Each year, thousands of Arizona residents email or call Rosie Romero’s radio show with questions about everything from preventing fires in their chimneys to getting rid of tree roots invading their sewer system. His goal is to provide answers that suit the specific lifestyle wherever someone lives in Arizona.
QUESTION: Can you plant bamboo in the desert?
ANSWER: Yes, bamboo is possible to grow. It takes a fair amount of water, but bamboo loves the heat. One thing you might not enjoy is that it will put out a lot of runners in your yard and can be very hard to control. However, there is a clumping variety that is not as prone to doing that. So you can ask for that type in a nursery.
Q: I have a tract home built in 2006. At night, I keep hearing a popping sound like a firecracker coming from the south wall in the master bedroom at night. It’s not the faint kind of sound like you hear when a house is contracting or expanding. You can push on a section of the wall and make it crack the same way. I asked a home inspector about it, and he thought it might be due to a problem with the trusses.
A: It sounds as though something in the wall assembly was not fastened or connected properly when the home was built. The wall assembly consists of the framing members, insulation, piping, wiring, drywall and siding. Unfortunately, the only way to determine the source of the noise is to do some destructive searching by removing the drywall.
Q: I have a new house with a plain dirt backyard that has nothing in it. Can I lay pavers by myself to put in a patio? Is there some class I can take to find out how to do it?
A: I have laid interlocking concrete pavers by myself in the past and built retaining walls with paving blocks to create planters. Doing the walls was easy but laying pavers correctly is very difficult. You will need to lay what is called an aggregate base course layer of gravel to begin with and then a layer of sand. All the layers have to be properly compacted and leveled. There are video lessons published by paver manufacturers that you can watch online to see if you want to go this route. But manufacturers generally recommend that you hire a certified concrete paver installer in order to get the best possible results.
Q: Half of my lemon tree seems to have oranges instead of lemons. How did that happen and what do I do with the oranges?
A: Try peeling and tasting the orange to see if it’s sour or not. If it tastes like a lemon, you can use it like a lemon. If it tastes like an orange, you might want to make orange juice. It might have happened because there is a sucker on your lemon tree that’s from an orange graft. Or it could be what is called “a cocktail tree” with two or three kinds of citrus grafted on to a lemon tree.
Q: Three years ago, I planted a fully mature mesquite on a piece of property that I own. It’s not a Chilean mesquite, it was a local variety. I have a tenant living there, and I don’t think he’s watering the tree enough because the bark keeps peeling off. An arborist looked at it and says it’s OK, but I’m still worried about it. What do you think?
A: As mesquites age and mature, they do have some peeling bark. It’s not necessarily a problem. Some of them get very shaggy. Mesquites don’t look very good at this time of year, as they transition from winter to spring. But they’re pretty hardy and yours sounds like it will be sound.
