Katie r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor
It's shoes, Crazy Trim. Just watch him as so many good things to
see. Botasy gas Club chickens not a sign in glass gas. Welcome to
garden Line. Welcome to garden Line on a Saturday morning. Listen, We've
got a good weekend here, and if there is a pulse, if you've
got one drop of gardener blood in your veins, this is a good weekend
to be outside and getting gardening done. I'm gonna little clouds today, the
no rain, got sunshine tomorrow, so we got a couple of days that
we can get a lot done. And there's a lot to be getting done
too. I hope you're as excited as I am about gardening because spring is
here and this is the time of year where it's just exciting get outside and
get the kinds of things done we want to do, to plant the vegetables
and the flowers, the herbs, to get that lawn up and going to
make sure this is kind of last call. If you're doing a little pruning
on some shrubs and things. It's good to go ahead and get that done
now. You trim a tree or shrub. Anytime of the year, there's
better times than not as good times, but now's a great time to get
that done. We're going to talk about all that and a lot of other
things today on Garden Line. If you'd like to give us a call,
our phone number. My phone number on Garden Line is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. If you give Josh a call, we'll
get you on the boards and we can talk to you about the things that
are most interesting to you. Why don't we just jump I'm right on it
and go right out to Parland. Here we're going to talk to Don.
Hello, Don, good morning, good morning. How are you this morning?
Well, I'm well, I'm well. I hope you're doing it well
the same, Yes I am, Thank you sir. Quick question. I
want to know I'm gonna put my barricade out and how long do I need
to wait before I put the nightro far fifteen to five to ten down.
You can do them the same day, one right after the other if you
want, Just don't put them both in the same fertilizer hopper at the same
time, because the particle size is different and you won't get even spread.
So do your fertilizer or your barricade first. Another one second, and just
make two runs with it. Okay. And should I cut my yard my
lorn down again, because I have cut it it a couple of weeks ago
before I put it down. Is your long growing right now? I got
green growing? Yes? Okay? Usually what I what I see in lawns
right now is the weeds are growing. And if if that's the case,
yeah, cut it back just so you can get those things to the ground,
so you know, you can get the particles of the fertilizer and herbicide
of the ground. By the way, when you do that, it is
I like to do it on the same day because then when I'm done,
I can just turned the water on, put about a half inch of water
on it, and that moves both the fertilizer and the herbicide down where it
can get some stuff done. But the barricade does need to be incorporated into
the soil surface with about a half inch of water. Okay, great,
thank you, Yeah, and you are you're fortunate to be out there in
the paar Land are you got a lot of places that you can find a
barricade all around near you, So that that's good. Oh, I already
got it all right, good, good, Well, I'm glad. I'm
glad to hear that. Hey, thanks don, I appreciate appreciate the call
very much. Yeah, you can get barricade all kinds of places all over
town really north, south, east, west, central. For example,
you down south Houston, you got places like Fisher's Hardware both on Southmore and
down on Broadway Street down to La Port you've got Memorial City Ace Hardware which
is in Memorial Drive. That's not a difficult one to figure out. Katie
Hardware out in Katie, yep. Katieace Hardware has got barricade as well as
other nitroposs products, so it's easy, easy to find. But remember,
when you're using a pre emergent like barricade, for example, you have to
get it down for the weeds come up, because that's what it does is
it prevents the germinating weeds from establishing. So if you're thinking about doing that,
if you've got some beare areas where sunlight is hitting the soil and you
want to prevent the weeds, you need to do it sooner rather than later.
If you look at my schedules, which are online at gardening with Skip
dot com, you'll notice that the pre emergent herbicides we start talking about those
really January, but February is the prime time to get those things done.
Just want to get ahead of the weeds. I like to use the analogy
of baseball, where if you're going to hit the ball, you can't wait
until it's in the catchers and not to swing at it. That's kind of
how it is with the weeds. Let's head back out to Judy and Sugarland.
Now, hey, Judy, Hi, thank you for taking my call.
And I would like to know when to prune elsia. I have many
elfias from my mother's gardens that I have rooted, and now they are getting
much too large, and I don't know when to prune them. All right,
althea is a summer blooming shrub, and so summer bloomers, broomer,
I can't say the word bloom bloomers. We prune at the end of winter
ideally, so now would be a great time. Now, yes, yes,
anything that burns in summer, like Vitex and ALTHEA for example, the
only under you know whatnot we can prune those now if they need prune in
very good. I would also like to book you for a program for the
Sugar Creek Garden Club. Could you give me who to contact for this.
I'm going to put you on hold and Josh will give you some information on
doing that. Thank you Judy for the call. I appreciate that a lot.
You know, we're talking about putting out fertilizer now and putting down the
barricade now. Now is also a fine time to do asmite. If you
haven't done as mite last year, for sure, you need to consider doing
that now and again. That would be another one that we make a separate
application for, but it can all be done on the same day if you
want to do that. There is not a problem with that. For example,
the asmite is being a trace mineral element, we don't have to,
you know, put it down ten times a year. I mean, we're
trying to make sure the bank account of nutrients in the soil is adequate to
support plant growth so that when I'll just make anthropomorphise here use a big word
the grass plant. You know, when it needs to grow. It says,
Okay, I need a little nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. In fact,
I need a lot of those, a little bit of maybe calcium,
some magnesium. I need some of these nutrients. Oh and I've got to
have a little malbdanum and I've got to have a little manganese, a little
copper. Now you never hear people talk about fertilizing with copper. Right.
Plants have to have it, though, And so if it's in the soil
bank account at the right ratios, that's important. You don't want to overdo
any nutrient. Uh, then it's able to grow, and it has it
all year and stuff doesn't wash away. You know it's going to be there.
So asmite is one of those things that people often forget because you're thinking
about the macronutrients, but not necessarily the trace mentals the micronutrients. You can
go to asimite Texas dot com find out more about it. It's available pretty
much everywhere. Every time I walk into one of our garden centers and feed
stores and ace hardware stores, Southlets for all those places we talk about here
on Guardlane, you're going to find as might available. That is kind of
nice. Well, let's take a little break. We're going to do a
little bit of information here that you know you can't live without the news,
the weather and traffic types of things. We're going to take a little break.
We will be back, and when we do, I'm going to continue
talking about things to do right now in your garden. Our phone number is
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden
Line. We are happy to hear to have you listening today. We're going
to talk a lot about the things you need to do right now. There
are a number of things we need to do right now. The first thing
we need to do right now is make sure you get the products you need
to do. The gardening activities you need to do. You know, whether
it's something to go weeds, whether it's something to prevent weeds, whether it's
something to fertilize your garden, your lawn to keep them in top quality shape.
They're just a lot of different things that we're doing right now, and
I'll be talking about them all morning. In fact, we're going to go
right now to the heights talk to Larry. Hey, Larry, I think
we're going to be talking about something to do right now, aren't we?
Yes, sir, you advise the kind of tomatoes your favorite. I think
you said that Juliet and the Celebrity. Those are two examples. Those are
both older tomatoes, especially the Celebrity been around a long time. It's you're
not going to go wrong with it. You know, there's nine hundred or
plus varieties of tomatoes out there, so you know, I could probably name
twenty five that are all good tomatoes. But Celebrity. I like it because
it has a nematode resistance in the roots and for people in sandy soil especially.
That's my question, scipe is is it okay to buy these at the
box store like Home Depot or Lows or do I need to go to nursery.
I wouldn't do that. The reason I don't do that let me see
here put this carefully. A lot of times when plants are not properly cared
for, they will get stressed and you will see tomatoes and they have shriveled
leaves, I mean purpleish underneath the leaf. I did a post on garden
the garden Line facebook page about that. You will also when you pull them
out of the container. You look and it's just a mass of tan roots,
not fresh, healthy white roots. But they've been in there too long.
They've been watered and taken care of the reason I recommend our mom and
pop local garden centers is because they take care of their plants. And I
just I'm not here to diss somebody, but I'm just telling you, I
think it's better to get a plant that's in its best healthy shape. I
think you're gonna be better. Okay, I'm probably gonna plant some the next
couple of weeks. All right, Well, hang around today. I'm gonna
be talking about things that you do to take care of your plants. And
one option I just posted this to Facebook last night. I believe it was
last night or yesterday. Uh. You can take your tomato plants and get
a head start on them by potting them up. Uh. And so you
know, rather than let them get all root bound, if you wanted to
buy plants today, you could buy them. We got to we kind of
got through the coldest of the nights, but we still got some chilis.
And if you wanted to wait, you could bump them up to a little
bit bigger pot and just put them out during the day, let them get
growing, and that way you're not gambling on if I put them out.
What if we have another cold spell? You know what I'm saying. But
when it's time to put them out, if you want to be on the
conservative end of when you plant, you're going to have a bigger plant,
a healthier plant, and you're going to be better off than waiting to buy
a plant at planting time. Do you see what I'm saying? Alrighty,
OK, appreciate the appreciate the information, all right, Larry, I appreciate
that. I appreciate that. Yeah, I posted about that a little picture
of a pepper plant that I am growing in my house. I've got some
lights in there that I grow my plants under. But even now, you
know, even without the lights, you get those things out during the day,
just spring them inn at night when it's a little chilly. You know,
fifty degrees is not going to kill a tomato plant. Forty five is
not going to kill a tomato plant, of course, but it's they've been
living the life of riley in a nice protected area and now you put them
out and they've got cool winds at night. Kind of chili. Then it
kind of sets them into a little hole pattern there for those hours. And
I think you can just do a better job by brandom in and out if
you don't have an indoor light, but you can sure get a head start.
I have planted tomato is way too early and done this with them,
and then when it's time to go out, they already have blooms on them,
and in some cases I even have them up to a gallon sized plant.
I know, I go overboard on it, but they have a little
tiny fruit that's already formed on the things. So you know, let's say
that I'm not going to name a day because people will hear it as this
is when I'm telling you the plant, But just imagine a day so far
out in the future when you go, okay, I feel like it's safe
enough to get out there and plant. We're not. We're past the average
prostate in my area and so on. Well, if you bought them now
and potted them up and grew them out a little bit versus waiting and buying
the same size plant are close to it at that time, you're going to
have the head start. So it's just a little tip a lot of people
won't want to go through that trouble. I get it. I don't blame
you. That's fine, but just know that you can get a really good
head start that way if you'd like to do that. By the way,
whenever you're bumping things up in any plant situation, herbs and flowers and shrubs
and the vegetable plants that I've been talking about, the folks that add Nelson
plant food have something called nutristar genesis. Now, nutristar genesis is a fertilizer
designed to help your plants in that relocation process. For example, it's got
the beneficial bacteria, it's got the endo and ectomycorrhizal fungi, it has humates
to even further condition the soil, and it enhances biology the soil. It's
a six to one to three ratio fertilizer, which is a good one that
a little higher in the nitrogen on those three nutrient levels gives the boost to
vegetative growth, which is what we're wanting them to do. So I did
some the other day. In fact, the pepper plants that are in the
picture on Guardline Facebook page, they were bumped up. I took a picture
while I was doing that, and I bumped them up to a bigger container
and I mixed nutristar genesis transplant mix and the soil and it works great.
It works very well. For that you're going to sea a response, very
very helpful. And again from the folks at Nelson plant food comes at a
little jar. You can get one of those clear plastic jars of it and
it goes, It goes a long way. You don't have to dump tons
of it on the ground. You're just mixing it in at the recommended rate
and you will see a benefit from the neutral star genesis from the folks at
Nelson Fertilizer. You're listening to Gardenline. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and if you would like to give us a call, the number is seven
to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. I was sitting yesterday morning, having a cup
of coffee in the morning inside the house, looking out the window where I've
got a bird feeder oriented so I can from where i sit, I can
just look out and watch it. And there were all kinds of little birds.
I saw some little tip mice that were in there working on the seeds,
and they were just busy as I'll get out going back and where you
know, our birds are coming out of the wintertime. We're seeing a lot.
I'm seeing a lot of activity at my feeders. Just know this that
there are birds that right now are looking for a home, and that would
be bluebirds. Bluebirds do their spring nesting and if you get the house up,
if you build it, they will come. Bluebird houses are really easy.
You can purchase them. Some people build their own, but I know
the folks that wild birds have some beautiful ones and it is just so nice
to put those out. And I don't know that it's one of my favorite
birds in terms of just beauty. Purple Martins, they're going to be here
any day now, if they're not already some scouts looking around your neighborhood.
You need to get your purple Martin houses up now if you want to attract
those in and again, a beautiful bird. And remember birds, we feed
them bird seed, but most birds, their favorite thing to eat is bugs.
Insects out there capturing pests that are in your garden and other things.
Bringing them back when they start nesting and laying eggs they're going to need lots
of caterpillars, high protein, high fat to feed their babies. That's part
of that process. The most important food for birds when they're raising babies is
things like mealworms, which you can purchase stride, or caterpillars which are out
in the environment. So attract them to your landscape. Let them help with
your pest control. Again, yesterday morning, I was just I told them,
I said, listen to the songs out there, the birds. It's
just it just adds something to the environment, the home environment, certainly the
back patio. And I would encourage you if you have never been into a
wild birds and lemit to do that. Check them out. Very knowledgeable folks.
There's several stores all over the Houston area. Just go to WBU dot
com forward slash Houston you can find one that's near you. We're going to
head out now to Montgomery and talk to Judy. Hello Judy about the tomatoes.
Now, of course, I had some plants last year and I have
done not very good with tomatoes. The plants grow, the flowers come out,
but no tomatoes. So the fertilizer, what about like epsin salt or
something like that, you know, like that's really supernatural or well something that
you'd have to actually buy. But I mean, if you have to buy,
that's okay. But I don't like to use any kind of chemicals.
Okay, Well everything is absent. Salt itself is a chemical. But epsin
salt you put on for the magnesium, and if your soil needs magnesium,
and a soil test would tell you that, then epsin salt would be helpful.
You hear a lot about people putting epps and salt on tomatoes, but
again you're adding magnesium, so does it need magnesium. It's like you taking
a vitamin. You know, are you low in a particular mineral or nutrient,
Well, then a supplement very really helps. If you already have more
than enough of that in your diet, then a supplement is not helping.
So that's what I would say about the absence salt. You can use it,
but there are a lot of good quality fertilizers that have all the nutrients
in them, not just that one element, And I would myself go toward
a complete fertilizer that has everything. If you don't want to use synthetics,
which I'm hearing that in your question, then you can choose an organic you
know you can. You can choose a product like Microlife fertilizers for example,
Microlife if you're doing if you're planting any kind of transplants, You've got the
Microlife Ultimate that works really well. It's got plenty of nutrients in it.
And I just like to use the green bag, the standard Microlife multipurpose.
It's a six two four and it's going to have the magnesium and other things
because what you're putting on is an organic plant based material that the plants took
those nutrients up to grow, and now you've got them present in the fertilizer.
Okay, okay, what about thirteen thirteen thirteen? Is that okay?
For use for tomatoes or not? I wouldn't use it. I wouldn't use
it. I would just use a standard fertilizer. The ratio in triple thirteen
is not the ratio that plants take up. It's not going to kill a
plant to put it on, but over time you're going to get way too
much of that middle number. Hey, I got to go gid. Sorry,
we're hitting a hard, hard break right here. If you're looking for
Microlife products, you're going to find them everywhere. Micro Life, all the
garden centers and feed stores I talk about here on garden Line, they carry
all of those and I would recommend you check that out while you're there.
If you're wanting to give your plants a boost, you know, use the
Ocean Harvest Fish fertilizer and it'll work also very well as a liquid addition.
We're taking a break here for the news seven one three two one two KTRH
sing us this ung. Well, my gift to you is I won't sing
you a song on the air this morning. You're listening to garden Line.
I am your host, Skip Richter, and here is the phone number that
you want to write down so you can give us a call. Seven one
three two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two
k t r H. We're going to head out now to Beaumont and talk
to Randy. Hello, Randy, welcome to Guardline. Hello, thank you.
I have a question I have. I bought some little palms from a
box store last year, and uh, they're about five foot or about four
foot tall. I think my wife said they're called cat palms, and we
tried to protect them over the winter and I didn't do a good job.
I guess, uh the there. You know, they had like a bushel
of like ten little limbs coming out of the dirt and hat way up.
They're totally brown and falling, you know, broken, Okay, and my
question is how do I how do I trim that back? I know when
I right, they were new and I had a dead limb, I just
cut it at the bottom, you know, about four inches up, and
yeah, the new one sprouts out the middle. You know, right,
do you do you have any green growth in the middle at the top of
those trunks, there is some green growth in the middle ones and in the
middle, and you know, actually the whole bottom of the plant's green is
just the top is brown and broke. So I didn't know if I cut
it where it's broken brown and it kind of grows from there, or if
I need to cut it at the bottom. Okay, I'm not positive.
I'm not real clear on which kind of pond you have. But palm trees
have a living bud at the top of the trunk, and if that bud
dies, the tree is dead. Even if you have some living green fronds
below it, the tree is not gonna It's gonna die or and so it's
that center bud at the top that is the key. If it's still alive,
you can keep going forward with those palms are gonna be okay. If
it's not, then you need you're gonna have to replace them if you want
plains. But let me let me suggest something, Randy. I would,
I would definitely uh do a little investigating as to what kind of palms you
want to get. Some are much more hearty than others, much hardier.
This is just a little pot plant, you know. We bought at loads,
you know, real and it's not like a tree. It's uh,
I mean, the trunk's like six inches and then it sprouts out about ten
or fifteen little limbs, you know, and it's got these little knife shape
coming out of both sides of the limb about six inches. Okay, well,
my brain didn't my brain isn't fully creating the right picture here. So
uh, but you may have a psycad, thank you. You may you
may have a psycad or a Sago palm, in which case I would if
you bought it and then planted in last year, I think it should still
be alive. But uh, if you if you want to send me a
picture of it. I'll be glad to take a look and see what kind
it is. I'm going to put you on hold and you can either hang
up or wait and Josh will give you an email to send me a good
picture of that. Okay, thank you for the call. Appreciate very much
you calling in the garden line this morning. Yeah. You know, the
when you go buy palms, don't just buy what's for sale. And there
are a lot of places to sell plants that they don't know plants, and
so they will often get things in that don't belong here. They just don't
and so you need to go with somebody that knows what they're doing. That's
why I talk about Burden Tree Farm all the time. Patrick over at Verdon
he knows palms and he I mean, they sell all kinds of trees,
but he definitely knows his palms. I just saw something on Facebook the other
day. He was talking about the Texas sable and the Texas Able palms are
just incredible. About as hard as you can get. Back three years ago
we had where I lived, we had seven degree temperatures and the sables about
the only thing that made it through it. It was down on the borderline
of what a sable can do, but I'm telling you it came through,
and that just makes sense. He's got a lot of other kinds of poems
too. If you want to learn more about that, just go to Verdant
Tree Farm v E R D A n T Treefarm dot com and you can
find out more about them. There's three locations, one over on Broadway Street
in Pearland, one in central Houston at the Heights where Yelle and I ten
come in, and then over at Barker Cypress on the west side of town.
They'll bring them out, they'll plan them, they'll do a turnkey job,
makes it really easy. And boy, I was just out visiting with
him about a week ago and we were just talking all kinds of trees and
what kind they have, and which ones we like better and so on.
Patrick's a wealth of knowledge. His whole team really is there. I would
encourage you to give him a call if you're thinking about a palm. Let's
go now up to Cypress and talk to janeas Hello, James, good morning,
everybody. How are y'all today? We're good, We're good. What's
up? Hey? Question for you and I'll make it quick. I'm looking
for a shrub or a plant, you know, three to five or six
foot tall that flowers and bee and butterfly friendly. But the caveat is I'd
like it to be frostproof, freeze proof, something I really don't have to
have a lot of maintenance oncome wintertime. And I was just looking for some
suggestions. Wow, that was a lot those characteristics. My brain is going
through the files trying to find a plant that does all of that. I
know. Let me just talk a little bit about some generals. Some of
the hollies that bloom. They they are, those blooms are very very popular
with bees, not so much butterflies, but definitely with the bees. They're
evergreen. But the blooms are nothing to write home about, that is for
sure. With other plants that we have that can take the cold weather.
If your soil is right kind of you create an acidic forest floor type soil,
azaleas will do really well. They they you know, there are plenty
cold hardy for our area here. Uh, you're catching me. My brain
has got too many things going in it right now, and I'm not thinking
of another one out. Let me think about that a little bit and come
up with a couple more answers for you. I'm trying to think about blooming.
See we've got the althea's they get too bad. The encore is one
type of azalea. There are many types. Encores are popular because they rebloom.
I can tell you this that just from a standpoint of being easier to
grow and so on, I find that a lot of the standard azilias may
be a little leisure to grow, but you don't get that reblooming characteristic that
an encore will give you. Okay, yeah, and it it kind of
depends on you know what, how much sun you have or shade. For
example, zelias they do need need some shade. They don't want to be
in the full brun especially the western sun, in order to do their best
exactly exactly fifty fifty shade sun ratio where this bed is, So that would
probably be great. Okay, all right, Well, uh that's that's what
I can give you right now. We're about to hit a break here,
But I appreciate your calling. If I think of something else, I'm gonna
i'll say it on the air here today, you're listening to Guarden Line.
It's time for us take another break. When we come back, Sandy,
you'll be first up and then your calls at seven one three two one two
ktr H. Welcome back to guard Line. Glad to have you today.
We are covering all kinds of things you need to be aware of and you
need to be doing right now. If you live down in the Richmond area
or if you're anywhere near let's say this from central to south and southwest in
Chanted Gardens is the place you need to visit. It's one of those destination
nurseries. It is beautiful and they always have a full stock of everything you
need. In fact, right now, their tomato and their pepper selection is
incredible. Again I posted on what to do. You know, if you're
gonna plant those out now, you can protect them. You can do that.
That's doable. I like to take them, get them now while there's
excellent choices, you have the best selection, and bring them home, and
if you're gonna be a little safe, pot them up and wait a little
while and then put them out later. And you just have a plant that's
growing and growing and growing and even better when you put it out. And
so that's an option you can go out there. You can find roses,
you can find herbs, you can find all kinds of cool stuff like fountains
and chimes and whimsical the garden art. I love to visit in Chena Gardens.
It's Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. They're
on FM three fifty nine. So if you're in Richmond and you're going north
toward Katie fullsher direction, that's in Chenned Gardens on FM three fifty nine,
you need to go check them out. They got some great programs coming up
too that you definitely want to be a part of. Enchanted Gardens in Richmond.
I want to head out to Cyprus and talk to Sandy now. Hello
Sandy, Welcome to guard Mine. Hi, good morning Skip. I have
a question. I have some black beauty eggplants and some bell peppers, some
alipinos, some tomatoes that I bought at a Sordware this past week and I
wanted there. So they're going to be transplants, but I wanted to see
because I know that we got a freeze coming up either Monday or Tuesday,
or a frost or whatever. Are they going to be okay? If I
go ahead and plan them and put them out, they're a good i'd say
about three to four inches. Yeah, I would not. You can put
them out and you can cover them. That's an option, and a cover
will take care of a frost. If it's going to be a phrase you
you probably need to go a little extra links to protect them, which can
be done. But I would just hold on. I would bring them home
and pot them up, put them in the next size up, like if
they came out of a little six pack, put them in a four inch
pot, if they came out of a four inch pot, put them put
them up into a six inch pot or even a gallon pot, and just
keep fertilizing them and watering them with the liquid food and give them in the
sun all day. Bring them in at the night time when we're having that,
and you're going to have a better plant. You will have avoided wrist
the gamble of how's it going to do and what's the weather going to do?
And that would be my first choice if I were you. Okay,
okay, all right? And also can I ask you one more question?
Sure? Also on the pre margint the barricade, I went and bought it.
I'm going to put it up this weekend. And that's the one that
you water first and then you put it out. No, and then do
I wait the bear wait a couple of days. No. The barricade,
you put it out and then you water it in because you want to move
the nutrient down into the soil surface right now. Yeah, there's different approaches
depending on the products you're using and stuff. But with barricade, a pre
emergent about a half inch of water after you put it out, Now I
think you go ahead. Yeah, and then the fertilizer you say, wait
until March or April. So do I do the post emergent after I fertilize,
or do I do the post emergent like in a couple of weeks post
emergent? I would do it right now. Right now would be the time
to do the post emergent, because when you do a post emergent, you
are killing the weeds that are young and getting started. And if you wait
until those weeds are large, you're going to have some problems getting control of
them because once they start blooming and setting seed, it's very difficult to kill
the weeds at that point in time. So what's a good post emergent to
go by. Yeah, so you can get a sprays that are for broad
leaf weeds and if you go into an ACE, they're going to be able
to direct you to the options. There are a number of different companies have
those. You can do that. It's not a problem at all. It
works. It works quite well. The other product, you know, the
Nelson plant Food. Nelson Plant Food has a oh gosh, I can't say
the name of it. I will here in just a moment. It just
jumped out of my head. They have a product that's a fertilizer with a
post emergent in it. It's called Turf Star Weedinator. And Turf Star Weedinator
may have been what you were thinking about when you said water and then apply
it, because it's a granule that you want to stick to the weeds leaves.
So this is post emergent. So you water and then you put turf
Star Weedinator out and it moves down into the weeds. I would wait probably
a day or two after you water, or after you apply it to water
again. Okay, because the second watering we'll move the fertilizer down into the
ground. But first damp weeds just damp. You don't need an inch of
rain, just damp surfaces. Turf star weedonator. It moves into the weed,
give it time to move into the weeds, and then watering a day
or two later to move it into the soil. And it's going to provide
you with a very slow release that will carry you on into spring. Okay,
sounds great, Thanks so much. Good all right, thank you,
Good luck with that. Appreciate appreciate your goal, all right. I uh
yeah, it's I know it can get confusing, and that's why I created
the weed or lawn pest disease and weed management schedule at garden at gardeningwidth skip
dot com. That's my website, Gardening with Skip dot com. The schedules
on there, you can you can print it out. It's got the information
that you need to know. And you're going to find products like we're talking
about here up at Spring Creek Feed Center. You know, Spring Creek Feed
is up there on it's in Magnolia actually on FM twenty nine to seventy eight
for those of you up there Grand Parkway Highway two forty nine up that direction.
Then you're going to when you go into Spring Creek it's a feed store.
It's got everything a feed store has, but it is so cool inside
and you're going to find all your gardening products in there as well. The
turf Star lines that I was talking about, the micro life lines, the
nitrofless lines, all the different products for dealing with weeds and diseases and pests
are going to be there. They're friendly, they're courteous. It's always a
pleasure to go into Spring Creek Feed. And again they're on FM twenty nine
seventy eight up in the Magnolia area. I just a while back was in
there and they were just starting to get in supplies and oh my god,
they have plants now too. They got some plants that they're bringing in.
They've got huge shipments of all the products you need for your lawn and garden.
Another good reason to go up there to Spring Creek Feed. I did
want to mention that it is time to get our pruning done and to do
it in the correct way is critical. Now. I know, we got
to do it yourselfers that do a little pruning on shrubs and trees themselves,
but when you need a professional to come in and get up there and you
know you don't want to hurt yourself going way up in a tree, and
you don't have the equipment to do the kind of pruning that may need to
get done. Affordable Tree Service does. That's Martin Spoonmore. By the way,
Martin and his wife answer their own phone. That's a kind of company.
This is we're talking about thirty years of experience taking care of Houston trees.
We're talking about dealing with the owners, not some call center or whatever.
We're talking about dealing with the owners. Just call seven one three,
six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven one three six nine nine two six
sixty three. Talk to Martin about things. He can come in. He
can look at your trees. He can say that doesn't need pruning, or
yeah, we got a couple of limbs, or no, we got a
big problem here, and here's what it is, and here's what we need
to do about it. If you're gonna do anything around your trees, like
trenching or putting in a driveway or a sidewalk, please call Martin first.
Don't wait until you've already done the job, done the damage, and now
you're trying to figure out what to do. I mean, he can help
you with that. But listen, once the damage is done, you have
really set your trees back. And I just have to say this when I
talk about tree pruning. Just because someone owns a pickup and a chainsaw,
it does not make him a tree expert at all. And I see some
horrible pruning jobs that ruin that tree for life. I'm seriously, it can
ruin a tree for life. Don't do that. Call Martin Spoon Moore seven
one three, six nine nine twenty six sixty three if you don't go to
the web site. The website is a fftree Service dot com. AFF Tree
Service dot com. Now is a great time to get that done because listen,
the fastest time a tree healing and growth is in the spring. So
when you prune now, when that tree starts to grow, it's going to
heal as fast as it does at any time of the year right soon after
you get that pruning done. Always always good to take extra care with those
trees. They are so valuable in our landscape. You know, tree adds
hundreds and hundreds of dollars to the value of your home. It's also a
reason why, by the way, that it's good when you plant trees to
choose types that do well here and don't assume if a tree is for sale,
especially at some places, that it's going to do well here. That's
again why we like our independent garden centers. The mom and pops that are
from here, they know the plants that belong here and they can direct you
that way, because when you buy a tree, that is a long term
process. You know, people like Burden Tree Farm Patrick, they they know
the trees that need to be sold here. They can take care of you.
That so always all the shop and places that are going to sell you
the things that go there. A lot of people just don't get that.
It calls all the time about I bought something from such and such place.
I'll help you the best I can. Hey, we'll be right back.
Katie r H. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or
services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r H Garden Line with Skin
Richt. It's just watch you as so many gos to Septasy. Welcome back
to guard Hey, thanks for listening this morning. I hope you are ready
for spring because I am, and it is time and we have ordered up
some beautiful rain free weather this weekend, So make plans. It's starting to
get a little lighter outside a bit. The day's going to be here,
and you want to be outside. Listen outside planting plants, preparing soil,
purchasing plants and products and supplies, and fertilizing and taking care of weeds,
all that kind of stuff. Now's the time to do it. And what
a great day it's going to be for doing just that. For example,
if you want to go out to RCW Nurseries, you know that's the nursery
that's there where Tombol Parkway comes into belt Wagh eight. RCW Nurseries is going
to have every kind of thing you need to have success with your plants.
They carry the fertilizers I talk about here. They have a wide variety of
plants. And you know, this is tree planting season. I talked about
it being tree pruning season, but it's planting season. And remember what I
said earlier about picking trees that belong here because they are very long term investments.
RCW grows their own up in Planetersville. They've got their own supply of
the trees that do well here. Because RCW is local, they know what
does well here. They've been doing this for decades here in the Houstern area.
They know what is going on. And that's the kind of place that
you need to purchase your tree from. You need that's the kind of place
you purchase your roses from. And boyd, they are a great selection pages
of roses that they carried all kinds of different varieties there. It's just really
easy. But right now, I would just say top of the line list
of urgencies is if you're going to plant a tree, get it done now,
sooner the better. If you're going to plant a rose, get it
done now. The sooner the better you'll be. It's it's not hard to
grow these things. You put them in good quality soil and RCW is going
to be able to supply you with some of the supplements and fertilizers you need
for planting. They know how to do it here. Now you can you
can give them a call, you can go buy RCW. I mean,
I just would say go to the website to trow easy. RCW nurseries dot
com. R CW Nurseries dot com. Again, they're Talmball Parkway at Bela
eight. Very easy to get to. Uh. They are open today from
eight to five and tomorrow from ten am to five pm as well at RCW.
We're going to head out now to northwest Houston. Talk to Ralph.
Hello, Ralph, good morning. There a great program. I have a
regarden and I all got it all killed up and I'm ready to put my
fertileers in to get ready for not no freeze and have a thing. But
but anyway, my nighbor's got it, and I want to know more about
that. But my neighbor's got to uh some kind of bush uh thing that's
coming up and at this feign seats all over my backyard and I can't I
don't know, have no problem to keep it coming, but it keeps coming
up? What to do with it? So it's coming from a bush and
it's putting seeds in your yard? Right yeah, I don't. My wife
knows what the name of it. But if you don't know, right yeah,
little ss come in and looking old that comes up, I get it
rough. Well, I don't, you know, knowing the exact name of
it would be helpful because then I could make sure I'm recommending the best product
for that particular species. But in general, over well, I know that's
how that's how plants, that's why plants survived through the eons without us.
They throw the seeds out, the seeds come up, and everybody's happy.
And then we arrive and go, hey, this is my yard. Don't
do that in my yard. So here's what you do. You need to
use a post emergent product on the ones that have come up. Uh.
And there are a lot of good post emergents out there. Okay, And
then okay, well but okay, I got I got the whole kind of
trees to all come fruit and trees and everything, my big old gordon,
and I'm ready to do it. And my best fertilized is what. Well,
we got a lot of good fertilizers. What are you fertilizing vegetables?
Everything? I go on my way, I go with a big gord and
it's a it's all over that way and everything. Well, you got a
lot of options, you know. The only fertilizers I talk about here on
guard Lines are ones that I use and that are successful, that I believe
in. Uh. And so for example, the Microlife fertilizer, that would
be an example of one. I would get the green bag, the six
two four green bag of Microlife. That's an organic fertilizer that will feed your
plants gradually over time. It does a very good job. That would be
an example. Cons and my pairs and everything. Everything just on the pairs.
Go light on the fertilizer on pears because they tend to grow too fast
and straight up anyway, and we want to slow them down a little bit.
So that's the one plant that I would say probably need a little,
very little fertilizer. On the rest of them, you can just go after
it, and the Microlife's not going to burn your plants, all right,
And put my fertile out now, I get I'm ready to go. You
could put it, yeah, you can put it out now. You can
put out now, you put out next month or the month after that.
That's all good. Hey, rolp. I've got to run. But thank
you folks. All right, thank you. I always appreciate your call.
Let's see, we're gonna go now. I tell you what I'm gonna have
to hold on, Barbara, I'm gonna have to come to you right when
we come back from break. We're going to take a break here in it
just a little bit. I wanted to talk to you guys about the be
Supply and B classes. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about
this before, but the B Supply out and Dayton they have beginner classes.
They holding them. I mean there's a February twenty fourth, the March ninth,
March twenty third, April thirteenth, April twenty seven. You see what
I'm talking about that every time you turn around there's another class two weeks later
at the B Supply. And if you've ever thought about keeping bees but you
know you don't know how to do it, that first year is is the
most challenging one to do anything, really, but beekeeping is the same thing.
They walk you through it, they teach you about it. You can
call them over again and say, well this is happening or what do I
do about that? They carry all the supplies you need. These classes begin
at nine thirty, they end at three thirty. You get to go out
and actually get some hands on experience going through a beehive. They feed your
lunch. I mean, what else can you want? Dbsupply dot com vbsupply
dot com they have plenty of things available. You can even order bees through
them to come in and I just tell you this, I would not try
bee keeping without talking to the folks at the Bees Supply. They're very knowledgeable.
They do know what they're talking about, and they will steer you right
and they understand be keeping in our region and the things you need to do
for success. The Bee Supplied and Dayton we had them on over the holidays
talking about bees, and every time I talk with those guys, Paul and
others about bees, I'm just like floored at the knowledge and the information they
have. We're going to take a break the phone number seven one three two
one two k t RH. I'll be right back, and Barbara, you'll
be first up. Welcome back to garden Line. Thanks for listening today.
Boy, do we have a lot to talk about because this is the prime
time gardening season. We are entering it right now. We're at that stage
where we're going is there gonna be another freezer or not? And you look
at the average and then you realize, well, average just you know,
just means right in between from the earliest to the latest, and so basically,
when's gonna be the last frost? I don't know. We're going to
find out pretty quick though. I wish I could predict it. One year,
I did an interview for a newspaper and I said, the last average
average frost date is such and such, and the printed out county extension agents
Kip Rictor says the last frost this year will be on a certain date.
I spent two weeks trying to explain to people that I did not say that.
I just said the average turns out on the day that came out of
my mouth the average day that year that was the last frost. I should
have kept my mouth shut. And it's been like I had a crystal ball
or something. But anyway, I've always been amused by that. Hey,
we're going to go out to North Houston now and talk to Barbara. Hello,
Barbara, good morning. How are you. I'm well? Thanks.
Hey. I have a couple of questions. First one is long question.
I'm going to be doing my core aeration and compost top dress, saying either
next week or the weekend after? Okay, should I put my fertilizer down
before or after? That's a good question. You can do it either way.
It doesn't really matter. When it comes to that. I might do
it ahead of time just because you're going to put the compost down on top
of it, and it's just you kind of it'll sort of like cover up
your fertilizer as you water it and wash it in and whatnot. But it's
not a big difference either way. I would do it fertilizer first, but
there's not a solid reason to have to do that. Okay, perfect.
Then the other question I have, I've just started seed starting my first foray
into this and it's not vegetables. I'm doing you annuals and perennials. Okay,
I have some sweet piece seeds. Are those best to be? Can
I plant those now? Or is that more fall? Well, you can
plant them now. They don't like hot weather, and so if you have
them on hand, I would just probably go ahead and give them a shot
and plant them. The best time to plan in this area down as far
south as we are would be in the fall season. They'll sprout. They're
fairly cold hearty as small plants. Maybe you know we have one of those
bitter freezes. We would cover them up, but you get a head start
and the blooming is just better in the spring. The second best time would
be probably back in January, getting them in the ground and then now would
be doable. But depending on the weather and how soon hot weather hits,
they may or may not do well. And they're perennial, right, I
mean they'll come back. No, they're annual, yes, okay, okay.
And then any seeds that you have that say you can direct sow.
I don't usually have good luck direct sewing into the garden. I don't know
why, if it's the watering or whatever. Can I start those in like
little four cell packs four cell packs and then just keep them in the house
or on the back patio or something, and then as they get bigger,
put them out. Yep, you can start them in a dixie cup if
you take an ice picking ontelevis in the bottom. I mean, the seed
doesn't care what it's in. It just wants some good quality soil. It
wants to good drainage, not soggy wet, and an excellent sunlight. That's
the most critical thing on starting seedlings is you got to have really good sunlight.
And right beside a window is not adequate. Okay, Well, I
started some winter sewing in some you know, old water jugs kind of thing,
and I'm getting you know, I've got plants coming up in there,
and it seems to be doing well. So I don't know if I could
just go ahead and do the same type of thing. Absolutely stuff that says
Directso just stick them out there, you can. The only thing I wouldn't
where you said you weren't talking about vegetables, but other folks are listening.
If it's a root crop like carrots, it's not going to transplant, well
you're gonna have deformed, malformed carrots. But in general, yes, you
can pretty much transplant anything perfect. All right, Well, good deal,
Thank you so much. I appreciate the infos have fun with all that.
Sounds like you're gonna have a beautiful place. I'm looking forward to it,
all right, take care by bye. If you've been to Channed Forest out
in the Richmond area and Channed Forest is well, it's an enchanting place.
It's a good name for it because you go in there and it's like you've
entered another place in time. I love going by there. Even the buildings
are fun and cool. By the way, they just built a last fall,
a new area for their herbs and their vegetables, and are they ever
stocked up? It is incredible, absolutely incredible By the way, they're having
their spring pottery sale now through February twenty fifth. So you buy one or
two pots twenty percent off, three or four pots forty percent off, five
or more fifty percent off. And listen, if you've been gardening for a
year or two, you already know you can never have enough pots, right
container gardening. We just need to be doing a lot more of that.
And boy, what an opportunity to really get ahead of the game and get
a great deal. This Saturday afternoon, they're gonna have at Enchanted Forest.
I can't even say say the name of the person. It's Carol Burton,
and Carol Burton is from Urban Harvest. She's director of permaculture there. You
can go out there join them. They have a glass of rose and an
intro to permaculture design through the lens of plant gills and roses. Plant gills
and roses. You won't know what that means, Well, go out there
and find out. It's free February seventy two day at four pm. Remember
that four pm. By the way, from two to five, Silhadad's Tamali
truck's going to be set up out there. I'm just saying can't beat that.
A glass of rose Tomali's and an excellent topic and then every plant you
can imagine ready to go home with you. Make sure you've got plenty of
room in the car. Enchanted Forest Richmond TX dot com. Enchanted Forest,
Richmond, TX dot com. It's on FM twenty seven to fifty nine,
So if you're going from Richmond to sugar Land area, it's going to be
off to the right. Always a good time to go out to enchen it
for us. Let's see here. Why don't we go out to Seabrook now
and talk to Charlotte. Hey, Charlotte, Hey, what's up. Well,
they're replacing a fence in the subdivision that runs behind my house, and
they're having to trim the roots of the trees and part of the trunk of
the tree in order to put the new fence in because of all the growth
and stuff. Anyway, they got sawdust all over my flower beds where I
plant a lot of my vegetables and stuff for the spring. And I've heard
that that's not good. So what can I do to ameliorate or to take
away the damage of that sawdust all being in there? Okay, Well,
first of all, sawdust. Mix it into the soil as it begins to
break down, ties up nitrogen because it's all carbon. Sawdust is all carbon.
But on the surface as a mult I wouldn't worry about it. Now,
if you just don't like the look of it and you want to get
it out of there, if you can rake some out, go ahead and
do that. But it's not going to kill your plants sitting on the surface.
Don't mix it in though, you said. One thing that concerns me
though, They took a chunk out of the trunk of the tree in doing
this. Yeah, they just went and they he just sought it down.
You know, had this little like a plane saw, but was going you
know, vertical. It was just going across the trunk and going down into
the roots where they could then you know the boards. Well, long term,
that tree is in bad shape that that will never heal over and the
interior would. Now it's like laying a two by four on the ground.
After about two or three years, there's going to be very little left to
the two by four. It's just going to start decaying away, and then
you're going to have a hazard that's going to fall one direction or the other,
so I might need to get together with the neighbors and make some decisions
on that. For the short term, you're okay, But longer term,
no, that's the that's the subdivision that's next to my subdivision, okay.
And they they do their own thing, and they don't take well to advice,
so I guess, well, okay, we'll see how they take to
paying for the stuff that was damaged when it falls on your property, or
are damaging a human being, which I think that ought to get there.
These are all these are cratee myrtles, so I oh, crate myrtles.
They're just crate myrtles that line the whole. Okay. I was when you
said tree, I was picturing something really big. Well, that's they're big
crate myrtles. Okay. They've got big trunks on some of them, especially
the ones behind my house, because they've been well watered and fertilized. I
tell you what, I would love to see a picture of what they did
from a distance and up close. I don't know if you have time for
that, but if you did, I would love for you to send me
some pictures of that, because I take pictures of what I call the good,
the bad, and the ugly, and that would definitely be the ugly.
So and that. But the question, how do I if I can't
mix it up? How do I put in the fertilizer in there and then
put the plants in there? I mean, I'll rake off as much as
I can, right, rake it off, break it off as much as
you can, and then just scratch the fertilizer into the surface. I say
scratch because it's I mean you can use a rake to kind of work it
into the surface a little bit and then just water it in. It's okay,
uh, if you right, if you rake off as much as you
can, what gets mixed in is not a concern for me. Just go
a little extra fertilizer to get some more nitrogen in the soil and it'll be
just fine. Don't worry about it, Okay. So what I use is
the microlife, so I can just go ahead and put that. Yes,
do I put any composts on kind of put com post on top of that?
Sure, you can do it all if you want. Uh, yeah,
just mix it in, all right, Charlotte, appreciate your call very
much. And that's that is really interesting, you know, CNMLS. I'm
going to be down at Cenamals this spring. By the way. I'll tell
you more about it when we get closer to it. But CNMLS has all
the products we're talking about. She was talking about microlife. They've got those
products. They have the Landscaper's Pride, the heirloom soils, the medina that
all all the different types of fertilizers we talk about here on guardline. And
they have mulch. You can buy by the bag, you can buy by
the bulk. They deliver within twenty miles of the location down there. And
where are they They're near Highway to eighty eight and Highway six, just north
of Roach Sharon on FM five point twenty one. Just go to Ciena Mulch
dot com and find out more. Listen, if you're thinking about putting a
little stone patio out there, you know, not cemented in but just a
walkway, well they've got unbelievable selection a flat stone for that. They got
the bull rock all the way down to gravel and anything you need to create
that beautiful landscape. It comes by the palette out there at Cinmulch. Now,
if you are interested in having a delivery, give them a call or
just go to the website Sienna Moltz dot com and have them bring it out
to you. Hey, it's time to do this. Don't delay any further.
You know, brown stuff comes before green stuff. And I know you're
wanting to get out and plant. Well, call Ciena Maltch and have them
either go buy and pick up bags, take your trailer over there, or
have them deliver it for you. But let's get that so ready to go,
and so that when we plant, we're going to have the best year
ever and you're going to you know that picture in your mind's eye where you
see this beautiful flowers and shrubs and vegetables and all of that. Make that
picture of a reality by starting with Cienama. It's as simple as that.
We are going to be taking a little break here in just a second for
the news. I want to remind you that if you need my gardening schedules,
they are available online at gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip
dot com. That's the lawn care schedule and that's the weed management schedule.
Both are easy to get a hold of. There no problem at all.
You print them out yourself. I'd recommend printing them out, taking them with
you when you go to get any of these products, and you can just
say point out and say out, I need this one right here, and
they can get you fixed up on that. We're about to take a break,
as I said, have Joe come in and do a little bit of
news for us. I want to remind you that next week, the twenty
fourth of February, I'm going to be at A and A Plants and Produce
up in Montgomery. The folks at Nelson's have donated eight bags of turch star
weedon eater. Come by, maybe you'll win one. We're going to be
given away every fifteen minutes. Welcome back to garden Line. I'm your host,
Skip Richter. What are we going to talk about today? You tell
me give us a call seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
I got my list of things I want to talk about today. I
was posting that to our Facebook page. By the way, if you don't
follow garden Line on Facebook, you ought to follow us. We are always
putting stuff up there. I just did something on growing transplants out. You
know, you purchase them a little early, you can grow them out and
make a better plant out of them, and talked about things we would be
discussing today. So look at the list, and here comes more of it
as we go into the show a little further. Hey, you know,
ACE Hardware stores are all over the Greater Houston area, so it makes it
really easy to find the stuff I talk about on Guardenline because it's at ACE
Hardware. You can go to Acehardware dot Com, go to the store locator.
It's easy to find and look at where the stores are. I mean,
I'm looking at one right now. They did red dots all over the
easy easy to find an ACE Hardware and they carry the fertil line I talk
about. If you hear me talking about mulches and different things, if you
need pest control, disease control, weed control, the weed control products we've
been talking about today. I mentioned the barricade, you know from nitrophis.
I mentioned the Nelson's, the turf star. We near that they've got those
things at ACE Hardware stores makes it really really easy. Again, just go
to Acehardware dot Com. By the way, when you go to ACE,
you need to sign up for the ACE Rewards program. I belong to myself
and whenever I go shop, it just earns points for money back on your
next purchase, and so it really makes sense go in there. Just ask
them about the ACE rewards program. And I mentioned nitrophus. Now's the time
to get that nitrophos imperial out and nitrofos imperial is the early fertilization for spring
green up. Now, this is one where if you'd like to get the
long greener in the spring, we put a little bit of available, immediately
available nitrogen out. And that is exactly what the red bag nitrofoss imperial,
that's exactly what it is. A fifteen five to ten product. That ratio
was developed a long time ago, about fifty years ago, over fifty years
ago TEXA A and M University in the turf department, because that's the ratio
that grass takes up nutrients in. Someone asked earlier about triple thirteen. Plants
don't take up equal amounts of nitrogen, phosphors and potassium. That would be
a one to one to one ratio. Triple thirteen, don't do that.
Fifteen five ten. The nitrofoss imperial the three one to two ratio, that
is a good one to put out. And you can find nitrofoss products all
over the place. I was just mentioning Ace Hardware stores, Plantation Ace out
there in the Richmond Rosenberg areas, got it all, spa ace up in
the wood woodlands, has it go out to Kingwood, Kingwood Ace hard Restores.
Got it easy to find nitrofoss products. And if you want to do
the spring green up, the fifteen five to ten Imperial from Nitrofoss is an
excellent example of a prou that will do a super job to get your lown
greening up a little. We'll talk about slow release products coming up here as
we get into the spring where we're feeding them over a gradual amount of time.
But for right now, for the quick green up Nitrophoss Imperial fifteen five
ten. Our phone number is seven one three two one two kt RH.
If you would like to give us a call, we would be happy to
talk about all kinds of things like that. On the Facebook post I mentioned
what do you do about lawns struggling with past drought and insects and disease damage.
Remember you've heard me say this before. Wherever sunlight hits the soil,
nature plants a weed. So our number one goal and having a lawn is
to grow a dense, thick, healthy lawn. That's first. A few
weeds can survive in that, but most of them can't. So when you
create a solid cover that shades the soil, that is your first step in
weed control. Absolutely, And if you've got some bear areas, or if
you have an annual problem with the warm season weeds sprouting up in your lawn,
the barricade. Now, after you apply it half inch of water to
move it into the soil surface, we'll create that barrier that the weeds can't
come through and get established. That's the number one goal in stopping them before
they even get started. After they get started, we have to resort to
other options to try to control them. But spring greenup is fine. I
call it an optional fertilizer. You don't have to do it, but if
you would like to have a greener lawn earlier. The spring greenup is on
my schedule, it was on Randy's as well as an optional application, and
now's the time to get it done. We are definitely entering that time.
If you live down south, I would say yes absolutely. Now if you're
north of I ten, depending on the spring we have, you can go
on into March, first three weeks of March and get it done. Go
ahead and buy the products so you have it whenever you have a day where
you can get it out and just go for it. Get it out there.
But that is important in lawn care, good mowing, watering, and
fertilizing. You know, when we talk about law care, people always thinking
about what is the product I need to put on. Well, products are
helpful, but cultural practices are where you start. Products help deal with the
things that the problems that you might have despite the good cultural practices, but
when you mow right, when you water correctly, and when you fertilize in
the right way with the right kinds of blends of nutrients, you're going to
build a good, dense, healthy lawn. And that is absolutely First of
all, we don't have any insects that we're dealing with in the lawn right
now. We are looking at the reappearance of large patch disease. It could
be going on right now in the lawn. That is something in the spring
sometimes we have to deal with and that would require a treatment to stop that.
But I'm telling you, as you take car of your lawn, follow
my lawn care schedule. As you take carr of your lawn, a lot
of the issues that you have to deal with just go away. And we're
talking about trying to get a grass that's struggling back on its feed and moving
fast. So just some things to think about there. Nature's way resources up
toward Conroe, up Interstate forty five, I say, toward Conro. Some
of you are listening in Conroe. It's on forty five south to Conro where
fourteen eighty eight comes in. They're having their Spring Gardening Festival on March ninth
from nine to two pm. And I want to tell you this festival,
it really is a festival. They've got gardening education talks, people guiding and
directing you on gardening. They've got children activities. Children are going to have
all kinds of fun things from a story time to a sandbox to coloring,
scavenger hunt with prizes. They're going to have SIPs and vendors and sales.
What does that mean, Eh, some bright spring sangria, some local vendors
that'll be set up there. It's just it's just really fun to go to
the event. I went last year, just had a really good time.
By the way. The address is one oh one Sherbrooks Circle if you'd like
to do that, If you want to give them a call nine three six
two seven three twelve hundred, make sure your truck and your vehicle are all
empty because you're going to want to come home with some quality bags of Nature's
Way products. And they have all kinds of products available. They're the leader,
the originator of many of the things we talk about all the time when
it comes of taking care of the brown stuff first, the soil, making
the soil better. They've also got native plants too, by the way,
so you do want to leave plenty of room. Don't drive up there for
the festival with a car full of stuff or a pickup where the bed you
can't put anything in it. Make room because trust me, when you get
there, you're going to want to bring some of that good stuff home.
I always love love visiting up in Nature's Way, John and Ian and they
that place just keeps getting better all the time. By the way, if
you haven't been to the Arborgate lately, you need to go because they have
a new parking lot that is unbelievable's outstanding. It is so convenient Trashel Road
leaves twenty nine to twenty before Arburgate and comes back in after Arburgate. I
don't care if you're coming from the east or west. It's a loop behind
the arbor Gate Trashel Road. The parking lot comes in off that in the
back. They've got wagons there for you to grab and take off shopping.
It's all weather surface, it's easy, it's plenty of room to park you
need to go. And you know why you go to Arburgate. Always something
cool at Arburgate. They always have the best and the latest of every kind
of plant. I love going by there. I do a lot of my
own shopping there. Arburgate is the place. It is a destination for sure.
Hey, we're going to take a little break. The number seven one
three two one two KTRH. If you'd like to give us a call.
Welcome back to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter. What do
you want to talk about today? The phone number is seven one three two
one two fIF eight seventy four. We're going to start by running straight out
to Mayland and talking to George. Hello George, Yeah, good morning,
Skip. How are you doing. I'm well, I'm well, thank you.
Well, I've got a question with my citrus trees. I have a
few citrus trees that are already butting out and some almost the blue, I
mean the buzzs almost opening up, and tomorrow they're predicting thirty seven degrees for
about three four hours. Is that a problem? Yep, yeah, I
mean it's not going to kill them, but they don't like it. That
tender new growth at thirty seven is kind of the border. I don't think
you're going to If it truly is thirty seven, you probably aren't going to
get a frost, But I know it can frost up. I've seen frosts
at thirty six, even not commonly, but it can happen. So I
probably would throw some sort of a cover just over the top of it.
If you want to be extra. Are these big trees or young trees?
They're well, they could have been bigger trees, but the freeze have knocked
him back the last few years. No, I'm thinking about covered them.
Yeah, that's what I was just trying to figure out what to do.
Yeah, I would say that eighty percent chance they're not going to have a
problem, but why take a twenty percent chance? When you don't have to.
Okay, Yeah, it was just good to me. Yeah, it
would just require a frost to burn that tender new growth. And I think
thirty seven is getting high to have a frost, but it probably can happen
under certain circumstances. Okay, I appreciate that then, all right, George,
thank you for the call. Ok thank you very much. When when
you're looking for, you know, quality kinds of products and supplies, George
Downe there in Marland area. He's not too far away from Southwest Fertilizer.
Southwest Fertilizers on the corner of Bissina and Renwick, and they carry supplies for
all kinds of things, you know. I know earlier they had the frost
cloth and things that you could use. They've always got ever fertilizer you can
amit. If I talk about a product on Guardline, they've got it at
Southwest Fertilizer, and then they have so much more. I like to say,
if they don't have it, you don't need it. And I mean
that because everything you could possibly need, you're going to find it Southwest.
Bob make sure his store stays stocked up in sex insect control disease control,
weed control, fertilizing your plants, eighty foot long wall of tools. Every
tool you need, they're going to have it there. You can go to
Southwest Fertilizer dot com if you want to find out more. Corner Abusina and
Runwick real easy to get to and like I said, you're going to be
amazed when you go in there. They also are knowledgeable and that's important.
And here's why. You walk in with a weed, you walk in with
a picture of a bug. You walk in with whatever, and they can
identify it and they can put you onto the product or it'll be products,
plural options for dealing with that problem. They're good at that. Do you
need organic, They've got it. Do you need synthetic, They've got it.
Southwest Fertilizer. It's a no brainer, easy, easy to remember.
I always like going in there. By the way, when you go in
there, I always tell folks ask about their kneeling bench, their folding kneeling
bench. It's a low green bench. It folds up. It's got pads
on the top and the bottom. Because you can flip it one way and
sit on it in the garden. You can flip the other way. And
kneel on it in the garden, and those legs become handles for getting up
and down. And if you're north of forty years old, you know what
I'm talking about, up and down, up and down through a good Saturday
like we're having today, and you wake up Sunday in the pre natal position,
if you know what I'm talking about, we get sore. It's like
I remember the first time I woke up sore and I could not figure out
what on earth I had done the day before to make me sore. Some
of you can done fight with that. If you can't now you will,
you will. But that kneeling bench is a lifesaver. It's I would say
if I, if you were to tell me, I'm going to take every
tool you got skip, I'm gonna leave you with five tools. Kneeling bench
would be one of them. That that's how that, that is how special
I think they are. You're listening to Garden Line our phone number seven one
three two one two k t R seven one three two in two k t
R H makes it really easy, easy easy to get a hold of us
and get your gardening questions answered. Uh if for those of you out in
the Kingwood area, worre in Southern Gardens and Kingwood Garden Center. They have
stocked up and it is unbelievable. Have you ever seen a saucer magnolia or
a tulip magnolia. They are gorgeous. These are plants that are deciduous,
not like southern magnolia. In the spring, it's one of the first things
to bloom. They're budding out right now. Uh. They have beautiful blooms
that are shaped kind of like a tuliper, kind of like a saucer shape
and beautiful. And I'm not good at colors, but let's just say few
sha pink, white, that that range of colors. They are dis gorgeous.
Someone said they look like on a big old saucer magnolia in full bloom
looks like a thousand porcelain goblets out there in the spring. And I don't
see a lot of saucer magnolias around the area, and we ought to see
more because it's a cool plant, a really good plant. We like to
spread out our blooms and beauty through the through the months of the year.
Saucer magnolia is a big part of doing that. While you're out there.
You can grab roses. They got tomatoes. Oh my goodness. Tumbling tom.
Tumbling tom tomato is what you would think. You put it in a
container and they'll sell you one in a container and it just comes tumbling out.
One year at Bear Creek Park when I was a county horticulturist here in
Harris County, we did a trial of all these tomatoes and seven gallon containers.
Tumbling tom was the best one out of like twenty different varieties. We
tried. Two hundred tomatoes per plant is what we averaged on tumbling tom.
You need to go get you a tumbling tom tomato out at Warren Southern Gardens
in the Kingwood area. Lots more we could talk about lots of cool stuff.
Just go out there and check it out, because it is. It's
amazing. But you got to give one of those tumbling toms. The cool
thing about a hanging basket tomato too, is if it's going to frost,
just bring it in, carry it back out, and hang it up again
when it's not frosting. That one that is what we call a frostproof plant,
a plant that has legs that can run inside like you do when it's
going to get really, really cold. I want to remind you that on
next Saturday, the twenty fourth, Next Saturday, from twelve to two pm,
right after I leave Garden Line, I'm gonna head straight up to A
and A Plants and Produce. That's in Montgomery, Ana Plants and Produce,
and Montgomery is a great place. You're gonna find every kind of thing that
you might need there. Do you need seed potatoes, do you need onion
sets? Do you need fruit trees or citrus? Yes, they have a
good selection of those already in Do I talk about a product on garden Line,
They're gonna have it at A and A. They've got all the nitropots,
they've got all the Nelson. In fact, they have that turf star
line. Like the Weedonator I was talking about. I'm gonna be giving away
eight bags of Weedonator one over fifteen minutes next Saturday at Ana Plants in Montgomery,
Ana Plants and Produce twelve to two pm. They're gonna have all your
microlife products. They're gonna have Nature's Way leaf mold compost, both the fine
and the course texture. They're gonna have all the heirloom soils, up there.
They're experts can do clean up around your home. If you're up in
the Lake Conroe area, they come out, they make it look good.
I mean, if you walked outside right now, landscapes aren't always looking that
great right this time of the year. Hire an a and a expert to
come out, one of their landscape crew to do a cleanup of your place.
And when you go there, my lawn care schedule's right there at the
counter. You can just grab one there, or you can print one up
long cair or the weed, pest and disease schedule that I have online at
gardening with skip dot com. You can find all that there. I hope
you'll come out and see me next Saturday. If you have a plant you
want identified, if you have a problem, you can put it in a
ziplock bag and bring it out. If you have a photo on your phone,
we can take a look at photos. We'll spend some time face to
face looking at things, talking about problems, talking about good ideas and plants
for certain areas all out there in Ana. Next Saturday. My first nursery
appearance of this spring right out there, So come on out, all those
folks up in Lake Conrod Montgomery APIs you know that region Ana plants and produce.
By the way, I don't know if I told you, Bous.
They are open seven days a week from nine to five, so it's always
a good time to swing by over at an a. Well, here we
go another break at top of the hour. When we come back, we
will go to the phones. K will be our first up and after that
it'll be you if you give us a call at seven one three two one
two k t r H seven one three two one two k t r H
kt RH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Richter's trim.
You just watch him as world a Taste suppotas Welcome back, Welcome back
to Garden Line. It is daylight enough to see outside, to get outside,
begin to do some of the tasks that we have before us today.
Hey, by the way, uh, people have been just watching social media,
looking at my emails, looking just general conversations going on. There's a
lot of people talking about planning tomatoes and no, don't plant tomatoes. We're
going to have a freezer or frost or whatever. Uh. Tonight, it's
going to get down pretty chilly. Depends on where you are. You know,
the temper is vary a lot as you go through the Greater Houston area,
but it's going to get down pretty chilly, maybe thirty six around where
you live, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Tomorrow night
is going to be another chilly night, and then starting Monday, we're beginning
a warm and warming trend. Like Monday night, maybe around fifty where you
live, or a little bit lower, a little bit higher. And so
if you're going to get a tomato, go ahead and get it, bring
it home. And if you're going to wait a while to plant it,
then pot it up, make it, put it in a bigger pot,
bring it home. But if you've already got it there, you've had a
better chance to get the optimum selection. That's why I would recommend not waiting
to get the plants. I always like to have things ahead of time,
and then when you're ready to plant it, you can go out and plant
it. You can also put it in a larger container start to grow it
out. When temperatures at night go down in the forties or even mid to
lower fifties tomatoes aren't real happy with that. They're okay with it, but
they don't want it, and so it gives you a chance to bring it
in and just continue to speed that growth along. So whenever you decide it's
safe to plant, and that's your call, but just between you and the
weather, land and the vicissitudes of nature, go ahead and plant it.
Because you have a plant that has a good head start. So yeah,
I would not stick one in the ground today and do nothing to protect it.
That won't end well, okay, But you can protect it, or
you can pot it up and you can take care of it a little bit
and get that head start. Because the plant you put in the ground,
if you've potted it up and given it a week or even two before you
know you're putting it out in the ground, is going to be a much
stronger, better plant. All right, That's all I have to say about
that. We're going to go out to k now in Pairland. Hello.
Okay, Hey, good morning, Skip, Thank you for taking my call.
I spoke with you a couple of weeks ago about a post emergent we
killer that I had, and you recommended the Nelson's Weedenator, and I haven't
gotten it yet, and I have a friend of mine was going to help
me do it, because I don't think I can take it on myself anyway,
our schedules didn't work out work wise or so forth, and then the
rain well on the day we could do it. So I looked out in
my yard life of yesterday and it's a little little tiny looks almost a little
clover like, little tiny weed. Okay, it already has started putting out
some little tiny yellow flowers. Is it too late for the weedenator? Now?
No, it's not. That is oxalis. An oxalis you can even
pick one and put in your mouth and chew. Want it to have a
lemony flavor, kind of unique. Oh, I don't recommend adding it in
large quantities to salad. It has oxalic acid, which also spinach does too.
But I'm not going to go into the health of all that. Okay,
But that's exalis, and it is a problematic weed. When it goes
to seed, the pod pops and it slings those seed a long way.
I've seen oxalis on the floor of a greenhouse cast seeds that landed up in
the pots on the tables, and started to grow. That's what I mean
about casting seed. So the weed enators find if you can get the granules
to stick to the leaf, you just need the leaves to be wet and
so oh and I could have done that after the rain man. You could
have Yeah, you don't want it to rain after you apply it for at
least twenty four hours, but that would be an option. If you find
that those leaves are just too little, you know, for the granule to
happen to land on them, then you can go back and use a spray
type post emergent to control it and take it back. But it is,
it is a problem. It's pretty persistent. And because it's casting seed everywhere,
you know, if you killed every one of them, new ones would
sprout up. That's just part of the day. Yeah, yeah, that's
part of gardening and yarning you that's right. Okay, Well you have a
great day. Thank you show you as well. I appreciate that. Thank
you for being a listener. If you are looking for a place where you
can get these products we talk about on garden Line, and you live up
toward the Tumbul direction, well, Plants for all Seasons is right there on
the side of Tomboll Parkway, which is two forty nine. If you're going
north from Houston toward Tombul exit Luada, cross over Luada and it's right there
on the right hand side, easy to get to. They have quality plants,
they have the species that ought to be planted here, and they have
staff that knows that they're talking about. And that is not something that you
get in just any place. Plants for All Seasons is the kind of place
you can go. You take your plants, weeds, or examples in a
zip lock bag, take a picture of something. They can help diagnose it
and they can take you to the right solution. And they have plenty of
solutions there. Plants for All Seasons dot com. That's the website, Plants
for All Seasons dot com. The phone number two eight one three seven six
sixteen forty six to eight one three seven six sixteen forty six. Listen.
If you've got a green thumb, you probably already know about Plants for All
Seasons. If you got a brown thumb, go buy there. They will
turn it green for you. Plants for all Seasons. Let's see. Let's
go now out to Brenham and talk to Mike. Hello Mike, Hello sir,
thank you for taking my call. Yes, I have a couple of
peach trees that have been struggling the last couple summers. They're about I guess
this is I guess this is their third season they've been surviving. Last spring
they actually looked pretty good. I had plenty of water on them. They
are somewhat elevated. They're not too deep in the ground, I hope,
But I'd overheard you say something about using nitrogen if they're not getting growth.
Yes, So, there can be various reasons a peach doesn't get good growth.
Really bad soil conditions like a heavy heavy clay, soggy wet soil conditions.
Put in a hole where the roots and the pot were circling, and
now the whole is a clay hole with slick sides, and the roots don't
want to establish, so it's easily stressed because it's not getting the good root
system. Those are among many reasons of peach could be struggling, But in
general, nitrogen pushes growth in green color, and a healthy peach tree,
once it's kind of established, should put on about eighteen inches of growth on
the ends of each terminal shoot through the course of the season, it could
be a little more than that, but if it's a lot more than that,
you may be overfertilizing. And when it's young, you're putting on a
lot of new growth. So that thing I said before about how much new
growth that doesn't apply to a one or a two year old peach tree really
not so much even a three year old peach tree. But you can kind
of use that as a guide. Do I need to up the fertilizer,
Mike. One thing that I use as a rolothon number one, I fertilize
my fruit trees with a lawn type fertilizer. I'm going to take a break
right now. I want to come back and give a little more information,
but I have to take a hard break here. I'll be right back alrighty,
welcome back to guarden Line. We're glad you're listening, of course,
as always, Hey, I want to tell you about a product that I
haven't been talking about for a long time because it's brand new out there on
the market. That's the three sixty tree stabilizer. Now, what this is.
It's a bar that attaches to a post and attaches to the tree,
and it has soft rubber straps to do that when it attaches to the tree,
so it's not going to damage your tree like wires will do. It
holds because it's a solid bar with a wire. If you put if the
wind's blown away from where the wire's anchored, if the wire's holding it,
if it blows toward where it's anchored, well you know, the wire gives
its slack with a stabilizer. Either way the wind blows, it's going to
hold it. Will You can put in a t post and it'll attach to
that with a very it's designed to hold onto that. Or you can put
in just a round post post and it'll attach to that as well. Because
of those traps, it allows some movement. And movement is very important because
if you take any plant and you do not allow it to move the stem
of that plant. In the case of a tree, the trunk will not
get stronger when it moves and stretches. It strengthens the stem. That that's
true. If you're growing little tomato seedlings in the house and you brush your
hand over them, they get stronger if you move them two or three times
a day. Just move them gently like the wind was blown, they get
stronger. It happens to tree trunks too. More. By the way,
if you want a fun word to impress your friends, that's called big momorphogenesis.
That's worth the price of admission. Bigmomorphogenesis just mean the plant developing strength
and response to moving. Just like our muscle stew go lift weights over and
over and over again, you get stronger. That is why I like the
three sixty tree Stabilizer. It's a quality product. I've seen them at RCW
Nurseries, Buchanans Arborgate plants for all seasons. Jorges Hidden Gardens down South has
those as well. Three sixty Tree Stabilize. Oh also Verdant Tree Farm has
those as well. Let's head back to Mike. Now, Mike, we
were talking about peach trees and I wanted to add one more comment, and
that is I use a lawn fertilizer. That ratio is really good for getting
a tree growing. And I put one or two cups of fertilizer per inch
of trunk diameter. So using your thumb is pretty close to an inch.
Just how many thumb wits wide is that trunk? So if it's let's say
it's a coc cola can. Well, that's about three inches across, so
you would get three to six cups of fertilizer spread evenly underneath the tree.
Now I use a lot of organic fertilizers, which obviously the nitrogen contents a
lot less. Yeah, Is that still the amount you would get? No,
I would. I would up it for that. I should have made
that point. I would up it, probably double it, depending on the
fertilizer you choose, Like let's say it's a Microlife six two four the green
bag for example. I would say, then on that one, you could
double it or even triple it. You're not going to burn the plants with
that fertilizer. Or I would double it and then maybe a month or two
in, maybe two months in I would do it again and spread it out,
spread it out a little bit. Okay, okay, excellent, all
right time, sir, Yes, sir, thank you. I appreciate your
call very much. The let's see we want to go now out to spring
and talk to Scott. Hello, Scott, Laurie Skiff, I have a
question about a vegetable garden. The soil built a six by twelve foot tenions
deep guard last year. Fill it with roast soil and just wondering what I
need to do this year to enhance the soil, or what do I add
to it. If you built it out of roast soil, you've got a
lot of organic matter still there, so you don't need to add more compost.
If you want to mix you know, half inch into the surface or
something for your next planting, you can do that, but there's not a
need to add a lot more. But occasionally you're going to want to do
that or add more roast soil and mix it in and just continue to continue
to maintain the depth because any organic matter is going to decompose the way over
time, and so the level those beds, if they're start off ten,
which is high, they're going to you know, in time, be eight
inches six inches. You know, they're going to settle in. So just
keep topping it off with the product that you started with. Yeah, it's
settle about three inches so far, so I just kip some more and to
add to it. Yeah, some of that settling too, is just the
initial settling. I mean, you could pile up dirt and it's going to
settle, you know, after you loosen it up and pile it up and
some of it is that gradual decomposition. All right, Okay, thank you
sir. You bet good luck with that. I wish you well. Hey,
you've heard me talk about Landscaper's Pride before. Landscaper's Pride is local New
Waverley company, top quality resources. Really they take basically green material from wood
to leaves, to all kinds of things that come through that industry and they
basically turn it into some of the best stuff that you can put on your
ground. That twenty seven different bag products. Do you need a rose mix?
They've got that. They sell a row mix. It's composted and it
also includes a slow release fertilizer added to it. The forty pound potting soil
is good for a potting soil. I use it for seeds starting as well,
and it's easy. The black velvet most beautiful, naturally dark black product
that is beautiful to go to Landscaperspride dot com. Landscaperspride dot com, look
at all the products they have widely available, and when you're on the website,
you can find every place that you can get it, and it is
very widely available. That really incredibly broad line of quality products. From Landscaper's
Pride. Let's go back to Lake Conro now and we're going to talk to
Joanne. Hey, Joanne, Yes, good morning morning. I think I
know the answer, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. Okay,
was a beautiful day last week and I got the urge to put some seeds,
tomato, seeds, bean and beat in a few containers. Well,
then the turned ugly. We lost the sunshine, it got cool and blah
blah. So my seeds were outside covered, but I'm afraid I'm not going
to see anything grow. Correct. Did seedlings come up and then they got
covered? No, No, nothing happened. I just put the seeds.
They'll come up. They'll come up. What I would do, and they've
been outside in this weather, yeah, they'll be fine. What I would
do is I'd bring those containers in and put them somewhere where you will look
at them all the time. You know, I don't know. If you
got a kitchen counter thing, put a little towel on it or something.
Set them on that and just watch them because in the warmer indoor temperatures,
they're going to sprout better and they'll get going. Once they start to sprout,
then go ahead and move them out into a really good light. Don't
give them like three days of after sprouting, or they'll get real lanky.
How about watering? Can I just splash some water on each one, Just
make sure while make sure the soil surface surface stays moist. You don't need
to drench the whole pot over and over and over again. Just just a
little water to keep where that seed is moist. Okay. Another question I
did see on Facebook or somewhere people were using boxes, cardboard boxes like Amazon
or whatever packaging box, putting dirt and putting seeds and setting them out on
the ground as a raised bed. I guess, yeah, is that going
to work? People love novelty? Can you do that? Yeah? You
could pole a shovel full of dirt on your five gallon bucket of dirt,
dump it on your driveway and plant in it and you can grow stuff.
But that's not a very great way to do it, and those boxes will
fall apart. It'll just be a big mess, right, Okay, All
right, Well I'll concentrate on bringing my keats inside work few days there you
go, all right, thank thank you. I appreciate appreciate your call.
Very much. You know the folks at Pierscapes, we talk about them all
the time. But if your landscape is looking worse for the wear after last
summer, Pierscapes can help. If your irrigation system isn't providing a nice even
application of water. That's what happened last summer for a lot of folks is
the system was not very uniform and some areas just didn't get enough water.
Maybe you got to run overhead out there and it needs to be replaced.
Maybe you want to redo the backyard and create a beautiful rock patio. Maybe
you want to put a water feature in. Do you see what I'm saying?
Landscape lighting Pierce Scapes can do at all. They can do all of
it, and if you go to their website you will see the kind of
work they can do. It's unbelievable. Piercescapes dot com. Now, if
you see a taj Mahal with all of this work they've done, don't think
they can't also turn your small little spot into a beautiful et as well.
Give them a call at two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight
one three seven fifty sixty are Pierce Scapes dot com and let them turn your
home into a beautiful place. You want to have people over, you want
to get out and enjoy it. Pierce Scapes can do that. We're going
to head out now to Brownsville and talk to Bob. Hello, Bob,
Hi, I have a question for you, Skip. I have some live
oak trees in my yard and I've heard that they are subject to oak wilt?
Is that true? Yes? Yes, oh yes. But here's what
you need to do, Bob. I don't know Brownsville area very well.
If you go to Texas Oakwilt dot RG, they have maps of where oak
wilt's been seen. It may have never occurred in your county. It may
have been only seen once or twice, and so there's probably not any near
you where it's going to be a big deal. Would you just if you
have any questions, anytime you make a ringing cut on the tree, you
want to immediately don't go inside and take an out and come back out.
Immediately paint it with a pruning paint and that will seal that wound and prevent
the entry of oak wilt through the wound. Okay, but text then it's
an air born tape of disease. I was told that the roots tend to
pick it up air near other oak trees. If you have an oak tree
that has oak wuilt nearby, the roots do join and it can travel that
way to the tree. If the wound occurs, a little beetle goes and
feeds on spores and flies in and feeds on your wound. It's not airborne.
It's brought in by a beadle. All right, Okay, thanks sir,
Ye take care much. Yep. Anybody listening texasoak Quilt dot org.
That is important. We've been talking about weeds today and I talked about barricade
earlier. I'm going to tell you about it again. Barricade is a pre
emergent. It prevents weed seeds from successfully germinating and established a plant. Barricade
works very very well. You need to put it down. You need to
follow the label. I don't care whether it's a sex side of fung,
side of herbicide. Always follow the label. Stick with the label. That
is the safe way to apply something, to avoid issues and to get the
proper product effect that you're putting it out for. Now, where do you
find barricade well, nitro foss is available all over the area. Where do
you live? I mean, do you live up in Montgomery, Jim's Hardware's
got it? Do you live over in Alvin Stanton Shopping Center's got it?
Do you live northwest? Up at Plants for all Seasons on two forty nine?
Yep, they've got barricade two. Not hard to find, very very
easy. We're going to take a little break here, let the news and
weather do its thing, and then we'll be right back. Welcome back to
Guardline. Hey, thanks for listening today. We are glad you're tuning in.
I hope it's a valuable show for you where you get lots of tips
and ideas help you save money, but also at the same time have a
beautiful, beautiful landscape. A lot of people waste money buying plants and won't
grow here. A lot of way people waste money buying products that don't work
or applying them in a way or a time that doesn't work, and we're
going to help you avoid that in the process. Let's head out to Galveston,
Texas, and we're going to talk to Steven this morning. Hey Stephen,
Hey, good morning, Thanks for taking my call. You bet Yeah,
So two quick questions. Can I go ahead and cut back my crate
myrtles and to do the spring pruning on that is? The second question is
I had a high biscus that even though I put a heater in it and
wrapped it, it got hammered. Can I go ahead and cut that back
as well? Yeah, the crate myrtles. Yes, it's a good time
to prune. Crp myrtles. Just remember when you print it that you you
don't butcher it. Don't drive around looking at landscapes and prune like that.
Ninety percent of the crate myrtles out there are mispruned by far. You want
to let the natural, beautiful branching of the plant be enhanced. Don't stub
them off like the top of a broom handle, just you know wherever.
Just create a beautiful shape without creating those knobs that everybody else does. As
far as the sorry remind me of the other plants. Yes, buscus,
if it's dead, it's not going to come back to life. You can
cut it off. I avoid pruning down into living wood because pruning is a
stimulating process. And you know, we still got a little cool weather and
hibiscus doesn't like cool weather, and so I would just if you scratch it
with your little fingernail thumbnail, a little planet knife, and it's brown underneath,
it can come off. If it's greenish underneath, don't prune back into
that. Okay. So a third of it turned out perfectly where the heater
was, and the other two thirds is not dead, but it's the tits
are dead. So you're telling me actual wait on the whole thing. Yeah,
well you could. I like to wait. The plant will tell you
where to prune if you wait. But if you want to use your thumbnail
or a knife just to scrape back and make sure that those branches are dead
it didn't just burn the leaves off of them, then you could prone back.
If you see paper sack brown color underneath the bark, then it's not
gonna come back to life in that spot. Great. I appreciate that very
much. Thank you very much. So it's good to get advice before you
go pruning, because there is a lot of a lot of things that you
know we can we can cause problem and pruning is a stimulating process. So
everybody, you know, when I answer questions, I realized that I'm talking
to a lot of different people. With a lot of different preferences and a
lot of different abilities and whatnot. And there's no one way to skin a
cat. You know, tomatoes was our topic earlier, and so here here's
that's an example. Do I buy it tomato today? Well, one answer
is no, wait until it's not gonna frost anymore and buy it. Another
answer is yes, put it in the ground and be ready to cover it
up tonight with a cover that's playtic, that holds all the dead airspace underneath
it. Another answer is yes, buy it, bring it in, Pot
it up, and you can bring it in at night, put it back
out during the day, and when the danger of frost is passed, then
you can put it out and you have a bigger plant to show for it.
That's just an example. There's not one right answer. Oftentimes, by
the way, there is a right place to get plants. And if you
live down in the Heights area or anywhere run Houston, really Buchanan's native plants
they always have a great selection. They just got in a bunch of boogainvillias.
And now that's an example. When you know it's going to be in
the thirties outside, you don't need a booga and villa outside. Buy it
while you got selection, bringing in the house, bringing in the garage.
If you don't want it in your house, they look good enough to bring
in the house and just put them out on sunny days. Hibiscus is the
same way, and yeah, they got a new shipment of those in.
Buchanans is on East eleventh Street and the Heights and the website you need to
know Buchanan's Plants Buchanan's Plants dot com. You need to sign up for their
free newsletter to get ongoing information. And boy do they have a lot of
helpful things on that website to guide you as well. Buchanan's Plant's always fun
to go. I'm'll be there this spring. I'll tell you more about it
as we get closer to it, but I'm going to visit the folks and
be out there answering questions of Buchanan's plants. Let's now head out to Lake
Jackson and talk to Ronnie. Hello, Ronnie, appreciate you taking the call.
Quick question. I grow summer gardens more, not do anything but my
wife. I usually plant cauliflower in the fall. Let it go, Yes,
my wife asked me the other day and she evidently likes the cauliflower fresh.
If I could plant cauliflower during the summer, and so I'm asking you
not during the summer, you could probably talk me into getting into late planting
right now for spring. But cauliflower is not like heat, and it stresses.
And if cauliflower anywhere along the way gets stressed, you're not going to
get those nice, big, beautiful coliflower heads that you hoped for. You'll
get something about the size of a golf ball, yes, sir, and
I will try it. I appreciate it, all right, sir, you
take care. Thanks for the call. Appreciate that as well. We are
now going to run out to Seabrook and talk to Rob. Hey. Rob,
Hey, how you doing, buddy. I'm good, sir. How
can we help excellent? Yeah, So I got two issues going on.
Number one, I've got some citrus in the backyard, and I've had white
flies and leaf miners on that. Right now, I've got a lot of
blossoms, and I want to take care I'm already starting to see some white
flies. So I was wanting to understand or know if it's okay for me
to go ahead and put any kind of insectidle soap or maybe some knee oil
on those while the blossoms are there, you can do a horticultural oil.
I would do that. Bees come to those blossoms. And I really like
to avoid and insecticide on cetrus when it's blooming. That that is a I'll
say a poison and texticidal soap spray upward from underneath the plant and get as
many of the bottoms of the leaves coated as you can. White Flies have
a pupil stage. It looks like a little tiny fish scale underneath the leaf,
and oil coats that and kills it by smothering it. And so make
sure you direct your oil sprays upward on a citrus plant to get the white
flies under the leaves. Scale also good coverage. All these all these pests,
white flies and scale you mentioned you need to smother them with oil.
So the degree of your coverage is the degree of your control. Gotcha,
Okay, thanks. My second issue is wild violet in my backyard. Okay,
so I've been battling that for about three years. I've tried manual removal,
tried the two four D amy I've also tried another another one that was
recommended. I forget that of it, but including the uh, the spreadersticker.
I seemed to be able to kill my grass really well, but never
really fully eradicate the wild violet. So anyway to get that out, well,
I'm surprised the two four D amine didn't form didn't work on it.
It's pretty good for all kinds of broad leaf issues, even brushy types of
issues. I would not killing your grass is a challenge. There's a product
that contains triclope here that works really well, but if you get it on
the grass, it's going to do damage to your Saint Augustine. So that
would be more of a spot spray, you know, just try to or
dab it on the leaves with a sponge type applicator. But other than that,
trying to think of what else you might try. The problem is the
Saint Augustine being in the in the same spot. That really limits Well.
I'm okay, I'm okay killing off my Saint Augustine returfing, but I've actually
done that in one spot. What the wild violet comes back? I can't
ever seem to actually kill the roots. Okay, good question. I'm hitting
a hard break here, Rob let me think about that. When I come
back, I'll make a couple of comments on it, but I need to
need to run to a break right now. There's not gonna be a lot
of great answers, but I'll give you something when I come right back.
Okay, thank you for appreciate you a you can if you wish, all
right, we'll be right back seven one three two one two kt r H.
Well, welcome back to garden Line. We're glad you're listening in today.
Hey, we had a question right before we took break and it was
regarding wild violets in the lawn and Rob from Don and Seabrook asked about that.
The problem is finding stuff that's strong enough to kill them and not kill
your Saint Augustine is a problem. He was saying, Well, he's willing
to lose some Saint Augustine to get rid of him. I would say again
that I still think that a broad leaf weed CA that has two four D
and di camba is probably your best bets using those now. If you use
them now, then there's not going to be as much damage to Saint Augustine
as when the weather heats up and you're in the nineties. Then you get
a lot of you can get a lot of damage from some of those products.
So two for d or dikemba, either one of those ingredients put on
the violet will give you pretty good control of them. The alternative I mentioned
was using Triclopeer Tricolo peer products or label for some types of turf grass,
but not the Saint Augustine. They kill broad leaves, brushy weeds, poison
ivy and things like that. So a spot spray on a wild violet that's
going to kill it too. But I think the two for d DA kembas
are your two options probably that are the best way to go for dealing with
that. I want to run by the way, where do you get products
like these that I'm talking about? Like, who's ever heard of triclop heer,
Right, it's in brush control, poison ivy control, and it's in
places primarily I would look at ACE Hardware. Ace Hardware stores or there's forty
of them all over the Houston area, so you always are going to have
one nearby. And yes, I've seen those kind of products in there.
They do carry those kind of products, and so just make sure that when
you go in. You tell them the weeds you're looking for, tell them
the product you're looking for, and they're going to set you up. You
can go to Acehardware dot com and find the store locator and find the one
near you. They're going to have the fertilizers. They are stocked up.
They was telling me that they had a whole bunch of nitroposs products that had
come in. We're talking about those today. They have every kind of fertilizer
you're going to need, the organic, synthetic, they've got them. They've
got the products to control everything to have a beautiful, successful lawn. And
now's the time to get out there, get ahead of things, and get
on it. And ACE Hardware can help you do just that. I'm going
to run out to Seabrook now and talk to Rob. Hey, Rob,
Hey, Chips, Sorry, you already got me on the last call,
so so I hung on to Oh I'm sorry, I was thinking we had
another Rob. Yeah, so you heard what I just said about the violets,
then, right, yes, sir, yeah, yeah, yeah,
thank you very much. Okay, you take care. Well there that was
that was smooth and easy on that last week. Hey, we got a
new sponsor that I want to tell you about here on garden Line. And
you've heard me brag about our garden centers here in the greater Houston area that
when you're in Houston, it can be north, south, east, west,
central, everywhere you got a good garden center, we'll do south of
Houston. Jorges Hidden Gardens, they've been open a while. They've been they
just keep growing and improving and getting more stock, and it just it just
it's really cool. I was by the way of the other day, spent
some time visiting with Jorge uh and boy did they ever have a good selection
of fruit trees. And I think nine different rites of peaches, including those
low chill peaches. So this this is way south. So if you're down
in areas like Dickinson, Santa Fe, Alvin, Algoa, Arcadia, Alta,
Loma, Hillcrest, even done Galveston direction, they're gonna have those low,
low chills that you need because you don't get a lot of chilling hours
down there. They've got apple varieties, they have plums and pairs and avocados
too, and right now their stock of veggies and tomato plants is outstanding and
they're really good stock of those. I saw some beautiful Peggy Martin roses on
little lattice panels that Jorge had potted up and they were just wound up on
the panel looking looking really good. They are on Elizabeth Street and Alvin,
south of Highway six, So this is Alvin, Texas. It's seventeen seven
to twenty one Elizabeth Street, and they're open on weekend, so Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday all the all three days from eight to four. Friday,
Saturday, Sunday, all three days, eight to four. Joges Hidden
Gardens down on Elizabeth Street and just south of Highway six. And by the
way, they also carry that three sixty tree stabilizer that I was bragging about
earlier. Yep. I was down there the other day and I was looking
at hoorray, you got some of those three sixty tree stabilizer. Yep,
they got them on hand there. Go by, say hi to them,
wander through, take a look at what they got. For those of you
living way down south. Now you have a nursery right down there in the
far south of Houston in your area. Kind of nice, real beautiful.
By the way, don't delay. They got a lot of fruit trees.
But I don't know how long that's gonna last because they do carry those varieties
that do well so far south down there. By the way, if you
wondered what a chilling hour is, a chilling hour is one hour around forty
degrees in temperature. Now it could be thirty five, it could be forty
five. And as you get warmer and cooler, one hour of time does
not give you one hour of chilling. But right around the forty forty five
degrees, an hour of time is an hour of chilling. And so you
could have like zero degrees for a week solid that would not be chilling hours.
It's cold, it's chilling outside, but it's not chilling hours. And
what fun factor right before we go to another break coming up pretty soon,
when we're talking about chilling hours, why does that matter? Well, when
a peach tree or a plum tree, or an apple tree or a pear
tree goes dormant, there is a chemical inhibitor in the buds that keep it
from growing. And that's nice because what happens when we have a week of
seventy degree weather in early January. You don't want your peach trees blooming because
you know how that's going to end up. We will have another freeze and
that you'll lose your crop. So over time, at the chilling hour range,
that chemical breaks down. Think of it as a enclosed bodyguard around the
bud. That's not how it is, but think of it as that.
And as it breaks down. Now the bud is able to grow, it's
able to get loose and grow. And so when you have chilling hours and
you reach the number of hours for the species variety you planted, then when
the weather warms up, it can take off and grow. So what happens
if you live way down in Galveston and you plant a seven hundred chilling hour
peach, it never breaks all the chilling chemicals down, the inhibiting chemicals down.
You don't get enough chilling hours, and so in the spring it's like
your tree doesn't wake up and grow. And then finally some leaves come out
at the very end of the branches, or maybe sporadically. By the time
we're into May or even June, you're seeing some new growth finally start again.
Well, you don't want to do that. What happens if you plant
a two or three hundred hour peach and you're up in Huntsville, you're gonna
haves in January for sure, December maybe even depending on that, because it's
gotten all the chilling hours it needs and now we get warm weather and it
grows. It's important to match the variety you buy to the area you live
in. And if you go online to Aggie Horticulture website, Aggie Horticulture is
a great website. They have a fruit tree section and you can click on
any particular fruit you want to grow, from avocados to peaches, to plums
to you name it. Jujubi's I mean, they have everything on there.
You click on let's say the peach one, and it'll give you examples of
chilling hour peaches. Allow map of Texas and it shows the range and that's
what you want to aim for. That's what that's all about. So that's
a little extra info there. But I think it's important to understand. Some
people think, well, if it's cold, I'm getting chilling hours. Well
if it's too cold, no you're not. No you're not. And so
the best chilling occurs on days that are cloudy, overcast in the wintertime and
it's you know, forty forty five degrees maybe a little drizzly that that also
helps keep that temperature right at the right level down there. We get a
lot of tilling hours when we're having that kind of weather. But anyway,
wherever you live, make sure you match your variety to the location that you're
living in. Again the AGGI Horticulture, go to the fruit page, click
on the type of fruit you're growing, and it'll tell you exactly the varieties
you need to do. It's not a complete list of ever possible variety,
but it is the ones that do really really well in your area. So
I would I'm going to take a break here. It's time for lunch.
We're going to some not lunch, it's not for a break, but it's
time for lunch for me. I gotta get a snack. More energy here
today, kind of running on empty today. I think got a little early
start. When we come back, we will answer your questions at seven to
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you'd like to die
by the letters one three two one two kt rh as simple as that,
don't forget. Next Saturday, from twelve to two I will be at Ana
Plants and produce my first Garden Center Appearance of the Spring at an A Plants
and Produce up in Montgomery. I'll be giving away every fifteen minutes a bag
of turf Star Weedinator. You can get one of those yourself. That's the
product we put down for post emergent control of weeds. Those little winter weeds
that are about to bloom and set seed. You nail them right now with
the Weedenedor. I hope you'll come out the Ana Plants and Produce next Saturday.
KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to kt RH Garden Line with Skip Rictor. It's
crazy. Just watch him as word so many Welcome back to garden Line.
Welcome back. What a beautiful, beautiful weekend. It's gonna be got some
clouds in the sky today. That's okay, they're not going to rain on
us. It's a good day to get out and get some gardening done.
And boy, I am excited about spring gardening. I mean the flowers,
the vegetables, the herbs. We're talking about fruit trees a minute ago.
Certainly getting your lawn and top quality shape. We're in the big middle of
all of it right now. Well, we better hit the ground running here.
We got some calls on the board. We're gonna head out to Ronnie
and Lake Jackson. If I can get a hold of Ronnie right here.
Nope, lots that. Let me let me do that different. I have
the wrong Runnie, Ronnie and Deer Park. Let's let's give that one a
try. Ronnie. How are you doing today? Doing great? About you?
Good? Good? How could we help? Well? I have a
magnou tree. It's about twenty five feet tall. All the leaves turned brown
from the heat last year. Yes, I'm getting a few sprouts in different
lambs along the tree. Okay, dead or do I need to leave alone?
Let's see what happens. I would leave alone. Let's see what happens
if you if you absolutely want to get it prone, Now, scratch the
bark, look for life underneath it. If it's alive, it's from a
white, creamy color to a greenish color. If it's dead, it's paper
sacked color of brown or even grayish brown. And it can be pruned out.
I like to let plants tell me where to prune, because you can
get damage that's here but not there, and there but not here, and
it's just better. And when you see growth beginning, that means it's alive
there. Now, occasionally you have some damage and what'll start to grow,
oh, will end up dying because the connection is not strong enough. It
doesn't have enough let's just say the plumbing to get the nutrients and stuff and
water it needs. But I would wait for the plant and prune it back
to just outside of where the new growth is, okay, all the way
up to the top of the tree. Yes. Yeah. We lost a
lot of magnolias this past summer, and we also had some that were severely
damaged. And when you get through pruning them, you look at it and
you go, that's so ugly. I'm gonna pull it out and put some
put a new one in or something. Of course, I can't predict what
your tree is gonna look like, but I would wait at the plants.
So you try to tream it where it's attractive looking tree, or just cut
it as needy. Yeah, it's cut it is needed, unfortunately, uh,
and if if it's severe damage, you may end up with a magnolia
bush rather than a tree, meaning you got branches lower coming out that have
growth in them, but the branches at the top dome or who knows that
the pattern can be often lopsided that the die back is occurring on. So
unfortunately, it's a wait and see. If you don't see green leaves on
a Yeah, if you don't see green leaves on a branch, more than
likely it's dead. There could be some re sprouting that might occur. That's
why I like to wait. Okay, should have water continually? Now to
wait a month or so. I'm going to amend that question to say water
it enough to keep the soil moist People over water oftentimes trying to help a
plant, and when the roots do not get oxygen because they're essentially in a
swamp of soggy soil, that will kill them too. So be careful with
the overwatering. But you can take a little hand trail or something out there,
dig down about six inches and just feel the soil and you'll know whether
it's moisture or not. Okay, great, thank you very much, Yes,
Sarah, good luck with that wish. I certainly do wish you well.
Well, now we're going to go while we're in Deer Park, why
don't we just go back and talk to Richard. Hey Richard, good morning,
Skip. I'll listen to your show every weekend. And what it is.
I have some baby tomato. They're little sprouts. I started by seed.
They're about it. They're just about an ants tall. Okay, what
kind of plant food can I safely feed them? They're in just cups.
Yeah, uh, and without hurting the plant or the roots, o'kay.
Safe. What you want to do is get fishing motion and seaweed and mix
them together at the label rate and they'll be okay. They will not burn
your seedlings. You don't need to mix it strong. It can be dilute.
I like to do it a little more dilute than it even says on
the label. And then every time I water them, I water with that,
so you're as you need to water. You're providing a very dilute nutrient
solution to them to help them grow. The most important thing though, for
those tomato seedlings of sunlight. The closer to full sun you can give them,
the happier they're going to be. Yes, sir, I'll bring them
outside during the day, and I bring them inside. I keep they're in
trays. I've got I got about almost thirty plants, and well, I
know it, but I let them stay inside my kitchen at night and I
bring them outside in the day, so they are they're getting sunshine. So
hey, hey Jackie. If my wife heard me laugh right then, she'd
be saying, why are you laughing at him? You've got I'm sorry,
I'm talking to Jackie next, Richard. If my wife heard me laughing,
she'd say, why are you laughing at him? You got some dead getting
many tomato plants we can't even get in the living room right now. I
know it. It's but well I planted them by save the price of the
price of plants went up. OHI at the different anyway. I just started
them by say, but okay, they're going they're going good, but I
need I add some to the soldiant. Okay, thank you, listen ever
wake into your show. Thank you well, thank you. I appreciate that.
Thank you very much, sir, Thank you. I had to talk
to you all right, yes, sir, And now we are actually going
to go talk to Jackie in League City. Hey, Jackie, Hey,
how are you doing this morning? I'm good? How can I help?
Last year in the fall I was having or actually all summer, I was
having quite a bit of a snail problem, and I was trying to find
out if there's a way or something I can do this year to kind of
get a jump on it so they won't be so bad. I've used Corri's
that snail or like pellets, but it's like I was still seeing them,
and I was pretty I was pretty good about using it about every two weeks
last year. Yeap, okay, but I never could get rid of them.
And then I've repotted some stuff this year and I've seen you maybe they
were dorm it down in the gravel or here's what you need to do,
and I have about thirty seconds. I'm going to give you the quick,
fast answer. But snail baits come in many forms. You can purchase something
called slug o. You can purchase something called deadline. There's a lot of
them out there. You put them out fresh, and you just get them
out and let the snails find them and feed on them. And then I
would put fresh ones out periodically because if they get a little bit and get
sick, they end up not wanting to eat more bait. You want them
to eat enough that it kills them. But there's a lot of good snail
baits like those that I mentioned. Slugo is one of the most common brands
areas. It's an iron based bait and it will work, but you just
want to avoid the thing. I said, Jackie, I've got to run
to a break. If you need to stick around, we can talk to
you after the break, but we'll be right back. Welcome back to garden
Line. Glad you're listening to us today. Hey, I was talking earlier
about fruit trees and things and chilling hours and that is really important. And
it just reminded me that down at Moss Nursery, which is in Seabrook.
You've probably been there before. If you have it, you absolutely have to
go. I mean, it's like eight acres of wandering through paradise down there,
water fountains and beautiful plants and all kinds of pottery and one sick of
items. It's cool. But they have a wide variety of fruit and they
will sell you the things that have the right amount of chilling hours for the
area. You can talk to them about that, like an apple and a
peach, for example. But do you want some unusual fruit Maybe something like
that you might need to cover. But it's tropical, okay, Guava,
papaya, dragon fruit, nepalas, the old punch of prickly pear nepalis I
used to I remember the first time I made some of those in a scrambled
egg dish. Kind of cool. Anyway, Berry plants, I've got blackberries
without thorns. When it comes to edibles, oh my god, they have
everything. When it comes to everything else, yeah, they have everything too.
They got a nice selection right now of everything from snap dragons, petunias
and patients, geraniums, gerber daisies, which or gorgeous. If you haven't
seen it, go buy and say show me your gerber daisies, begonias,
and then those acid loving plants that we'd love to grow in this part of
Texas, camillias and azaleas. They've got that. Pretty much anything you can
think of, they're going to have it. Listen at Moss. They are
real gardeners. They are people that have experienced years of experience in their own
gardens. They'll hope you get it right the first time. They'll they know
about the soil and watering and fertilizing. You can depend on them to steer
you right. Lots of vegetables, beautiful hanging I saw some beautiful a lissome,
kind of a pinkish rose colored lissm that was just stunning and hanging baskets
down at Moss Nursery, by the way, They are in Seabrook, if
you'd like to give them a call. Two eight one four seven four twenty
four forty four two eight one four twenty four twenty four eighty eight Moss Nursery
dot com. Moss Nursery dot com. You really need to go if you
haven't been. It is. It is a showplace, definitely a destination.
We are going to now head to Spring and talk to Kevin. Hey,
Kevin, Kevin, it sounds like you're in a tornado. I just got
back in the car. I was putting gases, all right, what's up?
Hey? I had two quick questions. First, is I heard you
talk to somebody a while ago about switching grass from Saint Augustine to either bluegrass
or bermuda and how you cut it differently, and I wanted to know which
that was again? All right, Well, first of all, I never
would have recommended bluegrass for down here. Bluegrass and bscue were too far south
for those two bermuda grass you can. If you're looking for an alternative of
to Saint Augustine, you got two good options, Zoisier grass and bermuda grass.
Both of them you can mow lower and have a denser I'll say golf
course green, not that short, but beautiful lawn like that. With those
two zoysia will put up with some shade. Bermuda needs full sun. The
more often you mow, the denser and more beautiful they are, and that
crowd out the St. Augustine eventually then well it depends on the growing conditions.
Uh, the bermuda in shade Saint Augustine wins, for example. So
it just it just I would get rid of the Saint Augustine before you plant
something else, and that way you get a fresh start. It gives you
a chance to level out the soil if you got any lower areas to you
know, cover up roots sticking up out of the ground a little bit,
to smooth it out and just get a good fresh start. I wouldn't I
wouldn't co mingle THEO. Okay, And then the other thing you just kind
of hit on it. Is there any way to cheat these live oak roots
from coming up to the surface. I'm not from taxes, no. Now,
any true route will come to the surface for two reasons. One is
the root gets bigger. And if it was only let's say three inches underground
when it grew, and now it's the size of your arm, Well,
that's going to be a root that's pushed up to the surface. If you
have erosion, like sheet erosion, with water going across an area, it's
going to take away surface soil over time and expose the roots as well.
All you can do is add some soil around them or plant a ground cover
that will just cover it all up and hide that area. Okay, okay,
I appreciate it. Sure you have a great rest of the day.
Okay, Kevin, thank you for the call. I appreciate that very much.
This is the time if you want to do a green up, to
get out there and do it. We're talking about the end of February and
especially the first three weeks of March. If you're further south, I would
say into February, first week of March. If you're a little further north,
maybe you're listening from up in Conro, well, then you can wait
until second or third week of March to do it. But what you want
to use as a product that's immediate release, and that would be Nitropos Imperial
fifteen five ten. That's a red bag. Makes it real easy. Nitropos
is red bag. The Imperial is going to release those nutrients and provide you
an early green up. And you don't want to, don't over apply,
you don't a whole lot of it. Just follow the label. Apply it
according to the label, and it's going to give you a really nice cover
and be just it's just going to give you the green that you're looking for
early on. We'll talk about other fertilizers as we go on the season,
but early on in the green that's a good way to do it. And
where do you get it, Well, if you're in Richmond Rosenberg and can
get it in chanted gardens for example. If you are southwest of town,
southwest side of town, Bearings has a hardware on this and that and on
Westheimer also, both of those places are going to carry that night Fast Imperial.
If you happen to be done in a Taska see today's hardware. There's
got it Stanton Shopping Center and Alvin's got it and Jim's hardware and Montgomery plants
and things up in Brenham. Lots of places you can find Nitrofoss products,
including the Imperial fifteen five ten. Check out my schedule online Gardening with Skip
dot com Gardening with Skip dot Com. That schedule will list products like this
Nitrofoss Imperial red bag for fast acting early greenup fertilization. We're going to now
head to uh Charlie and friends. Would hello Charlie, Good morning to you,
sir. Morning. Last week. Last week, my wife says she
had heard something about leaf willed on our peach trees. Terms sounds like plum
circular and something about copper. How brand or how did how attack that problem?
Okay, I think in what you said, there's kind of a mix
of different, very different items there. If copper was recommended, it was
for controlling bacterial spot of the leaves of peaches that causes a hole to fall
out like you shot it with a shotgun, and that occurs. It develops
over time. But we typically will hit our peaches with the copper spray early
on before they begin to push new growth. Spray the buds and things and
help manage that bacterial spot of the peach leaves. If they're wilting, that
could be due to different things from root rot to root damage to lack of
water, which isn't the case right now for sure. Yes, her us
is plumb cucula, Oh, plump curculio. Okay, yeah, Now we're
talking about little insect And when you get when the about three fourths of the
petals have fallen off all your blooms right toward the end of the bloom time,
you don't want to hit all the bees with an insecticide. At that
end of the bloom time, you're going to spray an insecticide that as their
first spray for Cculia, you're going to repeat it about two weeks later,
and about two weeks after that. There's a little insect that cuts a flap
in the tiny peach. It can attack even when they're larger, and it
lays an egg and the egg burrows to the seed. And that's the worm
in the peach that people often encounter. That's plumb curculio. But if what
kind of insecticide do you recommend on that, I would go where are you
Europe? And you're done in French with I would I would go to an
ace hardware store and ask them what insecticides they carry that are labeled for peaches.
That's going to be that's going to be the important thing is what what
do they carry that's that's labeled for peaches. So, for example, Don
and friends with You've got Ace Heart, we're on Edgewood Drive. There gonna
they're gonna have those kind of products. And I don't always know what every
store is carrying specifically, So rather than sending you out for a particular thing,
just tell them you need an insecticide labeled for fruit trees. But timing
is what's important. At the end of bloom two weeks later, and two
weeks again after that. Okay, thank you so much. We enjoy your
show every week. Thank you, Charlie, appreciate you listening that that is
helpful. Uh, you've heard me brag about heirloom soils many times before heirlooms.
I was just repotting some houseplants the other day and I was using heirlooms,
the works potting soil. It's called the works potting soil. It's available
all kinds of places, you know, Kingwick Garden Center, Ace Hardware,
Memorial Drive, Ace, Harbor City. That is Joe's Country Store in Santa
Fe mid mid County feet up in Nederland. That's some ways out. And
plaster seasons, of course, came Hardware's got it. The works. Potting
soil is just an excellent, excellent choice. Now there's also from Heirloom Soils.
You're going to be able to get rosol, You're going to be able
to get leaf, more composts, You're going to be able to get every
kind of blend that they produce, and there's a lot of different products.
You need to go online to Heirloom Soils of Texas Soils is plural Heirloomssoilsoftexas dot
com and look at the product line they carry. Airloom cells are widely available
in garden centers, ace hardware stores. You know down at southwist Feeding.
Southwest Fertilizer for example, has them easy to find quality soils. And what
do we say on guardline, take care of the brown stuff and then the
green stuff, the brown stuff, the soil, the fertilizer, making sure
the roots are happy. Then when you put your plant in, it looks
like you have a green thumb because you do, because you did the right
thing. We are now going to go to Austin County and talk to Doris.
Hello, Doris, Hi, how are you? I'm well, ma'am.
Can you explain the three two four ratio and fertilized Okay, it's three
one two. The middle numbers phosphorus. You don't want much of that.
The first number is nitrogen. You want a lot of that. Three one
two. What that is is a ratio. So if I said fifteen five
ten, that is an example of a ratio that has three times as much
of the first number as this first second number and twice as much of the
third number. Is the middle, it's three one two ratio. So microlife
makes us six two four. That's a three one two ratio fertilizer, right,
okay, okay, what's the last one? The last one is potassium
potassium. Those are the three nutrients that plants use the most. They need
the most quantity. A lot of nutrients are essential, but those we need
the most volume of it. If you will, okay, can I ask
you another question? I have about half a minute. Yes, what should
I set my spread around to put out the barricade? Uh foot number?
What I would recommend is take your spreader and do it about at one fourth
of fully open. So let's just say that your spreader the highest number was
a ten, you would do a two or a three, a one fourth
or a little above that. So whatever the highest number on your spreader is,
take that number and about it. One fourth of that are a little
more is where you put the barricade setting. Okay, I've got to run.
Thank you, Thank you very much. I appreciate that call. We'll
be right back here. We're gonna take a little break for the news.
The phone number if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden Line. I could
just sit there and listen to that song for I love that song. Hey,
you are listening to garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Prictor,
and we're here to talk about gardening. We got some folks on the line.
We're going to do just that. Before I do, I want to
tell you that the Antique rosing for them. If you've never been there,
it is the kind of show place that you really need to go. You
need to grab your friends, you know. I don't know if you have
a club you belong to a garden club or a group, Native herb Society
or Native Plant Society or Herb City, those kind of places and head out
there, make a day of it because it is. It's beautiful, and
the stock that they have on Antique Roses is unmatched. Also it's not just
roses. I mean they've got a really really good selection of other things.
Like right now, they've got a lot of ferns and other shade loving plants
available. They got boom and booias, they got dahlias, they got gerber
daisies. What do you need some perennial. Maybe you need a native plant
perennial like a purple cone flower, a white lintena, the pink skull cap
coral, honeysuckle yarrow Salvius salvius, my favorite genus of plants. They've got
them at Anti Crosing for him. The website Antique roseanporim dot com, the
phone number nine seven nine eight three six fifty five forty eight. They're gonna
have their spring celebration on March ninth and March tenth, and I'll be out
there for that. You need to get that on your calendar. There's gonna
be food trucks and plants galore. There's gonna be an artists in market and
various speakers like myself given programs, Anti crows, poorium. They're roses,
but they are they are so so much more and you need to check them
out. If you've never been, you need to go, and like I
said, take a group of friends with you because it is an outing,
it is a destination. Let's head now to Jersey Village and talk to Claire.
Hello, Clara, Hi, Skip. It's all of the question.
If your inkal is to have the bulb rebloom next year, yes, on
your amarilla's vaults, do you take them out of the pottings medium therein and
cut them back or do you leave them in the pot? You can do
either one. Pots tend to the soil, and pots tends to go away
over time, and so the rose are the rose. The amarillas doesn't have
a lot of soil to grow in, so repotting them with a bunch of
fresh new soil is typically helpful. And you could do that at this time.
You can do it pretty much anytime, but you could go ahead and
do that at the end. As we get toward the end of summer.
Probably go ahead and lay those down on their side so they don't get water.
The pots don't get water, let them go dry, let the foliage
weather, and then after a couple of two or three weeks of that,
then you can set them back up again and you can start watering them.
And that simulates the rainfall pattern in their native native home area, and as
a result, you'll get a really nice bloom coming out of that. Okay,
well, thank you for now. I've trimmed off all the leaves and
they're sending up new leaves. That's normal. Just leave it. Those leaves
are capturing sunlight and making carbohydrates and putting a bloom in that bulb, and
so you need to leave those alone right now. All right, Well,
thank you Skip again. Thank you for keeping us screen. Thank you appreciate
that. Clara appreciate that very much. Let's see here we are gonna ego
to trying to get my there we go, finally got the right spot.
We're going to head out to Magnolia and talk to Todd. Hello, Todd,
Hi, I'm good sir. Hey, Listen, we took a beating
on our Saint Augustine. Like I think a lot of people did this past
summer, and me and my wife are trying to get away from it,
okay of a better term, and so we're thinking about putting micro clover in
the backyard, okay, And I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
And one of the concerns I had about it is I've read different things
that they do attract a lot of bees, or they don't attract a lot
of bees. We have a couple of little small dogs too, and I
don't want them getting, you know, putting them in a position of getting
you know, stung and having any type of problems that way. So I
just want to kind of get your thoughts on it, or if you had
any kind of suggestions for a good fast spreading ground cover. YEA, for
the backyard, I wouldn't do the micro clover and our landscape here, that's
it's a small variety of clover, and clover has its season for us,
and so it's going to be around, but it's not going to make a
good lawn year round for sure. I just don't think you're going to be
happy with the results of that. There are various types of groundcovers that you
can use if you've got decent amount of sun. Did you say you had
a lots under shade? I didn't catch that. It's there's an area of
the yard that gets a lot of that, and then but the majority of
it's really shaded. And we have a lot of big pines and oaks and
stuff like that in the backyard, so the majority of it is shaded.
There's a couple of native groundcover plants in shade. One called horse herb does
good. It has a little yellow flower on it that is attractive to bees
and some of you a horse herb. Horse herb, Now you have to
look at a picture of it and see if you're going to like it,
because these are some people would say they're weeds, you know, because but
they are native plants and they do well, and horseharb as well in a
bright shade area. There's one called frog fruit that does well in the sun
and it also has little tiny white blooms on match stick stalks, match stick
size stalks that attract bees as well, and it is probably the best of
the groundcovers, especially the natives, for a sunny area like that. Okay,
cool, we'll definitely take a look at those. Yeah. The clover.
The clover seasonally is going to look good at times, but at times
it will not look good at all. Yeah, I've done it like brown
out during the winter. Yeah, and then you've what you got. You
got dirt, and so that's why I would not go with that. Hey,
thanks Todd. I appreciate your question. I hope that. I hope
that helps a lot. It's funny, you know, on Guardline, one
minute I'm talking about weeds, and the next and how to kill them.
In the next minute, I'm talking about how to plant them. Turf sar
weedon eight is the one we had recommended earlier as a post emergent to get
rid of weeds. That's from the folks that know Nelson's but also don't forget.
They've got this new Genesis transplant mix. A New Genesis transplant mix is
a six one three fertilizer. So I just used it the other day.
I was bumping some plants up from one size container to another. I mixed
the transplant mix into a new potting mix and planted the plants, and it
gets them off to a great start. It's got humaid's got my microbial activity
going on in there. Nutrastar genesis transplant mix. You need to try it
out this year. Hey, we're going to take a quick break seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to guarden Linem glad
you're listening today. Of course, as always, we're going to head out
now to New Caney and talk to Joe. Hello, Joe, hie Kip.
I just got a quick question. What is the technique that has suggested
to transplant bamboo. I want to transplant some wall bamboo for my perimeter,
okay. And if it's a running bamboo, you may wish you hadn't because
that takes over the world. If it's a clumping tepe, those are a
little more tame, and I would consider it, but I'll leave that choice
up to you. The way you transplant either bamboo is just dig it up,
dig up some some of the underground rhizomes, the roots, the clump
if it's a clumping type, and move it right to where you want it.
Put it in the ground, same depth, watered in really good,
and just wait. It's gonna sit there for a while. The bamboo growers
say, the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps. The
third year it leaps, and that's describing the growth. So don't be concerned
if it doesn't grow much the first year. You want to water it in
really good. Bamboo is a grass, so just like if you had bermuda
grass somewhere, you just dig up a scoop, move it over, put
it back in the ground, watered in right away. It's gonna take off.
That's how bamboo is no special magic to it real quick. Is there
a timeframe I have to get it in the ground from where I transplant it.
There's not a time frame, but you don't want it to dry out.
So if it's going to take a while, I would If it's gonna
take a good while, i'd pot it up in a potting mix and watered
in really good. Maybe set it in a semi shady area with a break
from the western sun. You could also set it down on the ground and
just cover it up with a mulch and then kind of water that to keep
it moist. You just don't want it to dry out. Awesome. Thank
you, yes, sir, thank you. I appreciate the call very much.
I want to tell you about Nelson Watergarden. Nelson Watergarden is. You
know, we keep saying we got places north southeast and West Nelson Watergarden is
West Houston's full service local nursery. They're just out there at Katie Katie Fort
Ben Road, north of the Katie Freeway. You head out I ten Katie
Fort Ben Road head north and it's a rocks throw from I ten Nelsonwatergarden dot
com. That's their website. But I want to tell you it is a
showplace. I was out recently and their selection of pottery pots you're not gonna
get anywhere else in the area. From around the world, they've got it.
And they were the ones that originated the disappearing fountain coming out of a
container. So imagine this big, beautiful vase that's just a traffic stopper.
Beautiful water's coming out of it. It goes to the base and it just
disappears because underneath there's a container holding water that's pumping it back through. That's
called a disappearing fountain. And boy do they get creative with it. I
mean, it really is amazing. You know, when you have water,
you're going to have birds. When you have water, there's a place for
beneficial insects to get moisture when you have water. Most importantly, there's sound,
a comforting, beautiful sound that just makes you want to be outside in
the garden. It's one of the off forgotten features of a beautiful landscape and
garden, the beautiful sound of water. And when you go there you'll see
what I'm talking about. I've never seen so many pots of my life.
They are everywhere, and they're all gorgeous. By the way. Your place
for koy ponds there, your place for any kind of a water garden with
water gardening plants like Levy pads for example. They've got all of that now
it trust me on this one. Just go out to Nelson Water Garden and
Nursery again. They're and Katie just north of Iten just a rocks throw north.
Well. I hope you will go out and check that out. It
is inspiring. Absolutely. Let's head out to Beach City now and talk to
Joe. Hello, Joe, good morning, Skip. Hey. I'm gonna
I've got Saint Augustine's and Johnson grass and a whole bunch of weeds on two
acres and I'm going to plant bermuda. I'm wondering how I should do that,
should I go ahead and cut the grass and scalp it and then kill
it up. If I if I were doing it, Johnson, grass is
a booger. That's a mess, and I would wait until it starts to
grow, until you have growth on the whatever grasses or weeds you've got,
and then I would spray it with something to kill the whole thing down to
the roots, and then I would let it have about a week to move
in. Then I would do the scalping and the rototilling that you need to
do. Wait another week or so. Just make sure it's not going to
re sprout, because you don't often get it all on that first spray.
And then when it does resprout anything that does, go ahead and spread one
more time, and then you're ready to go. Randy used to say,
kill, till and fill. Well, that's the kill and then and the
till and filling means just bringing in soil to level out the area. If
you got any divots or pockets or whatever, you can do that. If
you've got roots sticking up, you need to bring some soil up around them
so you don't have them sticking ab above the ground. You can do all
that, but it starts with making sure what's there is dead, because it
will plague you if you don't get rid of it before you plant the new
grass. Okay, thank you, all right. I hope that answered it.
But they very much for the call. I appreciate that. Sometimes when
people are kind of quiet, I think, are they thinking, I am,
there is no way I'm going to do that all that work. I
don't think that's the case with Joe has to Grow six twelve six. That's
a Medina product. Medina products you've heard if you've listened to Gardenline since Dewey
Compton did this show back in the fifties, you've heard of Medina products the
whole time through Medina is a widely popular brand of a wide variety of products.
They got a new thing that say it's a microbe. It comes in
a little container like a spice jar. You just kind of put a little
bit out, very little, because what you're doing is you're adding certain kinds
of certain kinds a bazillion different kinds beneficial microbes to the oil. Medina products
would include like their seaweed products. Medina products would include their fish emulsion products.
Medina products would include things like their Growing Green line of products or they're
growing Green actually is a fertilizer. I can use it on your lawns and
other things. Medina Soil Activator, Medina Plus. They're all great products and
they're widely available here in the Greater Houston area. And I can tell you
this that it's transplanting time. I'm going to be transplanting a lot of stuff
out and when I do, I water them in with some of the Medina
Plus. Medina Plus is just an excellent product anytime you're starting plants and getting
them established, watering them in. If you got plants that really suffered from
coal damage that are having to rebuild again, drench that with Medina Plus when
it starts to grow again. Use their seaweed product on it on the foliage.
It's a good FOLI your feed. You're not going to burn with these
things. They're safe to use. Their liquids mix all the label mixing up
in the water. But Menina products are one that it's a wideline but bitter.
It is a variety of things that people have sworn by for years because
they provide success. I love to use that Medina Plus when I'm watering in
New things. In fact, I believe I have a jug of it still
at the house. I mean you may need to get me some more because
it is going to be time really soon. Well, you've been listening to
Guardline today. Of course, we're on every Saturday from six am to ten
am. I'll be back tomorrow morning, first thing, six am. For
those of you early birds, I look forward to seeing you. For the
rest of you, all you got to do is brew a pot of coffee
and you'll be ready to go. Maybe I'll say something outrageous to help wake
you up for a thing in the morning. Don't forget Next Saturday, February
twenty fourth, a and A Plants and Produce in Montgomery. I'm going to
be there. I'll be giving away eight bags a turf Star we'dn eater every
fifteen minutes. Given away a bag of that. It'll give you a chance
to come up. Let's meet. I always love to meet people that listen
to the show. Do you want to bring a sample of a plant?
Do you want to bring a picture of a plant? We can identify,
we can diagnose, we can just help you. My goal is for you
to have a bountiful garden and a beautiful landscape. So come by let's figure
out how to do that. While you're there, make sure your vehicle has
plenty of space because A and A is loaded up with cool stuff that you
need to take home if you want to go from the drab gray brown of
winter to all the colors you can imagine. Galore. Ana is going to
get you fixed up. So talk to you next Saturday. Again, it's
twelve to two, so after the show I'll have that way. In the
meantime, I have to say this over and over again because I'm always surprised
there's people that don't even know these exist on my website Gardening with Skip dot
com. Gardening with Skip, that's meet dot com. Lawn care schedule,
it's free January to December. What do you need to do when it comes
to moving, watering, fertilizing, adding micronutrients, air core, aerating,
It's all on there. The lawn pest, disease and weed management schedule.
What insects do you have and when and what do you do about it?
Diseases, weeds, it's all on there. If you're an organic gardener,
I've got the products on there. If your synthetics are good, with you.
I've got the products on there on both of those schedules. Hey,
we look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning. Remember first thing, bright and early