Gardening This Weekend: November 7, 2024
As promised, here’s your early November list of gardening responsibilities.
PLANT
• Replace summer color plants with pansies, violas, pinks, snapdragons, ornamental cabbage and kale, sweet alyssum and other cold-hardy plants that are suited to your part of Texas. Planting now gives them time to become established before winter’s cold.
• Spring bulbs. Buy for quality – large Number 1 bulbs from reputable sources. “Cheap” bulbs can be very expensive mistakes when they give disappointing results. Last call to begin the “chilling” needed by tulips and Dutch hyacinths (45 days at 45F before planting last two weeks of December). Without the “pre-cooling” they will not bloom properly.
• Trees and shrubs as nurseries make final their reductions before Christmas trees start arriving.
PRUNE
• All browned stubble from perennials. Mark those you have trimmed to the ground so you’ll be able to avoid them as you plant new types before spring.
• Dead and damaged branches off trees so that they won’t drop during winter storms if you’re in a part of the state where bad weather is likely. Even slow rains and winds can cause limbs to snap and fall.
• Mow lawn regularly to keep fallen leaves and weed growth picked up.
• Overgrown patio plants as needed to get them into the house or greenhouse.
FERTILIZE
• Winter annuals with water-soluble or liquid, high-nitrogen fertilizer to keep them growing at a rapid pace.
• Ryegrass or fescue if you’ve not yet done so. These are cool-season grasses, meaning they grow most actively in late fall and from late winter through spring.
• Cut way back on fertilizer you give houseplants once you have them indoors under lower light intensities of winter.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Patio plants as you bring them indoors, for signs of persistent pests such as mealy bugs, other scale insects, or whiteflies. It’s best to eliminate them while you can treat the plants outside or in the garage and before you bring them indoors for the winter.
• If you have brought plants inside for the winter be sure they’re getting adequate light. Ferns, rubber plants, scheffleras, crotons, and others need more light than they often get indoors. They soon start dropping lower leaves, and new leaves may be malformed and unattractive. The solution is to put them in the brightest possible locations from the outset.
• Broadleafed weeds in your lawn, including clover, dandelions, dichondra, dollar weed and others. Apply broadleafed weedkiller containing 2,4-D following label directions.