Gardening This Weekend: May 1, 2025
Garden centers will be open bright and early tomorrow, before the big weekend crowds. Here are things you may want to put on your list – so you can get your shopping done in anticipation.
PLANT
• Summertime annuals, including lantanas, angelonias, pentas, lemon lollipop, caladiums, coleus, wax begonias, Gold Star Esperanza, cosmos, firebush, purple fountaingrass, moss rose, hybrid purslane, fanflowers, and zinnias, among many others.
• Perennials from quart and gallon containers. This list is even more extensive because nurseries offer types that are colorful at all seasons. Shop soon, however, before selections wind down.
• Groundcovers into well-prepared beds to take advantage of the burst of spring and early summer growth.
• New trees and shrubs but be prepared to water them deeply by hand twice a week for this first year until their roots become established.
• New turf from sod, plugs, or seed. Rototill the ground prior to planting sod or seed. Water lightly morning and evening for the first 10-14 days until roots get a good start.
PRUNE
• Mow lawn at recommended height. Common bermuda at 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 inches. Hybrid bermuda heights will depend on the variety, generally 1/4- to 3/4-inch. You will need a reel mower in most cases. Zoysias at 2 to 2-1/2 inches. Buffalograss and fescue at 3 to 4 inches.
• Spring-flowering shrubs and vines to restore natural shape now that they’re through blooming.
• Dead flower stalks from spring-blooming perennials. Leave foliage in place until it turns yellow, then brown.
• Dead trunks from crape myrtles. Many remain from the past several winters, some weak and with sparse foliage. Others are completely bare. In many cases the plants should be cut to the ground and new shoots encouraged to develop into strong, vigorous trunks.
FERTILIZE
• Soil tests in most of Texas show that our clay soils have excessive quantities of phosphorus, middle number of fertilizer analyses. Don’t be surprised then, if the recommendation comes back that you apply an all-nitrogen fertilizer for all the plants that you are growing, including lawn and landscape plants, and even flower and vegetable gardens. Choose a type that has 30 to 40 percent of that nitrogen in slow-release form (“coated” or “encapsulated.”)
• Water-soluble, complete-and-balanced analysis food each time that you water patio containers and hanging baskets.
• Iron additive with sulfur soil acidifier to correct yellowed, chlorotic plants showing iron deficiency. Symptoms include yellowed leaves with dark green veins most pronounced on the newest growth first (ends of branches). Keep iron products off masonry surfaces that could be stained.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Chiggers will begin to show up in South Texas soon, in North Texas in a week or two. Rather than trying to spray everything around you, it’s usually easier just to apply a DEET repellent to your legs, arms and clothing before you go outdoors. You’ll be protecting yourself from mosquitoes at the same time.
• Cabbage loopers eating holes in leaves of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and other Cole crops. Dust leaves or spray plants with Bacillus thuringiensis, otherwise known as “B.t.” organic insecticide.
• Aphids will congregate on tender new growth of many types of plants. Recognize them by their pear-shaped bodies and twin “exhaust pipes” sticking out from their bodies. Most are pinhead sized. Colors vary from green and yellow to black, orange, and almost white. You can blast them off with a strong stream of water, or almost any organic or inorganic insecticide will control them.
• This is looking like a bad year for Italian cypress, Leyland cypress and Blue Point junipers. They are being ravaged by disease. Seridium canker is attacking the two cypresses and Phomopsis canker is attacking the juniper. There is no control for either disease. Trim out the dead wood and try as much as you can to reshape the impacted plant. It will, however, be difficult.