KATRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on
this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Scared Rictor It's smell the Crazy,
just watching as wos so many Well, good morning, you are listening
to garden Line and oh my gosh, just hearing there's rain in the area
just reminds us that this summer is coming to an end. Fall. We
are on the doorstep of fall, and it is time. It is time
to start getting ready. It is time to renew our hope. Well,
I tell you, this summer tested our hope, didn't it hundred degrees over
and over, no rain inside. Oh my gosh, that was tough.
That that has been a tough one for sure. But fall is coming and
we know it's coming. We know the temperature is going to go down,
we know that the rainfall will return, and we know this that we got
to get ready now and do things now for fall. Just see, it
may be hot. Let's just say today it was not raining and that it
was one hundred degrees outside. That doesn't change the fact that now is the
time to be planting things for fall. And if we wait until we feel
like fall to start planting. Well, we've missed the boat and it's significantly
going to affect how things. Do you know you're planning your warm season vegetables
in the warm season garden, we still have a warm season vegetable harvest to
be enjoyed. We also have cool season that's just coming around the corner,
and we need to get those things in pretty soon. So it's time to
be thinking about that. It's time to be getting ready, and I'll talk
about some getting readies as we go through the day. Hey, if you'd
like to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one two five eight seven four, let's talk about
the questions that you have regarding gardening. I do want to remind you this
morning that after the show today from eleven thirty to one thirty, I'm going
to be out at Plantation Ace Hardware, En Richmond, and I hope you
will come out. If you've got some plants that are concerning you, bring
me a sample, let's take a look at them. If you've got some
photos you can take of them in good close sharp focus, make sure take
a look at them for you for you to take them and come make sure
they're in sharp focus. Take another one if it's not, because sharp focus
is really important and close up is really important to being able to diagnose something
off a little picture on a phone. But we can do that. We
can also identify plants if you'd like to do that. If you just want
to bring some pictures of your landscape and say, hey, what can we
do here? What would work here? Let's talk and Plantation Ace Hardware in
Richmond. So if you're in Richmond, Rosenberg, if you're in sugar Land,
if you're up in Katie or I mean, we're close to all those
areas and then some I hope you'll come out. We're gonna have a good
time out at Plantation Ace. They're gonna have a little shindeg going on out
there. I'll talk about it more as we go through the morning today,
but let's go. I always like to meet the folks that listen to the
show. It's kind of cool. Just you know, it's I'm sitting here
right now, looking outside, it's dark, talking into a microphone, and
I can't see your face. I'd love too, So come on buy and
let's visit and get to know each other a little bit. Well, I
had a question coming this week, and I'm just gonna start off with it
right off the bat. Here someone asked about with the drought and were restrictions
in many areas on no watering, should we not mow? Someone said,
if you don't mow, the roots will go deeper. Well, that's a
half truth. So let's talk about it. When you mow short. Let's
say you have a Saint Augustine lawn. If you mow it like it's a
you know, golf course green, well it's gonna have very shallow roots and
number one socle last at that height. But if you mow it at a
higher height, it'll have deeper roots because there's a balance in most plants between
the top of the plant and the bottom of the plant, and so as
you have more top, you can have more bottom, and vice versa.
There are other things that affect rooting depth and amount of roots and so on,
but in general, we like to mower lawns at a taller height.
Now, the most important to the lawn is to not mow it too irregularly,
because you get real tall and then you cut it back and real tall
cut it back. That's very stressful to the grass. I mean, imagine
a shrub in your front yard if you were too in the winter cut it
off at knee high and then let it grow all year and then cut it
off at knee high. That's a very shocking pruning job to that shrub.
So we can we can do we can do the similar kind of mistake with
our lawns. So I wouldn't say don't mow your lawn. I mean,
it's okay not to mow for a while, but as it gets really tall,
then you just don't want to cut it back so far. So just
kind of try to avoid the severe pruning of your lawn with the lawnmower.
How's that for a way to say it. Speaking of lawns, you know,
our lawns are really struggling and suffering right now, and we need to
take care of them. It doesn't mean they need a whole lot of fertilizer
right at this moment. No, that's if you fertilized in the last couple
of months, you're okay for right now. We're about to put on our
fall fertilization. Just a few weeks we'll begin doing that. In fact,
some people are going to start it at the end of the month, but
for now we need to make sure they have adequate moisture. And for all
your plants, any kind of a rejuvenation is good, any kind of supplement
of the different ingredients that they are part of grass growth. Of course,
we've got the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, we were just talking about that.
But what about things like providing humates because of the biological activity, because
of the many benefits that come to the soil and therefore to the plant when
you apply humates well, Microlife purple bag humates plus it's a concentrated compost in
a bag. That's important for your other plants that are out there. We
often you've heard me talk about the Ocean Harvest that's their blue label fish based
sprayable product. You've got a rosebush that's struggling, and I know a lot
of you do. You've got other plants that are struggling. You can do
a fullier application with that. You can also drench it on the soil as
actually providing nutrients to the soil. But also consider those fullier applications because there's
a lot going on inside the plant and when roots are struggling to take up
nutrients. A fullier spray can help temporarily to hold that plant, to rejuvenate
that plant. And I would repeat those about once a week right now,
actually just getting things going. And when you see the normal growth resuming,
then you know that the plant is getting its feet under it, if you
will, and it is on its way to recovery. That's what we're looking
for. We want those plants stimulators that come in a lot of the different
kind of products that Microlife makes, including the Ocean Harvest Blue label, And
so I would encourage you to do that. Microlife products will not burn,
they help build the soil, they help build a plant, and it is
always a good time to apply one or another of the mini products by Microlife.
Can go online to Microlife for leiser dot com find out where to buy
Microlife in the area. They're widely available, easy to find that one,
and also find out more about these products that I'm talking about. I think
that you will be very interested in that. So again that question that came
in at about the mowing, that's something that I want to come back to
after we go to break here. We're about to take a little break.
Our phone number is seven one, three, two to fifty eight seventy four.
Good morning, you're listening to garden Line on a beautiful day to be
That's right, that's right. Some of you folks are getting rain out there.
It's coming through the Houston area giving us a good drenching the rain in
some areas. For the rest of you, it's coming. I mean,
I was looking at the weather and let me tell you what. If you
are a gardener, this is the time to get absolutely excited about gardening.
We are not. I mean, we're talking about ninety five degrees this week,
and I feel like that's an air conditioner running. After the summer we've
been through nighttimes dropping down, you know, seventy seven degrees. That is
wonderful. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, you're supposed to rain. Hey,
don't delay. I'm telling you. Fall is coming. Now's the time to
get ready it. We get that little preview of a little break from the
heat, and then there's more good stuff to come as we go along.
Talking about mowing the lawn, taking care of the lawns. Our lawns are
really struggling a lot, and it's been hard to water enough and a lot
of people miss water by watering too little too often. Some people, just
for flat costs and expense, have had to cut back on water. Some
people the water supply companies are saying, you have to cut back on water.
We can't keep up. And whatever it is. We want to build
good, deep drought resilient turf. And when you mow along a little bit
higher, you get a deeper root system. It's a little bit more resilient
grass plant, and that is important. Now each grass has its own mowing
height. You know, Saint Augustine we mow hired than anything. We can
go up to three and a half four inches even if you wanted to on
Saint Augustine when we do have adequate rainfall, looks best at about maybe three
inches high in my opinion. But mode on a regular basis, it's not
that hard to keep it going if the weather just cooperates. But we're able
to water in some situations. Let's go ahead and get that done with a
good soaking. That is important to do when it comes to all of our
plant I talk all the time about how important soil is, and the soil
is the foundation. So it's the foundation you're building your house on when it
comes to a garden, for example, if you want to plant vegetables,
if you want to plant flowers, if you want to plant a rosebush or
shrub, you know, in a bed, getting the soil right at the
beginning is so important. We can always add a low compost later, but
you want to build that with a quality soil mix, one that is going
to last, and one that is going to provide oxygen that's going to meet
by bringing oxygen down in the roots. One that's going to hold moisture but
also drain with the excess of moisture that we do get when it rains a
lot around here, which it does sometimes well. Heirloom Soils has got all
of that. If you need a rose blend, they've got it. If
you want a landscape bed mix, they've got it. If you need something
that's for vegetables and herbs or cactus and succulents. If you just want an
amendment like an expanded shale or a leaf mold composts, superquality compost there.
If you need something for your potting soils, they've got it. And you
can find Mike. You can find the Heirloom Soil all over town. It's
really easy to find the great distribution through there. And the bottom line is
the soils work and when you set the plant up that way. If you
don't do anything right except one thing and taking care of a plant, it's
fixed the soil. It's prepare the soil ahead of time, because once that
rosebush is growing, it's a little late to rototail a bunch of composts into
the soil. Right well, airloom soils can get you set up, and
you can buy that bulk. You can have them to deliver a supersack to
your driveway, just a big sack, real, neat clean, one cubic
yard and you're ready to go. Now there you can go out and pick
it up at their porter location. You can also go any place around town.
We have a lot of retailers that are carrying heirloom soils and you can
pick it up right. There so many options to choose from, but I
can guarantee you one thing, no matter which one, you're going to get
a quality product that was made right. And there is no single thing you
can do for success in any kind of plant growing than to have good soil
to begin with. And most of us don't start with good soil, but
we can when we add a quality earloom soil product to it. It's just
as simple as that. With the arrival of rain, a little bit of
hope and parts of the area, that is a really good rejuvenating thing.
I was just thinking the other day about the fact that it's hurricane season coming
and looking at the weather data as a bunch of storms, they're kind of
warning, you know, may you may have some limbs coming down when those
storms set with forty mile nur winds. Well, that just reminds me of
the importance of having your trees looked after and prepared and taking care are properly.
An affordable tree is the one to do that. Martin spoon Moore has
been doing this for many many years. He knows what he's doing. I
have him come out, have him look at your trees. If they need
something, they'll tell you. If they don't, he'll tell you. But
right now, for those of you who haven't gotten rain, those trees are
really struggling and stressed, and that can be alleviated with a deep root watering.
They can put a good quantity of water down in the soil to help
that tree kind of a rescue treatment, if you will, from the rain.
An important thing to do right now having your trees trimmed so when a
storm comes through, you don't have dead limbs that are falling, or maybe
a limb that's up there and there's some rotting where it joins another branch,
and Martin can spot that, he can take it out. He can make
sure that later you don't have a big problem on your hands when that thing
comes down. Now, affordable tree is easy to reach. It's seven one
three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Seven one three nine nine twenty
six sixty three. No matter what you need done to a tree, affordable
Tree can do it. It's always a heartbreak. I was driving through a
neighborhood a little while back and I just saw a tree that's split right down
the middle. I mean, it was just that. That was the feature
tree in the front yard, and it was split right down the middle.
It hadn't been pruned properly. It had some very narrow branch angles, and
when it splits, you see all that black stuff in between the where the
two limbs come together. That's just non connected tissue that's decomposing, and it
caused that split, and boy, it sure makes sense to do it right
from the start. And that means even from planting. By the way,
for those of you who are wanting to plant some trees, plant them properly
and prune them properly, train them properly early in their life. That is
so important. I we often get into situations where we have to get it
chains off there and fix something. But I like to say I kind of
overstate it a little bit, but I like to say that the use of
a saw is an emission of guilt. So what do I mean by that?
Well, I mean that had you trained the tree properly every step of
the way, you don't need to bring out big saws typically to remove larger
limbs, to create larger wounds. Unfortunately, a lot of us are in
a situation where we got the tree we got, and that's where you need
someone that knows what they're doing to come in and prune properly. But think
about it that way. Emission use of a saws emission of guilt. If
you raise that tree from the beginning and pruned it properly from the beginning,
the number of times in situations where you're going to pull out a saw is
very very rare. It just doesn't happen for those of you that are getting
a little bit of rain right now. It just reminds us again that,
you know, we haven't had a lot of mosquitos lately because it's been so
dry and a little water for them to survive in even if you aroundtown,
but not like it can be here in the Greater Houston area. But when
it rains, those rain gutters hold a little water. There's water in always
under the catch basins, in your pots, on the patio. There's a
lot of places mosquitoes can breed. Do you know that a thumbleful of water
is enough water for a mosquito to lay an egg, the larva hatch out
and it turned into an adult mosquito. Those are the areas where you need
to put mosquito dunks now. If you have an area but with a large
quantity of water, a mosquito dunk covers about one hundred square feet of water
last thirty days. It's a natural disease of mosquitoes. Won't hurt your fish,
won't hurt your birds, won't hurt your family pets. Drinking out of
the water doesn't affect any of those. It only affects the mosquitoes, and
it works really well. If you've got little small areas, you can break
a dunk up and use it, or you can buy the low granules from
mosquito dunks and use that. But mosquito dunks are an organic product. It's
the fast, easy, non toxifying your landscape way to deal with mosquitoes,
and it works works super super well. I would suggest don't wait until you
know. Now you go out and you see mosquitoes hatching out of your water
surfaces, I would say go ahead and buy them now, have them on
hand, because you're always going to need them through the year. Time and
again you're gonna need especially if it a little pond of water or something else.
They love them, the stagnant water. That's where our rain gutters that
don't drain well are such a happy place. Lots of stagnant water up in
those things. Well. Our phone number is seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. We're gonna get some phone calls in here in just
a minute. Invite you to give us a call. Have Josh get you
on the board. If you're out and about today. I am going to
be down in Richmond. I'll be at the Plantation Ace Hardware from eleven thirty
to one thirty. I hope Peop will come out and see me. I
would love to visit with you. I'd love to help you identify your plants,
help you identify your plant problems, maybe identify an insect or is this
a cause? Or show me a picture of your lawn. What do I
do? Well, we'll talk about that. I suspect I'm going to get
a lot of sad lawn pictures because that's been going on a lot out there,
and we can help you with all that kind of thing. Not a
problem at all. I'll always love to get out there and you know,
just get to visit with the folks. That's kind of fun. That's one
of my favorite things, as a matter of fact, to do, is
visit with gardeners. You got a little piece of property and you would like
maybe to have a tractor to take care of it. I can tell you,
having had property myself, it is a lot of fun to get out
there on a quality tractor right around and get some work done. I've had
the old kind that you barely could keep them running all the time. But
to have a tractor that is first rate like the Landsdown Moody's Cabota twenty five
one, you can't do better than that. I mean you really can't.
You need to. You need to go to a Lansdowne Moody. They're all
over the area. Just go to lands Down Moody uh dot com or excuse
me, LM tractor dot com. Sorry about that, l M tractor dot
com and you can find out all about them hydrostatic transmission. I mean,
they they're a sweet ride, they drive nice. You can trick them out
with you know, the front endloader, mowers behind them, all kinds of
stuff and right now until the end of October, so time's running out.
Incredible deal, zero down, zero interest for eighty four months. You can't
do better than that. And the combination of Lansdowne Moody and Caboda tractors is
like none other. You can go to land LM tractor dot com or if
you want to know about just specifically more about Caboda Caboda USA dot com.
We'll give you more information. But look for the Caboda L twenty five O
one that is one sweet right well here comes Nikki. We're gonna do some
Nicki News Network stuff next, I suppose. Yes, we are coming up
at the top of the hour, seven o'clock. I'm going to do the
college football rundown. What to expect today? All right, Well, I'll
tell you what I expect. Yes, I expect a win over at Miami
on the Aggie part. Now, yes, can you arrange that? Well,
I'll see what I can do. Okay, thank you, I appreciate
it. Well, good morning. You are listening to garden Line and we
are looking forward to visiting with you about whatever you're interested in. When it
comes to gardening. We are entering the fall season. This is a time
of hope and expectation and it will be realized and it will be good.
I promise you that. You know, we go through these times where it's
too dry, too cold, too hot. You know, there's always something
going on out there in the natural world, and we deal with it.
It just reminds us the importance of planting plants that are resilient. That is
very, very important. I wrote a piece up for the folks out at
Enchanted Gardens on fall lawn care effect. They put it on their Facebook page
and it goes into the you know, what do we do about our our
lawn struggling with this unbelievably brutal summer that we're doing. Uh, you know,
we got to provide the nutrients available in the sufficient supplies of microbial populations.
Anything we do that optimizes those for root and plant health is a good
thing. And you know, providing that stimulus because microbes and roots, they
live in a symbiotic relationship where they benefit each other, and it just makes
everything better. It just does. When you got a lawn that's stressed,
you're likely to get diseases in it. Whenever you have a lawn that's stressed
and gets thin the cool season, weeds are coming. And so anywhere sunlight
think of it this way. Anywhere sunlight hits the soiled nature plants of wheat,
that's kind of how it works. And so our goal is to completely
block light from hitting the soil. And the way you do that is with
a dense, healthy lawn. Now, compost top dressing helps a little bit,
provides a little covering over not a thick mulch, but a little bit
of covering over the surface that can help some. All of those are important,
but The important thing is to remember that when you build dense turf through
through proper mowing, watering, and fertilizing, that you can end up with
cutting your weed problems down to just a fraction of the time. I'm going
to be talking about the fall land lawncare schedule information as we go through a
little bit more, but I just want to mention that that if you want
to go to the China Gardens Facebook page, there's a little rite up there
the kind of things that I think are important to keep in mind. You
know, in Channa Gardens, one of the things I like about them is
when and that's a long list, by the way. I mean that is
one incredible nursery out there in Richmond. For those of you that are in
Richmond or up towards the Katie direction, that's where Enchanted is Janet Gardens.
It's FM three fifty nine and you can go to the website Enchanted Gardens Richmond
dot com find out more information. One of things I really like is their
signage. Their signs are awesome. They tell you everything you need to know
about growing that plan. And I would suggest when you're out there shopping,
just get your cell phone and if you're going to buy a plant, take
a picture of the sign and you have it on your phone. Then so
if you're wondering later, how big does it get? You know what,
how do I prine this thing? Whatever you're wanting to know, Didier eat
this thing? It's all on the sign. It's all on the sign.
So it makes it so easy you just take It's like taking home a little
gardening book with you after you take a bunch of pictures of signs and of
the plants that you're purchasing. Really really good helpful information. A lot of
things are good and helpful out there. And enchanted gardens out in Richmond again,
they're on FM three fifty nine just up there on the Katie Fulsher side
of Richmond. When it comes to talking about gardening and things that we need
to be doing right now, now's the time to get out and plant vegetables.
Are we're kind of getting close to last call on our warm season vegetables
here. Those of you who live in the warmer parts of the area that
would be inside Houston because of that big city heat island effect. People that
are living down Galveston direction, you know, you've got a little more time.
As you go up north, you get up in Conrow and and Cleveland
and even you know, all that area up even up tom Bault direction.
Uh, then cool season comes a little bit earlier up there, a little
bit earlier. In fact, I've been surprised as I've done research for our
various lund care charts and other things that I'm producing to put online, at
how much difference there is in when the first or last frost is or when
the soul temperature hits a point where certain weeds will germinate. There's a pretty
big difference. And so getting on the air and saying, well, now's
the timing you need to do this, It's like, well, yeah it
is, but it varies a little bit through the area. So that's been
kind of interesting to do that as well. But anyway, preparing for the
vegetable garden, Yes, get the soil right first. I got to get
the soil right first. Otherwise you're shooting yourself in the foot when you plant
a vegetable seed. This is true of flowers as well, and are transplant
and you walk away, you are i would say, eighty percent of the
way to success or failure already. Why you've picked a spot that's sunny or
not. The vegetables will have an opinion about that, and the flowers will
have an opinion about that. You've picked a spot that's well drained or not.
Definitely a big deal because when it rains, it pours sometimes, and
soggy conditions are not good for plants. You've also prepared the soil well or
not. You've picked a species and variety to put in the ground that may
thrive and may not thrive. So everything that happens up to getting the plant
in the ground is the biggest part of success. With your flower beds,
your vegetable beds, your herbs, you know what I'm talking about, the
ground covers as well. There's there's so much important things to do at that
point. Well, we're gonna take a minute here and we're gonna run out
to Cyprus and talk to Sandy. Hello, Sandy, Hi, good morning,
skit, Good mornings. I have a question. I know you just
want over the blue level microlife. Yes, this might be a dumb question,
but I know it can be put on flowers and plants. How about
vegetables? All right, Well, first of all, Sandy and everybody listening
out there, there's no such thing as a dumb question. There's dumb answers,
and I'll worry about that because I'm the one given the answers. So
don't worry about asking a question other people. We'll have it. And I
know you're thinking, well, yeah, there are dumb questions, but that's
not how we dreat questions here. So uh so tell me tell me again
specifically, like what are you growing? And what are you what are you
wanting to know about it? Well, all my vegetables are them containers and
I have okra and tomatoes, felipinos and bell peppers, and I wanted to
see can I use that Microlife Ocean for hospertilizer in the vegetables or is it
just for flowers and plants? Okay, it's for everything. I mean,
you could spray it on your lawn if you wanted to it it really,
it's for everything. But uh you know it comes in a little court bottle.
So typically we're using it on things like rose bushes, tomato plants,
you know, pansies and petunias. We're using it on a wide variety of
things. You can use it on all of it. Now, if you
fold your feed you're giving a quick, a very quick infusion of nutrient.
And when anytime we FOLDI your feed, no matter what we're using, Folier
feeding is temporary. It doesn't last as long as putting nutrient in the ground.
So we always want to build our soil nutrients up to where the plant
has everything it needs. And Microlife has a lot of great fertilizers for that
kind of thing as well. But if you're trying to rescue a plant,
if you're trying to spray some of the things you know that provide all the
things beyond just nutrients that are helpful to plant growth, then you can FOLDI
your feed with the ocean harvest. And again you can fold your feed anything
if you chose to. You could mix it in a watering can and drench
it on the soil on the roots, especially with young transplants to get going.
But for long term feeding, I would choose one of the granular Microlife
products and look at the ocean harvest is more something that you're doing as a
stimulant, as a rescue when the plant is already struggling. All right,
Okay, thank you so much, Skip, thank you for the question.
I appreciate that hey, if you want to get on the boards for a
call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Good morning,
gardeners. We are talking gardening this morning here on garden Line. There's
no surprise there if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Fall is fireance season, and I wanted to talk about that just
a little bit. It is important to do your fire at bait treatments and
fall Now fire rants. There's two ways we go after him. One way
is the bait. They pick it up, they take it back. It
kills the whole mound if it's a quality bait. And the second way is
individual mound treatments where you put something on, drench it into the soil.
It kills that mound. Well, just doing mound treatments is playing whack a
mole with fireants, because there are mounds, there are colonies that haven't if
you will boil to the surface yet with all the soil coming up where you
go, oh, there's a fire amount, but they're there and they're out
feeding, and the baits get those. So rather than waiting for them to
pop up, which I call the whack a mole game. You do the
baits. Now you can use the individual mound treatments for the things that escape
the baits. That's fine, but baits are the key. And one of
the best baits really out there is Extinguished Plus. There's a lot of good
ones, but Extinguished Plus. And I know the folks at Plants for All
Seasons up on the Tomball Parkway at Louetta, that's where they're located. I
know they carry the Extinguished Plus and Plants for All Seasons is the kind of
place you go where you get expert advice, you get quality prints plants,
you get quality products, and they direct you to things if you need to
buy a product, it works. That is an amazing thing about Plants for
all seasons and it's why I brag on our mom and pop garden centers in
the Greater Houston area. We're so fortunate here. And Plants for All Season
just a prime example of that. They got a lot of color in you
know, they've got a lot of petunias. Was checking the other day to
get some nice foliage color warm season, and you know you can plant warm
season now and it's going to carry you way into the fall with color.
You don't have to wait until it's cool enough to plant pansies to have color.
Do it right now and with this promising break and the weather, get
them a good watering in and they'll do just well. And you're not gonna
find a better supply of that than they have there at Plants for All Seasons.
If you've got any questions, you go in there. They will answer
them. They know what they're talking about. Plants for All Seasons dot com.
It's a website, or you can give them a call at two eight
one, three, seven six, sixteen forty six. And again they're right
there on Tomball Parkway, just a little north of where Louetta comes in.
We're going to head out to the phones now and we're going to talk to
Matt in Hempstead. Hello, Matt, are you there, Yes, sir,
Well, how can we help today? One of my trees in the
front yard, it's a Schumart red oak, my only tree actually it's in
the front yard. It has what I think it's what it has is called
slime flugs. Okay, it's leaking, sinking out of the trunk. Yes,
sir, And well, it's that it's the hole from the trunk up
is turning black. Well of that part the bark is turning black on a
Schumart, Yes, sir, oh that that. I don't know what you're
seeing there. Normally when we see Black City kind of looking material, it's
because of insects that are secreting sugary water, because they're feeding on the sap
and getting that sugary water. But that I don't know. I'm gonna ask
the slime flux. All you can do is try to get the tree healthy,
adequate water, you know, get it back on its feet. And
these drought stress and summer times when we really see this lime flux coming out.
There's not a spray for it. You don't need to do surgery on
the tree to try to cut it out or anything. It's just a matter
of living with it and getting getting some vigor back in the tree, which
will come with time. The true will be able to put some callous in
there and close that area back over. But on the other I'm gonna put
you on hold, and if you would like hang on, we're gonna have
Josh get you an email to send me some pictures of that, and some
kind of from a distance, but something really up close, right, and
try to see what you're talking about when you're referring to that black material.
All right, well, it won't be until later on today because I'm actually
on my way to work. Oh oh, that's fine, that's fine.
Whenever you get around. It could be next week, doesn't matter. All
right, all right, thank you, and hang on just a minute.
Nature's Way Resources is one of those places. And there are very few,
very few places around Texas where you can get just outstanding quality soil products.
We're talking about things like composts, things like mulches. We're talking about the
micronutrient supplements that they produce and earth that they have right there at Nature's Way.
And they've been doing this a long time. They were the originator of
rose soil and the originator of leaf mold composts. They take time to make
things right. It's really easy to do. You can call Nature's Way at
nine three six three two one sixty nine ninety nine three six six two sixty
nine ninety and by the way, September thirtieth, they are having one heck
of a shindig fall garden festival, and I'm going to be there. I'll
be doing Q and A with all of the folks that come out. They're
going to have food, music, vendors, beverages. There's a kid's scavenger
hunt, fun for little gardeners. I mean lots. I could go on
and on. Lots of good stuff there again nine three six three two one
sixty nine ninety. Give them a call it Nature's Way, go out and
visit. You can buy by the bag, you can buy by bulk,
you can have them deliver. And you know when you order something from Nature's
Way, you have got rocket fuel for the soil that are going to make
your plants thrive. I want to go now to ethol Out in Beaumont.
Hello Ethel, Good, good morning, good morning. What my question?
Well, I have two questions. First one, we have a fifty euro
plus magnolia tree, which I'm sure you've addressed many magnolia issues. Never never
had any issue with it. I don't think it's gonna make it no green
leaves at all. We have put microlife around the around the edges, water
them in and no avail. So I guess my question is is this the
same with other people with the same problem. And do you think we have
a chance to save it? Well, I think it's very slim. My
experience has been when an evergreen like that, whether it's a holly plant,
hollybush or shrub, or whether it's a magnolia tree, when it turns completely
brown, it is rare that they would resprout and grow. Now you can
go out to the branches and just take your thumbnail or a little knife and
scrape back. You ought to see if it's healthy. You ought to see
creamy color or light green color underneath. If it looks like a paper sack
or a pecan brown, then it's that's dead. And you could give it
a little time to make sure. But I suspect this is going to have
been a watering issue from the heat of the summer. If it's been in
the ground a short time, then it has a very root system, has
been around a long time, it's got a good root system. But this
has just been one of those summers and we just really have to struggle along
with those things. Yeah, and we have watered, you know, as
much as possible, and we're on a whale, okay, but still we've
tried to conserve for certain reasons. So okay, well we will do that
in hopefully some way, somehow they'll be green. Thank you, Thank you
very much. I appreciate that call. Hey, if you're concerned about roofing
with these storms coming, you need to talk to Brinkman's Roofing. Jason Brinkman
and the team out there have a first Rate Better Business Bureau Winner program.
They know how to put a quality roof on and they do it with a
guarantee for twenty five years of first because they do it right from the beginning.
Brinckman Quality dot Com two eight one four eight zero seventy six sixty three.
We'll be right back our phone number seven one three two one two five
eight seven four give us a call. Also in the meantime, don't forget
today at eleven thirty to one thirty, I'm going to be a plantation Ace
Hardware out in Richmond and they are going to have a little bit of a
shindig going on out there as well. They'll be doing some giveaways. I
know we're going to give away a lot of Nitrofilees fertilizer. They're gonna they're
gonna put their whole Texas three step program out there where you get a fall
fertilizer designed for fall, where you get something that controls pests in your landscape,
something that controls brown patch in your landscape. All being given away at
Richmond. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Guarden Line with Skip Rictor. It's
so well, good morning. You are listening to garden Line. I'm your
host, Skip Richter, and we are here to answer gardening questions. Our
phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one
three two one two five eight seven four. Now, with this little passing
through of some rain with temperatures dropping down in the mid nineties and even the
mid seventy seven degrees or so at night this week, which is a nice
break, by the way from what we've been having, we know that fall
is coming. And because fall is coming, it is important to stock up
on the things that we are going to need for all our planting this fall.
And one of the things that I think is an important package that really
does it all is the arbor Gate one two three completely easy system. What
does that mean, well, it means, first of all, there is
an organic food for all plants. This would be a four four three plus
calcium. Organic foods got microbial content added into it, and it will absolutely
provide the nutrients your plants need to thrive. You're going to be planting cool
season flowers and cool season vegetables. You're gonna be putting a rosebush or a
shrub. There's a lot of things that you will be planting and you will
want to have this on hand. They also have the Soil Complete. That's
the two of the one two three. The Organic Soil Complete is a mix
of soil and organic matter that is outstanding. It's got a little bit of
the expanded shale in it, which also helps a lot with the clay soils,
as does the organic matter. And the Organic Soil Complete is going to
be you could use it for flower beds, you could use it in a
container if you want. You could use it in a lot of different ways.
It is a mix that plant roots will thrive in. And finally,
their organic Compost Complete, well, it's compost, but it's two kinds of
compost and it also has expanded shale in it, and so anytime you want
to amend your soil. You want to improve your soil. Organic matter goes
away, so after keep adding it. Maybe you put composts down a year
ago. You need to put compost down this fall again and the organic compost
complete would do just that. You can find that at Arburgate. For those
of you who've been living under a rock, I'll tell you that Arburgate is
about a mile and a half west of two forty nine on twenty nine twenty
one of my favorite places to go out and visit. You can go online
to Arborgate dot com and find them and find out more about what's going on
at the Arbourgate. We're going to go to Jersey Village now and talk to
Michelle. Good morning, Michelle good Maran Skip, thank you so much for
taking my call. Sure, I've got a pine tree that's close to a
townhouse, and so because the roots and it's already broken. The roots are
broken a pipe, I'm always careful. And this pine tree is about twenty
years old. It's pretty tall, as all the other pine trees are.
They're already reached over the tops of the houses. But I was starting to
take off some of the bottom branches because I've got an area where it's causing
too much shade and the grass isn't growing, and of course there's the pine
needles, and anyway, I was cutting back, the taking out the limbs,
and my neighbors telling me that I shouldn't do that because it's going to
make the pine tree go taller, which I don't believe. I just confirmation
front. All trees grow taller over time. But what makes the pine get
taller and skinny as being in a pine forest with all the competition for light
and they are heading up to try to get their their head up above their
neighbors so they can get better light. A pine tree growing without that shade
competition all around, it tends to be broader. You'll see pines out in
a field that are just very wide, unusually wide for a pine. Well
that's because they don't have that competition. So that that's the deal with the
taller I mean, but yes, it's going to get taller, but all
trees get taller over time. Yeah, yeah, I mean they're they're already
tall enough that I didn't I don't see it as a problem. I mean,
every like the front of every neighborhood, they all raise those branches up
that that's fine. He's always trying to put fear into me or bother Okay,
radio, prove him wrong. Well, there you go, there you
go. If he's listening, that's wrong. Don't do that. But there's
a lot of myth. There's a lot of myths and misinformation out there,
and oftentimes it's based on a bit of truth, but it's applied in a
way that's not true. And that's absolutely the case with this pine question you're
asking. Okay, thank you so much. Em a great day, all
right, thank you. I appreciate that call very much. You know,
speaking of trees, Verdant Tree Farm is a source of trees of all sizes,
especially if you were wanting a very large tree, like a really nice
big palm. They have smaller palms too, if you're wanting a really nice
knot palm, and all the other varieties of trees that do so so well
here. Verdant knows them, knows what they are. They grow them and
they sell them, and they will sell up to seven hundred gallons. I
mean, this is a thing like instant tree in the yard when you go
up that high. But they have all sizes you don't have to pay for
that big of a tree. You get one smaller. You get to pick
your own tree out, put a tag on it, they'll bring it,
they'll plant it. They know how to planet. That is so important.
A lot of trees that are sentenced to death at planting by being misplanted.
Verdant Tree Farm, they know what they're doing. It's Verdant Treefarm dot com
v r d a Nttreefarm dot com, Verdant Treefarm dot com. And there's
a location out in west here Euston on Barker Cypress. That's the one that
I've always been around. Down in Paralin on Broadway Street. There's a location
in the Heights where Yale Street comes into I ten. There's a location.
They're not hard to find a burden tree farm near you, And when you
get there, it's not hard to find a tree that's going to thrive in
our soils and climate here. They really are good about that well. Our
phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. The schedule that I just put
up a week or two ago on my website. The website, by the
way, is Gardening with Skip dot Com. Gardening with Skip dot Com talks
about fertilizing and we've got your organic and synthetic options on there. We've got
the reminder for the mineral trace elements that need to be put down for air
raiding the soil from proper mowing, how to do it, and just some
things you may not know about mowing or hadn't thought of, and then proper
watering throughout the year. And it's all on that schedule. We've got another
one that I'm working on. It's it's been a little bit more of a
challenge the lawn pest disease and weed management. That'll be coming out a little
bit later, but right now, when it comes to fertilizing especially, you're
going to find it right there online at Gardening with Skip dot com. There
is a there's good information on how to have a soul test done where you
go for that as well. That's always really important. And the fall fertilization
is coming up and I'm going to talk about that when we come back from
break here in just a moment. In the meantime, give Joshua call seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four and he'll get you on the
boards. Well, welcome to Garden Line. Here we go again with a
new hour. It's been doing this hour for a little bit, but we've
got all the way up until ten o'clock today to talk about gardening. So
I hope you will give us a call seven one three two one two fifty
eight four if you have any kind of gardening questions. I've been talking a
lot about soil today because soil is where it all is, and Nature's creation
makes an organic compost that is basically what you need when you're talking about building
and improving your soil. Now, nature knows this right, I mean,
think about it. Leaves and limbs fall on the forest floor, plants die
and whatever environment they're in and they hit the ground, they become decomposing.
The leaves fall to the ground, microbes get busy, fungi bacteria they turn
them back into the richest stuff on the planet for plants. And that's exactly
the basis for Nature's creation. Organic compost with microrhizal fungi, native recycled trees
and shrubs compost it aerobically where the microbes get good oxygen, so they do
the job right. You don't get off smells, none of that kind of
stuff. No other chemicals are added. They add seven different strains excuse me,
eleven different strains of micro rhizal fungi both the indo and the ecto,
the inside and the outside of the route. Those kind of fungi that help
plants by increasing their drought tolerance, helping with water and nutrient uct tape uptake,
even with disease resistance. Microbes are amazing done in the soil. Of
the things that they do for the route we have long for many many decades
we fail to give them their just due, but that is changing now.
You know Nature's creation organic compost can use as its top dressing for your lawn,
to enrich your garden soil, to use it as a multure un trees
to help protect the soil, to help keep the soil temperature down, to
help add that rich microbe material back into the soil. There's no peat,
there's no biosolids, and Nature's creations organic composts and you can get it at
Grows Outlet and Willis Moss Nursery RCW on Highway two forty nine, Wabash Feed
and Garden in all Houston Garden centers carry the Nature's Creation organic compost. Let's
go to the phones. Now, We're going to go to Friendswood and talk
to Tom. Hello, Tom, what is her? My question involves some
wax leaf lugustrum has been in the ground maybe twenty twenty five years, and
don't mind to collecting this drought. It looks like they've suffered quite a bit.
Stum have no leaves even after watering as of two weeks ago, and
the summer are very poor. So I'm wondering due I give them a chance
next season or cut them down now and just pull them out in the winter.
Well I would. I would get out there with my thumbnail or a
little knife and scratch the bark back. Start out at the ends of the
branches. You're looking for creamy white or a light green color underneath that outer,
thin, outer bark. And if you see paper zach brown, pecan
brown, that limb's dead. And you just work your way back and until
you see the healthy underneath the branch. When you scrape it back, that
kind of that is the signal of where you prune back to. After you
do that, you may go you know what this whole thing's gone, or
it's so far gone that it's so misfigured. I don't want to keep it.
And there's a second part to the question. One of them was clearly
dead. I cut it back to about a foot from the ground last year,
and that wood is hard, and I'm thinking I'm gonna have a little
trouble pulling this out of the ground. Maybe out I'll just burn it out.
Any thoughts, you shouldn't have to worry about that. I've taken those
out before. It is tough. I mean, it's a it's a woody
plant. But I've taken them out before using you know, a grubbing hoe
maybe a foot or so out from the plant in all directions where you're not
dealing with this really thick base roots. But they're starting to thin out a
little bit. Chopping like that too, and then you kind of pull on
it one way, put on it in another way. See what's still holding
on. I've gotten them out that way. I've even used I've even used
my car car hitch, a bumper hitch and a little chain or something like
that to drag them out a little bit too. That works pretty good.
Well, that's kind of where I'm at, because they're twenty twenty five years
old and probably probably three to four inches in diameter at the base. Yeah,
well, I mean you can, I don't know, if you get
a vehicle close enough. It's got the right kind of bumper to do that.
But you're not You're not just dragging the whole thing out. You're just
putting pressure on it with that, and then as you cut then it leans
a little more and put a little more pressure. Just be careful. You
don't want that chain something popping and coming loose and doing damage to a vehicle
or your house or something else. But that that would be a technique that
I would use on it, you know. It just it just kind of
depends on how what access you have there and what kind of tools you have.
There's a little device it's a it's a spading fork, but it's what
is it called. It's got the teeth on the on the edges are sharp
and so instead of just like a slick sided shovel around the edge, it's
it's got these big, jagged teeth and when you put it, yeah,
very serrated, huge, like the serrations as big as your thumb. And
when you when you push it down beside a root. It literally cuts through
that root incredibly. Well. Yeah, think of the name of the product.
But anyway, those are out there too, and I will use those
a lot because they also have a V and the tip that's sharp, so
you can raise it up and slam it down to the ground and it'll just
cut right through roots really well. So that's just another Uh. Sometimes there's
not room to swing a grubbinhope, but you can always do that. Okay,
thank you, all right, if I think of that, I'll say
it on the air here a little bit. Appreciate that, Tom, thank
you very much our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Now, Ana
Plants they're the nursery I've talked about a lot. They're up in Montgomery.
They are in the Lake Conro area. So if you live Walden Bentwater,
Grand harbored A Lago April Sound, you get the idea. If you live
in Conra, if you live in Montgomery, they are a very nice local
garden center. It's got everything you're gonna need. Three acres, lots of
plants of every type. You can find your products there that we talk about
here are the fertilizers, the soil products that I've been bragging on today and
more are all there at Ana Plants. They are loaded up with plants.
If you want to get your last planting a warm season, whether the vegetables
or flowers in you can do that there today at Ana Plants and Produce.
They're open seven days a week from nine to five. Knowledgeable staff and while
you're there, you're gonna fall in love with a lot of the yard bling
that they have. You know that things like terra cotta, chimeneias, or
maybe metal arches or trellises, or topiaries or furniture or whimsical yard art all
at Ana Plants and Produce. Now, if you haven't been there before,
they are on the east side of Montgomery as you're going toward Conro, just
on the edge of town, on the north side of one oh five.
Real easy to find. You can't miss them. Just driving by. You'll
find Ana Plants in Produce. And when you go inside, you're going to
find the kind of plants and the information and good help that you need.
As well. I mentioned earlier we were talking about fertilizing in the fall,
and in the fall we put on a fertilizer that where the nitrogen is lower
and the last number the potassium is a little higher, because in the fall
we don't want to push our lawn to grow luxuriously. You know, you
get in the fall, the weather cools off, you start getting rain,
and you throw a whole bunch of nitrogen on your lawn, and you're going
to make large patch or brown patch, very very happy. No, what
we go after in the fall is one that has mostly the potassium in it.
It needs nitrogen. Potessium and nitrogen are taken up by the plant together,
and so you can't just have potassium, but potassium nitrogen combination in these
fertilizers is excellent. Generally, I recommend those to apply in October. You
want to get them on while the plant is still has some growth going on
and the active route take up and whatnot. You don't want to get them
on super super early. I could see applying them, you know, maybe
at the end of September if you're way up in the northern part of the
listening area. But in general, October is a big time. But now
is the time to pick it up because a lot of these products, they
get sold out. They're a popular product. And just think about this that
sometime from now, especially by the end of September, you should have that
product in hand so you are ready to go for your lawn. I'll talk
more as we get a little closer to that, but I think you will
find that that will make a huge difference in your lawn. And the reason
is because going into winter, we need the potassium with a little nitrogen to
essentially create anna freeze in the soil I mean in the grass plant, so
that cold heartiness is increased. But more important than that, the carbohydrate production
that occurs in that season, primarily the month of October, but it's happening
now as well, is going to help that grass come out stronger in the
spring. When grass comes out in the spring, it is not the fertilizer
on the ground right at that time that it begins to wake up that makes
the huge difference. It's what went into the plant going into fall. It
has the stored energy to take off growing and to produce fresh new roots,
which is what's happening in the spring season. Fall fertilization very very important.
Let's go out to Richmond, and we're gonna talk to Alex. Hello,
Alex, Hi, syep hey, my dad's house. The yard looks pretty
dead. There's like one or two pockets that look kind of green. But
when do you think you should decide to do that kill till and fill?
Yeah, you know, is it? Saint Augustine? Sir? Yeah,
I get on your hands and knees. And if you see brown runners,
it's dead sometimes, you know, we'll look at our lawn. It turns
brown. You think it's dead, But all of a sudden, here it
starts sprouting out here and there. And if you get enough sprouts, you
know, like let's say even every one foot you have a sprout, then
it is able to fill back in over time. So it comes down to
do you want to spend money on a new lawn or do you want to
wait and work at it to get it back. But if it's truly dead
and large areas, you are going to have to do the kill, till
and fill. I mean with Saint Augustine. It's easy because basically you scrape
it all off at the ground and it's dead. You know, It's not
like bermuda that comes back up out of the soil if you scrape the top
off, so it's easy to get rid of Saint Augustine and do a reside.
And if you're gonna do that, I would do at Asaph. It's
better, you know, once we get into later October November, it's a
little late to be laying side for the best success. So make that decision
pretty quick. Here, is there someone you recommend for what the service of
killtill and fill? You know, I don't have. I don't have a
lawn renovation person that I recommend at this time. A lot of good landscapers
are going to be able to put a new lawn down for you. That's
not a really big deal. You know. Out there in the Richmond are
you're gonna have plenty. If I were you, I would give a call,
you know, call the one of the enchanted, enchanted, enchanted gardener,
enchanted forest and ask them who they recommend, and they're going to have
a good local person that they depend on. All right, Yes, sir,
thank you so much, you bet, thank you for the call.
Hey, if you live up in Magnolia on FM twenty nine seventy eight,
Spring Creek Feed is your hometown feed store. They carry the fertilizers. We
recommend they carry everything you need for your law and whether it's weed control,
past control, disease control, friendly courteous staff. If they don't have it,
they probably can special order it and they even deliver again. Magnolia FM
twenty nine seventy eight, just minutes away from Graham Parkway and Highway two forty
nine Spring Creek Feed. Well, good morning. It is a good day
for gardening. I know some of your looking out there going it's raining.
For crying out loud, what It's a good day to get inside and take
your house plant. It's a good day to start your seedlings, to grow
some transplants, abroccoli, let us and other things like that. Do you
see what I mean. It's a good day for gardening. It's always a
good day for gardening. Plus, I like, you know, headn't rain
in so long. I think I would just like to go outside and just
work in the rain, just to enjoy getting rained on a little bit.
For those of you in Houston and especially the East of Houston, you are
enjoying that. The rest of us are about to get to enjoy that.
And I'm going to tell you something. It has been dry, and what
happens when it is dry, our clay soil shrinks and that is hard for
foundations. And then what happens when it rains, like some of your getting
today, It swells up and that is hard on foundations. That's why we
like to recommend fix my Slab foundation repair. Tye Strickland has been doing this
for twenty three years. He knows what he's doing. He's a local,
he's got the small business service, he's got the experience that you want.
And you know when Tie does it, it'll be on time, the price
will be fair, and it'll be fixed right. You can go to fix
my slab dot com to find out more information two eight one two five forty
nine forty nine. Hey, if your doors are starting to stick, if
you see cracks in the sheet rock or cracks in the brick outside, done
not lay. It's not gonna get better, It's only gonna get worse.
Give Tie call two eight one two five five forty nine forty five or just
go to fix myslab dot com. Easy to get a hold of them.
And although we don't want to talk about having foundation problems, it's a reality
and you don't want to mess around with it, and you don't want to
delay. We're gonna go out to Laporte now and we're gonna talk to David.
Hello, David, good morning. Skip new to the guarding line.
And this is my first phone call and appreciate you taking my call. Well,
thank you for calling. How can we help? Yes, yes,
sir. So. I moved into my new home last year in July over
here in laport Seabrook area, and they put down some Saint Augustine sad and
I watered it regularly the first couple of weeks and it took on great.
You know, it really caught on. It was green. Oh. I
even did a fall treatment some time around September. September, excuse me.
And uh even after the freeze, everybody's lawn was dying and dry, and
mine stayed green. And I mean I was really proud of it. It
was doing good. And uh so during this drought. Uh, you know,
my lawn stayed green. It was It's been good. I've been watering
it, not too much, just right according to you know, some of
the experts. And I believe my neighbor had some chinch bugs and and I
noticed an infestation on near my sidewalks. Like I came home from work one
day and they were crawling all over the sidewalks by my driveway and I was
like, Holy moly. So I went and I put one of those granular.
I went to one of the local stores. I'm you know, I
fed the granular and then after that I hit it with some of the liquid
uh you know, uh medicine for the for the bugs or the you know,
the treatment right and uh. And I think we've got them all,
you know, but you know, my grasp is in a lot of areas,
there's still some green spots that a lot of the areas are green.
I'm calling to see what you recommend, because I've considered just you know,
tearing that out and putting some new saw the previous color kind of hit on
it a little bit. You know. You said, if you're going to
do it, do it now. Does that change anything in my situation?
And yeah, I would just look look at your lawn and you may have
to kind of get out there, even on hands and knees a little bit
and checking around and seeing where the life is if you've got if you've got
some sprigs, you know, not more than the foot apart, and you
know some areas where there's life that it can regrow. From Saint Augustine,
it's not gonna do a lot of growing this fall. It'll do a little,
but especially next year, it'll cover over pretty quick. Now, the
challenge when you're waiting on that to happen as you're going to have more weed
problems because sunlight is going to be able to get to the soil as until
the grass covers over well. Again, So that's just a trade off of
doing it. The alternative is to take huge sections and just put down fresh
side, press it to the soil, watered in well, and take care
of it. If you won't do that, you remember to water it daily
with a light application after you lay it for about a week, and then
every other day for about a week, and by three weeks it'll be it'll
be rooted in. But again, get that done soon because as we go
further into fall, the amount of rooting the grass is doing is very minimal.
Okay, follow up question on that. Let's say I do go that
route, which I'm leaning towards that route the new SOD, should I still
do a fall treatment on the new SAD or should I give that. No,
yeah, absolutely no. Yeah, you don't need to do the high
nitrogen fertilizer like we do all through the year. You just need to get
it number one, get it watered in. There's enough nutrient there. You
don't have to fertilize it the minute you lay it in. Fact, you
don't want to get it watered in. And after a couple of weeks of
that, then you can begin to put down your fall fertilizers and you can
go to gardening with Skip Gardening with skip dot com. There's a schedule there.
It's multi colored printed out and it'll give you a list of all the
organic and synthetic fertilizers that you can use in October or late September. Awesome,
Yes, sir, I just downloaded that PDA for a few minutes ago
when I was on hold. Well then it's the color coding makes it really
easy to trace it down to the bottom of the page and see what your
options are. Yes, yes, sir. One thing I might have gone
over. I just skipped and I don't know if this is if it matters
at all, but I did do a nitro false late June, and I
guess that according to a schedule that I saw, Yes, and maybe that
maybe up a little bit too much. Could that have been our chinch bugs
attracted to putting too much of that stuff? Well, they like succulent lawn
grass, but that it's not like there's chinch bugs across the street and they
smell that lawn over there and they run across the street to get to it.
You know. It's not like that. But they're going to be present.
They're present in the la la lawns. I got chinch bugs in my
lawn here and there, but I would the nitrofruss product is going to really
slowly over time. You probably use the silver bag, yes, and that's
you're not going to burn your plants with it. And uh, it's fine
back in June, but you're still gonna need the fall fertilizer application in October.
But get the get the sooner. You get the grass in and get
it rooted in. Then it has time to get ready for winter. We
can put down the nutrients and help it get ready for winter. U.
And so I guess sooner rather than later, yes, sir, okay,
we skip. I appreciate your your call. I'll be listening all right,
Yes, sir, we'll keep listening. Tell your neighbors about garden Line.
Tell your neighbor that had all the dead gum chinch bugs. He used to
be listening. Yeah, he's he's on the he's on my bad list right
now. Okay, all right, you take care, Thank you very much.
Hey, we're gonna take a break right now. It is a phone
number you want to write down seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Give josh akall who gets you on the board. Don you'll be
first up when we come back. Well, good morning. You're listening to
guard Line and we're here to talk all kinds of things about gardening. And
we got a lot to talk about. You know, we've been through this
incredibly brutal summer, and believe it or not, fall is on the way.
We are going to be seeing rain and cooling temperatures, and plants are
going to get happy and get growing and we won't be ready for that.
It is important that when you take care of a plant properly, you help
it not only to survive but to thrive. And for example, take a
tree. You plan a brand new tree out there, you want it.
I guess the way I like to put it is you want to hang a
hammock in it as soon as possible. Well, that doesn't mean just keep
it alive. That means get it going. And one of the best tools
for that is the tree hugger sprinkler. When you put a new tree in
the ground, this little hinged sprinkler goes right around the trunk. You hook
it up to the garden hose and you turn it on. You can water
a small area, or you can crank it up and water are large areas.
So I don't care if a tree has been the ground ten years.
You still got a lot of growth to get going on a ten year old
tree even and tree hugger sprinkler gets you through those hot, dry summer temperatures.
Now, maybe we don't have as brutal of a drought as we did
this summer. We just have a moderate drought occurs every summer. Well,
tree hugger sprinkler is the difference between that tree just sitting there and that tree
continuing to grow and grow fast. So it saves your tree in a critical
time of establishment during the critical first summer. But it also just helps your
tree continue to grow, so you get more out of it faster. The
value of your home goes up is that tree gets bigger and bigger. It's
really true. One of the biggest differences you can make to a landscape is
a good quality tree and quality landscaping. We're gonna go out to Montgomery now
and talk to Don. Good morning, Don, Good morning, sir.
I got a building a house out of Montgomery. In the soil here is
extremely scene. Do you think tree seem to go road just finding it?
But I don't think my grass is. So my question is do you have
a place where I can buy bolt probably like leop mold compost or some type
of compost to them in the soil. Yeah. Absolutely. The closest place
to you is going to be Nature's Way And they are on Interstate forty five
just south of Conrow where fourteen eighty eight comes in, and so they will
drive into le uh and they they are going to carry You're not gonna find
a better product than Nature's Way, okay. And they originated the leaf mold
compost that you mentioned. They created that idea, okay. And do you
is that what you would recommend as a leaf mold or is there something tell
me in addition to tell me again where all you want to use it for?
The basically have just that needs to be amended. Probably close to an
acre, Okay, that's a lot. Yeah. And this soil is sandy,
I mean it is, it's white powder sand. You know that's gonna
cost is gonna be a factor. And that kind of thing, and amending
a whole laker is a lot of compost. You might want to go they
make Everything they make is good quality. You might talk to them about that.
And putting down that's expensive. Compost is still gonna be a good one
over that area is gonna still accomplish the I need to add organic matter to
the soil thing. Uh. And it's it's gonna do a little more economically,
I think than the leaf mold over that that quantity. Now, if
money is not an object, you're not going to do better than a leaf
quality leaf mode compost. But give him a call out there in nature's way
and they can they can tell you, you know, what, what products
they have, what it costs to get it out there, and you can
make your decision based on that. Okay, So it's nature's way, all
right, Yeah, yeah, out of nature's way, And I I let
me. See, I get you, grab you a number. I've got
one right here, just a second. Uh nine three six three two one
sixty nine ninety nine three six six two or three two one sixty nine ninety
all right, all right, sir, thank you very much, you bet,
you bet, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. You
know. It's always it's encouraging to me when I hear about people improving their
soil, because I know what the results of that are going to be.
And it when you add organic matter to the soil, what you're doing is
you are basically circumventing decades of nature at work. If you let's think about
this tropical rainforests down in the jungles of South America or something. The soil
is so rich, and when they strip out the trees to try to farm
that area, they get incredible yields for a while, and then all the
rainfall they get down there, and not adding additional material, the yields begin
to drop after a few years and get lower and lower. Because nature makes
soil better and makes plants happier. When we don't add that back, we
go the other way. That's what happens, and so compost decomposes a way,
but there's nothing you can do better than putting a lot of composts into
the soil. And nature takes time to do that. It takes decades to
do that, but you can do it overnight by getting a good quality compost
and mixing it down deep. And you got your head start there, and
you're gonna add compost a little bit here and there over time, but basically
that gets you where you need to be, you know. Or Buchanan's Plants
is one of those garden centers that you just want to take family and friends
too when they visit from out of town. It's a garden center that you
want to go to yourself because it's a beautiful place. I mean it is.
It is a place that giant trees make shopping pleasant no matter what the
temperature is outside. This Saturday, September well coming up, actually it's September
thirtieth, from nine to noon, the Native Plant Society is going to be
out there and they're gonna be talking about natives to help customers while they shop,
because I tell you, Buchanans is all about native plants. I mean,
they have the best selection native plants that I've ever seen, including they
even have a table that's natives just from the Houston area for example. Now
they have way more than natives. They got there into summer sale going on
select plants or fifty to seventy percent off. You're not going to do better
than that. They've got the first shipment of Mum's has come in, and
the cool seedanuels, dianthus and snap dragon, and then those warm seasons that
we still need to be planning now petunias and marigolds, miracles planted. Now
the spider might populations are going to be declining, and they just are unbelievable,
as well as all the fall of veggies all there at Buchanan's Plants,
six to eleven East eleventh Street in the Heights. It's you know, it's
just always fun to go shop at a garden center. And I do it
all the time. I mean, I'm well number one because I do this
show. I want to be out there seeing what are the new plants that
they have, what's going on here? And I learned something every time I
go to a garden center. There's oh, that's a fun thing about horticulture.
You never get through learning it is. I think it's the best hobby
of all time. Of course I'm biased, but that didn't mean I'm wrong.
Just because you're biased doesn't mean you're wrong. So I would highly recommend
it to anybody. You're listening to Guardenline today and we are here to answer
your gardening questions. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If
you give Josh a call, he will get you on the board and we
will talk to you when we come back. Josh, I know, excuse
me, garden you're out there on hold. I'm not going to go to
you just yet because we have essentially no time left, but you will be
first when we come back from our break. I just want to remind you
that I will be today after the show. I'm going to make a bee
line for Plantation Ace Hardware Enrichmond. Plantation Ace Hardware in Richmond. I'll be
there from eleven thirty to one thirty, and I'll be answering all kinds of
gardening questions. Bring me samples of the plants that you're dealing with. By
the way, they're going to have a heck of a shindeg they got,
they got food trucks, they got food samples, and a lot more.
I'm going to be giving away the Texas three step for nitrofoskins at nitrofust Fertilizers.
That is a fertilizer that is a pest control and a disease control.
It's all the three things you might do in your fall landscape. That We'll
be doing a number of those sets of three as we go through the two
hours that I'm there, so there's plenty forever one there. They'll also be
giving away a Webber grittle, a smaller Weber grittle for that barbecue and hey,
it's football season. You know you got to have a little grill to
do some burgers out there for the game weekends. They it's just a fun
place to go and a lot of quality products out there at Plantation Ace Hardware
in Richmond. Hey, I hope that we will see you there. KATRH
Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this
program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictor it's just watching as well.
Good morning, and welcome to garden Line. We are here to answer
gardening questions. We don't even allow a little bit of bragging on you.
If you were one of the folks that managed to keep your law and healthy
and happy hope all summer long. First of all, hats to you for
that, because it has been a brutal summer. The good news is the
temperatures already dropping. We are and you're gonna be down in the mid nineties
this week. That is a welcome refrain. People from other parts of the
country, think one on Earth. If you're happy to be in the mid
nineties. Oh yes we are, Oh yes, oh yes we are.
And it cooler evenings too, which is really important for our plants. They
need a little break in the evening time. So if you're interested in getting
out and getting some plants, there is a good Now it's a good time
to do it. You know, it's time to plant. It's time to
plant some of our summer vegetables, time to plant some of the warm season
flowers. You know, you still put kolias in out there, you still
put miracle I like miracles in the in the you know, late late late
summer, which we're gonna call now late late summer. The way it's been
going you plant them, the spider mites populations go down. They just do
so well out there. The you're gonna find petunias doing really well out there
too. And our CW Nursery is just an example of one of those great
nurseries that we have in the community here in the Greater Houston community. You
can go to OURCW Nurseries dot com and find out more information about them.
They're on Tambo Parkway where it comes into Beltway eight. You've probably been by
there before or the whims And family has opened it up in what in nineteen
seventy nine and they still run the place, and it is the kind of
place that is known as get it, Got it? What does that mean?
Well, they don't have it, they'll do their best to find it.
They're going to carry all the fertilizers that I talk about here. If
you're looking for a rose, and by the way, fall is a best
time of the year to plan a rose. You can plan a rose any
time of the year, but fall you can't beat that. They got one
of the biggest selections of roses that you will find anywhere. I'm talking about
four pages worth. Go to the website see what I'm talking about. Look
at their list of roses, it is incredibly long. They grow their own
trees up in Madisonville. Out in Madisonville, up near the festival grounds.
Gosh, I can't even say the name of the town. Oh well,
we'll keep going on it. They grow their own trees fifteen gallons up to
two hundred gallon trees, from ornamentals to shade trees. They've got it all
up there in Plannersville. That's the what I was looking for. Now.
They are going to be open and available for you to come in and load
up Monday through Saturday eight am to five pm. On Sundays from ten am
to five pm. Again, it's RCW nurseries dot com. You need to
go by there and check it out. By the way, they are having
some really good specials going on right now. I believe they got fifteen percent
off select tree shrubs and perennials, and they also have a new selection of
annuals. And if you're looking for a cool fall festival type bling, you
know, like a metal pumpkin, you know, that kind of Halloween stuff,
but also just fall harvest stuff, all that kind of stuff put out
in the yards seasonally they have got an unbelievably cool selection of really attractive stuff
out oft OURCW for that as well. We're gonna go out now to the
cloverleaf and we're gonna talk to Gordon. Are you there, Gordon? How
are you doing today? I'm good? If you can turn that radio down,
how can we help turn it off? All right? I want I
want to first thank you for answer my question on my desert rose plans.
Last week my office turn a radio on and there you were, all right,
So like to thank you on that. So my question is I have
every weed known a man in my yard right now? So when does because
I would look for celsius all summer and I could not find celsius anywhere,
as I guess because the pros bottom. But what one of these things going
to die in the cold? Well, something like Virginia buttonweed. Okay,
Virginia button weed is a tough one at this point in the season. I
don't know that Sprain, It's gonna be a whole lot of good. You
definitely got a lot of little seeds along those runners. And I know you
don't want to hear this, but getting out there and pulling them off,
even if they're breaking off. At least you're getting the seeds out of the
yard to kind of cut down on it when we get back into next spring,
and you could treat it now if you want it, but I think
the amount of good you're doing is more minimal. When it gets into next
spring and you start to see it, that would be the time to pull
out a product like the Celsius as an example. There are some other good
products out that'll work on Virginia buttonweed, but you want to get on it
early before it gets too hot and be ready to do two, maybe even
three treatments with a post emergent because that is a very difficult weed to control.
But catching it early before it gets mature enough to start setting seed is
going to be pretty important. You know, Bonide makes a weed beat or
Ultra Furtilone makes a weed free zone. Those are all gonna do a decent
job on Virginia buttonweed, but you just have to watch the temperature when when
you're applying them. You want it to be preferably a plan on using the
carbo load Nelson's fourtililes of this year. I've thought about it last year and
I blew it off, and I regret it every day, but I plan
on doing it. And you said in October, right, yes, definitely,
October is the best time to plan it. I meant to use it.
I mean, it's not going to be hard to use anytime, but
that's when we catch our lawns where they're still in an active state of growth
and we can get the nutrients in them. And with the carbo loads,
you're not going to spur a bunch of fresh new growth, which you wouldn't
want to do at that time, but you are going to get your plants
ready ready for the next spring for sure. Well I replace my entire not
my entire, but I replace a large amount of grass last year inside,
so I couldn't use things like pre emergence. They said it would affect the
side. It affects reading the pre emergence. Most of them kill the weeds
by inhibiting the root formation. When the weed tries to germinate, that just
kills it. But if you overdo them, you can also inhibit the rooting
from the Saint Augustine runner trying to go down into the ground with roots.
It'll also affect that when you overdo them. And that's why we always say,
follow the label carefully. Pre Emergent products they have their place and they
do their work, and it's easier to prevent a weed than it is to
kill a weed are already growing. But just with any chemical we use,
it doesn't matter what it is, just always follow them. If I go,
if I go with the carbo load plus or pre emergent, would that
be too much? The carbo load has got a pre emergent in it,
and I need to go. I need to pull that label up, and
I can't remember which one it is, but I think if you do the
carbo load, that is gonna be your pre emergent. And I just need
a little time here to check check my products to be able, I'll say
something, well, I'll just use I'll just use the one then. But
one thing too, is what would you recommend garden spredderby? I got this
Scots thing I had for like three decades. Yes, yes, so it's
fine. I mean there's a lot of spreaders and droppers out there that that
work. Just find the key is operating them correctly, and go a little.
I usually go a little light on the application. Usually the fertilizer products
will tell you the spreader settings you need to use, but I'll go a
little bit light because I can always come back over it, you know.
But once if you go too heavy, then you run out of fertilizer before
you've applied reached the whole yard. Okay, hey, I'm gonna have to
take up break, Gordon. If you want to hang on that, you
welcome to do that, but I'm gonna have to go to a break right
here. Appreciate your call our phone number seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Well, good morning. We are glad you're listening to
garden Line this morning, and here to answer your gardening questions. By the
way, Gordon, you just called in a minute ago and I had to
go check that to make sure before I said something on the label. But
Nelson's, their carbo load product contains prodyming, which is the same ingredient that
you would find in barricade. So yes, when you put the carbo load
down, you're also putting down that pre emergent at the same time, and
that should and again that's another reason why we do this in October, because
that's when our cool season weeds begin to germinate and grow October November is a
big month. So since you're you're doing the carbo load for your fall fertilizer,
I would do it early in October just to get that product down.
You never know with the weather exactly when weeds are going to germinate. We
know in general, but not exactly. But I would do that one early
on, just so you know. It doesn't matter when you put the carbo
load fertilizer down, but does mend or when you get that ingredient pro I
mean in it down to prevent the wheeds. We are wanting to make sure
we're real clear about that so that you have success and always follow the label
and do it at the right amount. You know, September is the peak
month for hummingbirds. I don't know if you've got them at your house.
If you've got a feeder, you are going to see some beautiful hummingbirds coming
through their hardy here and they're getting ready for their trip across the Gulf of
Mexico. The wild Birds Unlimited stores carry a high perch feeder. It's the
one I use. Actually have several hummingbird feeders, it's my favorite one.
The high perch feeder from Wild birds unlimited, four different sizes of it.
It's really easy. They even sell a little cleaning brushes for cleaning it out.
They sell something called Nectar Defender which extends the next nectar from one to
two days in this heat to ten days. Now. If you've ever put
sugar water out, you know it gets bad and that's not healthy for the
hummingbirds. You can make your own nectar recipe or you can buy it if
you want to make your own. Four parts water, one part white table
sugar. Simple as that, four parts water, one part white table shooter
sugar. Go to a wild Birds near you. You know, we have
we have fortunate to have a number of wild birds throughout this Greater Houston area,
I mean, and so it's not hard to find one in your area.
You can go to w b U let's see WU dot com forward slash
Houston to find out more about wilbirds near you and the hummingbird feeders and all
of the other things that you might need for your birds. It is the
one of my favorite places to go into just because there is there's just so
much in there. And if you don't think you're a bird person, go
into a wild birds and you suddenly will find that you are a bird person.
And again WBU dot com forward slash Houston to find your local wilbirds so
you can be ready for this hummingbird season and even make more of their antics
available at your property than you already have. I love to watch the hummingbirds.
We're gonna go out to Ronnie now in Cyprus. Ronnie, how can
we help today? Well, I was listening to your show, great show
all the way, and I've got I love my banana trees in my backyard
there and I'm just taking it for granted that you know, every winter I
cut them down and then they just keep coming back up. I was wondering,
what's hope of fertilizah? How can I feed them and make sure they
got the right nutrients. You know, bananas are pretty flexible when it comes
to fertilizers. I've used different kinds of things on bananas from the traditional lawn
foods too. You could use this fall fertilizer that we're talking about. It's
got a lot of potassium in it and that is always helpful for the bananas.
The key is, though we're going into the winter time, probably don't
want to fertilize them late in the season like this, but you once they
come out and wake up in the spring, you can begin fertilizing them.
I would do it in small amounts over time, watered in really well,
and they will do well. You know. Occasionally we have such a mild
winter that our branana stalks will make it through and you actually get a load
of fruit the following year. People go to great lacks sometimes to cover them
up to try to accomplish that too. So what about the composting, would
that be good as well? Absolutely? Compost is our nature feeds the soil,
and so when you have compost, you've got decomposing nutrients that were once
in the plants the compost was made from, and they're going to be available.
So I would always keep a you know, an inch or so a
compost around the bananas, spread out in as wide areas you as you you
know, can esthetically accept. But yeah, that's good, All right,
well I appreciate it. Thank you, you bet, thank you, Ronnie.
Good luck with those out there in Cyprus. Fall is for planting,
and fall is for setting out our transplants. I don't care if it's a
vegetable transplant, if it's a flower transplant, if it's an herb transplant,
if it's a rosebush or a shrub. Has to Grow six twelve six is
an excellent way to get them off to a running start. You just take
the has to Grow six twelve six, mix it into water, set your
transplant, and water them in thoroughly, a good, deep, thorough soaking
with Hastra Grow six to six mixed in water according to the label directions.
Now it's a very very low salt formulation. You're just not going to get
a lot of leaf burn if you want to spray it on the plants.
It's got the Medina soil activator, it's got hum humate, humic acid,
it's got the seaweed extracts, all things that are stimulating for the plant.
Hasta Grow six twelve six. Don't put a transplant in the ground without having
Hasta Grow six twelve six on hand to give it that early boost. Fertilize
it at planting, fertilize it a week later with the hashtagrow six to six.
And when I say fertilized, I mean you're watering it in with the
product. And then one more time a week after that and you will see
really good results as I have. I want to go to rich now in
spring. How are things going, rich doing well? Thank you? How
can I show Regarding Scott's pro Vista Saint Augustine, Yes, are you familiar
with the product? I am familiar with the product? Yeah, what's your
opinion? Well? Uh it, I mean it isn't pro Vista the one
that's designed to be round up ready, it's it's immune too quite full,
say exactly. Yeah. Well, the reason they developed it is because when
you have that, then you can just splay round up on your lawn and
kill all the weeds and not kill the grass. I'm just not favor of
that approach to weeds and things. As far as a grass, I'm sure
it is a decent grass. We have a lot of other good varieties have
been developed in the area or the southern region and have done really well.
But you know, if if that's the route you want to go, that's
why they developed it. I just I would rather choose. There's a new
one coming out from Texas, A and M and I gotta find the name
of it. It's actually starting to get out next year, it'll really be
out and it is the most most drought resistant Saint Augustine that's been developed ever.
It is, it's it's like as drought resistant as Bermuda grass. It's
it's really a good one. And that is the one I would go with
if I were gonna if I were gonna plant a Saint Augustine grass. Okay,
and speaking of drought your opinion on any product hydrotane, I don't know
hydrogen what's in it? Uh? You mactans. It's not a wedding agent,
and you know allegedly, you know, it draws moisture from the ground,
circles around the roots of the grass, and gets more water that way,
is what they're selling. Yeah, I don't know if it's snake oil
or if it's working, you know. Yeah, poh boy, I don't
know. That's m hmm. That's a little bit sounds fishy to me.
But not knowing the product or using the product, I don't want to I
don't want to say it won't work. I just uh that I'd like to
know a little more about it. Maybe maybe it has some of those uh
polymer crystals that draw water in I don't know what else, what the mechanism
is. I really need to look at the label to know for sure.
So I don't want to I don't want to speak when I don't know,
and I don't know. I have applied it. I applied it about a
week ago, so you know, not much of data to go buy.
Yeah, all I know is it didn't it didn't kill the grass yet.
And with the water restrictions we're under here in spring, we only get to
water twice a week, and my grass is totally green. Well, you
know, I mean it, if it works, it works. So if
you're having good luck with it, then I don't see right why you wouldn't
why you wouldn't do that as well. I think that that new saying Augustine,
by the way, is called Cobalt Cooba lt. Like the Well,
okay, and I'll look into that app it's gonna be it's gonna be a
little hard to find, but it'll be worth well worth looking for. We
got a lot of the good grasses out there too as well. All right,
that was great, thank you. You bet you take care, You
take care. You know, if you're looking for a place that has ever
product you need, that is ACE hardware. I mean, it's as simple
as that. I'm just talking to one of my kids this week that lives
up in the DC area and they love going to their Ace Hardware and they
were telling me, you know, you can buy jewelry there and kinds of
stuff. Ace Hardware has everything you need for your lawn, your garden,
your landscape for the lawn. All the fertilizers, the quality fertilizers you recommend,
every product you put on the lawn to control weeds, to control diseases,
to control insects, is going to be an Ace Hardware Plus. ACE
Hardware is a hardware store. They have everything you would expect from a hardware
store, and like an old time hardware store, they have staff that knows
what they're talking about, that friendly staff that greets you and help you find
what you need. You can go to Ace Hardware dot com and look for
their store locator to find one of the thirty nine Ace Hardware's near you are.
Just join me today a plantation Ace Hardware out in Richmond between eleven thirty
and one thirty. I'll be there answering questions and giving away some free nitro
phost fertilizer as well. Let's see, we're gonna we're gonna go, Uh,
Paula, we are running out of time here. I'm gonna have to
hold you over and come to you during the next hour after we get through
with the news break here. Our phone number is seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
And I do want to mention you again, just as I have earlier
today, that the new lawncare schedule is out and you can find it at
Skip Richter. It's actually gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot
com the fertilizers you need and when to apply them, how to mow,
how to water, how to fertilize, how to aerate, window, apply
the trades mental all there on that schedule. We'll be right back, but
now we're going to turn it over the NICKI News Network. Well, good
morning, and a good day for gardening. Yes, I know a training
in some places, it's always a good day for gardening. You can garden
inside. You can start your fall transplants. By the way, it's a
time now. If you're going to grow your own transplants from seed, you
can do that right now. Getting ready for the cool season. Garden broccoli,
cabbage, cauliflower, cale, robbie, all that kind of stuff.
You can even begin pretty soon here we can begin planting things like spinach and
lettuce for transplanting outside. It is always a good day for gardening no matter
where you are. You know, speaking of a good day for gardening.
If you live out in the Kingwood area, you know you are rich with
garden centers out there. You've got Warrens and you've got Kingwood Garden Center for
example, you're not. You just it's always a pleasure to go this.
I love walking around because every time i'm I'm really just so pleasantly surprised by
the amount of color, the amount of trees and plants and everything you could
need. When we're talking about pottery, maybe you're talking about, you know,
a specific kind of vegetable or flour or product that you need. They
carry the products that we are looking for when we're going out to have success
with our landscape out there. They're starting to get in some of the cooler
season. I see a little dianthus going on out there, but plenty of
the good warm season things that we can continue to plan out at Kingwood Garden
Center. Out at Warren's Garden Center makes it really easy to shop. I
know, the good selection of colius. Always a good time to put some
colius in during the warm season because they make such a great great color.
You know, there's two ways to have color. One is blooms, which
are a more challenging way you have to change in through the seasons. The
other's foliage. Summertime and foliage really go together well. Out at Kingwood,
they've got some really new combo plantings that are the very nice out there.
You're going to find things like a coolius and little firecracker plant, and some
linear foliage like we like to add in our compost plantings, some of the
house plants. Their garden seed rack. It's worth going to Kingwood Garden Center
just to see the garden seed rack. Unbelievable selection of seed and now's the
time to get them because we're going to be planning all kinds of cool season
both flowers and vegetables for a good while. Speaking of vegetables, they got
a really good selection of vegetables all out there at the Kingwood Garden Center and
of course over at the Warren's Garden Center as well. Don't forget at Kingwood
they are going to have their Garden to Glass Mixology, which is the fall
end to Prosecco event. That's on September twenty feet at six pm. September
twenty first, at six pm, you will learn how to craft exquisite cocktails
with prosecco using fresh herbs harvested straight from the garden. So they're gonna teach
you how to grow the herbs, how to harvest them, and how to
infuse those spirits. It's their gartending class, as they say. Now,
just go to Kingwood Garden Center dot com or give McCall and make sure you
get signed up for that class. It sounds like a lot of fun.
Let's head out to Northwest Houston now and we're gonna talk to Paula. Hey,
Paula, good morning. I've had fastbike plants for years and I can
always tell when it's time for the hummingbirds to come because it's starts blooming.
Yeah. I mean it may be bloom earlier or maybe in bloomed later,
but it always blooms until this year. Boy, I don't see any buds
on it. Nothing. I've never happened to me before. And I and
I was fertilized with microlife ever spring, so its head continuous feeding through the
years. Yeah, but I don't know if we had I don't know if
you remember, we're some years back. I don't remember what year it was
that the temperatures got up to like one hundred and seven. Yes, and
but it still blooms in this is so I don't know if it is.
I'm doubtful as the heat. Do you have any ideas well, that's a
good question. I do not have that problem ever with fire spikes, as
you haven't. This is a new thing now when a planet don't bloom.
The natural things we go through is okay, it was stressed, not just
the heat, but maybe drought something held it back a little bit. Or
the more common thing is it's not getting enough sunlights. It takes light to
mente. But fire spike is a very shade tolerant plant. So right,
I'm saying that the things I normally would go to and hey, my plant
isn't blooming, situation is not really going to apply here. I'm assuming you
can now have four of them, so so it's not dislike one plant.
And also I cut some rootings for my neighbor, so my neighbor has a
fire spike and hers is not blooming either, So well, maybe that's where
all live. I don't know. Well, I don't know. That's that
is very unusual. I mean, it's gonna be. It's gonna somehow be
climate weather invade related. I know they can take heat. I know they
can take some shade, but they need a bright shade to do really well.
They don't need a deep, deep, deep shade. Uh. And
they need adequate moisture. One thing that happened to my plants this year is
it was so hot and that they were having trouble pumping water fast enough.
They would wilt during the day and then they would recover in the day when
they were able to get a job. Yeah, might have been wilting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know, Paula that that's my
best shot. Probably that's my best shot that I can just tell you that
this is not a normal fire fire spike problem, as you know. As
you know, good luck, be patient with them. If hummingbird shut up,
make sure they have a feeder and say the fire spikes are on hole,
they'll become shortly. I've got seven figures up on now. Love to
go out and listen to them fuss at each other. Hey, thank you
for that. I approach by you. Take care bye bye bye bye.
If you live down south of town, you know how I talk about you
gotta take care of your soil. Snamultch is your place. Snamultch is near
Highway six and two eighty eight north of Roe Shar and it's on FM five
twenty one. So all you folks out in first Colony and pair Land and
now near Brasspin State Park or maybe Sandy Point are cola. I will call
them. They're your local and you are fortunate to have them. By the
way, that'd be What place worth driving to is CNA Maltch because they're quality
mulch, quality soil products. This could be composts, this could be blends,
either bulk or by the bag. If I talk about a fertilizer here,
they are going to have them all in stock there at sea in a
Malch. It's a one stop shop for all of that. They're open Monday
through Friday, seven thirty to five, Saturday seven thirty to two, closed
Sunday, So today'd be a good day to get out there. Sienna Mulch
dot com. Just remember that Sienna Mulch dot com. You'll be very impressed.
And oh, by the way, be careful because if you look over
and see all the flagstones and rock products, you will be inventing new patios
because you just have to have that stone in your yard. It's that gorgeous.
I've had those same thoughts myself being out there. Let's go to Pasadena
and we're gonna talk to Greg. Hello. Greg, Yes, sir,
got to get some advice and your expertise on ground preparations for laying down U
sad, I'm pretty much down to bare ground, filled up all the old
grass weeds along with it, had long service, kind of overseated build my
Santa I'm seen, had some kind of other grass growing in its place,
and just ugly ugly. Yeah, I got it awful bare ground right now
thinking of killing. Somebody said sand and dirt mixed combination. But then somebody
said, no'll just sand as you're at bare ground right now with a little
chilling. So yeah, I wouldn't say yep, I wouldn't say you need
sand, you know, I don't. I'm not there, you know,
reaching down and grabbing a handful of your soil or anything. But in general,
we don't add sam before we plant side. It won't hurt, but
it's probably not worth it to mess with that. I would mix up the
soil. I'd mix a little bit of compost and if you can. Often
there's too many tree ridge to do that. But if you mix a little
bit of compost into the surface, loosen it up. Before you lay the
side, you want to water it well about two days before to get that
moisture down in the soil because when the roots grow down, we want them
to help moist soil, not dry soil. Then lay level it out where
it's nice and smooth and level buy your side, lay it down, press
it down to the soil, watered about once a day for a week,
very lightly, and then every other day for another week, and then it'll
be in good shape. By about three weeks. You're ready to go ahead
and fertilize. So get that done sooner rather than later, because we're running
out of time. Eventually, it's going to be late October and November and
the root growth is slowing down, and you want to get all this done
ahead of time. Yeah. I kind of held up on it a little
bit because of the extreme meat. We were at. Yeah, back,
you know its ideal between seventy five and ninety degree. Yeah, you're right,
You're right. Hey, Greg, I'm gonna have to run to a
break here. I appreciate your call very much. Thank you. Our phone
number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well,
good morning, welcome to garden Line. Well I'm excited right now. I
mean, I do you feel like I do? This has been a summer
that I would love to forget, so hot, so dry, incredibly incredibly
miserable weather out there, and it is changing. We can already feel a
walk outside right now, see what you feel? It is different. And
this is just the beginning. Rain will return, cooled temperatures will return,
will regain that hope we have as gardeners to get fresh new growth in the
ground, vegetables and flowers and herbs and lawns and trees and shrubs. It's
all ready to come back. This is what we would call this what the
precipice of wonderfulness coming up in the gardening world. EBB so lutly. Hey,
by the way, when we're taking care of our lawns, I always
talk about now the fall fertilization, the importance of putting down a higher potassium
fertilizer for the fall season. But another thing that our plants need is the
micro's, the trace elements. Even though they're needed in tiny, tiny amounts,
they are absolutely essential on the plants can't grow without every single nutrient that
is considered an essential nutrient, and there's about twenty of those things that are
essential, and a product like azamite does just that. If you'll learn more
about it, go to Azamite Texas dot com, A z O M I
te Texas dot com and you can find about their products. I would put
them on in the launch. If you haven't done it this year, go
ahead. Now's a good time to get that out. You don't have to
put it out at exactly the same time you've fertilize, or you can do
the azamite and then right away just put the fertilizer out. It's up to
you which way you want to go. But consider using that azamite. And
if you've got a food garden where you're consuming the food out of the garden,
you definitely want all those micros available for optimum health in the kind of
produce that you're producing for your family to consume. Well, we're gonna go
out now to Beaumont and talk to Donna. Hello, Donna, I skip.
I was been listening a couple of weeks ago, and I heard something
about a product that I could put on quite myrtle trees to kill them.
My friend up in Holtham City has a swimming pool in a new house that
she moved into, and for some reason, they planted crape myrtles around the
swimming pool. And you can imagine all the stuff that's constantly going into their
swimming pool. Okay, and so she really needs to get rid of them,
and I just wondered what you recommend. All right. I got two
suggestions. First of all, I hate to kill crape myrtles or beautiful trees.
So one option would be to wait until about late October early November,
have somebody come in, dig those things up and move them to another location
where they're not going to drop leaves in the pool, so or give them
to somebody else to plant. If they're not really large, that's doable.
If they're large crape myrtles, then that's not practical. But I just throw
that out there, is you know Hey, maybe you want to consider that.
If you want to flat kill them, you want to cut them off.
I would cut them off just a foot or two above the ground because
you need something when you're trying to pull that root out of there and you
know, grub it out or whatever you're going to do, you need something
grab onto. But when you cut them off immediately, not the next day,
but immediately on that fresh wound. You want to paint a product that
contains triclopier t R I C l O P y R. We're not spraying
it out everywhere. We're not putting it all on the soil. We're just
taking those little fresh cut surfaces with a little sponge. When of those little
sponge paintbrush things that are made out of a sponge and using the straight tracolo
pier, just go straight on this dabit right on there. It will go
down in the plant and it will kill it. Now, with a very
large plant, you may have a resprout that you have to also a retreat.
Sometimes one is not enough, but in general, if you do lots
of cuts and get that triclopier down in the plant by putting them on the
fresh cut, it'll take it out. Okay, Okay, I will pass
this on to her. Thank you so much. All right, so you're
asking you really are asking for a friend. Yes, yes, I was
up in her house a couple of weeks ago when she was complaining about how
these things are always a new suit star. Okay, thank you so much,
Kip you bet, thank you very much. Hey, it is fall
fertilizing season just around the corner. I mean when we get to late September
for those of you further up north, or the month of October for anywhere
in the listening area. You want to put down your fall application of fertilizer,
and that is carbo Load from Nelson's Plant Food. Carbo Load is at
ten ten twenties. It's got that high amount of potassium compared to phosphorus.
Normally we're the other way around. Through the year. We're doing three one
two kinds of ratio. When it comes to fall, you want the potassium
to come up, the nitrogen to go down. Carbo Load does all that.
And the Nitrofists has the color Star line of fertilizers, the Nutrostar line
of fertilizers, and their organic line, the Nature Star fertilizers all available,
I said, nitrofis I'm at Nelson's. Excuse me, Nelson Fertilizer's available a
lot of places here in the Greater Houston area. You can find them in
home in garden centers. It's not that difficult to find the nitro. Excuse
me, Nelson plant food, Josh, I think I need a fresh coke
or some caffeine in here to get my brain restarted again. Oh my gosh,
carbo load from Nelson's outstanding fertilizer for fall application. Go ahead and buy
some, get it on hand, because you're gonna need it and you're gonna
want to apply it. When you do that, it's like and a freeze
for your plant to have success. Let's see, we're gonna go out now
to Oh. I'm gonna running out of time here, Fred, I'm gonna
have to put you off until the next hour. But just hang on.
Hey, if you haven't been out to the Antique Rosenpourium, you gotta go.
They're up there in the Branhamry just north of Branham up in Independence,
Texas. Antique Rose Emporium dot Com is a website. The phone number nine
seven nine eight, three, fifty five, forty eight. Now they specialize
in antique roses, unbelievable selection of those. You can come out and see
them anytime. They're open on the weekends. They are roses and so much
more quality, drought tolerant, perennials, native plants, herbs, a wonderful
gift shop. It's always a good time to go out to the Antique Rose
Impourim again. Call them three seven, excuse me nine seven nine eight,
three six five five four eight, or just visit them at the Antique Rose
Emporium dot com. They have a Fall Festival of Roses coming up at the
Antique and Rose Impourim. They'll be this I guess later this month, the
Fall Festival of Roses, and it is a wonderful time. There are a
lot of good speakers, a lot of good speakers that you can go to
go there and hear just a lot of wonderful things going on during that fall
festival time. You definitely want to go out and check them out. It's
always a good time to go out to the Antique Rows Emporium. But yeah,
that fall fest was a great time to get out there and enjoy it
and do that. Hey, you're listening to Guardline. We're gonna take a
little break and we will be back. Fred your first up if you want
to give us a call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Just another
reminder. I'm going to be a plantation ace Hardware today from eleven thirty to
one thirty, and I'll be answering your gardening questions. I hope you come
out, love to meet you. Bring me some samples of plants to identify
or to diagnose problems. Maybe a bug and a bag would be another thing
you could bring in. We'll take a look at it, or some photos
of your landscape of flat questions. Just make sure when you get a photo
up in good close up and a good sharp focus. That is most important
for us to be able to help you. I'm will be giving away the
Texas three Steps set of fertilizer, disease control and pest control from Nitroposts several
times during my two hours out there. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse
any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden
line with skip rictor. It's crazy just watching as a wood loading. Well.
Good morning, good morning, this is a great day to get out
in garden, walk outside, feel the air. There's a difference. Fall
has become here. We go, let's have fun. Hey, by the
way, while I go, we're talking about the Anti gros Poim and the
Fall Festival Roses. I didn't give you a date for that. That is
November third, fourth and fifth, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, November third,
fourth and fifth. Go to the Anti Crosenpoim dot com website and you
will find out more about that. And it is always a blast when they
have at one of the shinn't eggs out of the Antique rose Emporium. You
know, we talk about our great nurseries. We brag on our great nurseries
all the time. And the Enchanted Forest down in the Richmond area is one
of those places you got to go to. It's absolutely enchanting to go out
there, big beautiful trees. Fun to go out and shop in the shade
and enjoy that they carry all kinds of plants that the kinds of things you're
looking for, everything for vegetables to flowers to herbs to some house plants.
They've got great trees and shrubs. In fact, they've just got a new
shipment of shrubs and trees and fall flowers in the other day, and so
this is a good time to get those kinds of things purchased and ready to
go out in the garden. They've got good fall to core and there's more
coming, by the way, lots of you need to check back about every
week because there's always something new coming in out there. This fallen Enchanted for
us. Now we're a couple of weeks away from the arrival of the pumpkins.
That's always fun. Of course, there's moms and more cool season vegetables
coming in. Danny and Clay and the whole team out there and Enchanted.
They know what they're talking about. They guide you, they help you.
If you need someone to take you over and show you a plant, hell
you out a planet, they take time to do that. Knowledgeable staff,
they know what they're talking about. They are there to serve the customer.
And when you go that's exactly the experience you're gonna have now, Enchanted Forest.
If you're in Richmond, you're heading up toward Sugarland direction. They're off
to the right, to the south of fifty nine. Not hard to find
at all, but definitely well worth the trump. We are now going to
go talk to Fred in Sugarland. Hello, Fred, Hello, Fredd.
Are you there all right? I'm gonna put Fred on hold. Fred will
come back to you, Josh. We can figure out how we get him
back. Now we're going to go to Frank in northwest Houston. Good morning,
Frank, Good morning Skip. I have a from a fifteen hundred square
foot back yard I laid resought in the early spring. Okay, I don't
know if the graph is uh, it looks dead, okay, and I
need a turnkey company's come in and resought the whole area about fifteen hundred square
feet. Yeah, yeah, do you is it Saint Augustine? Yes?
Well, if I were you, you may have already done this, but
I'd get out there on my hands and knees. Look around a little bit.
Make sure those runners are dead, not just the leaves burned back.
If you've got some green left in it, and he gets some water and
a little furlizer, it's gonna it's gonna bounce back. But if it is
dead, and you do need the turnkey as you're talking about, then I
would recommend you you just call the folks at Peer Scapes and see see what
they can do for you out there. I believe they do that kind of
work as well. You know, they're into designing and things, but I
believe they may do some installations like that, So I would I would give
them a shot and just just see because I definitely think, you know,
I need to just scrape it all up, bring in new fawd and relay,
I mean new dirt and relays. Okay, well, if that's what
you want to do, then I would That's exactly what I would do.
I would get out there and I would get all of the you know,
the old dead grass out of the way, do any kind of a prep
of the soil you might need to do to get ready to go for planting,
and then get it planting. But don't don't delay on that because when
you delay, we're going to hit the season where the root growth is just
not what it used to be. You know, once we get into late
October and November. It's better to get all this done well ahead of time.
Now, pier Escapes, let me give you a phone number for them.
They are two eight one three seven zero five zero six zero two eight
one three seven zero five zero six zero. They do all kinds of landscape
stuff. But they'll take all the dead grats out and put more thought in
there and then lay that's I mean, the more dirt and then put the
fog down. Yeah, you may or may not need more dirt, just
you know, if you need to fill in a few holes or level it
out a little bit or something like that. Yes, but I would talk
to them. I'm not positive on them doing the grass installations, but no,
I don't think it did. I did well. I'm before on some
landscape with mainly you hardstone. Yeah, yeah, okay, Well I don't
have a company in mind that, you know, just specializing in the laying
of the turf. But you know what, I still would call them because
they can tell you who to call. They have some people because they work
in that industry, and they're gonna know some good people to come in and
do that that layout for you. Okay, thank you, yes, sir,
thank you very much. I appreciate that. Yeah. Peerscapes they've been
around since nineteen eighty eight, and well this summer has been brutal, you
know, I mean Freds just talking about wiping out as grass. Well,
look at the plants and the trees that have struggled through this summer. You
may be looking at it going man, I just give up on guarding.
Don't give up on gardening. You can have a beautiful place. In fact,
the easiest, simplest way to get first class beauty and quality would be
to half Peerscapes come in and transform the landscape, get it looking beautiful again.
They can do that. Fall is the best time to get this done.
So you need to call them now because you need time to get in
there. Talk with them about what you want, what they can do,
get a design put together, and tell them please include some of the more
drought tolerant plants. I don't if we go through this again, I want
some plants that are as tough as they can be to survive it. Peerscapes
can do that. They can design a landscape that is more resilient. There's
different ways to do that. There's choosing the good plants, preparing the soil
right that's important for drought tolerance, Putting in a quality irrigation system that operates
efficiently, that does efficient irrigation. And while they're there, hardscapes, walkways,
you know, lighting, maltzing, all the other kinds of things.
Piercecapes dot com or just to eat one three seven, zero fifty sixty.
Uh. They they can turn what is brown and discouraging into something that is
beautiful and bountiful. Let's go out to North Houston. Now we're gonna talk
to Robert. Hello, Robert, Hello, Skip. I want you to
help him with a problem. I've got a cousin from East Texas and he
says he's been eating at poke salad, poke weed always laughs. Yeah.
And I got a hold of culture books, I got garden books, and
every one of them says it's all parts of poisonous. Do not eat poke
salad, do not. And I've got a gardener, a guy that mos
my grass up and New Waverley born and raised New Waverley. He said he's
been he's eighty eight years old. He's been eating folk salad always laughs.
So what is the deal. He got his master's degree and ate it from
A and M Austrey. Yeah, we'll see from the A or the M
side. You know, we got we got engineers and we got agriculture,
and we got everything else up there. I'll cut to the chase on poke.
Poke weed is poisonous. But when you take the fresh tender growth and
you boil it and pour off the water, I don't know if you have
to pour it off twice. I think it wouldn't hurt to pour it off
twice, but at least at least once. For sure, it gets rid
of all the things that would have hurt you in it. And that's how
these old Southerners have eaten pork poke salad for years. It is a big
old weed. The birds eat the berries and planted everywhere when they do their
droppings. But yeah, you can do it, you sure can, all
right, Okay, Well that's sols a mystery. Thank you. I appreciate
you. Bet. There you go. Hey, we're gonna take a little
break here seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We'll be
right back to your calls. Well, good morning. You are listening to
garden Line. We're here to talk gardening. Of course, if you haven't
been out to the bee supply, you need to go. I brag on
it all the time. If you are a beekeeper, if you want to
be a beekeeper. They have beginning classes once a month out there that are
just outstanding. Not only classroom, they do a six hour class with lunch
included, by the way, but you also get out in the bar to
actually see and handle the bees that are out there. You can go to
the b Supply dot Com find out more. There's also the free hunty tours
for all the rest of you who knows you may decide to keep bees,
especially if you're a gardener. Free honey tours are out there about once a
month as well, no cost obviously. But they now have their new observation
high back Up and going. I used to brag on it all the time.
This one is really pretty impressive. They've got a video of it getting
filled and installed on their Facebook page. You can see what it looks like.
But take the kids out there. This is a big old indoor plexiglass
area where you can see the bees in action inside the store. Pretty cool
at the Bee Supply dot Com out in Dayton area. I'm gonna go to
the phones now and we're gonna talk to Arthur. Hello, Arthur, how
are you this morning? How are you doing there? Skip? I'm good?
What's up? Well? I heard you talking about pro Vista, and
I've actually been working with Scott's and A and M. By the way,
that's a joint release from both A and M and the Scots company. And
uh, we started working on it back in the late nineteen ninety seven,
ninety eight, so it took a while to get here. Wow, that
is a long time coming. Well, and so tell me tell me a
little bit more about it. Well, number one, I heard the gentleman
asking. I heard your response, and I do apologize for we probably should
have gotten better information out to the public. But just like the other new
release from A and M Cobalt, this is a new release. It's probably
a the years ahead in the market. We've got eleven growers all over the
state of Texas, top growers and and you're one of your sponsors. King
Ranch is one of them. And by the way, we're Milburger turf grass.
We grow about eighteen different varieties down here, so we see varieties come
and go, just like you have. Yes, yes, you have,
you have art. And for those of you who are listening that don't know,
art is a legend in the turf grass world. I believe you've grown
a few thousand acres worth the turf grass harvesting over the over the time,
right, yes, or we have. We've been in business over seventy five
years and wow, so uh you know. But but all I can tell
you we've made all the mistakes. And that's the only reason I know what
I know today. Uh, And that's the truth. But you know what
one important thing about any new turf grass, uh number one, we do
have the credentials dislike you know A and M breeder up in Dallas and Vicats
worked on this thing. Uh it was in uh six different I guess it's
been up there six seven years now with the winners. So you know,
once we can grow grass in Dallas, especially Saint Augustine, that says a
lot for it from a host point of cold heat. So you know,
these grasses all have the good traits. But the provista we the reason it's
more the reason we we even talk about Clytha sate tolerance or resistance is that's
because that's good for the farmer because we put so much chemical on grass because
we're always growing grass on bare ground and harvested, so we're not like a
homeowner that's got that nice line and doesn't have weed invasion. So that's a
very important characteristic for the farmer, not so much the homeowner. We hope
you we sell the treat without any weeds in it, so it's not the
clate. The most important thing about Provista, in my opinion, besides having
all these great traits, is it's it's fifty percent less mowing the vertical growth,
not the horrid lenlgoth. The vertical growth is fifty percent less. And
that's the reason because I pounded on Scott's for years. I said, look,
if you release a graft based on glap of sate, well that's really
not a big deal for the home I mean it is, right, but
it's really a big deal for the farmer because right now in our fields we're
not using all these chemicals that we had to use because round up, I
say, is a pretty sublime, very easy. Uh. It's easy on
the environment. It's not like all these career modes and post emergence. So
that's for the farmer, But the homeowner, if you want to go away
for three weeks, four weeks, you don't have to mow that. So
we got yes. Yeah, So what you're saying basically is If you don't
want to spray the glave sate on your yard, that's fine. But this
this is the one of the peak advantages. And number it's got the cold
hardiness. Number two, that vertical growth and not mowing so often. Boy,
that I can see why people would be interested in that. That's the
deal right there, because I mean, if you and I mean, and
you know we like to say we grow, we're supermarket down here for grass
h palisades, for instance. It's a great grasp. You're gonna be mowing
it every five to seven days if you're irrigating it, just like sund up.
Now, I'm not saying people won't mow pro vast every week, because
you know what people do on a weekend. People like to get out there
and getting there, like to fertilize it, they like to mow it,
they like to do all these I'm just saying it doesn't take all these inputs
from us from side grower. We barely mow this thing all year and then
we harvest it and we don't have to put the chemicals. I mean,
it's the same thing like they've done with all the crops. They've just put
this one gene. But I'll talk Scots into doing one important thing. Give
give a home on or a trait a significant difference over brolly palmetto all these
graphs something right, they can they can, you know, go to the
bank with well, as you know, we we like to mow about a
third of the leaf blade off to avoid the big you know, major mow
bag. You know, let it get ankle high and then try to mow
it down to the normal height. Uh Instead, Now, even if you
mow every week, you're just doing a light trimming and you're probably gonna have
better density as a result of that. Excellent. And the color is a
whole other shade of any other uh sat augustine turf grass on the market to
go bluish or what's there? We're from? Green? Is the shade a
green? Or green green? Or green green? Okay? You know you've
got all sorts of shades of green. I mean all these and I and
I don't particularly uh you know, I like them all. I like all
the shades of green. But this one has that I mean, it really
takes your breath away when you look at it compared to it some of the
augustine and you know the number one thing that sells in my business, it
what's heller? Oh color? Yeah, yeah, that's that's well. I
believe a few people, a few people are going to be buying grass after
this summer. So that's all good information. I know they're will By the
way, I want to really uh compliment you. You know, Randy and
I were friends for years and we made video turf videos together. But in
so many garden shows, uh, they said, I mean, it's constantly
vegetables and trees, vegetables, this or that. But you have really carrying
on tradition because of I can tell just because of your consideration for lawns,
because a lot of times lawns get ignored in the whole landscape and they're taking
for granting. But I really appreciate you stepping in there and really emphasizing that
lawn. And I've listened to the show and you give excellent, excellent advice.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You know, in four
years of doing a county extension horticulture work, two things make the phone ring.
It's trees and turf. And that's true on garden line as well,
and so we do need to spend time talking about those two. All right,
thank you so much for the call. I appreciate that. It's good
to hear your voice and talk to you. We'll have to go out there
and do some videos. Sounds like thank you. I appreciate you giving us
a call very much. You know, talking about your lawns. When we're
trying to get our lawn out of the funk that we've been through this summer,
a good quality fertilization is important. And Microlife products they have a number
of different Microlife fertilizers that you can use. They are all excellent. They
all work for the purposes that they were designed to do. You know,
the six two four is the one we use all summer long when it comes
to fertilizing our lawns. It's at three one two race. You've got a
lot of nitrogen, very little phosphorus, and medium amount of potassium. Now
we're switching and to the fall season and the microlif brown patch is going to
be the one that we talk about then because it drops the nitrogen gets that
keeps that potassium up there, which is what we need to do going into
fall. Now. Microlife has a number of different products. I talk about
their seaweed, fish based product Ocean Harvest. It's the blue labeled product.
Good for a rejuvenation. It's got the nutrients in it. It's got a
lot of other substances that come with fish. There's hormone substances, there's all
kinds of plant stimulator substances and so on. Definitely stimulating microbial activity and microbes
and plants leave hands hand in hand. It is very important to have both
and to take care of both. And that's what you do with Microlife.
You can go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com find out more information and find out
how to have success with your garden, your lawn, your trees, your
shrubs, your vegetables, everything you want to grow. There's Microlife product for
that. Let's go to Sugarland. Now we're going to talk to James.
Hello, James, Hey, good morning. How are you. I'm well
this morning. What's up? I have a massive oak tree out in my
pasture in Austin County and it's got a slight crack an old looks like an
old wound, ye and I've got sawdust coming out of it. Okay,
I don't I don't see any ants, so I'm assuming it's some kind of
bore. But how high on the trunk is this? Uh? Four feet?
Half feet? And are you seeing any kind of leakage of liquid or
sap? Nope, just the saughtup Okay, nope, just the sup.
So that's a borer of some type. We don't know which one based on
just the sawdust it. There are boars that bore into the the living cambium
tissues and the flow and zylm in that area. Those are a problem.
They kill trees. There are boars that are opportunists that want that interior wood
to do their work in and they're not going to kill the tree, but
they're just are assigned that that tree bark was moved apart where they could get
into the interior wood. So I would I would probably wait and watch.
There are not many products to control boards because they're in there inside the tree,
and you can't use systemics on the ones that are working in the wood
because the juices aren't flowing into that inner wood to carry the systemic to it.
I would probably wait and watch. It's not a good sign, but
there's not a really good product. You could you could continually spray something that
the boars would have to crawl through as they finish their life cycle and come
out. But I just think that's going to be a lot of tedium and
you may not get the job done. Okay, So there's nothing you can
spray up in the crack to, you know, like kill on contact.
Well, I mean you could, you could try that, but if they're
down in a tunnel around inside the wood, the product's not going to reach
them. But if you if you want to just try something, a product
that has bipentthin in it as a pretty persistent product. They're readily available,
lots of forms of it. You might try that, but it's generally not
you know, it's not a big bif it's not a big borer recommendation.
Okay, okay, but that won't hurt the tree. Oh no, it
won't hurt the tree at all. No, okay, right? And it
is it too hot to put six two four out around trees? Oh yeah,
yeah, you can still do that if you want to do that.
I got about ten seconds. I will wrap this up quick. But yeah,
and any kind of a good lawn fertilizer is great for use to run
trees as well. All right, thank you, sir, appreciate that call.
It is time for the Nikki News Network and then we'll be back at
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well, good morning,
good Saturday morning, and welcome to garden Line. Walk outside, feel
the air. It is the promise of fall. It's our little down payment
on the wonderful weather and gardening times to come this fall. Thank goodness to
get this break in the intense, intense heat. Well, you know,
when when I think about taking care of the garden, taking care of the
plants that we have, I mean we always start with the soil. There's
a lot of products though that we have to do. I mean, sometimes
you're putting a fertilizer down, maybe you're fighting a pest or disease. Maybe
you're dealing with weed problems and things like that. Maybe you need a certain
kind of tool to get the job done. Well, all of that and
a lot lot more you're going to find it Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer has
been a Houston tradition here since what nineteen fifty five. They're on the corner
of Bissonette and Runwick in Southwest Houston, and they carry everything you're not going
to find a better selection of anything that you need for your lawn and garden
than you do it Southwest Fertilizer. I like to say, if they don't
have it, you don't need it, because that's pretty much the case.
If they don't have it, you don't need it. Eighty foot wall of
tools. Do you need to get your more blade sharpened? It makes your
grass look better when you have a sharp mower blade. They can do that.
They have a little repair shop in the back where they can do some
engine work and take care of things like that. They have quality products,
they have expert advice, and best of all, old fashioned service. They
know what they're talking about. They don't sell you something you don't need.
They listen to your question and they point you towards the product that will get
the job done right. Bob Patterson and his team can diagnose the problem and
head to you in the right direction. Go online to Southwest Fertilizer dot com.
You'll see what I'm talking about Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Hey, by
the way, when you're out there, you know my favorite new gardening tool
I guess if you will call it a tool, is the kneeling bench.
The thing that makes it easy to get up and down in the gardener to
sit on when you're working on something down low in the garden. Your caropractor
will be disappointed if you buy a kneeling bench, but you won't. Bob's
got a whole bunch of them there in stock. Go by and ask him
about him. Let's go to sugar Land. Now we're going to talk to
Fred. Well. Hello, Fred. Hi. My question was that I
have I think of fro the grubs where the grass was detached, okay,
and some patches of thatch that are left and grass starting to grow back in.
Is it better to remove that thatch and maybe use some composts or is
it better just to leave it go and see if the grass will go dry?
This is Saint Augustine you're talking. Yes, it is Sat Augustine.
I'm sorry, so are you putting new grass on top of Nosa. It's
just the grass from the margins is coming back in all of a sudden it's
started to grow. Well, I mean you can take it out if it's
not too difficult. The problem with Saint Augustine being all above ground and all
the de thatching that they do on northern turf grasses is a little more difficult
with Saint Augustine without doing a whole lot of damage to it. So I
would just be careful if you're going to remove some of the old out Otherwise,
I think your best bet would be to spread some quality leaf mold compost
over the area. That will help those runners to decompose. They are slow
to decompose, but it will help speed that process of getting all that organic
matter in the runners turned back into good quality saw material. We're just goin
to leave the FATCHI and us compost with it, little compo, little light
compost, stop dressing over the top of it. I think you'd be fine.
Yeah, okay, well, thank you very much, you bet Fred,
thank you. I appreciate that call. Appreciate that very very much.
You know, we're in the season when here come the storms and we get
our power outages. And when you get a power outage, you got a
lot of a lot of valuable food and the freezer and the refrigerator. What
if you're away from town, what do you do? Well, what you
do is you go to Quality Home Products of Texas and you get you a
Genderac generator. You know Genderacs Automatic standby generators. That is the coolest thing.
Generac automatic standby. What happens there is maybe you're gone and the power
goes out, the generator just comes on and it does what it needs to
do. I mean, this is one smart cookie here. It's exactly what
you need. They have ten kilowatte up to twenty six kilarote generatic generatic generact
generators. They're very quiet, very quiet, consumed less wool, run on
natural gas or liquid propane. They sit outside, just like having a central
area unit. You never renotice it, but boy, when you need it,
it is on hand and ready. You know, it's not just a
hurricane that shuts down our power. The grid is unreliable and you don't have
to wait for a storm for the power to go out. Get ahead of
the game with a GENERAC generator from Quality Home Products of Texas. You can
go to QUALITYTX dot com or give him a call seven one three Quality that
will get you on the road to having your house protected and to help not
just the inconvenience, but in many cases the financial loss and damage that can
occur when we do lose power. I can't remember how many time we always
have a bunch of candles sitting in a drawer that we would fumble our our
way in the dark through to try to light up when the power went out.
Oh boy, but these modern generators they are some then special, very
very helpful, very very helpful. I was bragging on Nelson's their plant food
earlier and the carbo load specifically. You know, they have like what six
I believe different parts of the turf star line from Bruce's brew, which is
an immediate relation using anytime of the year you want. They've got the of
a feather light, which is a made out of one third feather meal,
very kind of more of an organic ingredient there in that food. They've got
this low and easy we use all summer when we want a long, gradual
release. The carbo loads the fall one, and we're gonna be putting that
down in October. For those of you further up north, you can do
it late September if you want. I focus on the October time for carbo
load, But carbo load, because it's got that pre emergent in it as
well, you want to get it down early in that fall feeding time because
our winter weeds are going to start germinating in October again depending on the temperatures,
the season we have and where you live. And we want to get
the pre you have to get the pre emergent down and watered in before you
prevent in order to prevent those weeds. Carver Load will do just that.
It's a ten ten twenty product. Nelson Plat Foods available and a lot of
places. Is not hard to find super quality fertilizer from Nelson's. We're gonna
take a break. It is time for that. We will be back our
phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give Josh
a call. He'll get you on the boards. That should be the that
should be the bumper music for this show. Call me by bla Blondie.
You can call me at seven one three two one two fifty fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two and two five eight seven four to answer your gardening
questions, speaking of which I will be out at plantation as today I've been
talking about this morning. I watch come out and see me. Bring me.
You're tired, You're weary, your disease and insect infested masses yearning to
be cured. We will answer that, we will answer to diagnose them and
direct you to a product that'll fix it. That's why we're out there to
meet you. I'd love to meet Gardenline listeners. It's gonna be there.
I'll be there from a eleven thirty to one thirty. They got quite a
shindig planned. They're gonna be doing giving away a Weber Grettel and there will
be food trucks out there. They've got some food samples. I'm gonna be
given away. Nitro FoST fertilizer. They have a fall three step program.
It is a fertilizer that is appropriate for fall application. The fall. We
call them winterizer, but fall fertilizers. They're gonna have that nitro Foss product
for that. They're gonna have night Foss product for insect control and night Foss
product for good disease control. And they'll be providing those to give away in
sets of three and we're gonna be doing it all through that two hour period.
So another good reason to get out there and enjoy us. Enjoy yourself
with us out at Plantation Hardware in Richmond, Texas. Not hard to find,
and while you're there, it is a great place to shop. You
know, I was sitting outside in the heat and just my wife and I
just kind of quit using the back patio because it is just so blazing hot.
You go out there at eight o'clock and you're breaking a sweat. Still,
Well, that is changing, and that is important because ACE Hardware stores
are a wonderful place to turn your outdoor living areas into a beautiful escape.
I think of it as they help make your They help make your backyard part
of your home. So do you need a grill? Do you need outdoor
furniture decor or lighting, or outdoor power equipment even in outdoor games, and
so much more? It's available at ACE Hardware. There's thirty nine of them
in the Houston area. Ace hardware dot com do their store locator find the
one nearest to you. It's really simple, and when you're there, you're
definitely gonna want to pick up all the products you need for your lawn,
for your garden. So these lawn fertilizers we talk about are holidays, the
products that control pests, that control disease, They control weeds, Holidays and
along with a lot lot more. Trust me, when you go into ACE,
I know you're going in there to buy back a fertilizer or something along
those lines. You're going to find a whole lot of other stuff that you
didn't know they carried, but now you do. So check out Ace Hardware
dot com find the store nearest you are. Just for a real quick one.
Join me today eleven thirty out at Plantation ACE in Richmond. We're going
to head out to talk to Stephen. Now, Hello, Stephen, Hey,
Skip, how are you doing. I'm fine? How are you today?
Good? Good? Just a minute ago, you had a caller from
Austin County with the powder coming out of an oak tree and his pasture.
Yeah, the boars a huh uh, And then you started with asking is
it weeping or is it dry? Powdery? And has with dry pottery.
Okay. In the last week, I've had an oak tree do the exact
same thing that you were referring to. It's just copious amount of wheat,
just fluid coming down the trunk of this tree. Okay. So what it
looks like. It's right in the area where I had trimmed off a couple
of lambs last year, lower lambs. Yeah, and I've got just all
kinds of stuff coming out of it. Okay, Well, it could be
that from the wound disease organism, a canker type organism has moved in there
and is continuing to infect and prevent adequate healing of that area, and so
you're getting the weeping from that. By any chance? Is it white and
frothy weeping? Yes, exactly white where the wound it was? Yeah?
Are you seeing any like wasps or butterflies on it? On the froth?
I haven't a skip. Actually this just started. I think we noticed it
Saturday or Sunday. Okay, what past weekend? Well, what you've got
is is not a borer. What it is is a disease called slime flux.
There's other names for it. There's a bacterial wet wood that's another version,
but slime flux basically, what happens is you create a wound and inside
the tree that sap is sugary. It's carbohydrates that the leaves made right,
and so it ferments just like any sugary substance wood out in nature, and
it happens under the bark. They get back in there under the bark,
so they build up pressure from that fermentation, and that's why you get the
white, frothy material. That's just showing that it's a fermentation product. Because
it's a fermentation product, wasps and some butterflies love it and they'll get right
on it. I mean it's like a little insect beer joint right there on
the property. They don't get dropped or anything. Uh, you know they
probab do They probably do. But you do need to charge admission, at
least a cover charge to get into this tree because it's a valuable product for
them. Well what do we do about it? Well, the real danger
of it is the pressure builds up and kind of lifts the bark up away
from the wood, and that's kind of another bit of a wound. There's
nothing to spray on it. There's no back tier, side use scored in
there anything. There's no way to kill that. You just want your tree
to be healthy, which requires adequate moisture, which good luck without this summer
right, but adequate moisture, it'll start to form a callous and it'll close
that wound back over in time. It happens more on older trees and young
trees. It happens in the summertime more than any other time of the year,
and it may take a while to go away, but just realize it's
just kind of a nagging wound, not so much of a big thing to
be concerned about. Okay, well, this one does happen to be a
younger tree. It's about a four or five year old nut all that I
had planned the back yard. Oh good. But everything else, everything else
you said is perfect. I mean I can't beat the price on the on
the fire. Yeah. No, no, not at all, not at
all. And you have fun things to tell your friends too. You can
bring them out there when they come visit. Say, let me take you
to my little joint. Yeah, exactly right, that's it. Okay,
Skip, Thank you, Stephen. I appreciate that call very much. And
it's good you got a nut all. That's a great tree, by the
way, a great redda probably my favorite reddoape to plant in this area.
And being out and I mean skip, actually yeah, I purposely purposely picked
that. Along with shuemards. We had we had water ropes. Yeah,
we lost every one of them due to hot box one. Yeah, and
so yeah, I came to the same assessment you did. It's a great
tree. It is really happy being young. It's going to grow fast,
and that's that slime flux or back trio wetwood, whatever it is is not
going to be an ongoing problem probably for you. Just remember keep it,
keep it adequately moist, because the whole key to the tree recovering and even
avoiding this kind of thing is good vigor and so drought, lack of nutrients,
lack of water that that is what's in your control. Ironically, of
the three that I've planned in the last three or four years, this is
the most vigorous of the three, okay, and it looks the best,
so but anyway, okay, well, I appreciate the info. All right,
sir, thank you, appreciate your call. Appreciate that very much.
Just a reminder again that we have got our my lawn care schedule online.
You go to gardening with skip dot com. Really easy. Gardening was skip
dot com. I thought about putting at skip Richter dot com, which I
also owned that that website, but nobody knows how to spell Richter. So
gardening with skip dot com. People in California know how to spell Richter because
it's the same as the earthquake scale out there. But you know what I
mean. Gardening was skip dot com. Look for the lawn at Care schedule.
If you like synthetic products, if you like organic products, they're both
available there on the schedule, including when to apply them and the products the
quality products that are sold in our area for both of those categories, organic
and synthetic. Information on mowing, information on watering, information on air raiding
and applying trace minerals. Coming soon, We're going to get that lawn pest,
disease and weed management schedule out. That one's a little bit more of
a Pandora's box. I'll be talking about these things online as we get into
our fall season for dealing with these things, and that's going to be October
November. When we're looking at pre emergent herbsage, or we're looking at fungicide,
we're looking at any kind of recovery from a disease problem. We've got
it all on there. It's going to be coming out soon. I just
got to work through a Pandora's box, and I'm trying to make it very
easy to understand, but yet thorough enough to provide you all the information that
you need. Hey, we're putting a garden line show in the books.
We'll be back tomorrow morning from six to ten AM. Ever Saturday six to
ten you can listen to us by podcast. If you miss the show,
or if you have friends out in tim Buck two and the signal doesn't reach
them, they'dn't be pretty far out for the signal not to reach them.
They can listen in either online live, or they can go to the podcast
whatever podcast supplier you have. Just look for gardening line. Now, I'm
about to jump in a car and make a b line to Plantation Ace Hardware
in Richmond, Texas, eleven thirty to one thirty. I'll look forward to
seeing you bring me your different kinds of creatures that we need to identify