Clara Mae Marcotte is a Texas Master Gardener with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. If you
have a question to be answered, call the Master Gardeners at 830-379-1972 or leave a message to
be answered. The website is guadalupecountymastergardeners.org. The Master Gardener
research library is open Wednesdays from 1 to 4, at 210 East Live Oak Street in Seguin.
Q: You said last month to “water your lawn between sundown and sunrise.” Doesn’t that cause disease problems?
A: You are correct. It could if the moisture sits on the grass all night. Most experts consider the
very best time to be between 4 a.m. and at the very latest 10 a.m. You want to water while the
wind is down and before the temperature goes up so that less water is lost to evaporation. When I
use my irrigation system, I have it set at 4 a.m. That way it is finished by 7.
Aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu says that lawn watering should be to a depth of four to six inches. A
half inch of water achieves this in sandy soils, while three fourths of an inch of water is required
in loamy soils. To determine this, save up your cat food or tuna fish cans. Set out three or more
cans in a straight line going out from the sprinkler. Run the sprinkler for a half hour, then
measure the amount of water in each can. See how long it takes for the sprinkler to apply an inch
of water. Don’t water again until the lawn has dried out.
Q: A friend gave me a small plant called wooly stemodia. Does it grow well in the Seguin area?
A: Stemodia lanata, also called gray-woolly twintip, is actually native to coastal and southern
Texas and adjacent Mexico according to Wildflower.org. The fragrant foliage looks sort of
silvery or grey and has tiny white or lavender flowers. Stemodia spreads by stolons and can be
seen in Seguin growing in the raised bed along Court Street between N. River and N. Crockett. It
will die back in cold winters, but otherwise stays evergreen.
Stemodia is perennial, semi-evergreen, and grows to one foot. It blooms from April to
November. The plant uses low water, requires sun, and grows in sandy, acid, or calcareous soils
of plains, brush lands, slopes, dunes and beaches and is saline tolerant. Sounds like it would do
fine around here. It has high deer resistance. However, Wildflower does give a warning. This
species accumulates selenium and is therefore poisonous to livestock if sufficiently concentrated
(which means, of course, that we shouldn’t eat it either.) The plant can be propagated by seeds or
softwood cuttings. Because stems root at the nodes, the friend who gave me my plant roots them
by burying a node in the soil and letting it root before cutting it.
Q: I read that we should start our fall vegetable garden now. Is that right?
A: Plants that will freeze should be started now. This includes eggplant, peppers, squash and
tomatoes. My first freeze in 2017 was Oct. 29; in 2018 it was November 14; in 2019 it was
November 30. Doug Welsh in his Texas Garden Almanac says that the number of days from
transplant to beginning of harvest is around 90, and to completion of harvest is around 120. If
you subtract 120 days from Nov. 14, it means planting around the third week of July. Therefore,
you should be preparing now.