Weekly Garden Tip

April 2, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

With the type weather conditions we are experiencing at this time of year, many people are probably scratching their heads and wondering what happened to spring. We had a relatively mild winter and just a short period of good springtime weather and now it seems like we’re already into our summer season with extremely hot conditions and very little rainfall.

Many people looking at their landscapes are starting to see a lot of stress caused by current weather conditions and the biggest one is plants drying out more quickly. We haven’t had a great deal of heavy rains in some time and unless you have an irrigation system that’s watering at the proper frequency, you’re probably going to notice the plants beginning to slow down their growth or even have discolored foliage and wilting on shallow rooted plants.

Make sure that you’re irrigating landscape plants at least once or twice a week and turfgrass areas up to three times a week to insure that enough moisture stays in the root zone area for roots to continue normal functioning.

This time of year many people are completing change outs, too, of seasonal plants from the fall and winter to ones more tolerant of the summer heat and area garden stores and retail stores have good selections of plants for those purposes. You can pretty much do any type of landscaping this time of year and many people choose to add plants now into the landscape to give them the benefit of our long upcoming growing season to get firmly established before next winter.

Larger trees, palms and bigger plants should be looking a lot better now and have more foliage since they’ve had several months now of good growing conditions. Don’t expect them to be back to a normal appearance though before late fall or even next year.

Hopefully we will be spared visits from hurricanes this season as direct hits because many plants if we get hurricanes again this year may not survive being damaged three years in a row.

Insect and disease activity is also on the increase because of higher temperatures so inspect landscapes at least once a week and look for potential problems. If problems are identified and they are at high enough levels to warrant control measures, take the appropriate control measures to safeguard your plantings.

Many people are choosing not to do preventive spraying in their landscapes and this allows beneficial insects and predators to build up to help control harmful ones that are doing damage to your plants. If you can control the urge to instantly spray everything you see that looks harmful, you would be amazed at how sometimes natural controls will come in a large degree without your having to apply chemical products.

If you have questions about landscape problems at this time of year or just need advice on plant care, call the Palm Beach County Extension office for free advice. You can also examples to their office for free examination and determination of landscape problems. If you with to call them on the telephone dial 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.