Zones 10 - 11 Garden To Do List . . . .

My December To Do List :

Zones 10 – 11

Clean the air, indoors, and you’ll clear you mind. NASA studies have chosen the following plants as top air purifiers: bamboo palms, Boston ferns, dwarf date palms, English ivies, gerbera daisies, peace lilies and rubber trees.  Indoor plants help to remove such pollutants as formaldehyde, odors from paints/stains/varnishes, adhesives, particle board, ammonia and alcohol.

Do not prune your tender tropical plants this month (bougainvillea, hibiscus, lantana , or philodendron).

Most native plants can be pruned during the winter growing season. Research your plant before pruning, and have a plan in place.

 

Vegetables and Fruits: 

Get ready to enjoy your citrus.  Pick up and discard fallen fruit.

Feed your peppers and tomatoes once this month with fish emulsion, especially if you are growing them in pots.

Nematodes are a tomato plant's worst enemy. Nematodes hate organic matter, so the more organic matter added, the better the control.

Control aphids with insecticidal soap and beneficial insects.

Harvest mesclun with scissors. Not pulling the entire plant out for your salad will cause it to produce another head.

Pick a hand full of fresh herbs for making herbal vinegars.  Use 8 cups of fresh herbs to 1 gallon of your favorite vinegar. (Pour the gallon of vinegar into a second container.  Stuff the herbs into the vinegar’s original container.  Now, with use of a funnel, pour the vinegar back into its' original container covering the herbs.  Cap tightly and store in a dark place for a few weeks.  When you are ready to use it, or give it as a gift, strain the herbal vinegar into a clean bottle, only filling it half way and add a few sprigs of the fresh herbs.  Top it off with more vinegar, and enjoy the fresh flavors.) 

For an alternative to growing fresh parsley indoors:  cut the tops of your carrots and line them up in a shallow glass dish or pan with just enough water to cover half of the cut side.  Every two weeks or so you can ‘mow’ the carrot greens and use them as you would parsley.

Pick up fallen fruit, and discard what is not edible. 

Flowers:

Poinsettias have been a holiday favorite since the 1920’s, when they came from Mexico.  (More than 60 million are sold annually in the States.) They will grow for us as a specimen plant, medium size shrub or as a hedge if you have the space.   Don’t fertilize the poinsettia when the plant is in bloom, and do not overwater them. Poinsettias exude a milky and sticky liquid that may irritate the skin, but is not poisonous.  It is a good idea to keep them away from young children and pets.
If you have planted annual season color in your flowerbeds, in September and October, they should be performing well this month. If you can get them to bloom before Christmas, they’ll bloom all winter long.

Cut off the spikes of dwarf delphiniums after they’ve finished blooming and they’ll bloom again in the spring.

Snapdragons come in just about every shade, except true blue. All parts of snapdragon are poisonous, if ingested. Dwarf ‘snaps’ are prone to rust and caterpillars.  (Next October, plant the seeds of rust resistant snap dragons.)

If your primroses are full grown and not blooming, feed them with a liquid organic fertilizer.

To attach a flowering vine to a smooth wall, purchase clear, silicone adhesive from Home Depot, and glob several dots where needed.  Before it dries, insert the center of a short twist tie into each glob.  Allow the silicone to dry overnight.  The following day you can tie up the vine.  (This will work well with passion vines, jasmine, and clematis, but not for training a bougainvillea.) 

Trees:

Use a dormant spray on your trees following pruning.  The dormant spray is best used twice a year.  Do not spray your citrus.

Remove dead fronds from the palm trees.

It is important to keep all grass removed from the citrus tree trunk out to one foot past the drip line. Mulching is not recommended for your citrus trees. Mulching around the trunk can lead to damage from insect and disease that can kill your citrus tree .Newly planted citrus trees need to be fed eight times in the first year, at the rate of one pound per tree per month. This is extremely important in helping the tree establish a healthy root system, so that it becomes well established. You should start fertilizing in March and end in October, so do not feed them in December. 

Lawns:

Warm season grasses are now dormant and require little care in December.  When the grasses turn completely brown, stop watering.

If you have over seeded your Bermuda with an annual winter rye grass, you’ll need to continue to mow and water it as needed.  Set the mower deck for a 2 inch cut and change your blade to a mulching blade (if you’ve not done that already).

For your cool season grasses, mow weekly and water when rains are not adequate.

If your grass blades are a reddish brown and brown dust gets on your shoes, you turf has ‘rust.’  Feed the lawn with a balanced turf fertilizer.  Do not spray it with chemicals to treat the rust.