A g r H Garden Line with Skip Rickard's crazy trip. Just watch him
as many things, the suprasy double back again, not a sound, the
sun beam and down stop morning, good Saturday morning. Thanks for joining us.
Congratulations you're one of the early birds today. Good to have you with
us here on Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Ricker, and we're
here to answer your gardening questions. That's what it's all about. Or the
way I like to put it is, we want to help you turn your
brown thumb green, or how about another way. We want to help you
have a beautiful, bountiful garden and landscape. That's why we're here. We
look forward to visiting with you. If you got some questions you'd like to
give us a call, feel free to give us a call. Seven to
one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two
k t r H. And uh, I tell you if you've been outside
lately, you know that summer has arrived. It doesn't take a rocket scientist
to know, although we have a few in the Houston area. It doesn't
take a rocket scientist to know that it is blazing hot outside during the day.
But we can get a lot of things done in the morning, and
I encourage you to take your cell phone to get your little kt r H
app or your iHeartMedia app rather tune into ktr H garden line, carry it
with you as you're out and about and come up get a little sunshine here
in a bit, head out in the garden. Let's talk about what's going
on in your garden that we can. That way, you can get things
done and still enjoy listening to guardline. Who knows, maybe you'll even run
across a bug you need to take a picture of and send me for ID
or however you want to go about it. I was in my yard this
week, just doing regular kind of maintenance. I still had a little bit
of pruning to do, and someone asked me the day can you prune in
the summertime? And the answer is, well, you can. You can
prune any month of the year. There's months that are better. There's certainly
months that are better for certain types of pruning. Like you're going to do
a lot of heavy duty pruning to your trees, then I would try to
get that done at the end of winter. That's the best time because spring
is the fastest time for wounds to heal, and that followed by fall,
by the way, and then summer. So getting that all done early on
is a good idea. Plus, you don't have the leaves on the tree
at the late winter season, and you can look up and see what needs
to be done. It's a lot a lot clearer and easier to get the
job done right. But anyway, I've got some crape myrtles that it's been
a while, let's just say, since they had any kind of work done.
And so I had some branches that originally when they were planted and started
off, they weren't trained or proved properly. When we bought the place and
moved in, I just kind of have to make some decisions as to Okay,
that's not how it should be, but what's the best thing for me
to do now to fix it? And in general, with crape myrtles,
we want to follow the flow of the branches. So I'm going to explain
what I mean by that. This is true of a lot of plants,
by the way, with crape, Let's say you have three trunks coming out
of the ground, just as an example, and you go up one of
the trunks and at some point you want a branch to fork and make two,
and then at some point each of those can fork and make two more,
and on and on. And when you end up with branches that need
to come off, you never stub them off. That's what people do in
the winter. We call it crepe murder. They reach up and about seven
eight feet high, they are six feet high. They cut everything off and
just in nubs. That's called heading cuts, and that's bad, bad for
the great myrtle structure and beauty. Instead, look at as a branch goes
out, and let's say you've got a branch that's going way over rubbing on
your house or sticking out where you have to walk by, which is what
mine we're doing. You just follow them back to where they attach to another
branch and cut it off right there, so we redirect that growth. So
you picture a y in the road, like what did Yogi Bear say,
when you come to a fork in the road, take it? Well,
when you come to a fork in the branch, take one or the other
off, Take the long one off and leave a shorter one, or take
one going the wrong way off and leave one going the right way. And
so it basically just imagine you're a vehicle driving down that branch, and if
there's a road that is not a good road, then that's where you take
it off where it joins the other one. There's a branch that's in the
wrong anyway. I was doing some of that kind of printing this week and
just getting things shaped up, because you know they're in one case, my
some of my crapes were shading the lawn so much I couldn't get light through
to go grass, and so I had to do a little thinning out of
the canopy for that here and there. But when I got through pruning,
when you looked at the plant, you couldn't tell it was pruned if you
hadn't seen what it looked like before. There's not a bunch of stubbed off
branches. It's all a very smooth and natural form and a good pruning job.
It's hard to tell that it was pruned. It doesn't just you don't
just walk up and go who butchered that? You just see that it looks
a lot better in that case, I tell what we are gonna. Let
me run here to the phones and or, by the way, our phone
number if you'd like to give me a call today seven one three two one
two k t Arch. We're going to go to Houston and talk to Renee.
Hello, Renee, Hell are you? I'm well? I'm well how
can we help today? Well, you know, we just planted a new
new grass in our in our front yard. We din about three three to
four pallets. And the reason that I had to replet was because we had
a lot of shade and we prove our trees, and now we planted the
grass and I wanted to it seems like it's struggling a little bit to kind
of thrive, and I wanted to see what I can do so that we
can make sure that it's you know, plantic. You know, it builds
up the roots it and it kind of thrives. Okay, so you opened
up the canopy of the tree. So the grass is doing better, is
what you're telling me, right, Yes, okay, So the thing that
grass most needs is sunlight, and after that, of course, it needs
moisture and it needs nutrients, so and then finally regular mowing. So you've
provided the sunlight, assuming you've got it enough light for it to be able
to build up its reserves and actually grow, meaning get thicker, meaning fill
in areas and stuff like that. It's got enough light that then it's just
up to you to water it moderately periodically, not often, not every other
day, but once or twice a week with a good soaking. And then
if you haven't fertilized, fertilizing for summer is a good idea. And if
you do any kind of nutrient additions that you haven't done yet, go ahead
and get them done. But finally, the mowing is so important, Renee,
because the more often you mow, the denser the grass gets. Okay,
now, what kind of so good I was gonna say, I'm gonna
assume that the light is not outstanding because you had to do a little pruning
to improve on it. So if you're not, you're probably not getting eight
hours of sunlight a day, so you might if it's the more shady it
is, the taller you want to mow to lead more grass blade. Grass
blades are solar panels, and you got to capture as much light as you
can, so don't cut the solar panels off. Real short, Okay,
what type of what type of summer summer fertilizer should I use? You know,
I would suggest you just get some of the silver Bag from Nitrofoss that
is Superturf. Superturf is an excellent product. It gradually releases. In fact,
if you fertilize now with the silver Bag super Turf, you won't have
to fertilize again until fall. Have you downloaded my schedule? Spend any chants
from online? I have not? Okay, that's fine. You go to
Gardening with Skip dot com. That's the website Gardening with Skip that's me dot
com. And the schedules are there. They tell you what to apply and
when all through the year, and so that'll make it real easy for you.
But on there you'll see Nitrofoss Superturf. Uh and you can find it
at a lot of places. Where in the Houston General area are you Cypress?
Cypress area? Okay, yeah, well you can go up to the
Ace Hardware there on Jones Road. You can go to M and D Ace,
which is much further north than that. You can go to really a
number of different places in the Cypress area. Plant twelve Seasons is not too
far away from you, and they carry the super Turf as well. All
right, perfect, we'll we'll make our way to say today. All right,
well, thank you sir, I appreciate the call. Folks. We're
going to take a little break here and I'll be right back. Welcome back
to the garden line. Good ahead. You let us what are we going
to talk about today? You know, I can talk about the things that
I'm interested in. I can talk about the things that I know people have
questions about now because I've been doing this for thirty five years, listening to
gardening questions and being a gardener myself, so I know what the things to
talk about this time a year. But what are you interested in? Do
you have an issue at your lawn or your landscape? Are you wanting to
try a new plan, want to know if it'll grow here? Do you
need something identified you get the idea? Feel free to give us a cough.
We can help. That is why we're here to help you have a
more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape. Our phone number seven one three
two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t
r H. Wile ago, I was talking about the Nitrofis silver bag,
the excuse me, super turf, and I mentioned that you can get that
at plants for all seasons. You know, if if you go up and
down two forty nine, you pass by plants for all seasons all the all
the time, as you go back and forth from Tomball to down into the
Houston area. They're right there, just north of Luetta on the east side
of the road. Uh So, as you're heading out, you just exit
Luetta if you're heading toward Tomball, and then just north of Luetta is plants
for all seasons. I am always amazed when I go in there at the
amount of color that they have and at the variety of plants from shrubs to
trees to house plants to I got a venus fly trap there one time.
Yeah, you have, and it's kind of cool. By the way,
if you don't have a venus fly trap, you need one for your house.
You need a little light to keep it under and make it happy.
But I tell you that is so fun. You know, flies in the
house and all you have to do is get one to Sometimes you have ways
of capturing them and turning them loose in there, or just wound them seriously
and they wiggle around that thing closes down. Oh my gosh, it's fun
to watch and the kids love it too. They can't believe that a plant
actually eats living things. So anyway, the Plants for All Seasons has got
that. They've got beautiful pottery, gorgeous, gorgeous pottery that looks so good.
And right now the color baskets are outstanding. And you know you've walk
outside and look around your landscape. What you're going to see, in many
cases is a sea of green. That means green grass, green shrubs,
green ground covers, green trees. How do we get color in our landscape?
One quick way is to go get your hanging baskets, such just some
of the those coumbo planters that they have there at Plants for All Seasons.
You hang it up, it looks good. So you got a little thing
going on this weekend, you know you want to beautify the patio or whatever.
That's a way to do it instantly and it looks awesome when you know
when you go in there, you're going to get good advice and you take
pictures and samples and other things for diagnosis, for solutions to plant problems.
You're having Plants for All Seasons dot Com, Plants for All Seasons dot Com,
or just give them a call at two eight, one, three,
seven, six one six for six. I was talking a moment ago about
pruning and the fact that you can do some limb removal anytime of the year
that you need to get it done. Just know this, when you're going
to do any kind of pruning, you want to learn what to do before
you do it. A lot of people go out with a saw, pruning
shears, loppers, whatever, and they just begin cutting. It seems appropriate.
I think you need to step back a little bit and I'm gonna I'm
gonna be I'm gonna overstate this, but just to make a point. But
if they say that a sculptor can look at a giant rock and see the
figure inside. In other words, they look at this massive stone, but
they know if you're Michelangelo, they know that you're gonna chip away and leave
the David Famous David statue because they they they know what they want to accomplish.
And when when you look at a plant, you ought to look at
it a while and just kind of think about what do I want to accomplish.
If it's a hedge, you want the top to be narrow, uh
and the base to be a little wider, and that's so that light can
reach all levels of that hedge. If you let the shrub do what it
wants, it will go top heavy. It will be instead of being shaped
like the capital A, it'll be shaped like a capital V. And you
don't when that happens, the lower levels don't get light, the leaves don't
grow there, and you end up seeing through what you wanted to be something
to block a view. And so you keep the top a little narrower,
not like a capital A shape, more just a little narrower on the top,
at least at least exactly vertical sides, but maybe a little narrower on
the top. And that's how you do it. If you're going to do
a blooming plant, you prune it in the way that you want that plant
to be shaped. If you're going to whatever you're going to prune, imagine
what you want it to look like. And crpe myrtles are a good example.
You do need to train a crp myrtle. You don't need to butcher
them, but you do need to train them. And so you look at
that little scrawny stick you just put in the ground out of the pot from
the garden center, and you think about, Okay, when that thing is
fifteen feet tall, what do I want the shape to be? How many
trunks? Where do I want them to start branching? And I want to
choose things that are kind of going outward a little bit, because I want
to form that beautiful shrub. And so that that is kind of how you
go about it, and you picture what you wanted to eventually become. And
then as you begin to prune, each cut is made with a purpose.
And so we'll just call this little segment prune with a purpose. That is
very important. Prune with a purpose. We're going to go now out to
the phones and talk to Clark in Magnolia. Hello Clark, welly, good
morning. I guess I'm guilty of this. Craig mertling as well. I
was always under the impression that if you didn't print them back in, you
know, on February or March, then they wouldn't bloom. Well, no,
they'll bloom. What happens is if you've never prune to crate myrtle,
it would be a big old bush and then the blooms would be smaller,
but they'd be more numerous all over the planet. As you prune it,
and then it gets this vigorous new growth. You tend to get bigger blooms,
but fewer of them that you have these long, long lanky shoots,
because if it was an excessive pruning, long lanky shoots that end up breaking
off in a rainstorm or sort of flopping out in all directions. But I
think the main thing, Clark is that I'm trying to say is you want
the beautiful shape of a crape myrtle's form to be maintained and not to be
marked by just hacking the top off. So you don't prune them back in
February or March for the spring growth. You would leave one loan other than
the branches that you walk out of the way. Yeah, you prune it
for shape in February and March if needed. And I'll tell you this,
if you from the time you plan a crape myrtle, you begin to do
your training in printing. There's really very little printing that needs to be done
that just a little guiding, a little removal here and there. You know,
if you have a branch it's i say, growing out in the walkway
where you can't walk by, and you leave it three years down the line.
You cut it off. Now you make this big old wound to remove
it, whereas it could have been removed with hand pruners if you were doing
that, I'm envisioning what I want type of pruning. I was just talking
about. Okay, all right, I appreciate it, thank you, Yeah,
you bet. Yeah. You know this whole thing about great murder and
whatnot. And I realized here we were talking about crepe myrtle pruning and it's
the middle of summer. But it's what I've been doing this week, and
I know some of you are probably out doing a little bit of pruning too
on some things. The whole thing about it is designing and creating this natural
form. And the further the longer you allow a pruning decision to be put
off, the more of a pruning cut you make. The more of a
pruning cut you make, the longer it takes to heal, and the more
it mars the natural beauty of the plant. I'm going to go one last
time, hopefully last time, back to crapes for just a moment. If
you used hand pruners your crapes and whenever you said up these branches don't have
a long term future. I'm gonna snip that little thing off. Snip that
little thing off. You would never need to use a saw, and you
could create a beautiful structure to a crape myrtle. The more you let it
go past that to where now you got to get a chainsaw out there to
cut something up, you've got it. It's just a it's just a not
a good thing for the form. The way I like to put it is
this, when you pull out a saw, it's an emission of guilt.
Let that sink in a little bit. When you pull out a saw,
it's an emission of guilt. Now that's overstated. But if you've owned a
plant for years and you haven't pruned, you haven't done what you should do
to that plant, and it finally comes to a spot where you're having to
saw limb off, you're admitting that you know, I should have prined this
a long time ago, when I could have taken handprinters or loppers and got
it done. Now, I know there's always situations where you do have to
saw, But if you just think of it that way, when I get
out of saw, it's an a mission of guilt that helps you think in
terms of looking at things earlier before they are obviously an overcrowded problem, and
making those decisions as you go along makes it real easy. I I think
that it's just something to think about. Works pretty good. I was visiting
a good while back with ty Strickland, who is the owner of Fixing My
Slab Foundation Repair T He's been doing it for twenty three years with them,
and he was explaining to me about how foundation work gets done, what has
to be done when you're fixing a foundation and whatnot, and how the problems
for them. And we're talking about plants and different things, trees and their
effect on foundations and whatnot, and I just was so impressed. Tye is
very knowledgeable and he's got that those type of business practices that approach to taking
care of his customers that we used to think of as the old fashioned good
customer service kind of approach. What do I mean by that? I mean,
if he tells you he's going to show up at a certain time,
he shows up on time, that when he fixes it, his pricing is
fair, and when he fixes it, he fixes it right. And if
you see cracks in your brick outside and the sheet rock inside. If you've
got doors sticking, don't mess around. Call TI. Tell him you're a
guardenline listener. You get free estimates for guardenline listeners and have him come out
and take a look at it. Because it only gets worse, it doesn't
get better. And so do yourself a favor. Fix myslab dot com.
That's a website. Fix myslab dot com and the phone number two eight one
two five five forty nine forty nine. We're gonna take a little break here.
I'll be right back. Don't forget our number. If you'd like to
give us a call seven one three two one two kt r H bottoms its
line. Good to have you with us this morning. What are we going
to talk about? You tell me, hey, do you want to talk
about vegetables or herbs or flowers. We can switch into any of those topics
that you would like. I've been talking about trees and pruning, summer pruning,
which is kind of weird, Like I thought we in the winter.
What we do. The best time to prune is the winter, but just
remember that there are exceptions to that, and there are reasons we need to
prune at other times. And speaking of all this pruning makes me think about
affordable tree service Martin spoon More. You know, Martin's been doing this for
a very long time and he is an expert at it. And that's why
we suggest that you give Martin a call when you have any kind of pruning
that you need to do. Martin knows how to come out. He can
do things from deep watering, deep deep feeding. He can do minor pruning
you do planting. He can do training of trees. He can advise you
on things. Maybe you've got some issues in the landscape. Listen, if
you are going to do anything around a tree. When I say anything,
I mean digging away soil, adding soil, putting in a trench to run
a power line or water line or something like that. Definitely call him first,
have him come out and look, because by the time the damage is
done, it's too late to fix much. And that's true with bad pruning
too. Don't hire a guy just because he owns to pick up a chainsaw
and drives down the roadsticking cards in your door, business cards in your door
that you need to hire Martin. You need to go with him. He
knows what he's talking about. I've seen and talked to a lot of customers
that are very very happy and with storm season here, I mean there's already
a hurricane in the Gulf here come in our direction. Unfortunately doesn't appear to
be landing on Houston this time. But you need to have your trees ready
and Martin can come out and do that kind of pruning to prepare your trees
to minimize the amount of storm damage to make them the most storm resilient that
you can. Phone number seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three.
Here's Martin's phone number again, seven to one three six nine twenty six
sixty three. The website is afftree Service dot com. Aff tree Service dot
com. Whatever you do, don't wait because you know once the storm hits,
it's a little late. And trust me, you don't like the kind
of pruning storms due to your trees. I give part and the call having
come on out, you're listening to Guarden Line. I'm your host, Skip
Richter, and it is right now the time to discuss with you the things
that are of interest to you. So what kind of questions have you had?
Maybe you're wanting to here's an idea. This is a you know,
it's always interesting. I know, when the phone rings, it's probably trees,
turf for tomatoes, the three t's, that's what makes a phone ring.
But there are a lot of other topics out there that we can talk
about. And sometimes there's things that I wish people would ask about, especially
ahead of time, like how do I go about pruning a tree? How
do I properly plant a plant? Or here's a good one. I would
like to give a gift to a friend or family member and just to say
thanks, And what would you suggest is a good gift plant for people?
There's a good idea, you know, plan are there's just a way to
say thank you in an ongoing fashion. A fellow I used to know up
in Conro, Texas, and mister Alden Colston. He was ninety something years
old, gardener and still going strong. He was quite the character too,
But anyway, he used to say that flowers leave part of their fragrance and
a hand that bestows them. And I always thought that was beautiful. Flowers
leave part of their fragrance in the hand that bestows them. When you give
a gift, let's just say it's a rose, which by the way,
is a great gift for people. You give a rose bush. Then every
year when that thing blooms or somebody comes in there walking around the yard and
saying, yeah, look at this, and so and so gave me the
it's a memory of you and of your kindness to them. And I just
think plants are an excellent gift. You know, sometimes we look at our
landscapes like, you know, we throw this in there, pull this out,
and it's just like a plug and play, which it can be.
But you think about historically people that would even move and take plants with them.
There is a rose in Tucson, Arizona, and it is a Ladybank's
rose, which is a thornless, very vigorously climbing rose that blooms in the
spring. Only a bride took it there in a buckboard wagon in the eighteen
hundreds and it's still there. At one point it covered a quarter of an
acre. They built this like arbor canopy, going out in all directions for
the rose canes to grow on a quarter of an acre. That is that's
a big rose. That's a very big rose eighteen hundreds and it is still
still going strong out there. That's what I'm talking about. Those kind of
memories are a wonderful way to connect with family, with friends. And so
if you've been thinking about a gift for somebody, why not a quality plant,
one that will live for years and years that they can enjoy. If
you'd like to give us, call our phone number here is seven to one
three two one two kt r H seven to one three two one two kt
RH. If you look at your landscape when you drive up, just think
about that today or this week. Drive out and look at your landscape from
the front, from the street and just say what what would I like to
be different? What would be missing? Uh? For example, maybe it
does lack the color. It's that sea of green that so many landscapes become
in summer when we don't have to just be green. Green's a pretty color,
but it's not the only color. Uh. Well, call up perscapes,
have them come out, take them some pictures in sit doun. Say
hey, look, I want to renovate this bed. I want to create
a new bed here. What would you do with this landscape? They can
do anything from the full bloode create everything from scratch to renovating and redoing and
making something better, more beautiful. If you need hard scapes, if you
need, uh, perhaps your irrigation system looked at. They do all of
that. They do landscape lighting if it means the outside gets more beautiful,
pierscapes, they're your people. They do that. That is what they specialize
in. They also do quarterly bed maintenance. Now'd be a great time to
call them up. Quarterly bed maintenance every three months. They come out.
They fertilize weed, they trim, they check your irrigation. They do seasonal
color changes as needed, They molt. It's all at Peerscapes. Peerscapes dot
Com is their website. You need to go look at it. It's amazing.
And two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven
o five zero six zero. We're going to take a break if you'd like
to get on the board with Chris six seven to one three two one two
KTRH. And when we come back Ron in Cleveland, you'll be our first
stop. When you ask someone in their name, welcome back to the garden
line. May be with us this morning, looking forward to visiting with you
about the things that are of interest to you. The other day I was
dealing with some issues I have a neighbor that has some issues in the lawn
where various primarily take off patch, but there's some other things going on in
the lawn. I was just kind of helping them with it and talking about
it, and we were talking about different things you can do the lawn.
You know, one of the things you can do when you want to get
out there and give your lawn a boost. I mean, it could be
the complete fertilization, but it also could just be let's give a little boost
to some areas here that need it. That. Medina has a product part
of the has to Grow line called Supergrow Plus. Super Grow Plus is a
sixteen zero two fertilizer. It's a liquid. It hooks up to a garden
hose. It covers about four thousand square feet. It takes you about ten
minutes to do that area with your lawn, so I mean it's about the
fastest way you can get out there and get some fertilizing done. Just walk
through spraying the grass with Medina super Grow Plus sixteen zero two. A good
portion of that nitrogen is slow release. It's got seaweed extracts, it's got
humic acid, it's got molasses all the things to stimulate microbial activity and growth
plus iron in a kelated form. And this past week I looked at three
different email situations. I've been helping somebody with on yellowing grass and iron,
and this would be a way to get out there put a little boost to
it. Supergrol Plus is easy. You hook it up, you go out,
you spray, You're done. And it's not just for launch. I
mean you can put on anything you want to do. I mean I know
people that use them their vegetable gardens. Medina has to grow supergrow plus sixteen
zero two. Get some try it out. I think you'll see what I'm
talking about. We're going to head out now to Cleveland, Texas, and
we are going to go talk to Ron. If I can get a hold
of here we go. Hey, Ron, welcome to guard Line. Well,
good Morris. Skip a few things if you don't mind. You're talking
about trim and I've got three pretty good sized by texts that have bloomed this
year, and they got those seed pods on them. If I trim those
seed pods off, well that push that tree, those trees to bloom again.
It can so Ron, here's the two things that help a vi text
rebloom. When you prum back a little bit, not just the seed pod,
but you cut the branch back just a little bit and you stimulate new
growth. It will tend to produce blooms on the ends of those new shoots.
Vitext blooms at the ends of its shoots. If you catch it right
after bloom, there's the blooms fade and cut the pods off. Then all
the energy that we've gone into building those seeds. You know, seeds are
very oily protein. There's a lot of what the plant's producing that's going in
to make those seeds. If you do it before they make the seeds,
that energy can go into new growth and blooms better. If you wait until
it already has seeds, it's still worth taking them off, but they've already
put the energy into doing that. So if you could do it a little
earlier, that would be even better. Okay, I'll be ready to make
sense. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Well. By Text is a
tough That was a very very tough plants. I put in those crape myrtles
I was talking to you about, and I don't remember should I be watering
them like? And I did the Medina Hamster grill for plants, you know,
smoking them in? Uh? Do I need to be watering them every
day for a while because I got them right out here in the full sun
of course? Or is that like, you know, just stick your finger
in there, do like you say, you know, see if it's wet.
We're talking about creant myrtle plants. Yeah, right, yeah, I
got five of them. I put in some pink and like say, we
talked, I remember talking about, you know, checking if they're wet or
do I need to keep them wet every day? You know, I don't.
I don't really remember. Yeah, no, just a good soaking periodically.
How long ago did you actually put the containers in last Sunday? Okay,
so yes, I'm Here's the thing. That root system looks just like
it did when it came out of the pot. It is not established at
all. And over the next weeks and months and even a couple of years,
it's getting bigger and bigger and more extensive, and the plant's getting more
resilient as a result. Right now, imagine that you just set the whole
pot. You didn't even take the plant out of the pote. You just
set the whole pot in the ground. That's what your root system still is
like. So you still have to treat it like it was in a pot,
meaning you're not drowning it watering every day. You're just you're just giving
it enough water to keep that root ball in the area right around at moist.
And so if it's in full sun, that may mean every other day
probably is going to be adequate. It may in some situations the every day,
but not just be careful that you don't overdo it and drown the root
system. But keep it that water log. Yeah, all it needs moist,
but remember that in the course of a ninety degree day, it's pumping
that little cylinder that went in the ground, that cylinder of soil. It's
pumping that dry and the soil around it may be moist. So that's why
I say pretend it's still in the pot, because for a while, that's
where the roots are still going to be. Yeah. I had a lot
of work putting those five things in break from my bag doing it. I
don't want to lose them, you know, I'm telling you, like no
kidding. I get home at night and it's like, man, those leaves
look like they're wilting. So I've been watering, but I don't want to
overwater, so I've just didn't know if I should be doing every day.
If you're seeing wilting, you need to give it a little bit of water,
assuming that it wasn't just grossly overgrown in the pot. That plant,
if you can just keep that moist, should be just fine. And uh,
just a little drinking and they'll be on there. You know, you
planted them at a tough time, and we can plant be a month of
the year here, it's just when we do it now. We just have
to water a little differently than if you had planted them in November or January.
I'm going to put down some nitrofoss silver bag today. Uh some gets
around these, uh crate myrtles. That's gonna be okay, wouldn't it?
Or would I should I shy away from keep them away from that? It'd
be okay, It'd be okay. Just don't overdo it right at the base
of them. I would just kind of fertilize like you're fertilizing. And usually
when I plan a plant like this, I'm going to want to use some
sort of a liquid as a drench. A watering in drench periodically just to
kind of feed those roots right there, because again they're all confined, uh
and then dead. Yeah, go ahead. I bought the Madina hastroll for
plants and I have been doing it every other day with that, you know.
All right, Well, I appreciate your time, and I uh,
you know, I listening. I was listening to Randy for years. I
believe you've taken the show to the next level. I appreciate you. That's
kind. Thank you, appreciate that. Welcome, Take care, take care.
I I was the other day, I was looking at some some stuff
from je Jjes Hidden Gardens down in Alvin, and uh, just looking at
the things that they're up to, things that are doing. Of course it's
it's summer and they're they're very busy down there, you know, Jorges Hidden
Gardens. That that is the garden center down in Alvin, due South.
So for those of you live near Alvin, Santa Fe, Dickinson Hillcrest,
maybe Alta Loma, al Goa, Arcadia, all of those communities, Uh,
this is your local garden center and they're down there in Alvin. They're
open, by the way on Friday. You need to consider these times.
It's primarily weekends right now Friday from nine to three and Saturday and Sunday that
will be today eight am to four pm. So eight am to four today
and tomorrow ninety three on Fridays, and just go down there. It's seventeen
seven twenty one Elizabeth Street in Alvin, just south of Highway six. Horayes
always got things on lots of excellent selection of little trees and shrubs that he's
growing. But he has other you know Peggy Martin roses and krepe myrtle.
Course during the various vegetable planting seasons, they're going to have that with some
herbs and other things. It's always a good time to go visit. But
check them out one weekend, especially with those of you down in that area.
This is just a hop, skipping or jump away from where you live.
At Horages Hidden Gardens, I think you will be very pleased with what
you see. By the way, he also carries that three sixty tree stabilizer
in stock there, so that's when you get a tree from him. You
definitely need to get a tree stabilizer from him to keep that tree in place.
Well, you are listening to garden line, and it is time for
us to with this hour in the books. If you would like to give
us a call and get on the boards, just give Chris a call seven
one three two one two k t R seven to one three two one two
K two our h. I'm being back here in a little bit after we
get some news taken care of to talk about your gardening questions. What is
of interesting? They have questions about how can we help you? Know,
my goal is to help you have a more bountiful garden and a more beautiful
landscape. But also my goal is to help you have fun. The gardening
is not supposed to be stressful. It's not like I'm afraid I'm gonna fail.
It's not like I don't know how to do that. We can help
you have success because it should be fun. It is an outstanding, relaxing,
health promoting hobby without a dom ny any ways, all right, you're
right, Ben, crazy gas shrimp. Just watch him as gas man.
It takes the soup hot crazy gas again. You did us back again?
Not a sound and credit gases gas sound beam and down between a gas starting
out treat. All right, let's get going again here. Welcome back to
garden line. We are glad to have you with us this morning, ready
to talk about how to have a beautiful, beautiful landscape, how to have
a bountiful garden, how to have fun with gardening. You know, gardening
should be fun. And even though we live in a very warm climate and
in summertime it is hot, we still can grow anything we want to grow
just about here in the Greater Houston area. When it comes to being able
to take the heat, we have flowers that do better in the heat.
We have vegetables that do better in the heat. And I want to talk
about that just a little bit. What do you do when the mercury busts
the top out of the thermometer. What are some things that you can grow
when it's just so blazing hot. I know a lot of plants that look
good in spring don't look good in summer, especially when it comes to flowers.
You know, Petunias are a beautiful flower, calibri CoA is a beautiful
flower. But when it gets just almost one hundred degrees, I mean,
they are struggling out there. But there are things that don't struggle. So
here's a few ideas for some things you might want to consider. We're going
to do it first in the flower garden. The first thing we'll talk about
is in the flower garden, and that would be things like angelonia. Angelonia's
also call some or snapdragon, not a name I like because if people look
at them, go that I don't look like a snap dragon. Well they're
not snap dragons. But anyway, Angelonia summer snap dragon laughs at the heat.
It does well. Zenias do very well. Whether it's a cut flower
types, the little mounding bedding plant types of zenias, or there's actually a
zenia with strappy leaves that grows almost like a little groundcover. It's an annual,
but it spreads outward. It'll go over the sides of a container.
I've got some in the backyard coming over the sides of a bed, and
it's called Zenia lanaris or zenia and gustafolia. The common name would be narrow
leaf zenia. It comes in yellow, comes in white, it comes into
kind of an orangey color. Those are the three options. The blooms are
about size of a quarter and they just sort of shrink up and disappear after
they bloom, so you don't have to dead head it. It loves summer
weather as well. There are many plants that are just that that heat tolerant
that we can choose from. Remember, in summer, we look to foliage
also. We have some outstanding foliage plants that can live in the sauna that
is a Southeast Texas summer. For example, cannas. Cannas have beautiful blooms,
but they can also have very beautiful foliage. And there are some outstanding
types of cannas that if you give them adequate water, they can absolutely shine
in the summer. One of them I love is tropicana. It has I
don't even know how to describe the colors. It's of course it's got green,
but it also has kind of a coral color, a bronzy color in
it. It's just really beautiful, beautiful, beautiful leaves. There are some
types that have purple leaves that do very very well here. They're just a
bold purple, dark dark purple color. Cannas are an excellent choice. Copper
plant is another one in the summer heat that does well. There're one called
Joseph Coat that does well in the shade. We got kalladiums that do very
well in the summer heat and By the way, speaking of blooms, wishbone
flour and the Impatients are both good blooming plants for shady types of areas.
So we have a lot of different things. I mean, I could do
the whole show just talking about plants that will bloom or produce beautiful foliage in
summer when you get to the vegetable garden. Now we're talking about things that
are warm season sweet potatoes, for example, black eyed peas, purple whole
peas, crowder peas, those are all called summer peas. Zipper cream pieas
is another one. Summer peas. They actually are a bean, but hey,
they're called you know, like we say black eyed peas instead of black
eyed beans. They do well in the summer. Okra, oh my gosh,
okra begs for summer. It loves heat, it loves the humidity that
we're in right now. Very very happy. I got some okra outside my
house that I just I'm kind of an ochre nut. That will save that
discussion for another day, But that is just doing super well. Melons like
watermelon, canalopes, they can take the heat and do very well for us
here. I think I don't know if I mentioned sweet potatoes already poor I
think I did, but that's another good summer crop. And then we have
summer greens. So when we say the word green to a Texas gardener,
you're probably going to picture lettuce and spinach, maybe kale. You're going to
picture the cool season greens, maybe a regular some others like that. Well,
we have warm season greens from places in the world where it is as
hot and sultry as it is here in Histon, and they do well here.
Malabar is an excellent green, very vigorous, very plump, very succulent
leaves does super well here. There is something called Egyptian spinach. It's a
type of slosha that has grown here. There are probably my favorite summer green
is perslane. Perce lane is a weed. Person lane is also a flowering
hanging basket. But then there are vegetables types of person lane. They're very
very big leaves and very fleshy, high bita high content of omega three fatty
acids, a little bit of a lemonee zip to the taste really good.
Personally is an excellent, excellent green for summertime. So there are many others.
There's molokia, which is popular, especially in Middle Eastern cultures, but
not just there, other areas. It just loves summer. It grows very
well. And I could go on and on. My point is that we
have vegetables and flowers that do super well here in our summer season, and
we should take advantage of that just because it's summer. Get out there when
it's early in the morning, cool, pleasant, get the planning done,
get your irrigation system set up, and most the beds well and you don't
have to work in the heat, and you could still enjoy some really healthy
and flavorful vegetables and beautiful flowers as a result. Well, just a few
thoughts or tips for you to consider right there. If you haven't fertilized your
lawn yet, you got to consider Nelson's Plant Foods turf Star Slow and Easy.
Now. Turf Star is a line of turf fertilizers by Nelson's and they
just perform well because they in the case of the Slow and Easy, they
gradually release those nitrogen molecules out to the plant into the soil so it gets
a gradual feeding on through the summer on through the summer season. In fact,
if you do turf Star right now, you will not have to fertilize
again until we get into the fall fertilization. You get my schedule, look
at it and you'll see the next fertilizations coming in the fall. So easy,
easy to know exactly. You know when to do it when you just
look at the schedule. But the bottom line is turf Star carry right through.
It acidifies the soil a little bit. It's got a little bit of
acidifying effect, which is always a good idea, especially as we do with
things like take our root rot that like highph soils, anything we do to
help out with that. It gradually feeds the microbes that are in the soil
and of course microbes and feed the plants. That's how that works. Turch
Star is just just very very quality technology. It's a fertilizer that is designed
to do super well here and it's from Nelson Plant Food. The same folks
that give us nutra Star nutri Star for indoor plants, nutri Star for hibiscus,
Nutra Star for Plumeria and whatever you want to grow. The same folks
that give us color Star from Nelson, easy easy to find all over the
place, are available and they really do work. We're going to take a
little break here. We'll be right back. Our phone number if you'd like
to give Chrystal Coon, get on the board seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. With the snap of your fingers, all right,
we're back. Welcome back to the Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip
Richter. What do we want to talk about today? You tell me our
phone number seven one three two one two k t R H. And I'm
going to go straight out to the heights and we're going to talk to Mike
this morning. Hello Mike. Hey, thanks Skip. I'm just too mature.
Two story type magnolia tree in separate areas, and one has I found
an exposed route that is rotting. The second one has a fracture if you
wish or that is very small, and but there it goes all the way
up to the tree. The lea, the leaves are looking great on both
trees. But it's like a little fissure on this second one that is split.
And I'm wondering what I should be concerned about. Okay, it's on
the trunk you're talking about the fissure, Yes, trunk, the bark,
the bark is separating, but it's a very small separation at this point going
up to the top of the tree. Yeah, it could have been a
freeze crack from one of the freezes we had over the past few years.
Sometimes that can happen. There are different things that can cause that kind of
thing, but usually it's going to be like a freeze crack related or some
of the kind of physical injury on a magnolia because it's evergreen. Probably not
sun damage to the trunk, which can occur, but not on an evergreen
magnolia. So as far as what you can do, there's not really anything
to do about it. The thing the tree needs is to be healthy and
to be able to create callous to close that gap over, to reseal over
the wood on the inside. And the same is true in the roots that
you know, where you may see some wood exposure, some decay kind of
things. It just has to close it over. It's part of nature.
It happens out there. But especially in our landscapes, we got things like
lawnmowers and weed eaters and foot traffic and erosion across the surface and things that
expose roots and wound roots and whatnot. But the bottom line for you is
just keep it happy. Like last summer was so brutally hot and so brutally
dry for so brutally long that we lost magnolia's, which is a rare thing
around here to see magnolias just flat dye. But we did last summer,
and some of them were partially killed, some of them were completely killed.
So this summer, if we go without rain and it's hot, you don't
have to do it often. But let's just say once every week or two,
a good soaking of a wide area around the plant in the absence of
rainfall. Had and rain for two weeks, and it's one hundred degrees,
and go ahead and just put our irrigation out there. And what a large
area. There's a little gadget called the tree hugger sprinkler that goes around the
tree, hooks up to your garden hose, and that old water a very
large area in a circular fashion right around the tree. So it's really good
for targeting that water. Okay, thank very much. Yeah, yep,
all right, good luck, all right, yeah, you bet take care
now that that is definitely the case that can happen. I was in the
backyard yesterday and noticed one of my bird feeders had gotten empty. And I
tell you our birds, you I should let the birds come in and talk
to you about war Birds Unlimited because they could be a better spokesman than I
am. But they love the mix. I've got a nesting super blend that
is a good thing to be putting on right now because birds are still newt
nesting. There's still some of that going on. And then there's also the
molting season, which birds go through molts once two or three times the here.
It depends on the bird. But they shed their old feathers, they
generate new ones, and so they kind of take cover, hang out,
don't fly around as much, and it's nice to have a good source,
dependable source of food for him during that time. Nesting super Blend does all
that, and that's what I use in my landscape this summer, and boy,
they love it. And then I'll throw in a little bit of some
of the other excellent feeds from Wabirds Unlimited, perhaps something with some sunflower or
whatever. Wabird feeds are very high quality, and when something goes into a
wild bird sack of feed for birds, you know it's something birds want to
eat. They don't put the little red bebies that cheap bird seed has,
so you end up spending more on cheap bird seed because you have less to
go into a bird less percentage wise that the birds are going to eat.
Wabirds Unlimited is easy to find. You just go to WBU dot com forward
slash Houston, WBU dot Com forward slash Houston and you can find one of
the six Wallbirds Unlimited stores near you. It's always a good time to go
in for a gift for a friend, a feeder, a bird house.
Just go in and check them out. You'd be very very impressed, and
trust me on this and your birds you're gonna love it too. My goodness,
our yard, I would say probably right now, since I started the
feeding this summertime, I'd gone away for a while, didn't redo the feed
Since I started, I think I probably have five times as many birds that
are in the yard, and it's just going to get more and more.
A little water, a little bird food. By the way, they need
water. Make sure your birds have water and you can have great success.
Let's go now, we're gonna head back to the phone. We're going about
to Spring, Texas and talk to Mark. Hello, Mark hello today.
Yeah, I got two questions. What's the best mulched good around centris tree
in a container? In a container, you know, the mulching is helpful
to keep the soil a little cooler, but Centrius tends to shade it's soil
and a container pretty well. So you could really use kind of any type
of mult you would like. I would use something a little smaller in terms
of particle size. You know, if you had big old chunks of pine
bark or something in a container. You can't mulch three inches deep in a
container, So maybe something a little finer textured in a malt that way,
if you even got it an inch inch and a half deep, that would
be enough to provide what you want multch to do. Okay, excellent.
Oh my second question is I got a hearty high biscus and it's just not
growing. It's not big like the other ones mother too. Okay, it's
tall, and their leaves seem wrinkled, they're not big. H that's very
interesting. I'm probably gonna use a picture of that one to know for sure.
Is this the kind that makes the big old giant red pink or white
blooms? Yeah, there's sort of like a light pink with a red center.
Okay, yeah, okay, I I just want to make sure we're
talking about the same plant. Uh, they need water, they don't go
into drought. Well, Uh, they're not Prima Donna's that you got to
water every day. It's just that don't let the soul dry out. That's
important. Be careful using any kind of a broad leaf weed control product around
them, even in the lawn right next to them. Broadleaf we control products,
especially when the weather's hot, they can cause some problems. Yeah,
I haven't used any of that. Okay, start drop it. Yeah,
okay, well, Mark, I need to turn that radio in the background
down. It's kind of feeding back on us. So let's do this.
I think the best way to help you is I'm going to put you on
hold and have uh, the producer Chris give you my email so that you
can uh send me some pictures of the bush overall and some up close pictures
and let me see if I can tell what's going on. On. If
it's not drought, if it's not a chemical injury, it's possible that nematodes
could be working on the root system and have hit a point where it's just
so inefficient that the plan is struggling. But let me look at let me
see some pictures of it. Okay, okay, that's sound good. Yeah,
okay, I want to put you on put you on hold here and
we will get uh. We will get right to you, hick. Just
hang on just a second. We'll be right back with you to give give
you that email that you need. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your
host, Skiprector, and we're here to answer your gardening questions. We love
to visit with gardeners. I think one of my favorite thing to do.
I guess I'm doing the right job right now because my favorite thing to do
is to talk to gardeners. And when when you just have a chance to
hang out with gardeners, you find out some of the best people in the
world. They're just fun. We are eternal optimists. We absolutely have to
be uh. And you know, it's it's a healthy activity, it's a
mind healing activity, it really is. It's just just a lot of enjoyment
in gardening. So I guess that's one of the reasons why gardeners are so
much fun to be around. But anyway, our phone number if you'd like
to give us a call seven one three two one two k t r H.
Seven to one three two one two k t r H. I did
my final appearance of the season the other day, and we got a little
summertime off here now before we start those things up again in the fall.
But one of my appearances toward the end of the season this year was the
one at Langham Creek. ACE Hardware. Uh. You know. ACE Hardware's
are all over the Greater Houston area and it's always fun going into an ACE
because people walk up during these appearances. They ask me questions like, well,
I've got this we they pull it out of a bag, or they
ask some other kind of question. And when when I'm in an ACE hardware
store, I just say, yeah, you just go right over there and
there's such and such and you can get it. They carry it all.
Do you need the fertilizers I talk about on Guardenline Ace Hardware as simple as
that. Do you need fire ant control, preferably starting with a bait,
that's the best way to start. They have it. Do you need mosquito
dunks? You hear me talk about those. We put them in the water
and they control mosquitoes, mosquito larvae. Do you need a fogger for mosquitos
on the patio or any other kind of gadget. Do you want to beautify
your outdoor setting? Do you need barbecue equipment? Ace is the place for
your summer landscape and your summer outdoor living. Acehardware dot Com and find the
store locator and you'll find a store near you. Take a little break here
for the news. I'll be right back. Houston's News, Why they're traffic
plus breaking news twenty four to seven. This is News Radio forty KTRHEL Everywhere.
More of what's happening now from the John Morris Services Studios, Beryl coming
for Texas. I'm Cloff Saunders. It's seven thirty on KTRH and with traffic
and weather together, here's Gary Mack. Welcome back to guard Line. Glad
to have you with us today. Thanks for tuning in. It's always good
to visit about gardening with friends. Right, Let's get that. Let's get
that done today by answering your gardening questions. All you got to do is
give us a call seven to one, three two one two k t r
H. We'll talk about the topics that are most of interest to you.
That sounds fair enough, doesn't it. Night Fuss has a really cool product
called sweet Green. Sweet Green. Why sweet well sweet, because it's actually
from a basis in horticultural molasses. You know molasses. Organic gardeners know that
you put molasses on the soil and it stimulus. It's microbial activity, specifically
beneficial bacteria that help your plant roots to thrive. And sweet Green's eleven percent
nitrogen product. It increases the health of the soil as it increases that population
of all those beneficial microbes. And when you create that kind of a rich
environment to promote health of your plants, they're going to do well. That's
how nature does it, and that is why I think that you will find
sweet green to be a very effective and pretty quick available product as well.
You just put it down, I would say, at this time in the
season, if are we using sweet green, what I would do is I
would take the application and maybe split it in half and do some of it
now and then about six eight weeks from now do it again. And that
way you give a more extended feed and a small dose, which is a
good thing. You know, we eat small amounts every day over time in
order to have health. And the same is true with your lawn with sweet
grain. A split application like that in the summer would work very very well.
Now you're gonna find sweet green all over the place. If you're up
in Montgomery, Jim's Hardbur's got it there on fourteen ninety seven. In Brenham,
Plants and things have it down in Angleton, Lake Hardware, Angleton on
Velasco. Are all places where you can get sweet Green by Nitroposs. I'm
gonna head now to the phones. We're gonna go all the way to Dickinson
and talk to Charles. Hello, Charles, Hello, Hey Charles, what
regard line? Can you hear me? Yeah? I can't. Yeah,
I hear you on my phone, I mean on the TV. I mean
I'm already. I'm sorry. Okay, So I just asked a question about
fertilization. But I've got some I just started growing BlackBerry's and I want over
the last couple of years. I've got a really three faint varieties. I've
got some Navajos and we can't think of the other one. But the main
one I have right now is my Primark Freedoms. And these things are.
I've got stalks on them because my middle finger and I've got and I have
I have got berries all over right now and it's but the size of my
thumb, and uh, I'm just kind of surprised there's still producing. But
I'm just trying to figure out do I need. It's kind of like a
fertilization on the thing. You know, I go to I go to the
YouTube and there's so many different people around the country that and I can't find
anybody in this where we live out here for fertilization. Uh, you know,
some some answers on what I need to do to fertilize in this area.
But those Primarchs, I just can't believe it's still growing and producing fruit.
That's just beautiful they are. So I'm kind of if I if I
need to, you know, if I need to need to fertilize them,
but you know, anytime soon or anything. But the other one all all
all kind of everything's just kind of like dying back on them and you know,
no no fly or anything. But they're just beautiful. Yeah, well
good, Yeah, that Primark Freedom and there's another Primark Travelers and the other
and they're both excellent berries out of the University of Arkansas, thornless berries that
do very very well here. So I would you know as far as fertilizing,
First of all, we don't have to sweat it a lot on blackberries.
Yes, you own to fertilize them, but they're pretty tough. I
mean you think about like you see dewberries while blackberries growing all over the place
and they just kind of live out their nature they do. Okay. The
most important element for your blackberries is nitrogen, and it's better to apply it
in small applications. Typically we'll do a little fertilizing in the spring as the
buds begin to push out, and then after the fruit harvest is completed in
summer. And this is standard types of blackberries. Your freedom is an ever
bearing or repeat bearing. It's we call it a primal cane bearing BlackBerry.
You get some the first year on the canes, and you get some of
the second year too, in the same cane. Get there, So I
pardon, no, Dad, I'm sorry, I'm going to be interrupting.
Good okay, Yeah, So I would just primarily focus on nitrogen. If
you want to have a soil test done to see maybe your magnesium is low,
maybe potassium is low. Who knows, but a soul test would tell
you what else you might want to put down. I use lawn fertilizer on
my blackberries. Uh. When I've had that to fertilize, I think it
works fine. You could also just use a little bit of nitrogen source on
them, but again not a lot. You don't want to push them into
supergrowth because as you are have already pointed out, those are vigorous enough as
it is. Uh So yeah, and and Charles, if you if your
new shoots coming out are a little yellow, or maybe the veins are green,
but they're yellow in between the veins, then that is an iron chlorosis.
And in our soils would Thu're often high higher pH here than we want
them to be. In Southeast Texas, you can see some ironclerosis and you
would just supplement with a keylated iron product if that happens. Alrighty, I
appreciate it. All right, you take care now, you know, aeron
Guardline, our advice advice is free. But all we ask is that you
bring half of your BlackBerry harvest to the station when it comes in and we'll
call it even okay, all right, sir, thank you a great show.
Thank you, thank you. I appreciate that. Enjoy having fun.
You boy. Blackberries. We got to grow more blackberries along the Gulf coast
really throughout the state, but East Texas. When I say East Texas,
I mean kind of north south the direction the eastern third of the state that
is prime place for grown BlackBerry. You can grow further further west as well.
But blackberries are so easy to grow in these new varieties. He was
talking about the prime arc prime arc fun. In fact, blackberries are typically
a primacane and floracane producing plant, which means in year one, a shoot
comes out of the ground. It's called a primacine prime primo one first year,
that's what that means, primacaine. It goes through winter after it has
set buds, and in the spring it blooms since sets fruit year two floracane
as in flowers. Primacine first year turns into a floraicane, blooms and then
dies after you harvest it. Well, that's the two year cycle of normal
BlackBerry plants. For years now, people have been working on blackberries that can
produce on the first year that the cane grows. A primacane has fruit and
it can go through winter, and as a floricane it can have fruit.
Those are the primary breeder of those was Jim Moore, now John, a
guy named John, last name escapes me at the University of Arkansas, and
they produce some wonderful varieties, Primark Freedom and Primark Traveler, or two of
the best. We're gonna take a little break. We'll be right back our
phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four Socialism. Welcome
back to garden Line. Thanks for joining us this morning. We got a
lot of gardening stuff to talk about, got some folks online here. In
fact, we're gonna run straight out to the phones and let's see, we're
gonna head to Lake City and talk to John. Good morning, John,
Hello, good morning. I have some Yeah, I have some azelias that
the leaves they're real healthy, they've been there for years. They leaves,
though, are starting to drop off. It's weird. I'm seeing more leaves
dead underneath. It's kind of sending out. It doesn't look like iron chloruss
or anything. It's the leaves are kind of yellow and green, kind of
almost like a black yellow and green. And then they and then they turn
brown and drop. And I didn't know if you had any idea what you
think that might be. Well, usually it's due to a sole moisture problem.
The whenever you get wide fluctuations and moisture, it's not unusual for an
as elia to have the old leaves basically get cast off the plant. They
turn yellow, and then of course they turn brown and fall off, so
that that is one likely cause for it. If anything causes the sole moisture
availability to change, then you're also going to get that that same kind of
a symptom. For example, a root rot would kill roots, and it
would be the same things as having drought where you can't take water up because
you don't have roots to take it up. That's kind of what I'm talking
about. Physical damage to the root. You know, someone take a should
cut roots, or any of those kinds of things. It sounds to me
more like a water problem. It could be related to a sore moisture issue.
Uh, And it could also be related to a root rot, in
which case you would need to treat. But how fast did this come on?
Uh? Probably you know they they bloomed really well in the spring and
then I started my fertilizer cycle, and I would say for the last two
months probably you know, somewhere in May and maybe mart mid May to June.
I started noticing this and I kind of watched it kind of like it
was I have like maybe six of them big, cause Ellia is like four
feet high five feet high. And then I started noticing it's kind of getting
worse, spreading throughout, and I was like, well, what's going on
here? And they get you know, they only get excessive water. You
know, we've had heavy rains, but it's just kind of odd they've been
They've been sitting there in the same place. So it's not like the you
know, the soil's changed or anything that I'm aware of. Yeah, okay,
have we done anything like was a tree limb taken out? For example?
We did have some Yeah, we did have some maintenance springing done with
some oak trees that were above them. Well, you know, that opens
it up and now suddenly the lands go up a lot. So keeping a
mulch, keeping a moist, that would be what I suggest. If you
end up losing entire bushes, it may be time to jump in with a
drench of a root rot fung just side. But I'm not inclined to go
there. I don't think that's what's needed. Based on our conversation so far
here, you wouldn't recommend I like drench them with a fungus side now and
sprain or anything. I was wondering if it could be a fungus, but
I don't know. Well, it could be a root rot. But again,
as we talk about this, I'm not hearing some things that I would
think root rot shot. So I hate to send people out to spend money
and time applying products when they're not need did so, Yeah that that.
Yeah, it's weird. I don't ever hardly see that many leaves, you
know, this time of year. They don't usually drop their league. Yeah,
it's like they're sitting out. I mean you still look green by the
way, you know, But I see these dead leaves all in different areas.
So it's weird. Yeah, well that you know, it's not unusual
with any kind of a stress for that to happen on on Azila's anything that
limits up. Hey, you're in Lake City, is that right? Leak
City? League City? Oh? League City? Okay city? All right?
Good good? That would have been a long distance call Lake City.
Yeah, well, thanks a lot. Good luck with that. I hope
that, hope that turns around. If it doesn't, give us a callback
and we can suggest some type of a root roight drench, but again I
think that's a long shot. Okay, thank you, John. Alrighty,
let's see here. We are now going to go to Ron in West Houston.
Hello, Ron, good morning. How can we help? What I'd
like to do is I'd like to plant a blueberry patch. But I'd like
to know when is the best time to plant the blueberries prior to, of
course their season. Yes, I would plant them at anytime from mid to
late fall on into through the winter time. That would be ideal. So
while it's cool, the demands are lowest it's possible on the plant, it's
easy to keep them moist and everything that gives them the most time possible to
get some roots going before the next summer hits. And what kind of fertilizer
or what kind of preparation do I need to do to make sure that they
have the best chance for survival? Good question? Is your soil a clay
or a sand or what kind of soil are we dealing with here? It's
had died mulge for a couple of years. So does it hold water?
Does the soil whole water well? Or does it drain really well? Or
is it kind of a sticky heavy clay when you dig down into the soil
itself, do you notice any can you describe anything for me? Is this?
It is a sticky excuse me, sticky soil and it is a heavy
clay, and I want to remediate that. And I wanted to remove that
clay area down to what I need to for the blueberries to survive. You
can do that, I'm sorry, not blueberries, blackberries, oh, blackberries.
Okay, thank you for clarifying that I was about to leave you in
the wrong direction. Blackberries are not real happy with a heavy clay. They
like sandy loam soils. But I don't know that removing the soil is the
best way to go about it. I would say bringing a good quality mix
in and building up the soil with a good sandy loam mix with some compost
and things would be best. When you dig a pit like I think of
it as digging a grave to remove the soil out, and then you put
good soil in it and plant your plant. Now they're in an underground flower
pot where that it's like the clay hole's water and so you didn't improve the
drainage any if instead you put stuff on top of the ground and build it
up. Now the excess water drains away, but they're still growing in good
quality stuff. I think that's probably your best best approach. So what I
would be what I would do run is I would get a good quality mix
like a rose soil or like a airlimb soils makes a blend for or fruit
plants, and that would be a good choice. You can buy it by
the bag. You can have the book delivered end uh. If you you're
probably not too far away from Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with
skip Richard's trim. You just watch him as so many birthings to seepots not
a sign sun Beamon of Welcome back to guarden Lines. Hey, thanks for
listening, Thanks for tuning in today. We are looking forward to talking to
you about the things that interest you. How do we help you have a
more bountiful garden and a more beautiful landscape. That's what this is about.
And if you'd like to give us a call, you're welcome to do that
well. Happy to tackle the questions for diagnosis and identification and suggestions or whatever
you want to do to have success. Make your place a more enjoyable,
enjoyable place to be, because you know, gardening is about having a really
good time. It's about relaxing, it's about having fun. It's about having
the just the joy of being able to create something. Beauty, productivity,
fresh fruits and vegetables. You grew yourself, we can help you do that.
Here's the number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven
to one three two one two five eight seven four. And we're going to
start by going out to Alvin and talking to Wayne. Hello, Wayne,
good morning, Skip. Hey. We got a got a good producing Mustang
great wild great, and this year it was doing good. It starts setting
fruit real well. Then we got all that rain and then all of a
sudden, all the leaves just turned brown, dried up, And this thing
is loaded, it's ready to be picked. The new growth has come back
in. It has small green leaves on it. But I'm not skinning any
of the wildlife touch these grapes. What's your opinion on it? The grapes
look like they're ripe. You're saying, yes, sir, Yes, sir.
They look this thing is loaded to the hill. So are you pretty
sure that nothing got sprayed on or around that plant? Yes, sir,
I've looked all around it. As soon as it started happening. There's no
dead grass. I can't see anybody just spraying the plant without it getting on
the grass. It's on the chain linked. Then it's probably about four foot
high, so it would have killed something around it. I'm seeing other grape
vines in the area that has done this same thing. They're not produced,
and they're they're young, but the leaves dad and now they've come back looking
better. All right, Look, Williams, you know it could be a
number of things. We have not had the drought that would explain defoliating or
anything there is. There are some diseases, fungal diseases that can really wreck
havoc on vines. Normally, Mustang's are pretty tough grape. We don't have
as many problems with that with a lot of the other grapes that we have,
but black spot is one. It can cause foliage spots. There's other
fungi that can do it, and whenever we get a lot of rainy weather,
it's splashing spores around and it's helping those disease sports to germinate and infect
the leaf. And I would say that's probably what happened right now. The
fact that it's pushing out new growth again means the vine's healthy. You just
got a leaf disease that defoliated it and so it'll come back. Doesn't do
it any good. And as far as those apes that are on it,
they got to have sugar, and sugar comes from leaves, and so I
don't know what the crop quality would be like with that, but if they
can hang on any longer, give them a little more time, it'd probably
be good to do that, just to give them the best shot they can
do. Y'all typically harvest those yes, sure, yes, sure, okay,
all right, well that would be my suggestions. The only thing in
your control right now. Certainly shouldn't be necessary to spray a mustang grape,
but you always could. But again, most people that have a wild grape
like that, they're not going to want to have to get out and spray
it. Correct, all right, Skip. I appreciate cam Poe and love
the show all right, So in guardenline, all our advice is free.
But I do ask that half of whatever you grow and produce as a result,
you drop by the station. So that could be mustang wine, it
could be mustang jelly. However you want to do it, I'll call it
even better. Go build you a bigger pantry. All right. You know,
my family grew up kind of along the Gulf coast of Texas, not
my dad, as that family grew up my dad, and they used to
harvest mustangs every year, and they, you know, they made everything that
you would expect you would make out of grapes. Oh yeah, yeah.
The wife put up forty eight jars of jelly. And there's two gallons of
wine going now off of my cow. There you go, There you go.
There's also a greed, sir, do what I said. We'll see.
Yes, you'll leave with a smile. Hey, yeah, there you
go. That's good. Thanks a lot, man. Hey, good to
talk to you. Appreciate appreciate the college. Bye bye. Oh man.
Hey, if you lived down in the League City area, just south a
little bit to the east of Houston the way to Galveston, well your hometown
feed store is League City Feed. And when I say hometown, I mean
your hometown feedstore. If you're in Santa Fe or Dickinson, or Lamark or
Baycliffe for Elkamina, Reale, Clear Lake City, all that whole region down
there. League City Feed. This store has been around since forty years ago
when the grandfather Thunderberger's grandfather first got that thing rolling, and Wes and Madison
his sister, are still running the place. If you go in there,
you're gonna find ever fertilizer I talk about on Guardline. You're gonna find soil
blend, like the heirloom soil bags we talk about. Uh, they're going
to be there as am I. You're going to find that their quality pet
feeds, very high quality pet feed. They're gonna have pesticide, herbicide fundside,
whatever you need to make your lawn and garden look its best. That's
League City Feed. They're open Monday through Saturday and today nine am to six
pms again six pm today to run by there. Closed on Sunday. Here's
the number two eight one, three, three two sixteen twelve. Now it's
just a few blocks south of ninety six on Highway three in League City,
just a few blocks south of Highway ninety six. Easy to find, easy
to get to, and when you get there, you're going to find what
you're looking for. League City. Let's head now out to WESTU and we're
going to talk to Charlie. Hello, Charlie, we have a Charlie.
Did I push the right button? Charlie? Hey Charlie, you got you
all right? Good? Welcome to Guardline. How can I help nice Skip?
I have a Saint Augustine lawn which is not doing well, and I
was wondering if I need to take plugs all along. I think I've heard
the advertised of maybe a Randy ship Brandy shall m androgate arrogates. So are
you are you saying the lawn is dying back slowly or what are you seeing?
Just to agress is not doing well? It's got some some weeds in
it, Okay? Yeah? You know the schedule that I put online at
Gardening with Skip dot com. That's my website, Gardening with Skip dot com.
The schedule there talks about how to make your lawn party basically, and
it talks about mowing, watering and fertilizing to talking about frequency of watering,
uh, the amount of water you put on. It talks about the fertilizers.
Have you done any fertilizing this spring or summer? Uh? You know,
we have just done some fertilizing. Us also put on some weed prevent
just recently. Okay, good, yeah, good, Well I would I
would just kind of watch it. Whenever you use any kind of a weed
control product, be be cautious to follow the label very carefully because overdosing can
be a problem on those. But I would say sounds like just a matter
of giving it adequate water that if you, let's see you're in the West
View area, if you got a couple of options. You could send a
sample of the turf up to the state Plant Clinic at A and M and
have them analyze it. Maybe there's a disease on it, like take all
root rot that they would find. That would be an option. But other
than that, making sure it has adequate fertilizer and moderate amounts feeding through the
season and adequate sunlight and then of course adequate watering would be the most important
things. Let's do this, Charlie, I want you to hold on.
I'm gonna have Chris pick up the line here and give you my email.
Could you send me some photos of your lawn from a distance and close up
and make sure they're in really good sharp focus and I'll see if I see
anything else that is not coming to mind as we talk. All right,
okay, but on the subs, just taking plugs out of the lawn,
do you generally recommend that or not? Irri out? You can. You
can put plugs in to help it fill in. You can do that,
but you need to so they make a little little holes, a little holes
and pull some of the old toil out to let the air in. No,
no, no, don't worry about that. Oh oh, air rating,
Yes, absolutely, I'm sure. Yes. Air rating is always a
good thing. Do it as as soon as you can put some leaf,
more compost on top and watered in really good that I'm gonna have to run.
I'm late for a break here, but good luck with that. And
if you want to hang on hold uh josh, we'll give you an email.
All right, folks, we got to take a break. We'll be
right. Welcome back to the guardenline. Good to have you man, Good
to have you listening today. We got a lot to talk about it.
Hey, it is summer, but our plants are out there. They are
hanging on through the hot weather and whatnot, and we can do a lot
of things to help them out. One of the things that you can do
for your lawn to help it out is to do a aeration and compost top
dressing. I was just kind of busiting with that a little bit with Charlie,
and so basically, what is this. What this means is we're punching
a hole in the ground and pulling a plug of soil out. That last
part is important. There are machines that will push a probe in the ground
and sort of squeeze an opening down into the soil. That's okay, but
it's better to have a core aerator that reaches into the soil with a hollow
tube and pops that plug out and leaves it on top of the soil.
Professional turf aerated all the time, golf courses and things very important. It
helps with compaction, It helps with a lot of root issues for your grass,
and grass needs a good healthy root system, which requires a good soil
profile. So when you do a cororation and then you do the compost top
dressing, you've done that. And if you live south and west the Houston
area, BnB turf Pros is your go to company for this Listen B and
B. They know what they're doing. I've seen the work that they do.
I'm amazed by it. In fact, if you want to see the
kind of work they do, go to BB Turfpros dot com, bb turf
Pros dot com or you can give them a call seven one, three,
two, three, four, five, five, nine to eight. Here's
the thing about BnB, Here's why I am excited and am happy to recommend
them to you, is they are all about customer satisfaction. They do high
quality work. Look at the ratings. They receive, high quality work,
and they only use quality products. For example, good quality compost from Cnamlts
just down the road from them. There absolutely top quality. I saw something
the other day. They were doing a Microlife edition with the compost top dressing.
What a great idea. What a great idea? Again, what are
they doing? Top quality work with top quality products. They go above and
beyond and make a personal connection. So if you live as far west as
sugar Land, maybe up to Missouri City, all the way across to Pearland,
or down in the general area of Fresno, Sienna Arcola Iowa Colony,
Manvil. This is this is their backyard. This is where they do their
work. BB Turfpros dot com. Help your lawn survive through the heat and
through the drought. If you've got a lawn that's struggling, this is like
step A and bringing it back, give them a call at Bbturfpros dot com.
Seven one, three, two, three four five five ninety eight.
We're now going to go to let's see where are we going now We're going
to Pearland to talk to Carol. Hello, Carol, Hey, Caril Caryl.
How are you doing? Sir? Well, excuse me, welcome the
garden line. Thank you. Quick question. I have Molly Holly tree sorry,
Holly trees a lined in my backyard. Yeah, kind of like,
you know, to help just a private or you know, just natural private
pen team. I guess I want to change my if it's a good idea,
I think I've seen it once to change my mulch and use crush granite.
I feel like the mult, it's a it's a small backyard, and
I feel like the mult runs really quick whenever there's my sprinters are on or
where it rains. So I seen crust granite around holly trees before. I
don't know if it's a good idea of what type of if it has to
be a special quality to use that trust grind it around. That's kind of
like a decorative mult system situation. Yeah, I'm not real big on on
granite as a mulch. There are situations like if you're trying to grow something
that wants to be in West Texas in Houston, putting crush granite on the
surface gives it a quick drying, uh, you know, a little bit,
a little bit better environment, uh for those kind of plants. But
with a holly, I would use an organic mult. I would use shredded
bark, shredded hardwood bark. You could use, uh the pine bark mult
that's one that I know Louisiana Pacific. The shredded hardwood excuse me, the
shredded hardwood and pine bark mults. Both would be two of the top choices
that you could make for that landscaper's pride, is what I was trying to
say. They have a quality example of both of those are available by bags
everywhere. You could you could try hollies for the health of the hollies,
it wouldn't be a good idea to use granite, No, it would not.
That would cut down on aeration in the soil a little bit. But
we mainly use the granite and pathways and stuff where ye pathway and a holly
tree is from a southeastern US forests that's are a asia in the same kind
of place, and so they are used to having lots of decomposing organic matter
in the soil. That's what helps them thrive. So a good organic most
that will gradually over time decompose, that's the long time, long term benefit.
Perfect, Okay, so that was the question. That really appreciate you
til good, good, well, good luck with those. They are an
excellent plant for creating a privacy screen, that is for sure. Thanks for
the call, Carol. Correct, yes, sir, bye bye. That
is true. Let's see here. We are going to now run out to
Sweeney, Texas and talk to Mark. Hello, Mark, or I got
a question. Oak tree in my backyard probably pushing two hundred years over better.
I had a huge branch come down a couple of weeks ago and then
dropped another branch here not two days ago. Just fell out tree, no
wind, no nut, that just snapped off and come down. Is there
some way am I supposed to be fertilizing that or what can I give it
to make it more healthier? Because I don't want to lose that tree.
Yeah. That's a condition called sudden limb drop, and it happens a lot.
We really see a lot in pecand trees. I saw some the other
day on an elm tree. It's like everything looks good and is normal,
and suddenly there's not even a storm and a wind just cracks and pops falls
out of the tree. It's kind of a scary deal, but that can
happen, and it typically happens on you. In the summertime. We see
a lot of it, and there are various contributing factors to it, but
nothing that you can do anything about other than make sure the tree has adequate
soul moisture. But it's just a factor of summers. It's weird. We
have no wind at all and you come out in the morning and there's a
limb lane on the ground big enough to have hurt somebody. Oh yeah,
yeah, because up one branch, I can it. I think it just
off. The branch itself had one hundred and twenty rings on it holy cow.
Yeah, well you may want to have Martin from Affordable Tree come out
and take a look at it and just make sure. Maybe there's some narrow
branch angles that are contributing to that. There could be something else going on,
but uh, you know that sudden lind drop is it happens unfortunately.
But if you wanted to have a Martin from Affordable Tree he could he could
take a look at it and tell you for sure is it needing anything or
does it need some pruning, because if it's doing that, then when we
have storms, that's even an increased risk. Yeah. I just said,
no, you know, if there is a fertilizer or speed or something,
I need to be given it or make it healthier or what. No,
I mean unless the tree is just looking struggling, it doesn't have good green
color in the foe and other things. Fertilizer is fine, but that's not
the solution here. The only thing I would say would be most important is
during periods of extended heat and lack of rainfall, a good deep soaking on
an infrequent basis, you know, apply over an inch inch and a half
of water and one good deep irrigation soaking every few weeks in the absence of
rainfall when it's so blazing hot. Okay, all right, so get one
of those tree hugger thing up. Yeah, that'd be fine. If it's
not too big of a tree, Yeah, that would work fine. The
tree huggers will the biggest ones will reach out pretty far. Yeah, it's
it's pretty big. Yeah. So you may want to just get a regular
sprinkler and move it all around in a big circle like you're watering a doughnut
shape on the ground, you know, underneath that tree. All right,
all right, sure, appreciate you. All right, sir, thank you,
Mark, appreciate your call very much. We're gonna take a little break
here and I will be right back. The number is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. When we come back, John, you'll
be our first up. Welcome back to the garden line. Hey, good
to have you with us. Thanks for joining us today. By the way,
we really really appreciate that. I just enjoy the chance to get to
talk with gardeners. That that's kind of the bottom line. I think it's
fun. I think gardening is a great hobby. Listening to me, you
are never going to learn at all. As someone once said, probably sounds
like something Mark Twain or Oh, I don't know one of those folks would
have said. But the older I the smarter I get, the more I
know how much I'm dumb at or something along those lines. And boy,
is that ever true? You know, every year I learned about new plants
I've never heard of before. Can you believe that we're doing this thirty five
years? Studying and talking about plants for thirty five years? And I still
run across things. It's like, Okay, that's new new to me and
learning something else. Or maybe we have new diseases, new insects, we
have new opportunities for growing things in ways we didn't know we could grow them
before. It's fun to do the whole gardening thing. If you live up
in the Tombol area and you are looking for a feed store that out west
to Tombole on twenty nine to twenty D and D Feed, D and D
Feed on twenty nine to twenty West to Tombole is an outstanding place to get
all kinds of supplies for your lawn and for your garden. They carry the
fertilizers, all of them that I talk about here on garden Line. You
can find them there. You can find quality soil blends like Heirloom Soils,
Rose Soil, or their fruit berry and citrus mix. I was talking about
while ago with someone about using a soil mix for BlackBerry plants. This would
be a great one for that. They have a veggie and herb mix.
They've got the aged leaf mold compost, D and D feed now they bring
plants into I mean you can go and always find something going on outside there
in the area where they keep their plants out on twenty nine to twenty.
You can also go inside and find every product you might need for inside control,
past control, disease control for all of you at West to Tomball.
This is your backyard right here. And DND feed that hometown feed store that
you're going to find the things you hear me talk about on garden Line.
I always like to visit there, me talking with Jeff and the team there.
It's just it's always fun to get to go out and enjoy and the
way they treat you there is the way you should be treated when you go
to a good quality feed store. We're going to go now to the phones.
Let's see here who we got coming up. I believe I've got John
and friends with Hello John, Hi, Skip, how are you today?
Hey? Listens Tom oh no, no, no problem. I put in
a good bit of new Saint Augustine turf back in February. In March,
I was out of town almost all of June, and I came back.
I had a company do my lawnmowing while I was gone, so it wasn't
a jungle. That Saint Augustine is solid, it's thriving. But when I
came back after a few days ago, I had a ton of sedges growing
in all of that. I have used sedge hammer before in small spot treatment
necessities, but I wanted to find out if the heat right now is too
too hot for me to go out there and do big swathes swaths of the
grass with that sedge hammer product. I think it's okay. Still, I
just would go out early in the morning as well. I say early,
you know, before it even begins to really heat up, and do the
application at that time. I let it okay, come dry off. If
you can spot treat as opposed to just treating everything, that's fine. If
not, just do it however you need to do it to make sure that
the sedge shimmer gets on sedges and nutgrass or cutlinger or any kind of sedges
that you have. Yeah, yeah, I got a little bit of each.
So okay, real quick question. I've got some flax liies. I
put in about four pots of those a few years ago, and they are
they're just there're too many of them right now. How can I go in
and sind those out? Well? Are you wanting to just get rid of
them, or are you wanting to keep them where they'll growing, or you
can share them with somebody. I wouldn't mind getting rid of them, but
they're just they've gotten bigger, I mean height wide, and they've just completely
filled up a little bit more of an area than I want. Okay,
So you could use a shovel and go in there, and a good sharp
shovel. You need to actually sharpen the edge because we're not just digging dirt
here, we're cutting through plant materials. But you will if you use a
shovel and cut down. You could basically go around the clump and take out
sections to leave what you want to leave, or you could dig the whole
clump up. It's a little bit hot weather to do the whole thing right
now. But if you want to dig the whole thing up and then split
it into sections to repot, replant, share with friends, you could also
do that. I would try to do that in a little bit milder time
of the year. But as far as just taking a shovel and cutting into
the clump, you can do that now. Okay, all right, great,
that would get me going. Thanks a lot to get good luck.
Appreciate the call. Thanks a lot. I appreciate that very much. Let's
see here. We are going to now go to Brenham, Texas and talk
to Mike. Hello, Mike Skip, how you doing. I'm actually friends
with But my problem my problems in Brenham. Oh, I got a place
up there. It's loaded with live oaks. They're doing beautifully, but it's
had some huge seedars. I'm talking two foot diameter trucks in the last four
or five months they have. I've got ten or twelve that are actually did
and no one seems to know what's hitting them. I mean not, you
know, I don't mind losing them too much, but they're offully large.
Yeah, well, what what hit them was last summer? This has happened.
We've had widespread reports of it all the way up as you go through
the Belt through Texas, where you see a lot of the eastern red seedars.
Uh, depending on how much rainfalling area got, I know, up
in the Brian College Station area up that direction north of you on down into
Huntsville and whatnot. It's been really bad. And it basically what happened is
the plants. It was too hot and too dry for too long. And
cedars are very tough, resilient plants. I mean they well, that's the
last time I was worried to be oak tree. I was worried about the
oak trees. Not yeah. Well but no, we've seen a lot of
it. I mean they just turned bronze. It looks like overnight, it's
not and four months they're gone. Yeah, I mean it's just yeah,
they started the top and go down. And so the only thing to do,
if you could go back in time, would be this good deep soaking
very infrequently, like every two and three weeks, a good soaking, drink
the heat. No, there's not a practical way to do that. No,
No, it's exactly exactly it. And and so that's that's why I
think it's just something we live with others. But I'm just curious what was
getting him now. I'd love to find someone that would like some some red
cedar to make furniture with. Oh yeah, yeah, but I do.
I do have a problem in friends with it is. I just had a
section my yard resided because okay, Mike, can you hear me, I'm
gonna have to put you on hold and go to a break. I'm late
for a break. Fine, Okay, you take care. Folks. If
you'd like to give us a call phone number seven one three two one two
K t R H. I'll be right back. Welcome. What kinds of
things do you want to talk about? That's what we're going to be doing
today and we have been will continue to do that. You know, you've
heard me talk about Southwest Fertilizer before. Southwest Fertilizer is the place where if
they don't have something, you don't need it. And that sounds facetious,
but I literally mean that Southwest Fertilizer has every kind of insecticide funge aside.
We control fertilize tool products to spread fertilizer, you know, like a push
spreader, a handheld Fredder. Everything you would need is there at Southwest Fertilizer.
That is what they specialize in. They're on the corner of Bissinet and
Runwick in Southwest Houston, so it's easy to get to them. But I'm
just telling you when if you're looking for a place that has everything that you
would need, that's Southwest Fertilizer. They pride themselves in that, and they
also have knowledgeable staff. You go in there, you talk to Bob,
you talk to Aaron, any of the folks. They know what they're talking
about. They can look at a bug, or look at a leaf,
or look at a photo that you bring in and help you diagnose it and
help you find the product that's needed. If indeed a product is needed,
for example, Microlife fertilizers, you're going to have those there. In fact,
anything organic. Nobody has as good a selection of organics as Southwest Fertilizer
does. That includes Microlife's humates plus that's a purple bag, the concentrated compost
in a bag. It includes the green bag, the one we think of
as the lawn fertilizer, the six two four in the green bag. It
includes everyone that Microlife is going to carry both their liquid products, which they
have some outstanding liquid products at It includes also, certainly the dry granular fertilizers.
Microlife has been a purveyor of quality organic materials for a very very long
time. So do you need some Ocean Harvest liquid to drench over your plants
so that they do well? I mean, that's a fish based fertilizer.
It does really really good job. Microlife also has the seven to one to
three. It's an orange label bag. I use it for houseplants, but
ease for outdoor plants too. Watering things in when you're getting them going in
this heat, A good quality drench like the fisher mulsion, like the Ocean
harvest, like a seaweed type product like the seven to win three product from
Microlife helps those plants get off to a good start. Do it when you
water them in, when you plan them, do it a week later,
do it again a week later, going to help that plant get established.
That's as simple as that. We're going to now run out to let's see
where were we were? We in northwest Houston. No, we were in
Brenham, about to go somewhere else. Hey, Mike, go back,
Yeah, thank you, I'll be real quick. Last year, I had
no sage take over a little courtyard area and I followed Randy's hill. We
killed, tilled, and filled, and I had I got it completely sodded,
but the sod came in with what appears to be Johnson grants and some
sort of weed that looks like a mimosa leaf. Okay, coming up all
over it. As any way you can kill that out. The mimosa leaf
weed is you're going to need to use something probably containing celsius, like the
temperature celsius, and it's a post emergent broad leaf weed killer. You could
do things to prevent the seeds from coming out, but we're a little late
for that. Now spring those existing weeds with a product containing with the product
called celsius. Doing it early in the morning when it's as coolest, the
coolest time you could possibly spray it the day is best. Follow the label
carefully, don't mix it too strong, and it'll knock those out. As
far as the Johnson grass type of weeds, uh, there's not a way
to kill a grass in grass most of the in most situations, so you
would just have to let it get up above the grass and then wipe a
product on it that would kill it. But instead of spraying it and getting
dead spots in your grass, just wipe round up on a brush or on
a sponge type applicator. Yeah, if you can do that, if you
can do a lot of it, if you got a lot of it,
that that's a challenge. Yeah, it's it's it. They came in and
fully soiled it, and it's popping up everywhere. Uh. I mean,
of course it grows a lot faster than st August. And that's I guess
the advantage of trying it because I pulled some of them dug it up.
Yeah, so let's do let's do one other thing here, Mike, if
you want, I'm gonna I'm gonna about to go to break here a little
bit. Put you on hold, and if you want to send me some
close up pictures of that Johnson grass looking weed. Let me take a look
at it and see if I see anything, I may go oh no,
no, no, that's something else. And here's what you do for that.
Okay, covered our bases with you, all right, Okay, thanks
you all right, I'll put you on hold here and Crystal picked up the
phones, pick up and give you my email address. Appreciate that very much.
We're going to now go to Northwest Houston and talk to Dick. Hello,
Dick, good morning, Good morning. I'm help. I am inundated
with goose grass. How do I get rid of it? Well, I
was just saying, you know, killing a grass and a grass is very
difficult to do because what kills goosegrass kills Saint Augustine or Bermuda. By the
way, what kind of grass do you do you have in your lawn?
What your law? I have St. Augustine and a little permute it.
Okay, Well, goosegrass is an annual so even if you don't get it
out this year, it's going to be coming back from seed. So if
you next year will use the barricade product, a pre emergent herbicide by nitroposs
follow my schedule on when to use it, you can prevent the goosegrass from
next year. As far as this year. You would have to dab something
to kill goose grass. That would also kill your lawn, but dab it
straight on the goosegrass instead of spraying it where it gets on your lawn.
That's the option at this point in the season where you already have the grass
growing it is. You got a lot. I have a lot of it.
Okay. You know it produces a little crow's foot like seedhead and the
more if you mow you I might throw a bagger on it just to keep
from spreading those seeds if it gets to the seeding stage. Okay, but
yeah, you're you're just caught. It's pre emergence. The best way to
go prevent it so you never have it. Once you have it, then
then we have to go to great links to try to get stuff on it
without hurting your saint artisteine. Okay, thank you, all right, sir,
you bet, thanks, you appreciate that a lot. Well, you
guys, hear the music. Trying to work my way through some calls here.
When we come back from break, I'll Luis, you'll be our first
up. Susan in Lake City and enjoy and Lockhart, Texas. I can't
wait to talk that and I used to live in Lockhart, Texas. We'll
look forward to that when we come back. Just remember you're listening to the
guard Line and we're here every Saturday and Sunday morning from six a m.
To ten am. You can listen to garden Line on your iHeartMedia app.
Download that app. You can listen to us on there. Listen I Panish
Ball website and see us live on them. Just glad you're listening and we'll
be right back. Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.
It's trip. Just watch him as well. Tell us so many things
to set in. We are back. We are back to take your gardening
questions to basically help you have a more bountiful garden, a more beautifull landscape.
That's what we're here to do. Let's just jump straight on and here.
We're going to go talk to Louise out on the phone. Hey Louise,
welcome to guard Line. All right, there to be going to hold
Louise, put him back on hold. We'll come back to Louise shortly.
We're going to go now to Lake City and talk to Susan. Hello,
Susan Hight there. So I wanted to chat about composting. If you don't
mind, I get about two well barrowfuls of wilted produce weekly from a grocer.
It's been such a blessing. Well, I learned that. I learned
that open air composting was a really bad idea. So I ended up getting
a bunch of bags of soil and covered everything. But I'm still like kind
of dealing with fly. So I did a little bit more research and learned
about black soldier fly. I have chickens, so that'll be a win win
for me. So I was wondering two questions. Number one, is,
other than the rain that we're going to be having, if there's any other
way of getting rid of all the stupid flies that I gathered. I don't
know if you notice you had less flies in your yard for about a week
though we're here. And then secondly the black soldier fly worm casting and then
the leech eight that comes from that. Can I use those directly in my
gardens? Or do I need to delete the leech eight? I've heard something
about it's pretty strong. Yeah, I would delute it. So we've got
a lot going on here. First of all, something that I don't think
you mentioned that is worma composting or worm earthworm composting with red wrigglers, or
are what's called a brown noseworm? Those yeah, done in boxes. You
shred up newspaper and then you put your food scraps in there and they do
the whole thing there. That's one the black solver fly. For those that
are listening that are of familiar with it, that's a really unique creature.
It If you saw it, it would look like a little tiny wasp sitting
with its wings laid back over its body. And they're very effective at decomposing
a lot of different kinds of organic materials. And as far as I don't
know that there would be a leech eate though out of those, because what
they're gonna do is they're going to feed on the materials and there, yes,
they'll they defecate and whatnot from all that feeding. But then the soldier
flies themselves go off somewhere to pewpeat. And I don't know what you've gotten
into black soldier flies, but I don't have time on the air to explain
the whole thing. But basically, people create systems for those fly larva when
they try to crawl out of the box to pewpeat, for them to be
used to chicken feed and what. It's pretty cool stuff, but either one
would work. You could use either one. Basically, what we're doing is
we're using creatures to eat up organic matter and turn it back into a rich
material for the soil. Yeah, because of the volume of produce that I'm
getting. I mean, some of the produce I use for the chickens,
but you know, like potatoes and onions, they don't eat. So yeah,
I went to I have the little box started and set up, so
we'll see if I'm successful if that, But do you have any other suggestions
about the flies? Like this promithne work against those. I keep spraying the
coupe and spraying the yard. But yeah, I just attracted like half of
the flies at the scenia. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well Promethans is
a synthetic perithra and it's somewhat persistent, but not as much as some I
don't know if I want to spray it all over the chicken yard and stuff
where they're pecking and eating and whatnot. Since you're yeah, I get something
to eat from those chickens, right, I would probably instead use a fly
bait. And there are there's several ways to fly control. That Number one.
You're in clear Lake City, is that? Yeah, I'm over in
League City and I've put a bunch of those little fly Yeah, those fly
bait things, and and it almost feels like it's attracting more again, So
I didn't know if there was something else attracted to the bait, but they
feed on it. You don't want the bait where your chickens pegget, don't
hang it up right chicken house, put it else. But I would have
a lot of small bait stations and they eat it and it will poison them,
and that works pretty well. There are also bags you can hang up
that attract them in and they go in the bag and then they die in
the bag and kind of a liquid goo and it's it's nasty, but it's
all enclosed, so you can just throw it away when you're done. Yeah,
that's what I have. Yeah, League City Feed is going to have
a lot of supplies for you when it comes to that stuff. Go talk
to the folks at Leak City Feed and they can they can get you set
up on the bait et and on the bags and anything else like that.
So you think the word castings though, those could be used just straight into
the garden. They won't be too strong. The castings can be mixed straight
into the soil. I wouldn't put our changes deep. You're not going to
have them any right, But you can sprinkle them out, and that's just
fine. If you were going to make a liquid out of some of the
materials, that's where I would cut it, because with liquids, we typically
are sprinkling them on foliage and whatnot, and so you don't want something too
strong when you do that. Okay, well, thank you. And I
hadn't heard people talk about composting, so other people wanting to chat about it
would be really interesting for me as well. But thank you. I appreciate
you. Yeah, all right, thank you. We're going to now go
to lock our Texas and talk to joy. Hello, Joy, are you
there? I'm Joyce? And deal oh rod Dale. Okay, I have
mimosa tree was cut down and it's coming up out of the ground. I
think at first it was cut off where it wasn't always the ground. I
think someone has cut it off to the ground. The limbs coming out on
the ground and up higher. Some of the limbs are ten feet long.
It's right by my car port and I need to get rid of this mimosa
growth. You want do you want the whole thing? Dad? Is that
what you're wanting to do? I don't care if I have a tree there
but I can't have all of this many many shoots, really big ones that
have come up. Okay, So you can either cut off the branches that
are going toward the driveway or sidewalk or whatever, uh and leave the other
or you if you want to kill the whole thing when you yes, cut
it off a few inches above the ground. In fact, I cut it
off about a foot above the ground. And the reason is after it dies,
you want something that you can get a hold of to help grub that
or pull that out. So if you cut it off at the ground there,
that's another option. But either way, when you cut it off,
joy, I want you to get a product that contains triclop here. Uh
pardon what was that actually here? Okay, I'm going to spell it out.
I'm going to spell it out. It makes it's easier. T R
I C L O P y R. Now did you say you were in
Rockdale? Right? Are you listening on radio or on the phone on the
phone? Okay? Good h Well, first of all, welcome, Well
I was on the radio. Now I'm on the phone. Okay. So,
uh, the triclop peer is going to be sold products with names like
brush Control or brush and stump killer or poison ivy killer, those are all
there's all kinds of things for killing that type of plant that contained trilope here.
So what you do is you cut the tree off and right away,
not an hour later, but right away, you take a little foam paintbrush
and dab the straight product right onto the cut surface. So you've cut the
try off and then you just dab this product right on that wound, that
fresh wound, especially around the outside part of the of the stump that you've
cut off, and it will move down in the soil and it will kill
it. Now, if it's a very strong plant, you may have to
do it a second time. If it doesn't get it all, but it's
very effective at controlling brush and poison ivy and anything like that. You just
want to create that wound to apply the straight product, not diluted right too.
Thank you so much. All right, good luck with that, Take
care having you as a listener. It just come on, come on,
turn a radio on, is right in, I a won'to gotta do my
hair, my man, gumma is right and I won't Welcome back to the
guard Line's good to have you with us. Today, looking forward to talking
to you about the things that are of interest to you. You know,
ACE Hardware Stores they pride themselves in carrying the products that you need to have
a bountiful garden and a beautiful landscape. Do you need things to control weeds
or diseases or pests. Do you need things that will help enhance plant growth,
like fertilizers. If you hear me talk about a fertilizer on guardline,
they're going to have it at ACE Hardware that. That's what they do.
Fire at control, mosquito control products, everything to make your outdoor area a
little more pleasant. We have these invaders here in Texas, these fire ants
and things that just can make it unpleasant to be outside. Ace Harder can
fix that. They can help you fix that. They've got all kinds of
products. Perhaps you're dealing with some insects in the lawn and you need some
of the nitrofoss bug out Max. They've got that at ACE Hardware Stores.
Nitrofoss bug out Max is an insecticide. It's a granule. You put it
down, you apply it a little bit of water to soak it in to
the surface of the soil, soak it into the thatch and when ants and
fleas and ticks and chinchbugs things like that begin to feed in the lawn,
they're going to encounter it. And when you put it out, it's going
to last you all the way through this summer season. So you don't apply
it over and over and over again, but it'll go to work within two
days. It's already done the job that it's going to do on the insects
that are there. It works pretty quickly. Now. Nitrofoss bug Out Max
is available at all kinds of ACE hardware stores. You're going to find it
at places like the asen Sinco Ranch, the ACE hard City on Memorial Drive
in the Houston area Kingwood as a task Asta as you get the idea.
Nitrovis Bugout Max from Nitropos widely available. I'm very effective for pests that are
in your turf. And if you're wondering about that, go to the website
Gardening with Skip dot com. Download my lawn care schedule which tells you how
to grow a good lawn O water fertilized and also the past disease and wheat
management schedule. Two schedules on the website Gardening with skip dot com. The
second one deals with diseases, insects and weeds and how to manage those all
the way through the season. Both schedules offer both synthetic and organic options for
managing pests. We're going to now go to sugar Land and talk to Don
Hello, Doc Skip. I have a big question. I've got two different
pigs and their well, it's just two different plants. No one is getting
The figs are really the good size, but they have brown spots on them.
Is that anthracnose? And what's you to do with it? And then
also I have another tree. The figs are small. The thing goes straight
up or is real tall. Cut it back earlier in the year, but
the thing is still shot back up, and the figs are just diminutive in
size. And I don't know if some of it is a fertilizing we kind
of, you know, to fertilize it more or what's the issue with it.
Yeah, Well, generally speaking, figs don't need a lot of fertilizer.
They're very well, very willing to grow. It is possible that you
have, you know, the lack of nutrient in the soil, but generally
we don't have to add a whole lot when it comes to managing figs.
In fact, they they're very eager to grow, and sometimes so eager we
just say hold back if you have droughty conditions, if you have nematodes in
the soil, that definitely will affect the figs and detrimentally, and they can
get some leaf diseases. One the primary one we see is rust. Figs
otherwise are pretty resilient as far as spots on the fruit. It could be
something that's just skin deep and is not really hurting the fruit. I see
those kinds of spots on figs from time to time. If it's actually causing
a decay of the fruit, I think we need to see a simple photo
of it to try to assess specifically what it is. But generally speaking,
we do not spray figs for fruit problems. Right, it's not affecting the
fruit. It just they look kind of weird, you know, like when
a banana turns colored sorts the spots on them, and also like papaya they
say that's anthracnose or something when they start getting spots. One, yeah,
I think the fig you're probably seeing it like a large, dark blotch right
on the Yeah, but they're they're over there over a lot of the surface,
and when they ripe and more, of course they have more. Okay,
smaller ones. Yeah, that could be a little bacterial spot or something
like that. My way of dealing with them is to ignore them. I
guess it could be bad enough to where you would want to do something,
But in general, I've never sprayed a fig for that, that kind of
that kind of thing. Okay, what do you think the other one that
grows real tall and the fruit is real small and maybe not as many figs
on it growing tall could be a result of just having a really good vigor,
maybe being a little lower light, so it's stretching to get sunlight.
I'm not you can always cut them back in the branch so that that would
be fine. I wouldn't do it right now. I'd wait until any fig
you have you've harvested off of it. As far as the small figs here,
okay, Okay, the small figs, some varieties are just smaller than
others, so that that could be a varietal thing. Some get huge,
some stay very small. Celeste, there's a smaller type of fig, but
it's a good one. Yeah, okay, yeah, So the only other
thing, yeah yeah, the only other thing thing, don would be if
you had nematodes in the soil, you could what you could do is take
a shovel and kind of go out maybe a foot from the plant and just
sort of lift the soil up and then with a strong blast of water,
blast the soil away and look at the roots and look for little knots on
the roots. Because it's going to take a significant nematode infestation to see problems
in the tree and figs or nematode magnets. So if you see that,
that's a different thing. Now our figs are struggling because of a lack of
water and true and availability brought on by the nematode infestation. And had you
kill nematods, there's not a good way that the you can uh clear everything
out there's there, there's cover crops you grow to trap them. There used
to be people use the Fuma gun to fumigate the soil and truly kill them.
Otherwise we're basically moving the fig We're not moving it. We're taking a
cutting, reading that cutting and planting it somewhere else where. There aren't nematods
somewhere in your yard where there's not a nematod product. But there is not
a chemical cure for nematodes, not of an effective one. Okay, we'll
let them fight it out. Well, you know, I've been dealing with
nematodes. I've got them in two spots in my yard. I just discovered
another one this week, and uh so I just uh yeah, you just
have to plant them in a different area. Some people grow them in a
very large container. That's an option. That's a little more effort to try
to do that. Mm hmm. Okay, enjoy your show, thank you.
Yeah, yeah, but don don do do the washing up of the
roots and look for the mots because it may not be nematodes at all.
You don't want to want to give it up until you've determined that's for sure
what it is. Okay, So you're looking for a little feeder root,
that's all you're looking for. Yeah, just small roots, and there'll be
little bumps on them. As they get bigger, the roots become swollen and
look like the mischiline man, you know, a lumpy him on the tomato
plants. Before. Yes, you probably have thanks. Thank you. All
right, well let's see here, let's go ahead and run out to the
heights and we're going to talk to Maria. Hello, Maria, Hello,
good morning. Yes, I have scale on my great myrtles, although I
did spring them in the spring. So what can I do without defoliating the
whole tree? Ah? Boy, Well, here's the problem with killing scale
on crp myrtles. The products that will do it also end up in the
nectar of the blooms and our pollinators in summer. They go to crate myrtles
quite a bit because it's one of the dependable blooming plants that carries us through
three months of summer. So I'm very slow to say we'll drench a systemic
insecticide around that tree, although it will be taken up by the roots and
kill the scale. You got that secondary damage, and if it's not too
big of a crape myrtle, you can just cut the blooms off to get
past that. And let's go ahead and knock the scale out first, and
then they can bloom next year or later in the season. Maybe that would
be one thing, but yeah, that's the big challenge with the crepe myrtle.
Bark scale. The other thing you can do, and this is going
to be trouble, but if you want to go to the trouble, you
can put a double sticky, double sided sticky tape around the branches that have
the little white scale you see the little white scale spots on the on the
plant, and do that in March, and then replace the tape if you
need to as it gets dusty and is no longer sticky. But keep watching
it. And when you see little tiny red crawlers with your scale in stuck
in that tape, that means now's the time, and you spray the whole
plant, every surface of that you can see, with an oil or an
insecticide in order to shut that scale down before it honkers down and becomes resistant
to pesticide applications to the surface of the plant. Okay, okay, I
know that that's a little more trouble, but that's the best way to time
it so that you can use something that's not going to hurt your pollinators.
Yeah, okay, sounds good. Thank you. I ready to talk to
you about the things that are of interest to you. Seven to one three
two one two k t R H seven one three two one two K t
R H. We're gonna run out right now and head let's see Santa Fe.
We're going to talk to Raphael. Hey, Raffael, welcome to Guardline.
Hey Skip, how you doing. I'm well, thank you. How
can we help? Yes, I have some browning in my Saint Augustine grass.
It appears just to be thatch, probably at the end of the stolen
you know, as it dies off, but it's actually causing my lawn not
to be as green as I want it. I did use about eight weeks
ago Nitrofoss slow release silver bag. Okay good, And I wanted to know
your opinion on the spray defchers to try to kind of make that thatch go
away quicker. I'm not sure which products you're specifically refer to there, but
basically that occurs when we're overwatering and over fertilizing and creating a lot of fast
runner growth. Uh And as a result, one runner climbs over the next
one, and they don't touch the soil as well as they should, and
so as a result we get we get a thatchy build up that doesn't decompose
away. You can put down a compost top dressing over them to help break
down the runner. That helps a lot. Returning your clippings helps with that
because those those little pieces of clipping, they decompose faster than the runners do,
but they help keep it moist so that the runners decompose a little bit
better. And then core aeration popping the plugs out of the soil, dropping
them up on top of the ground. All of those things work toward reducing
thatch in your in your Saint Augustine lawn. That helps a lot, Thank
you very much. Yeah, and you mentioned you said something earlier and I
didn't quite catch it, but it sounds like you said like the ends of
the runners are dying. Did you say it that way or am I misunderstanding?
Yeah, yes I did. I was watching some videos on YouTube mom
in Novice. But these what I'm calling thatch is that that's still like attached.
In other words, it's not just loose thatch. This is still attached.
Yes. With Saint Augustine. It's very different than northern turf grasses,
where we do something called de thatching. With Saint Augustine, we don't do
de thatching because it's an on top of the ground running grass and so if
you tried to use a de thatcher, it would be ripping up and wounding
all the runners, which is the life of the plant. Northern turf grasses
are more clumping and de thatching is a process that they use up there but
not down here. So what we do is the correoration and the compasstop dressings
and things like that, as well as getting back to a more moderate amount
of fertilizer to avoid growing ourself into a thatch problem. All right, yeah,
the deftch I guess spray that was advertised. I think it said that
they would help with the decomposition, it would make it quicker. Well,
I could see that that could help, But my again not knowing the specific
spray or what's in it, my gut response on that is going to be
Look, anything organic laying on the ground in nature is going to rot if
it's kept moist, if it dries out, it's not That's why the forest
floor is covered with dry leaves that are not decomposing, But underneath those where
they've covered up other leaves, those old leaves are decomposing because they stay moist.
Your runners on your grass plant are the slowest to decompose. Part of
the grass plant, the runners and the roots actually too, and so it
takes longer. If they're kept moist. There's already enough microbes in nature to
decompose them. So the spray maybe adding some sort of a microbe to speed
that up. But if it doesn't stay moist, it's not gonna work.
So I don't know that you need the spray. I would probably myself.
I mean, it wouldn't hurt to use them. I'm not saying don't use
them. I'm just saying I would just keep it moist out there. And
if you could do a little compost screened compost top dressing, I think that's
going to help your line and speed the decomposition too. Got it. Thank
you very much, all right, good luck with that. Good luck with
that. I appreciate that. Yeah, the whole idea of thatch is something
we should talk about because whenever you have a southern turf grass that would be
Zeuisia, Saint Augustine, and Bermuda grass. All three of those are running
turf grass is not clumping further north where you're dealing with Kentucky bluegrass fescues of
various types of fescue. Those are clumping grasses, so you run a little
think of it. A de thatcher is like a rake with fingers that are
ripping the thatch up out near the soil surface. Well, that's fine with
a clumping grass, but when you have runners, they rip the runners up.
You're left with these strands on top. You're pulling them up out of
the ground, and it's just we don't do that. There is something called
vertict cutting, which is like vertically slicing blades. So think of it as
like an edger that goes around the edge of your patio or down the sidewalk,
and you're edging vertically cutting down in to cut the grass from running across.
Vertical cutters have cutting blades like that that are spaced out probably about four
inches apart for Saint Augustine, and they literally cut through the grass like that.
But even that I there, let me just say, at this weight,
most of the time, I would not recommend doing that for reasons that
our grass is often struggling with diseases, with drought, with heat, with
a lot of things, and so stresses don't need to be added to it.
I would put in a compost oop dressing so that those runners sitting on
top of the ground that are already naturally slow in their decomposition. They would
decompose faster as you water and keep it moist as you return your clippings and
put those wet high nitrogen clippings down on the surface of the soil. That
all helps speed the thatch, along with following my schedule, not overdoing the
nitrogen applications. Because we grow ourself into a thatched problem. People think clippings
contribute to thatch. Clippings decompose rapidly. They're like let us leaves out there.
They rot fast on the ground. On the surface. Runners are very
high in lignins, the tissues that don't decompose very fast, and that takes
a longer time. So the more you create a lot of runner growth,
the more you create that so you grow yourself into thatch, you grow yourself
out of thatch. In my pin, by following those practices I was just
talking about, that is important. In fact, I need jake that low
like say low clip. We won't put that on social media with just a
little explanation if folks would like to refer back to it. In time.
You're listening to Guardline our phone number is seven one three two one two k
t r H. I am getting really close here to a break time,
so Elmer and Laporte, I'm going to hang on and take you right after
we come back from break. If you'd like to give Chris a call seven
one three two one two KT al right, you'll put you on the boards
and we will come to your call as well. We appreciate you listening to
guard Line. Just really enjoy helping you to have more success in your garden,
and that's why we're here. I hope you enjoy listening as well,
and tell your friends about Guardline. We uh, we always would like to
have more folks listening and being aware of the kind of help that is available.
And believe it or not, I can't running into you know, guarden
Line's been on the air for decades now back do he comptem, I wouldn't
call garden Line back then. But back in the fifth nineteen fifties, this
show started and it's just been going for all those decades and still are runded
a lot of people that aren't aware of it, that are gardeners. I
don't know how that happens, but let's stop it. Let's let them know
about garden line and so they can have success with their garden in their landscap,
hopefully a little bit of fun along the way. We'll be right back,
Brandon. Just speak to them day do I've got plenty to talk about
this morning as we enter our last segment of the day. If you've not
been out at the arbor gate recently, you need to go now. I
just I want you to hear this for a minute. Just listen to me
for a second. When it gets to be summertime, people are like,
oh, it's hot, I can't plan anymore. You know, it's my
plants are going to die out there. That is not true. If you
take care of your plan and pick plants that want to be here in the
summer, and Arbigate has got an unbelievable selection of those. You can go
to Arbigate and you can find things like Thrialis tryalis Is Showers of gold is
another term for it. It's a perennial slash shrub type plant and it blooms
more months of the year than just about anything I know, beautiful yellow blooms.
If you shear it back, it'll just come back denser and more beautiful.
It is an excellent plant. By the way, deer are not fond
of thrialis. Either things likevillia. We know those like hot weather. Duranta
likes hot weather. Roses can still bloom in hot weather if you give them
some water, prune them back periodically, fertilize them, keep them vigorous.
Arburgate's got lantanas that are just outstanding, just great repeat bloomers through the summertime
in shade. Do you need something like kalladiums or impatience for example, They've
got that. Now there's a plant out there that I think you really need
to Actually, I can't limit myself to one. Excuse me. I've already
mentioned a bunch of them. But there's Vinka, which is a summer blooming
annual. It is wonderful. There's a little dwarf type of vinka because sorie
that one. The blooms are small. It makes a little bit of a
mound that spreads outward a little bit wider. Beautiful plant and one that you
got to go buy an ask for. And it's called sun believable Helianthus.
Unbelievable Helianthus that is a shrub's been around for several years now in the market,
and it just blooms and blooms and blooms, and it can take the
heat. Salvia's like the nemerosa types of salvias. Those are excellent for the
summer. All kinds of salvias are excellent for the summer, and they're all
at Arburgate. Go by there. Now is a great time to get these
things planted. It is still a good season for that. Listen, think
about it this way. It is the beginning of July. It is going
to be October before things start to cool off around here a little bit.
Well, look at all those months of color that you can have if you
get those things in the landscape and turn that sea of green into something beautiful.
From Arburgate, they're on twenty nine to twenty west of Tomball. Just
take Trishel Road around behind the arbor Gate and see that wonderful new parking lot
where it's really easy to get in and get out safely. You got to
go to Arburgate. Don't let summer thwart you. There's a lot that needs
to be planted right now, and Arburgate's got you set up for just that.
We are going to now head back to look at the calls here I've
got my computer screen is deciding whether it wants to play with me or not.
There we go. We're going to go to Laporte and talk to Elmer.
Hello, Elmer, Hey, good morning. I've got three questions for
you. I'll make them real quick. The first one is, I just
want to confirm my ceatrus trees that I've got our twenty fifteen foot tall.
One is a grapefruit, one is a lemon tree, and one is an
orange tree. I can want of those every day, once a day,
twice a week, three times a week, or just once. Yeah,
I'm not sure a well established citrus plant like yours the one size you're describing,
those are well established in the absence of any rainfall at all. If
you watered them once, maybe twice a week at the most, is all
you would need to do. Probably a good soaking. Now, now,
when we say water, I don't mean it like, you know, a
half inch of water or something that just barely wets the surface of the mulch.
But I'm talking about soaking the soil good. Once a week would be
plenty for your citrus. Okay. Secondly, I want to buy a tree
where I can take my trailer and give my back on big a hole and
just buy a big old tree. And I don't know where to go to.
What would you recommend me to go? Buy a tree where I can
just plant it in my yarn and get my back on big a hole.
And then I'll go to the last question here And then you're in Laporte.
So if you just go up the street a little bit there, you can
go to Moss Nursery, which is out there in Seabrook, not very far
away from you, down the road you want to, you know, head
a little bit. We got a lot of great nurseries and garden centers and
whatnot, but Seabrook Moss Nursery is probably about the closest one to you.
If you go down to. They have full grown trees. I mean,
I'm not full verdent, you know what I mean, something that's pretty big
already. Yeah they got oh yeah, they got pretty good sized ones too.
You can ask them depends on the counter tree you want as to what
size they may have it in, but they're gonna have large sizes out there.
If you head over to the Just give me one second, just Vergant
v e r d a n T. Verdant Tree Farm is in Paarland,
So that's a little bit of a drive for you, but still not too
far, that's what they say. And they have Verdant Tree Farm v e
r d A n T. The Verdant v E r D and Tea.
Verdant has a lot of different kinds of trees. They have palm trees,
they've got standard types of trees for shade and blooms and whatnot. That where
you go, those two pretty close to you and one is more of you
know, kind of like the little retail source of Seabrook a garden center.
Great plants there Paarland, the Verden Tree Farm, that's what they specialize in.
They come out and do the planting themselves. It sounds like you want
to do a do it yourself for though. Oh yeah yeah. And lastly,
and this was this was a complicated one. So I've got an area
about fifteen feet about five feet area where my wife wants me to plant some
you know, four or five foot evergreens and live with this way make it
like a landry type scenario restaurant. When you see the do I need to
actually dig the ground up. Or can I go buy like a dump truck
of dirt, dump it down, separated and then plant those plants. What
do I need to do in that case to plant and make it look like
that landryes types you know when you see that jounery when you go to the
restaurants, right, So what you want to do digging a hole and putting
good soil in it just creates an underground bathtub. Think if the clay soil
as something that holds water, all right, you dig a hole and do
that. I would put the mix on top. Buy a good quality bed
mix. If you don't know which one to get, something called roast soil
would be a good one. I know airline soils creates roast soil. The
nature's way up toward conradirection delivers all through the area too. They do that.
And if you put that down, I would put it down about three
or four inches deep, and then I would mix it with the soil you
have, and then I would add more on top of the good soil.
Because the area that I want to do, the area that I want to
do is probably about fifteen foot long and about six foot wide. So I
thought in my mind. The easy thing is go get a freaking dumb cruck
of just top soil, dump it out, and then plant the plants on
top of that. Yeah, and I didn't know that makes sense. No,
No, you could do that. I just rather than having like your
standard soil, think of it as your driveway with concrete, and then you
put a good mix on top. You have this interface where it goes from
wonderful soil to crummy soil. I would put four inches three or four inches
down, mix them together, and then put the good stuff more of it
on top. And that way you have a trus from good stuff down into
not so good stuff that's a little bit better. Otherwise, sometimes you end
up with what's called a perch water table, where the water goes down and
hits that bad soil and doesn't go any further. If you would lock to
hold on, I'm gonna have to run take a little break here. Well,
gosh,'re at the end of the day. Sorry about that,
Elmer. I would That's what I would do. I would mix it in.
I would add the good stuff on top. If you want to drive
over to Sienna, Texas, that's just south and a little to the west.
Of Houston off Highway six near Iowa Colony in Arcola. That area that's
where seeing a multius. They only deliver about twenty miles. But if you
can go get it, they're going to have those excellent soils. And that's
gonna be about the closest source that I would recommend to you for all of
They makes us like a rose soil or a yeah much all right, you
got it. I appreciate you, man. You stay safe, all right.
Hey, once you get that in then all you need to do is
turn the house into a restaurant and I'll come visit. Wonderful week. Dam
I won't go Landrys, I'll come to your place. Thanks a lot,
you guys. Will be back tomorrow