March 13th 2015

Question: Great column! Where do you buy Rico’s compost?  Thanks for all your advice.  I have installed those PVC pipes for deep watering of the fruit trees.  Noticeable progress!

I know it is not organic gardening, but it is curious as to why a high percentage of oak trees are dying especially on west facing slopes. We live up Mulholland Hwy. and the hillsides are turning brown from dying or dead oaks.  Not to mention pine trees (drought and bark beetle?). Is the drought responsible for the oaks as well or is it a disease?  Any insight would be appreciated.  When an entire oak turns brown, is there any chance it will come back?  Oaks are usually the best when it comes to recovering after a fire, but this is way different.  Pretty sad, some of these oaks are hundreds of years old.

Jack

Answer: Hi

Rico’s Compost info you can email me and I will forward to him.

Concerning the OAKs, You won’t believe how many people say Oaks don’t need to get watered cause they are drought tolerant! Yes they are drought tolerant because they have deep roots that tap into underground water sources and with ground water depleted, there is nothing for them now and they rely on surface water like others and with no surface water they will die. So if you want to keep them alive and they are on your property, set up a drip system to deep water once or twice a month.

Drought causes a great deal of stress to everything including trees. Insects / Diseases will attack them if they are stressed out due to lack of water or lack of minerals. So you might also want to think about hiring a professional to organically fertilize them. Once trees turn brown its dead. If only a part then the other part might come back under proper care.

Question: Hello, Andy

Thank you for the wealth of information you provide; you have stimulated me at an old age to try gardening.  Therefore, I pose two questions.

1.  What is stone dust and where can it be purchased?  I went to Home Depot and was shuffled to a number of places and finally found a place where I found many 1000 pound bags of stone and sand.

2.  About 3 or 4 years ago I bought three climbing, blossom vines, two white and one pink; after the first blooms fell off, there were no further blooms——until surprisingly, the pink vine recently started to bloom—I made no change in the care of the vines.

Please explain why the pink blossom vine  restarted blooming and the others  failed.  

Also, please advise how I can nurture them so that all will start to bloom.

Thank you,

William

Answer: Rock dust (a source of minerals) you order online. I buy from Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply in N Ca in Grass Valley. As for your second question, you did not say what type of plants they are and if they were planted next to each other? Please know that if they are near any source of high nitrogen they will not bloom so that could be the problem (think lawn). To insure bloom, use an organic fertilizer for blooming plants. I use Superseaweed which really makes em bloom but you can use say a good organic rose fertilizer. I would make sure they get their rock dust three times per year. I also spray the roses (all flowering plants) with a variety of things which I make in my garage to encourage them to bloom.

Andy Lopez

Invisible Gardener

Happy growing, organically of course!

Any questions? Email me at andy@invisiblegardener.com