Herself’s Houston Garden

If you have an unhappy plant the first things you should look at are the amount of sun and water it is getting and how much sun and water the plant wants.

If that is fine, check the nutrients in the soil. You can send a soil test off to the state or use one of the many kits available.

If all is still well and you don’t see critters, consider a fungal or bacterial problem. Especially with the high humidity in Houston, fungus can be a problem. Virus problems are rare in the home garden.

So how do you tell a fungus from a bacteria problem?

To prevent damping off fungus in seeds you are germinating use sterile pots and soil. You can sterilize your soil by placing it in a glass bowl and putting a potato in the middle of the bowl under soil. Bake until the potato is done. Or you can just buy it. If you do get a damping off fungus in your seedlings try spraying them with a fungicide containing copper.

To kill fusarium and verticillium wilt remove plants. Then till and moisten your soil. Cover with clear plastic and seal the edges. After about two weeks the heat will have killed the wilt. To identify the wilt split a plant stem vertically and look from brown rotten lines in the stem.

Viral infections are not often seen in the home garden. They appear different than fungus and bacteria problems. Viral infections often show as mottled yellow spots on leaves, you may see thin rings on leaves, spots on leaves are very tiny. Viruses are usually spread by insects. Once your plant has a virus it has it for life. There is no fixing it, you must remove the plant to protect other plants.

Plant names followed by VFNT have resistance to several diseases. V - resistance to Verticillium wilt, F - resistance to Fusarium wilt, N - resistance to root-knot nematodes, and T - resistance to Tobacco Mosaic Virus. So if you’ve had problems with any of these, consider buying resistant plants.

‘Immunox’ or ‘Neem Oil’ are often good choices for treatment of fungal problems. Nurseries have several products for fungal problems, many specific to specific fungi or plants.

There are also products for bacterial problems but your best option in that case is to wipe down the effected area with alcohol, take a clean sharp instrument and remove the bacteria affected area plus a buffer area. Fungicides with copper sometimes help with bacterial infections.

Mulching around your plants helps keep down fungal infections. Fungal infections are spread when rain or sprinklers kick up soil and fungus from soil lands on plants.

If you still have a problem you can’t identify consider sending it to the Texas A&M Diagnostics Lab for $30 they can tell you exactly what the problem is with your plant.

See also:
Primary plant nutrients
Secondary plant nutrients
Micro plant nutrients

Trees can be planted or moved any time of year provided . . . you are going to remember to go out and water them almost daily if we have no rain. If you are not going to go check the soil around your new tree every day for a year, plant it in Dec/Jan/Feb when it is dormant and we are getting plenty of rain.

Do not fertilize your tree the first year, except for the local preferred starter ‘SuperThrive’. I myself prefer Shultz ‘Starter Plus’ which just has extra phosphate to get the roots growing. Only use these once when you first plant the tree. After that wait a year before fertilizing.

When you move a tree remember you must remove equal amounts of leaves as you have roots. If you left half the roots behind, you had better prune off half of the leaves. If you purchase a tree for planting don’t do any pruning the first year.

Dig a hole twice the width of the root ball and about as deep as the root ball. You don’t want the tree settling down into loosened soil underneath it.

If it is a potted tree you purchased, unpot it and cut off the very bottom of the root ball. Then slice four vertical slices about a quarter inch deep down the root ball. Do these an equal distance apart with a razor or extremely sharp knife. This gets the roots growing in a direction outside the shape of the pot.

Place the dirt and the tree in the hole so the tree ends up with its base just a few inches above ground level. Cover the ground with a couple of inches of mulch for at least a foot, maybe two around the tree.

Now take your left over dirt and create a wall around the mulch a couple of inches tall. This helps keep water in near the roots of your new tree and helps prevent injuries from lawnmowers and weed trimmers.

According to the A&M, who did tests, the trees planted back with the same soil grew 25% larger and had a much more extensive root system after 5 years.

When choosing a tree don’t go for the largest one. A smaller tree will settle in quicker and surpass a tree that is much larger with in five years. Remember you are in it for the long haul when you plant a tree. Like the rabbit beating the hare, the smaller tree will beat the larger tree over time.

Staking a tree is not recommended. The trunk will not strengthen properly if it is kept too stiff. The only reason you might stake a tree is to keep the roots from moving around while the tree settles. If you stake be sure to use 2 or 3 stakes and place them a foot or more out from the end of the roots.

The grass is gone out back, and there’s not much left of it out front. It took dozens of bags of dirt, and 200 bags of mulch, but it’s all done now. ( But a larger percentage of neighbors have decided I’m a bit daffy. They couldn’t believe we didn’t hire someone to do this. )

Fortunately for me Mercer’s March Mart is this week. I’m hoping to get some cool plants to fill in a bit on the back left and out front.

The tomatoes are doing so well in the pots I thought I’d get brave and toss a couple in the ground. It’s a wee bit early still for peppers. Those go in the end of this month. I also put in a cucumber plant.

The starlings are gone to where ever they spend the summer and the humming birds are coming in. I see more each day. I went by the rookery and the herons and egrets are just finishing up the next building. I didn’t see any robins this year. Normally they come through in herds and eat all our worms. They must have migrated slightly east or west of us this year.

I have this one very confused woodpecker, same species that drinks out of the humming bird feeder all summer, that has been trying to dig a hole in the house to nest. She didn’t get very far in the stucco. I tried tossing ping pong balls at the window from inside and going out and clapping, nothing worked. She spent a week tapping away all day. Finally I started shaking the trees near the window and that worked. I guess because it was closer to her than me on the ground? Someone found a hummingbird nest and took photos from the initial nest to eggs to babies back to empty nest. The photos are wonderful.

The gardenias and other shrubs are beginning to put out new leaves. The larkspur is putting out more blooms already. I only put that in the ground a few weeks back. It’s still early but here and there I’m seeing signs of new life. I put out a second pineapple to grow this year and some critter absconded with it before it had been in the dirt 24 hours. Next time I’ll tie it down.

One of the nicer things about spreading mulch yourself in the spring is you get a good look at each and every plant as you work around it. I feel like I’ve been re-introduced to long lost friends.