To Do This Week

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Week of January 8th, 2011

• Plant fruit trees, artichokes, cardoons, strawberries, asparagus, leeks, onions, greens, cauliflower, broccoli, and radishes.
• Add manure or compost to your vegetable beds for the spring season. Manure does need three months to age in soil so that it won't burn your plants when you plant them soon. Compost needs at least a month, but your plants are less sensitive to that than they are to manure.
• Prune dormant trees and shrubs. You need to wrap that up by about the end of January. When we start to get a few warmer days and nights, our trees will start to leaf out and we do want to prune them before that begins to happen.
• Continue planting trees and shrubs.
• Dormant trees and shrubs will not have leaves on them right now. But plants such as live oaks are considered semi-evergreen, which means that they drop their leaves only in the spring, right before the new ones grow. So since live oaks do have leaves on them, you might consider them not dormant but it is also time to prune those live oaks as well. Especially with the danger of oak wilt, it's a great time to prune your oaks before those insects get active soon.
• This is a good time to move trees, shrubs, and roses.
• But, wait until February to prune evergreens. We don't want to encourage new growth when freezing temperatures could still be coming. Also, avoid pruning citrus until the last freeze date. Get these proper pruning techniques and guidelines for dates.
• Apply dormant oil to fruit trees to smother overwintering insects.
• Prune evergreen perennials like Salvia greggii to encourage new growth. Cut to the ground browned salvias like Indigo Spires or other dormant, browned perennials.
• Plant fruit trees, artichokes, cardoons, strawberries, asparagus, leeks, onions, greens, cauliflower, broccoli, and radishes.

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