North Mississippi Gardening Tips
April 2008
FLOWERS
Early April is a great time to grab your best gardening buddy and hit the garden centers and shop, shop, shop! But before you go absolutely haywire and come home with a menagerie of plants that will be a lasting testament to your foolishness, first take stock of what you have and what you need to enhance your landscape and protect your pocketbook.
Plan flower beds carefully. Consider the mature heights of various plantings so you can see and enjoy each group. Color combinations are also important. Plant pleasing blends as well as suitable contrasts. Do not plant too closely. Take into consideration the ultimate width of each plant so that plants do not end up too crowded. Try new types and cultivars to add interest to your plantings.
When preparing flowerbeds, good drainage is necessary to have beautiful flowers. Work beds thoroughly and deeply. Incorporate organic matter, limestone, and fertilizer into flowerbeds.
Remember to protect established roots and sprouts of perennials growing in flowerbeds, which will also be planted with annuals. You can work around perennials or lift them, work the bed, and reset them.
After the danger of frost has passed and the ground begins to warm, plant all tender flower plants like ageratum, begonia, coleus, geranium, impatiens, marigold, petunia, periwinkle and zinnia. Tender warm season vines like moonflower, morning glory, scarlet runner bean, and hyacinth bean can be planted after the ground warms and all danger of frost has passed.
CONTAINER PLANTS
Now that the weather is finally getting warm, and you are spending more time outdoors, don’t forget about maintenance of houseplants. Check plants for the need to repot if you haven’t done this already. Carefully lift the soil ball and check the roots. If they are matted and spiraling around the soil ball it is time to repot. If the roots are sparse the plant should grow all summer in the present pot.
Porch and patio plants like hibiscus, allamanda and ixora should be trimmed back, repotted, and fertilized. If needed, ferns can be trimmed back, but watch for new, emerging fiddleheads. Also check to see if they need to be repotted and fertilize to stimulate new growth.
When fertilizing container plants during the growing season use a full-strength water-soluble fertilizer solution every time you water. Some fertilizer brands have formulations for houseplants. As an alternative, you can use a slow-release fertilizer, which lasts several months.
FRUIT
When purchasing shrubs for the landscape consider those that have edible fruits like fig, pomegranate (Feijoa sellowiana), and pineapple guava (Punica granatum). Remember that the pineapple guava and the pomegranate are hardy to Zone 8, which means you will need to put these plants in a protected area if you want to try growing them in Zone 7.
One fruit that I think every home landscape should have is the blueberry. It cannot be beat for year round beauty and has delicious fruit high in antioxidants to boot! The blueberry sports creamy-white or pink flowers in spring followed by the tasty, nutritious fruit and the beautiful red, orange and yellow fall color. It is pretty even in the dead of winter with its young pink stems. Just be sure when purchasing that you buy two different cultivars to ensure cross pollination and fruit set.
VEGETABLES
After the first week of April most of Mississippi is past the danger of a freeze—now, before you smarty-pants remind me that we had a hard freeze on April 26th last year let me point out that that does not typically occur in a normal year. We hope to goodness that this will be a more normal year with expected rainfall and normal temperature ranges. So, take your chances and sow beans, corn, cucumbers, and Southern peas. Avoid planting okra seeds too early. The soil temperature should be above 75 degrees F.
You can set out transplants of eggplant, cantaloupe, watermelon, peppers, summer squash, and zucchini about two weeks after the last projected freeze date when night temperature are consistently above 50 degrees. F. If you do a lot of home canning of tomatoes, as I do, plant determinate bush-type tomatoes so the fruit will all ripen within a week or two of one other. That way, you won’t have to pull out all that canning paraphernalia but a couple of times and you will have a big yield of canned tomatoes, salsa, or whatever. For continued fresh eating of tomatoes, plant the indeterminate types that yield all the way until frost.
Lelia Scott Kelly, Ph.D., writes North Mississippi Gardening Tips monthly and is a Horticulture Specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Her office is in the North Mississippi Research & Extension Center, Verona.