Gardening This Weekend: May 8, 2025

Use this as your guideline of things you need to do between now and early next week. This is your list of homework assignments.

PLANT
• New trees, shrubs and groundcovers. Transport your plants home carefully. Protect them from highway winds by covering them with cloth or nursery shade fabric tied securely in place.
• New lawngrasses from sod, seed or plugs. Temperatures are perfect all over the state. Remember that whether you’re sodding or seeding, bed preparation (light tilling and raking) needs to be the same. You do not “over-seed” bermudagrass into an existing lawn. Its seed is far too tiny. And you don’t lay sod over existing grass. You must rototill and rake to establish a good and smooth planting bed.
• Annual color for summer. Here are some of the best. Lantanas, angelonias, pentas, lemon lollipop, caladiums, coleus, wax begonias, Gold Star Esperanza, cosmos, firebush, purple fountaingrass, moss rose, hybrid purslane, fanflowers, and zinnias.
• Perennials while nurseries still have good supplies in pots. The list is lengthy. Do your homework before you go shopping. Choose types with mature heights and colors that will be in harmony with the rest of the plantings.

PRUNE
• Mow lawn at recommended height. Allowing grass to grow tall does not make it more vigorous. Tall grass becomes weaker and allows weeds to invade.
• If your grass has missed a mowing cycle or two because of the rains and is now taller than you would prefer, mow it twice. Raise the mower one notch and mow it the first time. Wait one day for it to acclimate, then drop the mower down to its prior height and mow it again. That will reduce the shock to the turf.
• Erratic spring growth on shrubs and even shade trees. Your goal is to maintain their natural growth form.
• Low-hanging branches on shade trees if they are creating hazards or casting excessive shade on turf and landscape plants below. Surprisingly, just the weight of leaves can pull outer limbs down by many inches, even feet.

FERTILIZE
• Lawns, probably with an all-nitrogen food (unless a Texas A&M soil test recommends otherwise). 30 to 40 percent of that nitrogen should be in slow-release form.
• Trees, shrubs, flowers and vegetables can probably be fed with that same all-nitrogen or high-nitrogen fertilizer. Most Texas soils have excessively high amounts of phosphorus (middle number in the analysis).
• Iron-deficient plants that show the typical yellowed leaves with dark green veins on their newest growth first. Apply iron supplement with sulfur soil acidifier. Keep iron products off masonry and painted surfaces that could be stained a rust color. Sweep or blow it off surfaces.

ON THE LOOKOUT
• Crape myrtle bark scale is showing up across Texas. The white insects appear on twigs of new growth as well as stems and trunks. The scale insects as well as the sooty mold that develops in their sticky honeydew residue are of little harm to the plants but they are very unattractive. Drench soil with systemic insecticide Imidacloprid around drip line. If you apply it between now and May 20 you should be able to prevent them for this year.
• Plum curculios are leaving congealed drips on surface of peach and plum fruit. Larvae of the insect are within the fruit. There is nothing that can be done to save this year’s crop. Application of Malathion when 75 percent of petals have fallen in early spring stops the adult snout beetles from laying their eggs. Pick up fallen fruit in May and June.
• Pecan phylloxera galls causing knots on pecan leaves, then causing them to fall prematurely. There is nothing you can do to stop it now. Application of horticultural oil in late winter will help. As with most other leaf galls of oaks, hackberries, cottonwoods, this pest is not terribly damaging.
• Cabbage loopers chewing holes in leaves of cabbage, broccoli, and other Cole crops. Dust or spray with organic insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis.
• Mushrooms in lawn are there because of all the moisture, also because of decaying organic matter. They present no risk to the turf – there is no call to action.