Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Ricter. Just watch
him as a sign. Well, good Sunday morning. So you are glad
you're listening this morning, looking forward to having a great time talking to you
about things that are ventuest to you regarding your garden, your landscape. You're
listening to garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Richter. Here is a
phone number. Please write this down so you have it handy when you need
to give us a call. Seven one three two one two five eight seven
four. What are we going to talk about today, folks? We got
all kinds of things, lawns and trees and shrubs and herbs and house plants
and what flowers I don't know, insects, diseases, weeds, there's plenty
of talk about in gardening, always something to talk about. If nothing else,
we can just grap about the weather. How about that. Well,
let's start off. We're gonna go right out to League City. Get going
here with John V. Good morning, John V. Are you there?
Today? This morning is on the trumpet flower? That flower that looks like
is that the right name? I'm so sorry. Yes, Angel's trumpet Angels
trumpet. Yeah, I knew it was either between trumpet or angel and also
called Angel trumpet. Yes, yes here it is, okay, Yes,
sure. Pretty tall they, I mean they're pretty wide and tall and high.
I'm the true shut for one stock, one plant. You know,
they it depends most of most folks. They don't get that big. You
know, they're six seven foot something like in that range. Probably I've seen
them get, you know, as far as like eight feet wide, you
know, when when they really are growing and you got a robust plant and
strong and maybe you get through winter without a freeze back or things. So
there's a range there if it's in a container. Mine and containers have usually
been within the four to six foot range something like that. But you know,
of course they could get larger, but it just depends on how much
soil growing conditions and all that good water, good nutrition that you provide it.
I was thinking about putting it in the center of the garden because you
know, my queen and runa like true murder, you know, in that
center there outside we have kind of like a round circle in the backyard with
the bricks. Would it be survived throughout the winters if I planted there,
Yes, as long as it's all about temperature. It doesn't take much to
freeze one back. Think of them like you would think of a tomato plant.
You know, it doesn't take much to kill a tomato plant. Back
to the ground. Fact, with these, if we mult around the base,
they will pop back out of the ground again for us, especially if
they're growing in the soil. But oh, wonderful. It just depends on
the on the weather that we have. Mine usually freeze back each year,
but I've had years where they didn't. Okay, well, wonderful, Thank
you so much. I'll have a blessed Sunday. Well you too, Thank
you for the call, and enjoy that angel's trumpet. Those, by the
way, do you know what color blooms you have on that? Oh gosh,
my mother. We're pink and purple fanatics, so we're going to have
to pick between one or the other. Maybe maybe what we can do is
extended out to do two or three, or just want to do pink,
purple and yellow? Well would't that be? Yeah? Pink and yellow and
coral. Those are going to be pretty common. I don't know if I've
ever now the purple one. There is a not a bragman a day tura
that is also sometimes called angels trumpet that is purple and white. Gosh,
I forgot about the color coral. That's so beautiful too, right, Well,
enjoy it, thank you, thank you for the call. Yeah,
the angels trumpet's named because the blooms hang down from the branches, as if
angels trumpets were pointing downward from heaven. That kind of idea is why it's
given the name Angel's trumpet. Um. There's also one a different plant called
datura, and day tura is more of a little short growing shrub like plant.
It's not a woody plant that lives year after year in a shrub form.
It dies back. But um, the day tura is actually a poisonous
plant. It's um. It's blooms don't hang down, they kind of point
sideway ways are slightly up, and it is typically a purple and white form
of a bloom. They're also beautiful, they're absolutely beautiful, uh, form
little spiky seed pods. But just know that it is poisonous. I think
that day tura, I'm not mistaken. If you all remember the song Back
in the Saddle again Gene Autry Oak Singing Cowboy, where he sings about the
jimson weed that the cattle feed on. I believe jimsonweed is a type of
day tura too, so it's a it's a it's also called loco weed.
You know, it's not a good not a good thing for anything to eat.
But there you go where you want to know about that. You know,
if you have been taking care of your lawn outside, you've got your
lawn fertilized except for summer and everything. I would like to suggest you turn
your attention to your indoor plants as well when it comes to nutrition. And
here's why Microlife has a product to have a liquid line. A number of
different liquid products that are available. There's one called Microlife Biomatrix. It's an
orange label that I love it that they color code their labels. That makes
it easy. You'll remember orange. You might not remember by the time you
get to a store. What biomatrix What were those words? Well, let
me see what biomatrix is. It's a seven one three fertilizer. It's a
liquid fertilizer organic it's got beneficial microbes in it. This is a nice extra
plus. I use it for my houseplants. It works really really well at
that seven percent. The higher percentage of nitrogen compared to phosphorus and potassium works
really well for our foliage types of houseplants. It's most of our houseplants.
We grow them for their foliage. The second product I want to about is
Microlife's Ocean Blue Harvest or Ocean Harvest, and it's a blue label, and
that's a four two three a fish emotion based fertilizer. Now this is good.
I love it. For the outdoor plants. You can use it as
a folior spray. Follow the label carefully on mixing it. Spray upward underneath,
get the bottoms of the leaves wet in the morning early in the morning
when it's cool, and you'll get better absorption at that time. It's not
going to burn your plants. You can also just put into watering can and
drench it over But both Microlife Biomatrix the orange label and Ocean Harvests the blue
label are available where you Wherever you find your Microlife products, you can go
online Microlife Fertilizer dot com and it'll tell you exactly where you can find them
as well as if you want to learn more about these two excellent products for
liquid feed. Just giving little boosts along the way, which is how we
like to feed our house plants and many of our outdoor plants as well.
Works pretty cool. You know we're entering that season where here comes the storms?
What is it when we're June through what? September? October? I
don't know. The hurricane season is upon us. That's the short. Well,
if you need any kind of roof work done, Brinkman Roofing is the
place you need to call. I mean, Brinkman's been here for twenty five
years. Actually they've been here for fifty years. They warrant their roofs for
twenty five years of service, which is a long long time. Now,
the roof's a big investment in your house, so you want to get it
right. Okay. They have a number of options. You can do this
the solid seam standing seam metal roof to put on your home or on your
business. Either way, Brinkman will do that. They also have a solar
shingle timberline solar shingle, so you don't put a solar panel on your roof.
That's kind of an unsightly thing. Your shingles are a solar panel,
and I think that is pretty cool stuff. Now, Brinkman, they know
what they're doing. Again, you're not around that long, not doing a
great job. But when you need a quality roofer, call Brinkman. Go
to eight one four eight oz seventy six sixty three two eight one four eight
seventy six sixty three, or go to Brinkman Quality dot com. You'll find
out more. Hey, these folks twenty twenty two Better Business, a Pinnacle
Award winner. You know you're going to be treated right, you're going to
get a fair price, and you're going to get a job well done with
Brinkman. Let's take a break. Our phone number seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Good morning on a great Sunday morning. We
are glad you're listening to garden Line. Looking forward to talking gardening with you.
Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Give Josh a calf, keep you on the board and we will talk about
whatever kinds of gardening things you're interested in. Hey, if you're thinking about
purchasing a home maybe, you know, kind of looking for a place to
go settle in for retirement. Well you need to consider the new Dell Web
community. It's out there in Fulsher about two miles from downtown Fulsher on FM
three fifty nine. You know, del Web communities are for active adults age
fifty five and better. And not only do they have beautiful homes, beautiful
communities, walking paths, it's just a lovely place to be, but they
have a lifestyle programs that are built around you. And here is just an
example the Dellweb community out there in full Sure. They've asked me to help
them develop a community garden. So not only we have a beautiful home,
you want to plow up the backyard a community garden there, gather with friends,
enjoy the social events. You know how it is hanging out with gardeners.
It's just it's just a fun thing, a fun thing to do.
You've bet to grow your own fresh vegetables and flowers and things right there in
your own community. For more information, go to dellweb dot com, slash
Houston, or give them a call to eight one four five nine zero six
zero nine. Discover that Dellweb difference for yourself. Let's head out to Willowbrook
now and we're going to talk to Anne. Good morning, Anne. Hello,
how do you on the radio again? I need to turn it off.
Yes, it's best. It's best if you turn it down where we
can't hear it. Okay, I'll turn off. Okay. My question to
you is, yesterday you mentioned about not watering too much during this heat wave
that we're having. Yes And I had and I had new sod laid about
a month ago that they told me to water every day for about fifteen minutes
um every single day. And I've been doing that and it's thriving. But
I don't want to get into a situation where it's going to eventually, you
know, kill the roots. Like I think you mentioned yesterday about watering too
much. Yes, could you help me with this? You bet? Okay.
A couple of things going on in the question. Number one, what
I was talking about yesterday was when you water so much volume so regularly that
the soil never has a chance to drain and it just stays soggy. That's
deadly dependants. Okay. So that's that's that. It's a it's a function
of how often do you water, how much do you water? What kind
of soil do you have? You know, there's not just a water for
X number of minutes as an answer, it's you have to It depends on
your soil. But with the side, for the first week or two,
we do water about every day, just a very light watering. Though we're
not turning the lawn into a swamp. We're just making sure those little shallow
roots. You know, how the side comes in, it's got this little
thin leriu soil. Well, that's the whole root system of the side plant
when it comes to your house. So we've got to give time for those
roots to get down in the soil. Then it becomes really resilient. And
eventually we're only going to water once a week, so if it doesn't rain,
and so for the first week or so, you're you're just kind of
pampering it with just a little bit of water, not too much. Then
we go to every other day, maybe about twice a week. Then eventually
once a week. So by the time you've been in, you've had that
side in for three weeks, you should be moved back to a good soaking
with a drying out period of soaking with drying out period and so you shouldn't
have to be doing the daily watering, certainly not past one week. So
okay, good, even in its brutal heat. I mean yeah, seriously.
Yeah, well but again, picture picture like a cutaway of your lawn.
You know how you do those cutaways and you see the soil and the
sod on top. Well, first off, you just have a little roots,
and so you're watering it frequently, and then the roots are slowly moving
down, and so you're watering a little more but a little less often,
and then the roots finally get down and they're normally deep, you know,
saying augustine roots easily six eight inches into the ground. If it's a good
it's a good quality soil. And at that point you're just giving. You're
filling that sol volume with water and then you're letting it drain out and it
may not you may be watering twice a week or even just once a week.
Okay, good, And I know you don't really know the volume for
the minute, but utad rage is about fifteen minutes or you saying for good
watering, you know, I would I would rather because there's there's people listening
that have pop up solid sprinklers. They have people that have rotors, and
they have multi stream rotors, and they all are vastly different in how they
put out water. So what I would rather say is put a little coffee
can, a little tuna fish can, a little cat food can, any
little straight sided can out there in the yard. Put several of them if
you can, or even rain gages if you got them, and turn on
the water. And when you've caught, when you first put inside, I
would say you need probably about a quarter to a third inch of irrigation every
day at first, and then you're gonna you're gonna gradually work your way to
where you're watering with about a half inch twice a week or an inch once
a week. That's kind of in general now in in superside versus lots of
shade that varies a whole lot too. Yeah, okay, great, thank
you so much. Research your house and I'm glad to have you with us.
Thank you well, thank you. I appreciate the call very much and
appreciate that very all right. You take care. You know, I'm gonna
have um, I'm gonna have Papa Gala Begala from the B Supply on later
today in the eight o'clock hour. I hope you guys will stick around and
hear that. You know, the B Supply is out there in Dayton,
Texas, and they if you are at all interested in beekeeping, maybe you
are a beekeeper, maybe you want to be one, the B Supply is
the place that you need to go. And you're going to hear about this
in the eight o'clock hour a whole lot more. But you can go online
to the B Supply dot com, the B supply dot com and find out
more. They have beginner classes once a month out there in Dayton and you
can learn all that you need to know about beekeeping. I mean, it
is amazing the classes they teach. You can also if you just are interested
in teaching or learn about bees or teaching kids. They have honey tours,
free honey tours out it's to B Supply. You have them about once a
month. Just call them. If you have a really big group, you
could probably even schedule a specific tour for that. But they get to taste
honey, you get to learn about bees. It's just fascinating stuff. And
while the kids are there, you can see the second largest indoor bee observation
hive in the world. It's this big thing up in the air when you
walk into the room and it's just there's bee come and bees going in and
out this long tube. It's really cool stuff. But I'll be talking to
Paul a little bit later this morning and you can learn a whole lot more
about that. Let's see where our wi's go to Kingwood and we're going to
talk to Joe. Good morning, Joe, Good morning, Skip. I've
had mealy bugs on my high biscus that I've been washing off every couple of
days or so. I sent you a photo of knowing you've had a chance
to pull it up. But it's a losing battle with me right now,
and as one to call to get your advice on what you think I should
do. These are the tropical type of hibiscus. Yes, and it's in
a container. Okay, I do not see up. I do see you
did semi a picture. I'll take a look at those as we're talking here.
Yeah, the mealy bugs that they're a problem. They're they're difficult to
get rid of. I would you got a couple of options. You could
use a systemic insecticide that goes up in the plant. The only thing you
want to watch on that is when you use those and you have flowers that
the bees may come to. That can be a problem for the bees.
But the good thing about the systemic is is it moves up through the root
system up into the stems, and when the mealy bugs or aphids or white
flies or anything is sucking juices out of a plant, it sucks up the
poison and it kills them that way. So rather than spring poison on the
surface, you're putting it in the in the plumbing of the plant. That
is probably what I would do to just knock these out. You can use
there are contact materials like oils and soaps and things that we knock them back
with, but that's never one hundred percent because you got you don't get all
the nooks and crannies. You can use you know, like a synthetic perrethroid
type sprays to kill them, but they've got that that fluffy coating that just
really you know, kind of deflects a lot of the sprays we try to
get on them. So I think I would go systomach and just be aware
that you know, you want to be careful about the bees and things until
you get these these mealy bugs knocked out. Which one would you recommend?
I used look for a product that has a meadow cloprid in it. And
if you have a pen or pencil handy there, yes, I would write
down I AM I D O in medd and then clo pr I D clo
prid a metocloprid. It's the only thing spelled close to that. So if
you even got half those letters, you'll find it. And a granular or
a a liquid form. It's a liquid form typically for plants like that.
They do have a granule form. It's using the yard for grubs. But
I would just get you a good liquid form. There's gonna be a number
of them out there. You know you're out in the king Would area.
You're fortunate to have Kingwood Garden Center and Warren Southern Gardens and they're going to
carry something with a medicloppred in it. Great. And one more quick question
on that hibiscus. It's got one of the main stocks has a crack in
it. Yes, Should I try to save it or put something on the
crack or just let it heal itself naturally? The crack is on what plays
I miss that it's on one of the main stocks of the hybiscus. I
would there's nothing you need to put on it. Yeah, don't don't worry
about trying to put anything on the crack that that's not going to be practical.
Okay, Yeah, while I'm while I'm while I'm mentioning it to you.
You are in Kingwoods, so you've got K and m ace there in
Kingwood. And then it was J and R Over and Porter and they definitely
are going to have a very large selection of products if you have any trouble
finding it. All right, skip, thanks for your help. All right,
thank you. I appreciate that. Good luck without hibiscus. Well,
it looks like we're running into another break. Time for more news, So
here we go. Give Josh a call at seven one three two one two
five eight seven four so he can get you on the board. When we
come back, you will be the first up and we will continue talking gardening
here on garden line. Good don't you know me? Good morning, Good
Sunday morning. We are here talking gardening this morning with you our phone number
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four appreciate you listening to the
garden line, and it's always kind of fun getting a call see and what
on earth are we gonna talk about next, because you guys kind of set
the agenda when it comes to you know, is it herbs or is it
house plants? Or you know, why is my tree leaves falling off?
I don't know what kinds of things that come up with. You know,
if you want to have a beautiful landscape, if you're like me, you're
a plant collector. Okay, Now what that means is I go to garden
centers, I see plants I have to have, and I bring them home
and I try to figure out what on earth I'm going to do with them.
I'm sorry, but that's a fact. That's called a plant collector.
Our yards look like a bomb went off in a garden center and everything rooted
where it landed. But if you want a real landscape, you need to
call the folks at Peer Scapes. There are preferred garden lined landscaper. Peerscapes
have been doing this for a long time. They know exactly how to design
and install a landscape that will make your home a show place. We're talking
about rock borders. We're talking about good drainage. By the way, do
you have drainage issues, They can fix that. How about walkways, hardscapes,
new gardens. They know how to put in sprinkler syst They know how
to take care of the lighting needs. You know, that beautiful evening setting
where the landscape lighting is perfect. They can do that. Peerscapes. You
can find out more. Go to Peerscapes dot com, Pirescapes dot com or
column two eight one three, seven, zero five zero six zero. This
is a good time to get some landscape work done, so when fall comes,
your garden is just or your landscape just going to be even more beautiful
than ever before. I was driving up through kind of the Navasota area just
was it last week or week four? It was last week anyway, and
drove past Grimes County feed and you know they're one of our Sponsorshire on Garden
Line Grimes County. If you live up there, I call it God's Country.
I mean it's the area out there around Carlos and Iola and Bad Eyes
and Roan's Prairie and Richards and most of your stand what where is that?
Well? You need good check it out. It's up just a near Navasota,
near College Station to a lot of College Station Brian folks go down to
it. But this Grimes County Feed is that that good old time family owned
feed store that provide a service that has all the supplies you Need's easy to
get in, easy to get out. The fertilizers we recommend, you're going
to find them there, a tree, he sprinklers, things like that.
The mosquito dunks we talk about. They're going to have those quality dogging,
cat food, livestock food. Do you know they also do pond supplies and
fish stocking. Several times through the year they will have fish come in.
If you have a little farm pond you want to get them stocked, they
can take care of that too. Grimes County Feed for those of you who
live in King Oaks or the Murewood subdivisions, they're your hometown feed store and
I hope that you will check them out. You will really enjoy spending time
with Chris and the rest of the family out there and letting them prove to
you why Grimes County Feed is a place that you want to do your shopping.
I'm looking outside seeing the daylight starting to show up. Finally, the
breeze is moving the trees just a little bit. About It's a good day
to get out there and do some kinds of gardening. Nine we got hot
weather. That's why we have mornings and late late days, early evenings to
get out and get some of that done. But there's a lot to be
done right now. I mean, there's still things we can be planting.
There's things that we can be trimming and pruning and fertilizing and feeding and taking
care of and checking for pests and staying ahead of things. One of the
most popular kinds of gardening right now is gardening for butterflies and gardening for pollinators.
That is just a hot topic. And when I think about where would
you go if you're going to buy plants for butterflies and pollinators, one of
the top places is Buchanans and Native Plants. They're on the Heights on eleven
Street in the Heights. You can go online to Buchanansplants dot com to find
more out about Buchanans to find out where they are and what they have and
what's going on right now. They have a lot of milkweeds for sale now.
A lot of you are familiar with a tropical milkweed, the non native
that a lot of people grow for the beautiful blooms. They also have Asclepius
tuberosa, another beautiful native milkweed that we have here. They've got a green
milkweed Sclepius vartas. They've got an aquatic milkweed Sclepius perennis. So if you're
looking to make monarchs happy, and this is the place you need to go.
They specialize in native plants, but they have every other kind of plant
you can imagine, if you need shade plants, if you want herbs and
vegetables and house plants and trees and shrubs, and but natives is really the
heart of what they do there. And boy do they ever have an excellent,
excellent supply of bucannons plants dot Com Eleventh Street and the Heights. I
was in there recently and just yeah, every time I go, I'm surprised
at some of the things they have. It's stuff that you wouldn't find in
a lot of other places, you know, especially when you get into natives.
It's just not like everybody didn't just carry a huge amount of natives,
but if you're into interested in natives, they certainly do. That would be
a great place to stop and check out, especially on a day like today.
Our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven
one three two one two fifty eight seven and four. You know the Josh
will get you on the board. Give him a call. I love to
visit with gardeners about all kinds of gardening questions that they have, and I
know that a lot of people ask about trees and ask about turf and stuff
like that. In fact, trees and turf are the two teas that make
the phone ring most often on garden Line as well as in the county Agrilife
Extension offices around the state, where your county extension agents are helping you with
gardening and ranching and all kinds of different questions that you might have out there.
But when it comes to trees, you want to start with a quality
tree that was grown right and that was planted right if you're going to have
success. That is really important. In fact, I'm going to be doing
a talk for the Obapalooza coming up here within a month, and we're gonna
talk about the two things that make the phone ring the two tees and we're
gonna talk about trees and what goes wrong with trees, and some of the
things that go wrong are you don't pick the right tree and you don't planet
correctly. Verdant Tree Verdant Tree Farm is a place where you can get the
right tree and you can get it planted correctly. You can go online to
Verdant Treefarm dot com. They've got the old location or original location, I
should say it's out in West Houston over on Barker Cypress near Bear Creek Park.
They've got the Verdant Tree Farm down in pair Land on West Broadway and
then up in the Heights where Yale comes into I ten. There's another place
where you can get Verdant trees. You go pick your tree, they'll tag
it, they bring it to you, they plant it. One of the
best selection of palms you're going to find in town, but all the other
kinds of trees up to seven hundred gallons, ten percent discount for military and
first responders. Verdant Tree is a veteran owned company and they will provide a
beautiful tree that will add value to your landscape for decades to come. Remember
the best time to plant a tree was fifty years ago. Second best time
is today. So I hope you'll take advantage of that our phone number seven
one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two and two
fifty eight seventy four if you would be interested in that. Hey, there's
a sale coming up I wanted to tell you about, and that is with
the Trusted Lab. Now, the Trusted Lab is the supplier here in Texas,
Texas company of CBD products, CBD products to help you sleep better,
CBD products for your muscle, joint aches, and things like that, CBD
products for mood, CBD products for overall wellness. The Trusted Lab is having
a great Fourth of July sale. Just go to the Trusted Lab dot com
the Trusted Lab dot com and you can find out more information and get a
quality CBD product for you to try yourself. I use the ones on my
joints myself, my muscles. I find them be very very helpful. Hey,
we're gonna go ahead and take a break again. The number if you
want to get on the board seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Be a cowboys sweetheart, hold ladies in the desert. I will
still great divine. I want to here the cows while the sun sits.
I want to be a cowboys sweet well. Good Sunday morning, on a
great day to talk about gardening. Get outside, get a little early morning
work done, perhaps or maybe late day today also good day this afternoon,
get out and visit one of our garden centers. We've got a lot of
great ones around here. And I was talking earlier about Kingwood Garden Center and
also Warren's Garden out there in Kingwood. If you live out there, I
keep putting it this way, but you guys are rich with garden centers.
I mean, that is so fortunate. Anybody in the Kingwood Order, New
Caney Valley Ranch at Tascaseda, with all those places all out northeast here,
you guys have some really great spots to go check out. And they have
so many good plants, they have so many good products. They know what
they're doing. You know, if you want to learn how to build a
multi let's see what a combination ornamental container. Maybe you've got a real large
container and you want to have plants growing over the sides and growing up through
the center and all that kind of thing and just a showstopper. They can
tell you how to do that, or you can just go there and buy
one that they put together themselves and it's like instant there you go take it
home. Warrens is one of those garden centers that is just a destination place.
If if you have family and friends come in from anywhere around the area,
that would be a place I would take them to see, just to
see the kinds of things that they have there in the Kingwood area. Warrens
is on North Park Drive, Kingwood Garden Centers on Stone Hollow Drive. Both
of them are open seven days week. They also have those filling stations.
If you bought Microlife or Nelson plant food and the plastic jugs, you can
take them back in there and refiled a little bit less costs to do it
that way, and you don't throw more plastic into the environment. We already
got enough of that right. Warren's Garden Center, Kingwood Garden Center seven days
a week today. It'd be a good data check those out. You're listening
to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and our phone number
is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. I opened a drawer at the house the
other day and a silver fish ran by. I don't know, Deanna,
what silverfish are little flat silvery insects or actually are the insects. I need
to call Scott McGrath and ask if those are insects. I can't remember if
theyre or not. I think they are anyway, silverfish ran by. They're
the ones that get in your papers and chew up all the papers in your
books and things like that if you leave them stored for a while. Whether
it's cockroaches or silverfish or fungus nats or anything bugging your house. Maybe it
is fire ants outside or issues in your lawn. McGrath pest Control is the
place to call it. Go to mcgrah McGr at H McGrath pest control dot
com or column two eight one four six nine eight two four zero. They've
been around for over forty eight years here in the community. You don't stick
around like that if you don't do a good job. They schedule a time.
They don't tell you, well, sometime Saturday afternoon in five hours.
We may show up. No, they tell you when they're going to be
there, and they're there. They're highly rated. They serve the whole Houston
area and the owner is still involved in day to day operations and is accessible
to the customers. So no matter what you're dealing with, if you're concerned
about termites, if you're concerned about rodents squirrels in the attic, call McGrath
pest Control and they can take care of it for you. And I need
to give them a call and say I saw a silver flat silverfish. State
of emergency. Get over here. We gotta put an end to this because
I have opened up old books before and found those things in them where I
stored them out in the garage or something like that. Oh my gosh,
just ruins your day to know that your stuff is being destroyed by past.
Let's head out to East Houston and we're gonna get Paul a minute here to
talk about whatever is on his mind. Hello Paul, good morning, Skip.
I have a question about a gardenia. It's the ever blooming gardenia.
And I know that you've already addressed this probably a dozen times, but I've
missed it, so I just wanted to ask you. The leaves have completely
turned brown. And I don't know what all to do the same thing with
the azalea. About the only thing that I'm thinking is just clip off those
old brown leaves and hope for new growth. What do you think? So
are you saying the entire bush there, it's all brown, there's no green
leaves. There's maybe not anything that stands out. It might be real small
trying to grow out. I got a tarp and put over it. It's
it's one of those sun blocking type of tarps that um you see it garden
centers to try to protect it and save it. But I don't know what's
to do for it. Is it in a container or is it in the
ground? And how long? How long have you had it? Probably about
maybe a month? Okay, maybe maybe a month and a half. Yeah,
it's it sounds like it might have gone without water for a while in
the heat. That's a possibility. It's a possibility that, of course,
if you kept it two saggy wet, didn't have good drain holes in the
container, that that can also kill roots and result in the same effect as
if you water it. Uh. I can't think of anything else other than
a root rot, which would be you're you're kind of up a creek there.
When a whole plant turns brown like that, it's often the case that
you don't get it back. But sometimes if it was just a temporary and
you came back in time for it to recover, it may slowly put out
some new growth. And all that's going to mean is putting it in a
very bright shade location where there's light intensity coming in but not direct sunlight on
it, keeping that soil evenly moist, and then just waiting to see if
there's enough left in the plant to be able to push back out. My
gut feeling is this is not going to end well for that plant. But
I wouldn't give up on it yet. I know it was a real vigorous
one when I bought it. But anyway, yeah, I just was wondering
how many I'm just going to try to take the leaves off. It has
excellent drainage, Okay, I've really gone the extra step to give it everything
it needs to survive. And then I guess just the heat. Just one
day it just laid down. Yeah, yeah, all right, Well that's
that's strange. But you know, in a container it can get dry quick,
especially when it's one hundred degrees outside and right, and it also just
gets so blazing hot. I mean, you know, when it's one hundred
degrees already and now the sun is shining on the container, and so that
soil volume is way way warmer, hotter than it would be if it was
on the ground. There's just a lot of factors that come into play when
we start dealing with containers, right right, okay, all right, very
well, doing a great job, brother. I appreciate your help. Well,
thank you, and good luck with that. I hope things turn out
well for it. Appreciate the call pole our phone number seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Hey, if you haven't done your summer fertilization, you need to
consider getting that done asap. And we're talking about when we say summer fertilization
here on Guardline, we mean a slow release fertilizer. And Nelson Plant Food
has a turf Star line. In fact, they've got about a half dozen
different products in the Turf Star line. But I'm going to focus on the
slow and easy twenty two two ten twenty two to ten slow and easy,
gradual release over the summer. It does not push a lot of fast growth
that creates thatch that makes you have to mow, that limits the root system.
Slow and easy will get the job done by Nelson Plant Food. Nelson
Plant Food all their products Colorstar, Nutrastar, turf Star, Nature Star available
all over the place. You need to check them out. Hey, we're
gonna take another break here, and I hope you'll hang around with us.
We'll be back to talk more about gardening in the meantime. Right down the
number seven one three two one two five eight seven four and Josh, we'll
get you on the board so you can be first up this morning. We're
gonna talk when we come back about some other things. I want to talk
a little bit about some of the common pest problems that we deal with in
our lawns end in our trees as well in the summertime. If you would
like to discuss things like beneficial insects attracting them to the to the landscaping garden.
If we got some time, we may even get to that as well.
I want to remind you in the eight o'clock hour, folks from v
B Supply VB supply are going to be here and talking about bees, and
you need to not miss that. It's going to be fascinating stuff. KTRH
Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this
program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictor so just what him as
good Sunday morning. You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip
Rerector. We're here to talk about things of interest to you regarding your garden,
your landscape, your lawn, any kind of thing related to plants,
horticulture. We're happy to visit about that. I'm gonna give you a phone
number here. Write this down, give us a call if you would like
to be on the line. Ask a question of interest to you. That
is seven one three two one to five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. And I'm gonna talk now about I mentioned
some insect things I wanted to visit about earlier. The summertime. Bring some
insect issues to our yards. And one of those issues is grubs, the
white grubs. You probably have heard about grubs in the lawn before. They
feed underneath the surface and they sever the roots. They cut off the roots
of the plant, so you can literally pick up your let's say it's the
same augustine yard. You can pick it up like it was a throw rug,
and it just lifts right up. There's no roots down in the ground
to hold it to the ground. They're they're very short and cut off,
so it's will easy to lift it right up. That's a symptom of grubs.
Now they're grubs everywhere. There always are grubs in your lawn. I
mean, they're just they're ubiquitous. But it's when there are a lot of
grubs that it becomes a problem for a lot of folks. They don't think
this way about insects, But insects there's a threshold, there's a level where
we are concerned. And I'll let me use a green bean plant in the
garden as an example. They did a study one time where they picked leaves
off of a green bean bush and they looked at the yields as they removed
leaves that you know, of course, it was replicated trial, and they
found out that you had to pull about forty percent of the leaves off of
a green bean bush before you saw a significant decrease in production. So let's
apply that now to insects. If you've got some insects that are like how
to or beetles or whatever's eating on a green bean bush and they've eaten a
fourth of the leaves off, it's okay, it's not worth worrying about because
your bush will still produce it. That's how nature is. It's resilient and
it's made. Now, if you have a major infestation, yes that's a
problem, we've got to shut it down soon. But my point is that
just because a pestice present doesn't mean a control is needed at that point in
time. So with grubs, the entomology researchers tell us that it takes somewhere
between around seven five to ten grubs per square foot before there are enough grubs
to do enough damage to where it would warrant doing a spray to control them.
So go out and dig around where there's especially grass type plants, could
be grassy weeds in the garden, and you'll often find grubs in the soil.
That's just like I said, they're ubiquitous. They're here, but when
there's a lot of them, that's a problem. And that's how we need
to think about it in order to know when we need to respond or how
we need to respond. So with grubs, they typically and you know,
we grew up, probably you did, calling the little things flying around in
the air june bugs or june beetles, or maybe maybetles. If you're hearing
in the southern parts of Texas, the southern half of Texas, it's more
of a may beetle than a june beetle. But anyway, a little brown
beetles flying around, maybe on your porch light at night you notice them in
the summertime, Well, that's a mating flight of one of several types of
beetles that forms the grubs that eat our grass. There's more than one.
So when we see that, then we know they're gonna be laying eggs soon.
And after they lay eggs, the eggs hatch out and they're little,
tiny, tiny caterpillars. I mean this is hatching out as something that's an
egg maybe the size of a lowercase typed o letter O. So if you've
got an egg that little and it hatches, how big is that caterpillar going
to be? Really tiny? And it feeds a while near the surface,
and it goes through molts and gets bigger and bigger until it finally becomes that
big, fat grub that we see when we dig a hole in the ground
and find those C shaped, creamy looking grubs in there. Well, for
the first few weeks of its life, it's feeding near the surface, and
then as it gets hot, it moves down deep in the soil now here.
That's your window for grub control. So if you spray early and they
haven't laid all the eggs, eggs haven't hatched yet, then you're gonna miss
some of the eggs that would hatch a little bit later, and those grubs
you would miss them. If you wait until they've moved down into the soil
or started moving down, then your products are not going to get down at
that level. They're just not We want to catch them when as many as
possible they've already hatched out and yet before they've started heading down. So that's
the window, and for us that window is in June. It's typically about
mid June, which if I look at my calendar right, we're just a
little past the mid June, so now would be the time if you're going
to do a grub treatment. Don't delay any longer. Get it down there,
get it done. You can treat earlier. Some products are very persistent.
They last a good while, and so if you get them down a
little earlier, they'll st still be around when the grubs show up. Some
don't last very long at all. Some of the old products, you know,
seven people use seven dust and stuff, those kind of things don't last
as long as some of the newer ones in the soil. But grubs,
this is the window. Now, we're in that time when you need to
go ahead and get that grub treatment done. A SAP if you have a
grub problem. And again just because you saw a du and bug, just
because you found a grub somewhere, doesn't mean you necessarily do so. Something
to keep in mind there. Hey, if you've got a little piece of
property and you would like to get a tractor to help take care of it,
to make it nice, to make your work easier, you know,
maybe a front end loader that helps you haul feedsacks, you know, from
the truck out to the barn or wherever you're going. Maybe a box blade
to help smooth soil out, or a mower, a rotary cutter to just
you know, do some may your large scale mowing on the property. Lansdown
Moody and Cauboda have combined to create a deal that you do not want to
miss. That is the Caboda Texas Edition L twenty five oh one. It's
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can find out more about you know, where where are the Lansdown Moodies in
your area and how can you go buy you need toy and check it out.
Take a look at one hop up on one kind of imagine what it
would be like to have something like that out there on your place. It
just makes work easier and it's just It's just a pleasure to be part of.
Believe me, I've had a lot of old, clunky tractors that were
more work to keep them going than they saved me. Probably not with this
one. No, this is this is one gonna be a pleasure to be
a part of. You're listening to garden Line our phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. We are hitting on break time.
I'm gonna take a break and when we come back, if you will give
Josh Cale will be first up. Otherwise I don't keep talking about some things
regarding insects in our landscapes. Good morning, good Sunday morning. Beautiful day
outside. I was. I was loved to be able to say that,
you know, because around here it rains a lot, and when it does,
it's not always such a beautiful day, although you know what I like
rain to There's something about just watching the different phases of the weather. I'm
good with all of it, man, I'm telling you, except, of
course, one hundred degree heat. Yeah, not so much that one.
And I do I lodge it a formal complaint yesterday against whoever you know,
I could lodge it against that. I think that one hundred degrees for a
week or two at a time, or anywhere close to that in mid or
to late June, is just that's unacceptable. That we've got August, we
got July, we got even September to get all that kind of stuff done.
Let's not do it now. Could we just go ahead and cancel that
and go back to about ninety four or ninety three, or who knows,
maybe even a good front come through and we get in the lower nineties.
That would be more acceptable in my opinion. I bet you agree with that.
We're talking about insects. I was telling you about the grubs and the
lawns. Oh, by the way, our phone number seven one three two
one two five eight seven four, if you'd like to be on guard line,
ask a question. We got the grubs in the lawn, but we
also have chinch bugs. Chinch Bugs typically are a big problem in late summer
to early fall, and they have a spring generation they go through here where
we see some a little bit of a cropping up of them, but then
sort of goes away, and then here comes a later generation that really is
a significant problem in many years, not all years, but a few years
ago I guess probably five to eight years ago something like that. I was
in Cyprus and we had an outbreak, and I mean there were entire yards
turned completely brown, and that is not something you usually see every year in
yards here and on chinch bugs. But chinch bugs have piercing sucking mouth parts.
They put their mouth in your grass, they inject a toxin and they
suck the juices out of it, and it turns brown and it looks like
it needs watering at first. It almost always starts in the sun near a
sidewalk or a curb or some of the masonry structures. That is one of
the things I look for and diagnosing chinch bugs is yeah, it's over by
the sidewalk or driveway, and it's like the grass needs watering, and you
watered and it doesn't perk up, and it's gradually moving out. It's not
a clean line. It's just this gradual loss of color and just browning of
the grass. That's how chinch bugs go. And that's when we need to
get a treatment on either either dide ahead of time. If you know it's
going to be a problem for me, I never know for sure, so
I wait until I see the first signs and then I jump right on it
and treat at that point in time, but they they are a problem.
One year at a library and Lockhart, Texas. Now there's halfway across the
state. I was walking down the sidewalk and the grass. It was a
Saint Augustine lawn by the library, and it had weeds in it, and
the weeds were perfectly green. Chinchbugs did not want them, but they turned
the grass completely brown, nothing to eat, and they were heading across the
sidewalk and it was just like you know, herds of buffalo on the great
planes migrating across the planet. There were just solid chinch bugs heading across the
sidewalk to get to the other side where there was some green grass over there,
and it was just it was an interesting thing to see that the Saint
Augustine's gone and these dead gum weeds, which if I could have paid,
we need to breed a chinch bug that eats weeds and not grass. No,
No, if there's any researchers listening, there's an idea for you,
a weed eating, not grass eating chincherbug. But anyway, that was kind
of interesting to see that. Hey, I've talked to you about Dell Web
before you know. There's a community out in Fulshure going in. That's a
new Dell Web community about two miles from downtown and they're putting in a community
garden and I'm helping them with that. And now with the Dell Web community,
you get beautiful houses, you get a gorgeous community, walking paths,
incredible lifestyle programs for you designed around people age fifty five and are active adults.
And if you want to learn more about this community, go to dellweb
dot com slash Houston for more info or give him a call to eight one
four five nine zero six zero nine. They can help you find out about
that Dellweb difference and see it for yourself. Let's head out to Lake Charles,
Louisiana and talk to Kevin. Hey, Kevin, what's up? Hey?
Good morning? You know I'm good, I'm good. How things in
Lake Charles? So? Uh? You brought up sebinc about Jane bugs.
I have several swarms a year, and I got some young countries that overnight,
these June bugs will eat every leaf off the echountry. Is that right?
The little brown, little brown beetles. Huh, Well, I have
I have different varieties, oh, like three swarms. Okay, due to
all the hurricanes, they wiped out seven my oak trees, so they cut
the popular jew bugs significantly. But I was I was always wondering if I
get a big old bugs effort and start killing these June bugs because at night
I'll go out and turn the swimm pool light on, yeah, and they'll
just pop in there, and then my chickens love it the next morning.
So if I put the bugs app out there to cut the population down,
am I actually cutting the population down or increasing population by attracting morgin? Well,
if you if you turn your porch light off. Now I'm a I'm
not a bug expert, but I know there's different kinds of bulgs you can
put in a porch light where it's less attractive to some bugs. So you
might want to look into that and see if that's the case for jim bugs.
But I would put that you can you can go online and learn how
to make a trap, and basically you use one of those little clamp lights
and you put it over a five gallon bucket and you fill the bucket full
of soapy water or not full. But you know what I'm saying, and
then jim bugs come flying up there, just like they would your porch light,
and they fall into that water and they just drowned. But I would
put it out across across away from the grass, right from the yard,
you know, your house and stuff over there, and just let that run
each night, and especially during that season, maybe put a couple of them
out and see how many you can pull out of the air and capture that
way. Now, the problem with trapping insects is we never get them all.
And sometimes even though we get a bunch of them in this case,
June bugs in the bucket, that doesn't mean there's still not enough out there
to cause us serious problems. But at least you're cutting the numbers down.
And that's a homemade way to do it. I wouldn't I don't think a
bug zapper would would work, because I always wanted to buy attracting. Am
I attracting more or am I fleet deep creek well greefing to population? You
know? You it just depends with those mosquito things that capture mosquitoes like that.
Some of them put out sense, you know, kind of a carbon
dioxide kind of things that attract the mosquitoes in and if you put those in
your patio, Yeah, you're bringing mosquitoes from all over over to your patio
and you're going to trap some of them, But then there's gonna be a
lot of others that are buzzing around that are after you. Now, So
that's why I said, put it away from where you want to attract them,
to attract him, away from from where you don't want them feeding in
things. But I don't know that'd be the best thing I can think of.
Certainly, spraying them in the adult stage is not going to be very
practical. Yeah, I've tried, you know, I have three acres that
maintained. I've tried to kneeme all and nothing really worked. And I didn't
know is after the hurricane quite down some of those priest the population is decreased.
Okay, all right, very good, Well, good luck with that.
I'd give me a call back if you try that trap thing, see
if that worked, how that worked for it. I'd be curious in hearing
about it. All right, Hey, thanks a lot, John, I
appreciate or Kevin, I appreciate that call a lot. You know, if
I was looking at my U in my house in a back room. I've
got a little tall floor and I noticed a crack in it last summer and
the first time that had happened. But it happened because it, you know,
forty five days over one hundred degrees no rain, and the soil shrinks
and swells as it gets wet and dry. And whenever that happens, you
are going to crack a foundation on a house. And that's going to happen.
And if that happens to you, you need to call Fix My Slab
Foundation Repair. That's a good name, Fix my Slab Foundation Repair. Ty
Strickland's owner. They've been doing this since twenty twenty three years now. A
local business, small business service the experience that you need to have. So
it may not just be that you see a crack. Maybe the doors are
sticking, the bricks on the outside are cracking or walled, the sheet rock
is cracking. Before you do any home improvements to fix that sheet rock,
make sure that you got your foundation right otherwise it's just gonna shift and re
crack again. Now tis committed to a fair price, They show up on
time, they know what they're doing, and they don't just do home foundations
they'll do your crack sidewalk. They'll do they'll fix the driveway that's cracked as
well. They do it on time, they have a fair price and they
get it fixed right called two eight one, two five five forty nine forty
nine, or just go to fix myslab dot com and they will get you
set up. We're gonna head out now to Moss Hill and talk to John.
Hello, John, tell you good mourns. Thank you for taking my
call. Yes, sir, I was telling your screener that I've got a
couple of hibiscus plants that, uh they're about ten years old and first couple
of years they bloomed. The last five or so they have it, and
I was wondering where I should start. I have a sandy loam and uh,
okay, I don't have a brain comb. Now these are these are
not the tropical hibiscus that have the glossy dark green leaves, but these are
the large, dinner plate sized bloom perennial hibiscus or which one. Well,
no, sir, they're green. They are pretty glossy. Other than that,
I can't really answer. I've got them from a Houston area retail center
does a lot of plants. Okay, Well, hibiscus needs sunlight, they
want decent drainage, but they want moist soil. They don't want to get
dry. They need a good quality nutrition in the soil. So it's it's
going to be one of those things going on. If they're growing and they're
alive, but they're just not blooming, I would probably look at getting a
hibiscus food. A number of the different products we talk about here on garden
Line will sell you specifically a hibiscus food, and I would use that,
follow the label and just be a little extra careful and attentive to keep in
the soil adequately moist so they don't go through stress. Because when a plant
stress is often what would have been a normal follow through with a bloom and
whatnot. It will abort that and you won't get good blooms. So good
good dependable moisture, good dependable sunlight, and a good quality nutrition done according
to label. Don't overdo the nitrogen, just moderate them out. You don't
want to push them into the vegetative growth as at the expense of slowing down
and producing bloom buds and blooms. Yes, sir, they will grow roof
high every year with no blooms. I keep them moist. Are on the
south side of my house. I think they get plenty of sun. Okay,
do you for the high business food, do you recommend a certain brand?
You know, Nelson's has a good brand for that. The folks that
nitrifies have a good brand for that as well. I believe Microlife even may
have one for flowering plants like that. That would be a good one to
do. So you're not gonna go wrong with any of those. But watch
the nitrogen. As I'm listening to you and thinking through this as we talk,
it almost sounds to me like they're a little too vigorous and that they
might need to slow down a little bit get the other nutrients that they need
other than just nitrogen being overdone. Well, thank you very time. I
really do appreciate. I have my bill and I'm going to the store,
all right, Good luck with that. Thank you for that call. I
appreciate that. Hey, we're gonna take a break seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. We will be right back after our news break.
Yet, good Sunday morning. If you're listening to Garden Line, I'm
your host Skip Ricker, and we are here to answer your gardening questions.
You can give us a call at seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four if you would like to talk gardening. In the meantime, I
have an idea. You know, the fourth of July is about a week
away, and what does that mean? What what do you think of me
a fourth did you lie? I mean, can you do a Fourth of
July without cooking out on the grill? I mean, I'm not I'm pretty
sure it's illegal in this country to not cook out on the fourth of July.
I think that's required. But if you need some good equipment, I
know a place you can go and get it, and that is Ace Hardware.
Ace Hardware has one of the largest grilling sections in the market. And
if you don't believe you just go check one out. There's thirty nine of
them here. You can go to Ace Hardware dot com, Ace Hardware dot
Com, do a store locator and there's going to be a more than one
near you. You're gonna find the Webber grills, You're gonna find the Trager
grills, You're going to find the big Green Egg. I mean, we're
talking about the cadillacts and all above of grilling equipment here. All the blame
you need to go with it, whether you know, just you name it,
everything that goes with part of grilling. They're going to have it at
ace Hardware dot Com. Of course, they also happen to sell all the
fertilizers that we talk about here. They've got every kind of product you need
for pest and disease and weeds and everything else, plus a bazillion other things
you need for outdoors, outdoor furnitures, stuff for decor and lighting and things
like that. It's holidays hardware, but consider this, it's time for new
grill and so I would swing by an Ash Hardware between now and next July
fourth, which is next week, and let's get set for one of the
best grilling seasons you've ever had yet. Hey, it's one hundred degrees outside.
You could just about throw the meat on the sidewalk and cook it there.
But hey, a grill makes a lot better. It makes for a
lot better eating. If you're listening to Guardline, we've been talking all kinds
of things regarding insects and past I was just talking about chinch bugs, for
example, while ago. Another thing that we deal with in our lawns,
but it comes and goes, and that is a side web worm. When
they're bad, they're bad. But we can go years and essentially you don't
see side web worms in your yard. If you do, it's just one
or two here and there. It's not a big deal. But when they
occur, it's those little moths or tiny moths that fly real low. They
lay eggs in the turf, they hatch out into caterpillars. They feed at
night, they eat your grass leaves and it just looks like your grass is
sort of shrinking down as the leaves are eating a way. When you have
those, you need to treat for them, and there's a number of products
you can use. You can use persistent products that you put down and they
go on and on for weeks and they're continuing to provide some control, or
you could wait and the first sign to your treatment. Then typically they're going
to be midsummer to late summer. We can have them at different times,
but that's when I've generally noticed them the worst. But that is yet another
and probably the last of the biggies of the pests that we deal with in
our lawns. By the way, when you're needing supplies like for pest control
or whatnot, a quality feed store like a Spring Creek Feed center is going
to have those. And a Spring Creek they're up there in Magnolia on FM
twenty nine seventy eight, just minutes away from Graham Parkway and Highway to forty
nine. They've got the fertilizers that we talk about. They've got the herbicides,
the fungicides, the pesticides for dealing with these lawn pests and others.
They have supplies for your lawn, for your garden, for ponds. The
staff is friendly, they're courteous, they greet you. They if they don't
have a something you need, ask them about getting it in. They probably
can bring it in for you and find it for you. If you need
pet food, quality pet food supplies for your chickens, supplies for your livestock,
it's all there. They deliver, They will special order products and they
do have a delivery service as well. At Spring Creek Feed in Magnolia and
FM twenty nine seventy eight. I always love going in there, just a
i don't know, just fun, fun place to go and go visit our
phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two five eight seven four. I was in the backyard yesterday and
I finally got one of my feeders that I've had a couple of feeders that
I've been trying to get set up and get going with things for the birds.
And I'm just enjoying, you know, watching the birds come and visit
the feeders and and I don't know, I just enjoy. To me,
birds are like part of gardening in that you go out in the garden.
You see beautiful flowers, right, you see a beautiful law and a beautiful
landscape. That's all there. But then there's the flying flowers and that would
be the butterflies they go by, or the birds, the colorful birds that
go by. There's the movement, there's the songs of the birds in the
morning. It's just part of making that wonderful setting. Whyer birds come to
your house, Well, they come to your house because there's pests that they're
eating. They eat caterpillars. That is a big deal for birds. That
is an important food source. They come to your house because there's water.
So if you don't have water. You're messing out on bringing songbirds in.
It's blazing hot one hundred degrees a long time. Birds need water. Give
them water, a water, a bird bath, any kind of a thing
that provides them some water. Make sure that they have that. They're still
doing nesting. Bluebirds are nesting. A Cardinal's chickeneese rinds are all still nesting.
Stop by a wild Birds near you and get some of their super blend.
They have a nesting super blend. It's perfect for the summer feeding.
You want to continue offering nesting super blend through August to supp worth the birds
as they go through this period. There's seven wall birds around here, so
it's not hard to find one. Katie Kingwood Cypress, parlamb Belair, West
Houston, clear Lake. Go to WBU dot com, WBU dot com,
forward Slash Houston and find the wall birds near you. Isn't one of the
coolest stories you're gonna walk into. I mean, even if you're not into
birds, you walk in there and suddenly it's like, you know what I'd
like to do this. I want to feed her, I want a birdhouse,
I want just go check them out. You'll see what I'm talking about
really really cool hobby to add onto gardening. It goes naturally along with gardening.
Walking through the yard the other day, I was checking out some of
my trees. I've got some cypress trees that were dropping some limbs in the
yard, and I was kind of looking out, seeing what's going on up
there and taking care of them. And I noticed in one of my trees,
I've got a fork up in the tree where two branches are competing to
be the boss branch, if you will. They both think they're in charge,
and so they're kind of fighting it out. That creates narrow angles that
are a problem when when a storm comes, those narrow angles are going to
break out. You may want to check your trees out, or even better
yet, just call Affordable Tree Service. Call Martin spoon More. Either he
or his wife Joe will answer when you doll seven one, three, six,
nine nine twenty six sixty three or go to aff Tree Service dot com.
And here's why this is important. Now it is hurricane season. Do
you have limbs that need to be removed like that fork up in the top
of my tree I need to get taken care of. Are there limbs rubbing
your roof or under the eaves, or is there a dead tree that needs
to come down, Maybe a limb hanging over your roof or over your neighbors
or your property, over the fence line. How about power lines, the
drop line coming into your house. The last thing you want is a limb
falling on that and you losing power when it's one hundred degrees outside, right,
Have Martin come out, have him take a look. It's worth hiring
them to come out and do a consultation. If you need anything done to
take care your trees, from deep root feeding to pruning, to training,
even planning, call Martin Spoon more seven one, three, six, nine,
twenty six sixty three. Lots of topics to talk about this morning,
you know, regarding gardening and the different things that insects that we're dealing with.
That's kind of been the topic of the day, is the insects that
we're managing and when you need to get things taken care of in your property,
when you need to be on top of things and getting them identified.
That's one of the reasons we're here. You can call us on Garden Line.
You can talk with Josh. You find out how to send me a
picture of a bug or something will identify it and tell you what you might
need to know about it and do about it. But for right now,
we're going to take a break, So if you want to call Josh,
get on the board seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four and
we will be back with you shortly. Well, good Sunday morning. You
are listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and our
phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're
going to be visiting with Paul Fagala from the B Supply here in the eight
o'clock hour, which is just coming up in a little bit here. Looking
forward to that, And if you've got some questions about bees, that would
be a good time to call and ask Paul. He is the b expert
when it comes to all things that are bees, speaking of all things that
are if when it comes to all things that are, all the products you
need, all the advice you need, everything you can need to make your
lawn and garden the most beautiful, bountiful place. We're talking about Southwest Fertilizer.
I mean, if you've not been in there. I don't care where
you live. You need to drive over to Southwest and check this out.
They are over at the corner of Bissonette and Renwick. You can go online
Southwest Fertilizer dot com. But if you've never been in the place, you
need to see it. And I'm not exaggerating, and you need to see
it for yourself. Eighty foot long wall of garden tools, the city's largest
selection of herbicides, insecticides. Fun decide you. We've been talking to insects
all morning. I don't care if you are a synthetic gardener on organic gardener,
and I don't care either one. Just sell me what works. They
have got it there. They have all those kind of supplies, every kind
of fertilizer we recommend, and many more, including Southwest's own premium Goal that's
their own fifteen five ten slow release fertilizer at Southwest Fertilizer. They've been sponsoring
garden Line since I don't know when Doe Compton days. They've been around since
nineteen fifty five. In fact, I believe that I'm the fifth garden Line
host to speak for Southwest Fertilizer. That's the kind of institution they are here
in the Greater Houston area. Do you need your lawnmower blade sharpened? You
need to because a sharp blade makes a clean cut. It's easier on your
mower, and it actually looks better because you don't have all those little brown
tips from a blade that just rips the ends of the grass blades off.
If you need to bring a sample in or a photo of they'll take a
look at it and they'll take you to the product you need. They won't
sell you something you don't need again. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com. Go see
Bob and his team of well trained folks over there, and you will see
why they've been around for so very, very long and are so popular with
gardeners here in the Greater Houston area. You know, we have a lot
of things that we talk about on garden Line, and one of my broken
record things is soil, soil, soil. It's all about the soil.
It's always about the soil. Do you want success with your plants, Well,
what's the soil? Like? I mean, you're going to PLoP them
in to whatever happens to be at your house because you got on a you
know, a kick and just brought home some plants one day from a garden
center. Well, you're going to get the results that equal the soil prep
that you did. Did you add compost, did you add the nutrients that
it needs? Did you prepare the soil right? Did you build a raised
bed? Do you have good drainage? All of that sets you up for
success. It makes your thumb turn green if you will. Well, where
you're going to get that, Well, you're gonna get it from nature's way.
You know. Nature's way is up there on I forty five, up
toward Conrow about where fourteen eighty eight comes in, and they sell bulk,
lots of things bulk there. They also sell by the bag if you want
to purchase by the bag. Their bags are available in some of our garden
centers as well. But if you're looking for a quality mix, you know
they originated the rose soil and the leaf mole compost. They've been a leader
for a long time because they take time to make it right. Anybody can
rush some organic matter through, make it turn brown and sell it and call
it compost. It's very different to make a quality compost in a way that
takes the time to do it and that's what they do, by the way,
every Friday, ten percent off their bag products, twenty percent off their
bulk products. So they got a lot of fungal composts there. If you
want a top dresser lawn this summer, a good place to get your fungal
compost to do that. They also have a two acre nursery and garden center
with all kinds of plants, probably one of the better selections of native plants
in our area there at Nature'sway dot Com. Another good reason to stop in
and check them out. We're getting kind of close to the eight o'clock hour,
but I did want to mention one other thing. When we're talking about
pests this morning. I've talked about chinch bugs, I've talked about what else.
I talk about the grubs, the soil grubs that get into your lawn,
and a little bit about the sideweb worm that can be a problem here.
By the way, we're fortunate, fortunate is tongue in cheek here on
the Gulf coast to have the sideweb worms. You go up to College Station
Waco, Austin. Sideweb worms, I've never heard of them even being in
those areas. They like it a little bit warmer down here on the coast,
So another nice addition to our gardening challenges here. But we know what
to do about them when they show up. I don't know if you got
out and got around to some garden centers this weekend, but I hope you.
I hope you got a chance to and one of the places that I
would say, no matter where you live in this region, and if you
have family and friends coming in, you need to take them to his Enchanted
Gardens that's out in Richmond. If you're in Richmond and you head up Katie
Way, that's in Chanted Gardens. Chanted Forests is towards sugar Land and a
little bit south of fifty nine, and Channed Gardens is north of Richmond towards
Katie. The Lenderman family has been part of that community since nineteen ninety five.
When in Chenny Gardens open, this is an experience. This isn't just
like I go by a plant. This is you wander, you walk,
you're amazed, you get inspiration, you get ideas, and again they have
folks that know what they're talking about. That's why we love our mom and
pop garden centers around the area. Every kind of plant you can imagine,
and hey, it's time for a herb garden, even vegetables. There's vegetables
to be putting in right now. Do you want antique or hybrid roses,
trees? Do you want to buy seeds? Do you want to buy all
the products we talk about, the different soils, the different fertilizers. They've
got it. They're open today, by the way, from ten am to
four pm, and during the week Monday through Saturday eight am to five thirty
pm. Go to Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. Check them out on Facebook,
check them out on Instagram, get ahold of the newsletter so you find
out what's going on there in Chenni Gardens is one of the most fun places
that you will visit if you are at all into plants, or maybe you
got someone who in the family who's not super gardening, but you could haul
them out there and buy them one of those beautiful Cajun hibiscus or something like
that. It'd be a fun outing to get out and do an Enchanted Gardens.
We're going to head to Sugarland and we're gonna talk to Ronnie. Good
morning, Ronnie, how are you today? Hello, Good morning, how
are you doing? Thanks? Stay cool over there. Uh well, yes,
it's in a studio, so not until I walk outside there you go.
Hey, real quick, I've got some brick walkways that are just being
taken over concerned by weeds, you know, between the bricks. Okay,
Any any suggestions on some type of weed control? Yeah? Do you know?
Do you know at all of what kind of weeds you're dealing with here?
By any chance? All right? Well, so, if it's an
annual weed, you can just burn the tops. You can use anything from
a vinegar product to a translocated herbicide. You know, there's a lot of
different herbicides. The general purpose things, the glyphless sate kinds of things will
kill just about anything you get them on. So if it's a perennial weed
like nuts edge or like bermuda grass or something that's just going to keep coming
back and keep coming back, you might want to use one of those kind
of things. Otherwise you can just top burn them. Lots of good products
out there that'll do it. Again. The vinegar is kind of an organic
end of the spectrum, but we may have many others. If it's grassy
weeds, there's a couple of ingredients that kill just grasses and not broad leaves,
and you can go after a reflose. Now that you mentioned it is
primarily nuts edge, nuts edge. Okay, for nuts edge, I would
get something called manage. Manage is going to be a good one. There's
another one called sedge hammer, and another one called image. All of those
will work on nuts edge. But nuts edge is a tough weed, and
usually one shot doesn't get it. So when you spray it and it dies
back, then when it comes back once it's has three to five leaves,
you have to spread again right then, or it'll just create more daughter nuts
underground and you won't have accomplished anything. You know what I'm saying. It
just reproduces itself, and so killing the old plant didn't help. So three
to five leaves, it gets sprayed, it goes away. When it comes
back up, three to five LEAs sprayed again and then again, and you
will get rid of it that way. They are that is an amazing weed,
because you know how you can take a weed eater and go down in
between the crack. Yeah, oh yeah, you say, man, I
got it now, Yeah, it is, that's true. That's true.
It is an amazing weed. In fact, this is a fun fact,
you know. They I always say, if you can't beat them, eat
them well. Nuts edge, yellow nuts edge. The tubers are called earth
almonds, and I've actually tried one. You put it in your mouth to
chew on it. It's somewhat almond like in flavor, and then you spit
out sawdust. That's kind of Egyptian phay rows were buried with their chief of
nuts, which is a form of nuts edge. So I heard that and
I wondered, you know, if they were from Texas. But they've also
wanted to be buried with their fire ants because I can't imagine taking nuts edge
with me to the grave. Paul or Ronnie, thank you very much.
I appreciate the call of good luck with that. Ktr H Garden Line does
not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome
to ktr H Garden Line with Skip Rictor, so just watch him as any
club ticket not a sign. Well, good Sunday morning. You are listening
to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Rictor, and we are here
to answer your gardening questions. Give us a call seven one three two one
two five, eight seven four. Hey, have you thought about getting solar
panels for your house? We'll wait a minute. I've got an idea.
How about a solar shingle instead of a panel on top of your roof.
What about a shingle that creates the solar power itself. Well, Brickman has
a product called Timberline solar shingles that are just that, They're not above the
roof, they are the roof. Now, Brickman's been providing quality service for
our area for over fifty years now. And you don't stay in business that
long without doing things right and doing things right? What does that mean?
That means to be in a full service roofing company, residential workman or commercial
as well. That means standing behind your products and the workmanship against leaks for
up to twenty five years. You know your roof is one of the largest
investments you have in your home. You need to get that right. You
need someone that you can trust, for example, someone who is a twenty
twenty two Better Business Better Business Bureau Pinnacle Award winner. Brinkman Quality dot Com.
That's the website Brinkman Quality dot Com two eight one four eight zero seven
six six three. Brinkman provides all types of roofing, not just the solar
shingle we're talking about, but also metal roofing, standing ce metal roofing.
For example. Don't just wait for someone to knock on your door and drop
off a business card because a storm came through. Hire someone who's local,
who stands behind their work, and that would be that would be Brinkman.
We had a really good conversation just a minute ago with Paul Fagala from the
B Supply and I hope you guys enjoyed that. If you didn't catch the
website, it's the B Supply dot com. Lots of good information. They've
got the monthly magazine online. It's an online magazine you can get monthly by
going to the B Supply dot com. You can look at the monthly webinar
they have the first Thursday of every month at six pm. There's a YouTube
channel you can learn bees twenty four seven with the folks at the B Supply
and whether you end up being too beekeeper, not just learning about being the
fascinating thing. I think all youth should have the opportunity to learn about that
fascinating world of nature science. That's involved in the whole world of bees.
You've heard me talk about Microlife products in the past, certainly the green and
a bag and the purple bag that we put on our lawns. In fact,
you can put them anywhere. Great products that they also have a liquid
line, and that's something that I would like to talk about. You know,
it's a hot outside now. I mean, you probably got your summer
fertilizing done, but what about your houseplants, what about the patio plants and
things like that. Well, Microlife has two products that I want to tell
you about today. That's Biomatrix. That's an orange label, easy to remember,
orange label seven to one three. I use it on my houseplants.
It is a high nitrogen liquid organic and it includes beneficial microbes. Microbes are
important for root systems of plants. It helps make everything better for the roots
of the plants and therefore the plants themselves. Microlife Biomatrix orange label seven one
three super quality product works well. I can attest to that personally. Secondly,
as Microlife's Ocean Harvest blue label that's a four two three that is I
use that for the outdoors. It's a fish based fertilizer. Some people like
to use it as a folior feed. You just mix it up according to
the label. Spray upward from under the plant to coat the bottoms of the
leaves. That's where the stone mates are that open up and they're open in
the mornings. That's why we like to do it in the morning. Also
the top of leaves, that's fine. Or just put it in a watering
can and drench your plants to fertilize with it. A natural organic fertilizer works
well. Where to buy it well everywhere. Go on Microlife Fertilizer dot com
website Microlife Fertilizer dot com and you can find all the places where you can
get these and other Microlife products as well as find out more information about that
orange label Biomatrix or the blue label which is the Ocean Harvest Super super Products.
Our phone number if you'd like to be on and talk guarding is seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two
five eight seven four. You know now that it's hot, our lawns are
needing water to do well. Now, hopefully we get a little rain every
now and then and over the long haul. We get a lot of rain
here and we don't have to water our lawn all the time. But when
it hadn't rained for a week, it's time to put some water on your
lawn, especially when it's one hundred degrees. There is an app that will
help you do it that efficiently, and I've used this app for years myself.
It is called the water my Yard App. You can find it on
the Apple App Store. You can find it on Google Play the water my
Yard app, or you can go to the website water my yard dot org
orgy water my yard dot org. What it'll do, you put it in.
You tell it well, I've got pop up solid sprinklers, or I've
got a rotary, or I've got a multi stream rotary or whatever, you
know, whatever kinds of irrigation you're doing, and tell them where you live.
Because there are weather stations all over the area, and they will find
the closest weather station. They'll measure the sunlight, by the way, this
is all free, They'll measure the sunlight, the humidity, the let's see
solebrated sunlight temperature, the wind speed, all the things that affect how much
water a plant will use, and they have a little formula. They crunch
it through and they can tell you you're Saint Augustine lawn this last week at
your house used about a half inch of water or used about an inch of
water, and you can get an email that says just that it's time to
water. Here's how much you need to put on. You can't get any
better than that. I mean that is that saves you money. You're not
spending money on drinking water. You don't need to overwater that your lawn.
Doesn't need to overwater your lawn and it's not running down the curb side either,
because you've overwatered. When we overwater, we create plant problems. So
it's like a negative negative. You waste money and you cause problems for your
plants. Why not get the water my Yard app or go to water my
yard dot org and find out more information. I cannot speak more highly of
it. And again I've been a user of it and it costs nothing.
I mean, what else can we what else can we do than that?
When you're you know, when you're out taking care of your lawn too.
By the way, if you have not put on your azamite application for the
year, I'd recommend you go ahead and do that. We generally put it
on earlier in the year when we do our fertilizing, but you can put
an azomite application on any time of the year. Azamite is a mind material
full of trace minerals, and those trace minerals are all the things that plants
need in addition to those big three on the fertilizer label. I put it
in my vegetable gardens because I want my produce to be more packed with all
the nutrients that my body needs as well. Asamite is a wonderful product that
works very well. It's azamite Texas dot com. If you want to learn
more azomite mte Texas dot com and and learn a whole lot more about that.
But asamite is available in most of the places we talk about here on
garden Line. Just when you grab your fertilizer, grab some asamite as well.
We're going to take a break right now, Cyrus, I see out
there. You'll be first up if you would like to get on the board
with Josh seven one three, two one two fifty eight seventy four. Yeah,
here we go. That's a good song to follow up a nice segment
on bees and honey. By the way, thank you Paul Forgolla for coming
in from the bee supply spend a little time with us this morning and fascinating
us with all kinds of cool stuff regarding the world of bees and how they
interact with us in our gardens. We're gonna head out to League City now
and talk to Cyrus. Good morning, Cyrus, Good morning, sir.
How can we Hell? Yeah, well, I've got an herb garden and
have some fire antswer decided they like herb garden all right, so I'm wanting
to get rid of the fire ants without making the herbs toxic. Okay,
got you good, good question. Well, first of all, you can
apply any of the fire and controls around the herb garden. Outside the herb
garden. You're not drenching, you know, dumping them on top of your
herbs. The fireans will go out and find that one little granule out there,
in a granule here and wherever their home is, they bring it back
and feed it to the colony. And it's not going to toxify your herb
garden to do that. Okay. If you want to use something in the
herb gardener, in the vegetable garden. There is one product. It's an
organic called come and Get It. Come and Get It, and it has
the ingredients Spinos said, which is an organic insecticide that's attached to a bait
and it is labeled, I know, for use in vegetable gardens, the
edible garden kind of thing. So if you want to put something in the
garden, that would be one you could use to you want to use those
baits when the answer out foraging, if it's one hundred degrees outside, they're
probably hold up underground. Well, and the reason they're there is because I've
been water in the garden. Okay, well there you go. Well what
I'll do is, if you've got some potato chips or like an old oily
tunican lid or even a little hot dog, throw a piece out there on
the ground and come back in fifteen minutes, and if the ants are out
foraging, they will be all. They will have found it and be on
it. And if you see that, that's the time debate. If you
don't see that, wait until it cools off to it earlier in the morning
or later in the day and catch them when they're out so they grab that
bait right away before it starts to be affected by sunlight and you know,
starts to not become as desirable to the fire ant as a bait. Okay,
all right, very good, thank you, sir. I appreciate it.
I appreciate your call very much. Thank you. It's good to talk
to you. Hey, if you thought about maybe retiring and coming up with
a nice community, where would I live? Where would I want to Well,
you need to think about Dellweb. They've got a new community down in
Full Sure on FM three fifty nine, a couple of miles from downtown.
Now. Del Web builds those communities for active adults age fifty five and better,
and they've been doing it for over seventy years. This Full Sure community
is going to have a community garden, and I'm helping them with creating that
community garden there. I'm really excited about it. If you're a gardener,
I mean, what more could you want? Dell Web plus a community garden
in your community. You just can't do better than that. Dellweb dot com
slash Houston will get you more information or just give McCall. It's two eight
one four five nine zero six zero nine and now we are going to head
out to Katie and talk to John. Hello, John, how are you
this morning? Fine? How you scip? I'm good, I'm good.
I've got a burroke tree that I think I might have a lot of either
spongy or uh gypsy moth caterpillars in it, because I got a lot of
droppings all over the truck in the driveway. Okay, And I've read that
BT is something that you can use, but I uh, I'm not sure
how how high up and then the tree I need to get or if I
do it on the on the bark or or or water. Also saw something
about BTK BTK. Okay, well let's talk about that. So BT and
BTK when it comes to caterpillars, that's the same thing. The bt the
K type of BT is what kills caterpillars. There are other bts. There's
a BTI that kills mosquito larva and that's in the mosquito dunks. But the
BTK, that's the caterpillar one you can use that it's only gonna last the
day or two out there when you spray it, and you gotta get it
all over the foliage. So if the tree's too big to spray. That's
gonna be a bit of a challenge to do, but you can do it.
That bt you'd spray it about ever. I would spread about two or
three times every about ever three days to really shut everything down. The earlier
you catch it, the younger the caterpillars, the more effective it works.
And by the way, I don't think you have gypsy moth. There's a
number of caterpillars out there now. Having said that, here's something to think
about caterpillars or bird food, and the more we create caterpillar free landscapes by
planting things that don't get caterpillars, like a lot of our shrubs and trees
here have come from parts of Asia and they don't have a local pest.
Nothing is eating your waxley flugustrums, for example, because they just don't have
that pest here. So having some is important. And there's really a movement
to plant more native plants and more oaks because they do get some caterpillars to
help support the songbird populations. Otherwise it's a food desert for the songbirds.
And if you think about it, a tree can lose a lot of leaves
before it is in any way of stress to that tree. So just having
caterpillars seeing some droppings, you know that in and of itself is not a
threat to the tree. Now, I realize if you're sitting under the tree
with a glass of iced tea or some other favorite beverage and you're getting little
caterpillar poop dropping in it, that, you know that's not much fun.
But I guess you could put a little umbrella in the drink to shade.
Shade, you get the idea. So if you're trying to get rid of
the little droppings, I would just blow them off, wash them off,
you know whatever, of furniture and things. I don't think it's worth going
the full fledge. Let's snook the tree and try to kill all the caterpillars.
But that is an option if you choose to do that. Okay,
the tree looks fine, Well, yeah good, I don't have a problem.
I don't see the birds up there and eating them. Yeah, well,
there they are. They are there. You know, anytime birds are
raising young in a nest, it's not the bird feeder that's keeping them going.
Well, unless the bird feeder has dried meal worms or something in it.
But it's not the bird's seed, I should say, that's keeping them
going. It's the it's the protein, and it's the caterpillars, and especially
in spring, but even still now we've got a lot of our songbirds that
are raising young, still blue including bluebird, and they need those caterpillars.
So, you know, I kind of walk the line here between Yeah,
I understand you don't want that, but at the same time, we live
in a nice natural environment that we're trying to keep balanced. So something,
okay, something to think about. Okay, I think I'll go with a
rat with the bird food. There you go, and just thinking, you
know, those that caterpillar poop is just that's just organic fertilizer. You know,
basically they've taken they've taken your tree leaves and they've microbially decomposed them in
their intestinal tract. And now you've got organic food pellets dropping on the lawn
and in your in your plants and everything else. I guess that's one way
of looking at the lemons and saying, hey, I know how to make
lemonade on I'm at okay, keeping your help. I appreciate it, all
right, John, thanks a lot at least you got a couple of options
there. We can keep going, Oh gosh, you know, talking about
fertilizers and things. The Nitrofos folks have so many great products out there.
We talk about their fertilizers and whatnot. But early today I was talking about
the insects of the lawn, you know, the things that you have to
deal with that their insects of the lawn. Nitrofoss has those kind of products.
You know. They've got they've got the one that is the firing killer.
They've got the one that we call bugout Max to deal with that.
But when summertime comes, that's when we need to have a good application of
a slow release nutrient on the turf. And that's the silver bag. That
is Nitrofoss's silver bag. It's really easy, just oh yet to remembers the
color silver and there you go. You're ready to go. The Nitrofoss fertilizer
that's the Super Turf is going to feed your lawn gradually over time. It's
a nineteen four ten. Those are the three numbers. But it's going to
cut down on your mowing because it feeds gradually. It's gonna help promote deep
rooting because it feeds gradually and it's going to even help with some of those
issues that we deal with, like chinch bugs and large patches we get into
the fall when excessive nitrogen creates a problem. You're going to find nitro foss
everywhere. If you don't know where to look, look at a nice hardware
store. You'll find it there. You can go up to shades of Texas
in the woodlands. You can go up to the Tomball area and go to
arbigator D and d feed lots of places and channing forests and channing garden,
all kinds of places that you're going to find nitro foss products available. Why
don't we head out to Matta Gorda and we're gonna talk to Rudy. Now,
Hello, Ruddy, we catch you there off guard a little, Ruddy,
Are you ready to go? All right? I will put Rudy on
hold and we'll come right back to you. Don't hang up. We'll get
you right back, Ruddy, to talk about things that you are interested in.
You know, when people think about summertime, what do you think about
You think about outdoor grilling. And when you think about outdoor grilling, you
need to think about a hardware. Ace Hardware dot Com is where you go,
click on the store locator and find the thirty nine Ace Hardware's here in
the Greater Houston area. I mean, you can throw a rock from wherever
you live and find an ACE Hardware. They're going to have the fertilizers we
talk about on garden Line. They're going to have all the products you need
in sex side, fungicide, herbicides, things to take care of your lawn.
They've got it. But fourth of julys next week, why not a
brand new Webber grill or Tragger grill or Big Green Egg, or maybe some
of the bling and accessories that go with outdoor grilling. I mean, set
yourself up for a summer of wonderful outdoors. Maybe you need some outdoor furniture
decor or other things, outdoor power equipment. ACE Hardware has all that and
more. Go to Ace Hardware dot Com, find one of the thirty nine
stores and find out why I am so excited about Ace Hardware. Let's head
now to Mattagorda and we're gonna try Rudy again. You there, Rudy.
Okay, So for some reason we are not able to hear you, So
we're gonna put you back on hold, Josh. Maybe you can get Rudy
there. We can figure out what's going on with him out there. If
you are planting new transplants in the ground, and I was just planning some
the other day, we're doing a container planting a mixed color. By the
way, you need to have big mixed color containers around your patio. They're
just so gorgeous. You need to grab some. Medina has to grow.
That's a six twelve six. It comes in a hose in, but I
like to buy the one that's a court bottle with a low measuring cup that's
in. It's made into the bottle and so you can put it in a
watering can and water it in. It's got the Medina soil activator in addition
to the six two four nutrients that helps stimulate the biological activity. It's got
humate, humic acid, and it's got seaweed extracts all kinds of things your
plants need when you water in a new transplant you need to try has to
grow six twelve six plant food. It provides what those new root systems need
to get established and get going. Get that plant off to a good start.
I'll use it after transplanting. I'll do it a week later, and
I'll do it again a week later after that, just put it in the
water and can really simple, simple and easy to use. That's a has
to grow. That's the six to four. We're going to head to Kingwood
and we're going to talk to Tom. Hey, Tom, I got about
a minute. Let's see if we can get it done then. If not,
we'll hold you until after break. Yes, sir, I've got two
potted hibiscus. They're pros. However, they're coming back, but they're only
blooming half the size of the last year. Okay, what can I do
to But they look great, but they're only half the saves well, Tom,
in a nutshell, you want a good quality of hibiscus food, and
there's a number of good ones on the market. We talk about them here.
You want to support good growth. You don't want to overdo the nitrogen.
But when you have a good strong plant, you're going to have a
good strong root system. And that requires consistently moist soil, not saggy,
not too wet, but not too dry. Just keep it moist, provide
the good food and provide lots of sun and that's it. If you want
to hang on for more on that, we'll come right back after break.
I'm gonna put you on hold for now if you're done. Thank you for
the call. I appreciate that our phone number seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. I don't know what anyway, Good morning on a
beautiful Sunday morning. Little Harmonics a capella from Pentatonics, not the quirky romano
version, but uh it's close enough. Right, Hey, let's head out
to Kingwood again. Tom, did looks like you may have had some additional
questions on the hibiscus. Yeah, well, I've used color Star and I
always so used a color Star by Business Food and then Space citys Sperlizer.
But still I'm not getting the blooms that I got last year. Yeah,
well that you know that's interesting because the blooms are based on the leaves making
carbohydrates. That's how we get a bloom, or that's how we get a
fruit and so healthy foliage, which means adequate water, adequate nutrition, but
not so much nitrogen. And the color Star that you talked about is it
should not have excessive nitrogen in it. So unless you're just putting a whole
lot of the colors are on there, that ought to be a good way
to go. I don't know what else to tell you. They ought to
be producing the bloom size that you're looking for if you've got those the factors
that I just mentioned all together, So maybe kind of watch them a little
bit, watch the vigor. If it looks like the plants are just really
vigorous in and of themselves, then maybe back off on the furlijah for att
while, give it a little bit of time, let us settle in a
little bit. Okay, that's what it did. The voice are really free,
Yeah, really agree? Well yeah, let's yeah, the tropical biscuits.
They've got big dark green leaves. That's a that's a normal thing.
But yeah, we can we can push things too far. But I'm trying
to troubleshoot here, you know, without seeing the plant and knowing the full
history and everything. So but that's I think that's that's what I would look
at. And I do appreciate you given us that call. I'm gonna head
back out to Matta Gordon again. Ruddy, We'll give it one more shot
here. Are you there, Yes, I'm here there you go good.
How can we help today? Well, I'm gonna give you a little fact
to it. I'm I go back a long time. In fact, I
was on the radio on listen to the morning you came on and you come
a long way. You're doing a great job. But I go back to
the nearest buried in Dallas and and uh Compton and hit Boy and UH when
I was in the uh Bavan in Dallas also as well as Randy eleven for
twenty years. To you what you're doing. A good job. Thank you.
Listen my question. I had a question for the be man, but
he's gone on. Question about hybridized be I had. We had to burn
the little house down there in Vouta Gorda because it was a pull of the
gods. Said they were hybridized African African hybridized be and yes they were.
They were a problem out there. They were all over the place. Do
they do they intermixing in the hide to the regular bee. Yes, the
African bee is a honeybee and it will cross with the standard European honeybee that
we think of when we think honey bees around here. It's been happening for
a long long time. I can remember decades ago when they first African bees
first moved up into the area. That was a big concern. What is
being done now, though, is they beekeepers are our first line of defense.
They are constantly re queening their hives. So if there's some Africanized blood
in the bees that are out, with a brand new European queen in,
you know, dilutes that down. Then you do it again, and you
do it again, and now the you know, we don't worry about Remember
at that time, everybody called them killer bees, like well, they're just
they're just a honeybee, and they're they're more aggressive, a little more aggressive
than other bees would be, and so they became a cause for alarm.
You don't hear that anymore, that concern anymore. They're still around, the
blood still around in the lines out in the wild, but just by requeening,
we we avoid that problem. Yeah, we have an issue in Alvin
here. A couple three years ago Albost die from kind of with h But
anyway, the other in fact, I asked you the question the first day
you were here. You were a little a little bit nervous, but the
ladies. They did a good job of taking care of you. Yeah.
What what's the best way to I have a a ponytail palm I've had fifty
years. I'll hold it all over the state, okay, and the pros
and it's got doesn't babies. I need to clone number. What's the best
way to do that? Oh boy, I don't know how to clone a
ponytail. You know, it's not like they have little offshoots off the base
like some bulble can you do? Do you have babies pups on the bottom.
No, they're they're all over the trunk, oh, up on the
trunk um. And I love I love those uh those ponytailers. Yeah,
I was thinking about something that I was saying. They don't have something like
has roots down coming out from round level. If the main try I don't
know if you cut them loose from there, if you could rout them or
not that. I just don't know. I'd have to look into that,
Rudy. I'm not fabilar, you know, with the plants, with the
plants to produce little pups at the base like in a gaby will do that
and other things. Those you can dig and plant. They're fine. I
just don't know on the ponytail. That's a good question. I'll try to
look into it and if I figure something out, I'll mention it. Okay,
okay, Well anyway, keep up a good keep up the good job.
Nobody missed, no, well, nobody ever ever forget Randy Lemon.
That's what people. People wonder, Well, we need Randy Lemin. We
got well Randy. Randy will always be uh I remember do a complema,
Yes, sir, that's right. Just by the way, I'm not a
three year old, all right. Ruddy, Hey, Ruddy, thank you
for the call and the kind words. I really really appreciate that. Listen,
if you, if any of you have listening, have planted a tree,
a shrub, a rosebush, anything like that in the last year,
you really need to know about the tree hugger sprinklers. And here's why.
The minute you put a plant in the ground, all the roots are still
in the cylinder you put in the ground, and it takes weeks and months
and even longer even over a year, as the roots further and further and
further established themselves, and that's when it becomes a totally resilient You don't have
to pamper it plant. But in the meantime you got to water that cylinder,
and a tree hugger does that. You turn it on real low and
it waters right at the base, and then you turn it on higher and
it waters wider until you can water a very large area. There's seven inch,
eleven inch and three and fifteen inch size tree huggers. They go around
the plant hook to a hose, super easy. The investment and a tree
hugger will save you not just in keeping your shrub or tree or rose alive,
it'll say you in terms of faster growth, better establishment, and just
overall faster success. Go to tree Hugger sprinklers dot com to find out more.
We're about to take a break, and when we come back, we
will talk to Greg and Laport, and we will talk to Margaret out in
southwest Houston and anyone else who wants to dial seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. We've got being music coming out of the woodwork to
day out. That's a good one. I had forgotten about that song.
All right, you're listening to garden Line and here we go. It's our
last segment of the weekend. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. We're not gonna wasting time. Run right out there and get in
laport to talk to Greg. How are you doing Greg this morning? Good
more escape. How are you doing, sir? I'm well, thank you,
good good. Hey. I just received some red oak seeds in the
mail, and I don't know if this is the wrong time of a year
to try this, but I want to try to get them started in some
pots or in the refrigerator, which I've heard you could do too, Yes,
but could I get those go ahead and go now? Or well at
the wrong time? Did the folks that sold you the seed by mail order
did they happen to say if they had already been stratified? Did they use
that term or not? Well, I'd have to look at the website I
got them off of. Okay, I don't know U skilp. Well here
here, here's here's what I would do. I would put them in something
moist like moist sphagnum moss or moist sand, in a ziplock bag his zip
close your bag and put them in the refrigerator. However many you're going to
try to sprout, put them in the refrigerator and just took them in the
refrigerator, put them right where you have to look at them every day.
After about a month, you ought to see some little roots coming out of
the aren and going into the sand. Once you see that, then you
could pull them out and put them in the containers. You're going to grow
them in the container, should it. Ideally it would be nice to be
square as opposed around, because that way the roots don't go round in a
circle. I've used the old milk cartons for that. You can buy containers
for that, but something that just forces the roots to hit a corner and
go down, And often I will put mine on like a hardware cloth and
just leave the bottoms open and the air burns the roots as they get to
the bottom. It makes a much better transplant that way. But either way,
that's when you plant them, and then this fall I would take them
out and put them in the ground. Once things have cooled off really well,
likely October orly November, go ahead and get them in the ground then,
but that cooled moist. It's important that the sand is moist or the
moss stratification is part of that process of simulating winter and getting those acrons to
sprout, I understand, but what what kind of solut that? Oh?
And well to stratify them in the fridge, you can use moist sphagnum moss,
just that string string, Yeah, the stringy moss that you used to
line hanging baskets and stuff with. You can use that, or you can,
I mean you could put them in you know, some potting mix if
you want it. But I usually just use a moist sand or a moist
moss. Just it's just something to hold moisture around the seeds and in the
plastic bag and that way you can check them in. No when to pull
them out to plant. So you call that mouse what what's it called?
Sphagnum p s sph A g n u M. I can't spell sphagnum.
Sometimes it's not it's not just it's not just the peat moss. It's not
the brown ground up. It's more strings, right right, Yeah, I
know what you're talking about. I know what looks like sphagnum moss and some
moist sand and or moist well just you like with the moss, I would
wet it. I would grab it in my hand and squeeze all the water
I could out of it, put it in the bag of the seeds.
With sand. It's the same kind of thing. You just need moisture,
you don't need, you don't need, definitely not soggy. But it's just
to get those things. They go through a cool period that breaks down some
of the things that inhibit sprouting, and then they're ready to go and you'll
be in business. Oh okay, okay, Well I'll go ahead and start
that, Dan, I'll is that spaggen of moss I might get up here
at the store or is it? Yeah, you can get that at a
garden center. You can get that at ash Hardmore store I think would probably
have something like that. But again, there's nothing magic about the spagna moss
I mean right right, It's just it's just something that holds moisture and you
can wring it out really easily. And so yeah, and sand just sand
is sand sand anything like that. And like I said, if I don't
know how many seeds you got, but if you if you want it,
you just put them in some moist potting soil too. It's just a little
harder to see in the dark potting soil. What's got right? Okay,
okay, okay, okay, thank you, Greg. I appreciate that call.
If you if you live in the Tamball area, you know about arbur
Gate. I mean, it is an institution. People come from all over
the place, not just here in Houston, not just northwest Houston. People
come from all over to go to Arburgate because it is a destination garden center,
as we call it, a gardener's garden center. They're about a mile
and a half west of two forty nine on twenty nine twenty, just on
the west side of Tamball. They've got all kinds of things. I was
out there the other day looking at some of the fruit trees. You know
they have fruit trees. You're around out there at Arburgate. They've got beautiful
blooming. The herb section is going strong and it is packed with herbs right
now. Great time start an herb gardener a herb container. But when you're
out there, you need to get there one two three completely easy system.
That's number one. It's a food, an organic food, a four four
three nutrient plus organic food for feeding your plants. They've got the organic soil
complete for all the soil needs that you might have. I mean any kind
of a soil mixed need that you have. The organic soil complete is going
to be just that it has compost in it. It has got a large
particle sand in it, and it's got expanded shale. And our very heavy
cly soils. Expanded shale is very important for keeping them open up when we
do that. Now, the third part is organic compost complete, which also
has expanded shale in it. It helps promote soilration and drainage. Two different
kinds of composts are blended together. Incredible micrologic, microbiological activity in that Arbourgate.
Hey, go to arburgate dot com to check them out for more.
If you're listening from outside the Greater Houston area, next time you come to
town, you have to stop at Arburgate. You will be amazed and know
why I get so excited when I talk about that. Well, real quick,
here, let's run out to southwest Houston and we're going to talk to
Margaret. Hey, Margaret, you are our final caller of the day,
So congratulations, how can we help? Well, I have a I bought
two angel wing but goings and evidently didn't look very closely at how tall they
were they're very nice on top. Can I cut or do anything to put
something and make them look a little less tall. You can do some pinching
on them and branch out. You know, if you cut everything off and
just leave a bunch of like fence posts sticking up, it's kind of a
shock to the plant. I would do it kind of gradually and see how
that's going. But angel wings are not that difficult. But they are known
for being lanky and a little brittle. That's kind of a normal growth habit
for those. Well will they grow if I cut it? Will it grow
from the dirt or do I have to plant the top? You will probably
see some branching from further down from where you cut it, depending how far
back you cut, you know. I mean, if if you've got two
feet tall and you cut it to four inches, that would be an awful
heavy shock. I'd be a little concerned. I won't say it wouldn't make
it, but that's a little overdoing it. Maybe have two or three different
lengths, one in the middle and a little higher. That would be a
good way to kind of hedge your bet, and then as you see how
it respond, you can do a little more pruning later if you need to
pinch it back. Each angel wing. Though some of them are kind of
thin in the stems, some of them have very thick stems, almost like
your little finger sticking up there, and that's what they look like. Yeah,
And so depending on how high you're wanting it to be and how high
genetically it thinks it needs to be, you may be fighting fighting a little
bit of a losing battle. But I think you can cut them back a
little bit and they certainly will do well. It's a beautiful plan, isn't
it. I love them. I love them. Yeah, so many nice
thank you, thank you so much. Well you're welcome. Good luck with
that. And you know, when you cut it back a little, give
it a small amount of a fertilizer, not a lot. You don't want
to push luxuriant growth, but just a little bit to support it as you
go along. That's why I like the liquids I mentioned earlier, the Microlife
seven one three, the orange label that would be a great one to use
on it, as well as that fish emulsion one that I talked about,
the Ocean Harvest, a blue label that is just a really really good product
as well. If this is an outdoor, I would use the I would
use the blue label outdoors, not indoors. Just because it is a fish
based products had a little bit of a fish odor to it. Well,
that's fine. I thank you for all you do. You are really very
very good. Well that that's kind of you. I appreciate you saying that.
Good luck with those angel wings by the way, Okay, thank you,
all right, by Margaret. Well, there's another weekend in the bag.
Another weekend all done. I want to tell you you know we are
available by podcasts too. If you missed a garden Line show, if I
set a product and you didn't have a pen to write it down, number
one, put a pen by the phone. We always are talking about stuff
you need to write down. You can go back and listen to a podcast.
But today we had a really special guest, Paul Bagala from the b
B Company and they b supply and we're going to have that as a standalone
podcast with today's show. So if you know anybody that is interested in bees
and you thought, oh my gosh, I gotta tell you know so and
so about this, or tell this Scout troop or homeschool group that needs to
they got to go out there and see this. There's a podcast just for
that coming up. We'll have it posted to the website as well. Hey,
thanks for being a listener to a garden Line. We look forward to
talking to you again next week