A 12-month growing season for flowers and plants in Dallas means that your garden can be in bloom anytime. With these easy gardening tips from Dallas County Master Gardener Association, you can keep spots of color going all year long around your North Central Texas home.

Find Your Water Equilibrium

One of the most important gardening tips for Dallas homeowners is to water plants appropriately. Many people water too much or too little. Since the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is experiencing droughts, it’s even more important to make sure that every drop of water counts.

Master gardeners encourage homeowners to group their plants by how much water they need. You can use soaker hoses or drip irrigation to water regularly. Mulching flower beds helps to retain moisture and provides natural nutrients to plants as it breaks down over time. Mulch also discourages weed growth.

All landscape should be watered deeply once a week if there’s no rainfall — that includes grass. But overwatering your grass won’t help your lawn, and it can lead to higher water bills.

If you’re putting in new grass, consider Bermuda grass instead of St. Augustine. Bermuda is fairly drought-tolerant, and it can go dormant if drought restrictions force residents to water less than once a week. Although Bermuda grass doesn’t grow in shade, other varieties such as buffalo grass and zoysia will.

To cut down on water use, master gardeners recommend limiting the amount of turf that you use in your yard and to create more beds for flowers and vegetables.

Choose Plants Carefully for Year-Round Color

The key to having a flourishing flower garden and lawn in the Metroplex is to pick the appropriate plants. Native and adapted plants work best because they can handle the Texas heat. Some perennials need long periods of cold weather in winter to thrive in spring and summer, and the Dallas area’s typically mild winters aren’t a good match for those plants.

Master gardeners suggest you create flower beds with a mix of annuals and perennials to maximize the color potential year round. Brightly colored annual pansies grow extremely well in DFW winters, while petunias are pretty in the spring. In the summer, choose drought- and heat-tolerant bloomers like moss rose. Chrysanthemums come back every year as a beautiful fall perennial.

Talk to the Experts

If you need more gardening tips, reach out to the Dallas County Master Gardener Association. Or if you love gardening and want to become a master gardener yourself, find out what you need to do to earn a master gardener designation through Texas A&M.

[cf]skyword_tracking_tag[/cf]