• March Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or March Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• February Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or February Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• January Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or January Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• December Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or December Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• November Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or November Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• October Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or October Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• September Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or September Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• August Conventonial Planning Guide (PDF) or August Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• July Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or July Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• June Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or June Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• May Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or May Organic Planning Guide (PDF)
• April Conventional Planning Guide (PDF) or April Organic Planning Guide (PDF)

• Successful Onion Planting (PDF), Successful Potato Planting (PDF), Successful Asparagus Planting-Growing (PDF)
• Creating and Herb Garden (PDF) and Best Herbs for North Texas (PDF)
• Color Bowl Class (PDF)
• Plants that Attract Hummingbirds (PDF)
• Tree Care for the First Two Years
• Rose List and Description
• Palm Care in North Texas
• Fruit, Nut, and Berry Selection, Transplanting and Maintenance in North Texas (PDF)
• Garden Soils and Vegetable Selection in North Texas (PDF)
• Create an Easy, Fast & Economical Raised Bed (PDF)
• The Organic Yard - Making the Transition from Conventional Gardening (PDF)
• Act Now on Palms to Reduce Damage from Winter Weather (PDF)
  

Q: What's leaving holes in my leaves?

A: It could be more than one kind of critter - but chewing caterpillars are active right now, as are slugs and snails. Ask one of our nursery professionals for the most likely pest to be bothering your particular plant. Slugs and snails can be controlled with our Sluggo slug bait, which is a pet-friendly slug bait, or our Hi-Yield Slug and Snail bait, a conventional metalaldehyde bait. Caterpillars can be safely and thoroughly controlled with our Thuricide product, an effective organic control that only kills leaf-chewing caterpillars.

Q: Why are my rose blooms browning before they open? (or gardenia, or magnolia...)

A: Thrips are very active in late April and May, and suck sap from the petals of your blooms before the blooms properly open. Since the pests are deep inside the tight-wrapped buds, it's hard to contact them with normal pesticides. Use a systemic pesticide to get control - Isotox, Di-Syston, or our ferti-lome Systemic Insect Drench, and prune the worst damaged blooms off the plant. For our organic customers, prune all current blooms off the plants, and begin spraying with a preventative Neem oil application once every two weeks.

Q: What are the weird looking round growths on the (leaf, twig) of my tree?

A: These are galls, normally caused by tiny stinging insects very early in the season. They disfigure twigs and damage individual leaves but rarely do any serious damage. The correct thing to do? Don't worry much about them. There's nothing much you can do at this point and the plants are not normally badly damaged by them, losing at most a leaf here, a twig there. Make sure you don't confuse these galls for scale insects, a more serious problem on plants - the galls are actually part of the leaf or stem, the scale insects glue themselves to the leaf or stem and are not part of the plant. Scale should be sprayed for with a summerweight horticultural oil at this point, or a systemic root drench insecticide should be applied, or both in extreme cases.

Q: What is this (black spot on my rose, white powder on my crape myrtle, spot on my indian hawthorn)?

A: These are fungal diseases flourishing in cool temperatures and rainy season on these plants, particularly if they're not planted in full sun with good airflow. Several fungicides work well on these problems, but we prefer our ferti-lome Broad Spectrum and our ferti-lome Systemic fungicides, containing Daconil and Banner.

This week, we're going over a few tips about fertilization! Many people aren't clear on what needs fertilizing, what fertilizers do, and why they should use them.

What do the numbers on fertilizer mean?
The three main numbers on fertilizer refer to, in order -

• Nitrogen (N) : Nitrogen is necessary for healthy, green leaf growth! Plants that "park" and just don't grow are often lacking this, particularly if they are pale in color.
• Phosphate (P2O5) : Phosphorus is all about healthy blooming and rooting, and is required for photosynthesis.
• Potash (K2O) : Potassium is required for the overall health of the plant in many ways. It won't dramatically increase your blooming or leaf growth the way the other two nutrients will, but a plant lacking potassium is an unhealthy plant indeed!

Micronutrients matter a lot, but we're focusing on the "Big Three" today. These three numbers are often referred to as N-P-K as a quick reference.

What needs fertilization?
Around here, that'd be everything! Our soil, for the whole of the surrounding area, is extremely nitrogen-deficient, with medium to very high levels of phosphate and medium to high potassium from most of the soil analyses we see at the nursery.

How should I fertilize, and with what fertilizer?
There are so many types of commercially available fertilizer available these days that it can be very confusing which fertilizer to use for what purpose. As a general-purpose shrub and tree fertilizer in this area, we recommend fertilizers higher in nitrogen than any other nutrient, with generally lower phosphate and potash, with the nitrogen being at least twice as high as the phosphate, such as our Covington's Special.

Turf, we feed with even higher nitrogen/phosphate ratios - 3 to 1, or 4 to 1, with a moderate amount of potassium. Our Covington's Pro-Choice premium lawn fertilizer does this well, with a 21-7-14 balanced fertilizer with 25% slow-release nitrogen.

Containers, we generally recommend an even-and-balanced fertilizer. Osmocote 14-14-14 or Peters 20-20-20 are good choices.

Too much of a particular nutrient can be as harmful as too little. The above recommendations are good for most yards in the Metroplex, but If you'd like to find out the exact state of your property's soil, your county's extension service will usually have soil sample kits to send off for a detailed analysis. Contact your local county agricultural extension agency for the costs and contact information.

A few pointers for April:

• If you haven't yet fertilized your turf, please do show it some love. It's time, and proper nutrition grows a thicker turf, less prone to weeds and disease. Mow short and regularly for the best performance from your turf.
• April is the best month to find the unusual and different in plant material. Don't let it pass you by without finding a new favorite plant or two. Try something new!
• April is absolutely an outstanding month to plant roses. We have more than 4,000 roses on the property right this second to choose from with an enormous selection of colors and growing types.
• Spend a bit of time evaluating your plants this Spring. Are all of your plants performing to your expectations, or serve a purpose in your landscape design? If you have a plant or two around the house that's just never looked right, or was damaged in the drought and never fully recovered, it probably is time to do some "spring cleaning" around your landscape. Don't be afraid to remove a poorly-performing plant from your landscape.

We feel it important to emphasize this point a bit. Gardeners plant trees and shrubs with the intention of having a beautiful plant for years to come. None of us want to have to remove a living plant that is in very poor shape, because there's always the wish to "fix" the plant, to heal it, to make it better. This is not always practical, or even possible. There's even times when removing a perfectly healthy plant, which serves no purpose in your landscape or affects the health of other plants you wish to do well, is sometimes necessary - for example, a large shrub misplanted in an area where it is shading other desirable plants that need sun to live.

Do not be afraid to remove this kind of plant. Replace it with a healthy, properly selected plant, or remove it outright. Just think of it as a spring "housecleaning", the hard scrub-to-the-walls type of cleaning that makes your whole landscape look better. Do this yearly to keep your landscape looking sharp.

• The last thing we'll recommend this week - if you haven't done this yet this year, go outside the house one day and set your sprinkler systems on, one zone at a time. Look and see to make sure that all your sprinklers are operating properly, are pointed correctly to get even coverage of your turf and landscape, and are unclogged, then set a saucer out in that area to measure how long it takes your sprinkler heads to fill the saucer with about half an inch of water. That's how long that particular station should be set for per watering, but is rarely under twelve to fifteen minutes per station. Two, to at most three such waterings per week are generally plenty to keep established plants in good health.

We thought we'd put a short list this week of some of the most commonly asked questions and solutions we're being asked this month at the nursery. Chances are, one of more of these solutions will answer a question you may have about your own yard!

1. What is that purple-blooming weed all over my yard? The weed in question is called henbit, and it is a real problem this year, with yards still vulnerable from the previous few years' stresses. This weed is easily controlled with our ferti-lome Weed-Out broadleafed herbicide. For all of our customers, particularly our organic customers who really don't want to use conventional herbicides, we also are recommending core aeration be done on your turfgrass right now, especially if it hasn't been done in a few years. Less compacted soil grows less henbit because it's growing thicker grass. Properly timed pre-emergent herbicides (Dimension or corn gluten meal) will halt henbit seeds before they sprout, but do nothing to already-growing henbit.
2. Is it time to fertilize, and do I need to? Yes, it is, and absolutely! We start feeding turfgrass around the first day of Spring, generally, and have been feeding shrubs, flowers, and trees all the past month. We have far from an ideal soil in North Texas, and you should feed your soil (and thus, your plants) several times a year. If you haven't already been doing this, you'll see a dramatic difference. The fertilizers you use do matter - ask us about what to use for your particular plants for the best success.
3. Am I too late to apply pre-emergents? No, you are not. You have missed many weeds already that an earlier February application would have prevented, but you can stop a lot of weeds which have either not yet emerged, or weeds already sprouted which will go to seed and come up yet again this spring. DO apply your pre-emergents in mid to late February next year for best effect, but stopping half of your weeds from sprouting is still better than stopping none. Don't forget to put September on your calendar for the next application!
4. Will we get another freeze, and should I wait to plant? Our average last freeze in the Metroplex is March 17th. It is not very likely we'll get another freeze ahead, but it is possible. The earlier your flowers and vegetables are in without freezing, the better they'll do in the heat of our summer. The traditional date for vegetable gardeners to wait until in this area is Easter weekend.

"What Should I Do With My Organic Yard This Month?"

There's much to do in the organic yard this month! Here's some of the highlights.

• Pre-emergent weed control - apply corn gluten meal at the rate of 40# per 2,000-2,500 square feet to both prevent many weed seeds from growing up to full-blown weeds, but also to apply nitrogen in an organic-friendly form to your turf's soil. (Corn gluten meal is a 9-0-0 fertilizer.)
• Molasses - it's time to apply molasses throughout the yard as well. Established organic yards don't need this as often as a yard in transition to organic maintenance, but it's still good at least once a year in any yard. Molasses activates your soil's beneficial micro-organisms and is also helpful with reducing fire ant infestations.
• Prepare your soil! Organic and conventional gardeners use the same sensible practices when it comes to basic soil preparation - 2" of compost, 2-3" of expanded shale, and roto-till to evenly blend with the heavy clay soils most of us have. It's right for everyone. Top dress with another couple of inches of your favorite mulch when you're done to prevent weed growth and to hold moisture and moderate soil temperatures.
• Reuse and recycle! Many gardeners have a huge pile of used flats, nursery containers, and planting cups from the last year's plantings. Clear that mess out of the corner of your garage or shed. We accept used trays and nursery containers of 1-gallon size or larger here at the nursery, and check with your local city's recycling program about recycling your other items properly. When purchasing new plants, don't clutter up our landfills with perfectly reusable or recyclable plastic by throwing the empty containers in your trash.

A few words about maintaining the healthiest organic yard possible.

When thinking about plant problems and challenges in the yard, just remember: every problem in the yard has a reason. Healthy plants planted in the correct sun and soil conditions rarely have problems, and constant problems or challenges to a plant's health in your yard, from the turf to your tallest tree, generally means there's an underlying issue that needs to be corrected. If you have a plant that needs spraying with something anytime you look at it, that plant isn't in the right place, or has some other contributing factor. If your turf won't fill in, or always has weeds, you may have more shade than you think, or soil compaction issues. There's always a reason. It just isn't always apparent. Look where your sun is, your sources of water, and what kind of soils and plants you have in the area. More often than not, you'll find your answer.

February's a fine month to concentrate on your containers! From enormous to modest, a beautiful pot or planter packed full of early color or edible delights can really spruce up a space whose permanent plantings aren't looking their best right now due to the winter.

Here's a few ideas for your containers, from initial selection to designing your plantings.

• Container Selection - Have a good idea, ahead of time, what you wanted to plant in the containers. This is important for several reasons! Sensitive plants will need a container small enough to move in for freezing weather, and it's helpful to know the colors of flowers you want to plant so you can select pottery whose colors complement both the flowers and your home's coloration.

• "Thrillers, Fillers, and Spillers" - Color containers should have a focal area ("thriller"), generally a taller, high-color or interest item, and this is normally either in the center or along the back edge of the pot, depending on the area the pot will be viewed from. "Filler" items do exactly that - fill the pot - with colors and textures that complement the "thriller". "Spillers" refer to your trailing items, which are just about the best reason ever to garden in containers, because most trailing color looks great draped down the sides of your pot. A good color container has all three elements!
• I planted it - and it's about to freeze, so now what? For larger planters that you'd like to plant with tender items, plant dollies are helpful. These small roller-equipped platforms are an amazing help to move larger pots on hard surfaces. For really enormous planters, a furniture dolly (a large, flat, rectangular four-wheeled framed dolly movers use) takes a rough moving task and makes it easy. For folks with physical difficulties, just leave your heaviest item on that dolly all winter, and chock the wheels so it cannot move on a really windy day. Everyone should be able to enjoy gardening in containers!
• All About The Vegetables - Container gardening is great for folks with limited yard space to still have the flavor and savor of fresh vegetables and herbs. Ask your nursery professional to help with choosing types of vegetables appropriate for container growing (as some are just too big!), but most types of herbs grow great in containers. This is a food-producing container but they don't have to be green and boring - plant a few flowers even in your vegetable containers to spruce up their look for a planting that's both delicious and beautiful.

Continuing our article from last week, we're shifting our focus from design to maintenance in the yard. Here's a few things to put on your "to-do" list for this week to gear up for the spring season!

Things Every Gardener Should Be Doing In February!
(In no particular order, they're all important.)

• Pre-emergent herbicides should be applied this month.
• Pruning! If you need to shape or do remedial pruning on evergreen shrubs, this is the time. Prune out any dead wood on your shrubs or trees, and thin out trees which need it now while you can see the branch structure well.
• Pruning, part two! Most roses should be pruned back halfway at this time from last year's growth. Wait until after the heavy bloom in the Spring to prune climbers which may need training or shaping. The rest of your roses are fair game!
• Pruning, part three! Take the tallest third of the canes of your nandinas off cleanly at the ground. This will keep the plants full and bushy, and they'll regrow fresh stems to stay nice looking.
• Pruning, part four! (The last we'll mention, we promise) Ground covers can be cleaned up at this time of year, and Asian jasmine can be mowed if necessary to keep the ground covers full, clean looking, and leafy.
• Tool maintenance. Many people use tools of various types in their professions every single day and maintain them with diligence - after all, you make your living with them. How many folks can go in their tool shed and find shovels covered with soil from last year (and rusting because of it), dull pruners and saws, or dull lawn mower blades? Well maintained tools not only make the job easier, they do a simply better job - sharp tools make cleaner pruning cuts, for instance. This leads into the next point.

Select the proper tools for the job. Go through your hand tools! A few basic hand tools every gardener needs:

1. Bypass Pruners (hand sized) - one pair, either sharpenable or with a replaceable blade. (Don't use an anvil pruner. Why do they make those things? They cut as well as a lead fishing weight.)
2. Loppers - longer handled, aluminum or fiberglass handles are best for reducing effort while remaining durable.
3. Hedge Shears - powered or unpowered, as long as they're sharp and the blades cut closely.
4. Trowel or Transplanter - one-piece solid aluminum is the best.
5. Long-Handled Round Point Shovel - (LHRP shovel) - this is the mainstay, your basic landscaping shovel. Pick a shovel strong enough to put up with whatever force you physically can bring to bear on it without being too heavy.
6. Pruning Saw - some cuts are just too big to get with a lopper. Folding or fixed, your choice, we're not fussy. As long as it is sharp!
7. Gloves - everyone has their favorite, but latex or nitrile dipped cloth gives good hand protection with good flexibility. Heavier leather gloves for working with thorny plants. A pair of each isn't a bad idea.
8. Rakes - one leaf rake, one garden rake. They're not the same. A leaf rake is a lightweight, wide mouthed rake great for cleaning up large areas at a time of light material, while a garden rake is a heavier item, appropriate for cleaning up cut branches, twigs, spreading mulch, etc. One of each.
9. A tape measure! Surprised? Accurate measurements will let you plan for the right amount of materials ahead of time, instead of running back up to the store constantly. If you don't know how much material you need for a bed, accurate measurements will let your nursery professional know how much to recommend to you.

If you don't know which brand or model of tool to purchase, look at what the folks who do this for a living use. These hand tools are often two to three times the cost of the least expensive model available, but are sturdier, cut cleaner, and are less physically tiring to use for longer jobs. Cheap tools are rarely the quality tools which make work easier. Nursery professionals, landscapers, arborists - look at what these people use, and think about it.

Be prepared for a beautiful Spring!

It's time to start thinking soil preparation again. We recommend all new flowerbeds or garden spaces have a 2" depth of our cotton burr compost and a 2" depth of expanded shale worked into the soil to loosen the heavy North Texas clay and to add valuable organic material to the new bed. Top dress the prepared soil with another 2" layer of your favorite mulch.

We use a lot of hardwood mulch at Covington's, but cypress and cedar mulches are also good mulches with good reasons to use them. We generally don't recommend pine bark much, because pine bark floats and in our spring showers, this is not a good thing.

Some design recommendations from Covington's for your new flowerbeds for this spring! The following are a few of the basic elements we use to help design your spaces in the landscape.

• Grouping - One of any smaller shrub or a handful of small bedding plants don't show up well from a distance. Group these items up! A mass of smaller items with the same texture or color makes a stronger impact in your landscape than the same number of plants scattered all the way along an area.
• Repetition - Tie beds a distance apart together by using a recurring theme - groupings of the same sorts of plants, similar bed shapes, etc. A square bed of nothing but boxwoods doesn't look like it belongs in the same landscape as a round bed entirely made of spirea. Groups of low, mounded spirea in beds of that boxwood in both beds would be more appropriate, with beds of similar shapes. In multiple beds containing many different plants, in this example, groupings of that low-growing spirea in all the beds would tie in beds even if they shared no other item. If your plants can't be the same sort (one bed's sunny and one is shady, for example), repeat colors.
• Edge Definition - Make well-defined borders to your flowerbeds. A sharp edge, whether using metal edging, stone, or even plastic or wood edgings makes the bed stand out sharply from the surrounding lawn. Keep those borders free of grass trying to sneak into your flowerbeds from the turf. A clean edge makes the turf to one side and the bed on the other look cleaner as well, or keeps a bed bordered by a sidewalk well-separated from your walking spaces. This may seem a minor thing but let us assure you - it is not. This edge does not have to be straight!
• Dominance - Use an individual specimen or specimens, something larger, to make a statement in an area. One large crape myrtle on a large blank space, one specimen holly on that corner, a pair of topiaries flanking a walk, etc. Larger single items do show up well where smaller individual plants get "lost". Use this sort of item to put attention on a focus area.

Covington's Recipe for New Beds

1. First, remove the grass (if any exists) from the new bed area with a sod cutter or with a spray of 20% vinegar or Hi-Yield Kill-Zall.
   
   
2. Roto-till the area thoroughly.
   
   
3. Add no less than a 2" layer of expanded shale and a 2" layer of our Back to Earth cotton burr compost! The shale improves drainage more or less permanently (as it is stone, it doesn't decompose!), and the porous nature of the shale holds moisture in drought conditions, as well as air when the soil would otherwise be waterlogged! The compost provides further initial drainage and feeds the soil.
   
   
4. Roto-till it again! Think of this step like blending a cake batter, working the shale and compost throughout the existing broken clay.
   
   
5. Top dress with another 2" layer of your favorite mulch! Hardwood mulch, cedar mulch, and cypress mulch are all good choices for top dress. A thick layer of mulch cuts dramatically down on weed problems and keeps your soil cooler during the summer.

This bed preparation will make it much easier to succeed with your new plantings, across the board.

Water Conservation in North Texas

• Mulch Everything - This is the #1 priority: when drought conditions threaten, it's time to mulch. Put a generous two-to-three inch layer on top of your flowerbeds, around your trees, and in your gardens. A good thick layer of mulch is the first line of defense.
• Prepare New Beds Properly - Expanded Shale and Compost, a two inch layer of each tilled into your soils of new plantings, adds proper drainage and also holds enough moisture around your plants' roots to help prevent undue summer stress.
• Water Correctly - Water applied through your sprinkler system should be applied heavily, but less often; follow your home city's rules for sprinkler usage. Water in the early morning to avoid unnecessary evaporation, and when you do water, soak your plants hard. This heavier, less frequent watering encourages a strong, deep root system that is less prone to drought stress.
• Do Not Over Fertilize Turf - Heavily fertilized lawns need heavier watering. In drought conditions - with water restrictions active - go easy on the feedings. The turf won't be a lush, brilliant green, but it won't burn up either.

Expanded Shale and Why You Should Use It

Expanded Shale for our heavy clay soil does the following:

• Shale Opens Clay Soils - Using a good two-to-three inch layer of Expanded Shale, tilled in to the soil, opens clay soils and keeps them open for years. One tilled-in application of this shale will last for at least 10 years or more. This provides a soil condition most of us here in North Texas never see - soil soft enough to easily dig without "stomping" on your shovel.
• Shale Adds Air to Your Soil - Even when your soil would otherwise be waterlogged, through rain or simple over-watering, Expanded Shale will still maintain thousands of tiny pockets of air, helpful for the root system of your plants.
• Shale Holds Water in Drought Conditions - Shale also has thousands more larger pockets within a typical pebble, large enough for water to come in and make itself home. Expanded Shale will hold up to 38% of its' weight in water, but won't let it go until the soil around it is dry and in need of the moisture.