Gardening This Weekend: May 14, 2026
Here’s my list of things gardeners should do over the next several days. See how it compares with yours.
PLANT
• Crape myrtles. They’re arriving by the dozens in your favorite nursery. Watch them come into bloom, then nab your favorite colors. Check the plants’ mature sizes as you buy, however, to be sure it’s a fit for your space. Full sun for best bloom.
• Hot-weather annuals. That list is filling out quickly as temperatures climb. Caladiums, coleus, begonias, angelonias, Dahlberg daisies, fanflowers, pentas, lantanas, purple fountaingrass, ‘Cora’ vincas (because of their resistance to disease), alternantheras, ornamental sweet potatoes, and others. Let a Texas Certified Nursery Professional at a local independent retail garden center help you.
• Warm-weather perennials such as daylilies, cannas, yarrows, Shasta daisies, coneflowers, Gloriosa daisies, mallows, summer phlox, and others while nurseries still have good supplies.
• New turfgrass from sod, sprigs, or plugs, bermuda from seed. Remember that our most shade-tolerant grass is St. Augustine, and it must have at least 6 hours of direct sunlight daily to hold its own, especially in colder areas where it turns brown in the winter. If you’ve already lost St. Augustine beneath a large tree, then replaced it with fresh sod and subsequently lost it again, don’t waste more money. Switch to a shade-tolerant groundcover.
PRUNE
• Pinch growing tips out of fall asters, Mexican bush sage, mums, copper plants, coleus and other plants that will grow tall and lanky if you do not.
• Reshape your spring-flowering shrubs and vines. Do so lightly, however, because they’ve already produced a lot of new growth. Try to avoid unnatural square or round shapes.
FERTILIZE
• Apply high-nitrogen or all-nitrogen plant food to trees, shrubs, vines, groundcovers, annuals, perennials and turf. 30 to 40 percent of that nitrogen should be in a coated or encapsulated, slow-release form. Surprisingly, soil test results coming back from the TAMU lab have shown for decades that the only fertilizer we needed to be adding to most plants growing in clay soils was nitrogen – that we already had excessive quantities of the middle number (phosphorus).
• Patio pots and hanging baskets with water-soluble, high-nitrogen fertilizer every week or two. Supplement it with a long-lasting, timed-release product.
• Use iron/sulfur soil acidifier product to correct iron deficiency. (Yellowed leaves with dark green veins, most prominent on newest growth first.)
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Poor fruit set on tomatoes could be due to lack of pollination. Try thumping the flower clusters every couple of days with your finger, much as you’d thump a paper wad to send it scooting across a tabletop. That vibration will shake the pollen loose when it’s done mid-morning. Tomatoes are not pollinated by bees.
• Blossom-end rot is already showing on tomatoes. The ends of the fruit farthest from the stems are becoming sunken and turning dried and brown. This is almost always due to irregular and insufficient water. In very sandy soils it’s also possible that a shortage of calcium can add to the problem.
• Chiggers are microscopic, but they’re abundant in bermuda that has not been mowed recently, also in weeds in fields, roadsides and even parks. Apply DEET repellent to your legs and feet, also to the outsides of your socks and shoes. That’s much easier and more cost effective than trying to spray your entire universe.
• Same DEET repellent is the best way to deter mosquitoes. Yes, there are other ways of keeping them from biting you, but they’re not nearly as dependable. With potentially fatal viruses involved with mosquito bites, go with the best repellent.