By Felder Rushing

Gardening Columnist

When it comes to setting misinformation straight, I sometimes come across like rain on a parade. Hate to yuck anyone’s yum, but some garden habits cause problems.

Not that I am a straight-laced pedant unable to bend rules! Being both a horticulturist steeped in efficiency-oriented science and a lazy hands-on gardener who appreciates short cuts, I am perfectly aware that there are different approaches to gardening, each with pros and cons. My different minds let unimportant stuff slide.

Besides, subjective personal opinions that go against horticulture dogma are often valid; habits based on what we learned from someone else or have been doing for a long time, while not ideal, can work just fine.

 And many unquantifiable but thrilling rewards from gardening are not addressed by scientists. Some that come to mind include watching hummingbirds flit, dragging a tarp full of pulled weeds to the composting pile, growing plants that I myself thinks shouldn’t survive here, staring into a crackly outdoor fire, finding a gecko or rosy wolf snail eating slugs, smelling the musty petrichor wafting from the soil before a rain, and having my young granddaughter think I’m special because she can eat English peas right from my garden. And I adore nandinas (no, their berries don’t kill birds).

Yet there are lots of outdated practices and over-hyped things that people swear by for no good reason other than their granddad did it or they read it on the internet, which may not actually work but cause no harm in moderation. Eggshells, for example, really don’t add usable calcium to the soil, coffee and Epsom salts are nearly worthless (yes I am sure); and grits have never killed fire ants. No harm in trying over and over to grow lavender or rhubarb here, or insisting on calling Philadelphus shrubs either mock orange or English dogwood. None of that really matters, let it slide.

But there are some common but predictably problematic practices done this time of year that make me wince, and which, based on solid research and decades of personal experience, I will never do in my garden. I don’t use pea gravel mulch or weed barrier fabrics, mow the lawn short, use salt on weeds, or tell other people they shouldn’t prune their crape myrtles, or insist that native plants are best for the garden. Each of those is an entire article’s worth, but not today. Except for two.

First, please don’t burn the browned pampas grass! My dad did it every year, and it was almost as fun, singed eyebrows and all, as setting fire to the dried-out Christmas tree. But it usually killed the center of the plant, leading to a partial ring of smaller plants around a charred-black stump.

Instead, go at it with hedge shears, attacking at an angle and going around and around like licking an ice cream cone. And do it soon before new growth starts to emerge and may get nicked and look ragged all summer.

Second, resist exhortations to use lawn fertilizer/weed killer combinations. They sound great, but truth is, granular herbicides are usually too weak to do much good; and it is too early to fertilize without causing even stronger weed growth and risking lawn diseases and poor root development. Better, if you just can’t tolerate small, temporary, pollinator-friendly flowering plants in February, is to use a liquid spray on a warm day, and repeat in a week.  And wait til the grass has greened up and been mowed a time or two before fertilizing.

But I’m not the garden police; you do you, as best you can.

Felder Rushing is a Mississippi author, columnist, and host of the “Gestalt Gardener” on MPB Think Radio. Email gardening questions to rushingfelder@yahoo.com.