Gardening This Weekend: February 27, 2025
You only get one chance to accomplish many gardening tasks before the weather changes and you hear that you’re too late for another year. I’m going to include things that must be done very soon in this week’s assignments. Last week’s cold forced us to put many of them off. Take a look and try to get yourself back on pace.
PLANT
• Spring-flowering trees, shrubs, and vines while nurseries have their best supplies. They either have received fresh shipments in the past few days or they had their plants under cover during the cold. Protect all nursery stock from highway winds by wrapping them or carrying them in a closed trailer. You simply cannot drive slowly enough.
• Cool-season annual color, including stocks, English daisies, petunias, wallflowers, larkspurs and ornamental Swiss chard. It’s still a bit early (cold soils) for hot weather annuals except in Deep South Texas.
• Finish planting leaf and root vegetables in the northern 75 percent of the state. That list would include cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower as well as Irish potatoes, also spinach, radishes, beets, carrots, and lettuce.
• Begin planting warm-season vegetables in South Texas.
PRUNE
• Scalp lawn to eliminate many of the rank weeds and to remove winter-killed stubble. Put clippings into the compost. Do not send them to the landfill (already filling too rapidly).
• Remove any twigs or branches that were obviously killed by the hard freezes last week. However, in many cases it’s better to wait to see the extent of any damage.
• Last call for winter pruning. Last week’s cold has given you an additional few days.
FERTILIZE
• Annual color with high-nitrogen, water-soluble plant food to promote vigorous growth and bloom.
• Trees, shrubs and groundcovers with all-nitrogen fertilizer such as you’ll use on your lawn in a few weeks to promote vigorous new growth this spring.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Broadleafed weedkiller spray (containing 2,4-D) can be applied to kill existing non-grassy weeds such as clover, dandelions, chickweed and plantain. Read and follow label directions carefully for best results.
• Aphids on tender new growth. Control with almost any type of organic or inorganic insecticide. In some cases, you can also rinse them off the plants with a hard stream of water.
ABOUT PRE-EMERGENT WEEDKILLERS
Remember that these herbicides are designed to prevent germination of weed seeds in the first place – not to kill existing weeds. You are applying them now (or soon) to prevent summer weeds such as crabgrass and grassburs.
Choices: Three common options are Dimension, Balan, and Halts.
Timing: Determine the average date of the last killing freeze for your county. You can get that information from your county Extension office, from my book Neil Sperry’s Lone Star Gardening, or by asking your smart phone for the average date for a city near you.
Application should be made 2 weeks prior to that date.
As example: For McKinney, where I garden, Siri just gave me a couple of different dates: March 15 and March 22. Experience pays off. We’ve been here for 48 years. I’ll split the difference, so my chosen guess of frost-free date would be March 18. Subtracting 2 weeks, I’ll be applying pre-emergents next week around March 4 or so.
Booster Shot: Because our growing season in Texas is so long, a second application of the pre-emergent granules should be made 90 days later.
Using my example again, that would put my Booster Shot application around June 4.