Gardening This Weekend: April 13, 2017

Half your success as a gardener depends on doing the right things. The other half depends on doing them at the right times. Here is your gotta-do list for this weekend.

PLANT

• Trees, shrubs, vines and groundcovers. Selections in nurseries will never be better. Shop Thursday or Friday before the weekenders pick things over.
• Warm-season annual flowers and vegetables.
• New turf from sod, seed or plugs or by hydromulching.
• Patio pots for color in smaller spaces.

PRUNE

• Spring-flowering shrubs and vines immediately to reshape before their surges of new growth.
• Dead tops of frozen crape myrtles, pomegranates and oleanders in North Texas. Do so immediately to get them out of the way before resprouts fill in the voids.
• Mow turf regularly and at recommended height to encourage dense growth. (See related Question of the Week.)

FERTILIZE

• Lawn with all-nitrogen fertilizer (half or more of nitrogen in encapsulated, slow-release form).
• Trees, shrubs with same lawn fertilizer, but be certain it does not contain a weedkiller.
• Liquid root stimulator fertilizer monthly to trees and shrubs that were dug and relocated into your landscape.

 

 

ON THE LOOKOUT

• Cabbage loopers chewing holes in leaves of cabbage and other cole crops. Apply B.t. for control.
• Snails and slugs on tender new growth. Use Sevin dust or bait applied to the foliage and on top of the soil.
• Seridium canker attacking Italian cypress. Fungicides do not show a great deal of promise in controlling this very damaging disease.
• Poison ivy, dichondra, dollarweed, bur and white clovers, dandelions and other non-grassy weeds. Treat with a broadleafed weedkiller spray (containing 2,4-D).