Pyracantha

Well here we are, another Halloween. I will be at bowling tonight and will not get to see the ten to twenty-five trick-or-treaters who will visit Casa Sneed. What a bad break for me. I always hope for the high number because in case of low numbers of kids, it falls to me to eat the excess candy. Mrs. Sneed always buys lots of candy, really good candy, like M&M's.

Today has been a very busy day for me. The day began with a phone conference between me and our financial adviser. The vast Sneed fortune requires plenty of consultation and planning. One wrong step on our part and Wall Street is in turmoil.

I went to visit my friend Greg this morning. He is a faithful employee of Tedious Systems and a former coworker. I meet him every week or so for tea. While I was there I was able to take advantage of a flu shot clinic that was being held at one of the Tedious Systems offices. We old guys need our flu shots.

The balance of the day has been devoted to yard work.



This bush is a pyracantha or sometimes called Firethorn. Pyracantha is native to southern Europe and western Asia. It is in the same family as the rose, and some common berries. It is useful here because it tolerates many soil conditions and is drought tolerant. It has small green leaves and clusters of red berries, which are toxic if eaten and is a thorny-son-of-a-gun. This is probably a evolutionary response to grazers. It make working with the plant an adventure in impaling.

Normally pyrcantha like to be left alone. They generally don't require fertilizer and subsist with low watering, although they thrive with regular watering too. The bush is often used as an espalier, flattened against a wall like a kind of living sculpture. It makes a very dense hedge. My Pyrachantha is about twelve years old and I suspect it has a thirty year lifespan.




The new growth on my plant is a pale yellow, rather than a normal green. I suspect that the plant is suffering from iron deficiency. Iron is an immobile nutrient, so if the plant is not taking it up from its roots, it cannot use what is stored in other parts of the plant to supply new growth. That results in the new growth being pale yellow or white. The new growth also sunburns badly in this condition. Pyracantha is prone to get mites in our climate, which adds to the new growth damage.

I cut back much of the lower plant that had died back last winter and removed an invasive trailing Verbena that had grown up in it and was using the bush as a trellis. Then, I worked fertilizer in the soil under the bush, made sure the irrigation was working and put down a layer of mulch. I should see a great improvement next year. I also hosed the entire plant down to remove as many of the mites as I can. Washing down is the best way to treat mites and is environmentally safe.







Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky