Gardening This Weekend: May 22, 2025
Maybe you’ll be able to squeeze in a few hours for these activities between now and the time you go back to work early next week.
PLANT
• New turf now from sod, seed or plugs. Prepare a smooth and level planting bed for the new grass, and keep it uniformly moist at all times until it is well rooted.
• Hot-weather annuals now. Let your Texas Certified Nursery Professional show you the types best able to fend off the Texas summer conditions.
• Summer- and fall-blooming perennials from 1-gal. pots in local nurseries now. Inventories are closing out quickly. If you see what you like, grab it while you can.
• New trees and shrubs. Watch for significant markdowns as nurseries reduce inventories before summer. Cover the plants with scraps of nursery shade fabric or old sheets to protect the tender new growth from highway winds. Plant immediately and water by hand every 2-3 days all summer and into the fall.
PRUNE
• Any left-over winter damage from shrubs and trees to reshape them as they regrow the next several weeks.
• Errant spring growth from shrubs, vines. Avoid formal shearing whenever possible.
• Pinch out growing tips of coleus, copper plants, Mexican bush salvias, mums, fall asters, and other annuals and perennials to keep them compact.
• Spent flower stalks and browned foliage on spring perennials now that they have finished blooming. Leave green foliage in place to store food for next year’s flowers.
FERTILIZE
• All turf if it’s been more than 8 weeks. Use all-nitrogen lawn food with 30 to 40 percent of the nitrogen in encapsulated or coated, slow-release form. Your last feeding of St. Augustine should be by mid-June to lessen chances of gray leaf spot fungus during the summer.
• Same high-quality lawn food to shrubs, trees, and groundcover beds to promote late spring growth before summer.
• Patio pots and hanging baskets with diluted, water-soluble, high-nitrogen plant food every time you water them to keep them growing vigorously. Supplement with timed-release fertilizer for sustained feeding.
• Treat iron deficiency (yellowed leaves with dark green veins – appearing on the newest growth first) with an iron/sulfur additive.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Crape myrtles with soil drench of Imidacloprid systemic insecticide immediately to prevent crape myrtle bark scale, also crape myrtle aphids. See special feature on this topic last week.
• It soon will be time for second application of pre-emergent weedkiller granules (Balan, Dimension, or Halts) to prevent germination of crabgrass and grassburs in turf. Apply June 5-15, but start looking now as supplies will not be as plentiful as back in late winter. Note: If you did not make first application in late February or early March, this “booster-shot” application will be useless.
• Chiggers are, or soon will be, active in bermuda and other grasses and weeds. Rather than trying to spray everywhere, it’s usually easier just to apply DEET repellent to your feet, ankles and legs, also to your socks and pants.
• Seiridium canker continues to kill Leyland, Italian, and Arizona cypresses. Unfortunately, we have no product that will prevent or control it. Be forewarned not to plant these trees. This disease has become epidemic across Texas.