Watering

Pros!

It isn’t so stifling hot! We can almost always count on a breeze to cool us down when we’re working in the garden
Wind chimes always give us music outdoors
Mosquitos aren’t so bad. In cities like Houston, where there isn’t as much wind, mosquitos run rampant. And while we aren’t mosquito free, we can at least manage them with products like Mosquito Beater.
Wind can actually provide great pollination to supplement our bees and butterflies
Plants love air circulation. When they’re all jammed together, they get fungus and poor growth patterns. Our wind definitely helps with that.

Cons

Hanging baskets can sometimes jump! If we get 30mph winds, hanging baskets have this nasty habit of falling off their hooks, so make sure you bring them down if it gets windy
Trees often need staking, especially for their first year! T-posts and arbor tie normally do the job though.
No matter what hairstyle you want, it will always look windblown.
Plants dry out in windy conditions. What may normally need watering only three times a week may need to be watered everyday if it’s windy. Using a moisture meter helps ensure that we know if a plant needs a drink.

-Marta

You DO Have A Green Thumb!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say “oh no, I can’t grow anything! I don’t have a green thumb.” Well, I’m here to tell you that you most certainly do! Everyone, and I mean everyone, has killed a plant in their gardening career. But don’t let it get you down! Just make sure you get all the information you need to know how to care for your new plant, which includes: sun requirements, watering, soil conditions, and growth habit. Next time you see your plant dying, please take a picture and bring it in! We’ll help you figure out what happened, and how to avoid it in the future.

-Marta

Periwinkle Update

We are holding off on bringing in periwinkles (one of our favorite, most reliable annuals!) due to the rain patterns we have been having, and we encourage you to stay away from them until the days get longer and drier. With rain and heavy moisture in the air, they suffer from Phytophthora, an airborne fungus, and die within days. We promise we will get them in as soon as conditions permit!!

-Sally

Living With Snakes

First and foremost, I want to say that gardeners should love snakes! Snakes are a very important part of our ecosystem, and they keep away rats, mice, and other pests from our houses and gardens. With all this rain, you have a much higher chance of running into snakes in your yards and garages (hopefully not in your house). Most snakes are good, but there are a few that you should watch out for. In our area we have coral snakes (red-and-yellow, Kill-a-fellow!), rattlesnakes, and water moccasins. If you see a snake near you, the best thing is to leave it alone! If it’s a garden snake, then it’ll keep your garden in top shape by deterring unwanted rodents. If you’re unsure if a snake is venomous, please call Animal Control (361-232-5627) BEFORE you try to relocate/dispose of it. –Marta

Make Room For These Friendly Snakes!

Time for vinca?

We all love our vinca (a.k.a. periwinkle) and the time is finally right for them!! With the rainy spring this year we delayed bringing them into the garden center. They are susceptible to Phytophthora Stem Blight and Root Rot Fungus primarily caused by heavy rains. Preventing fungus is always better than curing it once it appears. Water management is the main preventative measure. Frequent watering, even in moderate to dry sites, can make conditions favorable for development of branch blight and root rot. It is also important to provide excellent drainage. When preparing a planting bed, thoroughly dig up the entire area adding plenty of organic matter such as Cotton Burr Compost.Treat the area with Actinovate, a biological fungicide to help prevent the disease. Space the plants 8-10 inches apart and mulch heavily with Hardwood Mulch to prevent water from splattering off the soil. Also never water over the top of the plant. Always water slow and thorough on the ground below the plant. It looks like we’re going to have warm dry days ahead which is what makes vincas happy!! –DeAnna

A Few Summer Tips

If your watering hose is in the sun, make sure to let the water run through for a little while before watering your plants. Hot hoses make for hot water!
Caladiums last longer if you pinch off the bloom stalks, which are always great for bouquets.
If your tomatoes or cucumbers remind you of Jack and the Beanstalk, use Takiron stakes and jute twine to lengthen your cage and keep those veggies contained.
You CAN give perennials a haircut in the summertime if you need to, but please nothing too drastic. Shearing blooms and gentle pruning are great ways to keep perennials looking fresh.
Weeds love to encroach on your garden beds in the summer. Walk your beds once a week! Pulling up small weeds now is always easier, and can save you a lot of sweat.
If you have to spray insecticides or fungicides, do in early in the morning or late afternoon, not in the middle of the day! Water droplets have this nasty little habit of acting like magnifying glasses in 90 degree weather, and can cause burns.

-Marta

Got webbing on your trees?

It is not webworms! Webbing on the bark of trunks and branches is a good thing. Don’t spray!! Bark lice is natures clean-up crew. These tiny creatures are scouring the bark for plant, animal, or fungus life which they eat, and while they perform this housekeeping chore, they spin this web for protection. Usually the web will disintegrate in two or three days and will disappear almost a suddenly as it appeared. Leave them alone and let them do their job of cleaning up your trees or shrubs. Thank goodness for good bugs!

-DeAnna

When you set them up correctly, they are the easiest things to take care of because they take care of themselves. But before we get into the nitty gritty of terrariums, let’s go over some basics. There are two kinds of terrariums, open and closed. Open terrariums are ones without lids, or that have holes. These allow new air into the container, and often need more care because of the evaporation effect. Closed terrariums are the ones you might have studied in school. They are a closed system, and therefore have the capabilities of watering themselves, and give that whole ‘ecosystem-in-a-jar’ look. Either way, terrariums need the right start, otherwise they’re just a pain to deal with. Open terrariums are best for succulents or ‘dry’ plants, while closed terrariums are great for water-loving ones. Now, substrate is key when you build up your terrarium! It’s not just dirt, but a lasagna of charcoal, bark, soil, and gravel. Charcoal is something that I feel not enough people utilize in terrariums, and it might just be the most important. In a terrarium (especially a closed one), you have a cycle of water going down into the soil, settling down in the bottom, evaporating up to the lid, and then condensing and dripping back down onto the soil. But if you don’t have charcoal, the water doesn’t stay fresh. Charcoal is like your filter, so put it at the bottom of the terrarium, followed by a thin layer of bark, and a thicker layer of soil. After your lasagna is ready, put your plants in place, and after arranging everything put a top layer of wet sheet moss or even live moss. The wet moss is your supply of water for the terrarium, so only add more water if you notice there isn’t condensation. Be careful not to overwater! Fill in bare spots with gravel to keep everything in place. Pinch back your plants when necessary, and watch the cycle of nature do its thing. It’s that easy. If you’ve never owned a terrarium before, or want to buy all the products necessary but don’t want huge bags of charcoal and orchid bark, then try our Terrarium Kits. They have everything you need, and come with really great detailed instructions.

-Marta

We had a wonderful long wet spring, but now the heat has hit and rains have reduced; it’s time to get back to once a week lawn watering. We need to maintain moisture to keep our plants happy and healthy. Watering slow and deep, at least 1 inch a week is good. We recommend using a tuna fish or cat food can with a 1″ mark inside to measure the amount of water your sprinkler puts out.

Place the can in the path of the sprinkler and when water is up to the 1 inch mark, that tells you how long you need to water with your sprinkler type and water pressure in your neighborhood. New plantings will need to be watered more often, so please use a moisture meter to determine their needs.

You should fertilize again now, as heavy spring rains have washed out much of the soil nutrients. Using Milorganite, Medina Growin Green will not encourage excessive growth, but give your yard the nutrients it needs for the long hot days ahead, and organic fertilizers will increase soil ability to capture and retain moisture.

-DeAnna

(DeAnna’s truck – always there, at 6:30am!)

In a few weeks we’ll be closing the stores early on a Saturday to have a pool party at our home to celebrate our Gill’s nursery & landscape staff. We recognize those who have been with Gill’s 1 year, 5 years, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 years. This year we’re celebrating DeAnna’s, our Alameda store manager, 30th year with Gill’s!

DeAnna Baumgartner is a local girl, graduating from Flour Bluff High School. Upon graduation, she played basketball for McLennon Community College and Baylor University, qualifying for the 1980 Summer Olympic Team. She joined us in 1984, and became a Texas Certified Nursery Professional in 1986.

In the fall of 1986, James started thinking we needed a small garden center in central Corpus Christi for the spring season since our Airline location was so far from town. I was pregnant with our second son, Trevor, and honestly wasn’t too keen on the idea. James convinced me it was just for five months, February through June, and then we would go back to a single store operation. DeAnna was our first choice to manage our little temporary store. She accepted, and we all know the rest of the story; she’s been the number one lady in charge of Gill’s Alameda for 28 years!

DeAnna gets to her store around 6:30 in the morning, many times has swept the nursery, done some spot watering and maybe even unloaded a truck or two before the doors open at 8 a.m. DeAnna is a hands-on manager. She works alongside anyone and everyone who needs a helping hand. She hires, she trains, she motivates, she brings treats and sometimes she’s been known to do a little counseling, to help staff through various life challenges. DeAnna is just as close to many of her customers as she is to her staff. She calls David Dunn her week-end boyfriend, I think because he’s there every Saturday. Billy Johnson used to bring her donuts EVERY Saturday morning. I’ve heard of customers calling ahead, placing their order, and DeAnna running to their car with their garden supplies.

DeAnna took it upon herself many years ago to learn not only everything she could about plants that do well in our area, but also how to take care of them. She studied how to enrich the soil, which fertilizers plants responded best to, what bugs get on them and what insecticides could be used on them with the least toxicity, everything to help her customers be successful with gardening. When DeAnna attended national trade shows, she was the first to ask if a label could be changed to better describe its benefits. She shared what her customers needed with the manufacturers and they listened. A year or two later, what she asked for would be on our shelves. Because DeAnna stays current to the challenges we are faced with in our gardens, our local extension agents call on her for advice and information.

As part of her volunteer Master Gardener role, in 2006 DeAnna became the Nueces County “Learning To Grow” coordinator, building vegetable gardens in elementary schools from Agua Dulce to Port Aransas. She has planned and assisted with the installation of over 300 vegetable gardens to date, including every CCISD elementary, middle and high school, private schools, the Mother Theresa Shelter, La Mirada Housing Project and the Food Bank of Corpus Christi. Her goal is to open young peoples’ eyes to the wonder of gardening and the importance of healthy eating. She continues to build gardens each new season, adding to her list private schools, church schools and non-profits. In the fall and spring of each year, seed and seedlings are delivered to our Alameda store. From there, she along with other Master Gardeners organize and pack product to go to each of the participating gardens. In 2013, DeAnna was awarded 2nd place State of Texas “Master Gardener Of The Year” for her contributions to the “Learn To Grow” program in our area.

In 2010 DeAnna helped to resurrect the Ray High School Greenhouse for the science classes and the botany club, which has become an award winning project. The Master Gardener program this year awarded their first scholarship to a Ray High School student for their hard work and dedication to horticulture.

On her days off, when not working with the Master Gardeners, she enjoys vegetable and container gardening in her own back yard (she does know a great place to get plants!) as well as spending time with her husband, Clint Knight, and very best friend, Carol Krank, of the South Texas Botanical Gardens and Nature Center. The girls celebrate each week with 3 M’s, Mexican food, margaritas and movies.

James and I admire DeAnna for her leadership and product knowledge. We’re thankful for her commitment to learning and sharing her garden knowledge, for providing a safe and good place for our community to work and shop and we’re thankful for her commitment to quality. She cares about her customers and their gardening success. Thank you DeAnna!

-Sally

It seems everywhere I turn I see bugs. Chinch bugs in the grass, worms eating bougainvilleas, scale on irises and lilies, mealy bugs on tropicals. To spray, or not to spray? That is the question. We need to raise our tolerance of what is acceptable in our landscapes. A few bugs here or there or a little plant damage is all o.k. Did you know that only about 5% of insects are bad? Many insects are even beneficial. This fact is the reason you must decide whether or not to spray. Lots of times nature will take care of itself if you wait a few days. Keep your plants as healthy as possible, and you will not have many insect or disease problems.

First, make sure you have the right plant in the right place, proper sun exposure, correct spacing of plants to insure air circulation, regular feeding, mulched beds, watering. All of these things reduce stress and result in perfect growing conditions for your plants keeping them happy and healthy. We call it IPM or Integrated Pest Management. If you do determine you need to treat a problem insect, start with the least toxic approach.

Insects and disease go for the weak and stressed plants first.
A few aphids can be controlled with a blast of water.
A cluster of mealybugs on the tips of plants can be remedied by pruning and discarding the area.
Using Insecticidal Soap, Neem Oil, or Thuricide sprayed on plants with insects is your next approach.
Never spray everything just because one plant has a problem.

So look around your yard; see what’s happening. If you’re not sure whether you have a beneficial or a problem insect, just put a sample in a ziplock bag and bring it to us. We will help identify the bug and tell you if you need a control solution.

-Deanna

Watering

You DO Have A Green Thumb!

Periwinkle Update

Living With Snakes

Time for vinca?

A Few Summer Tips

Got webbing on your trees?

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