Gardening This Weekend: November 16, 2023
Here’s my short list of things you’ll want to get done as soon as you can. Autumn is fleeting and winter is heading our way.
PLANT
• Winter color, including pansies, pinks, ornamental cabbage and kale, among many others. South Texas gardeners, where winters are warmer, can also include hardy cyclamen, stocks, wallflowers, Iceland poppies, sweet alyssum and others.
• Daffodils, narcissus, jonquils, grape hyacinths and summer snowflakes. Keep tulips and Dutch hyacinths in refrigerator until mid-December to give them their necessary pre-chilling.
• Thinking about buying a living Christmas tree this year? Buy from a Texas Certified Nursery Professional and ask that you only be shown types that are well suited to your locale.
PRUNE
• Mow lawn to remove fallen tree leaves. Don’t allow them to collect on top of the grass where they can lead to fungal diseases.
• All dead or damaged stubble from vegetable and annual garden plots and perennial gardens.
• Mistletoe from tree limbs by clipping off small twigs that are supporting it. If it’s on larger branches, better call in the help of a certified arborist.
• Overgrown patio plants as you bring them indoors for the winter. They need to be reshaped anyway, and there’s no point in letting them take up valuable space in your house or greenhouse.
FERTILIZE
• Cool-season grasses (fescue and ryegrass) with high-nitrogen lawn food with a significant percentage of its nitrogen in slow-release form. These grasses grow in cool weather, so they can utilize the nutrients now.
• Winter annuals with water-soluble, high-nitrogen plant food each time that you water them. Keep them growing vigorously during all winter warm spells.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Broadleafed weeds are growing vigorously due to the fall rains. Treat with a broadleafed herbicide (containing 2,4-D) in next week or two, before weather turns too cold to do so. Once that happens your next chance won’t come until February or early March.
• Brown patch (now being called “large patch” by university turf and disease experts) causes circles of browned grass in St. Augustine lawns. Blades will pull loose easily from the runners. South Texas gardeners who are still seeing this will probably want to treat with a labeled turf fungicide.