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

The temperatures are flirting with 100° and it is time to get serious about watering, mulching and garden pests. There is no better gardening practice in Oklahoma than mulching your flower or vegetable beds. It is a sustainable practice that really works as we apply a thin layer of 1 ½” to 3” of bark, hulls or other natural matter to cover the soil like a blanket. Mulches vary dramatically around the country based on what biomass type products are available in that region. Local to our region we have cottonseed hulls, pecan hulls, various grades of pine bark and cedar mulches. Our region has ground oak or hardwood mulches often made from recycled pallets and packing material, usually dyed black, brown or other colors to hide their earlier life.

From the west coast we get small, medium and large western fir bark and the beautiful dark brown, fine curly shreds of pacific grade A cedar. From the south east coast we get cypress bark and pine straw. From the mid-west we get virgin white oak, many colored oak mulches and cocoa hulls with the sweet smell of hot chocolate.

If mulching for the first time, soak your flower beds, vegetable garden or container well and then the next day apply the thin layer of mulch over the soil between plants. The mulch will reduce evaporation and keep the soil more moist and cool, often reducing watering by 50% or more. Mulching tomatoes keeps the tomatoes off the ground with air still moving around the “fruit” and dramatically reduces blossom end rot. The mulch acts like a comforter on your bed and moderates the temperature around the plants, not as hot in the summer or as cold in the winter. As the mulch ages and breaks down or as you mix it in the soil in future years it adds organic matter to the soil, further enriching your growing beds.

Mulches are also very good at reducing, in some cases almost eliminating weed problems and competition. Weed your bed good before mulching and the mulch will limit the germination of new weeds.  If you will keep the mulched area weeded your future weed problems will be less and less each season. After the bed has been mulched for a full season you can usually just dig and plant where needed in future seasons and freshen the bed with new mulch over the top of the old mulch as needed.

Make certain to stay attentive to your watering as you can stress your plants in a hurry at these temperatures especially with hot, dry winds. It is best to soak your trees, shrubs, lawn and flowers really good, equivalent to ½” or 1” of rain every few days rather than to squirt a little every day. Remember plants in containers and hanging baskets will dry out more often and need more watering than established plants in ground beds.

Be on the lookout for garden pest problems. We are seeing and hearing about bagworms, red spider mites, worms, beetles, mosquitoes, grubs and fleas. Visit with your nurseryman to select the right solution for your problems. Take time to enjoy your garden as you do your watering and mulching.

Spring is never dull in Oklahoma as weather always seems to find a way to become the center of discussion. East Norman, Choctaw, Harrah and much of the eastern side of the city recently experienced tornados and high wind damage. Piedmont, Quail Creek, Nichols Hills, The Village and a large area of north Oklahoma City was then hammered with significant hail this last week.

We should be focused on planting more flowers, vegetables and trees and enjoying what we have already planted and yet many gardeners find themselves cleaning up, pruning and deciding whether to replant damaged plants.

If you got wind or hail damage that broke or severely injured branches it is best to prune out the dead or injured limbs or shoots as soon as possible leaving a clean even cut. Your plants have a strong will to live and this pruning will act like a pinch and the plant will usually try to send out new shoots or growth from the internodes just below the cut.

Pruning instructions go way back in history with many pruning instructions and parables even in the Bible. This is not the time of year we would normally prune many plants but when you have storm damage it is best to go ahead and prune out the damage right away so the plants can spend their energy to produce strong new growth rather than growing on damaged wood.

If a tree  or shrub lost bark, lots of branches or is stripped of foliage it can be weakened for several years and will be more vulnerable to insects, diseases, drought or winter ice and hard freezes so pay particular attention to watering and feeding the next few seasons until they are fully recovered.

Many vegetable and flower gardeners in these affected areas now have a better understanding of the challenges that face commercial farmers. The wheat crop or the tomato crop can be looking great and the farmer can be hopeful of making his loan payments and saving a little that season and then one untimely hail storm can wipe it all out, adding to the bank note for future years.

With the damage happening this early in the season many gardeners face the choice of whether their tomatoes, peppers and eggplant will just be delayed and send out new shoots or whether to scrap the crop and replant. The safest answer, if you are left with bare stems or just a few leaves on a cut back plant, is to plant new plants in between your existing plants, then see what survives and thrives. You can grow out all the plants or select the strongest in a few weeks and thin out the weakest.

Hopefully we won’t get any more weather damage and you can concentrate on adding new trees to your yard, adding additional ground beds or raised vegetable gardens. Don’t forget to pot up the rest of those great containers for your patio or porch.

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.

We are now in the heart of spring and it is the season to plant most all crops. Your earlier plantings have been showered with early spring rains and night temperatures are rising so that nearly all of our plants will appear to jump out of the ground with new growth.  Over the last month we have enjoyed the symphony of early spring flowers from crocus, daffodils ,forsythia, Bradford pears, tulips ,quince, crabapples, wisteria, lilacs, iris, peach, plum trees and redbud.. Hopefully this annual show of spring has inspired you to add more of this beauty to your yard and landscape. Now is the time to plant trees, shrubs, most all summer vegetables, grass seed and ornamental perennials and annuals.  Since it is the prime planting season your local garden centers and greenhouses will have their largest inventories and selection of the year. It’s a great time to shop for additions to your garden and wonderful time to plant and experience success.

The two biggest trends in gardening the last several years have been the huge surge in home vegetable gardening and the great increase in container gardening. In fact many people are even mixing these trends and growing a fair number of vegetables in container gardens. The interest in vegetables gardens is largely driven by the desire to grow some of your own food, to get the feeling of working with nature, to see your tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squashes and melons develop and then enjoy their fresh, wholesome taste.

The joy of container gardening goes back centuries to old Europe, the Roman and Greek empires and the great dynasties of early China. The popularity of container gardens ebbs and flows over the centuries but always allows certain benefits.  You can move the planted gardens to the front porch or the back patio depending on your planned events or to adjust for higher light of changing seasons. You can grow anywhere, even if you live in an apartment, a condo with little yard area, a home with terrible or damaged soil or you may be planning a move in a few months and don’t want to leave your flowers behind. 

Many people use conventional plastic pots, nursery cans or hanging baskets for their container gardens but now there are literally thousands of choices in decorative ceramic, composite, fiberglass, moss lined wire frames and other objects you can choose to express your individuality and show your design flair with an endless list of choices in plant material.

Make sure to drill a drainage hole or holes in the container before planting .Use a good well drained soil mix. You may want to add some polymer crystals to reduce watering, particularly for hanging baskets which dry out quicker. Remember the larger the container and amount of soil media the more stable an environment for your plants and won’t be as subject to wet and dry extremes.  After planting water thoroughly, then check regularly for when additional water is needed.  Plant now enjoy the symphony of plant glory throughout the growing season.

Plant Away! Plant Away!

We have just passed our last average frost day for central Oklahoma and it is generally safe, in fact it is the prime season, to plant just about everything green and growing. Our night temperatures will still get a little cool for another couple of weeks so you may want to delay planting the most hot blooded summer plants like periwinkle, caladiums, okra and black eyed peas to the first of May or after.

Most trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials are container grown with the roots well established in soil so we can now transplant year round instead of just early in the spring with the bareroot plants like our grandparents often transplanted.

Now that the risk of frost is pretty much behind us the quicker you plant most plants the better they will get established before confronting our hot, dry punishing summer weather. Early planting allows your plants to grow larger this season and gives you more time to enjoy the color and harvest from your plants.  Your cool season vegetables should already be growing well but now is the time to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and the many types of herbs you may want to grow as you produce your own fresh food.

This is a great time to plant trees and shrubs whether container grown, balled and burlapped when dug from a production field or grown in Root Control fabric bags to encourage root pruning. Make sure to dig a hole about twice as wide and half again as deep as needed and mix sphagnum peat moss or a good compost with your soil as you refill the hole around your new trees and shrubs.

Now through May 15^th is a great time to plant tall fescue or ryegrass seed if you are seeding a shady lawn area. This is also a good time for sowing Bermuda grass seed for lawns in sunny areas.

We all enjoy the beauty and excitement of pretty flowers in our yards, parks and at businesses during the growing season. Perennials will come back year after year and many species provide bursts of real color and flowering but few flower all season as they have to store up energy to make it through the next winter.

Annuals only last one season but are unparalleled for making lots of color and many species will bloom all spring, summer and fall as they are not stockpiling energy to survive winter. Make sure to select plants for your light exposure. Some of the best annuals for sun are petunias, periwinkle, marigolds, bronze leaf begonias, zinnias, lantana and penta. Just a few of the great annuals for shade or part shade are impatiens, begonias, geraniums, salvia and coleus.

This is absolutely a great time of year and I hope you will get outside and plant, plant, plant away lots of vegetables and flowers to liven up your environment.