- Contributor: Laurie Morrow, Volunteer InyoMono Master Gardeners.
Growing Blueberries in the Eastern Sierra
Growing blueberries is a relatively new trend in the Eastern Sierra. Our climate and soils are not ideally suited to growing them, but with a little help you may be able to raise plants that produce a small to moderate amount of fruit.
Local nurseries carry the varieties best suited to our area. The general name for these types are northern highbush blueberries for areas north of Independence and southern highbush for Independence to the southern Owens Valley. Blueberries are self-fruitful, but better crop production is obtained with 2 or more similar varieties.
Things to consider when planting blueberries:
Site Selection - Find a location that gets sun most of the day, but late afternoon shade is favorable. Don't plant bushes against a south or west facing wall. This may encourage the plant to flower too early and be damaged by late frosts.
Soil Requirements - Ideally, blueberries want a soil pH of 4.5 to 5.5. Our soils are generally in the 7 – 8 range. When planting use a mixture of composted organic matter and peat moss. Soil needs to drain quickly, standing water will drown the bush. If you need to improve drainage add additional organic matter and sand. Blueberries will not tolerate high salinity soils and may not be a good choice for Chalfant.
Growing Requirements - Deep water your plants and apply 1 to 2 inches per week.
Mulching conserves moisture, controls weeds and protects roots from extreme temperatures. Blueberries are shallow rooted and are susceptible to winter kill. Fall watering and good mulching will prevent dieback.
Don't fertilize your bushes at planting time. In subsequent years apply a balanced fertilizer prior to buds appearing. Water in thoroughly. In May, apply a high nitrogen (21-0-0) fertilizer around the drip line of the plant and water in thoroughly, this will help to acidify the soil.
Pruning - In the first two growing seasons only remove damaged or dead wood. No pruning is required until the plant is 3 years old. Severe pruning produces fewer but larger berries and more new growth. Berries are produced on second and third year canes. Prune in winter or early spring. Remove weak side shoots in top of plant. To increase fruit size, head back shoots that have an abundance of flower buds.
Plants generally don't reach full fruit production until the 6th growing season.
If you have specific questions about your blueberry bushes please contact the Master Gardener Help-line at (760) 872-2098.
Further reading and references:
http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/filelibrary/5842/25993.pdf “Growing Blueberries in the Sacramento Region” UC ANR Publication #88
http://www.blueberrycouncil.org/growing-blueberries/ US Highbush Blueberry Council
- Author: Carolyn Lynch
MARCH, 2015
“Sow seeds indoors 6 to 8 weeks before the last frost date.” Uh-oh… that's NOW.
March is the month for Owens Valley growers to start seeds for tomatoes (other seeds too, but they are topics for other days). I find I'm never quite ready when March 1 rolls around. Every year, the hardest part is deciding what to grow and what to leave out. Should I devote space to a variety that last year gave me some of the best tomatoes I ever ate… all 3 of them? Or one that cranked out hundreds of tomatoes that were, well, pretty good?
Knowing we were not alone in this dilemma, several Master Gardeners conducted tomato trials at the Sunrise Research Garden in downtown Bishop from 2011 through 2014. Our goal was to identify varieties we could recommend to local gardeners as both (1) likely to succeed and (2) worth growing. We also wanted to find answers to questions like “are heirlooms really better than hybrids?”, “are hybrids really better than heirlooms?” and “should I grow an early variety or just wait two more weeks for ripe tomatoes?”
Here's a brief summary of some of our findings and recommendations.
HYBRID VS OPEN POLLINATED (sometimes called “heirlooms,” though many are new varieties): A lot of gardeners have strong opinions about the virtues of one or the other. Conventional wisdom, in a nutshell, finds that hybrids are more reliable, and open-pollinated tomatoes taste better. At Sunrise, we found truth in this assessment… sometimes.
The first few years, our hybrids didn't perform significantly better than the open-pollinated (OP) varieties we grew. In each category we had some winners and some duds. This changed when our soil became infested with root-knot nematodes. In our fourth year, almost across the board, our nematode-resistant hybrids succeeded and our OPs failed. It seems reasonable to conclude that where there's a known disease or pest issue in a garden, a grower is much more likely to succeed with plants with known resistance to that disease or pest. While there are a few OPs (for example, Rutgers) with demonstrated resistance to one or more diseases, most resistant varieties are hybrids.
On the topic of flavor… it's subjective. Several of our hybrids did very well in our yearly “taste tests,” conducted by subjective humans, and some of the OPs fared poorly. Overall, though, good OPs were more likely to thrill us with intense flavors and lush textures, while good hybrids often tasted more juicy, fresh and bright. Our all-time taste test winner? A hybrid: Sun Gold.
One big advantage of OP tomatoes is that you can save their seed and grow them again. Hybrid seed will grow, but the tomatoes won't be like the ones the seed came from.
EARLY AND HEAT TOLERANT VARIETIES: Owens Valley has great tomato-growing weather but a relatively short growing season. Also, it sometimes gets really hot. We avoided growing tomatoes with days from transplant to harvest greater than 80. (Days to harvest is a figure attached to varieties by seed producers/suppliers: a ballpark estimate useful when comparing varieties, but not a promise. We have had our first ripe fruit weeks earlier or weeks later than predicted.) We have tried numerous early (fewer than 70 days) and very early (fewer than 60 days) varieties in an effort to identify good prospects for higher-elevation gardens with their even shorter seasons. We also tried several “heat set” varieties said to be less likely to suffer from blossom drop at high temperatures.
Most of the early varieties did produce fruit earlier than the others and several heat sets produced well through some very hot weather. However, several of these varieties produced tomatoes that none of us wanted to eat. Most people probably don't have the space or the inclination to grow plants that will produce tomatoes that they won't want once the good ones start to ripen. There were a few, though, that were good enough to recommend in their own right.
RECOMMENDATIONS: These varieties grew and produced well for us and tasted good, too. They are listed in general order of fruit size and earliness. HY=hybrid, OP=open-pollinated. Numbers are days to harvest given by seed suppliers/our average days to harvest at Sunrise. These varied a lot from year to year. Results from one year when a June freeze made all our tomatoes ripen unusually late skewed the overall results for the varieties grown that year; these are marked*. Disease resistance codes: V=Verticillium, F=Fusarium race 1, FF=Fusarium races 1 and 2, N=nematodes, T=Tobacco mosaic virus, A=Alternaria.
Sun Gold (HY, 57/71*, VF): Absolutely great orange cherry tomato with very sweet, fruity flavor on large, productive plants. Its only fault is the fruit cracks a lot. A lot of Sun Golds don't make it out of the garden before being devoured, however. Even some of the biggest “heirloom snobs” love this one. Why would you NOT grow it? Seeds and plants are available almost everywhere.
Super Sweet 100 (HY, 65/68, VF): Popular red cherry tomato, widely available as seeds and plants. Very productive with good sweet flavor and little cracking, the best red cherry we tried.
Bloody Butcher (OP, 55/47) and Matina (OP, 58/63): Two very early, small-fruited (1-2 oz) tomatoes with better than average flavor. Bloody Butcher was earlier and more productive but Matina won the taste test between the two. If you want really early fruit that's (a little) bigger than cherry-size or if your garden is at high altitude, these are worth growing. Seeds are available in catalogs and online.
Early Girl (HY, 60/77*, VFF): This is one of the most popular tomatoes in America for good reason. Even though it has never been all that “early” for us, once it started to bear it usually didn't stop until the plant froze. It isn't labeled a heat set, but in hot weather it out-performed several that were. Every tasting panel that has tried Early Girl gave the juicy, medium size fruit high marks for delicious flavor with well-balanced sweetness and acidity. Seeds and plants are available almost everywhere.
Jetsetter (HY, 64/77*, VFFNTA): As early in our trials as Early Girl, the medium to large fruit had really good, sweet but well balanced flavor. The combination of earliness, large fruit size, good flavor and disease resistance is the best we have seen in our trials. Seed for Jetsetter is becoming hard to find, though there are still several sources, mostly online. One problem with growing hybrids is since you can't save seed, if the seed companies stop offering it, you can't grow it.
Big Beef (HY, 73/69, VFFNTA): A superior hybrid tomato with large, delicious fruit and great disease resistance; a midseason variety, it came in early for us. We grew Big Beef for the first time last year after trying the very popular Better Boy three times. Based on our experience it is hard to imagine why anyone given a choice between the two wouldn't choose Big Beef. This variety is widely available as nursery plants and seed.
Cherokee Chocolate (OP, 75/71): This is the popular heirloom Cherokee Purple with a skin color mutation. Like Cherokee Purple, the flavor was superb, very sweet but complex. The gorgeous chocolate-brown fruit were often somewhat lobed; they suffered more catfacing or blossom-end cracking than the hybrids we grew but overall quality was more than acceptable. This is the one we fought over at the tasting table. Seed is listed in a few catalogs and online; Cherokee Purple plants can often be found in nurseries.
Prudens Purple (OP, 75/81*) and Virginia Sweets (OP, 80/71): Gigantic fruit (10 to 12 oz average; routinely 2 pounds or bigger) on monster plants. Prudens Purple is an early, very good pink (not purple) beefsteak. Virginia Sweets is bright yellow marbled with red inside and out, a beautiful tomato. Both had good flavor and wonderfully sumptuous, smooth texture. Don't try these if you don't have a lot of space. Prudens Purple seed can often be found at retail outlets (I got ours at Kmart); both are available from catalogs and online.
Other worthy varieties include Park's Whopper CR Improved (HY, 65/70, VFFNT), a reliable producer of medium (not “whopper”) size fruit, crack-resistant and with good flavor, maybe not quite as good as Jetsetter. Ball's Beefsteak (HY, 76/70, VFFT) wasn't really a beefsteak but a meaty, medium to large, round tomato with very good, full-bodied flavor. It was very productive one year but a flop the next. Some OP varieties we liked but that had issues include Gregori's Altai (OP, 67/66), a very early, tasty pink beefsteak and the similar German Johnson (OP, 80/66) which was just as early for us. Both produced fairly well but the fruit were often misshapen or ripened unevenly. One of our favorites was Sioux (OP, 70/73), a delicious medium size tomato with good heat tolerance; but we found that our Sioux seed gave inconsistent results with several plants producing fruit with very different shapes, color, and (inferior) flavor. Arkansas Traveler (OP, 85/64) is a heat set variety that gave beautiful, flawless pink fruit all season without a break; but unlike the others listed here, it didn't taste very good.
A couple of notable disappointments were the aforementioned Better Boy and Celebrity, two widely grown hybrids that didn't impress us in several tries. Most of the very early varieties we tried left us cold, including the widely praised Stupice, Sasha's Altai and Galina's.
IN CONCLUSION: Our premise has been that if a tomato does well at Sunrise, it will do well in Owens Valley. The Sunrise garden is a lot like a home garden; we try things (shade cloth, different ways to support our plants) that home gardeners might try, nothing too fancy, because we're looking for the kind of results a home gardener would get.
I know that a bad result at Sunrise is no guarantee the same variety won't succeed in another garden nearby. Celebrity has always done well for me. And Master Gardeners who have grown some of our recommended varieties at home have reported less than stellar results. But if you're trying to decide what to grow, you could do worse than to try some of the tomatoes recommended here. I have most of them growing in my kitchen right now.
- Author: Lori Plakos
Conducted by Master Gardener Volunteer, Lori Plakos.
I planted a 10'x10' test garden using different mulches to compare their effect on the production of bell peppers.
The test crop was bell peppers. Each plot was planted with three specimens each of red and yellow varieties which were purchased from a local nursery. These were planted on April 25, 2013. Unfortunately, the plants were subjected to a heat wave the following week, while I was out of town, and the housesitter had a difficult time keeping the plants moist, with the result that the control plot and the straw plot each lost a plant, and two died in the pine needle section, while those in the vermicompost all survived.
Variables to consider:
- Automatic sprinkler irrigation may have been inconsistent through the bed.
- Proximity to a fence may have influenced sun exposure. The straw and pine needle plants were furthest from the sun protection of the fence.
- Difficulty determining when to harvest. Waiting until peppers changed color appeared to be too late - they often rotted on the plant. I wasn't sure if I should consider all fruit, particularly toward end of season when fruit wasn't completely ripe. I included fruit of a particular size from all plants, even though I personally try to eat only colored peppers that are fully ripe. I know a lot of people eat green peppers.
Observations:
The non-mulched section (5 plants) grew weeds. The largest grasses were removed to prevent spread.
The straw mulch plants (5 plants) had problems with pests, mainly slugs. These were controlled using Sluggo 11. All of the plants had their share of pests, but the straw mulch was the worst. I've read that is a problem possibly due to the less dense nature of the straw harboring the pests. I have used a lot of straw mulch due to the fact it's readily available in my area and economical. I plan on running it through a shredder to make it more compactable and not using it where pests are a concern.
Those mulched with worm compost (6 plants) produced the strongest plants. The nutrients in the vermicompost helped the health of the plants. My preference would be to use that, but it is expensive to be able to use it over large areas. I do a lot of regular composting (mostly grass clippings and leaves), but I worry that working compost that isn't fully composted into the soil will compete with the plants. However, using it as a mulch will allow it to work in the soil over time when it is fully composted and giving the plants nutrients along the way.
The pine needle plants (4 plants) produced the largest crop per plant and overall in spite of the early plant losses and being furthest away from the fence's sun protection.
Results by Total Crop Weight rounding off to the nearest oz.
- Non-mulch: 52 oz.
- Straw mulch: 35 oz.
- Worm compost: 129 oz.
- Pine needles: 161 oz.
Conclusion:
The biggest thing I learned with this test is to MULCH. The most effective thing I learned about mulching during a drought is the resultant reduction in weeding and watering, which is very significant. The less attention you have to give to a particular plant, the more attention you can give to other parts of your garden.
The vermiculture mulch was the most expensive but those plants were the healthiest looking and best grown although they did not produce the heaviest crop. Those under pine needle mulch produced the best yield, far surpassing those grown either under straw or with no mulch at all.
/span>- Author: Dustin Blakey
There are a number of factors that can set landscapes up for potential disasters and one of these is chronic plant stress. Many trees and shrubs, when exposed to prolonged periods of stresses like drought, are more likely to be attacked by insects or invaded by disease organisms.
As it should be clear by now, we are in a prolonged drought. While many Owens Valley landscapes have been able to maintain consistent soil moisture throughout the drought, others have not been so lucky.
There are two predominant changes common in landscapes that are occurring right now.
- Some yards are being maintained much dryer than in the past
- Some yards are inundated with excess moisture
Drier Yards
In yards that have become more dry, expect issues such as borer infestations and canker diseases. Once either pest has become established, it is very difficult to cure. The best cure in these cases is prevention. Vigorous, growing plants are much less susceptible to pest attacks. By keeping your trees and shrubs in good condition you will avoid most attacks will be able to endure those that do occur.
There is no getting around it: your landscape will continue to need water. It is important if you have less access to water, water what you intend to keep alive deeply. Deep watering will encourage the best possible utilization by roots. Using mulches to moderate soil temperatures and moisture loss is also beneficial.
Local trees we would expect to be most affected by drought-associated pests and diseases will be
- Lelyand cypress
- Arizona cypress
- Poplars, aspens, and cottonwoods
- Pines
- Fruit trees
Wet Yards
Too much of a good thing can also be problematic. Many yards in West Bishop are finding that their soils are inundated with moisture. For plants not acclimated or adapted to those conditions, this can be deadly. Waterlogged soils lack oxygen and the root injury that goes with it can lead to root rots.
If yards continue to be saturated, usually an engineering solution to remove excess sub-surface water, such as French drains, is needed. If this is a temporary condition, perhaps there will be no consequence.
Suggestions
It's hard to make blanket recommendations but here are a few ideas if you find yourself managing a landscape whose moisture level has changed dramatically.
- Water dry plants deeply.
- Use mulch in dry areas near shrubs and trees (but keep an eye open for new pests). Keep mulch off trunks.
- Encourage bare soil on wet yards to increase evaporation. Cool-season grasses will also pull moisture out of the soil, so don't remove lawns in these situations
- Watch plants for signs of change. Catching problems early increases options.
- Start saving for a fund to remove trees. If a tree needs removal, it can be expensive. If you don't ever need it, you'll have a vacation fund instead!
Contact the Master Gardeners for more ideas for dealing with your yard. inyomonomg@ucdavis.edu.
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by UCCE Master Gardener Volunteer Viv Patterson
Around the end of March, I noticed that some of my garlic plants were completely dead while others were alive, well, and growing straight up. I checked the water, exposure, and soil. All seemed ok; I couldn't imagine what had happened. I decided to dig up the dead plants, turn the soil a bit, and plant something else. Lo and Behold....the Garlic wasn't dead; it was done growing! According to my plant label, I had planted a bit of Sonoran Garlic in this spot. I went back to the catalog and studied the description for Sonoran Garlic. The description joggled my memory as to why I purchased this variety in the first place. It read:
Hardneck variety named for the Sonoran desert that harvests extremely early. Sonoran is very early harvesting so you have garlic before anyone else. It grows well in the great American Southwest from Austin/San Antonio all the way to San Diego. Harvests VERY early - late spring to early Summer - stores until around November-December.
Sonoran Garlic is beautiful - Purple with medium-sized cloves. Tonight I plan to enjoy my first Aglio e Olio of the Season: Linguini with Garlic and Olive Oil tossed with Fresh Spring Herbs and topped with Parmigiano Reggiano. Recipe follows.
Sonoran Garlic
Image: Burpee Seeds.
Viv's Aglio e Olio
Serves 2-3
Ingredients:
- 6-8 ounces dried Linguini (I like DeCecco or Barilla)
- One Head Garlic Chopped (yes, the entire head)
- Lots of really good Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
- One-Half teaspoon Crushed Red Chile Pepper
- One-Half teaspoon Kosher Salt or a good finishing salt like Maldon Sea Salt Flakes
- One Cup Minced Fresh Herbs
- Use at least four or five types of herbs. Tonight I will use whatever looks the best from my herb garden: Probably Oregano, Tarragon, Thyme, Rosemary, Italian Parsley, and Cilantro. They all are at their tenderest moment.
- Parmigiano Reggiano, freshly grated
Directions:
- Bring big pot of water to a rapid boil.
- Drop in Linguini and start timer for one minute less than the directions call for. Try Linguini when timer goes off. It should be al dente … not quite done.
- Meanwhile, put Garlic and Olive Oil in a large sauté pan. Sauté Garlic until it is just done. Don't let the Garlic get brown. Add one-half teaspoon of Kosher Salt and Crushed Red Chile Pepper at this time. Remove the pan from the burner.
- When the Linguini is al dente, drain the pasta in a colander.
- Put drained Linguini into pan with Garlic and Olive Oil. Put on a burner with medium heat and toss Linguini until done (but not overdone). Turn off heat.
- Add Herbs and tossed until pasta is coated.
- Add more salt to taste.
- Put on serving plates and topped with Parmigiano Reggiano. Drizzle with more EVOO, if desired.
Note: If you want this to look a little bit fancier, top the finished Aglio e Olio with Grilled Shrimp, Scallops, or Chicken. Make sure you coat the Shrimp, Scallops, or Chicken with Oil, some minced Garlic, Salt, and Pepper before grilling.
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