Fresno Gardening Green

Introduction Have you ever walked through your roses and seen a hole in the emerging buds filled with a black gooey substance? Well, the tobacco budworm is at work, and yes, on your ROSES. The tobacco budworm is the larval form of the adult moth, Helioithis virescens (scientific name).

Beth Linder Carr has lived among blue oaks in Auberry for nearly 35 years. There are dozens on her 10-acre property, but the one in particular she and her husband prize is a majestic specimen in the center of their circular driveway.

Asian citrus psyllid and the devastating disease it spreads, huanglongbing, are still serious threats to commercial and backyard citrus in Fresno County.

Calycanthus occidentalis, or western spice bush, is a large deciduous shrub native to lower elevations of the Coast Range, Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades. Reaching 10- to 12-feet tall and wide, it makes an excellent specimen plant or can be limbed up into a small multitrunked tree.

It might be tempting to pass on this one, sometimes dismissed as a weed, at the garden center, but that would be a mistake. Erigeron karvinskianus, or Santa Barbara Daisy, is a tough, almost carefree perennial and so useful in the garden.