Gardening This Weekend: April 9, 2026

The best gardeners keep tabs on critical tasks of the time, and the tasks of this time are outlined below.

PLANT
• New lawngrasses from sod or plugs. It’s best to wait another couple of weeks in South Texas or even into May in North Texas to seed bermuda – until the soil has warmed.
• Warm-season annual color into beds.
• Patio pots for color in smaller spaces.
• Trees, shrubs, vines, groundcovers. Nurseries are fully stocked now. For best selection and help shop on Thursdays and Fridays before the throngs move in over the weekend.

PRUNE
• Any freeze damage to shrubs so that new growth can be produced from the plants’ bases.
• Spring-blooming shrubs immediately to reshape them before their surges of new growth this season.
• Turf at recommended height to encourage low, dense growth.

FERTILIZE
• Lawn with all-nitrogen fertilizer (30-40 percent of nitrogen in encapsulated or coated slow-release form).
• Trees, shrubs, and probably even flower and vegetable plantings with the same all-N food unless soil tests suggest otherwise.
• High-nitrogen, water-soluble plant food to all potted plants and hanging baskets weekly during the growing season.
• Liquid, high-phosphate root stimulator fertilizer monthly to trees and shrubs that were dug and relocated (with loss of roots) in your landscape.

ON THE LOOKOUT
• Snails, slugs, and pillbugs chewing holes in leaves, stems of tender new growth. Dust plants with Sevin or put out bait for these pests. Reapply if recent growth shows new damage a week or two later.
• Cabbage loopers chewing holes in leaves of Cole family crops (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts). Apply Bacillus thuringiensis biological worm spray or dust as an organic control.
• Clovers, oxalis, dichondra, dollarweed, poison ivy, dandelions, and other non-grassy weeds. Apply a broadleafed weedkiller containing 2,4-D. Read and follow label directions carefully.