Gardening This Weekend: October 11, 2018

With cooler weather it’s a lot more pleasant to get outdoors this time of year. Nurseries are having sales and hopefully you have a little more time. Here’s this week’s checklist.

PLANT

• Trees and shrubs. Fall planting gives them months to establish new roots before summer. Yahoo for that!
• Spring-flowering perennials should be dug and divided now. List includes violets, oxalis, candyturf, thrift, iris, daylilies, Shasta daisies, coneflowers and many more.
• Pansies, violas, snapdragons, pinks and ornamental cabbage and kale for winter color.
• Ryegrass seed can still be sown for green turf in winter (but not if you applied pre-emergent herbicide last month).

PRUNE

• Mow to remove fallen leaves. Bag to be able to put them into the compost or use as mulch beneath shrubs and around perennials. Do not send them to the landfill.
• Remove spent flower stalks and browned foliage from perennials.
• Dig and remove roses infested with rose rosette virus, roots and all. Leaving plants in place allows the virus to spread to others’ roses.

FERTILIZE

• Fescue turf with high-nitrogen or all-nitrogen fertilizer. It grows in fall’s cooler weather.
• New pansies and other winter color plants with water-soluble, high-nitrogen food for quickest start.

 

ON THE LOOKOUT

• Brown patch is spreading rapidly in Texas St. Augustine. See story in last week’s e-gardens.
• Prune fall webworms out of pecans, persimmons, mulberries and other trees with long-handled pole pruner. Spraying isn’t efficient. Do not attempt to burn them out (way too dangerous).
• Armyworms. I might as well include it here in case this is all you planned to read in e-gardens. The adult moths have been everywhere this week. Watch for yet another round of the worms. They may show up. See our story in this issue.