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April 1–15 Garden Tasks (Central Texas): What to Plant & What to Avoid · ATXGardens Podcast

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hi listeners, I'm Colleen Dieker, landscape consultant and certified arborist at ATXGardens.com.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the ATX Gardens Podcast, where every other week I share simple, timely tips for what to do in your Central Texas garden right now.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you're watching on YouTube, tap like and subscribe for more gardening help.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, gardening friends.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're talking about what to do in the first half of April, and it's a very busy time for gardeners in the middle of spring now.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this episode, as always, is sponsored by my garden consulting business at atxgardens.com.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get to it.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right after I released the last episode, we got a late surprise freeze.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope y'all were prepared.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's important in March to watch the weather forecast and always be ready because we get those sneaky freezes sometimes.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: But now that we're getting into the first half of April, we should be in the clear.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: That should be it for the cold weather, and it's starting to get hot.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you planted tomatoes, peppers, basil, cucumbers, and squash before the cold snap, you might see some cold damage in the form of wilted leaves, little spots, black spots on the leaves, maybe some purple discoloration on the leaves and stems, maybe a purple mixed with some yellow.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you have more than 30% of the leaves or 30% of the plant that's been damaged, and the plant doesn't seem to be recovering or actively growing, it's probably a good idea to remove that plant and replace it with something that's going to do better.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's mostly applies to the vegetable garden.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see a whole lot of damage to the landscape plants because it was a fairly light freeze, but mostly that's gonna apply to the warm season vegetables.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you may want to replace some things if they got cold damaged.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be talking more about what vegetables you can plant at this time of the year later in the episode.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna start off with the woody plants, the trees and shrubs, what's going on with them?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's still a really good time for planting Mediterranean trees like figs, pomegranates, and bay laurels, or tropical woody plants like bougainvias and loquats.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it's too late now to plant other woody plants like shade trees, like for example, oaks, pecans, roses, yeopons, red buds, things like that.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't already have trees and shrubs in your possession, do not acquire more of them.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't buy any more.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wait until September.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know my roses are blooming now and I'm really enjoying them.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you take some time to slow down and really enjoy this time of year.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the middle of spring.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Treat yourself to a nice beverage and sit in your garden and admire it.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't let your garden become just one giant to-do list.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you get to enjoy all of your labor.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do any pruning right now on any trees or shrubs.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Springtime is not the time for any kind of pruning.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard on woody plants to be trimmed when they're growing new leaves.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So wait until summer to do any pruning, especially on oak trees, because this is the height of oak wilt season, and you can spread oak wilt by pruning oak trees at the wrong time of year, and spring is the wrong time of year.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do not plant do not prune any oak trees right now.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Wait until summer.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening in the garden with our fruit tree friends right now?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Early April, there's still some time for grafting, and I still haven't gotten to my grafting that I was planning to do with grapes and nectarines in my yard.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're still in my fridge, so I'm gonna get to that soon.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I mentioned in the last episode, check out the great book.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone by Susan Poisner with Steph Mooma.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll of course have a link to that book in the show notes.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is the time of year to spray your fruit trees.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's all of the palm fruits and stone fruits.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So things like peaches, pears, nectarines, apples, Asian persimmons.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you go ahead and spray those with some kind of holistic garden spray that will help prevent fungal and bacterial diseases from developing on the tree itself and on the developing fruit.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that could be homemade compost tea.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's some good products available that I'll have in the show notes that are these sort of biofungicides that colonize the branches and leaves of the tree and can help block out fungal and bacterial diseases from coming in.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So there's one called actinovate, there's another one called Arbor.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you could also investigate homemade garlic sprays, too.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of good homemade holistic sprays that you can use to support your fruit trees by uh helping to black out fungal and uh bacterial infections.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: So now is the time to do that.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, if you haven't covered the developing fruit with micro mesh or orchard socks yet, you can go ahead and do that to help prevent worms from getting into the fruit.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the time of year when the moths come and lay their eggs on the fruit, and then the eggs will hatch as the fruit is growing, and then the little worms, the little larva from those eggs get into the fruit and eat the inside of the fruit.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a bunch of different moths and their larva that will get into all the different kinds of fruit.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I recommend covering that with a barrier known as micro mesh or sometimes called orchard socks.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll have a link to that in the show notes.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't want to cover the fruits with a physical barrier like micro mesh, you can spray the fruit instead, and you have to spray three times.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you would spray right when the flowers have mostly dropped off of the tree.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So about 75 to 80 percent of the blossoms have dropped, which I covered in the last episode.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, the fruit trees bloom at different times, and this year was kind of weird too.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of trees that bloomed late.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you may still be at the point where your trees still have some blooms on them.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then about 14 days later, which is probably about now, the fruits will start to get into a period called shuck split, where when they're really small, they're sort of covered with a papery covering.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when that papery covering starts to break and splits open, that's called shuck split.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then you spray again at that time to prevent caterpillars and the little worms from eating the stone fruits and your apples and pears and stuff, and then you have to do it again about 10 to 14 days later, which may be getting into the end of April, and I'll remind you in the next episode, too.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you would spray with um something like the takedown garden spray, which again I'll have in the show notes.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you either have to you have three choices.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can either cover the fruits with a physical barrier like micromesh or maggot barrier, or you can spray the whole tree with an organic insecticide, like take down garden spray, and you have to spray three times, or you can just forget about it and eat fruit that has little maggots in it, which is no big deal.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can often, if it's not too bad an infestation, you can often just cut that part of the fruit off that was invaded by little worms.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's totally up to you and your tolerance of ickiness.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the next thing for fruit trees that I want to tell you is that it's time for you, if you have fruit trees, to start emotionally preparing yourself to thin your fruit.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the most important job in the orchard, and it's also the hardest job in the orchard.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: In the next episode, I will talk more in depth about thinning your fruit as it's uh developing because it's really important and nobody does it.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and now it's time for our mid-episode sponsor break.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hey y'all, this is Colleen Dieter with atxgardens.com.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you want personalized help with your landscape, book a consultation with me and we'll walk your yard together, answer all of your questions, and create a plan that feels doable for you.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: This week I helped Kate, who's lived in her home in Northeast Austin for a few years.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: She has heavy clay soil, and the former homeowners installed landscape fabric and rocks in the planting bed by her house.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: She does not like the rocks, and she called them potato rocks.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they do kind of look like potatoes.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the bed is shaded, and all of that fabric and rocks and shade added up to her not being very successful with the plants that she's tried in those areas so far.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I gave her some ideas of how she could reuse the potato rocks in other parts of her yard because disposing of rocks is really tough.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I also explained to her that the fabric needs to be removed to allow air and water to penetrate the soil, and I gave her some tips about how to do that.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I let her know that the soil needs to be amended before planting because the fabric really causes the soil to degrade and makes it hard for the plants to thrive.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have a situation like that where you want to undo some landscaping that the previous homeowners did and you're not sure how to approach it, make an appointment with me today at atxgardens.com.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get back to the episode.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on with the perennials and bulbs in our gardens in the first half of April?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now is a really good time for planting and transplanting all perennials, grasses, bulbs, cacti and succulents, and ground covers.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a really good time to divide all of them too, if they're too crowded, or if some are growing in places where you don't want them, like too close to a walkway or too close to a driveway.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dig them up and start moving them around.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now's the time.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Something to think about getting into April.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you're planting a bunch of new perennials or ornamental grasses, things like that this spring, consider how you're going to water them this summer.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Make a plan now and start gathering up the supplies that you need and start getting a system set up before it gets too hot outside.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: I really love soaker hoses, and uh, I also have a little round yellow sprinkler that I'll put in the show notes for y'all.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: That they're really great for big areas of perennial plantings.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to grab some quick connects, too.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those will also be in the show notes so that you can easily attach your garden hose to the sprinkler or to your soaker hoses.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so start thinking about that now before it gets really hot and you're rushing to make sure that everything stays watered this summer.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So now moving on to the vegetable and herb garden.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is a very busy time for vegetable gardeners.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good time now to plant all of the warm season crops.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So things like tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers should be planted as small plants.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else you can plant from seed, like bush beans, pole beans, black-eyed peas, southern peas, edamame, corn, cucumbers, summer squash, melons of all kinds, especially watermelons, cantaloupes, winter squashes like pumpkins, gourds, cushaws, butternuts, etc.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: All of that can get planted directly into the ground with seeds.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a good time to keep planting those warm season greens like Malochia.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that can be planted directly into the ground using seeds right now.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's at the very early point of being able to plant the really hot season plants like okra and sweet potatoes, but you can get them started now if you want to.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can plant okra directly in the ground using seeds, and then sweet potatoes are planted using slips, and a slip is just a little sliver of stem with a leaf attached, and you can buy bundles of sweet potato slips from uh some of the nurseries, or you can order them online.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I recommend making sure that they are uh they've been treated for sweet potato weevils.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you get slips, uh make sure that you get ones that have been treated for sweet potato weevils, and that way you know that your crop won't fall victim to a weevil infestation.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Asparagus can still be planted now from plants that are grown in containers.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when it comes to the herbs, now is a really good time to plant all of the warm season herbs from transplants.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that includes like the Mediterranean herbs like rosemary, oregano, thyme, lavender, lemon balm, catnip, and mint.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: They're all good choices for planting this time of year.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some that you can plant directly into the ground using seeds like borage and basil.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can also plant warm season flowers planted directly into the ground from seed, like cilogas, gomfrinas, uh amaranth, sunflowers, zinnias, and cosmos, poppalo, which is the warm season substitute for cilantro, can be planted from seed now as well.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so check that out.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you keep like to keep annuals, annual bedding plants in pots, or maybe you have a designated part of your yard where you'll switch out annual bedding plants, uh, now's the time to switch out cool season bedding plants like violas, pansies, snapdragons, and dianthus with warm season annual bedding plants like impatience, coleus, uh begonias, purslane, and pentas.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those would be planted as small plants as transplants.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: On the last episode, I talked a little bit about lawn care.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna revisit lawn care.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you are still growing turf grass and you care about your turf grass and you want to care for your little patch of turf grass, put your mower blade on the highest setting possible so that you're leaving the blades of grass very long when you mow it.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do not mow the grass too short.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: That will kill it.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a very common mistake that people make is they mow the grass too low.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: So mow as high as possible and start mowing once every two weeks or less.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's another common mistake that people make is they mow the grass too often.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So try to leave it high and mow as rarely as possible, and it'll be better for the grass in Austin.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's different in other parts of Texas, but in central Texas, that's the best way to do it.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure your mower blade is very sharp.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't already this spring, fertilize the turf grass with an organic dry lawn fertilizer like Sustain 824 or MicroLife 624, and then water in that fertilizer with Medina Plus Soil Activator or homemade compost tea.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you want more instructions about that fertilizing, I talked about that in the last episode, so go and re-listen to that episode.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But you only have to fertilize one time in either March or April in the spring.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be more fertilizing later in the year.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I will, of course, cover that when the time is right in uh this podcast.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna start doing something a little new in each episode here at the end, and that's an activism section of the podcast where I'm gonna ask you to uh take action in your garden and in your community.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: This spring marks four years since Putin's army invaded Ukraine.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine, and sunflower seed oil is a major export of that country.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Since the invasion, the sunflower has become a world.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Worldwide symbol of support, solidarity, and defiance for the Ukrainian people.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Plant some sunflower seeds in your garden, and as I said earlier, April is the time for planting sunflowers in Austin.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And take a moment to reflect on what else is lost during a war.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: In addition to the devastating loss of human life, what about the losses of food crops, trees, gardening and farming culture, and varieties of plants that go extinct because they're not grown anywhere else?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that wraps up today's episode.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Check the show notes for links to everything I mentioned.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this, share it with a fellow Central Texas gardener.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: It really helps the show to grow.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colleen with atxgardens.com.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to the ATX Gardens podcast.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: For show notes, tools, and to book a consultation with me, visit atxgardens.com.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Happy gardening.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.