KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on
this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Richards. So just watching
as a wood Well, good morning, good Saturday morning. Oh my gosh,
I am. I am so excited that we are finally. I'm calling
summer over, I'm calling fall begun. I know, got a warm day
or two here, But listen, this is nothing like we've been through a
lot of you have gotten rain. There's we're gonna have more rain on the
way. We're gonna have more good temperatures on the way. And this is
a time man as a gardener. Uh, you know, it's like we
just came through the gauntlet. We were in the gauntlet and here we are
ready to go for the best gardening season of the year. And that is
fault. It is hands down the best. And why do I say that,
Well, Number one, we just got out of summer and we're coming
back to temperatures and coming back to rainfall rates that we really will appreciate getting
and so all our plants. By the way, the temperatures are so mild
in the months to come that we can just garden to our hearts content once
again, it's safe to go outside, and we are doing exactly that.
A lot of gardeners been out of garden centers and just people. I can
just sense. It's a palpable excitement that people are ready to go, and
boy, I am ready to go. I hope you are too, because
there is a lot to be doing right now out there in the garden.
One thing you could be doing right now is giving us a call at garden
line seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Let's talk about what you're interested in.
I have, boy, this week, just lots of questions. I've been
answering phone email, all kinds of things that disregarding what to plant now,
what to do now? You know, what? How do I make my
lawn recover? Is this tree going to die? That's a that's a weekly
question all the time. It seems like, uh, And I think it's
good that people are starting to think forward. You know, we're we're looking
at probably the best vegetable garden season of the year as things cool off.
There's a lot to be planning out there. We're looking at a really critical
time of taking care of your lawns. And I'm I'll be talking about that
a little bit this morning. As we go forward, what do we do,
how do we get our lawn to recover? Uh, you know,
once we hit the fall season, we're still in you know, hurricane season
just I guess towards the end of it. But excuse me. Those storms
can always come through. But even just you know, a good blasting coal
front with strong winds and things can can be a concern. And if you've
if you're looking at a roof that is probably needing replacing. Maybe I don't
know, may have been damaged in some way, It may just be getting
old. May just be time to consider a new one to protect that house.
A big investment of years by the way, right, you know,
maybe you've been thinking about putting solar panels on a house. Well, you
need to give the folks at Brinkman a call. Jason Brinkman, Brinkman Quality
Roofing Surfaces Services. I guess it's a surface too up there on the roof.
They are fully warranted twenty five years of service. They've been doing this
for fifty years. They belong in the community that they live in. They
serve the community that they live in. Their customers rate them highly. They
are part of the community. They're not a fly by night stick a card
in your door company. When they do it, they do it right.
They've been doing it for fifty years now. You can go to Brinkman Quality
dot com Brinkman Quality dot com or give them a call two eight one four
eight zero seventy six sixty three. And when you do, ask them about
their timberline solar shingle. Not a solar well on your roof that this is
your roof timberline solar shingles. Pretty cool stuff. Ask him when you give
him a call to eight one four eight zero seventy six sixty three. I
did a video recently for the A and M. Hort Department, Texas.
Eggy Horticulture has a thing called Facebook Live and created a video for them on
what do we do now with our lawns? That video is on Facebook now.
If you go to our garden line Facebook page, you can find just
scroll down a little bit, you'll see the video there and I kind of
walk through all the basics and it's from a generic standpoint. You know it's
time to fertilize. It's time to if you're going to deal with weeds,
here's what you do and diseases and things, and it just sort of walks
through the whole thing. I'm standing in a lawn that has the trifecta of
summer curses that would be chinch bugs and drought and take all root rod all
hit in the same poor lawn, and how do we bring our lawns back
from that? The video is an introduction. It's about seven minutes long,
so it's not long, but it's long enough to kind of cover the topics
get you thinking about it. Always remember that our fall lawn care is listed
on my lawn care schedule and you can find that at Gardening with Skip dot
com. Gardening with Skip dot com, check out the lawn care schedule.
Somebody had sent me anothe the other day saying, hey, can I use
organic or synthetic fertilizer? And what I use and stuff. Go to the
schedule. It's right there. If you want a garden organically. If it
doesn't matter, you just won't see the whole list. It's all there.
There's a lot of quality fertilizers on there. And I tell you exactly when
it's time to plant them. And we are basically at the door. We're
knocking on the door of October, and that's a big month for getting a
lot of things done out there in the garden. If you want to have
a beautiful garden and sustain it, that is for sure. And if you
want to have a beautiful garden, and I say garden, I'm really you
know, I use that term sometimes to mean everything around the house, lawn,
landscape, tree shrubs. If you want it to be beautiful, if
you want your lawn to recover, you need the products to be able to
put down and take care of it and make it do that. And Ace
Hardware is an easy answer to work. And I get that stuff because Ace
Hardware is thirty nine all over the area and they carry all the things I
talk about on garden Line and more. If you need fertilizers, if you
need past control, disease control, weed control, anything you need to make
your lawn beautiful, A garden hose for crying out loud, a little hose
end timer. So you know, I don't know if you're like me,
but when I leave the water running at night and forget about it, the
kids the next morning when I come out, are taking canoes up and down
the roadside rivers that I created for them out a little hose end timer will
say that problem. But that's just an example of the one billion things for
your lawn garden landscape that you can find at ACE Hardware. Go to ACE
hardware dot com. There's a store locator and you can find the one nearest
sew makes it really, really simple. So I'm gonna I am going to
be continuing on talking about some of the things we're dealing with on our lawns.
Today. We're going to take breakcare just in a minute. If you
would like to get on the phone and ask some questions, you can give
me a call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one
three two one two five eight seven four Josh. We'll get you on the
board and we'll be ready to go. By the way, I want to
remind you. And I'll be doing this today today eleven thirty to one thirty,
I will be at the Arbigate Nursery and tom Ball, Texas. We're
going to be giving away some of their special organic fertilizer part of the one
two three Easy system. Nitrofoss has provided some giveaways as well. I'll be
entering your gardening questions, and I know Beverly's going to have a few extra
surprises to throw into the mix, Like every fifteen minutes she's providing a fertilizer
to give away there. So you definitely want to come out, love to
meet you, bring me some samples. We look forward to that. We'll
be right back in the meantime. Give Josh a call seven one, three
two to fifty eight seventy four. You're listening to garden Line and we are
glad you are. We are here to talk about whatever you're interested in related
to gardening. I hope you're as excited as I am that I'm officially calling
I called it a week ago too. It's like when we drop five degrees
off one hundred fallers here and we are there and then some it's only going
to keep getting better and better. You know. I just I really really
enjoy this season. I don't know it, I guess because our winners aren't
so bad. People that live further north, you know, they come out
of winter and it's like I gotta grow something, you know, because they've
been looking at snow for the whole winter down here. It's kind of like
summers that way, you know, we come out of summer. I lived,
I lived, hooray. And so we get out there and we're ready
to garden and kind of cutting loose. I'm gonna start off by going out
to Richmond and we are going to talk to Hetty this morning. Hello,
Hetty, am I saying your name right? Yes, sir, how are
you this morning? I'm well, how are you? Pretty good? I
am calling. I wanted to tell you first that we are certainly enjoying you
on the show. You're very refreshing and we appreciate you taking it over.
And I live on a p conrove of pecan orchards, and around our around
the house that I live in are at least one hundred foot pecan trees and
they are gorging, and I am so yeah, I'm so curious to know.
Do you know how old those kind of trees that all would be?
Is this a planted orchard or is this just a river bottom with the old
native pecans? Well around my house must be the old planted bottom, but
oh right around my house. And then there is an orchard that is planted
back behind our house, right, and it is all one owner and I
just rent so right, I'm assuming the trees around the house were there before
he started as the orchards. Yeah, it's really hard to It's hard to
tell, you know, You've got to look at the soil type, the
location and things, because trees grow at different rates in different soil conditions.
But you know, I don't know. It could be fifty years, could
be almost a hundred years some of the some of the trees on the river
bottoms and Texas are pretty ancient. Of course, the planted orchards are going
to be significantly younger. For ben County has been a big comproducing area,
but not you know, from the eighteen hundreds or anything. I mean,
it's a you know, it's it's fairly recent, as is many of our
Texas planted orchards in this area. Well, that's very interesting. How we'll
try and find out a little bit more about Yeah, and but I didn't
want to tell you. You're very refreshing on this show. Thank you so
much. All right, well, thank you. I appreciate your call from
out there in Richard. Right. You're you're lucky, by the way,
you know in Richmond, you've got some great nurseries near you, so you
are very fortunate. I don't know if you've been around, but they're they're
great. Yes, Shannon Garden is right down the street for me. Oh
my gosh. Really well, and you can do that, and you also
have Enchanted Forest down there. I mean, my goodness, you guys,
that's a reason to that's a reason to move to four Bean County. Right,
they're alone exactly, all right? Take care, thank you, bet,
thank you. Yeah, I was, I was looking at a a
Facebook page for Enchanted Forest. I always keep up with what's going on,
whatever they have happening out there, and oh my gosh, they have some
moms that are just unbelievable. You know, it's fall, it's time for
moms, and they're beautiful ones. You know, if you have the typical
mum that you would think of, you know, that's a just a very
dense flower. And then that we have the single flowered type moms at almost
daisy looking flower forms, and the colors they have are unbelieve it. You
need to check it out. And Channing forst is out there. If you're
at Richmond and you're heading up towards Trigerland. They're off to the right down
in that direction south of fifty nine. Easy to find them. But Danny
and Clay have just been getting in a lot of new things. I can't
wait until the pumpkin dry that's coming. It's coming down the line pretty soon.
But they got lots of new trees and all kinds of stuff, and
it's just fun to go out there and shop too, really really fun.
But it's worth going just to see the mums alone, and that is amazing,
the new ones that they've gotten in. We're gonna head out now.
Let's let's have the other direction. We're gonna go to Pasadena and talk to
Gil this morning. Hello, Gil, Hey, how are you this?
I'm doing well? How can I hear it? Good? Good? Well.
I had to actually have two questions, but first one I'm asking if
you don't have time for the second to spint. Okay, the first one
I have. It's a three foot wide area twenty foot long soil pattern.
It's it's, it's and I'd say three foot wide because one side I hate
foot fence, the other side of my garage wall and roof. So if
you barely get any sunlight, because that that small opening between the roof and
the and the fence. Oh well, so what can what can a plant
there that is you know that food grade wise? You know, cucumbers,
tomatoes. Okay, what can a plant there that that doesn't require a lot
of sunlight? Your best with my first weason, Yeah, your best shot
for low light for vegetables is leafy greens. And we are entering into leafy
green season. We got lettuce and a arugula and kale and collards and spinach,
and you see what I'm saying. I mean, there's a lot of
things we can plant in the cool season and leaves. You know, a
plant doesn't have to make a lot of carbohydrates to grow a leaf. It
takes a lot to grow a root or a fruit. So carrots and tomatoes,
lots of sun with leafy greens, you can get by on a little
less. Oh great, great, great, So now I know what I
could plant there? There you go? Great? Great? They do you
a tip for the second question. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do
it quick. Okay, all right. The second one is I have a
smaller part in my yard because I have a pool in a smoky so I
have a ton of smaller part that's eight foot wide by ten foot long,
and it has a lot of some moderate to every some light. Okay,
it's on the opposite side of the garage and the fool. So what can
I plant there that doesn't burn? Well, we're out of the burn season
and even in the summer. The things that we say grow in the summer,
if you water them, they're not going to burn. Okay. So
you could plan anything in that other area anything you want. I would just
say, have you done any soil improvement on it yet? No, I
haven't, but I will. I intend to. So that that's all there
has been there for I know, pointy years I've been I bought the house.
Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. Yeah. Out in that direction.
Anywhere you go, you just the soils always need improving and you need
you know, you need to get some organic matter mixed down. You can
also just bring in a mix and you know, do like a raise bet.
I know Airloom has their vegetable garden mix that they that we talk about
a lot, and you know, you can have it delivered or you can
just go buy bags. It's available in a lot of different places. But
I like the veggie and herb mix. That's a really good if you want
are kind of ready to go soil. And if you you can also just
buy compost from them and mix it into the soil you have. That's gonna
be more work, but you can do that too, Okay, Yeah,
just great man talking with you. I appreciate you. You bet gil.
Just don't don't skimp on the soil because you know, all the best varieties
and all the things we recommend you do in the world. Nothing replaces uh,
starting or failing to start with a good foundation in the soil. That's
your key to success. So I want you to have success this fall.
Thank you all right, sir, thank you for the call. I really
appreciate that goal. Yeah. You know Airloom Soils of Texas there, that's
their website, Airloom Soils of Texas dot com. They have it all.
I mean, the number of mixes they have. Maybe you're gonna plant fruit
trees, they got a mix for that, you know, Or you're gonna
plant herbs. The veggie herb mix is excellent. Do you need some indoor
potting soil? Do you need just a general outdoor potting soil? They've got
it all. I mean, if you just want to put some expanded shale
down. You know we're talking about Pasadena. We got some clay soils done
in that area, and expanded shale always always helps. So go online airlom
Souls of Texas. They be a little calculator. You can figure out how
much you need and make sure that you get your soul right before a seed
goes in the ground, because when you plant a seed or transplant and walk
away, you are eighty percent of the way to success or failure right there,
because it's either sunny or not. And that's what we were talking about
just a moment ago with Gil. It's either well drained or not. It's
either improved soil or not. And you've already picked your varieties, and so
yeah, everything that happens before you walk away from planting is the vast majority
of whether you're going to have success or not. I hope you will write
that down and think about it, because it is true and it is important.
We're gonna it out now to Conro and talk to Cheryl. Hello Cheryl,
Hi, sir, how you done this morning? I'm well, thank
you? How can we help? I have actually a two far question.
I have a planets from Mexican pejunia, and I knew when I planted them
that they were an invasive plant. Yeah, I had an area that I
wanted to get filled in. Okay, Well, my questions are number one,
do I cut them back in the fall? And number two, how
do I keep them from expanding from the area in which I wanted them to
fill in? Okay, you cut them back in the fall, cut them
back as low as you want. They will come back out. You know.
Just if they look ugly above ground and they're not going to be pretty
in the winter, then you can you can cut them back. There's the
short, bushy types and there's a tall upright types for these above knee high
and okay, yeah, well they have underground rhizomes, most of them do,
and they spread that way. So that's one challenge. So you'd need
a vertical wall in the ground to stop them from spreading, a sidewalk,
a house foundation, or just literally a vertical wall. The other the other
way is by seed, and they spread profusely by seed, and that's just
going to be a challenge of having to continue reading them. Okay, I'll
stay, so'll just trying to stay diligent about keeping them maybe seat pull in
a month that they go beyond where I walk up. Yeah, yeah,
And if you keep your gardens mulst well, it will prevent the seeds from
coming through. The seeds are going to have to have light they germinate,
and that little seedling needs light or it will not make it. And with
a mulch, they just are not going to make it. Now, the
rhizomes they'll push through a mulch. But if you're talking about seeds down the
way, that'll do it. All right, all right, thank you,
sir. I appreciate your help. You bet, thank you. I appreciate
appreciate your call. Good night, Nikki. We are just talking about gardening
already this morning. Here we go. That's what a surprise. I know,
who'da thought nobody calls me about stock prices. But that's a good thing
because it's well, it's a lot. We have to start thinking differently.
That's right, that's right. We are about to take a break for the
news seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you'd like
to be on garden line. You're listening to garden Line, and you never
know what kind of bumper music we're gonna have on garden line. I'm your
host, skip rictor We're here to answer your gardening questions. So just give
us a call if you'd like to visit. It is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. I was talking about being excited about fall, and I am.
But I will tell you something else I'm very excited about, and you
will be to the arbor Gate. I'm going to be out at the arbour
Gate today and guess what, they have a brand new parking lot. It's
behind the arbor Gate. There's a little road. I believe it's pronounced try
Shultz's. That's how I would say at try Show Road. As you're coming
out twenty nine twenty from tom Ball, you can turn in before the Arbogate
on Treshel or you can turn in after. It's a loop and when you
get right behind the Arbogate there's a nice new parking lot. So there'll be
plenty of space for you to come out today do some shopping. I hope
you'll come out and see me. I'm looking forward to that they're going to
be giving away a bag of their organic Food Complete every fifteen minutes. That's
their four four three organic food with it also has ten percent calcium in it
as well, lots of trace minerals. Just a high quality, high quality
product. Basically every fifteen minutes, we're going to be given away a bag.
I believe they have some nitroposts as well out there, a little some
canisters of that that we're going to be giving away. It's a good product
for all your color plants. So you got some petunias or things in the
ground, you're gonna plant some pansies, you need some of this stuff to
mix in the soil. Get things ready to go, because remember even with
flowers, you need vigor. Vigor provides leaves, Leaves provide carbohydrates. Carbohydrates
make blooms. That's how it works. So come out and see me at
the arbour Gate today and while you're there, pick up one of their organic
Food Complete, Organic Soil Complete, and Organic compost Complete. It's their one
two three completely easy system. And now Arburgate has the one two three completely
easy parking situation out behind the store, So come out check it out.
Let's visit. Really look forward to meeting a lot of you today. If
you've got some plant samples you want to bring in, just throw them in
a bag. Make sure they're you know, zipped up or something when you
bring them to me. We don't want to turn everything loose out there.
If you have photos, that's great to make sure they're in sharp focus and
we can identify, we can diagnose, or we can even advise on what
you might want to plant where. I hope you will come out and join
us, because that is going to be a lot of fun. We are
going to have a heck of it. They always throw a good party out
of our gate. Let's go now to Cyprus and we're gonna visit with Charlie.
Hello Charlie, nice kid. What's up. I've got a question about
actus. I feed cactus to my tortoises, the the spineless pers Okay,
so I want to build a raised bed and then start growing my own cactus.
And I was wondering how deep it needs to be and if I use
something like soil complete the one from Usual about the arburgate, the arbgate.
Yeah, yeah, okay, I like that soil or Yeah, it's something
comparable to that. Yeah, no, that would be fine. You know,
it's got some some expanded shale in it. I would probably also get
a bag of expanded shale and just take it up a notch with the shale
level and the soil. For something that is, you know, like a
cactus or a succulent, I just would give it one extra measure and make
sure the bed is high enough to where it's not a low spot that'll sit
whenever we get our week of deluge that can happen here. But but that
ought to do it. Yeah, that'd be silent for that. You think
you think like two by twelve for depth would be deep enough. Okay,
I mean I'm sorry, I got two by four timber. I mean two
by twelve timber like a low Yes, yeah, that's that's plenty. That's
plenty. Yeah, that'll do it. Okay, yep, that'll do And
just mound it up a little higher than you expect because it is going to
settle in time and so you want you'll want to Yeah. But all right,
I was hoping to get to go see you today. I ended up
in the hospital last night, so I'm not gonna make it out to see
you. Oh man, I have fun out there at Arburgate. I'm sorry
to hear that, but yeah, yeah, Well after you feel better,
you need to get out there and check out that new parking lot. That
is a cool deal, a wonderful edition. Hey, thank you, Charlie.
I appreciate that call. Thank you, Bye bye, yes sir,
and get well. Get well. You know that the summer has been brutal
and we have a lot of do it yourselfers. Those are folks that get
out, Like Charlie was talking about, we're gonna we're gonna mix up soil,
we're gonna plant plants, We're gonna do the whole thing from ground up.
And then there's some of you are looking out there saying, you know
what, the lawn looks bad, that I've got plants that have died or
just struggling everywhere. What I do, it's discouraging. Well, I'll tell
you one thing you can do is just call Peerscapes and say, look,
I need you to come in here and let's talk. Bring them, bring
them some pictures and say we want to reduce some stuff. Do you need
Does your irrigation system need work? Because it probably does a lot of poorly
designed systems that need some help. Do you need maybe to put in some
new beds, Do you need to move plants? Would you like to have
Peerscapes put in plants that are more drought resilient, drought tolerant plants. They
can transform a landscape and if you call them now, get in quick so
that you can get the design, get it set up, and have that
done. So this fall the best planting time of the year. You can
have a turnkey walk away a place you just can't wait to get outside and
be in again. Pierscapes can do that two eight one, three, seven
zero fifty sixty or piercescapes dot com really easy to get a hold of them.
We're gonna go now to Northwest Houston and talk to Bob. Hello,
Bob, Thank you more sir, How you doing well? Thank you?
Yeah, Hey, I got a problem with a weed called a daughter weed
d O D D E R. Yes, I'm kind of like a bunch
of spaghetti looking stuff that wraps around them. Yes, flowers and plants and
stuff. And yes, if you have some ego spray on that or or
I'm cutting it out, it just grows faster. I can cut it out
yeah, no, there's there's not a good way. You want to strip
it all out of there. There's gonna be seeds in the soil, a
good thing. Mulch can help. But Daughter, it basically it comes up
on its own, but then it attaches to a plant and it just becomes
a parasite and it doesn't have the green chlorophyll. So a lot of the
products that we would use on a weed for that kind of weed is not
going to work on Daughter. Clearing it out, just completely getting all of
it that you can out of there. There's some good information online and I'm
a I may do a little search just to make sure there's not a pre
emergent that might work on Daughter, but basically, get it out of there,
don't let it up for air, keep the area well mulched if you
can. If the area is not suited to that, we'll look. But
yeah, it's a it's a very unique problem that doesn't fit our other boxes.
YEA, all right, what's on my lantana and some other flowers.
It's I cut it out one weekend and I'll go back. It'll be growing
back up again. Oh, I know, I know it is. Probably
I'm gonna try to take a look at that Durham break and come back and
just make some general comments because you people see that occasionally on the roadsides and
don't know what it is. But yeah, not a good problem, but
good luck with it on Bob. I'll make a few more comments in a
bit here, I think. All right, all right, thank you sir,
all right, thank you. I appreciate that very much. Uh.
You know, it is time to take care of your lawn for fall,
and Nitrofoss has what they call the Texas three step really simple. A Number
one, you treat your lawn with the Nitrofoss Fall Special. It's a win
aizer. It's the kind of things that has that extra potassium that helps our
plants get winter hardy and ready. Number two, it's got the barricade in
the system that this is the one, two, three three separate bags.
The barricade is a pre emergent weed control. It keeps out broad leaf and
grassy weeds. And in October all your cool season weeds are gonna start germinating.
You can have the barricade down ahead of that so it prevents them.
In that way, next spring you're not dealing with knee high weeds in the
yard. Number three is the nitros turf fungicide called eagle. Eagle turf is
a systemaic It will fight a lot of the diseases that we deal with in
the fall. That would include things like large patch and things like take all
root rod for example. Eagle turf fungicide that systemic ingredient and it works well.
That one two three simply so simple to do. I mean it's the
Texas three step from nitrofish. You can find it a plantch for all seasons
in Channet Gardens out there in Richmond carries it as does like hardware down in
Angleton where we're going to take a break. Our number seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Well, you're listening to Garden Line and
we're here to answer gardening questions. That's what this is all about. And
I think the best shows are the shows where you ask questions, because as
supposed to me, I mean, I've drone on about all kinds of things
regarding gardening. But when you ask a question, somebody else has that same
question. Believe me, there are a lot of people that have questions a
little shy. I don't want to call in. That's all right, that's
fine. I hope I hope you'll become a caller someday because I love to
visit with you. But when you have a question, just know someone else
does too and we can take it from there. Hey, you know our
CW nurseries. That's the nursery where the Tomball Parkway two forty nine comes down
into Beltway eight. Right there in that area. A lot of you you
know, you know what I'm talking You've been there. It is a get
it got at nursery. If they don't have it, they'll get it.
But I'll tell you what, they probably have it right now. They got
a great stock on a lot of wonderful plants. I always like to visit
RCW and see what's going on. Lots of color right now. I was
just checking the other day. They had some dianthus, the snap dragons.
You know, these cool season plants. You can still plant some of the
warm things too. I mean, you know, there's plenty of warm season
plants that are going to carry us a while. Our normal first frost is
really far away, and we can get a lot of good weeks and even
months. It's a couple of months out of some really nice warm season color
too, So take your pick, do it either way. RCW gets fixed
up. They also have roses, Oh my gosh, do they have roses.
And their selection is outstanding. So if you're gonna plant some maybe you
want to hybrid tea or some special kind of rows that you just have been
really looking for it, well, their list is long enough to where I
will just say if they don't have it, it probably doesn't exist. They
really have a great selection again. RCW nursriies dot Com is their website.
They're on fifteen eight O nine Tumball Parkway where it comes into Beltway eight.
I hope you get out there and enjoy the wonderful day we're having some time
and get check them out. You will be you will be impressed. We're
gonna head out now to Navasota and talk to Cindy. Hello, Cindy,
good morning. How are you well? I'm well, thank you good.
I have two questions. Actually. The first question is we have a year
lease up in Navasota and I've been bringing my dogs up where there's a water
shortage. The question that I have for that is I need some type of
a killer that I can put out around deer camp that actually will kill fleas,
ticks, fire ants, and I guess they're called the crazy ants.
Okay, but all of the killer that i'm a bud killer that I've looked
at, all of them are required to be watered in. Well, there
is a water shortage here and that is not going to work for this situation.
Is there anything that you can suggest that I can put down that will
take care of that? So you're not able to water in a granule that
you spread, so you need something to mix up and spray liquid. Is
that what you're telling me? Probably? I mean I would prefer a granule
that doesn't have to be watered in by I don't know if that exists.
You know, I'm not a weather man, but it seems like last time
I looked, we're supposed to get a little bit of rain on Monday.
I believe check the weather. You could put the granule out ahead of that
and you could get the benefits from it from that, So that may be
something you would want to do if you do that. You know, nitrofiles
has thereby phen thrind that work works really wells having it's a really affected products
oft granule, so it's easy to spread. Now if you have to go
bi f E N T h R I N by pen thren, got you,
okay? Okay? Yeah, And so you you know you could go
with a direction like that that that works really well. I would say the
if you can't do the granule and get a rain to do it, then
you have to switch to a liquid. And if you go that route,
then you know, I would look for something with biphenthren or something called cyanara.
Either of those would work well as a liquid. But even those,
you know, you need to go moisture on them to move him down near
the sole surface because down there in the thatch of the grass and things,
the weeds, that's where your fleas are hiding. That's where larva or hatching
out and waiting for a dog to come by when they become adults. So
yeah, either way you go, you're you're just gonna have to deal with
those. But you know, I'm not a vet either, but the most
important thing on your dogs is making sure they've got the products on them that
if the flea jumps on him and bites them, it takes care of it.
Because you can't just believe it it's a big vicious circle. We got
to attack it everywhere around the circle. Yeah, believe it or not.
I actually have to treat my dog with essential oils because he has epilepsy and
I can't give them. I can't give him the flea medication because it's bad
to calls seizures. Wow, that's interesting. Well, as I said,
I am not a vet, so I just know what we do. I
appreciate, I appreciate the information, but I have a second question when guarding
roses. Okay, go ahead, okay on the roses. Is it okay
at this time to be able to cut back the roses and to fertilize them
might have survived this this really harsh, harsh summer that we've had. Yes,
but I'm looking to revive them a little bit before it gets too cold.
It's a it's a little later, Cindy, just to cut to the
chase on it, a little later than than I normally would do it.
But you can go ahead and share them back, give them a little fertilizer,
a little bit of water, and get some new growth on them,
and you should have a beautiful la later in October and November. You should
have some decent blooms too wonderful one. Well, thank you very much for
answer my questions. You have a great day, all right, you two
as well? Yeah, thank you very much for that. You know I'm
talking about all these products and where do you where do you get products?
Well, uh, if you have never been to Southwest Fertilizer, you need
to go. If you've been, you know what I'm talking about. But
nobody in town carries as much as they do when it comes to fertilizers,
pesticides and secticides, fungersides orbsides, the whole nine yards, as well as
everything else you need for the lawn and garden. They just do. They're
out there on the corner of Bissonette and Renwick and Southwest Houston. You can
go to Southwest Fertilizer dot com find out more. If they don't have it,
you don't need it. And it literally I mean that literally, it's
not just an expression. They carry everything that you need. It is a
one stop shop and they also have expert advice. They have people that know
what they're talking about. Bob and his team will look at your problem.
They will direct you to the product that works. And that is so nice
being able being able to know that you have that kind of thing. I
mean, they carry a wide variety of fertilizers too. Yeah, Nelson fertilizer
for example, They've got a really good stock of Nelson fertilizer. So maybe
you wanted to use Nelson's car carbo load. That's a ten ten twenty that's
used in the fall. It works really well. I mean, it provides
the plant what it needs to get ready for winter. Potassium the third number
very important, and drought resilience and winter heartiness. And here we are sitting
on the steps of spring fall having come out of summer, an important application.
It also includes something to help fight weeds at the same time. That's
Nelson's carbo Load ten ten twenty. And it's just one of the many many
products that Nelson makes. I mean, they have a wide variety of a
products. Their Color Star line for example, Beautiful for your flowering plants,
make them jump, Nutrastar line, Turf Star line for all the lawn fertilizers,
and the Nature Star line which is our organic line. That's pretty cool,
really nice to be able to have such an option range and Nelson it
just provides you just that and I know it was it about a week or
two ago that ones in Kingwood Garden Center in Kingwood had had shut down for
inventory and they have opened back up. Of course they were open on past
Sunday, but oh, my gosh, the amount of product that they have
and the beauty of the product. You know, it's it's mum season,
it's fall flower season. It's time to pick up the fertilizers that you need
for your lawn. And both Warrants and Kingwood Garden Center they're going to carry
that. It's it's easy to find them. And if you're in Kingwood,
my gosh, two garden centers for one town like that that are so outstanding.
It's an amazing thing. You are very fortunate. By the way,
don't don't don't forget when you're going by there to make always pick up a
bag of soil for improving your soul, whether it's compost or shale or whatever.
Get it in the car, take it home and fix the soil.
Always fixing the soil. We never stop. You may buy the best blend
in the world, but over time you're gonna need to continue to enhance it.
Maybe it needs some extra expanded shail mixed in. If it's a heavy
clay, maybe you just need to rejuvenate your gain matter. Because think about
it. You've seen pots that they're full of soil and two seasons later they're
half full of soil. That's why we continue to rejuvenate. Organic matter decomposes
away, and that's a good thing because it's feeding our plants. We want
our plants to have that release a decomposing organic matter. That's how nature works.
That's how nature is design to take care of the roots of the plants
and enhance them. Well, you can do the same thing in your garden
beds and your containers, whatever you do. Just quality mixes and I just
think, I don't know, this probably wouldn't fly, But if we might
need a state law that says, hey, if you're going to buy a
plant, you have to buy a bag of soil too. I know a
lot of people wouldn't like that. I would your plants would. They would
vote for it. If you're listening to garden Line, We're gonna take a
break seven one three, two, one two fifty eight seventy four. Give
Josha call and we will be right back. Ktr H. Garden Line does
not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome
to ktr H Garden Line with skip rictor It's smelly. Just watch him as
so many Good morning on a beautiful Saturday. This is chamber of commerce.
Whether we got coming today, it is going to be a nice day.
We were ready for fall. Hey, we paid our dues, we went
through summer, we survived, We kept as much as we could our plants
alive. We're going to call that a win. And now we're going to
head into fall. When things get easy. It's much easier to grow things,
vegetables and flowers, taking care of your lawns, giving your trees a
support they need to keep them healthy and growing. All of that kind of
stuffy much better time of the year. Hey, if you are up in
the Montgomery area, Ana Plants and Produce, that is your hometown nursery.
And when I say Montgomery area, I'm talking about all the way over to
Conro, all through the Lake Conro area. Lots of beautiful neighborhoods up in
Lake Conro. Just all of you guys that Ana Plants is it. You're
probably driven past them one hundred times. They're on the east side of Montgomery
on one oh five, right on the north side of the highway, and
you can wander through three acres of all kinds of beautiful things out there.
They really do. I mean right now, one of the things I noticed
you walking around driving up is just all the fall decorations. Now you know
that would be all kinds of bling for indoors and for outdoors and the front
porch and decorating and all that. They have got an outstanding selection. And
of course they have plants. They always got plants. Do you need what
do you need? Do you need fruit trees? Do you need shade trees?
Do you need flowers? You look for perennials, ornamental grasses, maybe
some shrubs. You know that did this summer take out some of your shrubs
and need to replace them. Stop by Ana plants. They will get you
set up again in Montgomery on the highway one oh five on the east side.
Really easy to get to, seven days a week, nine am to
five pm, with plenty of knowledgeable staff to help you as you shop around.
Our phone number, if you would like to give us a call here
on garden Line is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four earlier, I was discussing lawns
and coming out of this brutal winner that we've had, and you know,
your grass has has suffered from a number of things. It's not just the
heat. Saint Augustine is pretty darn heat tolerance, so it's Bermuter grass and
Soisier grass. But it's the it's the drought, and then it's the things
that add insult to injury. It's the chinch bugs that are feeding on in
the summer. By the way, they're still out. I saw some the
other day. Again it hadn't quite made the corner. In the fall,
they'll shut down, but we're not quite there yet. On the chinch bugs,
large patch is coming soon. That's a fungal disease. It will attack
and it gets its opportunity when we open the door with excessive nitrogen, which
we try not to excessively apply nitrogen in the fall because that makes large patch,
which we call brown patch, makes it much much worse. Also,
mowing very very low. You know, your lawn is not a golf course
screen. If it's Saint Augustine, you're never going to have your golf ball
and putter out there on Saint Augustine. But people mow it a little too
short, and that just makes it worse. If it's not drained well,
if you water too often and you're just constantly keeping it wet. Now stop
it. It doesn't need that, and that just makes the problem worse.
Now, if you would like to put some things out to get your lawn
healthy, I would recommend you look at Microlife's brown Patch. It's a five
one three fertilizer. So it's got a good amount of phosphorus that third number
in it. It's got some nitrogen, which is needed too. By the
way, you need both the the I said phosphorus, potassiums the third number,
the nitrogen first number, potassium third number. Those are those are keys
in the fall. You'd like them to be close to the same in terms
of their numbers, you know, not just for super high nitrogen, but
drop that nitrogen down. That's Microlife brown Patch. It's a five one two
and it's going to also put a lot of microbes out there on the surfaces
of your plants, so that when something like brown patch tries to infect it
is a hostile surface. It's a place where it's not easy for the disease
to have access because you've got a lot of the good, good guys if
you will, that are active. And I would follow it with the microlife
bionoculant. Only ten pounds per thousand square feet didn't take much. But if
you will do that, and again you're adding microbes, you are increasing the
amount and the variety of the microbes that are out there that are helping with
your plan. And you combine that with not excessively fertilizing. You combine that
with not excessively watering and mowing properly, and that is a key to helping
to avoid brown patch. Those of you who are trying to garden organically,
this is a simple system for doing it. The microlife brown patch and the
bio inoculant. Now, can you put out humates now, yes, if
you wanted to, If you want to, you can do that. Could
you put out the green bag sixty four? Of course you could. That's
also a good blend and it'll work well. Just remember that in the fall
potassium is are key and we want to give things moderately provided to the lawn
over time. That's how nature does it. That's how Microlife does it.
And you can find Microlife all over the place. Just go to Microlife Fertilizer
dot com. It's easy to find them. And when you go there,
you're going to find all kinds of places where you can get it, and
you'll find more information on these products like the brown Patch five one three bio
inoculant. They're all there. You can learn more about them on the website.
Well, you're listening to garden Line are I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. If we want
to take care of our lawns and gardens and have good health and good success,
that is really really important for those of you who live, you know
along two forty nine plants for all seasons. You've probably been in there before.
I mean, it's a it's been an icon in that region for a
long long time. They are right there where Louetta comes into two forty nine
and it's been a family on nursery. The Flowery family has had that since
what nineteen seventy three, full service garden center. I mean, do you
need Do you need a good selection, they got it. Do you need
things he is delivered. They can do that. They even do custom planning,
custom potting, They can do things like that. They are truly lawn
and garden experts. You can bring any problem in in a picture sample,
they'll identify it. They know what they're talking about. That's the advantage of
a place like Plants for all Seasons, super quality staff, super knowledgeable Plants
for all seasons dot com. That's easy. Plants for all seasons dot com,
or if you'd like to call them two eight, one, three,
seven six, sixteen forty six, get by there. If you've got a
brown thumb, they'll turn it green. Just get by there, get the
information, get the advice. Plants for all seasons. Oh and when you're
there, by the way, you're going to see color like you wouldn't believe.
The fall inspiration is running rampant out to Plants for all seasons. I
always love that, you know, as a horticulturist, I'm interested in all
kinds of plants. People ask me what's my favorite plant. That's that's not
a fair question. I think you don't have a favorite plant. I have
a thousand favorite plants. But every time I go into a garden center and
I see lots of plants in color, I just become a learner again.
Oh there's a new variety of that out. I did not know that.
That's cool. Let me read about it, let me learn about it,
or what on earth is this? Do you know that after thirty four years
of doing this and only probably learning ten bazillion plants, always I see new
plants that are new to me. Maybe they're new to the market, or
maybe I just hadn't gotten around to them yet. But that makes it fun.
Gardening is forever hopeful, forever fun. And that's why we're here doing
garden Line. Give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. All right, you are listening to garden Line, and we're
here to answer gardening questions. That's what we love to do. We love
to visit with you. You know. By the way, don't forget speaking
a visit with you. I'm going to be at arbour Gate today eleven am,
excuse me, eleven thirty am to one thirty pm. Every fifteen minutes
we're gonna be giving away their organic food complete a bag of organic food complete.
That's a lot of giveaways. We've also got some nitrofoss on hand,
one of their flower colors type plants that are products that is just excellent for
all your cool season color. And I'll be there to answer questions, Bring
me samples, bring me pictures, let's talk. Let's figure out how to
turn that parched remains of summer into something gorgeous this fall. And boy did
they ever have plenty of it on hand there to arbigate. I just saw
they got in there citrus not too long ago too, and they have It
would take me an hour to name all the different guys of citrus they carry.
Excellent selection, excellent selection. Good time to get out and get that
kind of thing done for sure. You know, if you are trying to
get your lawn in tip top shape, well you just need to begin with
making sure you got the nutrients that it needs. And Nitrofuss has something called
Texas three step. What is that. That's three different products that you put
on in the fall to deal with the things of fall, not just the
problem, but also to enhance your lawn. For example, they've got the
Nitrofosphall Special that's a winterizer fertilizer. It's got phosphate to promote healthy root systems,
but it's also high in potassium. That's drought heartiness, that's winter heartiness.
That's what potassium does. With a little nitrogen. The potassium gets in
the plant and you set that plant up. The plant be in your grass
plant, your lawn plant for a very good, strong, healthy burst into
spring. Spring growth initially comes from fall fertilizers. That's very important. Number
two the weed control nitrofoss barricade, broad leafweeds, grassy weeds, they're going
to start germinating in October for the cool season. Barricade put down, watered
in ahead of time prevents that germination. And finally the nitrofoss eagle turf fung
aside that is to deal with the fall lawn disease problems that we have to
deal with leg brown patch and like take all root rot. We are getting
ahead of those. Don't wait until you see circles. You got to get
that stuff down a little bit earlier. The weather throws us curves. You
never know exactly when that starts, depends on the temperatures and the rainfall,
but it's coming so early October. I would get that down to all part
of the Night Foss Texas three stuff. You can find it it bearings,
hardware and missing up all spats hardware up in the woodlands and plants and things
and brand I'm all carry night Foss products. We're gonna head out to Katie
and we're gonna talk to Cliff. Hello, Cliff, good morning, Good
morning. Get finished construction construction projects about three weeks long in the backyards,
and I have my lettle backyard of oasis out there, Okay, throughout so
throughout that process, you know, you've got to destruction equipment and all kinds
of stuff, and it's and so the whole what used to be a really
pretty thick backyard grass, it's now kind of just trampled on for three weeks
yea. And so I've got some yellow here in there, and it's just
press down from all the foot traffic it's had. Okay, I just kind
of wondering, you know, how do I revive it? So to speak?
All Right, Well, what I would do first is I would get
some aeration and maybe a little compost top dressing done too. Especially the aeration.
The foot traffic compaction squeezes the poor spaces out of the soil and roots
don't get oxygen and grass doesn't thrive in that condition. So having someone like
green Pro, they're one of the folks we talk about here on garden Line
that does such a good job of that. Having them come out and do
a aeration along with the compost top dressing, that would get your lawn ready
to go. Now. I would also still do a fall fertilization. And
if you go online to gardening with skip dot com, I put my schedule
up there for fall fertilization. It lists the products and it lists the timing,
and so without reading them all out right now and there, you know,
just go there long Care Specials you can find them. Water Men really
good and with the comptos stop dressing, you know that's heading you into fall.
I mean, there's other things we can do. We can deal with
disease, we can deal with insects, we can deal with weeds and whatnot.
But just first of all, culturally, let's get that grass in a
place where it can recover. And I tell a Cliff, you need to
do it soon, because October is a big month for that long being able
to recover. As we get closer and closer. Let's say we get halfway
into late November, even things have slowed down to a point where we're not
getting the recovery speed that you will right now and in October. So let's
get all that stuff done sooner rather than later, so the benefits of it
have time to really kick in before the grass goes more dormant for winter.
That's what I needed to appreciate your feedback. All right, sir, Thank
you have fun out there, and Katie get that thing back. I hope
you enjoy the new remodel in the meantime. Thank you so much. Yes,
sir, all right, you take care. Bye bye. Hey.
Do you have a little piece of property and you've been thinking about getting a
tractor but you just haven't gotten around to Someday. I'm gonna do that.
Well, someday just arrived. Lansdown Moody has a deal. Listen to this,
zero down, zero interest, eighty four months, seven years on the
Caboda L twenty five oh one. The Caboda L twenty five oh one.
It's got a hydrostatic transmission. I grew up grinding tractor gears, not anymore.
Not on that one. Go buy a lansdown. There's several of them
around the Greater Houston area and you can also just go online to l M
Tractor dot com find out more about them. But this is this is one
sweet ride. That's how I like to refer to the Caboda L twenty five
oh one. And anything you need to get done out on your property,
this is going to be able to do it. And so don't delay.
You're not gonna find a better deal than this. That that is absolutely a
fact for sure. We're going to head out now to Roe. Sharon.
Am I actually speaking to the Texas Garden guy? Am my o'clock into the
skip Ricker, Well, good morning, Okay, Well let's end the Mutual
Admiration Society and cut to the chase. What's happening out there? Oh man,
my fault tomatoes. I went out there and I watered, and I
was watering one particular pot in about fifteen leaf footed bugs just blew up like
a flock of crows. Are they heading south for the winter? Yeah,
I don't know. It was nuts. It was nuts. And I went
through with some mean oil being I tried some saddle soap and they're just still,
you know, hit still pretty you know, heavily hitting my tomatoes.
Wow, So do you have a solution for them? You know, when
they hit the stage where they got wings, it takes some pretty toxic stuff
to knock them down, if if you know, I always always encouraged people
to learn what the eggs look like. And when you see them, you
can just clip off a petio with all the little eggs on it, or
when you see the little herds of them, put a soapy bucket under there
and just swat it and they all fall down. They don't wings, can't
fly away, and they tend to stay in a herd when they're real young.
But once they get the wings, man, I tell you, uh,
Destin, that's uh that that is tough. There are insects sides that
will kill them. But you know, you're you're not getting You're having to
sort of chase them around. They're flying around everywhere there, you know,
So it's not like you just spray the plant and you've taken care of it.
Yeah. So yeah, I don't know, early in the morning,
maybe catch them when they're a little sluggish, that that might be an option
to I might have to look up like a d I y trap form or
something. Try to figure something out that that may work. I don't know,
I don't know a good Yeah, they don't have any great natural enemies
either. That we really need, you know, something that loves to eat
those things and couple. Yeah, they have those hard exoskeletons and like nothing
really penetrates them. Yeah, that that is really tough to do. That
is absolutely true. I have put little bags, you know, when I
have big slice or tomatoes, I put those little organza bags from just to
keep them off the tomato. That way they're gonna stick in their mouth.
It doesn't matter if they're on the plant, if you don't want them feeding
on your fruit. So if you can find a way to protect the fruit
like that, I guess that'd be another option. But sometimes that's not practical.
Yeah, that might be a good Those were games, the bags.
I got plenty of them. Hey, I appreciate the calm man. Hey
anytimes here, have a good morning. All right, you take you take
care out there. Thank you appreciate that. You know, if you're going
to be planting this fall, and you are, I mean fall is for
planting. We're planning shrub planning roses. We're planning perennials or planning ornamental grasses.
You're planning perennial herbs, we're planning flowers. Has to grow six twelve
six, simple as that has to grow six twelve six from medina. It's
got the three NPK six twelve six in it, of course, plus medina
still activator to stimulate the biological activity. It's got humic acid in it,
and it's got seaweed extracts in it. So that concoction watered into a root
system when you plant is a good way to get that plant off to a
good start. So what I'll do is I'll put it in a watering can
and when I plant the plant, I'll watered in really good. A week
later, watered in again really good, a week later, watered in again
really good. Three applications of that help that plant hit the ground running,
because the goal is to get it from that little waded uproots system that came
out of the container into a good established plant going into fall. That's when
you get the growth. That's when you get the flowers, that's when you
get the vegetables that you see what I'm saying, it all happens right there
hash to grow six twelve six easy to find, works well and you need
to try it. Don't go into fall planting without some on hand. Our
phone number if you'd like to give us a call 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'll talk about whatever
is of interest to you. Hey. By the way, if you are
out in the Richmond area and getting out and about today, which I would
highly recommend you do, you know, Saturdays are for driving around going to
garden centers. That's another state law we need to pass. I have a
whole bunch of state laws. I think it ought to be a state law
that if you drive past the buckeys you have to pull in. Yes,
I think that already is. People act like that. Number two. You
have to visit garden centers pretty much every day, but if you once a
week at least, and Saturday is a great day. Weekends are fabulous,
absolutely, and out in the Richmond area in Chennic Gardens is a great place
to go. I mean, if you're in Richmond and you're heading up toward
Katy Way on three fifty nine. That's how you get to in Chennic Gardens.
You can go online Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com and find them. They're
open today eight am to five pm. And do they ever have a stock
of everything? You can imagine? Trust me on this one, you believe
me. Drive up and just look at the place, look at the color.
You will realize that summer is over. We are now into the beautiful
fall season. And Nikki, I am not responsible for what happens to your
bank account when you go into a beautiful garden. Eight The prices are good,
but eight hundred thousand plants you can't live without. What do you do?
You do? Well, I'll tell you what we do. Right now
we go to the Nikki News Network. Well, good Saturday morning. We
are looking forward today to get in a visit with you about a lot of
things. But also I'm going to be out at Arburgate eleven thirty to one
thirty at Arburgate two hours at the table, they are going to be given
away some of their organic food complete. We're going to be giving them away,
not just some ever, fifteen minutes they have a few of the surprises
they're gonna throw in out there as giveaways. Also, they've got some of
the Nitrofroust fertilizer on hand that the ones it's for your color plants, little
jars of that. When we're providing some of those to people that come by,
Bring me some samples, bring me some pictures. Let's talk about how
to get your lawn and garden in top shape for the fall. And there's
a lot that we can talk about for that. That is always fun.
You know, it is so important that when we're going to have success,
that we start with the soil. And you've heard me once, You've heard
me a thousand times talking about just how important it is to start with the
soil. The folks at Nature's Way, they've been doing this a long time,
you know, John Ferguson, the originator of things like the rose soil
for example, the leaf mold compost for example. By the way, they've
gotten fungal compost on hand, that great supply of it, and it just
keeps getting better and better. You know, each month that goes by,
it's just decomposing a little bit more, just getting a little more richer,
a little more ready to turn your plants into something special. That's the leaf
mold compost, and they have their Fungal Fridays ten percent off bag products,
twenty percent of bulk products for fungal Fridays. So check out the fungal composts
that they have. Those are just outstanding. Any kind of thing you need
really to make your plants thrive because the root system is healthy. You're going
to find a Nature's Way resources. By the way, put on your calendar
next Saturday. Next Saturday, they are going to have their Fall Garden Festival.
The Fall Garden Festival. I'll be there. I'll stop in and we'll
answer your questions. They're gonna have Latin food, they gonna have live music,
local vendors, adult beverages, are stuff for the kids, like a
kid's scavenger hunt. They're gonna have some demonstration class that is on creating an
enchanting fairy garden. Learn the magic of miniature gardening. If you want more
information about Nature's Way, it's easy to find, easy to find them.
You can just give them a call out there nine three six two seven three
twelve hundred ninety three six two seven three one two zero zero. Look forward
to that and while you're out there, definitely want to load up. Either
have them deliver it or by it by the bag. But get some good
stuff to make your lawn happy, make your plants happy. We're gonna go
out to Claire Lake now and talk to Lane. Hello. Lane, right,
good morning, Skips, Good morning. I got my new plants from
Michigan. They're a quartz size. And I prepare my soil and I put
the the rose oil down you told me, Yeah, And I put like
six four inches the rose soil. I fifty five bags okay, And so
I'm going to plant them. And do I want me to fertilize it?
Uh? Well, tell me what you're planting again in this bed they're off
with zone line. There are various types of flowering plants, flowering plants,
Okay, yeah, I would, I would get you a good quality mix.
Uh, you know for a flowering plant. Uh. There there are
a number of good quality products out there. I know Nelson's. Uh they
have their color Star line that is an excellent one comes in a little canisters.
Uh. And so you know, wherever you go and shop, look
for the color Star line of canisters. You just take them out, a
little tablespoon out and sprinkle it out in the in the garden beds and mix
it in and it provides that boost to help the plants have vigor, but
also the ingredients that they need to produce good blooms. And so I would
probably put something like that down. You're I just heard just talk about hospital
has to Grow is a good transplant. That's that's something we're watering in when
we transplant. The other I'm talking about, you're mixing into the soil so
as the roots go out end the soil, there's good nutrient content there.
So there's two different things. It's not one or the other. Both are
important. The has to grow transplant. That's getting that transplant off to a
good start. Something like a color star from Nelson's or one of their other
they have a nature star that's an organic line, a nutrastar star. Yeah,
those those are going to be for building the soil up the levels so
that as that plant does get established, then the roots are moving out into
some really good rich soil. Until you sprinkle that in there first before you
plant it. You would, yeah, I would sprinkle it down. I
would scratch it into the soil kind of you know, with a little whatever
kind of little hand tool you got to kind of mix it into the surface.
The soil is really you know, lose because it's full of the Oh,
I know, it's it's great. You can wait and put the You
can put that I was talking about color stars an example. You can put
that down after the plants are established and watered in, then put it around
the plants, or you can put it in before you Okay, so how
long like a week later? You could do it a week later. There's
not a magic time. What is convenient for you? Would you rather get
it done before you plant? Would you rather go ahead and get the planting
done and water them in with a hastragrow and then later come along and add
some fertilizer. Either way, it's great, okay, okay, great?
And one more question. Sorry, I have an existing bed with with with
bushes already, and then you know I haven't put an emulge down so I
can see roots. Do I put that? Uh? What a set malts?
I mean no compost down or roast soil. I would use roast soil
if you're building a bed for any kind of shrubs and bushes. That would
work really well. It works on a lot of things. But you were
talking about bushes, so yes, road soil would be fine. Compost is
something we can mix into our old clay soil or whatever we have to improve
it. It's also something you can put on the surface as a mulch.
But I think you've gone out of your way to get some quality sail mixes
established, and so I think you're off to a good start, okay,
okay, And then I would put what is it molts on top, right,
Yes, the most we throw the mulch on top to keep the weed
seeds down. We have it on top to keep moisture in in the summer,
to moderate soil temperature. And so that's all important. Now, when
you bring in a fresh rose soiled mix like you brought, you're not gonna
have weed seeds in so the critical level that normally I would say the minute
you mix up the soil and plant, put mult down because those weeds are
going to start popping up. Well, you probably don't have meat seeds in
it yet, so you have a little bit of a leeway. That mult
is always a good idea. When we get a gully washer rain multi protects
that soil from eroding and crusting. Two okay, it's about two yeah,
that'd be good. Be good, and then send me pictures of the beauty
when it takes off. Okay, great, how do I send your pictures.
I'm gonna put you on hold and Josh will give you an email.
And that email is, you know, it just for a picture for something
that you're going to call in about. Okay, okay, thank you,
you bet, thank you very much. I appreciate that a lot. Yeah.
I always like to see pictures of things that people are doing and the
successes that they have, and you know that's why we're here. We want
you to have success. You do not have a brown thumb. You may
have an uninformed thumb and we're working on that, but you do not have
a brown thumb. You can grow anything if you do the soil right,
pick the right plants, plant them right, fertilize and take care of them.
You can do it. You really can. And we're here to advise
you and help with exactly that kind of thing. You know, the folks
that the bees supply have finally gotten that wonderful observation. Hive ready to go.
I've been I saw the old one. I love the old one.
They've redone it and made it even better, stands over seven feet tall,
has sixteen frames in it. The frames are the little panels that the bees
build the honeycomb and put the honey in. You can watch them build their
comb and watch them care for the brood, see the queens, see the
honey and the pollen that they've stored up. It's really cool. There's a
big tube taking them where they come in from outside to come into that indoor
plexiglass hive and take the kids out to see it. While you're out there,
I don't know, maybe schedule one of their tours that they have.
They offer tours all the time and you can go out and you can see
the whole nine yards. Buy some really quality honey too where you're out there.
If you're a beekeeper, you gotta go. I mean, their classes
are outstanding. If you want to have successive beekeeping. Before you get moving,
talk to the folks at the b Supply. They're out in Dayton,
Texas the b Supply dot Com. We're gonna take a break, we'll be
right back with the rest of your questions. Well, good morning, and
welcome to garden Line. We're looking forward to visiting with you whatever you're interested
in talking about as long as it's related to plants. We're happy to visit
with you about that. We are. You know, we've kind of made
it to the end of the summertime here. I know, we've got a
couple of hot days coming, all that kind of stuff that happens. But
we're at the end. But our trees are still struggling. You know.
Tree stresses last a long time. Tree stresses you can have things a tree
die three years after something started the process of weakening and stressing that tree.
It could be five years even sometimes it takes a while. And we always
want to make sure our trees have what they need, and number one thing
they need is water. They need moisture in the soil. And if you've
got a tree that's only been in the ground for a year, you need
to be taking care of that tree's root system. If it's only been in
the ground a short time, like a few months, then you definitely need
to be watering pretty much where that cylinder of roots went in the ground.
And that's what a tree hugger sprinter can do. Turn it on real low.
It waters a small area, you turn it on more, it waters
a large area. Three different sizes seven inch, eleven inch, fifteen inch.
Tree Hugger is easy. It's easy to do. You hook it up.
I like to use mine with a hose end timer. That way I
can have it come on and just I can have it water for five minutes
or an hour, whatever is needed. It can apply that water, it
can wet the root zone, and it can help the tree because remember you're
not just trying to keep it from dying, you're trying to get it to
thrive. The goal when we plant a tree is to hang a hammock in
it soon, right, So do we get there? Well, we get
there number one by water. Fertilizer is important. Other things are important.
Water is number one and tree Hugger is the insurance that you need for that
success. You can go to tree Hugger Sprinklers dot com tree Hugger Sprinklers dot
com. They're available everywhere. I see them everywhere I go. Tree Huggers
an easy one to find. Let's head out to Fairfield and we're gonna talk
to Marty. Hello, Marty morning, skip, how are you this morning?
Well? Good morning, good good. I know you're excited about fall
and so am I? So am I? Hey? Question I need like
a guideline. I have a bunch of seeds that I've been collecting from my
just normal plants, not veggie, and I don't I get a list here.
It doesn't have anything to do with my plans. I get suggestions here.
Go to each website kind of gets overwhelming. Is there one place that
has as like guidelines for monthly or even a website that has here's what here
are There are seeds that you plant this month. Here are the seeds that
you plant this month, not vegetables. I've got that right, I've got
that. Marty. You you are pointing out a very true fact that is
a sad case, and that is we don't have great we don't have great
annual flower schedules. Now you're you're good garden centers they can guide you with
that. Some of them have little handouts on their flowers and things. I'm
actually working on one. But this is going to be a long term database
project on annuals and perennials and for the area when to plant, what they
do, how big they get, what color. But that's that's a monster
project that I'm working on. But you can't wait on that. It's it's
gonna be a little while before I get that finished. But I see information
from time to time, but it's kind of hit and mess, you know,
and if it's coming offline from some other part of the country, it's
often flat not true. I'm amazed at I saw something the other day about
planting spinach in August, and it is like, who are you kidding me?
But that you know, just because it's online doesn't mean it's true,
right, right, So I would, I would talk to your garden centers
where you like to purchase stuff. They're going to be really good at that.
In general, in general, our warm season seeds we start after the
last frost. For whatever part of the area someone lives in, after the
last frost, which is going to be sometime, you're probably starting planting those
things in March. In general around here, that's all the warm seasons.
So if you're planting seeds of zinny years or sunflowers or marigolds or are all
those kinds of things, if you're putting out transplants of on the same thing.
We have some that go through the summer that we can plant earlier,
but we often plant because they can take the heat and other things often can't,
and then when you come into fall. I usually do a planting in
August of warm season to carry us all the way up to frost. It
could be early September too early to mid September. In fact, some people
are still planning some warm seasons. But then when it starts to cool off,
which we're calling that now beginning now October is an important time for a
lesson and snap dragons and stock and gosh, I'm trying to think of all
the cool season and then when it comes off a little bit more in November,
that is when violas and pansies are happier being in at that time.
Dianthus is the one I couldn't think of while ago. What I'm I guess
I'm not looking more for annuals. I'm looking for perennials like I have,
like for suggestions Plumme area, spider lily Crossandra. You know some of the
things that I collect. I collect seeds because I just think they're just cool
plant okay, and I just don't know when to put them back in the
ground and start propagating. So so you're wanting to plant the seeds of the
perennials that you're talking right, Okay, yes, yeah, is there a
site for that? Well, I don't know, but the thing I just
said about warm season, cool season, that would hold true. So if
you're going to if you're gonna plant a salvia or a crssander or something that
that's gonna take, you know, the milder temperatures and and do find not
a not a super freeze tolerant plant. I would do that kind of stuff
in in the spring. You could start your transplants in in a February for
planting out once they're up at a decent size and the all the frost has
passed. That would be one option for doing that. Okay, And even
like cannas and stuff like that. Just just I just guess I just thought
maybe there was something online or you hit knew somewhere. You're a wealth of
information. We really appreciate you. Well, yeah, and it's a it's
a wide open category. I mean, they're literally are hundreds and hundreds of
plants they could follow in the category. And so Thompson Thompson Seed Company Thompson
Morgan Seed Company used to have a thing online that listed a bazillion kinds of
annuals and the information on when to stardom and how to stardom, But you
just got to look for it. At one point it came offline and then
it was put back on. But Thompson and Morgan had the best single planting
or list of that that I had seen. But a good garden, a
good a good seed company side or a good garden center ought to be able
to guide you on that too. Very good. Okay, thank you.
In the meantime, you just reminded me I need to get into gear on
my project. Thanks a lot, Okay, thank you, Bye bye bye.
Yeah, you're listening to Garden Line and we're here to answer your gardening
questions. That is what we do. Seven one three, two one two
five eight seven four. That will get you ready to go, and we
will take you up with whatever Josh has on the board once we come back.
I'm looking forward to that. Hey, by the way, don't forget
eleven thirty two day, I'll be at the Arbourgate. I'm going to finish
the show. I'm heading out there. We're gonna be giving away their organic
soil complete every fifteen minutes during that two hour time. Beaverty's also got some
surprises on hand as you've got some jars of Nitrofoss's color plant fertilizer. It's
a fourteen fourteen fourteen that you put in for your color beds. They'll be
given away those as well. Bring me your plants. You're tired, you're
weary. Your hurdle mass is yearning to be identified, diagnosed and helped.
We will be glad to look at those pictures and help you have success.
Hey, ball is here by the way, Arburgate brand new parking lot in
the back on Trishell Road. You just turn in before Arburgat or after Arburgate.
Trishell is a loop. It goes around behind the nursery and there's a
parking lot and it's easy to get in, easy to it out. I
hope a lot of you come out today. I'm looking forward to meeting a
lot of folks. Hey, it's fault if you're a gardener, if you
have a pulse, you ought to be excited about getting out and planning some
things starting today. Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the
products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to ktr H Garden Line with
Skip Rictormelly. Just watching as so many. Well, good Saturday morning.
I'm gonna call this the first day fall. How about that? I don't
know when the first day of fall? I know it. I know there's
a calendar first day of fall. But this is our official first deffall.
This is our day that we get free from summer and go forward. This
is a you know, it's a time when it's easy to get excited because
there's a lot we can do. You know, you try to look at
it Brown, Let's fix out we can, we know how to do it.
Let's get it fixed. Let's get it beautiful out there in our landscapes,
there are there are a huge source of enjoyment. Yes, they're valuable.
I mean the value of your home. When you have a beautiful trees,
when you have a beautiful landscape, it is significant enhancement right there.
But what about your mental health, what about your physical health? Just the
enjoyment getting out and do it. I was joking with Nikki earlier about you
know, I go into a garden center and there's so much stuff. It's
like I'm going to empty the bank account. Not because this stuff's expensive,
but because there's so much. If there's a plan, I don't have.
I got to have it right, Okay, but think about it. Let's
think about this just a minute. Some of you guys are ready to head
out there and do some deer hunting this fall. Right, what is the
dear least cost? What does a deer rifle cost? I mean, how
much a pound is that venison? Right? Maybe you're a fisherman and you've
got a bass boat, and you know, you see where I'm going with
this. Gardening is an inexpensive hobby compared to some of the things that you
could be out there do and buying equipment for whatever kinds of enjoyable things you
like to do. But gardening is it's it's just a I don't know.
To me, it's the kind of thing that the rewards are ongoing, the
rewards of learning, the rewards of enjoying, of being in nature, of
having the ascetics, and remember, gardening is multi century. We visually see
beauty, yes, we see order, We see textures and lines and all
the things that a beautiful landscape can have. But we also smell. We
smell the fragrances and some of your best memories from the past, or smells
grandma's cookies, maybe a particular flower that Grandma had blooming at our house that
you can you'll remember walking in the gate and smelling. You see what I'm
saying. Smells, And then we have sounds. We have the sound of
birds, we have the sound of water. Oh my gosh, water is
so relaxing. That's why I love to have water features in my landscapes.
So I just got one the other day in that I'm haven't put together yet.
I'm about to put out there in the landscape, just a multi tiered
kind of fountain that I'm building myself and really looking forward to it. Gardening
is a great hobby and it's money well spent that you get a return from
every time you get out there and enjoy it. Well, let's head out
to Bear Creek and we're gonna start off talking to Kay. Hello, Kay,
Hi, Hi, what's up? Okay? This is you already know
from talking to me. I'm a crappy gardener. I've got a dead rose
book at the back of my yard. It got choked out by this nasty,
weedy little vine that doesn't have any leaves. It's just like a big,
skinny, skinny, skinny twig that grew into a bush. And surrounded
the roses, and it's dead. So I got it. I gotta dig
it out and replace it. Should I just like completely dig it out and
dig a big old hole, putting a new soil in and plant something,
or do I need to worry about that nasty thing coming back and killing whatever
I put there? So it's the nasty thing is still alive there, right,
Well it's still it's getting bigger, so I assume it's still alive.
So how big would you say, is the trunk of the nasty thing coming
out of the ground, size of your thumb, size of your finger,
little finger, little like like the size of my about my pinky finger at
biggest it's a tay skinny little Oh that's okay. So you want to get
a product that contains an ingredient and get a pen. You have a penhandy,
Yes, try clow peer t R I c l O p yr.
It'll be sold as a poison, ivy killer, as a brush killer or
whatever. And you're just gonna need a little bit of it that it's not
an organic product, but you're gonna you're gonna put so little out there you're
not gonna hurt anything else. And here's how you do it. You you
cut that vinyl off, you cut that bush off, whatever it is,
the nasty thing, and immediately you just take a little spongebrush and just dab
tracolate pier right on that fresh cut stump. That's all you put on.
Don't spray it, don't get it on anything else, don't have it walton,
you know, drenched down into the soil. Just a little dab of
it. That plant will take that in and it will kill it. And
sometimes you'll get a little bit of a resprout because you can quite get all
of it. But in general, that's the way to go. That's an
easy way to get brushy and viney weeds out of our flower beds and things.
Okay, so after I do that rose, the rose bush is gone.
I mean it's just it hasn't It hasn't flowered in like a year and
a half. So they used to replant at that point or do I need
to like put new soil down and then treat it somehow to make this No,
you can absolutely replant. Just give the give the product time to get
to kill the nasty thing that we keep preferring to. And once it's once
it's done its job. There, You're you're good to move forward. All
this thing it's now the whole contraption is I'm about six feet tall and it's
about a foot taller than me. So it's like this giant seven niche foot
bush that's probably like five feet across. Can I just take a chainsaw to
the whole thing at about ankle level? And is this the nasty things it's
surrounding the rosebush it's all interwoven with Okay, yeah you could, But if
you do that, either you have to dig up the whole base, the
stump, the bottom of it of that big plant and get all those roots
out of the ground, or you have to paint the cut surface immediately while
it's fresh to get the poison done in there to kill that particular plant.
Only Okay, yeah, I think. I mean, the roses are not
coming back, so I'm just gonna have to replant whatever's going to go back.
Well, you know, sometimes just ripping it out and starting over is
the easiest way. You're not having to tiptoe around everything, you know,
trying to not do damage while you get rid of the nasty thing. And
so it sounds like that may just be the best way for you to go.
I think that's probably the easiest way. It's easy as good, that
is for sure. I thank you, all right, kay, thank you.
I appreciate I appreciate your call the nasty thing. I like that.
That is that. Now that plant is forever called the nasty thing. Think
about itself image, think about how that hurt its feelings. But we don't
care to we because it is a nasty thing. Weed. Verdant Tree Farm
has been grown trees in Houston for a long time. You know they're they're
out there in West Houston on Barker Cypress. They're also down in parallel on
Broadway, just a few blocks away from the Killing Steakhouse. Down there,
if you go up into the Heights area where I ten in Yale Street come
together, there's a very down there Verdant Treefarm dot com. B E R
D A N T. Treefarm dot com. All sizes up to seven hundred
gallons. Do you need palms? They've got palms. Do you need any
of the kind of tree they've got it? Do you even need like a
really large like a Nelly R. Stevens holly kind of thing? They've got
all that I'm they know what they're doing. You show up, you tag
your plant, they bring it, they plant it by the way, they
plant it right, which is critical. And then here we go and you're
well on your way to success. And trees are always a nice addition to
the landscape. They're beautiful. Talk to the first folks at Ford, they
know what they're talking about. Tell them here's what I want. I want
a flowering tree. I want a shade tree. And needed to be about
this big. I needed to go take them a picture. I need to
go right here. What do you think they will help get you off to
success. The best time to plant that tree was fifty years ago. Second
best times today, So don't delay, get out there and check it out.
Well, we're going to take a break here. Our phone number is
seven one three two one two five eight seven four. We will be right
back. Hey, good morning, thanks for listening to garden Line. Let's
talk about what you're interested in, whatever is related to gardening. And boy,
is this ever a good time to be talking about gardening. Hey,
if you live up in the Magnolia area, spring Creek Feed, Spring Creek
Feed, that is your hometown feed store. Right up there, They are
on FM twenty nine seventy eight, just minutes away from Graham Parkway Highway to
forty nine. Last time I was in there, I just really impressed with
the line of lawn garden products that they had. Herbicides, fundersides, pesticides,
the fertilizers we brag about here on garden line. They've got it all
there. They've got it. If yellow pond, they got pond supplies.
You need food for your pets, well, there are a feed store.
They got livestock food, they got pet food and quality examples of both.
They also will special order products if you need. They do provide a delivery
service, just ask them. There About that Spring Creek feed Center in Magnolia
on FM twenty nine seventy eight. Always a pleasure to go in there because
the staff is friendly and courteous, just like you would expect from a quality
hometown feed store. Love to go in to Spring Creek Feeds. Well,
I'm gonna head out now. Let's see, We're gonna go to Lane out
in clear Lake. Hello, Lane, let's if thanks for taking the call
again. That just the questions just keeps coming. I order this holly called
Squeeze Box ink theory holly. And then I needed the male gym box ink
berry holly to you know, a male team, so they would produce the
berries. Anyway, the gym box in't berry holly. It's a dwarf.
And then the leaves are falling out? Should I be concerned or asked?
When you say their leaves are falling out? We talking about like how much
dropping? How much of the leaves have you lost? Like a quarter of
the leaves or just a few here in I mean a handful. Okay,
it's only a court size. You know plant well, you know a plant
and a container. If you don't get watered per day, it gets a
little stressed and you may see some issues with that. I would not worry
about it based on what you're saying, but I would do one thing and
make sure you keep the leaves moist all the time time. Don't let it
dry out, but don't keep it no, I'm sorry. The roots,
oh my bet, thanks for catching that. The roots moist. Hollies do
not do well with drought when they're young. They'll just flat doe. Yeah,
And so you don't want to you don't want to drench it. You
don't want it to be a swamp. It needs to be just moist.
But it needs to be moist and that goes all the way through next summer.
Make sure you keep it moist. Once it's had two or three years
and it's really well established, we don't worry about that as much. But
early on you just gotta be careful because that that's one thing they don't put
up with. Okay, So if I need to be gone for two weeks
so I'm having on a sprinkler system, I should it's thirty minutes, okay,
on Uh, you know, Lane, I can't tell you that because
I don't know your soil and I don't know the I just put it all
down the rate that water comes out of the sprinkler and stuff. Here's what
I would do. I would if you want to, if you want to
run it for thirty minutes, run for thirty minutes whatever number you said,
and then dig down, wait a little bit, wait about thirty minutes to
dig down and see how deep the soil is moist if you if you're if
you're getting moisture down about eight inches deep or more, then that's a good
watering. If not, it needs to run longer. If it's saggy.
It needs to run shorter. That's what matters, isn't the run time.
It matters how wet is the soil. Okay, God, okay, appreciate
it. Thank you here you bet hey, thanks for the call. Good
luck with those hollies. Uh. You know, I talk about soils importance,
and we are so fortunate here in the greater Houston area to have quality
soils. We we do not. You do not have to look far to
find one. If you're down south of the Houston area. CNA Mulch is
the spot. I mean, they're near what Highway six and two eighty eight
down north of Roe Sharon. In fact, they're on five twenty one.
You can go to their website cnamulch dot com find out more. Bulk Mulch's
bulk soil mixes, bulk composts, they've got it in bags, they've got
it. Every fertilizer I talk about, they've got it even things like you
know the azamite that we brag on here. And they just have a wide
variety of things down there and it's quality. They know what they're doing.
Sienna Mulch dot com. They're open today until two pm. Close tomorrow,
So now'd be a good time to go out there and take a look when
I brag about rose soils and organic composts. And by the way, when
you're out there, to check out the shredded hardwood mulch and check out their
rock supplies. Unbelievable selection of all kinds of decorative rock for your landscape,
Samulch. I'm gonna be out there this fall. I'll tell you more about
that when we get closer. But I'm looking forward to my trip out to
Sienna myself. Oh gosh, we are. I'm watching the clock ticking with
this morning seems to be going kind of fast. Maybe it's just because we're
having fun. I hope you're having fun, because I sure am today.
I just get all excited when the thought of no more summer it's my head.
We're gonna go out to Dickenson now and talk to Jennie. Good morning,
Jennie, good morning, thanks for taking my call. I noticed yesterday
one of our pine trees is getting brown, and of course around Dickinson there's
a lot of dead pine trees. Is this pine beetles? It's so what
do I do? Can you say? Getting brown? Do you is the
whole thing brown already or you just losing some of the older leaves turning brown.
Well, it's just starting to turn brown. And I've been looking around
town. There's you know a lot of dead ones here and there, but
I've just kind of been looking at ours. And last night I looked at
it, and this morning it's it's not looking good. Of course, every
day might be worse, but right do you see? I got a neighbor
to look at it. He thinks it could be pine beetles. Well,
if it's pine beetles, you're going to see globs of sap on the trunk.
They could be. They could be on the bottom, like bottom eight
feet of the trunk. That's one kind of pine beetle. If it's you
know, real high up, all the way up the trunk, there's a
bunch of little tiny gloves of sap, that's another one. If you're not
seeing that, I don't think you have pine beetle yet. But why would
that be just drough out it just because it's been so It could be it
could be just drought. It could be, you know, something anything disturbing
the roots, anything preventing moisture for getting up in the plant. That's what
pine beetles do is they cut the tubes so you're not getting moisture up into
the plant. That's why it turns brown and dies. But this is in
an area on our property that's kind of in a wooded area. It's not
really like on a lawn. It's kind of in a wooded area, okay,
where we have multiple trees, kind of well costs from the bio so
well it's been I could probably get in there to look to see. I
guess would it be you said it would be on the trunk. I could
see globes, gloves of sap. They may be as big as a quarter,
they may be as small as a dime. But that's that's what you're
looking for. Or also saw dust falling down and catching in the bark as
it falls down the trunk. The only thing that's in your power, Janice,
is if you can get water to them, to water them. Otherwise
it's a wait and see. Sounds like they're kind of in a wood lot
where it may not be real easy to get water to them. If you've
had an inch of rain in the last week or two, then you're not
needing to water okay, because we did get a quarter an inch and three
quarters by Friday, and maybe it's time on the Tuesday before that. Okay.
So do pine beetles they spread? Right? Yeah, well they can,
depending on which kind. But first I go out there and look and
then come back with a good description or send me some pictures or whatever.
Just start with a good description on the call and we'll take it from there.
I don't think that's what you have. But okay, well, how
did this we'll deal with that. Yeah, buddy, do you have a
tree arborist that you recommend? Yes, Affordable Tree Service, Martin Spoon.
Yeah, we talk, We talk about them all the time. They Martin.
They know what they're doing. They're they're very, very thorough, and
they'll come out and they'll take a look at it. Now if you if
you want somebody to look at it and say, you know, do I
have I have pine beals or not? Well, they're gonna know in a
heartbeat. But you can call him here right right down this number seven one
three, okay, six nine nine, twenty six sixty three okay, And
that will get you right to him. Tell him, tell him you're a
guardline listener. So you get to the front of the line because he does
a good job. So he stays busy and so well, I imagine he's
busy this time of year right now with this drought. Well, all right,
hey, thank you for the call, Jennie. Hey, thanks for
the help. Appreciate it. You take care bye bye. Yeah, yeah
yeah, affordable tree service, you know, spoon more. He's been doing
this. Martin has been doing this for a long time. I mean,
he knows what he's doing. His dad had the company for crying out lout.
They they just know what they're talking about. And don't just call him.
When you have a tree things dying. Call him to look at trees
to see if you're storm ready, you know, or the limbs. Does
it need pruning for the sake of protecting things that might be underneath the tree
a limb fallen on him? Do you need stump grinding done? Do you
need deep root feeding or deep roop watering? Do you need pest control?
And here's an important thing, here's another good reason to call Martin. If
you're going to do anything around a tree. Call first, after you've built
a house, after you've put in trenches, after you've laid concrete for sidewalks
and driveways. You're limited on what you can do to save that tree.
But if you call him ahead of time, he can guide you on that,
and that beautiful tree that you really want to keep you won't lose because
you do the things you need to do to protect it ahead of time.
Don't wait until after. I mean, he can come in and he can
do what he can do, but don't ask somebody to do a miracle when
it's just a simple Let's get some consultation up front when that comes. And
that goes to anybody with any kind of situation where you're going to mess around
with the soil around a tree, bringing soil in, taking soil away,
digging trenches, compacting the soil. All of those things lead to long term
plant problems. We're gonna head out now to Spring Branch and talk to Nathan.
Hello, Nathan thod morning, I'm good. What's up. A couple
quick questions for you. I want to know if there's anything at this time
of year. I think kint a vegetables that would be good to start growing,
maybe like an little five gallon buckets or something in the backyard. Oh
yeah, yeah, all the blue leaf vegetables, the cabbage, cauliflower,
kale, corrabi. Let's see what am I leaving out? Collards and broccoli
I didn't leave. I can't believe it left broccoli out. Those are all
good. You can be planning a little bit of lettuce here pretty soon now
it cools off a bit, and then spinach when it gets a little bit
cooler. Your root crops like carrots and beets and radishes and turnips can all
go in. Lots of things to plant right now, or any of these
they are good to go a five gallon bucket. They will all grow in
a five gund No, they'll all grow in a five gallon bucket. Just
get you a good get you a good quality saw mix, and you can
just go right to town and have fun. That's fans happened. Yep,
you bet. The other question for you I had. Okay, I've got
about twenty about twenty seconds here, I can hold you till after break,
but I've got about Yeah, do you have any luck without venus fly tramps
and any suggestions on how to keep you from going? You know, I've
never tried grown them. They're a little personnicketty. They want humidity. They
you know that they want constant moisture but not underwater. H And if you
can give them those conditions, they do pretty good. That's about the fastest
answer I and give you on it. They want to be in a little
moist terrarium like environment with good light, but not direct something. All right,
So thank you for the call, Nathan. I appreciate that. Seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I'm on turn it over
to Nikki. All right, we're gonna get back to the gardening and the
gardening calls here on Garden Line. Our number is seven one two one two
five eight seven four. Now, a lot of lawns have taken a beaten
this summer, and it is time to get in there and start doing some
things to help them out. Microlife has put together a nice collection of products
really. You know, we've talked about their green bag six two four,
we talk about their humids plus all through the summertime going into fall. Two
of my favorite products that they do is the Microlife brown patch. That's a
five one three mix. Lots of lots of microbes that go with that to
help protect your plants, as well as the microlife bio innoculant. Now,
the brown patch that's an orange bag. The bio inoculant is kind of a
violet colored bag. At least that's the way my eyes see it. And
you only put about ten pounds per thousand square feet because what you're doing is
you are introducing, you are innoculating your grass plant surfaces with microbial activity.
And when you have active good microbes on a plant at number one, it
helps out compete the bad things shoes that might come along, like brown patch,
for example, you've got good health there. Some of the good guys
actually directly fight against bad disease organisms. So when we say good and bad,
they don't wear white and black hats. But if they if we like
what they do, they're good. If we don't like what they do,
they're bad. How about that for a way to look at nature. But
anyway, microlife brown patch five one three combined with microlife bio inoculant, that
would be a good thing to do starting right now, really, and especially
get it done in early October. If you don't get it done now,
that's fine too. But you want to get ahead of these things because when
large patch appears in the circles are there. It's a little late to be
benefiting your plants, and coming out of the summer we had October is a
hugely important month for your lawn to get it back in good, strong health.
So it comes out of winter strong, but doesn't instead just continue to
decline. That's why we talk about the port into the fall fertilizing, and
that's why this package from Microlife I think it's so important you go to Microlife
Fertilizer dot com find out more about those products or where to find them.
Easy to find Microlife is pretty much everywhere around the greater Houston area. We're
gonna head out now to Alvin and talk to Larry. Hello, Larry,
Hey, skipper, let's up, skipper of the new skipper of the garden
line. Okay, well that's the one way to look at it. Hey
man, I got a live oak. Well, I have several of them,
but I've got one. It's probably fifty sixty years old. Okay it
my granddaughter swings has the swinging outers you come in and eat up with ants.
Got to look in and then one of the crotches where the tree separates
you. It's just got a lot of ants or little miny things. Were
they biting? Were they biting her or just crawling around on her no tongue
or she had whelps all over her legs, which really surprised me. Well,
that's fire ants. That would that would have to be fire ens.
Would they get in a tree? Well, I guess they could. You
don't normally see them up in trees. They tend to be down in the
ground. But I guess if you had a hollow area where they could make
a little home in there, I guess they might do that. That that
is unusual for fire ends, at least in my experience. Someone else may
have had that happen. They is, Uh, they're they're in the crotch
of the tree and they've already you know, kind of story working on.
You can tell it's kind of rotten dog Graham. Uh what I was wonder,
what should I use, uh to spray around that tree and in as
high as I can get in that tree, because it's about sixty foot tall.
Brou Is there like a hollow area up in there? You think where
they're coming out of You're saying, yeah, yeah, I would get I
would get a product with by fenthering and put it in there and watered in
really well up in there. And if they have to crawl through that,
that isn't gonna be. That is gonna to shut down any ant trying to
crawl back and forth through that area that's been treated like that. Well good,
I get fan. Yeah, that'll that'll work generally. You know,
with fire ants, we're dealing with baits down low. But I think in
this case, number one year, your story is a little strange to my
ears because it doesn't add up quite right. But I'll take it at face
value. I would just go ahead and treat them that way up in the
up in the tree. These are little bitty ants, so they don't look
like fire ants. I mean, well, okay, then that that would
make more sense. But the fact that they're biting, you know, I
mean, ants have jaws. Any ant can literally close its jaws on something.
But if they're biting and causing, well, it's that I don't know
another anti than fire ants. It does that, Okay. I mean,
you know there's a big red harvest rants on the ground and stuff, but
that's different. Yeah, yeah, I've got some of the muh. Now,
let me ask you about maybe putting a metal cloaker it out. Okay,
some of that some kind of suesteem me. Yeah, that's not going
to help at all. No, if something is sucking juice out of the
oak tree, it would kill it. But or but if it's if it's
just something like living in the tree, that's not gonna help. Hey,
Larry, I appreciate to call. Good luck getting that under control. We
don't need a little granddaughter out there getting bit that's for sure. Now,
will you take care you have a very good day. Uh. You know,
storm season around here is a good time to have generators. But storms
can happen anytime. I mean, our grid is unreliable and maybe it's maybe
it's one of those horrible winter storms like we've had before. We don't wish
that on anybody, but it could happen. Uh. And you need a
good generator. And you're not going to find a better generator than the Generac
automatic stand by generators, and you're not going to find a better pace to
buy them than Quality Home Products of Texas. And this is important. I
mean, you go a lot of places and by a generator, but Generac
automatic stand by generator from Quality Home that is what you need to do.
First of all, ten year warranty saves over a thousand dollars through October eighth.
We don't get much time. If you're going to get one, let's
get it done. But their customer service rating is unbelievable. Seven times they've
won the Better Business Bureau Pinnacle Award. I mean, seventy seven thousand satisfied
customers. This is what we're talking about. Twenty four seven three sixty five
customer service. They set it up outside your house. It runs off natural
gas or propane and it's just like your customer central air unit sitting out there.
You're gone to timbuck two. The power goes off, that freezer full
of food doesn't get lost because you're quality automatic stand by generator by GENERAC from
Quality Home Products comes on and it saves the day. That's peace of mind
and that is well well well worth it. Quality dot Com Quality excuse me,
Quality TX dot com, Quality TX dot Com or seven one three quality.
Give him a call find out what I'm talking about. We are reaching
another break. Time here we go. They say time flies when you're having
fun. Kermit the Frog says time is fun when you're having flies, but
that's neither here nor there. Seven one three, two, one two five
eight seven four is the number. Josh will get you on the board.
Frank, you'll be first up when we come back. Well, good morning.
You're listening to Gardenline and what are we doing? We are we are
talking about the fact that summer is gone and we are excited to be in
fall and getting all the plants replaced, getting our lawns rejuvenated, our trees
back and good hell, I'm excited about that. Something else I'm excited about.
And I'm going to be out at Arburgate Nursery today and I get to
see for the first time for me the brand new parking lot they got out
back. It is on Trishall Road, so Trishall's a loop. It comes
off twenty nine twenty, goes around Arburgate and comes back in, so you
can go in before you get to Arburgate or after you get to Arburgate you
just swing around Trishall loop in the back. Is the parking lot really simple?
You know? We talk about Arburgates one two three simplely easy system with
soil compost molt right well one two three simply easy parking now, I mean
really easy to get there. I hope you will come out to see me.
I'll be there from eleven thirty to one thirty. I'll be given away
their organic food complete every fifteen minutes, every fifteen minutes a bag. They've
got some nitrofoss one of the color products from nitrofoss on hand. We're gonna
be given that away. To come out and see me. And then of
course Beverly who knows what kind of things she'll pull out of the bag to
also give away. There's always some cool bling that they have their Their gift
shops are so cool. There's lots of good stuff out at Arburgatement. Come
on out and see me. Let's talk about gardening. Let's look at your
situation, identify, diagnose, make suggestions. That's why we're here looking really
looking forward to that, get out and doing that. We are now going
to go to let's see Frank in northwest Houston. Hey Frank, thanks for
waiting anning skip. Thank you put me on the right track. I laid
out salt the beginning of the spring of this year. It was doing fine,
and then I think I got the brown patch and I put Derris beIN
down on it. But I think I waited too late. I think it's
just took out my whole backyard, small area about a thousand square feet.
Okay, I want a chill, kill, till and feel Okay, So
what do I do to kill well? Herbet side? Is this? U?
Is this Saint Augustine grass? Yes? It is in every other kind
of steam in the yord. Okay. If you've got perennial weeds, you're
probably gonna need to spray those to kill them. That that would require a
spray. If it's just Saint Augustine, it just lives on top of the
ground. I mean, you scrape it back and it's it's gone. You
know, just a light tilling would would break it all loose. You can
kind of break through there, get it, get it all out of there,
and then do a more heavy duty tilling, you know, get that
organic matter off the surface first, so that you can really mix the soil.
Any low areas, you're going to throw some soil in them to level
them out, to fill them in so that you have a nice, good
level lawn area without the pockets and whatnot. Maybe you've got tree roots that
need a little bit of soil put in around them just to kind of bring
that soil level up a little. Well, do all that, and then
then you put the side down. But you've got two options. Either one
you do it right away so that it has pretty much all of October for
that new side to root in and get ready for winter and get strong and
ready to go, because if you wait until the end of October, it's
a little late for that grass to be strong going into winter. Or you
just wait until spring and do it. Then that's a good idea. But
what do I kill it? If I want to kill every weed grass in
all, I would use a grass Well, if you're gonna kill everything,
you're gonna have to use a weed killer that contains like a glyphosate product that
is going to kill everything if you're just going after grasses, or some grass
only weed killers that you can get rid of. But it kind of depends
on what we If I knew all the weeds that were in your lawn,
I could better advise you. But your options. You basically have two options
if you're spraying, and that's kill everything with a glyphosate type product or just
kill grass only with a grass only product product that grass. Only enough for
everything. I want to kill everything. Glyphosate is it's it's the roundup is
the brand name that people talk about, but there's a lot of brands of
that, Glyphosa gly Pho sat e will around up. But do it though,
if it's if it's a green weed out there, it's going to kill
it. Okay, that's what I want, and then I want. But
here, here's here's what you need to keep in mind with any pest side
you use. Be careful when you spray it. Don't get it all over
you. Just because it's for sale and over the counter doesn't mean that you
take a bath in it, right, So be careful with that. Number
two. Apply just enough to moisten the weed, don't drench it where it's
running down in the soil. Don't spray on a windy day or it could
blow over to things you like that you don't want to kill. And when
you pump up your sprayer frank, you want to do it just a little
bit so it spurts out the drops of water, but not such high pressure
that you get this fine miss that drifts over. Because you don't want any
secondary damage to non target plants. You want to just kill what you're spraying.
What kind of who would cap? Oh? Oh gosh, all over
the place in your area. If you're up in northwest Houston, there's some
great Cypress. Uh, there's Cypress Ace Hardware. There's M and D Ace
Hardware up in the Cypress area as well a number of Ace hardware. That's
probably the for right where you're located. That's probably the easiest place to just
go find it. Go to Ace Hardware dot com and do their store locator
and there's gonna be a whole bunch of them right in your area. I'm
close to a once board nursery I think Watchman Nursery or the Shepherd. Oh
you're you're in You're in kind of in down in Houston. Yes, oh
okay, Well you also have Ace hardwares around you there. Just go to
go to Ace Hardware and uh and and do a search right there and you
can find it. You can find one in your area if you were in
north central area there. Okay, Do I have time up the apply bet
before they go dormae yes, whatever, Yes, but you need to you
need to do it soon. If it didn't rain at your house, water
all the weeds get them growing, because these products were when the weeds are
actively growing, not when they're drought stressed. So if you got rained,
don't worry about it, because but now's the time, and it'll take it
about a week before you really see that it's doing something, and then by
another week you really know it's killing it. But you want to wait out
that time before you do the roto tilling because you need that product to move
down before you start cutting the plants up. Okay, I think that's just
what I needed to know. All right, Well, good luck with that,
Frank, Thank you. Hope you end up with a beautiful lawns as
a result of all of that. It is bird season. It's always bird
season. Right now, it's hummingbird season. Oh my gosh. Those little
buggers are everywhere, and if you've got a quality feeder, they're gonna come
to it. I've got several feeders I always use like four parts water,
one part white table sugar. No die. The idea that you got to
make the liquid red for hummingbirds is bologny. It's absolutely untrue, and it's
not even good for them. Four parts water, one part white table sugar.
That's it. I heat it up so the table sugar dissolves faster.
Let it cool down and you're ready to go. When you go to Wilbirds
Unlimited, they sell something called Nectar Defender, and instead of nectar going bad
in a day or two of warm weather, it'll it'll go like ten days
without going bad. Now. They also have hummingbird feeders. Ask them about
their high perch feeder. That's the one I like best of all the hummingbird
feeders I have. I've got a Wildbird's high perch feeder works works really well.
Go to w b U dot com, Wilbird's Unlimited, w b U
dot Com, forward slash Houston and you can find the many wild Birds Unlimited
all over our area. And you're gonna go in there for hummingbird stuff,
but you're gonna come out with a lot of other cool stuff because winter season
is coming. Birdhouses, bird feeders, bird seed blends, it's all there
right now. It's all about the hummingbirds. That is pretty cool stuff.
I love. I love that well. I am gonna have to go for
another break. Here we're hitting the top of another hour. Time is flying
like crazy today. I'm glad you're listening to garden Line if you'd like to
get on the air seven one three two one two five eight seven four,
I'll be happy to answer your question. Janey out in Missouri City. You
will be first up when we come back from break and not enough time to
do justice to a call from you right now, so we're gonna just say
hang on just a little bit and you'll be first up. Hey, if
you have not checked out or printed out my lawn care schedule, you can
go to gardening with Skip dot com. The Gardening with Skip dot Com the
schedules there. It tells you what fertilizers still apply if you're organic fertilizer,
synthetic fertilizer, talks about mowing and watering, all kinds of things that will
help you get your lawn off to a good start. October is a huge
month in the lawn. In fact, I would say October is the most
important month of the year in your lawn. It's it's when we're recovering from
what summer just did to our lawns with good quality fertilizers and good blends and
microbial products, any kinds of things like that you're putting out. Just a
good time to do it. It's when large patch hips and we got to
get ahead of that. It is when take all root rot also infects,
and we got to get ready for that. It's when the cool season weeds
germinate, and we got to get ready for that. Lots to talk about.
October is the big month of the year. KTRH Garden Line does not
necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to
KTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictord. It's so please crazy just watching ass well,
good morning on a good fall morning. Yes, we're calling it fall.
It is here. We are done with summer. That's behind us.
I can take another ninety five or two, two or three days here and
there. Okay, that's fine. Rain is coming, cool weather's coming.
Planting season is upon us. It is absolutely time to be doing a lot
of stuff right now. I mean, from a gardening standpoint, we just
went from peeking out the air conditioned windows areas of our houses at a drying,
dying landscape to big time hit the ground, both feet running, We're
moving. We are going. I mean, we got a lot to do.
We gotta take care of our lawns. We've got to get them healthy.
We've got to rescue trees where we can take care of those. It
is time to get the soil ready today. Get soil ready so that you
are ready to plant. And when you go out to a garden center,
grab some beautiful plants, bring them home, but bring some bags of soil
with them. Make sure and load up on that, because that's the secret
sauce, so that those beautiful plants end up what you are picturing in your
mind's eye right now, so they end up fulfilling that dream and they can.
We absolutely can't great place here to be able to grow things, easy
to do, not a problem at all. And speaking of you know Buchanan's
Plants and the Heights, that is one of the most outstanding garden centers we
have in the greater Houston area and it's right down in the big middle of
Houston. Buchanan's Plants is on East eleventh Street. If you haven't been there
before, that's where it is. You can go to their website buchanans Plants
dot com. Lots of good things going on. By the way, the
Native Plants Society is going to be out there on Saturday, September thirtieth,
next Saturday from nine am to noon to talk all about natives and to help
you as you shop. If you own a shop for natives, these are
some experts that can help you find the things that you need. It's kind
of a meat and chat time out there with them. I was looking yet.
I've got the Texas Star hibiscus at the house and one of my plants
is in an area where it's just too hot, too dry. I don't
take care of it and water it, and it has been struggling. It's
I have a white version of it, and I was just looking. Buchanans
has the Texas Star as well. They've got the beautiful red one that is
like the most common one, but I think the prettiest one of all.
They've got those on hand. You can get them planted now. It's a
perennial planet. Now get it established. Next summer. Here you go.
You're gonna have beautiful blooms. They've also one of the one of the cool
roses that has been kind of introduced to the market as the Gay Hammond rows.
It's it's a it's a cross done by doctor Davids leisak Up in the
University of Wisconsin. And Doctor's Leisak has worked with us here in Texas on
our earth kind rose trials, as has Gay Hammond, of course, key
player in that uh and they named a rose after Gay Hammond rows. It
starts off a beautiful yellow, it fades to a whitish color, and it
is very disease for which is an important thing for roses. Where do you
get it? Well, they've got it to be Cannon's Plants. Just another
example of one of the reasons we would love to go places like that.
I'm going to go now out to Janey and Missouri City. Hello, Janey,
Hey, how are you this morning? Well, I'm good, I'm
good. It's fall, summer's gone. We survived. Congratulations. Yes,
I have a forty year plus live oak in my backyard that we have trimmed
several times over the years. The most recent time was probably almost three years
ago in February or March. Wow, and I had done some research on
having it trimmed again, and it kind of looked like that during the maybe
more dormant time like February March was a better time to trim. But I
noticed lots of people are trimming trees around the area. Yes, and I
wondered. I wondered if it's the canopy's gotten a little heavy, which probably
saved my backyard with shade. But okay, I'm wondering whether I should go
ahead and trim it now. I have watered it during the summer, okay,
But I just wonder whether now is a good time or whether I could
go ahead and wait until February. So are you going to do the trimming
or are you hiring somebody to come in and try. Oh no, I'm
going to hire somebody. Okay, good. We've used the same company a
couple of times. Okay good. They can shimmy up there, and well,
if they know what they're doing, that's important. That It's why I
always brag on affordable tree because I know that I know the guys. I
know that they know what they're doing. The best time to prune trees in
general is in late winter, mid to late winter. Their dormant and the
fastest healing time is in spring. That's why. But that said, you
can prune a tree any any month of the year if you need to.
Fall is also a decent healing time. It's not as as fast as spring,
but it's faster than it. Much faster than summer are the winter time
in terms of healing that wound. So you also do pruning now if you
need to. It's just up to you. The one thing that I would
throw into consideration is a lot of our good quality treecare people. They get
booked up and busy in the peak season, and so if you catch them
at a little bit of an off time like this, you might have a
better chance of getting getting them out there promptly to get the job done.
Okay, that's just a thought, just to put in the back of your
mind. Yeah, okay, all right, thanks so much. Hey,
thank you, Janey. Good luck with those trees. Sounds like you got
a beautiful live boat. Ye all right, well we are. You know,
I just wish I could could we make this show go four more hours
than hey, because I've got a lot more to talk about. You probably
have a lawn that is struggling. I mean, what lawn is not struggling
after this summer? Right, even if you watered it a lot. It's
tough. Nitrophiles. Folks have put together the Texas three step. I love
the Texas three step that you know. Texas two steps are counting Western dance.
We're going to add an extra step in there, and here's what they
are. Number One, nitrophosts Fall Special winter aizer that's a fertilizer. It's
got the potassium. It helps with drought heartiness and cold heartiness and makes your
grass come out stronger in the spring. It's as simple as that. Secondly,
they've got the nitrophost barricade. That's a pre emergent. You put it
down. You watered in grassy weeds, broad leaf weeds when they try to
germinate, it shuts things down and you never have the weed problem. It's
one thing to kill weeds are already there. It's another thing to prevent them
from happening. And that's what barricade does. And October is the month when
our cool season weeds are going to be germinating, and so why not get
ahead of them and just be done with it rather than trying to kill them
later. The third step nitrophiles Eagle fungicide is a systemic protectant. It's a
curity fungicide too of your turf issues. Now, the ingredient in this it
soaks into the plant, it sticks around. So here we've got large patch
of brown patch coming up. You got to get ahead of it with a
product like like the Eagle Turf Fungicide one two three Fall Special Barricade Eagle Fungicide.
That package is what you're using to deal with all the things that happen
in the fall season in your lawn. Now where can you find it?
Well, One's Southern Gardens carries all three of those Ace hardware, and Sinkle
Ranch carries all three of those Grower's Outlet, and willis all three the Nitropus
three steps system. Simple as that makes it easy. We're going to go
out to Cypress. Now, excuse me, Steve. I started to take
your call and they are telling me I gotta take a break so you will
be first up. Sorry for that false alarm. Seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. Well, good morning. You're listening to Garden
Line and I'm telling you we are having a good time today. It is
fall and we are raring to go because there's a lot of good stuff to
happen in these coming months. Beautiful lawns, bountiful lands gapes. That is
what we're going for. Productive gardens as well. Hey, if you are
looking at a roof system being installed, Brinkman. Write it down. Brinkman.
That's who you need to know. Brinkman Quality dot Com. You can
give him a call at two eight one four eight zero seventy six sixty three.
Why do I say Brinkman, Well, number one, they've been doing
this for fifty years. Here they are a Better Business Bureau Pinnacle Award in
twenty twenty two. They take care of their customers, fully warranted twenty five
years of service. On your roof, they can do the Brinkman timberline solar
shingle. Is that cool or what not? A panel on your roof?
This is your roof, the solar shingle. They can do standing metal roofs,
composition single roofs. You've got commercial or residential, they'll do it all.
Don't trust somebody banging on the door saying they're going to fix your roof.
Go with somebody who lives here, who's been here, who has proven
Brinkman Quality dot Com two eight one four eight o seven six six three very
very important. Hey, we're talking about taking care of your lawns, and
one of the things we do as we take care of our lawns, in
addition to fertilizing, is putting down some of the trace minerals. The micro
micronutrients not needed in big quantities at all, just need a little bit,
but they are essential. If a nutrient is part of the about twenty essential
nutrients that we have for our plants. If it's one of those, if
it's essential, it's essential. Even if you just need a little If you
don't have any, the plant can't grow. Azamite provides that counter mineral to
your soil. Azamite Texas dot com is where you can find out more.
It doesn't take much. Again, at forty four pound bagg will do what
six thousand to twelve thousand square feet. If you got any leftover, put
it in your vegetable garden. You'll have a lot higher nutrient content in the
produce that you're grown for your own family as well asamite. Don't forget the
asmite when you're out taking care of the fertilizer. We're going to head out
now to Steve and Cyprus. Well, hello, Steve, gonna for real
talk this time. Skip takes taking my call. Man, I really like
your your program. Italian cypresses they look great in a in an Italian countryside
painting. They don't do worth the durn here. I've been there, done
that. Uh can't. Is there anything else that that I can run along
the border or my picket fence that that that would grow up in a cylinder
and and just kind of a border border plant. I was wondering about the
popular varieties. So you want something tall and skinny or do you want what?
Do you how big and how tall do you want to be? Well,
I don't want to encroach over into the neighbor's side. I'm on an
acre out here with a big ticket fence around the back. But uh on
the west side, I'd like some shape for sure, but that just uh
a cylinder border plant. Uh. Well, there are a number of different
ones. We've had some upright yopine that you're right about Italian Cyprus. You
may get by with it for a while, but eventually they're going to break
your heart. So I don't recommend those. But the yopons. The problem
with those as they get tall, as they tend to fall apart, Meaning
you have all these upright shoots and they get real tall and heavy and they
start leaning out, and it's like the plant just falls open instead of being
that nice cylinder you were describing, So I'm not real crazy about those.
If you don't need something really tall, we have some weeping yopons that you
could train up and then the branches weep downward. Some of those even have
berries on them. Those are nice. I was trying to think you're up
in Cyprus. I was talking to Beverly at Arbigate a while back, and
there was a holly type plant that they were really big on. And the
name is not come to my mind right now, but I'm going to be
out there today by the way, from eleven thirty to one thirty. If
you would like to come out there, I will find out what it is.
But you might want to talk to them about it, because she and
I were having this discussion about what are we gonna do these yopons, because
every time we get a new one, we think it's going to be good
and then it doesn't hold up. And we started talking about this this holly
that I think is going to be the plant to fit the bill that you're
talking about. Nice. I planted a bunch of those uh old pencil bushes
early spring. They didn't they didn't last through to this this brutal stub.
You talking about Skypencil Holly, Yeah, and yeah, you know, just
just for up against the house and up against the fence anyway. I know
they're not going to get super tall, but they didn't make it at tall.
Well. And the thing about all the hollies, really, even our
native yopun is, if when it's trying to get established, it doesn't have
adequate moisture, it'll just turn brown and die. And so we got to
get those through. I always say give them two or three years a good
TLC with moist soil not saggy, to make sure they're established. And so
even even something like Skypencil, which wouldn't be at the top of the list,
but it's you know, it's the form of the plant is beautiful.
Uh. If it if it goes through a low droughty period, it's going
to be up a creek. Yeah, that was all those were on me.
The Italian cyruses. No, I mean, I've got I've got two
thirty foot ones that are just coast and they've never looked great. Right,
And just to be clear for everyone listening, I'm not saying that, you
know, if you plan hollies, they won't survive here. No, not
at all I'm saying. During the establishment of Hollies, consistent soul moisture is
critical. That that's all. Hey, Steve, good luck with that.
I hope you. I hope you're able to come out to arbigrate today.
If not, just go there and I'm I'm Beverly and say what was that?
What was that Holly type plan? Like you and skip we're talking about
to replace the upright yopons And she'll she'll straight now, thank you, all
right, thank you much? You bet you take it. Yeah, it's
it's really really cool. There's so many new plants and we just don't have
time to test them all and keep up with all of them. Hey,
if you're looking for a quality soil mix, Nature's creation makes an organic compost
with Michael Eisal fungi simple is that it's a byproduct of recycling native trees and
shrubs. It really works well. They compost them organically. They don't add
any other chemicals or anything in there. There are eleven strains of microhizal fungi,
both kind that grow in the root and out of the root. To
increase the drought tolerance and water intake and disease resistant of your roots. Microhizer
or important. Nature's Creation puts them in there. Now you can find Nature's
Creation. It growers outlet and willis at Moss Nursery, don Seabrook RCW up
on two forty nine Wabash Feed and Garden and the Houston Garden Centers. Nature's
Creation is a quality mix. Look for their organic compost with microrhizal fungi and
you will be well on your way to a good start for your plants,
because, as you know, you hear me say, it all begins in
the soil. We're going to head out now to Port Arthur and talk to
d How are things way out east? D Oh, it's still hot?
Okay, first day a fault? No? All right, Well, what's
what's happening? I have a follow up question we spoke about a month ago.
I have an indoor aeroponic Tower Garden and my fall seedlings are ready to
transition to outdoors, and I need to know a couple of things. The
way that they grow in the Tower garden. They are in rock wolves,
so they're in little rock wool cues. Yes. And the roots system,
of course you know some of them. The roots are you know, three
four feet long. Okay, So my question is, when I've put them
in smaller posts outdoors, do I need to take them out of the rock
will trend the roots and then put them in soil, or should I leave
them in the rock wool kind of curl up the root system and then put
soil over the rock wool. Cue. That's a good question. It's gonna
be a transplant shot going from the aeroponic system they've been in to soil outdoors.
That's just a fight. If you could, if you could lesson that,
maybe make it in stages. For example, maybe you would take them
out of the araponic, you would leave the rock wall, don't take it
off. Trim the roots so they fit a container that you have, and
get them started, get them kind of adjusted, and then move them gradually
into the outdoor where they're exposed more to the full temperatures and things, and
then gradually even into the full sun that transition period. The way roots grow
in water is a little different than in soil, and so you can transfer
from water to soil, but there's a little bit of a setback. And
so if you add to that, now we're exposing you know, ninety five
degree temperatures or maybe full sun or something. You can't do all that at
once, right, Okay, what kind of soil would you suggest that I
use? A good quality soil mix? You know, I was just I
was just talking about nature's creation. Has that organic compost mix that's is good.
I know that Heirloom Soils makes an outdoor and an or potting mix that
works really well too, and as well as a mixes for just the beds
that you're building and wanting to plant in. You're not going to go wrong
with either. Okay, Okay, that sounds great. I'll be working on
that this week. Thanks, all right, all right, send pictures.
Thanks a lot. I appreciate appreciate that call. Hey, are you looking
for an outing? Maybe? How about an idea for tomorrow Sunday afternoon to
get out and about. You know the Antique Rosemporium up in They're in the
Brenham area, you know, up and toward Independence Way. You can go
to Antique Rosemporium dot com. It's always good to go out there and visit
them. I mean, they it's just cool. This weekend only this weekend
only, Saturday and Sunday. All roses are five bucks. Off. All
roses are five bucks off, and boy do they ever have a selection of
antique roses, roses, roses roses. They also have a lot of other
great plants in their garden center, perennials and a nuals and natives. Of
course, they've got vegetable starts and herbs. Nice selection. I bought herbserve
before, a really nice selection of herbs. Antiqurosium dot com, rose Emporium
dot com. I'm talking too fast here. Antiqu Rosemporium dot com now nine
seven nine eight three six five five four eight that's their phone number. Don't
forget. They're having their Fall festal of roses November third through fifth. Go
online, it's on their website. Check it out. Lots of great talks,
lots of fun at the Antique Rosenmporium. Always a good day to be
out at the Antique Rosenbrier, and plus it's just a good outing. Take
family and friends out there. It's like you've gone to another place and time.
That place since way back in the days John Chupas was establishing, it
has always been a destination place. And boy with the new the new folks
running the place now, they are just continuing to take it forward, really
really cool. You know, we've gotten a little bit of rain here and
there, and when you get ran, you get mosquitoes, and so we
don't want to be a squitter breeder. So what we're gonna do is we're
going to make sure that doesn't happen by putting mosquito dunks in any standing,
stagnant piece of water. You can buy the whole dunks. You can throw
them in a little pond covers one hundred square feet in last a month,
or you can buy granules are you can just buy a mosquito dunk, the
little doughnuts and break them up and put them in water. Anyway you go
about it. It's a disease of mosquitoes. It will not hurt fish,
pets, birds, wildlife at all. Mosquito dunks are available everywhere. They
work well, it's organic, it's simple, and it's the best thing that
can happen to a mosquito is to die of a horrible disease. Nikki,
that is that makes me happy, you know that's happening out there in the
water. Indeed, they carry so many diseases. They do, they do,
and I know they have a place in nature and blah blah blah.
Yeah, but it's it's in a different kind. It's not in my back
yard. It's not that part of nature. We're gonna take a break.
Seven three two one two five eight seven four. Well, good morning,
and welcome to Garden Line. We are glad you're listening. Our phone number
if you would like to give us a call is seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Hey, I've got an idea. The weather's cooling off, it's football
season. It's time to get outside and enjoy the landscape, enjoy the patio.
A visit to Ace Hardware can get you set up just for that.
Now, why are you there. You're going to pick up the fertilizers you
need for your lawn because they have them all, absolutely all. If you
need weed control, disease control, insect control, they've got it all.
They've got everything for your lawn, the tools, the hoses, everything you
need to have a beautiful lawn and landscape, they've got it. They've got
outdoor materials to turn that beautiful patio, that deck, or just an outdoor
sitting area in the lawn into a place of beauty, really an enjoyment.
Do you need a barbecue pit? Do you need some bling for your whole
barbecue scene out there as you're the pet master in the backyard. Ace Hardware's
got it. If you need it, they've got it, and they make
outdoor living fun and easy and truly truly a pleasure. Ace Hardware dot Com
go online, look for their store locator. Find the one near you with
thirty nine in the Greater Houston area. There is more than one near you.
And when you walk into Ace Hardware, you're going to come out with
everything you need for that beautiful outdoor living. And oh my gosh, we
just got a break from the weather, so it's time to start living outdoors
again. Those folks at they'll set you up and they will get you well
on your way to doing just that. I was out barbecue in the other
day. It's been a while because I don't know, I just you know,
when it's a hundred degrees at eight o'clock at night, it's kind of
hard to get excited about being outside even at that hour. And boy,
now it's not And oh my goodness, were we were cooking up some stuff
I had some baskets that I got from Ace Hardware. The put like vegetables
in. You know, it's kind of like you're going to do a shish
kebab, but you just put the vegetables loose in there and flip them over
and turn them. I got a basket. We're cooking fish in as well,
and just enjoying the pit, enjoying being outside. And if you hadn't
noticed today, I'm a little bit excited about the fact that it's fall,
and as a gardener, I am very excited about the fact that it is
fall. Let's head out to friends Wood and we're going to talk to Charlie.
Well, Hello, Charlie, good morning, Skip. Have you Paul,
well you as well. What's happening in Friendswood? Well, we have
a small pond down the front yard. I would say it's so about a
ten by eighteen or ten by twenty and after that it would have been dry
for a month or so at least. And at that recent rain we got
about foot and a half of water in it looked nice. Within two days
we suddenly had a green scum we'll call it, all across the top,
okay, and tried to rake it off or you know a little bit,
but we didn't help. My wife put a bottle of dome and it quite
well cleared it up. However, Yeah, and you know, but then
about three or four days it was back. She said, it looks it
looks oily stuff on the top. All right, were all around it.
But it needs some help from that. All right, So a couple of
things. That's not a huge pond. I mean, it's it's manageable,
right, ten by twenty go ahead, no, but but maybe ten by
fifteen or ten by twenty, okay, all right, So that scummy stuff
you can you can literally skim off of there. Put in your compost top.
By the way, too. It's really packed with nutrients, but you
can skim it off there. It happens. Algae and other types of weeds
like that in the pond. They happen because we have nutrient content in the
water. You know, if you were to throw nitrogen fertilizer out in your
pond, you're gonna see it's gonna turn green because all those little microplants they
need nitrogen and it just gives them a boost and it becomes a big mess,
a big, big mess. So you want to avoid anything that puts
that kind of nutrient in the pond. Maybe it's running off your driveway or
running off your yard, and just avoid that kind of thing and the way
you fertilize and watered in and everything. There is a website and it's it
deals with everything pond and weed h and it's called Aquaplant aquapla n t aquaplant
dot tmu dot edu. And that website has videos, it's got pictures.
It'll help you identify the specific plant, the specific scum type thing you get
you're dealing with. It tells you how to control them, how to manage
them. It's just a really good resource. And I realize yours is a
little kind of a small backyard thing. There are people that are listening.
They've got little small farm ponds, you know, little ponds outside of town,
and aquaplant dot temo dot etu is a good place to go. That
is what I would do. I would not resort to herbicides in this particular
situation. I would skim the top off, just keep good freshwater in there.
And I think that's your best bet. When we get the change in
the weather that's coming, it's going to help with that as well. One
other question, Now your thought of would possibly do any good? I'm trying
a shortcut better guess Okay, put in some gradulated chlorine in there. Well,
yeah, I would kill it. It would kill it. The only
thing is when you kill organic matter and it sinks down in the water,
it decomposes anaerobically without oxygen. And two things. If you have fish in
the pond, it'll just flat kill them because it removes the oxygen. Okay.
The other thing is it can start to it can start to stink really
bad. I was outside, I had a bucket sitting around the corner of
the back door. I didn't see it, and it had a bunch of
plant material in it that I'd pulled up and it filled up with water at
a rain and I started smelling this horrible stench. I couldn't figure out where
it was coming from. There's that bucket full of decomposing organic matter, And
that's what will happen in your pond if you just kill it, because it's
still organic matter. So just be aware of that. If I could skim
as much out as possible, I would do that. But yes, you
could chlorinate and kill it that way. As well, okay, great and
ta or aqua plant TAMU dot ed yeah, eed u as in education,
the first three letters of education, yep dot edu aqua plant. And for
anybody listening, if you got a little farm, pond or anything, it's
especially good for those because they just have everything you need to know. It's
one of the best organized websites I've ever seen. I Charlie, thank you
for that. Good luck with that pond. I appreciate thank you very much.
Good luck to you. Yes or thank you. I appreciate that call
very much. You know, when when we get rain like we've had,
and we've got this Houston black clay top soil all through this area, it
shrinks and swells. It gets wet, it swells, it shrinks when it
gets dry, and that movement rex havoc on our foundations. That's why Tie
Strickland started Fix My Foundation, Fix my Slab Foundation Repair Service. You can
give them a call at two eight one two five forty nine forty nine.
If you see that your doors are sticking, something's moving. If you see
cracks in the brick outside, cracks in the sheet rock inside, don't delay.
It's not going to get better, is not going to fix itself and
it will get worse. Call Ti Strickland two eight one two five forty nine
forty nine. They give you time and they show up on time. They
give you a fair price, and they fix it right. That's what's important.
By the way, they also do driveways and sidewalks if you need that
done. Fix my slap dot com. We're gonna take a break seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Mike, you're first up when
we come back. Well, you're listening to garden Line and we are entering
our last segment of the morning wherever every Saturday and Sunday, by the way,
six am to ten am. This is a call in show. You
can call in and ask whatever kinds of gardening questions you might have. And
that is what I most enjoy doing, is visiting with gardeners and helping you
have success. You have a green thumb, you just don't know it yet,
and all you need is information to go from brown to green when it
comes to your thumb color. And you know part of that information is here
on garden Line. That's why we're here to help looking forward to doing just
that. Our phone number seven one three, two, one two fifty eight
seventy four. We're gonna head straight out to Sugarland and talk to Mike.
Hello, Mike, Hello, Skips, good morning, Thank you. I
got a question. I overwatered my arbor. It was in a pod.
It's only about four feet tall. I took it out and the root ball
was really wet, so I put it in the ground. And I'm wondering
if the brown that's dead on it now will turn back green eventually or whether
it's yeah, yeah, just dead. Yeah, that's a good question.
Arborvitis, junipers, cedars, pines, all those trees can only regrow from
the base of living needles or living living scale like leaves, which is what
your arborvity has. So if you have a branch that turns brown, that
branch is not going to be able to reach sprout. If you cut a
branch off right behind the living green stuff, it cannot reach sprout. On
those kind of plants. It would have to then start to grow in from
the sides to fill that hole, which is usually a very slow process that
if the hole's big enough, it'll it'll never finish. Right, So take
a look at the plant esthetically, make your judgments. But if there's a
brown branch, you might as well just cut it off wherever it attaches because
it's not coming back out there. Yeah. I was scared of that.
Yeah, yeah, sorry to be the bear of bad news that happens.
We have diseases that do that. We have drought that does that. We
have spider mites that do that. We have bagworms that eat the leaves off
and do that. Arborvites have a lot of enemies out there. And keeping
one full and round and green and tall or whatever it is, it's a
it's a challenge. Yeah, Okay, I want to plant a winter grass
and my Saint Augustine this year and for the first time. So when when
do I want to buy the seed? And what kind of seed do you
recommend? Well, if you want to do that, first of all,
I'm gonna have tried to talk you out of it and saying that when you
overseed your lawn, it's like you're planting weeds in the lawn to compete for
water and nutrients and things. People do it every year. You seem virtial
properties around town that have the beautiful green lawn all winter because they overseated it.
It can be done. But just know that that is exactly what you're
doing. You're putting weeds in your lawn. Those weeds just happened to be
grass weeds that you like to look at. I would get a mix of
about the annual rye and perennial rye. There's usually some eighty twenty mixes out
there, but the annual and perennial together, one of them helps make up
for what the other one lacks, and so it ends up being a better
overall. Look. I'd probably put it out early November or maybe late October
as the seed follow whatever rate is recommended on the product you purchase, and
you know, watered into the lawn. Just know you are going to need
to give a little fertilizer as it starts to grow and get going, and
you're gonna have to do some winter mowing. Okay, maybe just seed it
lightly with that help with the weed problem or well a little bit, But
then it kind of looks doesn't really look very impressive. You know, It's
like your grass kind of browns a little bit in the winter, but there's
no green coming back. So I guess I'm not saying don't do it.
I'm just saying, realize when you do it coming out in spring, you're
gonna need to mow that lawn down pretty low to get that cool season grass
out of there and get your fresh new grass coming back in to fill it
in. And year after year when we do that in Bermuda grass lawns on
commercial sites, we do see a little bit of a stress and a decline
that can happen. All right, thank you very much. All right,
so thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Oh let's see,
let's go back to tom Ball and we're going to talk to Linda. Hello,
Linda, good morning. I'm doing good. I can't wait to come
up to tom Ball. I don't know if you have the afternoon free,
but I hope you and family and friends will come over to Arburgates so we
can talk more about things going on in your landing. Exactly, exactly.
Well, I have a question for you. Actually on my way to my
grandson's football game right now, but yeah, I plan on coming back.
Okay. I have pon trees that only every couple of years have little pecans,
and I think it's always the squirrels that eat them, But my dogs
chase the squirrels off. Now, yes, so I actually have little pecons
on at least one of my trees. What can I do to make sure
they become full adult pecans and I can actually eat them? Okay? Now,
was this a volunteer tree or did you buy and plant improve pecans?
The people that had the property thirty years ago when we bought it had planted
three trees. Okay. So pecan size, the nutlet size is dependent number
one, on the genetics. Some pecans are naturally big, some are naturally
small, And to be honest, it's not bad having a smaller pecan because
it's easier to fill some of the really big paper shell pecans. If we
go through summer droughts, which hello the last two years, they don't fill
the kernels well and you end up with not fully filled kernels, which isn't
a good thing. Whereas the small sized pecan varieties they do feel better,
and so that would be one thing to keep in mind. The other thing
is water. In the first part of the growing season up until about August,
first the pecan is growing in size, and if you lack water,
or if you lose leaves to disease or insects, on the pecan tree,
you may not get the full sized pecan that that variety is capable of producing.
Then after August first, it fills the kernel in. So if you
have hollow pecans, it's because of a lack of water or a lack of
leaf cover after August first. So it's going to either be genetics or it's
going to be water, or it's going to be a combination of the two
that you're you're asking about. Well, they are on a lower part of
our property. I'm on six acres and they're in a lower part of the
property. Okay, but I haven't been able water them. Yeah. Well,
you know in Texas, pecons are native and they grow in these big
river bottoms and they can send a route down twenty feet if they need to
to find some water a water table down there, and that's where they thrive.
And when we bring them into more of an upland kind of a soil
situation where the water is sometimes not so dependable, pecans can struggle. I
mean, you can keep them alive, but they don't reach their full potential.
Let me just put it that way. That's try well hopefully rain.
Yeah, that's what we need. You just need to get out and do
a raindownce and I'll do one myself to try to help you out a little
bit in the meantime. And here you go and get those things, get
those those things going. But you know, with pecans, I hate to
say it this way, but I kind of joke that when you plan a
pecan tree, you don't get to eat pecans. You just get to eat
squirrel meat. And a lot of people don't don't like the sound of that,
but hey, it's the reality. But I'll tell you a pecon fed
squirrel is some good eating. That's the mess of what we're dealing with.
At least you're making some squirrels happy out there. Linda. There you go.
Well, I appreciate it. You have a great day you too.
Take care. Oh man, Wow, another show gone. That was fast.
Hey, I am about to jump in a car and guess where I'm
heading. I Am heading to the arbour Gate up in Tomball eleven thirty to
one thirty. I'll be there. I'm going to be giving away the arbor
Gates organic food complete every fifteen minutes. They're supplying it and also nitrophos Color
Express fourteen fourteen fourteen now you sprinkle that in your flower beds. Getting good
response on all these cool season color plants you're about to put out there and
your flower beds. So we'll be giving both of those away. I'll be
answering your gardening question. So bring me some samples and ziplock bags to look
at, to identify, to diagnose, Bring me pictures of the yard.
Look at my yard? What do I do? What would go well here?
Let's talk about that because you're gonna be right there at the arbourgate and
they have everything. By the way, they got a new shipment of citric
in very recently, and every kind of citris you can imagine, so plan
on shopping. The best news of all for the day, though, is
they got a brand new parking lot off Tracial Road that goes around behind Arburgate.
No more parking on the road. Get back there in the parking lot.
Come see me