Winter Gardening and Landscaping

Winter is a time to reflect on your garden/landscape and to think about what needs to be changed or added or removed. Veteran gardeners or beginners need to review or read a good information source on pruning. How, where, when and why pruning is done is so important to the health of your plants and beauty of your landscape.¹ While plants are in a dormant state, it is prime time for moving them. Trees, shrubs and most perennials moved in winter “wake up” in place and never miss a beat.

Late winter before the bush roses start their spring growth is the time to prune. Climbing roses should be pruned right after spring blooming is over, not now. Climbers can be lightly pruned at any time during the growing season to keep them from overgrowing their support. Winter is the only time to plant bare root trees and shrubs, i.e. fruit trees and roses.

Pruning can be done almost any time, but many plants such as oleanders, bloom on "old wood" not on spring growth.  Crape Myrtles should never be pruned except to cut off the seed pods and to get rid of the suckers at the base of the trunks. Oak trees should be pruned in high summer and deep winter. Some arborists recommend painting the cuts after pruning. This applies only to Oaks as no other trees need painting.

Water the plants, as needed.

Leave the foliage on spring flowering bulbs until the foliage dies down.

Turn compost piles; add compost and mulch to established beds.

Divide ornamental grasses and fertilize lawns after April 1^st. Plant sod and seed grasses, compost and mow lawns.

This a good time to clean up the debris in landscapes and gardens to cut down on insects and to help prevent diseases.

Keep an eye out for insects and disease symptoms.

Weed, weed, weed!

¹ Neil Sperry's Complete Guide to Texas Gardening 2nd, pp. 20-23 is an example of a reliable source.