Gardening This Weekend: January 2, 2025
Here’s my list of early January things to accomplish in your landscape and garden.
PLANT
• Fruit trees, vines and bushes. Use this link to find varieties recommended by Texas A&M for your part of Texas and buy accordingly. Local independent retail garden centers are most likely to have bought for your area. National chains usually buy from regional or national offices. If you buy from mail order nurseries, be sure they’re selling varieties recommended for Texas. Womack Nursery in DeLeon TX works closely with horticulturists at Texas A&M to handle the best-suited types.
• Cool-season annuals, including pansies, violas, pinks and snapdragons in Central and North Texas. In South Texas list can also include sweet alyssum, stocks, ornamental Swiss chard, wallflowers and larkspurs.
• Onions in South Texas. North Texas plantings will go in in 3-4 weeks.
• Dig and relocate any trees and shrubs you need to move during the winter.
PRUNE
• Evergreens to reshape but avoid formal shearing to cut down on your work for the new gardening year. Hand shears and loppers give the most natural-looking results.
• Mistletoe from tree branches. Smaller clumps at the ends of twigs can be removed by clipping the entire twig from the tree. Larger clumps that have become established on more mature branches can only be clipped back flush with the bark. They will regrow, but you’ll slow them down. There is no spray that will eliminate mistletoe without harming the host tree.
• Peach and plum trees to establish strong scaffold branching 24 to 30 inches from the ground. Remove all strongly vertical shoots each winter. Make all cuts virtually flush with the remaining trunk or branch so that you leave no stubs. Stubs do not heal properly.
• Apples, pears, and figs only as needed to remove damaged or dead branches. In the case of apples, prune out strongly vertical “water sprouts.” Over-pruning these crops tends to lead to strong vegetative growth at the expense of fruit production.
• Grapes to remove 80-85 percent of the cane growth. Without this pruning the vines will over-produce and fruit quality will be poor. Maintain the vines on their scaffold wires.
FERTILIZE
• Pansies, pinks, and other winter annuals with a water-soluble plant food each time that you water them.
• Asparagus beds in South Texas with all-nitrogen fertilizer in next 10 days. Wait until later in January in Central and North Texas.
• Houseplants no more often than monthly with a diluted, water-soluble fertilizer with a relatively high nitrogen content. Your goal is to maintain them in good health and vigor without encouraging rampant growth during the dark days of winter.
• Liquid root stimulator to newly transplanted trees and shrubs monthly for first year they are in their new homes.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Cover tender plants with frost cloth any time extreme cold is forecast. It’s best to have it on hand before you really need it.
• Houseplants for mealy bugs, spider mites and scale insects. Treat at first evidence. Populations can build quickly since there are no predators indoors.
• If you intend to have your soil tested, this is the time to do so. Avoid the crush that will come in a few weeks when all farmers and gardeners across Texas start filling the mailboxes at the Texas A&M Soil Testing Lab. Here is the website for the lab for information on collecting samples and mailing instructions.