Hey there, gardening friends. Today we're talking about what to do in the second half of March, which is a very busy time for gardeners. This episode is sponsored by my landscape consulting website, ATXgardens.com. Let's get to it.

So in general in Austin, we got some beautiful rain recently. Everything is going to be popping up and growing fast. Now that it's spring and we got the rain, you'll start seeing everything growing really quickly. So start keeping tabs on your weeds: sticky weed, hedge parsley, rescue grass, clover burrs—I’ve been seeing a lot of clover burrs lately—grass burrs and false dandelions. Your Bermuda grass and Johnson grass will also be growing at this time of year.

It's a very weedy time, so make sure you've got your weeding tools handy: hoes, digging forks, your Fiskars Uproot Weeder, your Japanese hand weeders, your Hori Hori knives, everything like that. See the show notes for weeding tools. Keep in mind, anytime you're struggling to remove weeds, there's probably a tool for that. So check out the links in the show notes and get to know some of the weeding tools that can save you a lot of time and anguish.

If you had plants indoors or in a greenhouse to protect them from cold weather, now it's totally fine to bring them outside. There are no freezes in the long-range forecast, so it should be completely safe to bring them out.

Now speaking of that, it is time for pruning and feeding your citrus trees.

If you've got lemons, oranges, limes, tangerines, satsumas, kumquats, all those kinds of things, get them into their permanent spots for the warm weather. If you have them in pots, you can figure out where you want to put that pot until next fall.

For citrus in pots, I like to remove all of the branches that are growing back into the middle of the plant or that are crossing. At the end of the pruning session, your whole plant should be shaped like a vase or a martini glass, where the interior is more open. That allows more air penetration and light into the middle of the plant and helps prevent infestations of small sucking insects like whiteflies, aphids, scale, and mites.

Citrus tend to be really prone to those types of insects, and I’ve found that a little pruning at this time of year can help prevent those infestations. If you have branches where the leaves are touching each other with a lot of overlapping leaves, it's a good idea to remove some of those too, because insects really like to get into those spaces where the leaves are close together.

You can use hand pruners and loppers with short handles. I really like these Corona loppers with short handles, and I'll put a link to those in the show notes.

I do like to clean the hand pruners and loppers with rubbing alcohol or Lysol between plants because fruit trees, including citrus, are prone to certain diseases more than other plants. I like to make sure I'm cleaning my tools between plants so that I'm not spreading diseases around.

If you have citrus trees planted in the ground and they have cold damage from the winter, just remove any dead branches. You'll be able to tell they're dead because citrus branches are usually green if they're alive, and if they're dead they turn brown. So cut off any dead branches. The dead leaves will fall off on their own, but you can pull them off if you want to. That's all the trimming you need to do on citrus planted in the ground.

Your citrus might be grafted. Some types of citrus trees are grafted onto rootstock, and the rootstock is usually trifoliate orange. But some citrus trees are not grafted. Sometimes citrus trees are on their own roots, which is an advantage because if the top of the tree dies in the cold, citrus trees that are on their own roots can grow back from the ground.

If they're grafted onto trifoliate orange and the whole top of the tree dies, then the trifoliate orange will start growing up from the ground. That won't make delicious fruit and it's not the kind of tree you intended when you bought it. It can be hard to tell sometimes.

I'll post a picture of trifoliate orange so that you'll know what to look for, because it looks different in the leaves from other types of citrus.

In future episodes I'll talk about what to do if you have trifoliate orange rootstock growing up where your citrus tree died.

After you trim your citrus trees, I recommend using a soil drench with liquid humate, top-dressing around the root zone with Espoma Citrus-tone fertilizer and a little bit of compost. Add a nice layer of mulch on top—about an inch of compost and less than an inch of mulch.

Later when you water the trees, use Medina HastaGro liquid fertilizer. That's my recipe for success for getting a lot of fruit from your citrus trees. They like to be fed a lot, especially if they're in pots. They depend on you for all of their food and water if they're in pots, so make sure you give them plenty because citrus will respond well and produce a lot of fruit that way.

It is also a good time to repot citrus if you need to. After about two years of citrus trees in pots, you'll notice the tree may start to sink in the pot. Potting soil degrades over time and starts to shrink, which can cause the soil to pull away from the sides of the pot. Then when you water, the water just rolls off the top and around the side instead of soaking into the roots.

Sometimes potting soil degrades in a way that stops draining properly, where the water stops flowing through the root ball and gets stuck. It's very easy for citrus to get overwatered in that situation.

So every two years or so, it's important to pull a citrus tree out of the pot and refresh the potting soil. You have to use potting soil—don't use topsoil or soil from the ground.

When you pull the tree out of the pot, you can either move it into a bigger pot to give it more room to grow, or if you don't want it to get bigger you can do root pruning.

Sometimes we don't want them to get bigger because we need to move them in and out in winter. If they get too big, they won't fit through the door, you can't lift the pots, or they won't fit in the space you have indoors.

In that case, you can remove the bottom quarter of the root ball. Cut off the bottom 25 percent of the root ball with an old pruning saw, a bread knife, or a Hori Hori knife. Then put fresh potting soil in the pot and put the tree back in. It will grow back into that space over the next two years. It sounds harsh, but it works.

In more fruit tree news, March is time for grafting, especially late March. I think I mentioned in the last episode that it's around the time when Texas mountain laurels finish blooming, and that's about now.

I'm planning to graft some grapes and nectarines that I got at the scion swap last month. I've got them stored in my fridge. In the next couple weeks I'll go out into the yard and see if I can start grafting the new grape variety onto my old Mustang grape that's growing on my back fence. I also have some nectarine scions I'm going to try grafting onto a little feral peach tree growing in my yard.

If you're wondering about grafting, I really recommend the book Fruit Tree Grafting for Everyone by my friend Susan Poizner and Steph Muma. I'll have links to that in the show notes.

I also encourage you to sign up for the Central Texas Seed Savers newsletter to find out about grafting and fruit tree workshops that we'll have coming up this spring. I don't have all the details yet, but we'll have more workshops throughout the year.

Now is a really good time to plant Mediterranean trees like figs, pomegranates, and bay laurels, or tropical trees like loquats and avocado, and some South Texas native trees.

But it's too late now to plant other woody trees like oaks and pecans. It's also too late for rose planting. If you don't already have them in hand, don't buy any more trees or shrubs or woody vines like crossvine or Carolina jessamine.

They need to be planted by April 1. If you already have them waiting to be planted, get them in the ground as soon as possible, but don't acquire any more woody plants. It's very hard to plant them when they're actively growing and have soft new growth while it's getting hot outside. It's really hard on them and makes it difficult for them to survive the summer.

It's better to wait until fall to plant those woody plants.

Do not do any tree or shrub pruning right now if you can avoid it. It's not a good time because plants have new leaves coming out and pruning is stressful for them. It's also oak wilt season, and if you trim your oak trees now you can spread oak wilt. Avoid trimming woody plants right now.

For your other fruit trees like peaches, plums, nectarines, apples, and pears, in the last episode I talked about spraying for plum curculio, worms, and maggots that can get into your fruit.

I talked about spraying after the tree has lost about 85 percent of its blossoms using either Take Down Garden Spray or covering fruit with micro-mesh or orchard socks.

Some fruit trees bloom later than others, so it may still be time for your particular trees. If they're just starting to set fruit, go out and look for the tiny fruits and cover them with orchard socks or micro-mesh, or spray with Take Down Garden Spray to prevent worms from infesting your fruit.

If you spray instead of using orchard socks, you'll need to spray again when the fruit has just formed and expanded through its papery covering, which is known as shuck split. That papery covering is called the shuck.

When the shuck splits, that's when you spray again to prevent caterpillars. Then spray again about 10 to 14 days later.

So you spray three times: when about 85 percent of blossoms have dropped, at shuck split, and again 10 to 14 days later.

That's another reason why I prefer orchard socks. You put them on once and the fruit develops inside them, and you don't have to keep spraying.

It also depends on how much fruit you want. If you're hoping for hundreds of fruits, putting socks on each one can be very time-consuming, and spraying might be easier. But if you're like me and you're just hoping for a bowl of plums once a year, then orchard socks work great.

Sometimes infestations can get pretty bad though, so it's good to have a plan.

Now we're going to have our mid-episode sponsor break.

Hey y'all, this is Colleen Dieter from ATXgardens.com. If you want personalized help with your landscape, book a consultation and we'll walk your yard together, answer your questions, and create a plan that feels doable for you.

This week I met with Kyle in Northeast Austin. He had a sloped yard and hired landscapers to build retaining walls. They filled the walls with topsoil and Kyle wanted to know what he could plant in those spaces.

I recommended preparing the topsoil with compost to add more nutrition before planting. We made a plan together. He loves the color pink, so we talked about some of my favorite low-maintenance roses with pink flowers and some other plants he had researched.

Some of his ideas were good and some weren't, so I helped him figure out how many plants he could fit in the space and which plants would work best. He took his notes and now he's ready to start planting this spring.

Check out ATXgardens.com and let's get back to the episode.

Now is a good time for perennial gardening and working with bulbs and ornamental grasses. There's a lot going on because they're all actively growing right now.

If you still have trimming to do from winter damage, try to get to it right away. It's going to get harder to remove dead stems now that everything is growing again. Try to avoid cutting the new growth as much as possible.

Now is a great time for planting, transplanting, and dividing perennials, grasses, bulbs, cacti, succulents, and groundcovers.

If you notice plants spreading into places you don't want them—like crowding a walkway—you can dig up those extra plants and move them somewhere else or give them to friends.

It's very tempting to buy new plants right now, and it's certainly okay to do so. This is the best time of year for perennial planting.

But try to remember that if you planted bulbs or perennials in the fall or earlier that haven't popped up yet, they may just be slow. Some tropical perennials like Pride of Barbados don't start growing until it gets really hot in May.

You might not see them yet, so you don't want to accidentally plant something on top of them and end up with a tangled mess later.

That's a really common mistake with bulbs too. Sometimes bulbs take an entire year before they start growing. You might not see them at all this year.

So it's really important to mark where you planted things—use labels, markers, or draw yourself a little map so you remember where your plants are.

Now moving on to the vegetable and herb garden.

This is a busy time for the vegetable garden. You can still plant strawberries and Swiss chard, which are some of the last cool-season vegetables you can plant right now. You have to plant them as transplants.

You can also start planting warm-season vegetables from transplants like tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.

There are also many warm-season vegetables you can plant directly from seed now, including beans, corn, cucumbers, summer squash, and warm-season greens like New Zealand spinach and Malabar spinach.

There's also one called magenta spreen that's becoming more popular.

All of those can be planted directly into the ground from seed right now.

It's also a great time to plant warm-season herbs from transplants. That includes rosemary, oregano, thyme, lavender, lemon balm, catnip, and mint.

Basil can be planted from either plants or seed directly in the ground.

I also recommend trying some warm-season flowers in your garden. You can plant sunflowers, zinnias, and cosmos directly from seed right now. They'll attract beneficial insects and pollinators and also make great cut flowers for bringing indoors.

Finally, let's talk about lawns.

The last two weeks of March are an important time for lawn care in Central Texas. If you still have turf grass and want to maintain it, now is the time for the first mowing of the season as the grass starts actively growing.

I recommend mowing low this one time in the spring with the mower set to the lowest setting, and this is the only time I recommend bagging the clippings.

This removes winter thatch and gives the lawn a fresh start for spring.

After this first mowing, set the mower to the highest setting, remove the bag, and leave the clippings on the lawn for the rest of the season.

It's very important to mow as high as possible through the summer and leave the clippings so they decompose and feed the grass.

After the first mowing, it's a good time to fertilize with an organic granular fertilizer like Sustain 8-2-4 or MicroLife 6-2-4. Follow the directions on the bag carefully.

Then water it in with Medina Plus Soil Activator or homemade compost tea.

The goal is to rinse the fertilizer off the grass leaves so it reaches the soil. The water also activates the fertilizer.

Adding Medina Plus or compost tea helps support beneficial soil microorganisms that colonize the roots and help feed the grass naturally over time.

You can apply the water using a watering can or a hose sprayer.

Okay, so that wraps up today's episode.

Please check the show notes for links to all the tools I mentioned. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow Central Texas gardener because it really helps me grow the show.

I'm Colleen with ATXgardens.com and I'll see you next time.