Gardening This Weekend: April 24, 2025
I certainly haven’t been in every city in Texas this spring. Yet! But those that I have look like they all could use a little tuning up of their landscapes and gardens. The past several winters and summers have taken a toll, and nobody is going to make the repairs unless we do. Here are the things I have seen as being the most pressing for the days ahead.
PLANT
• New lawns from sod or plugs. Study the various options for your part of Texas and be sure you’re choosing the best type for your needs.
• Trees, shrubs, vines and groundcovers now to take advantage of spring growth spurts. Protect their foliage from highway winds on the way home from the nursery. You absolutely cannot drive slowly enough to avoid damage otherwise.
• Summer annual color to replace winter flowers. There are several dozen good choices. Do your homework before you go shopping. If in doubt, ask for help from a Texas Certified Nursery Professional.
PRUNE
• Oaks, maples, crape myrtles, pomegranates and other shrubs and trees that have suffered freeze and drought damage and dieback. Big limb removal should be left to certified arborists with credentials, experience, and insurance. It is OK to remove dead branches from oaks even during the springtime, but you should still seal the cuts with pruning paint. If your trimming of crape myrtles is extensive, it might be better to cut them to the ground and retrain the new shoots that develop.
• Spring-blooming shrubs and vines as needed for reshaping. Use lopping shears and avoid formal shapes.
FERTILIZING
• Patio pots and hanging baskets with high-nitrogen, water-soluble fertilizer every week or two to keep them growing actively. Supplement it with slow-acting, timed-release fertilizer pellets as well.
• Almost all plants, including turf, landscape plants, flowers and vegetables with all-nitrogen or high-nitrogen plant food. Perhaps surprisingly, soil tests show that nitrogen is usually the only major element that is deficient in most Texas soils, so almost all your plants will do best given a high-quality lawn fertilizer.
• Iron-deficient plants with iron/sulfur product that will also help lower soil pH. Keep iron products off masonry and painted surfaces that could end up with a rust-colored stain.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Take all root rot (TARR) is showing up commonly in Texas lawns. Grass in infected turf is slow to green up. Irregular patches are yellowed, and runners pull loose easily from the soil. Roots are short and very dark. Apply fungicide Azoxystrobin to affected areas. Be sure soil drains well in those spaces.
• Seridium canker has caused large sections of Italian cypress, Leyland cypress and other conifers to die. I have seen it many places in traveling around North Central Texas this week, and from questions I’m being asked, it is all across Texas currently. Plant pathologists do not offer much hope other than pruning out infected branches and doing whatever we can to improve drainage around the plants. There is no fungicide that will stop its spread.
• Cabbage loopers chewing holes in leaves of cabbage, broccoli and other Cole crops. Apply Bacillus thuringiensis spray or dust. The adult of the caterpillars is a lovely small, white butterfly. I’m seeing a good many currently.