Welcome to kat r h Garden line with scamp Ricord's sho crazy trim. Just
watch him as many give things to seep bats not a sid Good morning on
a what's going to be a good Sunday. Really look forward to today.
Uh we are we're entering the hot season of the year, there's no question
about that. Uh, but our mornings are still wonderful times to be outside.
Grab a cup of coffee, walk out, walk through the landscape.
Uh. You know, they say that the best fertilizer is the footprints of
the gardener, and I would add the best pest control as a footprints of
the gardener as well. And the reason is the more you're out there and
you notice things, the more you tend to be taking care of your plants
and not letting things get away. For example, a pest infestation, when
you catch it early, you use much safer. We'll see softer products,
meaning not as harsh, not as much of a backlash, negative effect on
landscapes, you know, killing beneficial insects or other things like that. And
it just it all starts with you being out there noticing things early on.
So take advantage of these cool hours to walk around and look. You know,
I like to also when I drive around town, I look at landscapes.
Of course, all the time, being horticultures, I can't help that,
but a lot of times I'll see them and I'll ask, why do
I like that landscape? What about it do I like? Is there?
Is it the curves of the layout that are very that actually pleasing? Is
it? Axit? For example, the use of certain kinds of plants and
how they laid it out, or maybe I see a plant, it's like,
what is that? Find out more about it? Learn about that one.
And the more you do that kind of thing, the more you kind
of know what you want to have at your house, and whether you do
it yourself or whether you hire somebody to do it. Always having some pictures
on hand to kind of remind you to give you some inspiration as you go
out shopping. Those are good ideas, and so I would encourage you take
advantage of that. It's always good. Different times of the year. I'll
do a walk through and just kind of look at things. After that season,
you know, the end of summer's Oh, it's a great time because
that's when you find out who's a wimp and who's a hero and the landscape.
Plants that can survive are warm, let's just say blazing hot instead of
warm, are blazing hot summer, the sultiness of the humidity and everything else.
Well, at the end of summer, you kind of get an idea.
You know, you see that area of the yard, you know,
I am trying to keep that grass alive over there. I don't even use
that as a lawn area. Really, maybe I should install some more drought
tolerant plants, some native plants, things that might have a better chance of
surviving and thriving, not just surviving in that area. So just the thought,
it's always good to kind of get ahead of time. Fall planting season
will be here and we can still plant things now, So this is a
good time to do that kind of evaluation. Well, welcome to Garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter. We're glad to have you with us.
Our phone number is seven to one three two one two k t RH
if you'd like to give us a call. I'm gonna talk about a couple
of things this morning that I've kind of been thinking about regarding regarding plants and
horticulture and planting and things like that whenever we're trying to establish a plant.
And I had a number of people I talked to yesterday out at the Langham
Creek Ace Hardware. By the way, thanks for inviting me out. It
was a blast. We had a good time. I think, I hope
everybody that came did. We were cutting up and just really learning a lot
of things and having fun in the process. But while I was out there,
I talked to a number of folks who had recently planted something or were
in the process of trying to do some kind of planting. And I notice
a lot a lot of times that you know, I always talk about fallbying
the best time to plant because it allows the most time between planting and the
weather we're experiencing right now, which is very stressful to plants. You can
plant any plant any well, you can plant anything that's a perennial that'll live
here here after year, any month of the year. Okay, So you
could put trees in now if you if you wanted to, if it was
a reason to go ahead and get that head start. Just when you plant
things now, you have to in your mind picture that you just put the
pot in the ground with the plant and what that will duty you if you
picture that is, you'll know now when I need to water it, where
would you put the water well? Where all the roots are in the pot?
Right? And early on in planting we have a little bit of a
touching go like that where you know it's very hot outside. We get the
plant established and we get it wet, make sure the root ball is well
saturated with water, and then we have to maintain that by continuing in small
doses to water it each day as we gradually expand that root zone. We'd
like it to happen fast, but as it happens, for example, in
a tree three years down the line, we are still building, you know,
a very resilient root zone or root system year after year. So as
you apply that water in small doses and then gradually expanding the wedding area and
just what you need to get down and feel the soil, dig down about
three or four inches and feel it. And if it's wet, don't water
because of clay soil and weather with us, water water water, and it
ends up being an underground bathtub, and that is very detrimental to roots.
Drought is detrimental completely submerge. No oxygen for the roots is detrimental. So
that's the touch and go that we do. But it can be done.
But she just kind of get involved, not just you know, turn on
a sprinkler, walk away and forget it. Well, let's let's go ahead
and jump in to some calls this morning. I'm going to head out now
to Cyprus, Texas and talk to Katie. Hello, Katie, I need
to get a connection here to Katie. Get naughty. I'm gonna put Katie
back on hold, and if you guys can try to get her on the
line, that would be good. We'll come back to you, Katie.
If you're trying to talk to me and I can't hear you, this's just
hang on. We'll be right back. See that all right? Check back
here? Do we have Katie? All right? Back on hold? So
I was talking about planting and making sure that plants get established. Well,
if you take a container in a garden center or in a grower field,
they've got the containers. They're water in those things every day and in most
cases depends on the plant and the pot size and the location in the garden
center, but they're watering them often because it only takes about a day or
two for a pot to dry out in hot, hot weather and full sun
especially, and so that frequent watering makes sure that completely confined root system has
a chance of surviving. And the thing you need to remember when you're water
plants, whether it's a container full of tomatoes or something that blooms, is
when that plant goes into drought stress, you probably you probably when it goes
into dashes, you probably water pretty quick and it bounces right back and it's
like, oh, dodge that bullet. Well, yes, and no the
plant you dodged it. In the planets that alive, But when you let
a tomato go into a drought stress, it's going to be more likely to
abort fruit the fruit that it has, or not going to develop the full
size that they potentially could develop. And when it comes to flowers, they
just quit flowering in many cases when they're going through those stresses. So those
are just some things to consider, and we want to avoid that kind of
stress at all costs in order to be able to maintain not just a live
plant, but a productive plant as well. We're going to take a quick
break here, Katie. I'll get to you first. When we come right
back, get the stretch, all right, welcome back to guard Line.
Good to have you with us. You know, I've been talking about planting
and how we can still plant in the summer season, how to make sure
where our plants do well, and it's all just about making sure we alleviate
any kind of stress that we can. I'm going to go back. I
believe we got Katie connected in our Yeah, Katie Cyprus connected. Hey Katie,
welcome to the show. Good to have you. Hey, good morning,
thank you. I have found two new guinea flatworms in my flowerbed,
and from what I'm reading, it is not good. How can I get
rid of them? Oh? Boy, that's a good question. I doubt
you're going to find anything on a garden shelf that says for treating new guinea
flatworms. You know, the label that tells us what something will work on
and what we're allowed to use it on. I don't want to look into
that a little bit. This is a for those listening. It's an invasive
species, fairly new to us here, and it just happens a lot around
the world where one pest or creature finds its way to a new environment and
now it typically becomes a problem when you when that happens because they don't have
all their and I send you video, Yeah, you can send me video.
It's to double to confirm, like good care for animals, like the
rat lung worm that it carried. I know you're crazy. Yes, you
can send me a video. I'm not an expert on that, but I
can probably figure it out what it is, and I'll give me a reminder
to see if I can find you what you can do about it. There's
probably not going to be a lot that you can do about it. When
when you have those kind of things, you know, it's not like they're
eating the leaves of your plant, so you spray the leaves of your plant
and the poison gets in the pest. This is going to be the kind
of thing that you've ended up nuke in a whole area to try to kill
it, and that has its own negative effects of course, But can they
completely destroy my plant? Let me let me see it. Let's get identified
and then we'll go from there. I don't. I don't think so.
But I'm going to put you on hold, Katie, and the producer will
give you my email address so you can send me the video or if you
have a close up photo too, that would be very good. Oh yeah,
when something, if you have a still photo that's close up in sharp
focus, that's the best way for me to be able. Okay, all
right, okay, Well this is a fun thing to share around as you
go visit family and friends. Here's a photo, the photo of my exotic
invasive species that I've got here. All right, thanks you very much.
I hang on just a second, here we go. Yeah, you know,
we get these new oh gosh, these new species in and sometimes it's
not a big deal. Sometimes they create great alarm that never pans out,
and other times they you know, it can be I don't know, a
new problem that we have to deal with, Like I've got things like the
emerald ash borer, and what was the one that we became so alarmed with
not too many years ago, the the oh murder they called the murder hornets
up in Washington State, and we were all worried they were going to appear
here, and a lot of our current existing WASP family members were immediately assumed
to be murder hornets when people found them in the lawn and in the landscape.
But they're not they're not here. That's one we can relax on if
you do have pasts in your landscape. Nineer fives has a product called bug
out Max and it really is ideally designed for use in the lawn for things
that live in the lawn. Not just pests of the lawn like a chinchbug
or a sideweb worm, although it would kill those, but things like ants
and fleas and tics. You know, yesterday I was talking with someone out
at Langham Creek Ace Hardware about controlling fleas, and we talked about the different
aspects of effective flea control, but one thing was dealing with things out in
the lawn and landscape that are in the thatch. And do you know fleas
they lay eggs that hatch out into larva that become people that become adult fleas,
and so out in the thatch of the landscape you can have that going
on. You know, the dog that the fleas are hopping off the dog
and hopping onto the dog as they run around the landscape. And that's part
of that big cycle that we have to break and Nuchruss bug Out Max can
do that sort of thing for you. You know, when it comes to
effective pest control. To put a product like that out to get it spread
over the area so that it's going to do what you need it to do
in terms of effective control and effect. Nice even coverage is important. That's
what I'm trying to get to and say, nice even coverage is important.
You water it in and within forty eight hours it's doing its work, and
then it's going to last all through the summer. It's a persistent product that
will be in that thatch of the turf down at the base near the ground,
and you're going to have ongoing control, so you don't have to apply
it three times over the summer season. You can ply it once and you
get your summer season of control. You're going to find that product did a
task asda Ace Hardware. You're going to find it down in Lake Jackson is
called Light Hardware Clute and you're going to find it at Jim's Hardware Montgomery,
as well as many other other places. If you'd like to give us a
call and talk gardening, our phone number is seven one three two one two
kt r H seven one three two one two kt r H. Be happy
to visit with you and see if we can help you have help you have
a more bountiful garden and a more beautiful landscape. That is what it's about.
That that's one of the enjoyable things about gardening is not only the visual
appeal of beauty and design and just whatever you like the looks of that that
beauty, but also just the multi century enjoyment a fragrance of flowers, of
the sounds of birds and water. The smells meant well, I said,
fragrance of flowers and one week create the environment that brings in or we bring
in both plants and animals, creatures that we're interested in, whether it's pollinators
or butterflies or whatever. It just makes our outdoors a relaxing place to be.
It's a very therapeutic thing to get out and do that. One of
the keys is we're going into the summer season to keep in our plants healthy
and just really doing the best they can do. As I was talking about
earlier, with production of flowers and fruit or just a nice dense lawn with
covered is making sure that we provide adequate water, but in any bed areas,
also making sure that we have a mulch on the ground. Mulch is
what nature does. Nature mulches the soil. Nature puts dead organic matter on
top of the soil, whether it's fallen leaves in the fall or or you
know grass blades shriveling up and being in a meadow to help cover the coat.
The surface of the soil covered up, keep the sunlight out of the
soil. And that does several things. Number one, the easy thing off
the top is down cuts down on weeds. When you don't have mult When
you have bear soil, nature wooll plant weeds in that area to cover up
the area. Second thing it does is moderate soil temperature, and that is
huge. We don't think about this, but you have you walked out well,
I know, if you go barefoot in a summer on asphalt, you're
about to step into it and you realize you've made a big mistake. Even
on a white concrete driveway, it gets so hot you can hardly walk on
it. Well, our soils are dark and they really absorb a lot of
the solar radiation and get too hot for the roots up near the surface top
three inches even becomes inhospitable for roots on a hot, direct shining summer Sunday,
and so mulch stops all that and keeps it very moderated and cool.
It helps conserve moisture and protect the soil from eroding well. Landscaper's Pride has
a lot of different multi They have a number of different ones. For example,
they have a cedar mulch and a cypress mulch. Both of those a
cedar has a nice aromatic smell. They both I think are very attractive.
The cypress locks down really well, stays in place when it's wet. Very
light colored mulch. Pine Bark's one everybody knows about. That's one of the
most popular multches there is. From the Landscaper's Pride. They've got the shredded
hardwood. And then they have black velvet. Black velvet is not dyed,
it is molts. It is naturally dark in color, but it's very velvety
and dense. And all of these, whatever you use of these, get
it down, get it in a thick enough layer to do its job,
to block the sunlight, to hold in the moisture that may be about three
inches deep. On some of them, you can go a little shallower,
that's okay. But Landscaper's Pride has all these and they're everywhere. You can
go to the website Landscaperspride dot com and look at the store locator and you
will see so many dots you can go well, I can probably walk from
here to where I can get Landscaper's Pride products because they're that ubiquitous. I
want to head out now. We're going to go to Orange, Texas and
talk to Susan. Hello, Susan, Hello, good morning. So I
live in Orange and I'm moving to the sam Rayburn area. I have Amarillis
bulbs that have been in the ground for twenty years. I want to take
them with me. What is my best way to do that to achieve success?
Is there any green foliage on them right now? Yes? Okay,
So all you can do is dig them up. And there's a couple of
approaches. Why is just dig them and let them dry out. I mean,
don't leave them sitting in the full sun all the time. But let
it go ahead and shrivel. The bulls will do that and it will come
back. Sometimes when we do that, it kind of throws them off of
a bloom cycle and stuff. But I am Maillis from where they naturally live.
Have late summer droughts that are part of the bloom setting and cycle.
So that's very very effective. But the other thing would be to try to
dig them and repot them and try to maintain that foliage and you sort of
create a little potted bulbs to carry with you. That's a little more work.
It's essential to keep them alive and going. But that's an option.
Uh, Susan, I'm gonna have to go to a news break right now,
but if you want to, I'm gonna put your on hold. If
you want to hang on for more questions on that, that's that. That's
happy to do that. All right, folks, it's time for a break.
Seven one three two one two kt r H. Go back to the
guard line. Good to have you with us. We're going to head back
to the phones. And let's see here. I believe we were talking with
Susan. Hello Susan, Yeah, hello, Skip. So if I lift
the bulbs and I want them to dry out, to cut the tops off
now, just they'll shrivel up. You don't have to cut them off and
just put them in a spot where there's good air circulation. You know,
of course, don't put a bunch of sawdust around them in their current state
and where it's warm, but there's but the air moves through easily, but
no direct sun shining down on them. Okay, okay, And then when
would be the best time to actually put them in the ground. I would
put them back in the ground, probably September. I think I would hold
them until then. You could pulp them right away and that'd be fine.
But I'm just sort of thinking about their natural cycle and and oh yeah,
yeah, typically I used to one of my mentors used to say, you
take amarillis and containers and you just lay the containers on their side toward the
end of summer and let them dry out and go to that dormant dry state
and then set them back up and start watering them and they take back off
again. And so when do you have to dig them and move them now?
Yes? Okay, yeah, it's a long time for them to say,
but I think that's what I would do with them. Okay, Okay,
great, Thank you, Skip, love your show, all right,
Thanks lot, appreciate the call very much. Let's see here. We're going
to go now to West Houston and talk to Ron. Hello Ron, good
morning, Skip morning. I I've just moved into a new location and the
flower bed has been abused with dyed mulch for quite a while, and I
wanted to know what do I need to do to remediate the soil so that
things will actually grow again. Yeah, well, there are a lot of
things that can mess up the soil. You know, I'm not a I'm
not a fan of dyed mulch. That's a whole nother topic for me.
But it's it will also decompose in time, you know. It's just those
dyes are It's not like they've ruined the soil and you can never grow there
again without excavating everything that. It's not that way at all, But I
would, I would just if you want to rake some of the old stuff
out, you could, in this case get rid of it and then just
put some fresh compost down, mix it in a little bit in the surface.
Is if it's around existing plants, you're not gonna be able to mix
it much. But then put a regular mulch of your choosing above on top
of that and you'll be fine. Okay. Would any amendments like Medina has
to grow be beneficial for that area. It's always helpful to have things that
are that stimulate microbial activity and whatnot. I don't know exactly the condition of
that soil. You know, I said, just put some composts in the
surface and mulch on top. If it truly is a poor soil condition and
you're going to truly completely renovate that bed, I would take advantage of that
time to amend the soil into its best condition. That might be bringing in
a bed mix. That might mean putting some if it's a heavy clay,
putting some expanded shale down and mixing it in as you're doing that mixing to
get a longer term benefit. Okay, yeah, I was just I know
I've been listening to the Garden Line for quite some time, and I know
that Randy had a very strong opinion about diagmol from the poisons that it puts
into the dirt well, and that's what I was concerned about. You know,
it's not something it's not something that the beneficial creatures are going to be
excited about in the soil. Nature is just so resilient run I don't want
to downplay, like, oh, there's no concern, don't worry, don't
you know totally, But at the same time, nature is extremely resilient.
When you think about the fact that we can have an oil spill on the
ocean and their bacteria that eat it up. That's that's resilient. And so
no matter what we do, nature as a way seems to work around us
and reheal the situation for plant growth. So that that's kind of how I
feel. But yeah, I would, I would share Randy's lack of appreciation
for for for it. I just you know, everybody has their opinions.
Some people think silk flowers are beautiful. I see them and go, that's
not real, that's fake. I don't like that. You know. There's
a lot of things that are that are that way. I can't stand the
little tiny cacti you see for sale in certain generally not plant centers, but
other places that have been dyed like navy blue or purple. You know,
to me, it's just fake and I don't like the looks of that.
So that's how I feel primarily about it. I would We could go on
about the specifics and things, but for me, it's it's mainly just an
aesthetic preference. And I think mulch should be there to decompose and feed the
soil because that's what nature does with mulch on the soil, and so that's
why I'd rather rather do it with a natural product. An unna Unnow,
So if I go on a program of using medina has to grow after I
rake off the diamulch uh spread down with medina has to grow, put compost
on top of that, and then mulch on top of that. How soon
could I plant right away? That you plant it right away? You should.
The only thing that I was talking about before is there is a physical
condition of the soil in addition to any chemistry or microbial or any of that.
There's just a physical condition. And if you've got a really tight clay
bed, getting in there and improving the physical structure of the soil would be
important as in addition to you're talking about you know, chemical issues or microbial
issues and whatnot. So anything you can do to improve that would would be
very important to Okay, all right, thank you very much. You're welcome.
All right, I appreciate appreciate the call. YEP. I know a
lot of people have a lot of opinions about things like that, and not
everybody everybody definitely agrees on it. There's some people who like that look.
You know, there's also people who like painted grass. Have you ever seen
painted grass? It's not beautiful color, so we spray it with a dye
and it looks a very weird blue green. To me, not real fond
of the color. But other people love it, So I don't know what
do they say? Yadis tirkin ziine blizzerin every creature has its pleasure. There
that was worth the price of admission today. Hey, you're listening to guardline
seven one three two one two k t RH seven one three two one two
k t r H. Give us a call. We'll talk about the things
that interest you when it comes to a beautiful landscape. If you want to
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On a quarterly basis, they just absolutely keep your place looking good. That's
go to piercescapes dot com. Piercescapes dot com. That's the website and when
you get there you'll find out how to contact them if you want to do
that. You'll see some really inspirational, inspirational landscape installations. You realize you
got professionals on your hands with very By the way, also this I think
this is an interesting point and worth making, and that is that they've got
employees that have been with them a very long time. You know that over
ten years. The longer longest tenured employee I believe now is over twenty six
years that have been with them. And when you have that kind of experience,
you just know how to handle things here in our area. I'm going
to take a little break here now. It's time for us again and I'll
be back. Our phone number if you'd like to call seven three two one
two kt r H. All right, hey, welcome back to garden Line.
We are going to go back to the phones right now and talk to
Mike in the Woodlands. Hey Mike, Hey, good morning Skip. I'm
moving into a brand new home that's been vacant for a couple of years.
People that move We're going to move into it. They had some unfortunate circumstances,
but they've got it looks like bermuda grass, and I've never seen this
type of bermuda grass before. It just seems seems to look different. And
I'm just wondering other different strains of bermuda many many look different. Yeah,
many different strains. If you've got, for example, like everything from a
golf course green which is a very dwarf strain, up to common coastal bermuda
in pastures which gets knee high almost, it's a it's a a lot of
things in between. There's some that are a little finer texture leaves than others.
There's a little variation there as well. Uh So, bottom line is,
yeah, you get you a lot to pick from when it comes to
bermuda grass. Okay, I don't know if you saw the pictures that I
sent in, Yeah, idea, okay, Yeah, it just looks just
look different. I thought it was bermuda, but it just just seemed to
look be a different strain though what I was, yeah used to. I
know it's some about Yeah, there's a variation like that. But no matter
what it is, the more often you mowed it, the better it looks.
I don't care what kind of bermuda you buy. If it's a dwarf
type, you got them it really often, or have the kind you have,
you probably get way away with a once a week mowing at about a
two and a half inch height. I think would be pretty good based on
what I saw. Okay, yeah, I've been looking around for a real
mower, but things like all that's online is just the manual push behind.
Yes, and if you want to, if you want to really go hogwild,
you can buy one that's motorized. It's about fourteen Yeah, yeah,
there you go. Yeah, I know, you know with with Bermuda,
that's not very super dwarf. If you mow it regularly with a sharp propeller
blade mower at about inches two and a half inches high, it'll make a
decent line. The shorter you get, the more you're going to need that
real mower to be able to do the real tight cut, and the more
often you're gonna be yeah too, right for there was also a picture of
a weed that is growing in the backyard. Yes, if you saw that
or no, that's called ragweed. There's a whole bunch of different species of
ragweed. But that is a species of ragweed that has grown out there.
You know, if there's a whole lot of it. If there's not a
lot of it, just hand pulling it simple. If there is a lot
of it, it's difficult to control. Now because it's so hot, and
without hurting your turf. I don't know the label on I would need to
check a product, a lawn weed control product that contains two four D would
be an option for controlling ragweed. But I just need to check and make
sure that your bermuda is on that label. Meaning I know Saint Augustine.
In the summer, two four D can be pretty rough on it as the
temperatures get hot, and so you don't want to cause problems by what you
use to control the ragweed, So wiper applicators, because that ragweed is going
to come up higher than your bermuda pretty fast, So you don't mow for
a few days, you can get to the ragweed touching the bermuda. That
that's an option. But it may be that there there's one out there that
you could just spray on the bermuda and there wouldn't be a problem. Okay,
but it's gonna have two four D in it. Two four D it's
one of the herbicides. It's often used in lawns to control weeds. Been
an old, old product, been used a long time. It's got its
pros and cons. But in this case, with this weed in this setting,
meaning a Bermuda lawn. I think it's going to be the thing you
need to use. Okay, there's other weeds in the yard. They seem
to be broad leaved. Should I just go ahead and individually spray those if
you with yes? Yes. Now I noticed the grass is kind of stressed.
It looks like it's been through some drought or something like that. The
densities is not there. So as you mow, water and fertilize, that'll
that'll get denser. But when it comes to the weed, it is pretty
actively growing. It seems to be pretty happy, and that's important for you
active control. If you've got ragweed that's drought stressed and stunted sort of,
you're not going to get good control with these products. It needs to be
happy and growing actively. Yeah, it looks like it's growing very happily.
Okay, thanks a lot, and I appreciate the call. Take care all
right, thank you, skip by bye, bybbye. Have you been at
plans for all seasons? Plans for all seasons is where see if you're going
to up Tombo Parkway two forty ninths where Luetta crosses over, so you just
if you're going north, just cross over Luetta and Plants for All Seasons is
right there on the right hand side. It's easy to get to. I've
been around since nineteen seventy three, and this family nursery has an outstanding selection
of all kinds of things that you might want. If you want to go
in and get some inspiration on doing containers, if you just want to maybe
you want to do it do it yourself combo, they can help you with
that. Do you want to just purchase a baskets, It's ready to go.
You got people coming over tonight for a gathering. Hey, you can
just go in there and get the instant color and it really will do well
in your landscape because they choose plants that do well here and they advise you
on how to take care of them. They also help if you've got problems
you want to take a sample in or a picture in to have them help
you with it. They are experts at that, which is definitely, as
I like to say, worth the price of admission. You can go a
lot of places and buy things, but when you go to Plants for All
Seasons, you've got a very educated staff that can guide you in the right
way. You're not wasting your time and money on plants and products that are
not going to work here for you. Plants for All Seasons dot Com is
their website if you'd like to get McCall to eight one three seven six sixteen
forty six to eight one three seven six sixteen forty six. Remember it is
still a good time to be planting. We got three months of summer ahead
of us, and why not have a colorful one with plants that laugh at
the summer heat. Go buy plants for all Seasons and ask them they can
help you do exactly that. We're going to go now to John in Spring
Tech says hello, John marin Skip. I lived in my house just over
thirty years in the Spring area, and we're looking at doing some repair on
some drainage that we have that's been installed, but also in some of the
wee drain lines and from the backyard to the street. I was worrying if
you could recommend a company to do that, I would recommend Pierce Scapes.
They are the best company I know for doing just that. I hear the
music playing in my ear here. I'm going to give you a website,
Piercescapes dot com, and then I'm going to give you a phone number two
eight one three seven oh fifty sixty. Go to their website peerscapes dot com.
There's a section on irrigation and there's information on drainage that you can read
about on there. It's very very helpful. In fact, they just hay,
thanks a lot. Yeah, they just had something on their Facebook page.
I think it was like how to choose an irrigation a drainage contractor some
of the key points. Thanks a lot for the colle s. All right,
folks, will be right back. You want to get on the boards
and be ready to go. Seven one three two one two k t r
H k t r H Garden Line with skip rictor it's just watch him as
again not a sign. Welcome back to the guard line. Good to have
you today. If you looked outside, it is beautiful. The sun is
shining. We've got a clear sky, and I think this is going to
be a good day. I'm looking forward to today this afternoon. I've got
a couple of things I want to get out and do a few things I
need to take care of. As I'm puttering about, I do need to
stop by. I had some various products I need to pick up. I
kind of went to the cupboard the other day to do some gardening and found
that, yeah, I need some more of this and some more of that,
and so i'd swing by and get some of that done too this afternoon.
I just want to remind you that even though it's getting hot, it's
still a good time to put out plants, and there are all kinds of
plants that can take this summer heat. It was out at Nelson Water Garden,
which is nursery and water garden actually out in Katie by the way.
If you've not been out there, that's your West Houston Garden center. And
you just sat out to Katie and turned north on Katie Fort Ben Road,
and it's just a hop, skipping or jump down down the street and when
you get there, you're going to find a lot of plants and go like,
well, I thought this place was just water garden. Not at all.
They've had a very nice nursery lots and lots of different kinds of plants
there. But when we get into summer heat and we start griping about the
fact, okay it's getting hot, well you just need a water garden,
that's what you need. Meaning do you want a little maybe a waterfall in
the landscape that creates that beautiful beauty visually and the sound of it. Would
you like one of those large containers, those urns that are glazed pottery that
the water spills out of the top of and goes down into a rock bed
where it just recirculates. That's called a disappearing fountain. And they are so
cool, they're so beautiful, and the birds and beneficial insects, well,
thank you for that too, by the way, Nelson Nursery and Water Gardens
out and Katie's got all of that and then some you just need to go
and take someone with you. This is a destination place. It's the kind
of place where allow yourself a little time to just go back among the many
water features that they have on the property. There back behind the plant nursery
part of it. It is shaded. It is beautiful and you would just
enjoy the therapy. In fact, they had a charge in emission just for
audio therapy that you get when I sit by water. I enjoy so much
the sound. It's relaxing, its just and it's also just beautiful anyway.
Nelson Watergardens dot Com. Nelson watergardens dot com. That's a website, easy
to find them, easy to get to, and when you get there,
you'll be surprised and you really enjoy yourself. I know you will, because
I always do when I go out there. We're gonna head over to Kingwood
now and talk to Joe. Hey, Joe, good morning, Skip.
I had to dig up three Sunshine the gustrooms that are planted in a bed
near my house, and they're in about seven gallon containers and I'm watering them
every day and I'll be replanting them all in about a week and a half.
My question is when I replant them, what should be the frequency for
watering. I assume start off heavy and then taper down. And then would
it be helpful to use medina has to grow for plants, and how many
times? And then after that medina growing green fertilized organic fertilizer. How often
should I apply some of that? Yeah, so first job is going to
be to get them a root system again, because they lost about ninety percent
of it no matter how much you tried to dig. And so I would
get them in the ground to keep them adequately moist. And so you know,
saying how often or how much to water. I can't tell you because
a lot of factors a factor into that. But that root system that they
have where it's all been cut off, is going to start re sprouting new
roots. And you want that soil to be consistently moist, not soggy,
underwater, not dry. You want it to stay adequately moist. So water
is needed for that. And I have to get my hands involved in terms
of you know, dig down and feel the soil a few inches below the
surface, and that's how I get to literally get a feel for how much
water I need to put on the medina. Haster grows, the drench would
be good. I would probably drench it right at planting. I'd probably do
it again about ever two weeks for several more applications, and you would it's
just doing a lot of good things for the plant root system because of the
various things in the concoction of the medina has to grow. As far as
going to the dry fertilizer you mentioned going to a medina a fertilizer granule,
you could do that. I would wait at least six weeks after planting,
and in the short term go with more of a gradual feed through. You
could use their seaweed product, their fish and motion products, any of the
products like that there. They're very safe to use on the new plants.
But job number one is getting a root system in and at least six weeks
later then beginning to put granule fertilizer out is good. I just I guess
what I'm trying to say, Joe, is that it's not nutrients that's their
number one need right off the bat. The number one need is consistent moisture
in the root system. That sounds great. Skip on the Medina haster grill.
You said every two weeks for several times. Yeah, I would probably
do it over two weeks for three or four times even. Okay, watering
it in at planting very you know very well. But then yeah, a
couple of weeks, just do it again, do it again, and I
think that that will go a long way to help him. Thank you much.
I appreciate the help. All right, Jim, thanks a lot too.
We're going to go to Austin now and talk to Robert. Is this
Austin, Texas, Austin County? What are we doing here Robertas County?
Okay, we need to know what's the best way to get stickers? Are
these the stickers that are look sort of like grasp but they come up way
above the turf with little seed heads on top. They get that all getting
your feet. Yeah, okay, the grass that's a grass burr and that
particular kind of stick arette. It's hard to spray and kill the plant if
it's in your lawn. Is that where it is in a in a grassy
lawn or where are you seeing those? Yeah? So what would kill the
grass burr plant will also kill your lawn. So what we generally do with
those, Robert is use pre emergent herbicides like a barricade application by nitroposs.
You can put that down. I have a schedule online and if you go
to my website gardening with Skip dot com, you can find the schedules there
for free. You are I'm going to say, you're a little north of
us, meaning it's a little cooler. Spring arrives a tadbit later for you
than it does for us. Not much, just a tadbit, so you
can bump. You can bump the schedule just a week or two later.
It tells you exactly when to put on a pre emergent herbicide like barricade,
and you would want to it's for you. It's going to probably be I
would say mid to late February that you need to get that down okay and
a really good well, thank you rid of them. Just be ready to
also, by the way, be ready to repeat that application about sixty to
ninety days later to continue that protection on into summer against the scrasppers. Thank
you, sir, Thanks for the call. Appreciate that you take a good
day. All right, We're going to take a little break here. I'll
be right back seven one three two one two k t R H give us
calls today. We are here to help you have a more bountiful garden and
a more beautiful landscape. I like to put it that way, because you
know, the enjoyment of plants, of horticulture, of the gardening world is
getting out and creating beauty and enjoying beauty. I think we all, wondergree
or another, have a creative process in us. When you make something,
when you do something, when you build something, when you create something,
it's a sense of satisfaction and you enjoy it all the more. You know,
they say that no vegetable states as good as the ones you grow,
and that's really true. No flowers is pretty is the ones you picked in
your yard and brought in and put in a vase. So get active in
gardening, release some creative juices. Make your place a place you just love
to come home to. We've been working at our house these past few weeks
and we'll continue to on enhancing our outdoor sitting area. We've got a little
area in the back where we enjoy going out and sitting. So there's issues
like what are we going to do about the mosquitoes, and we're working on
that. We've got some beautiful plants we've been putting in the area. I've
got some work I need to do some more. There, got a flower
bed about to go in. But the whole idea is to go out there
and be able to sit down and enjoy it. We just added a little
water fountain out into that area, and oh my gosh, you walk outside
and it's like you just the sound of water is just so therapeutic. Love
that, love that very much. Of course, having a beautiful lawn is
very important to people, and for those of you who are looking for a
very high concentration of nitrogen in an organic product. Nitrophos has a product called
sweet Green that is eleven percent nitrogen. It's a molasses space product, and
we know any organic gardener can tell you whenever you add molasses to the soil,
it stimulates microbial activity. The good guys that are down there making roots
happy, if you will, they release nutrients to roots. They protect roots
from diseases. Did you know that? Do you know that there are microbes
that protect roots from getting sick? So that's true. There are microbes that
help fight pests as well, and many benefits. And when you put on
sweet Green, you not only stimulate that microbial activity, but you got that
eleven percent nitrogen. What I would recommend at this point in the season,
because you don't want just a sudden, huge flesher growth, is take get
your sweet green, put it down in a little bit lower rate, and
then about two months from now, six weeks two months from now, do
it again at that same rate. And so what you've done you sort of
split it up and spread it out a little bit. And while in and
of itself it's not a slow release product, you can by putting small doses
out accomplished essentially the same thing and Microlife sweet Green is very effective and wonderfully
scented. I mean that molasses base is just absolutely delightful. If you will,
I love the smell of it. You're going to find it at places
like for example, Plants for all Seasons up on two forty nine will carry
if you're up in the Woodlands, aspa Ace hardware up there in the Woodlands.
Another place you can get screen sweet green, or go out to Brenham
the Plants and Things. They've got it out there as well. Sweet Green
an organic type product from the folks Nitrofoss. You're listening to guard Line and
we're here to help you have a beautiful place and help you have more enjoyment.
And sometimes when I talk to gardeners, and I love talking to gardeners.
And by the way, all of you who came out to Langham Creek
Case Hardware yesterday, thank you and thank you for your patience. I know
that was a some some of you had a little bit of a weight,
but we had a good time and we were we were out there. When
I when I talk to gardeners, sometimes with some folks, I pick up
a sense of what should I say, Uh, fear is a little too
strong of word, but maybe hesitation or anxiousness about trying to grow things and
failing at it, you know, like, well I want a garden,
but I don't know how, or I planted something and it died and I
don't have a green thumb and all of that. And you've heard me say
there's no brown thumbs. There's only an informed thumbs. And so if you
want a green thumb, well let's help you turn your thumb green. That
and gardening is to be fun and it's not rocket science. We follow some
principles, and those of you who came out yesterday, we'd here, you
know, I'd have a sample and we talk about it. And it wouldn't
be just like here's a problem, here's what to kill it with, or
here's a problem, here's what to spray on it. It's more of the
whole cultural thing and how you make plants happy so that the number of times
you have to control a pastor disease are reduced. Overall, it's not just
about you and a spray one keeping plants alive. And as you begin to
learn those principles, you know plants need sunlight. Some need lots of sun
to do well. Plants need good soil and good drainage, you know,
the brown stuff that comes before we put the green stuff the plants in.
There's just a lot of principles and as we begin to learn about those and
how to make plants happy, then we have better success. And there's a
quote that somebody talking about I spent most of my life learning to see things
from a plant's point of view. And that's a good way to put it.
When you know what plants like and you give them that, they thrive.
And that's why grandma could grow anything. And she seemed to have a
quote green thumb. Well, grandma was doing the right things because she understood
how to keep a plant happy, how to have success with it, probably
through experience as well as learning maybe from her grandma. But gardening is fun,
so have fun doing it. Don't be afraid of failing. Listen,
we have rototillers, we have hoe, a garden hoe that we can chop
out a problem of weed or something mistakes we made with and there's no shame
in that. One of the best horticultures in the country years ago said uh
to be a great horticultures. She got to kill a lot of plants,
and so give yourself permission to experiment. Now, do you want to buy
stuff and kill it? Of course not. But if you go to a
good garden center, one that knows what they're talking about, okay, and
you get the right plants and you get their advice, and hopefully listen to
garden line as well, we can help you have success with that and you
have more fun. But the main thing is just recognize that, don't worry
about failing. You don't fail unless you give up, then you fail.
But as long as you're trying, no shame in it. I've tried a
lot of things. I wonder if this would work, and it didn't,
and so I learned and I moved on. And you just get to be
a better and better gardener as you go. Have fun. That is important.
Don't sweat it. Don't get uptight about whether or not you're going to
succeed. All right, Well, there was a little speech for you.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two k TRH. I didn't
realize I was droning on, but I don't know thinking out loud there.
Hopefully that was a little bit helpful for you. Ace Hardware. I was
out at the one at Langham Creek yesterday. You know, they're all over
Houston. There's forty stores in the Greater Houston area that are part of the
ACE group, and it's easy to find things. At ACE Hardware. They
have every fertilizer I talk about on garden line. If you've got pest diseases
or weeds, they've got a variety of products to work on that. Again,
at the appearance yesterday, we were, you know, talking about different
problems and looking at the shelf and here's some of your options for controlling it,
and they had a lot of them. They've got a lot of them.
ACE is a place if you need fireant control, I'd recommend starting with
bait. That's the number one way we manage fire ants. If you need
to fertilize, of course, they're there. If you need mosquito repellents,
if you need BT in the form of mosquito dunks or mosquito bits, the
little granules, they've got that at ACE Hardware. Bragging about Microlife fertilizer while
ago. You know, ACE has a lot of different forms of it,
and you know microlife we think about the green bag that's the standard lone fertilizer
for microlife, and I get that that is that's like fertilizer number one from
them. But what about things like Biomatrix. That's a liquid. It's an
orange label. Biomatrix is seven to one three fertilizer. I use it in
transplanting all the time. I use it in watering house plants. You shake
it up, mix a little bit in water, just follow the label.
Trial easy. And not only does it have the seven to one three ratio
of nutrients, it also has thirty nine different strains of beneficial bacteria. It
has its base with things like amino acids and fish protein and calcium and kelp
and humic acid. It's all that good stuff in it. It's not going
to burn your plants, but it will help them grow and it also will
help them get established very very well microlife. Biomatrix is just one example of
many of the liquid products that are available for microlife. I want to head
out now to Willis, Texas. We're going to talk to Sherry. Hello
Sherry, the Hi, skip, how are you? And well? Thank
you? Yes. We leave every summer for five weeks mid July to mid
August. We're leaving in two weeks. And last year it was kind of
a disaster because our rainbird system was not set up will be watering enough,
And so I was wondering what your advice is on how to set our rain
bird. We have sane arcistine grass whole meadow, mostly because we have quite
a bit of shade, but not all stay. And so what would you
advise. I would advise unless your lawn has some disease issues, like take
our root right where the plants are struggling a lot, the lawn grass plants
are struggling a lot, I would water with one it's good right now,
Okay, I would give it one inch of water, and I would do
it once a week at one time, and in a series, all one
time, in a series of applications. Huh that Now, if you want
to, if it makes you uncomfortable, you can do it twice a week.
But you go from one inch to half inch each time. So okay,
Well, how do I know how much is a half inch? Because
I just have duration? That is a good question. And anything that has
straight sides, like a tuna fish can, a cat food, can,
a pinto bean can you know? You can put those around the yard,
or you can get rain gauges like people use and stick them out there,
turn on your system and record how long it takes to capture an inch.
In most cases, Sherri, you can't put an inch of water on without
runoff. So we do something called cycle and soak. But first you got
to figure out what rate it's putting it out. So let's say it after
x amount of time you applied to a third of an inch, Well,
that would tell you three times that much time is how long the system has
to run in total to apply an inch. So that's how you determine.
Because everybody's sprinkler heads maybe a little different in their arrangement and everything. So
that tells you, for your lawn, how long do I have to water
it? And then you measure that once and then you know you don't have
to keep checking it. I would do cycle and soak, which means the
irrigation let's say after a third of an inch of vrogation has started to run
off. I'm just making that up. Then you would have it go off
for about forty five minutes and come on again to apply another third of an
inch and go off for about forty five minutes and then come on again to
play the third third of an inch, and that what's the soul volume,
very deep believe, and that creates a good resilient root system. Because you're
not watering every day and keeping the top saturated, you're allowing oxygen to come
into the soil. And that once a week's schedule is a good one because
you mentioned a lot of your lawn is in the shade now in full sun,
and a lawn that hasn't been weaned off of frequent watering twice a week
would be the way to go a half inch each time. Okay, yeah,
because the part of our lawn is full sun, not a lawn.
Okay, yeah, well that my recommendation. Listen, I've got to go
to break, but if you want to hang on, I'll step we can
come back and keep talking about this. We'll be right back, folks.
Good to have you with us. We were visiting with Sherry up and Willison.
We're going to continue that discussion. Hey, Sherry, thanks for hanging
on. Hi. Yeah, so that's very clear, and I understand.
I guess the follow up question is how long into the fall should this watering
routine go. So if you go online, if you have a pin or
paper handy there, if you're right down gardening with skip dot com, that's
my website, Gardening with skip dot com on there is the lawn care schedule,
and what I've put on the lawn care schedule, there's a blue bar
going across it in the watering row and it I have the historical average inches
of water that your lawn is going to need per week in the absence of
rainfall, for each month of the year. So you can look and from
from May through August it's one inch, by in September it's three quarters of
an inch. In October it's a half inch. And so you know,
you can kind of head your bet there if you need to kind of land
somewhere in the middle, that's fine. But generally we begin to get rain.
Do you happen to have a rain switch on your system? Sure,
it's supposed to all it's supposed to alter based on rain, But I don't
know exactly how that works, you know, I guess it knows when it
has rained. I don't know. Well, there's usually a little device it's
attached to the eaves of your house or someplace, and when rain falls in
it, it swells up and it cuts the system off. So even though
the system the clock is going, it won't let the valves be notified to
come on. And that's called a rain saw. We have that, so
I would do. I would set the schedule according to what I have online
at gardeningwiskip dot com, and then I would not worry about it because if
it does rain, the switch is going to take care of that, so
you don't end up wasting water. All right. Then, I don't remember
what we were doing last year, but when we got back, it wasn't
good. In fact, this guy was so dry. This guy was coming
over and watering with a hose, like dragging it around. Yeah. And
then and he also does all the fertilizer and we got really bad brown packed.
I mean he got in the fall. It was so bad, and
so I want to avoid that. Yeah. Good, Well, sounds like
you got a plan. And I hope you're going to someplace cooler, that's
for sure. Go to New England every year. Oh my god, thank
you? Do you hear how many people you just caused to have severe pain
knowing that you're escaping to cool weather. Well we we continue to bake well
well when he spent twenty seven years up there and raised kids up there and
still have kids and grandkids. Ex Yeah, no kidding. We'll have a
great trip here. Thanks a lot for the call. Thank you so much.
Bye bye. We're going to go now to full and talk to Clint.
Hello, Clint more skip. What I got about a one hundred and
ninety six feet fence line. The plane of wax myrtles, okay, and
about two years old. First year they end too well. The second year
they have blown up and they are huge. The issue I have now is
you're getting so thick that they're coming taking up too much my yard. What
is the best time of year to prune them back? Is it okay?
Now? Is it not too late? Really throughout the year, primarily in
the warm growing season, starting in spring and going into you know, I
would say probably September or so. I'd stop pruning them somewhere in there.
But the thing with them you got to watch for is you need to make
sure all areas of that shrub get good light. And shrubs notoriously want to
grow top heavy. They want the top to grow out more than the bottom
does, and the top ends up shading the bottom. Then and now you
have like an umbrella with foliage on top where the umbrella is, and it's
all sticks and twigs down below. So if you continue to keep the top
narrower than the base a little bit, that think of a trapezoid kind of
thing where the top is shorter than the base and the slides slope out a
little then that maintains that. But you're going to do a lot more cutting
in the upper third of the shrub than you are in the rest of the
shrub, because that's where most of the regrowth, most of the regrowth will
occur. And so I would do it. I would start it in the
spring, early spring. I would continue it periodically as needed. The more
often you hedge them, the denture they'll be perfect. Thank you so much,
All right, man, have fun. I just was remembered just noticing
him clench from Fullsher. One time I was out at Fullsher and I somewhere
in that countryside around there, I saw someone who had pruned yo ponds like
little animals, you know, like there would be a I don't know,
one that looks like a pet or a dog or a bird or something and
they were Look when I drove by, I thought, well, and now
I know where doctor Seuss lives. But anyway, it was there were pom
poms, and I mean if they got creative, and you know, that's
fun. Hey, it's your yard, remember I said, well, ago,
don't worry about failing at gardening. Just have fun. Well, it's
your yard. Have fun. I can tell you how to prune a shrub
brunna however you want. I'll tell you what happens if you don't prune it
right. But the more you create a sculpture with a shrub, the more
often you have to prune. So those junipers that are a nice upright spiral,
they're very beautiful, but you got to maintain that. The shrubs that
have like a little trunk sticking out and then a pomp pom meatball on it
and then it goes up further in another pom pom meatball. All that kind
of pruning requires maintenance, and if you don't, you'll lose the structure and
it's hard to get it back once you lose it. And top heavy shrubs
is an example of that. Once you lose the foliage down low it's hard
to get it back. In fact, sometimes you have to just go cut
everything way back and kind of start almost from knee high or lower to rebuild
you a structure on the shrub. But the more often you the more particularly
you prune, the more shape creative designing efforts you make on that, the
more often you're gonna have to do to maintain it. That's just something to
think about when it comes to pruning shrubs. Plants respond to branches being pruned
by sending out new growth. You know, you cut a you cut a
little let's save a little tree that's size of a broomstick. You cut it
off it head high. It's gonna send out shoots all up near the end
where you cut it, and they're going to bunch of shoots. You are
going to replace what was one trunk. And so that is the effect of
hedge pruning on a shrub. You're just cutting off the ends of branches.
When you do that, you end up with a proliferation with If you're making
a hedge is a good thing, that is for sure a good thing.
If it's a great myrtle, stop it. Don't do it that way.
We'll come back in just a moment and talk about that a little bit more.
Our phone number seven one three two one two k t RH. I'll
be right back. There's no escaping to welcome back to the guard line.
Good to have you with us. We are gonna talk about a number of
different things. They go going into break, talking about various aspects of gardening
and hope, hopefully trying to encourage you to get out there and have fun,
enjoy, don't worry about it, continue to learn. You know.
One of the things about gardenings that keeps us young, in addition to mental
health benefits and physical health benefits, is just the fact that with gardening,
there's always a new season, there's always a new hope, there's always something
new to try to do. Uh And with every change of the seasons,
gardening changes, and it keeps us on our toes and we I enjoy that.
I think that's a wonderful aspect of it. You know. A while
back, we had those storms that came through here, and I mean devastrated,
devastated trees and landscapes. We lost power. Over a million people lost
power during that lift storm. And that was I think in May before hurricane
season June to November's hurricane season. Quality Home Products of Texas will set you
up with a generat generator that fits exactly what you need. Do you just
need something that you know keeps the food and the fridge and freezer from going
bad? Or do you have a home work from home business where you need
to be on the internet all the time and you need access and you can't
have a power outage in the process. They'll come in and do that.
Listen. When I think a Quality Home, I think of a standout organization.
I think about reliability, integrity, honesty, transparency. The way they
treat their clients is why they are so successful. That and the fact that
they're generation generators are one of the top on the market. Really right now,
there's three hundred and fifty dollars off all the generators and a free tenure
warranty on the air cooled units from Quality Home. They completely engineer, they
install, and they and they monitor the products that they have, and that
is a rare thing in this business. Most people are like, here's a
generator, good luck. Now. They work with you in every aspect of
the process. The way they treat their customers and the quality of their products
is why In twenty twenty three. Last year, the Houston Chronicle called them
one of the very best of the best in the home contractor category, the
best of the best. I just want the best of the best the home
contractor category. Qualitytx dot com is a website and for phone number seven to
one three quality. Simple as that qualitytx dot com or call seven one three
quality. Listen. There's a long season storm season ahead, and it doesn't
take a heart hurricane to have a storm. You need to give them a
call and start that process. Find out more. What would this cost,
how do we go about it? What are the steps? I think you'll
be very impressed, and by the time we hit this fall season, hopefully
you'll be ready to go with your new generator that gives you that protection and
sustains life as we go forward, whether it's our food that we're protecting,
whether it's our businesses we're running, or just being able to keep the lights
on. Let's go out to Spring, Texas now and we're going to talk
to rich Richard. Hello, Richard Aldi, how are you? I'm good,
sir, how are you this morning? I'm running around to play racket
ball, but I had a question about a tree in my front yard.
It looked like this since I bought it six years ago. The trunk kind
of splits almost immediately, but it's almost dead in the middle, but the
rest of the tree looks awesome. I mean, it's in my front yard.
I live in Legends Ranch up in Spring, Okay, and I just
seen office of something and I got to replace or if there's something I can
do to help this tree. Okay. So when you say the trunk splits,
is it like you have twin trunks coming up beside each other. I'm
talking about it. It's definitely one tree. It's one tree, but it's
about six inches off the ground. You kind of get an opening, okay,
that wide about eight inches and then goes back to the tree or about
four feet. Yeah. So those narrow, side by side trunks are problem
because as each one gets bigger in diameter, it's like they're pushing each other
apart, and that's essentially splitting the tree. That that pressure. You know,
if you if you had super strength and you grabbed them and pull them
apart, it would split down the middle. And uh, I can't see
the tree, so I can't give you the you know, the final word
on it. I mentioned that it's also black in that area. Yeah.
The reason it's before yeah, yeah, the reason it's black is because the
bark that when you push bark up against bark, it doesn't heal over and
join together. It just rots inside there. And typically when a tree splits
and you lose a them, usually it's because it's a narrow angle, and
usually you see that black decomposing bark in that narrow v angle that is formed
by those If I were you, I would contact Martin spoon Moore over at
Affordable Tree and have him take a look at it. You know, I
can sit here and say that doesn't sound good, or you know, I
don't know whether to tell you that a bolt in there would be helpful,
or a cable across there, or if it's needed, or if one or
the other trunk should just be taken out. But Martin can come out take
a look at it and give you a professional assessment on best next steps.
And they called Affordable Trees. Is that what you Affordable Tree? The the
do you have a pen or pencil? Handy? I and give you the
phone number? Go ahead, Yeah, it's seven one three six twenty six
sixty three and the website is a f F Tree service dot com. A
f F Tree service dot com. Tell him that you listen to guard Line,
marg says busy because he does a good job and that helps you kind
of move to the front of the line. Uh. And uh, I'm
sure he'll do a good job for you. Always does great. Can I
get that number one more time? I got seven one three six two six
six three? Thank you very much, all right, good luck with that.
Yeah, and and do something sooner rather than later, because you know,
after a storm, it's a little late, uh to to repair what's
lost. Yeah, you never know when that's gonna hit. So this is
one I wouldn't put off too long. All right, I'll give him a
call Monday. Thank you, Richard. You take care good to visit with
you. Uh, we're gonna go now out away. We're gonna go to
Houston, Texas and talk to Alicia and saying that right, all right,
welcome to Guardline. Thank you. Hi. My and my question what can
I do for snails? Blook in yours? They have been all porchside.
I have tried different things, slow beg and coffee break. Okay, thank
you? Okay, what what you need to do is you need to get
a product that is a bait for snails and slugs, and there's more than
one on the market. One example is, oh gosh, I just went
uh, I just went ba on the product name. What is slug O
slug O s l u g g O And it's a bait. It's an
iron based bas They eat it and they essentially get a terminal case of constipation
and it gets rid of them. That way. You need to get a
good fresh bait and put it out. You put it in little trays around
the area or sprinkle it around. You just want them to get plenty of
it, and it works really well. It works kind of naturally actually.
But slug O there's also a slug O plus that I think has They have
spinosa don it or something in addition to that so that it controls some things
other than just snails and slugs. Okay, thank you, we're can I
buy it anywhere you go. Ace Hardware stores have got it. You're going
to find it at our feed stores. You probably find it most of our
garden centers. But wherever you are in Houston, just go to Ace Hardware
dot com and you'll get a map of all the stores, and I know
there'll be one near you. Okay, so much, all right, thanks
lot, appreciate it. Well, you've been listening to guard Line. We
just put an hour in the books again. Gonna take a little break here
for the top of the hour and we will be back with garden Line.
If you would like to call and get on the board, so you're first
up when you come back. Seven one three two one two k t r
H seven one three two one two k t r H. I just want
to remind you again, I still run into people all the time that listen
to garden Line, but I haven't seen my schedules. Go to gardening with
skip dot com and the schedules are there. There's other information there. I
keep adding to it all the time, so check it out. Garden Line
with Skip Rickards trip just watch him as many the Club of Welcome back to
Guardline. Good to have you with us, definitely good to have you with
us today. We've got a lot to talk about. We're going to be
going through a number of different things today. First of all, I wanted
to remind you that if you have not done your summer lawn fertilization, now
would be a good time to get it out and put it down, water
it in and let nature take care of it from there and nitrophas the silver
bag that is nitropas superturf. That's a good, slow released product, excellent.
It's designed for our soils, it's designed for our climate, and it's
designed for our turf grasses that we have down here. And when you put
on nitrophs superturf, half of the nineteen percent nitrogen that's in it, which
is a lot of nitrogen, half of that is going to be gradually released
over time, so you don't have an over application of nitrogen. You don't
have nitrogen that is causing a lot of fast hop growth. So your more,
your watering more, your root system is more limited. Did you know
that when you have excessive nitrogen on a lawn, it actually limits the root
growth compared to the top growth, and then you have a plant that's less
resilient. So nitrofoss superturf is designed to avoid that, to spread that feeding
out over time. And that's handy too, because then you don't have to
worry about At this point, I wouldn't worry about fertilizing again until we get
into our fall fertilization season. You know you can find Nitrofoss Superturf at Hiding
and Feed on Stubnor Airline. You're going to find Nitrofoss Superturf at D and
D feed in Tomball, Texas, as well as Fisher Hardware, both the
one in South Houston on Southmoor and the one in Laporte on Broadway Street.
We're going to head back out to the phones now and talk to Mike in
China, Texas. Hello, Mike, Hello, I am having a problem.
I have a jungle growing in my yard. It's I think they called
it giant ragweed. Ah, yes, okay, tell lem me gets about
the size of your arm. It can. I mean we have there's a
I don't know, have to like seventeen different species of ragweed around the world.
I believe I may be wrong about that, but there's a lot.
Let me put it that way. And this stuff grows six seven feet tall.
I live close to railroad tracks and they don't maintain it, and it
encroaches into my yard. I'm just trying to stop it so it throws over
the fence at you. Huh right, Okay, well, uh, ragweed
of course really shows up as it warms up. If we could control it
much earlier, it's better. Our options are better. Is this then?
Would you be spraying it in your grass? Is that where you're share that
that? I don't mind the grass on that side of the dances and a
ride away So it's okay they use it for a driveway anyway. Yeah,
so yeah, I can't put anything near anyway, so the railroad on twenty
five feet of it. Yeah, Well, products containing two four D are
very effective against ragweeds of all types. The earlier that you get them on
the utter, and the ragweed needs to be in a state of growth,
not like drought stressed on hold for the product to work its best. So
you've got a number of different products that contain two forty There's one group of
combo products called Trimac that you can put down and it will, uh,
it will provide you with you know, the combination including two for dy.
You can also go to just a straight two four D type product and depending
on you know, you're you're not too far away from Beaumont over there,
So M and D supply on College Street and Beaumont is going to have the
parking lot right now, waiting for an open All right, we'll bang on
the doors. I'm for crying out loud. I got problems at home.
I gotta I don't have time to sit here. Now that's funny. Yeah,
well, good for you, because that's a good place to get M
and d's. We have a scene here in Beaumont and M and D hardware.
If you can't buy it here, you can't find it. All right,
there you go. I believe that well, so a two fourty type
product would be probably your best bet. There are other broad leaf we controls
out there. I just don't know off the top of my head that they're
going to be effective against ragweed. They may well be, but two forty
is what one I know that works sure. I don't guess called a bind
or something to make it stick to the leaves or spray at the roots or
no, just spray it on the foliage. That's the most important part.
To do it early in the morning, when it's cool. You can get
a product a Turbo, which is a spread spreader sticker. There are other
brands of spreader sticker, and they make sure that the droplets adhere to the
leaf, that they spread out so that the most coverage of foliage possible is
what you achieved with your spray. Okay, all right, I appreciate your
ill. Yeah, do it in the morning when it's also still too by
the way, because and two forty drifts any broad leaf plant your landscape is
in trouble, so don't don't allow it. I would not pump my sprayer
up too much because when you create a lot of pressure, you create a
fog that drifts across the yard. And so yeah, be careful with that.
There's nothing back there but chinaberry trees and that stuff. So two forty
maybe the best thing that could happen to it. I can do it.
Yeah, that's just kidding. Yeah, all right, thanks, appreciators are
all Yeah, growing up, I can tell you that chinaberry trees, with
their brittle limbs, are responsible for more broken collar bones on young boys than
any other plant on the planet. Probably. Seriously, they have their advantages.
I know that I get the beauty of them, having grown up and
been a young boy at once. In fact, some people would contend that
I'm still growing up. I can tell you that if you've got a sling
shot and a China berry tree. You can hold off the whole neighborhood until
the berriers run out. Do that with this you wish. Let's go to
Houston talk to Georgietta. Hello, George Eda, Hello, good morning.
I'm calling with reference to a fifty year old oak tree that I have in
my yard here in Houston area. And it is a big tree. It
has a lot of shade to it. But I live out of town and
I come here to take care of it at their wind's house, and it
is losing its bark in places. It's kind of spotty, and I'm having
someone come out and cut the limbs and things back because it's very shaded under
it, and some of the limbs are so big they're touching the house.
Okay. Is the bark falling off the trunk or the main branches too?
It looks like the trunk that's not real bad. But there's one piece that's
a little smaller than my hand. But it's coming off in little splotches.
Okay, all right? And uh so is it coming off mostly on one
side of the tree or is it all around your seeing these splotches, it
looks like on one side. Okay, all right? Now, last question.
Do you know if it's a north or the south or south east west
side of the tree? Can you tell? And looking at it, it's
more toward the west side. But it's the tree is shades its trunk so
much, you know. Okay, I don't know how much sunny gets up
under there. All right. Well, well George and I've got a break
right now. I'm gonna have to take a hang on. When we come
back, we're gonna we're gonna talk about what to do. All right,
Thanks a lot, appreciate that our phone number seven one three two one two
kat r h. I'll be welcome back. Good to have you back with
us today on a lovely Sunday morning. Well you look outside, that is
that's what we're looking looking for a good day to be out and about.
Got a real still not a lot of breeze blowing right now, but don't
pick up a little bit as the weather warms up. Today. We're going
to go back to Georgetta in Houston and Georgeta we were you were talking.
Go ahead and continue on with where you were, please. Well, I
just didn't know if I mean there was something I could brave the tree with.
I have the film and coming out to cut back the tree, and
he said he would look up in the breech of the tree because the limbs
are so big to see if it was holding water or something like that.
I know last year the lit the drafts and everything. I watered, but
my sprinkler didn't get up in that area. Yeah, but I did try
to water the tree because of the bad conditions. Well, yeah, there's
different things, Georgetta that can cause bark to pop off like that. Typically
we look backwards at past hard freeze cold times where we can do some damage
to the trunk. There is physical damage that can occur from it being bumped
by something and the bark gets kind of crushed and starts to die back in
an area. There's a lot of different things that even some more unusual,
like a lightning strike or whatever. I think in this case, if it's
just patches here and there, I wouldn't worry about it a lot. I
would clean out all the dead bark in that area to expose the inner wood,
because what's going to happen is the tree is going to start to create
callous from the sides of those areas that close back over like a little lava
flow coming in from all sides to close it back over. So what's most
important is keeping the tree in good health so that it is able to continue
to callous and close at as fast a rate as possible. As trees get
older, they tend to like us, I guess, they tend to not
be as resilient. They don't bounce back as fast as when we were younger,
you know, and trees can be that way. So making sure that
it has adequate water during extended heat and drought conditions, that would be one
thing that's in your control other than just cleaning out the dead bark to open
that area up. Okay, Well, I planted that tree when I could
put my fingers around it, and now I can't even put my arms around
it. The special tree to me, I would like to keep it healthy,
no kidding, no kidding. How many areas do you think the bark
is coming off like that? You said the size of your hand or something.
I believe high towards the breach is about the size of my hand.
The other pieces probably are about maybe two inches by maybe two by two is
a max. Okay, but it's kind of popped in areas where it is
Are you seeing any sawdust hung up in the bark? No, but there
is a pine tree and a house across the street. Two of them are
dead, and I know pine barked beetles will do that right, and they
won't get in your oak though. That's that's good news for your tree.
So yeah, I would Is it bleeding? Is it leaking? Sap?
Is it wet or white foam coming out? Okay? I think you know
what I just said is pretty much. I believe your tree is okay.
I don't know what initially did. It could have been a lot of things,
but bottom line is the tree in decent health, which it sounds like
yours is, will heal that over or close that over rather with callous tissue.
So you just got to get that to happen as soon as possible,
so the inner wood is not exposed any longer than it has to be.
So you're suggesting to kind of pick off the loose bark that's around, it's
already right as the damage looking is. Yeah, don't worry Georgia a whole
lot about trying to get all this out. It's just that when you have
a big piece of dead bark sitting over interior wood that holds moisture in so
the decay rate is increased in there. It gives bugs a place to hide
and whatnot. So we like to clear that out. Anything that's dead and
loose. Just pull it off and the tree will take it from there.
Okay, well, thank you so much. I'll take that in the heart
and I'll keep an eye on the tree. All right, good, good,
Thanks for the calle George, take care, bye bye. Our phone
number is seven one three two one two k t R eight seven one three
two and two k t RH. On July, for those of you who
are history officionados, on July first, in the year nineteen o seven,
here in Houston, Texas, something happened that has changed Houston for the better
and many many ways. And what that is is Star of Hope Mission,
a christ centered commune to hear in Houston that's been helping the homeless now for
one hundred and seventeen years as of Monday tomorrow, one hundred and seventeen years
in the Houston community, changing lives, turning hopelessness into hope, changing the
lives of not only into our families, but specifically too, changing the lives
of kids who are growing up in situations that are just really tough, that
don't give them a great opportunity for a future. You know, your small
donations to Star Hope make a difference, like two dollars and eighty cents pace
for a meal, and Star Hope serves about six thousand meals a week.
They don't just feed people, They house people in one of several different centers.
They train people how to get and hold a job. They provide the
skills necessary for various kinds of jobs. They help deal with substance abuse.
To get that monkey off your back if you will, where you actually can
get out there and create a future and hope for you and your children.
Star of Hope has been around now one hundred and seventeen years. Happy birthday,
Star of Hope. By the way, I would urge you to consider
supporting Star of Hope. My wife and I do. It's because we believe
in it, and I know when a dollar is given to Star Hope,
it is a dollar that would be very well spent and will not only change
the lives of those individuals that receive it, but change our greater Houston community
as well, because every time someone's life that's heading in a bad direction gets
turned around into a good direction. It benefits us all as a community as
well. Put your compassion to work. Will you put your compassion to work
with me? Starofhope Mission dot org. What a great way to do it.
And again, hey folks, congratulations and happy one hundred and seventeenth anniversary.
Appreciate that I visited there. I've talked with them. I've been of
the programming where people got up and talked about what Star of Hope has meant
to their life. And oh, my gosh, the stories I'm telling you,
it's what do they say, it's made for TV stuff. It's the
kind of thing that would be gripping and a heartfelt, feel good, exciting,
wonderful movie to have those kinds of stories made into movies. Because starhar
makes a difference, They really do. Southwest Fertilizer is on the corner of
Bisonett and Renwick, and you guys have heard me talk about them before.
Southwest is the place where you go to get anything you need to manage pests,
to manage diseases, to manage insects, to manage weeds, anything you
need for fertilizing your lawn. Every fertilizer I talk about on Guardline is at
Southwest Fertilizer. Do you need products like from Medina or from Microlife, or
from nitrofoss or from Nelson. Do you need funge of sizes like copperfunt based
funge sides. Or you an organic gardener and you want all of the above,
but you want it in an organic form. Southwest Fertilizer has it.
Bob prides himself and whatever's new coming out, he's on top of it.
And whatever works that has been out for a while, he's gonna keep it
in stock. Do you need a fertilizer spreader? Do you need a little
hand carried worthybird to put out fire? Amt Bait? Do you need the
fire at bait? Do you need tools? Eighty foot wall of tools?
Do you see what I'm saying. It's just everything you need is there.
If you can't find it as Southwest Fertilizer, you don't need it, because
if you need it, they will carry it very responsive and staying up the
date. It's easy to get in and out corner abys Ut and Runwick.
You can go to the website Southwest Fertilizer dot com. If you like.
They're open today, by the way, you need to go buy this afternoon
and get you some products. They're ready to go, and their staff knows
what they're talking about. You can take them a picture, you can take
them a sample, bring it in and say, what is this? How
do I get rid of it? Do I need to even be worried about
it? And they can answer those questions and make sure you have success.
That's what they're there for, is to help you have also a more bountiful
garden and a more beautiful landscape. Always like going in to Southwest Fertilizer this
week, getting back to my landscape and getting some things done. I've got
some more planting to do, you know, I keep telling you just because
it's summer doesn't mean we have to quit planning at all. We absolutely can
keep going. And I've got a number of things that I'm still setting out
in the landscape. I've got a rosemary, by the way, that I'm
putting in a big old container, beautiful container, by the way, glaze
pottery. Rosemary is one of the most drought resistant shrubs you can plant.
Yeah, I probably don't think of it that way, but that's what it
is the trailing types can spill over a wall or over the sides of a
container, or along the ground. They bloom by than the upright types.
Both types will bloom. The trailing types will provide that extra bloom which benefits
pollinators, but the upright types that's kind of putting in the container. Lots
of good varieties out there, lots of good varieties of rosemary. I enjoy
it because we use it for cooking. There's one culture bar called barbecue skewers,
and it's called it's called that because it has long, straight, little
thin woody shoots and you just strip the leaves off and slide your art don't
strip them off, and slide to your kebabs onto the rosemary stick. Put
it on the grill. What a cool thing, And grill your shish kebabs
of meats and vegetables or whatever you want to put on them. And that's
barbecue skewers. Others can be used in the same way. But that's one
of the things I'm doing is potting that up with a good quality potting soil,
and I'm going to be sitting it in a spot where there's a clay
soil. Now, if you have a pot. My pot just has one
hole in the very bottom of it. So if you set that on top
of a clay soil as the organic matter underneath it, maybe it's grass or
something decomposes away. Now that clay on the bottom essentially is plugging the whole
of your drainage, and so it's important to get it up. I'm putting
mine up on a little bit of a two three raised brick type masonry structures
that we'll keep it up off the ground so it drains well. Well,
let's take a break here as time for the news seven one three two ktrh.
I'll be right back guardline. We're ready to go again here with your
gardening questions. I want to go straight out to let's see, we're going
to head out to Katie. If I can find the button here, there
we go. I'm gonna talk to Ralph. Hello, Ralph, good morning,
Hey, good morning. Skip. Have a very quick question. It's
time I guess to treat or pre treat for chinch bugs and sod web worms.
I have both products, the nitro foss bug out and the cynara I
can't pronounce it, sin arm. Do you put do you put them?
Down together no or after one another, or how do you know? The
bugout max is a granule. You put it down, you get it wet,
and that the chemicals on it, the chemical on it synthetic perithro.
It soaks out into the thatch area and so pests that are crawling through there
are going to be exposed to it. It's persistent, it lasts a good
while, and so we say put it out now and you don't have to
worry about it again through this summer season. It gives you continue to care.
The cyanar max is typically something you mix up in a spryer or attached
to the end of a host, depending on how you buy it. And
I bought it, so you attach. Yeah, So you just go out
there and you just essentially wet your grass with it and it coats the grass,
but then it also soaks down around the runner and in the thatch as
well. Probably for the chinchbugs, either one is going to do it or
really not. Probably definitely either one will do a really good job. If
you're going after just the sod webworms, the bugout max will work on them,
but because they come up at night and feed on the grass blades,
the larva. New that having that if you used the cinara, you could
then essentially be spraying those the foliage of your grass plant. Uh and and
it probably would work a little bit better on that particular pest. But either
way to go, we we expect coverage as those sod webworm larva crawl back
down in the thatch. If you've done a good job with the bugout max
that you're probably good to go there. So either way you're okay. Okay,
but you don't have to use both, is what you're saying. You
do it both? No, No, they are both very effective if you
get both their synthetic perihids. If you get either one out into the ground,
it's gonna kill insects. Okay, great, thanks so much. All
right, you take care of Thanks for the car Ralph appreciate that a lot.
Let's go to Dickinson and talk to Annie. Hello, Annie, a
niece. I'm sorry, Yes, do you have me? I do?
I do? Okay? Hi? Uh? I called you like a month
ago. I guess about by a bird paradise and just simply will not bloom.
Well it's still not blooming, but I'm continuing with my color star feedings.
Okay, and it just keeps laying there. You know what, how's
the plant growth? What are the Is there a lot of new foliage coming
on? Yeah, it's gotten gets you folage. So it's a beautiful,
healthy plant. Okay, it just won't bloom. Okay. So I was
gonna ask you about magnesium. H Now, I've used that before on crazy
myrtle that was stubborn about blooming because of the weather, and it worked great.
Can I use that on a bird of paradise? Well you can,
but the question is do you need it. Magnesium is a positively charged element,
and whenever we overdo a positively the charge element, for example, it
can affect the uptake of other positive belief charged, crowding it out in the
soil, if you will, in a sense. Yeah. Well what I'm
giving it now is not doing the job. And it's good stuff. Yeah
yeah, color show is awesome. You can you get good foliage? Right?
I mean good? Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Yeah that's the sun.
Lots of sun. Yeah, I got lots of sun. Well,
I tell you, they say they do better when they get a little crowded.
You can't crowd them overnight, but that is supposed to help a little
bit. It sounds to me like you're doing what you should do. I'm
sitting here trying to think what else might be in your power to get this
darn thing to bloom other than just getting a little crowded. Let me think
on it a little bit. I don't have an answer right now of another
thing. You're doing the things I would suggest. So if I come up
with another thing, I'll talk about it on the air. But thank you,
thank you very much. Adequate moisture, not too much, and then
a good quality nutrient. I just would maybe watch that if every time you
fertilize, your applying a little bit of nitrogen, and the nitrogen is volatile,
and maybe back off a little bit now and give it some time,
because sometimes when we push with nitrogen, we end up getting vegetative growth at
the expense of bloom production. And and so you try, just you fertilized
quite a bit, You're good. The nitrogen will tend to cycle out and
go away. And see if that's settling it down a little bit doesn't help.
That would be my next suggestion for it. Okay, I'll seed it
like every two months instead of once a month. Oh yeah, yeah,
that would be a good idea. Let's see that if that works. Okay,
all right, okay, well, thank you very much. All right,
thank you. I appreciate the call very much. Talking about different kinds
of feeding and fertilizing and stuff. You know. The color Star is an
excellent product by Nelson by the way, Nelson Plant Food. Nelson has a
number of different lines. They've got the color Star line, but they also
have the nutri Star line, and the nutri Star would be individual canisters of
specific types of plant food. For example, there's one for palms and ornamental
grasses. There's another one for roses. Outstanding for roses, the Bougainvillia.
Bougain Villa is a neutral star type that works well on any kind of a
flowering vine. So if you've got a flowering vine, the Carolina jessamine,
you know, butterfly vine, honeysuff, or anything like that, it'll work
really well for those. They have the create Myrtle line, which is good
for any blooming tree, and of course the Slow and Easy, the super
slow release turf Star line that will feed your lawn from now up until the
fall when it's time to do fall fertilization. Great way to get from here
to fall. Let's take a little break and we will be back and we'll
talk to Doris and Doc when we come back, and welcome back to the
Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to answer
your gardening questions. How can we help you have a more bountiful garden and
more beautiful landscape. That's what we're here for. So give us a call
at seven one three two one two k t r H if you've got a
question you'd like to ask about gardening to help you have more success. We're
going to start this hour by heading or this segment by heading out to Friendswood
to talk to Doc. Hello. Doc, Hello, welcome to the neighborhood.
Thank you. I am oh well sorry, I'm having troubles with a
I'll try to of some sort some sort of small could be or whatever.
I know it's not fleas, but something comes up and attacks me if I'm
about the knee down when I go out into the backyard or even to the
front, and I'd like to spray something to kill whatever that bug is and
maybe get an idea of what the bug is. Yeah, it's a good
question. So you're you're walking as let's say, with shorts maybe on,
and it's getting you on the legs or is it coming up you dos legs?
Okay, well it's coming up only when my legs are uncovered and really
just a little blow of the knee add down. Interesting. Well, I
was going to say, if you eliminated mosquitoes, I'm sure you have.
They're definitely out and biting this right now. There are fleas that can come
out of the lawn in the thatch and jump up and bite you. If
you're not seeing fleas, then we can eliminate that one as well. I
know it's not fleas. I'd recognize them, they hope. Yeah. And
there's some little creatures sometimes around the beach areas. You hear people talk about
no sums. They're a little gnatlike things, but boy, they got a
set of dentures on them. They can bite, and they could be that.
We also have chiggers that come out of the grass, but those take
a while before you notice the problem, and that would expo Tiggers would explain
also at being low on your legs because it takes them over they're tiny.
It takes the while to crawl up. Typically people get chiggers, though not
because they crawl up all over them, but because we lay down in the
grass and they get on us, And so that would be a possibility.
The only thing that I would suggest for those kinds of things would be some
sort of insecticide treatment to try to shut down whatever it is out there,
because it's gonna be a really tiny insect that you don't just see like you
would a flee or a mosquito. I agree, but I don't know what
would be appropriate. If is your lawn bermuda grass by any chance, uh,
Augustine, Saint Augustine, Wow, Because that that also helps reduce eliminate
the chiggers from being the most likely culprit. I would probably get a hoose
end attached product called cyinara, and and uh just follow the label and go
over the lawn with it. Uh. Follow that, I don't follow the
label, you know, don't double up on it, don't go outside the
label. Uh, and just apply it and let it allow it time to
dry off before you walk back out there and see if you still notice them.
If spraying cinara across the lawn is not helping with this, then it
is something flying in from somewhere else and then we're up a creek. Then
then we're left to things like trying to put a repellent on us like we
do for mosquitoes. So I have noticed that repellent does work. Okay,
if I if I sway that on my legs before I go out, then
it's not a pro Yeah, well, doc, I think you know,
try the cinara. That would be your best option to just get everything out
of the way, or just resort then to the repellents, because it's going
to be something flying in, and you know, spraying your a lot of
control mosquitoes, right, So I'm sure also that it does not fly in
because I can stand out on my patio. Oh okay, no problem.
It's only when I walk out into the grass that I'm attacked. Then I'm
about ninety percent sure the hose end attached bottle with cinara is gonna do the
trick. I shall get it. And you shouldn't have to do it real
often either, because if these things are residing in the grass, you you
know it's not I can't just spray this twice a week. Keep going,
it'll last a while, all right, all right, sir? Thanks a
lot. Appreciate you call very much. Appreciate it a lot, and you're
going to get products like that at a place like ACE Hardware. For example.
ACE Hardware's are all over the place. There what forty stores in the
Greater Houston area. You can go to Acehardware dot com and when you go
in the fertilizers I talk about many of the saw products that I talk about,
and certainly disease, pest, insect, we whatever control is going to
be at ACE Hardware. Like the product I just talked about, Synarra the
hose end attached. That is just an example. There are other products that
will work on this, but that's an example of one, and you're gonna
find it at your acehard Infact, I saw some just yesterday when I was
out at the Langham Creek Ace Hardware. They had some signar on hand out
there, so that worked pretty good. Acehardware dot Com for and go to
the store located to find the one near you. There's lots of them around.
Makes it easy to find anything you need for your lawn, your garden,
and your landscape. We're gonna see now here, Okay, who's next
in line? Doris in Austin County. Hello, Doris, good morning.
How are you. I'm good today. What's up? Well? Nut grass?
My yard is becoming a nut grass territory. And I've tried two products
and it won't kill it. Can you tell me what you've tried? Well,
one is a nut sedge killer and the other one is a weed stop
for lawns. It says kills yellow nut sedge. Yeah. Well, there's
yellow and there's purple. And I can describe how to tell the difference between
them, but it's it has to do mainly with the tips of the leaves
out pointed. Okay, hello, the bloom in this, I'm sorry I
had to sneeze there, pardon me. The blooms and the seed head on
top are different on the two, and it kind of matters which you have
because some products work on one but not all. I'll tell you the truth.
I have both then, okay, you're over it, I know.
And the ones that have the little knobs on top it is very very thin
lead. Yeah, and then at the bottom it's kind of red. That's
kylinga. That's kylinga that you're seeing. You just describe with the knobs on
top, and then leaves. Uh. You know what may be good is
if you could take a picture or pick off some of the little bloom heads
on top the seed heads and things you see up there and lay them on
a piece of paper and take a picture of them, or lay them on
a dark counter surface. Uh, and send me those pictures. Let me
make sure I get the right product for you. There's one called sedge ender.
There's one called uh sedge hammer. Uh. There there. I've tried
to sedge hammer on this and it don't work. Wow, that's one of
the best products that's out there for it. I didn't find what kind of
ress. Okay, Well, I Doris, I could suggest products. You
can go out buy more stuff and try it again. Or why don't we
start with looking at it and let me know exactly the weeds you got.
If there's more than one kind, take pictures of each one. I mentioned
one. You've described it and I said it's sounds like kay linga. Another
one is some type of nuts edge, and may have both types. Let
me see pictures of them so that I can prescribe something that I know is
going to work, rather than just giving you the next thing to try.
Okay, does that sound okay, okay, all right. When you apply
them, you need to add something that helps it stick to the slick nut
grass foliage. That's called a swatter turbo. Okay, you have been using
that too, No, okay, all right, well let's let's let's get
the right idea. I'm putting you in hold now. The producer will give
you my email address and then we can go from there. Does that sound
good? Sounds good? All right? Thank you. We will be back
here after a break. Martha and Mansfield. You will be the first one
up and we come back. Thanks for waiting. We look forward to visiting
with you more when we get past the top of the hour. Ms.
Thanks again to the folks at Langham Pregate's Hardware having us out yesterday. We
had a real good time. And think those of you who came out,
well, I've never seen so many samples of sick plants, bugs, diseases,
weeds, insects. I said, I felt like the Statue of Liberty.
Remember the Emmer Lazarus poem, bring me You're tired, You're weary,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. This was kind of like, bring
me your disease you're infested your weedy lawns, yearning to have a diagnosis sound
free. It was a good time though. Always good to know what you're
fighting so that you can choose the right product to do it. To KTRH
guarded line with skin rictor trip just watch him as the world. There are
so many good things to spray again, not a sign sun, welcome back
to the garden line. Good have you today on a lovely Sunday day.
Beautiful. I've got some clouds in the sky, so give us a little
break here and there as they passed by from the sun. But a good
day to get out and about this afternoon. We are still enjoying some really
good weather. I think you know it is summertime and go deal with summer.
But hey, we live here. We're used to this, right.
I hope you are. I hope you are. It's part of the changing
of the seasons. Remember everywhere you live, there's trade offs in terms of
do you have a long, hard winter, do you have a long hot
summer, or what other kinds of things do we deal with. That's okay,
that's right. We can do a lot of good fun stuff around here.
And those of you who are near the coast, have a little extra
benefit of being able to get down there and enjoy yourself as well. I'm
going to go straight out to the phones this hour and we're going to go
to Mansfield to talk to Martha. Hello Martha, Good morning Skip. I
was calling you about my pear tree, which my husband planted about maybe six
years ago. Never have buried any pears, and lately he planted a peach
tree next to it, and it was loaded with peach with plums. I'm
sorry. And this year we got about five pairs off the tree. Some
of them fell on the ground and they brought it. I got I may.
They got about three good ones off of it. Wow. So I
want to know what can I do so I can have more fruits. So
you the par produced well in the past, but this year not so much.
Never did never did, oh, never never did. I'm sorry,
I misunderstood you. Okay, Well, pears, is it getting good sunlight?
Is it full sun? The tree's lots of sun on it. Oh
yeah, it's in my backyard full sun. Okay. What is the trunk
diameter of the tree up about waist high? Like? Is it the size
of a coca cola can, or bigger or smaller or oh it's tall,
it's it's about maybe two or three coca cola can. Okay, so it's
a big one. It's a big one. Yeah. As pears get older,
they still should produce. Though sometimes we see a little bit of a
year where you have a real good year and then not so good year,
but you're just not even you're trying to get to the first good year that
you have. I would say, be careful that you don't overdo the nitrogen
when you fertilize them. If you fertilize them, if you haven't fertilized all,
I would probably give it a little bit of a turf type fertilizer,
but just in a moderate amount. Probably. Oh, let's say, maybe
I'm still trying to do the trunk diameter in my head. Here are we
looking at? Therefore, coquinees, are you looking something like those those big
coffee cans, the large sized coffee cans we used to buy coffee in it?
Yeah, okay, yeah, I would probably give it probably two pints
of a quarter fertilizer. So, however, you want to measure it out
a quarter fertilizer, and I would spread it in an area from the trunk
out as far as the branches reach in all directions, and then watered in
really good. And do that now because your pear tree is going to be
setting its blooms for next year during the mid to late summer to fall early
fall season, so you want to get it in as good health as you
can right now. If we go into an extended drought where it's going to
stress the plants a lot, I would make sure it gets a good soaking,
just periodically though, just to avoid the stress. Other than those two
things, I think that's what's in your power. And the rest is the
trees got to settle down and grow. It may be a variety that just
doesn't do so well here, but I think we can give it every effort
to try to bring it forward. And a little bit of a moderate amount
of fertilizer done right away, don't wait until later to do it. And
then today watering as needed, but just get your good lawn fertilizer to do
that. Okay. And one other question about my our is potato my husband's
planets for the first time in the gordon. Instead of the vine growing straight
up, they're growing like across all the roads. I mean they it's not
and it's Irish potatoes. Correct. Usually the Irish potatoes we plan in ring
and then they come up and by the time we get to this season,
those vines are turning yellow and brown and shriveling up on us. Uh.
And then we do it again in late August for a fall crop. Uh.
Do the vines look healthy? Well, yes, they look healthy sitting
then some of them are turning a little yellow as they vine across another road
that there's nothing planting in it. That's interesting. Would you mind sending me
a photo of what you're seeing, Uh, just kind of a picture of
it as a group, and then maybe get up close and show me some
leaves up close. Okay, I'll be happy to do that. Yeah.
And my last question go ahead. I'm gonna have to put you Whenever we're
done, I'll put you on hold and the producer will give you the email.
Okay. Well, my last question is about my roses. I bought
three little roses. They're really beautiful, put out gorgeous roses, and they're
growing so tall and about to reach the top of the ouse. Do I
cut him down? You can cut them back at this point in the season.
H maybe when let's say, when we get toward late August, I
would I would trim them back. That allows them to put on some new
growth for a good fall bloom. We're about to go into the really rough
summer season. I hate to do prune them too heavily right now. Okay
they might, they might do okay with it, but I don't want to
take that chance. Yeah, and then when we get into winter, the
February, early February, late January, that's your time to get a good
If you need to do a big time pruning, get that done then and
follow it up with a little bit of a lighter shearing a little later on.
Got it. Thank you so much, my pleasure. Good to talk
to you. Uh. You know, we've we've got these clay soils around
here. We talk about them from gardening stampont all the time. But the
klay shrinks and swells when it gets dry and when it gets wet. It
shrinks when it's dry, it swells when it's wet. And that movement,
because we do go from dry to wet pretty often, that movement is powerful,
powerful enough to crack the foundation on your home. Powerful enough to heave
your driveway or your sidewalk up where you know triple trying to walk across it.
Well, Fix my slab foundation Repair by Tie Strickland. That those folks
know what they're doing. They've been in the business a long time. Listen.
They're all about customer service and doing things right. If you want something
on time, priced, fair and fixed right, that's fix my slab foundation
repair. Whether it is a sidewalk, a driveway or a home foundation,
they can do it. Here's the website, fix myslab dot com, fixmslab
dot com, or you can call Tie two eight one two five five forty
nine forty nine two eight one two fi five forty nine forty nine. Walk
around the house. Take a look at the bricks for cracks, look inside
at the sheet rock for cracks or doors sticking. Any of those are signs
that you don't need to delay. You need to have somebody look at it
soon, because it doesn't get better, it only gets worse. Fix my
slab fix myslab dot com. We're gonna take a little break here, Heidi.
You will be our first up when we come back. The number seven
one three two one two k t R h if you'd like to call in
friends, are nice to do, get nice going back to burn line.
Good to have you with us today. Looking forward to talking to you about
the things that interest you. If you'd like to give a skull seven one
three two one two k t r H. We're gonna head now over and
talk to Heidi. Hello, Heidi, Hey, good morning, skiff.
How are you doing. Is this Heidi from T Research Farms? Yes?
How How are things out there at the farms? Very hot? Okay?
Well, yeah, we've been working on production and trying to keep things watered.
Okay, you're looking good, but I think it's another rain. All
right? Well good, Well, what what's the what's the uh? What's
the call? The lady? They called about the pear tree. Yes,
it's possible. It's a high chill pair. It is. We don't have
a lot of choices of pairs that produce down here, and a lot of
people. My sister was given a plum tree and was all excited, and
I said, do you know what variety? And she said no, oh,
yes she did, there was. It was purchased at one of the
box stores and uh, it was a very high chill plump. And I
said, well, you can have a pretty green tree, but it's never
going to bloom and never going to fruit. That's a good point. I
think I mentioned in the call that depending on the variety she had, but
that that is really true, and a lot of people make that mistake.
So it's good. Fortunately around Houston here we got a lot of folks that
provide locally adapted fruit trees. Oh. Absolutely, you very good one.
There's some very good ones, but mostly with your apples and your pears and
plums and peaches. I guess it's still you have to have your low chill
or medium chill. Yeah, down here, that's true. But something most
people don't know. I have to explain to them. And I know that
that's right up your alley, But just I needed to just call in and
say hi and throw that out. Well, Heidi, it's always good to
hear from you, and glad to hear things are going good at it.
I need to swing back out. There's been ages since I've been out there
to that place. It sure has he now that you're not in Travis County.
Yeah that's true. Okay, Well, hey, thanks for thank you
very much for the call. I appreciate that having no problem. In fact,
I'm going to drone on about chill hours here in a little bit.
I think if I'm I have time to you, that's a very good point
to bring up. You take care, Bob. We're going to now,
let's see, we're going to go to West Houston and talk to Tom.
Hello, Tom, Hi Chip. A couple quick questions. How do I
kill prade myrtle suckers about six feet from the mother plant? Six feet a
sucker from a You're pretty sure it's a sucker attached to a root, and
maybe not a seedling coming up out there. Well, I get I'm not
the xp one. I guess it could be either. I mean I would
say that either are four to six feet and then we eat them and they
just come back in a week. Yeah, that far away. I don't
know. It could be attached to a root, but it's also possible it's
a ceiling. The difference, the reason that's important is if it were its
own plant, I could recommend you apply a certain type of a herbicide to
the trunk that will kill it. But if it were attached to the mother
plant, we wouldn't want to do that because then that product gets into the
mother plant as well, because they're connected. So that would be the first
thing is figuring out if these things are on their own or not. If
they're if they are attached to the mother plant, you just have to dig
down and try to remove them with as much of the root as you can
to get them out of there because there's no spray in them. If they
are not attached to the mother plant, you can cut off the crape that
you want to get rid of near the ground and immediately dab a product on
the back cut surface that contains an ingredient called trichloe here t r i clo
p y r that is sold as poison ivy killer. It's it's sold as
brush and stump killer. It's got a lot of different names that it goes
by, but Triclo piers the ingredient. You're not spraying it, You're putting
drops of it out. Get your little foam paint brush with the little tiny
foam brushes and take the tricle pair right out of the container straight and dabit
straight onto that fresh cut surface. And it works wonders, and you've applied
just the most minuscule amount of product out in the environment as you can tyclo
clear triclo peer. Huh, that's the ingredient. And you're you were in
West Houston, so I don't know how far away from Southwest Fertilizer you are,
but Bob has definitely got tricle peer and more than one form there at
Southwest Fertilizer and the corner of Bismett and Man. What about these products called
like sucker stopper and some of the other spray on. So if the sucker
is coming off the bottom of the crate myrtle, you cut it off as
close to the trunk base as you can and then you spray the sucker stopper
or the what's the other one, not sucker ender, there's another it's got
sucker in the name. But anyway, you spray those right on that cut
surface. And what it is, it's a hormone. And whenever we print
a plant, it stimulates regrowth. When you spray the sucker stopper on there,
you're hormonally telling the plant there's nothing going on here, you don't need
to regrow, don't worry about it. In other words, you're suppressing that
sucker regrowth. If it's a one coming up six feet away. Then if
you sprayed what you cut off, it would suppress it there. But if
it's its own plant out there, you're probably still going to get some suckers
coming off the base of it. And it's hard to get down to the
cut surface if you cut it below the surface of the soil. So I
appreciate that. I got one quick question about a peach tree. It's four
years old and it's been very healthy, but it's dropping about twenty or so
yellow leaves a day now. I mean it looks helt except for a few
yellow leaves or anything to be concerned about. Well, yellow leaves aren't good
on a peach tree. Peaches will get yellow leaves when the roots sit in
soggy, wet conditions and can't get oxygen. They'll get yellow leafs when they
go through a drop period where they can't get enough water and the tree just
starts to kick off some of those older leaves that would do it. Is
the are the yellow leaves also associated with any spots on or holes in the
leaf? I haven't noticed any. I mean, I'll look again, but
my recollection from this morning is that they're just yellow leaves dropping. And yeah,
again, it's about twenty a day though, so I think this has
happened last year. So yeah, I know it gets enough water. Now
to a question about it, does it get too much or too little?
You know, it's kind of hard to say. It's got to sprinkle around
it. How old is this? How long has the tree been in planting?
It's five years old? Five, you know what, Tom, Just
to be sure, I would get a little hand trowel and the end of
a garden hose and I would dig down around the base of that tree and
try to wash it out a little bit, so you can examine the base
of the trunk at and just below the surface of the soil and look for
anything that might be strangling the trunk. Sometimes root going in a circle can
do that. Sometimes a plant tag that drop down where it's not being photodegraded
by the sun becomes a strangling piece of plastic around the tree. But let's
just make sure that's not going on, because it's possible. I've seen that
in peaches before. And if you can eliminate that one, I would just
say, let's get it a little bit of fertilizer and a consistent so moisture
without excess have you fertilized it this year? I have, but I've just
used long fertilizers out nine. That's a perfect I use long fertilizer my peaches
all the time or on fruit trees and other things. Yeah, that would
be fine. So if you've already fertilized it, you probably don't need any
more. The only other thing is sometimes creating a larger moulted area around the
tree helps keep moisture consistent, keeps the roots cooler, and helps the tree
to thrive also. So those are a few tips for things to think of
about. Well, thanks for your help, all right, sir, Good
luck with that mine, sure, bye bye. Wild Bird's Unlimited is my
favorite store to go to for anything related to birds, and it's because of
two things. You know, you've heard me talk on garden Line about companies
and things and service. Knowledge of the people that are knowledge on the on
the part of the people who are helping you is critical. You got to
have people know what they're talking about. Secondly, you've got to have quality
products that is very very important. And service, of course is very very
important. And wild birds you're going to get all of that. Yeah,
if you want to bring birds to your yard. They can help you.
They have the products that are necessary, whether there's bird feeders, bird houses,
bird baths for water. They have the feed that is high quality feeds
such as right now you should still be putting out the nesting super Blend because
we're still in nesting season right now, and the birds often go through molts,
and whenever birds are molting, they're shedding their feathers and getting new feathers.
They don't fly around a lot because they don't have the whole system set
up there, you know, in terms of making it easy to fly around.
They stay kind of close. They find cover where they can take cover
and fly less, hang around a reliable food source and nesting super Blend is
a outstanding product that has the kinds of protein, it's got calcium in it,
and it just does well. The birds are able to thrive with that
kind of a blend, especially at this time of the year. You're going
to find that if you're going to go on vacation, you want to get
a seed cylinder from wild Bird that is a compacted round cylinder of seed,
solid all the way through, just like just like one of those big old
candles you pull on a table and it takes the birds a while to peck
it out of there, and so they don't just fly up, grab a
seed and fly away. You get to watch them for a little bit longer,
which is what we like to do. Also, if you go on
vacation you're going to be gone for a couple of weeks, put one of
those out there. When you come back, the birds still be working on
it. It lasts a good while. WBU dot com that's the website.
You need to go to WBU dot com Forward slash Houston and it'll show you
the six Wildbirds Unlimited throughout this area that you can go to and get these
kinds of supplies. It's always inspirational and fun to go out there. I
talked earlier today about things were doing for the birds in our landscape and how
much we enjoy getting out and seeing their antics and hearing their songs. We
just put up a new feeder the other day and the blue jays found it,
and boy are they ever going crazy out there at the feeder. Anyway,
Wildbirdsunlimited dot Com, Forward slash Houston, you need to check them out.
My favorite store. When it comes to backyard birding, you're listening to
Gardenline. Our number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four
seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Uh. We're about
to take a little break here for the news. As we hit the nine
thirty break, I want to remind you that this summertime is the time to
get your lawn fertiliza and done. So, if you haven't done so already,
I'd recommend you get your slow release fertilizer. Get that job done so
you don't have to worry about it again until we come back until in fall.
And in the meantime return the clippings nature' z owe slow release organic fertilizer.
It's a grass clipping. Why would you ever bag it up for somebody
to haul away. We'll be right back back to the guard line. Good
to have you with us. We are here to help you have a more
bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape. That is certainly our goal. I
tell you there's a new product by Medina that definitely can have you have a
more beautiful yard, and it's called Medina Has to Grow Supergrow Plus. It's
one of their has to Go line. You know, there's regular has to
grow. There has to grow for lawns. Well. This is Supergrow Plus,
which is also for lawns. It's a sixteen zero two fertilizer, but
it also has keylated iron to help with that yellowing that occurs in your lawn.
About a fifth of that nitrogen in it is a slow release form of
nitrogen. It's got seaweed extract in it, it's got molasses, it has
humic acid in it. It's quite a concoction to do all the things that
are necessary to keep a lawn healthy and growing. One bottle of it hooks
up to a garden hose and covers about four thousand square feet and you can
do it about ten minutes to your whole four thousand square feet a yard.
That's simple. Medina has to Grow works well, and Medina Supergrow Plus part
of the has to grow line is just outstanding for the lawn. Now,
I say for the lawn, you can spray it on your tomato plants and
the vegetable garden or flower beds or whatever you want to spray it on if
you wish. It's a good product. It's gonna work. But primarily we
think of it as a lawn based product, and I encourage you to try
it out. It's easy to find. It's available in a lot of garden
centers, a lot of feed stores, our feed in Guardline, You're gonna
find it in Nace hardware stores. You're going to find it at Southwest Fertilizer,
down a bus net and Runwick. It's just a widely available product and
an excellent product. I would highly recommend super Grow Plus except to a hose
from Medina. We're going to go now to Memorial and talk to Jeff.
Hello, Jeff, Well, Hello, how you doing today? I'm well,
sir, thank you. Okay, So I have a couple of years
ago I went and bought two lemon trees and two lime trees from a local
nursery, not a box store. And one of my lemon trees gave me
some fruit last year, and it has fruit on again. This year's got
five lemons on it. But the other three trees have never shown any indication
of bearing any fruit at all. Okay, and I guess my question is
we're all entertainers, and they're all like similarly situated in terms of getting moisture
and in terms of getting sun and shade. Okay, and I don't know
what the difference is between those three and the one why I keep getting food
off of one but not the others. And they're all the same cultivar of
lemon, all the same species. Well, two of them are lines,
and the two lemons are Myer's limits, So I don't know. So the
two lines beyond that and the two lemons, and they're supposed to be okay.
Yeah, well so you probably have most of this already in place.
But to have success with citrus, you need adequate soul volume so that it
doesn't get droughty all the time. You know, you forget to water it
for a few days and all of a sudden you're coming back, and that
that stress period will affect bloom and fruit set and everything else. You need
good sunlight, full sunlight, if possible at least six hours for it to
do its best, and of course keeping it adequately moist, a moderate amount
of fertilizer in the mix, a good well drained soil mix, and the
container. Those are all the components. Now, if all that is being
done and or at least equal between them all, So why are some doing
good and others are not? I don't know. Where we go past that
this is not going to be due to a pest an insect. It's probably
not going to be due to a disease. And so you know, of
all those things, can you think anything that might not be happening sunlight,
adequate moisture, adequate soil volume, fertilizer or anything. Well, well,
the curious part is, you know, Okay, if it's an absence of
water, then I mean they all get the same amount of moisture, the
same the same amount of water, they all get roughly the same amounts sunlight,
They're all have roughly the same I mean, they're all in the same
kind of containers, so they all have roughly the same soil volume. Okay,
And I guess maybe what it is is that you know, I don't
particularly spend a lot of time watering them, and you know, so maybe
those three just need more water, or need more sun or something. I
guess, Yeah, you know one who's getting I'm sorry, I'm talkue to
Jeff. Jeff. There's a lot of factors in the watering. How big
is the container, the type of soil you have, is you could start
off with a real good soil mix, and over time it just decomposes a
way and gets a little mucky. You know, it may be too chunky,
and it's straining too well, not holding water or vice versa as possible.
Uh. And just even though they're all in sun, there's always gonna
be some differences. But I tell you, when citrus is young, production
is often less, and the trees will often bloom and set little tiny fruit
and then abort the fruit. Uh. And while they're a little just tiny,
tiny little citrus fruit. And so as the tree gets established and settles
in, we usually see better production come on. So that would be something
I would suggest think about in the meantime, watch that watering and then give
them a little bit of nutrition, a little bit of extra There's some of
our fertilizer sponsors produce things that are for fruit that do really well for fruit.
I often use a low fertilizer on mine, but you could get one
specifically designed for your fruit that would do well. Also. You just want
moderate nutrition and then they just need a little time to grow. Because I
have it in the past head centris that did a lot of a boarding when
the plants are very small and didn't have the good strong root system yet okay,
all right, well, thank you very much. All right, good
luck with those. I appreciate that a lot. Now we're going to go
talk to Robert in Cyprus, and sounds like we're all on the same subject,
Is that right, Robert? Yes? But my question is is I've
got two lemon trees I've had for three years. They're growing, ones at
eight foot the other one's nine foot tall. They've never bloomed. And I'm
wondering about the grab. Is it is every tree different? Does it have
to be grafted? It doesn't have to be, but they almost all are.
Uh, And they're grafted to one of specific mostly one of two different
rootstocks here in the Greater Houston area. Uh, that's too long. I've
never heard of one. I've never heard of one. Good Sunlight on the
leaves to make carbohydrates are needed to form the bloom buds and then also to
form the fruit. Uh. And so it sounds like you're getting that adequate
so moisture so it doesn't go into stress is not excessive amounts of nitrogen,
but it shouldn't go as long as you described without fruiting at all. That
that's very peculiar. On do you know, is this a is some mere
lemon or is it some of the lemon tree a barn from the nursery,
And you know it's just like I don't understand. Yeah, myers are good
lemons. They do just fine. Well. A tree, like a lemon
or other fruit tree sets fruit because sunlight shines on the leaves, carbohydrates are
made and it just gets the ability to set the bloom buds and then the
fruit. Are your trees blooming and not setting or are they not even blooming?
I've never seen a flower on them. To be here with you on
garden Line, I'm your host, Skip Richter and our phone number seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. We are going to now run
out to let's see, we're going to Huntsville, Texas and talk to Charles.
Hello, Charles. I've heard a lot of discussions this morning about bark
stripping. And I've got a pear tree that it went from the bottom clear
to the top and I ended up losing about four or five branches that became
dead. And a local landscaper looked at it and said wrap it with burlap.
And I'm wondering if the rash now was the same that existed ten or
twelve years ago, that every time you had something sought off you had to
spray it with that black tar like steps just as a protection. And now
that's gone completely out of style. Yeah, do you have comments about that.
I don't. Wrapping is not going to be helpful or needed. In
fact, it actually could work against you. I'd like to clear away any
dead barks, to expose the inner wood that is there. That way,
when we have a rain or something, it gets wet, it dries out
quickly, and the bark, the callous that will form on the sides of
a wound or a dead area and begin to crawl back over. If you
will like a lava flow to close over and protect that interior wood, that
callous can be seen and it can go ahead and do its job. Well,
I've seen that callous form and since I gave up one spring. But
at one time that was the answer. Oh spray, and I assume that
was a black tar like substance you sprayed on it. Yes, yes,
absolutely, black black tar like substance. But I don't recommend doing that at
all. Didn't Well, that must have gone out of style. Yeah,
it has gone it's it's been disproven. I won't go into all the details
of why, but it doesn't help. There's only one time when we use
those pruning paints, and that is if here in Texas, if you have
oak wilt in your area and you prune an oak tree, the paint is
on there, not to help it wound healing, but to stop the bug
from getting in and infecting with that disease. So that's all right, all
right, Charles, thanks, thank you, appreciate your insight. You bet,
thank you for the call. I'm going to go now to Kathy in
northwest Houston. Hello, Kathy, Hi, very good callers today. The
guy with the bar problem. I've got oak trees out here and they slop
off bark every so many years. So it's a common thing in trees.
They need to remove old bark in orders for the new bark to expand,
the tree to expand in its girth. Then the other thing was the guy
with the lemon problem. Lemons limes sometimes the type of lemon or lime it
is, they come in male and female. There. I'm sorry, Kathy,
but there there's not a male and female lemon or lime that one is.
That's not accurate. The really, yeah, because it's not we have
that's what I had been told. Well, we have a few fruit that
can do something like that, like per simmons can have male and female flowers
that are separate, not separate trees male and female. Oh well that might
have been I mean it was years and years and years ago that I learned
that. Yeah, and there are some fruit Papayas have male and female trees
that are separate, or trees that are both. Actually, but yeah,
we got red plum. There are red plums that are male and female.
Awesome. Actually, I'm sorry that the plums, peaches, per simmons,
I mean plums, peaches, pears, apricots, stone fruits, palm fruits
like apples and pears, all of those are they have perfect flowers, they
have male and female parts on the flowers. But okay, but there are
other things that will cause the lack of fruits out that we've been hearing about
today. Well it's just true. Okay. Well I smoke then, and
thank you for updating my information. Well, thanks for calling in. I
appreciate that, and thanks for being listening to Guardenline. Appreciate that a lot.
We're going to go now to Pleasantville. That's a nice, pleasant sound,
and we're going to talk to Deborah hy Deborah, Well, I skip
the weeds over here are pleasant. Now I'm restarting a Saint Augustine yard.
I can't do it all at one time. So half of the yard is
waiting for me to put salt on. It is full of nut stage and
Virginia button weed. Okay, could I spray something like image or sedge hammer
on there? Wake them within a half and we saw it? Or should
I just lay that saw right on top of it, let it grow and
then hit it. Well, whenever you lay side, you want to lay
it on bare dirt, so whatever it takes, not on old dead grass,
because you want the sad bottom to touch the dirt and root right in.
Really well, I would definitely control the button weed and the nut's edge
in the meantime because you can use things, and you can do a better
job of killing those weeds without hurting your lawn while you're in between lawns,
if you will, so, law, Yeah, get your sedge hammer,
get those nuts edges killed. They're gonna come back again one application. You
know there's nuts underground that haven't sprouted death that will, you know, and
so do that. As far as Virginia button weed would there's a lot of
different ways you can go about it when you don't have to worry about what
you're spraying it on. But in a lawn, we would use celsius,
which is a herbicide to kill the button weed. It's very effective. If
you don't have a lawn, then we can and try it. You can
try other things. Okay, yeah, right there on the half of the
lawn is I resaw it that the other half doesn't have anything on it,
But yeah, weeds that's going into my bare dirt. Yeah that's right.
I'm trying to smother it with cardboard the natural way. Yeah, it's crazy.
Well, you know, and nuts edge can hold its breath a long
time, so cardboard is not going to really get those nuts out of there.
It'll kill it sticking up above the ground, but they'll poke through it.
So but your instinct is right, get that completely weed free from those
perennial, pernicious weeds like nutsedge and bermuda grass and Virginia button weed and dollar
weed, anything like that. Now's the time to clear it up. Even
if you spray it a while. You watch, and you wait and give
it some water to encourage re sprouting of anything still there, and spray it
again, get it cleaned out, and then when you lay your lawn down,
it's much easier than if you lay lawn over a weedy spot. Okay,
all right, thank you so much, thanks a lot, appreciate appreciate
your call very much. Wow. What do they say? Time flies when
you're having fun? Here we are it is time for music to be playing.
We're at the end of the hour. Star of Hope is celebrating their
one hundred and seventeen anniversary Monday, July first, that's tomorrow. Can you
believe that since nineteen oh seven they have been making a difference. They've changed
the lives of thousands of homeless men, women and children. I hope you'll
join them in their journey. My wife and I support Star Hope. You
can go to Star of Hope mission dot org. Sh mission is actually it
don't spell out Star Hope soohmission dot org. And we're going to be posting
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world around out. Star of Hope, Mission Boy, whatever here I can
find a better consy. Hey, thanks for listening to us this weekend.
We'll be back again next weekend. Remember we're available by PI