GARDENING THIS WEEKEND: MAY 4, 2023
How do you narrow the list down to the most critical out of the 150 possible things you want to get done in your landscape and garden? Let me help by giving my list. You can add your own and strike out any of mine that don’t interest you.
Hang on. Here we go!
PLANT
• Summer color annuals. Nursery supplies will never be better.
• Summer and fall perennials. Nurseries have them in pots. As they sell out they won’t be available again for 9 or 10 months.
• Start new lawns. Sod can be planted anywhere in Texas now, and bermuda seed in southern two-thirds of the state, in one more week in all of Texas.
• Landscape plants, but wrap tops or lay plants down as you transport plants home to avoid damage from highway winds.
PRUNE
• Dead or weakened branches from shade trees to prevent injuries and damage during spring windstorms.
• Erratic spring growth to maintain attractive form of shrubs, but if you’re able, bypass formal pruning. Let them grow naturally.
• Mow lawn at recommended height frequently to keep turf low growing and dense. Thick turf is best able to resist invasion by weeds.
FERTILIZE
• Lawn and landscape plants with all-nitrogen or high-nitrogen fertilizer containing upwards of half of that nitrogen in slow-release form.
• If your shrubs and vines are already showing iron deficiency (yellowed leaves with dark green veins, most prominently displayed on newest growth first), apply iron with sulfur to reduce the soil pH. Repeat several times through the growing season.
• Apply high-nitrogen, water-soluble fertilizer to patio pots and hanging baskets each time that you water them.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Cabbage loopers chew holes in the leaves of cabbage, broccoli and other Cole crops. Apply Bacillus thuringiensis (“B.t.”) dust or spray.
• Snails, slugs and pillbugs are still devouring tender new growth. Control with Sevin dust or baits, or sink a pie pan flush with the soil surface and fill it with beer. The pests will be lured by the fermenting smell and will drown in the beer.
• Prevent crape myrtle bark scale. This is the time for application of Imidacloprid systemic insecticide as a soil drench around each plant.
• St. Augustine that is showing signs of take all root rot, or TARR, through patches of yellowed, lethargic grass can be treated with fungicide Azoxystrobin. This is the upgraded recommendation replacing application of a 1-inch layer of sphagnum peat to the lawn.
• Nutsedge (“nutgrass”) with application of the Image product intended specifically for nutsedge or Sedgehammer.
• Broadleafed weeds, including poison ivy and others, with broadleafed weedkiller containing 2,4-D.