Gardening This Weekend: March 5, 2026

It’s nice, once the rigors of day jobs come to an end, to have a few hours to spend out in the landscape and garden. Daylight Saving Time begins this Sunday morning at 2, so let’s see how you might want to spend your extra time outdoors.

PLANT
• Spring-flowering trees, shrubs, and vines while nurseries are well stocked. Protect all nursery stock from highway winds by wrapping them in old sheets or nursery shade fabric or by carrying them in a closed trailer. You simply cannot drive slowly enough.
• Landscape shrubs as you “remodel” or replace plants damaged by recent cold winters or summer droughts. Shop while nurseries have their best supplies.
• Leafy and root vegetables in the northern 75 percent of the state. (Too late in South Texas. Hot weather will catch them before they mature and cause them to be bitter and off flavor.)
• Warm-season vegetables in South and Central Texas. It’s still early to be planting in North Central Texas, but odds are improving daily.
• Warm-season annual color in South and Central Texas, but it faces the same risks in North Central and North Texas. Know the average date of the last killing freeze in your area and respect that date relative to planting.

PRUNE
• Spring-flowering vines and shrubs if needed to remove errant growth, but avoid formal shearing wherever possible.
• Mow your lawn regularly, even if all you have is rank weeds. Many of them will be eliminated simply by mowing. If your lawn is still brown from the winter, you may want to drop the mower down by one notch and “scalp” it to remove the stubble. Put the clippings into the compost or use them as mulch beneath shrubs. Do not send them to the landfill.
• Winter-killed leaves and stem stubble as you reshape plants prior to vigorous spring growth.

FERTILIZE
• New flower, vegetable, and groundcover transplants with water-soluble, high-nitrogen fertilizer for quickest establishment and new growth.
• Lawns in South Texas with high-quality, high-nitrogen or all-nitrogen lawn food. Ideally 30 to 40 percent of that nitrogen should be in slow-release coated or encapsulated form.
• Flowers and vegetables with the same high-nitrogen fertilizer. Soil tests from almost all parts of Texas show soils to be excessively high in phosphorus, middle number of the three-number analysis. It can accumulate to almost toxic levels.

ON THE LOOKOUT
• Application of pre-emergent granules Balan, Dimension, or Halts must be made to your lawn very soon if you expect to prevent germination of crabgrass and grassburs. Repeat the application with a “booster shot” treatment 90 days from now.
• Broadleafed weedkiller spray (containing 2,4-D) can be applied to kill existing non-grassy weeds such as clover, dandelions, chickweed and plantain. Read and follow label directions carefully for best results.
• Aphids will congregate on tender new growth of many flowers, vegetables and shrubs. They will always have pear-shaped bodies. You can probably knock them off the plants with a hard stream of water, but several good general-purpose insecticides are labeled for controlling them.
• Spider mites are turning needles of junipers brown. Thump a sample twig over white paper. If you see tiny specks starting to move about, apply an insecticide labeled for mites to stop them. Check to determine level of control in 7-10 days. Repeat if needed.