Topics in Subtropics

Since Greek and Roman times, the appearance of a plant has been used to help identify plant health. The plant speaks through distress signals. The message may be that there is simply too little or too much water.

Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer can go to over 100 and counting hosts, but the Fusarium that the ambrosia beetle carries can not reproduce on all tree species. It is this fungus that ultimately kills the tree.

One point I always make is that the sooner you control annual weeds, the better. This reduces crop-weed competition, along with a host of other issues caused by weeds (we'll save that for another blog). But the real key to forward-looking weed management is to kill the weed before it produces seeds.

There was a lot of odd looking, water-soaked Satsuma fruit showing up this year along the coast. It was showing up as late as March since fruit can hang so much longer along the coast than the Central Valley and hotter areas.

From Peru This Week, Hillary Ojeda: Unfavorable climate conditions around the world have increased demand from Peru. In February, the Ministry of Irrigation and Agriculture confirmed that Peru is the second largest exporter of avocados.