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

This is the four “P” season, time to prune, pre-emerge, prepare and plant in the Oklahoma garden. We have had unseasonably warm weather the last few weeks as Oklahoma does on occasion and already have daffodils blooming, a few fruit and ornamental trees in flower and buds popping on many other plant materials. This is a good season to prune trees, shrubs and most everything except spring flowering shrubs and fruit trees as pruning those now will result in reducing your early season harvest of flowers or fruit. When pruning trees and shrubs first prune out any dead wood or branches. Then prune to shape the tree or shrub as you hope to size or shape it. There are also many plants, like roses that respond well to harder pruning where you cut back the canes or braches to stimulate new energetic shoots from down low on the bush. Remember the new growth will usually come out from a bud or joint just below your cut. If you pay attention to the location of the bud on the joint you can even predict the direction of the new branch to assist you in shaping and directing the plant. Use clean and sharp cutting tools to make a clean cut instead of smashing or ripping the cut which will require longer for healing.

If you hate to fight weeds and want to reduce your weed pulling frustration in your lawn or your flowerbeds, later in this growing season, this is the time to apply pre-emergent herbicides for control of warm season weeds and grasses. We usually apply different products on the lawn and in the flowerbeds. You need to identify your type of lawn grass to make sure you select the best herbicide to spray or spread as granules. Make certain not to use a pre-emergence herbicide on lawn or flower bed areas where you plan to sow seeds or if you have plants you like that come back from seed each year. These pre-emergent weed killers work by killing the seed as they start to germinate. Some pre-emergents kill grass seeds, others kill broadleaf weeds and some work on grasses and broadleaf’s. None can tell the difference between good seeds and bad seeds so do not use them where you plan to sow good seeds. Most pre-emergent’s work for four to twelve weeks after you apply them to your lawn or flowerbeds. They work best when watered in well after application. There are post emergent herbicides you can apply after the warm season weeds and grasses have germinated but they are more selective and more likely to burn or damage plants you don’t want to damage.

The third “P” is for preparation. We can already plant trees, shrubs and cool season crops this is the time to take soil tests, create new flowerbeds, add peat moss, compost or other organic matter to your existing flowerbeds before the main planting season for warm season crops. This is a great time to get your containers cleaned up, filled up with good soil and ready for planting. You can do a spray of dormant oil to help control scale and other pests before the season starts on your shrubs and trees.

We have entered the planting season and can now plant bareroot fruit trees, grapes, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb and horseradish. We can plant Irish potatoes, onion plants, onion sets and seed or plants of lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and many other green leafy crops or root crops like radishes and carrots.

Take advantage of the pretty days to escape your cabin fever and get outside in your yard and engage in the four “P’s” of late February – pruning, pre-emergents, preparation, and planting.

Lots of pretty warm days and just a few freezing nights the last couple of weeks has really stimulated our spring fever. The humans and the plants are getting anxious and want to start growing. Many of the early spring flowering bulbs are pushing growth up out of the ground and will soon be in flower. Many of the perennials are starting to send out their first growth of spring. Flowering shrubs, fruit trees and our ornamental trees all are producing swollen buds, pregnant with first new leaves of spring ready to burst forth. This is always a tricky season for Oklahoma gardeners. We are anxious for the growth of spring but hope it doesn’t get too warm, too early and cause the new growth to come on out and to then get damaged by a hard freeze which is likely still ahead of us. Our last average freeze in central Oklahoma is usually around April 7th but in the last five years the last freeze has been as early as late February and as late as early May so we have one to three months before the last freeze based on recent history. Many gardeners practice their gambling skills by planting earlier than the safe date in hopes of getting an early start on the growing season and a longer overall season. This is a risky practice and often results in planting twice. There are a number of products and techniques you can use to provide extra protection from light frosts or freezes. Cover tender plants with boxes, sheets, blankets, even newspapers or use a commercial product like hot kaps, row covers or Wall-O-Waters for extra protection of three to twelve degrees.

There are many plants you can plant now without being a wild gambler. You can plant ornamental trees and shrubs, fruit trees, flowering shrubs and many perennials or cool season annuals now. Over the last decade many more folks have gotten involved in food gardening and are raising fresh produce and berries very locally, right in their own yard. There are a number of cool season crops to plant right now and most of these are very easy and trouble free to grow. The hardest work on most of the cool season crops is preparing the soil, planting them, then the all important watering as they grow. Some of the easiest crops are root crops like Irish potatoes in red, gold, purple or white and onion sets or plants in yellow, white or red. These are usually plant, water, water and harvest type of crops. Plant these from now until mid March. There are many perennial food crops to plant now including strawberries, rhubarb, horseradish and asparagus crowns as well as grapes, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, gooseberries and youngberries. Sow seed of cool season greens like lettuce, mustard and Swiss chard, root crops like turnips, radish, carrots, beets and specialty crops like kohl rabi and Brussels sprouts.

Not only the trees and flowers are starting to germinate or grow but also the crabgrass and weeds. This is the time to kill crabgrass, goat heads, sand burrs and summer weeds before they germinate. Most good herbicides or pre-emergent’s will kill the weed seeds as they start to germinate for about four to eight weeks after they are applied to your lawn or garden. Depending on the product you apply, if applied at mid February it will kill most of the labeled crabgrass or weed seeds that try to germinate over the next four to eight weeks so until mid March or mid April depending on the product. They should be watered in well after application. There are a number of good pre-emergent’s but I suggest one that contains one or more of these active ingredients, Prodiamine (Barricade), Dimension, Treflan, Balan, Team (Treflan & Balan), Gallery, Tupersan or Sulfentrazone. These are all available from many manufacturers and in herbicide only or weed and feed combinations so you can feed your lawn at the same time you are controlling or killing future weeds. It is generally much easier to prevent or kill the crabgrass and weeds at germination then to control them later with a post emergent herbicide.

Enjoy the warming sun as you do these garden projects, prepare the soil for warm season planting later, get your soil tested and prepare for a full spring of gardening.

We have had a relatively mild winter but it has been a very tough winter on many of our trees, shrubs and other plant materials. The two hard cold fronts that dropped into single digits occurred while most of the state was very dry. Unless you had been watering your outdoor plants before these really hard freezes, these cold blasts caused more damage than usual as it froze hard on these dehydrated and already water stressed plants. Many of our broad leaved shrubs including many varieties of euonymus, boxwood, photinia and hollies literally had some of their outer canopy foliage and the foliage most exposed to the warming south sun light during the cold ‘freeze –dried”. Many of these broad leaf shrubs that were not watered well before the arctic blasts will lose some or even a lot of existing foliage. Please let this be a lesson to water your trees and especially shrubs periodically through the winter when we are really dry and nature is not providing us adequate periodic rain, snow, sleet or the dreaded ice which all give us natural moisture.

Most of these trees and shrubs will survive but many on the south side of the house or in the open will show some freeze burn and damage and may require some trimming and shaping this spring when you can really assess the damage.

The days are already well over thirty minutes a day longer than they were just a month ago and the sun is growing more intense as it moves gradually to the north and more overhead to us. The extended warmer weather of the last couple of weeks is already causing the buds to swell on many of our trees and shrubs. Spring will be here soon. I have even seen a few daffodils bloom already that were in protected sunny areas. We can and should prune many of our trees and shrubs to remove dead branches and to remove storm damage as well as to shape the plants. We can take advantage of the nice days to prepare our soil in new or existing flower beds to get ready for spring planting. In a couple of weeks it will be time to begin our vegetable gardens by planting our cool season crops like seed potatoes, onion plants, onion sets, cabbage, cauliflower, leaf and head lettuce, green peas, Swiss chard, kohlrabi, carrots, turnips and spinach. For central and northern Oklahoma we usually suggest planting these cool season crops between the middle of February and the middle of March. A good way to remember this cool season vegetable planting is to plant between Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day. It is easy to get anxious on the nice sunny, pretty days of winter but do not plant the warm season plants too early or you will get to buy them or plant them again. Spend the next couple of weeks getting your beds ready and then you have the month long target to plant cool season crops and we should wait until April to start planting the tender “freeze sensitive” warm crops.

It will also be time to start thinking about pre-emergent control of crabgrass, sand burrs and other summer weeds in the next few weeks. There are many good weed “birth control” products available to apply alone or in combination with a fertilizer as a weed and feed treatment. Most of these herbicides last and kill seeds as they germinate for four to eight weeks after they are applied. We don’t want to apply too early and miss a lot of their effect but we don’t want to apply the pre-emergent summer weed control too late when many of these weeds have already germinated. For best effect apply at about the time the beautiful yellow flowers of the forsythia flowering shrub are blooming in your neighborhood. We will talk more about the pre-emergent herbicides in our next column.

Take advantage of any pretty winter days to clean up your gardens, prepare the soil and to get ready for spring planting. Spring is coming!

It is hard to believe we are already at the end of another year but the calendar says it is so. We hope you had a happy year, full of interesting experiences and lots of growth, in your gardens and in your life. It is a common practice to use this changing of the calendar to evaluate our lives in view of the year gone by and to make resolutions, plans and dreams for the year and life ahead. This is a good practice in our personal lives but also as we look at our gardens and landscape. Take advantage of the short winter days at this time of year to reflect back on what did well in your yard or garden this year and what was disappointing or frustrating. Remember we are working with living things and there are many variables each year led by weather and rain as they affect your plantings. Just because something did not work one season doesn’t mean it will never work but if it doesn’t work for several seasons you probably need to try a different kind of plant and we are blessed to have hundreds, even thousands of plant choices for any given spot.

Some folks keep their garden records in their head while others keep a garden diary with notes, their successes and misses and even their timing on planting, flowering and fruiting. In our new high tech world many folks do their record keeping and planning on their computer. There are many software programs that make this relatively easy to do. There is value in our personal lives and in gardening to pause and evaluate what is working and what is not working, to assess our strengths and our weaknesses and to ponder the resources we have available and the resources we are missing to have a good chance at success. We need to be realistic about what we have and what is possible if we want to be successful.

Once you have assessed what conditions you have and thought about what has done well and what has not performed well it is a good time to think about what you want, what you dream of and what you want to work to accomplish this next year and in future years. In the garden we can think short term like colorful annuals and vegetable gardens or we can think long term about shrubs, foundation plantings, fruit trees and even large shade trees, pecans and walnuts that can be for future generations. When setting resolutions and goals I always think of this quote from Benjamin Mays,” The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”

Take some time to dream of what you want to do in your yard or garden this next season and over the decades ahead and then set some goals to help you get there. Do you want to add more shade trees to your property? Do you want to start a personal orchard or add some grapes, raspberries or black berries to your yard so you can pick fresh fruit and berries? Have you dreamed of adding a butterfly garden, vegetable garden or water garden? Would you like to add a new flowerbed, build a patio or outdoor entertainment area or install your own hobby greenhouse to raise some of your own plants and overwinter your favorite plants? None of these things will happen unless you have a dream and make plans for your life and for your yard and gardens.

Once you have a plan and a goal, visit with your local nursery or garden center for inspiration and direction. Consider attending classes or workshops at your local nursery, the county extension center, or Myriad Gardens. Visit the local bookstore and find gardening books that address your dream. Most of the seed catalogs arrive at this time of year and it is a lot of fun to flip though them and pick out a few new plants to try each year whether from seeds, bulbs or plants. You can always search on line or visit with fellow gardeners for insight and information. Just be careful when reading books, garden magazines and on line to see where the information is coming from and try to find information for our part of the country. Articles on plant materials and timing from Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Florida or California will often not adapt well in Oklahoma. It is best to trust information from local nurseries, gardeners, Oklahoma State University and the extension service.

We hope you and your family had a joyful and blessed Christmas and we wish you a healthy, prosperous and happy new year full of new growth, flowers, fruits, berries and nuts!

It is hard to believe Christmas is only a week away. Hopefully you have been in the Christmas spirit for several weeks and have poinsettias, amaryllis, Christmas cactus, cyclamen, Christmas trees, mistletoe and Christmas wreaths and ropes of greenery surrounding you at home and work to help create that Christmas magic. If you have been busy and haven’t yet surrounded yourself with Christmas plants and greenery there is still time to select your poinsettias and Christmas trees and you can enjoy them now and for an extended season after Christmas. Although living or cut Christmas trees and greens should have a limited time inside our warm, dehydrating homes and offices, the living poinsettias and cyclamen can often be enjoyed for several months with a little attention to light levels and watering.

One of the cherished rituals of Christmas is sharing gifts with those we care about or love. If some of those on your gift list love plants or gardening there are literally hundreds of great gift ideas that should help you find the right last minute gift. You can always give actual plants like poinsettias, amaryllis, paperwhite and hyacinth bulbs for forcing into flower or their favorite house plants to green up their home or office right now. Gift certificates or gift cards have grown in popularity in recent years and most nurseries and garden centers offer gift certificates so the person you are gifting can pick out their own favorite plants, shrubs or trees. This allows the avid gardener to pick out the new rose bush variety they have been dreaming about this next spring or to get the vegetable transplants to start their new vegetable garden or to select the shade tree they desire to replace that giant tree they lost in their backyard. You can always gift tools, gloves, garden hats and decorative garden containers in addition to actual plants.

Another popular gift for gardeners is a membership in the Myriad Gardens Conservatory, The Oklahoma City Zoo and Botanical Gardens or the new Tulsa Botanic Gardens so they can make regular visits to these great Oklahoma gardens and get special rates at their events and classes. If they have special interests in one type of gardening consider a membership in a plant society of other folks interested in that same plant area. These include the Rose Society, Iris or Daylily Groups, Cactus or Succulent Society, Orchid Society, Chrysanthemum, Bonsai, Wildflower and Native Plants and many other specialized plant groups. I love the Oklahoma Horticulture Society, a group of folks from all across the state with a general interest in all phases of horticulture and gardening. A membership in the Horticulture Society or a local Garden Club is always a good choice for gardeners. An Oklahoma Horticulture Society membership includes a year’s subscription to the Oklahoma Gardening magazine and helps fund scholarships for Horticulture students.

Gardeners love to learn and know there is always more to learn so classes are another good gift. Many local nurseries and garden centers offer classes as do many of our public gardens like the Myriad Gardens, the county extension offices and master gardeners. Plant and Horticulture Societies and many of our Vo-Tech or Technology schools and the Horticulture departments at Oklahoma State University in Oklahoma City and Oklahoma State University in Stillwater also offer great classes.

For the gardeners who have everything consider a gift of travel to other botanical gardens like the Dallas Arboretum, the St. Louis Botanical Garden or gardens all over the world or even to plant events like the spring Azalea Festival in Muskogee or the spring blub show in Dallas, Texas. Another great gift is to honor a gardener with a scholarship to encourage young people to get interested in nature and gardening through 4-H or FFA or to encourage Horticulture studies at the OSU/OKC or OSU/Stillwater campuses.

One of the most appreciated gifts to parents or grandparents or friends who struggle to keep up their gardening is to offer to spend a half day, day or weekend working with them in their yard and garden. That time together may be the greatest gift of all even while you are accomplishing needed landscaping and gardening efforts. We hope you, your family and friends have a very Merry Christmas Season.