Welcome to k t r H Garden Line with Skip Richard. It's just watch
him as world map basic. Good morning, Welcome back to garden Line.
Let's talk about gardening. What would you like to visit about seven one three
two one two k t r H seven one three two one two k t
r H if you'd like to give us a call and we will talk about
those kinds of topics that you are interested in. The folks at r CW
Nurseries, you know, that is the place where you can find a wide
variety of all kinds of things. That's a nursery that's on Tomball Parkway to
forty nine where it comes into belt Wait eight on the north west side of
Houston, and it's easy to get to, easy to find, and when
you get there, you're going to find everything you need. I ask them
for a list of their roses earlier in the year, and oh my gosh,
like four or five pages, single spaced a list of all the different
kind of roses that they can get a hold of for you. They also
grow their own trees out at Williamson Tree Farm out in the Plannersville area,
and so they have an excellent selection of every kind of tree that you can
imagine you'd want to plant here. Things that do grow here, and that
includes when I say trees, I mean large shrubs as well, of course
holly's and whatnot. They know how to grow them, they know how to
pick the ones that belong in the yards here in the Greater Houston area.
That's what they specialize in. And it's all there at RCW Nursery. You
know, David and the team out at RCW do an excellent job of all
of that. And so here we are, we're at the end of winter
time. If you want to get a woody ornamental on the ground, you're
not going to find a better time. Don't delay, go ahead, go
ahead and get it. Just pick it up, get it, bring it
back. You can water a little bit while you get the bed ready and
everything. Get get set and ready to go and get that thing in the
ground as soon as you can. This Uh, we've had a few kind
of days of some cloudy, rainy stuff. That's gonna go away. We're
going to be back in nice sunshine and it'd be a great time to get
those things planted. Build a quality mix into the soil and put in a
quality plant like they have. They're at the RCW Nurseries. You know,
you can go online to RCW Nurseries dot com. You can find out more
about them there. But just know this that from fifteen gallons up the two
hundred gallons, that is a place where you can get quality, quality trees
and a wide, wide variety of roses along with everything else. If they
sell at the nursery. You're listening to garden Line again our phone number seven
one three two one two kt r H. We're going to go out to
Cleveland now and talk to David. Hello, David, good morning, Skip.
What's up. I have a I have three questions. They're probably pretty
short. First, I got a plumbria. A friend gave me a cutting
about three or four years ago. I got in about a twenty twenty five
gallon pot and I moved inside for the freeze. I've protected it well up
till now. And my shed got a little bit cold. And it has
three branches, but two feet tall, and the branches out in three and
the tips of the branch is about excuse me, about six or so inches
of them got cold enough that they turned kind of mushy. They're soft.
I'm not sure what I should do with that. It seems to be still
solid at the bottom and there's green. You know, when you peel the
skin a little bit, Have I lost that thing completely or probably it's probably
not. You could have a soft spot on the stem somewhere, you know,
where it also was damaged. But I would kind of wait and watch
it a little bit. You can cut out any area that you know is
dead, that you know was rotted, and just get a fresh cut and
make sure that it has a chance then to dry over that cut that you
made, which it will, and it should be fine. Primaria doesn't even
think about growing til it really warms up, and so there's still in a
dormant stage. There's no rush on anything. Unless you just saw you had
an active decay going on in there. Then I would go below that area
and make the cut. When you make a cut, you'll know if the
center looks rotted or not. But I think it's gonna be. I think
you're gonna be okay a bit two or three weeks from now. Probably do
the cut on it. Oh yeah, you could. I would look it
over it kind of feel on fill those stems and stuff and check it over
and if you feel like that, you know you have an active decay going
on. I would do the printing now, but I don't think you need
to. I think you can wait a little bit and then let's see what
the plant looks like as we begin to warm up just a little bit.
Okay, good deal. Now, I got a blood orange in a Sam
Houston peach. Okay, the blood orange. It got really bit pretty hard
by the it was twenty twenty one. I think the real super cold.
I protected it. I had a heat lamp and all that. But the
December before that it produced some peaches. It wasn't old enough. I thought
I'd got them all off, but I hadn't. And not peaches, dang
it, oranges oranges. And yeah, it had hit some in some dense
foliage at the bottom, and there were about eight of them, and they
were really good. I followed Ranta's advice by knocking all the blooms and stuff
off of it, and I missed eight of them. But it hasn't produced
an orange since then. And it just got bit by this last freeze here
this spring or winter, and it lost lost all the sleeves. But it
looks like it's sprouting little leaves. Yeah, the all the stems are really
green and that right, that thing's probably going to be all right. How
long should that thing go without producing oranges? Well, yeah, it depends
on grain conditions and a lot of things, but it will start producing again.
You know, you haven't lost the tree. As long as there's growth
above the bud at the bottom, then that's growth through. Yeah. I
never lost it down to the graft. It's still the same wood that it
was. Well, I would wait, I'd watch it and wait right now,
David, and let the new growth do what it's going to do.
I wouldn't want to print it anymore. Right now, it is super susceptible
to cold because you've got succulent new growth coming out. You don't have a
canopy to kind of hold in some of the radiant heat coming up from the
soil, and so you don't want to add that to that pruning it,
which is also a stimulating thing to do to a plant, is to prune
into living tissues. So just wait and as it begins to grow we kind
of get past the danger cold. Then you can go in and do some
selective printing in there to take out all the dead At that point. Yeah,
the peach tree. I've had it for about probably eight years, and
I've never really got an edible fruit off that thing. Okay. It's produced
some small peaches and most of the time the squirrels get to them, but
and the birds, but none of them ever got to what you would call
of something that you want to, Yeah, pull off there and put them
out. So you said you've had it eight years, David, Yeah,
probably seven eight years okay in the ground. Yeah, it should have produced
for probably about eight inches in diameter. Maybe is something like that. It's
a peach that does well in East Texas. It should have done better for
you. Is does every year do you get blooms from it? Yes?
Okay, it does, and as long as frost hadn't taken out the blooms.
I don't know what to tell you. It needs good sunlight in order
to set bloom, produce blooms, sat blooms, and set fruit and develop
fruit. All those require a lot of sunlight. So that's one possibility.
Full sun Yes, for sure. Then I would I don't know. I
would wait and see. The only thing I can think of is maybe it's
not the brighter you thought it was. Sometimes things get crossed up. But
I think I'll just give it a little more time. If the tree looks
good, I'm gonna have to take a break here, so I can't readig
down much further into this one on. But look at the health, Look
at the growth. You ought to have eighteen to twenty four inches and new
growth on shoots by the end of the season. If it's more than that,
back on nitrogen fertilizing. If it's less, give it a little bit
more. Make sure the drainage is good, and hopefully it'll it'll finally kick
in. It should for sure. Hey, thank you, thank you for
the call, and good luck. Thanks for you bet, thank you very
much. We're gonna take a break right now. Our phone number seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip rich Or. We're here to talk about gardening.
Isn't that a surprise for a gardening show? Well, would you like to
talk about gardening? Got a question? Seven one three two one two k
t R eight seven one three two one two k t R H. And
when we get to the end of the winter season, we are in like
the peak season of the whole year for pruning trees and shrubs and things like
that. And the folks at Affordable Tree. When I say the folks at
a Portable Tree, I'm talking about Martin spoon Moore. Martin's been around since
oh my gosh, I think he's done this for thirty years now taking care
of Houston trees. He knows what he's doing. That's why that's why Randy
always talked about Martin spoon Moore service. I'm talking about Martin spoon Moore.
When you get somebody that knows what they're doing and does it right, you
need to stick with them. Because listen, if you screw up planning a
tomato, you can dig it up and put a new one in the ground.
When someone comes in and messes up your tree with a bad printing job,
that's permanent. Do not let some fly by night guys stick a card
in the door of your front door and you know, have access to your
trees. You got to know what you're doing or you do permanent damage to
trees. It is serious the kind of stuff you see around town, and
it's heartbreaking because it's done. You can't go, you can't go put the
branches back and do it right. Martin does it right. He does it
right the first time. Listen. Here's his number. Just write this down.
You'll want to have this on hand anytime you need any kind of tree
work done. Seven one three, six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven
one three, six, nine nine two six sixty three. When you call,
you're going to get Martin or his wife, Joe. That's right,
the bosses. They answer the phone. That's the kind of business. This
is afftree Service dot com. If you want to go to the website aff
tree Service dot com, get on the schedule. He has a lot of
work. Make sure and tell him that you're a garden line listener. That
gets you to the front of the line. And anything that's going to be
done around your tree, Martin needs to be involved in that. Maybe you're
going to put a trench in the ground, maybe you're going to add a
driveway or a sidewalk or something that's going to be on top of the tree's
root system. Because they reach way out in all directions. Get him there
first so that it's not too late and the damage is already done. Let
him guide you through it, let him consult with you and make sure you
take care of those giants of the landscape that add incredible value to your home.
Don't trust them with somebody else. That's as simple as that. I'm
going to go out now to Richmond and we're going to talk to Gus.
Hello, Gus, good morning. Hello. How can we help today?
Yes, I have a thank you for what you before all our gardeners.
Yes, sir, I just want to have a question about the Saint Augustine
grass. It is the time to top dress it. And how much should
I put on there? Yeah, you can. About a third of an
inch is usually about right. It doesn't take a lot, just a little
bit over the top of it. You want to use a very fine screened
compost, you know, you want to make sure that you're not putting big
chunks you know, of wood that the lawnmower is going to knock all around.
This is a high quality. It's best to use a finely screened leaf
mold compost if you can, because that will settle down between the grass blades
and do its work right there. All right. Just a concern about it
being too early and now, yeah, it's really not, and in fact,
getting it down a little bit early. It's just a little less light
hitting the ground, so maybe some of the weeds that would have otherwise germinated
don't quite get enough light to establish. Well, just a little bit of
a help there. It's going to release its nutrients over time. But you
can do the top dressing at different times. You don't have to do it
right now. I mean you can do it now, or you can do
it a little bit later as well, So it's not a real specific date
on the calendar. You have to get that done. Well. Thank you,
all right, Gus, you take care. Good luck with that.
Good luck having a beautiful, beautiful lawn. Boy. The season we've been
through last summer's that took its toll. Our lawns have been hammered, and
we've got some thin talk to a lot of people. Are they're having to
reap plant lawn sad in areas and you know it, And sometimes people go,
I don't know if I need to replant or not. I had a
lot of damage. And here's the way to look at it. Uh,
if money's not that big of an object and you've got an ugly lawn,
you can rip it up and reside it and put a new one in and
do that. If you are trying to save some and you look at your
lawn and you've got living grass that's let's say, not a bit more than
about a foot apart. Some of the little patches of grass. There's not
like a three foot area with all dead grass in it. Well, that's
within a foot. It's going to fill in. By the by the time
we get into the mid season, it'll it'll have covered in. You're gonna
have some issues with weeds coming up in those bear spots. But the grass,
the grass you have can recreate the lawn you want. But that's provided
that it's in good health that you're mowing, watering, and fertilizing right.
That's why I put the mow the lawn care schedule online at gardeningwith Skip dot
com. Now, if you do that kind of care, you can get
back into the lawn that way. People vary in their tolerance for weeds or
for maybe being patient versus I want it right now. And that's your call.
That's not my call to make. That's your call to your yard.
But I'm just telling you that if you if you have some living spriggs about
a foot apart, and you take care of it good, you can get
that to fill back in for you. But if it's suffering from diseases,
it's going to be weak and it's not going to fill in really well.
So that's that's the caveat that we have to deal with, you know,
speaking of composts and mulch and things, and being down there in the Richmond
area, you're not very far away there. Gus called in from down there
from Cienamals. Cienamulches is really a great place to get let me put it
this way. I always say brown stuff before green stuff, and Cienamulch is
a great place to get the brown stuff taken care of. And here's what
I mean. They've got mulches, they have composts, they have soil blends
bet we call them bed mixes where you bring the mix, you put it
on the ground and you grow in it. It's already ready to go.
They've got that. They have bags, they have bulk they deliver within about
twenty miles of their area down there. They also have the fertilizers that I
talk about. That's part of taking care of the brown stuff, getting the
soil bank account of nutrients ready, so when plants grow the roots, have
everything they need things bend those nutrients by putting them into growth and taking off
running. And that's what we're after. That's the kind of success we want,
and Ciana Multill gets you set up for that. The website is Cenamultch
dot com Sienna Multch dot com. They're on FM five twenty one just north
of road Sharing. And so for all of you living out in near Brasis
Ben State Park, sun Creek Estates, Fresno Quo Valley, or Colo Cinti
Plantation of course, Iowa Colony, all those neighborhoods around there, this is
your backyard specialist in the brown stuff that makes the green stuff jump out of
the ground with success. I'm going to be out at Cenamultch later this spring.
I'll tell you more about that later. Really looking forward to getting out
there. They're open Monday through Friday, five or seven thirty in the morning
to five pm. Saturday's seven thirty to two. They're closed today, but
they'll be back open again tomorrow where you can begin to get everything you need
so that this spring you have a show place because you built the foundation first
at Cienamulch. Our phone number if you'd like to give us a call is
seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two
one two five eight seven four. I am when I get back to the
house a little bit later here and get through the show today and head back,
I'm gonna I'm gonna be focusing in this the next week. My number
one goals are to get some transplants moved outside. I've been growing some under
a light inside and they're nice, sturdy transplants. Get them moved out into
the garden, and I've got some coverings ready to put over them, warm
season transplants. It's a little early to put them out. I'll be planning
these up in the College station area, and that's a little cooler. You
get up Conroe College Station up that far, the last frost is a little
bit a little bit later than it is down if you're in the Galveston area
listening, for example. But if you're ready to cover them up, you
can go ahead and do that. If you're not ready to cover them up,
what I would recommend, and I'm going to do this with some of
mine, by the way, is to kind of hedge my bet is just
bump them up into a bigger container. I have some that are just about
ready to go into a one gallon container and finish. They're growing out,
and that way I can put them outside. They can get sunlight and get
used to you know, the wind and the temperatures outside. And then on
a cold night it's gonna get down in the ill, say mid fifties or
lower, I'll go ahead and bring them in that far tomato that's a little
cool. When you get down fifty degrees, I'll bring them in and then
put them back out again. And when it's time to plan outside, I'm
going to have a bigger plant with blooms. And oftentimes I'll even have fruit
on them already by the time I actually plant them outside. But if you're
out shopping and you see some, go ahead and buy them and bring them
home and do that. And here's why, somebody else is going to come
pick them up, and you may go back and the variety you want isn't
available anymore. So there's nothing wrong with going ahead and getting them. Just
remember they need good light, they need a little protection from really cool weather,
and you need to fertilize them, keep them growing, and you can
have quite a plant and quite a head start. That's all pretty important.
Uh. So I here comes a call that's of interest to me. We
got Mick in Wisconsin talking about palms. That doesn't that doesn't compute make in
my head. Tell me what's going on? Hey there, good morning.
It's been a while since I've called end of the show. But oh,
okay, well, yeah, I I grow all kinds of stuff, mangos,
lemons, palms, bananas up here. But anyway, the uh and
the question I have is, I have somebody sent me to Mexican fan palms
from down there, and they came together. They're about I want to say,
about half of a foot tall, okay, and they're growing really close
together. And I want to know, I don't want to do this with
bananas, but I don't know how to separate these things. I don't want
to kill them. Yeah. Let it. Let it warm up just a
little bit for you. Palms like warm weather. We do. We even
done here to a lot of our palm planting in the summertime because they just
do well in that weather. Uh. And then you can just take a
sharpshooter cut them apart and they'll be fine. Uh. The palm palms are
basically they're technically they're a grass plant. They're not a tree like we think
of trees. Uh, and so appreciate that. Yeah, so just cut
the roots. New roots will originate at the base of the palm because it
is a grass plant, it's not a tree, and so that'll be just
fine. Yeah. Tell me how you grow of that stuff? In Wisconsin?
What you must to have one heck of a greenhouse. Yeah. In
my in my office, I don't keep closing my closet. I have a
lighting and mile our back and wow, reflecting the lights. And then I
built a structure in the in the actual office itself. Wow, lots of
lights and high electric bills. Yeah, but that's fine. Man. It
sounds like you're having a blast. What part of Wisconsin again, chaboy?
And it's about an hour north of Milwaukee. You're not just in Wisconsin.
You were up in Wisconsin pretty far. We're up here. Yeah, And
I'll started. I was down in friends of mine, We're digging up banana
plants from their yard, and I said, let me take a let me
take a rhizome home with me. And sure enough, that's how it started.
There. You go hey, it's a gateway drug, man, it's
a gateway drug all kinds of tropicals. You're in trouble. Thanks for the
call, and good luck with that. I'd love to hear how things you
go before you up there. Uh yeah, we could say we could recommend
a lot of wonderful If you've never grown white butterfly ginger, that's a that's
a tropical that you ought to try out. Put it in pots so you
can protect it from the kind of coal you have. But that's the most
heavenly fragrance you've ever seen. I will do that, all right, nick
Hey, thanks for the call. I appreciate I appreciate hearing from you.
All Right, it's time for Nicky in the news. Our phone number if
you want to give me a call on Garden Line seven one three two one
two kt r H boh you me, we see soaking it up. That's
fine, it out. Just have fast your brothers, boll pops here you
there ing nothing bad lead it's your face like along sermon on a pretty sunday.
All right, welcome back to Garden Line. We are going to talk
about the things you were interested in and a couple things that I'm interested in
today. It is time to get your garden in, man, I mean
the warm season garden. We are on the doorstep of it. What we're
doing is we're staring at the weather. We're listening to the weather man.
We're rolling dice, we're rubbing on crystal balls, We're using our imagination.
When's that last froster free is going to be? We don't know, it
doesn't matter. Here's the deal. Here's the way I look at it.
I often will get out with an early planting, and I know it's a
little early, but maybe I'll get lucky and it works. If it doesn't,
I'll just replant, especially with seeds. That's easy to do. With
the other plants. You bring them in, you get them going, you
get that gardening fever flowing, and when it's time to put them out,
you put them out there in the garden. I talked earlier about potting up
your tomato plants, just to be ready to go. Maybe you're gonna plant
a few tomatoes and you buy several, but you plant a few and you
hold back a few, pot them up and you've got them as a I
don't know an insurance policy you could put out there our peppers. By the
way, Plants for All Seasons has an excellent supply of tomatoes and peppers.
I know, you know. Plants for All Seasons are on two forty nine.
They're just north of Luetta and Tomball Parkway, heading up toward Tomball direction
or down from Tombol for those you coming in that way, just north of
Luetta. They've got a wide variety of things like helopanos, tabascos, serranos,
the Chaszzo pepper, the giant Marconi that's a that's a really nice one
too, bell peppers. They've got all kinds of vegetables. Have you ever
grown poc joy before? They have transplants of that. You ought to try.
It is fast, like in twenty eight days from seed you've got pock
joy. So that is a great stir Fried's grape for soups. It's just
a really mild brassica that I think is excellent. Girl. I always I
have someone about to plant out in the garden myself, but they're set up,
they're ready to go. What do you need? They've got it there,
the tomatoes, the peppers, all kinds of things. They've got the
roses and oh my gosh. Their seed selection is unbelievable, huge wall seeds
and bulbs, seeds, bulbs and supplies. Oh my, how about that?
All there at Plants for All Seasons. Go by and see them.
You know, when you go by there, you're gonna get good service.
You're gonna get good plants, you're gonna get good advice, and if you
need service after the sale, they're absolutely going to be right there for you.
So that is an insurance policy like you just can't get when you go
shop at some place that, let's just say also selles, hammers or lumber
kinds of you know, some of those places, not all, but you
know what I'm talking about, Plants for All Seasons. That is a is
a great place to go, and you need to get to know the flowertys
there and find out the kind of service I'm talking about. We're gonna go
over at the Galleria right now and talk to Chip. Hello. Chip,
Hey, Hey, I love your show. I appreciate it. Thank you.
The question I had is can you I know no one has the crystal
ball, but can you go ahead and put your try fruit. He's in
the in the ground right now, and you know you have to cover them
up if we got something coming through. But yeah, can you go ahead
and put those things in brown or do they prefer a bigger container, like
you know of a large you know, like fifty gallon containers. Okay,
some people have so all the decisions for trees can go in the ground now
without any concerns. Are you talking about like citrus trees? Yes, they're
like a couple of orange limes, lemons. Okay, Okay, out here
there's a great sunny area that has the parents house that we want. Want
to go ahead and put them in, you know you could, uh,
and then be ready to protect them. I think if they were mine,
I would buy them on it and get the selection right now that that's best,
uh, And then I would just hold on to them, put them
out, let him get sunlight as much as you can. If we're going
to get down you know below forty, bring them inside, just bring them
in a garage or something, and then put them back outside again and let's
get a little warmer and then get them in the ground. That way,
if you do, if we were to have one of these unexpected, very
very cold spells, you haven't created a lot of work for yourself trying to
protect it, and then you put perfect when you plant that. I've heard
tell that maybe you pour a little fish emotion or something in the bottom of
the hole that you might dig. Is there any like super trick that you
might suggest to give the plant the best opportunity. So what I would do
is, now, if you wanted to mix in like a microlife. Microlife
has a citrus type special fertilizer, you could mix that in with the soil
around the planting hole. Normally we don't put fertilizer in a planting hole because
salt based fertilizers, too much of them around the roots can burn roots when
you're trying to get a plant established. But you could do that. Microlife's
not going to do that. You mix them in and then if you want,
as it's after it's planted, if you want to water it in from
the top down, drenched down on it with a solution of like Microlife's ocean
harvest, you could do that. That would be a good example of that.
Medina makes one called Medina has to Grow Plus and that would be another
example of one of those Those kind of products are high quality and they go
right in a solution to the roots and can help get you off to a
good start. But you're citrus isn't going to want to grow until it warms
up, and so you can't make it grow with fertilizer right now. In
fact, you want it to not take off too fast because it needs to
warm up a little bit more. Okay, all right, thank you for
the call. I appreciate that very much. Hey, you've heard me talk
about Star Hope here before on Guarden Line. Star Hope is a Cristi centered
community that's been in Houston since nineteen oh seven. They've been helping the homeless
now for over one hundred and sixteen years. I mean that is a long
track record. Now, I don't go that far that back with that far
back with Star Hope. My wife and I've been supporting Star Hope now,
oh gosh, probably the last time it did was over oh gosh, probably
we're thirty definitely over thirty years ago. When we begin to help with Star
Hope. It's a place that we believe in. It's not just three we
say three hots in a cot, meaning they're going to feed you three hot
meals, give you place to sleep overnight. They can do short term,
but what they're really here about is changing lives, long term job training,
dealing with substance abuse, overcoming that, the kind of education and spiritual growth,
life management skills and things helping people actually get job interviews, training them
for the job interviews. They even have clothing there for folks to dress properly
and to put their best foot forward. And do you see what I'm saying.
We're talking about a commitment, a long term commitment to help people change
their lives. And when you're talking about I like to use the example when
we're talking about mom living in a car with little kids. I mean,
we are not just changing Mom's life. We are changing the future for those
kids in a real, really real way. We're changing our greater Houston community
with Star Hope. It doesn't take much. Just go to Star of Hope
and check them out. It's s o hmission dot org s o Hmission dot
org for Star Hope. You're not gonna find a better way to put your
compassion into action. We're gonna take a little break right now. Our phone
number is seven one three two one two k t r H. I'll be
right back. DOT. I was in love with you, Dot, I
was in love with you a man witch dot. He told me what to
do. He said it you never know what kind of song we're gonna play
on garden line. Welcome back. We're glad to have you here. We
are going to talk about the things you're interested in. If you'd like to
get us call seven one three two one two k t r H. Seven
one three two one two k t r H. This is a time to
plant trees. This is a time to plant shrubs. This is a time
to plant roses. Now, if you're going to plant a tree, you
need to give it some stability initially until it gets its roots established and you
know, can kind of hold up on its own. Well. The best
way to do that is with a new product actually on the market called the
three sixty Tree Stabilizer. What that is Imagine it's like an arm that reaches
out and it grabs on to the post that you're using for your anchor post,
and it grabs onto the tree with a soft rubber strap that allows movement
on the tree. That's important. You don't want trees to just not move
at all. Movement in the wind helps strengthen them. You don't want to
move too much, but you want to move a little bit in the three
sixties. Designed to allow that you can put one on a tree. You
can put them from two different angles, like ninety degree angles, so one
is keeping it going north south, the others keeping it on the east west
direction, however you want to go about it. They're made to attach to
an iron post, one of those little t posts. They're designed just for
that. You can also put them on a big old round post and they
do just fine. Going to find him at R. CW. Buchanan's Plants
Arborgate plants for all seasons. I was, you know, the Verdant tree
Pharmas out there the other day. They had some of those out there.
Three sixty tree stabilizer is a small investment in a very significant investment. When
you purchase that tree, help it get established and off to a good start.
You know the goal. How fast can I hang a hammock in a
tree? That's what I think when I buy a tree. How fast can
I hang a hammock? We want to get it on the ground. We're
going to hit the ground running. And three sixty tree stabilizer is a great
insurance policy. It'll last you forever, I mean a long long, long
time. So any other future trees you plan or loaned to a friend who's
going to plant one, these things are going to stick around, and they
do the job right much better than wires that you're going to trip over.
Besides wires, they you know you. They keep you from pulling against the
wire but not pushing toward the wire and the wind blows different directions. Three
sixty tree Stabilizer has you covered all the way around. Really really products.
I've messed around with them myself a long time ago when they're first working on
getting the patent of this thing, and it's a great product. We're going
to go out to Spring now and talk to Catherine. Hello, Catherine,
good morning, Good morning. How can we help? Do I trim turks
cap? Do I take it down close to the ground or just a few
more inches? I would take it. You could leave it as it is,
but it looks a little straggly. I would take it down and cut
it off about four inches above the ground. Just cut it all off,
and when it warms up, it will come out like Gangbusters and it'll be
a much more pretty plant. And it'll still Esperanza. Yeah, Esperanza will
do the same thing. Yes, sometimes it makes it through. This year
we had enough cold. I don't I think Esperanza may be killed back to
the ground at a lot of places. But yes, I just there are
a lot of those semi surviving above ground perennials. Esperanza's one and Turk's cap
is another one like that. The Golden showers is another one. Just cut
them all back. And what about beauty berry? I have several beauty berries.
The beauty berry is a shrub and that one you shouldn't have to cut
back like that. It should be surviving above ground unless for some reason it
just was not ready for winter and that cold hit it. But I think
I just need to wait for leaves. Yeah, I just wait for leeds.
The plant, like I like to say, the plant will tell you
where to prune back on anything like that when you see the new growth coming.
I appreciate your help. Well, Catherine, thank you for the call.
Good luck with all those plants. Those are all great plants too to
have. By the way, hey, have you been out to the enchanted
forest. Enchanted forest is set up and they're ready to go if you need
any kind of hell. Halloween, wrong time of the year in times day
shopping. They've got the potted plants, just really cool stuff, all kinds
of their gift shop. If you've not been in there, you got to
go see it. It is every time I see it is just better and
better and better, and you're in chanted for us. They've got all kinds
of plant if you need tomatoes and peppers and herbs. That their new section
they built last year is just outstanding. And while you're out there, asked
to see the gerber daisies. Gerber Daisy is just you know, Jay from
Texas Gardener. He always ends every one of his little social media things with
plant happiness, y'all. Well, if you gerber daisy is the poster plant
for plant happiness. They are the brightest, most colorful, happy looking little
blooms you've ever seen in your life. Gerber Daisy's are beautiful. I've had
them in containers on my porch over the years, many many times. Beautiful
plant. Ask him it in chanted for us to see the gerber daisies.
By the way, where is enchanted for us? Well, if you're in
Richmond heading up Torch sugar Land Way, it's off to the right. FM
twenty seven fifty nine FM twenty seven fifty nine makes it real easy? Or
how about this. Here's a website Enchanted Forest Richmond, TX dot com.
Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. It's always fun to go out
and see Danny and Clay and the whole team out there, and they sure
we'll give you the help you need to have success. We're going to go
now to Magnolia and talk to Cindy. Hello, Cindy, Hi, how
are you this morning? Well, I'm well, how are you? I'm
doing just fine. The question that I have is we have Saint Augustine grass,
and because of the bird seed, I'm sure that I'm feeding the birds.
I've got a lot of weeds in the yard, stinging grass and things
like that, and I don't want to stinging grass on the dog's seat.
Can you tell me what is the best thing to use to kill the weeds
in the Saint Augustine without actually killing the Saint Augustine? Yes, right now?
You want to use a post emergent broad leaf weed control product, so
that would be that could be something you spray. There are things you mix
up and can spray, or you can get a product that Nelson's makes.
Nelson's makes, of course a lot of fertilizers, but they make one that's
called we Donator we Donator, and it has a fertilizer that's very gradual release,
so when you put it down, it's going to be fertilizing your lawn
for the next few months. But it has the product that kills the existing
broad leaf weeds that you're seeing. You need to wet the soil first,
just barely actually wet the plant, just barely get the plant wet so that
when the granules of weedinator land on it, they stick to that weed plant
and they move into it. And then don't water for a day or two
and it will move in the weed and it'll kill it. Then you want
to water it to get the fertilizer down in the soil, all right,
And that's called the Nelson's Donator we Doinator. That's the fertilizer combo that you
put on right now to kill those cool season weeds before they start blooming and
setting seed. Don't delay. If you're going to do that, you need
to get it done sooner rather than later while they're still most susceptible. That
that spraying with just a weed control that you know, just spraying would just
a herbicide itself would be an option, but for most things go ahead emergence
broad leave. Yeah, but let's just make it simple. The Nelson weed
nator will kill the kinds of weeds you're seeing right now that are about the
problem, and it'll fertilize at the same time. Yeah, okay, wonderful.
Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you. Bet youa
Cindy, thank you. I appreciate appreciate your call. Thank you. That's
high time to get that kind of thing done. Hey, uh, if
you are wanting some you know, just good ideas and advice and guidance on
plants. The Aggi Horticulture website is excellent. I talk about my website a
lot. I'm just getting it built, you know, gardeningwith skip dot com.
That's where the schedules are and some other things. By the way,
I just put a thing on soil testing made easy. Put it on last
week on my website and it just gives you the real simple how to do
it. Here's how you do a swell tester, say you send it in.
Really easy to do. But Aggie Horticulture website, there's a whole section
on fruit, where you can get a free publication to view online or print
out, whichever you want, on everything from avocados to I don't know what
fruit begins with the Z. It's got all of them on there, dozens
of fruit. It's got the same thing for vegetables, every vegetable you could
want to grow in your garden. It's all free information. You should go
check it out. You can learn a lot. It's very very hardful.
We'll be right back. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's
so just watch him as the world many things. Good morning, Welcome back
to garden Line. Let's talk about gardening. What would you like to visit
about seven one three two one two k t r H seven one three two
one two k t r H. If you'd like to give us a call
and we will talk about those kinds of topics that you are interested in.
Uh. The folks at r CW Nurseries, you know that is the place
where you can find a wide variety of all kinds of things. That's a
nursery that's on Tomball Parkway to forty nine where it comes into belt Wait eight
on the northwest side of Houston, and it's easy to get to, easy
to find, and when you get there, you're gonna find everything you need.
I ask him for a list of their roses earlier, uh in the
year, and oh my gosh, like four or five pages, single spaced
a list of all the different kind of roses that they can get a hold
of for you. They also grow their own trees out of Williamson Tree Farm
out in the Plannersville area, and so they have an excellent selection of every
kind of tree that you can imagine you'd want to plant here, things that
do grow here, and that includes when I say trees, I mean large
shrubs as well, of course holly's and whatnot. They know how to grow
them, they know how to pick the ones that belong in the yards here
in the Greater Houston area. That's what they specialize in. And it's all
there at RCW Nursery. You know, David and the team out at RCW
do an excellent job of all of that. And so here we are,
we're at the end of winter time. If you want to get a woody
ornamental on the ground, you're not going to find a better time. Don't
delay, go ahead, go ahead and get it. Just pick it up,
get it, bring it back. You can water a little bit while
you get the bed ready and everything. Get set and ready to go and
get that thing in the ground as soon as you can. This. We've
had a few kind of days of some cloudy, rainy stuff that's gonna go
away. We're going to be back in nice sunshine and it'd be a great
time to get those things planted. Build a quality mix into the soil and
put in a quality plant like they have. They're at the RCW Nurseries.
You know, you can go online to RCW Nurseries dot com. You can
find out more about them there. But just know this that from fifteen gallons
up the two hundred gallons, that is a place where you can get quality,
quality trees and a wide, wide variety of roses along with everything else
that they sell at the nursery. You're listening to garden Line again our phone
number seven one three two one two kt r H. We're going to go
out to Cleveland now and talk to David. Hello, David, good morning,
Skip, what's up? I have a I have three questions they're probably
pretty short. First, I got a plummeria A friend gave me a cutting
about three or four years ago. I got in about a twenty five doll
the pot, and I've moved inside for the freeze. I've protected it well
up till now. And my shed got a little bit cold. And it
has three branches but two feet tall, and the branches out in three and
the tips of the branch is about excuse me, about six or so inches
of them got cold enough that they turned kind of mushy. They're soft.
Yeah, I'm not sure what I should do with that. It seems to
be still solid at the bottom, and there's green, you know when you
peel the skin a little bit, right, Have I lost that thing completely?
Or probably probably not. You could have a soft spot on the stem
somewhere, you know where it also was damaged. But I would kind of
wait and watch it a little bit. You can cut out any area that
you know is dead, that you know it's rotted, and just get a
fresh cut and make sure that it has a chance then to dry over that
cut that you made, which it will and it should be fine. Primary
I want to think about growing til it really warms up, and so they're
still on your dormant stage. There's no rush on anything, unless you just
saw you had an active decay going on in there. Then I would go
below that area and make the cut. When you make a cut, you'll
know if the center looks rotted or not. But I think it's gonna be.
I think you're gonna be. Okay, a bit two or three weeks
from now, probably do the cut on it. Uh, yeah, you
could. I would look it over, kind of feel on. Fill those
stems and stuff and check it over. And if you feel like that,
you know you have an active decay going on. I would do the printing
now, but I don't think you need you. I think you can wait
a little bit and then let's see what the plant looks like as we begin
to warm up just a little bit. Okay, good deal. Now I
got a blood orange and a Sam Houston peach. Okay, the blood orange
it got really a bit pretty hard by the it was twenty twenty one.
I think the real super cold. I protected it. I had a heat
lamp and all that good. But the December before that it produced some peaches.
It wasn't old enough. I thought i'd got them all off that I
hadn't and not peaches. Dang, it oranges oranges, And yeah, it
had hit some in some dense foliage at the bottom, and there were about
eight of them, and they were really good. I followed Rantag's advice by
knocking all the blooms and stuff off of it, and I missed eight of
them. But it hasn't produced an orange since then. And it just got
bit by this last freeze here this spring or winter and it lost lost all
the sleeves. But it looks like it's sprouting little leaves. Yeah, all
the all the stems are really green. And that right, that thing's probably
going to be all right. How long should that thing go without producing oranges?
Well, yeah, it depends on grain conditions and a lot of things.
But it will start producing again. You know, you haven't lost the
tree. As long as there's growth above the bud at the bottom, then
that's growth through. Yeah. I never lost it down to the graft.
It's still the same wood that it was. Well, I would wait,
I'd watch it and wait right now, David, and let the new growth
do what it's going to do. I wouldn't want to print it anymore.
Right now. It is super susceptible to cold because you've got succulent new growth
coming out. You don't have a canopy to kind of hold in some of
the radiant heat coming up from the soil, and so you don't want to
add that to that. Pruning it, which is also a stimulating thing to
do to a plant, is to prune into living tissues. So just wait
and as it begins to grow, we kind of get past the danger cold.
Then you can go in and do some selective printing in there to take
out all the dead at that point. Yeah, the peach tree, I've
had it for about probably eight years, and I've never really got an edible
fruit off that thing. Okay. It's produced some small peaches and most of
the time the squirrels get to them and the birds, but none of them
ever got to what you would call of something that you want to, yeah,
pull off there and put them out. So you said you've had it
eight years, David, Yeah, probably seven eight years in the ground.
Yeah, it should have produced for probably about eight inches in diameter, maybe,
is something like that. It's a peacha does well in East Texas.
It should have done better for you. Is does every year do you get
blooms from it? Yes? Okay, it does and as long as frosted
and taken out the blooms. I don't know what to tell you. It
needs good sunlight in order to set bloom, produce bloom, set blooms,
and set fruit and develop fruit. All those require a lot of sunlight.
So that's one possibility. Full sun Yeah, for sure, Then I would
I don't know. I would wait and see. The only thing I can
think of is maybe it's not the brider you thought it was. Sometimes things
get crossed up. But I think I'll just give it a little more time.
If the tree looks good, I'm gonna have to take a break here,
so I can't read dig down much further into this one. But look
at the health, Look at the growth. You ought to have eighteen to
twenty four inches and new growth on shoots by the end of the season.
If it's more than that, back on nitrogen fertilizing. If it's less,
give it a little bit more. Make sure the drainage is good, and
hopefully it'll it'll finally kick in. It should for sure. Hey, thank
you, thank you for the call, and good luck. Thanks for you
bet, thank you very much. We're gonna take a break right now.
Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome
back to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip rich Or. We're here
to talk about gardening. Isn't not a surprise for a gardening show? Well,
would you like to talk about gardening? Got a question? Seven one
three two one two k t R eight seven one three two one two k
t R. H. Listen, when we get to the end of the
winter season, we are in like the peak season of the whole year for
printing trees and shrubs and things like that. And the folks that affordable tree.
When I say the folks at a portable tree, I'm talking about Martin
spoon Moore. Martin's been around since oh my gosh, I think he's done
this for thirty years now, taking care of Houston trees. He knows what
he's doing. That's why that's why Randy always talked about Martin spoon Moore service.
I'm talking about Martin spoon Moore. When you get somebody that knows what
they're doing and does it right, you need to stick with them. Because
listen, if you screw up planning a tomato, you can dig it up
and put a new one in the ground. When someone comes in and messes
up your tree with a bad printing job, that's permanent. Do not let
some fly by night guy stick a card in the door of your front door,
and you know have access to your trees. You got to know what
you're doing or you do permanent damage to trees. It is serious, the
kind of stuff you see around town, and it's heartbreaking because it's done.
You can't go, you can't go put the branches back and do it right.
Martin does it right. He does it right the first time. Listen,
here's his number. Just write this down. You'll want to have this
on hand anytime you need any kind of tree work done. Three six twenty
six sixty three seven one three six nine nine two six sixty three. When
you call, you're going to get Martin or his wife, Joe. That's
right, the bosses. They answer the phone. That's the kind of business.
This is afftree Service dot com. If you want to go to the
website afftree Service dot com, get on the schedule. He has a lot
of work. Make sure and tell him that you're a garden line listener.
That gets you to the front of the line and anything that's going to be
done around your tree. Martin needs to be involved in that. Maybe you're
going to put a trench in the ground, maybe you're going to add a
driveway or a sidewalk or something that's going to be on top of the tree's
root system. They reach way out in all directions. Get him there first
so that it's not too late and the damage is already done. Let him
guide you through it. Let him consult with you and make sure you take
care of those giants of the landscape that add incredible value to your home.
Don't trust him with somebody else. That's as simple as that. I'm going
to go out now to Richmond and we're going to talk to Gus. Hello,
Gus, good morning. Hello. How can we help today? Yes,
I have a thank you for what you do for all our gardeners.
Yes, sir, I just want to have a question about the Saint Augustine
grass. It is the time to top dress it, and how much should
I put on there? Yeah, you can. About a third of an
inch is usually about right. It doesn't take a lot, just a little
bit over the top of it. You want to use a very fine screened
compost. You know, you want to make sure that you're not putting big
chunks you know, of wood that the lawnmowarer is going to knock all around.
This is a high quality. It's best to use a finely screened leaf
mold compost if you can, because that will settle down between the grass blades
and do its work right there. All right, that's just a concern about
it being too early, and now, yeah, it's really not and in
fact, getting it down a little bit early, it's just a little less
light hitting the ground, so maybe some of the weeds that would have otherwise
germinated don't quite get enough light to establish. Well, just a little bit
of a help there. It's going to release its nutrients over time. But
you can do the top dressing at different times. You don't have to do
it right now. I mean you can do it now or you can do
it a little bit later as well, so it's not a real specific date
on the calendar. You have to get that done. Well. Thank you,
all right, Gus, you take care, Good luck with that.
Good luck having a beautiful, beautiful lawn. Boy. The season we've been
through last summer, she's that took its toll. Our lawns have been hammered
and we've got some thin talk to a lot of people or they're having to
replant lawn sad in areas, and you know, and sometimes people go,
I don't know if I need to replant or not. I had a lot
of damage. And here's a way to look at it. If money's not
that big of an object, and you've got an ugly lawn, you can
rip it up and resote it and put a new one in and do that.
If you are trying to save some and you look at your lawn and
you've got living grass that's let's say, not a bit more than about a
foot apart some of the little patches of there's not like a three foot area
with all dead grass in it. Well, that's within a foot. It's
going to fill in by the by the time we get into the mid season,
it'll it'll have covered in. You're going to have some issues with weeds
coming up in those bear spots. But the grass you have can recreate the
lawn you want. But that's provided that it's in good health, that you're
mowing, watering, and fertilizing. Right. That's why I put the mow
the lawn care schedule online at gardeningwith Skip dot com. Now, if you
do that kind of care, you can get back into the lawn that way.
People vary in their tolerance for weeds or for maybe being patient versus I
want it right now, And that's your call. It's not my call to
make. That's your culture yard. But I'm just telling you that if you
have some living spriggs about a foot apart and you take care of it good,
you can get that to fill back in for you. But if it's
suffering from diseases, it's going to be weak and it's not going to fill
in really well. So that's the caveat that we have to deal with.
You know, speaking of composts and mulch and things, and being down there
in the Richmond area, you're not very far away. Gus called in from
down there from Cienamlts. Ciena Mulches is really a great place to get let
me put it this way. I always say brown stuff before green stuff,
and Cienamultch is a great place to get the brown stuff taken care of.
And here's what I mean. They've got mulches, they have composts, they
have soil blends bet we call them bed mixes. Where you bring the mix
in, you put it on the ground and you grow in it. It's
already ready to go. They've got that. They have bags, they have
bulk, they deliver within about twenty miles of their area down there. They
also have the fertilizers that I talk about. That's part of taking care of
the brown stuff, getting the soil bank account of nutrients ready. So when
plants grow, the roots have everything they need. Things bend those nutrients by
putting them into growth and taking off running. And that's what we're after.
That's the kind of success we want, and Cianamultchill gets you set up for
that. The website is cenamultch dot com Sienna multch dot com. They are
on FM five twenty one just north of road Sharing. And so for all
of you living out near Brasis Ben State Park, sun Creek Estates, Fresno
Quo Valley, or Colo Senti Plantation of course, Iowa Colony, all those
neighborhoods around there, this is your backyard specialist in the brown stuff that makes
the green stuff jump out of the ground with success. I'm going to be
out at cenamultch later this spring. I'll tell you more about that later,
really looking forward to getting out there. They're open Monday through Friday, five
or seven thirty in the morning to five pm. Saturday's seven thirty to two.
They're closed today. They'll be back open again tomorrow where you can begin
to get everything you need so that this spring you have a showplace because you
built the foundation first at Cienamulch. Our phone number if you'd like to give
us a call is seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four
seven one three two one two five eight seven four. I am when I
get back to the house a little bit later here and get through the show
today and head back, I'm gonna I'm gonna be focusing in this the next
week. My number one goals are to get some transplants moved outside. I've
been growing some under a light inside and they're a nice sturdy transplant. Uh.
Get them moved out into the garden, and I've got some coverings ready
to put over them warm season transplants. It's a little early to put them
out. I'll be planning these up in the College Station area and that that's
a little cooler. You get up Conroe College Station up that far. The
last four dust is a little bit, a little bit later than it is
down if you're in the Galveston area listening, for example. But if you're
ready to cover them up, you can go ahead and do that. If
you're not ready to cover them up, what I would recommend, and I'm
going to do this with some of mine, by the way, is to
kind of hedge My bet is just bump them up into a bigger container.
I have some that are just about ready to go into a one gallon container
and finish they're growing out, and that way I can put them outside.
They can get sunlight and get used to, you know, the wind and
the temperatures outside. And then on a cold night it's gonna get down in
the ill, say mid fifties or lower. I'll go ahead and bring them
in that far tomato that's a little cool when you get down fifty degrees,
I'll bring them in and then put them back out again. And when it's
time to plant outside, I'm going to have a bigger plant with blooms,
and oftentimes I'll even have fruit on them already by the time I actually plant
them outside. But if you're out shopping and you see go ahead and buy
them and bring them home and do that. And here's why somebody else is
going to come pick them up, and you may go back and the variety
you want isn't available anymore. So there's nothing wrong with going ahead and getting
them. Just remember they need good light, they need a little protection from
really cool weather, and you need to fertilize them, keep them growing,
and you can have quite a plant, okay, quite a head start.
That's all pretty important. So I here comes a call that's of interest to
me. We got Mick in Wisconsin talking about palms. That doesn't that doesn't
compute make in my head. Tell me what's going on? Hey there,
good morning. It's been a while since I'm called into the show, but
over the year. But okay, but yeah, I grow all kinds of
stuff, mangos, lemons, palms, bananas up here. But anyway,
and the question I have is, I have somebody sent me to Mexican fan
palms from down there, and they came together. They're about I want to
say, about half of a foot tall, okay, and they're growing really
close together. And I want to know, I don't want to do this
with bananas, but I don't know how to separate these things. I don't
want to kill them. Yeah, let it let it warm up just a
little bit for you. Palms like warm weather. We do. We even
done here to a lot of our palm planting in the summertime because they just
do well in that weather. Uh. And then you can just take a
sharpshooter cut them apart and they'll be fine. Uh. The palm palms are
basically they're technically they're a grass plant. They're not a tree like we think
of trees. Uh, and so appreciate that. Yeah, So just cut
the roots. New roots will originate at the base of the palm because it
is a grass plant, it's not a tree, and so that'll be just
fine. Yeah. Tell me how you grow of that stuff? In Wisconsin?
What you must have one heck of a greenhouse. Yeah. In my
in my office, I don't keep closing my closet. I have a lighting
and mile our back and wow, reflecting the light. And then I built
a structure in the in the actual office itself. Wow. That's lots of
lights and high electric bills. Yeah, but that's fine. Man. It
sounds like you're having a blast. What part of Wisconsin again. Uh,
Sheboygan. It's about an hour north of Milwaukee. Well you're not just in
Wisconsin. You were up in Wisconsin pretty far. We're up here. Yeah,
And all started Uh. I was down in friends of mine. We're
digging up banana plants from their yard, and I said, let me take
a let me take a rhizome home with me. And sure enough, that's
how it started. There you go. Hey, it's a gateway drug,
man, it's a gateway drug all kinds of tropicals. You're in trouble.
Thanks for the call, and good luck with that. I'd love to hear
how things you go for you up there. Yeah, we could say,
we could recommend a lot of wonderful If you've never grown white butterfly ginger,
that's a that's a tropical that you ought to try out. Put it in
pots so you can protect it from the kind of coal you have. But
that's the most heavenly fragrance you've ever seen. ILL do that, all right,
nick, Hey, thanks for the call. I appreciate I appreciate hearing
from you. All Right, it's time for Nicky in the news. Our
phone number if you want to give me a call on garden line. Seven
one three two one two kt rh ooh you me, we me, I'm
soaking up that fine it out. Just have fast your brothers boat. I'll
tell you there ain't nothing in that. He's your face like a long sermon
on a pretty sunday. All right, welcome back to garden Line. We
are going to talk about the things you are interested in and a couple things
that I'm interested in. Today. Uh, it is time to get your
garden in, man, I mean the the warm season garden. We are
on the doorstep of it. What we're doing is we're staring at the weather.
We're listening to the weather man. We're rolling dice, we're rubbing on
crystal balls, We're using our imagination. When's that last frost or free is
going to be? We don't know, it doesn't matter. Here's the deal.
Here's the way I look at it. I often will get out with
an early planting, and I know it's a little early, but maybe I'll
get lucky and it works. If it doesn't, I'll just replant. Especially
with seeds, that's easy to do. With the other plants. You bring
them in, you get them going, you get that gardening fever flowing and
when it's time to put them out, you put them out there in the
garden. I talked earlier about potting up your tomato plants just to be ready
to go. Maybe you're gonna plant a few tomatoes and you buy several,
but you plant a few and you hold back a few, pot them up
and you've got them as a I don't know an insurance policy you could put
out there our peppers. By the way, Plants for All Seasons has an
excellent supply of tomatoes and peppers. I know you know. Plants for All
Seasons are on two forty nine. They're just north of Lowe and Tomball Parkway,
heading up toward Tomball direction or down from Tombol for you coming in that
way, just north of Luetta. They've got a wide variety of things like
Alapanos, Tabascos, serranos, the Schizzo pepper, the giant Marconi that's a
really nice one too, Bell peppers. They've got all kinds of vegetables.
Have you ever grown poc joy before? They have transplants of that. You
ought to try. It is fast like in twenty eight days from seed you've
got pock joy. So that is a great stir fried grape for soups.
It's just a really mild brassica that I think is excellent to grow. I
always I have someone about to plant out in the garden myself, but they're
set up, they're ready to go. What do you need? They've got
it there, the tomatoes, the peppers, all kinds of things. They've
got the roses, and oh my gosh, their seed selection is unbelievable,
huge wall seeds and bulbs, seeds, bulbs and supplies. Oh my,
about that all there at plantchborol Sa. Go by and see them. You
know, when you go by there, you're gonna get good service, You're
gonna get good plants, you're gonna get good advice, and if you need
service after the sale, they're absolutely going to be right there for you.
So that is an insurance policy like you just can't get when you go shop
at some place that well, let's just say also sells hammers or lumber kinds
of you know, some of those places, not all, but you know
what I'm talking about, plants for all seasons. That is a that is
a great place to go, and you need to get to know the floweries
there and find out the kind of service I'm talking about. We're gonna go
over at the galleria right now and talk to Chip. Hello. Chip,
Hey, Hey, I love your show. I appreciate it. Thank you.
The question I had is can you I know no one has the crystal
ball, but can you go ahead and put your fruit trees in the in
the ground right now? And you know you have to cover them up if
we got something coming through, but yeah, can you go ahead and put
those things in brown or do they prefer a bigger container, like, you
know, one of a large you know, like fifty gallon containers. Okay,
some people have so all the decisions for trees can go in the ground
now without any concerns. Are you talking about like citrus trees? Yes,
they're like a couple of orange limes, lemons. Okay, okay, go
out. There's a great sunny area that has the parents house that we want.
Want to go ahead and put them in you know you could, uh
and then be ready to protect them. I think if they were mine,
I would buy them on and get the selection right now that that's best,
uh, and then I would just hold on to them, put them out,
let them get sunlight as much as you can if we're going to get
down you know below forty, bring them inside, Just bring them in a
garage or something, and then put them back outside again and let's get a
little warmer and then get them in the ground. That way, if you
do, if we were to have one of these unexpected, very very cole
spells, you haven't created a lot of work for yourself trying to protect it.
And then you put perfectly when you plant that I've heard tell that maybe
you pour a little fish emotion or something in the bottom of the hole that
you might dig. Is there any like super trick that you might suggest to
give the plant the best opportunity. So what I would do is now if
you wanted to mix in like a microlife. Microlife has a citrus type special
fertilizer, you could mix that in with the soil around the planting hole.
Normally we don't put fertilizer in a planting hole because salt based fertilizers, too
much of them around the roots can burn roots when you're trying to get a
plant established. But you could do that. Microlife's not going to do that.
You mix them in and then if you want, as it's after it's
planted. If you want to water it in from the top down, drenched
down on it with a solution of like Microlife's Ocean Harvest, you could do
that. That would be a good example of that. Medina makes one called
Medina has to Grow Plus and that would be another example of one of those.
Those kind of products are high quality and they go right in a solution
to the roots and can help get you off to a good start. But
you're citrus isn't gonna want to grow until it warms up, and so you
can't make it grow with fertilizer right now. In fact, you want it
to not take off too fast because it needs to warm up a little bit
more. Okay, all right, thank you for the call. I appreciate
that very much. Hey, you've heard me talk about Star Hope here before
on Guarden Line. Star Hope is a christ centered community that's been in Houston
since nineteen oh seven. They've been helping the homeless now for over one hundred
and sixteen years. I mean that is a long track record. Now,
I don't go that far that back with that far back with Star Hope.
My wife and I've been supporting Star Hope. Now, Oh, gosh.
Probably the last time we did was over Oh gosh, probably we're thirty.
Definitely over thirty years ago when we began to help with Star Hope. It's
a place that we believe in. It's not just three we say three hots
and a cot, meaning they're going to feed you three hot meals, give
you place to sleep overnight. They can do short term, but what they're
really here about is changing lives long term. Job training, dealing with substance
abuse, overcoming that, the kind of education and spiritual growth, life management
skills and things helping people actually get job interviews, training them for the job
interviews. They even have clothing there for folks to dress properly and to put
their best foot forward. And do you see what I'm saying. We're talking
about a commitment, a long term commitment to help people change their lives.
And when you're talking about I like to use the example when we're talking about
mom living in a car with little kids, I mean, we are not
just changing Mom's life. We are changing the future for those kids in a
real, really real way. We're changing our whole Greater Houston community with Star
Hope. It doesn't take much. Just go to Star of Hope and check
them out. It's so h mission dot org shmission dot org for starf Hope.
You're not gonna find a better way to put your compassion into action.
We're gonna take a little break right now. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two k t r H. I'll be right back. Dot.
I was in love with you, dot. I was in love with
you wich dot. He told me what to do, He said it.
You never know what kind of song we're gonna play on garden line. Welcome
back. We're glad to have you here. We are going to talk about
the things you're interested in. If you'd like to get us, call seven
one three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one
two k t r H. This is a time to plant trees. This
is a time to plant shrubs. This is a time to plant roses.
Now, if you're gonna plant a tree, you need to give it some
stability initially until it gets its roots established and you know, can kind of
hold up on its own. Well. The best way to do that is
with a new product actually on the market called the three sixty Tree Stabilizer.
What that is Imagine it's like an arm that reaches out and it grabs on
to the post that you're using for your anchor post, and it grabs onto
the tree with a soft rubber strap that allows movement on the tree. That's
important. You don't want trees to just not move at all. Movement in
the wind helps strengthen them. You don't want to move too much, but
you want to move a little bit. In the three sixties designed to allow
that. You can put one on a tree. You can put them from
two different angles, like ninety degree angles, so one is keeping it going
north south, the others keeping it on the east west direction, however you
want to go about it. They're made to attached to an iron post,
one of those little t posts. They're designed just for that. You can
also put them on a big old round post and they do just fine.
You're going to find them at RCW. Buchanan's Plants, Arborgate Plants for all
seasons. I was, you know, the Verban tree Pharmas out there the
other day, had some of those out there. Three sixty Tree stabilizer is
a small investment in a very significant investment. When you purchase that tree,
help it get established and off to a good start. You know the goal.
How fast can I hang a hammock in a tree? That's what I
think when I buy a tree. How fast can I hang a hammock?
We want to get it on the ground. We're going to hit the ground
running. And three sixty Tree Stabilizer is a great insurance policy. It'll last
you forever. I mean a long, long, long time. So any
other future trees you plan or loaned to a friend who's going to plant one,
these things are going to stick around and they do the job right much
better than wires that you're going to trip over. Besides wires, they know
you. They keep you from pulling against the wire but not pushing toward the
wire and the wind blows different directions. Three sixty Tree Stabilizer has you covered
all the way around. Really really quality product. I've messed around with them
myself a long time ago when they're first working on getting the patent of this
thing, and it's a great product. We're going to go out to now
and talk to Catherine. Hello, Catherine, good morning, Good morning.
How can we help I trim turks cap? Do I take it down close
to the ground or just a few more inches? I would take it.
You could leave it as it is, but it looks a little straggly.
I would take it down and cut it off about four inches above the ground.
Just cut it all off, and when it warms up, it will
come out like gangbusters, and it'd be a much more pretty plant. And
it'll still smil to Esperanza. Yeah, Esperanza will do the same thing.
Yes, sometimes it makes it through. This year, we had enough cold.
I don't. I think Esperanza maybe killed back to the ground at a
lot of places. But yes, I just there are a lot of those
semi surviving above ground perennials. Esperanza's one, and Turk's cap is another one
like that. The Golden showers is another one. Just cut them all back.
And what about beauty berry? I have several beauty berry The beauty berry
is a shrub, and that one. You shouldn't have to cut back like
that. It should be surviving above ground unless for some reason it just was
not ready for winter and that cold hit it. But I think I just
need to wait for leaves. Yeah, I just wait for leeds. The
plant, like I like to say, the plant will tell you where to
prun back on. Anything like that when you see the new growth coming.
I appreciate your help. Well, Catherine, thank you for the call.
Good luck with all those plants. Those are all great plants too to have.
By the way, Hey, have you been out to the Enchanted Forest.
Enchanted Forest is set up and they're ready to go if you need any
kind of hell of Halloween, wrong time of the year, Valentine's Day shopping.
They've got the potted plants, just really cool stuff, all kinds of
their gift shop. If you've not been in there, you got to go
see it. It is every time I see it is just better and better
and better, and you're in chanted for us. They've got all kinds of
plant if you need tomatoes and peppers and herbs. That their new section they
built last year is just outstanding. And while you're out there, asked to
see the gerber daisies. Gerber Daisy is just you know, Jay from Texas
Gardener. He always ends every one of his little social media things with plant
happiness. Y'all. Well, if you gerber Daisy is the poster plant for
plant happiness. They are the brightest, most colorful, happy looking little blooms
you've ever seen in your life. Gerber daisy's are beautiful. I've had them
in containers on my porch over the years, many many times. Beautiful plant.
Ask him it in chanted for us to see the gerber daisies. By
the way, where is enchanted for us? Well, if you're in Richmond
heading up Torch sugar Land Way, it's off to the right FM twenty seven
fifty nine. FM twenty seven fifty nine makes it real easy. Or how
about this. Here's a website Andanted Forest Richmond, TX dot com. Enchanted
Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. It's always fun to go out and
see Danny and Clay and the whole team out there, and they sure we'll
give you the help you need to have success. We're gonna go now to
Magnolia and talk to Cindy. Hello, Cindy, Hi, how are you
this morning? Well? I'm well, how are you? I'm doing just
fine. The question that I have is we have Saint Augustine grass and because
of the bird seed, I'm sure that I'm feeding the birds. I've got
a lot of weeds in the yard, stinging grass and things like that.
I don't want to stinging grass on the dogs seat. Can you tell me
what is the best thing to use to kill the weeds in the Saint Augustine
without actually killing the Saint Augustine. Yes, right now, you want to
use a post emergent broad leaf weed control product, so that would be that
could be something you spray. There are things you mix up, can spray,
or you can get a product that Nelson's makes. Nelson's makes, of
course a lot of fertilizers, but they make one that's called we Donator we
Donator, and it has a fertilizer that's very gradual release, so when you
put it down, it's going to be fertilizing your lawn for the next few
months. But it has the product that kills the existing broad leaf weeds that
you're seeing. You need to wet the soil first, just barely actually wet
the plant, just barely get the plant wet so that when the granules of
weedinator land on it, they stick to that weed plant and they move into
it. And then don't water for a day or two, and it will
move in the weed and it'll kill it. Then you want to water it
to get the fertilizer down in the soil, all right, And that's called
the Nelson's doator we Doonator. That's the fertilizer combo that you put on right
now to kill those cool season weeds before they start blooming and setting seed.
Don't delay. If you're going to do that, you need to get it
done sooner rather than later while they're still most susceptible. That that and spraying
with just a weed control that you know, just spraying would just a herbicide
itself would be an option. But for most things go ahead emergence broad leaf.
Yeah, but let's just make it simple. The Nelson weed Enator will
kill the kinds of weeds you're seeing right now that are about the problem,
and it'll fertilize at the same time. Yeah, okay, wonderful. Thank
you so much for your time. I appreciate you. Bet youa Cindy,
thank you. I appreciate appreciate your call. Thank you. That's high time
to get that kind of thing done. Hey. Uh, if you are
wanting some you know, just good ideas and advice and guidance on plants,
The Aggie Horticulture website is excellent. I talk about my website a lot.
I'm just getting it built, you know, gardening with skip dot Com that's
where the schedules are and some other things. By the way, I just
put a thing on soil testing made easy, put it on last week on
my website and it just gives you the real simple how to do it.
Here's how you do a swell test, so you send it in. Really
easy to do. But Aggie Horticulture website, there's a whole section on fruit
where you can get a free publication to view online or print out, whichever
you want, on everything from avocados to I don't know what fruit begins with
the Z. It's got all of them on there, dozens of fruit.
It's got the same thing for vegetables, every vegetable that want to grow in
your garden. It's all free information. You should go check it out.
You can learn a lot. It's very very harpful. We'll be right back.
Welcome to kt r H garden Line with Skin Director. It's so watch
as the world. Welcome back to garden Line. Glad you're listening today.
Got some interesting weather out there this morning, but that front is moving to
the east. It is going to get away from us here and this afternoon
is still going to be a good day. So let's not give up on
today yet we've got some rough stuff going on out there. We just hope
everything goes safely for the folks that are dealing with the front coming through up
further north than here in the the tornado issues and things like that, what
would be extra extra cautious in those areas. But I tell you when it
when it comes to the rest of the day, you just know, we
got a gardening day here that's coming up, So I hope you'll get out
and enjoy that. For those of you up in the Montgomery area, you
got a na plants and produce up there, outstanding, outstanding garden center.
You know they've got right now in stock. They've got the sea potatoes.
If you want a plant. By the way, now's the time. If
you want to have a crop of potatoes this spring. You got to buy
those sea potatoes and you cut them up with a couple of eyes on each
section. Give them a couple of days to dry off, just so they
don't rot so bad when you put them in the ground. Then once they've
kind of dried that cut surface, put them in the ground and you're on
your way to success. Onion sets are out there too, fruit tree citrus
trees. Of course, they have everything at Ana Plants and produce your color
plants, your roses or shrubs, your trees. Lots and lots of quality
products too. When you hear me talk about night frost and Nelson's products,
about microlife products, about airloom soils, Nature's way, leave mo compost,
They've got all of that. It nate at A and A Plants and produce
up there in Montgomery. You can hire them. Their landscape crew can come
out. If you live around Lake Conroe, they can come right over there.
Then do early clean up on your homes, getting the beds already,
sprucing them up, ready to go. Let's have some beauty and really enjoy
that. Well, it looks like we've got Nikki coming back in for the
news. I'm gonna pass it with the microphone back over to her. All
ready, let me check there we go. News Radio seven forty KTRH activating
the Houston area emergency alert system. The National Weather Service in League City has
issued a tornado warning central Grimes County, east central Brasis County, northwestern Montgomery
County, and southwestern Walker County. The tornado warning in effect until nine fifteen
tornado and quarter size hail is possible again. The affected areas include Richards,
Carlos, and Rhones Prairie. The counties are Central Grimes County, east central
Brass County, north western Montgomery County, and southwestern Walker County. This concludes
activation of the Houston Area Emergency Alert System. Okay, am I back on,
now there we go, all right? I think I was just saying
that the Ana Plants and Produce, the folks up there have every kind of
plant that you would need and all the things you need to go with it,
every kind of supply that you would need, all the products of fertilizers
and soils and things. And they do have copies of my lawn care schedule
that you can just go to the counter there and they've got them printed up.
They'll give you one or bring it in even better yet, just print
it out and bring it in with you so you know which thing you want
to point out and say, hey, I need one of these. We'll
get you set up with that. By the way, guess what I'm going
to go up to Ana Plants and produce not this coming Saturday, but the
Saturday after. What day would that be with that would be the twenty fourth
of February. February the twenty fourth, I'm going to be at Ana Plants
and Produce. And it gets even better. They are going to be given
away. The folks from Nelson's are going to be giving way eight bags of
turf star weedinator every fifteen minutes. I'm gonna have a drawing for a bag
of turf star weedinator while I'm there at Ana Plants and Produce. Now'll be
there from twelve to two, and I encourage you bring me samples of plants
for identification or for diagnosis, bring me pictures if you have something to identify
or to diagnose, or if you just want to show me your landscape and
say, hey, what would go good right here, or what do you
think's wrong with this over there? Let's talk. I love to meet the
folks that listen to Garden Line. I don't get up that far very often,
and I'm really looking forward to two weeks from yesterday, Saturday, the
twenty fourth, A and A Plants and Produce. By the way, leave
room in your car because you're going on a haul home. Some of the
good things that they have available there. Those of you that live in the
Lake Conroe, Montgomery Conroe area. You already know about ana plants and produce
and the kind of quality stuff that they keep on hand, as well as
staff that knows what they're talking about to guide you and to having success.
If you'd like to give us a call here on Guarden Line, our phone
number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two kt RH. That makes it really simple, didn't it.
Uh? You know, the kind of cold weather we had a while back,
caught our plants unprepared. It got a little bit too cold for that.
My goodness, Here we come with another newsflash. We got a lot
of weather going on today. May Yes News Radio seven forty KTRH activating the
Houston Area Emergency Alert system. The National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch.
It had been a warning. It is a tornado watch in effect until
three this afternoon. It includes nine counties Austin, Colorado, Waller, Washington,
Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, Poke and Sandra Sinto. Again, the
National Weather Service has issued a tornado watch in effect until three this afternoon.
This concludes activation of the Houston Area Emergency Alert system. Alrighty wow, that's
a little excitement going on in the weather. I hope everybody's staying safe,
take care of yourself out there, keeping eye on the sky, and we
just wish everybody the best, and that it kind of throws you off when
you come in with such serious news and we're talking about you know that happen
the fun things about gardening and taking care of plants and stuff. If you'd
like to give us a call, our phone number again is seven one three
two one two five eight seven four. We had that weather back a little
bit earlier in the winter where the temperature dropped down lower than it's supposed to
drop down around here. Now I'm not saying when I say supposed to,
I mean it doesn't not that it never happens. It happens actually quite often,
but we don't expect all the time to have that kind of weather dropping
down. And I think you have experienced that before. Back in February twenty
one, we had that freeze. It was just record breaking for so long,
so cold, single digits. I had seven degrees up at my house
a little further up north, and it was brutal. But then we had
the December, not this December, but December ago, it dropped down and
it caught plants unprotected. They were not hardened off and ready for winter.
And then this year we had another coal one that hit later in the season
than the December freeze the year before, but our plants got hammered. And
a lot of people have called and asked questions about what do I do about
my plants? Well, one thing you want to do is as they begin
to regrow, and that's coming as the weather warms up a bit. Got
a couple of cool chili days here, not cold, but just the night
times a little on the chili side, and then it's going to warm up
and these plants are going to get moving. And a product like Microlife their
blue labels, I like the blue label that that would be the Microlife Ultimate
by the way, that is a eight four six, a real fortified.
Their fertilizer does super well for your plants. You can use that on transplanting
as well, putting plants in and then the ocean harvest. That's the four
two three seaweed or fish based fertilizer that you can drench in. When your
plants start to regrow, go ahead and drench them with that ocean harvest.
Mix it up, follow the label. You're not going to burn your plants
with it, don't worry about that. If you got some leaves coming on,
go ahead and spray those two. You can do a FOLDI your feed
with that as well as well as with the Microlife's seaweed product on helping that
new growth to get the nutrients and energy it needs to get some leaves out
there, capture sunlight, make carbohydrates to fuel the plant and everything that it
needs, and all that's for Microlife. Microlife has a wide variety of products.
I've used them for years. They work very very well, and I
think that you just go to the website Microlifefertilizer dot com Microlife Fertilizer dot com.
You can find out where they are learn a lot more about those products
as well and the many options that you have. You're not going to go
wrong with Microlife where you're working with nature in order to create a more resilient
landscape. And resilience is the key. We've been through a lot weatherwise,
and our plants when they're treated right, when we select good quality plants and
when we take care of them right, they just become more resilient and they're
able to survive, as they say, the vicissitudes of nature. And boy
does nature ever throw vicissitudes at us as it is doing today with the kind
of weather that's passing through here. May it pass quickly? Please. You've
heard me talk about Starhope before. Starhope is a program that I fully believe
in. I'm completely It's a christ centered community, been around Houston since nineteen
seven, a long long time. More than a thousand homeless and nearly homeless
men, women and children every day are served by Starrohope. Starhope provides every
level of help that it needs to turn a life around. Their downtown Men's
Center has over three hundred beds or women and Family Development Center off Red Road
off two eighty eight down south. It can host one hundred and eighty single
women and one hundred and thirty families there. They serve about six thousand a
week, six thousand meals a week there at Star of Hope. You can
get involved in that. Just a few dollars provides a meal. How do
you want to get involved? Well, go online? Do this? Will
you do me? If I ever go to sohmission dot org and find out
how you can donate. Find out more information. There's everything from volunteering to
donating money. Just two dollars and eighty cents provides a meal. I mean,
that's that's the pocket change. Put your compassion into action in ways that
are not just a handout, but that are a hand up to change a
life for the people and for their children as well. Shmission dot org.
You're listening to Guardline. Our phone number is seven one three two one two
five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
I was talking to you yesterday about Verdon Tree Farm. You know. Vernon
has the three locations. They're down south in uh Pearland, and they're up
in the Heights area where Yale Street and I ten come together, and then
they're out on Barker Cypress in West Houston. I was just out visiting out
there at the Barker Cypress location this past week, looking at all the plants
that they have all that. Boy, they have a lot of things coming
in. I believe I was visiting with them about some holly l nice large
excellent hedge plant holly types. They have a number of different holly species they
grow. You need a wall of foliage to block a view. They can
get you set up with that. Of course, they specialize in trees that
are just all the way up to like seven hundred gallons for that instant.
Wow, I already got it. It hit the ground running. They take
it out, they plant it. You pick it out, haven't put a
tag on it. They'll bring it to your house and they'll plant it for
you. They'll even help you if you're looking at doing some developing, you
want to redo a new landscape or even developing a community area. They can
sit down with you and talk about what are some good species that would do
good for that area. What is a good cold hardy tree, what's a
drought hardy tree, drought resistant tree? They have all of that at Vernant
Tree Farm v e er d Ant Treefarm dot com. Vernant Tree Farm.
Hey, if you are a military or first responder, they are for a
ten percent discount for you as well and a one year warranty on what they
sell when they do the installation. That is a great deal. And now's
the time. Remember the hotter it gets, the more stressful it is for
a new plant going in the ground. Why not make it easy get that
done right? Now, get that done right. Now, let's go out
to northwest Houston. We're going to talk to Rebecca. Hello Rebecca, Well,
good morning. My question is I have an oak tree, and do
all those acorns need to be picked up? I mean, I hate for
them to be sprouting up little trees, but I didn't know whether they actually
needed to be picked up. Well, they don't need to be, but
if you want to rake them up, I mean you can. You can
just kind of clean them out of there and a lot of them will sprout
send up a little tree when you mow over them. They just just chop
them off anyway, you don't have to worry about it. But if they're
in a flower bed, yeah, you're gonna have to grab on to them,
kind of pull them up. You do it when they're real young and
pull them up with one hand. This makes it all easy, okay.
But they all don't really all have to be I mean, there was a
lot of them this year. There was a lot. I know, we
call that a heavy masked year. That's the term they use. But oaks
do that. They'll have seasons where it just really you get a lot of
acorns, right, but they do cycle. Different kinds of oaks are on
a one or two year cycle, and but then we have these master years
where it's like, oh my gosh, where did that come? Right?
I think I think this is a life oak. I'm not exactly sure,
but I think it's called a live oak. Okay. Does it have green
leaves on it right now? Yes? Yeah, probably a life Yeah,
it's right. Okay. So they don't all have to be picked up,
but some of them probably should. That's completely up to you. You know.
If I'm gonna run around barefoot under the tree, I don't know.
I don't like stepping on them. That's just me. That's just me.
I'll pick them up. But you know, it's not like a sweet gum
to that for sure. You need no one to run barefoot. Oh yeah,
right, seriously, it's not. It's it's whatever you want to do.
Okay, sounds good. Thank you so much. You bet, you
bet. Thanks for the call, Rebecca. I appreciate that. I want
to tell you something. As a former seven year old boy live oak,
acorns and a sling shot, you can have a lot of fun. I'm
just you can have a lot of fun. Also, as a former seven
year boy a China berry tree. Did any of y'all listening, did any
of you grow up with China berry trees and a slingshot? We had a
next door to our house was another house. It was actually a rental house
my parents secure. And there's a China berry and a little kind of a
garage for parking out there, a little tin roof garage. And I'm telling
you, give me a sling shot, put me on that tin roof underneath
that China berry tree, and I could hold off the whole neighborhood for but
a week. Okay, enough of those unnecessary bits of information. You're listening
to the garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter. What are we
going to talk about today? Well, I want to tell you what's something
one thing I would like to talk about, and that is what do you
do with a landscape that is just brutalized by the kind of summer we had
last year and maybe even by the cold weather we just had. Well,
I ain't. One thing you can do is you can call Pieres Pierscapes love.
I love going online to their website and looking at the kinds of jobs
that they've done. Now, a lot of those jobs. I mean they
are like top of the line jobs and you're going, well, that's not
what my house looks like. Okay, But they can do anything. Do
you need just an added flower bed or a renovation or do you just need
a little work on a sprinkler system? Do you something modest or do you
want to go all out? Do you want to create a beautiful outdoor patio
with water features, with landscape lighting all the above. Perscapes can do it
all from a to Z, all of that kind of stuff, and they
do an excellent, excellent job. But you need to get them scheduled.
Hey, they stay busy, you know, telling me you heard about on
guardline that you heard you need to get it scheduled ahead of time, and
they'll say, yes, absolutely, of course you do, because they want
to be able to get to work, get it planned out. You know,
maybe it's a big job, gonna take a lot of time to get
it all scheduled, work with you on the design, or maybe it's a
simple job. They stop to get it planned out and scheduled so they can
come out. If your sprinkler system isn't working wide, if you got broken
heads, if the coverage last year, proved to you that that system was
very inefficient and did not do the job of evenly watering throughout your yard.
To keep the whole yard alive, you need to call Pierscapes. They can
do all of that and then some. I keep saying, Collum, what's
the number two eight one three, seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three
seven oh five zero six zero, Or go to that wonderful website piercescapes dot
com pierscapes dot com. Take a look at the kind of work they can
do, and then imagine for your home, for your outdoor goals, what
might you have them do for you. We're going to go now out to
where are we going? To the League City League City and talk to Rubin.
Hello, Rubin iod line. I ordered and received ten metal plastic.
It should have been clear. Unfortunately it was too late to send it back.
It's a opaque almost white plastic eating and the reason for this to tend
top areas in the garden, ok, for this protect them to my TRAIND
Is that going to be detrimental using the plastic in your garden? You're saying,
well, actually what I wanted was a clear plastic, but I ended
up gaining almost so white. It's not opaque, it's almost white, slightly
see through plastic instead. Okay, if you're if you're wanting, are you
wanting to use it to protect plants against temperatures that are cold or what?
Well? No, no, just just to tent up garden areas where we
have excessive rains that just while they're growing. Oh, I guess you could.
I guess you could. I don't fully picture what you're saying. Hey,
Ryn, I'm sorry, but Nicky's come back in. We gotta do
a little news break or a weather emergency here, or just hang on just
a moment. News radio kg RH activated the Houston Area Emergency Alert system.
The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning. This is a warning east
central Grimes County. There are three areas. The counties are east central Grimes,
northwestern Montgomery, and southwestern Walker Counties. Again, this is a tornado
warning in effect until nine to forty five. This concludes activation of the Houston
Area Emergency Alert System. All right, there we are back, so Rubin,
I guess you know, if you're just wanting to shed some water off
the area, Yes, you could use any kind of a plastic just remember
if the sun shines through it, it gets a little hot underneath it,
so that would just be the only caveat that if I'm understanding here. Welcome
back to guard Line. We're glad you're listening in today. Boy, what
a day, interesting weather going on north of town. To pray everybody's safe
up there, property and people. Tornadoes come through up in that area.
I just want to remind you down here, this front is blowing through and
we are going to have an afternoon that is a good day to get out
and get outside. For those of you shopping down in the Houston area looking
for garden centers and plants and products and supplies and whatnot, it's a good
day to get out there. And it's going to just let this blow through
here. Once you get past lunch a little bit, it's going to be
a really, really nice afternoon. And I hope you will enjoy that and
take advantage of it, because you know, the gardening is just such a
refreshing and enjoyable hobby. It's such a hobby of hope. It always amazes
me that every year it's just like a new start, you know, And
there's a lot of things in life where new starts are much more difficult to
come by. You know, when it comes to gardening, if you don't
like the way a plant grew, if something died, if it didn't do
well, you can try again. You can do something different. And I
just think that's one of the most refreshing things about it. And I don't
think it's a coincidence that there is something that we call the Garden of Eden.
There wasn't the Cubicle of Eden. Right. We enjoy being out in
nature. We're just built for nature. We're built from being out among living
things and plants and whatnot. And I think it's a happy place, and
I hope you enjoy that. There's so much research out there showing the benefits
of being in nature, certainly gardening, but even just walking, walking through
the woods, breath of fresh air, exercise, just participating in all the
activities that the outdoors and enable us to be able to enjoy. Take advantage
of that, especially this afternoon. Speaking of picking up supplies, Bob and
the folks over at Southwest Fertilizer, they are stocked up. I've been a
couple of weeks since I've been in there, but they were already getting all
these shipments in of all kind every kind of fertilizer I talk about, and
then some is it Southwest fertilizer, every kind of pesticide. Whether you need
to deal with insects or diseases or weeds, they've got you covered there.
They have staff that knows what they're talking about. You bring them a sample,
bring it, put it in the ziplock bag, bring it by.
I say, what's wrong here? What do I do? What is this
weed? How do I kill it? They can help you with that.
Take them a picture. They can work with you on that. They have
the products they need, and they know how to direct you to the thing
you want. Listen. I have stood in big box stores before, watching
customers stare at this wall of products, not knowing what to get or where
to begin. I mean you can just see it in their eyes. They're
like, Okay, I don't know what they were there for. I didn't
butt in and ask them, but you know, as cockroaches or what are
you trying to kill? And so they look for a bottle that's got the
deadest looking bug on it and the brightest colors to the plastic on the bottle,
and that's kinw they choose their purchases. That is not the way to
do it. You go into a place like Southwest Fertilizer and you they know
the weed or the past or whatever it is that you're dealing with. They
take you to the product that's timely for that situation and they tell you how
to use it. And that is that's the way it ought to be done.
That is good service. That's the old fashioned kind of makes sense service.
That is just so important and unfortunately too rare these days. But not
a Southwest Fertilizer seven one three six nine nine seventeen forty four. That's the
number seven one three six nine nine seventeen forty four. Or just go online
to Southwest Fertilizer dot com. There at the corner Abyssinet and Renwick in southwest
Houston. Go by there, go by to day see for yourself. By
the way, when you're in there, kneeling bench, say show me your
folding kneeling bench. One of those. I bought one for my sister.
Wonderful thing. I bought one for myself, and it's like, oh my
gosh. If you need to sit and work in the garden, if you
want to kneel down and get up. It's got a little handles to help
you get up and down. It'll change your gardening life. And if anyone
o north of forty, trust me, it will change your gardening life a
lot. The folding Bod's got plenty of those on hand in there all right
here, Where are we? Now? We're going to go out to Baytown
and talk to Steven. Hello Stephen, Hey man, I'm a quick question
for actually two one. My grandmother has always told me turn the roses right
at Valentine's Day? Is that too early? Too late? Perfect, No
problem at all. You can do it now. You can do it in
January. You can do it in February. Just you want to get it
done. You know, heavy purning before you already start the new growth.
You don't want it to start growing, and then you cut off all the
growth that just spent energy to grow. So February is a good time.
Valentine's Days a good time. Okay. Second, I'm starting. I just
bought a home, so I'm starting the the fertilizer schedule. Randy stuff starting
that. Put down my barricade, Yesterda before the rain Friday night. Actually
put it down sod watered in for me, because why not use that right
the backyard. The front is beautiful already, the back is just clover and
gross, and I know there's some some grass under there somewhere. Yes,
is there anything else I can do now to start getting rid of some of
the weeds that have already come up? So if you've got this is in
your lawn, Stephen, Yes, okay, So Stephen, I've got a
schedule online also kind of an updated one that I put up on gardening withthskip
dot com. You should download those two. I have two actually, there's
one that just deals with fertilizing and mowing, watering. There's one that deals
with the pest diseases and weeds and so print those out. But what I
would do now if you've got broad leaf weeds in your lawn is since you've
put the barricade out, I would go ahead and get a broad leaf post
emergent product like Bonides. We'd better ultra. There is a fertile homes Oh
gosh, I'm trying to think of what they call theirs. I need to
get that in front of me. Gosh. Anyway, they're for broad leaf
weeds. You're out there in the Baytown area. You've got some ace hardware
stores really close to you, really easy to find, easy to get to.
If I were you, I would just head out go to one of
those and say I need a broad leaf post emergent weed killer product, and
they can get you fixed up and you'll be ready to go spray that directly
on the weeds. But do it steven soon, not later, because once
those weeds start to bloom and set seed, you're not going to get as
good as results trying to control them. Okay, so that's like clover and
such. That would be like clover, chick weed, hen bet, carpet
weed, cleavers, all of those cool season weeds. Yes, sir,
okay, perfect, Thank you so much, you bet, take care.
All right. We're going to now go to talk to Rick. Hello,
Rick, do we have a Rick there? You have a Fred? Fred?
All right, we'll talk to Fred then mean Kingwood. Good morning,
Skip, good morning. I have a very beautiful white pillar al fea I
think it's called. And for the freeze, I put a lot of hairloom
composts around the base, and yesterday we didn't get a whole lot of rain.
The last couple of days. But yesterday came out yesterday morning and this
morning, and it was growing a very right at the base, right around
the bottom of the of the plant. It was growing a very bright yellow.
I think of fungus, of course, okay, and I'm thinking that's
just because the compost was doing a good job. Yeah. Now, when
when we pile the compost around the base of a plant, we do that
to protect the base if it gets frozen back to it. But you never
want to leave composts piled against the trunk of the plant. Pull it back,
leave a little gap there. Mulch is a good thing. About three
inches deep. That's pretty good, but don't leave it piled up against the
trunk. But yes, nature has a bazillion organisms that turn wood back into
soil, and that's kind of what's going on there. So I should pull
back the moult. It's only about two inches high. Oh, okay,
I should just pull it back down to the uh they pull it back to
the base of the trunk. Yeah, that'd be better. You know,
two inches isn't bad. But I would just I basically let mine go to
the ground right at the base of the plant, and then have the multch
sticking up as you go out from it. But that the yellow. There's
a lot of different kinds of fungi someone. Some actually look like a dog
through up. Others look like scrambled eggs sitting on top of the mulch.
Others look like white mushrooms. And it's all decomposer fungi that are doing what
they're supposed to do. This was just a real pretty yellow Yeah, okay,
well, don't worry about it. It's nature making the soil better.
That's really what it amounts to. Those are called decomposer much. I appreciate
it, all right, man, thanks a lot. Appreciate the call.
Fred, thank you very much. All Right, here we go. We're
coming right back here. We're kind of jumping around here dealing with the alerts
and other things. I tell you what, I'm gonna go ahead and go
straight out to Kevin and Cypress Ranch. I believe Kevin's got a question out
there. Kevin, welcome to garden line. Yes, yes, you got
it, immen Cyprus. Uh, we've got three sets of large trees,
uh. And they're all three combined oak and a hiring growing in sin from
the flare of the base and they're they're sort of parallel electrical high lines.
All right, I'd like to get rid of the oaks. I want to
keep the pines. Uh, the heads and times are pretty high above the
lines at all. But I'd like to, you know, get rid of
those. And I'm just warning if that would increase the potential of them blowing
in a high wind situation, or blowing over the pine trees blowing over in
a high wind situation, or anything like that, you know. And then
well, whenever you remove trees that have been growing to some trees that have
been grown together, the other trees are more exposed to the to the air
blowing through. They don't have that canopies of the other trees around them.
So I can't tell you for sure, you know, not seeing the situation
and the size and the trunk diameter and everything of everything. Just yes,
there's a potential that the trees you leave would have some problems. It may
be worth having somebody come out and look at it. I would if I
we had call Martin Spoon Moore to come out and just say, look,
you know, hey, I'm out here at Syranch. What what do you
think can we take these out? Are they going to be okay? Is
there any kind of a pruning you need to do to help make them more
okay or not? And I think that would be probably the best, the
best way to go because me just guessing over the air on it is that's
not going to be a very accurate, very accurate. Do you need a
would you like a phone number in case you decide to give them a call?
Yes? And that last name. I didn't get a spoon more just
like two words, but put together spoon and more and it's seven to one
three six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven one three six nine nine two
six sixty three. His website is afftree service dot com. Okay, another
thing I have a little bit of difficulty getting the getting the program inside my
house has am FM radio. We're not knowing the correct okay numbers. Well,
the truck truck works fine, it's always there. But yeah, the
interior on these things, I'm not sure what's happening. Well, if you
get the iHeartRadio app on your phone, you can listen live that way and
you can listen to podcasts that way too. It's a free app iHeartRadio app.
You can listen on your computer as well, and it's kt RH.
It's seven forty am. Hey, I got to run to another call.
We're just about out of the show today. But thank you very much,
Kevin. I appreciate your call very much. We're going to go up to
UH Humble and talk to Butler. Hello, Butler, Hi, how are
you? Good morning? You've probably been asked this question to million times,
but I've always missed it. My oak trees never shed their leaves, and
as I drive around the neighborhood, even talk to people as far as Dallas,
it seems to be a common thing, especially the lower leaves. Sometimes
they're shed the top that they never shed the lower. Yeah, or some
at all. This sounds like a red phenomenon. Sounds like a red oak
probabably, Yeah, that's mine. Are they hold on to them up?
I'm sorry, they do hold on to them in the interior. That's not
unusual at all. They'll come off later. Don't worry about that. Just
nothing, not a sign of a problem at all. All right. Well,
because of the drought last year, I was wondering if it was affecting
in Lord of the early frost or anything. There's nothing that really can do
that. Yeah, no, that it's it's not a problem. It's a
good question, good thing to wonder about. But now some species, the
Mexican monterey oak, also holds on to its leaves a long time, especially
in the interior, so not a problem. Okay, all right, thank
you very much. Well, goods. All right, we have a good
day you too. Thanks for listening. Appreciate you listening to garden Line.
See if I can squeeze one quick one in here, let's say noe,
we already had Kevin here in sy Ranch, right, leave Kevin just hanging
on. Yeah, okay, all right, well, thank you very much.
Well, look, I was trying to finish all the calls before we
run into the end of the day. You've been listening to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here every Saturday and Sunday from
six am to ten am. Six am to ten am. Really easy to
get ahold of us. You can listen to seven forty am on your radio.
You can listen to the get the iHeartMedia app and listen to us live.
You can do that. You can listen to past shows. You can
go on your computer and go to the KTRH website find garden Line listen to
us that way. A lot of ways to listen to garden Line, including
by the podcast with the past shows. In fact, on a number of
different podcast apps will carry garden Line as well, not just the iHeartMedia,
but that's the one that I like to use because I listen to the show
live and everything. Actually I don't listen to the show. I'm talking on
the show, but I do love podcast. That's a great way to catch
up on things. Thanks for being a listener. Hey, I hope this
afternoon we're going to get this weather through here, and I hope you get
out and get some of the supplies and plants and things you need to have
a really, really good day. Remember two weeks fround'ming to be at A
and A Plants and Produce in Montgomery. That's Saturday, the twenty fourth,
at lunch. I hope you'll come see me.