If your lawn has a lot of thatch then we suggest also de-thatching your lawn prior to the aeration process.  This machine can also be rented. Usually you will see an accumulation of 4-6 inches before the thatching procedure is important ( dead grass trapped under the green growth area)  You can usually determine the degree of thatch by looking at your lawn at the curb line.

Happy gardening.

Spring is a perfect time once the plants are pruned and your soil has been cultivated to mulch.  We recommend the shredded hardwood material at a depth of 2-3 inches.  Mulch is the insulation that will keep your soils cool and help the soil retain the moisture received from the irrigation process (Mother nature and you).  After the freezes we have experienced you really need to do all you can to help your landscape recover and mulch will  help in your success.

Happy gardening.

The above mentioned items are for sunny areas.  Alyssum is still available for foreground planting but if not established early and given some afternoon sun protection may not survive the summer swelter.  Lobelia is an outstanding ground cover type (foreground) annual that is a hot color. Sun Caladiums are both hot and pastel.  For the shade you can choose Caladuims, Impatiens, Begonias and Geraniums, which come in both hot and pastel colors.  There are other choices and this is just the basics.

Happy gardening.

Do not be discouraged.  If you cannot wait it may be time to rethink your design by including more native plant materials.

Happy gardening.

For those of you with palms in your landscape it has been suggested to leave the fronds in place and spraying the crowns with a copper based fungicide now and then repeating in 10 days.  Palms will need a Palm fertilizer every 2 months March through September.  Again it is best to err on the side of caution with pruning.  Group containers or beef up annual color areas with bright annuals to draw your eye there and away from the winter damaged foliage.

Happy gardening.

In lay terms – a lot of the top growth will be bare, dead sticks and the plant will produce a new, very bushy, plant from either the roots or fairly low on the old plant. The good news is that if the root system escaped death, the new, regenerated plant will have a deep viable root system and a lot of energy to send upwards so the plant will put on a lot of fast growth to support the root system. The bad news is – following a deep freeze the primary damage is as I have explained – the secondary damage is deep cambial damage. The energy that the plants expend in spring to send growth up from the roots in abundance taxes a weak and damaged cambial layer. The last time we experienced freezes this deep, we saw many plants emerge in spring as if they hadn’t been phased.  They put on copius quantities of new growth in May and April and then suddenly the plant died in July and August as the growth hardened off (matured).

What happened here was that the weak cambial tissue was unable to keep up with the demands of all the new regenerated growth and it split along the trunks in mid summer – severing the life line of water and nutrients to the leaf structure.  This is called “Cambial Rupture” and you will normally see this on your woody plants (Pittosporum, Azalea’s, Viburnum’s, etc.). If this happens in summer, all you can do is cut the plant back to the ground and wait for it to grow back from the roots or replace it. If your woody plants went into the freeze well hydrated, the damage will generally be less.

In the 25 years since the last deep freezes (below 20 degree’s) our plant pallet has been expanded to include hundreds of new tropicals and temperate plants that were not available here until the last 2 decades.  The city is now filled with citrus, antique roses, ornamental grasses and a wide variety of tropicals that have been introduced because our mild winters and hot summers were conducive to their growth habits. I now use Sanseveria (Mother-in-Law’s Toungue) on a regular basis as an ornamental because it is readily available and it loves Houston. The answer that we have been giving is – don’t replace it yet – wait until we have consistent 72 degree nights (May) and then let’s see what comes back. Do not cut off the frozen growth yet, it is protecting the root system underneath and by cutting it off all you are doing is encouraging new growth which will be very susceptible to any more freezes coming our way.

I saw a planting of Butterfly Iris yesterday that had been cut back two weeks ago, they had put on 2”-3” of new growth with the mild weather last week and then gotten hammered this weekend with the light freeze. Don’t cut anything back until March, and you may have to wait until May to see what happens. For the large tropicals, I anticipate a shortage of replacement plants this year as the primary growing areas (Florida and the Valley) were hit with freezes as well. It very well might be late summer before we see adequate numbers of tropicals hit our market, so you may as well just wait and see what happens to yours.

Since time is always about money, it is beneficial to have a client organized and prepared for the meeting and it normally helps a client think the project through, edit the “fluff” and expand on the important, prior to our meeting. We will go through all of your “homework” at that meeting and I have a list of questions for the interview to fill in the details. We will walk the site together, look at drainage, screening issues, visual site lines, and discuss in depth project expectations. Following that meeting, I will gather site information, measure, and then go to the desk and begin sketching.

Normally a preliminary draft will be presented to the client along with pricing information so that everyone is on the same page with both design and financial information. At that meeting, notes will be taken as to how to “tweak” the design to exactly meet the client’s needs and expectations and how to meet their budgetary considerations by choosing material selections that fit in the budget or deciding how to phase the project. A second round at the drafting table and calculator and then another client meeting before the project is “shovel ready”.

This all takes time and these next two months present a great opportunity to take the necessary time required to make sure that your project has had the required time to sink in and be just what you had hoped for.

Plant growth and viability is triggered by length of day light hours and temperature. Once we have consistent 72 degree nights (typically May) the aquatic plant growth takes off in earnest. One of the reasons we perform annual pond cleanings in March and April is to beat that cycle and prune back the dead growth, separate the plants, new soil in the pots and fertilization so that once the growth cycle resumes the unsightly winter dead has been removed and the plant roots are ready to regenerate. Tropical Water Lilies will normally continue to bloom through December in our climate and to some extent stay green through the winter. The jury is still out for this year as our temperatures have been far below normal for a gulf coast winter.

Your fish will not be very hungry during the winter months and may not eat at all. If you continue to feed the fish and notice that they are not coming up to feed or the food pellets are still floating untouched for a period of 10 or more minutes I recommend discontinuing feeding until spring. If you continue to feed your fish, and they are not utilizing it, all you are dong is adding to a nutrient overload as the food decays at the bottom of the pond and the result will be a very healthy filamentous algae bloom as soon as the spring sun rises. The organisms in your pond and the algae growing on the pond sides will nourish the fish as they need it during the pendency of winter.

Leaves accumulating in the pond should be removed with a net. If allowed to settle and decompose for a long period of time the decomposition process will set up an oxygen deprivation zone that will send the fish into higher water searching for an oxygen rich layer.  If you notice your fish gulping for air at the top of the pond in the morning hours, it’s time to clean your pond and chances are you have a mat of decomposing material sitting on the pond bottom.

Water garden care in the winter is very simple – scoop leaves as needed and let nature take its course. Winter is the rest time required for the plants and fish prior to active growing and breeding seasons.

People actually pay crews to REMOVE extremely viable, nutrient rich materials from their yards and then BUY the same material back a few months later. The truth is that the leaves that end up in your beds are a very valuable source of nutrients that offer your plants a host of beneficial services – nutrient base, water holding capacity and as the leaf mat builds, the ability to hold down weed growth. The best way to handle the leaves in your beds is to incorporate them into the beds rather than remove them. This is done by a practice called “cultivation”, the act of turning the leaf material into the garden soil.

Our horticultural management team does this 4 times a year for our management clients. It should be done a minimum of twice a year. By utilizing this material you add the valuable material directly to the soil and set up a composting cycle immediately around the base of your ornamentals so that the root zones get the maximum benefit. The use of the blower in the beds does nothing more than remove this material AND the mulch you paid for.