GARDENING: Time to tweak the landscape

Many plants are stressed from the extreme cold, heat and drought of 2011. Help your limping landscape with some of the following practices for 2012.

First of all, evaluate your landscape. What survived, what’s stressed and what didn’t make it all. Regardless of what happens to our water resources, we need to design and develop our landscapes so they are appropriate for the area. A few practices including selecting well adapted plants, amending soil with organic matter, using mulches, improving irrigation efficiency and maintaining reasonable amounts of turf.

All landscapes have to be updated and tweaked as they evolve, so why not make yours more water efficient as you make those updates.

• Thin crowded plants. This goes along with landscape tweaking but if your landscape is heavily planted there could be a benefit to plant removal. Crowded shrubs, perennials and even trees may be an excellent step to maintaining healthier plants. Thinning can reduce the competition of neighboring plants. Those left behind should respond by good vigorous growth because they do have more water, more nutrients, more light and more space.
• Control weeds for some of the same reasons listed as above. Weeds compete for space, light, nutrients and water. Keep them pulled, cut or smothered when they are in the seedling stage by beginning right now to control them.
• Weeds also harbor harmful insect pests that can move into your landscape causing problems. Some of those insects spread plant disease with them through feeding on infected plants. The diseases can then be spread to healthy landscape and garden plants. Nature will not pass on the this moist soil opportunity to grow lots of plants. Many of those plants will be weeds.
• Use quick release nitrogen fertilizers with care. Apply them at the time of year when plants need and benefit from them most which is generally prior to new growth. Make sure the soil is moist before applying them and that you have enough water to move them into the top few inches of soil. Soil moisture needs to be maintained over the next following weeks.
• Avoid fertilizing stressed plants. In most landscape situations, even with turf grass, the ideal situation is slow steady growth. You want a healthy, maturing landscape, not maximum production, like those used in production agriculture. Nitrogen fertilizer pushes a plant to grow, but if it’s weak and recovering it needs to do so without the extra burden of having to put on lots of new growth it can’t support in the heat and stress of summer and at the expense of the root system development.
• Choose fertilizers that are slow release and apply to plants just prior to new growth. Organic fertilizers can be applied even earlier so they can be releasing nutrients when plants need them. Compost tea might be a good option, too. Organic matter releases nutrients as they decompose, so you may want to top dress beds with compost and then cover them with an organic mulch to create your own slow release fertilizer. If water resources are reduced, you may want to skip fertilizing.
• When it comes to fertilizing, turf grass, annual color beds, containerized plants and most vegetables benefit from some additional fertilizer for good performance. Pecan, peach and other fruiting trees may benefit too. Remember, if the water isn’t available then don’t fertilize.
• Pruning, especially heavy pruning, has an invigorating effect on plants. Plants respond with rapids spurts of growth, sometimes as the expense of plant health. If plants are stressed, limit pruning to dead, damaged, diseased, crossed and rubbing, and hanging limbs.

Utilizing some of these practices in your home landscape could make the difference between health and decline.