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

Happy Mother’s Day Weekend!  Most mothers love fresh cut flowers, a live rosebush, a special tree or beautiful container garden.  The best gift might be helping them dig a new flowerbed, planting their existing flowerbeds either as a surprise or while visiting together as you work in their yard and garden. 

Mother’s Day is right in the middle of the big spring planting season so we can plant most everything over the next few weeks and enjoy good success in the Oklahoma garden.  We all know this is the best season to plant our color annuals to liven up the full growing season.  The sooner you plant your annuals the more they will grow and the more flowers and beauty they can bring into your life and yard before freezing next November.  This includes everything from petunias, geraniums, and begonias to impatiens, periwinkle, sweet potatoes, marigold, zinnias and hundreds of other great annuals.   I love to add perennials to my landscape to provide seasonal color and to be a key part of the landscape that will come back year after year.  Perennials won’t flower as much or as long as the annuals but they will often add great bursts of color and excitement for several weeks, every growing season.  

This is a great time to plant trees and shrubs in your yard and landscape.  They act as the foundation or anchors for our landscape and get bigger and more impressive as the years go by.  The sooner you plant a tree the sooner you can start enjoying the shade and cooling it will add to your yard in addition to the beauty and aesthetic impact they will make to your property. 

Our night time temperatures are finally warm enough to plant most all of our warm season vegetables including tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.  You can also plant cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon, summer squash, pumpkins, okra and even the hot blooded sweet potatoes that are growing so rapidly in popularity. 

Don’t forget to water your new plantings thoroughly after planting and then to water regularly as needed.  Most plants need water equivalent to an inch of rain or water you provide each week.  This varies a little depending on your soil type, the plants being planted, the amount of protection from blowing winds and other factors so you need to watch your plants for cries for water like wilting or bright green foliage turning a dull or grayish green.  Water delivery choices have improved dramatically in recent years and you may want to consider soaker hoses or even better and more efficient drip irrigation instead of the usual overhead sprinklers and hand watering.

Container gardening continues to explode in popularity as more people lift their “planting holes” up out of the ground and into all kinds of containers.  Container gardening opens up the full gardening experience to folks in apartments and condos as well as conventional homes and yards.  You can grow annuals, vegetables, perennials, grasses, shrubs or some combination in virtually any container or hanging basket you can imagine.

Remember the larger the container the more soil media is used and the easier the container gardens are to care for and manage.  The smaller the container, the more often you will need to water and care for that container garden.

 If you are blessed to still have your mother alive, please spoil her with flowers and plants this weekend as you spend time in person or on the phone to say Thank-you and share memories.  Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful mothers out there, including my own remarkable mother, Marjorie Moesel.

It looks like Oklahoma gardeners can now safely “plant away” on virtually all warm season plant material.  Our night temperatures seem to be staying at 50° or above, the days are now much longer and the sun intensity is getting brighter by the day.  We are now in the season where the sooner you plant your annual flowers and vegetables the longer you can enjoy them and the greater your harvest will be of flowers, food and aesthetic beauty before the November freeze ends another growing season.

It is now warm enough to plant most all kinds of container grown annuals and perennials in your ground beds, raised beds, in planter boxes, decorative containers and hanging baskets or most any gardening nook or space.  Even the really warm blooded crops like sweet potatoes, periwinkle, copper plants and caladiums can now be planted with a high rate of success.  You can select and plant hundreds of plant species including the ever popular begonias, geraniums, impatiens, petunias, penta, marigold and zinnias for color.  It is always fun to explore and try some of the lesser known annuals along with the tried and true plants you have planted and enjoyed in the past.

You can plant large blocks of the same plant for mass impact, rows of different plants to create steps or waves of color and texture or you can plant a mixed garden of many types of plants depending on your taste and artistic style.  Gardening is a chance to be an artist with living paints and to work with nature to produce a living and evolving masterpiece.  Gardening gives us the chance to watch miracles happen daily as seeds, bulbs or small transplants grow from a small collection of cells into impressive large plants complete with flowers and/or fruit.

Vegetable and herb gardening has surged in popularity in recent years and we can now “plant away” on  our tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, all kinds of herbs and even the most heat loving vegetables like Okra.  The sooner you can get your tomatoes and peppers planted, the more you can harvest before flower set and yields slow down in the intensive heat of July and August.  Commercial produce is going to be in tight supply and expensive this summer and fall because of extreme drought in many key vegetable production areas, like California.  This is an especially good year to raise part of your own fresh vegetables and herbs.   You can raise more if you have space for a full vegetable garden but you can raise a surprising and fun amount of fresh veggies in container gardens on your porch, patio or even on an apartment balcony. 

We have had a lot of wind and ice damage to trees and shrubs the last few years.  If you need to replace some of your trees and shrubs or want to plant new ornamental or fruit trees for future shade, flower or fruiting this is a great season to “plant away”.  Planting trees and shrubs is a gift to the future, kind of the savings account of the plant world, a chance to leave an inheritance of beauty, cooling shade and love to those that follow after you. The “plant away” theme even applies to turf and lawn grasses.  We are at the tail end of the season to sow tall fescue to establish or improve shady area lawns and the beginning of the season to sow Bermuda grass seed for sunny lawn areas.

 We are still very dry across central and western Oklahoma so remember to soak all your new plantings with a good dose of refreshing water.  Check your new plantings regularly but most will do best with at least one inch of moisture per week from rain or your water hose.  Remember a good soaking every few days or once a week depending on your soil type is better than just spraying or squirting your plants every night.

We have now passed our last average freeze date in central Oklahoma so this is the official beginning of the 2014 planting season for warm temperature crops.  It is still a good idea to look at the 7 day forecast and as long as it looks comfortably above freezing it is time to plant away.  Even though it is past the usual safe date for planting we can get late freezes and you still need to be weather aware.  Remember just last year we had an unusually late freeze in early May.  If we do get a late unexpected freeze, be prepared to cover your tomatoes, peppers, impatiens, begonias and other tender crops with row cover fabric, hot kaps, wall-o-waters, cardboard boxes, empty milk jugs or old sheets or blankets for a little extra protection. 

 Many of our flowering shrubs and trees are convinced winter is over and they are blooming full blast into spring.  As the daffodils, crocus and hyacinths wrap up their spring flower show we are still enjoying bright colors from many varieties of tulips.  Flowering shrubs in full spring color include bright yellow forsythia, orange & red quince, and pink and white flowering almonds.  Our state tree, the Redbud, leads a long list of trees in dazzling flower including ornamental crabapples and pears, and fruit trees like plums and peaches.  We will have a steady parade of color over the next few weeks as many of our shrubs and trees welcome spring with their own personal flower festivals. If there are some of the flowering shrubs and trees that excite you when you see them in flower each spring and you wish you could add them to your landscape – then do it now.  This is a great time to transplant container grown or larger balled and burlap trees. Dig a hole at least half again as large as you need and then remove your tree or shrub from its container and gently place it in the hole backfilling with the soil removed from the hole mixed with ¼ to 1/2 sphagnum peat or some type of well aged compost.  Trees and shrubs should be planted so the top of the soil ball is at about the same height as it was in the growing container.  Water thoroughly after planting and then regularly throughout this year as your trees and shrubs get rooted in and established in their new home. 

It is best to still wait until after May first when the soil warms up more and our night temperatures are warmer to plant the real hot blooded annuals like caladiums, sweet potatoes, okra,  periwinkle or vinca and copper leaf plant.  Other than those few hot weather crops you can now plant most all annual and perennial crops.  Plant your flower beds, your decorative containers and your hanging baskets with geraniums, petunias, marigolds, zinnias, begonias, impatiens or hundreds of other colorful plants to give you a show and feed your soul throughout this full growing season.  You can plant tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, cucumbers and many other vegetables to feed your stomach throughout this full growing season.  Now that planting season has arrived, the sooner you plant, the more growth, flower and fruit you can enjoy this season.  We can plant container grown plants all through the spring, summer and fall but the gardeners who plant early get the most enjoyment and harvest for their effort so start planting.

The crocus and daffodils are blooming and may already be winding down their show of flower fireworks.  The hyacinths are just starting to flower as the fall planted bulbs do their part to announce the arrival of spring 2014.  The best results in gardening, as in much of life, takes a little planning and preparation.  These small bulbs packed full of life condensed into tiny flower bulbs, when planted in the ground in the fall, watered and rooted in, then exposed to cold weather will literally leap from the ground early the following spring or about now to produce their colorful displays of flowers. They transition us from the cold and bleakness of winter as we launch into the colors, bright light and energizing life of spring and then summer.  These early bulbs will then be followed by tulips, anemone and ranunculus.  There are many summer flowering bulbs we plant now, in early spring, to grow and produce color this summer including gladiolus, dahlias and lilies as well as canna roots.

Just as the bulb crops have a rotation that delivers color from spring into summer, so do the flowering shrubs.  Their spring show begins with the brilliant yellow forsythia, followed by the hot orange and red flowering quince and then goes through the color wheel with azaleas, camellias, rhodendrons, hydrangeas, viburnums, roses, lilacs and finally the crape myrtle and rose of Sharon that peak in the summer heat.

Nature produces a similar show with our flowering trees that begin with ornamental pears, peaches and plums ,redbuds, crabapples, and then magnolias.  The flowering shrubs and flowering trees are available at your local nursery or garden center year round as container grown plants so you can plant them most anytime the ground is not frozen.   Hopefully we are done with frozen ground for this year even though we likely face several more light freezes as our last average freeze date is around April 10th.  You can plant container grown flowering trees and shrubs when they are in bloom and you have them on your mind or in the normal spring or fall planting cycles.

This is also a great time to plant most all of the perennial crops as they tolerate some cold weather and light freezes.  It is great to add some perennials to your landscape that will come back year after year and make a great foundation for your ornamental gardening.  Perennials save much of their energy to help make it through the following winter so they don’t bloom for as long as annuals each season.  Many perennials will bloom for 3 to 6 weeks each year while annuals will use most all of their energy to flower throughout the season but have to be replanted each year.  It works well to plant combinations of perennials and annuals so you get the big color impact from the annuals and get the periodic flower show of the perennials while reducing how much you have to buy and plant each year.

 I would still encourage patience before you plant the warm season annual ornamental crops like periwinkle, pentas, begonias or impatiens or vegetable crops like tomatoes, peppers and eggplant until mid April, when most of our chances for freezing have passed.  If you are determined to plant warm season crops early be prepared to protect them on cold or freezing nights with covers like Hot Kap wax paper cones, Wall-O-Water’s that provide a pyramid of tubes filled with water or insulating blankets all available at your local garden center or by using old sheets or blankets to cover these tender crops.

 This is the last call to plant the cool season vegetables, bare root trees, shrubs and berries.  We are also running out of time to apply your pre-emergent weed killers or weed and feed products.

If there was ever a year in recent memory to plant your own food or vegetable garden, this is probably the year.  Over half of all our fresh fruits and vegetables in the U.S. come from California and they are in a terrible drought, like our farm friends in much of western Oklahoma.  The federal water reservoirs are not releasing water this year to large areas of vegetable and orchard farms across California.  Depending on who you believe, somewhere between 500,000 and 850,000 acres of vegetables will not even be planted this crop season.  Because of the drought, hundreds of thousands of acres of fruits, berries and nuts will not get the water they need and will produce smaller fruit and much less fruit while under drought stress.  Expect produce and fruit prices to go up dramatically this summer and fall as a result of this extreme drought.

 We are in the last couple of weeks for planting your 2014 cool season crops.  Many old timers believe the best time to plant potatoes is around St. Patrick’s Day which seems appropriate for Irish potatoes.  They should definitely be planted over the next couple of weeks to develop the best yield.  The same goes for onion sets and onion plants.  You need to plant young plants of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and lettuce right away to get your best yields before we get too hot and stress out these cool season crops.  We are already at the tail end of the planting season for seeds of beets, carrots, kohlrabi, Swiss chard, peas, spinach, turnips and radishes.  We are also in the last couple of weeks to plant bare root crowns of rhubarb, asparagus and horseradish.  This is the last call to plant bare root fruit trees; berries like strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries and blueberries as well as grapes.  You can plant container grown fruit trees and berry crops as the season warms up and throughout the growing season but time is running out to plant these crops while they are bare root and less expensive.  Visit your local nursery or garden center and select the varieties you want to grow and get them planted before March runs out on all these cool season crops.

Hopefully we have seen the last of our single digit low temperatures and we will begin a steady warm up as the days get longer and the sun gets brighter.  Soon we will be starting to enjoy the first flowers of spring from our crocus and daffodil bulbs and flowering shrubs like the yellow forsythia and orange or red quince will brighten up our days.

We should wait until April 10 or 15, after our last average freeze date, to start planting the warm season vegetable seeds and plants including our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, green beans, etc.  This gap between cool season veggies and warm season veggies is a great time to prune our rose bushes and apply our pre-emergent weed killers.  The weed and feed type products allow you to kill crabgrass and other summer weeds before they germinate.  Properly applied and watered in, they will kill weed seeds trying to sprout over the next 6 to 12 weeks and reduce weed competition for your turf grass.  Weed and feed versions will kill the weeds while feeding the grass and should be applied before the redbud trees are finished flowering.