Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with skimp Rictor. It's trip.
Just watch him as well. Things the suprasy not a sign. Good morning,
Good Sunday morning. Glad to have you joining us bright and early until
bright outside. Glad to have you with us today. You are listening to
the Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to
talk about plans. How do we have to help you have success with the
kind of plant should want to grow. One of the fun things about horticulture
is that you can grow all kinds of different things. There are people who
just care about flowers, just care about vegetables, just care about herbs,
really care about their lawn. You know, it just goes on and on.
Maybe you want to attract hummingbirds, Maybe you want to attract butterflies.
What are you interested in? How about house plants? You know. One
other nice thing about horticulture and gardening is that you never age out of it.
And I was visiting with some one the other day about you know,
they had been a very active gardener, just really active outside, and as
they got significantly older and a little less physically able, they just shifted over
to other things. Working with houseplants and other types of things that they could
do inside. I was in a senior living facility a few weeks ago where
they had a built table inside. It was beautiful. It was just imagine
a raised bed indoors, but a bet on wheels that was a pied like
wheelchair height, had lights over it and everything, all the grow lights,
and it was just a place where they would have gardening classes for the residents
to come down the hall and be able to grow herbs and flowers and all
kinds of things. It was really cool. I thought that was a good
idea. You know, gardening keeps you young. It does, and Thomas
Jefferson even do this, he said, though I am an old man,
I am a young gardener. And so anyway, just a little upbeat thing
to kick off show today. We're going to head first thing out to Port
Netches and we are going to talk to Eric. Hello Eric, good morning,
Skip, How are you sir? Well, thank you. I've got
an olive train I've had in the pot for about five years and it never
produced well. This year it produced a lot quite a bit. And what
I've noticed is after the rain, I have these these brown spots almost like
like a rot. It appears on ninety percent of the fruit use. The
only fertilize I use is the mark Life six two four water regularly, the
leaves look good, everything else looks good other than the fruit. And it
happened on with silver Nce. Interesting. Well. Olives are not a big
crop, especially in this part of the state. They've they've been working on
trying to grow them over further west from here. I am not familiar with
the specific fruit rots that would attack an olive. That it could be one
of the more common, uh, you know, fruits rots that we have.
We have brown rot on peaches and whatnot, and it may be something
like that. But as far as what to do about it, if it
truly is a rot, you're going to need to be able to put a
fungicight on ahead of the rot arriving so that the surface of the fruit is
protected from a spore that would land and initiate that rot. Olives are happiest
in a more arid place, so whenever we're going to have a period of
rainy weather or if you have a sprinkler that happens to get them wet frequently,
that just kind of exacerbates the problem, makes it a little more common,
makes sense because if it didn't show, we had a heavy rain on
Thursday. Yeah, yeah, well, and actually, if we're just looking
back to Thursday, this had to have infected before then to already show up
as a as a yeah, show up as a rot right now. That
that's too fast to come from this rain. So I'm just trying to think.
I've never heard. We've got an olive specialist at Texas and M who
works with the industry, a couple of folks that work with the industry,
and I just don't No, I've never heard them talk about any kind of
a particular fruit route. I know they are there, and you'll find them
in other parts of the world where olives are grown more commercially. Yeah,
I might reach out to them because it was it was twenty four hours the
day before the fruit looked fine, okay, And it was like a twenty
four hour period in Bam Well, I'd say probably ninety percent of the fruit
and it might not be rotten. It might be something else. Yeah,
it may be. It may be something else. Could you take some pictures
of it up close? If you may. You may need to pick two
or three olives and bring them in, set them on a table where you
can really get as close as possible, good sharp focus, and send them
to me and I will run those by some folks then focus on olives to
see there may be something else going on there. I'm going to put you
on hold and my producer will get on the phone and give you an email
address that you can send them to. Okay, thank you so much,
skill you've met. Thanks, I appreciate that call very much. If you
haven't fertilized your lawn yet, sweet green from nitrofoss is an organic option.
It is a very pleasant smelling fertilizer. You don't usually say pleasant smelling and
fertilizer in the same sentence, but this one is. Because it's a molasses
based product. It's eleven percent nitrogen so and it dissolves quickly and moves down
into the soil. Microbes go nuts when you start adding carbohydrate sugar based substances.
The beneficial bacteria and whatnot. Love that now. Sweet green is widely
available. You can get it in a channing gardens down in the Richmond Rosenberg
area. Shades of Texas up in the woodlands also carries it, as do
the Fishers Hardwares in South Euston on South Moore and the one over in the
Port on Broadway Street. Good places. Stop in and get your sweet green.
We're going to go now to Jason and Magnolia. Hello, Jason Skip
Harry this morning. I'm good, sir, awesome. Well, hey,
my question also regards a tree. We had a Japanese magnolia tree that was
planted by the previous summers and this is our third spring season with it.
First two years have produced, you know, tons of leaves and tons of
those beautiful pink flowers. This year though only like two of the it's kind
of like fifteen individual skinnier trunks, and only two of them actually produced any
leaves, and even then not much and we maybe got five flowers out of
it this year. So just trying to maybe ask what could have led to
that, and what can we do to encourage it to bounce back if at
all? All right, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm going
to take a break here. We gotta do a little quick news break.
When I come back, I will I will answer that, and it's gonna
be related mostly to cold weather. But i'll be I'll be right back.
For those of you listening our phone number seven one three two kt r H,
welcome back to Guardenline. Good to have you with us. I'm going
to get back to Jason's question here about the Japanese magnolia. Jason, I
think this is one of the questions I would call a fuzzy question. And
what I mean is it's not just a black and white Okay, it's absolutely
this. This is the problem. Go do this and it fixes it.
It could be a number of different things. The amount of sunlight that a
plant gets affects its ability to create carbohydrates which make blooms and fruit ultimately on
fruiting plants. And it could be that where you have it planted, it's
not getting enough light. So while it bloomed initially, then now you're looking
at going through a season and not setting the bloom buds to actually provide bloom
again. That's one possibility. While Japanese maple is generally hearty enough for our
area, it is possible with sudden drops in cold to have cold damage.
To one. They're not super hardy here, I mean they're dependable here,
but we can have conditions that do that. We had crape myrtles, which
grow all the way up to Washington, d C. Get cold damage two
decembers ago for that exact same reason. The thing that puzzled me a little
bit was the lack of leaves coming out on those shoots, and either cold
damage or I did a quick check, because there's something called chilling hours where
a plant has to have so many hours in order for the buds of the
leaves and the buds of the blooms to open normally. Even if they did
you do have them, they don't open normally. That happens to peaches a
lot. When you plant a peach, it should be planted further north than
here. But I could not find anything indicating that on a Japanese maple.
So I guess takes me back to fuzzy as a fuzzy answer. And at
this point that's all that I would know to tell you. Uh, tell
me again, how long you've had it in that spot? Yeah, I
couldn't take it along the Japanese. I know who has been there. It
was planted before us by the previous time owners. Okay, this is our
it's our third spring with it at this point, it's boom, it's almost
sudden. Yeah. Yeah, And it's on the southern most point of our
property. It's full somat exposure. So I would you know your point about
chilling hours makes more sense because this past winter we hardly we had one freeze
as maybe not even twenty four hours, so brief. Yeah, and but
but chilling hours are are not even freezing that it's like forty five degrees as
chilling hours. So I'm gonna have to say, I don't know. Is
the ultimate answer from me on that. I will look into it and see
if I can find anything else on it. If anybody else has had this
problem, that'd be interesting to hear about. But would there be anything we
can do to look at like the tips of the different branches to see like
maybe to break a few back and see I should be going on a side.
I would take my thumbnail on the little small branches that are out near
the ends and just scrape, scrape the bark back. It should be a
cream color to a light green color right underneath that thin bark. Uh.
And if it's paper sacked brown, pecan brown, or if it snaps real
easily, uh, and it's clearly dry and it's dead. Uh. But
you if you have to use a little pocket knife to scrape it, you
know, you don't have to whittle it away or anything, just just scrape
back the thin outer surface. Okay, all right, thank you very much.
I appreciate that. All right, let's see we are gonna go to
copper Field. No, I'm sorry, I'm trying to catch people in order.
Here. We're gonna go to Spring, Texas and talk to James or
Jacob. How you doing James, good morning. Uh. My father in
law grew beautiful roses and what is passing looking in the cabinet. The old
thing he has was miracle grow. My question is what are the dews and
don't with miracle grow? Well, miracle grows a product you mix up water
and the nutrients are then dissolved in water and you apply it to plants.
It's one that's quickly available. Roses they number one. What they need depends
on what your soil is. Okay, they do need nitrogen. We know
they're going to need nitrogen. But everybody's soil is a little different. That's
why soil test is a good way to know exactly what roses in your soil
at your property are going to do best with that said, there are a
lot of products out there that are for rose fertilizing. You know, the
Nelson plant food and nitroposs both make a product for blooming plants like roses,
for example, or a rose food specifically, and those would be the way
that I would go, in the absence of knowing exactly what it's already in
your soil. As a good show. Now, if you got something on
hand, good and use it, follow the labels mixing it up, don't
mix it too strong, good and use it up. But I would switch
over to something granular that you could work into the soil around the plants to
support good growth. They bloom on new shoots. So when you have when
you prin them and what was one shoot, now you got two or three
sprouting where it was. That means you have increased the number of potential blooms.
And so you need the vigor from nitrogen. You need really good sunlight
as much as possible, and then there's some occasional pruning to get the most
out of those roses. Well, I think he bought Miracle Girl every time
he passed the store. I probably got two to three years worth of it
sitting in the Okay, so the question is do I spray it on the
leaves? Do I spray it on the bottom? How often do you spray
how often do you fertilize any comments? Well, you can spray it on
foliage that just follow the label. There's gonna be a super low rate for
a folio type application. But I would mix it up, probably use a
watering can, drench it in around the roots until you've used that up.
All right, Well, I appreciate, thank you very much for your time.
God bless all right, thank you. Good luck with those with those
roses. That's a cool plant. I love love growing roses. Have you
been to enchanted gardens recently? They are stocked up on a lot of really
cool plants, which of course is nothing new. They're always stocked up on
things. Their bootleas are outstanding. If you haven't ever grown a bootlia,
you ought to try it. Boodlias have these giant spikes of flowers, typically
in a pink, purple, white, in that range, blue, in
that range of colors. They're fragrant and they are butterfly magnets. Butterfly bush
is one of the names Boodlia because they love they love this plant. The
more you share a Boudleia, the more ballooms you get, and they can
get you set up at in Chendi Gardens, you need to go by and
see those. They're really really pretty. They have a lot of different things
in stock right now. You can always depend on them to have the best
of plants. They're stocked up for Mother's Day, lots of wonderful gifts and
including the gift shop and everything else. There's some beautiful planters they put together,
some in white metal bucket containers, kind of a farmhouse. Look,
I think you're really attractive. Whatever your mom likes, you're going to find
it there and it's easy to get in, easy to get out. It's
on FM three fifty nine just north of Richmond Rosenberg. The website go ahead
and write this down Enchented Gardens Richmond dot com. They're open today from ten
am to four pm, normally Monday through Saturday. You're going to find them
open from eight to five and in Chenny Gardens on the Katie Folsher side of
Richmond on FM three fifty nine. We are going to now go to let's
see Kim in Copperfield. Hello Kim, Hi, Good morning, Skit,
Good morning. Yesterday I was doing some weeding in a bed that we are
redoing. Soil was soft after the rain, and it was a good time
to do that. I was noticing we have a lot of carolina snail seed
in that bed, and as I was pulling those out, I found many
of them were connected to deep roots that were quite thick. So I was
pulling out all of those roots the best that I could, and some of
the roots I could not pull out all the way. And I wanted to
ask you what is the best way to control that so that I don't have
to continue to pull these roots out year after year. And then secondarily,
I was finding a few little spots where carolina snail seed was popping up in
my yard, and so knowing how deep those roots are, I'm a little
concerned and so wondering what's the best way to control that. Yeah, yeah,
that's true. Well, you're going to need to go to a product
that's more aimed at controlling brush and poison ivy types of things than your typical
lawn weed control products. The ingredient that you should look for when you go
to a garden center or go to a Ace hardware store where wherever you're shopping
is tri Clo Peer t r I c l O p y R tri Clo
Peer. It may be called poison ivy killer. It may be called brush
begone. I mean, it's got a lot of different names. But the
ingredient's what you want. You need to If you can spray it on the
leaves, that's fine. You need a spreader sticker because those they're not totally
glossy, but there's a spray's rollof off of Carolina snail seed, and so
a spreader sticker like Turbos an example of one of many, and you put
that in the mix and it makes the droplets spread out and stick to the
leaf. If you've got larger vines of it, you can take a little
paint a foam paintbrush like you would get at a hardware store for painting there
on little wooden stick you know the kind I'm talking about, just a little
one, and you dip that in your triclo paer and then you just sort
of paint it on the stems, the sides of the stems, and you
can do about a eight ten inch section like that. It will soak in
and move down. You're not going to get it all with one application because
there's a lot of storage root underground storage structure. But you go back and
do it again when you need to, and then just realize that there are
a lot of berries that those things produce, so you could have seedlings started
to pop up too. It's gonna be a little bit of an ongoing task,
I see. So can I also paint it on the roots that I
cut? I don't know, I've never you know, that's just not a
normal application for it because people generally don't you dig up a plant. But
if it's if it's anything above ground that you have cut, you can paint
it on the cut surfaces too. That works really well. Okay, alrighty,
looks like I'm going to have a longgoing project on this one. Yes,
and the birds or you're breaking their heart. They love those, they
love those, but I know they're breaking your heart too by plantinum everywhere.
Thank you, cam, I appreciate that. Thank youkiye bye bye. You
know. Ace Hardware is a place where you get all kinds of things like
that tricle pair I just talked about. For those of you dealing with water
issues. You know, they've got all of the things we do after a
flood, you know the things we need, fans and dehumidifiers and rubber boots
and gloves and definitely bleach and buckets and everything like that. You know,
the quick damn sandless sandbags. They've got those there. They've got bags of
tops well too. By the way, you use top soil as a sand
bag as well. UH utility knives. The damp Rid is a product that
dehumidifies. But that that tractor payer is talking about. Those are at ACE
Hardware. Forty of them are on the Houston area. Ace hardware dot com.
Welcome back to Guardline. Good to have you with us today. You'd
like to give us a call our phone number. I'm going to write this
one down seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three
two one two k t r H. You hear me talk about Nitrofoss's Superturf
a lot because it is an outstanding fertilizer to provide a gradual feed two year
lawn through the summertime. If you haven't put down a slow release fertilizer yet
this year, now's the time to get that done, and superturf is uniquely
formulated because the nitrogen in it. By the way, it's a nineteen four
to ten fertilizer, nineteen percent nitrogen. That nitrogen half of it is in
a slow release form. So you apply it today, let's just say you're
essentially applying too much today for one point in time. If it were a
fast release, it would be too much. But it's not a fast release,
and so that fertilizer keeps releasing over the next three or four months to
your lawnch so you'd get a nice even feed. And that's how lawns take
up nutrients, and that is how you have success. When you overdo at
a single point in time the nitrogen to your lawn, you get a lot
of top growth. It grows fast, it grows big, it grows green,
and you mow mom. But that comes at the expense of root growth.
We don't want to over apply a quantity of nitrogen at one time,
but with a slow release, we overcome that, see, because it's releasing
slowly over time. So what happens is you get a balanced lawn. Balanced
meaning it's got good top growth, it's got good color, but it also
has good root growth, so when summer comes and it's dry, you're all
right. You got a good resilient root system there to do it. And
Superturf is designed to feed like that. It also has four percent iron,
which is usually when you look at your lawn and you see yellowish areas that
you usually iron deficiency. So Superturf's in a silver bag. It's really easy
to pick out when you go to the garden center. Just swing in there,
ask them for the silver bag, and that is Nitrofus super Turf,
And I say, go to the gardens. You can find it a day's
hardware stores all over the place. Southwest Fertilizer, I mean, the superturf
is widely, widely available, easy to find a lot of our feed stores
as well. Even we'll carry the Nitrofus Superturf. I am heading to do
some yardwork this week, and I have actually been gone. I was out
out of town all week this past week. And with the rain, I
tell you, I don't know if I really want to see my lawn or
not. I think lions and tigers and bears will come crawling out of that
thing. By now, it's got to be a jungle. But anyway I
got away from it, I mowed it right for a left though, But
when I get back, I'm gonna have to do some mowing. And so
what do you do when your lawn has grown significantly and now you got to
mow it? You know, I always say return the clippings. Return the
clippings. Well, the two times in the year when I are two situations
where I wouldn't return clippings. Number one, when you have winter weeds gone
to seed and the seeds are all there on the plants, or when summer
weeds have gone to seed the seeds are on the plants. Could you're just
returning those seeds to the grounds. Better to bag as many of them as
you can and get them out of there. The other time is when you
haven't mowed for a while and the grass has gotten really tall, and it's
hard. When you mow it, your yard looks like a hayfield rasley and
everywhere. A good multing more helps. But sometimes it's too much for that,
and that would be a time when I'd bag those clippings, don't throw
them away, use them, spread them lightly as a malt in your vegetable
gardens. And flower beds and things. They are packed with nutrients. All
the nutrients you put on your lawn are showing up in those clippings, and
you don't want to throw those away. But another thing I will often do
is mow twice. I will mow at a higher setting and then I'll drop
it down to the desired setting and mow again. And my mower mult is
but not well, And so that's a way that I can actually chop those
clippings up a little bit more. Remember, when the lawn is wet,
you don't want to be mowing it. Then that just makes a real mess.
They get stuck underneath the housing of the mower and whatnot. But whenever
it does quit raining around here and you get back to your lawn, if
it's getting a little ahead of you, those are just some thoughts to think
about to getting things back in hand. If you are about to do some
gardening beds, and that would either be creating a bed or renovating a bed
and improving it, you need to get a hold of some of the many
products from airloom soils. Airlom soils has a rose soil that does not just
roses, but pretty much any kind of shrub you're going to plant in a
bed will do well with that. They've got their veggie and herb mix.
They got it in bags. You find it all over town in bags.
You can have them deliver it. They can dump it on the driveway,
or they can bring a supersack, which is a cubic yard sack that they
set on your driveway. You can go get it, go out to porter
and grab it in your trailer or truck, bring it back if you want
to go that route. They have fruit berry and citrus mix. They've got
the compost top dressings, the leaf more compost top dressings, a lot of
quality things there. With airloom soils. Now, there are unfortunately too many
places that sell crummy soil. What's cremy soil, Well, it's rushed through
the composting process, not fully composted to the point it needs to be.
It's not screened well. You open the bag and it's like you got a
bag of wood chips in there. There's just a lot of things people do
to make a buck that are not good for your plants. Airloom soil is
quality. That is the bottom line. If you want a bundant yield,
if you want healthy plants that is the result of planning them and a quality
mix like an heirloom soil. You can go to Airloom Soils off Texas dot
com Airloom Soils of Texas to find out more, as well as to find
their really cool calculator online where you know you're looking at this area going well,
I got a flower bed, how much do I need? Well,
the calculator will tell you exactly how much you need. We're going to go
now to Row Sharon and talk to Dennis. Hello, Dennis. Hello,
I'm good, I'm good. What's up. I've got a question I've been
thinking about. I've got a yard full of a lot of weeds. Mode
and so I modeed and then I was gonna apply look wid weed killer on
it, and I said, you know, maybe that should go on before
and then let it sit you. Yes, yeah, that's right. Let
those weeds grow leaves so the weed spray you're putting down has something to soak
into. Do that and uh, and then do it spray early in the
morning. Some of these products, once it gets up in the upper eighties,
they're a little stressful to your grasp, but that as simple as that
go online to Gardening with Skip. That's my website, Gardening with Skip.
The guide is on there for pest disease and weed control. It's free and
it tells you what to apply and when to apply it. Awesome. I
had one other quick question. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to hold
you over break for that one. I gotta I gotta head to some commercials
here and I'll be right back, all right, phone number seven one three
two one two K t r H. Welcome back to guarden Line. Good
to have you with us today. Hey, what are we going to talk
about? Will you tell me when you call in at seven one three two
one two K t r H. Buchanan's Native Plants in the Heights on Eleventh
Street is one of those awesome places to go and just experience. And I
really mean that. This isn't just a boring nursery with a bunch of things
sitting on tables and that's it. No, this is a you wander through.
You you see all the different kinds of plants that they have, and
wow, do they ever have a wide selection. If you're looking for something
for mom for Mother's Day, Oh well, the gift shop would be a
good place to start. Going into the house plant greenhouse. It's huge,
it's full of things that even if you're into house plants, there's a lot
in there that I guarantee you don't know the name of it. You've never
seen one of those before. That that is typical if you begin, it's
plants. Do you want a native plant? Number one place to go,
so I can think of Buchanans plots even down to the location of like I
want native to Harris County specifically. Yes, they have that. They have
got them separated out for you there right now. Tropical color is the thing.
We're entering the blazing hot season and they've got some blazing hot color.
Bougainvillias and mandavillas. That vine, oh my gosh, mandavia, beautiful little
vine. You can put a little trellis pole, you can put it in
a container with something to climb on in there. Plumerius, jungle jack,
plumerius the Hawaiian lay flower. That's what plumerias are. They are outstanding plants,
and it's they're not hard to grow. Just a few simple, few
simple practices and you can have success with them. Your backyard can become a
tropical paradise in a place that is like entering into a whole nother little secluded
nook that again, I love visiting. It's just fun to walk around there
and every time you turn a corner you find something else that you need to
take home with you. That's what I do at Least eleven Street in the
Heights. Buchanansplants dot com. You need go visit them, check them out.
We are now gonna go let's see here if i'd find the buttons,
We're gonna go back to Dennis and Road Sharon, Dennis, I think you
had a follow up, Yes, I did. My question is about wheat
killers that come in an apple hit or you just hook to your garden hose,
yes, and does that have surfactant in those? Typically not. I'm
not a big fan of those. I guess we would have to talk about
what weed are we going after. I prefer to use either a granular,
especially if you're doing a pre emergent with a granular, or to do a
spray, especially with the post emergent, to put a spray down where you
can direct it to the leaves themselves. With a garden hose, you're putting
out a lot of liquid, and so some of the products you don't want
to drench them down and have them go soap down deep into the soil and
affect tree roots or some other kind of thing. So I generally would say,
just get your product, mix it up in a sprayer, and go
through there and hit the weeds you need to hit with it. Great answer
my question. I appreciate you, all right, Dennis, Thank you for
the call. You take care those of you that are out there dealing with
the weather as it's been this past week and as it is today. You
got a band going through again today. I certainly do wish you well,
and our hearts go out to those of you who have suffered through some of
the flooding. And you know there's levels of concern that of course, first
is human life. Secondly is some of your very valuable property from your home
to other things that we're concerned about. We are happy to entertain questions about
landscapes after flooding and things like that as well. It's a little early probably
for that, but I just want to mention that we can talk about those
kind of things. Also when we are dealing with storms, we have to
remember that our trees are very susceptible to that. After these past few days
of storms, I mean, obviously we're in storm season. Hurricane season officially
starts June first and goes to the end of November. With it almost here,
now is the time to get your selective pruning done. And Martin Spoonmore
from Affordable Tree is the one to hire for that. Martin knows what he's
doing. He'll come out, he'll take a look at him do some selective
pruning. Maybe there's some dead areas, Maybe you have a plant that died,
a tree that died or has huge dead limbs. You got to get
those out of there. Those big ones they call widow makers for a good
reason. You never know when they're coming out of the tree, and you
better not be underneath them when they do. He can make your tree safe
for the heavy one, even the healthy green growth. Uh. Proper pruning
can help set up your trees for storm readiness. It's as simple as that.
And you don't want them falling on something valuable. I can't stress enough
the importance of getting proper tree pruning done as we get ready to head into
that storm season, even if it's not a hurricane I mean there's you know,
last week's storm came through high winds and we saw some huge limbs come
down on some trees in the area. Call Martin spoon Moore please seven one
three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Seven one three six nine nine
two six six three, or you can go to his website, which is
a fftree service dot com. When you call seven one three six nine twenty
six sixty three, either Martin or his wife are going to answer the phone.
The owners do answer their own phone. If you get something else,
you've called the wrong If you get someone else, you'd call the wrong place.
Hang up dial seven three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. But
don't delay. He stays busy and you you want to get this work done
before instead of waiting until after. And now he's he's in cleanup mode and
a tree that's got broken limbs and that causes a whole different kind of damage,
So don't delay on that. You're listening to garden Line and I'm your
host, Skip Richter. We're here to answer your gardening questions this morning at
seven one three two one two kt R eight seven one three two one two
kt R H you may have heard me talk about a new product by Medina,
and this product I'm really excited about. It's called has to Grow.
Well, there's a number of has to Grows by Medina. This one is
has to Grow super Grow plus super Grow Plus. It's a sixteen zero two
fertilizer. Now, of that sixteen percent nitrogen, about a fifth of it
is slow released, so you get an immediate and we're talking about hose en
spraying. This is a fertilizer you hook up to a garden hose. It
covers about four thousand square feet. The quart bottle you buy with the garden
hose attachment about four thousand square feet and it's going to give you the immediate
release with a little bit of slow release also in there. It's going to
give you iron and a chlated form, and that's important to keep that aren't
available for the plant. It has seaweed extract and other things that are just
excellent like molasses and humic acid are in there to improve soil to feed the
microbes. I just think it's a complete package, and I like that ratio.
The sixteen zero two that is a that is a really good blend for
summer fertilizing. You can do it periodically, you can use it as a
as a spring greenop, you can use it in a lot of ways.
And I even have pictures that someone sent me of somebody that uses it on
their tomatoes in the garden, and of course they're getting good results from that
as well. Remember fertilizers, I don't care what's on the label. They
can't read. And so if it says if it says lawn fertilizer and you
want to put it on your herbs or flowers, I mean you can do
that. You know, it's nutrients, it's nutrients. We just kind of
go for general ratios on these things. But supergril Plus is just many many
uses, but especially for your lawn. Another quality product from the folks they're
at Medina. Yesterday, I was talking to Jorge of Jorges Hidden Gardens on
the phone and just talking about what all they have down there. They've got
their Mother's Day sale on on roses going on right now, and I'll go
all the way up to Mother's Day. Three gallon Peggy Martin roses are also
included in the Mother's Day sales. So if you've been driving around admiring other
people's Peggy Martins, now's the chance to get you one yourself. They are
on Elizabeth Street and Alvin, just south of Highway six Jorges Hidden Gardens.
They also have citrus like Satsuma's one of the hardiest citrus we can plant here,
oranges and limes and lemons. So they have many other things from trees
and shrubs to vegetables and flowers and fruit and all kinds of things at Hoges
Hidden Gardens. They are open on the weekends also, by the way,
Friday from eight am to four, Saturday from eight am to four, Sunday
from eight am to four, and then during the week from nine am to
three pm. So Hoorges Hidden Gardens, Elizabeth Street and Alvin. Yep Oh.
He also has that three sixty tree stabilizer that's kind of cool. I've
talked about those all the time. It's a really cool new tool. I
want to mention the landscaper's prideline of products. You've heard me talk about them
before, but this company local just quality products for your soil. It could
be black velvet malts not dyed, naturally beautiful velvety black malts for the top
of the soil hardwood mults, not ground up pellets. True hardwood multch for
the top of the soil or for pathways too. It's good to put on
your garden pathways as an all weather surface. Pine bark molt one of the
most popular slow decomposition right really beautiful pine chunks, and the garden Gardener's Magic
Soil. Gardener's Magic Soils, a pine based Blant's got Humus, green pine
compost risols and Chicken pillot fertilizer lasts up to three months. Landscapers Pride go
to Landscaperspride dot com. They're widely available through area. You can find out
all the sources and learn more about their products when you're there. Well,
I do want to mention that I got something for your calendar for next Saturday.
I will be at the Arbor Gate Saturday, May eleventh, next Saturday,
from eleven thirty am to one thirty pm. Eleven thirty am to one
thirty pm next Saturday at the Arbor Gate. So you folks up there north
and east are really wherever when I go to these appearances. As surprising me
sometimes people will drive a pretty good distance across town to go. So hey,
wherever you're listening to my voice. Uh, if you are out of
town and you've never been to the arbor gate, here's your excuse. I
mean, as if you needed more beautiful nursery, and we're gonna have a
good time there too. We'll be right back. Welcome to Katie r.
H. Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's crazy just watching as well.
Give me things the ups again, you're not a sound Welcome back to garden
Line. Good to have you with us this morning. We are here to
answer your gardening questions, and so if you would like to ask a question,
here's the phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That auto make pretty
easy. I enjoy visiting with gardeners because I just find a I don't know,
uh kind of a connection with people that are interested in growing plants and
doing better. I know that when you get involved in growing things, it
is good for us all in so many ways. Number One, there's an
exercise getting out there in the garden and walking around. I mean, you
know people I saw one of my daughters is interested in getting a walking pad
that goes under your desk. So while you're at the desk, you know,
when you're caught all day in front of a computer and sitting at a
desk. Now we have the desk, we can stand up. Well,
now they have a low walking pads like a try underneath your desk. So
she's interested in one of those. And I was just thinking about you know,
when you garden, when you go outside, you're walking all the time,
and they always say, after so many minutes, get up and walk
around. Well, gardening is exercise, and it can be It can be
a mild amount of exercise, very low impact. It can be a heavier
amount of exercise. I mean if you get out and start turning swill with
a spading fork or shoveling compost, well, yeah, you're doing a little
more work there. But it's enjoyable in that way. It's enjoyable in the
sense of accomplishment too. You know, even a task like weeding, which
we generally think, okay, that's not a pleasant thing to do. But
I can tell you this. When I go in and I've got a mess,
I've got to clean it up. At the end of a given amount
of time, you look back and you see the work you've done and you
see the difference you've made, and there's just something mentally rewarding about that.
A lot of our jobs we go and we you know, bang our head
against the computer all day, or push papers all over the place, or
deal with people, and at the end of the day you kind of go,
what did I accomplish today? Well, with gardening, you can see
what you accomplished today, and it's a rewarding kind of thing. The health
of getting outside and working in the garden and just being able to enjoy nature.
We are made to be connected with nature. That is just a fact.
And piles of research studies have shown it in all kinds of ways,
benefiting children with the ADHD, older adults that are dealing with mobility issues,
things like dementia, even for example, the sense of well being. Just
studies of looking at what if we pull you off these meds and instead you
go garden and things. Yeah, it's amazing, it's amazing the benefits that
are there. And many years ago they discovered a bacterium, a bacteria in
the soil that releases substances that cause our bodies to produce the serotonin effect.
In other words, soil makes you happy. That's the bottom line on it.
There are bacterium in the soil that actually have that mental cognitive beneficial effect
on our bodies. That's just one of a million examples. Gardening is good
for us. We need to get out there and roll around in the dirt
and have some fun. That is a fact. If you haven't fertilized your
lawn yet and you're looking for a quality, slow release product, the Silver
Bag by Nitrofoss Superturf nineteen four ten, that is example of what I'm talking
about. Superturf releases gradually over time. It gives even feeding to your soil.
You fertilize once and you're done. It takes you all the way through
the summer pretty well, actually three or four months actually of a feeding out
of that. Now it's got iron in it as well, which helps green
up the garden or the lawn, because when we have various issues from certain
root diseases to highlight levels of pH or phosphorus in the soil, we start
to have iron deficiency and there is always a benefit when we can add a
little bit of iron to help get that grass a little bit greener. And
Superdurf does just that. Superderf's widely available like all nitropost products. You can
get it at Gem's Hardware up in Montgomery. You can go out to a
Tascasita to the ACE Hardware out there on Timber Forest Drive. They have it
out there as well as does the ACE at Sincle Ranch on Mason Road out
there in the Kadi area. I'm gonna now go to let's see, we're
gonna go back and find the buttons. Today we're gonna go to Cypress and
talk to Sandy. Hey, Sandy, Hi, good morning, Skip morning.
I have a question about my egg black Beauty egg plant. When do
I know if when it's I'm ready to harvest, like, uh, well,
it doesn't. It doesn't ripen in the sense of like a peach ripening
or something. So but we let it get about as big as it's going
to get. But but harvest it while the skin is still glossy. Once
the skin gets dull, uh it, it starts to lose quality significantly.
So as far as the size, don't worry so much about the size.
Just kind of get it up to close to the size that you would expect
Black Beauty to be. But look at watch that skin and don't let it
start to dull. Okay, And did you get my I didn't put my
name yesterday, but I as red flower weeds. Yes I did. I
actually replied to that a little bit earlier, replied to the photo of all
the different kinds of weeds and then also the red flowers. I'm working on
the red flower still. It looks like a type of verbenu, but it's
not quite right for burbinas, so I'm trying to nail it down a little
bit better. Okay. I don't know how you have that in your yard.
I've never seen such a beautiful weed in the yard. It looks like
a plant or a flower. And I said, I didn't plan it though,
but my my email is three slat low Gallire. Yeah, if you
got it yesterday, I sure did. And like I said, you have
an answer in your email box. So oh, okay, okay, we're
good. All right, Thank you so much. All right, thank you
had a great day. You too, you too, sir, Thank you.
I wish you well. RCW Nursery is one of those places where,
for example, you can get night super turf. They carry that and a
lot of other products that you hear us talk about here on Garden Line.
RCW makes it a point to carry what you are interested in and what will
help you have success. Do you want a planet a tree? They have
all kinds of products to help you get that tree off to success. You
know, they grow their own trees up in Plannersville and they bring them down
to the nursery and it is just it's I put it. It's like,
you know, when you go there and buy a tree, you're going to
get a species that wants to grow here. You're also going to get it
planted right. They'll go out and plant it for you too, and they'll
do it right, or they'll give you the instructions on how to do it
yourself with the products you need in your hand to have success with that.
It's Mother's Day coming up, and boy do they ever have a beautiful They
have a nice stock of roses. They've got a nice stock of some of
the landscape art that mom might like and things like hibiscus, beautiful, beautiful
hibiscus. It's just you got to go buy your and see it for yourself.
RCW Nursery is one of those places, fun to visit, easy to
get to Palmbo Parkway and RCW Nurseries dot Com. RCW nurseries dot Com.
We're gonna take a little break here. We'll be right back and get back
to your questions. Well for back to the garden line. Good to have
you with us as always if you're doing some container planting outdoors, and you
should be. Containers are gorgeous. You buy a beautiful quality container and it's
with you for years and you put it wherever you want to put it.
You can move them around, you can grow vegetables, you can grow flowers.
It's just containers are awesome way to have I would say instant beauty,
almost instant beauty out there in the garden. But you need to have a
container that drains well and you need a quality potting mix to go in it.
And Jungle End is that kind of mix. Jungle Land distributed by Nitropos
has a four different kinds actually of aged organic matter. It's got microhizal fungi
as well, and it drains the excess water away, but it holds on
to the moisture that the plants are going to need. So it's kind of
the perfect thing of too. You know, you don't want something dries out
too fast. You don't want something to stays soggy and mucky like a swamp.
Jungle In does the best of both worlds. You can get jungle in
in a lot of different places. Dney Feed and Tomball has got jungle nd
Lake Hardware down in Angleton. They've got jungle in. You know it's you
find it pretty much. Any ace hardware store that you go to, like
Fisher's Hardware for example, is another one that has jungle land down in Baytown.
So check it out, get some and use it in your containers so
that you have quality success. We are now going to go to Marty and
Fairfield. Hello Marty, Good, good morning. Step Hey. Yesterday you
talked to him about his little acorns growing into trees and his lawn, and
you said just to mow them. What about the acorns that have grown into
trees in your garden? What can I spray and up till now? I've
just been taking the weed eater and but they just for three years now,
I've had bumper crops of acorns. Yeah, and I just I want to
get rid of them right now. I don't have a whole lot, but
I do have lots of ferns and stuff underneath the trees. Yeah, so
is that what the acorn? What are the acorns growing? What are the
good plants that are growing with the acorns? Oh, I'm a cottage garden
person. I like whatever. I like whatever. I wander around and see
that I like, I just pick it up. Yeah, okay, put
it in. Well, the problem with spraying the acorns is you're gonna have
to use a potent stuff for woody brush type control, and you're going to
hurt other plants when you get it on them. So there's not really a
good way, especially in a cottage like setting like that, where you're not
going to get it on the desire plants that you have around. There Actually
is a little device I can't remember what they're called, but you set it
down around the stem and you pull back on the handle and it literally pulls
the tree out of the ground. I mean, use it on trees up
the size of your thumb. I'm talking thousands of little trees in my garden.
Okay, there's no way I can know. Well, and I guess
I'm not going to talk into getting in your hands and knees with moist soil
and just pulling them up. That's what that's what I do in mind,
if they're if they're at that stage that many, I don't know a good
solution. You know, you spray, you're gonna kill good things. Uh,
they're just too many physically to remove. So that kind of leaves you
with Uh, I don't know. I just I'll just weed eat them and
put some molt on them. I guess that's It's about the only thing I
can do. Then there there actually there's one other option. Uh. You
can take a product that would kill brush and you can put it in a
wiper type applicator and like the sponge on the sponge on the end of your
clipper your grabber tool thing. Yeah yeah, yeah, one of those.
Okay, if you can rig that up, you could put put triclop peer
on it. And triclop peer is the ingredient. It's sold in many brands,
many things. You know up there in Fairfield, you got some good
Ace hardware stores nearby there, they're going to carry that that triclo peer for
you up. Uh. No, it's a tricl Peer is more like a
poison ivy killer. It's different. It's not the ingredient and roundup. Roundup
isn't as good on woody brush as triclo peers. Uh. And you do
the wiper and just dab it on the you know, squeeze the sponge on
the leaves of the acorns. Now again you said you have hundreds of them,
but are thousands? Uh, So you're gonna have to get out there
do a little bit. And next Saturday morning, with a cup of coffee
listening to the garden line, you can just speer it on some more.
Now you see what I'm saying. Just keep on it, and I think
that would be a good option. Probably put a little bit of a spreader
sticker in the mix to help it stare to those slick oak leaves. All
right, okay, all right, thank you, you've bet. Thanks Marty.
I appreciate your call. Piercecapes is the company you call for pretty much
anything you need around the landscape. And here's what I mean by that.
It's been raining. That's no news. Right When it rains as much,
you have standing water everywhere. And what do you read when you look at
what a plant wants? Good drainage? Almost always I want good drainage.
Piercecapes can turn a swamp into a well drained area. They can do that.
They can work on landscape lighting. They can help get your irrigation system
in working order, and that is important. They can create hard scapes,
they can do all kinds of things. I mean, go online to the
website and you'll see what I'm talking about. They do some really beautiful upper
end work. They can do a number of things at piercescapes dot com pierscapes
dot com. They also have a quarterly maintenance for your beds. So here's
what happens. You sign up with them and they come out quarterly, four
times a year. They'll do trimming, weeding, fertilizing, they'll check your
irrigation system. They'll do seasonal color changes. You can choose how many of
those you want to do in a given year. Two changes a year,
three or even four. And they'll replenish the multch keep it looking good and
blocking that light to whole weeds down. Quarterly maintenance for beds from Piercescapes just
another one of the mini services that they offer. Here's the phone number two
eight one three seven to zero five zero six zero. We're going to go
now to Northwest Houston and talk to Ralph. Hello, Ralph, good morning,
Good to hear from you. You've got having a Saint Augustine grass and
doing like you said, leave it alone, but you got long runners and
all on top instead of any dirt. Only should I put a for some
dirt around all majority or something, cause they did not grab it on the
Uh, they're going on top and the long runner. But I'm not gonna
get out there and they're not rooting in. They're not rooting in. They're
going on top of the other. And it's okay, did like you said,
do I take care of that? Yeah? Compost top dressing can help
with that. When you have runners on top of runners. Uh, then
you've got that thatch and it's keeping them from from pegging down to the ground
like you want to. If I'm understanding your question right right, And so
when you put a little compost top dressing out there over the top, it
helps to speed the decomposition of those runners. And and then you're you essentially
are using nature to compost away the thatch that you're describing. Okay. Also,
my boy, cajun hibisinus, it's not doing near as good as my
other hobbistiness. Oh really, Oh yes, Oh, I love that.
I love Cajun hibiscus. I got some at home that is loading up with
buds right now and can't wait till see it. I don't know i'd get,
I'd get a good quality of hibiscus food. And uh, you know,
I know that Nitrofoss makes one that does well. Nelson's makes one called
color Star. Color Star food you could use. Just keep them fed,
keep them vigorous, keep them in plenty of sunlight. The more the better,
don't let them completely dry out. Uh. And you they should kick
in and do better for you. Okay, fine, thank you, all
right, sir, Thanks very much, Ralf appreciate your call. I it's
talking about Nelson's and you know, having the Color Star and things. Nelson's
also has their turf Star line. That turf Star means for your lawn.
Uh. They've got two products that both last to six months, but they're
different. One of them is Bruce's Brew. Bruces Brew is good for quick
green up in the spring because most of the nutrient releases pretty quickly, but
there is some slow release. It'll go out about six months. Not the
bulk of the product but a little bit in there, so you could do
Bruce's Brew now, you could do it again midsummer and that'll carry you all
the way to fall. Slow and Easy is a very slow release product.
It gives you some feeding now, but you're going to have Slow and Easy
going four months from that. In fact, if you do Slow and Easy
on your lawn, you don't need to fertilize again until we hit fall.
Just return the clippings. That's all you got to do. It's an acidifying
fertilizer, which is a good thing for a number of reasons. But both
Bruce's Brew and Slow and Easy available from Nelson Plant Food, and they are
quality products and you will have good results with those. Let's see here I
am what's good. I tell you I'm not going to be able to take
call. With just a few seconds left here, I think Nicky may want
to do the news instead of listening to me. Continue to talk to callers
through it. When I come back, Steve you will be the first up,
and John you will be next. Our phone number is seven to one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. You can give me a call here. Our producer will
get you on the line and ready to talk when we come back. I
just want to remind you that next Saturday, I'm going to be at Arburgate
from eleven thirty to one thirty. That's the eleventh Saturday, May eleventh,
eleven thirty to one thirty. I hope you will come see me, and
I hope you'll come see Arborgate in fact, parking back that brand new parking
lot they've got that is just absolutely awesome. Hey, we're going to do
news. We'll be right back. I see you don't don't super Man's game,
you don't speak with you, don't pull a mask on, hold on
range around your tom Welcome back, Reguardline. Good to head with us this
morning. We're here to answer gardening questions. How can we help you have
a bountiful garden and a beautiful, beautiful landscape. That is the goal.
And listen, it is not that difficult. I know, you know,
you may be one of these folks. It feels like I just have a
brown thumb. My grandma could just put something in the ground that grew and
looked good, and she just had a green thumb. Well, let me
tell you something. There's no such thing as a brown thumb. What there
is is an uninformed thumb. You learn a few simple principles of taking care
of plants, let us help you along as we go, and suddenly it's
like, maybe you don't have a brown maybe you do have a green thumb.
Because I'm telling you it is not rocket science. We can do it.
You just have to follow a few few basic guidelines as you're going along.
And one of them rule number one. Soil first. Soil first.
I know it's exciting to get buy a tomato plant and think about it,
even taste the tomatoes when you take the to made a plant home. I
know it's fun to buy a rose bush. You can just imagine the fragrance
of those roses in a bouquet or whatever. I get it. I understand
that those are great. I feel the same way. But soil first.
Get excited about the soil and make the soil right, and then you will
be on your way to success. By the time you put a plant in
the ground, you are eighty percent of the way to success or failure.
You've picked a spot that's sunny or shady, and plants are going to have
an opinion about that. You've picked a spot that drains well or drains poorly,
and plants are going to have an opinion about that. You've selected a
species and or a variety, and there's some that do better than others.
So you've made a lot of decisions. But the most important decision is you've
either improved the soil so the plant can thrive or you haven't. See anamalts
is about improving the soil. When you go into cianamalts, load up and
come home or have them delivered. They deliver within twenty miles of their location,
which is down just north of Sharon on Highway five FM five twenty one.
When you come home from there, here's what you got. You got
compost, You've got rosesoil, you have leaf mow compost, you have bed
mixes, you have mulches, you have every fertilizer I talk about on guardenline.
They have it there, including things like asimite. They have it there,
and you come home. You create that setting and then when you get
a good quality plant take it home. You will have success. That's how
that works, and Cienamultch can get you started. Sienna mulch dot com.
That's that's what you need to know, Siena multch dot com. Go check
them out and you'll see what I'm talking about. They will help you do
the first step, which is brown stuff, before step two, which is
green stuff. I'm gonna go now to John in a Tascasita. Hello,
John H. Scalp Hi. I've got got a pear tree in my front
yard and it's got fired light. Had this before and I'd like to like
to do something about it. Okay. Fire blight is a bacterial disease.
It typically hits in the spring. As you probably notice, it likes to
enter through blooms. It also the tender new growth gets it in there.
For those who haven't had fire blight, I'm kind of explaining it. I
know you know some of this stuff. The bacteria causes complete and rapid collapse
of the whole shoot, and it just ends up hanging their chocolate brown with
leaves still on it, chocolate brown. The way to deal with it is
the first step is sanitation. So you want to go to all those strikes,
all those burned ends of branches and things, follow them down until that
you get a healthy branch and cut it off just a little below there.
So typically those things are about maybe eight inches a foot long. In severe
cases it can be more. But you got to print it out because that
is loaded with bacteria that when it rains, will splash onto healthy new growth,
especially next spring, and you'll be right back where you are when you
prune. Have some lysol or some similar product on hand. Spray your printers
after each cut. That way, if you did happen to cut into the
bacterial infective part, you wouldn't just be spreading it with printers now, So
I spray them with lysol between cuts. That's a good practice in general.
Get it all pruned out, get it out of the area, out of
don't drop it on the ground, just get it out of there. And
then on pairs I would I would almost say don't don't fertilize them. There
are situations where you need a little fertilizer. But if you push them with
succulent new growth lots of nitrogen and water and things like that, fire blight
is much worse. And we're that's yeah, that's seculent new growth. You're
just setting it up for fireblight. Now. The weather is a huge factor.
Some years are worse than others. Variety as a huge factor. There
are some that are fairly tolerant of fireblight. There are some that just get
toasted, and so those are all some of the concepts. There is a
spray with streptomizin in it that you can buy in garden centers. Not all
of them have it. You have to look around a little bit or go
to your ace hardware store and ask them if they have it, and it
is. It has streptomcin in and it's for fireblight. So basically you're using
an antibiotic type spray to control that. It's got to follow the label rule
carefully. Most people don't want to get out there and have to spray to
try to stop it, so we use these cultural and sanitary techniques I just
talked about. I think spraying would be an easier option for me than even
my tallest lad or I couldn't yet halfway up the tree. Well, just
know that, you know, with the infected there, it's like spray is
not a complete panacea. So yeah, but those are your options for fireblight.
I'm about in the in the off season, when the can I spray
the bear tree, it won't wit something no, it won't do any good.
No, you got to get you got to get that done early on.
It'd be like taking an antibiotic now, because you might get a cold
in the fall. There's there's you see what I'm saying. Yes, yes,
all right, well good luck, good luck with that tree. I
understand. I've I see your pain, and I've seen a lot of fire
blight this spring. Okay, I'm going to get busy with that. All
right. Thanks for the call. I appreciate it. Nelson Water Garden,
boy, they had their little shindig out there yesterday evening. I was not
able to go, but I bet it was a blast. Nelson Water Garden
is a destination. It's and I should not say water gardens, it's Nelson
Nursery and water Gardens. Although they've always been known nationally for their quality water
gardens, they're a leader and a lot of things. You know, they
invented you see these disappearing fountains where it's like a large glazed vase type container
that water's spilling over the sides and going down into a rock bed where it
disappears and then it gets pumped back up through the container. They invented that
that kind of thing, and those are so cool. And when you go
to Nelson's number one, it's fun just to walk around. But Nelson Water
Garden is inspirational. You'll see all kinds of different waterfalls and fish and water
plants. And then their garden center is just awesome. I mean they have
a wide, wide selection of things. They're in Katie Katie Fort Ben Road.
When you get there, just turn right on Katie Fort Ben just as
stones throw up the street and you will enjoy it. I promise you you
will be very inspired. And whether you want to hire them to come out
and put in a waterfall for you or a water garden of whatever type,
or you want to do it yourself and have them advice you, they'll do
that too. Uh. You know, it's certain tasks, certain jobs are
pretty involved. Then you're probably gonna want to hire it done. But for
do it yourselfers, they can help you with that too. Nelson Watergardens out
there and Katie, here's the here's the website Nelson Watergardens dot com. You
need to go check them out. You're listening to garden Line, I'm your
host, skip rickor we're taking a break here, I will be right back
if you want to get on the board for a call seven one three two
one two kt r H. You can dance heavy, dance with the gardens.
You thee I let them hold you take you can smile. Welcome back
here, garden line, good heavy with us today. What are we gonna
talk about? I think probably I'll do a little bit of talking about some
of the things that we can be doing indoors as well. Your house plans
need to be periodically bumped up to a bigger container. If you want to
have success with them. You need to check the light levels on things,
see how they're doing. You know, there's a survival level of light and
there's a thrive level of light, and those are very different. I often
will move my houseplants to a brighter area gradually for the summertime. I got
a little front ports. It's real, real, really really shady, but
in much brighter than it is inside. That gives them a chance to make
some carbohydrates and rejuvenate. So you can do that. Check the watering on
them, see how they're doing. Every now and then if you've been fertilizing,
just put them in the sink and drench them with water and wash all
the excess salts and things out of there. Let them fully drain out,
and then you're back in business again. A lot of these things we can
do for the plants. Try some new houseplants. There's a lot of cool
species out there. If you want a full proofast plant, we're just going
to start on that end. Sansavaria mother in law's tongue. I didn't name
it, mother in law if you're listening, but anyway, Sansavaria, that
one shake deep, dark areas, bright areas. Let it get too dry,
forget to water it, and water it again. It survives it all.
If you can't grow sens Ofvaria, I can't help you. I mean
it is probably easier easier to have as a plant than silk and plastic plants
are. I mean it is a tough one. Another good one. ZZ
plant that's been a popular one now for a while, fairly new as far
as houseplants go on the list. ZZ plant again. It likes light,
but it can take less. You can forget to water and it does just
fine. You know, with most houseplants, the biggest problem we do is
when we overwater them and roots stay soggy. And can't get oxygen start to
rot. But Zzi is another easy one. And then there's some others.
I love Aglionima, also called Chinese evergreen. They come in so many colors.
I'm kind of into colored foliage houseplants, so something like a Chinese evergreen,
a Moranta prayer plant, some of those types of things. I kind
of like them because they bring a little color in as well. Your hometown
feed store if you are up in the twenty nine seventy eight area in Magnolia,
that's FM twenty nine seventy eight. It's Spring Creek Feed Center. They're
just minutes away from Graham Parkway high Way two forty nine. Spring Creek Feed
carries all the fertilizers I recommend they're there. If I say this is a
good one, you go there. They're going to have it. They have
supplies for your lawn and garden like pest control, disease control, weed control,
and so on. Very friendly, courteous staff, and it's a beautiful,
beautiful store. I mean just walk in and it's just fun to get
in there and shop quality pet feed, quality livestock feed. Of course,
if you are in four h or FFA, if you were in the military.
If you're a senior citizen, there's discounts for all of you. And
if they need a special order, they're more than happy to special order the
particular things you were looking for. And they even have a delivery service.
Again Spring Creek Feed in Magnolia on FM twenty nine seventy eight. Let's go
to Cove, Texas and we're going to talk to RUFUS mornings. Yep,
when do you start pulling up onions? Mustflying onions the harvest dry out and
reap again. Yeah, anytime you want, Uh, you can leave them
and not pull them up. You can pull them up once you at least
want to get them to multiply and have shoots that are let's say, a
good size for eating. But there's no particular time yet to do it.
Well, I noticed that some of them have died back to the to the
dirt line. And when I pulled up, I pulled up one row of
my most flying and I noticed they were still there and they still were solid.
Yeah, any way, well maybe they're still good. So I got
them out there drying. That's the other thing I was asking, how I'm
going to leave them on the table to dry out, just just enough for
the outside to dry the roots. I don't know, I'm getting a feedback.
Are you hearing that on your end? Rufous hell? That sound that's
much better? Uh so okay we'll go off. Yeah the uh you just
just enough to the tops dry. You don't want to put like green green
onion top or fleshy wet root materials, you know, into storage. It'll
just just decay right away. So just yeah it. Don't overthink multiplying onions.
They're pretty durn simple. Yeah. I know people that forget about them
for a while and then a year later they go in and divide them and
get going again. Right right? How often do you have to cut the
gentlemen? You have wall? Go with the fire blake? This tree is
really tall. I cut mine back about five years ago and got it down
the badge wall, and it started to get up about twenty five foot.
Okay, what's a good what's a good height to? Just okay, what
it gets here? I need to cut it back a third. Oh boy,
that varies on the person and the size of the ladder you have and
the kind of tree you've got. Uh, there's not a good side.
Just keeping it manageable. But here's the thing. When you prune a pair
tree back severely, it takes off like a rocket and all the shoots go
straight to the sky real quickly. So you got to stay on it as
much as possible. If you can lean shoots out to the side kind of
forty five degree angle or so, that helps spread the growth from just the
tips going straight up like a fishing pole or bamboo, you start to get
shoots occurring on the sides along along that stem that was shooting for the sky.
So a lot of the people training they part of their training is to
lean them out rather than trying to prune them into submission, because they they
they don't respond well to being severely pruned. They just redo what you just
try to prune out. Hey, Rich, I didn't shoot out as bad
as when I put that black stuff on it. Yeah, yeah, I'm
gonna have to run. But thank you for the question and good luck with
that. I appreciate your call. The b Supply in Dayton, Texas is
a really cool place to go. They've got an observation hive there. If
you've got kiddo's or just you're curious and like stuff like that like I do.
Go and do the honey tour. Learn about the different kinds of honey.
You get to taste a bunch of different kinds. You learn about bees.
You can watch the bees in the store inside an observation hive. It
is super cool. If you have five to twenty acres and you're within fifty
miles of the bee supply in Dayton, Texas, you can do their be
rental program. Go to their website and they will explain how it works.
Basically, they bring the bees, they set them up, they take care
of them for you. And bees are something you can use in an egg
exemption. You have to have the right amount. They understand how to do
it. Just go to dbsupply dot com. Dbsupply dot com also check out
their beginner bee keeping classes. Very helpful, good classroom and good hands on
both in those classes. Love love to do that. Uh let's see,
We're gonna go to Melvin in Parland. Hey Melvin, Hey nice used today
morning? You know I brought in that little old stunted tomato plants. Yes,
I told you previously the year four I had a lot of weeds and
I sprayed it with spectrocide. I got to think that, you know,
I was wrong about what I sprayed. I used that bear breast killers when
I did so, I didn't know if there was any makeup and that you
know, absolutely absolutely, Yeah, No, that that explains the symptoms you
had. Uh. It's a hormone type herbicide and that was damage from it.
Uh. These tomatoes are probably goneers. Uh, but it's not like
it's in your soil now and you can't replant. You can pull them out
and replant with something else if you want. But yeah, that does it.
Melvin. Hey, Melvin, Yeah, I've got to run, uh
if you thank you. Yeah, and it was good to see you in
Paarland. By the way, I appreciate that. Yeah. And also I
did poketo pinto beans around her anyway. But yeah, I figured out what
it was. Yeah, that's it. I just want to make sure they
all right, you know, stay there all right. Thank you, thank
you for your help. N nice to meet you too. Hey. Arburgate
has a brand new parking lot you know about that up in Tomball twenty nine
to twenty just west, just west of Tombull Parkway out there on the edge
of town. The Arborgate has everything you need to have success, including staff
that knows what they're talking about that will guide you well while you're there.
And by the way, I'm going to be at Arburgate next Saturday, that's
the eleventh of May. But while you're there, you got to pick up
some stuff for mom. They have wonderful gift shops, they have outstanding plants.
There are probably a thousand things that would make your mom really happy that
you can find there at Arburgate. In fact, just bring her with you.
How about that? Bring her with you, bring her Saturday you get
to pick out our own. Yet, if you come out, you can
bring samples of plants. Put them in a zip lock bag or plastic bag,
close them up, bring me the plants, will identify them or we'll
diagnose them. You've got a bug, put it in a bag and bring
it out there. I love to meet people that listen to garden Line,
so this is another opportunity. It's going to be this coming Saturday, eleven
thirty till one thirty, and I'll be there answering your gardening questions. We'll
talk about whatever you're interested in. You just want to come in and bring
me some pictures and say, hey, I've got this area. What plants
might do good there? What can I do to you know, enhance that.
We'll do all of that kind of stuff again at the Arbitate, which
is in Tomball. Now, if you're going to drive out there, you
want to look for Trishel Road. It goes around behind Arborgate. You can
get it on one end or the other. Drive in the back and there's
an awesome parking lot, easy easy access. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with
scamp Direct. It's just watch him as so many things beginning. Hey,
welcome back to the garden Line. I am your host, Skip Richter.
It's good to have you with us today. Got a question you'd like to
give us a call? Here is a phone number seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
Now I know it's gardeners. When we have rainy weather's kind of cooped
up and we don't do well with that, do we. I mean we
want to get outside enjoy it. I guess you could work in the rain.
There have been times when I have worked in the rain. How many
you all remember doctor Dolittle? I don't know. This just went through my
head. Doctor Dolittle the song if you remain out in the rain, you'll
think you're drinking pink champagne and you will spend your life praying for thunderstorms.
I don't know where that came from, but the past, long long time
ago. Yep. I enjoy getting outside. I don't mind it a little
wet, that's fine. I mean, I'm just gonna stand there because it's
rainy. But you know, it's good to get outside and do some stuff,
enjoy it. Now would be a good time to go ahead and get
your summer lawn fertilization, get the supplies you need to get that done.
And if you would like to have a high nitrogen level in an organic natural
type product, Sweet Green by nitrofoss is that it's got eleven percent nitrogen.
It's a molasses based product. So number one, it smells good. That's
what it's called sweet green. And whenever you put molasses on the soil,
it is rocket fuel for a lot of the benefit. Microbes they love that,
and in this case, you put it on your sweet green water it
in and the microbes take it from there and they get real happy about that
Sweet Green is a product you can put down. You put about Oh,
let's see, I'd do it at about a rate of ten pounds per thousand
square feet. For sweet Green it's eleven percent nitrogen, and uh, just
spread it evenly. Then, whenever you're spreading fertilizer, you should do it.
Don't look at how much you're going to apply and try to put it
on at that rate. It always it never seems to work out right.
What I'll do is I'll do half that rate and go across the yard one
way, let's say east west, and then look at how much you have
left, and if you've used half of it, okay, good, then
you go the other way using the other half. If you've used two thirds
of it, then you go the other way using the other third. But
you know, you got to crank it down a little bit and move a
little faster or something like that, because you want to get a good even
application, so you have a good EVA lawn unless you like stripes. I've
got some picture I wish I could shaw you pictures on the radio. I've
got some interesting examples of not furtilingco and properly. But sweet Green put it
out evenly. Water it in and watch your plants jump by the ground,
your grass plants that is, and be very very happy going forward with it.
It is one of the many products that are on my lawn care schedule.
If you go to Gardening with Skip Gardening with Skip that's me dot Com,
you can find two schedules there. The lawn care schedule that's how do
you make your grass grow schedule and the lawn pest Disease and we'd management schedule
that's the what's going wrong with my lawn schedule And it tells you when to
apply everything and what to apply, and it makes it really really easy.
By the way, if you're looking for sweet green, you can go up
to D and D Feed and Tombole they're going to have it up there.
You can go to the Plants for All Seasons on Highway two forty nine.
They're going to have it there. You can go to Shades of Texas up
in the woodlands or Aspass up in the woodlands. Those are all places you
want to go further north. How about Willis Growers Outlet another place carries our
night frost products. Makes it easy easy to find them and they are good
products to use as a result. Our phone number is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven
four. I'd like to give us a call, Feel free to do so.
Actually have an open board right now. So, boy, yesterday got
crazy for a while and I always hate for people to have to sit online
very long. So now would be a good time if you want to give
a skull. Moss Nursery, Seabrook, Texas. Moss Nursery, seventy year
old, family operated grocery on eight acres of land. Allow yourself time to
wander. It is a not only is it a garden center with every time
you turn a corner there's plants. They may be on tables or the ground
or hanging from something or Not only is it that, but there's different kinds
of art in the garden. You know, maybe a carved kind of an
ethnic mask type of thing. And there's a carved canoe, a real one,
old old carved canoe out there. Lots of different cool sculpture type things,
water feature type things that moss, but tropicals, that's the one I
want to talk about right now. With moss, I'd be talking about anything,
but oh my gosh, their tropicals are beautiful. We're talking about things
like elephant ears. Ten to twelve different kinds of elephant ears. Yeah,
you heard that right, five to six different varieties of bananas. There's a
cool tropical, the bird of Paradise, the orange and blue bird of Paradise.
They've got those there. The ligularia, the big lily pad looking foliage,
they have it. And now they have a lot of tropicals in combo
planters. So you may have a big bold, almost chocolate brown black elephant
early sticking out the top. You got colius around the sides, and you've
got let's say a sweep a data charts, you sweep a data mine spilling
over the side, and many versions of that. So if you got an
area that's got some shade and you want to bring a lot of color into
it, maybe it's a very shady sitting area outside, these would be perfect
for it. Always something to see new at MOS Nursery in Seabrook, Texas.
Here is the website. You want to go there, sign up for
their newsletter. Where there Mos Nursery dot com, m a A S Nursery
dot com. On to Toddville Road there in Seabrook, Texas. Remember I
said allowed time, because when you go, it's not a run in and
run out. It's a experience, and a fun one at that. We're
going to go now to Lake Jackson and we're going to talk to Robert.
Hey, Robert, I'm starting to call here with about a minute before a
break. But let's let's get going and we'll hang on after break if we
need to. Ah ready, how can I help? Okay, so I've
got in. All I can call him is big clover and small clover.
I follow the schedule organic style, except I do use the uh, the
barricade okay for weeds. And out of all past two years, I'm covered
up with huge clover and the small clover. Okay, what do I do
about that? All right, well, let's uh, I'll dive into that
when we come right back. I think you're probably talking about a true coat
clover and probably about something called oxalis, which is a has a clover leaf
to it. But we'll be right back in just a second and we'll dive
right in into that question. The phone number seven one three K T R
H. I'll be right back. Welcome back to the garden line. Good
to have you with us today. We're going to head back out and late
Jackson and uh continue our conversation that we're having with Robert. Robert, you
said you had a big, a big and a small clover, and uh
you, I think you prefer to do things organically. Based on what I
was hearing you say, is I correct? Well, I followed the organic
fulization schedule, but I put out wheat beater complete and I do spot treat
with all the various uh weat killers. Okay, and last last year I
wound up springing wheat beater ultra coming into spring on the clover, and it
killed it, but it came back, okay. And I want to these
something out there that like kills it forever without hurting my I have some Saint
Augustine grass. Okay. Well, the the ultra, yeah, it should
have killed it. If it's truly clover, it's it's it's a coming back
from seeds there. It's an annual. Well, so what I've done is
I've dug down and actually pulled the I'm gonna call them nuts out of the
ground, and that's what I'm trying to do it. Okay, constantly coming
back, all right, so what what you have there is not clover,
that's ox salas uh ox salis, and it does have those storage organs underground
like a bulb type structure, and so it it is harder to kill h
and it does also recede and it casts the seed all over the place.
So you're dealing with both a pre emergent type thing for the seed coming up,
but you're dealing with the post emergent. You know, when it comes
to the bulbs. Uh, the Windpeter Ultra should have done a good job
on those bulbs, but you may have to redo it if you're if you're
trying to uh. Typically one application is not going to do it. Now
you could switch to a different product on my chart there uh post emergent products
uh And because each of the three things I have listed under post emergent herbicides
have different combinations of ingredients and so that those they're not the same same product.
And you know, we only have a thousand different weeds we could have
in the yards. So just like with medicines and sickness, you know,
each medicine works best on certain things, but not everything. Uh And and
that certainly is the case for weed control. Too, so you might want
to try that. There are some organics you can sprinkle on the foliage.
It burns the foliage back. For oxalis, that's not gonna not going to
kill it. It'll burn it back, but it won't completely kill it.
So if you're if you're wanting to translocate down in there, the products that
are on the list of the ones that that you probably need to use,
very cool. I got go ahead. I just wanted to say if you're
if you're on that, if you're looking at the long pest disease, and
we'd management schedule that I put together down in the corner bottom right corner,
that's where you and you mentioned we'd beat LTRA those. But also there's two
organic products that are listed there that cover a wide variety of weeds. One
of them does really well on clover, burning it back, and then the
other one is listed for oxalis, but it's gonna bounce back. Yeah.
Okay, I got one more question about lagustriums. Okay, I've got I've
got lots of lagustriums and all of a sudden this year they look good,
but they're losing a lot of leaves. Okay, are their leaves turning yellow,
Do they have brown spots on them? They do? Okay, that
is a disease that affects lagustrum. It's one of the reasons I'm not a
fan of lagustrium. Whenever there's wet conditions, that proliferates. If you can
pick off infected leaves, eat if you look closely at one of those leaves
with the spots, you'll see little tiny black specks in the spot. Those
are like little tiny volcanoes blowing spores out everywhere. And that's why it just
reinfects and reinfects. So if you can pick up all the fallen leaves,
rake them all up, pick off leaves that have the spots on them,
and I realize that may leave your plant without any leaves. But and then
as it begins to regrow whenever we have a rain spell like we just had.
Now you can follow that up with a fungicide spray to protect it from
infection. But it does no good to spray a leaf that's already got spots
because they're already there, you know. But so sanitation was my first suggestion
there. Picking up all the material that's producing spores that you can and then
number two. When we have a rain spray the foliage. We have rain
spray the foliage. You can alternate between a couple of types of fungicide.
But yep, that's a problem with lagustriums. Cool deal, Well, I
appreciate all right, you take care. Good to talk to you. If
you are planting a tree or planning on planting a tree, tree, the
three sixty tree stabilizer is the best product I know for staking them. Listen,
I have bought the cable, the wires. I have cut up garden
hose and made that little you know, steak the tree down three different corners,
then trip over the wires when you try to walk by. It's just
it's time, it's money, it's hassle, it's all that kind of stuff.
Just get a three sixty tree stabilizer and I would get a T post
the standard iron post to hammer in the ground. This stabilizer comes in a
form that has a T post attachment and you attach it to the tea post,
attach it to the tree, and the T post is a vertical post
going in the ground just a little over a foot away from the tree,
and so it holds the tree very well. You can do two of them.
If you've got winds blowing north south east west, you want to do
two at a right angle to hold on to it. They're easy, easy
to come by. You can go to RCW or Buchanans or arbor Gate Plants
for All Seasons, Horrees, hidden Gardens Done and out. Southwest Fertilizer carries
them as well, of course they do. They carry everything. But the
three sixty tree stabilizer is it's a quality product and it lasts and it works
right. And by that I mean it holds the tree well, but it
allows a little bit of movement with the soft strap that goes around the tree,
so that you strengthen the trunk and root upper root system with a little
bit of movement. And that's important too when you're staking a tree down.
And those are just a really good quality product. Now I mentioned they had
them at Plants for All Seasons. Plants Frail Seasons is on Highway to forty
nine. That's Tomball Parkway. If you're going north toward Tomball from Houston,
you exit Lueta crossover Luetta and it's right there on the right hand side,
right on two forty nine. Now, the folks at Plants for all seasons.
The Flowerty family, they've been doing this since nineteen seventy three. They
know the area and people in the area know them, and they have many,
many loyal customers that come back and why because they have great plants.
They have great products. Ever fertilizer you hear me talk about, is it
plants for all seasons, and they have super advice to help guide you plants
for all seasons. Dot com is a website. The phone number if you'd
like to write it down two eight one three seven six, sixteen forty six.
You can go in there and you can find anything that you hear me
talk about, like Microlife. You know, they've got the green bag of
Microlife fertilizer. They've got the hum mats plus that's a zero zero four,
the Purple bag. That's kind of the lawn combo, by the way,
from Microlife for your summer, spring through fall really up to fall lawn fertilizations.
It's the green bag six two four and then the humants plus the Purple
bag, which is concentrated compost in a bag. You put it out and
over time when the organic system is that you work with nature to build soil
over time and you have better plant results because of that, and that is
what that combo would do for you. And both of them are excellent products
for use on your lawn from the folks at micro Life. You want to
go to micro Life Fertilisure dot com. You can find out where you can
buy it. It's pretty much everywhere. Uh, and you can also find
out more about their products there. Let's see here. I'm going to go
to Patterson now and talk to Susan. Hello, Susan, Hey, good
morning, Skip. I hope you can hear me. I'm sitting in my
car outside of church and it is just pouring down rain. My question are
you are you? Am I keeping you from going to church? No?
It doesn't start till nine, so I'm good. But I appreciate you asking.
How can I help? I like to plant kind of for wildlife when
I can. And I was looking at the honeysuckle and I was wondering from
there with one called Major Wheeler. Uh, it's kind of a red yeah,
red one wheelers. Honey, I am yes, but the major was
throwing me there. But anyway, so what you're wanting to know how it
does one place I read it set up to zone eight, and then a
couple other places said zone nine and one even said ten. So I never
know who to believe on that stuff. So I wanted to ask you,
what's your opinion. Oh boy, uh major wheeler honeysuckle. The I'm trying
to think you like better. No, I like it. It's it's a
type of coral honeysuckle. It's not the it's not the kind that's invasive,
you know, So that's that's a good thing. I don't see why it
wouldn't grow here. I don't I've never heard of it. Only going to
zone eight. We we have coral honeysuckle that does well here. It's just
a cultivar, yeah, just a cultivar of that plant. So yeah,
I like it. It's tame. It doesn't take over the world. I
used to have some kind of on a lamp post out in the front yard.
We had a little lamp gas lamp post out there and we just trained
it to that. I've seen it train to you know, portray lns and
other things because it is tame and you want to get it up close fairly,
because you want to watch the hummingbirds. They love it. Yeah.
Yeah, we have a little spot right off the front porch that I want.
I wanted to fit something there, so okay, yeah, I had
seen it called Major Wheeler, and then another place it was just Wheeler,
so I guess nobody's really sure what the name is. But well, all
right, well good good luck with it, and thanks for the call,
yes or thank you you take care by bye. We're going to go now
to Paul in Keema. Hello, Paul, Hey, how's it going.
I'm good for you, Thank you, sir. I have an outside storage
area that's surrounded by chain link fence and I want some like a privacy screen
or something so that people on the outside I can't really see what's on the
inside. And I've used tarps. Didn't like those. I used that messed
up. Didn't like those. Last year, Bend we took over my chain
link fence, and I love the way it looked. I may not be
calling this the right thing, but it's I did an image search on Google
and that's what I came up with. It's a flowering vine and it climbs
right up the fence and then just kind of spreads and completely takes over.
Okay, it's like it's kind of like a morning glory. I believe it's
somewhere that looks to that. Yes it is. Yeah, what can I
do? What can I do to make that grow faster and wider? Because
I want to get my chain link fence covered up a little good well,
just you know, water and fertilizer. The proper name on it is bind
weed, bind weed. It is detested by farmers. It's a it's a
mess and pastures and I mean and farms and stuff. But it is in
the honeysuckle family. That's another good one. There's another one called Alamo vine
that is in that similar family, and it has a different looking leaf,
but a similar morning glory looking bloom to it. But it's just a matter
of you know, getting adequate water and fertilized little fertilizer to it. Doesn't
take much. I mean, it grows. It grows wild just out in
the pasture. I'm you know, yeah, pasture but also a farm.
So so is it gonna help me if I pull up pieces from areas that
I don't want it in and stick it in the ground near where I do
want it, Well, you could, but you know, you're you're putting
me on the spider. I feel like someone's asking me if they can transplant
nutgrass, because that's that's a problem. We also it's not evergreen, I
don't believe, so you might want to try something like a coral honeysuckle on
there. There are several nice evergreen vines that also bloom for you real pretty.
You may want to try one of those as well. But yeah,
yeah, obviously it's willing to volunteer. Okay, all right, well thanks,
all right, thank you, Paul, appreciate that, appreciate that question.
Uh, well, time for the news, So I'm gonna pass the
baton to Nikki. Seven one three two one two k t r H is
a number if you'd like to give us a call back the pine trees running
the wine in rule. I've got to be welcome back. Good to have
you with us. We are going to be talking plants for the next hour
and a half this morning. We're going all the way to ten am,
So if you'd like to give us a call and ask a question, our
phone number is seven to one three two one two KTRH. Seven one three
two one two KTRH. One of the most important things you can do to
enhance your lawn to help it grow better is to do a cororation followed by
a compost top dressing. Now, soils around here often are clay, and
they often are compacted, and when you have that combination, the root system
has trouble thriving deep down into the soil because there's not good oxygen levels down
there. And as a result, when you do a core aeration that means
popping a plug out of the ground and leaving it on top of the ground
surface, you help get oxygen down in the soil. The compost top dressing
that post finely screen goes down in the swad Those are important, uh.
And it's not an inexpensive process because it's it's it's special equipment and it's it's
bulky bringing in mults wherever, wherever they're you're coming to, they're coming to
to do it for you. But it is a very very helpful, very
excellent way to enhance. You got an area that the grass just don't want
to thrive. You've watered it, you fertilize, it's just not working.
Tri compost top dressing followed following a good aeration. Now BnB turf pros if
you live down south and to the west, they are the ones that you
need to call b B Turfpros dot com. Bb turf Pros dot com.
Here is the phone number. Write this down, keep it handy seven one
three two three two fifty five ninety eight now bn B turf Pros. They
focus on customer satisfaction. They focus on doing high quality work. I've seen
the jobs that they do. I've talked to them. We you know,
as we were bringing them on as a sponsor, we talked about a lot
of things. They focus on quality products too. They only use products and
companies that I trust here on garden Line. So when I say get a
leaf mo compost, that's what they're going to use. They're going to use
a high quality leaf mo compost. In fact, they use the one from
Cienamulch, which you know, I have no qualms at all about saying way
to go. That's that is a good way to go. They do the
aeration and the compost stop dressing. They do have to schedule, so they
need to give them a call, but they really go above and beyond to
make a personal contact with their client and to ensure your satisfaction. So where
did they serve? Well, if you can go as far west to sugar
Land up in Missouri City as far east as Pearland. If you're going to
be down on along Highway six, well up up in Fresno, down in
Siena or Cola, Iowa, Colony, Manuville. That all through that area
right there is their service area, So just give them a call again.
Bbturfpros dot Com seven one three two three four fifty ninety eight. I'm gonna
go now to Crosby and talk to Mary. Hello, Mary, Hi,
how are you. I'm well, I'm well, how are you? Thanks?
Great? Thanks. I have a willow tree that I planted three and
a half years ago and it had been doing great and this year the leaves
you know, butted on it, and then probably a few weeks after that,
all the leaves started to drop off and it's completely barren right now.
And I checked the leaves. There was no you know, spots on them
or anything. So I'm not sure what happened. And I know that they're
you know, heavy water, you know drinker. And it did well through
the drought last last summer, the only and I used nitrofoss fertilizer on my
on my grass, and this year I tried the weed and the nitrosoft boss
we didn't feed. That was the only thing I did different. But I
can't imagine that that would do something to him. You know, I can't
tell you just the symptom being the leaf fell off. I mean, because
it could be a lot of things. This year has been moist enough to
where I would certainly rule drought out all the way along. The willows are
not super resilient long lived trees. Sometimes you get older ones, they just
you kind of get lucky, and that happens. But there's things that can
happen to them along the way. There are some root rots that can affect
a willow, and with what you're describing, it almost sounds like a collapse
with the root system. I would watch it go out and scratch your thumbnail
on some of the small twigs branches. See if there's still some creamy color,
green color underneath the outer thin bark, and that's an indication that it's
probably still alive, at least for now. If you see, if you
see paper sacked brown pecan brown color, that twig's dead. Just keep em
and you to switch over to little pocket knife work in your way back down
a branch until you find green and try to determine if it's if it's still
alive. There's nothing to put on it. There's no magic cures for any
of this. At this point, you just kind of wait and see.
I wouldn't give up on it too quick. But once you can't find green
or a pretty creamy color underneath the bark, that section is dead. It's
not going. What about a fertilizer would that help it at that point?
Not if it's a root rot or if it's a sole moisture issue or whatever.
It's not dropping leaves because it's lacking nutrients. There's more than enough nutrients.
If you'd never fertilize that soil, ever, then there'd still be enough
nutrients for that tree to at least survive, may thrive and grow. But
this is something else. Something's gone wrong, and I'm going to put it
this way. And the plumbing of the plant, you know, getting moisture
and nutrients out there to the leaves and what happened. I don't know the
description, but time, okay, I'll just watch it. Yeah, check
and wait, check the stems and wait. Okay, all right, thanks
much, all right, thank you appreciate that call. I talk about fertilizing
your lawn. You know, azamite is a mineral supplement. It is a
trace mineral supplement mind and utah up in Utah comes right out of the ground,
and it provides those nutrients that are needed in tiny amounts that are essential
to plants, but they're needed in tiny amounts, and so I always encourage
people to have a soul test and see what your soul needs. That you
know, a sew tests the best way to fertilize period, because your soul
may be different than your neighbors because how they or you have fertilized over the
years maybe different, and so what's built up what's depleted could change. But
as a general guide, putting as mite down once a year would be a
good place to start, just to make sure you're getting those micros applied to
the soil. Follow the label. It goes a long way. Remember these
are micros. These aren't nutrients you need in the levels, the amounts,
the quantities that you do regular fertilizer. These are micros. So like a
forty four pound bag of azmite will cover six to twelve thousand square feet.
You can go to Azomite Texas, Azo Mitetexas dot com find out more about
as might if you'd like to learn a little bit more about it. You're
listening to Guardline. I am your host and we are here to answer gardening
questions. If you would like to ask a question, We're about to take
a little break here, but you can go ahead and give the producer a
call. We will get you on the boards and you can be first up
when we come back from our break. I just want to remind all of
you that next Saturday, I'm going to be at Arburgate in Tomble. Here's
your official Do you need an excuse to go to Arbrogate? I don't think
so, but here's your official invitation. How about that to head up to
Arbrogate now Saturday, that's May eleventh, eleven thirty to one thirty. I'll
be there answering your gardening questions. I can identify plants, I can do
plant diagnosis, any kinds of questions you might have like that, bring me
photos on your phone. Mainly, just come and meet me and shop one
of the coolest nurseries you're going to find anywhere. Uh and by the way,
just a hint, Mother's Days coming up right Okay, so here's your
here's your official opportunity to bring mom out there with you and get her something
really cool, because Arburg has got plenty of that. Believe me. We'll
be right back. Hey, welcome back to garden Line. Good to have
you, Good to have you with us today. We're talking about all kinds
of things related to gardening, talking about some of the products and the places
and things like that where you would get these quality supplies too. For example,
Ana Plants produce up in Montgomery. A and A is your hometown garden
center. If you're up there in the Lake Conroe area, especially lots of
beautiful neighborhoods up there. Do you need somebody to come out and do some
work. Call A and A and have their landscape crew, their expert landscape
crew come out and visit with them about what you need done, what they
can do up there. You know, A and A is going to be
a place where you're always going to find color. You're always going to find
quality plants. No matter whether you want trees or shrubs, or vegetables or
herbs or flowers. There's always stuff. Beautiful, beautiful containers, beautiful hanging
baskets. Ana Plants and Produce also carries all the fertilizers that we talk about
here on gardening, and I mean all of them, and soil tests too.
By the way. For example, you're going to find Nitrofoss and Nelson
plant food, including the turf Star line that we're talking about a little bit
earlier. You're going to find microlife products there. You're going to find heirloom
soils. You're going to find Nature's Way resources like the leaf mold compost for
example. They've got it makes it really easy to do. They keep my
schedules there at the counter. Most of the time they haven't given them all
out on a particular day. But Ana Plants and Produce is the place you
need to go. You need check out. You've probably driven by it one
hundred times if you going up and down one oh five. They're on the
east side of Montgomery. On the east side of Montgomery. You can follow
them on social media and know this seven days a week from nine to five,
knowledgeable staff, seven days a week, nine to five, easy easy
to get. Buy Ana Plants and Produce, find them open and find the
stuff that you're looking for inside, like this Imperial Nitrofoss Imperial. That's another
good example of what they carry. Nitrofoss Imperial is the one we used in
the spring. That's the red bag. But now we're talking about Nitrofoss's Superturf
fertilizer, the silver bag. They have that too. They carry all these
products, the Sweet Green eleven zero four as well. Well. Let me
tell you about the Superturf a little bit more though, that I like that
because it puts half the nitrogen in a slow release form, so you fertilize
now, but it is fertilizing for you when you get to the month of
June and the month of July, and even into the month of August,
it is still fertilizing for you because it's gradually releasing those nutrients. So you
get a gully washer rain. If you put an immediate release down, just
think about it's putting salt or sugar and then spraying it with water hose.
It dissolves and it goes it goes away in a heavy rain. Now,
with the slow release, you're not going to get that. You're going to
get a gradual release over time. Just another reason why you might want to
use a slow release in the summer. Four percent iron promotes a nice uniform
green color to your grass. And where do you get it? Well,
I just told you just go right up there to ana plants and produce,
and you can find it there. Of course, wherever you live. You
know, maybe you live somewhere where there's an ace hardware store, or a
feed store or a nice garden center. Just widely available one of the many
widely available products. We're gonna got a friends with now and talk to Francis.
Hello, Francis high skill. I have a problem with my Saint Augustine
grass. The runners are standing above the ground, looping in an arc.
They're not connecting. Yeah, yeah, usually, Francis, that happens when
we get a lot of growth on our Saint Augustine lawns. The Saint Augustine
lives on top of the ground. In other words, it doesn't have underground
rhizomes. It just has the runners on top. And as you get a
lot of them forming, then when a new runner forms, it tends to
crawl over the top of the old runners, and so it can't touch the
ground to get a root down in there, and that can happen. That
is the equivalent of what we would call thatch in a Saint Augustine lawn.
The ways to deal with it are number one, look at your fertilizing schedule.
And if you're overdoing the fertilizer, you're going to get a lot of
growth and you're going to build into a thatchy kind of situation faster. So
you want to avoid that. The grass is not thick underneath it. We've
hit some diabeg from last year. Oh okay, so the runners could touch
the ground. They could. The other thing that can happen is when you
use a lot of a pre emergent herbicide. Most of the pre emergent ingredients
that are out there work by preventing the roots of a seed that's a weed
from being able to grow. The root comes out and it stops it,
it can't grow. That can happen to your Saint Augustine too, especially when
you overapply it, apply too much, apply it too often, and the
Saint Augustine makes roots. At each node you know you got a runner,
and then you have a spot where there's a node with leaves and woofs and
then part of the runner each of those nodes. If you lift up your
runners, look for the roots coming out of them. And if you see
little roots maybe a quarter inch long and they're stubbed at the end, we
call those club roots like a k Man club those. That is because of
the pre emergent doing that. Okay, so time is the solution to that.
Okay, well it'll wear down all products like you're going to break down.
But they work a while. So it's just another reminder that when we
use those, we want to use them at the label rate, not too
much and not too often. Okay, well, thank you so much.
Skip. I enjoy your program. Thank you, Francis. Appreciate your call
very much. You know me and soil right round stuff before green stuff.
Nature's Way Resources has been providing quality brown stuff for a very long time.
John Ferguson at Nature's Way and now Sonny i In who's working there with them.
They have created a beautiful place. I mean it's the garden center they
have there, the plants and ate lots of good quality native plants. It's
just nice to go. If you want to drive up to Nature's Way,
you go up Interstate forty five and where fourteen eighty eight comes in, just
south of Conro, fourteen eighty eight comes in from magnolia into forty five.
You turn right across the tracks in your Nature's Way, Now Nature's way,
What are you gonna get there? Well, you're gonna get fungal leaf compost.
Every Friday is fungal Friday. Ten percent off bags, twenty percent off
bulk. You're not gonna beat that. You're gonna get leaf mold compost that
we talk about for top dressing. By the way, a finely screened fungal
compost is also great for top dressing. Just a communication with Liam the other
day. He did a little side by side in his yard with the leaf
mold compost and the fungal based compost that had been finally screened, and they
both looked great, did a good job. You're gonna find roast soil there.
You're gonna find soils for other types of plants, specially blended for uh,
you know, fruit plants, or for some other other use. They're
each each type of blend that they've created is ideal for those kinds of plants.
So what do you do well? Number one? I would suggest you
go to the website, the Nature's Way website. I would also suggest you
just give them a call by the way. The website is Nature's Way Resources
dot com. The phone number nine three six three two one sixty nine ninety
nine three six three two one six nine nine zero. Whether you go there
and pick it up bag or book, or whether you have them deliver it.
Check out the fine products that John and Liam now have up there at
Nature's Way Resources. We're gonna now, let's see here. We're gonna go
real quick to Marsino and Cyprus. Hello Marsino, good morning, ched morning.
I sent a picture to you, okay, of my newly planted crape
myrtle. Three months ago, planted a crepe myrtle, had it professionally planted,
okay, And this morning I noticed that the bark is peeling off at
the bottom. I see that that is natural exfoliation. Nothing to worry about.
Crepe myrtle bark pops off in little papery slivers like that, and that
is perfectly okay. What's happening is the tree's growing and the dead outer bark
is just coming loose, kind of unique. A few plants to do that.
Crape myrtle is definitely one, so hey, good news. You don't
have to worry about that. That is great news. Thank you so much
for and thank you for your humor. You really are as funny character.
Oh my gosh, Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate that,
Mercina, and thank you for the call. Shape that very much. Wow.
Another hour in the books. Time flies, you know, time flies
like an arrow. They say. Kermit the frog says, let's see,
time's fun when you're having flies. I think that's what he says. All
right, one more time joke. Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies
like bananas. I love that one. I'll leave you with that one.
We'll be back seven one three two one two k t R H seven one
three two one two k t R. Give the producers a call and let's
get you on the board. We will talk to you when we come back
from break. Don't forget next Saturday. I'll be at Arburgate nayth eleventh,
eleven thirty one thirty. So right after the show, I'm going to be
line over there. I hope you will be lining too and join me over
there. You know, we got some Mothers Day shopping to do, don't
we. Arburgates got you set up on that. Bring me samples of plants,
bring me things to identify, to diagnose, or just pictures to Hey,
what can I do with this area here? I'll be happy to help
you with that. I always love going out to Arburgate. It is always
a blast to be out there. Welcome to KTRH Guarded Line with scamp Ricker.
It's so trim, just watch as so many good things to a s.
Hey, welcome to garden Line. Good to have you back, good
to be by. You live out in the Kingwood area, Well you're fortunate.
You got Kingwood Garden Center and you've got Warren's Garden Center. These are
both quality places. You're gonna find everything you're looking for when it comes to
plants, of course, you're going to find people that know what they're talking
about when it comes to help, and you're going to find really, really
excellent prices. I'm telling you the warranted Earlier this year visiting they they've dropped
prices significantly on things and just this extra special deal. Really, I mean.
And when I go to Warrens, I'm always impressed just with the layout
and the beauty. It makes you want to run in and go, oh
my gosh, I can see this in my patty, I can see this
in that flower bed, and no matter what kind of plants you want,
they're going to have it. They also have a good stock of all the
fertilizers I talk about, and things like heirloom soils. Lots of quality bag
products from heirloom soils there at Warren's Garden Center in Kingwood. Not difficult at
all to get to. For those of you up in the northeast kind of
direction of Kingwood, You're fortunate. It is a really really cool play.
I hope you go by there and pick it up. They got lots of
good lots of good heat tolerant color too, including some really attractive color combo
planters. That is just the fast way. You know. You got a
party to night, run out, grab a planter, bring it home and
everything looks good instantly. You can't you can't get faster than that. I'm
going to run now out to friends Wood and talk to Andy. Hello,
Andy, they skip Good morning morning. I've got I've got a question,
a problem with my myra lemon that's in the pot. The leaves are curling
on the underside of the leave or trails. It's dropping foliage. I know
it's got something. What do I spray myra lemon with because it's it's set
some fruit. What's the best path? All right? What you got is
something called the citrus leaf miner. Leaf miner as in coal minor. The
little fly lays an egg and the leaf and the larva crawls in between the
upper and lower surfaces, leaving trails and causing curling and silvering coloring of the
leaves. Uh. First of all, it's not a citrus killer. Now,
if you have a young plant, it's gonna set them back because they're
losing leaf area. But in general some people just ignore it and go on
despite it. If you want to control them, you need to spray when
you're getting a new flush of growth. Leaf minor doesn't attack old, dark
green, leathery leaves. It attacks fresh new growth. And so you would
spray with a product called spin No said, And I'll spell that here for
you if you have a pin or pencil hand I have yeah, S P
I N spin O S A D. Spin No said, And that that
is not the brand name. Well, I guess it could be, but
there are a lot of brands of Spino said. Uh. And just find
that you want to cover the foliage, especially the new growth. You don't
have to wet all the foliage of all the leaves. Uh. And then
when leaf minor tries to chew in, it shuts them down right there,
it stops it. All right, all right, well, thank you very
much. All right, you take care, good luck with that. Good
luck. Yep. Leaf minor is something we have to deal with here,
that is for sure. Ace Hardware, those of you who are dealing with
water problems, I just want to remind you is the place for even that
as well. I remember back in Harvey when we were cleaning out houses down
streets, just kind of helping people that have just been wiped out. What
do you need? What you need fans, You need dehumidifiers, you need
some rubber boots and gloves and buckets, and you certainly need bleach because when
it gets wet, black mold is coming right around the corner. You're gonna
need that. Utility knives. They even have something called the quick damn sandless
sand bags. By the way, you can take top soil bags, bags
of top soil, not floaty mulch, but top soil, and punch some
holes in them just to kind of, you know, allow air to escape,
so that they weigh down even better and use those as a sandbag and
then use them in your garden or in your yard, filling in holes and
things. When you're done, it works really well. Ace Hardware's got all
of that. They've got things like fire ants, bait and direct individual mound
tree and listen, after this flood, you're going to see firet mounts popping
up all over the place. Uh, they'll get their mounds up out of
the wet, wet soil. Ace Hardware has got you set up on that
to forty different stores in this scenario, forty stores. Acehardware dot Com is
the website, use the store locator. You're going to see a lot of
red dots on the map when you go there and you find the ones,
there'll be more than one near you. That makes it really easy easy.
Uh. Let's go to Ken in Beaumont. Hello, Ken, Hey,
Hey, Kim, Hey, I'm calling on the half a mom. Thanks
wife. Okay, I'm trying to get her to call you before. But
she has these outcroppings of Johnson grass in her yard. Okay, what can
rid this? Johnson grass has got a lot of underground rhizomes and it's you
don't it's not just real easy to get rid of as you know. Uh,
other than han digging, which is quite a job. You can spray
them with a product like people talk about round up all the time. It
kills just about everything you can do that. Now, if you get the
round up on something good, it's going to kill that good plant too.
So some people use wiper applicators. It's where you would put a product in
and you can just you rub it over the plant and it wipes it on.
Think of a sponge, I guess, and it wipes it onto the
leaves and then translocates down. And the nice thing about a wiper is the
Johncon grass could be coming out of a bed full of roses and flowers and
you're wiping it up above that and not killing the good stuff down below.
Okay, this wiper you're talking about, that's the buyer. Well, there
are some on the market. What I usually tell people and if you've got
a lot of Johnson grass, this is a little tedious, but you can
use one of those grabber tools that you get a jar off a shelf with.
They're about three feet long, and instead of having grabbers suction cups,
just figure out a way to bolt a couple of sponges on there. I'll
use a little metal plate like the ones with the holes in them they use
to attach to two by fours together or something as you're framing, and and
that then put the sponge in front of that, and then a little boat
with a washer to hold a sponge on, and then you can just squirt
that sponge and go through there wiping any kind of weeds that you have.
You can reach under a rose bush and wipe nuts edge if you want.
I mean, it's it's a very versatile tool. Uh. There are wipers
you can buy. Just last night, I was doing some searches and I'm
not real happy with the stuff on the market, but I've seen people do
home own homemade versions of all kinds of things. To apply a contact killer
like that to a weed. I'm sure you can. I'll bet you can.
All right, all right, thanks, appreciate you too. Take care.
Yeah, uh, I need to put I'm gonna put that online.
I'm just telling you right now, I'm gonna put plans for building one of
those online. I just got to get around to it and get it up
there and done. It's time for a break. Our phone number seven one
three two one two kt r H. Katie and Katie will be with you
first when we come back. Welcome back to the garden line. Good to
have you with us today. If you are putting a container out on the
patio, you need to know about jungle and flour and vegetable planting mix.
It has the qualities that you need in a mix. Number one. It's
got like four different sources of organic decomposed organic matter in it, which is
good. It's got mic rhiz of fungi in it, it is good.
It drains away excess water, but it onto water enough for the plants to
survive. It is not a drought prone type of mix like some can be.
And now jungle lands available widely. I mean you're going to find it
in places like Stanton Shopping Center and Alvin. You're going to find it at
the Arbor Gate up in Tomball where I'm going to be next Saturday from eleven
to one. By the way, You're going to find it at the ice
Hard Restaurant in Kingwood, for example. Lots of places you can get jungle
in. You can get quality products from the folks at nitrofoss. I want
to head over. Now, let's see who's next one. Look Katie and
Katie. Hello Katie, how are you? I'm good? How are you?
I'm good? What's up today? Well, yesterday I noticed I have
three high biscus plants in pots on my patio, and I noticed that a
couple of the high biscus blooms had these perfect little circles through them. And
when I went to look, it had this little it was a little green
caterpillar. Okay, I guess the little green caterpillar. And even one of
the blooms that hadn't opened up yet. I pulled off of the high biscus
to kind of open up and see what was going on, and that's when
I saw the green caterpillars. Yeah, it's on two out of the three
plants, and I want to know what I can do to get rid of
them, and what can I do to prevent it from getting to the third
plant. Okay, Well, the simplest, safest, most targeted thing you
can use is BT. Thesylothuringiensis is the fancy name we just call it BT.
If you go into a garden center hardware store, feed store, we're
ACE hardware. For example, you're going to find just need some BT and
they'll get you fixed up. You got a couple of nice ACE hardware stores
out there in the KD area, like the KD Ace Hardware for example.
A Signal ranch another good one. But anyway, the BT you sprayed it,
it's only going to last a day or two out there in the environment.
But the caterpillar eats BT. So you spray it all over the plant,
and then it eats it and it gets sick. That doesn't make good
bugs sick. It doesn't even make beetles and grasshoppers sick. It just kills
caterpillars. The next step would be something like spinosid, which will also work
lasts a little longer out there in the environment. But I think I'd start
with the BT. And is that safe for pets and other animals that are
outside. Absolutely yes, yeah, it is a disease. Only a caterpillar
has the intestinal tract that is right for BT doing its killing work. Anything
else, it's not going to kill them. I need to spray the third
plant to prevent the caterpillars. I would I would spray it and then I'd
get out, you know, three days later, look over the plants and
if you see any new damage or anything, spray them again. But usually
one or two BT sprays will get you through that cycle with a caterpillar.
And you know, maybe that three weeks from now something shows up and you'd
have to do it again. But I like to start with the safest thing
that has the least environmental damage and BT is that okay? All right?
Well, thank you, you bet, thank you. I appreciate your call
very much. So when was the last time you went out to enchanted forest
out in the Richmond Rosenberg area enchanted forests is I love going there. I
just love the setting. It is fun to shop there, and great staff
to help you. And selection is incredible. Their selection on herbs, on
vegetables, on flowers, and on and on down the line. It is
just amazing out there and enchanted forest. Now you're going to find all the
perennial plants that you would want to plant. You're going to find things that
are not so common. You know, the little one that I referred to
as frog fruit because that's its name. It is a native groundcover that has
little time any white flowers that are attractive to beneficial insects. They have it
there. You can buy that there the Jumping Jack's plumerias. If this is
your gateway drug into plumerius, Okay, go buy there, get one and
get it started. Find out how easy it is to grow a plumeria,
and you will just enjoy those beautiful flowers you can make. You can make
lay flower necklaces for everybody that shows up at the house. I can kind
of do a little Honolulu stuff going on there. That's the plumeria. They
also have a great selection of plants for butterflies, things like pentas that are
just a butterfly crack. When it comes to bringing in things like the some
of the swallowtails, for example, Uh, they're gonna have plants like passion
vine to go fridlary caterpillar, like the oh gosh, pipe vine swallowtail,
the pipe vine vines, and then they're gonna of course, there are things
that attract the adults. There's strings that feed their larvae, and you want
both, and they have both. In fact, chances are when you go
buy a larval food so enchanted forest, they're going to give you a larva
or two to take home if you want it. I mean, they got
plenty butterflies. Know the place they hang out there. I mean it's it's
on all the social media for butterflies like you got to go here, and
it's because they have so many cool plants like that. I love to go
there. Now, where is it? Well, it's on FM twenty seven
to fifty nine outside of Richmond head towards sugar Land fifty nine. It's off
to the right FM twenty seven fifty nine. Just go down there. Here's
the website, enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. Just go go
check it out. Sign up for the newsletter too. By the way,
great website as well. We're going to go out to Westbury now and talk
to Anthony. Hello Anthony, how are you going, sir? I remember
you from my Sugarbille days and you were working with John. Oh yeah,
John Drumgal. Yes, oh man, that goes back a while. I'm
sixty five years I'm sorry anyway, Okay, Well I'm only twenty seven.
So well, I know I've got shirts that are twenty seven years old.
Go ahead, how can I help? All right? At worked there were
given away these roses and I got to a point where they were begging us
to take them so anywhere. I got two uh, they are. The
little card on it called them Tiffany Rose hybrid tea. And one really did
well. It got blooms and the it opened up and they were very very
fragrant, like I said on the card. But the second one, the
the bloom never opened up and just kind of dried up. And I cut
a couple of them over, dissected them and said they were bugs. I
couldn't find any kind of insects, so I don't know why the second one
didn't do well. I used the Nelson rose feed good and some puzzled now
described to me that the blooms formed but didn't open. Right. That's correct,
Yes, sir, did you notice them having brown around them or green?
Was it just normal? Green? Just never opened? No, there
is brown. Okay. So whenever we have rainy weather, we can get
petal blights. It's a fungus that infects and kills the petal tissues. And
when that petal dyes, that soft supple rose petal that's around the bud,
when it dies, it gets hard and it's like putting a plastic wrap around
the rosebud. It cannot open it physically, isn't able to unfurl. And
that is probably what's going on those during rainy period. You could use a
fungicide to spray those to prevent that from happening, or you can just kind
of consider it like, well, it's it goes with the weather here and
there, and I'm gonna overall, I'm going to cut them off when they're
like that, but I don't worry about spraining all the time for them.
But those are your two options, Anthony, okay, and then dad headed,
how do you recommend I've done two different things. Just experiment because it's
what I do about a quarter of an inch below each bloom and then on
different stems. I've got a lot of stems. I went down to the
fifth plant, on fifth leaf, you know, okay, and cut about
a quarter of an inch above that. What's the best thing for me to
do? In general, what we recommend for roses is start at the bloom
and work your way down. You're gonna find leaflets, leaves that have three
leaflets. And then you go down low further and you see leaves that have
five leaflets, and go down to the first five leaflet and cut it off.
There. You can go a little further below if you're trying to kind
of cut the bush back and invigorate more branching and things. But just above
that leaflet quarter inch above it is fine. There's a bud at the base
of that leaflet that will take off and grow. Broo. All right,
thank you sir, all right, good luck you bet take care. Microlife
fertilizers are natural fertilizer products that are chalk full of biological activity and the nutrients
that you need for your plants, whether you're using the green bag sixty four
to fertilize your lawn, whether you're using the pink bag for acid loving plants.
Yesterday I was out at by the way, thanks to the folks at
wild Birds Unlimited down there in Pairland for hosting me. We had a great
time and thanks to all of you that came out. But I was talking
to more than one person and the topic came up. But they needed an
acid fertilizer. It may have been for blueberries or azalias or something. Micro
Life has a pink bag for that. It's more it's got self for in
it, which is an acidifying compound that helps out with that sort of thing.
Then they got the humane plus the purple bag. Lots of options for
Microlife. Now where do you get it? Well, it's widely available,
but I'll tell you you can get it. And then one place is Southwest
Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer. They basically are the place that has everything they do.
If something new comes out, I guarantee you Bob is going to get
it. We talk all the time about some new thing here, how do
we deal with that over there or whatever. He's always trying out new things
and bringing him into the store. So if I talk about a fertilizer,
I guarantee you Bob has it there, like Microlife for example, and many
many others. If you need a pests disease or weed control, he has
several options for everything. Knowledgeable staff, they know what they're talking about.
You can bring them a sample, you can bring them a picture. They'll
diagnose it, they'll identify it. They'll put you in contact with the product
that works. That is very important. You don't want to just buy stuff
and spray it because someone who doesn't know what they're talking about told you to
use it. You want to purchase once, and you want to purchase correctly,
and you want to know how to use it. And they can do
all that for you. Southwest Fertilizer corner of bus Nut and Renwick in Southwest
Houston. Corner of bus Nut and Renwick, Southwest Houston, if you want
to go to the website Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com.
Well, we're coming up here on a break, so got a few folks
to get to out there. We're going to start off with Jeff down at
Ale and I'll be going let's see, we're going to talk to Biff,
Henry and Mark after that. Hang on, guys, we'll be right with
you. Welcome back to the Guardline. Good to have you back. Let's
keep going here. We got about a half hour left today. I want
to make sure you get to as many of these calls as we can.
I do want to mention to you though, if you are looking to purchase
a tree, Burden Tree Farm makes it easy for First of all, they're
in three locations around Houston. There's a there's a location up where Yale Street
comes into it, kind of North Central Heights sort of area. Out west
on Barker Cypress there's a location, and then down south in Parland there's also
a location for Verdant Tree Farm. The website is Verdant Treefarm dot com.
You need to go there because they have you can look at the various trees
they have and there's information on each one, very helpful. Like what is
information on a cypress versus a month a Zuma cypress. It's all there.
All the palm trees, there's information on that. They have very hearty palm
trees. They can direct you to. In fact, you can go sit
down with them and say, hey, look here's what I want. Here's
what I'm out of a tree. Here's a picture of the right yard where
I want to put it, and they can direct you the right one.
They'll sell to you. You go out and pick the tree out you want,
They tag it, they bring it home to your house. They bring
it not home, they bring it to your home, they plant it,
and you're ready to go. You've successfully been set up for success by Verdant
Tree Farm. Easy easy, and they know what they're doing. The largest
tree farm in the Houston area, the largest independently owned tree farm here in
the Houston area. We're going to go now to Jeff and Ileve Galveston.
Hey, Jeff, okay, sir, how are you today, I'm good.
Thanks for waiting, no problem. I was on the listening to you
earlier and I couldn't get to my pen fast and I fast enough to write
down the product that you suggested a lady use on her augustine grass that is
getting kind of spongey with a lot of thrush under it. What was that
product called? I was talking about using like a leaf mold compost top dressing.
So of the Saint Augustine grass plant, you've got roots, you've got
nodes and runners and then grass blades. Grass blades right fast. They decompose
fast. That's why we return our clippings. When you fertilize a lot,
you can end up with a lot more runner. And runner is slower to
break down. It's not like wood, but it's halfway between grass blades and
wood in terms of its resistance to rotting. And so when you put a
compost hop dressing over it, you keep it moist. You got a lot
of microbial activity there and it just speeds up the process of turning all those
runners back into organic material in the soil. And that that is what I
had suggested for her, But then we found out she really didn't have a
thatch, so well I've got the thatch. It's almost like walking on tundering
parts of my yard of yeah, yeah, you don't touch any solid surface.
Yeah, so a I'd back off on the lawn fertilizing amount. It's
still important to fertilize, but the more you push runner growth, the more
they're going to start crawling on each other. And you end up with that
so so moderate that a little bit return the clipping. Still, it's still
a good idea. That's part of adding, you know, some high nitrogen
material down there in the thatch to help decomposition speed up. Is there a
specific brand of sab dressing or whatever? I look at it. I prefer
leaf mold compost by either nature's way. You can get it from airlom soils
delivered. Both of those are a long ways from you. Down Closer to
you is Siena Multch, which is down south of Houston in the Siena area.
They probably, well, I don't think they. I'm pretty sure they
don't deliver as far away as you are, but you can find a way
to get it there and use that as a top dress. They do have
leaf mold compost at Sienna. All right, sir, I appreciate the help,
and you have a wonderful day you too, Thanks a lot. Appreciate
appreciate that call a lot. Let's see now we're going to go to Beff
in Houston. Hey, Beff, Hello, thanks for taking my call.
I appreciate it. Sure. Last summer really killed my yard. All I
had was weeds, had it scraped by a landscaper and new sod put in
and it looks great. They tell me to water every day for the first
month, but now it's looking great. I'm through the first month. So
my question is how do I you know, how do I cut back my
water schedule? And what fertilizer or we control shit I put on it?
Now? Okay with this new sod. All right, well, since this
is going out on the airways, I just want to want to qualify something
that they said, you do not need to water every day for a month.
If you can water, I usually will water twice a day, morning
and evening because the plant has zero almost zero roots. When you get the
grass sod for the first week and then once a day for a week,
and after that, you bet you start to back off. That's plenty,
but how do you do it? I think your grass is going to be
very, very wet, probably got a little bit of rain and all this
stuff we've been through here, and so you you probably probably won't need to
water for at least I'd say three or four days after this rain dries up
and quits, and then I would go to a twice a week schedule.
I think at this point, if it's been in a month, you have
got very well established rooted grass. And I would on my lawns, I
try to water once a week with a good soaking and let it dry out
in between waterings. So that is a schedule a lot aim toward. But
i'd start with every other twice a week. I would start with twice a
week, and then i'd go to once a week after two or three weeks,
or even two weeks isn't enough, okay? And then what about fertilizers.
Okay, well, it's been in a month, so you can start
fertilizing it. I would at this point, I would get me a slow
release fertilizer, something to gradually release over the next few months. I would
always return the grass clippings back into the lawn. They'll decompose also and help
feed it. But it already is well established enough where you can begin to
fertilize it. It probably looks pretty good. And even without fertilizer, right
he does, it looks great. What slower release would you recommend you got?
You got several good options. Uh. The Nelson's makes one called Slow
and Easy. Nitroposs makes one called It's the Silver Bag, it's super turf.
Those are going to be widely available. I don't know what area you're
in, but I'm over by Southwest Fertilizer. Walk in the door. They
Southwest even has their own proprietary slow reliefs, So yeah, walk in,
talk to them. They'll they'll show you what they got and uh, you're
not going to go wrong with any of those. All right, great,
all right, Beth, Well, I appreciate very much. That helps.
All right, sir, thanks appreciate that. Appreciate that call a lot.
Let's see, now we're going to go to Crosby and talk to Mark.
Hello. Mark, Hello, I got a question. Uh, how can
I get rid of poison going up oak tree without digging the roots up?
Is the solution? Absolutely? Yes, I'm gonna I'm gonna cut to the
chase because I'm short on time. You need to find something with trimech in
it tr i MC that could be a poison ivy killer. Maybe what you
see on the label it may say brush be gone or something trimech tr imec.
You want to cut that vine off where it's attached to the tree,
take a section out with a saw, and then immediately take a spongebrush like
for painting on a little wooden handle, and dab the trimec right onto that
fresh cut right away. Just dab it right onto that fresh cut. It'll
translocate down and kill it. Sometimes, if it's a big strong bind,
you may have to do another application at some point. But that is the
fastest, easiest, least toxic, least product way that you can do it,
and it works very well. And that'sing what happened to the tree.
No, not because you're dabbing it onto the fresh cut surface. That no
problem. Oh don't bine see thee Yeah yeah, Because you're saying, if
you got a buy and going up a tree, uh, then you you
can just dab it on them, but you gotta you gotta cut it.
Essentially, you're creating a little poison ivy stump and you're and you're dabbing that
stump with TriMet Okay, so putting it on the leaves and like they spend
it down the roots. I don't do the job. Well, it can
also do the job, but you get it in better this way, and
uh, you avoid the potential for the spray going onto something that you don't
want to kill. Well, I had I had a charrange, I was
going to dab it on the leaves. I would just do the trunk cut.
Trust me on this one. Yeah, Okay, it's like cutting artery
and trying to drop it down in there. Okay, I got you,
all right, Mark, all right, thank you very much. Good luck
with that. Hey, we got to take a break. Seven one three
two one two k t r H. When we come back, Henry Cyprus,
You'll be the first stop. You believe me say it? I love
you. When you know I've been a liar all my life. You've had
a reputation since you were a youth. I must have been and said the
thing you tell me the truth. Can you believe me when I said we'd
marry when you know I'd rather hang than have a Why I know I said
I'd make you mine. But who could know that I could go for that
olt? Right? I want you to hear a little bit Danny k remember
that boy? That was a long time ago. Uh, pretty silly song
too. All right, you're listening to the guard Line. I'm your host,
Skip Richter, where we play some weird stuff ever now and then just
for fun, we're going to head out to Cypress now and talk to Henry.
Hello, Henry, good morning, good soggy morning. Skip. Yeah,
no kidding. We'll take it. We'll wish we had it in July
and August. Really, I've got a thirteen or fourteen year old b I
repair big tree and this year, first year started in the spring. New
growth is on the ends of the limbs, and the like turns yellow,
turns brown and dies. The rest of the tree is fine, okay,
and it's not all the limbs, but it's enough so it's worse. Yes.
That is a disease called far blight. And when it dies, you
probably have brown, chocolate brown leaves still stuck through the dead branches. Far
Blight is a bacterial disease. In the spring, we get some rain splash
in bacteria around they land on a bloom they land on new tender shoots and
they infect it and kill it. That we call it a shepherd's crook effect
because typically the very succulent ends bend over like a shepherd's crook, like a
walking cane. And so what you need to do two things. First of
all, you need to back off on any kind of fertilizing you have been
doing. If you had been doing any every time we invigorate a pear tree,
we increase the incidence of fireblight. It loves lots of tender growth.
So fertilizing with nitrogen, a heavy pruning or pruning period, it just it
creates new vigor, and that's where we're in the problem. Second thing you
need to do is go in and take pruners and prune out all those dead
ends that you can get to. You will see that it's sunken in.
It has a canker in the wood, and it's sunken in. And then
you get down to a certain point where you're back to healthy wood. Prune
below the dead and then each time you prune a limb out, spray your
printers with lysol to kill anything on any microbes bacteria in this case, on
those prunter surfaces because you don't want to then make a new cut and spread
them to another spot. So spray in between cuts and then get those out
of there, and that will minimize it. So minimizing vigor as best you
can and send monetarily removing as much of it as you can, or your
two tricks of the trade. There are there is an antibiotic called streptomize,
and that's available for fire blight in some garden centers, and so if you
if you want to look for that, you can spray that in the spring
fall of the labels instructions. Most people don't go to that trouble, uh,
just because you're having to do it ahead of time. You're you're get
if you wait until you have everything's brown, it's a little late to treat,
and so you're having to do it in the spring, but during that
spring rainy period that the infection is starting. Okay, Now, much of
this tree is so tall that even with my handy dan the eight foot ladder,
I'm not going to be able and long handled cruiers, I'm not going
to be able to reach that high. Yeah, I know, I know,
it's a it's just the way it is. Uh. You know,
once you have a tree and it's big and you got fire blight, you
just do the best you can with it. With the name of the disease
again, so I can for the researches. You bet, fire blight of
pair F I R E B L I G H T. Okay, thank
you so much, Skip. I appreciate that you bet. Is this an
edible pair or an ornamental? This is a Bradford Bradford Yeah, I think
you said. In fact, this is the first issues we've had any real
blossoms. Frost has kill them every year in the four years we've lived here
except for this year. Finally we get some blossoms and then it's followed by
this blight. Yeah, it's one of the one of the issues with Bradford
pair. But uh anyway, yeah, go look at look it up.
You can learn a lot about it and hopefully that'll help. Thank you,
sir, much appreciate it. You bet, thank you it. A while
ago, who is that talking about. I was talking to Bef Bith and
we were talking about fertilizers for his new lawn, and I mentioned Nelson Slow
and Easy. Nelson's has a line of fertilizers called turf Star. There's a
number of them in the turf Star line. Two for this summer that you
need to know about are Slow and Easy and one called Bruce's Brew. Now,
Bruce's Brew puts a lot of the nitrogen as immediately available, but there
is some slow release that may take up to six months to fully release.
Slow and Easy is primarily a slow release. It does have some immediately available
nitrogen, of course, but it'll be releasing all the way the next time.
If you do Slow and Easy now, the next time you need to
fertilize is in fall. And if you get my launch schedule at gardening with
Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot com, you can find out all
about when to fertilize and what to use. If you're organic, if you
like synthetic product, whatever you like, it's on the schedule there. It'll
guide you on that. Slow and Easy, though, is a great way
to provide slow, even growth. It's also a somewhat acidifying fertilizer, so
not only at releasing nutrients slowly, providing things that microbes too enjoy, but
it's also slightly acidifying the surface as you use it. And it's always good
to move our lines in that direction, especially in this part of the state
where we tend to have higher peach soils in the heavy clays often but anyway,
Slow and Easy is a great one to use, and Bruce's Brew is
another great one to use. They each have their own pluses and they each
are quality products from Nelson that you can find widely available. I wanted to
thank the folks out in Pairland at Paarland wild Birds Unlimited yesterday hosting me.
We had a great time out there. I think all of you came out.
I was impressed and the questions were awesome. Lots of samples out,
a box full of dead plants. I felt like the Statue of Liberty.
Remember the Amma Lazareth poem, bring me you're tired, you're weary, you're
huddled masses yearning. Well, well, I think people were bringing me they're
sick, they're dead, they're infected, and we just put them in a
box as we went through diagnosing. But thank you for having me out there.
It was a good time. And Mother's Day is a great time to
go to Wildbirds Unlimited. You know there's six wildbirds here in the Houston area
and If you want to find the ones near you, it's easy. Go
to here's the website wb U dot com forward slash Houston WBU as in wild
Birds Unlimited dot com forward slash Houston, and you can find them near you.
They're all over the place now. They have things like the ecotyp Classic
feeder. It looks like it made out of wood, but it is.
It's beautiful, but it is made out of milk jugs, believe it or
not, real cool recycled plastic milk jugs. They have the High Perch hummingbird
feeder, my favorite hummingbird feeder. It really works well. It has several
advantages. I'm time to go into all those right now, but it is
an excellent hummingbird feeder that make an excellent gift. And if you only go
to the Cadillac. My favorite feeder of all in my house is the Eliminator
squirrel proof feeder. You put your seeds in there. It does not allow
squirrels in. It is really well made and this is a lifetime warranty,
so something goes wrong on it, you can get the part. You can
fix the feeder. I mean, it's that kind of quality. There are
many other things the flying Bistro cylinder feeder. You put the little cylinders of
bird seed in there for that. They have a beautiful, wonderful book called
The Joy of Bird Feeding by the founder of wild Birds Unlimited. Really cool
wild Birds Unlimited. All right, I'll tell you what here. I'm gonna
Ashley, if you will hold on. As soon as we're done here,
I'm going to take your call. Okay, we just don't have enough time
right now, but I will take your call. I will be next Saturday
at Barbaragate Barbergate Garden Center in Tomball. If you've never been, I don't
know how that's possible, but you need to go. If you have been,
you know how cool it is. Drive around back on Dreshal Road.
See the brand new parking lot that I keep raving about on. You know
how much rain we've gotten here. I guarantee you right now you could drive
to Arbigate. You can drive across that parking lot because it absorbs the rain
down into the soil and it is all weather. It is so cool.
I'll be there from eleven to eleven thirty to one thirty. Come see me.
Look forward to seeing you next Saturday at the Arbor Day Hey, thanks
for listening to Garden Me