Gardening This Weekend: April 6, 2023
Here’s hoping you’ll have a couple of hours to catch up on gardening activities this weekend. Here are things that hit the top of the list.
PLANT
• Warm-season annuals including marigolds, zinnias, cockscomb, cosmos, pentas, angelonias, coleus, wax begonias and purple fountaingrass among others.
• South Texas gardeners plant lantanas, periwinkles, moss rose, hybrid purslane, firebush, Gold Star Esperanza and copper plants. Wait a couple more weeks to plant those in North Texas.
• Warm-season vegetables. Plant tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash, cucumbers, corn right away. Stay with small- and mid-sized tomatoes for best production. Large types like Beefsteak and Big Boy don’t set fruit above 90F.
• Warm-season grasses from sod. In South Texas plant bermudagrass from seed. Wait until May in North Texas.
PRUNE
• Azaleas, wisteria, Carolina jessamine, Lady Banksia roses, crossvine, forsythia, quince, viburnums (once they finish blooming) and other spring-blooming shrubs and vines to reshape. Avoid formal shearing.
• Houseplants to reshape them as you bring them outside to spend summer in rehab on the patio. Expose them to outdoor lighting gradually. Direct sunlight will burn their leaves after a winter indoors
FERTILIZE
• Lawn with high-nitrogen or all-nitrogen fertilizer with 30-40 percent of that nitrogen in slow-release form.
• Same lawn-type fertilizer to all trees, shrub, and groundcover plantings.
• Water-soluble, high-nitrogen plant food to patio pots, hanging baskets, new annual flower and vegetable transplants to get them off to a quick start.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Cabbage loopers on leaves of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and other cole crops. Apply B.t. biological worm spray.
• Snails, slugs and pillbugs devouring tender new growth. Apply Sevin dust or bait to plants, soil. These feed primarily at night.
• Clover, dandelions, dollarweed, dichondra, poison ivy and other non-grassy weeds with a broadleafed weedkiller spray containing 2,4-D. Read and follow label directions for best results.