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February 2023 King Feed Garden Blog

King Feed Garden and Hardware - Wimberley, Texas

February 2023 is starting with a big winter ice storm! We have never seen an ice storm negativily impact trees as this storm. You can find Chainsaws at King Feed in Wimberley, Texas. You can also find Pole Saws at King Feed in Wimberley, Texas. Although winter is not usually the time of year we get dramatic weather systems, the past three years have parted from that practice. With some memorable winter storms under our belt, most of us have had the chance to hone our skills at splitting firewood, insulating pipes, leaving a faucet dripping inside, and other cold weather survival skills. Mother Nature is full of surprises, so we’ll have to wait and see what she has in mind for us this year!

February 2023 Grass Care

February is our shortest month, but there are lots of garden chores that should be on our February calendar. For instance, grasses are living plants, and they need food. Even while dormant, grassroots, and stolons are growing and getting ready to take off once the weather warms. We developed King’s Premium Soil especially for Wimberley. Our Wimberley Soil has all the primary nutrients in the right proportions. It's a full complement of beneficial minerals with extra iron, zinc, sulfur, and other micro-nutrients also needed by your lawn, trees, and shrubs. We also love organic lawn foods like Sustane 8-2-4 Milorganite, and others. Using them along with a top dressing of ½”-1” well-rotted compost will feed your lawn the natural way.

Gardening In February 2023

Maintaining the nourishing qualities of our gardens is the most important task gardeners face, as each year’s crops constantly deplete the soil. While this is true everywhere, it is of particular note in Wimberley, where most of our poor, rocky, alkaline soils simply do not have all the nutrients necessary for a fruitful, prolific garden. Even experienced gardeners new to Wimberley are often surprised at how poor our typical native soil can be. Plants must have access to the primary elements they use to turn sunshine into food, and adding the necessary organic nutrients to your garden soil is the easiest and most cost-effective way to accomplish this. These amendments will become a permanent part of the soil structure and the living biomass.

Decomposed organic material will improve the overall tilth, nutrition, and drainage of your garden. Peat moss, compost, well-rotted manure, coir fiber, leaf mold, and humus are useful for this purpose.
Micronutrients can pair with mineral supplements, including greensand, vulcanite, sulfur coated iron, Minerals Plus, and others.
Supplement the typically low nitrogen levels in Wimberley soils with cottonseed meal, blood meal, fish emulsion or seaweed.
Either rock phosphate or bone meal will supplement the phosphorus your garden plants need to grow strong roots, bountiful flowers, and set flowers that will become our food.
Dried ground banana peels and greensand are perfect for enhancing potassium.
Boosting microscopic populations that benefit your garden is are discovered organic gardening technique that has now graduated to high tech production facilities.

One of these is mycorrhizal fungi, which we now carry in several brands, including Espoma Plant Starter Plus, and Jobes Organic plant foods.

Prune Roses In February

February is the traditional month for pruning roses here. If you have found a well-drained mostly sunny spot to grow roses that can be protected from deer foraging, prune your roses with a clean, sharp tool, removing up to a third of their mass, always ending with a cut just above an outward-facing bud.

Plant Potatoes, Onions, and Asparagus In February

potato plants for sale king feed wimberley texas — Potato Plants For Sale - King Feed Garden and Hardware

asparagus plants for sale king feed wimberley texas — Asparagus Plants For Sale - King Feed Garden and Hardware

Now is the time to do what’s got to be done to enjoy a bountiful crop of delicious home-grown potatoes, some sweet and juicy Texas onions, and an annual winter surprise of crisp green asparagus shoots. February is the latest recommended time to plant seed potatoes, onion plants, and asparagus crowns, and we will have a regular fresh stock of all through the month. All of them are cultivated in distinctive ways, so be sure to pick up a copy of Tim’s Tips for each of them while you’re in the store. Cool-weather gardening continues for a while, but as you plan on planting warm-season crops, check to see if branches adjacent to your garden need trimming to preserve sunlight for your veggies and flowers. Remember: they are completely solar powered! While planning, make plans for rotating some of your crops locations. All successful farmers and gardeners use this technique to balance the nutrient levels in their soils. It is our goal to always have everything you need to have a successful garden: pots, planters, baskets, raised beds, the soils, and mixes to fill them, every sort of plant or seed to plant in them, and quality advice and help from trained horticulturists and nursery workers. Let us know if you are not finding what you are looking for, and we will help you find it or try to order it for you! We hope you loved reading all of our February 2023 gardening tips! Thank you for checking out our website.

Click here to shop our True Value Products! King Feed Garden and Hardware is a True Value Store in Wimberley, Texas.

Be kind and take care of one another!
Happy Gardening!

Garden Blog January 2023

Tim’s Garden Center Notes

Garden Blog by Tim Thompson – Your Hometown Garden Guy

This Garden Blog will specifically talk about tips for January Gardening in Wimberley, Texas! We hope you enjoy the read. The freakish weather patterns, hot and cold, dry and wet, from the poles and the tropics have become the mainstays of our Texas forecasts. Due to this, I suggest that you learn what you need to do to protect your home, family, and garden, and stay ready to act when necessary. For instance, I have learned to wrap and insulate the outdoor faucets and pile mulch around the roots of some shrubs and trees. Besides leaving one faucet dripping on the coldest nights, we cover our wellhead, pressure tank, and all associated plumbing and plug in a couple of lamps under the cover. Bringing in tropical plants and draining hoses is also a good idea!

Garden Blog January Chores

While this is the “quiet season” in the gardening world, there are a few essential chores for Wimberley gardeners to remember.

Chief among those is tree pruning. Click this link to see all the Tree Pruning Products available at the store. Dormancy means less stress on the trees, and the insects that can spread disease from one open wound to another are usually gone for the season. Most trees need only dead or damaged limbs removed as well as any that rub against one another or a nearby structure. REMEMBER THIS IMPORTANT THING: For the same reasons you would want your surgeon to do so, be sure to sterilize all your tools between patients. Using a 10% bleach solution will prevent the spreading of any pathogens from one tree to another. As extra protection against disease, I recommend you paint your cuts with pruning sealer as soon as they are made.

Practice pruning that is safe for your trees. Make clean cuts that cannot collect rain that would encourage rot. Don’t leave stubs, but rather prune right up to the collar from whence a branch begins to grow. All pruning tools should be sharp and clean to avoid spreading disease.

Pruning can be an inherently dangerous job. We want you to have a terrific, healthful gardening season this year and every year, so please do remember that any job involving ladders, sharp tools, or power equipment requires the utmost attention to safety. Wear protective gear appropriate to your task, especially gloves and eye and hearing protection. Be careful.

Garden Blog Fruit Tree January Care

Fruit trees require slightly different treatment. In very young trees, choose two or three balanced leading branches, and remove all others, always finishing the ends of the branches with an angled cut just above an outward facing bud. As they mature, remove branches that threaten to cross or rub, and all those growing toward the center of the tree to encourage a wide-open canopy with lots of air circulation and sunshine down into the center of the tree. This task will maximize fruit production and minimize disease problems. After the first few years of shaping cuts, only maintenance pruning should be necessary.

Garden Center Vegetables

January is the time to remember some delicious veggies. Potatoes are planted this month and into early/mid-February to get them ready to produce tons of tubers later in the spring. We’ll have a ready supply of both red and white certified seed potatoes beginning early in the month. Pick up a free copy of Tim’s Tips for growing potatoes, as they are grown in a distinctive
manner.

Asparagus is also grown in an unusual fashion, and we have the crowns available now. They are already two years old, and a year or two should be plenty to get them established and producing lots of delicious spears for your table in the early spring.

If you have not yet planted your bulb onions, you still have time, but they should be planted by mid- February. We’ll keep all your favorite varieties in stock to produce loads of sweet, tasty bulbs later this spring.

Our gardens may appear dead, but they are only down for their annual sleep, and are full of life, nonetheless. The roots of perennials and trees are exchanging minerals and water with the earth even as they bring nutrition to rosettes and buds in preparation for the season just a few weeks away.

Take the opportunity this winter to enrich the soil in your garden to replace the nutrients used in making all those tasty, nutritious veggies last year. Our gardens grow all year on the soil we create now. Enrich it as needed with organic material, like compost, manure, or peat moss, and add trace minerals if you haven’t added them for a while. Add cottonseed meal or blood meal, rock phosphate or bone meal, and add greensand for potassium, and get ready for a great gardening year!