BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Landscaping Any North Central Texans out there?

I moved to the area about 2 years ago and am finally deciding on doing some landscaping in my back yard. My questions is, when is it okay to plant? A book I have says Spring or fall. Is it okay to put new plants in the ground in October? I'm from the midwest, and really have no idea what to do. Any help would be awesome. Thanks.

I would recommmend a good radio show/website for you. It's www.dirtdoctor.com and Howard Garrett, dirt doctor, is on 660 am radio on Sunday mornings with an organic gardening show. His website is full of great info on gardening in north TX. I live in Arlington. What city are you in? I know the Dirt Dr's show is carried nationally too. If you want to know what to plant here, check out his website.

If you find any great nurseries in your area, I'd like to hear about them. I've had trouble finding good potting soil in Arlington. Finally found some at Marshall's Grain Co in Ft Worth. Lots of organic remedies there too.

I'm in fort worth. I'll definitely check out the website. good to know about marshall's, I just pulled it up on a list of nurseries in the area. I'll let you know what I find on other nurseries. I'm hoping to take advantage of the contacts at a landscape company I work for. Unfortunately, they don't do design only install, or I'd have better info.

Thanks!

You'll love Marshalls. They also have plants. On the Dirt Dr website I think he has info on nurseries in the north TX area also.

What kind of place do you have? Do you have a lot of landscaping ahead? I moved here from Oregon and decided it's too hot to put much outside to take care of. We did re-do the front of our house and I put some mums into barrels for color, low maintenance stuff. We aren't going to stay in this house forever either-only about 3 years so whatever we do it's with an eye to re-sale.

One thing I've found here (it's my second year) the winter last year was very mild so my mums and pansies bloomed all winter and into spring. Things grow very well in the spring and fall here. you can even plant fall tomatoes.
Good luck with your projects.

It's really amazing how long thing stay green. I'm used to snow and clouds for 4-6 months a year. I grew up in Chicago and spent 6 years in Michigan.

I recently attended a really cool seminar put on by FW's water dept to promote water friendly landscaping. It really is amazing all the things you can plant. there's a cool website www.txsmartscape.com that's worth looking into. They have a plant database that offers size, water requirement and pictures.

I just want to soften up the corners in our fenced backyard. I'm not used to all the 6ft wooden fences.

I owned a ruralish 'ranchette' outside of Mckinney for 15 years and worked extensively in the nursery business in Collin county for a long while.

Yes you can plant in the fall, it's a great time to put trees in the ground in Texas, maybe the best. Gives them time to develop roots that will help them survive the next blistering summer.

Spring planting should be completely finished in north Texas by the first of May, or even better, the first of April. Anthing that goes in the ground after that stands a low chance of surviving the season. It's so intensely hot that plants need very well developed root systems to survive the many months of heat. Plants put in the ground too late in the spring will not have enough root-power to make it through the summer and they'll fry.

After years in the nursery/landscape business there I can tell you what the Number One cause of plant death is: overwatering. Surprised? People see that their newly planted gardens look wilted and they get out the sprinkler, water the daylights out of it every afternoon at 3 o'clock in soil with poor drainage, and soon their happy new plants are root rotted and dead. This is why gardens need to go in early so as to avoid this whole fiasco.

And yeah, I'm just a huge fan of Howard Garrett as well. Loved his radio show and his books. The man know of what he speaks.