Lincoln County foods to be showcased
Saturday there will be quite an event if you can attend and are willing to drive out to Alamo and spend some time with our rural Nevada friends and neighbors. It’s a dinner event at Buckhorn Ranch 1½ miles before you get to Alamo, just after the Pahranagat lakes.
Mario Batali’s chefs from Las Vegas are donating their time and energy to feature local food producers from Lincoln County. These producers are starting to organize so that they can bring locally grown food into the Las Vegas Valley.
These producers live at elevations ranging from 3,000 to nearly 6,000 feet above sea level. This allows them to grow products during the summer that we can no longer produce due to our summer heat. Lincoln County is known for its beef production but other meats at this event will include lamb and goat, which I heard from the chefs, is going to be turning on hand-built spits.
You can expect that the chefs will pull out all the stops for this event in support of these producers. This dinner event starts at 6 p.m. at Buckhorn Ranch; tickets cost about $40 per person. If you would like more information, e-mail me at morrisr@unce.unr.edu or call the master gardener help line at 257-5555.
Q: We are new to Las Vegas and live in the Summerlin area. We would like to purchase and plant a fig and a pomegranate tree. When is the best time to purchase and plant? What varieties do you recommend?
A: Both figs and pomegranates do well in our climate. Both of these plants tolerate our desert heat and soils extremely well.
However, you must think of them as desert oasis plants and not suitable for desert landscaping. What I mean by this is that they must be treated like fruit trees, not as desert landscape trees. Both of these trees will require extra amounts of water and care if you plan to enjoy the fruit.
The best time to plant is in the fall or spring.
However, if you are careful, you can plant them now . Dig the hole before you buy the plants. Dig the hole about 3 feet in diameter and the same depth as the container. As long as there is no hard, caliche layer you do not need today get any deeper and that. Remove any rocks larger than a golf ball from the soil excavated from the hole and leave it next to the hole. Fill the hole with water and let it drain.
After digging the hole, buy the plants along with two bags of compost for each tree; also include a starter fertilizer high in phosphorus. Buy plants that are small but appear to be vigorously growing. A 5-gallon or smaller size would be ideal.
Also pick up some green, stretchable nursery tape, 1-inch diameter pointed wooden stakes and wood mulch. I sometimes even use rebar if I cannot find wooden stakes. Thoroughly mix the compost and starter fertilizer with the excavated soil.
Start running some water into the planting hole and carefully remove the plants from the container. Immediately put the plants into the hole and start adding your amended soil, keeping the rootball and amended soil constantly wet with water running from a hose. This helps to remove air pockets and doesn’t allow dry soil to come in contact with the roots for more than a few seconds. Never put dry soil against the roots.
After planting, the top of the rootball should be the same depth as the top of the soil level in the planting hole. There should be a slight, 2-3 inch depression around the plant about the size of the planting hole.
Using a hammer, drive the tree stake through the rootball into the soil at the bottom of the hole where it is solid. The stake should be as close to the plant as possible and then tied to it with the nursery tape. The idea is to immobilize the rootball and keep it from moving for about three to four months. Spread the surface mulch around the plant to a depth of 2 to 3 inches.
Fill the depression around the plant with water three or four times after planting. During this heat, fill the depression two times, every other day, for about two weeks. After two weeks, water every third day. In mid-September or sooner the plants should be ready to be placed on drip irrigation. You will know when the plant is ready by watching for new growth.
If you see new growth appearing, the roots have “taken” into the surrounding soil and hand watering will no longer be needed. After two or three months of vigorous new growth, remove the stake and nursery tape.
Q: The property where I live has a new landscape service. When the men repaired and replaced two emitters they somehow left the water on . The landscape has desert plants, shrubs, a few palm trees and a few cacti. The various drip emitters in this area are on one water clock. How long a period should the water be turned off and then restarted and for how long?
A: This overwatering will act like just like a single irrigation. Unfortunately the excess water that went beyond the plants’ roots is lost to the plants.
Allow the soil to dry before the next irrigation just like you would have during a normal cycle and then start your irrigation cycle. It is hard to know what your irrigation cycle should be without more information. With nondesert trees and shrubs we are normally on a two or three times a week cycle during the heat, dropping one day a week when it cools down in later summer. Many of our hardy cacti can go about two weeks between irrigations. The cacti really should be on a separate valve from desert trees and shrubs.
Be sure to apply enough gallons of water to the entire rootzone of the plants when you do irrigate. Bigger plants need more water applied to them than smaller plants. This usually means more emitters with higher flow rates.
Plants with roots that don’t go very deep, like groundcovers and small flowering plants, need water applied more often. Plants with roots that grow deep need water applied less often. Deep rooting is one characteristic that help plants to avoid the need for frequent watering.
Bob Morris is an associate professor with the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. Direct gardening questions to the master gardener hot line at 257-5555 or contact Morris by e-mail at morrisr@unce.unr.edu.
