These steps will improve your chances for success in your North Texas garden
As we set sights on a new gardening year, this would be a great time to fine tune our focus. I’ve been watching North Texas plant people for more than 50 years, and there are some simple steps we could all take that could improve our chances at success. See what you think.
Plant with a plan. It doesn’t have to be a formally drawn landscape plan from the offices of a registered landscape architect (although that’s always best), but you need some kind of roadmap for the journey you’re going to be taking as you work on your plantings this spring. Nurseries often have landscape designers who are quite skilled with their knowledge of plants and who have a keen eye for what works well together. In fact, if you’ve been gardening locally for a while, you may have those same skills.
The important things are that you have a plan and that you buy plants that will help you fulfil it. Design according to plants’ mature sizes, not by the sizes they are when you buy them. When you go shopping, “find a plant for your home” so you won’t have to “find a home for the plant” when you get home.
Choose plants that are adapted. They need to be suited to your soils and your climate. In spite of a few warm winters back in the early 2000s that skewed the USDA’s two most recent Hardiness Zone Maps, wise gardeners still use primarily Zone 7 and Zone 6 plants. Zone 8 plants freeze too often here and will end up costing you money and lost time in the process. That’s why I still say that the USDA’s 1990 Zone Map is the one we should be using here.
This is where a Texas Certified Nursery Professional can help you with your plant selections. They know plants like plumbers know wrenches. You’ll find them, for the most part, at independent, locally owned retail garden centers. Do your planning now before they get covered up with spring business. Have your planning ready to put into action.
You’re not married to the old plans and plants forever. Don’t be afraid to remodel your landscape. Family needs change. Plants outgrow their usefulness. We find we have less time or less energy, and we want to downsize our responsibilities. Those are all things that happen inside our houses, and it’s fine for us to consider them outside in our landscapes as well. Removing old plants and starting over can seem painful, but once accomplished, you’ll probably wish you had done it years sooner.
Have purpose in your pruning. Our goal in landscaping is to use our plantings to provide a natural setting for our home. Most houses are not designed symmetrically, and their landscapes shouldn’t be, either. Avoid long, straight rows of shrubs pruned into boxes or globes.
Choose plants that grow to the size you want, then let them grow naturally. Use pruning only to maintain their attractive natural forms. The exception, of course, would be if you have a strongly formal garden design, but that falls into the category of a purpose for that pruning.
Out of all the wasted effort I see in gardening, topping crape myrtles has to rank No. 1. It ruins the plants’ natural growth forms forever. It delays the first bloom of the summer by six to eight weeks. In fact, you may only get one round of blooms each season instead of three or four. And it does nothing to change a plant’s mature height — that’s a genetic thing. They’re going to grow right back to that height. Topping is barbaric. Anyone who tells you differently is simply wrong.
Learn how to know when to water. It’s not “by the clock.” There’s never a good answer to “How often should I water my plant?” There are too many variables, including species, soil type, temperature, wind, sun/shade, how long since last rain, slope, and others. Learn to look at the soil. Its color will lighten. Small cracks will develop. It will pull away slightly from edgings and sidewalks. And best way to tell — feel it. Roll it between your thumb and index finger. You’ll soon learn the difference between wet and dry soil.
Water deeply when you do water. That will encourage deep root growth as the plants seek that water. Then let them dry out slightly before you water again. When the top inch of topsoil has dried to the touch, that’s the time to get out the garden hose or turn on the sprinklers.
If you’ve not had an irrigation contractor put your system through a checkup, this would be a great time. Check for leaks and misaligned heads. If you don’t have a “smart” controller, have one installed. It will monitor all those important conditions I listed earlier to determine if irrigation is needed. Let them do that work now before they get overloaded in spring and summer.
Know the facts of plant foods. It should start with a soil test, hopefully from a recognized laboratory like the Soil Testing Lab at Texas A&M. They’ll check for the levels of major elements nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium so you’ll know what mix you need to be adding. They’ll also check for the soil’s pH (acidity/alkalinity) and its accumulations of soluble salts.
If you’re gardening in the black clay gumbo soils like most of us in North Central Texas, expect to find that the middle number, phosphorus, runs at very high levels. It’s quite common for soil tests to suggest application of only nitrogen, with 30 to 40 percent of that N in slow-release form. We are generally told to apply no more phosphorus, since the soils already have excessive amounts. I tell you that only so you won’t be surprised. Let the soil test results confirm it to be sure.