Xtremehorticulture of the Desert

I'm not so much asking a question as telling one of my solutions. My garden is along an East facing concrete block wall and though sha...

I hope all of you in the 29 Palms area will help support this event! It sounds like lots of fun and a great way to get some local seeds tha...

Our climate in the Mojave desert can damage grapes during the cold winter months. This winter was warmer than usual and the two times it dr...

Whiteflies on the bottom of pomegranate leaf Q. I am new to gardening in the desert and am surprised at my success thus far!  That is,...

Q. I'd like to continue fertilizing my rose bushes right through the spring since the past year's bloom was not too impressive. Is...

Q. I was going through my garden notes and I found pictures I took a few months ago of my tomato plants.  A few of them came up with rea...

Large shoestring Acacia. Some are more upright than others while others are more rounded. This is because of how they were propagated, gr...

Q. I recently purchased tulips already in a container and they bloomed for almost 10 days. The roots were sitting in water, and I had to a...

Q. We have a very old globe mallow shrub that looks bad after a frost. When and how should it be pruned to bring it back to its former glo...

Q. I dug up some of our native soil and amended it with 50% planting mix. The next day after it dried, this white substance appeared on th...

Q. Please provide me with recommendations for types of mulch for fruit trees. A.  By definition, mulches lay on top of the soil surfac...

Trumpet vine is commonly used in much colder, arid climates. It is not a true desert plant but can tolerate arid environments and poor soil...

Q. I have a Mexican petunia (Ruellia) that is about 4 years old.  In 2013 the freeze caused all of the stems to die back. I cut all of the...

Q. Last year I grew an avocado outdoors from its pit. As the temperatures began to dip I transplanted it to a pot and brought it inside.  ...

Q. I have been noticing tiny little snails climbing up my red brick planter during the fall. I have thousands of those shells all through ...

Q. I recently received a large bag of home-grown Fuyu persimmons given to me, grown in California. Will the Fuyu Persimmon tree survive ou...

Q. I wonder if you can tell us how to prune our Elberta peach tree. We planted it in the spring and had one beautiful peach to enjoy. We ar...

Fruit Tree Establishment During the first few weeks after planting, new roots must grow from older roots and into the soil used for pl...

In case you missed my classes this spring, below is an updated version of some short notes on pruning fruit trees. This covers most of the...

I will be giving a fruit tree pruning class in 29 Palms, California,  which will cover basic pruning techniques of all major fruit trees t...