Gardening This Weekend: November 6, 2025
We’ll be getting precariously close to the first killing freeze in parts of Texas over the weekend. With that in mind, here are the early-to-mid-November things you’ll want to do in the next several days.
PLANT
• Finish plantings of ryegrass for temporary cover. It will be slow to germinate as temperatures turn cold.
• Cool-season color from annuals such as pansies, pinks, ornamental cabbage and kale, also snapdragons. South Texans can add in English daisies, stocks, sweet alyssum, Iceland poppies, California poppies and wallflowers
• Daffodil, narcissus and jonquil bulbs, also grape hyacinths now. Continue chilling tulips and Dutch hyacinths for a total of 45 days at 45 degrees, planting them the last two weeks of December.
• Trees and shrubs now. Nurseries have sales going on. Get the bargains and get your new plants in the ground so they’ll have months to get established before summer.
PRUNE
• Remove spent flower stalks, dead leaves from perennial beds.
• Do light shaping of shrubs but save major pruning for late winter.
• Continue mowing lawn at same height as you have used the rest of the growing season. Raising the mower does not improve the lawn’s winter hardiness. It actually helps weeds get started.
• Trim and reshape patio plants as you bring them indoors for the winter.
FERTILIZE
• Ryegrass and fescue with all-nitrogen food now during their prime growing season.
• Pansies, pinks and other winter annuals with high-nitrogen, water-soluble plant food each time that you water them.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Check patio plants closely for insects such as scales, white flies, mealy bugs and spider mites. Treat plants while they’re still outdoors.
• Run fallen tree leaves through the mower, then use them as mulch around shrubs and perennials or put them into the compost pile. Do not send them to the landfill.
• Brown patch (now referred to as large patch by university plant pathologists) is showing up in St. Augustine turf across Texas. It appears in rounded patches 18 to 24 inches across. Blades pull loose easily from runners. Discontinue all evening waterings. Apply fungicide labeled for patch diseases.
• Clover, dandelions, chickweed, henbit and other cool-season, broadleafed weeds are up and growing now. Spray them with a broadleafed herbicide (containing 2,4-D) on a warm day.