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Questions and Answers:Q. What kinds of onions will grow in our area? I can get onion seeds sprouted and they do fine, but no bulb ever forms. What am I doing wrong? A. Purchase onion sets, or small bare root onion plants already growing in bunches of 25-50 plants from most garden centers in the early spring or late winter. The best time to plant is January. They should be fresh, not dried out, and the individual plants should be no larger than a pencil or one-half inch in diameter. Larger ones will go to seed too early and the smaller ones won’t bulb. You must purchase the type of onion that will set a bulb in our part of the country where the amount of nighttime hours are sufficient for bulb formation. If the dark hours are too short and it gets hot really fast in the spring, bulbs won’t form on some kinds of onions. Unless you can find the seed that needs to be planted on November 1st for spring crop, buy sets of short day varieties such as Texas 1015Y, Grano 502, Yellow Granex, or White Bermuda. Growing good onions is an art and will take some trial and error. Good luck. Q. I have two nice green apples trees that I inherited when I bought my country home. Every year, a rotting spot forms an all the apples and makes them inedible. Can you help? A. This is probably bitter rot, a common disease of apple trees. It over winters in mummified fruit that was not cleaned up from around the tree and also thrives in the bark of the tree. You must spray with an approved fungicide at the correct times of the year. Contact you local county extension agent for types of fungicide to use and what times of the year to spray. Be sure to keep weeds and old fruit from around the base of your fruit trees. The disease is most prevalent on Empire, Freedom, Golden Delicious, Fuji, Granny Smith, and Arkansas Black. Q. I’ve got rabbits in the garden. Is there a humane control method for these critters? A. You can use a live trap baited with apples, but you’ll need to take them at least a mile away from your garden and set them free. Try putting up “raptor poles” which are poles 10-12 feet high that owls and hawks can perch on and collect these garden pests. Position the poles so the bird can get a view of animals entering the garden or can see down several rows at one time. I incorporate the poles into my trellis construction. Q. My beautiful zinnias get brown spots on the leaves every year. I know it’s some type of fungus, but it’s ugly, and I’ve got company coming? What can I do? A. You are correct that this is a fungal problem. It is called blight and can kill the plant. It is carried in the seed, so you aren’t doing anything wrong. It may be carried over from the seed of zinnias that went to seed last fall in the garden. It is very difficult and expensive to control. What I do is plant zinnia seeds every 2 or 3 weeks instead of all at one time in the spring. When the fungus begins to show up on the older plants, which it will, you can pull them and enjoy the younger more vigorous plants later in the summer. Be sure to pull the infected plants before they go to seed so the disease won’t carry over until next year. Zinnias can be planted until the middle of August for fall color, and they are a great butterfly attractant. Our butterfly season is in the fall when the monarchs are migrating. Once the cooler weather sets in, the fungus isn’t as active.
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