April Showers Bring May Flowers....and the bring wind and wind damageT

Time to get prepped up for surgery

 We're back from a long winter of debilitating shoulder pain stemming from a past car accident. After trying everything else, I finally relented and agreed to let the specialists I've been seeing for physical therapy and pain management for two years do electroscopic surgery on my shoulder.

After the surgery, she said that the rotatory cuff tendons had finally healed, but there was a great deal of debris and concretions (looked like stalagmites in the pictures) that had been rubbing on the tendons and keeping them inflamed. I was in an immobilizer for two weeks and boy did I get stiff and sore. 

Now, after weeks of painful post-surgery physical therapy, I'm cleared for light-duty work.  I've been gradually getting my range of motion back and a little of my strength.  I've been doing more and more of housework, watering plants and such, each day a little easier and a little less painful than the past. I feel it's time to take care of some slightly more strenuous issues in our landscape. 

We've had a lot of rain - for Las Vegas anyway: 1.03 inches so far this April and a great deal of wind along with it.  The oleanders along our North fence provided some wind protection for the house, but took a little bit of a beating themselves.  Branches that had once reached for the sky were now bowing to the mulch below.  Some were either broken or cracked and near to breaking. 

Time for us to conduct a little surgery of our own.  

Our instruments of choice for this surgery, recently sharpened too.

 We wore hard hats (never know when a branch will somehow conk you on the head while you are pruning, especially such chaotically branched plants as oleanders); eye protection (always a good idea when pruning large branches); gloves and I wore a leather weight belt (for back support as my lower back hasn't been feeling well either, possibly due to sleeping on a wedge for many nights to avoid putting too much pressure on my shoulder. 

Many of these branches touching the ground are bowed down from quite a ways up the trunks.

 Before the strong winds started coming, these oleander bushs' lowest branches were not touching the ground, but now they are dragging on it and putting too much pressure on each other. We're concerned that even more of them will eventually break under the stress. With our hot, dry summer coming soon, even tough oleanders can't afford to have that added stress. 

This is a nice floral display from the street, but it's hiding big problems.

 The bowed over branches are also putting too much pressure on the chain-link fence and cinder-block wall as well as on each other. Plus, they are starting to rub the bark off each other more than they normally would. The cinder-blocks are also rubbing the bark off, with all this added pressure from above branches, than the plant can keep up with by laying down more scar tissue on the bottom of the branches touching the blocks. 

This bark damage could let insects get into the plant and do more damage than it can handle, so many of those branches rubbing on the wall are going to have to be shortened back past the damaged parts.

View from the neighbor's side of our North wall of the branches laying over and rubbing on it.

Pressing branches threatening to damage porch supports

 Here's an example of how we selectively pruned to lighten the pressure of the bowing branches in hopes of getting them to spring back upwards without having to cut them clear off. We do this because we value both the utility of the shrubs in providing wind protection, shade and privacy screening as well as valuing the health of the plants themselves. Excessive pruning, especially in a hostile climate like the Mojave Desert, is very bad for any plant's health. 

In this example, the branches are pressing against the back of this porch roof support, threatening to bend it eventually. We don't want to wait for that to happen to take action.  So we'll selectively head the branches back without losing too much of them, thus reducing the pressure.

Examine, decide, check then cut as little as possible, properly placing the pruner each time - that's selective pruning.

 It's not easy to show the step by step process in pictures, but basically the idea is to make branches that are too damaged and/or too heavy to stay upright, just short enough that they can once again support themselves without laying on anything.

In the above picture, we're cutting a branch off at the first crotch (where a 'daughter' branch is growing out from the 'mother' branch) back from the tip of the branch. We're cutting just in front of the crotch at an angle and putting the anvil of the pruner towards the 'daughter' branch so that the sharp pruning blade doesn't accidentally slice into it. We're getting as close to the crotch as we can to hide the cut to reduce the amount of dead material that will have to be scabbed over as the branch heals.

A properly pruned branch.

 Now that the weight of the daughter branch is off, the mother branch (pictured) is able to spring back up a little and away from the porch support. It will recover quickly from that small wound and most of it is still there to carry out its many purposes for both us and the shrub.

Another example of a good prune cut.

Now, the porch support is unencumbered by branches, yet the porch is still nicely shaded.

This wall now has less pressure on it and the meter is readable again.

Pruning has taken the bending out of this fence. The fence would have broken long ago without us heading back the branches when needed.

Time for clean-up

Once we were done pruning, it was time for cleaning up. Tidying up anything always seems to make a bigger mess until it's properly dealt with.  We started with the tools.  Oleander sap is sticky and not very pleasant to smell either. It'll gum up your pruners if you let it dry on, so we wipe it off with alcohol moistened wipes, taking care to avoid cutting our own 'branches' on the sharp blades by keeping a glove on and wiping the blade from the dull spine side and wiping towards the sharp side. 

We also decided that the branches we'd cut off weren't infected with anything yet upon examination, so we used them for mulch under the shrubs.  They'll keep the crushed rock covered soil cooler this summer.  Since we didn't get carried away with our lumber-jacking and cut off as little as possible, we were able to neatly tuck all of the branches under the drip-line of the shrubs and out of the way. 

Why throw small branches away when they can be free mulch?

 Now, that we're all done, it's time to take a shower, stretch my shoulder and back and apply some nice, cold ice.

Rain tests out the new stain job on the wooden wheelchair ramp

Rainwater beads up nicely on this freshly stained wood.

Nothing beats a trial by fire.  Or, in this case, rain.  We thought we did a good job of staining this wooden wheelchair ramp, but a nice little rainstorm early this morning really put it to the test.  The water beaded up and ran off just like it should. 

Even these handrails repelled water well.

We inspected the whole job and found that even the dryest and most weathered wood took the stain well and is repelling water as it now should.  It doesn't rain often in the desert, but when it does, it still does damage to wooden structures so this was worth doing.

Why stain your wooden hardscape? This picture tells the tale.

We had some stain left over after finishing the ramp (better too much material than not enough), so we stained a few other wooden hardscape objects as well.  It makes them all match and they all needed protection just as badly as the ramp did.  The puddles on this raised garden bed tell the tale of why staining wood outdoors is worthwhile. 

But how does water repellant wood stain work? I mean, it's liquid itself right? It soaks into the wood, especially this weathered wood, really well.  It didn't form a plastic like coating on the surface of the wood. Other than being a little darker, it looks and feels the same as before.  But now the rain water isn't soaking in.  I did some research.

The first thing I found out was that the stain we chose contains linseed oil. The oil fills the pores in the wood so that water cannot enter them.  It, like all oils, is naturally water repellant.  Everything is made from atoms which are incredibly tiny, electrically charged particles made up of negative electrons, positive protons and neutral neutrons and those atoms are combined to form molecules.  Some molecules are fundamentally stable enough to be considered elements, such as the oxygen and hydrogen that make up water. The hydrogen bonds that hold water molecules together are such that they leave some electrons still free to attract to other positively charged molecules, such as those that make up cotton fibers (which is why cotton clothes soak up water like a sponge).

Oil on the other hand, is made of chains of molecules that are bound together in ways that there aren't nearly as many electrons free to bond with other things, making a liquid oil nearly neutral in charge, thus the negatively charged water isn't attracted to it.  It get's quite complex, but that's about the most simple way to explain it. 

A great picture of the flax plant and its products by Handwerker on Wikimedia Commons.com

Water molecules. Note the positive charge of the hydrogen (H) is attracted to the negative charge of the oxygen (O)

A simple oil molecule. Hydrogen (H) electrons have filled all the available bonds with protons in the carbon (C) atoms, thus no space for the available electrons on the oxygen atoms of water to be attracted.

The stain we used also has what they call WaterGuard water repellants, which are trademarked and not disclosed, but are likely to be man-made polymers that are a lot like natural oils and that enhance the properties of the linseed oil. 


In addition to the raised bed, we also stained this wooden fence protecting a little patio area.

Water is running off this wooden fence now.

Stained this shade awning for the water system

And this shade awning.  Shade awnings like this are essential for protecting hoses, pipes, etc. of water systems for homes in the desert. Otherwise, the UV light from the sun will weaken the rubber and plastic they are made from. The awning also reduces the amount that the water gets heated during the summer so that water won't be so warm when it comes from the tap in the sinks.

Staining wood isn't terribly fun as it's difficult to keep the stain from getting on places where you don't want it and it's a sticky mess to get off your hands (rubbing alcohol on an old rag works about as well as anything), but it is important for having a sustainable landscape.  Being sustainable and environmentally friendly includes preventing materials in the landscape from becomming so damaged that they have to be thrown away and replaced.  By protecting these wooden structures, we're avoiding adding damaged wood to the landfill (or even the effort, time and money involved in getting it recycled before its useful life is truly over) and avoiding having to contribute to the demand for new lumber (and all the enviromental costs involved there), at least for the time being.  

Saving a wooden wheelchair ramp from an early demise.

This wooden wheelchair ramp is only about 6 years old.

Wood is a great mateial to build things with and has been since the dawn of human civilization.  It's one of the lightest yet strongest materials to work with; most flexible in terms of what you can build with it; easiest to work with without expensive tools and one of the most pleasing to the eye in a landscape.  However, it does have it's downside: it does'nt last as long as some other materials do, especially if it is not properly protected. 

This wooden wheelchair ramp is only about 6 or 7 years old, yet it looks much older.  It is still strucurally sound for the most part, but is showing signs of beginning to fall apart already. 

Wood on this handrail is seriously warped & is coming loose.

The wood was stained back when it was built, but they must have used a very low quality stain that lacked good UV and water protection.  In places, it is as grey as an old barn. Worse yet, it is really drying out in our hot, dry climate and is starting to splinter apart.  The handrail above will be unsafe to use soon if something isn't done. 

Wood rot on this siding.

The lower sides of the ramp are covered with wooden siding which is working well for the most part, but in the places where they piled dirt and crushed rock against it, it is starting to rot.  We dug the rocks back from it and will keep them away.  We don't get a lot of rain in Las Vegas, but enough to cause wood rot if the wood isn't allowed to dry out fast enough. 

Some sort of borer larva, possibly Flathead Borers, have been munching on this post.

This post shows signs of some species of wood borers, maybe Flatheads, tunneling in it.  It is still sound so far, but will have to be replaced if the damage gets any worse. We'll be keeping an eye on it now that we know about it.  Haven't seen any signs of damage in the other posts yet. 

We highly recommend looking over all of your wood structures on your property for damage like this.

We dug down as far as we could around posts to get them protected too.

A good quality stain with UV & water protection

We decided to start with a well applied coat of good quality stain first and see if that is enough to deal with the drying wood and hopefully, even retard further borer damage.  We don't endorse any products, so we won't show the brand, but the things to look for are ultraviolet light (UV) protection, water resistance and a moderate price.  Like many things, you get what you pay for and the really cheap stain isn't truly worth your time to use as it doesn't last. 

This project was done in the autumn in Octorber as it's a great time of year in the Desert Southwest to do outdoor hardscape projects.  Cooler weather makes it more pleasant to do physical work like this and the stain will cure better when it is neither too hot nor too cold. 

Before

 

After

Not only is the wood better protected from our harsh climate, it looks much better too. 

Rescued Butterfly Bush Finds A Home

Butterfly Bush Buddleia davidii

This Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii) was rescued from the discount rack at a local big box store that we call 'The Orange Store'.  It came in a tiny, flimsy plastic pot barely big enough for the roots, but only cost $2. It was wilty and sad looking at the time, but we saw promise in it because it had the best formed trunk and branches; no obvious evidence of girdling roots and several flower buds. 

When we brought it home, we put it in a spot under a California fan palm sapling (that will be transplanted too someday) and on the East side of the house to protect it from being blasted by the hot, setting sun each afternoon.  We transplanted it into two nested pots filled with a soil-less potting medium high in pearlite to ensure drainage and watered it until water began to drip from the bottom of the pot (it was sitting on a stand so that the water could drain out) every day.  

After it quit wilting, about two weeks later, it started to flower. The flowers sure are pretty! We are looking forward to seeing how it looks when the plant can support full inflorescences of blossoms.

Butterfly bush blossoms

The pink blossoms contrast nicely with the opposite leaves of this plant which are dark green on top (adaxial surface) and covered with fine, silvery white hair-like wax on the bottom (abaxial surface).  It may continue to produce pink blooms, or the next set might be a darker red, even almost purple as these plants have some variety in blossom color.  The flowers are quite small as seen above and are rather simple, yet elegant, in design with one row of petals, each with serrated edges, fused into a tube with a deep center that hides the pistil and stamens. 

Butterflies and hummingbirds possess tongues long enough to access the sweet nectar that these flowers produce.  We hope that this bush will become a natural feeder for them so that we'll get to enjoy watching them flit around the yard.  Since we never spray pesticides in our yard, we think we stand a better than average chance of attracting them now with this bush.


Once the bush flowered for a while (another couple of weeks) and even began growing new leaves (a very hopeful sign that it might survive after all), we decided to transplant it again.  The weather was cooperating too with highs in the 80's forecasted the whole week and a 40% chance of rain.  Cool, rainy weather is ideal for transplanting many species in the desert. 

To give the plant the best chance of success, we carefully planned its new location.  A well placed and well dug hole is the key to success when it comes to transplanting out here.

The ideal spot was between this wall

And this planter

We paced 7 ft from the wall to give the bush room to grow

This is a good spot because it will get morning sun, but afternoon shade from the house and it is close enough to my makeshift drip irrigation set up (someday, I'll install a proper irrigation system) that I can set a drip on it if I'm gone for an extended period.  It is also in a fairly level spot which will make controlling runoff much easier than planting on a slope.

Butterfly bush can grow to be about 15 feet wide and 12 feet tall, so we wanted a location where it would have plenty of room to grow without getting in the way of anything.  As you may have noticed from other blog posts, we are not big fans of needless pruning.  Had we planted this bush closer to the sidewalk or wall, it would need pruned almost annually.  Where it will be, it won't be too close to any of the traffic paths, and may even cast a little shade over the planter box someday. 

 

"Weed Barrier" is in the way!

Weed Barrier is a myth. It doesn't prevent weeds for more than a couple of years after installation.

Fine gravel under the plastic?

When we started digging, we discovered to our dismay, that the previous owners of this property had fallen for the myth that putting a layer of black plastic under your rocks would prevent weeds.  Apparently, they placed it over the entire yard.  We'd already removed some of it around the trees shortly after we moved in.  This plastic is going to have to go away if we can hope for healthy root systems for our plants.  It's preventing gas exchange between the soil and the air and is impeding water infiltration.

Good soil under the rocks

The soil profile of our yard. Note the compacted layer on the surface.

Now that we've gotten the rocks and plastic and compacted soil out of the way (please oh please dear reader, never cover your yard with rocks no matter what your water district says!), we've found actual soil.  We're blessed to have chosen a location in the Las Vegas Valley that has loamy sand soil with fine gravel! This is primo soil for the Mojave Desert. Very good drainage and just barely enough clay and loam in it to help hold moisture and nutrients.  Other places in the valley aren't so lucky and have layers of caliche 'clay' which is actually coral that was pulverized and buried when the volcanoes that are now the Black Mountains to the South erupted, burying what was once a huge lake as big or bigger than the Great Salt Lake to the North of us.  Where I am digging used to be part of the shoreline around that lake and is a bit more like digging in a beach than a lake bottom.  This is perfect for many desert native and adapted plants, including our little Butterfly bush.

I know this soil well, so I know what its physical and chemical properties are.  If I wasn't sure, I'd do a couple of tests before deciding to plop a plant in here.  First, I'd get a little vinegar and drip it in a shallow hole.  If it fizzed a lot, I'd know that the soil was very alkaline and may not be the best material to use for a plant species that is not adapted to the desert (such as roses or violets). Then, I'd dig a small hole down to my planned root zone depth and fill it with water, noting the time that I did so.  I'd come back every 10 minutes or so to check the water depth.  If the hole still had standing water in it after 30 minutes, I'd consider planting somewhere else or build a raised bed if there were no other good locations for the plant.  Never plant anything (other than maybe plants from swamps or marshes) in a place with poor drainage. Your plants will never be healthy there. 


We dug the hole down just as deep as the flower pot was and about four times as wide to be sure to get as much plastic and rock out of the way as possible.

Luckily, the pot happens to be as deep as a spade is tall....

Makes measuring hole depth easy

People used to think that digging a really deep hole was key, but research has found that most trees and shrubs do not grow a really long tap root that winds up being as deep as the tree is tall. Only a very short list of trees actually do that, most of which aren't even grown in the U.S.  Actually, the key to tree stability is lateral roots. A wide fan of lateral roots extending out beyond the drip line of the mature tree canopy is what keeps trees from falling over.  That's why one spade deep is deep enough for this bush, but we made it as wide as we could. Someday, we'll probably come back and dig up even more of the rocks and plastic and move them out of the way as the bush gets bigger. 

Gently tapping the rootball out of the pot...

keeps the roots from being damaged

 

Placing the rootball in the hole, ensuring that potting soil is under and on all sides of it

Since the Butterfly bush was grown in soil-less potting media, we chose to keep that around the roots and to line the inside of the hole with it.  Our soil is pretty good by desert standards, but it's good to keep as much of the original soil around the roots to avoid breaking off any more root hairs (the tiny, almost invisible parts of roots that do all of the water and nutrient uptake) than we have to.  Eventually, the roots will grow out of the potting media and into the native soil, so we made sure to avoid compacting the bottom and sides of the hole, even raking at the surfaces with our fingers to make sure the spade didn't compact the soil too much.  Smooth, firm holes just become underground pots, preventing future root growth.

The native soil was gently placed around and on top of the rootball and gradually sloping away from the trunk, leaving a gap about a finger's width around the trunk to help prevent stem rot.

Bare soil was then covered with wood chip mulch out to what will soon be the dripline

Now that the plant was in the hole, we gently placed native soil around the sides of the potting media pile and over the top of it up to about a finger's width of the trunk.  Then, we covered that with a two to three inch thick layer of wood chip mulch also within a finger's width of the trunk.  That will help reduce the chance of stem rot that sometimes happens when soil and mulch are piled up around the trunk.  The mulch will help keep the soil moist and reduce soil erosion.  We used such a thick layer to help prevent weeds and to keep the mulch in place better than a light scattering would have.  As the bush gets bigger, we will move more rock and plastic away from it and add more mulch in its place. 

We then irrigated the plant with about a gallon of water and will water it about every other day to prevent wilting.  Thanks to the good drainage of this soil, that won't water-log the roots.  In heavier clay soil or in caliche, we would have to wait longer between waterings to avoid drowning the roots.  If the soil was really tight, we would have just built a tall planting box full of potting medium on top of the ground with a reservoir hole filled with gravel underneath it and planted the bush in that.  Once the bush is established, a deep watering once a week will be all it needs, even in summer.   

  Now, if all goes well, no guarantees when it comes to growing things, we'll have a lovely Butterfly bush to enjoy for years to come. 
 

Mystery of the Chewed Up Pepper Plants Solved

Can you spot the culprit?

We've been noticing that our pepper plants in the raised flowerbed no longer have entire margins.  They've been 'redecorated' by some unseen agent for the past several weeks.  Now, many of them have margins that are beginning to look more like those of holly plants :). 


Up until now, we have only been able to guess who's behind this baroque design.  While we were harvesting some nearby onions for dinner, we finally spotted the culprit.  Can you see it in the picture above?


How about in the picture below?

Here he is!

He's huge! One of the biggest caterpillars we've seen in Las Vegas.  He's green with diagonal white stripes across his sides and a reddish 'horn' on the tail end.  What is he?  We compared him to pictures from several websites and found a 'mug shot' that fits him pretty well.....

This Tomato Hornworm picture looks a lot like our new friend

On the 'Green Caterpillar Identification' page at this link Green Caterpillar Identification, we found the above picture that looks very much like our little guy.  We think he's a Tomato Hornworm or Manduca quinquemaculata. 

An article from the University of Minnesota Extension Service found here: Tomato Hornworms says that they only eat plants related to nightshade (the Solanaceae family), so that explains why this guy is sticking to our pepper plants and not bothering the squash nor the corn. 
They say that common weeds such as jimsonweed and horsenettle are also in the Solanceae family and that the best way to reduce the chance of getting Tomato Hornworms is to pull such weeds in your garden. 


If we put him back in the garden, he may form a cocoon and turn into one of these......

Our caterpillar could turn into a Hummingbird Hawk Moth!

Live-Jar for the caterpillar

For now, he'll be educating Joani's students in his little jar we've set up for him.  Maybe he'll turn into a Hummingbird Hawk Moth for them.  We took a Mason jar and replaced the sealing disk with a rough woven cloth.  To keep him from drying out, we drip water on the cloth.  He'll have plenty of pepper leaves to live on as he seems to be the only surviving one in the bed and has left most of the pepper plants standing so far.  There are also sticks in the jar so that he can climb up and make his cocoon on the cloth. 

Update from original posting:  I learned from Holly, a member of Gardening Blogs, Videos and Websites community on G+ that we need to add 3-4 inches of potting medium to the jar if we want him to pupate. She says that hornworms actually put their cocoon in the ground rather than hanging it from a branch.  We missed that detail in the research we did.  We so love to learn new things! Please, feel free to comment on our blog so we can share, not only what we know, but what others have found out as well. 

 So the next time we see a caterpillar like this, we'll think twice about just smashing it.  Hummingbird Hawk Moths are good pollinators and will pollinate the same flowers that true hummingbirds do.  Other than redecorating the leaves on your tomatoes and peppers, they are actually beneficial.  We might 'thin them out' a bit if we start getting a bunch of them as we don't want them to annihilate our garden, but we do want some of the moths around to pollinate our salvia, butterfly bush, jasmine etc.