KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on
this program. Welcome to ktr H Garden Line. With Skip Ricord's Crazy Trip.
You just watch him as who tell us so many past the us back
kicking, but they're not a s Well, good morning. You are listening
to garden Line. I hope you're having a good Sunday morning so far.
At least got one eye open with a cup of coffee in your hand,
or tea if that's what you like to drink. You know, it's dark
outside. Your neighbors probably aren't listening to garden Line. If the light turn
on, go over there and bang on the door and tell them they're missing
it. And they will appreciate that so much once they start listening and realize
they can have a beautiful lawn and a bountiful landscape just from having listened to
go and find. Okay, maybe that's over selling it, but hey,
Hey, that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to help you
to have success, help you find plants that are going to be successful for
you. Boy, this brutal summer, I'm going to say we just got
through how about that. Can I be an optimist here just a little bit.
I mean, we get five degrees off the temperature for the day,
and I'm going to call that fall. We're ready to go. It is
coming, by the way, it is coming. We'll get some rain,
we're getting some cooler weather arriving. Those kinds of things, We're just going
to get better and better by time we're into October. Well, let me
put it this way, by the time we're into October, you are either
going to have done or wish you did the things that you need for your
October garden. For example, the warm season plants in your vegetable garden,
they need to go in definitely by now. Get them in now if you
have them already. The planting things that are going to be warm season flowers.
Marigoles do great in the fall. They look great in the fall because
spider mites aren't bothering them so much. They'll be go pom pom types.
The African marigoles, those are especially beautiful. They just glow in the fall.
Petunia is another example, does really well. Involved But all those things
have to get planted now, because if you wait until mid October or something,
you're just too late for all of that for sure. So it's also
the time to get our soil ready because when it comes time to plant,
what if it starts raining and it rains for two weeks, you can't get
out there and work the soil because it's so wet, sopping wet. But
building your soil now will help you be ready when you do want a plant,
maybe you're going to put out some roses or shrubs in the fall,
the soil will already be ready. You'll be ready to go. There's no
loutage. Make hay while the sunshines. Well, I would say prepare your
soil while the sunshines because rain is coming. That's what happens in the fall
here in the Greater Houston area, and prepare your soil ahead of time.
Don't just wait. I know it's a little warmer than you want to be
out there, but we have morning hours that are much much cooler. In
fact, I've got a lot of seventy seven type temperatures this week in the
mornings. That'd be a great time to get out and get a little early
soil work done and you'll be glad you did later. For reasons, I
just described and for others, Hey, if you'd like to give us a
call and ask a question, our phone number is seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. You know, talking about the soils, it
is important to have a quality soil just because someone is selling compost or maybe
you go to a place, maybe a national chain that's not one of the
folks we brag on here on garden Line, and you see something and example,
well that's cheap. Well yes it is. I would say cheap is
a better word than an expense. When you look at some of the soils
that are for sale to compost, the mulches and whatnot. You get something
and it's called garden soil or potting soil and you open it up and it
looks like shredded wood chips. I mean that is not a quality soil.
Airloom. Soils knows how to make a quality soil airloom from the potting soils
for indoors, to the rose soils, to the fungal types of composte materials
like their leaf mold composts. That's an excellent product. Rose soil. They
just have a ton I mean I could sit here just probably for an hour,
just naming all of the products and describing all the products that Airloom Soils
makes. They know how to make them and their first rate. And when
you put that kind of material down, it makes it look like your thumb
just turned green. Because your plants thrive. Soil is everything. Not preparing
the soil is like playing Russian Roulette with only one empty chamber. Good luck
with that one. You're just not and to have success. And you spend
money, you spend time, you get excited about. Maybe you're buying a
rosebush. Oh, it's gonna be this beautiful. I see the picture on
the tag. That's what's going to look like. Only if you give that
rosebush the kind of soil that it wants to grow in, or that tomato
plant or whatever you're planting. It doesn't matter what it is. And heirloom
soils can help you get to there. It's as simple as that. They've
got the one yard supersack. They can deliver to your door, or you
can buy it by the bag. Airloom Soils is widely available across the Houston
area and have success. And I'm just telling you, if I were to
put all the eggs in one basket, it would be make your soil right
and then you can have success. The best plant in the world, the
best everything you do after it in the world. You know, the fertilizing
and watering and all that. Of course that's all important, but if you
don't start with soil, it's like going out there with two by fours and
on the dirt starting to build a house. You have no foundation. How
is that house ever going to have success us and not right away in the
first year. That's what is so important when we talk about soils like heirloom.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We had a lot
of things to talk about today. Hopefully some of your calls, because that's
the stuff you're interested in. And I guarantee you if you have a question,
somebody else has that question too. Hey, I had a great time
out there at the Ace Hardworst Store Plantation Ace yesterday. Thanks for all the
folks that came out. Got to meet a lot of new folks and that's
always fun. Hopefully we got you squared away on the questions and problems you
brought in. I want to remind you that this next Saturday, I'm going
to be up at the Montgomery County Home and Garden Show from twelve to two.
From noon to two, I'll be doing a one hour seminar first from
twelve to one, and then from one to two, I'll be doing an
appearance at a table where we can do kind of like we did yesterday.
You bring your things in, show me some samples, show me some pictures
are just come in and ask questions and we talk about them. I'm going
to be giving away some Nelson plant food jugs and some Adena samples as well
up there, and I hope you can come out and see me, because
that all the folks up in Montgomery County. This is a chance. You
don't have to go far. I'll be right up there at the Montgomery County
Home and Garden Show, and that's at the Lone Star Convention Center kind of
Northeast Conro. You know where it is if you live up there, so
come out and see me. You know Nelson Turf Star products. I brag
on them a lot, but for good reason. They've got a long line
of products from color Start and Nutristar to the Nature Star Organic line to turf
star, and we have been talking about different turf stars all summer, like
slow and Easy in Bruce's Brew. We're about to hit the fall season and
once we get if you're we're just talking about Montgomery County. If you're up
north, I would say late September through October. If you're down further south
in a warmer area, definitely in October. Carbo Load is their product that
has the higher potassium content, which what we refer to as a winterizer fertilizer
or a fall fertilizer. It prepares your lawn for cold, cold weather,
and that is really important. But the most important thing it does, and
people don't realize this is our fall fertilizers prepare our lawn for spring. Grass
comes out of spring and its health and vigor level is dependent on how it
went into winter. It's as simple as that. Nelson's carbo Load will do
just that for your lawn or yeah, for your turf grass. Hey,
let's take a break. Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Boogie will gee to get us going again here on garden
line. Our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
Give me a call if you'd like to visit about I don't know,
whatever's interest to you when it comes to gardening. We're here to try to
cover the various kinds of questions you might have. It's it's a lot of
fun getting to kind of drill down on things. It's kind of a playing
Colombo, I guess on some of the issues that people come up with.
It's it's always a kind of a mystery solving thing, which I think is
a lot of fun. It's a good challenge too, by the way,
that's for sure. I was taking care of some houseplants I have the other
day, and one of my favorite new house plants is it's really you know,
there's a number of really good ones out there, but I like the
philodendrons. I find them really easy. But I like house plants, you
know that are beyond just green. There's nothing wrong with green. But there's
a philodendron brandyanum that is has silver all in it and it grows really easily.
I mean it, I'm amazed at how how easily it how easy it
is to take care of. It's real simple. I've I've got a syndapsis
also that is the same way, it's just really easy to grow. Uh.
The syndapsis picked us, I think is the one I have and I've
gone, I'm gone a lot, and I you know, often tie just
ignore it. But I've got in good light. It is just thriving,
really easy one to grow a lot of fun too. And you know,
if you're looking for things like that, Buchanans Plants has an unbelievable collection of
these kinds of house plants. And if you want rare fund maybe you've got
every plant in the world, you need another one, and they've got a
rare one or two, or three, or four or ten that you can
go check out. By the way, Buchanans on September thirtieth Saturday, they're
gonna have from nine to noon they're gonna have a talk all about natives and
you can kind of get some good help while you're shopping. It's kind of
a meat and chat going on there with the Native Plant Society of Texas.
By the way, for those of you who don't know, Buchanans is on
East eleventh Street, six to eleven East eleventh Street up in the Heights.
They've got a lot of events that come through there. Lots of great ones
coming up too. By the way, they just got in a bunch of
cool season type stuff like dianthus and snap dragons. Of course, the petunias,
amergals. I'm in town. It's time to get them in. Now
is the time they're starting to get their vegetables in, and also an end
of summer sales. Select plants they have are fifty to seventy percent off.
That is a that is worth, that is a real I can't talk to.
That's a reason we're stopping in and of itself. Buchanan's Plants. Every
time I go there, I learned something because they got plants I had never
heard of before, believe it or not, thirty four years of doing this,
there's always some new plants. And I just love the layout and the
way it's so easy to shop, walk around, just enjoy. It's like
you're you're living in someone's personal jungle of wonderful things. Especially they specialize in
those natives really really nice at Buchanan's Plants. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two five eight seven four. We're gonna go to Cypress now
and talk to Sandy. Morning. Sandy, I skip the morning, my
sister wanted to identify something that's going at our house. Okay, and I'm
sure if it's or she's probably thinking, is it edible? Okay? I
sent it yesterday afternoon and it was called you know, help me? Can
you help me identify what this is? Or? Okay? And what is
the name that the email came in? Swatty? Galli? Here? Can
you spell that for me? Please? S w A t I okay,
g A yeah, I got you, all right, let me go look
here. Okay, No, I got a July. I don't have anything
from yesterday. Let's do this, Sandy. I'm gonna put you on hold
and Joshua can give you an email and what up? Let me check spam.
I'll check that again. But he's gonna give you an email and wee
can let me just have you try it again, okay, since okay,
we're all right. Let me see. I've got a lot of emails from
you, but but all of them start the the most recent is July sixteenth,
So I'm gonna put you back on hold just to verify for sure.
I know you got the right one, but would you re send Let's try
that? Yeah, let me talk about emails just for a little bit while
we're while we're on that topic, I try to focus the emails on things
we can talk about on the air, just because there is no way I
can get through a tenth of the emails that people will send as we open
those gates. And so if you've had emails in the past and didn't get
a reply on them or something somehow they slipped through the cracks, just if
you will send. If you're going to send an email, send it,
but then be ready to call in on the show so we can talk about
it. Because again, sitting down and typing out all the answers, I'm
just not able to do it. I wish i could, but it's just
too much of a flow. So we always want to connect them to a
call on the show if at all possible. All right, you are listening
to garden Lie seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four, and we're talking about all kinds
of things related to gardening today. By the way, Thank you, Thank
you Jill and Mickey out there at Ace Hardware and Richmond yesterday. That was
it was a nice event. Were really enjoyed coming out and doing that.
I always like to go to ACE Hardware. You know, there's a there's
an ACE Hardware near you, no matter where you are. Ace Hardware dot
Com. It's a website. You just find the store locator. There's literally
there's thirty nine of them in our Houston Ace Hardware group here and so it's
easy to find. And I was in there and actually my wife went with
me on this one. And at the end of all the two hours that
I was there, I thought, Okay, it's time to go, and
she comes around the corner with a shopping car full of stuff. So yeah,
She've had all kinds of good stuff in Ace Hardware, which is not
hard to do. I mean, the bar key sections unbelievable. Of course,
you know your garden line listeners, it's all about the lawn. It's
all about the lawn, of course, the gardens and the trees and everything
else. And they have all the products for that. They've got all the
fertilizers I talk about here. If you have any kind of a disease,
insect or weed problem, they've got the products that will control it. There.
It's really just as simple as that. And that's what a lot of
the questions were yesterday, disease, insects and weeds, and then the eternal
question of this time of the year is why is my lawn dying? Or
what do I do about my lawn? And when your lawns are struggling like
that, you've got to help them out. Coming up is our fall fertilization
application time, and one of the things that we feature in the fall on
the schedule are products that are higher in potassium. That's the third number on
the bag. All summer we've been talking about ratios like three one two four
one two were the nitrogen's the big guy in the room. Now we're going
to focus on potassium and drop that nitrogen down, not get rid of it.
We still need nitrogen with it, but not much. And that's why
why is that important. Potassium gives cold heartiness. Potassium also gives drought tolerance,
believe it or not, and so when we're dealing with lawns that have
been struggling and trying to recover, that's why we have potassium and our fertilizers
all through the year, but especially in the fall time. You want those
plants going into winter strong because when they come out. It's not like in
the early spring they've got this big giant root system that's just taken up all
the nutrients. They're using stored energy to come out in the spring, and
as they begin to grow and get new roots going in the ground, they're
more and more able to take up the nutrients that we're putting down in the
spring. But it is the fall fertilization that brings your plants out of winter
strong, and that is really important. And I'm going to be a broken
record like I am with you start with the soil. Spend money on the
brown stuff when you spend money on the green stuff, because the brown stuffs
the important stuff, the compost and things. I will be the same way
about fall and potassium talking this winter or this this fall. So that's really
important, you know, whenever you're transplanting, and I hope you're planning on
that. Now is it time to be planting a lot of things getting ready
for fall. But as fall gets here in the weather cools the success you're
going to have with planting your woody ornamental shrubs and trees and woody vines,
it just increases. And it's a time when we're getting a lot of perennials
in the ground as well, and perennial herbs in the ground. Has to
Grow six twelve six needs to be your transplant partner. And what I mean
by that is you take the has to grow six twelve six. It's got
the NPK six twelve six in it. It's also got in medina cell activator,
it's got humic acid, it's got seaweed extracts and all of that combination.
You mix it in water and drench it in, use that water to
water in your plant, and then five to seven days later, do it
again, and five to seven days later do it again. I mean,
you can keep doing it if you want, but at least three good waterings
in because that new plant is trying to get those roots that went into the
ground out into the soil around it, and that is really important to be
able to get them in to the soil around it. And that success sets
you up for a very successful establishment. And when that plant gets into spring,
is going to be so far ahead of the same plant that you planted
in the spring compared to the one you put in fall and did the has
to grow drench over the roots into the roots that's so so important. It
is a key for success in getting those things going. Well, you're listening
to guard Line our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, and you will
get on the line here, Josh, We'll get you on the board so
we can talk to you. And when we come back from break. Now
we're going to take time for the Nicki News Network. Hey, Nikki,
do you know we were talking earlier about plants, and I told people that
that just listening to garden Line would make their plants more bountiful. Yes,
well and so on, and that's my experience. Well, and have you
ever thought about leaving the radio on when you're not there and so that the
plants can hear garden Line? I honestly believe when you come back to the
house at the end of the day, they're gonna be a foot taller,
greener, prettier, and there may be blooms on things that don't even bloom.
You have to talk directly to the plants. Yes, right, yeah,
I'll see that. And so Nikki's plants, if you're listening right now,
All right, enough of that nonsense. Let's let's find out what's happening
with the news. Good morning, good morning, you were listening to Garden
Line, and we're glad you're here. We hope to help you with whatever
kinds of questions you have. That's that's what this is all about. How
can we help have a beautiful garden, bountiful landscape. That's what we're going
for. I mean, it gives us pleasure to go outside and see nature,
and to see a beautiful garden and a beautiful landscape is important. It
helps in many ways. There's a psychological benefit. Of course, there's a
physical benefit and getting out and working in the soil and getting fresh air,
enjoying all of that. And I'll tell you right now, people walking around
looking at their landscapes, it's kind of like, woo, that was a
rough summer we've been through here, and it's time to begin to change that
around. And we can. There's a lot of ways to change it around.
You know, fall season is the best planning season of the year,
and we are just on the doorstep right now. A fall we can plant
twelve months out of you. You can plant this morning, you can plant
in July if you want I mean, if you take care of it,
you can do that. You can get by with that. But fall is
the easy time. You know, you put something in the ground and fall
and it's not hard to keep it going because the demands are so low on
the plant. But of course now as when we're preparing the soil getting things
ready for that, but it's also the time when we're doing our shopping and
getting ready for fall in that way. And for example, RCW Nursery right
now they got fifteen percent off of select trees, shrubs and perennials and annuals.
I mean, it's an opportunity. It's not everything in the whole nursery
on sale, but a lot of great deals. Now'd be a good time
to get by and look at that while you're how did RCW check out the
pumpkins, the metal pumpkins, the little pumpkin coaches, and I mean they
have some really cool bling if you want to decorate your fall for the harvest
season, Halloween, Thanksgiving, all of that kind of thing. They've got
a lot of really good stuff on that. They carry every fertilizer that I
brag on here in the Gardenline Radio show. It is a wide selection of
quality things that they have. If you're looking for a rose this fall,
the biggest selection I know of in town is at RCW Nurseries. They like
four pages single space rose Rose, Rose rows. Give McCall find out you
know what are the roadses you want? You can find that list by the
way on their website. It's RCW Nurseries dot com. They're the nursery for
those of you new to the Houston area. They're Tomball Parkway, which is
Highway two forty nine where it comes into Beltway eight. So as you're going
over the overpass, they're switching from one of those roads to the other.
They're down below and it's really easy to get to, really easy to find,
and when you get there, what you find is going to be a
lot of wonderful things. They also have trees fifteen gallons the two hundred gallons
that they grow themselves up in Plantersville, and fall is the time to get
those things established as well. All of that at RCW Nurseries easy to get,
too easy to find, and if they don't have it, I bet
they can get it. They specialize and they get don't have it, we
can get it. Types of things. You know, you go into a
lot of nurseries and you don't find it and they don't have it, and
that's kind of the end of it. Not at RCW. They absolutely do
everything they can to get that product in that you're looking for. Our phone
number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three
two one two. Katie R. H. Give Josh a call. We'll
get you on the boards. We'll talk about the things that are of interest
to you. I love talking about the components of success to gardening because that's
what we need to get in your hands. You've heard me say before.
There are no brown thumbs. There are uninformed thumbs. That's what's that's essentially
what we think of as a brown thumb. And people think, well,
you just gotta have this knack. Granny had this knack. Anything she touched
turned green. Well, okay, I bet she did. But it wasn't
because there was some magical power to Granny's fingers. It was because Granny knew
what to do. She had learned over the years. She had learned from
other people, she had learned herself, and she knew how to do things.
She had learned the secrets of doing it. And that is exactly why
we want to help you with that, because it's not it needs to not
be a secret. It needs to be simple, plug and play. Do
these things make it work. Start with a soil, Choose good plants,
plant them right, take care of them right, get the right kinds of
nutrients and products on there to help that plant succeed. And then you sit
back and you enjoy your landscape. And when it comes to a lawn,
one of the things that you need to be doing for your lawn is providing
a supplement of trace elements. Trace elements or things that they only need a
little bit of a very tiny amount, but they have to have it.
It's essential. If you take an element, let's say, oh, I
don't know manganese, for example, and you could take every molecular manganese out
of the soil, that no plant could live. It has to have manganese.
It only needs a tiny pet but it is essential. It's very important.
The big nutrients, the macros, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, they're
the ones on all the fertilizer bags. They're needed in large amounts. They're
also a essential, but they're needing a large amount. But trace minerals are
essential, and Azamite provides that. You can go online to azamite Texas dot
com find out more. Just know this that when you purchase azamite, it
provides that bank account so when the plant needs it, it's there. Forty
four pounds of asamitel covers six thousand to twelve thousand square feet, so it
goes a long way. But now it'd be a good time to get some
of that down. You don't have to put it down right when you put
on fertilizer. You can put on any time you want. But azamite application
this fall, coming out of the summer we've had, I would definitely include
that on the list for sure. We're gonna go out to Magnolia and talk
to Tim. Hello, Tim, good morning morning. I've got a very
mature gets. I don't know how old it is, but it's big and
large and doing well. But I've got a soaker hose completely around the tree,
and I wanted to know how much, meaning how long should I keep
that soker hose going and how often should I water that? Uh, you
know, to not get too much water or enough you know. I'm more
obviously not lose a tree. Yeah, you know it. It's it's hard
to give numbers because sunny sunny areas versus shade, sandy, silver versus clay,
it, all of that changes, all of that changes it. And
so U I would say, get a get a long handle screwdriver, and
after you've watered what you think is enough, wait a few minutes, put
you know, thirty minutes to push it down in the soil and see if
that's if that screwdriver goes down at least eight to ten inches. If it
does, you've given that tree a good deep soaking. If it doesn't,
you need to soak some more. That's the best way to know for sure.
Okay, and then like maybe once a week or something like that.
I mean just even when I'm getting it, so you know, ever ten
to fourteen days is enough and you're focusing on the area, the entire area
beneath the branch spread of the tree. Ever, ten to fourteen days is
enough if you give it a good soaking. The frequent shallow weddings or the
wastewater, and the tree's not getting the help it needs. It needs a
good soaking, but not very often, not very often at all, Okay,
all right, all right, Tim, you bet, thank you for
the call. You're listening to garden Line. We're gonna take a break and
come right back. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
Get you on the board, Helen. When we come back, you will
be the first step. Well, good morning. You are listening to garden
Line this morning, and we are answering all kinds of gardening questions coming in
and that's what we love to do. You know. I was just talking
to Tim about that that oak tree out there and watering it. And soaker
hoses are great. They work well because they water slowly and allow that water
to get in to the ground. That's important. The only thing, the
only hesitation I have about the socrehose is you need a lot of soacer hoose
or you need to move it two or three times, meaning you need to
water the volume of soil. To water in one spot, even if it's
a socrehose size spot is only watering a fraction of that tree's roots system.
We'd like to water the entire area beneath the branch spread, so you could
do circles about a foot apart, spiral going around the tree, and then
you could move it out and do it again, and you move further out
and do it again. You can do that, or you can just do
a tree hugger sprinkler. That's the way that I like to water these trees,
especially as trees get older and bigger, because that's a huge area and
maybe you don't want to water with your lawn irrigation system the entire property just
to take care of this one tree. You're trying to, you know,
not waste money on water. Well. With the tree hugger, you turn
it on and depending on how far you turn it on, how large a
tree hugger, there's three sizes, seven inch, eleven inch, fifteen inch,
how far you water out or how large it is, how large you
water it makes it just so easy because you turn it on and you can
wet this large area. You can run it for a while and turn it
off, let it soak for a while, and then run it for a
while and turn it off, let's soak for a while. It's easy to
do. It's really easy to do with a tree hugger, and it is
a great way to you know, not only what not waste water, but
to give a bigger volume of soul. Think of it this way. If
you had to have let's say, surgery, and you only had a portion
of your lung left right, maybe a third, and you were trying to
breathe, well, that part would be taking an oxygen, but you'd have
to be a little careful because you couldn't get enough oxygen from that portion of
the lung. Think of the soil as that way, we're watering it.
And if you put a hose at the bottom of a tree and water it,
yes, the roots there are getting water, but that tree has a
huge system and you can't get enough water for the whole tree. About watering
one spot. That's why I'm talking about the tree hugger and the benefit of
being able to water a much larger area at one time. We're gonna now
go, let's see, We're gonna head out to Cypress and talk to Sandy.
Hey, Sandy, I did get the email this time? Oh yes,
yeah. And looking at the plant, it well, I don't think
it's a weed. I think it's a garden plant. But I could be
wrong. But there's the one plant I think it could be is Mexican mint
marigold. And I know it doesn't look like a marigold. But that's what
Mexican meant marigold looks like. And if you go up and take your hand
and rub it down those long shoots and then smell your hand. If it
smells like one of those black jellybeans, a liquorice jelly beans, that's Mexican
mint marigold, and it will be blooming for you pretty soon. It's a
fall bloomer. Now, if it doesn't smell like liquorice, then we're gonna
need to wait and let that thing bloom and then send me a picture of
what the blooms look like. And I can probably take it to another step.
But of all the common garden plants, that's the one that it most
resembles to me. And if if that's the case, I'd be curious to
hear back. Yeah, well, if that my sister's house, it's my
sister's Okay, I'll ask her to take a picture of it. If it
blames Yeah, and do the smell test. I don't know if you've already
done that, but do the smell test on it if you haven't, because
that foliage has a very distinct liquorice jelly bean smell. Okay, all right,
Alli, thank you so much. Skip Hey, thank you appreciate that
call. Thank you very much. Take care our lawns, our lawns.
We keep talking about our lawns. They're struggling. They're are struggling and struggling
with the heat, with the drought. It's been a tough tough year.
When it gets weak, then here comes take all root rot and here comes
you know, other things moving in to take advantage of a weakened lawn.
And this would be a great time to get some microlife products out there and
to try to rejuvenate that lawn. The microlife Humates plus is an excellent product
for that. I talk about the fish based ocean harvest the blue label.
Normally we're using that, you know, smaller plants comes in a quart jug,
but you can use that as a foldier in your lawn as well.
I mean, it is an excellent product that provides a lot of things.
Share lawns need minerals to be replenished. They some of these good organic products
will contain things like hormones and plants stimulators and other things that are in there.
They also not only add microbes, but they stimulate the microbes. You
already have, and so what you're doing is you're creating an environment where that
grass has the best chance of recovery. That is important in so many areas.
Even with human medicine. We don't just have product that may deal with
the problem directly itself, but we get the patient recuperated, we get the
patient stronger, we get the pretient here so it's able to recover. And
those natural processes that are in plants, that are in our bodies that help
healing and recovery, we kick them into gear with the support from products like
that microlife products that I'm talking about very important at this time of year when
you're trying to get that lawn out of its struggling and by the way,
that fall fertilization is coming, and the Microlife brown patch is an excellent product
for doing just that. Remember the importance of that high potassium in drought resilience
and in cold resilience, very very important. Let's head out to Alvin and
we're going to talk to Helen. Hello, Helen, Hello, good morning,
good morning. How can we help. Well, I've got several things,
so I don't know. I'll try to cut it short. I may
have to catch you short and then come back after the hour if you want
to hold Okay, I have two areas. I have a pergola in the
backyard, and i'd like to establish grape vines, okay, would hold our
this tremendous heat or you know the cold? Yes, okay, so i'd
like that. And then another area and on the front porch, I need
to have vines growing up wire chain fins. Okay. And so it is
so hot it has just even tore up the resin on my ratan. It's
a plastic ratan, and boy, it's just cracking up. And so I'd
like to preserve some of it, all right, And the tooth is there?
Let me ask and then let me ask you a question about the grapes
real quick. Are you what do you want them for? Do you want
to eat the grapes? Do you want to make jellyably? I know we
have mustangs just growing everywhere, but I just don't think. I don't know
why. I thought maybe there would be a better variety than a very bitter
mustang. All right, Well, there's champanel. Champanell isn't is from a
native Texas species of grape, and it is very tough, very hardy.
It's not a fresh eating grape. It's a jelly making grape. Okay.
The other grape I would recommend is called Southern sensation, and it is a
seedless grape that does very well here. And if you want table grapes,
Southern waya in Southern what sensation? Okay, Southern sensation seedless is a table
grape that is your best shot. We don't have almost no table grapes that
do well here, but Southern sensation is probably the best of our choices.
Okay, okay, all right, and can we uh, let's see,
can we go ahead and hold for the rest half of the next half of
that would be that you can hang on. It's going to be over a
newsbreak, but well, we will come come back to you. Sorry,
I just have to continue on here. If you are looking for a way
to regenerate your soil and therefore your plants. I keep talking about soul first,
soul first, bronze stuff before the green stuff. Arburgate arbogate dot com
is a website. You can go learn about more there. But Arburgates one
two three system Organic Food Complete. It's a four four three plus calcium organic
fertilizer which feeds anything but roots. What butt roots anything with roots. That's
how food gets into the plant by the roots. The Organic Soil Complete is
a soil blend that has the composts and it's got it's got expended shale in
it, and it is an excellent choice for whenever you're needing to build up
the soil, maybe make them bed, maybe even use it in a container.
It is a quality product that works that way. Organic Compost Complete is
what you expect composts, but it's two different kinds of composts. So with
that you also get the shale. So every time you put Organic Compost Complete
and mix it into your soil, maybe you finish one crop of flowers or
whatever and you're putting another one in, or you're just building a soil maybe
for rose beds. The Organic Compost Complete puts that shale in two So between
the compost and the shale are heavy clay soils that are so brutally tough to
deal with. Here just get better and better over time. And all of
that is at Arbigate Nursery, which is on twenty nine twenty just west of
two forty nine up in Tomball, Hey, we're gonna take a break.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven
one three two two fifty eight seventy four. Next Saturday from twelve to two,
so a couple hours after the show ends here on Saturday, I'll be
at the Montgomery County Home and Garden Show. So everybody up there in Montgomery
County that listens, I hope you will come out to the Home and Garden
Show. I'm gonna give a talk. I'm doing one hour seminar, and
then I'll be spending an hour at a table to your gardening questions and also
just to meet you. I love to meet our listeners out there. It'll
be at the lone Star Convention Center in Conro and I'll be giving away Nelson
plant food jugs and samples of Medina fertilizers as well. So I hope you
can make that next Saturday, twelve to two. Put that on your calendar.
Look forward to seeing KATRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the
products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip
Rictor. It's smell crazy just watching as so many good good morning good Sunday
morning. I hope you are having a good one so far. We're here
to talk about any kind of thing gardening that you're interested in. By the
way, if you've got a little piece of property out there, this goes
beyond the garden. But hey, if you are a big time gardener,
if you have a little piece of property, you need to know about the
Lansdowne Moody deal with Caboda USA dot com. Lansdown and Caboda are the perfect
combination because here's why. There is a Caboda L twenty five O one Caboda
L twenty five O one that is a really nice tractor. I mean we're
talking about hydrostatic transmission. We're talking about a tractor that you can put a
front end loader on. Of course, you can put a more behind you.
You can trick it out however you want. Right now, at Lansdowne
they have a deal and this is zero down, no money down, no
interest for eighty four months, seven years, no interest. It is versatile.
It has performance that you would expect from Caboda, and a quality and
a product and service that you would expect from lansdown Moody as well. You
can go to LM tractor dot com. Now this deal is only good through
October thirty first, so time is ticking away on this. Don't delay,
go buy, just sit on one. Just ask them. You know,
where is it? I want to I want to try it out here.
I want to see what this is like. I want to be experienced what
it's like to sit on one of these things. You will find that it
is one sweet ride and you will need to have one yourself. You've got
a little property, you know, I don't. Maybe you're hauling malts,
maybe you're moving some composts into an area, whatever kind of things, carrying
feedsacks out for the animals that you got on the property. Lots and lots
and lots of uses for a quality tractor like that. Lots of fun too,
lots of fun. Mix work so much easier. Let's go out.
We're gonna go back now and complete our conversation with Helen. Helen, we
were talking about vines. I think we got through some grapes and then you
had a vine you wanted for like a chain link fence. Did you say,
yes, great, I had that little star. It's like a little
light star. Yes, and it is such a good vine freezes. I'm
so tired of planning things that freeze. Evidently, we're going to have to
try some northern covers, and so that's one thing I kind of needed was
something that would grow on a chain link fence. So you had a a
Confederate jasmine on there. What did you have? I believe it was it
had the little white flowers and it grows so well and it freezes. So
yeah, we just had some tough winters for that. That's a right line.
Just some tough winters. Okay, Well, my next question and my
third question was I have to protect my home with like a huge flower box
completely across my ninety two hundred foot frontage to the road. I live across
the street from the high school, and all that baseball water they niche out
they're curving, but I'm not allowed to niche mine. So it's like a
street that just fills up. I'm the basin. But I've got a flower
box that goes clear across. My box would live. The other was like
trees growing, and we just kept trimming them. When they died, I
had them all pulled out. Now I'd like something to replace them. I
don't want the roses. I want some type of plant that would at least
grow three to four feet high shrub totally across, because like the driveway,
the water comes when when cars go, the wake hits my garage feet high.
That's good, that's the way. Good night. I've been dealing with
that for years years. Yeah, southern wax myrtle. That's a little short
to keep it. But you could keep southern wax myrtle probably about four feet.
There is one type of it that's a little more compact than the standard
type. Go for the more compact type. That would be important. But
a Southern native it knows about living in wet conditions and things, and it
doesn't have to have a swamp to live, but it can tolerate some of
that. That may be your best bet. You can keep it hedged and
make a very dense hedge out of it, and choose whatever heights you want
and keep it at that. Right. Okay, I do have something I
want, but several people, you know, kind of go against it.
Okay, it's that bush that has maroon really wine colored. And now when
I want to say Chinese, is Chinese witch hazel? No, It's starts
with the a I believe, and it's just a beautiful plant. But people
say it's very hard to grow. Now our neighbors have two bushes of it,
but I just don't know if Evidently it doesn't freeze, so it lasted,
you know, through the let's freeze and then the heat. Yeah,
let's do this. If you did, do you do email? No,
sir? Okay, uh, well, try to find the name of it
and then give us a callback. Thank you for your program. I really
enjoy it. It is very helpful. Well, thank you the A and
the purple. Right now, my brain is not coming up with a plant.
But I'm sure what you say. The name wine ish colored more than
purple, I guess as some verbal well, and yeah, I always always
slips my mind. All right, Helen, thank you for the call.
I appreciate look forward to helping you more with that as we go a little
further down the line. You're talking about putting out you know, plants that
do well. Verdant Tree Farm grows trees that do well. They choose species
based on the fact that they are going to be successful here in the Greater
Houston area. So whether you need a if you need a palm tree,
for example, what kind of palm should you plant well? Some do well
and some do not do well at all. Some of you get to replant
every year because it gets too cold. They don't sell that kind. They
sell the kind that will do well for you. And you can go to
Verdant Tree Farm. It's v er da Nttreefarm dot com Verdon Tree Farm.
If you're looking for locations out in the West Houston, there's one on Barker,
Cyprus. That's the one I've always been to. That's the original,
I believe. Down in pair Land on Broadway Street there's a Verdant Tree Farm
blocks from Killing Steakhouse. And up in the heights where Yale Street comes into
I ten there's a Burden tree form. It's not hard to find one ten
percent discount for military for first responders, one year warranty with installation, and
boy are we ever hitting the time of the year when you need to get
those kinds of things in the ground. By the way, it's not just
trees. I mean, you know, you need certain kinds of hollies.
For example, you may kind of be caught there between a shrub and a
tree. With some of these hollies. They sell those as well, and
they know how to install them properly so they live and you have good success
with them. We are going to have to take a break here, Mike,
Donn and Dennis, you are the first three up when we come back.
Thank you for holding on our phone number seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. Well, good morning. You're listening to garden Line
and we are talking all kinds of things gardening. Hey, you know your
lawn. It probably looks like I can't finish that sentence right now. With
the summer that just hammered it with heat and drought and everything like this,
this would be a good time to have an aeration and a compost top dressing
done. Now, when you aerate, you can go rental a narrator that
just pushes a hole in the ground, that just squeezes and compacts the sides
of the hole as it presses open a hole. There's a core narrator that
pops the little plugs the soil out. That's the best kind to do,
and that's a kind that Greenpro uses. Now green Pro has been doing this
for a good while. They know what they're doing. They do the aeration
and then they do a compost top dressing with quality compost. So what happens
is you get that low compost coating over the surface of the soil that blocks
a little bit of light. Hey, it probably helps a little bit with
the winter weed germination which is going to start next month. But it also
falls down in the hole, so you're getting organic matter in the holes.
You're getting oxygen in the holes. When it rains, water goes down in
there and it helps infiltration and water soaking in. So if it rains an
inch, you get that inch on your ground rather than running off down the
street. Green Pro knows what they're doing and they have a special deal if
you are a gardenline listener, you sign up for aeration and compost top dressing
by the fifteenth of September, that is five days from now. By then
they'll give you ten percent off. Now you don't have to have it done
by the fifteenth, You just have to sign up for it and book your
time by the fifteenth to receive the ten percent discount. This is a great
deal, a great opportunity, and with lawns in the shape that our lawns
are in this summer, this is one way to help bring them out of
that in a way that works very, very effectively, a lot cheaper than
doing a resotting. Maybe chinch bugs were also part of the problem. This
morning again or this summer again. Compost top dressing followed following a good aeration
by Greenpro. That's the way to go. Let's head out now we're going
to go to Mike and Brunham. Mike, thanks for hanging on. Yes,
sir, how are you doing well? I'm okay today. How are
you? I'm doing well, doing well, thank you. I am looking
at building a new I guess cabin next to a tree in my backyard,
and I'm concerned about any potential damage to roots, uh to that tree and
uh, if any if that should be considering a different location. All right,
yeah, well, in future infiltration, let me ask you a few
questions. Is this gonna be perembeam er slab? It's gonna be slab?
Okay, how far away from the tree is the slab gonna be? The
slab is probably gonna be. I mean, it's a it's a large mature
oak. It's gonna be kind of at the outer edge. It's probably twenty
feet from the actual trunk. So the outer edge of the branches where they
are current a little bit more. If you were to walk up to that
tree and each all the way around it with both arms, what are you
How big is that? Is that a steering wheel or your car? Is
that a large coffee can? How big of a trump? It's a little
bit bigger than the steeringhil of the car. Okay, well, if you
if you keep it twenty feet away, it can be done. I would
want to get into the cool season and get the soil moist. I wouldn't
want to do that to a tree in the middle of summer drought, for
example. I'm not saying it wouldn't survive that, but right now it needs
all the roots that's got. But as you do that, as you build
it that far away, I think you're going to be Okay as far as
what the roots do, you know, you're you're gonna anytime you've got a
building and the rainwater's coming off of it, roots are going to go up
against the slab. It stays moist there. That's where they proliferate. And
it's not so much that they go under it like they do a driveway or
a sidewalk, but they draw all the water away from it, because then
the soil goes from being very wet after a rain to very dry, and
that shrink and swell is our foundation concern that we have with roots. You
can have somebody come out cut the roots and put a barrier in that comes
at an expense, but that prevents any roots from getting any closer to it.
But I think in this case, just making sure that when we go
into next summer and it's hot and dry, that all the areas that are
still not covered by slab get a good soaking ever ten days to two weeks
during an extended time of drought no rainfall, let's say within the last couple
of weeks. Okay, So as far as that barrier's concerned there, so
I'm doing, I build, I do most of this work. Is there
a dy barrier for the roots? Probably, I don't know. It's not
going to be like you go to a garden center a home store and buy
one of the materials, a very very very thick fabric not fabric plastic type
material that goes underground and creates a wall. Essentially, there are some fabric
type materials that even have a root burning product incorporated in them so that as
the roots hit them, it's like a root hits air. The air burns
the root and it, you know, it prevents it from going forward.
It doesn't hurt the tree. It just says roots can't go by here.
There's different ones that I am not an expert in that. Someone like Affordable
Treecare could tell you exactly what that's done and what they would charge to do
it and too. But bottom line, as you're getting a wall in the
ground after you cut the roots in making the trench, and you're putting that
vertical wall down in the ground around it to prevent them from going that way,
I see. And as far as how deep that needs to be,
and all of that that's outside of my league. Okay, all right,
excellent. I appreciate your time today, you bet I thank you very much.
We are going to now go out to sugar Land and talk to Don.
Hello Don, and thanks for waiting. Good morning, Sip. Thank
you. I'll live it a townhouse that's only got a partially open patio.
It's about a eight by twenty and only about a four by twenty section at
the top is open. I've made some big planter boxes out of a hearty
board at the bottom. And my wife loves bamboo. I don't like it,
but anyway, so y'all compromise when you're getting it. Is that what
I'm Yeah? And well, she likes it as a barrier at the top.
Anyway, She's used different varieties and hasn't been satisfied with it. Most
of the bamboo at the tips of the leaves always turned brown. Do you
have a particular variety and when? What kind of soil would you put in
there? And fertilizer to make this stuff go? She gets out there and
she takes scissors and clips all the one that's brown parts off the top.
But the last variety was a thinner stock bamboo, and it didn't do well.
And there's the stuff well dying on her. Eventually the bamboo will grow
out and then the sunlight gets it. But it just doesn't seem to do
what it needs to do. And I know it shouldn't be that difficult.
I don't know if there's too much water or what. Yeah, bamboo's grass,
and so like any grass, when he gets two drivets can die back
and or die out right. If it's a severe enough drought, there's a
lot of types of bamboo. The kind you want probably is a clumping type
as opposed to the running types. Those are the ones that take over the
world and you wish and ever planted them. Unless we were just talking about
root containing her tree roots. You can do an underground root barrier for bamboo
too, to keep it within a space, but that's that's a whole nother
step. What I would do is, let's see you're done in Sugarland.
I would probably call the folks over at enchanted gardens and see what kinds they
can get and would recommend the problem with the clump types is they're a little
less hardy, not all of them. There's some heartier clumpers. But describe
to them what you want and they can tell you what kind of plants they
would get in that they would recommend for that particular spot. It's going to
come down to hot tall do you want it to be? Uh? And
uh? You know how wide of a boxed area you have which you were
describing to me, and they can tell you what they can get that would
fit that. Okay, what kind of soil or fertilizer would you use?
Any kind any good quality soil mix A good blend. It will do very
well in I mean it'll grow. And just the native soil that's out there,
I mean they're pretty tough. So look compost in there is good.
When you fertilize them, treat them like a lawn. They're a grass,
just lawn fertilizers. What you would use? Okay? All right? Can
I ask you one other question real quick? Yeah? Sure, I had
that. I had that Behavior Grass and Saint Augustine, so I called Southwest
Fertilizer and they didn't have manner that you recommend it, but they have a
different variety and they said, don't use it until it cools off. Well,
all my grass is dead anyway, except the Behavior grass. But anyway,
if you have like fruit trees around, is that is that not good
to use around a fruit tree or would it be okay if you just kind
of spotted around it? Really if you're if you're very careful, follow the
label carefully. Manner is one of those products. It works very well.
But if it if you get a gully washer or rain or you just irrigate
a lot and wash it down into the root system. It is very hard
on trees and shrubs because they've got roots all over the place, all over
your lawn. They're tree and shrub roots, and so you just have to
be careful on using it, you know, you want to you want to
put it down at the proper rate, not too much, and don't don't
do it before we're about to get an inch or to a rain, you
know, right before that, and you can you can probably do a pretty
good job with it that way. It wouldn't hurt it. The fruit though,
and edible fruit no well, no, yeah, no, I mean
it's not labeled for putting in an orchard, but in our landscapes we have
all kinds of plants combined together, and so I would be more concerned about
doing damage to the tree, you know, than it being taken up and
being in fruit. If you you would be doing it now anyway you want
to give. What I would do is I would water very well and get
that behagrass growing and then put the manner down And because actively growing weeds is
what takes up whatever herbside we're putting on them, and that would be your
goal. And then you're not watering after that to wash it down in the
soil. All right, got it? Okay? Thank you very much.
You bet, I thank you that. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah,
I mentioned in Channa Garden, you know. In Channa Gardens is out
there on three fifty nine just north of Richmond. It's on the Katie Fulscher
side of Richmond. You can go to their website enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com.
Enchanna Gardens is a place where you can get any kind of plant you
need. I mean they have everything, and they have a good selection of
everything. Do you need pottery? Do you want to create a fairy garden?
You know, faerry gardens are They're really cool, a little miniature gardens
with little miniature figurines and them. It's kind of an unusual thing. They've
got them in big containers. They got you know, but round the base
of your tree where nothing else is gonna want to grow, Why not put
a ferry garden. Go out to Encinna and see there. They're pretty cool.
Do you need antique and hybrid rows, is vegetables, herbs, specimen
trees. I mean they and their staff knows what they're talking about. And
oh yes, by the way, they carry all the fertilizer. If you
talk about they carry the soil as we talk about. You can get those
Vego garden beds we talk about at the Enchena Gardens. I mean they're hours
eight am to five thirty pm on Monday through Saturday and Sunday today ten am
to four pm. So get out this afternoon and check them out. You
will see why I'm so impressed and why when I have family come, that's
one of the places I take my visit and other friends just because every time
they go it's like, Wow, I've never seen a place like this.
Well, when you go to Enchanted, you will have Well we're running a
kind of short on time here to start, Dennis. I know you've been
holding. Thank you for your patients. If we can get through this newsbreak,
you will be the very next one that comes up. Our phone number
is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. Just a reminder that if you haven't downloaded
or put a bookmark in for my lawn care schedule, Skip Ricter lawn care
schedule is on gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot Com.
It tells you what to use all through the year from January to December.
All of the cultural practices that help make a beautiful lawn. Well, good
morning, you are listening to Garden Line and we are going to go straight
to Dennis and cove. Dennis, you get the Worldwide Award for Patients.
Thank you for waiting. Okay, I have two questions. I'll start with,
Well, hope is a shorter answer. It's about soaker hoses. I've
been watering my foundation by hand, and I got one hundred and fifty foot
soaker hose to try that to be more convenient. And I ran it about
two hours and I saw water coming out the entire length of the hose.
But the end of the two hours, i'd say the last half of the
hose, the ground was not really watered. And at the very end,
you know, it was just hardly damp at all. Okay, is that
going to be typical? Are there you know hoses that are I imagine that'd
be hard to manufacture a hose where the prosty actually increases along line so you
get even water distribution. Yeah, that's the problem. Anytime you run down
a piece of pipe, whether it's PVC or whatever, the pressure at the
beginning is greater than the pressure at the end, there's that a drag on
the pipe. It's hard to think imagine water inside PBC having friction, but
it does and the pressure decreases. Now, if the pipe slopes downward,
you can have it all even, but you got to get the right slope
where gravity overcomes the friction loss and it stays the same. There are drip
irrigation lines that are made with interior emitters that it's called a tortuous path.
But when the water comes into the emitter, it has to go through a
zigzag. It almost looks like a zipper going back and forth, back and
forth, and then it comes out the hole. And what that does is
it helps moderate the pressure and it gives you a more even application. All
the way down the line. One hundred and fifty is a long way to
go, and if there were any way to have maybe the water come in
midway down the line and then go both ways, you would cut it to
seventy five feet each way. Your water loss water pressure loss would be different.
But those in line emitters with a tortuous path, you buy them anywhere
you buy drip irrigation. You can get them in there's you know, six
inch spacing, twelve inch spacing, and so on. They come in different
amounts, and we use them in landscape beds, we use them in agriculture,
but you could certainly use them for your foundation like that. The other
thing that happens with emitters, and especially the soaker hoses too, is if
your water qualities a little off, maybe you've got some calcium or iron compounds
that develop deposits in there. They get clogged up and they just don't weep
the water out like they would otherwise, and so that can also happen.
That's something happens more over time, though, Dennis, Okay, okay,
thank you. My second question has to do I've got a number of deciduous
trees. Most of them are things we planted, so they're still fairly new,
you know, probably three feet high, some a little shorter, maybe
some are a little taller. And I've I've been doing what Randy used to
call the deep root watering, where I make the holes around and then water
into the holes rather than trying to soak the ground, especially in all the
heat. And I usually do this on the weekend, and things have been
holding up pretty well through the summer, but within the last couple of weeks,
I've noticed on several things that leaves are starting to turn brown. I
noticed particularly I've got maybe seven crat myrtles, and probably on six of them
the tips of the leaves are starting to brown. And there's some other trees
that this is happening, and they're all deciduous. But this seems to be
a little early to start losing leaves. Should I keep watering anyway? And
if the leaves come off? Kind of like, how do I know the
watering still doing any good? Or how much to water? Yeah? Is
your soiled clay? Yes? Oh yes? So let me this This what
I'm about to say goes back as well to your your house foundation. If
you take a long handled screwdriver and you push it into a clay soil that
you've watered, let's say from the top, like your socer hose was doing,
it'll go through the clay easily when it's wet. And then when you
hit however deep that watering got, it'll be like you hit a hit concrete.
And so you can pull the screwdriver out and you know exactly how deep
that soil is wet. That's that's helpful for you. Your socer hose or
whatever you're using around the house. But when you get about out around the
crape myrtles and things, I would still do a gradual soaking from the top
down. Now, if you just tried to put a sprinkler and just water
water water without stopping, it's going to run off. But anything that would
gradually soak as wide of an area as you can, and it could be
running a sprinkle and turning it off, running it, turning it all the
way down, that is good because you've got roots up there in the top
let's say two inches from the surface of the soil, there's roots. And
if you do the deep root, that does provide that bank account down in
the soil, and that's helpful. But if it's not doing enough, maybe
the water isn't coming upward enough to fully wet a volume of soil where you
have more resilience when it comes to the plant always having an access to that
moisture. Does that make sense? Yes? And so I guess again the
last part of that is, you know these things lose their leaves, does
it make sense to keep watering or you know at that point and you're just
kind of waiting connect spring to see how well things come back. Well,
what happens is they do lose their leaves as a way of trying to survive,
because the leaves are what uses water up there. It's how the water
gets out of the plant primarily, and so they drop the leaves just to
say, well, okay, we'll just hang on to survive. But during
that time, that plant can't do photosynthesis, it can't make carbohydrates for winter
heartiness. It can't. You know it. It's not a good thing.
It's a survival mechanism, but it is not helpful beyond just surviving. So
I would go ahead and give them some water because new leaves are going to
come on them. We hate to have them defoliate and then refoliate towards the
end of the year, just because you know that's it should be going into
fall and then dropping the leaves. But I would say it'd be worth giving
them watering still now, because there's a long time before it truly gets cooler
and the leaves normally start to drop, and I think you can get some
benefit out of getting hydration and some more leaves on that plant. Okay,
thank you very much. Yes, The only thing I wouldn't do, Dennis
is fertilize a plant because they you don't want to just push a lot of
succulent growth, but you do want to get some more leaves on that great
myrtle. All right, all right, thank you, yeah, thank you.
I appreciate the call. It's good, excellent questions. I know a
lot of other people probably have similar ones. You know, if you are
in the area down Highway six, a few blocks south of ninety six down
in League City, that is League City Feed. That's your hometown feed store.
The Thunderbergs have a very nice I call it old fashioned because they got
all the stuff that you would expect in a feed store. The fertilizers recommend,
the feeds, the pep foods, all the stuff, backyard chicken products.
They've got all of that. But they have that family service, you
know what I'm talking about, that you walk in your family the way you're
treated. They carry the things you need. If you need pest side products
for your long they're going to have them. And it's so easy. You
get to Highway three a few blocks south and ninety six. So if you're
in clear Lake City or oh come into Reale. Dickinson Lamart Bay Cliff,
League City Webster. This is your hometown feed store and now they're open Monday
through Saturday, closed to Sunday. They're open till six Monday through Saturday.
So after working, swing by there two eight one three three two sixteen twelve
two eight one three three two sixteen twelve for League City Feed. Well,
we're gonna take a break here. We will be back our phone number seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well, good Sunday morning,
What a great day. It is beautiful outside. We got a little
bit break from that just I don't know how to intense infernal heat that we
were dealing with this summer. And we got a little bit of rain some
parts of the area, especially Houston, a little bit to the east side.
Rain for everybody's coming. That's called fall. It is coming, the
temperatures dropping. It's time to get ready and speaking to get ready. If
you live up in the Montgomery area, A and A Plants and Produce has
got everything you need to get ready. They have a great stock of plants.
I mean we're talking shrubs, trees for trees, if you want annual
color, if you need vegetables, and herbs and things like that. They've
got it all. Plus they have a lot of nice fall bling. You
know, they always have bling up at Ana Plants and Produce, whether it's
chimin eas or other kinds of structures out there, maybe topiaries, some deck
furniture, patio furniture. That's another good thing that they have, along with
the yard art and you know, hand tools and glove everything you need to
have a garden. By the way, on Sunday, October eighth, I
know that's a distance away, but write this down. Sunday, October eighth
is their annual family fall festival. The technical term is Shindig. It's one
heck of shindig coming up Sunday, October eighth, twelve noon to four pm.
Twelve noon to four pm. Doesn't cost anything. Mister Scarecrow, be
there. There'll be a DJ there, there'll be face painting, there'll be
a balloon artist, there'll be a pumpkin patch. Just put on your calendar.
You don't want to miss that one. Out at A and A Plants
and Produce if you haven't been there before. When you're in Montgomery, you
just head east on one oh five to the edge of Town on Highway Wonder
five Tortomball, Tomball toward Conro. My gosh, don't even have my map
in my head here, and that's where they are. It's easy to find
them. So all those folks out in April sound like Conro, bent Water,
you know de Lago. All those places out there, they are your
hometown garden center and they carry all the fertilizers we talk about here, So
that makes it easy for one stop shopping. We've been dealing with this brutal,
brutal summer weather and I know I keep saying it and you already know
it, but I'm telling you things are changing, that it is coming and
we need to be ready for it. Now. Maybe you're looking out there
and you're going, this is so discouraging brown yard. There's shrubs that are
dying, and I just don't even look at it. Well, know that
it can all be turned around. It can all be turned around. You
maybe a do it yourself and you're gonna chip away and do it yourself.
But if you really want the first rate, beautiful landscape and you want a
turnkey job to make it easy, maybe it's done in stages, but maybe
it's done at one time. Pierscapes is a one and here's why you need
to know this. Now you call them, now, you take pictures in,
You sit down with them, you tell them what you want. Maybe
you have pictures or something you like that you saw some or bring it in
and say I like this and can I do this here? What do you
think? They're going to guide you and suggestion and suggest things because they know
what it takes to make things right. They can fix the soil, they
can put in plants that are drought resistant, so you're not doing this every
time we have this kind of a summer. Peerscapes is easy to get a
hold of two eight one, three, seven zero fifty sixty. They do
everything. Do you need hardscapes? Do you need a patio? Do you
need irrigation work? I bet you do. Most irrigation systems need help.
They're not well designed or maintained. And Peerscapes can do just that. Peerscapes
dot Com. Give them a call, and why not do it now so
that when fall comes and the prime time for getting all these in the ground
is done by the holidays, You've got a beautiful place and you've started over
with resilient plants and a well designed landscape. That's what peerscapes can do.
That is what they can do. I was sitting at home this past week
and look across the living room and going across the floor was a cockroach.
Yes, in my house, a cockroach. I have two Golden retrievers,
and you know what they were doing. They were just looking at it.
They just looked at those ingrates, those freeloaders. They were just I hope
they'd pounce on it and get rid of or they eat everything else. Everything
else goes in their mouth. Not this. Well, I tell you what
I need to do. I need to call McGrath pest Control. Scott knows
how to control pests. Even doing this, I think nineteen seventy four,
Scott's dad started the business, still family run over forty eight years now.
He has the experience. You can go online to MacGrath Pest Control dot com
or you can just call him two eight one four six nine eighty two forty.
Every time of the year there's something we're dealing with. There's the season
where seasons where we're dealing with mosquitoes. There's the fire ants in the yard,
there are the critters that get up in the attic. You know,
there's dealing with mosquitos and rodents and all kinds of things. Scott does.
All of that covers a whole hous scenaria, modern technology with old fashioned customer
service. So when you call McGraph, they don't go, well, block
your whole Next Saturday, we might show up. Like a lot of service
people do. They tell you the time that they're going to come, not
a five hour window. They show up and they're highly rated on all the
review sites. McGrath Pest Control write that down. You're gonna need it.
You need it probably today, but you're gonna need it as we go through
time because there's always a new thing we're dealing with and McGraph knows how to
deal with each of them effectively, and that is really important. We have
been talking about all kinds of things gardening. I just want to remind you
that next Saturday, I'm going to be at the Montgomery Home and Garden Show
that is up at the Lone Star Convention Center in Conro. Now, Nelson
plant Food is going to be there, given away some food plant food jugs,
some of their quality products that Nelson produces, and also I'll be giving
away some medina samples. At the same time, I'll be given a talk
from twelve noon to one pm, and I hope you will come for that.
It'll be about all kinds of things we need to do to take what
we have now coming out of summer and turn it into something special. Whether
it's your lawn, your garden, your flowers, if trees are struggling.
We'll talk about all that, and then I'll be sitting at a table for
an hour to answer your gardening questions. We are very happy to take care
of all of those kinds of things really important. If you haven't been,
If you're in and the Tombawler, your hometown feed store is D and D
Feed. D and D Feed is out there on twenty nine twenty. It's
about three miles west of two forty nine, just west of Tomball on the
left. Inside. The Dover family has been doing this since nineteen eighty nine.
Their expansion this summer is it's great when I go in there and look
at the amount of products and everything you need for your animals, for your
livestock, for your pets. They have quality pet foods, Origin Diamond,
Victor Starpro. They got this little kind of pet deli where you can get
really cool kind of bones and snacks and all kinds of things. If you
come home without those, your dogs will look at you like, how could
you treat me this way? You need to get some of those. DND
feed is easy to get to. They often have plants outside as well.
They carry every product we talk about in terms of fertilizers to make your lawn
and garden special. They carry the mulches and the soils that we brag on
here on garden Line. So it's really easy to do, really easy to
get to. Again, DND feed they are three miles west of ivy two
forty nine on twenty nine twenty in Humble. Check them out and you'll see
why we say it is your hometown feed store for all the greater Tomball area.
One more reminder that you can get my lawncare schedule for free online at
gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot com, we talk about
the synthetic fertilizers and what to do. We talk about organic fertilizers and what
to do, the trace minerals, the aeration, the mowing, the watering.
There's instruction for all of that here on the garden schedule that I produced.
These are all cultural things. Now we have another schedule it's going to
be coming out that talks about the problems, the pests, the disease,
the weeds. When do you do what, When do you look for chinch
bugs? When would sobworms side web worms occur? When do you put on
a pre emergent and so on. I'll talk about that on the air.
We're gonna have that schedule out, But for now, the big elephant in
the room on the lawncare schedule is fall fertilization. We're just about to enter
the prime time for the fall fertilizers, and it's not the same fertilizers as
the spring and summer. Those are high nitrogen fertilizers. When we're promoting vigorous
growth fall, we drop the nitrogen levels way down. We make sure the
potassium is plenty high, but it's potassium with a little bit of nitrogen makes
for the essential ana freeze inside a plant that's carbohydrates. So no matter what
kind of winter we have, if you're putting in a new lawn replacing your
o lawn, you definitely need to get a quality fall fertilizer on it.
You need to get it as hearty and tough as you can going into winter
and then coming out in spring it's going to be even better. So check
out the lawn care schedule of Gardening with Skip dot Com. KTRH Garden Line
does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program.
Welcome to KTRH Guarden Line with Skip Ricord. Just watching Golden Well, good
morning, good morning on a beautiful Sunday morning. You're listening to Garden Line,
and we're all about helping you have a beautiful garden and a bountiful landscape.
That is our goal here and coming out of this summer, we got
our work cut out for us. But it can be done. Believe me,
it can be done. Do not be discouraged. Cool weather is coming,
rain is coming. We've got a night. One of the nice things
about living this far south in Texas is we do not have brutal winners.
Occasionally we get one of those. It's and not supposed to be that cold
here. But overall, I mean, for crying out loud, we grow
citrus here, people grow avocado trees here. I mean, this is a
really a gardening, a gardening Eden when it comes to all the different things
you can grow that people even a little further north can't grow, and it's
a nice thing to have. We also tend to get a lot of rain
here. Now, of course, here comes these weird summers we've had lately
that make it a little bit more of a challenge. But the bottom line
is this is a great place to garden, and you can enjoy the beauty
and the bounty of your garden just by following some principles, by doing some
things right. And one of those principles is start with the soil. It
all starts with the soil. The soil, the soil, the soil.
Spend money on the brown stuff before you spend money on the green stuff,
or at least do it at the same time. Do not neglect taking care
of the soil first before you plant, and then continuing to take care of
it after you plant. And how do we do that well. We do
that by choosing quality products and Nature's way resources. They have long been a
leader when it comes to everything that makes roots and plants happy. This is
what I mean. We're talking about compost, We're talking about rose, soil,
blend. We're talking about leaf mold compost. We're talking about all kinds
of ingredients that enhance the soil therefore enhance the soil microbiology, which means the
roots are enhanced and plants just do better. They've got all kinds of products
to do that, everything you can imagine, including way more than the ones
I just mentioned. They also have a nice selection and native plants at their
nursery. That's something that people are probably not aware of. But if you
haven't been out there, you need to check it out. And they have
been out there, you need to go back because they've really upgraded it a
lot. They just continue to get better and better out there. John and
Ian at Nature's Way really have things heading in a very exciting direction. You
can give m a call at nine three six three two one sixty nine ninety
nine three six six two one Let's see gosh nine three six three two one
sixty nine ninety My tongue is tripping over itself, by the way way On
September thirtieth, towards the end of this month, I'm going to be out
there because they're having their Fall Garden Festival. One heck of a Shindig.
I'll be out there entering gardening questions, meeting the public. They're going to
have food, music, vendors, beverages, at kid scavenger hunt, all
kinds of fun for little gardeners. They'll be demonstrations going on, like how
to create an enchanting fairy garden. I was just talking about that a little
bit earlier, learning learn that magic of a miniature garden. It is really
kind of cool. So mark your calendars again September thirtieth. It's no charge
to come into this. You can visit their website or you can just if
you want, you can get m a call nine three six three two one
sixty nine ninety. While you're out there, I hope you'll pick up some
of their quality products. You can order them in bulk to be delivered.
You can also buy them by bag at various places around our listening area.
We're going to head out now to the Woodlands and talk to Jennifer. Hello,
Jennifer, good morning, how are you. I'm well, Thank you.
I have a question. I recently had a bunch of trees trimmed up,
you know, branches done and everything. The arborists came out and took
care of it, and then literally maybe a week and a half later,
I looked out and one of my mature pine trees was completely brown as far
as the needles are concerned. And I I walked up to it and looked
and there I again, I don't know, but this looks like maybe pine
beetles. There's boars all throughout the base and up the tree I guess too,
where there's little sawdust, uh coming out, and then there's also sap
that's like partially uh, you know, coming out of the tree. And
I, I don't know, I think that's it. I don't know what
happened, but it must have happened very quickly. But I've done anything to
to prevent that is tough because getting out there and spraying a tall pine tree
trunk trying to none of us have the equipment to do that properly. You
need to get eighty percent of the trunk covered with a spray to try to
prevent an infestation. They're opportunists, and when pines get weak, they show
up. I mean, if that pine had been hit by lightning, you
would see beetles showing up real quickly after that. If that pine has gone
through drought, which it has. That that is another weakening thing that makes
the beetle more likely to be able to attack and kill the tree. The
best thing you can do at this time is to get it down as fast
as you can. Those beetles, and you said they go up the tree
not more more than like eight feet high, they go way up the trunk,
the little sap and sawdust, I mean, I think so. I
didn't really investigate it up beyond that. Yeah, I saw most of the
damage around the base. Around the base, well, that could be turpentine
beetle. But get as you get higher, there's ips and graver beetle.
There is the true southern pine bark beetle, and there's actually I think there's
five different bark beetles that can attack pines. The number doesn't matter. The
bottom line is when they're up there, they're poor flyers. But if you
know, if they were up thirty feet high or twenty feet high on a
tree, then they can take off and fly to another tree on your Oh.
So getting that tree down, even if you do nothing but cut it
down and it's laying on the ground, you've gone a great distance and reducing
infestation of the other trees so good deep soakings. It would be nice just
to get a good rainfall. I don't know if you got any and the
thing that came through yesterday or did you get some good raining a little bit.
Well, getting them out of stress is important. But getting that tree
down soon, and also what will happen is the bark wills real quickly start
coming off the tree and then anybody who's got a climate to take it down.
That is re dangerous to try to climb a tree with loose bark sooner,
sooner rather than later. I would probably talk to the folks that Affordable
Tree. They're the ones we like to brag on here because they do a
great job and they you know, just whatever you do, you need to
get somebody soon to get out there and get that thing down. Okay,
okay, thank you very much. All right, Jennifer, thank you.
I appreciate that call very much. You know, the folks at CNA Maltch
down south of Houston, they have ever fertilizer I recommend, and they have
an unbelievable supply of quality products. So when we brag on soils and products,
we talk about you know, like an heirloom soil kind of materials and
stuff. We're talking about a quality product. Well, that's the kind of
stuff that you're going to find when you get to CNA Malts. When they
sell you perhaps a multch like a native hardwood malt or double ground malt,
or whenever you're looking for rose soil or an organic compost material, they've got
that. They deliver within about twenty miles. And by the way, they
are near Highway six and two eighty eight north of Rose Sharon on FM five
twenty one. They're open Monday through Friday, from seven thirty to five on
Saturday seven thirty to two, closed on Sundays. But they also again carry
those fertilizers, which it's just I'm not even having time to get to all
the rock products that they provide at cienamals dot com. Go to cienamulch dot
com. You'll see what I'm talking about. Well, we're gonna take a
break. Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Well, good morning. You are listening to garden Line and we are
here to answer your gardening questions. I'm your host, Skip Rector, and
you can give us a call seven one three, two one two five eight
seven four. If you are out in the Richmond area, a nursery you
need to know about is enchanted forests. Now, if you're in Richmond and
you're heading up toward sugar Land direction, it's off to the right, it's
it's south of fifty nine when you enter. It truly is an enchanted place.
The setting reminds me of kind of like an old West town. I
don't know if that's accurate or not, but you just go in there and
you got that feel, that that feel of the building stuff. By the
way, they just put in a new herb area and it is a really
cool little structure over the herbs. And you know, fall is herb season,
the best time to plant almost every basil being an exception it likes hot
weather, but almost all the other herbs, Fall is an outstanding time to
plant. And enchanted forest has the herbs you need. I mean, they've
got a wonderful stock in this really cool new area that is now open out
there. They've got snap dragons out there too, all kinds of things,
you know, fall flowers, that kind of thing. It's time to get
those in. You can go for it and have beautiful color all the way
into the fall. They've got some really cool fall to core. I was
looking at some of the pumpkin decorations for indoors and outdoors and whatnot, and
oh my gosh, if you're planning a Halloween or Thanksgiving or any kind of
gathering, you got to have some of that stuff. There's more coming too.
By the way, Pumpkins are coming pretty soon too. They're we're not
too far away from their pumpkin season. Lots of educational programs this fall out
at Enchanted Forest. In fact, on September sixteenth, Saturday, September ten
am, they're going to do a beneficial insects program on how to achieve and
sustain a natural balance in your garden. And these are free and just go
to the Facebook page for Enchanted Forest and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Get those things on your calendar. I'm going to be out there before the
end of this fall giving a talk myself. I always like going out there
too. By the way, we're going to head out now to Lake Jackson
and talk to Ronnie. Hello, Ronnie, Hey, how y'all doing today?
Well we're doing well? What's up? Quick? Question. I've got
access to some barn manure. It's not green, it is dried, and
talking with the gentleman that I got it from, he just told me till
it right into the ground. I went on the line and it says to
let it age for like six months with leaves and other stuff. Can I
put the leaves on it? When I if I tell it into the ground,
what do you say, thing? What are you growing in this spot?
Getting ready for next spring? Tell about vegetables? Yes, they're affegetable,
so I'm sorry. Yeah. The deal with vegetables is when you have
the nerves that are not fully aged for a couple of months, h there's
potential for some microbes that would be human illnesses to be there. You know,
et coli for example, that kind of thing. Okay, and so
we don't want to just put it down the ground, mix it in and
then have rain splash it up on the vegetables we're growing, because that would
be a direct contamination. That would be a health concern. You know,
if you're growing something else, I wouldn't worry about it. But with the
vegetables, I would let it age. You can mix it with some leaves
if you want just kind of create a heap on the ground. You don't
have to go all the way into a full fledged compost pile. Maybe mix
it around a little bit, and then I would say you put it on
in late winter for your spring garden. Let's give it a little bit of
time to do some decomposing before you do that, just as an extra measure.
You may not do that and get away with it, but I don't
want to run the risk gamblevising you. Yeah, absolutely, I agree.
A thank you sir, Yes, sir, thank you for the call.
I appreciate that very much. Hey, if you live out in Mount Bellevue,
I'm gonna tell you about your hometown feed store. We love our local
feed stores and out in Mont Bellevue that is Texas Feedstop. Now, if
you're in Mont Bellevue from Interstate ten, go north on Highway one one forty
six, just a few minutes on Interstate ten, go north on Nord forty
six a few minutes and there they are on the right hand side. You're
not going to find better customer service at than anywhere than they have at Texas
Feed Stop. It is awesome. Brian and Hope Rhodes, they have created
that place that I can just describe it as family friendly. It is.
When you walk in, you're treated like family. You feel like family.
They carry the bags out for you, and they got all the stuff we
talk about, all those fertilizers, we talk about, all the soul stuff.
We talk about the mosquito dunks for example. When you hear me talk
about things, you can go into Texas feed sime you can find them,
and it's really easy to do. So, I mean, maybe you don't
live right in Mont Bellevue, maybe you know you're a little further out.
This is still your hometown feed store. I mean it's just so easy to
get to and the products and the service. Maybe you're getting ready for deer
season. They've got a lot of products for that as well. It's really
easy Baytown, Mont Bellevue, that whole area your hometown feed store for everything
you need for your garden as a Texas feed stop. We're gonna head out
to Clear Light now and talk to Lane. Hello, Lane, Hello,
thanks for taking my call. Sure, So, last time I call you,
my ask about the American Holly and it's dead. So I'm having it
pulled out and all the plane old bushes that the builders gave me. They're
dead, so I'm having them pulled out and I'm going to plant new plants.
And I was wondering what should I till into the soil for to uh,
you know, handle these new plants. Yeah, okay, Can I
just put in like plain omericable garden soil. No, I would not use
pete moss. When it dries out, It's hard to get it wet again.
And it is a mind product that is is a limited supply if we
keep using it up like that. I would get a quality mix like a
rose soil that would be an excellent one. And you can get rose sau
bulk. You can get it in bags, depending on how big of a
bed you're making, but that would be good. Okay, well, straight
compost too, so if it's pretty long, you probably want to have a
delivery made, or if you know anyone with a trailer and a truck to
go get it. You can have a truck. Okay, well, uh
you know that. Then you can go for it and get it yourself,
or you can just order and have it delivered. If you go to Airloom
Soils website Heirloom Soils, they're up in the porter direction, so they're not,
you know, across the street from here. But if you go to
their website, they have a soil calculator and number one, you can see
their soils there and find out what it costs to get them delivered and everything.
But on the soil calculator, you measure the length and the width of
your bed and you say, I want I want it four inches deep,
I want eight inches Well, however much you need, and it'll tell you
exactly how many cubic yards it takes to do that. And that's really helpful
information because you're probably going to find that buying it by the bag is just
not the way to go. It's better to get bulld and those kinds of
places like Airloom, they'll deliver it down there and you can get a good
mix. But a rose soil or just a really quality compost that's screened and
that it is well composted in a bed like that gets you. You want
to mix it into the soil that you have and create a raised, mixed
up bed like that and then plant and you're going to have much better success.
Okay, do I And then I put malt on top? Yes,
after you plant. You cover the soil surface with a blanket of malts.
That protects the soil. It keeps the soil temperatures moderated, It helps hold
moisture from just evaporating right off the surface in summer droughts like we just had,
and most of all, it keeps the weeds down. You know,
sunlight can't get to the soil when you've got a good mulch cover over the
top. Okay, And I was just thinking using cedar mulch, No I
would use. I would probably be used a shredded hardwood mulch for that.
That's going to work better for you. Yeah, okay, I mean there
are a lot of mulch is out there, but a shredded hardwood is a
good one. Okay. Yeah, I know about no using guide boards,
you know mostly yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. And you
know how we have a lot of ants. They do damage to the plants
or no, but by and large, note there are very few types of
ants that will mess with plants, and they just like to mess a few
montes well or even most of them don't even mess with arts. The fire
ants will be Yeah, I think we attack them there You go there you
go, Hey Lane, I appreciate your calling and good luck getting that bed
made. I hope you have good success. Thank you, you bet you
take care if you're looking to put in a vegetable bed, or a flower
bed, or an herb bet or some other kind of bed that you just
want a beautiful bed that does the job and lasts a long long time.
That is Vego garden beds. You can go online to vegogarden dot com and
find out more about them. When you see these beds, you will see
why I think they are so gorgeous. They are treating The metal inside the
bed is treated in a way that prevents corrosion and rust, and then they
coat it with a paint that is safe to use in gardening beds that lasts
a long time, non toxic, no leeching of metals or toxins or anything.
With a Vego garden bed. They're modular. You can make them long
and skinny, you make square, you can make them C shaped or L
shaped. You just put them together like you want and it's really easy to
do. It's like playing with tinker toys. Essentially, Vego garden beds way
out last treated wood and for organic gardeners that you absolutely would want to use
a Vego garden bed because there isn't any concern with anything leaching out of the
bed itself. Vegogarden dot Com or a lot of our garden centers now are
starting to carry the Vego garden beds, and so it's easy to find,
and I encourage you to really give them a good long look because this is
a one time purchase you're gonna make that is going to be decades of enjoyment
as a result. Neat, clean, easy, beautiful Vego garden beds.
We're let's see what are we doing. I got a little time here before
I have to go to our next break out there. I brag on ACE
hardware all the time. By the way, thank you for Mickey and jailed
down at Richmond Ace. We had a great time out there yesterday. That
was really a lot of fun. Ace hardwares are all over town. I
mean, you can find ACE hardware near you. It is not difficult because
there's thirty nine of them in the Houston area. If I recommend a fertilizer,
it's going to be an ACE. If you have a pest problem,
a disease problem, a wheat problem. ACE will have more than one.
They will have several products for each problem that you might have that you can
choose from. I mean, it is the place to have a more beautiful
lawn, to have trees that thrive, to have a garden that thrives.
ACE has all of that, and then some lots of cool stuff for the
home, for outdoors. It's just really to do, really easy to do
when you go to ACE and do your shopping there, and when you get
there, you're going to find out, like I found out yesterday, there's
a lot of other stuff you can't live without. My wife came around the
corner with a bag full of stuff. I sat there for two hours.
That was two hours of shopping. Nikki, it almost broke us. Oh
yeah, I mean the prices were good, but when you fill the basket
to the brim, Oh yeah, man, but you just keep going.
Yes, I could use that. Yeah. In fact, we fired up
our new soda stream from ACE. One of those little things where you you
put the water in flavor in it and it just carbonates. The whole thing
is I've always been a wonderful It's absolutely wonderful. Need it, yes,
Well, I mean what do we need? We need water, we need
air, we need but I wanted it and so we got one. But
when you combine the air in the water, you get carbonation. That you
get carbonation. It's effervescent, kind of like the Nikki News network. Let's
go to the news. Well, good morning, you're listening to Gardenline and
we're having a good time today on morning talking about all kinds of things gardening,
all kinds of things gardening, including trees. You know, trees are
a valuable part of our landscape. There the value that they create ask Andy
realtor. The value that they create for your home is significant. And planting
trash trees is a bad idea because about the time it should be the most
valuable thing in your landscape, it is being falling apart, it's being taken
out and it never should have been planted. We need to choose good quality
trees and we talk about that sometimes here on garden Line. The importance of
that planting them right is important, but then taking care of them, helping
them through drought times. For example, you know Martin Spoon with Affordable Tree,
they do the deep root watering. You know, we've heard of deep
root feeding. Of course, well deep root watering is also very important.
It gets water down in the system quickly to rescue a tree, to provide
that bank account that the trees need. Now. Martin does all kinds of
things. This is an important time to to make sure and get your trees
ready for any kind of a storm season we might have. I mean,
hurricane season lasts until November, but didn't have to be hurricane. That causes
the winds that can break a week limb. If it's brown, take it
down. That makes it really simple. If you have a tree that's browned,
you better take it down because it's going to fall on something like your
neighbor's house or maybe your car. Continue to do that. Deeper feeding very
very important. If you want any kind of work done, you need to
call now because Martin books up fast. Always tell them that you are a
Guardenline customer because that gets you to the front of the line an affordable tree.
They have been a strong Guardenline supporter for a long time and we're proud
to have them. We're already having storms passed through and just don't mess around
with it. Get them pruned and get them pruned properly. Listen. If
a guy shows up with a pickup and a chainsaw, that doesn't mean they
know what they're doing. Martin Spoonmore knows what he's doing. And bad pruning
is forever. When you butcher a tree, it will forever be a weakened,
more hazardous not to mention, just flat, ugly plant and they're so
beautiful and valuable. Give Martin a call at seven one three six nine nine
twenty six sixty three. I was talking to Jennifer earlier about the pombark beetles
that you know, I'd already kill that tree. That thing needs to come
down, and you need someone that knows what they're doing when they do it,
and that would be Martin Spoonmore at Affordable Tree again seven one three sixty
nine nine twenty six sixty three. You're listening to Garden Line and our phone
number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We actually
have an opening right now. If you would like to give us a call
and get on the lines, we would be happy to visit with you about
the things that are of interest or of concern to you after this Scember.
There are a lot of things people are concerned about. I'm sitting there looking
at the studio windows right now at a tree. There's a whole bunch of
grain trees and one brown tree. And you probably have noticed that before.
And it's always hard to help people that have a bunch of trees that look
healthy and one that's brown and explain to them why it died, and they
don't want to believe you. And here's why, Well, why didn't the
others die? If you're saying it was drought, why didn't the others die.
If you're saying that it was some other cause, why didn't the others
get it? Well? Why do you go to a party with five friends
and come home shake the same hands, have the same people coughing in the
air as everybody else, and you get sick or your friend gets sick,
but the rest of the group doesn't. It's just the way nature is.
That's how things work. Sometimes it's because the patient is a weak patient and
not as resilient that happens. And that's one of the explanations for these things
on our trees. Speaking of your trees too, you need to make sure
that you choose a good quality roofer whenever you have damage to a roof,
and when storms comes through, here come the storm chasers and they run through
everywhere and they say, here, I'll get you your insurance, I'll fix
your roof, I'll put you a new one on there, and blah blah
blah blah. Those are fly by night and they're gone. They're off chasing
the next storm in Florida or wherever. Literally they travel all over the place
like that. You need a place from a company from here, You need
a hometown person. That's Brinkman. Jason Brickman, Brinkman Roofing. Brickman Roofing
had been doing this for fifty years, twenty five years. Warranty of the
service that they do in your roof. They can do shingle roof, they
can do standing metal seam roofs. Don't trust a company just knocks on the
door. Go with someone that has won the Better Business Bureau Pinnacle Award.
That's Brinkman Quality dot Com. Or call them at two eight one four eight
zero seventy six sixty three. And when you call them, ask them about
their timberline solar shingle. This is a solar energy producing shingle that is not
on the roof it is the roof really cool. They protect your home while
they create electricity. We're gonna go now to the phones and talk to Bill
out in Spring. Hello Bill, Hey, good morning, Skip morning.
Appreciate all the good information you're providing everyone. I've got a question. I'm
gonna put in a new flower bed and I've got to chill it up.
I've got san augustine in there now and the typical spring tomball gumbo. Okay,
so when I tell this, uh, what kind of preparations should I
do once I get it tiled up? What kind of amendment should I put
in there to make it more friable in a better bed? Yeah, that's
good. Well, say, austine's easy to get out of there. I
mean you scrape it off the top of it's all gone. It's not like
bermudo grass, So that's good. I would buy a rose soil and put
that down. That is. I know roses are on the name of the
mix, but it is good for a lot of things. If you're just
planting petunias and pansies and things, rose soil is good for that. I
mean, you can grow anything in a rose soil. So I would I
would buy that I would probably put about must say, four inches of it
down. Mix it a little bit with the soil that you have underneath,
so it's not just like wonderful rose oil and boom instantly that black clay you're
describing. You kind of blend that transition a little bit, and then you
can add more to the top. Make sure the bed gets high enough to
drain well in whatever area. If it's a low spot, you need to
come up a little higher. But when it does rain, and it will
again, sometimes it just stays wet for days and days, and we want
to get our roots up out of that in a well drained mix like rose
soil would give you. I raise it, you think, yeah, I
think so. I mean if it was let's say, out the top of
a little mound, well it's already raised, but a lot of things are
flat, and so getting it up maybe if you were to bring it up
about ten inches, it's going to settle down to about six pretty quick.
That's just ow so will work. So bring it up hired and you think
you want it because it won't stick around. If you ever had a flower
pot on the patio, you know that you start off full of potting soil
and two years later the parts half full. Well, that's what happens in
a garden bed too. Well, I bought about a dozen plants yesterday.
I've got the hotlit shalba and the passion vine, and so I'm gonna be
planning those in. There is that proper soil and everything for those plants that
would be excellent for all of those. And Bill, I'm gonna have to
go. I'm gonna have to go to a break here. If you had
more of a more questions, you can stick around. I'll come back to
you, but I need to I need to break and take a break right
now. Our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Well, you're listening to garden Line, and we're glad you are.
We're here to answer your gardening questions and visit about all kinds of things gardening
that you might have. You know, when when it comes to supplies for
everything you need for a garden, you cannot find a place that has a
better, more complete, more extensive selection than Southwest Fertilizer. It is simple
as that they've been around since nineteen fifty five. And when I say Southwest
for Elijah. I'm talking about the corner of Bissonette and Renwick here in Houston.
Corner or Bissonette and Renwick. You can go to Southwest Fertilizer dot com
to find them there learn more about them. All the fertilizers are recommend and
then some the plant soil products that are recommend and then some. There is
nothing that will attack your plants, whether it's a disease, an insect,
a weed in your lawn that Southwest Fertilizer doesn't have several options of effective control.
And the folks there, Bob and his team, they are experts.
They know. They bring them a sample, bring him a picture, they
can look at it. They can tell you what it is and they can
point you to the right product for the situation. Because the devil's always in
the details, isn't it. Well, they understand the details and they know
how to help you have success. Now when you go to Southwest, you're
going to also want to ask Bob about the kneeling bench that they have.
That's a really cool product. It's one of my favorite, absolute favorite new
products that I discovered. Been around longer and I discovered it, but I
discovered them and started using them. It's easy to get down, to eat,
to get up. You carry them around one way it's a seat,
you turn around the other way and it is a kneeling bench with handles to
help you get back up again. Trust me, that is important. It's
been anywhere north of forty. That is very important. They have those,
They fold up, they store away really easy. It's really easy. But
Southwest Fertilizer, of course they have those. They have everything that you would
need. And if they if they don't have it, you don't need it.
That's as simple as that with Southwest. Hey, let's run out to
Sandra in Kingwood. How you doing, Sandra. I'm doing fine, Skiffs.
Thanks for taking my call. I have a quick question for you.
I even have a patio home. So i have a very small all front
yard and I've got a reddo that almost the canopy almost covers my entire front
yard. And what I'd like to do is eventually replace that Saint Augustine underneath
that tree would dwarf Mundo graphs. Okay, So I I have my college
kid coming next week and I'm going to give him a spade and he's gonna
dig up some of the grass. He's gonna make a circle underneath the canopy
and we're going to get bigger every year. But my question is, once
he gets the graph up, should I add more dirt to the ground,
And what month would be best to plant this Mundo graphs Now's a good time.
This falls probably the best time you can plant it. You could also
plant it in the springtime, that's fine. Mondo is a slow grower,
so it doesn't fill in real fast, so you don't feel a little closer
than you would other plants could just because of the spread rate is slower.
If you can mix in a little bit of compost at a bit of an
improved soil mix kind of thing like that, it would be helpful. The
challenge is going to be doing it around the tree because all the roots they're
just there's woody root everywhere you try to dig around a tree. And so
I would just see how well you can do that in terms of adding a
little soil and mixing it in and then getting that Mondo planted. Did you
mention the dwarf or the regular mondo l Mondo? Yeah, that one stayed
really low. I mean, that's that is the beautiful dark green lawn underneath
a tree where nothing will grow. Mudo can grow where it's too dark for
mushrooms. Of course that's a joke, but it is one one good shade
tolerant plant. Okay, And then water it like you said for regular side,
like every day for two weeks or whatever. It is not necessary because
you're bringing in a good root system because it's coming in as transplants already in
a container side they go in and they shave it off just a half inch
under the soil, and so you're losing all those roots. You get the
roots that are in the clay soil that comes to you with the side.
That's why we're having to water it frequently lightly, just to keep it going
until it gets its roots down. With mondo, it's a transplant, it's
different. That makes that makes sense. And as it I know I'm gonna
plan it, I don't know, maybe six inches apart, and I know
that eventually it will fill in. But until it fills in, like next
spring, if I do have some soil that's not root down, could I
interspers little plants in there such as I would you talk thus things that grow
in the shade, yes flower colladiums or impatience or what are you trying to
do? Yeah, impatient? Well you could if there's enough light for the
impatience. They like shade, but they like a bright shade. But you
could do that. I've never really thought about it that way. If you
like the look of that, I would say you could go ahead and do
it, or you could just have a bed area that you plant the impatience
in and then the mando is outside of that. It's kind of up to
you. It's your yard. You get to call it. Well, it's
my yard in the h a yard, and I I'm going to go on
the premise that dwarf mundo grass is a grass and they should not bother me
about replacing one with the matter. But we'll see. Oh my gosh,
okay, yeah, I feel you're pain Okay, all right, Sander,
good luck with that. Thank you. You know. One of my one
of my favorite parts of gardening is birds. And it used to not be.
I was not a bird person and I walked into a wild Bird's Unlimited
store and yeah, the rest is history. So I'm warning you when you
walk in there, you will you will find stuff you you absolutely have to
have them bring home and it's all good stuff. That's the nice thing.
If they say you feed, it's good. Feed it. They say a
bird feeder or birdhouse, it's a good one, and they know what they're
talking about. The staff knows how to help you. This is peak month
for ruby throated hummingbirds. Were in the big middle of their fall migration.
You need to make sure that they have feed out all the time. Now
you can purchase a liquid for them. You don't need the stuff with the
red dyes. You just take four parts water, one part white table sugar,
four parts water one part white table sugar sugar, mix it up.
I heat mine a little bit just so the sugar dissolves well, and then
let it cool off and put it in a bird feeder. I've got several
kinds of hummingbird feeders. My favorite is the high perch feeder from Wahbirds.
It is a really cool feed of four different sizes that it comes in.
They even have cleaning brushes for cleaning them. You can go to the Wahbirds
Unlimited website by the way, that's WBU Wildbirds Unlimited dot com, slash Houston
and you can find the seven wild Birds store here in the Greater Houston area.
Also on their website there is good information on all kinds of things right
around hummingbirds. There's also their social media pages. You know, each Wilbirds
stores independently owned, so you can go there, find out about the hummingbird
festivals around town. Find out tricks and tips for having success with your birds.
Really really easy to do, not not difficult at all. Now I've
been talking about storm today, you know, getting your trees trimmed and things
like that. When storms come, power often goes out and we need a
generator to keep the power going unless you want to replace all the food and
the fraser and the refrigerator. Not to mention the smell well Quality Home Products
of Texas and the website write this down QUALITYTX dot com, QUALITYTX dot com,
or just call them seven one three quality. They are a seven time
Better Business Pinnacle Award winner Quality Home Products. They sell a Generac automatic standby
generator and you could be in ten buc two off halfway across the country.
The power goes out, it pops on. How cool is that? I
mean, that really works. It's outside, just like your your air conditioning
units. They have a free ten year warranty through October eighth. Don't delay
free ten year through October eighth for the warranty Savior over a thousand pucks right
there. Quality products, quality service, quality life. That's quality home products
of Texas. Check it out. Because you do not want to go into
any storm season without a generator. And I want to tell you something.
The grid is unreliable. You don't have it have a storm. I mean
it just goes out at times. You've got to be ready for that.
Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Scared Rictor so
smell crazy. Just watch him as woods. What good morning. You are
listening to Garden Line and we are talking gardening. That's what we do here.
If you'd like to give us call, our phone number is seven one
three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy are you can just dial two one two KTRH. Some people like
to dial by the letters. I find that I'm going around trying to find
the right letters. Easier to just put the numbers in, but some people
like to do the letters. So we got it both ways. Makes it
real easy, doesn't it. You know, one of the things that I
enjoy in the fall season is being able to get outside, visit some garden
centers and find some of those kinds of products that you just, I don't
know, you just don't see all year. There's there's a lot of different
things we get to plant in the fall. We have our fall color,
of course, the warm season color. I've been talking about that for a
while now. We also have the things that are so much better when planted
in the fall, or let me put it this way, they're easier to
plant and have success in the fall. Perennials and herbs and fruit fruit trees
actually too. We typically think of late winter, but you can put them
in in the fall season and they do quite well. Here's the thing.
When you put a plant in the ground in the fall, it has all
one to get roots in the ground, get them going, and then when
spring comes, it's ahead of the plant that you would have waited to plant
in the spring. And so I have found that to be a very successful
way of getting through that first summer, and that is really important. And
you know, at Warren's Southern Gardens, out in Kingwood. They have a
lot of new plants coming in. They do have some beautiful dianthus, and
if you've not grown dianthus before, you need to go check it out and
try the different kinds. There's the old fashioned types, there's some new types
that get taller, just neon colors. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. They
have those kinds of things out there at the Kingwood Garden Center, same kind
of things coming in. There's always something new coming in to Warren Southern Gardens
in Kingwood Garden Center. By the way, for the calendar, you know,
I always listen to Guarden Line with a piece of paper and a pencil
handy because you want to write something like this. Down at at Kingwood Garden
Center, they're going to have the herb infused Fall into Prosecco event. Now,
what is this. This is a garden to Glass mixology class. You
can discover that art of crafting exquisite cocktails with prosecco using fresh herbs harvested straight
out of the garden. They'll teach you how to grow herbs, how to
harvest herbs, and how to infuse spirits for a craft cocktail that's delicious and
In fact, you can sign up for what they call their gartending class at
the website. It's Kingwood Garden Center dot com. Kingwood Garden Center dot com.
It's really easy to find and out there in Kingwood. As I always
say, you guys are lucky. You've got to outstanding garden centers. Both
Kingwood Garden Center and Warren's Garden Center so easy to find. Warrens is on
North Park Drive. Kingwood Garden Center is on Stone Hollow Drive out there in
Kingwood. Well, let's go to the phones. We're going to head out
to Alvin now and doctor Lawrence. Hello Lawrence, Hey, good morning.
Just a couple of simple questions, probably, and I apologize. I'm sure
one of these has been asked a dozen times, but I'm just now getting
around to it. I haven't fertilized for June or July on the fertilizer schedule
because we haven't any rainy and still didn't get any rain this weekend, but
their forecasting rain for Tuesday Wednesday, and I don't know whether to put down
the summer you know, the June July fertilizer or the fall fertilizer, or
do I do them both now I wouldn't do both, and I wouldn't do
the summer one. And here's what's happened. Okay, we are getting fall
skept fall. We are about to enter that season and when we start getting
rain, and if you have a high nitrogen fertilizer that you're putting out things
like brown patch call also called a large patch, they're gonna be so much
worse and we would rather avoid that. So going into fall, we're not
trying to make our grass grow fast like we all all the rest of the
summer and spring season. We're trying to get it. It's slowing down because
the days you're getting shorter than I you are going to be cooling off,
and we want to get the nutrients in that create winter heartiness and that creates
strength and the spring coming out as it begins to put out new growth.
Fall is when that happens. So we use our fall fertilizers in If you
go online Lawrence to gardening with skip dot com my schedules, it's up there
and it shows when you would apply these fertilizers, and it also gives a
list of all the fertilizers that I would recommend as quality products for that fall
fertilization, right, should I wait until closer to fall or you know,
for putting this out just basically you didn't get it out. Yeah, our
lawns don't have calendars, but you get you gotta just realize there is a
better time, a good time, a best time, and all that kind
of thing. When it comes to planting, I would probably hold off a
little bit more the fact that you're getting a little bit of rain that you
know, I could be talked into doing a little extra early, but we're
gonna have other rain that comes. But I would generally on the schedule.
It's an October thing and you're you're down in Alvin, though and further south,
you could do it a little bit earlier just because of temperature. There's
a difference between Conro and Alvin when it comes to winds of fresh frost and
all that kind of thing. So if you want to find early, that's
perfectly okay. Okay. The second question would be I have a bunch of
mulch. You know, it's really they were the power company was out,
you know, decimating the trees in the area, and I talked them into
dumping you know, the chippings, the wood chips, and you know,
over the past year it is slowly you know, decayed and is becoming actually
kind of a decent mulch. The problem is that I'm getting crab grass growing
up the side of it, and I'd like to, you know, poison
that with something, because I don't like crab grass. And you know what
I'm worried about is will it will that poison leach back out of the mulch
as it decays, you know, want to start using it in places?
Or you know, am I just being worried for no good reason? No
good reason I would get a grass only killer. Then there there are two
ingredients out in the market that are grass only. But when you go to
shop at a garden center, if you go to an ace hardware store near
you, you're going to ask him for something that kills just grass. And
that way, you know, if you get it on any broad leaves,
it is probably not gonna hurt anything. But the grass only killers are easy
to get, and crab grass is easy to kill, and you just want
to get it done. Sooner you get done the better because once it starts
producing seedheads, and now you got seeds that are moving with your mulch into
the new spot. And that's you'd rather avoid if you can. Yeah,
yeah, And then just a third question. If you don't mind what's good
for killing you pond, Try clope here, tri I cl oh ke y
are try clop here. When you go buy it, it's gonna say stump
stump killer or poison ivy killer or brush killer. And here's what you do.
You cut off the yopon and you paint with I use a little sponge
paint brush things and a little wooden stick, you know what I'm talking about.
I just dab the tracolo pier right on the fresh cut stump, not
the next day. You want it fresh, and you put it right on
there. You don't need to spray it all over the place because it'll kill
other things. You just put it right on there. It translocates down and
it does a really good job. Now Yopon has underground network where it can
pop up, and so you may have some escapes that you have to retreat.
But that's the way to do it, all right. Yeah, Well
you can kill all the poison ivy around it that it wants. It absolutely
kills poison ivy two very well. Hey, I gotta go to a break,
but thank you for the calls and good luck with all that out there.
Hey, we're gonna go to a break phone number seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. I'll be right back. Well, my
gift to you is I'm not going to stand along with that. How about
all right? Well, you are listening to Garden Line, and of course
we're here to help you have a beautiful garden and a bountiful landscape. That
is what we are about here. It is time. I mean, we
are on the doorstep of fall right and October is the big month for putting
down our fall fertilization. You can go on my Gardening Law lawn Care schedule.
It is gardening with Skip dot com and you can find the schedule there.
It'll tell you when to put it down and what to put down.
And if you are looking for a quality product for fall fertilization, that is
carbo load. It is a ten twenty product at that high potassium number,
the lower nitrogen number compared to the rest of the year when we're high nitrogen,
low potassium. The fall fertilization carbo load, that's the one it's going
to provide what your lawn needs. And our lawns need to be fertilized this
fall. We have got to get them out and recovering from what they just
went through and some are still going through, and we've got to get them
ready so that when they go into fall there are stronger plant, more co
hardy, and come out and spring better. That is why we change fertilizers
for the fall, and Nelson Plant Food Carbon carbo Load will provide you just
that, just like any of the other quality Nelson Plant Food products, the
Color Star, the Nutril Star, the turf Star, they're organic Nature Star
line, all excellent products and for your lawn. Remember the carbo load.
That is Nelson's way of helping your lawn have success and come out even better
next spring. Well, we're gonna go now to Pleasantville and talk to Deborah.
Hello, Debrah, Hi, how are you? I'm well today?
McGrath, my Saint Augustine. I talked to you. I thought I had
sought large catch or I thought I had a fungle. Yeah, so I
sprayed with the f stop and it looked like it's improving. I've still got
issues where I think is large catch or take off patch can I put iron
down? I got my fault for the ready, got my barritat ready,
But can I give it a touch of iron? You cans just showing yellowing?
Yes, it's yellowing and it's almost like somebody pours sprays scalding water over
an area. Oh boy, well that may be more than just iron.
Now the iron won't have anything to do with take all root rot, but
it will help circumvent the fact that because of drought and or maybe because of
this disease, the plant has lost roots and you hope to have new root
growth to take up iron. Iron is taken up by the ends of growing
roots, and so when you can't get the iron in that way the way
you hope to get it in, then an iron application to it can be
helpful, both a fullier application but also a granular to just make sure there
is more iron available right there for the roots as it washes down into the
soil after application. So yes, okay, now I would be a fine
time to put down iron if you need to just be careful when you put
iron down. It's stains concrete and masonry and so state laying a rusty nail
on the sidewalk when it gets your sidewalk stained. You never get that stain
out, so you want to be careful iron products. I sins you an
email about some zailus and Colius wants you could disregard that. I don't know
what's going on with this, Okay, I think it's heat, but yes,
I just wanted to ask you about the iron Okay, thank you so
much. I'll check with you next week. All right, good good luck
out there in Pleasantville. What a nice name for a place to live,
Pleasantville. Alright, you take care, you take care if you live up
in Grimes County. I am excited to be able to tell you about Grimes
County feed that is your hometown feed store. And I don't just mean Grimes
Canty. I mean Heaven up into Brian College Station area. You know,
as you get up into Brads's County. This is a local place not too
far away from you, even up there State Highway thirty Carlos, Texas,
too miles west of FM two forty four. It's locally owned and operated by
the roy family. And they have the fertilizers we talk about. They have
a nice selection of those. You can go in there. You can find
Mosquito Dunts. You can go in there, you can find the tree hugger
sprinklers. And by the way, those of you that live up in that
area, all those neighborhoods up there, like Kingwoods and Murewood and all the
communities around it, a lot of your soil is it drains very well,
a really good quality soil. But when you have a tree that's under stress,
you have got to give those soakings that go down deep in the soil.
And I would do it ever ten days in that area with that kind
of soil, with a tree hugger sprinkler. That is important to do that.
And the folks at Grimes County Feed have those along with everything else you
would expect from a feed store, including the important fertilizers that we talk about
putting down. Now, swing by Grames County Feed and make sure you pick
them up because that is important for the lawns and in this case the trees
that have gone through this brutal, brutal summer. Boys driving through there the
other day and just looking at the post oaks and the way they're struggling,
summer being killed out right, definitely time to step in and help those plants.
We're gonna go now to League City, Texas and talk to Dina.
Hello Dina, Hello, good morning, good morning. I have a question.
I have a Flare bed that is a fairly large Flaire bed, and
I had the most delivered it. Dina, I lost you there. You
cut out right after you said mulch delivered. All right, if if you're
not able to come back here, let's I'm gonna put you on hold and
maybe we can figure out what's wrong, or you may have to call right
back in. Uh. Let's instead go to Thomas in the Woodlands. Hello,
Thomas, let's skip. I got a question for you. I bring
in plants inside of my house. But I have noticed over the past couple
of months I have bowl weevils everywhere. And I found a box inside my
pantry looked like an old bottle of wine had been leaking. But anyway I
have, I just can't figure out how to get rid of them. Okay,
well, it's a it's not a bowl weevil, and if it's in
the pantry, that's a different kind of weavil. But boy, there are
weavils that love to get into you know, you've got oatmeal and rice and
pinto bean dry, pinto bean stored and they love to get into that kind
of thing. U there are I am not a pantry insect expert, Bert,
they're you know, a good quality pest control place can do that that
they can come in and do the treatment that you need to get rid of
them. If you are insisting on doing a do it yourself job, there
are home treatments that you can use. They're not going to be as effective
or maybe asked as long as what a professional could do. But though that's
the way you're going to have to go. First of all, you've got
to get all the stuff that is infested out of there. You can,
you know, you can see when they've been in it. If they you're
not sure if they've been in the or not, put in the freezer.
Leave it in the freezer for a couple of days and then take it out
and that'll kill something that might have been in there and shut it down at
least. You know what I when I notice every morning, I take a
wet towel and I put it on the ground and in the pantry. I've
got all this stuff off the floor and then they'll be like twenty of them
on there and then I pick them off the towel and kill them, but
they just keep coming back there today. Yeah, any kind of a trapping
tracting thing like that, you're only getting a portion of them and you're never
going to catch up. You're gonna have to do some sort of an insecticide
treatment in there and do that. If you go on a line right down,
Agra Life, learn a g R I l I f E learn diagraf
learn Agri Life, learn dot i oh agrilife learn dot tam U dot edu.
It's at Texan m University dot du as an education. You can type
in pantry pests in the search and you will get access to a free publication
that tells you everything from you know, home pest to pantry pest, the
silverfish to you name it. There's publications on all that stuff. I'm gonna
have to run to my next call, but good luck with getting through those
things under control. I appreciate your call very much. You know, I've
i've I used to brag on Greenpro all the time, and we're back in
that season again where compost top dressing after a good narration is very important.
And listen to this because this is time sensitive. If you by the fifteenth
of September, five days from now, we'll give them a call tell them
your Guardenline listener. They will give you ten percent off on whatever they come
to do to you at your house. That would be the aeration, good
cororation, and top dressing with a quality compost. That is going to help
a lone that has been through what we've been through. It gets it's organic
matter down in the soil, It gets oxygen in the soil, and when
it rains, it helps water soak in better, down deeper into the soil.
Now, you got to do this by the fifteenth. You don't have
to have it done by the fifteenth. You got a column and schedule it
by the fifteenth to get that ten percent off. That is Green Pro.
Green Pro has We've been bragging on them for a long time here on Garden
Line and do not delay. We are going to now go to League City
and talk to Dina. Hello, Dina, good morning. How are you.
I'm well? How are you this morning? I'm fine, I'm fine.
I have a question. I have a flower bed that had lantana planted
in and I had a company come in and put mass and it had to
be the worst mass ever because I've got tons of all different kinds of weeze,
have got nut grass, I've got everything. So I'm pulling everything out.
I want to pull everything out till it. But what can I do?
Because it looks like the nutgrass is really embedded into the ground. What
would you recommend I put to just cover it all up, let it settly
in, and then go back later in the spring and plant something. Yeah,
I would use a product called manage Manage. Can I get it at
Ace Hardware? Yeah? Absolutely, Ace Hardware Manage. There's anohe called sedge
ender sedge ender. But you walk into Ace, tell them you've got nutsedge.
You need a nutsedge control. They'll provide you. Just out simple as
that ahead and get it treated. But if the nut sedge and growing,
actively water it and get it growing, because those products kill it better.
If it's actively growing, then if it's dry, oh okay. Because I
was I had a young man to start pulling up all the nut grass,
I still have plenty of nutgrass. You'll just put it on, just spray
it all on it and just leave it follow and then kill it app or
kill it app first. No, No, no, no, no,
spray it on it and leave it. That's all you need to do,
all right, okay, all right? And can I spread it in different
areas in my flower beds if I have different flower beds. If you have
not said read the label on the product, have them at ACE help you
with that so you get a product okay to use. Thank you. I
appreciate the calm after run. While guy was just talking about Green proff I
got to give their phone number. It is eight three two three five one
zero zero three two for Green Pro eight three two three five one zero zero
three two and make sure by the fifteenth get in on that special deal for
ten percent off. Well, good morning. You are listening to Garden Line
and we are in full force here with all kinds of questions and answers on
things gardening. I'll tell you what. I am excited that people are still
interested in their lawns. I was kind of afraid that as the lawn fried
and died, so would enthusiasm for gardening. This that kind of tends to
happen sometimes, but not now. Nope, this is the time for hope,
and this is the time for action to get our gardens ready, our
lawns ready for the best gardening season of the year. Fall is coming.
Fall will bring cool weather, Fall will bring rain. You will want to
be outside again. Act now, though, to get ready for that,
that is important. Act now and an example of act now is to take
care of your lawn and Microlife products are a great way to do that.
You know, when you buy Microlife, you know you're getting microbially friendly,
if not microbially packed product. Our lawns need that microbes and plants and roots.
It's a symbiotic relationship that is very very important for plant health. So
you'd be putting down for example, they have their brown patch forlizer that season
for all of that kind of application for the fall fertilization. You can call
it one orizer if you want, but that is in October and it can
be done even at the end of September. That's fine too. We just
want to get that down to get our plants ready. If your lawn is
struggling, making sure that you get the kind of products like humates for example
humates plus this cost concentrated compost in a bag. You know, I usually
use the Ocean Harvest, the blue label. Just spraying on my plants,
flower beds and shrubs and things. But you can use it on lawn too.
I mean, if you've got a lawn area and you won't do that,
you can do that because that is going to provide all kinds of things
that plants need. So with this whole line of products, we've got minerals
that we're replenishing. There are hormones, there are plants stimulators, there's products
that help the microbes. That's all part of how Microlife can help you and
your lawn have success. That's what we're looking for. And right now,
coming out of summer especially important to take care of our grass to help it
get its feet under it because fall and winter or winter is coming and at
that time the grass is on hold and then here comes spring and if it
goes into winter week, it's going to come out in spring week. If
it go into winter strong, because you've applied these products and you've gotten that
beefing up. If you will of the grass plant done, then it's gonna
come out and spring strong. That's why it's important. Microlife Fertilizer dot com.
You can find more information, you can read about every one of these
products. Right there. We're gonna go to El Campo now and we're gonna
talk to Nick. Hello Nick, good morning, Skip. How are you.
I'm well this morning. How you doing? Hey? So, with
the drought and everything, I've got about forty five oak trees and I've infested
with the robust oak bore. I've treated most of the trees all with the
metic loprid and spray with bithon to kill you know, the adult beetles.
My question is, of course I haven't had then water about half of them,
but hadn't had the really good rain to get them to soak up the
systemically. So I'm wondering if when it does start raining, am I missing
something or should have tried to you think fertilize them to give them a little
jump start and getting rehealing, or I would hold off on the fertilizing until
spring for those trees. By the way, is this a live oak or
what kind of oak is it? Okay, well, you know we're going
into fall. The trees need to slow down growth. They need to be
they don't need to be pushed with nitrogen right now, but coming out in
spring, I would do the fertilization at that time for them. But it
sounds like you're kind of doing what's it you're in your power to do to
help get back on their feet. So just remember that borers are usually sign
of a week a weekend tree, and so anything you do that keeps a
tree strong, including fighting summer drought, that helps reduce the incidence of borers
that we have to deal with, right and the minor cloak should help as
well. Grat Yeah, that's a systemic. It gets in the plumbing,
you put it on the ground, you watered in the roots, take it
up on something like an oak tree. It's not like you about bees going
to the flowers, so we don't worry about that. Second, it works
inside the plant. Anything that choos on it. And if the bar is
working in the bark, inside the outer bark where all the living tissues are,
it can get a hold of some of metacoporate that way. But if
it's working on the interior wood, those products trunknn reach it in there.
And there are some boards that they just bore around in the deadwood. It's
like an old Tubi four inside. Uh, they're boring in that. That
is not hurting the health of the tree because there's nothing living in there.
Are you are you with the robust soak bore? Is it more of an
internal or just on the external part you No, I don't the name robust
boar. I'm not familar. I'might have to look at that one to see
which one you're talking about. I've not heard that term before, and it's
a little bit surprising because I've I've kind of heard about everything. Yeah.
One of our fellow aggies up up in Austin, actually entomologists up there,
gave me the information on it. I send him a picture of it,
Okay, told me it was and so I just wasn't real familiar with what
they fed on if it was the outside or internal as well. Yeah.
Just look at it. Boy, that Bookers got long long antenna. Wow.
Yeah. So it definitely does occur here in the Texas area. I'm
just not familiar with Allen. Yes, okay, Well great, well,
thanks for thank you for the call. I appreciate that very much, very
much. Uh let's see, we are going to now go to West Houston
and talk to Mary. Hello Mary, Yeah, hello, script, Skip
just needs your input quickly here. I have some under the weather shrubs Uramus
and Nandina, particularly Nandina, which is a understand, is a slow growing
shrub, very slow growing. So I had it six feet high, and
all the leaves turn yellow. Uh huh, six foot nandina? Okay,
all the leaves, all the leaves turn yellow. Okay. Yeah. I
got tired of looking at it right at the front door, so I cut
it back four feet four feet okay, Okay. I cut the stems and
look, and I looked at the stems. There was some green in there,
but it was faint, okay, very faint. The rest of it
was yellow, yellowish. Show. I cut it back so it's about two
feet high. There's some there's some growth coming out of the bottom the base.
Yeah, some fertile granulated fertilizer with iron and drenched it with water.
Okay. Now I sent you a picture on Friday. Uh, Mary,
let me look Friday. Okay, Mary. So bottom line, as you've
done what you can do, just know that nandina's generally when we cut them
back, we cut them back to the ground. We don't cut the whole
planet necessarily, but we cut it back because here's why. When when you
when you cut that back, you uh, the nandina doesn't reach sprout well
from that stem that you cut back. So what we have to do is
we need to remove individual things all the way to the ground because there's probably
not many leaves left on what you cut back, right, there's not.
Yeah, I would go ahead, since you've done what you've done, go
ahead and cut all of them back to the ground, and then the freshman
ground, fresh new growth will come out and in the future, in the
future, as you're cutting them back, just individually take individual stems to the
ground and leave the others and help it transition to sending up new shoots from
the ground. Okay, sure, but there were no stems that were there
was nothing alive. Okay, that was well okay, Well, hopefully with
water and time, it's going to come back and we'll just have to wait.
What about fertilizer. You've done what you need to do for now.
Let's wait and see when we get back into next spring and we see what
kind of new growth we have, we can make another decision. Hey,
I got to run to a break, but thank you, thank you,
thank you, ma'am. Appreciate the call. Seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four is our number if you'd like to get on the boards
with Josh Well, good morning again on our last segment this s Day morning.
You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and
we're here to answer your gardening questions. Happy to do that. Hey,
if you live in north central part of Houston, your hometown feed store is
Quality Feed and Garden Center. Ken and Chris have been doing this for what
thirty two years. The store has been around sind nineteen twenty eight for crying
out lot, I mean that is and when you go in it has that
cool old time feel. I mean, first of all, they got that
nineteen what is it, the old feed rack nineteen twenty eight feed racks stocked
with heirloom feeds. By the way, they just got in all their twenty
twenty four feeds that are seeds, that are organic seeds and they're heirloom varieties.
That's what they do there at Quality Feeds to carry the airloom varieties.
So you need to get in because you know those things are going to get
bought and sold out and you want to have your selection. Now's the time
to do that. Ken and Chris have done a great job of creating that
kind of environment. You know, all the things I talk about on guarden
Line, the fertilizers and whatnot, they've got it there. They have every
kind of anything that wants to mess with your yard, garden and plants like
disease, insects and weeds. They've got a product to control it. At
Quality feed. You can go to Quality feedcode dot com. Now for those
of you who went to the old place like I used to go to,
they've moved not too long ago to eighteen thirteen Lozon Street. That's new the
Intersection Equipment and Allusion. They're open today from eleven thirty to four pm,
so you can get in there and do that. By the way, if
you need backyard chickens, they always are getting new shipments of chicks in and
it's a great place to go and get stocked up for not just the chicks,
but all the stuff you need to feed them to water them. And
they stock up on an incredible array of quality products for everything. If you
got a critter from two legs to four legs running around the place, Quality
feed has got the feed you need for that, so give him a call
or check them out. I would just go by there today. Quality feedcode
dot Com eighteen thirteen, Lozon Street. We are now going to head out
to tom Ball and talk to John. Hello John, Good morning Skip.
I have a quick question for you, sir. Fertilizer. I've got like
three or four bags in my garage because I have a small yard. I
just bought him this year. Yes, if I keep them there tight,
how long would that fertilizer be good for? You know, it's it is
hard to give a number specifically. You know, there are products that are
that are more of a synthetic chemical based product. There are products are organic
products, and just the way they hold or don't hold their quality over time
can vary a little bit. If it's a hot and a humid storage environment,
you mentioned they're sealed up. That helps some with the humidity, but
in heat that's not a friend of any kind of product. But if I
had it, I would go ahead and use it and put it out and
just get you some fresh when you get a chance to get some fresh.
But anytime you can store something during the hot weather inside a garage or something,
it's a little bit better for it to do that, and if you
want it to last a little bit longer. Okay, one more quick question
I'll put out some sweet green and I've noticed something. Yeah, my penta
is and just in the middle of the night just pulled him up or was
was digging it. And that's weird. Have you ever heard of something like
that. I've never heard of that, never have Now. The sweet green
is a good quality product and when you put it down and water it in,
and you always should water in a fertilizer. When you water it in,
it shouldn't be available for something to come dig it up or mess with
it like that. I don't know what would pull up a penta that.
I mean that almost sounds like deer or something are grabbing the top and pulling
on him or coming out of the ground. I don't know exactly, but
that's an unusual symptom. It's weird. Yeah, thanks you all right,
John, Thank you. Glad you glad to talk to you. Glad we
could help a little bit today with that. By the way, I am
going to be out at the Montgomery County Home and Garden Show and this will
be next Saturday, Saturday, September sixteenth, from twelve to one pm,
a little bit later than my normal appearances. This will be from noon twelve
o'clock to one. I'm going to give an hour talk from twelve to twelve
to two. I'll be there. I'm going to give an hour long talk
from twelve to one on everything you're gonna want to know about getting ready for
the fall season. What do we do about these lawns, what do we
do about these trees? When is it safe to go back outside? By
the way, the answer to that is now, all the kinds of things
you want to play at your vegetable garden, your flowers, whatever questions you
come, we just sit there and enter a lot of gardening questions and have
a really good time. I'm gonna be given away some Nelson Plam food jugs,
some Medina samples as well, and so come by, let's meet,
let's talk. After that one hour talk, I'll sit at a table for
an hour and just visit with you, diagnose things, bring samples in if
you want, bring photos in if you want, make sure they're in good
sharp focus. But that is next Saturday, twelve to two at the Montgomery
County Home and Garden Show. So everybody up there in Montgomery County that listens
to this show, I hope you will come out it's at the Lone Star
Convention Center, right across the street from the Extension office and all the beautiful
gardens that they have out there. Look forward to seeing you. We're gonna
head out now to Katie and talk to Doug. Hello, Doug, good
morning. Well i'd like to know. Okay, it's between summer and fall
now, and I'm not sure if all the heat's over with. And I
heard you talking earlier about fertilizer and stuff. My law, I don't think
I have any diseases. It's even pale. It's just not very green anymore.
Yeah, I don't have spots or you know, things like that Wilton
leaves. It looks pretty healthy. Really, the color is just not very
green. Is what can I do to green up my lawn at this point
in time? Okay, Well, hold off on worrying about the green up.
Let's figure out, you know, how to get it back on its
feet healthy first of all, and that would make sure that it is getting
adequate water. If you take a straight long handle screw driver out there,
shove it in the ground, see how far down it goes, and it
will it will do. It will do fine. Uh. And so I
mean it's okay, water really good. All right, Well, we don't
want to put a high nitrogen on now what we're gonna be doing. If
you go to gardeningraskip dot com, you can see my schedule and we're gonna
where you are in Katie at the end of September and and in October is
the time to put the fall fertilizer down. And I list all those on
the schedule. Hold off until then. That is just like a couple of
weeks from now, and and put them down at that time and water them
in and that will do the most you can to getting those things healthy.
All right, I got I got one last fellow here online. I'd like
to catch them if I could, Doug. But I thank you, yes,
sir, thank you. Oh well you're still there, Doug. Okay.
We had a question about a spreadable mineral fertilizer, and I'm not I'm
not sure what they're referring to there. I guess all of our fertilizers provide
minerals. All of our fertilizers are spreadable. So I have a number of
fertilizers that are quality that I recommend. Go to gardening with Skip dot com
gardening with skip dot com in the big middle of the page. I'm building
a website. It's the first thing on it, and pretty much all of
it's on it right now is the lawn care schedule. Print it out or
just look at it on your computer. And if you're if you want to
use organics, if you want to use synthetics, if you don't care,
they're all listed on there until as you when to apply them, which one
to get you just choose one. You don't apply them all. Follow the
recommendations for how much to put on that will be on the bag, and
that will set your lawn up. We can't do any more than that right
now in terms of getting the lawn ready for winter and spring, because remember,
the health of the lawn going into the fall into the winter season is
going to be the health of the lawn coming out of the winter season,
and we've got to do everything we can to take care of it now.
And it's not a lot of nitrogen that just promotes brown pudge. We switch
fertilizers in the fall to less nitrogen and a good strong amount of potassium the
third number on the bag, So that is what you need to apply.
They're all listed on the schedule. It's very simple. Just follow it,
get those down, get those watered in. Now. If we're dealing with
issues like insect deal, that's another thing. There's treatments for that. If
you're dealing with disease concern, may be large patches worrying you, or maybe
the brown patch, the large brown patch circles we used to call a brown
patch, now it technically is called large pen They we can help with that.
If you've got to take all root rot, we can talk about that
kind of thing. But right now, culturally, it's the lawn and the
fall fertilization, the winter riser, if you want to call them that.
Don't really care for that name, but everybody knows what you mean when you
say that. I'm so we'll go with that. This is a time to
get them down. Remember, I'm going to be up in Montgomery on this
coming Saturday to helpstitute. I hope you'll come out there and join us out
there. Had a good time talking with you today on garden Line. You
know, we do this regularly every Saturday from Sunday from six am to ten
am. You can listen to pass shows by podcast. If you miss something
tell your friends and neighbors about it. We got folks that listen from a
wide area. We're looking to have more. Hey, have a good week.