Gardening This Weekend: October 30, 2025

Fall has finally found us. With it come tasks that we save for cooler weather. Here are the ones I put at the top of my list.

PLANT
• Pansies, pinks, ornamental cabbage and kale, snapdragons and other winter-resistant annuals. South Texas gardeners can add sweet alyssum, Iceland poppies, hardy cyclamen, stocks and several other cool-season types to the list. Your local Texas Certified Nursery Professional can give you reliable advice.
• Just about last call for planting ryegrass seed for bare ground and as overseeding where you want green turf this winter.
• Nursery trees and shrubs as final fall markdowns are offered. You’ll have a big head start on Growing Season ’26 by starting now.
• Daffodils, grape hyacinths at any time to provide early spring color. By comparison, tulips and Dutch hyacinths require 45 days (or more) of “pre-chilling” at 45 degrees in the fridge to give them enough artificial winter to bloom properly. Plant them no earlier than mid-December. (Do the math on those dates. You need to get the bulbs into the chiller in the next week or two.)

PRUNE
• Perennials to remove dead seed heads and leaves.
• Mow lawn at same height you’ve been mowing all year. Bag fallen tree leaves in the process and use the shredded leaves as mulch or in the compost pile.
• Reshape houseplants as you bring them indoors for the winter.

FERTILIZE
• Ryegrass and fescue with all-nitrogen lawn fertilizer to take advantage of good fall growing conditions.
• New annual color plantings with water-soluble, high-nitrogen plant food to keep them growing vigorously during warm spells of fall.

ON THE LOOKOUT
• Brown patch (now being called “large patch” by plant pathologists) is becoming common across Texas as cooler weather and rains return. It erupts as circular 18- to 24-inch patches in St. Augustine (also fescue and zoysia). The grass blades pull loose easily from the runners. Roots and runners are unaffected, so the grass overall will bounce back, but the grass is weakened enough that extreme cold in winter can kill affected areas. Control it with a fungicide labeled for patch funguses.
• Newly germinated cool-season broadleafed weeds such as clover and dandelions can be eliminated during warm, dry spells over the next 3-4 weeks by spraying with a broadleafed herbicide containing 2,4-D. Read and follow label directions carefully regarding temperature and rainfall.
• Be wary of all caterpillars on shrubs and trees or that might have fallen to the ground at this time of year. Texas is home to several types of stinging caterpillars, most notably (but not exclusively) puss caterpillars, also commonly known as asps.
• Watch, too, for snakes that have taken up comfortable residence in stacks of firewood, leftover brick and stone, and piles of leaves and building materials. Venomous types such as copperheads are especially common this time of year.