Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.
It's crazy, can you trim? Just watch him? As were so
many pots, Sea Bot, Bazys, the club back Chicken. It's not
a sign credits gas sun beamon of Well, good morning. It's gonna be
a great Sunday for gardening. I can tell you that right now. Look
outside, it's dark, can't see a thing. If your neighbor's lights aren't
on, go bang on the door, wake them up, tell them they
are missing guarden Line and they'll rise up and call you. Bless it at
least someday maybe when they appreciate it. Hey, you're listening to Guardline.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we have a phone number if you
would like to call to discuss anything of interest to you regarding gardening. That
would be seven to one three two one two k t R eight seven to
one three two one two kat r H. Give us a call. Let's
find out what you want to talk about. I got some things I'm going
to go through today as we as we go through our show this morning,
but I suspect you may have a question or two. And you know,
the thing I found interesting is when you have a question, somebody else is
going to have the same question. That's just how it works. There are
a lot of people out there thinking the same thing, and people are often
shy. I don't want to ask because you know, nobody else thinks that
has that question or whatever. Yeah, they do, they do. Let's
start off by going up to Tom Ball and we're gonna go right to the
phones. We're going to talk to Mel this morning. Hello Mel, Hey,
good morning, Skip morning. Uh. I missed your show yesterday.
I tuned in late on the road. You mentioned a product that sounds like
a combination of weed killer and fertilizer. You said it's stuck to the leaves.
Leaves, huh, yeah, that product that would have been Yeah,
that's weed DNA tour by Nelson Nelson. Weed DNA tour is a slow,
slow release fertilizer. And you know people talk about weed and feed. This
would be like weed now and feed later kind of approach. Because it releases
gradually. You'll be getting release over it for two or more months going forward.
And so that's how that works. And yes, you do. You
have to have wet weed leaves, just damp leaves. You don't have to
wet the soil, just dampen the leaves and that granule sticks to them.
Then when you put it out, well, I got a combination of in
my in my yard of weeds, and Saint Augustine had bear spots, so
okay, imagine, okay, that would work all right? Then, yeah,
that would work fine as far as the bear spots are concerned. Night
Fuss makes a product called barricade, and that that just prevents the weed seeds
from sprouting and establishing successfully. So you can do both. Uh huh.
Anytime you're using different products, people often ask can I do as mic the
same day affertilize? Can I fertilize the same day I do barricade, or
you know, and so on. You can just use it make a different
path through the yard, a pass through the yard, because particle size is
different and you want to make sure and get good distribution of each product.
Good barricade the first time I'm gonna use these social garlic kind of work,
won't it? Society garlic on barricade? What are you a wild garlic?
Now? The garlic. I mean it could come from a seed, but
it's coming from an underground bulb, and so you're going to need a product
that probably contains a two four D type ingredient in that out in order to
Yeah, now I don't know if the weed Nator would work. My concern
is getting it to stick to that little skinny upright garlic leaf. Do you
know what I'm saying that that may be one you want to just get you
a post emergent broadly, if we control that got two four D in it
and just spray it on, just spot treat it. You don't have the
nuclear yard. Just just spot treat those garlic and you'll see them start to
get all twisty and malformed, and that that shows that it's working. Okay,
Yeah, because those wrestlers have a lot of weeds growing up in the
can only reach them and quick to hear the trimming baby box? Who was
We got some baby gym box who was that we kind of about two years
ago and I wanted to grow to three feet and I trimmed him back last
year and I'm wondering, did did I mess up there? Growth? And
others? Other can I expect them to still get to those three feet.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they'll come back. Yeah, no problem,
absolutely very good. All right, thanks sir, you take care A
and A plants up in Montgomery. I was there, oh gosh, a
couple of weekends ago and or a weekend ago and they had an You know,
that place is always fun to visit because there's always something changing and going
on, new shipments coming in. And for those of you up in the
Lake Connor area, this is your backyard garden center. By the way,
thanks to everybody that came out that day. That was fun. You guys
warm me flat out with questions. But they've got this interest in now up
there. They got a new shipment of it just the other day. They
also have a really nice selection of geraniums, the big old jumble geraniums.
They look really good. Geraniums are a cool flower. I mean they I
grow mine and containers at this time of year. Put your geranium containers out
in goods sun, lots of sun, and they'll be fine. As it
really starts to get hot, though, I'll move mine to where they get
morning sun an afternoon shade and you don't have to water them too much.
They don't like soggy, wet conditions. But on the other hand, they're
not a succulent where you just can ignore them and they'll somehow hang on,
keep the soul moist and they'll do well. But geraniums are just the colors
really outstanding on them. And there's so many kinds now, I know out
at Ana they've got the red, the cherry rose, they've got bright white,
they've got salmon colored geraniums. Just a lot of new things out there,
and they always have something new. Now. They're the garden center that
if you are on one oh five in Montgomery heading toward Lake Conroe. They're
right on the edge of town. And if you drive either you've seen it
one hundred times, you need to go by. They're open seven days a
week, nine to five. So to day this afternoon be a great time
to get out there and pick you up some plants, because I'll tell you
one thing. They get these shipments in, but people show up and they
take your plants. They buy your plants right out from underneath you. So
don't mess around. Go ahead and get yours while the supply is best,
and A and A plants and produce can get you all set up on that.
We appreciate you listening to garden Line. By the way, I always
enjoy getting to visit with folks that are listening to the show. You know.
I wanted to also talk about fertilizing, and I know a lot of
callers will talk about it as we go through today. But Nitrofoss has a
product that's our Early Spring green Up. If you go on my schedule at
gardeningwiskip dot com. The early Green spring Up. Early Spring Greenup is what
we do now. And the fifteen five ten red bag it's Nitrofoss Imperial.
The easy way to remember, it's Nitrofoss's Red Bag. It's time to put
it down. It it gets in the soil, the plants take it up,
they turn green the grass plants, and when growth begins, you've got
the nutrient in there. We'll be doing other fertilizing for the long term as
we go a little further into the season. Right now, it's green up
time and Foss's Imperial is the product to do that. Now. Where do
you get it? Well, I get it at Bearings Hardware and Bissonette and
on West Timer, I get it at Plantation Ace Hardware out there in Richmond,
Rosenberg, just lots of places you can get night Foss, Imperial.
Hey, I'll be right back, take a little break and we'll be back
for your calls. Welcome back to garden Line. Good morning. We want
to want to cover a lot of things today, so we're gonna we're gonna
jump on it. In fact, I'm going to go straight out to the
phones here and let's see where were going to go first. Well, who
was first in line? We're going to go to Girardo out in meadow Space
Meadows place. How you doing, Girardo? Pretty good? Skip, How
you doing this morning? I'm well, thank you. How can we help
today? I've been looking I have an apple tree, sun, some flowers.
I'm trying to do some research and I can't find anything on how to
spray for I guess possible insects and pests and stuff like that. I I
have a schedule for peach trees and stuff like I can't find anything on an
apple tree. I was wondering. I sprayed dormance free before the on it
before I guess the ballooms came and everything. But you know, I had
some nice flowers on and everything, and I don't know what to do well
once it starts forming apples, I'm I can't find anything. And how to
a schedule too? How a spray you're lessie? Are you in Fort Bend
County? Yes? Okay, yeah. Fort ben County Extension Office is down
there in Rosenberg, just south of fifty nine sixty nine. I would call
Boon Holiday there at the office, and I'm pretty sure he has a spray
schedule that would cover apples or get you to one. That would be one
thing. First of all, you don't want to spray anything during bloom because
of the bees. You got to have the bee apples are a cross pollinated
The only things I'm trying to think of, we don't have a lot of
big insect issues on apples. They can get scale and there are some other
insect pests that can affect them. But the primary thing with apples is the
diseases and our rainy climate over here, and that would be a funge aside
to protect against those. And there are a number of ones if you you
know, I'm sending you north southeast and west here. But Cuthwar's fertilizers just
up the street from your Businett and Renwick and they've got the best supply of
products for controlling issues that anybody has. Go in and tell them, look,
I got an apple tree and I need a funge aside for it.
What are your options and let them take a look, and those are going
to be the thing. You can follow the label. I can just tell
you when you you know, watch your apples and see how they do,
especially when there's fruit on the tree. Controlling leaf spots is helpful. But
when you get a fruit rot, game over for that apple, and so
you need to after we have a rain period for the whole apple, no
that that apple's gone, you know, so you can't that's a there's not
a You can tolerate a few leaf spots, that's not a problem, but
when you lose apples then that's a problem unless you just like like the tree
for its blooms. So yeah, I would talk to Bob over there at
Southwest Fertilizer and they can get you all set up on the product that is
labeled for use on apples. That's a big challenge is we've got to find
something that actually is labeled for them. Okay, okay, And by the
way, that if you want to just give them a call to make first.
It's seven one three six six six one seven four four Southwest Fertilizer dot
Com. You bet, thank you, Okay, thank you. Good to
visit with you, Good to visit with you. Let's see here I wanted
to. I always talk about soil and the importance of soil, and the
way I like to put it is brown stuff before green stuff. And what
that is. What I'm trying to do is to have you think about the
fact before you put a plant in the ground, ask yourself the question is
the soil ready? Is that soil going to make this plant productive and healthy?
And because a lot of people go out and they buy plants, I
get it. The flowers at the garden centers. I get excited too.
Let's get one to bring it home. Let's do that, but before you
do, bring home also something that will help your soil. That includes fertilizer,
that includes composts, that includes bed mixes. And the folks at Airlom
Soils they've got it all. They've got potting soils like the works potting soil
for your containers that do very very well. They have the rose soil,
they have leaf mold compost, which is one of the hottest items these days.
Leaf mold compost such a high quality compost. You can go to Airloomsoils
off Texas dot com that tells you where you can find them, but I'm
telling you you can find them in a lot, a lot, a lot
of places. The heirloom soils products. Now, if you are preparing your
soil like that, and you're getting the bed ready and the right way,
you're just going to have success. And I urge you spend a dollar on
the brown stuff before you when you spent spend a dollar on the green stuff,
because brown stuff comes first. That's very very important. Let's go out
to Katie. Now we're going to talk to Ralph. Hello, Ralph,
good morning, Skip Hey. Question. Recently adopted some pets and so now
we're rethinking putting the organic stuff instead of synthetic. What would you recommend for
the post emergent on weeds post or pre Well, before we adopted the pets,
I put the barricade down two weeks ago and I didn't do the post
emergent, so I'm trying to be safe for the pets. Yeah, it
depends on the weed that you have. Uh, there is a product called
Agerlon, a crabgrass killer that works well on a lot of weeds, but
not every weed. It's a cinnamon based product. Uh. There is a
product called Captain Jack's Lawn Weed Brew and what it is. It's a keylated
form of iron that again works well on a lot of weeds, but not
every weed, but it'll turn them just black quickly. It's amazing how that
works. But basically some weeds are just sensitive to that kind of iron.
And are you're Saint Augustine lawn isn't? And so I would And where do
you get this, Captain Jack Sprew, Well, you're you're out there in
Katie. I would go to the Ace hardware. You got right out there
in Katy. It's that's probably the easiest close which direction from Katie? Are
you uh South Fry Kingslinn, I'm near the ace hardware. Oh yeah,
okay, yeah, okay, Well there you go. I would just go
to the ace out there they are going to have If anybody's got it out
there, they're gonna have it. Uh. And again yeah, let me
let me get you to do this right down my website, it's gardening with
Skip. That's me gardening with Skip dot com. When you go there,
you'll see my lawn care schedule for fertilizing and for weed control, and on
the weed control one on the bottom right corner is the post emergent organic options
and these are spelled out right there for you. Okay, okay, I
just remember that not and this is true whether it's synthetic or organic, not
every product kills every weed. So just be aware of that. If you
got you know the history of weeds all over the lawn, then you're probably
gonna miss a few, but at least it'llt you going in the right paw.
One last question, Bob weeds say, if you do use synthetic,
how long before you have the pets come down after you water it? Uh?
Well, you're gonna have you already fertilized. Yes, okay, So
you're going to be doing a spray of a synthetic post emergent weed control and
you just need it needs to have you know, a couple of days to
soak into the tissues and then you can water, just water the lawn and
kind of wash off whatever might be there and you'll be okay, okay,
so I know they have to be out every day to go to the bathroom.
But you know, it's just the trade off trying to to coordinate traffic
going across the lawn. There, gotcha, all right, thank you,
all right, sir, thank you. I appreciate, appreciate your call very
much. I want to remind you that this is the season to finish up
getting all that pruning work done. Now. You can prune any month of
the year if you need to, but we like to get it done this
time of year because the fastest time of tree healing is now the spring.
That is when the trees feel the fastest. So it's not you don't have
to do printing now, but I can't think of a better time to go
ahead and get it finished up. And I can't think of a better place
either than affordable tree service. I've I've talked to you before about Martin Spoonmore
and the fact that he has been around for a long time in this area
taking care of trees. And when it comes to trees, I would say
there's no aspect of your landscape care and stuff where you need a true professional
more than you do with trees, because these things are worth hundreds and hundreds
of dollars to your landscape. And I've seen the work of people that are
in a chainsaw, a pickup and have business cards. It is a mess
and it ruins them for life. Martin will come out for one hundred and
fifty bucks. We'll give you a consultation what he sees going on, advising
on what you should do and so on. If you choose to say,
okay, let's go ahead and have you do the work, that one fifty
is applied to the cost of doing the job. So you know, a
guy can't run around all over town with people that are just kind of curious
about this or that. But if you're serious about it, have him come
out and do that. If you're going to do any kind of construction,
digging a trench, putting us a driveway down or something, you absolutely have
to have somebody come out because that does or it can do significant damage to
trees. And there's a lot he can advise you on to help with that.
Now. Affordable Tree Service here's the website. Aff Tree Service dot com
a ff tree service dot com. Here's the phone number. Any of the
martin ER's wife Joe will answer the phone. Yep. The owners answer the
phone seven to one three six, twenty six sixty three seven one three six
nine nine two six six three makes it easy. It's got to magnolia now,
and we're going to talk to Michael. Hey, Michael, goom,
mor skip. I'm playing on here in the next month or so, laying
down some good u top soil, because I live in Montgomery County, and
you know, it's nothing but saying out here and then throwing laying down some
sod. And once I get that watered in good and well, how soon
do I have to wait before I can fertilize it. You know it's going
to be growing pretty well by the time you get that down, and I
would probably give it a couple of weeks or one way I like to put
it, because weather it can kind of be cooler or warmer, which affects
the rooting and the growth rate. When you've had to mow that lawn,
go ahead and fertilize it. Then it's not going to be in trouble if
you don't fertilize it real soon. I mean, it's gonna be okay.
It's just getting some roots down in the ground. There is some nutrient there.
But when you start to see the growth or when you reach out and
you grab one of those side pieces and kind of tug on it and it
doesn't lift up, you can see that it's pegging roots down. That's a
good time to fertilize. Okay, very good, Thank you very much,
sir. You have a great weekend. Yes, sir, enjoy your lawn.
Appreciate that very much. Well, you're listening to garden Line. Is
that the name of the show. This would be gard Line. It was
yesterday at least, and we're going to turn it over to Nikki for the
news here in just a minute. But if you'd like to give us a
call seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two five eight seven four, we'll be right back to take your
questions. So let's see what you want to talk about next. Welcome back
to guard Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter. And what are we
here for it? We're here to turn brown thumb's green because, as I
say, there's no such thing as a brown thumb. There's an uninformed thumb.
So we know how to make that a green thumb. We do.
I'll tell you who else knows how to do that? And that is Plants
for all seasons. Plants for all Seasons has been in the business turning brown
thumbs green for a long long time since back oh gosh, nineteen seventy three.
I believe they opened up there on two forty nine, which is Tomball
Parkway, right just north of Louetta. So just get off Tomball Parkway,
go across Luetta and they're right there. And I was out there the other
day and I saw something that reminded me. I haven't talked about this on
guard Line before, but I remember the day when terrariums were all the rage.
I mean, people loved having terrariums. And they have a whole section
of little small plants, a little small plants that you could put together.
Maybe you want to use an old aquarium to make a terrarium. Maybe you
want to use one of those big old fishbowls, or the fishbowl on a
pedestal. Those are great for terrariums because the idea is to create this little
humid environment where they could be happy. And they also have a lot of
the carnivorous plants. Now, nothing as big as a little shop of horrors,
but if you're a fly, it's the same thing. They have venus
fly trap, and they've got the little sundews. Now, venus fly trap,
you know, has a little fingerlike things across that in case that like
little bars that close the prison around the fly. Sundews have sticky stuff and
a bug lands on that, a gnat or something, and they get stuck.
It's like flypaper, and sundews are cool. They have picture plants that
actually the little insect falls down into the plant. There are track did to
it and they fall down inside and then I hope you have up your not
eating breakfast right now. The digestive juices are released by the plant to digest
the insect. In that cool. Your kids need to know about this stuff.
They need to play with it. You need to get by there and
get them. Some of those kind of plants, whether it's a terrarium in
the room or are especially cool is the ones that eat things. And the
venus fly trap, of course, is the poster plant for that. And
they've got them there plants for all seasons. They also have lots of tomatoes
and peppers. I was very impressed with the selection that they had. They've
got them all grouped where it's easy to find what you're getting. And you
know, peppers are all the rage, and they've got everything from mild peppers
down to the ones that you have to water every day to keep the mulch
from catching on fire. That's a joke, by the way, but they've
got it all at Plants for All Seasons. Hey, just go to the
website Plants for All Seasons dot com or give them a call to eight one
three seven six sixteen forty six. Where are we going next? Let's go
out to Kady if I can find my mouse here, and we're going to
talk to Michael. Hello, Michael hight there, Good morning, Thank you,
Good morning. I got a quick question about my front yard. I
got some I'm kind of new to your to your schedule there and keeping my
yard keeping it maintained. I've watched it kind of deteriorate over the years.
I've been a homeowner since sixteen. The last couple of summers have been awful.
So anyways, I got some weeds, a've patch of weeds in the
front yard kind of where the yard went balled right by my house. And
then I've got you know, and I want to lay down the pre emergent
and the fifteen five ten fertilizer separately. Of course I've been using weed and
seas. I want to do this right, and I just wanted to know
about like the order things. Should I you? Should I do this all
one weekend? Should I space this out? What's the help me get started
here? Sure you're putting down a pre emergent and a fertilizer. Is that
the two things? Yeah, on the schedule of that that you guys have.
So you put the barricade down and then you put the fertilizer down,
and it could be done in either order. It doesn't matter if you're doing
fertilizer and barricade separately. But don't put them in the same hopper. Just
make two applications one of one, one of them day, same hour if
you want it doesn't there's no problem. The only no no is to put
them in the same hopper because they're different particle size. And if you've ever
had a box of things of different sizes and you shake it, all the
big stuff kind of comes to the top and the little stuff settles to the
bottom, And if you did that in a fertilizer hopper, you get all
the barricade out first and then you get the fertilizer out, and you would
not have an even distribution of either one. So first, whichever you want
to use first, it doesn't matter the order. Put them both down and
then turn them the sprinklers and put one half inch of water down. That
moves the barricade down into the soil, and it'll also wet those granules and
get them moving down too. Okay, Well, and as far as I
kill the weeds, just do that, give done first, and then do
this or yeah, you mean your existing weeds. Yeah, yeah, Well,
I mean there's different approaches to that. We've you know, we've got
options where there's a fertilizer and that kind of weed control, or you could
just buy a spray and spray the weeds. It kind of depends on what's
convenient for you. But if we start doing the fertilizer combo with that,
well then that changes what I just said, because then I would just do
what you're saying, do the barricade, do the the Imperial red bag fifteen
five ten I think you meant you said fifteen five to ten, right,
yes, and then go with that, and if you've got existing weeds,
look at them closely and see if they are flowering and setting seed already.
And if see where are you you're calm from Katie, you probably still could
get the post the post emergence down and be just fine. But in a
pinch, you also definitely are going to want to the first couple of mowings,
put a bagger on that mower and try to capture as many weed seeds
as possible. Even if you've sprayed them, the seeds may could already be
viable. Understood, Okay, thank you so much. All right, Michael,
thank you. I appreciate, appreciate your call a lot. I was
looking at some of the work that Piercecapes does on landscapes, and I know
a lot of you listening or do it yourself first. And I also know
a lot of you listening or have somebody come do it. And there is
definitely a time where that is for sure the best thing, especially when you're
looking at a really big landscape job. And Peerscapes can do that. I
mean they can do everything from hey, come out, my irrigation system needs
some you know, check up and repair to I've got a drainage problem in
the back that could be a big job. It could be a small job,
not too big of a job. Do you want landscape lighting? Do
you want you know, hard scapes? And somebody install a beautiful fountain right
there off the patio. They can do all that kind of stuff. Peerscapes
has been doing this a long time. They know what doing. But let
me tell you, they stay busy. That's true. Our sponsors in general,
they do a good job, so they stay busy. That's how you
treat your customers right, and you stay busy. That's how things work.
So they're getting work still, scheduling work on out. So don't delay,
even if you don't want it done right now, go ahead and call them.
Make sure that you get that done soon so that when you can get
on the schedule, then later they'll be out there and they'll get you set
up just with whatever it is you need. They got all their certifications and
licenses. They can do any kind of work like that. Pierce Caapes dot
Com is a website. I would start there, or you can just give
them a call at two eight one, three, seven oh five oh six.
Oh. That makes it easy as well. We're going to go now
out to Paula in northwest Houston. Hello, Paula, good morning. Last
fall, you suggested diansis too Oh, I think I lost Paula there for
just a minute. Enjoy them. My first question is how much longer will
they last? And then what is a good nectar replacement for them for warmer
weather? Okay, Dianthus is going to go into the early part of summer
and then gradually, like our other cool seasoned flowers, it just starts to
lose its bigger, lose its blooming and whatnot. But it's lock and tail.
Yeah, it can warm up quite a bit. You've got some.
You got plenty of time left with these for now, okay, and then
when you get into summer. It kind of depends on what you like to
look at the little well. I want something with lots of nectar for the
butterflies and bees, okay, and you want something that's really short like dianthus.
Yeah, yes, okay. There are some zenias that do really well.
Any kind of a little disk like flower, daisy like flower would do
really well for you. The compact zenias I'm talking about, not the big
long cut flower types, the lobularia. There's one called white stream. It
may be hard to find at this stage, but if you can find it,
it is another popular one that will carry you on into some warmer weather.
And then once we get into the heat of summer, you've got things
like angelonia. You've got just there's just a lot of great flowers and plants.
What I would do if I were you. You're up in northwest Houston.
You know a lot of great garden centers up there. You know you've
got RCW, You've got plantro arborgate. Go talk to them and see what
they have, because sometimes they surprise me and they get something I didn't even
know it was on the market, and so I would do that for sure.
Hey, I got a run for another commercial break, I got one
more question. You can hold hang on. Welcome back to Garden Line.
Yesterday I was out at the in Conroe at the Home and Garden show up
there. Thanks to everybody that came out. Had a good time, lots
of questions and things. When I was at the event, I had a
couple of questions that I just want to mention the morning because they're significant in
terms of what things we're doing now out in the yard and garden. One
person asked me about sweet green. They said okay, this is organic,
right, and I said, yes, it's organic, and then they started
asking me questions about how it works, is it a slow release or whatever?
Sweet green there from nitrofoss is a fertilizer that's made from a molasses base,
and microbial activity is part of what turns it into a fertilizer, but
it also stimulates my chrobial activity and soul because it is a sugar based type
product, a molasses based type product. That's why it smells so wonderful.
It really smells good. It's eleven percent nitrogen, so that's a good boost
for an organic fertilizer of that much nitrogen. But when you put it down,
you water it in and it is going to be released pretty quickly.
It's not a slow release. It's going to be released quickly and it's going
to give you feed over a number of weeks. And so could you use
it for a green up. Yes, it's a little slower than the Imperial
the red bag fifteen five ten, but if you want to organic fertilizer early
on, this would be a good one to use. It works just well.
And again the other question is you know where do you get it?
And The answer is, well, where do you want to get it,
because it's pretty much everywhere like nitrofoss. You got enchanted forest out there in
Richmond Rosenberg. That's the place you can get it. You can go to
Growers Outlet and Willis, you can go to RCW Nursery up on Tombai Parkway.
You can get at all those places. But just remember you want to
water it in because it's going to dissolve away and it's going to do its
work and the microbes will say thanks a lot because they love the part of
organic gardening we use. We use molasses type products all the time, and
sweet green is a similar connected product that The other thing people kept asking me
is about as mite. When do I put on azmite? When do I
put on an ase mate? When do you want to put on azmite?
It's a trace mineral, and you need trace minerals. So if you've had
a soul test that shows a need for trace, then you absolutely need to
do it, and you may do it more than once. If you just
are looking at an ongoing maintenance, then the as and mite label is a
very light application. It really is. A forty four point bag will cover
six to twelve thousand square feet. That's a lot. That's way less application
than your normal fertilizer applications are. But asimite adds those important trace minerals.
Put it in your vegetable gardens too, because it just helps with the complete
nutrition of the produce you're going to be eating. And by the way,
if you want more information, just go to azimite Texas dot com asimite Texas
dot com and you can find out about those lots of good questions we were
dealing with yesterday. We're going to go back now. We're talking to Paula
in Northwest Houston. Hey, Paula, Okay, there's two schools of thought
I have read about whether or not you should pinch out suckers on tomato plants.
What are your thoughts? Okay, there's no single answer right way to
do it, But here here's the principle that you're operating on. If you're
going to steak tomatoes or have a single vine like and you see in these
greenhouses we have one vine going straight up. Then you produce, you pinch
out every sucker and just leave that one vine. It will give you earlier
ripening on the first tomatoes. And it will give you well because all the
competition from all the suckers is removed and all the focus goes into those tomatoes.
It'll also give you a little bit larger tomato for the slicers. Now,
if you don't remove them, you still want to remove a few.
You don't want to let every sucker grow, or you just end up with
this massive tomatoes that has a lot more fruit. You get more fruit that
way by having by not removing it any of the or only removing a few
suckers, but the fruit will be slightly later because again it's you know,
it's got a lot of babies that it's raisen. That plant does. And
so what I do is I remove the first you know, one or two,
and then maybe allowed where you're eventually getting three vines growing because I've allowed
a couple extra suckers to come on, but then continue to do some sucker
removal if it's in a cage. Otherwise the cage is such a wad of
blooms that air can't get in there, and diseases increased and so on.
So some sucker removal is important. But just think of each sucker as more
that that vine is trying to support. Okay, well that helps. And
also I've read that you shouldn't any branches on the bottom that hit the dirt,
you should cut off. Is that a true statement, Yeah, it
is. I mean I always must so that my leaves aren't getting splashed with
soil and the fruit isn't getting splashed with soil, and then it's not as
important. But yeah, I try to clean it up. You want good
air circulation. That's an important part of disease fighting. You don't have to
spray for spray for everything. All right, Hey, good god, I
appreciate it. Thank you, you bet you take care. I'm going to
head now out to where we're going. We're going to Marty in Fairfield.
Hello, Marty, good morning. Skip. I picked up some Bonye weed
beater. But when I started to put it on, and I look back
at your schedule and it said ultra and all I picked up was Southern lawns.
I read the label. It doesn't say anything about whether I can put
it down now, whether I wait, It doesn't give anything about temperature wise,
you can do it now, you can do it now, okay,
So but if you're doing it now, either one is fine the Ultra.
There's several versions of weed beater. Southern Lawns is one that's a good one
to used to. Weed beater Ultra has a little extra kick in it for
certain kinds of weed problems. But you're you're putting either product on to kill
the weeds that are growing. Now, that's a chick weed, tenbat clover
all those things. If you see a weed, now it's a cool and
weed. Yeah. Yeah, it's a post emergent. But I already put
down the pre emergent barricade, and then I have my ag crab grass that
I'm going to put out. What was the second thing you're gonna put out?
A would h? A g crab grass control? Oh okay, all
right, Well if you put a pre emerging out, if you did you
use barricade or what did you do? Yes, then you don't need a
crabgrass control. The barricade will do that. They're already up. Oh the
crab grass is already up. Oh boy, I say that it's the big
clumps of real skinny. I'll look it up. Yeah, I think it's
something else. I think it's about you, say you. I'll put you
on hold here in a bit you can give Josh your email or he'll give
you my email. Okay, just send me some pictures up close in good
sharp focus. I don't ok And thanks for theo tomato advice. I just
learned something about my tomatoes, so thanks. Well, when I walked in
the studio, I didn't see any tomatoes that dropped off here, so I'm
sorry. I do expect that when I give good advice on tomatoes to have
something. Absolutely. I have about fifteen plants, so I will bring you
some. I'm kidding. I'm kidding that. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Marty. Good luck with those. I hope you have a good crop.
Thank you, bybye, all right, bye bye. Yeah, it's
a joke here on guard Line. You know, if we give you advice,
you just had to bring us part of the produce. Oh my.
The folks that Landscaper's Pride have a wide variety of products to help you do
what I always say, and that's brown stuff before green stuff. They specialize
in the brown stuff. For example, they're pot dirt. It's an omni
certified that's organic certified, organic soil, and it's really proven for the short
term high potency growth of the flowering plants. Got It's packed with nutrients,
got worm castings and sand and vermeculi and more so you got annual bed seasonal
color changes. You want to really pop with color. Pot dirt will work.
Landscapers Mixed It is excellent for drainage because of the way it's got the
fresh pine bark in it, with the rice holes in, pearlite and other
things. Eve has a slow release fertilizer in it, and then the rose
soil, the rose mix. They call it very effective for woody ornamentals,
any kind of an acidic pH loving garden especially works well for that. Now
you're going to find all these products all over the place. But if you're
looking for hey, where do I buy landscapers Pride products? Go to Landscaperspride
dot com and there you go. When you go there, you will see
all the places to get these products and many many more, including their punting
soil, which is very versatile and very helpful. I am running against our
first big break for the hour here, Steve. When we come back,
you will be our first up. Couldn't quite make it to you this hour,
but we will be first when we come back. If you'd like to
call Josh and get on the boards. Seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
I was visiting with and H. Dester from agg the other day. And
Andy this weekend is out at the Southern Nurseries and Silsby. So all of
you listening way out there in the you know, toward Beaumont direction in Sillsby
Southern Nursery. She's going to be there today from the opening to close.
And that's eight am to five thirty and noon to four thirty. It's it's
got both of them. Oh, eight am five thirty is yesterday today,
noon to four thirty, I believe, so I hope you will enjoy that.
That is a good opportunity. Andy is always a wealth of information.
She can tell you all about the Medina products, of course, but she's
just a good wealth of information. She and I go way back to the
days when we both lived in Austin, Texas. We'll be right back.
KATRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on
this program. Welcome to KATRH Garden Line with Skip Richt. It's so just
watch him as, Hey, welcome back to guard Line. What are we
gonna talk about today? Can you tell me a little bit of glow outside
some cloudy's weather? Cloudy skies today. But you know what, it's going
to be a nice mild day and it's not gonna rain on us. The
weather managed promised me it's going to rain on us. So it's gonna be
a good day to get out and do some things in the garden. One
of the things that you need to do, and I need this is like
a we need that little sound of an emergency broadcast. You know, this
is something you need to know. Our weeds eeds are germinating. That's the
news. That's the news flash. Broad leaf, grassy, warm seasoned weeds
are starting to germinate in parts of this listening area. And in order to
prevent them, you have to have some that will prevent them from getting up
and growing, like a barricade product. And that's prime product that we talk
about here on guarden Line for stopping both broad leaf and grassy weeds. But
here's the deal. It's like the analogy I like to use is the baseball
analogy. If the catcher is holding the ball, the batter has waited too
long to swing. Does that makes sense? That's what we're talking about when
those weeds are up and growing and you know, taken off and everything.
Well, pre emergent means before it emerges, and that is what barricade is.
It's a pre emergent. So if you've got thin lawn areas, you've
got areas where the sunlighter sitting in the soil, nature will plant weeds there.
And barricade is what we put down watered in with one half inch of
water, just a half inch, all you're doing is just wetting the granules.
And why well, a dry barricade granules sitting on the ground is not
going to prevent all the weed seeds all around it. When you water it,
that liquid takes it into the surface where it ties up. Now when
a weeds he tries to come up, there is a barricade over the soil.
And that's why we use the term incorporating. Back in the day with
farmers, they would maybe disc it in really lightly a product, or they
would water it. Watering it in is how you do it in your lawn.
Barricade is what you use in your lawn. That's how that works.
Now all the different kinds of weeds, crabgrass and what's the other one to
everybody? Oh grassper that people just can't stand. Well, that is why
we do it. Now, where do you get barricade? Alsposees in the
woodlands has barricade, plants for all seasons. Two forty nine has barricade.
Brenham. I'll go up to Brenham Plants and things in Brenham on Highway three
sixty five. They've got barricade and other nitrofoss products as well. I want
to run now to Lake Jackson and Steve. Thank you for being patient holding
How can we help today? Yes, good morning, Skip. I enjoy
your show a lot. Thank you. And so this is a follow up
to call it from a about two weeks ago. I'm fighting this brown patch
in my front yard. And so what I did was I put down a
some liquid funge aside. I waited about ten days. I put down the
nitrofoss eagle to the side, and so it's, uh, the grass is
coming back. Well. I raked some of the brown and I bagged that,
went over and bagged it, and so, uh, the green is
coming back. It's about fifty green fifty brown and so uh so from a
you know, going forward, Uh, is it okay for me to fertilize
at this point and maybe water a little bit? Yes, it's it's if
you're going to do a spring green up, now is when you do it.
Now. Spring greenup is an optional application. It's not like, Okay,
this is part of what you have to do every year, right.
Uh, it's an optional one. But if you want to get the grass
of greener earlier, that's what we do. That's why we call it spring
green up. We'll begin our i'll say our main warm season fertilization schedules.
Those begin in April. They go through May, June, July, and
then we come back in October for a fall application. But those will begin
pretty soon. If you wanted it for whatever reason, Uh, you wanted
to wait and just start with the summer schedule, that's fine. It's all
on my gardening schedule. I don't know if you've seen a copy of it
or not, but it's online at gardening with Skip dot com and it lists
all the products and everything. So yeah, if you're going to do an
early greenup, you can do that now. So I've printed that schedule out
it's just wonderful. I really appreciate that. And so how does this brown
patch propagate? You know? How is you know? And once it sets
up, is it likely to return you know next year, next summerfall.
Yeah, Like a lot of fungi, it's we would say it's ubiquitous.
It's everwhere, the spores are, everwhere. When we create conditions that brown
patch likes, then it can it will infect and be worse. So those
conditions mean extra nitrogen during the season when it affects, it attacks, extra
moisture during the season when it attacks, so you get lush growth in the
fall. And that's why when we move to fall, we switch over our
fertilizer a little bit and the application timing in the falls a little different,
and so as a result we try to avoid it. But if you overfertilize
with nitrogen during that season, brown patch only attacks in cool, mild weather
conditions, So it's not a summer disease, it's a fall disease. It
can be a spring disease too with those cool mild conditions. So that's the
main thing. Take take care of your lawn properly and you don't predispose it
to things like brown patch. Okay, thanks for helping bring my yard back,
all right, steep, thank care, I appreciate you, ll thank
you. Yeah, that is That is a principle of plant pathology, folks.
Is we predispose our plants to problems or we don't. It all depends
on our cultural practice. So for example, let me use this as an
analogy. You go around to the shady side of your house. Let's say
you got brick face brick on the exterior of your home, and there's no
algae on that brick. But turn on a little mister and have it run
all day for about a week, and what you're going to see is the
appearance of algae. Where did that algae come from, Well, it was
spores, it was around, It may have even been sitting on the brick.
But it's not growing. But when you created those moist cool, shady
conditions, especially the moisture, you suddenly allergy allergy algae appeared. And it's
because you created the conditions and you can do that. We're about to get
into summer, and if you look on my schedule, you will see that
we start talking about gray leaf spot in April and May and June and even
July. And what happens is if it's very shady and you keep it extra
moist and you just put down a fertilizer and you overdo the nitrogen and a
quick release over overdone application, you're going to see gray leaf spot. I
always tell you, if you don't know what gray leaf spot looks like,
go through a piece of plywood on your lawn in April, late April and
May and leave it there for a week and pick it up, and you
will see gray leaf spot. Where did it come from? It was always
there? But was the grass going to get sick before you did the plywood?
Nope, You created the conditions that predisposed it and created the problem.
So that is part of the cultural thing. And I talk about some of
those things in my lawn care schedule. You know the importance of doing things
properly. Well, those are those just a little extra things to think about.
We're going to take a little break. Here, it's time for another
break and I will be right back. Our phone number is seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well for back to the guardline.
I hope you're having a good time. I sure am. Today it is
spring. I'm a gardener, what could be better? This is, as
Robin Williams said, spring is nature's way of saying, let's party. And
that is the fact. By the way, they're having a party out at
Moss Nursery, Done and Seabrook. I love going to that place. I
mean like acres and acres that you're just wandering through and seeing all the cool
stuff they have. They have got there, for example, their house planting
greenhouse, which is one of the first places I go when I get there,
just because I love the selection of succulents. It's like none other.
The selection of tropicals, again, like none other. They're hanging from the
rafters in there, They're on the tables and floors, I mean the shelves
that just everything is loaded up. Moss is a place where you're going to
find eight hundred bazillion kinds of containers as well for whatever you want to grow
in a container. They are loaded up on those things. Of course,
They've got tomatoes and peppers and herbs and vegetables. They have beautiful hanging baskets,
just gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous hanging baskets out there at Moss Nursery. They
the shipments have come in on color and it's just outstanding. But I really
would suggest you consider it maybe one of their hanging baskets this year. That
is a great versatile way to just light up an area. It's instant color.
You bring it in and they can get you fixed up on that.
You know, when you go to Moss, you know you're going to get
good service. You know you're going to get knowledgeable people helping you. I
mean the higher gardeners, people that know how to garden. A couple of
last time I was out there, a couple of my master gardeners came by.
They that I trained when I was in Harris County. Moss Nursery is
a place to go and it is a destination and you do need to go
see it. If you haven't. If you have, you know what I'm
talking about, and you need to get back out there because they are loaded
up right now. They're in Seabrook on Toddville Road and the phone number write
this down two eight one four seven four twenty four eighty eight two eight one
four to seven four twenty four eighty eight. Moss Nursery always fun to go.
It's like wandering through a jungle of coolness when you head out to Masner.
Every time you turn around the corner, who knows what's going to be
around the corner, a beautiful fountain, some cute cool artifact or whatever.
I love going out there. I love going out there. It is seasoned
to be planting. You got vegetable transplants. Time to get your tomatoes in,
get it done. Go ahead. You can go ahead and go with
your peppers as well. If you want, you want to wait a little
bit, that's fine too, but definitely get those tomatoes in right away.
I'm planting peppers and tomatoes this week out of the house. My plants are
big, they're too big to be into the light, and I got more
plants that need to come under the light, so they're about to go out.
The old plants are about to go out to the garden. Peppers already
have blooms on them, starting to set small fruit. The tomatoes are just
about to start there blooming as well. Time to get them in and when
I put them in. Here's what I do, and I recommend this if
you're planting vegetables, herbs, flowers, if you're putting in a rose bush,
hash to grow sick twelve to six from Medina has to Grow six twelve
six. What is that? Well, it's a six percent nitrogen, twelve
percent phosphorus, six percent potassium fertilizer that's good for watering in a new plant
to encourage new root growth and fast establishment. It's got Medina soil activator in
it to stimulate the biological activity. It's got humic acid in it as well,
and it has seaweed extracts in it as well. So it's a really
nice cocktail of good things to help that plant hit the ground running. You're
not going to burn your plants with it. You can use as a folier
spray if you want, and that's not a bad idea really as they begin
to grow, but initially on planning you at least got to have some mix
it up in a watering can. That's what I do, and then just
drench the plant and watered in really well. And Medina Has to Grow is
widely available, Lots of different places carry it, and anytime I'm going to
put a plant in, I mean, you can use just water to water
in a plant, but why not use something that gives those roots and that
plant itself the things it needs to have that early boost, because that is
the first step to success with those I was out of Southwest Fertilizer visiting with
Bob the other day and looking at the three sixty tree stabilizers which he has
in out there by the way. Three sixty tree stabilizer is a device that's
used You attach one end of the post, you attach the other end of
the tree, and it holds that tree securely so that it doesn't blow over
when you put a new tree in. But the straps are soft and allow
movement, a rubbery strap, and it allows that tree to move, and
movement is important for strengthening it. There's a principle of nature that when things
are stressed and moved, they get stronger. You go to the gym and
you work out, and you wear your muscles out, and then you go
rest awhile and they build back and you do that again and again, and
what happens You get stronger. Well, when a tree is held without movement
by three guys number one, you're going to trip over the wires. It's
a mass. Uh. The wires are going to cut into the tree.
These three sixty tree stabilizer won't do that and that tree without movement, the
strength of the stem is hampered by that. When a tree moves and bends
and stretches, just like our bodies, it gets stronger. The lignin,
the tissues in the trunk that make that tree stem stronger start to form,
and the movement is important. And three sixty tree stabilizers designed for that.
You can put them around a regular round fence post type post. You can
put them around a t post one the metal te posts. They hold well.
If you've got something that needs a lot of support. I would put
one at another at right angles, two of them. That's all you need
is just one let's say nor south, the other east west, or whichever
you want to put them, but a right angle, and that holds very
very well. Also, they're good for crape myrtles that have multi stems.
You can just grab one or two of those branches and you're your set.
And it isn't investment. Listen, those trees aren't cheap and you want to
have success with them, and this is one of the things that'll do that,
and just hang it up in the garage. He things you're going to
last forever. The three sixty tree stabilizers. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. When I was at the Home and Garden show up in
Conroe yesterday, I mentioned earlier that we had a lot of questions and a
lot of different things. And one of the things that people ask me about,
both in the session but also when I was at the table outside afterwards,
is what is this turf star weed and eight or what like? How
do you use it? How does it work? What you know, when
do you put it on, and whatnot. Here here's what you need to
know it is. Think of it. Don't think of the term weed and
feed. Think of the term weed now feed later. That's a better way
to put it, because here's how it works. You what the lead of
the weed. You just turn on the sprinkler. We're not talking about watering
the soil. We're talking about just wetting the foliage. Then immediately you run
your fertilizer spreader through and you put out the weedonator at the proper rate,
follow the label. At the proper rate. It sticks to the wet leaves,
the granules, and then you give it a day or two for it
to thoroughly soak in to those tissues, and then you water the lawn to
move the fertilizer granules that are stuck, some of them stuck to the weeds
up there on down into the soil and it begins this long release process for
the fertilizer that's in weedinator. It's going to release over two, maybe even
three months. It's a gradual release that it does. It's got a really
cool chemistry of the nitrogen forms so that it doesn't just wash away, but
it releases little bits over time. That's what a solil release does. And
we'll talk about those more as we get into summer. But I was trying
to help people understand how that works works out, and why how that whedonator
works and why it works. It's got a lot of nitrogen at twenty percent,
but you're going to get that released over months, so don't worry about
that high number. That's exactly what you want and it's a good combination of
everything you need in the turf Star the Weedenator, and that's a Nelson plant
food product, one of their many good products that they produce there. Our
phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one
three two one two five eight seven four. All right, I uh in
my own garden this week. Yes, I actually get time to get to
my own garden occasionally. I'm going to be planting my peppers and tomatoes.
As I said, my cool season peas, the sugar snap peas, not
that variety, but that type of pee They are coming on. They've their
tenders are grabbing and climbing, and they're about to produce themselves. Really well.
I love those things. They're sweet. I mean you eat them raw.
In fact, I used to just plant a little bit of them and
it ended up being gardener food because I never make it back to the kitchen
with enough to cook. I would just be like I'd eat them while I
was out working in the garden. So this year, my daughter and I
we planted a lot of them, and I mean we got I don't know
what we're gonna do, probably open a sugar snap peace stand out at the
street, or because we have we probably have too many of those things planted.
But you know, gardening is fun and it's always a new year.
I like to say gardening is like an etch of sketch. For those of
you who remember those, you had a little two knobs. You draw up
and down with one knob, and left and right with the other knob,
and you try to create a circle with an etch of sketch. Good luck,
because your brain messes up and you think you're going right and you go
left, and now you've messed up your picture. What do you do?
I can hear you all answer the question. You turn it upside down and
you shake it and it all goes away and you get to start drawing again.
That's gardening. The equivalent of that's just sketching. Gardening is called a
rototiller or a spading fort or a hoe to chop out this stuff. You
get to start over. It's always a new thing, and that is fun.
I love being able to go out and try something new. You don't
fail at gardening. Listen to this. You don't fail at gardening. You
just regroup and do it again, and one year your tomatoes will be just
awesome. And the next year it's like, wait, I know how to
grow tomatoes. Why am I having some trouble with this variety this year?
That's the vicissitudes of nature. That's gardening. That's okay. You know,
the nice thing about nature is it's not all about straight lines of perfection.
It's about enjoying yourself and the natural world. It varies, but it's fun
and there's always new plants, there's always new things to do. It is
rejuvenating for the mind, it's rejuvenating for the body, and it's rejuvenating for
the soul. And if you've been listening to the show and you're not,
you're not out there getting those things done this year. Try it. Let
me talk you into try a container, a big container, and grow something
in it. Maybe a pepper, maybe an egg plant. Maybe you can
grow carrots in a big container. And what do you want to grow?
Grow something in a big container. If you've got a little spot where you've
started gardening and not had success, let's get you to success. Call the
show. Let's talk through the things that you are finding challenging and we'll fix
out. And for those of you live out in Kingwood, you've got two
garden centers out there that will do the same thing for it. They will
help you, they will hold you by the hand and guide you. They'll
get you the right plants, they will get you the right advice. They
will get you the right products that you need, and that would be Warren's
Southern Gardens and Kingwood Garden Center right now. They, by the way,
today got public service announcement the last day of the leap You're special last day
is today. What is that You can get rose soil at a greatly discounted
rate. In fact, if you buy two or three even more discounted and
you need two or three, you can get azamite at a discounted right you
can get Nelson plant food and Microlife plant food in the little jars by the
way, Warns Garden Center in Kingwin Though, they have the little refill stations.
So when you buy one of those jars of Microlife or Nelson's, you
just when it's empty, take it back and for a discounted price, you
actually can refill it right there, just like when you're buying peanuts at the
grocery store and you pull the little lever and fill up the bag to take
home. Well, that's what we're talking about. That's what they have out
there. They also have the Chinese fringe trees right now they're just about to
pop. And I'm telling you that is one of my favorite, let's say
Top five trees for modern landscapes because it only gets about fifteen twenty feet tall
twenty twenty five feet wide, so it fits in our modern landscapes. And
the blooms in the spring at a billow of shaggy, little pleasantly scented blooms
Chinese French tree. You need to take a look look at them, and
they got them out there at Warren's Garden Center. We're going to turn it
over to Nikki now for the news. Give us a call seven one three
two one two KTRH. Welcome back to the garden Line. Glad to have
you listening in today. Boy, what a what a spring we're having.
This is great, it is really, it is wonderful. Finally to be
past all the things we've been waiting on. You know, gardeners, we're
not not always so patient, although we should be being through year after year
of dealing with nature and things, but we're not. And that's okay.
Time to get outside and enjoy things, Time to get outside and plant,
time to get outside and just make your garden magical. Remember a garden.
Now, I've told you this before, but when you say a garden,
people are a landscape. People picture the visual, and of course you do.
You think of flowers and vegetables or whatever your picture of a garden is.
But there's also the garden. That's the sound. That's our birds.
You know, we have birds that come in and sing for us, and
we have the sound of wind going through the trees. I've yellow clump of
clumping bamboo. Not the running kind that your neighbors will not rise up and
call you bless it if you put running bamboo near the fence line, but
the regular clumping kind. When the wind blows through, there's a sound of
like light rainfalling. It's a little papery leaves of bamboo rubbing against each other.
It's kind of cool. I like that. There's a sense of fragrant
plants out in the garden. There's a lot of features of the garden.
One of the things is popular now is pollinators. Taking care of our pollinators.
Had a call today about that. What can I plant and in general
plants that have small disk daisy like flowers, so things like fall aster things
like the zenias, for example, things like the blackfoot daisy that's one for
native to central Texas. If you give a good drainage. It does well
even here. Those little kinds of flowers they do well. Okay, Now,
Chemomeal is an herb that has that kind of flowers, and then plant
flowers that are herb flowers. Most herb flowers from chives to rosemary and on
down the line time they all attract little, tiny beneficial insects are very popular
with small beneficial There's other kinds of flowers we can group and generalize and whatnot,
but they support our pollinators and bees especially, and bees are an important
part of the backyard environment, native bees and the honey bees that are here,
and you know honey bees when they pollinate. When any bee pollinates your
flowers, you get better production. You get more seeds set and therefore better
produce. You will have larger size blueberries because more seeds get pollinated and the
berry gets bigger. You will have a normally shaped apple, for example,
you have an apple that didn't properly pollinated and slop sided. And then the
squashes, the cucumbers, the melons, the watermelons, and cantelopes. All
of those curbits need pollination. So have you ever thought about having bees for
your own backyard? You know you can keep bees. It's allowed, there's
guidelines on it. But you can keep bees in the city and bees will
pollinate your blooms and you get honey. What a deal you get honey.
The folks at the Bee Supply can get you set up. They've got all
the stuff you need to get set up with bees. But even better than
that. Right now they're ordering bees by the way. Yes, you buy
bees like buying a herd of cattle that you put in a box. But
they're ordering those in. But they're having their classes. The beginning beekeeper classes
are underway. They've been going on since February twenty fourth. The next class
is March ninth, The class after that is March twenty third, and then
April thirteenth. Go to thebsupply dot com. The class will walk you through
it, they'll feed you lunch. It's a nine thirty in the morning to
three thirty in the afternoon, and you will learn all about bees. You'll
even get to go out suit up and learn about handling bees. And I'm
telling you it is fascinating and wonderful. And if you just want to learn
about bees, if you've got kids, you must take them out there to
see the observation hive. This is out in Dayton, and you can do
what they call the honey Tour, where they will give you samples of like
six different kinds of honey. They will give a presentation of all about bees
that will blow your mind. And plus you get to even go outside and
see them take a frame out of a hive if weather permits to do that
as well. Vbsupply dot com. That's where it all starts. And hey,
why not add that hobby to your backyard gardening. I think it's kind
of cool. Take a nice Christmas gift. You know, you raise your
own creature on honey. I say, your own bees are doing all the
work, but you know, bottle it up. Think about that kind of
fun. I think I used to keep bees myself when I lived up in
Willis, Texas. Yes, I used to live up there and we had
a strawberry patch and I had a pea torchure and we had bees and that
was fun messing with the bees. An old bee keeper taught me how to
do that. And God rest his soul, that was a that was a
wonderful, wonderful thing, and I learned more from it. I still am
amazed every time I think about what bees can do. We're going to go
out to Ralph in Lake Jackson. Now, hey, Ralph, how are
you today? Wondrously? All right, totally totally off topic. I was
at breakfast and some friends yesterday and the topic of freeze protection for plants,
not so much wrapping them, but when you know a freeze is coming,
do you want to water them or not water them? Okay, the answer
is if the soil is already wet, you don't need to water. If
the soil is at all dry, you want to water enough to moisten it.
Because moisture holes heat better than air, and so well moistened soil does
two things. Number One, you have that heat sink, and at night,
on a cold night, when you've cover plant, the warmth of the
soil rises up underneath that cover and makes a huge difference. Secondly, a
plant that's water stressed is not That's not a good way to go into a
freeze, and so making sure your plants are adequately watered. But this thing
about spray and water on to make ice on the branches, if you want
to know more about that, if you go to my website, gardening with
skip dot Com. I have a whole publication, nine page publication on the
science of freezing and how to protect plants and all that kind of stuff,
and you can take that with you the next time you visit with the folks
and it will answer a lot of questions. What brought it up is a
lot of rural areas where there's fencing for cattle, okay, and a lot
of trees that have grown up through those fences. We've seen it in Brossoria
County, in Paris County, and in Fort ben County. A lot of
those trees have died and they're falling over, and we were wondering if they
were stressed from not enough water during the drought and then the freeze comes along
and kills them. Probably not the freeze. It depends on what species you're
seeing dying, but probably the drought is the bigger thing there. Yeah,
but you know it could be certain species that are a little bit on the
edge of hardiness. You stress them and weaken them and you can get more
freeze damage. Thank you, mich all right, Ralph, take care appreciate
that call. We love feed stores here on Garden Line and League City feed
that is the one you need to know about if you live down in San
Leone, Lamark Bay, Cliffe, League City, of course, Calcamino Reale.
They're on Highway three, a few blocks south of ninety six. Now
the Thunderbergs have been doing this store since for forty years now. Monday through
Saturday nine to six. Are closed today, close on Sunday, but every
day they're open till six, so you can catch them on the way home
from work if you want two eight one three two sixteen twelve to it.
One three, three two sixteen twelve. They're going to have everything you need
for backyard chickens. They're gonna have every fertilizer I talk about. They've got
the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and premium types of pet food. You
need to go by there at League City feet again, they are on Highway
three, just a few blocks south of ninety six. People live in that
area. They already know about it, and you need to find out about
it. It's a fun place. We'll be right back. We're gonna take
a little quick break and when we come back, we'll go straight to your
calls. Oh man, can we just take this segment and just listen to
music. That wouldn't be a bad way to go. Welcome back to garden
line. Hey, if you would like to call a garden line for some
reason in the perfect storm, we got some open lines here to just jump
right in. So if you've if you've hesitated to call because you think,
well there's too many people, call it, well, now's a good time
because it's kind of quiet on the Western front. As they say, you
know, the the call thing is always interesting. You can have some call
where you're trying to get to everybody and you hate people sit there, wait
online on a lot, and suddenly you just go into a no call.
So that's part of the deal. Hey. I like the note calls too
though, because it gives me a chance to talk about things that I think
are important. Hummingbirds are here. Do you know that they're arriving? They
are now here in the area arriving. Excuse me, mine about to sneeze
here. So anyway, that was not a good time. So while Bird's
unlimited, of course, is your place for all kinds of things. When
it comes to birds. Now they've got the feed, that's the quality feed.
In fact, I don't post something to Facebook, I saw a picture
the other day, No I saw a bag. I took a picture of
a bag of cheap bird seed. Now, cheap and inexpensive aren't always the
same thing, right, Cheap bird seed full of the full of the little
red bebes. Birds kick it out. You think you're getting a deal,
but when you actually weigh the part the birds are going to eat, you
are not getting a deal. You're wasting money. Wabirds has feed that if
they're seed in a bag, the birds are gonna eat it. That's how
they do it. They even have one like if you like sunflowers, which
birds love sunflowers, black oiles sunflowers, for example, they have one the
talllest, so you don't even have the sunflowers that the birds have broken apart,
dropped onto the ground. The shells wilbirds that get you fixed up on
all that. Now is hummingbird season. You need to get your feeders out,
and they have gorgeous ones at Wildbirds Unlimited. Wibirds Unlimited has six locations
around town, and you can find the one near you by going to wb
you dot com forward slash Houston WBU dot com forward slash Houston Wabirds Unlimited that's
the time to have your bluebird boxes out. Bluebirds are setting up shop.
It's the time to get the purple Martin houses out. And boy, they've
got some really cool purple Martin houses, very easy to clean, care for.
And the birds will lineup on the block. Because some of the wildbirds
was showing me the inside of the little birds the purple Martin houses and all
the different features and stuff and why it's easy clean and why the birds like
it. And it's like dot Com, I'd move into that place. That's
pretty cool. They've got it all there, WBU, dot Com Forward Slash
Houston. Bring the feathered friends in their beauty, their color, their songs,
their antics. It just is part of gardening. So you got to
go into a wildbird's just check them out. You'll see what I'm talking about.
You know. Another way that we take care of our hummingbird is by
planting things that attract them. For example, the kral honeysuckle, the long
tubular red blooms of coral honeysuckle. Many of the salvias. I like the
Salvia gary nittica. It is a typically blue to purplish colored blooms on about
a four foot bush. Hummingbirds love that one too, but there are a
lot of other plants that hummingbirds like. Typically a red tubular or red long
bloom is a good cue that they're going to like it. But you know,
Garyitica is not a red bloom and they love it, so plant those
kind of plants. The Buchanans Nursery specializes in that they've got all the native
plants that you can imagine Buchanans native plants. That's their name, Buchanan's Native
plants, and they have those like the coral honeysucle they've got those right now.
You can go pick one up today. But all the plants that you
would want, they're going to have, and a plant that attract hummingbirds is
something they're gonna have. They also, oh my gosh, I was looking
at their list, their list of tomatoes and peppers and things. I don't
know. I don't know that I've seen this long of a list of tomatoes
in a very long time. But how about this Amish past Arkansas Traveler,
beef Steak, beef Steak, beef Master, better Boy, better Bush,
big Boy, black crim I sound like a lawyer. Commercial Brandywine Camaros celebrity
champion Cherokee purple chocolate sprinkles. Yes, dark Star, Yes, that's a
tomato, Early Girl. Jrummer Johnson Homestead j D's Early Black. That's from
Conra Greenhouses up there in Conro, Texas. JD's Early Black. Excellent tomato.
That was half the list that I just read. Yeah, all the
rest of them are out there too. Lots and lots of tomatoes. They
have the trailing, the vining type. If you've never If you like cherry
tomatoes, super sweet one hundred and sun gold or two, you gotta have.
They are excellent, excellent tomatoes. They've got those there, along with
a bazillion others. And if I started reading the peppers, it would take
me just as long a mile long. Have you ever heard of a megatronjlopeno?
Have you ever heard of a ghost chili? Ghost peppers are so hot
they make the maltz catch on fire. You have to water it to keep
it. Okay, I'm joking. I have to say I'm joking because some
people. Have you ever heard of a pepper called Bulgarian carrot? We'll go
find out what it's like. In Buchanan's plums, they're on the Height.
They're in the heights on eleven Street right there. It's it's a great place.
They absolutely are going to have every kind of plant you can imagine,
people that know what they're talking about. The fertilizers you talk about here on
garden Line, they're going to have them at Buchanans Plants as well as the
soils brown stuff before green stuff. Grab a bag of soil or more and
grab your bags of fertilizer when you grab your plants. They're at Buchanan's Plants.
Makes it really easy. We're going to head out to Winchester now and
talk to Craig. Hello, Craig, Hey, Skiff, how's going.
I'm good? How are you today? So fine? Hey? I want
I have forty acres out here and winches are just north of Lagrange and I
want to get watermelon on the growing but I haven't had much luck. If
you have any tips, is your soil sandy clay or what? It's a
layer of sand on top and clay underneath. How deep do you go to
hit the clay? About six inches sometimes deeper? Okay, well you might
get you may have some success with them out there. You want to get
all the weeds out of the way. That's the biggest challenge because once you
have all the watermelon vines, you can't get in there and hoe and whatever
you're going to do as well. Are you talking about just a garden sized
patch or we talk about commercial garden sized pad? Okay, Well, choose
good varieties. There's a lot of great ones out there that do well depending
on what you're looking for. And they need consistent soil moisture, they need
to not dry out. Bees are very important. A bee has to visit
a watermelon bloom. I don't know what the number is, just like thirty
times to get full full pollination, which gives you the full sized watermelon that
you're trying to grow with that whatever variety and modern amount of nitrogen and other
fertilizers, So a modern amount and that's pretty much. Yet it's getting close
to time to plant those. I'd wait a little bit longer, but then
when it's time, go ahead and get those things out either by transplant or
by direct seeded, which is the more common way. So how do they
grow with the watermelons? And like gluling, when are they watering those things
regularly or are they Yeah, they're they're irrigating. They have big, bigger
irrigation in watermelon fields because you can't depend on the weather if if we go
into a drought period. The commercial folks they can't they can't risk that.
But that's it. Yeah, let me give you one other thing, and
I'm gonna have to run here, Craig. If you go to the Aggie
Horticulture website, Aggie Horticulture, just do a search for it. There's a
vegetable section and there's a whole publication on home growing of watermelons that is outstanding
and it covers everything from soil to fertilizer, to watering, to varieties and
everything. Okay, okay, all right, good luck with that. I
appreciate that a lot. When you're looking for supplies and you're going, hey,
where do I buy stuff? Where can I get fertilizer? Where can
I get pest control? ACE Hardware is the easiest answer to give you because
there's forty ACE hardware stores. They're everywhere. You're going to find ACE no
matter where you go. They're going to have furtilizers like Microlife, by the
way, you need if you get the Microlife you need, get their hu
mats plus right now. That's the first one to put down this year over
time, HU mats plus over and over again, you just get an absolute
improvement and sold drainage and everything else. I've told you about that before.
I'll tell you but more about it as we go through the data. You're
listening to Gardenline. I'm your host Skip Rictor. If you would like to
give us a call, our number is seven one three two one two fifty
eight to seventy four. We're gonna take a little break for the top of
the hour news here Bert, you will be the first up when we come
back. Thanks for that call. I want to remind everybody my garden schedules
are online at gardening with Skip dot com. We are slowly but surely putting
more and more things on that website and everything up there is something educational to
help you have a more beautiful, bountiful garden and landscape at Gardeningwithskip dot com.
But for right now, the lawn care schedule and the lawn pest disease
and we management of schedule. Pren them out, take them with you when
you go to buy products. It'll help you find the right thing. We'll
be right back. Kat R H. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H
Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's crazy Trim just watch him as many things,
the super crazy gas back again, not sorry, Welcome back to garden
Line. Boy. This is going to be a day for gardening folks.
I hope you are making plans this afternoon to get out there and get some
good stuff done. Let's turn your place into a more beautiful place. Turn
your garden into a bountiful garden. That's what we're here for. That is
what we are trying to achieve, because this is the greatest hobby in the
world. And it's good for you. It really is. It really is
good for you. It's good for your health. It's good for your physical,
it's good for your mental, it's good for your psychological. It's just
good for you. That's how that works. We're going to go straight to
the phones and talk to Bert in Conroe. Hello Bert, Well, I'll
tell you what it would help if I turned to you on there. Okay,
Hi Bert, how are you doing today? Hi, good morning,
Thanks for taking the call. I've just picked up an Eastern redbud. Is
it more of a tree or shrub question? And the next one, I'm
concerned, how far away from the foundation, house, foundation or driveway should
it be planted? All right, good, it's a tree, a small
tree. It's a very small tree, and time they can get larger.
They do best if they're in an understory kind of location where get a little
bit of a break from the full brunt of the hot afternoon sun. You
will see red buds in the full sun. They just seem to do a
little better if they have a little bit of a break from it. Don't
put them in deep shade, but just a little bit of a break they
probably I would say, I wouldn't want to get much closer than about well,
there's two issues when it comes to planning them near the house. Number
one is, of course the roots, but it's more the top the branch
is growing out and rubbing on the eaves or the shingles or the house itself
or whatever. So I'd probably make sure and get them at least twelve feet
away from the house, fifteen feet away from the house. That way,
it's manageable. When it comes to a driveway or sidewalk. Again, if
you can get them about ten feet out. They're gonna be okay. They
don't have a lot of huge surface roots. All right, well, thank
you, all right, there you go. I'll have fun. And by
the way, when you're out shopping, look around a little bit, because
there's a standard type of Eastern red bud with those beauty full blooms in the
spring. There are types that have a burgundy to the leaves. As they
are in a lot of sun, they get more burgundy. There's even a
type called Sunrise that has kind of a golden orange yellow chartrouse color as the
leaves progress. So you get to pick whatever every kind you want. So
do a little shopping, all right, you bet? Thank you? What?
Yeah? And the folks up at A and A plants and produce,
I bet you they can get you fixed up. And you're just down the
street from them up in Montgomery. They carry a wide variety of different kinds
of plants. Give them a call first, make sure they have them,
and if they don't have them, I'll bet you they can get them for
you. That for sure is something you're going to want to do. I've
told you about jungle Land before. Jena Land is a product by Nelson plant
Food and I'm sorry Nelson Nitrofuss. You know, we need to get names
that begin with different letters. I think because my brain goes on autopilot.
Nitrofross is a distributor of the jungle land product, and jungle land is it's
two different products. Actually, it's the outdoor jungle land and the indoor jungle
land. Outdoor is called flower and Vegetable planting soil, and we use it
for containers. So if you want to grow a tomato in a container,
a pepper, if you want to grow herbs too, by the way,
it's good for that. If you want to grow flowers, that's the outdoor.
The indoor has the water saving crystals in it, and it's called jungle
land water saving potting soil. What are crystals, Well, it's a polymer
that when it gets wet, it swells up and holds a lot of water.
And then when your soil gets a little dry, the plant roots have
gone up against that polymer and they can draw from that moisture reserve. It's
kind of having it like having a little bank account of extra moisture in the
soil for when the plants need it. Now, jungle land is widely available.
You can find it, like all these nitrofoss products that are out there.
You're going to find it at places like plants are all seasons on TOMBOI
Parkway. You're going to find it at all spas, ace up in the
woodlands. You're going to find it plants for all things, and plants and
thing. Excuse me, and Brennam they've got that like they do other nitroposs
products. Makes it easy when you got one, stop shopping like that.
Set out to Katie and talk to Judy. Hello, Judy, good morning,
Skip, good morning. I have what I think is mold on the
trunk of my kreik myrtle tree. Can you tell me how I would get
rid of that? Please describe it to me a little bit. It's just
black. The trunk's just black where it hasn't been before. Okay. What
that is is city mold, and it's growing on sugary substances. So it's
not a disease of the tree. It's just insight It's just insightly. So
you can use like a soapy spray in a spray wind on it, and
then you can use a soft brush and scribe it to get rid of it
like that. But it's not real easy to just get rid of. It's
there because you have crpe myrtle bark scale on your crate murder and that's the
cause. And so the real long term solution is to deal with the scale.
But short term a I wouldn't worry about it other than the visual aesthetics.
It's not hurting your it's not hurting your plant, so it won't hurt
the tree itself. It just looks bad, right, Yeah, it won't
hurt the tree, but the scale takes energy from the tree, but the
scale doesn't kill the tree either, so uh huh yeah, all right,
Okay, good to know you bet, you bet, John Bye, I
enjoy that crpe myrtle. Have you been out to Nelson Water Gardens and Katie?
If you haven't, you need to go. And I'm telling you why
you need to go. Number one, it's a garden center too. They've
got all kinds of flowers and vegetables and herbs and things. It's a garden
center, but their main focus is water gardens and they have what do you
want to create a water garden? They can actually come out and do it
for you. Do you need koy. Do you need shabunk and fish or
something else to go on it? Do you need water garden plants like lily
pads for example, beautiful, beautiful plants. They have all of that.
They also have the disappearing fountains. They invented that. Now what that is
is think of a big, beautiful vase that in and of itself would be
worth putting in the garden. It's so beautiful. But now you've got water
coming on the top of it and running down the sides and going into gravel
where it recirculates. And so it's just this self contained fountain out there wherever
you want to put it on a patio or out in the yard or whatever.
They can get that set up for you as well. And Nelson Water
Gardens they're in Katie. If your head out to Katie on Iten, you
just turn north. They're well, I don't know, stones throw off of
Ien as you go north on Katie Fort Ben Road, so it's easy to
get by the way. They have herbs out there right now. I bought
some herbs from a while back. They have every kind of herb you can
imagine. I mean, things like rue and lovage and lemon balm. The
probably weren't even knowing you needed. Well, they've got them lots of different
kinds of mint and time at a regano, and number of different kinds of
basil. So yeah, it's a garden center also, but mainly you got
to go just see the displays. They have it set up where it is
a pleasure to walk through. And I'll call it a destination garden center because
you need to take your friends, you need to get a group and go
out there and see it. It in and of itself is just worth a
visit it really, I mean it, just seeing it is inspiring. Like
you may think, well, what am I going to do with a fountain?
You go out there and you'll see exactly what you do with the fountain,
and you'll have to have one to believe me. I was sitting there
going, I think I need to buy more properties on post some of this
stuff up out there. We're going to take a break for a little bit
here. Our phone number is seven to one to three two two KTRH.
Will be right back. Oh little rodeo music there, that's right. Larry
Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers used to come to the Rodeo all the time.
I'm going to be heading out there after the show today. I'm superintendent of
the horticulture contests and the kiddos are bringing all their different kinds of things from
floral arranging to containers. This week we did we did some of the outdoor
designs the large landscape type planting containers last week and we'll be doing stuff again
next Sunday afternoon at the at the Houston Life Stuck Show on Rodeo. Makes
it real, real fun to get out there, all kinds of things going
on. I hope you take advantage of it and get out today see some
of the things that are happening out at the stock show. While ago,
I was talking about microlife and the hummates plus. That is the purple bag.
It is concentrated compost in a bag. What does that mean? Well,
think of it this way. You got this giant pola leaves in your
yard, you compost them. Now you've got a small kind of medium sized
pile of compost, and you you take that further down and now you have
a bag of microlife. Humtes plus humts is a final decomposition stage of organic
matter and when you put it in the soil. It improves the soil.
When you put it on your lawn, it finds its way down into the
soil where it opens the soil. It helps with the heavy clay soils.
It provides a home for many kinds of microbes. Plus. Microlife Humates plus
has a lot of kinds of microbes in it, and it's just a way
of doing what nature does over a long period of time in a shorter period
of time in your yard. I recommend using it annually. You can use
it at the same time you're doing fertilizer, just apply them separately, or
you can do it now and do your fertilization later. It's up to you
how you want to go about it. Microlife products are easy to find.
You just go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com. You're going to find them everywhere.
They are widely widely available, top selling organic fertilizers here in the Greater
Houston area. For sure. Life Humus plus is one that I would suggest
is a good one for right now out there in your landscape, in your
guard, in your lawn specifically, nothing wrong with putting it in a garden.
To you, by the way, I should I should add that we're
going to go to Parland now and talk to Loretta. Hello Loretta, Hello
Skip, thank you for your show. I have an unusual question with potatoes.
This time of year, they start sprouting these swimming things, and I
know I've heard that you know you can keep the potato and plant those and
make potato plants. That's right. My question. My question is is it
safe to eat those sprouts? Do you have to wash them off with potato
before you use it, or are they If you have a potato you bought
in the store and it's sprouting, I would break those off. They break
off real easily. Potatoes are a stem tissue themselves, and so if they're
in the sunlight, if they're in light, they turn green and that is
a corphyll response and there's a compound called solanine and potatoes that's not good for
you. So if you have a potato that's got green skin because it got
some light on it, you want to just peel that off. And then
when it comes to the sprouts, you don't want to eat them, Okay,
And the second question. In the past, I have bought tomatoes that
they call ripping on the vine tomatoes. They come in a cluster okay,
with the vine connected, Yes, and setting on my counter. I have
had several tomatoes with the thieves inside the tomatoes sprout. Did they poke through
the skin? Yeah? Isn't that weird looking? That is a yeah?
Okay, here's your five dollars horticulture word for the day. That is called
the vippery. Vippery is when a seed sprouts and it's still in the fruit,
for example, and that happens, they can have the pecans and other
things on the tree. You just got to toss it. You know,
it's kind of messed up. I guess if you want to get in there
and pick out all the sprout sections and stuff, you could slete the tomato.
But basically it's kind of going to be a mess inside at some point.
Okay, So both sprouts are not good to eat, no, ma'am,
No, you don't want to do that. You don't want to do
okay. I have also looked for bean sprouts in the stores slightly, and
must stores don't carry them anymore. Okay, we'll find out. But if
you go to a specialty top store you'll find them are Why don't you just
grow them yourself? You can buy the seeds. You buy them online.
Some stores will, some garden centers will carry the sprouting seed and you just
put them a little tray. There's even a little device crews on the top
of the mason jar that you it's kind of like a screen and you put
the seeds in there, you them and turn it upside down and you can
grow your own sprouts. And that way you can grow them when you want
them, the kind you want, as much as you want. And so
that's just another thing Loretta to think about. I'm going to have to run
to another call. But if you want to try sprouting, I think it's
well, it's a fun thing to do. It's fast, and it's easy
and it's not that expensive. Well, thank you for the HILP. All
right, thank you very much. Man, appreciate that call. The other
day, I think it's yesterday. Maybe someone was looking for expanded shale and
we're trying to figure out where to get them, where to get some and
I finally thought, oh, go to Ciena Maultch and they just sent me
an email. Yep, we went to Siena. They had it. We're
all squared away, and you know, why should that not surprise any of
us. Ciena Maltz has everything that you need. Remember brown stuff first,
Well, when I say brown stuff, it doesn't have to be brown,
expanded jale is gray. But it deals with the soil. Right, brown
stuff means the soil, so it means compost, it means bed mixes,
it means fertilizers, it means expanded for heavy clay soils. Ciena Multch has
all of that. They have a wide variety of fertilizure. I mean,
if I talk about it, they've got it there. And it's a one
stop shop for getting your soil ready. And when you get your soil ready,
you're going to have success. That It's as simple as that, and
Ciena Maltch will definitely be a place to provide you quality, quality ingredients in
that way. Now they the website is Cenamultch dot com, siennamult dot com.
They're down south near Highway six and two eighty eight on FM five twenty
one, just northor Row Sharon, so that whole region down there. They
deliver within about twenty miles of the of the place, so if you need
a bulk delivery, they can take care of that too. Always a good
day to go out to Cienamultch. They are open, by the way,
I should. I should tell you this Monday through Friday seven thirty to five
and on Saturday seven thirty to two. They're closed today, but they'll be
back up open again tomorrow. We're going to head out now to sugar Land
and talk to James. Hello, James, Hey, good morning, scar
My Saint Augustine here, sugar Land is starting to turn. I guess,
but it's already starting to yellow. We killed ten or fifteen twenty June boats
on the patio last night. Could we be having grubs this early? No?
No, Why is my grass yellow on already? Different things can cause
that. Diseases can cause that. It could be did you use any kind
of products on it to kill weeds or anything? No fiction, to put
out fertilizer and pre emerging today that's going to be night for falls. Yeah,
okay, follow the label carefully when you do that. The yellowing could
be different things. If the yellowing is older leaves, that's one thing.
If it's the new growth that's yellow and you pick a blade and hold it
up to the light and it's yellow and green streaked, it looks yellow from
a distance, but when you get up close you see it's got the little
green streaks in it. That's an iron deficiency, and that will go away
in most cases on its own. But you can also add an iron supplement
to it to help cure that a little quicker that's typical in cool, moist
conditions in the spring, and it tends to grow out of it. Well,
now we sprayed propoconaisol. I think I pronounced that right last fall.
Okay, is it? Do we need to do that again? Just in
case. You know, if you're dealing with something like a brown patch,
large patches, but that'd be circles, it wouldn't be just generally yellowing.
I think if you want to send a picture of it to me, I
can put you on hold you and you can send me one an email.
But I'm about ninety percent sure of what I just told you is going to
be what I would say after looking at a picture too. One more quick
question. I usually buy eight or ten bags of sixty four to put out
on my trees at around the trees at the ranch. Okay, but I
noticed Nitrofoss also has a sixteen to four A tree and shrub fertilizer. Yes,
it is one better than the other. They both will work. One
is organic, one is synthetic. The synthetic significantly cheaper. So well,
then there's it's a great fertilizer. Night foster and shrub will work just fine.
It's a it's a fast release, so don't overdo it. I would
What I would do is go up to the tree trunk and look at how
many inches across, not around, but in diameter, how many inches across
is it? And give it a cup or two per inch of trunk diameter,
And that way a big tree gets more than a little tree. A
couper two per inch of trunk diameter of the nitrofoss product. The tree and
shrub you talked about. It's an excellent product that will work very well.
Okay, great, thank you, all right, you take care. Thanks
for the call. Appreciate that Anti grozen Porium is a place that if you
haven't been, you need to go. If you have been, you know
what I'm talking about. It's destination. It is the whole. It's like
you've gone back in time and that they have the outbuildings that are just rustic
and cool, and of course that fits well with antique roses that you know
that that feel they are loaded up on roses, but they also have more
than that. There are more than just roses. They have perennials, all
kinds of great perennials, lex Alvia's and other wonderful things, Purple cone flower,
you know, lentanas and whatnot. Coming up March ninth and tenth.
What would that be next Saturday? I believe it is on my calendar.
March ninth and tenth is a spring celebration and they're going to have speakers,
including myself. I will be out there giving a talk. I'm gonna talk
on beneficial insects. So if you'd like to learn more about attracting beneficials next
Saturday, you got it. Antigros and Porum Now they have an artistan market
and food trucks and of course all the plants and tools and fertilizers and everything
you need. Antique Roseemporium dot com. That's a website, Antique Rosanmporium dot
com. You want to go there and learn more about it because it's always
a good time to go to Anti grosm Porium. Spring is just visually unbelievable
out there and if you want to call them ninety seven nine eight three six
fifty five forty eight nine seven nine eight three six fifty five forty eight,
you can do that. I encourage if you're going to go, load the
car up, get your friends, get your family, you know, go
out and see it because this is a destination and you want to be there.
And I hope you show up next Saturday, March ninth. It's March
ninth and tenth the events. I'll be there on Saturday. Look forward to
seeing you. We're going to take a little break here. It is time
for Nikki in the news. I will be right back our number seven one
three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Welcome back to Garden Line during the Houston Livestock Show in
Rodeo. Have you been to a rodeo this year? You need to go.
They got the lineup there is awesome, always fun. Plus there's something
to do out there at the Houston Life Section and Rodeo. I'm gonna be
out today. We're having a horticulture contest going on again this weekend and next
weekend as well. I'll be working with them out there on that. If
you live up in Tomball, here's your hometown feed store. If you're anywhere
near Tomball, here's your hometown feed store. D and D Feed and Supply.
They're west of Tomball on twenty nine to twenty. You just head out
that way and they are always getting shipments of chicks in out at D and
D Feed. They it's a regular supply coming through. You can go and
give them a call first. Just give them a call at two eight one
three five one seventy one forty four two eight one three five one seven one
four four and say hey, what you got now and when are you getting
the next ones? And they can tell you they've got all the feed you
need, of course, livestock feed, great quality pet feed. By the
way, do you need soils like I was talking about the works potting soil
from airloom soils. They carry airloom soils out at D and D Feed.
Do you need fertilizers? They have a wide variety of fertilizers. They've got
nitrophoss fertilizers. They got the super green that we were talking about a little
bit before. Do you need your barricade for the weed control they've got that.
In other words, they've got a lot of things at D and D
Feed that you need for your home and for your garden. Again the phone
number two eight one three five one seventy one forty four. Check them out
at D and DE Feed. It's a great place, great supplies. And
oh, by the way out front, they got a lot of plants.
They do a good job of bringing in a lot of different kinds of plants
that are going to be timely, that's for the season, and they're going
to be all kinds of things you want, things like strawberries. I saw
some of those out there the other day. So D and defeed get you
all set up. We're going to head out now to East Houston and talk
to Tom. Hello. Tom, Hello, how are you to day?
Skip? Okay, sir, how can we help? I wanted to share
some no what that man that called yesterday concerning about what he called mestita hawk.
All right, I need you, I need you to give a fast
version of that. Can you do that for me? Those are called crane
flies. They are forty four They do not have mouths, they do not
have stingers. They are primarily on this earth to feed the birds. If
you look outside, you start seeing birds in your yard. So it's a
beneficial insect. It actually is. They don't do any significant damage to anything.
And you're right about the mouths. But the larvae basically chewing up organic
matter done in the soil, moist organic matter, so they're even part of
that cycle as well. Tom, I appreciate that information. Good to good
to hear from you, and thanks for passing that along. You're welcome,
all right, sir, You take you take care. Now's the time to
get your wheden weeding done in the lawn. That means a product like barricade
to prevent the weeds that are coming up and they are sprouting. Now it's
time to get that done. But also how about your early spring green up.
Nitrofoss Imperial that is the red bag. It makes it so simple when
they have colors Nitrofos Imperial red bag. It's a fifteen to five to ten.
That three to one to two ratio is what any turf specialist from Texas
to Florida to really across the country will tell you is three one two ratio
fertilizers. That's what grass takes up. That's what you need and that is
why Nitrofoss Imperial is in a fifteen five ten combination. It's a three one
two ratio. That's what it needs. Where do you get nitrofos, Well,
throw a rock and you probably hit a place that sells nitrofoss. That's
the fast answer. If you are in the Memorial area, Memorial Drive,
Ace Hardware City has got nitrofoss products. If you're in Stanton Shopping Center,
don in Alvin, Yep, you're going to find them there. Go out
to Katie Ace Hardware on Pinoak Out in Katie. They've got night FoST products
as well, easy to find them. Now's the time. If you're going
to do primerge, now's the time to do the barricade. If you're gonna
do spring greenup, now's the time to put that Imperial down. Don't delay
because we got an other fertilizing we'll be doing later on, but now's the
time for that spring greenuple. Let's quit and head out to Kingwood now and
talk to Jeremy. Hello, Jeremy, Hey, skip has a great segue.
I wanted to ask you, so the weeds in my yard have emerged.
Yah, So I want to make sure that I can put down the
I already have the nitroposs weed and feed. I haven't put it down yet,
but I want to. It's okay to put it down now and then
wait how many how long until I could put it down the Imperial Now,
I haven't been on any any fertilizing schedule or anything for a while, so
I'm just trying to get going now, and I want to make sure I
don't mess it up from this point on. Okay, So you what if
you put down already? Nothing? Oh? Nothing? Okay? So which
which nitrophoss weed and feed do you have? What color is the bad blue
blue bag? Okay, that's a that's going to be a post emergent TRIMEC
combination product, and so it's going to do the early greenups. So you
want to go ahead and do it a S A P. Because here's the
deal. You need the weeds to be wet and you need the granules to
stick to the weeds. So give a quick little sprinkling just enough to what
the weeds put it out. It sticks to the weeds and it moves down.
As weeds get further and further along blooming and setting seed, they're harder
to kill, and at some point they've already made seeds, so you kind
of miss missed your boat. So don't delay. Get that down. Now's
the time for green up. Now's the time to go ahead and kill those.
Those are all winter weeds. Anyone listening, any weed you're seeing now
is a sticking up in the garden or the yard weed, that's a winter
weed. And now's the time to get them done, because as we move
forward, they become less and less susceptible or already have set seeds to sentence
you to more weeding next year, in the year after and the year after
that. So let me follow up real quick. Once I put this down,
I will get it down today. How long should I wait until I
do the next step? And as the next step, the imperial or the
blue bag is in place of the imperial. You've made the decision to choose
not just fertilizer, which is imperial, but fertilizer plus pust emergent. Broadly,
if we control that's the blue bag. So the next step will be
when you do your fertilization as we get into spring. So at this point,
let's say you are in Kingwood. At this point I would say,
probably about mid April would be the next time that you're going to fertilize,
and that would mid to late April. Even that would be when you put
your your long slower release product out. You're using the nitrofoss products, so
that would be the super turf, the silver bag, but that's not coming
until we get much further out into April. Okay, perfect, all right,
thank you very much, sim I have a gret day. Yeah,
and for people listening, just just for clarity, so we don't so I
don't confuse you. I say that because he is putting out the greenup.
Now, if you don't use the greenup, that's the green Up's the optional
application. If you don't use the Greenup, then you can start, you
know, earlier in April, h putting out your longer term slow release things
like in the case Jeremy's using the nitrofos products, that would be the silver
bag, the Imperial in April. It's always hard to say these things on
the radio because people selectively listen or selectively here however you want to go about
it, and someone will say, well, I heard I was supposed to
put Imperial out now. No no, no, no, no, no,
no, I'm sorry. Yes, yes, yes on Imperial No no,
no, on the silver bag. Not yet, not yet. It's
coming. It's a great product and it'll feed and feed and feed on through
the weeks and months early into the late spring and summer season. All right,
Well, our phone number if you'd like to give us a call and
talk about things that are of interest to you is seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Welcome back to Guarden Line. Good to have you with us today.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to answer gardening questions.
That is what we do. Listen, if you were down in the
Richmond Rosenberg area, you need to get by Chanted Forest. They have loaded
up on color on shrubs, trees, vegetables, herbs, everything you can
imagine. I was looking out they had some beautiful angelonias. That's what we
call it, summer snap dragon. You plant that thing now and it's going
to carry all the way through summer. It just grows and blooms and blooms
and blooms and blooms. It's a wonderful bedding plant. Beautiful color combinations,
tall spiky blooms. It's just beautiful. It's part of any summer landscape bed
color. And they got them right now, so don't wait for summer for
them, go ahead and get them out. They have all kinds of other
things. All the petunias and all the other plants that we would think about
planting now are going to be there. They also have Texas Mountain Laurel.
Now, if you never smelled one of those, you got to go buy
and smell one. They are a purple bloom that looks like a cluster of
grapes and smells like grape kool aid or a great bubblegum rather that strong grape
bubblegums. Oh, it's wonderfully fragrant, grows, slow, takes its time,
has to have good drainage, plant it on a mound, but they
have them. They've got hanging baskets. They just have everything that you would
need. They are loaded up on it and as they always are out there
and enchanted for us, it's a fun place to go hang out and wander
and see. They just continue to have more and more cool stuff going on,
and they always if you doan't to have a butterfly garden, you have
to go there. They have the milkweeds, they have all the plants that
attract butterflies. In fact, during peak season they got so many caterpillars.
They'll even give you caterpillars to take home, so you can kind of like
a sour dough starter for butterfly gardens. Right, you bring a caterpillar home
with you with the plant so you can get going on it. Enchanted Forest.
Where is Enchended Forest. Well, if you're in Richmond heading toward Sugarland,
it's off to the right on FM twenty seven fifty nine. The most
important thing, really, the most important thing that you're going to need to
know is the website Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. Enchanted Forest,
Richmond, TX dot com. Let's go now out to We're gonna talk
to Vicky in Willis. Hello, Hello Vicky from Willis, Good morning,
Good morning. The caterpillars as a starter for or butterflies. That's your riot.
That's great. That is the first time first time Clay Clay and Danny
told me they were doing that out there is like, that's a great idea.
Very good. I've been really good this year. I've done my pre
margin on everything doing well or not totally weak free. But we live out
in the country and we just will deal with that. But I'm starting to
see my Saint Augustine. I'm starting to see patches already. Summer's green and
some is. I've got a couple of spots of yellow. We've got a
couple of spots of just not doing anything. It's patchy. I have no
idea why what do I do well? The yellow is probably due to an
iron deficiency, which happens in the spring quite often, especially when the temperature
cool The Saint Augustine roots are not growing very fast and the plants aren't They're
kind of waking up slow like Saint Augustine does, and you get a little
early on some of that iron deficiency. You can put an iron supplement on
it. I have found that is the weather warms up and organic matter decompositions
picks up faster that it sort of goes away on its own. But if
you'd like to do an iron supplement, that this would be a good time
to do that. Also, just be careful don't get iron on your sidewalks,
your driveways because will it will leave a rust stain. Yeah, and
I would say that's probably all there is to it. There could be some
other things going on, but it's just too early to expect a lot out
of your Saint Augustine appearance wise. So if it still looks bad three weeks
from now, let's talk again, okay, sor right, Well, we'll
give it time to grow itself and see what happens. You Victa, take
care. I used to have a peach orchard in Willis by the way.
Oh, oh, that'd be great. Love that, Love it up there,
love it up there. I was visiting with Ty Strickland and his wife
from Fixed Nice Lab Foundation Repair the other day and I was just picking his
brain. And the guy he he knows foundations. I could not ask a
question that he didn't know the answer to. He's been doing this for twenty
three years. Really, I fixmyslab dot com. That's his website. So
do you see a crack in your brick? Do you see a crack in
your sheet rock? Maybe you know the doors are sticking a little bit in
the house because the foundation moves. And as you get a house that gets
older and older, the chances of that just get larger and larger. And
there's things that contribute to it, and he can help you understand the things
that are in your power to do to help protect your foundation. That is
important. Now tell him you're a guarden line listener. You get a free
estimate if you tell them you're a garden line listener. The thing about ty
and Fix my Slab is they're committed to be on time, to show up
when they say they're going to show up, to do it at a fair
price, and to fix it right. That is important and doing it right
is very critical to having good success. Now again, Fix my Slab dot
Com is the website two eight one two fyy five forty ninety nine to eight
one two five forty nine forty nine. Don't delay, it's not going to
get better. Now's a great time to have foundation work started on your property
because this is just a good time with the soil and the condition it's and
go ahead and do that. If your sidewalks and driveways are heaving and cracking,
that's a whole different issue, and they can come in and they can
fix that as well, including the thing where you kind of float it up
and re level it. They have a way of doing that. So you're
not buying a new driveway. What a great deal. Fix my slab foundation
repair. David in Tomball is going to be our next call here. How
how are you doing out there in Tomall? David, Good, Good morning,
sir. Hey, I got a little tomato myth or truth question.
Okay. I got a flower bed that's about four feet by ten feet and
on one side, I got my tomatoes planning way. On the other side,
I was gonna put some peppers, and my neighbor, oh, no,
you can't do that. And I researched it, and I never could
get a definitive yes or no that I could or could not. Okay,
what's your take on it? Do it? You can do it. It's
fine. Okay. Here's where that comes from. Plants in the same family
tend to get the same diseases. And if it's a soil disease like Fizariam,
reverse cilium, root rod or something, and you grow the same plant
year after year after year, and happened to get that disease in there,
then following up with peppers in that spot or eggplant in that spot, because
those are all related, then you're just you're that's a problem. But having
a tomato in the same bed as a pepper. Absolutely no problem. Now,
should you someday develop some root disease or something, plant something different there
and put your tomatoes and peppers in other beds. Hey, if I can
one more question, all right, I want to build a strawberry bed and
build it in a box? What dimensions, how date and should it be
and how wide? Kind of an ideal you need about a foot of soil
deep, and it gets you a lightweight soil. If you can even mix
some sand in with a quality mix, you know, like a vegetable and
herb from heirloom or something a mix, then that sand is good good drainage,
and strawberries don't like a heavy clay, so give it a good mix
about a foot deep. I plant mine on beds that are about three feet
across because you can put three plants across the bed that way, and it's
not too far to reach to get to the middle from either side. So
that would be my advice. Alrighty, thank you sir. All right,
good luck with that. Have fun out there and tumble take care. You've
got RCW Nurseries down on two forty nine where it hits belt Way eight.
They are specialists when it comes to having every kind of rose under the sun,
they grow them all. You know, if you remember the Rose Society,
you want to find a place that's got all kinds of beautiful cutflower roses,
shrub roses and anti They got it all right there at RCW Nursery.
They grow their own trees up in Plantersville, so they have quality grown trees
varieties that belong here. That's very very important. Now we are entering the
big spring season, so it's time to finish up your roses and tree planting
if possible, just because things do better when you plan them early on rather
than waiting until July to put those things in the ground. Now is the
time to get it done. They have all the supplies you need to put
in to put with the plants as you're planting them to ensure good success.
RCW Nurseries they better on a long time. They know what they're talking about,
and they carry stuff that grows here and that is very very important to
have that as well. I also want to talk to you about a little
bit about Nature's Way resources. They're having their Spring Garden Festival and that is
March ninth, That would be next Saturday, from nine to two. They're
gonna have education. They're gonna walk around and get you some sangree at a
drink. They got stuff with the kids, all kinds of stuff happening.
It's always fun and listen. Never go to Nature's Way without an empty car
for bringing home native plants. They've got for bringing home the soil mixes and
the blends. Call them, give them to get them to deliver toy Nature's
Way Resources dot Com. That's the website. I always like going out there
Connedy and they they just the place just keeps getting better and it's just more
fun to get out and do. You don't want to miss that event.
It will be a lot of fun while you're listening to garden Line. Here
we are putting another show hour in the books. We've got one more left
today. I hope you stick around for us. Maybe those neighbors that have
their light to offer a wake. Now, if you want to go back
and knock on the door again, tell them, hey, garden Line's still
on. Don't miss it. I'll be right back in just a moment.
Katie r. H. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products
or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r. H. Garden
Line with Skip Richter's Crazy trim. Just watch him as were so many brothies
supprazy gas not a sim. Welcome back to, Welcome back to Guarden Line.
Glad to have you with us today. Hey, we are here to
answer gardening questions. So if you got one seven one three two one two
five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four,
if you are interested in a high concentration organic fertilizer for your lawn, Nitroposs
Sweet Green is that product. It's eleven percent nitrogen, which is higher than
most nitrogen sources that come from a natural source. And this is a molasses
based product. Through microbial activity, it is turned it basically into a quality
fertilizer. Smells wonderful, smells like molasses because that's what it's made from,
and that sugary substance really enhances back to your life in the So it's why
we use in organic gardens, why we use molasses as a soil amendment.
It is very very effective for that and this one will provide the nutrients and
the green up that you're going to need for your lawn. Now. Nitrofoss
Sweet Green is available widely. You can find it in a lot of different
places, like all the different nitroposs products that you would see, for example,
ACE Hardware at single ranch out there in Katie, Yep, they are
going to have this product. If you go to a task Asita, Ace
out in a task Asda, they're going to have nitrofoss products as well,
like our Sweet Green here and Lake Jackson down at Lake Hardbearing Clute specifically,
they're going to have the nitrofoss products as well. It's not hard to find
them. They're widely available. And the Sweet Green I think you will be
very pleased with both, from the fragrance of it all the way down to
the way that it works. I want to go out now and we're going
to start doing some more calls for this hour. We'll start with John in
League City. Hello, John, Good morning to you morning. I have
a question. I put Shaw in my backyard, okay, about four years
ago, and the dogs have trampolin and so in October I planted Rye rass
win or right, and it's going in nice and thick and I really like
it, but I know it's going to die off. Yes, so do
they make a summer ride. Nope, they don't. They don't, Unfortunately
they don't. You just want to as it, what's going to happen?
What kind of lawn do you have? Senegast? Okay, so the Saint
Augustine's would try to wake up here as the weather warms up, and the
rye grass is going to be wanted to grow like crazy. And so there's
this transition where the rye grass is basically like a whole bunch of weeds in
your Saint Augustine competing for water and nutrients. So you're gonna want, as
we get a little further into the season to mow that down pretty short and
then let this Saint Augustine come on up and get sunlight, because a good,
thick, healthy, standard rye grass is quite a competitor in the spring
during that transition. All right, did I fertilize it? Now? You
can't. You can fertilize with the spring green up. I think. I
think what I might do in your situation is I might hold off and then
on April first, begin the slow release fertilizers that are on my schedule online.
If you go to gardening with Skip dot com, online. You can
see the schedule. It's free to print out. And I think I would
skip the spring green up because you've got all that ryegress in there and I
don't want to encourage it any further. And then I would go ahead and
do a good, a good mowing down low as we're coming, you know,
a little further toward the end of March, and then do the Saint
Augustine fertilization at that time. Okay, very cool, all right, you
good luck with that, John. I hope that, hope that works all.
Arburgate Nursery and tom Ball is the place that, of course everybody has
heard of. They have been around, they've been around a while, and
I was surprised at the arbor gate. You know, I've been going there
for ages. I always love to go out and visit with Beverly and really
all of our staff out there. They have a group of very, very
friendly and educated folks that know gardening, and you get answers from them,
You're gonna absolutely know that you can depend on those answers because they know what
they're talking about. And that's important. Listen, when you go out and
get gardening advice from people, you often don't know. And I hear people
all the time that they'll call the show and say, well, so and
so tell me such and such, and it's just not right. But it
absolutely at Arburgate. You don't have to worry about that. You got people
that know and they every time I go there, it's like shipments and shipments
of plants coming in. It's always loaded up and beautiful, the best,
coolest new thing. By the way, they celebrated their twenty eighth anniversary this
week, twenty eight years. Can you believe that? I can't, It
seems like yesterday. But Arburgate Nursery is on twenty nine to twenty west to
Tombul and there's a little road called Trishel Road that goes behind it, and
the brand new beautiful parking lot is back there, and so you don't have
to worry about parking on the road. On twenty nine to twenty. Take
Trischel and go behind it. It starts before Arburgate and it comes back into
twenty nine to twenty after Arburgate. So if you miss it on the way
through, just pass by Arburgate and look for Trischel. It'll come back in
there and jump on it. And run out run behind Arburgate All Weather Parking.
It is wonderful and Arburgate is loaded right now. I was out there
about a week ago and it was just unbelievable the supply of everything they had.
I mean I could name every plant, but that would take the rest
of this show in the next two because they have so many cool things.
I was talking earlier about. You know how important the summer color is,
and they can fix you up on that at Arburgate. Why are you there?
Pick up their one two three easy system. It's the food organic food
that's complete. It's the organic soil complete and the organic compost complete. The
latter two both have expanded shale in the mix, which is especially nice.
Let's see, we're going to go now to Willis and to Jessica. Hello,
Hello, hight Sorry, this is Gary. My wife's dialed in and
she handed me the phone, so I'll ask I'll ask you the question.
All right. I love your show, listen to it a lot. We're
new at the Gate at the gardening program, and we were hoping that we
could get some guidance on where we might find a gardener for hire help us
establish establish a nice vegetable and fruit and flower garden, and we could kind
of work alongside of someone for a while and uh and and learn how to
do it. Would you have any suggestions. We've really tried a lot of
different avenues and we just haven't been able to find anybody that's available to Well,
that's that's a good that's a good question. Unfortunately, I don't I
don't have a real specific answer for you, but I have two suggestions.
Uh. Now, it's a little bit of a distance for you for Willis,
but over in Montgomery at a and a landscape or a and a garden
center, they have they hire out to go clean up yards and things in
the Lake Conroe area. I think you're going to be too far for them
to go. No, that's where we are. We're very close to they
come. Okay, well, you can hire their crew to come out and
do spring cleanup and things like that. I would talk to them and see
what kind of a service like that. Maybe they would visit, you know,
several times during the year and you would meet them there and they would
I don't know, you just have to talk to them at ana and see
what they're say. The other thing is cursh your over in Lake Conroe side
on Airport Road outside of Conroe where the Lone Star Convention Center is. The
Montgomery County Extension offices right across the street there, and they have a master
gardener program. There may be somebody within that program who would be willing to
do that. And normally master Gardener's a volunteer program. They don't hire out.
That's not how that works. But I would call that office either,
talk to Michael Potter, the horticulture agent. There are some of the master
gardeners and they should be able to help you. I am up against a
hard break and so I'll put you on hold. If you want to hang
on, we can. If not, I hope that is helpful for you.
Thank you for that call. We'll be right back. Try not to
move and wiggle your foot or tap your toes or anything during that song.
And I defy you to try that. It is impossible. Yes, that's
true. Hey, you're listening to Guardline. I'm your host, Skip Richter.
We are glad to be talking to you today. I want to tell
you about jungle Land. It is a soil for containers by the folks at
nightrofous now Jungle land has two versions. There's the Flower and Vegetable planning soil
for putting outdoors, and it says flower and vegetable, but you can put
it for herbs too. Anything in a container like that, it's going to
do well with it. For color plants, you will absolutely ignite really solid
color and growth for all those plants. It knows how to hold water and
knows how to drain excess water, and that's what you need in a good
quality mix. Now there's a jungle land for indoor plants. It's called the
water Saving Potting soil, and that has the crystals that hold onto water.
The roots go upside the crystal hold onto the crystal essentially, and when the
things get dry well it can pull water out of those crystals because if they
hold water very very well, that makes it more forgiving when you forget to
water. Where do you get jungle land, Well, wherever you get any
kind of nitropos product, which are widely widely available. You can go to
Kingwood Ace Hardware down in Kingwood and they have it there. You can go
to the Arbor Gate up in Tombol. You can go to Shades of Texas
on Genoa Bluff. Road down in South Houston all places where you can find
nitrofoss products. I want to mention today by the way, that this is
the time to get any kind of landscape work scheduled and get it. You
know, whether you're doing landscape renovations or or compost top dress. Things are
aerations and things. The folks at Greenpro are the ones that will do your
aeration up in the northern part of our Araine area. We're gonna say Magnolia
and within a forty five mile range around Magnolia, so that'll go down about
to central Houston area. I'll go over maybe about Interced forty five down to
around it ten. That's roughly speaking. You have to give them a call.
They will come out and they will do the compost top dressing with top
quality composts. They will do the core aeration where you pull a core out
of the soil, pop it onto the surface and that helps get oxygen down
in the roots. The compost falls down in those holes. It builds the
soil and enhances it really stimulates, especially when you're dealing with the heavy clay
soil. Grass can struggle in a compacted, heavy clay compost top dressing after
you have air rated will work very well. Now you can do the other
order if you want, but you could just aeration, or you can do
both. The the are just the compost top dressing, or you can do
them both, and I would recommend both. By the way. Now that
is green Pro and their number. Write this down seven excuse me two eight
one three five to one forty seven thirty three two eight one three five one
forty seven thirty three, or go to greenpro dot net talk to them about
it. They know what they're doing. They do an excellent, excellent job
for that region that they surface up there, service up there. I think
I'm running toward the end of the show, and my brain and my mouth
connection is starting to falter a little bit as I try to say words.
Microlife has a wide variety of fertilizers. You know, you can get their
fertilizer for acidic plant. You can get the fertilizer that's designed for the citrus
and fruit kinds of plants like that. You can get the fertilizer that we
think of as a lawn fertilizer. It's the green bag. It's really the
everything fertilizer. I mean fertilized trees with it, a furtlized vegetable gardens with
it. It's a good fertilizer. Right now, I want to talk to
you about the hum mats plus that is concentrated compost in a bag and it
is Microlife's purple bag. Now, this is one that you're doing periodically over
time to your lawn to improve the soil structure, to improve the effect of
the microbes that are there, making things better for your root system. Well,
hum mats plus is part of that cycle. And what you need is
you need the purple bag. That's a zero zero four and I would put
it on now. Don't think of it as a fertilizer. It does have
four percent potassium. Think of it as a microbial provider and a soil enhancement
product, and that's what it does. Microlife humats plus purple bag. Let's
do that now. You want to do that periodically and pretty soon we're going
to be talking about the green bag and fertilizing your lawn. But for right
now, Microlife humts plus very important part of a long term that's the wayne
nature takes care of plants, that's the organic process, long term benefit to
your soil. We're going to go now out to Beaumont and talk to Donna.
Hello, Donna, Hey, Skip. I got two questions. First
of all, I have a yesterday to yesterday, today and tomorrow plants that
I've had for a long time. They're in pretty large pots, all right,
and they're starting to put new growth on, but they're real stimmy looking,
and I was wondering is there a time I can pring those back a
little bit? And also what kind of fertilizer is best for those? Okay,
so you said it's a yesterday, Today, and tomorrow plant, right,
Yes, sir. It has the flowers that change colors from blue to
white and whatnot. Okay, that violet and then it gets a little lighter.
Yeah, okay, I want to make sure we're talking about the right
one. You can print it back a little now if you like it's okay,
you can leave it as it is, and then next winter print it
back a little bit as we get toward the end of winter. If it's
got decent light, and if you're fertilizing it, it'll fill in. It'll
look really nice, a beautiful plant, like the way the branches arch over
and have those blooms and stuff. I would use a lawn fertilizer on it
myself. I mean, there's a lot of good fertilizers out there that will
work well on it. But when we're talking about our turf fertilizer, if
you get my lawn care schedule at Gardening with Skip, yeah, just go
down there. Whatever you're going to use on your lawn, use that on
that. Brune Felcia, which is the fancy name for yesterday. Okay.
And the other quick question was I have one of those corn plants. I
think it's what you call it. It's got a real long stem and some
leaves coming out at the top indoor plant, right, and it looks just
so yellow on the leaves. I'm thinking it either might need a bigger pot
or maybe different fertilizer or something added to it. Yeah, you know you
could. I put you on hold here when we're done, and if you
don't send me a picture of it, I'll give you an opinion about the
bigger pot. But in general, yes, some nutrient fertilizers would help.
But also watch the water is as you get as the plant gets big and
it's too big for the pot, it turns dry. Really quick because you
have very little soil to support that big plant, and so just watch that
the soil doesn't dry out nor stay soggy wet. Both of those create issues
for those plants. Soggy wet starts root rots that cause yellowing two. Okay,
all right, all right, all right, Well you're welcome, Bunches.
Thank you for the call. I appreciate that. If you're looking for
a quality tree, Verdant Tree Farm will get you set up. Listen.
Verdant has three locations. It makes it really easy, really easy to find
a Verdant tree here in Houston. You can go out to West Houston on
Barker Cyprus. You can go to the Heights where Yell Street comes into Inner
State. Right there that area, there's a Verdant Tree Farm down in Pearland
on Broadway Street, just a few blocks away from the Killing Steakhouse. There
is a Verdant Tree Farm there. Now. They have a wide variety of
trees. They have excellent selection of palm trees as well. By the way,
but if you want a fast instant tree seven hundred gallons, they can
sell you trees up to seven hundred gallons. You can go in take them
a picture. You can sit down with them and go, hey, what
tree would go well right here in this location, and they can talk to
you about that. You pick the tree, you tag it yourself, they
bring it to your house, they plant it, and if they plan it,
they guarantee it for one year. Now, you're not going to do
better than that. This is called Verdant Tree Farm and that's the website Verdant
Treefarm dot com. Talk to them. I was out a while back looking
at some of the trees and things they had coming in and just visiting with
Patrick about some of the things they had. It's a great place with a
lot of great product. We're going to head out now. Let's see.
Next would be the Anthony in Spring, Texas. Hello Anthony, Okay,
good morning, how are you. I'm well, sir, good. I
have a question. I need to build my lawn up with soil. I
had a lot of erosion from gutters overflowing, not draining properly, and I'm
not sure what to put down first. I mean, eventually we want to
put a small garden back where all the dirt ran off, but we look
like we need to probably add at least a couple of inches of soil along
that foundation and then build it out along the front yard. It's just my
front lawn. What do I put down first? And do I have to
till or air rate the existing soil first, or how do I go about
this? And this is St. Augustine, You say, oh, yes,
sir, I'm sorry, Well, there used to be grass there.
I have a couple of trees in the front yard and I've been told that
they're just sucking the life out of all my grass too. So because the
grass is very sparse in the area. Okay, if you need to raise
the level, I would do it gradually over time. You can go out
and spread about an inch. If you can do a top soil type lend,
that's truly good there. Some folks will also take a compost material and
mix it with a compost or a sandy mix together and spread that out.
The organic materials like the compost are going to decompose away and so that in
long term they're not going to raise the level. But the soil top soil
or sand will raise the level. But you're going to do it gradually,
maybe a half inch, and let the grass grow through it and a little
bit later in the season, add another half inch or third of an inch,
and just keep gradually bringing it up over time. That is better for
the grass, unless you just want to strip it off and reside. But
it's also better for the trees. If you could drop three inches of soil
over a tree's entire root system, you severely stress that tree. And we
won't to avoid that, We're going to take it a little bit slower than
that. Okay, Yeah, because I've got roots popping up in the lawn
as I'm trying to cut whatever grass is there. Yeah, I'm running over
roots everywhere. Yeah, but I mean years ago, the grass was nice
and green and thick, and then just I don't know if it's just the
erosion killing the grass or if it's the trees killing the grass. Probably both.
Yeah. The trees shading the grass weakened the grass, and so it's
ability to fuel growth and density goes down as the light intensity goes down.
So trees they don't get along. Well, they don't like each other.
That's what I've got. I've got full shade until about one or two o'clock
and then my house faces west, so I get full sun the rest of
the day. Okay, well, Anthony, that's the best shot. I'm
gonna take a little break here for the news, but that's what I would
do. And I would also seriously consider maybe doing a groundcover or something else
there, because once it gets too shady for grass, it's hard to have
it. Just come back and be lushing. You be with it all,
right, Hey, I appreciate your call. Thank you, sir. I
appreciate that call very much. We're going to turn it over to Nicky and
the news. By the way, Nikki, the news is that weeds are
sprouting all over town and the time to put the pre emergence out that I
haven't all I've been listening to news all day and you haven't mentioned that,
and that is a critical factor that needs to be more important than all the
other news that could be possibly out there. Okay, if I have time,
I'll squeeze it in here. I'm sure you will. Welcome back to
the guard Line. What are we going to talk about now? I'll tell
you what we're going to talk about now, talk about the things you need
to be doing in your garden and your landscape. If you'd like to give
us a call seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one
three two one two ktrh, So another way you can go about dialing it.
Driving around town yesterday, I was looking at some beautiful, beautiful blooming
plants that are their spring announcers. What do we say, the harbingers of
spring? Right? Uh? And one of them is a saucer magnolia.
Have you ever seen saucers? They are gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. The saucer
magnolia is a shrub slash, let's say, big shrub. We'll leave it
at that, big shrub. And saucer magnolias have beautiful pink everything almost from
a wine to a pink to a white colors and the flower, depending on
the cultivar, mostly pink. And they just pop out in the spring on
bare branches and they have these big, old saucer like attractive blooms. They're
really cool, a lot of fun to be able to have that kind of
color that early in the season, and it's important, it's important to be
able to do that, and that's what they look like. I've seen in
some still spring blooming around town. They are easy, easy in terms of
giving them a you give them a acidic soil, you give them adequate soil
moisture, you get them decent sunlight, and they're going to perform well for
you, and they do, they do super well. And other spring blooming
plants are on the way. You know the I was bragging earlier about the
Chinese fringe tree and how beautiful they are in the spring and the way they
just absolutely light up the sky with shaggy white blooms that smell so good.
Red buds another good one for the spring. Some of you are fortunate enough
to live in an area where dogwoods will do well for you, and that's
another one for spring. And then we have all the things we can do
in our landscapes, lots and lots of things from color plants. There are
annuals to color plants that are perennials, to containers. And where do you
get all of this wide variety of plants. Well, if you head over
to Ingented Gardens and Richmond, you're going to find a lot of wonderful plants
just like what I've been talking about. They know how to put the collections
together. Are the things that do well here and that are just just outstanding
in terms of performance and beauty. And Chaney Gardens has always been good at
that. You know, they've been a showplace since the family has been part
of that community since nineteen ninety five. And in Channet Gardens, Richmond,
by the way, that's that's the garden center that if you go north from
Richmond, like you're going to Katie fullsher direction, Well it's on three fifty
nine and it's up there, and you've probably been there before if you haven't
worth the drive there. They're open today from ten am to four pm.
So if somebody would like to head out, maybe you lift some other direction
and you just have ever been to this nursery, you want to go see
it? I think you should, and I think you'll be very very impressed
with it because it is it's the kind of place that you want to take
friends and family when they come visit. It's that kind of a showplace.
And in Channi Gardens, Richmond, easy easy to get to again FM three
fifty nine. What do you need? You need vegetables, herbs, flowers.
They have beautiful, beautiful containers, beautiful containers full of flowers. They
have succulents, they have pretty much everything you can dream up wanting to have
there at in Chenni Gardens, and I love to go. I love to
visit. I love to visit with the folks there because they absolutely know what
they're talking about and it's just fun. It's just a fun place to go
see. You know. I always encourage you guys that are listening to Guardline,
why don't you get out in the afternoon. This afternoon be a good
time to go out and visit. We have so many good nurseries here North
Southeast, West Central that you can just enjoy time out and get inspiration and
yeah, bring home some stuff for the soil and stuff for the for the
color and the plants. This is a good time to do it, all
right. I'm going to go over to Orange County and I'm gonna talk to
Greg. Hello. Greg, Hello, thanks for taking my call. Yes,
I have a question about I heard you talking about like turf store weed
and later. I have a property in Jefferson County that I'm building a house
own and my lawn is just covered with weeds. I mean, it's been
neglected for years. But I can't find that brand in my area, at
least I haven't yet. But I traveled to Houston to Pasadena on Wednesdays and
I heard you mentioned a place called Shades of Texas or nitrofos. What would
you recommend because I want to get a good, uh you know, product
to put on the lawn to try to get the weeds. And I was
wondering what you recommend. You're you're where I could get it. You're an
Orange, yes, sir, I am, but I don't. I've looked
online and I can't see anyone that lists a nitrofos or this church store brand.
Well, I would. I would talk to the folks at Child's Building
Supply in Orange. There an ACE Hardware Child Building Supply there on sixteenth Street
nor sixteenth Street. They yes, Ace is really good about carrying nitrophos products.
I would expect that they have it. You may have to drive a
little further up to my There's an M and D supply up in Maurysville,
and of course then over Inviter in Beaumont, and there's a number of aces
out in that area. If you go to the the ACE Hardware or ACE
Hardware dot Com and do their store locator, you can see all the red
dots of the aces. That's where I would start looking for nitrofoss out in
your area. Okay, I really appreciate it. Thank you you've met Greg.
Thanks a lot. Appreciate that call. Helpe get that lawn back into
shape, that is for sure. Yeah. Ace Hardware, you know forty
of them here in the Greater Houston area. Forty Ace Hardware stores. So
yes, all the way out there in Orange, Texas there are Ace Hardware
stores Mauriceville, vider Beaumont, Lumberton's got them out that direction and of course
all over the Greater Houston area. Just go to acehardward dot com, go
to the store locator. If you want me to spell it out, it's
Acehardware dot com slash store dash locator. I'd just like to say, go
to Acehardware dot com. You can find it. And when you're there,
you're going to find ever fertilizer I talk about. You're going to find everything
you need to control insects and to carol weeds and control diseases. There you're
going to find the tools that you need, the water hoses and things,
and then all the cool stuff for indoor and outdoor living. And if you
haven't been in an as in a while, you need to go check them
out. You are going to be very surprised. And when you go to
an ACE you need to ask about the ACEH Rewards program because you're going to
be there shopping. You're going to be going back to get your stuff time
and again. Well, you join that program, and you earn money on
your produce, on your produce, on your purchases. So I belong.
And every time I go into an ACE hardware store make a purchase, well
it just goes on and first thing you know, Hey, you got some
money to spend. So I would encourage you to do that when you're out
shopping for ACE. Yeah, makes sense, good good place, good products,
good deals. What else do you want? ACE is a place,
as they say, you're listening to garden Line and you're here to answer gardening
questions. I'm gonna take a little break here and give a little break for
the news. But in the meantime, why don't you give us a call?
Call Josh at seven one three two one two kt r H and he
will get you on the board. You will be first up when we come
back. All right, folks, we're back for our last segment today on
Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and uh, I don't
know it's rodeo time. So let's just say I'm back in the saddle again.
Here we go. Uh. I want to remind you that this that
this coming. I'm sorry, Josh talking to meut here. This coming Saturday,
I'll be at the Anti Rosing Porium because they will be having their Spring
celebration that is March ninth, for those of you who like to look at
the calendar, March ninth, Saturday, Saturday. After the show, I'm
gonna head that way. They're gonna have speakers, artisan markets, food trucks.
They're gonna have of course, they got the plants. They got native
plants to perennials. Yep, they're not just roses. Oh boy, are
they ever roses. But they're not just roses. They have tools and fertilizers
and gift items and everything. But I'm going to be there giving a talk
on Saturday. But this is a two day deal of the Spring Celebration March
ninth and March tenth. I hope you will come out to see me.
Listen, if you haven't been out there before, this is your permission to
head a sent to the Antique rosen for him. You are gonna love that
place. It is just fun and it's a cool drive out in the countryside.
By the way. You might swing by blue Belt and pick up some
ice cream. I don't know if they're open on Saturday or not, but
if they are, that would be a good idea. Always good to get
blue Belt, the national ice Cream of Texas. All right, we're going
to go to Champions and talk to Glenn. Hello, Glenn, Hey,
s get. I know I'm late doing this, but I'm gonna put down
the barricade today before it rains, okay, and then tomorrow or Tuesday I'll
put down the Nightrifoss green up. Okay. My question is how safe is
that for dog pets? After I put that down, It's fine. You're
gonna water it. Don You're gonna You're gonna put it down. You can
put about a half inch of water on it to move it down into the
soil, because it does no good sitting up on If any granules stick to
the plants, that's not doing any good. If it just sits dry on
the soil, that's not doing any good. You gotta wet it, incorporate
it into the surface, and that that should take care of things as far
as your pats, okay, and that's for both of them. In other
words, the Imperial yeah, I know water is a barricade in, but
the Imperial water in as well. Yeah, you want to because you know
it's a it's a salt based fertilizer granule sitting on the surface that dissolves quickly,
and that's why it's our spring green up because it immediately releases those nutrients
into the soil. So yes, I would do if I we do both,
you could do go through and do one and go reload your fertilizer hopper,
change the setting, do the other one, and then add the half
inch of water and you're done with the whole thing. Okay, that's fine.
Now my last question is I plan on thirty days from now putting down
the Nelson's whetenator that works. No, No, weedonator is for killing existing
broad leaf weeds, and those things are already starting to bloom and go to
seed, and you want to get that down sooner rather than later. The
weedonator is going to be you know, the hen bitt and chick weed and
clover and all those cool season weeds. That's what you're putting the weedonator down.
For but it also has fertilizer in it. So you can go one
way, you can go the other, but don't don't do all the above
together. Okay, So if I'm going to do the Wheatonator, don't do
the Imperial. I'm my hesitation as I'm trying to think through you let me
put this weight you could. The Imperial is going to release, It's going
to dissolve and release right now. The weed Nator is going to gradually feed
over the next two or three months. So normally I would say don't put
two fertilizers down at the same time. I think in this case you could
get by with that and do it. Normally I would tell you we'll wait
on the next fertilizer, but you got to it's important to stop the weeds
that are going to sprout with the barricade, so don't delay. It's important
if you're going to kill existing weeds to go ahead and in that case put
the the If you're using the weed inator, that's what that would be for
now one alternative, and I know these are all good products, and you
go the direction you want would be to shift over to the Nitrofoss's blue bag
instead of the Imperial red bag. That way, you would get the fertilizer
that's immediately released now, and you would also get the broad leaf products sticking
to the weeds that would work now. So you would do beat ad I'm
saying, barricade plus the blue bag from Nitrophoss, and you can do all
that now. You can come later and do the gradual release products, you
know, like the weed Nator for example, like uh, you know,
well, there's there's just a lot of different options out there, and then
Nelson Plant Food makes the weed Nator. They also make a slow release,
slow and easy uh type product that's going to feed your your lawn over time.
We would do that probably starting in sometimes mid to late April, if
you've done the spring green up already. Okay, so so do the blue
bag now with the barricade. With the barricade, yes, April, you
could do the Weedonator then or at that point in time, sir, I
would I would just shift over to a different product from Nelson's. Okay.
That's that's that's why I was saying the Okay, That's why I was saying
it. The way idea Nelson's they have a number of different products. So
the gosh. I just went blank on the name. It just went out
of my head. Slow and easy, I said it a minute ago.
Slow and easy. Yeah, I wouldn't. If you're going to wait and
delay, I wouldn't do the weed and eat. I'd do the slow and
easy. Okay. If you go online to my website, you can see
all the options right there, and it's all laid out. It's gardening with
Skip dot com. Okay, yeah, very good. Well, thanks a
lot, Skip. Appreciate it all right, you bet, thank you very
much. I appreciate that. The folks there at Nelson by the way also
have a product called Genesis. Have you heard me talk about that before.
I I've used it myself. Here's what you do with Genesis. You mix
it in to the soil you're transplanting into. So I was bumping up some
tomatoes and peppers and I just took you know, I had my little plants.
I was gonna move them to bigger containers, and it takes some extra
soil to do that. I mixed the Genesis into that soil mix. So
as the roots go out they find the nutrients they find. It's got beneficial
bacteria and endo and Ectomycoriza in it as well, so it's like root heaven.
I mixed it in that watered it in, and my gosh, they
took off. This is a transplanting mix. It's a six one three and
it's called nutros Star Genesis. You buy a little canisters, plastic canisters,
and it works really really well, and it enhances the biology of the soil.
And it's something you ought to consider. I mean, if you're doing
any kind of transplanting, those of you putting in containers and bringing home flowers
and vegetables and herbs that container soil, just mix some nutri Star Genesis in
it. Follow the label and you will find that the response is very soon
and very impressive. When I did it myself, I was I was really
surprised at just how well it worked. We're going to go out to Conro
now and talk to Mary. Hello, Mary, Hello, how can we
help? Answered my question? But I got a little bit confused too.
Okay, I can't find that weed mate or anywhere. And I know you
said it was Nelson's, Yes, plant food, but I'll look at I'll
look up Nelson's plant Food, and I don't see it. Maybe I don't
know well, okay, here's what you need to do. If you just
go out to Ana Plants on the on the on your side of Montgomery out
there, they're going to have it there. Call them first, make sure
that it hadn't sold out on them or something. But call them and you're
going to find it. Uh that that will be probably one of the easier
ways to just just find what you're looking for. There are some ACE hardware
stores. We don't have any right there where you are located. You have
to come down in the Houston area to find it there. But I would
just go out to an a that's not that far from you. Plus it's
fun to go to Ana. Okay. The other thing is, can you
can you tell me what root rot is? And I don't know that I
have it, but I can plant dying and I'm I don't know how you
tail. Root rot is typically a fungus, can be a bacteria, and
the soil that moves into the plant kills the roots and they just turn into
mush and dye and then the plant can't get water our nutrients because they lost
the roots. What kind of plant do you have? Oh? Well,
I mean it's I've got about I've got about fifteen seconds for they start playing
the endo show music. Okay, shrubs and Camellia. Okay, so yes
you can. You're old. You know they're old. Okay, well you
probably don't have root rot, but just watch that you don't keep them soggy
wet. When it's a soggy, soggy wet, that's when root right tends
to move in. And so there are if you start to get it,
there are some things you can drench into the soil to find it. But
I don't want you going out buying and playing that stuff until we know you've
got that problem. And it really comes down to good drainage. Okay,
all right, thank you. I don't think I have that problem. I
bet you don't. I hope you don't. I bet you don't. Thank
you, Mary. I appreciate the call. All right, Bubby, Just
one more reminder. Where am I going to be next Saturday? Antique rosing
for him. I'll be there for the big shindig they call it the Spring
Celebration. I'm going to be there from twelve to two. So when I
finished the show here, I am making a bee line. If you see
anybody flying by down two ninety. That's me on the way to antiqu rosing
for him twelve to two. I'll be giving a talk on beneficial insects.
Do you want to learn about what beneficials are? Do you want to learn
how to attract them and keep them in your landscape? Come see me.
It's gonna be fun. Plus, there's a lot more going on at antique
rosing for him that day