Katie r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Ricter.
It's sho crazy Gashrim. Just watch him as worlds many got by gas
again not a sound Well. Good morning, Good Saturday morning. I am
looking forward today to talking to you about whatever you're interested in regarding gardening.
I've got a few topics I'm going to cover. I must spend a lot
of time today on what to do this time of year in your lawn,
your landscape, some of the important things. Last year hammered a lot of
our lawns and there's a lot we can do. And let me tell you,
we are in the big middle of it. They always say he who
hesitates his loss. This is the time of year when it comes to your
lawn that you don't want to hesitate. And I'll talk about that a little
bit more later and we get a little further into it. If you had
like would like to give us a call, you can reach me at seven
one three two one two five eight seven four, or if you like to
die by the letter seven one three two one two KTRH Simple as that,
let's get you on the board and talk about the things that you are most
interested in regarding your garden, your landscape. We're going to start by heading
out to Tomball and talking to our early bird of the day, Mel.
Hello, Mel, Hey, good morning. You know your opening lines are
just hit home with probably what my question is. Okay, as warm as
it's been this February, I've never seen this warm before. We're looking for
an early spring. I would imagine, Hey, you know, I wish
I had that crystal Ball. I'm a concern. I'm concerned that we still
may have another frost or freeze in US. So some of the things I'll
talk about today is those of you are anxious to get out gardening, there
are some ways we can we can prep for that kind of hedge our bed
a little bit so. But uh anyway, yeah, I don't know about
how early. If it comes early, that like I said, this is
the big the big caveat is well when does some little late freeze come?
And that's that's what we deal with every spring. Welcome to gardening, right?
Yeah? Well good, I was I was I was going to try
to put down by pre emergent herbicide pretty quick before the rain case or whatever.
And I would imagine that's okay to do that. Absolutely, it's not
just okay. If you're going to use a primergent, you got to get
in ahead of the sprouting of the weeds and we're there. It's time to
get it down, all right. Well, that's that's that's that's good to
know it. I lost. I lost a lot of grass last year like
everybody else. So I'm hoping that can get something back. Well. And
if since you did, you got thin areas in the lawn and that you
know, wherever unlight hits the soil, nature plants a weed. And so
that that's why the pre emergent probably this year is going to be a little
more, you know, in an important step because yeah, that bear soil
area will just you'll just start to get weeds each germinating. All right,
Uh all right, yeah, hey, mel, I don't know if you're
using barricade or what, but when you use a pre emergent like nitruss is
barricade, you want to put it down at the label rate. Don't think
that adding more is better. It's not use the label rate, follow it
very carefully and then watered in with about a half inch of water, about
third a half inch of water. That moves Go ahead, I'm sorry,
I was going to say it moves it into the soil. Sitting on the
granule you put out, it's not doing you any good when the moisture comes
and dissolves it and it ties up right at the soil surface where it does
its work, so that that watering it in is very important. Well that
it's pretty interesting that you say that, because somebody told me says, no,
that like the barricade is I think it's like whatever ten crowns covers five
thousand, and he said no, he said, that's really not enough.
Do you need to actually make it, like, you know, maybe a
bag and a half or five thousand and I'm thinking, well, well let
me let's just let's just use logic, you know, for a minute,
on what your friend said. If I made a herbicide, wouldn't I want
you to use more to buy more of my product? Right? So why
would I set a label rate that's low lower than it needs to be for
you to have success? Absolutely cannot be true. Follow the label. It's
on there for a reason that that rate if you put it out evenly.
At that rate, you will get good results when you move it in.
But the teaspoons good tablespoons better. We've used it our whole life for all
kinds of things, you know, and it just don't do it in gardening,
whether it's an insecticide or a fundicide. You know, there are secondary
issues that come when we move. It'd be like taking too much of certain
kinds of medicine. It's not not good for you. All right, Well,
that's good, good, good too. I'm glad I called you.
All right, Well, I'm glad you did too. Good luck up there
getting that tomboy yard and top shape. I'd save some money now there you
go. Well, okay, so I hope you spend it on other plants
and pum take care. Our phone number again seven one three two one two
k t r H. Give me a call. Let's talk about the things
that are of interest to you. Yes, I want to talk about spring
and the critical things. I'm going to do this more than once today,
because I know we have folks at tune in different times and listen. Uh
So it's always surprised me. Sometimes I'll say something and three minutes later someone
will call with that same question because they weren't listening when I said that the
first time. They weren't tuned in the first time. Maybe they were tuned
in, they weren't listening. I'll give them the benefit of a doubt.
But anyway, last summer was brutal, and our lawns lost a lot of
their density just because we couldn't water. And some people completely lost areas of
their lawn And you're gonna have to sad those areas. And I want to
say something right now, and I need you to listen. This is important
to hear this and understand this. If you have a lawn and you're not
re sodding, a pre emergent herbicide put down at the right rate and moved
into the surface will help protect against weeds. But if you plan on having
to put sod down, you don't want to lay sod down on something designed
to prevent we'd seed roots from developing and therefore control the weeds. So because
you don't want to affect your grassroots that you're laying on top of this barrier.
So you know, to put a barrier on the surface is fine,
but to lay it put it down on the ground. And then lay sod
on. It doesn't make sense, So go ahead and get the sodding done,
and then later on, when you've got that established and grown in really
well, the roots have moved from the sod down into the soil, then
if you want to use products on the surface, that's fine, but just
keep that in mind. Some people are going to have to do some residing,
and so when I talk about pre emergence, you need to have that
in mind. But if you're not residing, you can go ahead and do.
I hope that wasn't confusing, but it is important to remember that this
is an important time because once our soil temperatures hit about fifty five degrees or
so, depends on the weed species, things start to sprout out in the
garden. Do you have issues with grass birds? Do you have issues with
let's see crabgrass, that's a common summer weed that we deal with. Well,
each of those has this little temperature range where it really begins to sprout,
and we're getting close to hitting those temperature ranges here. That starts to
happen on the average throughout the Greater Houston area about this time of the A
A little bit later than this time toward the end of the month and in
tomorrow, and we want to be ahead of that with our applications. Uh.
And the analogy I like to use is you're playing baseball. Should you
swing at the ball before it gets to the plate so that you hit it
when it does or do you wait until it's in the catcher's myth to swing?
Well, that's a ridiculous question, but it makes a point. If
you let all the weed seeds sprout and germinate and then you put on a
pre emergent, well, pre emergent is what it's called, not post emergent.
So, uh, you want you don't want to delay in that and
move those in. I want to see a couple of other things about application.
We talk about watering it in with about a half inch of water.
I'm going to come back in just a moment. It's time for me to
take a break, but I'll be right back and with your calls. Our
phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. All
right, welcome back to garden Line. We're glad you're listening today. Our
phone number. You want to write this down so you can give us a
call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven to one
three two one two five eight seven For guess what day is coming up?
Valentine's Day. I know you were all thinking that, right, Valentine's Day.
This is a tip. Guys, listen if ladies don't listen for just
a minute, please, Guys, you don't want to mess up this.
It's important to get it right. Okay. I want to give you a
suggestion. You're not going to go wrong with a rose bush. Rose bushes.
You know. The cool thing about a plant like that for a gift
like that is it's one thing you can buy a bunch of long stem cut
roses. That's fine, go ahead and do that. Good luck. I
mean everybody else is after the same runs you are. Rose bush. You
give it to them, and year after year after your season after season,
the blooms just keep coming. You cannot buy a better, cheaper, more
economical, more repeat ongoing supply of roses than just getting a nice quality rose
bush. And RCW Nursery is an example of a place like that. Rcw's
rosebush list is like over four pages long. I mean you can go to
their website, do that, go to RCW nurseries dot com. Check it
out. You'll see what I'm talking about. The list is on there and
they are loaded up. And by the way, when it comes to blooms
and pretty blooms, pretty pink blooms, azaleas, camellias, citrus trees are
all on February sale twenty percent off azaleas, camellias and citrus trees. So
while you're there at the roses, there's a lot of other things to get
At RCW Nursery they always have a good stock, and just go through the
list. I would recommend print it out or at least look at it online,
write down some of the ones you want to check into, and then
go there to shop with that. You know there's gonna be other people there
after your roses, so don't delay. You want to get be able to
have a good selection, get the ones you're looking for. And that's how
you do it now RCWS at Tombolpark win but way eight, real easy to
get to, real simple. Just go to RCW Nurseries dot com. RCW
nurseries dot com and find out more. And believe me, when it comes
to a good selection, they definitely definitely have it. Hey, you're listening
to Guardline. We're going to talk about all kinds of things today. I
was just talking about if you are using a pre emergent, how to do
that right. And I want to make one other statement about both putting down
a nervous side and fertilizing, and this is important. We get rainstorms that
come. We got a little bit predicted this weekend, and you know that
it would be nice if it rained a nice slow half inch to move that
product down into the soil. But what often happens is we get a gully
washer and it just, you know, really rips and goes. And if
you especially if you have a fertilizer that's an immediate release which is used in
the spring green up application. If you choose to do that, an immediate
release fertilizer, it's a salt based and so imagine, you know, you
sprinkle salt or sugar on the counter and then just flood it with water.
Where does all that go? It dissolves and it washes away. So you
don't want to do that right for a rain do it, do a little
irrigation, But unless you know it's not going to rain too much, I
wouldn't put those out right before a rain. Make sure and you know,
just pay attention to that because you purchased it, it took time to put
it out. You want to grow grass with it. If this is a
lawn situation, you want to go grass. You don't want to grow algae
in a creek somewhere else. So be wise and be frugal by making that
application correct. Just something to think about out there in our spring lawn care
activities. You know, we talk a lot about lawns and weeds. Just
about everybody has a lawn and so we get a lot of questions on how
to what's wrong with my lawn, how to have a beautiful lawn, how
to take care of my lawn, and we talk about that all the time
on guard Line. But I want to be really clear about one thing.
When it comes to any garden, any landscape situation, the goal is not
to run around with products to kill things that pop up. The goal is
to grow as good and healthy of a garden as you can. And then
when you have a deal an issue you need to deal with, then you
pick the right product at the right time, at the right rate to do
that. And so the way we have a big, beautiful lawn or a
beautiful lawn is to mow water and fertilize properly through the year. And that's
what my lawn schedule does. If you go to gardening with Skip dot com
Gardening with Skip dot com, look at the lawn schedule and it talks about
when to fertilize and with what to get you all the way through the year.
That's the goal. Mow water infertilized. The denser your lawn, the
healthier lawn, the better shape your lawn is in, the fewer weed problems
you have to deal with. And when you fertilize properly, not too much,
not too little, then you also have less of a problem with issues
of certain insects and certain diseases that can be related to lawn care as well.
So it makes sense to make it easier on yourself create that foundation.
Over time, you can grow yourself out of most weed issues, but there
are weeds that you cannot grow out of. Saint Augustine will choke out a
lot of weed seeds, but things like Virginia button weed and dollar weed and
some others they're very difficult to deal with because they can coexist in the Saint
Augustine Lane. We have to deal with those, but that's a one at
a time. You know, each one has its its particular the best approach
to managing it. But for right now, just focus on the fact that
if you're going to need to prevent weeds, this would be the time to
prevent them. Compost top dressings help a little bit in that as well.
It's always a good time to get out there and put a little bit of
a compost top dressing down where you know, you can have that thin layer
over the surface. It shades the soil a little bit. It's not like
you're putting three inches the compost out, so it's not going to give the
full multch effect, but it is going to help some and that that's really
important to be able to do that. We got we got one of our
our folks that we like to recommend is green Pro Green Pro. My gosh,
they have been doing compost top dressing for a good while now and they
are focusing their efforts on about twenty five forty five excuse me, miles one
way or another from the Magnolia area. You know, they don't they don't
head wey south we kind of say it tends kind of the line they work
on. But if you're in Spring or Cyprus area, Woodland's up in Conroe
or Willis Magnolia, Montgomery, Katie, even West Houston, Central Houston,
North Houston, that's green Pro territory and they can come out. They if
it's a distance, you know, they have to charge a mileagrate to get
out because they're bringing a lot of heavy equipment. They're bringing the com bulky
compost materials and everything. But I'm telling you, a compost stop dressing on
your lawn, especially with a quality leaf more compost, that's what Greenpro uses.
That material will do a lot to helping your lawn, especially one that's
struggled. And they are struggling right now coming out of the winter season.
So give green Pro call. You can go to the website it's greenpro dot
net, green pro dot net, or call them two eight one three five
one forty seven thirty three two eight one three five one forty seven thirty three.
I love watching lawns when they've been compost top dressed and just watching the
way the lawn responds as the weather worm's up, maybe begins to grow and
stuff makes a big difference. You know, nature fertilizes that way. Nature
drops leaves on the ground in forests and in meadows, and it adds back
that organic matter to the soil gradually over time, over the years, and
things just keep getting better and better. I have talked a little bit about
some things with the lawn this morning. I'm going to continue to do that
as we go through the morning. What are some things you need to know
about in getting ahead of things? And the first message of the day is
you gotta if you're gonna have to deal with a weed problem, it's better
to prevent it than to try to kill it after it's growing. When weeds
are growing in your lawn, there are products that can help on that,
but as it gets hotter and hotter, our product options dwindled to very few,
very few, and it's much better to just avoid it in the first
place. If you have a vegetable garden, if you're interested in vegetable gardening,
By the way, I keep forgetting to give you our phone number seven
one three two one two KTRH if you'd like to give me a call this
morning. If you're thinking about vegetable gardening, We're on that borderline, you
know, where we go. Do I put my tomatoes in the ground and
peppers and things, or do I not? H? And the gamblers will
uh. And they're because they're going to get out and cover the plants because
it is a likelihood we're going to have a frost coming up. I mean
it, just if you look at the average, we're not there yet.
We're not at the average last final date. We may not have any more
and we may it, just we don't know. That's the gambler. So
if you like to gamble to get out early and get going, go for
it and be ready to cover them up. If you are very conservative and
you do not want to buy more seeds or transplant or anything like that,
you got two options. By the way, those are the people that wear
both belts and suspenders, just to be sure. The options you have are.
Number one, go aead and buy the plants and bring them home.
And if look at the root system, if it's pretty full in that pot,
go ahead and bump it to the next sized pot and just hang on
to them. You can put them outside during the day when we're going to
get down below fifty five or so. I would bring them in at night
and make sure they're doing good. Some people bring them in even if it's
going to just be sixty But just couldn't do that and get them growing,
because then when it's time to plant, you have a bigger plant and you're
better off. You're doing better off, or you you know, you could
put them in the garden and then have to protect them. But just a
couple of options for getting that good early start. Because I don't know about
you, but I am raring to go to get out and do some gardening.
This is going to be a good spring. I just know it is.
I feel it in my bones, and I've been planting out in my
garden. I've got some transplants going indoors, and it's just a lot of
fun to be able to do that. Hey, if your landscape was looking
bad, I talked about it, then lawn. If you have other issues
in your landscape, like maybe you lost some plant or lost some whole sections
along last year, maybe your irrigation system wasn't giving good coverage, even coverage,
and even though you're watering, you just couldn't keep the lawn alive.
Pierce scapes can come out and they can fix all of that, they can
put in new planting and say, hey, I need some stuff that's a
little more drought tolerant, or how about redesigning a bed or something like that.
Now's the time to call them and get scheduled, because they're gonna be
really busy. They're gonna be do irrigation twunops, making sure taking care of
things like that. They're gonna be doing planting and designing. And the sooner
you sit down with them and bring in your pictures and talk to them and
say, hey, let's talk about a design. The sooner you can get
that set up and oh my gosh, water gardens, walkways, rock patios,
landscape lighting, and it just goes on. A drainage. There's a
huge one, a huge one. If we don't have good drainage, planes
don't do well. Piercecapes can fix that. All you gotta do is go
to the website Piercescapes dot com or call them. Two eight one three seven
oh five zero six zero was time for Nicky and the news. We'll be
right back. Welcome back to garden Line. We're glad you're listening today.
We are going to be talking all morning, well all morning till ten am
about the different things that we need to be doing right now that are very
timely, and we have some things. This is that baseball moment the pitcher
has let go of the ball. You got to make a decision and you
got to swing at the right time if you're going to hit the ball.
And this is the right time for a lot of different kinds of things that
are out there. For example, you've got plants that have been through a
little bit of a hammering frieze. This year, we had a pretty good
one that wopped them pretty well. And as those plants are getting ready to
push new growth, As you start to see new growth coming on, it's
a good time to put down something that is going to provide nutrients for those
roots as well as other important elements or other there's hormones, there's vitamins,
there's nutrients, all kinds of different things that go on to the soil.
But Medina Plus is a seaweed extract to medina soil activator. So you got
two really excellent products right there put together. In Medina Plus, it encourages
root growth, encourages blooming and fruiting. You're getting the nutrients out there and
you're providing a lot of biological activity additionally to what's in the soil. With
those products, I like to drench them on to the base of the plant
as it's beginning to try to regrow, and then turn on and do folio
your feet as well. You can spray on the leaves as are coming out
and beginning to grow. Once you have a leaf you can hit with spray,
then it's time to do some of the folio feeding as well. And
Medina has a number of different products at work very well. I'll talk about
some others a little further in the season, but right now, the Medina
Plus with that seaweed extracts, or you can also just purchase Medina Seaweed two
to use as you begin to do some folio on your plants. It's very
good too for little seedlings you're getting started. Just to follow the label real
carefully, but mix a dilute solution and kind of watermen get them going.
As you're putting transplants in watermen with that as well, it all works really
well. Hey, we're going to head out now to Ralph in northwest Houston.
Hello Ralph, good morning. I'm sure glad you've covered everything. How
hold on, hat's already. Oh okay, well and I'm all already to
get to going. Yeah, and my compost? What did put on top
of my yard? My Saint Augustine is coming through to the board. Have
you put some compost out already? Ralph? Have you already put it out?
No? I haven't. Okay, Well, any kind of a good
screen compost can be used, you know, if you purchase that's a lot
of work and it's a mess. Uh, and a lot of people just
heart done. That's where we're talking about greenpro coming out and just doing it
for you. But uh, you can anytime you you do a compost top
dressing lightly over the over the grass, you can get some benefit from that
as long as it's screened. You don't want chunks of wood and stuff that
you know your lawnmoar is going to hit and send everywhere. But I say,
my compost, if I'm making it my self, I save it for
you know, potting plants and potted plants containers and working into the vegetable garden
because uh, it's you need a lot of it. Okay, you're very
good at what you do. And I'm glad for Aguland thanks sir, and
my pecan tree. I told you about it. They it's very so much
and I had have ability to come out in trimed three years ago and then
it had so much heavy I didn't have them again this year. And it
just wrapped the big limbs off of a lost I got a bunch of different
kind of leaves. Yea tree. Well, those those pecans get older,
Ralph, and that just you know, they they do. They're bad about
dropping some limbs sometimes as they get older. So oh, it was so
heavy, like the acorns did everything on my tree. I got. I
got a lot of stuff, all right. Anyway, Well, hey,
thank you so much. I appreciate you call this. You take care up
there, have a good time gardening. Let's head up to Seabrook and talk
to Carol. Hello, Carol. Hi. Hey, you know we don't
spend that much time in the front yard. And several days ago we were
out there and I looked up at our our live oak and there was a
holes, I mean hundreds of holes. It's just on the street side.
And my husband said, well, it must be a woodpecker. Okay,
you tellmage to the tree. Will it ever survive? You're talking about holes
that are like the size of a pencil eraser, little little bittyles. That
is a sapsucker bird. It won't hurt the tree. Don't worry about it.
They do that, and if you look at them closely, they typically
are in horizontal lines, like you took a machine gun and strafed across the
trunk. Are you there? It's up and it's up and down tree.
Well, you could send me a picture of it, but I'm ninety nine
point nine percent sure you're talking about a sapsucker and there's nothing to do about
it, nothing to worry about. Okay, so we shouldn't spray it or
anything to keep bugs from borrowing in. No, that's it's not really.
That won't be related to that. The sapsucker work. They make a little
tiny hole, barely touch that living bark inside, and it leads a little
sap They come back and drink it and that that's kind of how that works.
But I would say that these holes are at least a quarter or plus
deep. Yeah, they're about the depth of a pencil of a brand new
pencil eraser and about that size too. Yep, that's what the bird does.
Hey, you're lucky to be out there in Seabrook. You got Moss
Nursery on the back steps. Yeah, true. Oh well, I was
just out there out there yesterday. Go ahead. Well, I'm not gonna
We're not gonna lose our tree that was my Those holes are not going to
be the cause of a loss of the tree. Okay, all right,
Well, thank you so very much for the information. The day you take
care of Carrol, you too as well. Yeah, I went out,
I was out at Moss. We were just walking through and look at my
wife loves string of plants, and oh my gosh, when you go to
Moss there is a lot of house plants, including succulents, which are really
a hot item right now. And we had to get some string ofs to
add to the collection out there from Moss. You know, Moss has stuff.
I was walking through there. You know, their fruit trees, all
kinds of fruit, you know, like the the what we think of as
more northern fruit like apples and peaches, and then the tropicals like guava,
papaia and dragon fruit and apoloies. I mean, they have all kinds of
things, blackberries that are thornless. I saw probably forty fifty different kinds of
herbs, probably ten different kinds just of mint. What kind of mint do
you like? They've got it. They've got herbs and hanging baskets, they
got the vegetable plants, everything you need. And you know, one thing
I was out there, I visited with a couple of Travis County and not
Travis, Harris County master gardeners back when I was agent here in Harris County.
I got to visit with some out there because Moss hires gardeners, people
with years and years of experience in their own garden. So when you're walking
around talking to someone at Moss, you're talking to somebody that knows what they're
doing. They are experienced, and you want to get things right the first
time, and they help you do that. They talk to you about the
swelling water and fertilizing and how to plant a plant, how to take care
of it. Go to Moss Nursery dot com Moss Nursery dot com or give
them a call. It is two eight one four seven four twenty four eighty
eight two one twenty four to twenty. Hey, I love going to Moss
and I know you will too. Where are we now? We're going to
go back, Well, got to take a little break. When we come
back, Ray, Phil and Beverly, you will be first up and look
forward to visiting a little bit more about some things that are very timely for
right now. We'll be right back, all right, welcome back to garden.
Looking forward to visiting with what with you for with good night, Looking
forward to visiting with you about what you're interested in. That's what I'm going
to say. What topics. You don't talk vegetables or you're talking herbs or
whatever. Beautiful hanging baskets, bibles at massa other day and talking about that
yesterday, and oh my gosh, that had a listen and hanging baskets.
They're just a rose pink color and you couldn't see the leaves or some ballooms
on the plant. It's just beautiful. They got all kinds of hanging baskets
too. Hey, if you want to get a staghorn fern, they got
those two. You can get a smaller size when you can get started for
a very reasonable economical way and get going to have your own beautiful stag goorn
too. I love hanging baskets all really nice. Hey, let's go down.
We're going to go to pear Land and talk to Beverly. Hello,
Beverly, good morning. I have a big, long brand. It's about
twelve foot long four foot deep, and it has cestrums and lantanas in it
and one alamanda. This year, I all, I covered them up.
But when I uncovered them, it's all uh and yeah, will those plants
come come back? And how much should I prone them? Well, it's
impossible to tell, not knowing exactly the extent of the damage to those plants
in that specific location. But alamanda's are more of a tropical I'd worry more
about it. The lantana should be fine, and the cystrum, I think
from the base you should. You should see some regrowth on both of those,
especially if you had some sort of cover over them. So on the
the alamanda, I'm doubtful, but wait and see. Okay, But so
I just need to get the dead part off of the lantanas. And yes,
how much should I purne the Well? You know what I would do
if it were mine is I would wait and let some regrowth begin and then
let let the plant tell you where to prune back to. You can prune
it now, there's not a problem but you really other and scrape in the
bark and looking for a living bark underneath the surface. It's kind of hard
to tell how far back to prune on that cesstrum. For example, if
you use a knife for your thumbnail and scrape back and it's brown like a
paper sack, then go down for alone. But how about the lantanas.
They they're probably killed back. I would probably prune them back to a few
inches above the ground. And I think they're going to resprout for you below
that. Oh okay, thank you, okay, I appreciate it. Yeah,
And I was out in Paarland, uh see about three days ago.
You guys have a Walldbird's unlimited store down there. That is unbelievable. I
was in talking with the movie that is. Isn't that the coolest stuff that
they have inside? That you're fortunate to have a Wallbird's. Well, I
was actually a bunch of them, But you're fortunate to have one right now.
Twll everybody by yourself A squirrel a danger a squirrel. Oh I know,
I've got their scrollator preventer feeder and it works. Man. That is
very very cool. All right, Well, I just had to say that
because I was just out there. Thanks a lot, Beverly, Okay,
thank you all right, bye bye? Yeah, that oh my gosh,
that is I love going love going into Wilbirds. You know, there's I
think there's six different Wildbirds stores now going around the greater Houston area. And
it's time. Listen if you if you want Bluebirds or if you want Purple
Martins, you got to get the houses up now. When the Purple Martins
scouts come out and look for a place, you need to have a house
up or they're gonna find somewhere else to set up shop. Purple Martins are
out there eating bugs. So are bluebirds and other many other birds by the
way, But now's the time and they can get you set up on all
of that. You know, six six stores all over the Houston area.
Go to WBU dot com if you want to find the one near you.
They're all I've never walked into a wild Birds that I just wasn't. My
jaw hits the ground. It's like I need one of everything that's in that
store. Let's go to filling Tomball now, Hey Phil, what's up?
Yeah? Look, I had some some Italian cypress trees and they got killed
off by the freeze. This was several years ago, and I've been looking
for some I really like the Italian cyprus a lot, but I was told
that they're really not quite quite good for this area just because of the freeze
and the disease and stuff like that, and and I was looking for something
to replace them with. They gave kind of a similar look, okay for
the Italian Yeah, yeah, that is a very narrow, tall, unique
plant, and it's hard to find one that's just like that, So you're
gonna have to The look's going to be different. The Japanese you can be
trimmed to make a wall of foliage if you put a bunch of them together.
It takes continued trimming, though to maintain that. And that's the challenge
of the Italian cypress. It just sort of maintains it's with But we have
very few op when it comes to being able to have a plant that fits
that exact dimensions. So somebody had told me that maybe maybe like a tailor
juniper would work. Have you had any experience for those? You know,
I haven't grown tailor, and I need to look at the width. It's
got to be pretty wide. Compared to the Italian cypress though, but you
could try that. But listen any cypress or juniper type plant, cedar,
you know those kind of things that they can have thing issues like spider mites.
They can have issues that like certain diseases, some needle blights, and
when you kill a section of a plant whether whatever does it, that turns
brown and it never regreens right there, and so you sort of have a
hole in your plant. That's one of the reasons I don't generally recommend Italian
cypress for here because you get them up, they look beautiful. You feel
like you're on your villa in the Mediterranean, and next thing you know,
this one loses a hole and that one dies, and now how do you
recreate that uniform beautiful? Yeah, you described it exactly exactly. That's what
always happens. It may not happen early, but it will happen. And
so that's why I don't I would have to look at that tailor. I
don't know the width on it off the top of my head. But let
me ask you this, where's a uh that's all just going to go maybe
shop for some trees to get a like a hedge or I've got like two
acres and a single story house, and I want to kind of put some
a privacy, some some trees up, I guess, and looking for something,
where's a where's a good place in town? Where'd you consider some recommendations
to actually go look at a wide variety of like smaller trees that I could
get. Yeah, plant, Well, you're you're up there in Tomball,
so you know you got to arbrogate on your back door. I mean,
they've got a lot of different things up there. If you're wanting just to
go, like to a place that just focuses on trees, you know,
we we've got those as well. But I would I would start right there
at the Arborgate first, okay, And if you want to obrogates, like
ten minutes for me. Yeah, And they're going to have a lot of
options for you out there down there, not too far, I guess.
The next closest place and focusing on trees would be the RCW folks have Williamson
Tree Farm and they grow a lot of different trees up in Plannersville that they
bring in and so they are they're like the local retail nursery, but they
have access to that farm, and so you would that would expand your a
little bit. But both of those you're not gonna go wrong in either of
those places. Okay, okay, all right, well, thank you very
much. I appreciate it, you bet, Phil, thank you. I
appreciate that. Yeah. Our Arburgate. By the way, those of you
who've been to Arburgate, Uh, do you know about the new parking lot
that's behind it? You need to because you know they're out on twenty nine
to twenty just to the west of Tomball Trisher Road. Whether you're coming from
east or west, Trisher Road makes a loop behind Arburgate and so either either
way before Arburgate or after Arbrogate, coming east or west, just turn on
Trisher Road and go around behind Arburgate. Great new parking lot, super super
parking lot, and boy, they are loaded with all kinds of really cool
stuff. Go look at the Lenton roses, the HeLa bores. That is
the most beautiful plant. And it's named because it blooms during the lent season
each year. A great perennial for a shady area that you might have a
part shade type area. Lobos, I'm a bit of shade. Lenton rose
is gorgeous. I like it because it has an antique look. That's one
of the reasons. You know, we got a lot of plants. We
use a lot that just eh, it's the same old plant everybody has.
This one's kind of different. Not everybody has a Lenton rose, that's for
sure. There's a lot of great perennials like that that you ought to be
looking for. But anyway, yeah, you know, you know what I'm
talking about. Always new plants. By the way, anytime I go to
Auburgrade, I'm will see a dozen plants I've never heard of before, because
that's kind of something new coming in out there. We're gonna take a little
break here. It's time for the top of the hour in the news.
Our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four or two
one two k t r H. If you want to do it that way,
we'll be right back. Kat r H. Garden Line does not necessarily
endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kat
r H. Garden Line with skimped Richard. It's Trim just watch him as
well. Welcome back to garden Line. Good Saturday morning to you, Glad
you're listening in today. Still dark outside. Hey, if your neighbors lights
aren't on, go bang them the door, tell them they're missing guard line
and they will rise up and call you blessed. Maybe not today, they
might call you something else today, but you get the idea. They need
to know about guard line so they can have a beautiful on a bountiful,
bountiful garden. Uh, we're gonna run. Let's see, We're gonna run
straight out to Katie and talk to Ray. Hello, Ray, the morning,
good morning, good morning, good morning. I just had a quick
question. My yard kind of died off. Large large patches of grass just
died. Yeah, I want to do the top the you know, the
air ration and compost stop dressing. Yeah. Should I do that before I
lay the new sad or lay the new sod and then do the compost top
dressing. If you're going to do that, I would definitely do it after
you lay the new side. Give that sid, you know, a few
weeks of at least two weeks if it's a warm season when you lay it.
But it needs time to root in really really well. Uh, and
so it's better to do that aeration itself. As we get into the growing
season. The grass is actively growing. The compo stop dressing. You can
do then, or you can do it anytime. So you may just want
to get them get them both done, especially if you're going to have folks
at Greenpro come down and do it. And they green Pro does come down
to the Katy area. I know they go down to about it ten,
So Katie's one of the town as I go to, Yeah, out fixing
a call and set up an appointment maybe for like March. Yeah, yeah,
that'd be a good March would be good. Later in March even or
April would would also be good. You can do it anytime. I mean,
you can do it in May, even June, whatever. But I'm
just saying that it's better to go ahead and get that done. Okay,
Well, thank you skid. You have an awesome date. All right,
Ray, thanks for the call. I appreciate that a lot. You know,
we're talking about lawns and when you're looking at the nutrients a lawn needs,
the big three are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Those are the
three numbers on a fertilizer bag that drives a lot of growth. The grass
uses the most of those three nutrients of any of the nutrients, but it
needs about twenty different nutrients to do really really well because there are nutrients that
are called essential that are needed in trace amounts, and as mite provides that
a might When you put as mit down, you're adding a micronutrients source to
the soil and to your lawn. So you don't need to put it down
and it's time to fertilize a lawn, you can just separate it from your
fertilizer, make two applications, but you can put it on any time that
you want to do it, because what you're doing is you're looking at building
the bank account in the soil. So if it needs a little bit of
manganese, or if it needs a little bit of boron, or if it
needs a little bit of copper, whatever is needed, is there in an
adequate supply for your lawn. And you go to azamite Texas dot com,
it's widely available. Lots of our good mom and pop garden centers, lots
of our suppliers and feed stores will carry asamite, And I would I would
recommend you that you get that on your schedule. I've got it on my
lawn, my excuse me lawn care schedule that's online at gardeningwith Skip dot com.
We're going to now go to Mary in West Houston. Hello Mary,
Hello skips. I have a couple of questions, one with regard to some
heavy, too heavy philodendrons in pots, play pots and plastic pod They're very
heady and they've got sapped by the recent freeze the leaves did, and they've
got this white mildew stuff growing on top of the stalk. Right. Can
I move them outside of the house into the ah room again or should I
wait for the next freeze before March? I would make sure you were done
with freezes, because unless you just like moving them in and out, if
you're able to know to do that heavy, yeah, I would. I
would give you a little bit of time, So about three more weeks you
think by the first of March will be okay to move them back out.
Let's see, you are in Western you know it, Yes I do.
But the weather is unpredictable, and so we now look at percentages like here's
the fifty to fifty date, here's the seventy five twenty five date. You
know what I'm saying, And so sure, sure, I been on safe
side. You're pretty safety. I wait till the middle of March. No,
I think you're probably ok. You could wait till the middle of March
if you want to be extra careful. And those things don't want to grow
until it warms up anyway, So that was my next question. There's stalks
are coming off the there's there's runners coming off the stalk and they're all brown.
Did they die with the leaves or were they start uf? Well,
I don't, I don't. Yeah, I don't know what exact kind of
philodendron you have, but that I think I know based on the fact that
you're seeing those are roots, aerial roots dropping down to the ground. Probably
yes, they go underneath the bricks to the to the ground. Okay,
And yeah, well time will tell, ma'am. We're just got to see
when new growth begins, you'll know, you'll know exactly. Yeah, okay.
And on the weeds in the front yard, can I go ahead and
put a fertilizer, uh, with a broad leash weed killer down in the
front yard that you can now? Well, yes, But Nelson's Plant Food
has something called turf star we donator weed do nature and what it has is,
it's got it. Normally I don't put a weed controlled and fertilizer in
the same product. This one is used for the cool season weeds that you're
talking about right now, the existing weeds. So you need to wet the
grass first so that the leaves of the weeds are wet. It just takes
just enough water to barely wet the grass and then put the fertilizer weedinator out.
The weed control. It sticks to the weeds. Give it about a
day or two before you water the lawn. After that because let it stick
to the weed, let it move into the weeds, and then a day
or two later you can water, but that'll move the fertilizer down. And
it's such a slow release that you're not going to get all that fertilizer washed
away with the winter rains like you would with some of our spring green up
type fast release product we had last night would be sufficient. Yeah, unless
you just literally have water sheeting off the lawn carrying debris and everything with it.
But that fertilizer doesn't just dissolve away. It's it takes a long time
to release everything that's in the product. In the turf star weed denatur we
didn't. Okay, okay, if you want broadleaf we control you bet all
right, you bet? Thanks. I appreciate that call Mary very much.
If those you've living down League City, League City Feed has been there for
a long time, forty years ago. I mean this was I was by
visiting with Wes just this past two let's see it Thursday, I believe I
went by there and the store is just like what you always expect. It's
that old time feed store. They bring the bags out for you and oh
my gosh, the products selection that they have, Wes, and it's just
if I recommend a fertilizer, they've got it. They have the soil type
products we recommend. If you need any kind of a pest control, they've
got it. Of course they have animal feed. You know that it's a
feed store. You expect that. But it's on Highway three, just a
few blocks south of the Highway ninety six out there in the League City.
So for all of you like Dickinson, Lamark Bay Cliff, Santa Fe,
clar Lake City, el come into Reale Webster. You know that's your hometown
feed store, and you know they're going to be available nine to six pm.
Closed, on Sundays Monday through Saturday nine to six. It's easy to
get by there. You can give them a call to eight one three three
two one six one two. We're going to take a break right now,
Cleveland and San Antonio. We're going to get to you first when we come
back. All right, welcome back to guard Line. We're glad you're listening
this morning. If you'd like to give us a call on any kind of
gardening question, our number is seven one three two one two k t r
H seven one three two one two ktr H. We're going to go out
to San Antonio now and talk to Cleveland. Hey, Cleveland, thanks for
being patient. Hey, Heyskip, what you're doing? I'm good. I'm
good. Are you in San Antonio right now? Well, right now I'm
in Sofa Springs. I'll trive a big truck. Oh okay, So you're
listening on the app? Is that? Yes? All right? Good,
glad you're listening as usual. Thanks for calling. All right, So the
question I have is about de thatching. I need to I've sent Augustine and
I need to be thatches. Is there a way I can deepfat you without
equipment like a liquid detache or something. Well, the thing to do there
would be to do a compost top dressing so that those runners are covered with
organic material. Runners that create the thatch in Saint Augustine, those runners are
very resistant to breaking down compared to like grass blades. When you mow,
you can just let the grass blades fall down, but the runners, when
you when you fertilize the water a lot, you create more that So number
one, don't overfertilize the lawn that because that just creates more growth, that
creates more thatches. Those runners are crawling around everywhere, but when you put
that top top dressing of compost over it, it's it's like you know,
you're covering them up, and it's like the forest floor where leaves are covering
up organic matter. It all starts rotting down there and you can you can
decay away if you will, uh some of the thatch. Other than that,
you would want to use a core aer rator. That's the one that
goes in the ground and pulls the plug of soil out outside your finger a
plug of soil out of the ground and drops it on the surface, and
that soil also mixes in around and with air rating and compost, stop dressing.
You can decay away a lot of that thatch, just don't grow more
in the process. All right, good, thank you, all right,
thanks be safe out there on the roadways. We've got some rain coming through
you. Oh yeah, I'm already in it. Yeah, okay, all
right, you take care. Yeah, that is true. Thatch is interesting.
You see things called de thatchers, uh, and those are for northern
turf grasses, bluegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, fescue grass, those clumping types of
grasses. De thatching works well for those. When you start taking a Saint
Augustine lawn and running a a thatcher over to it's just pulling those runners up
and it just it just makes a mess and does does some damage. There
is something for severe situations, and this is this goes toward Cleveland's question.
It's called a vertict cutter, and think of it as blades that are vertical
separated out at some distance maybe four inches, to cut down through the Saint
Augustine runners and it pulls up a little bit of debris in that process,
and then you go through and mow it and cut it down. That is
a wounding process and we don't want to do it if we don't have to.
But where you cannot use a the de thatcher, or you shouldn't use
a de thatcher on Saint Augustine, a vertic cutter is an option. I
don't talk about it much because almost nobody needs it. It would take a
very unique situation where that is going to be needed, but at times it
is. But I just like to grow myself out of it. You know,
anytime that we can just let nature's processes go to work for us,
I think it's a good idea to do that. And the corroration compost top
dressing just an example of that sort of thing. You know, we're talking
Valentine's Guess why this week is Valentine's Week? Come on, guys, we're
here, guys and ladies both Now if you are interested in learning more about
roses, and while you're picking up some roses, even Chenned Gardens in Richmond,
they've got a program today. The minute I end the show today,
the program starts ten am, so twelve noon. Rosecare in the Gulf Coast
region. Now, if you're interested in starting a rose garden, this is
a seminar you need to go to. Now. Marie Jenkins, manager of
the Anti Grozing Porium. It's gonna come down to Chenni Gardens in Richmond,
and they're gonna be talking all about rosecare on the Gulf Coast region, the
best varieties to grow here, and so on. And in Chennet's stocked up
on all their spring roses. You can choose your favorites, take them right
home with you. They're gonna have tents out. Don't worry about the weather
today. They have beautiful, big old tints with plenty of seeding to keep
you all protected and comfortable and everything like that while you learn. Their programs
are always outstanding out there at the enchanted Gardens. They're also they're stocked up
on tomatoes and peppers, so if you want to bring some of those home
with you, they can get you fixed up now. In Chinned Gardens,
they're on the Katie Fullshire side of Richmond on FM three fifty nine, So
as you're going north toward Katie from Richmond, that is in Chanded Gardens NURSE
three fifty nine. Enchented Gardens Richmond dot com. Take advantage because you're going
to learn about how to plant roses, the roses to pick, how to
care for your roses all today again. That's ten am to twelve noon out
at the Enchanted Gardens in Richmond. Our phone number is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven
four. You know, whenever we get rain, our soil shrinks and swells.
As it dries out, it shrinks, as it gets wet, it
swells, and there's a lot of movement in the soil. I don't know
if you've ever driven down through some of the streets in Houston and it's like
you're going across the rocky mountains. You know, the streets are buckled and
bent and all kinds of stuff going on, potholes and whatnot. And it's
that constant shrinking and swelling. It even breaks waterlines during severe droughts. The
soil movement is a powerful thing. It moves your foundation and cracks your house
foundation. That's why you see cracks in the brick outside and cracks in the
sheet rock inside your driveways, your sidewalks. Well, fix my slab foundation
repair. They know about that. They've been doing this for fifty three years.
Ty Strickland here in the Houston area fifty three years, twenty three years
of doing foundation type repairs, and he can come out and you can take
a look. You got a door that's sticking, You want to have them
take a look, do so, don't wait Number one, tell them me
from garden Line. They do free estimates for garden Line listeners, and they
do it right. Then they show up on the time. They set a
time, and they show up at that time, and let them come out
and take a look. It doesn't get better, it gets worse if you
don't deal with it. And so don't be afraid. Don't stick your head
in the sand. Oh I'm afraid I might have a problem, Well find
out. Bite the bullet let's let's find out. If something is needed,
they can take care of it. You go to fix myslab dot com.
Fix myslab dot com. If you got a pin or pencil handy, always
should when you listen to guard Line two eight one, two five five,
forty nine forty nine, fix my slap. It's bad news to have foundation
issues. But I tell you, if you're gonna deal with them, you
need to get somebody that knows what they're talking about, and that's Tystrick and
fix my slap. I have been talked about things to do in your lawn
and garden this season. You know, we're getting really close to the early
spring green up. If you wish to do that for your lawn, I
call that an optional one. And here's why. When the weather's cool,
the soil is cool, grass isn't on take off growing because you've put a
fertilizer on it, but it will green up. So it's sitting there,
it's not doing a lot of growth, but you're getting you're starting to see
those nutrients come in. You get a little bit earlier green up from that,
and we're just right on the verge of that early green up application in
the southern parts of our listening area. Get to the right toward the end
of February, we do that. You can do it anytime in the first
two or three weeks of March if you want to do it at that time.
That's probably a better general guest for our listening area. We got people
listening from north to south and east and west, but that would be the
time to get ready to do that. You need to go ahead and buy
those products, have them on hand so you're ready to go. You know,
if you're gonna if you're gonna get a lawn care product, whether it's
something to control weeds that exist, to prevent weeds that have not sprouted yet,
to deal with insects or diseases or any of those things, go ahead
and buy those supplies and have them ready. Bob over in Southwest Fertilizer,
you've probably been there before. If you haven't, you need to go talking
to somebody yesterday and they were somewhere way across down and they go, you
know, I keep wanting to go to Southwest Fertilizer just to see that place,
and you got to go. If Southwest Fertilizer does not have something,
you don't need it, because they have everything. I will go in there
periodically just to see what's the latest stuff that comes out on the market.
These companies don't always tell me, hey, Skip, we're putting out a
new whatever. But I can go to Southwest because Bob's going to have it
first when it comes in, He's going to have it. They've got medina
products and microlife products, they got copper fungicides. They've got all kinds of
things for your fertilize and your lawn. The Nilson Plant food, the nitrophos,
very high selection of nitrophas, and the barricades and things like that.
Southwest Fertilizer has it all. They're on Bisonet, Bissonet and Runwick. That's
the intersection. If you want to call them seven to one, three six
six six, seventeen forty four, or just go to Southwest Fertilizer dot com.
You can find out more there. But you know, got a little
drizzles today, but be a great day to go buy and get those supplies.
It's not going to be too rainy to do that. Get them ready
to go, bring them home, and then when the weather clears and you
can get out and do the work you want to do. You already got
the stuff on hand. I would recommend that. You know, I tend
to wait sometimes until ooh, I think I'll fertilize it in and then I
go looking for something. Well, why not just go ahead and get it,
have it ready to go. Then when the weather allows, when you
want, when you feel up to it, you can just go out and
get the job done. That's pretty simple to do it that way. We're
going to go out now to Katie and talk to Felicia. Hello, Felicia.
Hello, I have a question. I have sweets that are in my
lawn now that I already see because the grass stead. You have a dorman,
I should say, but I see all this green and I see I
wheat. So do I go out and start pulling them out? Or spray
something on them to kill off? Both are options. If you don't have
a big lawn, or you just have one little patch that's wheedy, you
can go out there and do pulling. You can do that if you want
to do that. If you want to spray, you have two options on
that. One would be to apply apply a product. I was talking a
little bit earlier about turf Star weededter from Nelson. It's got a very slow
release fertilizer in it, so it's going to feed for a long time and
not all wash away in the spring rains. But you get the weeds wet
and then you put that down and those granules stick to the weeds. It
also has a post emergent weed killer that's the weeds you see growing now,
and give it about a day or two before you water, So don't put
that out today. You just can have rain wash it right off. Go
ahead and put it out and then when you're ready to put it out,
turn your irrigation on just enough to wet the weeds. Now, the other
option would just be to buy a broad leaf weed control spray, and you
can do that too, that's another option. But then you're going to need
to go ahead and fertilize later. Yeah, And you can put that out
anytime out the Nelson's weedonator or the spray, I mean the spraw leaf spray,
the spray not before a rain, but yes, anytime now. And
it's better to kill those now before they get real big. All the cool
season weeds in your lawn, they're like your blue bonnets out on the roadside.
They sprouted in the fall, they sat there as little plants through the
winter. You're looking at those plants now and then they're about to grow like
crazy, bloom and set seed. And when they start the bloom and set
seed, it's it's just it's too late, and it's very difficult to kill
them before they do that. Like now, that would be the time if
you're going to kill them, to kill them. Okay, So that free
emergent won't do anything with that particular issue. No, it will not kill
a weed that's already well established and growing. It prevents them from getting started.
Now, the pre emergent. I don't want to be I don't want
to complicate this were and confuse everybody listening. But we're putting a post emergent
down on the cool season weeds that have been growing all winter. We're putting
a pre emergent down to prevent the warm season weeds like crabgrass and grass burd
that'll be sprouting in the next weeks to come. All right, okay,
perfect, yeah, let me well, I got to take a break.
If you want to hang on, I'll come back to you after the break.
Let me just say one thing. If you will go online to gardening
with Skip, my lawn, pest disease and weed schedule is all there.
It's a big chart January through December with color codes and directed organic synthetic.
Everything is right there on that chart, and that'll make it a lot easier
for you too. I'm gonna put you on hold. It's time for Nicky
and the News. Welcome back to garden Line. Thanks for listening in today.
We have got a lot to talk about, lots of things to be
doing. We're visiting with Felicia and Katie on some weed questions and where do
we leave things? Felicia, Yeah, thank you so much for taking this
last question from me. I have a three by briefly by twelve feet area
where the bermuda graph has taken over last year, and so I need I
need to pull. I don't like bermutographs personally. I want I have Saint
Augustine, and so I need to pull that. You know, do I
pull it all out? And you know when do I pull it out and
replant side? Yeah? Uh well, nothing gonna want to really take off
grow until it warms up just a little bit more. I would probably make
that move in late March or maybe early April, depends. Uh are you
gonna spray it and kill everything and then plant or are you going to try
to dig it out? I was thinking dig it out? But what do
you what do you think? Well, it's hard to get it all.
It's very hard to get it all. But if you dig I would probably
go ahead and dig it out a little sooner than I said, because you're
going to watch it and see bermuda re sprouting that you missed. It's inevitable
you're going to miss a bunch and then you dig again and maybe dig again
if you're going to go the non spray route, because it's hard to get
rid of it. You had to clear out that whole area, So can
I spray? It would be easier to spray it and kill it. You
kill. You can also do that. There are products that kill just grass,
and then there's products that kill grass and broad leaves. They're called you
know, general herbicides. The bermuda needs to growing for those products to work.
So again we're gonna wait and let it warm up a little bit and
get that bermuda going, and then when you spray it, it takes it
down and moves it down into the plant and kills it. Even with the
sprays, I would do it, and I would wait about two weeks and
see if something else pops up. Because it's hard to kill bermuda and not
kill Saint Augustine. That's why you're going in and just taking a whole patch
of it, out everything and replanting. Okay, So either way I would
neither way you would either way. You don't favor one other over the other,
one product over the other, or what are you asking me? Well,
one technique either dig it all out. Well, just having having tried
digging bermuda myself and watched other people, the spray in is the way that
tends to work better. But you know, people that don't want to spray,
digging is an option. It just it. It's hard to get one
hundred percent of it, and you got to be patient, and it's time
and trouble. And if you're willing to do that, that that's fine.
You know, I'm not here to tell you how to garden. I'm just
here to tell you that the techniques that will or won't work with however you
choose to go about it. Okay, So I need to wait for it
the warm up, and then spread it and then spread it again until I
see it probably, So yeah, be patient, be patient because our warm
season turf grasses wake up a little bit slow. And uh so by the
time you've mowed your Saint Augustine twice that bermuda is that ought to be about
time to do the second spring. If you're gonna spray of the bermuda,
Okay, okay, gotcha, got all right. And if you go out
there, you're in Katy. You're in Katie. You've got an ace hardware
store over there, that just they're gonna have all the supplies of everything you
need out there, So you got to y'alla, just drop drop in there
and tell them what you're dealing with and they'll they'll set you on the right
products. Okay, thank you so much this morning. All right, Felicia,
thanks for the call. Good luck taking care of that lone. Yeah,
it's a it's a challenge sometimes, uh to deal with some of these
issues, and that's why it's always better to avoid them if you can.
What do we mean by that, Well, don't let them go to seed,
that's one. If you got a little bit of bermuda, jump on
it early. If it's in your Saint Augustine, don't let it now infiltrate
half your lawn because it just gets worse. And you know, I've had
to deal with all these things. I mean, I tell you what to
do, but that sometimes falls into the category of do as I say,
not as I do, because in the past I've often made the mistakes I'm
trying to keep you from making right now no better. All right, Well,
let me talk a little bit about a quality mix. If you're going
to start some seeds indoors. Maybe you want to grow some cucumbers or squashed
but as a transplant later. But you want to get going now, it's
too early to put the seeds in the ground, but you can get going
with some transplants indoors. Now, well, Landscaper's Pride has a forty pound
bag of potting sorts. There's the most budget friendly thing. And you're going
to find that it's customizable because it's got the decomposed or aged pine bark and
sand and blended organics and everything. But if you wanted to add other things
to it to make it more of a soil for maybe grun cactine suculents,
put in some gritty material to improve the drainage even more. You can do
those kind of amendments to it. But I'm telling you you can just use
it right out of the bag for starting your seedlings if you want to.
They've got a premium rose mix that is excellence, got composted pines, got
some sphagnum moss in it, a slow release fertilizer all in there for roses
or really any other ornamental that you're wanting to grow. Twenty seven different products
from Landscaper's Pride. There's a lot. Where do you find it? Well,
go to Landscaperspride dot com makes it easy. Landscaperspride dot com find out
where they sell this around here. They're the ones that have that black velvet
maltz, the naturally dark, not dyed, naturally dark material. They've been
doing this for twenty years now. Their local top quality Landscaper's Pride, easy
to find, widely, widely available. We are. Let's see where we're
going to go now. I'm going to go to David and Tomball. Hey
David, good morning, sir. Hey my little baby tomato tomato plants that
I bought at Plants for all season yesterday, I got them in the ground.
Okay, And since tomatoes are technically of fruit, I have some some
stuff I got at RCW. It's a microlife product for citrus and fruit.
Yes, uh like a six two four or six four to two, I
don't matter what is it? Anyway? Could I put some of that stuff
around in baby plants to kickstart them? You absolutely can. I have found
that plants can't read. Even if they see that label, they're gonna be
happy you put it on there. They're they're gonna not gonna say, wait
a minute, that's for citrus. We're tomatoes. I didn't know if it
was just too early and they was too young, it might hurt them or
something like that. Won't hurt them. Microlife products are not salt based.
They're not gonna burn. You're gonna be just fine on that. So just
go right ahead, mix it into the soil around them, and what's going
to happen is microbes are going to get a hold of the micro life.
They're gonna start breaking down the nutrients that are in there and releasing it out
into plant available for them from the organic material that is micro life fertilizer.
And it'll work just fine. You're not You're not going to burn them.
It works well. Hey, all right, thank you. That answers that
question. But I'm gonna can I add to what the lady just talked to
about Bermuda and Saint Augustine. I got to make sure of that. Man.
You can talk about you can talk about getting Bermuda out of Saint Augustine,
but you can't use any four letter words because a lot of people start
to do that. Okay, go ahead, No, although you probably won't
make you want a sin or cause anyway. Hey, I was under the
impression that if you keep fertilizing your Saint Augustine, and I've been on the
Randy Lemmon fertilization schedule for a year and a half years now, and I
was under the impression that eventually your Saint Augustine would just push out that bermuda.
Is that correct? Well not quite. But you know what, David,
I'm looking at the clock and I have missed a break. I'm gonna
stop right here. I'll be right back with you in just one second.
Just hang on. Welcome back to the garden line. Glad you're listening.
Hey, it's getting a little bit of light out there. You can look
outside and see what's going on in your landscape, your neighborhood. Finally,
we'll go go back to David up in Tomball. David, we were talking
tomatoes. I believe. Where do we go from here? Well, well,
you finished my talk about the tomatoes, and then I asked another question
about Saint Augustine with that lady you have in Bermuda problems. Yes, I
kind of got the same problem, and I'm wondering I've been on the Randy
lemon schedule for about two years now, and I was always under the impression
that if you followed that schedule that sooner or later the Saint Augustine would push
out to Bermuda. That ain't necessarily happening or is that the case. Well,
well, that can help. Following a quality you know, schedule of
mowwater, fertilized, whatnot can help. But there are factors that lean the
needle toward Bermuda or towards Saint Augustine. As you go into the shade,
Saint Augustine has the advantage. Bermuda can't take as much shade as Saint Augustine
can. As you go into droughty spells where you go into severe drought and
then you come out of it, that gives Bermuda the advantage. It's better
survivor and drought conditions than Saint Augustine. Is if you use certain kinds of
herbicides that will weaken Saint Augustine in the hot weather of summer that won't do
that to Bermuda grass, then you give Bermuda that brand. So there's just
a lot of factors in there. Bottom line is when you got both,
it's hard to get all completely rid of the bermuda in the Saint Augustine.
It's usually kills Saint Augustine out of bermuda than vice versa. Well, the
schedule did at least get rid of the stickers, those little burdweed stickers.
Are you going, Yeah, it will, It absolutely will. I've got
my schedule online at gardening with skip dot com. There's two of them.
I have a lawn care and a weed pest disease management schedule, two different
ones. You can go on there hopefully, yeah, hopefully, sooner or
later I'll have a beautiful Saint Augustine line. There you go. That's what
we're aiming for. You know. In the meantime, just just mow the
lawn and take off your glasses and it looks great if you take your glass.
Thanks David, you take care. Yeah, he was talking about asking
the question. You know, we're talking about, well, what can I
use a Centrus microlife on tomatoes, for example? And the answer is yes,
you can. You know, the green bag that we use for lawns,
we talk about for lawns all the time. I use it on all
kinds of things. It's just a good fertilizer and so it's a CEUs for
example. Uh, you know, if you're going to go out and buy
one, well, yeah, buy one that's more designed for the kind of
plant you're dealing with. But you've got something on hand, you need to
use it, go ahead and use it. Microlife also has something called humates
plus that's a zero zero four and that is it's it's humans humate. Humous
is the fully decomposed composted materials you got. You got things like leaves and
grass clippings, They composed away into composts and then it just keeps degrading into
the form we call humus, the last form, and humates have a lot
of organic acids in them and other things that help build the soil, help
build soil structure. The humates plus is a purple bag, by the way,
kind of a bluish purple. I may be color challenged on that,
but you know, i'd say purple zero zero for it's got a little bit
of potassium in it, but a bazillion different kinds of microbes, and then
a bazillion different strains of each of those micro robes. So it is a
very micro micro biologically active material that will help your lawn over time. It's
not something you just put down to fertilize for spring. You can put it
down anytime you want. I would put it down now. But you're also
still going to need your heavier nitrogen, phosphorus potassium fertilizers to support and push
that local that early vigor and growth as the weather begins to warm. Microlife
Fertilizer dot com you can find it all over the place. It's easy to
find Microlife products widely available. When I talk about garden centers and feed stores
and other suppliers, ACE hardware stores, office, they all are going to
carry the Microlife product line for you. You're listening to Garden Line and we
are here to answer gardening questions if you would like to give me a call.
Seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three
two one two k t r H. For those of you way out west
to tom Ball looking for a good feed store, quality feeds, I say,
way out west on the west side, how about that uh D and
D feed They're on twenty nine twenty out west to Tomball. They got everything
you expect a feed store to have, right which includes feed for your animals
for your pets, high quality feeds. By the way, they're about three
miles west of two forty nine on twenty nine twenty. By the way,
the Dover family open this up in nineteen eighty nine and they just keep getting
better. They got a new shipment of chicks in last week. You just
give them a call if you're thinking about getting backyard chickens. Give them a
call, see when the shipment is coming in again, and if they got
some leftover from that last one, because those things are hot items and they
do tend to go fast. Two eight one three five one seventy one forty
four two eight one three five one seventy one forty four. That's D and
D Feed. If you need potatoes, red potatoes, white potatoes, the
yellow Yukon gold, they've got those. They've got a good supply of the
age leaf, mole, compost, heirloom soils, rose food and fruit and
berry and citrus, veggie and herb. All those quality soil materials that I
talk about are going to be available there at D and D as well.
Kind of makes a nice one stop shop, and I always grab my dogs
a couple of the treats. They've got a little doggy treat doggy Deli type
treat area. They got seeds available to It's just a lot of fun to
go in there. I always like swinging by there. Hey, we're talking
things that are related to gardencare, spring lawn care. Especially right now I've
talked about it's pre emergencies and get it down half inch of water to move
it into the soil. If you're going to prevent the warm season weeds in
a thin lawn, that is what you need to be doing. Out products
like nitroposs for example, Nitrofoss barricade is a pre emergent that's going to control
it's going to control your broadly feed. It's gonna control your grassy weeds as
well and prevent them. But you got to get it down. But remember,
don't put something down unless you know how much water is gonna fall out
of the sky. Don't put it on for a rain unless you know how
much water it's going out of the sky. If there's a good chance we're
going to get a gully washer, just hold off, put it down and
just turn on the water for a little bit. Just a half inch is
all you're putting out to move it down into the soil. And let me
make one other comment on this. If you are looking for all of these
kind of products anywhere you live around the Houston area, you're gonna find them
in Ace Hardware. Ace Hardware there's forty stores around the greater Houston area and
they keep stocked up on everything, all the fertilizers and the soil products and
the pest and disease and weed control. You hear me talk about it's going
to be at Ace Hardware. Go to acehardware dot com find the store locator.
You can find a store near you. And that's really convenient, you
know, to be able to find one so close by, and they are
close by. They I was in some Aces last week and just looking at
all the product. To me, they just were getting in the nitrofive shipment
that day, getting ready for spring and getting ready to go. They're gonna
have a wide variety of anything that you're looking for. If you need to
do any plumbing repair, any kind of repair in your sprinklers, maybe someone
ran over a sprinkler head, Ace Hardware's got all of that. And by
the way, when you're in there, check out the barbecue pits. Oh
my gosh, check out the home furnishings, you'd be surprised at what's at
ACE Hardware. They say ACE is the place for well you fill in the
blank. ACE is a place for everything you could possibly want to put out
there on your garden and on your landscape if you are gonna be taking care
of your lawn. I just want to mention that I mentioned the pre emergent
herbicides. I mentioned the fact that the green up season is coming. We're
right on the doorstep of the spring greenup application. If you choose to do
that, that's a fast release, and we put it on there basically just
to get the long green and looking good early on. It's an optional.
Once the lawn begins growing, that's when we look at our summer fertilizing.
That's gonna happen, by the way, in April and it we're going to
be recommending some slow release products to gradually feed your lawn over weeks and weeks
and weeks. And if you think about it, that just makes sense because
grass takes up a little nutrient each day and it's nice to have that gradual
release. Organic materials release gradually. There's a lot of good chemistries of synthetics
that will slowly turn those nutrients loose. And that's helpful because when we get
a gully washer, you don't want all your eggs in one basket. You
want something's going to stick around and give you a little more gradual release over
time. That's the benefit of those Always good to do that. Hey,
it's a time for us to take a break here. In just a second.
Here, I'm going to give you the phone number again so you can
be first up when we come back, phone number seven to one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two k t r
H seven one three two n two k t r H. By the way,
next Saturday, I'm going to be at see what is today? Yeah,
No, of two weeks away, the twenty fourth of February. I'm
kind of getting out of out of sync here. The twenty fourth February,
I'm going to be at A and A Plants and Produce up in the Montgomery
area, and I'm gonna be doing a giveaway of some turf Star products up
there from Nelson's. That is Saturday, the twenty fourth, two saturdays from
now, So go and write it down if you live up in the Lake
Conroe area. Come on and see me. I'd love to meet you.
That's at A and A Plants and Produce. I'll be here from twelve o'clock,
mat me just a bit to get up there after the show to two
pm. Looking forward to seeing you and I'll talk about that more going forward.
Kt RH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Lined with Scared Rict.
It's just watching as the world. Welcome back to Garden Line. I
can see outside. It's always nice when the light appears, sun comes up
in this case, just some light appearing outside. I just love love the
start of a new day. You know, as a gardener, we are
eternal optimists. We complain about the weather too much rain, I don't know
a frame, blah blah blah, all that stuff. Yeah, we do
kind of like farmers, I guess, but we're optimists. Every time you
put a seed in the ground, that is, you are basically saying,
I believe that this detritis dead looking bit of who knows what this is?
Such, I'm put it in the ground. It's going to create me a
plant, and that plant I'm gonna get a tomato, or you put a
plant in the ground. I'm going to get a rose bush, for example.
And Valentine's Day, this is rose bush time, right, it sure
is. I mean, if there's anything that's easier for even non gardeners to
remember, no, it's like Valentine's that's time, plants, rose, entrepreneur
rose, all kinds of things we tie into Valentine's Day. By the way,
if you love roses and you need an outing, I want to tell
you Polace, you need to go. And that's Antique Rose and Porium that's
up in the north of Brenham. North of Brenham, Antique Rose and Porium
has been a long time destination for gardeners and for families. By the way,
it's just a wonderful, cool setting. It's a great outing to get
out there. And there's always something going on out there. You know.
There's Spring celebration is March ninth and tenth. That's just coming around the corner
here. I'm going to be up there for that, by the way.
At the Rose and Portum, they're gonna have speakers, artists and market food
trucks and then they've got all their native plants are perennials, and of course
roses, but there are roses and so much more. You can go to
the website Antique Roseemporium dot com, Antique Rosanmporium dot com or call them ready
for this ninety seven nine eight three six fifty five forty eight nine seven nine
eight three six five five four eight. With Valentine's Day coming up? What
would be a better gift than roses? And heyre here's an idea. If
you don't you don't just have to have the plant on a certain day,
why not take your loved one out there with you and let them wander around
and pick out a rose that they want, and then come home help them
plant it. You know, if you give roses as a gift, maybe
someone's a little older, a little bit more, I don't know, a
little bit less able to get around plant the rose for them. What an
extra gift? You know? It gives you time and folks enjoy time spent
over a cup of coffee or just out there looking at the rose. Listen,
you're creating a memory and they'll think of you every time. An anti
rosemporium can get you all fixed up on all those great old roses that we
love so much Antique Roseenporium dot com. I always like going out there.
I'm busity with Jim somewhere else. I don't know where we were. We
were at some other event and talking to Jim Keeter from Rose and Porium out
there, and it's just always good to go out there. Boys. Spring
time, that place lights up. Oh you got a plan at least one
weekend to get out and do something like that. And I say weekend.
During the week it's even you know, less people out and about. You
kind of get the placed yourself a little bit, not so many folks around,
But anytime, it's a good time to go out there. We're going
about to Jersey Village now and talk to Clara. Hello, Clara, Hey,
well I my rose colored glasses. Today is the eternal Optimus. There
you go. Is there any benefit to leaving all these acorns in your wawn
and your flower beds? Practically speaking, no, Now, in nature,
everything organic that drops to the ground eventually becomes part of the soil. But
there's no reason to leave them. You know you're going to get some o
them sprouting, So you've got some little little oak seedlings. You're gonna have
to pull up or do something with But in general, now I wouldn't worry
about it. On the other hand, if it doesn't bother you, there's
no reason you couldn't just leave them. But you are going to get a
few sprouting. Okay, So I was told that it would kill my lawn.
Acorns will kill your lawn. No, no, okay, the shade
shade from the tree that gave you the acorns may kill your lawn. But
but the acorns, they don't have a lawn poisoning them or anything. Okay.
I have one other question. Thornless blackberries for our region? Okay,
is there such a thing? Oh? Absolutely, yeah, you bet.
We got some great ones, And can you recommend a certain one for down
here. There's a number of them that do well well if you find one
that starts with prime arc Prime. I think they finished spelling at Prime and
then Ark like Arkansas Primark. There's a Primark Freedom and there's a Primary Traveler,
and those are both there. Thornless they produce well, and they have
they have the ability to produce the first year on a new shoot, which
normally blackberries don't produce on shoots until after those shoots go through winter, but
the primarks can do both. There are other good ones. Those are the
not the only two blackberries to plant. Those are just two that come to
mind initially. Blackberries like a well drained soil. So if you get them,
if you gave them BlackBerry Heaven, it would be kind of a sandy
loam soil with lots of organic matter maybe mixed in or something. They'll do
well in that. If you got to clay, just build up a little
bit of a raised bed so the drainage is good, and you know,
using one of our quality soil mixes, and that way you can have better,
even better results. I have a raised bed on a chain link fence
background, so I was thinking of putting them there. That'll work. That
will work if you want. This is more than I can go to in
a few seconds on the radio. But if you go to the Aggie Horticulture
website, there's a fruit section and there's a publication several colorful pages of pictures
and things on blackberries, and they'll tell you how to prune them. It'll
tell you how to prunum, and it'll give you a list of some other
varieties as well. Oh all right, well, that's always. Thank you
for all of your help to help and keep a screen. All right,
let's do that. All I ask Clara is that when the blackberries start producing,
bring half of the crop to the K. T. H. Studio
so I can enjoy them with you. That's the only charge I have you
take care of I want hold my breath though. Thanks a lot, Clara,
I appreciate that. Okay. I have a garden line quiz for you.
I think I ask you this every week because I talk about it ten
times a week. What is the most important thing you do if you want
to have success with plants? And the answer is take care of the soil.
First, brown stuff, fertilizers, compost, good soil, drainage,
take care of that. And then comes the green stuff, the plants.
That's the stuff you want to get to. I know you want a rose
bush, you want a tomato, you want to fill one fill in the
blank. When the soil is right, everything is going to want to thrive
for you. And Nature's way resources is the place where you can get the
soil right. Listen. John Ferguson has been doing this for years and years.
He's the originator of a lot of the soil products we talk about all
the time now and all over town rose soil, leaf compost and things like
that. They've got their fungal Fridays ten percent off the bag product and twenty
percent off the bulk product, and they have plenty of it on hand.
I mean they can deliver it. You can go pick it up. You
can get the bags, you can go pick up the bulk if you got
a truck or trailer and get out there. The phone number is nine three
six three two one sixty nine ninety nine three six three two one sixty nine
ninety Listen, put this data on your calendar. March ninth, that is
their Spring Garden Festival, and a lot will be going on at Nature's Way
Resources. You can go to Nature'sway Resources dot com. I don't have time
to read you all the stuff that's going on at the Spring Garden Festival,
but it is a lot good talks and shopping and all kinds of fun stuff
for kids and families. Nature's Way Resources dot Com. We'll be right back
after this break and we'll look forward to talking to you at seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back, Guarden line. Glad
you're listening to our show today. If you'd like to give a call talk
about something on the air. Seven one three two one two ktright seven one
three two one two k t R. We're gonna go up to George in
Jersey Village. Now, Hello George, Yeah, good morning, ship you
do it. I'm well, thank you good. I want to grow blueberries,
so I love the little boggers, but I've never had any luck,
and so I wonder, well, what am I doing wrong? Is this
particular plant that's going to go well in Houston? Thanks, that's my first
go ahead, Yeah, I can. You've got two basic types of blueberries.
One group is the rabbit eyes. Those have been grown here for a
long time. They're called rabbit eye because the unimmature berry before it turns blue
is pink like an albino rabbit eye, the little white rabbits, and those
do well here. They get a little bit larger. And then there's the
Southern high bush, which is a smaller statued plant. They're only going to
get up about four feet high roughly, give or take. And that's a
whole different group of blueberries. Either way you go, you need to have
a couple of varieties to ensure the best pollination, and that is very important
for success. Blueberries want good drainage, and they want a highly organic acidic
soil, and they want a good quality water. So in your air,
go ahead. The kind of plants got to have, like a boy plant
and a girl plant. No, it's just needs two different varieties to cross
pollinate some fruit or that way. The male and female are both on every
plant. In blueberries, it's just the pollen compatibility with itself isn't always real
good. Some of them are okay, but overall, just plant two different
ones. That also helps spread out your ripening season a little bit too.
Okay. My second question was I called you last week about planting potatoes,
and Yukon gold is one in particular. Can I go sweet potatoes at the
same time? Are they different kind of a critter? Very different. The
potatoes that we plant in the spring are the Irish potatoes, the new potatoes,
the red you know, the red potatoes, those kind, the creamy
types, and including the baker's too. If you're going to do that,
I wouldn't recommend those here, but you can grow them here. The sweet
potato is a root that we grow in this summertime, so it needs to
warm up a whole lot before you want to put sweet potatoes out. Yeah,
okay, that's an interesting Thanks very much, you bet, George.
Good luck with those out there. Yeah, hey, you're just down the
street from Plants for All Seasons right there in Jersey Village. You got to
you gotta check them out. I'm date from timetime out. They do carry
blueberries in there. I don't. I haven't been by lately to see if
they've got them in yet, but I bet if they don't have them,
I bet they are going to get them in real soon. But that's a
great, great place, real close to you there. All right, thank
you very much. I appreciate the call. Hey, yeah, Plants for
All Seasons. If you want to know the website, it's Plants for All
Seasons dot com. You need to go on line subscribe to their social media
so you can find out what's going on there. The phone number seven or
excuse me, what why do I always start off with the wrong area code
two eight one three seven six sixteen forty six two eight one three seven six
once for six Plant for All Seasons as family owned. I have been going
by there for well over a decade at a Plants for All seasons, visiting
with the Flowery family. You're talking about people that know what they're talking about,
people that sell plants that grow here and not the other stuff. You
know, a lot of places, not our good mom and pop nurseries,
will sell you stuff that doesn't grow here, and you don't need to be
wasting your money on that. I don't care if you like Welch's grape juice.
Do not plant a corn concord grape here in this area. You're not
going to have success. And yes, that's an example I just saw the
other day at let's just say, one of those national chains that sell stuff
other than plants, but plant for all seasons. They won't steer you wrong.
And you know it's not just the sale, it's after the sale.
Do you have questions? Do you need advice? Do you want to bring
in a picture or something? They're going to fix up on that. That
is why it's worth it always to go to a place that knows what they're
talking about. We love our mom and pops. I'm not going to hear
a big chain nursery kind of commercial here on guard Line. We stick with
the mom and pop nurseries because they're the ones that are here in the community
and where you get the good advice. And I could tell story after story
of the other kind of places, and I'm just not going to take time
to do that right now. We're going to now run out where we're going
to Crosby and talk to Tanya. Hello, Tanya, Hey, Skip,
good morning. How do you dody? What's up? I put down barricade
yesterday, mode put down the barricade, was hoping for a big rain.
It's not here yet. But my question is, well, actually it's two
questions. I uncovered several bear spots where I want to put sod squares of
sod in the spring. Okay, So question is how long after barricade can
I do that? And then how do I prepare the soil? What kind
of bed do I make for you for the sod? That's a good question.
So the barricade's going to last a while. It'll last, you know,
I could say it last in three months, probably go a little longer
than that. But you know, of course, it's a time breakdown over
time, so it's not black and white like on such and such a day
it's completely gone suddenly, I would if you've already got it down, now
it's gonna get watered in, I would probably let's see what are we in
now, we're in February and March April. I'd probably look at maybe May
putting some sod down. It's warmed up, the grass is growing fast,
and it'll take off better if you want to be a little extra careful.
You can concentrate the soil back it's going to have barricade in the surface,
that's where it ties up, and then put the sod down, you know,
below the surface inch or so of soil. But I think by then
it'll be okay, okay, all right, so probably May. How about
May? Would I would try it at that time. And always when you
put these down, that's another reason why we don't over apply them, because
when you overdo something like that, don't have it a little bit longer,
not a lot, but it'll extend a little bit the length of time that
it's out there. Okay. And then the bedding the soil material to put
the saw down on. Should that be a mix, yeah, any kind
of a good mix. I wouldn't do just like compost right on the surface
and plant in that because it's going to decompose a way. I would get
some sort of a top soilerty type mix to put in to kind of fill
in those areas as much as you can try to replicate what you've already got
out there, that's probably a pretty good idea. So a couple of bags
a top soil mixed with maybe, yeah, I would This is a year
out in Crosby, you're not too far from Porter's Porter Texas from the Warrens
Rocking Malts. See what kind of a top soil they would have out there,
and I would go with that. It's a little bit better than just
to use all organic because again, that just decomposes away. It's one thing
in a bed to use it a raised bed, but down in the lawn
where that long's gonna be there for a very long time. I would try
to get a good quality topsaw mix. And sometimes what you find in a
bag, especially if you go bargain pricing to find something cheap, you end
up getting what you paid for and it's not top soil at all, even
though the bag says that. Okay, love your show. Thank you so
much for the answers. Thank you Tania, I appreciate that call very much,
thanks a lot. You know, we I was talking about turf Star
earlier, the weed Nator product, and this is one of the timely things
that if you're gonna do it, you need to do it because turf Star
is a post emergent product that has a very slowly fertilizer in it. So
what's happening is when the lawn is damp, the weeds are damp, you
don't need an inch of water. You just need wet surfaces. So you
can turn the water on for five minutes and turn it right back off and
you're ready to put out that turf Star is gonna stick to the weed leaves.
The material is gonna move into the leaves gradually, so you want to
give it about a day or two before you water. So you're gonna want
to water because you're gonna want to move the fertilizer off the granules down into
the soil. But give it about a day or two. And again,
if you don't have wet leaves first, the granules just bounce off the leaves
and hit the ground, and so you need wet leaves before you put that
out. But it will work and it'll give you months. You know,
actually at least see four, probably six weeks or more of release of those
nutrients out into the lawn. Probably a little further out than that because the
chemistries of it are designed to not turn all that loose at once, so
the spring rains don't wash it all the way. It's going to be a
gradual thing. Turf Star weedenators from Nelson. It's part of the turf Star
line. Lots of great products, easy to find, lots of places you
can find those here in the greater Houston area. Let's head out to northwest
Houston. Now we're going to talk to Fred. Oh. Fred, they
good morning. I'm coming to the finals of information, and I'm trying to
find out my wife wants a pudding green instead of a lawn, okay,
and i need to know whether whether it's oil of grass would be better than
this daughter in St. Augustine. Yeah, I'm all turn it over to
you. Yeah, uh, well, Saint Augustine will ever make a putting
green, the best putting greens. And if you look, if you look
at golf courses, that's Bermuda grass here in our area Bermuda grass, and
it's a very fine textured dwarf type of bermuda that's planted. Uh, and
you you're gonna have to look around to find something like that, and then
you have to mow it regularly. Do you know they mow a golf course
green every day in the warm season when it's growing, because they're cutting off
just a tiny bit. They just like an eighth of an inch cutting off
that thing and just just constantly keeping it perfectly because that's the best putting surface.
So whatever you use, you want a very dark bermuda and you want
to do it regularly. Now you can. You can create a low dense
lawn with zoisia, but it's going to be rougher than the bermuda. So
when it you know, if you're talking about more of a fairway kind of
thing, I think that be okay. Making a putting green out as zois
is going to be very difficult. And when you mow something short enough to
be a putting green, you're going to need a real type mower, not
the propeller blade like everybody else's mower. Is the real type well, well,
the real type mowers is what they mow golf course greens with. It's
like a barber pole, the candy cane, that that mower blade that spirals
around uh and and that kind of mower gives you the finest, closest cut.
So that's what it takes to get a putting green in the common.
Long that's a good long grass. It does very well here, puts up
with quite a better shade generally not quite as much as Saint Augustine, but
good shape tolerance, and it also takes sun. It's very persistent. You
just have to mow it regularly for it to look its best. Saint Augustine's
plus is that it's very forgiving of an irregular mowing schedule. It doesn't like
it, but it'll it'll put up with it, and zeusa. If you
don't moan it regularly gets a little lumpy on you. What about the brown
patch is a subject. The brown patch as bad as uh St Augustine,
You know, I don't. I haven't seen the one that you're thinking of,
the big circles brown patch, and I bet it does. I just
don't know that one. It does get some other diseases. It can get
take all root rot like Bermuda and and UH Saint Augustine both can. Uh.
Every every turf grass has potential diseases, but when we take good care
of them, we help avoid a lot of that. It's always I planted
the same way as uh St Augustine. Yes, sad is the best way
to go really for Zoysia and Saint Augustine. Hey, uh Fred, I'm
gonna have to run time for Nicky in the news, but thank you for
the call. I appreciate that very much. Good luck in that long established
all right, we're gonna find out now what's happening. I know you're sitting
by your phones not to hear a garden line, but or by your radios,
but to hear Nikki tay if it's safe to go outside or not.
So here it comes. Welcome back to guard Line. We are happy to
have you with us today, looking forward to talking about the things you are
interested in talking about. So let's do that. Let's jump straight out here
to the west side and talk to Terry. Hello, Terry, Hi,
Skip. I didn't hear the last call, fully, but I'm calling because
we re sotted our backyard last November with Aaron Zoysia, and so my first
question is I'm familiar and use the Randy Lemon system on fertilizing and everything.
Do I still use that on the airon zoia? Yes? Yes, it's
a warm season southern turf grass, so so that that would be a good
schedule. Yep. Okay, that's now number two, number number two.
We didn't replace the sod in the front yard. It's Saint Augustine out there.
And someone told me, boy, after you mow your front yard,
you're gonna have to wash your lawnmowre to keep this Saint Augustine out of your
zoosiet Is that correct? No? No, it's Saint Augustine doesn't spread very
readily like that a big old chunks and it just doesn't get a foot down
to get a root in the ground. Uh, now you can, you
know, you can bring in sprigs of bermuda grass if they're long enough,
not chopped up so much that they're just not gonna make it. But generally
we don't worry about that kind of thing. Okay. Is there anything else
I should do this first spring on that zooyshia to encourage it? Uh,
just mow water fertilized. The more often you mow your zois o the densure
and more attractive it's going to be, uh. You it you have a
little range and how high you mow. Generally, mowing a little bit higher
you don't have to mow quite as often as if you mow a little lower.
As you mow lower, it makes a nice, tighter, denser,
more attractive plant Thezuisia. So that's the range you kind of have a train.
You think once a week would be about right, depending on the growing
season and how much it's growing. When we mow grass, we would like
to cut off one third of the leaf blade every time you mow. So
if you if you've got a grass that you're mowing a little bit higher,
uh, then you're not mowing quite as often because it grows more to reach
that one third length. But as you go down lower and lower, you're
mowing more often. But again you're getting a better, more attractive Zuisia lawn.
By doing that, keep your keep your lawnmower blade very sharp because lois
is a little bit of a tougher grass plant. You know, if Saint
Augustine has led us, Zuezia is more like a little bit of a jute
twine. It's it's got a lot of silicon stuff in it and it just
it. That's an over exaggeration to call it jute twine, but I'm just
saying a good shark lower reason. Yeh, that's one of the reasons why
we wanted it. It's so lush. Yes, it is a beautiful,
beautiful plant. Okay, Well, thank you very much. Good luck with
it. Hope you hope you enjoy that a lot. It's a really cool
deal. Let's see where are we going to go now? We are going
to Luis and Galveston. Hello Louise, good morning. Two quick questions.
We had a rubber plant outside. We covered it during the recent freeze.
All the leaves have turned brown, they have fallen off. Do we cut
the rubber plant down as a result the steam itself or just wait for leaves
to repopulate. Yeah, let the plant tell you. You can do the
branch scraping thing to see where it's alive, where it's dead. Just let
the plant tell you. That's what I would do. And when you see
green growth sprouting, then cut it back to just above. That's the best.
Yeah. The second question is I stumbled down upon twelve hanging baskets under
the house and to go out and purchase twelve hanging plants might be a bit
costly. I'm just wondering what would be the most successful results from what seed,
what plant that I could that I could put in those baskets. Is
this a sunny area or will they be in a lot of shade or what
it could be either? Or which twelve I have to find areas throughout the
property. I like to mix it up. You know, there's things that
look good in the spring. People love big old baskets of ferns and whatnot
like that. I like when the weather gets hot to switch over to things
like porta laca. It takes the heat and does really well. They're just
so many good options right now hanging baskets, or we're entering big time hanging
baskets season, where there's a lot of really really good options that always look
good. I just mix mine up. I like to look at different things,
and some things do better when it gets really hot. And then there's
of course the shade versus sun. Some things need more light, so if
you're in a shady area, foliage is probably going to do better for you.
There's a few shade loving flowers for hanging baskets, but as you get
into more sun than some of the blooming options become a little more well suited.
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you.
I appreciate that call very much. Hey, do you live down in the
Richmond Rosenberg area? Have you ever been out to Enchanted Forest and Jenny Forests?
A beautiful, beautiful nursery. It just I love going out there.
I love the look of it. Do you just drive up and the overall
look everything is just so so cool and inviting. It's like you went back
to another place and time kind of deal. You know. It's it's just
a really cool environment. Everything you can imagine growing houseplants, succulents, roses,
bedding plants, annual plants, perennial plants. Tomatoes. By the way,
today at this write this down today, an enchanted forest out there in
the Richmond area, danmim millokan's to be talking about all about tomatoes. It
starts at ten o'clock. When I quit talking here, he starts talking there
all about tomatoes out and Enchanted Forest nursery. They've got your vegetables, just
go lower their new area that Danny built out there, and vegetables, herbs,
this selection is unbelievable. You are going to be very impressed with what
you find when you go out there. They may even still have some red,
white, and yellow sea potato types that are available for you out there.
But there's always something going on. Every weekend this spring, there's gonna
be something happening out there at Enchanted Forest Garden Center. And once you go,
once you'll see what I'm talking about. Now, how do you get
there? Well, if you're in Richmond and you're heading up toward sugar Land
direction off to the right, FM twenty seven fifty nine, that's where Enchanted
Forest will be located. So again, just give them a call, go
buy stop by, the stop by the website. Do it that way.
If you go to Enchanted Forest, that's Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot
com. That'll get you there, and I promise you you won't be you
will not be disappointed. Oh By, it is time for another break.
When we come back, Donald and Roy, you'll be the first two up
if you would like to call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Welcome back to garden Line. We're glad you're listening today and looking
forward to talking to you about the things that are of interest to you.
What do you care most about? Well, let's let's talk about that.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You know, the there's
always a new product coming on the market every year. There's new types of
pretty much everything you need, certainly, new kinds of plants, new kinds
of products and things. One of the one of the cool new things that
is now available pretty widespread here now in the Houston area is the three sixty
tree stabilizer. What that is is it's a think of it as a bar
that attaches to a steak and attaches to your tree to stabilize it, and
that could be. It's made so that you can put one of the tea
posts in the iron t posts and it grabs onto that. It's designed to
grab a tepost. It'll also grab just a round post. I mean you
put a regular post down on the ground, it'll grab onto that and it
reaches out and grabs a hold of the tree. And it's got a soft
connection so it doesn't damage your tree bark, which is very important, but
it prevents that tree from moving. And if you put them from two different
angles, like at a right angle, it won't go in north southeast west.
It controls it for movement in any direction. The three sixty tree stabilizers
are available in a lot of areas. You can get them at rcw's got
the Buchanan's got them, Arbrogate's got them. Plants for all seasons, got
them. I was out at Verdant Tree Farm yesterday talking with Patrick about some
trees and things they have coming in and whatnot, what's happening in this spring.
He's got some there. I saw them there as well. Now,
the three sixty tree stabilizer is a kind of product that you buy it once
and you got it on your shelf and it lasts a very very long time.
When you got wires, you got people tripping over them, you forget
to take them off, they cut into the tree, a lot of issues
like that. Look, trees are not cheap. I don't care if it's
a little crape myrtle or if it's a big old shade tree, gunn plant.
You want to make sure they're stabilized and taken care of. And so
this is a very small investment to do that and you'll always have one.
They're ready to go next time you plant something. Three sixty degree tree stabilizer,
good quality probably by the way. Verdant Tree Farm. Verdant Tree Farm,
they are loaded up and getting a whole bunch of new plants in.
There's always new things coming in. They got a bunch of hollies coming in
here really soon, really looking forward to seeing those. They've got trees of
all sizes. I mean, if you want something up to seven hundred gallon
soil balls, they've got that in containers out there now. Verdant Tree Farm.
There's two locations, well there's three. Actually there's the farm on West
Houston out on Barker, Cyprus. There's the one Yale Street where it comes
into it in the Heights area, and then there's one down in Parlane on
Broadway. They have a wide variety of very cold hearty, very drought resistant
plants. You can go in, you can talk to them, you can
get a consultation. What tree would go here? You pick out your tree,
they come and they plant it. And it's as simple as that.
And listen, summer's coming. Don't delay if you want a tree covered today
and get scheduled to get one brought out to your place. Whether it's a
palm tree or whether it's a deciduous tree, you know, the regular standard
types of trees. They've got all of that, including the hollies that I
was just talking about. So make sure and get that set up so you
can get it established, because every day you give that tree to form roots
between now and the heat of summer, the better off and the more resilient
it's going to be. We're going to head now out to northwest Houston and
talk to Donald. Hello, Donald, how are you? I'm good,
sir. This is the way to start today. ALRIGHTY. I feel embarrassed
because I wrote down, you know, I write down the name. So
I wrote down Martin, and then I wrote down George. But I'm not
sure how, so tell me your first name again. Skip. You can
call me Skip, call me anything you want. Just have you got a
gardening question. I'll help you. I sure do. But I got something
to read you real quick that you'll like. I got my ACE Rewards coupon
thing here, which is wonderful five off twenty five fifteen off seventy five twenty
five off one twenty five and each coupon has my name on it with a
membership number. And can't beat that. Can't beat that. Oh, I've
been to ACE Hardware when they have them, when they said they have everything,
I can't explain it. They have bins and bins and bins of hardware.
And you can buy threaded screws and machine bolts in snake brass or brass
or nylon or a stainless steel. I mean, you can't find that anywhere,
no one at a time. ACE is a place for your name.
And hey, Roy, do you have a gardening question or don't excuse me?
Oh? I sure do. Okay, Remember I was talking to you
about property up in Love lady, and still not sure what to do with
it. But I'm thinking that excuse me if I just want to put thornless
blackberries up there, and now I'm thinking pumpkins. This is things that we
don't get to take care of much. We go there, but you know
we're not like a daily visit. So if just put pumpkins in the ground
and thornless blackberries and just let them go and see how they grow. You
can do that with the blackberries the pumpkins. I think you're going to run
into. They get some powdery mildew and issues on the leaves. It's worth
a try, but under neglect, it's a little roll of the dice with
the weather on those. Okay, well again, there's thirty acres on the
side of the house there to play with. So we could put some in
one area and then maybe you know, the one hundred feet away, put
some more and see what happens with them. And we know animals will get
to them. But just have fun, have fun. That's a main Yeah,
that's the main thing. Yeah. And I forgot to mention to you.
You said, well, it's a nice piece of property. There's one
hundred and sixty five more acres that have to be mode. That takes two
and a half weeks to do. Good. Luckily, I better let you
go so you can get that thing mode. Hey. I do appreciate the
call, Donald, but I think you did experiment with whatever you want.
Hey, there's nothing wrong if something doesn't turn out. That's how that's how
gardening can be. Just have fun. A quick pine tree question, all
right, real quick, I gotta move. I have my property here in
Houston. I have like sixteen pine trees, about eight to ten inches around
close to the house, and some are so they're not that far apart,
and some are nice and dark green, and the others are kind of yellowed
out, like they almost look like they're dying. But they've been here for
years. Why would they be so different. Could be a number of things.
The weather, the drought we had last summer has taken a toll on
a lot of pine trees. There's just a lot of other issues. But
I suspect drought related maybe part of it. And it's always hard to kind
of predict, right, Yeah, at this point, there's not much you
can do because of what happened before. You just kind of have to wait
and see. Okay, and I get other catalogs. I just want people
to know, like, hey, Donald, I'm sorry I have to cut
in, but I might have to run. We got some folks here waiting
up. I got a break coming. Thank you, sir. I appreciate
the call very much. Uh. Yeah, that that is, you know,
it's the vicissitudes of nature. They direct a lot of things that we're
doing. Let's uh, let's see here. We're gonna go to Katie and
talk to Roy. Hello, Roy, Hey, I got a couple of
quick questions. I uh took the day off yesterday to get my gardens ready,
and so now I got to follow up on that. Okay, I
did a about a one third mixture of chicken manure with my soil, and
I'm wondering, does the manure make me need to fertilize less? Yeah?
Or or do I still need to do a weekly liquid fertilizer? And what's
the plant? Tell me? Tell me the plan again, Roy, Oh,
it's gonna be different vegetables, tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapenos. Okay.
And was this and minru you got from somebody or or what? Or what
it was it a bag? It was? It was a mixed corn that
I got out. Okay, so it was it was already processed. Okay,
Yeah, all right, good two thirds soil and one third chick I
don't know that. Yeah, well that's a lot of chicka mine. You
shouldn't have to fertilize. But watch how things grow. And see, chicken
manure is one of we call it the hotter manures, meaning it's got a
lot of nutrient in it compared to something like rabbit or horse for example.
Uh, And so just be a little careful that that one third is a
lot. That's a lot of chicken maneur. So I think you're probably okay.
You don't want to overdo anymore. Just be careful with it. I'd
throw a malt on the ground, you know, when we do with chicken
mineur. I don't know the product and how well processed it is, but
there are some human microbe types of things that we have to deal with.
Most people making a product are gonna have that in mind and get it adequately
composted. But just just be a little careful. If you're doing vegetables,
you know, got soul splashing up on your leg, leaves or stuff.
We always like to make sure that it's fully, fully decomposed. That's why
I throw a mulch on top of it when I use any kind of a
manure in the gardens. Okay, thank you very much, Roy, thanks
a lot. Enjoy that. Hope you have a good time. Hey,
we gotta take a little break, Nancy and Westbury. You are first up
when we come back. I appreciate you hanging on with us. We'll be
right to you if you would like to give us a call seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. Two weeks from now, I'm going to be up at A
and A Plants and Produce, which is up in Montgomery. That is on
Saturday, the twenty fourth, not next Saturday. Two saturdays from now.
That's going to be my next appearance out and about A and A Plants and
Produce in Montgomery. Saturday is twenty fourth, twelve to two. Hope you
can make it out. Kat RH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of
the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katy H. Garden
Line with scared director. It's crazy. Just watch him as the world may
give things to Septasya again, not a sad Welcome to garden Line. We're
glad to have you back today. What are we going to talk about?
Well, that depends on what you call about. Our phone number is seven
one three two one two five eight seven four. Overall, I'm talking about
getting ready for spring, and we've got a lot of questions coming up about
that. Uh so we're gonna jump right into things. But before I do,
h have you been to Warren's Garden Center and Kingwood Garden Center? Out
in Kingwood, Texas. Those of you listening up to the north and east,
you're lucky. You got two places that are top quality. Mom and
Bob local fill in all the names you want independent garden centers right there in
Kingwood, and they have got a great selection of vegetables and herbs available right
now. Now is a good time to get out there and do that.
Hey, by the way, they have Kettley orchids arrived just in time for
Valentine's State. What a great gift. And orchids are not that difficult to
take care of a little bit of TLC here and there. Just tell them
when you get them an orchid. Hey, call garden line if you have
a question, help you with it over there, or go back to Warren's
in Kingwood. Listen, those folks know what they're talking about. And if
you have any issues with taking care of plants, if you wanted tips for
success, you know what are the ABC's that haven't success with this plant?
They can take care of that. They are still selling the supersacks from heirloom
soils out at Warren's Garden Center. Very cost efficient, very easy, super
convenient. It's a cubic yard sack that they'll put in your truck or your
trailer or you know. It just makes it real easy to get a hold
of the composts that you need, the quality mixes that you need. They've
got that. Now here's you need to listen to this part. They are
offering a deal. They're calling it the Skips Special. Okay, buy three
bags of heirloom soil that are one cubic foot or larger, not the little
tiny bags, but you know, decent sized bag one cubic footter larger,
and you get one free. That that is a really good deal on it.
But just go by and say, hey, I need the Skip Skip
special on these bags of soil. Three bags of heirloom soils, and there's
you can mix and match, like if you want to get a veggie and
herb soil and you also, you know, want to get a rose soil
for example, that counts. But buy three bags and you get the fourth
one for free. And it's good this weekend. It's good all the way
up until February eighteenth, so that would be what next Sunday, that's right,
this weekend and next is your chance to do that. So get buy
Warren Southern Gardens or Kingwood Garden Center and you can do just just that.
That's a good deal. Let's see, We're going to head now to Westbury
and talk to Nancy. Hello, Nancy, Hi, Skip, I have
a question today. My question is I live at a condo with a swimming
pool. On one side of the swimming pool, there's a brick flower bed
that runs the length of the pool, and the lagustrum in that flower bed
died last summer. Okay, so we want to replace the lagustrum, and
some suggestions have been to plant purple sage oryopon. So what shrub would you
recommend that we plant in that bed, well, both purple sage and yopon.
I don't know if that's coming in on your own, but I'm getting
a lot of feedback right there. If that's all your question, go ahead
and hang up, and I'm gonna go ahead and answer it. If you
need to hang on for a follow up, that's fine, Okay, all
right, okay, Yeah, the yopon is an evergreen and it's green.
Of course, you can buy the little compactyopons that are smaller. You can
get a larger yopon that would have berries like there's a variety called Pride of
Houston. Just no yopon berries or poisonous. If you got little kiddo's playing
in the pool and that might tend to want to stick something in their mouth,
that may not be a good choice. The yopon, but prior to
Houston's, a beautiful yopon does really well. Texas sage the siniso is also
good. It's more of a silvery Some versions are a little bit greenish,
a little more silver with others. But it's got to have really good drainage.
And if you can give it a raised bed so when it rains too
much here, which it does at times, you drain off that extra soil,
it'll be okay. And it's a beautiful plant does really well also,
So those are both good tough plants that you're not going to have many pests
and disease issues with. I would just throw in one other idea. This
would not be an evergreen, but why not some shrub roses. There's a
lot of beautiful roses out there that are shrub type roses, and they're easy
to prune and sheer and keep looking good. So that would just be one
other being a swimming pool. It's probably in the sun, so that's gonna
make roses very happy too. Just another thing to consider it as an option
out there. By the way, if you already have roses and you need
to get them fertilized, well why not use a quality mix one of Microlife's
quality mixes. And they have a lot of blends. You know with Microlife,
you've got you've got the standard green bag, that's the six two four.
We think of it as a lawn fertilizer. I'll tell you this.
I use it on my roses. It encourages good vigor, and when your
roses have vigor, they're gonna have blooms. It works really well for that.
But Microlife has a wide variety of selections. You know, they got
things for fruit and citrus, for example. They've got they've got acidic types
of fertilizer, and the acidic blends also super super good for roses. So
consider the one that's made for things like blueberries and camellias and gardenias. You
can use that on your roses too. The Humates plus that's the zero zero
four purple bag, very good for your lawn. It would be a good
time to start thinking about getting that out in the lawn here pretty quick.
You're going to be following it up with your standard summer lawn fertilizations, but
for now, just the humates plus over time, year after year, adding
that in building the soil, improving the soil structure, improving the lawn,
you're basically doing what nature does, and that is growing a healthier plant and
improving the soil little by little over time. That's what nature does, and
that's what you do with your microlife Microlife Fertilizer dot com if you want to
get more information, they're available everywhere. It's really easy to find microlife in
this area. We're going to head now to just says Houston and Karen,
Karen, what part of Houston are you in? Southwest Houston? Alrighty,
how can we help? So? I had a horrible struggle with aphids in
my cucumbers last year, okay, and I just never could get pasted.
I guess by the time I discovered them, they were already too established.
And I bought some mem oil and was treating it with nim oil, but
it just never like it never got rid of them. Okay, is there
something I can do, like this spring when I plant my cure numbers to
kind of prevent them. Yes, aphids will feed on those new cucumbers,
especially the new shoots out toward the end, and they will cause them to
curl and cup, and it's hard to get a spray in there to kill
the aphid because the leaf is deformed because of their feeding so early on.
Just watch for them, you know what to look for. When you see
a few, just get you some insecticidal soap and just squirt those leaves.
Make sure you get the bottom of the leaves when you spray, and the
soap. If you give aphids about the insecticidal soap, it kills them.
It's not a poison, it's physically killing them. And so that you just
every now and then. You don't need to spray every week. Just when
you see a little problem cropping up, catch it early. And that is
the safest, simplest, easiest thing you can do. You're not gonna kill
your bees that way either, Okay, great, and I have and I
have chickens, so there it's like but they but I fence them off so
they cannot get to my plants. Not a bad idea, not about chickens.
Are very bad gardeners. They're not. They are, but they do
provide fertilizer, servis and eggs. That's it. That's it. If you
got backyard chickens, you get eggs. That's the fun part, all right,
Yes, and then one other quick question, if it's okay, I
planned a layer garden. It seemed like margals help my tomatoes because I had
no pett Yeah, any other suggestions to layering? Okay, Karen, I've
run into a break. I'm gonna just let you go, and when I
come back from break, I will address that. We will be right back.
Well, welcome back to garden Line today. We are having a good
time talking about all kinds of things. Listen, it is spring. I
don't know if you're excited or not. I am. I am very excited
about spring, and if you're a gardener, I bet you are too.
Listen. I know you see a lot of clouds up there, but I've
been looking at weather forecasts and it looks like some of this is gonna hold
off a little bit. So if you have a chance to get out today
and get by your garden centers, get by the places that supply the kind
of things you need, to grow your lawn, your garden, your landscape.
I would get out there and do it. I mean, we got
we got a lot of spring to come, and we want to get ahead
of things and be ready to go. So don't let a little bit of
cloudy weather keep you from doing that. I was just talking on the phone
about I think I was talking with Karen, and we were talking about different
things like marigolds and tomatoes and putting those things together. The whole issue of
companion planting is a very complex one, to be honest. It's you know,
you can't just say, yeah, you put these two plants together and
everything works out. It's more complicated than that. Some companion planting claims don't
hold out and some do some types of things. You know, like if
you were to use marigols to keep nematods off your tomatoes, well you'd have
so many marigals planted that they would essentially become a weed to your tomatoes,
that is, taking water, nutrients and whatnot, And that's not a good
way to do it. Will marigals trap nematodes and reduce the numbers over time
in the saw, yes they will, But to put a whole bunch of
on a tomato plant is not that effective of an approach. It's too complicated
to go into Whi's been a whole show on it really talking about all the
aspects of it. But in general, with that one marigoles and tomatoes,
I don't do that. And I know that some people recommend that you will
find that marigals get spider mites, and spider mites love tomatoes too, and
they'll just move right up on your tomatoes as well. So I don't know.
I'm not a big one on that particular example of companion planting. Let's
go up to Cyprus and we're going to talk to Teresa. Hey, Teresa,
Hi, I need your help going to war with rabbits that are eating
my pansies. Okay do you War's a big term, I mean it,
Okay, Uh with rabbits. There are some repellents that you can purchase.
You might try your ACE Hardware store if you're up in Cyprus. You got
a couple of great ones. You got the one on Jones Road, Cypress
as you've got M and D that's a little bit further further north for you
up there. Both of those are going to be really good choices. M
and D's on Luetta Road. Uh, And they're gonna have some repellents for
various kinds of animals. You might try that. Fencing them out. If
you in an area where rabbits are coming out of the woods and whatnot,
putting a low fence out maybe the best way to keep them out of there
because they are that they don't cooperate with what we want them to do in
the garden. Okay, so a repellent, a repellent or fencing them out.
Those are like for the front yard. Like, if I can't put
a fence, I'm just gonna have to use the repellent. Then yeah,
yeah, you use the repellent. I'm not a wildlife expert, but that
that would be something you could try. I know, the bunnies are cute.
You use the term war. I'm pretty sure ballistics will be frowned on
in your neighborhood. So I would stay away from that. But seriously that
if you can, if you can just try to kind of repel them away,
that's probably one of your better options. Okay, Okay, thank you
for your advice. All Right, thank you very much. Not a real
super super good answer for that one. We're going to go now to the
Woodlands and talk to Chris. Hello, Chris, good morning, Thank you
for taking my calls here, bet you bet. I have a lot of
oak trees leaves brother coming down, and I just want to know can I
put them in my compost pile or do they No? You can? You
can? Yes, you can? The answer here, Okay, they're not
a problem. No, not to a go for it. There are huge
stretches of hardwood forest across the southeast United States, and it's almost eighty or
percenter more oak leaves fall into the ground decomposing and everybody's happy. So don't
worry. Don't worry about that at all. Good deal, Thank you,
you bet. And if you run over them with a mower, break them
up a little bit, they decompose faster, and so that may be something
you'd want to do. Okay. Oh okay, all right, thank you,
thank you, thank you you bet. Yeah. I was talking about
ACE Hardware up in Cyprus area. You know, if you just go to
their store locator, go to acehardware dot com and find the store locator,
they'll ask you, you know, what the zip codes you're coming there from.
If you put your zip code in they'll show you the ACE stores that
are near you. It's real easy, easy to find them. And you're
going to find all kinds of things from repellents to pest control, disease control,
weed control, fertilizers. Oh my gosh. ACE has stocked up like
crazy on all these products. They're ready to go. Get out there and
get some now. So when the weather is such that you're gonna get out
and fertilize or put on brimmerge, whatever you're gonna do, go ahead and
get it now, be ready to go, and ACE will get you fixed
up on that. We're gonna now head out to sugar Land and talk to
Greg. Hey, Greg, Yes, I have a knockout roses. I
would like to know when do I need to cut those back? I had
a bloom right during the the freeze. On a week after froze, they
bloomed down. And now yeah, this dope dormant or whatever, I go
ahead and cut it. You can do some printing now, it's fine time.
It's excellent time to do printing on your road. They're gonna be putting
out new growth, gonna get a little more warmer weather coming here. You're
gonna see some sprouting coming out if you have already on your roses and uh,
so you go ahead and get that printing done. However you want them
to be shaped and look knock out some good shrub rose. Very disease resistant.
Uh and that's its main attribute. Is it blooms and blooms and it's
a disease resistant. And also my fertilizer once should I put that down for
the winter for the summer coming we talk about your roses. No, for
my lawn. For you lawn you could do you could just see you in
sugar nut. You could do a greenup. I would probably consider if you
want to do a greenup just to have it turned green. It's a little
early for making it grow. But you can do that in early March or
even very late February, but probably more like early March. For your your
lawn green up, your actual you know where you're putting on the slower release
fertilizers to last you a while over the summertime and spring. I would start
that at about the beginning of April for your area. And that's on my
lawn care schedule, which is at gardening with Skip dot Com. Go to
that website and print those out or just bookmark them gardening with skip dot com.
They're free and it tells you everything from January to December what you need
to do. Hey, and it has all the numbers as far as the
five ten or whatever numbers. It does. So, for example, if
you go the lawn schedule, you get to choose the synthetic options and the
organic options and done at the bottom there is a list of the best products
for that option, for fast release, for slow release, for synthetic,
for organic. It's all right there, real easy. That's why I like
people to print them out. You can carry them with you when you go
shopping and just say, hey, I want that one and point at it.
You don't have to memorize everything. Okay, thank you so much.
All right, Greg, thank you. I appreciate your call very very much.
I've been telling you that I'm going to be at A and A Plants
and Produce. That's in Montgomery. If you're in Montgomery, it's on the
east side of town. If you're in Conroe, head toward Montgomery passed by
Lake Conroe. All those of you live out there Lake Conroe, this is
your this is your backyard. Garden center right there on the east side of
Montgomery, and they have a little of everything. They got sea potatoes,
now, they got onion sets, now, they have fruit trees, including
citrus trees right now. Lots of bagged products, all the nitrofoss products,
all nail, some plant food in fact, all of the turf Star line
from Nelson, All of the microlife fertilizer products are there, all of the
heirlooms, soils are there, Nature's Way resources, leaf mold, composts,
both finding course, they've got it there. I mean, Ana Plants has
got what you need. You can hire them by the way to do cleanup
in the homes around that Lake Conroy area. So if you're up in that
area, they'll come out and they'll the landscape crew will come up and do
a good clean up and get you ready to go for spring. And at
the counter you'll find my lawn care schedules. So if you don't want to
print up your own, just go buy Ana Plants and Produce. Now,
remember two weeks from today, Saturday, February twenty fourth, I'm going to
be at Ana Plants and Produce. Come up and see me. Bring me
samples of plants. You want to identify it or diagnosed. Bring me photos
that you like me to look at. I'm going to be given away eight
bags of turf star weedinator, one every fifteen minutes for the two hours that
I'm there at Ana Plant Produce. Not next Saturday, but the next Saturday,
February twenty fourth. I hope you'll come out and see me, and
while you're there, get some shopping done. They've got it all. We're
gonna go. Now. Let's say we're gonna have to report and talk to
David. Hey, David, good morning, Skip for taking my call.
I called for the first time. Last year, my neighbor infested my along
with chinch bugs. We decided to rip out some significant pieces of the Saint
Augustine there, and you know you recommended to go ahead and rip it out
and put it in. Now. It was around August or early September,
so I went ahead and did that. I bought a palette of sod and
I mean it caught on pretty good. Everything's looking good here. You must
have got out water, yes, sir, we've got some you know,
uneven and patchy here and there. You know, okay, I didn't do
as good a job as I should have maybe laying the sad, but when
when was a good time for me to fill in or top soil that lawn?
And what's a good product to use. So if you're wanting to fill
in low spots, you want to use a top soil. You don't want
to just put a compost or leath more compost on. That's not for filling
it in. It'll just decompose the way itself and you'll still have a hole.
Yes, so a good quality topsail mix and they're you know, different
soil yards are going to have their versions of that. If it just a
little bit, you can buy things by the bag or you can have it
delivered. If you're going to need a lot of it to put out out
there, that's for filling in. If you're wanting to do compost top dressing
over the top of the lawn, that's a different thing. But I think
top soil is what you're asking about. Yes, sir, so a top
soil and thank you for that. Just a follow up question on our flower
bed. You know, with this freeze that came, it's a new home,
so there was not there was a couple of plants in there that that
died. I pulled them out. What do you recommend as far as something
to throw in the flower bed soil to prepare for for some new prints?
All right, I got about twenty seconds. I'm gonna give you a quick
answer on this one. I would get like an heirloom soils. The veggie
and herb mix would work for that, the rose mix would work for that.
All of those would be good for soils. If you've already got a
pretty decent soil, maybe just adding some of the compost to the soil alone
would work well. But either of those three products gonna work pretty good for
you. Hey, I'm sorry, I got to run. It's time for
Nicky in the news, and she will run me out of here with a
pitchfork if I don't let her have the microphone. So how was that for
us? Your character just got drug through the mud. There, I'm gonna
shut up. Now we'll be right back. Welcome back to garden Line,
Welcome back, Glad you're here? Or Hey, what do we want to
talk about today? We can discuss the things that are most of interest to
you. I've got my own things. I've been talking about what to do
for spring and whatnot. While Ago is mentioning heirloom soils, and you know,
heirloom has such a wide variety of products. I mean, whatever you
want to grow, they have a soil for growing it, and they have
those amendments that you need. You know, I just want to improve on
a clay soil area, and you want something that's going to last a long
time, like the expanded shale, you can mix that in. Do you
want to do some of the leaf more compost, you can top dress with
that yourself. Do a little bit here and there, just where you might
need a little bit. If you need a big yard full, you have
to bring in quite a bit of it by the cubic yard and get that
done. But that that can be a mess. That's why we have people
like you know, our dependable sources for like greenpro for putting the top dress
compost out. Those who live north of Interstate thirty five up in the let's
just say the north and west quadrant. As you look at Interstate forty five,
their seat ten. I said thirty five forty five and ten up in
that quadrant. You get the idea. Hey, I would highly recommend though
that you go ahead and get your soil, so you're ready to go when
you work the soil, and you're gonna find heirloom soils. You're gonna find
them everywhere. They're sold by the bag, they're sold by the bulk.
You can go get them in porter, you can have them to deliver them
to you any way you want to go about it. For those of you
living down south, Siena Molts that's a great place to get airloom products.
Cenamlts carries everything you need to do what I say every week you need to
do, and that's brown stuff before green stuff, fix the soil. Do
you need a quality blend airloom soils has got it. Do you need a
place where you can get it? Well, Ciena Malts a great place to
do that. Sienna's got compost blends. They've got mulches. They got them
by the bag, they got them by the bulk. They have the fertilizers
that I talk about. So while you're there, while you're doing the brown
stuff, that includes composts and soul mixes. That includes fertilizers for the nutrient
bank account and your so well, and that also includes the mulches. They
go on top of the ground to protect the soil, to fight weeds and
things like that. Sienna's got all it. They also have, by the
way, a pretty good selection of all the things you're trying to use to
fight problems like wheat problems or insect problems or disease problems. They have tools
on hand. They've got rock and stone. Do you want to create a
beautiful pathway? Do you want a stone bed siding? They've got all of
that. And here's the thing. They're in Siena. Siena Multch is down
near Siena Plantation, for example. They are just north of Roe Sharon where
Highway six and two eighty eight come together the little FM road FM five twenty
one at Siana Maltch. I love to go there, by the way,
I want to be there this spring. I'll tell you more about that as
it's coming up. But Ciana Maultch is just a great place to go visit
and to find all of these kind of products like the airloom we were just
talking about a second ago. I want to head now to northwest Houston.
We're going to talk to Diana. Annah. Hi, Hi, happy to
talk to you. Last year I built a ten by two foot raised bed
you know, out of the concrete corner blocks and with the wood between them.
Okay, but I'm trying to figure out what to put in there.
Last year I put cucumbers, uh, squash, and zucchini and some green
peppers, and of course I had nothing but tangled vines and that didn't work.
I mean, the crop the crops were takinge are you talking about the
crops tangling up the vines or with his weed vines? What? What was
the vines? Okay, I'm sorry, do what was it? The was
it the vining crops that were getting all tangled up in the Okay? So
here's here's what I would do. Whenever you have a small garden, go
vertical as much as you can. So on the north side of the garden,
if there is such a thing, you know, the put a put
up a fence. It could be a livestock panel, it could be mesh
wiring on posts, it could be anything. And run your vining crops up
the the mesh fence, the wall, the trellis. That'll give them good
air circulation and it uses very little footprint of your garden and they're not crawling
all over everything else. Then in the other area, you can plan all
the other things that you don't want vines climbing all over. That's how you
get the most out of a small garden area. Yeah, I used I
use the tomatoes, you know, the tomato what do you call them?
Ca okay, so those little grew all over, Yeah, what they call
tomato cages, those little those little round, triangular three wire things. That
is too dinky for tomatoes. That's okay for peppers, maybe mayde eggplant,
but tomatoes just get most of them get too big for that. You need
a regular tomato cage. Or you can also train your tomatoes onto that wall
that that fncing I was talking about. That's a little more work, but
that that is an option if you choose to go that route or just buy
a more compact the squaestion, would you can suggest I love the squash,
the yellow squashing the zucchini, which you suggests that those since they do vine
out so much, that I plant both in se Can I do a container
just like a large pot if it's a very yeah, and then they don't
those two don't viine. I mean they do slowly the stem grows out and
crawls along the ground. But it's not what I would call a vining plant
at all. Squash, the yellow squashed zucchini is more of a bush.
And yes, if you could get about ten gallons of soil and a container,
they'll do pretty good. If you container starts getting smaller, you end
up not being able to water enough and fertilize enough to keep them happy because
those roots are way too confined in a small container to have good success.
Gotcha, But yes, I love love container gardening. That's a fun thing
to do. I'm getting into it this year and last year, so hopefully
it'll work better this year. All right, Dinna, thank you very much.
I appreciate your call. Let's head out to uh let's see. I
tell you what, John and Sour Lake. I do not have enough time
to give your call justice, so just hang on a minute. You will
be first when I come back, and I'll be right back. Our phone
number is seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven one
three two one two k t r H. We've been talking today about what
is important. What do we need to get done right now, especially in
the lawn. Go to gardening with Skip dot com my website Gardening with Skip
dot Com the lawn care schedule is there that we talk here about on Garden
Line. You can print it up. You can just look at it online.
I'd print it up. I'd take it with me, stick it on
the refrigerator if you want. It'll tell you January to December what to do.
You can also print up the lawn pest disease and weed management schedule,
same thing, January to December, organic synthetic. It's all on one schedule,
easy to find. I'll be right back, and if you'll call us
up, we'll be ready to go with you when we come back. Right
after. John, all right, there we go. We're gonna hear a
lot about that during the Super Bowl. I bet too. Welcome back to
the Garden Line. Glad to have you with us today. We're gonna run
right out of the phones. First thing here and talk to John out in
Sour Lake. Hello, John, Hey, I've got I planned it in
some sugar snaps. Yes, I was wanting to watch fertilize and with you
know, sugar snaps is a lagoon, being a pee, a cool season
p and they don't need a lot of extra nitrogen now a little bit.
If your soil is very poor. A little bit is helpful, just a
little bit early on. I would probably use a very slow release, gradual
release product for that, and once they get going, they're going to do
pretty good on their own. If it all depends on what you're starting with,
John, So, if your soil is poor, I would get a
moderate amount of fertilizer that's got a little bit of everything in it and put
it down, mix it into the soil, and then plant the sugar snaps.
If you already planted them, you can sprinkle some around the sides and
real carefully just scratch it into the soil surface around them, kind of water
it in to get those nutrients released into the soil, but be careful because
too much of that first number you end up with vining at the expense of
pod production, which is your growing upclid on them. Well that's perfect,
that's perfect. Yeah, just the green bag would be just fine. Yeah,
that's what I normally. I got one other question. I want to
plan a kate jasmine or guardain you okay, I want to put it in
a pot, big pot started out on the port. Okay, what kind
of salt you use? You want a soil that is for acidic loving plants.
And the folks, I know, the folks up at Airloom Sauce have
got various kinds of blends that they do. It's real easy to find them
there for sale by the bag everywhere. So if you want to, if
you want to go that route, they absolutely will have, you know,
something to help out with that kind of plant you mentioned. You like the
Microlife too, so buy some of that a reddish bag that has that's for
acidic loving plants to go for that gardena that you're going to put in acidic.
Yeah, you know, Microlife has a products kind of in a reddish
pink bag that that has It says it's for azaleas and blueberries and camellias and
guardinas and whatnot, that it's good for all of those. All right,
thank you, I appreciate it. All right, you take out, hey,
thank you, appreciate you being a listener. You take care. Yeah,
lots of lots of good I tell you guys this, those of you
living in the Houston area all the time, but you do not know what
a horticultural paradise of garden centers and product suppliers and stuff you have down here.
It is. It is just really really unique. A lot of people.
I get responses all the time, someone from Dallas wanting to know,
well, I can't get such and such product up here. Well, I'm
sorry, you know I can't. I can't control that, but I can
tell you this, folks down here have a lot of options. And if
you're looking for the best garden centers in the state of Texas, really in
the region, all in one spot, Houston is it. They're downtown,
north of town, east of town, west of town, southwest of town,
south of town, you know, over southeast. I mean, it
doesn't matter which direction you are, You've got a destination kind of place.
And that is just amazingly convenient. So I guess we're spoiled by all that
good stuff because it's really cool. For example, downtown Buchanan's Native Plants,
they're in the Heights, by the way. I'm going to be out at
Buchanan's in March. I'll tell you more about that as we get close to
it. I can't wait to get out there for that one. But they've
got their first batch of tomatoes and peppers and they're ready to go on that.
Do you need a Valentine day gift. That's kind of a grab and
go, you know, maybe like potted tulips or moms or hedranges. They've
got that. Any kind of a plant that you want to give away.
They got weeks roses coming in. They still have some some of I believe
that David Austin, I believe some roses well on those. They just have
a good stock of all kinds of plants, and they specialize in natives.
That's why it's called Buchanans Native Plants. Now. You can find them really
easily. They're on Eleventh Street in the Heights, or just go to the
website Buchanansplants dot com. Once you when you're on their website to bookmarket and
to sign up for their newsletters. Their newsletters are full of great information.
And when you go to Buchanan's Plants online, when you go to the website,
there's some really helpful educational material on there too. It's called resources.
There's gardening articles and gardening guides and whatnot. You can be part of their
rewards program all there at Buchanan's Native Plants. Oh okay, we're going to
go to East Harris County now and Robert Hey Robert, good morning, Good
morning. I've got a terrible issue with my lawn being overrun with what looks
like clover in every form of weed I've never seen in my life. I've
been in this house thirty years and I've never seen it. Yes, as
it is now. Yeah, I've followed Randy Lemon's lawnchair guy for years,
but it's it's it's overtaken even that. So I'm just wondering. I see
you advertise for this leading nator, if that's something I should be considering doing
now. Yes, what you're seeing as a result of a real bad summer
last year and our lawns got thin and we'd seed starge brought and everywhere,
and now we're dealing with it the weedonator. If you wet the weeds,
just wet them. Don't drench the soldier. You just want the leaf surface
wet. You put it on the cranial stick to the weed and they move
in and wait a day or two before your water, because you want to
let it do that and then water it to get the nutrient themselves down into
the soil, the fertilizer part of it, and that will get you good
to go. You can also spray weeds. You can if you want to
do if you don't do the fertilizing right now, you can do the spray
on them now. But either way you've got a good package there that's going
to work. But the key, and you said this, Robert, is
do it now because those weeds are small, and in the next three or
four weeks they're going to take off growing. They're going to have ballooms and
seeds, and then products don't work as well. And so it's much better
if you're going to do something to do it now on those young, younger
weeds before they get really big and grow too fast, I understand. And
then what should I do as far as fertilizing then later in the spring.
Yeah, you mentioned Randy's schedule. If you go to my website Gardening with
Skip, I've got both. I've got two schedules up there. One of
them is just lawn care. It's mowing, watering, fertilizing, air rating,
trace minerals, and it gives you all the products for organic and synthetic
lawn care whichever way you want to go. On. Also is the lawn
pest Disease and Weed Management schedule. So that's going to tell you when to
do chinchbugs and sodweb worms and take off patch and brown patch and weed prevention
and killing existing weeds and so on. It's all on that schedule too.
Okay, great, thank you. Still one more question on the weed donator.
With it raining, now, do I wait for the lawn to dry
out and then right before fertilizing you'll water it down? Yeah? You just
keep Yeah, you can't control the rain, so you don't want to put
it out and then have rain wash it right off in the next few hours
or something. So I would wait until we get to the end of it,
when it's quit raining and the leaves are damp. If you run out
there and do it, fine, if you miss that window, just turn
on the sprinklers, wet the leaves, and then put it out and you're
and that's good. Doesn't take much water, just enough to barely with those
those leaves weed leaves, got it? Thank you for your help, all
right, sir, Thank you for the call out there in East Harris County.
Good to talk to you, Robert, as always. Well, unless
you've been living under a rock, you know two things. Number one,
the Super Bowls tomorrow afternoon number two. Valentine's Day is this week, and
Valentine's Day is a perfect day to give a gift. Let me throw an
idea out there. Do you have a friend, some older person. Maybe
it's your grandma, maybe it's an aunt or uncle, maybe it's just a
neighbor, a shut in, and can you imagine a better gift than getting
them a rose taking it over their house, let him know you know you're
coming. You want to plant a rose bush, And plant that rose bush
and sit down and spend a little time with them. Listen, life goes
fast. Kids grow up, older, folks get older. It moves fast.
Any of you who have been around for a few years know that's true.
And it gets faster by the way. So why not take time for
those relations ship things. You know, Gifts are gifts. Gifts are great.
But when you give a plant, you give a memory. Every time
that rose bush ballooms, they're going to remember you. I mean they are.
I heard an old gardener I used to know up in Conrod, Texas.
He would say flat and this is not his quote, but he would
quote it. Flowers leave part of their fragrance in the hand of the beholder.
And it just it's a pleasant thing to do to give a plant as
a gift, and with Valentine's Day, I can't think of a better plant
than roses. Everybody loves roses, All kinds available. Hey, thanks for
listening to the Guardline. We'll be back tomorrow at six am to ten am
to do this again