January a time to check for hollies and magnolias freeze damage

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Walter Reeves

Discoloration and wilting are common when holly branch tips are frozen in winter.

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William Berry

Georgia Extension Educator Walter Reeves shows how to amend Georgia red clay. Here he adds pine straw as a mulch to the just planted canna.

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• Get more Home & Garden news
  

• Listen to Walter Reeves Saturday mornings on NewsTalk 750 WSB-AM from 6 to 10. Call 404-872-0750 to ask questions.
• His Web site, walterreeves.com, contains thousands of answers to lawn and landscape questions. Watch "Gardening in Georgia" each week on GPB. Details at gardeningingeorgia.com.

Check fall-planted hollies and Southern magnolias for freeze damage (blackened tips) on the leaves. Make sure the soil is moist so leaves can rehydrate after a freezing night.

Lightly fertilize ryegrass planted on your dormant garden plot. A half-pint of 10-10-10 per 100 square feet should suffice.

Check poinsettia containers to be sure water has not pooled at the bottom. Soggy soil is the fastest way to kill a poinsettia.

Now that Christmas cactus has finished blooming you can root some of the leaf segments. Snap off four or five and insert each one halfway into a saucer of damp sand. They will be ready to transplant in eight weeks.

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Do a good deed for a physically disabled gardener. Build a tall raised bed so a wheelchair can fit underneath. Details at http://xrl.us/HIGHRAISEDBED.

Check your rain barrel to be sure the overflow is directed away from your house.

Reapply mulch that has been beaten down by winter weather. Pine straw = 3 inches; pine chips = 1 inch.

Continue to spot-spray broadleafed weeds in your lawn. Annual bluegrass can be controlled by wiping the patch with a foam paintbrush dipped into diluted glyphosate (Roundup, etc).

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White potatoes are easy to grow, but finding a source of “seed potatoes” is difficult. One online source is www.ronnigers.com. ‘Red LaSoda,’ ‘Kennebec’ and ‘Sebago’ potatoes grow well in Georgia.

Make sure firewood is stacked no closer than two feet from your house. Otherwise termites can invade the wood and travel from the pile to your home.

Collect 5-gallon buckets. They provide a great way to raise vegetables in a small space. Drill five 1-inch holes in the bottom and five 1-inch holes around the circumference just above the bottom of each bucket.

Pull unwanted sprouts of nandina, mahonia and Chinese privet on a warm day while the soil is wet enough to make the chore easy.

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Prune vertical branches from your weeping cherry and shorten any pendulous branches that touch the ground.

Soccer, football and baseball volunteers take note: you can get good information on managing any athletic field at http://xrl.us/SPORTSFIELD.

Too-large sasanqua camellias that bloomed in the fall can be pruned now.

Deer will eat anything if they are hungry enough. For a list of plants that deer normally avoid, as well as plants they prefer, visit http://xrl.us/DEERPLANTS.