Test PB Collection: FTE

Problems may include skin cracking, split pits, and skin russeting. The last one is the easiest, so I will start there. Russeting of nectarine fruit is usually caused by the feeding activity of thrips.

There are several possible options. You can fill the boxes with 100% bagged planting mix. This medium is available at most garden stores and is composed of composted sawdust and cow manure or forest products and biosolids, etc. One hundred percent compost is another option.

Spring time is tree and shrub planting season. This is the time of year when bare root fruit and shade trees are available, when new crop roses are available, and it is also a good time to establish potted trees and shrubs of all kinds.

Lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, peas, radishes, parsley, spinach, carrots and other cool season vegetables can be planted as soon as you can work the soil.

Squash plants are monoecious (moun-e-she-us), which means they have male flowers and female flowers on the same plant. However, if pollen does not get from one to the other, pollination and fertilization do not occur and the potential fruit aborts.

The following are some causes for the poor seed germination and dead seedlings in your garden. Cutworms. The adult is a brownish-gray moth about one inch long (head to tail) with a two-inch wing span. The larvae is a gray, brown, pale pink with black specks worm which lives in the soil.

Many commercial avocados are now routinely pruned to keep the trees short, so that harvesting costs and other tree maintenance expenses are reduced. Also more light shines into the trees, so that more fruit is borne on the lower branches.

Purslane is a prolific seed producer. Even a small plant (2-3 inches in diameter) will have started to produce seeds. The fleshy leaves of purslane also make the plant resistant to drying out.

The following information was taken from a bulletin prepared by Nick Sakovich and Ben Faber Farm Advisors in Ventura County. Seriously frozen leaves collapse, dry out, and remain on the plant. Foliage from recent flushes is most susceptible to this damage.

Virtually all fruit trees are grafted onto a rootstock, which in case of apricot could be another apricot or a plum. Rootstocks are selected for their vigor, also their disease and nematode resistance.