Creating a holiday dinners garden is a form of planting backwards. You know ahead of time what you will need, so you estimate which ingredients should be planted and when. That way they will become harvestable as they are needed. And your holiday dinners garden is not limited to edibles. Seasonal decorations, such as flowers and greenery, can  be found in your yard just as easily.


​This planning process may feel overwhelming, at first. Instead of taking on more than is fun, you might want to select one holiday at a time and build on that over time. Either way, it all starts with a calendar.

Create a calendar 

Calendars are handy tools, especially for gardeners. You can use printing paper or an inexpensive paper calendar to design your holiday dinners garden. Start by identifying all the holidays you celebrate each year with special meals. In my family, these holidays are New Years’ Day, Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Mark your family’s holidays clearly on your calendar.
​

Meal planning

We all have favorite dishes for each of our holiday dinners. In my house, New Years’ Day would never feel right without hoppin’ john and Easter wouldn’t feel like Easter without a ham surrounded by baby beets and carrots.

In the first column, list each of your ingredients. In the second column, add the date you want each ingredient to mature. The third column is for a note about whether each ingredient is a perennial, already preserved, or how many days it takes from planting seeds to harvest. Keep in mind that days to maturity found online and on seed packets may be different for your region of microclimate. These numbers are simply averages, but they are still useful.


For each ingredient, count backwards from the holiday the number of days to maturity for a planting date. In the example above, my apples ripen long before July 4th, so I freeze or can them. Then, I see that basil takes 50 to 75 days from planting to harvest, so I count back 75 days from July 4th for a planting date of April 21st. Now, my family loves basil and I plant a lot of it, starting long before April 21st, but I add a reminder in my calendar to plant basil on that date so I know I will have plenty when I need it for that holiday.


If your planting date occurs before it is actually warm enough to plant a specific species, you may need to start it indoors, or buy seedlings at a later date.


In some cases, like celery, I could plant it but I choose not to. For me, celery is fiddly to grow and is so inexpensive at the store that it is not worth the garden real estate. You might feel the same way about onions or garlic. A lot of this will depend on where you live and how much time and space you have. Even if you only select 2 or 3 ingredients for each holiday meal, you’ll be glad you did.


Simply go down the list, counting backwards for each ingredient that needs to be planted. You can add these annual reminders to the calendar in your computer and add alerts in your phone.  If you set them to repeat every year, the planning process is done. Before you know it, you will have all the information you need to plant your holiday dinners garden!

Using base saturation numbers

Soil test results will tell you how much of each plant nutrient is present and base saturation percentages. One thing you might see is an excessive amount of a nutrient but a normal base saturation percentage. How is this possible? Again, it goes back to electrical charges. Say you have a ton of calcium, a positively charged mineral, but the calcium base saturation is normal. This happens because other charged particles are also present. They can block the excess bits from connecting with anything. Or, there may not be enough negatively charged soil particles available. You need to use both the actual mineral levels and the base saturation percentages when deciding on whether or not to add fertilizer.


This post is an oversimplification of an extremely complex topic, but it is accurate enough to help you get the most out of your soil test results. Soil tests cost around $25 and are worth every penny.

Your soil has a characteristic known as bulk density. ​

Put simply, if you take a scoop of soil, it will weigh something. If you take a scoop of different soil, it will have a different weight. Those weights are a measure of the material held in that space. No surprise, right? 


Also known as scoop density, this measurement tells you how tightly your soil is crammed into a space. It also tells you a lot about your soil’s permeability (ability to drain), infiltration (rate of drainage), porosity (the number of macropores and micropores), soil texture (sand, silt, and clay), and soil structure. This is important information for plant roots.


Another non-surprise: soil is heavy. The weight of the top soil pushes down on the soil below it. That layer pushes down on the layer below that, and so on. This means that soil becomes more and more dense, the deeper you go. This is one reason why so many plants keep their roots near the soil surface.


What’s normal?

Bulk density is measured in grams per cubic centimeter (g/cc). Bulk density generally ranges from 1.0 to 1.25 g/cc. Sandy soil tends to have high bulk densities (1.3-1.7 g/cc), while clays and silts normally have moderate densities (1.1-1.6 g/cc). Soils that contain more organic matter tend to have lower bulk density values. Lower bulk densities allow for proper drainage, reducing the chance of fungal disease and helping plants overcome the negative effects of mud and drought.


Too much stuff

If a soil’s bulk density is higher than 1.6 g/cc, your plants are going to have a hard time. Compacted soil restricts the free movement of roots, air, and water. High bulk densities can also prevent germinating seeds from making it to the surface with enough energy to thrive.


What is your soil’s bulk density?

The USDA provides instructions for a DIY bulk density test, but I have to warn you, your kitchen will stink after you bake or microwave a soil sample. A far easier and more pleasant method is to send a sample to a lab. For the price of a bag of fertilizer, your can learn a lot of good stuff about your soil. Soil tests tell you about nutrient levels, the cation exchange capacity, pH, and base saturation numbers, along with bulk density.


Case in point

In 2015, my soil’s bulk density was 1.18 g/cc. By 2019, it had changed to 0.95 g/cc. What happened? 


In 2015, my soil test indicated an extreme overabundance of every nutrient, except iron, and compacted clay. [The overfertilizing was done by the previous owner.] To counteract the compaction and the lack of iron (a nutrient needed by plants to help them consume other nutrients), I applied foliar sprays of chelated iron and mulched the heck out of every soil surface with aged compost and chicken bedding. 


The iron sprays allowed my plants to make use of and extract the abundant nutrients, bringing them closer to normal, balanced levels. The composted manure and other organic materials created more spaces between soil particles, making it easier for roots, gases, and water to move around. Four years later, all of my plants are growing better and my soil organic matter (SOM) levels went from 3.5% to 7.6%. 


If your soil is too dense, your plants can’t thrive. If you know your soil’s bulk density, you can take action to improve it.


Have you ever noticed how the larger bits come to the surface when you shake a container of soil?


This is called the Brazil nut effect. I have no idea why.

To the purists, grapes grow on vines, all other woody climbers are lianas, and our pole beans, peas, and cucurbits are herbaceous vines.


Now you know.

Ammonium bicarbonate fertilizer

In the plant world, ammonia means nitrogen. This makes ammonia bicarbonate sound like a good idea as a fertilizer, right? In China, ammonium bicarbonate is used as an inexpensive fertilizer. But, because of its instability, it is being phased out in favor of urea. Also, ammonium bicarbonate is an eye, skin, and lung irritant. If you were to use it (against my advice) be sure to wear protective clothing and a respirator. 


High soil bicarbonate levels commonly occur when soil or irrigation water have a pH of 7.5 or higher. Alkaline soil and irrigation water tend to have lots of bicarbonate and carbonate ions floating around. These ions tend to attach themselves to and transform calcium and magnesium into less soluble forms that are difficult for plants to use. Also, as these minerals are altered, they leave salt behind in your soil. Not good. When these conditions occur, chelated fertilizers should be avoided. The level of bicarbonates in your soil also determines how much acid is needed to acidify the soil. 


If powdery mildew or other fungal diseases are causing problems in your garden, forget the baking soda and ammonium bicarbonate, Instead, space and prune plants for better air flow and apply potassium bicarbonate, Bordeaux mixture, sulfur, fixed copper, or milk. You may also want to apply insecticidal soap (not dish soap) to reduce the spread of disease by ants.

“Give your plants one inch of water each week in summer.”

“Almond orchards use an average of 4 acre feet of water every year.”

But what are water inches and acre feet? Let’s find out!

How much should I water my plants?

Sorry, but there is no single answer. Every situation is different. There are simply too many variables: soil structure, water holding capacity, sun exposure, plant species, age, size, and developmental stage, wind, rain… the list goes on. You can, however, generally keep your plants healthy by providing them with one inch of water each week in summer.


The term water inches is traditionally used in hydraulic mining and it refers to specific tube diameters, vertical surfaces, and pressure levels. We are not discussing those water inches, but there is some math involved.


Measuring water

Since irrigating plants often means the water is being absorbed into the soil as we water, it is practically impossible to know how much water your plants are getting without measuring it at the hose bib end. You can get a general idea of how much water is coming out of your garden hose by turning the spigot on to a set point and timing how long it takes a one-gallon bucket to fill up. If you counted to 15 while your bucket was filling up, you know that your hose puts out 4 gallons a minute, since 4x15 is 60.


Water math

Generally speaking, in the world of gardening, the phrase “one inch of water” refers to how much water it takes to cover one square foot of space with one inch of water. Since there are 12” in a foot, you can multiply 12”x12” for your “one square foot” to get 144. This means 144 square inches of water are needed per square foot of garden space. Of course, none of us have measuring cups or watering cans that are marked in square inches, so there is a little more math to do. Don’t worry, though. Once you get used to the numbers, as they apply to your garden space, you won’t have to repeat the calculations.


One gallon equals 231 cubic inches. If you divide your 144 sq. in. by 231, you get 0.6 or a little over half a gallon per square foot.


What about irrigating raised beds?

If you have heavily planted areas or raised beds, you can simply take the length and width measurements and multiply them, using the same steps. For example, say you have a 4’ x 6’ raised bed.

​First convert feet to inches:
    (4x12) x (6x12) = 48 x 72
Then calculate the area:
    48 x 72 = 3456
Since we now know one gallon equals 231 cubic inches, we divide 3456 by 231:
    3456 ÷ 231 = 14.9 gallons

This means that your 4’ x 6’ raised bed should be given an average of 15 gallons of water each week in summer.


What about watering container plants?

The math gets a little trickier with containers. Remember the joke about “pie are squared - pie are not squared, pie are round”? Well, this is where you actually get to use that equation. For those of you who need a little geometry refresher: 

• The measurement across a circle is its diameter.
• Half the diameter is called the radius.
• To calculate the area of a circle, you square the radius, which means you multiply it by itself, and then multiply that number by π (also known as pi, or 3.14).

For example, let’s say that you have a 10” planter pot. Since diameter is twice the length of the radius, we would create this formula:
    = (3.14)(10÷2)(10÷2) 
    = (3.14)(5)(5)
    = (3.14)(25)
    = 78.5 

That may sound like a lot, but it ends up that 78.5 square inches of water equals a little over one-third of a gallon. [78.5 ÷ 231 = 0.34]


Acre feet

If all this math hasn’t made you crazy, let me just tell you that an acre foot equals the amount of water it would take to cover one acre of land with one foot of water. Without going through all the numbers, one U.S. acre foot equals 325,850 gallons of water. In 2018, it was predicted that the average acre of almond orchard would produce 2,150 pounds of almonds. That works out to over 150 gallons of water per pound of almonds.


Watering your plants properly can make or break your garden. Getting a more accurate idea of how much water you are giving your plants can improve their health and reduce water waste. And remember, the “weekly water inch” is just a recommended average for summer. You should always monitor your plants for overall health. If they start wilting and the soil is dry, water them. If they start wilting and the soil is moist, do not add water. Instead, check for root feeding grubs, gopher holes, and hardpan.


Did you know that the amount of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool weighs over 5.5 million pounds? I didn’t either.

​How do plants use gums?

Gums are produced in a process called gummosis. Gumming refers to the way some plants can break down internal tissues, particularly cellulose, to create a high-sugar sap, or gum, used to seal off wounds and surround invading insects. Gums are commonly found in conifers, such as pine and spruce. Some plants, such as Western poison oak, use gums as protective, gummy seed coatings that delay germination.


How do we use botanical gums?

Botanical gums are water-soluble sugars that are commonly used in the food industry as emulsifiers, thickening agents, and stabilizers. They are also used as adhesives, in printing, candy-making, paper-making, and to make chewing gum. 

If you look at ingredient lists on packaged food (and I urge you to do so), you may see some of these botanical gums:

• guar gum - from guar beans
• gum arabic - Acacia tree sap
• gum ghatti - Anogeissus tree sap
• gum tragacanth - Astragalus tree sap
• karaya gum - Sterculia tree sap
• locust bean gum - from carob tree seeds

Gums are frequently collected by tapping or otherwise wounding trees with incisions or by peeling back sections of bark. The trees respond to these wounds by gumming. 


Tapping is the method used to collect the sap from sugar maple trees to make maple syrup. A tap consists of a metal tube with a downward-pointing lip and a notch or hook from which to hang a bucket. The tube end is hammered into a tree to reach the xylem and a bucket hung from the lip. Sap from the xylem flows (very, very slowly) through the tube, down the lip, and into the bucket. From there, the sap is cooked down to reduce the water content. More modern set-ups use plastic tubing. My students and I once made a delicious syrup/caramel from silver maple trees.


Some of these gums stay soft, while others harden into “tears” which are broken off for processing. If you see gums oozing from your trees, take a closer look.

Soil crusts are rather fragile. As they are damaged, they tend to break apart, allowing the soil to erode very quickly. [My Burner readers know what I mean. Pre-event, the Black Rock Desert crust is firm and dust levels are relatively low. As traffic picks up, the surface crust is damaged and dust storms can become rather impressive. For you non-Burners, just think of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.]


Correcting crusty soil

Patches of crusting can be corrected by lightly breaking up the soil surface and planting cover crops, green manure crops, or cereal grains. You can also top dress the area with aged compost or manure, or reduce damage by mulching.


How to prevent crusting

Rather than rototilling or digging, use mulch to encourage worms and soil microorganisms to do the work for you. Also, after harvesting an area, cover it with straw, mulch, or a fast-growing cover crop to absorb rain droplets and prevent erosion and compaction.

Bramble fruits, such as blackberries and raspberries, cherries, citrus, cucumbers, eggplants, grapes, melons, peppers, pineapples, pomegranates, pumpkins, squashes, strawberries, and watermelons are not climacteric and must be left where they are until they have ripened fully. If these fruits are harvested before they are ripe, put them in the compost pile or feed them to your chickens because they will never ripen. There are some non-climacteric apricots and melons, while some varieties of grapes and strawberries, while not climacteric, do have active ethylene gas receptors.


Whether a fruit is climacteric or not, leaving it on the parent plant for as long as possible is the only way to get the best flavor and nutritional value.


After the climacteric stage has been reached, plant respiration returns to normal or below normal and fruits become far more susceptible to fungal infections. In other words, after climacteric (and non- climacteric) fruits have reached their peak of flavor and sweetness, they start to rot.

Now you know.

Dangers of cedarwood

Before you jump on the cedarwood oil bandwagon, however, you need to know that there is a downside. Research has shown that, while exposure to cedar wood oils can interrupt the reproductive and developmental cycles of peanut trash bugs, Indian meal moths, and forage mites, prolonged exposure to these oils increases your chances of getting cancer. 


Strangely enough, European turnip moth larvae love eating cedar. Isn’t life weird?

Components of soil organic matter

Soil is made up of minerals (45-49%), water (25%), air (25%), and things that were or are alive. These lifeforms can be insects, plants or animals, in various stages of living or decomposing, microbes, and any substances created by those living things. These lifeforms, both alive and dead, and their secretions and exudates, are what make up soil organic matter.


Soil organic matter is approximately 5% living things, 10% fresh residue, 33-55% stabilized organic matter, and 33-50% decomposing organic material.


Organic matter and soil health

Maintaining healthy soil is a big part of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices that allow us to grow plants with a minimum of chemical interventions. Healthy levels of soil organic matter provide biological, physical, and chemical benefits to your soil. Sufficient soil organic matter improves soil structure and water retention and infiltration. It also increases soil aggregation, or clumping, which increases the number of macropores and micropores through which water, air and roots can move. Organic matter improves soil biodiversity, and the absorption and retention of pollutants, while reducing soil compaction, crusting, and urban drool. Organic matter also creates a  buffer against changes in soil pH.


Organic matter and plant health

As plants, animals, and insects decompose, a variety of compounds become available to plants, increasing soil fertility and nutrient cycling and storage. These compounds include carbohydrates (sugars and starches), fats, lignin, proteins, and charcoal. As these compounds are broken down further, or mineralized, they increase your soil’s cation exchange capacity. This means plants are better able to absorb atoms and molecules of plant food through root hairs. Insufficient soil organic matter can cause mottling and other signs of nutrient deficiency.


Soil organic matter also acts as a carbon sink, reducing the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. As a major player in the carbon cycle, soil organic matter is believed to hold 58% of the Earth’s carbon. We can help keep it there (and out of our air) with no-dig gardening and cover crops.


How to increase soil organic matter
​
Before increasing anything in your soil, send a sample to a lab for testing. There is no other way of knowing what, exactly, is present without a soil test. It would be rare for most soils to have a problem with increasing organic matter levels, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Plus, then you’ll have all that other great information!


You can increase organic matter levels in your soil with these tips:

• stop rototilling - it disrupts important soil microbe populations and soil aggregates
• reduce soil compaction and erosion with cover crops and mulch
• fertilize only as needed [as per your soil test results]
• incorporate perennial legumes and cereal grasses, such as millet, oats, and alfalfa, into your landscape
• top dress with aged compost and manure
• rotate annual vegetable crops with green manure crops

Remember, soil organics matter!

Suckers and root sprouts

Suckers are shoots that occur at the base of a tree or shrub. Root sprouts come up from the root system, usually at a distance from the parent plant. Suckers, also known as basal shoots, and root sprouts can be removed from mature plants and encouraged to take root elsewhere. To do this, you will need to carefully remove them from the parent plant and place them in moist soil. ​

What about GMOs?

Propagation generally refers to breeding or reproducing plants by natural processes from parent stock. How you define natural processes may alter how you feel about genetic modification. Before digging in your heels, you need to know that plants, bacteria, and fungi have been modifying genetic material [their own and that of other living things] long before we got started in the lab. For better or worse, genetic modification has a role in modern plant propagation. For one thing, without genetic modification, there would be no seedless watermelons. Seedless watermelons happen because plant breeders do two things:

1. They take the normal 22 watermelon chromosomes and double them, using a chemical process.
2. They pollinate female flowers of plants with 44 chromosomes with male plants that have 22 chromosome.

The resulting offspring have 33 chromosome and are highly unlikely to have viable seeds. That’s why you still get an occasional seed in your seedless watermelon.


Rather than going to the store to buy new plants, you can often propagate your own for free using these methods.

Polyphagous shot hole borer as farmers

Polyphagous shot hole borers are a type of ambrosia beetle. Rather than feeding on bark or wood or sap, ambrosia beetles eat fungi that they grow for themselves. Polyphagous shot hole borers have tiny pockets on their exoskeleton. In these pockets, they carry spores of the Fusarium euwallaceae fungi. After burrowing into a tree, the borer starts growing these fungi along the walls of the burrowed galleries. The fungi provide adult and larval forms of polyphagous shot hole borers with food in a protected environment and the borers carry the fungi to new trees. It's a win-win situation for them. The problem is, this fungi causes Fusarium dieback. Fusarium dieback causes branch dieback, canopy loss, and it can kill trees.


Polyphagous shot hole borer management

Yellow sticky cards, purple prism traps, and multiple funnel traps have been used with some success. Because polyphagous shot hole borers have no natural enemies here in California, and because they live inside the tree, safe from insecticides, prevention is worth the effort.


Polyphagous shot hole borers are most commonly spread on firewood. If infested trees are chipped into mulch, the borers can catch a ride to your trees, so always inspect wood chips before accepting them. Wood chips cut into pieces smaller than 1” are generally considered safe because the borers get chopped up too. Personally, if I saw black galleries, I would refuse delivery just in case.


If you suspect polyphagous shot hole borers have found your trees, please contact your local County Extension Office right away.

If you have a tree with conks, you should probably contact a certified arborist. They can inspect the tree for structural integrity and to determine the extent of the infection.


Conks may look cool, but you don’t want them on your trees.

Canker rot identification

Cankers are open wounds, or lesions. Cankers can be a few inches long and wide, or several feet long, depending on the fungal species. The bark next to these cankers dies, becoming discolored, often lighter or orangish, and it is tightly bonded to the canker. After a year or so, the dead inner bark turns black and stringy. This looks a lot like sooty bark canker, but canker rot can also have lenticular (lens-shaped) lighter areas in the bark. Unlike other canker diseases, canker rot affects both bark and inner tissue. ​

The world’s largest life form

Tree roots spread. Then they can send up new root sprouts, which then create more roots and more root shoots. Given enough time and space, this process can create something really HUGE! In fact, root shoots are responsible for one of the world’s largest and probably oldest life forms: the singular root system of a grove of male quaking aspen found in Utah. Known as Pando, this root system covers 106 acres, weighs approximately 13 million tons, and is believed to be 80,000 years old. Sadly, Pando, is dying. Pando’s decline is believed to be a combined result of drought, grazing, and fire suppression. The U.S. Forest Service and private groups are trying to save it, but repeatedly killing off the root shoots with grazing (or hand pruners) does take its toll.


Why do trees produce root sprouts?

Some trees are more likely than others to produce root sprouts. In some cases, it is simply the tree’s normal method of propagation. Root sprouts can also be a sign that a tree or shrub is stressed. That stress can take many forms:

• too much or too little irrigation, nutrients, or sunlight
• wrong planting depth
• frequent heavy wind
• borer infestations
• restricted space due to buildings, etc.
• too close to a heat sink

What can you do about root sprouts?
First, keep your tree as healthy as possible. Water it, feed it, protect it from lawn competition, weedwackers, and car doors. Mulch around but not touching the tree. Do a little research to find out what type of tree you are dealing with and what its needs are, and provide for those needs. This will reduce the tree’s drive to reproduce in this way.


If you spray herbicides on a root sprout, you will be poisoning the parent plant as well. Instead, you can kill the individual buds by tearing the new growth off, as close to the root as possible. Of course, this may require some soil removal. If you can tear the root sprout off of the root, you are likely to damage or kill that particular bud. If there is a section of root that continually puts out unwanted root sprouts, you can dig up the offending root and severe it from the tree or shrub. If all of that sounds like more work than it is worth, simply snip them off at soil level each time you see them.


There are also products available that you can spray on root sprouts, but I do not use them. Reviews appear to be highly mixed and applying just a little bit too much can seriously damage the tree or shrub those root sprouts came from. Other people swear by them. It's your call.


If you are really sick of all the root sprouts in your lawn, contact a licensed arborist. They can safely apply a growth inhibitor.

Prune limb borer management

Mature, healthy trees can often withstand a prune limb borer or two, but young trees can be killed by heavy infestations. Like other borers, these pests are easier to prevent than control. Inside the tree, they are safe from predators and pesticides. Use these tips to prevent prune limb borers from taking up residence in your trees:

• Keep pruning cuts smooth, so they can heal quickly
• Provide sunburn protection by whitewashing trunks and exposed branches
• Avoid mechanical injury by lawnmowers, weedwackers, and cars

Over-the-counter pesticides and insecticides are not effective against prune borers. If you have a badly infested tree, it  may be worthwhile to hire a professional to apply a residual, contact insecticide.

The angle at which branches attach to one another, known as the angle of attachment or the branch axil, determines the strength of that connection. Angles of attachment that are too narrow become areas of weakness later on. These V-shaped crotches also provide overwintering sites for American plum borers, prune limb borers, and many other pests. Branch axils of 30° or more generally result in sturdy attachments that can withstand strong winds and heavy fruit or nut crops. Downward hanging branches are highly prone to breakage. The best branch axils are 45° to 60° angles.


Selecting scaffold branches

When training young trees, you want scaffold branches that are appropriate to the species, spaced properly, and at good angles. You should avoid having more than two scaffold branches at the same distance from the ground. Scaffold branches should be at least 8” to 16” apart, vertically. Also, select scaffold branches that are positioned radially around the trunk so that they are not growing directly above or below each other.


As you train your tree, remember to avoid cutting the branch collar and do not use sealants. Sealants often trap moisture against the wound and create the perfect environment for rot. Your tree knows how to heal itself and will form callus tissue over and around the wound.


Take a look at the scaffold branches on your trees. Are they strong and healthy or do you need to do some re-training this dormant season?

Vein clearing and overspray

Vein clearing can also be seen when overspray occurs. Overspray describes the way herbicides and other chemicals can drift on a breeze to unintended plants. After landing on a plant, the herbicide is absorbed and transported throughout the plant in the xylem. Older leaves generally exhibit damage to margins (edges) and interveinal (between vein) areas. Younger leaves respond differently, showing chlorosis of the veins, especially the midrib.


Vein clearing can also be a phytotoxic symptom. Phytotoxic means “poisonous to plants”. In some cases, we apply insecticides, oils, or other treatments with the best of intentions. Whether due to extreme sunlight or temperatures or something else entirely, these treatments can go awry, causing symptoms such as vein clearing, along with wilting, leaf loss, or flower drop. In other cases, these symptoms may appear for no obvious reason at all!


Cherry vein clearing, for example, is believed to be a genetic mutation that is spread by grafting affected scions onto unaffected wood. Some researchers believe this mutation is caused by a boron deficiency in the soil, but no one is sure just yet.


In some cases, vein clearing is a short-lived symptom. As the disease or toxicity progresses, vein clearing may resolve itself and show up as completely different symptoms, depending on the initial cause. These symptoms may include dwarfing, puckered leaves, variegated yellow and green on leaves, and vein banding. Vein banding is similar to vein clearing except that bands of translucent and opaque green, yellow, or white are seen.


If you see vein clearing, take a closer look, note any other symptoms and send me pictures!