Gardening This Weekend: April 12, 2018

It’s the busiest time of the gardening year. Here are your current assignments.

PLANT

• New turf from sod, seed or plugs or by hydromulching.
• Warm-season annual flowers and vegetables soon.
• Trees, shrubs, vines and groundcovers. Suggestion: selections in nurseries are at their best on Fridays, before the weekend hoards pick things over.

PRUNE

• Mow turf regularly and at recommended height to encourage dense growth.
• Spring-flowering shrubs and vines immediately to reshape them before their surges of new growth.
• Evergreen shrubs to remove erratic new shoots. Avoid formal shearing whenever possible.

FERTILIZE

• Sidedress rows of vegetables with high-nitrogen fertilizer every 3-4 weeks to keep plants growing actively.
• Liquid root stimulator fertilizer monthly to trees and shrubs that were dug and relocated into your landscape.
• Lawn with high-quality, 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. Atrazine is especially damaging to trees and shrubs.

 

ON THE LOOKOUT

• Snails and slugs on tender new growth. Use Sevin dust or bait applied to the foliage and on top of the soil.
• Cabbage loopers chewing holes in leaves of cabbage and other cole crops. Apply B.t. for control.
• Seridium canker is attacking Italian and Leyland cypress plants again this year. Fungicides are not effective 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).