Gardening This Weekend: March 27, 2025
I always look at the last weekend of March as one of the most important times of the entire gardening year. Many things suddenly jump onto our list of tasks to accomplish. Here are the most critical among them.
PLANT
• Trees, shrubs, vines, groundcovers while nurseries have their best selections of the year. Transport plants home carefully covering their tender foliage and flowers with nursery shade fabric or old sheets to protect them from highway winds. Better yet, lay them down in a pickup. Best of all, transport them in a closed trailer or truck.
• Warm-season annuals including marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, wax begonias, pentas, angelonias and coleus. In South Texas you can add lantanas, moss rose, firebush, Gold Star esperanza, moss rose and hybrid purslane to the list, but save them for planting in mid-April or later in North Texas. Periwinkles and caladiums do better if planted when it’s much warmer – May or even early June.
• Tomatoes. Timing is critical. Wait too long and you’ll run into summer’s heat. Stay with small-fruiting types. Red Cherry, Super Sweet 100, Red and Yellow Pears, Roma, Porter, Early Girl, Super Fantastic, Better Boy, Celebrity. Avoid Big Boy, Beeksteak and other large-fruiting types. They will not set fruit well in our heat.
• Peppers, bush beans, squash, cucumbers, corn and other warm-season vegetables. Okra, sweet potatoes and southern peas can be planted in South Texas, but wait several weeks in North Texas.
PRUNE
• Dead or damaged branches from trees and shrubs, including stems killed by past winters’ cold. Consumers should wait to prune oaks until mid-July to lessen the chance of spreading oak wilt, but certified arborists can prune emergency cases now. They will know how to protect trees in the process. Seal all cut surfaces of oaks immediately with pruning paint.
• Spring-flowering shrubs and vines to reshape as needed. Avoid formal shearing.
• Remove spent flowers from spring bulbs such as daffodils and narcissus, but leave foliage intact until it turns brown in several weeks.
FERTILIZE
• Soils have warmed enough in most of Texas to feed turfgrass. Apply all-nitrogen fertilizer with 30-40 percent of that nitrogen in slow-release form.
• Same type of all-N food will work with most of your other plants, including trees, shrubs, groundcovers and even annual and perennial flowers and vegetables. One high quality fertilizer may truly “do all.” If you have sandy soil, a soil test may suggest applying a food with a 3-1-2 or 4-1-2 ratio of N-P-K.
• New annual and perennial transplants with liquid or water-soluble, high-N fertilizer weekly for several feedings.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Snails and slugs feeding at night. You’ll see their slime trails on the ground and on plant leaves. Dust with a snail/slug bait. Some people use a shallow pan filled with beer or with dry dog food to which they have added water. The pests will be attracted to the smell and will drown.
• Cabbage loopers chewing holes in leaves of Cole crops (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.). Apply Bacillus thuringiensis (“B.t.”) biological worm treatment.
• Aphids congregating on tender new growth. Most general-purpose organic or inorganic insecticides will control them. You can often wash them away with nothing more than a hard stream of water.
• Non-grassy weeds such as henbit, clover, and chickweed with a broadleafed weedkiller spray. Read and follow label directions for best results and to avoid doing damage to desirable trees and shrubs nearby.