Katie r h. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or
services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r h Garden Line with Skip
Ricter. It's crazy trip. Just watch him as the sepotas not a side.
Well, good Sunday morning, Welcome to garden Line. We're glad you're
listening. Looking forward to talking to you about I don't know what's of interest
to you regarding gardening. We are in peak gardening season already. Now you
may look outside and say, well, you know, it's kind of cool
out there, and I'm not sure it's time to play tomatoes. Well,
of course it's not a little bit early at least I don't know. Some
brave gardeners are out there planning and protecting them and it's practically building a mini
greenhouse to keep those things going early. But seriously, it's time to prepare
for everything happening in the spring, and it's time to plant a lot of
our cool seasoned plants as well. So do you want flowers? Do you
want to establish some perennials? Do you want to establish some perennial grasses for
example? That's something probably underutilized in our landscapes. Is some of the beautiful
perennial grasses that we have in the features that they can offer. Maybe your
vegetable garden needs some additional crops such as lettuce or spinach. It's time for
that. And you can plant carrots. Now, you can plant all of
those cruciferous vegetables. Korabbie and brussels sprouts. Well, it's a little brussel
sprout's is one I generally aim for in the fall, just because they take
so long to reach their full size. But broccoli would be an example,
cauliflowers and example cabbage of course, Kale karabia mentioned just a lot of really
good quality vegetables that are healthy that can be planted. Now in the flower
beds, we've got pansies and violas. We've got a lissome dianthus. Dianthus
is one of the most underutilized plants. I think in our floral beds,
our color beds. We have the old types. I call them the old
types. It's a standard, little small compact dianthus. Tellstar was a series
that really was a big deal number of years ago. Now we have so
many more new ones that we can plant. But we also have the upright
dianthus, and these think of like a carnation flower, but in miniature,
long stem with a carnation like bloom at the top. But with the kinds
we use embedding plants now they're clusters of blooms, so you get a really
nice little bloom head. And the colors are absolutely neon. I mean,
they are really bright. They're not your standard primary colors or pastels or things.
These are amazing and they do well in the middle of a color border.
So maybe you have something lower in front of them, like a lissen
would just be an example. Like that, you come up and then you
have these taller dianthus. The Amazon series is one. There's some other really
good ones out there, and that's a little bit taller, and so you
have a kind of layers of color, and that's a good way to approach
it to By the way, you always want to have something coming on.
And even when you know people think of a color bed as like you plant
it and you just get all this color at one time, and yeah,
you can do that, but when you add perennials and things like that in
it is a bed that evolves through the seasons. So, for example,
perennials have their season when they bloom. Some bloom for a very long time,
but a lot of them are actually quite fast. They show up,
they do their thing, and they go away. A lot of our bulbs
are that way. They come on for their season, they do their thing,
they replenish their reserves, and then they essentially appear to go away for
the rest of the season. Whether it's rain lilies that pop up during the
summertime, or whether it is something like paper whites that typically are going to
be the announce those that announce the spring season coming on at the end of
winter. We have a lot of beautiful options like that, daffodils, that
type of thing. It's another example. And those do their thing and go
away. But that's okay because you plan your beds to always have something going
on. If you just do perennials, you're going to have periods where the
bed doesn't look its best. It's just how it is. If you just
do annuals, you're going to be spending a lot of money on color changes,
and that's okay if you want to do that. That's the way to
have constant riot of color all the time is just constantly be replacing annual in
it is, one goes out, you put another one in, and we
call those color changes, and you can do in a home landscape. Some
people do two a year. You got a warm season and a cool season
color change, and so there's some edges to those seasons that don't look so
great. Some people will do three or four color changes a year. As
you go through the season, you know, you got your spring stuff that
comes out and looks great in spring, but when our Texas summer arrives,
it's not so great. So we go to some heat tolerance summer color,
and then when fall comes we've got some of that, and then of course
in the cool season we have our cool season flowers. Anyway, the idea
is you do it however you want, but just as you plant it out,
think a little past what you're putting in the ground right then. So,
for example, if you're planting violas or a dusty miller, which is
a silvery foliage plant that does well in cool weather, if you're planning one
of those, then be thinking about, well, when are you going to
do the next color change? And you will always be changing it out before
it's finished blooming. Because as things reach the end of their season, they're
kind of scraggly. They're still blooming, but it's kind of here and there.
You know, your pansies or violas. It's warming up and they're still
going, but they're not real happy with that. And so you just decide
we're in there. Do I want to jump in and put in the petunias,
for example, in the spring or one of the many many other plant
options that we have, and you plan that out through the year. All
right. So those are just some ideas and tips of things that we're right
in the big middle of right now. By the way, when it comes
to garden centers, if you haven't been to Plants for all seasons, they're
talking about all this color reminds me of plants for all seasons because they constantly
are having a new group of really cool plants come in that are just awesome.
And that's just how they are there. I mean, it is a
place where whenever you show up, you're going to see some of the hottest
items, the most dependable, proven adapted to our area of plants that you
can have, and that they stay on top of that, and they also
are just filled with knowledge I mean, you talk to anybody around there.
The Flowerty family and the folks that work at Plants for All Seasons, they
know what they're talking about. So when you walk in and you go,
hey, I got this bed and it gets us much sun and this is
what I want and here's a picture. You know, these are shrubs that
are behind it and stuff. They can direct you right to a set of
plants that are going to do well, and then you come back and you
ask questions and they just keep helping you. That is what you can't get
at a lot of places, because you know, if places are selling hammers
and flowers, chances are they don't know flowers very well. And that's just
how that works in the industry. But a good mom and pop nursery when
you're talking about Plants for All Seasons, and the Flowery family been doing it
since nineteen seventy three. You can go to their website Plants for All Seasons
dot com, or just do this, just go visit them. They are
on Highway two forty nine Tomball Parkway, just north of Luetta Road on the
right hand side as you're heading toward Tombol Direction. Plants for All Seasons dot
com. They'll get your color going there. I'll tell you that for sure.
Let's take a little break. Our phone number if you'd like to give
us a call. I guess it would be good for me to give you
a phone number today nine seven or nine seven nine seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two ktr H. Welcome
to garden Line. We are glad you're listening this morning. We're here to
talk to you about whatever you want to talk about that might be of interest.
For example, do you want to talk about vegetables or flowers or maybe
houseplants. Houseplants are kind of one of the big plants of wintertime. And
we say that because you get cooped up in the house a little bit,
and uh, it just gives you some other things to mess with and enjoy.
And you know, I love I've never been a big houseplant person most
my life, but in the last probably five years, especially the last three
years, I just have gotten more and more into them and looking at all
the different types that are out there. I tell you, you know,
it's like anything you begin to collect anything, I don't care if it's trading
stamps or old you know, muscle cars or whatever. You start to get
into it and it just it's it becomes this black hole, you know,
where there's always something else. And I was looking at some of the philodendron
houseplants that are out there on the market now. It's like half of them
I've never even seen the plant before. Right, it's a new type.
Somebody's crawling through a jungle somewhere to find something new, or in some cases
doing some plant crossing and coming up with new types. But there's always something
else. In another town of far away, I was at a garden place
that specialized in the interior tropical kinds of plants, and they had, you
know, the standard plants that you can get just about anywhere, and then
they had some that are a little less common. And then they had this
rare table where you know, something just a plain old you would go,
oh, oh, that's just a pathos or I don't know, philodendron or
something, and he'd be like five hundred dollars. If there's one plant it's
like, WHOA, Well, it's got a little different marking in the leaf,
and this one's different than all the All right, I get it,
And that's the fun thing about it again, and it applies to anything,
snamp collecting or you name it. You just find, oh, I need
this a special type here that I don't have now, And so that's what
drives that. But I think it's fun that people get to grow what they
want to grow, because if you just want to enjoy a green plant,
you can get find some brand that has a pathos, cut a little section
offs to get in the ground or root it, and you got your plant.
I mean, it's that easy. That stuff roots so easily. But
if you want some of the unique and the beauty that's out there in that
houseplant world, there's a lot of that too. And I find myself each
pretty much several times a year. I'll look out and I'll see some plant
that is just that is really cool, and now it's part of my houseplant
collection. Then I just have to figure out where to put it. So
on. But I like color and houseplant foliage. There's a lot of green,
and green is a color too, of course, but I like when
a houseplant can have some variegation or can have some of the corals and reds
and other kinds of patterns and streaking and coloring in the leaf. I just
think that adds interest to an indoor environment. And if you need help with
houseplants, we can help you with that. There's a lot of good information
out there online too. You can find the plants that do best in lower
light. You can find the plants that do best on neglect. If you've
never been a houseplant person before, I recommend that you get a sense of
area. It's also called mother and lost tome. It's got the long strappy
leaves. It goes straight up to the vertically out of the pot. Those
are are foolproof. They take low light, they take highlight, they take
modern considered consistently moist soil. But they'll put up with drought really really well.
Also, in fact, I like to say that if you can't grow
a sense of AIA, I can't help you because it's pretty much barely one
step above a silk plant. When it comes to easy care. It just
real, real, easy to do. Zz is another one. Z z
is in two zebras. Zz zz plant will put up with lower light.
It's a little on the lankier side. It puts up with very high light.
It is another one that can take some drought it's a succulent type plant
storing a lot of moisture, and it's and it's leaf petioles and leaf leaf
leaflets, and so it's you know, it's pretty tolerant of that. That's
an easy one to grow. One of my favorite houseplants is Aglionema Chinese evergreen.
The old types were always kind of a green aby with some gray streaking
in the foliage, different patterns of gray, silvery gray in the foliage.
Now we have some types that are beautiful, beautiful color with the reds and
whatnot, and I just am continually attracted those again for the color moderate light.
Can't put it in a closet, but it doesn't have to sit there
right in a window to be happy. That's an easy one to grow.
There's a lot of others. You get the idea. Some can be more
challenging, but hey, that's one of the things we enjoy about gardening is
we can always step a little further into it and try some things that are
more challenging. I think that's pretty good way to go. You know,
if you have dealt with weeds in your lawn in the past, and I
know I was out looking through my yard and due to some real struggles last
summer when it got so dry and we just couldn't couldn't keep going on the
water, I actually left for a couple of weeks, and oh my gosh,
when I came back, the yard looked like it had been torched because
the autosystem did not come on and run and take care of it. But
anyway, if you're dealing with some weeds in the yard, now's a good
time to go ahead and deal with those. And here's why our cool season
weeds germinated primarily in the late fall, mid to late fall. You can
still have cool season weed germinating going on now, but most of that happened
already, and those seedlings are very small. When we get into longer days
and warming temperatures, those plants will take off growing flower set seeds. And
here we are sentenced to two hundred times the number of plants that you weeds
that you had before in the future. So they're like our blue bonnet.
Blue bonnet seeds germinate in the fall, they sit there through winters. We
call it a rosette. It's a little plant that's not very conspicuous, and
then in spring you get this giant mound of growth and the beautiful blooms we
enjoy, and then they cast their seed. You wait until a plant is
blooming and setting seed. It's very difficult to control if you can control it
at all. And also it may already have viable seed, so you may
kill that plant, but not the thousand seeds that are going to fly everywhere
from it. So you want to deal with these weeds early on. And
that's why nelson put together, you know, their their product line where they
offer fertilizers, and they have a particular product and I'm going to tell you
a little bit more about it as we go through, but excuse me,
I'm having some trouble with my throat here this morning. But Nelson's has a
product that has a post emergent in it that is for broad leaf weeds that
you would use when the plant is very when the weed plant is very very
small, and when when you use a plant, when you use a product
like that and you're able to get in and catch that weed at an early
state, it's easier to knock it out. It's just it's just much easier
to knock it out. And it's called the turf Turfstar turfinate or weedinator,
excuse me, turf star weedinator. And it's got that broad leaf product in
it. Now, if you're going to use that, you need to wet
your lawn first because the granules need to stick to the weed leaves. They're
not going to hurt your lawn. It's a broad leaf product, not a
grass product. It doesn't kill grass, it kills broad leaves. But when
you put that out there, that will work. And you know, normally
I would say hold off on your fertilizing because our grass isn't growing right now,
but in this case, we've got a fertilizer that will last you about
five months, maybe six months actually going out. So to put that on
now, it's going to gradually release and not gonna all wash away, but
you will get control of that early on issue with the weeds. And if
you wait until the hendbit and chick weed and clover and everything else are now
big plants and your lawn looks just horrible because they've taken over, it's going
to be a little late to have effective control options at that time. So
this would be a good time to go ahead and get that done. If
you're gonna if you're dealing with that kind of problem and you want to shut
it down, do so before it sets the seeds. And you know,
the whole issue with lawns is building a denser lawn over time by proper practices
like mowing, like watering, like fertilizing. When we do that, when
we take care of our lawn and create density, we pretty much work our
way out of most weed problems. Now I say most. There's weeds like
Virginia button weed and dollar weed, for example, that can coexist in a
dense, healthy Saint Augustine lawn. But there are a lot of weeds that
can't. Weeds that come from seed, typically because there's no sunlight reaching the
soil, because your lawn is nice and dense the cause you mowed, watered,
and fertilized properly. And when you do that, now you have fewer
times that you're having to apply fewer product efforts to shut down the wheed.
You don't want us to be on a treadmill where the only way to keep
it from having a weed is just constantly, every seemed like every season of
the year, be doing something to kill weeds. Start with it, make
it easier on yourself. Start with the dense, healthy lawn, and then
the weeds that might escape that the issues you have. Then it's a much
easier thing to deal with. And I just think that's the better way to
go horticulturally, no matter what you're growing, to be able to create a
healthy plant, to create a dense, healthy plant, to minimize the problems.
Because your goal in having plants, whether it's a garden or a lawn
or flower beds, isn't to spend your weekends out there killing things. It's
to springd your weekends out there walking through and then smelling and eating and enjoying
and all the other things we get from plants. All right, Well,
there's a philosophy for you. Hold on to that one because it is the
way to go. We're going to take a break right now. Our phone
number is seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We
come back to garden Line on a Sunday morning. Look outside, it's dark
outside. If your neighbor's lights aren't on, go bang on the door,
tell them they're missing garden Line. They will so appreciate that. Someday we'll
head right to the phones this morning by the way. Our number is seven
one three, two one two five eight, seven four. We're going to
talk to Frank. Hello, Frank Good on skip one of them. I
emailed you a couple of photos yesterday. Yeah about us long we were talking
about and I know there's a lot of possibilities, but I was just thinking
maybe if you looked at those and say, oh, this would be a
perfect spot for uh whatever. Yeah, well, boy, there's there are
a lot of possibilities. That's always the challenge of it all. You've got
a lot of good evergreen material there in that front area. I'm just kind
of wondering if maybe something that had some flowers on it would be appropriate.
I mean, like a big rose bush would be there. We have some
really good tough roses. You don't have the pamper arm or anything. You
know, everybody's probably seen knockout roses everywhere. They're one of the most planted
roses in town. A bush that's a rose bush would look good there.
You could go with something that is a more of a standard, meaning it's
a shrub, but it has a trunk or trunks to it. Crate myrtle
is a good example. The smaller crate myrtles would be a possibility in that
area, be deciduous, but you would have flowers through the summer. You
could go with that, or just something that had attractive foliage. Laura Pedlam
Chinese evergreen has a burgundy, a deep burgundy foliage, especially in the cool
weather, and then you have spring flowers. So I'm just kind of thinking
that might add a little interest seasonal interest to the area as well. But
they're really about eight hundred thousand options for a nice full sun area like that.
Okay, well, thank you very much for looking at it. Skip.
If you have a blast day, well you too, thank you for
the call. Appreciate that. Frank all right, Well, you know,
if you are emailing me, I just have to say this, just due
to time constraints and the potential for all the emails that come in, I'm
not able to type out the answers in most cases. Occasionally there's something I
can give a quick answer to, but a lot of times plant questions are
more elaborate than that. They take a little more, and so just for
the sake of time, if you do email me, please include photos that
are in good sharp focus. Repeat good sharp focus when possible, as close
as you can get to something, if it's a bug, or if it's
a spot on a leaf, or if it's a little seedling coming up that
I don't know. In other words, let me be able to zoom right
in within a few inches away from it, if at all possible, in
good sharp focus. And then what I'll do is I'll ask you to please
call in the show and call in and refer to that email, and then
we can go from there. That's probably the best for me to help the
most people that I can. And so I would just kind of refer you
to that you're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and we're here to answer your gardening questions this morning. I first of all,
welcome to guarden Line. Be glad, glad you're a listener today.
Hopefully you got at least one eye open, maybe a cup of coffee or
tea or whatever in your hand, just to kind of keep things going there,
Let's talk about the things that interest you at seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
Now pruning season is upon us. You can prune a tree any month
of the year that you want to prune it. I mean it can be
done the time when we try to get the majority of our pruning done,
especially when we're doing quite a bit of printing to a plant, not just
lopping off a limb here or there, is in the mid to late winter
that that would be our idea. One of the reasons for that is because
the fastest period of wound growth on a tree branch that's been cut off,
the closing over of that exposed inner wood, that occurs in the spring.
And so if you were to do a little like it could be time lapse
photography, or if you just do a little like a little chart with the
line that goes up and down, the fastest wound healing occurs in the spring,
and then it sort of tails off in summer, slows down a lot,
not stops, but slows down, and then in fall you get a
little bump again, not as much as spring, but you get a little
bit of healing speed up in the fall, and then in winter, of
course everything's sitting pretty much still. So by pruning in this month and early
next month, it's just the easiest time to get it done. The leaves
are off, the tree, you can see what you're doing, you can
get in there and get that kind of pruning work done. So that is
why we aim for that this season, to get the pruning done. Pruning
correct is critical, and I'll talk about that more than once this spring or
this late winter. But most people go out and prune without knowing what they're
doing, and in some cases that causes irreparable damage to a plant. When
you take a tree and you just basically hack it up with poor pruning,
that structure is destroyed and you essentially never really get it back. This is
done to crate myrtles all the time. You know. These guys go out
from landscape crews and homeowners because they watch what's being done commercially and they think
that's what you should do at home, and they just basically hack the tree
off at a certain height, they just cut it off, you know,
grab your loppers, reach above your head, and that's how how you prune,
and that is not how you should prune a great myrtle. As a
result, we get these stumped off tops. They look like the fence posts.
You know, it's just got this sizeable little branch coming up and it's
just cut off and you get a crow's foot of growth, which means a
whole bunch of sprouts take off and grow straight up in the air. They're
poorly attached, they're a good summer storm can break them off, and the
beautiful, shapely form of a grape myrtle is destroyed by that kind of pruning.
That's just kind of like the poster example of pruning abuse that we have,
but that happens. Similar things happen to shade trees too. Someone comes
through and goes, I need to cut all those branches off, so you
know it's hurricane season, you don't need to. Well, there is judicious
pruning that's done to help strengthen your tree through storms and build strength over time,
but that doesn't mean cutting them off like a hat rack is what you
do, and it destroys the structure. And so if you're going to do
it yourself, do a little learning about how to prune properly. And I'm
going to talk about that often on this morning the show, and some principles
of proper pruning that help you get off to a really good start from the
time you plant a tree, even when you have a giant, older tree,
how do you deal with that, and of course above all, you
know hire professional that that is the most important thing to know too. Hey,
I'm gonna take a break here. Our phone number seven one three two
one two five eight seven four Kif Joshua call, you'll be on the board
when we come back. Welcome back to garden Line on a Sunday morning.
We're glad you're with us today. We're talking about all kinds of things gardening
kind of Some of the topics that come to my mind is things I think
are important for the season, things that you should know. If you'd like
to give us call today, our phone number is seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
By the way, if wild Birds Unlimited has got a selection of seeds
for your birds that is second to none. And now you're thinking, okay,
bird seed is bird seed right, because it's just seeds, right,
It's just seeds. No, it's not cheap. Bird seed is filled with
the little red bebies. You've seen it all on shelves. The little tiny
red seeds are stuff that birds just don't really eat. It's a sorghum type
seed. It's just filler if you will. And so if you look at
a price of a bag of that bird seed, and you were to take
that seed and take out all the red seeds out of there and see what
you have left, in other words, of stuff birds want, you would
find that what you're really paying for that bag is a lot more, maybe
double or more what it should be because it's in there. It's because it's
cheap and easy to put that in seed, to extend it out a little
further, it makes a big bag, and no one knows the difference.
Well, I'm telling you it's better to purchase a high quality seed like wild
birds has, because when for every penny you spend on that seed, you're
getting seed that birds are going to eat. Now some types they have or
even completely whole free. So like you know, let's take sunflowers for examples,
great bird food, but when they crack it open, they drop the
holes on the ground. It's still it's a seed that the birds want.
So yes, that's good, But do you want holeless In other words,
where there's zero zero debris anywhere. Wilbirds has that too. I would recommend
right now that you focus on their winter super blend because it's loaded with the
fats and proteins that birds need. They need that, especially during this particular
season, your bluebirds are starting to look for a nest box. And so
if you have bluebirds or want to attract bluebirds, consider getting a bluebird box
from Waldbirds Unlimited and getting it set up. They can tell you where to
put it. Bluebirds have their own opinions about you know how and where they
prefer to us. They can set you up with that. How about Purple
Martins. They're coming in next month in February, so go ahead and find
a location, get that polls set up and they have wonderful Purple Martin houses
at Wildbirds Now. Wildbirds is all over the place. We've got a bunch
of stores here in the Houston and Houston Greater Houston area. Six stores now
in the Houston area, and you can find one near you by going to
w b U dot com forward slash Houston w BU as in Wildbirds Unlimited dot
com forward slash Houston. When you go in there, you're going to find
a lot of cool stuff, from bird houses, to bird feeders, to
well, perhaps most importantly, people that know what they're talking about and can
direct you to a product that is both both beautiful and really really effective in
bringing the songbirds in to your house. I love mine. I've got the
squirrel excluding feeder, and anytime I can disappoint a squirrel is I want to
take advantage of that. And this thing disappoints squirrels because I used to have
the feeders they could get into all the time, and I was basically Bill
Murray and Caddyshack trying to figure out how to keep the squirrels out of the
feeders. But now I just you know, with that quality feeder, it's
just enjoyable to watch. I was talking about pruning a little bit earlier,
and I want to go back to that because there's a few things that are
really important to know. First of all, when you plant a tree,
you start the pruning process of that plant. And here's what I mean,
it's called training at that stage for the first let's say five years. I'm
just going to throw a number out there. We're doing a lot of training
on that tree. We're establishing where are those scaffold branches going to be,
and making those choices wisely is important. You look at this little tree,
maybe it's the size of a broomstick, and it's got the little branches coming
out, and you see two branches that are six inches apart, and that
looks nice. Well, imagine each of those branches twenty years from now,
thirty years from now, when it's grown to be you know, eight ten
inches are twelve inches in diameter apart. They're suddenly crowded together and they're pushing
against each other, and some of the structural strength is not going to be
there had it as it would had it been trained properly. So you look
at that tree, and unless you buy a very large tree, when you
just go buy a little tree and a five gallon bucket or ten gallon bucket
somewhere, pretty much every branch on that tree is not going to be there
later in the life of the tree. And it's because walk underneath a big,
beautiful tree in your yard or anybody's yard, where's the first branch.
Well, it's a way above head high, right, Because those branches come
out, they sack down. You got to walk and mow under them.
And so all those branches in the tree you bought are temporary. So what
we want to do is get that tree growing as fast as we can and
you don't prune them all off and you're just left with like a fishing pole
or a bamboo shoot. No, you leave them because they're going to have
leaves in the spring that make carbohydrates that fuel the growth of that tree.
And our goal is to get it to grow as fast as we can from
the day it hits the ground on and so you leave them. What I
will do is often tip those branches, take my pruners and cut the last
few inches just out of them. And that is a dwarfing process. It's
I guess it's like almost as if you were doing a bone's eye or something.
Some of the pruning and things that are done with that to keep it
more dwarf. Well, when you tip a branch, it those tipped shoots
try to branch out and grow, but they stay there. The leaves stay
on them, but the branch doesn't grow in diameter much. Now, if
you never tip it again, yes it will, But my point is is
that we leave them on there. And I like to use the term nurse
limbs. As a nurse limb, so imagine this tree you put in the
ground size of a broomstick, maybe just as an example, and you've got
all this little stuff growing out the sides that you know are not going to
be long term branches. You don't want the energy of the tree going into
those because you're just going to hack them off and throw them way later.
So when you tip them, you keep them a little smaller, but you
maintain good foliage cover. You don't prune everything off of it. And then
people that do strip out the whole tree and just leave the highest parts,
well, that's called lion tailing. That's one of the types of lion tailing,
meaning you got this long, long, skinny, naked branch and a
bunch of leaves out at the end like a lion's tale. And that's not
what you want to do. Now. Once a branch reaches about an inch
in diameter, it could be up to a golf ball size, but preferably
by about an inch, you go ahead and cut it off. And so
you're you're using leaving these limbs long enough to do as much good as you
can without letting them become the boss limb of the tree. You know,
tree limbs compete with each other, especially trunks going upward, and you have
to you have to hold them back with some of that pruning to allow the
trunk to grow up and the branches that are permanent to get established and get
out there. So I will often use when I plant a tree, for
the first year, I've got those nurse limbs on it, and then they're
coming off or about the time they hit about it a little over an inch
in diameter. You want to be able to cut them off with looppers,
not have to use a saw. If you do use a saw, the
smaller the branch is the better because the fast it heels over. I don't
know if that makes sense to you, but that is the process. Maybe
I ought to do a video put it online or something like that. That
would probably be helpful to do that. But anyway, if you're interested in
that, let me know. Maybe we'll get something like that up on the
website or training early in the life of the tree is very very important.
I get a lot of photos and phone calls from people that describe a tree
and it's just a mess, and now what do I do. Well,
you know, it's six years down the line and there's things we can try
to do to help, but it would have been so much better to do
it early on. Something I like to say, and this is an exaggeration
that it makes a point. If you have planted a tree yourself and during
the life of that tree yet to pull out a saw, it's an admission
of guilt. What does that mean? That means that back when a limb
could have been cut off with loppers, you delayed the decision and now you're
having to make a big wound on the tree. That's kind of what I'm
talking about. Hey, we'll be right back. Seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Katie r h. Garden Line does not necessarily
endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie
r H. Garden Line with Skip Richard. It's so crazy trip. Just
watch him as well. Good Sunday morning. Welcome back to Garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Rector, and we're here to talk gardening. If
you'd like to give me a call. Seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two one two KTRH. I see a glow
in the eastern sky. It's just getting started, but it means the day
is on the way and it's going to be a good day, a beautiful
day. Outside, Just really looking forward to spend a little bit of time
outside myself. I've been talking about different things going on in timely things in
the garden. Talked a little bit about training trees, getting into that last
break that we took. I did want to mention a little bit about nutrients
and our vegetable gardens and our flower beds this time of year, this is
a time when are it's cooler, and so plant growth has slowed down a
little bit. But nutrients are especially important. The fact that a plant is
able to get all the nutrients that it needs enables it to have vigor.
And when you have vigor with some light, you're going to get lots of
carbohydrate production and more bigger and more blooms and more fruit maybe or maybe flower
buds. Do you know we eat flower buds. It's called broccoli. That's
that's one thing that we eat that's a flower bud. But in order for
those things to be their most productive, you need nutrients. Especially the nitrogen
is important, but all of them are important. Now, maybe you're growing
onions. You planted onions and you can't wait for your spring harvest of big
beautiful onion bulbs. Nitrogen is very important for those onions should not just sit
there. They should be growing actively as much as is in your power to
help them grow. And so, for example, you can take a fertilizer
that has a good boost of nitrogen. An example of that would be Microlife
Microlife I really like for that kind of fertilizing. I like their Ultimate eight
four six Microlife Ultimate eight for six. That's a blue bag and it's got
a really good strong boot boost of the nitrogen in it as well as the
other ingredients that plants need. Now I know it's a lawn fertilizer, you
can use it for that, but it's in anything pretty much fertilizer. So
if you've got a vegetable garden or a flower bed, maybe you have some
violas or pansies or a lissom or something like that out there, when you
give a boost of a nitrogen product like that in the cool season, you're
going to sustain that good growth. And as the weather warms up, it's
going to break down even faster, releasing more and more nutrients because plant growth
is speeding up as the weather warms up a little bit, and as a
result, you have more bountiful and beautiful gardens. Now, just think about
it a little bit. If you allow your plants to they will essentially,
in the case of flowers, bloom themselves to death. Just about that's an
exaggeration, but my point is that they take a lot of carbohydrogen energy to
create blooms, and if they have fruit to especially to eat fruit, that
draws on a lot of reserves of the plant and vigor goes down as a
result. But when you keep feeding them, when you keep encouraging growth,
not excessive amounts of fertilizer, but constant, dependable supply of nutrients in the
ratio they want, they're going to do well. And that's one reason I
like Microlife's Ultimate eight four six. The Microlife products are sold all over town.
You can go online to Microlife Fertilizer dot com and find out where,
but pretty much any place you walk in you're going to find Microlife in the
Greater Houston area. It's an organic fertilizer, so we it's one that a
lot of folks enjoy, love to use, and have had excellent success with
and I know I know you will too. So nutrients are important in the
in this season, keeping that broccoli growing as fast as you can the cauliflower
as fast as you can based on the weather we're having, making sure those
onions grow. By the way, do you know why it's important to fertilize
onions so much? The onion you eat is really an onion leaf. An
onion bulb is an onion leaf. So just think about that for a minute.
The roots of the onion, everybody knows what those are. At the
bottom of the base. That little plate at the bottom of the bulb that
the roots come out of, that's the stem of the onion. Everything above
that little round belly button on the bottom of the onion is leaves. Everything
above that, so an onion ring is the swollen base of an onion leaf.
Now why am I going but all into botany. Well, here's why.
If you want a big onion bulb, you have to have a big
onion plant with lots of leaves that are healthy. And that's how you end
up when the day length changes and tells the onion it's time to create a
bulb at the base there. When that happens, if you've got three leaves
on an onion plant, that's going to be a really tiny bulb. It'll
still taste like an onion. It's still worth having and eating and all that,
but you have just really reduced your production as a result. So what
do we do. We fertilize regularly in small amounts, We keep moisture going
there, we do all the things plants want, good sunlight, blah blah
blah. Because the strength of that plant when bulbing initiates in the early spring,
that is the big that's the size. You're the potential that your onion
bulb that's going to have. Okay, that makes sense. A lot of
people don't think about it that way, but that that's basically what it's going
on. So you cut across an onion, you see onion rings. That's
the base of an onion leaf. It is part of the onion leaf that
you're looking at. That's probably one of the most important secrets to success with
onions is to get as big a plant as you can. That determines the
cultivars that we plant that are adapted here. It determines the timing of when
we plant because we want to get as much growth as we can, and
it certainly determines the kind of nutrition and moisture dependent. Moisture levels that we
have for our onion plants. There's a lot, a lot of information on
onions, but I don't know. I think it's fun to learn about things,
but I also think that it's important to learn about things because if you're
going to have success with a garden, understanding how things work is a big
part of that. You know, you can memorize eight hundred thousand little mini
facts about gardening, or you can, hopefully in addition to learning facts,
you can learn about some of the principles that make plants grow and you can
learn have success with that. So that's what we just did with onions,
and also with tree pruning. I want to make another comment about tree pruning
as we go forward here, We're going to keep circling back on this today
and I'll probably do it in future shows as well. But in addition to
training the tree right so that as much energy as possible goes into trunks,
trunk and brand that are permanent on the tree. That was the first goal
in the training, getting it established. The next thing is learning to make
printing cuts properly. When a tree branch joins a tree trunk, you see,
you've got your trunk, and then here comes a branch in from the
side. As you follow that branch down toward the trunk, there's a certain
diameter to the branch. It isn't changing much. And then right as you
get just about to the point of attachment to the trunk, the branch gets
larger, it expands, it flares out. And when you make a printing
cut, there's three places to make that cut, and two are wrong.
I'm going to leave you with that thought, and when we come back,
I'll talk about the three places to make the cut and the two that are
wrong, so you won't make the wrong cut. Our phone number seven one,
three, two, two, fifty eight to seventy four will be right
back. Welcome back to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter.
And what are we doing today. We're talking all kinds of things gardening.
I've been kind of going through some stuff on tree pruning and I want to
continue with that. It's just an important number one. This is the primary
season where we do the majority of our tree pruning if we're able. Sometimes
nature throws us a little challenge like limb breaks in the summer or whatever,
but this is the time when we like to get it done. But doing
it right is so important, and I would say it's better not to do
it, to go learn how to do it, and then come out to
do your pruning rather than do what seems best, because I see a lot
of examples of quote what seems best to people, and by the way,
also companies that claim to be experts in trees that it's just a butcher job
and it messes the tree up. So I mentioned before we went into break
that we were going to that a branch when it comes in toward the trunk,
it you know, whatever the diameter of the branch is is pretty consistent.
And then right when you get right up to where the trunk attachment point
is, the branch flares out and where it attaches. So there's three places
you can make this printing cut two or wrong. One is right. First
place. You can reach out a little bit past where it starts to flare
out and cut it off there. That's wrong because it leaves a stub.
Where you cut that branch off, that end will die. Everything out from
the swollen area, if you will, or the larger the flared out area
where it attaches, everything out from that is going to die and it'll be
a dead stub, and the branch will the tree will not be able to
close that wound back over because the main place of healing is in that collar.
That flared attachment point on the branch, that's where most of the effective
healing is done, are such that they're designed to close over there very well.
So you leave a dead stub, now you've got a dead two by
four, you got moisture entering the tree. You've got interior trunk decay over
the years. Not a good place. The second place that's not correct is
right up flush against the trunk because imagine this now that analogy, I hope
I created the picture in your mind. But when you cut the branch off
where it's the size of the regular size of the branch down there before it
flares out, you've got a certain sized wound. But as you go closer
and closer to the trunk when it flares out, if you cut it off
there, you've got a much larger wound. So that's more area to try
to heal over right, and so as a result, it takes more time.
That leaves the interior wood exposed for longer, which is not a good
thing. Also, you've removed the tissues on the tree that are basically the
ones designed to close that wound over best. Where you get the fastest healing
is the tissues that you just cut off because you went too close to the
trunk and you removed that collar, that flaring out base at the bottom of
the branch. Wrong place to prune. The right place to prune of those
three is right where the branch begins to flare out. Just really close right
in there, because then you're removing the branch, You're still having the smallest
possible wound that you could and all those healing tissues are right behind where you
cut, and they can begin. I shouldn't use the word healing the callous
forming tissues that close the wound. Those tissues are actively going to come in
now and grow that callous and close it back over and seal them protect the
interior wood from the exposure to the elements and microbes and moisture and all that
kind of thing. So that's the proper way to make a cut. That's
the proper place to make a cut. I'm going to talk in a minute
about the proper way to make a cut. That would be a different category
altogether. For right now I just want to I just want to point out,
and you hear me brag about Ace all the time, and the reason
I do, the reason I love Ace is because Ace has everything that you
need for lawn and garden. You know, of course, ACE has everything
for electrical repairs and plumbing and you name it like a hardware store would.
But you're not going to find the kind of options when it comes to fertilizers.
If I talk about it on Guardenline, they're going to have it at
Ace. That's how that works. The potting soils, the fertilizers, the
insect control, the disease control, the weed management. Do you need a
little pump up sprayer or gardening tools like a whool burrow or many others gardening
hose for crying out loud. I mean, they've had all. They've got
it all there at Ace. They've got the multch there, They've got every
kind of product you need to have success with your lawn. It's going to
be at Ace Hardware. And that is nice because it's so convenient. Forty
Ace Hardware stores around the Houston area. It's easy to find one near you.
Go to Acehardware dot com and you will find a store locator if you
want to take that url out one more step. Ace Hardware dot Com slash
store dash Locator, store dash locator, and you can find the Ace Hardware
near you here in the Greater Houston area. And it is going to be
at the kind of thing where when you walk in, you're going to realize
why I talk about them all the time. They've got it all. They've
got everything you need. Makes it makes it so much easier to be able
to have success with your lawn and your garden, any part of your landscape.
So I was talking about on a branch, where do you make the
cut? That is one important factor, and we've covered that. We talked
about previous to that. I talked about the importance of training a tree properly
in the first especially the first five years, just to throw a number,
a general number out there. By that time, you will have a tree
that has its major scaffold limbs formed, You've cut off all the small branches
once they got a little above an inch that aren't permanent, and you've created
a beautiful tree. By the way. One additional factor in training is trees
love to send up competing trunks where you have two side by side, going
up, each one trying to be the boss, and you got to take
one or the other out. I would say it doesn't matter which one you
take out, just because people get hung up and they put it off,
and that creates a bigger problem and a bigger wound, and just make a
decision. Cut one or the other out. Single trunk coming up through those
narrow, narrow, v shaped trunks are destined to be weakly attached and to
split apart in a storm. It's coming. Who knows what day it'll get
there, and maybe ten fifteen years down the line, but it is coming.
When you have those narrow, angled, v angled trunks that you don't
take one or the other out of, I'd like to talk about how do
you make a proper pruning cut. The goal is to use sharp materials,
sharp tools rather for example, your loppers, your hand pruners, or a
saw. You want it to be nice and sharp because you want to make
a nice, cleaned wound. Now, as branches get larger, what happens
is people reach out and they grab the branch and they start, let's say,
sawing it off from top to bottom, and all of a sudden,
the weight to the branch is heavier than the wood that's left that you haven't
cut through yet can hold, and the branch falls in. It strips the
bark off going down the wound instead of a nice clean wound. Now you
have this stripped almost like you peel the banana. You know, one section
of a banana peel off. And when you have that, that is going
to be forever to healing. Everything I said about the tissues being in the
flare at the base of the branch where it attaches, that's where the healing
best occur. Will you just stripped right through those when you do that.
So what you need to do if you cannot hold a branch in one hand,
You look at that branch and you say, can I with one arm
reaching out hold that branch? Probably your left arm if you're right handed,
can you can you do that? And if the enter is no, and
it often is no, then you need to use a three point cut.
Now what a three point cut is is first you go out from where your
final cut's going to be, out the branch away from the trunk just I
don't know, it could be a foot, it could be less uh,
and you cut upward about a third of the way from the from the ground
upward into the branch about a third of the way. Don't go too far,
the branch will will fall. Lean down and pinch your saw. It'll
get your saw out of there. Then you go out from that a little
further, not closer to the trunk, but out from the where the first
cut was even further and you cut downward, and at some point that branch
is going to break and fall off, but where it does that, it's
going to stop. That first cut is going to stop the stripping because it's
not connected there anymore. The branch breaks away and you've avoided stripping that bark.
When the branch falls, then the third cut is where it should be
made. That's where we were talking about before. Where do we make the
cut just outside that swollen flare at the base right where the branch approaches the
normal diameter of what that branch is going to be going outward from there.
So one, two, three, First upward a third of the way,
then out from that downward till the branch falls off. Then third, grab
that stub that you've created and make your final cut, and you can just
lift it away. It's a little more time and trouble. But when you
get in a hurry and you think, oh, I can hold it with
one hand, or I'll just cut real quick before it falls, Inevitably,
you're going to create a wound. And now you've done significant damage. It's
going to last to that tree. So hopefully that that little one two three
tip is helpful for you. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host,
Skip Richter, and we're here to answer gardening questions. You can reach
me at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That is
seven one three two one two five eight seven four. I want to remind
you that it is coming up upon big time season in the lawn once we
once we get here into February especially, we got a lot of things going
on. If you're doing a pre emergent, if you're dealing with certain disease
problems, uh, if you're doing your fertilizing that's going to be beginning in
the spring. We just want to get all that done and my lawn care
schedule and my lawn disease weed pest management schedule or both online at Gardening with
Skip. Gardening with Skip, that's me Dot com gardening with skip dot com.
These are free, you can download them. They're full color, they
have organic options, they have synthetic options, and they tell you January through
December what to do. Boy, if we just have more charts like that
and life Nikki were we just look at the chart and it says exactly what
we need to do in life at every stage of the game. Wow when
you do that. Yeah, I think a lot of us are a little
bit too much of a rebel to what charts telling us how to love are.
I'm looking at you. Yeah, I'm confessing on the all right,
it's time for the news. Give us a call. Seven one, three,
two and two five eight seven four. Welcome back to garden Line.
Glad you're with us this morning. I don't know, this morning's kind of
turned into a let's talk about trees kind of day. We can talk about
whatever you want to talk about, starting your seedlings indoors, we talk about
we talk about fertilizing your flower beds a little bit. And it's season for
planning fruit trees. By the way, the cool season, at the end
of the cool season midwinter to late winter, that is a prime time for
planning most types of fruit trees. I mean, and you can, you
can. I think if I bought a citrus right now, I might hold
on to the plant just a little bit, just because I don't know if
we have one of those very unusual, really really hard phrases and you just
stuck the thing out there in the ground. Oh yeah, you can protect
it. We can do that. We have ways of doing that here.
But it might be way better to hold the plant a little bit. But
go ahead and get it now while you have the ultimate selection. I mean
that is right now in our garden centers, it is. It is the
best time to get great selection on art your free trees. You know,
it doesn't matter if it's a fig or if you're going to plant a citrus
tree, or maybe you want to put a peach or a blueberry or something
like that. By the way, Buchanan's Plants has got an excellent selection in
of all of those kinds of plants and more. They always stuck up really
well on those, and I like, you know, I mentioned the I
mentioned three right there that are really easy care too. Figs. Not really
many disease or insect problems you have to deal with on a fig tree.
They're easy. They do have a few problems, but nothing major. We
have fruit that's a little more of a challenge. You're gonna be spraying it
more and whatnot. Blueberries not so much. Get a little bit of leaf
spots and things on them, but in general we don't have to worry about
a whole lot on blueberries. You do need to make sure you get two
varieties so that they can cross pollinate, not just to set fruit, but
to set fruit that gets bigger. And here's why I'm a blueberry. If
you put if you take a blueberry, cut it open, it's got a
whole lot of little seeds inside, several dozen little seeds inside. And if
you partially pollinate it, and let's say only half of those seeds are successfully
fertilized, the berry will not get as large because seeds release hormones that create
size and fruit. For example, an apple, if seeds on one side
of an apple dye or never really are pollinated, you're gonna have a lopsided
apple because the side with seeds on it is going to produce that hormone and
create a fruit. That is why we're growing it so we can eat that
thing. Blueberry is the same way. It's not just can a blueberry pollinate
itself? Most of them can, but when you have at least two varieties,
then you're more assured of getting better pollination. Therefore, the fruit sets
better, and the fruit that does set is going to be larger when you
successfully pollinate more seeds. Anyway, that was a little side on blueberry.
Citrus really easy to grow. It has a few issues. We can get
scale on them. We have the citrus leaf minor, which is more of
a nuisance than anything, and you know, it has a few issues.
But in general, citrus is not too difficult to grow. A nice little
evergreen plant, beautiful fragrant blooms. If you don't plant a citrus for any
other reason planet so you can enjoy the fragrance of the blooms. I think
everybody ought to have a big containerized like a satsuma or maybe a kumquad or
something like that, you disposition on the patio where you can get the enjoyable
fragrance of those heavenly blooms when they come out. But yeah, Buchanans has
all of that. Buchanans specializes in native plants. You know, they basically
have every kind of plant you can imagine from house plants to native plants,
to fruit plants, to vegetables and herbs and things for the shade. They're
on an East eleventh Street and the Heights. Always fun to go by there
because there's always something going on at Buchanan's Plants. You can go to the
website Buchanansplants dot com or just go over there six to eleven East eleventh Street
and the Heights. While you're there, you're going to find the fertilizers I
recommend, you're going to find soil products. Remember, we spend some money
on the brown stuff when we are going to want to have success with the
green stuff. First, you got to take care of the soil so that
your plants will thrive. And Buchanans can get you off on the right start
from fertilizers and soil amendments as well. You're listening to Gardenline. Our phone
number is seven one three two to five eight seven four seven one three fifty
eight seventy four. We're going to go out to Manville now and talk to
Adolf. Hello, Adoff, good morning. Yes, sir, I have
a what I think is a Chinese zelm. And word forks. Evidently there's
a there's a in that fork. I guess it's deep enough to where it's
collecting leaves, et cetera, and in rockets, and now it's growing plants.
That's how that's all. Yeah, okay, growing in there. I
don't know how to take care of it. So these branches are going to
be pretty large if it's doing all that right. This tree is probably probably
around thirty some years old. Yeah, well, you'd rather water not sit
in there. I mean, mosquitoes can even breed and it doesn't take them
long to go through their their egg to adult life cycle. And in those
areas on a tree that cap sure rain water and then have that rotting organic
matter. That's a mosquito heaven. So you don't want it for that reason
either. But I tell you at this point, Adolph, taking a saw
and cutting that branch off would be a problem in so many ways. Number
One, it would really disfigure your tree. Number Two, Now you've got
this giant wound that is essentially probably never going to fully close over. So
the introduction of decay inside is there. Not seeing it, it's hard to
advise you and say this is absolutely what you need to do. My gut
feeling is that you're probably going to leave it and live with it, but
you may want to have an arborius come out and take a look at it.
And I've heard previous conversation so a while back that people put very dry
and then they put cement in there. Yeap, that is not a good
thing to do. Definitely not it. If you you're not saying you have
this giant hollowed out area yet, are you? Like you're not saying that
you've got this big area where the interior wood has decayed away and now you
have this big area. I don't know because I haven't I haven't gotten a
letter. Yeah, and look, but well, just the nature of way
trees grow. When they're growing, branches are growing real close to each other,
it can form that thing that holds water without it being that deep.
And I don't Number one, don't do the cemount. I mean, I
could go into more detail about why, but it's not a good idea.
It's not going to help uh, And it's just a mess in a number
of ways. I think you're going to be okay on it without seeing it
for sure. But this is where hiring a qualified arborist, you know,
like affordable tree service. That would be one that could come out, take
a look at it, make a make a decision on Yeah, here's what
you need to do. Uh, this is one of those situations that's grown
into the problems. So we're kind of you know, if we could go
back in time, we could have more things we can do than is available
right now. Hey aight, I'm gonna have to run for a break.
If you want to hang on, we can keep talking. Or if that
answered it, thank you, Thank you, appreciate the call. Our phone
number seven one three two one two five eight seven four. I'll be right
back. Welcome back to garden Line. We're glad you're listening today. Got
a lot of things that we can be talking about today. Hey, are
you familiar with Landscapers Pride's black velvet multz Now Landscapers Pride you Probay familiar with
them? Have been around a long time, in two thousand and two,
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They have twenty seven different bag products and you can also buy bulk from
them too. By the way, if you want to find out more information,
you can go online to Landscaperspride dot com. That's where they'll have their
store locator where you can find it near you. But the black velvet mulch
has been popular for a long time. And the reason this has a beautiful
dark color. It's an organic composted hardwood mulch. So as it ages,
as it decomposes, it enriches the soil. I mean, that's what forests
do. Forests build their own soil with leaves and bark and wood and all
kinds of things decomposing away. So whenever you have multa in your soil,
this is a side note here, whenever you have mult on the soil,
don't take the old mult away and put new mulch on. I hear people
doing that. No, throw the new mulch on top of the old.
As the old gets a little thin and it just continues to provide what mulch
does, and that protects all temperature, protecting against erosion, protecting against weed
sprouting by blocking out the sunlight. Very important. But let that old mulch
decompose well. Black velvet, it is a beautiful dark, velvety color,
very dense. It keeps your plants healthy by protecting the roots against the things.
I just ma. That's one of the main reasons why mulch is so
very very important. Now is it colored, No, it's not. It
is not artificially colored. I can't stand the red mulches, the black dyed
mulches. I know people like that, they think that's attractive. I think
it looks very unnatural to do the artificial dyes. Now, this is naturally
just a dark, mult black and velvety from Landscaper's Pride easy to find Landscaperspride
dot Com, easy easy to find. I'm going to head out now to
Wimer, Texas, and we're going to talk to Jeff. Hello, Jeff,
how are you today? Good? How you doing? I'm good.
What's up in Wimer? I have some water oak trees that are developing like
a greenish gray mold on them, and eventually it spreads, the bark falls
off, and it kills the tree. Greenish mold on the bark of the
tree, well, actually it's underneath the bark. It starts out where there
is no bark, and then it just spreads and it kills the tree.
So far, I've lost about two or three of them, and either mature
water oaks, and I don't want to lose any more and describe that color
again, greenish what it's like, kind of like a greenish gray powdery mold.
Okay, so I'm ninety percent sure what you're talking about is called hypoxylan
canker. Hypoxylan canker is an opportunist. It is out there in the forest
on oak trees already, and when the tree gets stressed, the hypoxylon it's
like the tree's natural defense system is weakened and the hypoxylon quickly gets the upper
hand and it kills entire branches and usually the entire tree. It can attack
a lot of different types of oaks. I've seen appoxillon on sycamore and other
trees as well. Oaks is where we see it the most. The droughts
have been through the last two years have set our trees up for a lot
of hypoxillon. We've hypoxillans around all the time. But anytime you stress a
tree, and drought is the big stress in these past couple of years,
then it gives it the upper hand. There's not a spray for it,
Jeff. There's not any you know, spray or drench or systemic or anything
like that that you can do. Once it's there, it's there and you
just have to get rid of the limbs and in many cases the tree.
But the thing to do is to prevent it by doing everything in your power
to minimize stress for your trees. So basically, I'm gonna the ones where,
like where it's small spots are starting on it, there's nothing I do
about it. You can cut the lumb off and maybe eliminate it there.
Typically I find that it occurs in several places. Maybe it'll like on a
trunk, It can happen several places around the trunk. It can happen on
major scaffold limbs. If you were able to isolate it and cut that branch
off, that would be helpful. But in general, we don't look at
hypoxylon as something we get rid of, something we avoid. Yeah, all
right, well thank you. Yeah. If you want more information on it,
you can go online to the State Plant Clinic. It's plant clinic.
That's one word plant clinic dot t A m U, dot E d U
as in Texas and university. It's a state plant Clinic plant clinic dot TAMA
dot edu. Do a search in there for Hypoxylon and they have a publication
they put together. It's free. You just click on it and read it
online and it goes into more detail. But bottom line is going to tell
you what I just told you. Okay, all right, well, thank
you very much, Yes, sir, sorry to be the bear bad news,
that is for sure. Now we're gonna see I want to continue on
with some tree care comments as we go through here. I'm going to head
back to the phones one more time before I start doing that again, I
want to give the number one more time out. If you're interested in calling
and talking about whatever horticulturally is of interest to you, uh seven one three,
two one two five eight seven four anything related to lawn and gardening,
as long as it's not let's say, marriage advice. One time I went
out. One time I went out to somebody's yard and under the auspices of
I have a question about a plant kind of thing. And I was standing
out there and the spouse, uh, with the other spouse. I'll try
to leave genders out of this, but one spouse with the other spouse standing
right there, put their hands on their hips and looked at me and said,
now will you tell my husband, my wife, blah blah blah,
and I realized I had been brought out there to win an argument. It's
like, oh, no, I do horticulture. You know. You get
to hear Garden Line for free thanks to our mini sponsors. If you want
marriage advice, that's two hundred dollars an hour. I'll be happy to divv
it out. It'll be worth less than you paid for it. I promise
that. Let's go to the phones. We're going to talk to Paula in
northwest Houston. Hey, Paula, Oh hi, good morning. I didn't
know who's gonna put me on the phone. I'm I'm seventy nine years old.
I'm downsizing and get rid of a lot of things. I've got a
box of old garden books. I wondered if you might be interested in any
of them. I made a list. I put it in Microsoft Word a
list all right, that I could give you. Let's do it this way.
If you I'm going to put you on hold right now, and Josh
will pick up. Hes he's handling another call, but he'll be there pretty
quick to pick up, and you can just He'll tell you an email where
you can just send some information like, I appreciate that's a kind offer.
I hope you stick with house plants though as you're downsizing, you know,
we never get to own. Listen. I'm still going to garden and here's
some of the books I'm keeping. I'm well expressly back to one about the
insects and stuff. Okay, all right, hey, well, thank you,
thank you very much. I'm putting you on whole right now. Yeah,
you're listening to the Guarden Line. We're going to be back after our
break. Stop the hour for the news seven one three two one two five
eight seven four, and I'm going to continue on offering little tips and advice
for this time of the year. Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily
endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kat
r H Garden Line with scip Rictor. It's crazy, yes, Trim,
just watching as crazy. Welcome back to Garden Line hops. We are glad
you're listening today. Hey, look outside, we got sunshine, we got
a farently blue sky. That's nice. It's gonna be a good day to
be outside. I can just tell you that this afternoon. I hope you
plan on getting out doing a little gardening, maybe visiting one of our garden
centers or other suppliers. This is a time to stock up on things.
We've been talking about different things you do this time of the year. If
you are going to do some pruning, that has been kind of the topic
of the day, I think, or at least that's what I'm interested in
talking about the idea of successful pruning. It also includes having good, sharp,
quality tools and when you are looking at making a cut, if your
pruners, your hand pruners, or your loppers are very are very sharp,
that you're going to much easier make a nice, clean cut, and that
is important. A ragged cut is not as fast a heel. Also,
and tear on your hands, your elbows, your arms, your shoulders,
whatever muscles you're using to do the printing, especially the joints. When you
are really having to honker down and try to cut through something with not so
sharp printers, it's significant and you have fatigue. But you can also for
those of you who deal with issues like I don't know, an arthritis type
of issue, or beverside us or whatever, those kinds of issues are exacerbated
by having to struggle against printers that aren't sharp, so keep them really clean
and sharp. One other thing about the printers is it's better to use the
bypass printers than the anvil type printers. What does that mean. Well,
bypass printers cut like scissors, two blades that bypass each other as you slice
down. Anvil types are like an anvil. There's one side of the printer
is a flat plate and the other side is the blade that comes down on
that plate and cuts it. Now, those cut, but I find that
the anvil printers it's harder to make a really clean cut with them. It's
more of almost a crushing of the branch, especially toward the end there.
And I just don't think they're the better way to go go. The bypass
punter a way to go. It's a better way to go. So when
you're choosing and purchasing, do that. Another point, maybe I should have
made this like the top six points to keep in mind with prunters, but
we'll just keep going here. Another point is quality. You want quality printers.
Cheap printers do not hold their blade as well. They don't hold their
edge. You're going to end up sharpening a lot trying to keep a sharp
blade on them. The steel. The metal is not of such a quality
that it holds the edge as well, and as a result, again more
hand fatigue. They also, because they're cheaply made, tend to kind of
get sprung out. They don't if you ever had scissors that when you tried
to cut, the blades weren't rubbing tight against each other and you couldn't cut
through it just bent the paper over. Well, these cheap printers can kind
of do the same sort of thing to a degree, and it's just not
good. A quality printer will last you forever. I mean literally, it
just lasts and lasts. You take care of it, you deal with issues
like preventing rust and whatnot. The blades can be replaced. It's a quality
steel that sharpens and holes the cut. I would rather spend whatever money it
takes to get a good quality set of printers than to buy cheap o things
that are just going to end up. I don't know if you took them
all. Over the course of all the years I've been gardening, I've had
a lot of cheap printers that I came across and I gave me this or
that or whatever, and I used it and it ends up in the trash
can. I probably have a five gallon bucket full of worthless garden tools like
that that just aren't going to work. Spend some money on a quality perunter.
Get it very sharp, keep it sharp, keep it well oiled,
and take care of it, and it'll last you forever. I'll come back
to punters in just a moment. Right now, when to head out to
the phones. Our phone number is seven to one three two one two five
eight seven four, and we're going to go to Southwest Houston and we're going
to talk to Steve. Hello, Steve, Steve, how are you they?
Oh Hi, listen, I'm in Condra right the moment just came out
of the just came out of the garden. Lots of greens growing right now.
I'm about to pour them into this vitam mixed blender with green tea.
Oh boy, yeah, it's some turmeric I dug up yesterday. It's things
are really doing well right now? Well good. My question is last about
a year ago, the extension up here in Montgomery County sold some apple trees.
I put them in the ground instead of just letting them bush out.
I kind of trust them a little bit over to a couple of steaks with
wires growing strung between them, like you do great. So I'm interested in
knowing how to prove that properly so that it'll stay on that wire and make
it very easy to pick apples in the future. That's a good question.
Yeah, that's a good question. That process we called espalier training of trees.
You can create you know, the like the grapes. Your trunk comes
up and two branches go out and it goes up to the next wire,
two branches go out. Or you can create fans, which is kind of
like we open your fingers on your hand going out in all directions. There's
a lot of styles of espalier that you can use. Apples do lend themselves
pretty well to that, especially if they're a type that tends to have more
spurs. Spur type apples has have these little short stems that don't grow much
each year, but at the end each year there's a cluster of apples and
it's a little easier to espalier those types on there. There is not a
great publication I know of on how to espalier here in Texas, and primarily
because that's something that's done in other areas. More, if you were to
do a search on Google or whatever search engine you use, and type in
the word Espellier and fruit, and then I'm going to give you you got
a penhandy, I will get one. I grab a pen and paper.
Always listen to Guardline with a pen and paper. So I'll give you a
way to find a good Espelier publication. And this is a way to find
a lot of good stuff too. By the way, Espelier, I'm not
going to spell that one. I would probably butcher it, but Espelier and
then fruit and then a space, and then type in site s I t
e colon colon dot e d u. So s I t e colon dot
e d u. That tells a search engine I want you to find me
stuff and espaliering fruit trees. But I only want you to look in sites
that end in dot ed u. And you're going to get a lot of
the the agg universities, the extension services, the research folks all over the
country, and there'll be some really good ones. One or two or three
or more of the Langrande universities around the country is going to put something together.
Our about Cornell has something like that I wouldn't be surprised by how stated
something like that. But anyway, that is the way to get to a
good espalier. How to We just don't have one here in Texas. Okay,
well great, it sounds like you're an old DOSS user and you understand
how you put this in the computer. I'll try duck duck going, yeah,
it'll work, it'll work. Yeah. That there's a lot we can
do in searches by limiting the search. We call it restricting the search and
site colon dot du is a great way to start when you're doing gardening stuff.
Well, that's that's fantastic for the lady that wants to give away her
gardening books. I'm interested. All Right, hey, Steve, thank you
very much. I'm gonna have to run to a break, but I appreciate,
appreciate your question. We're going to be right back our number seven one
read two one two fifty eight seventy four. Charlie and James, you're the
first up when we come back. Welcome back to guard Line. I'm your
host, Skip Rictor. We're talking gardening today. Fact, I'm gonna just
run straight out here to friends Wood and we are going to talk to Charlie.
Hello Charlie, good morning to you, and I wish you a great
dear. Thank you you as well. My question is I'm about to treat
with glyph phosphate an area that had formerly been a worship but we're going to
turn it into a garden. Now there's cold golf of citrus, and I'm
wondering i'll be treating with. I believes the maximum strength two and a half
ounces per gallon. How long after treating is it safe to plant vegetables?
Okay, Well, what happens is the glay saint moves down into the soil
and gets tied up there and over time is broken down to bearing grease.
I have found that if you if you spray a bunch of weeds, give
it time to work. It needs time because it's not fast, but it's
thorough to move down and kill the weeds. Let's say give it a week
or so to really get in there. The weeds won't be dead in a
week, but they'll they'll be on their way and then you can go ahead
and rot a till that area or whatever you need to do to it to
mix up the soil. Let it said about a week and plant and you
shouldn't have a problem. I don't know, you know, it's it's activated
primarily is affected by getting on green tissues and moving in. So you spray
the side of the trunk of a tree, it's not going to kill the
tree, but a branch coming out with leaves on it, you spray and
it gets in those leaves and it moves in and does damage. So you're
saying it okay, where there's green, that's where it kills. Yeah,
And so that's why when you put it on the soil, you know,
it doesn't take long before it's it's getting tied up and some seed that lands
on the soil that's not going to be affected, or planted under the soil,
it's not going to be affected. Okay, I know if still question,
the label says either one and a quarter, which is difficult to measure
out, or two and a half, which would you recommend. What is
the percentage on the glyphosate laid? All right, that's full strength and it's
saying one and a quarter what ounces per gallon or two and a half?
Well, what are the we what weeds are you trying to get rid of?
Thing? Is there bermuda grass no bermuna grass no, okay, So
it only if you have weeds that are not actively growing, it's not going
to work. So I know you don't have bermuda, but I use that
as an example. Bermuda in the wintertime goes into kind of a it's not
true dormancy, but it just slows down and glafas ay won't kill it very
well at all, if any. But once it starts growing, then it
works. So if you've got weeds that are going to pop up and be
perennial problems in spring, you need to wait until they're doing that before you
you spray. So something like bermuda that's just insidious and invades everywhere. Yeah,
that one you want to get rid of. Where you try to garden
things that are just annual weeds like hind bit and chick weed and clover cool
season weeds for example. Right now, there's not even really a need to
spray them. I mean you can if you want, but just to you
know, start working the soil, getting ready doing that transition into gardening because
they're not going to come back again until see those seeds will sprout in next
fall. Okay, skip well, I thank you very much for good information.
Well you bet. Just remember glafys aid is not a pre emergent product.
It's a post only all right. It's okay, thank you, thank
you so much. Thank for the call. Appreciate appreciate that a lot.
When you're looking for supplies for things like different types of black site or different
other weed killers, you can go to an Ace Hardware store and they're gonna
have everything. I have everything that they're out there that is out there for
you. I mean even organic products. If it's organic that controls weeds in
various ways, they're going to have it at Ace Hardware. They just carry
that kind of selection. There's forty Ace Hardware stores in the Greater Houston area.
Easy to find. Acehardware dot com. Acehardware dot Com do their store
locator on the website. You can find exactly the stores that are closest to
you. And any kind of a product like that, you want to have
options. You want to have different kinds of options so that when you go
you don't have to go, Okay, this is the only thing for sale
that says it's kills a weed, or that controls a bug, or or
even a particular ton of type of fertilizer. ACE hardware gives you those options.
Let's head out now, we're going to go back out to Cyprus this
time and talk to James. Hello, James, Hello, good morning.
So you may have covered this earlier, but I got onto the radio and
I was listening and you were talking about pruning. I'm gonna be cutting back.
Got some knockout roses in the front bed, and I'm gonna I want
to prune back. I don't want to do a region. I just want
to go back maybe a third. I've got probably about three foot tall right
now. I want to turn them back to maybe a foot and a half
two foot. I've always been told Valentine's Day? Is that true? How
do I deal with the freeze after I've cut them back and so forth and
so on. What's the best time to cut back knockouts? That's a good
question. So basically, anytime you hear advice tied to a holiday or something
like that, it's just to make it easier for us to remember, you
play potatoes on Valentine's Day, prune your roses on valan that that kind of
what it basically is is just saying, is hey, when we get toward
the end of winter, that's a good time to prune your roses. I
mean, you could prune them now, but if we go through let's say
a week or two from now, we get up in the eighties, which
can happen in the winter here, and it just warn't those roses are gonna
start sprouting out. And then if we have a real hard freeze, you're
gonna get some burn back on the tip. So we like to wait until
later in the year. But roses start their growth pretty early, so Valentine's
ends up being a pretty good suggestion. But there's no rule about that,
okay. And then once I do cut them back, if we get a
hard freeze, just make sure to cover them. Yeah, if you have
tender succulent growth, you want to go ahead and cover them. Roses are
pretty hardy, but you know, you never know what's coming. I mean,
this has been, at least for me, it's been a pretty mild
winter. We just haven't had, you know, a pretty tough freeze to
deal with, and we may finish it out without one, or on the
other hand, there may be one on the way that, yeah, really
really hammers things. By two quick questions and then I'll hang up. I'll
let you finish up your suggestion brand of pruning or shears, and then bloppers
and last but not least, a good groundcoverage flower that'll play really well with
those roses. Something I don't I don't want anything that's going to climb and
intermingle with the you know, the rose bush. But just something good to
the you know, groundcoverage that will flower up and it'll look nice in the
bed. So thank you so much. All right, thanks James, I
appreciate that. Now I'll see if my brain can apprehend the the examples that
are gonna come to my head here. So let's see groundcover flower, groundcover
flower, maybe may or may not flower. I would a couple of things
I like to use themto roses. One is called polygonum. Polygonum is a
very flat little groundcover with little pink pump on balls stick up from the foliage
just a little bit. It can freeze back, but it always comes back,
but it makes a nice flat groundcover with a little bit of that interest
in it, with those little pink You just have to look it up.
Polygonum, that would be one that would do well. Oh, gosh.
Now I'm trying to think, Oh my gosh, ah, I'm gonna have
to hunt this at break and find the name. It's a little low,
low growing ground cover with dark dark blue, dark blue flowers. It's I
believe it's a type of shoot names escaping me. All right there, that
was what I was afraid was gonna happen. Now I can't remember, Josh,
what was the other question that he asked me before before we went let's
see knockout roses pruning knockout roses. I'm sorry, Josh, I mean,
I'm sorry, James. It just went right out of my head. Someone
else called tell me what James is asking me. We'll go from there.
Got too may things on the mind this morning. Oh I know, brand
of printing shares. That's it. Corona has traditionally been an excellent brand.
It's it's a it's a very good brand. There. There are a number
of other brands, even some newer ones, that do pretty good. The
first thing I would look for in those is can you replace the blades on
them? If it's hand printers now with loppers, you're probably not going to
be able to replace the blades. But I like Corona. That's a good
quality brand, and it doesn't just have to be Corona though. There are
some other good ones that are out there that will do a good job.
Just look on the handprinters will can you replace the blades and on the lappers?
You know, is it going to be a special hardened steel that's going
to hold up well for you. One thing that I will mention is that
equality priunters also offer you options for your hand to fit your hands, for
example, their printer. There are companies that produce printers for left handedeople as
well. There are companies that have prunters that have When you grab a set
of prunters, your thumb is over one part of the handle and your fingers
go over the other part. That part where your fingers go over can actually
roll and so as you squeeze down, it rolls in your hand and it
makes cutting much easier. It's initially you have to get used to it,
because that's not something most prunters do, but it is an ergonomic design that
really reduces stress on your hands when you prune, and that is very important,
by the way, anytime you're doing printing. I was going to mention
this before you want to make sure your printers are sharp, of course,
but you also want to make sure that you keep them cleaned off. SAPs
and things like that can get on them when there's moisture, which there is
implant tissues. It can cause them to rust or to get pitted, and
so we always want to oil our prunters when we're done. It may mean
cleaning off with a solvent some of the sap and materials that need a solvent
to remove them, and then oiling them very well. If you're purning a
plant that has disease issues like cankers or blights or things, get you some
liceol spray and after you make a cut, just spray both sides with lysol
and then go back to cutting again, and that avoids spreading the disease from
cut to cut as you go through the plant. That would be something like
a pair with fireblight, for example. You don't want to spread that disease
on your cuts. Just a little tip there. Our phone number seven one
three two one two five eight seven four send for Nicky in the news.
Welcome back to garden Line. Glad you're with us today. Boy, We're
talking about a lot of different things today. By the way, during break
I was I had reached that mental block trying to remember what was the name
of that groundcover that I want to recommend. I mentioned polygonum under roses,
polygonum as being kind of a little reseeding groundcover that I think it would be
a good choice. The other one I couldn't think of was leuad wart plumbago
lead wart w ort plumbago deep deep blue flowers, a little low tamelee vining
groundcover by tamely vining. I mean, it doesn't take over the world.
It just it spreads out slowly, beautiful flowers. Not the most common plant
in the world, but if you can find it, leuad wart Plumbago makes
a nice little groundcover and especially does well I think around roses. Just something
that's tame enough to behave for you out there. Let's see, we're going
to go to the phones. Now, We're going to head out to bell
Air and talk to Deborah. Hello, Deborrah, good morning. You basically
just covered what I was calling about. Okay, I can't pronounce or spell
that poly gomma poly Yeah, let me let me spell it. P O
l y polly g G o n you am polyg numb Okay. If I'm
wrong about that, it's not far off, but polygon that's in eu M
m is and Mary okay and in Nancy you m as in Mary Okay,
got it? Thank you? Sorry, you bet the rest of you day.
You bet. Another crisis averted. We got to take care of there.
Let's head out and now to spring and we're going to talk to Chuck.
Hello, Chuck, Hello, Happy New Year's to you. Are you
as well? Steve had called in a little bit ago on the sier and
I have a bit of information that maybe would be of help to him and
to anyone else listening. Sure, go ahead. About about four years ago,
I attended a session out at Harbor Gate, Okay, with both Beverly
and Angela and Chandler has a lot of on that because I was really interested
in it. It was the first time that I've seen that with regarding to
fruit trees versus you know, your typical uh, you know, grape vinds
and what have you. And anyway, she covered part of that fruit tree
class that I was at that morning, Okay. And I don't have her
website, perhaps you do, but again she has had a lot of information
pertaining to that and how to work with the train and where to plan them
the best spots in the yard. Yeah, well, she she certainly knows
the what Her website is the Garden, the Garden Academy dot com. The
garden Academy dot com it is, and I don't know. I'm looking at
it right now. As a matter of fact, I don't see a spell
you in there. It may well be there's probably way too Yeah, there's
a contact on there if you would like to pursue that lot. I don't.
I just don't know specifically what she has on that, but Angela is
excellent for that. That doesn't surprise me at all. Thank you, Right,
No, I did it? Okay, I have a great day.
Yeah, you bet appreciate that. It's good to have listeners that are keeping
their ears open for us as we do these things here. I've talked today
about pruning quite a bit, and I've talked about training trees properly when they're
young, talked about the importance of making pruning cuts correctly, and then I've
talked about how to do a three point cut. If you missed any of
those, you need to go back and listen to us on podcasts, and
that will that way you can kind of catch up on those things. Those
are all three important I've talked about the importance also of quality printers, sharp
printers, ones that you know are gonna gonna last and continue to perform for
you over time. So those are all important things. The importance of not
spreading diseases that very very important. I suggested, using Lysol for example,
that I will kill all kinds of critters and creatures and microbes and whatnot that
might be there, you know, trying to do damage to your plant.
You won't spread that when you prune, so that would be a really good,
really good choice to do that. I mentioned, you know brands.
I mentioned Corona, but I forgot to mention Falco. I can't believe that
that Corona and Falco are both excellent brands. And again there are other brands
out there. But remember that you get what you pay for. So while
you can find a pretty good deal on anything from time to time, don't
be afraid if a prunter's going to cost you a little more. If it's
a quality brand like Corona or Felco, those are excellent. Some people like
certain Fiskers products. I personally have not used Fiskers. Actually I have once
or twice for some things. But Felco and Corona I think are two of
your top But I have seen some other excellent brands out there, And so
when you go buy things at a quality place. You know, we're talking
earlier about the importance of shopping where they know what they're talking about, then
you can get those kind of brands. An example of that would be a
Southwest Fertilizer for example. There's a wide variety of tools that Bob has.
In fact, he has an eighty foot long wall of tools. Yes that's
right, eighty feet long wall of tools. And he has a lot of
quality brands of printers. So go by and talk to him. So you
heard about own guardline, does he have this or that or what else does
he have that he would recommend? And he's going to have some other brands
because there's not just two brands in the world out there, but those those
two I know are good and dependable. By the way, Southwest Fertilizers on
the corner of Businet and Renwick this afternoon, you know, getting out and
about. It's a good time to get out and do some shopping. Make
sure that you know whatever kinds of supplies, tools, plants that you have,
you're ready to go on that. Yeah, don't skimp when it comes
to those kind of We're gonna go to a break here. Our phone number
is seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Give Josh a
call. We'll have you up on the board and we'll be right back.
Welcome back to Guarden Line. We're glad you're listening in today. Talking about
all kinds of things. I got some calls on the line here. We're
gonna go ahead and jump to those, by the way, if you'd like
to join us. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
Let's head out to Alvin and talk to Mike. Hello, Mike, Hi,
Skip. I got a Mexican petunia. It was in a pot when
I bought the house and it kept blowing over every storm to come through.
So I finally planted it. And now a couple of months ago you said
they take over the yard and it's about ten feet wide. Now, okay,
we'll do about it. You know, there's several of those on the
market. What first of all, are the blooms purple or pink or white
purple purple? Is the plant like something about a foot less than a foot
high or is it something knee high or taller? Oh, it's like the
center of it's about three or four Okay, got you, I know which
one you're talking about. Yeah, Humban birds love it. So I've planted
it in front of a window so the cats could watch it. But now
it's kind of spread all. Well, it does spread. It has underground
you know runners that can that can spread. It also spreads by seed,
and that's that's the biggest challenge with them. They produce a lot of seed.
And I remember I worked at a place once where we had a sidewalk
out front. We had a Mexican petunia put in on one end of the
sidewalk, and a year later I came out and there were Mexic petunias coming
up beside the sidewalk, twenty five feet down the sidewalk And it's because the
seed had washed down there in the rain and popped up there. So yeah,
it's a great plant, but it's over enthusiastic, so you just have
to be ready to you know, kind of keep it in bounds. Well,
since it's the pruning. So should I prune some of it? Or
oh, you can print it. I would print that kind all the way
back to the ground, especially as we getroy the underwinter. It will not
kill it at any money close to kill it, and it'll come out all
fresh and new and healthy. And that's what I would do, And I
just be ready. When you see the little ones, you may have to
weed them out or I mean you can spray them, but the little seedlings
or where it really becomes a proliferator. Some people will put a barrier in
the ground to confine things like meant for example, that likes to take over
the world. So just imagine, like you sunk a metal ring in the
ground. You could do that with a five gallon bucket, just you know,
cut the bottom off at some height and push it down in the ground
and that confines your plant that way. But that won't stop the seeds on
Mexico petunia. Yeah, it seems like the wind blows the tall stalks over
and then they just kind of grow. They will, you know, parallel
and then yeah go upwards at the end. Yeah, they do. It's
a rue elia is It is a very enthusiastic genus let's just put it that
way. Okay, all right, well, hey, thank you, appreciate,
appreciate your call a lot. Uh, let's go. Now we're gonna
go to Tennessee and talk to Mark. Hey, Mark, Hey, how
you doing? Yeah? Good? How are you listening in Tennessee by a
computer? Oh? Now iHeart on my telephone? Okay, good, Yeah,
I'm over road driver and that's how I listened to Houston News. All
right, we'll good, We're glad you're listening. How can I help today?
Anyways? I like to give a pitch for the Falco loppers. Me
and my wife each ap a pair. They're dirty, run over mine several
times with my tractor and haven't been someone. So get out there trimming branches
and stuff off trees and the pasture and in the back and kind of forget
about them occasionally and they fall off and I've run them over. Yeah,
there's twice that I can think of. Yeah, the Flco for me,
and this is my personal experience, but Felco and Corona have been the two
brands that just really really excel. And a friend of mine was telling me
about a new brand a while back, and I tried something. They're excellent
too. Can you remember the name of it? Unfortunately, but yeah,
you're not gonna go wrong with with Falco for sure. Oh they're a little
bit expensive but well worth money. Well for sure, that's true. You
know, I say that about a lot of things here on the show.
But like bird seed, for example, you can buy cheap bird seed,
but you can't afford it because the amount of bird food you get in a
bag of cheap bird seed is a fraction of the bag. So yes,
sir, all right, Well be safe out there on the roads. Oh
I'm trying, all right, So thank you, thanks for pitching in this
morning. Appreciate that. Lots of lots of good, good brands of different
things. I I kind of am a tool nerd. I grew up For
example, I'll just use one specific tool as an example. I grew up
with a garden hoe. Was that standard hoe? Like if that is a
picture, you know, chopping in the garden with a hoe, there's a
hoe that comes to mind. That's the one I grew up with. That
hoe is made Yes, you can chop out big weeds, but it's also
it's basically it's made for moving soil around. That that's why you got the
big fat blade that set at a ninety degree angle to the handle of the
hoe. Uh, and that is not the best hoe by any means for
weeding in your garden. I'm gonna take a break here, run to a
quick quick phone call, and then I may come back and make some more
comments on that. In a second. We're gonna head to Hockeley now and
talk to Rusty. Hello, Rusty, we got Rusty. There sounds like
I lost I did lose him? All right, Rusty, come on call
back. We'll get you on anyway, the hose. There is a hoe
called a scuffle hoe or a stirrup hoe, because the hoe itself looks like
a stirrup like you put your foot through when you get up onto a horse.
And the bottom part, like if it were a horse strup where your
foot sets. That's the blade and it's sharp on two sides, and this
swivels, so as you push it cuts and as you pull it cuts,
and boy, it's like playing shuffle board, but not just on the push
stroke, but push and pull stroke both. You can cover a lot of
ground. And it's a very efficient hoe. Now, if you wait until
weeds are giant, no, you can't use that kind of hoe if you
wait until weeds are giant. It's kind of like I said, if you
have to use a saw, you're admitting guilt to the way you've been training
your trees. Well, if you have to go beyond a standard weeding hoe,
you're just basically saying, yeah, I let that problem get way out
of hand before I start dealing with it. We want to avoid that.
So basically, what we're going to aim for with a hoe is one that
slices right underneath the ground, just barely, because you want to sever the
weed, but you don't want to dig up new soil. The old time
hose dug up new soil, and all you did was bring more weed seeds
to the surface. And yeah, you got rid of those weeds. But
wait a while, and your soil turns back into a chia pet when all
the weeds start coming up again. And my favorite hoe is called a diamond
hoe. And a diamond hoe the blade is it's not set at a ninety
degree angle to the stem, but it's set so that let's see how a
would I describe it almost like you're sweeping or maybe mopping motion. The blade
lays parallel to the ground, not at a right angle to the ground.
And as you push it and pull it, all four corners of this narrow
diamond shaped hoe cut and with that long point you can get right in around
plants without damaging them. You do a little fine surgery around in there,
and you just slice like a half inch underneath the surface even less, and
you just slice underneath the surface and it cuts the weeds and you don't disturb
it. The weeds just die and lay there. It's a great way to
garden. There's another hoe called a swan neck hove. It's very good for
that. A lot of market farmers we use something called a collinear hoe,
and think of that is like a little short ruler with all four sides sharpened.
That's the stem comes straight up, the handle comes straight up, so
it's like you're sweeping as you hold it the handle on two hands to sweeping
motion, like you're sweeping with a broom, but you're sweeping right under the
sole surface. And all of those kinds of hoes are much better for weeding.
And again, being a tool nerd, I've always got to try a
new tool, and there's all these great tools out there. Maybe maybe we
should just do a show on gardening tools sometimes that would be probably time.
Well spot, maybe I should put something on my website that'll also be a
good idea. Hey, you're listening to garden Line. We're about to take
a break at the top of the hour here for the news. We invite
you to stick with us. Our phone number is seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. We'll be right back. Katie r. H.
Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on
this program. Welcome to Katy r h. Garden Line with Skip Ricter.
It's so crazy just watch him as so many Spotsy. Welcome back to garden
Line. On a beautiful sunny day, a beautiful Sunday, sunny day.
Glad you're listening, boy, what a great day. Get out and about
hope this afternoon you get a chance to get outside and get a little bit
of work done in the garden. Maybe even pick up some supplies and things
we've been talking about, prunters and tools and whatnot. Lots of good plants
to be taken care of too. Now. By the way, if you
still want to plant cool seasoned vegetables, prime time. Get it done.
Let's do it. If you want cool season flowers, great time to do
that. If you want to plant trees and shrubs, get it done.
The sooner you do that, the better off you're going to be when summer
comes. And it will come and it will be hot, and we will
have some dry weather. And that plant that has had the most time to
get roots out into the soil and establish is the plant that's going to survive
the best. So now's the time to get that done. I know roses
are for February, but roses are for January too, excellent time to get
out plant rosebushes. If you like perennials, whether it's perennial herbs, whether
it's perennial flowers, they all do really really well when planted now, So
it's a good time to do that. But what's the most important thing quick
quiz for garden line listeners. What is more important than the plants you plant
the soil that you prepare ahead of time? Now I know it. Choosing
the right plant a species in a variety that wants to do well here,
Yes, critical, absolutely critical. But to get the best plant on earth
and PLoP it into an unprepared plot of heavy clay soil or just generally unimproved
soil. You have just essentially limited your success dramatically by not preparing the soul
first. So when you go to a garden center, come home with a
bag of soil amending products, or go to places where you can get those,
you know, and where you can order them bulk. You live done
South, you know we've got cenamultch down there, will they will get you
fixed up down in the road sharing direction. They've had all kinds of supplies
like that. You know, we've got Nature's Way resources up toward the conroad
direction on forty five heirloom soils of Texas out toward Porter direction. And these
products are sold all over town. Bag too, but take some time to
buy a quality product, not somebody who threw organic matter together for five minutes
to turn brown and then sold it, but someone who truly made a quality
blend. And those are the kinds of people that we have on garden line
of sponsors. We don't have sponsors of companies that I don't totally support their
product. So that's just something for you to think about. Let's go out
now to Hockeley we're gonna talk to Rusty. Hello, Rusty, morning skiff.
I'm sorry I read hey. I don't hold it against the dog.
I hope it wouldn't. You though, have a thornless oh hawthorn, hawthorne
tree, thank you? Was given to me for Christmas. I'm not sure
if it's good for this part of the the Gulf. That's I'm calling.
That's why I just calling to ask about that. You know, there's a
lot of different there's a lot of different species of hawthorn, so I don't
know exactly which species you're talking about, assuming that this this is a true
hawthorn, but hawthorns in general, most of them will do well here.
They do, they do okay here. I can't say that every hawthorn in
the world would, but East Texas is home to several native hawthorns that this
one's mostly from Washington, if that makes me, that's what's gotten me worried,
the state of Washington, State of wash Yeah, I guess, so,
okay, that's what the tags h It has a red berry that's edible,
supposedly ball and I'm going to lean toward and I have my doubts in
that case. There is a there's a hawthorn called the cockspur hawthorn that oh
it is. Okay, well, now that that particular hawthorn probably doesn't want
to be south of about about zone seven, which is a couple of zones
north of you. Uh, and so I have a feeling summers are going
to be too brutal if you want to give it its best possible shots.
Since you've already got the tree, find a space where it gets good sunlight,
but preferably morning sun and a little bit of a break, maybe an
understory to some trees that are shading it in the mid afternoon and on that
probably your best shot at it. I've never seen that tree planted here,
but that's one that is often settled as thornless. Okay, well, I'm
gonna give it a shot. I got sny shady trees out here and anywhere.
Hey, we're good, thank you, thank you very much. All
right, hey, Rusty, just a request, keep up, keep up
with that. Tell me how it does. I'd like to hear, you
know, not not the spring, but you know, and then the year
or two to come. If if you find that it does well here,
I'd like to know that because the information I have always heard on thornless cockspur
hawthorn is a little further north. But let's see. Yeah, okay,
that's good. Okay, with springtime, early spring, putting it in the
ground, I would get it done now. I'll get it as soon as
if you've got the tree, get it in sooner rather than later, because
again we're asking a tree to grow further south and it probably wants to,
and so we don't want we wanted to have his best root system. We
can going into the summer. All right, sludge LT Thanks Sarah, appreciate
the call. You know, there's so many plants out there, it's just
mind boggling, and being a general horticulturist, I feel like I'm trying to
always stay up on every kind of plant there is, and well, you
know, when there's eight hundred new tomato varieties every year, it seems like
and you're trying to keep track of every kind of thing that's out there and
every version of everything, it's daunting. And so I think that it helps
us all to realize there's more that we don't know than we do know.
Don't you have some friends that you wish realize that? But anyway, there's
more that we don't know than we do know, and we're just forever learning,
which I think is one of the best things about gardening. And why
do I say that, Well, learning is a mind stimulating process, you
know, as we get older. I mean if you just kind of just
sit and badge out and do not stretch your brain, use your brain,
whatnot? Same thing with your body, of course. Uh, let's just
say we atrophy. Maybe that's a good way to put it. And to
continue to learn is good. And boy, with gardening, I don't care
if you narrow it down to I just like native plants, well, good
luck. You must spend the rest of your life learning all about all the
nati plants are and about the time you get it all figured out, there'll
be new ones that have been discovered or they've been developed, or new information,
and it's just a forever learning process. It could be orkids that you're
into, or it could be vegetable garden. It doesn't matter. There's so
much new information. It just I love that part about gardening. It's stimulating,
it's fun, and I encourage that, by the way, I encourage
you too. If you're really really into garding. Now I know we got
a lot of listeners that are just you know, I got a loan,
will you help me keep it green? But if you're really into it,
I'm going to suggest when we come back some ways that you can help expand
your learning as you go forward. Our phone number is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden Line. We are
glad to have you around today because we love to talk to you about gardening.
I have one of the most enjoyable things that I have in life is
getting to visit with gardeners about plants and about helping them have success with plants.
You know, people think I got a brown thumb, can't grow things.
I need help. No, you don't. You just need your thumb
informed. And that's what we're here for. That's what we're here to do.
We're going to run right back out to the phones and talk to Paul
in Spring. Hello, Paul, you doing skip well? Thanks? Hey,
I got a question. I got two big pots with the bird of
paradise and on a quarter my ballooms don't open. Okay, I just want
to not assume here is this the bird of Paradise that has kind of the
orange with the bluish coloring in the blooms. It's not the barbee, it's
not the word. It's a tropical bird of paradise. Okay, Yeah,
I don't know why they wouldn't open. Sometimes often people will have trouble with
them not blooming, and the plants, UH can at times just be vegetative
and not do a good job of setting blooms. And there's there's various things
we can do. But if you get blooms and they're not opening, I'm
not sure what would do that. That's not a disease, that's not an
insect. Developmentallycts very very rare. No, that plant doesn't have problems.
I'm just saying. I So that would leave it to something cultural or something
you know, to do with the weather, temperatures, development, you know
certainly that. So what would you fertilize with? I would use a high
There's there's some high quality fee fertilizers that are out there on the market that
will be geared toward blooming plants. I know. Nelson says some products,
just as an example of that, some some color star types of products.
There are fertilizers that do well for plume areas, which by the way,
would do fine for Bird of Paradise too. The specific blends like that nitfive
fertilizer has some lines along the same thing that would do well. I would
just get a little canister, one of those one of the little plastic jars,
and sprinkle some out there. I don't worry about fertilizing it right now.
It's a little too early. That plant is not interested in growing in
this weather once right now. Yeah, well, once we get into spring,
then I would I would add the fertilization to it. But I have
never known an instance where fertilization made blooms open that were there but wouldn't open.
So I think it's just going to be a matter of warming up again
a little bit more and perhaps providing a little vigor for those plants to get
them going. That'd be curious. I'd like to hear about, you know,
if if they suddenly start opening or whatever. I hear about that,
I'm going to make a note and see if I can hunt down anybody any
tropical experts that have commented on that. With Bird of Paradise, I have
not heard of it. They start blooming in November and they're still blooming now
yeh, yes, well, and they'll be co it's fun moving them.
They'll continue the beautiful blooms, absolutely stunning tropical blooms. But yeah, give
it, give it the fertilizer I was talking about. But I would I
would say that, you know, the blooms on any plant, including bird
of Paradise, are are are centered around the fact that the plant leaves get
sunlight and make carbohydrates, and therefore the plant is able to produce blooms.
Uh. And so good gloom health produces blooms. Our mystery about six feet
tall. So oh wow, you got good healthy ones. Our our mystery
here though, is okay, they're producing blooms, but the blooms aren't opening.
And that's the part where I'm gonna have to look into a little further.
I'm not aware of what. It's not getting enough water sometimes or what
so, of course it's such a big pot, it's kind of hard water
correctly. Yeah, and you know those plants, I've seen them where they're
really not taken great care of and they do okay, they're pretty tough.
I don't I don't recommend, you know, not taking care of them,
but Uh so I would have a hard time believing that it's just water,
but I guess that could be a factor. Yeah, yeah, oh I
know they're pot bound, so yeah. Oh and then they're happy that way,
pot bound too, by the way, they they do just fine with
that. Yeah, just trying not okay, Yeah, but it's but at
some point you know that pot bound is too pot bound and for them to
keep growing and blooming and whatnot, you need to get so you split its.
Hey, well, life gives you lemons, make lemonade. You could
divide them into several So all right, Paul, say it again. I
said those pots are cheats. No they're not. They're not. There are
several plants that will do that. You know, the zzy house plant I
was talking about earlier. Oh my gosh, that thing it has creates some
force in a pot that'll crack it right wide open too. So all right,
well I'll look into it. If I know of anything, I'll say
it on the air. All right, thank you, thanks sir, I
appreciate it. Bird of Paradise is such a gorgeous tropical tropical plant. It's
also an example of plant names being sometimes frustrating. You know, we're sitting
here. We use the term bird of paradise for two plants that are very
unlike, very unlike, uh and the the Seesalpinia or pride of Barbadoes that
he referenced. The other bird of paradise plant, sometimes we call it red
bird of Paradise, and I think that helps just to separate it from bird
of paradise. But it is still kind of confusing, isn't it. That's
why we have botanical names of plants. I know, nobody likes to try
to deal with and memorize the scientific name of a plant, you know,
the botanical name of a plant. It's a little makes you sound like you're
trying to show off and use botanical names, but it's accurate, and that's
important. It's important that we have something that's accurate. So I talked earlier
today about fertilizing your cool seasoned flowers and vegetables to keep them vigorous, keep
them growing, for them to do well. You know, taking care of
plants can go beyond just the nutrients themselves. You know, for example,
Medina soul activator Medina cell activator has got over forty trace elements in it.
It's got hormones. It's got various things like, for example, iron and
zinc. You know that's not an a normal bag of fertilizer, but there's
a lot of trace elements in a Medina Soil activator. But now they got
well, now it's been around a while, they've got Medina Cell Activator Plus.
And when you add that, you're adding not only what was in the
original Medina Sol Activator, which we think of as something for the soil,
but with Medina Cell Activator Plus you're getting these other compounds that are helpful in
the plant, both blooming, growing of course setting fruit. Whenever you do
a transplanting, you could use the Medina Sole Activator Plus as a way to
set out your new transplants, or just dilute it down and use it for
young seedlings that you're getting growing as a folder. I'd put in a little
spray bottle and just spray it on the foliage as they grow and help them
along that line as well. It's very helpful for that, and you can
find Medina Cell Activator Plus in a lot of different areas. We call it
Medina Plus, that's the simple name for it. But any kind of plant
that you have it's going to be helpful for those kinds of situations. I'm
going to head back to the phones. By the way, our phone number
we're the last half of the show, or last half of the hour of
the Today's show is seven one three one to fifty eight seventy four. So
right now I'm gonna head out to Paarland and we're going to talk to Archie.
Hello, Archie Martin skip Hey, I'm going up to Fort Worth this
this week to visit my son, and he's got an issue between the house
and the fence. There's about three feet maybe three and a half feet where
he can't keep grass growing there. But now he's getting you know, he
had some stepping stuff, but he's getting mud and stuff now, and he's
wondering if there was something he could get down that would be course enough that
the rain would go on through. Because the fence sar blocks when the rains
coming, there's not enough sunlight for anything really to grow there. Okay,
if there's something that you can put down, but I don't want that.
I don't think I want that rubberized stuff. But is there something else you
could put down there that would kind of harden up to where they could,
you know, walk down through there. He's got a three year old gets
in there and gets mud all over him. Yeah, well, there are
different options. There's what we call hardescape, and that would be think of
it as like a bunch of bricks laid on the ground that have cracks some
space in between them, so the moisture can move down. Uh, it
sounds like this area probably is a clay soil, and it also sounds like
it may be a little lower lying, and so as you as you raise
up the surface, then the water drains away, just like off a hillside.
So you might want to consider putting in a landscape. The metal landscape
border the bed bordering materials that you put down there, they're plastic and metal
versions metal ASTs a little longer. And then in between those two the landscape
edging materials, you could use a substance like decomposed granite. Decomposed granite is
very crumbly. Water will move down in it, but it also just drains
off to the to the sides, so it's like a like just broken rock
pieces, and but when you walk on it, it's very stable. You
don't have to it's not like pea gravel where you know, your foot sinks
down or someone is trying to holler. And the problem is as three year
old gets over there and he tries to you know, the pea gravel stuff,
tries to pick it up in his hand and throws it all over the
lace. And yeah, well you need to buy him a slingshot for Christmas
because then he'll need something. He'll have a time of his life as a
former three year old. I can tell you that that former eight year old
terrorism. Yeah but no, seriously, that's not going to be so much
the case with decomposed grantite. But but just the hardscapes. I like a
lot of the very attractive kinds of stone type materials, typically concrete materials,
flagstones and things that you could put They make a real good, good walkway.
So just something to think about there. It's not for it's like about
forty feet okay, yeah, and anesthetically, so think about what you like,
Archie. I'm about to have to take a break here. If you
if that covered it, we'll let it go at that. If not,
put you on hold. You can hang around if you like, we'll talk
to you all. Have a safe trip to Fort Worth. Good luck,
on forty five. By the way, that's taken your life into your hands.
Nikki, your life are your Archie. My mind immediately goes to Veronica.
Veronica, I was the three year old ones. Oh wow, do
you know? Okay, now we're cutting into your nie time when I was
a kid on the box of Super Sugar Crisp. Is that the name of
on the back? They pressed forty five records? I remember, did we
already talk about this? No? I remember Sugar Sugar by the Archies.
Yes, I had that record. You had to cut it out of the
cardboard put it on your little record, all right, So bottom line,
I'm old, it's time for news. Enjoy right off the back of a
box a Super Sugar Crisps. You got it right there. For several other
places you could get the record, but I always enjoyed that. That was
a lot of fun, Probably the first music I ever listened to. You're
listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter. We're here to
talk about things that are of interest to you, questions you might have about
gardening. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven
four. We're entering into the last half hour of garden Line this weekend.
We're here every Saturday and every Sunday from six am to ten am, so
set your clocks to give you an alarm wake up call. Of course you
want to don't want to miss garden Line. We stuff up in the morning.
Tell your friends and neighbors about garden Line too. We always enjoy having
new folks listening in and that again is part of the fun that we have
here on guard Line. Today. I've talked about a lot of topics,
a lot of pruning stuff that we're mentioning today, talking about tools and waste
of prune and things to prune and things like that I'm going to go into.
I just gonna keep going on that theme, I think today because this
is a big time of the year for pruning. Types of things we do.
Most are pruning in the late winter and spring, because it's prior to
spring growth coming out and the time of the fastest healing, especially in the
case of trees and shrubs, the fastest healing of the wound that we create
when we prune. However, there are caveats to that. Any plant that
blooms only in the spring, we don't prune until after it blooms. Now,
I bet I know where your brain went on that. So let's just
let's just hang with me a minute and talk about it. When a plant
blooms only in the spring, it sets those bloom buds in late summer and
fall for the following springs bloom. And I'll use a fruit tree as an
example, because they do that, and I realized that broke the rule I
just gave. But here we go. That they set the bloom buds at
that time. They come out in spring and they bloom and then they're done,
and toward the end of next year, as long as there's some good
healthy growth that is not just brand new shoots, it'll start setting those buds
on that would for the following year. So a l banks rows a once
blooming rose, which a lot of climbers are once bloomers. They don't bloom
in cycles all through the year, like a knockout roads would, for example.
So those kinds of plants we wait until after they bloom to prune them.
The typical types of azalias that bloom just in the spring and then they're
done for the year. Spyriea are bridle's wreath. If you're from the further
north midwest, you had Forsythia, the yellow blooms that are early, early,
early in the spring. That's a once bloomer. Also, flowering quints
is a once bloomer that grows down here in our landscape. So Texas Mountain
Laurel just blooms once in the spring. Those kind of plants wait if you're
going to prune them until after they bloom, because otherwise you're just cutting away
the bloom buds that are right there. Now, I use fruit tree as
an example, but we prune fruit trees in the winter. Why is that
Because we're not growing fruit trees to have a beautiful bloom show. We're growing
fruit trees to have a productive crop. And so you can prune a fruit
tree in the winter to create the branch structure that's strong, that helps you
have a well balanced tree with production from lower in the tree all the way
up into the higher parts of the tree, and you're still going to have
more blooms than that tree needs to set. Then we even get into thinning
of some of the additional blooms if frost doesn't do that for us. So
fruit trees are kind of an exception, but we're not growing them for the
blooms. Now, a tree, a plant that blooms on and on through
the summer, like a rose bush typically would do, or a plant that
just blooms in the summer like vitex vtex agnes castis called shade not shade tree.
A chase tree, for example, would be a summer bloomer. O
leanders or summer bloomers. Those are blooming on new wood. So you could
cut that thing to the ground. Crape myrtle, it's another example. You
cut the ground almost and it's going to send up shoots and probably have some
blooms on it that summer because it blooms on new growth, not on buds
from last year. So those we can prune through the winter season. You
just want to remember that you want to print them properly, because if you
do cut something like that to the ground, that's going to probably mess up
the structure that you're aiming for on the plant, and and a lot of
other things. But just remember that the only thing, the only caveat to
the winter pruning is something that is only going to bloom in the spring that
you're growing for the flowers. All right, enough of that, let's go
out to Katie and let's talk to Mike. Hello, Mike, Hello,
skip one question. My question about a crowd. The leads, the older
leads on the plant have had curled the curl and uh, they look green
as they always have, but they're they Hey Mike, Mike, let me
cut into a minute. Do you have your phone on speaker because we're getting
a lot of rubbing and feedback. I thought I had turned it off.
I'm sorry, Okay, no problem, go ahead. So your crown of
thorns and leaves are curling, yes, sir, and uh it was it
happened before the weather change. I know the weather maybe can affect them like
that. The only other thing I have done is I've heard they're pretty sensitive
to boron and or kind of sensitive to it, and I have fertilized them
a couple of times with uh it was a week of weekend solution. I
had given them some fertilizer, soluble fertilizer with boron and h. But the
leaves are just you know, have been been like that for months months.
Okay, Now was it the product called solu bore so l ub r or
was it just a fertilizer that had boron in it. It was just a
yeah, just like a very small percentage of boron. Yeah, nothing,
nothing, you know. It was just a regular fertilized like miracle grow or
something like that. Right. Well, I don't think that's the cause of
the problem unless you just overused it over a period of time. No,
that wouldn't be the case. Yeah, krome of thorns is tough, as
you know. I mean, then go into drought and drop leaves and come
back again. I have noticed that in heat and we're very very dry soil,
sometimes you end up with some of that leaf curling. Listen, I
need to run to a commercial, but let me come back to you and
let's continue this discussion. If you're able to hang on through the break.
Our phone number if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two
one two five eight seven four will be right back. Welcome back to guard
Line. We're glad you're listening today. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and we're here to answer your gardening questions. It's as simple as that.
We were just on the phone with Mike and Katie and we're going to join
Mike again and discuss this crown of thorns Mike, I think you said going
just going back to refresh, that your crown of Thorns had some leaf curl
on it that just seemed to continue on and on. That's correct, That's
correct. Yeah, I would, I would watch the watering. That's the
source of a lot of problems with the crown of Thorns. You ought to
be able to dig down a couple of inches and feel it feel dry soil
before it's time to water. They don't need much. They store water in
the stems, and so people tend to treat them like other plants and water
them end up watering them too much. I think that. I know I've
seen times where leaves kind of curl up when they get a little bit on
the dry side, not enough to go to drop all the leaves, but
I've heard some reports of even excessive watering contributing to that. To that second
part of it, I think mine might be the underwater. And to be
quite honest, because I have it in a very well drained because I'm I
tend to I could overwater, and so I've done very well drained soil.
Yeah, and I think I think my problem may be underwater, And it's
what what I'm thanking, and that could be the cause, it could be
contributing to it. I just you know, people that have crown of orange
or you know, some of them are sitting there on the phone going,
I got mine in a terra cotta pot. My mother in law has one
terra kotta pot out on the front porch, and it gets watered when she
thinks about it. And so that plan can go pretty dry. And I've
seen it drop its leaves because it literally got that dry. But I think
I don't want to infer that it needs to stay moist. It doesn't.
In fact, it would rather or not, but just let it dry a
little bit and then water it. I'm sure other issues like temperature. There's
probably some nutrient deficiencies that can do it. I don't think the excess boron
is what's doing that to your plants. But the only way to deal with
excess boron in a pop plant is to pull it up, you know,
tease the dirt off the soil and repotted in fresh soil because boron didn't go
away. But I doubt, I seriously doubt that's what's causing this. Okay,
all right, I'll appreciate your health, all right, sir. Thank
you, Mike. I appreciate the call. You take care. You're listening
to Guardenline our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
We're gonna now run to Southwest Houston. Talk to Jack. Hello Jack,
good morning. How are you. I'm doing good? What's up?
I had a question. I've noticed, especially in my yard in the neighborhood,
a lot of weeds that normally come up in the springtime are seem to
be coming up now. And I wanted to that to do with the drought
and that, you know, everything was so stressed, and then when we
had the rain that finally came late in the flall that everything just decided to
grow at the same time. I don't know, that's interesting. I don't
think it's necessarily the drought, though. Here's the deal that makes weeds grow.
The seeds get moist and the temperature is right. And so if you
take weeds like crabgrass, for example, believe crabgrass starts germinating when the soul
attempts are about fifty five degrees somewhere in there. I have to check it
to be sure. But as you get further along the line and you get
into things like some of the spurges, grassbur and whatnot. It has to
warm up a little bit more before the seeds will germinate. When we go
through winter down here. Number one, we don't really have winters. We
do, we just don't know which day of the year it's going to be
in the Houston area. But we can go through a spell in the middle
of early January where it warms up enough to where seeds start germinating for warm
season things. And that's not fortunately it's not every year like that, but
it's made it difficult when I put together my lawn pest, disease and weed
management schedule. Now this is nerding out more than you want to know.
But anyway, I went through it. Yeah, I just I'm sorry.
I was just gonna say I looked at civil temperatures throughout this region from Galveston
out to sugar Land and up to New Caney and Houston and all through and
was looking at when or the temperature's right for most of our warm season weeds
to germinate. And what that ended up being is that it's going to happen
typically toward the end of February, but it can happen in mid February or
occasionally even a little earlier. Okay, because it's happening now. Like I
have dollar weeed in my yard and I normally and I've treated it, but
I normally don't get it till the spring. Oh yes, okay, So,
and then those big weeds that grow like that turn into those those little
flower or those kind of those wild weeds. They're already you know, two
feet tall along this drainage ditch that I live near. So, and it's
unusual that I've never lived in that area for twenty years. I've never seen
the weeds be as profound as they are this early. It's you know,
it's they started growing back maybe around Thanksgiving or before. It's been it's been
over a month now through the month of December. That's what I was I
see. So we're having two different conversations. I was talking about weed seed
germinating and what you're describing are perennial weeds that are just getting rejuvenated. So,
yeah, getting out of the draft, the heat gives them a new
lease on life. You know, dollar weed can come from seed, but
typically it's something that's that's propagated vegetatively by the plant, and so it's just
a perennial uh. And and the other weeds you're seeing, the cool season
weeds that germinated are already blooming in some cases because we've had some mild temperatures.
Depending on the exposure at your yard too, that's another thing that can
affect how and when weeds needs start to you know, wake up enough to
get growing. But yeah, it's a temperature thing and a soul moisture thing
for you for your question, Okay, all right, well, thank you
very much. All right, Jack, Well, you know, weeds are
green if you mow them and take your glasses off. The lawn looks great,
looks really good. I know, but it's just it's just kind of
said. I just didn't all surprised to already see them so early, but
it is what it is. Maybe, Yeah, that's a good point.
And hey, Jack, I mentioned this earlier today on the show. But
the period of time we're in right now, if you've got warm season weeds,
this is a great time to start managing them because like that dollar weed,
a lot of the products that work well once we get into temperatures in
the upper eighties, those products can really stress your Saint Augustine lawn. So
if we've got some good weed growth, go ahead and take a shot at
it now. Don't wait until some of those weeds begin to flower and set
seeds and things, because they're harder to kill at that time. So maybe
you can get did to apply barricade to my yard. Okay, I guess
I missed the actual initial broke because I have a little bit, but but
I did. I did barricade probably in November, so I'm trying to be
ahead of the curve. But I was surprised that the weeds came up anyway,
Well, you're gonna have what I'm getting, yeah, and you're gonna
want to reuse that. And when we get now into the spring for the
warm season germination. Barricade takes us back to what I was originally talking about,
and that's weed seed germination. So barricade is not going to kill your
dollar weed that's growing in your lawn. It's it's already germinated, it's already
a plant. So the time for barricade, if you look at my online
lawn pest disease and weed management schedule, is in February. That's that's a
prime time now you can do it. You can do it in mid January
because we do have some early sprouting that goes on. There's nothing wrong with
that, but especially unless I say the first two weeks to February, that
would be primetime. Nothing wrong with doing a little earlier, even a little
bit later, it can still do you some good. But once we get
into March, a lot of these seeds are already on their way. And
you know, like I always use a baseball analogy, it's like swinging at
the ball after it's already across the plate. A little too late to start
swinging. I understand, all right, Thanks for the tips, Thank you,
you bet, I appreciate that. Hey, if you want to see
those schedules online, go to gardening with Skip dot com Gardening with Skip dot
com. They're free. You can download them or look at them online.