Hey there, gardening friends.

Today I’m talking about what to do in the first half of January, so your Central Texas garden stays healthy all winter long. This episode is sponsored by atxgardens.com, my landscape consulting business. So let’s jump in. Keep watching the weather forecast for freezes and be ready to move or cover tender tropicals and other plants that are not cold hardy.

For more information about protecting plants from freezes and which plants need protecting, listen to my past episodes from November and December of 2025. Be on the lookout for winter weeds that are sprouting. Now, like I said in the last episode, the key to success with winter weeds is identifying the seedlings and learning what they look like when they’re small. So listen to the last episode for more details.

One weed to look for at this time of year is called hedge parsley. The botanical name is Torilis arvensis. Another common name for this weed is the tall sock destroyer, and it commonly grows in shade or part sun. This plant is invasive, and it’s related to carrots. The seedlings look just like carrot seedlings, so if you aren’t sure what’s sprouting up in your yard, you can look up a photo of hedge parsley or look up a photo of carrot seedlings.

The plants sprout in the winter, then they grow tall and get beautiful white flowers. But in late spring and early summer, the flowers turn into burs that get stuck on your socks, get stuck on your pants, and in animal fur. When they get taller, the plants become kind of prickly and can irritate your skin when you pull them out. So removing them now, when they’re little seedlings, is key to success.

If you planted larkspur seeds, be sure you know how to tell them apart because the seedlings look very similar. Hedge parsley seedlings will be kind of hairy, and larkspur seedlings are smooth. Hedge parsley seedling leaves are pointier than the more rounded larkspur leaves. Check out episode seven and the show notes from episode seven for some tips on my favorite weeding tools for removing big groups of tiny seedlings.

Now is a good time for sheet mulching to make new planting areas or walkways. Sheet mulching is a process of cutting down the existing plants in an area—so that might be turf grass or wild plants and weeds—and then adding a couple of layers of cardboard. You can also use newspaper or butcher paper, something like that.

Wet that paper down really well, or wet the cardboard down really well, and then you can add compost and mulch on top. I’ll have some sheet mulching instructions on my website for you in the show notes, so more details about that. If you build new planting areas at this time of year, by the time the cardboard starts to decompose and all the formerly existing plants start decomposing, you’ll be ready for spring planting. So sheet mulching in the winter will get you ready to plant in the spring.

Don’t forget to keep watering plants that you just installed this year, particularly young trees. Newer plants still need regular watering, even during the winter, to keep them hydrated. If it doesn’t rain for two or three weeks—which is pretty common for us in the winter—go ahead and water the entire landscape.

Make sure you check the soil with your finger first. It should feel wet, like a wrung-out sponge, all the time around new plants. So if it’s a little dry, go ahead and give them some water.

Okay, now what’s going on with trees and woody plants? Now that the weather is cool and the trees have lost their leaves, it’s okay to go ahead and start pruning them. It’s a really good time for tree trimming. I’m going to teach a tree pruning class at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center this winter—more information coming up on that later in the episode.

Now is a great time for planting trees, shrubs, and roses. So get to it. If there are any trees or shrubs you’ve been wishing for, now is a great time for planting.

Now is also a great time for planting fruit trees, particularly stone fruits and pome fruits. The stone fruits are peaches and plums, and the pome fruits are the ones with cores, like apples and pears. This time of year, in particular, is time for planting bare root fruit trees. Bare root fruit trees come without soil around their roots.

They’re usually packaged in plastic bags with sawdust or newspaper surrounding their roots. There are a lot of advantages to planting bare root fruit trees. The trees are smaller when you first plant them than trees that generally come in containers, and that gives you the advantage of shaping the tree exactly how you want it to be. You can keep it really small so you can harvest the fruit easily.

Another advantage of bare root tree planting is that bare root trees tend to have fewer root defects than trees that come in containers. You’ll generally get a younger tree as a bare root tree than one that comes in a container. And with fruit trees, they don’t live very long—particularly peaches and plums—so getting them when they’re younger means you’ll have them for a longer period of time for fruit production.

Ordering bare root fruit trees online gives you more options for the best varieties for our area, ensuring you get varieties that will make fruit based on chill hours. Chill hours are the number of hours in the winter between 32 and 45 degrees.

In Austin proper, we get between 450 and 600 chill hours each winter. Outside of town, we get more chill hours—closer to 600 or 700—where it’s colder. Basically, after a certain number of chill hours, the trees know it’s springtime, and that’s how they know it’s time to bloom and start growing.

Different varieties of fruit trees need different lengths of chill hours to break dormancy and start blooming. If you get a variety with the appropriate number of chill hours for our area, you’ll be likely to get fruit. If you get a variety that needs more chill hours than we get here in town, that tree will never bloom and you’ll never get fruit.

That’s a very common problem for us because we live so far south and have so few chill hours compared to most places in the world. If you get a variety that needs very few chill hours—maybe one better adapted to South Texas—it might bloom too early, and then the flowers or tiny fruit could be killed by late freezes.

That’s why chill hours are so important for us. When you order bare root fruit trees or buy them from a locally owned nursery, you’re more likely to get a variety that’s appropriate for our area. If you live in the city, look for varieties that need between 450 and 600 chill hours. If you live a little outside of Austin, you’ll want varieties that need between 600 and 700 chill hours. If you live farther south, near San Marcos, for example, you could stick with around 500 chill hours.

The planting method for a bare root fruit tree is a little different from a container tree. If you’re ordering bare root fruit trees or have already picked some up, make sure you know the planting method. You’ll dig a really wide hole, and you want that hole to be about the same depth as the root system of the tree as it came to you in the bag.

Then make a little mound in the middle of the hole, with the top of the mound level with the surrounding soil. Spread the roots of the bare root fruit tree around the sides of the mound, with the trunk sitting on top. Sometimes you’ll get a bare root fruit tree with a taproot, which is a long root extending from the trunk, with smaller hair roots coming off it. Place the taproot in the center of the mound and spread the smaller roots out along the sides.

Then backfill with the soil you removed. I’m going to include some resources in the show notes, including a list of varieties for our chill hour requirements here in Austin.

What else is going on with fruit trees at this time of year? If you have peaches, plums, pears, or apples, you’ll want to spray them with dormant oil one time on all trunks and stems when the temperature is forecast to be above freezing for three days in a row. Just do the best you can.

We spray fruit trees with dormant oil or neem oil in winter to suffocate overwintering pests like aphids, mites, and scale insects. It also coats their eggs and blocks their breathing pores. This provides low-toxicity pest control before new growth starts in the spring. Neem oil also helps control some fungal issues, so that can be a really good choice.

Up next, I’m going to talk a little bit about perennials at this time of year. Usually by now we’ve had our first freeze, and the tops of warm-season perennials have gotten some cold damage. It depends on how hard the freeze was. Sometimes there’s just a little cold damage on the ends of branches and stems, and the rest of the plant still looks alive and maybe even blooming.

That can be confusing—should you trim it or not? Sometimes we have a really hard freeze and the entire top of the plant dies and looks terrible. You might think about cutting everything down, or you might not be sure whether the stems are still alive and just lost their leaves.

Here’s my guidance: all warm-season perennials—where the tops typically die in winter and the plants grow back in spring—optimally need to be cut down by March 1st. That’s generally when they start growing back, though some are later than others and it’s very weather-dependent.

If you’re a wildlife gardener or have a butterfly garden, all insects and animals use dead plant material for overwintering. Many insects pupate in hollow stems, and small animals use twigs and dead leaves for shelter. If that’s important to you, leave dead plant material as long as possible.

That said, February is a short month, and it often has bad weather—winter storms, cedar fever season, and lots of people getting sick. That’s a lot of cutting down to do in a very short time. At my house, I start cutting perennials down in January, even though I am a wildlife gardener, because there’s no way I’ll get through it all in February.

I don’t just cut the dead tips. I cut the whole plant down and leave a small bit of stem sticking out of the ground so I remember where the plant was. Even if the plant is still blooming or has leaves, I start cutting perennials down in January.

If you have fewer perennials and more time, you can just trim off dead parts if you want, but that’s tedious, and the whole plant will eventually need to be cut back anyway. I’m talking about perennials like lantana, salvia leucantha, mealy blue sage, majestic sage, yellow bells, pride of Barbados, and similar plants.

Be kind to yourself. Be kind to your insect friends. Find the timing that works best for you.

Moving on to the vegetable and herb garden in winter—there’s not a whole lot happening right now. You may be able to start harvesting cool-season vegetables if you planted seedlings in recent weeks. Be sure to thin seedlings, especially greens and root crops, to give them space.

You can eat most thinnings—radish tops are tasty as microgreens—so you don’t have to feel bad about thinning. Make sure beets, radishes, and turnips have enough space so roots can grow properly.

Check your seed packets or a good reference book. I have Howard Garrett’s Texas Vegetable Gardening book on my website, and we’ll link it in the show notes so you can see proper spacing after thinning. Thinning is a really important part of vegetable gardening, even though it’s hard.

The same goes for cilantro, dill, fennel, calendula, parsley—anything planted from seed that may need thinning now. There’s more information about winter vegetable gardening and herb planting in the last episode.

Now for upcoming events: on January 8th at 10:30, I’ll be speaking to the Highland Lakes Birding and Wildflower Society about seed saving from native plants and trees at the Burnet County AgriLife Extension Center at 607 North Van DeVere Street in Burnet, Texas.

On January 17th at 9:30 at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, I’ll be teaching a tree pruning class. Registration is required, and if it’s available, we’ll link it in the show notes.

Then on January 31st at 9:30, again at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, I’ll be teaching a winter maintenance class for native plants, where you’ll see me cut back perennials like I talked about earlier. If registration is available, we’ll include that link as well.

That wraps up today’s episode. Thanks so much for joining me. Check out the show notes for links to everything I mentioned, and if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with fellow Central Texas gardeners—it really helps grow the show.

I’m Colleen with atxgardens.com. See you next time.