't need as much winter pruning,

Debbie Flower  8:40

right. And if you also open it up, and there are diseases or insects that maybe attacking your plant, opening it up helps control those diseases and insects.

Farmer Fred  8:53

Now, Steve mentioned that these fruit trees are rather young, they're only two years old. And so they're still in the formation stages of that plant. So we're talking about controlling the overall height of the plant in a plant in its second year. If it's going to bear fruit, it might have only one or two, if that. You got to wait till year three or even year five before you see what that tree will eventually do. So Steve is still shaping the tree.

Debbie Flower  9:18

Right. And determining which branches you're going to keep and which branches you're not. So maybe the non-bearing ones are higher up from the ground, they may be vegetative, it takes time for a branch to become fruitful.

Farmer Fred  9:29

So all of a sudden we're doing a little detour here, to what we were telling you. But for those with mature fruit trees, what we've been saying is true. And for a two year old, you may want to exercise a bit more caution about which branches you remove in order to maintain the desirable shape of the tree and you're going for that vase shape, that champagne glass shape, where the branching is basically going out and into a vase shape to allow for better air circulation and for better sunlight penetration into the middle of the canopy.

Debbie Flower  9:57

And again, checking the home orchard publication, it says young trees should be pruned (of fruit) fairly heavily and encouraged to grow rapidly for the first three years without any fruit. Leave most of the small horizontal branches untouched for later fruiting.

Farmer Fred  10:13

There you go, we'll have a link to the publication “home orchard” in today's show notes. But Steve, yeah, enjoy your peach trees there. Remember that those nectarines and plums trees are  still in their formative years; but for those of you with mature fruit trees, yep, you'd prune them when you're thinning the fruit in April. And  again in July and August, when you harvest the fruit. You prune the trees again. And that way you can have a fruit tree that never gets out of control and it will require very little winter pruning. And the only reason you do winter pruning would may be to remove any crossing or rubbing branches you might not see now. And also look out for suckers at the base because most fruit trees are grafted.

Debbie Flower  10:54

Yes. And so  what comes from the base, right at the soil line, is going to be the rootstock. It’s not going to bear the fruit that you like.

Farmer Fred  11:02

Exactly. Debbie Flower, thanks for your help on this.

Debbie Flower  11:05

You're welcome Fred.

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Farmer Fred  11:10

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LEMON VERBENA

Farmer Fred  13:03

We're here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. It's Harvest Day. It's a big event, put on by the Sacramento County Master Gardeners, where their gardens are open to the public. It’s where you can see some amazing practical gardens that you can apply to your own situation. There's vegetables, there's grapes, there's an orchard, there's herbs, there's perennials, there's a drought tolerant garden, and a lot more. You got to come and see it whenever they have Harvest Day, which is always the first Saturday in August. And speaking of perennials and herbs, one perennial vendor that's always here is Rose Lovell-Sale from Morningsun Herb Farm in Vacaville. Rose, I don't know if you've seen it yet since you've been here, but I understand it came from you. It’s over in the herb garden. It's a tree but it's about a six foot tall tree. It’s a shrub, but it's shaped like a tree. And I saw it when it was in bloom when I first saw it, and I said, what is that? And one of the Master Gardeners told me it's lemon verbena. And then she said, here try this. And she gave me a cookie made with lemon verbena. It was a lemon verbena sugar cookie. And it's sold me on this plant. And when you think of herbs, you think of little plants. And this one was shaped like a tree.

Rose Loveall-Sale  14:12

Yes, lemon verbena, Aloysia virgata. (Note: the sign for the plant says it’s Aloysia citrodora). Its native to Peru. It's one of my all time favorite herbs. I love this plant more than anything.

Farmer Fred  14:22

What USDA zones is it applicable for?

Rose Loveall-Sale  14:25

Definitely all the way down to nine and it's much hardier than people think it is.

Farmer Fred  14:30

Does it die back in in marginal climates and come back?

Rose Loveall-Sale  14:33

It does. People think it's very tender, but actually we treat it like a rosebush. So it dies all the way back. You cut it back like a rosebush, and it comes back in March or at least by Tax Day.

Farmer Fred  14:46

Now I noticed the one here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center has been trimmed as a standard tree, shaped that way on purpose wasn't it?

Rose Loveall-Sale  14:54

That was on purpose, to keep it up a little higher, to make it look kind of pretty. If you want lots of foliage, then you really want to prune it all the way back like you would a standard rosebush.

Farmer Fred  15:06

Still though, the blossoms when it is in bloom, is fabulous.

Rose Loveall-Sale  15:09

It is. And it's not really grown for the blossoms, those little white flowers, but it's quite pretty and it's actually attractive to a lot of insects.

Farmer Fred  15:17

So beneficials are attracted to it. The leaves you can use in cooking and because it does get if you trim it as a standard to five feet or six feet tall, so it's really a nice focal point for an herb garden.

Rose Loveall-Sale  15:29

It's a beautiful standard for an herb garden, it will get five to six feet tall and there's one down at Filoli. That's about 12 feet tall. It's huge. And I always suggest for people to put it somewhere where they're going to run into it because the fragrance is tremendous.

Farmer Fred  15:47

Now Filoli is not your typical backyard garden, the Filoli mansion and estate, I believe, it was the Matson Steamship Line owner that built it and landscaped it. And if it's an amazing amazing garden. Only if you win the mega lottery will you be able to afford it.

Rose Loveall-Sale  16:06

Yes, if you're on a zero lot line home or maybe have a small container garden area, you definitely are going to keep it more into a two to four foot size which is very doable because once you start using it in your cooking and for your teas and my all time favorite thing to make lemon verbena ice cream, you will be keeping it fairly short because you will use it in your daily cooking.

Farmer Fred  16:29

Well since you said that, what's the recipe for lemon verbena ice cream?

Rose Loveall-Sale  16:35

It's actually pretty simple. It's a cup and a half of cream, a cup and a half of milk. Two thirds to three quarters cup of sugar and you bring that up to a fairly warm temperature. Not boiling but fairly warm. You take that off of the heat, you add three egg yolks. so you whisk the egg yolks a little bit, using a little bit of the of that cream mixture. You add it to those whisked egg yolks. Then you add the egg yolks back in to your mixture. You bring it back up to fairly warm temperatures but you don't want to bring it to boiling. You keep that stirring for about eight minutes until it becomes thickened. You take it off the heat, add about a cup full of fresh lemon verbena leaves and then close it down. Let it come to room temperature on its own and then I actually put in the refrigerator for a day. Then you take those lemon verbena leafs out, squeeze them to bring all that lemon verbena goodness out of it and then just process it in your ice cream maker and chill it down and eat it you can tell I make this a lot the fact that I know the recipe that well

Farmer Fred  17:48

what's your favorite flavor of ice cream to use with it?

Rose Loveall-Sale  17:50

Oh that's the ice cream, lemon verbena ice cream. That's all you need. Although you can add  a little smidgen of peaches, add some fresh peaches with it and it's wonderful.

Farmer Fred  18:00

Would this recipe happen to be on your website?

Rose Loveall-Sale  18:03

It is. if you go to our website The recipes are listed at the bottom you can click there and the lemon verbena ice cream will be on on the recipe list. So yeah, lemon verbena ice cream. I know it by heart.

Farmer Fred

and the website?

Rose Loveall-Sale

The website is morningsunherbfarm.com.

Farmer Fred

And you do mail orders don't you?

Rose Loveall-Sale

We do, but we stopped mail order during the summer because it's too hot. But we will start again right after Labor Day. We will be mail ordering for the next couple months after that.

Farmer Fred  18:34

All right, check it out. Check out their catalog online. Are you still doing tomato testing?

Rose Loveall-Sale  18:39

Well, no. This year we put 200 tomato plants out, we thought we would have some tomatoes to test. It turns out this year for the first time in 25 years, the deer thought our tomatoes would be delectable. And so out of the 200 plants we had, about five tomato plants were what  we've been able to harvest from. The deer are hungry this year. Between the drought, the fire, and everything else, we’ve just decided the deer can have the tomatoes. We're enjoying the eggplant.

Farmer Fred  19:09

Morningsun Herb Farm in Vacaville, about halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco. Besides the herb farm, you have classes as well.

Rose Loveall-Sale  19:20

We have classes. Those will be starting those back up in the fall after COVID. With COVID we of course put a stop to everything . But in the fall we'll be starting once again with our herb classes and all of our wreath making classes in October.

Farmer Fred  19:33

Visit the website. morningsunherbfarm.com

Rose Loveall-Sale  19:35

All right, thank you so much Fred.

DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred  19:46

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SUMMER TOMATO TROUBLESHOOTING

Farmer Fred  20:54

We're doing some tomato troubleshooting with Don Shor from Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California going through the litany of problems that might affect your tomatoes this spring and summer. And you probably know that tomatoes do best in full sun, but too much sun can be a problem. Now there are some sun related problems especially in warmer areas where your plants are getting pummeled by sun all day long. And yes, tomatoes are a full sun crop. Yeah, but there is such a thing as too much sun which can result in things like fruit cracking, or cat facing or solar yellowing.

Don Shor  21:32

Sun scald is a sunburn is as simple as name to apply and it is directly on the fruit. In the case of the Sun scald, it's it's the fruit that's exposed to the western sky when it's 105 degrees, and some varieties are more susceptible than others only because some of them have better leaf canopy than others. I've never had sunburn on an ace tomato because the plant has got a nice dense canopy. It's a consistent problem on Celebrity for me when I've grown that one because the plant is a relatively unvigorous plant that produces a lot of fruit so a whole lot of that fruit is exposed to the direct afternoon sun. So there are a varietal differences once again and once you've grown in number of tomatoes, you'll find some of them are just leafy or more vigorous shade themselves a better champion does a very good job of shading itself and produces a very large amount of large fruit. And I mentioned celebrity by comparison. It's a chronic problem on that particular variety for me. So you could if you want Want to grow a particular variety that susceptible to sunburn on the fruit, figure out a way to shade it a little bit from the hot afternoon sun, maybe rig up a little structure to the west of the plant and put some 50% shade cloth that you buy from a local garden center. Another option might just be to put them where there's a little natural shade not too much, or just plant varieties that are more dense and leafy. And and you'll notice that again as with blossom end rot you'll notice a variety of differences over time will lead you away from some varieties and towards others as you slowly build this collection of your favorite varieties that does well in your particular region.

Farmer Fred  23:04

And it probably would help to to keep your pruning shears in their holster because the more leaf cover that it has, the less chance there is of sun related problems.

Don Shor  23:15

I would say pruning tomatoes is almost never necessary. And I know that that causes some controversy when we say that, but it has very little benefit. if you're taking foliage off and exposing fruit, you're definitely going to get that adverse effect of sunburn on the fruit itself. It reduces yield. Overall when you prune tomatoes, the only reason I can think of that would be a possible benefit would be in areas where late blight is a real problem. Pruning them to get more open habits so you get better air circulation that increases your risk of sunburn. So I would suggest that keeping pruning at an absolute minimum unless there's some weird training technique you've adopted that absolutely requires it. pruning is for people in Minnesota where their season begins on Memorial Day and ends on Labor Day. Here we've got such a long season that we can allow the fruit to set very late in the season, we don't have to prune the vines for size control, and we'll still get plenty of ripe fruit.

Farmer Fred  24:08

There are some yellowing issues with the leaves on with some diseases. In fact, if you buy a tomato plant, you may see letters next to the name of the tomato like V F or N or T or A for that matter, but the V and the f are two problems that can cause a plant to turn yellow. Then that would be verticillium and Fusarium.

Don Shor  24:29

Yeah, those are two problems in our area where we have these are soil borne diseases, so they may be in your area if your homes were built on old agricultural soil, or if you bring in soil, inadvertently bringing in the disease with it. One of the reasons I've always been concerned about people getting tomato plants from their fellow backyard gardeners who started the seeds themselves. A lot of home gardeners like to use dirt, use compost from their own yard as they as they grow them. Unfortunately, that can be a source of contamination into your yard. So it would be best if all the gardeners out there who are sharing transplants use packaged soils rather than home made garden soils. If you get them it's a real problem. verticillium and Fusarium are very challenging to eliminate impossible basically to eliminate and even the rotation practices that we all recommend that special three year rotation of only Nightshade plants in this area and then no Nightshade plants in this area Nightshade families, what I'm referring to is That's only marginally effective. So your best bet if you have a problem with verticillium fusarium or nematodes is to look for that V F N on the label. new hybrids, modern hybrids that have verticillium fusarium and nematode tolerance built into them. champion is a good example. But there's a lot of others out there. And that's that's why you see that on the labels and East Coast gardeners are now seeing more and more varieties with late blight resistance, which is a nice kind of new wrinkle in the breeding drought direction.

Farmer Fred  25:56

and the letters T and A refer to a tobacco mosaic virus and Alternaria. And, yeah, as far as tobacco mosaic virus, don't smoke around your plants.

Don Shor  26:06

Yeah, there you go. That was easy. I've actually never seen a case of tobacco mosaic in my career. So I gather that's more of a greenhouse operation concern. But those those resistances that are built into the hybrids are a distinct advantage. This is why when we're talking on your program, early in the season about going and selecting your tomato varieties, we both kind of Push, get at least a few hybrids in there, you know, they're gonna have this resistance bred into them. And I know people love heirloom tomatoes and all but they don't have that resistance built into them. So diversifying the number of varieties and the types of varieties you're planning can be really important.

Farmer Fred  26:42

And one more problem that may affect your tomatoes where the lower leaves and stems look kind of bronze or oily brown color the leaves dry up and drop that could be Russet mites.

Don Shor  26:53

That's an interesting one. I've seen it several times. And it's really hard to diagnose from someone's description because they think it just looks like a watering problem. You know, the plant looks like it needs not wilting, but like it's sort of drying out from the ground up. I happened to have that problem very early on when I was a gardener here in the valley. So I got it identified. And it yes, it looks like it's browning slowly from the ground up the vine. the vine keeps growing with reasonable vigor keeps flowering, keep setting but just sort of steadily declines as the season goes along. It can be a tough one. oil sprays can be very helpful early in the season if you've had it one year you might wish to spray for it The next year.The thing, though, is to get a properly diagnosed because it takes a 40 power hand lens to see those little mites and most nurseries and honestly most Master Gardeners aren't going to recognize that problem. It's not something they encounter very often. So take some pictures of the plant, get real close with a with a hand lens and look at the leaf. You might see the russet mite on there. If you have a problem one year, get rid of all the tomato foliage, all the debris at the end of the season, don't compost it, send it away, send it off to the landfill, and watch your plants carefully the next year or perhaps give them a preventive spray with a light oil as they're beginning to grow because it can be a frustrating problem when you get it by the time you figure out what it is. Might be a little late to do anything about it.

Farmer Fred  28:13

Is there any truth to the old adage avoid planting tomatoes near petunias and potatoes to avoid Russet mites?

Don Shor  28:19

Not that I know of. I think petunias look lovely with tomatoes.

Farmer Fred  28:23

We've been doing some tomato troubleshooting with Don Shor owner Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California. Don thanks for the tomato tips.

Don Shor  28:31

Always great to talk to you Fred.

“Beyond the Garden Basics” Newsletter

Farmer Fred  28:38

Is it hotter, or is it just your imagination? It’s real. Heat waves across the country in the last decade are longer in duration and higher in temperature including both daytime and nighttime temperatures. And your plants are noticing it too, especially those popular ornamental shrubs that are more at home in milder climates, roses. Have you noticed that the blooms on your roses might be smaller than usual. That they tend to dry up quicker. And the foliage on the rose bushes may look crispier that usual. However, there are some rose varieties that can thrive in the heat, especially if that rose bush is located near a hard surface and it’s against a south or west facing wall, where the heat is particularly strong. In the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, out Friday August 12, master rosarian Debbie Arrington talks about those rose bush varieties that can take the heat.

Find a link to the newsletter in today’s show notes, or visit our website, Garden Basics dot net, where you can sign up to have the free Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter delivered to your inbox each Friday. Also at Garden Basics dot net, you can listen to any of our previous editions of the podcast, as well as read a transcript of the podcast episode you are listening to now. That’s at Garden Basics dot net. For current subscribers, look for those heat tolerant rose varieties in the next Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter on Friday, August 12th in your email. Take a deeper dive into gardening, with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter. And it’s free. Find the link at garden basics dot net.

Farmer Fred  30:18

Garden Basics With Farmer Fred comes out every Tuesday and Friday and is brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, visit our website, GardenBasics dot net. That’s where you can find out about the free, Garden Basics newsletter, Beyond the Basics. And thank you so much for listening.