Year-Round Advice to Keep Your Garden Beautiful

With mild winters and warm summers, the climate in central Texas is perfect for gardening. If you are looking for some tips to boost your garden all year round, the experts at McIntire’s have compiled this monthly guide. For more detailed gardening tips and tricks, visit our Georgetown location or call 512-863-8243 to chat with our certified nursery professionals. 
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May

Mother’s Day is coming up! If the mothers in your life love plants & gardening, we have lots of perfect gift options. (tools, seeds, soil, living flowers, chimes, pottery & gift cards) 


To have color in the summer, plant heat tolerant annuals. For example: zinnias, periwinkles, cosmos, purslane, and moss rose (These plants do not do well if planted too early. Some of these tend to have fungus and rotting problems in the spring before temperatures become warm enough). In more shaded areas, caladiums, impatiens, and begonias are good for color. If you need shade, May is about as late as you can plant trees before the heat sets in. However, many heat tolerant perennials can still be planted successfully as the heat ramps up. 


Tropical plants start to become more accessible to garden centers around late spring. Now is the time to pick up things like Bougainvillea & Hibiscus, for example. 

In your lawn, it is now getting to the time of the year when our soil temperatures are warm enough to plant Bermuda seed and some seasonal color that does better in the warmer temperatures. If you have an area where you would like to establish a Bermuda lawn from seed, this is the time to get started. Bermuda requires warm nighttime temperatures of 60-65 degrees to germinate. 


If this is your goal, here are the steps we recommend taking: Step One - kill and then remove any annual or perennial weeds. Step Two - you want to do any leveling, grading, or filling, as needed. This will make sure the area is smooth & can drain properly. There should be at least 1" of loose soil on the surface. Step Three - Apply a mild fertilizer such as Milorganite or Texas Tee. Step Four - now apply your seed with a hand spreader. This is a good method to go by if you are laying Bermuda or St. Augustine sod as well. Water enough to keep the ground visibly moist for 2-3 weeks (to get the seed up), and then start cutting back on the water a little at a time until you are watering twice a week. This first year will require more watering to get the yard established. 

Mark S. Ney, Certified Texas Nursery Professional #4749