Gardening This Weekend: July 24, 2025
My goal is to help you tend to the most critical gardening tasks of the weekend so you can get back into the house as quickly as possible. The older I’ve gotten, the more I appreciate early morning and evening gardening.
PLANT
• Fall vegetables. Finish setting out pepper transplants and, in South Texas, tomatoes. Green beans, squash, corn, and cucumbers.
• Lawngrasses from sod or, in the case of bermuda, from seed. Prepare a good planting bed by rototilling 2-3 in. deep and raking to a smooth grade that drains away from the house. Be prepared to water for 5 minutes morning and evening for the first 2-3 weeks until the grass is established.
• Interested in planting wildflowers for spring? Order them now so you’ll be ready to sow them in early fall.
PRUNE
• Spring- and early summer-flowering perennials to remove dead leaves, spent flower stalks and seedheads.
• Winter-killed stems from crape myrtles. (This is a message I’ve repeated for months. Why are we still talking about it?)
• Oaks to repair cold and wind damage now that the active season for spread of oak wilt has lessened. Seal all wounds with pruning paint. Leave no stubs when you cut. They will not heal properly.
FERTILIZE
• Container garden plants including hanging baskets with high-nitrogen water-soluble fertilizer every couple of times that you water them. Nutrients leach through the soil in short order, plus plants will use them rapidly if they are growing actively.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Leafrollers attacking many types of plants. They will either roll or fold the leaves together as protection for their larvae. Leaves will turn brown and remain attached to the stems. Biological worm spray Bacillus thuringiensis (B.t.) will control them if you have direct access to them. Otherwise, you’ll need to use a systemic insecticide. Most common host plants: sweet gums, redbuds, pyracanthas, cotoneasters, cannas, and groundcover vinca.
• Lacebugs turning leaves of loropetalums (fringeflowers), azaleas, Boston ivy, pyracanthas, cotoneasters, bur oaks, chinquapin oaks, sycamores and many other types of plants tan. Backs of leaves will have speckles of black excrement and occasionally you will even see the adult lacebugs feeding. Most general-purpose insecticides will control them.
• Chinch bugs attacking St. Augustine. Always in hottest, sunniest parts of lawn. Grass will appear dry, but watering won’t correct the problem. You can see the BB-sized black insects (white diamonds on their backs) if you part the grass and look at the surface of the soil. They’ll be most active at the interface of healthy and declining turf – not in the dead areas. Your local independent retail garden center will stock several products to control them.
• Check new tree and shrub plantings every day or two for signs of drying. If the soil is dry to a depth of 1 inch, soak it deeply. You will probably need to water new plants every 2 or 3 days at current temperatures. Thick-leafed plants like hollies and magnolias don’t really wilt, so it’s easy to miss dry plants and lose them.