How do I not kill my landscape?

A few days is fine if you water it every day and keep it in the shade — not on hot concrete, not in the truck. A week is pushing it in summer. Trees and shrubs in big containers can wait longer than a flat of annuals, which can cook in an afternoon. If life gets in the way, water it daily and plant it the first evening you can.

In Rockwall you can plant container trees and shrubs twelve months a year; the only difference is how much babysitting they need. Fall (October–November) is easiest, spring is fine, summer works if you water every day for the first month, and winter works any day the ground is not frozen. What actually has a season is annual color and vegetables — the calendar has those dates.

More than anything else. "Full sun" on the tag means six-plus hours of direct sun — and in Texas, afternoon sun in a west-facing bed counts double. A shade plant in a west bed will scorch by July no matter how you water it, and a sun plant under a live oak will get leggy and never bloom. Match the tag to the spot, and when in doubt, use the sun filter in the Plant Finder or ask us with a photo of the spot.

For trees and shrubs, no — backfill with the clay you dug out. A hole full of rich, fluffy soil in a bowl of clay becomes a bathtub, and the roots refuse to leave it. Improve whole beds instead (expanded shale and compost tilled through the top 6–8 inches) and plant into that. Details in the soil guide.

This is the number one killer. The top of the root ball — where the trunk or stem widens into roots — should sit level with or slightly above the surrounding ground, never below. Dig the hole wide (two to three times the root ball) but no deeper than the root ball is tall. Buried too deep, a tree can take five years to die and you will never know why. Step-by-step in how to plant a tree.

Circling roots keep circling after planting and can eventually strangle the plant. Tease them loose with your fingers; if they are a solid mat, cut two or three vertical slices down the sides of the root ball with a knife and rough up the bottom. It looks brutal and the plant will thank you.

Only if it will not stand up on its own or you are in a wind tunnel. A trunk that moves a little grows thicker and stronger. If you stake, use wide straps with slack, and take the stakes off within a year — trees strangled by forgotten stakes are a sad, common sight.

No. Roots need to grow before they can use fertilizer, and salts from fertilizer can burn tender new roots. A root stimulator at planting is fine. Wait until the following spring to feed trees and shrubs; annuals and vegetables can be fed a couple of weeks after planting.

By hand, at the base, slowly — the sprinklers do not count for the first month. Every day it does not rain for the first two weeks, every other day for the next month, then twice a week through the first summer. Trees: about 10 gallons per inch of trunk diameter every week for the first year. The full schedule is in the watering guide.

For an established lawn, yes. For a plant you put in this year, no — its roots are still the size of the pot and the sprinkler spray mostly lands on the mulch and the lawn. Sprinklers water lawns; hoses, soaker hoses and buckets water new plants. And note that hand watering of new plantings is allowed on any day under the city schedule.

Stick a finger two inches into the soil next to the root ball first. Dry: water it. Wet: do not — overwatered plants in clay wilt exactly like thirsty ones, because drowned roots cannot take up water. Wilting at 4 p.m. in August and perky again at 8 a.m. is normal heat stress. Wilting in the morning means it needs help.

Yellow lower leaves that drop while still soft, a sour smell, or mushrooms in the mulch point to too much water or poor drainage. Crispy brown leaf edges and leaves that dry up on the plant point to too little. Yellow leaves with green veins on new growth are neither — that is iron chlorosis from our alkaline clay (see the problem solver).

Please do not. In clay, daily watering of established plants keeps the roots in a soggy, airless layer near the surface and rots them; it also breeds fungus in lawns. Water new plants daily for two weeks, then back off. Established plants want deep, infrequent watering — an inch a week for lawns, a long soak once a week or less for shrubs and trees.

Two to three inches over every bed, refreshed spring and fall, and yes — it is the difference between a bed that survives August and one that does not. Bare clay bakes hard and hot; mulched clay stays cool and damp. The one rule: keep it an inch or two away from stems and trunks. A mulch "volcano" piled against a trunk rots the bark and invites borers.

For most landscape beds, a slow-release balanced fertilizer once in spring and once in early fall does it; overfeeding causes more problems than underfeeding. Lawns have their own schedule (see the lawn calendar). Azaleas, gardenias and other acid-lovers want an acid fertilizer plus iron. Bring the bag or the plant name in and we will match them.

Most shrubs and trees: late winter (February), before new growth. Spring bloomers like azaleas, spirea and redbud: right after they flower, or you cut off next year's blooms. Crape myrtles: only remove crossing, rubbing or inward branches — never top them. Roses: Valentine's Day. Oaks: only in the dead of winter, to avoid oak wilt. Never remove more than a third of a plant at once.

Wait. Freeze-damaged plants look dead in January and sprout from the base in March — lantana, esperanza, plumbago, hibiscus, even crape myrtles. Cutting early exposes live wood to the next freeze. Scratch a stem with a thumbnail: green underneath means it is alive. Prune once new growth shows you where the live wood is.

Identify first, spray second — half the time it is spider mites or aphids, which a hard blast of water handles, and the other half a caterpillar that Bt (a bacteria that only affects caterpillars) stops without touching the bees. Put a leaf in a zip bag or send a photo through the contact form and we will name it and point you to the right shelf. The problem solver covers the ten most common.

Almost always water and heat, not disease, especially in its first summer. Deep-soak the root ball (not the lawn), mulch it, and give it afternoon shade if you can. Do not fertilize a stressed tree. Japanese maples and hydrangeas do this every summer regardless; plant them where they get morning sun only.

Bring it in — the plant, or a photo, plus your receipt. Most of the time we can tell you what happened (nine times out of ten it is planting depth or water), and plants 15 gallon and larger are covered by our one-month warranty (within a month of purchase, with your receipt). Either way you will know how to keep the next one alive.