Katie r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to Katie r H Garden Line with Skip Ricter.
It's crazy trip. Just watch him as well. So many good things
got crazy? Was the club back taking? Not a SUDDA good morning,
Good Sunday morning. We'sh a happy Easter all the folks out there, and
hey, we are really really looking forward to talking with you this morning.
Uh, first of all, congratulations, you're an early riser, so I
congratulate you there. Glad to have you with us. Look outside, dark
outside, your neighbor's lights aren't on. Go bang on the door, you
know the routine, Tell them they're missing garden Line. Wake come up.
They will rise up someday and call you blessed, but not this morning.
They will call you something else this morning. We're glad to have you with
us, and we're gonna be talking about a lot of things regarding gardening today.
I did want to make a comment yesterday, I think it was yesterday.
I was talking about in Chanic Gardens and I mentioned that they were open
today. I said tomorrow, which is today, and they're actually closed on
Easter and so for them, and for really all of your garden centers,
I would just you know, check their social media, check the website,
give them a call. I make sure that they are open today. If
you're going to head out and do any garden purchasing, perhaps this afternoon,
well that would be a good thing to do. Speaking of in Chana gardens,
I tell you the place it just is always fun to go to.
What do I mean by that, Well, I mean it's the things they
create, from little ferry gardens to just different kinds of scenes. I was
looking at they're putting together some giant hanging baskets with all kinds of beautiful plants,
and you know, think about this. Hanging baskets can be hanging in
the sun, but they got to be hanging from something, so if it's
a tree, limb or a porch, maybe they're not getting a lot of
sun. And you can make some really cool shade hanging baskets and they got
all the plants you need to do that. We make a real big one
though, one has plenty of soil and everything in it, and they're just
gorgeous. They also have plants for shade. Have you ever thought about your
color in the shade. You know, in the shade it's darker and you
need things that kind of are bright that really show up. They've got a
Collegia repens. It's a gold form of it. It's kind of kin to
a wandering jewtipe plant that it's just beautiful and lights up the shade really well.
That'd be another option for you. And they have my favorite spring blooming
tree, the Chinese fringe tree. Just billows of shaggy white blooms with a
honey like scent that is wonderful. It's a medium size, small to medium
sized tree, doesn't grow super fast, so you can just enjoy it for
a long time. Not gonna take over the whole property, but boy,
is it ever a cool tree. They have that there. Of course,
they have everything there. Jenni Gardens and Richmond. First of all, the
website in Chennick Gardens Richmond dot com. They're on the Katie Fullsher side of
Richmond, so if you're heading from Richmond up toward Katie, they're on FM
three point fifty nine and they normally the normal business hours are Monday through Saturday
eight to five and on Sundays not today on other Sundays from ten am to
four pm. So it's always a good time to go out there. Take
some friends with you, take family. They will love just walk in the
place. Even non plant people, non gardeners, will love just walking and
seeing the beauty and all the wide variety of things they carry out there.
So it's a good day, always a good day for being in enchanted gardens.
And again, like our like we essentially insist on with a quality nursery.
They absolutely have trained, educated staff that know what they're talking about and
can guide you to the best plants, the best ways to take care of
them. That is very important when you are shopping at any garden center to
have that kind of service. You're listening to garden Line, and so how
about a phone number, because this is a call in show seven to one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. Give us a call. We'll talk about the things that
are of most interest to you. The warm season, weeds in our lawns
are sprouting, and it's time if you're going to get down a preventative application,
Now is the time to get down your barricade, your barricade application is
a applied watered in with a little bit of water. That is very important
to remember, and then it moves into the soil surface where it forms a
barricade and a weed seed tries to germinate. It prevents that root development.
The seed desiccates and dies and you never saw the weed. The barricade took
care of it before the weed became a big visible weed when it tried to
establish. The reason I say now is the time is because you know if
you wait until they've all sprouted, it's a pre emergent. So get it
on as soon as you can if you want extended coverage. Then going out
a couple of months into the future, sixty ninety days somewhere out there,
you can do another application of it to carry that prevention on in through the
summer season. But it's important to get that out. And you're going to
find barricade all the places that are going to carry our nitropross products here in
the region shades of Texas up in the woodlands, enchanted gardens. I was
just talking about Don Richmond Rosenberg. They have barricade as well. The other
night to Fast Products, Fisher's Hardware, both the one in southeaston on South
Moore and the one in Laporte on Broadway Carrie the Barricade. Also, I
was talking yesterday about putting in some sod, which I'm doing putting in a
lot of sod and trying a bunch of different cultivars and a couple of species.
I'm doing some Saint Augustine and some Zoysia. There's always new grasses coming
out. And when a new grass comes out, you know, we have
great hope for it because it's gone through the research process. It's also probably
gone through our Southern Turf Trials, and that is a collaboration of LANGRA universities
here throughout the South. We took places like University of Georgia and so on
all across the South in Texas, and I'm here in Texas where they evaluate
these in a checkerboard fashion out in the field and they look at them.
How do they perform, do they get diseases? How do they fill in?
What's the growth rate? You know, how often do you have to
mow thing? Is it drought tolerant. There's a lot of important factors that
are evaluated. So when a turf variety comes out it's supposed to be a
good one, but oftentimes over time we learn some things about them, and
so it's always good early on to have people growing them out, to check
them out, to see how they do. You just never know, you
know, everybody's yard is different soils, different different parts of the region,
and so I'm doing a little bit of that in my yard. I'm doing
a couple of Saint Augustine's doing a couple of zoysias, and I just think
it's a fun thing. Personally. For me, it is getting out and
trying these new things, testing them out and learning about them. If you're
going to replace your sod, it's good to go ahead. We're kind of
getting into the best season really for getting that done as things warm up.
But we're already planting turf out there. But with every degree of warming as
we move towards summer, that turf is more and more interested in growing.
By the time we get now into April, that's a good time for turf
to take off running and get going, and so it's a good time to
establish it. The demands are a little lower, and so it's easier to
get it established if you wait until the heat of summer. You can plant
turf just fine, but demands are higher, so you're watering a little more
often, a little more carefully. We're going to take a little break.
I will be back if you'd like to give us a call, Josh,
get you on the boards. Seven one three two one two KTRH. Welcome
back. Good to have you back with garden line. If you'd like to
be on ask a question, well, let's do that. Seven one three
two one two k t RH. Can you call. We'll talk about the
things that interest you most. In the meantime, I want to try to
talk you into doing some containers on your patio, containers on the front porch,
containers anywhere you can find them. Containers are a great way to add
instant color and instant interest to your landscape. You know, if you can
you can do anything from just let's say you want to grow some vegetables.
I mean, if you want to do it on the cheap, get you
a five gallon bucket, drill some holes in the bottom and put some good
potting mix in there, and planted in it, and go for it.
If you want to really create beauty, a beautiful glazed pot is stunning.
Always get a little bit bigger pot than you think. That's a good way
to put it. If you watch I watch occasionally garden shows and they're typically
you know, from some other part of the country, east coast or midwest
or west coast, and I see these containers that are too small for Texas.
That's just too small for Texas, that's the thing. Well, and
what is that? Why would that be? Well, here, it's hot.
It's hot during the day. It's even hot at night really comparatively to
what a night should be for a plant. And it takes a lot of
water to supply that plant. So if you put a plant in a smaller
than it needs pot in Texas, you're going to be water in it twice
a day, maybe just trying to keep it from going into stress. Maybe
if it's too small more than that. But if you make a larger pot,
that's more volume of soil, and with a larger volume of soil,
then it can it has a bank account of soil and nutrients could draw from.
So always bump the pot size up a little bit. Can you grow
up a tomato and a five gallon bucket? Yes, but should you know
you should have a ten gallon bucket, unless it's just a little tiny dwarf
tomato. If you are growing flowers and things, that's the same. Another
thing a larger pot does is it shows up more in the landscape because you
can do a combination planting. You can have something spilling over the sides of
flowers, you can have something that fills in as kind of the base width
of the of the planter, and then you can have something upright that is
it just really shows off. And they call that thriller, filler and spiller
from the top down, thriller filler, spiller, and so an upright could
be something like a burgundy colored ornamental grass, or it could be a lot
of things. And you don't have to use that formula. But when you
get a larger container and you put a lot of things together in it,
it's just beautiful. It's just it just is. That's how that works,
and I would encourage you to do that and always make sure that container has
drainage and secondly it has good quality soil nitrophiles. They distribute something called jungle
land. A jungle land has an indoor version and an outdoor version. The
outdoor version, which is what I'm talking about right now. It is called
jungle Land Flour and Vegetable and it just absolutely does really well with our plants
for a couple of reasons. It holds moisture, but it drains the excess
moisture. It's got microizal fungi, it's got four sources of aged organic matter
including also Canadian blonde pete, and it just is going to be that foundation,
the brown stuff that helps the plants to thrive. And a good quality
product like that. And you're going to find, you know, when we
talk about you, where do you buy these things? Where do you get
them? Well? With jungle Land, you can get them a number of
places. You can get them at ace and sickle ramps for example out there
in Katie. You can get jungle Land over in a task Asida at a
task Asida Ace and you can go down to Jim's Hardware Montgomery and they have
it as well there. But a quality mix like jungle Land and the container.
Make sure you put plants in a grouping that want to be together.
So is it a shady spot, is it a sunny spot? Well,
don't you know, don't put a plant in each sun in a shady container
mix them together like that. Make sure that you use plants that have variation
in them. So for example, the fine lines, the vertical linear lines
of a grass compared to a big broad leaf like a kalladium, for example,
would be an example of that. And that's variation and it just looks
interesting. If you want to get into color combinations and stand within a color
family way, you can do that if you want, but it's up to
you at your house your content. I like containers also because you can move
them to a shady spot around behind the barn if you will. When they're
not looking good, you can kind of replant them and get them going again
and then move them back or if you want to go through that. It's
just easy to have fast, nice color. And when you buy a quality
container, it's going to last for a long long time. And I think
more people should plant more things than containers, including vegetable gardens and herb gardens.
And by the way, there's nothing wrong with mixing some vegetables and some
herbs together and a container. How about a regano spilling over the sides or
a time spilling over the side. You get the idea. We listen to
the garden Line our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. You know, our soils here and along the Gulf Coast, they
typically are a heavy clay. Now we have everything from sand to heavy clay.
But when you're in a clay soil, there's a lot of shrinking and
swelling as it gets dry and gets wet. You've seen places where you walk
in the backyard in the summer and it's dry and the cracks are so large
you could lose your little fufuu dog down in the crack in the backyard.
Well, that's because the soil has shrunk and then it rains and suddenly those
cracks are pressed together. And what does this do well, it tears up
sidewalks, it tears up driveways, and it also has its effect on foundations
for our slabs. Ty Strickland has a company called Fix My Slab Foundation Repair
and he's been doing this for twenty three years. He knows what he's doing.
One of the things I like best about tie and Fix my Slab.
And I've said I'm visited with them and his wife and it just they're good
folks. He's committed to making sure he's on time. He tells you he's
going to be there. He's there. He's committed to giving you a fair
price, not just throwing some big number out there, but looking at exactly
the work you need done and giving you a fair price. And then he's
committed to getting it fixed right. It doesn't have to get redone when Ty
gets through with the job. Now, tell them you're a Guardenline listener.
They get free estimates for garden Line listeners. But how do you know you
may have a foundation problem? Well, doors are sticking, perhaps, cracks
in the brick on the outside, cracks in the sheet rock on the inside.
Those are all signs that something's moving. And I'll tell you, if
you've got a house that's been around for I don't know, twenty years or
so, you pretty much have got a foundation that has moved enough to potentially
have some some things that need taking a good look at. That's just the
way it works. Fixmislab dot com is his website. The phone number two
eight one two FI five forty nine forty nine two eight one two five forty
nine forty nine. All right, Uh, you're listening to Gardenline. We're
going to be talking gardening all morning, So I hope you will all morning
until ten am, how about that? But when you start at six,
it feels like all morning. Glad you're with us today. By the way,
those of you out in Seabrook are really fortunate. You've got Moss Nursery
out there, And if you haven't been, I don't know, you must
be living under a rock, because everybody in that region knows Moss Nursery.
Moss is a place where you never know what they're going to get in next,
and they have one of everything. I would recommend if you're thinking about
going to a park one day, don't go to the park. Go to
Moss Nursery and walk through their eight acres of plants and containers. I mean,
you know, go through the vegetables and herb section, go through the
immense flower selection and hanging baskets selection. Go through the greenhouse. The greenhouse
is amazing. They have house plants, including succulents, including things like cacti
to they always getting something new in shipment after shipment after shipment. The trucks
are just unloading and unloading. I tell you, I feel for the employees
out there because they must feel like that they're actually the ones working at the
dock unloading the cargo ships just around the core there. Because they get so
many cool plans out there. People love it. They Moss hires gardeners.
I've talked to a couple of master gardeners that we trained in Harris County out
there. Uh, they are people that know what they're talking about too,
and that love what they do too, and that's that's also important. They're
on Toddfield Road in Seabrook. The website is Moss Nursery with there's two a's
m aas nursery dot com. The phone number two eight one seven or two
four seven four twenty four eighty eight. Let me try that one again two
eight one four seven four twenty four eighty eight. Moss is not just another
garden center. You need to go check it out. Even if you love
across town, you ought to go just check it out. It is one
of the cool places that I love to go, that's for sure. Well,
you're you are listening to Guardline our phone number seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight four.
If you haven't fertilized your lawn yet this spring, then I would say it's
time to just go ahead and start with your slow release fertilizers because it's warming
and up enough now to where we can go ahead and just do that,
start that process. And Nitroposs has one called Superturf that is the silver bag
that makes it easy you walk into a garden center, which is Superturf.
It's the silver bag nineteen four ten, nineteen fourteen. It's got fifty percent
of the nitrogen is in a slow release form, so it's going to feed
your grass for a couple of months or more out there. It also has
iron a four percent iron. I was talking to somebody the other day that
had some light light green in the grass and kind of a yellowing and I
just said, well, it's probably an iron deficiency. And we were standing
right in front of some superturf, and I said, this one right or
got it in it? That is important if you don't know if you have
iron deficiency. By the way, just pick a grass blade a yellowing plate,
lift it up and look at it to the sky and if you see
streaks of green and yellow, like vertical lines of green and yellow, that
is a sign of our deficiency in the plant. It means you need to
add a little bit more often. That gets better itself. As a soul
warms up, mycrobial activity kicks in even faster. But a product like Superturf
will help you in terms of dealing with that. Where do you get super
turf, Well, you can get it at Kingwood, at the Ace Hardware
Store. You can get it up at the arbor Gate in Tomboil. You
get in shades of green done in South Texas, Genoa, Red Bluff Road,
easy to find, easy to find. Now, if you did a
early green up like we talk about, well, then you don't need to
do superturf right away. Given about a month. You can give it more
than a month, six weeks and then do your start your summer fertilization regimen.
But it is time to start transitioning over to those slow releases, and
that is why we're talking about it this morning. Well, I tell you
what. Well, first of all, I'm gonna I had a great time
out at Ciana Maltch Estordy. Thank you folks at Santa Moltch. We had
a bunch of us out there. We took we give it away a lot
of products as a result of people coming by out there. It's a lot
of low form and getting getting contacted like you're a winner. Next Saturday,
I'm going to be at M and D Ace Hardware out at clear Lake.
M and D Supply, which is an Ace hardware out in clear Lake.
I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that as we go forward.
Time for a break. We're turning it over to Nikki for the news.
Welcome head and go line. Glad to have you with us this morning
on a what's gonna be a nice Easter day. I wish everybody happy Easter.
It's out there, it is it about to be celebrating today. There's
a lot of egg hunting going on this weekend, I believe judging from everything
I'm seeing going on everywhere. Uh, you know, the the keys in
our gardening that we need to remember are to give the plant the simple things
that it wants. And I'm really boiling this down to just ABC here,
but oftentimes we forget the ABC's of taking care of plants. And plants need
good soil that can hold water but drain, and that has good nutrient content
that's balanced out. There's a little of everything in it. In other words,
not just excess of one thing and almost none of another. So good
soil. That's the first. Plants need sunlight. Now, some can grow
in shade, but the deeper the shade gets, the smaller our plant palate
becomes to choose from sunlight shines on the leaves, and the leaves make carbohydrates,
which fuels everything it makes for growth. It helps with health. The
plant's ability to fend off things and everything else is fueled by the energy that
comes from the sun that goes into the plant and the plant to turn it
into plant food. And so as the light goes down, you're going to
have less blooming with most plants. You're going to have less fruiting, for
sure, with a lot of our fruiting plants. And so sunlight is very
critical. So good soil and good sunlight, those are just really basic things.
And then finally, plants need to have adequate water. Adequate water supply
so that they can hydrate themselves. Very few plants grow in a swamp.
Very few plants want to grow in the desert. At least looking around your
landscape, very few of those plants your landscape and gardens can grow in a
desert, so you need moisture for them, but you need it not to
be too much, and it's not too When I say it needs to,
it's not too much. It's not that there's a lot of water that's killing
them. It's that the water is driving oxygen out of the soil and in
a submerg It's like us, can you breathe underwater? Of course not?
Do you know? Plants? Roots do the equivalent of breathing. It's called
respiration, and they have to have oxygen in order to do what they do.
So that's why when you water log them you have problems. People think
that water drowns plants. Well, I guess it does, but it's really
not the excess of water. It's the lack of oxygen that they can get
to. So soil, sun and water, that's the base. If you
get those three right, you can grow a lot of things. Now you
need to know your plant, so you know what kind of soil, how
much sun, and how much water it needs. But those are the three
big ones. Nature's way Resources is set up to provide you with the soil
part. The brown stuff that I keep saying is the most important, comes
before the green stuff. Nature's Way Resources has been making quality composts for a
long time. They have bed mixes like rose soil. They have the fungal
composts. It's by what Every Friday, by the way, is Fungal Friday.
Put that on your calendar. You're gonna get a ten percent discount off
bag products and twenty percent off bulk that they deliver for you. Bolk deliveries
twenty percent off. They also have the leaf mold compost. Now is an
important time to get out there and get the lawn covered with a thin layer,
very thin layer of leaf mold compost. If you can do the correoration
with it, that's even better. But Nature's waighs a provider of all those
quality products, and that is part of that first of the ABC's of plant
success, getting the soil right. So start off with soil that the plants
are going to thrive in. A Nature's Way Resource is easy to reach them.
Here's the phone number nine three six three two one sixty nine ninety.
We're going to go now out to spring Break, Spring Branch and talk to
Mary. Hello, Mary, Oh, Yes, I lik a a oh
partment here Spring Branch, and my window face is west so I get the
afternoon sun, and I've been thinking about growing herbs, and i just wanted
to know what is the best potting soil to grow herbs inside, and where
in my area would be a good place for me to buy the herbs.
Okay, so, a good quality potting soil would be the jungle n indoor
potting soil. The jungle indoor has little crystals in it, and our potting
soils are almost all organic matter. You know, it could be coconut core,
pete, moss, compost. Those kinds of things are what makes up
most potting soil. But the crystals, after that potting soil starts to dry
out, they hold onto the water a little more and the roots can continue
to get some moisture if you forget to water the potting mix. And so
that that is a good a good way, a good place to start with
the jungle end. You don't find it in a lot of places. You
know, You've got to knownumber of ace hardware stores that are close to you.
They're going to carry it in the spring, you said, spring or
spring branch, spring spring branch, okay, spring branch, Yeah, they're
going to carry that for you as far as plants, you're not too terribly
far away from two forty nine. You go up to forty nine, you've
got plants for all seasons pretty close to where you're located right there, So
that would be a place where you could get some herbs. I don't know,
is there a trying to think of what else? Depends on exactly where
where exactly you're located in the Spring Branch Well region? Yeah, okay,
I am in the and the Ande and two ninety area. Okay, yeah,
I would probably just if you're looking for some real close, i'd probably
just run up to plants for all seasons there, and also I also to
get to plants for all seasons you're gonna if you would just stop at belt
Way eight, that's our CW Nursery and they've got a good selection as well
of herbs that you want to What was the name of the last place,
h R c W R c W Nursery. When you're going on the overpasses
there with Bella eight and Highway two forty nine, tom Ball Parkway, it
is just right down there. Just hunt them down on a map and your
little phone directions and whatever will take you right to it. Okay, okay,
well thanks, thanks very much, and I want you know I'm a
very old woman. I am eighty oh wow, and I've been listening to
garden Line for the last twenty years and you are excellent replacement for dear Randy.
Well, that's kind of you. I appreciate you saying that. Yeah,
you know, Thomas Jefferson said, although I am an old man,
I'm a young gardener. I like that. Yes, it was many,
many years ago that I read that, and when I was a young woman,
about thirty years ago, I went to Monticello. Oh boy, it
is a fabulous place and I highly recommend everyone take that trip there, and
I do as well. Mary. Thank you so much for the kind words,
and I hope we got you off to a good start there. Yeah,
enjoy that indoor gardening. And good for you continuing to go after the
gardening, because I think gardening keeps you young. I just do. Thanks
a lot morey. You know, I mentioned plants for all seasons. They
are kind of a people in that whole region. They know plants for all
seasons. They've been going there, they know it. But they're the kind
of place where you go and you know, you're going to get it right.
And what do I mean by that, Well, you're going to get
the plants that you want that will grow here and do well here. And
I don't care if it's tomatoes or peppers or flowering bedding plants or shrubs or
tree I mean the whole nine yards. Herbs. Oh gosh, they have
a great herb selection that Mary would enjoy, I know. But they also
have the staff that knows what they're talking about. And listen, that is
so important. When you go and just find the cheapest plant you can find
anywhere, I'm telling you, it's going to go wrong for you. And
here's why it may not be a plant that does well here. A lot
of places don't take care of their plants. The plants just are not cared
for and they're stressed and they're not going to do as well. And then
places sell plants they shouldn't sell. And you know, I could sit here
and give the dirty dozen list of the places like that, But the bottom
line is I walk into a lot of spots that aren't really in the business
of growing plants. They're in the business of other things. And when you
go in there, you look and you go that it doesn't even grow here
in this region. You know, like some black raspberries, you don't grow
those in Houston. I mean, don't call me and say you grew one
one time. I'm just telling you that they don't do well here. Well.
Plants for All Seasons they check all the right boxes there. They're on
just north of Luetta on two forty nine Tombo Parkway two eight one three seven
six sixteen forty six, or go to their website Plants for All Seasons dot
com. We're going to take a break, phone number seven one three two
one two KTRH. Welcome back to garden Line today. We're glad to have
you with us. I hope that you are going to enjoy today. So
certainly it's our Easter Sunday today, a big, big important holiday there for
a lot of folks, and it also is going to be a wonderful afternoon
to be out and about taking care of things. I'm going to go straight
to the phones. We're going to talk to Betty in Shenandoah. Hello Betty,
good morning and happy Easter and to you as well. I have a
question. I have been trying to find Genesis fertilizer and I cannot find it
at all my favorite spots Arburgate all seasons. I'm just wondering if you might
know where I could find it. You tried to Arbrogate implants for all seasons.
Both tell you what if anybody from Nelson's is listening, if you would
text Ror let me know, I'll report that back to you later. Betty,
I do not have an availability list of all the places that are carrying
that specific product. I'm a little surprised plans for All season didn't have it,
But anyway, they may be able to get it for you too if
they. Okay, well, I think I think it was It was on
a gardening show. I don't know if it was yours or not, and
they said they had amazing results with their tomatoes, and so I thought,
well, I'm going to give to try. That was a show. Yeah,
absolutely, So your way up toward Conroe Way, you might try.
There's some Ace hardware stores kind of up your direction. There's one. Yeah,
I tried my local one. Yeah, they did not have all.
Right, Well, I need to find out. That's a good question.
But you do need to get a hold of some of that. And so
we're going to find it one way or another. Just keep listening, Okay,
I'll let you know. Okay, have a good day, all right,
bye bye bye, Thank you very much for those of you here going.
Okay, what are we talking about? Genesis Genesis is it's actually neutral
Star Genesis. It's it's one of Nelson Plant Foods products and it's a fertilizer
designed to aid in the process of a plant being relocated into a new place.
It stimulates the plant in a number of ways. Number one, it's
it's an organic type fertilizer. It's a six to one to three mix.
It has beneficial bacteria and it's got both the both of the types of funge
that helped the plant take up nutrients and protect the plant roots too. They're
called indo and ectomcoriza if you like big words. But it also has humates
that would help which help condition the soil, and it just enhances the biology
of the soil and in general you have good success with it. I had
great success doing some peppers this year with it when I tested it out.
I had a collar the other day that has raved about it for their tomatoes
and other things. And it's a it's a good mix comes in little jars,
like a lot of those kinds of plant foods do. But it works
really well, and we're going to find out some of the source are the
locations where you can pick that up. I know a lot of you are
buying it out there. Maybe anybody up kind of north central knows where they
got it. Call in let us know, we'll see if we can help
Betty out a little bit more on that. You're listening to guarden Line.
Our phone number is seven to one three two one two ktr H seven one
three two one two KTRH. I was talking to Jason's Jason at Pierscapes a
couple of days ago, and we were just talking about, you know,
this spraying, how different this year is than last year, and you know,
all the things that have to do with the green industry and the weather
and whatnot. And he was just talking about how they staying quite busy,
and you know, a good landscaper, a reputable landscaper, they're going to
be busy and you're going to have to book them out weeks, if not
months. It just depends on what you need done, how big the job
is, and when you call. But I would suggest that you if you're
thinking about doing any kind of work on the landscape and you need some help
with that. You give them a call, get on the board, I
tell them you heard it on guardline, and find out when would they be
able to come and do that work. So, for example, you need
irrigation systems check out and any repairs done. That summer is coming, folks,
and you don't want to limp into summer with a bad irrigation system.
And most irrigation systems are pretty inefficient and could use a little improvement. That
would be an example. Do you want a beautiful patio? Do you want
a water feature in the backyard you know with your patio? Do you want
hardscape done? There'd be pathways. Do you need lighting and outdoors, any
kind of rock construction type projects. Do you have a place that doesn't drain,
well, you just got a lot of rain. You got some of
those spots I do in my yard. I just put in a French train
this past week. They can do that. They can fix that for you.
But here's something that maybe you're not aware of that Piercecapes does they have
a quarterly maintenance program for your beds. So you sign up for it.
In every quarter. That's four times a year. They come in it.
They do trimming, they do weeding, they do fertilizing, They check the
irrigation system. If there's problems, well then that be an additional charge.
They do aeration, they do seasonal color changes, and they remultch, freshen
up the mult put some new multch out there. It's all a maintenance of
the beds. So you know, with our seasons, we're coming out of
winter, the pansies aren't happy anymore. It's time to put in petunias and
other things. And then summertime comes and they will do this seasonal color changes
for you. It depends on, you know, how many color changes you
want. You negotiate that with them or I say negotiate, you know,
call them and find out what will it cost for do this, what it
costs to do that. But Piercescapes, that's a great idea getting on that
quarterly maintenance program that they offer their peerscape. So if you would like to
get in touch with them, how about I give you an email and a
phone number. Pierscapes dot com, pierce Scapes one word dot com two eight
one three, seven oh fifty sixty. I looking at their website, it
is done. The kinds of work that they can do, I mean,
and you don't have to have a taj Mahal, you know, million dollar
landscape to hire them to do. They can do that, but you don't
have to have that. They can do small simple things as well for you.
And certainly that service is pretty cool with the maintenance maintenance agreement. Well,
you're listening to Gardenline. Our phone number is what is it? Seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you'd like to give
Josh a call and get on the board, it's a good day to call.
I think Easter Sunday people imagine that they've got their minds on other things
today. Absolutely so I've been talking about some different things and the importance of
color containers too. I just would encourage you this season to grow something new,
to do something different. For example, maybe you've never grown herbs before.
Grow a few herbs, try that out. Maybe you've never tried growing
vegetables in a container. Let us help you and have success and try that
out. Why don't you do that? Grow some fresh, healthy produce.
It's what fifteen hundred miles fresher than what you buy in a store. Why
don't you try that? Give that a shot. Maybe you've never done the
hanging baskets. Maybe there's a new cop Maybe don't you've not had a citrus
plant and you want to put one, maybe a little small lime or a
lemon or something, and a large container. Try it out. Try something
new this year? What are you going to try that's new? Every year,
I always try a number of new things. And it may be a
new plant, it may be a new gardening technique, maybe a new way
of dealing or helping avoid pests and weeds and diseases and things like that.
But try something new. There's so many cool new things. And with house
plants, oh my gosh, so many new cool houseplants out there. I'm
going to talk about some specific plants here coming up in just a bit,
but we're going to end up taking a here in just a moment, so
I don't want to launch too far into that, but you know what,
I am going to mention one plant. One plant that is underplanted here in
the Houston area is called persian shield. Persian shield has large, bold foliage
that is a purplish color. If you can imagine in between purple and pink
in there, but more toward the purple side. And then it also has
green and some silvery look to the leaves. If it gets in a little
more sunlight, it's going to have more of the purple. If it goes
into a little more shade, you're going to see more of the silver.
But it's a wonderful little plant. You can keep it pinched back, keep
it branching, and have it about three feet high, and that purple color
just really shows up. Well. That's a cool one. And shade is
often a challenging place for growing plants just because you know it doesn't get enough
sunlight out there. So Persian Shield, if you hadn't tried it before,
try it this year. Our garden centers carry it. Easy to find.
Owner reminds you that I will be at M and D Supply that's an ace
hardware store in the clear Lake area, and I'll be there next Saturday.
Next Saturday from eleven thirty to one thirty. I hope you'll come out.
We're going to be doing giveaways from nitrofoss products and it's just gonna be a
good time. You can bring me samples. You can bring me pictures.
I just want to come by and say hi. I went out at cinemals
yesterday a lot of people just said, I just want to come by and
say hi. I appreciate the Garden Line. I have been listening a long
time. Well you can do that too. I always like to meet the
folks that listen to Garden Line. But M and D at clear Lake also,
I should mention this for those of being down in Wharton the Ace Hardware
there, it's called Wharton Feed and Ace Hardware. It's on Richmond Road,
North Richmond Road. They're having a Friday and Saturday grand opening in that area
too. You want to swing by there and check that place out. We'll
be back KATRH Garden Line. It's not necessar sly endorse any of the products
or services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with
Skip Rictor it's crazy Gas. Just watch him as many you got crazy.
Hey, welcome back to garden Line on Easter Sunday morning. I want to
welcome you and uh, just hang on. We're going to talk about all
kinds of things gardening. If you got a question something you would like to
talk about just give me a call seven one three two one two k t
R H seven one three two one two k t R eight. That makes
it simple, easy, easy to do. If you have not done your
early spring greenup fertilization, that's the one that's optional my schedule, but we
put it down. The reason it's there on the schedule is because when you
put on an early spring green up, it releases those nutrients, and while
it's cool and the grass doesn't take off growing and running all over the place,
it does turn green and it is you're getting those nutrients into the plants,
so as it warms up, they're going to have that reserve to take
off and be growing. Well. That's an example of that would be Nitrofos
Imperial. It's a fifteen five to ten. That's the red bag from Nitrofoss
And if you haven't done one and you want to do that, you can
Right now. We're kind of on that line between do you want to do
an early greenup type application or do you want to just go ahead and do
the slower release, longer version. But now's a fine time to put out
a fifteen five to ten to get it in the ground and to make those
nutrients available plants. That ratio of nutrients was developed by turf scientists Texas A
and M and other Southern universities as being the ideal may for what grass needs
to grow and thrive and do well. And when you're dealing with nitrofross products,
you're going to find them in a lot of places. It's really easy
to find your nitroposs. For example, a D and D feed store up
in Tumble. They have the nitrofoss products. If you go out to Angleton,
to Lake Hardware and Angleton, or to Fisher's Hardware and Baytown, those
are all places you can get the nitroposs products. DND the red bag.
That's the easy way to remember it is the red bag. I mentioned D
and D. D and D. When I think of D and D feed,
I think of a number of things. Number one, it's a great
feed store. I mean, whether you're looking for quality feed for pets or
whether you're looking for feed for your outdoor animals, then the D and D
is going to have it. It's also the place that has all the fertilizers
I talk about here on guard Line and the soil blends. You need a
bag of some quality stuff like a rose soil or fruit berry and citrus,
or veggian herb from marloom. They've got those there as well as aged leaf
mole compost. But Dani's a place that has the chicks coming in all the
time. I don't know why that sounds funny to say it that way,
but that's just true. It's a place where the chicks hang out. Well,
D and D feed This Thursday, on April fourth, they're getting in
four different types of turkeys. Did you know there were four different types of
turkeys? How about a blue slate? How about a bourbon red? How
about a chocolate turkey. I don't think it tastes chocolate, but it must
be the color. How about a royal palm turkey. Then on Friday,
I don't know, let's see that five ten, fifty, way over fifteen
different types of chicks coming in like pullets. We call them pullets. Well,
that would be olive eggar and Rhode island and buff orpington and lavender orpington.
I could just read them all. These are Oh they have a naked
neck. We had some one of those one time. It's a chicken and
there's no feathers on the neck part is that weird? It's absolutely they're going
to get some of those as well. Hey, dndfeed, just go check
them out. They've got a great selection of plants too. Right now,
phone numbers two eight, one, three, five, one seventy one,
forty four. They're on FM twenty nine to twenty west of Tomboul, about
three miles west of Highway two forty nine, two eight one three five one
seventy one forty four. Man, people are in the backyard chickens. I'm
telling you, Uh, we're gonna go out now to sugar Land and talk
to Nick. Hello, Nick, good morning, Happy Easter, Happy Easter
to you as well. That all help? Oh please? So my question
is, and this is why I am calling. My mother in law wiped
out all the flowers that I had that attracted hummingbirds. Okay, and I
don't even know what to begin to plant. That's why I'm calling, because
you know everything. Wait a minute, I want to get my wife on
the phone. She needs to hear that. No, go ahead, and
uh, even if you tell me what's a plant? How long can I
well they come back in a seat? Will it take? Will it take
a season? Will it take several seasons. It depends on what the plants
are. Some things you get them the first season. A lot of the
salvias, you're going to get those right away. And there's some good hummingbird
plants in the salvias. Uh, if you're talking about something that's more of
a shrub or vine, a witty vine, then you may have to wait
a year or two to get the amount of growth and blooms that's really going
to make a big difference. Like coral vine that's a beautiful native vine that
attracts hummingbirds. And just another example. There's a lot of plants though I
would I would include some annual and perennial flowers just to get you going.
And then plants some things that are a little bit longer term. You know,
they're not they're not one year and done. They're they're going to be
there for years for you. And what what fertilizer to help expedite the process?
You know possible. There's a lot of fertilizers out there. There are
some like color stars and excellent fertilizers, maybe by Nelson's The color star is
going to provide a good nutrition. I tell you in a pinch. I
often use my lawn fertilizer for fertilizing vegetables and flowers and other things. It
just don't don't overthink it, don't worry about it too much. But if
you want something that's kind of designed for, like a color bed like that,
Nelson's Color Star can do that, and I don't have to worry about
molts or anything like that, do I or welling down top soil or well,
anything you do to improve the soil is the most important thing you're going
to do. So if you want to put on a bed, mix and
mix it in a little bit, or just on top of the soil,
if you need to put some top soil to bring up the level for drainage,
to make sure the roots aren't sitting in too wet, those are all
important things to do. But I would get that those spots ready to go
before you put the plants in, and you can just buy bags of product.
You're done in sugar lands. I mean you got you know, in
Chenny gardens and in Chennit forest, just in your backyard. Well, I
appreciate your time, wish me luck and have a nice easter, all right,
Nick, Thank you? You don't need luck. I know you're gonna
do a good job of this, and it's gonna it's gonna be nice.
The pollinators, I'll tell them when I talk to them, and the hummingbirds
that just hang on your you're on your way back. I don't Someday I
want to hear the story about the mother in law and the destroying flowers,
but not this morning. Thanks a lot, right, I appreciate you by
bye. Received that very much. Oh, let's see, we're gonna go
now. Yeah, I don't have time for another call. Say a little
break here, Ronnie and Bernie. We're gonna come to you when we come
back from our break. Our phone number for the rest of you seven one
three two one two five eight seven four. Welcome back to the guarden Line.
Good to have you with us today. I've been talking about redoing my
lawn. I'm also doing a patio out back. We're going to do a
one of those little stone with a decomposed granite patios, not a concrete patio,
but a one of just a flat stone flagstones with the decomposed granted.
And it's finally given me a place to put a little water feature that I
have. I've got a bird bath that I have been really looking forward to
getting set up, and I just haven't had the spot for it, and
so it's kind of gone to the back. But water is such a cool
thing in the landscape. The sound of water is nice. And then bringing
the birds in closer and providing with stuff during the heat of summer, that's
important. And that made me think about Nelson Water Garden and Nursery, which
is out there and Katie and Nelson's has been a longtime leader. They are
nationally known as a leader when it comes to how do you design beautiful water
gardens. They created this disappearing fountain that comes out of a container, a
big beautiful container. Let me just tell you this. You need to go.
It is a destination nursery and when you get out there, you're going
to walk through and they just have like waterfalls and the container fountains I was
talking about, and you're just wandering through looking at the koyfish and the lily
pads and everything. And they are a garden center too, Yes, they
are a garden center. If you want to find out more from them about
them, go to the website which is Nelson Watergardens dot com. By the
way, there's a Landscape design and build tab on the website where you can
fill things out because they do landscape design services, and especially with the water
gardens. Oh my gosh, why don't you check into that and look at
when you go out there and see it, you're gonna want a water I
promise you're gonna want a water garden. They're just so so cool. Katie,
Fort Ben Road just north of it out there, and Katie, let's
go now to rich Wood and talk to Ronnie. Hello, Runnie, Hello,
Jeff. I have a large tree and last year it dropped its leaves
early because of what I think was powder post beetles. So call one of
your advertisers and for scribal something I put on get rid of the beetles apparently,
So this year the leaves came out, okay, But now it's some
quiet, fungus looking stuff growing around the base of the of the tree where
all the powder was coming out when it had the beetles. Okay, So
you know what that could be and what I can do for it. Well,
I'm ninety percent sure that the bark is dead underneath that area. When
the bark is alive, if it truly is like a powder post beetle.
They don't just drill through living bark typically, but a dead area they will
go in. There are a number of different beetles that can do that.
And then the white is a fungal mushroom. It doesn't look like a mushroom.
It's more like a shelf fungi. I don't know if you've ever been
in the forest and you feel see a log on the floor of the forest
and it's got the shelf fungi coming out, it's it's a it's a fungus
somewhat like that, but it's basically in there to decompose the wood in the
tree. So it's just a sign that you've got a dead area there.
Having an arborous look at it would be a good idea because that particular tree,
the ash, they're not a super strong hardwood last a long time once
you've got exposure of the inner material to decay. So as far as it
being a hazard during a storm, that would be the first question that I
would have about it. But that's not a disease of the tree that you
spray for those little white things, it's they're just there to decompose okay,
thank you very much. All right, sir, you take care you do
you need a contact for down in your area or or somebody up here that
has Yeah, okay, have you ever have you ever contacted Martin at Affordable
Tree before. Yes, he's the one that I talked to I believe about
power post people. Yeah, telling me talk to me on guarden Line and
that I feel like you got a d some kind of a decomposer of fungi
there. Martin. He knows what he's doing and I feel comfortable recommending him
because because of that. But Affordable Tree Service Martin spoon More would be the
one that I would call. Uh, you've probably already got his phone number,
but the website's Afftree Service dot com. Okay, all right, Ronnie,
thank you, you bet, thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Yeah, Martin, he stays busy, So if you want any kind
of tree work done, you need to call him. Tell him you're from
garden Line. That helps you gets to the front of the line. He
kind of gives a preference to Guardenline listeners. Uh. But a phone number
for those of you who aren't familiar with it, seven one, three,
six nine nine two six six three Martin or his wife Joe answer the phone.
Yep, the owners answer the phone around there. That's how they do
business. He definitely is a profession It costs about one hundred and fifty bucks
for him to come out for a consultation. And if you know, he's
going to tell you what's going on and what he thinks needs to be done,
or if he doesn't think anything needs to be done. But if you
if you hire him to do the work, then that one fifty just goes
right into the cost of what you're hiring him to do, so you you
don't lose the one fifty. So it's always a good idea to have a
knowledgeable arborius take a look at stuff. We're going to go now to spring
and talk to Bernie. Hello, Bernie, Happy Easter. Have easter do.
I've got a vegetable garden with the usual pepper's cucumber tomatoes in it.
It's like few other things, they all seem to be doing good. I've
got blooms, small fruit coming on. But I know the stink bug and
the white fly, the green ca otolers are probably going to evade it sometime.
And I've never done this before. Is there a spray that uh?
And I should uh a routine spray? Should I starts doing that now or
like like uh like seven spray and to try to prevent them from coming in.
No, I wouldn't do that. Uh, it's not going to prevent
them from coming in, but when they're there getting sprayed with it is going
to kill them. But seven seven has some negative effects. It actually makes
spider mites reproduce faster and uh it does. It kills everything that eats the
spider mite too. So you get these tomatoes and spider mites. Spider maights
love tomatoes, and so I don't want to do anything to encourage them.
And I usually, I mean, I know people have used seven on tomatoes
for a long time, but I'm just telling you that just to start spraying
them now, you're just asking for ahe spider maight problem. So Eccusually when
go ahead, I say Eccusually when they arrive is when I see, you
know, and it's almost too late, you know. And I was just
wondering if there's something else I should do. Yeah, So for the stink
bugs and caterpillars there, I would wait until you see something going on out
there. If you know what stink bugs look like when they're immature, and
the leaf footed bug, which is stinkbug's cousin, when you see them,
you can just put a pail of soapy water and swap that little herd of
them and they fall into it and die. You have to bother mixing up
a spray to spray on them. That is one thing. When you see
the caterpillars, a bet that's the time to pull it out. But another
thing that people are starting to try, there's a mesh that you put over
the plants. It's not row cover, but it's more like think of your
windows screen, but something super lightweight with even smaller holes, and the rain
goes through, air goes through, and you just basically create a screen portch
that goes over the top of the tomatoes into the ground and nothing can get
through there. And you don't you don't need sex to pollinate your tomatoes.
The wind shaking them will do that. But that that is another option.
Uh, if you want to, you want to go that route, but
I would if it were me, I would just wait see what shows up
and then we can find the safest, most effective thing to use. Okay,
that's what I'll wait to wait waaly, come all right, just check
it, check it out. They say the best fertilizer is the footprints of
the gardener. I would add to it, the best pest control is the
footprints of the gardener. So get out there, catch them, catch the
problem early, and it's easier to get rid of the problem. Thank you,
okay, thank your help. Take care. If you have a broad
lead weed problem in your launch, and that's that would be the winter weeds,
the things that sprouted last fall and have been growing through the winter just
a little bit, and then here comes spring, just like our blue bonnets
take off growing bloom set seeds and and they're gone. Well uh not nitrophiles,
excuse me. They have a product that's a nitrofoss fifteen to five to
ten and it has the ingredient trimech in it, So it's both the fertilizer
and a weed control. For a post emergent control of broadly weeds, you
get the weeds wet, those particles stick to the weeds and they move into
the weed tissues to kill the weed and then give it after a day or
two, give it a good watering, move that fifteen to five to ten
in and it's like your spring greenup fertilization. So after you if you use
that, after you use it, wait about a month or so before you
start into your summer fertilizations. And that way you kind of kill two birds
with one stone. You can find nitro Fross products a lot of different places.
I'll give you a few examples. If you happen to be down Southwest
Bearings Hardware on Businet Bearing Hardware and Wesheimer they both have it out in Richmond
Plantation Ace Hardware they carry the Nitrofosh products as well. Hiding and Feed up
on Interstate forty five North on Stubener Airline that area they have it as well.
We're going to now head south west Houston and talk to Carolyn. Hello,
Carolyn, good morning. I have a question about the ornamental cabbage and
tail. Are they edible? They're edible, but they weren't bread for that,
so they may not be as good to eat as that. But they
are an edible plant. They're just a different version of cabbage and kale.
So is there any there's nothing basically different except the taste probably probably maybe,
I don't know if texture if they're tougher textures are stringing. I don't nutrition
I've never tried eating them nutrition wise. I just I wouldn't know, but
I would think it'd be somewhat close. They are cold. We call those
coal crops coil e and that includes broccoli and cabbage, corrobbie, collards.
I'm leaving some owt, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, all of those. You
can eat the leaves of all of those if you want, but they're not
the term I use is edible but not palatable. So I had a friend
one time who planted some broccoli, I mean some some what was it a
collars or something and or kale. When it was coming up, he was
eating the leaves of it, and all of a sudden it put on a
broccoli head. It turned out broccoli the whole time. It was a some
of the plant long ago that was selected for the variations. And you know,
with Brussels sprouts, we're eating the side buds. With cabbage, we're
eating the terminal bud at the end of the stem. With coole robbie,
we're eating the swollen stem. You know, with broccoli and cauliflower, we're
eating the flower bud up at the top, and I don't know what else.
I left collars and kale. We're eating the leaves, so I would
if you want to eat something, I would grow the one developed for the
leaves in this case. As opposed to this was a friend of mine who
said she was planning it and she's kind of moving from flowers into vegetables,
okay, And I said, well, if it's if it has a bright
purple middle, it's it's the ornamental. It could be. There's actually purple
cabbages too, but yeah, it's not gonna it's not poisonous or anything like
that. But if she does try eating it, I'd like to report back
because I've never tried eating one of those. Uh maybe just as good as
regular Kaylen Cabby, I don't know. Okay, great, thank you,
thank you so much. I appreciate your call very much. You've been listening
to garden Line. We're gonna take a little break here for the news.
If you would like to be on, ask a question perhaps seven to one
three two one two kt R eight seven one three two one two kt RAH
and I'll be right back when Nikki is done telling us what's up? What's
happening. Well, welcome back to garden Line. Good to have you with
us. What are we going to talk about? You tell me by calling
seven one three two one two KTRH. I tell you it. I hear
so many people lamenting the condition of their lawn and it just I was out,
you know, centemal gesture and a number of different people stopping by.
We're talking to me about lawn issues. Lawns got hammered last summer. It
was dry, and it was hot for a very long time, very dry,
very hot. And if your lawn is thin and not looking good,
you've got a couple of options. I mean, you can replace it,
just redo the whole thing. But if you've got some decent turf there and
it's just getting on the thin side, I would suggest you consider a good
deep time aeration, a core aeration with a compost top dressing, a quality
compost top dressing on it that brings oxygen into the soil fertilizer you apply,
and the composts that you apply will find its way down into those holes as
well, and it just enhances the root system. Along with your regular fertilization.
This really enhances a lot, a lot less it's an investment to do
that. You know, to have for example greenpro have them come out and
do it. It's an investment, but it's a lot less expensive than resotting.
Trust me, I can tell you that one. But if you want
more information, go to greenpro dot net. Greenpro dot net. Greenpro covers
sort of the north and West region from Houston and out so thing places like
let's say west to Katie, you know, West Houston area, Central Houston,
North Houston, you go up to Conroe and Willis and the Woodlands and
over to Montgomery, Magnolia, Cyprus Spring. Those are all areas covered by
Greenpro. You know, when you got really quality equipment, which they do,
and then you're having to haul in all that compost top dressing. You
just can't drive all over creation on that and make it worthwhile. But greenpro
dot net can do it. And I'm telling you aeration quality aeration with compost
top dressing is a huge benefit to your lawn, especially when you have areas
that are struggling with soil compaction. Soil compaction is uh. It takes the
oxygen out of the root system. Earlier I was talking about water logging.
It's not they're not being killed by water. Plants are not being killed by
water. They're being killed because the roots diye for lack of oxygen in a
water log soil. That's one of the things that happens in that and soil
compaction does that too, and you can't get a good deep root system.
And that's one of the reasons why corroation is helpful. But not just pressing
a hole in the soil. You know, like you like some of the
cheap rental units, do you want to pull a plug out of the soil
and leave that plug on the surface. That that is the right way to
do corrooration. Other things taking care of your lawn, A microlife has the
green bag the six two four organic fertilizer to put down and feed the lawn.
Not just those nutrients, but you're providing a lot of other compounds in
that fertilizer, like microbial activity. Microbes themselves are in that microlife fertilizer.
And also another thing about it is because it's an organic fertilizer made from things
that were once alive like plant like you know, compost was made from things
that were alive. Also, well, because of that, you've got all
the nutrients the plants need, not just the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium.
The bag says six to four, but there's a lot more in it than
just those three nutrients. And Microlife also makes a humans plus. This is
a product that's the final decomposition of compost. It's concentrated compost in a bag.
It's the purple bag. So what I would suggest in bringing your lown
back the green bag and then follow that with the purple bag and watered in
really good, and let's get that grass grown again, because I realize the
struggle you have because I have struggle the same thing this year. Microlife Fertilizer
dot com is where you can find out more about Microlife and where to buy
it. It is one of our more widely available fertilizers throughout this region.
So if you're listening to garden Line, unless you're listening online and Timbuck too,
by the way, I've never had a caller from Timbuck too. That's
my next goal. But unless you're listening way off, you're going to find
Microlife products where you live pretty close. Not a problem like that. For
example, those of you that are up in the Lake Conro area, Lake
Conroe. All the neighborhoods around like Conroe, you have a backyard nursery.
It's Ana Plants and Produce. I'm sure you've seen it, and I bet
you've been there. It's just on the east side of Montgomery and they carry
all of the things you need, like that microlife fertilizer I was talking about,
and other fertilizers you hear me talk about as well. They got it
right there at Ana Plants. In fact, they told me that they were
printing out some copies of my laun care schedule and have them at the counter
there for customers to grab, so you don't want to punt one at yours
out. You may check that out. They have Nature's Way resources like leaf
mold composts, so if you're doing a do it yourself leaf mold compost top
dressing, well you can. You can get some products there by the bag.
I wouldn't do huge yards trying to do it by the bag, but
small areas, yeah, that's that's valid. It certainly does that. If
you live ou above the lake, they do spring cleanups. They have a
landscape crew really that goes out and they're very talented. But when it comes
to oh my gosh, this place coming out of winter doesn't look so good.
Let them come out and do some clean up early spring cleanup around the
landscape. Beds and things that you have. Just call them at A and
A. Plants are just swing by there. They're in your backyard. It's
really easy to get there and to find them. I was talking earlier about
a couple of things. I was talking about containers and having success with containers,
and I certainly today again we're talking a lot about lawns and taking care
of your lawns. I don't know how many of you have really tried hanging
baskets, uh, for your patio or for the porch, or wherever you're
gonna you're gonna put them. But hanging baskets are just a beautiful way to
add color and beauty to make a place more inviting. We had a little
back patio behind our house and one year we just put a lot of beautiful
fern hanging baskets out there, and it just kind of felt like you were
in a tropical paradise with those those flowers, and I mean the fern,
the foliage. I've done a number of different kinds of flowers and hanging baskets.
Uh, it's just a beautiful way to do that. And so think
about that when you're decorating the outdoors. Don't just think of the landscape,
but think of what can we put around here. Just remember, with any
kind of a container, you even need to water pretty often so that they
stay adequately moist. Now, some things like a purse lane and a hanging
basket. That's a succulent and so it's a little more forgiving. It soon
needs water, but it's a little more forgiving than some of the other plants
might be when it comes to going a little bit on the dry side.
They do pretty well. I love personally. And the colors are all over
the place, just wide variety of colors. Our phone number is seven to
one three two one two k t RH. We'd like to give us a
call and talk about something you're interested in. Seven to one three two one
two k t RH. You've heard me talk about ACE Hardware before and their
motto is ACE is the place. ACE is the place for and you fill
in the blank. They carry the fertilizers I talk about. You can get
your gardening tools and you're uh, let's say you need a garden hose,
and there's bray nozzles, and you need things to control insects and diseases and
pasts, and certainly the fertilizer products that we talk about, they've got that.
It's also the place to get your fire ant control. And this is
a season to get that done. We get a lot of rain and you
see these mounds popping up everywhere. What I would recommend is go to ACE,
grab you a fire at bait. They have several different good there's a
number of good ones out there. I could start naming them, but then
I'd leave half of them out. But a good quality bait and put that
out at the required level, and the required level is super super low.
Follow that with an application of the individual mound treatments after you see what the
bait did or didn't do. It's always better to start with a bait and
then give it some time to work, and then if you need to,
the individual mound treatments can come in. I'm going to come back after the
break and talk about that a little bit more, but we're going to take
a break right now. Seven to one three two, one, two,
five, eight seven four. Good morning, a good Easter day, as
well. By the way, did you know that a red solo cup those
lines on there are specific volume measurements and I can't remember what each one is.
Just go online look it up. But the first time I saw that,
it was like, wow, that is a That's like having a measuring
cup right there, right there in a red solo cup. Who to thunk
it? All? Right, well, you're back here with Guardline. I'm
your host, Skip Ricker, and what are we going to do. We're
gonna talk about gardening. I was talking about fire ants before we went in
to break and because this is the season to get on them, spring and
fall especially big times to deal with the fireing issues. So a bait there
is synthetic and organic types of bait that you can purchase for fire ants.
Whichever way you want to go. The bait knocks out not just the mounds
you see, but the mounds that haven't i'll say boiled to the surface yet
then they haven't come up. They're developing underground because they have foragers that are
going out and picking up the bait particles. And you don't dump bait on
the mound. You spread it very thinly, follow the label. I know
what the like the andro product. One pound of andro baate covers an acre
forty three five hundred and six square feet. Now think about how far apart
the granules are when you do that. That's what baits are for. That
ants pick them up, they take them back, feed them the queen,
feed them the colony, and it takes it out. It works well.
The ones you miss, you can do the mound treatment. But if you
just do mound treatments. If some people say I pour barling water on my
fire ants, well okay, good. Let's say you killed the mound,
which you probably didn't get the whole thing, but you definitely kill the plant
right next to it. But that's just what you're playing whack the mole with
fire ants when you do mound treatments, because another one pops up and you
lop that one down and then another one pops up. First the bait,
and then then if you miss some, then do the mound treatment on those.
That's called the Texas two step method. Texas A and min Zobologists developed
out a number of years ago. The Texas two step is bait followed by
mound treatment. That's the way to go about so ace hardware has got that.
You know, they've got all the products you need for both steps of
the Texas two step. They all also have the fertilizers and things you need.
While you're there, Why don't you just go and pick up a bag
of the Nitrofos superturf. That's the silver bag. You can walk right into
ACE and say I need your silver bag, and they will they will know
what you're talking about. Nitrofos Superturf's that one that releases gradually. It's their
slow release fertilizer. So it's when it gets wet. Those granules they don't
all just go immediately into solution in the soil. There's some that it can
take, you know, a good while. Superturf will last year a couple
of months, maybe three months, and or getting that nutrient out of it.
And so while you're at ACE, just pick up the Nitropos superturf and
you can get it at pretty much every ace you find, I mean widespread
widespread availability on that superturf. So why you're dealing with fire ants, grab
that fertilizer for summer. You're gonna need it. You're listening to garden Line,
I'm your host skip Rictor and our phone number is seven to one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four, seven to one three two and two
five eight seven four. One of my favorite things to do during the week
are on weekends is just to visit garden centers. I love to go to
garden sets. They're each different. And when I say garden center, I
don't mean a garden center, you know, just tied onto a bunch of
other things. I'm talking about one of those mom and pop garden centers that
is just a destination, a place like in chenned Forest and Richmond, which
by the way, I'm going to be there sometime in April. A little
bit later in April, will be out there doing an appearance. In chenned
Forest, you walk in and the whole scene, from the buildings to the
trees to everything, the way the plants are laid out, it's just inviting
to walk through. And they just expanded Danny Clay had expanded the herb and
the vegetable area and they have unbelievable selection, really good for that. If
you like pollinators and if you like butterflies, they really really stock up on
those things. Last year they had a bunch of larval food sources for butterflies,
you know, like monarchs eat milkweed and gofridillary eats a passion buying leaves,
and they had so many caterpillars on them. They were like you could
take home a free caterpillar when you bought the plant, because then you got
to you know, your head start. You get to watch the crystalis and
everything for him. But Intended Forest is really good about that pollinator gardens,
butterfly gardens. But they have a lot more their greenhouse full of color,
with impatience and with just guardina, just a lot of different kinds of plants,
a lot of different beautiful, beautiful kinds of plants. Lantanna's kind of
one of the pick of the week that they've had out there, and they've
got a wide variety. And do you know, Lantana's don't have to just
be a big old bush. There's some varieties there are a lot smaller and
go ahead and check it out. By the way, enchanted forest, if
you're in Richmond, going toward sugar Land off to the right is where you're
going to get to enchanted forests. That's FM twenty seven fifty nine twenty seven
fifty nine. That is I just would recommend you do that. Go out
and check out, by the way, on all our garden centers, I
have not called everyone. See who's open, who's not open to what?
Just go check their social media, go check their webs. I don't give
them a call before you head out that way today being Easter Sunday, and
just make sure that they're open before you head out that way. But I
every day is a good day to go out to Enchended Forest and visit them.
We were talking about fire ants as being one of the pests that we
have to deal with when it comes to getting out and enjoying the garden.
Mosquitos are another one that we have to deal with. And you know,
mosquitos need water in order to go through their life cycle, but they're pretty
fast. It doesn't take long for the mosquito to lay an egg, the
egg to hatch into a little larva that floats along the surface and not to
transform into an adult mosquito. And when you have like leaky gutters, they
can hold water for a period of time and mosquitoes can reproduce in there.
When you have a bird bath that just sits stagnant, or a dog bowl
full of water outside that just sits stagnant for a long period of time.
Mosquitoes are gonna be present, and we say, don't be a Skeeter breeder,
because all we have to do is dump those areas. Fix those areas.
You know, they're the little mosquito dunks and granules you put in that
is a stagnant body of water, maybe it's a pond or something like that.
You can put them in there to control the larva there. But you
want to be ahead of this whole thing. And here in southeast part of
Texas or through the region, it rains a lot in general, and when
it does, here come the Skeeters. So kind of plan ahead as you're
thinking about that. That's just kind of like a public service message. But
there's a lot we can do to avoid that kind of problem. And with
different kinds of mosquitoes, different species, and the different diseases they carry,
we need to be extra careful. You know. The Health Department's always looking
at looking for things like do we have West Nile virus and other things that
mosquitoes can carry. So give you a little extra extra careful if you have
pets. Make sure your pets are being treated for heartworms. Do you know
that mosquitoes can carry the heartworm and your pet gets the heartworm. Here on
the Gulf Coast, there are widespread heartworm issues with pets or dogs, very
widespread problem, and so another reason keeping the mosquitoes down. But don't depend
on that. Make sure your pets are always continually on HeartWare medication. If
you just moved here from some other parts of the country. The Gulf Coast
is a hotbed for heartworm problems with dogs, and that is a serious problem
you do not want to mess around with. Let's go out to Whitehall and
we're going to talk to Mark. Hello. Mark, Hello, good morning,
and thanks. Skip. I'm really struggling with pruney freshly planted fruit trees.
Okay, I've been online and saying, yes, you've got you've got
a knee, capp them and cut them back and skip. They're beautiful,
They've got leaves, some are producing some small fruit. Yeah, and I'm
really struggling with this. Yeah, I got you. The Aggie Horticulture website
has a publication on each fruit tree in the fruit section, and it shows
you how to train and prune them going along. So whatever you're planting,
what kind of fruit have you planted? Well, we've got two pair,
two apple, two peach, two necktarine, and too plumps. They're all
in a line, a straight line, about twenty five thirty feet apart.
Yeah, So on the plums and the peaches, you want to open bowl
or a base shape or a challice shape if you want to go that route.
And to do that, you got to cut the trunk off somewhere and
get your branches. Now, if your tree came with it and you happen
to have branches that are about the right height let's say about need to pants
pocket high, you know, something like that, and they're going in different
directions, so they're kind of like the three points on a triangle, then
you don't have to cut those off, cut everything else off, and just
train those. If you bottle a bear root tree when you plant it,
we say just cut it off at that time if the plant, if the
branches on those trees are really not where they should be, just leaving them
is a mistake you need and a young tree can develop a new branches pretty
quickly. With the apples and the pears, we're doing more of a central
water time of training, where we have a central trunk and then what we
call a whirl of branches at a certain height, and then you go up
another eighteen twenty four inches whatever, you have another whirl of branches, and
that's kind of the goal in apple and pair pruning. Pairs are a little
tricky to get to cooperate with pruning, and we try to minimize pruning on
those. But I mean, we could sit here and talk all day on
those. I'm about to We're going to hear music in just a minute.
But if you want to hang around until after this break on top of the
hour, we can continue the discussion. But be brave, be brave the
right do the right thing. But you know, there may be some more
details I didn't get from you in that, So if you want to talk
about it, I'll I'll hang with you. Thank you. Yes. Where
I'm going to be next Saturday, I'm going to be at the ACE Hardware
store. I'm going to be at specifically the M and D clear Lake store
down in clear Lake. Ace Hardware it's easy to find. Hey, how
do you find an ACE Hardware store? You go to ACE hardware dot com.
And you find the store locator and it takes your right to it makes
it real easy. I'll be there from eleven thirty to one thirty. Love
to meet you. I'm gonna be giving away Nitropost products are providing us some
cool giveaways there. We'll be doing that also next Friday and Saturday. Down
in Wharton they're opening the new Wharton feed an Ace Hardware store on Richmond Road.
Kt RH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Richter.
It's so crazy just watch him as so many Welcome back to garden Line.
Welcome back to guard Line on a Sunday Easter Sunday, wishing you all
happy Easter Sunday. Hope you have a very nice and relaxed time as well.
We are going to start this hour by heading right out to Whitehall to
talk to Mark. Hello. Mark, we just were talking pruning and here
we go again. Yes, sir, I just have to get over the
initial fear because they're so beautiful. At this point. There palms on them,
there's speeches on them, and it's like, oh, what do I
do and I'm sorry, how old are these streets. How long have they
been in They've been in the ground now about four weeks? Yeah, okay,
and they're all six foot six foot seven foot tall. Yeah. Well,
take a look at those publications. When I grew up. Each I
start the branches you know, down about wasst higher, a little lower than
waist high, and create that bowl. And I know you've got those up
there, but just remember this, everything that has peaches. If you wait
until after the fruit is on the tree, then you're taking a lot of
lumber out, a lot of growth that the tree put out, Whereas if
you do it now, all the new growth is going to come from buds
on the branches where they should be. And so that's a trade off.
I know, you got a peach and you don't want to you don't wanna,
you know, lose it. But really it's the third year that we
really look to get our production starting. That's just starting. And the way
I think it helps mart to look at it, maybe maybe this makes it
a little easier, is if you for the first two or three years focus
primarily on building a great, big tree that's well shaped, that has light
all through the branches. Then you're going to hang a lot of fruit on
that tree in the years to come. If you instead allow it that hasn't
been prune to shade out the lower areas and allow it to try to have
fruit and things, then you're not going to have the tree that in the
future you can hang a lot of fruit on. And so just think of
it that way. Maybe they'll make it a little bit easier. But look
at those publications on Aggie Horticulture. I think they'll be helpful. I'll do
it, all right, Mark, good luck with that. Now. If
you do it, I recommend it and you're successful. I just ask normally
ask for half the produce from callers, but if you can just give me
twenty five percent spring in summer, I'll call it even. All right,
You got to the Easter service, youtobe, by bye. Those of you
that live out in Kingwood, you I'm sure know about Kingwood Garden Center and
Warren Southern Gardens. You know those two places. They always have the kinds
of plants and the kinds of products you looking for. You know, do
you want to run out there and pick up some quality airloom soils, for
example, Well, they have that absolutely they have that. If you want
to get out and get some beautiful flowers. Oh my gosh. They are
loaded up with color right now. And I just was talking yesterday about some
of the things you know you want boog and videos. Those are gorgeous,
gorgeous color. They have shrubs that have beautiful color. They've got that red
bud. That what it's the name of that red bud. It's like flame,
oh my, flamethrower, flamethrower red bud. The new growth is just
a reddish orange color. The older leaves are kind of orangey, and the
color it's just really beautiful, really really beautiful. Lots of color you can
get from them for your landscape. They're going to have all the products I
talk about. If I say, you ought to use this fertilizer, it's
a good one. They're going to have it there at Orange Garden Center and
Kingwood Garden Center. They just absolutely have done something recently to that I think
is wonderful, and that is dropping their prices significantly. They have made a
lot of changes and the new price structure I think is a really good one.
Save some money. Go check that out. Also, if you want
to buy things, buy the flat, a flat of eighteen plants on vegetables
and herbs. Well, you don't have to buy like eighteen tomatoes. You
can buy some tomatoes and some peppers and some herbs and things. You can
mix and match any of the vegetables, and that is a discounted price when
you buy the whole flat. So maybe you and a neighbor want to go
together and each get nine plants. That's another way to look at it.
Larrence Kingwood Garden Centers great places to go. You listen to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to answer gardening questions.
You can give us a call seven to one three two one two five eight
seven four seven one three two one two five eight seven four. I was
talking earlier about the mosquitos and the importance of making sure standing water areas are
drained often. I don't mean ever two weeks. I mean you know,
every few days, make sure that that gets stumped out, or to use
some of the products that control them. And there's products like the mosquito dung,
some stueto granules that you can put in stagnant water and it releases a
little microbe that is a type of BT in that interesting. You know BT
is caterpillar control, right, BT caterpillar control. There's other strains of BT
that do other things. Leaf feeding beetles, there's a strain for that.
It's not the caterpillar one. Don't buy regular caterpillar BT for beetles, it
won't work. There's a strain for fungus nats. There's a strain that works
well for the mosquitoes. BT israeli ensis is the one for the mosquitoes.
And those products are available at a hardware stores. You know, everything's available
a dase. They just have everything you need. But when you're dealing with
mosquitoes and you need products for that, including equipment, you know, fogger
and other things, Ace Hardware is going to have all of that. UH
And so you know you're in there, you're buying your fertilizer, you're getting
your fire ant control, you're getting a mosquito control equipment. They got something
else for the the UH patio for that beautiful outdoor sitting area, maybe a
string of lights through the area for that evening Ambiyonce Ace Hardware has it all,
go to the website acehardware dot com now asardware dot com has a store
locator, and you you just put in. In fact, they may ask
you that when you first go the website, you know where are you from?
Can we can we look? Can we use your location? And that
way you can get the map of all the things and the places to go
so you can find an ACE hardware near you. I think that's good because
it makes it super super easy. ACE is the place wh why not won't
stop shopping. I'm going to head out now to North Houston and we're going
to talk to Robert. Hello, Robert, very good mornings you. Yeah.
I was listening to your program yesterday and a man called about cabbage and
he told him to use spinosad and he said that that spinosad it wouldn't run
off the cabbage because you know, I guess it's kind of slickly. I
was wondering, could you use that spinosad as a spread er sticker? No,
I think I think what we were talking about is those blue leaf vegetables,
the coal crops like broccoli, cabbage and caulifar or whatnot. The drops
just stand up on the leaf and roll off. They don't spread out flat,
and so you need more of a surfactant to try to get that to
work that way, and the spinosa is not a surfactant. You would need
something to spread those droplets out to get them to stay, because you need
them to soak into the leaf tissue. So when the bug eats the leaf
it gets that can die. So that that's kind of how that would work.
Okay. You can also you can also cover them. You know,
those things don't have to be pollinated, so a very lightweight row cover over
them. That little moth is flying through the garden looking for the right kinds
of plants to lay its eggs on, and it can't lay eggs on their
plants because you got to cover over them. That's another good option. Okay,
Well I thought many after I listened yesterday you used a spreader, but
since you said no, I'll go with yeah, no, it's it's it's
not made to be a spreader stick. Yeah. Okay, thank you all.
Good to clear that up. Thanks for the call, appreciate that very
much. Uh, if you can hang on just a minute, we are
going to take a little quick break here and when we come back, John
Dudley and Steve, you guys will be the first ones up. Welcome back
to the garden line. If you're doing some potting up of your plants,
maybe you're maybe you're doing some outdoor potting. Will Jungle in from distributed about
night Fross. They've got a quality product that drains very well. It's a
four to different types of aged organic materials and also Canadian blonde pede in there
and micro hizo fungi. It helps with the root system indoors. It's the
indoor potting soil version. What does that mean, Well, it means it
has little crystals in it that swell up with water. So if you forget
the water, it will help extend a little further, Uh, those plants
ability to avoid going into a drought stress. And so that's very handy for
that. Those crystals are really cool and juggle Land is available wide widely.
You know, any any place you're going to get a night frosh products.
For example, if you go to d and Defeat up in Tomball, they're
going to have those kind of things. Angleton Lake Hardware down in Angleton,
they're going to have those sort of things. Fisher's Hardware and Baytown as well.
Easy to find night Frost products, including the Jungle l in potting soil
potting mix. We're going to go now to Tomball and talk to John.
Hello John, good morning, Skiff, Half easter to you and as well,
thank you. I have a quick question. I've got a couple of
cherry tomatoes and I'm not exactly sure if I should throw in some fifteen five
ten or has to grow or I have some fertilizer from Arborgate. What's your
recommendation on that? In roses? You can go either way. It kind
of depends on the soil content of nutrients that you have now, So assuming
we don't know that, then if you wanted to use a long furtilizer,
that would be fine. But I think the Arborgates is it are four four
to three. I believe their soil organic food complete rather four four three plus
gas. I think I would use that on them. Of the things you
were questioning, I think that's going to be your best back because it works
on anything that has roots pretty much. I mean, that's widely usable.
And how often skips should I do that? I would do it at right
after planting. You can actually mix it into the soil, not just in
the hole, but mix it into the soil and then plant a plant in
that area, but I would do it right after planning. I would probably
repeat it about three or four weeks later a second time. And because our
summers are going to shut down the tomatoes, so I don't know that a
third application is going to be necessary, right, Okay? And I guess
the same with roses, right about once every one two months? Yeah,
every that would that'd be eight weeks. Yes, that two months would be
pretty good. And with roses, you're going to do it more often through
the summer because they're continuing to grow through the summer. But that, yeah,
it would work very well for that. Thank you, Skip, appreciate
it, you bet, thank you, John, appreciate that call. You
know the Arbigate they have a new parking lot. Did you know that?
As you're heading out, you know, twenty nine to out west of Tomball,
west of two forty nine, the Arbigate's going to be on your left.
Well before you get to Arbigate, Trichel Road goes off to the left,
goes around Arburgate and comes back into twenty nine to twenty right after Arburgate.
So if you miss Trischel Road, just oh there's Arburgate. So really
be looking because the other end of Trishele's right there and you go in the
back and the parking lot is awesome. I mean, it's all weather.
It's really cool the design of it, the way they did it, where
the water just goes right down in through the parking lot through that hardescape.
But it's cool. And we were just talking with John about the organic food
Complete that's the four four to three plus calcium. They also make an organic
soil complete that has the high quality blended soil mix with expanded shale in it,
and an organic compost complete which has high quality compost with expanded shale in
it. Why do we keep putting expanded shail in these things? Because our
heavy clay soils. Expanded shale is one of the things along with the organic
matter like the compost that helps keep that soil open and build a structure so
that oxygen and water drain into the go through the soil profile better and the
plant roots just have a better environment all around. That's that's all available at
the arbit It's color one two three system. Ask them about it when you
get out there. We're gonna go to West Houston now and talk to Dudley.
Hello, Dudley Aunty Easter and to you as well, what's up this
morning. We've got a schumock read oak tree that we planned four years ago.
It's about six ancient diameter or we won't know if it's dying, okay,
being barked at the bottom up about a foot it's flaking off and there's
an ant bed there. We've treated the ants. Okay. Woodpecker has eaten
holes in it up about seven feet and it's the first Believes of the last
time talking about when all the trees budding, it gets the last one to
bud and the fall is the Believes fall first. I don't want to know
what to do. Okay, it's dying when you say the bark is chipping
off or is it like the big thick section whole section of bark where you
see the wood underneath. Yes, okay, well something killed the bark there
when trees are young. That could be the sun shining against the trunk in
the winter time. I can explain that one why, but just say for
now that that could have started it. As the tree gets older and the
bark gets thicker than the sun is not an issue on that bark, but
it could be a cold crack from one of our past freezes that formed under
there, and the tissues died and that expanded a little bit before the tree
was able to start losing it over. I don't know what caused it,
but that's just a dead bark And the number one thing should we tail the
bark off? Yeah, just the outer bark where you can kind of see
it. What you're going to see is the sides of the wound begin to
close in. And it's slow, but they close in. It's just like
a lava flow coming back across that across that interior wood. And the more
you do to keep the tree healthy, the faster it closes. Now the
woodpecker, is that a hole like size of a golf ball or are we
talking about little the size of pencil eraser holes little pencils. Yeah, a
little. That's a sapsucker and it's not going to do much damage. Nothing,
nothing to really worry about in terms of that. Uh. As far
as why is the tree not doing as well, I would consider fertilizing it.
If you look at the trunk of the tree about chest high, how
how many inches across? Not around, but across is that trunk you know,
if it's a size of a coke can, that would be three roughly
three inches. If it's the size of the steering wheel or car, not
a one pound, about a one pound coffee can, about a one pound
coffee. Again, for every thumb with for every thumb with the cross,
every inch across, give it one or two cups of turf fertilizer, or
you can purchase a fertilizer. I know naitre Foss makes one specifically four trees,
but in the in the absence of that, you can also use a
lawn fertilizer, not weed control in it, just fertilizer. And that's that's
how much you put out and put it as wide as the branch spread goes,
so one to two cups per inch spread evenly as white does the branches
go watered and really good. Okay, okay, all right, sir,
all right, you take it. I appreciate your call very much. Thanks
a lot. Uh. This is the time. It's kind of like what
they say, last call, last call for pre emergence for those summer weeds
of sprout in the spring. You need to get that done. In barricade
by Nitrofoss is a product that moves down into the soil. By the way,
you have to water it in after you apply it. Very important.
Moves down in the soil and it forms a barricade. And anything that's trying
to put like a weed seed trying to grow a root into that soil,
it shuts it down right there. It doesn't let it develop into a plant,
and it dies. That's how the barricade's working. Barricade is always to
be applied like any fertilizer, any herbicide, fungicide, insecticide, according to
the label. Follow follow, follow, follow the label. That is very
important. If a teaspoon is good, a tablespoon is not better. In
fact, can cause problems when we start using any kind of a pesticide product
like that, when we misuse them, that is not good. So follow
the label and it'll do its job. Label is there for a reason.
That is a rate that the company itself is saying, this is the rate
that works. It works best to do it this way, so follow that
label. Barricade is widely available. It's a it's a night foss product,
so you know you're going to find them all over the place, like if
you're out in Kingwood. The Ace Hardware out there has them. I think
I Arborgate. I was just talking about them a minute ago. They've got
that kind of product as well. It's easy to find night foss products.
But it's important to get that done. We can do barricade at other months
of the year, you know, there are things that sprout later, but
right now I wouldn't delay anymore. I would get that done. Let's go
out to Dayton and we're going to talk to Steve. Hello, Steve,
Hey, Skip, thanks for taking the call. I got a question about
a palm tree. I have two palm trees. One I think is a
Merit Paulsa and the other one is a Melodie Methley probably, yeah, and
planning about we'll say thirty feet apart. Okay, and the trees are I
bought large trees, so maybe the trees were full or five years old when
I bought them, and I've had them for uh three maybe four years.
And the issue I have is they put they put on hundreds of blooms.
I mean hundreds of blooms, but I get maybe three or four plums and
that's it. Well, and okay, I don't know what to do.
Yeah, So if you're getting a lot of blooms. That means you're getting
good sunlight, so that that's important. Yeah, they got full sun Yeah,
why are the blooms not saying well? Pollination is one one thing now
methaly I know is it can self pollinate, and I think the Mariposa all
so is self pollinating. So that's why I'm both of them. So the
next step would be are bees there is there is there some reason that you're
getting the insects in there. I see the bees on it. You know.
I've got uh, I've got peach trees in that same area, and
I've got a number of different types of oranges, and I get tons of
peaches off the trees. I uh, okay, and I have raised bad
gardens in the area, and and I just have you know, beautiful plants
in the garden, plenty of fruit in the garden. Okay. Uh,
it's a stumper. I would, you know, excessive fertilization, but that
would affect fruits that not not bloom. You know, I read about maybe
overfertilizing. I use micro life six two four, so I don't make it
an open over probably not. I don't think it's it's a fertilization. I
got about thirty seconds, BEFO, I have to go to break here.
The only other thing I could think of is they're not the variety you thought
they were, and their variety of needs pollination. That's a long shot.
I'm all ponned by this one a little bit, but pretty much all the
common reasons that that happens. You've we've ruled out in our conversation. If
you want to stick around till after break, Steve, that's fine. I
had to go and we're going to move to the news. I'll be right
back. Well, Nikki, we got things to talk about today. It
is right, it's news time. Yes, we do indeed disappointing things to
talk about today. I didn't like hearing about the Astros and the Yankees.
That was disappointing. And we've got a major thoroughfare that is closed down all
lanes. Oh that's fine. Yes, welcome back to guard Line on an
Easter Sunday morning. We are glad you're with us today. Appreciate you being
a listener to guard Line. I hope we're hell for you and our goal.
My goal is to have to help you have a more bountiful garden and
a more beautiful landscape. And it's as simple as that. And so just
using some of the simple principles of things that help plants grow along with I've
been doing this thirty five years, so answering gardener questions and learning myself.
Yes I am a gardener. I don't just talk about it on the radio.
Trying to help you avoid the mistakes that are commonly made by gardeners or
people that would like to be that's why we're here. Well, our CW
Nurseries is the garden center that's there well where Beltway eight comes into Highway two
forty nine, which is Tomball Parkway. So it's easy to get to,
really easy to get to. I want you to write down the website it's
URCW Nurseries dot com. That way you can get more information on things that
are going on whatnot. Now I think of them as they get it,
got it nursery. That means that they don't have it, they'll do their
best to find it. And whether you need annuals or perennials, or herbs
or shrubs. A native plants, a trees, they grow their own trees
up in Plantersville area, so they have the varieties the cultivars if in some
cases that do best here always first stop shopping for roses. They just like
four pages or two hundred roses. Over two hundred roses they carry there.
That's incredible right there. But it doesn't matter what plants you're looking for.
Just go by and ask them about it. They probably got it. And
they also have the products to help you get off to a good start with
what you plant. You know, do you need a root stimulator type of
product in there? Do you want to put some micro life fertilizer like a
collar. Just a minute ago was talking about around the trees that they'd planted.
Well they've got all of that at RCW Nurseries. Again. They're on
Tomball Parkway, right where about Way eight and Tombil Parkway come together. Let's
go up to West Houston. We're going to talk to Greg. Hello Greg,
Hey, good morning Skip. I've got a few very quick questions about
Zoiza. I just laid down one pallette and a small backyard and we were
rushed and we did the best we could. And we haven't rolled it yet.
And I had a question about rolling it and how heavy, you know,
how how much water put in that roller of how heavy to make it
in order to roll it properly? Yeah, and then I have a couple
more. But if you want to when you say when you say you just
laid some does that mean yesterday or what when? Yesterday? Okay? So?
Or have you watered it yet? Watered it? Yes? Good?
Okay? So for the first week, go ahead and water twice a day
with just a little bit of water, you know, just just a little
bit. Uh and and uh. But you want it, you want the
soil underneath it to be moist, so initially you may put a little more
down the roller. I don't know the weight on roller on that I would
you know, I mean, you don't want to compact your soil, but
at the same time, you want good soil sid contact. When I plant
grass, I step on it and just kind of with your feet, you
know, press it down. Well, when I put when I step on
one foot, my whole body way goes on that spot. So that's a
lot of weight right there for for that small footprint. Literally, So I
would I would just you know, fill up enough to where it's got a
real good weight in it. And you're trying to make the sod contact the
soil. Uh. And that with your regular watering gets it off to a
good start. Okay. And when there's a and I've got it fenced off,
it's not going to be walked on except for by me for three months.
Right. And there's there's obviously seams. You know, you can't you
can't make them disappear completely. Is there anything that you can due to those
seams to encourage them to spread together faster? Just once it's been in for
two weeks and it's rooted in fertilized according to my schedule. Uh, And
and do the proper amount for the particular product that you buy, and they'll
fill in. Those seams will fill in pretty fast. Yeah. And it's
Emerald zoys. My understanding is lower night rogen higher or whatever. The metal
one is, no five, No, I would I would do a three
one two ratio kind of fertilizer or four one two for that, even that
variety. It does not need the middle of nighte right. Okay. And
the grass the grass farm said that it has a good amount of fertilizer in
it that should be good for like a month. What do you think about
that comment? Oh? Well, it does I mean, because they are
trying to grow grass fast and so they're keeping it at peak nutrition. So
I said two weeks, that's just a time you need to get it rooted
in. You know, it doesn't have roots, how's it going to take
up much nutrient? So if they say it's a month, they probably put
a slower release in there, and you could wait to do what they said.
Do you wait four weeks to start fertilizing? And is it okay?
I wasn't able to spray Medina soil activator down prior to laying the sod.
Is it okay to spray some soil activator on top of it? You can
do that. And as far as the Medina products are concerned, I think
that I would go with the You know, the Medina has the lawn version
of their fertilizer. It's called has to Grow Lawn, and I would use
that one. It's a twelve four to eight fertilizer hose end applicator. Hey,
I need to run, but I would use that Medina product. Gary,
if if you can, thank you, Yeah, that's true. You
know it has to grow six twelve six that's the one I used for the
planting for transplanting, moving stuff right into the soil. Get those transplants going,
get them off to a good start. Do it at planting, Do
it a week later, do it a week after that. Three applications,
totally two weeks there apart. Get those things growing for your lawn. Yeah,
it has to grow long twelve four eight. It does well. It's
one that you put on the end of a garden hose and you water it
in, so it's already a liquid to go on down. It's got the
kinds of nutrients that your soil needs, and Medina products are just one that
are going to provide a lot in addition to just the basic nutrients as well,
you know, things that stimulate the biological activity. So that works.
That works great. I talk about brown stuff and green stuff a lot because
that's the simplest way I can think to put it. You know, brown
stuff the soil level. That's the line between brown stuff and green stuff.
Okay, below ground is the secret to success with your plants. That's the
brown stuff. Heirloom soils makes quality brown stuff. Whether you buy a veggiean
herb mix, whether you buy the fruit berry and citrus mix, which by
the way, is Hardware up Alspa up in the Woodlands. They're now carrying
airloom souce, fruit very and citrus mix, the veggie and Herb mix.
They can deliver it to you. You can go there and get a trailer
and bring it back. They can bring us supersac put it on your driveway
in just in bulk. Just for the product itself. One hundred and nineteen
bucks is a really good price for the veggie and Herb mix. But all
those products are designed by airloom soil to helpe you have success. And the
only thing that you add after that is you can put your fertilizers in.
Then you got the brown stuff in the best possible shape for roots to thrive.
Because when a root, when the plant's roots are thriving, that plant
is well on its way to success. We are going to take a little
break here to remind you. I'm going to be at the Ace Hardware out
in clear Lake, the M and d Ace Hardware and clear Lake next Saturday.
Next Saturday, and I'll be doing a regular appearance out there giving away
some nitrophospertilizer, and I hope you can come out and see me. Eleven
thirty to one thirty, bring me samples, bring me pictures, let's talk,
let's have let's help you have a more beautiful, bountiful garden and beautiful
landscape. I'll be right back. Welcome back to Garden Line. It is
good to have you with us on this Easter Sunday morning. We're looking forward
to talking about a few more things that I think are important for us to
cover today. It's always about the lawn. That's the big deal, that's
the elephant in the room. When I worked for Agger Life Extension for thirty
five years, I was an horticulturist and we used to say the three things
that make the phone ring, or the three t's trees, turf, and
tomatoes. And that's true on Garden Line too. You know, trees and
turf, those are the huge and nobody ever calls me about their called Robbie,
but boy tomatoes, that one is a common topic. But turf is
important and it's important to keep your turf adequately fed. Now, excessive amounts
of fertilizer are not good. Remember if a tspoons good, a tablespoon is
not better. Don't do that when you overfertilize the turf, applying too much
nitrogen. For example, you get top growth at the expensive root growth,
and we need a good root growth, especially when you're moving to summer stress.
Well, a product like super Turf by Nitrofoss, when you put it
on at the proper rate, which is about five pounds per thousand square feet,
it's a nineteen four to ten. Now that's a big nitrogen number,
but you're putting it on a lower rate, it's going to go farther and
secondly, half of that nitrogen isn't going to release right away, It's going
to be releasing over time, over a couple of months. That gives you
that slow even growth, but it does provide the continent need supplementation of nitrogen,
which your turf needs on an ongoing basis through the growing season. It
also has iron four percent iron to help take care of that spring yellowing that
we often have and we're often dealing with. Now you can buy excuse me,
you can buy the Super Turf Altic Kingwood at the Ace Hardware store and
a Tascas Sita Face hardware store out there. D and De feed and Tombo
is going to have the Nitrofoss fertilizer Super Turf. The silver bag. Let's
go now to Alan in Sugarland. Hello, Alan, good morning, Skip.
How you doing today? I'm good, sir. How can we help?
I've got web worms and mulberry tree in the backyard. Last year,
the it was an infestive invested with them, and this year I felt that
I would. I went out to the hardware store and talk to them and
they suggested to put out a systemic before the webworms came in. Now.
Last year they came in later, but they about the systemic last weekend and
they're already making whales. Now. Yeah, it takes that systomach a while
to work too. Yeah, yeah. Would it do any good to put
that systemic on at this point in time? Would they eat these once they
come out of the whale? You know, I've never heard systemic recommended for
webworms. To me, that seems like a canon to kill a nat.
You know, I'm going to put send something in the whole tree of that,
and it takes a while to do it. I would just use a
direct spray on them. You can use BT or spinosa if you want an
organic product. If you don't don't care about that, there's a lot of
insecticides labeled for landscape. Use that you spray them and the key is to
get it on the leaves so when the webworms eat the leaves, it makes
them sick. And yeah they you love mulberry. Okay, all right,
now what did what did you suggest now? Bt bt uh that only lasts
a day. Uh spinosa that lasts a little bit longer. Spin no sad
s p I n O s A D. I'm gonna have to be uh
oh in spin like I'm going to spin a top and then oh and then
s a d like sad. Okay, Hey, Alan, I'm gonna have
to run. But I hope that. I hope that helps. If if
you have any additional questions on it, just feel free to give us a
call after you've you been out. Thank you, yes, sir, thank
you very much. You know, birds make a landscape beautiful. The songs
of the birds, the melodies, the antics of the bird. I just
like watching them. Even a bird bath, you know, taking a bath
while bird's unlimited. They've got everything you need for birds. This is the
season when our birds are nesting and they need a high quality feed. Keep
your nest boxes cleaned out and ready so when that happens, it's ready to
go, and I'm telling you it's already happening. But Superblend is a it's
called Nesting super Blend, and it's a feed designed for this time of the
year when birds need more of that protein. It's got various kinds of like
sunflower, peanuts, it's got dried meal worms which I love, that bark,
butter, sapphire tree nuts, a lot of things. It's perfect for
those birds when they're trying to raise they're young. So when you go to
Wildbirds, you're going to find every kind of feed you need. They are
experts in that they know what they're doing. And I would recommend just starting
by going to the website WBU dot com slash Houston. Now, that's going
to get you to the about six Wildbird stores here in the Greater Houston area.
I'm going to head out now to Katie and talk to Ray. Hello,
Ray, Good Morning's Cape, Good morning. I just had a quick
question. I have okay, I have I have tomatoes, I have the
peppers, I have avocados, I have eggplant. I have all of those
things in the in my garden. What is the one the one fertilizer I
could use for all of them. Yeah, because I know the avocado they
have the citrus and avocado food. I have that, but I can't use
that for the tomatoes. What is the one fertilizer that I could use for
all of them? Yeah? Well, you know they we put names on
fertilizers like citrus food or like whatever, rose food and so on. But
if you look, a lot of them are pretty similar, and so there's
not it's not the end of the world to use one thing on another.
I use a lot because I buy lawn fertilizer and big old bags for the
lawn. If I got some left over, I'll use it in the garden
and it works just fine. Now, if you want to buy specifically a
product for you know, the garden, I know Nelson's Fertilizer makes some canisters
of some various products that are designed for vegetables. That would be an option
you could do that. I nitro foss has its own kind of products like
that, or if you just wanted to get a bag of microlife and put
it out there in the garden, all of them are gonna work. It's
just a matter of getting the nutrients into the solution so that the plants can
take it up, and so uh, don't don't sweat that too much.
But what I would recommend is go to my website, gardening with Skip dot
com, and there you're gonna find my schedules and these are for lawns.
And I know you're asking a vegetable question, but on my lawn care schedule,
it gives you a link to where you get a soil test, and
you need to have that done. And then when you fertilize your vegetable garden,
call me back, tell me what's in your soil, and I can
give you a bit more accurate answer. Okay, yes, sir, thank
you so much, Yes, sir, thanks for coming in, and good
luck with that. You know, we're talking about all these products and things
Medina Microlife, Nelson's, nitrofoss and on and on. Well, Southwest Fertilizer
has all of those. They have absolutely all of those. Now when you're
looking for tools, when you're looking for pesticide, herbicides, anything, seeds,
they've got it all there at Southwest Fertilizer. It's the place to go.
I like to say it this way. If they don't have it,
you don't need it. They are on the corner of Biscinet and Runwick,
and you will be amazed. I know of no store anywhere in town that
has as much variety of things as Southwest Fertilizer does. You can go to
the website Southwest Fertilizer dot com find out more about it there. But trust
me on this one, you're going to go home pretty much with everything you
need for your garden, just on a one stop shop on that. I
haven't talked about Jorge in a while. Hoores Hidden Gardens always has a good
selection, and you know he just keeps growing that place. Right now,
He's got a lot of evergreen trees. He's got Egleston Holly's, Japanese blueberries,
magnolias and live oaks. The beautiful Peggy Martin rose minus just starting to
bloom. He's got Peggy Martin roses too on little lattices, lots of Lantana's
boy, that's a dependable plant for color in beds. And do you need
some manuals like marigols or some perennials like Salvia's hibiscus fruit trees. It's all
there at Jorges Hidden Gardeners. Now they also carry the three sixty tree stabilizer.
They carry a lot of different things that you might be surprised that they
have. Now here's the address Elizabeth Street and Alvin. Elizabeth Street and Alvin,
just south the Highway six, So Alvin, Santa Fe, Dickinson Hillcrest,
Algoa, Arcadia, Alta Loma, all of those communities. Jorges Hidden
Gardens is your backyard nursery down there. You need to go check them out
on Elizabeth Street in Alvin. Say hi to Harvey by the way when you
go by there. Well, let's see here, am I about to put
another one in the books. It looks like we are here just toward the
end of the hour waiting on the music, and that's the official time that
it's closing down. Let's see. I wanted to mention music start here.
I want to mention that next Saturday, I will be at the clear Lake
Ace Hardware store. The clear Lake acehard it's called M and D Clearlake,
M and D clar Lake. Would you come out and see me. I'd
love to see you out there. That it's we're gonna have a good time.
We just really are M and D Ace Hardware. It's on Bay Area
Boulevard. Down in Houston. But all you got to do is go to
the ACE Hardware website ace hardware dot com. If you want the rest of
it. It's slash store dash locator, but you can find all the ACE
Hardware stores. Next Saturday, eleven thirty one thirty I'll be at Acehart m
D claar Lay. So all of you down in all those communities around down
there, from Seabrook and Galveston and Haarland, Deer Park all through Laport,
all that region, come on down. Let's see. Let's talk by the
way next week. Also down in Wharton at the new ACE Hardware Wharton feed
and ACE Hardware is opening up on North Richmond Road and Wharton, Texas,
and they got a little shindig going on over there as well. Well,
here comes another one with the news. When we get back, we'll go
right back into plants. Kat r 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 scamp Ricter. It's so crazy just watch him as day.
Welcome back to the Garden Line for our last hour segment on this Easter Sunday.
Happy Easter Sunday. By the way, we are here every Saturday and
every Sunday from six am to ten am. To your neighbors or friends.
They can listen to us. In fact, people live outside this area,
they can listen to us online with the iHeart Radio app and other apps will
carry it to But just look for a garden line and you can listen live
there. You can go to the website, the KTRH seven forty am website
and listen there. You can listen to some past shows as well. So
if you miss something that I said and you want to get back to it,
well just do it that way you can find it. We are going
to go first out to Southwest Houston and talk to David. Hello, David,
good morning. I've got a river birch tree that has not gotten any
leaves yet. It's an old tree, maybe twenty years old. Is it
dead or is it just coming back light? Well, I wouldn't give up
on it just yet. If you scratch the branches with your thumbnail or a
little knife just underneath that outer skin of the bark, look for green or
creamy colored green to green. If you see just brown, it's dead.
But I would give it just a tad bit more time to make sure.
All right, Well, thanks very much, all right, good luck with
that. I hope it turns out that it bounces back for you. Yeah,
it's you know, last summer was tough and a lot of trees have
struggled with it. This is kind of getting away from David's river birch question,
but this just kind of reminded me about that when plants get weak,
they're more likely to get sick, and so your stressed lawn is more likely
to get take all root rot much more likely when it is stressed. Your
oak trees are more likely to get hypoxylin kinker, which kicks off the bark
and can kill a tree when they go through stress. So that's why we
try to alleviate stress as soon as possible, or better yet, prevent it
in the first place on our plants. But when it's blazing hot and no
rain in sight for weeks and weeks and weeks, well that's kind of hard
to overcome. It makes it quite a challenge. I want to thank the
Ashley and really the whole group out there at Siena Multch yesterday was a great
time going out and being part of their little second annual spring Fling. We
had a really good time. It's got to talk to the folks that know
some plant food. Shelby was there and then the Heirloom Saw has spent some
time with Louise and Texas Gardener. Texas Gardener Magazine was present as well.
I you know, it's it's always good to get to visit with these folks,
but also to visit with you the gardeners. They came by and thank
you for coming back. By the way, Jay White from Texas Gardener Magazine
was there. Thank you for coming by, asking your questions and visiting.
I love to get out and do that. And I think you saw those
of you who came out saw why I brag on cienamulch such a selection of
different kinds of the brown stuff. You know. That would include soil blends,
composts, you know, the rose soil kind of blend for example.
It would include things like the mulchus they go on the surface. It would
include also rocks and stones for pathways and maybe you're doing a little dry river
bed with some river rock through the landscape for drainage. They have all of
that stuff and also they carry all the fertilizers I talk about on garden Line,
Microlife and Nelson's and Nitrofots. They carry heirloom soils, and they carry
landscapers Pride, they carry Medina products, and they even have some tool tools
out there, good quality landscaping tools as well. Ciena Maltz is down there
in the Siena area, so if you're south of Houston and within twenty miles
of them, they'll deliver to you. So that's pretty cool. So those
of you in Roach Sharon and Sandy Point and Iowa Colony and Quill Valley and
even over to pear Land back near Brasispin State Park, that's it. They're
on five twenty one FM five twenty one just north of Roch Sharon. You
can go to their website CNA Maltz dot com, CNA malt dot com.
Check them out. Thanks again for having us out there and having a good
time with that shindig Here on Guardenline, we do talk about the brown stuff
a lot, but I do want to say that it is very important for
success with plants, for you to plant things that want to be here.
I do this myself, but gardeners are always wanting to grow something that doesn't
want to grow here. You go to Colorado, you see the blue Columbines
of Colorado and bring those seeds home. You see a blue spruce tree,
you can picture having this little Christmas tree in the backyard. Yeah, it's
pretty much a slow tortuous death for a blue spruce tree here in this area.
But we always want to do that. You moved here from the Midwest,
and you remember Forcythia announcing spring every year. Well, it doesn't work
done here. Maybe there's a lot of common plants that people just associate,
you know, with where they used to live or where they're from or growing
up. Give us a call on garden Line. Let's make sure we connect
you with the plants that will work. Or go buy one of these mom
and pop we call that. Independent garden centers is really the way to put
it. That have quality, educated staff and that carry the plants that belong
here, not plants that the chain is selling all over the country. You
know that kind of thing. You want to have success. By the way,
if your lawn has the broadleaf weeds from winter still in there, you
can get a product from nitrofoss It's their fifteen five to ten plus Trimeac.
TRIMEC has three different kinds of broad leaf herbicides. And if you get the
leaves of the weeds wet, just turn on the sprinkler for a little bit.
Have those particles then stick to the to the leaves because you know,
you wet the area, and then immediately put the product out. It sticks
to the leaves, that moves down in the tissues and it kills the whed
and then water it after a day or two and the fertilizer moves down into
the soil and you've just put on a quick release fifteen five to ten fertilizer
kind of our spring green up type of thing. You can do it just
that way. It works well. You can find nitro frost products all over
I keep saying that all over Stanton Shopping Center. Now then they've got nit
fross products, Ace Hardware and Memorial Ace Hardware City and Memorial Katie Hardware.
Ace. They've got them to just another places where we can find it.
Let's go out to Conroe right now. We're going to talk to Jenny.
Hello, Jenny, I want to tell you this before I start. I've
got about thirty seconds and I want to want us to talk a little bit,
but you're gonna have to hold through break and we'll continue. Okay,
okay, okay, I have a slim gym magnolia tree, well, my
daughter does. And the tips of the leaves are turning gray and brittle.
Okay, all right, Well, let me put that on hold and when
we come back, I will tackle that question. Thanks for being patient.
Okay, thank you, you bet. We're listening to Garden Line. We'll
be right back. Welcome back to Guarden Line. Good to have you with
us today. We are talking about all kinds of things, but right now
we're talking to Jenny and Conroe about some slim gym magnolias with great tips.
Jenny, how long has that plant been in the ground. Is it a
recent plant? No, it's been about four years. Okay, all right,
so it's got a good root system by now. Yes, when you
see the tip die back, it could be a response to drought on a
plant, right the tips and the margins or the first to go. It
could also be and this is less likely, but it could also be a
fertilizer burn, a salt based synthetic fertilizer that's over applied or put in a
you know, just concentrated around the plant can be taken up and the salts
in there can cause a burn on tips and margins. I've never seen that
magnolia, and I don't think that's what it is. Yeah, my daughter
does, okay, so, but I thought it might be from the drought.
The new growth looks great, Okay, It's just I've never seen a
gray magnolia leaf. Yeah, like that. They do that though, that's
that's not unusual. And the new growth being good. You're good to go.
You're okay, nothing to worry about. We can go deal with hunger
and world peace and other big issues of the day. And also we're free,
free to move on. Thank you, all right, have a happy
Yeah you too. I appreciate your call. When you're planning a new tree.
By the way, you know that the best time of the planet tree
was forty years ago. Second best times today. Right, we want to
get that thing up, or we can hang a hammock in it pretty quick,
or where we get the blooms if it's a blooming tree, well three
sixty tree stabilizer is think of it. It's a bar. It grabs the
tree, it grabs the post and it can grab onto any kind of post,
even a teapost. There's a little fitting in there that's perfect for a
teapost. It's got a loose strap to let the tree move, and it's
a very good stiff. The state goes pretty close to the trunk because the
stabilizer is not that long, fairly short, but the steak goes pretty close
to the trunk and so you're not tripping over wire. First of all,
you've got to buy wire. You want to cut up a garden hose to
protect the tree from getting cut by the guy wires and all that kind of
stuff. Just put a little steak in by it and get a tree stabilizer.
You can get those things at jorgesed and Gardens. I was just talking
about him a minute ago. Southwest fertilizer plants for all seasons, we cannons,
arbrogate RCW. Those are some of the places or where you can get
the three sixty tree stabilizer. If you need extra stability for other direction of
the wind, you can do too, like one nor south, one east
west. Then no matter which way the wind blows, that tree is stabilized
and it works pretty well. In fact, it works very very well,
a lot better than the guy wars. Let's go to Cindy now in spring.
Hello Cindy, Ohay, happy Easter and you as well. What's up
today? Thank you so claud cow Okay, I want to talk about this
tree. It is a pine. I would think it is an orntmental pine.
In from the ground up, its brown, then it kind of turns
green, and then it turns brown again. It's as tall as my home.
And is this just the color of the bark that you're describing some sticking
out from the tree. It Okay, it looks like a norse fulk pine,
but it's straight up like skin. Okay, ornamental. Sounds like a
fungus is eating on it. I tell you what, I'm not going to
do a good job with the description, trying to nail this one down.
I'm gonna I would like you to send me a picture of the plant in
general, and then some close ups and good sharp focus and let me look
at that and I can get right to it that way. I think that
more accurate and more efficient. I'm going to put you on hold and Josh
will give you an email to send me those photos. Thank you, Thank
you, appreciate your call. I appreciate your call very much. When was
the last time you went to the anti rosen for him? Have you even
been? If you haven't, you've got to go. We are always talk
about our destination garden. This is definitely a destination. They have people followed
the country that come there. Anti Crows Imporium has been specializing in anti croses
for a long long time, and they know how to grow them. They
grow them, They grow their roses and two gallon pots, which a lot
a lot of rose producers don't do that, and the two gallon pots just
allows them to establish a little bigger, better root system before they go in
the ground. Anti crows have been around since nineteen eighty three, In fact,
about the time I got out of my original degree at A and M.
That's when they started, about the time I went to my master's.
They always have something going on there. There's always upcoming events going on.
By the way, their facilities can be rented out for various kinds of things.
Just have to give them a call, find out, find out from
them. You know what's available, how do I go about it? How
do I do it? It makes it really easy, easy, easy to
get a hold of them. By the way, you haven't been out there,
you need to go now because spring is the most beautiful time of the
year out there at Antique rosen Parium. You get to drive through the blue
bonnets on the way up there too. The phone numbers ninety seven nine eight
three six fifty five forty eight, ninety seven nine eight three six fifty five
forty eight or Antique Roseemporium dot com. And by the way, they're not
just roses. They have a lot of other kinds of plants, including many
native plants and pollinator plants. While you're out there, you can chop with
those as well. I always like going out there. That is just a
fun It's like fun drive out into the country not too far away. Well,
you're listening to guard Line and we're here talking about things that I hope
you'd be interested in to have a beautiful and bountiful garden and landscape. If
you'd like to give us a call, the number is seven to one three
two one two kt RHU. We're approaching the end of the show today and
right now I've got a cleared board amazingly enough, so there's a zero wait
at least for the first one or two they give me a call here nine
of seven one three two one two ktr H. I talked earlier about Microlife
products they have. Microlife has a real wide product line. They've got the
dry fertilizers. They've got the one for acidic uh loving plants that would be
cardenia's and blueberries and camellias and zalias. You get the idea that is the
pinkish bag. Then they've got the green bag, which we typically use for
lawns, but I'm telling you you can use it for anything you got.
It works very well. The green bag is a six two four, and
so if you haven't fertilized your lawn, you six two four it. Now,
get that down and let it start going to work to have a beautiful
dense grass. The he Mates plus is the purple bag. It is a
zero zero four fertilizers, little potassium in it, but it's it's basically based
on humus, which is concentrated compost. So the humans plus is concentrated compost
in a bag. Think of it that way, you put it out.
It helps with soil microbiology and also the soil structure. Humus is an important
element of creating good structure in the soil, so just another reason to apply
it. Hey, Microlifefertilizer dot com. That's the website. Go there and
find out where you can get it. It's available about as widely as any
fertilizer I know, Microlife fertilizers, and that includes their liquid fertilizers as well.
Just go to the website and you can find out where you can get
it and learn more about those. Also. Let's say I want to go
now to Spring and we're going to talk to Mike. Hello, Mike,
Hey, Skip, how you doing. I'm well, sir. Hey,
I've got a little piece of property up on the lake in Livingston on the
north side, and I want to ask if there's any kind of natural or
native grasses that I can plant for the little grass the little bit of a
yard I have that doesn't take a lot of water and their maintenance. Oh,
se, do you ever get sunlight up there? I know there's we
have. I have quite a few bit of trees. It's just in a
little spot right in the front yard that I have fenced in. I guess
there's behea that grows in the ditches, and yeah, behea is extremely tough.
But the problem with Behea is the day after you mow it, it
seems like it sends up that tall seaed heead, so it always looks like
it needs to get mowed again. But I you know, if you were
telling me you had a little parking area out there and you wanted a good
turf cover over it to you know, keep from running out the soil,
and I'd say behave it would be a good one for that. I don't
think for a long grass you're going to be as happy with it. But
if you're willing to put up with those seatheads, you certainly can do that,
and it can survive on in the conditions the soil type conditions that you
have up there. I don't know, I might think about some other options,
you know, maybe a real low growing groundcover or some other things as
being another alternative. The most shade tolerant grass is Saint Augustine, uh,
and so that that would be an option for you to consider up there as
well. Well. The issue with me is the water is real expensive in
this little spot I have, so you know, to water it, okay,
you know, it's kind of a cost prohibitive. I got you,
I got you. Okay, Well, those would be some ideas. Maybe
the behavior would be one to try. I'm just not thinking of another one
to tell you that it's going to grow up there in that soil. Uh
just almost don't have the water it Uh that those those limitations take take out
most of our most popular turf grass options. Yeah. Yeah, kind of
a little weekend place. Yeah, so all right, all right, Rick,
good luck with that. Well that it's a weekend place. You just
show up and first thing you do is mow the lawn. All right,
all right, thank thank you. Appreciate that call very much. The folks
at Lan being up there reminds me of a Landscaper Spride. Landscaper Spride is
a Loco Doar region provider of twenty seven different bag products. They also have
them by the bulk. Now, if you want to learn more about these,
just go to Landscaperspride dot com and you can find out all about them.
I want to talk about their rose mix. It's a very effective mix
for any kind of woody ornamental plant plants that like a little more acidic soil
as well. It's got composted pine bark sphagnum and also a slow release fertilizer
in it. They have another one called Gardener's Magic Soil. It has humus
screened pine and composted rice holes and a chicken pellet fertilizer that lasts up to
three months. Now, I could just go on and on about the many
different products from Landscaper's Pride. I suggest you would focus on the fact that
this business has been around for twenty years now, twenty seven different products,
always local, top quality resources, and just go to Landscaperspride dot com find
out where you can get it, and it's not going to be hard to
find. I have talked about fertilizer. I've forgot to mention the asamite.
You know. Asmite is that micro nutrient element that's the the trace minerals that
are essential, but you only need them in tiny amounts. That's why a
forty four pound bag of asmite covers six to twelve thousand square feet, but
it's loaded with those. You can go to asmite Texas dot com and find
out you can do it when you're fertilized, or you can do it some
other time. Just don't put it in your fertilizer. In other words,
fill the hopper with fertilizer. Do your business, fill the hopper with asmite,
do your business, separate them out and that works just great. It
is a part of building the bank account in the soil to make it have
success. Well, we're going to go to break. Let's see our phone
number seven one three two one two KTRH. When we come back, Rick,
you will be the first up. Well, welcome back to garden Line,
Little Megan Trainer. First thing in here, not first thing, actually
one of the last things. You're listening to guard Line. We answer gardening
questions, and we talked to you about how to have success, how to
have a beautiful garden, how to have a bountiful garden. Uh, it
is what we do. Uh. If you if you live in the League
City area, well, your hometown feed store and we love feats first are
on garden Line. Your hometown feed store is League City Feed Now. Forty
years ago, Wes Madison's grandfather built this store in an Ochre patch. I
love that. Anything it starts in an Ochre patch, it's got to be
good. Uh. The Thunderbergs have been taking care of the store since then,
and it is that old time feed store that you would expect with the
service you would expect carrying your bags out and everything. But here's the thing.
Any fertilizer I talk about, they're going to have it down there,
and then they're going to have all the other products to go with your lawn
and landscape and garden care. The pesticides, the herbicides, the fungicides that
you might need, premium pet food if you got backyard chickens, oh many,
they can get you set up with good quality feeds for that. Now.
Where they located, well, they're about three or just actually a few
blocks south of Highway ninety six on Highway three. Okay, League City Highway
three, go south ninety six, not very far now. The thing also
you need to know is they're open Monday through Saturday nine to six, so
it's easy to stop by after work. They're closed on Sunday. And the
phone number if you want to give them a call to eight one three three
two sixteen twelve. Two eight one three three two sixteen twelve for League City
feed Let's go to Lake Livingston now, Rick, thanks for holding How can
we help? Yes, I've been trying to grow blue bonnets for years and
I've had no luck. Just planted them, sowed them in the fall.
I've sowed them in the spring. I even dissed them in kind of prep
the soil. Everything else grows, but I cannot get blue bonnets to grow.
That's very interesting. Do you have a sandy soil or do you have
a heavier textured soil. It's very sandy. Like I say, all I've
got Indian paint brushes and stuff like that. They all come up fine,
but I have I just can't get blue bonnets. I don't know if it's
bad seeds. Orm Well, it could be bad seed, but that's unlikely,
and especially when you've tried it more than once. Blue Bonnets are planted
ideally in the fall, earlier in the fall, so that they can absorb
moisture and as it cools off, start to sprout. You know what,
This may be at least part of the problem. If I ask every Texan
how many what's the state flower of Texas? How many do we have?
They would say the blue bonnet? And actually there is. There are several
varieties of lupines that grow here in Texas, and they're all considered the safflower.
So why do I say that, Well, there's one called Lupinus subcarnosis,
and one called Lupinas tex census, the one you see with the little
white tips all along the roadsides as you drive through most of Texas. That's
one type. Then that's the type planted most. But when you get in
sandy areas, you have a different looking blue bonnet that is deep blue all
the way to the tip, all the way to the tip, no white
little bunny tail on the top of it. I would try planting that one.
I think that you're going to have better success with it. Now.
I don't know where you've purchased your seed before you're doing mail order or what.
Yes, I got it from online, I can't remember. I think
it was a place up close to Betas, Texas the seed place. It
was a native seed place. I picked them up from a year. Okay,
well just ask them which species they're selling you because and you'll notice this
now when you drive around. I had across I ten going to San Antonio,
and there's a couple of bands of sandy soil in there, and I
notice it because the blue bonnets are different in that area. It's a different
one. So I think that would be a good thing to consider. And
if you want to which one? Which one is that the more blue?
Which your proper name for that one? I believe that's Lupinus tech census.
Uh. Let's see. I'll tell you in just one second. Here I
thought I thought I was sure, and then now I'm going to be extra
sure. Uh all right, there we go. We'll come back to it.
But if you want to try a different source, like if you can't
be sure you're getting the right one, right, uh, then I would
make sure and do a source like Native American seed which is out in Junction
okay, okay, and what's the one in Fredericksburg while seed while seed Okay,
I'll try both of them. Yeah, I am me. So I'm
trying to I'm trying to do a dual thing. Do pollinators and you know
something that pollinators can work with, but also make feels look a little prettier.
Yeah, yeah, so I I let's see the Oh, the sandy
Land is actually it's a subcarnosis. So if the one that says Texas in
the species name, that's the standard when you see everywhere, and the subcarnosis
is the one that's the sandy they also call it sandy Land blue bonnet.
I think you'll have better luck with that. Give that a try, and
I'll keep thinking on this. But I can't think of another reason why you
would just not have any success other than maybe not having enough sunlight. But
if Indian blankets are growing there, then you ought to have enough sun for
blue bonnets. Yeah. Yeah, I can plant pretty much anything. I've
been transplanting since I was a kid, and even as a kid, I
never had luck with the blue bonnets. But I always lived in a sandy
soul area and just got the blue bonnets that were most available. All right,
Well, there you go. Thank you Rick for the call. Good
luck with it. If you do have good success, calls back in the
year or so whenever you do have some. I'd like to know how that
works out for you. Okay, all right, thank you, thank you.
The folks at Nelson have a product in their turf Star line. Turf
Star is the Nelson fertilizers that you put on your lawn. Turf Star turf
Star we donator weed and nature. Now, this is a very interesting product
because it has a slow release nitrogen that the design of the nitrogen forms in
this product release and some faster, but some more gradually over time, and
that's good. That would be a slow release. It also has a ratio.
It's got a good load of nitrogen and of course less of the phosphorus,
and a medium amount of potassium. But it also has a weed control
product that kills broad leaf weeds that the existing broadleaf weeds that you have.
So you would wet your lawn, you would fertilize with turf Star weedinator,
and that product will stick to the wet leaves of your weeds and it moves
into the weeds and it kills them. And then so give it about a
day or two to do that, and then watered in to get the fertilizer
part all down in the soil where it can go to work. And when
you've done that, you have fertilized for your first fertilization of the summer according
to my schedule that's out there. So I turf Star weededter. You might
want to give that one a try. I think you'll be pleased with how
that works. I'm going to go now to Galveston and talk to Bill.
Bill, I've got less than a minute, but I'd like to get your
question in and then we'll come back with an answer. Quick, quick question.
Can you can you spray niam oil on citrus trees and avocado trees that
are blooming, boy, blooming? You can spread on those trees except in
the really heat of summer, the blooming. You know, that's a good
question. I wouldn't do it. I don't think it's as toxics of the
bees. I may be wrong about that. Let's come back from break.
Let me give me a minute to check on something, and I'll come back
and we'll try to answer that better. It'll hang out, Okay, okay,
it's time for a break here phone number seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Guarden Line for the last segment of
the day. We are glad to have you with us today, answering gardening
questions at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. So I
checked into the name on the bees and don't do it. Basically the research
that I could locate and find there were there were some concerns and just a
general recommendation is don't use it on flowering plants during the time of you know,
they're flowering, So that would be fruit trees, for example, when
they're flowering. There are some studies that showed that it has kind of an
anti feed in effect, which means the foraging the feeding is reduced in the
bee colony. And also there are some other possible effects that it can have
on bees on the reproduction and a lot of loss of a queen bee perhaps
something like that. So you know, it's not the end of the world
kind of product, but in fact it's relatively safe for a lot of things.
But i'd hold off when your citrus is not blooming to use the knee
oil on it to be safe, because we definitely don't need to make things
more difficult than they are for our bees. I want to go now to
Spring Branch and talk to John. Hello John, Hello, Skip. I
have heard about planting flowers in your as companions for your vegetable garden to suppress
insects. And you know, I found out last year about the Mexican bean
beetle. Okay, so I have that and cutworms. Okay. So are
there any flowers that you can plant that will attract predators or something and suppress
negative insects. That's a good question that as a general rule, putting the
right kinds of flowers into a garden area helps increase the levels of certain beneficial
insects, which helps control certain paths. I don't know of a flower that
would attract and support something that attacks the Mexican bean beetle caterpillars. They have
a bunch of natural enemies. The best natural enemy of caterpillars as wasps,
paper wasps. Most of their diet is cutterpillars. For those, uh,
there is a bracken Those those are the red and black bodied wasps. Yeah,
or the yellow and kind of brown golden cut that's another type of paper
wasp. Uh. They formed the little paper nests, you know, and
then and they sting us if we mess with them. Uh. The brackenid
wasp attacks the tomato hornworm and it is a tiny little wasp that having flowers
that they can get nectar from would be good. So small flowered daisy like
flowers like chemameal for example, would be that way. Uh uh there are
you see what are some other good flowers for this? Flowers with an umbrella
like head like yarrow or dill, or a carrot that was left in the
garden and goes to bloom, has that umbrella like head that will attract and
the many weeds do too. By the way they will attract I'm trying to
get rid of that. Yeah, tiny parasitoid parasitoid wasps that are out there
aphids. There are wasps in the affidious genus that attack aphids in our gardens,
including the aphids on tomatoes, and so the small flowers would attract those
as well, the small blooming kinds of plants. Let's see alessum, which
is a beautiful little white flower we use in the cool season. It does
pretty good into the warm season for a while. That is very attractive to
surfed fly larvae which eat aphids as well, and other beneficials. I mean,
I could sit here kind of go on and on, but yes,
that's the case. But don't think that just any flower is going to fixture
your pest problem kind of thing you need to kind of aim for. You
can do a little research online to find the flowers that are recommended that also
grow here. And well, I was I wanted a list, and you
know, the opinion of a horticultural list, it would be worth my time
to you know, plants marching on annual flowers are potted greennial and John,
let me do it this way. Flowers that have a daisy like flower,
so that would be like a purple cone flower has a daisy like flower.
I mentioned camomeal, a little tiny daisy like flowers. Anything has a little
daisy like flower is going to be good. Anything that has that umbrella flowerhead
like the arrow or ordell has or fennel has that too. Those kinds are
good. And then most of the herbs are going to be good. Chives
as a bloom and rosemary, the trailing type blooms better than the upright type.
Those flowers are also visited by pollinators and other things. Oh and how
about borage? Is that effective as it is? It has a little short
balloon period of time, but bords would be okay, okay, well,
thank you very much. All right, you take care, Thank you,
John. I appreciate that in you as well. You're talking about flowers and
these plants and pollinators and stuff. You can native plants, if you can.
A native plants is in the Heights. They're on Eleventh Street. You've
probably been there. Most people have because it's an awesome place to go.
They have a little of everything. Their house planting greenhouse is huge they've got
I was in there the other day just looking at all these vegetables and herbs
that they have. They've always got things going on. You need plants for
shady ears, but what about pollinators? What about butterfly attracting plants? Yes,
they can do that, and if you need native plants, they have
on the best selections you're gonna find anywhere. In fact, down to what
plants are native to. Just ride around the Houston area. They can even
sell those kind of plants to you that do really well and that would help
the pollinators and with the beneficial insects when we do some of those type of
things. Well, I told you they're on eleven Street in the Heights.
It's a good place to it. You need to go out and check out
Buchanan's Plants, sign up for the newsletter and look online at all of the
educational material they have there that is really valuable, and I highly recommend you
get on their list for the newsletter just for your own learning alone, much
less to know what's going on at Buchanan's Plans. We're going to go over
to Montrose now talk to Melvin. Hello, Melvin, Hi, there.
How are you? I'm well, this is Melvin. I have a problem
with a lawn. It's been stressed out by all this chemicals put on it
by true green and grass's dyads. Okay, the Saint Olson grass has died,
and I have an appoint uh a materials contract from contact, but a
proposal that I want to use scott whedon feed on it and the plant but
grass afterwards. Uh. And that that feeds two hundred and twenty five bucks.
And then there's a second proposal to put Scott's wheden feed on it and
use twelve flats and plugs. Uh, six dollars? Uh? Is Themata
grass a better alternative for how long than Saint Elverston grass? Well, you're
you're kind of in the inner inner area of Houston. Do you have really
good sunlight or is this a somewhat shady Yes, yes we have. We
have very good sunlight. Yes. Okay, well, uh, then you
can grow that. The the negative of Bermuda grass, uh is that it
invades everywhere, So your flower beds and things, you're going to be fighting
it going into the flower bed. That's that's the negative of it. They're
really looked at for very well. Yeah, okay. Well, the the
other thing about bermuda is for it to look its best, you need to
mow it very often. It's very important to it off. Mow it often.
Don't stretch out the mowing schedule, get it done as soon as possible,
and if you can take it a little shorter, that's better. But
those would be the things now on the Scots we You know, there's a
lot of products that are sold out there. There are like well I'm not
going to name them online, but they have different ones that have different ingredients
in them. Some of those products have an ingredient that if you put that
down and then planted grass seed, they it wouldn't come up. It would
kill the g It prevents seeds from coming up. Others kill existing meats.
Is your lawn full of existing weeds right now? Do you have just a
lot of weeds in it? The excuse that the weeds were treated about triggering
three different times. We don't have any weeds, but I'm saying olives and
grasses. It's a patch that needs to be taken up. Then, okay,
okay, ground worked up a little bit for the bermuda seeds, and
that's what we're going to do. Yeah, if you're going to do bermuda,
then get the Saint Augustine out of there. You can do the seeds
of the plugs. The problem with seeds is it takes a little while for
those little tiny seeds to germinate and to get established and to have a plant
that's tough. Bermuda is a tough plant, very tough once it's established,
but as a seed link, it's a very weak plant. And so how
long you tink you to take before we have a bermuta lawn providing depending on
care and the seeding rate and everything, it's going to probably be about oh
three weeks four weeks before you think it's filling in decently, But it's going
to take longer than that for that grass to really reach the tough stage of
the area. So you know, the plugs may be a better way to
go because bermuda spreads quickly, and so I think I would probably it's going
to be more expensive, but I think I would go on away like that,
and I would stay away from the herbicides. Right now, let's get
the bermuda in and get it going. If you're using plugs, you can
use a pre emergent herbicide to prevent each seeds. But but if you're not
using plugs, don't use the pre emergence. Okay, okay, well I
appreciate your HEILP shirt. Well, thank you and good luck. Nope,
all right, well there we are. We just put another show in the
books that goes fast, doesn't it. Next Saturday? Where am I going
to be? Clearly M and d Ace Hardware from eleven thirty to one thirty.
Next Saturday, M and Dace and clearly