Hey there, gardening friends. Today we're talking about what to do in the second half of January, so your Central Texas garden stays healthy all winter long. This episode is sponsored by my landscape consulting service, ATXgardens.com.

So let's jump in. In general, this winter, the weather has been bananas. I don't normally like to spend time talking about the weather, but it's been so bizarre this winter. It's been so warm in town. There haven't been any freezes yet, and there hasn't been much rain either. And so this makes everything very confusing.

But I'm here to guide you along the way. And even a friend of mine had a party on New Year's Day, and I saw his vegetable garden, and he still had tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants going, and they looked really good. He lives in a very warm part of town in the Go Valley neighborhood, and it's really warm there.

So they're practically having spring all winter. That's not the case at my house. Like a lot of my warm-season crops, you know, started looking really shabby last month, and I pulled them out, you know, and I pulled a bunch out earlier too, so it's just been very odd. So, you know, use your gardening instincts, but I'm here to guide you through this really hard time of climate weirdness.

Right now we've got more winter weeds popping up too. In particular, there's one called burr clover, and that is a plant that grows really low to the ground and has leaves that look like clover leaves. It'll have a central, kind of what's referred to as a rosette, where it has sort of like a taproot that grows down into the ground and then branches that come out from that point that run horizontally along the ground.

And then little flat leaves coming off of that, and they make burrs. They get little yellow flowers in the spring, and then they make burrs that will get stuck to your socks and stuck to your animals. So now is a good time for identifying burr clover if it's a weed that you have and that you don't want.

Start identifying it now and getting after it while it's still small. The Fiskars Uproot Weeder is a really good tool for removing burr clovers because that tool grabs a taproot and pulls it out. A hori hori knife is another good tool for removing weeds with taproots, as well as digging forks.

And so I'll have links to all of those tools in the show. This time of year in January is a really good time for thinking about what changes you might like to make to your landscape for the spring and starting to get ready for spring planting. And so of course, if you need ideas or if you just need a thought partner, like someone to talk to about things that you're thinking about for your yard, I'm here for you.

I'm a landscape consultant, and you can go to atxgardens.com and make an appointment with me to get advice and ideas. So there's lots of pruning tasks coming up for February. So this episode is for the second half of January, but February is a big time for all kinds of pruning. So if you haven't already this winter, it's a good idea to take a couple hours and do an inventory of your tools.

All of your pruning tools, like your loppers, your hand pruners, which are also known as secateurs, your saws, your pruning saws, all of that—making sure that they're sharpened and they're well oiled and that none of them are dull. If you haven't ever sharpened your hand pruners before, learn how to do it or take them to a knife sharpener and get them sharpened.

It makes a huge difference on the strain on your body if you're doing a lot of pruning. You can really injure your wrist, your forearm, your elbow, even your shoulder by doing the same motion, closing your hand over and over again. If they're not sharpened and they're not oiled, you can really strain yourself.

So take some time and learn how to do that. What's going on with woody plants at this time of year? Now that the weather is coolish and the trees have lost their leaves, it's still okay to continue pruning them if you need to. I talked about that in the past episodes, so check those out for more information. It is time for planting—all trees, shrubs, and roses.

So get to it if you're interested. I made a trip out to Kerrville to see David Winningham at Natives of Texas Nursery, and I got a whole bunch of wonderful, rare, hard-to-find native trees out there, including some smoke trees that I'm very excited about that are native to the Hill Country and Blackland Prairie where I live.

Think about planting a small ornamental tree near a window so that you have something nice to look out at. The ornamental trees are so easy to care for, easy to plant, and provide a lot of benefits, including beauty for you. Rusty blackhaw viburnum is my favorite of the small ornamental trees.

Now, again, coming up in February, it's going to be rose pruning and feeding time, so you'll want to start getting ready for that. Get your fertilizers ready for your roses according to your soil test results. In most cases, you can't go wrong with adding some compost, so you might want to pick up some compost from the nursery.

In general, roses love a little bit more acidic soil than what we usually have here in Central Texas. So in general, adding some soil sulfur and watering that soil sulfur in with liquid humate or home-brewed compost tea is really helpful for roses. I'm going to be setting up my compost tea brewer and getting that going.

And you can also find links for purchasing liquid humate and soil sulfur in the show notes. Now, next episode at the beginning of February, I will be explaining a little bit about rose pruning, how to, so be sure you tune in to the next episode for that information. Up next, I'm going to talk a little bit about fruit trees. So for the last half of January, you still have some time to spray dormant oil just one time on all the trunks and stems of your fruit trees when the temperature is forecast to be above freezing for three days. I'm revisiting that from the last episode.

I mentioned that in the last episode. If you haven't done it yet, you still have time, but it's really important to understand, especially with how warm the weather's been lately, do not spray dormant oil on your fruit trees after February 1st. Do not spray if flowers or leaves are emerging at all from your fruit trees, because dormant oil can damage a tree if the tree is sprayed when it's not dormant. And that dormant oil spray helps prevent insect infestations.

And now I have seen some fruit trees around town starting to bloom very early because it's been so unseasonably warm. So if your fruit trees are blooming at all, do not spray them. But if you haven't sprayed them with dormant oil or neem oil yet this winter, you still have time to do that before February 1st.

Fruit tree pruning and feeding time is coming up in the first half of February. And just like I said earlier with the roses, you'll want to get your fertilizers ready now. Start picking that stuff up. Again, just like with the roses, you can't go wrong with adding compost. You really should get a soil test if you haven't already—get a soil test once every three to five years or so, just so you know for sure that you're adding the right things to the soil.

Fruit trees too, just like the roses, they love some acidification, so adding soil sulfur for them and watering it in with a liquid humate or your home-brewed compost tea is very helpful to them. So start getting all of that stuff set up so that you have it and you're ready when pruning and feeding time comes upon us at the beginning of February.

Now, if you have a lot of fruit trees to prune, then you can definitely start now in mid-January. It's not too early. It's okay. Here's a few hints for fruit tree pruning. You'll want to prune your fruit trees for several reasons. One is to control the size of the tree so that way you can harvest the fruit easily.

Two, you can also inspect the fruit as it's developing. Have the fruit at eye level so you can see if there's any problems with the fruit. Another reason to prune fruit trees is to open up the canopy of the tree, or like the branches, the top branching part of the tree, to allow air and light penetration into the center of the tree.

Because fruit trees tend to be very susceptible to insects and diseases that thrive in dark and humid conditions, so more airflow and light penetration into the middle of the tree helps prevent diseases and bug infestations. And then also removing very vertical, upright branches, also sometimes known as water sprouts or suckers.

It's really important for that light and air penetration, but also because those suckers tend to not make fruit. The more horizontal branches are the ones that produce fruit, so trying to create a more open shape, open canopy, is important for your fruit trees. Do not remove more than 25% of the tree in one year.

Okay. Fruit tree pruning is very confusing. It's very intimidating, but keep in mind that people have been doing it for 6,000 years. There's many, many, many different ways to do it, and there's pros and cons for all these different ways to do it, and I can help you with a consultation. So if you need hands-on help, I can prune your fruit trees alongside you.

So make an appointment with me at atxgardens.com and I can help you. Now is a great time still for planting all the stone fruits like peaches, nectarines, and plums, and the pome fruits like apples and pears. Get to planting—it’s still a good time. Okay, and now it's time for our mid-episode sponsor break.

Hey y'all. This is Colleen Dieter with ATXgardens.com. If you want personalized help with your landscape, book a consultation and we'll walk your yard together and I'll answer all of your questions. This week I met with some customers in Central Austin who were doing a remodel of their home, and they hired a landscape designer to make a plan for them, and they weren't a hundred percent sure that the plan was right for them.

So they hired me to come and give a second opinion before they undertook the huge installation project that they were going to do. So if you need a second opinion or more ideas to make sure that your project's on the right path, that's what I'm here for as a landscape consultant. So make an appointment with me at ATXgardens.com. Now back to the show. Now I'm going to tell you about perennials and perennial gardening, which has been very confusing this year because in Austin, in town, we really haven't had a hard freeze yet, and in very warm winters like this one, it makes perennial gardening very confusing. The problem is that a lot of your warm-season perennials are probably still blooming.

Some of them are probably still looking fabulous. Some of them are probably looking pretty ratty, but you maybe feel hesitant to cut them back because they're still blooming, and that's really challenging. I talked a lot about this in the last episode, so revisit episode eight for more advice about which plants to cut back.

Now, as there are many pros and cons to various timings of cutting back warm-season perennials, and that includes things like hibiscus, esperanza, pride of Barbados, yellow bells, lantana. Just today I was with a customer who had a bunch of hibiscus that were still blooming, but really the stems were looking really shabby.

The leaves had mostly fallen off, so we decided to go ahead and cut them back, leaving about nine inches of stem sticking out of the ground so that way we can remember that the plants are there. One con or downside for cutting back warm-season perennials now in mid to late January that I didn't mention in the last episode is that cutting perennials back now may stimulate them to grow, and that new growth is vulnerable to cold damage if we get a hard freeze. And that sort of repeated damage from freezes to the new growth on the warm-season perennials can eventually kill them.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the tops of the plants, the tall stems that might be kind of ugly or partly dead at this time of year, they can sometimes shield the new growth coming up from the bottom of the plant from the cold damage as well. So you have to weigh those factors with how much time and energy you really have to cut everything back in late February.

And how willing are you to replace the plants if they die because they were cut back too early. So you have to take those things into account, and like I said in the last episode, it's cedar fever season. It's been particularly bad this year. Everybody has hay fever, feeling a little bit down in the dumps, and so you may not have as much energy for gardening as you normally do.

So if you need to start getting out there and trimming stuff in little bits so that it's all done by March 1st—really March 15th at the absolute latest—then just start doing it now and take that risk that we might get a hard freeze and it could damage the perennials, in my opinion. So it just depends on how many perennials you need to cut back, what your schedule is like, and how much time you have and how you're feeling.

Now moving on to the vegetable and herb garden and some of our garden flowers too. Just continue harvesting your cool-season vegetables, and you might think about getting more aggressive with harvesting if you want to start prepping your vegetable beds for spring crops, which will get planted at the earliest in March.

So if you want to start making room for peppers and tomatoes and beans and stuff like that, that'll start getting planted in March. So if you have any cool-season crops that are starting to maybe mature, become a little over-mature, you can start pulling them out now, amending the soil, and getting it ready for March.

It's still a little early, so you don't absolutely have to, but maybe you've got some cabbages or broccoli that have caterpillars eating them, like cabbage worms and stuff like that. I know I lost some cauliflower plants to cabbage worms. I'm just going to give up and pull those out right now and prep that space for spring.

As I mentioned in the last episode, you can still plant cool-season greens and root crops like radishes and beets. There's a chance that little seedlings could be killed by a hard freeze, but the forecast looks very warm for the next couple weeks. Of course, that could always change. As of this recording, the forecast is unseasonably warm, and it will probably be okay to start planting, but it could change for sure.

Late January is an excellent time for planting onions from sets, and sets are little baby onions that are about the size of a pencil, and you can buy them in bundles from some of the local nurseries. I know Natural Gardener typically carries onion sets, and you can go get those and plant them about four to six inches apart.

And they're great because they start growing right away, and you can harvest green onions from them really fast. You can plant them closer together and harvest them as time goes by at different stages so that by the time they start getting to be big onion bulbs, you've got, you know, six inches between them.

At least—well, four inches is sometimes okay. It depends on the onion variety. But I like spring onions. I think I talked about that in a past episode, where they're particularly delicious when they first start bolting, and they're really juicy and tasty in the spring, so think about some onion sets.

They're so easy to find room for because they're so skinny. You can kind of fit them in between other plants as long as they get enough light. It's almost time for planting potatoes. February is potato planting time. So now in mid to late January is a good time to start prepping your potato beds by double digging. That's digging down really deeply with a broad fork or a digging fork to loosen the soil so that your potatoes have nice soft soil to develop in, just like the roses and the fruit trees that I mentioned earlier in the episode. Soil sulfur is also really good for potatoes. Potatoes prefer a little bit of a neutral to acidic soil, and soil sulfur and the liquid humate can also help with that. And adding some compost is important for the potatoes as well.

So get ready for potato planting. There's still time to plant seeds and cuttings indoors for warm-season vegetables and herbs that take more than 80 days to mature, like peppers and tomatoes and eggplants. There's still time to plant ornamental sweet peas for your cutting garden. You can put those seeds directly in the soil.

There's still time now to plant cilantro, dill, and calendula from seed if you're willing to risk them getting damaged from a hard freeze. You might see some wildflower plants available at the nurseries, and this is a great time to plant them for your spring show.

January 31st at 9:30, I'm teaching a winter maintenance class at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

But unfortunately, that class is sold out. But keep listening to my episodes because I'll teach that class again next year. I teach the summer version in the summertime. And I also can teach for your gardening club or community group, and you can see my website at atxgardens.com to fill out the form to ask me to come to speak to your group.

That wraps up today's episode. Check out the show notes for links to everything I mentioned. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow Central Texas gardener. It really helps me grow the show. I'm Colleen with atxgardens.com. See you next time. Happy gardening.