I am now focusing on my childhood passion for vegetable gardening and small scale food production. Visit my new website: PeterPunzi.com.

A. Dropping leaves is how trees cope with stress. Many tropical trees drop leaves for the dry season and temperate zone trees for winter.   Mid summer is always a tough time to transplant large trees. When possible plant them in the spring or fall.  There are many stress that can cause the leaves to drop as the fine hairlike root structures responsible for water uptake are often damaged. Trees compensate by dropping leaves thereby reducing water loss from the leaves (evapo-transpiration).    Loss of leaves does not mean the plants will die though.  One concern is to make sure you do not over water.  If you have not done so make sure your soil is well draining. If you dig a hole for a tree in a very clay soil it can become like a container that fills up with water and then rots the roots.  Of course rotting roots have the same symptoms as dry roots because the plant can’t take up enough water.  Do a perc (short for percolation) test.  Here is how: http://www.horticultureguy.com/television-segments/testing-soil-drainage/

If your soil is not well draining make sure you test it for moisture before re-watering.  Also for future reference current tree planting does not recommend amending the fill soil.  It is now believed that this may encourage the roots to stay inside the dug area and not move readily into the surrounding soil. – HG

A.  A little background – most fruit trees have a built in mechanism to prevent self fertilization – presumably because self fertilization similar to inbreeding reduces the vigor of future offspring and limits their gene pool.  This mechanism is not completely on or off but varies. So for example one tree may self pollinate 80% of the time and would be considered “nearly completely self pollinating”.  Another may only self pollinate 20% of the time and would be listed as requiring a suitable pollinator.  You may improve the “nearly completely” pollination with a suitable plant (usually shown on a pollination chart) and presumably get close to the additional 20% pollination.  The pollination chart takes into account the time of bloom (since bees don’t as a general rule pollinate with long term storage pollen) and how closely related the plants are.  Usually if trees share parents the self fertilization prevention mechanism can reduce pollination.  To answer your question – yes you do not require an additional tree for pollination – although pollination could be improved.  If you find that you need to thin fruit each year anyway I would say you do not need an additional pollinator tree.

 A.  There are two possibilities here.   If they start out green and then turn yellow you waited too long to harvest and the cucumbers are over ripe. Pick them earlier.  The seeds will be smaller and the fruit will be less bitter. If they are never green and always yellow then you may have been slipped a yellow cucumber variety (or this variety was nearby in the field and crossed in at the source).  These varieties (like Lemon) produce yellow skins.  In addition there are is an outside chance they have a virus which prevents chlorophyll (green pigment) from forming in the skin of the fruit.  Overwatering has been said to cause this but usually you see some problems with the plant itself which you did not mention.  Since you did mention they were very large it is likely that you have the first scenario.  Edible yes…pallatable.. not so much.

Live Long & Garden,

Peter (AKA Horticulture Guy)

Thanks again… ~Vik ,Snohomish, WA

A. To kill the seeds naturally you will need to compost the weeds.  There are two ways that you can compost – low and slow (sounds like Ramone the Chevy Impala on the movie Cars – my son is an avid fan)  or high and fast.  Low and slow means low temperature and maybe a year to process the compost.  This will not remove the weed seeds or bits that may resprout.  You want high temperature (hot) which produces a final composted product in a month or so.  This is the process they use at the LRI landfill (Pierce County Recycling, Composting, & Disposal) where all the yardwaste is processed.  Low and slow is much easier as you just pile up your garden debris and turn it a few times – low key.  To get it to go to high temperatures (120°F–150°F) you have to monitor the types of waste you put in (balance of green or nitrogen rich products and brown – containing carbon like wood chips or brown leaves).  You also have to turn it regularly because the microorganisms that produce heat need oxygen. These temperatures will kill weed seeds and other structures that allow the weeds to reproduce  Rather than go into any more detail here I will refer you to a WSU extension booklet which you can download on composting.

Live Long & Garden

Peter – HG