citrus

Come take a stroll through our garden and do a little stress-free shopping. We can help you pick out the perfect gifts that grow and other useful gifts that the gardeners on your list will love. Here are 10 gift ideas for green thumbs.

1. Gifts That Grow

Now is a great time to plant winter flowers like petunias, geraniums, and snapdragons are great right now, and they’re quick and easy to plant! Easy for Santa to sneak in and secretly plant a few flowers.

Roses, herbs, strawberries, and onions are all great to plant right now too. Or if you want to make it a truly memorable holiday, plant a tree! Remember that trees benefit greatly from being planted in Fall and Winter, including citrus trees!

2. Poinsettias and Other Holiday Classics

Poinsettias are THE classic holiday décor and centerpiece for holiday meals. They make great gifts for teachers, bosses, coworkers, and friendly acquaintances – they just make people happy!

A blooming Christmas Cactus or Kalanchoe is great too, or a small living holiday tree like a juniper, Norfolk pine, or rosemary. We can gift wrap these for you. Done!

3. Custom-Planted Pottery

Let us help you put together something totally unique! Choose the pots and plants and we can pot it all up for you. Houseplants, flowers, herbs, native plants for pollinators, and lots more can stand alone or be combined in the right pot.

4. Fine Gardening Tools

These French-made hand tool sets from Opinel have been a hit with the pros here at Gill’s. Or a nice set of pruners or loppers. Or even a quality sharp-shooter shovel. Working with quality tools makes gardening a lot more fun.

5. Soothing Wind Chimes

Lots of different tones and styles for relaxing in the garden.

6. Something for the Birds

Birdbaths, feeders, houses, seed, and native plants to attract birds to your loved one’s yard. Watching birds is better than TV!

7. Wildflower Seed Bombs

Maybe the best stocking stuffer for the planet? These little lumps of dirt contain 28 varieties of wildflower seeds that provide food for bees and other pollinators. Just place them where they make contact with bare soil, and wait for flowers to pop up next Spring!

8. Plant-Me Holiday Cards

Our holiday cards this year are completely biodegradable and they have flower seeds embedded in them! Find a sunny spot and plant the card in the ground after the holiday season.

9. Dried Flower Bouquets and Bundles

Come pick and choose different bundles and create your own dried flower bouquet or choose one we’ve put together. No watering or fertilizer required!

10. When in Doubt – Gift Card!

Can’t go wrong with a Gill’s gift card! Good for plants or services too. You could give the gift of landscape design, a food garden next Spring, a planted tree, or anything else we provide. We can help you with ideas there too!

Citrus Trees

Fertilize your citrus NOW for more blooms, May/June for better fruit set, September/October for nutrients.

For citrus trees, we recommend fertilizing with Espoma Citrus-Tone – all organic

Meyer lemons on left with fertilizer, Meyer lemons on the right without!

Knock-out Roses

We like to cut knock-out roses by the end of January or first week of February, even if they’re covered in blooms. We prefer to cut before roses have made their first big flush of Spring growth. Just like the hybrid tea roses, knock-out roses benefit from a hard trimming, usually down to 24”. Begin fertilizing mid-February.

We recommend fertilizing roses with all organic Rose-Glo. Works great for lots of other blooming plants.

Ornamental Grasses

Trim your ornamental grasses straight across (no “cupcakes”) to 3”-4” from the ground sometime in January. Follow up with a small amount of fertilizer late February or early March. Be stingy – too much fertilizer speeds up the growth, making the foliage flop over instead of stand up.

Next week, my grasses will be cut back and ready for a new growing season.

For ornamental grasses, Plant Tone, Medina Growin’ Green, or HastaGro are all great organic fertilizers. Just remember – not too much!

-Sally Gill

James Gill had his annual Get Ready for Spring garden talk here at Gill’s last weekend. As always, it was a big hit – standing room only! In case you missed it, we decided to do a recap:

Pre-Spring Lawn Tips

Prevent and treat Take All Root Rot using Peat Moss: Rake out dead grass, spread Peat Moss, and water it in. Wait until dry to water again.
Know when to water your lawn – if a screwdriver is hard to push into the soil, its’ time to water. If it pushes into the soil easily, you’ve got enough moisture.
Wait to fertilize your lawn until it’s growing, and you need to mow it once a week – usually March
If you get Bermuda grass in your landscape beds, use Grass B Gone
There’s not a practical way to remove Bermuda grass in your St. Augustine lawn – the best way is to keep your St. Augustine healthy (watered and fed) and it will choke out the Bermuda

To Prune or Not to Prune?

Prune Now

Lantana
Esperanza
Plumbago
Hibiscus
Firebush
Jatropha
Grasses
Shrub Roses

Do Not Prune

Crape Myrtles
Citrus Trees
Bougainvillea
Fig Trees

Prune AFTER Spring Bloom

Azaleas
Mountain Laurel
Indian Hawthorn
Climbing Roses

Fertilize Citrus Trees Now

Use organic Citrus Tone
Spread inside and just outside the drip line (where water drips off the tree branches and leaves when you water it)

-James

We’re lucky in South Texas to be able to add citrus trees to our gardens with great success. Lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit, kumquats, and more thrive here and produce lots of fruit with the right care – if you feed them, they feed you! Now’s the time. Here’s our recommended method.

We love organic CitrusTone by Espoma. It contains all the essential nutrients plus beneficial microbes that colonize in the root system and create stronger roots and a healthier plant overall. Sort of like eating healthy AND taking vitamins.

Citrus Feeding Schedule

Late Winter January/February: Pre-bloom application will enhance flowering.
Late Spring May/June: Post-bloom application will encourage better fruit set.
Fall September/October: This will ensure overall nutrient needs are met.

How Much?

Citrus trees are heavy feeders – they need quite a bit of food to produce fruit.

Citrus Tree Height	Amount of CitrusTone (using 4lb bag)
Up to 3 ft	2 lbs. (1/2 bag)
3-6 ft.	4 lbs. (1 bag)
7-9 ft.	6 lbs. (1.5 bags)
9+ ft.	8 lbs. (2 bags)

Pro Tips

Spread fertilizer at the drip line. ‘Drip line’ means the outer edge of the branches where water drips off when it rains. Don’t use fertilizer within 6” of the trunk. Spread evenly at the drip line, then water it in thoroughly.

Remove blooms for the first 2 years. Young citrus trees need to put their energy into growing roots and branches instead of producing fruit. This means once you start seeing blooms, be sure to pluck them off. This will prevent fruiting. Do this for the first 2 seasons, then your tree will be ready to sustain the weight of the fruit and the energy required to produce it.

For citrus trees in pots, use 1 teaspoon per 4″ of pot diameter. Double for pots over 12″. Feed about every 60 days late Winter to Fall.

Plant fertilizers are much like food for us, the healthier the meal, the greater benefits.

That’s why we love organic Espoma plant foods. We use them in our own gardens and recommend them to customers all the time – they work! Each “Tone” (Plant-Tone, Citrus-Tone, Bio-Tone) product is a complex blend of long-lasting natural ingredients fueled by beneficial microbes. These natural organic granules break down slowly for a steady continuous feeding. They are naturally low in salts, so they won’t burn your plants, and they add organic matter back into the soil to build better soil health. Bottom line… you get a beautiful healthy garden that’s also safer for our environment.

Bio-Tone is the premium plant starter to use when putting in any new plants. It promotes root growth for stronger plants as they grow.
Plant-Tone is the go-to for an all-purpose food for flowers, veggies, potted plants and landscapes.
Citrus-Tone is superior for all citrus and fruiting trees & shrubs.
Azalea-Tone is specific to plants the need a more acidic soil than we have in the Coastal Bend. Use this on plants like Azaleas, Camellias, Gardenias, & Magnolias.

We also love and appreciate Espoma’s commitment to the environment. They are a minimal waste manufacturing facility that operates 100% on solar power! They utilize a vast array of renewable and sustainable ingredients. There are never any sludges or fillers and no hazardous or toxic ingredients, making it safe for people, pets, and our planet.

-Debbie

Over the next few weeks, we will be addressing the freeze damage to plants which everyone has suffered. We are working on a video giving easy to follow instructions about what to prune and how.

It is not critical, and in fact, may be too early, to start most pruning immediately. If you have palm leaves hanging down, you may prune them as soon as this last freeze (hopefully) passes. Gingers, which look blowtorched, may be cut to 18″ tall this weekend if desired. Blackened, wilted herbaceous plants like Mexican petunia (Ruellia) and shrimp plant can be cut close to the ground. But woody shrubs like ixora and plumbago, small trees like citrus, and sad looking philodendrons should be left alone another week until we can more closely determine the level of damage, and therefore where to prune.

Watch for us to address these recovery issues here in the Garden News and on social media. Email us at info@gillnursery or message us on Facebook and Instagram with your related questions, so our upcoming instruction video is as complete as possible in helping you through this temporary setback.

– James Gill

Our first reaction to make it all better is to water our grass and plants. Do not water unless the ground is close to dry. Watering damaged plants will encourage fungal and bacterial growth, which we want to avoid. Stick your finger in the soil and check for moisture. If it is moist, do not water yet.

You can mow your grass if it is taller and needs to be mowed. Place your mower setting one setting lower; do not cut too short. Cutting too short will add stress to grass that’s already stressed from the freeze.

Do not fertilize your lawn until it is greened up and actively growing. That is when the grass can best absorb the fertilizer in its roots and benefit from the nutrients.

Start removing the dead/damaged portion on your plants. Some examples below are:

If the plant is mushy (tropicals like ginger, Moses in the boat, bird of paradise) trim back to firm stem or to ground. Watch video: “Freeze Remedy: Initial Assessments”
Plants like salvia, plumbago, firecracker plant, and flax lily, trim down to within 4” from ground.
Plants like ixora, duranta, schefflera, hibiscus, and bougainvillea: scratch trunk and trim back to where you see green in the cambium layer of the trunk (maybe to ground).
Philodendron – Watch video: “Freeze Remedy: How To Save Philodendrons”
Palms – Watch video: “Freeze Remedy: Palm Trees”
Citrus– if you scratch a branch and there is no green underneath you can remove it, but no hurry. Keep any suckers that arise from below the graft cut off, they will grow fast but produce sour fruit. If your tree is frozen all the way to the graft, fertilize with Citrus Tone now, May 1st, and September 15th to promote plenty of healthy regrowth from freeze damage.

We know it looks bad but we are here to help you get your landscape back as best we can. We are bringing in new, healthy plants from California, Florida and all over Texas. Our Texas growers learned from the 80’s freezes how to protect plants.

Thank you for your questions on our website, Facebook, Instagram, on the phone, and in person! We will continue creating videos as we see the need and as always, we’re open 7 days a week to help you with your garden!

Many citrus trees around the Coastal Bend appear damaged after Winter Storm Uri. For citrus trees you want to try and save, the best thing to do right now is wait and see. Some may be goners, some may bounce back, and others may have delayed effects from the freeze. It may still be weeks or months before we know for sure. If you want to go ahead and replace or plant new citrus trees, now’s the best time – check out Josh’s how-to video below.

We are happy to present this video in collaboration with Grow Local South Texas!