A month ago in this space, we reported our expectation that plants being grown in southern Florida would be prone to disease problems if the unusual pattern of significant winter rainfall were to continue. Well, the pattern has continued, and local plants are definitely showing the strain. What can homeowners do to prevent the outbreak…
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Brazilian Red Cloak (Megaskepasma erythrochlamys) was included in a June 2015 article on this website about hedge material, but it merits special attention now that it is blooming spectacularly. This single-species genus is a New World native that occurs in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Venezuela, but not really Brazil. It is capable of…
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This article was originally posted almost 4 years ago, but bears reposting since we are now in the heart of our winter (although you would never know it except for the calendar date). I also neglected to give a heads-up to the Hong Kong Orchid Tree (Bauhinia blakeana) which really attracts the ruby-throat at the…
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The UF-IFAS/Miami-Dade County Extension Office – IFAS for short – publishes a very interesting and informative quarterly newsletter, Miami Green Bytes. Among subjects addressed in the Winter 2015 issue is the influence of El Niño, which so far is more than living up to its advance billing as a major weather-maker. Generally speaking, most of…
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“It’s essentially in free fall.” That’s what Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam had to say about the state’s citrus industry this week when the USDA reported it had adjusted the orange-harvest forecast for Florida downward for the second straight month. The newest prediction by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) is that 69 million 90-lb.…
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