Welcome to ktr H Garden Line with Skip Richards smell crazy. Just watch him
as Wood, so many good things to see. Bouts come back, ticket
but sell. Good morning, Funday, good Sunday morning for gardening. That's
what we're here for us to talk about gardening. And for those of you
who have got one eye opened, a cup of coffee on the couch trying
to come to for the day, Welcome to garden Line. I'm glad you're
listening. Hope you have a good time today. We're gonna We're gonna visit
with you about a lot of different things related to gardening and hopefully talk to
you about some of your calls. I know, if you've got a question,
other people have it too. Yesterday I was out at the Margaritaville Resort
up in Lake Conro. We were doing the Home and Garden show up there
and got to meet a lot of folks. Thank you for everybody that came
out. I hope you had a good time. I sure did. I've
never I don't know if I've ever heard that many questions from a crowd before,
but you guys had a lot of questions, which is good. I
mean, that's that's why we're here. That's part of the fun of it
all. But you know, being out and talking with people, I can't
tell you. Several people came up and said, I just wanted to tell
you I love listening to Guardline, but I never call. And I it's
like, okay, call. I realize it's just a it's worse than the
tip of the iceberg when it comes to you know, lots very few people
who listen call, And I encourage you to give it a call if you
if you are a little bit shy, you know, you don't be in
the air. That's okay, it's just showing me nobody's listening, especially you
know this hour there Actually we know different than that. A lot of folks
waking up out there. But I hope you will give us a call.
The number if you would like to call will and get on the board this
morning is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. It is as simple as that.
So I was telling you guys yesterday that our new lawn care schedule is out.
Some of you already seen it. I've had a number of comments on
Facebook and Instagram regarding that this is a guide that is a PDF fill.
In other words, it's full color and you can print it out, put
it on your refrigerator or in the garage where you keep your fertilizer, or
wherever you want to put it. But it basically takes you January through December
with the major cultural practices of Karen for a lawn, what does that mean?
What it means fertilizing. So there's a row across the calendar if you
will for synthetic fertilizing, and if you would rather fertilizing or game nick way,
there is a row that gives you a list of the times and options
for that as well. We got trace minerals on there. We've got aeration
on how to do it, and then the other cultural practices that are critically
important for a good lawn or proper mowing and proper watering, and so we
guide you through the year on that. I've got a little bar across there
that says each month of the year, what is the typical need for a
lawn in Houston area in the absence of rainfall? And so per week,
So like if you go across to where are we now We're still in August
barely, but in August, our lawns need in Houston based on sunlight,
solar intensity, intensity, humidity, wind speed, you know, all the
factors that make a lawn used water. They need one inch of water a
week. In September it goes down to three quarter inch a week, and
October it's a half inch a week. So you get the idea. It
kind of guides us as we go through the year on how to water and
then to the bottom of course, and it's all color coded. So let's
say you chose to do fertilizing organically, Well, there's a section at the
bottom, same color and it lists all the products that are organic that you
can use on there. I appreciate those of you who have given us some
feedback on it. Have made a couple of updates. You know, sometimes
I look at something and it's like, yeah, that makes sense, and
then several people say I don't understand this part of it or what about that,
And we made some tweaks on it. And it's probably going to evolve
just a little bit here in the early days as as we get things where
they're easily understood. Because the goal for this is for you to look at
it and think through it and then go, I got it and I know.
And we've had some folks that have looked at it initially and go,
there's a lot of information on there is that I don't know if I can
absorb all that. Well, yes you can if you just take it a
step at a time, like, Okay, I want to fertilize, When
do I fertilize? And what does it say there and what are the best
options for that. It's as simple as that. I'm also working on the
lawn pest, disease and weed management schedule and that will be coming out soon
and that is the partner for the lawn care schedules. So the insects and
the diseases and the weeds that we deal with, when do we typically see
them, and why didn't we put it all on one schedule? There's absolutely
nowhere close to enough room because we explain to you when did chinch bugs and
sode web worms typically occur? When do you treat for grubs? When is
take all root rot typically occurring? When do you treat for large patch if
you've had a lawn with the history of that, And then the same for
weeds, and that's going to be up there pretty soon. We're I'm still
working on that. One's a little more complicated because there's just a lot of
moving parts on it. Well, I think that kind of gives you an
idea what we're talking about. If you are planning on doing any kind of
transplanting, and I hope you are, Fall's the best season in the world
for it. I'm still transplanting things now. I know a lot of our
gardens center have peppers and tomatoes out there, and a lot of other plants
that can be planted, in fact need to be planted right now. If
you're going to plant them, consider using has to Grow six twelve six.
The has to Grow twelve six is a high phosphorus fertilizer that you mix in
water, and I use it to water in transplants because it just helps those
roots get going, those plants establish, because you don't want them to be
transplanted in pout for a week or two. You want them to hit the
ground running. And so it's got the soil activator in it to stimulate biological
activity. It's got humic acid, it's got seaweed extracts. Has to Grow
six twelve six. Give it a shot. I just mixed mine in a
little bit of water and a watering can, and when the plant goes in
the ground, I watered in without has to grow six twelve six, and
then a week later again, and then a week later again. In those
three waterings in with the has to grow product really gets that plant off to
a good start. Well, let's we are going to I'll tell you what.
I'm going to head out to k and Missouri City. Good morning,
k Good morning, Hi. I just wanted to tell you I took your
call and we got about under a minute. So let's get started and we'll
finish after we come back. Okay, it's it's fast. It's two.
It's two questions. I bought asamite yesterday. What do I put my spreader
setting on and do I water it in? It depends on the spreader setting.
But it's well, I mean the settings each like brands of rotors,
brands of rotors, brands of spreaders and stuff, are a little different.
Azamite comes in more than one product form, and so one is finer textured
than the other. You're just gonna have to kind of look at it.
I would go with less open than you think you need because that way,
if you if you didn't get the right amount on per thousand square feet,
you could just come back and do it again. If you if you make
it too open, you know, you get ten steps down the yard and
you're done. That's a problem. So that's that's what I would recommend.
Alright, Okay, in Uh, it's it's okay to watered in. It's
not required like it is with a salt based fertilizer or you know, an
organic product you want to activate. Uh, you can watered in. It
will get watered in eventually with rain and stuff. But it's not an emergency.
It's not gonna burn your Okay, your your plants, all right,
Okay, thank you very much. Hey, thank you. Kay. I
appreciate that call. We're gonna take a break right now. Give Will a
call at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. This US.
Good morning. You're listening to guardline on a what is gonna be a
full Sunday morning. Look outside right now, it's dark. If you see
the neighbors and the lights aren't on, go bang on the door. Tell
them they're missing garden line. They need to know about this, by the
way, especially they're the ones that don't take care of their yard. Right,
Well, go tell them they're missing garden line. They will. They
will rise up and call you something eventually, blessed. But maybe this morning
they'll rise up and call you something else. Oh gosh, let's let's talk
about mosquitoes. Hit. Mosquitoes are having hard time right now because they can't
find water anywhere. Well, in the Houston area, you can always find
water somewhere, but whenever it rains here they come. Do you know it
takes mosquitoes just a matter of days from an egg to be able to hatch
out and have a larva and then an adult flying around, and it takes
about about a bottle cap or a teaspoonful of water. Believe it or not.
If you want to ask mosquito, what's heaven for the larva? Stagnant
water with decaying organic matter. So would that describe the catch basins under your
plant? Yes, the saggy gutters that aren't draining right. Yes, whenever
you have water, you have to deal with the mosquitoes. And one of
the best ways to do it is mosquito dunks. If it's a large pond
of water or you know large like a fish, not a fishman, you
know on a mccoypine kind of thing. Well, if you have a little
area of water like that, you can put a whole mosquito dunk in it.
It'll float around for about a month, releasing a disease at mosquitoes.
It does not hurt birds, does not hurt pets, does not hurt fish,
does not hurt any wildlife. Very easy to use. They also have
granules that you can put out there. For a larger area. You just
toss a bunch of granules across it, and basically you were spreading the bubonic
plague among mosquitos, which is a wonderful thing to happen to a mosquito.
You're gonna find mosquito dunks all over the place wherever you shop. Our garden
centers, are feed stores, are hardware stores. They all have mosquito dunks
in them. Let's head out now to Camp Logan and we're gonna talk to
Ron this morning. Good morning Ron, thanks for waiting. Hey, thank
you Skip, thanks for taking my call. I had two questions, if
I could. One is regarding the new Houston mandatory water restrictions start for me
this afternoon this evening, okay, And I was curious about the yard watering
strategy. Should I just do multiple runs on the same zones? And also
curious about yard mowing. Hut, you know, right now I mow it
about three and a half. Should I not mow for a while? Go
to five inches? Yeah? What are you? I'm assuming you're talking about
Saint Augustine at those Yeah. So I would leave it at three and a
half and I would mow it as often as you can. But ultimately,
you want to mow. When you're mowing, cuts off a third of the
height of the grass. So let's say you're at three and a half and
a half, it's going to grow to almost four and a half before you'd
have to mow at that height. But that is the goal of mowing,
is to not do major pruning back, but cut off about a third of
the leaf when you mow, so that that's not going to be very often
if you're not pushing them with fertilizer and water a lot. As far as
how to water, think of it this way. You'd like to put an
inch of water down on the day you water, so you're not. You're
not going to be able with most sprinkler heads to apply an inch all at
one time without it running off. So what we do is we water until
it's about to run off, and you just have to get out there and
figure out how long that is and then let it go off for about forty
five minutes to so it soaks down in the soil aways and then water again,
and that way, with that cycle and soak, you can get an
inch down in the soil. That's that's what we're aiming for. Okay,
right, okay, And let me give you a tip for a way that
makes it so easy to know how much the water. There's something called water
my Yard and it's it's The website is water myyard dot org. You can
find an app for your iPhone. You can find an app for your Android,
and it's all free. And what it does is there's a whole bunch
of little weather stations people don't even know about all over the greater Houston area,
and they measure all the things that make grass use water faster or slower,
and like sunlight and wind speed and temperature and humidity and so on,
and they crunch it together and they send you a free email each week saying
your lawn has used point seven five inches of water this week. And that
way when I say you put on an inch when you water, well,
if you if if you've only used a half inch this week, then either
weight to water or go ahead and put a half inch down. But that
that guide will take you all through the air. I mean, it could
be October and you're wondering, you know how much is what my lawn used?
It'll tell you. And it's fast, it's easy, and it's free.
Best of all. All right, great, thanks slot skip Hey one
more quick question, if I could more curiosity. I grew up in northeast
Texas. Incinipede was a popular grass and I don't hear much of it being
used around the Houston area. Any reasons why why we don't see that couple
centipede. It doesn't achieve a dark emerald green color very well at all.
In fact, if you over fertilize it, it will really hurt it.
Centipede therefore, is kind of a shark cruise screen, which is not as
appealing to people. It likes acid soil as opposed to high pH soil.
It can grow and higher pH to a degree, but it prefers kind of
an East Texas acid sand kind of soil. Also, in the winter,
when it gets cool, it turns straw colored. Saint Augustine will hold onto
a little color, especially this far south. But centipede, I mean it
looks like the lawn died, especially as you get up further north. You
may have noticed that when you were up in East Texas that way. But
those are the reasons it can be planted from seed. You can't hardly find
sod of it around. But just because it's not a cellar, so they're
not going to waste time growing and carrying it. Great, that's why.
That's the simple reason into your answer. All right, thank you for taking
my call, you bet, I appreciate that call. Ron, thank you
very much. Hey, for those of yat in Kingwood, you know how
I always say this, but Warrens and Kingwood Garden Center to awesome garden centers
right at your back door. I mean, I don't know another place that
has two garden centers so close together that are so awesome, but those they
are right now. They're featuring azamite. You okay, called earlier about azamite
settings and things on the spreaders. Well you Azamite is available Warren's and Kingwood
and it is their product spotlight right now and this would be a good time
to get that down. If you've not put an application down this year yet,
now it's a fine time to put it down. The other thing to
know about Warren's Garden Centers and Kingwood both as they got fresh vibrant tomatoes and
pepper plants at both places. Now's the time to go ahead and get those
in. Don't delay anymore. You want to get those in so they have
time to grow set fruit before it cools off so much that they just slow
down and are not developing fast enough. So that that is something that is
very timely advice. They also have their composts sale. If you buy three
bags of heirloom soils leaf aged leaf compost, you will get one free.
That's that's a really good deal. It's like buy three, get one free,
and then don't forget when you're at at ones by the way to sign
up for their lawn Care Club. They send you tips, they send you
coupons, and it just helps you take your lawn up to the next level.
At a discounted price. You can sign up. When you check out,
you can email them, you can message them on social media, or
just give them a call at either locations. Now at Kingwood Garden Center coming
out and this a little ways out but not too far. You need to
get on your calendar in September twenty first at six pm in the evening September
twenty first, six pm, they are going to have their urban Fused Falled
into Prosecco event. And this is a garden to glass mix all a g
class. How about how about that for a name? You can learn how
to craft exquisite cocktails with prosecco using herbs right out of your garden. They'll
tell you how to grow the herbs, how to harvest them, and how
to infuse them into spirits to create that kind of cocktail. They call that
their gartending class. Go to the website Kingwood Garden Center dot com and you
can find out more about that there. That's a creative idea. Let's go
to Bear Creek. Now we're going to talk to Bill. Hello, Bill,
Oh, I've been monk going skip. I've got a little problem with
tree roots. I think I need to saw to replace the lawn and I
think maybe I've waited too long, and I've had some foundation problems. I've
put in a root barrier, but on one side of the lawn the roots
are like three inch roots three inch in diameter roots, you know, cover
go out to the entire lawn edge wo And on the other side it's got
it's a lesser problem, but a lot of large roots. Okay, So
what happens when I try to after I kill and when I try to till,
is that going to be a problem. Yeah, You're just not gonna
be able to till when there's tree roots like that. I mean you'll be
banging around with the tiller and nicking the roots and all kinds of stuff.
And it's in that situation about the best you can do is just some light
tilling here and there a little bit, and maybe breaking it up a little
bit with a fork. I don't mean like a whole spading fork where you
turn over a big chunk of soil, but you're just loosening up the surface
a little bit. If those roots are sticking up above the surface, the
grass gonna sitting sitting on top of them. So you're gonna either that to
put a little soil in to bring the level up to the top of the
root, or come up with a different plan for those areas. Now it
sounds like they're so much of a tree root area that me suggesting a groundcover
would basically turn your whole lawn into a ground cover. But that's one way
we hide tree roots. But just bringing a little soil in here and there
between the roots to kind of bring the soil level up, that that would
be the other option. If you have to do that over a huge part
of the tree's roots system, that can be stressful to the trees, But
just an inch or two kind of in certain areas that that's fine. And
ground what's a good ground cover to cover a major portion of a fun lawn?
Yeah, bright shady areas. Asian jasmine works pretty good as a groundcover.
Boy, there's a lot of them, and it depends on your esthetics
for sure. There are a number of different sedges that do real well,
especially in shade, and so their native sedges and non native sedges. But
they form a little tufted plant that depends on the sedge. But it's going
to get up about you know, six inches to ten just depending on which
said you pick. But it's just like a little meadow underneath. You keep
us to keep that down. Oh yeah, yeah you could, but you
wouldn't have to. You don't want to mow it very often. I mean
it would just be uh, you know, maybe coming out of winner,
cut it back so you can get some fresh new growth. And perhaps is
Mondo grass one of those? It's not Mando would be fine, and there's
a dwarf Mondo. The thing with Mondo number one it can take tons of
shade but not a whole lot of sun, but it grows really really slow.
Hey Bill, I need to break for a for our next new spot,
but if you want to hang on, we can continue this when we
come back. Answer my question, Thank you, skip yes or thank you
well. You're listening to the guard Line seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Give us a call dot com? Would his t shirts
he got attack on his amposite data he got did you see heydon afternoon?
I know we've got to show that you're here, but I could just listen
to Jim. You're listening to garden Line and we are glad you are.
We're here to answer your gardening questions. Give us call seven one three,
two one two fifty eight seventy four. We are gonna now go out to
Magnolia and talk to Tim. Hello, Tim, Hey, don't skip.
I'm well, thank you. I sent some pictures yesterday. I've got some
groundcover on the side of my garage. We've had the house for about nineteen
years. I don't know when they planted it, but it's always grown perfect.
I've never really watered it or fertilized, and he just always stays nice,
thick and green and so. But just the last I guess two or
three weeks, you can see on those pictures it's just dye in the middle.
Some of it on one side green, but most of it's just dying.
And yeah, I didn't know what I need to do. I don't
know if you've got those pictures. I did, Yeah, I did?
Uh tended? Did you cut down a tree that might have shaded that area
before? By any chance? Uh not recently? Make me like four years
ago? Oh okay, Well, yeah, that's that's pretty far back.
It looks like drought injury to me, And I don't know. It could
be a lot of things. It could be that the water isn't reaching that
area due to some foliage block in the sprayer. It could be that when
you water, it's not soaking in deep enough. It looks it looks like
it might be a little bit of a slope. Is that right or not?
No, it's pretty preable, and we're you know, our property has
a lot of trees right there on that side. It does get some sun,
but we're predominantly tree. A matter of fact, that my grass hardly
ever grows because I got so much shades, even in the last drought,
and I don't have water sprinklers or whatever. Even the last drought, I
didn't even watered at all, and it stayed just like that. I was
interesting it, really, but then just like it just all of a sudden,
that started even doing like that. Yeah, and well, here here's
what I'm saying. I mean, there there are root diseases that can affect
that Asian jasmine and kill it. Cotton root rod and some other things can
affect it. But they wouldn't just show up overnight. That would have been
a gradual development in that area over time. The other thing I'm seeing is
a grass doesn't look good either. Right there, It looked like it's dying
out, and so that's what. There's not a disease that Asian jasmine shares
with turf grass, and so that's making me think something like like a water
or I don't know what it's going on. It has been so hot for
so long, just almost to point of a record here that I don't know.
I would go into the jasmine. I would take a little hand trawled
dig down about four or five inches and feel the soil. And if it's
moist then I unless you just watered, then maybe we can eliminate the water
is being the cause. But I don't know a disease it would cause what
you're seeing right there. So that looks to me. When I see that,
my first thing I think about is what was in the shade now is
getting blasted by the sun, which you've you've said no, uh. And
and I see the lawn and I think, man, that is that's got
to be water, a water thing unless herbicide was put on it, a
weed killer to kill weeds in it or in the lawn, and it got
over there or something different like that. Uh. Those are the only things
I see in the photo. You know, over there on the left side
of the water where the water hose is it's it's looking good. But I
noticed just a few little tiny leaves to turn brown way over there on that
left side. Okay, you know, well it's only kind of really hit
hard on that right side, you know. And well, the next step,
if you want to pursue it, would be to take a sample of
that plant. You would just take a shovel and dig out about a one
foot square chunk. You don't have to get a whole lot of soil with
it, but just get the roots. If you can shake a little of
the soil off and send it up to the State Plant Clinic at A and
M. They do a charge for diagnostics, but they'll get it in there,
cultured out in a petri dish, look at it under a microscope,
and they can tell you exactly if there's a disease, what that disease is,
and then that would guide us on Therefore, what do you do.
So if we eliminate chemical damage, if we eliminate drought damage, if we
eliminate you know, the sudden sun exposure, then I guess it's worth taking
a look at a disease. But that would be that's a little unusual,
but unusual happens, so that if you wanted to do that, It's called
plant Clinic dot TAMU dot d U. Plant Clinic dot TAMU dot edu.
And that's how you take a sample to send it in needs to be fresh.
You can drive it up to the college stations an hour away, or
you can mail it up there, you know whatever. Okay, all right,
well I appreciate your help. All right, thank you, sir.
I appreciate the call. Good luck with appreciate you were listening to garden Line
and I'm your host, Skip Ricter. We're here to talk all kinds of
things gardening with you today, you know, talking talking with Tim and seeing
that lawn. I see a lot of lawns that are struggling. You know,
they have dead areas in them. They lack that color, kind of
a shark cruise color rather than a normal color. And our plants are distressed.
I mean it number one, it's dry and hot, right, so
you got a water and I don't know. Sometimes we think we watered and
we didn't. But also just the intense heat is taking its toll on a
lot of plants, and that's the time when we want to make sure that
they have the nutrients that they have active there's a good soil moisture and active
microbial content in the soil because that's part of protecting the roots. That's part
of making the roots more efficient. And a product like Microlife. You know,
they've got their six two four for example, that's their fertilizer. They've
got the Humates plus that's a purple bag. Six two four is a green
bag. Humates plus, which is concentrated compost in a bag, is the
purple bag. Those are helpful. I talk about here the product that they
have that we spray on plants as a folder feet or we can drench it
onto the soil, and that is their fish based product. Now the fish
based product, that one is in a blue bottle. It's called Ocean Harvest,
and just follow the label. You're not going to burn with Ocean Harvest.
It provides when you do all these things, you're providing minerals for the
soil, you are fighting micro microbs plus, helping the microbs that are there.
Of course, you're providing some of the sugars and things that help them
really proliferate. And there's just a lot of other plants stimulating things that go
on when you treat your long like that, and at this point in time,
as someone said, it's almost like a gatorade for plants with that,
with that blue labeled ocean harvest. Get them there equivalent of human electrolytes.
I guess if you will, just to provide some things to stimulate them and
keep those things going. And you can find microlife everywhere. If you go
to Microlife Fertilizer dot com Microlife Fertilizer dot com, you can learn out about
these products that I'm talking about. You can also learn different places you can
get it, and it's widely available here in the Houston area. Well,
we're going to take a break here. Our number is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Give Will a call, he'll get you
on the board and we'll be right back with you. Bring into a million
pieces like you always do. Good morning, it's gonna be a beautiful Sunday
morning. By the way, that movie, if that came out of that
thing you do, that impressed me more by Tom Hanks than he's an awesome
actor. If he's going to be in a movie, I'm gonna watch the
movie because it's always good. But the fact that he wrote music for that
show, like that thing you do. By the way, if you're out
there listening and you think you know something about that thing you do, why
don't you let me know what the name of the band is on them in
the movie that sang that song? How about that? Can you give me
that? Give me a call, let me hear about that. I'd be
curiously if there's any any that thing you do fans out there, or you
could call about a gardening question, which is why we're here. Seven one
three, two, one two five eight seven four seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Buchanan's Plants in the Heights is another one of
those what I call destination garden centers, and Houston is rich with them.
I know, those of you who've lived here a long time, probably you
know I mean, familiar with something. You sort of take it for granted.
But let me tell you this, you are really fortunate to live in
the greater Houston area, because I mean, they're like a half dozen awesome
garden centers, north, south, east, west, central, anywhere you
want to go around here. We are fortunate to have some and Central Buchanons
is exactly that. It's an eleventh street in the Heights. And again it's
one of those places where if you're a non gardener, or if you have
a family member that's a non gardener, have them tag along at big beautiful
shade trees. So even on a hot day, it's pleasant to go out
there, walk around and do some shopping. The gift shops are unbelievable.
So I'm back to your non gardening friend here, and you know, our
goal for all this is to get them in there. It's going into a
quality garden center. Is the gateway drug to gardening. I mean, that's
what happens. You see these plants and suddenly you go, I would love
to grow that. And next thing you know, now you've got a gardening
friend, and so you can go hang out together, load up the suburbans
and run all over town. Anyway. Buchanans has native plants, that is
their specialty. They have unbelievably wonderful selection of not just Texas natives, but
natives just here to the Houston area. They have a whole table just for
Houston area natives. Buchanans has got everything else. Though, If do you
need herbs, do you need vegetables, do you need house plants? Their
house plant collection is unbelievable and it a lot of quality and things that aren't
easy to find. Stuff. I walk in there sometimes and it's like,
no, I've never seen that house plant? What is that? Because they're
always coming up a new things in the houseplant world. Buchanans carries the fertilizers
I talk about. Buchanans carries the soils that we talk about here. Anything
you need for your garden, from products to plants, to quality advice to
accurate advice. You're going to find a Buchanans Plants and the Heights that's East
eleventh Street, or go online to Buchanans Plants dot com and find out more
about that. Here on Guarden Line, we talk about a lot of different
topics and right now the elephants in the room, there's two of them.
Is lawns and trees, and why are they dying under this extreme drought stress,
extreme heat stress. Plants are just having a hard time making it.
And I was talking with some folks out there at the Home and Garden show
up on like Conro yesterday, and we were just just kind of thinking through
what's going on here. I mean we think about, well, plants need
water, I water them. They should be okay, Well they need water
that's in a good soaking, and then they need the soil to dry out
a bit between waterings. So what most people do is they squirt the lawn
with a little bit of water frequently every other day, hopefully not every day,
hopefully not every other day. But they do that and it wets the
soil in a very shallow way. It keeps the grass wet, which increases
disease problems, and it doesn't create a resilient, deep rooted grass. A
good soaking wets the soil deeply and then let it dry out. And as
the water moves out from between those soil particles, as it begins to dry
out from gravity from plants taking it up from evaporating, the soil gets oxygen
back down into the soil. The spaces that were once filled with water now
are filled with air, and roots need oxygen. They have to breathe.
They need a certain amount of oxygen to be able to perform well. You
keep a plant completely water logged and you'll kill it, especially in the stress
of heat. The other thing going on in our plants right now. I
see this on roses especially, but it's on a lot of plants. Is
it is just so blasted hot for so long that it's like they're wearing out.
When the temperature goes up into the upper nineties and above a hundred especially,
there are certain processes in the plant that starts to shut down photosynthesis,
for example, in many plants, when it gets too hot, it starts
to shut down another biological burst, I should say, biochemical processes. The
little factories begin to malfunction. And when that happens the plants, like in
the case of photosynthesis, that helps produce food for the plant. So you're
weakening the plant just due to the excessive heat, just because it can't get
that food production done. At nighttime, the little holes on the bottom of
the leaf open up and allow gas out, and that's the time, you
know, plants breathe, breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. We
all know that. That's why we like to hang out with them, because
we were good partners in that way. But they also have to have oxygen
at night where they burn some of the processes in their respiration, and when
it's so hot that the plants close the holes up so it doesn't lose any
more water. That process can't keep going on. That's like shutting to the
door to the auto factory and no cars can get out. That you're not
going to produce the things the plant needs if the door's not open. And
that's a simplified analogy, but that's part of what's going on with our plants
right now. So we can water, I'm gonna be careful not to overwater.
We want to water properly. But we just need to get this heat
to move on out. And our plants here are used to heat. I
mean, welcome to Texas period much less Southeast Texas. We you know,
we're used to the heat, or they're used to the heat. But days
and days and days on end, and then here comes the kicker. When
something goes a little wrong, maybe a root rot, like take all root
rot on your grass. Maybe something going a little wrong, is it gets
a little too dry, or maybe you're using a certain kind of product that
damages the plant. Any of those things. It's like it tips it over
the edge. It's hanging on, it's doing okay, but at some point
it's just too much and that's when we start to see decline and you see
it on crape myrtles now in different places where the tips of the leaves and
margins of the leaves are browning and the leaves are beginning to fall off.
It just we need to get out of one hundred degrees. That's the bottom
line. In the meantime, we need to water write. I already just
describe that, so I don't know, I hope that's helpful for you if
you have not been out to Southwest Fertilizer. I'm gonna talk about them in
a little bit, but they've got some they a product out there that you're
going to want to hear about. I've mentioned it before, but it's one
of my absolute favorite new products. And I'm always falling in love with a
new tool. And that the way it is. Whether you're into woodworking or
gardening, or you name it, or sewing even there's always some cool new
tool that helps you do your craft a little bit better. And that's I
don't know, that's part of the fun of it. You know, Gardening
is one of the less expensive hobbies that there are out there. I mean,
that's true, right, you don't have to have a deer lease.
You don't have to have a four wheeler. You don't have to uh you
know, the rifles and all the stuff it takes to be a hunter.
Bass fisherman. Yeah, you catch fish to save some money, provide fish
for the family food budget. But after you pay for a bass boat,
let's let's talk about gardening. When you come back, we'll be right high.
Welcome to ktr H Garden Line with Skip Richard's so smell crazy. Just
watch him as a wools You well, good Sunday morning, starting to lighten
up outside on what is going to be a beautiful day. You're listening to
garden Line and we're here to answer your gardening questions. I was talking about
before we went to break about a new favorite tool, and that what I'm
talking about is a kneeling bench. Now, I don't know if you've seen
those before, but a folding knee. There's a lot of versions of it.
Some are all solid hard plastic. You flip them up to sit on,
you flip them down to kneel on. The folding kneeling bench is a
little metal bench, got nice soft pads on it, and you can set
it up where you can sit down. So if you're down, you know,
maybe you got to raise bed. You're done at that level, and
you're wanting to work on some plants or anything along those lines, it's really
easy to do. And then if you want to flip it upside down and
kneel on it, what was legs now or handles? And I don't know
about you, but somewhere north of forty years old, i'd woke up one
morning wondering why I was sore because I couldn't remember doing anything the day before
that cost it. And what happens to me is I get out on a
Saturday years I'm you know, I'm working, getting getting stuff done in the
yard, and I don't realize how many times I go up and down and
up and down, you know, planting seeds and I don't know, just
whatever. And with those of little handles on there, I mean, it's
easy to get up and down. And I used to think, you know,
in fact, about one for my sister who's much older than me,
a point which I love to point out to her. But and then after
a while I thought, you know, I need one of those, and
I got one. It's wonderful. It's one of my favorite tools that I
have. And it's as simple as that. And you just think, well,
I don't need to carry a chair around in the guard. Yes you
do, and bob at it. Southwest Fertilizer. I got some of those
in. I told him about him. He got a bunch of those in
and I've seen him. You know, you've seen him around and stuff.
They're just not as common as they need to be though, in terms of
availability. But I'll tell you this. Southwest does carry those. They also
have a soil probe that you can borrow to take out to do a soil
sample, and I would recommend you do that now. I recommend fertilizers all
day here on garden Line because there's standards that we use three one two four
one two ratio fertilizers. That's a good general guide for grass. But everybody's
lawns a little different. You know, maybe your phosphorus is through the roof,
maybe it's unusually rare, are unusually low in your yard. A soil
test tells you that, so you can fertilize accordingly and bobble lown you the
probe. You put a little deposit down, get your money, get your
deposit back. When you bring the probe back. That's to make sure you
bring the probe back. But that's just another service Southwest has. I mean
every You're not going to find a place anywhere in Houston that has more products
for your garden than Southwest Fertilizers. That's fertilizers, that's pesticides and sex sides,
fungicides are besides on and on and on. I mean, down to
getting your mower blade sharpened is going to be there at Southwest. Go to
south West Fertilizer dot com if you want to find out more. If you
haven't been there, take some time and go out and check it out.
You'll see what I'm talking about there. If they don't have it at Southwest
Fertilizer, you don't need it. It's a corner of Bissonette and Renwick down
in southwest Houston. Let's head out now to Montgomery and we're going to talk
to Deborah. Good morning, Deborah, Good morning, Skip. How are
you this morning? I'm good this morning. How are you right? Just
watered that beautiful indigenous magnolia tree of my neighbors that are in Iceland. Ah,
oh yeah, yeah, I just got a quick question about that tree.
It has looks. It looks so much better since I've been watering it
regularly while they've been gone, and I was wondering about putting up getting some
nutrients to the roots of the tree. Is that a shallow root tree or
deep or is that something I should tackle. It's pretty it's it's medium,
and you don't need to fertilize a deciduous magnolia a lot, but you do
want to support good growth. It doesn't grow super fast and you don't want
it to be all lanky and floppy everywhere. It has a nice medium growth
rate, and so you can use a number of different things. I mean,
if it's in anywhere near the lawn, you could just when you're fertilizing
the lawn fertilize that tree a little bit extra and that would be fine if
you depending on how big the trunk is. Typically those are or can be
multi trunks, sometimes single trunk. Just for every inch of trunk diameter,
give it a cup of lawn fertilizer. That's one one simple fast way to
do it. Watered in really well, but in general they do pretty good.
The only problem they have nutrient wise here is if the soil pH is
really high. They can be chlorotic. So I think that's happening with that
tree. It is thirty years old. Oh well, okay, well you
know thirty years it should have settled in pretty well. I would consider taking
a little pitchfork spading fork, you know, like you would turn the soil
over with and just push it straight down in the soil and wiggle it really
good to kind of create some little vertical holes and do that in a whole
bunch of places around it, and then top dress it with a high quality
compost like us a well screened leaf mole compost. And if you do that
about once a year or twice a year, you will gradually get more and
more organic matter down into the soil. You'll aerate the soil better, and
it'll feel like it's in a forest, which is what it wants to feel
like. It's a tree. It wants to be in a forest with rotting
leaves everywhere around it. And that would help create over time that environment.
Oh that's beautiful suggestion. And bloom booster would be no, no, not
really not necessary. And here's why. The bloom boosters tipic clear hid phosphorus.
And when you have high pH and high phosphorus. Around a plant that
likes a little more acidic soil, you can often get tie up of iron
and so the new growth comes out not as green as the old growth is,
even even to the yet point of being yellow. That's a sign of
one of the signs of iron deficiency. So bloom Booster's fine for what it's
for. But on this it's basically a tree, and and yes it'll bloom.
And unless your soil is way out of whack nutrient wise, it should
be fine with just a turf type fertilizer. Right, Well, I'm looking
forward to seeing you in College station for more information about the soil testing.
Yeah, yeah, good, Well, hey, thanks for you were out
at Margaritaville, right yeah, okay, Well we had a great time out
there. Thanks for coming out. Oh it was great. I'm so glad
I got to meet you. So knowledgeable. Well that's not the good work,
that's kind. I hope, I hope you were worn out today because
y'all share the heck wore me out with questions yesterday. All right, this
is a Jeff that came up with Debbie and I wanted to tell you that
it seemed like it just automatically turned into a radio show. I don't know
if you had anything planned to say, but the question is, as soon
as you introduced to yourself, you started getting questions. Yes, we did
we did well, we had a good time. Hey, thank you guys.
I appreciate the call. Good luck up there by. Bye all right,
bye bye. That was good. Speaking of going out to places.
Next week is Labor Day, so I'm not gonna be anywhere on Labor Day.
And you wouldn't want to come out on Labor Day. You probably got
other things going on. But on the ninth of September, that's Saturday.
That's two saturdays from yesterday, so two weeks essentially, two weeks from now.
On Saturday, from eleven am to one thirty pm, I'm going to
be at Plantation Ace Hardware out in Richmond. Now Plantation, I've been there
before. It's a wonderful place. Lots of stock of all kinds of things
that you need, you know, for your yard. Especially that that's what
people are number one focusing on. If I need to fertilize them a law
and I've got disease or insect or weed or other issues. There's nothing along
those lines that they don't have at Plantation as Hardware. Everything you need is
going to be out there. But I'm gonna be out there for two hours
for an appearance Saturday, September ninth, and I'll be there from eleven thirty
to one thirty. So if you got some plant issues, be ready to
dig up some plant or pick some leaves, put them in a ziploc bag.
Let's take a look at them. We can identify, we can diagnose,
or if you just want to take some pictures of the place and bring
those photos in, make sure they're in good sharp focus. If I'm trying
to dig, if you want me to diagnose something, the closer you get
to the problem the better. But that's where you got to really watch to
make sure it's in focus. But I'll be happy to do that and I'm
looking forward to that. I know that's two weeks away, but I just
wanted to give you a head starts. You can get that on your calendar
add apt Plantation as Hardware during that time. If you are interested in a
high nitrogen content organic fertilizer, you're not going to find one with a better
nitrogen content than Sweet Green eleven percent on the nitrogen and it is a molassa
space product and through microbial activity, it has chock full of the nutrients that
plants need. It's an eleven zero four fertilizer. It's a good blend for
lawns. It smells good. So I don't know if you've ever hauled fertilizer
home in a hot car, but if it's a it's got a little manure
in it kind of gets interesting there in the car. This one has a
real sweet smell. You'll really enjoy that sweet green. It's going to release
and provide the nutrients your plant needs. If you put it on right now,
it will it will not burn your plants, and it will carry you
right up until when we need to put the fall fertilization on. So nitrofisle
sweet green. Every where you find n fast, which is pretty much everywhere
that we shop around town with garden centers, feed stores, he's hardware stores,
they're all going to have that that kind of sweet green material. Excuse
me, my throat is give me trouble today. Well, I'm gonna take
a break here seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well,
good morning. You are listening to garden Line and we're here going to
talk about gardening. What a coincidence. Our phone number is seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four tib will a call, get you on
the board and we'll talk about whatever you're interested in talking about. Regarding gardening,
gardening is one of those hobbies. Now I'm biased, but that doesn't
mean I'm wrong. It's one of those hobbies that I just see it as
a we talk about when when this is a win win win, win win.
And here's what I'm talking about, it's enjoyable. I believe we were
made to garden. I you know there is a reason that there is this
thing called the Garden of Eden. Right, It's like we are made to
be in a garden and it calms us, it provides. And this is
all I'm not just saying personal experience here. I'm talking about research based stuff.
We can record a drop and blood level when someone just walks into a
forest, When someone goes out among their plants and just enjoys the natural world.
I think that is that's our natural habitat. It affects us cognitively.
Their kids with add actually makes a difference in classroom studies where there are plants
around, or a view of nature outside versus a view of a parking lot
in a brick wall. Hospitals where people are recovering from surgery. That makes
a difference. It absolutely does. As folks get older and deal with things
like a dementia. There is actually a cognitive benefit to gardening, and so
I just can't brag on that aspect of it enough. I personally think it's
fun. Now some of you may think, well, and by the way,
I know we have non gardeners that listen to garden Line. You may
think, well, that's you know, maybe for people that love gardening but
not me, well go out and just take a walk through the forest.
Then I mean there is there is so many benefits to being able to enjoy
gardening at Plus, I saw a T shirt once it said gardening is better
than therapy. Plus you get tomatoes. That's true. That is true.
I get a lot of thinking done some days, you know, coming home
from work, I'll just go out in the backyard and put my thumb on
the end of a garden hose, which is not how you water, but
it's how I think. And so I can go d program just by going
around watering, being outside, having some mindlessness stuff going on. I can
get a lot of thinking done out on the end of a garden hose or
even pulling some weeds. That's therapy because there's not many things in life where
you know, you apply yourself to something and stand up a few minutes later
and look back and you can see what you've accomplished. But that's true when
you're when you're gardening oh Man seven one three two one two five eight seven
four. Hey, if you are dealing with any kind of pests, you
need to know about McGrath pest Control. Scott McGrath. The business started by
Scott's dad back in nineteen seventy four, so I was at forty eight forty
nine years they've been doing this mcgrathh pest control. They're easy to reach.
It's two eight one four six nine eighty two forty and I don't care what
kind of pest control needs you have. Maybe it is termites, maybe it
is fire ends in the law on. Maybe it's rodents. You got the
rats coming around and doing the things they do, or critters getting up in
the attic. They can handle all of this mosquito management McGrath pest Control knows
what they're doing. One of my favorite things about McGrath is they got that
old fashioned service. Number one, you don't have to sign a contract.
So now you're locked in for a year them treating your house. You call
them when you need help. They'll make suggestions, here's a good time for
us to come back, you know, to to continue this treatment. But
you don't have to sign a contract. They tell you when they're going to
show up, not like we'll block off your whole Saturday afternoon. I may
or may not be there. No, they tell you and they show up
that time, and they serve the whole Houston area. So with modern technology
and techniques and old fashioned service, you're just not going to do better than
Metgraph pest Control. Go online, it's McGrath pest Control dot com. You
can find out a lot more about it. Then I had a cockroach crawler
across the floor of the on the night, which had our two Golden retrievers
very interested. It kind of kept them occupied for a while. I wish
they would have done something about it, but they didn't. But I probably
need to call Scott myself. I bragged on ACE a little bit earlier.
I'm going to be out at the plantation ACE next two weeks from this weekend,
next two saturdays from now. And you know, the thing I like
about ACES is number one, They're thirty nine of them in the Greater Houston
area. So wherever you live, you've got an ACE near you. Actually
you have two or three ACES near you no matter where you live. If
I talk about a fertilizer, it's going to be an ACE. If you
need a pest control product for your lawn or any of your plants, it's
going to be at ACE Hardware. They've got tools, they've got pretty much
everything you need to get outside and have a beautiful lawn, a bountiful garden,
beautiful landscape. You're going to find all those kind of products there at
ACE, with friendly employees that greet you, that take you to the products
you need, help you with it. That way. By the way,
when you're in ICE, make sure and sign up for the ACE Rewards program.
I belong to it and I earn money every time I make a purchase.
Get I begin to get those points where I get money back on the
purchases. That is ACE Hardware. Another as if we needed another reason to
shop at ice. Let's go to Clare Lake and we're gonna talk to Lane.
Hello, Lane, Hi, I have a question. My Saint Augustine
grass has looks brown and I think they may have died because I can water
it enough because of the drought. I've only said it for like ten minutes
on my sprinkler system. I guess it's not enough. Okay. I was
wondering if I can put Saint Augustine seeds down, would help it? Or
okay, all right, Well, there's not a Saint Augustine seed product.
I don't think there's one on the market. Years ago there was one,
but even if it was, you don't want to use them. It never
was good. It's better to pick a quality Saint Augustine variety and buy pieces
of sade and put those down. It's a little more than seeds. But
starting Saint Augustine seed and getting a good, attractive, dense lawn that is
a long shot. And so I do not recommend even looking for seeds.
I don't think they're any on the market anymore. So when you've when you've
lost your your grass due to you know, drought. Uh, First of
all, i'd give it a little bit of time. Sometimes it burns back
and some of it still comes back, but you would just get some little
pieces of sade. You know. It's like the little uh right doormat at
the front door, and you can make it. You can lay the whole
side pieces down or lane. You can cut it into sections and so let's
is like you know, okay, Well, so with everything and gardening,
there's a tradeoff between time and money. And so since you're asking about seed,
I was thinking, well, if you don't want to pay to have
the whole thing sotted at once, if you can put if someone can put
a little more time into it. You can take each of those sections and
cut them into six or eight little plug sections and space those about a foot
apart. So you're not buying enough sod to cover the whole area. You're
putting in plugs about a foot apart and getting them watered in and they will
fill in. So that'd be a way to save money. But it is
work in time. But that's the tradeoffs have to face. Well, luckily
it's in my backyard, so it's not seen. Okay, all right,
Well, in the meantime, don't break all the dead grass out at least
it's covering the soil and blocking sunlight so that weed seeds don't go crazy because
they love a bare area. Oh yeah, I noticed that bermu. The
grass grows really well. And these weeds, I don't know what they're called,
but they love they thried. I don't know why. Yeah, that's
well, that's what weeds do. That's what well. I'm sorry to hear
about that drought. Hopefully that'll help you get off to a little bit better
start. But yeah, in time, you're gonna just have to put some
new sod in there. Either. I have one more question, may I
Okay, I have about thirty seconds? Okay, my American holly. It
looks all brown. Okay, I think it may have died to leave.
If yeah, if it's all brown, probably how long ago was it planted?
It's a it's an old okay hollies. Hollies don't have a way of
wilting and saying we need water. They just they they're stiff leaved and they
just sit there and all of a sudden they start turning chocolate brown. And
when that happens, I'm not saying the whole plant is dead, but at
least major sections of it are, and so try to get a good soaking
on it, just just once a week. A good soaking would be plenty
to keep that holly alive. That's a valuable plant. It's been around that
long. Yeah, it looks like a Christmas tree base all all the leave
brown. All right, Well, I don't give it great hope in that.
Hey, thank you though for the calling. I appreciate that. We're
gonna go to a break here news with the Nikki News Network in an N
seven one three two one two five eight seven four is the number. If
you'd like to give Will a call and we'll come to you. I'll after
John V right when we get back from break sky. Good morning, Good
Sunday morning. I hope you're having a nice one so far, this this
beautiful Sunday day. You know, if we could change the temperature, I
think we we would have perfection right here. We got a beautiful, beautiful
sky, and it's always good to get outside be around. I hope this
afternoon you will get around and take some time to visit some of our home
garden centers here. We have so many wonderful ones. It's a good time
to pick things up. You need to get your tomato plants in, need
to get your pepper plants in. If you were going to plant squash or
cucumbers, green beans, things like that for your fall vegetable garden, better
get those in. They need to come up. I know it's hot outside.
Just keep them watered, maybe put a little shade over the row initially,
just to keep the soul temperature down. Dust a little bit till they
get up and going, and you'll be well on your way and when it's
time to enjoy those in the cool days of fall. By the way,
did you know that the best vegetable gardening quality that you can have with green
beans and squash and cucumbers is in the fall season when it's cooling off,
as these ripen and the days are cooling a little more moderate. It's just
high quality. In the spring. It's the so that you know, we
plan them in mild temperatures, but then by the time they start to ripe
and it's getting kind of hot, and that affects the quality and how fast
the quality holds up or how long the quality holds up on greens and things.
So just another reason to be out and about today. We got plenty
of others too. Even though it's hot now, now is when and if
you've been in Texas long, you just realize as a gardener it's you don't
You're thinking, no plant or person wants to be out there. But you've
got to do these things now so that you can enjoy them later, because
if you wait too long, it's too late. Like if you wait until
October to planet tomato plant, you're not going to get any tomatoes. So
we need to get all that kind of stuff done. We're gonna go out
to the League City now and talk to John V. Good Morning, John
V. Good Mornings, Gives and garden Line. My question this morning is
the species name is Antaharium, the snap dragon or dragon flowers. One's the
best time to plant them? Is it better to go ahead and put them
in planters and put them around the garden instead of in the ground. You
could do it either way if you're buying them, are you talking about buying
them as transplants, yes? Or seats? Okay? Yeah, they need
a little bit of a break from this brunt of the heat, and so
we're gonna plant those a little bit later, but not much later, because
they're also not one that you're gonna be planting so late in the season that
maybe a hard freeze is going to come. But I would I would be
getting ready for that, getting the bed ready, mixing composts in so that
when you do plant them after you have a little bit of a break.
Maybe I think I'd probably put mine in at the end of September, maybe
in sometime in October. You could probably get away with that. Okay,
And the composts I use in rose soil again, ross would be fine if
your rose soil is like kind of the whole bed mix ready to go in
a way. Compost would just be something you add to the soul that you
have to make it better. So either one is good. All right,
wonderful. Well, y'all have a wonderful Sunday. Thank you. All right,
Well you've picked a good plant. Snap Dragons are really cool. Thank
you for that call, John Vy. I appreciate that. Yeah, you
know, snap dragons are cool. I don't know how many of you are
familiar with them, but they little stalks of flowers, very beautiful. They
come in many types. Some get really tall, I mean like waist high.
Even that are nice for long cut flowers. Others stay real short and
compact like a betting plant. But they all have this little double It's like
a two part flower that's got the top part and the bottom part that opens
up like the jaw of a dragon. That's kind of where it gets its
name. You can grab the lip on the bottom and pull it open and
it'll snap right back up. Or you can squeeze the cheeks on the side
and you just kind of have to get to the flower and mess with it.
I can't describe it on the air, but as you squeeze the sides
of it, the jaw just drops open, which if you've got little edge
around, that is the coolest thing. You got to show them that.
There are a lot of cool things to show kids out in the garden that
I just think are part of that wonder of nature. I don't know.
Plumbago, You know blue plumbago. We have that in our gardens. It
takes the heat really well if you give it a little bit of water.
And the blue plumbago has sticky substances at the bottom of each floral tube.
So plumbago flowers a cluster. They can be white or sky blue. Sky
blue is a more common one. But that cluster of flowers is like a
little bloom with a long tube going back to where it attaches, and where
it attaches, it's sticky, and so you can make really cool botanical ear
rings for the grandkids with these. You just show them how you stick them
on your earlobe and they hang down there, and I mean, hey,
it's a simple pleasure, right, it's a deal. But if you've got
kids, those kinds of things are fun out in the garden. Our kids
need to be around nature more. Our kids need to be eating things that
are healthy. I mean, I sound like I don't know somebody lecturing you
here, but you know what I'm talking about. But our number one health
problems in this country, or primarily not all of course, but primarily driven
by our diet and our lack of exercise. And gardening fixes both of those.
And when you grow, when you're a little kid and you grow something,
you are probably going to at least give it a try eating it,
And so it just kind of introduces them to the fact that vegetables are cool.
I've got a granddaughter and since she was little, salads were part of
the deal. And I mean it, you know, there's not hostess twinkies
on the menu at the house, thank goodness. And she actually loves you
know. She'll come and say, hey, can I have an apple?
Or she literally likes to eat salads and other things just because that's how she
grew up eating them. When you grow stuff you as a kiddo, you'll
tend to eat it, and so health, exercise, love of nature,
et cetera, et cetera. Lots of rooms to get kids out there in
the garden. And where can you get all kinds of supplies like that,
Well, Arburgate Nursery and Tomball is one place. Those of you live up
in that direction, or even those that don't, you go out to Tomball,
go up to forty nine and turn left and go out twenty nine twenty
about a mile and a half and it's Arbourgate and they have every kind of
plant you would want a plant. They have beautiful garden centers, gift shops
that are just amazing, more yard art than you know what to do with,
really cool yard art and stuff like that as well. They have the
Triple the food Soil Compost one two three easy system A four four three plus
calcium organic food for plants on organic soil for plants that includes expanded shale and
an organic compost with a blend of two types of compost and expanded shale.
Those three together. Each time you use them, your slow gets better and
better, and therefore your plants get more and more productive. Well, we're
gonna take a break right now, Marcus. You'll be first when we come
back. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. I could be handy many a few when your lights have gone.
You can eat this weather, buy the fireside Sunday morning, golfer a ride,
do in the garden digging the wheels. Could ask for more? Pleased
me? Feed me when I'm sixty four. Right there you go a little
barbershop with gardening. That's not a combination that tc to find out there.
I hope you enjoy it. You're listening to Garden Line. We're having some
fun with music and fun with callers as well. This morning. Hey,
if you live up in the League City Feed area, I should say maybe
down in the League sit I feed a little south of Houston there. The
Thunderbergs at League City Feed have one of those great old time feed stores,
you know, it began years and years ago, forty years ago to be
exact in an ochre patch. Now nothing that starts in an ochre patch could
be bad. I mean, that is just that's a great start on life.
That's my opinion. League City Feed has got all the fertilizers we talk
about. So all of you down there in League City, Webster Bay Cliff,
Clear Lake City, San Leone, El Comino Real, this is your
hometown feed store. It's on Highway three, a few blocks south of Highway
ninety six. And you're gonna find the fertilizers. You're gonna find all kinds
of things for your garden, like pesticide, herbicide, fungicide. Do you
want quality pet food? They've got it at League City Feed. Even if
you're one of the folks that's into the backyard chickens, that's kind of a
popular thing again. Now they've got plenty of everything you need to supply your
backyard chickens as well. Monday through Saturday nine to six. Closed on Sunday.
Here's the phone number. Give them a call when they've opened back up
on Monday. Two eight one three three two one six one two two eight
one three three two one, six, one two. Remember they're open until
six Monday through Saturday, so after work you can swing by there and get
everything that you need for your lawn, your garden, and also for the
pets and the livestock that you've got around the property. We're going to head
out now to Spring and talk to Marcus. Hello, Marcus, Yes,
Skip, this is Marcus. Live just on the very northern part of Harris
County near Spring Creek and our homeowners association in June, probably not the best
time to plant, but they planted like one hundred and thirty twenty to thirty
gallon plants fines yo ponds myrtles, and I think they call them chestnut oaks,
okay. And the plants are probably about six feet, you know,
apart from each other. Okay, and probably about thirty scent of them have
died. And I'm just at calling for some advices to what you would recommend,
just try to keep them alive here, you know, during this extreme
heat and the next couple of months. Well it might be soil water the
time we will water them. I don't know, whatever you suggest, Okay,
Well, I mean there's there's a lot going on, and what you
just described. First of all, when things start hitting a point where they're
actually dying, it's a challenge to turn it around and stop. Yeah,
stop that. But they need water where the roots are, and the roots
are basically where they were when they put them in the ground. Since June,
the amount of root movement from the original cylinder that went in the ground
out into the soil around it is still very minimal. So if you were
to picture those plants, let's say you put the whole in the ground,
which you wouldn't want to do, but you put the whole pot in the
ground, you would know that all your roots are still right there. They
can't go anywhere right because the pot, well, that's kind of what's happening
in anyway. In the soil. They're gradually moving out if the soil is
moist, but when the soil is dry, when it's hot and stressful,
they're just not growing much. So that area the picture how big the container
was when it went in the ground, and water that area plus about fifty
percent of that width beyond it, and focus all your watering on there for
now. After we go through fall and winter, and you know next year
it'll be a little lot much a larger area and eventually it becomes a well
established plant. But right now it might as well have just come out of
the pot in terms of the extent of the root system. So just focus
your care on that. Keep it moist with deep and frequent soakings, but
don't don't water it so much that it stays soggy. Okay, Okay,
roots need oxygen? Is there in this in this heat? Is there an
optimum timing to water the plant? No, it does not matter at all
for watering the soil underneath a tree like that. Any anytime you can get
out there and get it watered, that's fine. If you're sprinkling water all
over the lawn grasses, yes that would matter, But you're just putting water
on mulch and dart, and so just do it when you can do it.
That's what's im Okay, all right, and skip this one final question
if you've got a moment. I've heard a lot of talk about the soil.
I noticed that the around several of them it's either very very sandy or
very very high clay. After we keep them alive. Is there something that
we should do to no, give the best chance on the oil, you
know, there's not. For a tree. A tree is can have a
root system reaching two and a half times the tree and height in all directions,
so little amendments around the base that that doesn't help, and and just
just help them be happy in the soil they're in. If you picked a
species it does well in the soil you have, then it will be successful.
And if not, then it's going to be an uphill for a long
time. Yeah. A primarily are yo pons and myrtles, and yeah,
and pines. Well, okay, especially the yo pons and myrtles. They're
happy about anything. The pines as long as it's decently drained, they'll be
happy too. Okay, thank you, Marcus. I appreciate that call very
much. I just got a new Vego garden bed that is on rollers.
It's a petio bed, and like the Vego beds that go on the ground,
it's made of that quality thick metal that's been treated so that it won't
rust and corrode. You know, have a galvanized tin. Well, this
isn't galvanizing, but it's like that to prevent corrosion and rust. And then
they paint it with a USDA certified paint and this stuff lasts forever. I
mean it'll weigh out last treated wood in your garden. Now I have the
bed that's now on rollers. They have tons of different types of beds,
different heights, different weds, different colors. You pick what you want.
You can make a long, skinny bed, you can be a big square
on the ground. You make a C shaped bed, very versatile, easy
to put together. These modular beds are very simple. If you're an organic
gardener and you don't want to use treated wood, well, this is the
absolute best option. If you're not an organic gardener, I still think this
is the best option for a bed. I've got some treated wood beds at
my house. The next bed that I put in in the ground will be
a Vego bed, because I'm convinced that's the way to go. You don't
have warping boards, you don't have to deal with the fact that it is
treated wood out there. Now, there's a lot of impostors Vegos from here
in Houston. Go to vegogarden dot com and you will find Vego at some
of our garden centers out there out and about. I know I've seen them
at the two enchanteds down you know in the Richmond area. I know they've
got them there at the Buchanan's Plants. I've seen them out there. I'm
trying to think, where's the other place that I saw. I'm gonna come
back and tell you later. But another place I just saw they put up
a nice display of these beds. Vego garden beds. You can't get simpler,
and you can't get better, you can't get easier, you can't get
safer than Vego garden beds. Let's now go out to Walter in Cyprus.
Good morning, Walter, hire you this morning. By the way, I
just want to let you know we got just under a minute, so if
we can get it done. If not, we'll hold you after break.
What's your long range forecast shows for chances of a fall garden or just wait
on spring. No, I would absolutely do it. Now. You got
a water hose and you can get the plants in. You can keep the
still moist so that they get going, because when fall comes, we're going
to forget about this hundred degree weather and we're just going to be enjoying it.
And so you want vegetables and flowers and herbs and whatever you want,
whatever you like to grow. You want to get those going at the right
time so you can enjoy them. Yep, don't let this weather throw you
you. You bet. Thanks for the call, Walter. Appreciate that you
used to live up in Cyprus myself. I love it up there. That
is really cool. Well, you're listening to garden Line. Gosh, it
seems like just a minute ago that we went to our last break. I
think, what do they say, time flies when you're having fun. Hermit
the frog says time's fun when you're having flies. But that's neither here nor
there. I'm your host, Skip Richter. We're gonna take a break here
and we're gonna come back and talk to you about all kinds of things gardening.
If you would like to give us a call, the phone number is
seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four, or you can simply just say hey, will
put me on the board. I need to talk the Skip. We've got
some high level questions you need to get asked. Welcome to ktr H Garden
Line with Skip Richards, Smell the Crazy Tree. Just watching as wold goods
to say, well, good morning on a good Sunday morning for gardening.
We are looking outside and it's pretty and Nikki's talking about that high winds coming
through, and you know, we get the successive heat and rising air and
stuff. It can bring high winds well, so okay in hurricanes, and
we're in a hurricane season now, and this would be a good time to
get out and make sure your trees are ready for that kind of weather.
Your trees are valuable. I mean it credibly valuable, monetarily of course to
the value your home and landscape, but also just to be able to enjoy
the shade. Maybe they're shading a brick wall and cutting it down on air
conditioning in your home. Maybe they're shading you so you can actually enjoy being
outside on a hot day. They're valuable, and it makes sense to take
care of them. With trees, preventative is the most important thing you can
do. So that would mean a deep root watering right now, making sure
there is a huge volume of water in the soil for them to draw on,
because they need a lot just to stay cool on hot days. Well,
affordable tree folks, they know how to do that. Martin spoon More
and affordable tree care. They can come out. They can do that watering
that gets the water down deep all through the soil volume, not like putting
it way under the soil where it's not up on top too. No,
that it wets the volume where the most roots are. And that's exactly what's
important right now. If you are concerned about storm damage, they can look
at your trees decide this slimb may need to come out. If it doesn't,
they'll tell you it doesn't, but they will take a good look at
it and make sure you're ready so that when a storm comes, you don't
come out the next morning and you have a split tree. Half of it's
on your house, half of it's on your car, and now you've lost
all your shade on top of it all. You want to take care of
your trees. And that's why having someone that knows what they're talking about,
like Martin spoon More is important. The phone number there is seven one three
six nine nine twenty six sixty three seven one three, six nine nine twenty
six sixty three. They have employees that have been them for fifteen to twenty
years. I mean they you're talking about people that know what they're doing.
If you're about to build a house, you need to have somebody come out
before you do the damage to the tree roots that a house building will cause,
and you need to take care of it. If you're going to do
anything around the landscape that's going to affect the roots system, let Martin come
out, take a look, talk about what may need to be done to
protect the trees, because once the damage is done, it's kind of hard
to just fix it. You know, there's not an overnight fix to a
serious damage to your trees. Really important, consider that a public service announcement.
These are incredibly value it. There's a reason why dying trees and dying
turf make the phone ring. It's because they are a cause for big concern
and we're here to try to help you avoid that, you know it.
I always tell people when I'm working with a county agrilife Extension office as a
horticulturist, people will send me plant samples and I'll say, we'll make sure
it's alive, but sick don't. A healthy plant there's nothing wrong with it
for me to diagnose, and a dead plant. The way I put it
is, I can do diagnosis, but I can't do autopsies, so make
sure you're dealing with it at a diagnostic stage and that way we can kind
of figure out what's going on. So we try to prevent your lawn in
your trees from becoming autopsies. As long as they're a little stressed, we
can work with that. But once you know, once they're heading downhill and
trees, once they start heading downhill, it's hard to turn around. We
want to avoid that by good care. For those of you up in the
Tomball area, your hometown feed store is D and D Feed. They are
on Highway twenty nine twenty west, so if you're at two forty nine in
Tomball, you go three miles west on twenty nine twenty they're They're on the
left hand side. The Dover family has been operating D and D Feed since
they opened it in nineteen eighty nine. They have a nice expanded store.
Nab and looking at pictures of some of the new stock and stuff they have
coming in, wow, they are loaded up. If you want a high
end quality dog food like Origin, Diamond, Victor Star Pro those, they're
going to have them. Livestock feed products, take care of your horses.
They even have plants outside from time to time at D and D Feed,
So while you're in, they're picking up some of the fertilizers we recommend here
on garden Line or the soil blends we recommend here on garden Line. You
can also pick up some plants out there at D and D Feed. It's
your full time service feed store. I mean when you walk in, you
are their priority, and they take care of you and make sure you get
the product you needed. That's at D and D Feed out there in Dumble.
I'd like to head out to Lakewood Estates now and we're going to talk
to Maureen. Hello, Marie, good morning. I have I think two
brief questions. I don't want said getting a lot of calls this morning.
Okay, so I always checked my oak grap and I was surprised by small
tiny I don't know if it's mite or what. So I need to solve
that I can wash them off of the hose or because they're edible. I
don't want to just put anything on there. So what would you suggests t
to me? When you look at it, does okrah leaf look normal it
just has things on it? Or does okra leaf look like it's curling?
A little bit cupping. Okay, I think I have both. But my
okra is quite mature and it went into the garden in May, so I
think it could be a natural occurrence. You know, I've just worked hard
for you, Okay, But what really were my concern is on the okra
itself. My new okrah shoots sort of have something that I would call a
might that I've seen on other things, and I know that it's critical to
get them off now because it's so early. I haven't seen it no other
spot, just on this one little area, so I don't want it to
spread. All right, we can do We can do this two ways.
I can give you my best shot based on myself, or you could send
me some photos and I could up close and as good a focus as you
can get, and I can look at them and then and then I know
exactly for sure what you're dealing with. It's probably aphids on okra. Now,
aphids typically are underneath the leaf on an ochrah leaf, but they they
shed their skin just like a snake does, and you end up with these
little white things all over the plant that are the shed skins of the aphid.
And so if you do what I would do is I would get a
strong blast of water and go out there and from the bottom side up,
just blast the bottom as of the leaves as with as stiff as spray dream
as you can. I don't mean a stream like a mist, but it's
blasting past them to knock all the apids you can off. If you do
that about once a week, you will get it back under control. There
are sprays, but it's so blazing hot that soaps and oils that kill aphids
will also burn your plants if you don't do it just in the super super
earliest time of the day. So that's what I would do if it were
mine, I would just blast them off. Ochre is a tough plant.
It's resilient and a few aids aren't a problem. A ton of afids are
good. Okay, okay. Second question has to do I was paid,
Marie. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I'm gonna I'm gonna take a break
and hang on and we'll come to the second question right when we get back.
And Eidolf, when we come back, you'll be first up two our
phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Because you
know I'm alobab Va Davis now Chebel. I'm Alumba Davis Va Davis now Chabel.
I'm Alumba Da Das no Chabel. I'm Maloba Davis. Well. Good
Sunday morning. You're listening to garden Line and we are here ready to talk
to you about whatever kinds of questions you might have. Hey, if you
are still wanting to do a fertilization on your lawn, you ought to consider
the silver bag. The silver bag is nitrofoss A nineteen four ten Nitrofus nineteen
four ten. That is called super turf for a reason. It is nutrients
and it releases those gradually to create a super turf if you will on your
lawn. You know, grass like we takes in nutrients every day. That's
called good health. You don't just dump something on and it washes away,
volatilizes away, and then it's gone for a long period of time, and
in the meantime you get to initially mow a lot and you have more chinch
bugs and more disease issues because of the excessive amounts of nitrogen. No superturf
is designed to release that nitrogen very slowly over a very long period of time,
and that's the silver bag. It makes it easy to find when you
walk into an ace hardware store or a feed store or one of our home
garden centers. It carries nitrofost products, which of course are happening all over
town all the time. They're very very easy to find nitrofosts here in the
Granter, Houston area Superturf nineteen four ten. It only takes about five pounds
per thousand square feet to give it a good application of nitrogen and quality product
you get. You definitely get the money that you paid for in terms of
a gradual release. That makes it very very inefficient, inefficient, very very
efficient. I think my brain's about fried today between the two radio shows and
answering questions for a good while back at the at the Home and Garden show
yesterday, I'm kind of running out of thoughts here. Let's go back to
Maureen Marine. We did, okrah, I think you may want to talk
about hydrangees. Correct. In May, I received a bouquet of flowers and
the several hydrangeas were in there. And I always take care of my flower
arrangements, which translated into I have a stalk from the hydrangea which has burst
on the sides of the stalk, and I have a lot of growth coming
and I thought maybe I should call you. I took a grafting class a
different plant, but the point being, I have hormone powder and I have
some spagnum moss, and I thought I'll just run it by you. Do
you think it's worth the effort. I mean, there's nothing else I can
do other than water. What I haven't looking to run? Yeah, well,
I mean it's fun. I mean, you know, to be a
good gardener, you've got to kill a lot of plants. That's what I
always say. And so that's how we learn. And I would give it
a shot. Normally we don't try to root bloom shoots. Like if you
wanted to root a rose, I wouldn't take the rose, cutting of the
long stem rows and try to root that. I would take a shoot that
doesn't have a bloom on it to root. But it's worth a try.
If you've got some rooting powder, obviously you know how to go about that.
Uh yeah, cut the bloom off though, and and and see how
it does. Oh right. It's a little bit of a long shot,
you know, because a cut flower has been sitting there a while already.
So but if it works, if it works on its own for Mother's Day,
Remember is all the way back in May Wow, and it was it
was a cut flower and a Yes, there's a beautiful floral display with like
four or five hydranges and whatever else. You know, you get all the
different arrangements. Do you see roots on the stems? No? I do
not see. That's where the question was. But I thought, you know,
I've got the products in the house, but I could experiment, so
I just thought I would call you in case there was something I needed to
do. I'm thinking, do I also need to put a little slash in
the stem, and if so, just below and put a toothpick in there
so it will allow the route to come out. No, do you know
I need a toothpick? But when you I would make a fresh cut in
the stem below it and then do the rooting. And don't I wouldn't root
it in water. I would root it in a moist saw mix with that
rooting powder first on it that you were talking about. Well, that was
what the Spagnan loss. Was there anything else that I can support that'll work
just fine? That'll work just fine, good well, good luck than all
right, you let us know if that works. Trees are important, They're
valuable to the landscape. I was just talking about taking care of your trees,
making sure they get deep roof, watering and all that. But picking
a quality tree is also important. And Verdant Treefarm grows quality trees. They
don't grow species that shouldn't be planted here. They grows species that do well
here. When it comes to palms, and no one does it better than
Verdant Tree Farm. But when it comes to all the other kinds of trees
that you want, various kinds of oaks, and we could just go on
and on with all the different species they grow, they know how to do
it. You drive up to a Verdant Tree Farm, by the way,
there's three locations. You can go down in Paarland on Broadway Streets. You
can go up in the heights where Yale comes into it ten or you can
go out in West Easton on bark or Cypress and find a Verdant Tree Farm
by the way. The website is Verdant Treefarm dot com. I know it's
pronounced Verdant. I just can't quit san Verdant Verdant Treefarm dot com v er
da nt Treefarm. You pick out your plant there, you say I want
that tree, They put a tag on it, they bring it to your
house, they plant it right, so it's survival chances are as high as
they can be, right from the start, and then they tell you how
to take care of it and you can enjoy that beautiful tree. The best
time to plant a tree is fifty years ago. The next best time is
today. So if you want to get to where you can hang a hammock
in it, don't delay. Let's get that thing planted at for Dant Tree
Farm. We're gonna go out to Manville now and talk to Adolf. Hello
Adolph, Yes, good morning, Skip. You mentioned a magazine, garden
magazine I don't know, a couple of months ago. Yes, and I
can't remember the name of it. Texas Gardener the only magazine in Texas for
gardening, and in fact, it's one of the very few state magazines for
gardening across the whole country. Okay, and are they well? I can
find it online, yes, if you go to Texas Gardener dot com.
It's real easy. I mean, if you search for Texas and Gardener.
You're going to find it. And they have the subscription, which of course
is the you know, handheld magazine. They also have a digital subscription or
you can get it both ways. So people that like to be able to
read stuff on the computer, well you can also have that, all right.
Also, I just just to add real quick, I love your show.
I love the humor that you could lend there. It's it's funny,
you're being serious and they all all of a sudden you throw something in its
spacing. That okay, okay, well, thank you. Well that's kind
of you to say that. I appreciate that. I always wonder sometimes I
think my sense of humor is a little bit off off kilter. So I'm
glad you like it. No, I love it. I think you you
you you connect with people. Okay, we'll good read your live live person.
We try to have fun. I know, if I said everybody that
likes barbershop music, raise your hand, I wouldn't need any hands go up
out there, but I'm going to subject it to it. Anyways. Thanks.
I don't appreciate that. You take care if you live in in Houston,
if you're in the north central Houston area, I want to tell you
who your hometown feed store is, and that's Quality Feed and Garden Company.
Ken and Chris have been operating for the last thirty two years this wonderful old
time feed store. And when I say old time feed store, I mean
you can go in there and you can find that they have a seed rack
that is from Oh my gosh, the nineteen twenty eight. I think it's
stocked with heirloom seeds. And then when it comes to products, if I
talk about fertilizer, if I talk about swill mixes, composts, and things
like that that on garden line, they're going to have it. A quality
feed store. You just know you're gonna get it there. If you need
pesticide, herbicide, fun decide, they've got it. Premium pet food.
They specialize in chicken. It's about over two weeks they get a new shipment
of chicksins. For those of you who want to try your hand at backyard
chickens, this is a place where you can always go in. They're always
going to have them coming up. Gimmcall first just to make sure when and
what's coming in. They're on Luzon Street eighteen thirteen, Luzon which is near
the intersection of equipment and a lesion there in north central Houston. Monday through
Friday nine to six, Saturday nine to four, and today Sunday eleven thirty
to four pm. Quality feed coo dot com. Check it out and you'll
see why we like to brag on quality feed. I think now we're going
to head out to pair Land and talk to Howard. Hello, Howard,
Hey, good morning, Skip. How are you doing. I'm well,
thank you. Yeah, I had a question. I grow what some people
refer to as super hoots as far as hot peppers go. Yes, I
grow trinida at scorpions. I grow Carolina reapers, grow ghost peppers. Do
you have to do you have to water or the mulch every day to keep
it from catching on fire? I'm sorry, I do one of them almost
daily. Those peppers. Those peppers are like there's probably ought to be some
sort of a law, you know, like there is on other deadly items
like guns and whatnot. You can kill someone with the Carolina reaper pepper.
Oh, I love them. I'll put one into a big old batch of
chili and it just gives it that get up and go and that kick.
That's just fantastic. Yeah, you're a better man than I am. I
would get up and go if someone stuck a go ahead. How can we
help today? Anyway, in the spring, before we started getting into this
weather of eighties, I had a pretty good crop. I had, you
know, a fair number of ghost peppers, a lot of scorpions and a
few reapers. And once we started getting into the successive heat, you know,
ninety five are better. My plants are doing well. There are plenty
of green, lot very leafy, an abundance of flowers, but I'm not
getting any peppers. And I'm just kind of curious if that's going to reverse
itself. It is, once it starts to cool down a bit, it
will, it will. I've got uh and I my garden, you know,
they it hadn't gotten watered like it should have. I'm gone too much
to take care of it like I should. But my peppers have quit producing
as well. I even have hobb and arrows. That's my my hottest pepper
that I've got, which doesn't hold a candle to the ones you mentioned,
but they're not setting. But just take care of those bushes. The bigger
the bush, the more ornaments you can hang on it and then the case
of ornaments. We're talking about peppers and so yeah, I mean it'll come
my My Carolina reapers are they're probably gamed me a five foot tall wow and
very very thick, you know, and I'm growing these in thirty five gallon
mesh bags on the patio. That's cool. Hey, if you don't mind
if I put you on hold, would you send me some pictures of that?
Well, I don't if you don't want to. Oh no, I
have no problem with that. I just I'm in my vehicle right now.
Oh no, no, no, not right now. I'm just saying,
yeah, okay, Well, sometime, uh get calling into Garden Line.
Talk to their producer. I would love to see that size pepper and the
thirty It sounds like you're doing everything right. So I would just say,
wait for a break in the weather and you ought to be okay, and
this fall when they load with peppers. I definitely would love to see see
that. That's got to be quite a sight. Okay, very good,
sir, Thank you, Howard. Appreciate your call very much. All right,
you're listening to Garden Line, Bob, you're first up. When we
come back, We're gonna take a break right now for the Nicki News Network
our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Good
Sunday morning. You are listening to guard Line and here we are. We're
ready to talk about anything gardening you're interested in. If you are looking at
a lawn that is struggling, and pretty much everybody's looking at a lawn that's
struggling right now, I would suggest that it would do your lawn some benefit
to put on a product that adds the microbial activity, that has the human
materials in it, that has the fertilizer ingredients that will release at a slow
rate organically naturally over time, and Microlife Fertilizer has a package of products just
like that. We're talking about the green bag six two four that's a standard
three one two ratio fertilizer, the number one Ferti organic fertilizer sold in the
Greater Houston area, and just and for a reason, the purple bag is
the Humates Plus and that's like a concentrated compost in a bag. I was
talking to some folks out at the lake yesterday and we were talking about Humates
plus and different in humates and composts, and basically compost still has a way
to go. Humates by the time you have decomposed to the point where you
know you're kind of at the end there, that is when the organic matter
has hit that stage where we would refer to it as humus. In the
humates. There is a ton of good stuff in humates for plants. It
benefits in many, many different ways. I would throw in with that mix
the Ocean Harvest blue label that is a seaweed based or a fish emulsion excuse
me, fish emulsion based fertilizer. Buy Microlife and it's in a blue quart
bottle. You mix it with water. You can use as a fullier spray
to provide some of those material directly to the leaves. You can also use
it as a drench. Now, Microlife's easy to find. It's all over
town. Just go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com. But if you got plants
that are struggling, maybe a rosebush, they seem to be really taking this
heat hard, consider doing a full of your spray with the sea or the
fish emulsion based product that I'm talking about, the blue level Ocean Harvest.
I think that it can't do any harm, and in fact, it will
do good because what you're doing is you're providing those plants things they need to
deal with the stresses that they're already struggling with. Don't wait too long by
the time the plant's dead. I don't know a product that helps, but
as long as there is still life in it, there's a hope of bringing
it back around and getting it through this stress. Because someday it's going to
rain again and the temperature is going to go down. I know that,
I believe it. I've lived a few years and it happens. Let's go
out to Conro now and talk to Bob. Hello, Bob, Yes there,
good morning, Good morning. I have a a citrus tree question.
Okay. We have a mayor lemon that I was planted in maybe late April,
early May, and I was curious as to how often I should feed
it and how much? Okay, is it in the ground or a container?
No, it is in the ground, Okay. I would I would
get a quality fertilizer for citrus type plants, and there there are some great
examples here in the Greater Houston area. One that I would direct you to
is Nelson Plant Food makes a number of products. They have the Color Star
line, the Nutrous Star line, the Turf Star line, the Nature Star
line, and they do have a plant food for citrus and for other fruit
type trees that it comes in little canister. I guess you can bite in
the bag too, but I think of it in these cannish and you just
take it out, you know, get a couple of tablespoon, sprinkle it
around the plant, water it in. Well. You can do that as
often as you like. The goal is to provide enough nutrient without just overdoing
it, and depending on the plant size and the time of the year how
much it's growing, you fertilize accordingly. So we want to be careful with
citrus going into the cold weather because yours is in the ground and you can't
pick it up and take it into the garage. So I would avoid pushing
it with too much fertilizer from now through the rest of the fall, because
we're hitting a point where those plants need to slow down a little bit.
If you look, if you're looking at it and it looks deficient, then
I would give it some now just to kind of get it healthy. But
otherwise, once we warm up in the spring. That's when we begin to
push along with the fertilizers on our citrus plants. I'm not saying don't do
any now, I'm just saying don't overdo it, because to create succulent growth
heading into the first freeze is not a good idea. Yeah. What was
then that canister? What was the name of that? Well? Nelson.
It's one of Nelson Plant Foods products. I believe it's in their nutriustar line
if I'm not mistaken, h and it They have one for citrus and it
comes in the little little clear jugs. In fact, once you have one
of those jugs, you can take it into certain nurseries and you can just
pull the lever down and refill your jug. And it saves on waste and
plastic. It's a little cheaper to buy it that way bulk than have to
buy a new plastic canister. Yeah, okay, all right, sir,
thank you very much. You have a great day and stay cool. All
right, good luck with the citterest. All we ask when we help you
with a plant, is you bring us half the produce and drop it off
at the at the station. Okay, okay, maybe a while. It's
a small request. That's funny. Yeah, talking about plants and trees and
things. With the drought we're having, you got to keep them well watered.
And when it comes to shrubs and trees, rose bushes, good example,
just talking about those. Get you a tree hugger sprinkler there. It's
a little sprinkler that it's hinged and you sort it sort of is like a
circle that goes around the plant. I think of it as a C shaped
sprinkler that has a hinge, so it closes around the trunk. You can
turn it on a little to water new plants to get that root ball wet.
You can turn it on more if you've got a plant that maybe it's
been in the ground for a year or two. You can turn it on
a lot, if you've got a bigger tree, shrub, whatever, and
water a large area. But the nice thing about it is without dragon hoses
all over the place, or without turning on a sprinkler system and watering everywhere,
you can get that rescue treatment. You can get that life sustaining treatment
to the plant that you have with a TreeHugger sprinkler. It is the least
expensive insurance policy you ever buy in your life, and this one is for
your plants, and that's called a treehars sprinkler. I'm going to head out
now to Spring Branch and we're going to talk to Daisy. Morning day,
Hi, good morning. How can we help him? Was giving you a
coal? I have trees, probably eleven of sixteen Eagleston holly trees that have
seemed to have just very fastly gone down in the last six weeks. And
obviously we're looking at the weather and I think about the water, but I
didn't know if there was something else that might be causing them to go down
right now, and if there was any suggestions you had to kind of bringing
them back to a healthy state. Well, the number one problem with Holly's
fitting the description you gave is a water stress. And Hollies, whether they're
Eagle Stun's or Nelly or Stevens Burford holly or even our native Yopon holly,
they don't wilt. And so one day they have pretty green leaves like they've
always had, and then within a week the leaves are turning brown and hanging
on the plant, and the whole branch is dying and there's no warning there.
So we've got to keep the roots system well hydrated. Usually once they're
established, they're a little more resilient, but especially early on the first couple
of years, maybe three years, you want to make sure and give them
good soakings, enough to keep the saw moist, not soggy, but moist.
And it's a beautiful holly Eagleston. But once it starts down, hurry
up, get the water on them, because it doesn't there's not a long
distance between it struggling and it dying. Okay, for this, we have
about six that are all like a golden brown out of the eleven that have
gone, you know that are really struggling. Okay, are those savable?
The ones that are all brown, there's nothing you can do except keep the
saw moist. And it's going to be wait and see if they're all brown.
I'm worried about I'm bouncing back, but I don't want to make predictions
without knowing for sure. I mean, I'm not there looking at your plants
and looking at the soil and stuff. But I'm very concerned about the ones
that are all brown to say the least. Okay, so just keep giving
them as much water as we can. Yeah, dig down daisy. Dig
down about with a trial, dig down about four or five inches, feel
the soil and if it's moist at you know, nice and moist that's good.
You don't want it's soggy, so, you know, saying as much
as we can, I just I just want to put a caveat on that.
It's like, well, not not oversaturated, but always available water.
That's what you're going for. Okay, what are your thoughts on the super
thrive? Would that help them come back a little? You know, I
have not studied that one a lot. I think I think that it won't
hurt to use it, let me put it that way, but we have
to remember that, you know, if something is putting vitamins and hormones and
nutrients and stuff down, if the problem is lack of water, where you
can't fix lack of water with extra nutrient and vitamin and hormone, but anything
you do that helps the plant be as healthy as it can as a good
idea. Just just know that the reason that they're going down is because of
a period where it was too hot. They couldn't pump enough water fast enough
because the soil got a little on the dry side. Okay, Yeah,
it's if you want to use the super thrive, they'll go for it.
It won't hurt. Okay, thank you. So when when if they come
back, should we kind of look for that? Would that be next spring
when we see, well, you might see some sprouting this fall, if
they're not too far back. If they if you get to next spring and
they still don't have a leaf on them, I'm thinking they're probably gone.
You can take your thumbnail or a knife, scratch the bark and see if
it's creamy colored or light green underneath. If it's pecan brown or papersack brown
underneath, it's gone. Okay, thank you, you bet, thank you
for the call. I appreciate that very much. Now we're gonna run out
to Pleasantville and talk to Deborah. Hello, Deborah, tell you what,
Deborah, I'm gonna put you on hole one second. We're gonna go ahead
and take a break. Deborah will come to you first when we get back.
Then Tammy and Denise you'll be right after that. We'll be right back.
Favorite scriptures they've passed play. We're both praying he don't preach late,
but he's getting MS. And that's your Starling's eighty five degrees outside, he's
just getting more. We getting well. Good Sunday morning to you. I
hope you are enjoying today already. It's gonna be a beautiful day outside.
Let's get a little bit of the storm winds coming through here. At some
point we'll actually how that turns out. Hopefully that won't be too bad.
We'll be able to just continue on with that. We're gonna go back out
and try Deborah in Pleasantville again. Debora, are you there? Yes?
I am alrighty. How can we help? I sent you an email titled
Azilius and Colius. How long ago was that? Just? Oh about five
minutes before I went all hold oh, okay, okay, hang on,
just say I'll find it. If I can find it here, we'll talk
about it. Tell me go ahead and start telling me about the thing,
and I'll hunt it down. You can tell you this, guys, some
sort of brown spy. Some I thought maybe it was from the heat,
because here in the west side of the house. And but only two two
of the plants of the three that are out there have those brown spots.
The other one does not, huh, the other the other a colias of
the flower bear that always has ants. I'm always have problems with any things
that put there. Okay, So I put I put some bug out and
other things there so I could try to patrol the ants there in that flower
will be at all the time. Interesting, Debra, you're for some reason
your email didn't come through, but I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and answer
it any anyway, the azaleas are the spots are on the leaves. You're
saying they're on the leaves and the leaves are dropping. Okay, Uh,
there aren't any big time leaf spot fungal issues that we generally deal with on
azaleas, but we do. We do have the issues of dry conditions,
and it can be that the water demands have just gone up higher than the
plant is able to keep up with. Probably that the soil could use a
little more of a good deep soaking on an infrequent basis, Zell, your
roots are not that efficient. There's a reason they don't live in the desert.
They like to be in a forest where it tends to stay real composte
and and moist and whatnot, and so they hit drought stress faster than most
plants would. As far as spots on the leaves. That could just be
due to the die back from the stress from the lack of water. Uh.
I can't think of another cause unless you sprayed something above them or on
them that could have caused those spots. No, I have not sprayed anything
in that area. Okay, uh, I don't know what. I really
need to see that photo, So maybe try resending it. Let me take
a look. If I get it for the end here of the day,
I'll take a look and see. I'm just not seeing it right now.
Now. The other thing you were talking to me, what was your your
second question? Go ahead and stay that napolius seems to have a maybe silver
watering. It's black around them, it's around the stem towards the ground.
Uh huh. It could be that it could be a fungled or a bacterial
problem going on there. Typically colius is pretty darn tough and we don't have
to worry about those things. If it did lack water, you should see
that as wilting on a colius. I mean, it'll wilt and show you
right away when it gets thirsty. So I'm assuming you're not seeing that because
you didn't mention it. Is that right, I'm not seeing that. Wow,
let me see a picture of that too, something close up and as
sharp a focus as you can. I don't want to just start guessing at
it, but that okay, I'll reseand I'll call back in with probably next
week at a game. But oh okay, all right, well, thank
you. I look forward to seeing that and being able to help you a
little further. Thank you very much. You bat you take care. If
you are out in the mot Bellevue area, your hometown feed store is Texas
Feedstop. It's as simple as I mean. They are out on Highway one
forty six and Mont Bellevue, So if you're on I ten, you go
north on one forty six just a few minutes and they'll be there on the
right hand side. Brian Hope Rhoades have one of those great old time feed
stores. It's the kind we love to brag about because I know when you
go there, you're gonna get treated by family. There's gonna be some teenager
from the community that carries your bags out for you to the car. It's
just that kind of thing. You walk in and you feel like you're there
with family. They are the typical feed store that sells corn and feed.
They also have hunting supplies, you know, for deer and whatnot, feeders
and feed and stuff like that. But they have all the stuff we talk
about here on garden Line. When I mentioned fertilizers, they've got them,
Mosquito dunks, they've got them, I believe them. Even have the tree
hugger sprinklers. Trying to remember the last time I was out there. But
they're the kind of place that would carry that and all of that kind of
stuff. Now, Texas Feed Stop. They're just minutes away from Baytown,
so they're your hometown feed store for Baytown as well. But go see what
I'm talking about you you will be impressed. They truly treat you like family.
They have the products you need. I didn't even mention all the pest
control, disease control, weed control, things like that. Not going to
do better in Texas Feet Stop. And if you haven't METAM yet, you
need to get out there and meet them. It's just you'll see what I'm
talking about. I mean, it's one thing to say it's a fat storm,
but no, this is difficult. Well, here we are another end
of the hour, Timmy, You've been hanging on a long time. If
you can hang on a little longer, you'll be first when we come up.
Denise, you're next our phone number seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. We're going to be coming back to put the last hour
in the books here and we will take those callers that are on hold and
then any new ones that come in. If if you have a calendar nearby,
I want you to write down Saturday, September ninth in Richmond, Texas
at Plantation Ace Hardware. That's where I'll be. I'm gonna be out there
answering your gardening questions, identifying plants. I hope you will make plans to
come out and seeing two weeks from yesterday. Welcome to ktr H garden Line
with Skip Ricords, so just watch him as wol. Good morning, nice
Sunday morning. You are listening to the garden Line and we're here to talk
gardening. And without any further ado, I'm going to head out to Hitchcock
and talk to Tammy. Tammy, if I had a great door prize,
I would give it to you for waiting so patiently for so long. My
apologies and welcome to garden Line. Oh that's Okay, I've enjoyed listening.
Okay. I have two avocado trees that I've bought in the spring. They're
in twelve inch pots, once a joey and once a poncho, and I
feed them with a Nelson plant food. But they're the leaves and it's not
all of the leaves, because I still see new growth, but not a
lot of new growth, and a lot of the leaves are turning brown on
the edges. I don't have any yellow leaves, but they're turning brown.
And I use a moisture meter and it seems like the soil is like really
wet, you know, or moist but I don't want to give it wet
feet all, you know, or soggy feet either. So I'm not really
sure what's going on. Good point. Hey, so how big are these
pots? Again? Uh? They're like probably twelve inches at the top and
maybe eight inches at the bottom. Okay, so they're pretty small for an
avocado. Okay. The containers, how tall is avocado tree in them?
About three feet? I would say about maybe probably four feet Okay. Yeah,
that's a that is a pretty confined system. Now, if you water
it often, you can keep them adequately moist and they can grow for a
while in that you need to bump them up at some point, but it's
it's hard to say how often that is. I mean, you know,
maybe twice a day, maybe every other day, but I doubt it's every
other day in that size container. I would dig down. The moisture meters
are okay, but sometimes they're just not real accurate. If there was a
way to kind of you know, dig in about a few inches and feel
the soil and to your touch and see what you think, you'll pull it
out. It's still may be that it's not giving getting enough water, but
it also can be when plants are having to pump water really fast. If
it gets even marginally scarce, they start showing symptoms of tip and margin burn.
You can overdo for fertilizer in a confined roots system like that UH and
fertilizers UH synthetic based fertilizers are salt based, and so you can burn plants
by an excessive fertilizer application so that the moisture content of the soil just has
a lot of salt based fertilizer in it. Now, if okay, that's
easy to fix. You just drench it really good, and it washes the
excess out. So just when you fertilize that is a high quality fertilizer that
you mentioned Nelson's, and just make sure you don't overdo it. Uh,
I've they gave me a schedule, okay, So I've I've been following the
schedule and I have dug you know, probably like three inches deep or whatever
to just steel the soil. And it's and it's damp, but it's not
really wet, Okay, so maybe a little more water. I don't know,
I you know, it me kind of over the radio trying to assess
whether too dry or too wet. It's kind difficult, but I would I
would try giving them a little more water. It has good drain holes on
the pot, I assume, yeah, it's got really good drain holes,
and I had got like a couple inches of rock in the bottom just to
make sure that it's, you know, would drain properly. Well. If
it has good drain holes, it's going to be hard to overwater it because
if it's a quality saw mix, which I assume is the case that came
with the plant, it's gonna drain excess away and so I would probably kick
up the water in a little bit maybe and see if that helps. Another
thing you can do. And I have several plants that's this way. I've
kind of moved them where they get morning sun but not afternoon sun, and
that's where they are too. Okay, well, sounds like you're doing.
But I live on a point on the water, and sometimes I feel like
they're getting wind whipped. Well, that can show up as damage to the
leaves, but it shouldn't show up as tip or more argin burn on the
leaves. Okay, I think you can eliminate the wind there. You know,
we've kind of talked through everything. I think what we've were left with
is given a little more of a good soaking and see how that goes.
But just know that when when something wants to be as big as an avocado
wants to be, which is about thirty feet tall if it had its druthers,
when we put it in a container, you hit this point where they're
just not enough soil volume to take the water and the nutrients and supply through
the day that the plant needs. Okay, so how big of a container
do you think that I should go? Because I was also told you know,
since their stems are still green, I really shouldn't put them in the
ground yet. Yeah, that's true. And because you can cheat and haul
them into the garage over in this winter if we have a couple of hard
freezes. So there's nothing wrong with carrying them a little longer in the container
you mentioned twelve inch top, probably move them into something with maybe a fourteen
sixteen inch wide top at least. Okay, i'd be more like sixteen somewhere
in there. You don't want to go up too much on pot size at
one time, so you can incrementally move it up. But when you pull
it out and get ready to move it up, make sure that any circling
roots that you cut those so that they can branch out and not just keep
circling around, because when it goes in the ground, you don't want a
bunch of spiraling roots underground from from the end and the container. Now,
I wouldn't cut roots today one hundred degrees and you know expect the plant to
not really develop tip and margin burns, So just hold off until we cool
off a bit in the fall, maybe late September, early October even it
would be even better and do the repotting at that time. Okay, okay,
good Yeah, and there they're all like on coasters too, so that
if it's too windy out I do put it Grosge. I'm a baby in
these plans like you would not believe, because I've been trying to grow avocados
for years and something always seems to happen. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Well there's a reason there's not avocado orchards all around Hitchcock, Texas and
Houston. Right. They're fun for backyard growers. We go to great links
to make them happy, but just we realize we're trying to grow something that's
not from here. If you will exactly, well, thank you so much,
Skip. I really appreciate all right, all the inputs you bet,
thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Hey, if you haven't
been out to Enchanted for us, they're done in Richmond, Texas. In
fact, if you're in Richmond and you head up towards Sugarland direction off to
the right south of fifty nine, that's where Enchanted Forest is. It is
the coolest place I feel like when I go there, that I've walked into
like one of those old western towns. With all the wooden buildings, you
know, and stuff, and it just has that look to it. In
fact, they've been working on updating and kind of sprucing up their vegetable area.
They got a lot of construction that they're doing to redo the whole vegetable
and herb area. But see what I'm talking about, big trees, wonderful
to this afternoon. Wander around, just enjoy the shade of the trees and
you'll be amazed at what they have. Why are you there? You need
to pick up one of their jasmines, the Arabian jasmines that they have.
You know, we garden for beauty, we garden for food, but we
also garden for fragrance. And oh my gosh, if you have not smelled
an Arabian jasmine, you need to smell that. Get it, bring it
home, put it in a container, have it by the back door,
or maybe you get a little patio sitting area. Put it where the wind
blows across the plant towards you. Oh my, heavenly, absolutely heavenly.
And by the way out at Enchended Forests, they have a schedule of activities
and educational programs this fall that just doesn't start, I mean, doesn't end.
I'm going to be out there on October seventh for their Pumpkin Palloza,
the Pumpkin Peloza, and we'll be doing all kinds of things like we do
when we go out to a garden Line event appearance. But my gosh,
there's one September sixteenth coming around the corner here on Beneficial Insects. Go to
their website, sign up, find out about what's going on there, and
you definitely want to take advantage of the wonderful opportunities to not only get out
there, but get educated and while you're there, pick up some really cool
plants as well. Hey, I've gone a little long here. We're gonna
take a break, Lisa. You will be first when we come back.
Our phone number seven one, three, two and two fifty eight seventy four.
Crack, little get on board. Were going all right, take it
well, good Sunday morning. You're listening to garden Line and we're here to
talk whenever you are interested in when it comes to gardens. I hope we
do that. That is our goal. We're gonna head out now to Lisa
in a task Asita as promised, Lisa, Good morning, and welcome to
garden Line. Good morning. My question is I have agapanthus and I have
amaryllis, and they're turning very white and crunchy. When I pulled one up,
it's got the characteristic of what it is just after a freeze. So
normally what I do is clip it at the bottom and spray the copper fungicide.
But with the extreme heat, what would I do When you say clip
it at the bottom, are you talking about bloomstock or are you talking about
the whole planet in the foot? I usually clip it all the way down
to the top of the bowl. Then I spray copper fungicide. The leaves
are now taking on the same characteristics, and when I pulled one up,
it's mushy, just like after Are you saying the bulb is mushy or the
leaf growth at the base the very top top. I guess you could do
that again. I have not done the copper before on those, but that
is a good bacteria side, and it also is a good fungicide. It's
not going to get in the plant, so like if there's an interior decay,
the copper on the outside won't help with that, but it will protect
the surfaces and the cut surfaces. You feel like you're watering enough. Oh
yeah, we're watering every day. I mean these have been here for years.
That's why I don't want to lose them. They were my mother in
laws. But I think with the excess of heat everything, I think I
lost you there, Lisa. I believe I heard the question though, So
we're gonna we're gonna dive on into answering it. Thank you. Oh there
you are, you're back. I'm back. So yeah, I just that
with the excessive heat, I think it's just taking a toll on all my
stuff. Yeah, my agapanthus look the same way then, I look just
like after a freeze. Yeah, well that's that's not unusual at all.
I mean we're going through those kind of things. I wish I could see
it because I think I could picture it a little bit better if I could
see it, But I would if you're sure you got enough water. Also
make sure you're not too wet, because if it stays soggy, wet,
roots die and it crashes in a heartbeat. So just make sure you got
good drainage. And other than that, if you want to cut, if
it's dead and rot it. You might as well cut it off and then
if you want to try the treatment, that would be fine. It's not
going to hurt anything for sure. Hopefully it'll turn it around. I just
I just want to make sure there's not a root, rod or some other
thing involved in there too. Yeah. No, we have all the airloom
soil in our beds, and we have all the malts and everything is airloom.
So okay, well you're doing everything right, So just call the weather
man and complain to him. It's his fault that this is happening exactly,
all right, Well, thank you so much. All right, thank you,
Lisa. I appreciate I appreciate that call very much. Hey, if
you've got a little piece of property and you would love to get out there
and have a nice little tractor to run around on, you know, I
mean you need to explain to buy in the family you need this. It's
a business expense, it's it's required. You can't get the work done.
But you and I both know that when you jump on a Caboda L twenty
five oh one from Lansdowne Moody, we're just having a blast. We call
that our sweet ride. Don't tell anybody that it's just ting you and I.
It is a blast to operate one of those hydrostatic transmission I grew up
grinding tractor gears driving around. No not with this one. Absolutely great deal
too, zero down, zero interest for eighty four months on the Caboda L
twenty five O one from Lansdone Moody. Now you can find Lansdowe Moody all
over the Houston area. Go to one near you tell them I want to
see the Kimoda twenty five one. I want to set on one of those
things and they will get you set up. LM tractor dot com. That's
the website, LM tractor dot Com. Go check it out and you'll see
what I'm talking about. We're gonna head out and nowt to Base City and
we're gonna talk to Terry. Hello, Terry, Hey, Okay, I
have a question about containers. I have about seven different kinds of fruit trees,
and I have two avocado trees and they haven't grown. They're in big
containers, but they're about like gosh, they're about like four years old,
and the trunks have been scaly and stuff on them, so I know I've
had him in the sun. I need to move them out of the sun.
But my question is about containers. I'm going to keep everybody in a
container. They're in smaller containers, maybe they're two two gallon or something,
Okay, but I have I have bigger, bigger containers, and I've been
told you can't move them into bigger container, but I fill up. I
can fill up the container with star poe and take up some of the space.
So I'm finding that my problem is they don't get watered enough and they're
in small containers, and if they're in bigger containers, I had better luck
with them. So can I use a bigger container and transfer them in bigger
containers? All right? Absolutely? You put a whole lot of information out
there, so let me take a dive into it. The container it determines
how much root volume you can have. And if you have a small container,
there's only so much water that's available. You can have it to completely
saturated and by the end of the day it's completely dry if the containers too
small. So the bigger the container, the more forgiving it is, the
less you have to worry about drought stress. Whenever we limit a root system,
we dwarf the plant. So think about a bones eye. Everybody knows
what bones eye is. Well, what they do to create this little mini
tree that wants to be eight hundred feet tall and we got it eight inches
tall. Well, they trim the roots, they put it in a soil
mix where they can control drainage. But everything is kind of in a touching
go thing with bones eye, and it creates a dwarf plant. And so
your avocados could be essentially a similar thing happening. You're not trimming roots off
and everything, but they've got a confined root system and they're not going to
get any They're not going to be able to get bigger than that. And
so when you bump into a larger container, it has more room for soil,
for water, nutrients, all that kind of stuff, and it just
does better and just keep going. Now you use the term starfoam peanuts.
We don't want to put anything in a container that people have told you in
the past will help drainage. It is mentally logical that if you put gravel
in the bottom, it's going to make it drain better because water runs through
gravel. But what happens is you decrease your soil volume by wasting soil space
by putting gravel or peanuts or pot charge or whatever you got in there,
and as a result, you have less soil volume. And gravel does not
pull water out of the soil. The soil gets completely water logged and literally
drips out into the gravel. So don't do the gravel have good drain holes,
but let the whole thing be soil. I could go into more details
on why that is, but just trust me. Stuff in the bottom of
a pot does not help drainage. It just doesn't. That. Oh okay,
so the physics and hydraulics of water will not allow that to improve things.
It's it's just not. Well, that'll be a whole different thing I'm
going to do now. I won't step it with anything. It'll cost me
more money to use more potting soil to fill up the dig pot. There
you will, there you go. But hey, that's that's why you got
quality soil. And that's why you got a big pot, you know,
because we're telling a plant that wants to get big. And I avocado tree
thirty forty feet high. I guess I've never seen one above forty around here,
but it wants to get that big, but we're telling it, no,
you got grown a little container. So the bigger the container, the
bigger, better more productive plants you're going to have. What about my little
fruit trees that are in you know, it's like orange. I've got orange
trees and a satsuma. Yeah, can I bumped into a bigger pot too?
Because everyone says it's harmful if you take a tree that's in a small
container and put it in a bigger pot. If that's a no, no,
you have to graduate your pot size. Okay, here's what they're talking
about. If you have a little, tiny root ball and you put it
in this now big pot, you have all this soil that has no roots
in it, so that soil stays too wet. When you water the soil
that you the little root ball you put in there pumps dry. And now
you've got soggy soil out here and dry soil in here, and it takes
time for the root system get to get out there and fill it. That's
why we move up incrementally on pots. But if you just watch how you
water, you can avoid that problem. But yeah, it's generally okay,
it's good to take a step at a time. If I were growing a
satsuma, I'd have it in something the size of a half whiskey barrel,
but not a half whiskey barrol because those rot out. But something about that
size for a satsuma would be about a good container size. Now not from
the day you buy it put it in there, but that's the size you
probably are aiming for. Okay. I'm thinking about putting some more drainage holes.
Should I put some drainage holes on the side as well as the bottom?
I like, is it sitting on concrete patio or is it sitting on
the soil. If it sits on the soil, I'll get ants up in
the pots. We'll always put it on a big tile or something, so
it's not directly on the soil. Okay. If the water can escape the
hole at the bottom, that's okay. I like holes in the side because
in the case of sitting on the soil, as an example, when it
sits down tight to a clay soil, that hole on the bottom is not
draining out very well at all. But holes from the sides the excess can
run right out. And I like side holes for that reason. On a
concrete patio, or if you've got it kind of propped up on little those
little pot feet thing, then it's not as important. It can get out
that bottom hole. And to keep ants out of the pot. What should
I do? Put some put the pot down. No, I don't worry
about it. There's not an ant that's going to attack your plants. They're
in there, but they're not They don't eat plant roots, they don't eat
plant leaves. I wouldn't worry about them. If you want to treat for
them, you can use any kind of an insecticide that'll kill the ants once
they get in the pot. But oh, okay, I don't say I
don't. I can't think of a good reason to do that. Okay,
Oh okay, great, thank you so much. All right, thank you.
I appreciate that call very much. Wow, Nikki, we're rolling here
on all kinds of questions today. I think I don't know if somebody off
the gate open so so bees pollinate? What do ants do? What purpose
did they have? Well, they're they're well, they're married to your uncle,
and they tend to be nicer than your mom, I've found. I'm
sorry, but I'm very good. That was uncalled for. That was uncalled
for. Ants. They they are most ants are eating seeds or eating other
little insects or things like that. Fire ants. Occasionally we'll get into like
ocra pods and things. But there's only one kind of ant that eats plants,
and it's a leaf cutter ant, and it's it has to have big
colonies out in the ground. It's not going to get in your pots.
Okay, okay, all right, I guess let's take a break seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You can dance if you dance
with the guy gives you a little hole you take. You can smile if
you smile for the man to hell in your hand. Leave the pail,
but don't forget those taking you home, and you're gonna be alrighty. You're
listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Ricter. We're here to
answer your questions at seven one three two one two five eight seven. Now.
I talked earlier about you know, gardens and landscapes or for the esthetic
beauty, and they're also for the sense. I was talking about the the
Arabian jasmines out there at Enchanted Forest and Richmond they're also for the sounds.
And I used to not be a bird person at all. I mean,
I've had nothing against birds. I just wasn't into that. But since I
have started feeding, providing bird watering, bird housing, those kinds of things,
I noticed now when I go out in the morning enjoy a cup of
coffee on the back patio or something like that, the music of the birds
is just yet another cool thing, relaxing thing. Remember how I said about
gardening and nature so important to us. It's just another aspect of that.
And while Bird's Unlimited is the place to go to get set up on all
things regarding birds. They have bird feeders, they have bird waters. They
ain't gonna a little hummingbird misting waterers that are really cool. You have to
go see those there. I can't even describe them. They're pretty cool stuff.
They have quality bird feed. If you buy inexpensive, I'm gonna call
it cheap. That's what it is bird feed. You end up with a
lot of that feed being those little red beebes that birds don't want to eat.
They kick them on the ground and make the doves drop down there and
eat those things because they your songbirds don't care about that, and so you
end up thinking, well, I got a good deal on bird seed.
But what you really did is you spend a lot of money on the seed
the birds actually are gonna eat. The rest of it is just a mess
going to sprout and come up underneath the feeder. Wahbirds has quality feeds that
the birds are gonna eat everything in the bag you buy. Wilbirds has blends
for every kind of birds you're going to talk about wanting to feed. I
mean, it doesn't matter nut that's thick, chickadees, just all kinds of
beautiful, beautiful birds that you can bring in with Wilberts. There's Wildbird's unlimited
everywhere near you. There's seven of them run the Houston area Katie Kingwood,
Cypress, pear Land. There's one in bel Air, one in West Houston,
one in Clear Lake. It's not hard finding a wild birds near you.
Go to WBU dot com forward slash Houston and find the wallbirds near YOUWBU
dot com forward slash Houston And now is hummingbirds season. They're here and they're
gonna be here for a while, stocking up for their migration across the Gulf
of Mexico. Get you a Wildbird's unlimited high perch hummingbird feeder. I've got
one of those. They are cool and they work well. That gets several
feeders. Because you know how hummingbirds are, they're always chasing each other off
the feeder. That is yet another enjoyable antic to watch those little guys running
around out they're chirping and fussing at each other at Wallbirds Unlimited. Not difficult
to find those at all. Well, you're listening to Gardenline. Our phone
number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you're looking for a high nitrogen
content organic fertilizer, that would be en Nitrogen's excuse me, Nitrogen nitrofosts Sweet
Green. Sweet Green is a molasses based fertilizer. What they do is they
have a process where they put microbes in it and then it goes through a
process and it creates this nutrient rich that's why they get That's how they get
the nitrogen up to like eleven percent in this product. But being a molasses
or therefore sugar type based product, microbes love it. I mean it's rocket
fuel for the beneficial bacteria in your soil. Smells good too, by the
way, But nitro FoST Sweet Green takes about, let's see, ten pounds
per thousand square feet for an eleven percent nitrogen product. It's easy to find.
It's all over the place like nitrofoss. Our feed stores, our ace
hardware stores, our mom and pop garden centers are going to have the nitrofoss
Sweet Green product. Now's a good time to put it on, because here's
the deal. It's gonna work, it's gonna do its job, and then
about the time you need to fertilize again, we'll be when we put our
fall fertilizer application on. That's coming, you know, back over in October
time, when we put that fall application on. By the way, I
just put on the internet and my new website, the new lawn care schedule.
Did it a couple of days ago. I've already got a lot of
feedback from it, and I appreciate that. By the way, constructive comments,
questions are always appreciated. And I've already done a little tweaks and updates
to it. We're getting a new version, slightly tweaked version of things that
didn't catch the first round. They're going to be up there probably, if
not already up there, will be up there by sometime tomorrow for sure,
if not sometime today. But that is the Skipwacter lawn Care Schedule, and
it's beautiful, many colors, and the reason for the colors is to make
it easy. So whether you're looking for an organic or a synthetic fertilizer,
you just follow from January to December. It tells you when to apply the
fertilizers you need, and then there's a list of fertilizers in the same color
for organic or for synthetic. You pick your one and it's right there at
the bottom of the page. There's information on trace minerals things like our azamide
and Nature's Way or mineralizer or important for that category. Tells you how to
mow properly, how to water properly, and just a lot of good information.
Soon to follow behind that is going to be the lawn pass Disease and
Weed Management schedule to control or for information on insects, disease and weeds,
and it's going to be the same kind of layout and it will also be
up on the website. So what's the website gardening with Skip dot com.
Gardening with Skip dot com is a website to get that free publication. You
can print it up and carry it with you when you go into the garden
center. Say hey, this is the feed I need, or the feed
store, the or the Ace hardware store wherever you're going to buy your stuff.
Take that in with you and point out the one you need and they'll
they'll make sure and direct you to that product. We are now going to
go out to the phones again and talk to Terry Sue out at the galleria.
Hello, Terry Sue, Hi, I have a question about jumping worms.
Okay, now I haven't found them recently, but when I find them
and I want can I if I cut them in two? Is that going
to kill them? Or are they going to have like eggs inside and not
going to be any good? That's a good question. Can have eggs inside?
That's not how they how they work. The eggs actually an exterior structure
on the earthworms, including the jumping worms. Okay, you know, if
you're concerned about that, I think I would just grab and throw them in
a bucket and they'll dry up in there and you'll be done. With it,
Yeah, and just not toss them aside. Yeah, the old thing
about if you're cutting worm in half you have two worms, No, that
doesn't work. One half may live, but the other half is going to
die. And so I knew that. I just I was just worried about
the possibility of egg casings or something. Sure, sure, Okay. The
other question I had was about that horrible weed called chamber bitter that has all
the little seeds on it. Yes, now if I spray that with an
all purpose like glyphosate type of thing, are the seeds going to be viable
at some point? They are when they first start to form, they haven't
cured enough to be viable. But if you look down the little leaflets,
you'll see little tiny seeds or bloom pods, and then all the way up
to the larger ones, and the larger ones are going to be viable.
So the only way to deal with that at this point would be to hand
pull them out. And that's going to be one heck of a job,
because yeah, those things proliferate. You you mentioned guy for say, you
could also if it's is it in your lawn? Yes, yeah, I
would just use a broadleaf post emergent weed control products something that kills broad leaf
weeds after they come up, and there are several products out there that will
do a good job of that. You just because we are in such blazing
hot weather, you got to be real careful because those products will damage your
seeing augustine significantly. So I'm trying to kill all that anyway. Oh you're
killing everything. Yes, there, there you go, But but I still
need to hand pull the chamber bitter probably if you if it's not too big
of an area, and you can do that. And then the other thing
to remember is next spring. And by the way, the schedule I was
just talking about that's not online yet, the lawn pest disease and weed.
It will tell you when to put the pre emergent out for that weed,
for the warm season weeds, and it'll tell you when to treat with post
emergent. If you've got a lawn and you don't want to hurt the lawn,
there's a time of year where we treat to avoid that lawn damage too.
So that's all going to be on the schedule that's about to go up.
That sounds great, all righty, Thank you, thank you so much.
Thank you, Terry Sue. I appreciate that call. I was looking
at my landscape the other day and I've admitted this on the air before.
But those of us who are plant nuts, we often become plant collectors.
And here's the problem with a plant collector. We don't design beautiful landscapes.
We collect plants. Every time you go to the garden center. There's plants
you have to have. You can't live without them. Trust me, I
know this, I'm there, I feel your pain. So the bottom line
being a plant collector is you need somebody knows how to designed, and that
would be pier scapes. If you don't want your landscape to look like a
bomb went off in a garden center and everything rooted where it landed, call
pier scapes. Let's have them get in and get involved in creating a beautiful
design for you, and then you can have all those plants you want and
plant them. D need irrigation work done. Maybe your system isn't working right.
They do that. They do drainage and a lot of our areas when
it rains, remember when it used to rain, it will again. Drainage
work is important. Rock gardens are rock borders rather Hardscapes. Peer Scapes does
all that and much much more. Three excuse me the phone number two eight
one three seven zero fifty sixty two eight one three seven zero fifty sixty or
peerscapes dot com. We're gonna believe it's time for a little Not quite,
are we time for a break? Here? I believe I went a little
long. Okay, let's take a break. Nancy and Dab. You will
be next up when we come back from break. In the meantime, have
an get ready to go. I've got one more bit of information I want
to give you. By the way, when we come back from break on
Gardening, we'll talk to you in just a moment. I got this all
guitar, the strings are rusty buddies, all Anny bringing the kicktommick and back
to beat. Let's get around and seeing this song. Hey, well,
good morning. Wait, are in our last segment This morning back, last
segment of the weekend on garden Line. We're here every Saturday and Sunday from
six am to ten am. You can also listen to past shows. Maybe
you heard me say something you didn't get it written down. You can listen
go back and listen to the show on podcast. If you have our Heart
Media podcast or whatever your podcast provider is, look for garden Line, find
the one with the guy. There's a lady garden Line show somewhere around the
country. We are the one with the guy, a garden Line guy,
and so just look forward on your podcast. You can listen to past shows.
It's kind of nice. If you've got friends and neighbors that haven't listened,
they need to know about that. If you've got friends in other areas,
we have people that call from all across the Gulf Coast states and even
beyond that to garden Line, and maybe they'd be interested in knowing about the
podcast availability if they're outside where they can get the radio signal. I mentioned
there was some stuff I wanted to talk about real quick, and I'm about
to head back to our two callers. We got on hold here. But
what that is is in October, our cool season weeds will start to germinate.
That's typically when the soil temp hits a point where they are going to
germinate, and that would be hin bit and chickweed and annual bluegrass and carpetweed.
There's just a lot of different cool season weeds. That we deal with.
You need to have a dense lawn at that time and order to not
have a lot of weed problems. So if your lawn has gotten thin from
drought, from strass, from disease, from whatever, putting a pre emergent
down at that time is going to be important to avoid having to spray things
in the grass later that might be harmful to your grass as well as trying
to kill the weed. And so that's an important window. So why am
I mentioning it now, Well, I'm mentioning it now because anything you do
to increase the density of your lawn will help cut down on those weed problems
because they're going to be germinating starting in October, also germinating in November.
And so if you can shut out the sunlight by growing a denser, thicker,
denser lawn or beautiful lawn in the process too, by the way,
you can cut down on weed problems a lot. Just a little quick tip.
Let's go back to the phones now and we're going to go to the
woodlands and talk to deb. Hello, deb Hi scap how are you.
I'm good? How are you? I'm good? Hey, I have a
question about our magnolia tree. The tree is not very big around in trunk,
but it's probably twenty feet tall, I want to say, not more
than three inches in the trunk size. And one side of it faces the
afternoon sun pretty strongly, and I have scorched leaves. Am I helping it
alone? If I give it more water? Am I harming it? What
is there anything I could do to protect it from getting further scorched? Right?
I'm going to give it. Yeah, I'm gonna give you the quick
answer because I've let things get to the end of the show here and I'm
gonna have to wind it up. But the answer is give it a good
soaking. If the soil is not moist three or four inches down, that's
the bottom line. Depending on the sal type, the sun exposure, the
plant, all that, it's going to vary as to how often and how
much you need to water, But keep the sal moist as the bottom line,
and that'll give it the best chance of avoiding additional scorching down. I
I'm sorry to have to run so fast on your deb Thank you for being
patient and waiting on the call. But I hope that helps you. Bet
Hey, if you're looking for a source of all kinds of gardening supplies.
That is ACE Hardware. ACE Hardware has everything you need for your lawn.
The fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and secticides. All of that.
Ace Hardware's got it. Ace Hardware has the tools, the hoses,
the sprinklers. If you want a beautiful landscape and lawn. ACE Hardware is
a place to go. Go to ACE hardware dot com and look for the
store locator to find the store near you. Oh goodness, I was just
about to run over to Nancy and Lake Palestine. My apologies, Nancy.
We were going to try to get in a quick answer. Let me do
it this way in case you are still listening. I got a picture of
all the plants, beautiful fruit trees and things you have growing in containers.
I think they look pretty good if you could move them up a container size.
Are about ready for that. The tomato is okay in the container it's
in the citrus is okay. But if you can move it up one size,
it's gonna just do a lot better. Let me go back to your
text on that scrolling through this here that the cherry tomato isn't producing because it's
too hot. When it cools off, it will start setting fruit. So
just hang on. They're gonna be just fine. Hey, thanks for listening
to garden Line. We'll talk to you next week.