Rodd's Seeds of Wisdom Horticultural tips and tricks from Rodd Moesel

Hope your family enjoyed a special Mother’s Day this weekend and had the chance to spend time celebrating all the important mothers in your family. Our mothers give birth to us and get to live the joys and challenges of our growth and development as they nurture us into the adult world. This is the season of the year when we get to watch the plant world’s children, small plants grown from seeds and cuttings, spring to life and grow rapidly towards maturity.

We can transplant trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals most anytime of the year using container grown plants with a good undisturbed root system. Spring time is still the best time to transplant most crops to enjoy the greatest success. The combination of warm, sunny days and still cool nights mixed with warming soil and a few spring showers just naturally creates optimum conditions for most everything planted at this time of year. It is always amazing how quickly the seeds and transplants we add to our yard or container gardens at this time of year branch out and grow even producing flowers, fruits and vegetables. There is no other time of year we can experience such explosive growth in such a short time frame in the Oklahoma garden.

Those gardeners that play early spring “garden roulette” by planting tender annuals in March or early April before our last average frost date are sometimes rewarded with an early crop and some years lose their plants and have to plant again. Those gardeners who waited patiently to late April or now in May come as close to guaranteed gardening success as you can get in the real Oklahoma plant world with our continual natural challenges of wind, flood, hail, tornadoes and varmints.

If you haven’t purchased plants and planted your yard and garden yet, this is the ideal time to get planting. The night temperatures have warmed up enough to plant even the “hot blooded” annuals like caladiums, periwinkle or vinca, sweet potato vines and candlestick trees and enjoy immediate success. Don’t forget to water in your new plantings of trees, shrubs, color plants or vegetables and be prepared to water regularly when we don’t get natural rains. We are nearing the end of the spring season for sowing fescue grass seed. It is prime season for sowing Bermuda grass lawns.

Don’t forget to feed your lawn, trees, shrubs, annuals, perennials and vegetables to get maximum yields and plant growth from your plants during this important spring growing season. Visit with your local nurseryman to help select the best granular or water soluble fertilizer for your soil type and crops. There are many good options in conventional or organic fertilizers to feed your plants and help them develop the healthiest root system to be ready for the challenges of our hot, dry summer that lies ahead.

I hope you are able to get outside in the garden to watch the wonders of spring plant growth in your yard.