Hi listeners, I'm Colleen Dieter, landscape consultant and certified arborist at atxgardens.com. Welcome to the ATX Gardens Podcast, where every other week I share simple, timely tips for what to do in your Central Texas garden right now. If you're watching on YouTube, tap like and subscribe for more gardening help. Hi, Texas Gardeners. Today I'm talking about what to do in the second half of May, when the weather is starting to get a little bit hotter and things are slowing down a bit. And as always, this episode is sponsored by my landscape consulting business, atxgardens.com. So let's get to it. Okay, in general, in the last half of May, I've been overjoyed by all the rain we've been having. It's really got everything blooming beautifully here. This time of year is a great time for flowers. All the perennials are blooming, looking good. Recently, I got some questions from some listeners and some of my customers about soil testing because I've mentioned soil testing a couple of times in past episodes, and this is a good time of year for soil testing. Why should you get a soil test? So I'm always talking specifically about testing the soil for nutrients and soil microbial activity that supports the plants. So there is testing that you can get for contaminants in the soil, like heavy metals and things like that, but I don't know that much about that. So when I'm talking about soil testing, I'm talking about the nutrients that the plants need in order to thrive. So soil testing is a good idea if you are a devoted gardener, uh, if you really love gardening. It's especially important if you are trying to grow turf grass or domesticated fruit trees. So if you want to grow fruit, uh it's a really good idea to have a soil test, or vegetables. Vegetables are heavy feeders, all of those plants, turf grass, domesticated fruit trees, and vegetables need a lot of nutrition. They're heavy feeders, and so it's really important to understand your soil if you're growing those plants. If you're growing native plants, herbs, things like that that aren't as prolific, they don't need as much nutrition because they're not producing so much in terms of fruits and seeds. They don't need to be fed as often or as much, but it still can be very uh informative to have a soil test done and really understand what's going on in your soil. Um, soil testing is a good idea too if you have mysterious plant death. You know, if you keep planting things and they're just not thriving, they're just not growing. Sometimes it can be something that's missing from your soil, or you've noticed that some of the leaves are turning yellow, or there's certain patterns of yellow and green on the leaves. Sometimes that can be due to nutrient deficiencies, or sometimes an overabundance of a particular type of nutrient. So it's surprisingly easy to over-fertilize, even with organic fertilizers. But particularly if you're not organic, which I encourage all of you to go organic, devote yourself to organic gardening. It's so much easier. If you use fertilizers that are not organic, it can be very easy to over-fertilize. And in fact, I was called out a few years ago to a particular country club here in Austin where the uh turf grass managers had accidentally set their fertilizer spreader equipment to the wrong setting, and they over-fertilized the grass and killed it. Um, and they asked me to come out to help them figure out what to do. They knew they had killed the grass by over-fertilizing it. They figured it out later, but they wanted me to come out and help them figure out how to remediate the soil and figure out if there was something else they should do with that area that had been turf grass, maybe they should convert it to native plants. So it does happen. You can over-fertilize, and if you don't know what your soil has in it to begin with, then you won't know what kinds of fertilizers and amendments to use. And even though the marketing on fertilizer bags tell you that a fertilizer is designed for a particular type of plant, if the soil already contains what those plants need, then you don't necessarily need more fertilizer. So getting a soil test can save you some heartache later by understanding what's in the soil to begin with. Um, I had another customer who didn't know that his soil was very high in phosphorus to begin with, and that's pretty common here in Central Texas for folks to have very high phosphorus rates in their soil. And he was putting in a new flower bed and brought in a bunch of manure-based compost, which tends to be very high in phosphorus as well. And then that just set the phosphorus levels way too high. And a lot of the plants turned yellow, the leaves turned yellow, many were very stunted and had problems long term because of the overabundance of phosphorus. So, again, understanding what you have in the soil to begin with is important so that you can make educated, informed decisions about how to fertilize and amend the soil going forward. So there's a couple of labs here in Texas that are really great. One is the Texas AM University Soil Lab. The other is a privately owned Texas Plant and Soil Lab that's down in the Rio Grande Valley. They're both really great. I like the Texas Plant and Soil Lab because they provide organic recommendations with the soil tests, and they also can test for microbial activity in the soil so you can get an understanding of how many living little microscopic critters there are in the soil that are good for the plants that help decompose organic matter that's in the soil and make all those nutrients available to your plants. So both of those labs can assist you in how to take a proper soil sample. It's really not hard to do, but it's important to do it correctly. So you want to take little shovelfuls from a large area, from many different spots over that large area, and then mix them all together so that you sort of get a an overview of a whole area instead of the sample being taken from just one spot. And you mix all of that together, you put it into a bag, put that bag in a cardboard box, tape it up, and mail it to the lab. The soil labs will send you results of how many pounds of a certain nutrient to add to your particular area, but you may need a more specific prescription to know which fertilizers and amendments are the best ones for you and how often to add them to the soil. And I offer that service. So contact me through atxgardens.com to get a prescription based on your soil test results. I recommend doing a soil test every three to five years because of course, as you're adding more amendments, the soil's gonna get better and better, but also the plants are taking those amendments and fertilizers out of the soil and using them too. So the nutrient levels in the soil do change over time. Okay, now what's going on with our woody plants at this time of year? Okay, so it's important to stop planting any woody plants right now. It's getting too hot to plant any of them, and they're actively growing. It's really hard on them to get planted when they're actively growing new shoots and leaves. And so it's really important to stop planting trees and shrubs at this time of year. Also, do not prune any woody plants now, especially oaks, as it's still the height of oak wilt season. Pruning now can spread oak wilt, so avoid that. Now, in the last episode, I said wait until June to prune your oaks. But really, what I should have said was wait until after June 30th to prune your oak trees. So that was a little bit of a misspeak on my part. I apologize. But keep listening to the podcast and I will let you know when it's okay to start pruning again. There are some exceptions for pruning oaks. If you need to prune them to accommodate public safety concerns like a broken branch or traffic visibility, that's one reason why you could prune an oak tree at this time of year. You might want to remove limbs that are rubbing on a building, or branches that are rubbing against each other, or branches that are getting hit by trucks and vehicles that are low over a street because that's creating open wounds that can't seal. So the plant just gets wounded over and over and over again, and that's how the beetles can get in that carry the oak wilt disease. They get into the interior of the tree through those wounds. So take a look at the Texas Oak Wilt website from the Texas Forest Service for more information about oak wilt if you're worried about it. I will put a link in the show notes. Now, at this time of year, exciting things are happening for our fruit trees. So getting into the second half of May, we might start to see some of the stone fruits starting to ripen. Especially the really early varieties of peaches, like June gold, Tex, Royal, Regal, and La Feliciana. They're all early types. You should check your apricots, nectarines, pluots, plums, all of those stone fruits, they might be starting to get ready. And something that I have had very good luck with in my garden is picking all of the stone fruits a little early when they start to get just a little bit of color on them, and then bring them indoors and let them ripen at room temperature. That way you can harvest them when they're still a little bit hard, and you'll get them before the animals get them. So if you have problems with squirrels and raccoons eating all of your fruit, uh you can harvest them when they have just a little bit of color coming into them and uh bring them inside and let them ripen indoors. They'll ripen faster if you put them in a paper bag with a ripe apple and you close that paper bag. That the ethylene gas from the ripe apple will help ripen the stone fruits a little bit faster. So that's a really good trick that I've had. Good luck with it in my garden. Um, it works for tomatoes too. If you haven't yet, you can still thin some of the palm and stone fruits, you know, apples and pears, and then all the peaches and plums. If you haven't thinned them yet, you should do that. And I talked about that in the last few episodes. If you have fruit tree branches that are very heavy with fruit, good for you. That's exciting. Um, but you may need to prop those branches up using uh wood or metal props of all kinds, whatever you can fashion together to hold up branches so they don't break. That's very important. And as I mentioned earlier, we talked a little bit about soil testing. Well, this is a good time of year to do any soil treatments that you may need to do to feed your fruit trees at this time of year when they're setting fruit. They really could use some extra food, so it's good for them. Okay, now what about perennials and bulbs and ornamental grasses? What's going on with them at this time of year? Mostly they're all looking beautiful and blooming. There's not a whole lot to do. You can continue cutting down your cool season perennials that are starting to go to seed, like yarrow and spider warts. If you want more plants, then just leave those plants alone and let them set seed, and then more plants will come up on their own next year. But if you want to control the number of plants that you have, or you feel like they're just looking too ugly, you can start cutting those down. It's time to start wrapping up planting perennials. Some gardeners will continue planting and transplanting and dividing perennials into June. If the long-term forecast looks like rain, then you can keep doing that. You can keep doing that sort of planting, dividing, and transplanting. But um, take a look at the forecast, you know, the long-term forecast for the first couple of weeks in June and see how you feel about it. If you have perennials in hand that need to get in the ground, plant them as soon as possible before the nights start getting too hot. So if somebody gave you a bunch of perennials or you just bought a whole bunch of perennials, try to get them in the ground as soon as possible before it starts getting too hot at night and it really stresses the plants if they're new. But sometimes June can be very rainy, and the plants will be very happy if they're planted at this time of year, and then it continues to rain through June. So we'll just have to see what happens. All right, and now it's time for our mid-episode sponsor break. Hi, y'all. This is Colleen Dieter from atxgardens.com. If you need personalized help with your landscape, book a consultation and we'll walk your yard together, answer all of your questions, and create a strategy for you that feels doable. I specialize in helping do-it-yourselfers by alleviating their anxieties about their yards. This week I helped Kate in the Barton Creek area. She had some spots in her landscape where plants kept dying over and over and over again. And we took a look at the irrigation and the drainage, and we figured out that there were some areas of the yard that were getting way too much water, and others that were not getting enough water, and solved the mystery of why some of the plants were just not thriving and dying in certain parts of her yard. So now she has that information that she needs to go forward with her landscaping projects and be successful this time. So make an appointment today at atxgardens.com to get valuable advice like that. So let's get back to the episode. All right, how about vegetables and herbs? What's happening with the vegetable and herb garden right now? Like I said in the last episode, May is a time where we're transitioning from planting spring crops to summer crops. And that can be a little complicated. I got a question on Instagram asking when is the best time to plant corn? So I think the second half of March and all of the month of April are a really good time. That's a really good time to plant corn. And then again, in the second half of July and all of August is the other really good time for planting corn. If you plant corn in either of those two windows, make sure that you choose a variety of corn that takes 80 days or less to mature. That way you can be sure that you'll get a corn harvest before the seasons change and either stress or kill the plants. There's exceptions to this, and some sources say that you can continue planting corn into May and June. And I think the exceptions are more heat-tolerant varieties of corn that originate from the American Southwest or from Texas. I don't personally have a lot of experience with those varieties of corn, but I know of other gardeners who love growing those corn varieties and will plant them at this time of year and grow them through the summer. Native seed search is a great source for those types of corn varieties that are more heat tolerant. The second half of May is still a good time for planting southern peas, black. Peas, cow peas, because they're all heat tolerant and they will continue to produce peas and beans, their little green beans, and then the more mature peas through the worst months of summer here in Austin. And you can plant melons now, they'll grow all summer. I always recommend with all of the legumes like peas, black-eyed peas, cow peas, beans, that you plant those directly from seed directly into the soil. Melons as well are best direct sown right into the soil. You can plant peppers and eggplants now, but they need to be planted as little plants as transplants. Winter squash and pumpkins can be planted now and they will grow all summer. The very durable varieties of summer squash, like tatume or loofah squash, loofah gourds really can be planted now and they'll grow all summer. And you can still plant sweet potato slips at this time of year. So um ask yourself a question before you start planting those hot season crops. How long into the summer do you want to keep growing vegetables? Do you plan on gardening all summer? Many vegetable gardeners take a break around July 4th and then leave the garden dormant until mid-August. And I will definitely talk more about that this summer and help you make those decisions. But if you start planting at this time of year, you're starting to make a commitment to care for those plants through the worst part of the summer. So think really hard about that about whether or not you want to have plants growing in July and you'll be caring for them in the hardest time of the summer. You have to really, really, really like black-eyed peas. Oh, of course, I forgot to mention you can also plant okra at this time of year, too. It's okra time. So if you really love black-eyed peas and you really love okra and you really love peppers and eggplants, then by all means get to it. If you really love melons and Armenian cucumbers, I like the warm season greens like malabar spinach and magenta spring. Get to it. What about the herbs? What's going on in your herb garden? Mine is going gangbusters, and this is a great time at the end of May to start harvesting. Keep harvesting if you haven't been harvesting. Get in there. Many of the herbs are maturing now, and they are at their best flavor-wise before they start blooming. So, really getting into June, June and July, they might start blooming. So things like mint, lemon balm, chives, oregano, and thyme are all at their best now. Once they start blooming, the flavor can change a little bit and the plant starts to fade. And I'll guide you through that in future episodes about what to do when they start fading. So make sure you're enjoying them now. Start harvesting them, using them fresh at this time of year. And you can also harvest some to dry as well. Your cilantro may be running its course now because it's a cool season plant. And most likely it's blooming right now. The other term for blooming is bolting. You might hear vegetable and herb gardeners talk about bolting. That's the term that we use to describe a plant when it goes from being vegetative and growing a lot of leaves into a phase of reproduction where it starts making flowers and seeds and it stops growing leaves. So cilantro is probably doing that now. And once it starts blooming, it doesn't taste as good. So you can decide if you want to pull those plants out and do something else in that spot, or you can leave the cilantro, let it bloom, then it will make seeds, and the seeds are coriander. So the other spice called coriander is the seed of the cilantro plant. And you can harvest the coriander to use in your kitchen, or you can harvest it, you can let the seeds form on the plant and let them turn brown, let them dry out and turn completely brown. And those are the seeds that you can save for next year's planting in the fall. You can also, of course, save those seeds and share them with other gardeners through the seed libraries around Central Texas. Most of the public libraries have seed collections, and you can bring cilantro seeds in to share with others. Now for the activism portion of our podcast. Last episode I mentioned the Ukrainian seed bank and how it was moved to protect the seeds at the start of the current war with Russia. And when I heard about the Ukrainian Seed Bank, I started wondering what other seeds are at risk due to armed conflicts. I recently was lucky enough to receive some seeds from the Iraqi Seed Collective. That's a group of Iraqi and other Southwest Asian and North African heritage seed growers devoted to preserving the genetic legacy of Iraqi crops by saving seeds. You can follow them on Instagram. And I'll be following up with similar organizations in future episodes. So as always, think globally and act locally and check out Central Texas Seed Savers and donate cash or seeds to Central Texas Seed Savers. And there'll be links to all these resources in the show notes. Now, coming up, the Austin Pond Society will host the 2026 Austin Pond and Garden Tour June 6th and 7th from 9 to 5. The spectacular Saturday Night Lights Pond and Garden will be featured from 6 to 9 after dark. This event is a self-guided tour of amazing ponds and gardens in and around the Greater Austin area. Enjoy garden art, meandering streams, fountains, waterfalls, dragonflies, koi, and amphibians. Some of these inspiring ponds and gardens are also certified wildlife habitats. Proceeds will help support local charities, Zilker Botanical Gardens, Educational Children's Programs, Central Texas Gardener, and Blue Santa. You can buy a ticket online at Austinpondsociety.org, and we'll have the direct link in the show notes. Advanced ticket sales are available until 10 p.m. on June 5th. And all you have to do is present your ticket or your receipt at your first pond on the pond tour in order to get a wristband for the rest of the tour. And that is your pass for both days of the tour. Kids under 12 are free. Pets are not allowed on the tour. So leave your Poochie at home. Okay, so that wraps up today's episode. Check the show notes for links to everything I mentioned. And if you enjoyed the ATX Gardens podcast, please share it with a fellow Central Texas gardener because it really helps me to grow the show. I'm Colleen Dieter with ATXGardens.com and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the ATX Gardens podcast. For show notes, tools, and to book a consultation with me, visit atxgardens.com. Happy gardening. See you next time.