Gardening This Weekend: July 10, 2025
Here’s that shorter list of things to get done here in mid-summer.
PLANT
• Summer and fall annuals, but stick with types that can handle the hottest of weather. Lantana, cleome, amaranthus, purslane, moss rose, copper plant, Cora XDR periwinkles, purple fountaingrass, pentas, angelonias, fanflower, purpleheart and others.
• Crape myrtles while in full flower in nurseries so you can get the exact shade that you want. Check the nursery label carefully to be sure the variety you’re choosing will fit the space you have available for it.
PRUNE
• Crape myrtles to remove sprouts that are coming up from their bases. On the other hand, if your plants have suffered freeze dieback, prune out the dead wood and train these shoots as the new trunks. Don’t waste your time trimming off seed heads. It does not speed up their reblooming.
• Pinch growing tips out of coleus, basil, lambs ear and santolina plants that have tried to bloom. Flowers stop production of new leaves. Pinch the “Jack-in-the-pulpit” flowers out of caladiums and elephant ears for the same reason.
FERTILIZE
• Bermudagrass to keep it low, dense and dark green. It’s best not to feed St. Augustine until early September due to likelihood of gray leaf spot development.
• Container plants regularly. Their soil reservoirs are limited, so nutrients drain away quickly. Use water-soluble, high-nitrogen type food every third or fourth time that you water. Supplement it with a timed-release product as well.
• Iron-deficient plants that show yellowing leaves with dark green veins most prominently on the newest growth first. Use iron combined with sulfur, but keep all iron products away from masonry and painted surfaces that could be stained.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Chinch bugs show up in the hottest, sunniest parts of your St. Augustine lawn. The grass will appear dry, but watering won’t bring it around. You can see the BB-sized black insects with white diamonds on their backs on the soil surface if you look at the boundaries of the dying and healthy grass. Turf insecticides kill chinch bugs quickly.
• Gray leaf spot is showing up in St. Augustine lawns. It is a by-product of excessive nitrogen in the presence of hot summer weather. Affected St. Augustine turns yellow in large sweeps across the lawn. Withhold all nitrogen until early September. Apply Azoxystrobin or other labeled turf fungicide to fight the disease.
• Webworms and other colonizing caterpillars in pecans, persimmons, walnuts, mulberries, Texas mountain laurels, possumhaw hollies, and other shrubs and trees. Control with Bacillus thuringiensis (B.t.) or inorganic insecticide.
• Leafrollers in pyracanthas, trailing vinca groundcover, cannas, redbuds, sweetgums, and other trees, shrubs, and miscellaneous landscape plants. Systemic insecticide offers best control.