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Handy
Contact Information
Indigo Lake Estates
ILE Events and Issues
Copy of Monthly Newsletter*
Montgomery County Extension Service
9020 FM1484 Conroe
936 539-7824
AMI Property Management
Larry Quick
281 681-2000
Lquick@amitx.com
Indigo
Lake Estates
Property Owners Association
Information for ILE Residents
Master Gardeners Hotline
Call with all your horticultural Questions
(936) 539-7824
City of Magnolia
Official Website
Constable's Office
(281) 356-3883 (7am-4:30pm)
(936) 760-5800 (other times)
Sheriff's Office
Emergency: Dial 911
Non-emergencies/General Info: (936)760-5871 or (281)353-9791
*All property owners should
receive a copy of the newsletter each month via the U.S. Mail.
If you are not, contact Larry at AMI. He is our liaison with the management
company. |
Featured
News Articles
Preparing the Garden for Winter
Pruning Keeps Fruit Trees Healthy
Getting Rid of Standing Water in Your Yard
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Preparing the Garden for Winter
by
Tom LeRoy |
With the onset of a frost
or a freeze, many people become concerned about
what they should do to protect their vegetation from freeze damage. There
are certain precautions one can take to minimize frost and freeze damage.
First, use only thoroughly hardy plants in the basic part of your
landscape
such as shade trees, screens and foundation plantings. Use the more tender
plants only as fillers, or in secondary places (entryways, display plants
or
in borders).
Become familiar with your garden's micro-climate. Observe which areas are
warm and which are cool. Recognize danger areas such as stretches of open
ground exposed to the sky on all sides, particularly to the north sky.
Plants in shallow or in low enclosed areas where cold air is held
motionless
are also in danger. The cold air will tend to settle in these areas with
poor air drainage to cause more damage.
Tender plants are safest planted under overhanging eaves, lath structures
or
under tree branches. South-facing walls absorb heat during the day and
radiate it at night, warming nearby plants.
The most ideal location of all is a south-facing wall with an overhang.
Avoid placing tender plants such as fig ivy, camellias, bougainvillea or
hibiscus on a north exposure. Cold north winds will take their toll.
Condition plants and soil for frost. Taper off nitrogen feeding in late
summer and early fall to slow growth and permit wood to harden. Plants in
a
state of active growth are more vulnerable to freeze damage and less
hardy.
Reducing water will help harden growth, but keep soil moist at the onset
of
frost because a moist soil holds and releases more heat than dry soil.
Know how to recognize the signs of approaching frost. Knowing a frost is
at
hand will give you the advantage in preparing to cope with it. Still air,
absence of cloud cover, low humidity, and low temperature (45 degrees or
less at 10:00 p.m.), set the stage for a possible frost.
If you notice these signs at bedtime, take steps to get tender container
plants inside or under protection of a porch roof or in the garage. Burlap
or plastic covers over stakes or frames will do a good job, but make sure
the cover does not touch the foliage. Uncover during the day.
If plants have been damaged by frost or freeze, do not be in a hurry to
prune them. Premature pruning may stimulate new tender growth that will be
nipped by late cold. Wait and prune in early spring.
In cases of really severe cold weather when the temperature falls below 20
degrees, the less hardy plants may not make it regardless of your
precautions. Even the more hardy plants may be injured.
The most sensible way to protect plants from severe freeze is to attempt
to
protect their roots by mounding or mulching. If the roots survive, the
plant can be salvaged and new top growth developed. Use grass clippings,
straw, cornstalks, or leaf mold, and cover the roots to a depth of six to
eight inches.
Broad-leafed evergreens may be hardy to cold, but they suffer windburn and
sunburn when low temperatures, strong sun and cold, drying winds combine
forces.
Protect with burlap or lath shelters on the windward side. But above all,
keep evergreens watered through the fall and winter to reduce leaf burn.
Don’t forget to send your garden questions to Plant Answers at 9020 FM
1484,
Conroe TX 77303 or e-mail me at
t-leroy@tamu.edu .
Educational programs of Texas Cooperative Extension are open to all
citizens
without regard to race, color, sex, disability, age or national origin.
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Pruning Keeps Fruit Trees Healthy
by
Tom LeRoy |
Fruit tree pruning is once
again upon us. The winter months are filled with
odd jobs in the garden and pruning is one of them.
Why prune at all? It is a lot of work, but it is necessary. Many fruit
trees require pruning for a variety different reasons. Because different
fruit trees grow differently they must be pruned differently. The
elimination of any narrow V-shaped branches is very important. This type
of
branching is weak and likely to break when the fruit load gets heavy. The
tips of the branches should be cut off of young trees to encourage
branching.
“Stone Fruits” which includes peaches, nectarines and plums for example,
develop fruit on last season's wood. This means every year about ½ of
the wood should be removed. The removal of this wood will keep the tree
growing rapidly and thus produce the growth needed for next year's crop.
An unpruned peach, nectarine or plum tree will gradually slow growth and
the
fruit crop will dwindle. You should try to keep the center of your tree
open. This allows the sun to penetrate through the leaf cover to help
ripen
the fruit more evenly and promote new growth in the lower portion of the
tree.
Apples and pears develop the fruit on permanent spurs, so they don’t need
to
be pruned as aggressively. Pruning should be done only to eliminate weak V
branch angles, eliminate broken or diseased limbs and help shape the tree.
Try to make all your cuts smooth and flush with the other branches. Never
leave stubs sticking out. Stubs encourage pests and are a good location
for
disease to enter the tree. A stub will never heal properly. When cutting
back smaller branches make all cuts at a bud. This encourages good growth
and healing.
The right kinds of tools will help. They must be sharp and clean. You will
need quality shears, loppers, a saw and tree wound paint to do the job
right. The tree wound paint should be put on all cuts larger than two
inches in diameter to help protect the wound from insects and diseases.
It is difficult to over-prune a fruit tree, so start cutting.
Under-pruning
is much more detrimental than over-pruning. If you have some fruit trees
that have not done well the last few years try pruning them heavily.
Sometimes this will do the trick.
Don’t forget to send your garden questions to Plant Answers at 9020 FM
1484,
Conroe TX 77303 or e-mail me at
t-leroy@tamu.edu .
Educational programs of Texas Cooperative Extension are open to all
citizens
without regard to race, color, sex, disability, age or national origin.
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Getting
Rid of Standing Water in Your Yard
by Michael J. McGroarty |
Do you have one or more
areas in your yard that hold water after a rainfall? This is a common
problem, and sometimes difficult to solve. Over the years I’ve talked with
dozens of people trying to battle this problem, and on several occasions I
have been hired to solve the problem. So what can be done?
Too often people come to me asking what kind of a tree, or what kind of
shrubs can be planted in a wet area to dry it up. This is the wrong
approach. Most plants, and I mean almost all plants are not going to
survive in an area where the soil is soggy for extended periods of time.
The roots need to breathe, and planting a tree or shrub in a water area
will kill it.
Another common approach is to try and fill the area with topsoil.
Depending on a variety of variables, this can work, but many times adding
additional soil to a wet area will only shift the water to another area
just a few feet away.
If you are lucky enough to have some natural fall to your property, or a
drainage ditch nearby, this problem is easy enough to solve. If you happen
to live in an area that was developed over the past few years, there might
even be a system to remove storm water nearby. In many new home
developments I’ve seen storm water catch basins already installed in
backyards. Trust me, this is a good thing. There is nothing worse than
having a soggy yard all the time.
If you are fortunate to have some fall to your yard, or a storm water
system that you can drain water into, this problem is easy to solve. Make
sure you check with your local officials before you do anything at all
with a storm drain.
All you have to do is go to your local building supply center and buy some
4” perforated plastic drain pipe. The best kind for this purpose is the
flexible kind that comes in 100’ rolls. This type of drain pipe has small
slits all around the pipe. These slits allow water to enter the pipe so it
can be carried away.
Just dig a trench from the center of the low area you are trying to drain,
to the point that you intend to drain it to. Using a simple line level you
can set up a string over top of the trench to make sure that your pipe
runs downhill all the way. A line level is a very small level that is
designed to attach to a string. Any hardware store sells them for just a
couple of dollars. Set the string up so it is level, then measure from the
string to the bottom of your trench to make sure you have constant fall.
You should have 6” fall for every 100’ of pipe.
The highest point is going to be the area that you are trying to drain, so
you only want your pipe deep enough at this point so it can be covered
with soil. Once the trench is dug just lay the pipe in. At the highest end
of the pipe you’ll need to insert a strainer into the end of the pipe to
keep soil from entering the pipe. Cover the pipe with some washed stone,
and then backfill the trench with soil. The washed stone creates a void
around the pipe so that the water can find its way into the pipe.
Washed stone is usually inexpensive stone that has been washed so it is
clean and free of mud. The only part of the pipe that needs to be exposed
is the low end, where the water exits the pipe. Do not put a strainer in
that end.
If you do not have anywhere that you can drain the water to, you still
might be able to do something. But first consider what is happening, and
why the water is standing where it is. Even if you have well drained soil,
water can not soak in fast enough during periods of heavy rain, and it
runs across the top of the ground and eventually finds the lowest point,
and either leaves the property, or gets trapped.
If you have well drained soil, the trapped water usually soaks in. If you
have heavy clay soil, the water lays there, and the soil underneath
becomes very compacted, and the problem compounds itself. The more water
that stands, the worse the drainage gets.
What I have done in areas like this, where there is standing water but
nowhere to drain it to, is to install a French drain system that actually
carries the water away from the low area, and allows it to seep into the
ground over a larger distance, where the soil is not quite so compacted.
To install this French drain system you do everything exactly as explained
above, except instead of draining the water to a lower area, you can send
it in any direction you like. Even in the direction from which it came,
which is uphill.
When installing this type of system, it’s a good idea to dig a number of
shorter trenches, all heading away from the area where the water stands.
Using the line level, make sure your trenches fall away from their point
of origin so once the water enters the pipes it will flow away from the
wet spot. What is going to happen is that during times of heavy rain the
low area is still going to trap water, but much of that water is going to
seep into the drain pipes and eventually leach into the soil under each
trench.
Because this soil has not been compacted by the standing water and the
baking sun, it will accept the water. It won’t happen near as fast as if
you could just drain the water to a ditch, but at least you will have a
mechanism in place that will eventually disperse the water back into the
soil. It’s a lot easier to leach 200 gallons of water into a series of
trenches that total 100 lineal feet, than it is to expect that water to
leach into a 10’ by 10’ area that is hard and compact.
Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit his most
interesting
website, http://www.freeplants.com
and sign up for his excellent gardening newsletter. Article provided by
http://gardening-articles.com.
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