Gardening This Weekend: May 26, 2022
Maybe you’ll have a little extra time for gardening this weekend, and maybe you won’t. Let me help with your checklist.
PLANT
• Hot-weather annuals such as lantanas, angelonias, pentas, purple fountaingrass, moss rose, periwinkles, coleus, gomphrenas, Dahlberg daisies, fanflowers, copper plants, firebush and others. Let your nursery professional guide you.
• New trees and shrubs. Watch for plants as nurseries continue to bring in supplies. Some types simply aren’t going to be available until fall, still due to the freeze damage of February 2021. It really tore into the production schedules. Cover new plants with scraps of nursery shade fabric or old sheets to protect from highway winds. Plant immediately and water deeply by hand every 2-3 days all summer and into the fall.
• New sod now before it turns really hot this summer. Warm-season grasses we grow here in Texas will establish most quickly this time of year. Seed bermudagrass right now as well.
PRUNE
• Dead branches from trees and shrubs. There still is a great amount of cold-killed growth in large plants. It needs to be removed before it falls and does damage.
• Pinch out growing tips of coleus, copper plants, Mexican bush salvias, mums. fall asters and other annuals and perennials to keep them compact.
• Fruiting canes from blackberries by cutting them completely to the ground after you finish harvesting all fruit. They will never bear fruit again. Tip-prune this year’s new canes to encourage side shoots to keep plants more compact.
• Errant spring growth from shrubs, vines.
• Spent flower stalks on spring perennials as they finish blooming.
FERTILIZE
• Patio pots and hanging baskets with water-soluble, high-nitrogen plant food every 7 to 10 days to keep them growing vigorously. Supplement with timed-release fertilizer for sustained feeding.
• All-nitrogen, slow-release lawn food to turf if it’s been 8 weeks since first feeding. Your goal with St. Augustine lawns should be to feed now and not again until early September to lessen chance of gray leaf spot outbreak.
• Treat iron deficiency (yellowed leaves with dark green veins – appearing on the newest growth first) with an iron/sulfur additive.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• It’s almost time for second application of pre-emergent weedkiller granules (Dimension, Balan or Weed-EX with Halts) to prevent germination of crabgrass and grassburs in turf. Apply early June, but start looking now as supplies will not be as plentiful as earlier. Note: If you did not make first application in late February or early March, this application will be useless.
• Chiggers are active in bermuda and other grasses and weeds. Rather than trying to spray everywhere, it’s usually easier just to apply DEET repellent to your feet, ankles and legs, also to your socks and pants.
• Pecan phylloxera gall is causing lots of leaf drop with knotty galls on the blades. It is of minimal harm to the trees and there is nothing that can done to lessen the problem now.
• Similarly, galls are showing on oaks and other tree species now. They, too, are of little or no concern. You can’t do much to control them anyway.
• Leafrollers are beginning to show up on sweetgums, redbuds, cannas, pyracanthas and other susceptible plants. Apply Imidacloprid systemic insecticide as a soil drench, but preferably 3 weeks prior to their invasion next time.
• Watch, too, for bagworms on junipers, arborvitae and other conifers. Treat with B.t. or almost any general-purpose inorganic insecticide.