Gardening This Weekend: January 10, 2019

I’ve made a list of the critical tasks as we approach mid-January. Try to tend to these as time and weather allow.

PLANT
• Fruit trees and vines, bramble berries and pecans. Choose varieties carefully, sticking with those types recommended by Texas A&M for your part of the state.
• If you have established trees and shrubs in your landscape that you’re planning on moving, you have about one more month to get that job done. Dig them carefully, holding balls of soil in place around their roots as you do.
• Onion slips in South Texas. Snap peas in Deep South Texas.

PRUNE
• Peach and plum trees to maintain their scaffold branching structure and horizontal habit.
• Grapes to remove 80-85 percent of their cane growth.
• Evergreen shrubs as needed, but retain natural growth forms as much as possible.
• Summer-flowering shrubs and vines, but do not “top” crape myrtles ever for any purported reason. There is no valid reason to do so.

FERTILIZE
• Asparagus with all-nitrogen fertilizer to promote new late winter cane growth.
• Pansies, violas and other winter annuals with water-soluble, high-nitrogen plant food.

 

ON THE LOOKOUT
• Scale insects on hollies, euonymus, fruit trees, oaks, pecans and other shade and fruit trees. Apply horticultural oil. Read and follow label directions as they pertain to rain and temperatures. For the record, crape myrtle scales do not respond well to oil sprays. They are treated with systemic insecticides in May.
• Houseplants to control whiteflies, mealybugs, scales and spider mites. Your nursery professional can show you the appropriate controls.