Katie r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r H Garden Line. With skip
rictor it's sho crazy gas trim just watch him as we may suppotasys gassing a
side gas sun Bemon of gaz Well, welcome to garden Line. We got
a good Saturday today. How many of you appreciate the fact that it can
rain around here, but we're pretty much done with much it'd have been raining
around here. I think we got a lot of cabin fever going on Houston
style. You know, we don't get so cold that we're typically hiding inside
for days while the snow drifts pile up, but we can sure get cabin
fever from the rainfall periods we have around here. Well, guess what today
we got some Chamber of Commerce weather coming in. We Saturday and Sunday is
going to be great, so it's a good time to get out there.
Our garden centers are getting in some good stock of some of the things we
need, certainly the supplies you need to go ahead and stock up on things,
you know, garden centers, our feed stores. We have a lot
of great suppliers that provide the products we talk about here on garden Line,
and it would be a good time to purchase your fertilizers a little literally for
standard fertilization, but it is still worth picking some up having it on hand
that way you got it. Who knows you may be out one day and
have some extra time and thinking, let me just knock that out and you
don't have to go run down and buy some. You already got it on
hand, so you know what you're gonna want to get. If you got
any questions about things like that, you can give us a call. Our
phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That makes it really easy to
get a hold of us, and we can talk about all kinds of things.
I want to spend a little bit of time. In fact, I
suspect we may spend a lot of time based on what you were interested in
talking about, but spend a little bit of time talking about dealing with that
extra rain that we got. What do we do? You know you walk
out in the yard, I know when it just finished raining. It's not
unusual at all to see puddles of water. But a day after a rain,
hey, it's about time for that to go away. By the time
you go past a day. We call that poor drainage, or at least
I would that may Sometimes you can have a water standing for two or three
days and that that's just too soggy wet. You know. Ideal drainage it
ought to move out of there within eight hours and you're done. But we
don't always have that. We got some heavy clay soils here that hold water
very very well. So if you're a farmer rancher wanting to put in a
farm pond, that's a good thing. If you are a gardener trying to
you know, not have a swamp in the back, it's not a good
thing. Most plants cannot tolerate what we call wet feet, meaning soggy wet
roots. And why is that plants like water? Well, the reason is
plant roots need oxygen. A few plants have worked out ways to deal with
oversaturated soil, but in general, when you submerge roots for an extended period
of time, the plant's going to go downhill. I don't care if it
is a houseplant that you're overwatering or if it is a landscape plant, and
so what we need to do is we need to get that water away.
It's good to get to wet that whole soil volume, and then it's good
to not have rain or irrigation for a while and allow that to dry out.
And if that's not happening at your house, you need to fix it
now. Put a post on Facebook that goes into some of the information on
what are your options. I'll talk about a little bit of that today.
I just want to remind you again our phone number if you'd like to give
us a call seven one three two one two five eight seven four. So
when the rain ends, which it has now leave for most of the area
last time I checked. If you see this water standing, uh, it's
time to step in. And you've got a few options. So first of
all, where did that water come from? Can it be rerouted? Maybe
it's coming out of the down spouts from your your gutters and they're dumping all
the water that's going to a certain spot where you have the problem. There
are things you can put on the bottom of the down spout to direct that
water somewhere else. That'd be an option. Sometimes a grade change is all
that's needed. You know, you have water that is sheeting across the lawn
and it's going to one area and just a slight swale could take it to
a different spot. That's an option to Secondly, maybe if it's not too
bad of a situation, putting raised beds in would get those roots above the
water table. So you know, I mean, we're not talking about six
inches deep a water standing. We're just talking about it's just staying there and
then it goes away. And remember that when you don't see water on the
surface, still underground it is wet. Have you ever gone to the beach
and you're walking on the sand, you get down close to the water,
you dig down, and all of a sudden, water starts coming up in
the hole. Yeah, it's called a water table, and you have that
in your yard. And so maybe you don't see the problem on top is
a puddle, but it's there and the soil. In those kind of situations,
coming up with a raised bed would work just fine. Get them up
high enough. Remember, all race beds are going to sink down in time,
especially if they have a lot of organic matter in them, which our
bed mixes do. So get it up a little extra high, knowing that
it's going to sink down. Number three a third option, if it's really
minor, you can do a lot for internal drainage by mixing in some compost
and some expanded shale, both of those together into the soil that you have,
so that the openings within that soil are larger and water can drain out
easier and air can move in better. And so that would be for very
minor situations. But just just improving the structure of the soil, that's what
we're talking about. You can't change if it's a clay, the fact that
it's a clay, but you can make it a better clay by improving the
structure of it. Number four, there's another one. You can just what
do they say, when life gives us lemons, make lemonade. You can
just plant things that want to be there. We do have plants that tolerate
soggy soil and the problem spots that you have, why not put something like
a button bush. It's a native shrub that can live in that. Louisiana
iris love a bright, bright, shady area, maybe a little bit of
sun dappled through the day and they can survive in that thing where water tends
to come and go. Cannes, Yeah, cannes can actually live in water.
They do well. The Texas star hibiscus several of our hibiscus, but
native along the Gulf coast called Texas star. It's not native to Texas,
but it's native along the Gulf coast that will put up with very wet areas.
Elephant ears or many others. Lots of different options there, but essentially,
when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and a good a lot
of good native plants to choose from along those lines as well. And then
finally you can just hire somebody, a professional to install some subsurface drainage and
take that water away. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit
more when we come back. Right now, we're going to take a break.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Welcome back to Garden Line. We're glad you're listening this morning on what
is going to be a good Saturday. Listen, if you've been cooped up
this week because of the rain and the rain and the rain, I got
good news for you today is going to be a good day. It is,
and tomorrow's gonna be a good day. And we got some good days
in a row here, which is kind of nice that temperatures mild. We're
not worried about, you know, frosts and freezes. We kind of push
that rain out of the way, get the sun out there, let it
warm up things, and just continue heading us toward the spring season that we're
all looking for. Remember that it's not spring now, but it is time
to be ready for spring now. And I said this, I think it
was last week. I used to know a gardener's ninety two years old.
His name is Alden Colston, and he made a statement real sm but it's
always stuck with me. He said, you can always add water, but
you can't take it away. And that is true. That's why we don't
overwater. You actually can take it away, but it takes a little bit
more of a task to do that. And I was going through a moment
ago some of the tips for when you walk out and you see puddles that
are been there more than a day after it rained, that is a significant
enough drainage problem that you need to do something about it. And went through
a number of things a moment ago that you could do just to kind of
recap quick for those of you who jumped in. If those down spouts are
dumping water in an area, or where is that water coming from, in
other words, how do you change that. You can reroute the down spout
spill out point to somewhere else. You can use slight grain changes to change
water that is heading across the yard into a low spot. Maybe it just
depends on the layout of the land. You can do raised beds that help
with minor drainage problems. You can add compost an expanded shale to improve the
internal drainage of the soil. If the you know, if you have six
inches of standing water, that's not going to fix it, but for minor
problems of soggy soil, that can fix it, do a lot of good
for it. Next, you can do plants that like it there. They
actually they're native to you know, a bog or you know the side of
a pond or a creek or whatever where the water table is up there higher
and they do well with that. And then finally doing subsurface drainage. Now,
subsurface drainage relies primarily on the fact that water runs downhill. That was
a revelation, wasn't it. Well, Because it runs downhill. All you
need to do is find a place for the water can get into a drain,
find that low spot. There's different things that professionals can do to put
a screen over it, and most doesn't get in as bad. You know,
you can get water down in there and then direct it to wherever is
lower for the water to run off to or run out of, whether it's
out at the curb or wherever you go with it. And you need a
professional to do this because we're talking about very slight drops in elevation that you
just can't see with your eye. But as you go over a distance,
you want that pipe to be gradually sloping down to get that water off the
site and out to a lower area. In other words, it's like a
bathtub drain. It's taking the water from the tub and it's taking it somewhere
else. And that's real simple. Sometimes it happens a lot in this area
because you know, we don't have a lot of change in elevation here.
It's not like we live in the hill country of Central Texas, and so
you may have an area that doesn't drain well and there's really no place to
take it that's lower or significantly enough lower to do the job. A professional
can come in then put a drainage box underground and actually have a pump that
takes the water that spills into that and sends it off somewhere else. Even
if that wolf of course, would be uphill. You can do it that
way. But again, good professional help is needed on that because you need
them to work well, and a lot of the do it yourself kinds of
situations just aren't going to cut it well. A company that does that is
Peerscapes. You've heard me talk about Peerscapes before. They absolutely do pretty much
anything you need done, from lighting to hardescapes to whatever. But right now,
topic of the day is drainage, and you can have them come out,
get them scheduled, have them come out, take a look look at
the situation, you know, do the little site lines to see how far
does it drop from here to there, and make the decisions on how to
fix that problem. That's what they specialize in is fixing your landscape problems and
creating beautiful showplaces. And if you go to their website you can see what
I'm talking about it's scapes dot com. Pierce P. E. A r
C. Scapes dot com. You can give them a call at two eight
one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven five zero six zero.
Don't mess around, get it. Get the call in, you know,
so you can get them scheduled to come out. Do you need an
irrigation tune up? Do you need any other kind of work done? Let's
get it scheduled now so that you can get in line to get that work
done on your property as soon as you can. And they really know what
they're doing, Jason and the whole whole team there, they will do it
for you. Don't wait until you run into another rainy spell later and we're
right back in this situation. Your plants aren't thriving because of it, go
ahead and get it fixed. That is the topic of the day. Rain,
rain, rain, What do we do? What do we do about
all this rain? When plants sit in anaerobic conditions, meaning no oxygen to
the roots because they're underwater. We couldn't breathe underwater, right, neither can
they, And so when that happens, roots start to shut down and you
can actually have a plant wilt in standing water, and that wird you think
of wilting is the roots are dry. Well, if the roots are shut
down, it can't take up what it needs, and you can have wilting
too. You also have root diseases that move in. There are some diseases.
This is kind of interesting. I guess if I was a plant pathologist,
I would say it's really cool. I don't find it cool, I
just find it interesting. But there are plant diseases that the spores instead of
floating through the air, they swim through the water and soil profile. So
think of tadpoles, you know, yell a little tadpole with a tail on
it. They have spores that actually do that. If I top there is
an example of one of those. We call them water moles, and it'll
cause major root rots on a number of different types of plants. And and
so whether whatever kind of rot it is, soggy conditions open the door of
that. And so you may find that you're losing a plant because you have
a top there, or rhizactonia or some other root rot. But really you're
losing the plant because the soil state's too wet for too long, and so
that's that's another another reason that we deal with this. If you want to
have flower beds, if you want to have vegetable gardens, raised boxes or
that's the only way to go. I mean, they absolutely makes it so
simple and you don't have to worry about drainage. I mean, if you
get a good sized rais box, your roots are going to be just fine.
It's going to do really well. Hey, our phone number if you'd
like to give us a call talk about something of interest to you is seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. It is still prime time to be planting trees
and shrubs, to be planting perennials, whether it's flowering perennials, ornamental grasses,
ground covers. This is a prime time to do it, and we're
doing it now because summer is coming and we want to give those plants the
most many as many weeks as possible prior to hot weather to get root systems
established. That little thing you put in the ground that's a very confined root
system, you're not going to do very very well in terms of resilience until
it gets roots established, so get them planted. Now. It's a good
time to plant roses and a good time in the vegetable garden to plant.
We're starting to hit the potato season here real quick. In fact, we
can be doing it right now. Plants for all seasons. By the way,
they've got a great selection. I was noticing there, David Austin roses,
really good selection of those, and it's time to plant those. By
the way, in this time of the year, you can plant roses bear
root, or you can plant them as container grown, or you can plant
them as container rised. With the difference, well, bear root is bare
root, container grown was grown in that container. Containerized means you take a
bear root rose, you put in a container, you put soil around it,
and that way it has some resilience. If you don't get it planted
right away, you're okay, it's going to get those roots started. So
when you do plant it, it hits the ground running. Now when you
go to like I could, plants for all seasons. For example, if
you buy them in the bare root stage, you save about ten bucks over
waiting until they pot them up for you. And so it just makes sense
unless you just need to you know, have them hang on for a few
weeks before you're going to be able to get them planted, but it's a
good time for that. They also have potatoes, by the way, I
noticed they had the kennebec i like the red, white and gold, and
that would be the red lesoda, the kennebecs of white potato, and the
Yukon gold is that buttery looking yellowish gold potato. That's really cool. You
want to make your potato cuts on so that they have one or two eyes
little buds from the potato tuber on each cut, and then set them with
the cut faces up so the air can move through real good and let them
dry out, kind of scab over a little bit for two or three days,
and they should be good to go now. If your soil is too
wet to get out there. But you don't want to set potatoes in a
swamp, they will rot. But what you can do is you can plant
them a little like a four inch pot and get them started growing, so
you're getting the roots going, getting them moving while you get your potato beds
ready to put them out there. Potatoes are growing containers too, by the
way, if you do it right. But anyway, all that's the Plants
for All Seasons. Hey, if you want to give them a call,
it's two eight one, three, seven six, sixteen forty six or the
website Plants for All Seasons dot com. Easy to find. They're on two
forty nine heading north toward Tomboal. You just exited Luetta Road crossover Luetta and
they're right there on the side of two forty nine. Real easy to find
them. We are going to be talking about a lot of different things today.
I want to spend a little bit of time on fruit trees here in
a bet, not right this moment, but I suspect we're going to talk
a little bit about wetspots and drainage and what can you do and things like
that. When you hear Garden Line every show, I think I talk about
what is the most important thing if you want to have success with your plants,
And the answer is the soil, brown stuff before grain stuff. Just
remember it that way. Brown stuff is the soil and the nutrients and drainage.
Green stuff, of course, is all the fun stuff you go buy
at the garden center. That's the pretty things with the flowers on top and
so on. But brown stuff first so fix your drainage problems before you put
in a new planting. Too. If you want to put in a new
garden, make sure that you design it in a way where you're not going
to have to deal with soggy, wet soil conditions. And you can do
that. It's not that difficult to do. You can have success quite easily
really with that. Uh. Water is a good thing, and as we
know, when it's there's too much water is a bad thing. When I
was living in the Houston area, I've been through two serious floods where we
lost our office completely. We were out at Bear Creek Park at the Extension
office and we went completely underwater and it was like knee deep in the building.
Uh, and had to rebuild. And then here comes Harvey and it
was all the way to the roof. And so I understand what it means
to have too much water and how around here sometimes when it rains at pours
Nikki, that's what the little Martin Morton salt girl said. That's what I
said on there right when its carrying an umbrella spilling salt out in Chicago.
Really, I believe that's where the plant is well when it rains at poor.
So anyway, I'm gonna turn over to Nikki here for the news.
If you would like to give me a call, get on the board with
Josh so we can talk. Seven to one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four, seven to one three two one two five eight seven four.
We'll be back in just a moment with your calls. We're also going to
talk a little bit about fruit trees and how to have success with fruit trees
here in the Greater Houston area. Welcome back to garden Line. We are
glad you're listening today, looking forward to talking to you about the things that
interest you. It is. We are on the doorstep of spring. In
fact, I would say that in some ways it's already begun. Our milder
weather is starting to creep in. We're going to see more and more.
Now hear this. Clearly, I'm not saying we're not gonna have another frost
or freeze, of course not. We are before well before the last average
frost or freeze date, so there is a likelihood that we'll have another one.
Doesn't mean it'll happen. Every year is different, but it just means
that it's time to be getting ready. Right now is a good time to
be growing transplants. Are you interested in growing some of your own transplants?
Have you ever started your own peppers or tomatoes or eggplant before? Those take
about six to eight weeks, depending on growing conditions to get them ready to
go outside. You start them now and they'll be ready to go definitely by
the time the last frost or freeze has passed. It's kind of fun to
do too, by the way, I don't know if you've ever done that
before, but I really love growing owne transplants. I've got to set up
in the house right now where I'm growing some things, and we've got peppers,
we've got eggplant. I do have some cool seasons that I'm still going
to be putting out. There are some of the cruciferous vegetables. Those are
the ones that are just packed with all kinds of phyto nutrients that really help
our health, from fighting cancer to other kinds of things heart disease and other
issues that result from our poor food choices in many cases. But chryciferous vegetables
would include broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, col robbie. There's a one that's
not new to me, yet it was new a couple of years ago to
me. But it's called chi jimasi c chi j i m s ai something
like that, and that's what one seed company calls it. It's a cross
between two different cruciferous vegetables, and it's a leafy green. A lot of
those can have a little bit of a mustardy taste, and mustard can be
a pretty pungent flavor, and a lot of people aren't into that, but
chi jimasai is very very low in that pungency. It tastes really good.
It's a super dark blue or dark green leaf, I mean, just as
dark as you can imagine of green, and very healthy. Grows fast,
easy, easy to grow. Now I've got some seedlings of that started.
We've got several other things, got a little bit of lettuce started. By
the way, when you plant lettuce plant, think about this. How many
heads of lettuce or how many romain heads or whatever leaf lettuce you're buying,
How much do you eat in a week? Not a lot, Even if
you have salads every day, there's not a ton of lettuce there. So
when you plant, don't plant a fifty foot row of lettuce it's going to
be ready to eat and you're not gonna be able to eat at all.
Plant in small amounts, you do, think about it, about a week's
worth of lettuce plants, plant them, and then a week or two later
plant some more, and a week or two later plant some more, and
that way is you go through. You'll always have fresh lettuce coming on.
There's two ways to go about it. One is to let it reach its
essentially full size and then harvest the whole plant. Another way is just to
mow the leaves off. Take some scissors or whatever you want, and just
cut the tops off, and the bases will keep growing. When you cut
all the top leaves off, the center we'll just keep pushing up new leaves,
and it's just like mowing the lawn. You mow it and it grows
back. You mow it and it grows back, and you can do your
vegetables that way too. Now's a good time to plant things like carrots,
for example, and radishes. Some of the root crops we're getting really close
to time to plant beats. I might put some out a little bit early,
but if you're ready to cover them up when we have a good hard
freeze. If another one shows up, then you're good to go. But
starting seeds is easy. You need a good quality mix. And by the
way, the folks that landscapers Pride, they have a number of different mixes
that they have. The website, by the way is Landscaperspride dot com.
But they have a rosemix, They've got the black velvet molts that we talk
about here on garden Line, and then a forty pound bag of a potting
soil. The potting soil is made with age, pine bark and sand and
blended organics. You can use it as it is. I would use it
as a seed starting mix. The potting saw is a great one for starting
new tomato seedlings as well, very economical. Lots of different places you can
find it. Go to Landscaperspride dot com find out about their twenty seven different
bag products that they have, and hey, get started this season for too
long. We're going to talk about if you want to grow up swash or
a cucumber transplant. Those are coming a little bit later, but you're going
to need some of that on hand. We're going to head out now to
Kingwood and talk to Kathy. Hello, Kathy, all right, don't know
do. I didn't get a hold of Kathy there, so well let's try
that one more time. Matthew Kingwood, Welcome to garden Line. Thanks,
thank you so much. I love your show. Thank you. I've got
acres of not literally acres, but it feels like acres of plants that froze
that are just mush wandering jews and hibiscus and just aga panthers and everything that
just looks horrible. It's not dry frozen stuff, it's wet frozen stuff.
So I'm wondering if I should clean that out. Well, you have two
options. One is just to learn to tolerate the ugly for now. Should
we have another freeze, then that mush on top that's going to dry out
would be a protection for the crown of the point below. If you can't
take the look and caun't adjust to the look, then you can clean it
out, but be ready to throw a little bit of multuor compost over those
crowns as a protection for them, and the new growth can come back up
through that. But I you know, ideal would be, hey, just
wait and when it was fine, yeah good. I was worried about some
kind of bacteria setting in or fungus because of it. So well looking,
yeah, we can have those kinds of things, but in general that frozen
back, the plants are going to be just fine. Sometimes. I know,
with things like palm trees, they've got that bud at the top of
the tree that that's where everything comes from, and we got to protect it.
And so because water can catch inside that top of the pecan, a
pecan palm trunk, well we'll toss a little bit of a copper top funderside
or something up there just to protect them. But I think with the you're
describing, I wouldn't worry about it. Great, all right, I appreciate
you. All right, Kathy, thanks for the call. I have fun
out there in Kingwood. It's gonna be two good days. I'm ready there
you go, I'm ready to Hey, we're gonna take a little break here.
It's time. We're gonna be back in just a moment. If you'd
like to give us a call. Seven to one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome
back to garden Lione. We're glad you're listening and looking forward to visiting with
you. What do you want to talk about today? Well, here's how
you get a chance to do that. Dolls seven two one two five eight
seven four. I'm going to go up to Willis now we're going to talk
to Mike. Hello, Mike, Hey, how you don't skip? I'm
good, that's up. I'm looking to do some pruning for the blueberries I
have and some stone fruit. But I was planning on using the cuttings off
the blueberries to do starts. And this was curious. What type of soil
and horn use homer and growth that powder to use to start the cuttings and
stuff like that. You should You should probably go online and look a little
bit. With blueberries, we typically do some little hardwood cuttings. This time
of the hardwood means it's the tissues that came through the winter. They're already
hardened off there they're sort of woody. If you will, you can also
do semi hardwood on a lot of plants where it's in between that's succulent and
where it is now. You do want to use a hormone, get a
good quality hormone to dip the cuttings in. Put them in something that is
very well drained. It could be like fifty percent pearl light fifty percent peet.
That would be an example of a good mix. You just you want
it to stay very well drained, not underwater. I will push a little
hole with a pencil in that mix, put the cutting that's been dipped in
hormone in, and then push the soil gently up against it. The reason
is if you put the hormone on it and then push the cutting in,
it's like the soil is wiping the hormone off the surface of the cutting.
You see what I'm saying. So make a little hole to set it in,
just a little thin hole, and keep it moist, have a cover
over it. Get it in good sunlight. I mean good light, but
not direct sunlight. And so as the new leaves begin to come out,
they have plenty of light because that's important to make the carbs they need to
make the roots. Yeah, tell me in a greenhouse. But okay,
what type of hormones of it? Because I was told that some hormones aren't
good for fruit. That you eat hormone powders or is that I think that's
a mix. I don't know that that what you were told kind of sounds
like a compilation of different I just say no, don't worry about that.
The rooting of hormone is typically a powder, but can also be a liquid.
Our garden centers carry them. They're not hard to find. You just
want to get a fresh one. You to keep it in the refrigerator and
a seal jar, and when you use it, tap a little bit out
of the jar and use that for what you're rolling the cutting in or dipping
the cutting in, and don't put it back in the jar and contaminate the
jar. Don't stick your cutting done in the jar and contaminate the jar.
How about the spray peat moss or I'm saying that right, let's get stagna
mos. Yeah, it's kind of stringy. So like when you taking a
cutting out, I don't know, I can see you breaking off some roots
and it usually we just use a ground up spagnum moss, not spagnum pete,
not not the stringy stuff you would line a ding basket with, for
example. Okay, well to meet you at the Master Gardener. I think
that you were going to give a speak talk there. I am I'm coming
up to Montgomery County to give a talk on organic gardening to the master gardeners
up there. Yeah, looking forward to it. Okay, all right,
Mike, we'll have fun up there. And well, I used to have
a peach orchard and a strawberry patch out east of Willis many years ago before
we ended up moving to another city. Well, actually that's where my orchard
is. It's in between Cleveland and Cold Springs. Okay, hundred acres up
there, but nice, I don't We don't live up there, but were
we lived in Willis? All right, sir, Well, hey, thanks
for the call, and good luck with getting those blueberries taken care of.
You know, we were talking about wet and rain and everything, but we
were also still dealing with the frase and your plants that were from the back.
They're going to start waking up as the weather warms up a little bit,
and when they do, you want to provide what they need to get
back on their feet again. They've lost a lot of tissues from the cold.
They have to regrow. They're in a depleted state because plants need leaves
to make carbohydrates to support growth, and microlife has their ocean harvest, which
is a four two three nutrient ratio. Liquid and you can spray it on
the plant. You can drench it on the soil. I would recommend doing
both. If there's leaves, spray it on also, but definitely drench it
on the soil. You can follow that with a four excive me six two
four, which is the green bag, the stuff we typically talk about for
lawns. It's good for all kinds of things, any kind of plant.
You can put that around it and then a couple of weeks later just go
ahead and do the ocean harvest again as the liquid and that'll take care of
it. You can find Microlife products all over the place. They're available wide
variety of areas. You can go to Microlifefertilizer dot com find out where to
go at them. League City Feed, for example, those of you done
in League City and all the surrounding communities like Dickinson and Santa Fe and clear
Lake City, Baylett, Lamark, all those areas. League City Feed is
your hometown feed store. And if I talk about a fertilize like Microlife here
on the air, they've got it at League City Feed. The phone number
there is two eight one three three two one six one two two eight one
three three two one six one two. They're real easy to find. They're
on Highway three, just a few blocks south of Highway ninety six, and
they're open practically all the time Monday through Saturday, nine am to six pm,
closed on Sunday, and so it's really easy to find a time to
swing by there and grab all of those things, including pet feed and pest
control products and other things at League City Feed. We're going to head out
now to East Houston and talk to Tom. Hello. Tom, Hello,
sure, how can we help today? Thank you for except for my phone
call. Yes, sir, Yes, I'm I am a caretaker, and
I believe that I did damage on a rubber tree okay, rubber plant okay.
And I did not bring it in from the frost okay. And I
covered it up with a sheet and it looks bad. Okay. Do I
have any Does the plant have any hope? It does? Right? It
does? Just you know, it could be anything from it's completely gone to
it's going to be pretty good. It depends on how cold of God,
for how long, and what was damaged. I would Tom, you could
do a couple of things. You can scratch the bark with your thumbnail and
look to see if it's a creamy green color underneath, or if it's kind
of a paper sack brown, meaning it's dead, and follow it from the
end all the way down toward the base to see if there's any life.
If it were me, I would just bring it in if you don't mind
looking at it, get it, get it into protection, and bring it
back out when the weather's okay, and give it some time. It's not
going to want to grow till it warms up. That's why coming inside might
help a little bit. But let the plant tell you where to prune it.
I certainly will tell you if it's still alive, because when you start
to see sprouts, that's where you're going to have to pune it back to.
So that may be at the base where you just have a few buds
at the base that lived and the whole trunk's gone. But the plant will
tell you. Just give it time and know that it takes some time and
warmth before it's going to want to start reach sprouting. Oh my gosh,
Well, hopefully it won't be too bad. Hey, Tom, I'm about
to have to run here. I appreciate your call very much. Good luck,
yes, sir, good luck. With that rubber truck. I've dealt
with those myself before. Kind of interesting. The mystery that we deal with
when it comes to freezes and figuring out what is and it's not going to
make it. And plants always surprise me. There were there are several times
where I thought, you know, I plant's gone. I just again around
to taking it out, and all of a sudden, here comes some new
life they. I guess you could say they have a very strong will to
live. If at all possible, they're going to do that. Uh.
We're going to take a little break for the top of the hour in the
news. If you would like to give us a call, call Josh at
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Let him get you
on the on the board so we can talk to you when we come back.
I just want to remind you today I'm going to be heading out to
the Brasses home show out in Fort Bene County. Uh. I always enjoy
going out to the home show. Is getting a chance to visit with folks,
talk about what's going on. Uh. If you have samples you would
like to bring out, bring them, put them in a sip lock bag.
Bring them to me. Let's take a look. If you have photos
and they're in sharp focus, bring them on your phone and we'll take a
look at those. We can diagnose, we can identify, Uh, if
you want me to, I can also do last rites. I'll bring some
with me. Anyway, you get the idea. Let's have some fun.
I love to meet folks. I'm gonna be giving away a few containers of
a brand new product from Nelson Flat Food that I'm gonna be telling you about
here in a little bit. Uh. And so with people show up,
I don't know, we'll have some kind of a participation quiz or who drew,
who drove the furthest We'll come up with something. But we'll be out
there for now. We'll be right back. K T r H. Garden
Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program.
Welcome to Katy r H Garden Line with skimped Richter. Just watch him
as so many good piece suits. Welcome back. We're glad you're listening in
on garden Line today and you'd like to give us a call. What do
you want to talk about? Any kind of question identifying plants, diagnosing problems,
getting recommendations for plants, for gardening, for how to have success.
We can do that seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven
one three, two one two five eight seven four in the aftermath of all
the rain. You know, if you have drainage problems, now just watch
it for a day or two. You know, if water stands over a
day, you got a drainage problem. And if it stands over two days,
you really got a drainage problem. Low areas and clay soil. Just
think of it as a big farm pond. That's what you got out there,
and it holds water very well. Unfortunately, you got to do something
about it. And I mentioned in my post to Facebook. By the way,
if you want to go to Facebook to the garden Line page, we
hope you'll follow us on there. I've got some information on five different options
for what do you do when you got a wet sagi area. And one
of the things is build a raised bed. You can raise the soil up
by essentially bringing in a quality mix that plants will thrive in, putting it
on ground and planting in that. And examples would be and by the way,
the folks at Airloom Soils. They have a bunch of different product combos
that I think are just excellent. For example, rose soil, they've got
a roast soil mix. It's very good for raised beds, not just roses,
but shrubs and trees and perennials even will do very well in that.
They have a veggie and herb mix that you can buy that. By the
way, airloom products are available in bags and they're also available in bulk as
quantities as supplies last. They also have leaf mold composts that is an excellent
high quality compost for top dressing lawns, for even mixing in the soil,
or I like to use it as a surface mulch. I think it does
very very well as a surface mulch. All of that can be done if
you've got plants that are struggling. Mix a little bit of some of those
into the bed itself. Just carefully mix it in around the plants, just
a little bit, get it going, provide that extra nutrition. You know,
when you got good microriza, when you've got good biological activity in the
soil, it changes the root environment in a way that helps plants. And
that's what we're all about brown stuff before green stuff. These are just three
examples of really quality brown stuff from the folks at Airloom Soils. Not hard
to find those products either. They're sold all over town by the bag.
You can buy them again, as I said, by the bulk, give
them a call. Here's a website, Heirloom Soilsoftexas dot com. That's simple
Heirloom Soils of Texas dot com and that will get you right to the information
you need to find the products and to if you're going to go get the
bulk to know where to do that as well. Let's go out to Seabrook
and we're going to talk to Lisa. Good morning, Lisa. I have
a question about growing lavender and pot. Does it do well as a potted
plant. Lavender does not like our climate. The rain, the humidity,
and the summer heat are all really really hard on lavender. Even over you
know, you got to Fredericksburg kind of central Texas where it's a little dryer
and things. It even struggles out there in a pot. You're giving it
the best chance you can because you can put a good quality mix in there.
You can control how much water you give it. You can even move
it to a you know, late day shade to help it out a little
bit in the hot summer weather, and so you can do that. Spanish
lavender is probably one of the easier ones to grow. Spanish lavender, the
French provincial the provincial lavender. It's kind of tough, but if you can
keep it, don't we the foliage. Don't have a sprinkler spraying it.
Put it in the pot like you ask about, and then keep it moist
but not soggy. I think you may have You can at least keep the
plants going and have a good measure of success. Thank you, you bet.
I have fun with that lavender. There have been a lot of attempts
to grow lavender here in Texas. Commercially. There are certainly several attempts that
lavender farms. I've gone to see several of them, and you know,
you go see them initially they look good, and then you come back a
year or so later and there are these huge dead spots in the field,
and it's just the challenge of growing it here. But I think at least
I had the right idea put it in a container where you control more things.
Let's head out now to Bear Creek Park and talk to Jerry. Hello
Jerry, good morning, sir. You're talking about a plant. I'll teach
them Assaiah. I tried googling in id Let me. I can try spelling
it for you, but it's it's hi ji chi jemassi. But if you
start with that chi ji, just start with there and you go to a
website the sea company called Baker Creek Seed. They're the ones that call it
chi jim Assi. Other companies will sell crosses of the same two parents and
call them other things. I can't remember now what they call theirs. But
chi Jimasi is just a It's a simple, easy one. It's one that
I always think gardeners need to try something new every year. And I try
a number of things new every year, but that would be one that I
think a lot of people are gonna like be impressed with its growth. Okay,
No, Baker Creek. Baker Creek Seed up in Missouri, Mansfield,
Missouri. Mansfield, Missouri, that's where Laura Ingles Wilder wrote the Little House
Books. Originally Mansfield, Missouri. That's not where they were the story is
from. It's up in Minnesota. But that's where interl your life. She
settled in and wrote those books. That was a fun fact worth the price
of passion. I get this wrong. I uncle back and listen to the
podcast there, don't you. Yeah, that's a good thing. I should
mention that more on the air. But if you miss a show or like
you hear me say something and what did you say? You can you can
go listen to it on podcasts. Okay, Jerry, did you did you
stay? Do you have any flood problems in Bear Creek? Well, I'm
not sure. I have been home in thirty five days. Okay the rehab
Siner and copper Gill. Okay, okay, okay, Well you should try
that chie Ja Messiah thing. And I wish you well. I hope.
I wish you a recovery there. And I used to work in the Bear
Creek Park area, so I know how what happens when it rains too much
after a yes, oh boy, yep. A lot of your neighbors didn't
fare as well, did they? That was that was a booger, all
right, sir? Welly I do wish you well, and good luck finding
those seeds. I think it's fun to grow, you know, gardeners have
to be optimist. You do, and and there there's reason to be optimistic.
Nature is full of beautiful plants. I don't care if you want visual
beauty, if you want culinary flavors, if you if you want to just
grow your own food, vegetables and fruit and things flowers. It's just if
there's so many things out there, and we always should try something new.
Now, I don't recommend doing something ill advised. You know, if you
go in a vacation to Colorado, don't bring a blue spruce back or one
of those blue Colorado columbines their state flower. They're not going to grow here.
If you're want a columbine, we got columbines that will grow here,
but not the blue one from Colorado. Uh and the blue spruce. I
mean, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Plants should meet you at
the Texas border and take that thing away from you. Anyway, let's take
a break our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight to seventy
four. I'll be right back, all right. That's for your listening pleasure.
This morning. You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip
Richter, and we're here to talk about all kinds of things related to gardening,
and even we can talk about some things on the periphery, let's say,
of gardening, uh, taking care of the landscape and the backyard and
whatnot. A lot of folks are really interested in backyard chickens. I don't
know if you're one of those, but we've been through that. I tell
you, I can probably look back at seven different times we've had backyard chickens
different places, we've lived in things, and it's a lot of fun.
People just like enjoy doing that taking care of them. But we're getting close
to time to go get you some baby chicks and to get started. In
fact, the folks at D and D Feed up in tumble They I believe
it's February or the eighth that they're going to start getting those in. You
can go to their website. D and D Feed's website, the D and
D Feed and supply real easy to eat to find. It's called ddfeed dot
com. Just give them a call too. Two eight one three five one
seventy one forty four two eight one three five one seventy one forty four.
They are on twenty nine twenty just west of tumble, and they have everything
by the way they need. They've got their their fertilizers in the ones you
hear me talk about here on guarden line. Are there if you need disease,
pest, weed control, if you need things like their loomrose, soil
and age leaf compost and fruit berry and citrus, veggie and herb, those
ones I was just talking about. Yep, they got those at D and
D feed as well, and later on we get a lot of new things
in. They also have potatoes, by the way, if you need the
red Leasda, the white Kennebec or the yellow Yukon gold, they've got them.
But hey, don't wait around, because go ahead and get them.
They can sit on your counter for a while if you want, or you
can go ahead and cut them. Get them ready to kind of scab over
a little bit and be ready to plant so they don't rot in the cool
soils, cool wet soils of spring. All that is available at D and
D. Feat again the number two eight, one, three, five,
one seventy one forty four. We're gonna now head out to Sweeney and talk
to Tom. Hello, Tom, Hello, how are you doing today?
I'm doing good? What's happening in Sweeney, Texas. Oh, lot of
wet weather right now? Okay, all right, well we got rid of
that. I called and canceled it. It should be done now. It
ought to wind up for you today. Well, good for you. Thanks.
Yeah, right. I was I'm gonna plant some save potatoes next month,
and I was just checking to see what kind of fertilizer I need to
for them. Yeah, that's a good question, Tom. I'm gonna give
you kind of more than one answer here. The first of all, a
soil test tells you what you already have, which tells you what you need
to add. So that's the best answer to your question. We don't have
that in front of us right now, so we'll give the next best answer.
As you're mixing composts and things into the soil, it's just getting better
and better and that's always a good idea. And then as a boost,
what I will typically do is I will use just a lawn type fertilizer for
potatoes. And here's why. With potatoes, you're growing the tubers, which
are extensions of the stem that are filled with carbohydrates. You need leaves,
healthy foliage to make carbohydrates. So you can have potatoes on the plants.
So anything you do that stimulates the leaf growth is going to provide more of
a top to create more of a harvest. And so you get you.
I don't know what kind of fertilizer you use for your lawn, Well you
have a particular range. I hadn't put anything, damn, you know,
triple thirteen or Okay, I'd switch. I would switch over to something that's
got a ratio instead of a one one one like triple thirteen does like three
one two. Lots of that first number, not much of the middle,
and then a moderate amount of the second. And that's considering that we don't
know what's already in your soil. But that's a pretty good place to start.
Yeah, alrighty, well, thank you for all the help. I
appreciate it. Yes, sir, have fun. And all I ask is
that you bring half the potatoes and drop them off at the station and we'll
call it out. Thank you, thank you. All right, you take
care. Yeah, the potatoes are it's it's we're hitting potato season. You
know, they don't the potato plant itself is not going to tolerate a freeze,
but we put them in the ground and they come up, and sometimes
you'll get a little bit of a freeze, they'll blow burn the tops,
but then they just kind of re sprout from under there. I would throw
a mulch over them. If you get them planted a little early, throw
a mulch over them. And whenever we're going to have a frieze, just
go ahead and cover them up. It's okay. They'll come through it.
In fact, one of the strategies, one of the best strategies for growing
potatoes is you put them in let's say, something like a little bit of
a trench, and as they grow, you throw more compost and soil in
around them, and they keep pushing their stems up through it, and then
you end up with about eight inches or so of buried stem and that's where
your potatoes are going to form. So that's important to remember. A potato,
like a new potato, an Irish potato, you know those kinds of
things, they're not roots like a sweet potatoes. They're stems. So when
you plant that potato, I seed peace. We call it a seed piece.
It's a section of potato that you cut up and let the edges or
the fresh cuts kind of dry up before you plant it. The roots go
down and the stem comes up and the potatoes come off the stem. It's
as simple as that. You grow potatoes and containers too. They do really,
really, really well in a container. Talking about the topics, you
know, really of the season right now for gardeners is number one, we
just had a really bad freeze and number two we've got a lot of rain
and we're dealing with that. But if you you know, we talk about
plant recovery from the freeze. But what about pipes? You know, do
you have some issues with pipes that you need to do repair on maybe you
know irrigation system, little minor repairs and things. Well, Ace Hardware is
going to have that. Any kind of plumbing repair parts you need, they're
going to have it. Anything to repair your sprinklers. You know, this
Christmas, maybe your brother in law came over and backing out of the driveway,
he ran across the corner of the yard and yep, that's where the
wrinkler head is. And maybe you don't know damage has been done yet,
but boy you will when you turn it on. What do you do?
Well, Ace Hardware, They'll get you fixed up. We're going to be
talking a lot about all the products that they have, because they have everything.
Do you need fertilizers, do you need mulchus, just any kind of
tools and things, things to control pests and diseases. ACE Hardware is easy
to find. You know forty of them here in the Greater Houston area.
Just go to Acehardware dot Com, find the store locator and you can find
the ones near you, and there is an ACE Hardware near you. That's
as simple as that. I fortunately did not have any pipe damage in this
last freeze, and I bought the little and ACE carries these those little covers
that go over your faucets outdoors, and the little things you put around your
pipes to protect. Boy, it's always good to have those on hand.
Years ago I had a little spot where I put those things, and I
know right where to go get them when the coal weather arrives. But I'm
glad to not have to mess with that, for sure. We were talking
about potatoes and how to grow them. There's a lot of different kinds of
grape vegetables. There are a lot of fun to grow. I grew potatoes
one time in a basket like one of those little wooden baskets with the metal
wire handles. Just drilled a hole in the bottom and put the seed piece
in the soil that had been worked up and right over it. After I
buried it, I put the basket with that hole in it, and so
when the potato sprouted, it came up inside the basket, and I throw
mulch in there, composty stuff, and as it grows Philip, Philip,
Philip, by the time you get that basket completely full, you will have
then the vines coming out and growing over the top. And this is a
conversation piece. When it's time to harvest, you just cut it loose at
the ground. And now this isn't going to make the basket last. It's
that moist soil is going to decay. But you'll get that first season out
of it. And all your potatoes are in the basket because they're not roots,
they're stems, so when they come up, all the potatoes form in
the basket. I've done that with five gallon buckets. You gotta have really
good drainage on those lots of holes drilled in it too. But there's a
lot of fun ways to get kids and have fun. Then you just take
the basket again, cut underneath it to get it loose from the soil and
dump it out, and now are all these perfectly formed, beautiful potatoes because
they're growing in nice loose COMPOSTI mix. Kind of a fun way to do
it. Getting kids involved in gardening is I think an important thing. We
do need to get the kids involved because it's a lifetime of health when we
learn to eat right and not being afraid of vegetables, not pushing them around
the plate, afraid to eat them. But you grow them yourself, you're
more likelydium. That's how it works with kiddos. And another thing that is
fun if you've got little bitty ones, little bitty ones, the is to
plant radish seeds on the ground. I would put them in like a big
tray. Maybe you only have about four inches of soil in a tray,
and you put the radish seeds in there, and then you lay hardware cloth,
like the little half inch square hardware cloth like you'd have underneath the rabbit
cake. You lay that on the surface and the radish is sprout up through
it and they just grow. And then when it's harvest time, you just
pick up the hardware cloths this big wire sheet wash off the soil, and
on one side you got the radish tops and on the other side you have
these nice, little, beautifully formed radishes. And radishes are about a twenty
eight day crop, so kids and people like me with very low patients can
have fast results. But that's kind of cool to see about. If you
do that, would you post it to our Facebook or tell us about it?
And we would love to see it on our Facebook. You can't post
it to our Facebook, but you can connect it to garden Line Facebook.
That would be so cool. It is cool. It is cool now eating
radishes for kids, that's a whole nother. Yeah. Hot, this kid
still doesn't like radishes, but are you not? Well? We won't talk
about that. The Radish Grower Association of America is probably wonderful if there is
a thing. Yeah, yeah, they're fabulous. My dad liked those little
red radishes and they just were hot. I didn't care for them. There's
actually a big one, though, Nikki. It's the size of a turnip,
and it's white toward the bottom and green light green toward the top,
but when you cut through it, it's red inside. We call it the
watermelon radish because it's like green on the outside, red on the inside,
and it's it's pretty mild too. So I mean, if I guess it's
the gateway drugged rabits eat a radish, a watermelon radish might work. We're
going to be right back. It's time for Nicky in the news. Seven
to one three two one two, five, eight seven four. Good morning,
and welcome to garden Line. We are talking about things, hopefully that
are of interest to you today. One way you can make sure that happens
is to give us a call and ask your question. Seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven
four. I was this past week with all the rain, and I spent
a lot of time looking from inside through the window at the outside, and
we're just noticing all the birds that were gathering at our feet. Er,
we've got one of the those wild birds squirrel excluding feeders. If you haven't
seen one of those, you got to go check them out. They are
amazing, quite a contraption, and to foil a squirrel's evil plans is not
easy. They want the bird seed that we're given to the birds bird feed
so Anyway, I was watching that and looking at all the different kinds of
birds that we had, and I was real surprised. There's just a lot
of variety coming in, all kinds of different beautiful species. And you know,
this is a season when we still need to be feeding taking care of
our birds. We're still doing a little bit of the winter super blend,
that's the one that has lots of fats and proteins to help them get,
you know, get through this winter. It's pretty duck being a bird out
there when you've got freezing, freezing cold weather and you're dealing with that and
trying to find food and whatnot. Well why not help them find food in
your yard. And when you do that, they'll be back food and water
and all the things we provide. Housing. By the way, speaking of
housing bluebirds or starting to look for their nest boxes, if you would like
to have bluebirds, and now's the time to get a nest box out Purple
Martins. There, we're just on the doorstep of when they start showing up.
The scout's coming out looking for a place to make a home. If
you've got a nice Purple Martin house up on a pole, maybe they'll set
up shop there, they'll find your place and if you've had them coming back
from year after year, they already know where you live. Now. There
are a lot of different Wildbirds locations, six of them around town. It's
really easy to find. Go to WBU dot com forwards slash Houston, WBU
dot com forward slash Houston find a Wildbird's near you. Also, you want
to follow them on the social media because they they're always having new tips and
ideas. There's good videos, there's good information on birding. It's just really
really excellent, excellent website and excellent social media posts. Two that they do
at Walberds. I was like that love going into those places too. It's
like a candy story for me and go go in and in seeing all the
cool new stuff that they have. Well, you're listening to Gardenline. Our
phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one
three two one two five eight seven four. I mentioned earlier that I'm going
to be at the Brasses Home and Garden Show, which is down in Rosenberg
now. It's at the Fort Bend Epicenter. It's yesterday, today, and
tomorrow. I'll be there Today. When the show's over, I'm gonna get
some things packed up and head over that way. I'll be giving a seminar
at twelve and I will also be giving one at one o'clock. At twelve
o'clock, I'm gonna be talking about landscape recovery after the freeze, and I'll
talk about some other things, some general tips for spring and garden success.
And then at one o'clock we're going to be doing a lot of Q and
A and who knows. Typically i'll go in, I'll plan on talking about
something, and then here come all the questions, and we we head off
in the things that the people that show up want to talk about, so
we can do that too. But that's all at the Fort Bend Epicenter in
Rosenberg, Texas, and I hope you'll come out. If you have a
sample you want to bring, put it in a ziplock bag or twist type
bag, close it up and bring it in. We'll take a look at
it. If you have photos on your phone in good sharp focus, bring
those. I'd be glad to see those as well. Kind of you know,
figure out what might be ailing your plants, or maybe it's a plant
you want to identify it something like that. We'll be their home and garden
show BRI's Fort Bend Epicenter to day after the show garden line. I'll probably
get there about eleven leven thirty. I'll be talking twelve and one again,
so hope you come out. Let's head back to the phone. We're going
to go out to Jersey Village and talk to Clara. Hello Clara, Good
morning, skit morning. I have a question for you regarding adding that expanded
our expandable coconut fiber to your garden soils. These race beds have been in
for about eight years now, okay, and as I've added soil, of
course, it's become more and more compacted. So I was wondering about using
that to kind of like bluff it up. Well, you could generally,
though, with the cocoa fibers coconut fibers where we call a coconut core.
We're putting that in planting mixes like potting soil kinds of things. It would
be pretty cost per to do it, you know, just to a large
area. I would recommend instead, if you're wanting to improve your soil,
get a good bed mix and spread it out there. How big of an
area do you need to cover? This is probably three and a half feet
wide by twenty five fee? Okay? And what are you wanting to grow
in that bed? Typically? I grow tomatoes, cucumbers, spell tempers,
okay, just household household type, you know, summer and all stream beas
okay, good vegetans, and yes, and I do rotate where the cucumbers
are planted and where the tomatoes are planting. Okay, well I would I
would grab you a bed mix the airlom soils folks. They have one called
Edgie and Herb that does very well. And you can find bags of that
over where you live out there in the Jersey Village area if you go up
to you got a couple of great ace hardwarares M and d is up there
in the Cypress area, and then the one on Jones Road as well.
Good supplies of those kind of things. Just buy you some bags, toss
them down the way about. I probably put it if you've already got soiled
in there, I'd probably put it about three inches deep and then mix it
in, you know, as deep as is practical for you with a swaden
park or whatever you're going to use to kind of improve it a little bit,
and I think you'll have real good success. Okay, and then use
how about using the coconut fiber or coconut core to do the seedlings, to
do seeds? You can, but you don't want to use just that.
It has each component, and a potting mix has its own purpose. You
know, the peat moss or the cocoa core that's going to hold water very
well, the things like pearlite and vermiculite that's going to help drainage be better.
So you wouldn't want to grow and straight peat moss or and straight cocoa
core, but you can mix it in. Okay, Okay, Well,
you know we're all starting to think about these gardens. I know we are,
that is for sure. Yeah. I used to live up in the
Cypress area, by the way. One day, it actually dawned on me
why they call it Jersey Village. I did not know this, but that
was big dairy farm country. That's why we have Darry Ashford Street and Jersey
Village and there's some other landmarks of that of that day in time. Yes,
yes, all right. As a native Ustonian, we've watched the concentric
circle theory, grow and grow and grow. I'm telling you, I think
we're at it. We're at our outermost belt at this point, well at
this point, at this point, I'm afraid that Brunham and College Station are
going to be the edge of Houston if it keeps going like it is in
that in your direction at least. Hey, yes, that is very true.
Thank you, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Clara.
You take care. We're going to take a little break here and we'll
be back. Our number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. The sun is on the way. In fact, the sun is
shining right now. It's just shining on the other side of some clouds and
maybe a little over the horizon, depending on when you're where you're listening to
Garden Line from We're going to have a good day. These cloudy conditions they're
going to start to break up and move away. We got the rain behind
us, so today is a good day to get out there. Let's go
visit a garden center. Let's go pick up some supplies at some of our
garden centers and feed stores, ace hardware, those kinds of places we talk
about. Get ready for spring. It's coming. I'm not going to tell
you to fertilize today, but you could buy the fertilizer and be ready to
go. So when you're ready to put it out, all you got to
do is head out there and do it. You don't have to go buy
it at that point in time. I hope that there's a stock of whichever
you prefer, whichever kind you like to use, at the places that you
prefer to purchase them. Go ahead and get out there and get started.
It's definitely time in the vegetable garden. We can continue planting cool seasoned crops
like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, cole Robbie. I've got some sweet peas,
some sugar snap peas that I'm about to put out. I've always planted
them directly in the garden. It's a big old seed, easy to direct
seed in the garden, and I just decided this year I was going to
start them inside, and I'm glad I did, because right after I got
them started, we had this horrific cold spell that came in, and had
they been up, that would have been a little bit of a problem for
them. So instead they're in these little transplant cells, and I'm going to
put them out in the garden here pretty soon. And they're already up and
growing. It's about time to move them out as far as the plant condition
is concerned. But you can do that right now direct seed those out.
Lettuce and spinach can still be planted out in the garden. Root crops like
carrots and beets and beats. Actually they're a little coal tender, but you
can grow them if you're just willing to protect them. When we have our
next little freeze, they'll be all right. Lots of things to plant right
now in the vegetable garden. In the cool season garden, you can still
plant some cool season flowers. They're you know, with summer and warmer weather
coming, they're not going to be long for this world, but they still
would look good and help spruce things up. And it's getting closer and closer
to the time when we begin to plant our warm season. We want to
get that danger of frost past us to start to put out things like petunias
and other beautiful flowers in the garden. It's a great time to plant herb
transplants. Let's see where are we right now. It's a tad bit early
to plant basil indoors as a transplant, but you could if you just don't
mind growing it into a bigger plant. Basil likes warm weather. It does
not want you to stick it out there and the night becomes fifty degrees.
In fact, I'm waiting to plant mine another at least two weeks, probably
to start a transplant indoors. There's a lot we can plant. It won't
be long before we're putting in squashing cucumbers. It's transplants if we would like
to do it that way. I mentioned potatoes. It's a time to plant
fruit trees, and I want to talk about fruit trees a little bit here.
I'm probably going to do that the next hour. But it's time for
all of that. And your lawn. Your lawn's asleep, but it's going
to be waking up pretty soon. And you know, when the lawn gets
going, we get some spring growth on it. Anything you can do to
stimulate and help that lawn be healthy is important. And the roots are where
the lawn lives. I mean that is, if the roots aren't happy,
no plant's happy. So you've got to make the roots happy first, and
green pro they do that I don't know if you've heard me talk about them
before, but green Pro does compost stop dressing, and they can do the
deep time aeration that punches the holes in the soil, pops the little plug
out and leaves it on the surface where it can melt away. They follow
that up. They got really cool machines that put the compost out for you,
and they know the right kind of compost to use, very fine texture
that settles in real well. And with that aeration and compost top dressing,
your lawn just it just gets better and better. And so you want to
give them a call and get a schedule. Get on the schedule so they
can do that. And all you have to do is go to greenpro dot
net greenpro dot net and you can find out more about their services, what
it costs, where they can where they can go, depending on how far
away you are. You know, there's a there's a little bit more of
a charge to get out to that location. But this is the kind of
service that probably does more for your lawn than any one single thing we do.
We know we got a water in the summer. We know we've got
to fertilize our launch to have good growth. But when you use green pro,
what you're doing is you're making the soil right for those roots to thrive.
And that is more than half the battle right there. And what do
we say all the time brown stuff for green stuff? Aeration and top dressing
is taking care of the brown stuff so the green stuff, that beautiful lawn
you want to have can really happen. I guess I'm going to become a
broken record, but I want you all to go, Okay, Guarden Line,
I know what he's gonna say. He's gonna say brown stuff before green
sale. Hopefully we can get that so into the psyche of all Houston area
gardeners that we just see much more success. One of the frustrating things for
me in helping people garden, and I've been doing this for a long time,
thirty five years with Texas A and m Agrolife Extension Service. I worked
in Missouri as a fruit grower advisor prior to that for a few years and
now continuing on radio on Garden Line doing the same thing. One of the
frustrations is someone who goes out and does something that has no hope of success
and then they call and how do I fix it. Now. I don't
mean don't call, Please call and let's fix it. We want to help
you have success, but I would rather have helped before whatever was done was
done, so we could help you get off the right feet. And here's
what this looks like. Someone who's you know, not really gotten into gardening,
but wants to. They go somewhere and it typically is going to be
some you know, big box store that has plants over on the side.
They go in to buy a hammer or whatever else. They see the plants.
They go over there. Oh they're pretty, you know, let's grab
them. They bring a flat home and they walk around the yard looking for
where to put them. Well, number one, are those plants even adapted
to here? Are the varieties even adapted to? Here? What condition are
those plants in? Our Mom and pops? They know how to take care
of plants, and they know how to get you the varieties and species that
do well here. Well, so you stand there, you look around,
where am I going to plant them? You scratch back the weeds in the
grass, You make a bed and you put them in it, and the
soil is not properly prepared, and then you wait and they struggle and the
next thing, weeds are in there, and by the time we get to
May or June, it is just basically weeds. So you just mow over
the whole thing and say I can't garden. That is wrong. You can
garden. You just started off wrong, and we want to help you start
with success. That's why I say brown stuff before green stuff. It's fun
buying plants, and we should. I mean, my gosh, I love
that, but take care of the soil. First broken record. But I'm
telling you I could sit here all day and tell you the best tomato varieties,
the best flower varieties, all that kind of stuff. But if you
don't do the other then you're just you're just spinning your wheels. Let's go
out to Manville and we're going to talk to eight off. Eight off.
I got a little bit of time here. How can we help Yes,
you're real quick. I know you've discussed it before. What I called the
fruit trees. They're small. Should I go ahead and uncover those? Yes?
Absolutely, And you don't need to cover them up. In fact,
once we're going to not have a freezing night, you don't need to cover
them up. You can pull that cover off. Okay, great, thank
you you met Well, that was fast and easy. Good luck out there
in Menville with your fruit trees. Uh uh, that's that is a that
is a good question. I appreciate people asking questions because, uh, you
know, it's what what is the deal that this is a thing about guys,
Right, we don't ask for directions. We refuse to ask for directions
and stuff. Well, I don't know if that's fully true, but some
of you are saying, oh, yes it is, yes it is.
But when when we get things we take care of and get them right,
it's just better. And and again I was, I was, you know,
harping on a minute ago about getting the soul ready before you plant.
Yeah, I want you to be inspired, have spring fever by plants come
home, make the place beautiful, have a beautiful, bountiful, healthy garden,
all of that kind of stuff. But just check a little bit and
be careful. Oh my gosh, social media, I don't know where to
start. I'm gonna not rant. That's my gift to you. But so
much stuff on social media is just flat wrong. It is just flat wrong.
Some of it is because it's for another area, not this area,
not your area. Some of it Some of it is because people become experts
overnight. Gardening and medicine seems to be the same thing. People that have
all this, do this, do that, you need this, you need
that, and they don't know what they're talking about. And it just is
frustrating because I watch people waste money in time and have disappointment because of that
kind of thing, and I don't want to see that. You don't want
to see that. Of course, that's why we have resources for you.
Aggie Horticulture website, Aggie hyphen Horticulture dot TAMU dot edu twenty and publications on
every vegetable you can imagine growing and fruit and herbs, and it's just on
and on and on. There lots of good information. Call Garden Line,
visit your county Extension office, your Egro Life Extension off you got one in
your county. We've got some some uh, We've got offices and all the
counties around here. We had a horticulturist down at Fort Bend County and Galveston
County and Brazoria County and Orange County and Harris County and Montgomery County and Brass
County. There's plenty of help out there to help you along the right We'll
be right back. Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of
the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome q kt r H Garden
Line with skip rictor it's trim just watch him as Welcome back to garden Line.
We are happy to have you with us today. What do we want
to talk about? You got a question, give us a call seven one
three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. We were talking earlier about recovering from the freeze, the
different kinds of things we can do for our plants. The bottom line is
all the top growth are a lot of it, depending on the plant was
frozen back, and so the plant's got to regrow that and that top growth
if it had leaves on it, if it was an evergreen for example,
or a winter annual for example, that kind of top growth was making carbohydrates
to strengthen and support that plan and help it do more growth, more blooms.
Now it's using stored carbohydrates to try to regrow. So, in other
words, bottom line, we've got to help our plants, got to take
care of them, making sure they have adequate nutrition. Mixing in a little
compost around them is always a good idea to do on plants. Also,
things like Medina plus Medina plus and Medina seaweed both are very helpful for plants.
They these two products are liquid. You can put them in a watering
can drench them over the soil when new growth begins. You can use them
as a folio or spray too, and that is very helpful as well for
the plants. But making sure that that root system as it begins to wake
up and push growth, has the nutrition that it needs. That's what's important.
And you know, some things are not going to grow for a good
while. They're just going to be sleepy heads and take a while before it
warms up enough to grow. Other things are going to bounce back pretty quick,
and so you just need to watch your plants, take good care of
them, make sure that whatever's in your power to do, you do.
And they know how to deal with this. Plants are designed for all kinds
of the vicissitudes of nature that they just find a way to bounce back.
And so I have great hope for that. Now. If it's if you
put a houseplant pathos ivy outside and it got down to twenty five degree or
something. Well, you can just do last rites and get rid of it.
But for most of our plants that are outdoors, there are a lot
of them. I think we're gonna have good, good results on this.
Let's head out to Brenham, Texas and we're going to talk to Dan.
Hello. Dan, Yes, I have a question about my bad yard from
the freeze. Who got down the ten eleven degrees? Have several nayses?
Brown, What do I do? And when do I do it? You
have Saint Augustine. Yes, for right now, just hang on that that
grass is not going to want to grow until it warms up. That you
can put fertilizer on it, water on it, not put what it's not
going to grow. Uh, temperature, that's what's going to make it grow.
We're gonna be that warms up. Yeah, is it is. It
starts to warm up, it'll start to wake up. Your grass is not
dormant like dormant trees are. It's the fancy word is quiescent. It is
sleeping. Uh, it's still alive. We have some warm Like if we
went through a week where we had seventy five degrees or so that grasp.
I would start making carbohydrates and you know, getting going and stuff a little
bit, and then it'll go back to sleep again, because it's not going
dormant, it's just it's just going to sleep with the temperature. So what
I would do is get ready to go on your spring fertilization. Some people
start really early on that. I generally wait until about the time I've mowed
the lawn twice. On my schedule, I've got April first is a time
to begin fertilizing in this area. If you're done in Galveston, you know
it's going to warm up sooner than it is if you're up in Huntskill listening
to the show, what about fruiting plants that got burned in the freeze if
you can, if you can stand to look at the ugly, just leave
it for low growing plants that just kind of turned to mush. That's a
protection for the base the crown of that plant. The other thing about pruning
is if you end up cutting into living woods, it stimulates growth, and
we may have enough freeze left in us and we don't want to stimulate it.
So if you can put up with looking at the ugly. The plant
will tell you where to prune. When spring huts, you'll see where the
buds come out, and that's where you prone to if you're patient. On
hey, do you have a copy of my lawn care schedule by any chance?
Dan? Yes? I do? Okay, good? Well on there
it lists when to fertilize and all your product options for synthetic and organic,
whichever you want to go. Okay, all right, have fun and Brunham
enjoy a bluebellt ice cream for me. Oh yes, you take care,
bye bye. That's that is some good ice cream right there. Let's go
to Caldwell and talk to Don. Hey, Don, is this Callwell,
Texas or Carwell County, Texas? All right, sir, how can we
help? Just have some questions about a few years ago my mother in law
has some guys come in and mow, and I think they brought grass birds,
and we don't have good grass at all. She planted some san augustine,
but it does come out in spots, but I didn't know whether to,
you know, just skim the top off and plant some soya, soysa
or whatever it is that I see in the magazines. But okay, it's
so tired of digging grass birds out of the carpet. Yeah, and also
about planning a garden. How to you know in sandy soil. I've planted
some tomatoes. I have great bushes and no tomatoes, so I don't know
what I'm doing wrong. Huh. All right, Well that that's a lot
of questions in one so let's uh. First of all, I was just
talking about my online schedules. There's a lawn care schedule, and there's a
lawn pest disease and weed management schedule, and they're at guard with Skip dot
com gardening with Skip dot com. They're free. You just print them out
or look at them on your computer and it tells you when to fertilize them
with what. And the main important thing coming into spring is getting that fertilizer
down for the lawn to get going. Now, the grass burds you kind
of have to catch twenty two on your hands. If you're gonna sod,
you don't want to sod after you put down the pre emergent because the pre
emergent stubs root growth, and that's how it kills the weed seeds trying to
get started and it will have the same effect on your side that you laid
on top. It's gonna have trouble getting roots down. So I would you
can do one or two things you can just I probably if you have to
sod. If you need to sod, I would go ahead and do that.
Maybe if you've got a bunch of things there, weeds and other things,
you would just kill everything so that you can level the ground out and
and put new sod down and get going fresh. And then as far as
things like grass, pro seeds and things, we can deal with them later.
But I'd say right now, unless you see sprigs of grass within you
know, ten twelve inches of each other, that you could get it to
refill in by the by midsummer, I think probably putting some new fresh grass
down. But if you have Saint Augustine, don't just put zoisia in it.
If you want to go to zeusia, get rid of everything and so
that zoysia sod can touch the soil, have good contact with the soil,
and you're not going to want You're not going to get much results from that
until it warms up a little bit more. Okay, do that answered?
Or did that just muddy the water. Well, so do I skim the
skim the top of the grass off to get what's there, and then read
resoil and then put the Saint Augustine down. I'll just switched to some of
the top of grass. Well, Saint Augustine is fine. If it's in
the shade, it's going to be your most shade tolerant. You know what,
Don, we are hitting a hard break. Can you hang on when
we come back. This is going to go on a little bit. Let's
let's finish this conversation in just just a minute. Thank you for hanging with
us. Uh, here's here's a break phone number seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. I will be right back. Welcome back to
garden Line. We're looking forward to visiting with you about the questions that you
want to talk about. Our phone number is seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. I'm going to go back to Calwell. We're visiting
with Don about some turf options. Don, Saint Augustine is the best turf
when you have a lot of shade. It's the most shade tolerant when you
get out in the sun. The challenge with Saint Augustine. You can grow
it, it just isn't as drought tolerant, and so Bermuda and Zuezia pass
it by in terms of drought tolerance out in the sun. Every grass has
its pros and cons, though there's not like one that's the one you got
to plant. Are you there? I am here. Okay, I've got
some shade, but it's not it's not massive. Okay, I've got big
sections of the yard that are full sunshine. Okay, well here, here's
here's the bottom line. It just kind of to bring it down to brass
tacks on the choice. Saint Augustine will take more shade, and it also
if you don't mow regularly, it still looks okay. Zoisia will also take
a decent amount of shade, so it probably would be okay in your spot.
It requires a sharp mower, and if you don't, if you cut
it down low, you have to use a real type mower like a barber
pole spiral blade as opposed to a propeller blade like standard mowers have. And
if you if you don't have a sharp blade on a propeller blade mower,
it tends to knock the Zoisia over and it gets a little lumpy when you
cut it a little higher rate. That would be And if you do zoysia,
I would do the broader leaf types of zoysia, the varieties like Jammer
and I'm trying to think of some of the more modern ones el Toro,
Jammer a couple of examples of those, but either one would do fine.
You just realize they all have their pros and cons. But if you're gonna
sod, you got to get that old stuff out of there. Randy used
to say kill, till and phil, meaning kill the kill, the weeds,
of grass, the everything, fill it up to level any areas out
and then or tillot if you need to loosen the soil up, level it
out real good, and then plant the grass on top. If you don't
need to do the leveling and everything, just get the organic matter off the
top. Like if you spray and kill weeds, you still have that dry
dead weed on top of the soil, so the sod can't touch the soil.
It sits on the dry dead weed. Do you see what I mean?
So you were talking about scraping it off that that would be helpful if
you could do that okay, Okay, Yeah, And if it's a perennial
weed though, that's where spraying is more important because you chop the top off
and it just comes back through there. Yeah. I think spraying killing first
and then killing and then repotting is going to be the best plan, probably
so, And I wouldn't get in a big hurry about it. Some of
the weeds that are a problem through the summer, they're going to be waiting
to really show up until it warms up a little bit. So let them
go ahead and come up, and then when you do get rid of them,
you can kind of get it all done, hopefully with one application and
be done with it and then whenever you can get that sod in and get
it laid. So last question, what about gar name? What's the without
buying a hundred sacks of it? Because I was gonna do a pretty deepent
area where I could do some tomatoes and yeah, for a variety of plants
that we eat every every day, okay, and especially beats. I was
interested in beats because there's health health issues. How big of an area are
you looking at? Probably twenty four Okay, Yeah, it's going to take
a bit to do that. By the way, if you go to Airloom
Soil's website, they have a calculator on there that is really helpful. And
the calculator you can tell it you know what size area and how deep you
want to put the stuff, and it tells you exactly how any qbicyards you're
going to need, and you probably want to do. That's Airlooms Soilsoftexas dot
Com calculator. Find out how much you need and you're gonna want to buy
a bulk for that big of an area, and so you know that way
you can go ahead and get it spread out and mix it in a little
bit with the soil you have, and then keep building it up with the
quality bed mix. If you can get it up probably about ten inches eleven
inches or so that that ought to be enough for putting in the bed and
so you can order it. You know our soil yards down here in the
Houston area. Transportation is the big cost, and so getting it all the
way out to Caldwell, Texas is going to get a little cost prohibitive.
But you can talk to the folks at Airloom find out what they have,
or Nature's way is up in Conro area, that would be another option.
Or since you're in callwell the recycle place gosh, I can't say the name
of it up up there north and just to the west and north of Brian,
Texas is pretty close to you. You got to go get it.
But they have a compost up there that I've checked. It's a good compost
and if you go get it, you can do that. That's probably the
most convenient for you. But you could talk to our soil yards and get
a price on what it would cost to get one of our good mixes,
like a veggy mix up to your area too. Okay, Well, I've
got to try rock and get Okay, get that soil. Yeah, I
just I can't say the name. It's the same name as the landfill up
there, and it's escaping me at the very moment, but it is north.
There's a thing called Lake Brian that's up north and west of Brian,
uh and it's it's out real close to that the facility Twin Oaks, Twin
Oaks, Twin Oaks landfill and just just hunt it down online and you can
find it. Okay, it's called it's called twin Oaks, like two Oak
trees twin oaks. Yeah, it's close. They don't deliver, they just
make it. It's part of the recycling program for those communities up there,
and so that that is yeah for you. I think that might be the
easiest thing to do. All right, Well, I appreciate your show.
Thank you for doing a great job. We appreciate it. Thanks, sir.
I appreciate your call very much, very much. You know the the
uh folks at Southwest Fertilizer. I was visiting with them yesterday and they are
on the verge of getting a product in all kinds of new things. If
you need past control, disease control, weed control, they've got all the
fertilizers. They're sitting there waiting for you. I mean, do you need
early weed control. We'll be talking about that soon. Do you need,
you know, to do some fertilizing of your lawn or whatever. They've got
it all Southwest Feed or Southwest Fertilizer rather now they're on Bisonet, a corner
of Bisonet and Runwick in Houston. It's it's not hard at all to find
them. If you want to get them a call seven to one three six
six, six seventeen forty four. I was just in yesterday admiring their seed
collection. They've they've got all kinds of packets of seed, but they have
these bulk binds, and you're not going to do better on a price for
seed than bulk bends. You just have a little scoop in there, and
you scoop it out and put it in a little envelope. And it is
the most economical way to plant a vegetable garden for sure. And they're stocked
up well in that, but it's just going to continue to get better and
better. If they don't have it at Southwest Fertilizer, you don't need it
because they pretty much have everything you can imagine, certainly everything that I would
recommend here on Garden Line. We're going to head out to Katie now and
talk to Roy. Hello. Roy, Hey, thanks for taking my call.
I just I have a couple of real quick questions. The first time
ever. I'm getting ready to do some container fruit trees that I'm gonna buy
from the county in I guess in a couple of weeks, okay, and
I want to get I want to get my containers ready. What is the
best mix that you you know, soil, mixed and everything that you would
suggest. And then my part beat to that is I read the I went
to the A and M web page that you suggested and everything, and they
talk about the biggest problem of overwatering. So can you kind of give me
some detail on how not to make sure I don't overwater? Yeah, in
containers, the way you don't overwaters you use a mix. It drains well
and you make sure you have lots of holes in the bottom of that container
where water can drip right out if it gets too wet, so that that
is important. If it's in the ground, that's a different discussion. But
in containers, there are a number of mixes. I've grown things like that.
In rose soil, I've grown it. There's also a couple of fruit
mixes. The folks set Nature's Way up in the conroad direction and out at
airloomsils both have a mix for that. You can buy it by the bag.
If you're doing containers, you don't need to buy it by the bulk.
So they're going to be for sale around you. So you know out
there in Katie you got some ace hardware stores that are going to have that
kind of material. Real handy make it real easy for you. Remember to
give them as much soil as you can. I don't know specifically the fruits
are growing, but any fruit in a container has a confined root system.
In the ground, it would have roots going way out in all directions.
In a container, it's confined. So the more soil you give them,
the less drought stress, moisture stress, and nutrient stress you're going to have
because they have a bigger volume for that soil bank account. Yeah, it's
going to be mostly the liming and oranges. But I'm I'm really tempted that
I saw there they sell an apple tree that does only needs one hundred hours
of cold. I guess can that apple tree you think work in a container?
Well? It it it could. I don't know what rootstock it's on.
There are some dwarfing rootstocks, oh gosh, the M seven M nine
M seven would be examples of apple dwarfing rootstocks that would help. I tell
you one thing, though, an apple we're outside the range of apples.
You can grow them here, but the variety choices and the fruit quality and
things aren't always what you might be hoping for. A lot of other fruit
we can do better with. But if you're determined to grow an apple once
like that or the way you need to go. Okay, well, thank
you very much for your help. I really appreciate it. All right,
Roy, thank you. I appreciate your call very much, and we'd like
to talk to the rest of you as well. Our phone number is seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're going to go to
Nikki for the news here and we'll be right back. Welcome back to Gardenline.
We're glad you're with us today. What are we going to talk about?
You tell me seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You know, we've been
talking about this rain, this excessive amount of rain that we got in a
lot of parts of the area. I was talking to the folks at Anti
Crosing Porium yesterday at the OBA Science Day event, by the way, that
was a great event put on by the Organic Horticulture Benefits Alliance and visiting with
folks at Antie and they got like fourteen inches of rain up there. That's
a lot, I know, a lot. You know. You get up
around tom Ball and whatnot. There's areas run seven inches and as you go
down south, I think, oh three four five six inches, and a
lot of areas around here depends on where you are, but that was a
lot. So what happens, Well, we we got to get that water
away from our plant roots. And I did a Facebook post that talks about
five different things you can do to help improve the roots situation get that water
away, And that's at the garden Line Facebook page, which I hope you
will like and join and follow. But another issue with that rain is our
is the soils shifting. You know, this summer, it got incredibly dry
and the soil shrunk up. Our clay soil shrink and swell. They shrink
and swell. When they get dry, they get shrinked. They shrink.
When they get wet, they swell and boy are they ever swollen now.
And that is that rex havoc on our foundations, the home foundation and your
driveway, your sidewalks. It does it all And fix my slab. They
are specialists in this. They know what they're doing. Uh, they've been
doing this for thirty or twenty three years. Ty Strickland of the folks give
them a call to eight one two five five forty nine forty nine. If
you see cracks in your sheet rock or in your bricks on the outside,
give tie a call to eight one two five five forty nine forty nine,
or go to fixmslab dot com. Listen when they do it, tell them
your guardline listener. Free estimates for gardenline listeners, and they're committed to a
fair price. They show up on time the way we like to say it
is on time, fair price fixed. That's fixmslab dot com. That's Tys
Tricklin and fix my slab foundation repair. We're going to head now out to
sugar Land and talk to Greg. Hello. Greg, Yes, one would
be the best time for me to put that barricade down. Well, yeah,
that's an excellent question. On my schedule, I talk about applying pre
emergence. You can begin in mid January and go all the way through February.
I generally focus on February. Here's the deal. Every year, the
lawn weeds of different species are sprouting at various times, and so it's not
like we go, you know, black and white, like today's too early,
tomorrow's on time. It depends on the year. But for those of
you that are further south in like sugar Land, then going a little earlier
is fine for listeners that are further up north. And you know, waiting
into February is good too. So I would say probably not. Hey Greg,
are you there? Yes? Okay, So I would get it down
Let's say sometime toward the end of January here, early February for your area
would be just fine. Remember you have to water it in with about a
half inch of rain just to move it, or irrigation just to move it
into the soil surface. Now, I know the last thing you want to
do today is irrogate, but it's going to dry out a little more,
and when it does, get that down. But you got to move it
off the granules into the soil surface. That's where it's able to control weed
seats. Okay, okay, So I'm going to have to work it in
just with water, just a little bit of water. We'll get it in.
Okay. Yeah, that's all you got to do. That's all.
You don't have to scratch it down or you don't want to scratch it in
or anything. Just water and it'll go in. And listen, Greg,
when you're using any pre emergent control, including barricade. Follow the label carefully
when you start going. If a teaspoon's good, a tablespoon's better, you
can do damage and you want to follow the labels so it does what it's
supposed to do and no more. Okay, alrighty, thank you so much.
Thank you appreciate that call very very much. See we're going to go
now out to northwest Houston and talk to Donald. Hello. Donald, Oh,
how are you glad to be up? I'd like to ask you a
question about over airating the soil after it's been growing hay for a couple of
years and now it's stagnant. And I have a five foot wide one and
twenty six spike six inch spike roller and can you over airrate? Can you
like make too many holes in the ground? No, not really. But
what happens when you airrate is there is some grass plant damage. You know,
if that's spine comes down right up on top of a grass runner or
something, you know, you get some wounding there. So we don't want
to go more than what we need to do. And I would think one
time over should be good. If you wanted to crisscross and do it back
the other way, that'd be fine. Right. Well, we had fifty
had a cattle on there or so, and they aerate it with their feet
pretty good, make holes and all that. But now that it's wet out,
when it's dry in the summer, you can't aerate it all because it's
you know, the clay as hard as a rock. Yeah, And you
can fill up this drum to you with water. It's five feet by about
twenty inches around, so you can bring it up to about one thousand pounds
I guess whatever. Ye fifty gallons of waterways And so the only thing that
had been growing there is was hay, but that was we stopped cattle and
with auctioned the cattle and now have the hay field about thirty acres. And
that would have been in the year nineteen so nineteen twenty twenty two, so
it's been three or four years since there's been any cattle walking on it.
And we don't want to grow anything. We don't what to grow on it.
I was thinking about putting getting BlackBerry bushes that are thornless and plant them
and then the birds eat the blackberries and they spread them out all over the
place, and then you have free blackberries. You know, never heard that
one before. Well, I'm not a pastor, guy Donald. Is this
in Harris County? In love Lady Texas? Love Lady? What county is
that? Lovely? Houston County? Houston County. You have a Houston County
Extension office up there, and I would call your ag agent in Houston County.
I've not heard of like air raiding pastures like that. I'm it's just
because that's not my area. But talk to your county extension agent in Houston
County. I can't think of the guy's name right now, but he can
talk to you about that better. But yeah, you're right. When the
soil gets dry, you need a jackhammer to airrate. You can't do it.
And the purpose of it is also to keep it from puddling up,
because if you do go out there to mow and you've got you know,
puddles, the puddles will stay there and you don't need to get your tractor
stuck in a puddle of mud. And then the harder you pull it,
the deeper it goes. And yeah it is. We have one tractor that's
John Dearwood four wheel drive, a great, big monster tractor. You know,
so all right, that one gets through anything, but we don't need
to pull that little roller behind that great big tractors. Well, yeah,
that makes sense, but yeah, I just that's about as far as I
can advise you. But I do appreciate the call and good luck with that.
Sounds like you have a nice little piece of property out there. Thank
you, thank you very much. I'm going to have to run. It's
time for a break here. Our phone number is seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
We'll be right back after the break. Call Josh and get you on
the boards and you can be first up. Welcome back to Garden Line.
Thanks for listening today. Now I look outside and I see lots of clouds,
but I'm telling you those clouds are staying on the move, and we
have asked them to hold and not drop any water, and they've agreed to
that. The weather man even agrees with that. And so here we are.
Tomorrow we're going to get some sun and patches through today. It's a
good day to be outside getting some things done. Tomorrow is gonna be downright
sunny even, and boy do we ever have a good week. This week,
it's warming up considerably, and so that reminds me. When the temperatures
start going up, we start to think about things like what's happening with the
plants, including the weeds. Those are plants too. When the soil temperature
it's a certain point, depends on the weeds. Some weeds it's around fifty
five degrees, some weeds it's a little warmer. That's when we start to
see weed seed germination, and getting ahead of those with something to prevent the
weed seeds from establishing is important. It's easier to deal with it that way
than to have weeds growing in and among your grass plants. And now we're
trying to kill weeds binochiar grass. That then we start running into some challenges
depending on the weed and the species of grass that you have. And so
pre emergence season is upon us. It doesn't mean you have to get it
out today by any means, but it's coming up here, and so it
wouldn't hurt for those of you who are further south down Galveston direction. That
would be an earlier application because all it takes is, you know, a
few days of the right temperature like a week like we're going into and we
may start to see some germination occurring. Normally, I would say put your
pre emergence down in February because that's when that usually gets us ahead of most
of the weeds. But when I say in February, I really mean early
to mid February. And here's the trade off. When you put a product
down, it you watered in and it moves into the soil. So when
a weed seed germinates it, it prevents that little route from establishing. They
work different ways, but that's one way, and it prevents the root from
establishing. And so if you wait until the weed has already put down a
route and is growing, then unless you catch it really early in the process,
you're not going to have any effect. It's like swinging at a baseball
after the catcher's already holding it in. Is MIT a little bit too late
then, so you want to do it ahead of that. Now, for
those of you further north you start to getting up, let's say you go
as far as Conroe, Bryan College Station, certainly Huntsville up in those areas,
we're looking at more of an endo February type of application for getting those
down most years, but remember every year is different, and so just be
aware. That's why I'm saying and said it last week and I'm saying it
today. Go ahead and get the products that you need. They'll wait until
the day you want to apply them. To go get them, I mean,
you can do that, but get them and have them there on hand
ready to go, so when the time comes, you're ready to apply them.
Now. If you have not bookmarked my website, I encourage you to
do that because on there, number one, I write things from time to
time. I'm about to post one on soil testing. It's coming up in
the next few days. But up there you'll find the long care Schedule,
which talks about fertilizing, air rating, mowing, and watering your lawn for
success. It gives you stuff to do from January to December. It lists
the products that you would apply. It even as a link to the soil
test forms. And then there's the Lawn Past, Disease and Weed Management schedule
that does just that. What insects occur in our typical lawns here, and
when do they occur and what do you do about them? What diseases occur
and when do they occur? And what do you do about them? What
about weeds? Oh my gosh, what about preventing them with a pre emergent
or killing them with a post emergent? What do you do? How do
you go about that? It's all there on the schedule. And again,
if you choose synthetic, choose organic options, the options are there for you
and I encourage you. And all that is that gardening with Skip dot com.
Gardening with Skip that's me dot com and you can find that and more.
Like been talking for a while about new updates coming, and boy do
we ever have a lot of new updates that are coming to the website.
So I've been talking about talking about fruit trees, talking about talking about and
I'm going to talk about it. Fruit trees are one of the really cool
things we can add to our landscapes. And when I say fruit trees,
I mean fruit trees, vines and bushes, grape vines, blueberry bushes,
BlackBerry bushes, and then all the different kinds of fruit trees that we have.
And winter is a great time to plant those container grown bear root.
There's a lot of bear root now I know, buchanans and the heights has
just gotten their ship the first shipment of the the bear root fruit trees.
They've got peaches, they've got plums, they've got pears, they've got a
lot of other things as well. Uh, And so you know you can
you can go that root. You can also purchase from them plants that are
in containers. And so however you go about it, you want to first
think about what fruit do you want to grow and do you have a good
spot. And a good spot for fruit generally centers on two things. Is
it well drained and if the area is not well drained, create a big
mound to grow it on. It could be about a foot high, or
you can have a container about you know, foot or so deep a box.
I say a container, I mean you know a box. You can
use landscape timbers or whatever you want to make a box. Or you can
grow them in something like a vego bed, a big ring a vego bed
could be done. But you want to have plenty of drainage for the roots.
Number two, you want to have sunlight because listen, on fruit trees,
we're growing them for the fruit, not for the foliage. And so
in order to have fruit, you need sun shine. Shining on leaves to
make carbohydrates. You can grow a peach tree in quite a bit of shade.
It'll be spindley and it'll never give you peaches. But if you put
it in sun you get the peaches, which that's why we're growing them.
So drainage and sunlight. Those are the two most important things. Right with
them is a good variety, and you want to pick varieties that do well
here. And we don't have time to go into all of those, but
you go to a quality nursery, a mom and pop nursery like Buchanans,
and you're going to be able to find exactly the varieties you want because they're
not going to sell you stuff that doesn't do well here. That's not how
mom and pops stand business. Now. Buchanans is on eleventh Street in the
Heights, and by the way, today after my show today, they're going
to have a program on going native there. It's a free program, free
class at Buchanans from ten to eleven am. In fact, you could go
to that and then run down and see me at the four Bend the brass
Is Garden showing for it, Ben. But those classes are free and Native
is so important. You know, we dealt with all this rain that we've
had and struggling through that. We don't have to worry about about rain when
we plant a plant that likes to be in wet conditions. And a good
example, and this is a native is button bush Buchan and sells button bush.
Button bush makes a very large shrub with beautiful little button like blooms,
very unusual looking blooms. And it's also a butterfly plant too as well,
So ask them about that when you go by there. I was talking with
Dean Nelson Nelson Fertilizer the other day and we were discussing their new Genesis Tramps
Plant Mix. Genesis Transplant Mix, what is that. That's a six one
three fertilizer designed to aid in that relocation process. You mix it in with
the mix that you're going to plant in and it helps get them off to
a good It's got beneficial bacteria, it's got indo and ecto microreizo fungi which
helps the roots with nutrients. It's got humates to help the soil, got
a lot of other nutrients that encourage enzyme production and just enhances the biology of
the soil. As well. That's a nutri Star Genesis transplant mix. I'm
going to bring I believe almost a dozen bottles or jars of that down to
the Fort Bend or the Brasis Garden show in Fort Bend at the Fort Bend
Center, and I'll be giving those away. We're gonna have some sort of
little way to figure that out as to who would win one of those,
But come down, let's visit. I'll be down there after the show today.
I'm gonna start giving a talk at twelve. I'll do another one at
one o'clock with basically lots of Q and a bring me samples and stuff,
and who knows, maybe you'll win one of the nutri Star Genesis transplant mixes
from the folks at Nelson's Fertilizers. I have some saw mix and I'm planting
putting the Genesis in for my transplanting that I'm about to be doing in some
things. And I always like that, by the way, when you're out
shopping and doing then else it's their turf Star weedonator. That's another one that's
timely. It kills existing weed that is not a pre emergent. It kills
those little winter broad leaves that are about to take off and grow like crazy.
That's a turf star Weedlater, Well, we're glad you're listening to garden
Line today. We're going to come back. I've got another hour here before
we head out. We'll be back again tomorrow morning. If you have friends
or family, or even people from other areas they're interested in the garden Line,
tell them about it. Tell them that it is a way to learn
a lot about gardening. Maybe they don't live right here, but we have
a lot of good general advice on gardening. Maybe the exact fruit tree I
tell you a plant doesn't apply in Atlanta. Yeah, we had some of
them from Atlanta listening last week, and typical we get those kind of calls.
But they can also they can listen live online at the kg r H
website, or they can get their iHeart app and just subscribe to garden Line
and you can listen there. You can also listen to pass shows there,
which is kind of helpful. Well, we're glad you're a listener. Take
our little break and we'll be right back, Katie r H. Garden Line
does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program.
Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip rictor Crazy Trip. You just
watch him as things Supt. Bazy Welcome back, well, come back to
Garden Line. We have put in an order for the rain to stop,
for sunshine to arrive. The rain is gone. It's not supposed to rain
anymore for us this weekend. And that's good news because we got a lot
of get out in garden getting our supplies and our plants and all kinds of
things ready to go to do this weekend. And now the clouds are going
to be kind of passing through today. Don't worry. They're a little soggy
bottom looking. But like I said, the weatherman has assured me that we're
done with the rain for now. Tomorrow, big sunny day and it's going
to chill out a little bit. I think you may have heard that on
the weather I was just kind of looking into the weather and what's to be
expected. And we've got Sunday night gonna drop down some cool temperatures. That's
that little front kind of pushing things a little cooler for us. Some of
you in the northern parts of the listening area are going to get pretty close
to frostable temperatures. You know, you can have a frost above thirty two
degrees. That's kind of an interesting fun fact too for another day. Uh,
it's gonna hit down around thirty six here in the Houston some parts of
the Houston area low cold or farther north. So just hang on to that
froshcloth just in case you need. It might get down to that temperature.
But oh my gosh, what a day. Sixty six sixty eight seventy,
sixty eight seventy that's wonderful temperatures right there. Lots of good things can happen
out in the garden. Let's head, We're going to go ahead and start
taking some calls here. Our phone number is seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four, and let's go to Lake Conroe. Talk to d
Hello, d Hi, how are you doing well? Thank you? Good
good. I have had marillas and lots of them, and all of the
stems, the foliagees all on the ground. Now, So what do you?
What do you suggest I do? First? Tell me what to do?
Well, if it were mine, I would just ignore them and leave
them alone. Yeah, that dead mush on top is just going to be
a little protective cover. If we were to have another good hard freeze,
which could happen, it'll be there to protect it. If you can't if
you get stand the look of it, can't, as we say, learn
to tolerate ugly for a little while. Then you can pull it all out
of there, cut it out of there. And but I would be ready
to throw a little compost or mulch over those bulbs, because if we do
have another co front, you don't have that protective mush, dried mush on
top, and so you're going to have to do a little more to protect
them. Very good, Okay, I'll do that. I'll just and just
deteriorate or I should never never clean it up. Oh, you can clean
it up a little bit later. You know, new growth will start to
push up out of there and you can get it out of there. I
just like to get us past. You know, right now we expect another
freeze. You know, we're still at a point where it would be probably
more likely then we'll have another cold snap. Then we won't. But you
can't predict the weather, so we just kind of prepare. Among those people
that's kind of conservative about that stuff, do I wear a belt and suspenders
just in case. That's yeah. If you want to gamble and run with
scissors, hey, go for it. You can do it either way.
Another question I have is about Pride of Barbados yesterday. Maybe I did it
too early, but in the past I've always cut them way down and it
comes in the original plants probably fifteen years old, and it grows real tall
to six feet and all of the buds and blooms are you know, have
been off since maybe August or September or something like that or October, I
don't remember. But anyway, I cut them way back as I have done
in the past, and they come out from the base of the original.
Oh it's huge now, about one and a half feet wide, you know,
are around And was that too early to do that? No, you
can do that. The freeze we had probably took it all the way to
the ground. For Pride of Barbatas. I even throw a little bit of
a kind of a multi composting material over the base going into winter, just
to protect that crown so they can can reach sprout from there. But they
will, and most of this area here, it's it's mild enough to where
we don't have to worry about them. There. They're slow to wake up,
though I like to put it there. They are as they sleep as
late as a teenager on Saturday morning, and so when when it gets to
about late May, they're interested in starting to grow, you know, So
don't don't give up on them if you don't see sprouts. And that would
be true with chrysanthemums. They're all butting out new growth. Now. Yeah,
yeah, just just wait. You know, when you prone, it
stimulates new growth, and so it's gonna you know, let let's not encourage
growth just yet because growth new tender growth, and then here comes another freeze.
That's not a good comment. Okay, Well I'll wait until later,
maybe later end of February or into March or something, and I need to
transplant a bunch of them if I have a lot of them. Good.
Yeah, Well is your pride of Barbados. I bet it's beautiful in the
summertime, Oh my gosh. Yes, Well I'll live them a golfwell on
one of the holes. But it's right on the lake too, and everyone
stops by and talks about my Peggy Martin roses, and it's absolutely beautiful.
They hang over the wall. You're doing everything right. You must hang out
at A and A plants and produce because they're down the street from you.
I go everywhere, and I started a lot of them. I love the
way you said last week or the week before that, I don't. I
can't listen to all of it because I don't wake up better. But today
I'm at a point because I needed to know about the marillas and other things.
Nada. I thought we could be friends, but now I just found
out. You're not even willing to sell an alarm clock to get up to
hear me first thing, so you don't miss a single word. I'm sorry
you come on too early. And today I thought with a fifteen and I
said, get out of the bed and don't listen to the Hey, I
agree with you. I come on too early the time the alarm clock goes
off in the morning. I won't even tell you what time I have to
get up to get ready and get up. I've got so other gosh,
what does he think is awake so early in the morning. Maybe you'd be
surprised. You would be surprised. A lot of people are morning people.
All right, question now about Roses, You talked about roses one time on
my way to churches when I listened to you on Sunday. But anyway,
you talked about roses, and I have three beautiful hybrid pink roses. They're
just bigger than the saucer when they bloom, and one of them has been
there for probably going on a year and a half. Uh huh, I've
got I've got about thirty seconds, so let me say about it. I'd
like that what moved, and also the prunem I think you said later in
the month, So that's what I'll do. D do it do it a
S A P. Because we're planning bear route now, so what you're going
to be is digging it up and having a bear root plant that you put
right back in the ground, settle the soil watered in good and it should
be good. Hey d thank you. I've enjoyed the call. Good good
luck up there in the Lake Conroy area with your plants. We're going to
take a break when we come back. We've got some folks on the line
if you'd like to call seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
All right, you're back with the garden line, and we got some
people to talk to. Here, we're going to run right out to let's
see. Start off, we're going to go to the heights and talk to
Mike. Hello, Mike good Martin. Yeah, pow are you? I'm
well, sir, good sir. I got a question. After all this
rain we have had all week long, and yesterday, of course, I
was wondering, is it time can I put shredded mult around my shrubs in
the front yard or do they need to dry out more? Or any time?
I can see the the the the piping of my sprinkler system, and
I wanted to kind of cover that and maybe cover the base of the plants
just before the next freeze or cold spell. Yeah, either one would be
fine. Mike, don't worry about it. I mean, if you want
to leave it open, let a little more evaporation from the surface, But
that's going to be kind of a minor thing that takes time, especially in
the temperatures we're about to go into. So anytimes a good time to put
the mulch out, okay, So I could go ahead, and a good
time to do it now, yeah you could, okay. Also, I
liked your earlier this morning. You mentioned our Saint Augustine is sleeping, it's
resting. Yeah, it gives me hope. That's right, Well I took
it osh. Saint Augustine took a real hit last year on the summer,
so it's going to be interesting seeing what all we're dealing with this year.
So it's taken two hits, one from the drought and then one then that's
all this rain we've got there, you go, All you need to do
is throw in a bunch of dogs to trapes it down all day long and
a handful of maybe a invite the kindergartens from the local preschool to stomp through
it a little bit. Well, let me ask you this. I've got
I have a yard man who comes to here and I call it the chariot.
It's a big, tall riding line. More that he stands up off
Should he stay off of that right now? While that grass is in that
condition, Well, it's more the soil. Now, those particular mowers have
pretty good you know how snowshoe distribute your weight so your foot doesn't go right
down through the snow. They do a pretty good job of that kind of
thing. So they don't compact the soil like a little narrow blade or wheel
wood, or like your foot stomping down on the soil. I rather not
pound on the soil whenever it's it's wet. But I think that's if they
need to get in there to most something right now, it'd be mowing weeds
though, really because the grass is Yeah, so if they could hold off,
that's fine. But uh, those mowers are not too bad about that,
Okay, so maybe we'll hold off on it all. Yeah. And
if you feel like you have some silk compaction when we get into spring a
little bit there, you know, call the folks at Greenpro have them come
out and do a deep time aeration and that fixes it. Yeah. Good
idea approach. You may need that already. Okay, Well, thank you
so much, and you've given me hope. Thank you, Mike. I
appreciate your call very much. Let's see, we are now going to go
talk to Charles out in Deer Park. Hello, Charles, good morning.
How are you starting. I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How can
we help you? Just got a quick question. Got a quick question about
my milk weed. I grow Texas native milkweed out in the backyard. Thirty
forty plants, froze last year, pulled it all up, replanted, froze
again this year. No big deal. Will it come back or do I
need to cut it and pull it? Is this the one that has the
orange flowers, yes, and the red and the little red and orange flowers
for the monarchs okay, the native Okay, So that one should be a
perennial comeback. Really, so if I just trim it back to six inches
or something like that, maybe if you need to, yeah, cutting it
back. I'm trying to just My only hesitation is making sure I'm thinking about
the same species you're talking about, because there's a lot of different different types
of milk weed. But yeah, that was the only one I can buy.
It's the only one I can buy here in Houston. I go over
to the Heights someplace I forgetting out exactly the name of it. Well,
yeah, I think you'll be fine. I just wait and watch let nature
take its course on it. Yeah, okay. Because the one that's a
little lower growing and has big clusters of little orange blooms, that is the
Asclepias tuberosa, And it is one that is a perennial that we'll returned.
Yeah, this grows. I've got some stalks that are six foot long,
I mean, so they don't fall over the dry so they don't fall over
the walkway, and and that kind of thing. Okay, we're not talking
about the native. Maybe there's a there's a swamp milk weed, there's a
periri milk weed. There's a number of difference. The one in most gardens
is tropical milkweed, and it has skinny, little pencil sized stalks that come
up to the heights you talked about, and they'll have a little cluster at
the end. Now that's that's not a native. That's that is a introduced
species. And a lot of times it if you had it mulched, if
it may have made it through the freeze. Otherwise it probably killed it.
But that thing received so much that it's going to be coming back somewhere.
I have little stalks popping up all over the yard, and that's fine because
that's going to get mowed every week. Yeah, well I would aad.
I've got about a thirty foot bed or so that I grow it in.
All right, Well I would, Yeah, I would just kind of wait
and see it. It's gonna it's gonna show up again it volunteers a lot.
Yes it does, Yes, it does. All right, Thank you
very much. Thank you, Charles. Appreciate appreciate your phone call very much.
Let's see where we're going to go. Now, let's go to West
Houston and talk to Jim. Hello, Jim, Hey, Skip, good
to talk to you. I got a question for you. Uh dot Condra
in my yard? What's the best way to spot treat that? You can
buy a product that has a blend of different ingredients in it. Something called
trimech is an example that has three as the name implies, it has three
different herbicides to put together in it. Make sure it's label for your lawn
spray with that. There are some other products like celsius we use, especially
as the temperature gets warmer. Some of those things that we could get away
with in late winter early spring become problematic in damaging your lawn when the weather
gets too hot, so we switch over to something called celsius, like the
temperature celsius. So that would be those would be two options. The folks
that Nelson have their turf star weedonator. If you wet the lawn or catch
it when it's wet and then put that out it sticks to the grass leaves.
You don't want to do it during a rainstorm or right before a rainstorm.
You just want it to be damp, so the little granule stick to
the weed leaves and it would kill them. And then it also has a
very slow release fertilizer that's going to take a while to Yeah, I'm sorry.
The reason I'm asking now is, you know, with the threes and
the rain and it's the greenest thing in my yard, I fever really worried
about too much. But it's so easily easy to see right now. It
would be pretty easy for me to you know, you pop up sprayer and
and you know, just hit this stuff out right now where you can see
it in the past. I'm kind of the genre. If it's green,
I just cut it. But I can take care of this stuff right now
because I can see it. Yeah. Well, bon Night and and furlom
both make a a good product. The fur looms, I believe, is
called weed free Zone and I say in the right number name on that uh.
And the bon Night is weed Beater Ultra. And either of those can
be mixed in water in your sprayer and you can spray just follow them labor
and be careful because it kills. It kill broadleaf things, so you spray
it on broadly flowers and they'll kill them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
that's why I wanted to get down right on top of it. Why I
can say it'd be really easy to treat this week with the weather kind of
drying out. Yeah, it would, and we're going to get some warmer
temperatures. That's another thing on these post emergent herbicides is if the weed is
in a dormant or a quiescent state where it's really not growing due to temperature,
for example, they don't work as well, and so you may have
better luck when the weeds are you know, kind of coming alive and waking
up because the temperature is more suitable. Go, I'm I'm wasting my time
to do it right now. You think on the dichondra. With the week
we're having, I might give it a shot and see how that works.
We're going to get up around seventy for two or three days here after we
go through the cold spell. Don't spray to day after we go through the
culture. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna get it like middle of next
week or something after it dried out pretty good. Yeah, yeah, that's
right. All kay, good luck, Thanks love love your show. Thanks
sir, I appreciate that. I appreciate that those of you out there in
Kingwood. I was talking to somebody king with the other day. You've got
Warren's Garden Center, Warren's Southern Gardens, you know it if you live out
there, and you've also got Kingwood Garden Center. You got two garden centers.
Room really handy there for you live in out that area. Warrens is
stocked up on all the things you need to help your plants recover and get
back growing again from the freeze. So that would be things like that Microlife
three way combo where we talk about ocean harvests drenching the plants and then following
that with a six four green bag fertilizer, and then about a week later
drenching again with the ocean harvest. That ocean harvest is going to give them
some immediate availability of nutrients. It's a fish fertilizer. The sixty four is
more of a little bit longer term. Now Warrens has got that. They
have all kinds of fertilizer we talk about here on Garden line. They've got
the mulches and the soil mixes and the everything you need. They even have
some extra restock on frostcloth. I believe to check that. Check them out
about that. They got plenty of seeds, plenty of seeds ready to go
for your spring gardens. So, I mean, you know, if you've
ever been out to Warrens, there's always something going on there. There's always
a lot of just really cool flowers and vegetables and plants and whatnot. And
they have great classes out there that you need to sign up for their list
to get notified about things. I always love to go out and visit at
Warrens and Kingwood, a garden center out there in that area. The you
know, in spring we get we get the spring fever a little bit early,
I think, and so when we do that, we tend to kind
of get a rush and go and do things. And I always tell people,
no way to plant your tomatoes. Don't plan them now. But you
go somewhere and they'll be tomatoes for sale, you know some places. Well
if you end up unable to resist and you buy them, you're gonna have
to bring them home and you have to pot them up. In a little
bigger container and grow them for a while, get them plenty of light,
as much light as you can, and bump them up once or twice until
there's time to plant tomatoes. But timeliness is really important on all of those
things. Hey, I wonder tell you about an event. I mentioned it
last week, but on February eighth, the Fort Ben County Extension Office Boon
Holiday and the team out there, they are going to have the thirty thirty
ninth annual Fort Ben Regional Vegetable Conference. So if you're a commercial grower or
if you're a homeowner that just likes to grow vegetables, there is a day
full of information at a really good price. I mean if you, let's
see about forty bucks at this point for registration and you can just contact the
Extension office out there to get more information on it. That is on February
eighth. That's an all day thing at the Fort the Fort Ben Regional Vegetable
Conference, So I think you ought to check it out. I've spoken out
there before. By the way. The website is Fort Ben dot agralife dot
org, Fort Bend dot a g R I L I f E dot org.
Great event it's time for Nicky and the news. Give us call seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden Line.
You know, we've talked about a lot of different things today, but
one thing I haven't talked about is our trees. Most of your trees are
dormant right now. We've got things like live oaks that have green leaves on
them all through the wintertime. But we're in the big middle right now pruning
season. And before you turn your trees loose to anybody, know that that
person has to be a professional that knows what they're doing. The guy that's
stuck the business card in your door and owns a pickup and a chainsaw,
they can do more damage. They can do permanent damage. The tree never
fully recovers from a bad pruning job. Martin Spoon Moore Affordable Tree. They
know what they're doing. Martin's been doing this for a very long time,
about thirty years now in the Houston area. You can get Martin to call
at seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven one three six
nine nine two six sixty three. Write that down or go to the website.
Eight Fftree service dot Com. Now you want to get on the schedule.
Anything that is going to be done too and around your trees, Martin
needs to be part of it. And here's why. If somebody is going
to put in a new water line, an irrigation system or you know,
trench, if you're going to add a new slab or driveway over part of
the root system, if anything like that that's going to be done around them,
you need to call Martin to come in and look first before they do
some significant damage. There's things we can do beforehand, afterand after it's done.
It's a mess. It's hard to do. Tell Martin, tell them
when you call that your garden line listener, get to the front of the
line again the phone number seven one, three, six, nine nine twenty
six sixty three. Let's get that pruning done during the best time ever,
which is right now. I mean prune tree anytime of the year, but
now sure is the best time. We're going to head now out to talk
to Jim and Paarland. Hello, Jim, good morning. Skip in October,
I put down carbo load, yes, sir on my Zorasia and Saint
Augustine. Okay, I had already had some weedy uh killer in it.
Should I still go ahead and put down some barricades? You said, when
did you put it down the month October? October? Yeah? I would
yes. Uh, let's see October, this, November, December, January's
three months. It's probably doing a little bit of good for you. Still
that stuff is pretty persistent, but this is getting, you know, out
toward the edge of the time. I would, I would say, do
the barricade. Let's see, you are in Paarland, so you can probably
do that at the end of this month or early next month. Okay,
all right, appreciate it, Thank you, Thank you, jam Weekend,
Yes, sir, and as always, Jim, on any of these products,
follow the label. That's very important. Okay, all right, take
care. Let's see We're going to go now to Pinehurst and talk to Vicky.
Hey, Vicky, hare things up in Pinehurst? Uh, Wendy,
Okay, I have questions. And I heard you talking about er last Saturday,
and I looked it up and it's not on Nelson's website, so I
had to google it and finally brought it up. But last year I used
the bruces Brew for pre emergent and and they I think they had pre emergent
in it last year, which they do not have this year. But I'm
wondering if I used the barricade, Now can I do the We didn't either
we didn't ate, or when can I do that? Okay? I did
cart like the gentleman before me last October? Okay, Well, the Bruces
Brew does not have a pre mergon and it's just just a standard, fairly
immediately available a fertilizer on the Bruce's Brew in compared to a lot of the
other products that they have. Now, now you did, I'm sorry the
names of all the products jumbled up in my head? When did you last
apply what I did? The carbos in October? Like the man ahead of
me sick and I had to wait. So you you want to put another
premrgon out now? Right? Yeah? Yeah, same same kind of thing.
I would, you know, playing her shirlot further north up there,
and I would say probably early February would be a good time to put that
down. You may wait till mid month and get away with it just fine.
We just don't know how early spring is going to start, so that
would that would probably be a good time for you. But again, follow
the label carefully on the rate. If it says a certain amount, use
that amountain morey and watered in. Okay, so the which I want an
early green up. But can I use the then is my fertilizer or do
I need to just do the briefest bruise. If you're if you're going to
put down a pre emergent product like a barricade, for example, you don't
also do well the weedonator. It's a different kind of of weed control a
barricade, and the carbolode has a pre emergent in it. The weedenator is
a post emergent, so it doesn't prevent weeds, it kills existing weeds.
So if you wanted to do the weedonator, I would do that in the
next three weeks if you could, Yes, because what you're putting it out
for is in your lawn. You would use it if in your lawn you've
got little chick weed and clover and hind bit and cleavers or velcrow weed.
You know, in all those cool season weeds. When the weak weeds are
wet, the leaves are wet, you put it out in the granule,
stick to the weed leaf and then they kill that weed. They don't prevent
summer weeds from coming up. They killed the weeds that are there. And
if you got in your lawn and you do not have a broad little broad
leaf weeds, don't expect things knee high out there. I'm talking about little
bitty things in the grass. If you don't see that, then you don't
need a post emergent on that lawn. You just go on with the regular
fertilization, okay. And it does say it provides it does say it provides
a quick green up. Well, it has more than one kind of nitrogen
in it, and some of the types are released in the first six weeks
after you apply them. That'd be like ammonia and U rhea, Okay,
And later on, as the soil warms and the microbes become more active,
there's a couple of slowly available types of nitrogen that gradually release. So you're
going to get a long term or release out of the weed Nator, But
there are other products that will do that too. Generally in the spring,
if you've got your weeds taken care of and you don't need the post emergent,
just go with a fertilizer and follow that I have such a large yard.
I've got thirty nine thousand square feet three quarters of a nic or so
you need to set up bleachers and have football games out there, right that
c line like to do the all in one. It's just okay, take
me a little more so, no barricade, just the weedonater or barricade.
Also okay, weedonator kills. Weeds that right now are visible and above ground
in your lawn that are broad leaves. The barricade or the carbo loade have
a pre emergent that prevents the warm season weeds from waking up and establishing when
it warms up just a bit. Okay, so what are you going after
that? That's the question. Yeah, understate it's not either or it's it's
two different things for two different situations. Okay, thank you so much.
All right, good luck, Thanks for the call, Vicky. I appreciate
that we're gonna take a little break here. Uh Mark, when we come
back, you will be our first up and our phone number is seven one
three two one two five eight seven four. Welcome back to the garden Line.
Glad you're listening today. We're going to jump right out and get on
the phones here. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. We're going to go to Mark Mark. Are you in
Joplin, Missouri? I'm just south of there right now? Okay, I'm
on my way. Well, good about the shellco oppers that I kept running
over with my track here, Yeah, that's not good for him. Oh
I didn't hurt them at all. Let me tell you, well, it's
some questions about my peach tree. Okay, Yeah, it looks like it's
got some uh runners coming up out of the roots, you know, away
from the main tree. I was wondering, is that commons? That is
it? No? How far away from the trunk? Are we talking about?
Maybe about four or five? Yeah, peach roots don't do that.
Maybe what's happened is a peach pit got buried there or something, and you're
you're getting a seedling coming up. Cool. Yeah, but that works because
there's quite a few of them, and I really would like more peach trees.
Yeah. Well, uh, the thing with seedlings is you don't know
what they're going to be. You know, you you picked peaches to plants
that are well adapted varieties for your area, and that seedling is going to
be different, just like a child is never identical to mom or dad,
although mine have been accused of being identical to me when they misbehave. But
seriously, they were not identical to the parents. So the the if you
do a seedling, you're probably gonna want to graft it over to an improved
variety. Okay, well this one was grafted. It was given to us
in two thousand and six when we moved to property. Okay, so yeah,
so what that works? Well, yeah, so the tree you have
has got a rootstock and then they grafted. Do you remember what variety it
is? No, that's okay, it doesn't matter. It was grafted to
an improved variety, and so when it pollinates and has seeds, the genetics
get all mixed up, and so the babies will not be identical to the
mama plant. That's all I'm saying. But yeah, you can do that.
In fact, I used to work at the State Fruit Growing Experiment station
there in Mountain Grove, which is about one hundred miles to the east of
you. I don't know if you've been out that way or not, but
they developed the ose Art gold apple there and and there what was the peach
that that they did they do loring. I think they may have done loring
there, but anyway, uh, the Topaz. So you got your Peach
Country. I live west of Houston. Oh you're just in Joplin. Yeah
yeah, okay to pick I'm going to pick up a load job. I
see. What are you listening on iHeart app? Or how are you listening?
Oh? Yes, sir? Okay, well good, all right,
it's a great thanks and slice breads. Let me tell you, isn't that
the slickest thing, especially when you've got to have a lot of windshield time?
Yeah, that's that's good. Even people that live around Houston can listen
on the iHeart app because you know that way. You're not always around the
radio, but you're a run garden line, that's right. And you give
away your age there with the cointy scissors and running with them. Well,
because we used to get told that in school all the time. But I
was to throw it out. Yeah, well I know I'll give away my
age. Last weekend I got thinking after I said it. I was describing
gardening like an Etra sketch. You turn them upside down and shake them and
you get to start drawing all over again, And after I said that,
I thought, I wonder how many people out there know what an extra sketch
is. So, yeah, we used to try and get all the grain
pills off there and see what was behind it. There you go, all
right, hey, thanks for the call, Good luck with it. Now.
I assume was this question all about a peach in Jopplin or a peach
down in Houston? Just unclear? It one? Okay? All right?
Good? Yeah, the whole different group, a whole different group of peaches
down here. Oh yeah, So I could just go ahead and cut one
of those out and transplant it for an experiment, you could, but just
know that it's going to take number one. It takes longer. I like
to use human analogies because it's easy to understand. A child is not able
to reproduce until they hit a certain age. Neither is a peach seedling.
When you graft it, it's like you're taking older wood and putting it on
that seedling, and you can get into peaches a lot faster. So if
you wait for that seedling to start producing peaches, it may be seven years,
ten years. I don't know how long it'll take, but it'll take
a longer time than with a grafted tree. That's another thing. Yeah,
that's fine because it originally took a yeah, about two years I think for
it to finally get up and start producing in the beginning. Yeah, hey,
Mark, I have not been watching my clock. I'm going to have
to run. But thank you very much for the call. I appreciate that.
You know, any kind of supplies that you need are going to be
at ACE Hardware. It's just as simple as that. To fertilizers. We've
been talking about all these we control products, you know, the barricade and
products from Nelson's and other things, and they're there at Ace Hardware. They
have all of it. Now, could they also, of course, have
the things to fix your plumbing? Do you have broken pipes? Did somebody
back over a sprinkler head? And you need to repair irrigation? Ace Hardware.
ACE Hardware is the answer. Ace is a place for you fill in
the blank. Now. You can go to Acehardware dot Com find the store
locator. There's forty of them near you in the Greater Houston area. Check
them out at ACE Hardware. I've got one more call. I'm gonna get
to you out here. We're going to go to Brenham and talk to Leonard.
And Leonard I believe I've got about a minute left, so we'll see
what we can do. Good morning. I have two evergreen oak trees in
my front yard. They've been having problems for years. I believe in they're
getting worse. One of them especially, they have a little bitty balls on
the each leaf. I've had a tree man out and he said, oh,
that's nothing to worry about, but I think it's get weaker and weaker
the tree. I mean they had like nine ten little bitty ball. Some
they bigger. Okay, I got a question for you. Are they about
Are they about half the size of an English pea? And maybe they're reddish
at times and brownish at times? Are they larger and fuzzy? Maybe maybe
a little smaller than an English Yeah, but you discussed that is but they
get bigger, they're smaller and then they get bigger. That's a there's a
gold wasp that does that. And in general, they have their own natural
enemies and you don't have to worry about them. And plus if you did
try to spray them, you would have to spray a lot in order to
catch them. When they're out because the spray doesn't go in that gall to
kill the larvae inside. So I would say, look like it's getting weaker.
Well, it's getting weaker not just because of that, though. Something's
wrong, something strangling the trunk. It's not enough water, too much water,
there's something else going on. Adequate moisture, but good drainage, a
little fertilizer to get it boosts along. If you want, I'm gonna put
you on Hoole right now and Josh will give you an email. You can
send me some pictures of the gall and of the tree and I'll go into
more depth than I have time for right now. Okay, I'm gonna put
you on hole leard if you want to do that, I'll get to get
an email that Josh is about to give you. Well, you've been listening
to Garden Line. Here we go. Boy, day's going fast. Today
just seems like we got started and here we are. We're going to be
back tomorrow at six am. Don't forget today. I'm going to head down
to Fort Benn County to the Home and Garden show down there. It's the
Brasses Home and Garden Show in Fort Bend at the Epicenter. They're in Rosenberg,
Texas. I'm gonna be there giving a talk at twelve and another one
at one answering your gardening questions. Come on by, I'd love to meet
you. I'm even going to give away of Nelson's brand new fertilizer