Gardening This Weekend – January 23, 2025

We’ve used up our cold-weather passes. It’s time to get down to business. Here is this weekend’s checklist.

PLANT
Onion transplants. Buy types best adapted to your area. 1015Y is still the standard of excellence. Developed by TAMU several decades ago, it’s a proven performer. Look for crisp, green bundles and plant them shallowly into well-prepared ground.
Freeze-hardy annual color, including pansies, pinks, and snapdragons in North Texas. South Texans can add in sweet alyssum, petunias, stocks, wallflowers, larkspurs, ornamental Swiss chard, foxglove, and other frost-tolerant cool-season color.
Bare-rooted or balled-and-burlapped fruit trees, grapes and blackberries. Blueberries in East Texas.
Dig and transplant established native or landscape shrubs and trees that need to be moved.

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PRUNE
Do not ever “top” your crape myrtles. It’s a message I’ve carried for 55 years, and I’ve yet to see a justifiable reason. See story in last week’s e-gardens.
Evergreen shrubs lightly as needed to shape. Avoid formal shearing whenever possible. If you need to do major pruning of these shrubs, do so now, but tailor the cuts with lopping shears and a pruning saw to avoid a butchered look afterwards.
Summer-flowering shrubs and vines to reshape but remember that extensive pruning will lead to strong vegetative growth and fewer flowers.
Oaks, as needed to remove dead and damaged branches. All pruning of oaks should be finished by Valentine’s Day or saved until mid-summer. The oak wilt fungus is most active in spring during which time it is spread through open wounds. Seal all cuts made with pruning paint.
Bush roses by half. Make each cut above a bud facing out from the center of the plant to encourage open growth. As you are pruning, familiarize yourself with Rose Rosette Virus and its classic symptoms (abnormally spiny stems, buds that do not open properly, a few extremely strong “bull” canes, gradual weakening and dieback of plants). Remove any diseased plants. There is no cure and there is no way to prevent the virus other than to remove infected plants roots and all.
Peach and plum trees to outward-growing buds to encourage horizontal growth. Apples and pears to remove dead or damaged branches, also (with apples) to remove strongly vertical shoots called “water sprouts.” Figs only as needed to remove frozen tissues.
Grapes to remove 80 to 85 percent of canes in an effort to limit numbers of fruit and improve overall quality. More detailed information, even videos, are available online.

FERTILIZE
Newly transplanted trees and shrubs with liquid root-stimulator monthly this year.
Asparagus beds with all-nitrogen fertilizer to promote vigorous new spears.
Winter color plantings with high-nitrogen, water-soluble plant food each time that you water. That will help them rebound from the cold.
Ryegrass and fescue plantings with all-nitrogen or high-nitrogen fertilizer, half or more in slow-release form. That will help the grass green up after the cold weather retreats.

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ON THE LOOKOUT
Scale insects on fruit and shade trees, hollies, camellias, euonymus and other plants. Apply horticultural oil (“dormant oil”) spray according to label directions.
Aphids on tender new growth, starting in South Texas during upcoming warm days. They can be vectors for plant viruses. Most insecticides will eliminate them, or you can wash them off the plants with a forceful stream of water.
Broadleafed weeds in any type of turf. Apply a broadleafed weedkiller (containing 2,4-D) according to label directions. Be patient. It may take a week for it to do its job.

Posted by Neil Sperry
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