Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skimp Richter's
Crazy trim. Just watch him as so many teats. Good morning, Good
Sunday morning. It is a beautiful day in store for us. Today is
going to get warm today like it has been nothing eighties, which, hey,
if you went through this summer, you know the eighties is like somebody
left the refrigerator door open or something. But boy, is it going to
cool off after that. We got some cool weather and I'm going to talk
about that because there are some things you need to know about what's going to
be going on in your yard and your landscape because of the cool weather that's
coming. We will leave that as a little teaser for right now, and
we'll get to it here in just a little bit. Welcome to Garden Line.
We're glad you're listening this morning. If you'd like to give us a
call, maybe you got a question something you'd like to visit about. You
can give us a call at seven one three, two one two five eight
seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four I was out
at Southwest Fertilizer yesterday and thanks for everybody that came out. Boy, we
had a group, and those of you who took time to wait and get
a chance to visit with me at the table, I really appreciate that.
I appreciate that patience, and I do not take that for granted. We
had a whole lot of bags of plants coming out up there, you know,
the weeds, and I saw a lot of weeds yesterday as well as
a lot of other things too, And we just had a really good time.
And thanks to Southwest Fertilizer for hosting us and giving away some really nice
prizes and things. That was that was especially nice as well. We had
a really good time. But while I was talking to people, somebody asked
me some questions about minor nutrients, you know, trace elements, the you
know, how do you do you do you put on the asmite now kinds
of questions, and I was explaining to them and I guess this, you
know, I talk about it from time to time, but I think it
doesn't really make sense to a lot of folks, and that is that a
fertilizer is something that adds nutrients, so in a sense, you could call
azemite a fertilizer, but I prefer to not think of it that way because
it will help you understand how and when to apply it, and and what
and how much to apply when you're when you think of your standard fertilizers,
and right now we're doing fall fertilization. Those there are the big three numbers,
nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Sometimes they have micronutrients also include certain
micronutrients also included. Sometimes they occasionally have secondary nutrients to the big three.
Things like magnesium or sulfur might be in. There are calcium, but a
trace mineral is something needed in very small amounts, but it is absolutely essential.
So if you take some obscure nutrients, it's one of the twenty or
so that plants have to have to survive. Let's say molebdanum as an example.
How many times have you gone to the garden center and gone, do
you have any molybdenum fertilizer? Of course never, but your plants have to
have that. Now, it's probably already in your soil, but it may
not be its sufficient quantities. And when we add trace minerals, we make
sure that when the plant needs to do whatever it's doing, growing roots,
growing leaves, making fruit, whatever it needs, the molybdenum is there and
that's why we add the asmite for example, and so those trace elements we
don't have to quote fertilize with them every time we fertilize. Your soil test
will tell you what your levels of those are, and so you know.
But in the absence of a soil test, I would recommend that once a
year. You could do it twice if you felt like the plants needed it.
You apply a trace supplement like that. And azemite is just an example
of what we're talking about, and it's an excellent example. You can go
to azamite Texas dot com and learn a lot more about that product. But
that's what we're talking about. So, yes, we fertilize at certain times
of the year with certain products. You can do azimite at any time you
want to do that, and it's easy to remember when you're fertilizing. So
I usually say, when you fertilize, consider doing the asimite, but just
know that it doesn't have to be at a certain time of the year.
It's not going to make your grass grow faster like the nitrogen, for example,
it's going to stock the soil with the nutrients that plants need. Well,
let's go on out now to Katie. We're going to talk to Ralph
this morning. Good morning, Ralph, Good morning. Skip. Have a
quick question. I've already put the Texas trio down a couple weeks ago,
and I went ahead and air rated my yard yesterday. I guess I should
have done it the opposite there, but got a wild here did it today?
I was going to put a's in mind. Is there something else that
you can put in addition to that to I guess help the soil as you
have it open right now? Yeah, No, not really. The compost
top dressing we often do after a narration because with those holes open, you
can get a little bit of organic matter down into the soil, and it
also helps kind of hold you the hole open. A little bit of that
having that organic matter in there, because it helps drainage so air and water
can move in better. But other than that, I think you've kind of
covered it. The only negative of the aerrating after the Texas three stop is
that the barricade forms a barricade over the soil surface. And so when you
punch holes in that barricade, if you will, now you have little areas
where you potentially could get a weed germination. Maybe the soil that comes out
of that plug now is land on top of the soil. But that is
not a huge deal. I mean it just if you have the choice,
go ahead and put the pre emergent after you air rate, but don't reapply
the pre emergent now you definitely don't want to do that. You put the
right amount, don't double up on it. Okay. One last question,
what about putting down like rye on some of the areas that might be a
little bare because of the heat this summer. Well, the problem the problem
with that is now that you've put the barricade down, it stops broad leaf
and grassy seeds from germinating, and so you're going to have trouble getting a
stand of rye. Follow the application of barricade fair enough. I'll just put
the age of mind and let it go. Yep. Sounds like you,
you know, good shape there. You're doing a lot of good things to
the lawn. So I hope it has I hope you have a good success
with it. Hey, appreciate your show. Thank you, Thank you very
Muchrov appreciate the call very much. Yeah, it is important, and we
were just talking about, you know, the nitrofoss Texas three step and basically
what that is is the fall special for winter riser. That is the right
ratio of nutrients to help your lawn get strong for winter and come out stronger
in the spring. Second step is that barricade. That's a pre emergent.
It you watered in with half inch of water. It goes into the soil
surface and stays there. It doesn't wash it down through the soil. It's
made to tie up right up near the surface where the weed seeds are going
to germinate, and when they try to come through the barricade, it is
a barricade that prevents that. Now, the third step would be the Eagle
turf fungicide and we enter the cool season and we start to see things like
brown patch up here or take our root rot reinfect at that time. Uh,
this is a protectant. It's systemic. It goes into the grass and
it prevents those diseases from attacking. So if you've been having a problem with
brown patch year after year after year, number one. We need to get
you into a stronger turf situation, a healthier turf situation where you're not predisposed
to that, but that fungicide can help break that cycle for this coming season.
Now you can find nitropost three step at Cyprus Ace Hardware, Fishers Hardware
down in La Port and Plantation Ace Hardware out in Richmond has it as well.
Well, it's time for us to take a little bit of break when
we come back. If you would like to give us a call at seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four, Josh will get you on
the board. Who are you going to call? Well, I suggests calling
garden line not about ghosts, but plant related questions. Seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two fifty eight seventy four.
So I was talking earlier, kind of got a little teaser about, Hey,
this weather means we need to be aware of some stuff in our landscape.
So let's let's talk about that a little bit. When weed seeds germinate,
the things that make them germinate are number one, moisture and the seeds.
As the water soaks in the seed, it initiates a germination process,
but temperature also. Each weed seed has a range of temperatures that it's likely
to germinate. And I say weed seed, it could be a radish seed
or you know, a sunflower seed, whatever you're planting. As it germinates,
it it's when it's moist, but when the temperatures are right. As
temperatures drop in the fall. And when I say temperatures drop, of course
we're thinking about the air temperature, but it's actually the soil temperature which is
connected to the air temperature. But as it drops, those weed seeds then
begin to germinate more rapidly. They're able to germinate. And with this cold
weather that's coming in, and maybe cold isn't the right word, but cold
for here, as the temperatures drop down, the soil temperature is going to
be decreasing, and the weeds that are the seeds that are there in the
top inch or so of soil, they're going to be able to start germinating.
And so those things we do with in the spring, like chickweed and
hen bed and clover and let's see annual bluegrass, the one that's called cleavers.
It's kind of like the velcrow weed that sticks to all of those cool
season weeds. They will begin germinating now and they'll form little plants that sit
there through the winter. If you looked at them, you'd say, oh,
yeah, there's a little seedling there, but you don't renoice them.
But then when we go through the holiday season and we come into spring and
the day link starts to get longer and the temperatures start to get milder,
they take off and grow. And our blue bonnet is the prime example of
that, our state flower. It does exactly that. It germinates in the
fall, kind of sits, there's a little rosett of leaf in the winter
time. And boy, then in spring, I mean, it's almost knee
high, and there's blooms everywhere and seeds flying everywhere. And by the way,
blue bonnets do throw their seed. I don't know if you knew that
or not, but they fling their seed all around. I was sitting in
a blue bonnet patch one time at about that time of the year, and
you could hear these little clicks. I had a little hat on, and
actually I could hear the seeds landing on my hat as if someone was flicking
them up in the air. And they were dropping on my hat. And
it's because the plants are throwing their seed everywhere, which is a pretty cool
thing if you're a plant, because you spread a wider and wider range of
you know, your offspring. So anyway, that's what blue bonnets do,
and that's what our other seeds that we would consider weeds and our lawns are
doing, lawns and landscapes and garden beds and whatnot. So now is the
time to do two things. Number One, if you have bare soil areas,
cover them with mulch. When you block out the light, the little
seeds cannot push. They don't have the energy to push through a thick mulch
trying to get to light. In fact, some it's actually the light itself
that helps in that germination. So mulching helps prevent weed problems. And if
you miss it a little bit, and now you see these little tiny weeds
coming up in your garden beds, throw multch on top of them, because
if they're real small, it'll still kill them. It'll smother them not from
air, but from light. The other thing is there's areas you can't maultz,
like your lawn and when our lawns get thin, and boyd did this
summer ever make our launs? Then well, what do we do there?
That would be where a pre emergent herbicide would come in. Now, certainly
things like compost top dressing work, but at the very thin layer that's put
out for a compost top dressing is generally not enough to fully block out all
weed seeds, but it does help with that. But the pre emmer and
herbicide goes to the soil surface and then when the weeds try to come through,
it prevents them. And so that's why we talk about those kinds of
things, especially now in October. But cool season weeds can germinate in November,
they can germinate in December. Even our winters are so mild here that
when the temperatures are right, you can get germination. It's just that it
begins when the weather cools off and the weather is about to cool off.
So because of the way they work, some of them will kill very small
seedlings. Some pre emergent herbicides they have a little bit of a kickback,
you know, like, well you miss germination, but the seedling is still
so young it'll kill it. But most of them don't do a great job
about that, and so we want to get it down ahead of time.
It's as simple as that, so that this weather reminds us of that.
The weather also reminds me that diseases like, for example, brown patch,
the big circles, the brown patch in your lawn that is brought about by
several factors. Temperature is a huge one. That's why you don't see big
brown circles in the summer. It's too hot for that particular strain of that
disease riseoc tonia. And the moisture is another huge factor. Disease is like
moisture. Almost all diseases like it to be a little on the wet side.
And in our lawns. We can't control rainfall. But a lot of
people are still running the irrigation as if it was July, and that's way
way too much water. Did Your lawn does not need that. We're getting
rain. The soil is moist a little supplementing here and there is fine.
But the more often you wet the soil, the more disease problems with brown
patch you're going to have. So if you continue to keep it wet by
squirting your lawn, three times a week. For example, you are asking
for brown patch problems. If you mow your lawn real short and try to
make Saint Augustine and inch and a half high rather than two and a half
inches high, you're going to have more problems. If you put a spring
or summer fertilizer which has higher nitrogen levels on your lawn now and push it
with extra nitrogen, you're going to have more brown patch problems. And when
the cool weather arrives, which here it is we're on the doorstep, you're
going to have more brown patch problems. So everything you can do culturally,
you want to do. If you've got a lawn that's been plagued by year
after year, a pre preventative type product that can soak into the plant,
and that's where the eagle fungicide Nitroprusses ego would be an example of that.
That will help prevent the problem when it rives. But don't wait until the
circles are there. When you see a circle, it means the leaves have
been rotted off that runner. And when the leaves have been rotted off the
runner, you're not going to get new grass blades and green up that circle
until the weather warms up enough for the grass to start growing actively again.
So you got money of looking at ugly or you prevent it that. That's
how that works. So with this cool front that's coming, uh, and
just be aware that you're lawn watering. Your lawn is not going to need
the water that it's been needing, so don't add to that. Don't increase
the incidence of disease. So you have several things. You got cultural options,
You've got a spray option or a granular depending on you know, what
kind of products you're putting down. But when you put those down, that
is the thing that helps prevent it. Also. All right, I hope
that makes sense. But it's kind of big news that the weather's cooling off.
It's big news because we don't want to walk around in hot weather.
We're ready for some cold. I got some sweaters I've been staring at going
I wonder if I'm ever going to get to put those things on. And
so it's good weather, good good news for gardeners. Hey, our phone
number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Those products I'm talking about, you
know, the fertilize, the pre emergent products, the disease control products.
You can get all about it. Ace Hardware. And you know I've been
telling you that Ace Hardware has thirty nine stores in the Houston area. Do
you know that I was lying? It's actually forty. I just found out
they've added some more stores. In fact, they had a couple more stores
Orange. If those of you out in Orange, you got an Ace Hardware
that's part of the Houston group. Now in Bay City also has a new
group. By the way, I bet you didn't know this, but ACE
is a place for everything you need. But it's also the place for all
your Christmas lighting and decoration needs, both inside the house and outside the house.
So maybe you want to do some lighting for the tree, or lighting
for indoors a house, or lighting for on the outside. They've got custom
lights by the foot. They got box sets and various configurations with multitude of
colors and sizes. Do you need a wreath, do you need some garland?
It's at Ace. Tell you Ace has everything. Ace is the place,
that's what they say, right. Most stores have their full displays out
ready to go. Now, So go check them out when it comes to
decorating inside your house. Hey, you got to swing by there to grab
the products you need for your lawn and garden. Why not also go ahead
and grab that holiday lighting that you're looking for. Ace Hardware dot Com look
for the store locator. You can find one near you. And now that's
even easier to do with two additional stores in our local group. That is
that is cool stuff. My days of climbing up on a ladder are limited
now. I don't do that as much as I used to. But I've
got folks, kidson, and there's significant others that are willing to help out
with that. So I'm very, very very grateful for that for sure.
Hey, I mentioned that yesterday I was out of Southwest Fertiliser. Next Saturday,
November fourth, eleven thirty to one thirty, I'll be at Ciena Maltz.
Ciena Maltz, that's right. Ciena Maltz is down there near It's just
north of Roach Sharon. It's on FM. You can go to cienamultch dot
com find out more about them. But I've got an idea. Why don't
you come out next Saturday? Let me let me show you the wide variety
of products, all these fertilizers, all these mulches, all these soil products.
This is primetime season for doing that, and I hope that you will
come out next Saturday and visit with me. They're actually having quite the shindig
out there at Ciena Moltz. There's a there's a lot of different things that
they've planned. We got a lot of different folks that are going to be
out there. They're calling it fall Back in Love with your Yard. I
think that's a good idea. They're going to be giving away prizes. The
first ten customers are going to get a gift card coming out there. I'm
going to be giving away some products as well. Out there. A lot
of our sponsors that you've heard about here are going to be out at Ciena
molt It's going to be quite a deal. They have a little Mary had
a little party trailer with some treats as well. Just fun to be out
there again. Write this number down ninety six fifteen FM five twenty one and
row Sharon ninety six fifteen FM five twenty one or cienamultch dot com. I
hope you'll come out next Saturday after the garden Line Show and let's visit and
as always, bring your samples, bring pictures, we'll talk about whatever you're
interested in. To get your long and good, great, wonderful, beautiful
shape going into the cool season. Well, we're gonna turn it over to
the Nicki News Network our phone number seven one three two one two KTRH if
you'd like to get on the board. Good morning, welcome to garden Line
on a beautiful Sunday morning, still dark outside, but it is going to
be a great, great day. Hey, if you are interested in perhaps
a gift for friends, maybe you're gonna go visit for Thanksgiving, or you're
just getting ready for the holiday season. In general, think about Wilberd's unlimited.
I mean, they have an outstanding array of things that pretty much anybody
would find beautiful and interesting additions to their landscape, their home. They do
all of that kind of stuff. You know, our birds right now,
or because the days are getting shorter and get a little cooler as we move
forward, short days and longer nights means there's less daytime hours for birds to
fuel up, and Wi Birds has created a special product. It's called the
Winter Super Blend. It's packed with fat and protein that these birds need as
we go in to this winter season. Also, by the way, if
still if you have your hummingbird feeders, leave one up. The roofous humming
birds are still around a few of them. They stick around here and you
may get lucky enough to see one through the holiday season. Guddenly leave those
up. And finally, just remember that even though you know we're getting some
moisture, we got some moisture in the soil, birds still need a pool
of water to get a drink out of, and so keep the water out
for them. I just filled up two containers the other day for our left
town. Make sure that we have plenty of water for our birds in the
backyard. Also stocked up the feeder a little bit before before we're gone.
I've got that squirrel excluding feeder, which is the coolest thing I've ever seen.
The Wilbirds also has that as well. Go to w BU dot com
forward slash Houston WBU dot com forward slash Houston and you can find out the
wildbird stores in our area. We're gonna head out to Nadville now and talk
to Jan. Hello Jan, good morning, Skip morning. I would say
how are you, but I'm not gonna waste your time, you know.
I always say, nobody really cares. Yeah, that's right. There.
Used to be a radio host in Austin, and people are you know,
because it's an American thing. We just go how you doing? You know?
And he would always go, do you care? I think you trying
to break people asking him that question. Michael, Yeah, Michael Berry says,
just get to the point. There you go, there you go.
So anyway, what's Jen's point? I had some really large old crepe myrtles
and they're just scraggly. What can I fertilize them with to bring them back
to make it really pretty blooms? Yeah, the drought has affected them.
You know, they're not watered right. Well, I wouldn't. You could
fertilize them now, that's fine, but especially as we come out of winter
and they're ready to grow. Uh, that would be a time I use.
I use lawn fertilizer on my crepe myrtles. Now, there are great
mertertilizer, lawn terf fertilizer for your lawn. Just I use that. Now.
There are there are fertilizers for shrubs and trees, and those are great
for crepe myrtles. But if you if you don't happen to have some on
hand and you need to fertilize, just use your lawn fertilizer on that'll be
okay. Uh. And when you do it in the spring when they're about
to grow, that nitrogen really supports vigor and new growth, you know,
but they're not going to grow. The nitrogen is important, but they also
need sole moisture and they need the temperature where they can grow. So that's
why I really focus on the nitrogen boost in the spring. But any kind
of a good fertilizer to stock up your soil for now would be fine.
Okay, what a triple thirteen work? Yeah, but I don't like that
fertilizer. Our plants don't take up nutrients in a one to one one ratio
like triple thirteen. And so if you happen to have a soil that needed
phosphorus and was low and phosphorus, which is not the norm. But and
if you also happen to need about the same amount of potassium, well then
triple thirteen would be a good fertilizer, but it generally is not, and
so we aim for other ratios. All right. Well, I'll get those
fertilized in the spring. And I know there's a lot of things that have
gone into dormancy because of the drought. Do you think any of it will
come back, I e. Especially my big o' magnolia tree. Well,
if it if they're drought dormant, yes, they'll come back. If they're
dead, of course they won't. And so that's just the thing you kind
of got to figure out. Yeah, just wait time. We'll tell We
usually say go up and scratch the twigs or bend the twigs at the end
and see if they're supple and bend or if they're dry and they snap,
And that'd be one way, but scraping the bark back a little is also
a way. I think at this point. Just wait and see what comes
out in the spring, and that'll tell you where to prune too. By
the way, you know, you may have some die back on the outsides
and then you get some sprouting further back. Then you know to cut back
to that spot. All right, Well, thank you so much and have
a good day. Appreciate your show. Well, thank you, I appreciate
that. Thanks for being a listener to the show. If those of you
in the Heights know about Buchanans Plants, and boy, I always love visiting
Buchanans. It's just it's a beautiful place. And the selection of stuff they
have it's really unbelievable. I mean they specialize in natives, that's their thing.
I mean, if you're looking for a native that is hard to find,
maybe nobody else has it, well, they're going to have it there.
That is what they do. But they if you need herbs, that's
the place. If you need house plants, Buchanans house plants selections unbelievable.
And right now, cool season color is the deal. So they got some
cycloman in by the way, they got a big shipment of holiday cactus in.
It looks awesome. They've got unbelievable selection when it comes to the cool
season garden like Dianthus, like cyclomen like you need pansies, Iola's alyssum stock,
all the cool season color, they've got it there at Buchanans. They're
in the Heights on our eleven Street. The website Buchanansplants dot com. You
need to go to that website too, because not only does it tell you
about what's going on at the nursery. But there's a lot of really good
educational content that they put together for you on that website. Let's head out
to Cove now and talk to Dennis. Hello, Dennis, Hi, good
morning. Real quick question. I still have green tomatoes on the vine,
and with the cold weather coming, are they likely to ripen any more on
the vine or is it time to bring them in and them in a bag
with an apple. I would bring them in. I wouldn't necessarily put them
in a bag with an apple. I would just bring them in and set
them on the counter where there's indoor temperatures and the process of ripening continues after
you harvest the tomato. A lot of fruit aren't that way. A peach
won't do that, for example, but a tomato will. But here's the
thing. Tomatoes, when they're green, they go from being immature and incapable
of ripening to mature. They're still green, but they will ripen just as
well as they would outside. I mean, they just you pick them,
you set them down, they just keep going. The difference is, and
of course, when you test it this way, you've just destroyed the tomato.
But if you take a sharp knife and cut through your tomato. If
that inside is not like a jelly material and the seeds just move to the
side as a knife goes by, that is an immature tomato. And if
when you cut through it the seeds pushed the side because you got that jelly
in the little sections, that is a mature tomato that would have ripened.
Now you can kind of get an eye for looking at them. Sometimes size
is a way to tell. Sometimes, you know, tomatoes can sometimes not
get full size, and so, uh it you just kind of learn to
train your eye. I usually pick a few more than I think will actually
ripen. I go a little past that, and some of them may not
turn out, but the rest of them will inside. Okay, thank you
very much. Yes, that's it, Dennis, thank you. I appreciate
that. Yeah, we uh, you know, we always talk about a
vine ripen tomato, and yeah, that's good to have a vine ripen tomato.
But I'm telling you, when it's you know, we're looking at cole
Weather coming, get that tomato, it'll be good. It'll be just fine
inside. And another reason is when you got mockingbirds pecking into your tomatoes,
that's a good reason to maybe pick one a little early. And bring it
in. Hey, we're going to take a break. Our phone number seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four will be right back. Well,
good Saturday or Sunday morning. I lost the day there. It's still
dark outside. So as I like to say, if your neighbor's lights aren't
on, go bang on the door, tell them they're missing garden line.
Aye. Will so appreciate that. So appreciate someday, not this morning,
but someday. So think of it as doing a horticultural favor in your neighborhood.
Yeah. Yeah, yesterday I was out at Southwest Fertilizer. I was
mentioning that earlier. And every time I go in Southwest Fertilizer, I'm just
amazed at the what they have. People were coming in, they were asking
all these questions, and you know, it didn't matter what their question was.
I could say, yep, you need this, and it's right over
there. I mean, it's just that Southwest Fertilizer they don't have it.
You don't need it. Because they have it. They have everything that you
possibly need. Now's a good time to get that fertilizer you need if you
need weed control or disease control or insect control or anything like that. It's
going to be there at Southwest. You can go to the website Southwest Fertilizer
dot com, or you can just go out to the their store at the
corner of Bisonet and Renwick. Corner of Bisonette and Renwick. While we're out
there yesterday, Bob had those kneeling benches that I love to brag about out
there, and people were picking those things up like hotcakes, because that is
I like to sort of tongue in cheek just say, that thing will change
your life. You sit on it like a bench. It folds up by
the way you open it up. Sit it not like a bench, Flip
it over, kneel down on it, and use your hand the handles to
help get up and down. That's the best part of it at all.
And I'm telling you it's convenient. I can't tell you how many people while
I was out there were telling me, yes, I love that thing.
That is that is a life changer, and especially not just for people that
are older, but especially as you get older and it's harder to get up
and down. Maybe little arthritis here or there, or just you know how
it is. That tool helps you keep gardening. And Bob's got plenty of
those out there, so you ought to check those out while you're out at
Southwest Fertilizer. Need to I've got some stuff to do at my house that
I need to get done. I've got some plants that I need to staff.
I got some strawberry plants. As a matter of fact, And because
you know, I'm running around doing the radio, I don't always have time
at the house to get things planted. So hopefully this next week we're going
to get those things in the ground, because it is it is time to
get that done. But anytime you're going to put those plants in, just
make sure you've got a well built soil first. And I talk and talk
and talk about that. It's so important to start with good soil because it
makes you look like a pro. It really does. When you drop.
When you PLoP a plant to an unprepared plot, I love to say that
your chances of success plummet. Because, yeah, there's great fertilizers. Yeah,
there's all kinds of other things we do for helping our plants, but
you've just you know, you've just added to the degree of difficulty and the
problems that it's probably going to have. You know, when I was out
of Southwest, one of the one of the products that people were asking a
lot about and picking up was Nelson's carbo Load. Carbo Load is the fall
fertilizer that Nelson make. They make a lot of great fertilizers. They've been
doing it now for over forty years and they just celebrated that forty year anniversary.
And by the way, congratulations to Dean and all the team out there
at Nelson's on quite an accomplishment. And boy have they ever built up a
wonderful group of product selections that you can choose from out there. You know,
this fall, they're donating two dollars for every bag of carbo Load sold
to Randy Lemon's Memorial Scholarship up at A and M. What a good cost
and what a great product too. So it's like a win win when you
get a really good product, it includes also something to help prevent weeds,
and you contribute two bucks toward a really good cost something that will live on
forever. Randy would have been extremely proud to know that there was a scholarship
in horticulture in his name up at Texas A and M. The carbo load
has that ingredient that also helps prevent weed seeds from coming up. So uh,
it is important to fertilize sooner rather than later, but it's especially important
to get that pre emergent down sooner rather than later. So grab your carbo
load, get it down a sap because here comes the cold weather with a
little bit of rain, and there's a lot of things that I talked about
earlier. They're going to start happening in your lawn and you want to be
ahead of all of that. It's it's not difficult to pull that one off.
Driving across town. The other day, I ran past a Lensdown Moody,
and I always like it's kind of like going past a car dealership and
pulling in and jumping in and sitting in a hot ride and you know it,
picture yourself in this car or whatever. Well, I'm that way about
tractors and Lansdown Moody has their Click Pick Go Orange deal going on right now,
and what that basically means is you want to pick the Caboda you want,
and the L twenty five two that is the workhorse from Cabota hydrostatic transmission.
I mean it is, as I like to say, a sweet ride.
It is a hard working ride too. Secondly, you click on your
tractor deal that's tractor package dot Com. So do you want a box cutter,
do you need a box blade? Do you need a front end loader,
post hole digger? You know that sort of thing. You put your
package together and then you get to go with the really amazing finance plan,
no money down, no interest for eighty four months now Lansdown Moody. This
isn't some big national corporation. This is our local tractor company. They're a
Houston company. They've been here since nineteen thirty six, nine locations around the
Gulf coast. Here. I mean, it's not hard to find a lens
down where you can hop in and do like I do with tractors, and
a lot of people do with cars. And let's go in and sit on
one. Check it out, get the field, see what it's like.
Let them tell you about it. Lmtractor dot com. Lmtractor dot com landsdown
in Caboda. What a combination. Well, you're listening to garden Line and
we're nearing the end here of our first hour of the show. This morning.
I want to I'm going to talk about a number of different things today.
One thing I want to mention is the folks at Texas Gardener are doing
the Texas Tomato Lovers Conference. Now, this is in January. It's coming
in January, January thirteenth, to be specific. That's a Saturday. They're
going to have it out at the Anti Gurowsman for him, and they've got
a lineup of speakers. Razanne Green is going to be there. She's gonna
be talking about growing tomatoes with and for the young family destin our Texas garden
guys. It's gonna be talking about mastering container grown tomatoes. Patti Leander is
one of my former master gardeners when I was a County Horticulture in Austin,
Texas, and she is a vegetable growing guru. Best Varieties for twenty twenty
four plus eight Steps to Grafting Success? Did you know you could graft tomatoes?
Patty's going to teach you how to do it, tell you all about
it, and I'm going to be there talking about the ten Commandments of Tomatoes
Success. How's that for a title. This is all at the Texas Tomato
lover's conference. Just go just do a search for Texas Gardener Magazine and it'll
all be It'll be there on their on their website. You can find out
there if you follow me on social media. I just posted something about it.
I'm gonna have something on my website coming up here about it. That's
gardening with Skip dot com. But I just want to give you the head
start because these spots are not going to last forever. These spots for you
know, it's a limited amount of space that they have available. So you
can also give them a call two fy four eight four eight ninety three ninety
three. I did want to mention to you that if you're up in the
Montgomery area and you haven't been by A and A Plants, you need to
go check out the color that they have right now. Now. I know
it's holiday season and Ana's got all the blame, you know, chimine as
for the back patio and all kinds of stuff like that, but the color
is absolutely amazing. An A Plants is on the east side of Montgomery on
the way to Conroe on Highway one oh five, seven days a week.
Today's a great day to go out to a NA well we're gonna take a
little break top of the hour, get Nikky in here for the news.
Uh, if you would like to give us a call. What kind of
gardening questions do you have today? Well, let's let's find out seven one
three two one two k t RH. As simple as that, seven to
one three two one two k t r H. Don't forget that. Next
Sunday or Saturday. Next Saturday, November fourth, albeit siena mulch down near
Roch Sharon, and this is your opera. You hear me talk about Sienna.
Here's your opportunity to go see a brag on the place. I mean,
let me show you all the products that they have in there, all
the fertilizers I've been telling you you need to put down. They've got them
mulches and oh my gosh, composts and bags and bulk and everything else.
They're gonna have really a nice little shindig out there at Sienna. Lots of
folks out there, food truck, you name it. I hope you will
join us. Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the
products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to Katy r H Garden line
with skip rictor. It's crazy gas. Just watch him as many spotsy not
a sound well, good morning, good morning. I hope you are having
a good morning so far. I got your eyes both open. Maybe it
took a cup of coffee to help with that, but welcome to garden Line.
Give us a call seven one three two one two five eight seven four
if you would like to visit about something related to gardening. Maybe you have
been looking out the window at your landscape, or maybe having to close one
eye as you drive up the driveway and see your landscape because summer has just
been that brutal to it. I understand that, believe me. Up driving
around seeing some of the loss of plants, the loss of lawns and things,
it's kind of hard to look at now. There are a lot of
do it your suffers out there, and I'm I'm a Dutch sofer everything I
can. I think that's part of the benefit of gardening is getting out and
doing things. But you know, sometimes you need somebody to come in and
do a turnkey job in a professional way. You know, I'm a plant
person. I love plants, but if you were to take me and create
a plant design, not so much. I mean, it's kind of like
giving me Rembrandts paints and canvas and saying paint something. I could put paint
on canvas, but it wouldn't look like rem Brandt. Well, I want
to tell you who would, and that's the folks at Pierscapes, Jason Garretty
and his team Bob and Canvas, and those folks know how to design stuff.
They know how to create beauty and esthetically pleasing designs. And if you
would like to have someone come in and redo the lawn, maybe your irrigation
system, it wasn't well designed and it's just the coverage is not good and
as a result, you have dead spots because you can't water enough to keep
them them adequately hydrated. Call Pierscapes. They can do it. They can
put in lighting, they can fix drainage. You have areas that are too
soggy wet, almost all plants want good drainage. They can fix that.
Now, you can give them a call at two eight one three, seven
fifty sixty, or just go online to Piercescapes dot com check out some of
the jobs that they've done. Click around there. There's some nice photos of
it. You can transform your landscape and get it into looking something that's just
beautiful. Again, make sure when you do talk to them about, you
know, what are some drought tolerant plant options that I could put in because
should this ever happen again, which you know inevitably it's gonna Uh, Pierce
Capes is the one that can give you that resilience in your landscape. As
they redesigned something absolutely gorgeous again. Just go to Piercescapes dot com. We
are now going to head to Columbus and talk to JW. Hello JW,
Good morning, sir. Hey, this is not going to be simple.
I live out in the country. I don't Saint Augustine grass was killed by
bugs, you know, tinch bugs and everything else, and I fight them
with some effect. And this year was a year all the way around,
and I got a patch off the patio. There's probably twelve by twenty that
has I don't know how many plants there are, but I have tens of
thousands of sandbirds. I took a torch to them earlier in the summer and
burned them down to the ground. All that did was to seem to help
them. Yeah, but didn't. Yeah, I did, but I think
I just burned off the stems and the seed sell the ground. That's my
guess. Okay, I need some sort of solution. I refuse to mow
them because that's going to scatter the seed all the more and pre emergence not
going to be all that easy, though I would certainly consider it. You
have any suggestions, and I'm not about killing the ground. But below this
area, I have a real nice Lsu purple hybrid fig that I love and
I don't want to harm it. Okay, all right, well, yeah,
pre emergent' is a great option. Now. Just want to make sure
we're talking about it's a grass type weed that has the burrs on it,
right, it's the sandburs O carry stick them, yel the thorns break off
in your skin, and then you're in paint. By the way, if
you will keep our jail in your refrigerator and you go to stick out a
thorn, put some more gel on it about five minutes before you start digging
on it with that sterilized needle. That will help the paint. All right,
folks, you heard it here first on garden Line. There's a tip
of the day right there. J W. I would there are some pre
emergence that work very well on sandburg Uh. The pendomethylen is one ingredient.
Wait a minute, you've got to do that in Englis. Please oh p
e n d I M E t h A l I N Okay one more
time. P E n d Let me do this rather than just giving you
the one nitrofus barricade if that's a brand, and okay, Scott, there
there are two or three different pre emergent ingredients that will prevent grasspers sandburds.
The barricade has got one of them, and it works just fine. What
you want to do is follow the label. Now, sandburgs germinate in as
the temperature warms up in spring, but they germinate a little later than a
lot of our other weeds. They need a tad bit warmer soil before they
kick into gear. Normally I would say pre emergent in early February, but
I would say with sandburs, you could probably go to mid to late February
and you would be just fine. You may have to own sixty maybe ninety
days after that application do it again, because stuff doesn't last forever and you
want it to continue to do what it does. Okay, now pas here
the ones that will come up. What do I do with the ones that
are already there that they can't get rid of? I tried digging them up,
and that was that was way too tedious. Well, if it's surely
a samber plant, the winner ought to take it out. It's an annual.
It's not a perennial. Really, Yes, I did not know that.
Yeah, they seem to live here all year long. Okay, you
know, I guess I don't know. I've never thought about, you know,
some protected spot. But out there in Columbus, you shouldn't. They
shouldn't be a perennial. Some people will take like a piece of carpeting and
drag it over the area to pick up all the little birds the birds get
caught in the carpet, and just throw the carpet away. You know,
I'm not talking about like that's a great idea that yeah, just a piece
or I guess you could probably do that with burlap pretty well too. But
well, old carpet seeds to come by these days in burlaugh, there you
go and then just throw it away. But that that would get all a
lot of the seeds out of the way when you're going to walk across it,
but pre emergent at that right time. I'll talk about that when we
get back into spring on the show. But that's yes, sir. And
one other thing to remember is when you fertilize, they actually don't do as
well. Uh. They like a sandy droughty uh low nitrogen level area where
grass doesn't want to grow. They proliferate so good turf care practices or actually
work against sandburs's success. Sam, we were going to plant something in place
of that, you know, some sort of side. What would you recommend
instead of Saint Augustine, Yes, suir, I not like San Augustine,
But would we consider it or something else. I'm gonna have to take a
break. Bermuda or Zoysia is the fast answer, and I'm gonna put you
on hold and go to break. If you all stick around, we can
talk about that a little further. But Bermuda or Zoysia would be the other
two. We are taking a break now at seven one, three, two,
one, two, fifty eight seventy four. Well, welcome back to
garden Line. Welcome back on a what is gonna be a beautiful Sunday.
Uh, here we are and join I don't know, maybe one hopefully one
of the last days where we're up in the upper eighties like this or mid
eighties, it's going to drop down, be a little on the chain side
for a few days, get a little bit of rain in that. And
as we were talking about earlier, that means that the winter weeds are definitely
going to be kicking into gear and trying to sprout, and that means that
diseases like brown patch, the big circles in the lawn are going to start
showing up, especially in lawns that have been pushed with too much nitrogen late
in the season. That's why for our fall application we recommend the lower levels
of nitrogen. You know, folks at Nitross they've created that system, the
one two three system that starts with that a fall fertilizer that is a we
call them fall special or winter winter Riser fertilizer. Basically means we're going to
drop that nitrogen level down, make sure we got plenty of potassium to get
the grass as strong going into winter as possible, so it comes out strong,
so it's hardier in the winter. It's just a win win on that,
and then they add the step two barricade pre emergent weed control. It
controls broadly weeds, it controls grassy weeds. You put it down, you
water it in. If worms a barricade, the weeds can't get through,
and it's much easier to prevent a weed than it is to try to kill
one that's existing. Next spring, those weeds that are germinating in these next
few weeks here, next spring, they'll be huge and they'll have flowers and
starting to set seed, and all the products we try to use aren't as
effective as just preventing them in the first place. Third step is nitrofoss.
Eagle turf fungicide soaks into the tissue and when brown patch tries to kick in
and infect, when take all root rot tries to kick in and infect,
it helps suppress those and prevent them successfully getting into your grass and taking your
grass down. And where do you get these well, all nitrofoss products,
including the Texas three step Trio are available at Gim's Hardware, Montgomery Ace Hardware's
in City, and Memorial and Lake Hardware down in Clute. Simple as that
we've talked about a number of things today regarding the cool weather and the arrival
of cool and stuff as it cools off. Now, some of the some
of the cool season plants that we put for put in for flowers will just
naturally do better. Pansy's and viola's, for example, they like cooler weather
and when we plant them, you know, earlier in October, you try
to plant them and maybe the temperatures are up in the nineties. Still they're
just not happy with that. They'll survive, you can keep them going,
but now is getting to be the prime time, prime time for getting those
in the ground and having success. So if you're looking for color that is
very hardy. One of the two of the hardiest cool season flower plants that
we have is viola and pansy and they would they would be excellent to be
purchasing and planting right now, and you can find you can find products like
that. You got to go out to Enchanted Gardens and Jenny Gardens out in
Richmond now and Jennigar Gardens has everything you can imagine planting. But if you're
looking for some great cool season color, maybe you do want violas and pansies,
Maybe you want dianthus or a lissum or snap dragons or stock for example,
that's a not so common cool season plant. They're going to have it.
Maybe you want some cool season foliage too, you know Dusty Miller.
The silver color of Dusty Miller makes a beautiful combination with light blue and blue
colored pansies and violas. Just a real good combo tip there. But in
Chanti Gardens has more than that. They've got the fertilizers that I talk about
here on the show. They've got the soil products that we recommend here on
the show. Grab some bags that remember brown stuff before green stuff. So
when you go out there to get plants, make sure you go home with
some composts, some soil amendments, and the fertilizers that you need as well.
They are on FM three fifty nine. So as you're in Richmond heading
up toward Katie direction, they're going to be on FM three fifty nine right
there. Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com open Monday through Saturday eight to five Today
Sundays from ten am to four pm. It's a good day to go visit
out at Enchanted Gardens. Our phone number is seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four seven one three, two, one two, five eight
seven four. I was out at Quality Home Products this past week visiting with
them, learning more about some of the products that they have and uh,
you know, some of the different uh services that they offer. And you
know, the thing that is most impressive to me about Quality Home Products is,
well, it is impressive that they have generatic generators, which are an
outstanding product. I'm absolutely outstanding generator product. They've got them in all different
sizes. The thing that is most impressive about Quality Home is that when you
buy that generator, you've got a team that goes to work with you and
stays with you. And here's what I mean by that. You've got to
get a hold of the HOA or maybe the city power department or something where
you're you know, you're going to be hooking this new thing up. You
got to get the permit whatever. They do that for you. They handle
that for you. You're going to need a slab to put the thing on,
They do that for you. After you have it hooked up, it's
going to have to be serviced. They do that for you twenty four seven,
three hundred and sixty five days a year customer service team. That's why
now for the eighth time, by the way, news flash, they've won
the Better Business Bureau Pinnacle Award, the most prestigious customer service award the BBB
offers. I mean, they are mopping the floors with that kind of thing
because they take care of their customers, because people love the experience they have,
they love the service after the sale. I was talking to them and
there was somebody who sold their house and they actually contacted the new homeowner to
go in there and work with them on the generator that they inherited when they
got the house. Who does that? Who does that? That's the kind
of service they offer, And that's why I say, yes, generat generators
are great, but when you get it from quality home, oh, it's
way past the product you purchased. It's all the things that come with that.
And by the way, when we go through late fall and winter,
generator world slows down. People are thinking about other things. It now's the
time to get one. And it's kind of like driving in Houston traffic.
Yes, at five o'clock you can get on the roads and you will eventually
get somewhere. There are a lot of the people that are on the roads
right then you go at another time and you got a free trip right through
town. So same thing with generators. Why not contact them in these next
few months and go ahead and get that process started so that you will be
ready to go whenever you might need it. And you know, with generators,
it's not just a storm, it's our grid that is not always very
reliable. And can you imagine having something just comes on and keeps the power
going in the whole house even if you're not there. Oh well, I
know I'm droning on about that, but I am very impressed with quality home
products and the service that they provide. That is really important if you happen
to live up in the Magnolia area. On FM twenty nine to seventy eight
is Spring Creek Feed Spring Creek Feed Center is your hometown feed center up in
Magnolia on twenty nine to seventy eight, just minutes away from Graham Parkway and
Highway to forty nine. Now, they carry the fertilizers that I brag about
here on garden Line. They carry all the herbicide, fungicide, pesticide things
that you need to deal with those issues in your lawn. They have plenty
of lawn and garden and pond supplies too. By the way, great pet
food products, high quality pet food products. Again, friendly, courteous staff.
I tell you, and you've if you've listened to me along on garden
Line. The number one thing to me is the service that you get with
a company. And I want to be greeted. I want friendly people who
know what they're talking about. They help me, they're not deadheaded, and
they could care less that you walked in the door. They actually make sure
you get what you need. And that's how they treat you at Sprin Creekfeed
Center. Now again they're up in Magnolia on FM twenty nine seventy eight,
just minutes away from Graham Parkway and Highway to forty nine. Our phone number
here on garden Line is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
If you would like to give Josh a call and you can get on
the board and we can visit with you about the things that are of interest
to you. I was talking about having the strawberries I needed to get planted.
I've got a few other things. We got some herbs, we purchased
the other day that I need to get into my herb planting. I've got
a little box that I grow herbs in. I also grow them in containers.
I also grow them in the ground. I just like growing herbs and
I need to get those planted. And when I do, here's how I
do it. Number One, top quality soil mix. That's important. Number
two watermen with astro grow six twelve six. That's a fertilizer six twelve six
fertilizer. You mix it in water, you drench your plants, goes down
in the root system and it helps them get started. But it's not just
those three nutrients NPK. It's medinosol activator, it's humic acid, and it's
seaweed extracts. All present in as to grow six twelve six A water amen
at planting, a watermen about a week later. Again same product, a
watermen about a week after that. Three times water those in because you want
the roots to hit the ground running. You want them to have success and
be invigorated to be able to create that strong plant. Fall is a great
time to plant and getting your plants off to the head start with astro grow
is a great way to do it. You're not going to burn your plants,
never going to burn your plan. You can mix it up and do
it as a full of your spray if you'd like to do that. It
is not gonna burn your plants. It's really good. You can buy it
in a court bottle with a measuring cup. There's even a hose en spray
or quart that you can hook it up to and you know, spray over
plants. You're law and all kinds of thing. It's a good product.
It'll it'll work very well, but especially in my yard. It is what
I look to when I'm putting in a new perennial or annual type of plant.
Let's go out to Southwest Houston now and we're going to talk to Carolyn.
Hello, Carolyn, good morning. You had covered this before, but
I didn't write it down. I have aphids on my okra uh at this
all I get rid of it well. At this stage of the game,
Okra is slowing down, especially when we get this cool front coming in here,
and I don't worry about it. A lot I've had. I've had
some aphids on my ochre this summer. Occasionally I'll just get a strong blast
of water and just just blast as many as I can right off of them.
Uh, and they just they're just not going to come back, and
the okra is going slowing down enough to where I just don't know if it's
worth treating them. If you did want to use an insecticide on them,
I would use insecticidal soap that is very safe, very safe. Mix it
according to the label, and you just need to get the aphids wet because
it's not a poison. It kills them by dissolving the waxy coating on their
body. So insecticidal soap would be another option. But for me, you
know, having to walk to the garage and mix up something and spray it.
I just get a blast of water myself. Wonderful, all right,
thank you? All right. By the way, you know those are Cajun
aphids. That's the kind of aphid that gets on okra. Just I'm sorry
that was That was a real sad attempted humor, right there. You take
care of there you go there, You probably brought them with you. They
got on your car when you drove back over. Carolyn, thank you for
the call. It's time for us to go to the Nicky News Network.
Our phone number is seven one three two one, two fifty eight seventy four.
Give us a call, get Josh, you'll get you on the board.
And now here's Nicky Well. Good Sunday morning. Hey, it's a
beautiful eastern sky with the sun coming up out there today. I hope you
take a look at it. And by the way, when you're out and
about today, it's a good time to pick up the products you need for
your lawn going into this coming week because it is going to get cool.
We're going to get some rain and the weed seeds are going to be very
happy about that. The cool season weeds as are cool season turf diseases,
so you want to make sure and take care of those kinds of things.
You know. Microlife Fertilizers has a combination that I like to use in the
fall season, and that is the Microlife bron Patch five to one three and
Microlife Bioinoculant by inoculant. It's not just for fall, it's just that what
it does, you use it in a small amount goes a long way.
It's the violet colored bag, by the way, but the bioinoculant is putting
a lot of extra microbial content out there. Into the soil and helping to
build the soil. That way to the structure of the soil, of microbial
content of the soil as well as as it splashes up on the grass plants,
you're getting some extra microbial content there, which is important because when diseases
land, they're looking for a place where the spor can land and infect the
plant. And when you've got that area populated with a lot of different microbial
activity, let's just say it's a crowded environment, it doesn't do as well.
And then we have microbes that actually help fight disease as well. Now,
the first part of that though, is the brown patch. That's a
five to one three that is a fertilizer and it's a good one for going
into the fall season, and it also is chock full of microbes. And
that's why they call it the brown patch, because they recommend that as something
you would put it down. And as you use the microlife products over time,
here's what's going to happen. Not only are you adding the nutrients,
but you're adding organic batter, different types of You're adding a ton of microbes
to the soil, and you're building and building that environment. And when you
have good soil, you're going to have healthy plants. That's important. Good
soil has good nutrients, it has good structure, it has good organic matter
content, it's got good microbial activity, and that whole combination. You're enhancing
that when you put on something like a Microlife brown patch five to one three.
Now, there's a lot of other good micro products from Microlife. You
can go to microlifefertilizer dot com find out more about these and about others that
are out there. But for the fall season, I would recommend first and
foremost that Microlife brown Patch five to one three. It works very very well.
We're going to go now out to Magnolia and we're going to talk to
Ron. Hello, Ron, morning morning. I've got some grapefruit trees and
they're getting leechins starting to grow on them. Is there something to worry about
or is there something I can do about that? Uh? Well, not
probably something to worry about, but it may be a sign of something.
The lichens themselves are not a disease of the plant. They're a combination of
an algae and let's see an algae and fungus I believe growing together, and
you get those weird little papery, frilly, just all kinds of different lichens
that'll grow on it. They're a sign that the plant canopy is thinning out
a little bit. So anything that weakens the plant, drought, soil compaction,
lack of water, lack of nutrients, anything like that, the canopy
thins and you start to see the lichens because the plant's just not growing as
fast. So when we see plants that are just kind of sitting there and
not really vigorous, lichens are going to show up. So you can treat
them. There's a product, I believe it's called mossmas. There are also
some copper based products that can be used to suppress likened growth. But I
find that in general it's more backup, let's figure out why this plant isn't
doing better, and let's get it invigorated, and then the lichens are not
something you really need to treat. Okay, all right, thank you,
you bet run, thank you, and enjoy those grape fruit trees. Yeah,
lichen is an interesting thing. We got a couple of several things out
there that are associated with plant problems, but there really aren't the cause of
the plant problem. Ball moss is a good example. Ball moss grows in
trees. You see trees that are declining, it's like they're two thirds dead
and the ball moss is everwhere. And people think the ball mass killed them.
Well, no, the ball moss had its opportunities because as that plant
got weak and as the canopy thins, the ball moss just proliferates. But
remember this. I I can tell you that ball moss will grow on a
power line. I've seen it over the over the highway in Austin, Texas.
Took a picture one one time because if it needed plant, sap or
something to grow, how could it grow on a power line. You see
lichens on fence posts and rocks. They're not a parasite of the plant.
They're just along for the ride. And there are more a sign that something
else isn't isn't doing really well. If you're in the in the market for
a new roof and maybe your old roof has damage, maybe it's just age.
Maybe you want a different kind of roof. Maybe you got shingles and
you'd like a nice single seam metal roof. You know that that's an idea
right there. Maybe you would like to switch out from a standard shingle roof
to a Brinkman's timberline solar shingle roof. Well, Brinkman's a company that can
do that. Can you imagine that your roof itself, not a panel on
the roof, but your roof itself is making electricity? Sure? Could I
use that this summer? Right now? All of a sudden blazed down.
Well, Brinkman's got you covered now. They they've been doing this for fifty
years. They give twenty five years warranty on their workmanship, and they use
only quality products. That's why they won the Better Business Bureau Pinnacle of Ward
twenty twenty two. You can go to the website Brinkman Quality dot com,
or you can just give them a call two eight one four eight zero seventy
six sixty three. Listen, you don't stay in business in the Greater Houston
area for fifty years unless you are using quality products, doing quality work,
and taking care of your customers. And that's Brinkman Quality. Our phone number
is seven to one three two one two k t r H. If you'd
like to give us a call seven to one three two one two k t
r H. That this cool weather has really gotten kind of gotten me excited.
I like cool weather now. I don't want to be cold all the
time. But after you've been through months and months and months of blazing hot
summer weather, it's time for a break, and we're about to get one.
So I hope you enjoy that. Take advantage of being outside. Couple
of tips. If you've got let's say, holiday cactus, Thanksgiving cactus,
Christmas cactus that is outside, I put mine outside because as the day links
get shorter, and as you get that cooler weather, they'll set the bloom
buds and then you can have the beautiful bloom season. If you have them
outside, just watch, don't let them don't let that temperature drop below definitely
not below fifty degrees, maybe you know, somewhere in the fifty to fifty
five range. If it's going a little colder than that, I'd go ahead
and bring them in, But mind stay out in the mid fifties and that
helps with that blooming cycle. But just be aware of that if you've got
other house plants out there, that's a little bit of a shock to get
a cold when it drops down a little too far. So we're not hitting
the forties. I don't believe this week, but just always be aware of
that, because yeah, you won't take care of them and have beautiful,
beautiful blooms. By the way, if you've if you've got Christmas cactus or
Thanksgiving cactus from past years and you would like to, you know, rejuvenate
it. When we come back, I'm going to talk about how you get
those things to bloom again. Right now, we're going to take a break
our phone number seven one three two one two k t RH will be right
back and Jack, you'll be the first up. Well, good Sunday morning
on what is going to be a great day to get out this afternoon,
get a little bit of gardening done, maybe a little bit of gardening shopping.
You know, we do have some things we need to be picking up
right now. There's a lot lot happening and our garden centers are just chock
full, I know, Kingwood Garden Center, Warren's Garden Center out in the
Kingwood area. I mean, if you live and we always talk about it
as a Kingwood deal, but you know, if you live in a Task
casita, if you live in Hoffmann or Umble anywhere in that whole region out
there, Porter there's a local Garden Center for you both of them. Kingwood
Garden Center has got a real a good deal on the snapdragons. You buy
them by the flat right now. And snap dragons are just beautiful. They're
a cheery plant. I mean they I don't know, they just kind of
make you happy looking at them. The interesting flower forms, the spikes,
there's types that are very compact that make a bedding plant. There are types
of get tall and you actually use for a cut flour. And boy,
I tell you Kingwood Garden Center, that gift shop is loaded up for fall
and it is absolutely beautiful as it always is inside there. The Warrens Garden
Center as well. I mean, you know, you know when you go
there, you're gonna have people that know what they're talking about. They're gonna
help you. They're gonna direct you to a wide variety of things, because
that's what they have at Warrens is a wide variety. They they've got you
covered on all those fertilizers that I talk about. They've got you covered on
soils. Do you need a rose soil? Do you need you know,
any kind of a bed mix in a bag. They've they've got it out
there at Warren's in Kingwood Garden Centers. Really simple as that. Hey,
let's go up to Conro and we're gonna talk to Jack. Hello, Jack,
Hello, how can we help? Yeah? Yeah, I put some
pre emerging down and some Paul fertilizer from Ace and but I think I was
a little late. Come up. My yard is covered with some flowering weed
and I'm mowing it spreading the seas and I'm wondering if I can do anything
about that, or I just have to wait this out to the winter.
Now, will you say sunflowery weed? Could you describe it a little more
for me? No, they're like weeds, but they have little bitty pink
white flowers on it. Ah, Okay, it's just tiny. Yeah.
That is called slender astor, and slender ast is a problem. If I
were you now, you probably don't want to hear this, But get out
and pull them up. They come out of one spot where there's a tap
root, and you can grab that and pull it out of the ground and
it'll be all interwoven into your grass. But every one of the those plants,
every flower's got like fifty seeds, and every plant has a bunch of
flowers and so this is a stage of the season where spraying them is not
going to be effective. They've reached what we call a reproductive stage and the
post emergent weed killer is not going to work. But you can get as
much of the seed out as possible. So if you're able to do that,
I would highly recommend it, just because you know it's going to set
you up for a lot more next year. The way to deal with those
is as we get into next spring season, putting down a pre emergent product
and then repeating it about sixty to ninety days later to extend that coverage and
prevent the plants forever getting established. That's a sneaky weed jack. It'll it
comes up, you don't really know it's there, and the people first notice
it because it's woven into the turf. They first notice it. When the
little daisy like pink flowers start to show up. Well then it's a little
late to right. So just a thought there on those, alrighty, all
right, well good luck with good luck with that, I know, just
the Also in the meantime, just make sure you do the fall fertilization on
your lawn if you haven't already, and continue to just build that lawn with
mowing, watering, and fertilizing through the season, and it'll choke out most
of your weed problems. The slender asters one of the few that survives in
a dense, healthy lawn. But the rest of them, you does it
help to mow it, you know, lower or higher or just regular bat
That plant adjusts to whatever you do if you have that weed. If you
can go to a vacant lot and see those weeds and they are literally almost
waist high, but they get in a lawn, we mow them and they
go sideways, and you mow lower and they just go sideways lower. I
mean, they are a weed that mowing. It's not like a big grassbur
sticking up in the air. It's a tougher one to deal with. Yeah,
if you haven't gone online to my lawn care schedule, it's gardening with
skip dot com that schedules online. You can see from January to December,
the fertilizers you make, both synthetic and organic, the times to air rate
to mineral supplement, and how to mow or wind to mow, and just
some tips on watering and mowing. So I think you'll find that helpful you
how to check that out? Okay, thank you very much. All right,
Jack, you take care up there. I used to live in Conra
a long time ago. That's a great community up there, love it.
Let's see. I want to talk about the fact that now is the time
to plant woody ornamentals, and that includes trees and shrubs and woody vines.
It's also the time plant perennials and all kinds of other things too. But
if you've been thinking about planting a tree now, let's just say next summer
is going to get as miserable as this summer, god, or even half
that bad. You should get the tree planted now, because it has months
and the roots will grow in our mild climate here, It'll grow all winter
long and they'll get established. And when next summer comes, the tree planted
now will be way ahead of the tree planted let's say in May, for
example. Now, who can help you with that, well, tree farm
can Verden Tree Farms got several locations. They're in West Houston on Barker Cyprus.
They're up in the heights where Yale Street and I ten come together,
and then there's one down in Paarland on Broadway Street, just a few blocks
away from Killing Steakhouse by the way. Now, Verdant Tree Farm will help
you pick out the tree you need, take them a picture, talk to
them. They'll do a free consultation. You know, hey, this is
one I think would work. Walk out in the yard, pick the tree
you want in their tree yard and pick the tree you want. They'll tag
it, they'll bring it, they'll plant it right. The sooner you get
it done, the better. And if you're thinking about planting a tree,
now's the time. Absolutely the time of the year. And as we like
to say, the best time to plant a tree was fifty years ago.
The next best time is today. Verdant Treefarm dot com. They can get
you set up. We're going to now head out to Missouri City and talk
to Dana. Hello Dana, good morning, and it's SANAA sorry, no
problem. So my grass over the summer just took a beating. I mean,
there are areas that are just my Saint Augustine used to be really thick
and lush, and it's it's area that just died out. I'm trying to
figure out what I need to do, you know, to kind of get
that turned around. You know, I just put some fall fertilizer down.
I was I was thinking about doing, you know, a truckload of composts
and spreading that out and trying to help because the dirt is clay when you
get down about three three inches or so. I'm just trying to you know,
I really really missed my grass the way it used to be. Yes,
So I'm just trying to figure out, you know, what's what's the
best way to get started. What are some of the steps that I need
to take to try to You're don't either dig all it, dig that part
out and put new sawd down or will it come back? Yeah? You
know, I just I'm I'm about to pull what little hair I have left,
all right, Dana, Dana, I've got about a minute here left
to answer, so I'm gonna I'm gonna go quick on it. But bottom
line is residing if the area is large, if it's you know, you've
got grass sprigs that are alive a foot apart, well that will cover back
over without resotting. But if you've got larger areas, you're gonna have to
put sod in those areas. I would probably wait to put that side down
until we get into the spring when the grass is growing about April to put
the new sawd down and water it in. In the meantime, you can
leave the old stuff there, old stuff there that's dead, or you can
rake it out. But whenever you expose the soil to sunlight, here comes
weeds. So I would not do a lot of weed control anytime within a
few months of when you're going to put the sod down, because those products
are meant to inhibit root growth. And if you're going to lay sod right
down on a soil that's had pre emergent put on it recently, that's not
a good thing. So you can decide which way you want to go on
that, but that residing is probably going to be necessary, and that would
give you a good time now to do any filling up holes. You know
Randy's talk about the kill, till and fill, where you kill the thing,
kill the weeds and everything you fill, you know, or I said
that backwards, but you know what I mean, level it out in any
kind of scratching up the soil to loosen it before you lay your sod.
But that would be things that leveling out the soil and then getting it loosened
up would be prior to whenever you're going to lay that sod. All right,
thank you very much. All right. And in the meantime, if
you've got living grass out there, go ahead and do that fall fertilizer because
we want it. It's already weak. We want to strengthen it before we
go into winter. Comes out stronger in the spring. Got you all right,
sir, Thank you, thank you you take care. Wow, that
error went by fast seven one three two one two. K t r H.
Get on the boards. We'll be right back. K t r H
Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this
program. Welcome to k t r H Garden Line with Skip Ricter. It's
crazy shrip. Just watch him as many septasy not a sign. Well,
good morning, good morning. You're listening in the Garden Line. I'm glad
you're listening. We're to answer gardening questions, talk about gardening things that are
interest to you and if you'd like to give us calf seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven
four. It's as simple as that. I was talking about soils earlier in
the importance of quality soils. And if you are thinking about putting in a
garden bed, or if you need to build up a garden bed you already
have, or maybe fill a box that you're growing in, such as a
vego garden. Here's the deal that you don't want to miss out on.
And this is from Heirloom Soils, by the way. Uh, they have
a big fall special on the bulk soils that they have, So for example,
the veggie and herb mix that is outstanding for vegetables, herbs. Heck,
it's good for flowers too, by the way, and a lot of
other things. But veggie and herb mix fall special. It's a one hundred
and nineteen dollars bulk pard. Or if you want a supersack, it's one
hundred and forty eight dollars per cubic yard. Now, a supersack's a big
giant sack that holds a cubic yard of mix and they just set it right
there in your driveway. It's very neat and clean, easy to do.
If you'd rather go out and go pick it up yourself out in porter,
you can do that. If you want to have it delivered the bulk,
for example, delivered to your house, dumped on the driveway. You can
do that too. But these are really good, significant discount deals. Now
the rose soil that they have, that again is outstanding for many things beyond
roses, but definitely roses and shrubs and perennial plants. Seventy dollars bulk,
ninety nine dollars for the supersack. And that's all at Heirloom Soils. Now
you can go to Airloomsoilsoftexas dot com and find out more. But here's your
chance to get those bulk deliveries. To create the new bed, to fill
a box, to anything that you need to do where you need more than
a few bags of soil to do it. That's your deal. So don't
don't delay taking advantage of that, because you're not gonna find prices like that
again, very very often anywhere around town. Now I'm going to head out
to northwest Houston and we're going to talk to Ed. Hello, Ed morning,
Sure morning. I have three crape myrtles, probably twenty five years old,
and now one of them especially is dropping leaves ninety miles now. The
other two are looking kind of poolly like they're about to start okay, but
they just they look like they need some food. I don't know what to
give them. Well, you know, we're in the fall season, and
leaf drop is not unusual. It's a little early, but I think for
a lot of our plants, and I've seen this on crape myrtles quite a
bit, there's just so much stress from this summer that they started dropping a
little bit earlier, and so you don't want to invigorate them to try to
put new growth on because you know a freeze is coming and tender sucond on
growth. That's not a good combo. So I would I would just let
them go ahead and do what they're doing. Make sure the soil is adequately
moist, which it should be with the rains we've had in the temperature,
and once the leaves drop off, they're not going to need They're not gonna
be using much water anyway. But do that when if you want to do
some fertilization in the winter time, you can just to get the nutrients down
in the soil. If it were mine, I think i'd wait until spring
when they're starting some new growth and get a fertilizer on them at that time
to support the new growth. Okay, yeah, I just got a little
work because next little neighbor has too, and here's a still green green,
much greener than mine. Mine just looked like that. He hit this this
brown and stage a little early to me. So that's why I wanted to
ask you a questions they have and we've seen that quite a bit around town.
So it's just, you know, it's just not a problem what we're
dealing with a way, that's true. All right, Well, you take
care, enjoy those those great myrtles. Myrtles are a unique plant. They
bloom for about three months during the about ninety days of blooming, and that
varies with varieties, but really outstanding. Get them in all sizes, Get
them in all colors. You know, there's the typical red and pink and
white, and there's even lavender colors out there that are just beautiful, some
very deep red colors. The crammurtles are really versatile plant. They call it
the lilac of the South, and that's basically because we can't grow lilacs in
the South. But I jokingly say, if you miss your lilacs, buy
some perfume and a crape myrtle and squirt the bush with it and there you
go. That's about as closest we can get to it down here. But
it is a very nice, versatile plant. Lots of lots of advantages to
it. I was, I'm always checking in on our local mom and pop
garden centers and what do they have, and what's going on there, what's
happening And in tended Forest, it's just a it's a wonderful place. If
you haven't been there. It's on FM twenty seven fifty nine in Richmond,
So if you're en Richmond heading up towards sugar Land direction on fifty nine,
it's off to the right FM twenty seven fifty nine And when you drive out
there, you just drive up and it's like you've entered another little world.
I mean, I love the buildings. It's weird to talk about nursing until
you like the buildings, but I really do. They just put in a
new herb area, They put in a new vegetable area. By the way,
their succulent house is restocked. That's that hut that they grow in.
Oh my gosh. They have a wide variety of succulents, and succulents are
really popular now. You know, you go through a summer like we just
did, and suddenly succulents start looking even better because they're so darn tough when
it comes to heat and drought. But they've got those and they've got all
kinds of cool season color. I know, the cyclomene are in out there.
A lot of other good things are in out there. I just wanted
to also mention they have orchids, a lot of beautiful orchids in the restock.
And you know orchids. People think of orchids as something that's hard to
grow, but what the kind you typically find now in a garden center is
going to be the moth orchid, and those are easy to grow. They're
very easy to grow. And if you will give them some humidity and some
bright light but not direct sun, and don't over water them, and they're
potted up in a way to make overwatering hard to do, they will just
do well. I've got some that bloom year after year, and I got
to admit it, I neglect those things more than I should. But you
got to go check out the orchids that they have out and enchanted for us.
And of course when you're out there, lots of cool color, lots
of ornamentals, lots of woody shrubs and trees and vines and all kinds of
other things. Of course, if you need mums and decorations, they've got
that. It's pretty much everything you need enchanted for us, as simple as
that. Hey, the phone number is two eight one three excuse me,
nine to three seven ninety nine to eight one three seven ninety four forty nine.
Our phone number here if you'd like to give us a call. A
garden Line is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Uh. Microlife Fertilizers, Well,
the folks at Microlife have put together a really nice combination of products,
and I want to come back and talk to you when we get back from
break here about a blue plus blue product combination that I think is really really
cool from the folks at Microlife. Right now, we're going to take that
break and we'll be right back. Halloween music there. Hey, you're listening
to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here
to answer your gardening questions at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Before I went to break, I talked about the Microlife Blue plus
Blue. I don't know if that's what they call it. That's what I
call it. It is the microL Life Ultimate, the eight four six organic
fertilizer. That's a blue bag and it is a It's just a quality mix.
It's got a good concentration of nutrients. So when you're when you're planting
a plant, you want to put some of this in the soil around the
plant. You can do that because Microlife fertilizers are not going to burn your
plants. They're not a salt based fertilizer. Normally I say, don't throw
fertilizer in the planting hole, but this will be an exception to that,
and I wouldn't throw it in the planting hole. I would mix it in
the backfield as you put it back in. They also have the Microlife Ocean
Harvest. That's a second blue that is a liquid sea food fish based product
that you can use to water plants in. You can use it as a
foliar feed if you would like to do that, or you can mix it
up and use it to water your plants in. So if you're trying to
put in a new tree, shrub or other plant, this is be a
good combination for that. Again from the folks at Microlife. Now you can
go to Microlifefertilizers dot com and learn about these products and learn about other products
that they have, and most importantly, where can you get them? And
I can just tell you this, I'll give you a shortcut everywhere. They're
pretty much pretty much everywhere that we have out there. Well, let's go
back to the phones now. We're going to go to Bake Cliff and talk
to Joan. Hello, Joan, good morning, Good morning. I have
recently purchased an avocata three, my first I have no experience with him,
and I didn't know if I should put it in the ground this fall or
if I should put it in a big pot and wait for spring. I
would put it in a pot and wait for spring. And here's why avocados
are marginal lee hardy. Here. You may go through years without any freeze
significant freeze damage, or we may have a year that kills them way back
and they kind of base the resprout back out again. So we don't know
what kind of winter we're going to have for sure. So since you're asking,
if you were asking this question back in this summer, i'd say put
it in the ground. But if now that you're asking it at this point,
I would hold on to it and just make sure it's okay, get
it, leave it outside as much as you can to get to get good
sunlight. But just move it in when we're going to drop down below freezing,
just to be extra careful with it, and then get it back out
when we passed the last frostrate and spring, get it out in the ground,
get it going. Okay, That's what I needed to hear. Thank
you you, bet Jo, good day you too. Thank you very much
for that call. Let's see. We are now going to go to talk
to Don in Cyprus. Hello Don, Hello Skip. I've got a couple
of fruit trees that are in ten gallon pots that I put put in just
in the fall this year, okay. And then I have a number of
they were new sprouted live oak trees that I have in like two or three
gallon pots okay, And I'm curious how hardy they are. And when I
maybe think to bring them in, I know it's getting down into the mid
thirties this week. Yeah, the the potted you said, live oak,
right, was one of them. Yes, the live oaks are going to
be plenty hardy. Anytime you have a plant in the container, that container
soil can get much much colder than the soil in the ground because it's exposed
to air on three sides or for size, and so I would maybe put
it up against the house or something like that, just a little bit of
a protected spot. But they'll be okay. Now the fruit tree. What
kind of fruit trees you got in pots? One is blood orange I think
it is okay, and the other is a grapefruit. Oh okay, Well,
ten gallons is a good starting sized pot. But you're gonna need to
bump those up here in time so they keep growing, especially that grapefruit that
is a very large type of citrus tree, and so keeping it in a
really small pots a little bit of a challenge till I go from a ten
to a twenty in the fall. You could, Yeah, I want to
keep them in pots. Yeah, well that would be it if you can
do that. You know, the equivalent of a half whiskey barrel kind of
size is pretty good. I've never tried growing a grapefruit and that size of
pot. I know we have smaller cetrus like satsuma, oranges, kumquats,
or smaller the mere lemon and the limes we grow in smaller pots. But
just kind of watch them and see how they're doing. Here's the big big
thing. When we get to hot summer weather. If that tree is trying
to be a big tree in a little pot, it's going to dry it
really fast, and so you're going to have to watch to make sure it
doesn't go into drought stress. And I can't tay how off into water because
it depends on what I was watering them almost every day, every day or
every other day during the heat of our drought. Well that it came both
of them came through real Well, yeah, that's probably going to be necessary.
But yeah, I would bring the I would bring the citrus if you
could put it in a place where you could roll it into the garage.
Anytime it's going to drop down below freezing, I would just do that.
Uh, they're going to be a little heartier than that, but not much,
and so uh don't what degree below freezing. I'd bring the citrus into
the garage just to be And then one other quick question. I have a
pecan tree that that fruited for the first time this year and just a little
just a few pecans really, but what should there should I add zinc?
Is it zinc to that? In high pH soils, Zinc is helpful.
But you'll know you need zinc because the leaves instead of getting full sized and
they look like a pecan leaf. You know, pecan leaf looks like a
spear. They'll be they call a mouse eared. They're like stunted and a
little more round it at the tip. That's a sign of a zinc deficiency.
You may not have a zinc problem in your soil, and you may
not. It looks beautiful. I would leave it alone. Zinc is a
whole the thing to deal with, and if you don't have to, I
wouldn't just add it just because it's a pecan tree. I've just been putting.
You know what's on my grass? I pretty much follow pretty close to
your plan. Look for the grass and of course the tree is in it.
So yeah, I use I used her fertilizer on my fruit trees,
pecan trees especially. I've done that too. It's fine. To do.
I mean, we have specially fertilizers and they're fine. I mean, if
you got them, use them. If you see them. It's right now
a good time to add a couple of more fruit trees, it is.
I like to buy them in like a three gallon pot and then transplant them.
Yeah, that'd be a good time to do that all the way through
them. In fact, you know, fruit trees you can plan any time
of the year if they're a container grown, but now's the best time.
And with bear root trees, if you buy bear root trees, we typically
get those in the dead of winter and try to get them in the ground
in January before you know who has a lot of the like smaller three allen
free. I also might have some trimming questions for for whoever I go to
Webre. You're up in Cyprus, so plants for all seasons, and arbor
Gate and RCW all three are pretty close to you, and they all carry
fruit trees and they can all guide you on the proper way to handle whatever
you're purchasing. Awesome, thank you, sir. Yeah, you're lucky up
there. By the way, you are loaded with really outstanding garden center.
So that you're fortunate. Oh yeah, yeah, the plants for all seasons
I've gone to for thirty years or so. All right, there you go.
Well, hey, thank you for the call. I appreciate that very
much, and good luck with your fruit trees. Talking about about trees and
planting. Anytime that you're going to put in a woody ornamental when you buy
it, just go ahead and get a tree hug or sprinkler. Because here's
the deal. Now, I say woody ornamentally, I include fruit trees in
that as well. Any woody plant. As that tree gets established, you
need to water it right at the base because that's where the roots are early
on. But then you want to expand that watering area as the plant grows
and as we get into really hot summer weather. And a tree hugger goes
around the tree, hooks to a hose. You turn it on depending on
how high you have it turned on. The little valve there at the base
of it. You can water a large area if you want, and it
will water that area under the tree canopy and just beyond that, and that's
the area where you need to focus. Once your tree has become established,
Now you can go to tree Hugger Sprinkler dot com find out more information about
them. They're available in most of our garden centers, ace hardware stores,
feed stores. You're going to find treehre in a lot of places. Just
go to tree Hugger Sprinkler dot com and you can find what you're looking for.
Let's head to Alvin and talk to Larry. Now, Hello, Larry,
how you doing well? I'm doing well? What's up? Well?
I've got a problem with aay is I put on the front of a house
to make it like a hedgerow? Yes, sir, but even with the
water in a sprinker system, they didn't make it very good to the heat.
Okay, Well, I'm wondering what I'm wondering. What a good plant
to make a hedge out of along the front of the house would be.
For Texas weather, what's the amount of sunlight that you get there morning sun
and no after doing sun? Okay, A good one would be Laura pedlum
Chinese witch hazel. It's got burgundy colored foliage. When the new growth comes
out, get some cool weather on it. It has a burgundy color.
In the spring, it's got beautiful shaggy, little strappy pink hot pink petals
that are really pretty. Just when you buy one, read the label.
How big does it get? The old type could get fifteen feet high or
more, and they grew eventually into almost a little well, into a little
tree. Some of the new ones are more dwarf. So pick one that's
going to get about the size you want it to be, and as you
keep it hedged, it will be beautiful. You don't even have to keep
it hedged if you don't want to. That that sounded like what you were
looking for. I want to make the hedges about twenty foot wide across the
house. Would that work there? Oh? Yeah, yeah, you ft
them about whatever? Diches Oh no, no, no, no, no,
not near that wide. So here's here's a general tip for hedges.
If you look at a plant, and I'm going to make up a number,
let's just say you buy a Chinese witch angel that's going to be four
feet or five feet wide, then you want to plant it about two thirds
that far apart. So if it was four feet, you know, you
may look at a little over a little under three feet or something, and
that way it forms a hedge. The closer you get, the more plants
you're purchasing, and at some point you don't need to buy that many plants.
But if you put them too far apart, you have to wait forever
for them to reach each other and break ahead. But two thirds is a
pretty good rule of thumb if you're putting in a hedgerow of anything. Okay,
my second question is I down the microlife the purple back stuff about two
months ago when I followed up with that brown bag for brown Patch, big
bag and my yard. I've always been by the I always go by the
radio limit schedule. But I'm starting to get some pale yellow in it.
Okay, hard to put in a street green down now? Or is it
too much time? No? No, no, don't do nitrogen now.
Don't do the extra nitrogen now. That could be a number of things.
It could be a little bit of a root problem going on. It could
be a droughty issue. Lots of different stresses can cause that. But it's
not a fertilizer thing that you need to deal with. If you're seeing a
little bit of yellowing on the grass right now, just it's probably a lack
of roots. It could be from take all root rot. You could try
a little bit of an iron application if you wanted. If it's an iron
efficiency causing the yellowing, that would help that. Okay, well how about
some asia bite You could do that, but that's not going to have that
particular nutrient at a high enough level to treat for the yellowing itself. Hey,
I've got I've got to go to our mid hour break. But if
you quick quick question, well hang on and when we come back from a
break, I'll be glad to take it on and see how we can help.
We are heading to break. Here's Nikki our number seven one three two
one two k t RH. Teach your kids how to chant that when they're
walking down the street for Halloween. Hey, you're listening to gardenline seven one
three two one two five eight seven four is our number. If you're looking
for a roof, I've got a company that you need to definitely give a
call. And that why am I saying that? Well, this company has
been around for fifty years. They fully warrant their work, twenty five years
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is a huge compliment coming from your customers. The company is Brinckman roofing.
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is collecting energy and making electricity. Brinkman Quality dot Com. That's the name
of the company, Brinkman Quality dot Com. The website two eight one four
eight oh seventy six sixty three is a phone number. That's all you need
to know. Don't mess around. Don't mess around with fly by night people
sticking a card in your door. Go with someone who's from here, who
lives here and for a very long time, has proven that they take care
of their customers. That's Brinkman. We're going to go back out to Larry
now, Larry, I think you had some other question to go with your
shrub question, Yes, sir, I did. I would like to know
where I could go with one of those sponsored nurseries on garden Line to pick
up these Laura pedlums where there's a year down in Alvin. You're a little
bit of a distance out there, I think probably, And i'd have to
get the map out here and kind of look at at distances from you.
I think some of the enchanted folks out toward Richmond Way might be one that
is not super super close, but it's not too too darn far either,
and it's well worth the trip. You might want to try one of those.
Now, you know here in Houston we got good nurseries all different directions,
so uh, you're going to not have trouble finding Laura pedlums in different
sizes. Okay, So the iron, I'll get the iron at the A's
hard Worth to treat the lawn. Yes, and then I'll either go to
mass or I'll go to Cannon, I guess to see what they got for
shrubs. So is it the right time of year to plant those war pedals?
Absolutely? Best time of the year to plan any What do you and
in the past always usual roads soil, What do you suggest to put around
them? Roussel is fine. I would mix it into the ground that you
have and then dig the hole in plant. I would go about and do
it that way, But it's an excellent mix for a lot of things.
Especially the lower pedlums would be especially well adapted to that. Okay, and
then you would you say Pansy's is a good flowering plant to put in for
the cool season. Pansy is an excellent one. It's one of the most
cold hardy. I like Viola's a little better than Pansy's. The flower is
smaller, but you have more flowers. And after a rainstorm sometimes pansies can
get a little beat up. But the violas just seem to hold up a
little bit better. But both of them are outstanding. I'm not dissing January
in February. Oh yeah, yeah, they if it's cold, they're happy.
Okay, Well you've answered my questions, all right, Larry, good
luck, get out there and enjoy that, have a very very good time
doing it. Where are we going from here? Let's see, we're going
to go to Rebecca in Sharpstown. Hello, Rebecca, Hey, Skip.
I had three trees lost, all three to the ganoderma. Yes, okay,
the arbor has told me we can replant another tree because we need shade.
Yes, but how far from the trunk or the hole of where the
three trees were how far away? Because he said, don't put it back
in the same hole. Well, that's yeah, And that's not so much
because of ganoderma. That's because just when you you've had a tree that's growing
and you got all this essentially wood in the soil, it's kind of hard
to get good soil mixed to go right up around the new tree. So
just move over enough to where you don't have wood in the way, basically
is what that amounts to. So you are you talking like maybe two or
three feet from the base. Yeah, if you know, if it was
a giant, if it was a giant, giant becomes yeah, yeah,
because if it was a large one, you're gonna have big roots out several
feet, so that becomes a problem digging a hole. Yeah, okay,
okay, okay, that's what I needed to know. Thank you very much.
All right, thank you. I appreciate appreciate that call very much.
Let's see remote a Rob. But Rob has disappeared, so let's go to
Greg in Kingwood. Hey, Greg, how can we help? I skipped
part my front lawn up this summer. Water's too expensive to water it's so
it's crunchy and brown now, and I think I got clay in that soil.
Get any ideas for bringing that back? I think it's Sant Augustine.
Okay, well, and its Yeah. If you get out on your hands
and knees and the runners themselves are brown, then it's dead. Saint Augustine
doesn't live below ground. It's all above ground. There's no rhizomes underneath the
ground, like with Bermuda and Zoezia. So if it's dead then you just
have to pull the debris out of there and reside that area. It's a
little late in the season to reside, you can, but root growth is
going to slow down a lot here on Saint Augustine's, so we're at my
yard. I'd probably wait and let the spring growth start up and then do
the sodding. Then okay, great, yeah, all right. If the
roots are brown, it's dead. It's no good. You're gonna have to
pull up and reside in the spring. If the runners, well, yeah,
the runners are crawl along the top of the ground on Saint Augustine.
Yes, if that's brown, it's a goner. All right. Sorry,
you ahead, your sorry you did that? Had that happen to your lawn.
I know a lot of people can feel your pain on that one for
sure. Uh. You know when we talk about quality and good soils and
things that will help enhance the soil, uh, Nature's Way has that all
of that. I mean they were a leader for a long long time historically
a leader in the quality soil components. They know how to make composts.
They have a wide range of compost options. Every Friday is Fungal Friday.
Fungal based compost products ten percent off bags, twenty percent off bulk, and
they have plenty of it there. They have rose soil, they have leaf
mole composts, they know how to make those. And they also while you're
out there, they've got a nice little native plant nursery and not just natives,
but includes natives out in their property. Now that's if you go north
on thirty or forty five, when you get to where fourteen eighty eighty eight
comes in, just turn right, go across the railroad tracks, you'll be
at Nature's Way. Here's a phone number nine three six three two one sixty
nine ninety. Let them set you up with a quality product, because remember
brown stuff before green stuff. All right, Now we are going to head
out to Marty in Fairfield. Hello, Marty, morning Skitnie. Hey,
I heard you say something earlier about pulling some tomatoes in with the cold weather
coming. But I also have squash and eggplants and green tomatoes and miscellaneous peppers
and stuff. But do I have to bring all of that in? Well,
if it's going to freeze, it'll it'll damage all of those. But
if we're just talking about you know it's getting cool, they're not moving fast
enough. They none of those will ripen indoors. They are what they are
when you harvest them. So you can eat squash from the time the bloom
falls off all the way up until it gets big, so there's no ripening
of the squash to worry about. And pepper's the same way. You can
eat green peppers or you can let them turn red at this point in the
season, unless it's going to get cold enough to do damage to them at
your location, I would just leave them out there. Yeah. No,
it's supposed to be the lowest as I saw was like thirty eight. Okay,
they should be, Okay. I wouldn't planning on bringing anything in,
not even my tomatoes. All right, Well, at thirty eight. You
can leave them. They'll probably be okay. But if we get some fraud
they're getting close to frostable temperatures there, then you might have some problems.
But hey Martin, I got to run, got to run. Do an
app Thank you for the call. I appreciate that very much. Our number
is seven one three two one two fifty eight. Give Josh a call.
We'll get you on the board stand. You'll be first when we come back.
Well, good morning. You're listening to garden Line and we are having
a good time talking about all kinds of things that are going on out in
the lawn and of course out in the garden. We're gonna head out now
to Eagle Lake and talk to Stan. Hello Stan, Hey, good morning,
Skip, Good morning all. I have a question regarding potatoes that were
planted in obviously August in time in the window. Red potatoes. I think
they're redlest soda. Okay, They're over twelve inches tall and they just started
to curl. The leaves just started to make a fist. You know what
I'm saying. Okay, don't know. We came up with three things.
I'm not going to buy us your professional answer. I want to know what
you think. Okay, well, there there are some different things that could
cause. First of all, go unfold some leaves, unfurl some leaves and
see if you see a bunch of aphids in there feeding on them, or
any other kind of pest. Certain kinds of pests will cause that plant leaf
to deform and twist and curl around them. And so that'd be the first
thing I'd look for. That's an easy one, yes or no. The
next thing would be, has any kind of a herbicide for broad leaf weeds,
that is, especially a two to four D based herbicide been used around
the plants? Or have you used a sprayer on the potatoes that might have
contained a herbicide like that in the past. That would be the second question.
Any thoughts on those aphids? I looked at them yesterday and they usually
hang out on the underside of a good leaf, right, yeah, okay,
so I found no sign of that. Okay, As far as herbicide,
it wouldn't be anything that the property owner had applied. If anything,
it would have been drift and well probably not. Then you know, if
we were in hot summer weather. There are certain kinds of things that can
volatilize and drift more so than they would right now. The only other thing
would be something viral, and that would be a little bit longer shot,
but that I guess is a possibility. Okay, nobody's dug anything up yet.
I'm curious. Yeah, I mean, even those little red potatoes are
just excellent. So yeah, Well, one other thing you could do,
Stan, I can put you on hold here as we're done, and you
could send me some close up photos. Show me the whole potato row and
then get up close on a leaf. Make sure it's in sharp focus.
Let me take a look at them, and if I have a thought on
it, I'll come in. You know, if it's pretty much what I
already said, then I've already said it. I won't I won't just repeat
it, but let me take a look. I'll be happy to do that.
That's great. May I have your email address? Yes, I'll put
you on hold and Josh I'll pick up the phone and he will give that
to you. Thank you for that, for that call. The folks at
Arburgate have created a really cool one two three system. The one two three
is pretty much what you need when you're going to put a plant in the
ground and take care of it. And so what is that. Well,
first of all, it's an organic food complete. That's a four to four
to three plus ten percent calcium organic fertilizer. You can use this on your
launch a good ratio for this fall season, by the way, because you
know you've got a little the nitrogen and the potassium are getting close to the
same same range there. And it's not just for launch. You can use
it on flowers and shrubs and your vegetable gardens and so on. Eleven different
types of microhizol fungi in there, and it gradually releases. Being an organic
mature forty five percent organic matter, lots of trace minerals in it as well.
That's organic food complete from arborgate. Then the other two are for your
soil. There's organic soil complete and then there is or of course the fertilizer
is two, but organic soil complete and organic compost complete. If the organic
soil complete is a special blend, it's got compost in, large particle sand
and expanded shale all in it. So think of it as a growing mix
a soil that will do very very well. Now the organic compost complete again,
we get some of that expanded shale, which is a long term benefit
to clay soils. You can never you always keep adding the expanded shale if
you've got a clay with poor drainage. But this particular compost complete has two
different kinds of compost blended together, really good beneficial diversity of microbes in it.
And again when you put those three together, organic food complete, organic
soil complete, organic compost complete, you have a winning combination on having success.
You know, you go the Garbagate, you buy these beautiful healthy plants.
You're going to take home and plant them. You want them to have
success. So brown stuff before green stuff. Remember, take care of these
plants by can carry the soil first with these three products. By the way,
when you're at Arbagate, check out that new wonderful parking lot behind the
building Trishall Road. Whether whichever direction you're coming before or after Arburgate, you
can turn in Trisher Road parking lots behind it. Oh my gosh, it's
convenient, wonderful, wonderful. Let's head out now we're going to go to
sugar Land and talk to Steve. Hello, Steve, Hey, you have
it going well. Thank you. Good I'm calling my soil after the heat
of this past summer is just severely compacted with line, you know, with
cracks going all through down my yard where you know it's separated maybe a half
inch full inch apart, and trying to figure out how to decompact the soil
so my graants will grow because much like the man and Siana plantation earlier.
Yes, I've got all sorts of brown patches and it's all around, you
know, wherever the cracks and the soil are, and this is your lawn
soil talking about this is my lawn. Correct. So you can't rototilla lawn
and mix in composts and things. What you can do, First of all,
you need to get it moistened so that it's not like concrete with the
giant cracks. And as we get some rain that helps to swell it back
up again. When it is moist but not supersaturated, you don't want it
to be like gouey gumbo. You want it to be moist. You can
do a core aeration and a compost top dressing. A cororation pulls the plugs
out of the soil, and you can rent machines to do it, but
they tend to not do as good a job as a really high quality machine
that reaches down into the soil and pulls that core out and drops it on
the surface. That's a better way to go. And then the compost top
dressing. And if you do that, I would do that once or twice
a year for a little while here, and that will just get it just
gets better and better as you do that. But if you're starting from the
worst of soils, clay, hard, big cracks, all that stuff,
that is one thing that will be very helpful. Continuing to get the grass
to grow with fertilizer, watering, and proper mowing is also important because grassroots
live about a year. So you know, you've seen these videos of the
time lapse photography, you know where you watch something that takes months happen in
a two seconds. Well, when your grassroots grow and die and grow and
die, each root lives about a year, you're adding organic matter. You're
opening up the soil. Those roots are creating chambers, and so healthy grass
builds its own soil too. Returning your clippings and recycling that organic matter into
your grass also helps. So all of that combination is the pathway that gets
you where you want to go from where you are, okay. And is
the nitrofoss brown which is what I've been using, you know for this time
of year, that's still the preferred thing to use. Yes, this time
of year, the nitro Froust brown bag is the one to use. It's
got lower nitrogen but still a good component of potassium in it. Very important.
And is it better for me to use a spreader or a dropper when
I'm putting down my bro You know, everybody has their preferences. I like
the spreader, but you got to watch and just your overlap and how much
you're putting out that you don't create streaks. The droppers can create streaks too
because when they overlap that you get that. But either one will do the
job. It kind of comes up to your preference. Okay, all right,
say well, I appreciate the help you bet, thank you very much.
I appreciate the call. Donnie. We are going to have to catch
you right at first thing in the next hour. Our phone number is seven
one three two one two k t r H seven one three two one two
k t r H. Hey, don't forget next Saturday. I will be
at c Namulch down near Rose Sharon, and we're gonna be there. I'll
be there from eleven thirty to one thirty. They're gonna have quite a shindig
out there. They're gonna have a food truck and a lot of other folks
out there. Some of our sponsor reps will be out there with their products.
You need to go. You need to see Ciena Molts, you need
to see the fertilizers. While you're out there, by the way, you
can pick up your fall fertilization products. You can pick up bags of molts
and order bulks of molts. If you're within twenty miles of Ciena Moltz,
He'll deliver it down in that area. But I hope you come out next
Saturday, eleven thirty to one thirty. KATRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse
any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden
Line with Scip Richard. It's so crazy trip. Just watch him as world.
Well. Good morning on a beautiful Sunday. The sun is shining and
I can just tell you it's gonna be a great day to get out take
advantages. Afternoon, get some stuff done out in the yard, or maybe
go visit a garden center to pick up the products that you need. I'm
going to head now to north Shore and talk to Donnie. Hello Donnie,
Hello, Skip, Good morning, sir. Morning. I've got about three
questions. At first, I'm trying to make them real quick. I've got
about three pecan trees in my yard backyard inside, and they're about twelve plus
feet tall, probably with a canopy out at leeds eight feet white. For
the last five plus years, I have not gotten any pecans. And I
noticed earlier this morning you was talking about feeding them with zinc. I've never
fed them with zinc. So and I don't know exactly what kind of pecan
trees they are. Okay, what should I start, Donnie? Are these
volunteer pecans or did you buy and purchase it and planet a tree? One
was already there when I bought this property, okay, and the other two
were replant it replanted from a store bought tree or from one you dug up
and moved one I dug up moved. Okay. They're probably seedlings, and
seedlings take a long time before they reach a mature productive age. A young
pecans, they call it juvenile wood. It is incapable of being reproductive.
It ages to a certain point where it is now able to make pollen and
nuts and become a productive tree. That with pecans, depending on just the
genetics of that particular seedling and other conditions in the site, that could take
a number of years. I mean, it wouldn't be unusual to see a
pecan twelve years old from a seedling not producing, so that is probably what's
going on with them. There's not a thing that makes pecans not produce other
than a lack of sunlight. But other than that, I think you just
need your trees or just having they're still growing up. You know. It's
like any kind of animal that they have to hit a certain age before they're
capable of reproduction. Okay, Suddond. Question is I got some like spider
like weeds in my flower bed okay, and they're just going everywhere? Yeah?
Are they very very flat to the ground, yes, yes, okay,
that is spurge. And just to check and make sure that I'm talking
about the right weed. When you go outside, pulls on, break them
off, and you should see little white gloves of sap come out immediately from
that broken stem that's spurge, and spurge proliferates because it produces a bazillion seeds
and anytime you got a little bit of a bear, they're gonna come up.
And they loved. They grow in soil too dry and too poor to
support growth of a lot of other plants. They're very resilient, very resourceful
plants. The thing I would do, and I was talking with someone at
Southwest Fertilizer yesterday about this. I have a little hoe that is it's called
a diamond hoe, but it's very flat. You hold it at an angle,
almost like if you were gonna be sweeping the floor, you know,
with a broom, and you just slide it right under the surface. You
don't chop with it like people picture a standard type hoe where you're chopping and
digging the weeds out. This you're just sliding it right under the surface.
And that those spurge plants, they come out in a single spot. They
have a tap root. They come one little spot in that big old spread
out plant is where it comes out of the ground and you can grab them
and pull them hand pull them that way, or if you got a larger
area, just sliding a hoe right under the surface, because here's the deal.
You don't want to turn the soil over and just bring new soil and
new weed seeds to the surface. So we're just skimming right under the surface.
And whether you hand pull them or whether you skim under like that,
then gather them up carefully and put them in a bucket and get them out
of there. You know, if you hit them and shake them and everything,
you're just going to be knocking a bunch of more weed seeds off.
But then the ultimate thing is to keep that soil moltzed with two to three
inches of molts so some light can't get to the soil and you prevent them
coming up. They're not a perennial, they're a warm season annual weed.
Okay, should you on your boy, I forget the course. Okay,
yeah, it's all right, as you'd trim them all year around. You
can do some trimming anytime you have a wild hair in the bush there.
You want to trim it back to you know, kind of make the plant
shaped like you want just a while here to going out, you can trim
those. But once we get past, oh maybe early to midsummer, you
want to stop pruning the azaleas of any amount significant amount of pruning because they're
setting their buds for the spring bloom the coming year. So like right now
you're azala bushes. Whatever blooms are going to have in spring, they're already
in the buds right now, so if you prune them, you'd be removing
that. So wait until after spring bloom to do any pruning you need to
do to those azaleas. Got you, okay? All right, thank you
much, Yes, Sarah, thank you for the call. I appreciate that.
Glad to be able to help the folks at RCW Nurseries. They are
still having that fall Shindi going on where they have fun and games and activities
for all ages. I mean, you can walk through their beautiful garden areas
and you can take family photos, have a hilarious that's up with that.
They got refreshments and snacks for the families. You do not want to miss
out, ladies and gentlemen on this autumn extravaganza. This is all through October,
so this is the end of it. This weekend at RCW Nurseries and
RCW if you've not been there, they're on Tomball Parkway right where it comes
into Beltway eight, so it's easy to find. The website is Rcwnnurseries dot
com. Simple as that. While you're out there, they got a fifteen
percent discount on trees going on. So if you're thinking about planting a tree,
now's the time to do it. So go out there. You can
walk around and see the trees that they have. They grow them themselves up
in Plannersville and they only grow things that do well here, and so check
them out at RCW Nurseries. Grab a tree to add to your landscape because
fifteen percent off now is a really good time. While you're there, you
can grab the fertilizers you need for your lawn and for your trees. In
fact, they have a little package of products that they will sell you to
go with a tree you purchase, and it's the things that enhance the early
root growth and get that tree well established. So it's kind of a one
stop shop for everything like that. RCW Nurseries. We're going to go now,
well, I'm running out of time here. We're gonna have to take
a little break. Terry and Jake, you are the first two up when
we come back. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Welcome back to Guardenline. We are glad you're listening today
and looking forward to talking to you about whatever gardening questions you might have.
We're going to go out to Bay City first and talk to Terry. Hello,
Terry, Good morning, Skip. Okay. I have two questions.
One, it's about the freeze. It's gonna come not freeze, but the
co wedded it's going to come up during the night. I have Moto burning
pots. Do I need to bring them in? It's going to get down,
you know, close to freezing for sure. If it's even in the
upper thirties, I would go ahead and bring them in, just because they
don't like that temperature and not gonna be very happy with it. U depends
on how cold it gets where you are, but it's not a big deal,
you know, to bring them in take them back out, so that
that would be my suggestion. Will they survive out there above freezing? Yeah,
they probably would, but they start not looking so good when they get
colder than they want to be, right, okay. And then second question
is I have a yard that has no grass, It's completely bare ground because
of huge oak trees and I've had them trimmed all I'm ever going to trim
in the spring. I want to put in some kind of grass that will
take heavy shade. I don't know what kind, but right now it's just
ugly having bare ground. So is there any kind of a seed that I
can throw down without any work and maybe it'll just come up and be green
instead of dirt. Well, we have ryegrass we can plant in the winter.
But if it's is this a live oak? Yeah, okay, so
live oaks keep their canopy into the cool season, and the rye grass needs
light and it's just not going to it's going to be spindley and lecor to
try to grow it underneath their So I don't think under that situation it's going
to be as there is a solution for you to seed out. You may
want Saint Augustine's the most shade tolerant of our grasses. And if it's not
doing well there and you've done the trimming and it's kind of is what it
is, I think you're going to need to switch to a shade loving groundcover,
or you can create a moulst area, put some shade loving shrubs in
it. You know what I'm saying, you're going to have to do something
other than grass. It's for but see the whole yard, even where you
walk. I mean, I can do some kind of a bond that that
wouldn't be practical for the whole yard. Well, you know, if it's
shady, it's shady, and the grass isn't going to grow. And I've
seen some beautiful landscapes where they had two giant live oaks in front of the
house. And I mean, so there wasn't a hope or prayer for grass.
But they planted loriopee in certain areas. They used Aztec grass, which
is like a white green striped version like a like a a rioty bit different.
Uh, And and they just made a big beautiful green, dark green
groundcover with using some different colors. A juga as a groundcover will grow and
shade and it can have some types have kind of a bronzy colored foliage.
Uh. There, you know, ferns can grow in areas like I mean,
there's a lot of things you can do. But yeah, if you
want to grass, it's just not gonna work in that much shade. Okay,
Okay, well I guess it is what it is then, yeah it
is. I mean, you know they say when life gives you lemons,
make lemonade, And there are a lot of types of lemonade you can make
out of a shady area. Yeah, and it's for my own home.
This is a rent home, so in renters can not want to do a
lot of yard work. So I guess I'll just put them in some stepping
stones and that's the best they're gonna get. Yeah, that'd be another option.
You could do that and just look around shade loving things, see what
you like the looks of you know, if it is a rental type home,
it's not even water and things. I think the riopy is probably a
good way to go. Certainly. Monkey grass is another way. It's even
darker green and puts up with more shade. Monkey grass, but it doesn't
spread very fast, so you're having to buy a lot of it to cover
a large area like you've got. I've got lope in my own home.
I have a lot of loraape that I could dig up and put over there.
But I don't want to do a hope andnch of like digging in the
yard. So how much do I have to prepare the soil to put something
like monkey grass or loiope, Yeah, not much. I'd spread about an
inch of compost over the surface, and then as you're digging in the plants,
it's going to get mixed in a little bit. And just set the
plants out and get them watered in. I like the Aztec grass because it
has it's a bright color. It's not just another dark green in there,
and so you can line a bed with it, or line a walkway or
whatever. I think the stepping stones are a really good idea. Great.
Okay, well, thank you so much. All right, Darry, thank
you for the colt. Appreciate that very much, very much. Well,
it's fall fertilizing time. You need to not delay. It's also the time
if you're going to put down a pre emergent weak control, you need to
get that done. And night Fross has made it easy with their Texas three
step Step one Nitropos Fall Special night Fuss Fall Special. It's a brown bag.
It's design for fall applications to make your turf stronger so that it goes
through winter better and comes out stronger in the spring. And this is important
people think about fertilizing in the spring and summer, and yeah, those are
important times, but falls the most important one you have because your lawn is
strengthened to go through winter. And the early growth is not due to fertilizer
in the spring. The first growth on your lawn is due to stored energy
in the grass. That's what it draws on as it begins to grow.
Then the grassroots begin taking up nutrients and the spring fertilizing is good at that
time. Early on. It's the fertilizer you're putting down now, nitrophosphall special
nit frous barricades, a pre emmergen weed control. Put it down, water
it in with a half inch of water, and it stops weeds from sprouting
from seeds and coming through and becoming a problem. And weeds are going to
be sprouting now, especially with a little rain and cool weather that's coming up.
Third, nitrofas eagle turf fungicide systemic product gets in the soil and it
prevents weeds from being able or excuse me, prevents the diseases from being able
to attack your plant. So I said. It gets in the soil,
it gets in the plant itself as you spray it on the plant and What
it does is when that brown patch spore lands and it tries to infect your
grass, You've got a systemic fungicide already in the grass. That's what the
eagles were one two three. Where do you get nitrofoss products like the three
step, Well everywhere, but you can get them at Bearings hardware on Biscinet
all spas hardware out in the woodlands or plants and things up and Brunham all
carry the nitrofos three step. Let's now go and we're going to talk to
Jake and friends. Would hello, Jake, Hey Skip, good morning,
Good morning. Hey, So I have a question about a live oak tree.
Okay, have my front yard. It's kind about fifteen feet along on
all sides of it, uh huh doing the house on the sidewalk, kind
of planted up on a raised area soil, and it's got sticks azelias that
the previous homeowner. They're pretty small that they put in. Okay, and
it's not dropping acorns this year, so this would be the third year of
the first two years it did. And just a little concerned about that.
It's got a bunch of suckers on the branches too, like water sprouts.
Yes, Okay, that the water sprouts is usually a sign of going through
a drought, stress or anything that stresses a tree, Like if you cut
tree roots, if you have soil compaction and the tree begins to die back
from the periphery, it will typically trunk sprout and major branch sprout a lot.
Just some of that could also just be due to pruning or some other
thing. I wouldn't worry about the lack of acorn. That's that's not a
cause for concern. That is not a sign that something's gone wrong. But
the trunk sprouting a little bit of it is okay, but just kind of
watch that and it may have been a stress response. Yeah, it's got
a lot and it's done that for the past couple of years. Okay,
So I know I have some soil compaction, and I don't know if there's
any like DIY type stuff that I could do, like maybe get a one
of the deep root watering things I like to do stuff myself. Yeah,
you could do some of that. I mean, when you get a lot
of tree roots in, it's hard to do much to loosen the soil.
You can't run a you can't run a deep deep time neration through there.
It'll hit all the roots and tear up the machinery. You know. I
have put a little spading fork down straight into the soil, wriggled it in
when the soil is moist, and just pull back to crack the soil a
little bit and done that in a bunch of areas to kind of loosen it.
You're not turning it over anything. You're just you're just leaning back on
the handle a little bit to crack open the soil a bit. You could
do that. It's a little bit tedious to do, but that could help.
But just keeping a good a good compost on the surface of the soil,
it's gonna work its way in and that'll also help too, especially along
with any other kind of disturbance we're talking about, from a deeper watering to
a spading time just wiggled into the soil. Okay, alrighty, all,
yep, appreciate it, all righty, thank you for the call. Good
luck with that those trees and everything you got going up there and friends with
uh. You know, the bee supply out in Dayton is a place that
is really for everybody. And here's why I say that. Now, if
you are a beekeeper. They've got ever supply you need, and they have
training for you as well out there, and they take time to train you.
They want you to have success. I mean, you can call them
back and you're not gonna bother them. They're there to help you have success
because they can put the right product in your hand and with good advice.
If you have success as a beekeeper, you're gonna come back, of course
you would. If you are interested in beekeeping, they're the place. They
have classes for that. In fact, their classes for twenty twenty four are
already signing up now on the websit. You go to the website and you
can sign up and the classes begin, I believe in January of twenty twenty
four. So you don't want to delay on that, you know. I
mean the if you want to order bees, by the way, get those
done too, because they'll start picking up you'll start picking up your bees out
there April eleventh. It'll go through the end of May. The sooner you
sign up, the better. They have two different strains of bees. They
can tell you which is which and what you need to do. By the
way, the phone number nine three six seven seven six seven three nine.
Finally, if you're just interested in learning about bees, they have free b
tours out there. You get a little bit of honey, sample and everything.
It is a lot of fun. Take some of your friends garden club
or Scout troop or you name it, go out to the Bee Supply and
Dayton. But again, the thing I would recommend is just start off for
giving them a call nine three six seven seven six seven three nine, or
go to the website, which is thebsupply dot com. We're now gonna go
out to Spring and talk to Josh. Hello, Josh, Hey, Stip,
how you doing. I'm well, what's up? Hey? You can't
complaint. I'm probably gonna come on out there to the RCW Love event.
You coming that you're doing? That sounds real good? Oh no, they're
doing it out there. Yeah, out at RCW. I'm gonna be at
our. I'm gonna be at RCW on November eleventh, though, if you
want to come out that time, but that'll be after this event's over.
Yes, I'll be out there. I'll meet you man. Yeah, I
love your show man. Yeah. Really, I've been listening to Going Line
since I was eighteen. I'm thirty nine now. Well, good, good,
you are you are I have memorized everything and then by now, yes,
now I have a question about these trees. I have a client and
the tree roots are coming to the top. Now I know I need to
errate the area and feed the trees to get the roots to go back down.
But part of it is they used a lot of sand as well,
so as the sand washed away, it left the dirt that's there. Yes,
but you still have the tree roots that's up. Should I cut the
roots? What should I do? What should I do? All right?
First of all, the roots will not go back down. There's no going
down. What happens is you've got a little spaghetti sized root that goes right
under the surface when it's a young root, and as it gets bigger and
bigger, it's pushing down and up and out in all directions. As it
grows in diameter and pushing down that's hard soil, so pushing up it just
lifts the soil up and it appears to be coming to the surface. But
that's why. Also you mentioned water washing it off. That is another reason
why that that happens. And so all you can do is fill in with
some soil around it. To get the soil up to the root level.
That would be about all that is in your control. Okay, all right,
okay, well all right, that sounds like a plant. Yeah.
The only other thing would be to plan a groundcover like Asian jasmine, just
to cover it all up. I'm heading to a break, but hey,
thanks thanks for that call, Josh, and I look forward to seeing you
out at RCW. Thank you very much. We're going to take a break.
It's time for the Nicky News Network. We need that little news sound,
you know. Dunda dun d dunda dun dun. Our number seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Give Josh a call, who
get you on the board, and here's NICKI. Well, good morning.
You are listening to garden Line on a wonderful Sunday, and we're glad you
are our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Yesterday I was visiting with Felder Rushing from Mississippi on the air here today on
guarden Line. And he's going to be speaking at the Fall Festival of Roses
out at the Antique Roseenporium. Now that is November third through fifth, So
read that as just around the corner right November third through fifth. You can
get your tickets at we Areroses dot com. It's a website for antiqu Rosenberg.
We are Roses dot com. Now the Fall Festival Roses is free and
they're going to have the third through fifth, three days of talks going on.
You're going to get to a Fielder several times, and a lot of
really other excellent talks they got going on out there. Now, if you
are interested in the farm to table dinner, that is going to be a
special deal. That is one you do need to purchase a ticket for.
And the ticket sales will end tonight, so I believe they may have some
tomorrow, but definitely about tomorrow night it's over with. But I wouldn't delay
because you know this is a space available type deal, so don't delay.
That'll be on Friday night. It'll be at six fifteen pm. Felder will
give a talk as a keynote there. They're going to have a wonderful dinner,
beautiful chef serve dinner and it's just going to be a good time.
That's how they do things at antiqu Rosing forium. But if you want more
information, you can call them at ninety seven nine eight, three, six
fifty five forty eight. And by the way, get out there early enough
to do some shopping, because they've got a wonderful selection, not just of
roses, but perennials, Texas star Hibiscus, Salvia, Greggy I, butterfly
of Viron, all kinds of good stuff out at the Antique Rosing Porium.
They are roses and so much more. Don't miss the farm and table dinner
on Friday and the all over fall vessel of roses that is going on November
third through fifth. This is your chance. It's a big deal. Don't
want to miss that. We are now going to head out. Let's see,
we're gonna go to Ronnie and Lake Jackson. Hello, Ronnie, Hey,
Skip, how are you doing this morning? I'm good, sir.
What's up? Listen? I've got to cut bunch of I live on a
little over an acre. I've got a whole bunch of little trees coming up
anywhere from they've sprouted straight up seven foot down to three foot. Okay,
is there some way I can cut them and put something all the trunk or
the leftover base that will go to the root and kill it. There is.
The product is called the ingredient is called trichlo pierre trii clo p y
r. Now it's sold in a variety of products. One of them may
be called brush killer, poison, ivy killer or whatever, but that's what
it does. So you cut it off and immediately get your little one of
those little sponge paint brushes like you get at the paint store, you know,
and just dab that product right on the fresh cut right away. Don't
do it the next day while it's fresh cut. It dab it on there.
Sure. If the tree is really thin barked, real young, which
it sounds like some of those may be, you can literally just kind of
paint it on the outside of the bottom foot of trunk or so and do
that. Sometimes people will mix it in a little bit of diesel. Diesel
is an oil, and mixing the tracle pier into diesel makes it stick better
to the outer bark. But if you're gonna cut him off, just cut
him off and treat that stump. It should get it in one treatment.
Sometimes you get a little bit of rich sprouting. It recovers, but you
hit it a second time and you'll be done. I appreciate it. Skip,
take care all right, Ronnie, thank you. I appreciate appreciate your
call very much. The uh, let's see, we're gonna now go to
Norman in Spring. Hello Norman, Hey, Skip, thanks for taking our
call. Yes, sir, how can we help? Many years ago we
learned about esperanza being a beautiful yellow blooming plant. Yes, sir, I
found out esperanza means hope, h jope okay in Spanish. So we're hoping
that our esperanza will bloom someday. We planted a speranza store bought in a
coy pond that we had covered up, okay, and that thing is as
big as a tree now and we haven't had one bloom. Can you help
us out something's wrong? Is it supposed to have yellow blooms or orange blooms?
Yellow? Okay? So there are native types of esperanza. They tend
to have strappier leaves with more jagged edges. And then the gold star,
the kind that really set the world on for a number of years ago.
It has a little flatter, a little broader rather leaf and I can't describe
the difference on the air. You just have to see them. But as
you go into a garden center and see a true gold star. Gold Stars
will start blooming when they're three feet high, and they keep going. If
you've got one that big that's not blooming, I think you must have gotten
kind of more of a I'll call it a wild type of esperanza. Uh.
And you might you don't want to hear this, but you might need
to go find you a gold star, dig it and dig that one up
and put a gold star in and eventually, yeah, eventually even the wild
type should bloom. But it shouldn't be that big and not blooming. Yeah.
Yeah, the truncks own it, are you know, probably inch and
a half tick? Okay, it's sticking up over there all right, backs
as high as you can think. Yeah, no blooms at all. Well,
you could wait, give it one more year, or you could replace
it. Those are kound of the two options. I hate to be the
bearer of bad news, but appreciate you. Appreciate you calling asking about it.
Norman. That os Brown's is a beautiful plant. Thank you, thank
you for that call. If you need any tree work done, you need
to call Affordable right now. Martin spoon More he knows trees. I've been
doing this over thirty years, taking care of Houston trees. The website is
Afftree Service dot com. The phone number is seven one three six nine nine
twenty six sixty three. And when you call the owner and his owners,
Martin and his wife, they're gonna be the ones that answer seven one three
six nine nine twenty six sixty three. They don't answer. You call the
wrong place with Affordable in the name. Hang out in Redal. But if
you need any kind of work done in your trees, pruning, get on
the schedule. He stays busy. I mean he does good work, so
he stays busy. But garden line customers go to the front of the line.
So just don't delay. Get scheduled. I mean you may want him
to do pruning in February or something. Go ahead and call him and get
on the schedule and let's get that done. If you're planning on doing anything
around those trees, to disturb the soil, a trench, a sidewalk,
driving vehicles through there, anything, you got to call him and let him
come out first with a consultation to tell you how to do it right.
Because once you damage your tree, it's very difficult to recover from that kind
of damage. So call Martin first. He knows what he's talking about.
We're about to have to take a break here. Valerie, you will be
the very first st up. Thanks for waiting. I'm going to have to
hold you till after break so I can devote an adequate amount of time to
your call. And Troy you will be next. The phone number is seven
one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two
kt r H. Give Josh a call. Let's get you on the boards
and we'll be right back. Josh, you're getting creative on me today.
I like that. Listen. If you're listening to Guarden Line. By the
way, I'm your host, Skip Richter and if you're inched, given us
to call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. UH.
Nature's Creation has an all natural betting plant food with micarizal fungi. Now this
is specifically blended for betting plants. It contains alfalfa meal, cottonseed meal,
humates, molasses, I got some composted poultry and calman are in there,
sulfate of potash, green sand, and then the micarizal fungi. So it's
excellent for any kind of fall blooming plants, your pansies, your cycloman snap
dragons, a listen stock, petunias, anything like that. Now you're going
to be able to buy Nature's Creation, all natural betting plant food with Micorizat
fungi at Quality Feed on Luzon Street. We talk about them all the time.
Moss Nursery out in Seabrook or I was just mentioning RCWP on two forty
nine and all Houston garden centers will carry that product. I'm going to head
out now. We've got a little busy board going on here. Let's go
to Valerie and Valerie, how are you doing this morning? Oh? I'm
fine, I said a question. Thanks for taking my call. I have
a question. It's the cold weather coming this week. Is still is it
too late to plant? Fad? Too late to plant? What? Please
put saw down? You know, if you need to get it down,
go ahead and get it down as soon as possible. Generally we're kind of
hitting that line where it's it's a tough call because as we get cooler and
cooler, the sod roots are going to slow down and you're not going to
get that new sod established as quickly as we'd like to. If you can
wait until about April and it's really growing and get it down, then it'll
have to ground running. But if you need to get it down again,
do so soon. We're about to get into some really cool weather and that
Saint Augustine is not going to be interested in growing when we get into the
next few days of this week, but it'll warm up again a little bit
after that. So that's the judgment call you need to make on that valerie.
It's not a black and white issue. And how do you prepare the
soil before you do it. First of all, you want to level the
area. If you got any holes or anything like that, you want to
get some soil in there to level it. And then just if you loosen
up the surface a little bit, that's okay, but it doesn't have to
happen. What's most important is when you lay the new side, you press
it down so there's no air gap between the soil that came in with the
sod and the soil in your yard. And then you want to water it
with light frequent irrigations to keep it supplied with moisture until it gets some roots
down and then you back off. Okay, okay, And so you say
I need to wait till the coat like next weekend when it's warm again.
Well, you know, there's no problem going ahead and laying it down now.
I mean, it's going to do something. But I wouldn't delay laying
it down. I would just do it pretty quick. But I'm just telling
you that as it warms up a little bit, then you get the grass
moves a little faster and gets established a little faster. Okay, But April
is really the ideal time to put it down. Grass is very happy here
in April, and it's ready to get growing, and it just may be
a simpler time. You may get by with it. And I don't want
to it's a gray area and I don't want to be confusing about this,
but you may get by with it now. But if you put it down
and then we had a really bad hard freeze came unusually early here, well
that'd be a problem for the grass because it's not well rooted in yet.
And so that's why I'm saying, you know, it's do it, but
do it quick or wait and do it later and kind of head your bed
that way. Okay, yeah, I think I may sauce. I hate
to take the chance and buy all this pod and then have it. Yeah.
Well yeah, and you know, I know people are still out planting
side and they get by with it. But it just that's the facts on
it. But I hope that helps Valerie, and I do appreciate your call.
Oh well, thanks. Can I ask you one quick question, a
real quick one. I got some folks with you, and the man said
he had tree roots coming through. And you said, planning a ground cover
like as O jazz man. Is that what you called it? I said,
Asian Jazmine as an example, it's the groundcover you see around all over
town around live oaks. Underneath it's just a groundcover that grows on the soil.
Yeah, And that was just an example of one. But basically I
was saying, plant plants to cover up those roots. That was about all
that amounted to. Okay, oh okay, Asian Jazz. Thank you.
I appreciate your call very much. I'm going to run now to Southwest Houston
talk to Donna. Hello, Donna, Hi there, Hi, thank you
for taking thank you for taking my call. A quick question. I bought
for your recommendation the carbo load okay, but I'm I'm not sure whether my
uh my lawn is covered by oak trees about a half of it, and
I didn't see where it said because it has the pre emergent, is it
still okay to put beneath the drip line of the oak tree? It is
okay. You want to put it out at the right rate. Anytime you're
applying, whether it's a fertilizer with a pre emergent or a pre emergent by
itself, it's it's like taking a medicine yourself. You don't triple dose something.
You follow the instructions on the bottle, right and and that's that's true
of any kind of a pre emergent herbicide. But there's no problem with putting
that under your trees, watering it in well, no carbo load is it's
got an excellent blend of nutrients for fall. It's designed based on dific research
tot A and M by soiling crops and whatnot. It's designed to give your
lawn what it needs now. And they throw that pre emergon in because just
like now, we're fertilizing for our grass to get stronger. Going into winter,
we also have to have the pre emergent there to prevent the winter weeds.
And as we go into this next week, we got cool weather and
we've got some rain coming, and winter weeds are going to be an issue,
but they are every year. But that's just the queue for them to
get going. So if you're going to do that carbo load, and I
recommend you do, don't delay, go ahead and get it down, okay.
And if some of it kind of goes over into my evergreen bushes,
that's okay for them as well, perfectly. Okay. The only place that
wouldn't be okay is if you had some soil where you're going to plant some
lettuce seeds, or you were going to plant, you know, some flower
seeds or something right away. You wouldn't want to put it down and then
have those because it would do to them like it does to the weed seeds.
But it's made for lawns, so if you get a little bit around
the shrubs, it's okay. Thank you, and we love your show,
and thanks for keeping the song grating in the grass for your song. Okay,
all right, thank you, b I appreciate that. I appreciate that
done. And by the way, that on that uh carbo load every bag
that's sold this fall. Dan Nelson's donating two dollars to Randy's memorial scholarship.
What a wonderful cause Randy would be so proud. I can tell you that
I knew Randy A and M meant a lot to him, and this would
really make him happy. I can tell you that for sure. Let's go
out to Montgomery now we're going to talk to Troy. Hello, Troy,
Hey, good morning. A quick question for you the end of the year.
Basil just wondering with this cold weather. Should I just bring it into
the garage for the next few days. Do a partial haircut or a complete
haircut? It's growing in a container. Yeah, okay, uh yeah.
Basil does not like cool temperatures. It doesn't have to freeze for Basil to
be unhappy. When you get in the lower forties, it's not very happy.
And when you get in the thirties anywhere, it's very unhappy. So
I would I would probably bring it in. You can take it back out
again when the temperatures are better. But just realize it's not going to be
a winter herb for you. Oh yeah, it only will lasts only for
a short time. Yeah, I just didn't know if I should go ahead
and do a complete harvesting. Yeah, that's something you can do. I
mean, some people will cut the stems and they'll put them in a glass
of water indoors and they'll they'll form roots and you can keep it in a
window sill maybe for the winter. Or pick the leaves and dry them.
That's another option too. Okay, well, listen, really appreciate your help.
All right, Troy, you take care up there in Montgomery, and
we definitely appreciate your call. Wow, this this morning has gone fast.
That that just really really went quick. Guard lines around every Saturday and every
Sunday from six am to ten am. If you got neighbors that aren't listening,
I hope you'll tell them. Tell you tell your relatives too, you
know. So our signal reaches all the way over to the Louisiana border,
and I know I've listened to it and really passed new bron fuls over that
direction. So a wide variety of areas, you know, people tell them
about garden Line. We focus here on helping people have success. The way
I like to put it is to help you have a more beautiful lawn and
a more bountiful landscape. That's what it's all about here, including your vegetable
gardens and your fruit trees and whatnot. Don't forget that. Next Saturday,
I will be at Ciena Mulch from eleven thirty to one thirty. Cna Maultch
is down there in the road sharing area. You hear about me talk about
Sienna all the time. I'll be there for two hours at a table doing
an appearance. The folks at Senna are having quite a little gathering. That
little food truck coming out. They've got a number of different people. Some
of our sponsors will be out there and others. It's just a good chance
to really get out and have a good time and learn a lot and meet
a lot of people. And while you're out there, that would be a
good time to go ahead and pick up those fertilizers about the Nelson Carblode a
minute ago. They've got that. They've got all the fertilizer we talk about
here on guarden Line. They have a good supply of all of it on
hand. They've got the bag molts, they've got they got a bulk maltz
delivery within twenty miles of the area of that around there for a small charge,
So it'd be a good time. Just empty the back of your pickup
truck so you can bring a bunch of stuff home, because you know what
we say, brown stuff comes before green stuff. Take care of the soil
and then put the plants in and you will be well on your way to
success. So so very important. You know, it's easy to get excited
about a big, old, giant, red dinner plate sized hibiscus flower.
Kind of hard sometimes to get people excited about some brown composts. If you're
a gardener, you do get excited about that. I like to lay in
a big poly compost and make compost angels, you know, even the hands
back and before. But that's just me. Hey, if you haven't gone
to my website gardening with skip dot com, need to do that. On
there you will find my lawn care schedule and my lawn pest disease and weed
management schedules. Both they're both available there at gardeningwi skip dot com. Also
there I posted a link to an article on planting fruit trees by doctor Larry
Stein from the an M. Horde Department. It is an excellent article.
I recommend you read it. If you are thinking about anytime soon planning a
fruit tree, that would be a good one to see. We're going to
keep chucking that website full of stuff, got a lot of plans for adding
more content to it. But go ahead and bookmarket so you're ready to go,
And in the meantime you can listen to us on podcasts if you missed
anything, I will just see you next Saturday.