Enjoy your summer color plants a few more weeks before needing to make changes

To some degree it’s the same cast of characters that appear in the late-season drama each year.

The same questions that keep popping out of gardeners’ mouths and falling off their fingertips and onto their keypads.

It’s the only time that I hear them. See if any of these sings a song that you’ve heard.

• “How long can I leave my summer color plants (begonias, purple fountaingrass, pentas, etc.) in place before I pull them out to make room for pansies and pinks for the winter? The hot-weather plants have really bounced back. They’re looking fabulous still.”

You have a few more weeks, but try to have the pansies, violas, pinks, ornamental cabbage and kale and other winter color annuals in the ground no later than early November. By that time, practically speaking, your summer plants won’t have more than a couple more weeks of good color left in them.

Our average date of first killing freeze here in the Metroplex is November 20-22 (earlier in rural areas nearby). The longer you wait, the more important it becomes that you buy really sturdy 4-inch potted transplants and care for them perfectly.

• “I have a banana tree that actually has a cluster of bananas on it. Will they ripen before it freezes? Also, what should I do with the plant to protect it this winter?”

Unless it’s in a frost-free protected location, it’s not going to have enough time to ripen fully. Odds are that the cluster was just produced a few weeks ago. For what it’s worth, it’s probably not of a variety of much quality anyway.

As for protecting banana plants themselves over a North Texas winter, my policy always has been to let the first freeze kill them back. The leaves and stems will turn to mush. It all will quickly drain and dry, so that you can trim away all the frozen tissue within just a few days.

At that point I mound shredded tree leaves over my clumps of banana stems, and if they’re in areas where winds might blow the leaves away, I’ll put a sheet of old burlap in place over them and peg it down to hold the leaves in place.

• “My shade trees (pecans, oaks and a couple of fast-growing types) look terrible. Their leaves have brown edges. Is that a fungus? What can I spray?”
  
  

There is some possibility that a fungal leaf spot such as anthracnose was involved at one point or another, especially after a really wet spring like we had this year. However, with just a few weeks of the growing season remaining, it would make absolutely no sense to try spraying trees. Let them go. They’ll be just fine come spring. This actually happens every autumn.

• “I didn’t get grass planted around an addition to our house. How late can I plant seed or sod?”

You have two options at this point, but both require immediate action. You could plant ryegrass seed and hope that it would germinate and give you temporary cover over the winter. Rye dies when it turns warm in May, and you could plant your permanent lawngrass at that point.

Option two would be to plant bermudagrass sod now. It’s not the ideal time to do so. That would have been back in the late spring or summer, but if you have to have a solid cover, it is at least a grass that won’t be killed by winter’s cold (like new St. Augustine sod can be) as long as you keep it watered properly.

• “My daffodils haven’t bloomed at all the past 2-3 years. They only bloomed their first year. I believe they are King Alfred. What can I do now to get better flowers next spring?”

Large, late-flowering daffodil varieties like King Alfred, Mount Hood and Unsurpassable are notorious for blooming one year and then never again. Old-timers say that they “went all to leaves.”

Even digging and dividing the old types doesn’t produce much improvement in their bloom for next year. That’s why we always caution people to concentrate on planting the long-proven varieties that establish and repeat year after year.

Best of them all: Carlton (golden yellow) and Ice Follies (white), but there are many others. These types just get better and better with passing years.

• “Is there anything I can do now to get better fall color out of my red oaks, Chinese pistachios and other fall color trees this year?”
  
  

Fall foliage color is such an elusive feature. The New England folks who have made a living selling their scenery to tourists from all over the world have studied it for decades. They tell us that ample rainfall in late summer and early fall is important, followed by cool, crisp weather in autumn.

Hard freezes shut it down. Oh, and you don’t want to be applying high-nitrogen lawn foods beneath trees you’re growing for fall color. Nitrogen promotes new, green growth and keeps the trees vegetative longer than you really want. Let your trees go just a little bit “hungry” as fall color time nears.

• “My mums are starting to turn brown. What should I do with them?”

That’s normal behavior as they finish up their flowering cycle for this growing season. Once all of their color has faded and the plants have shaded into brown, crisp tissues, you can trim the tops off to within 3 to 4 inches of the top of the ground.

Leave that much stem to mark where you have them planted. You’ll notice, as you’re doing that trimming, that there are small shoots sprouting up from the bases of the plants. Those will become next year’s stems. Leave them in place. As they start to grow vigorously next April and May, pinch out their growing tips to make them branch out.

You can hear Neil Sperry on KLIF 570AM on Saturday afternoons 1-3 pm and on WBAP 820AM Sunday mornings 8-10 am. Join him at www.neilsperry.com and follow him on Facebook.