Ripening fruit will slow growth

: I live in Hurricane, Utah, and last year planted a miniature apricot tree that produced about a half dozen apricots. This year it must have at least 50. The thin branches are bending with the weight of them. After reading your article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, I am confused as to what to do about the tree. Should I pick all the green apricots to take away the weight? Will having so many impede the growth of the tree?

A: You have a couple of choices. You can leave a few of the fruit and enjoy them or remove them all. Leaving a few fruit will allow you to enjoy some early apricots but it will slow down the tree’s growth since the energy for new growth went into the fruit rather than the growth.

I don’t know how important slowing the growth of the tree is to you. Slowing down the growth of a fruit tree does tend to delay its early productivity but that’s usually not a big concern for a homeowner. Either way is acceptable as long as you know what you are doing and the consequences of your choices.

By the way, you should be spacing the fruit about 2-3 inches apart when they are about the size of a quarter.

Q: My vines were doing fine but now they’re browning, turning yellow and dropping leaves fast. I believe it’s watering but can’t tell if it’s too much or too little. I’m watering three times per week with two emitters per vine for one hour. Each watering is approximately 2 gallons per vine.

A: That is a tough call. Overwatering and underwatering can have similar symptoms.

Let’s run down a checklist to make sure they were planted right. These should all be answered yes.

Was the plant planted as soon as you got home? If you could not plant it right away, did you put the plant (in its heat-absorbing black plastic container) in the shade until it could be planted? Was the hole dug about three to five times the diameter of the root-ball prior to taking the plant out of the container? If the soil was really hard, did you make sure that water would drain from the hole, when filled, in a few hours?

Was the soil from the new hole mixed with compost and starter fertilizer and this amended soil used for backfilling around the root-ball of the new plant? Did you remove the plant from the container by not pulling it out by the stem? Did you make sure the hole was wet before you put the root-ball in the hole and buried it? Did you plant it so that the top of the root-ball was at the same soil depth as it was in the nursery container?

Did you water in the new plant with the backfill as you were planting it so that air pockets were removed and hot dry soil was kept away from the root-ball? Did you make a basin around the plant to hold water and then hand water daily for the first week even though the plant might be watered automatically? If you used rock mulch, did you keep the rock mulch from burying the root-ball and the main stem of the plant?

I would be watering daily for the first week after planting or until you see some strong new growth. Then water every other day and finally twice a week. By June you may be back up to three times a week as it gets hotter.

If this plant was in a 5-gallon container, I would be watering about 3 gallons each time, making sure that there is a basin to catch the water from a hose. If this is drip, I would be checking the emitters daily the first couple of weeks to make sure that they are not plugged. Drip emitters will frequently plug right after they are installed or after a break in the system has been repaired. This is because people fail to flush the irrigation system after installation or repairs.

Q: My rose bushes are developing the same problem as in prior years. It starts at single leaves, yellowing and browning from the tip, then it spreads to other leaves on the same stem and then further throughout the bush. At the end, those leaves are completely dried out. Usually it starts affecting leaves closer to the main branches inside the bush. I don’t know if this is a disease or a watering problem (too much or too little?). I have about 15 rose bushes and it affects all of them.

A: Thanks for sending me pictures of your rose-bush problem. This problem does not appear to be a disease caused by pathogens.

First of all, your roses’ leaves seem to be extremely healthy, very dark green and luxurious so I commend you on that. When I first looked at the leaves, I thought the damage looked exactly like salt damage. Frequently, salts will cause scorching along leaf edges or on the tips. We often see this in houseplants watered with tap water that originates from the Colorado River.

Roses are generally very sensitive to salts while other plants may not be as sensitive to the same concentration. This is why you can see damage on some plants while other plants appear to be very healthy. Sometimes there is a yellow margin between the dead part of the leaf and the remainder that is green.

Some specific salts like boron will accumulate along leaf margins and tips causing dieback of the leaf beginning at the tip; eventually, the terminal buds will die. In extreme cases, entire stems will die. We do have boron problems in some parts of the valley.

Salts will accumulate on the surface of the soil when water evaporates. The only way to remove salts is to flush the soil periodically or irrigate enough so that the salts are constantly pushed below the roots of the plant. If these plants are along a wall that is shared with a neighbor, the neighbor’s irrigation water can push salts in your plants’ direction.

In cases like this, you have to add enough water so that the salts are pushed downward. Watering a bit more frequently and the use of wood mulch will help to keep the salts from accumulating as much.

Q: Attached are photographs of my Kieffer pear tree leaves. I had this problem last year and most of the leaves were affected. The tree had a few pears last year. They were small, but I expected this since the tree is young. The tree is very healthy looking right now but I can see the beginning of this problem. There are no pears on the tree this year.

A: Any damage to pear leaves will cause them to turn black, as they are in the pictures. Our pear trees get some black leaves or black patches on them every year but most of the leaves look healthy. Other than the black margins, your pear leaves have a nice, dark-green color.

That is the key. If these are just a few of the leaves, the vast majority looked healthy and the tree is growing well, then I wouldn’t worry too much. Just keep an eye on the tree.

Damage to the leaves can occur from a variety of things. Hopefully, your tree is not in rock mulch and has enough water distributed around the base to keep its roots moist. Pear trees will not do well in rock mulch. When you are irrigating the tree, you should irrigate at least half of the area under the canopy.

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 extremehort@aol.com.