Welcome
Tennessee Extension Master Gardener Program is a UT Extension Program
TEMGs are volunteers who have a love of plants and horticulture coupled with training to teach and assist Tennessee residents
Tipton County Community Garden
The Tipton County Master Gardeners have started to build their raised beds at the Community Garden!
Look What's Coming Up!!
Arboretum Events
Great Speakers For the Expo
2024 Lawn & Garden Expo
Come join us at our Arboretum in Drummonds, TN
2024 Lawn & Garden Expo
Great Speakers For the Expo
2024 Lawn & Garden Expo
You don't want to miss this!
Great Speakers For the Expo
Great Speakers For the Expo
Great Speakers For the Expo
The 2024 Perennial Plant of the Year - Garden Phlox
Phlox paniculata "Jeana"
Photography Credit: Saunders Brothers, Inc.
‘Jeana’ is an exceptional garden phlox renowned for its impressive flower show, tall sturdy habit, and pollinator-friendliness. Dense, domed trusses crown stiff stems from midsummer to early fall. Individually, the fragrant lavender-pink flowers are significantly smaller than typical garden phlox — only about half an inch wide — but the show at peak is eye-popping, nonetheless. This is a case where bigger is not better, from a pollinator’s perspective anyhow. In trials at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, the nectar-rich flowers of ‘Jeana’ attracted more butterflies — Eastern Tiger Swallowtails were especially plentiful — than any other garden phlox in their study. Hummingbirds and other pollinators are fans too.
OUR PROJECTS
Extension Office
Landscaping of the Extension Office at the old Train Depot building in the Historic District of Covington
Monthly "to do" list
March
Plant
- Plant hardy woody vines like clematis.
- Divide and replant daylilies, hostas, peonies, Shasta daisies, asters, boltonia, phlox, rudbechia, and
chrysanthemums when new growth is 1-2 inches high.
- Plant cool season crops - i.e., lettuce, chard, kale, spinach, peas, broccoli, cabbage, carrots,
radishes, and beets. Cover them if temperatures dip below freezing.
- Start tender vegetables, like tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, indoors.
Maintenance
- Fertilize perennial beds based on results of your soil test. Slow release organic fertilizers work
best.
- Cut back liriope monkey grass before new growth begins.
- Deadhead daffodils when the blooms fade, but allow the foliage to die back naturally to store
nutrients for the next growing season. Pansies benefit from deadheading as well.
- Sheer back germander to 1-2 inches to keep compact.
- Cut back plants that were left for winter interest, including grasses and seed heads.
- Cut back dead and old foliage from ferns.
- Turn over soil in vegetable beds and add plenty of organic matter.
- Prune summer-blooming plants like althea, buddleia, vitex, and crepe myrtle.
- Prune deciduous azalea, forsythia, flowering quince, spiraea and viburnum after blooming.
- Roses: Prune ever-blooming roses severely to force new growth. Thin out older canes on climbing
cultivars. Fertilize roses and continue every 6-8 weeks.
- Fertilize berry plants and fruit trees.
- Remove old camellia blooms to prevent spread of petal blight.
Lawns
- Fertilize cool-season lawns (Tall Fescue). Don't fertilize again until September.
- Don't fertilize warm-season grasses now (Zoysia, Bermuda, St. Augustine).
- When mowing Tall Fescue lawns, don't remove more than 1/3 of the height at one mowing; leave
clippings on the lawn unless they would smother the grass.
- Apply pre-emergence herbicides to lawns by the time dogwoods bloom.
Helping the Girl Scouts with planning an event "It's Your World - Change It"
