For:
By: Daniel E. Mullins
Extension Horticulture Agent
Produce Best Winter Flowers and Vegetables with a Fall Start
Most local veteran gardeners agree that it is easier to produce vegetables during the winter than in the summer. Obviously, we can’t grow the warm season types in the winter, but there are over 20 different kinds of cool season vegetables that produce well.
September is the best month to start a winter garden. Some vegetables can be easily established by seeding directly into prepared beds. These include beets, carrots, mustard, kale, kohlrabi, parsley, radish and turnips.
Others are best established by purchasing or growing your own bedding plants for fall transplanting. These include broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, lettuce and onions. A visit to three local retail garden centers last weekend revealed that two are already offering cool season vegetable plants.
The cool season or winter flowers are also best planted in the fall. This allows time for them to become well established, make some growth and toughen up before the first cold weather arrives.
Bedding plants of winter flowers will also soon arrive at local nurseries and garden centers. Look for these and transplant during October: snapdragon, shasta daisy, petunia, pansy, statice and digitalis.
Other September Tips
■ Divide and transplant crowded daylilies, amaryllis and other
perennials.
■ Permanent landscape plants such as the lawn, shrubs and
flowering perennials should be fertilized, if needed, no later than the end of
the month. See last week’s column
concerning fall fertilization.
■ Tulip, hyacinth and crocus bulbs will begin arriving this
month. These “northern” bulbs must be
grown as annuals in our area because our mild winters don’t provide adequate
conditioning. They must also be
refrigerated prior to planting. Place
them in the bottom portion of a refrigerator, where no ripening fruit is
present. Remove and plant them next
January.
■ Try planting one of the Lupine species this fall. The Texas bluebonnet, Lupinus
subcarnosus, should produce some great winter color
in local gardens. It can be direct
seeded in the fall and starts flowering within about 3 months, providing blue,
the most coveted landscape flower color.
■ Remove weeds and old diseased plants
from vegetable and annual flower beds.
Question of the Week: I
planted
Answer: Following several questions, it was determined that a fertilizer that
also contained a weed killer was applied soon after these young grass plugs
were planted. This evidently resulted in
damaged and stunted roots and no top growth.
The fertilizer and weed
killer combination products come with specific instructions that could have
prevented this damage. Even those that
are normally safe on established turfgrass might
cause damage to a newly established lawn.
In this case, the amount of time to wait following establishment is
clearly stated on the label.
There is nothing that
can be done to reverse this condition.
Hopefully, with time the herbicide will break down to a point that
normal root growth can occur.