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GreenThumb Tips & Tricks, Austin, Austin, TX (2026)

10/21/2026

Before you cut back your hydrangeas this fall, check which type you have!

✂️ Bigleaf (mophead and lacecap): don't prune now. They bloom on old wood, so fall cuts remove next summer's flower buds. Leave the dried flowers on; they look lovely in winter.

🌿 Panicle and smooth hydrangeas: they bloom on new growth, so prune them in late winter or early spring.

🍂 For all types: add a few inches of mulch around the roots, keeping it off the stems, water well before the ground freezes, and skip fall fertilizer.

10/21/2026

Before you cut back your rosemary this fall, read this! 🌿

- Fall: light cleanup only. Remove dead or broken stems and snip sprigs for the kitchen. A hard cut now pushes tender growth that frost can damage.

- Spring: once new growth appears, do your main shaping.

- Always cut where green leaves remain. Rosemary rarely regrows from bare, woody stems.

10/21/2026

The "Christmas cactus" you bought in November is almost certainly a Thanksgiving cactus. 🌸

Shops sell them under the same name, and once you know the
difference you can't unsee it.

🔍 LOOK AT THE EDGE OF THE LEAF SEGMENT:

SHARP POINTED TEETH → Thanksgiving cactus. Blooms November. This is
what's on the shelves.
SMOOTH ROUNDED SCALLOPS → true Christmas cactus. Blooms December
into January. Genuinely less common.
ROUNDED WITH FINE BRISTLES at the tip → Easter cactus. Blooms
spring.

Neither is better — but it explains why yours flowers "too early"
every year. It isn't early. It's a different plant.

- AND HERE'S THE part that kills most of them:

IT IS NOT A DESERT CACTUS.

It grows on tree branches in the coastal rainforests of Brazil —
dappled light, humidity, regular rain.

Treating it like a desert plant and watering it once a month is the
single most common reason they fail. Water when the top inch dries,
and give it bright indirect light.

- TO GET BLOOMS: six weeks of 12 to 14 hours of complete darkness a
night, at around 50–55°F. A lamp switched on in that room at night
breaks the cycle.

- AND IF THE BUDS DROP — it's almost always because the pot moved.

Once it sets buds it orients them to the light, and turning or
relocating it makes it abandon them. Draughts, heating vents and a
sudden change in watering do the same.

Pick its spot before it buds, then leave it alone.

- Two more things worth knowing: it blooms BEST when pot-bound, so
resist repotting. And unlike poinsettia and amaryllis, it's safe
around cats and dogs.

These plants live 50 to 100 years. People inherit them.

10/20/2026

Frozen water does more damage to a winter flock than cold ever does. 💧

A hen drinks roughly twice the weight of the feed she eats. When
she can't drink, she stops eating — and eating is how she generates
body heat.

- And no, they won't eat snow. Melting it costs more energy than it
returns.

One day without water can stop a hen laying for two to three weeks.

- FIVE WAYS TO KEEP IT LIQUID:

- HEATED BASE — thermostatically controlled, sits under a standard
font. The most reliable option if you have power at the coop.

- BUCKET WITH A SUBMERSIBLE HEATER — good for larger flocks, though
the rim still ices and ni***es can block.

- BLACK RUBBER TUB IN FULL SUN — free, and genuinely works down to
around 20°F. Dark rubber absorbs heat, and ice pops out when you
flex it.

- SWAPPING TWO BOWLS — no electricity, no fire risk. Two or three
swaps a day, and the frozen one thaws indoors while the other is
out.

- PING PONG BALL — the wind moves it and the motion delays ice.
Helpful, but it delays rather than prevents.

- NEVER:

Salt or glycerine in the water. Both are toxic to chickens, and this
advice still circulates.

Hot water. It actually freezes faster, and it adds humidity to the
coop.

- And please don't run a thin indoor extension cord to the coop.
Dust, feathers and a cheap cord are a leading cause of coop fires.
Heavy-duty outdoor cable, properly rated.

- THREE SMALL THINGS THAT HELP:

Raise the font to the height of a hen's back — cleaner water, and
slower to freeze.
Insulate the bucket with an old tyre or foam.
- Keep water OUTSIDE the coop. Moisture in a closed coop causes
frostbite — and it's humidity, not cold, that takes combs.

10/20/2026

"My hens stopped laying." It's the question of the season — and
daylight is only one of five answers. 🥚

- IS SHE LOSING FEATHERS? She's moulting. Feathers are protein and so are eggs, and she can't build both. Six to eight weeks. Feed higher protein and wait.

- IS SHE GETTING UNDER 14 HOURS OF LIGHT? Then it's simply the
season. Normal, and it returns in spring.

- IS SHE OVER THREE? Production declines naturally after year three.

- HAS ANYTHING CHANGED IN THE LAST FORTNIGHT? A move, a new bird, a
predator scare, a feed change. Any of those stops laying for weeks.

- NONE OF THE ABOVE? She's probably laying somewhere else. Check
hedges, corners and under the coop — or look for yolk smears in the
nest box, which means she's eating them.

- AND THE QUICKEST CHECK THERE IS:

Feel between the two pelvic bones below the vent. THREE TO FOUR
FINGERS apart means she's laying. ONE TO TWO means she isn't.

- And the counterintuitive part: the FADED, scruffy-looking hen is
often your best layer. That pigment went into the eggs.

- IF NOTHING FITS — CHECK THE WATER.

A single day without water can stop a hen laying for two to three
weeks. A frozen font overnight, a tipped bucket, a blocked ni**le.
It's the most common cause nobody suspects, and it's the first thing
I'd rule out.

Also worth checking: mites under the wings at night, and whether
treats have diluted the feed below 16–18% protein.

- ON ADDING LIGHT — it works, but it's worth knowing the trade-off.
A hen is born with every egg cell she'll ever have. Light doesn't
create more, it spends them sooner.

If you do it, add it in the MORNING, never the evening — an evening
cut-off leaves them stranded in sudden darkness. And never during a
moult.

A winter rest is normal. She isn't broken.

10/20/2026

A plant that has never been touched can prepare for an attack — because it felt the vibration of one happening nearby.

What they did. Heidi Appel and Rex Cocroft at the University of Missouri pointed a laser at a tiny piece of reflective foil stuck to an Arabidopsis leaf, and used it to measure how the leaf moved while a cabbage white caterpillar chewed on it. A leaf being eaten shakes in a very particular way.

Then they played that recording back to a second set of plants. No caterpillars, no damage. Just the vibration.

What happened. When caterpillars were later put on both sets, the plants that had been exposed to the recording produced noticeably more mustard oils — the defensive compounds that make their leaves unpalatable. They had armed themselves in advance, on the strength of a vibration alone.

And this is the part that makes it hold up. Other plants were given gentle wind. Others were given recordings of different insects that share some of the same acoustic features. Neither group increased its defences at all.

So it isn’t a general reaction to being shaken. The plant distinguishes the specific vibration of something eating it from the ordinary vibrations of a windy afternoon, and responds only to the one that matters.

Now the honest framing, because this story gets stretched online. There is no hearing here in the way you and I hear. No ear, no nerve, no brain, no experience of sound. What exists is mechanoperception — cells that detect physical vibration in the tissue and trigger a chemical cascade. It’s closer to touch than to hearing.

That’s not a lesser finding. A plant with no nervous system, reading a vibration precisely enough to tell a caterpillar from the wind and acting on it before the first bite lands, is stranger than the version where it simply has ears.

10/20/2026

Evergreens don't usually die of cold. They die of thirst — in ground
that's full of water. 💧

It's the most counterintuitive problem in the winter garden, and
almost everyone who loses an arborvitae blames the wrong thing.

🍃 HERE'S WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS:

Deciduous trees drop their leaves in autumn. That isn't just
tidiness — it's how they stop losing water for the winter.

Evergreens don't have that option. They keep their foliage, and
foliage keeps transpiring. All winter, every day, they're releasing
water.

Winter sun and dry wind speed it up considerably.

- AND MEANWHILE, THE GROUND FREEZES.

Frozen soil locks the water away. The roots can't take up anything,
no matter how wet the soil was when it froze.

So you have a plant losing water from its leaves and physically
unable to replace it from its roots.

It's dying of thirst while standing in frozen water.

🔍 THE SIGN — AND THE REASON NOBODY CONNECTS IT:

Browning from the leaf TIPS AND EDGES INWARD, worst on the southwest
side and whichever side faces the prevailing wind.

- And it shows up in FEBRUARY TO APRIL.

Months after the damage happened. People see brown arborvitae in
March and blame a late cold snap. The damage was done in November,
by a plant that went into winter already dry.

- WHO'S MOST AT RISK:

ARBORVITAE, JUNIPER, SPRUCE, YEW, PINE — steady loss through narrow
needles.

- RHODODENDRON, AZALEA, BOXWOOD, HOLLY — broadleaf evergreens lose
considerably more. (The curling, drooping leaves on a rhododendron
in a cold snap are a water-saving response, not distress — that part
is normal.)

- ANYTHING PLANTED THIS YEAR. Root systems are still small and
shallow. These are the ones to prioritise, every time.

- ANYTHING IN A POT. Exposed on every side, first to freeze,
nowhere to draw from.

✅ WHAT TO DO — and it's genuinely simple:

💧 KEEP WATERING UNTIL THE GROUND FREEZES. Usually late November
into December, depending where you are. Most people stop in
October.

📏 ONE DEEP, SLOW SOAK — about an inch of water, delivered from the
base of the plant outward across the root zone. Not a quick
sprinkle.

🌡️ WATER ON A DAY ABOVE 40°F, IN THE MORNING, so it has time to
soak in before the temperature drops at night.

🍂 MULCH 2 to 3 INCHES over the root zone, pulled back from the stem.
A donut, not a volcano. It slows the soil freezing, which keeps
water available for longer.

❄️ AND DURING ANY LONG WINTER THAW — water again. A warm week in
January is an opportunity, and almost nobody takes it.

- WHAT NOT TO DO:

DON'T FERTILISE and DON'T PRUNE now. Both encourage soft new growth
that has no chance of hardening off in time.

DON'T WATER FROZEN GROUND. It sits on the surface and ices over,
helping nothing.

- ANTI-DESICCANT SPRAYS — the evidence is genuinely mixed. Some
studies show a benefit, others show none, and they need reapplying.
They're not a substitute for water, and watering matters far more.

- A BURLAP WIND SCREEN on the windward side — standing clear of the
plant on stakes, NOT wrapped around it — does more than any spray.
Wrapping traps moisture against the foliage and causes its own
problems.

- Twenty minutes with a hose on the next mild morning, before the
ground locks up.

The brown you'd otherwise find in March is being decided right now.

10/20/2026

No big yard? A single 3-by-3-foot square can become a busy stop for birds, bees and butterflies. 🐦

- Build the tripod
Lash three sturdy 7 to 8 foot poles together at the top with twine and set their bases firmly in the soil, so the structure stays stable under heavy vines and wind.

🌿 Plant native vines on the legs
- Trumpet honeysuckle: red tubular flowers that hummingbirds love.
- Maypop passionflower: bees adore the blooms, and it hosts gulf fritillary caterpillars.
- Crossvine: orange-and-yellow trumpets in early spring, just as hummingbirds return.
As the vines thicken, small birds like wrens use them for shelter, and some may even nest inside.

🌼 Fill the base
- Scarlet sage for extra nectar.
- Coneflowers: leave the seed heads standing for goldfinches in fall and winter.
- Little bluestem grass for seeds and winter cover.

- Skip these, even though you'll see them recommended: coral vine, blue sky vine and Lantana camara are invasive in parts of the US, and lantana's green berries are toxic to pets and livestock.

- Fall is a great time to plant perennials and vines in many areas, so roots can settle in before spring.

10/20/2026

Save Your Coleus Before Frost and Grow New Plants for Free!

Coleus brings incredible color to the garden all summer, but one frosty night can turn those beautiful leaves black and limp! ❄️ Luckily, saving your favorite plants is surprisingly easy. Just a few cuttings can give you a fresh collection for next spring!

7 Easy Steps to Grow New Coleus Plants

1️⃣ Take Cuttings Before Frost
Don't wait until temperatures reach freezing! Coleus struggles when nights drop below 10°C (50°F). Choose healthy stems while the plant is still growing well.

2️⃣ Pick the Best Stems
Select strong, colorful shoots about 4–6 inches (10–15 cm) long. Cut just below a leaf node using clean scissors.

3️⃣ Remove the Lower Leaves
Keep a few healthy leaves at the top and strip away the lower ones. Remove any flower buds so the cutting can focus on developing roots.

4️⃣ Place Cuttings in Water
Fill a clean glass jar with room-temperature water. Submerge one or two leaf nodes, keeping all remaining leaves above the surface.

5️⃣ Give Them Warmth and Light
Place the jar somewhere bright, away from harsh direct sunlight and cold drafts. Change the water every few days to keep it fresh.

6️⃣ Watch the Roots Grow
Tiny white roots may appear within 7–14 days! Once they reach about 3–5 cm, gently transfer the cuttings into small pots with well-draining soil.

7️⃣ Keep Them Happy All Winter
Place your young plants near a bright window, water when the soil surface begins to dry, and pinch the growing tips occasionally to encourage bushy growth.

😅 Common Mistake!

Leaving cuttings in water for too long! Those beautiful roots can become tangled and delicate, making transplanting more difficult. Move them into soil once they've developed enough.

- Bonus Tip!

You can also bring an entire coleus plant indoors before frost, but check carefully for pests first. Taking cuttings is often easier and saves valuable indoor space!

- One Plant Today, Many Plants Next Spring!

With a little care and patience, your favorite coleus varieties can survive indoors all winter. Once warm weather returns and the danger of frost has passed, gradually introduce them to outdoor conditions.

A few simple cuttings now can fill your garden with gorgeous colors again next year! 🌿

10/20/2026

Fresh walnuts from your own tree taste wonderful all winter, if you dry and store them the right way. 🌰

🧤 1. Gather when the green husks start to split, and pick them up quickly from the ground.
🧤 2. Remove the husks right away. Husks left on can stain the shells, spoil the flavor and invite mold. Wear sturdy gloves: walnut husks stain your hands dark brown for days.
💧 3. Rinse off the dark residue and toss any nut that floats or looks damaged.
🌬️ 4. Dry them in a single layer in a shady, airy place for about 2 to 3 weeks, stirring now and then. Skip direct hot sun, which can make the kernels taste bitter.
- 5. They're ready when the kernel snaps crisply and the thin divider between the halves is brittle.

- How to store them
- In the shell: in a mesh bag somewhere cool, dry and airy.
- Shelled: in a sealed jar in the refrigerator for several months.
- Freezer: up to about a year.

- Any walnut with mold inside goes in the trash, since some molds produce toxins. And keep dogs away from fallen husks: moldy ones can make them seriously ill.

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10/21/2026

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