Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with scarre rictor so just watching
as wooing, not a SiO. Good morning. It's a good morning to
be inside. You're gardening, amounting to taking care of house plants. I've
just got a container the other day and I was on a pot up one
of my house plants. Have several that kind of outgrew their their potner a
little stress. Every time I neglect to adam, they pout about it for
a while. So I'm trying to get a little more soil in there.
I'm going to bump them up to a larger size. Good activity for indoors
on a day like today, it's also a good time to if you want
to start some cuttings or seeds or things like that inside. It's a great
time for that. If you haven't ever purchased a little light for seeds starting,
you want to consider doing that. And I realize this isn't the big
big seeds starting season. We think of that in late winter, but it's
still something you can do all year round, starting new plants, getting them
a go in to move them outside. If you have a really bright window,
that's good. But you may notice your your plants all lean in or
lean out toward towards the sunlight, and with a good quality light above them,
they just do a whole lot better. Maybe I can talk a little
bit more about that in a bit. Our phone number if you'd like to
give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four,
and we're going to go to League City and I believe we're going to talk
to John V. Hello John V. Good morning, having another's day,
Rick and all of you. My question this morning is on the ivy that
hanks. Let's trying to have a two story house, and so I'd like
to hank the ivy and grow the ivy seven different species, but you know,
just start out some with flowering, some not. I just asked my
questions. Yes, sorry, I'm sorry you're kind of cutting out on me.
The base base of your question. What do you ask? What do
you guys vines that we can grow to cover two story house on the brick
side, Oh I see, okay, on the outside, okay, Um,
you know the fig ivy has used a lot it's the vine. You'll
see it on overpasses, you know, sixteen gallery area. They sometimes will
grow that. The problem with it is it's not fully winter hardy, and
we do get some seasons where it comes in and it's just a little too
cold for it. But it's beautiful if you have it and a nice low
you know, hugs a brick real tightly and attaches to brick real well.
I wouldn't use it on on painted wood type surfaces and things, but I'm
good for attaching to the brick. There are you know that that's probably the
most common one that you see around here. The other kinds of ivy that
climb or a bit on the vigorous side, but you could use them.
You just have to, you know, trem them a lot. The English
ivy. There's several versions of that, and they they can get kind of
invasive. You know, they're hard to keep track of if you don't keep
an eye on them. So I'm not as I'm not as big about those.
Well, thank you so much. You'll have a wonderful day. Well
you too. Thank you appreciate the call. Take care, okay, you
know, the the indoor indoor ivys, that's where my brain went first.
But the indoor ivys, there's so many kinds of them, and they're so
easy to grow. I've been talking about houseplants this morning. I'm shifted over
back inside beautiful cut leaves, different you know, you go buy the little
plants are typically salty and a little hanging basket. Sometimes you can buy them
in smaller four inch pots or something. I like those because when you're creating
your own little dish garden, it allows you to get a little bit more
creative. But they're beautiful and they work really well in a basket. Inside.
Just have to turn it around because they're constantly want to point toward the
sun. But those are really beautiful. Probably one of the most common,
if not the most common houseplant. It's just the plain pathos that you see
everywhere, with the green leaves with kind of yellow streaking in them. Those
are super, super easy to grow. And there's a lot of new types
of it of the pathos, some with white splotched leaves and other versions.
It's kind of cool, kind of cool to try out some different things.
And I always when I see a new plant I haven't tried before, well,
when whatever possible, I grab one to add it to collection and learn
about it. Sometimes I learn that I don't care for it. But that's
okay. Hey, let's go phone number by the way seven one three two
one two five eight seven four. We're gonna go to Jersey Village now and
talk to Marigold. Wello Marigold, good morning, Hello there. How are
you? I'm well? Thank you? Yes, um, I have a
bit of an unusual problem. During the winter, I cut back my lawn
service and but the guy sold rye grass the all over my front yard.
So now it's grown up and I had to go all your grass there before.
Oh yeah, and I've been in this house for like twenty years and
I've never had this. It's not in the backyard. It is only in
the front. And the reason why I know he did it is because right
along the property line there's a straight and on all sides. It's not in
my neighbor's yard. It's just in my yard. But it's really full,
and I don't know what to do. I mean, like since it's been
raining, it's up to my knees because because the grass grows like it's two
check about an inch to two inches a week, and god, so well,
someone mowing it and keeping it mowed down. Yeah he does. I
gotta love the yard guys. And he mows it, he comes to.
He mows it every two weeks. Okay, but it's like now it needs
to be once a week yea. And yeah, it's so the homeowners Association
is on their course. Well, I tell you I that is gonna die
down. It's gonna go away. Uh. They It depends on exactly what
they used to oversee. There's an annual rye and a perennial rye and off,
and people will oversee the blend of the two because each has its advantages.
And if it's an annual, right for sure, I mean the heat
is going to take it out and you may have a few seeds that are
left over to sprout next year, but probably not much. But the perennial
rye can be a little more persistent. But even that does not like our
blazing summer heat. So I think time is going to be your friend.
There's not a there's not a magic bullet that kills rye grass, but not
your sosia grass. And so okay, yeah that's what I was like,
Oh my god, if I put it so someone had suggested use it round
up on it? Are we killer? Well, don't don't up? Yeah
youki your will Zosia grass with round up? Yeah yeah? And so waited
out yeah out doing anything? Cut low, yeah yeah. Cut more often
than the schedule you've been on, probably would be helpful, because the Zoysie
is a good tough competitor, and it's better mode lower than Saint Augustine,
and it is better mode very regularly with a good sharp mower. Now,
if you're long, if you're long, care guy has a propeller blade mower,
like a probably the standard kind of a mower. Um, you can't
get too low because those end up gouging the grass and they're just not made
to cut real low. As you get shorter heights, the little spiral barber
pole type called a real mower R E E L. And those types give
the best cut when you get on really short. But then the shorter you
mow, the more often you're having to mow to keep to keep it,
you know, from getting range looking. Okay, yeah, it's interesting right
now, all right, thank you very much. Well, thanks for the
call. I hope that helps. Let's head out now to spring. Oh
mo I'm pulling you up, but I'm gonna put you on hold. I'm
just seeing it is break time and so we'll be right back with you.
Just hang on our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. R CW Nurseries. That's that's the one up there where tom Ball
Parkway comes into Beltway eight. Go online RCW Nurseries dot com. You can
find all the information on them there. Boy, the Williamson family has had
RCW since nineteen seventy nine, and they know plants. They really specialize.
One of their specialties is in trees. They grow their own trees up to
I think maybe fifteen maybe up to two hundred gallons, so pretty much any
size you would want. They're going to have available unbelievable selection of roses.
That alone is just worth a visit. But they go away beyond that,
Herb's perennials, annual shrubs. Our CW Nurseries. Check them out. I
think that you will be very pleased. Our CW Nurseries dot com. The
good morning. It's a good Sunday morning to be inside, listening to the
radio and taking care of your houseplants. Got a little rain coming today,
and it just reminds us we do live in southeast Texas area where it does
rain. There are people a lot further west that wish they could have just
a little bit of what well we get here every year. But you know,
they say, when it rains, it pours, and when it rains
too much, we end up dealing with poor drainage issues are standing water,
soggy soil, and that's one of the key steps to success with many of
our garden beds is to get them up into a raised bed where the soiled
drains a little better, get those roots out of submerged conditions so your plant
does a little better, and every time it rains a good amount, it
reminds us of that. Well, we're gonna now head out to talk to
Mo in Spring. Good morning, Mo, Good morning. My grandmother loved
talking to you yesterday. Well, good all, I'm talking to her too.
She just forgot to give you what you wanted to give you, was
her homemade jam. Homemade jam. Well, maybe next trip she won't forget.
That's good. We had a great time out of Arbigate yesterday. A
lot of folks came by and got to meet a lot of new folks and
people that hadn't even been there before. They were amazed at the place.
Well, what I want to know, I'm planning two new pecanches. What
should us get around of mulch around it on the roots? Well, so
you don't need to do anything in the soil for the pecanjo. You're going
to have a huge, extensive root system and the little bit you do doesn't
accomplish much if you try to amend the so much for a pecan, But
you do want to make sure the surface is mulched to keep all the weeds
away and to create that kind of forest floor environment for the pecan tree.
So you can use I mean, you could use just compost for malt.
You could use you know, wood chips, I mean, whatever kind of
multi want. Shred your own leaves and put them in there if you like.
But just the bigger area. The bigger the area is the less competition
for weeds and grass that that tree's going to deal with, and you're going
to see a lot faster growth as a result. Yeah, and put tree
huggers on them. Yeah. Water. You shouldn't plant a woody ornamental or
tree or something like that without a tree hugger, because the first year that
pecan goes into summer, that's the touching go a year, that's where you
may lose it or not. That's where you may get good growth or at
base basickly leafs out and just sits there. And accurate watering to that root
ball and as the pecan slowly puts new roots out, that is very important.
And yeah, you're right, the tree hugger can certainly do that.
Okay, thank you very much. All right, mo, thank you very
much for the call. You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host,
Skip Richter and our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Yeah, we
had we really had a great time out there at Arburgate yesterday. I've everlely
had the Bellini machine going, and I tell you we had folks. We
had folks coming by to take advantage of that is wonderful, a really good
time. I would like to meet meet folks. And I saw bags of
plant material and photos on phones and all kinds of things as we as we
identified, diagnosed and recommended our way to hopefully a beautiful garden at a bountiful
lens Gape for some of the folks that came by. Thank you all for
hostingess out there arbor Gape. The the plants that we plant in our gardens
are either going to be well adapted or not. And a lot of times
we see things we want, but that doesn't mean they're happy to be where
we live. You know what I'm saying, You on a vacation to Colorado
and bring home a little blue spruce. Well, the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Plants will pull up with syrenes to your landscape and they will
cuffe you for such a crime, a horticultural crime. Now, seriously,
we want things that do well. And one of the one of the best
things here in Texas is called the Texas Superstar Program. So Texas Superstars are
plants that have been tested by Agrilife Extension Agrilife research all across the state and
to see how they do, and the one that rise to the top are
given a Superstar status. Now, there's not every good plant in the world
in the Superstar program, but all those that are there have their features and
have their reason to belong there. And you can go online. You can
check out Texas Superstar dot com and there'll be a list of the plants that
have been recommended over the years. You find everything from shrubs, two trees,
perennials, not a lot of annuals. Well, actually there are quite
a few annuals on there, and then some that they call per annuals,
as in perennial annuals, meaning if you go farther south, they're a perennial,
if you go farther north, they're probably an annual. We have a
number of plants like that, like Durronta, the Brazilian skyflower, beautiful plant
as has the golden berries on it in the following the flowers, and that's
one of its names. It points to that that's a tough one. But
you take that up to way and it's not a perennial, that's for sure,
but it is down here. In fact, you have it living the
above ground parks, living through the winter many times. That's just an example
of what I'm talking about. We have many other good Superstar plants, you
know. The one of the ones that I like. Of course, I'm
I'm kind of perennial. I'm perennial I'm kind of partial to salvias. I
just I love those a lot. And Mexican bush sades, the one that
blooms in late summer and fall with the purple and purple and white or all
purple blooms, that's on the list. That is just a good one,
and I like it because it gives us color at a time of year when
there isn't as much color as there is in the spring, for example,
So don't ever forget those fall blooming plants. They also have on their Henry
Duelberg salvia, which is a Salvia farrenasia or a cross of it, and
it is native here in Texas, Salvia farnasias. They have a mystic spires
salvia, which is beautiful little compact version of a salvia that we used to
grow called indigo spires. So those are all good salvia's for example. Well,
let's let's go to the phones. Our number, well, our number
if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two five
eight seven four, And Doug, I'm about to take a little break here,
so to give you a little more time, I am going, I
am going, okay, I'm gonna come back to that let me continue on
just for a moment, though. A couple more of the superstars that I
did want to mention, and a new group of those are the hibiscus that
are perennial. These are different than the multicolored, beautiful tropical hibiscus either a
dinner plate sized blooms. There's one called Flare Flair hibiscus. There's one call
Lord Lord Baltimore. There's one called Moi Grande. Moi Grande is especially a
unique one in that it has the probably the biggest of the blooms of all
of these. The blooms don't form a complete circle. They're more like remember
the old time desk fans that had the blades four blades or whatever, and
there was there was space between the blades. That's kind of how a more
grande hibiscus bloom is. They're absolutely beautiful, absolutely beautiful. And there are
many other varieties of these that haven't been you know, haven't been tested to
reach the superstar status, but they are they're very good plants for those perennial
hibiscus just give you that color that is just gaudy. I mean, it's
if you want, uh, you know, vehicle going down the road stop
traffic beauty in your yard. This is going to be the kind of plant
to do it. And I was visiting somebody Arbigate yesterday just about that thing.
But these big bold colors are just beautiful and their perennial. They come
back a year after year. Texas Star, by the way, is another
good one. It's a native to the to the Gulf Coast's actually, despite
being called Texas Star, it's not native to Texas. But we'll call it
happy anyway. Well day, what our phone number seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. We're gonna turn it over to the news and
Nikki shake shake your good morning on a good morning to be inside listening to
the radio, doing your gardening with your house plants. The craze of house
plants over the years is just kind of surprised me these last couple of years,
you know, with with COVID and people being cooped up, well,
it's kind of makes sense at house plants would get a surge in popularity,
but oh my gosh, what a surge. The thing now is to find
something nobody else has. It's never been soldier before. Some new variety or
variant or or even species I'm seeing. You know, I've been in horticulture
thirty five years and pretty familiar with a lot of plants, but I am
seeing houseplants that, Okay, what is that? You know, I've never
seen that one before, and people are really excited about it. And it's
fun. It's a good it's a good indoor release. It provides that setting
house plants do for a room that I don't know. It just gives it
a more natural feel, less sterile, more more natural feel. They have
many benefits to house plants, when one of the one of the benefits is
often touted, Oh, by the way, I should give you our phone
number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That way you
can put an end to me droning on which I love to do. So.
One of the things that attributed to house plants is improving air quality.
And while I am one thousand percent in favor of people putting more plants in
their home, I think that it is basically oversold. I'm surprised to hear
me say that. Well, there was a study done it NASSA years ago
that looked at air quality and it would say, well, this plant pulls
formaldehyde out of the air, or this plant, you know, helps take
benzine out of the air. And these tests were done in little chambers where
they could do air quality sampling. Well, when you try to take that
and put it in the size of your indoors scale, you would basically have
to create a jungle to achieve those same benefits. And then you add to
the fact that we've got doors opening and closing and air blown through, we've
got air conditioners circling the air around. That's not the reason to do it.
In fact, you know, an interesting thing of some follow up studies,
they found that the soil, actually the soil, the microbes in the
soil were accomplishing even more than the plants that were growing in it. So,
I guess if you want to do something I don't know, bringing a
good quality layer of some of the sols we talk about, put it about
two inches deep across all the floors in your house and run around barefoot,
that would accomplish it. But yeah, houseplants are a wonderful thing. Let's
go out to Liberty and talk to Tracy. Good morning, Tracy, Good
morning, skimp. I got a question about a myer limon. It's a
three year old tree that's just transplanted from a pot into the ground. It's
got fruit forming. But the question I have I've noticed they're about the size
of a very small marble, but they're turning yellow already and dropping off.
Well, the citrius will abort like that, and it can be due to
different things. You know that if pollination is required for the kind of citrius,
then that could be an issue. But stresses they set a little extra
fruit all the time, so it's not unusual to see some of that aboarding.
When it's more it's probably due to I'm sort of a stress in this
case. Maybe the planting process and getting ready to get established there could be
part of it. But it's going to be some type of a stress if
it's more than the normal amount of a boarding. Is there anything special?
Do you think I need to do to it? Or no? Let nature
take its course pretty much. Let nature tickets course. How long ago did
you plant? It's been in the ground about a month? About a month?
Okay, Well, I would say anytime now you could begin to give
it small doses a fertilizer. You know, don't overdo it, but provide
a sprinkling of fertilizer around it, kind of scratch it into the soil surface
and water. The bigger the mulch is around it, you know the words.
The wider the mult circle, the better off it'll be too. And
just kind of create that setting work and you know, get its feet under
it if you will, and really start to thrive. Okay, And one
other question, the black mail mulch, would that be good to put around
citrus tree? Yeah, that'd be fine. It's a natural mult product that's
not dyed mulch. For those folks listening, you know, we're not fans
of dyed mults. But the black velvet is a naturally dark mulch and it
would be just fine. You just want to create, create a good mult
surface and then always add mulch to the surface as the old mulch kind of
breaks down. Don't take the old mulch away because that's a good stuff.
And think about the forest floor leaves year after year after year, the leaves
rotting at the bottom. That's the good stuff. All right, we'll do
that, all right, for the information you two. Thank you for the
call. By the way, I want to wish everyone that's a mom out
there, A happy Mother's Day. This is a special day of the year
and many many lives that you know just impacted in ways that no one else
in your life can buy. Your mom. We'll take a break right now,
our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
You know jungle Land, I've talked about it before, but it is a
soil for containers. It's a potting type mix, so this would be something
that would provide that color on your patio, the opportunity to really thrive.
And it's because it's got a blend of Canadian peat four sources of decomposement,
decomposing organic matter, and then micro rizal fungi. There's the kick. If
you have indoor plants, they have a version with crystals that help hold moisture,
so if you forget to water, it helps the plant keep going until
you get around to remembering it. Jungle Land is sold everywhere that other nitro
FoST products are sold. So a task aseda Ace Lake Hardware in Angleton or
Gem's Hardware in Montgomery. Looking for well, good morning, Well, a
good morning to be inside listening to the radio and maybe doing some house plant
gardening. I am working with my throat this morning to see how long it's
going to allow me to keep talking, So kind of bear with me.
We're gonna head out our phone or by the way seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Now let's head out to Montgomery and we're going
to talk to carry on. Hello Carrie in good morning, Skip. I
am calling up a question about my yard. My husband I moved into our
house a year ago. We laid eighty palettes of sod and we worked hard
to take good care of it. We did aisamite, we did the Medina
soil activator, we watered, but ultimately ended up with brown patch pretty severely
at the end of summer, and with all this rain, I'm just really
worried about the emergence of another fungus and wondered if there's anything that I could
do, you know, proactively, or if I see patches start to come
up, what I could do, well, if if we could identify what
fungus may be out there affecting your lawn, the brown pat it may have
been brown pat, was it circles or was it irregular in the die back?
This at the end of the summer, Yeah, it was, it
was circles. Okay, well, then that is the what we've always called
brown patch. I think the turf folks call it a large patch now.
But the that doesn't kill your grass. It rots the leaves off the grass,
and then the runners are alive and they've grown new leaves on them in
time when the weather's right. So if you have a fall of attack from
it, then you're going to have those circles all winter because the grass isn't
growing to come back in yet. But I think you know, in terms
of what you've done for your lawn, it sounds like you're you're doing a
lot of things right. The only thing if compaction were an issue, doing
a core aeration pulling the little cores out of the ground, a little compost
top dressing just to kind of cover the soil surface in any areas where the
sunlight might hit the soil. Also provide that that nutrient as it decomposes.
Those would be helpful, But I think the main thing would be just just
watch it close. If you see that it's there's color issues, you know
it's not as green even though you're fertilized, or you're getting yellow splotches through
it or you seeing any of that right now, there's one area that I'm
worried about that's not growing and it should be growing, okay, And it's
definitely in circular yeah nature, And you said it was Saint Augustine, right,
that's correct. Yes, So you know that's going to do really well
in the sun and the shade and sun because it's more shade tolerant, not
too much shade, but a little bit. But just watch that whenever we
hit the heat of summer, that you're providing supplemental water as needed and really
watering once a week in the absence of rainfall. Is is plenty twice at
the most, but we try to wean our lawns back to once a week
because that allows the soil to dry out a little bit and brings oxygen back
into the root system in that process. I don't know any magic potions to
put on it at this point, just fertilizing. When was the last time
you fertilized? So April tenth and I use this sweet green And that kind
of leads me to speaking questions Skip. I have all kinds of stripes in
my yard, and so if I was to fertilize again, it's six weeks.
Should I just go in and fertilize the areas that I missed or just
do a criss cross type of pattern and try to even that out. Well,
if you if you criss cross, you may end up with a checkerboard
instead of stripes. You might do the areas that you missed. Do you
have a drop spreader, yes, sir? Okay, well that's one of
the reasons I kind of like the little whirlybird spreaders. That's you know,
push to put it out everywhere because it's easier to get a kind of an
even blend with just a little overlap and avoid the stripes. But yeah,
normally criss crossing is something we do and that helps us to get it down
at the right rate. That way, you don't get halfway through the yard
and you've run out of what should have been a whole yards worth of fertilizer.
But right, the drop spreaders are good for applying certain kinds of things,
especially when you're looking at weed issues and stuff like that. Okay,
so wordy bird is what you say, Well, I call him morty bird.
It's a little spinning you know. It's a kind you've probably seen it
in pictures or TV where like the fertilizer is just being spun out everywhere.
There's a little whirling plate underneath that slings it everywhere. That's opposed to the
drop spread They each have their place, but it's a little easier to avoid
the striping with the spinning type spreader. Okay, okay, yeah, Well,
if you fertilize that recently, then you don't need to fertilize again.
That sweet green's gonna last you a while. You might, you might put
on a light summer fertilization if you're just lack in color, but I think
probably your next one is probably going to be in the fall, especially if
you return your clippings. Okay, all right, all right, thank you
so much. Well, good luck with your long you are listening to garden
Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and our phone number is seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're gonna be heading to
break here in just a bit. But if you will give Josh a call,
he'll get you on the boards and we can talk about whatever you are
interested in. And again, wishing all the moms out there a happy,
happy Mother's Day. What you've poured into lives, your children, your family.
The sacrifice is made, the kindness is the comfort that the list could
go on and on, and we are very appreciative to you. As the
son of a mom, I can tell you that it is just I don't
know, It's just one of those holidays of the year that is unique in
many ways and special in its own way. And I hope you're doing something
for your mom this Mother's Day. Maybe a card, a phone call,
best you, a visit, perhaps a gift. But we are very appreciative
moms, thank you so much. Or as the way you poured out your
life for us. Ana plants up in Montgomery. They're on the east side
of Montgomery. That garden center is just amazing. I mean the color,
the color that they have right now is just jaw dropping. If you go
by Ana check out. Also some of their other materials are I call it
blain, but Mexican talavera, the terracotta, the chimineas you know, topiaries
or arches or gazebos, all of that other stuff. In addition to having
all the plants and all the products that we talk about here on Garden Line,
the fertilizers and the soil soob lends and whatnot, A and a plants
just on the east side of Montgomery. Let's see we need to I believe,
Josh. Let's go ahead and take us to a break. I'll tell
you what. Let me. Let me do this. I've talked about Vigo
garden beds before. Vigo garden beds or modular metal garden beds that will provide
the perfect environment for your plant roots, whether you're growing flowers or vegetables,
or a mix of the two. Vego is a Houston company. A Houston
company, the original metal garden bed here in the United States. It's treated
with material with a material to prevent rusting and to prevent corrosion, and then
it's painted with the USDA certified Very Safe paint, so excellent for again at
gardeners too. There are impostors out there, but the original is Vego v
Ego garden dot Com. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the
products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip
Rictord. Just watching well, good Sunday morning, Good morning to be inside,
that's for sure, But It doesn't stop us from gardening, does it.
There's these things called houseplant. You got an ivy apothos or something that's
just getting too long and lanky. Cut some of those things off and one
node for each little section that would be a node is where a leaf attaches
to the vine and put them in some Well, let's get them rooted.
Start your whole new ivy basket and enjoy it yourself or give it away to
somebody if you'd like to do that. You're listening to Guardenline and I'm your
host. Skip Ricter our phone number. Write this one down. It's seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two
five eight seven four. I want to I want to talk about some myths.
I in fact, I think from time to time we gotta have a
myth Gardening myths segment. Need a little intro of someone shouting that out.
Gardening myths. Well, here's myth number one. We're gonna talk about it
today. We'll include some of the myths as we go through. Putting star
foam, peanuts or gravel or broken potshards in the bottom of a container to
improve drainage. Now, It makes total sense logically, right, I mean,
you pour water onto gravel and the water just goes straight through. Nothing
could drain better than gravel, right, that's true. But the physics a
little nerd warning here. The physics of water is that it moves from broader
spaces into smaller spaces by capillary action. That's why if you have a drop
of water in your counter and you put the corner of a paper towel right
down and touch the drop of water, where does that water go? It
goes up into the paper towel because that draws the water more, you know,
than just the air of the water flattening out in the air on the
counter. So when we have soil, a soil volume, and it's sitting
over gravel, then what the water literally that soil literally has to get so
oversaturated that it drips out of the soil into the gravel. And yes,
then it moves on out very easily. But it two bad things happen when
you do this. Number One, you lose volume of your soil. In
other words, let's say you had a container, oh, I don't know
however high it is. If it's full of soil, that whole area is
for plant roots to get water and nutrients from. If you put a bunch
of gravel in the bottom of your pot, then you just shrunk the area
of soil that your plants can get water and nutrients out of. And here
in Texas when we hit summer especially, we need all the soil we can
get. We need to. You watch TV and see little potted plants and
stuff being talked about on some garden show somewhere, just look at the pot
and say, well, I'm gonna have to do about fifty percent or one
hundred percent bigger than that for it to survive well here in Texas. So
that that is one of the things that happens. The other thing that's not
good is you just moved the oversaturated section up. You didn't get rid of
it. So fill the soil with fill the pot with soil. If you
have drainage holes, sometimes I'll throw like a coffee filter over them or even
a paper towel just to kind of hole the soil initially from just washing out
of that hole. Now they're going to rot away and be gone. And
some people use window screening a little circle cut out of that. Well,
you can do that if you want but anyway that what's going to happen.
Then your whole volume of soil is gonna drain downward with gravity. It's gonna
lose the water, and then it gets to the bottom, it's gonna be
wet right there at the bottom. That's just how it is, and it
will dry out. But don't put things in the pot like that. The
only time where I would recommend filling part of a container would be if you
have a really really tall planter and you don't want to put that much soil
in it, you don't want to buy that much soil, then you can
fill it up. And what some people do is they take like the little
you know, a little water bottles that we use for drinking water. Remember
we didn't have to buy water, there was just water fountains. And anyway,
the those things with the lid on them are are a nice little air
pillow if you will, and you can throw a bunch of those into the
bottom of a very tall container. One time I was gardening out of the
tile that lines a chimney. There's these long sections of basically squared a rectangle
terra cotta, and I didn't want to fill all that, so I threw
a bunch of those in the bottom and then I don't know what. I
may have used a board, or I may used a metal screen or something
like that to sit on top of them to kind of hold the soil from
not just falling all in there. And I use much less soil. I
still have plenty of soil, but it was that excessively tall container that I
was trying to deal with, so that would be the only time I would
do it. But even though it's even though it is logical to think that
gravel helps drainage, it only helps drainage, and gravel the soil is going
to be as wet as it's going to be. Let's head out to Fairfield
and we are going to talk to Marty. Hello Marty, good morning,
Skip. How are you. I'm well, thank you good. Yesterday you
were talking about the nuts edge and one area is just inundated with it and
I just can't seem to get it under control. Okay, you said to
make sure that the blades were gone and not get let the sun get to
them. So if I went out and we eatd wet ate whatever, right,
If I put the weed eater on it and cut them all back and
then dug up the soil kind of till it. Would that do something to
help it? The rain's not helping any that's obvious. It's making it very
happy. Yes it is, and truly it truly is a yellow nuts edge,
which is more common when we have in our yard. Yellow nuts edge
has a chemical inhibitor on the nut to keep other buds from sprouting. At
the same time. It has like I don't know, seven or eight buds
on that nut. That's why every time you chop it said off, a
new one comes up, and wet soil washes the inhibitor off, and you
get increased sprouting and proliferation in wet conditions. So don't over water. That
would be one help. And I assume this is a flowerbed, not a
yard a lawn, yes, correct. So what I was saying yesterday was
you need to treat it right away, But if you are not going to
spray it, at least cut the top off and prevent it from getting stronger
and making more daughter nutlets from that plant underground. Chopping the top off is
not at all. Here's how you control nuts edge. It just it was
My comment was more just at least don't let it have leaves. You know,
once it has three to five leaves, it is now replenishing the bulb.
And that bulb is sending out daughter plants. And I think it one
time I talked to some weed specialists and they said, bye, about the
first of May, it has already established daughter plants that are that are able
to survive themselves without being connected to mom. And there's like eight or nine
daughter plants on there. Well, I have a tribe of daughters all over
my hard Yeah, I know, well I would. I would get a
product that is labeled for nuts edge control in the area that you're using it.
And some products that kill nutsedge may hurt some other plants. You have
to be real careful. I use a wiper applicator for mine, and it's
it's a homemade one. And you may have too much nuts edge for this.
But you know the little tools that you grab a jar off a shelf,
it's a little you squeeze a trigger, all right. Well, if
you on the end of those instead of suction cups or whatever they have,
put two halves of a kitchen sponge, cut one in half and just attach
with a bolt. I have to each side and then you can squirch your
nuts edge control on there and just reach down without even stooping and pull squeeze
the bottom of a of a plant and pull it all the way up to
get that whole thing wet. So if you'd like to let's continue this after
break, can you hang on just a minute? Sure? All right?
Thank you? You're listening to garden lines the number seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four Nelson Plant Food. Their turf Star line is.
It is an amazing series of products. They have a number of different lines.
I mean they've got the Color Star, Nutril Star, a Nature Star,
and the Turf Star turf Star number of different quality lawn fertilizers for summer.
I like to recommend Slow and Easy twenty two to ten. It gradually
releases the nutrients to prevent increased thatching and increasing of thatch, having to mow
more often and developing a better root system for less water consumption. Slow and
Easy by Nitro by Nelson's Plant Food twenty two two ten and well. Good
Sunday morning for a good Sunday to be indoors this morning early, you know,
kind of watching the weather out there and taking care of your indoor plants.
Let's go back. I was having a conversation with Marty up in Fairfield
and I wanted to continue that. Marty, I'm back, and I just
want to add to it that you probably need to get something either that you
can spray in on the plants, try to keep it off other things.
Just follow the label, or you can wipe on the sedge itself, whichever
kind of way you want to apply whatever you've designed, you know, to
to create a wiper or purchase one. But there's a product called nutgrass Killer
two. It's by Monterey. I believe it's a manufact true, but Nutgrass
Killer two has an ingredient that is very good against nutgrass, and its label
is not just lawns. Some of the nutgrass killers are only label for lawns.
This one you can use it in landscape beds as well and it won't
kill the flowers. Uh, I mean, is its selective on the nut
set only? Yes? You know, I need to check and see.
I don't know that I would be very careful in using it, and I
would have to read the label, which I don't have just sitting in front
of me. Um. I don't know that. It's we call those over
the top, you know, the like you grass killers. You just spray
over everything and it only kills the grass. I don't know if it's going
to be like that. So I'm gonna I'm gonna suggest you look. Take
a close look at the label on it, okay, and who made it?
Monterey Monterey. Yeah, they have a nutgrass killer two. It's the
name of it, I believe number two. Okay, Well, I can
probably pull up the nutgrass. It's around the plants that I have. I
have liked lantana and esmonds and stuff like that. But um, okay,
I will give that a shot. The alternative would be to get a long
weeding fork that you can push down in the soil and you're as I'm pulling
on an I've done these before, but as I pull on a nuts edge
plant, and I use that um weeding fork kind of a seesaw lever,
a lever or whatever, you can tell if the nutgrass is coming up,
if you need to push the fork down a little lore to get underneath it.
But I tell you a hand digging nutgrass nuts. Um you anny kids,
if they ever misbehaved, you can send them out to put the nutgrass.
I'm trying to come up with a strategy here for you, Marty.
Thank you for the call. I appreciate thank you. Bye bye. Now
we are going to go talk to our pod in spring. Hello our pod,
good morning, thank you. I've got two Asian pair full of fruit.
And just recently I noticed that some limbs at the top begin to brown
and then the whole limb goes brown, and I'm concerned about that. Okay,
So what that probably is a disease called fireblight. It's a bacterial disease,
and it off, it hits. It typically hits primarily the end of
shoots, and then but it kills. It kills its way back down,
sometimes pretty far. You want to prune those out below the dead, like
cut into livingwood below the dead, and then you want to have some something
like lysol disinfectant. Spray lysol and you spray your pruners and then you make
your next cut. Because because it's a backtar, it's really easy to spread
it from one tree to another, from one branch to another. So do
that little sterile spray and just take it all out of there. In the
springtime is when it's worse, but I would You know, there are some
sprays that can prevent it, but most people don't. Don't bother with that.
So spray at the cut after I cut it, spray there, Spray
the prunters. Oh oh, after first time, having you cut into the
healthy, not into the dead, because there we know we're picking up bacteria
on our prunters, all just low below that cut it off. But then
spray the prunters. So if you did get someone, when you go print
another branch or something, you're not just reintroducing it to that fresh cut wound.
You're making I understand. I understand. And then I had had a
second question. If I made sure I had to cut down. I had
to cut down two big pine trees in the back, and once they were
down, we saw that they were invested with termites. I didn't know that
termites can kill a huge pine tree. So the gentleman did the work,
pointed to a third pine into that that one's probably going to die next year.
So is there a way to save that tree? My knowledge are termites
don't kill pine trees. They termites work on deadwood. They're interested in like
a two by four. That's what that's what they want to eat. They
don't go into my knowledge, into the living tissues, the xylum and flowum
that's alive, active material, and so they will hollow out a tree.
And we have some pretty horrendous types of termites here. You might want to
call a good pest control company to come out and take a look. They
could put some baits out or baits nation or whatever. I'm not a termite
specialist, but to try to control them because as they do all that interior
damage, then the tree becomes more likely to snap off in a storm.
So the trees that are probably a drought or something and then the termites came
in, you know, could it could have been a number of different things.
But yeah, and I if we've got a arborious listening, they can
make change that. I'm open to hear that, but I'm ninety eight percent
sure termites don't eat living tissues trees. Okay, Well, thanks so much,
all right, pot thank you for the call. You were listening to
garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. And now we're going to go to Northwest Houston and talk to
Debbie. Well while we figure out how to work our way around the emergency
alerts and everything. Debbie, if you want to hang on, we'll try
to get this fixed and I'll be happy to answer your questions. I just
a while ago, I was talking to somebody about nuts edge, and just
remember when nuts edge, the most important thing is whatever you're gonna do to
it, dig it, spray at whatever, do it. In the spring
when those nuts edge plants have like three leaves, start in on it.
And every time you take one of those nuts out in the spring, you
prevent having ten nuts by the time we get to May and so early.
This is he who hesitates is definitely lost when it comes to nuts edge control.
It is a pernicious weed and it's a problem to deal with, but
it can be. It's not immortal. We can control it well. Good
Sunday morning, on a good morning to be indoors listening to a radio show
about gardening. We are now going to head back out and Debbie, do
I have you live now? Hello? Hello Debbie. All right, I'll
tell you what, Debbie, if you would just go ahead and recall call
back into the station the number seven one three two one two five eight seven
four we'll see if we can get this resolved. I'll tell you that our
emergency alert just kind of sent everything into a sideways direction. But we're happy
to wait if you'd like to give us a call back. Visit with you
about that. You know, when it when it comes to gardening, there
they're so many types of gardening, so many ways to go about gardening that
just keep it very very interesting. Uh. You know, like you do
you like herbs? Do you like herb gardens? Do you like potted plants
and hanging baskets? Do you do you love flowers and flower beds? Aren't
Maybe you're a lawn ranger and your weekend is spent creating the perfect carpet for
your landscape, and you love that flowering trees, fruit trees. It just
doesn't stop. There's so many aspects of horticulture, of gardening, and they're
all they're all therapeutic, they're all valuable. Some even adds significant interest in
terms of price to your home when you go to sell it. Well,
we're gonna give Debbie another try. Debbie is eighth time the charm? Oh
my gosh, I guess eighth time is not the charm. I am not
able to hear, Debbie, So I'm will stick you back on hole,
will eventually get that solved. All right, one more try Hello, Hello,
Hello, Yeah, Ray you're here. Sorry, Okay, I guess
the gremlins have left the wires. Okay, great, Hey, I have
a couple of questions. The first one is I'm overrun with this. I
guess it's a mulberry weed. Yes, there is um yes, Oh it's
awful and it's all over my flower bed, and so I guess I just
need to go pull it up. Is there anything that I can put on
it too? Yeah? Okay, Well you mentioned flower bed, so the
broad leaf we control products that would kill it after it's up. I would
be very hesitant to use those around a flower bed just because you Okay,
it'll kill your flowers as well. You're broad leaf flowers. So hand pulling
is probably your best bet. And the sooner the sooner, the better.
I know you don't want to hear hand pulling, but okay, because it
produces a seed at all those little nodes going up the stem, and you
don't want to give it time to create another two hundred thousand additional problems per
plant that you have right now, so okay, all right, I would
pull sooner rather than later, if okay after the rain, sure, yeah,
yeah, okay. Second question, I have a joey avocada tree,
and before the huge trees, and it's last freeze, it yielded about one
hundred and twenty avocadas, loved it. I have compost back there, but
now this last freeze got it, and so we cut it back as much
as we can. So do I just make sure there's only one trunk coming
up or several limbs or yeah, I would, and I'd get the others
off there. Cut them as close to what they're coming off of, whether
it's a trunk or the base, you know, the base where root attaches.
Cut them as close as you can to that to not encourage a lot
of sucker sprouting from the base. But pick the one that looks best and
then cut cut the stem off just above that. Give it a little more
time to grow, because right now the attachment of those new shoots is a
little weak. They're pretty easily broken off probably, So give it a little
more time to grow. Maybe a little later in this and as we get
into summer, then go ahead and make a nice cut maybe a quarter inch
above where that current attachment is on the trunk. Do you know what I'm
saying? Yes? And okay, yeah, so you don't want to leave
a trunk stub there. That'll just be a rotting, hollowed out area that
long term is not good. Okay, Well, thank you so much,
and we really enjoy you. It's a bitter so very easy to listen to
and so full of information and anyway, we're so glad to have you now.
Well, thank you. And by the way, you're the you're the
winning caller today when it comes to patients. So thank you for hanging around.
I hope that. Okay, great, thank you, you're beat well,
you're listening to Guardline and we are here to answer your question. That's
why we're here, and we encourage you to call. I you know I
talk to I can't tell you how many people I talk to that they listen
to Gardenline, but they never called in before. And I can just tell
by looking at their face. There's like this little mini terror at the thought
of being live on the air. It's only you and me. I think
there may be one or two people listening. So take the pressure off yourself
and just call. I promised to be kind and gentle and helpful. And
there's no such thing as a stupid question. Just I know what you're thinking.
Yeah, there are, but no, they're stupid answers. And so
the problem and the pressure is on me. If you've got a question,
somebody else is going to have that question. We have people listening that are
veteran gardeners. I've been doing this probably longer than I have. That's a
long time. We have people that are brand new, they haven't even tried
gardening yet, and they they just want some help and advice. So do
give us a call. We'd love to answer your questions and try to help
you in a way. We're gonna take a right now. But the number
is seven one three, two one two five eight seven four. Enchanted Gardens
and Enchanted Forests done in Richmond. I hope you've been there. If you
haven't, you need to check them out. Amazing places, mystical enchanting places.
If you will both of them. You know I was looking. I
was actually at both of them within the past two weeks and just just looking
at the supply and what they have. Now you can you can find out
more about them by going to their Facebook and Instagram pages. Each nursery has
their own Facebook page and their own Instagram page. So Enchanted Forest, that
would be the one from Richmond in the Sugarland direction. Enchanted Gardens from Richmond
toward Katie directions both well worth going to unique garden centers, excellent plants,
excellent gifts, and lots of inspiration from well trained, very educated staff.
Well, good morning on a good Sunday morning, or being inside listening to
and talking on the radio, they head out to Katie. Our number is
seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Let's head out to Katie and talk to John.
Hello, John, Hello, Good good morning, good morning. Question
for you. My daughter, she lives in Katie. Also, her backyard
is being overgrown with mint. The neighbor was growing some mint and it has
spread and it's a fast grower and it's about taking over half of her yard.
Smells good when you moy, oh, doesn't it? Ever? I
was just gonna say that, yeah, Well, you know, we have
a we have a fertilizer called sweet green, and this would be like a
sweet green lawn, right, you place and this wonderful sweet smell come up.
Oh gosh. You know, there's not a great answer to that.
It's a broad leaf. It's got underground rhizomes that are there's helping it spread,
just getting it out of all. The only thing I can think of
is it seems like it might come up faster and higher than the lawn.
And if if you could go with that molent for long enough and then use
sort of a wiper type applicator on the mint that would be applying a product.
These these things often look like a hockey stick or something there there are
a smartings on the end, and you would just wipe the mint with this
product and the lawn below wouldn't get any of the product on it, you
know, at least not much. Uh. And that's the only thing I
can think of, John h to kill mint in a lawn without killing the
lawn. Yeah, it's just I mean, you could use a broad leaf,
you could use a broad leaf product. Uh, just don't delay.
I mean, actually, I guess you probably the weed beater weed Beater Ultra
product would probably be a good one that that ought to work. I can
tell you it's not going to have mental on the label though, so I
can't I can't guarantee you that that it would work, but it kills over
two hundred broad leaf weeds, so it probably probably would work just fine.
Another one you might want to try is Fertilum has one called weed free Zone.
The same kind of product or same kind of action, a little bit
a little bit different chemistry, but basically very similar. And if you try
those and you do it before the temperature gets up the upper eighties, mid
upper eighties, so that means get it done pretty quick here you may see
a response from it on that. I don't know. But with mint,
my gut is that you're probably gonna have to treat him again a little bit
later, just because there's so much material underground to be able to weather that
storm and have a little bit of life left to come back. Okay,
all right, well, thank you, all right, good luck. We
Yeah, I remember we had mint that escaped into the yard and know it's
growing up, and I always look forward to mowing over that area because the
fragrant, fragrant smell of it. But we lived in a more arid climate
where the mint was not as likely to just proliferate it. Mint doesn't like
to get too dry, that's for sure. You're listening to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter. Our phone number is seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. We're talking about myths earlier with the putting gravel in the bottom of
a pot. Don't put gravel in the bottom pot does no good at all,
no matter what to think. Trust me, this is a physics problem.
So there's a a horticulture problem. The physics of water moving in the
soil is that you have to oversaturate the soil above the gravel before the water
drips out, but with a capillary action that pulls water to smaller spaces and
that's called your potting soil in there compared to the gravel smaller spaces. So
anyway, believe me or not believing, that's true. By the way,
we're getting a lot of rain. So after this rain you need to do
a little quick perusal through the yard. Find out where you might have standing
water. That could be a sagging gutter, that could be a could be
bird bath, it could be the catch basins underneath your plants, any little
spot where you have still stagnant water, the mosquitoes will drop their eggs in
there and in a very short time they go through their life cycle and now
your little outdoor patio enjoyment area becomes a battle zone, right, So we
want to avoid that everywhere you can get rid of standing water and get your
neighbors to do it, is a way to cut down on the number of
mosquito problems. Now, if you've got stagnant water that you know you can't
just get rid of, maybe it's a little pond or something like that.
A mosquito dunk works. Mosquito dunks, you throw them in, They last
about a month. They controlled mosquitoes. Naturally, that's just another option for
controlling mosquitoes. But the dunks are really they're really cool product and easy and
especially the fact that they're so safe. They won't harm pets, they warn't
harm you know, people, they don't harm birds or fish or whatever,
because they're a disease of mosquitoes. To be nerdy about it, it's a
specific kind of BT. You know, have a BT for caterpillars, the
well, mosquito dunks are a different version of BT that works on mosquito larvae
work really well. Very effective, very effective product. Well, let's see,
we're getting kind of close to time to head out of here. We're
gonna take a break and we'll be back for the next hour. I'm gonna
make a few more comments before we do go to break, though. We
were discussing mosquito dunks, and we're discussing nuts edge and some other things earlier.
Nuts edge being one of those weeds that it's just so difficult to control.
And another one would be the bermuda grass. It's it's one reason why
I'm hesitant about a bermuda grass lawn because it just loves to invade flower bedge.
It doesn't understand where we want it to stop growing. But when you
have those kind of problems, you need something. You either need to dig
out those rhizomes or nuts or runners whatever underneath the surface, or you need
to spray a product that will go down in there and kill those kill those
runners, and don't delay. I mean, so many people, if you
put a garden bed out on your lawn, maybe you want to get one
of these vego beds and set it up out there on the lawn. If
you have nuts, if you have bermuda grass in the lawn. It's going
to come up in the bed because there's no bottom on the bed, I
mean, which is the way it should be a connect to the soil directly.
Well, if you got to get rid of that first, I mean,
go to great links to get rid of it before you create a garden
bed in that area, because it when it gets into beds now we're trying
to control it around our vegetables or around our flowers, and it just becomes
much more tedious to do. So we want to avoid that weed at all
costs. I used to work in Austin and we had an organic farm,
old organic farm in the city of Austin, which was kind of cool,
several acres and they you know, when you're organic, you can't just grab
the round up to kill the nuts edge. I mean you can't grab the
the grass only killers, excuse me, the bermuda grass. You can't grab
the grass only killers either, because your organic can't use those things. And
so they called it. Their name for it was Lamalamu head or a bad
woman. That was their name for bermuda grass in the beds. We did
some experiments on their farm where we spread out groundcover cloth, a large like
fifty foot across groundcover cloth through the whole section of the farm. Left it
on for several months, and it did an awesome job of taking that bermuda
grass down to just a very minor type of problem. Because it grows underneath
there. It doesn't get light. It's moist and warm, so here it's
growing. You pick up the cloth, it looks like spaghetti. Underneath there
it's about the same color as spaghetti because it can't get any light, and
that was one way that we found to try to overcome that. But anyway,
just some thoughts. I've done number of experiments with the cloth for bermuda
grass control, and I also did one once for nuts edge control. So
I hope you are getting a few good tips today. This is garden Line.
I'll be back after the break. Our phone number is seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. That's seven one three two one two
kt r H. We We have so many ACE Hardware's here in the Greater
Houston area that is just it's just convenient to find one. And if you
want to find one ACE Hardware dot com, you can find the one nearest
you. ACE hardware is it's that hardware store you grew up knowing about,
you know, where they knew what they were talking about. They greeted you,
they knew you, and they directed you right to what they need.
Well, that's true of ACE hardwarees, but so much more is true their
garden sections, the products they carry. It's everything we talk about here on
the show. They've got it and then some. I mean I've spent thirty
minutes just going down the line of products, noticing what they have, reading
about them, and learning about them. Pretty cool stuff. Ace Hardware dot
Com. Check them out. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of
the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with
Scared Rictor Just watching. Were good Sunday morning, on a good morning to
be inside, looking out inside watching right. I actually see a lot of
break in the clouds, but I know that's not going to hold up.
But anyway, we appreciate rain. We just wish we could divvy it out
a little more evenly through the year, don't we. About the time we
start complaining about rain. We were reminded of the fact that sometimes in summer
it gets a little bit dicey where we're trying to keep the plants alive with
water and just no rainfall. So we're gonna say thank you that it's raining
today and be glad for that. I um. I was out working in
my lawn this past week doing some I've got cypress trees, and they send
those knees up. I wish they were the type of cypress that don't send
knees by the way, we do have those. A Montezuma cypress is one,
but boy, I've got a heavy glay soil and in that lack of
oxygen, soil conditions are popping knees up everywhere. So I hadn't just a
grubbing hoe out there. There's a little trip to it, by the way,
older gentleman told me about that. You know, pop hit it on
one side with a grubbinhoe on one side of the knee, and then go
to the other side, so you're kind of cutting the route going into the
knee and coming out of the knee, and it pops out pretty easy,
but it's not fun to do that. I was out doing that in my
yard and I just noticed I have a section of yard where i'd i'd put
down some Microlife fertilizer and it was a six two four. That's the green
bag. And also, by the way, when you do the green bag,
you also do the Humates plus, which is the purple bag. We
call that composted or concentrated compost in a bag. But the lawn, it's
kicking in, it's greening up, it's beautiful, and I'm going to get
that gradual release from that over time. Now, if you if you're looking
for nitro foss, you're going to find it. If you go online,
go to Microlife or Fertilizer dot com Microlife Fertilizer dot com to find your Microlife
fertilizer. They have all the different products. They've got not just lawn fertilizers,
but a one hundred other things. But right now, let's focus on
the lawn and make sure we get it up and growing in green. And
I was really pleased with the way mine has been greening up. We are
let's see, we are available by phone. Guess what this is? A
callin Joe seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two five eight seven four one. Thing I didn't mention this morning
talking to anything much about vegetables, and it is a great time to be
out in the vegetable garden. All those things we planted, you know,
when we got past the danger of frosts, things like green beans and tomatoes
and cucumbers and summer squash and those things, they're all being harvested now.
I've noticed on the summer squash, and you will see this, like the
yellow squash crook neck or straight neck, for example, You'll see little whiskers
growing on a fruit and then the fruit just collapses and rots away, and
that is a fungal disease on the fruit. And you want to pick those
off and get them out of the garden because those whiskers are going to prove
spores that will reinfect. Avoid overhead watering too, by the way, that
we're not able to avoid overhead watering today, are we, But where it's
in your control, eavesdrop or something else, because every time you get fruit
wet, squash fruit wet, you increase the chance of different kinds of diseases.
It might affect the plant, so you don't avoid that. But I
was noticing some of that on the plants, and it's it's easy to deal
with. But the thing I like about this part of the season is we
also are putting in our warm season, our hot season gardening, if you
will, And we have a lot of vegetables that do well here, and
if you think about it, it makes sense. The problem. I don't
know if it's a problem, but the issue with these vegetables is we don't
know about them. You know, I grew up in our gardens or squash,
cucumbers, tomatoes, you know, just the standard Texas garden vegetables.
We have a lot of vegetables from parts of the world that have a somewhat
similar climate, hot and humid, and those kind of vegetables they're very happy
to be in the Houston summer if you just give them a little bit of
water. And we have a number of greens. Malabar green grows and very
well in hot weather. The Molecchia is a green that does very well here.
In fact, you only need about two plants because it makes a little
bush. It's an annual that is back in the winter, but you just
trim the little tip side of the shoots for use as you would a green.
Let's see another one. There's one call. It's a summer type of
spinach. New Zealand spinach does pretty good here in the warm season. Amaranth,
they're vegetable amorants. They have big, bold leaves that we would use
as a summer vegetable. Anyway, the list, the list just goes on
and on. There's a lot of options included with our summer vegetables, like
okra and southern peas, which is black eyed peas, purple hull peas,
cream peas, for example, all of those summer vegetables, sweet potatoes.
You know, they take a long time to produce their potatoes, but you
need to get them in now if you haven't done so already, to give
them that time to be able to do that. And don't forget the cool
season squash, the winter squash they call it, I shouldn't say cool season
winter squash, And it's named that not as it grows in winter, but
because it's stores into winter. So you take something like a pumpkin, a
spaghetti squash, a butternut squash, an acorn squash. We let those go
all the way to maturity before we harvest them. That's different than our summer
squash. And then we can bring them in, put them on the counter,
and they'll sit there for several months, depending on which kind of squash
it is and the condition of it when you bring it in. But those
are planted in the summer also at this time of the year, because we
need to give them ninety days. Some pumpkins maybe one hundred and twenty days
into harvest. But just remember on those watch the foliage for diseases. Number
one reason we have problems growing something like a pumpkin or these squashes here is
because the diseases get to their foliage. Powdery milder is one of the worst,
and it just it'll essentially take out almost all the foliage and so you
can't the plant can't make carbohydrates to make those fruit that we want to store
and enjoy for months to come. And so you need to spray the foliage,
whether you use organic products or synthetic, you need to protect that foliage
from the diseases. And again, powdery mildew is a prime example. On
those where you're listening to garden Line, I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and our number is seven one three, two one two fifty eight seventy four.
A little bit ago I was talking about microlife and you know, putting
a fertilizer like that down on your lawn. And when it comes to finding
products like that, number one our sponsor. Products are available all over the
place, but if you look at a one place that has the best selection
of everything, that would be Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer has been a Garden
Line sponsor since the Dewey Compton days. In fact, I'm the fifth guard
Line host to speak for Southwest Fertilizer. But by tell Bob and his team
they are they're excellent. If you bring a sample in there, they're going
to identify it for you, and they're going to take you right to the
product that works, and and they're not going to tell you something that doesn't
work that you don't need. They're the number of different herbicides and sexicides and
fungicides including organic products is like none other. It's amazing. Southwest Fertilizer dot
com. Check them out and when you go in there, you're gonna come
home with soils, fertilizers, any kind of pest control you need to do.
And by the way, you can even get your lawn moore blades sharpened
and you can get get some of the small engine repairs done in the shop
that they have in the back. Yeah, it's really interesting when you when
you go to a place has a wide variety of products because a lot of
the a lot of those stores that are let's say, big boxesh kind of
things, the ones that are you know, big company, multiple store,
you'll find products in there, but a lot of times the special products you're
looking for you may not be able to find in there, and of course
you're not going to get any help in there and directing you from a horticulturally
educated perspective on which product you might need to use. And that's that's really
important. You know, we're always talking about our our mom and pop nurseries,
are independent garden centers and places you know like uh, Southwest Fertilizer.
There. In those kinds of places, you get people that take you to
what you need and that that's important and by the way they carry the things
that you need to Well, this is a call in show seven one three,
two, one two, five eight seven four. So let's go and
we're gonna go to Pallasha and talk to Greg are Craig. Hello, Craig,
were Hey good morning, Yes, good morning, I'm along time listen.
Never called because might normally get my answers answers before my question, before
I've even asked them. So I was listening. But I've got a new
one I've never had before. Um. In November, I planted some oak
trees, some big ones, the four inches across at the base. I
don't know what gallon size of it, but it's big. Um. And
I did what the nursery recommended for me to do. They asked. They
told me, if dig a hole the size of your root ball, put
it in the hole and pack it in real tight. Saw up on doing
so. I'm kind of in a windy wind throne area, but I figured
that the size of the root ball and such that the trees were gonna be
good to go. Nope, um bye. Week ago a storm came through
and blew the oaks over to about thirty degrees off ninety quite a bit.
So when I and they and so the whole fill up with water and pulled
the pulled the trees up straight vertical and this time staked them off. But
in doing so it raised the trees probably to some two inches some three inches.
Yep. It raised them up because of the sentiment. I suppose that
I un'erneath the tree. That's right, that's what happens. Yeah. I
dug a hole adjacent to the root ball bigger, put a coffican in it,
and drained all the water out for a couple left the water seep into
that hole for a couple of days, and got as much water by natural
drainage as I could out. But now I'm worried that of course I've got
I've got an air pocket in there because of the one side that was touching
the ground that got raised up. And I'm so and I've got a so
I've got air pocket. I know, I've got saturated roots that and it's
a real, real dense clay. I mean, this is like concrete clay.
Yeah, what when I make sure I do to I don't lose these
trees? Yeah, Well what a situation. And not an unusual one though,
Craig. So when a tree blows over, it's always a good idea
to get in the hole and dig out what is probably washed first, as
you as you were describing you know this, uh, and and get it
staked upright. And I'm gonna talk about staking in just a moment. But
I wouldn't worry at this point about like an air pocket under it. I
think that with the root ball from the container and everything, you're probably going
to be okay, and you know it. You don't need to go to
the great lengths of essentially almost digging it up and replanting it. But I
would I would make sure that it's staked from three directions would be best.
Make sure that one steak is pointing toward the southwest, especially because that's the
prevailing wind and so you've got a real direct line holding it. Make sure
the lines you use number one are not stuff that like a wire that would
cut into the branches or cut into the trunk something us, something that's designed
to go around a tree, a strap, or there's other plastic gadgets.
But leave the wires slightly loose, just a little bit, because you want
that trunk to move. You don't want the tree to blow over, but
you want to allow it to move just a little bit and that will help
strengthen the trunk. And you should not leave need to leave those steaks on
past oh, let's say six months to definitely not past a year from now.
That tree will be well rooted in. And the issue with your soil,
you know, it is what it is, and we can't fix that.
All we can do is try to pick species that are going to do
well in that soil. And you know, the live oaks are good a
good species. I mean, Houston is basically a live oak forest. It's
really there are a lot of live oaks around here. So I think do
you have a follow up on that or does that kind of answer your question?
Well, I'm cool. Worried about you would some sort of any black
root rot or something setting in, something that's going to kill it from below
that that I can't see. Well, it won't kill it, but it
will kill some roots down there. And I you know, again, are
there live oaks in your neighbor? Do you see live oaks around? Actually?
Yes, but very few. I'm right on the bait, right on
the right on mya goor to bait. You know, I've seen a couple
of us are Yeah. Well, I think it's gonna be fine. I
would straighten it up and just you know, take good care of it,
give a little fertilizer, make sure you keep it mulch, keep the lawnmown,
weedier away, and I think that's the best you can do, and
that I think is gonna do good. Craig, Hey, I'm gonna have
to run. I'm pushing up against a break here. Our phone number seven
one three two one two five eight seven four. Well, you're listening to
garden Line on a nice Sunday morning. To be inside listening to the radio
and maybe call on the radio. Our number is seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. You. We were just talking with Craig about
the uprooted tree and it just reminded me when when you plant a tree,
and I just am so happy to see this new product out that that they
have called tree Hugger sprinklers. When you plant a tree, you need to
invest the small amount of money in that little sprinkler to take care of the
large amount of money you put in that tree. And so they have them
in seven inch, they have them eleven and fifteen and it goes around the
tree and when you turn the water on, you can turn it on,
you know, with a lot of pressure and make in water a big area,
or you can have it just you know, come up where it's just
spouting a couple inches above the sprinkler if you want to water that root ball.
And we're going into summer, so trees that you've been planting, you
know, let's say since January especially, they're not getting that root system fully
established out into the lawn around them. And so that root cylinder that came
out of the pot is where all the roots are. And that's why the
tree hugger works so well and helping protect that investment. You can find out
more about them at TreeHugger Sprinklers dot Com. I find them in independent nurse
centers. Certainly hardware stores like Ace Hardware is going to have them. Tree
Hugger Sprinklers dot Com is well worth it, and so I would encourage you
to just protect that investment that you put in a really nice tree or shrub
or rosebush. They weren't great on roses, to protect them with a tree
Hugger sprinkler and you have a lot better results. The trees are one of
the things that make the phone ring. You know, we say we got
trees, turf, and tomatoes, Well, the three tees trees are definitely
one of them. We get a lot of calls on trees and questions about
trees. I've talked to you before about Affordable Tree Service, but we only
we only have one tree service that we really advocate for here on garden Line,
and that is Affordable Tree Service. You can go to aff Tree Service
dot com or just call call Martin and Joe. Just call them seven one
three six nine nine two six six three seven one three six nine two six
sixty three. Make sure you tell them that you're a garden Line customer.
Martin. By the way, if Martin or Joe don't answer, hang up,
You've called the wrong place with Affordable in the name. Unfortunately, there's
more than one Affordable Tree Service. Martin and Joe, that's who you want
to talk to. They do everything your tree needs, from planting, deep
roof, feeding, pest control, pruning on the tree. They come out
and do bids for free. And the experience that they have, they know
what they're doing, and that's why we are so fond of their service and
we can depend on them because every time I've talked to several garden Line listeners
who've had Affordable Tree Service work done, and you know, I mean,
it's like they feel like a friend just showed up and someone they can trust
someone that doesn't oversell, that takes care of them, and boy, that's
the kind of stuff I like to hear. Well our phone number seven one
three two one two five eight seven four. I'm going to head out to
Lake Livingston and we're going to talk to Bob. Hello Bob, Good morning,
Skip. How are we doing today? We're doing well. Good good.
Hey, you were talking about the knees on your cypress tree. I've
got property at Lake Livingston. I've got a beautiful cypress that is probably about
thirty feets on the bulkhead, and you know, of course on a ride
and mower man, I feel like I'm just getting bounced all around because of
these knees. Yeah, tell me again, how to can I Can I
brain those down? You were talking earlier about your issues. Yeah, yeah,
first of all, there's not gonna be a good answer. But here's
here's some answers. I used to use like a reciprocating saw and just cut
them off at the surface. And I don't know that that's a hard cut.
Even putting a printing blade into a ciprocating saw still didn't make it that
workable. But you got a route that's running along not far underneath the surface,
and then a knee pops up somewhere on the route, and so you
can kind of Usually if you look at the tree and hitch your grubbing hoe
on that side of the knee, you're gonna be catching the root coming from
the tree. Something. They don't always run just directly out from the tree,
but that's always a good guest. But one good hard chop on the
both tree side and they away from the tree side on each side usually pops
those things right out. Sometimes you got knees that are already big, you
know, maybe you have sought them off so many times that now they're six
inches across. Well that's gonna take a little more work. But I'm telling
you I understand the pain with mowing over them. You can't run barefoot hit
yard because oh my gosh, you even get your your feet and ankles.
Yeah, yeah, that was my thing. I thought, you know,
bringing some grinding guy. But yeah, I didn't want to affect the tree
because it's probably got a thirty six inch diameter trunk on it, and you
know, we don't really go over in that area. But yeah, just
you know, my fillings fall out of my mouth when I'm running over those
things with the mowery. Well, I thank you for your time, sir.
All right, thank you very much, Bob, appreciate that call.
Yeah, I wish I could go back forty years in time and get people
to plant Montezuma cypress or another strain that doesn't have the knees, because oh
my gosh, once you got them, you got them, and it's kind
of a pain, very much a pain in the neck to deal with.
You know, I've got a bill on the line. Bill. We're going
to come back to you after break. I want to give time for us
to be able to talk. But right now I'm just gonna just gonna talk
for a minute about a couple of things. We talked about fertilizing, and
when you fertilize your lawn, you need to put down azamite after your fertilization.
And that's because azamite is a product that has all the trace elements you
need for your lawn. So you fertilize and then you add the asamite.
Now, I use it in my vegetable gardens because asamite has nutrients that plants
don't need, but my body needs, and I want those nutrients to be
in the produce that I eat from the vegetable garden Asamite Texas dot com if
you'd like more information as and White Texas dot com. Well, good morning
on a good morning to be inside listening to a gardening show. This weather
is coming in bands, as Nikki said, and so it's a good time
to be inside. Hey, I wanted to mention on next Saturday, Saturday
the twentieth, I'll be at the Sugarland Home and Outdoor Living Show. It's
at the Stafford Center in Stafford. The Times or eleven thirty to one thirty.
So I hope all of you live out west, Southwest, even south
come on over there and let's meet. I'd love to meet you. Sugarland
Home an Outdoor Living Show next Saturday at the Stafford Center in Stafford from eleven
thirty to one thirty. Right now we're going to head out and talk to
Bill in the Woodlands. Good morning, Bill, and thanks for hanging on.
You're welcome. I never realized it took so long for all the news
and ads. Well, how can we help? Well, I've always wanted
to have an avocado tree, and I had a beautiful one in California,
and it's very disappointing here in the woodlands. I haven't had anybody give me
any encouragement on how I might be able to raise an outdoor avocado tree.
Okay, what are your thoughts on that? Well, here's the first thing
I would do. Because it'll call on the radio, I can't give you
the whole nine yards on raising an avocado. But if you will, go
to Agge hyphen Horticulture at dot TAMU dot edu, or you could just Google
search whatever for Aggy Horticulture. There's a web page and on that page is
a fruit and nut resources and there is a fact free fact sheet you can
look at online or download for every future you can imagine, including avocados.
So you can get a multi page, full color fact sheet that goes through
the whole nine yards on what you need to know about avocados. And I
would definitely start there. And if you have any follow up questions, feel
free, you know, to give us a call back. But that's the
most likely to survive? Uh, what is the most likely avocado variety?
Or what? What are you asking me to survive our cold weather here?
Yeah, so the Mexican avocado is probably the one that we use most here.
There's a Guatemalan and Mexican hybrids that are used. All that's in the
publication. You know the varieties. You'll see varieties like like lu lower wilma
for example. Uh. They they've proven to be hardy in places like San
Antonio, which is actually colder than here. Uh, that's where they originally
found some of these varieties that are now being spread around. Oh okay,
yeah, well, thank you. Yeah. The avocado in the store,
the black bumpy one is not hardy at all. And so if you plant.
Some people like to plant those seeds, stick toothpicks in them and put
them on a glass of water. That's fine, just for fun. But
don't grow that one and don't graft onto it, because then your rootstock isn't
hardy. But go by the kind that our quality quality. And when you
go to a good garden center, you know they're going to have the ones
that you need and they'll point you to them. Okay, thank you,
Emma. All right, Bill, thank you for that call. Let's head
out and out to League City. We're going to talk to Jason. Good
morning, Jason, A good morning, Skip. I've got some peach trees
that I've raised from seeds or I've got a couple of them are about a
year and a half old and some that are just about six months. Okay,
And and I'm getting some flies on the leaves, and I've also found
some ants in the pots that they're growing in right now, How can I
take care of this? Well, the flies, I know of no pest
of peaches that is anything like a fly on a leaf, so I think
those are incidental. There are different reasons that insects will go around to peach.
Peach have what peaches have what's called extra floral nectares. That means little
spots where the it's at the base of the leaves that secrete a sweet substance,
a nectar type substance, and you'll have insects that go to that,
especially wasps like it. But I don't know why the flies are there or
what they are, but they're not a pest of the tree itself. You
mentioned the ants and the pots, Those again are not going to be ants
that attack the tree or hurt the tree. If they're fire ants and you
don't want them, just get some, get a product called come and Get
It. I believe it's still made by Fertile Home, but come and get
it. Fire ant killer. It's an organic fireant killer. It's labeled to
be used in like vegetable gardens, food production. And you just put that
bet around and let them find it. Don't disturb them, mound and that
should take them out. If it's other kinds of ants, I wouldn't worry
at all. Okay, very good, all right, all right, thank
you very much. All right, thank you for the call, Jason.
I appreciate that call. You know, this is this is a season when
birds out in the landscape are raising their nests of young. In fact,
they're they're well into that process by now. And if you've never been into
a Wahbird's Unlimited store, I was in one the other day, and in
fact, I'm going to be at the new clear Lake store coming off.
I'll talk about that more later. It's like Saturday, May twenty seventh,
two saturdays from now. But wild birds, they just have everything you could
need, and they have the knowledge. You know, it's not just somebody
selling you, oh, here's a bag of quote bird feed. During the
nesting time, they'll sell you dried mealworms, which is exactly what birds need
that protein to be able to raise a nest. Of Young's bird seed is
not that helpful as the protein sources, but they know that kind of thing.
They can set you up with feeders with. By the way, it's
a good good Mother's Day gift there too. Maybe a hummingbird feeder would work
out. Check out Wallburg done. Let me go to the website here it
yes w BU dot Come and you will find the wild birds in your area
on these now well good Sunday morning, on a good morning to be inside
listening to a garden show. Nikki was talking about we had some clearing and
here comes the next band, just like she predicted coming over us. By
the way, I am going to be out at the Sugarland Home and Garden
Show next Saturday. Now I mentioned that come by and see me, you
know, at the booth. And it's always always the same instructions. Bring
me some plants, bring to identify, or bugs to identify or or diagnose
a problem. Bring me pictures on your phone. I'll be happy to look.
I'm moving there for an hour at the booth, just at the booth,
but the first hour I'm going to be doing a seminar in the classroom
to give you success tips for gardening. That starts at eleven thirty, So
I'll be there from eleven thirty to one thirty Sugarland Home and Garden Show,
Stafford's Center in Stafford. I hope you can get out. I always love
to meet meet listeners and help you work through some of the issues that you
might have with your plans. Well right now, our first of all,
not just right now. Our phone number is seven one three two one two
five eight seven four. Right now we're going to go to Southwest Houston and
talk to B. Good morning B, Good morning Skip U. I got
to ask about my parsley plan. I've never grown parsley before, and I
followed Randy's instructions and it was doing very well. And now it's got this
big stock in the middle of it, and it doesn't seem to be as
bushy. Should I cut the stalk off? You can do that. What
the parsley is doing is blooming. And this happens with cilantro, it happens
with parsley, It happens with our spinach, it happens with our lettuce.
As the days start to get longer, it signals the plant to bloom,
set seed, you know, and propagate itself if you will, so you
can cut that off. You may find that the bush doesn't do a whole
lot more past that, but I would give it time and see keep giving
it good care. But yeah, that's what's happening. By the way,
if you want to leave it. The blooms of parsley are very attractive to
some of the little beneficial insects, like the tiny wasps that attack aphids.
So sometimes I'll leave a few things in my garden to just bloom for that
purpose. What do the balloon look like? Uh, they're kind of umbrella
like covered like yarrow, I guess in a little bit or Queen annelais similar
somewhat similar to that, different in their own way, but they're they're that
umbelifery family, if you will. And it reminds the word reminds me of
umbrella because that's what the bloom looks like. But we'll still put out parsley
shoots. Uh, it may produce some more. I you know, in
the past, I've had my partially hang around for a while and I've also
had to die back. Oh you could, yeah, there's oh, okay,
woman, I'll do that. Good reason to do that. But again
that blooming is you know, for nature, it's a good thing. Oh
okay, well then I'll watch it bloom and then I'll buy a new partley
plant. There you go, there you go. Sounds like you've got a
plan. B. Thank you, Thank you so much for the call.
Appreciate that. Yeah, you know herbs and I don't. Sometimes I don't
know whether it calls some of the vegetable or a herb. But the herbs
just enhanced gardening in so many ways. They season our food and it's so
easy to grow erbs. You can grow partially in your vegetable garden, but
at the end of a row, I will grow a number of different herbs
at bloom in my vegetable garden, just to attract beneficials because you want them
to be hanging around and if you want success with gardens. Okay, this
is a garden line quiz. What is the most important thing you do if
you want to have a successful, a beautiful flower bed or a bountiful gart
vegetable garden. Well, I hope you said start with a soil, And
that's right. You do. Start with a soil. When you get the
soil right, everything thrives and Heirloom Soils is out in the porter. They
will deliver some of the products they have to you, but they can deliver
also in what's called a super sack, think of a big, old giant
grocery sack, but full of one cubic yard of the product that you bought.
Go to Heirlooms Soils of Texas dot com and when you're there, click
on their soil cubic yard calculator. And if you've got a little box that
you want to fill up with soil and you don't know how much to buy,
that will tell you exactly how much to buy. And the quality soils
they have will really make your garden do well. I've used them myself,
found them to be very very good. We're gonna stop talking about soil for
a saying. I want to go over and talk to Steve out in Tomball.
Good morning, Steve, good morning. I need a little advice.
This morning. I kind of made a bonehead mistake and I spray some image
lawn weed and crab grass killer on my Saint Augustine grass. And as it
turns out, it wasn't wasn't made for Saint Augustine and it's it's starting to
yellow, Okay, dying off obviously. Is there any remedy to that?
Not at this point. Just wait, It'll probably come out of it.
Yellowing is not unusual for even the regular image on grass. But I would
I would just give it time. There's no thing to make the herbicide go
away. You know that that's going to really help. It just needs a
little bit more time. Okay. Hopefully the damage isn't too severe and it
will bounce right back. Okay, okay, very good, appreciate it.
Thank you very much, Steve. Appreciate that, Carl very much. We're
gonna go to Rosenberg and talk to Rob. Good morning, Rob, Hey,
how you doing. Um? I have a question. I wanted to
plant some HMOs the trees out in my backyard for the shade, but I
don't see them around. I mean, I think is it pretty much?
Is it kind of a nuisance tree because of how fast it grows? Yeah?
I was one to wonder how how well it would do out here.
You know, people have mixed feelings about mimosas they don't live long. They
have the number of issues that can take them out eventually, but almost the
blooms are unbelievable, and the form of the tree is really attractive too.
So normally we don't consider trees to be like a perennial or something that we'd
have for a while and then get rid of. But that's that's the future.
If you plant a mimosa, I'm not sure where you would find mimosa.
You're out in the Rosenberg area. I would call the two enchanteds out
there first of all and see if they carry them. That'd be my first
stop. But yeah, they're they're good trees. But just know that this
is not a typical tree in the landscape. This is something you're planting for
ten maybe years of enjoyment. What about what about that is opposed to um
like a crape myrtle? I know those don't live very long either, but
they live longer, ye mimosa. Yeah, crapes live a lot longer,
in fact, a very bad time. Yeah, that would be another good
traice. Just make sure you get one that's resistant to powdery mildew to save
you the headache of that particular problem. Okay, well I haven't I haven't
really seen so I'm from Lake Charles. I haven't really seen mimosas out here,
and I know obviously, I guess people don't really plan them because they
don't live that long. But would it would it grow with like proper feeding
and watering? Oh? Absolutely, they grow like a weed and then exactly
that's why people do. Yeah, if you can find one that's a what
do you weed? Yeah, they'll do fine. Hey, I'm gonna head
off to another call. Rob. We're gonna go to Tiki Island and talk
to Jeff. Hello, Jeff, good morning, sir. How are you
doing. I'm doing well, excellent. So I've got questions. Uh,
the mango tree didn't flower this year, but it's a expanding very rapidly,
so I'm I'm assuming I'm gonna have to like cut it back because it's quite
large. Okay. Last year, what I did, I made some cuttings
out of it, and they seem to be doing okay, but they're not
getting any larger faster. So I want to rack your brain on how you
would go about doing it. Good sunlight, good drainage in the container,
and just regular gradual fertilizer is the best thing that ought to they eventually ought
to get going for you. What about a dragon fruit, dragon fruit,
A good care. They do well here. I know Vego Beds makes a
special little bed with us a rack on it for growing your dragon fruit,
and that's a cool one. It's just you know, with the things you're
talking about, they're not totally cold hearty, but with a little care you
can you can get them through. Jeff. Thank you very much, sir.
I appreciate your call. Thank you very much. Hey, if you've
not been out to Arburgate, I was just out there yesterday. We had
a great time. But you can go to online to Arburgate dot com.
I'll tell you that place looks all right now. And the number of products
not just plants, but all kinds of products for your gardening and for your
home. They also have to Arburgate one two three, completely easy system that
would be a food to feed your plants, a soil for any application,
and a compost to improve your soil, all completely organic and you find them
at arburgate dot com. I'm going to head over to the New Vienna,
Ohio and we're going to talk to Jim. Jim, is that really the
state of Ohio? Yes, sir, New Vienna, Yes, sir.
That's all grandy years ago. Okay, first time calling year. So how
are you. I'm well, thank you and I appreciate you calling back.
How can we help? Yeah, well, we had pretty bad winter this
uh this past season here got down to minus nine with a windfil of minus
thirty nine, and I had, I guess it's a rose tree, all
kind of backpots here. I protected the upper part of it. I built
a wall with the landscaping fabric. Yeah, We're nearing the end of the
of the hour, and so I'm going to try to help pantr for you.
We may have to hold you over to the next hour, just kind
of letting you know. Okay, I'll wait. Okay, well, I
mean, you know, you know, start talking just this moment. But
if you okay, I protected it with landscaping fabric about what are they about?
Two three feet tall? Yes, and the field up with leaves to
take the upper part. Okay, But did that told kill the plant because
it was in It wasn't in the ground. It was in a big part
all right, So let me let me come back to that afterbreak. Just
hang on and I'll address that issue. You're listening to the garden line,
give us a call. Seven one three, two one two fifty eight seventy
four. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Guarden Life with Skip Rictord. Well,
a good Sunday morning to you on a good day to be inside listening
to gardening radio right and by the way, Happy Mother's Day to all the
moms out there. We know what all you did for us, and we
know the sacrifices that were made, we know the love that was given,
and we're just very appreciative of all you did for us many beginning with giving
us life itself. Thank you so much, appreciate that. Well, we're
gonna go back. We're talking to Jim up in New Vienna, Ohio,
and we're talking about rose roses that froze and so, Jim, are you
looking for ways to protect them in the future. Yeah, it's a rose
tree. I guess you might call it on a three long Yeah. Yeah,
yeah, that's going to be that's a challenge, you know, normally
with the roses and the climate like you've got up in the Midwest there,
if you've got a variety. First of all, some varieties are hardier than
others, which is a good thing. But if you've got a variety that's
going to be a little coal tender for your area, people will they'll wrap
the stems all up together kind of with twine, you know, creating a
little upright stems on the bush and then mound up a lot. You can
use soil, or you can use mulch, but I'm trying like a foot
deep or more, and just to protect that base that way, if the
top freeze is back, maybe you get some sprouting from the base. That's
very helpful. But with your tree rows, you got a long stalk of
a trunk with your variety grafted way up there in the air, that stalk
is a different probably a different species. I could be wrong on your particular
rows, but those are hard to protect and you just almost have to have
some sort of a mounded cover over them with some source of heat underneath to
just bring the severe cold down to just a hard freeze and the road we'll
get through that, but that's a lot of trouble to go through, and
probably you have to leave it on for long periods of time. When you
have one of the kinds of winners you can have up there. Can I
just bring it into garage on a really I don't know, maybe below thirty
two degree days or oh my gosh, it's in a container. I missed
that. I'm sorry. Yes, oh, absolutely, yeah. Get if
it's not on on wheels, you can slide a little dolly or hend truck
underneath the edge of the pot, put a strap around it to hold it
onto the dolly and it makes it so easy to move it in. And
absolutely, yes, you can leave it in there for long periods of time
if you need to. It's really yeah, still be okay with no sunlight.
Yeah, well, when I shouldn't say. When I say long periods
of time, I'm talking about two or three days getting through a freeze,
you know, a real bad bad spell. Even a week could be okay.
But yeah, you do want to to be able to have sunlight.
Usually, you know, the day temperature warms up enough, it could it
could be run outside to catch all sun and then put back in if you're
going to have a number of nights of hard freezing. And how about watering?
Do you still need to water at a lot or no? Keep the
roots adequately moist. That's all, it's not using hardly any water at all,
but you don't want them to completely dry out. When the plant is
stressed, it's cold heartiness is decreased, and so you don't want to create
a drought stress in that container. Awesome news. Thank you so much.
I love yourself and be leek out there. Well. Thank you. Tell
everybody in Ohio to listen to Garden Life. I appreciate the caldail. Let's
head up to or down to sugar Land. We're going to talk to Fred.
Good morning, Fred, I skip hey, listen. We're really enjoying
your show, clarity you bring to it and the advice you give. Thank
you, Thank you. My question has to do with knock out roses on
the east side of our home front yard. We'll get a little too much
shade. Now. We just know that the fungus is going to come.
I'm wondering, is there something we should start doing earlier. You're on maybe
as a preventative. They're just beautiful now, all the leaves and yeah,
in the plants, but we know what's coming. You know, if you
have a susceptible rose that that can get the black spot or powdery mildew,
then then you do just need to spray, and those those products are better
used as a preventative. We have some that are systemic and some that just
coat the surface of the leaf. What I would recommend that you do is,
uh find you're in Sugarlander. You've got a number of good ACE hardwares
that are out in your area. You know there's plantation ace in your general
area out there in Sugarland. You've got uh, let's see, we're gonna
go in a south east. I've trying to direct you to some places that
are going to have that kind of protection. Oh, there's an M and
D supply right there in u in Rosenberg also that you can use. But
this I've been in there and the selection of the of the fungicides is great
and a qualify. You know, a person that works there can direct you
to your options. We have a number of things we can use on roses
to fight different kinds of diseases, and it would be good to go with
one of those products and they can direct you to the ones they carry that
are going to work the best. So are we talking sprays rather than drenches,
Yes, we are talking for spraying the foliage. You know, if
it's a systemic that'll move in and give you a longer period of protection.
If it's just a surface fungicide. A lot of the organics or surface fungicides,
those you're going to have to repeat periodically because they're not moving into the
tissue to kill the diseases. They are just on the surface and so therefore
they wash off. Great, thank you, You have time for another real
quick one, Yes, sir. We're nine years into a new yard,
a new home, and we've done lots of things through the years, all
the products added to it, and all I'm wondering, do we ever reach
a point where a NUS is kind of NFS in terms of of all these
additional products we add to the yard. Yeah? Yeah, the brown patch
question brought that to my mind. Yeah, you know, you could.
I mean you could, but it depends on what your yard needs. And
for a lot of folks, uh, there are there are things that are
add ons that are really important and that they really help without. And so
I don't think we're there yet. But it may be that your yard needs
a different mix of things, and some of the add ons you don't need,
and someone else it would be a different mix of things. So it
just kind of depends on the situation when we're talking about those kind of products.
Now we've used a lot of composts, we use the microlife products.
Oh, that's good. Next and we and we had it ierated this year,
but we've always had a big brown patch problem and we'd problem. Well.
I hope that gets you off to a good start at hand. I
appreciate the call out there, and I'm going to be out in sugar Land
again next Saturday from am to one. Fred. I hope you could stop
by. We'd love to meet you if you live up in let's say Magnolia
area. FM twenty nine, seventy eight. You know what I'm talking about.
This is just minutes away from Graham Parkway in Highway two forty nine.
Spring Creek Feed. Spring Creek Feed carries all these fertilizers that we talk about.
Really friendly, courteous staff. By the way, if you are a
kiddo in FA for h if you are military or senior citizens, there's discounts
for you and they'll special order. If they don't have it, they'll order
it for you. Spring Creek Creek Feed. It is a pleasure to walk
through. I'm always amazed when I go in there. The next caller I
want to go to this morning is Jim out in Cypress. Good morning,
Jim, Good morning Rec. Let's talk to you again. Good talk to
you. How can I help my I had I called yesterday. I'm trying
to get some confirmation that the weed I'm fighting in my lawn is sandber okay,
And I was hoping that a picture I sent you yesterday might help you
to help me determine that and then treating it. I bought some image at
at ace as Image Kills Night and much said, yeah, but it does
the same thing about applying it before or after rain. I thought you might
be able to Jim based on yeahs. Based on your picture, it looks
like what you're dealing with is dollar weed, So check for that on the
label of the products that contain more than just a regular image. Make sure
that it is the weed on the label. You want to get it down
and have at least for three or four hours before you get a rain on
it. But if I'm seeing rain coming later in the day, I would
not apply it. And if I'd already applied it and it got rained on,
I'd watch it for a week after that and probably need to go back
and apply it again. Okay, so it looks like you say, dollar
weed. It looks like dollar weed, but the photo it's it's not up
close and real sharp, crisp ro I can see for sure, but I
think that's what you're dealing with. This dollar weed have little spikes on it.
No, I'll tell you what this, Jim. This is pretty start.
Yeah, take take another picture up close, check it and make sure
it's in good focus, and I'll give it another shot. I'll be happy
to do that. Thank you very much. We're gonna have to run to
break seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. And just like
the guy big Well, nice choice of music, Ryan, it's appropriate for
today. Oh gosh, Hey, I want to tell you about a product.
If you have a small acreage, you know, and you just want
to take care of that acreage, you need to consider a Caboda tractor from
Lansdowne Moody. Now. Capoda has their Texas edition right now and it's the
Caboda L twenty five one. You got that hydrostatic transmission, you can trick
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don't delay on this because listen to this deal, zero down, zero interest
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And you can't beat a deal like this. I want to want it
to head out and talk to We've got a lot of calls on the board
right now, but I'm gonna start by heading up to Willis and we're gonna
talk to Mike. A good day, Mike, how are you? Good
day? I'm heading to the arbor Gate right now. I got about fifth
ye or so muscadine graves, and I was told that she's got some I
was there about the David. She's got some seaglists muscadine grapes. Oh wow,
cool, So I'm gonna put another row in. But my question on
the grapes was summer pruning. You know, I've got three varieties of muscadine
grapes so pretty aggressive. So he said, okay, and they're about seven
years old and they're all trolls out for picking. It's for pruning the vines
that are really aggressive, thinning them out. Is okay to do that?
Or how aggressive can you during the summertime? You can do some of that?
Well, here's what here's what I want to do. Just to help
you more than I can in the short call time on the radio. Go
to Aggy Horticulture dot Tammo Dodds. That's actually Aggie hyphen Horticulture dot tammu dot
edu. There's a button there for fruit nut information. Their fact sheets and
there is a sheet just on muscadines and it goes through everything some of the
varieties. They are a little bit older varieties on the list because new ones
keep coming out, but they have information on planting, trellising, pruning,
fertilizing. We control all that is right there on the list, and I
think that would be the most fruitful thing that you can do for you know,
figuring out how to handle that. Yeah, I've done a ton of
research and stuff, but I couldn't really get anybody, you know. They
had some videos of summer pruning but okay, well, if that's I'll go
ahead and look at it well. To me, yeah, to just simplify
though, Mike, just you can remove the twiggy stuff that you know,
what you feel like is in the way or whatever. You can do some
of that. It's just most of our prunting we do in the wintertime.
But with Muscadine's air so darn vigorous that I think you have to stay on
it a little bit. What was your next question? Um? You know,
actually I called you a couple of weeks ago about this black leaves coming
on my charach. You said, cut cut the limbs off. I have
cut them off, and I've noticed that some of the trees are getting that
black leaves again. Is there anything I can spray on it to prevent that
or what's causing you know, I'd I'd have to see it to know exactly.
If the black is on the tips and margins of the leaf, then
it's it's a flow of water through the plant problem. It could be dry
soil, it could be rotting roots, it could be a lot of things.
But if it's in the tips and margins, if the whole leaf is
turning black, that really does still sound like fireblight. And there are sprays
for fireblight. They're not easy to find, they're not cheap, and you
may, you know, you have to reapply them, but basically they're sprays
that contain an antibiotic type material in them. You might want to give those
a try, you know, when you're go to Arbigrate, when you're there
today, and just ask them there what they carry for fireblight. They may
have something that is just the perfect thing for that. Because I do some
heavy water. This shirt that I did last years. All right, well,
I'm gonna run to another call, but thank you very much for the
call. Mike. Good luck with that. Let's see, we're gonna go
to Southeast Sistern and talk to James. Hello, James by, good morning,
Good morning. My question is because I listened to the show the last
two years, I have had excellent crop of tomatoes, but word has spread
and I am getting already stink bugs okay, and how can I control them?
They are just terrible? Yeah, well, stink bugs are definitely a
problem. The first thing I would do is go online and look look at
what their eggs look like. Stink bugs and leafooted bugs. They're very distinct,
and if you know what you're looking for, you have a bunch of
tomatoes or just a few, quite a few, quite a few. Okay,
well this it may be hard to you know, comb over your plants
looking for eggs, but if you can find them at that stage, you
can wipe out a whole bunch of them before they do anything. Check your
tomatoes every few days. And when you see the little herds of stink bugs
or herds of leafooted bugs, they don't have wings yet, just put a
pale of soapy water under them and swap the branch with your hand and knock
them into the soapy water. Once they get wings and they're flying all around,
that's a problem. I mean, we have some You have to use
a pretty stout insecticide to try to kill them, and you're spraying it all
over all your plants when there may just be a stink bug here or there,
and then another one comes flying in from somewhere else. So that early
monitoring is really important. Okay, I have never I've looked on the internet
and stuff and got all kind of ideals, but never heard of that.
So I will try it and see what happens. Because it's really disappointing.
Yeah, it's very disappointing. And stink bugs and leafooted bugs, they're rude
creatures, vandals out there, tomato garden. I understand your pain on that,
but yeah, it just makes sense to get a whole bunch of them
when it's you know, let's spray anything. You got them all collected together.
They tend to kind of stay in a herd a little bit when they
first hatch out. So you see a bunch of these little things crawling around
there, you go. They're pretty tricky. I mean, they see you,
they see you coming, and they run over to the other side of
the tomato. Really, that's that's why. You know, the earlier you
catch them, the off you're going to be. Plus the products you would
spray are less toxic early on. When you get adult stink bugs and leadfoot
of bugs, you're having to go to a more toxic con sect decide.
But I appreciate that call very much. Thank you. Let's head out to
Spring and we're going to talk to Alex. Hello, Alex, Hey,
good morning, how you doing well? Thank you? Good hey. I
got a couple of questions for you. The wife and I are bridges in
the new house. You're in a couple of months and they're putting a Saint
Augustine grass into the yard. Now, I really want to get into real
mowing, and I know you can't get short with that. Is it reasonable
to oversee and go to a bermuda? It's going to coexist with your Saint
Augustine. If it's a shady area, Saint Augustine has the edge. If
it's a sunny area and you're mowing high, the Saint Augustine will hang on
much better. When you mow real low, it's a little bit better for
the bermuda. So once you have a mixed if I would not intentionally mix
them, Saint Augustine is easy to kill. It just lives on top of
the ground, and I would if you want bermuda, I would get rid
of Saint Augustine and then plant the bermuda. It's not Saint Augustine's not going
to pop back up in your bermuda like bermuda will pop back up in your
Saint Augustine. Okay, well, cool man, Well, I appreciate you.
Tom, all right, thank you very much. I appreciate that call.
Let's head to let's see we've got time yet just a little bit.
Let's head to sugar Land and we're going to talk to Fred. Good morning,
Fred, Hey, how you doing. I'm doing well. How can
we help the day? Yeah? I used to have a really nice looking
patch of zucchini and yellow squash, and probably every year I get attacked by
the squash squash mine bars. Do you have any good ideas to bull bin
or kill them? Ideas? But no magic magic bullets. Here's the thing.
You need bees on those squash flowers, taking the pollen back and forth,
and so anything that's going to be a real good insect aside in other
words, real good meaning it works well, it's going to kill your bees
and you absolutely can't let that happen. So what I do on the vine
board Number one, Their eggs are very distinct, little tiny pinhead sized amber
eggs, typically laid on either the vine or the stalk. So if you
know what they look like and you're going through your squashing, find them and
just rub the egg out and avoid that altogether. When you start to see
the little ooze come out of the vine where the vine boar is in there
tunneling pushing out like wet sawdust. You can split the vine lengthwise and kill
the worm that's in there, and then covered up a little bit. One
other thing, start with a row cover or a netting over your squash that
excludes insects. They are insect excluding mesh materials. And when it comes time
for pollination, you either do it yourself or you pull the netting off.
Then and your plants are big enough to produce a decent crop for you.
I'm gonna have to run now, Fred. There are some insecticides, but
you just want to be real careful with you using them. We're gonna go
ahead and take a break pretty quick here. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Now we try all kinds of things. I've done several
experiments on squash using foil mulches to try to deter them. Nothing works really
good. Just need to from the time their eggs on, just get after
them and do the best you can. I believe it's time for some news.
Do you remember yesterday at nine o'clock we're going is it time to leave
yet? And here it is nine thirty. Boy, this morning's gone by
fast. I know, okay, let's jump it in the news. Well,
good morning on a good morning to be indoors listening to a garden and
show are calling into a gardening show. I was just talking about the barricade,
you know, the preventing weeds and things. I was out in the
yard the other day and doing some fertilization and I used the has to Grow
twelve for eight liquid lawn food plus. That's a long name, has to
Grow twelve or eight liquid lawn food plus. It's from Medina Products. It's
in a Hosen sprayer. Now you can get into a quart, in a
gallon, larger sizes, but basically you buy the Hosen sprayer about a quart
size and it takes about ten minutes to fertilize your lawn. It gives a
very fast response. You got liquid food on there giving a fast response.
It stimulates the natural soul organisms and if you if you return your clippings to
your lawn, they're going to help feed. So only about four times per
growing season would you use this has to Grow with the clippings removed. You
need to do it every month because you're taking a lot of the nutrients out
of there has to Grow twelve for a liquid lawn food. Plus you're going
to find it at all of the places we talk about, our garden centers,
our sponsors, ace hardware, places like that. You check out the
has to Grow, see how it works for you. I am going to
head to the phones, because we got folks here on the phones have been
waiting a little ball. We're going to go to Jersey Village now and talk
to Joe. Good morning, Joe, Satty. I'm calling from Kate may
a correction, Kate Charles of Virginia. Okay, okay, how can I'll
still help you? Know you listening online out there? Uh yeah, it's
on the on my iHeart radio. Good, good, wonderful. Well,
thanks for being a listener. How can I help? But don't get too
excited. I live in Jersey Village, okay, But I mean you're you're,
you're, you're getting all the way out here to Cape Charles. It's
beautiful out here right now, but it's raining back home. And two weeks
ago I put out Pete to uh deal with my take all patch right as
a suppressant hunt and so, and I haven't and I then I had that
was put down before Thursday. It's now raining. It's you no better than
I do because I'm not there. We'll let have diminished the value of the
of the pete. I need to reapply more pete. Well, a little
rain is helpful because you want to kind of wash it down in and around
the runners of Saint Augustine. If you have a gully washer and you got
erosion just sheeting across your lawn, then that's probably going to dislodge that peat
and move it out, but hopefully some of it will still be helpful.
You may want to follow up with like an iron sulfates, something a little
acidifying, and something with iron in it, because that helps the grass get
by when it's already dealing with a limited root system, and that acidifying.
The organism that causes take all rot doesn't like acidic conditions. It likes high
pH conditions. So if all this is not working for you, you may
have the switch and use a systemic type pungicide to shut things down. But
I'd give it a watch. Just make sure, and then anything stretching your
grass show It could be compaction, it could be too much shade, it
could be use of certain herbicides. That weaken the grass, that is just
going to predispose it to the take. Also, we try to avoid all
of those things as best it's in our control and minimize the pressure on the
plant. Okay. I plugged with some palmetto Saint Augustine in the bar areas.
Okay, in the shade areas, and that's stressing out of the shade.
Okay, Well, it does pretty good. The most light you can
give it, even though it's quite shade, tallerant. The more light you
give it, the more energy the plant can have, and the thicker and
healthier it'll be. Okay, then I need to get your tree term wrapped
in. Okay, I appreciate thanks so much. In the from Cape Charles,
the Virginia's gorgeous sun up here. I'm good and I got some I
got some kids and Durham, North Carolina, so i'd say stop buy and
say hi to inform me. But I think that's a little bit of a
drive. Thanks for the call, Joe. I appreciate that. Okay.
Oh gosh, I'll tell you what. Let's go to Spring Branch. Hey,
we're gonna talk to David in Spring Branch. Good morning, David.
How can we help. Good morning, good morning, thank you for taking
my phone call. I just had a question about the expanded shell. I
have about four bags in them that I never used. They're probably like about
five years old. It is it too late to use them? To put
them on my plant bed next to my front yaw to my front of my
home. I have clay era and I have a waxy murder there. Okay,
Well, the expanded shail we put down prior to planting, you can't
get it evenly all through a soil once you have plants in the way,
so that that's probably not going to be super helpful unless it's a ser enough,
serious enough condition that in maybe this fall, you know, to pull
some plants out, move them over on a tarp, and redo the whole
bed and then put the plants back in. I know that's a lot of
work, but that would be the only way that I would see expanded shaw
coming into this situation you described. Okay, within that's helpful. Yeah,
I will do some transplanting maybe this fall or maybe within a week. So
I appreciate that very much. Okay, just one quick tip, David,
with expanded shawl, you need to put it down about three inches. Agrilife
extension from A and M did studies up in Dallas, and they would mix.
They found that when you don't mix enough, it's just some shale particles
here and there in the clay. When you put about three inches down and
mix it in, well that's enough volume of the shale where it really gives
you the aeration benefit, the water infiltration benefit, and all those kinds of
things. Okay, all right, well, I appreciate very much. All
Right, you take care. I appreciate your call. Thank you very much.
We're gonna head to a break here. I see you out there,
Craig and Base City. You will be first when we come back up.
Well, good Sunday morning. You were listening to garden Line and I'm your
host, Skip Richter, and we are here to talk about things that are
interest to you. At Boy's grew lit up the boards here since we got
into this last couple of segments. Let's head out to Base City. We're
gonna talk to Craig. Good morning, Craig, Good morning to Skip doing
a great job. The question I have is is I had the opportunity to
be in a new subdivision this past week and they were planning trees in the
esplague. I noticed that they're putting it. They were putting a PBC pipe.
Oh, I guess half inch down right going right to the root ball
coming back up and they cut it off and I asked him, I said,
why are you doing that? And they said, well, that's we
could deep deep root water and deep root feed from there. I said,
how do you keep bugs from growing in since it's got a cap? I
just want to get true take on it. Well, I'm not worried about
the bugs, but listen, a tree has roots going in all directions.
Initially we have to water the cylinder that went into the ground. That's where
all the roots are. That's why I like tree hugg sprinklers. And I
know the city's not going to just buy bunch of treehars. I wish they
would, but because it water, you can make them water in that area,
or a berm of soil that you fill up with water is also helpful.
But those roots are going everywhere, and I mean, if you put
in twenty little pipes to water through that, it just it's not worth the
trouble and it's not going to wet the soil volume that we need to wet,
so when we fertilize, we fertilize the whole area. If we need
to errate, we can errate. But basically, don't worry about doing those
little pipes. That is just not that helpful. I mean, if somebody
wanted to go in with a deep root water or feeder, you know,
like a tree company can do. I mean that when when you when you
do something like that, you're doing it all over the place, you know
when I mean we're talking about tree watering and feeding in a lot of places,
all around the trunk. That's what Affordable does, by the way,
when they do that, but don't at home, don't do the pipes.
Not worth it. Okay, all right, thank you for the call.
I appreciate that. Let's head out to Danbury and we're gonna talk to Ronnie.
Hello, Ronnie, good morning. Hey, Skip appreciates taking the call.
And agree with the gentleman the call before. You're doing a great job.
Listen, I've got a question. What I've got is out in the
garden this morning, in between rain storts, and there are literally thousand,
over the exact hundreds of gnats on my tomato plants. A little white looking
nat flies. Do I need to be worried? Well, that sounds a
little bit like it could be white flies. They if you can see this,
if when they land, if they're holding their wings kind of like a
rooftop, you know that angle of your rooftop. If they're holding their wings
down alongside their body, but in that shape, you might be dealing with
somewhat of a like a white fly problem getting started. There are so many
insects out there though that without a good identification, I don't know. I
hate to send people out with insecticide to treat white flies. And here's why.
They have a lot in that trial enemies. And when you treat for
the white flies, you may kill white flies, but you kill the natural
enemies. And then the white flies come in, you know, in a
wave, and there's nothing there to even slow them down. So you might
want to use something if you feel like you have them. When you turn
over your leaves, you're gonna see these little tiny, smaller than a typed
zerbo, but a little tiny fish scale looking things on the bottom of the
leaf. That's their pupa. And if you if beyond the adults, if
you're seeing a lot of that under the leaves. I would get an insecticidal
soap, or better yet, a horticultural oil, summer oil like a kneem
oil that would be an example, and spray upward and coat those things,
coat the undicides of the leaves. That would be the best way to manage
them, because when we start pulling out the insecticides, they're just a bootmerang.
I hear you odds if I appreciate thanks sir, Thank you. I
appreciate that call running. Thank you very much. Wow, we this time
flu this morning really moving kind of fast on us. So I'm going to
talk about a couple of things I've been wanting to talk about for a while.
First of all, I've been mentioning today this is lawn fertilizing season,
and if you want a good quality lawn fertilizer, you need to look at
the Turf Star line by Nelson. The Turf Star line has a number of
different things in it. You know, it's got the Bruce's Brew, the
eighteen four nine that you just use it year round. In fact, I
would use products like that in flower beds and vegetable beds. I mean it's
a slow you know it's going to give you a faster release, so when
you know you put it down, you get the release right. Then if
you want to slow things down a little bit, I would go to slow
and easy. That's a twenty two to ten and that's going to give you
feeding that will last you through the rest of the summer. You don't worry
about fertilizing your lawn again until fall when you put down a slow and easy
type product. You know Dan Nelson, the folks Nelson's Fertilizers. Over twenty
years have they been making fertilizer. They have followed carefully research on turf at
A and M and to how they formulate their their fertilizers. And that Turf
Star line is just a good one. Nay, a lot of other good
lines too, but I really I really like the Turf Star line a lot
for the summer. One. Another one though, like a lot, by
the way, is a color Star. Color Star products for your plants that
have color right flower bed. They work really well for that, and uh,
you know, it's just a quality product, and so I encourage you
to check that out. Whenever this rain is done and we get a little
bit drier, I'm gonna need to head back out and do some more lawn
care. And this is when lawns tend to kind of get away from you.
You know what I'm talking about. You know, you can't get out
and mow, and next time you get out there, if you know it's
going to look like a hay field, well I always tell you to multure
clippings back in the lawn. That is. I'll just say that's the best
lawn fertilizer and the cheapest because it's free, it's your lawn. You're recycling
the clippings that's not in and of it's enough to keep a law dense and
healthy. You know, we still fertilize, but if you get rid of
those clippings, you're just renting the fertilizer that you're putting down because you're growing
grass clippings with it and paying somebody to haul it away. But after a
rain, that would be a time where you could When it's grown too much
to where I'm we like to just cut off like a third of the grass
blade height each mowing. That's ideal, but maybe it's grown to where when
you mow it it's going to be you're cutting off over half the height of
it. Well, in that case, yeah, you could gather the clippings,
use them as a mulch in flowerbus. It's not too deep. They'll
dry out and work well. Use them in your compost pile. What I
do, because I just love having the clippings there is I'll mow high and
then I'll come in and I'll mow again lower, and that just better chops
up all those clippings and so it doesn't look like a hay field when you're
done. So that's another strategy for it. But the secret to a good
healthy lawn, one of the key secrets is regular mowing, frequent mowing.
The more often you mow, the denser of a lawn you're gonna be able
to have. Now, it's important to have water, it's important to have
fertilizer, of course in your lawn, but dense mowing or frequent mowing creates
that density. And I'll prove it this way. The most mode turf on
the planet is a golf course green. I mean they are mowing those things
every day, like an eighth of an inch cut out. You just barely
mow it a little off And how could you get denser than a golf course
green? Right now. If they mowed a golf course screen once a week
when they mowed, it will be an ugly mess and it wouldn't be a
good surface for playing golf on for sure. Well, in our home lawns,
we're not going for that low of a mowing unless you just have a
little backyard putting area. But just mowing once a week is enough cutting off
a third of the blade. That's good. It's just when we get stretched
out by extended periods of rain. I don't think this one will be quite
that extended, but that's when we kind of get into a problem with things
stretching, stretching out and just getting a little bit long and lanky. Honest
Hey, I want to remind you guys that on this coming Saturday, that's
the twentieth, I'm going to be at the Sugarland Home and Garden Outliving Show
Outdoor Living show that's in Stafford Center in Stafford. I'll be there eleven thirty.
I'm gonna give a seminar and help you have success with your garden,
and then I'm going to spend an hour outside at a booth answering garden questions.
This is where you bring me in a ziplock bag, bugs, disease
examples, you know, other issues with the lawn. What is this plan?
Bring it in a bag or take pictures with your phone, take pictures
of a problem area, or take pictures of an area where you're kind of
thinking what would be some good color to put into that area of the landscape.
We'll help you with all that. On garden Line. We have a
short time to visit with you on a question, But when you come to
one of these places that I appear at, like Sugarland Home and Outdoor Living
Show, we can spend some time eye to eye and kind of work through
some of the bigger questions that you might have. I hope you'll be able
to come out and see us this coming Saturday, and by the way,
just stretching things out a bit further. The following Saturday, I'm gonna be
at wall Bird's Unlimited at clear Lake, and I'm gonna tell you a whole
lot about that next week.