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Even though it is January, (although it feels like April this week), our garden to-do lists are surprising long! This week I’d like to catch you up on the chores you should attend to this month to help prepare your yards and gardens for a colorful and fruitful spring!
January is a good time to dig garden beds for spring planting. Mix in a generous amount of compost to ensure rich and healthy soil for your plants. You can also divide ornamental grasses and daylilies. Nothing beats the gift of a divided perennial! You can also prune peach and plum trees into a bowl shape so light and air can reach all branches. Also prune deadwood, lower limbs, suckers, and crossed limbs from shade trees. There is no need to top the trees. This includes crapemyrtles. Don’t commit crape-murder by hard pruning the large branches.
This month is also a good time to plant fruit and bare root nut trees, roses, asparagus and onions. Do not plant your onions too deep like I did last year! Plant more ornamental cabbages, pansies, and snapdragons for winter color as well. You can divide crowded summer and fall perennials too. With a gardening to-do list like this, it’s starting to feel like spring!
You can also fertilize cool season annuals, vegetables, and winter flowering plants. If you still have time and energy this month, clean out flower pots with soapy water and soak them in a 5 percent bleach solution. The bird feeders, houses, and baths could also use a little cleaning while you’ve already got your rubber gloves on!
Scale insects can be a real problem for camellias, crape myrtles, fruit trees, and other woody plants. Now is a good time to spray a dormant oil to reduce and possibly prevent a spring infestation. It is recommended to spray two to four times in total at 7 to 10 day intervals. Spray the undersides of the leaves as well as the branches where many of the insects hide.
Often times scale infestations go unnoticed until the tree begins to decline. The little bugs spend most of their lives in one place, not moving around so they’re easy to overlook. They damage plants by sucking out plant juice, often leaving yellow spots on the tops of the leaves. A heavily infested tree can become quite weak and more susceptible to other insect and disease pressure. Treating your trees now will go a long way to keeping them healthy during the growing season.
As Texas gardeners, we have to keep in mind our unique climate and soil type when shopping for and growing plants. Many gardening books and magazines are from other areas of the country where growing conditions are quite different from ours. Reading gardening books and magazines written by Texan and other southern state authors is a great way to learn how to succeed as a gardener in Texas.
This week we are lucky enough to have the editor of the Texas Gardener magazine come to Nacogdoches to share his love and knowledge of gardening with us! Jay White, Editor of Texas Gardener based out of Brenham will be at the Pineywoods Native Plant Center Thursday evening for the Les Reeves Lecture Series. His talk is titled “Home Garden Trends. Average Gardeners, Mean Vegetables and Distributed Benefits.” The talk begins at 7:00 but come early at 6:30 for snacks and a chance to meet other plant lovers. There will also be an exciting plant raffle to follow the lecture. See you there!
Lacey Russell is a freelance garden writer. She can be reached at alicecreek .
Lacey Russell is a freelance garden writer. She can be reached at alicecreek .