Katie r h. Garden Line does not necessarily endorsed any of the products or
services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r H Garden Line with Skip
Richard's show Crazy You just watching as world us so many good things to see.
Blotsy, good morning, Good morning, and welcome to garden Line.
We are glad you're listening today. You get the early Bird Award for being
up and about and that's a good thing. Starts a day, right.
Uh. We are going to talk about a lot of different things today regarding
horticulture, gardening, landscapes, trees, shrubs, lawns, you name it.
But we'll talk about whatever you're interested in, and that is by calling
our phone number. It's as simple as that. You've heard this show before,
I'm sure, And here's here's the routine. Seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four,
give me call. Let's talk about what you're interested in. Maybe you
get some questions on some aspect of gardening, or I've been getting a lot
of these lately. Somebody tells me that somebody told them that well, such
and such about what they should do to their lawn or whatever, and it's
just not right. It's not true. And I always think you know the
information you get, uh, don't always take it with a grain of salt.
I mean, do take it with a grain of salt. Don't always
believe it. It is. There's more misinformation about gardening out there than you
can imagine. And sometimes I have to not look at certain lightwilf for example,
Pinterest. People love Pinterest, and I get that that's cool, but
don't believe everything horticulturally on there. There's stuff that's just not right. Facebook,
any app you use, any websites and searches and things. You come
up with all kinds of things. So if you have any questions about them,
give us a call. We'll be glad to visit with you and to
try to kind of work through what is and isn't true about something. Usually
things that are erroneous are based on a kernel of truth. That's the problem
with them is they start off right, or they're based on something true,
but they take it where it's not true. Well, anyway you get the
idea, I want to visit a little bit, starting off about our lawns
and what we can be doing or should be doing. At this point in
time, our lawns are entering their winter rest. And I don't use the
word dormancy. Occasionally it may slip out of my mouth, but that's not
the right word for our Southern turf grasses. Saint Augustine doesn't go dormant like
your deciduous trees go dormant. It just slows down. You know, the
light levels are lower, the days are shorter, the temperatures are cooler,
and it just shuts down. And when we get some warm weather it kind
of can kick back in again. And that happens in the cool season.
It's one of the reasons why I remind people to rake the leaves off your
yard. How they lay there a few days, that's not at the end
of the world. I'm just saying, don't just leave them for long periods
of time shading the grass, because that grass, even in January, if
the weather's right and we get a bunch of balmy kind of days. I
say balmy maybe you know, mid to upper seventies, those kind of temperatures
and even above sometimes well, that grass can be making carbohydrates and strengthening itself
going into winter and therefore coming back out into spring. That's why we have
been recommending for weeks and weeks now get your fall fertilizer down. And the
reason is you want the grass to go stronger into the cool season, and
that's what the fall nutrition does. All through the year. I've got fertilizers
that are basically pushing nitrogen to the grass. That's kind of what the turf
specialists talk about. If you ask anybody any university where one of their turf
specialists, how do we fertilize? What do we need? Well, they're
basically through most of the season spring in summer you're pushing along a little bit
of nitrogen because you're supporting good growth, good vigor. And I said a
little bit not nuked with nitrogen because over applications cause problems, and fall is
a good example for that. In fall we shift over to something a little
bit less nitrogen from a ratio standpoint to the other nutrients, and we want
the phosphorus to be really good and strong in its content. In there the
levels of phosphorus, it's because in that cool condition your soil is the roots
are active in your soil, but we want them to take up the potassium
and it has to come with some nitrogen at that time, so we still
have some nitrogen and fall fertilizer, but we don't want to promote a lot
of vigorous growth. That's where we get into problem with brown patch, which
is called large patch. Also, when you get lots of vigorous growth,
then you're asking for problems, and we're just wanting to get the crant,
the plant healthy with the nutrients it needs to build the carbohydrates to go into
winter. And you've heard me talk about that before. When I say something
as a fall fertilizer, that's what I'm talking about. That's what it is
for, you know. And a good example of that is Microlife's five to
one three. They call that the brown patch formula. It is a good
fertilizer really, you can use it anytime of the year, but it has
got a little bit lower on the nitrogen and sometimes we'll put a little Humantes
plus with that because that has about a four percent nitrogen nitrogen excuse me,
potassium. I need to watch my words here. The third number on the
bag is what we're going after now. Microlife also has a couple of products
I call them the Blue plus Blue that would be that would be things like
the Microlife Ultimate that is the blue bag a fertilizer. It's got an eight
four to six ratio of nutrients and again you can use that about any time
of the year. And then there's the Microlife Ocean Harvest. Ocean Harvest is
a blue bottle. It's basically a fish based product that you can use to
water implants as you plant them. You can use it as a folier spray.
It just has a lot of uses. But there are and many many
other products are available from Microlife. Just go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com and
you can find out where you can buy it and learn more about each of
these products. It's always good to learn a little bit about the things that
we are talking about. Hey, if you live up in the Magnolia area,
spring Creek Feed is your feed store. They're on FM twenty nine seventy
eight. Y'all know that area. Y'all know FM twenty ninety seventy eight.
It just minutes away from ground Parkway or Highway two forty nine, so it's
really easy access to get to Spring Creek Feed. They carry all the fertilizers
that I would recommend here on guard Line. They also, of course,
there are feeds, so they carry lots of livestock feed, high quality pet
foods, pet brands for your dog food or cat food. They even have
feed for wildlife. And if you happen to be in FFA or four eight
maybe raising an animal, if you're military, or if you are a senior
citizen, there's discounts for you. And one of the other good things about
Spring Creek Feed is they will special order a product if you need to get
it and they can get a hold of it, they will special order it
in for you and even have a delivery service available as well. All of
that you're going to get at Spring Creek Feed again. It's up in Magnolia
on twenty nine seventy eight. Well, we're going to go to a break
here. We will be back if you would like to give Josh called and
get on the boards seven one three two one two fifty eight seven four alright,
all right, that's your moment of happy, happy music here for just
a bit before we get going on guarden Line again, which is right now.
Hey, listen, I was talking about your lawn. I was talking
about the importance of getting the leaves off the lawn and why that's important and
why the nutrients are important that we put on in the fall. And the
longer you wait to do fall fertilizing, the less time there is or the
less grass growth activity there will be as the year goes on. In other
words, once we get into you know, late December and January, the
grass is kind of just sitting still. But again, you know, it
moves a little bit, but it would be so much more efficient for your
fall fertilizer application to go ahead and get it on in October, which is
what I have on my schedule. For those of you who aren't familiar with
the schedule, you can go to Skiperchter dot com or excuse me, gardening
with Skip. Don't forget Skip Richter Doctor. There's not one of those Gardening
with Skip dot com Gardening with Skin and the schedules are on there. The
one's a lawn care schedule. It tells you about fertilizing, It tells you
about watering and mowing and air rating and adding mineral supplements and things like that.
It goes into all of that stuff, and it's got the organic and
synthetic options for both of those. For all of that there's also a pest
disease and weed management schedule. These are free, by the way, a
multicolor chart. It makes it really easy to follow. Just hang it up
in your garage, you know, wherever you get your fertilizer spread or out.
I guess, and just have it handy there. That's good. Always
check back though. Anytime I see an opportunity to update it, to add
something or improve something, I'm going to do that, and so just check
back occasionally. I'll try to remember to mention when there is an update that's
just been made to those schedules. But that would be a good idea.
So we were discussing lawns and whatnot, and someone asked me the other day
how tall should I be mowing my lawn? And it kind of depends on
the grass that you have. Saint Augustine is the one we mow the highest.
It's probably about a two and a half inch is a good general height
for Saint Augustine. When you get too short, it's stressful. It's not
built to be mowed like a golf course green. Bermuda on a golf course
green can take that. Saint Augustine now, and if you get let it
get taller. That's okay. It's just some people don't like the look of
a taller lawn. But I've seen people have their lawns three or four inches
high, and it makes for a more deep, extensive root system, to
have more available top growth, especially if it's in the sun. And it
also means that when you mow, you don't have to mow quite as often
because you're not cutting off you are not having to just make your clippings really
short. In general for turf, let me just put it this way.
In general, for turf, we cut off one third of the leaf blade
of the grass. So if your grass is three inches high, you cut
it to two inches high. That's one third of the of the height.
So the taller the height you're mowing, the more it can grow before you
have to mow again, if you go all the way down. I'll take
a golf course green as an example. Uh, they're mowing those things every
day during the growing season especially, and it's because they're cutting off like an
eighth of an inch or a six even less sometimes, but about an eighth
of an inch usually of the grass blade height. Well, I don't think
you want to mow your home lawn every day or every other day or three
times a week. Once a week is generally good. But to do that
and it looked good, you need to have a little higher grass height to
be able to do that. Our phone number is seven to one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Airloom Soils is having a sale that you need to know about if
you're thinking about building a bed, or if you have beds and they kind
of sunk them down in time and you want to top them off, get
the soil back up and a taller or higher level for better drainage. Maybe
it's a flower bed, for example, a vegetable bed. Here's the opportunity
to do it because they are putting two of their best sellers on sale this
fall for bulk of purchases. So the veggiean herb soil is on fall special
for one hundred and nineteen bulk per cubic yard, or one hundred and forty
eight for a supersac, which is a sack that holds a cubicyard. The
rose soil is on sale for seventy dollars bulk and ninety nine dollars for a
supersack, and each of those prices is a cubicyard and they'll deliver them.
You can go out there and pick them up. They'll drop the supersack off
in your in your driveway if you want. It's a lot neater and cleaner
than just having them dump soil there. But anyway you want to go about
it, you just need to get a hold of folks at Heirloom Soluce.
Go online to Heirloomsoilsoftexes dot com, Airloomsoilsoftexas dot com and when you go there,
what you're going to see also as a compost calculator where you can figure
out how much it is that you need to order. We're going to heading
out to the phones. We're gonna talk to Mike in Sugarland. Hello Mike,
Hello Skiff, good morning, Good morning. I applied the Nitra Falls
winter Riser fertilizer and I did it about four or five weeks ago, and
my grass is turned brown, so I think I over applied it. You
know, I'd have a hard time believing that you applied enough of it to
brown your grass. I mean you would have you know, it had been
like it snowed out there just about not quite, but it's pretty hard to
apply that much. But go ahead and go ahead with your question and we'll
see if we can figure it out. Well, whatever I did, I
did water immediately after application. But it was the eight twelve sixteen I believe.
Anyway, Yeah, I went back and checked the bag on the application,
and I used half of a forty pound bag. So I put down
twenty pounds about two thousand square feet. So fifteen of your twenty on two
thousand. That's not too high. That's now twenty pounds ten pounds on one
thousand, that would be just eight percent night. I just don't I don't
think that that application of fertilizer was enough to do that. Now, you
should watch the application rate because we're trying to keep the nitrogen a little lower.
So even though the ratios are perfect for fall the nitro fall special,
if you put on enough of it, you're still putting on more nitrogen,
right, even though that number is a little lower than the others. I
would watch for that. But let's see if we can figure out what else
might be going on. Was there any did you ad any kind of weak
control products or anything else applied to the lawn. No, not at that
time. I did a post emergent weed spray. Yeah, in the spring.
Okay, well, hey, I don't you know, just you're not
saying it's in circles, and you're kind of describing it like the whole lawn
kind of got hit at once, right, Yeah, at least where I
I fertilized it. Okay, So that's why I think it's the fertilizer.
Okay, Well, let's just question is how do I get around it?
Is it going to kill the grass or no? Will it come back?
No, it'll come back. But let's just say you did way over apply
it or something, and that is the cause. Just a good drenching rain
or irrigation just kind of do a little extra to basically, you'd be washing
any salt based minerals, you know, out of that root zone. So
it's just like washing salt, you know, dissolves and it moves away,
and it would just get the access away and the grass will be Okay,
I don't I can't imagine you're putting so much that you would kill grass.
I'm having trouble believing that you put enough to brown the grass. But we'll
go with that for now. If you'd like to send me some photos and
have me just look at them. I may not have another a different answer,
but if I see something, I'll let you know. I'm going to
put you on hold. If you wish to stay, Josh will pick it
up and get you an email and send me some pictures from different angles where
I can really see overall, and then something up really close and good sharp
focus could I have Are you still there? Yes? But I do need
to run what was your last well? I was going to say, did
I not water an in enough? Would that have burned it? It would
be all you need is a half inch of water to move it in there.
An inch would would be fine if you're trying to dissolve a little more,
but you may need to do it again if you're if we were trying
to get a salt out of the soil again. Okay, okay, all
right, thank you, thank you, sir. I'm put you on hold.
You know, if you're going to do some fall planting, and I
hope you are, excuse me. Remember when you put a plant in the
ground, the root system is confined to what you pulled out of the pot.
And so that's what needs the moisture and nutrients initially to get going.
And that's why I like to water implants with has to grow six twelve six
has to go six twelve six is a simple process. You just mix it
in water and I use a watering can to put it on my transplants.
You can spray it as a foldier. It's not going to burn plants.
It's got, of course the nutrients the six twelve six, but also I
seeweed extracts and medinas, will activator, humic acid and other things like that
that just help. And I would suggest you water new transplants in with that.
Then you do it about five seven days later, in about five to
seven days after that, three times about a week apart, and then you
know those roots are getting going, and just from there you can just sort
of back off and you don't have to constantly water right at the base because
you're hoping that the roots are reaching a larger area, drawing from more nutrients
in the swell and able to do to do just fine. I was I
was talking about a turf while ago, excuse me. And when we go
into the cool season, some people often want to overseed their turf. We're
getting a little later in the season for that, but you still you can
still do it. But when you oversee turf like that, what you end
up with is basically you're putting weeds in your lawn. That grass you're planting
is competing with the lawn for water nutrients. It can be done. Commercial
properties do it all the time, but most people don't want to water and
more and have to fertilize or mode during the cool season, and this overseeded
is a cool season annual grass or annual or perennial grasses are used. So
I would just say hesitate before you do that. There's certainly reasons why people
would do that, and there's ways to do it. People that know what
they're doing can obviously pull that off. Well, we're about time for a
break right here. I about that, Nicky, come in while I go
find some throat lozenges or something. Here. Oh, that's going to be
sore. No, I'm okay. Oh. I saw a doctor and he
said he'd only seen it once before, but they had to put the whole
herdles. Sleep time for Nicki and the news. Welcome back to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to answer gardening questions.
If you would like to ask a question, just give us a call.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. I was looking at I've got one of
the rolling above ground raised beds, the Vego beds, but this is the
one on wheels. It's like a little just think of it like a box
above the ground on wheels. It's pretty cool. You can move them around
really easily, which is which is handy. I'm putting mine in a spot
where i can get it into the garage really easily, and I'm just looking
forward to a really cool harvest through the winter time because I'm doing a lot
of greens and other things that are that are fresh, and it can just
go in the garage whenever it's too cold. I mean, you could throw
something over it to protect it as well. But I just think that was
a cool one. You know, Vego, I brag on them all the
time, but they just there's a lot of features. The fact that the
metal is not going to rest in Corrode. It's a special it's not just
galvanized, a special process that is not going to do that. I was
tested at the A and M Metals laboratories and just really passed with flying colors.
Also the paint, the USDA approved paint on them. It's just beautiful
colors. You know, you don't want your bed to stick out like a
sore thumb. You want it to be beautiful and part of the overall landscape.
And that's why I like the colors on the Vego beds as well.
Now they're a Houston company. There's a lot of impostors out there that you
know came along later, and but listen, Vego's the one. They're the
original. They know how to build them. They're time tested. I've tested
them myself as a matter of fact, and you're not going to go wrong.
If you are looking for a really cool garden gift for someone in the
family, this would be unbelievable. Just go to vegogarden dot com vegogarden dot
com. You'll find them at some of our local mom and pop garden centers
around here too. Don't be fooled by the others on the market. You
need to try it. You need to try out the Vego because it's just
so dead gum convenient. It's so easy, and it lasts forever. That's
another thing. I've built beds with treated lumber. That's a lot of time
and work and a lot of money. And in the long term, when
you have to read doo beds, you end up wishing you would gone ahead
and gotten in the metal bed like Vego bed. To begin with, we
are we're here to answer your gardening questions. If you have any you'd like
to call in seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven
to one three two one two five eight seven four. I came home the
other day and there were branches from my Chinese pistache tree that's out in the
front, uh, and they were laying in the driveway. And I've been
knowing I needed to get up there in pruneum. But a delivery truck came
in and you know those are really high compared to driving in with your vehicle
every day. Uh, And it just broke off a bunch of branches trying
to get in the driveway. And so I need to get up there and
do some some pruning. And if you have any kind of pruning you need
done, you know who I'm going to say, and that's Affordable Tree Service.
I was just visiting with Joe yesterday. And you know, Martin has
been doing this for a very long time, over thirty years of experience taking
care of Houston trees. They know what they're doing, and don't let anybody
run your trees doesn't know what they're doing. I'm telling you one bad pruning
job, it's pretty much for life. That tree will never have the structural
strength from the re sprouting as it would if it were pruned properly. And
you're just not going to get him back when they prune in bad And Martin
knows how to do it, and that's why you need to call him.
His number is seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Seven
one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. And when you call,
you're going to talk to Martin or his wife, Joe. That's who enters
the phone. Yesterday I called, Joe answered, and it's if you don't
hear one of them, you've called the wrong place. So hang up and
doll again, or just go to the website Afftree Service dot com. Now
you need to take action now. Even if you're thinking you want trees pruned
in February or something, call now and get on the list. He stays
busy. That's what happens when you do things right. You stay busy and
telling me your guardline listener too, by the way, that that helps move
you up to the front of their list. And so don't wait until you
know, like me, some truck knocks down branches it should have been prone
a long time ago, or a storm comes in and ruins a beautiful tree.
Have Martin come look at it. And if you're going to do any
kind of construction around around that tree, I about trenches or whatever, have
him come out first and look at it and give you a consultation as to
what you need to do, because again, one mistake in construction can end
up leading to the death of a tree as well. We don't want that
to happen. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I think I've told
you about this for several weekends now, but I just want you to be
aware that the Oba Lone Star Yule Ball fundraiser is going on December seventh.
That's a Thursday, December seventh. It is a Thursday coming up soon,
isn't it. It's from five thirty to nine thirty at the ballroom at Tanglewood
off Westheimer, and it is going to be quite a shin dig. By
the way, you need to be wearing your Western attire. That's the theme
of the whole event. Shake Russell is the legendary Texas performer. You probably
know Shake or have heard his music. He is going to be there performing
for him. They'll also have a group called d VS Strings, which is
what you would expect, a small string ensemble. They'll have magician and fortune
telling and a delicious dinner by the way, certainly cocktails and other things.
But you got to go online to register at OBA online dot org, slash
register, OHBA online all one word dot org slash register, and that is
how you can become part of the party. We are coming a little close
to a break here, so I don't want to start a whole new topic,
but I did want to just say a few more things about the Our
lawns have been through a really difficult season and a lot of people are sending
me pictures are telling me that you know, what do I do? And
it looks bad and it's a you know, you kind of have to look
at do you have living grass close enough to where it would close back in?
I usually say, just as a rough idea, if it's a foot
apart sprigs or a foot apart, it'll close back in pretty quick in the
spring to early summer. But that's then if the grass is in good health
and able to do that. If not, residing is going to be something
you're going to have to be looking at doing, and that's where we get
rid. That's your chance to get rid of all the bad weeds that you
can't get rid of that are growing in your lawn, to deal with like
roots that are sticking up above the surface, or you may need to bring
a little bit of soil in those sort of things, leveling the soil,
filling holes. That's all done ahead of time, so now'd be a good
time as you get time over the next few months to be working on that,
so you'd be ready to go and lay lay some fresh grass down and
get that lawn back where it should be. We're going to take a break
right now again. If you'd like to give Josh a call and get on
the boards. Seven to one, three, two and two, five,
eight, seven four. Welcome back to Garden Line. We're glad you're listening
today. I hope you're enjoying the show. We're just going to offer some
advice on different aspects of gardening to help you have success. One of the
things that I would advise you on if you are looking to have success is
to find a good quality mom and pop garden center. And for those of
you listening up in the Lake Conroary, the Montgomery, the Conroery all through
up there, Ana Plants and Produce is your backyard nursery. And for all
those lake neighborhoods, Oh my gosh, Waterstone, Lake Conroe, Beltwater,
Grand Harbor, de Lago, On and on, that's your hometown nursery.
And they are having a really cool deal. By the way, they're getting
ready for their annual Christmas festival at the nursery. That is tomorrow, Sunday,
December third, from noon to four pm. It's free group photos taken
with Santa Claus and Missus Claus there. And while you're there, of course,
you're going to do some shopping I mean they ana plants and produce.
If you need fertilizer that I recommend, They've got that. Do you need
quality annuals, perennials, vegetables, shrubs, trees, rose vines, everything.
Ana Plants and Produce is the place to go. You've driven past it
one hundred times when you're coming out of Montgomery heading toward Conro on one oh
five. It's right on the east edge of Montgomery and on the north side
of the road. But if you drive by, I don't have to tell
you what side of the road it's on. It is pretty darn clear,
and it's always fun to go in there. Good advice from good folks that
know what they're talking about too. That is very important when you are choosing
a place to purchase plants and other things like that. Excuse me, I
have talked about it this fall, but Nelson Plant Food is doing their special
for the Carbolobe. That's the Fall fertilizer. A special thing has happened in
this fall, and that is that forever bag of carbo loads sold, Nelson's
Fertilizer will donate two dollars to Randy Lemons Memorial Scholarship. It's for horticulture students
at A and M, and so it's just a it's kind of a win
wind deal because you get a good fertilizer and you contribute to a good cause
in the processed. I mean, they're they're providing that two dollars donation for
you, and carbo load is an excellent one for reasons I was just talking
about. Before the fall is when our grass gets stronger to be hardier in
winter and come out stronger in the spring. And carboload also has a pre
emergent herbicide that will when you water the carbo load in after application, put
about a half inch of water on it, and it'll move that herbicide also
into the surface and the cool season weeds that can be germinating anytime here and
have already begun to germinate. It prevents that process from happening. And that's
from Nelson Plant Food, a good quality product and definitely a good cause too.
You are listen the garden line. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and we are going to be taking a little bit break here in a bit,
But I just wanted to switch gears from talking about lawns and discuss some
fertilizing and other activities in the garden. I think the best easiest garden season
of the year is the fall season. The fall and winter really down this
far south now. Spring is wonderful, Slummer is wonderful. That's all great,
But it's so easy right now to grow healthy greens, things that we
know have the fighter nutrients to keep our bodies healthier. And so that would
be things like kale, greens, lettuce, spinach. A regular regular is
we use it more for seasoning as a green. In fact, you make
a salad with very little dressing when you add some sorrel for lemony greens,
when you add a little irregular for kind of a nutty. I don't know
how to describe the taste, but I would say nutty is one way to
go about it. And you can sprinkle so lantro and if you wanted to.
I mean, there's a lot of greens with flavor that you can put
together in a salad and it is so easy to grow now. You put
the seeds out or you put the transplants out, and the weather's just perfect
for them. Yeah, you got a water some but not like the summer.
This is a great season for doing just that, and I encourage you.
If you have never tried gardening before, would you try this fall the
bottom line, the low hanging fruit. The easiest way to get into a
garden is to get a five gallon bucket, droll holes in the bottom,
fill it full of a quality potting mix, and give it a shot.
See how it does. Now, I know before long you're going to be
wanting to get beautiful containers to grow in on the patio. And you may
even decide to put in a raised bat like one of the veggos I was
talking about a while ago, and you can grow even more. Don't think
about having a garden, meaning you've got to go buy a rototiller and plow
up the back forty of your yard. You can garden anywhere sunlight hits the
soil, and so find a way to do it. It's easy. Do
some lettuce. That's one of the simplest things you can do. Get the
kids involved. Let them go out there and mow it with scissors out of
the top of the container. Yeah, that's how you do it. You
just plant a bunch of seeds. It just comes up like a little weedy
lettuce patcher. But it's all lettuce, and you trim it off like you
mowed it, and it just sproutsrat back out again and you get another trimming
lighter. Can't get any simpler than that. Hey, while I'm talking about
activities, you need to be aware that at Buchanans they're having their holiday open
house. We've been leading up to this for a long time, but this
is a free event. There's gonna be live music, beer and wine.
Food, Sam will be there, kids, crafts, local vendors all there
at Buchanans Nursery which is on Eleventh Street and the Heights six eleven East eleventh
Street in the Heights. And when you're there you're gonna find some of the
vendors, for example, Mingo's a Latin kitchen, traveling Tom's coffee truck,
uncommon Bee for the kiddos if they want to make crafts like a Christmas headband
or write a letter to Santa or a Christmas bellcraft, that's all going to
be going on there today. And of course when you're there you need to
pick up all the plants that you want to have to make your beautiful fall
and winter landscape even more beautiful, and your garden as well. They have
native plants. They certainly have a lot of Christmas trees, right, and
it's a great time to go ahead and get that tree and get it in
the ground. And they take care of their trees so when you buy them,
they haven't been sitting out of water on a dry lot somewhere waiting for
somebody to show up in the sun. No, they take care of their
trees. They put them in water, they take care of them from the
time they come off the truck so that they have the longest life possible in
your home. I have vacuumed my share of pine needles up from a tree
that was not in good shape when it came in the house, and it
was just a needle drop adventure. It kind of looked like Charlie Brown's tree
by the time by the time we hit the season. But with Buchanans,
you're not going to have that for sure. Buchanan's Nursery again on East eleventh
Street in the Heights the topics. I was talking about vegetable gardening and everybody
needs to try. It's just it really is easy. You can do it.
I would encourage you to. I've grown more things and just the old
black nursery buckets. I mean, plants don't care what they're growing in.
They want soil, they want water, and they want nutrients. And if
you give them an adequate amount of those three things, they're going to do
well. I mean, you could. I told this story before, but
one time I was driving down the street and my wife, I tend to
be kind of an eclectic gardener, and we were driving down the street and
somebody had put a toilet out at the roadside that they had redone their bathroom.
And I didn't say anything. I didn't look at My wife says,
don't even think about it. Don't even think about it, because she knew
what I was saying. Yes, that's what I was thinking. I could
grow stuff in that. Plants don't care what they're growing in. Just give
them enough soil, good water, and good nutrient. So try it out
this fall. Let us help you walk through that process, because you know,
gardening need not end in disappointment. You do not have a brown thumb.
You may have uninformed thumb, and we can help with that, but
you do not have a brown thumb. You can garden, You can grow
things. Do you want beautiful flowers? You want to spruce up the entrance
way to the home with some containers of flowers. Do you want to have
some vegetable production or RB production in containers. Just get your feet wet,
don't bite off too much. Just try it out. And we have plenty
of great garden centers that will help walk you through that, getting you good
plants with good advice. And there's just a lot available online to help you
try out gardening. And I want to say this, and I'm not trying
to meddle here, but it is a fact that when kids grow up learning
and appreciating good quality food, learning to eat things that they grew they are
set on a path toward a healthier life. Because our number one health problems
in this country are because of what we've put in our mouth. That's one
of the biggest things. There's others, but that's one of the biggest things.
And learning to eat fresh and healthy is so important. And why not
also introduce them just to the wonder of the natural world, and a garden
is a great way to do that. We're about to take a little break
here and be heading out the door for the news, but when we come
back, we'll be glad to take your calls. If you'd like to be
first in line, you can give us a call. It's seven one three
two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or
services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip
Rickyard. It's so crazy, Trim. Just watch him as we welcome back
to garden Line. We are glad you're listening this morning and looking forward to
talking to you. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. If you've been thinking about getting a generator but just having
gotten around to it, here's your round to it. They are having a
holiday blowout at Quality Home Products right now. It's going to be going on
through the month of December. Up to twenty five hundred dollars off, ten
percent off, up to twenty five hundred dollars total off and it's only for
new generator customers, new ones only, and it can't be combined with other
promo offers. That makes sense. Now, you can go online to Quality
Texas dot com to find out more about them. You can call seven to
one to three quality. But let me tell you one thing. It is
important to get a quality product like a generat. Generator is an excellent example
of that, but it is equally, if not more, important to have
somebody who gives you honest service from the time you walk in until years down
the line. And that's what quality does. They help get you in the
right generator so you're not wasting money on something you don't need. They won't
go through all the process of the permits and things that are needed to get
that thing set up outside your house, even for the slab to do it.
And then after the sale they come back and they will periodically a couple
of times a year, I think, come out and service the generator,
make sure everything's working, because listen, when the power goes off and you
need internet for your job, for example, or you've got frozen food in
the freezer, you don't want a generator's not ready to go. And that's
what Quality Home Products of Texas does. They make sure that when you're their
customer, you're taken care of. And the awards they have won from the
Better Business Bureau, you know, eight or nine times like the highest of
working it's just amazing and it's a because of the service that they give their
customers. We're going to go out and out of Bay City and talk to
Lisa. Hello, Lisa, Hello, how can we help? I have
a Texas stage and an azalea plant that I would like to plant, and
our soil is the black gumbo clay mud height. Okay. Planted trees before
and they don't ever get out of the root ball, okay, and they
just die. Well, Texas Sage doesn't mind that soil, but it does
want excellent drainage, so raising amound of soil up to plant in. You
can bring in a quality soil mix and mix it a little bit with your
soil and then add more fresh mix on top to sort of create that raised
bed to put it in. If you can keep the roots from being underwater,
which happens when it rains a lot in the clay soil, If you
can prevent that, Texas Sage will be happy. It needs full sun,
but it needs good drainage. That's important. Now, would you suggest top
soil, because I've looked into getting different types of soil. I live out
in the country and so looking for different types of soil well, top soil
would be good. It's just that what you and I call topsoil is not
always what a soil yard calls top soil. Sometimes people will sell you something
called topsoil and it's not a good quality soil. A good quality soil mix
from a soil company you can trust. That's very important. They won't say
you something that it isn't And so yes, topsoil. You could mix some
organic material in it Texas age will grow and some of our nice bed mixes,
you know, like a roast soil mix, for example. But mixing
it with top soil is a good thing because the organic materials tend to decompose
and therefore shrink down over time, whereas soil pretty much stays where what you
have it doesn't, it doesn't shrink down as much. Okay, with a
sandy getting sand and mixing in with it, it's us or not necessarily sand.
Just if you could get something that's more of a loam, ask them
about more of a loam type soil to mix in with your clay or or
or they may have other options depending on where you end up getting your your
mix. I know your way down in Bay City, We've got a couple
of great places up on the north end of town. I know I talk
about airlom soils and Nature's Nature's Way up towards Conro, but they deliver in
a wide area too. Now, as far as your azilia that needs a
woodland type soil mix, just imagine in the woods, there's lots of decaying
organic matter and that's where azaleas are from. And so what you want to
do, and I'm going to say this in kind of a funny way,
but it gives you the idea. You want to set your azalea plant on
the ground and then bring your bed in around it. So what we're saying
is that that plant isn't dug in a hole in the ground because that's poor
drainage and the heavy clay soil azelia is just not going to like that.
But you can mix some bed mix in with your soil, but make sure
and get a good quality acidic bed mix. And again Nature's Way up in
Conro and Heirloom soils out and Porter, both of them make a high quality
mix that's on the acidic side and makes azaleas feel at home. Okay,
okay, I think our soil is kind of acidic because we can grow blue
bonnets. No toad that blue bonnets grow in bad soil. No, well,
they grow in bad soil, but not really. There's one blue bonnet
that grows in a city soil, but that's aside from I would just make
sure you get a good mix and get those get that mixed into the ground
and give those plants a good chance. But I appreciate Lisa your call,
and I wish you. I wish you well. That's a that is an
unusual combination Texas Sage with the Azalia. I hope you're not putting them in
the same place because their desires are different. Texas age likes a higher pH,
Azalia's need a lower pH. And so just a little bit of words
for the wives there. Uh RCW Nurseries. I was out there this fall.
I had a little shindig going on out there. You know, we
call RCW that get it, got it nursery, and that means if they
don't have it, they'll get it for you. They are just right down
the website and go check them out. It's RCW Nurseries dot com. They're
the garden center that where Tamba Parkway comes south and hits belt Way eight.
They're right there in that area, easy to get to and they carry pretty
much everything you need. And if you're doing any fall planting of woody ornamentals,
roses, shrubs, tree those kinds of things, they specialize in that.
I mean they have everything else too, but they carry the fertilizer I
talk about here. But RCW Nursery. You just need to go buy and
visit them and let them show you the trees that they have. They have
a very good selection of species that do well here and they know what they're
talking about. That is also very very important. Was I was just talking
with Lisa Done in Bay City and I didn't think about this, but Siena
Maltz, really, Lisa is They're just not a long way from you.
They're due south of the Houston area. I don't know if you are in
the delivery range of them or not, but you can go by and pick
up a bulk there anyone living anywhere down south, you know, especially within
a twenty mile radius of them. They're on FM five twenty one, just
north of Road Sharing. Their website is Sienamaltz dot com. Beautiful Stone Options,
Beautiful Stone Options, Beautiful quality soils and mulches and every kind of fertilizer
you hear me talk about on Guardenline. See and the mulch is open Monday
through Friday, seven thirty to five today seven thirty to two and closed on
Sunday, So today'd be a good time to go check it out, because
remember, a quality garden, a beautiful and bountiful garden, begins in the
soil. We're going to take a little break here, we'll be right back
our number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back
to garden Line. We are glad you are listening today. I am going
to be talking more about some other aspects of gardening as we go through the
show. But before I get going on that again, I just wanted to
make a comment, and that is that if you have not we talk about
fertilizing all the time, fall fertilizing, if you have not done an asimite
application, it's still a good time to do that. Now, everything I
said about fertilizer and then more nitrogen in the spring and summer, less nitrogen
than the fall, but good potassium in the fall. That that kind of
blend. It's all there on my chart. You don't have to memorize all
that. Just look at the chart and it tells you the products. If
you don't do it organically synthetic, it's got all of it there together to
help you with that. But the azamite is not something that makes your plants
want to grow faster like nitrogen would do. But it has micro nutrients we
call them trace elements in it, and those are essential for plant growth.
So as a plant goes to take up nutrients and put on growth, make
blooms, make fruit, whatever you wanted to make, leaves, whatever you
want of that plant, the asamite is in the trace elements are in each
each part of the plant that you that you were growing. Let's say it's
a lawn. You got grass blades, well that you know, you got
nitrogen faster's potassium in there. But the micronutrients, that's the ones that are
also very important. They don't spur growth, but they're required for growth.
Think of it this way. If you were gonna if you were going to
build a brick wall, you would need bricks, you would need mortar,
you would need some moisture to make the you know, to make a slurry
with the mortar. That mortar would need some sand mixed into it. See
all of that, so if you tried to make a brick wall and all
you had is bricks and sand, you can't make a wall. Everything is
essential when it comes to our trace elements. And that's why we talk about
amite. Azimite Texas dot Com is the website. I encourage you to go
check it out, but you're gonna find it really easy to find a lot
of different places here in the Greater Houston area will carry the asmite. Our
phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give us a call. Let's
talk about the things that you are interested in. There's a lot going on
around town today. I was just visiting, uh, you know, Enchanted
Gardens out in Richmond. They're having their holiday open houses and what they you
know, take your family, your friends, your neighbors, just go out
there. It's always fun to visit in Chenny Gardens in Richmond. But their
holiday open house is going to have live music. It's going to have plenty
of holiday chair for sure. Their gift stock, the gift shop is so
stocked with unique gifts and one day only open house sales. Now one day
that's today. That one day is today. You don't want to miss that.
They're going to have a taco truck out there. They're going to have
the Southern Comfort Taco truck. They're going to have GPI Lost Tacos food truck
out there both today and tomorrow. By the way, today it's from eleven
thirty to four and that's when the taco truck is there. From two to
four is when the Southern Comfort truck is there. They're also going to have
hundred being coffee roasters. How they have them out there a lot. But
this is just it's just a fun event. It's your opportunity to get out
and enjoy. Take the kids with you out there, and when you get
there, you're going to find a lot of cool stuff. If it has
anything to do with beautiful fall and winter landscapes, they've got it in Chinned
Gardens, Richmond. If it has anything to do with your Christmas decorating,
holiday decorating of any type, they've got it. The points that is in
the trees and the swag, all the stuff you need out there, and
plus you don't want to miss today just because holiday open house is going to
be really cool. I was discussing earlier the importance of making sure we keep
our lawns without the leaves land all over them. I do want to say,
though, that don't get rid of your leaves, don't get rid of
your grass clippings, and don't get rid of your leaves, leaves or nature's
own slow release fertilizer and nature's own mulch. That's how a forest protects its
soil. It drops leaves on it and they decompose over time, and it
gets richer and richer and richer. And that is why we need to be
taking care of our soil. You can bring a beautiful soil land, a
good mix and go, but are you adding some composts to it as it
goes over time? Are you keeping it molt? When you molt, do
you take out Some people think you have to take out the old malts and
put in fresh molts. Who does that in the forest? In fact,
that would be so counterproductive to rake up the best stuff now that it's finally
decomposing and doing something, and then just bring leaves and lamb on the ground
that it blocked the sunlight. It accomplished the weed control. But why not
leave the old stuff and just add fresh new on top of it, And
in doing so you are gradually overtime like a forest, making your soil better
and better and better. That fall is the time to plant tree, shrubs
and woody vines. It's the most effective time because those plants have between now
and let's say next May, before it starts to get really hot and we're
having to, you know, go into extra measures to water when it doesn't
rain and the plants or the root system isn't extensive enough. It's a new
plant. It's going to be that way for two three years, even depending
on what you're planting. When it comes to trees and shrubs, but plan
them now. This is a good time. And when you plan them,
just go ahead and grab you a tree hugger sprinkler. I talk about these.
I've got three sizes myself. I've got the seven inch, the eleven
inch, and the fifteen inches. Of the three sizes, what they do
is they have a little hinge and they go around the trunk of the tree.
You hook up a water hose, you turn on the water, and
if you want to water a small area like it's a fairly new plant with
a still quite limited system, you can do that. Don't turn it up
much. If you have got a tree that's five, seven, ten years
in the ground and you want to water a much larger area to do the
summer rescues, especially when it's critical, you can do that with a tree
hugger sprinkler. You're going to find them at tree huggersprinkler dot com. That
is, you'll find the retailer where you can get them there tree Hugger sprinkler
dot com. I find them widely, widely available. They just are.
You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're
here to answer gardening questions. Give us a call of the for the things
that interest you. I can talk to the cows come home about different things
that I find interesting. But what do you find interesting. I don't know
if I talked to you about this before, but I know that in any
given hour there are people listening that weren't listening the last hour, or maybe
the hour after you have to run to a meeting or go do something else.
I can't believe there's anything else to do. Other than listen to garden
line. But I'm biased. I'm biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong
mistletoe. Mistletoe is a holiday deal, right, you hang it over the
door, you get to kiss somebody underneath the missletoe. Well, mistletoe.
I think the fun thing about the fact that we want to kiss under the
mistletoe is we think that the name missletoe is derived from Old English for the
words twig and dung. So happy kissing. There are a thousand plus species
of missiletoe around the world. They get into branches. They truly are a
parasite. They send their roots down in the branch, the little white berries.
When they explode, they overfill like a balloon and they explode and they'll
shoot their seeds out like sixty miles an hour. Right as it leaves the
berry and it flies over and it's sticky and it sticks to a branch,
or a bird comes by and it sticks to its feet or its beak.
And then the next tree comes along and here it get wipes off, it
sprouts and the next thing you know, here you got the mistletoe. What
do you do about mistletoe, Well, I would say nothing. Now you
can do some pruning of the tree, but when you got a lot of
mistletoe, your pruning is probably doing what it is doing more harm probably than
just the misletoe. There isn't a good spray to kill it. But you
can spray something called flor L fl ore L fruit eliminator and it's registered here
in the US to control growth on mistletoe and deciduous trees. So again,
it's gonna make some of it kind of branch may fall out and stuff,
but it doesn't kill what's down in the plant. It's not a herbicide,
if you will, but florrell is one way to do that every time you
do that. Though, mistletoe comes in male and female plants. Did you
know that they're separate male and female plants, So one plant's kind of like
Chinese pistache. The trees are either male or female, and you definitely know
it when you see it loaded with berries that you got a female there.
But anyway, with a mistletoe, just not letting it produce more berries to
fly around and cause more harm, that would be a really good thing.
I can talk about it at a little bit more, but bottom line is,
yes, it is a popular holiday thing, but it has its nefarious
side as well. Let's go out to Clear Lake and we're going to talk
to Jim. Hello, Jim, good morning. I've been walking through the
yards and I kick up a few moss every time, but lately I've seen
a couple of webs down in the grass. Is it too late to treat
or is it I'm surprised that there would be sod webworm activities. Still,
I know each year is different and sometimes unusual things happen. What I would
do is, when you get down and look at the grass, you may
see some webbing that could be webworms, but there are other things, spiders
and things that can create webbing in the grass. Look at the grass blades
like something is chewed chunks out of the sides, and if you see that,
that is a sign of caterpillar feeding activity. There's a hundred moths,
more thousand moths that could be out there in your yard. So just seeing
some moths could point to a lot of different things. If you've ever had
soad webworms in the past that were bad, you probably are more familiar with
what those moths look like. Have you ever had to struggle with that?
Not that I I mean, I've seen moths for and gun in law had
some in his yard. They kind of have their a can with a darker
brown modeling. Yeah yeah, well you can go online and see what they
look like. But I would get down on my hands and knees if I
don't see a bunch of chewed leaves. Do not worry about it, because
it's getting late anyway. These these insects have the temperature ranges they proliferate in
and those that they don't. So I'm doubting it's webworms. But if you
see that, go ahead and just use a spinosid spray on your lawn and
that will shut it down. Okay, well, thank you very much.
All right, thank you, jentlemen. I appreciate, appreciate your call very
much. We're going to be taking a little break here for the news.
If you would like to give us a call, Josh will get you on
the boards seven to one three two one two five eight seven four seven one
three two one two kt r H. We got more to talk about with
gardening when we come back, ed, you will be our first one,
so just hang in with us a little bit longer. There. I've got
another kind of interesting horticulture. Fun fact. I'm going to talk to you
about when we come back, but right now, I'm just going to take
this baton or the golden microphone. I'm going to take some microphone and hand
it to you. NICKI, alright, you can take it from here.
I'll take it from here. We got the news. Welcome back to Garden
Line. We are glad you're with us today talking about gardening. You know,
if you are in the Kingwood area. Kingwood area, you've got two
great garden centers, Kingwood Garden Center Warren's Garden Center. It's crazy that you
got two places like that in the same town, but that's nice. Their
plan of the month, by the way, their native plant of the month
is beautyberry, Texas beauty berry. And there's stuff going on all the time
at both of these garden centers. Number One, they've got great products,
great plants, yes, trees yes, cool season color, yes, Christmas
decorations, I've got all of that. At Kingwood Garden Center, they're doing
something called twelve Days a Christmas and it's November twenty fifth through December sixth,
and each day there's a different deal that may be a bye one, get
one I believe yesterday was a thirty percent off. There's a forty percent off.
There's a buy one, get one coming up day tomorrow, I believe.
I believe tomorrow a thirty percent Bogo free again thirty percent. Gosh,
just it's a great time to come in. And if you're looking for anything,
Kingwoo Garden Center has a beautiful gift shop that that is really, really
very nice. I just want to let you know Warren's Holiday Hanging Basket Workshop
where you can learn how to craft a stunning holiday hanging basket. You've probably
never seen one of these. I just imagine a holiday decorations, you know,
with the greenery and the pine cones and the lights and everything, but
in a hanging basket. It is gorgeous. And they're going to teach you
how to do that on December ninth from ten am to eleven am. Ten
am to eleven am. They will teach you on December ninth, that's just
around the corner. So they will provide all the materials you need, the
step by step guidance, and you need to go online and look at it.
Just go online to go find them on do Warren Southern Gardens on Facebook,
and you can learn about a lot of things that are going on there
at the garden Center. We're going to head out now to South Houston and
talk to Ed. Hello, Ed, Hi Schiz, thanks for taking my
call. Yes, sir, so, my wife and I recently purchased a
lake house just north of Houston in a small town of Crockett Sexton, and
the yard is just ridden with and we tried this past summer to get some
graph establish it by putting Bermuda feet down, but not being there full time,
and with the heat that we were faced with this summer, we didn't
have any luck. So this fall through this winter, sorry, we're going
to be having a sprinkler system installed and gonna be pumping out of the lake
the water of the yard, And just wanted to get your advice on establishing
a new lawn. We're looking at possibly doing Bermuda seat just for the simple
fact that the yard's about three quarters of an acre. I'd like to have
Saint Augustine's, but unfortunately it can't afford to lay saw on the entire space,
so right now it's full of weeds. I just kind of want to
get your advice on prep work and what would you do leading into the spring?
All right? What you want to do? Randy used to use the
terms kill phil till, and basically what they're saying is you kill anything in
there that you don't want to live in your lawn. Like if you had
a perenne of weeds, now or spring would be a good time to go
ahead and get those done. If they're a cool season or warm season,
just get that knocked out. You want to fill up any low areas that
where the soil is, maybe there's a hole or something you don't on twitter
your ankle and just kind of get it like you want it to be.
Maybe if there's big tree roots up, you can bring a little soil around
those just to kind of level it out a little bit. But that would
be the fill and then and then you just you just plant it. We'll
just plant plant your grass. I would at this point you're gonna want to
wait until the weather warms up considerably to put out those bermuda seeds because you
want them to come up soon after you plant, not to sit there waiting
for warm weather to arrive. So you could probably get by with late March
on that or early April, either one would be early April be a little
better. I think to put the seed out and watermen really good and just
choose a good quality seed. Do you have a pinner pencil handy? Ed?
Are you there? I believe with us. Okay, if you got
a pin or pencil handy. If you go to the Aggie Turf website and
it's Aggie Turf A G G I E t U r F at dot TAMU
dot e d U and I'm not going to talk you through the whole thing,
but there's a there's an option down toward the lower left on the page.
It says Texas Turf Grasses and you can scroll down and click on Bermuda
grass and it's going to give you a list of varieties that you plant from
sod and varieties that you can plant from seed that would be ones that have
done well here in Texas. Okay, great, I appreciate it. Yes.
Going back to the kill, you said that is well, I want
to wait till the spring. I'm assuming that's just because everything's dormant at the
moment. I would because the seeds are I'm sorry, what were you saying?
Wait on the kill portion of killing all the weeds. You'd like me
to wait until the spring to do that, and you do that with the
glhawks fate you could. It depends on the weed. There's stuff for grassy
weeds as well, but if it's a perennial weed, then you want to
get rid of it whenever it's growing. If it were a cool season weed,
then you know you could be doing it now. But it's more likely
that those are going to be warm season perennials and you may not see them
up until it warms up a little bit. Another good reason to wait a
little bit on seeding them out. Okay, yeah, sure, yeah,
great, I appreciate it. Yeah, okay. When you're up there,
there is also at that Aggie Turf website, there's also where you see Texas
Turf Grass. You'll see publications and there's a lot of good stuff on taking
care of a lawn and establishing a lawn and whatnot. So just check that
out. Great, I will. I appreciate your time. All right,
thank you, Good luck with that project out there. When you went into
an Ace Hardware the last time, weren't you impressed with all the stuff that
they have. Every time I go in, I see like ten things as
like, oh, I did not know they did that. Well, here's
something you may not know. Did you know that ACE is a place for
your Christmas lighting and decorations. So do you need something for outside? Do
you need stuff for inside? It could be lighting, for example, strings
of lights. They have all high into boxed strings of lights and colors and
shapes and sizes and links and everything like that. They also have something called
custom lights by the foot, and that is what you expect. It is.
You just have to go into an ACE to see how it works.
The custom lights by the foot allows you to create lights of the links that
you want. Maybe just something across the mantle. You know, you want
to find one that's exactly that long, Well you can make one that's exactly
that long. Have they got reads? They have garland, you know,
so decorating the front door and the outside. We just put some garland up
above the entrance way to the house with the lights and things in it.
Just the other day. It's easy to find an ACE Hardware store there all
over town. Just go to Acehardware dot com slash store dash locator, or
just go to Acehardware dot com and you can find the store locator right,
there plenty of them around this area. Well, it's about time for us
to take another break and I'm going to turn it over to the information here
coming up with news and and all kinds of things. But I'll be back,
So give me a call seven to one three two one two five eight
seven four. Hang around when we come back. I'm going to give you
a little horticulture fun fact. Ain't nothing doesn't go with camouflage. You're listening
to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here
to answer gardening questions. So feel free to give us a call. We'd
love to visit with you whatever is of interest to you. There's a lot
of different topics we can talk about in gardening, and it's just I don't
know, it's always new. That's the thing I like is that no two
days are the same, no two years are the same. Things are always
changing with the seasons and nature and our gardens and our landscapes can do that
as well. Being in the holiday seasons, we talk about a lot about
gift giving, and there are so many great gifts that you can give for
gardeners. For example, plants, houseplants, if you if you're going to
go to a holiday party, why not take a point set or why not
take something that even lasts longer, like a Christmas cactus, Thanksgiving cactus.
Those kinds of things. They can keep that plant for years, a little
care for it. Even a nice little orchid can be an attractive little gift
and not a high priced gift at all, but one that you know would
be a nice hostess gift. What about something else, though, What about
people on your list, either gardeners or non gardeners. What about a wild
bird's unlimited? It could be a gift certificate, or they can go in
and get anything they want. It could be a particular kind of feeder,
maybe a hummingbird, a beautiful hummingbird feeder, or one of their nicer feeders
that each kind of bird you know, Some are pulling little thistles out of
a sock, Some are feeding on certain kinds of blends. And by the
way, wallbirds will have every blend you need, every blend without the waste.
Remember red bebes means trash bird food. You don't you're wasting your money
buying something that's going to half of it end up on the ground. Wall
Birds unlimited their blends are one birds want to eat. That is absolutely and
you can do that. But they have beautiful feeders, platform feeders. I've
got one of the little feeders that's actually a tall feeder that hangs down and
if a squirrel tries to get on it, it excludes them, and that
is an amazing thing. It's fun to watch squirrels get frustrated, but I'm
having to pay for the food for them. I would recommend you try Wildbirds.
They're everywhere and when you walk in you will immediately know some things that
you think would be great gifts. You can get wildbirds. You can find
your Wildbirds Unlimited. There's seven of them all around the Greater Houston area,
so that's kind of nice. Just go to WBU dot com. WBU like
Wilbirds Unlimited dot com forward slash Houston, but don't delay. Now's a great
time to get a special gift for someone on the list. Or maybe you
go in in there and you just make a hint that you would like one
of those. That works too well. You're listening to garden Line and we're
here to answer gardening questions or we're more than excited when we get to talk
about gardeners, because gardeners are I just I find in general gardners are pretty
pleasant people. They just are, you know, people that get out and
play in the dirt like I do. There is a therapy that goes on
in that. And by the way, next hour, next hour, we're
going to have doctor Charlie Hall from the Texas A and M Horticulture Department.
Charlie is in the horticulture department. He's an economist and he's also a researcher
when it comes to the effects of plants on people. And you are going
to be fascinated by this, So don't miss the eight o'clock hour because we
are really going to delve into some wow. Now. You know, when
I first started hearing doctor Hall talk and seeing research like he does from other
folks around the country, I just realized that's why I like gardening so much,
the benefits of it to mental health and physical health and all the different
kinds of things. I think it's really cool to see scientific studies that actually
prove the beneficial effects of nature and plants on people. If you are looking
for a place to get some quality tools, like a quality pruner, you
ought to consider Southwest fertilizer. Now Southwest Fertilizer has everything. They're the place
you go and you find ever fertilizer you're looking for every insecticide, fung just
side herbicide. They I've never seen a selection like Bob has at Southwest Fertilizer.
They've got that kneeling bench, which I keep telling you is a good
Christmas gift too. The folding kneeling bench changed my gardening life. But they
also have quality tools. Eighty foot row, eighty foot wall, loaded with
quality tools. And take care of those tools. By the way. Cheap
pruners, you're going to throw them away and get frustrated after they make your
hands hurt from being sprung and not cutting well, not able to sharpen them
right. When you get quality prunters, you just replace parts and they go
for life if you take care of them. So make sure and do take
carry your tools. Go to Southwest Fertilizer dot com if you've never been there
before and you want to see where they are, or I can just tell
you they're on the corner of Bissinet and Renwick, But go to Southwest Fertilizer
dot Com. Stop in there because if you're looking for a good quality tool
as a gift, and every gardener would appreciate a quality pair of prunters or
loppers, maybe a the kneeling bench that I talked about, we've go a
wonderful gift as well. And a soil knife if you've if a gardener in
your list has not had a soil knife, they need to get one of
those. Those are amazing. I use mine all the time all the time.
It's a really good quality tool that lasts, and that's a good thing.
Finding things that last and things that are quality, that is important.
I wanted to tell you a little horticulture fun fact, and I think you
know, I realized that any given hour, someone may be listening new that
wasn't listening the last hour or maybe one weekend your way, And you may
have heard me talk about this before, but I just I just think this
is a fascinating anything. Nature amazes me. And the more you study,
and in fact, the more we learn, the more amazing nature becomes.
When you consider, I'm trying to get someone in here on the on the
show that talks about the interaction between insects and plants. We'll be doing that
as a show later this month having them as a guest rather. But oh
my gosh, the way that nature interacts and the things that cause whatever happens
to happen is just amazing. So, for example, you're looking at your
Greg's missflower, beautiful little light blue, shaggy looking flowers in the fall,
loads up with queen butterflies. They love that plant, they absolutely love that
plant. But what looks like just this cute little nature scene. Oh,
there's butterflies on that plant and they flutter away, and so that's that.
There is a there is a lot going on in that process. That plant
produces poisonous alkaloids. Okay, alkaloid substance is toxic to livestock and humans,
and these substances are the way the plant prevents itself from being eaten by livestock,
for example. Though it's like their own little way of warding off the
things that are eating them. And that particular poison doesn't poison queen butterflies,
but in fact, not only does it not poison them, it's essential for
their reproduction. And here's how this works. When the male about ninety percent
of the butterflies you see sitting on your Greg's missflower and they'll be loaded there
all over it. They love that plant, about ninety percent of them or
male, and they're they're imbibing that nectar. And in the nectar is something
called intermeddine intermedine that is a poisonous substance, but the butterfly's body converts part
of that intermedine into a smaller molecule which is a sex attractant for females.
It's a pheromone. So in eating the poison nectar, it produces a sex
attractant pheromone to attract female butterflies for mating, which is a cool thing that's
good for the butterfly's ongoing future, right, But also part of that that
didn't get turned into the pheromone turns is still a toxin, and in the
mating, that nuptial gift, if you will, our nuptial gift is transferred
over to the female and renders the eggs of the female queen butterfly unpalatable to
predators. Is that amazing? So the butter as the butterfly pollinates the flour,
the flour gives it a molecule that helps in two different ways that butterfly
to reproduce. And this is discovered by two Cornell University professors, Thomas Eisner
and a chemist, Gerald Meinwald, and they're good friends. And really from
that in similar studies, the field of chemical ecology the research field that has
taken off, and oh my gosh, we're learning so much more that's going
on in nature than we ever knew before. I don't know, I'm a
nerd. I thought that was interesting. I hope you found it interesting as
well. We're about to take a break here. When we come back,
we will have doctor Charlie Hall and we'll be visiting with him about the effects
of plants and nature on people. And trust me, you're going to learn
a lot of stuff that you never knew existed. So hang around with us.
Our phone number, by the way, seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four if you'd like to ask doctor Hall a question. 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 scipe
Richt. It's so crazy, Trim, just watch him as Welcome back to
Garden Line. I hope you enjoyed that last hour with doctor Charlie Hall.
That was some really interesting stuff. Lots of good information out there. And
any one of you who listening, who maybe you're part of a city group,
you know, city council or parks departments, part of schools, maybe
your kids go to private school somewhere and you're able to come in and offer
thoughts and suggestions and things. Think about all the things Charlie talked about in
the effects, Go arm yourself, read up, learn about some of these
benefits. And there is a lot being done right now. When I first
started working with schools years and years ago as an extension agent, it was
few and far between that schools called and said we need help with plants.
In the later certainly the last decade of working Fraggerife, I now often will
get calls from a school that wants to create an outdoor learning environment. In
other words, they want to take the science classes and other classes for that
matter, outside, for people to be for kids to be able to interact
with nature and learn and use that. And that's a very common thing,
the school scape itself being a learning environment. Then we have the program through
Agrolife Extension at A and M that is called Junior Master gardener Junior Master Gardener,
we call it JMG. Wide variety of programs, lots of educational materials
connected to nutrition and health, lessons for science, lessons for math, at
school curriculum. They just have a lot of stuff up there. So there
for any of you like those I was mentioning that might be interested, learn
some more about it, and if you need some more help and information,
let me know. But there's a lot we can be doing in our communities
to make not only the whole city better, but certainly every small part of
it. From maybe a facility that houses older adults that have reached a point
where they're needing special care, maybe it's a school, whatever it is,
we got stuff in horticulture that can make a difference there. We're going to
go out now to West Houston and talk to Bob. Hello, Bob rick
Skip That's okay, I'll call it just I'll call me anything that sad laid
for dinner. How can I have Bob right right, right right? I
at my ranch. I beginning. I've got a fig tree. It's about
a thirty year old tree, and we've gotten wonderful figs off of the last
couple of years. Well, like last year, I probably got a dozen
figs off of it, and then the figs that came came on were little
bitty green knots and they never matured. Yeah, yeah, I've had that
before. We've had that. You've had that before, you say, yeah,
I did it. It's done it for the last two years. Okay,
I have not fully tracked that one down, and I've gotten I've had
people ask me questions about it. I've not had it happen my on fig
trees that I've had through through life. But I think it is in some
way related to the weather. The fig is the figs we grow here in
Texas, by and large or not, figs that have to be pollinated.
They are what we call parthenocarpick. So it's not like, well those figs
didn't get pollinated right, you know, or some other issue. It's just
a matter of that fruit developing and that can happen. Sometimes figs can take
hot weather. So I don't know what all is involved in it, but
yes, we unfortunately have to deal with that occasionally. And I'm gonna have
to look into it more, Bob, to see if anyone who's you know,
a higher level expert on figs, can can offer a thought on what
the research has shown that may be causing that, what all's going on?
Yeah, well one other question. That tree puts out a lot of suckers.
Yes, take all those suckers off. You know, it's up to
you. We used to train figs. I grew up in South Texas and
there it didn't freeze to the ground hardly ever, And we had single trunk
trees in our yard where it was a single trunk and then it branched out.
It made a little nice tree. Once you get a freeze back,
then you lose that trunk and cutting all the suckers off and trying to go
back to a single trunk and rebuild it takes time, and who knows,
maybe you get another freeze. So most people here will have multi trunk trees,
and they may be five five different trunks coming out of the ground in
different directions. I would thin out those suckers to just a few, however
many you want. Just to remember that two suckers that let's say, are
two feet apart, even when they get to grow and their branches are going
to be growing together and everything. So don't leave too many of those suckers
coming up. Well, I cut them out last winter. I took all
of them out because the tree, like I say, it's an old tree.
Yeah, it's got some major branches. Okay, these are coming up
around the bottom, and I took them all out. Of course they all
came back. Yeah, yeah, so so yeah, I should have entered.
Yeah. No, it can be due to freeze damage, but trees
will often just do that. And when you cut suckers off, if you
leave a little bit of a stub, there's a budgs right at the base
of a sucker. And so this happens on crape myrtles. You cut them
back and then you get even more because you got to cut those suckers off
pretty much where they attach almost to try to get those buds out of there.
But yeah, I forgot. You were talking about already having this tree.
It hadn't died back. But we have had some folks that have had
their trees die back. And look, one other question. If I'm here
in Houston, I have some sunshine eduestrins in my flower bed, Okay,
and they are gosh, they're just they're withering away. They're losing their leaves.
It looks like the leaves are trying to come back. Okay, little
buds on there, but they're just losing all their leaves. And some of
the leaves are light green rather than the dark green. All right, I've
got a sprinkler system. I know it's not water. Okay, all right,
Well I'll tell you what I think. It could be too much water,
it could be not enough. It could be a root disease, which
is unlikely but possible that's affecting them. And have you ever used a glyphysaid
or round up around them? No, okay, because that is one of
the If you get a very light dose of a round up type material on
the plant, too little to kill the plant, you'll often see the growth
coming out, little tiny, strappy, not normally formed leaves. So the
only other thing I'd say, Bob, is if you want to send me
a picture, I can put you on hold. Let me take a look
at those from a distance and some leaves close up, and maybe when I
see that, I'll go, oh, I know what's going on here,
and I can answer you better than trying to imagine it in my mind's eye.
Okay, I'm gonna put you on hold and Josh can give you the
email. Yeah, you're listening to garden Line and hey, if you have
not purchased a tree and for your landscape, remember I keep saying fall,
fall, fall, plant or trees in fall, or plant them in winter
or certainly by spring. If you can check out Verdant Tree Farm Verdanttreefarm dot
com. They are everywhere in town. I mean there are several locations and
they got a big deal of fifty percent off up to fifty percent off all
their trees at all their locations, the one out at barker Cypress, the
one at Yale Street at Iten, and the one down on Broadway and Paarland
and the folks at Verdant. They carry a wide variety of trees and some
very large container sizes too, so you can kind of get that instant effect.
But check them out again Verdant Treefarm dot com. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to garden Line. So glad to have you with us 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. I was visiting with
Kennon out at the arbor Gate yesterday and just looking over. They still got
a great supply of Christmas trees out there. By the way, I did
want to change of date. They had a date and due to inclement weather,
the Santa and Missus clause had to bump that date forward, and it's
going to be December eighth from one thirty to five. December eighth from one
thirty to five. If you want to go out to Arbigate, bring the
kids, definitely want to do that. That'll be next Friday, December eighth,
one thirty to five. Bring your camera, take pictures and while you're
out there, Oh my gosh, they have everything you could imagine this time
of year. Do you want to put in beautiful color? Do you need
some vegetables or herbs or any other kind of plants? Certainly all the holiday
plants like poinsettas and other kind of The cyclomane is another beautiful one for the
holidays. While you're there, grab their organic food complete, organic soil complete,
and organic compost complete. That one two three, completely easy system that
Arborgate offers of some quality, quality products. If you if you've been listening
to Garden Line for a while, you've kind of heard me talk about the
fact that things begin in the soil. It's important that we get our soil
ready, and that's why getting those three bags, the three completes, if
you will, from Arbigate is important because when you take them a plant,
take them something to keep that plant happy, and the brown stuff comes before
the green stuff. You know, our soils aren't always great here and we
always can benefit from improving them. One of the problem with our soils is
that they have a lot of shrink swell potential. That means a clay when
it gets dry, it shrinks a lot. When it gets wet, it
expands a lot, and that just creates a havoc. I mean tree roots
trying to grow through there and you pop a two inch crack open in the
soil. That's hard on hard on trees and roots trying to establish as well.
But it's really hard on our foundations, our sidewalks, our driveways.
That's why fix my slab foundation repair is there. Ty Strickland has been doing
this for twenty three years. And if you see a crack in your brick
on the outside, a crack in the sheet rock on the inside, have
them look at it. Don't put it off, because now I'm gonna get
better, and it can get a lot worse. So whatever kinds of issues
like that you have, give Tie a call. You can call them at
two eight one two five five forty ninety nine two eight one two five five
forty nine forty nine, or just go online to fixmslab dot com. Their
slogan is on time, fair, priced and fixed, and that's exactly how
they do business. We're gonna now head out to Cyprus and talk to Robert.
Hello, Robert, good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
Yes, sir, a quick question. I'm got an acorn tree dropping
major acorns on my Saint Augustine grass. Yes, and I'm wondering if it's
detrimental to my grass. Well, not necessarily. They're going to sprout and
try to come up, and your mower is going to shut that down.
When you mow your lawn. We generally don't tell people you have to get
the acre off your lawn. But I guess you know, with the amount
of they call that mast, with the amount of a mast year that we're
having now on our oaks, it could get pretty thick out there. And
some people will do a little bit of raking or something like that. But
I think in general, I wouldn't worry a lot about the fact that they're
there. If you got some time, tine to go ahead and take raak
some out. So there's no any city effect, no, sir, nothing
like affecting pH or nutrient levels or anything like that. Very good. Thank
you, yes, sir, you bet, thank you for the call.
I appreciate that. Yeah, think about the trees in the forest. I
mean they have mass years in the forest too, and that it just ends
up becoming organic matter or a new tree if it's allowed to sprout and to
grow. Have you been to the bee supply you've heard me talk about.
Go out there and do their free tours. The honey tours are amazing.
First of all, the honey tour you get to see how bees build,
come and you learn all about what's going on. You. By the way,
inside they're building is a seven foot high what they call plexiglass little room
if you will, and it has b comb in it. The bees are
building their comb, they're caring for their brood and so on. There's a
tube going to the outside that you can watch it come and go. It
is really really cool. You have family in just give them a call out
at be Supply make sure they're going to be around whenever you might want to
go. Don't just head there first. But by the way, you can
call them at nine three six seven seven six seven three nine, or just
go to thebsupply dot com if you're a beekeeper. They have classes. The
classes are going to be starting up again here in the spring, and they're
also they will bring in queens to help re queen the high They've got every
kind of equipment you can imagine, and I just think it. In fact,
I'm gonna have Paul Vagala here on the show for too long. We're
just going to talk bees for a little while. Let's got to Conrad now
and talk to David. Hello. David Hello, I'm wondering. I've got
what I've identified as aster weed in my yard, and I've pulled up a
bunch of it. When the ground is wet, I can get it up.
But there's some of it that's so intertwined with my Saint Augustine that I
can't. I can't get down there to get the weed like I need to.
Is there something I can spray on it that won't kill the grass,
not at this stage. Once that astor is blooming, which it's been for
a while now, and so you seed that just a post merging attempt on
its life is not going to be very very helpful. Yeah, I know
what you're talking about. It weaves its way through your grass and sometimes,
you know, I typically go for the tap root, which is what you've
been doing pulling it up. But if you have some that you can't get
out, just just clip them with a little snipper and then pull them out
the other way or something. You just have to get them out of there.
Just remember when you leave them, hundreds, if not thousands, of
can come off of one plant. And so yeah, you're doing you're doing
good things right now getting those seeds out. You're still gonna happen next year.
But why have an extra five thousand seeds? So there's nothing to kill
them right now, But a pre emergent herbicide would help it. A pro
emergent now that includes broad leaf weeds in the label and what it controls would
work. Barricade is nitrophosis product that works for that. You would want to
do it in the spring and it's warmed up just a little bit. Maybe
we would say March or April, and then probably you need to repeat that
again about sixty maybe a little longer, about sixty days later to try to
prevent them from going. But they come up. You just don't see them
until they start popping up and making their little pretty blooms, which bees love.
Another way, well, I know we've had some good rain up here
in the last day, so I'm going to be out there again this afternoon.
Get you of them. I have a five gallon bucket, and uh,
find a place to set your cup of coffee or other drink of choice,
and go after it. Man, That's what's what I do. I
do. Thanks, thank you, thank you for the call. I appreciate
that. Ace Hardware Stores. You've probably heard the jingle ACE is the place
right for your hopeful hardware man. Remember that jingle. Well, ACE is
a place for Christmas lighting, Christmas decor, any kind of holiday decor.
We're talking about the box light sets of different colors and sizes and shapes and
whatnot. They also have custom lights by the foot, which is I think
the best thing anybody's ever thought about when it comes to Christmas lighting. You
just create a light that is the length you want, and you just have
to go to your Ace Hardware store and just say, tell me about your
custom lights by the foot. This guy on the radio saying there's such a
thing as custom lights by the foot, Well, go ask him about it.
Let them show how that works. They've got wreath, they've got garland,
so whatever you need. Of course, when you're in there, you're
going to get your lawn care products that you need, your fertilizers and other
things. They've got garden tools and hoses and everything you need to have a
beautiful outdoor. I like the little strings of outdoor patio lights. I think
those are really cool. And yes, I says those two. But Ace
Hardware is easy to find. Just go to Acehardware dot com find their store
locator, and you have to limit yourself to forty stores in the greater Houston
area. I think we can find one pretty close to any of us.
That's Ace Hardware. Uh, you are listening to Garden Line. If you
would like to give us a call, our phone number is seven to one
three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Hey, if you have not heard about or registered for
the Texas Tomato Lovers Conference. You might want to give that a check.
You know, tomatoes are the queen of the garden. That is the one
vegetable that excites the most interest, passion, endeavors, and sometimes frustrations of
all the vegetables garden and the Texas Tomato Loverage Conference is a day long,
really event that features some great speakers from around Texas and around our region as
well. It is on Saturday, January thirteenth. That's right in the big
middle of January, Saturday, January thirteenth. It's at the Antiqueros Imporium out
there in Independence, Texas. And if you want to register, by the
way, this event, they're going to have it. There's going to be
food, there's going to be you know, lots of snacks and things that
you need for breaks. And this lineup of speakers includes Rosanne Green is going
to be talking about growing tomatoes with and for the young family. Destin Nook,
our Texas garden guy is going to be mastering container grown tomatoes. That
is important and boy, with container growing, everybody can grow a tomato even
if you don't have him for a garden. Patti Leander from over in the
Austin area is going to come over and talk about the best varieties for twenty
twenty four, and she knows it. Patty. I've known Patty for thirty
years or more now, and Patty has been growing and gardening. She's gardened
in the Houston area, She's gardened over in the Austin area. She's also
going to talk about eight steps to grafting success. Did you know you could
graft tomatoes? Yes? You can. That's kind of cool. I wish
I had time to get into that now, but time doesn't allow. And
I'll be talking about the ten commandments of tomatoes success. Does that sound important?
I don't have any chipped out blocks of stone, but I do know
ten things you better know if you want to have success with your tomatoes anyway?
Do you want to register? Two five four eight four eight ninety three
ninety three two four, eight four eight ninety three ninety three are just emails
Sally at texasgardener dot com. Simple as that. We're always discussing how rough
this year was and how hard it was for the different landscapes and gardens we
had. If your landscape needs some major work, you need to call Peerscapes.
Peerscapes is our garden line preferred landscaper. They've been here since nineteen eighty
eight. You can go to their website peerscapes dot com, or you can
call them at two eight one three seven oh five zero six zero and they
can do it all. They can fix your irrigation system if it's not performing
properly. They can fix poor drainage areas and make them drain well. They
can put in walkways, rock borders, hard scapes. Do you need outdoor
lighting, boy, that really enhances that setting. They can do that as
well. Just give them a call. They have been doing this for a
long time. They have their certifications, there's licenses and very highly trained employees
as well as the designers who can create that beautiful landscape. Telling me you'd
like some new plans that are a little more drought tolerant. I suspect we
may be dealing with that again in the future. Well, for now,
we're going to take a break. Our number is seven one three, two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Melanie. When we come back, you'll
be the first up. That lady is an energizer, bunny. I mean
she's still going now, even doing some really cool rock work. I work
for some rock stars compilations and stuff. Pretty cool stuff. Dolly just she's
an energizer, Bunny, that's for sure. We're going to go now up
to Cypress by the way. Our phone number is seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. We're going to talk to Melanie. Hello,
Melanie, Hello, I've got a problem with nut said, I've decided it
should be called the cancer plant. I mean weed, that stuff is impossible.
Yes, this summer we moved out of our house and I kind of
let things go and we're going to turn it into a rental property. But
I have this one big bed that this nutsedge just came up from nowhere and
I wasn't paying attention to it. So now I'm trying to kill it.
I've sprayed it first. It didn't die after the rain the other day.
I went in with a pitchfork, and I mean, I dug up that
entire bed because I'm going to just put grass on the side of the driveway
and not have that bed anymore. But I went to plants for all season
and he said, you probably still didn't kill it even after And I mean,
it has that nut at the end, and I was throwing all that
stuff away, and he said, if it comes up again, then I've
got to spray it again. But it didn't. We also had chinchbugs along
that driveway and so a lot of the grasses did. So I'm going to
just I'm going to go through and take the killer. I'm going to just
kill everything up. But there's some other weeds. I also sprayed it.
The stuff I used on that nutsedge, you put a hose on it.
It is a nutsedge. I can't remember what brand it was. Probably with
a hose and spray it, Okay, I don't know if there's one that's
more effective. He said, if I start seeing it come back up,
I've got to spray it again. Yes, so this may go on for
a while, and so I doubt if I'm going to be able to get
rid of it. And my landscape guy that came, he's helping me with
some other beds. He wants to put grass down, but I'm just kind
of like, I don't even know after spraying all this nuts edge, if
it's wise to put grass down. If that nuts edge is still going to
come up, well you can do it either way. It's easier to kill
weeds. When you don't have your desirable plant in the area. You can
still use certain products that won't hurt your grass and whatnot, but it's just
easier if you get it cleaned up. But this is a long term thing.
We do a lot of different things, no one of which just solves
everything you can hand dig. Whenever you get the nuts out of there,
you've prevented some more plants. Know this that in the spring when nutsedge comes
up, once it gets three to five leaves, you need to spray it.
Because if you were to let one mama nuts edge plant one nut go
all the way to May, it would already have eight viable daughter nuts that
it had sent out little strands to go to build that nut, and they
will all be viable. So you'd have you'd essentially almost have one hundred percent
more of I mean one hundred percent increase almost on your what you had.
So by catching it early, don't let them get up and get sunlight and
start putting carbohydrates out to create more nuts. You be with it no matter
how good you do initially, if you give it room to come up and
breathe again, it's it's you're just starting takes over. Yeah, it's the
gruesome way. I like to refer to it as you got to hold a
nutsedge under water until the bubbles quit coming out, because if you let it
up for air, you just start over again. Uh. But there are
products out there. If you went to plants for all seasons, they are
experts there. They know they probably have more than one different thing that will
control nuts sets. There's image, there's manage, there's sedge gender, there's
uh, you know, yeah, I think this one was said, and
I may switch to the sedge hammer or something you could. You could do
that. Just know that follow the label carefully, make sure it's labeled for
use where you want to use it. Some of those, for example,
you can't put in a vegetable garden. But the combination. But just the
most important thing to remember is when it sticks its head up, just have
your little squirt bottle ready to go. Just squirt it and you never let
it get established. It seems like it's immortal, but it's not. It
uses straored energy to grow a shoot, and when that shoot is killed,
chopped off whatever, it sends up another SHOOTE And some of the better parts
I've been able to control all the other weeds, not this one. Well,
those products don't go down the chain of nuts underground. You kill the
plant they sprayed them on, but they're not going out to kill the daughter.
So remember what I said about by may it has eight daughters. Well
you could have sprayed that mama plant and killed it, but now you have
eight more coming back, and it's like, my gosh, my spray just
made it worse. Well, no it didn't. It just that there were
others underground that haven't popped up yet, right, so just keep I guess
should I just keep? He wants to put the you know, wants to
go ahead and start killing everything up and put the grass down, but I'm
scared to do that. Well, you can do that. If you see
any nuts in the process, go ahead and pull those out. But when
it comes up. There are products you can use in turf. It's best
to use them when there are some you can. There is a version of
image. Not everything called image is the same ingredient, but there's a version
of itage. It says image for nutsedge And just here's the thing. You've
been to plants for all seasons. Just go in there, tell them what
you got and they will not send you home with a product that doesn't work.
Just know that even products at work, you got to stay with them.
You got to come back again. And my last bit of advice,
Yeah, just to repeat it once more because I know other people listening have
nutsedge issues. If you if you haphazardly go after nutsedge, you're never going
to catch up. Yeah, it is a war. It is a war.
It is a war. I've often said that. You know, it's
like at the beginning of the movie Patent, he marches back and forth on
the stage in front of the troops, basically getting them ready to go to
battle, and almost feel like we gardeners. I got to do that and
say, you know, it's you or the nuts edge, and here's what
you have to do exactly. Good luck with it. Okay, I'm a
little nervous about putting the grass down. We'd had really mild weather, but
I'm hoping. Okay, it's going to taking me about a pallet of kit
grass on that side of the driveway. All right, Well, Melanie,
I got to run, but thank you for your call, and good luck
with it. Call us back if you have other questions. Yeah, well,
she was talking about Plants for All Seasons. You know, Plants for
All Seasons is in their fiftieth anniversary year, and you got to go online
to their social media and see photos from years ago when two forty nine was
looked like a goat trail practically, and they were getting established there selling Christmas
trees. That was the first thing they did at Plans Fell Season. It's
just a young man trying to make some money. I had a family on
the way, a baby on the way, and just needed to earn some
money. And then it grew from that into what it is now. I
mean everything has been added plants, flowers, trees, and shrubs, years
and years of experience by the Flowerty family. They are on two forty nine,
just north of Luetta Road, and when you go in there and ask
a question, you're going to get a good answer and you're gonna get pointed
to the right product as well. Plants for All Seasons, just north of
Luetta on Highway two forty nine. We're going to take a break, ted
when we come back, you'll be the first up our number seven one three,
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Garden Line.
We are entering our last segment of the day, So if you would like
to give us a call, it's last call for calls. The number is
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We are going to
head out to Magnolia and talk to Ted. Hello, Ted, good morning.
I have four river birds trees which I really like, and yesterday I
was out and noticed a woodpecker on one of them, and I got the
look and closer, and there's little bore holes with part of that bark missing,
and the bottom four feet of that same trunk has like a honey something
that's attracting bees. Okay, it's seething from the tree. Okay, I
have no idea what to do with that. All right, what looks like
boreholes. They're probably about the depth of a pencil eraser something like that.
That is a sapsucker. It is a woodpecker type. It's not like other
woodpeckers. It's it's called a sapsucker. And what it does is it comes
along and it drills those it pecksels little holes into the trunk, and typically
they're in horizontal rows to some degree. And it's like you took a machine
gun and strafed the trunk across. That bird then comes back and it feeds
on the sap that leaks out of those holes. It's not good for the
tree, but it's not going to kill a tree. It happens a lot.
There's certain trees that attracted more than others. I know pecons, they
love pecons, but there are a lot of other species that they love to
do that on. Nothing you can really do about it unless you can talk
the neighborhood cat and hanging out in the tree and waiting for the woodpecker to
show up. But that is what it is now. The seeping sap that
is due to some kind of a crack or a wound where the outside for
where microbes could get into the interior sap of the tree and start to populate
there and they cause the bleeding leaking. It's kind of like an open wound
that won't heal. And this is especially true when trees are weaker stressed,
which magnolia. Some of them are just killed out right this summer with the
drought and heat we had. But it'll weep and eventually the tree will just
kind of wall that off and create a callus to close back over that area.
But that's what it is. It's a fermented sap that's building up pressure
underneath the bark. Is there anything I should do? No? The only
thing is the tree needs to be healthy and it needs to have some vigor
and uh so we're ending a cool season, but it is an evergreen tree,
so it's still capturing sunlight. Uh And as we go, is this
tree in your yard or is it more in like a big bed somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's in my yard to lose its leaves.
Yeah, well, meaning like in the spring trade off or what do
you mean by getting ready to lose them? No, it's a river birch.
Oh, I'm sorry, I was operating. I had magnolia in my
head. H yeah, a river birch. Yeah. Those those can be
persnickety and they some types scorch really bad and hot summer heat and sun and
and losing foliage and stuff is not unusual. But of course this time of
year it's losing its leaves because as you know there it's a deciduous tree.
So I would say next year, as it as it begins growing, if
you're fertilizing the lawn around it, that's enough for that tree that just if
it's an established tree that ought to be enough. Just make sure it doesn't
lack for water during dry hot weather. You don't need to be water in
it in the winter or even in spring probably, And I would say when
it gets really hot, then maybe some supplemental just to prevent the stresses that
tend to lead to things like that. It's either bacterial wet wood or slime
flux. That's the names for what's happening to the trunk of your tree.
Okay, just yeah, I try to soak it when it's really hot.
I try to soak it for half an hour or so. Slow soak and
the bigger bed you can give it where there's no grasp, but it's just
a natural forest floor beneath the tree, the better the tree will do.
So that comes down to esthetics. But you know, if you if you
turned your whole yard into a big compost pile, the tree would be really
happy. It doesn't want to see grass anywhere. We have to, Yeah,
we have to find the happy medium. Hey, Ded, thank you
for that call. I appreciate that. Uh. We are going to go
now to Southwest Houston and talk to Jesse. Hello. Jesse. Hey,
good morning, tripod morning. I have a question. Uh the spurs that
that's growing in the Saint Augustine that I have, and it's more than what
I need in there, and I did spray it like three weeks ago.
I don't know what huh. Now are you talking about spurge? For sure,
it's like if you pull it, you get a little milky sap coming
out of the little twigs or little shoots. You just have flowers on it,
yes, and real small leaves, okay. And it seems like it
grows from a from a little cap root from the you know, just kind
of grows on top of the grass. Are the flowers little pink days.
He's about the size of a dime. I have not seen it be that
okay, But when I went to south Let's Fertilizer, the guy said,
oh, yeah, that's spurge. Oh he gave me this product of the
surbicide okay, that I spradered about three weeks ago. Yeah, by direction,
that is still there. So it's not like it's really uh, you
know, killing it. So yeah, just traded here in the fall.
Did you take a photo or a sample in the Southwest? Oh? Yes,
I did all right, Well, they know what they're talking about.
So we're gonna we're going to say that is spurge, and it is an
annual, a warm season annual, and so you can kill it, but
it's going to die out anyway when we get into some really cold weather.
But it will be back with a vengeance. Everywhere sunlight hits the soil next
year. Any bear areas, any areas that don't have thick, dense grass
cover over them, it'll sprout again. And that would be I would say
in the spring, about the time we get into about mid February. Putting
down a pre emergent product to prevent those spurge seeds from germinating would be your
better, better approach than trying to kill them after the fact, because as
the weather gets warmer, it some of those products that kill spurge will also
kill Saint Augustine when it gets really like temperatures in the nineties for example.
So oh yeah, yeah, So pre emergent in January and southwest can point
you to one of the mini products like barricade that they have there. Right,
I just I did spray that already in the pre emerging in the Saint
Augustine, So I don't know, okay for the fall. Yeah, well,
it'll have to warm up next year before the new seeds come up.
That's do it again into around March or something with a pre emergence. Yeah,
mid late February or early March would would be fine. Okay, yeah,
all right, well, okay, that's good, right, thank you.
You have a good weekend. You take care. Have fun with the
lawn out there. Boy. Lawn weeds, I tell you, that is
a that is a common topic when it comes to concerns people have. And
you know it, really nature. Nature is resilient. But nature hates bear
soil because bear soil erodes, bere soil washes away, and it's not good
for the ground and the plants growing on the ground to have bear soil.
And so nature plants a weed wherever the sunlight hits the soil. That's how
it works. Just think of it as nature. You just scrape something back
and now you got bare dirt, and Nature's going to cover it back up
with green plants because green plants protect the soil and actually build the soil over
time in a number of ways. And so that's why when our lawns get
thin. We end up with such issues with that, with the weed problems
that pop up in them. And I just have seen so many pictures this
year of lawns that are weedy, weedy, weedy because sunlight is hitting the
soil, and so your only approach is there, if it's a perennial,
you're going to have to kill the plant because it's not going to be prevented
just with a pre emergent. You've already got a plant there, but it'll
prevent the seeds of that perennial. But if it's an annual, yeah,
a pre emergent will stop help prevent that seed from germinating successfully. But the
real solution is to build your lawn denser and denser and denser. Mow,
water, infertilize. Go to gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip
dot com. Look at my lawn care schedule there and it talks about exactly
what you need to do, And when your lawn gets denser, your weed
problems dwindled down to just a few weeds that can thrive even in a dense
Saint Augustine. The rest of them you will grow your way out of as
you build your lawn denser and denser with proper mowing, watering, and fertilizing.
Nobody wants to be on a treadmill where every year you're spraying one hundred
times to fill a hundred things. Start with good, healthy lawn, and
then those things that escape, we can deal with those when those problems happen.
It's kind of like us, you know, if I can just pontificate
here, when you are tired, when you're not sleeping well, when your
diet is really crummy, you are more likely to get sick than had you
exercised and gotten good sleep and eating a healthy diet. You see what I'm
talking about. It's not black and white like you'll never get sick, but
it's just is saying it reduces the problems, and we need to treat our
plants the exact same way. Hey, we're going to leave now. We'll
be back tomorrow morning at six am to answer your gardening questions