Gardening This Weekend: May 17, 2018

If you compare things from one week to the next here, check through this list. You have a bunch of new things to consider.

PLANT

• It’s warm enough to plant vincas, copper plants, moss rose and hybrid purslane, fanflowers, angelonias, pentas, purple fountaingrass and other summer color.
• Watch nurseries for late-spring perennials like coneflowers, cannas, mallows, daylilies and others. Also fall-blooming perennials such as fall asters and Mexican bush sage. Buy them when you see them. Supplies often go quickly.
• Soils are warm now. It’s the perfect time to start new lawns from seed, sod or plugs.

PRUNE

• All spring-flowering shrubs and vines to remove erratic shoots and to reshape for the rest of the growing season.
• Winter-killed branches from crape myrtles, figs and other tender plants.
• Low-hanging branches from shade trees if they are hazardous or if they’re keeping sunlight from reaching your lawn. Wait two months to prune oaks to lessen chance of spreading oak wilt.
• Pinch out growing tips of Mexican bush sage, copper plants, fall asters and new shoots on blackberries to keep plants shorter and more compact.

FERTILIZE

• Flower and vegetable gardens every 3 weeks with water-soluble, high-nitrogen food to keep plants growing vigorously.
• Turf, trees and shrubs with all-nitrogen fertilizer with half or more of that nitrogen in slow-release coated or encapsulated form. Independent nurseries have it and can explain it to you.
• Container plants with water-soluble, high-nitrogen fertilizer with every watering. Potted plants dry out quickly and must be watered frequently.

 

ON THE LOOKOUT

• Nutsedge. You may know it as “nutgrass,” but it’s not a true grass. Its stems are triangular like all of the sedges. All grass stems are round. Treat with SedgeHammer or the original Image according to label directions.
• If you applied Dimension, Team, Halts or Balan granules for pre-emergent control of grassburs and crabgrass back in March, you will soon need to make a second application for a full season of prevention. You don’t need to apply it now, but many sources close out their supplies after early spring. Start looking now. Buy it when you find it and have it on hand. If you did not treat earlier this spring, there’s no point in doing so now.
• Insect galls on trees. Whether they’re tan, tennis-ball-sized galls on red oaks, warty pecan phylloxera galls on pecan leaves or nipple galls on hackberry leaves (or any of many other leaf and twig galls), they do little or no harm and there’s no way to control them. Just move on with life.