The El Niño weather pattern that settled over the Pacific last summer and brought desperately needed rain isn’t quite done with southeast Texas just yet. There’s more wetness ahead, though not in the amounts seen over the last two weeks.

While water is a good for your lawn and garden, excessive amounts of it can wreak as much havoc as drought. Fortunately, it’s relatively easy to limit the destruction that too much late spring rain can cause.

1. Turn off your irrigation system

If you have an automatic irrigation system, make sure to shut it down when rain is in the forecast. This is particularly important because excess moisture can remove oxygen from the soil and drown roots. Also be sure to check your plants after rain to see if they are wilting and/or have signs of leaf scorching. These conditions are especially common in the hot weather that follows rainstorms.

2. Avoid the mud

Consider putting down mulch between rows of plants so you can walk around your garden. You can also put down boards in your garden when the dirt is soaked. Either of these methods will help lessen soil compaction, which occurs when you walk directly on muddy areas. Remember, too, to wait until the soil has dried out before working in your garden.

3. Combat soil compaction

A good way to combat soil compaction is to aerate the soil in and around your garden by using a core aerator. This tool removes small plugs in the soil and eases compaction. You can also hand-aerate by using a wooden or metal dowel rod to make holes.

4. Mind the insects

Abundant rain brings out hungry slugs that will feed on both living and decaying plants. You can get rid of them by handpicking them out of your plants or setting up special slug traps. If you choose the former option, you can drown slugs in soapy water, smash them, spray them with 5 or 10 percent diluted ammonia.

5. Beware standing water

Be aware that disease can spread from standing water to any produce you may be growing in your garden. Also, if you notice that plants in your garden have yellowed, do not eat any fruit or vegetables from them. And if water that has been contaminated with sewage or animal manure has seeped into your garden, do not consume fruits or vegetables that have come in contact with it.

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The heat and humidity of a Texas summer – which will officially begin on June 21 – make this season less than optimal for most kinds of planting. Nevertheless, it’s still a good time to consider the types of vegetation you may want to include as part of a long-term landscape update and/or renovation plan.

Succulents

One succulent you may wish to consider is the scarlet hedgehog cactus. It can form large, mounded clumps of cylinder-shaped dark green stems that are about 16 inches long. In spring, these mounds bloom with 3-inch-wide, red-orange flowers. The red yucca is another fine choice. It forms clumps of slender, tough leaves that can grow up to 3 feet tall. Flower stalks rise above the foliage to bear striking tube-shaped red flowers.

Shrubs

The Texas mountain laurel grows 15 to 20 feet tall and about 10 to 12 feet wide, which makes it a good shrub plant. In the spring, it produces showy, fragrant clusters of purple flowers as well as silvery seedpods. Female yaupon holly bushes grow to about the same height as Texas mountain laurels, but have stiff, gray-green colored leaves. They bear glossy red berries in fall and winter, but only if they have male bushes nearby for pollination.

Trees

If you’re looking to add a few trees to your landscape, the plateau live oak will add not only beauty and grace, but eventually shade. A slow-grower, this Texas evergreen tree reaches 20 to 40 feet tall. Another evergreen with scale-like, fragrant leaves is the eastern red cedar. At maturity, the red cedar is 40 to 50 feet tall and 10 to 20 feet wide.

Perennial grasses

Lindheimer’s muhly grass makes a wonderful, fine-textured landscaping plant. Typically, it grows in clumps 2 to 4 feet tall and 1 to 2 feet wide and produces gray-blue arching leaves. In the fall, flowering stalks grow to 5 feet. If you want a larger grass, try the big bluestem. It has wider, dark green leaves and grows to 6 feet tall, with flower stalks rising even higher.

All of these plants are native to Central Texas. That means that they are all pre-acclimated to our weather patterns (and, in most cases, to drought). Despite recent heavy rains, water conservation remains an ongoing issue for Austin.

For your irrigation system needs, call South Austin Irrigation at (512) 534-7449

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