Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictor, so
just watch him as a sign. Well, good, good Sunday morning.
We are happy to have you listening to garden Line this morning, and we're
gonna do some garden and talk. I won't give you a phone number,
so you can give us a call, get you on the board so we
can talk about the things that you are interested in. That number is seven
one three, two, one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four, and Josh, we'll get you on the
board and we can talk gardening. I'm still kind of dark outside, so
we're it's a good time to be curled up with a cup of coffee listening
to the radio and I don't know, maybe talking some gardening with us.
I'm gonna go over a bunch of different things as we go through the day
today. But before we before we get too far into it, we've got
Phil out here in Spring and we want to go start off with him.
See what we're gonna talk about with Phil. Good morning, Phil Money,
Good morning, school. Yeah, I had two different questions. One had
to do with craig myrtles and least five feet. But I noticed this spring
and maybe it did this before and I didn't notice it. Look when it
leased out, it was late. Getting worried about it because other create mules
are leaked out side and will it worked itself? Well, I need to
come in where I'm getting you cutting out on me a whole lot. Um.
I don't know if it's the what I'm hearing is you're concerned that the
maybe the createmurdle leaked out late later than others. Is that the gist of
it? No, it was hard leaps out. It's fully leaps out now,
okay, and then it gradually over a period of more over about two
weeks, it gradually spread in a line north and south across the tree to
the west side. And it's fully and so my listen normal. The thing
I didn't catching that again with the cutting out is um, what was it
that spread from north to outside? Me? Yeah, Phil phill up.
We have to get you to We'll have to get your call back. Maybe
if you can get a landline or something, or try another call seat with
Josh pittsgog work. I'm just I'm not gonna be able to hear enough to
be able to help. But please do give us give it a try back.
Okay, appreciate that. Thank you very much. We are let's see
our phone number this morning. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Boy, yesterday was a great, a great day out at K
and m Ace Hardwring Kingwood. We were out there, and for all of
those of you who came out yesterday, uh, it was it was great
to meet you. I mean, it was good to see so many different
folks that listen to the station. And I know those of you who came
out, Uh do you agree with me that? Wow, what a what
a hardware store they have out there at K and MS in Kingwood. If
you didn't get to come out yesterday, you still you've got and just see
the place it is. You will be very very surprising and impressed at just
what all they have. I mean, it's I could sit here all day
talking about I bet you didn't know you found you could get one of these
at a hardware store, right Well, remember the old days, you know,
growing up we had a little Ace hardware store in our town and it
was the typical little hardware store kind of what you expect. Ace is evolving
in so many many good ways. I you know, like back in my
day there was in a big green egg barbecue section with many other great brands.
There wasn't a gosh the k and m Ace even had a lady's shop
area where you could get all kinds of jewelry and purses and bling for the
house and bling for you and you know what I'm talking about. It just
like, my goodness, this is uh, this is way beyond kind of
a one stop shop. But anyway, it was good to be out there.
Thank you guys for hosting me out at East and thank everybody that came
out got to visit with that day. All Right, we're gonna go back
and give one more shot here, Phil, Let's try it one more time
to see if we can get it to work this time. So I think
where we are as you've got a craig myrtle. It leaked out a little
late, but it did leaf out, and now something's going on from north
to south and what is that something? Okay? Is this a better line
by so far? Yes? Okay? What it did is It started on
the very east side and it leaked out beginning there there was nothing on the
west side. But over the course of about the least two weeks, it
finally moved all the way over to the west side, and it was kind
of in It traveled in the north south playing moving from east to west,
you know. And I'd never seen a tree do that before. Okay,
now that is kind of unusual, and it is definitely one tree. It's
not multi stems coming out and each stem is acting different. Yes, it's
just going to well, it looks great now. I don't know. I
don't know on that one. The you know, the thing that cues the
plant wind to leaf out is in many cases it's how many hours of cold
did they have before? But that should not vary within within one genetically similar
plant. On the other hand, it sometimes exposure to you know, certain
kinds of warming things like a reflective wall or something else like that might have
an effect. I have noticed sometimes on different sides of a plant due to
like cold northern winds, you may see a little bit of a difference,
but nothing like you're describing. So I think we have to chalk it up
too well. I hope that doesn't happen again. Yeah, well I had
affordable kind of affordable tree service came out and tramps and trees for me,
and so I may give more of the call se see it. But the
attitude people I talked to you said they never yet before. Yeah, yeah,
it's you know, I'm just trying to think horticulturally more from a sign
space, you know, what would cause that kind of development. And they're
like, I mentioned a couple of things that could, but I don't know
if and if it's not done it before. That's a good that's a good
question. But it's good you talk to Affordable tree though anybody knows, they'll
know. I have one of the questions for you. It's good. This
has to do with blueberries. I plan into some blueberriesis U in Sebruary and
two different species that I got out a right to this way, I don't
know. I'm sorry, arbor gate okay. And so the time is coming
when they're rockinging up. I think they're riping up in June, don't they.
It depends on the kind of blueberry. But yes, that's a good
general. So what is a good way to keep the birds from getting to
these things. I'll tell you what we are. We are seconds away from
me having to take a break. Do you mind holding and let me let
me enter that as we come back. Certainly, all right, he sounds
good. You're listening to garden Line. I am your host, Skip Richter,
and our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four word. Well,
good morning. You are listening to garden Line and I'm your host, Skip
Rictor. We are here to answer your gardening questions, and that's what we're
already up to this morning. I want to head back to Spring and we're
going to talk to Phil. Phil we were discussing blueberries and you mentioned you
had two species. Do you mean two different varieties of blueberries or two separate
species of blueberries? Varieties? Two varieties? Okay, good and tell me
your question now with the blueberries again, Well, they're they're getting right,
um. And my understanding is it as they ripen up, the birds are
going to get interested. Trying to figure out a way to keep the birds
away from them, got you? Got you? Well, that's not an
easy task, um, the blueberries, because you've got little berries all over
the place. You can't bag the fruit, so about your only option would
be to have some sort of a netting that you would suspend over the bush.
If you just lay it on the bush the bush, the birds will
land on the netting and peck the berries right through the netting. So you
would need like like a PBC pipe that you know, arches over kind of
creates a maybe you think of like an igloo if it were covered with something
white, but you're you're you got a one pipe going north south, going
east west, and so it creates the structure, and then it's easy to
get the netting up over that because it's hard to pull netting over a blueberry
bush with all the little shoots sticking out and everything everything else. So that
that would be about the best thing that I can think of, because they're
just not going to be another good solution, you know, that is practical,
affordable, and you probably don't want to spray certain kinds of things on
your berries anyway since you can eat them right right, Well, what's up?
What does what size mess can you use? I think you want to
let the bee the bees get in the pollen at and everything, right,
Yeah, most of the meshes are about I don't know inch, half inch
somewhere in there. I've actually never actually looked at the exercise of the square,
but you know there's they're small. Think of something you know about with
your finger, maybe from the most Okay, yeah, well I'm gonna try
that then I can. I saw some mess you's hardware when I was there
the other day, so try to get some of that. Okay, well,
thanks a lot rick keeping it. Do you have a I feel do
you have a bunch of berries or just a few bushes. It's quite a
few. I've got the Climax and the Premier, and it seems like the
Climax is the one that's got the most on it right now. Okay,
yeah, well that's a good old variety. Premire is too, though,
if you have several and they're in a row. Another option is people will
put like a post at each end, and they will stretch a couple of
wires horizontally over the patch, and then you your netting can just be kind
of hanging from those wires and you just drag it across like you with a
shower curtain to accept there. Instead of being a single sheet it's light goes
up across and down. You kind of picture what I'm talking about. And
that way it's easy to push it back, pull it open. You know,
you can take care of it. Yeah. Yeah, when you do
that is there you have to secure it somewhere down at the ground to keep
thanks from getting us under it. Yeah, there's some there's some species of
birds that will hop along go underneath it and jump up in the bush and
go to work. So you do need to You need to secure it at
the ground and on both ends of course. Okay, well I'm gonna try
that. Skip. Hi Phil, thanks for the call. Appreciate you being
on with us today. We are now by the way, the phone number
is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Let's head out to Fairfield now and we
are going to talk to Marty this morning. Good morning, Marty, morning.
Skip. I have a question. Oh tell that guy kind of like
a tent. Like a tent there you go, yeah, and plug it
down on the flapping part whatever you call it anyway, sake it down anyway.
I have a question about I need some of the suggestions I pulled up
a bunch of azaleas out of my front bed, and it's got shade and
it's dappled to medium shade two very large oak trees, and I'm looking for
some flowering plants to replace it. I want something flowering perennial. I don't
want too much here. I want it to attract birds, bees, and
butterflies. Two to four feet high and whispy. I like in sun.
I like a broom plant, you know, with the big yellow flowers,
or a fire carcer plant. But I don't know what to put in this
in a shade. It's kind of whispy like those guys. Wow, I
know I don't want much to it. No, I'm not at all.
I'm gonna have to think about that one a little bit. You know,
as you were talking, I kept thinking having some plants come to mind,
and then you would say the next characteristic. It'd be like, okay,
I can't go that one. Okay, let's let's do the main part.
Shade, flowering perennial. Yeah, whispy. I think about some some that
would be good whispy perennials. I have had ranges and I those are a
little bit too formal. Um. I have cannas, I have all kinds
of ferns and iris and everything else out there. But and I have ground
cover. Okay, so I want something in the middle of the bed to
give it some two to four the height. Okay, you gave me a
good a good shrub for like m to put up against a fence. That's
not what I'm looking for. I just want something in the middle that's gonna
be whispy and I attracting. And I looked through Randy's book, and I
looked online, and I just I'm not coming up with much. Yeah,
that's that is one, just to be honest, that's one that I'm probably
gonna have to um think about for a while to try to pull together.
Because the whispy is the biggest challenge of it. I think when you when
you're adding all those things, you know for further north you could do is
still be in there. But I just I don't. I've not found to
still be to be always dependable down in our yeah, and in our area.
Well, I even I got variegated ginger in the bad backyard. But
I you know, I thought about just the leaves. I have also lots
of leopard dance that I'm looking for something more um with white or flowers of
some sort that attracts okay in the shade. Yeah, so I'm gonna for
just a minute, I'm gonna ignore the whispy because that's thrown me off,
to be honest, Okay, ignore that. One thing that does well in
the shade and has has a bloom like structure on top is a shrimp plant.
Are you familiar with those? What a shrimp? Yes? Okay,
so you can get those in the standard type is kind of a rusty red
color or reddish orange. Yes. Then there's one that has pretty variegated foliage
with white and green, you know, splotch through the foliage, and then
has a redder bloom. So I kind of like that one a lot,
okay, for one that would do well in the shade. Of course,
Turk's cap does well in the shade, but it's much it's very far from
whispy. But no, I have Turk's cap all over the all over the
yards. I don't want anymore. You've got enough, Okay, I have
enough. They're very invasive. All right. Um, let's see what else
shade garden Agapanthus might be one. That's the clumps that come up, you
know, about maybe three feet high. Uh, and they're I have this
moment, yea, I have. I'm sorry, that's why I called early.
It's okay, that's okay. Well, well that's the problem with you
calling early. My brain is still trying to ask for one more cup of
coffee. Okay, what don't know. Floss flower is nice, but it's
down low. It's going to be about a about a foot high. What
is a Japanese mahonia? Mahonia is more of a holly like plant, but
it grows in a form like a nandina wood where you have stalks coming up
out of the cover and it has a holly like leaf and it has some
blooms on it, not just outstanding you know blooms one that I like in
shade. But this is this is an annual slash perennial, and that's Hinckley's
columbine. It's going to get up a couple of feet high, but it's
primarily going to be there through the cool season and then as the weather really
heats up, it's it's not much to look at. And so that would
be maybe another one that you would consider in that kind of area. I
ran across that and I didn't stop and look close enough. All Right,
I'm gonna put you on hold, and I'm gonna have Josh I get your
give you some information to send me an email, and if you have an
email ready for you, okay, and if you would, if you would
send me some pictures of the op of the location, that would be helpful.
And it'll give me a reminder to try to try to dig in a
little further than is coming off the top of my head this morning. Okay,
well I don't have pictures, but I'll do my best. All right,
thanks it all right, thank you, Marty, appreciate that. Okay,
Wow, you're listening to garden Line and it's stumped the chump morning.
I believe that was a that was a doozy, a good question in a
totally legit question too. It's just, you know, it's like a Nikki
if I said, I want you to go to the mall and I want
you to buy me some clothes, but I don't want pants, I don't
want shirts. I don't want anything with color or black and white, you
know, and it's like, okay, wait, and we're narrowing it down
pretty fast. But that's the reality of gardening is we have these situations where
it's a very demandable set of requirements and I'm supposed to be here to help.
Maybe you can help with the news stunt the jump. Oh goodness,
good morning on a good Sunday morning for a great gardening day. I see
a blow in the horizon as the sun is about to come out and give
us a really really nice day for getting outside, enjoying the garden, just
enjoying nature in general. You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host,
Skip Richter, and our phone number is seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two and two fifty eight seventy four. Let's
hit out now to Deer Park and we're going to talk to Jay. Good
morning, Jay, Good morning Skip. First, before I get into my
question, I just want to say how much I appreciate everything you do and
you bring it. You've done a great job. I appreciate all you bring
to the program. I'm a longtime listener and was really anxious about the transition,
but it's been fantastic, and thank you for all you do. Well,
that's very kind. Thank you Jaye. So my question is is that
we did a complete rework in my front yard intu being the beds, got
them rebuilt up, everything stripped out starting from ground, went out to Moss
and got some tips from them on plants to plant. So I've got a
couple of plants and I'm not really sure how to what to do with them
as far as care for fertilization. Just your general tips to maximize their health
and production all right, specifically too that I'm not familiar with it. The
chameleons shigashira that they're going to kind of produce over the winter and then peter
pan dwarf agapanthus, okay, summer over summer bloom. Just any idea on
when I need to be fertilizing, what I should be putting down focus feeding
just overall from there, Well, the communiers you're growing basically year round.
They're evergreen, and so you want to feed them gradually over time. You
don't want to overdo it like you're just pushing them with too much nitrogen,
but they do need a regular, gradual supply, so you can use a
slower release product to achieve that, or you can take whatever fertilizer you have
that's not slow release and give it gradually over time. And you're going to
find that at your local garden centers. You mentioned moss. Wherever you shop,
they're going to have some products for acid loving plants, and that's the
kind you want to use on the camillus. For example, I know that
Microlife has I believe it's a red or pinkish bag that is a six two
four. It's not the green bag, but it's like a red or pinkish
color that is for acid loving plants. And there are other examples of acid
loving plant fertilizers out there, and that's what your chameleon needs. As far
as the agapanthus, you know, we're looking primarily there in a warm season
growth habit, and so you're going to want to begin as spring comes in
and we're already there, and then some to give them a gradual feed over
time as well. You want something that has a blend of all the nutrients.
So if it's for blooming plants, then you're going to find that the
agapanthus are going to respond really really well to it. As a result,
would that be something on the agapanth It's like my Nelson's color Star or something
like that, or more of a liquid. Yeah, color Star would be
excellent for that. Nelson's color Star would do good for that. Nitrofile has
that color Express that would do good for that. And I mentioned I mentioned
the microlife types of products, but all of those are gonna are gonna provide
what you want. Just note whether there's something that releases gradually, and if
not, then make divide that amount you're going to put down into two applications.
Put them about four weeks apart, and I think you're going to see
really good results. And Agapanthus likes it moist, not saggy, but moist.
So don't let them, don't let them dry out too much. Got
it? And it can ask a few few more clarification questions. I've got
a minute, So why don't we try to start on one and then we'll
come back after break and finish it. Yeah, that's that's perfect time.
This is regarding the SOD that we put down. I'm patient, and I've
put down some of just some that liquid organics and stuff. But but as
far as it filling in, there's some areas it's got some thatched build up
and I don't know if I should leave that to pull it out to keep
it healthy and off to get start all right, Well on that one,
you want to if you're gonna lay side on top, you need to get
that dead organic material off the surface because that's just gonna hold your sod soil
up above your your your ground soil, and you don't want that, Okay,
So rake it out a little light roto till in there to get it
out. But that would be the way to go. If you have some
other questions, just hang on. I'm gonna put you on hold. If
not, thank you very much for the call. We're gonna go to break
our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one
three two and two fifty eight seventy four. Well, good morning on a
good Sunday morning for gardening. Here comes the sun. It's going to be
a beautiful day to day. I was just out in the countryside the other
day. I'd heading up to Grimes County to the feed store up in that
direction and driving through the country side look at all the people's little pieces of
property, and it just reminded me of something. If you have a piece
of property and you've been thinking about getting some kind of equipment to manage it
a tractor. Now is the time to do it. And here's why.
Lansdowne Moody they're your choice for Cabota here in Houston. Lansdowne Moody has our
Texas Edition L twenty five O one. It has a automatic hydrostatic type transmission
and it is therefore not one that you're going to be grinding the gears on.
I used to have this old tractor when we had our peach orchard,
and every time you shift, it's like, you know, you're fighting and
grinding the gears. Not with us one, not with this one. Here's
the main reason I'm saying you need to think about this now. Kubota has
their best deal. I've seen more affordable than ever, zero down, zero
interest for eighty four months. That is a long time. Seven months,
I mean seven years without interest. You're not going to do better than that
now, lansdown Moody and Cuboda. There that is a pair that goes together.
You can go to LM tractor dot com. LM tractor dot Com.
By the way, this deal is only good through June thirtieth, so don't
delay. If you're looking. If you know you're on the fence, maybe
I'm I really want to get a tractor. This ought to be the thing
that puts you over the edge. And you can just step out to one
of the many Lansdowne Moody stores here in our area and learn all about it.
LM tractor dot com. You know the the well. The springtime is
the time when I love to get out and just work in the soil.
And when we had our little peach charger and I would love to get out,
even though we had an old clunker tractor that I had to jump start
about every time I ran it. It was just good getting out and enjoying
that. And you know, if you if you've trying to get some work
done and you need a rotary cutter, you need you know, a box
plate or a front end loader, you can put that all together in a
package with one of these comboders from Lensdowne Moody at Fortune. Unfortunately, at
that time, I did not have a front endloader, and I can tell
you I really wished I had, because those are so handy, so cool
for the kinds of things you want to do. You're listening to Garden line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to answer your
gardening questions. Our phone number I've got a little bit of time for we
have to take our next big break of it. It's seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. If you want a call, we can
perhaps get started on the question. If not, Josh, we'll get you
on the board and we can talk to you when we come out of our
break. Looking at the kind of sky we have today and the kind of
weather we have today just reminds me that you know, if it rained,
I know a lot of the areas that are here in this show. We
had a little bit of rain coming through this weekend, and you want to
get out, and you want to check your rain gutters, make sure they're
not drooping and holding water. You want to check the bird baths and any
other thing that holds water from an old tire still left somewhere in the back,
to the catch basins underneath your potted plants on the patio, because wherever
water stands for a very short period of time, mosquitoes can do their life
cycle. And now you're enjoyable sit out on the patio in the evening becomes
a battle against the blood suckers flying everywhere after you, and you know,
dump those out those, get those cleaned out and get rid of them.
Don't give them a chance. I mean, all it does is just check
it once or twice a week. Just make sure you don't have that.
If you do have standing water and you need to do you know something about
it. You can always do the mosquito dunks. We talk about those before.
They work very well. You put them in there and they just they
do the work that they're doing. But in general, just be a good
I guess patroller of your landscape and look for those those kinds of things.
They say a stitch in time saves nine. That old adage you've heard before,
Well, when it comes to gardening, that's really true. You know,
if you're looking at weeds to get in with malt before the weed seeds
sprout, or even when they're a little bitty weed seeds, throw the mulch
over them and they can't get light and they're gonna die. That's a stitch
in time. If you've got young weeds and you're gonna have to hand pull
or hoe or whatever, I just get a little hof slice into the surface
and knock them out once they get established. Number one, they're already stealing
water, nutrienturer plants. They're already shading your plants. In many cases,
they're harboring viruses that insects will then carry to your plants. So get them
out ahead of time. It is difficult to pull out a well established weed,
and when you do that, you may damage some of the roots system
of the plant that you like that the weed is growing by next maybe it's
a flower or vegetable. A stitch in time saves nine. Get in ahead
of the problem and it's so much easier. One other example of it.
If you're trying to kill insects and you want to do it organically, the
products that you have available work best when the insect is youngest, so don't
wait. A stitch in time saves nine. We'll be back after the break.
KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with scarre Rictor just watch well
good Sunday morning on a good day for gardening. Oop I see the sunlight
coming across the buildings and the tree tops. It is going to be an
house standing day to get outside. Weather is perfect. Oh my gosh,
you just can't do better than that. You're listening to garden Line. I'm
your host, Skip Richter and our phone number. You want to write this
down seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four, give Josh a call. Let's get you
on the boards and talk about the things that you are interested in. And
we had we had some discussion earlier about m plants for shady areas. And
you know, shade is a challenge in our landscape. If you look for
sun, you know, if you've you've got a spot that's Sunday and well
drained, you can grow just about anything, right. But when we start
having poured rainage, then that limits our abilities are our options rather in terms
of plants we can plant, well, shade does the same thing. But
that doesn't mean there's nothing we can plant in shade. There are many things
that we can plant in shade. We just have to kind of back up
and you know, kind of take a different look at it and come up
with some other options. And when we're looking into the shade. One of
the best options we have are our foliage plants. We have a lot of
the really nice foliage type materials like aspadistro, a cast iron plant, I
mean, my gosh, that grows in deep shade, and its name is
well chosen cast iron. It is an extremely tough plant. Colladiums are a
good foliage plant. They bring color, they'll carry you through the season.
Occasionally you can get another season out of them, but in general, if
you want the big leaves, a big, giant, beautiful leaves, that's
primarily going to happen in the bulbs or the tubers that you purchased to put
in the ground. Kali lilies do well here too. Killa lilies have you
probably have seen them as a florist plant. They've got an unusual little bloom
that is almost shaped kind of like a chalice or a vase or something like
that, if you can imagine that, and typically in white, but there's
some other versions of that light yellow, for example, pink. But they
like a rich organic matter soil. But they are a beautiful and dependable perennial
if you provide them some of those combinations of the enough light but not direct
sun and good moist soil. They'll do really well for you. And we
have a lot of others. I'll talk about some others as we go through.
One of the ones that we often overlook are the ferns. I was
at Arbigate the other day looking through some of the shade loving area that they
have and just examining the different species of ferns that they have, and our
home independent garden centers do such a good job of this kind of thing.
But there's ferns like cinnamon fern, the leatherly fern. There's a little maiden
hair fern. By the way, we have a maiden hair that's that's native
to the Texas hill country. You go out there and you see a little
like a spring or a seep coming out of a rock in a little shady
area, and there's maidenhair ferns growing all along a little trickling seep of water
coming out. Wood fern, royal fern. Just lots of good kinds of
ferns. One of my favorite, just because it's so darned dependable, is
holly fern. It's named because its leaf is somewhat hollylike it's instead of a
little wispy fernlike leaf or lacy fern leaf. It's got a little bit of
a boulder leaf on it, but deep, deep green, kind of a
glossy foliage. The nice thing about ferns this is like that cast iron plant
we were talking about. They if they get to looking bad, you just
cut them off at the ground and they come back up fresh again, just
fresh new growth. And so it makes a very tall ground cover through a
shady area. But there are some absolutely gorgeous ferns, and when you really
get into looking for some other they're kinds of ferns, you're going to find
some very unusual things, some things that really add a very nice interest to
an area. Well. As you remember, though, when you're doing shade,
a lot of things I'm mentioning are green, And so as you get
into shade, the darker green something is, the more you don't notice it.
Or the darker the color is like a deep purple versus a light pink.
The purple's going to go a little more unnoticed in a dark, shady
area. So what we do is we try to set our plants out by
putting things around them that are like spotlights that draw your attention to that area.
And one of the best spotlights that I think we can use is something
called aztec grass. Now, if you're not familiar with it, first of
all, the word grass is applied to a lot of things that aren't grass,
and aztec grass is not a grass. Think of it like a white
with some green stripes. Leiopy think of a larioty type plant, but the
leaves are virtually white, but they've got little green stripings in them. When
you use that around the bed, or when you use it to line a
pathway into a shady area, it just draws your eye. It's like runway
lights looking at it. And so instead of just having like a dark multi
pathway and then dark loriopy or monkey grass or whatever and then holly ferns and
things that's just green, green, green green, break that up a little
bit and you can do that with aztec grass. That's a perennial, so
you buy it once and it just keeps going for you. You can also
do it with annual plants. There's impatients that have white ballooms. That would
be a really good way to achieve the same kind of results. Colladiums that
have mostly white in the leaves another way to achieve those kind of results.
So when life gives you shade, there's a way to turn it into a
beautiful area. And I've named what six or seven plants, we could name
sixty or seventy that would do well. And again, good reason to go
to a full independent garden center, knowledgeable mom and pop shop where the people
that walk up and greet you, and by the way they do that,
they're unlike some places, and those kind of garden centers. They walk up,
they greet you and they know what they're talking about, and they direct
you to it. And if they don't know, they don't just blow smoke.
They find out. They ask somebody else at the staff, or they
check it out. Sometimes you just like on this show, there are questions
that come in and it's like, I'm gonna have to look into that one.
That's kind of a unique one there. And that's why we go to
those places. And that's why I say that those kinds of places are the
most economical places to shop, because when you spend your money, you get
something that does what you want, that last that's like, oh, we
sell it in our stores all over the United States. I guess it doesn't
do well in the hot South. You don't have to deal with that.
You're talking about local and it really really important. Another good flower for shady
areas, a bright shady areas is Nicoceana, and they call it flowering tobacco.
And they're neicoceanas that are down, you know, a foot high,
that are very compact. They're nicoceanas to get you know, third or four
feet tall with big, beautiful blooms in the summertime. Typically they're red or
white or pink, or there's some that are kind of pale yellow, but
that's a that's a really good one. In Pentas is another good one in
a Gyptian star flower. It needs a bright shade, but it will light
it up. Being a red and pink and white are the most common colors
of blooms that they have. All good things for the shade. Maybe maybe
we'll come back in a little bit and talk more about shade, but for
now we're going to take a break. If you'd like to be on the
air, our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Good morning on a good Sunday morning, and it's gonna be a good
day for gardening. Oh my gosh, the sky is blue, little breeze
out there, temperature is just perfect. I don't know what else could we
ask for. All right, this is this is perfect. You're listening to
garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Richter. And here is the phone
number. You want to write this down so you can give us a call.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. And let's just go straight out to the
phone's. First thing here, we're gonna go out to Lamarck and talk to
buddy. Good morning, Buddy, Good morning, Skip. How are you
today? Well, I'm well, thank you. I have to put some
shrubs in in a spring and a property I have and it's a very high
shade area. What type of shrubs would you recommend for a high shade area?
You know, the den sure the shade, the harder it is to
get good density of shrub, you know, just not enough light to create
that wall of foliage like you would get out in the sun. Uh.
There's there's a shrub called a Fatsia japonica. Fatsia japonica. There's another one
called a neck cuba it's a U cuba. One form of a cuba is
called gold dust plant because it has a little flex of gold in the leaves
or actually yellow but in the leaves. Those two can take a lot of
shade, and so I would I would consider those. Uh, the U
Japanese U does pretty good too, if the shade isn't too dense. Okay.
And what was the name of the first one again, Japonica or something
Japonica, Yes, Fatsia fa t Sia, Fatsia Japonica. I think sometimes
I believe that one is also called Japanese are aurelia also, But anyway,
those two are very, very very When you look at them, you think,
well, that's shrub like, you know, but but it is.
It is a shrub. It's just not the kind of the bush structure that
you would think for when you hear the word shrub, you know. So
okay, it's just something to put in the house to please the Homeboarders Association.
But no sense in buying something that's not going to live and have to
replace it every couple of years. Yeah, these are okay? And are
they carried somewhere in spring at one of the garden center. I'm down in
Lamark. In Lamark, yeah, you're you're going to find them at all
the garden centers we talk about the main you know, mom and pops are
going to carry things like that, and you know when you're there. When
you're there, buddy, you may just ask them that same question because they
probably you know, I don't know what every every plant that every center carries,
but they may have another suggestion or two that also fits that. And
if you're going to a good independent garden center like the ones I talk about,
I have total confidence that they will not there. You wrong, So
okay, and then they'll called the properties up in a spring, I'll get
one locally, so those will know more what's going on in the local area
than down here in Lamark. You start heading a little bit north in that
direction and you've got you know, our CW Nursery there you have two forty
nine, you've got plants for all seasons. Of course, you all the
way out to Arbigate up in that area, they're just a lot of good
Oh and down in the heights there's Buchanans and they have a really good selection
of shade loving plants as well. Because a lot of the landscapes in that
area because of the big beautiful trees are pretty shady. Okay, I appreciate
that, sir, Thank you. I appreciate the call very much. You're
listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and our phone
number. Write this down seven one three two one to five eight seven four,
and always listen to garden Line with a pen and a piece of paper,
because who knows I might say something that you want to write down.
At least we hope we do several times a day. Let's go out to
the woodlands now and we're going to visit with Jill Well. Hello, Jill,
Hello, Skip. I have a mulberry tree in my backyard and strangest
thing. It sprouted like a leaf or two early early on in the spring,
and now there's absolutely not one leaf on it. But when I like
check to see if it's still alive and pop a branch, it's still,
you know, wet and has green on it. Okay, but there's no
use. And then this has been in the ground for more than a year
several years, yes, okay, and never had this happened to it before.
Right now, I'm not sure why they would have dropped off. That's
something is is shocking the plant. You know, of course drafts can do
that, but that's not what the problem is with your mulberry. At this
time of the year. It could be sometimes saggy, wet soil will be
difficult on a plant, but from mulberry, just to drop all those leaves
and not come out, that's kind of well, the leaves didn't come back
from from from winter. Like there was maybe one or two in the in
the spring, so like they they dropped in the fall, right, and
then there's one or two and they're not even there anymore. Yeah, that's
I don't know. Something's wrong, Something is going on in the soil.
And exactly what it is, I'm not I'm not sure what to tell you.
But I tell you what if you've still got green on the on the
twigs, they're supple and green, and there's there's juice in the limbs.
In other words, yes, I would I would wait and it's probably going
to come out. Uh. The only other thing would be some sort of
a herbicide used around it that might have had some stressing effect like that.
Um, unless you just have some distinct memory of doing some kind of a
weed treatment around it that might have gotten in the root system. Yeah,
i'd say, just wait, it ought to bounced back out. But that
is a strange response, and I can't I can't think of a disease or
insect, you know, particularly that's causing it. So I think it's going
to be a wait and see. Okay, well wait, Well I've been
waiting for a while. I've been waiting to call too, So thanks so
much for taking it. Yeah, I'm glad you called and keep us posted.
I'd be curious to know, you know, if it if it still
doesn't come out, or if it comes on out later. And because every
year is different and plants keep teaching us new things, right, No,
I hear you. All right, thank you so much, Thank you,
Jill. I appreciate the call. Oh goodness. We uh yeah, you
know, plants, they do have a way of teaching you amazing things.
Uh. One thing I always like to say is the plants obviously can't can't
read. For example, I used to have a list of deer resistant plants,
and my my humorous comment is, yeah I had the list, but
deer broke into my office one night rummage through the file drawers, and ate
the list in some other words, deer can't read. You know, they're
everywhere it says, dear, don't eat such and such plant, and then
you plan it and deer eat because deer can't read. They don't know they're
not supposed to eat that cotton plant. Let's go out to northwest easton.
We're going to talk with Greg. Now, Good morning, Greg, Yes,
we're a good morning. Can you hear me? Okay? I can?
How are you okay? Good? Good? Thank you. Hey.
We have an important garden dust in our back yard that has several plumps of
sedge nut in them, and we have already treated them with sedgehammer. Had
talked to Randy last summer before he passed, and he had suggested a technique
of using a cotton glove over your hand and dipping it into the liquid of
the sedge hammer and actually coating each plant to avoid spraying in a garden where
you have other it's all ornamental plants and any food producing at the moment.
But anyway, so I did the treatment about a week and a half ago,
and at about a week many of the plants started showing kind of a
yellowing and somewhat of a wilting process. But anyway, from reading the packaging
and instructions with the sedgehammer, it wasn't real clear how long you have to
wait for the chemical to really do its work. You know, they said
it could take a week to two weeks for you to see the signs of
it. But it works, like you get rid of the stinking things that
I kind of like to know how long I have to keep looking at them
and have them well interfere with the other things I want to do. I
would give them at least a couple maybe two weeks would be a good number
before you would just like you know, weed eat up them off at the
ground. By then it would have moved down into the plant. So if
you're tired looking at the top growth, you can remove it or you can
just leave it. But it takes time to work, but it does work.
It does work. Sometimes you have to retreat because there's going to be
some nuts that had not sent a shoot up yet. So you think,
while I killed it and it came back, well, maybe it was a
different nut underground that came back. Sometimes a big strong tuber underground we call
them nuts, but tubers they have several buds on them and you knock them
back real far. But one bud survives and comes on back out. So
be ready to do a retreatment. Don't let it up for air. Once
it has three to five leaves on it, it needs to be treated again.
All right, yes, all right, well, thank you very much.
We're gonna go to take a break. Appreciate that call. Greg.
You were listening to garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Nikki, did you know that you can eat nuts sedge? No?
I didn't know you can eat the tubers from yellow nuts edge. So
sometimes you feel like a nuts and sometimes you don't. All right, well,
thank you speechless. I had to, I had to follow up,
but I'm gonna drop and we're it's all news now, bye bye. Boy.
You're listening to garden Line. Here we are Sunday morning, and you
could not have a better afternoon ahead in this kind of weather. I mean,
is it is awesome. It's a good day to get out and fertilize
the lawn if you haven't done that already. If you fertilizing, it was
like six weeks ago and you put on one of the quick releases to get
an early green up, you need to get the fertilizer down now that's going
to feed slowly and take you through the summer. This is the time to
be doing that, and so you want to get out there, get those
products, get them ready to go. Get your soil built as best you
can. Because whether it's a lawn, a vegetable garden, a flower bed,
a herb garden, you name it, the soil is the bank account,
and you can only spend money when the bank account's got money, right,
Isn't that true? If the soil is dry, If the soil a
saggy wet, that's a problem. We need good drink, we need good
moisture content. If the soil is low in nutrients, that's going to be
the limiting factor. Do you know there's a thing we're going to nerd out
a little bit here, But bear with me because I think it helps to
understand some of these principles in horticulture. So here we go. I'll make
this quick. There is a thing called Lee Bigg's barrel. From long time
ago, a scientists named Lee Bigg, a soil scientist came up with the
idea of a barrel and the staves on a barrel each represent a different nutrient.
So imagine a big old whiskey barrel, okay, and each stave coming
up. One is nitrogen, one is phosphorus, one is potassium. You
get the idea all the way, all sixteen seventeen different nutrients that are absolutely
essential for the plants. Now, imagine if you cut one stave off halfway
up the barrel, how high could you put water in the barrel? No
higher than that, right, because it just runs out. So that analogy
that he created is a good one because you may add plenty of nitrogen,
plenty of phosphorus, plenty of potassium, But if you're lacking in sulfur,
or if you're lacking in zinc, or if you're lacking in manganese, or
if you're lacking in magnesium, that's going to be what limits what your plants
can do. They can only be as productive as the least available nutrient that's
there in the soil. That's why we build our soil, that's why we
add compost to the soil, because compost is dead organic matter. It's organic
matter that grow making plant parts therefore required every essential nutrient or it couldn't have
grown. It wouldn't be essential if you could grow without it. Right,
So when you take a leaf off a tree, that leaf has a blend
of everything that that tree needs to build a leaf, to function, to
do all the biological processes. So it's the limiting factor that we're looking at,
and that's why we add compost. That's why we return our grass clippings
when we mow the lawn. That's why we buy fertilizers. And then we
also supplement with the trace minerals, the trace elements, those kinds of things
that are all the elements you'd never think of, but they're important for plant
growth, are implant important for human growth. All of that combination provides a
bank account. So when the plant says I need I need some copper,
but I just need a little bit of it for this function in the plant,
there's copper in the bank account that it can draw from. Not too
much to cause imbalances, but there's enough. And when you hear me talk
about fertilizing your law, and or you hearing me talk about using one of
the mineral supplements, you know that you might find like a Nature's Way has
one. When you hear me talk about using something like an azamite for all
the trace minerals that are in there, that's what we're talking about. We're
talking about getting a bank account that is stocked with everything a plant is going
to need, because strange enough, you could have all of the minerals,
all the things you need, except one being short, and that's the one
that's going to stop your tomato from producing, your lawn from thriving, your
trees from doing well. It takes all of them. And that's what we
mean when we say spend money on the brown stuff before you spend money on
the green stuff. Fix your soil, and then the green stuff you put
in the ground is going to thrive and it's going to be money well spent.
It's an investment. And I like to think of a soil as a
bank account because that is a good analogy. We all understand what happens when
it's called overdrawn ride or it's called in not much money left there, right,
we want to build a bank account that it's not just one thing money
coming out. It's seventeen different and more than that, different minerals and nutrients
that are in that bank account, and we can draw this one or that
one or the other one just exactly in the amounts we need, the timing
we need. That's the seas to success, and that's what we're raiming for.
And you know what, it's something that nature taught us a long time
ago. And I'll talk about that coming back from break. Right now,
I'm gonna give you a phone number to call get on the board while we're
in break, and that's seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Brag you may well, good Sunday morning. This is a good day
for getting out there and getting some gardening done. A good day for getting
out there and visiting some garden centers. This afternoon. Boy, you just
this is chamber of Emers weather we've got. Oh my gosh, it's sitting
inside and doing a radio show. I love doing a radio show, but
Agent, I just look outside and it's like the plants and dirt are calling
me. I need to get out there. Hey, let's head over to
the Heights now. We're gonna talk to Steve and the Heights. How you
doing this morning, Steve us a skip. I'm doing pretty good. I
had a mulberry tree that was just full of mulberries, and then the web
worms got it, and they've pretty much I pretty much roted it off,
but now they're starting. I bought a few other little trees. I got
a few peach trees and a plum tree going, and now the web worms
are getting on that. I bought some regular stuff that's supposed to kill bugs,
you know that you just put on your water hose and stuff. And
I've been spraying it like it's supposed to last, like for four weeks,
and I spray it today and then the web worms are back tomorrow. So
is there something I can put on these? The key to the first of
all, I'm surprised you're having that kind of a web worm problem now.
Usually we have a little bit of a spring outbreak. It's very small though,
and then in the fall we have the big web worm season when it
just can defoliate a tree. But anyway, nevertheless, first of all,
if is this a small tree where you could reach up there with a stick
and break up the WEBSHOI not really, no, no, no, The
big one it's probably at least twenty five okay tall or so all right,
and that's what I've been doing on these two smaller ones. I've been getting
a rake and on a ladder and try to just drag the web all for
then sprays and wall spray. But well, you want you want to when
you can, You want to break the webs up and then spray, because
what they do is they build this web so they can feed on the leaves
inside and be protected against wasps. And the webs tend to deflects mists like
spray. So there are hosen sprayers that shoot a straight stream a good distance,
and with the strength of that stream you can kind of break through the
web because you want to get the foliage inside covered with what you're spraying.
And the safest thing you can use is as the products that contain BT.
BT is a disease of caterpillars, so it works on them. It doesn't
kill grasshoppers or lady beetles or anything else. It's a grasshop it's a caterpillar
disease. The BT only lasts about a day, but if you get good
coverage, it's gonna it's gonna take them out, and then you may come
back three to five days later and hit it again. And you may have
to come a third time. But the BT is the less disruptive to all
the things that are out there that are helping you fight the pests in your
garden. But that would be an option. But I think the key to
success, even with the product you purchase is getting through those webs, getting
the foliage covered, because when you coat the foliage and they eat the foliage,
that'll take them out. Okay, so let me answer you something.
This tree I got, it's a pretty big tree, and it will.
I mean they pretty much devoured it and I had even so it will.
It will come back next year or later on once. Okay, absolutely,
you'll come back, and they probably won't be right back with the new growth.
They do run a life cycle, and but you'll have them if you
had them, and now you're going to have a heck of a time with
them in August, September, maybe October when they come back again. So
just be ready and on all these sprays, especially on the BT, you
want to spray it when they're young caterpillars because as they get old and they're
about to become moths, going to a pup and become a moth. These
products are not going to be as effective, especially the organic BT. So
watch for the start of them, and that's when you have access to all
the foliage and you know they'll lay eggs on a bare leaf. They have
a little cluster yellow eggs into the leaf. And when you first to see
some start of the damage and you start spraying the foliage, that's the way
you get ahead of it and shut it down. Once the big webs are
there, it's it's more work, and it's kind of more hit and miss.
It's more more physical work that you have to try to just not know.
I was getting a rake what I can reach and find to drag the
webs off, and then I would just spray them on the ground. So
get this BT, Yes, that's what you call it, justs BT and
I'm getting I'm sure Southwest has it the Southwest. If you go over and
talk to folks at Southwest they will take you they probably have. There are
four different bts they sell. But the thing to remember about BT is it's
not it's not a toxic poison. So you spray it on the on the
pest and they die. It's it's something they have to eat, and it's
a disease. So it's like spraying bubonic plague on your leaves. But the
bubonic plague attacks caterpillars, okay, so they eat, they get it inside
of them, and then then they it kills them that way, But early
on is the way to go, no matter what products you're using. Let
me ask you this, and because I've got I've got a couple of little
smaller you know, eight ten foot like a peach tree and a pear tree
and a plum tree. It wouldn't be a bad idea because they're all to
spray that stuff now, even before the caterpillars get on it, right before
the most worms on peach, pear or plum. They'll attack mulberry, that'll
tack pecan, they'll attack black cherry and a few other things. But they
shouldn't be on those. Hey, Steve, I'm gonna have to hit a
break here, but I appreciate the cloud and good luck with that. I
wish you, wish you the very best. I want to tell you about
a garden center that you I don't know if you've been out to Kingwood before,
but even if you don't live up in the northeast part of town,
Kingwood Garden Center on stone Hollow Drive and Warren's Garden Center on North Park.
They it's an amazing place to visit. I stopped by there yesterday. I
was in Kingwood and I checked out our friends at Kingwood Garden Center. They've
got all the products we talk about, but they also have one of the
most amazing gift shops I've ever seen. And Mother's Day is coming up not
too far away. You need to check it out out because even if your
mom's not a gardener, they've got some really cool stuff in there that I
think she will love. That's Kingwood Garden Center on stone Hollow Drive, both
Kingwood and Warren seven days a week. And you've got plants, you've got
bling, you've got everything you're looking for. You won't be disappointed if you
check those places out. Yeah. I always like to stop into garden centers
like that. We we just for me. It's inspiration and I learn every
time. You know, you go to a garden center and I'm walking through
and I'm going, oh, well, there's a salvy I've never grown before.
I'm gonna try that one out. And actually I brought I brought a
couple of things home from Kingwood Garden Center yesterday just to try out in the
yard, see how it, see how it does. So when I advise
you, it's not just me reading something in a book somewhere, it's maybe
I've actually done it myself. At least that would be ideal. Tom out
in Jersey Village. We're having to head to a break, but I hope
you'll hang on. We'll get to you. You will be the first up
after we come back from break. For those of you who would like to
get on the board with Josh seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Well, thank
again everybody who came out at K and MS Hardware yesterday in Kingwood. And
I do want to let you know that in a couple of weeks, on
Saturday, May thirteenth, I'm going to be at the arbor Gate, Now
that's a day before Mother's Day. I'll be out there for a couple of
hours at Arbourgate Nursery. Believe me, you will find somewhere between five and
one hundred thousand different things you can buy your mom. Five thousand different things
that you can buy your mom for Mother's Day at Arbor Gate. I hope
you'll come out Saturday the thirteenth and we'll see you there. KTRH Garden Line
does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program.
Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip rictor just watching. Well. Good Sunday
morning, on a great day for getting outside, a great day for gardening.
You just this afternoon you need to either bee in your garden, in
your lawn, or out visiting a garden center for inspiration and for some pretty
cool things to bring home. No, momaid, I had forgotten about that.
That is important to give our pollinators a chance to you know, have
a shot at some some different blooms that can help support them. Just remember,
though, one one drawback is in your lawn. When you allow your
lawn weeds to bloom a number one, it's great for the bees. I
mean, bees love dandelions, they love chick weed and all that. But
uh, here you're you're building seed that's going to be in your lawn.
So if you are not tolerant of any weeds in the lawn, maybe you
know that's not the approach. But I can tell you this dry down the
roadside, I'll pull over. I'll see little white flowers weeds, we're talking
weed roadside weeds. I'll pull over and just kind of go look at them
to see what's on them. And I always find pollinator insects. I always
find beneficial insects. Some of the things that are eating afids, for example,
in your garden are going to be out there on those flowers. And
so when we create a flowerless environment, you know, we got our Saint
Augustine lawns that go everywhere. We've killed every weed in the lawn. Maybe
not doing a real great job planning all kinds of blooming plants around the landscape.
You're just not going to have those guys around because there's nothing for them,
there's nothing to support them. No Momay, you know I would I
would have said, no momay is what we call June first. When you
get to June first, there's no mowmay. Josh. We need like a
symbol crashing couldn't sound or something for when I tell one of those horrible,
horrible chokes. Let's head out to Jersey Village and talk to Tom. Hello
Tom, good morning morning, Skip. How are you today? Better than
I? Deserve. Thank you. Well, good, How can we help?
My wife has a I guess you'd call it a pondless waterfall that still
has a pond, and he observed some string alja and he has other critters
like frogs and whatever that are relying on that pond. And she wanted to
put some sort of a treatment, and she got a product that she didn't
want to apply it until she got more information because it has the environmental cautions.
And she's got a Texas Wildscape National Wildlife certification and a monarch waystation,
on and on and on. So you had mentioned something yesterday in your program
to somebody about a product that contained the alga in that situation, and I
didn't write it down and wondered if that would be an appropriate cure for this
situation. Oh, I'm trying to remember what we were talking about yesterday where
I mentioned that this and this was probably though not in a pond. I
don't remember having a pond conversation on algae. Well, it's called AKA something
you'd mentioned it. I didn't write it down. Okay, Well apparently I
did, and I'm not remembering now what what that was, but I can
tell you this when you have algae in a pond, and is this are
we talking about a big farm pond or like a little coipond kind of thing
in the backyard. It's approximately six feet by yeah. Yeah. So a
lot of the products we would use on algae are going to be toxic to
fish, for example, and so we don't want to use them in that
kind of environment. One thing that's done by people's little ponds like that is
you can purchase straw, little straw bales, and the straw is just a
dried grass material, but it draws nitrogen out of the water. And because
that's a high carbon straw bale that you're putting in and it literally takes the
algae down. It drops the numbers down. And I think some of the
some of the plant some of the places that will sell like to do pond
work, you know, like Nelson's Garden out there in the Kadi area.
They may have an access to that, or they may have another product that
they would recommend for reducing the algae that you have down in the pond.
That would be probably the best thing. There's actually there's a lot of different
algae. I think you mentioned filamentous algae there's a plankton algae and a macroalgae
and other things, and each one is handled a little bit differently, so
it's hard to generalize. But if it's the filamentous types of algae, I
think you're going to find success with either the straw bales that you just set
in the pond, the soap, or one of the products that they may
have that's safe for fish and other things. Great, she misses you.
She was a master gardener out there at Bear Creek. Oh it's flooded after
Harvey. Oh well you said you were always helpful. Well, thank you.
That's kind of her. Yeah, those were those were great days.
Boy tell you Harvey we hit We lost our office at Bear Creek twice,
the Agrilife extension office, And after the second one he's like, okay,
that's enough. You know that. The second time, I think it was
underwater for like weeks before you could even walk back in there to see the
damage. And that was a nice facility served as so many years the Houston
community. But yeah, we'll say hi to your wife. I appreciate the
kind words. Our anniversary is tomorrow, Well, happy anniversary. Hey,
thank you. Skip you you need to do. Is she listening now?
If not, I'll give you some good ideas. She's always listening to you,
skip, Well, I would thought her a lot. Since she's listening,
I think it's appropriate for you to buy her jewelry that's garden related.
It has lots of diamonds on it for an anniversary. Gap. I'm sorry
to do that to you. I'm just saying thank you very much, thank
you for the call. Tom. Sorry, sorry to stir that pot.
Just have to be a little bit devilish there. All right, all right,
let's I'll tell you what. We're going to run out to Bill and
conro a. Bill, we got about a minute. How can we help
here today? We got you there? Bill? All right? Yeah,
here, I'm there you are. I'm dealing the takeall patch and I'm doing
two applications a fungicide two weeks apart, and I'm in the middle of the
middle of that. Okay. My question really is after the second application,
when should I apply fertilizer and I shall use the fifteen five, or should
I move along to the next round. Yeah, I'd move along to something
that's more gradual release over time. And you know I've been talking about those
today are the folks that we talked about here, the nitrofoss the folks,
the Nelson folks, microlife. They're all going to provide you with things that
can gradually feed out over time. And that's what I would do. And
don't worry about timing with that and your fungicide. It's okay. Just fertilize
when you want to fertilize. Okay, that's a great. Yeah, alright,
good luck you bet. Thanks for that call. Rich In Spring and
K and Pareland. We are coming back to you. You guys will be
the first up when we get back from this little break segment. You're listening
to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter and our phone number.
Please write this down and give us a call. Seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one two K t R H.
Well, good morning on a good Sunday morning. Excellent day for gardening
ahead, day to get out in the yard, day to go visit a
garden center, day to get inspiration. This is spring. You know,
when you get out there and you prepare the soil and you plant the right
kinds of plants, the ones that are going to survive. Here that they
are going to thrive here. You will enjoy the benefits of that money and
that work all through the rest of the year. And if you if you
pick good shrubs, trees, perennial plants, you enjoy them for decades to
come, and your home value even gets better each time you enhance your landscape
and make it better. Well, let's head out to Spring and we are
going to talk to Rich this morning. Hello Rich, good morning. Skip.
Questions are regarding three emergence. I've done a split application of prodiamine and
I'm still and I know pro diamine, I don't think it's good against kalinga
and nutsedge. Is there anything along the pre emergent lines that will handle kalinga
and nutsedge? I? You know what, Rich, I'm going to have
to look at some of the products that we have on that. I have
not checked the barricade label for the sedges and related plants. I can do
a little looking into that and maybe comment back on it a little bit later
in the show. If you would like to hold on, let me put
you on hold, have Josh give you some information and you would send that
to me. It'd give me a chance to go read some labels. You
know, it's one thing a lot of plants. A lot of times you'll
have a herbicide says this label for this and another one's label for the same
thing. But they don't perform equally well. And I'd like to steer you
in a direction of what's going to be a little bit more effective against that
particular kind of plant. So would you hang on josh that information and then
let me get you a better answer than I'm going to be able to give
off the top of my head. Okay, we'll do, thank you,
all right, Well, good luck with good luck with those Yeah, I
tell you the You know, we have a lot of different groups of plants.
We talk about annual grasses, and we talk about a broad leaf weeds,
and those are the two big ones. But then we have all the
sedges and the sedge like plants, and that would be things like nutsedge and
kalinga that Rich was mentioning, and things perform differently. Then we have this
other group of plants that is kind of caught between a grass and a broad
leaf, and that would be things think of wandering jew think of dove weed,
or think of basket grass. Those kinds of things they have the you
look at the leaf and the veins run parallel to the leaf, but it's
a broad leaf, not a grass like leaf. Those are kind of caught
in between, and they can be a challenge to find the herbicides at work
well on them, and especially if it's in a lawn situation, you don't
want to you want to carry your lawn in the process, so that that
can be a little bit of a challenge to pull off. Well, let's
head out to pair Land now and we are going to talk to k this
morning. Well, good morning, Kay, good morning Skip. Thank you
for taking my call. I talked to you a couple of weeks ago about
some plants I was trying to highbiscus and blue plumbago that had free freeze trying
to recover from and I've lost a few. But anyway, in the meantime
it's a forty foot bed raised bed. And in the meantime, the Virginia
button weed is kind of creeping in taken over, and there's a long,
long runner kind of of thin bladed grass too. I don't know exactly what
it is. I think it came in with the dirt, but anyway,
I've pulled a lot of it out back, maybe eight or ten inches away
from the plants. I was wondering, can I along the edges of these
beds? Can I spray with roundup or some other weed killer. I actually
have a big piece of cardboard with a V cut in it to protect the
plant. You not want to spray? Yeah, if you're if you're using
something like that, you definitely need to protect the plant. And this is
just a general answer kind of goes broader than your question. But whenever you're
using a product of any kind that's going to kill a plant that you have
desirable nearby, you want to make sure and not pump your sprayer up with
too much pressure. That tends to make it put out a mist that can
float in the air. So you want course droplets, low pressure corse droplets.
You want to just spray enough to barely wet the foliage. If it's
dripping off and going into the ground, you're wasting product. And followed by
a rain, you can actually have some of those products go in the soil
and do damage to the plant roofs. You want to be careful with that.
Uh, you know, I'm sorry, What was the kind of plants,
desirable plants that you have in the bed, high discus and blue plumbago,
plum bagons, both broad leaves. Yeah, I would be real careful
because the Virginia button wheat is tough to kill and it's going to take special
products and you're gonna have to do it more than once. And so if
you're gunna spray, you know you need kind of a weed beater, ultra
kind of product. There's another one out. Oh gosh, the names escaping
me right now. Fertilone makes that. We'll do pretty good job on button.
We'd be it takes more than one application. But if it's you had
told me Celsius was one that was one, well knows, yeah, No,
Celsius is one. That's not the one I was thinking of. But
the nice thing about Celsius is we use it in the lawn. And I
keep saying, don't use broad leaves in your lawn, broad leaf control in
your lawn. When temperature gets up above the mid to opper eighties, well
we're still inside that that line, yes, but we're not going to be
very much longer. But celsius can go up into probably ninety ninety one or
two degrees and still be okay in the lawn. But it's not I don't
believe it's going to have an ornamental bed label for application, so I know
it's a long bed you've got. But anything you can do just to get
in there with a little spade kind of fork and try I'm going to get
a claw thing to maybe, yeah, one a little claw clawing to grab
the runners underneath. Yeah, that's right, just kind of I have a
little fork thing that's that's a hold of my hand. It's not a spading
for it, but and I just it just loosens the soil and you can
kind of shake the weed as you pull it, and it comes right out
at the soul's moist. I would do a lot of him pull and i'd
especially get it done before the button weed produces the buttons, which are next
next plant a cycle seeds and try to get those out of there. There
are things you can squirt on them that are pretty effective, but button wheat
is tough, and I've seen it get squirted right in the face with something
that you kill it, it gets weak and then it bounces back. But
after that, if you hit it again when it's in its weakened state,
you get much better control. So don't think of button weed. If you're
going to spray as a one off, expect to have to come back and
do it again. Okay, but again in that situation, I think you're
going to be if you can take the time, get you a good kneeling
bench out there where you can you avoid all the things that happened to us
when we get down and get up, and get down and get up eight
hundred times on a Saturday morning. Yes, actually, when you're eighty three
years old, it's a little harder. That's right. That is that is
right, That is right. I understand that we all remember sometime north of
forty when we woke up one morning sore and we couldn't figure out why.
It only gets worse, doesn't it? But does? Seriously though that you
know, just a little bit of time here and there, you know,
going through a few mornings and early morning, don't work late, have a
cup of coffee. It's just amazing how much ground we can get covered that
way. What's the first one you said to use in the bed for the
for Denny button, We've the first I think I mentioned, I think I
mentioned we'd beat our Ultra as one. There's another one that also contains the
ingredient carfentra zone. That's one that you don't see in a lot of the
broad leaf weed controller products, but it has it does a good job when
you're dealing with the weed like that. And I'm off the top of them.
I had the names escaping me that Fertlane has a product that does that.
I think we'd beat their ultras of bonide product. And you know,
the brands not what is important to me here, it's getting the right set
of ingredients out there. And so that's that's what I would do. If
you know, if you can't do all the pollen, at least do that.
I'll give it a try. Thank you so much. A great day.
To be real careful with it, because it kills broad leaf plants and
it doesn't care whether you think they're a weed or not. It kills broadly
plants. So yeah, I know I don't have a lot of don't have
a lot of leaves on my plants yet, but day some of them are
struggling to come back. All right, Thank you so very much. I'd
like your little air track. Kay, thank you for the call. Okay,
appreciate that very much. You're listening to garden Line. I am your
host, Skip Richter. We are here to answer your gardening questions. So
if you want to write down our number, if you'd like to give us
a call, it is seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. They are there's a
lot of different weed issues that we deal without in the lawn and garden,
and everybody has, you know what, they're varying tolerance for different things.
And you know, we're we're about to go to news here in a minute.
But Nikki walked in and you you were talking before about I mentioned that
you could eat nuts edge and you took us fat almond joy. Do you
know that one of the names for the edible uh nuts edge nuts is they're
called earth almonds, And so I bought some seed one year now here I
am. I hope nobody's out there listening. I basically planted nut grass.
I bought the tubers, but it's it's called tufa nuts tufa and they're used.
They can be roasted and they have an almond like flavor. But I
would not recommend them, because it's like you put them in your mouth,
you chew a while, and then you spit out a mouthful of sawdust and
you're walked with somewhat of an almond like flavor. But did you know that
Egyptian pharaohs were buried with their chuffa nuts in the tombs in the pyramids in
Egypt? I did not know that that is one of the many things they
took with them to the afterlife. Nuts. Yeah. Can you imagine being
buried with your nut grass? That's like also, I'd like to be buried
with a bag of fire ants. Uh and what from for crying out loud?
Buried with your nut grass and your fire ants and everything. And anyway,
I just thought that was interesting, very good earth almonds. You heard
it here first. You also heard that. I don't recommend that you do.
By the way, that's yellow nuts edge, not purple. Purple nuts
edge is bitter. The nuts are bitter flavored. You don't want that.
Don't want that one. But if you can't beat them, eat them.
That's that's what I there. You go, all right, Well, good
Sunday morning on a good day, Oh my gosh, a good day to
get out get outside this afternoon. There is wonderful weather. You just can't
beat it. And if you just get some fresh air, do it for
your mental health if no other reason. I mean, if you just walk
through a park, get outside and do that. This is this is like
free therapy, just everywhere outside on Chamber of Commerce weather to day. We're
gonna go now out to Titusville, Florida and talk to DC. A good
morning DC today. Well I'm well, tell me how you are in Titusville,
Florida listening to guard Line well as hide Assville, Flard is doing just
fine. Um. I've got a front yard and I have between the sidewalk
and the street, I have Northfolk lines and also a crepe myrtle, big
crape myrtle, and the grass between the crape myrtle and the one of the
Northfolk pines is not growing. It just kind of dying up and gets the
direct sun of everything. So I'm thinking that they're just battling with the trees
for the glasses. It's been a good water out of the grass, so
it's not growing. That's my dealing, but I'm not Yeah, hey,
d D see what kind of grass is that st Augustine, Saint Augustine.
Okay, Well, as you get a lot of tree roots, uh,
the soil basically gets filled with wood, right, I mean these are big,
giant tree roots, and there's less room for the plants to get their
roots in and reach good soil. And that's one thing. Of course,
the shade under a tree is something. But I think you indicated this is
a pretty sunny area. I would I would do a couple of things.
Have you tried have you fertilized this spring yet? Yes? I have a
Scott's botusaster my little commers. All right, we'll be careful with the ones
that you know have that combo in them, because sometimes the products that are
killing the weeds can also have an effect on the lawn or maybe the timing
maybe a little off. But I'm gonna assume you put that down at the
proper rate and got it watered in and everything. I would just I would,
I would check the area out and see what what do you think about
soul compaction there? I don't know. If you're in a sandy soil,
it's not an issue. If you're in a clay soil, it can be
an issue. Make sure that go ahead, okay, okay, good,
Well, in that case, I would just kind of watch how things are
going, make sure it's get adequate moisture. You might want to contact your
your extension office for your county. Uh and in Titusville you probably have a
horticulturist in the office there, but ask them about a sample. Bringing a
turf sample in you. They may be able to determine that there's a particular
disease, like take all root rod on it. We're not in chinch bug
season right now, but you know chinch bugs grubs. A good turf sample
may help us narrow down what exactly is going on. Then we know what
to do about it. Because you're saying you've got good decent sunlight, you've
got good soil, and you fertilized, so that grass should be doing better
than it is. Who let me ask you. Of course, if it
doesn't, it is baddly with those greets. I know, I can take
out a big once a while conser, but what about us like fer jazz
as it is? If I can't get the grass to put federick Jasmine all
couple that work. Confederate Jasmine is a pretty big and sprawling planet. You
know, it's not like Asian jasmine that stays down a little tighter. You
can keep it a little tighter, closer to the ground. I like Confederate
jasmine. Uh, you know, it's a it's a nice vine on a
fence or something like that. But I think the Asian jasmine may may suit
that a little bit better. There are some others the advantage of a vining
ground cover as opposed to a clumping like I'll use a low riopy as an
example. You know it lo riopy. The clumps can't grow where there's a
big root sitting right there, so it tends to be kind of spotty.
But with a vining, the vine fills in all around, and so you
get a nice even coverage despite the fact that there's some roots here and there.
Okay, all right, and I'll look into that. Asian jasmin.
Does that have a good No, No, it doesn't. In fact,
it basically doesn't bloom. Now, there's some types that have some colorful foliage,
so they are a little extra attractive. You go to a good garden
center in your area, you're going to find some that are not just the
plain old dark green that they have some either yellow or some white and other
thing in the foliage that are kind of attractive. And then there are a
lot of other good ground covers. I know what Delia is a popular one
in the South, but it is a takeoff, running, sprawling booger,
and so you need to be able to keep it in control. But it
is one that could sprawl through there and fill in really well. I just
think you're not gonna like it, because it's going to be jumping over the
curb and jumping over the sidewalk, and probably a little bit too aggressively vigorous.
Yeah, because I've got a live woopie all along my walls, along
the edge of the house, pretty much all into the pot yard. But
can I take some of them little wopee like along the street edge, along
the side walk, just make a border? Yes, you bet you can
dig it. You can dig it up, take a clump, take a
sharp shovel through it in two directions, make four plants out of it,
and spread it out and it'll do just fine. Hey, I've got to
take a break, DC. Thanks for calling out from out in Titusville,
Sandy. We see you out there in Cyprus. You're the first up when
we come back our number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Good morning on a good Sunday morning for getting outside getting some fresh air
this afternoon. I hope you're out in the garden or you're walking in nature,
you're visiting a garden center. Uh, Sandy, I see out there
in Cyprus, and I almost got to a minute ago, and then I
got decided to go to a reading and come back. So how can we
help today? Okay, skip, I need a real big sosh my yard
in the back backyard. I don't know what these weeds are, but they've
got some pink flowers. And then I think I have I don't know if
they're the dollar chy or the ones that look like it's a round circle,
but it looks like a clover almost, okay um. And it's like there's
like probably by my pen's line that's about fifteen feet by ten feet that nothing
but weeds the same August UNI can barely see. Okay. Well, and
I did the fertilizer um. I did the fertilizer um at the end of
February beginning of March, and then I did the asam the next weekend.
And then I did the fertilizer again like last week, but I think I
did the wrong one. I did the fifteen five ten. That's okay,
that's okay. I mean, it's fine. It's just gonna be an immediate
release. So you're gonna probably want to after about six weeks do another light
fertilization. Uh, going into summer, okay. So as far as the
weeds, Sandy, a couple of thoughts I have. Number One, a
broadly weed control product is going to be effective in killing the existing weeds that
you have. But my first thought is why are they there? You know,
why is it that the grass isn't there and the weeds are doing well
there? It is it soul compaction? Is it that there's not enough sunlight
for the soil, but these particular types of weeds there they're getting by there.
Is it that you know something else is out of balance or wrong?
The area is seeing too wet to dry. There's a lot of things that
give weeds an advantage over grass, and I would try to figure that out
first, because we can certainly spraying kill the weeds, but if we're not
fixing the underlying problem, then it's just we're just going to be on a
treadmill of spraying periodically to try to keep weeds out of an area that grass
is not doing well in and we want the grass to do well, all
right. And the only thing I can think of is I've lived here for
twenty years and this is my first year having this, and really, to
be honest, the first fifteen years, I don't even think I did fertilizer
in my yard. The only difference is this task. Winter October, November,
December, January, part of January, even for February, those five
months I didn't have my grass cut at all, Okay, but maybe once,
okay, once or twice in the five months. Is that? Does
that have something to do with it? It's better to mow the lawn regularly,
no matter whether you mow it high or low. If you mow regularly,
it makes a densure lawn. And when your lawn gets a dentsure,
the weeds have more trouble, and you give the lawn the upper hand rather
than the weeds when you don't mow. When you mow irregularly, and when
you cut it back, it looks real bad until Larry Green's up again.
That erratic cycles hard on your grass plant and it gives the weeds the light
they need to get a good head start. So I would I would give
a regular mowing schedule as you could. I would use a broad leafwat control
product. Though. Now try to knock those out and let's get that done
before the temperatures are up in the mid to upper eighties, because we are
right on the cusp of entering the warm season and we don't want to damage
the grass with the products we used to kill the weeds. Okay, okay,
So what do you recommend I get? You could do something called wheat
free Zone from fertiloam Bonide also has a product was I was mentioning it a
little bit earlier. It's called weed Beater Ultra. There's a lot of good
products out there that'll do it. Europe, in Cyprus, so you're not
far away from plants for all seasons. From the RCW or Arburgate, those
places can all steer you to the product they have on hand that'll work well
with that. With that, you tell them if you do, oh yeah,
absolutely. If you're in Cyprus, there's there is the M and D
ace and the Cypress area. You've got the ace up on Jones Road in
the Cypress area, and they all have a wide variety of products, absolutely,
and they can point you to many options. Take them a picture of
the weeds that you have, just so you know we know which weed we're
talking about when they recommend something. But those two products i mentioned Ace is
going to have, They're gonna have both of them. Thank you, you
bet all right, thank you, Thank you for the call. Well,
you are listening to garden Line and we are here to answer your gardening questions.
We will be taking a break now, but we will be back and
when we come back, you can be ready to go on the boards.
Give Josh your call at seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Can't wait to visit
more about some things that are going on today. I've got a few other
things I'd like to talk a little bit about, So please hang around.
You got neighbors that have not listened to garden Line before, tell them about
garden Line and listen to us live from six am to ten am every Saturday
every Sunday morning. You can also subscribe to the podcast and that way you
can go back and listen to pass shows. Maybe something you missed. Tell
your neighbors about that. It is a great opportunity for people to be able
to listen. It's always interesting to hear all the different places people listen from.
Gosh, we were in Florida today, but that's kind of cool.
But garden Lines here to help you have a more bounabul garden and beautiful landscape.
KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Director, so just
watch him as well. Good Sunday morning. Wow, have you looked that
side? This is the day to enjoy this afternoon. Get out and do
some gardening. Maybe go visit a garden center, take a walk in the
park. Good therapy for you there. You know, if you have purchased
yourself a little piece of property, maybe you've had a piece of property for
a while and you are looking, and you've been looking. Maybe I need
to get a tractor or some things to take care of the property. Well,
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M tractor dot com you'll see what I'm talking about. Drive by there,
stop in, you'll get they'll let you sit on a tractor kind of check
things out. I think you will fall in love with a Caboda from Lansdowne
Moody. I was talking about the other day being out and about and seeing
things, and one of the one of the things that I enjoy doing is
getting out to garden centers. And I've talked to you about that before.
Familiar with that, but I was at Buchanans Native Plants done in the Heights
and it's like a little secluded hideaway. And I say little, I probably
should say large secluded hideaway because you get in there and you just wander through.
You know, there's the shed where they all have all the products that
we talk about, the fertilizers, the soils, pest and disease management things
that that's there. You're going to find a great gift shop. And by
the way, Mother's Day is coming, so if you cannot find something for
your mom and the Buchanans gift shop, you're not trying. Buchanans Plants dot
Com. They're on East eleventh Street in the Heights and allow some time because
it takes a while to see everything that they have everything you can possibly imagine,
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native plants and all the products we recommend Buchanans Plants dot Com. I'm gonna
put the phone number out there. We've got seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four if you would like to be on garden line. I'm
gonna start off by heading right out to at Tascacita and talking to Cheryl.
Well, Hello, Cheryl, I skip, good morning. I have a
question. I'm gonna be putting Microlife six two four on the grass next week.
Yes, and I was wondering the difference between the humates plus and azamite.
Okay, well, there's a big difference and there's some similarities. Both
of them are going to give you a wide range of micros because the azamite
is the mind product with that and the humates plus. It's formerly it was
a plant organic matter, and now it's been broken down to the point where
everything that was in those plants is concentrated light, concentrated compost in a bag
and it will provide those kind of nutrients as well. With the humates plus,
you get a lot of micros that you're not going to have in the
asomite. That would be an addition that the humates plus would give you.
And the humates plus with being a microlife product, it's just kind of natural
to do the green bag and the purple bag, and you do each of
those when you do them. But each of these products has its strengths and
each of them will provide the quality of the nutrients and things that you need
going into the ground. Just think of the humates plus more as a concentrated
compost in a bag with the micros. The azamite is a mind product with
micros as well. You're not going to go wrong with you either way either
one. Okay, all right, thanks hip you bet, Thank you,
Cheryl. I appreciate the call. Now let's head out to Kendall in Tanglewood.
How are you this morning? I'm good? How are you? I'm
well? Thank you. So I have Saint Augustine that's in shade and I've
had it for fifteen years and it's been great. But now it has a
fungus and so I tore out some of the grass and put in Ivy English
Ivy. But the rest is the fungus is still just eating the grass and
turning it into dirt. And so now I'm concerned. Do I need to
But I have other Saint Augustine that's unaffected. But is it coming its way?
Is there a way to fix the Saint Augustine get rid of the fungus?
U? I'm not sure what to do. That's a good question,
Kendall. And what what I would ask is what when you say you have
a fungus? Was did somebody diagnose something? Can you describe to me what
you saw? What do you think? Yes, I asked, are I
have a landscaper talkson Hansen who came out and they said it was a fungus
and I didn't tell me what kind. And they said there's nothing I could
do about it, and that I'd have to tear it all up and put
in ivy R put in plants. But I have a large front yard that's
divided by a sidewalk, And then I just didn't I didn't know what is
it going to jump to sidewalk? Am I eventually going to have to tear
up the whole yard? You know? I really didn't want to do this,
so I just torek part of it. And it's just it's just it's
it's not like it turns brown. It literally just sort of eats the grass
and then it's dirt, and so it looks like sitting hair on a bald
man. The description you're giving reminds me more of what the effect of the
fungus take all root rot might be. Yeah, like most funguses that attack
fungi that attack our Saint Augustine, it could be great gray leaf spot,
it could be take all root rot, it could be others. They're ubiquitous,
they're out there in nature, and when conditions are right, they move
in. And so what we try to do is culturally avoid the conditions for
the fungus being right. And Keno, I'm running out of time here in
this segment, but if you want to hold on, I'll be glad to
keep going on this and we can discuss it a little bit further. But
I'm gonna have to take a break here in just a bit, so please
hang on for just a little bit. Well, good morning on a good
Sunday morning for gardening. I mean, it's a good Sunday overall for gardening.
Get outside today and enjoy some of the air. We're going to head
back out to take away again. We're visiting with Kendall and Kindle. Let's
continue our conversation. We were looking at some possibilities of diseases and I think
I said, take all root rot. Maybe maybe one of the ads that
you're looking at, Yes, I think that might be it. Okay,
I would make sure an aerate that area. If it's a small area,
you can just do it, you know, with a little spade and fork,
you kind of wiggle straight into the ground and kind of rock it back
and forth a little bit and then pull it out. Just make those little
holes to kind of break it open a little bit. If it's a bigger
area, you can hire someone to do it the right way with a core
narrator. But if you do that and then you follow that with a good
top dressing, normally I would recommend a leaf mold compost and that that is
a good mix to use anytime you're top dressing. Take all root rots.
Specifically, if we can acidify that surface a little bit, it really helps
give the grass the advantage over the disease. And so that would be acidifying
fertilizers would do that, but the peat moss spread about a half inch thick
over that area. And you can buy these compacted bales of peat and you
just sort of break them up into a wheelbarrow and then dump a little piles
around so that you can then kind of spread them around. I use a
soil rake turned upside down with the tines pointing up. And you know,
I don't know if you've ever played shuffleboard. I never have, but I've
seen pictures, and you know how you have this long shuffleboard and you're kind
of you're holding your arm down by your side as you push the shuffle forward.
Do the rake that way, turn the times up, and just it's
like you're playing shuffleboard in the lawn. It makes it so easy to spread
the peat moss all over a small area. Now, if you've got a
big lawn, of course that's too tedious. But water that pete in when
you're done and continue to fertilize. I'd use kind of an acidic fertilizer.
Normally, I would say like a Microlife six two four the green bag,
but there's a sick to forward that's in a pink or reddish bag. That's
for acid loving plants. And if you're fighting the take all in an area,
I think I would switch over to that one and try that one.
It's not going to cure the take all instantly, but everything we're talking about
doing, air raiding, peat, moss, acidifying, fertilizers, that all
makes that take all not very happy, and it gives your grass a chance
to recover. Okay, okay, so that can I plant new grass on
top of it because there's not much grass? Laughs? Yeah, I would
just get the you know, get any organic matter on the surface out of
the way, because you want the side you put down, the soil on
the bottom of those pieces to touch the soil in your yard and have good
We call it sid to soil contact, and that's important on helping it root
through. So if you've got a whole bunch of dead grass or thatch or
whatever, it kind of gets in the way of that. It creates kind
of like an air gap underneath the side between it and the soil, and
we want it to touch the soil. Okay, all right, all right,
that sounds grateful. I like I've given you a lot of work to
do today. Sorry about that it's all good. Thank you all right,
Kendall, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Let's head out
to Spring now and we are going to talk to Mo. Hello, Mo,
Hi there, Steep. Hi are you doing today? I'm good,
Mo. What can we do for you today? Well, my grape plants
has suddenly got some kind of grayish snow started at the base of the tree,
as you know, the plant, okay, And I was wondering what
kind of spread there just to break it away. Are you talking about down
on the trunk near the ground or what? Yeah, okay, I would
not worry about that at all. If it's if it's a grape vine and
it's got mold growing around deer near the base, that is not something you're
going to spray or worry about. You just make sure the grape has good
drainage, good moisture, good nutrients, uh malts the soil to keep the
weeds away, and it'll take off and grow. Just find there's not a
disease of grapes that appears as mold on the on the truck. Okay,
all right. And the other thing I was going to ask you, what
kind of peat moss can I spread it all over my uh grass in the
front yard. I would use just the compacted bales of pete. But I'm
not recommending everybody that has a yard go put peat on it. That's where
the leaf mole compost is the way to go. In general for your yard.
You should spread leaf mole. Okay, oh my gosh, Yeah,
that's not practical. Well, pete moss is definitely not practical either. The
peat was just for a situation, whereas the disease called take all root rot
and it it's a suppressive thing. It's not a cure, but it suppresses
it. And we're trying to give the grass the upper hand. But yeah,
if you eleven acres, you know, forget the top dressing. That's
probably not going to be practical for you. Just take good care of it.
Take good care of it, make sure it gets adequate nutrients over time.
Make sure when it's dry, you water, but you don't overwater.
Make sure it has a good sunlight. And that's the best thing you can
do to have a big, beautiful lawn. Okay, thank you, all
right. I wish you a nice day as well, and thank you so
much for the call. You know, we're talking about soils and the importance
of you know, like top dressing and soils and things. If you have
not checked out airloom soils before, you really need to. Now you can
go to the website write this down airlooms Soils of Texas dot com Airloom Soils
of Texas dot com. When you go to airloom Soils, you're going to
find everything you can imagine. They got the rose soil, they got the
compost, they got mulchous to go on top of the ground, and a
lot, a lot of other things for every kind of plant growing you might
need to do. One of the cool things about Airloom Soils now is that
they have the supersacks. Imagine a giant sack that holds a cubic yard of
soil that they set in your driveway full of a cubic yard of whatever it
was you purchased from them. They'll deliver those and you just need to call
them up and make arrangement. Of course, there's a charge for delivery.
It costs money to get big bulk product like that out to a place,
but it's reasonable and the supersack is a pretty neat, clean way to go.
Now, when you're If you don't know how much you need, you
need to go online Airloom Soils of Texas dot com check out their cubic yard
calculator. No matter how you want to spread it, by the wheelbarrow,
by the five gallon bucket, you name it, you can find out exactly
how much you need from Heirloom Soils. We love talking to gardeners on garden
line. I want to give you a phone number here if you'd like to
give us a call in. We're entering our last half hour here, pretty
quick of garden line for this weekend, So right down seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four, and we'd be glad to visit with you about whatever it is of
interest that you might you might be interested in on gardening. Had any vegetable
calls today. That's kind of a little bit of a surprise, because usually
there's some interest in the vegetable garden. But we can talk lawns, we
can talk trees, we can even talk talk house plants. When I was
out at Kingwood Garden Center yesterday, I noticed a really nice supply of house
plants by the way. I was surprised at K and Mason Kingwood. When
I was out for the appearance, I did not realize they had a nice
plant section outside the store. I kind of caught me off guard, but
I walked through it and it's like, man, they had a lot of
good stuff that you really do want a plant in this area. So it's
kind of cool to get out and check that out. But the house plants
are kind of a hot thing. People are excited about them, and I
just think you just really can't have enough right enough house plats. We'll talk
about that maybe a little bit in a moment. Right now, I'm gonna
run out to Trinity and we're gonna talk to JR. Good morning, JR.
Hello there. Huh. I've got new construction here, a barndow that
we've made, and we've got a couple of slopes and one's about a thirty
degree slope, the other is about a forty five. Tried to do spray
seed, but it ran off of these heavy rains. So I guess the
question is is there it gets minimal sun maybe three to four hours max in
some areas, and there is there a grass that I can get in a
sod that you think would work on this sixty forty mix, or should I
just go ahead and get some rip rap and be done. So you got
a slope that you're getting the erosion off the side of and you want to
cover it with a turf type grass? Is that? Am I understanding that?
Right? Yeah? I didn't know whether or not there was a zoysia
or a maybe a some sort of behavior and not behaved bermuda grass that I
could buy a thob that I could stake to the ground and maybe get that
to it here. Yeah, if you get it, if you can get
it to root in, yeah, give it a couple of weeks of you
taking good care of it and getting it rooted in well, and any of
the turfs will work in that kind of a setting. The bermuda and the
zoysia is probably going to hold the ground a little bit better than Saint Augustine
because it's got the underground runners and the above ground runners. But either way
you should be able to do good. And if you get it out now
the weather's warming up enough to where you can get good growth and establishment on
it, I think it'll work well for you. It's not too steep to
mow right. It's one of those kind of things I won't be doing with
the riding mower. I will definitely be having a handboard. It's pretty good
angle, that's for sure. Okay, Well, you're not going to find
anything better at holding soil than grass. I mean, we have ground covers
that'll grown a slope, but nothing holds the soil as well as grass does.
So I think I think you're on the right track their trinity, and
I do I do appreciate that call. We're gonna head here to break in
just a second. Craig out in Spring Valley. I see you on the
boards. You'll be first when we come back. If you would like to
get on the boards and join Craig seven one three two one two five eight
seven four that's two one two, kat r H and Josh, we'll get
you on the board where we can talk during our upcoming segment. About thirty
minutes left today, So if you want to talk gardening, this is a
time to give us a call. Well, good morning on a good Sunday
morning, this is going to be a day this afternoon. Get out there,
do a little bit of gardening. Maybe go visit a garden, center,
enjoy yourself, get some inspiration. I think you will find if you
can't get a gardening bug this time of year, I can't help you tell
you this is this is the time of year when just about everybody with a
pulse is going to at least appreciate the beauty of plants, if not find
one they have to come home with. We're gonna head out to Spring Valley
and we're going to talk to Craig this morning. And how are you doing,
Craig. I'm doing well. Thank you, thanks for taking my call
today. Yes, sir, so, I've got a question. We have
a about a two year old lemon tree in our backyard. It last year
it produced I don't know, maybe seven It was kind of small, made
it through the freeze, and this spring it has really started budding out.
I mean there are dozens of, you know, small little lemon buds coming
out on this thing. And in the last three days the leaves have started
turning yellow, and yesterday they started dropping off, I mean like most of
them. And you're talking about leaves, not the lemon buds themselves, but
the leaves. No, just the leaves, right, huh. Well,
let's see when lemons. When citrus like that suddenly gets a bunch of yellow
leaves that fall off. I usually look at a sole moisture issue to dry
to wet those kinds of things, or a root damage could cause the same
thing, because it's it's essentially having the same effect on the plant as sort
of it's too dry or too wet. If it's the new growth that's turning
yellow and the old growth looks fine and green, then we look at things
like an iron deficiency, for example, as the nutrient. If it's face
versa, the new growth is still there and green, but the old growth
is kind of getting yellow and starting to head south, then we look at
mobile elements like nitrogen being deficient. But what you're describing to me sounds more
like something is wrong, something shocking the plant itself, that's system and causing
that yellowing and drop of the leaves. Tell me about again the growing site
and the conditions and the soil that they're in. Well, I mean,
it's it's soil that it's been you know, we've had other trees in the
same spot than the guy because of the freeze and so forth. Yeah,
this one's I haven't done anything to it. Other than we did start our
sprinkler system about four days. Excuse me about it. I think it's right
now two or three days a week. We just started out in the last
week and a half. But I mean it's no, it's not getting a
ton of of uh you know, sprinkler on it. Yeah. Obviously we've
had the rain the past few days, but that's really that's the only thing
that's truly changed. Yeah, very interesting. Well, if it's just a
yellowing and drop of the leaves, I'm I'm thinking underground. Something's going on
underground, and so, uh you know, other than dig down maybe three
inches feel the soil. Is it wetter than you think it is? Uh?
You know? And or is it getting it can't be getting dry right
now, So excessive moisture is all I can think of. In the meantime,
I think it's gonna be okay, and I think it's gonna bounce back.
Just watch that it doesn't stay two side you wet. Provide a good
Centrius food fertilizer. If you haven't have you fertilized it this spring yet,
I'm miss If you said it, I'm not sir, Yeah, I would
get a good Centrius food and it's going to have a blend of nutrients,
including nitrogen. Let's give it a boost. You're going to find that,
you know, in the Nelson's Plant Foods and Nitrofis foods, they're going to
have the foods for specific kinds of plants like that. A Microlife has a
citrus specifically a centrius food as well. But get you one of those kind
of things, and let's give it a boost. Let's getting watered in really
good, and watch and see how it does. I think you're going to
see new buds up here, and I think normal growth is going to take
off. Okay, all right, well, I appreciate your time. Thank
you very much. You Bet Craig, thank you for your time. I
appreciate very much. A task a Ceda Thomas. What's up this morning?
Good morning, so here to talk about nitrogen for a minute. I've been
using the Microlife liquid organic maximum wool on my plants. Yes, and I'm
getting nice color. I'm getting so much green, so many leaves and not
as many blooms as I should be getting. Okay, well, what's the
kind of plant we're talking about? Um? Well, my day lilies,
for one thing. They're just going crazy, okay, And I've got everything
under the sun. I've got scotch broom, you know, bagonias and the
only kind of thing that the ground, little ground flowers and the leaves are
coming great. And I've got plenty of blooms, but not a lot,
not that I should have. Well, let me see if in the next
forty seconds here I can give you a good answer, and I think I
can. When you start looking at lack of blooms, it can be due
to a number of things. Certainly, the amount of sunlight is a big
deal. You know, something like a day lilies. I come bloom in
the shade, and I realize you grow dailies. You know better than to
put them in the shade. But sunlight is important for that. Nutrients is
important. When you overdo nitrogen, you can encourage vegetative growth at the at
the expense of blooming or fruiting with plants at fruit and so you just want
to watch it. You don't overdo a good thing. That would be a
possibility, But that fertilizer is a good one and it ought to be performing
well. Your plants ought to be performing well. So they may just need
a little more time I don't know what else would be going on other than
either a lack of sunlight or some other nutrient issue. But if they've done
well in the past, it's not like your soil changed dramatically overnight. So
you have been good soil and plenty of sun light. Yeah. So I
don't know. I you know, I don't know the exact rate of everything
that got put out, But if you feel like you knew you stayed within
about what the label would recommend in terms of use of it, then I
would just wait and give them a little more time. I don't think it's
gonna be still with you. The temperature. It's been a cool spring,
and that has delayed some things for us. But we still have good performance
out there in the garden. But I have noticed significant delay, especially on
certain plants. And it's like about the time it starts to warm up here,
we go back down into the upper fifties and you know, in the
evenings and so spring is dragging itself out. We're gonna wish we had this
cool weather though, when July and August get here. YEA, thank you,
sir, all right, thank you, sir. I appreciate that call
very much. Phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four,
give Josh a call. Let's get you on the boards. They read
scriptures, they passed play. We're both preyed. He don't pree delay,
but he's getting ad and that's your star. Yeah, it's eighty five degrees
outside, just getting hold up. Well it's not eighty five degrees outside yet,
but it is that kind of day. I tell you for sure you
are listening to garden Line. I am your host, Skip Richter, our
phone number. You're gonna write this down. This is our last segment,
last chance to call for next Saturday. Seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. And we are going to head right out now to Missouri
City and say good morning to Paul. Yeah, good morning, Skip,
I thank you for taking my call. My question is wild Bermuda. My
yard is in really very good shape this year with Saint Augustine, but I
do have a two foot by six foot strip of wild Bermuda which is pretty
much choked out any Saint Augustine in that area, and I'm anxious to knock
it out now. I'm not a very patient person. I want to treat
it aggressively. Either chemically or mechanically. By mechanical I mean I'm willing to
hack it out with a pick axe, okay, or should I poison it?
Well, you have those two options. You can get in there with
some spading forks. I wouldn't use a rototiller because it'll just break the bermuda
up into little pieces and then you're gonna have resprouting coming out everywhere. But
get down over a spading fork and kind of loosen the soil up and get
as many of those underground runners as you can out of there now. And
doing so, you're going to get the Saint Augustine out of there too,
right, I mean, because you can't do one without the other. But
hand digging it as an option. After you hand dig it, just water
it in, wait and watch because you will miss some, and then do
it again. You may need to do it a third time just to get
all the sprigs. Because here's the deal. Once bermuda, as in your
Saint Augustine, if it's a good sunny spot, it is going to be
virtually impossible to get it out of there with a selective control product. So
in addition to the hand digging, the other option would be to spray and
kill everything in that area, and I'd go a little bit out beyond where
you see the bermuda, because it's going to have runners moving out in that
area already beyond where it is visible above ground. And so you would spray
it and kill everything, and then wait because you won't get all of it
with one spray. After a couple of weeks, you should see some resprouting,
and then you could go in and individually just hit the little bermuda weeds
that are coming up sticking their heads up above the ground and stay watching it
for a month or so because you can always get another sprag and again once
he gets a foothold, then you got the mess that we're in right now.
And so those are both dramatic, drastic measures. But you said you
don't like to mess around. You want to get it done. And there's
no other way to get in there and just get the bermuda out without sacrificing
the Saint Augustine and then replanting the Saint Augustine back in Okay. So when
you say spray, am my spraying with you can spray. There are number
of products that will kill bermuda grass. The common when you hear people talk
about is glypha said, and that is a kills everything that you spray it
on product. There are products also that are grass only killers, and they
would have do you have a pen or pencil handy. Yeah, I'm gonna
spell an ingredient. And there's more than one ingredient and grass only killers.
There's two different ones, but I'm going to tell you about one, and
it's set h O x y d I M suthoxy dim. Now, when
you go to the garden centers, you know you're out in Missouri City.
You got some great ace hardwares by the way out there in the Missouri City
area, and you if you go into one of those, you may see
something that says grass killer or grass be gone or well, you know some
the label just tells you this kills grass. And you're probably going to see
that suthoxidem as ingredient. There's one they're ingredient. And I'm not going to
spell the whole thing out in the air right now, but it's flu a
Z flu a Z. If you see those letters, and then there's more
to the word. That's the other grass only killer. Either of those sprayed
on will kill the bermuda you're saying, augustine, any other grass that's in
that area. If you go the glyphasate route, it kills all that,
but it also comes broad leaf weeds as well, and some people prefer not
to use glyph sate. That's fine. These two grass only killers. They
will they will work just fine on it. But just know that one treatment,
it's not like a miracle cure. One percent of all of it dies.
There may be some sprigs underground that haven't sprouted yet and then they will.
But then you come back and hit those and once you get that cleaned
out, then go in and reside. What's your opinion on atrazine. Atrazine
is an effective pre emergent weed killer that has some post emergent activity. The
reason we're not fineto atrazine is because it can wash off into places we don't
want it to wash. It can go down in the roots system and damage
trees as well. And I've seen people misuse atrazine and get a good rainfall
and suddenly the trees are getting some real weird yellowing symptoms and damage because of
the atrazine products. So it's general we kind of stay away from it.
You know, each product is going to have its pros and cons and so
there's not like a product that is just one hundred percent safe. I mean
even organic products have their pros and their cons and so that's the con of
atrazine. The other thing for me about atrazine is depending on the season that
you're in, the time that you A lot of times it's put in fertilizer
products and that's fine, But depending on the season you're in, the best
time to fertilize and the best time to put on a pre emergent we control
don't always overlap fully, and so I would rather see you by quality fertilizer
and if you've got a weed issue, by the right weed control product and
use them separately, and I think you're going to have much better results.
There's other issues that come with combining them. You can get away with it.
There are a lot of big brands on the market that do it all
the time. You know, they sell the combinations. Uh. It just
you're asking me personally, and my preference would be fertilized with a fertilizer,
do weed control with a weed control product, and that's geared toward the weed
that you have and the timing that you need to do. It sounds like
a complex issue, Thank you so much. You know it can be.
But you can call me here on garden line, I mean, and we
can talk about it. And you know, you can say I've got crabgrass
that comes up every year, or I've got clover in my lawn, and
I can direct you to that product that'll that'll do that and the right timing.
It would be nice just to say weed killer, and you know,
and all it is is a quote weed killer, and then you just use
it everywhere any time for any weed. That product doesn't exist, you know,
there's always a yeah. But there's annual weeds and perennial weeds, there's
broad leaf and grass. There's cool season and warm season, and so if
we oversimplify it, we're not going to have good results. So I can
direct you to fertilizer, I can direct you to a weed control. Just
call anytime. Thank you so much. All right, thank you, Paul.
I appreciate for that call out there from Missouri City. Wow, we're
this morning flew by. At least it seemed like it to me. This
has been a good, a good visit with you about a lot of different
kinds of plants and plant kind of issues. I just want to remind you,
by the way, on the day before Mother's Day, that would be
on Saturday, May thirteenth, I will be at the arbor Gate from eleven
thirty in the morning until one thirty. So you got two weeks to get
ready for this. But put it down on your calendar. Number one,
you don't want to miss an opportunity to go to Arburgate. But on top
of it, we'll get to me. We'll get to be there. Can
bring me some plants in a baggy, or you can bring me some pictures
or something. I guarantee you Arburgate's gonna have the plants you need, and
they're gonna have the products you need, and so you know, we can
kind of kill a whole bunch of birds one stone there. But the main
thing I want to point out is Mother's Days the next day, and you
maybe you want to come out and buy a surprise for your mom. They've
got gift shops out there, they've got plants out there, they got all
the bling that you might want to go with anything, and you're longing landscape,
but maybe you'd want to bring your mom out and just say hey,
Mom, here's the treat. We're gonna go out and have fun to Arburgate.
By the way, Mom's life you spending time with them. Trust me,
I'm a dad. I understand how that works. Arburgate, May thirteen.
Don't forget it. Write it down.