Gardening This Weekend: October 23, 2025
Here are your homework assignments for this last full week of October across Texas.
PLANT
• Spring bulbs. Daffodils and grape hyacinths now. Tulips and Dutch hyacinths go into the fridge at 45F until mid-December to give them “pre-chilling” to simulate the winter that Texas cannot provide. They must have the cold.
• Winter color from pansies, violas, pinks, snapdragons, ornamental kale and cabbage. South Texans can also plant sweet alyssum, petunias, stocks, wallflowers, Iceland poppies and ornamental Swiss chard.
• Nursery stock – trees and shrubs as nurseries reduce inventories before winter. It’s a big help to you, because you get bigger plants for less money (close-out sales), and the plants are better established when next summer blasts in.
PRUNE
• Keep mowing turf at same height right up to frost. Letting grass “get tall” before winter does nothing to improve its winter hardiness. It weakens the grass and invites rampant weed growth.
• Dead limbs from pecans, live oaks, and other trees that may have been damaged by cold, injury, or other causes from prior years. You can still identify them now, but you won’t be able to once healthy branches lose leaves. Large limbs are very heavy and can do a great deal of damage. Have a certified arborist remove them if you don’t know how or don’t have the proper equipment.
• Remove dead stubble from perennial gardens to keep landscape tidy.
FERTILIZE
• New annual color transplants with high-nitrogen, water-soluble food to get them off to a quick start. Repeat every couple of weeks.
• Fescue and ryegrass turf with all-nitrogen lawn food containing high percentage of slow-release nitrogen (for sustained feeding).
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Insect pests on patio pots and hanging baskets you intend to bring into the house or greenhouse. Treat them while you can control them outdoors.
• Treat around the foundation of your home for invading pests, also against baseboards and other entry points indoors. Read and follow label directions carefully. Replace damaged weatherstripping.
• Stinging caterpillars (puss caterpillars, also known as asps, also Io moths, Hagg moths, Saddleback moths, and others) may be lurking on shrubs and trees this fall. Learn what they look like and watch for those larvae. It will be the bristles on their bodies that carry the painful liquids. Most can be controlled with general-purpose insecticides, also with B.t. biological worm control (organic).
• Apply broadleafed weedkiller spray (containing 2,4-D) as a spot treatment to eliminate young, non-grassy weeds that are starting to grow in your lawn and landscape. Read and follow label directions carefully.