Timely Tips – July 2013
Plant: Fall tomatoes. Best varieties are the small and mid-sized types, including Red Cherry, Yellow Pear, Sweet 100, Porter, Super Fantastic and Celebrity. Protect new transplants from afternoon sun for three or four days at the outset. Small and medium-sized pumpkins from seed early in month. Pepper transplants mid- to late-month in most of state. Fall color, including zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, celosia, Joseph’s coat, copper plants, firebush. Warm-season turf from sod, plugs or by seeding. Crape myrtles. Choose while in bloom to ensure proper colors. Transport crape myrtles and other nursery stock home carefully to protect foliage, flowers. Plant at once, and hand-water every day or two through the rest of the summer and early fall.
Prune: Roses monthly to maintain shape, vigor. Remove any rose plants showing Rose Rosette Virus symptoms. Summer perennials to remove old flower stalks and seed heads. Trees as needed to allow more sun to reach grass below. Routine shaping of landscape shrubs, vines and groundcovers. As much as possible, try to allow plants to grow in their natural shapes; avoid formal shearing.
Fertilize: Lawngrasses every eight to 10 weeks with quality, slow-release high-nitrogen (sandy soils) or all-nitrogen (clay soils) fertilizer. Wait until September to feed St. Augustine again to lessen chance of Take All Root Rot. Apply same fertilizer to other landscape, garden plants unless soil test shows you need additional phosphorus. Container plants with each watering (perhaps as often as daily in the heat) with very diluted, water-soluble fertilizer. Chlorotic plants with iron, either in liquid or granular form. Spray foliage in evening after sun is down. Keep spray off masonry, painted surfaces.
On The Lookout: Scale insects on euonymus, hollies, camellias, crape myrtles, foliage plants, (horticultural oils, systemic insecticides). Aphids causing sticky honeydew drippage from pecans, oaks, crape myrtles and others. Leafrollers in vinca, sweetgums, cannas and others (systemic insecticide). Dallisgrass in turf by spot-treating with glyphosate-only herbicide. Tip: cut end out of one-gallon milk bottle and place bottle over dallisgrass clump. Spray within bottle to avoid drift. Glyphosate will not contaminate the soil, so new grass will spread back into the void very quickly. Chinch bugs in hot, sunny parts of St. Augustine turf. Grass will appear dry even after watering. Apply approved turf insecticide. (Imidacloprid is a standard.) Gray leaf spot in St. Augustine. Look for diamond-shaped lesions on leaves, runners. If present, withhold nitrogen until early September. Learn symptoms of moisture stress (yellowed leaves in interiors of large plants, leaf scorch and burned margins). Soak soil thoroughly, and mulch plants well.