Katie r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor
It's crazy Trim. Just watch him as maybe things to see black day not
a sad good morning, good Saturday morning, and hey, thanks for listening.
First thing this morning, congratulations on getting both eyes open or at least
one and a half. Maybe a cup of coffee is helping that you're listening
to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to
do what We're here to help you have a more beautiful landscape and a more
bountiful garden. That's the goal. And also you know what else we're here
for. We're helped. We're here to help you have fun out there in
the garden. You know, gardening is not rocket science. It is not.
And I know you may feel like, well, Grandma had a green
thumb, I've got a brown thumb. No you don't. If you feel
that way, then you just have an uninformed thumb. And we're going to
inform that thumb. Because the only reason Grandma could grow everything seem like if
she dropped a pencil it would root and start growing a pine tree. The
reason for that is Grandma knew what plants wanted, she knew how to take
care of Maybe she didn't even know why she knew, she just kind of
had a knack for it. But that's why the plants were happy at Grandma's
house, and they can be happy at your house too. So the bottom
line is, hey, let's have some fun, let's learn some things,
and let's make sure that you have more success in your lawn and in your
garden. One way we go about that, just starting right off the bat
here, is talk about lawns. Everybody just about seems to have a lawn
these days, and everybody cares about having a beautiful one. And one way
that you can make sure you have a nice, even beautiful green turf through
the summer season is with Nitrofoss Superturf. Superturf is the silver bag. You've
heard me talk about super turf before the silver bag, the nineteen four to
ten by Nitrofoss. Half of that nitrogen is in a slow release form,
so it's going to gradually, over the next three or four months, release
that nitrogen a little at a time to give you nice, even growth,
So you don't have this thing where you're mowing every day trying to keep up
with the grass because you've overdone the nitrogen. No, it spreads it out.
You also have a good deep root system because you haven't overdone nitrogen.
You've spread it out, and that is what superturf does. You can find
Superturf at Bearings Hardware both on Bisonette and the one on West Teimer. You
can find it at Plantation Ace Hardware out there in Richmond Rosenberg as well as
Hiding and Feed up on stubenor Airline. We're gonna head straight to the phones
today. I want to get out here and get going with things. So
if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two five
eight seven four that's the number. Let's head out now to Huffman and talk
to Mike. Hello, Mike, how's it going today. I'm doing well?
Thank you good. Yes, sir, listen, I've got a bamboo
infestation and uh, what's the quickest easiest way to get rid of that,
short of burning down the neighborhood. Well, the quickest easiest is to call
a realtor and put your house on the market and find you a new one.
The second, the second would be would be a backo, and the
third would be getting a product that kills bamboo, that kills grass, bamboos
a grass that kills grass. There are grass only killers out there, and
then there's things that are general purpose, like like Glyphas, which round ups
the name everybody knows, but there are many brands brands of glyphas. You
just got to get it on the tissues of the of the weed, the
above ground tissues, and the bamboo needs to be in an actively growing state,
not like rout stressed and barely hanging on. You know. No,
it's doing fine, believe me. Yeah, and you you're gonna have to,
Mike, You're gonna need to be ready to do it or than once
probably too. It's probably not a one off. Yeah, oh man,
Okay, well just give that a shot. Then I'm gonna get my chainsaw
and whag it down, you know, to uh? Or do I need
to leave the leaves and everything on there? Can I go cut? Is
there is there anything desirable around it? Like if you were to spray something
on the bamboo, would it would the spray get on stuff you don't want
to kill? No? I want to kill all that stuff around there,
Okay, I would. I would go ahead then and spray it first.
If it's actively growing, as you're saying it is, then then go ahead
and spray first. It's gonna take I'd give it a couple of weeks to
make an assessment. Then if you want to cut it back to the ground,
you can, and when the new growth comes up, when it gets
about knee high, you can hit it again. Okaypreciated man, y'all have
a good day. All right, Mike, You're gonna win this one,
believe me. Oh trust me. I hate this stuff, all right,
take care, appreciate the call, Yes, sir, Yeah. Bamboo you
know, bamboo is It is one of the most amazing plants I think in
the world. People build houses out of bamboo. We make fabric. The
first time I heard that there were bamboo socks, I thought, oh my
gosh, I'm gonna have splinters in my feet if I wear something like that.
No, it is unbelievably soft fabric, bed sheets and socks and everything
else made out of bamboo. You were in the band as a kid growing
up in school and played a wind instrument. That little reed that we at
least we used to use. They probably have synthetic ones now. Was made
out of bamboo. I mean, bamboo is a cool, cool plant.
It can be a beautiful plant if you have a clumping type that doesn't take
over the world. It stays more in a clump. Those kind are gorgeous.
They make a nice screen. I like the sound of a real tall
bamboo, the wind going through the leaves because the leaves are very stiff and
papery, and when the breeze blows through bamboo, it sounds like it's raining.
It's a really cool, peaceful effect out there. And we used to
have in an old office I worked in, there was a little outdoor sitting
place that was surrounded by bamboo, and you were just in this nice little
enclosure enjoying the shade of the bamboo, but listening to the sound of it.
But the running types of bamboo, if you do not have a way
to contain them, oh boy, you end up in the situation. Mike
was just describing where you got to get rid of that, because it does
take over. Think about bermuda grass and how it takes over the world.
It moves into flower beds and everything else. Well, if the soil is
good and moist, bermuda is going to take over. And if the soil
is good and moist, bamboo is going to run. It's going to run
like a like a preschooler on the first day of school head for the hills.
So you got to be able to control it and manage that. If
you'd like to give us a call, our number is seven one three,
two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. You know, out of enchanted gardens in Richmond, there's always
there's always something to see, always something new. Oh with something going on
right now. They are set up for Father's Day. I mean they have
gifts in the gift shop for dad that of course have all kinds of plants
and things that dad would enjoy. Uh, just you name it, whatever
kind of gardening your dad may be interested in. Urfy just enjoys having some
beautiful things around. Maybe a beautiful outdoor patio sitting area could use some really
nice things to feature, like a plumbago for example. Well, they've got
all that and more. Enchanted gardens in Richmond. They're on the Katie fullsher
side. So if you're in Richmond, you head north. Here's the website,
Enchanted garden Richmond dot com. Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. They're open
Monday through Saturday eight to five. Tomorrow they'll be open from ten am to
four pm. So I would encourage you to go out there and check it
out. How about an outdoor wind chime for dad? How about a fountain,
some kind of whimsical garden art. They've got that out there, Beautiful,
beautiful plants and exceptionally knowledgeable stuff. That's very important when you choose a
garden center. You want people that know what they're talking about, that can
direct you right, and that's what you'll get at Enchanted Gardens out there in
Richmond. We're gonna take a little break here. I'll be right back.
Our phone number in the meantime seven one three two one two KTRH. All
right, welcome back to guarden Line. Starting to see the slight glow of
a brand new day coming up. It's going to be a good one out
there, a good day to get outside and get some gardening activities done.
Have you ever looked at your landscape beds and just thought, you know,
oh, there's got to be a better way to do that. There's got
to be something to make it look better. I mean, I buy plants.
I go to the garden center. I buy some plants. I think
they're pretty flowers sitting there on the shelves at the garden center on the tables,
But then I come home and I plant them, and I don't know,
it just doesn't work quite as well for me. Well, one of
the things that we have to keep in mind when we're gardening here is number
one. You got to get the soil right. That you hear me say
that all the time. Soil comes first, brown stuff before green stuff.
That's the way I like to put it. Helps it make it easy to
remember. Get the soil right, so when the plants come in, they're
going to be happy. Second, you want plants that want to grow here
and grow here in this season where you're growing them. So, for example,
right now now, I think that pansies are beautiful plants in the cool
season, but they would just turn to toast in our landscapes at this time
of the year. And so each plant has its time when it does best.
Some will go season long. A lot of them have a very narrow
window, and some have most of them have a moderate size window. When
we come out in spring, we have a lot of flowers that look good,
and then they can start to look not so good by the time summer
gets there, and it may be time to switch over to something that can
take hotter weather. You can also just plant that stuff right up front in
the springtime, but there's a transition. When fall comes, we'll have another
transition. And then in the cool season, for example, things that can
take the cool weather that transition. Keeping up with that is the way you
keep a landscape bed beautiful the whole time in general, just as a guide.
In general, what you're going to want to do is depend mostly on
things like shrubs and trees, perennials that are going to be there, the
foundational kinds of plants, things that maybe an evergreen that always looks good twelve
months out of the year, those sort of plants. Then put in some
perennials that each have their season, and think about that when you buy them.
Look at your landscape bed and say, what's going to be blooming in
March, what's going to be blooming in August, what's going to be blooming
in October? And you can mix your plants to have a nice season long
color, and then your annuals. Those are the ones you're trading in and
out season by season. Those are the icing on the cake. And you
can put all your money in annuals, but then you're redoing the whole bed.
It's more expensive, but it can be gorgeous, beautiful botanical gardens,
or just have huge beds full of that of course, but think about how
you want to do it. But that's just one tip. Start with the
foundational plants, the things that are going to be there all the time looking
good. Put in some perennials of seasonal interest, and then have your annuals
that you trade out so you always have something looking good and color. When
you drive home from the garden center. You've already got the plants in hand
to go ride in the beds and start looking good right away. Now that
is the approach that I would suggest to take. If you need help doing
that, peer Scape can help you do that. You know, Pierscapes has
a service which is their quarterly maintenance of your beds. So here's what happens.
You say, you sign up and you go, okay, I want
you to come out quarterly, and I want you to take care of the
beds around my landscape. And they're going to do trimming, they're going to
do weeding and fertilizer, check the irrigation system, make sure everything's working right.
Any kind of mulch additions that are needed, and we need to always
keep mulch on those, they're going to be there. And then finally a
seasonal color changes. Do you want two changes a year winter summer? Do
you want four changes a year? You can do that, just you work
that out with them. But Piercecapes they number one. We know them because
they do unbelievable landscape designs, gorgeous designs. And here's what I want you
to do. Write this website down and just go look at the work they
do. It is inspirational. Pierscapes dot com, Piercescapes one word dot com
two eight, one three seven fifty sixty. Give them a call one three
seven, five zero six zero. Anything that you can imagine to beautify,
to landscape lighting, to hard escapes, to on and on and on improving
drainage, they do it. But ask them about that quarterly maintenance especially that
is really handy to be able to have that to help you do that.
I was out in the outdoors around my house this week getting some work done,
and boy is it ever hot out there. I'm trying to get most
of it done in the morning hours, but it's it's I just have a
lot of projects that I'm working on all at once, unfortunately, but uh,
swatting mosquito is away. Oh gosh, they're there and they love me
because you know what happens when a mosquito feeds on you. They need the
blood. They're like a little vampires. That's what they are, flying vampires.
They need your blood the protein in it to be able to lay the
eggs. And it's the female mosquito that bites you, not the male.
Now I'm not gonna I'm gonna let that and go, but I could run
with that. But anyway, the female mosquito is the one that feeds on
you, and your blood protein helps them to lay the eggs that give you
more mosquitos. Do you know that you have a like a bottle cap full
of water sitting outside, Mosquitoes can lay eggs and go through their generation cycle
and fly out of there as adult mosquitoes. Just from a bottle cap full
of water. So we got to get rid of all the water standing around
the place. But anywhere you have water, you need to put a mosquito
dunk in it. If you've got a little pond, if you've got a
bird bath and you're not wanting to wash it out every few days, you
know, clear out all the old water. Put them mosquito one, crumble
one up, make granules out of it, or buy the granules and just
put them out there. Mosquito dunks are a natural disease of mosquitos. They
hurt nothing else that we would care about, not a bird, not a
pet, the family cat and their children is totally safe, totally safe.
You put them in the water for one month. They really a disease of
mosquitos into the water, and any mosquito that shows up dies. It works
like this, kind of like BT with caterpillars. We put BT out for
caterpillars. It's a different kind of BT. They put in a mosquito dunk,
and that I think is pretty cool stuff. Uh. They again,
one dunk covers about one hundred square feet of water and lasts about a month.
You can find them at ACE hardware stores. Have them your independent nurseries
and garden centers I talk about here on Guardenline, and feed stores. Mosquita
dunks are easy to find, but have some on hand because it is mosquito
season and they have plans. They have plans for you and you don't like
those plants. If you'd like to give us a call and ask a question
about gardening or discuss something related to identifying a plant, perhaps you can do
that. Just dial seven to one three two one two KTRH seven to one
three two one two kt RH. That is our the way that you get
hold of us. League City Feed down in League City is one of those
old time feed stores. I just love going into old time feed stores.
And here's why. Number one, the service. You know, they're going
to carry your bags out for you, your sacks of feed and things.
They just provide that kind of service. I just like going in and shopping
and there's just a I don't know, there's what an ambiance or something to
an old time feed store that I just really love. And League City Feed
is exactly like that. The Thunderberghs have been doing this for over forty years
now, and if you go on a Saturday, you might even catch Madison's
dalmatian Roschak running around there. I think that Ruschak is the best name for
a Dalmatian that you can think about. You just stare at the dog and
you know what do you see? Well? Anyway, they're on Highway three,
a few blocks south of Highway ninety six. So all of you in
the communities all around League City, like Santa Fe and San Leone, Lamark
Baycliff, Webster, el Comuna Real, Clear Lake City, all those communities
down in that region, this is your hometown feed store. They've got every
fertilizer you hear me talk about on garden Line, whether it's nitrophoss or the
microlife fertilizers you hear me talk about Nelson and as Am and on and on.
They've got all of that there at League City feet They also have things
to control pest weeds and diseases. They're open Monday through Saturday, nine to
six, so it's easy to swing by after work. They're closed on Sunday.
If you want to give them a call, here's a number. Two
eight one three three two sixteen twelve. Two eight one three three two sixteen
twelve. I you know, when I go into a feed store. I
find that I spend a little extra time just because I'm always looking through,
you know, through the shelves, what do they have, what's going,
what is here, and whatnot. And I always end up sitting there and
talking to the folks that I work there for a while because I don't know,
it's just a it's a good place to hang out. In fact,
they need to set some hay bales up on the front porchs there so you
can just kind of go hang out there for a while, spend a little
bit of time with them. That's that is when I was growing up,
we had a feed store like that. I always remember that. Well,
you are listening to Gardenline. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're
here to answer your gardening questions. If you'd like to give us a call
and get on the boards seven one three two one two five eight seven four,
or if you like dialing by letter seven one three two one two k
t R H. I want to remind you that my lawn care schedule and
my lawn pest disease and weed management schedule are both online at gardening with Skip
dot com. It's a real easy website. Me Gardening with Skip Gardening with
me dot com Gardening with Skip dot com. You go on there and you
can print those up and they basically they are a big checkerboard chart that goes
from January to December across the page, and for example, on the lawn
care schedule, that's all the things you do to make your lawn grow,
fertilize, water, mow, all of the different products and when to apply
this, when to apply that. Everything you need to know is right there
on the schedule. If you go to the lawn pest disease and we'd management
schedule, what you find there is the insects January through December, what occurs
when and what to do about it. Diseases, same thing. Preventing weeds
that would be called a pre emergent. Killing existing weeds that's called a post
emergent. All the products are there and with both schedules, there's both the
organic and the synthetic option, so you take your pick however you want a
garden, that's your business. You can go either way. Makes it really
really easy to do. We're going to take a little break here for a
little bit of news and I will be right back in the meantime. If
you'd like to call Christen, get on the lines. Just dial seven to
one three two one two KTRH. I said the word dial nobody. We
don't dial anymore, dew. We just punch the numbers for crying out loud.
Make your phone call seven one three two one two ktrh. We'll be
right back. Welcome back to the Garden Line. Good to have you with
us this morning. And the sun glow is shining across the buildings and downtown
Houston. That means we are about to have another beautiful day. I'm looking
outside and seeing some clear skies, so this morning would be a good time.
Throw your phone in your pocket. You know you can listen to Garden
Line on your phone on the iHeartMedia app and just go on there listen live.
Throw it in your pocket and head out in the garden. Let's get
some stuff done this morning. If you get a question, to give me
a call, we'll we'll talk you through it. Our phone number seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. The folks at Medina. You know, Medina has been
around for a very long time. You know Garden Line as a show goes
back to the days of Dewey Compton when it was more of a farm type
report and Dewey Compton built Ziac John burrowsers. There's a lot of different folks
that have been part of this long history of the show, including Randy Lemon.
For the last twenty six twenty seven years, I believe Randy sat in
the chair hosting garden Line and Medina's been a sponsor Gardline for that whole time.
They have been for a very very long time, and they keep coming
out with new products and one of the newest things, in fact, I
guess it would be the newest that they've come up with, and it's probably
the product I'm maybe the one I'm most excited about. It's the Supergrow Plus.
It's a hash to grow Supergrow Plus from Medina. Now what is it
and why I'm excited, Well, it's a sixteen zero two fertilizer, so
it has very like a zero phosphorus content, which in some parts of the
country, you know, phosphorus is enough of a concern where they're actually requiring
like a prescription to be able to put phosphorus on your lawn because they're worried
about it Washingtonto bays and estuaries and things like that. Well, bottom line
is Supergrow Plus has a pack of different kinds of ingredients. That is such
a nice it's such a nice mix. And here's why. A portion of
that sixteen percent nitrogen is even slow release, which is good. It also
has kelated iron in it, which is important. That's when your lawn starts
yellowing in places almost always, that's due to a lack of iron available to
the plant. And when you put the Supergirl Plus on it helps with that.
It's got seaweed extract, it's got molasses, it's got humic acid in
it. It's just a good blend of all kinds of things. One quart
bottle which hooks up to your garden hoset, covers four thousand square feet.
Really easy to do, ten minutes, you're done, really easy to do.
Now I'm going to be giving some of that away today, by the
way, Today after the show from eleven to one, I'm going to be
at the Wildbird's Unlimited store wild Birds Unlimited in bel Air, so that is
bel Air Boulevard. It's real easy. I'll talking about that in a little
bit. But the bottom line is it's real close to where Stella Link and
Beller Boulevard come together. Wallbird's Unlimited store, and I'll be giving away some
has to Grow super Grow Plus, some of the quartz Mendina's donating that I'm
going to be giving away some other things. I've got some of their growing
Green fertilizer bags, the small bags that we're going to be given away that,
some samples and other things, and as well as something from Walberds.
We're going to be providing for you. So you just need to get by
there. Remember, has to Grow Supergrow Plus will be given those away,
But sixteen zero two, you need to get some of that and give it
a try. If you are returning your clippings, which I hope you are,
you can do that maybe once or twice during the season and it kind
of carries you through pretty well. If you're not, you can do it
even monthly anytime you need to green things up, and it works on all
kinds of stuff too. I've got some plants that I planted a while back
that need to boost. There are ornamentals in a flower bed and I'm just
going to hit them with those super Grow Pluses this next week. I was
just thinking about that a little bit earlier. Even though it's primarily something we
think about for lawns, it is excellent for giving a little boost to your
vegetable gardens or your flower beds or whatever you have. Just hook it up
to the garden hose. You can't get any easier easier than that super Grow
Plus by Medina. I always like it when we get new products that I
think really fit a special niche that we have where we have a need for
something that works, and this absolutely is an example of that. You are
listening to garden Line and instead of me talking, lets you talk. What
do you want to talk about today? Seven to one three two one two
kt r H seven to one three two one two kt r H. When
I talk about gardening, I always tell you that the brown stuff comes first,
brown stuff before green stuff, because in order for a plant to be
successful, you need a foundation, a soil or root system that is well
are that wholes soil, but that drains well, that holds nutrients and keeps
them in a good balance. Well. Airloom soils is designed to provide that.
And I don't care what kind of plant you're talking about. If you're
looking at a vegetable garden veggian herb mix. Do you have some succulents or
cacti that you're growing, you need something grittier that drains even better, that
would be a cactine succulent mix from Heirloom Soils. They have the works Potting
Soil outstanding potting soil for all kinds of plants. If you don't grow vegetables
or flowers on the patio, the works Potting soil is an outstanding choice for
that. They've got Roses and Bloomers Blend. Roses and Bloomers Blend is a
type of multipurpose rose soil, but not just for roses. It works for
a lot of other kinds of plants, but all of that as well as
many many more options from Heirloom Soils. Heirloom Soils of Texas go to the
website Heirloomsoilsoftexas dot com. They have a very good compass calculator on there will
help you know exactly what you need. I mean even down to five gallon
buckets, how many five gallon buckets or a qubic yard. Well, go
on the gool Airloom Soils or Texas dot com you'll find out. So when
you're gonna put a bed in and you need to know, well I need
but I don't know how much to order. Well, there you go.
You can go pick it up at porter. You can have them deliver it
in bulk. You can have them put a supersack on your driveway, big
old sack that comes out holes a qbyard sits on your driveway. It's real
neat and easy, real easy way to go about it. Or you can
just go to one of about a million different places where you'll find heirloom soils
for sale and buy it by the bag. Makes it really really easy to
do. I was this past week spending some time working on a bed that
has really poor soil in it. And you know how I am about getting
the soil right now. But we first we excavated some horrible clay, I
mean just the nastiest, stickiest stuff in the world to get that out of
there, and then I put in a lot of expanded shale. Expanded shale
is like the way I like to describe it is think of kitty litter.
Remember the old gray kitty litter. There was kind of dusty stuff. Imagine
putting that in a hot oven and heating it up, maybe with some steam
or something to expand those particles. When I'm talking about thousand degrees, you
know, heat it up. And now you have a very lightweight, porous
rock type material that you put in the soil and it keeps that soil open
and organic matter does the same thing compost does, but compost decomposes a way
over time. Expanded show kind of keeps its rock like structure for a pretty
good long time. So anyway, we were adding that to it. And
I've been using all kinds of blends and things. You know, I tell
you I always use everything. If you hear me talk about a product on
garden Line, I've used it in my garden. I've watched how it works
or doesn't work. And that way when I take on a sponsor, when
I talk about a product, it's something that I first had knowledge with and
that's what we try to do. And that's what I've been doing, so
a lot, a lot of soil work. Probably over a week now,
I've been working on getting that soil right because I'm about to plant, but
you want to get it right first. Well, it's time for us to
take another little break I will be right back again the number seven to one
three two one two KTRH. Welcome back to the garden Line. Good to
have you with us today. We are talking about all kinds of things regarding
the garden and landscaping. I just kind of discussing a few of the things
that I've been working on this week. Perhaps some of you are doing the
same things, are planning on doing the same kinds of things, So let's
talk about that a little bit. The area. We have a spot around
our house where I'm putting in a little bit little orchard. Now it is
a little like three or four fruit trees max. But anyway, that area
has got some noxious weeds in it. The Meermuda grass has been in that
area. We had there was a lawn there at one time, and I
decided I didn't want to mow it over there because it was just grass existing
for the same of grass, and I don't need to water something that I
get no enjoyment out of or don't have any time on. So anyway,
we're getting rid of that. And I just saw this permuters growing in there
and it has nuts edge in it as well. Oh boy, nuts edge,
And so I've been working on getting rid of those weeds before I put
the orchard in. And it's always better when you can to get rid of
weeds prior to planting. Now, a lot of weeds are annuals. Those
are easy throw multch on top of the ground. You took care of it.
The seeds have to have light to germinate and establish successfully. And when
you mulch with a good thick three inch l aira mulch, you've taken care
of those weeds. But perennial weeds nutsedge. I've seen nutsedge push up fresh
laid asphalt. I did in Montgomery County Extension Office many years ago when they
put the brand new parking lot in in front. They put that asphalt down,
and I don't know how long after they put it down, it wasn't
very long. All of a sudden I saw over in a corner it was
lifting up and I looked and it was a nutsedge shoot up out of the
ground, pushing pushing up that fresh laid asphalt. So that is a weed
that you got to deal with. And Bermuda again, is that way stay
with them if you're going to hand dig them, hand dig them and then
watch because they will be back. You won't get it all. Hand dig
it again, and hand dig it again. Just stay on it, don't
ever let it up for air. When if you're going to spray, spray
it and then give it some time, you might want to mix the soil
up a little bit. If you've got a rotortiller or spade, whatever you're
useing, just loosen it up water. You will see re sprouting. Then
you go after it again. You want to eradicate all that you possibly can
before you plant, because once you have a vegetable garden or a flower bed,
or in my case, even the fruit trees in there, you don't
want to have to be in there trying to spray and get rid of stuff
because you're liable to hurt a desirable plant when you do that. And so
that's what I've been working on for a while now, and I've seen a
lot of approaches to getting rid of these. I was surprised when I was
in grad school. I did some time doing a study at a peach orchard
in Ruston, Louisiana, and the fellow theres he just is outstanding peach grower,
been for decades there. He would take a Bermuda grass field, and
he would plow it repeatedly all through the summer and basically kill the vast majority
of the bermuda grass. So, in other words, it would sprout,
he would plow it over, and it would dry out in the hot Louisiana
summer sun. You'd get a little bit of rain on it, and it
would try. The things that survived would re sprout. He would plow it
again, and I mean he would just repeatedly disking that field, and essentially
when he got done, there was very little bermuda left. I mean he
could go in there and it's real easy for them to take out the escapes
that had gotten by before they put the peaches in. And I learned from
that now, repeated plowing through the summer is not a good thing for the
soil. I mean, you're burning up organic matter and you're affecting soil structure
and so on. But just as a weed control technique, that is what
they were doing, and it really worked well. But just keep in mind
that if you plant in an area that has problem weeds, you are now
going to be dealing with those weeds in a much more difficult situation than had
you done it before. You put the plants in, just something to think
about we're out there. One of the common questions that I've gotten in these
past couple of weeks has been about peppervine. Pepper vine is a little vine,
has a multiple it's a compound leaf, and some people think, well,
maybe it's poison ivy. It didn't really look anything like poison ivy except
that it's a vine and it has a compound leaf. But peppervine will pop
up, it'll come out of the ground. When I lived up in the
Cypress area, we had some that was coming in from a drainway behind our
fence, and so it would come under our fence and pop up in the
yard. We kept having to deal with it, and it is a problem
to deal with again. Hand digging is an option for that, But if
you're gonna treat it, there's a product ingredient called Triclo peer tri c l
O p y R. And if you're dealing with a woody weed, if
you're in a witty weed, would be let's see the hackberry seeds that sprout
and come up in your fence lines because a bird stopped and pooped because it
ate the berries and it pooped the seeds out, and now you got poison
ivy in the fence line and hackberry in the fence line. That's how they
that's how they get there because they come from birds anyway, when it sprouts
up, triclo peer works well on those. But rather than spray it and
get it all over everything, because it's not it will hurt your lawn and
it will hurt other broad leaf plants, desirable ones. You can take those
vines and just sort of paint it on the stem of a vine. Or
you can cut the thing off near the ground and immediately paint the surface that
you cut and then the stem that's right below that. So just as a
case of example, you got a hackberry coming up in a fence line,
you cut it off about four inches high, and you take a little spongebrush
on a wooden stick, you know the kind you buy at a paint store,
a little spongebrush, and you dab it on the surface, directly on
the surface, and then wipe a little bit on the sides of the young
thin vine tissues and it moves down and it does a good job, and
you didn't have to spray it. You put a minimum aunt of pesticide out
there into the environment. But you did something that'll work. Because I know
we think round up kills everything. No, it does not. There are
many things that are just not it's not strong enough to work on them,
it's not targeted enough to work on them. Trico pair is a better way
to go. And I do like the way of not spring it because number
one, it works better to just dab it on a fresh cat. But
also if you're gonna if you are going to try to avoid hurting other good
plants nearby, that's a good way to do it. All Right, we
are let's see here, we're coming up pretty close to taking a low break
of the news. I wanted to just mention that you hear me talk about
Southwest fertilizer all the time. Southwest fertilizers at the corner of Byssinet and Runwick.
And the way I always put it is if Southwest doesn't have it,
you don't need it. And the reason I say it that way is because
they have it. They have everything. When you're looking for a pesticide and
insecticide, a fungicide, if you're looking for any fertilizer I talk about,
and then some if you're looking for any kind of tool you might need for
your lawn, your garden, your landscape. Do you need a fertilizer spread
er, Do you need some looppers? Do you need a rake? Do
you need whatever? They've got it there at Southwest Fertilizer. I was just
talking about, you know, the new Medina product, this super Grow plus
the sixteen zero two you hook up to a garden hose. Bob's got that
at Southwest Fertilizer. But you would expect that he would, of course he
would. Anything that comes out new that's going to be effective in work,
they're going to have it on the shelf there. And so it's a one
stop shop. It's easy to do the corner Abyssinet and run Wick. Here's
the here's the website. If you want to go to the website, it's
Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Southwest Fertilizer dot com. Stop by there. And
if you're an organic gardener, you're gonna you are not going to find a
better selection of organic products. Then you have it. Southwest Fertilizer. They
have everything synthetic and organic. Because remember, if they don't have it,
you don't need it. And that just makes it really really easy to keep
track of I was in there the other I go periodically into Southwest just to
see what's on the shelf. Because you know these companies, all the Monterey
and Boneyed and High Yield and all the different ones making all these different products.
They don't notify me when something new comes up. I wish they would.
They don't, So I have to go see what's on the shelves and
that's the way I learn about things. That and talking to the company reps
kind of grilling them about how to do it. Well, don't forget today.
I hope you will come out to the Wallbirds Unlimited in bel Air.
I'll be there from eleven am to one pm. Hey, this is an
opportunity to bring in a sample of a plant in a ziplock bag or a
closed bag, to bring photos on your phone. Let's talk about how to
hope you have success. But while you're there, plan on doing your Father's
Day shopping because they have an outstanding selection of options for Father's Day shopping right
there at Wabirds. And I'll be at the one again in bel Air.
If you haven't been there before, it's really close to where Bella or Boulevard
and Celement Road come together in SATs. Welcome to KTRH garden Line with Skip
Ricker. It's just watch him as things. Hey, welcome back to the
garden line. Look outside, we got some sunshine and a beautiful sky.
This is gonna be a good morning. I hope you're already outside getting a
little bit of puttering done around the landscape and the garden. Make plans this
afternoon to go out and get some plants. You know, it's still a
good time to plant and put in vegetables, various kinds of vegetables, take
the summer heat, beautiful flowers and things. Plants for All Seasons is stocked
up ready to go if you're interested. They're on Highway two forty nine Tomball
Parkway. If you're going north from Houston toward Tomball, you just exit Luetta
and it's right across the other side of Luetta right there on two forty Nine's
easy to get to. Been around since nineteen seventy three. And when you
go into Plants for All Seasons, you know you're going to find a good
selection. They've got some gorgeous baskets right now, kind of mixed containers mixed
baskets where you have all the different kinds of flowers all blended together. That
is just a beautiful, stunning effect. And you can just bring those in
there ready to go like you got a patio party tonight. You can have
instant beauty and color just from that. They also have a selection of all
the different products that you need for making sure your plants are beautiful, your
lawn is dense and beautiful, that your flowers are productive and continuing to bloom.
For example, they have Microlife Microlife products at Plants for All Seasons.
You can go to Plants for All Seasons dot com. That's a website,
or you can just give them a call to eight one, three, seven
six sixteen forty six. If you haven't gotten your summer fertilizing done, swing
by there and grab some of the options that they give you, like the
Microlife Microlife that's the green bag, the sixty four that's our summer fertilizer for
organic gardening, beautiful, beautiful results. I've used it myself, The Microlife
Purple bag that is the Humanates plus. It works very very well in adding
a concentrated form of compost. Compost that is concentrated down toward the humous form.
That is the final stage of it, and when you put that out,
it improves soil structure. It it enhances the microbial activity as well because
it's loaded. Microlife products are loaded with microbes themselves. They're purposefully added into
there and they will help create that thriving environment for the roots to give you
good success. You can go to Microlifefertilizer dot com find out more about their
other products. Also, I'm going to start off by going out now to
Francis. Hello, Francis, Welcome to Guardenline. Hello, thank you.
I wanted to ask about building up a new vegetable bed, a new raised
and I was trying to decide if my best option would be to use wood
or to invest in one of the metal kind of yeah. Yeah, the
beds, uh huh. You know, Francis, I've done them both ways.
And I've built beds that had no sides. They were just mounds of
dirt, you know, and those are road away on the sides. But
that's the cheapest way to get a bed out there. I've used treated wood
before, it will rot in time. I just took out a bed this
year that someone who owned the house before us had put in treat would for
the bed and it was rotting away. Even treated wood rots in time.
The thing I like about the metal it's more of an investment up front,
but it lasts a very, very long time. And for those gardeners who
would rather not use treated wood, maybe you're an organic gardener or just would
rather not, then the metal beds provide a nice option that avoids needing to
use the treated wood chemicals. Okay, is there any particular one that you
would recommend. Yeah, I recommend and the ones I use at my house
are Vego garden beds. Yes, I've heard you talk about that. Yeah,
when you first started well garden line. Yeah, I like because Vego
number one, it's a Houston company. It was the first one to come
up with these beds here in the United States, these metal corrugated metal beds.
They've done all the work in terms of homework. I was talking to
somebody the other day that was up at the corrosion lab at Texas A and
M where they test metals. They go ran all their metals through the corrosion
lab to make sure these are things that are We've got them coated in a
way. We've got them treated in a way that's going to hold up and
not rust out and stuff, and it's just a quality bed. We just
put another one in this spring. As a matter of fact. Okay,
I don't live in Houston any longer, unfortunately, and I'm having a terrible
time finding good soil. Okay, okay, And I know, I at,
I don't know. I think I've heard you talk about working in the
central Texas area at some point. Do you do you have any suggestions for
how to find some really good soil or I just heard you in earlier segment
talk about working to a new bed to get good yes, so well,
yes, okay. So here's what I would do. It's been a while
since I've been over there. On the east side of Austin is the Dillo
Dirt Factory. That's where all of that comes from. Those are composts that
are made there are a sewage sledge based compost, and so people use those
for like top dressing a yard or whatever, but not in a vegetable bed.
But I would do two things. I would call the County Extension office
in Bastrup County and talk to one of the master gardeners there and say where
do you guys get your soil, because they're going to know there's gonna be
new places that have popped up since I was there, and they can tell
you. If you don't have success with that, call Natural Gardener. Natural
Gardener is on the southwest side of Austin. They specialize in organic gardening and
whatnot. And just say, hey, I'm in Bastrop, can you suggest
a good soil source for me over here? And they're gonna know too.
Okay, Yeah, And if I built, if I put my own soil
together, what kind of things should I throw in there? Uh? You
mean as far as blending a soil mix, yes, I would. Uh.
Now in Bastrup, you do You probably have some kind of sandy lum
soils there in a lot of those areas because the river goes right through there.
Well, my my yard is clay play. Then I would use probably
about twenty five percent by volume compost composted organic matter in the clay, and
I would cut about two inches. If you can find an expanded shale,
I would put two or three inches of expanded shale down and mix it as
deeply as you can in the clay. A combination of the shale and the
twenty five percent organic matter will turn that clay into a really nice soil.
Or or just buy it. Just have them bring a big truck and dump
it on the driveway and fill the beds with that. That's the easiest,
fastest one. Yeah, okay, all right, appreciate your help. All
right, thank you very much. I appreciate your call. We're gonna take
a little quick break here. When we come back, Ron, you will
be first up, and then David. Welcome back to the Guardline. Good
to have you with us today. Let's see, we're gonna head straight out
to Cleveland, Texas and talk to Ron. Hello. Ron, Good,
Warren Skip, Good morning. Hey. I've been working on getting my Bermuda
grass to fill in. I'm out here in Cleveland. Of course, I've
got a like a thirty year old roadary more that's starting to wear out,
you know. Uh, so I'm looking at possibly getting a real more,
but I'm kind of wanting to get thoughts on is it like a high maintenance
piece of equipment? Do I got in love with the lawn? Any pros
and cons in your thoughts and that I appreciate. Yeah, good, good,
questions real moors, I have never well, I have owned one.
It's been a long time. I was a little hand push more, but
they they are. They do take You've got to get the blade very sharp
and they do take some adjusting sometimes to get it get it right. As
far as maintenance, are you talking about a push of human powered? Are
you talking about of the little gas engine on it? I was going to
go with I'm thinking a gas engine. I'm on a one acre a lot,
but I don't have I've still got my riding hustler more that I'm going
to use on the bigger areas. Yeah, but up closer around the house
I was gonna use. I was thinking about getting a gas powered I'm not
too worried about the gas part about it, but like the real part,
you know, I'll hear about this grinding the blade and back lapping and having
the mow several times a week. I'm still working forty fifty hours a week,
so you know, I'm just like, if I buy one, I'm
not gonna be able to mow it but once a week, you know.
Yeah. What kind of permuter do you have? Is it a dwarf type
like Tiff or no, it's just common bermuda that was coming in and then
I just caught seed from home depot. And you know, I really prefer
it over the same in Augustine because you know, I don't have a sprinkler
system. It's more drought tolerant, you know, and I've got it pretty
dense in quite a few areas, okay, you know, and it really
chokes everything out. So just in a kind of a quick answer way,
yes, you do have to mow regularly with a real It's not like with
a propeller blade mower where it can get ahead of you. Because you've had
a two weeks of rain and now you're having to go back in there.
That's very difficult with the real mower. So you do need to mow regularly.
And but with bermuda, if you don't mow it regularly, you end
up it doesn't look good after you mow it. I like to compare bermuda
like you're over there in Cleveland like a pine forest where all the green is
up on top of the pine trees. And if you were to go through
a pine forest and cut everything off at twenty feet high, you just have
a bunch of brown sticks and That's what happens when you let bermuda grow and
then cut it way back. Now, it bounces right back and it fills
back in, but it looks like heck for a while. So a regular
mowing schedule, whether you use a reel or a propeller mower, is the
way to have the prettiest bermuda on. Yeah. Yeah, I'm you know,
I'm pretty much a weekend mower, okay, because so much, you
know, I'm thinking set it a little bit higher and go with your propeller
blade. In my opinion, just based on all the factors you're telling me,
I think I think that circumstances are going to catch up to you,
from rainy days to you stand a little too busy at times, and sometimes
the rainy it gets, sometimes you can't bowl. So oh yeah yeah,
and then you know how life is. We get you're going to mow tomorrow,
but something happens in the family or whatever, and you know, so
I I think you're going to be happier based on what you're telling me.
With a with a propeller mow, right, keep the blade sharp and go
for it, keep it very sharp. Yes, And the shorter you mo
the more often you have to mow. So if you can get your permute
up to about two and a half inches, that are two two and a
half inches, that's probably about the right height with your propeller more. All
right, appreciate you, appreciate your show. Thank you. Ron, appreciate
the call very much. We're going to head out now to David in Spring
Branch. Hello, David, Welcome to garden. Good morning, Skip.
I got a couple of oak trees that are getting this webbing on the leaves.
It looks just like somebody wrapped it with his white webbing. It's on
kind of the lower leaves, so I think it might be insects. I'm
not really sure. Yeah, it's definitely insects. It's probably something called the
fall webworm. And don't let the word fall fool you. It occurs.
They have three generations a year here. Some years you don't even hardly notice
them until late summer, and other years like this year, this is one
of the worst early infestations I've seen in a long time. We're seeing a
lot of them everywhere. The thing about them is they, you know,
a little moth lazy eggs. The caterpillars hatch out they form the webbing to
protect themselves, and then they go through a pupil stage, just like any
butterfly or mothwood, and they come back out as adults later to do it
again. And they can do that three times during the season, generally speaking.
Here in our area. Now, I've noticed that a lot of the
ones, if kind of they're kind of winding up their first generation in most
places, and so it's we're hitting a point where is it worth spraying forum
or not. If you've got a pretty new infestation, I definitely would spray
with an insecticide, but you've got to get it through the web to get
to the foliage where they're feeding. There's there's a product called spinosid that's natural,
very low tox and I would I would consider that. Having said that,
though, if you're looking at pretty good sized caterpillars, I'll say those
caterpillars are over an inch or more long, I might just let it go
for now and be watching, and when they start to show up again,
spray promptly at the beginning of the next generation. Which how long would that
be do you think? You know? You just I don't know. I
would say probably about a month before we would see them again. But the
weather, it's it's all about the weather and their predators. You know,
if the predators built up enough this generation, the next one may not be
very bad. But in general, the worst one is the one that occurs
at the end of summer August September. Is that's why they call them full
webworms, because that's the bad generation that tends to be the most popular,
most damaging. Would NEMO work on them? Nemo oil is not going to
help much with them. If you used NEME that not the oil form,
but the asidirectin form, and got it on the tissues of the leaves,
it probably would be pretty effective, but not the oil, not for them.
The spinosad is that sold under that name, well, yeah, it's
a you know, there's a Captain Jack's version of it. There's pretty much
every company selling garden products is going to have a form of spinosid. I
know that Monterey does, and I know that Bonie does, and so it's
it's fertil on probably does, so that's the ingredient. But you can use
anything. I tend to stay away from stuff that is going to kill all
kinds of insects because that way, you're killing beneficials as well as the bad
pests that you're after, and it's better if you can target it. That's
why I like using the spinosid. If it's does and eat a leaf spinosa,
it's probably not going to kill it. Okay, all right, Chip,
thank you sir, all right, good luck. Appreciate that. Appreciate
that very much. Speaking of trees and things, if you've got tree issues
and you need some help with them, Affordable Tree Service Martin Spoon Moore,
they're the ones you need to call. Now. You know, we just
went through those storms and wow, did they ever do some damage. Now
we're in hurricane season started in June, goes through November, and that just
means more storms will be on the way. In fact, they're predicting this
to be one of the bigger hurricane seasons we've had in a while. Having
Martin come out, take a look at your trees or their dead limbs or
there's some weakened limbs that need to come out. Doing that. Selective printing
is important. I can't express enough the importance of proper tree care when we
go into a storm season, because a properly prune tree is going to be
a tree better able to take the wind and withstand it and not drop those
giant limbs or the whole tree itself on something of value to you, like
a home or your neighbors. Maserati, the one he parks in the in
the driveway. Give Martin a call. Martin's phone number here it is seven
one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. I'm gonna give you that
again. Seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. The web
site afftree service dot com. Afftree service dot com. Check them out.
He does more than just pun your trees. I mean he can come out
and do some deep roof of eating. He can do all kinds of things
in terms of advising, getting trees planted and cared for and whatnot. Martin
will charge one fifty to come out to the property, and then when you
hire him to do whatever he assessed might be needed, then that goes right
into your bill. So it's just something to say, hey, are you
really serious here? And he's an expert and he knows been doing it a
long time, So don't trust your trees to some guy who happens to own
a pick up a chainsaw and bought some business cards to stick in your door.
That is not the way to go about it. Bad tree work is
forever. Don't mess with that. Call Martin. All right, let's go
to Jersey Village and we're gonna talk to Bob. Hello, Bob, Hey,
Skip Hey. I've been out of town for a while. Finally got
back to the where my wife lives, and I come in and oak trees
have been raped for a long time, and now the oak leaves are embedded
in the grass, fell in the grass, and I need to recede the
entire yard. I removed as much as leaves as I can, but they're
still a bunch embedded. So you're talking about live oak leaves, just oak
leaves, your pin oak or whatever oak, small oak leaves. There's a
small oak, okay, Well, then being down in the grass is not
as big of a problem. And when they're on the grass and shading the
grass, that that is something you want to do. If you got to
do. You have a mulching mower and a bagger where you could go through
there and mow a little lower and just kind of suck a bunch of that
up and get it out of there. Not really well, I think the
problem, Bob, is not so much the oak leaves that landed on the
ground, although again, if you have enough of them to where the grass
can't get sunlight, yes that would be a problem. But the problem is
just the shade itself from the oak trees. When grass can't get good,
full direct sunlight, it's going to have problems. And I suspect that your
situation may be a combination of things. You know, it could be anything
from drought to a disease, to insect issues to most likely though the shade
is going to be one of the biggest factors. If I overseed the yard
I need, or is the grass going to overtake the uh oak leaves that
are invaded, or or I after I get those out out out of the
out of the well. If you overseed and you have enough leaf area laying
on top over through the soil, you probably are not gonna have real good
success in getting those over those seeds up and growing. I don't know what
you would use, though, in general, I don't recommend overseeding. Is
your lun, I'm miss this is your lun, Saint Augustine as mostly okay,
you know what I'm the We've got the news coming up right now.
Bob, will you hold on and I'll continue this discussion. If you need
to run, I'll make some comments when I come right back. Seven one
three two one two K t R H. If you'd like to give us
a call, I'll be right back. Welcome back to Guardenline. Good have
you with us, Glad you're here today. We are now talking to Bob
in a Jersey village, and Baba, I wanted to come back to you
and continue that discussion. If if your lawn is a Saint Augustine and or
a Zoisio grass, I just don't know how you would do the overseating or
what you would use for seeding in Bermuda grass. We do have some semi
dwarf seating options that we can do, but the other two I'm not sure
what would be an appropriate thing to use for an overseed right now. So
probably the best thing to do is is maybe find either a bunch of kids
with rakes or a power rates that's try to get to yes leaves out between
the grass. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah you could. And
you know, I'm just thinking though I've never had a problem with this,
and okay, I do understand too many leaves on the surface in the fall,
you know when it hits the ground, But in general, if they're
falling down in between and the blades can still get sunlight, the leaves themselves
are generally not the big option. One thing you need to be aware of,
though, is you rake them all out. If that grass was then
now you've got some areas where sunlight can hit the soil because you've removed the
leaves that were down in there, kind of helping to partially shade it,
and you may have to be watching for some weed sprouting that will occur once
the sunlight gets through there. My backyard is completely shade. Is there anything
I can grow in way of grass back there? No? Saint Augustine is
as close as you get, and in enough shade, it's not going to
do well. You can do you can do things like this didn't grass,
but monkey grass mondo grass. There is a dwarf type for small areas.
You can put a whole bunch of that in and make a nice little tight
lawn that can take a lot of shade. But when you start looking at
any area of any size at all, it takes a Brazilian little dwarf mondo
plants to fill it, and so that's not practical. All right, that's
what I need to know. And you're always the best, Bob. Thanks,
I appreciate your call. Good luck with getting that under control, all
right, thank you. Yeah, you take care, that's for sure.
Landscaper's Pride is a company that has first of all the local company there.
They've been here in this region for a good long time. And when it
comes to Landscaper's Pride, you're looking at a wide variety of products too.
You know, they basically are turning organic matter into stuff that makes your lawn,
your garden, and even container plants thrive. But right now we're hitting
summer, and summer means got to get the mulch down. Mulch stops weed
seeds from getting established, which means you have less work. You're gonna pull
weeds when it's one hundred degrees outside. I think, so neither do I.
So get a mulch down. Put a pine bark maltz. That's the
most popular one. Pine bark maltz decomposes kind of slowly, so it's a
pretty low mulch. Nice one. A lot of people like the hardwood mulch
I do too. Example, it is not made out of pallettes like a
bunch of cheap old you know, mass packaged mulches can be that grind up
wooden pallets and call that a maltz. No, this is truly a hardwood
based malt It's good for walkways, it's good for flower beds, however you
want to use it. Black velvet is one of the prettiest malts you'll find.
It is from Landscaper's Pride. It is not dyed. It is naturally
dark, dark, velvety, dense, beautiful material, makes a really nice
service molts. They also have cedar molts. They also have Cypress molts for
example. A lot of different options out there for some quality mulches that are
beautiful and they do the job. Landscaper's Pride is where you're going to find
that. If you go to Landscaperspride dot com you can find out all the
many places where you can pick up they're bagged Moltz products. By the way,
they are also available by mulk by bulk. Excuse me, go to
Landscaperspride dot com. We're going to go now to Cypress and talk to Ed
Hello, Ed, Good morning. I sent you a couple of pictures of
the measures I'm having with some tomato plants their celebrity. I put them in
in time this year and got a nice crop of tomatoes, but as it's
getting warmer, I'm having disease problems. I guess that their leaves and stems
are yellowing, have black dots on them, and then on some of the
leaves it's got some kind of a cocoon looking thing on them. Did you
get those photos? I did, so. The little black spots are some
sort of a disease. Probably it could be fungal or bacterial, I can't
tell which. At this point in the season, you know, it's fixing
to really heat up, and our tomato production just crashes. So I'm a
little bit hesitant to do a whole lot to these plants, just because I
don't know that you're going to get a lot more production out of them at
this point. But you certainly could use a product. I would probably try
something that is a copper based spray, copper base. There's a number of
them where you go and do your shopping, you know, for your gardening
supplies. A copper based sprays you're up there in the Cypress area. You
know you've got you've got Cypress ace hardware. You've got M and D a
little a little bit up further north and Langham Creek as you go a little
south from you, those ace hardware stores are all going to have your copper
base, a copper based fungicide type spray, the stuff you described sitting on
the leaf. And I see in the picture that is caterpillar poop, and
you are you have a tomato hornworm somewhere above that on the plant that is
eating the leaves, A big, all fat caterpillar, big as your little
finger. I haven't seen them, but I guess I'm not up there at
the time there there. Yeah, well I do have an issue with those
legged Yes, yeah, I've kind of I read someplace that you could vacuum
him up, so I just bought a handheld vacuum and vacuum up. Yeah
you can. You can't. And when you catch them young, they can't
fly away. Once they're older. You kind of got to got out there
with your vacuum early in the morning sneak up on them. But yeah,
there's nothing wrong with that other than the neighbors are going to talk about you.
But they're doing that already. You know. Mildred's Mildred. He's out
there vacuuming his tomato plants. He's gone off the deep end. So yeah,
all right, all right, well, I appreciate it, Thank you,
sir, appreciate your call. Take care, thank you. Oh yeah,
that's true. Yeah, tomatoes, it's getting warm enough to where they're
they're having a hard time getting getting uh uh tomatoes set. Once we get
into the nineties during the day and then our night times are up around eighty
up in the upper seventies, even we start to lose our ability for the
large fruited tomatoes, especially to set. Fruit cherries and grapes are a little
bit better about that. We're gonna go now to Parlant and talk to Kevin.
Hey, Kevin, Hey, good morning, Skip morning man. Just
a courtesy announcement for for anyone as a homeowner, trim back your trees from
rubbing on the roof and clean out your gutters. Good idea. I can't
how many roofs I've been on in the past month because of these storms.
Yep, you know, tree branches cause what's called mechanical damage insurance companies do
not cover that, and they're going to scrutinize the rest of the roof too.
That's good. If your gutters have trees growing out of them, not
a good thing. I can guarantee that. Yeah, that's true. That's
well, that's good. I appreciate that advice, Kevin. I may elaborate
on our hair in a little bit. It's good. Good word you take
care. Yeah, I've noticed that in addition to that, some species of
mosquitoes like to live in decaying organic matter of water. So you got,
you know, leaves that are rotting in the water. And remember it only
takes a bottle capful of water to raise a mosquito. Well, what Kevin
is saying is true. That rotting leaves a little bit of a sagging spot
in your gutter, and now you are just setting yourself up for even more
mosquito problems. So thank you, Kevin, those good advice. Appreciate that
very much. We're gonna take a little break here and I'll be right back.
Our phone number if you'd like to give a producer a call seven one
three two one two k t R H. You'll get you on the board
and we'll talk to you right after we talked to Terry from fulsher when we
come back. Welcome back to garden Line. Good have you with us today.
When was the last time you went out to Nelson Water Garden and Nursery.
That's out in Katie, Texas. That's our West that's your West Houston
Garden Center. It's the one you need to know about. You need to
get out there and check it out. It's a beautiful place. I was
out just recently visiting a throw off out there and checking out all all the
new plants that they've gotten in, and man, they had a really nice
selection of things. Now, of course, you know Nelson's is a place
for water gardens. I mean, do you want a beautiful, let's say,
a waterfall designed, a rock waterfall put into your landscape. There's nothing
more soothing and beautiful than that. They can do that for you. They
can even advise you if you do it yourself. Or they have the big
giant urns that are a glazed pottery, just beautiful with the water tumbling out
of the top or or running over the sides of it, a beautiful sound.
It's called a disappearing fountain because the water goes down into gravel or rock
underneath the urn, and then it comes right back up through it and it's
it's just a wonderful, wonderful effect. When you go there and you see
the things they have, you will be inspired and you'll want some. So
I'd tell you to take your friends when you go, because it really is
an inspiring place and they've got a great selection of all kinds of things.
They're just out there and Katie, So it's just a hop, skip and
a jump outside of Houston. You just run right out there on Katie Fort
Ben Road, turn north and it's just a hop, skip and a jump.
Here. I am using all these colloquialisms, but it's the truth.
Nelson Water Garden beautiful place to go, inspiring, definitely a destination place.
You're going to find the plants you need, and you're going to find a
lot of really cool inspiration out there as well. I'm going to head out
now to fullsher and we're going to talk to Terry. Hello, Terry,
good morning, Skip. How are you today? I'm good, sir.
How can we help? I'm having some yard work done. Actually, what
we had we had some drainage issues in a new build area, and so
we've had that corrected and the landscapers have come in and put in some new
SOD. My question is is when should I start fertilizing that new sawd area.
It can do fine for about a month and then you can begin to
fertilize it. You can actually go a little longer than that. The SOD
comes in with a pretty good amount of nutrient and the first job of that
side is to get roots down, and so for the first few weeks,
that is what it's focusing on, is getting roots down in the ground.
Then it's got the root system to take up nutrient and to support growth.
So you continue to build the density or maintain the density of it. So
I would say you don't need to fertilize any sooner than a month after you
plant. You could even wait to look, okay, well I followed ready
lemons of the nitrofoss schedule. Anyways, I just infertilized like last month.
So I would even just waiting until the next feeding time. Yeah, stand
on the schedule. Yeah, what did you did you use a slow release?
Yeah? Yes, yes, silver bag will carry you all the way
into fall. Yeah, you can do your next fertilization and fall. In
the meantime, return those clippings when you're mowing and they slowly. Yeah,
I always do. You'll be all right, all right, Thank you so
much for your all right, y, thanks a lot, appreciate that.
Yep, those schedules are very important. I just want to remind you I
got mine online too, if you would like to go to gardening with Skip
dot com. Gardening with Skip dot Com. I have elaborated on the schedules
a little bit there. I've got a lawn schedule and a pest disease and
weed schedule that I encourage you to print out take a look at when you're
out there doing that. Whenever our clay soils get wet, they swell,
and when they get dry they shrink. They actually do. That's why there's
those giant cracks in the backyard. Have you ever been in a yard of
clay soil and it was super dry and the cracks are so large you could
lose a chihuahua down in the ground, I mean, the big old giant
cracks. Well, that's what happens to our soil, which recks havoc on
your landscape, on your hard scapes. Rather your sidewalks, your driveways,
and most importantly, the foundation of your home. Fix my slab foundation repair.
Ty Strickland, he's the owner. He's been doing this for twenty three
years. He knows how to fix it right. And Tye he's got the
expertise and he's got the experience. And if you see maybe a door is
sticking that used to not stick, or there's a crack in the sheet rock
or on the outside you see a crack in the brick, that's a reason
to quickly go ahead and call ty. Don't put this kind of thing off.
Listen. These situations definitely don't get better, they get worse, and
so do something soon. Tell them you're a guarden line listener. I'll give
you a free estimate for gardenline listeners. The things I most appreciate about Tie
and Fix my Slab is the fact that they show up on time. He
prices things in a fair way and he fixes it right. And what more
can you ask for from any kind of a service provider than that show up
on time, fair price, fix it right, fix myslab dot com,
Fix my slab dot com two eight one two five five two eight one two
five five four nine four nine. We're going to go now to Ray in
Spring, Texas. Hello, Ray, good morning, Good morning. I
want to see if you can help me. I have two Japanese blue bears
about five feet tall that I have put in in twenty one right up to
the big freeze, okay, and one of those blue bearers is turning yellow
and the leaves will fall in off and I don't really know what the problem
is. I don't want to lose it. And if there's anything you can
tell me that I can do to save it, I would appreciate it.
Yeah, it's not unusual on a Japanese blueberry they get into a little bit
of stress, or just as they grow, the older leaves a little further
down the line from the ends of the shoots, you'll see yellowing. They'll
even turn a pretty low red color sometimes before they drop off. And that
that is either related to just its older leaves that are being cast off,
which it does periodically, or it's a stress and the stress could be soggy
wet soil, poor drainage, it could be lack of water. I think
it would be root road over watering. You know we didn't getting a lot.
Well, that's that's what I'm saying. Yeah, too much, too
much water, poor drainage. You know, the problem with too much water
isn't the fact that there's a lot of water. It's the fact that the
roots can't get oxygen and so yes, that can stress them. You can
get a root rod in them. So either water extreme can cause a problem
with them. You just have to get out. I would say, get
a little hand draut, dig down about four inches and feel the soil and
if it's moist, you don't need to water. And once a tree is
established, once a shrub like that is established, it should not have been
water and it's just a rain that's doing it, you know. Yeah,
yeah, but I will do that. I'll dig down because I was wondering
if there may be some root rods there since it's been getting a lot of
water. Where it is, one, I will get the other one.
That's fine. Yeah, Well if it's if it's not you water and it's
too you might want to relook at where's this water coming from. Maybe there's
a downspout of the house that could be redirected somewhere so you can avoid or
minimize the amount of water that goes to that area. If there's something in
your power to do, I would do it. I think so Okay,
thank you so much. Appreciate it. I try that. I think it's
maybe my down spout. Okay, sounds real good. Appreciate that. Thank
you so much. You take care. Yep, we appreciate that very very
much. Let's see we want to I want you to mention Ciena Molts.
They're down south of Houston. I talk about them all the time because Cinamalts
is a place you go to get quality materials. You know how I say
brown stuff first. If you want to make all the brown stuff as good
as it can be for the plants to succeed, Cnmalts will get They got
you covered. They carry all the fertilizers I talk about on garden line,
all of them. They have them there. So that's part of getting the
nutrients in your soil. They carry composts, they carry bed mix. It's
like, for example, they have the veggie and herb mix from heirloom soils
down there. They have all kinds of premium mulches, premium mulches, all
all kinds of options for you. You can buy things in bulging, buy
things in bags. You can go get it yourself if you're within twenty miles,
so deliver it to you there Sienna multch dot com. Go to that
website and find out more about them. They're north of roch Sheron, near
where Highway six and two eighty eight are there FM five point twenty one.
They're open till five o'clock Monday through Friday and on Saturday until two, so
you need to go ahead and give them a call or swing by there.
Make sure that you're ready to go. Cennamultch Love Cenamulf. Hey, guess
where I'm going to be after the show today? And I hope you are
too. Going to be at the wild Birds Unlimited in bell Air. Wildbirds
Unlimited in bell Air. It's easy to get there, you know. They're
down where Stella Link comes into bel Air Boulevard, kind of southwest Houston.
Real easy to get to come by there. Bring me some plants and pictures
and things. Let's talk about how to have a beautiful lawn, how to
have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape. We can do all that kind
of thing there. And while you're there, plan on grabbing some Father's Day
gift for your Dad. They got a lot of cool stuff. One of
the things that I am probably my favorite product that they have is their scroll
proof feeder. Come by and I'll show it to you. I want you
to see this saying it's amazing. I love my Welcome to kt r H
Garden Line with Skip Richard. It's just watch him as Hey, welcome back.
Let's get going here. We've got some more garden line to do,
lots of things to talk about because we want you to have success with your
garden and your landscape. If you live up in the Montgomery area, do
you know about A and A Plants and produce. You drive by them all
the time. They're right there on Highway one oh five on the east side
of Montgomery. So all of you up at the various lake neighborhoods up around
Lake Conroe, you know Del Lago and Walden and all the other neighborhoods up
there, this is your hometown garden center. Just always stock full of everything
you need. When we're planting vegetables during those seasons, they've got them.
When we have flowers, they've got them, shrubs, trees, vines.
Do you need blame to go in the landscape maybe a chimenea for the patio
or some sort of artwork for out in the garden. They've got some really
cool stuff. Yes, they have to go in the store and see.
I mean they look up, look up. A lot of it's hanging up
in the rafter is there. It is really cool stuff. And they've got
every fertilizer I talk about, and I do mean every fertilizer, every one
of the major brands that we talk about on Garden Line, including the soil
products as well from airloom soils in Nature's Way. They've got all of that
right there at Ana Plants and Produce. It makes it really easy. Their
expert landscape crew does some clean up around Lake Conroy area. If you need
a little work done on that get things spruced up, they're set up for
that as well. They usually keep my schedule at the checkout counter there at
Ana Plants and Produce on the east side of Montgomery on one oh five.
But if they don't, just go ahead and print it out, take it
yourself, bring it in there, and that way you can point at the
product that you're looking for, make sure you go home with the right one.
We're going to go now to Cypress and talk to Leanne. Hello,
Leanne, good morning, Good morning. Problem with nutsedge that has invaded my
vegetable garden, and thought I had it under control, but it was being
hidden by my Now it's a big problem, okay. And I've read if
she on edgehammer, and of course is don't spray on vegetable, right,
But my question is how close can I get? Because I've got some that
has invaded, like under the canopy of this cute meatball basil, and I've
been pulling up arugula to get to it because I know I can't avoid spraying
the arugula. I mean, it's it's all so infiltrated under theirs. Yeah.
I think there's just not a great solution in a vegetable garden like that
because the image and the manage and the sedge hammer and all those are not
labeled for vegetable gardens. Glyfa sade is round up glyphasade is, but it
doesn't do as good of a job on nutsedge as the others do. If
it were my garden, I think I would do one or two things.
I would either the nutsedge tends to come up above the foliage of the plants
you're talking about, and you could wipe a product onto that nuts edge foliage
and avoid spraying and killing your vegetables with it. That would be one option.
The other would be that whenever you transition, which in a vegetable garden
you're transitioning several times, that arugula is not going to be there a long
time when you transition, go ahead and take those nutsedge plants, follow them
down and get the tubers out as much as you can, and just kind
of regularly do the digging along with your when you're able to do the treatment.
But use a wiper applicator rather than a spray applicator. Okay, so
you're saying it could contaminate the soil, then no, it won't contaminate the
soil. It's okay. So a lot of those products aren't labeled for use
in the garden, and I cannot recommend and use of a product outside the
label like that. You know, I can't tell you I just go do
it anyway. I'm not going to do that. But whatever you use in
a vegetable garden to put on the nut's edge, if you apply it with
a wiper as opposed to a spray, then you avoid it getting on a
desirable plant in the garden as well. Does that make sense? It does.
I've kind of devised where I took a sola cup and put an X
on the bottom and put that over the head of the spray. Or you
can do that spray under just that cup so it doesn't get out from underneath
it. Yeah, you could, you could do that, Okay, Yeah,
but I think the wiper is even better. And I use you.
I've seen people use different things. If you're in a vegetable garden, you
don't mind doing hands and knees by the cheapest set of tongs, barbecue tongs
you can find, you know, just those little thin metal things that no
fancy gripsure thing. And if you can figure out how to drill a hold
in one and attach a sponge to each side, or use super not super
blue hot glue or whatever whatever it takes to get a little piece of sponge
on each side, you just put the product on the sponge and you reach
down and squeeze the nuts edge leaf and pull up and it wipes right on
the leaf and you get it on nothing else. I've made those out of
the things you grab a jar off a shelf with too those little grabber tools.
You can put a sponge on those. But whatever you do, you're
applying it just to the nuts sedge. Got it, all right, thank
you very much. Yeah. The last last tip there, Leanne, is
don't once it gets three to five leaves, you need to be doing something,
digging it or treating it, because otherwise it's creating. I know,
it's a mess. I found some last night there were two feet tall.
Yeah, yeah, well, okay, but what happens when that happens is
they've already got a daughter plants that now you're gonna deal with. But that's
okay. Just stay on them, keep your eyes peeled. Yeah, my
rugo is quite prolific, all right. See, and I just let it
go because I love it so much. All right, Well, there you
go. All right. I think you're armed with the right with the right
process right now, and you can do that. And by the way,
you're up there in Cyprus. You know you got Ace hardware stores all over
the place. Up in your area. There's two or three real close to
you where you can get all these kinds of products. And sometimes I'm in
tumble, so go to D and D Feeds. Oh yeah, they have
it. They have that stuff up there too. All right, thanks a
lot, appreciate it, appreciate it. Take care. Yeah, I was
talking about ACE Hardware. You know, Aacet Hardware is a place for the
Father's Day gift that your dad will love. I mean, think about it.
Ace Hardware. They have all kinds of gadgetry for the lawn, for
the garden. I mean we're talking about, you know, a new chainsaw,
one of these electric powered tools and products that are available, a string
of lights to turn that outdoor sitting area into just a beautiful little ambiance place.
I mean on her own. How about a barbecue. Oh my gosh.
Ace has barbecue pits, the highest quality, the best brands, and
all the accessories you need to go with them. I mean they do.
Ace Hardware is the place, and when it comes to a Father's Day gift,
I cannot imagine a better place. No matter what your dad's interested in,
ACE Hardware is going to have some really cool stuff. Everyone is independently
owned, and each one is different. Some have certainly one of them may
have a fudge bar or something like that. Someone may have another one that
does etching on some sort of a tool or cutting board or what. Every
Ace Hardware is different, So go into your local Ace Hardware and see what
they have, and you're going to see stuff that's like, you know,
I never would have thought of that, but that's perfect for my dad.
And I guarantee you you go to Ace Hardware and you're going to find something
for Dad for this weekend. And by the way, this weekend is Father's
Day weekend, right, So get over to your local Ace Hardware. You
can find it by going to Acehardware dot com, forward slash Houston, Acehardware
dot Com forward slash Houston and there's what forty stores. It's going to be
really easy to find one near you in the greater Houston area for Ace Hardware.
So don't don't delay on this. I mean Father's Days tomorrow. Let's
go. Let's get this done. You're going to find something cool Today's hardware.
It is time for me to take a break here. I realized I
just talked myself into a little bit of a break time. Diana and Dave,
you'll be the first two up when we come right back. The phone
number if you'd like to give Chris a call and get on the boards seven
one three two one two kt rh. Hey, welcome back to Garden Line.
Good to have you with us today. A little bit of mix there
on the music. You know, we try to mix things up a little
bit here on Garden Line. Get your fix for all kinds of different things.
If you've not fertilized you're on this summer, you ought to consider sweet
green. Sweet green is a product from Nitrofoss. Sweet Green is a base.
It's based on a molasses material with microbial activity turning it into an eleven
percent nitrogen fertilizer. Now, whenever you put molasses on the soil that carbon
microbes need carbon to thrive, and I mean it kicks them into high gear.
They really take off. And that's part of the creating a rich environment
around the plant roots with beneficial microbes to help support that grass plant. Sweet
greens available in a lot of different places. You can go out to enchanted
forest in a Richmond Rosenberg area and find it growers Outlet up and Willis has
it. RCW Nursery on Topball Parkway is another place like many where you're going
to find sweet green from Nitrofos. Go ahead and get it down now you're
going to want to plan it now. If you have not fertilized this summer,
if you're already fertilized, hold off. But if you haven't put this
week green now now about six weeks, eight weeks from now, you could
do it again. And that'll carry you all the way up until we get
our first full fertilization schedule, which is coming up pretty soon in a while,
pretty soon, it's coming up in the fall. But the sweet green
will carry you all the way to that. Always return your clippings when you're
fertilizing, because clippings are full of nutrients, and if you don't return them,
you're just renting fertilizer. Let's head out now to Jersey Village and talk
to Diana. Hello Diana, thanks for waiting, Good morning, Skip.
What is the best way to root azelias from a cutting? H Okay,
you the best? First of all, the best type of material you want
is in the springtime we get all the fresh new growth and then it kind
of slows down and we say it hardens off. It kind of goes from
succulent to a little on the woody side, you know. And so about
now about June, that spring growth is hardened and matured, so now's an
excellent time to take that cutting. I usually would take a cutting about the
with them a hand, So if you were to reach up and grab the
end of a shoot, cut it off at the at the bottom of your
hand, in other words, a width of your hand long. Cut the
shoots off, take the bottom two or three leaves off, and then dip
them in a rooting hormone, which you can get, you know, from
your local ace hardware store, from a garden center, even though some of
our feed stores will carry those. Dip them in the rooting hormone, and
then put them in a mix that is about fifty percent pete and fifty percent
pearlte parlts, a little white stuff that's real chunky and loose and airy.
If you put them in just potting soil, you may have success, but
it also may stay a little too wet, and with the pearlite high content
of prolite in there, it's just looser and drains better. And then cover
them with something clear so they can get light. But don't put them in
the sun. You don't want them in the direct sun. You want them
in a very bright and that sort of creates this little mini greenhouse that they
root really well in. Okay, alrighty, So once they generally how long
does it take for them to root? It depends on the condition of the
cutting, and it depends on the temperatures and other things. But you should
get something in a few weeks. I would say, you know, within
about a month, you should be able to check and if you see new
growth occurring, that means it has a root. It's not going to push
new growth if it doesn't have a root. Okay, So once it has
the roots, then should I I plant them in like say a pot What
type of a medium would I use? Then? Then I would lift them
up carefully out of there. I will use a spoon or whatever to go
underneath them and kind of lift them up, because if you just grab the
cutting and pull on it, you may rip off some roots getting it out
of there, and then pot it up into a mix. You can use
a potting soil if you would like to do that. That would work just
fine. A rose soil works really well for azelius too. So many of
our you hear me talk about our rose soil mixes that are available here in
the Houston area. Those are excellent for potting up in Azalia. Great,
thank you so very much. All right, Dan, thank you for the
call. Appreciate that very much. We're going to go now to Dave in
Spring. Hello Dave, and good morning morning. I had a question about
Virginia button weed and is it too late, we are we doomed? Or
does celsius actually work? Celsius works pretty good. Button wheat is persistent and
no one product, one time is going to do it. So I would
use Celsius, but I would do it early in the morning. Even though
Celsius can be used at a little warmer temperatures than a lot of the other
broad leaf post emergence can I still wouldn't wait until it's one hundred degrees in
the middle afternoon and try to put the Celsius on. That. I would
go ahead and get it done early in the morning, when we're around eighty
degrees preferably, and that that will give you your best shot. You're probably
six weeks later, eight weeks later, you may need to be going back
in and doing it again next year. Start a little bit earlier on the
on the battle. Now that next as a spray or it's a sp it's
a spray. It comes in a little packet. Uh. It's a little
cardboard thing that hangs on the shelf at the garden center, at the feed
store or the you know, Southwest Fertilizer wherever you get your stuff. Uh,
and it and it's a little clear bubble Packet's got a little envelope in
there that you follow the label. Yeah, good luck with it. I
wish we could eat button weed and other than that seems like too. Just
after three or four years of putting down compost in a grassy area that has
it, you usually get rid gets rid of it. Is that logical or
not crazy? I don't think that'll work. Button weed likes wet condition,
and so if you are in control of moisture, don't keep it wet.
That would be our irrigation. That would be maybe you got a drainage coming
out of a drought down pipe that could be redirected. Anything that's in your
power. To let it dry out a little bit. It won't kill the
button weed, but it'll just keep it from proliferating. Buttonweed and dollar weed
both just love it when we keep it soggy, wet, real good.
All right, take care you bet? Thank you day. Yeah, some
of these weed I wish, I wish we could eat but weed. Do
you know? You can eat nuts edge, yellow nutsedge, tubers. I'm
in the final stages of getting a nuts edge right up on the web,
and one of the things I talk about in there is that you can eat
yellow nuts edge. The Okay, this is nerd alert. Sorry for those
of you who just want the facts, ma'am, no details. Well here's
the details. Nutsedge is called cyperus esculentis. Esculentis means you can eat it.
That is a rough translation of esculentis from Latin. Yep. The Egyptian
pharaohs were buried with their chufa nuts, which is cyperus esculentis. And so
you go into the into the tombs of the pharaohs, and you know,
within arm's reach they had some nuts edge to snack on. Doesn't that sound
Wouldn't you like to be buried with your nut's edge? I think I want
to be buried with my fire ants. Maybe that would be another good crazy
stuff. Yep, you can eat it, all right, end of the
nerd alert. Let's go now to a Teskesina and we're going to talk to
Chris, Chris, are you there? Yes? I am all right.
How can we help? Hey? Sounds like you got a party going on
over there. I did not get an invitation, but oh well, it's
a weight watchers party. So if you want to come, Okay, that's
good. How can we help today? Hey? So I have all these
little white pillars that are invading my entire yard. They're they're creating webs on
the trees. They're all over my flowers. Yeah, how do I what
do I do with them? Are webworms and they've been in the trees creating
the webs. And like any caterpillar, whether it's going to become a moth
or a butterfly. By the way, these are going to be moths.
Uh, they go through their stage where they're growing and feeding and then they
move off to make their cocoons to complete the life cycle. These have dropped
out of the trees and they're just crawling around. They may munch a little
on something, but basically they're finding a place to make their cocoon and do
that. So you could ignore them. If they're eating something you like,
just spray the with an insectus. Any insecticide will kill the webworm. Caterpillar
if you spray it on the on the leaves that it's eating. But I'll
tell you most of them, they're just on their way now to move to
the next life stage. Okay, So I also have these it looks like
chia seeds all over my driveway. Is that? What is that from the
same webworm? It's it's from something up in the It's probably from a caterpillar
up in the trees. Yeah, caterpillars. They they drop their droppings and
they tend to be little dry pellets. Depending on the size of the caterpillar,
you got different sized droppings. It's probably not a beetle if it's if
you're seeing it like that on the driveway. Okay, So how what's the
what's the lifespan for this for the webworm? Webworm? Yeah, they we
start off in late spring with our first generation. Most years, many years
it's not even noticeable. This year is one of the worst for the first
generation I've seen. Uh. Then they go through a second life cycle and
then typically a third that hits about August September, and that's the one that's
the worst. That's why they call it fall webworm because that's the worst generation.
For it. So just watch and if you're looking up in your trees
periodically, when you first start to see webbing, that's the time to spray
the foliage so that when they eat it, it kills them. And there
are a couple of organic products. There's certainly many synthetic products that will kill
them. Okay, So what's a good product to use if you want something
that's natural. Spinosid spi nosad BT will also kill webworm caterpillars, both spinosid
and BT or organic. And then when it comes to synthetics, there's a
lot of synthetic perithoids it will also kill them. Just remember, when you're
spraying for webworms, you got to get the spray to the leaves they're eating,
so that may mean breaking up the web if you wait too long,
and now they've got a big web protecting themselves. Okay, okay, wonderful,
Thank you so much. I appreciate your health. You take care all
right. You're listening to guarden Line. Our phone number is seven to one
three two one two k t RH seven one three two one two k t
r H. We're gonna take a little break for the news. I'll be
right back all right, welcome back to guard Line. Good have you with
us today. We got a lot to talk about. I'll get going here.
Hey, I'm going to be at Wallbird's Unlimited. I'm going to be
at the store that is in bell Air, that is Southwest Houston, the
bell Air store. And I'll be doing that at eleven o'clock to day.
When I finish here on the show, ten o'clock shows over, I'm heading
over that way. I'll be there till one. Bring me some samples and
pictures. Let's meet, let's talk by the way. While you're at Wallbirds,
it is an excellent opportunity to get something for dad. They have some
really cool stuff. Uh. For example, I would highly recommend that you
get the Eliminator squirrel proof feeder. That one is a Cadillac. It works
so well. The squirrels at my house they just sit in the tree and
they say, I can't repeat the words I say on the air. They
hate the fact they can't get into it. I love that fact. The
birds love it too. They can get in and get everything they need.
While you're Wallbirds, there are bird feeders, there's bird houses, there's you
know, there's books, there's all kinds of things. How about a little
bird water bath, a little water bath, and they have gadgetry that you
can get that even helps control things like mosquitoes that might be a problem there.
While Bird's Unlimited, they're all over Houston. There's six of them in
the greater Houston area. All you have to do is go to WBU dot
com. WBU stands for wild Birds Unlimited, WBU dot com forward slash Houston
and it'll show you right where the stores are, including how to get to
the one in bel Air where I'll be today from eleven to one o'clock.
Hope you'll come on and see me. Really looking forward to seeing you out
there. We're going to head now to northwest Houston and talk to Ralph.
Hello, Ralph, good morning. I'm glad to have you. Yeah.
Well, I got my bird feeders out and then the big old well other
birds come here on a little bird get and I'll do fine. I'm talking
about my Saint Augustine in front. It is running big long runners on top
and my back yards all right, But why what is called in debt with
the Saint Augustine runs all on the south. It does that sometimes, especially
when the lung gets a little thick and the runner it sort of gets up
on top and it you know, it doesn't have the doesn't have a mind
of its own where it goes. Hey, I need to turn south and
go down towards the soil. And so it's like the grass, the other
runners and grass blader just holding it up above the ground. And when you
mow usually those lift up underneath the mower and get cut off. But in
general, it's not something to worry about, not something you can do a
lot of. Just make sure you're not overwatering and overfertilizing ralph because the more
growth you get, the more of that thatchy runner growth you're going to have.
And so just keep it at a moderate rate on the fertilizing. All
right. Another question, I got a lot on my neighbor's got a bushy
line it and it all comes under my fence and it comes over to my
yard and I almost got into my garden and I'll pull it up. But
yeah, what is best way to stop it? Oh? But have to
see a picture of it to kind of know what we're dealing with. Is
probably got a broad leaf plants, kind of a vining thing. You're saying,
yes, it's a vining. Yeah, is it coming is it in
stuff that you don't want to spray and hurt the stuff that's in or is
it in a spot where you can just spray it and not have to worry
about it. Well, I'm just want to keep it from their yard my
yard, and it's run under my fence and now I'll pull it. I
left it alone for a while, but then it runs all the way to
my my guard. Okay, Well, you can either either just cutting it
off there where it's coming through, regularly cutting it off, or spraying it
with something that contains tri clo peer tri clo pere t r I c l
O P y R. And if you apply that to it, it will
it will move in it and it'll kill it. Okay, all right,
thank you, great program. Hey, Ralph, thanks for the call.
Appreciate that a lot. For those of you who are who have not been
to r CW Nursery lately, you need to go check them out. They've
got a lot of good stuff on on hand, I mean in stock right
now. They've got some special deals going. I mean I'm talking about roses,
I'm talking about shrubs, about trees, significant percentages off on all those
different products, and it just gets you ready to go for summer. You
know, it's still okay to get stuff planted now. You just want to
kind of watered a little bit day by day as you're going through help it
get established. But you can do it right now, and now is a
great time to pick up a really good deal on it. They've got some
interesting signage too. I like some of the humorous signs that they have.
Maybe Dad would like one of those too, by the way, they've got
some of that. And of course when you go to RCW, know you're
going to get the fertilizers that I talk about here on Guardline to take care
of your lawn as well. Now they grow their own trees up there in
Plantersville, and so when you go to RCW and buy a tree, you
know you're going to get one that a the species grows here, because that's
what they sell, things that want to grow here. Secondly, one that's
been grown properly and they can come out and plant it properly for you,
so you can be off to a good start now. The best time to
plant a tree is forty years ago. Second best times today, So don't
delay anymore, go ahead and get it out, because what is our goal
when we plant a tree? How soon can I hang a hammock out there?
Right? Well, let's get that tree going. And RCW right now
has got a really some really good deals for you as well as those excellent
cultivars and varieties that you would want to have and plant again if you haven't
been there, that's the garden center. That is where Tomball Parkway comes into
Beltway eight. The website is rcwnurseries dot com. Easy to get in,
easy to get out, and easy to find what you're looking for. If
they don't have it, they probably can get it. That's why I call
them to get it. Got it nursery. We're going to go now to
Marene. Hello Marene, Oh, good morning, thanks for taking my call.
Good morning. I have I have a question. I have about a
thirty five year old American elm and it started dropping leaves and they're dark,
they have dark spots on them. And I called out a professional tree service
and they diagnosed it as a fungus and they said there's really nothing we can
do about it. And I just kind of wanted to know your opinion.
If there's something I can do for this fungus on this American elm. How
big are these spots? Well, some of them are like half of a
leaf. Okay, I don't know what that is. That is not a
Elms just basically don't have leaf disease problems. They have a thing called Dutch
elm disease, which kills whole shoots and trees. But as far as like
I got spots on my leaves, there is there is one fungus that's very
uncommon that causes small yellow spots that eventually can kind of get a black coloring
to them, And there's a handful of others. But in general, elm
leaf diseases are not a problem. If you would like to take a picture
of some leaves and send it to me, maybe i'll see something other than
that. But I'm not going to recommend any fungicide sprays because I'm not sure
what you're dealing with. There. Oh, I'm gonna put you. I'm
gonna put you on home Marene and the producer will pick up the phone and
give you an email. Make sure you attach the photos, don't embed them
in the text, attach them to the email, and then either I can
answer it online, or if you like to call back tomorrow, we can
we can take a look at that. We're kind of running a little shorter
on time today, but if I get them fast enough, I'll talk about
him on the air. Okay, okay, thank you so much, all
right, goodbye, goodbye, Thanks a lot. Appreciate that. Yeah,
that's interesting. Lots of lots of things can be going on out there in
nature, but I am not aware of an elm fungal leaf disease that warrants
spraying. That would be a new one for me, but it could happen.
If you're having the Tomball area and you need a local feed store out
west to Tomball on twenty nine to twenty is D and D Feed has been
providing quality products for the lawn and garden for a long time. Yes they
are a feed store, and yes they have super high quality pet feed.
They really really carry an excellent selection of different feed supplies and things from whatever
you need. But they've also got everything you need for the lawn, garden
and landscape. I'm talking about fertilizers. I talk about these brands a fertilizer
and this one is a good one, and that one. If I talk
about it on guardenline, they've got it there. If you're looking for age,
leaf, mold, compost or rose soil or fruit berry and citrus and
veggie and herb, all of those are from heirloom soils. They've got those
as well. They keep a stock of plants around also. And if it
comes to pests, diseases, and weeds, D and D feed again,
three miles west of tumbul on two forty nine, or excuse me, twenty
nine to twenty. They're west of two forty nine on twenty nine to twenty,
about three miles out there. They're going to have those things as well.
Just show up out there, you'll see what I'm talking about. D
and D feed two eight one three five one seven one four four two eight
one three five one seven to one four four D and D feed your hometown
feed store. Well, let's see here. I believe it's time for me
to take another low break. We're going to do that, and I will
be right back in the meantime. If you want to get on the board,
just give Chris a call. Seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. All right, I've got a little bit of they might be
giants. I can mix it up for you a little bit here on garden
line. Well, let's see here. As might is something you hear me
talk about often when it comes to lawns, because a ismite provides trace minerals,
and there's a little bit of confusion when it comes to what is a
fertilizer and what does this mean as mite? If I fertilize, I need
as mite. Here's a deal. The typical things we think of as fertilizer
for the lawn. They contain the three big the big three, nitrogen,
phosphorus, potassium, always in that order, the three numbers on the bag.
They also may have some other nutrients in them, especially in organics,
so you're gonna have some micros in those as well. But those are the
ones, the big three we put down in order to support good vigor,
growth and everything like that. But they're also trace minerals, things we need
tiny amounts of, but we need them. They're essential. For example,
how many times has someone gone and said, I need to put some selenium,
manganese, and I don't know what else on my lawn. Well,
never they never heard that. But those are essential minerals, and so if
you could take all of the manganese particles out of the soil, a plant
could not live because manganese is essential, zinc is essential, iron is essential.
There are a lot of those, like twenty something nutrients that plants have
to have and trace minerals from azamite or part of that package. So that's
why we do that. You can do your fertilization, but you also need
to consider about the micros and that's what that's what azemite's about. You can
go to azamite Texas dot com find out more about it. Azamite's widely available.
All the feed stores, garden centers, you hear me talk about ACE
hardware stores, a Southast fertilizer, all those places are going to have azomite
and that is something about once a year. You're going to want to put
that out. You can do it at the same time you fertilize. Just
do it in a separate application, don't mix it with your fertilizer when you're
putting it in the hopper, and you'll be just fine. Works really really
well. We're going to go now to League City and talk to Dina.
Hello, Dina, how are you. Well, I'm good. How are
you. I'm doing great, Thank you. I just want to give a
shout out to for A Gardens also known as Texas Landscape or I got several
quotes for cleaning out a very very big flower bed with lots of flowers and
crab apple trees, and he had the best quote and they did a superb
job. You do a good job. I'm always glad to hear that.
I appreciate that. Thank you. It was very professional, that came on
time, and I just wanted to give a shout out. Well, I
appreciate you giving a positive report about that. We we do, you know,
take a good close look at our sponsors before I put my name on.
Hey, this is a good one. So it's good to hear that.
Buy several fruit trees from them and flowers and stuff, and they're all
quality plants. So it'll let you know. Well, that sounds wonderful.
Thank you. I appreciate that call. Thanks bye bye, bye bye,
very very good to hear. Hey, by the way, while I'm while
I'm mentioning or, Hey, the summer hours, I need to give you
all his summer hours. And by the way, for those of you are
going. Who's Horey's what is she talking about? Down in Alvin, Texas
where he's heading gardens. They're up and now on Friday the hour the new
hours for Fridays or nine through three, and then on Saturday and Sunday it's
eight am to four pm, nine to three on Fridays. That's new breaking
news there. I want to let you know if you want to head out
that way, we are going to now go to Hempstead and talk to Jerry.
Hello, Jerry, Hey, how are you today? I'm good,
sir. How can we help? I've got grasshoppers all over my tomato plants
and they're eating the leaves. I'm trying to figure out what's the best course
of action. Oh boy, well, we're kind of getting toward the end
of tomato season, so you know, i'd give a close assessment, and
you know how much spraying and protecting is worth it. But you can you
can spray any kind of an insecticide on the tomatoes that's labeled for put on
putting on tomatoes, and it should kill the grasshoppers. There's a number of
things out there, everything from seven a bill of known seven US for a
long time. Normally I wouldn't recommend putting that on tomatoes because it causes spidermight
outbreaks. But if you're trying to save the leaves, then you know,
I would say that's an option. There are other products out there, but
grasshoppers are just voracious. Yeah. Yeah, And I've got tons of young
tomatoes still on the on the plants. Oh okay, yeah, well then
you definitely yeah grapes and it'll keep producing grapes on into the heat. Yeah.
So it's, uh, that's what I'm trying to save, is the
grape tomatoes. Yeah. Just just go, you know, Jerry, go
wherever you shop for your products and find something that's labeled for tomatoes that's an
insecticide, and that should help the problem is it. Just check how persistent
the thing is, because if it if it's not gonna last, you're gonna
have to reapply it periodically, and if it's a little more persistent, you
won't have to apply it quite as much. All right, appreciate your time,
all right, thank you very much. Appreciate that you will you as
well very much. Hey have you been to Buchanans Plants and the heights?
Oh my gosh, bu Cannons is I just I love going in there Number
one. It's just a wonderful place to go and to visit to see the
different things they have going on. They always have new plants coming in,
you know. They Buchanan's Native Plants. They specialize in natives and they also
do an excellent job in terms of plants for pollinators. So if you go
in there and you've got a challenge, let's say you've got hey, I
need I've got a shady area and I want to which already limits things right,
and I need a pollinator that will grow in a shady area, and
I'd like something that's native, or maybe you don't care, just a mix.
Buchanans has a list for just that. They can provide you the plants
you need for a unique situation like that. Of course, it's Father's Day
shopping, so great time to go in and buy something for Dad. They
have a wonderful little gift shop there too, and some really cool plants.
Buchanans Plants is always good to visit. I love going by there. East
eleventh Street in the Heights. Buchanansplants dot Com. East eleventh Well looks like
here we go, we are already hitting the top of another hour. When
we come back, Donald up in Northwest Houston you'll be first up, and
George and Jersey Village. Yeah, we do take calls from California. You'll
be right after Donald when we come back. Don't forget. Today I'm going
to be at the Wallbird's Unlimited store in bel Air. And by the way,
while I'm there, we've given away some stuff from Wallbirds. We're also
going to be giving away some super Grow Plus for your lawn or whatever you
want to spread on. It'll do good for Medina. We're got some bottles
of that. I've got some other Medina product to give away. I'll be
giving away some of their growing green, the little five pound bags of that,
and oh gosh, hopefully visiting with you, meeting the listeners and answering
your gardening questions eye to eye. We'll be right now. Welcome to kt
RH Guarden Line with Scape Richt. It's just watch him as the world All
right. Here we go again. We got our last hour of the day
coming up here. Don't forget. At the end of the show today,
I'm heading over to Wallbirds Unlimited in bel Air, Texas. Wild Birds Unlimited
in bel Air. I hope you've come over and see me if you hadn't
been to that wall birds before. It's really easy to get to it.
It's where Belair Boulevard comes together with what's outside. Treat the Stellar Link right
bell Air and Stellar Link right there in that area, easy to get to.
We are gonna take off this hour by talking a little bit about turf
before I head to the phones. Real quick. If you've not done your
summer turf application of fertilizer, go ahead and get it done now. It
is time to get that going. And you've got a really quality product by
Nelson Plant Food that I want to tell about. It's part of their Turf
Star line. It's called Slow and Easy, and boy is it ever slow
and easy. It will give you a release of nutrients now, but then
gradually just continue to release and release and release that nitrogen four months or so
down the line. So when you put Slow and Easy down for summer,
you don't have to fertilize again until fall. It carries you all the way
to fall. It is an acidifying fertilizer, so it is going to slightly
acidify that surface area which is where the runners are, which is where take
all root rot which hates acidic conditions. By the way, where it is
most active, and the slow and easy is just a good way to get
a nice, smooth release of nitrogen. Keeps your long green, keeps your
lawn dense, keeps your long healthy without overdoing it. Where you're having a
momo mode, try to keep up, or whether where the excessive nitrogen would
cause a problem with not a good root system. Yep, overdoing nitrogen results
in a less than ideal root system for your turf. Isn't that strange.
It's counter intuitive sort of, but it's how it works. Slow and easy
gives you the gradual feed that avoids that. So it's as simple as that.
Just put it down and don't worry about it. Return your clippings as
your mow and you're good to go. Nelson's got a lot of products,
you know, their nutri Star line. They have the Plume area, which
is good for all flowering tropicals that you might have. They've got their Palm
line. It's part of the nutri Star too, and which works well on
ornamental grasses, which palm basically is a grass plant, and the nutri Star
rose. Just I could sit here just for an hour and talk about all
the different Nelson products that are out there on the market that are excellent for
our plants. Well, there you go. That's a good start. Easy
to find Nelson all over town. For example, Ace Hardware stores carry him.
Ace Hardware stores are going to be the place where you get anything that
you need. I mean, it doesn't matter if it's for your lawn and
garden, you got it at Ace Hardware. But I'm telling you right now,
I cannot think of a better place to get Dad a gift for Father's
Day, which is tomorrow for those of you who aren't keeping track, than
Ace Hardware. I mean, what is Dad interested in it? What kind
of gadget is he interested in? Whether it's Karen for the lawn, whether
it's barbecuing, whether it's you know, creating that beautiful outdoor how about you
know, a beautiful outdoor lighting set or any barbecue. Is the thing I
can't get my mind off of, because this is just the season for that.
Everything like that. You can imagine and stuff and listen to this stuff
you've not thought of yet. For Dad. You're gonna find it Ace.
You're going to walk into Ace. You're gonna look around or you're gonna go.
I didn't even know that that existed. I didn't know A's carried it.
Well, of course ACE carries it. ACE is the place. Go
in there, get some inspiration, and I guarantee you you can find something
that. I don't care who you are, what your dad's interested in.
ACE Hardware is going to have it. Acehardware dot Com is the website.
You can find the store locator, which will help you find forty stores in
the Greater Houston area. We're going to go now to Northwest Houston and talk
to Donald Hello. Donald Hello, We're back again. And I can verify
that ACE is the place because when Radio Shack went away and Sears went away,
ACE is still there. And I have fixed more inordinate crazy things by
going to ACE and say here's what I'm looking for, something like this,
and sure enough you'll say, oh, I got that right here. They
always know where everything is, of course they do, all right, And
this is this is the ACE store that's on Guessner over here. Oh is
that the way you get to Okay, good, my pine tree that has
the roots grow and above the lawn. Okay, we're going to skip on
that now and there's still the way they are. But however, years ago,
maybe ten years ago, there were pine pine tree bark beetles that would
eat into the tree, and I know there was a big killing of pine
trees. I don't know if you remember that blight, if you want to
call it that, yes, okay, okay. So now this pine tree
that is at least thirty years old, and I want to ask you,
how do I measure it to tell you how big it is? Like a
measure around like you're measuring for a belt about chest. Hie, yeah,
no, measure give me the diameter across. Well, so just look at
it from the front and like with the yardstick. Yeah, okay, all
right, well either way, okay, I'll have to measure it. But
I know it's pretty damp big. But yeah, however, so I have
a couple of holes in this side of this tree. I look at it
every so often because we have a garden around the tree, and I see
these holes and I'm like, oh, I hope this is not the pine
tree beetle attack again. So I don't know what to do. Uh,
poke a little something in the hole there to see what's going on. But
you know, it's not soft or anything, but and it's just holes here
and there. And about what's the diameter of the hole we're talking about,
like a pencil racer or something batter? Yeah, like yeah, like yeah,
uh like a three eighths of an inch hole or so yeah, about
like a pencil's in there. And they're the ones that I can see here
right at at face level, you know, about six feet off the ground
here. Okay, is there any sap coming out of them? No?
When you look at when you look up in the canopy of the pine tree
or the needles green. Yeah. Oh, I had this pine tree by
the way, by your advice and everybody's advice in Lewis floor and all with
the tornado went right right through the front of my house there, ripped the
screens off and everything. But I had this tree thinned out. When when
the tree guys and find it out so I can see through it, you
know, have to explain to them. And so when the wind comes doesn't
rip everything. You know, the more branches you have up there, the
more wind pressure you have on the tree. So cleared out all right,
and they did a wonderful job so you can still get shave. Non I'm
gonna I'm gonna jump in. I've got about thirty seconds and I want to
be able to answer your question. Uh, don't worry about it. Those
holes are not something that's threatening the life of your pecan tree? Are pine
tree? Sorry? Sor right? Uh? Anything in there? No,
don't don't worry about it. If they if if they were in the inner
sap of the tree where they can do the damage, you would have sap
coming out of that tree. Okay, And so yeah, don't worry about
it. I don't know what made them, but that's not what we're looking
for. I think you're okay on that. It should be good to go.
Sorry to have to run short, but we got to go to a
break here. I'll stick a little probe in there every so and to see
if it's wet. All right, there you go on. All right,
thanks sir, appreciate that call George, and we come back. You'll be
our first up. We're gonna take a quick break here if you want to
get on the boards to talk. This is our last hour of the day
seven one three two one two kt r H. I'll be right back.
Welcome back to garden Line. Good to have you with us. We got
plenty talked about, and looks from the look of the boards, a lot
of people want to talk too. If you've been to Enchanted Forest recently,
that's the garden center that's down in the Richmond Rosenberg slash Sugarland area. In
other words, if you are in Richmond and you're heading up towards sugar Land,
it's off to the right and Chenned Forest is on FM twenty seven fifty
nine. But let me tell you this place always is stocked full of quality
plants. Right now, they have an excellent supply of many beautiful crape myrtles.
By the way, if you're going to pick out a crape myrtle,
you want to get one that's got some disease resess since it possible. You
want one that's the right color. But almost most importantly, you want one
gets the size you want. Do you want it to be thirty five feet,
then buy one that gets that big. Do you want it to be
fifteen feet, Then buy one that gets that big. That's what I'm saying
by the size. And they've got a good selection there an Enchanted Forest,
a really good selection. It is a beautiful pottery too, some of the
stoneware, the Talavera types of pottery. It's just so colorful. It's it's
gorgeous, absolutely beautiful, beautiful stuff. They have an excellent, excellent selection
of things that attract butterflies. Whether it's for the larval food sources or for
the adult nectar sources, they've got them. And it's no surprise. Intended
Forest is a fun place to visit. It is the kind of place you
want to take your friends and go, allow yourself some time to wander around.
Quality staff, people that know what they're talking about. They can get
you set up so that you can have success no matter what kind of gardening
that you want to do. That's intended for us. It's on FM twenty
seven fifty nine down in the Richmond Rosenberg area and you will enjoy your trip
there. I guarantee you will. It is that kind of I always look
forward to be able to go down there. We're going to go now to
George in Jersey Village. Hello, George, Yeah, good morning, Skip
is good talking to you. So anyhow, I've been saying your praises to
the sky to my brother who lives in Englewood, which is not far from
Lax and I wonder do you take calls from southern California and stuff like that.
We get calls from all over the country, and so yes, we
can now my ability to help somebody in another area, depending on what their
question is. You know, maybe we're limited, but yes, we do
take calls from him. Do you can he listened to your program on the
website a website somewhere. He can listen to the kt r H website or
the best way for someone to listen to our program, I think, unless
they're just sitting at a computer, would be to do an app like the
iHeart Media app. If you go there, you can look at Guardline and
you can listen live. But you can also listen to past shows because we
put them up online as a podcast every time. Yeah. Good, I'll
tell him all about you. He wants to hear you. He's eager to
hear you. All right, good, Well, we'll see if we can
help him out there in LA. They don't have any hard right, I
don't think so. I don't know if that's going to work. All right?
Thanks year, Thanks George. I appreciate thanks for being patient waiting.
I know you had to sit there a little while. Uh, let's go
now to East Texas wherever East Texas is and talk to Joshua Hey, Josh,
yes, sir, Hey, So I'm I'm actually about two hours uh
east of Houston, okay, up north of Lumberton. North of Lumberton.
Form My question is I have a live I live rural, and at the
when I built my house, we didn't have enough pasture for a horse.
So I said, well, I'll just see my front yard with behayo.
Uh huh. Well, now now after two days after you mow your grass,
you've got one foot behave at that seems like is there any way to
get rid of the behavior and not kill the rest of the grass that's seeing
augustine and the whatever native grass is there? Well? Yes, and I'm
trying to think of the name. Oh my gosh, I might have to
hang on just a second here, Uh, there is a product that we'll
control bajea. Oh gosh, what is the name of that grass? And
jeesh, let's see. I think I want to say that Celsius does.
Let me check and make sure I know. One called fahrenheit is pretty good
about that. But it depends that fahrenheit isn't labeled for every kind of grass.
Gimme just one second here. Yeah, fahrenheit is save for Saint Augustine.
So fahrenheit and it's not gonna be one that's easy to find. Fahrenheit
is not one that's just available everywhere, but if you find it, it's
gonna work on behea and be labeled for Saint Augustine. There is another one
called manor m ano R Manner herbicide that will kill bhea and can be used
in Saint Augustine. But when you use Manner or Fahrenheit, you need to
follow the label really carefully as to how and when it's applied, and you
need to not over apply it, not over apply it. Uh, and
it doesn't It doesn't do well when you do it in super super hot weather,
So get it done early in the morning and be careful because it will
also damage trees and shrubs. And people that think if a teaspoon's good,
a tablespoon's better and they drench it on they end up with damage to their
trees and shrubs. So follow the label real carefully and either of those will
control behand. Okay, thank you so much. Manner and Fahrenheit manner M
A n O. R. Manner is probably going to be the easier one
to find, but depending on where you are and what's available out there in
your area specifically, you may have to search around a little bit. Okay,
thank you so much, you bet, thanks a lot. Appreciate that.
Appreciate your call very much. Nature's Way Resources is having their summer sale.
Do you know that through July first? July first, you can get
thirty percent off of most of their plants. Now excluded from that are native
sun perennials, but that's the only thing excluded, Native sun perennials. The
rest thirty percent off their plants, and they have a really good selection of
Texas native They have an excellent selection of plants for pollinators. Yeah, I
know Nature's Way. We think of soil and soil blends, and yes,
of course they're the place for that, but they've also got a nice selection
of natives. Now, this is important you need to listen to carefully.
If you tell them that you hear about them on garden Line, you can
get twenty percent off of all compost products, multch products, and soil blends.
That is a good deal. Twenty percent off all composts, mulches,
and soil blends, Nature's Way resources. You got to just tell them,
hey, I heard about your guardline. I'd like to get that twenty percent
off discount on all those kinds of products. And they can get you all
set up. We're talking about book, we're talking about bags and so on.
Nature's Way Reace sources are up there toward Tomball off Interstate forty five R
where fourteen eighty eight comes together. You need to check them out. Super
super quality products and with a deal like this, don't pass this up.
This is a good deal. You need to jump on. We're going to
head now to Richmond and talk to Roy. Hello Roy, Hey, good
morning, Skip. How you doing well, sir? Thank you? How
can we help? Hey? Skip? We planted some tomatoes, some beef
steak tomatoes, so roma tomatoes, and for some reason, last year our
our fruits were very large, and this year they are like half the size,
okay, three side smaller. Is there anything we can add to the
soil, you know the main there's two things that help with fruits, well,
three things that work on fruit size. Number one is the cultivar.
Each variety has a different genetic tendency to be big or smaller medium. That's
one. Number Two. Is the plant stressed or not. And if the
plants are struggling, and it could be struggling from too much water, from
not enough water, from lack of sunlight, from diseases, you know,
anything that's stress in the plant will affect fruit size. And then finally the
fruit load on the plant. If you, you know, take out the
suckers where you're kind of pruning your tomatoes and limiting the number of clusters,
you're gonna have larger fruit. And if you get a really heavy fruits that
you're gonna have larger or smaller fruit. And so though it's going to be
one of those things roy that's working, So does it need more vigor fertilize
it, Does it need so moisture water? Does it need better drainage?
Don't overwater, you know, and something along those lines. Now that we've
gotten as far into the season as we are, all those larger tomatoes,
the slicers and the aromas and things, they're not going to set well.
The cherries and grapes do okay in the heat. But I think your next
good fruit set's going to come in the fall on your slicers. All right,
all right, gi Hey, thank you for the information. I have
a good day, yes, sir, good luck. Appreciate that. Appreciate
that very much. We're gonna now go to Houston. Talk to Susie.
Hey, Susie, Hi, sir, thank you so much for taking my
call. I appreciate your knowledge. I have about twenty cypress trees are about
four feet tall three and a half feet four refeet tall. I planted them
about a year ago. These were replacement because sadly I lost the same amount
in the trout, okay, and they were insured. So this is the
second I don't know if that makes a difference what I'm sharing with you.
I have been noticing that on some of the branches, about every fourth or
fifth tree, it's a beautiful rust colored. You know, it turns the
branches, you know, some of the I guess leaves, for lack of
a better word, I know with cypress trees a rust colored. And it's
not on all of them, but it gives me a little PTSD from that
drought because that's the color of them. When they were dropped dye. I
fertilized them actually at a hardware I went there and I got some fertilizer.
Okay, and about three weeks ago I put fertilizer on them. Okay,
but you know they're still there. I just don't know. Can I do
something. They're on a sprinkler system. Am I using not enough? Too
much water? What are your suggestions? It's kind of hard to overwater a
cypress because they grow on a swamp. It's yeah, I wouldn't encourage overwater
in them, but if you're if you're keeping them fairly moist, I would
say when you water, give them a good soaking, let it dry out
just a little bit. That's a pretty good schedule for them. Rusting of
the leaves we call it. I call it bronzing of the foliage. That
is typical of a stress cypress. Typically we see that towards the end of
summer, when it's been hot for a long time, it gets a little
on the dry side. They usually bounce back from it. Cypress are pretty
resilient. And I agree your plants are young and they don't have the root
system development yet. You know, they came in a container and now the
roots are trying to establish and fill a large volume of soil. So it
becomes a resilient plant, and in this meantime, you're more prone to like
a drought injury kind of symptom because the roots zone is so limited. Okay,
so maybe a little bit more, a little bit more water and then
let it try out and water it again. Yeah, just just kind of
dig down about four inches. But remember that cylinder that they came in.
The roots are mostly still there. They're slowly venturing out, but that's where
you need to focus your watering on until it gets that root system spread out
wider. Okay, good, all right, Susan. I appreciate it,
you bet, thank you very much. I appreciate your call. You know,
the folks at the arbor Gate they always have every plant you need.
The Arborgate is the place to go when you need expert advice. It's a
place to go when you need something unusual. If you're trying to buy a
gift for Dad. Oh my god, they have gift shops galore. They've
got bling for the landscape, and they have really cool plants. Maybe Dad's
into fruit trees, do you know? Arburgate sells fruit trees year round.
They've got their one two three easy system, A soil a fertilizer and a
compost material all together. Three bags. You buy them when you buy your
plants, because that is going to help create that foundation for your plants to
have success. Arbrogates outside of Tomball those you haven't been remember, go out
round back on Trishal Road for your parking and everything you need will be there
at Arbrogate. And by the way, I think on think on Dad's Day,
they're even having like jack and coke or something like that. They're offering.
What a deal. I saw that one the other day. It's like,
Okay, there's a reason to go right there alone. Hey, we're
gonna take a break, time for the news. I'll be right back.
Welcome back to garden Line. Good have you with us today? What do
we want to talk about? You give us a call, we will talk
about it. Let's jump right out there to the phones. We're going to
go to West Houston and talk to Ram. Hello, Randy, Hey,
good morning, Skip, Hope you're doing well this morning. Thank you.
I've I've started on a long term project here that I want to get your
opinion on. I've started heart or started digging up a number of these oak
tree saplings that are starting to come up from all the acorns that have been
dropping the last six or seven months, and I've been putting them into Dixie
cups that got holes in the bottom so that they're well watered and then drained,
and I've been using uh Medina once a week on them. And so
my my next question is is how much direct sun should they be getting each
day while they're in this process, And what's the next size of container I
should be considering. Okay, full full son is what you want now if
you're I don't know how serious you are about the project or how many you
want to grow. If you're just a few, that's one thing. If
you're going to do more, there are actually some special pots you can buy
that prevent the roots from going in circles around the container. They have holes
in the sides where the roots go out, and we say they burn off,
meaning the air causes a pruning of the root and it makes a denser
root system and the container. Those would be the way to go for if
you were going to do a lot of this, if you're just doing it
on your own. I used to use the little square milk cartons. You
remember those days when you can buy a little like a quart milk carton or
not even a half gallones a little quart size or pint. Anything that creates
something that's not round that the root will hit the corners and go down is
better if you have whatever it is without a bottom sitting on mesh on like
a quarter and tardark cloth or anything that's just a mesh. The roots will
hit the bottom and they will also air prune down there. And so as
you move them from the dixie cup to something else, cut any roots that
are going in a circle and they will rebranch and put them in a new
container that where they're going to go down and root. That's the biggest challenge
on new trees that are grown in something small. As you get a root
that goes in a circle, and as you keep bumping it up, that
root gets bigger and the trunk gets bigger, and before long, when it's
in the landscape, you start to see it decline because the trunk now is
being strangled by the root like a like an anaconda wrapped around something, strangling
it to death. So that's what you want to avoid by that root pruning
or by trimming the roots when you bump them from the dixie cup on up.
So should I take them out of the dixie cup now and find these
type of pots that you're talking about? Would that be best? You could?
It would be best if you could do that, And depending on you
know your level of do it yourself for I mean, people will build things
to grow them in. Uh, but you can also buy it. There's
a number of places that will just sell you containers online. There's a place
called Greenhouse Superstore out there and lives in California that will sell containers for people
that are in the growing stuff in greenhouses and things. But they also have
those air pruning root containers out there. All right, air pruning that's what
I was saying. Air printing container. Yeah, yeah, air pruning container.
But it's real simple. It's like instead of a slick round container,
slick slided round container, it's gonna either have holes in the sides, it's
gonna have fins that direct the root from just continuing to circle it hits the
wall and has to go down because a fin is sticking out inside the container.
Just do some online searching and you're gonna find what I'm talking about.
No, that's perfect, No, because I'm doing about one hundred of these.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to buy some containers.
You gotta buy some and you can buy a small one. There's a lot
of forms of them. They all work as long as they prevent the circling
route. Okay, super, okay, good luck. Look, thank you
very much. You take care by Let's see here. We're gonna now go
to Jason. Hello, Jason, how can we help today? Good morning,
sir. Yeah. So, the so my grandfather he recently passed away,
and he had about three crate myrtles back in I guess it was last
year of the year prior he had somebody to try to come prove them and
they just destroyed them. And I know about the creat myrtle murder and all
this odd what have you from, Randy the I wanted to see if you
had any recommendation on a professional service because I'm not really too familiar on bringing
them back or revising them. So I wanted to see if you had any
recommendations on professionals they might be able to come out to help me. Yeah.
Well, Martin spoon Moore at Affordable Tree, he knows how to print
a crepe myrtle so I would you know, that would be that would be
who I would call to have him come out when you've got one that's been
butchered by the way. First of all, I'm I'm sorry to hear about
the loss of your grandpa. But the uh, the when they've been butchered,
they're again. What happens is people cut them off. They look like
the top of a fence post, and now they re sprout and you get
this what we call a crow's foot, all these shoots coming straight up.
If you can thin all of those out and leave one or two shoots where
instead of one branch, now it's forked into two, instead of turned into
a crows foot, like you you pointed all your fingers straight up. You
know, that's kind of what it looks like when when we don't prove them
right. You can thin those out and do it yourself. But if it's
a bigger tree, it's a little bit, you know, you need something
a little more on a on a professional level, I would I would call
Martin at the Affordable Tree. Do you need a phone number for him or
a website? Serious? Well, I just wrote down Affordable Tree. That's
that's in Houston. Yeah, it's Afordable Tree in Houston. Aff Tree Service
is the website aff Tree Service dot com and the phone number is seven to
one three six nine twenty six sixty three. He knows how to print a
tree and he can certainly take care of it. And there's no big rush
on it. I mean, you want to get it done sooner rather than
later, but it's not like it has to be done this week. Yes,
sir, no, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for your
time. All right, good luck, wish you well with that. Thank
you, Thank you, sir. Bye bye. All right, let's see
here. Well we're going to go now out to Cleveland and talk to Sonny.
Hello, Sonny, Yes, sir, good morning. How are you
doing today, sir? I'm good, thank you. I had lots of
palm trees that died a couple of years back, well three years now,
and we had a high hard freeze, and you know, it look pretty
everything else, and I was thinking you'll be replacing. Can I replace with
the date trees and maybe coconut trees. You will really produce fruits in this
weather. Coconuts too cold, hardy or two call tender for us a date.
There is a palm called a Pindo palm. It's a type of date
palm that is moderately hearty. It's not the hardiest palm trees that you have,
but it's but it's there. Now, I know you're out. Pardon
p I n d o Pindo pendo palm. Uh. It's it's a moderately
heardy date palm. Uh. Now, if I were you, I would
I would probably call Verdant Tree Farm. Verdont has three locations in Houston.
There's one probably the one closest to you is going to be the one in
the Heights, which is where I ten and ye'll come together. But vert
Patrick there they specialize in palms, and they know the different types, they
know the heartiness, and he could really point you to what would probably be
the best for here. He might even I suspect he probably carries Pindo palm.
But you're, you know, being up in Cleveland, you're it's it's
a little bit of a challenge because there's going to be one of those winners
that comes by. I move, I move now, and I'm an humble
Okay, well a little bit. It's still you know, it's it gets
cold sometimes and you just got to accept the fact that when we have one
of those doozy winters, Uh, it affects even hearty things here. But
uh, Verdant Tree Farm is the website v E R d a n T.
Verdant Tree Farm. You can go online and look at them. I
would go to the website because when you go there, what you're going to
find is they have a list of all these trees and include in a different
list for all the palms where you can scroll through it and it will show
you each type of palm tree and it will tell you about it and how
well it does and stuff. But I definitely would call them because appreciate it.
They're experts and they're going to have the details you're looking for. Awesome.
Thank you so much for you take care of them else. Uh.
If you've got issues that are problems in your lawn, like with bugs,
well nitrofoss bug out Max is an excellent product for that. We're entering chinchbug
season, we will soon be coming into sideweb worm season. Do you have
fleas, do you have ticks that are down in the lawn or even ants
crawling on the surface. Bug out Max is going to kill about one hundred
and thirty different kinds of insects. I'd say that's a lot. Just doing
you me a lot and within forty eight hours when you put it down,
wash it in with a little bit irrigation, it's going to do its job.
Bug Out Max is widely available. You know, it's a nitrofoss product,
so you're going to find it all kinds of places. All our ace
hardware stores are going to carry nitrofoss a bug Out Max. You're gonna find
it down in Southwest feed and Fertilizer. There many many other places like nitrofoss
products. They're easy to find. Well, it's time for me take a
little quick break before we go into our last segment of the day. I'll
be here right back. Welcome back, Welcome back to Guardline. Good to
have you with us. We are looking forward to visiting with you about the
things that interest you. I want to tell you about something. You know
that we have storms here. You know it's hurricane season. You know,
even without hurricanes, storms can knock out power like it just did for us
a while back. Generic generators are quality. They are quality products that do
the trick. They are automatic standby versions where power goes off, it just
comes on. It automatically handles that. But what is most important is that
you buy them from a place that has the reputation, that has the customer
service, that knows how to treat you right and how to be dependable,
and that is Quality Home Products of Texas. I would not buy a generic
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Give them a call there's a process involved in getting all this done. A
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hurricanes in the Gulf to call quality home. Go ahead and get it done
ahead of time. But I'm telling you this is a company that I would
trust absolutely because of this kind of service that they offer and of course quality
product. We're gonna go out to Angleton now and talk to Jason next.
Hello, Jason, Hey, Skip, are you? I'm good, sir?
What's up? Oh man? I've watched it eat a big breakfast here,
So what my question? As Skip, I built a house here in
Angleton, right on at the land. So I built it up, Son't
what's just out in this field? I went around the perimeter of it was
like native. My theme was going to be native evergreen. Did some oak
trees, pine trees, stuff like that, yo, pun. But on
the internal part of the yard, I don't. I don't want to go
willy nilly and just oh, let me just throw red tipped potini over here
or something. I want somebody that can lay this out, but I want
it to be more like a I need something very specialized, like a zoo
thing. Well, you go into the Houston Zoo. You got raised beds,
drainages and mine. You have sidewalks, water garden. Who in the
heck is knowledgeable enough design your outside landscape? But incorporate the sidewalks, the
flower bed water. You're going to have a backyard patio, Yeah, or
rocks, but that's something I just have to have in my mind. Yeah,
you know, I just I don't know the landscapers down in your area,
specifically down here to tell out here until you're garding up. I mean,
yeah, I put some rocks in, it'll throw some plants from Yeah,
but you're you're wanting more. I used to work with and college station
when I was going to school up there, so I mean, and I'm
older, so I just don't I don't have the back for doing that,
but I want to get to another level, if you understand. So I
figured maybe in the Houston area it would be somebody. Well we got some
we got some good Yeah, we got some good ones. The one that
I'd like to recommend for you is Pierce Scapes. But they just don't go
down that far south. They stop at about I ten uh, maybe a
little below item, but not not all the way down to Engleton. Uh,
you know, so, I mean, actually Pierre Pierce will go a
little wider than that, a little further than I ten. But my point
is just there there. I don't think they're gonna come down as far as
you are. You could try giving them a call. You could try giving
them a call. Maybe they would know someone down in that area they'd recommend
to you. They might, they might somebody League City gals, And I
think they would travel over here. We're not that far away, yeah,
from either over those areas, and you know the internet well and and some
something else you might want to do. Uh, you may want to call,
like calling Enchanted Forest, which is just you know, just kind of
a little bit south of Richmond, Sugarland area, uh And and they they're
pretty close to you, and just say, hey, do you know any
good landscapers it would service this area because that's a quality garden center that's gonna
know. And you might I might even call Sienna Mulch and they're just north
of you and say, hey, do you got a landscaper that you would
recommend and tell them what you want And they're just up the road from you.
Sienna is and so they could probably keep it. But before you start
a landscape, when you need to lay it out. So he's gonna lay
that design out, Yeah, you need somebody that's gonna draw it out.
Somebody. Yeah, I just go to a landscape. There's landscape designers and
landscape architects. Well, I mean, if you're talking about doing the taj
Mahal here, yes, I would hire a la a landscape architect, a
landscape designer in there. If you're just talking about a standard you know,
kind of home landscape, a good quality landscaping company that offers that service,
ought to be able to draw something out for you. Now, you know,
like I said, give give Piercecapes a call, knowing that they're probably
too far north. Maybe they would do the drawing if you send them some
picture. I don't know, but yeah, but just basically that's it.
You got it. I appreciate all right there, all right, Jason,
thank you appreciate that call. Hey, I'm going to run over here to
Turker and Conro. Can we do this in a few seconds here? We
can? We can? Yeah? Yes, sir, so I got got
Thank you And also a quick question, thank you because last time I called
you, I had a I live up in Dallas and I asked for a
I asked for a recommendation and who to go through for landscaping. And you
recommended me to Scotti Rigsby and he's great. Yeah, he came and hey,
I'm afraid, I'm I'm afraid you're gonna run out of time. How
can I help you with this Bermuda Bermuda heights cutting heights two inches. I
couldn't decide on the blade height. I'm sorry, We're in a time.
Two inches is what I would recommend. That's the easiest level to main contain.
You can go a little lower if you need to. That's a busy hour.