Gardening

Some of you might have seen me in my front yard today with a big bag of chicken crumble and were wondering why I was spreading chicken feed on my lawn. Well we are getting to the time of year when soil temperatures are right for switching from chemical fertilizers to organic fertilizers. An organic fertilizer is a product that you add to your lawn for good fungus and microbes to break down to add nutrients to your lawn. In this case I used chicken crumble which is not advertised as an organic fertilizer but makes a great inexpensive one.I got a 50lb bag for $15 from Tractor Supply in Helotes for example.

So some of you might be tempted to go out and toss some harsh fertilizer on your lawn. Hold back on that one. After the shock our lawns got with the freeze start with some very mild and balanced mixtures. The best thing you can do is add something like composted manure that comes in with an NPK of 0.5-0.5-0.5. If you want to use a chemical fertilizer I recommend something similar to “The Andersons PGF Balanced Fertilizer” that comes in with an NPK of 10-10-10. Below is a picture of both products.

As far as other plants in your yard I recommend patience. Some of them went dormant hard after that cold shock. You might need to research best care of each after a freeze to treat them correctly. Don’t go and cut your tree/bush/shrub down because it lost leaves, like some have thought they needed to do. Some trimming might be in order but in most cases your plant will come back with some care.

Thought I’d change things up and do a video this time. There is a lot you can do in your own yard while some are getting more time at home. Ask questions for any of the stuff I missed. No time? Talk to one of the many lawn/garden professionals we have living in our neighborhood and they can probably provide service with very little contact as we are in this social distance time.

Some of you all are having issues with Winter weeds taking over your yard as we are in the back and forth weather prior to spring. Lets takes some steps to clear that up.

1. Mow the lawn. Even if the grass doesn’t need it, if weeds are going crazy cutting the lawn will remove portions of the weeds to include flowers and seeds and help to reduce their growth.
2. Apply a pre-emergent herbicide. This will help stop new seeds from germinating and has shown to also slow the growth of existing weeds.
3. Apply a liquid post-emergent herbicide like Spectracide, Bayer Advanced, or Image. I find Spectracide works best on broad leaf weeds, Bayer Advaced works best on Crabgrass, and Image is the best at killing Nutsedge. Spectricide is the cheapest but it’s worth paying for one of the others if you have a particular issue with crab grass or Nutsedge. Also look at the ten day forecast when you do this and make sure it’s dry for a few days so that the herbicide isn’t immediately washed out.

I wouldn’t recommend putting down fertilizer quite yet as lawns are still experiencing reduced growth for the most part from the winter. If you tackle the weeds now though your lawn will be ready to take off when we start really getting into Spring.