Gardening This Weekend – March 20, 2025
Cool nights and warm days make for great gardening weather. We can put up with a few sidesteps now and then, but this is the time to celebrate springtime in Texas to the fullest. Here are this weekend’s prime tasks.
PLANT
• Nursery stock. I’ve been in several nurseries, and supplies are looking great. But growers tell me the most dependable types are still in short supply. If you see what you like and need, grab it right away.
• Patio pots and hanging baskets for spring and summer color. They allow you to mix up the best possible potting soil, also to move the pot to the best possible lighting. Plant and pot choices are endless.
• Warm-season vegetables. Remember that the old large-fruiting tomato varieties like Big Boy and Beefsteak are sorry-dog losers for Texas. They don’t set fruit well in our heat. You’re much better off with small to medium-sized varieties like (in order of increasing fruit size) Red Cherry, Super Sweet 100, Yellow Pear, Roma, Porter, Early Girl, Better Boy, Super Fantastic, and Celebrity.
• Sod for new lawns in southern two-thirds of the state. Wait a couple of weeks along the Red River and in the Panhandle. Wait to seed bermudagrass until May. Soils need to warm considerably.
PRUNE
• Mow your lawn frequently to keep weeds at bay. Many of the rank-growing spring weeds will be discouraged by the mowing and will quickly fade away.
• Spring-flowering shrubs and vines as soon as they finish blooming. It’s the one time per year that you can reshape them to restore their natural forms.
FERTILIZE
• Apply all-nitrogen lawn fertilizer to your shrub and groundcover beds and to flower and vegetable gardens unless a soil test specifically directs otherwise. Look for a fertilizer that has 30-40 percent of its nitrogen in encapsulated or coated slow-release form.
• Apply high-nitrogen, water-soluble fertilizer to flower and vegetable transplants, also to patio pots and hanging baskets.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Aphids on tender new growth of annuals and perennials, shrubs and trees. You can probably wash them off with a hard stream of water, or most organic or inorganic, general-purpose insecticides will eliminate them.
• Snails, slugs, and pillbugs. Use bait or Sevin dust, or sink a pie pan filled with beer to attract and drown them.
• Pre-emergent weedkillers Dimension, Balan, or Halts for the South Plains and the Panhandle to prevent germination of crabgrass and grassburs. (In more southern parts of Texas you have missed the earlier prime application time by 1-4 weeks.) Wherever you are, repeat the application 90 days later for sustained protection.
• If you’re seeing big, bold grassy weeds now, they’re probably rescuegrass and annual bluegrass. There is no product to control them now. They will disappear with warming weather in the next few weeks. Apply pre-emergent granules between August 25 and September 10 to prevent the next generation.