Timi DeBusk
Master Gardener, Master Naturalist
February 2008
It is time to show love to your Valentine and to your roses. February 14th is the optimum date to prune your roses and feed them the first feeding of the new year. A quick crash course in rose pruning:
1. Use clean, sharp tools.
2. Look at the overall plant, but begin from the base of the plant.
3. Prune to open the center of the plant to let light in and air circulate.
4. Make your cuts at a 45-degree angle, about ¼ inch above a bud that
is facing toward the outside of the plant.
5. Make sure it is a clean cut (not ragged).
6. Remove all broken, dead, dying or diseased wood.
7. Cut until the inside of the cane is white.
8. Remove any weak or twiggy branches thinner than a pencil.
9. Remove sucker growth below the graft.
10. Remove any remaining foliage.
Be brave. Most people err on the side of not enough, rather than too much. Generally, you should be cutting back about 2/3rds of the old growth. It takes resolve to prune, but you will be doing your plants such a favor. Right now is the opportune time for planting onions and potatoes. Lettuce can go in middle to end of the month.
When planting your onions you will want to plant them fairly shallow if you want them to bulb. If you want green onions you will need to plant them about a finger deep. Usually I plant 1015s to bulb and white Bermuda for green onions. Have you noticed how hard it is to find really nice green onions in the market? They are usually too small to peel or they are big and fibrous. Onions require very little attention once they are in the ground.
Potatoes are one of my favorites, probably because they can be planted when little else is going on in the garden. The ground needs to be tilled so that it will be loose (remember we are talking about root veggie). I like to make a rather deep furrow, letting the soil build up on the sides.
Prepare your seed potatoes by cutting them into 1” chunks being sure to leave an “eye” on each piece. Let the chunks chit, or air dry, for about 24 hours. I like to dust each piece with sulfur powder. Take a chunk and press it firmly into contact with the soil in the valley of the trench. Be sure the “eye” faces up. Cover with about 1”-2” of soil. As the potato plant grows, mound more dirt around the plant. Continue to add more of the soil until you begin to have a mound above the soil line. This allows for layers of potatoes to form beneath the soil. Right after the flowers bloom you can begin to harvest new potatoes. I usually get the small ones right below the surface and then continue to harvest them a layer at a time as needed. The larger ones will be the ones close to the bottom of the roots.
Late January and all of February are busy times inside the greenhouse. It is full of flats of annuals that we will all want ready after the threat of frost is past. If the winter doldrums are lurking, come by and stroll through the greenhouse, it invigorates the gardener in all of us.
Mark your calendar now so that you will not miss the Llano Lawn and Garden Show on March 8 from 9:00am – 1:00pm. There will be speakers and demonstrations the whole time as well as vendors.
If you have been shelling pecans, I hope you are saving the shells and using them for mulch. If you need to loosen up hard packed soil, why not till some shells in?
We have beautiful onion sets and seed potatoes in at the nursery. Come by and have a look at all that is growing in the greenhouse.
Llano Master Gardeners new training classes begin March 12th. They are held from 9am-1pm each week. Most classes will be at Llano County Library in Llano unless we take a field trip. We have lined up some of the most knowledgeable and renowned educators in all of Texas to present the classes. There is so much to glean (there are no tests). You just come and drink in the information and learn where you can go for further information on subjects that are of particular interest to you. It will be the best 10 weeks of learning that you can imagine. If you are interested you can register at the County Extension Office in Llano or you can pick up an application at the nursery.
Happy gardening - Timi
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