H Garden Line with skip rictor shoes, crazy heresies, gasp you can just
watch him as wosis gas so many good things to seepbot basic ways, gassies
like gas baby can you did? Doubles back again? Not a sign?
Glasses a gas the sun, beamon of a tree, bring the gasses and
gas can starting you did? Good morning, Glad to have you with us
this morning. Welcome to garden Line. We're looking forward to whatever things are
of interest you. What are your questions about gardening? What have you what
would you like tried? Is there something we can help you with in terms
of diagnosing, identifying, or do you just like to talk about gardening.
I can certainly understand that one for sure. If you would like to give
us a call, our phone number is seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I
am really I'm actually really enjoying the weather that we've been having. I enjoy
a mix of the weather, and you know, we've got to have times
where it rains, time where it doesn't some sunshine. Of course, it's
summer. We can gripe about the heat, but it's summer. It's part
of the deal. All we need to do is focus on getting our work
done in the early morning hours, in the late afternoon hours or very late
or I should say early evening actually ours. Uh. Just always want to
be safe, and I encourage you. I know, when I was a
kiddo, I was pretty invincible. Nothing would kill me. And then one
day I don't know how I was, but it was up in the teens
or early twenties, I ended up with almost having a heat stroke from being
out in the sun and just working and work in those a time where we
were doing a lot of physical work and farm work and different kinds of things.
I overloaded and as a result, it almost knocked me down. Good.
Heat stroke and heat exhaustion and all those things are serious, and I
encourage you to know and obey the warning signs when you see someone or when
you start feeling things, feeling flush. There's just a lot of symptoms of
it. I'm not a doctor, so I won't tell you what they all
are. You can find those out yourself. But when you start noticing things
just aren't quite right, you need to take care of it. But even
before that, you need to plan so that you don't get into that situation
because a lot of those problems sneak up on us. And that's what happened
to me. I thought I was fine. I mean, just gut up
and go right, you can do it. But well, I tell you
what, it's life threatening, so don't mess with it. Another thing we
don't want to mess with is our skin. Skin damage is cumulative, and
the more you're out getting sun on your skin. Number number one, it's
there's the danger of long term skin damage that has all kinds of issues that
we have to deal with. But there's also the fact that you know it,
it's cooler to wear a long sleeved cotton type shirt or something else that's
got a good SPF factor because it's it's actually your Your perspiration soaks into the
materials and then evaporates away, cooling you off. The sun doesn't actually hit
your skin and heat it up that way. Uh, And I've made that
switch to over the years too. What I'm going to get out, even
though it's summer, long sleeve, loose fitting shirt, it just works really
really well SPF sunscreens, making sure you wear a hat or something if you're
if you have bare skin, you're ears your head, your neck, all
those things. Here, I am lecturing you like your mom. Well I'm
not really, I'm just saying from one friend to another, Hey, let's
take care of ourselves. We want a garden for a really long time and
enjoy it. And just something that's kind of been in my mind lately as
things have really heated up and the weather is heated up, so drank plenty
of water. That's another one. It sneaks up on you. All right,
Well you're listening to garden Line. I'm gonna stop the advice that was
unsolicited and we'll just start talking about gardening. The fire beds that I have
are I've been taking care of them, putting some nice quality multures down.
Had a shredded mulch that I was I have been using now for a while
from Nature's Way Resources. Nature's Way is a wonderful company that really was at
the lead of quality soil care products. You know the mantra stuff before green
stuff. Well, Nature's Way is all about the brown stuff. They're up
there almost a conro up I forty five about where fourteen eighty eight comes in.
They're on the east side, just across the railroad tracks. Real easy
to get to, and the quality products they have, there's just so many.
I mean, I could spend the whole hour just naming and describing some
of the mini products that they carry. If you're looking for specific mixes like
for ctrus or for cactus or something like that, they have it. If
you want to grow blueberries or azaleas or something that likes acid loving condition or
acid conditions guardinias Headrangis, they've got a blueberry mix that works great for that.
They were the ones who actually created, in partnership with the Houston Roads
Society, the premium rose soil blend that's out there on the market, and
it just goes on and on. Anything you need you need some expanded shale
mixed with composts to help create a long term loose of that clay soil.
Nature's Way has that they stay, i would say, on the cutting edge
of how things go in the soil making, the compost making, the bed
mix making industries. They take their time to do it right, and when
you get a product from Nature's Way, you know that you're going to improve
your soil significantly, or in the case of mulches, you can go on
the surface that you're going to create a high quality mulch, and that's that's
some of the material that I've been using this past week is some of their
double aged double or native age double ground mulch. That is an excellent,
outstanding molts. They have many other really high quality ones as well, but
that's just one I've been using and I think it works super super well.
Nature's Way is open Monday through Friday from eight to five and Saturday from eight
am to two pm. They're closed today, they'll be back open tomorrow as
well. If you want to give them a call, it's nine three six
three two one sixty nine ninety three six three two one sixty nine ninety.
They have some outstanding opportunities to get quality products at a very very good price
right now. Tell them that you heard about them on garden Line. This
is important. Have your attention just for a moment here because this is important.
Tell them you heard about it on garden Line, and you will get
a huge discount on all kinds of soil based products there at Nature's Way.
And now's a good time to do it. I realize it's hot outside,
but little early morning work and stuff fall planting is just around the corner.
We're going to be planting starting planting our vegetable gardens. Actually we kind of
already have a way of tomatoes and whatnot, but we'll be doing a lot
of vegetable garden planning in September, even late August. Flowers, same kinds
of things. If you're going to put any kind of a woody shrub or
perennial or tree in the ground, there's not a better time than fall.
But now's the time to get your soil red. Get the brown stuff first
and then the green stuff. And Nature's Way Resources can help you get super
high quality brown stuff. And by the way, that is also their website,
Naturesway Resources dot com. You're listening to the Garden Line. Our phone
number is seven one three two one two KTRH and we're gonna take a little
break here and when we come back, we will go to Mike in Northwest
Houston and kick things off on the phones. Welcome back to guard Line.
Hey, we're glad you're listening this morning. I hope you have a cup
of coffee or whatever it takes to get those eyes open. And we got
a lot to talk about because we want you to have a beautiful, beautiful
landscape. We want you to have a bountiful garden, whether it's vegetables or
flowers or herbs, and it all is available to you. All it takes
is some good information to get you off on the right foot. Like I
like to say, there's no brown thumbs, there's uninformed thumbs. And we're
here to inform your thumb. And we're going to head straight out to the
phones right now and talk to Mike in northwest Houston. Well, good morning,
Mike, and welcome to guard Line. Hello Mike or Texas State Guardsmen.
Yeah, I'm here. Okay, go ahead, can you hear me?
Okay, yeah. Let me give a quick shout out to all the
state Texas State Guardsmen who are out helping with the pass out supplies and water
and ice to everybody that suffered from the hurricane. The question is because they're
doing good work. The question is, with all the rain and all the
water on the ground right now, is there anything we should do to try
to take advantage of it or to head off issues? Are we talking about
the context of like a lawn or what? Yeah? Like yeah, around
the house? I mean, yeah, not mass We don't Yeah, I
probably misled you with that. But anyway, just when we get off you
know, when we go off duty and we go home with all this rain,
is there something we should do to take advantage of it or to make
things better. Well, we got a lot of water on the ground,
right. We don't want to work the soil when it's very very wet,
especially clay soils that destroys the structure. And then when they dry out,
we got little blocks of concrete in the ground that are very hard to work
with. But when it's moist, you know, dry, it's hard and
hard and you don't can't work it. Super wet, you don't want to
work it. But in the middle there's this sweet spot where it crumbles apart,
and that would be a good time to do any kind of soil preparation
because you know, we could go back into a drought period for a month,
and if anything you can do to get your beds ready for fall or
for any future planting, take advantage whether they say make hay while the sunshines,
well, this is a great time to be able to do some soil
improvement. As it begins to dry out just to a little bit more so
you would want to avoid that. It's also an easier time when the soil
is moist to pull up weeds when you're you know, going to do some
hand pulling, or if you've got one of those little tools like Grandpa's weeder
that just pulls the pop pops them out of the ground, you never have
to bend over. When the soil is moist, they come out easy and
it's much less work. And then it gets dry it's harder to do.
This would be important time to stay ahead on mowing because the number one thing
making those that grass grow right now is the water. As it gets dry,
grass is going to slow down. But boy, when it gets good
rainfall, it's as if you fertilized it. The grass really takes off growing.
So stand ahead on that. Those are a few things. Look,
I just wondered if there was like, you know, like hey, seize
the moment. Yeah, those are some of the things I think. I
think also more so than just the fact that we had a bunch of rain,
is where we are on the calendar. And you know that I've said
earlier when I started the show talking about vegetable plantings for fall, there's times
when you need to get them in so that you get your crop before the
first frost hits or something like that. And so we want to be watching
those and stand ahead of that. But it's always a good time to build
the soil. Mike, I appreciate you call a sure, Yeah called before,
I'll call again, all right, look forward to it. Yeah,
that you know, there's all these adages out there. And someone told me
the other day that I speak in adages a lot, or speak in sayings
a lot and stuff. But it's a thing that comes to mind, like
right then, you know that make haywell, the sunshines. He who hesitates
is lost. A stitch in time will save nine. That they're true.
There's a reason there's adages. They're true. I say this about pest control
a lot too. The sooner you respond to a pest problem, the more
options you have, and the more least toxic options you have, and the
more benefits you can do. So let me give you an example. If
you have caterpillars that are chomping on your plants, if you jump in there
early on with a square to bet on the foliage, they eat it,
they get sick, they die, and it's very effective. The older,
the caterpillars get BT becomes less effective. Plus with each molting they get bigger
jaws and they eat more leaf area per day. And so you can go
from oh, there's a caterpillar on my plant to oh, I don't have
any leaves on my plant pretty quick, and so early response is important.
And the caterpillar is just an example. That's true of many other pest issues.
Stink bugs when they're young are much more susceptible to a spray. By
the time they get older, they have wings flying around. It takes some
pretty potent stuff, synthetic perithoids and whatnot to truly knock them down and kill
them. And they're everywhere, and your sprays aren't as effective because you don't
have a little cluster of them like when they hatch out as babies don't hesitate
on things. If you've got little weeds popping up everywhere, just a slice
of the hoe barely underneath the surface, and you just wipe them all out
with almost no work. Once they're established and got good root systems. Now
you're hacking away at them, they're already entangled with your plants, are taking
water, they're taking nutrients. If you pull them up, you may be
damaging some of the plant roots around them. You see what I'm saying,
That principle of sooner rather than later, get it done now, and it's
so much better if you're an organic gardener. Especially, this is even more
important because our options, in the organic arsenal or the organic pest control options
that we have are most effective when the pests are very very young, and
you can step in and take action at that time. So that's just a
little bit of a ti there to think about. I see a lot of
times, you know, I get calls from people, a lot of times
when the problem is already so far along that it's kind of late to do
anything. So the analogy or the example that I always uses the guy that's
coming home from work at five o'clock. You know, he's hammered from the
day of work, and he's shuffling along looking down, and he doesn't notice
a problem in his trees up above until he hears leaves rustling under his feet
that he's shuffling through, and then he looks up and sees the problem.
Well, it's a little bit late to do any good for it, all
right, Well, our phone number if you'd like to give us a call
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Puerscapes is a It's
an outstanding company when it comes to anything to make your landscape more beautiful,
more effective, make the work that you're doing out there much more productive.
And here's what I'm talking about. You need a good design. They can
do that. They can design the whole landscape or they can just do some
designs for parts of it. Do you need work on your irrigation system so
those hard earned dollars you're spending squirting drinking water on your lawn and plants are
more efficiently spent, most efficient. Most irrigation systems are not designed efficiently and
they become inefficient as heads get misaligned and other issues happen. Peers Scapes can
fix that. Would you like to see some hardscape perhaps, or maybe some
landscape lighting. Do you have an area that just is poorly drained and as
a result, plants are not performing there very well. Peers Scapes can fix
that. They do all of that. Do you have landscape beds that are
blaw and you want them to be up kept and looking at their best?
Hire them as a quarterly maintenance service to come in, do some cheese,
seasonal color changes, to do any kind of weeding and fertilizing, check the
area, gation, mulching, if trimming is needed, to do that,
and they keep them in tiptop shape. See Pierce Scapes does all of that
and much more. Go to the website peerscapes dot com. Look at the
examples of the work that they can do. It is very impressive. Or
give them a call two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one
three seven zero five zero six zero. Now it would be a great time
to give Pierscapes a call. Fall is coming and that is an awesome season
to do major renovations in the landscape. Give them a call now, get
on the boards with them. What any design work that's needed. You know,
just making sure you're scheduled out there and have them come out and transform
your place into something beautiful because when fall comes and the temperatures cool off,
you're going to spend a lot more time wanting to live outside and enjoy that
landscape. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. If you'd like
to give us a call. We'll talk about the things that are most of
interest to you. If you haven't done summer fertilization, now's the time to
get it done. You still can do summer fertilization now. I would recommend
a slow release product being my first option, and the reason for that is
grass takes up a little nitrogen every day. It doesn't take up a year's
worth of nitrogen in one week. And sometimes people want to go out and
just dump a bunch of immediately available nitrogen down and feed the lawn for the
summer, and it doesn't work that way. Excessive amounts they wash away,
they volatilize the way into the atmosphere. They cause a flush of grass top
growth at the expent of root growth, and none of that is good.
That's a less resilient grass plant to grub, damage to droughts and other things.
Nitrofoss Superturf is the fertilizer that is a slow release. It's a silver
bag by Nitroposs. It will feed your lawn all the way through the coming
weeks and months, all the way up until it's time to do fall fertilization.
Nitrofos Superturf is widely available. Like all nitrofoss products. You're going to
find it in many different places. Ace Hardware Stores, the Plantation Ace out
there in the Richmond area. You're going to find it at Southwest Fertilizer down
on businest Runwick and many many other locations. DND feed up and tom Ball
carries it easy to find Nitropos Superturf and now's the time to get that down.
We're going to take a little break now for the news and I will
be right back. If you'd like to get on the boards, give us
a call seven one three two one two KTRH. Fine. Thanks for tuning
in this morning. We got plenty of things we can talk about when it
comes to gardens and taking care of gardens and things you know, plans for
all seasons. On two forty nine, which is Tomball Parkway is a long
term nursery, a family operated nursery, one of our independent garden centers.
That the kind we go to when we want good information, when we want
quality plants, and we want service that is very important when it comes to
garden centers and plants for all seasons. Is that kind of garden center you
know, they've been around since nineteen seventy three. The Flowerty family has been
operating plants for all seasons. They are experts when it comes to the plants
that grow here, how to care for and plant and care for plants here,
and just helping you along the way. If you've got a brown thumb,
walk in there and they'll turn it green with good information, with good
guidance. You can bring them samples, you can bring them pictures. Whatever
you need, they will help you. Maybe it's a product that you need
to manage a particular pest. Listen. They've been through decades of answering these
same questions. They know what works, they know it doesn't work. Go
to Plants for all seasons. From their education to the selection that they have,
the fact that they do liver all kinds of things. They are true
lawn and garden experts. Plants for all Seasons dot Com two eight one three
seven six, sixteen forty six two eight one three seven six one six four
six. We're going to go to the phones now and head out to Humboldt
to talk to Lee. Hello, Lee, good morning. I want to
RePOP my orchid, but it's in a plastic container. And I don't know
the particular names of the orchids carts, okay, but it has two shoes
going through the plastic container. Can I cut that plastic container off? And
what do I need to buy to RePOP my ipit? You can cut it
off. Let me ask this question. Did you get it at like a
grocery store? I got it your home depot in Walmart. Okay, all
right, so that tells me what kind of orchid it is. You've got
a moth orchid and those are the easiest orchid to grow. And so what
you want to do is you want to take it out of the old container.
If I don't quite follow the going through the container, but cut it
away however you need to do it to get that orchid free. You want
to cut off any dead roots, and you can see they're shrunken down.
They're not plump and healthy looking. Usually those are lower down on the stem,
the lowest roots, and as the stem grows up, roots keep coming
out of the stem higher and higher on the stem, and save those roots.
You want to pot it up in a good orchid mix. And we've
got some great garden centers that provide some really quality mixes for growing orchids that
are going to be very chunky, like chunks of bark may They may have
a little bit of charcoal in them. They could have some kind of an
expanded shale or haydike kind of material, or clay dried clay balls in them,
anything like that swagn of moss. Those orchids need really good drainage.
You want them to be able to get moisture and hold a little bit in
the mix. But they live on the outside of a tree in the jungle.
They cling to the barks. You get wet when it rains and then
they dry out. There's no soggy, wet soil for an orchid, So
make sure you get a true quality orchid mix for that. And being out
there in the Humbul area, you got some ace hardware stores that are going
to have that kind of mix that you can use. You're not too far
away from Kingwood where there's worn in southern gardens. Kingwood garden centers gonna have
those kind of mixes as well, and so that's important. You want to
get a little bit larger pot. You don't need a large large pot,
but i'd bump it up to the next size pot. And then once you
get it potted up, water it in a few times with a very fertilizer
solution, something that you know, you mix in water to loote down.
It can be organic or synthetic, but a very dilute solution, and just
as you water, do that and it'll give it a little bit of a
boost to get it growing. Make sure you give it as much light as
you can, whether it's in a bright window where the sun doesn't hit it
directly, or if you got it outside in a very very shady area,
that is the key, and it'll start growing and next thing you know it's
going to be going through its bloom cycle. Again. Well, thank you
very much, because I'm in beginner it is. I love orchids, but
I've never tried to repot one, but thank you. You pick the right
one that is the probably the easiest orchid to grow, and the more you
work with it, the better you get. And sometimes you know, you
may have one that you lose, but overall you're going to have success.
And you may see them growing and growing and or just they're alive and they're
sitting there and they won't bloom, and that's usually because of a lack of
adequate sunlight or not getting They need sunlight, they need indirect light. Excuse
me, I shouldn't have said sunlight in that sense. They need bright indirect
light. They like. They don't be at all less than great light area.
If you want the top performance out of them, they'll grow in less
light. They'll sit there, they'll get darker green, but they're not going
to bloom for you if they don't get adequate light. Okay, okay,
well, thank you very much. All right, Lee, Thanks, I
appreciate your call very much. Thanks a lot. Star of Hope has been
around for many, many years in the Houston Areia, to be exact,
they just celebrated their one hundred and seventeenth anniversary one hundred and seventeen years.
They're one of the oldest and largest homeless providers in America. Over a thousand
homeless people, a thousand homeless and nearly homeless men, women and children every
day are helped by Star of Hope. They serve about six thousand meals a
week. They have a van that goes out right now, you know,
with the excessive heat and things, people that need help, but they don't
just do handouts. They do that, but they don't just do handouts.
They are about changing lives. They're changing lives in a christ centered community that
turns lives, that turns families around, jobs, hope, freedom from substance
abuse, help for the kids, that help in getting back on their feet,
for people that are willing to follow the program and stay with it,
They change lives. I cannot think of a better way to spend your dollar
to put your compassion to work than Star of Hope ministries. You can go
and learn more, and I hope you will sohmission dot org. There's ways
you can volunteer, there's things you can donate, and when it comes down
to donating, you know it doesn't take much to provide it everything. Do
you know that for two dollars and eighty cents they can serve someone a meal
two dollars and eighty cent donation? I mean that is that is chicken feed
for us, and yet it's huge for someone else who doesn't have in needs
and it's trying to make a difference for them and their family. Star Hope
Missions. I can't recommend it any stronger. Let's go out now to Rose
Sharon and we're going to talk to the Dennis. Hello, Dennis, Hi,
how are you doing? Hello? Hello? Hello? Can you hear
me? All right? I believe we're going to take a break. Dennis,
hang on if you're there. We're going to come back to you when
we get back from break. But our phone number if you'd like to give
us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four play tram
ad Buck Sexton. Can you hop about the guard line? Good to have
you with us this morning. We got a lot of things we can talk
about. One thing I want to talk about is trees that this storm that
just went through was devastating. I was talking to somebody yesterday and they were
describing to me in their section of Houston the trees that they have seen,
the damage that they've seen, and it just it's like a war zone.
Whenever storm's hit, trees are at risk and proper pruning and care. Proper
begins with proper training, but it even goes into as a tree is old
or some selective pruning can be helpful when storms come. Whether it's a hurricane
and we're in the start now of a very what's predicted to be a big,
big, hurricane season, but it could also be just regular storms that
aren't attached to hurricanes, like the one we had a while back that devastated
so many trees. Affordable Tree Service Martin Spoon Moore is a company that can
come out and they can make sure that everything that's possible that can be done
for that tree is done so that it has the best chance that we can
provide it in getting through these storms without serious damage. I can't stress enough
the importance of proper tree care coming in to the storm season that we are
now already into. You can call them at seven to one three six nine
nine twenty six sixty three. That's seven one three six nine nine two six
six three, or go to the website aff Tree Service dot com. Aff
Tree Service dot com have Martin Spoon Moore come out. Of course, he
doesn't just do tree trimming. They do deeper feeding, They do deeper watering
during drought times. They can also come out and advise you as you're doing
any kind of a work around the tree. It is so important to have
a tree service person that knows what they're talking about to guide you before you
do damage that is not easily fixable, like putting a trench too close to
the trunk and other things like that. Call Affordable Tree seven one three six
nine nine two six six three. I'm going to go to the phones now
and we're going to head out to Rose Sharon to talk to Dennis. Hey,
Dennis, Welcome to garden Line. Hello, Skip. I want to
do a follow up question. Can you hear me? Yes, sir,
I wanted to I've talked to you before about the assassin sting bus and you
gave me good tips on how to sweep them into a bucket of soapy water
and try to get them off of the tomatoes. I want to know if
there's something I can do to prevent them from coming to my garden. They've
just moved. They've wiped out the tomatoes, and then they moved onto the
honey dews, and now they're moving onto the watermelons, And is there anything
I can do to prevent them and make them go to somebody else's garden?
Well, the fast answers know, But there's things that are somewhat like that.
For example, there are crops that we call trap crops that they like,
and if you can get those out and get the stink bugs to those.
You can spray them and control them early on on those crops before then
here comes your tomatoes and now they're moving, oh there to your tomatoes.
So it helps to have a trap crop. It's not a panacea for sure,
but things like sunflowers, the little sun they love sunflowers really, any
kind of a grain like that. Pearl millet is one we've used in the
past as a trap crop, but they come to them like the little sunflowers.
Another one they like a cardoon, the little blooms on cardoons, which
is a thistle looking kind of an artichoke looking plant. They love those.
There are some other plants that you can use as trap crops, but you
just put them out there and get them doing their thing early. The stink
bugs when they're coming along there's no tomatoes to hit yet, or the other
plants that peach, fruit and other things that they like to feed on,
and then you just spray them on those plants. So it's almost like a
bait station, if you will. For those starbugs. Yeah, I haven't
had problem with these previously, but the last two years they've come on me
hard and I have them. They're a problem. Yeah, Well, they
I don't know how you've missed them before, because they they're ubiquitous. They're
all around. And I tell Gardner, learn what the eggs look like.
You go online google that, find out what they look like. Learn what
the nymphs look like, because they don't look the same when they're new hatched
as they do when they're adults. And so once you know what you're looking
for. At those early stages, they don't have wings, and they're easy
to just vacuum or swat into water or however you want to go about it,
or spray them. They're more susceptible to sprays at that stage too.
Okay, I thank you for your time, sir. All right, good
luck in that battle. I know that's a formidable foe. You got your
your sights on there, Dennis. Thank you, Thank you a lot for
the call. Our phone number is seven to one three two one two kt
RH seven one three two one two kt r H. Talking about bugs,
Nitrophis has a product called bug out Max. Bug Out Max is a granule
that you put in your lawn and then you put a little bit of water
on it to wash the product off the granule and into the thatch and lawn
surface area where it goes to work. Do you know if you have pets,
they get fleas when they go out in the yard. Those fleas can
actually be dropping off into the thatch of the grass where eggs are laid,
where you can have nymphs that are growing, and then they become adults and
the dog runs by or the cat goes by and they hop up on them
and bring them back inside. So part of breaking that cycle of fleas and
ticks is dealing with them not just on your pet, but also outdoors in
the thatch, and night Fuss bug Out Max is very effective for that.
Also, chinchbugs here they come. We're about to enter chinchbug season, soid
webworm season, if we're going to have one this year, is going to
be occurring. It could be occurring starting now, but it typically comes a
little bit later, but it can really occur anytime. And if you look
at my garden line schedule, my skip erchter, lawn care, pests,
disease and weed management schedule, you'll see exactly when to do treatments for these
particular kinds of pests. Night Foss Bugout Max is widely available, being a
night foss product. You're going to find it at RCW Nursery. You're going
to find it at the Ace Hardware Storing Kingwater a task Casita. You're going
to find it at Stanton Shopping Center down in alvin As well. Night foss
bug out Max for what bugs You? That ought to be the slogan for
what bugs You. You're listening to Garden Line and our phone number is seven
one three two one two kt rh IL. You'd like to give us a
call, we will be happy to visit with you about the things that are
most of interest to you. A couple of things I was wanting to visit
about out in my gardens. I'm still doing planting in the vegetable garden.
I kind of have to do it as I can get around to it,
because it seem to be run around doing a lot of other things, like
sitting here doing the radio show, and as I'm getting things planted. First
of all, in this he eat, it helps to have some sort of
a shade over the planting row. You don't have to and I plan oakroh
without shade over the row, for example, but if you provide a little
bit of shade just to help those soil temperatures. It helps the seeds get
going and get started. And when you're planting, the most important watering that
you do is before you plant, I want to just pause and let that
sink in. Well, there's no plants, why would I water. Well,
here's why. When you give the bed a good soaking, let's say
a day or two before you plant, that water soaks down inches below the
surface, down into the soil. So then when you put your seed in,
yes, you're going to water it again. But when it germinates and
sends that root down, it's not dry soil down there, it's already a
bank account of nutrients. Because in those first days, even the first week
or two, when that seedling is getting started, if it dries out from
the minute it starts to germinate, if it dries out, it dies,
And so having that bank account down in the soil is really important, especially
in this heat. So preplant watering. Then when you plant a light watering.
For some types of tiny seeds, you want to use a mist because
you don't want to dislodge them and splash them all over the place. But
that is a secret to getting going. And then of course having a little
shade over the row. If there's at all a question about it, or
we weigh above germination temperature, a shade over the row will help them get
started. You can just leave it on for a week or two and then
take it off. You don't need to leave it there, but that's important
because if you measure the soil temperature an inch below the surface, which that's
where seeds are, right an inch or less below the surface. If you
do that, you're going to find that it is blazing hot. Just like
your sidewalk, and certainly just like the asphalt. It gets blazing hot on
the soil surface, and that's where your seeds are. Give them moisture,
give them a little bit of shade. That's a tip for success starting seeds
out in your summer garden. Well, here we are, I hear music.
That must mean it's time for the top of the hour news. I
want to remind you that you've heard me talk about these schedules, the lawn
care schedule and my disease past week management schedule. Those are on my website
at Gardeningwithskip dot com Gardening with Skip dot com. Go check them out,
print them out, carry them with you when you go shopping because you'll see
exactly what your options are and you show the folks this is the product I
need, or put them in the garage so next time you fertilize, you
got them right there to help and guide you. We'll be right back.
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This is used Radio seven forty kt r H Houston everywhere. Unnecessarily endorse
any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r
H Garden Line with Skip rictor It's shows Basy gas trip. Just watch him
as wakes the spot bases gas by can you not s gas Sun? Themons
of Welcome to guard Line. Welcome back to guard Line. Good to have
you with us. If you'd like to give us a call, ask a
question about gardening. Let's help you have a more bountiful garden, a more
beautiful landscape. Well, here's the number seven to one three two one two
kt r H seven one three two one two kt r H. Landscaper's Pride
has been making quality products both for in the soil and on the soil for
a long time. Landscaper's Pride, you can think of it as a way
of recycling nature back into wonderful things for our plants. And right now with
the sun blazing down, multch, maultch. Maultch is so important. There
are very few products that the list of benefits is as long as is the
list for mulch. Because maltch helps prevent crusting of the soil from rain drops
crusting. It prevents erosion of the soil. It takes the impact of that
rain and lets it percolate right down into the soil. It moderates soil temperature.
I was talking about that earlier, Very important because soil gets Take a
thermometer out when you have a warm, hot day, stick a thermometer down
in the soil. I'll put it on two inches and just measure how hot
that really is down there. That is too hot for roots, that's too
hot for seedlings to germinate up in the top, especially on the top inch.
Most fixes that, most does other things. It decomposes over time to
feed the soil. Think about the forest. Who fertilizes the forest? I
mean, I know there's you know, some parrot poop fallen around, but
what actually is providing nutrients for the soil in the forest. The trees drop
their leaves, then they drop more leaves on them, They decompose away,
they release their nutrients. Microbes are certainly involved in the whole process, and
it just gets better. And so I could go on and on about the
benefits of mulch, and landscaper's pride has got some quality. Whence they've got
black velvet mult which is a naturally dark colored, beautiful velvety dense multch.
It's not dyed maults it is, but it is a very dark, beautiful
malts. That's why we call it black velvet. They have hardwood multes,
shredded hardwood, not ground up palettes like some cheap junk out there on the
market. Is but true shredded hardwood trees, organic hardwood based mult is ideal
for walkways and flower beds recreational areas. Then they've got pine bark the most
popular one. It's the slowest perhaps in the decomposition rate, but a lot
of people love pine bark. I like the cedar malts, and I like
the cypress moults too. For example, cedar malts that nice aroma that comes
with fresh cedar, and then the beautiful red streaking that is occurring there naturally
within the product itself. And then cypress molts and nice light color mults that
really stays in place and doesn't tend to wash away at all. Very durable,
very very excellent. All of these excellent choices from Landscaper's Pride. Go
to Landscaper's Pride landscapers Pride dot com and there you'll find all the places where
you can buy these and believe me, they are widely available throughout the greater
Houston area. You can also learn more about each of these products there at
that website. Well, you're listening to Guardline and we're here to help you
have success in what you're trying to do. So if you get any kinds
of questions we can assist you with. We'd be more than happy to do
that. I want to make a I want to make a point about wasps.
I know when I say the word wasp, a lot of people cringe
because the first thing we think of are those paper wasp nests up under the
eaves. But there's many kinds of wasp. There's little, tiny, tiny
knat size parasitoid wasp, and this is cool stuff. They lay eggs and
in for example, one type lays eggs inside an aphid, and the egg
hatches and consumes the interior body of the aphid. The aphid swells up and
get troll luffy and big, and then the wasp comes crawling out. It's
like watching the movie Alien on an entomological level. Pretty cool stuff. There
are wasps that are predators, and those paper wasps that we have are predators.
Do you know the number one food of paper wasps is caterpillars, that's
their number one food. And so if you have a butterfly garden, yeah,
probably not so big of a fan of paper wasps. But if you've
got cabbage and broccoli and you got loopers on them, if you've got tomatoes
and you got hornworms on them, if you've got anything. The caterpillars are
eating webworms. Those webworms we went through earlier. By the way, I
expect another big return of those in the next generation of the summer, So
just hang on, stay tuned for that. But webworms, wasp pull those
back. They estimated I think it was a group of entomologists in the Midwest
Langrene University entomologists. We're doing an estimate and they figured about seven thousand caterpillars
per season for a good sized paper wasp nest. That is a lot of
caterpillar That's a lot of pest control for you. Now, if they sting
you and you're allergic, well that's life threatening and we don't want to Nobody
wants to get stung, even if you're not allergic. But wasp nests,
they are out of the way. Just know that's what they're doing. They're
working for you. So if you get rid of the nest, I certainly
understand that in an area where it's a threat to you, but consider areas
where they're not a threat. Just leaving them alone because they're out there working
for you. That's what they do. So just a little bit of a
different glimpse inside of wasps, especially those paper wasps. When I was a
kid growing up, every summer I got stung by wasps, and I distinctly
remember one summer, probably because I was crawling around in places I shouldn't be
doing things I shouldn't do, but I distinctly remember one summer I had gone
through the whole summer and a school was about to start and I had not
been stung, and it was just like, yes, I did it.
I did it. That day a ball went underneath the bush, I reached
under to get it, and whammo, they got me. So I don't
know if I ever made it to the summer not getting stung by wasps,
but uh, yeah, that was my experience with them. But I appreciate
the work that they do now and just stay out of their way. Stay
out of their way. Well, if you'd like to give us a call,
our number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven
one three two one two five eight seven four. You know. Sweet Green
is a product by Nitrofoss that is an organic type fertilizer for your lawn.
It's it's very high in the first number, eleven percent nitrogen. It's made
from a base of molasses, and with microbial activity on the molasses, it's
turned in actually to a fertilizer. Uh. And this fertilizer is very immediately
available, dissolves very quickly, smells wonderful too. By the way that molasses
space. When you put a sugar based substance of the soil, beneficial microbes
just thrive, especially the bacteria. They love that carbon based material. That's
their food, and so they go right to work on it. That's why
organic gardeners often will use molasses in their gardening. Well, Sweet Green,
that product becomes available for your grass very quickly, and I would recommend if
you're going to apply it, since it's eleven percent nitrogen, you're going to
want to put about a total of about ten pounds per thousand square feet.
Split it in half, but five pounds now, and then six to eight
weeks from now, do another five pounds, and by doing that you will
spread that nutrient release out over time and have very very good results from sweet
Green. Sweet Green from nitrofos, and like all nitrofoss products, very widely
available. You go down to Laporte to Fisher's Hardware on Broadway. They've got
it there. In Angleton Lake Hardware and Angleton of Alasco. They have it
there are up in Montgomery Gym's Hardware on Liberty another place where you can find
nitrofoss products such as this sweet green. I was doing some soul prep work
this past week, and a part of part of the job and putting in
a new garden is number one. Getting rid of any noxious perennial weeds that
are very difficult to control. You know, if you've got a flower bed
that's already in and it is invaded with nut grass and bermuda grass is probably
the two prime public enemies number one in two, and I don't know which
is one and which is two, but it's very difficult to get in there
and control those without hurting your flowers and it's our If it's a vegetable garden,
spring things on stuff you're going to eat, you don't do that,
But if you do it ahead of time, you can do. There's a
lot you can do to control it, both from an organic and a synthetic
standpoint. For most weeds, nut's edge is a little bit of a bigger
challenge. I don't know a great organic solution for nutsedge other than hand digging
repeatedly. Every time it's stix, it's head above soil. You dig down
and get that nut and pull it out. But the bottom line is do
your preps ahead of time to get rid of problems before you begin that soil
building process. And I'll talk about that a little bit more in just a
moment. Right now, we're going to take a break and I'll be right
back. Every hurricane season is different. It only takes one again. Low
where a friend, there is a friend. Welcome back to Guardline. Good
to have you with us this morning. What do we want to talk about?
You tell me our phone number if you'd like to give me a call
seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two
kt r H. So I was talking about soul prep before we went to
break, and how it's important to get rid of noxious weeds before you put
the plants in. It's much easier, Our options are better. Uh,
it's just better, better, better in every way. If you've got a
lawn full of weeds and you're about to redo it and replant size, now's
your chance. You get out there. You water it to get those weeds
growing. Yes, that's right, get the weeds growing, because then you're
going to kill it, whether you scrape it up, whether you spray it,
well, however you're going to go about it, you're going to get
rid of them. But most of the sprays you use on weeds post emergent
to kill existing weeds work best, if not only, when the weed is
actively growing. When the weed is actively growing, so you want those weeds
to be happy and healthy and growing, and that's when the products do the
most work. If that weed is stressed, drought stressed, or whatever,
the products just don't have the same effect, believe it or not. And
so get them going, get that lawn, get all the stuff you're dealing
with under control before you put the lawn grasp back in. Because once a
lawn is in, now we're having a little bit of a challenge finding things
that we can put down on the weeds is not going to hurt your lawn,
and that is the whole idea is to avoid damage to the lawn,
but to make sure that we're getting things ready to go to put that new
lawn back in. That's kind of what that what that amounts to. I
think that you will you will agree that when it comes to having a beautiful
and a bountiful garden and whatnot. You do want to have one that you're
not fighting. We nobody enjoys that, right I don't. In fact,
I don't like spray at all. To be honest, my idea of a
great Saturday is not to mess, mix up smelly water, to spray on
stuff. It's to enjoy plants. It's to enjoy nature. To have success.
Well, there's times when we have to step in and do things,
but let's minimize them. Minimize those times by gardening smarter rather than harder.
I guess you could say, uh, I've told you a lot about Nelson
Water Garden out in Katie, Nelson Water Garden and nursery. Don't forget that
part. And nursery right now is having their summer plant sale. They are
having all kinds of fruit trees and shrubs and citrus specifically for example, that
are on a very significant sale, like fruit trees and shrubs normally forty bucks,
now twenty bucks. Citrus, she's seventy five, now thirty five.
Your boy, there's not a better time, and now's a great time to
put that citrus in. Just keep it wet, keep it moist. When
you plant, we take it out of the container, put it in the
ground. Remember the roots are all still in that cylinder you pulled out of
the container. So keep watering right there and just beyond that and keep it
going and it will get well established. And at this opportunity to get a
deal like that, you're not going to do better than that. That is
awesome. Any kind of products you need, you know, they carry the
microlife products. They carry asumite and things like that out of Nilson Water Garden
and nursery take advantage of it. They have sales of roses going on.
There's a really good sale on roses and on azaleas as well. And I
realize that it's hot outside, but if you plant a plant properly, you
can have very good excess, even planting in the summertime. The key is
in your mind to remember where the roots are. You can have moist soil,
but that little roots cellular pumps dry faster than the water can wick in
from the moist soil around it. So keep the root cylinder moist, not
soggy, not's oversaturated where roots can't get oxygen, but just moist. And
that's going to require a little amount of daily water right there to keep it
going cushing with the soil around it moist as well, so that as the
roots expand they can get in. But that's a secret to success on summer
planting, regular watering. I tell people. The visual that seems to work
for me maybe it will for you, is imagine that you just took the
pot that you purchased with the plant, and you dug a hole and set
the pot down in the hole with the plant inside. Where would you water?
Well, of course you water right there in the pot because there's not
roots outside the pot, because there's a pot there to stop it that way,
and you'll water properly with the new plants that you put in in the
summertime. Just always remember that excess water. Excess water excludes oxygen in a
blazing summer heat, it's as bad or worse than not having enough water.
So touch and go. But you can do it. You can have success.
Nelson Water Garden, by the way, if you haven't been by there
there, you got to Katie on Iten and you turn north on Katie Fort
Ben Road and they're just across the tracks a little bit upstreet there on the
right hand side. Their water gardens are outstanding and listen on a blazing summer
day, I think it was it's like going to the park. You get
your friends, getting the cargo out there and sit among all those are stroll
among all those water features, hearing the beautiful sound of water, seeing the
beautiful features too. You're gonna want to have that in your backyard. I
know I did when I first went out there. That was the first thing
I thought, is, Okay, I gotta have this because it is so
therapeutic. And you know, when you have the sound of water, it
brings birds in more also, and the birds will find it, they will
show up and they'll be very grateful for that. You can get all that
you have them come in and install a feature, or you can just do
it yourself. They're more than happy to give you the supplies and tell you
how to do it if you're do it yourself. For that's another option that
you can take. All of this is out there at Nelson Water Garden and
Nursery out in Katie Oh. I have not told you this about Nelson Water
Garden before, and every time I think back on talking about them, I
thought, why did not tell them? You ought to see the indoor houseplants
that they have in that store. They are beautiful. If you want house
plants that aren't just green, that offer patterns and structure and different texture in
the foliage and all kinds of things. They have a great selection right in
the big middle of the store when you walk in, and they are beautiful,
and I would encourage you to stop by there because you know, summer
is a great season to be taking care of the house plants in our house,
and that's a way to bring nature indoors. Check out the house plants
that they have. I'm telling you that the selection is really really beautiful.
You're listening to Guardenline. Our phone number is seven one three two one two
kt r H. Seven one three two one two kt r H. You'd
like to give me a call, let's do that. Perhaps you have a
sample or a symptom or something you want identified or diagnosed. You can email
me and if you give us a call in this or call our producer say
you want to send in a photo and then call back. I'm not able
to hand type out responses to all the emails I get. Occasionally in certain
situations where where that is needed I do that, but what I ask is
send me the picture. You need to send it ahead of time, then
call on a Saturday or Sunday morning between six and ten and we will talk
about it. But it really helps to have a picture. So many times
someone's describing something, and I tell you, as an extension agent with texas
A and m Agrolife Extension for thirty five years, innumerable times someone would describe
something in a situation to me and then I would either go to the site
and see what they were talking about, or then they would send me a
picture and it was like completely different from what I had pictured. And maybe
it was me listening properly, maybe it was them describing accurately. But I'm
telling you, a picture helps a lot with a diagnosis. And if we're
going to suggest that you have to go spend some money and do some work
to fix the situation, we do not want you wasting your money in time.
We want to make sure we diagnose it accurately and send you to the
right if it's a product, to the right product that's going to work effectively
with what you're dealing with. We have a flower bed. It's actually a
veggo garden bed, one of those up above ground metal. They are coated
and painted and super high quality beds. Our Veggo garden bed is loaded with
flowers. This particular one is an L shape, big L shaped bed that's
loaded with flowers on the patio. So it kind of goes around a corner
of the patio, so as you're walking around, you just kind of walk
over there. And my wife loves flowers, and boy, is it ever
looking good. We've got all kinds of summer tolerant flowers in it, angelonias
and pentas. This sunbelievable sunflower which, by the way, pause them in
it. I need your attention to step for a second sun believable sunflower.
It's called Helianthus. That's a genus of sunflowers that bogger just grows and they
say it produces a thousand blooms over the course of a season. It's because
it blooms for so long. But they're a little shiny, not shiny,
little bright, attractive sunflowers that are just happy. I mean, you look
at it and it just makes you happy. If you like little deal of
tiny cut flowers, it would be great for that. You can do that.
But anyway, sunbelievable. We got to keep looking good. Another one
that's looking good is pirates pearl little tiny white flowers, beautiful. All right,
well I'm talking about flowers. We're gonna take a little break here for
the news. We'll be right back. The number seven one three two one
two k t r H boards are open if you'd like to get a good
head start. Welcome back, Welcome back to guard Line. Good to have
you with us. What would you like to talk about if you have a
question you would like to visit with with me about uh seven one three two
one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k t
r H. You know, ACE hardware stores are ubiquitous here in the Houston
area. And what I'm trying to say is, no matter where you live,
there's going to be an ACE hardware store somewhere near you, probably more
than one. There's forty of them here in the greater Houston area. And
when you go into Ace, you know you're going to find this stuff you
hear me talk about on Guardline. For example, fertilizers. They're going to
carry them all. They've got a wide variety fertilizers, excellent, excellent,
selection. You know you're going to be able to find the tools that you
need, for example, hoses, garden tools, do you need in any
kind of specific things like maybe a mosquito foger, or maybe you want to
decorate the back patio with some beautiful lights or other things. ACE just has
it all. Ace is the place. That's the motto or the slogan for
them. Ace is the place, and ACE is a place for all the
things you need. ACE is a place for your fire and control. ACE
is a place for your mosquito management, whether it's buying the mosquito dunks to
put out in water and shut those things down that way, or as I
mentioned, a fog or any other kinds of things. ACE is the place
beautiful outdoors activities, the barbecues and things. We just started using our pit
again a while back. We'd used it and the kind of had gone through
some time where we hadn't been using it, and so here we are back
out again enjoying the outdoors and getting the barbecue and done. And boy ACE
can set you up with every aspect of that that you might need. You
can find ACE hardware stores all over the place by going to the website Acehardware
dot com, Acehardware dot Com and then find the store locator, tell it
where you live, give it your zip code or whatever, and it'll show
you all the stores that are close to you. It makes it really easy.
And when you know, when you go into ACE, you're going to
be greeted with that old fashioned customer service by people who know what they're talking
about and take you right too what it is you're looking for so that you
have success, whether you're fixing a faucet or turning your outdoors into a beautiful,
beautiful environment to enjoy. ACE Hardware can help you with all of that.
We are doing some I was talking about soil preparation well ago, and
I was mentioning the importance of getting rid of noxious weeds before they start to
invade to a point where it's hard to control them in your plants. Well,
another thing about soil prep is making sure you build a swill up so
that when it drains, when it rains a lot, it drains. Well,
that's important. We can't control the rainfall, we can't control our irrigation.
Most people over water, especially the lawns, and miswater the lawns.
But when you build up a raised bed, it you always know that the
excess water is going to drain away. When you make soil that is improved
with organic matter and in some cases expanded shale, you can have that good
internal drainage to the soil. Plus when you add organic matter, the microbes
go nuts because they get They love to break that down and feed on it,
and the whole root zone environment is better. And I know you hear
it's like a broken record, mixing compost, mixing, compost, mixing,
compost, But it's true. It's what nature does slowly over time. We
just want results now, like this fall. I want beautiful flowers, so
I can't wait for nature over decades to improve the soil. I'm going to
get some quality composts, mix it in and jumpstart the whole process. But
why is that? And I just want to talk about that just a little
bit. Number One, it keeps the soil open. So if you have
a sandy soil, decomposed organic matter composts, those little particles act like a
little sponges that whole moisture and hold nutrients sand it just runs straight through.
It's like broken glass. The water and nutrients just wash right through it.
But when you have organic matter and it helps it hold. If you have
a clay soil on the other end of the particle sized spectrum, clay soils
become dense. I mean, you can make a little bowl a lot of
modeling clay and put water in it and it just sits there like a little
pond. Right. It doesn't drain well at all. In fact, you
know our Houston black clays, in the absence of roots and organic matter,
just the clay, it takes in water at about one eighth of an inch
an hour. So if you want to get an inch in the yard,
you need it to rain one eighth of an inch an hour for eight hours.
Now when does it do that? But when you add organic matter to
a clay, that mass, that sticky gooey doesn't drain. No oxygen getting
very far down in the soil suddenly starts to become clumps and it becomes what
we call friable. It breaks apart easy, and you're creating structure inside those
structure that you could see if you looked under a microscope, for example,
or a good handless you can see that structure in the soil, and that
brings oxygen in the soil. It makes water drained through the soil, and
when you bring oxygen down you get a deeper, more extensive root system and
you get more microbial activity. And microbes are doing all kinds of things.
Do you know There are microbes that are releasing substances that are antibiotics that help
fight disease for the root. There's microbes that can grab nitrogen out of the
ox out of the soil. Air. Right now, when you're listening to
me, you're breathing about seventy eight percent nitrogen in the air you're breathing.
Well, that nitrogen does plants no good until it's in a form they can
use. There are microbes that make it in a form plants can use.
Have you ever wondered how there could be giant meadows across America? They're just
beautiful and no one's running through there with a fertilizer spreader. Well, I
mean, they're not performing like a lawn would perform. Mo momo and trapes
across it and all that kind of stuff. But it's all being done by
microbes and by nature in the soil, and so that is another thing that
they can do. There are many other things. There are microbes that fight
insects. DT is a microbe. It's a bacillis that attacks insects. There
are microbes that fight diseases. There's another one, And forgive me for the
long word, but Basillis amila lico facians. Isn't that a fun word how
to impress friends and influence gardeners anyway? That one helps plants fight disease.
There And I mean, we could just talk for days on all the things
microbes are doing. And you are creating that environs and your soil when you
add organic matter, when you improve aeration, when you improve the structure of
the soil. So just to say mixing composts isn't just like we're putting a
little fertilizer down. It's like we're changing the root zone. And plants live
in their roots, and then roots are happy and thriving. Your plant's going
to be happy and thriving. And most of our plant problems are not just
diseases and insects above surface. They're the things that are going on to stress
the plant underground. Drought, compacted soil, poor nutrient levels, poor moisture
levels, too much, too little, and all that. And you can
get all that done by just improving your soil. Hardline goodhead with us.
As always, we love to talk to gardeners, and I think that's what
we're going to do here. We're going to head straight out to full Sure
Texas and talk to Clint. Good morning Clint, and welcome to garden Line.
Hey morning, Skip, I got a good one for you, all
right. So my neighbor has an entire Permuta lawn. I have an entire
Saint Augustine lawn and we have no separation, no rocks, nothing to divide
our lawns. He has gone one hundred and ten percent this year and it's
starting to encroach into my Saint Augustine. What or is there anything I can
do in your existing situation? There is not a lot you can do.
Those two will exist together. There are things that benefit Saint Augustine a little
over Bermuda. There are things that benefit Bermuda a little over Saint Augustine.
For example, shade. Saint Augustine has the edge droughty condition stresses. Bermuda
tends to have the edge that there's not a spray that's available over the counter
where you can go in and kill one grass without killing both of the grasses,
and that's a challenge. So you know, I don't I don't know
what to suggest to you on that particular one, other than you know,
there's always a possibility of killing the line between you putting a vertical barrier in
and then trying that, but you know the bermuda. You got to get
the barrier down far enough the bermuda doesn't go under it, and then you're
going to have the fact that those are both crawling across the top of it,
and so you're constantly edging. And I just don't think there's a practical
solution. And your question is one that has been asked a million times because
this is an ongoing problem for folks. Yeah, it was an issue before,
so I never really paid much attention to it. And this year,
like I said, he's really taking some care of his lawn and it's looking
great, but it's started to really come over to mind. And he goes
out there and pulls all the Saint Augustine runners out of his yard because he
hates Saint Augustine. So we're both kind of in the same position. I
consider the metallic or metal barrier to separate and dig a little trench. But
like you mentioned that, we have to take care of the top and it
goes under, so yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah, I would
take more than just that bit edging material you'd have to get. I don't
know. I've suggested at least eight inches down in the ground to make sure
you're getting underneath that bermuda. I don't know how far how deep it can
go. I'm sure there's variations, but yeah, that's it. If you
ever end up redoing your lawn, call us back. There's some things you
can do up front to kind of help avoid that, but at this point
it's not not very well appreciate it not very doable. I appreciate it.
Thank you, all right, you take care. Thanks thanks for the call.
Yeah, we need a good silver bullet on that. There there are
for people listening. There are things that a garden, a quality garden,
or lawn care full lawn care service can do to help with that. There
are some things that aren't available homeowners that that can be done. They're very
expensive and so you know, for one person to try to do it,
number one, you can't get hold of it. Number two, it's just
to prohibitive to try to do it. But long care, if you've got
a really good long care service, not just somebody somebody that mows and blows
there may be talk to them about it. Maybe they can they can help
you with some other options there. RCW Nursery is right there where Tomball Parkway,
which is high Way to forty nine, right where it comes into belt
Wagh eight. And you know RCW has been around a long time. The
Whimson family. Not only do they have RCW, but they actually grow their
own trees up in Plantersville. And so when you go to RCW to get
a tree or shrub, a large shrub, you're getting stuff that wants to
live here. They know what to plant. They don't they're not going to
say you a blue spruce, for example, for crying out loud. They
know what grows well here, and so you can know that when you get
plants from there, they're going to be successful. They have an outstanding rose
selection. And I tell you RCW is always having things on sale. Right
now, they've got Cajun Bess twenty five percent off, fifteen percent off all
of their trees. There's other great deals there at RCW. If you've not
seen Cajun hibiscus. You need to go. You can go to their website
and or their Facebook page and see pictures of it. RCW Nursery's Facebook page.
In fact, if you had a garden line this morning, I posted
a picture of my Cajun hibiscus I've got. You know. They come in
many shapes and form or colors and hues, and they're just beautiful, gorgeous,
gaudy. I'll tell you, you have a yard full of pink flamingos
and one Cajun hibiscus, and no one's going even notice that you had pink
flamingos. That's how gaudy these flowers are. They are absolutely wonderful. I
love mine. Go go look at the garden line facebook page right now and
you'll see the one who just posted is one that I have that I just
love it. And it's blooming and blooming and blooming. Takes the heat like
nobody's business. I have mine and a container, so I have to make
sure and keep it watered. You put them in the ground. But Cajun
is one of those beautiful types of modern hibiscus are just so stunning. Let's
go back to the phones. We're going to head out and talk to page.
Hello Page, Hi, Welcome to Gardendline. Thank you, thank you.
I have snails everywhere, and so I've tried the granules that you put
around, and every time I put them down, it rains, so that
don't know. They're pot plants. Mostly we don't have any other in the
ground plants. They're all pot plants. Yeah, okay, well I would
You're going to need to use a bait for them, and there's a couple
of them out there. You just have to do it for it rains.
But the baits. It's important to get a fresh bait so the snails will
be interested in eating it. It's like if someone threw food out that was
spoiled in front of you, you wouldn't want to eat it. So the
bait does no good if the snails aren't interested. Uh. And so what
you do is you get a fresh bait. There's one called slug O s
l Ego. There's one called slug O, plus there are other bait products
on the market, and you put a fresh one out, sprinkle a little
bit on the surface of your pots, or you can put it in a
little tray if you want to sell a little tray in there to have them
crawl in. Just make sure they can get into it to feed on it,
and it works pretty good. And just do enough to where you really
get them. There's a thing with snails page called bait shyness, And what
happens is they get in and they eat a little bit of bait, but
they don't need enough to kill them. And then maybe the bait is older
and not as effective and they get sick, and then after that, if
they recover, then they're not going to go back and eat that bait anymore.
They've kind of learned their lesson. So you want to use a fresh
bait, get plenty of it out there, and that is the best way
to manage them. There's cultural things, you know, the wetter you keep
it, the more mulch and organic matter decomposing and things you have, the
more kind of a problem with slugs and snails you may have. But just
that in and of itself is not going to get rid of the snails.
You're going to have to do the bait. Okay, So could you also
put it on the ground around the pots. Yeah, that's what we're well
wherever the snails are going to go and If the snails aren't going out around
the pots, then the bait out there is not going to do any good.
But wherever the snails are, that's where you want to put it,
and you can just have a little bait station. Sometimes I'll use like a
little tray like I don't know, jar lid or something turned upside down and
sat down kind of low into the soil so they can crawl right into it,
and that works pretty good. But you can also just drink sprinkle the
pellets right on the ground. They're typically are pellets, and that that'll work
too well. Used there's a lot sorry, go ahead, So I've used
slug I've used Slugo a lot, and okay, you're getting it always rains
or something. So after rains and Slugo is wet, how you're it going
to solve in the dirt? You have to clean it out, you know,
it'll just dissolve a That's one reason I like the little trays because you
can set them in and take them out and stuff. But Slugo is an
iron based product, so it doesn't hurt for it to get down in the
soil. There are other products that have more of a poisoned pesticide type ingredient,
and that there's one called Deadline Deadline that is a slug and snail bait,
so you can choose. You may want to try switching to a different
type of product. There is a Slugo plus that not only is a bait
for snails and slugs, but it controls certain other insects as well. You
might want to switch to that, to Slugo plus and try it, or
just switch to something else, but just stay with it. Remember fresh bait.
Get it out there, get it where they can get to it,
and that's your best bet. The only is go ahead. Should you change
it every day? Not every day, but about every week. Okay,
all right, we'll be right back, folks. Thank you very much.
Welcome back to the garden Line. Thanks for joining us today. I hope
you're enjoying this beautiful Sunday morning. We're still the cool time of the day.
That's always a good thing to get out enjoy that. A little bit.
Just was talking to some of my dogs. We've got a couple of
Golden Retrievers, and those things love to hang out with you. It's almost
like having a built in stalker. Everywhere you go. They're right with you.
They love to go for a walk, get outside, play just but
mainly just hang out. They're also garden dogs. Now. I don't know
if I've told you this before, but our first one, Ellie, the
female, she helped me one time. In fact, I put I posted
this to my Instagram account. A long while back. I went out and
planted some I think they were. Yeah, it was purple cone flowers,
plants out in the garden. And I went inside, got a drink of
water, and you know, just freshen up, come back outside again.
And when I got opened the door, right there on the doorstep was my
echinacious, my purple cone flower. Ellie had gone out and retrieved it because
that's in her name, so I did not know that's what retriever meant.
I've tried to teach Ellie to retrieve weeds, but she hasn't learned that yet.
She needs to, and that would be very, very helpful. But
she's getting to an age an hour where she's not so bad about retrieving the
things I don't want her to retrieve. Now. Her brother Tax is also
hanging out, and he's the more enthusiastic one. We call him our affable
affable knucklehead. That's the best way I can describe tax. We love that
guy, all right. Well, hopefully it maybe someone out there who is
a dog enthusiast could develop a gardening dog. Wouldn't that be a great idea
where you go, hey, Rover, go right there. I need a
hole that's six inches wide and eight inches deep. I've got some compost over
here. I need you to mix about an inch of compost in the bottom
of the hole. You know that, wouldn't that be a great idea.
I'd had a lot of money for a dog like that. I don't know
about you, but that's that's the way it goes. Anyway, welcome to
Guardline. We'll drive to have you with us. You know, soil is
what it's all about. And if you think about nature a minute, and
it kind of dawns on you that nobody rakes the forest, nobody bags the
meadow, nobody fertilizes the forest. How does nature take care of plants?
Nature take share plants by taking anything that's organic and turning it back into soil.
You know, in the meadows, it may be cowpies. In the
forest, it may be deer droppings or whatever. It may be leaves that
fall on the ground. It may be branches that hit the ground, and
they all just decompose away. Because microbes are run in the world. I
don't know if you know this, but microbes run the world. And when
it comes to microbes, an organic fertilizer like microlife that's what it's That's what
microlife products are all about. Microlife products help the microbial activity in this world.
They help I guess supercharge it would be a good way to put it.
Number One, they're loaded with microbes themselves. Microlife products have a huge,
longline list of beneficial microbes in them, but they also have the ingredients
that is the product itself that helps stimulate microbial activity. And we have a
lot of good microbes, good beneficial, good fungi, tenel mice seats that
are a good bacteria. They're out there in the soil. And when you
do something like hu mats plus that's a zero zero for the purple bag.
It's concentrated compost in a bag. The granules go out in your soil,
they work their way down into the soil and over time, whether you're using
microlife hu mates plus or they're green bag. The six two four. You're
adding organic granules to the soil and it just gets better and better over time
at night. Nature does not fix things overnight. It doesn't. It's not
a quick fix thing. Nature builds and develops. You leave a forest alone
and nature will turn it into the best soil on the planet. We go
in scrape away the trees and start farming it, not taking care of it,
and we can destroy what nature is created, or on the other hand,
we can build and continue to build toward that. And that's how microlife
products are based. You can go to Microlife Fertilizer dot org, Microlife Fertilizer
dot org, see all their products, see where to get them, and
they're ubiquitous everywhere. You hear me talk about garden centers and feed stores and
Southwest Fertilizer, ace hardware stores, Microlife all of those stores you're going to
ease easy to find it and mini products for acid loving plants, for your
lawn, for house plants. Whatever you want to do, there's a product
there for it. But it's based on the concept that nature knows how to
build soil and we can come alongside nature and help enhance that process. With
microlife products. You are listening to Garden Line. Our phone number is seven
to one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one
two k t r H. I was working out, and uh, yesterday,
I said yesterday day before my wife. My wife was repotting some of
her strings and we were getting those set up. I was also doing some
things with some other container plants that I have. I've got I've got several
that are in hold. I'm one of these people I wouldn't tell you to
do this, but he's kind of like, don't do as I do,
do as I say, you know, kind of thing. But I see
plants I want, I buy them, I bring them home and they sit
on my patio or my porch until I get a round to it to put
them in the ground. And I find that sometimes well, let's just say
that if there was a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Plants and these
potted plants have had a phone on them, I would get reported because I
forget to water or I get busy, and I do this well, trying
to get those things in the ground so they'll be happy. And we've got
some beautiful gingers that are about to go in the ground, some calalilies that
we need to move into the ground. And the first step though, one
reason they're sitting there is because I know you don't PLoP a plant into an
unprepared plot. I love saying it that way. It's a tongue twister.
You build the soil first, and that's what these guys are waiting on.
They're waiting on me to get off the radio and go outside, dig,
dig some holt, and get the soil ready to go so they can have
success. But that's the key to it. I don't know if you're a
plant collector like me, but I am. You can always tell a plant
collector. You know, some people understand design and beauty and organization, and
that's called landscape design, and that's that's wonderful. I'm very very supportive of
that. But for a lot of us, it's kind of more about,
oh, I don't have that cajun hibiscus, I need one of those,
or I don't have that such and such tamato plant. So we're always looking
for something we don't have. And when you put a landscape together that way,
it's like a bomb went off in a garden center and everything rooted where
it landed. Seriously, if if you're guilty of this, you know what
I'm talking about. I'm talking about me too. But anyway, just you
got to have a plant. So you buy a plant, you get home,
and you go, Okay, now where am I going to put this?
If you're that kind of gardener, I feel your pain and I also
know your joy because that is a lot of fun. But it does help
to get someone a little bit of design a little forethought. Now's a good
time to do that. Fall planting season is coming. Why not right now,
go ahead and get things organized, come up with a plan, get
some help with it if you need to, and let's start redoing beds and
building beds and building that designed beauty into things. You know, turn our
bomb went off in the garden Center landscape into something that has a little bit
more organization and design. I think it's something we can all do a little
bit better job of. All right, well, let's go out to the
phones. Now we're going to talk to Donna in Beaumont. Hello, Donna,
welcome to guard Line. HIK. My question is I've had a luna
rose plant. I think it's in the high discus family and it's been in
the pot for like two years. I thought it died in the freeze last
winter, but I just kept with playing and watering it and it came back
and I was so happy. But last week and we had lots of brain
I think it might have drowned. It just looks like somebody sprayed weed killer
on it. It is just the leaves have all shriveled up. It looks
terrible and I don't know if there's any hope that maybe it will come back
again, or if I should cut some of the branches the stands back.
Yeah, okay, Donald, I tell you what. I have to go
to a break right now. I didn't want to get your question, but
hang on. When we come back, we're going to tackle that one.
That's a very very good question. If you'd like to be on guard Line
dolls seven one three two one two kt r H and we'll be right back
to take your call too. Gome back to guard Line. Thanks for listening
this morning. I hope you're having a wonderful Sunday morning. Uh, this
is certainly going to be a good day. Any day is a good day.
I think, do you enter it the right way? When I was
outside a little bit of time. A couple of days ago, I was
outside, just enjoying time outside, just thinking about it. How good it
is to be able to be out and enjoying nature, breathing good air,
you know, even if it's kind of warm in your sweating and stuff.
There's just a gratification to be able to get out and turn your space into
a more beautiful space, a more productive space. And I think that we
were meant to be in a garden. I just think that, you know,
for those of you who are gardeners or horticulturists or whatever, you are
absolutely doing the kind of thing that as human beings we were just designed to
do. And I know I'm biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
That does not be biased, does not mean inherently that you're wrong. So
I think you will agree with that, at least those of you who are
gardeners, and I hope you enjoy it. Let's go back out to the
phones. We were talking to Donna and Beaumont, and Donna, you mentioned
it was a kind of a hibiscus family, some sort of roads. Could
you describe the leaf size and also the blooms for me, please the bloom
is probably it's like a truly a high discus bloom. If I stretch out
all the fingers of my hand, the bloom is big fat, but the
plant don't stay small. It's like maybe a football. Okay, oh wow,
okay. And so these these blooms are probably either pink, red,
white, or a mix of those colors deep pink. Okay, So you've
got a you've got a southern hibiscus. The perennial rose mallow is another name
for it. And those are excellent plants. They like moist soil, and
so if it gets dry, they can turn to toast pretty quick. If
you had significant root damage, you would also see the same results as being
dry, and that if you don't have root, you can't take up moisture,
and so that's a possibility. You said that they turned brown pretty rapidly.
Is that correct? Well, I was actually I was kind of in
and out all last week and it was raining a lot here in Beaumont,
and I had I had put it one of those little saucers underneath it because
I was having to water it because before that it was really really hot every
day and and it would kind of get a little wilted. So I bought
one of those little saucers to put underneath it. But then when it rained
and rained and rained, it just sat in the rain. The roots and
everything it was in the rainy, you know, standing and kind of standing
in water. And then I noticed that what I calmed down and finished with
my project I was working on. Then I, uh, I noticed that
it just was wilting. The leaves are withering up. It just it looks
like somebody took weed children and straight on it. It looks very sad.
Yeah, so it's in a container. About how how why does that container
or tall wheel on your car? It it's not that big. Let me,
let me just take a look, get it right quick. Let me
if it's not any bigger than the steering wheel on your car. I think
the container is a little small to sustain the southern rose mellow plant. It
was like, you know, the top is about I'd say it's probably be
a foot across and it's probably about foot deep. Okay, Well, something
has happened in the roots and who knows. You know, both drought and
excessive water. Southern rose mellow is pretty tolerant of wet feet, and so
I don't think that it's the saucer you put underneath it. But I guess
it's always possible that some sort of a root rod or whatever has gotten at
alved. I think it would benefit from being moved to a larger container,
just because the demands are so high on these plants in summertime. They're pumping
a lot of water, and the only place that plant can get water is
the soil and the container. So if you have a cubic foot of soil
versus two cubic feet of soil, the plant that's in two cubic feed is
going to have a lot more moisture bak account to draw from, So that
would be one thing I would do. Sometimes I've seen decay take those things
down, and it usually when I look into it, it's usually due to
some sort of a decay or a wound or a root rot or something like
that at or below the ground level, So you might check around for that.
If you lean the pot over and slid this out of the pot sideways,
don't try to pull it up, just slide it out. Look at
the roots around the outside of the container. They should be very nice,
plump, white roots. If what you're seeing is shriveled or or looks like
a cigarette filter with the kind of brown and black staining gray. That kind
of stuff. That's the sign of a root rot. And what you would
do is take a I use like an little butcher or something or a soil
knife to just cut away the outsides of the root ball, get back into
some living roots, and then pot it back up again. Get it out
of the direct sun because it doesn't have the roots needed to put up with
the demands a full sun. But give it good light but not direct sun,
and try to get it in some fresh saw mix and try to get
it going again, and then you can move it back out into Okay,
okay, thank you, I will try that. Thank you so much.
Good luck with that, all right, send me a picture if you get
it to recover. Okay, all right, all right, thank you.
Bye. I love those spots. I love Southern rose mallow. That's the
one I was talking about earlier. The Cajun series, the Cajun hibiscus.
Oh gosh, those are so so beautiful. I uh, there are a
lot of gorgeous types of biscus breeders just keep doing things that is like we
hadn't seen that before and that when it comes to hibiscus, and I think
it's exciting. You can't get a gaudier, more beautiful, more heat tolerant
flower than a good quality tropical hibiscus or the southern rose mello, the perennial
one that we were just talking about there with Donna. Excellent choices. Remember
this about the hibiscus, especially that tropical rose mellal. Each bloom lasts a
day. So if you have one, or if you're thinking about getting one,
let me just give you a couple of little tips here. Each they
produce a lot of buds, and a bloom opens up, stays open through
the day, and then toward the end of the day it sort of shrivels
up and it's done. One day, that's what you get. But there's
another bloom and another bloom. There's all these blooms laying in wait for their
turn in the sun. And so if you take care of a plant,
have lots of branches, you fertilize it, it looks good. You're gonna
have a lot of blooms. You're always gonna have blooms on that plant.
But each bloom just lasts a day. But if you have one of those
tropical hibiscuits. What you can do is, let's say that you were going
to have a garden party this evening or any evening. Well, hibiscus balloons
aren't going to look good at that time of the day. But you could
pick them as they're starting to open up and put them in the refrigerator and
leave them. That's right, not in water. I'm talking about. Break
the bloom off. Stick it in the refrigerator. You do not need to
put it in water. It's not going to take up water anyway, and
it will be preserved. And then that evening bring it out of the refrigerator
and use it as decoration. You lay them around a table and they will
sit there looking just like they're on a plant for a long time. They
don't just wilt immediately. I mean, I guess if you put them in
the sun, they would. But I know people that will get like a
fish bowl, you know those old fish bowl people goldfish in and they'll float
the bloom in there. Just for a unique way to decorate with hibiscus blooms.
But remember, you can have a hibiscus ballooms at night for decoration,
but you got to pick them put them in the refrigerator early on, before
you know, they begin decline for the day and you'll get several hours out
of those things when you pull them out. I think it's a pretty cool
deal. Hopefully you do too. You are listening to Guardenline. Our number
is seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two five eight seven four. We just had hurricane barrel barrel come
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do that now, because we got a lot of storm seasons still left.
We're going to take a break now for the news. I'll be right back
Houston's News, Why there were traffic plus breaking news or seven. This is
used radio seven kt R H five everywhere. Welcome back to the garden Line.
Good to have you with us, Glad to be here, Glad to
be talking about gardening. Listen, it's early in the morning, and one
of my favorite things to do early in the morning is to enjoy the birds
that are in our backyard. Whether I'm sitting inside looking out watching them,
and yeah, I can hear their songs from inside the house. I mean
they really it's a cacophony of bird noises when when it gets really really early
in the morning sun's about to come up, or going outside and just enjoying
them there and Wallbirds Unlimited can help you turn your landscape into that kind of
an enjoyable paradise where you get to enjoy the music of the birds and the
antics of the birds and the beauty of the birds. We have some little
finches that seem to be a specially fond of our feeders. The little kind
of a reddish color to them. Trying to think of the name of the
finch, but anyway, we really enjoy that. And so you can too
go to wild Birds Unlimited and check out all of the things they have to
offer. WPU dot com, Forward Slash Houston, WBU dot com Forward Slash
Houston. They're six stores and there you're going to find the supplies you need.
You may find a bird feeder that you like. My favorite is still
that one that's the squirrel excluding feeder, but there's so many other excellments.
I use more than one kind of feeder. Then they have their quality blends
like the Super Blend. If you're going to take any kind of a trip
and you need something that'll last out there, get one of their seeds cylinders.
It's packed with seeds and it takes the birds a little while to peck
on them, and when you come back, you're still going to have some
available food for the birds still present there because they don't just chomp it all
up. It also makes them hang out a little bit longer to try to
get those seeds out, and you get more time to watch them when they're
out there. While Bird's unlimited for whatever you're looking for, from bird baths
to bird houses, to bird seed, to good information to help guide you
on success with birds, and for that matter, for those of you that
really love birds in the yard and love to bring them in because you know
that a lot of them help you with your insect management around the property.
Well, for those of you you need to know about the Merlin app M
E R l I N like Merlin the Magician. It's from Cornell University,
but it is the most amazing bird app I've ever seen. I have my
Merlin app. I can walk outside and I hear a bird singing and I'm
not a bird expert, and I just turn on the app and say what
is that? And it listens and it tells me what bird it is.
It gives me a picture of the bird, and it tells me more information.
Is that cool or what? Merlin app can do a lot of other
things too, But if you're a bird enthusiastic, got to get the Merlin
app. It's free, by the way, believe it or not. All
right, you're listening to Guardline. Our phone numbers one, three, two
and two k t r H. We're going to head out now to Missouri
City and talk to Dan Dan Spring in the garden line. I have a
crate myrtle that was cliented probably forty one years ago, and uh, it's
it seems to be I didn't know if they had a lifespan, but it
seems to be sending up shoots from Uh. It looks like a crate myrtle
is coming up different places in my flower bed. Does that? Do they
have a lifespan? Well, every you know, every living thing essentially has
some sort of a lifespan. But it's not like at a certain you know,
X number of years all CRP myrtle's croak on you. Uh so I
would they they are quite long lived, and there are some beautiful specimens that
have been a very very long They've been around a very very long time,
so I wouldn't be thinking this is a lifespan. Uh did it? Did
you used to not have the creat myrtle shoots coming up and now you do?
Or has this been something? Yeah? Yeah, I didn't have them
coming up. Now I do. And I thought it might have been that
drought year we had. Maybe it was trying to say this, so I
don't know. Yeah, well the drought year did it did damage, but
the coal spells that we had also depending on your Missouri city, it depends
on what air part of the areas you go further north, Especially, we
had crepe myrtles that were killed to the ground by an early hard December freeze
when they weren't ready for winter. Creat myrtles were very hearty, but they
weren't ready for it. So it could be a number of factors. But
when you look at the plant itself, does it look good still? Yeah,
it's still blooming and uh yeah. So what I've done is I've just
tooken a taken a sharp shooter shovel and pulled these out and then planted them
somewhere else. I don't know if I don't know if they'll survive or not
a bit. They probably would if they look Okay, if you do,
if you want them, really want them to survive, I'd wait and do
that in early November, and you'll have much better success with the transplant because
it has all winter winter to settle in before it has to face the demands
of summer heat. Moving a man can be done, but it's it's a
high risk. So these could be you know, we always have to leave
them. It could be seedlings, because great myrtles can produce viable seed,
and it could be that. But it could also be boot sprouts. As
you're talking about. Forty one years ago, I pruned it back and I
stuck one of the cuttings into some soil and it came up six foot tall.
It's been blooming ever since. Wow, that's impressive and I have no
I have no experience doing that. Well. I just think it has to
be attributed to clean living and fancy horticulture techniques. That's the only thing I
can think of. Okay, Well, I forgive you credit for that.
Ran you get thanks for the call. Enjoy that CP myrtles are. They're
very, very tough plants. I'm amazed really and how tough they are because
you look at them and I don't know, you just wouldn't think that they're
going to be that amazingly resilient. But they are pretty darn tough plants.
But any plant can succumb to any kind of situation if the conditions are right.
Something that to be aware of the worst thing that's happened to crape myrtles
around here is the crepe myrtle bark scale. That is a critter that I
believe it came from Asia, which is where the crape myrtle's from. Uh,
And it gets on crate myrtles. You start to see black everywhere on
the leaves, on the trunk, on things under the crate myrtle. And
it's because crep myrtle bark scale is a soft scale that sucks the sugary juices
out of the plant's trunk and branches and then it essentially pees out a sugary
water because it's not in it for the sugar, it's in it for other
things in the sap. And when that falls. We call that honeydew,
and it's just like if you mix sugar water up and sprayed it on something,
you would see a city mold grow on that sugary substance. And that's
what the black is all about. So the black isn't the disease. It's
just the salt of the insect that we're dealing with. They're hard to control.
They're very difficult to manage. They generally don't kill crape myrtles, but
they sure make them look ugly, and there are different ways to control them,
and there's not a good silver bullet trying to manage them. Some people
will use a soapy brush, a soft brush and wash the black off.
They'll spray oil on them, which first you would think, well, oil
would be a good control those brainsecticides on them, but the scale are protected
and we have to go to some pretty significant links to try to control them.
Just remember, they don't kill scrape myrtle, So I've known people that
just leave them and ignore them. Their number one enemy that I've seen is
the twice stabbed Lady beetle, and I just took some pictures of some yesterday.
But the twice stabbed lady beetle is a black lady beetle that has two
red spots on each side, hence the name twice stabbed. They love creat
myrtle bark scale and if you're not spraying all the time, they're going to
find it. They will not eradicate it, but they will help keep it
under control. What it's time for me to take a little break. We
will be right back our phone number if you want to get on the boards.
We've got a wide open board right now, so this would be a
good time. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. That's
seven one three two one two five eight seven four. It's a complicated I'll
tie up. I hate to see waiting. Welcome back to garden Line.
Hey, we're glad to have you with us today. Thanks for being part
of garden Line. This is a ongoing conversation among friends, right we're talking
about the things that are of interest to us as gardeners and ways to have
better success. Uh. You know, we're talking about creameral bark scale coming
through and there are systemic products that will go up in the plant and kill
the scale because the scale is sucking juices out of the plant. So when
you put the poison in the plumbing, those scale or they have access to
it, and something crawling around on the surface of the plant would not be
exposed to it, as opposed to putting a spray on the outside of the
plant. So those drenches are an option. The problem is that gets into
the nectar and can be a part of the issue that bees have to struggle
with, So we hate to do that when we don't have to try to
avoid that if possible. Just regular treatments are available that you can use when
the scale are crawling around as babies typically March April somewhere in there is when
you'll start to see that here in the Houston area, and those could be
used. Then when the scale don't have the protective coating, they are the
babies crawling around fixing to set up shop and put on a protective coating.
So that's an option and you can get all those kind of products. For
example, at Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest has everything that you could possibly need to
have success in your garden your landscape. They have the tools, they have
the supplies and secticide, fungicide, herbicide. Certainly fertilizers wide variety of fertilizers.
There knowledgeable staff that can look at your situation and listen, look at
a picture, look at a sample, talk to you, make sure they
know what to do that, what is effect, what is happening on your
plant, and then select the product that'll work against it. Is what I'm
trying to say. They're excellent at that, and they do that and they
have it all. If Southwest doesn't have it, you don't need it.
For example, new fairly new product by Medina called has to Grow supergrow Plus.
As to Grow supergrol Plus is a sixteen zero two fertilizer in a quart
bottle that attaches to a garden hose. It covers four thousand square feet and
you can do that in about ten minutes. So you hook it up and
you just go to town and spray your lawn. It's going to have the
sixteen zero two nutrient ratio that's an excellent one for the summertime. It's going
to provide in addition to that, by the way, part of the nitrogen,
about a fifth of it is in a slow release form. It's going
to provide a keylated form of iron to help those yellow spots green up.
It's going to provide molasses, which we already talked about earlier today, how
molasses helps microbes in the soil. It's going to provide humic acid, and
it's also it also contains the products that help enhance growth, like seaweed extract
all By has to grow supergrow plus. Medina product has to grow supergrow plus.
And again you can find that at many places, including Southwest Fertilizer,
which has everything. Let's go back to the phones now. I'm going to
talk to Houston or talk to Justin out here in Houston. Hey, Justin,
Hey, how you doing. I got a little bit of a problem.
I keep being told that this weed in my yard is like different names,
so it's hard to try to find something to kill it. Everybody's seen
it if you live in Houston. It looks kind of like sant Augustine,
but it grows faster, and it has those stocks that come up that bend
over and have like a seed pod and their little black seeds and you know,
I stick to your jeans and everything when you walk past them. They're
kind of sticky, you know what that is? And I kill it.
Yeah, I got your email, and I just replied to it. It's
in that thing where it takes it a minute to send, But if you
were, can you take some photos of it and attach it and send them
to me. We've still got time today and i'd be glad to talk about
it on the air. But it could be one of two or three things,
and I don't just guess, so let me. Could you get me
a picture and then let me give you a better, more accurate answer,
Yes, sir, thank you? All right, Well you will have a
reply already from me when you get to your phone, hopefully or your computer
action. Actually, thanks. I feel free to call back on or I
may just talk about it. Either way sounds good. I'm here, all
right, you bet. I appreciate that very much. Let's go back to
the phone's Baytown. We're going to talk to Ronnie. Hello, Ronnie Hello.
My question is about something to replace some trees that we lost the storms.
There was a fast growing tree that was advertised on the radio at some
point, but I didn't get the name. I'm supposed to go about four
or five feet a year. They do not reproduce no nuts or seeds,
and I'm looking for something like that. Do you any suggestion Okay, I
don't know which one that was, but I do know this almost with that
exception, the phrase grow fast, die young applies to trees. The things
that grow really quick tend to be very weak wooded and also tend to not
live as long or start to fall apart over time. And so I would
rather than looking for something that is the fastest growing tree out there, I
would decide a couple things. Number one, do you want it for shade
or do you want it for blooms? And then pick a plant that is
going to grow pretty darn fast, but that really fits that bill really well.
So which of which are you looking you're looking for shade? Okay,
all right, So one thing that would be a good option for shade that's
going to be fast growing is a red oak. Red oaks do very very
well here there. If you've got a good deep soil, A shoe mard
type of red oak is good. If you have an area that tends to
be a little bit poorly drained, then the nut tall n u TTL nutall
type of red oak is going to perform well in any kind of soil,
but including the saggi wet type. So red oak would be a good fast
growing You fertilize them, you take care of them, you make a big
mulched area around them where they're not competing with grass, and they'll grow fast.
They'll grow fast, but they'll be a long term tree. Another one
would be a Chinese elm. Chinese elms have beautiful gray and rust colored exfoliating
bark, so they're very attractive. I mean even in winter when there's no
leaves in the tree. It's an attractive tree for that reason. And you'll
see these around town. If you do a search on line for Chinese elm,
you kind of see what I'm talking about. Those grew very fast and
they also are a good, longer lived tree. Tho those are two examples.
There are others out there. There's a green ash, not Arizona ash,
but a green ash or a Texas ash. Those are both good trees
that grow pretty fast as well. So there's three options for you. It
is Thank you, sir, and have a good day, all right,
Ran, Thanks for call. Appreciate that. Good luck getting that. You
know, the best time to plant a tree is forty years ago. Have
youall ever heard that? You know what the second best time is today?
That's right. You like to see it that way because it makes a point,
you know another I'm just full oftenings to another thing that I like here,
I've heard that I enjoy it is a society is great When old men
plant trees under which shade they will never say, in other words, I'm
doing this for the next generation. And that's true, isn't it. I
mean, when you think about the value of your home, remember the days
when Arizona ash was everywhere, and after about twenty May eighty thirty years,
they just started falling apart and got to start over. Can you imagine this
big, beautiful shade tree that someday, whether you or someone in your family
is selling the home, it's just all the more valuable, and you've got
to enjoy it all along your way. It makes sense go for stuff that
lasts and that's quality, not just fast. It's my Disney line I call
program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with scip Ricker's just watch him as a
world us so many things to see, not a sign. Well, welcome
back to your garden line. Good to have you back with us. As
we start our final hour of the day, start, we're looking forward to
helping you and whatever way you need to have a beautiful garden and a bountiful
garden certainly a beautiful landscape. All you have to do is give us call
seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two
one two k t r H. And we are going to head straight out
to the phones right now and talk to Alan in sugar Land. Hello,
Alan, welcome them the garden line. Good morning, Skip, thanks for
taking my call. I have a question regarding some vinca that have come up
from sea. Uh hav them planting planting venca in a raised dead last year
and then also some large pots and now the u this year the siege from
last year's plants started sprouting. But a lot of them just sprout up maybe
uh inch inch and a half and then they just don't do anything. Is
it a soil issue or what would you think it could be? Are they
turn it well? Are they turning kind of a blackish color and dying?
You know the green? They're green? They're just stunted. Yeah. Well,
first I would get a little hand trout, dig one up and uh
look at the roots, wash the soil off, look at the roots and
are they normal little long, slender roots, healthy going out in all directions,
or are they rotted? Or do you see little bumps on the roots,
little knots, like a string of pearls kind of thing that would indicate
nematodes. The bumps the rots would indicate a root rot. And then if
everything looks normal, then we're looking at either some moisture or possibly some kind
of nutrient. But when you had the venka there before, it grew well,
right, yes, uh huh, so I would I would tend to
not think it's a nutrient problem because the old vinka was happy to be there,
so this one should not be that stunted. Okay. And I had
put a thin layer of compost on the raised bed, and now some of
them were doing good. They're going well, I said. Others they just
kind of sit there dormant. Okay, Well, adequate soew moisture, adequate
sow moisture, A little boost of fertilizer would be fine. There's no problem
with that. Just moderning. Oh, yeah, that'd be fine, that'd
be great. Scratch it, scratch it into the soil service. Yeah,
sixty four is a good one. Scratch it in a little bit into the
soil surface, throw some mulch over the top. That's going to do two
things. Number one, that microlife is going to break down or release nutrients
better because it'll stay moist that way. But also you'll be moderating the soil
temperature and the little tender seedlings dealing with the full brunt of the sun in
the heat. That may be a factor, but I I first would make
sure and dig that plant. Dig a plant up, wash soil off,
look at it, uh, look at the roots and if we can.
If you see nematodes, that's a whole another monster. If you see like
bb size or something, or it depends on the root size, but yeah,
they could be down starting off as little as bebes. But as the
roots get bigger, the nematodes get bigger. Sometimes it just looks like a
little like a you know, if I like a giant snake swallowed a rabbit
or an animal, it had that bump in the middle of it going down
the snake. It's sort of like that, but there'll be more than one
of them. But in bad cases there's so many that they're just lined up
and the root looks like the Michelin manned with all the lumps and everything else.
So just look and if you have a question, you can take a
picture of it up close, good sharp focus, send it to me and
I'll make an assessment of that. I'll be happy to help you that.
One more quick question. I've got some cana lily and some caterpillars got out
of there and I've been spraying them with BT and it seemed to be doing
somewhat good. But how often do I spray the BT only? ET only
lasts about a day or two where it's effective and then it begins breaking down
being a natural product. So if you spray BET, you got to get
it out there on the leaves. Cann Of leaves tend to ball up water
and it runs off. If you have your notice that about spraying them,
your spray doesn't stick to the leaf really well. So you can get a
product called a spreader sticker. So you know you're out there in the sugar
Land area, you were just a hop, skipping or jump away from a
Southwest fertilizer Bob's got some there spreader sticker type products. Ace hardware stores are
gonna have spreader sticker type products depending on where you're located. Find the local
one and mix that in the water and that helps it stick to the cann
of leaves. Spinosaid maybe a better option for your cann of leaf roller.
That's the caterpillar you're dealing with. They get inside the leaf and you can't
get a spray to them. Spinosid soaks into the leaf tissue and so you
have to spray it regularly. But it lasts longer than the BT. But
it also because it soaks in, Like if you spray one side of a
leaf and the caterpillars feeding on the other side or something, they're still going
to get that poison in them. Could you sell that for me? Yes?
S p I N O S A D. Spindosid. Now there's a
dozen other insecticides I could tell you to spray that would kill the can of
leaf rollers, some systemic and others spinosa and BT or two natural organic products
and very low talks. And so we generally start with those those things.
Okay, all right, thank you for your time, and I have a
big day. All right. You take care too. You know, earlier,
earlier, folks, I was talking about wasp. Remember I was saying
how paper wasp their number one food sources caterpillars. Well, I was looking
at some cannons I used to have. I redid the bed and did something
else with it. But I had some cannas and I was watching. I
could look at the patch and see right where the leaf rollers were because there
weren't leaves. They'd eating them. And I was watching paper wasp red wasp
in this case, going in to the pack. I knew what they were
in there for, and I kind of crawled around a little bit and found
them eating, and they had a can of leaf rogram. They were chewing
them up. They were in there as predators, hunting those little boogers down.
And when you see wasp flying around your plants, they're there for one
or two reasons. They're looking for food. Because they're predators. They're looking
for food, and that food is primarily caterpillars. Or number two, they're
looking for extra floral nectaries. Extra floral nectaries. Now, I'll tell you
about those when we come back from break, So stay tuned our phone number
seven one three two one two kt r H. Welcome back to Guardline.
Glad you're with us today, Very glad you're with us listening if you'd like
to give us a call seven one three, two one two five eight seven
four and a right for break. I kind of gave you a little teaser
there that I was going to talk about something a little bit different. We
were talking about the canna leaf rovers. Remember those can of lefros. I
was talking about wasp coming in and they were hauling them away. Wasp or
predators. They're flying around your plants. One of the things they're doing is
they're looking for some to eat. And something eat usually is a caterpillar.
When you're a paper wasp, a red wasp or one of those yellow and
brown striped paper wasps, that's what they're doing. But the other thing that
they're doing is they're looking for something called extra floral nectaries. Extra floral nectaries.
Now, we all know that flowers have nectar. Bees go for that
and butterflies go for that. But do you know that plants have other spots
on the plant that produce nectar. Most people don't know that these are called
extra floral nectaries. Outside the flowers, there's other places you will find a
little spots along a stem or maybe we're a leaf at the base of a
leaf, like if you were a look at a peach leaf, for example,
it has a little stalk that attaches to the stem at the base.
But right at the base of the leaf before it gets right to that stalk,
they're these little orbs, these little bump those are extra floral nectaries.
You'll see them on black eyed peas, You'll see them on just lots of
different plants, and they bring in They attract beneficial insects to feed on that.
That's one of the reasons the plant is making them. And you'll see
wasps sitting on a stem and they're kind of just walking around in that area,
just doing something. You're going and what are they doing there? There's
no caterpillar there. That's what they're doing there, And i'd attract them in.
And it's not just the big paper wasps, it's little tiny beneficial wasps
of other types. So extra floal nectaries kind of a cool fun fact.
I guess that's our cool fun fact of the day. Well, you're listening
to Guardline and I you hear me advocate for Star Hope Mission a lot,
and it's because I believe in Star Hope Mission. Star of Hope has been
around for one hundred and seventeen years, My wife and I are supporters of
Star of Hope because we believe in Star of Hope. I've seen the work
that they do. I've heard the stories of lives that they've changed. You
know, there are christ centered community dedicated to meeting the needs of homeless men,
women and children. They're really their goal is not just a handout,
but positive life change. They have structured programs that focus on things like spiritual
growth or education, how to get a job, life management, a lot
of life skills that people don't just necessarily have or maybe they weren't taught as
they grew up. Recovery from substance abuse another big part of what Star of
Hope does. You can get involved certain you can donate. I can't think
of a better way to put your compassion into action by providing donations for Star
of Hope missions. They have an outreach called Love in Action. It's a
van goes out. It distributes things to people like right now, water is
a huge thing to people that are homeless on the street. Hygiene kits they
call them hope bags that contain the option, you know, things like toothpaste
and little toothbrush and other things like that. They're providing that. You can
volunteer that way, be a ride along on one of their Love and Action
vans. You can help assemble Hope bags. You can be part of the
upcoming soon they'll be doing the back to school events as well during the holidays,
food baskets. You can sponsor a family. There are so many ways
to find out the way that best fits you, but by all means,
do something. Star of Hope is the place, soohmission dot org. Sohmission
dot org learn more about them, hear the story. I think you will
like. I did find it to be a very compelling and a great way
to put your your your love, your mercy, your generosity into action with
Star Hope. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. If you would like to give us a call, we'd be
happy to visit with you about the things that you are interested in in your
guard in your landscape, what is what are what issues are plaguing your landscape
that we could help with. We'd be happy to do that. Nelson Plant
Food is a premier fertilizer company. They have many, many types of products.
And when I say that, I'm talking about lawn products. For example,
they're turf products, a turf Star line outstanding, just outstanding products.
For example, if you are really interested, for example, in a slow
release fertilizer, they've got the Slow Relief turf Star Slow and easy and it'll
feed for three to four months. You do it now, you're not con
fertilized again until spring. That's just an example. They have many other products
in the turf Star line as well. They've got the Color Star line.
You know, when you're looking at a color Star products, you're looking at
things that really make blooms pop. Just outstanding blends for your flower beds to
just keep them looking good all the time. And then they have specialty products
for azalia's boogavillias, citrus fruit, avocados, crape myrtles, hibiscus, palms,
plumerias, roses, trees and shrubs, vegetables. You get the idea.
There is a Nelson product for anything you're going to want to grow,
and their high quality. I like the little Color Star and some of the
nutri Stars that come in the containers because those containers are refillable. There are
several of our garden centers that will provide a refill spot where you can take
your old plastic container in and get a good deal on a refill because you're
not buying the whole bottle and more plastic in the environment. That's one of
the things that Nelson does, and so check them out. You can go
to Nelson Plantfood dot comf you want to learn more about their products, but
you're going to find them all over the place, widely available. For example,
ACE Hardware stores carry Nelson plant Food products. Now you can go to
ACE. What forty Ace Hardware stores around here? Not hard to find one
of those, So you know you're going to find Nel some products near you
and again just widely available. ACE Hardware is also going to be the place
where you get all the supplies that you need for your garden, for your
lawn, for your flower beds, your herb garden, your trees or shrub
your containers. Do you need a potting saw mix, Do you need fertilizer?
Do you need something else to enhance those plants, to protect them from
pastor diseases, to control weeds? ACE has all of that. Are you
sitting outside trying to enjoy the cooler evenings late in the day and the mosquitoes
are eating you alive. Go to ACE. They've got the mosquito dunks that
you put in water to shut down the larvae. They've got a foger machine.
They have all kinds of things to help you make your outdoor space more
livable. Certainly anytime fire ants pop up. In fact today, later today,
I hope to be able to get out and do some fire ant baiting
because I saw two mounds on my property. I can't believe that I was
so. I was so they would show up on my property. But that's
allum. This rain brings them to the surface, and a good quality bait
spread out over an area is a great way to shut them down. ACE
is the place easy to find. And I mentioned those mosquito dunks. You
know, mosquito dunks are a very effective way to kill mosquito larvae. So
what you do is you put a dunk it covers about ten one hundred square
feet of water about a ten by ten area. Or you can break them
up into granules and throw a little bits in those catch basins under your pod
or in a maybe you got an area yesterday someone called and they had a
tree with a low cavity where water was sitting inside the tree trunk. Throw
some mosquito dunks in there, because that is mosquito breeding heaven in those little
hollow tree spaces up in the gutters that don't drain, well, there's a
little sag. Mosquito dunks are a very effective product, again, available at
ACE and many many places, easy, easy to find. Don't harm fish,
don't harm birds, don't harm beneficial insect like bees, and certainly don't
harm your pets. So you can't beat that for an effective product. Let's
head out to Richmond and we're going to talk to Alan. Now. Hello,
Allen, Hey, good morning. I got a couple of quick questions
for you. First one, I've got a live oak that has just gotten
way too big for the plot of land where I live, Like every other
house in our neighborhood, they should have never they had us originally with two
live oaks, and anyway, I want to get rid of that, but
we have to replace it with another hardwood tree. Do you have one that
you like that doesn't get too tall and too huge of a canopy? Well?
Are you? Can it be deciduous? Is that okay? As opposed
to evergreen like a live oak? Yeah? Yes, Okay, I don't
know how large too large o's for you. But the Chinese fringe tree,
as yeah, I was looking at that was nice. Shaggy white blooms.
They do very well in the Houston area. Shaggy white blooms. There's so
many of them that you actually get a nice fragrance off the tree in the
spring when they bloom. They grow a little on the slower side, but
again with fertilizer and care and keeping the grass away and getting a big mulched
area, you can speed them up considerably. But that's a beautiful tree.
I would say maybe twenty feet. I've seen bigger ones. We used to
have a bigger one at the Bear Creek Extension office in West Houston before the
floods came through and took out the office. But that Chinese fringe would be
a nice tree for that. Crape myrtles, there's some big, beautiful crape
myrtle Some get up to thirty five feet tall, like Natchez with the white
blooms. That particular one has a beautiful cinnamon colored bark. But there are
many other other types of crape myrtles that will do really well. Okay,
yeah, yeah, I like that. I was reading about some other fringe
trees, but I'll definitely check out the Chinese fringe tree for sure. Yeah.
Well, if you like native plants, there's a native fringe It's also
commonly called grand Sea gray beard. It's native to East Texas. It's not
as showy as Chinese fringe, but it is a native tree, and it
does have pretty low blows. They're not just quite as billowy and white as
is the Chinese French. But either way, it's a good plan. Okay,
great. And my other question was, as far as I'm thinking about,
I've got a small area in my backyard with we have the transformer box
that I just want to put some I was thinking about putting up making a
little wildflower garden. Is now a good time to even consider that or just
do I need to wait to the spring or how would that work? No,
I would do it in the fall, for sure. In the fall,
I would I would hold off a little bit. Now. I mean,
you could plant seeds now, like blue bonnets cast their seed in the
spring and they're gonna come up in the fall. They're just sitting there now.
But I would wait, probably until we get into September, maybe a
little later in September, and do the seeding then, because what you're going
to want to do is go in and mow everything down really low, probably
rake the area out a little bit, just so you can get sunlight down
to the soil for those wildflower seeds to germinate, and then sprinkle the seeds,
rake them in, scratch them in. Do you know any kind of
a scratching of the soil surface to loosen it up so the seeds fall down
and contact the soil really well, and water it in well. And if
you do that in late September, they'll sprop pretty quick and they'll get up
and get going for you for sitting through the winter and then coming out in
the spring. Perfect. That sounds great. Well, thanks for your help.
I appreciate it. You bet. I appreciate the call. Thanks a
lot. Yeah, I was just just writing an article for Texas Gardener magazine,
which, by the way, if you don't get Texas Gardener, you
should. It is an outstanding magazine. I'll tell you a little bit more
about it, and i'll tell you about the article that I've got coming out
in there that I think you'll be interested in. As well. For right
now we're gonna take a little break. It is time for the news.
If you'd like to give chrysal call again. We got a good open board
right now. You could be first up if you're the first to call seven
to one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one two
kt r H and I will be right back claiming welcome back to the garden
line. Hey, it is good to have you with us. Are glad
look always look forward to talking to folks about gardening. I can't think of
a better thing to do than to visit with gardeners about gardening. I found,
by and large, gardeners are just great folks to be around. I
enjoy visiting with gardeners. I always find that I don't know, they're just
well, you know, how what do people say that they're good people kind
of thing. It's like they're enjoyable. They they picked a hobby that they
enjoy and it's just a it's just a pleasure to hang out. Of course,
you got to put up with bragging. You got to put up with
bragging. You know. You tell them I tomato and it was wonderful.
Oh yeah, well mine was twice that big in three weeks earlier. So
there, Well, we'll put up with that. We'll allow a little bit
of bragging on guard line. Not too much, it's a little bit.
We're on the phones right now and head to Austin and talk to Anna.
Hello, Anna and Austin. Hi on a high skip. I send an
email as Texas zombiing grounds, Travis County. There you go. Okay,
all right, I did get your I got your pictures, as a matter
of fact, I did. Yes. What do you think about that leaf
discoloration you know on those eagles and hollis the little specking on the outsides.
It could be something nutritional that is possible. So a good complete lawn food
that has micronutrients and things in it, that would not be a bad idea.
I think the fact that your holly has dropped some leaves Holly's will do
that. Any kind of a stress drought stress is one that we can often
get into. It hadn't been a real drought a year like it was last
year. But when hollys don't get water, they don't do well. And
I always tell people when you plan a holly, count on handwatering it the
first three years That didn't mean you can't have a sprinkler system. It just
means sometimes sprinklers get blocked. The spray goes out and it hits leaves that
sort of block it, and then there are certain parts of the root zone
that don't get that water that they should be getting. That's why when you
handwater, you can purposefully go all around it and do that. So that's
one. Again, it's not been a super droughty year, but something that
could be contributing to the leaf drop soggy conditions too. If on the opposite
is true. Let's say you've got a heavy clay soil, it's not in
a good raised bed, good drainage, excess amount of water, and we've
had a couple of doozy rains this year that can contribute as well as can
of course people just overwatering. But I don't see a lot that concerns me
other than maybe a little nutrition and make sure that the root zone has adequate
water but not too much. Okay, well that's good to hear. I
was worried about a fungus or something like that, so okay, well it's
not This is definitely not a fungus. That's for sure, okay, good,
and the pH of the soil is going to be okay. I was
reading something about adding vinegar to water or whatever. If your pH is not
right. Yeah, so don't don't do the vinegar. That's happen now,
that's what happens when people who think they know stuff are turned loose online.
We get okay, well this three yes, okay, Well, I'll continue
to watch the water and certainly do the as you say nutrition. Okay,
well, thank you. I just was worried that it was on its way
out, all right, man. Let me let me add one thing to
it. I would get some microlife their reddish bag. It's for acid loving
plants like blueberries, guardens azalias, all those kinds of plants, and I
would start using that around your hollies. Hollies like a little more acidic environment.
They don't have to have that, not to the degree of hydrandua or
blueberry, but it does help them. And microlife acidic fertilizer is going to
release slowly, So follow that abel, sprinkle it out around your holly's,
scratch it into the mulch, because you want that fertilizer to say moist so
it decomposes more rapidly, and it will feed and it will slowly acidify that
root zone over time as you continue to use it. So I think that
would be good. Plus, the microlife is going to have micro nutrients in
it because it comes from organic materials, so naturally has whatever nutrients we're in
that organic matter. And so if you got a little bit of a shortage
of micros, you could do that. You could also put a little bit
of azamite out. I don't know if you've ever used azmite before. Normally
we put it on a lawn, but I would follow the label, don't
overdo it. Any nutrient you need the right amount, not too much.
And that's true of micros as well. So the azamite, follow the label,
Sprinkle it around your hollies and water it in really good between all of
that stuff. Hopefully they'll they'll bounce back and you'll start to see better growth.
Okay, well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. All
right, thank you, I appreciate that. I appreciate you. You take
care, all right. It always happens this way. At the end of
guard line, we get when it rains, it poors. Here we go
garden. Let's see Karen in Houston. How can we help the day?
Karen, Welcome to garden Line. Good morning. I planted a Myers lemon
in my yard last year. It did find the first year, but the
new growth this year the leaves are shrivelly and look unhealthy. And I'm not
sure. I've tried mem oil, thinking it might be something microscopic that I
can't see, but that's not healthy. Karen, tell me the name of
the plant, Polae again. It's a Myers lemon tree Myers. Okay,
yeah. Shrivellly is probably an insect called citrus leaf miner. It's a little
fly. It lays an egg in the leaf and the leaf tunnels in between
the upper and lower surfaces. And as it makes all its little squiggly lined
tunnels, if you get up close and look at them, you may see
some little skinny black thread like lines going around back and forth, zigzagging around
through there. That's the leaf miner and it will cause a crinkling of the
leaf as it's growing. It happens primarily to the new tender shoots that are
growing. You can ignore them. They're not going to kill the tree.
You can ignore them if you want to shut them down. Then whenever you
have new growth, you spray it with something containing spinosid. And I can
spell that for you while you're grabbing a pen or pencil there. That spinosid
is an organic product that soaks in the tissue and it'll kill the leaf miners.
But you want to spray the new growth. No sense spraying the old
dark green, leathery leaves. They're not going to get leaf miner or if
they had it, it's already gone. So the new growth SPI no sa
D spino sad and that'll do it. And if you want to be extra
sure that's what it is, grab a sample, take it to a good
quality garden center like we talk about on garden Line, show them what you
got, put it in a zip lock bag and they'll tell you if that's
what it is. Okay, great, thank you so much. I appreciate
it. All right, you bet, thanks for a call. All right,
folks, we are going to have to take a little break here at
the top. We got one little segment left, and I'll thankful of calls.
So those of you on there hang on. We'll get to you.
James, will you be first, and then Greg, and then I think
James Another, James and Lee coming up. We are gonna hop and jump
right out here and see how many of these phone calls we can catch before
the end of the show. Today, we're going to go to Meadow's place
now and talk to James. Hello, James, Hello. Skip With all
the rain we had, I had an outbreak of grass burrs in my Saint
Augustine. I treated everything with sedge gender and have pretty well killed all those
spots. My question is to improve the recovery of the area, I had
planned to use some leaf mo compost and then water it in with soil activator.
Is there anything better that I could apply to help growth recovery in these
areas? Those are all just fine. Leaf mo compost about a third half
an inch of it on the surface is very helpful. If the soil as
compacted and that's part of the problem, you can do an aerration on it.
But if not, that's fine too. The watering it in as you
described is also a good idea. Hopefully the grass will have time to fill
back in and do well. There is a product from Medina called has to
Grow super Grow Plus. It's a quart bottle that hooks to your garden hose
and it covers four thousand square feet. It's got a lot of other things
in it in addition to the sixteen zero two fertilizer, and I would probably
use that on those areas and try just to try to give it a boost.
If it's got any iron deficiency in it, it'll help with that as
well. I think that'd be a good way to go about it, or
a real quick thing, though, Greg. I don't know if you've ever
seen my schedules online at my website, but there's a turf care schedule and
a disease, pest and weeds management schedule. On the second one, you
will see exactly when to apply the preventative herbicide a barricade to stop grassbirds.
And you're going to do that in the probably let's see where you all right,
you would do that in your area. I would do it in mid
February or late February would be fine, and then I would do it again
about sixty days later to carry it on through the season just to prevent the
grasspers from showing back up again next year. Okay, what was that supergrowth
you recommend it? Also? Yeah, from Medina has to grow products there
are several has to grow products. This one is called super grow Plus Super
Grow Plus. We'll go to an ACE Hardware store. They're going to have
it. An ACE Hardware new you is going to carry that. Okay,
appreciate all the information, Thank you, sir. All right, and download
that schedule from Gardening with Skip dot com Gardening with sk I've got it.
I've been following it most of the year. Okay, okay, good good,
glad to hear that. Take care, have a good rest of your
weekend. We're going to go now to Conrad and talk to Greg. Hey,
Greg mor good morning, Good morning to you. I'm done fine.
How can we help my daughter about Father's Day? Brought me a couple of
those sacks and bechanal and sons, lime and lemon trees. Yes, huh
they're potted trees from lose okay and uh first office. And no, there's
no no directions on how to how to care for it. No no uh
planning instructions, no fertilizing instructions. I was wondering what I could use as
a lime tree and a lemon tree, and I was warrant there's any kind
of fertilizer you'd recommend for them. I gotta right now, I gotta ref
bottom and something bigger and fertilizing. There's a lot of things that you can
use that'll do well for citrus. Uh. You know, it's not just
certain magic formulas that you have to have. But I know Nelson Plant Food,
for example, has these little canisters, plastic canisters with a screw on
lid of a centrus type fertilizer. And so you go to an Ace hardware
store, you're probably gonna find it there. A lot of our garden centers
Europe in conro I bet they have it out at A and A Plants on
the east side of Montgomery that that's probably a place you call them to be
sure, but they're going to have something like that, and just follow the
label. Just get your a little tea spoon in there and sprinkle it around
and water it in really good to get good growth. The most important thing
on those is to get them in a bigger container than you bought them in.
They probably came in a gallon container based on what you told me,
Yeah, and so you need them to be in a much bigger container so
that they have soil, a quality soil mix. Get your quality soil mix,
and then make sure you keep it adequately moist. That's the biggest challenge
with growing centrus and a container is in the summer, it's pumping a lot
of water, it's thirsty, it's hot, and we just have to make
sure that the bank account of soil in that container stays moist. Right,
But it can go in a container. It's got a picture of a of
a container. I guess you get it's not gonna be very big. I
think I said it's gonna plant seven feet apart and it'll get like seven feet
tall three feet wide. That'll be I guess that's so I figured the container.
Yeah, containers better because you can wheel that container into the garage on
a freezing night. Both the limen right to take a hard freeze. Uh.
So I would get, you know, I would get something probably The
next step could be something about five gallons of soil about that size. You
can kind of figure it out what you want to get a nice pretty container
for that. Uh and then eventually you're gonna get almost up to a half
whiskey barrel size a container where you'll need a little dolly to run it around
the yard and into the garage, right, Okay, but you don't have
to do Okay. My last question is, like Karen said earlier about her
her lemon tree had like those those bad leaves on the top of my line,
that same line plans doing the same problem. And I've had them sitting
side beside, but it's only affecting the line with those leaves greenfully on top.
Yeah, it's okay, that's just where they happen to have landed.
They take they attack all types of citrus, but that's a citrus leaf miner,
and I would get spinosid. And anytime a new flesh of growth comes
out, tender new tissues that haven't hardened off and gotten leathery, spray those
with spinocid. I just wanted to I just wonder why gon't want and not
the other sitting side beside, because I'm just I didn't replan them yet.
But okay, I I just don't know the answer to that. But anyway,
that that that's what you do, all right, Greg, Hey,
thanks thanks a lot for the call, much appreciated. We're going to go
now out to Lee and Tomball. Hello, Lee, good morning, three
fig leaves, three fig trees to growing good one is looking sickly, crinkly,
leaves looking yellow. I just showed you talk to somebody about spinosa.
If I should put that on there? Uh, you said fig right,
I'm barely able to hear you. You can get a little closer to the
phone. That would help, did you say, fig Yeah, so that
spinosaid, you don't need that for the figs. It could be different things.
You said, crinkly, the leaves are crinkly. Yeah, leaves are
crankling like they're drying out or something. But the stems look green. They
get plenty of water. Water once in water. Yeah, Well, different
things can affect figs. Figs get nematodes which block the water movement through the
roots, and so even though they're getting watered, the water and making it
up there and so you're getting the equivalent of drought symptoms, which can be
yellow and of older leaves, browning of older leaves, you know, the
drying up kind of thing. That may be what's going on. Uh,
it could. It could also be a disease called fig rust. Why don't
we do this. I'm gonna put you on hold, and I want you
to send me some close up pictures so I can see that, and then
let's talk about it next weekend and we can we can figure that out.
Okay, but hang on, Chris is going to take pick up your call
here as I hang it, hang it out, all right. I'm gonna
go real quick, James, it's already music playing. But can I give
you a quick answer. How can we help? Yeah, this fall messed
up my old streets pretty bad. How much limbs cannot cut off of it
without hurt them. Any limb that's broken, damaged, whatever's got to come
off. So whether you want to prune that much or not, it's kind
of beside the point. It's got to come off so you can take care
of the tree. Go ahead and do them on a pruning you need to
do at this point. If it's a damaged limb, anything that can wait
until February. Wait until February. All thank you very much. I will
be back next week