236 Heat vs Fruit Trees. Deer Control.

Show Transcript

GB 236 Heat, Mycorrhizae, Deer, Leaf Shredder TRANSCRIPT

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.

Farmer Fred  0:20

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

Many areas of the country suffered through prolonged heat waves in September. And now, your fruit tree orchard may have problems. We have ideas on how to help your fruit trees get through next year’s heatwaves.

You’ve seen the bags and boxes of fertilizers and soil amendments that say, “Now, containing mycorrhizae!” Is that a good buy? America’s Favorite College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, gives her take on that. Also, she has tips for thwarting deer in your garden.

Finally, an outdoor power equipment expert tells us about the latest item that can blow your fallen leaves into a pile, suck them up, and them grind them up, perfect for topping a garden bed in the cold season. It’s a combination portable leaf blower, vacuum and mulching machine.

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. Let’s go!

HIGH HEAT vs. YOUR FRUIT TREES

Farmer Fred  1:38

We're talking with Quentyn Young of Q Young Garden. He's a landscaper in the Sacramento area, also a Master Gardener. He works in the orchard at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, and we're standing there, next to an espaliered Stella cherry tree that is trying to recover from a recent bout of unusually high heat here in the Sacramento area. But it has an interesting story. Q, this Stella cherry, and all cherry trees around here, we've been told, in a Mediterranean climate they need to be pruned in August, in order for those wounds to heal so that it is not infected by any blowing rain-driven spores in the wintertime, exposing it to Cherry diseases like Pseudomonas or botrytis. By the way, in the show notes, we will have links to more information about cherry diseases. So it is true, though, that cherries and apricots are very susceptible to rain borne diseases? Do they need to get pruned before the rainy season starts?

Quentyn Young  2:38

That's true. And that's something that we try to adhere to here in the orchard.

Farmer Fred  2:43

This year was unusual, with a bout of 110 degree heat for several days in a row including a record breaking 116 degrees. And I think that 10-Day bout of heat happened less than a week after this Stella cherry got pruned. It started acting a little odd. It’s a north-south facing espalier here. The north side, the leaves are very green. the South Side. Not so green.

Quentyn Young  3:11

Yeah, you can see it's a really a stark difference between the two different sides. And the South side really got fried with that heatwave.

Farmer Fred  3:20

What's the prognosis for it?

Quentyn Young  3:21

I think it'll pull through. You can see it looks like they even put some fresh trunk paint on some areas that were opened up to the sun when they did the pruning, which is something we also do down in the main orchard. Now that I'm looking at this, I'm thinking maybe next year, we might want to have it set up so that we can maybe cover it with frost cloth or something like that or Agribon. Because it was part of the premise of doing this two dimensionally, both with with the peach and with the cherry tree. If theoretically, we wanted to try to protect it from the Spotted Wing Drosophila, we could net it or  cover it with Agribon, to protect the cherries. And also we could cover the peach tree if we wanted to experiment with protecting it from peach leaf curl. So that was part of the reason for growing these two dimensionally like this.

Farmer Fred  4:11

Yeah, we should point out that on this espalier, there is a stella cherry tree and planted right next to it is an O’Henry peach tree. The O’Henry peach seemed to make it like a champ. But then again, that wasn't pruned. Was it?

Quentyn Young  4:23

Not as severely as the cherry was. Yeah, and we are still behind on pruning the cherry the Multibud cherry down in the orchard. But maybe that's a good thing. I think so. I think we should expect maybe, like you said, maybe waiting a little bit later and unfortunately I think the the estimate is going to be a drier winter until late in the season. So I think we might be safe doing some of the pruning now.

Farmer Fred  4:51

That's kind of the thinking in a drought. When rains do happen, the really heavy rains, it may not be until November or December. But you never know. You mentioned painting the trunks. And that's a great idea because of sunburn or sunscald to newly exposed branches, we saw that the newly exposed cherry leaves turned crispy after they had been protected by that outer layer of leaves that was pruned away. Those leaves turned brown. What about the stems and the trunk? Did you see any signs of sunburn or sunscald?

Quentyn Young  5:24

On the stems, no. And on the trunk? It’s a little bit hard to say right now because they're still sort of covered, covered with leaves. But we did do some fresh painting just to be just to be safe after the fact, or actually during the fact. Sometimes in the orchard when we're pruning in the summer, we'll often have kind of a group meeting:  Do you want to paint this branch now that we've opened up exposing the center of a tree during the heat of the summer.

Farmer Fred  5:50

Painting or whitewashing the trunk on newly exposed branches is a good idea. The whitewash could be simple as 50% interior white latex paint and 50% water. And apply that. I like the idea of covering it when these heat waves are expected. And by having it on an espalier, basically a two dimensional fruit tree. And with the system you have here, it'd be fairly easy to throw a bit of a shade cloth over it.

Quentyn Young  6:16

Yeah. And I think it would be easy , because like you said,  the North side, I think, is fine. The south side, I think we could maybe just cover that side. When we experimented with the multibud Cherry in the orchard, covering it completely with Agribon, what we found in the summer is it made it too hot and it caused the cherries to ripen so quickly that they actually got mushy. But up here, it'd be a little bit different because we would just be covering one side and it wouldn't be creating such a heat box like it did in the orchard. And I think we have that on the website. At the Fair Oaks horticulture website, you can see that Agribon experiment; and, it made it way too hot. But I think it'd be easy just to cover one side here.

Farmer Fred  6:56

What weight Agribon was that? And what weight would you recommend for summer protection?

Quentyn Young  7:01

I would try to go as light as possible. I think what we used was 50%.

Farmer Fred  7:05

Okay, you could have gotten down to 30 weight or less.

Quentyn Young  7:07

yeah, we hadn't realized how hot it was going to turn out. Basically it was just a giant square of Agribon floating on a PVC frame. And it really, it was actually really uncomfortable to work in there too.

Farmer Fred  7:20

in your post mortem in the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center orchard after that bout of record heat, what other things did you notice?

Quentyn Young  7:29

We noticed some fruit ripening faster. We noticed quite a bit of pit damage, like especially with peaches and nectarines. Damage around the pits from the extreme heat. And we noticed a lot of fruit drop too.

Farmer Fred  7:41

I would think that especially with pit burn, that maybe if you have an eye on that long term weather forecast and you notice that a heatwave is coming, maybe harvest the nearly ripened fruit.

Quentyn Young  7:53

Yeah, I think so. And then just try to counter ripen the fruit because  once we had that damage to the fruit, it was really unusable.

Farmer Fred  8:01

That's advice also now for tomato plants, too. If you have tomatoes growing and you know that there's going to be a bout of unusually high heat, the experts are saying to harvest those tomatoes, even though they may not be fully ripe. And let them ripen on the counter. Because high heat can turn them to mush, really quick.

Quentyn Young  8:18

Yeah, we had we had that problem also with plums and pluots.

Farmer Fred  8:22

That's a difficult one because they can be harvested at different times.

Quentyn Young  8:25

Yeah. And then like I said, we're only here once a week. So  we would come here and we would see quite a bit of fruit fallen on the ground. Most of it was unusable because it was already mushy.

Farmer Fred  8:35

I would think, too, that after a summer pruning, even if it isn't September instead of August, would you avoid fertilization?

Quentyn Young  8:43

Yeah, we don't do any fertilizing in the fall here. Until  springtime. I might fertilize some of the fruit trees, like the tropicals, that we have in the barrels. But other than that, we don't fertilize our fruit trees except in the spring like you said.

Farmer Fred  8:56

But in reality, the trees are being fertilized year round because of the several inches of mulch on the ground.

Quentyn Young  9:02

Yeah several inches of mulch, and we also leave all the cuttings there as well. So they get a good mix of carbon and nitrogen.  It's just the citrus trees primarily that we will fertilize in the springtime.

Farmer Fred  9:14

Have you seen an unusual amount of sunburn on citrus fruit this year?

Quentyn Young  9:19

I would say not yet. But I've noticed a lot of fruit splitting.

Farmer Fred  9:23

And that is usually a boom-bust cycle of water.

Quentyn Young  9:26

I think it was that rain that we had was about maybe 10 days ago. The fruit gets wet. It can't expand fast enough, and it just splits open.

Farmer Fred  9:34

All rain is local, just like all gardening is local. And it was interesting that the area around here got over an inch of rain, whereas where I live, it was less than half an inch.

Quentyn Young  9:46

Yeah, it was very spotty here.

Farmer Fred  9:47

So that's the other thing with the changing climate and we're not going to be climate change deniers here. With a changing climate, you do have those storms that are very localized.

Quentyn Young  9:59

very localized. And I think we're gonna see that kind of boom and bust cycle where you're either gonna get no rain or a lot of rain all at once.

Farmer Fred  10:07

Right now, with a cherry tree that is recovering like this, are you doing anything special for it? Are you increasing irrigation or decreasing irrigation?

Quentyn Young  10:15

No, we basically maintain the same irrigation throughout the season, especially since we've picked most of the fruit. So usually in October, we're going to start reducing most of our irrigation anyway.

Farmer Fred  10:25

And one thing we should point out, too, is a leaf can still photosynthesize even though there may be brown portions on it from the high heat, the edges are burned. But don't remove any leaves because of that.

Quentyn Young  10:37

Exactly.  We're gonna leave it be. we're gonna baby it into the fall, then fingers crossed, we have a nice rainy winter.

Farmer Fred  10:44

That same is true with peach leaf curl.

Quentyn Young  10:46

Yeah, we just sort of put up with it here in the orchard. The tree will drop the diseased leaves, and push out new leaves. But as long as they're still on the tree, they're still producing food for the tree.

Farmer Fred  11:00

All right. Any tips for us to get through the winter?

Quentyn Young  11:04

Just keep your fingers crossed for a good rainy winter.

Farmer Fred  11:08

And maybe keep the frost cloths handy. Just in case.

Quentyn Young  11:11

Hopefully . We need the chill hours for our deciduous fruit trees.

Farmer Fred  11:14

Right we need the chill hours. and the frost cloths would be for citrus, not for deciduous for trees.  But I like the idea too, for frost or freeze if you think one is coming to your area where normally you may not get one, would be to whitewash the trunk and the branches.

Quentyn Young  11:29

Yeah, winter is a good time to do it too. In the winter when you can see the structure of the tree, too.

Farmer Fred  11:34

Alright, so you practice Summer pruning here for the most part on all your trees.

Quentyn Young

on all the trees we do very little winter pruning.

Farmer Fred

Right .and it's probably in the wintertime you just notice maybe crossing or rubbing branches you didn't see before because all the leaf cover.

Quentyn Young  11:47

And some are some dead branches too.

Farmer Fred  11:50

We live in interesting times, somebody once said.  And it truly is when it comes to being a gardener. We have to learn to adapt and do things perhaps a little bit differently. What about growing cherry trees? Because they do have a thin bark, maybe plant them where they could get afternoon shade?

Quentyn Young  12:09

I think that would be helpful. I think that it's also true for flowering cherries too. the non fruiting flowering cherries. I usually try to tell my clients to plant them where they're going to get afternoon shade because they're really susceptible to burning on their trunks.

Farmer Fred  12:22

All right. Speaking of clients, tell us about your business.

Quentyn Young  12:26

Basically, I'm doing consulting on installations, specialized pruning, and anything that's kind of related to that.

Farmer Fred  12:33

So if somebody wanted, in the Sacramento area, they're Japanese maple tree pruned.

Quentyn Young  12:38

Depending on the size, yeah. But also a lot of specialized pruning for fruit trees and things like that.

Farmer Fred  12:42

Quentyn Young, Master Gardener, and landscaper here in the Sacramento area. Thanks for getting us through this latest climate shock.

Quentyn Young  12:50

Sure, Fred, thanks for having me on.

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Farmer Fred  14:46

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CAN MYCORRHIZAL FUNGI SURVIVE IN A BAG?

Farmer Fred  15:54

You're seeing more and more bagged soil amendments at the nursery with the phrase, “contains mycorrhizae”. does it ? is it? Let's find out more. Debbie Flower, is here. America's favorite retired college horticultural Professor. Mycorrhizal fungi in growing media seems to be the craze. It seems to be the extra component in a lot of bagged products. But I often wonder, how can something stay alive in a sealed bag, sitting on asphalt in the summertime, outside?

Debbie Flower  16:26

That is definitely a question. Fungus has one little benefit in that it does have a resting stage, which is a spore. So maybe some of the spores have survived. But in general they are living things. this is a manufactured product that's been put in a bag. It has sat in a warehouse, then put on a truck or some other form of transportation, and brought to the store where it is sits outside, or in a not very well temperature-controlled area, and stews, basically, and dies. So a lot of it is probably not alive. I have to say I remember when mycorrhiza started showing up in content, in bagged products, in fertilizers as well. And the cost of those bagged products and those fertilizers went up dramatically. You're paying quite a bit. You may not realize that. maybe you weren't gardening back then when it first started. But you're paying a pretty penny for something that may be completely dead.

Farmer Fred  17:29

I remember when mycorrhiza started to get added into fertilizer. One fertilizer company approached me at the time and said, would you do commercials for us? For that to happen, I told them, I need to test your product. And so they sent me a box of their fertilizer and I set up a test in the greenhouse, testing their fertilizer against three others, and including a control with no fertilizer. And by gum, it worked. I mean, it was the second best. There were good results growing. I used marigolds to grow, and they were the second most lush with that mycorrhizal fertilizer. The first luscious batch of marigolds were grown using fish emulsion. But the results of this mycorrhizal-added fertilizer seemed to work, too. Okay, I told them, I'll do one set of commercials for you. And I did, and it was fine. And I used that product throughout that summer. And then the next year, they sent me another box of the same thing, supposedly the same thing. And when the plants came up, they all keeled over. Oh, my. And I asked them about that. They said, Yeah, we got some formula wrong on the shipments we sent out and yeah, there is a little too much added nitrogen. I think the problem burned the plants. It burned. They were young. Yeah. And so immediately I said, Well,  okay, I still have fish emulsion. I'm happy with that. It varied batch to batch.

Debbie Flower  18:55

Mycorrhizal fungi are very specific to their host, some more than others. And they will not do anything if their host plant is not there. Also, the way they work, you get them in the soil, they're out there in the air, and they find their hosts, they blow around in the spore stage or something. And they find their host plant, they hang around in the soil and need a signal to become active to germinate from their spore stage. And once they get that signal, which comes from the plant, then they grow. Hyphae is like a stem for fungus, except it's a single line of cells. It can have branches, but it's a single line of cells. It doesn't take multiple cells to make a stem of fungus. So it can go really long distances and it can go into really small places. And so the fungus starts to grow and it collects phosphorus and water. Those are the two primary things that it brings back to the plant in exchange for that phosphorus and water. The plant gives the some of the Plant sap to the fungus to keep it alive. So it sounds great, right? Well, there's conditions where the plant will not give the signal. One of those is the plants are really healthy, they are doing just fine. It doesn't need extra water, it doesn't need extra phosphorus. Then whatever the plant exudes from the roots, and we are gaining more and more evidence all the time that plants do exude things from their roots into the soil. That feeds other things. But what it exudes doesn't give the signal that the mycorrhizae needs to grow. So nothing happens if the mycorrhizal fungi happened to be at the right host, happened to be alive, and they're in a bag of fertilizer, they're probably never going to become active because the plant is getting fertilizer and doesn't need their help.

Farmer Fred  20:49

Getting back to the mycorrhizal fungi that's in the bag. Can it help to rehydrate the bag when you get it home, to bring those mycorrhizal back to life?

Debbie Flower  21:00

If there's anything alive in there, it's a spore. And the spore will not germinate. I used to say to my students, I have this theory that when Armageddon happens, if it happens on the earth as we know it , implodes, fire, flood, freezing, whatever it is, fungal spores are the thing that are going to live through it.

Farmer Fred

There are cockroaches, they’ll survive.

Debbie Flower

Well, that's another possibility I hadn't thought of. Those mycorrhizal spores are very well protected against environmental issues. Like freezing, thawing, drying out. They need a little tiny bit of water, but they're like a seed in a packet. And  they're in a state where they really don't consume water. So no, adding water to the bag is not going to help.

Farmer Fred  21:43

Okay, So those spores can survive, though, being in a bag on hot asphalt throughout the summer in front of a nursery?

Debbie Flower  21:57

Potentially some can. Yes. But it's going to take a chemical signal from the plant in order to activate those and not just any plant. It has to be the specific plant that the fungus has a mycorrhizal relationship with.

Farmer Fred  22:02

if you've ever read the Micorrhizal ingredients on a bag, a soil or fertilizer product, you will see a whole host of mycorrhizal species in there. And so I guess it's kind of a crapshoot, you will throw it all against the wall and see what sticks as far as the plant goes. because one of those is bound to work with the plant, right?

Debbie Flower  22:21

Initially when they were putting mycorrhizal fungus into bagged goods it was just one or two different species. And then this information about specific host specificity became better known. Now it's 17 or 27 “live organisms”, it will say sometimes. They don't always use the word mycorrhizal fungi.

Farmer Fred  22:44

Is there a difference between mycorrhizal fungi and mycorrhizal bacteria and the plants that they react with?

Debbie Flower  22:52

I'm not aware of the term mycorrhizal bacteria. There are bacteria,  we inoculate some seeds with that help so the plants fix nitrogen, right?

Farmer Fred  23:02

Yeah. Like that bag of clover seeds sitting over there.

Debbie Flower  23:05

Right. So they're different organisms. Yeah. And for decades, more, you know, longer than I've been alive. That  product has been sold to inoculate your legume seeds, soy beans, and peas, and things like that. And there is some specificity to that. There are fewer species of that. So initially, when I first started buying it, you just bought one packet, and it didn't specify what it was for. You used it on every variety. So it was inoculant. Yes, it's called inoculant. And I assume it had all the species of the bacteria. there aren't that many that did this. and they have a similar relationship with the roots of specific plants, and we know what they are,  the beans and the peas, etc. And they also they take nitrogen out of the air, so it's a different nutrient, and they fix it to fix nitrogen. Nitrogen exists primarily as a gas in the air. To “fix it” means react with a hydrogen or an oxygen atom, so it becomes a molecule, it becomes heavier, and it can be stored in soil or in roots. And so the bacteria actually fix the nitrogen. And then when the roots die, that's another sort of problem with nitrogen fixation. But when the roots die and roots actually turn over on a plant. It doesn't have a permanent set of roots, some of the roots, the feeder roots, which are collecting the nutrients turnover quickly, they have some that we're using today. And then they make new ones and three days later  some die. And so when that root dies, it releases the nitrogen into the soil and then it can dissolve in water and be absorbed by the roots

Farmer Fred

just like us.

Debbie Flower

Yes. So it's releasing nitrogen. Yes, it's a different process. But it has a lot of similarities, yes.

Farmer Fred  25:01

I think what I'm confusing it with, is compost. You have bacterially dominated forms of compost and fungally dominated forms of compost. One is better for annual plants, one is better for trees and shrubs. and I always get confused which is which.

Debbie Flower  25:17

Yes, I know what you're talking about. And that's true with soil. If you mulch your soil regularly with arborist chips as I do, you get way fewer herbaceous weeds, because the herbaceous weeds, whatever dominated soil, the breakdown of the woody product creates does not support the herbaceous weeds as well. And that has to do with the microorganisms that are just living in the soil.

Farmer Fred  25:44

And finding compost that is green waste-based is difficult. Because some of these companies, if you turn over a big bag of organic compost that's sitting out there in front of the nursery, look at the ingredients label, it'll just say “organic compost”, well, fine. Where did you derive it from?  if it's a forest product that's probably only to the benefit of woody plants.

Debbie Flower  26:06

It depends. Sometimes usually there's a “derived from” box  on fertilizer bags. The “Derived from” statement lists what it provides, but on bagged goods I'm not sure if it says the same thing.

Farmer Fred

usually it says “forest byproducts”.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it does. So think about a lawn. We advocate mulch. mowers, mulch, mowers chop the top off the lawn, cut it into pieces and drop it in place. That's a green mulch, right. And it's supporting a green crop and herbaceous crop.

Farmer Fred  26:37

so that would make sense, right? Also, I remember when growing up, there was that time of the year, usually this time of the year, when you could walk up and down the block and smell Bandini steer manure on everybody's front yard.

Debbie Flower  26:51

And that's probably fairly green, as you said,  manures  are considered green. Yeah, part of the compost.

Farmer Fred  26:59

And back then those steer were probably eating nothing but pasture land, right.

Debbie Flower  27:03

So it was good clean steer manure. Yeah.

Farmer Fred  27:07

And that was to the benefit of a herbaceous plant like a lawn right? Science is confusing. Well, that was an interesting bypass. We need more information on this. In general, you're wasting your money.

Debbie Flower  27:18

If you look at bagged goods, and it says it has bat guano and bloodmeal and cottonseed meal, buy individual boxes or bags of bat guano. buy cottonseed meal. Buy whatever I said. you'll save money. There are a few situations where mycorrhizal fungal are beneficial, the homeowner probably will never run into them. One is if the property has been mined, and your living on mined tailings, that's a possibility for a housing development. mine tailings would be subsoil, not the topsoil. Not even this, the second layer below that which is crappy, but still garden rubble. If you get below that, you may have no life in that soil. And maybe adding mycorrhizae will help there. Another case is if it was a farm field, or some kind of field that was hit regularly with fungicide, you may need to reinoculate the soil. But in general, the mycorrhizae is out there, it will find its host and you don't have to do anything. It's even