According to one of the most trusted names in Texas Gardening, the state of Texas—and therefore Dallas, TX proper— has four seasons. I am going to spin that somewhat and say there are three temperature ‘seasons’: cool, cold and hot. What is the difference and what difference does it make to a gardener in Dallas? Let’s look.
Dallas Weather – Conventional Wisdom
Neil Sperry, a local gardening celebrity, has been a gardener in the Dallas area for many years. He can tell you both from experience and education that there are indeed four seasons in the Dallas Metroplex. In his book,
Neil Sperry’s Complete Guide to Texas Gardening, he describes them this way:
• Spring: A delightful time marked by cool-to-warm breezes and a sizeable portion of the annual rainfall.
• Summer: A challenge to gardeners. Extreme heat in many parts of the state, prolonged periods of drought.
• Fall: Good growing conditions return. Temperatures drop gradually for 2 to 4 months, rain returns
• Winter: Temperatures vary but Dallas will have some frost and some good gardening days.
Dallas Weather – Simplified Wisdom
Perhaps a simplified way of looking at the gardening weather in Dallas is to look at it in terms of temperature. Why? Because temperature is the one uncontrollable ingredient in gardening weather in Dallas. We can water if it doesn’t rain, drain the growing beds if it rains too much. We can plant here or there, according to the sunlight requirements. But temperature-especially too much heat in the summer-is something we have to just work around.
So to simplify four seasons into three temperatures, think of your gardening weather in the Dallas metroplex like this:
• Cool Weather: from March to May, and from September to December, when your flowering annuals, perennials and vegetable garden will prosper the most. You may have to water in the autumn but the growing temperatures will be optimum.
• Cold Weather: December to March, when only frost-hardy vegetables and flowering plants will prosper outdoors. With some occasional frost protection many of the cool weather flowers will make it through this period.
• Hot Weather: From May to September the weather is hot enough and the sun strong enough that there are some plants that just will not grow. Some will actually die from the heat, some will go dormant, some will struggle but won’t prosper. And there are some vegetable and flowering plants that will thrive ONLY in this season.
What to Do About This?
The trick of course is to identify which plants go with which temperature season. Then you are not struggling to grow a cool weather plant in the hot weather or a hot weather in the cool season. For instance, if you plant a beautiful large bed of pansies in September, and you enjoy them all winter and even through the spring–great! But come the month of May, and the daytime high temperature hits the high 80’s and low 90’s, you can be assured that your beautiful bed of pansies will lose its vigor, its blooms and by the end of the month, will be a mess. What went wrong? Nothing. But the Hot Season has arrived and pansies will dependably stop blooming and die shortly after the Hot Season begins. The same is true if you plant a lovely bed of Hot Season annuals like Fibrous Begonias–a great summer annual here in Dallas— or even a summer blooming perennial like trailing lantana—and then October comes and it seems to be dying. No problem: just a change of season. They are doing what they need to be doing, according to their nature and the ‘heat’ of the season. You, as a gardener, need to be doing what you do: replant or perhaps inter-plant with a flower that is better suited to the season.
There are several lists that identify which flowering plants grow best in which season. But the very best way is to join a gardening group in your area, so you can just ask a ‘veteran’. The avid gardeners will know already what works with minimum effort and even which ones you can maybe ‘baby’ along for a while.
So there you are, three seasons instead of four, here in Dallas, and how to best adjust to them each year.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Sperry
Neil Sperry’s Complete Guide to Texas Gardening,
http://www.neilsperry.com/