Water

  • Recently, we had a client contact the Extension office asking about watering newly planted landscape shrubs.  The client asked, “I have gotten such mixed messages on how I should have been watering — gardeners are telling me [water] every day; arborists and the nursery are saying [water] once a week, which I did. That didn’t…

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  • Recently, a church trustee in Bartow County brought samples of “holey” mail to the local University of Georgia Cooperative Extension office for closer examination. Strangely, mail deposited in the church’s mailbox was showing up with holes chewed through the outer layer of the envelopes, but the mail inside was intact — a small miracle in…

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  • As a general rule, anytime a tree or shrub dies within the first year of planting, there is usually a root issue involved.  Spring planted trees and shrubs are generally more stressed from summer heat, since their roots are still underdeveloped during the first year.  This results in excessive wilting, which causes well-intentioned gardeners to…

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  • If calcium is deficient in developing tomato fruits, an irreversible condition known as blossom-end rot will develop. Blossom-end rot occurs when cell wall calcium is deficient during early fruit development, and results in cell wall membrane collapse.  Blossom end rot is a physiological disorder of tomatoes and not caused by a plant disease. Symptoms include…

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  • The local Extension office has received numerous calls in recent weeks about warm-season lawns that are struggling to green-up this spring.  Based on conversations with my colleagues, this appears to be a wide spread issue throughout North Georgia.  What we are observing is that some lawns are very patchy and thin as well as being…

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  • Whenever powerful storms blow through north Georgia, tree removal services and insurance companies often have plenty of work to do.  When a tree branch fails or a tree becomes uprooted, clients often call the Extension office wanting to know why it happened and what went wrong.  Examining storm-damaged trees can provide many insights into why…

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  • With the recent dry weather encouraging the use, and possible overuse of irrigation systems, and then the recent tropical conditions (high rainfall and humidity), we have had several pictures and questions about a jelly-like substance growing in lawns.  The jelly-like “stuff” is a Nostoc algae, a type of cyanobacterium formerly classified as blue-green algae.  It…

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