Herself’s Houston Garden

It’s only just begun.

First came the December freeze. All the tropicals lost their leaves. There’s so many of them that the garden smelled like rotting lettuce for a week. ( I’m pretty sure that didn’t win me points with the neighbors. )

The yellow and black bamboos lost their leaves and wilted, the greens are holding up so far.

The gingers have died back to the ground to await warmer weather.

The younger cactus have wilted, the older cactus have blackened tips.

Surprising to me the mother-in-laws tongues have help up well, I ‘ll plant more of them come spring.

This week lows will be in the twenties. For a light freeze covering your plants with fabric, then plastic helps, at 20′F that’s not going to do much.

Do not cut your plants back. I know they look bad, but if you cut them back they’ll try to grow on warmer days and the new growth will die back on the next cold night. Be patient, wait till spring to cut your plant back and more of them will survive the winter.

It’s been rainy so no need to water.

Adding mulch never hurts, or layers of newspaper. Plastic can not be touching the plant to do any good. Put paper or fabric between the plant and the plastic.

Large rocks in the sun heat up and stay warm a little way into the night, plants near rocks, and stone walls will have better protection.

In the spring the strong plants will still be here, in place or rebuilding themselves from the ground up. Let nature decide what plants should be in your garden. Come spring, replant the lost ones with something new.

The climate usually gives us a couple decades of warm weather, then a couple decades of cold weather. It’s too soon to tell if this is just a bad winter or whether we are returning to the colder winters of the 1980s. But I’m thinking I’ll be planting less tropicals come spring.

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Down here on the Gulf Coast root knot nematodes can destroy gardens. Commonly people bring them home on tomato plants and once in the garden they are near impossible to eradicate.

I’ve been reading ‘Silent Spring’ in bits and pieces and tonight’s reading mentioned the use of marigolds as a treatment for root knot nematodes. After a bit of digging through old texts and online I discovered marigolds are still commonly used as a treatment for infected soils.

In ‘Silent Spring’ Rachael discusses success had planting marigolds among roses in some infected soil. Down here it’s your vegetable garden that is likely to be the problem.

The marigolds release alpha-terthienyl through the roots. The alpha-terthienyl is extremely toxic to nematodes, many insects and viruses. It works by preventing the hatching of the nematode eggs.

In addition, nematodes can not feed on marigold hosts, so you are also denying the nematodes food.

While you can always plant nematode resistant plants ( check for the N on the plant label ) Marigolds might be a nicer option.

Not all marigolds will prevent and harm root knot nematodes, do a bit of research first.

Varieties recommended for control of southern root knot nematode include: Tagetes patula, T. erecta, T. minuta.

More information:
Marigolds ( Tagetes spp. ) for Nematode Management