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 crazy Trim. Just watch him as we may give it. Please the
Supertzy gas Club again, not a sign sun. Hey, good morning,
Welcome to Garden Line. It's great to have you with us today. Congratulations.
If you are listening to this, you made it up. Maybe got
a cup of coffee or tea or whatever it is. It helps you open
your eyes and we're gonna have a good d day day today. We actually
have a pretty some weekend here. I got a little rain forecast maybe,
but tomorrow today's gonna be a great day. Look forward to getting outside today
and getting some gardening work done, making sure that we make I don't know,
let's just say, the right adjustments to our landscape. That would include
from fertilizing and the right rate, the right types of products. Right timing
always important. Putting in plants. This is a really important time to get
things planted for summer. We are still in mild temperatures. It is not
bad yet and those of you been here for a year know that it can
get a little interesting when we get into the brunt of summer. But by
planting now, you can make sure your plants are well established. You know,
we have things that can take summer heat just fine. Venka, for
example. I prefer to call it Madagascar periwinkle because there is another plant called
vinca. But I guess there's another plant called periwinkle too, So there we
are. That's the deal with common names. But anyway, what most people
refer to as vinca super heat tolerant, and so many types of it now
they're just breeders have really done a great job of coming up with some nice
twists on really an old plant. I remember growing up we had that in
flower beds in front of our house. I lived south a little further in
south central Texas, and we had it in the front flower bed and it
would recede, and some of the plants would just survive year to year because
it didn't always get cold enough in that protected area. But it's a great
plant, does super well. Angelonia super superflower for heat. Lots of types
of Angelonia, different heights. Got a nice little range of colors. We
can do the typical, the pink, the red, the white. There
is some purple, purple, lavender colors and whatnot. It's just a good
plant. It's an excellent, outstanding plant. Really person lane Porto Laca and
Slain both very closely related. They can take the heat and they can also
take the drought and do really well. We could go on and on.
I mean there's shrubs, there's vines, there's all kinds of things. Get
them in now so that they have time to establish roots. And once they've
established roots and the heat comes, these are plants that are tough and they
can take it. But don't delay. Go ahead and get them in.
Get some size on them. You know, you buy the little plants they're
pretty in the garden center, but you want them to get bigger. You
want them to get to whatever size they're going to be so they look their
best. So whether you have sun or shade, there are plants that will
do wonderfully for you. Here in the KTRH listening area, we have a
lot of great options. Makes it kind of nice. I'm go'na quit talking
for just a minute. By the way, I should give you a phone
number seven one three two one two KTRH. We're going to go to Des
Moines, Iowa and talk to Dan. Hello, Dan, are you there
all right? I'll tell you what. I'm gonna put Dan on on hold
and we'll see if we can get him back. That was interesting all the
way from Des Moines, Iowa. First thing in the morning. So I
was talking about cool, cool, heat tolerant plants, plants that can take
the heat. One thing to always remember is even the toughest of plants need
a root system to be able to be tough in heat and drought. And
a root system requires good soil. And we talk all the time about brown
stuff before green stuff, and so that is that is one principle. But
it's also true if you're putting them in containers, you need to sew a
volume that is as much as pretty much as much as you can really we
oftentimes, you know, plant and a little bit smaller containers, and that
container volume of soil is the entire area that that plant can get water and
nutrients from. If we if we can look at a larger area, a
larger pot, then we're able to draw from that larger area and the plants
are just better able to survive. And I'll talk about that more in a
minute, We're gonna go back to the boy and talk to Dan. Hello,
Dan, we got you? Uh did you? Is that for for
Dan? Yes? Dan, You're it. You're on you Okay, No,
no, no, I don't. I'm actually over in the Beaumont area
now, okay, And when I was in the one the boy, I'll
tell you what. You could pull some crops up there that are just crazy.
But over here, I'm having a problem with some pill bugs. Okay,
how do I get rid of them? Well, let me ask you
this first. What are they doing? What is uh what? They're eating
my basil and uh some other uh some stuff like cucumbers, but not as
much as the basil. Okay, well, yeah, typically they're not uh
they're not one of our big pests that we have to deal with. They
feed on decaying organic matter. I've got a strawberry patch and the underside of
every strawberry that touches the ground. It's going to ben about pill bugs.
But there are baits that you can put out there that are for pill bugs,
and they're close relative called sow bugs, right and and other kinds of
critters. And I would just go to You've got you know, a couple
of great A hardware stores out there in your area. I would just probably
go over them and say, you know, I need a bait for snails
and pill bugs and slugs and things like that, and they can get you.
They can get you fixed up with one. I have done some research
and I've seen that there was a product called slug O Pro. Yeah,
and I can't find it anywhere. I don't know Slugo Pro. There's a
Slugo Plus. I think could that be a that what what you saw?
That? Possibly? Yeah, slug Slugo plus gosh, if memory serves me
right, Slugo is basically an iron based bait. It gives uh, it
gives a toxic amount of iron to the pests that eats it. Uh.
Slugo Plus I'm pretty sure also has spinosa in it, which is an insecticide
that also works. And so it just it just spreads out the number of
things Slugo will work on. But if you if you head over to you
got an M and D there on College Street in Beaumont, I would I
would try them talk to them they. I've been to Ace hardware stores many
times that had the Slugo Plus, So I don't know if you've tried that
one or not. But but but I would, but I would just go,
you know, just read the label on anything like that, any kind
of a bait that they would have, and just make sure that it's sow
bugs or pill bugs are on the level, right, Yeah, okay,
you know they are crustaceans like crawfish, so you're in crawfish country. That's
right. This is just a crustacean. I don't think you want to eat
these, but who knows the same taste? All right, Dad, thanks
a lot, appreciate your call. Yeah. Yeah, pillbugs you turn over
organic matter, and they are just everywhere. I got mulches in my garden,
and whenever I pull the mulch back, it's like good night, there's
herds of pill bugs into there. I generally don't worry about them, but
yep, they can do some feeding on some things here and there. Just
so it wasn't want check too that when you see an insect and then you
see damage, make sure that what you're the pest you're seeing is truly a
pest doing the damage. It's something else and sneaking in there. Uh,
and it gets blamed on on something else. Let's take a little break.
Our phone number is seven one three two two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome
back to the garden Line. Good to have you with us today. Hey,
if you ever thought about having bees in the backyard to make your own
honey, to pollinate your own crops, if you will, you have fruit
trees, you've got vegetables perhaps, or you just enjoy being a support to
the pollinators that we have, because you know how important that is. Well,
you can put bees in your backyard and the bee Supply can help you
do that. They specialize in things like that. They have classes for you.
You want to go in and learn all about it if you find out
it's for you, which I think you will when you get the hands on
part. Their classes are excellent. By the way, they also have a
b rental program. Maybe you've got a piece of property five to twenty acres.
If you have five to twenty acres and you're within fifty miles of Dayton,
Texas, just to the north end east of US and fifty miles of
that, they will come out. They do all the work, They set
up the bees, they tend to the bees. It's a really good deal.
You can go to their website. Go to the website it's thebesupply dot
com and find out about the bee rental program. They also have something that's
really cool and that is a leaf cutter bee a little home for them.
It's little tubes that they live in. Leaf cutter bees are excellent pollinators and
you can bring those home to your garden as well, and the Bee Supply
can get you fixed up on that. It's just a great place to go
and if you ever want to get out there and do a little tour,
take some friends out. They've got an observation hive that is so cool to
look at. You. If you have kids or grandkids, they really need
to see this because is that it is that fascinating at thebesupply dot com.
If you want to go the website one more time, thebsupply dot Com.
I'm going to head to Sugarland now and we're going to talk to Mike.
Hello Mike, Well, good morning, Skip Marni. I got a question
about the pH of my soil. How do I test it? And then
if it's high what do I use? And then if it's a low pH
what do I have? All Right, Why Mike, is your soil a
clay soil, a sandy soil, or something in between. It's primarily clay.
Okay, so I've done several popsoil applications. My problem is, like
some green some of the grass blades are light lime green as opposed to a
dark green, right, Okay, yeah, yeah, that could be a
little bit of an ron deficiency, but it also could be just well,
there's a variation depending on the number of nutrients in the soil, including nitrogen
being the main one that helps drive that green color. So as far as
how do you do that, I don't know if you've been to my website
Gardening with Skip dot com and looked at my lawn care schedule that's on there.
But if you go there to Gardening with Skip dot com, there's a
free lawn care schedule. You can look at it on your computer or print
it out. There's also a lawn pest, disease and weed management schedule again
takes you from January way through December, tells you the problems you run into,
what to use for that, and how to time it. But the
reason I bring it up is because on there is a live link to the
soil test lab at an M and that is where you would find out your
pH. You just send a sample up to them. There's a link right
to the form that you need on there if you have a pen and want
to write it down. It's soil testing dot T A m U, dot
ed U and they can tell your pH. I can tell you this.
Chances are it's a little bit high. And if it's a clay, chances
are you're not going to move it much. It's difficult to make a high
pH clay more acidic. But what you can do for beds, garden beds,
vegetable beds, flower beds, you can bring in a quality mix that
has a good pH and put it on top of the ground, mix it
in a little bit with your soil and just grow in that. That's the
best and easiest way to deal with it. Far as your lawn. You're
not gonna make your lawn a raised bad so, but but grass is pretty
tolerant of pH. You may have to use a little keylated iron or something
like that. But i'd start with finding out what the pH is and at
the same time you're going to find out your nutrient content, and that's important.
Okay, what about some some have said, well, put some sulfur
down. Is that well, that's that is how you bring pH down.
But in a in a in a clay soil, the term is buffered.
The clay is so buffered that you just add sulfur and add sulfur and add
sulfur, and it's hard to get the pH to come down. Uh,
and so it's very difficult. If not, I'll just say it's impractical to
try to bring a clay high pH clay down much in pH. And then
the final question is I'm considering going to a professional long service. Do you
recommend them? I've done two applications. You know already they share so pretty
using or is there one we would recommend down there? Yeah, in the
area, or well, what do you think of them in general? Their
prices are pretty high, so the ones you've been looking at, Yeah,
okay, Well, I generally don't get into just the kind of the mow
and care for lun care services we do. Well, you do have BnB
turf Pros down there and they'll do the compost top dressing, which, by
the way, will be another way to help your loan because it's getting the
compost down in the soil and the roots find it and they have access to
the nutrients. Maybe the high pH tends to lock up. But BnB turf
Pros down there, you'd have to talk to them about any other services and
whatnot that they that they might provide. I know that the website is Bbturfpros
dot com and sugar lens is one of the areas that they service down down
where you are. So you're you're saying, you know, if you can't
do it on your own, then maybe search out these professionals. I'm talking
to me. I'm not the mowing and the trimming. I'm talking fertilizing and
doing so past. Uh so, Yeah, I've never talked to them about
whether they do sell tests, but it's so easy for you to do that
yourself, just to send the sample in. But BB tur Pros would be
the one I would call. They do the compost, top dressing, they
do deep time erration. Now those those activities top dressing and neration are not
inexpensive, but you're making a significant difference in the lawn. It's not just
like throwing fertilizer out there. It's it's going beyond that. But you might
I would call them and just see because I think a lot of them.
In the way they do business. They really focus They only use products that
are quality. Then they focus on the customer and making sure you're happy.
It's more of a relationship with them. It's not just like send me a
check and we'll show up ever so often. It's I like the way they
do this. I would give m a call and talk to them about it,
and they could probably as you visit with them. I think between the
two you work out, you know, some sort of a plan. And
so do you have a preference as to whether you should use granular or liquid
fertilizers? They both work, They both work well granular. With granular you
can get some nice slow releases that will release over three or four months that
you're not going to be able to get that slow over release and a liquid
and I like that gradual feed over the course of the summer. So I
would aim toward granular. But if you want to get out there and get
a nice green up, there's some excellent products, including a new and I'll
be talking about in a little bit here from Medina that that's good. You
just put it on the end of a hose and you can get it done
real quick. All right, so if I have a low pH, well
did you is there a certain thing you want to put on your yard?
Well, then yes, I think there's a ninety nine point nine percent chance
you don't have too low of a pH that would need to be raised.
But lime lime is what is used for that. Oh okay, that'd start
with this old test. It's going to tell your phosphorus, your magnesium,
your nitrogen, your potassium. It's going to give you all the levels and
you'll be able to fertilize more accurately. All right, I'm gonna have to
thank you. I'm gonna have to run. Thank you very much. Good
luck to that lawn in good shape. Appreciate that. Yeah, you're talking
about slow release fertilizers. Nitrophos has got their superturf and that's the nineteen four
to ten, nineteen four ten. It's a silver bag. Makes it easy.
Just remember silver nitrophs nineteen four ten. Half the nitrogen is in a
slow release form. So it's going to feed your lawn for several months.
Here, it's going to give you a nice gradual and also Mike's talking about
you know a little bit of a sharp trouse color of green well, it's
going to give you more of a boost because it has the four percent iron
in it as well, and that gives the nice green color on lawns that
are struggling because the pH is high and the iron is tied up. Nitrofoss
nineteen four to ten Super Turf's available a lot of different places. You're gonna
find it at Gym's Hardware up in Montgomery. You're gonna find it at Lake
Hardware Inclute. You can find it in a lot of places. Ace hard
Ride and Sinco Ranch also carries the Nitroposs Super Turf. We're going to head
now to let's see, we're heading to Greg and Hempstead. Hello Greg,
Hey, good morning, Skip. You've got a couple I've got a couple
of questions for you. The first one is core aerating my yard. I
received the and doing a compost top dressing. I received a price for it.
I'm not saying the price is wrong, but the price is more than
I can more than I can bite off at this time. Okay. My
question to you is if I do a plug aeriation and instead of using doing
the compost top dressing, could would there be any benefits to doing something you
know, putting down something like Microlife's hummates instead of the top dressing. Well,
yeah, it's beneficial. The humates are very beneficial. I don't It's
kind of a different thing than putting down the screen compost. You know,
they both have their benefits and advantages and things. But the humates would be
fine. You know, you can buy the compost for top dressing, a
screened leaf leaf composts. You can bite it by the bag, or you
can just have somebody dump it off there and spread at your But are you
talking about using a like a little step on it push it down in the
yard aer rator? Are you talking about renting one? No? I was,
Yeah, I was going to either rent one or even even buy the
plug aerator to hook onto the back. I've got a small lawn tractor to
hook onto the back of it. And it wasn't going to be one of
the core Yeah, you know, one of the plug ones. But my
problem is I've got twenty I've got twenty two to twenty three thousand square feet
a yard, and it's just a little to put down the compost top dressings
a little bit more than this fifty something year older is able to do.
By himself at the twenty and again, I'm not saying the price I got
to do it is wrong or it's more than at an expense, very expensive
equipment and hauling a lot of stuff. Well, you know, I maybe
I would just have my wife go do it be easier. I don't you
know the old Germans they used to get all their work done by this weather,
their friw. So I don't know if that. Yeah, I know,
I grew up with the old Germans. So hey, I'm up against
a heardbreak, Mike. Good luck with that. I gotta run, Thank
you very much, Yeah, thank you, bye bye. All right,
it's time for Nicky in the news our phone number seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. All right, no more, no more old
German jokes spouses. Oh gosh uh. I was talking about B and B
turf pros a minute ago, and I just I don't know if you guys
have heard me mentioned them before, but this is an outstanding outstanding organization.
They they they spend time with their clientele, and it matters to them to
know you, to serve you, and to make sure you're happy with what
they do. They really go above and beyond to make that personal connection and
to ensure the satisfaction they do high quality work, their products or excellent.
In fact, they only use products and companies that I trust. Here on
garden Line with a website. If you are looking to have top Dressing Corporation
done, and you are down in the south and east part, let's say
on the east end from Pearland on the west end to sugar Land and from
Missouri City down to Fresno or Coola, Iowa colony, Manvil. This is
your company. It's Bbturfpros dot com. And the phone number if you'd like
to write this one down seven one three two three four fifty five ninety eight.
I'm going to head out now to northwest Houston. We're going to talk
to Paula. Hello, Paula, Hi, good morning, good morning.
Okay, my Tameya. Problems keep happening. Now. I've got tomatoes with
green tomatoes with black bottom. I've sent you a picture yesterday, Okay,
that is called blossom end rot and well that's rot. I remember that.
Yeah, it's boss better. And so what happens is it's usually due to
a moisture fluctuation. The disease is caused by a lack of calcium to the
growing the tip of the tomato. When the cells there start, when they
don't get calcium, they start to collapse and die, and then the rot
sets in behind them. So we see it more often early in the season
than late because later in the season the tomatoes root systems a little more extensive.
It's taking up nutrients. Well, chances are you've got enough calcium in
the soil, but a soil test would help confirm that. But if you
can keep the moisture even it really helps make that blossom indrot go away.
I have a feeling it's going to get better on its own. Are these
containers or the ground I don't Yeah, yeah, these are in the grow
boxes, so it's hard to keep the moisture. I've held off on watering
because they seem to be pretty wet, so I haven't been filling those reservoir
Yeah. Uh, well, so there's nothing. There's no way I can
add calcium, or well you could, but even if the calcium is there,
with the moisture fluctuation, you're going to get blossomed. Okay, blossom
man. So, but I think grow boxes have the reservoir underneath them,
right right, Yeah, well, yeah, you keep that full and it
ought to be. Okay, you can put in, uh, some nutrients
in the soil if it truly is missing. You can even make a kind
of a solution of some nutrients in that water in the bottom from the take
it up something that does you know, that's all the nutrients in it,
or mix in the like liquid micro life. There are some liquid micros.
I'd have to check the label to see if they have calcium in the particular
one you're you would be Oh, I'll look in the bottle and see.
Okay, check that regular Microlife's gonna have some calcium in it, So you
could just use that too. Well, it's got microlife in there. It's
got mic life in this. Guy, leave my old composts. I don't
understand. Well, oh well, I don't know, but I still think
it's a matter of maybe the box water level. Yeah okay, yeah,
okay, so water thing. You have a minute to recap what you told
me about that limp to made up when I saw you at r c W
last Saturday. Oh okay, okay, Look it looks it's real limp and
it looks like it was dying, and you told me to look at the
roots to see if it if there was any light, little nodules on it
or something. And I looked at the roots and the roots look fine.
But recap again, what what you told me to look for? A right,
we were looking for nots on the roots, which is nematodes, which
affects water getting okay, makes it will huh. The other thing would be
a root rot. If the top of a plant is declining and you basically
pull it up and look at the root system and the root system is further
declined, it's like it's rotting away. The problem started in the roots as
a root rot. If the roots look fairly normal and healthy and you're just
getting wilting, then it's it's gonna be a lack of moisture in the soil.
Okay, Okay, I'm writing all this down this time, okay.
And then you told me that if it does, to go ahead and cut
open that stem. Okay, yes, the last thing we look for.
The last thing is you slice the stem vertically, and this is this is
this is the you're performing the autopsy at this state, you slice it ethically,
and instead of healthy green with a little creamy white inside the tomato stem.
You see streaks of brown like it was an old stained cinaret filter,
but but streaks of it through there. That is another covering disease that came
from the soil, so that we fight with resistant varieties. Hey, Paul,
I got another guy on the line here. I'm gonna all right,
you take care, appreciate that. We'll go to Jonathan and clearly Hello Jonathan.
Hey, good morning, sir. I have a question. I hope
it's an interesting question for you. I have a Saint Augustine lawn full Sun,
and I've been follow following the schedule for twenty years. About six years
ago, we had a very large oak tree that was in the middle of
this that we had removed and we brought in the special the correct soil,
and we did sod and it's been doing great. Right where the tree was.
I'm realizing I'm having to water a lot more than in other parts.
And we've done the top dressing. We did that a couple of years ago,
but we've never air rated. So this year I tried to air rate
and I'm noticing, of course now that I'm finding bits of root and things
about four inches under the ground right where we're having to water a lot.
All right here, let me just cut to the chase on this one,
John, I think I know what you got. Whenever you do have a
tree and you take it out and stuff, you've got a lot of wood
in the soil. And that wood does a number of things. Number one,
initially ties up a little nitrogen as it decomposes. But you just it's
just going to be. It's just going to take time for it to settle
down and to decay away, and having to water a lot is maybe part
of that process, and there's no fix to it. Keep making sure that
it's kept moist, that you give good fertilization to the grass is what's in
your power. But other than that, you know what is is and that's
wood in the all over in the soil compared to the soil that you're lawn
in other areas is growing in. That's great. And then my question beyond
that was I had a bag of rose soil and I just kind of sprinkled
it over top, thinking maybe I could elevate the soil above those roots.
Is that bad idea? No, that's fine, that's fine. It may
be a little greener spot. But I think that's what's within your all right,
man, thank you, thank you a lot. I appreciate that.
I appreciate that. If you're thinking about putting a tree in, by the
way, you need to get you a three sixty tree stabilizer. If you
put one in in the last few months. Three sixty tree stabilizer holds that
tree, but it doesn't hold it tight. It holds it in a slightly
allows the slight amount of movement, and that allows it to establish well.
And when the tree moves, it's going to strengthen the tissues in the trunk
and in the braceroots right there at the bottom, it's going to strengthen those.
Now you can get a three sixty tree stabilizer at Buchanans and arbor Gate
Plants for all seasons carries them. RCW has them down and Alvin Jorge Hidden
Gardens has them in Southwest Fertilizer where I'm going to be today, by the
way, I'm going to be there. I'll tell you about that in just
a bit. They have those as well. But three sixty trees say there's
a quality product. It hooks right to a t post or any kind of
post you put in and it works well and it lasts well. I guess
we got to take another break here. Here we go. I'll be right
back seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to
Guardenline. Good to have you with us today. If you have not been
to RCW Nursery recently, you need to go. I was out there a
couple saturdas ago, I guess, and just always amazing the color they have,
it's just outstanding. The book and villias are gorgeous. The roses,
by the way, they got it. They have a cell going on on
the roses. Ten percent off all trees and roses. You got that right,
all trees and roses both. Now's a great time to get them established.
You know, with RCW they grow their own trees, and so they
grow things that belong here, that grow here, that'll do well here.
You can purchase a tree, or you can have them come planet, which
I'd recommend the latter because they'll do a good job. Make sure it gets
established very very well for you, and that is really important. They also
have in celebration of Arbor Day, they've got all their beautiful arbors and all
the metal artwork for sale twenty percent off. RCW Nurseries haven't been there before.
It's two forty nine, which is Tomball Parkway where it comes into belt
Way eight. If they don't have something, I bet they can get it.
That's why we like to call them the get it, Got It Nursery
because they are excellent at hunting something down and getting it in for you,
and the selection is just outstanding. Check them out over at RCW yesterday I
was I was going around, stopped in at Spring Creek Feed Sprint Creek Feed
is the feed starts up there on FM twenty nine seventy eights and Magnolia,
so kind of north and east to tom Ball, not very far all away
from ground Parkway Highway to forty nine. Their selection is just still excellent.
In fact, he keeps getting better. They had plants outside. They had
all kinds of garden de core and stuff outside, but inside to find the
fertilizers, I recommend on garden line, you're going to find all kinds of
pest. I was surprised at the amount of different types of pest disease and
weed management products that they have. It is excellent and of course it's a
feed store. You're gonna get quality feed there. The store itself is cool.
I mean it's just beautiful, from a little home to core and bling
to everything you can imagine that you might need for animals or in this case,
for your landscape and garden. At Spring Creek Feed. You should get
by there and check them out. Not this coming week, but after that.
I've got to get out in my yard and get some more potting done.
I've got a number of plants that are just waiting on me to show
up and move them from the containers that they came in to the pots that
I have. I got some beautiful pots out there. We were talking about
the other day some my wife and I some things that we might move and
plant and where to put them and whatnot. And you need a quality soil
when you do that. First of all, you need a container that's large
because you need to hold a lot of soil so you can hold moisture and
nutrients in our brutal summers. Don't stick them in a little tiny pot unless
you want to water them three times a day trying to keep them alive.
So we need a large pot that has drain holes. And then a quality
soil like jungle land. Jungle Land is the one you've heard me talk about
distributed by Nitrofoss. There's the outdoor flour and vegetable planting soil, and there's
the indoor water saving potting soil. That outdoor flour and vegetable that's the one
you use for all those plants out on the patio or wherever you've got your
containers sitting. You're going to find it in a lot of places, easy,
easy to find. Shades of Texas. Down in South Houston on Genoa
Red Bluff, some of you probably know that one. Well, Kingwood Ace
Hardware has got it. In the Arbrogate up and Tumble, They've all got
the Nitrofoss products. That's a good you know, that whole line of products
is easy, easy to find, and it's widely, widely available, easy
to go. I love to go visit garden centers. That is one of
my favorite things in the world to do, to get out and to check
things out and you know, just kind of get a feel for what's new
and what's going on out there. And I Enchanted Gardens down in the Richmond
Rosenberg area is one of those destination places you just you just love to go.
And it's because they have everything everything you can imagine. And I was
just looking at some things that they had available, and one of the cool
things they do is container plantings. You can get all you can get your
containers there. You can get all the plants you need, you can get
the soils you need. And by the way, they also have all the
fertilizers I recommend here on garden Line. But some of the combos they've put
together are just gorgeous and it just you stare at them and there's things spilling
over the sides, there's things filling in, there's things coming out of the
top. And when you use a larger container and make a multiplant, different
types of planting, different species of plants all combined in a planting, it
is just really cool. And they of course they have that there at Enchanted
Gardens as long as well as can't talk right now, as well as everything
else that you might need for your plants. A cool new venka called tattoo
that you got to see that boy, that is a deep deep, deep
pink VCA really beautiful. Hey. Enchanted Gardens, by the way, is
on FM three point fifty nine. It's north of Richmond. So if you're
heading up Kiati direction full show direction, that is the way you go.
Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. Today'd be a good day to get out there
and to check them out. So anyway they say the cobblers' kids go barefoot,
and sometime at my house that is the case, especially when I'm traveling
and off doing different kinds of things. And I'm ready looking forward to getting
back and getting some things in order. I've got a front flower bed that
we it's just plants have struggled there and it is a nasty, sticky clay.
It's just a mess. There's clays that are good clays and there's clays
that are just I don't know. They're not very conducive to plant growth,
for sure. And that's what I got, and I need to put some
some amendment in there to fix it up. And what do you do?
Well, Expanded shale is important. That works very well on helping a clay
stay open. Takes about three inches of shale on the top mixed in to
significantly do a good job, but any little amount is going to help a
little bit. Also, organic matter, you know, I think about places
like Nature's Way. Nature's Way is on I forty five north. They're right
where fourteen eighty eight comes in to Interstate forty five, just south of Conra.
You turn right across the tracks and you're there. And Nature's Way,
for a long time, has led in the creation of new quality product blends.
For example, the rose soil that started at Nature's Way, the leaf
more compost that we talk about top dressing our lawns, but that started in
Nature's Way. Remember it. Nature's Way. Every Friday is Fungal Friday.
Fungal based composts are ten percent off in the bags and twenty percent off in
the bulk, and you can give them a call. By the way,
I always listen to the guard line with a pen and paper. Here's a
phone number. Write it down. Nine three six three two one sixty nine
nine three six three two one six nine nine zero. Nature's Way excellent source
of quality products to fix things like that flower bed I got in front.
Before us stick my plants in it, I'm going to actually take my own
advice and take care of the brown stuff before I start putting in the green
stuff. We're going to head out to Paarland and visit with k now.
Hello, Okay, good morning, Skip, Thank you for taking my call.
I have a question. I was just inquiring about a fragrant plans,
particularly a climber if possible other than jasmine, that would bloom at a different
time so it can have the fragrance more frequently. Uh, something that would
bloom on through the There is gosh a vine you want to vine? Well,
well, it could be of our flower of Okay, well among our
fravorite fragrant plants in shade, a very bright shade white butterfly ginger is going
to be a late summer and fall bloomer that has a beautiful gardena like fragrance.
The almond verbinam saying that right, Alma verbina aloisia. It's a it's
a shrub slash. It's not a tree, but it's a very lanky,
big shrub that has an unbelievable vanilla fragrance that just wafts through the air.
It's one of the more fragrant. There's night blooming plants that have that kind
of fragrance as well. Let's see what else A vine ladybanks, the white
lady banks in the spring. It's a once Bloomer, that's going to have
a nice fragrance for you. Confederate Jasmine. Uh, that that is a
good one. It just its fragrance is outstanding. That'd be another one.
So those are a few that come to mind. Oh that sounds that's great,
great choice. I appreciate it, all right. And then finally,
don't forget don't forget angels trump at or brug Mancia. Uh that late in
the day it releases its fragrance. So it gets one and put it in
a big giant container on your patio so you can enjoy. Angels trumpet is
kind of poisonous. Though you're thinking of Datura. I'm talking about one the
flowers hang down like trumpets hanging from heaven. That's where it gets to.
Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of too, that i'd heard from
other people. Yes, I hear their music. You gotta go. Thank
you so much for taking my blessed day. Thank you, bye bye.
Appreciate your call. Hey, guess where I'm gonna be today and where I
hope you will show up. Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer in the corner of
Byssinet and Runwick I'm going to be giving listening to this. I'm gonna give
away skip Bucks. So you come out there, you stop at my table
and ask a question. I'll give you skip Bucks, which is a very
valuable uh dollar value. You can go and purchase stuff with Medina product.
We're gonna have Toro blower and a Toro string tremor. Listen, you don't
want to miss this. Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H
Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's so crazy, Trim just watch him as
world. Give a tea the supt Tasy not a side. Hey, welcome
back to Guarden Line. Good day have you with us today? Got some
light outside, I see clouds. But listen, this is gonna be a
good day. It's gonna be a good day to get out and get things
done. These clouds are just let's just say that, a're making it a
little cooler for you to get outside and work. We'll look at the upside
of that. We're not looking to get a lot of rain out of them
today. So I hope you're making plans to get out and do some shopping,
get out and do some yard work, whatever you need to get done
around your place. What have you never grown before? What have you never
tried to grow before? Have you have you never tried to grow vegetables?
Have you never tried to grow a plumeria? Have you ever created a terraria?
Remember those those are really popular back years and years ago. They still
are. What what have you never tried to do before? Something just off
off the top, hanging baskets, beautiful hanging basket areas. Do you have
some areas of your law in landscape that needs some work and need some renovation.
Maybe a shade that is so deep that it just you just don't even
notice it. It's like you've sort of lost that area from an esthetic standpoint
on your property. There are things that will grow there. Why to tackle
one of those things this year? If you've never tried it before, if
you have kids around the house, I really hope you will try vegetable gardening
because when we grow it, we're more likely to eat it, and when
we eat it, we're more likely to have good, long, healthy lives.
You know, our number one health problem is what goes into our mouth
and the fact that we like to sit on the couch. Those kinds of
things are big deals, and we can set kids off to a different kind
of lifestyle than that by getting out with us in the garden, by enjoying
growing things, whether it's flowers or vegetables. You know, have them grow
some cut flowers, and they can take them and give them to to give
them to teachers at school, give them to friends, give them to family,
grandma, who who ever. It just gets them involved in nature,
and nature has a positive effect on us. There's research a mile high on
the effects on us mentally, the effects things like ADHD with kids, the
things with performance on tests, for example, exposure to nature, exposure to
plants has an effect on that. It does. I just believe that we
were made to be engaged with the living world around us, and here we
are. We're gardeners. We've got the easy way in. I hope you'll
try something new this year, tackle something. If you got a question,
a problem you've been dealing with, give me a call seven one three,
two, one two fifty eight seventy four one of those problem areas. Maybe
we can kind of help resolve that. You know, the best time to
plant a tree was what forty years ago. Second best time is today today.
The folks at Verdant Tree Farm pack and the team there. They grow
quality trees and they grow trees of all sizes. I mean you can get
trees up to seven hundred gallon size, so I mean that's almost like it
ought to come with a hammock, right, I mean, if it's going
to be that size, that is awesome. They grow palm trees. Their
selection of palms is excellent. And here's the deal. They plant them and
then when they plant them, they will give you a one year warranty with
that installation because they know how to do it right. They've been doing this
a while. Patrick's been doing it a while. If they really serve the
community, you know, if you were a first responder or a military farmer
military current military, ten percent discount for those as well, and I appreciate
them doing that. They'll do free office consultation. You come in, bring
them a picture, say hey, I'm looking for and you fill in the
blank. Talk to them. They'll get you set up. It's easy to
find one because there's three Verdant Tree Farms. There's one on Barker, Cypress
and West Houston. There's one down Broadway Street in Parland, and there's one
in the Heights where I ten and Yelle Street come together. Verdant Treefarm dot
com. By the way, they also have very large shrubs, like certain
kinds of hollies that you might want to use for a screen. They can
get you fixed up on that as well. Someone was making a comment to
me the other day about how much they liked the smell of sweet Green fertilizer.
Not normally the people walk up, you know, it's like, Hey,
I love the smell of fertilizer, but I understand what they're talking about.
It's a molasses based fertilizer from nitrophoss and my crobes work on the molasses
base and through magic, they turn it into an eleven percent nitrogen fertilizer that
you can put out there on your lawn. It dissolves away and a sugar
based carbohydrate and molasses that substance is just rocket fuel for beneficial bacteria in the
soil. It's just a it's just a quality blend. It really works super
well and it will green up your lawn and you see a nice benefit from
it. And it is widely available, you know, You're going to find
it all kinds of places. Sweet Green, kingwoob Ace Hardware, for example,
they're going to have that product. You can go down to Angleton to
Lake Hardware down there they're going to have it, or over in Baytown Fisher's
Hardware they're going to carry it as well. Over there. It's easy to
easy to find nitropost products that are very widely available. You ought to try
this Sweet Green. I think that you'll be very impressed. Eleven percent is
one of the highest analyzes for an organic plant food that you're going to find.
Not every day someone walks up and says, hey, I like the
smell of fertilizer. This fertilizer. I was at the Arbigate a while back,
and in fact, I posted something to Facebook, to our Facebook,
our garden Line Facebook page, which you should follow if you don't already,
about the parking lot in the back. You know, I keep talking about
it and I want you to see it. It's this all weather parking lot
where it's got a grid, like a plastic honeycomb looking grid with rock that's
inside of it, and so when rain hits it, it goes right through
it. It just absorbs water. So there's never muddy out there. I
mean, you drive in any kind of weather and you have this all weather
surface. You have to turn down Trishel Road, which goes around behind Arburgate.
So if you pass Arburgate and you haven't seen Trischel, keep going,
but look better because you're going to see the other end of Trish'll come back
in. Just drive around behind Arbrogate and you get right in there. And
you know Arburgate always has quality products. There're one two three completely easy system
is just an outstanding, an outstanding combination for making your plants happy. I
always say on Guardline, brown stuff before green stuff. The one two three
easy system is brownst You know, it's got a food for anything that has
roots with calcium added too, by the way. Uh, it's got a
compost that has expanded shale in it. And it also has a soil,
a soil blend that has expanded shale in it. So it's one two three
easy. You take those three bags home with your plant. Your plant's going
to be happy, the roots are going to be happy, it's going to
thrive. That's why Beverly and the you know Arbrogate, that's why they have
that system. Because they want you to take their beautiful plants home and have
success with them. And they know that by getting those products in your hand,
you're going to have success. Arbrogate's on twenty nine to twenty just west
of tom Ball. It's easy to find. Check them out on social media
too. They got some excellent posts all the time going on up there.
We're gonna take a little quick break here. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Guarden Line.
Good to have you with us today. What are we going to talk about?
Well, you have to tell me. Well, and if I don't
hear from you, I'll tell you. I'll tell you what I want to
talk about. Seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven
one three two one two k t r H. You may have heard Nicky
during the news earlier talk about the fact that there is a holiday or tax
holiday when it this weekend. When it comes to things that are emergency,
you know, emergency type items, and I can't go through the whole list
of what's available. You can go to the Texas Controller website and see But
if you've been looking to purchase some of these items. ACE Hardware Store is
a great place to do it. And while you're at ACE, here here
is a huge deal going on at ACE. At two day, thirty two
participating ACE Hardware stores, thirty two different stores will honor a sale on Still
equipment Still power equipment. It's called the ACE Big Still Sale. Still is
a quality brand of power equipment. They're going to give you fifteen percent off,
and even if the item was on sale, it's still a fifteen percent
off. I mean, you cannot beat that if you've looked to get any
quality equipment for doing all of the different things around. You know, we
got weed eaters and everything else that still provides chainsaws and whatnot. Now's the
time to do it, because you're not going to do better than a fifteen
percent off sale. You can go to your local ACE Hardware store. If
you don't know where ACE Hardware store is, well, go to ACE Hardware
dot com and find the store locator and it'll tell you. In fact,
when I sign into Acehardware dot Com, it always says can I use your
location? And I say yes, and I get this big map of red
dots all over the Greater Houston area. Forty different stores in the extended Greater
Houston area. Thirty two stores though around here are doing that still sale today.
The ACE big still sale take advantage of that, and while you're in
there, ask them about what qualifies for emergency supplies. They're like, whether
I can go into it. But there's a bunch of different things that qualify,
and you can say you won't have to pay tax on those items as
well. I got two birds with one stone. Let's go to Cypress.
We're going to talk to Eric. Hello. Eric, Hey, Skip,
I got a question for you about a really terrible looking lawn. I've been
skimpy on chemicals in the backyard for a few years, I guess because the
pets, grandkids, and guess what landed in my yard this year And I
didn't really realize it until it was too late. Burweed is everywhere, and
you can't walk on a yard with burweed. Yeah it hurts. I'll start
digging it up. But then I've looked at some of the possible chemicals like
atrazine. I don't know how toxic that is in the back how long it
takes to get it away, and if it harms the tree. Because I
had an arborist out of a while back, and he said, don't use
around up on the yard, the kind that's for lawns, and don't use
a lot of things because it kills the microbes that the trees need. So
I'm a little bit of a quandary as to what to put down for the
grass, and then now what to do with the with this spur weed.
I've considered residing, and I know that would cost it a small fortune and
be a backbreaker. So I just calling for your thoughts. Let's drill down
on this. I just want to make sure that I've got the right weed
with you. It's not grass burr. You're talking about a little frilly leafed
broad leaf plant that has the burrs on it. Is that correct? Yeah?
Kind of. It's low, it stays low, so it doesn't hardly
cut very easily. You got to dig that out. And boy, they
right, and they're everywhere because I saw that where they like sparse grass,
and mine is sparse, so it's moved in anytime sunlight hits The sell nature
plants of weeds. So the density of your lawn is like the bodyguard that
either does or does not let weeds into your lawn. And that's kind of
what you described at the beginning of the call. So your number one goal
is to go to my website, Gardening with Skip dot com and get my
free download lawn care guide. It ties you how to mow, water and
fertilize properly and the timing on those things. And the more you build the
lawn over time, the less weed problems you're going to have. Like burweed,
for example, there are a few weeds that can coexist in a dense
Saint Augustine lawn. Most of them can't. And so I would say I
kind of hear from you you'd rather not use chemicals if possible, but whatever.
So that mowwater, fertilized fact sheet or chart calendar is very very important.
Do that all summer long. Now, as far as what to do
about the burweed, now you would have to use a post emergent broad leaf
weed killer, but you're not going to put it down at a rate that
would inch through the soil or harm a tree or something like that. You're
going to apply it just enough to dampen the leaves of the weeds, and
once you do that, it's going to kill the weeds back. And then
as the grass begins to grow. It's not like your long stays toxic for
months, you know, or anything. It's not going to be an issue
there. Just just follow the label carefully. These products that work best when
it gets in the upper eighties, they begin to be stressful to Saint Augustine.
So we're right now in temperatures that are hitting the upper eighties. But
if you do it in the morning and let them dry up before the temperatures
get up there, you're okay. Still. If you wait another month or
so, then we're looking at the nineties and it's already hot first thing in
the morning, and so I would get it done now rather than later.
If you're going to do those sprays, yeah, and so yeah, go
ahead. So I don't have a whole of Saint Augustine to worry about in
the back. You could do in the front. I haven't seen the birweed
in the front yet. But what is the chemical that you would recommend putting
down on that? And I'm guessing I need to kill it and then dig
it up still because those birds don't disappear. I mean the plant might die,
but yeah, but well, if you're going to dig it up anyway,
then I wouldn't spray it. I just dig it up. But that
is one heck of a job digging up burweed all over a lawn. If
you're up to that, then go for it, but don't don't spray it
and then dig it up. You just got to determine that you are going
to get the densest Saint Augustine anyone's ever seen by the end of summer,
and you can do that with with that mollwater fertilized with quality products, and
I would that's what I would aim for. There are pre emergent herbicides that
you would put out in this early like February for the burweed. But let's
just work on getting the lawn dnse and seeing how far we can it there.
And getting the burweed out is helpful because it is a competition for your
grass. Now that it's found this little niche in the spots in the lawn
where sunlight hit the soil. You decide the way you want to go about
it, you know, from hand pulling to spraying to whatnot. But the
simplest, least spray way I can tell you to do it is maybe hit
them now with the spray to kill the ones that are there. But then
just really focus on that mowater fertilized and what's fertilizer called again? Say it
again? What the name of your fertilizer that you're talking about. Oh,
there's a number of them on my schedule. You hear me talk about them
on garden Line. You know, there's products from Microlife, there's products from
Nelson's, there's products from nitrofoss and from Medina and they all work. They're
all good products. They work. They're different, you know, some are
immediate release, some are slow release. But when you look at my schedule
at Gardening with Skip, it lists all of the products there and it talks
about when to apply them. And so that that's why I'm trying to send
you there. Because it's free. You just download it, print it up
if you want. And when when a yard is bad enough, I mean,
do you at some point you got to say there's nothing there to redeem.
I mean talk about residing a little bit. I know that's okay,
I'm gonna have to I'll do this in a real quick way because I have
to run on. But if you have grass that's alive, that's in decent
health within a foot space apart. It will cover back over by by summery,
you know, through the sometime in the summer with good care. If
if it's more sparse than that and you got larger areas, either you're having
to plug in strips here and there to try to speed the fill in,
or you just go to the total resaid and it is money. But sometimes
biting the bullet and just starting off that way maybe easier. Unless you have
the time to it out and kind of mess with your lawn each week,
a couple of days a week doing some things, it may be easier to
just go to the reside. But that you have any recommendations for reside companies
are places to buy it. There's a number of places around town. I
don't have a specific one that I would recommend. I would do a little
research on what kind of grass you want, and what variety of grass you
want, what cultivar. Saint Augustine it is the most shade tolerant that we
have. There are zoisias that are moderate close in shade tolerance, but not
as good as Saint Augustine. And then I wouldn't even do Bermuda. It
has its own issues. It's just a version of St. Augustine. There's
a couple of different breeds of it or whatever. There's a lot of them,
and some of them are hard to hard to find. I tell you
what. Let me let me do this. If you go to the Aggie
turf website, I'm concerned. I'm on time here. If you go Aggie
Turf website, it's it's Aggie turf dot TAMU t A m U dot e
d U go to text turf grasses being the lower left corner says it has
turf grass, weeds and turf grass's by the way, you should look at
the weed part two. Uh and and it'll list like you click on Saint
Augustine or click on Zoisia and it'll tell you cultivars and stuff. Now that's
not the most up to date list, you know, websites have to get
updated periodically, but that's a good start. Uh And And I I would
I would try that. Depending on how much shade you have, and depending
on uh some other factors, one variety or another would be better suited to
your lawn. Okay, okay, I appreciate you, all right, you
bet, Eric, thank you very much for that call. You know we're
talking about fertilizing and things. Microlife. Micro Life products are excellent. You
know, Eric was kind of interested maybe and stand away from some things that
are synthetic. Well that that's God's fine. That's that's your prerogative. By
the way, my schedules, both of them online, have organic and synthetic
options, so you choose what you want. They're there. We help you
have success based on the way you want to go about it. And Microlife
is an organic product. The green bag the six two four that is the
standard lawn fertilized standard organic lawn fertilizer, and I use it for things way
beyond the lawn. I mean, it's an excellent product. The Microlife humts
plus C zero four helps with your soil structure. Humate is concentrated compost.
If you take composts to its final stage, that's called humus, and humates
plus is a high quality soil amendment that you can put on the surface in
your lawn and in time, as you do that and the lawn grows,
you just create an environment where grass can thrive. And that's that's what we're
looking for. If you go to Microlifefertilizer DOT com Microlife Fertilizer dot com.
You can find out where to get it, and it's widely, widely available.
I mean you hear me talking about feed stores and ace hardware stores of
Southwest Fertilizer, and you know all these places are going to carry micro Life.
It's easy, easy to find. Well, we just ran through another
break Nikki. This morning is going two dead gum fasts. It is really
I don't have time to talk about all the things I want to talk about.
And humus is that like hummus but different. It's like hummus for the
soil. Oh No, humus is like okay, so you start with the
leaves and grass clippings, that's organic matter. It decomposes into composts. That's
the good stuff to put in your soil. And when composts decomposes all the
way as far as it can, that's humus. Wow, I don't love
the education. Maybe we need to mix it up and put it in a
little one pint tens and I don't know, maybe keep you regular or something
like that idea. Sure, I'm just saying I never heard about anybody eating
hummus, but humus all right, I'm past sorry. Hey, welcome back
to the garden Line. Good to have you with us today. You hear
me all the time brag about our independent garden centers here in the Houston area.
I'm just telling you, if you live in any other city here in
Texas and a lot of I've been to a lot of cities around the country,
nobody has got this selection of garden centers that we do, the top
notch independent mom and pop whatever you want to call them garden centers. And
Warren Southern Gardens out in Kingwood is an example of that. You know that
you've got Warren Southern Gardens and you got Kingwood Garden Center out there. It
is just one of those places where you go and you just want to hang
out, You want to wander around because they have so many cool things.
By the way, they've got a deal right now that whether you buy a
bag of Nelson's Turf Star Slow and Easy or Nitrofoss Super Turf, either one,
they'll give you a free tempon bag of a barricade for the pre murder
week control. That is a deal they got going on out there also.
And they have a selection of plants, outstanding hibiscus, outstanding color anything you're
looking for, you're going to find it out there. But there is a
plant that I hadn't seen in a long time, and it's blue butterfly clarodendron.
And you've got to see this plant. It's a shrub, but it
has a little clusters of little blue flowers that look like butterflies. The petals
look like butterfly wings, and the anthers and filaments, the pollen and everything.
The reproductive part of the flower coming up look like the antenna of a
butterfly. Blue butterfly clarodendum. Just go out there and see it. It
is an excellent plant. I like to put it in a kind of a
semi sun area where it gets a little sun, a little bit of shade.
It does super super well there, Blue butterfly Clara dendum. But that's
just typical of woring Southern gardens. Of course you're going to have new things.
Of course you're going to have cool things going on, and they always
have some great deals going on too. You can go to the website it's
Warrens Southern Gardens Warrens Southern Gardens. So you know, I've I've been there
a number of times. By the way, they're open seven days a week
too. That's another thing. I mean, it's always a good day to
go out there to Warren Southern Guards and a Kingwood Garden Center. While you're
at it, well, guess what Mother's Day is coming up? I hope
you know that. Guys, this is your official You've been told, you've
been minded, you've been remembered. Mother's Day is coming up, and so
what do you do for mom on Mother's Day? Well, there's a lot
of things. Of course, people think of flowers or box of chocolates or
whatnot. I'll tell you what mom would really like. Mom would like something
from Wabirds Unlimited. Because at Wabirds everything you can imagine that associates with birds.
They're gonna have it. They're gonna have feeders, they're gonna have the
bird houses. You know. They've got the little hyper hummingbird feeder, which
in my opinion, is the best hummingbird there is. I've got one myself,
high perch hummingbird feeder. They got the Eco Tough Classic feeder. It's
the typical if you kind of picture a bird feeder in your mind, it's
probably what you're picturing, but it's made out of recycled plastic milk jugs.
Really cool. My favorite feeder the squirrel proof. It's called the Eliminator squirrel
Proof feeder. That is a Cadillac and it works. I'm telling you the
squirrels at my house. You should hear the language they use around the yard
because they can't get into the darn thing. They're very frustrated. There's books,
there's just all kinds of things at Wildbirds Unlimited, including even like jewelry
and decorations for the home, and bird baths, bird bath, bird water
feature for birds. Right, they've got it. Wilbird's unlimited and super super
quality feed where when you buy a pound of wild Bird feed, you're getting
a pound of stuff that's going to go into the stomach of a bird,
not kicked off on the ground. Super high quality. That's what they do
wild Bird's Unlimited. So get by there, now, get mom something.
I guarantee you can find something from Mom there. We're going to head now
out to Mike in Surfside. Hey, Mike, Hey, Skip, thanks
for taking my call. I got a quick question for him trying to store
some vegetable seeds and I was wondering if by refrigerating them and just a normal
refrigerator. Would that extend the life of the seed or are they just better
off at room temperature? No, significantly better when you cool them down.
You know, when people are want to store seed forever, they put them
in the freezer, right, But a refrigerator for our home garden purposes or
refrigerators just find you just need them to be dry, make sure they're dropping.
That's why you know, whenever I buy something you get those little desecon
packets in it. I always save those because I throw those in with my
seed and that's pulling moisture out of the air. In cold storage, you
need something that seals tightly, not as I but like a Mason jar with
a lid, or one of those click down food storage jars that has a
rubber seal. Yeah, yeah, plan on using the Mason jar ceiling deal.
I'll figured the refrigeration would probably help extend the life of the seed.
That wasn't quite sure it does significantly. All right, I appreciate you helping
me. All right, take care, Thanks, Mike, appreciate your call.
That is for sure. I've told you about the silver bag. You
know what the silver bag is that's Nitrophoss's superturf. Superturf, it's nineteen four
ten. It's got a lot of nitrogen in it. But don't worry about
that. You're not. We don't want to overdo nitrogen, but you don't
when you put on superturf. And here's why. Half of that nitrogen is
in a slow release form that's going to release over the next two or three
or four months. I mean, it just depends on conditions, weather conditions,
but it gradually feeds the grass like grass takes up nutrients gradually. It's
kind of like we eat. Do you eat six months of food at one
time? Well, I've attempted it on several occasions, but no, we
don't do that. We eat gradually each day, and grass takes up nudrinks
gradually each day. So that slow release is the way you spread out the
growth get a stronger, deeper, more resilient root system. It also has
four percent iron, which is important for good color. A lot of times
in our clay soils and our highph soils, we end up with a little
bit of an iron deficiency, especially early in the season, but it can
occur through the year and the nitroposs superturf the silver bag. That's how we
avoid that. So where do you get nitrofas superturf, Well, pretty much
everywhere, that's a fast answer. You get it plants for all seasons,
yep, that's on Tomball Parkway, you know that one. You can get
into asposees up in the woodlands. They carry nitrofoss products up there as well.
Or go out to Brenham to plants and things and you're going to find
superturf as well as other nitrofoss products. Makes it easy, you know,
I just realized I am not giving the phone number out often today, and
I always have to do that because people tune in and they don't know where
to call. Well, our phone number is seven to one three two one
two kt r H seven to one three two one two kt r H.
That makes it easy to get ahold of us. What do you want to
talk about? What kind of questions do you have that we can assist you
with. I earlier was talking about getting out and doing some container repotting that
I need to get done. That is important. I've got a bunch of
orchids. You know how it is, You go and you maybe you,
I don't know. You get an orchid, someone gives it to you,
you buy it yourself, and you bring it home. The moth orchid,
that is the one that is just ubiquitous. It's the one you see everywhere
from grocery stores to garden centers. The moth orchid is the easiest orchid to
grow indoors. It's the full, almost fool proof orchid. If you've got
a bathroom with a real bright window, that's a perfect environment because you know,
every now and then you shower and you get some humidity in the air
and whatnot, and they're just happy there in that bright light. They don't
want to be in direct sun, but they want to be a nice bright
light to do their best. And I've got a bunch that are sitting there.
They most of them bloomed for me this year. A lot of them
are about a year past when I should have been repotting them. But I'll
go in there and pull them out. I cut away all the dead roots
and the base of the stem that now is no longer functioning, and they're
always sending new aerial roots down from the stem up above. You probably see
those coming out, maybe sprawling outside the outside of the pot. Orchids are
not a terrestrial well, moth orchids are not a terrestrial plant. They live
in trees. They attached to the bark of trees, and that's their natural
habitat. So that's why we put them in a bark mix and occasionally if
you will clean them up like I'm describing, repot them in a container with
some fresh bark chunks. You can buy orchid blends at our garden centers that
are designed for that. They may even have a little bit of charcoal in
them or stuff. Just to avoid soggy conditions. Orchids do not want to
sit in water. They just need to get a good soaking every now and
then and then drain really well. Do not let them sit in water.
But if you do that and then begin to fertilize them very lightly, super
super low rate. When you water, you can get invigorating new growth along
with good sunlight, and that orchid will cycle back into bloom for you later
on. And I need to do that to mine. I just got this
pile of orchids that have been neglected, and so the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Orchids is probably on their way to my house right now.
But I'm gonna fix that. And I just a tip for you as well.
Hey, we're going to take a break seven one three two one two
ktr h. I'll be right back. Welcome back to garden Line. Good
to have you. We are. We are hopefully walking on sunshine. We
got a little bit of clouds out there in the sky, but listen to
day is it's safe, It's safe to go out. The weatherman keeps telling
us, yeah, it's cloudy, but chances of a rain are very scattered
and not that high in any given location. So let's get out there and
get some stuff done in our yards. I was talking about wild birds being
a good gift for Mother's Day, and it just reminded me I bought my
mother outlaw. I'm sorry, mother in law. I get those confused sometimes,
but you know, I'm gonna leave that as it is. I bought
her one of those little hangars that you put a bird feeder on. You
know, it's kind of like a shepherd's crook that comes up. I got
one at Wildbird's Unlimited recently, and I'm gonna get her all set up with
a bird feeder right outside the window where she likes to sit, and we'll
get her all fixed up to you. So don't forget your mother outlaw.
I'm sorry your mother in law when you're purchasing your mother's day gifts at wild
Birds Unlimited. If you're listening to this, have you been to Nelson's Water
Garden out in Katie A lot of you have. No, It's a popular
place. They've been around a long time. You know Nelson's water Garden.
They are national leaders in the water garden industry. They have been building water
gardens for a very long time. So everything from the fish, to the
plants, to the structures themselves. They can get you fixed up. They
will come and build like a waterfall in your property if you like that,
a pond whatever kinds of little When I say a pond, I mean you
know, a little small pond for your koi or whatever kind of fish you're
doing. They've been doing this. They can do it turnkey. But if
you want to do some do it yourself. They can guide you on that
as well. Yes, they also help with that. Now, Nelson's Nursery
and water Garden is also a nursery. Don't forget that. I mean,
they got some sod in the other day people were in purchasing the sod.
They've got all kinds of plants restocked on zenias, really cool, really cool
shrubs, the kaleidoscope, babelia, which is a beautiful little abilia. They've
got those, and I don't know, guardinas, adrajas, you name it.
Definitely got the hibiscus, of course, but they really the feature of
that place is the water gardens and it's the way they transform a landscape.
And I just have to please do this. Just go out the plan an
outing, get some friends, get your neighbors, family, whatever, go
out there and check them out and look, and you will be inspired you
walk through there, and I did the first time I walked in there.
Everywhere I went it was just like, oh my gosh, I have to
have that for my backyard. Oh my gosh, I have to have that
for my backyard. When you see it set up like that, it is
so inspirational. And they really are an inspiring place. A destination garden center
Nelson's Watergardens dot Com. Think of it as your West Houston garden center.
It is out on Katie Fortvenroe snort of Katie Freeway out there in Katie.
I promise you, if you go, you will be impressed, and you
will suddenly you will realize that how did I ever get by without a disappearing
fountain coming out of a beautiful container or a little waterfall. I love love
that kind of inspiration in places like that. At the house, we are
transitioning our vegetable garden. It's coming out pretty quick here. I've got some
cool seasoned peas. I had some sugar snaps that are now on their way
out. They have finished up, and boy, they were productive. It
was with a very productive planting. For sure. I need to get my
tomato trellis vine. I need to get my tomato vines attached to the trellis.
They're kind of flopping around. And I like to use cattle panels just
those are those livestock panels, the galvanized very heavy duty wire with big oldes
ones with like four inch by six inch openings, and the and the thing
you can put a couple of teeposts in attach them to a teeposts. I
slap mine just a little bit and then the tomatoes kind of grow on that
and whenever one flops the wrong way, I just push it back through the
trellis and ends up with a wall of tomato foliage and the tomatoes, because
they're slanted, they hang down a little bit below the treillers where they don't
get as much sunburn. And it works really well. But I occasionally have
to go back and kind of wind them through it. But a lot of
things to be done in the vegetable garden this week. Have you been to
A and A Plants and Produce recently up in the Montgomery area, All of
you who live up there in the Lake Conroy area, this is your hometown
garden center. I mean it's just right there on the back door. They
have a landscape crew that can come out to your place and they can do
work for you out there. They absolutely are excellent at tending to things like
that. If you are needing any of the fertilizers that I talk about here
on guarden Line, they have them. They always are getting restocked. They
restocked mulches, they restock the fertilizer, they restock the compost. So you
know, you hear me brag about airloom soils and Nature's way, you hear
me brag about Nelson's fertilizers, micro life, fertilizers, nitrophos fertilizer. It's
all there, and really cool garden bling too, from signs to little metal
arbor structures. It's just I love going through there. If you have any
imagination at all, you walk in there and you can kind of see how
that place can really turn your beautiful, beautiful landscape even into a more beautiful,
enchanting one. Lots of activities for kids too. When you go by
there, ask them about the things that they do, the programs that they
do with the kiddos, because they always have something like that going on at
Ana Plants and Produce in Montgomery. By the way, they're on the east
side of Montgomery on one oh five, So if you are heading up in
that direction, you're going to drive by. In fact, anybody going up
and down one oh five all the way from Nevinesota to Conrod, Texas,
you just drive by Ana all the time. That's right there. I have
my lawn. I finally mowed the first time my lawn. I always tried
to lay a little bit, but I got that new grass put in that
I was talking about earlier, and it's starting to grow and finally hit a
point where I needed to get it mode. So I got that knocked out
because I'm going to be out this week in a way, and got it
down to a good level. Just remember when you're mowing, a sharp mower
is important. Number one is less strained on your lawn more. But number
two, and this is something I bet you haven't thought about. When you
look at your lawn, it's like looking at a pixelated picture, but you're
so far away that you don't see the pixels. Right. But each grass
tip is going to have a brown edge where it was cut off. And
if your mower is sharp, that's going to be a real thin brown edge
because it made a nice clean cut, like you just took scissors and snipped
it off. If your mower is dull, it's going to be a split,
ragged, larger ten brown end of the grass blade because that blade just
essentially just just hammered off the end of that grass blade as it flew by
and didn't make a clean cut. Now you take that difference between like a
little one eighth of an inch brown and maybe one half of an inch brown
in some cases, and you multiply that times ten billion grass blades out there,
and the green suddenly looks less green, and so a sharp more blade
to a degree makes your lawn greener. I know that's just think about it.
I think it'll make sense the way I described it if you just think
about it. You want to fertilize, you want to get it mode,
but you want to mow regularly. Every time you mow is like you're hedging
your lawn. And the more you hedge a plant, the dentre it gets.
And so the turf specialists first time one of them told me this,
I thought you got to be kidding, but it's true. Of all the
things we do our lawns, the single most important thing to have a dense,
beautiful lawn is regular mowing. Yes. They need water, yes,
and we need fertilizer. Butt the single most important thing is mowing frequently with
a very sharp mower, and that'll give you success. I hope that helps
out. Hope that's something to think about when it comes to fertilizing. Nelson
plant Food has got a couple of products that are outstanding. One of them
is I always thought of it as a fast release, but actually it also
has some slow release nitrogen in it as well. It's called Bruce's Brew.
Bruce's Brew is primarily one that releases fast, but it does have some slower
release products in it. We use it in spring for a quick green up.
You can do it anytime the year you want to do it. You
can do a regular standard rate of you can kind of cut it in half
and do a lower rate and then later do another lower rate and that sort
of spreads out the release even more or just gets slow and easy. Slow
and easy is Nelson's slow release. And when I say slow, I mean
this is going to feed your lawn for three months, four months. I
mean it really goes out there pretty darn far. And when you return your
clippings, in addition to that, they're decomposing. And so your lawn is
just getting the nicest, slowest feed all through the summer months, just like
you would want it to be in nature. And slow and easy by Nelson
plant Food is an outstanding blend with the right kinds of nitrogen to provide that
kind of gradual feed over time. Pretty important, pretty important to do.
Nelson plant Food products are widely available. They have everything from the jars of
color Star products to these these turf fertilizers part of the turf Star line of
products work. I know because I've used it to work very well. Where
you're listening to the Garden Line, and I want to remind you that today
after the show at eleven am eleven am, I'll be at Southwest Fertilizer corner
of Bissing at and run with Now, Bob's going to be given away a
Toro blower and a Touro string tremor. That's a valuable gift to be given
to two valuable gifts. We'll be giving away some Medina stuff. They'll be
something called skip Bucks. When you stop by my table and maybe you bring
a plant sample or a picture, just a question in and I'm helping you
with it, I'll give you skip Bucks and you can use those to get
things at the store there. For example, Medina has got something called super
Grow plus sixteen O to hose end applicating. I'm going to tell you more
about that in a little bit, but you could use your skip Bucks to
get some of that. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the
products or services advertised on this program. To Katie r. H. Garden
Line with skin Rict it's so trim. Just watch him as so many superasys.
They're not a sign. Welcome back to Garden Line. Good to have
you with us, looking forward to talking. We got a lot of things
to talk about this hour. If you have been by Plants for All Seasons
lately, you know what I'm talking about. When I say the place looks
gorgeous. It is stocked up. There's plenty of everything there. One of
the things I enjoy there is the fact that they're gonna carry things that do
well here, that that's just what they do. They this place Plants for
all seasons, the Flowery Family. They've been doing this since nineteen seventy three.
For those of you who haven't been there, it's on Highway to forty
nine North. That's Tomball Parkway when you get if you're heading north, when
you get to Luetta, you exit Luetta and go over Luetta and it's right
there on the side of Tomball Parkway, just past Luetta. Easy, easy,
easy to get to. Now they are green thumb experts, So if
you have a brown thumb, you walk in there, they're going to give
you a plant, and they're going to give you advice, and they're going
to give you the products you need to turn the brown green. That's what
we always say. There's no such thing as a brown thumb, there's uninformed
thumbs. Well, when you take quality plants, quality products, and quality
advice, everything looks like you have a green thumb because you're doing it right.
And Plants for All Seasons helps you do that. The website Plants for
All Seasons dot com. The phone number you want to write this down two
eight, one, three, seven six, sixteen forty six. Go in,
talk to Sherry, talk to Kelly, talk the whole crew there.
Everybody that's there is an expert in helping you have success. You can take
them a sample, you can a picture in there. Their goal is to
make sure that you have beauty and bounty just like you're dreaming of when you
walk into the place, and they'll work with you to help you achieve just
that at Plants for All Seasons. I'm going to head up to Cypress now
and talk to Sandy. Hello, Sandy, good morning, Thank you for
taking my call. I have a question, like a general question on my
vegetable plant. I know indeterminate tonight You're not you're supposed to prune, but
like my black beauty eggplant they finally produced, and my okras and my bell
peppers. If the lead at the bottom are touching the oil, should I
pick them off? But pip them off? I generally do. I mean,
you know, there's always a potential, especially an unmulched soil, to
splash dirt up on them and maybe get a little more disease issues that could
get in there a little leisier. It's not night and day. It's not
like, you know, it's the end of the world if you don't prone
them off. But number one, just keep the soul mult and then you
don't really even have to worry about it, Sandy, I find containers.
Okay, yeah, no, I wouldn't. I just wouldn't worry about it.
A lot. You'll find that the older leaves start to get aged,
and they may get more leaf spots, or they may turn a little bit
yellow and stuff. So sometimes you're cleaning them up just for aesthetics, sort
of get disease issues reduced a little bit in the in the plant. Thank
you, bet good luck. Now you know, Sandy that if we give
advice, it's free. But all I ask for is half the eggplant you
grow, drop it off at the studio. I got to make my baba
ganoosh and so I'm dependent on your baba. You take care, you take
care. If if you are looking to improve your lawn and you're looking for
a natural product that has a high concentration of nitrogen in it, Sweet Green
by Nitrofoss has just that. It's eleven percent nitrogen product. It's based on
a molasses with the microbial content involved to create this sweet Green product that absolutely
stimulates microbial growth in your soil. You know, organic gardeners have been using
molasses on their soil for a long time and they understand the value that to
stimulating beneficial bacteria and other microbes. And Sweet Green will do that now.
Sweet Grain, being a Knight Fosh product, is easy to find. You
don't have to hunt everywhere for it. You're going to find it an enchanted
forest out there in the Richmond Rosenberg area. A growers outlet up in willis
Or RCW Nursery where Interstate Interstate where FM two forty nine Tambo Parkway comes into
Beltway eight. All places you can get You're Sweet Green from Nitroposs. We're
gonna head out now to Jersey Village, and talk to Teddy. Hello,
Teddy, how are you doing? Skip? I'm well, how are you?
I'm doing fantastic. I got a quick question for you. I drove
around the neighborhood and as a matter of fact, in my front yard,
I've noticed that I'm patches. I only got a few patches of lime green
color. And I'm I'm over here, like am I'm the only one?
So hey, you know what. I drove around, you know, and
a few homes and all that, and they even had it too. I
mean, it's what's the problem there. It could be a couple of things.
Uh. Iron deficiency will cause a lack of iron, I'm a lack
of art, a lack of deep green, the emerald green color you're probably
looking for. Uh. If you grab a grass blade that lacks the color
and you hold it up to the light and let the light kind of come
through it, and you see green and yellow stripes going up and down the
blade, that is an iron deficiency. And so now the next question is
why is there an iron deficiency. It could be because of a lack of
iron, but more likely it's because of a lack of available iron. And
so putting down a product that is going to give you iron. You can
do an iron keylate. A keylate is a way they protect the iron molecules
so the soil doesn't tie it up as fast. You could do that.
You could do fertilizers that contain iron. You know, this silver bag nitrophuss
superturf contains four percent. You know, I put that the nineteen fourten.
That yeah, I called in that last week. I put that in last
week, okay, and that will be that will be providing some iron for
them. The other thing that can cause iron deficiency is loss of roots.
The disease take all root rot often shows up as yellowish types of areas on
their way down to dead. And if the yellow keeps going and you end
up with dead spots, that would probably take a root rot. But I
don't want to jump to conclusions. I'm just telling you you're seeing an iron
deficiency and it's due to one of those things. And I think you did
the right thing starting with the silver bag super turf. Let's see if it
carry up from that. If not, you may want to treat those spots
with a little iron key late as well. Okay. Is that a concern
I need to worry about? Right now, or I just just I would
wait if it were mine, I would wait and watch a lot of times
iron deficiency gets better as the weather warms up a little bit too. All
right, okay, okay, all right, skip, Thank you buddy,
all right, you bet, thank you nobody. I wanted to tell you
guys about Jorges Hidden Gardens. You probably have have heard me talk about them
before. They're down in Alvin and Hoores Hidden Gardens. Is it's easy,
easy to get to. I mean they here's there. They're hours, by
the way. They're open for weekend Friday from eight am to four pm Saturday
from a am to four pm. Sunday from eight am to four pm,
so it's easy to remember, right eight am to four pm Saturday through Sunday.
They have a lot of plants, a lot of selection plants. You
can get fruit trees, you can get bedding plants. You can get your
vegetables and herbs and blueberries and I mean just all kinds of things at Jorges
Hidden Gardens. They also carry this three sixty tree stabilizer three sixty tree stabilizer
a brago. They've got it down there. You can get it, so
if you're in Alvin, Santa Fe, Dickinson Hillcrest, Alcoa, Arcadia,
Alta Loma, all those communities. You got a hometown garden center right in
your backyard. Jorges Hidden Gardens. They are easy to get to. Again,
they're in Alvin, Texas, so no problem finding Jorges Hidden Gardens.
By the way, they're on Elizabeth Street. If you're looking, I'm gonna
go away, take a break. I'll be right back. Seven one three,
two point two fifty eight seventy four. Hey, welcome back to garden
Line. Good to have you with us today. It's going to be a
good day. By the way, I know you see clouds, but that's
just to keep a cooler for us. We're not going to get a lot
of rain today. In fact, you probably will not see rain where you
are at all, even in a little tiny sprinkle. So it's a good
day to get out, get some work done, get some plants and products
and things, so you set yourself up for success. Remember that spring,
we are still officially in. Spring is the time when we set ourself up
for success. So when the brutal summer months come, we've got healthy plants
with good, deep, strong root systems because we've prepared the soil, and
we purchased plants that belonged, and we got them planted and established before the
brutal weather of summer I hit them. So it's now's the chance. You
have been warned, you have been advised, or whatever. Now's the time
to get all this done so you can have that kind of success. Speaking
of getting out and about ACE Hardware has got a deal that I got to
tell you about. This is the Big still Sail Steel. Steel is in
the string tremors, as in the chainsaws, as in the power equipment that
you love it, quality equipment. Right now, thirty two participating ACE stores
will honor this sale today. There's a couple of them that may. Some
of them are doing it yesterday, some of them will do it tomorrow.
But today, all of them, all of them today, Big Ace,
the ACE Big Steel Sale. And it is now fifteen percent off. Even
if something's on sale, you still get fifteen more percent off. I don't
know how you beat that. So that's on all the steel serial numbered tools,
all the attachments, the batteries, and the chargers. Now it doesn't
include industrial tools and accessories, but all still serial number tools, attachments,
batteries and chargers at thirty two different ACE Hardware stores. You're not going to
beat that. And by the way, while you're there, don't forget this
is the emergency weekend break where things that we would purchase, such as batteries,
such as an escape ladder out of the second story, and all the
kinds of things you might purchase during it for emergencies at your house you can
get tax free, and ACE carries those kinds of things, So talk to
them about that when you're in there too. I want to head now to
Richmond and we're going to talk to Steve. Hello, Steve, Hey,
good morning Skip. I got a quick question for you. We've got some
live oaks in our front yard, three of them. They've been here,
oh, probably five years. They've been getting about twelve thirteen fourteen feet tall
now and I need to find somebody that can come and excuse me and the
trim the tops of them. They're getting kind of bushy. All right,
Well, the person I would suggest you get is Martin spoon More. Martin
Spoon Moore's companies called Afordable Tree Service. You want to hear them advertised on
your shows or the channel there a lot. So yeah, Mark's been doing
this long time if they're over thirty years experience, and I've seen the work
he does, visited with the hem and Joe. Uh. There, that's
that old time kind of company service where the owners answer the phone and the
the they make sure you're happy with the work. So uh here that was
right. Okay, here's the phone number. Do you got a penhandy?
There? I do. I'm ready seven one three six nine nine twenty six
sixty three seven one okay, six nine nine twenty six sixty three. If
you want to go to the website websites aff Tree Service dot com. Aff
Tree Service dot com. Okay, I got one more quick question if you
have time absolutely work. My wife, our neighbor has an evergreen rosebush out
front and it's just beautiful and we're having a hard time finding those, uh
and nurseries around. Do you have any idea? Those are the ones I
had, like the five white petals that look more like a flower than a
rose. Well, I'm not you don't have to have a variety name for
it, yeah, rosesance. Oh, I'll tell you what I would.
I would call RCW Nursery and see if they have access to that they've got
like, oh gosh, four pages single space of roses that they have access
to to be able to get some stuff. RCW prib be your best bet.
RCW Nursery. You know, sense a builder put these in five years
ago, you think they'd be clinical because they don't really put the most expensive
things into yeah, you know, landscape. But yeah, well that's a
hard time for some reason. Well, and I don't know that. I've
never grown that rose. I don't know that rose. So that's why I'm
going to refer you just to give them, give them a call or go
buy. The website is RCW Nurseries dot com. Uh, they're they're there
at We're talking about park Land belt Way eight. Come together. Okay,
we'll give me show. Thank you for appreciate you you bet appreciate the call
away audios. Yeah, that's interesting. I don't have to look that up.
I'm not familiar. Haven't grown that one before. We talk about lawn
fertilizing, and you know the purpose of fertilizer is to provide the nutrient bank
account in the soil that plants need. I know, we think of it
like you know, you fertilize and it makes your plants grow. And well,
yes, to a degree, the nitrogen is doing that, but you
have all these other nutrients that don't make the plant grow. They support the
growth the plant is trying to do. And asamite would be an example.
As mite provides trace minerals. Trace minerals are needed in tiny amounts. It
doesn't, you know, azamite goes a long way. I mean, you
know, one one bag of azamite, what a forty four pound bag will
cover six to twelve thousand square feet. But you got to have those nutrients
because remember how I was kind of joking earlier that I don't eat six months
worth of food in one day. I eat a little bit every day.
And plants are taking up nutrients a little bit every day. So you can't
fertilize every day for them. You shouldn't. What you do is you build
that bank account and then when the roots need it, it's there. And
as mite does just that. It's easy to find as m It's widely available,
no problem at all getting hold azmite. It's one of the more easy
to find products that we talk about here on Garden Line. But it does
provide that kind of a boost. You're listening to garden Line, and I'm
your host, Skip Richter, and here is the phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. We're going to go now to let's see spring and talk to
rich Hello, rich good morning. Skip. Question regarding nuts edge, I
had a little patch in my yard, so I used Prosedge hell soap puron
methyl product. Okay, My neighbor next door add a bunch of nuts edge
along with some Virginia button weed, so I used blind side. The blind
side on his lawn knocked the heck out of the nuts edge as well as
the Virginia button weed. But my lawn using the pro sedge, it has
impacted it, but at two weeks down the road, it's still not even
dead any ideas the pro sedge tell me again, it knocked backge. It
didn't. It knocked it back, but nowhere near killing it. Like the
nuts edge on my neighbors that in four days it's totally brown. Okay,
well, okay. First of all, just in general about herbicides, how
fast it works doesn't necessarily mean it works better or worse. You know,
some things take their time and do an awesome job. So I'll just set
the speed aside. But the blind Side is a product that's generally not available
over the counter. It's it's going to have two different ingredients in it,
and so you're probably coming at it from both sides. It is. It
does do good on on purple and yellow nuts sedge. The pro sedgs the
halo you said, halo sulfur on, right, was the ingredient, and
yes, yeah, yes, sir, Yeah, the halo sulfur on is
also I believe that's the one that's in manage. Let me see if I
can find that particular thing or saige excuse me, just an I'm gonna find
out sedgehammer that's the one. Yeah, it's the same. Yeah, it's
the same. I've checked it. Yeah, and it works good. It's
a very effective product on the nuts edge. So uh, just get be
a little patient with it, I guess, and see if you feel like
it's not going to do the job, which I'm not sure why I wouldn't,
because it does work. It's a very popular product. Uh, then
maybe talk to your neighbor and get a little bit of a little bit of
what he bought, because he probably bought way more than he needs. If
you know I bought it, I've got bottles of Blindside and Celsius. I'm
the guy that takes care of my neighbors launched. Okay, so you're the
you're the local controller around the place there. Well, I wouldn't just immediately
jump on that and apply that to the product. I would I would stick
with waiting to see how what yours is going to do. Give it another
couple of weeks to see if you see results before you well do Joe.
Thanks collusions all right, Rich, thank you for the call. Thanks appreciate
that very much. When it comes to brown stuff and having success, Ciena
Mulch is a place where you're going to get everything you need. Every fertilizer
I talk about on guardline, is there, the heirloom soils, rose soil,
the leaf mole compost, it's there. They deliver within twenty miles and
twenty miles Ciena malt where twenty miles of what Well, it's due south of
Houston. So if you are out in neighborhoods like Iowa Colony or Coola Lake,
Olympia, Pomona Riverstone Manbill Roach, Sharon, Meridian, first colony.
We can just go on and on that. Cena Maultch is your hometown local
supplier. They are near Highway six and two eighty eight just north of Roch
Sharon on FM five twenty one. Cienamultch dot com is the website Sienna mulch
dot com. You can get all the stuff to make the brown stuff perfect
for when you plant the green stuff in it. That's how that works.
Soils, fertilizers, quality products, mulches, that's it's all CNA malts.
They deliver within about twenty miles of their location. All right, it's time
for a break here. Well, I've got some folks online, those of
you that are out there, I will come to you first when we come
back. We just want to make sure we have plenty of time to be
able to address your call. And now it's time to turn it over to
Nikky for news. Right, I got it. Is that what we're gonna
do. That's what we're going to do. All right, Well, thanks
for listening to Garden And by the way, don't forget I'm going to be
at Southwest Fertilizer today starting at eleven a m. We're going to be giving
away all kinds of things, including some really cool stuff like a Toro blower
and a Toro string trimmer. And we got some cool products from Adina as
well. All right, well, here's Nicky Welcome back to garden Line.
Little music from looking Glass. Also music for Guardians from Guardians to the Galaxy
for those of you who know the song from that. We're gonna go to
Northwest Houston and talk to Bob Hello, Bob, Hey, Skip. I've
got a dilemma. I mault my yard every every year, and I've done
it, you know, for twenty five years with bulk hardwood mult Last year
I put the mulch down and immediately my my tender plant started drying, dying
young ones, certain varieties. Something was in that malt. So this year
I changed where I got it. Okay, put it down last weekend.
We got that heavy rain Saturday night and everything's dying Sunday morning, my tomatoes,
my young plants. I read that the malt can leach an acid if
it hasn't been wet and dried prior to putting it down. What's going on?
Oh boy? This would take a while to drill down through all the
issues that might be going on on it. But mulch can be a problem,
but generally is not. If someone knows what they're doing making mulch,
creating a multch product, you shouldn't have that problem with it. This wasn't
a dyed mulch by any chance, was it. No, no, no,
no, no. This is just regular hardwood. And like I said,
I had got mulch in prior years at the same place for twenty years.
Yeah, this year I changed and it's irreputable. It's ground up,
the ground up and good looking mulch. Put it down and boom it kills
it. My thought was they it doesn't have time to sit in the yard
to deteriorate, and it's still got it's still green, and it's high nitrogen
as it as it decomposes, and it's burning the plants. Well that is
yeah, the mult will not behind nitrogen to be on the other end of
the spectrum. But people put undecomposed mulches down all the time, dried leaves
for example, you know pine pine bark chips, right, it's not not
the fact that it's not decomposed. Only there are things that can happen in
the process that create an issue. But what you're describing it, something's not
quite right. How fast did you say you solve the problem overnight? Overnight?
Yeah, we had that heavy rain and the next morning my my begonias
were dying. I had my tomatoes are turning brown. A pepper plant,
a bell pepper plant. I mean just generally the younger, the more tender
plants are dying. Helly, it killed Basle overnight. Well, you got
me somebody to be able to answer this. Yeah, this, And I've
done nothing different than I've done in prior years. Prior, I mean,
I do it. I even put it on a little thinner this year.
Normally I put about ten inches down, and I probably put four or five
thinking, you know, may yes, mothered them four or five inches deep?
Yes, holy cow, well ten I've never heard of that. But
four or five is even a pretty good thick. Well, I mean it's
composed down it, you know, it compacts. Okay, And well,
I'll tell you what, Bob, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna have an
answer just immediately. I'm going to try to check with some of our the
mulch makers that I know what they're doing. Maybe one of them would like
to call in and discuss it. I just think it's interesting that it happened
two years in a row with two different suppliers. That is very strange,
and so I'm kind of at a loss as to where to go from here.
It shouldn't be the case, though. I mean, I will say
this, A friend of mine got part of this load. My last load
then finished up the yard with bag mault, and the bag malts came from
one of the biggest supplier here in town. And the bag malts didn't seem
to have the effect that the bulk mulch. Okay, well let me look
into it. If I figure out anything, we'll say it on the air
today. But you got you got me on that one, okay, Well,
everybody the same thing I've said, Yeah, okay, thank you,
thank you. I appreciate it. Bye bye. Speaking of multch products,
you know that it is important to get a quality product when you do that,
and uh yeah, folks at landscaper Spride they absolutely know how to create
quality products. They've got a bunch twenty something different products twenty seven to be
exact. Landscaperspride dot Com is the website you can learn about it there at
Landscapers Pride, you are going to find quality products. They're going to have
the black velvet mulch, which is not dyed. It is not dyed,
it is naturally that color and it just beautiful, velvety and dense. It's
just it's an excellent They have a hardwood mulch, a hardwood based mult ground
up. It's not you know people that grind up palettes or repurposed wood.
No, this is truly hardwood malts. Good for walkways, you know,
all where the pathway melting the surface in your flower beds and recreation areas.
Pine bark maults they have that locally sourced pine. It's got a very slow
decomposition rate which people like just kind of lasts a little bit longer out there
in the garden. And then their Garden Magic Soil. It's a pine based
blend that contains humus and screened pine and composted rice holes as well as chicken
pellet furbilizer that will give you feeding for up to three months. That's the
Garden Magic Soil from Landscaper's Pride. If you want to find out more about
them, Landscaperspride dot com find out about this twenty seven products and their store
locator as well. While you're out about doing that, let's go to Dayton
now and we're going to talk to Marshall. Hello, Marshall, Hey,
Skip, how you doing. I'm well, thank you. Hey. I
got a question on I've got a couple of silver maples still in the pots.
Without getting into a long story, I was babying them and you got
them up to growing pretty good, but then I got busy I didn't mess
with it. And then now they've been in there a year and a half
and I want to transplant them. How should I go about that? Well,
you need to pull them out of the pot, and you're going to
see roots going in a circle, and you need to either unwind those,
which is not going to probably be practical, or slice through them in three
or four places vertically through that cylinder of roots. I know that sounds drastic,
don't worry about. Just go ahead and do it. Plant them in
the ground, get them established, and within a couple of weeks are going
to have fresh new roots coming out from where you cut the ends. That's
your best chance of getting them established. Now, if the roots have grown
through the pots, can trim those roots or is that a no no?
Or what no? You got to cut those off. You got to cut
them off. So the ball root is probably still obviously inside the pot,
right the what root please? The ball root? The root ball itself?
Yeah, thes I like to call it a root cylinder. It's called root
balls because people used to ball and burlap trees, and you had a tree
with a little ball on the bottom of roots and soil. But it's kind
of a root cylinder since you've grown them in a pot and it's inside there.
It's got all the roots of the tree, unless some have come out
the holes into the ground. But just cut them all off, cut those
off that are coming out of the holes of the pot, and then slice
vertically through the others. It's drastic, but it's you know, it's the
only way to not end up with a problem on those trees that you've grown
in the pot for a little extra time there and on cutting them. Is
there a certain way I should cut them like at a forty five or just
chomp it or clip it? Or how should I I that? You know,
on some plants with the roots aren't big. I take a box cutter
knife and just vertically slice through it about an inch a date. If you
need to get pruners, just going with pruners and snip off the ones going
in a circle, and do it in about three or four places around there,
because everywhere you cut, it's going to branch and it'll establish better.
All right, sounds great, Thank you you, Bet Marshall. Thanks a
lot. I appreciate that. Hey, we got to take a little break
here. If listen, Linda, you'll be first when we come back.
If you'd like to give us a call seven to one three two one two
kat r h. All right. If you put it and tap in,
you you better check your pulse, that is for sure. If you're looking
for a quality mix to put in a container for your indoor plants, that
would be jungle Land water saving potting soil. It's got crystals in it that
swell up with water. After the mix itself begins to dry out a little
too far, you know, you forgot to water well. Those crystals are
still holding onto moisture and the roots can get access. So let's just say
it makes the soil a little more forgiving, if you will of a bad
watering schedule. Well, jungle Land indoor water saving crystals, indoor potting salt
with water saving crystals. You're going to get it in enchanted forest. You're
going to get it at Growers Outlet up in Willis RCW Nursery carries the night
Fist products as well. We're going to head out now to Linda in Tomball.
Hello, Linda, I skip doing a great job. Thank you.
Man. I need some help with my all my plants basically, but I
have some night blooming jazmine bushes. I have four around my back and for
some reason, I've had them for ten twelve years and at night they are
fantastic. But something is eating my leaves for the first time. Okay,
they're chewing them like this little red and then some of them have like insl
sized holes in them. I sprayed it twice with memol and that's not doing
it. Really, that's surprising. Uh. You kind of have to once
you get a bunch of holes, you kind of have to study where they
are so when you look again you can tell if they're new holes or if
it's still the same old holes. I was, well, go ahead pinching
off of the pinchin the old ones, the ones that are damaged off though
I couldn't and they're there every night, all right. I would switch over
and get a product called spin no said s p I n O s a
D spin nose sad and spray that on it, and I think that will
take care of it for you. I just want to get good coverage on
it. But just realize too, that night blooming jasmine, it can lose
a lot of leaves and it's still okay. I may not look good,
but it's not like you know, you get a few leaves with holes in
them and the plants in trouble, it still will perform well for you,
all right. Yeah, they have made it through the phrases and the monsoons
and everything, and they love that plant. I absolutely love it. Hey,
Linda, thank you for the call and good luck with it. I
think the spinosa is going to do what you need to. I'm going to
give it. Thank you. You've had you take care. Hey, have
you been to the antique rosen Porium. I'm telling you that place is crawling
with roses. You know, they grow them in two gallons. Every rose
they have it's once that price twenty nine to ninety five each. The two
gallon containers. That's a good sized container to grow a nice robust rose.
So it does well for you. Now an antique Rose, you got to
go just to see the nursery and display gardens because they are roses, but
they are so much more. Lots of different kinds of quality plants out there,
houseplants, flowers, fruit trees, lots of natives, tons of natives.
Every Friday and Saturday at one pm is their Tinker Garden Workshops. That's
for kids, by the way, age two through eight. It's a ticketed
event. It'll go through mid May, so you can bring the kiddos out
there again Friday or Saturday at one pm for the Tinker Garden Workshops. Go
to the website Antique Roseemporium dot com and just check out the upcoming events tab.
That's where you find that kind of stuff out. Still looks beautiful at
Antique Rows. Always looks beautiful at Antiquerose. If you want to give them
a call, it's ninety seven nine eight three six fifty five forty eight eight
three six five five four eight. We're going to go out to Angleton.
Now we're going to talk to Steve. Hello, Steve, how are you
doing this twenty. I'm well, sir, how can we help. Well,
we bought a house a few years ago and it had what I would
call, I guess, an ornamental cedar tree in the front yard. It
was a couple of them. They weren't real tall. They had been there
about twenty twenty one years and they were starting to die. I'd cut them
off. I dug up the stumps and got that out. But now for
the past almost three years, I haven't been able to get grass to grow
in that area, and just wondering if the soil may be toxic or from
the app or what. Sometimes we see that around cedars. I think it's
I don't think it's toxic, but I think it should get improved. I
would do a little errating on it, get some composts down in there.
Even you know, it's not too big of an area if it was around
a plant like that, So you could even take a spading for it and
push it, wiggle it straight down in the soil and just kind of pull
back a little to crack it open, and then move over and do that
again, and then put a fine quality, very small particle compost like a
screened leaf mole compost over it watered in really good, and then do your
fertilizing and I think you're going to be able to bring it back. Just
that shouldn't last long what you're seeing. Okay, well, I appreciate it
all right, good luck, Thanks a lot, appreciate your call very much.
You know, you can use a product like Microlife on there, the
sixty four that's a green bag. Put that on after you make the holes
in the ground and in the situation like I was just discussing with him,
and you can absolutely get that nutrient done in the ground and it'll do very
well. Humants plus would be another good example that is concentrated compost in a
bag. I would sprinkle Humage plus over that area after doing the aeration in
this specific situation. For the rest of you, you just sprinkle it out,
spread it out with your spreader on the ground, do the Humane plus,
turn right around, do the Microlife green bag six two four and those
over time, just get the soil better and better and better, and you're
going to see. This is the organic system, you know, it's not
just this quick fix thing. We build the soil with quality products and things
get better and better. The grasskets denser. We do all least less weed
problems. As a result of that, the soil is better, the aeration,
the and everything. The root systems are happy all because you get on
that system and stay on it. Microlife Fertilizer dot com is where you can
find out where to get microlife as well as learn more about their products.
I'm going to head out now to Audrey and Tom Ball. Hello, Audrey,
Hi didn't learning Hi? March sixteenth, got planted at Guardina and it's
just sitting there with the balloons. It's been sitting there with the balloons and
they're not opening. Okay. I can see the flowers and they're just not
blooming. Okay. It's called a gardenia August beauty. So far it hasn't
been too beautiful without any blooming. Well, that's a that's a beautiful old
garden. You've been around for a while now, your did you do any
show work before you planted it? Yes, it said to Nick, sand
and soil a foot wide and a foot deep, And I did that.
Okay. And how long did you plant? How long ago did you say
you planted it on March sixteenth? I tell you Guardina's love acidic soil that
has a lot of organic matter in it, and I, you know,
I'm kind of sitting here trying to decide which way would I go. I
think if it were mine, I might lift it up and slide it onto
a tart, move it out of the way, and then get a good
quality mix like a rose soil or which which is good for plants, especially
those that like it a little on the cidic side. Mix that in also
with what you've already done, and then reset that plant watered in really well
and begin using a plant food for acidic plants in it. If you don't
want to go to that trouble, let's just get some good multa over the
top and begin using that acidic plant plant food. I think that it will
do well. It's just gardenias need really good rainage, and to just dig
a hole and put sand in it is not necessarily gonna improve the internal drainage
down through the soil it. You know, a whole, a clay soil
whole holds water like a bathtub. And so I'm just kind of trying to
lift it up a little bit higher. I don't think that's why that's sitting
there in the blooms aren't opening yet, but I'm just thinking about Guardina's and
what they love and want to make sure long term you're setting it up for
success, So that would be the option I would consider. Okay, so
rose soil, yeah absolutely, yeah, up, yeah, you're gonna roast
soil is easy to find. Uh you know, it's widely available. I
know you go out there to uh D and de Feed on the west side
from Tomball. They carry the heirloom soils products. You might call them first
make sure they got the roast soil in stock that someone hadn't come cleaned them
out. But you can buy bags of it from them. There are a
lot of other places that you're going to get a quality roast sox perfect.
I'm by plants for all seasons. Should they have that, they may have
that as well, but if not, they may have a different plant soil
for acidic plants. If you're close to them, then just swing over there
and see what Cherry and them had over there. Wonderful. I'm so thankful
for your help, all right, and uh I appreciate it. That mean
a picture when it starts blooming. Thanks a lot, Audrey. Okay,
you did all right, bye bye, okay, bye bye. Yeah.
Nature's Way Resources, that's another good one. You know, Nature's way.
They created rose soil. That's where rose soil was born, if you will.
And the finely screened leaf compost that we talk about top dressing with,
that's where it came from. That's where it came from. Nature's Way Resources.
They are on I forty five up toward Conroe on the right hand side,
and they have all kinds of things. Don't forget fungo Friday's Fungo Friday's
ten percent off bag, twenty percent off book. Write this number down nine
three six three two one sixty nine to ninety. Nature's will get you set
up with quality products. Remember it all starts with the soil. All right,
We're gonna put this hour in the books. Just a reminder. I
am making a bee line for Southwest Fertilizer. I'll get there at eleven o'clock
today. I hope you'll come out and see me, bring me samples,
bring me your photos, just stop by to say hi. I always love
to meet people that listen to Garden Line. We're gonna be giving away a
toro blower, you heard that right, and a Toro, String Tremor.
I'm gonna be giving them away skip Bucks. You stop by the table and
ask me a question and I will give you skip Bucks where you can go
use them to buy products that are there. And you know Southwest Fertilizer they
got every product that you can imagine. We'll have some the Dina giveaways as
well. It's gonna be fun. Come on out and see us. Eleven
am KTRH 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 so we just watching as many. Welcome back to the guard Line.
Good to have you with us today. Good to have you with us today.
I'm glad, glad to talk to you about the things that are of
interest to you. You know, I am a broken record when it comes
to making sure your plants have success, that you get beauty and you get
bounty. And the way you do that is what what is the mantra here
on guard Line Brown stuff before green stuff. That's the simple way I put
together to say, if you get the soil right, your plants are going
to thrive and heirloom Soils has designed a wide variety of products to do just
that. For example, the veggie and herb mix. The veggie and herb
mix is excellent for growing anything edible out there in the garden, but especially
the veggies and the herbs. They've got a fruit berry and citrus mix.
You're going to be able to get a quality screened leaf more compost to do
your top dressing. You're going to be able to get a rose soil that
is top notch. By the way, it's they got some really attractive brand
new bags of it, so if you used to looking at the old bag,
they got a really cool pretty much same old quality rose soil in it.
But that is just how they do things at nature at the Airlom Soils
folks. Now, if you want bulk, you can drive out there to
porter. You can get a bulk. You can have them deliver it.
You can have them put it in a supersack, a one cubic yard container.
They sit it on your driveway. It's real neat and easy. Or
you can drive out and haven't put it on the trailer you got, put
them behind your truck if you want to go about that route. However you
want to go about it, or if maybe you just want to go to
some garden centers. Heirlom soils is widely available. If you're listening to Garden
Line from way out beyond the Houston area, heirloom soils is probably available in
your community because they just keep expanding the reach, so a lot of people
have access to these quality soils. Uh, I'm gonna see. We're gonna
go to the phone. Oh, speaking of Uh, go to the phone
right now. We're going to talk to Louise and Houston. Hey's Louise surprised?
Hey, Skip, I have I have Mark Powen with Bego Garden on
the line. He was the mastermind behind most of the recipes form. He
has the answered to the question you have good Hey Bob, Bob in northwest
Houston. You had that question about the molds. You put it out and
the next day you said plants were struggling. So here comes the experts with
your answer. Mark. Good to have you man. Hey, good morning,
Skip. I'm so great to be joining you and Louise. Of course,
so I've run into this in the past. There's like a potential like
perfect storm when it comes to mult and here it is so the maltz production
process. Typically MULT is sold as a finished product as a double ground mult.
So it's you know, you have like large trees and branches and all
that are ground once into some big large shreds like five to nine inches long,
and then it's aged up and then down the road. Then they grind
it into smaller shreds, usually anywhere from half an inch to like three inches.
That's what we call the second grind or the double grind. And so
long story short, a second grind. If that malt is piled up in
a big pile what we call static pile, there is a potential perfect storm
window of like three to fifteen days later where that mult is sold three to
fifteen days later, that's the time period when that moult goes into the thermophilic
heating. Heat process can go anywhere from one hundred and fifty to you know,
two hundred degrees hot. Right, you can cook it in a multipile.
I hear, Oh, Louis's cooked steak and a whole meal in a
I'm not going to be eating at his house anytime soon. I hope you
wrap those up, Louis. Oh, you never know when you go to
Louise's house. So it's for sure, and just you could get the savici
right because then at least you know that doesn't gone too the composing process.
All right, I digress. So back to the So three to fifteen days
is really hot, and if it's a really big pile with all that heat
and all that mass, sometimes they'll go anaerobic. And during that thirteen day
period sometimes you walk up and dig into the pile and it'll smell like vinegar.
And what's going on is that perfect storm when it's really hot, a
really big pile and it goes anaerobic where it doesn't have enough oxygen. Then
you'll have a pH which skip probably will sound shocking anywhere from like one and
a half to three. And that's like an indicator. And if it smells
like vinegar, yes, it's producing acidic acid. And we all know what
vinegars use for in the horticulture industry these days for people that you don't want
a natural way to combat weak it kills plants. Good. Yeah, And
so you have this little perfect storm and then so the good news is and
then what will happen is say that gets sold, you know, goes in
the dump truck, somebody delivers it, and and and of course the mult
will be physically hot. Plus you have the acidic acid. And so then
if it sits in a driveway, and then it starts trying to cool off.
But then when people start digging into the pile, well, when it's
piled, when it goes dumps out it, say it takes a couple of
days or whatever it is, you know, immediately starts to try to reheat
again. But and so what will happen is often people if they take it
at that perfect storm stage, put it on the landscape. The physical heat
can be an issue for plants like that are more sensitive, like some of
the ferns and begonias, And and then on top of it you've got the
acidic acid, and so it can be a real issue. Now larger shrubs
because this fellow and this fellow had malted pretty deep too in the past,
like up to ten inches and this time maybe about five. So that just
adds to the potential for the heat that you're describing, I think, right.
And then larger shrubs and trees will usually withstand it. But you'll see
you know, on their the marges edges of their leaves what looks like symptoms
like if something had a chemical you know, burn, you know, or
something where somebody's putting you know, something's gotten dumped into the soil or whatever.
So that's the So that's the bad news that can happen in that cycle.
The good news is most plants will withstand it. They may go into
a little bit of shock. One of the best cures is just the water
more. If you spread it out real thick the potentially you know, maybe
send it out a little bit and then it down to two or three inches,
water it more and then if and then the other thing I would say
if people want to be pretty safe is just you know, if you if
you ever have a chance to smell of it there, if it evere's like
vinegar, it may be in that stage and then you either want to pass
on it or come back and revisit the issue in the positive of buying it
later. But so the two things to do is one, if you have
it the pile, it is like, wow, this is like really hot.
Ideally before you put in the landscape it should be have dropped under one
hundred and twenty degrees. So that's one thing you could take a thermometer and
see if it's dropped under. And then the second thing, if it smells
like the vinegar. The thing you want to do, which is kind of
the cure both ways, would be to cure it off longer if you can't,
and then it could be as little as two weeks for curing it and
up to but just to let it come down on the temperature and let that
pH kind of come back up citic acid to kind of work its way out,
and if you errate it a little bit more too, that that helps
kind of mitigate the effects of that acidic acid. Man, Mark, I
appreciate that, And Louise, I'm up against another break. But thank you
guys so much. Louise from Heirloom Soils and Mark you're you're my Vego friend
now over there at Vego Gardens too, right. That's great we can so
they're lucky to heank you guys. Thanks so much. Man, appreciate it
all. Right, there you go, folks that you just got the answer.
Uh, glad we could provide that. And Bob, I sure hope
you were listening. We're gonna take a little quick break here and I'll be
right back. Bill, you'll be the first up. Welcome back to Guardenline.
Good to have you with us today. Hey, if you're looking for
a fertilizer that you put down now and you have fertilized your lawn with a
gradual release all through the coming two or three four months, that would be
Nightcross Silver Bag nineteen four to ten. It's called superturf. And the reason
is it releases half that nutrient over the coming weeks and months. Literally,
I mean it carries on and on, depending on weather conditions and different things.
That release me a little slower, a little faster. But you basically
have got your summer fertilizing done with Nitrofoss superturf and you put it down right
now. It's got this supplemental iron. And we've had two collars, say
we talk about iron deficiency in the turf, well four percent additional iron promoting
that uniform, nice green color in your lawn. You're going to find Nitrofoss
superturf a lot of places because nitrofoss is basically a ubiquitously available product. You
can find it, for example, the shades of Texas in the woodlands.
You're going to find it in enchanted gardens down in Richmond. You're going to
find it at Fisher's Hardware, both the one in South Houston on Sophomore and
the one in Laporte on Broadway Street. All places where you're going to get
nitrofass superturf product. Go to Bill in Cypress Now, Hello Bill, A
good morning. Skip A simple question out here in Bridge Lines there's not enough
tree for hawks to live in and anyway, we've got a problem with rabbits
eating my foliage. Okay, any suggestions, Uh, you know, for
rabbits you're kind of basically fencing them out with a real low fence. That
is one option around gardens and things. You just see people put the chicken
wira up, get it down to the ground where maybe a little below the
ground, even where they're not going to just dig right under it, and
uh that I don't know to see Zara. There is a rabbit repellent out
there, and I can't remember what it's based on, probably a predator urine
or something like that, but there is a rabbit repellent. I've never tried
using it before. What about molasses? I don't know that that would keep
them away? Have you heard that it says. They said it keeps barmans
away, like you possums and stuff. Huh. I wonder why that is.
I don't know that that would be new to me. But I used
to use it on the nut grass too. Uh huh. Did it work
well for you? Yeah? It just takes a while. Yeah, yeah,
all right, yeah you you uh, other than what I told you
that, That's about all I would know to suggest. But hey, Bill,
you you can eat rabbits, you know that, right, They're not
that big. I've got people. I can hear screams from all over Houston.
People are how dare you? Okay? All right, I'm just starting
it up a little bit. I have a good day. Oh gosh,
I shouldn't go there, but I did. I did. Hey have you
been out to the Enchanted Forest? And Jenner Forest is in Richmond. It's
the garden center that if you're Richmond, you're heading towards sugar Land. It's
off to the right hand side, off to the right hand side. So
what you do is you just head out FM twenty seven fifty nine, twenty
seven fifty nine. Let me give you the website for I forget it.
Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX. Dot com. Enchanted Forest, Richmond,
TX dot com. Unbelievable website, excellent, excellent website. You want to
get on there, find out what's going on. It is a place you
go if you need anything in the way of herbs, vegetables, flowers,
trees, shrubs, if you like butterfly gardens, man, can they fix
you up. They've got the flowers for the adults. And they have a
lot of good larval food sources, you know, things like milkweed to supply
monarchs, or passion vine to supply go fritillaries, or pipeline for the pipeline
swallowtail caterpillars. They've got all of that and then some. And they always
have things going on all the time. There's something happening on Saturdays, especially
in the springtime, out at the Arborgate Nursery Arbor Gate. What am I
saying? And I'm halfway across the county at Enchanted Forest Garden Center down on
FM twenty seven fifty nine. You know, you I go on auto pilots
sometimes and that is never a good thing to do. Let's head out now
to Austin County and talk to Doris. Hello, Doris, Hi, are
you I'm well, thank you. I have a problem in my yard along
the curve and the walkways of the dry grass, like it didn't get enough
water. Maybe okay, so dry. If I pull that out and put
some topsoil down on those edges, will the grass be able to spread out?
It will, it'll close back in, But you got to get you
got to just make sure it has moisture. That's important. Sometimes I bought
silker hosts. Oh okay, well you could go that rude too. Then
you're then you're making sure that you've got it covered. Yeah, yeah,
that ought to do. What kind of grass do you have, Doris?
Okay, yeah, it'll crawl back in there pretty quick if you I'd give
it a little extra fertilizer too, not extra, but make sure you do
fertilize it as well, and that will the water. Uh let's see.
Do you like organic? Do you like synthetic or do you care? I
used the silver bag when I'm fertilize. Okay, Well that's it. That
is that is super turf. It's going to gradually feed it. Uh.
Have you already fertilized that this year? You're saying, yeah, okay,
well you ought to be good. You ought to be good to go.
You ought to be good to go, all right, Doris? All right,
thank you so much, you bet thanks a lot. I I appreciate
that a lot, that is for sure. Uh. The uh folks at
Southwest Fertilizer, I'm talking about Bob, they bye just make sure that he
has everything you could possibly need. I mean everything, really, eighty foot
wall of tools. If there is a pesticide to control insects, diseases,
or weeds, he's got it. If there's a fertilizer, liquid, granular,
organic, synthetic, fast, really slowerly, he has it all.
He has it all there. And I'm going to be there today, by
the way, from eleven o'clock to one o'clock, so you got a two
hour window to stop buy, and I hope you will. I always love
to meet the folks that listen to Garden Line. We're gonna be given away
the I can't even see the name, and now my brain just went blank
here for just a second. Hang on something, sorry, Toro. I've
said it three times today, the Toro blower and the Toro string trimmer.
Can you believe that that's a huge giveaway thing. We're give away some Medina
samples and products and things. And by the way, Bob just got a
shipment of this new Medina product called super Grow Plus. Supergirl Plus. It's
a sixteen zero two. Sixteen zero two is a wonderful blend. It of
course has zero on the phosphorus and phosphorus. If you fertilize your lawn for
years, you have enough phosphorus. It tends to build up over time.
This is a hose end application. It's got iron edta. Remember how I
talked about iron keylate earlier. That's what iron edta is. It's a type
of keylated iron. It's got seaweed extract in it. It is going to
be primarily an immediate release, but about one fifth of the nitrogen is going
to be slow release in that has to grow Supergirl Plus. Hook it up
to your garden hose. One quart covers four thousand square feet and Bob's got
it in stock. And you need to try this one. This is a
new thing, and if you haven't tried it before, you need to try
it. So swing by today. I'll you stop at the table and I'll
give you super skip Bucks Super skip Buck skip Bucks and you can take that
and get a huge discount off the price of anything you want to purchase in
there, including the has to grow super Grow Plus. You're not going to
find a better deal than this. Absolutely. And Southwest Fertilizer where is it.
It's on the corner of Businett and Runwick in Southwest Houston. Here's the
website Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Come see me today
again. I'll be there. I'll arrive by eleven and I'll stay there until
one o'clock. I used to stick a little longer around. When I do
that, I always love to get to visit with Bob and his team there,
Aaron and all the folks. They know what they're talking about by the
way you carry them a sample in there, You car them a picture of
something and whatever. They can point you in the right direction. They understand
how their products work, so they can guide you in that. That is
important. You know, you go someplace and you buy a product from someone
that doesn't have a clue what they're talking about, and that's just wasted money
and who knows, you may end up doing damage with it. That's why
I like to go to Bob in Southwest Fertilizer because they do know what they're
talking about. And I'm going to be there today. Come by and see
me. Let me get a skip some skip Bucks in your hand so you
can go and get a great deal on the many many products that they carry
there at Southwest Fertilizer, including this great new product has to Grow Super Grow
plus the hose inch prayer with a sixteen zero two fertilizer in it. I'm
going to head out to Magnolia now and talk to Ted. Hello, Ted,
good morning. Wow, my backyard, Saint Agustine I lost from last
year. I don't know if it was take all ry rock, chinch bugs,
or heat or combination of all, but I did my best to treat
all three, but it's gone. I just air rated my entire yard and
I'm going to fertilize today and then I was going to put kalman ere a
day and then put side on top of that, uh and then treat for
the take all the root rock because I'm seeing signs of that again. Okay,
I wouldn't do the calmandar. I wouldn't do the calendar. It's a
it's a pretty high pH naturally high pH product. And like take all loves
high pH and we we don't want to encourage it by raising pH anymore than
it already is. Uh. But uh, you know, a good quality
fertilizer applied at the right time. What what did you say you were fertilizing
with. I'm sorry, other than the calmndar, did you have something?
It's it's a slow release, uh, fertilizer. Okay, Like is it
the Nelson Slow and Easy It's uh. Now it's some that I had from
my it's less go I think. Okay, all right, Well, I
mean if you got a fertilizer on hand, you can you can, you
know, go ahead and use it. But I would recommend you get you
some Slow and Easy by Nelson. That one will fertilized for the next three
months, and it's got several different types of nitrogen so that they get released
very slowly over time out there. Uh. It's easy slow and then with
apostrophe in and then easy slow in easy. Uh. And it's Nelson plant
food, so that'll get you set up. I'm up against a hard break
here, but I think the proper fertilizing with adequate watering and regular mowing,
and you're going to grow yourself out of this ted, but not worry about
putting any thing down before I put the side down. No, no,
I would just get the side and then I would begin to do the fertilizing.
Yeah, water it twice a day the first week, once a day
the next week, and then back off eventually to once a week. All
right, thanks a lot man, appreciate it. All right. Our phone
number if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two
kt r H. And here's Nicky. Yeah, all right, we're back
here on garden. I'm about to enter our last half hour of the morning.
I just wanted to let's just start by going straight to the phone here.
We're going to go to Matthew in Conro. Hello, Matthew. How
you doing today, sir? I'm good, I'm good. What's up?
Yes, sir, I've got a celebration Bermuda celebration in my yard and i'd
like to try to get this torpedo grass out of my yard. Oh boy,
what a combo, I know, And you know how taken over more
and more I know, I know, and it's a booger. It's a
bogger to get rid of you can. I'm going to suggest a surgical way
to get it out of there, and the alternative to that is not good,
and that's just get rid of everything, kill everything and let the bermuda
come back in. But that I'm going to think you're gonna let's try first
the surgical. Uh. You know how the torpedo grass comes up above the
bermuda, right, it's a it's a mult upright figorous. If you can
create a wiper applicator and I'll tell you how in a minute, and put
a product on it to kill grass, I would probably use Glyphoss eight because
it's very thorough in it. You could also use a grass only killer.
There are products that don't kill broad lace but kill grass. A couple of
those on the market, easy to find. But if you buy one of
those little gadgets, you get a jar off a shelf with it's got a
little pistol grip on one end and the other end maybe two section cups or
something like that, and you grab the jar, take the suction cups off
and get a plate, one of those little metal plates at a lumber type
store that has holes in it. You know, it's used for joining two
tuba fours. Do you know the kind I'm talking about. It's like a
whole bunch of little holes in a thin metal plate. It's about the size
of a deck of plane cards roughly, Yesta, put that on there,
and then put a sponge, a kitchen sponge. Just take a standard size
sponge and cut it in half and put on there. Put a boat with
a washer to hold the sponge on. So what you got is you got
the same gadget, but you've replaced let's say the section cup with a plate
and a sponge. The plate just to hold the sponge so it doesn't just
bend backwards. And you squirt those sponges with the galiposate product, and you
go through your yard and you don't even have to stoop because those things are
about three feet long, and you can just reach down and grab the torpedo
grass and pull up, and then grab the next one and pull up,
and you're just wiping it on individually to the torpedogress. You're I can get
it all the first time. Just plan on spending the next few Saturday mornings
with a cup of coffee in one hand and your little applicator in the other,
and just every time you get a chance, just stay on it,
get all of it you can, and you can work your way back out
of it that way without having to kill everything in renovate. Because there's not
a selective product. To kill torpedo grass, it won't kill your celebration Bermuda,
Yes, sir, did that make sense? Yes, sir, I
was just wondering, during the dormant stage during our winter months, was it
possible I could put something down during that time, because of course, you
know, my celebration goes dormant, but then you don't see the torpedo grass.
Yeah, the torpedo grass is dormant, right, Well, you don't
see it, and you know, with the celebration being dormant, I guess
the torpedo grass you know, does too. But yeah, I was wondering
if at that time would it be good to do something. Now they both
have that same growth schedule of not being happy with winter weather, winter cold
and stuff, and so if it were a broad leaf weed that was a
cool season weed, you could spray it in the winter and not kill your
celebration because you're right, celebration is dormant. But I think the wiper's probably
the best way and if it's already gotten so far ahead of you, you
know, at some point you just bite the bullet and you go, I
just have to kill everything and start over. Yeah, in the military,
I cut everybody else's grass. Now I'm trying to take care of my own
grass. I know, I know I can tell you we're in the military,
Matthew, because I've never been told yes, sir so many times in
my whole life. And thank you for that. A lot of it is
my mom hitting the back of my head when I don't do it all right.
Well, you know, family, family's family. So anyway, good
luck with that torpedo grass man. Thank you very much, sir, and
you have a nice day, sir, you too, Bye bye. All
right, Hey, have you been to Buchanan's Native Plants in the Heights.
That's right Eleventh Street in the Heights. This this place has been around a
long time, but everybody knows about him because it's just cool. It's fun
to go there. I think of it as almost like a hideaway. You
driving down Eleventh Street and all of a sudden, boom, you're there,
and it's this nestled in to the Heights. They specialize in native plants that
if you're looking for natives, even down to I want a plant that was
native here in the Harris County, well they can point you to those.
They have those separate out like that Native Texas plants in general. But Buchanans
Plants always always has a good supply of all kinds of things you need for
your lawn and garden. They're going to have the fertilizers that I talk about,
they are going to have absolutely have the soil type products to improve and
create that beautiful, wonderful soil. But are you looking for color like begonias
and silotia. By the way, I didn't talk about solosia earlier when I
was mentioning heat tolerant plants. Soilosia is great. It's got those plumes on
top that are colorful. And some types have beautiful burgundy leaves. I love
it. In College station we call that maroon where I come from. But
beautiful burgundy maroon leaves. They have that trees native trees. You know,
we're talking about Earth Day. This stimmy year for Earth Day, and they
have thirty percent off their Native Texas trees. How can you how much better
than that? Can you do? They also have their life below all purpose
soil thirty percent off of that as well. So here's your excuse. There's
a time to get it done. Any kind of plants for decorating, for
creating beauty, herbs and vegetables and everything else are at Buchanan's Native Plants.
Very knowledgeable staff absolutely steer you in the right direction for success. And let's
just put it this way. It's just a fun place to go and to
explore it just is. I love going into there and you will too.
You probably already do you probably know about that. Let's see where are we
going to go? Now? I'm going to head out to Tyler and talk
to Nancy. Is that right Tyler, Texas? Yes, yes it is.
Well, actually I live on Lake Palaestine. That's a little ways out
of there. But and I said pictures just now, I just found the
address, but I'm sure if you hard to get to. I have a
plum tree that is two years old and it's got maybe a little bit bigger
than a quarter size plums on it, but it doesn't seem to be growing
any bigger. Also, I have a lemon tree that looks like it needs
a really bad haircut. I've had one lemon in four years. I have
something that's eating a few of the leaves. I'm just wondering what am I
doing wrong? We don't have micro life out here, are ace hardwares or
any other place? Okay, what is a can I go online? What
would be a good for I'll purpose for all my plants ventrum the deck,
Yeah, in my guarden. Well, if you can't get the micro life
up there, you probably have nitrophospertilizers available up there, and that would be
a fine one. If you're looking for organic, then you would need to
look for something that's got the Medina products in it. That would be a
good choice. There. I'm looking at your pictures. I did get them.
The plum has got some little things that are sucking juices out of the
bottom of the leaves, and so I would get an insecticidal soap product and
spray upward, upward from underneath the leaves to knock those things out. It
could be spider mites, it could be something else, but it's pretty severely
affected by that. The holes in the leaves I wouldn't worry about that's not
significant. But you do need to get that plum out of the container and
into either bigger container or out in the garden soil hand because the containers are
a little on the small side and it's gonna stunt it like plums. But
that's last on my back deck. Yeah, my garden so very good.
So on the on the lemon tree, do you see the one branch that's
just yea out there? I do, I would, I would trim those
back. I'm sorry, but I have got to run, Nancy, I'm
I'm up. I've already passed a break I didn't catch. Okay, thank
you. Trim that wild branch back a little bit, balance it out,
all right, We'll be right back. Well, welcome back to the garden
line. Good to have you with us today. Well we are ending the
show here in just a little bit. And I see we got some folks
on the board, so we are going to jump right out there and head
to beat Eyes, Texas and talk to Dane. Hello, Dane, Hey,
how's it going? But doing well? Doing well? How can I
help today? Man? I've got a couple of tomato plants of my raised
garden, and uh, some of the leaves on the tomato only two of
them, one more so than any of them all the leaves are curling upwards.
And I've been reading on it and they say the wind can do that.
Is that true? Well, a lot of times we see it,
uh, when it gets a little warmer than it's been. But varieties differ
a lot in that. And now when you say, oh you do me,
not just the new growth at the top, you're talking about the older
leaves too, right, That is correct? Yes, yeah, I think
that's a natural physiological thing that is not going to affect production. And I
wouldn't I wouldn't worry about it, Yeah, because the virus would just affect
the new growth, gotcha. Yeah, Yeah, And it was. It
was weird because it was it's more so one plant two plants, than the
other two. And they are two different of the four, they're two different
varieties. Yeah, yeah, and that that's kind of normal. But don't
don't worry about it. It's it's an okay deal. Uh, just uh
get ready to enjoy your tomatoes. Hopefully they're in good sunlight. You're gonna
get good production. They are and they're already growing good. So I appreciate
your man. Keep up good work. Thank you, Dane. Say aha
to my friends over there at the feed store over by Carlos. You're just
a rock throw away from them, right, I was there this morning.
Good good, good folks, good folks. Thanks, thanks son, bye
bye. If you are looking for a quality potting soil for your containers out
on the patio, how about jungle Land. Jungle Land flour and vegetable.
Jungle and flour and vegetable potting soil. It does two things that a soil
needs to do. It drains well when there's access. It drains the access
away, but it holds onto moisture. So you gotta have good air air
in the soil and you have good moisture in the soil. Both that is
important and jungle Land can do just that for your soils. Now, where
do you find jungle l and soil? Well, Katie Ace Hardware has got
it. Ace Hardware City and Memorial you can find jungle Land there as well.
Or Stanton Shoppings done in Alvin. You can find your jungle and products
there. Let's now head out to Friendswood and talk to Beverly. Hello,
Beverly, Hello, good morning. I have a pine apple pear that has
never given me any fruit till this year, and it is loaded, and
I covered it with a netting. My question is, how do I know
when they're ripe? Pineapple is a fairly firm pair. It's not like a
Kiefer or anything like that. But you'll notice a little bit of a color
change in the scheme, that's one thing. And you'll notice it gets a
little bit softer too, Okay, so you kind of can feel with your
hands a little bit. If you're thinking, you know, this is looking
pretty ripe. You could try sampling one, right, I thought I would,
But I just wondered about the color because the different pairs have different colors
than I was, Yeah, wondering does it turn yellow? Yeah, well,
Pineapple, I'm surprised you haven't had any production before because Pineapple asked the
crows got it, so I got and covered it with a knitting so they
can't get to it or the squirrel. So yeah, yeah, I'm hoping.
All right. Well, uh, it's a good one. It's one
of the older ones that we have. It does the green does kind of
blush out to a chartruse. Sometimes you'll see a little bit of color on
the sunny side of the pair too, a little bit of a blush on
that, but it's a it's a good old fashioned pair. It's tough,
kind of hard to kill. But they are pretty hard. It's don't think
in terms of like a boss or d'ango lit in the grocery store. This
is gonna be a harder pair. Okay, all right, thank you so
much. Enjoying your program. All right, thank you man, I appreciate
that. Good luck with that. Let's go now out to Pasadena and talk
to Frida. Hello, Freda, Hi, how are you this morning?
I'm well, I'm well, what's up? How about Peggy Martin? Rose?
And I'm putting it in a place there was an ano there that didn't
do well because it's been full sun. And I want to know what I
need to do for the soil and what kind of fertilizer to put on it.
I would get a good roast soil mix. You'll find those. They
are widely available. You probably get them done in Pasadena direction. Local ase
hardware stores there are going to have them. But if it you know,
if it's from airloom or from nature's way, and it says rose soil,
then that is what I would use. I would build a good sized bed
with it, you know, don't just put roast soil in a planting hole,
but mix it in with your soil, and then even add a little
more rose soil so you have really good drainage. That's important. And then
plant, plant your Peggy Martin. And she's not hard to be she's not
hard to make happy. She's pretty pretty good tough ROAs. Just fertilize it
periodically and then get ready because it's going to take off, run and so
have something for Peggy to grow on. Okay, all right, thank you.
I'm having all my pintilance. I have a chance to grow on.
Oh that's wonderful. That's wonderful. Well, it's it is a beautiful,
beautiful rose. That's why it's so popular. Okay, thank you so much.
Thanks a lot, Fred, You take care, appreciate it. I
appreciate your call. Wow, that was it. That kind of went fast.
I want to remind you guys that I'm going to be at Southwest Fertilizer
to day to day from eleven o'clock to one. So after the show,
I'm going to head over there, say hey to Bob and the team,
and get busy answering your gardening questions. At eleven will start off at the
table. If you come by the table, I will give you some skip
Bucks. You have to come by and ask a question to visit me at
the table and I'll give you skip Bucks and you can use those to purchase
products out there in the store. You know, I told you earlier.
Bob has gotten in this brand new product, a brand new product from Medina,
the super Grow. It is the has to grow Supergrow for lunch.
It's a sixteen zero two. It's on a hose in hose end sprayer,
so you hook the hose up to it. It takes about ten minutes to
go through your yard and do it, and most of the nitrogen is going
to be immediate release. You're going to get a nice quick green up.
Those of you just put a lawn in and want to get that growing.
Once it's established and rooted in, it'd be good for that. If you've
got an existing lin it'd be good for that too. But you hook it
up like that and then about a fifth of the nitrogen this kind of slow
release. And it's even got some keylated iron in it. I mean,
it's just all around. This is good now, by the way, that
product is good for gardens and other things too, you know how it is.
I sometimes something is sold for the lawn, but it's good for other
things as well. Bob's got it, He's got a great supply of it.
He's ready to go. So come on in, let's get some in
your hands. Stop by, get a skip buck and head over there.
And you need a really good discount on this cool new product or anything you
want to buy. There at Southwest Fertilizer would be given away samples of Medina
products. They're going to have cold drinks and popcorn there. Uh, they're
going to be given away. Get this, this alone is worth the price
is showing up a Toro battery powered blower and a Toro battery powered string tremor.
That's good. Tour is a great brand and battery is a way to
go these days. All at Southwest Fertilizer, bring me your samples in a
ziplock bag, Bring me photos of things that you want to identify it or
diagnosed, or maybe it's a section of the yard you would just like to
get, you know, some advice on like hey, how can I bring
some color in here? Or what do you think? What would you do
if you had this section to kind of make it a little more impressive or
a little more effective. Well, we'll talk about any of those things you
want to you want to talk about. Don't forget too My schedules are online.
If you go to Gardening with Skip that's me gardening with skip dot com.
There's a lawn care schedule January through December. What are the art danic
fertilizers, what are the synthetic fertilizers? And when do you apply them?
And they're all listed there. It makes it easy trace. Mineral supplements are
on there. Aerration cor aeration, proper mowing. You think I know how
to mow my lawn, now listen to me. There's information on there that
will be very helpful for you. And watering, I'll tell you month by
month, what is the historic average number of inches of water that a Houston
lawn needs per week in the absence of rainfall. Forget about the rain.
I mean that is what it is. But I can tell you, like
right now, we are in April. April is a month where three quarters
of an inch per week is how much water your lawn is using. And
then there's my lawn pest disease and weed management. Schedule, same thing for
insects, diseases and weeds.