Gardening Tip

May   

Blooms, blooms, blooms everywhere you look! Time to start planning and planting summer and fall color to continue the beautiful show!

Plant: 

Grass: This is  the best month to start any warm season turf grass; remember to prepare your soil well prior to seeding or sodding. 

Vegetables: Hot weather vegetables such as sweet potatoes, okra and southern peas. Harvest what you have already grown, and any extra can be donated to a local food bank!  

Herbs: Plant herbs every where: in containers, in your vegetable or flower bed...anywhere they will have ample room to grow and get sufficient sunlight. 

Annuals: use annuals to help decorate for your outdoor entertaining for Mother's Day, graduation or Memorial Day. Pick a them such as school colors or red/white/blue and use in a bed or container to create an instant "party" mood. Also look forward to the summer and add annuals that will endure the hot sun and heat: marigolds, zinnias, pentas, and moss rose are perfect choices for full sun. Brighten your shady beds with gorgeous coleus, begonias, impatiens, caladiums and elephant ears.

Perennials:  add summer and fall "bloomers" to your landscape to continue the colorful show.  

Trees. Shrubs, Groundcovers, vines: Be sure to select ones that fit into your landscape based on mature height and width. Be prepared to hand water several times during the first week of summer in our landscape. 

Prune:

Prune and shape shrubs and vines that have finished flowering.

Cut any spring growth that is straying from the line/form shape that you want.

Thin peach and plum trees. Remove fruit so that any remaining on the tree are approx 5-6 inches apart to improve size and quality.

Pinch growing tips of blackberries, Mexican bush sage, fall asters and mums to encourage more compact growth.

Remove all flower buds from coleus, basil, caladiums, dusty miller, santolina and lamb's ear as these flowers stop vegetative growth, allowing the plant to deteriorate. 

Lawns: 

MOW! tall grass becomes thin and week and more prone to weeds.

For healthy lawns, do not mow too low. St. Augustine should be mowed at 2-2.5" and Bermuda t 1.5". 

Fertilize with a quality all Nitrogen fertilizer formulated for N. Texas clay soils. You can use this same fertilizer on your trees, shrubs and flowering plants. 

Look out for and treat for Nutsedge, powdery mildew, black spot, Take All Root Rot and webworms. 

Come see us at the nursery for the RIGHT product for your landscape problem!