Gardening This Weekend: March 26, 2026

Whatever your gardening love might be and wherever you practice it, there’s plenty to do now that we’re in the middle of springtime. Here are the things I’ve put at the top of the list.

PLANT
• Warm-season vegetables. This is their time for most of the state. Green beans, squash, cucumbers, melons, peppers, corn, and tomatoes. For best production in tomatoes, stay with small and mid-sized varieties such as Celebrity, Porter, Roma, Super Fantastic, Super Sweet 100, Red Cherry and Yellow Pear. Big Boy, Beefsteak, and other huge types are notoriously poor producers in our hot climate.
• Warm-season annuals including marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, wax begonias, pentas, angelonias, and coleus. In South Texas you can add lantanas, firebush, Gold Star Esperanza, moss rose and hybrid purslane to the list but save them for planting later in April in North Texas.
• Nursery stock now. Supplies are at their peak and demands are great. You can expect shortages later in the most popular types.
• Sod or plugs of turfgrass now, but wait a few weeks for warmer soil if you intend to seed bermudagrass.

PRUNE
• Spent flower stalks and clusters from spring-flowering shrubs and vines. Reshape the plants in the process. Avoid shearing them formally into unnatural globes or cubes.
• Mow lawn regularly at recommended height (perhaps lower than you might have expected). That will encourage dense growth of the turf and discourage weed invasion.
• Remove dried flowers from daffodils, narcissus and other spring bulbs, but leave green foliage in place for types that are expected to rebloom next spring. It is needed to make and store food reserves in the bulbs.

FERTILIZE
• Almost all your plants will need high-nitrogen, lawn-type fertilizer now. Don’t be surprised if prices are up due to the conflicts in the Middle East. Use your fertilizer prudently. Your plants need it, but so will our farmers.
• High-nitrogen, water-soluble plant food for container plants and new plantings into landscape beds.
• High-phosphate root-stimulator monthly for plants that were recently planted as bare-rooted or balled-and-burlapped stock.

ON THE LOOKOUT
• Cole crops (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, etc.) with B.t. biological worm spray as soon as you see small green caterpillars (cabbage loopers) eating holes in their leaves.
• Aphids with green, white, yellow, orange, or red pear-shaped bodies clustering in large numbers on new growth and flower buds. Most organic and inorganic insecticides will control them, or you can blast them off with a hard stream of water.
• Snails and slugs feeding at night. You’ll see their slime trails on the ground and on plant leaves. Dust with a snail/slug bait or with Sevin dust. Rake up organic debris where they may be hiding during hot days. Some people use a shallow pan filled with beer or with dry dog food to which they have added water. The pests will be attracted to the smell of fermentation and will drown.
• Broadleafed weeds with a spray product containing 2,4-D. Read and follow label directions for best results and to avoid doing damage to desirable trees and shrubs nearby.