- Howdy, I'm John Hart Asher.

This week on "Central Texas Gardener", let's grow food and ideas.

On a house-hunting mission, Kat and Dave Sherby fell for a big yard that beckoned creative brainstorming and wildlife watching.

Mary Kay Pope from Backbone Valley Nursery picks the best citrus for homegrown goodness.

Plan your summer crops with garden manager Anamaria Gutierrez, plus Daphne Richards answers your questions.

So, let's get growing right here right now.

- [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener" is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association.

(upbeat music) - On a house-hunting mission, Kat and Dave Sherby fell for a big yard that beckoned creative brainstorming for wildlife watching.

- We didn't really know exactly what we were doing, but we did know what we wanted.

- Gardening to us is working with what Mother Nature allows and there are a lot of plants that we've tried and most have made it not all do.

I think you have to keep an open mind about what you want out of a garden.

- Well, my name's Kat Sherby.

We wanted to have kind of a in town countryside look and feel to this home.

- We moved in 2008, and we didn't buy the house, because we loved the house.

We loved the neighborhood.

We're fortunate to have about an acre of land.

And coming from our previous home of 10 acres, which was a lot to manage, this gave us just enough of, we can do a lot with this.

And so, there was very little done to the land.

We moved in, but we knew we wanted to be more, you know, Texas, you know, native central Texas landscape specific and just, you know, add onto it little by little every year.

Our soil composition here is clay in the front and caliche in the back.

So, we have to amend our soil virtually every spot, which is kind of fun to me anyway.

I like to mix and match specific to the plant.

We had a slope on one side of our house that water would drain towards the house.

So, we built in a berm to direct the water around the house.

We put in a pathway to help also drain water away from the house and just try to work with what mother nature is gonna send us.

We like a habitat that will encourage swallowtails, you know, monarchs to come through, you know, hummingbirds.

We plant flowers that are red in nature, because that's what attracts hummingbirds and we're happy to see the same results year after year.

We enjoy putting our heads together and coming up with a plan for this specific bed or that bed.

And then, you know, Kat will have her garden bed that she wants to do and I'll have my separate garden bed that I wanna do.

And that's, you know, that's what makes it fun.

We work together really well, but we also like to do separate and have my thing and Kat thing so.

Started gardening as a young child, it was because my mom would be like, "Okay, put the plant here and this tree goes there and that goes there."

So, I got a lot of early gardening experience from I think my mom just because that was the weekend and that's what she did.

When I went back to see my childhood home, you know, decades later, you know, all the little trees that I put in at this big, were now like, you know, 40, 50 feet tall.

I was like, "Wow, that really worked, you know, good for you, Mom."

Also, when I met Kat, you know, 31 years ago, she had a gardening thumb and I took inspiration from that as well.

- My keyhole garden is a galvanized aluminum tub that is filled with garden soil and a tube goes down into the middle of it.

It's a tube made of screen so that we put the compost into the tube.

The compost decomposes and feeds plants from below.

We even put in cardboard so that it could decompose and then put the soil on top of that.

Then you can plant anything you want.

- One of the gardens that we have is an herb garden and I started the herb garden, because I wanted to have fresh herbs for cocktails.

So, I planted, you know, some fennel and certainly, you know, basil, and sage.

and mint for sure.

- Mint.

- We make our own compost, because we're believers in recycling and virtually, everything comes out of the kitchen that's fresh, that's green, that's leafy.

Coffee grounds goes into our tumbler and it's a two-sided vessel.

One side is what we transfer the cooked compost into.

So, we are always taking from that and spreading that around into our gardens.

I like to collect seeds and propagate plants from seed, because I enjoy the whole process of gardening from start to finish.

We take our dogs to neighborhood parks quite a bit and there are sometimes during parts of the year where the flowers are blooming and I'll make a mental note of that and we'll go back later when the seeds are starting to replicate themselves and I'll collect seeds from around our neighborhood from plants that I admire.

And I have a potting shed.

I'll put them in jars and containers and propagate the seeds from there.

A lot of the canna lilies that we have, a lot of the flame acanthus, a lot of plants that we have came from seed.

It's kind of goes back to my childhood science background.

You know, when you're learning about nature and how science works and how nature works, and that's always fun for me.

There's a point where Kat will ask me, "What's in that pot?"

And I go, "I don't know."

We have harvested rainwater for gardening and personal use for decades.

When we lived out by Hamilton Pool, we converted from well water into a rainwater collection system.

When we moved here, it was probably the one thing that I knew we wanted to do and so when we did a remodel on our house, we did part of our roof in a galvanized aluminum roofing.

But we collect off of all surfaces, including a typical asphalt shingle collection.

We use all of our rainwater for gardening at this point.

We have three different tanks, we have two 1,500 gallon tanks, and we have another 1,000 gallon tanks.

So, we have 4,000 gallons.

Our rainwater system is split between a gravity feed with a hose and then the other two tanks are on a pump system, but also through a hose.

The house came with a irrigation system, but we don't typically use it and plants just respond so much better to rain water than they do City of Austin water.

And we like the idea that we're not using our drinking water to keep our plants alive.

- We like our cowboy pool, because it's so refreshing in the summertime in the brutal Texas heat.

We like to have a cocktail in the pool, around the pool.

The pool has a pump that circulates and sometimes I get in there on my float and just, you know, float around in the pool.

It's wonderful and it is just a blessing in this Texas heat.

Well, the outdoors for me is such a playground.

The Merlin app is a great resource for recording birds in your environment.

In a half an hour this summer when there was a migration going on, I recorded 16 different birds in 30 minutes on the Merlin app and it is just fantastic.

And when the pandemic arose it was like I didn't go anywhere, but there was so much to draw and paint and appreciate in our own backyard that I could just be out there every day.

Sometimes I would go out and sit in the gardens and just draw little line drawings of all the flowers and then I would make cards out of those, or I even sold some online and have had a lot of success in just letting people know about what I've been doing and how much they appreciate it.

It's been so rewarding for me.

- When someone is contemplating a garden, there are a lot of things that go into it in terms of what you have to do to manipulate the land.

The kind of plants you're gonna put into it, the kind of plants you're not gonna put into it, the amount of time that you have to spend on your garden.

What I love about our gardens is they give us a place to contemplate.

The gardens that we have are specific to us.

I think that's the beauty of gardening is you can make it whatever you want.

I would suggest to anybody, if you're contemplating on starting a garden, is to make a list of what you want get out of it.

I've seen many gardens in Architectural Digest and related magazines that are nothing but stone and rock and a chair to relax in and have a cup of tea.

It doesn't always have to be chock full of plants.

We love it, because of the give back to nature when we have hummingbirds and monarchs and swallowtails and anoles and the lizards and everybody that we see interacting out there.

Certainly bees, that gives us joy.

That's a garden that's specific to us.

It doesn't have to be that for everybody.

I think when you get into thinking about a garden or designing a space, make sure you put into it what you want to get out of it.

It doesn't have to be the same as your neighbors.

- Not so long ago we were zone pushing to even think about growing citrus in Central Texas, but these days we can harvest many fruits of our own.

To get us started, we're thrilled to welcome horticulturalist and certified arborist Mary Kay Pope from Backbone Valley Nursery.

How are you doing Mary Kay?

- I'm very well, thank you.

- Let's talk about Backbone Valley Nursery.

- I've been with Backbone for 10 years.

Backbone Valley Nursery is family owned.

It's been in production for 26 years, since 1999.

- Wow.

Okay.

- And it is a retail garden center with a tree farm and a very large mountain laurel-growing facility.

- Texas is famous for its sort of weird freezes we're starting to get now.

We're talking about citrus plants that are okay for here in Central Texas that you could plant the ground.

What are our options?

- I'm gonna put okay in quotes, because you know, we'll get 10 to 12 years before we have a real killing freeze like we had in '21.

- Right.

- But we do have some citrus that can be winter hardy down to 15 degrees or so.

And that's if they are hardened off.

So, it really depends on your pre-chilling, like if they've ever received any cold before the really cold hits.

- So, by pre-chilling you mean that, that is it that year?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- Yes, they need to be exposed to cold before the real cold comes.

- Oh, okay.

Toe dipping.

- Yes, and it's not that you won't get any damage, it's just that they won't be killed.

Some of my favorites to try in the ground would be the Calamodin orange, the Satsuma mandarin orange, a tangerine, and those are probably the best to try in the ground.

- Okay.

- Like I said, they may be killed back, but they will come back usually, if you protect the lower trunk and the roots.

- Okay, and those come back, because of graft stalks?

- No.

- Or how does that work?

- No, it's that the plant itself is more winter hardy than say limes, which are very tender and lemons that are more tender.

- Okay.

- I have had some instances where the improved Meyer lemon had been planted in the ground in say Bee Cave, Texas, which is zone eight, and made it for 10, 12 years before getting killed.

The trick is you have to protect the lower trunk, whether it has a graft or not, about 15 to 18 inches up with a soil bank.

- What does that mean?

Are you pulling up soil up against the trunk?

- You are mounting soil up above the graft, if it's grafted, or 15 inches, if it's not - Okay.

- And it is regular soil, not compost, not mulch.

The bottom of the bank should be in contact with real soil.

That is the way that the heat will be conducted the best.

- Interesting.

That's really weird, 'cause usually we don't want to have soil up around.

- It's a temporary thing.

- Right.

Right.

- If you think it's gonna be on there for very long, you probably should use an insecticide and a copper fungicide on it before you bank it.

- Okay.

Okay.

Great news.

Well, so you mentioned some of the temps, but again, what are those temps that are those varieties?

Like are they're gonna be okay with, you said 15 degrees or so?

- 15 I think the Arctic frost Satsuma.

Texas A&M had it down to 11 degrees at the Overton research station I think.

But not much lower than that.

And that's not without damage, but that's surviving, if it has been preconditioned by earlier freezes.

If we got that freeze in the fall, - It's not, - Nevermind.

- Not happening.

Okay.

- Yeah.

- Well, what about less hardy plants, but ones that we potentially can grow in containers?

What are some varieties there, and why would you wanna look at that?

Maybe you don't have room for those or what about containing plants?

- Well, if you don't have proper soil in the ground and you don't have a protected location, like a south or southeast location, which is protected from the northwest winds, you can grow any kind of citrus in a pot.

- Okay.

- My favorite, of course, is the improved Meyer lemon, but the kaffir lime, any type of grapefruit, regular oranges, any of the more limes.

Oh, limes are very cold tender, but you can grow them in pots.

- Okay.

- All the time.

Now, there are some guidelines that you need to follow for growing in pots.

- [John] Okay.

- And I think the biggest mistake I think I've seen people make is putting a plant, once they purchase it, a small plant into a really large pot.

This isn't gonna work.

You have a plant that really citrus doesn't have a really large root system in a pot and you can have a very large plant in a small pot.

- Okay.

- And then this plant will produce a lot of fruit for you.

But we call this over potting, and when you do that, there's a couple things that happen.

One, is you can't get your moisture relations right, because all the roots are in that original soil ball, root ball.

And as the plant uses the moisture and loses it from the leaves, it's replaced by the moisture in that root ball.

All this extra soil is doing nothing, but holding excess moisture and it really makes it difficult to get the soil moisture relations right in the pot.

The other thing this does is, if you plant it in a large ceramic pot, knowing that you're going to have to protect it in the winter doesn't seem that that's a very astute way to do things.

I prefer to keep them in their plastic pots.

Now, if they get to the point where they need a bigger pot, go a four to six inch jumping pot size at one time, with a quality potting soil, and double pot, take that plastic pot and set it down into your ceramic pot.

That way you make it easier to transplant, you make it easier to bring into the garage or your house in the wintertime.

- Sure.

- Nobody's gonna move a big heavy pot.

And there is one added benefit to having it in a plastic pot, watering.

When we're watering plants in the pots, a lot of people like to put their finger down in 'em and feel the soil.

Or you might use a moisture meter and that works just fine.

But when you're ready to water, if you would simply lift that pot and see the weight of that pot, it gives you a really good idea as to how much water is left from the last time you watered.

- Interesting.

- So, once you're finished watering, you lift the pot and it's really heavy, you can judge when it's half that heavy and maybe it's dry three inches down when you put your finger in and you can pretty much determine that's the time to water.

- Okay.

Well, that's a great resource.

Well, another one, what about pruning?

- They require very little pruning.

This is what I like about them.

You can shape them or if they're getting too big, which does happen sometimes, 'cause they really do well in pots, you can prune them a back to limit their size.

There's two exceptions.

One is, if a sucker comes out below the graft, that's not going to be a productive shoot.

So, you wanna keep the suckers pruned off.

There's another shoot that comes off called a water sprout.

And it'll come off higher in the tree and it also is not a real good producer of fruit.

So, you'd wanna remove the water sprouts.

- Okay.

And what about fertilizing?

- Fertilizing, I generally, fertilize three times a year.

Many different ways to do things, but this is my rule of thumb.

When they start to bloom, when they start to put on new growth in the spring is the first time.

And when they set fruit is the second time.

So usually, late spring, and then once again in the fall, like September or October.

And I found that a 2-1-1 - Right.

NPK.

Yeah.

- Now, NPK with micros, because they do use magnesium, zinc, manganese, copper is the best thing to use.

And if you have an organic fertilizer, of course, we always recommend that.

- Okay.

And how do you know when the fruit is ripe?

- That's my favorite thing.

(John and Mary Kay laughing) You have to try it.

- Okay.

- You have to actually, there is no way to feel it or look at it and know that it's ripe.

You actually, have to kind of look at when the fruit was set and the guidelines will be, you can find articles online how many months it takes to ripe them.

But generally, most of the say the Satsuma mandarins would set fruit in the spring and then they'd grow all summer and they'll start to turn orange in the fall and they will ripen over the winter.

- Right.

- The reason why we can't jump the gun and take them all off, is once they're off the tree, they do not continue to rip like tomatoes.

So, many people will leave their satsumas on the tree all winter long and they just get sweeter and sweeter.

- Well, Mary Kay, thank you so much for coming.

And I wanna mention too, really briefly, you have a weekly newsletter chockfull of all this wonderful information, and a website as well.

- Yes.

- And come visit you at Backbone Valley Nursery - In Marble Falls, Texas.

- In Marble Falls, Texas.

Well , thank you so much again, Mary Kay.

We appreciate you sharing with us.

- Thank you, John.

- Well now, let's check in with Daphne Richards.

(upbeat music) - Since many of us are growing citrus plants for the first time, we wanted to answer a few questions that viewers often send us.

Al Seen is one of many who noted that they've noticed a distinct damage to lemons for the past two years.

This is a classic symptom of fruit scarring created by birds pecking while the fruit is young and the skin is still starting to develop.

From the archives, Regina DosReis wanted to know why her orange tree that she started from seed has never blossomed.

At the time we reached out to Monte Nesbitt, Texas A&M AgriLife extension program specialist who told us that citrus is not hard to start from seed and many even come true to type from seed.

So, it's an inexpensive and easy approach to citrus tree propagation.

Plants usually start out healthy too.

But the bad news is that without budding or grafting, it's a slow process to reach the flowering and fruiting stage of the tree's life.

Like many fruit trees, citrus have a juvenile phase taking several years minimum before reaching fruit-bearing age.

In the case of Regina's tree, living in a container is also slowing down its growth, which will add additional time to the juvenile phase.

Sometimes in spring, Jason Lantz is lucky enough to spot these gnarly-looking caterpillars on his lime tree.

He told us it was pretty amazing to watch them for a week or so.

They've been munching away at our lime tree and we let them go to town.

Since we love our butterfly and moth friends.

After filling their bellies, they went right next door to the pineapple guava to pupate.

And that's great news, Jason.

These will turn into giant swallowtails that lay their eggs exclusively on citrus plants.

We'd love to hear from you.

Head to CentralTexasGardener.org to send us your questions, pictures, and videos.

- Next, plan your summer crops with Anamaria Gutierrez, garden manager at Este and Nixta.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Anamaria Gutierrez and today, I'm gonna share with you what I'll be growing at Este Garden and Nixta Garden this late spring and summer.

Here are some crop sea considered growing during April and May.

First, is okra.

It loves the heat, you can direct sow it, and I have a ton of say seed from Este Garden of our okra.

Next, is my favorite, corn.

You could grow some dried corn, some sweet corn, popcorn.

It can seem really intimidating, but it grows really well here in Central Texas.

And whenever I grow corn, I always plant it in the Three Sisters method.

So, also beans and squash alongside it.

For beans, I recommend some pull beans.

I like to go for the yardlong beans, because it's more bang for your buck and they're delicious.

But there are so many different bean varietals that you can get.

And for squash, my favorite summer squash right now is the Magda, because it did really well against the vine bores, since it has a longer vine.

But if you have a lot of trouble with the vine bores, I recommend doing some winter squash.

Those long vines are gonna be great ground cover.

There's so many cool varieties and a lot of heirloom squash and beans.

I highly recommend looking at "Southern Seed Exposure" for these like heirloom varieties.

I'm gonna try a lot of them this year.

If you're looking for more vines, I recommend the loofahs and bird gourds.

They're really beautiful over arches.

And lastly, there's the peppers and eggplants.

You can get those transplants in the ground right now.

I will say you'll get a good harvest early summer and then they'll slow down.

So, I recommend putting shade cloth over them to keep them through the summer and fall harvest is really beautiful.

For refreshing vegetables, we've got cucumbers.

They grow super well in the heat.

The only thing is you wanna know what varieties won't get bitter with the heat.

So for that, I recommend the Suyo Long and the Striped Armenian.

And, of course, there's melons.

For flowers, I recommend marigolds, cosmos, zinnias, tithonias, sunflowers.

And for herbs, I am gonna do a lot of basil, lemon balm, chives.

And it's a good time to get some herb transplants in, like lavender, rosemary, sage, and oregano.

Some fun ones that I'm gonna try this year too are hibiscus roselles, and Nopales.

So, this is also a great time to come up with your irrigation plan.

If it's drip or ollas or how you use rainwater, come up with a plan before it gets too hot.

And then as far as fertilizer goes, I like to focus more on improving the amount of life in soil.

I think that's what's gonna be best for healthy plants and for drought tolerance.

So, I recommend checking out the "Central Texas Gardener" segment with central Texas micology and the Central Texas Food Bank, as well as a segment with Andy Marsh, where she teaches a lot about introducing life into your soil.

So, make sure you get your hands on some shade cloth, some pine straw to cover your ground and keep it moist.

And lastly, I wanna remind you that you are part of your garden's ecosystem.

So, make sure that you take care of yourself by hydrating, working early mornings.

And if something doesn't go as planned in your garden, be really kind to yourself and try again.

On Backyard Basics, this is Anamaria Gutierrez.

- Go Beyond the show with us.

Follow our producer Linda on Instagram where she shares even more CTG content, including glimpses into her own gardening projects.

Be sure to check out CentralTexasGardener.org where you can get tips, show highlights, and sign up for our newsletter.

Until next time, adopt the pace of nature.

Her secret is patience.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener" is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association.

(bright music)