GARDENING CALENDAR
TEXAS COOPERATIVE EXTENSION
BEXAR COUNTY
BY DAVID RODRIGUEZ June 2, 2007
Harvest your vegetables on a regular basis to keep quality
high. You can still plant southern peas, eggplant, and okra for mid-summer
vegetables. Use a Bt product to control hornworms, fruit-eating pinworms,
and other caterpillars. Pull non-producing plants, especially the tomatoes--before
diseases and spider mites move in and put them in the compost pile. Powdery
mildew will probably take the viney plants this month. Pull them out and wait
for fall.
Select the color and the height of mature crape myrtles you
want by choosing from the hybrid, disease-resistant varieties. Local nurserymen
will have this listing of crape myrtle characteristics.
Cut, mow or pull suckers from the roots of trees (such as
Live Oaks) don't use herbicides, it will damage the mother tree as well.
Chinch bugs can appear in lawns, especially on Bermudagrass,
anything from now through late summer. Floratam St. Augustinegrass is chinch
bug resistant.
Irrigate the lawn grass only if it hasn't rained in the last
two weeks, and then no more than 3/4 inch of water on St. Augustinegrass (less
for Zoysia, Bermuda, and Buffalo grasses). Water only the most important part
of your lawn and let the rest go dormant until we get rain. Keep the mower
blade sharp. If you had grub or chinch bug problems last year, treat the lawn
at the end of the month, just follow the directions on the bag.
David Rodriguez is County Extension Agent-Horticulture
with Texas Cooperative Extension in Bexar County. For more information, call
the Master Gardener "Hotline" (210) 467-6575 or visit our County
Extension website at http://bexar-tx.tamu.edu.