Thanks all! We're in the SF Bay Area (Oakland, so not in the fog belt---pretty mild/moderate). We do have very heavy clay soil and have been amending it where we've planted new trees to try to mitigate drainage issues after losing two avocado seedlings to root rot. As far as the second cherry, if this is bacterial canker, is it likely to spread to other fruit trees? We have aging apples, persimmons, and figs (one fig is ill with something too, but our local nursery noted that it may just be at the end of its life). We also have younger plums, avocado, and citrus. All are in close proximity (entire yard is maybe 1200 square feet?). It's obviously a little late for dormant spraying in our area, but is there anything I should be using in the spring/summer season to prevent the spread of the canker, if it can spread to other nearby trees? It does seem to have been eating away at the cherries for some years now, as the previous owner had taken off large chunks of both trees. Also, we would like to replace the cherry (though maybe in another part of the yard, it sounds like!) I've seen cherries on both Gisela5 and Mazzard rootstock. (Am guessing the current trees are on Mazzard or something similar as they're huge.) Is one more resilient than the other, or should I just choose based on size/fruiting? Thanks!

Unfortunately, old corn stalks have very few nutrients to add to garden soil. Even in compost, they will need some nitrogen-rich materials to help them break down. When you put corn stalks or fresh leaves or sawdust into the soil, they suck much of the nitrogen out of the soil to use in their own decomposition process. This is counterproductive to building soil fertility. I would collect all the corn stalks, make a flat layer of them over some good soil outside your garden beds, and then start a compost pile over them. They will assist in air entering the pile from below, which will speed up composting. After six or eight months, aided by the nutrients above them in the pile, they can be added to soil if they look like they have rotted adequately. The website below has a lot of information on composting. Click on "Techniques" then on "compost." Here is a link that might be useful: Alan Chadwick

As silica said citrus have shallow roots but you DO need to remove that grass from inside the water ring by the citrus, grass is very prolific and can uptake nutrients more quickly than citrus roots can i believe now that you have gotten rid of the rootstock feeder branches that were robbing nutrients if you get rid of the grass that is also robbing the nutrients you will see some great color improvement and rapid growth improvement on that lemon tree. i would get down there and pull the grass out by hand shouldnt take more than a half hour do that and get all that grass out then stay on top of it once a week.

Just wanted to update this thread with my fava beans trial. They seem to work very well here if you start them in the fall. They grew through the winter like it was summer (had a few sub 30 nights too). Here's a few pics of them today: The fava bean plants grew much bigger than I thought they would. They are about 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide. BTW, that plant on the left in the 1 gallon container is another trial plant I started in the fall: an Ice Cream Bean (Inga Edulis). which handles the cold a lot better than they were supposed to. 9 germinated from 10 seeds and they all stayed outdoors without any real issues. Being very young plants, I still gave them overhead protection but the sub 30 nights didn't phase them. (Same with the new Moringa trees) This is a close up of the fava bean flowers. You can see some bean pods started in the lower end. The pods are very small now but by the size of the seeds I planted I think they'll get pretty big if I let them. One thing that's cool about the fava beans is they draw a lot of bees to the yard, including some big carpenter bees that are yellow (I had never seen the yellow type before). Here's another plant that's reseeding from last year and is very welcome. Last year someone on this forum made a post about a type of mexican swiss chard (I believe that's what it was called) and gave a link, so I bought some seeds and let it go to seed last year, and it grows all over the place. It tastes really good, very similar to fresh spinach. I figured I might as well include this pic of a Loquat tree I started from a cutting last year. It also stayed out in the cold, but with no overhead protection, and did completely fine. What fall plants did you try and were they a hit?