Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip rictor Trip just watching
many rick s. Good morning. It is a good day to be talking
about gardening. Good day to be gardening inside. We'll talked about that a
little bit today. Nice to be able to look out and see a little
bit of rain coming. You know, we need that every now and then.
If we can only control it how much and when that would be nice.
Wouldn't it be able to say, Okay, that's enough, we're gonna
turn spick it off, but we want to save that we were about to
get and apply it to July or something like that. That would be nice.
Well, we can't, but we learn how to deal with it.
You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're
here to talk about whatever is of interest to you. And when it comes
to your gardening questions, might be a plant identification, maybe some sort of
a solution to this problem, this bug, this disease. We could talk
about anything. I'm going to talk a little bit this morning. First thing
about some indoor activities for gardening. If you'd like to give us a call,
our phone number is seven one three, two, one two five eight
seven four seven one, three, two and two fifty eight seventy four.
Give Josh call, tell him your name, where you live, and a
word or two that describes your question. That's all he needs to know,
and we will get you on the board and who knows next thing you will
be here, will be visiting. By the way, if you are one
of the many people, I can't tell you how many times I've heard this
people say, yeah, I want to call in, but I don't know.
I can't. It's just the thought of being on the air. Listen.
It's just me. I think there's one or two other people that's listening.
It's just me, you and one or two other people. Don't worry
about it. We will treat you kindly, and we will help you with
your question. And I can tell you something. If you have a question,
somebody else has a question, and you may feel like it's a stupid
question, but you know, we all are stupid at what we don't know,
right I am, And so the only way we learned something is to
ask questions or observe and read and things like that. Let's go for it,
Let's learn something, because there are other people that need to know too.
We don't. We do not consider questions stupid. We consider answers stupid.
So the pressure is on me. I will avoid the stupid answers if
at all possible. Seven one three, two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Well, today's a good houseplant, right, it's a little rainy outside.
I think we would get a break or two here and there, so
it's not like the you know, you can't get out and do anything,
but in general, when it raining, we tend to stay inside. And
ever since COVID, houseplants have been a hot item when it comes to gardens
and our garden centers and plant sales and things like that. And I'll tell
you the whole houseplant thing. Well, COVID caught all of us off guard,
but the surgeon houseplants caught me off guard. You know, when I
went through getting a horticulture degree, I don't believe that I took a single
class on house plants. I might have had some in one, but basically
it's just like, yeah, those are there too. Now there are people
who focused on flora culture and foliage, and the other whole thing dealt with
flowers, cut flowers, houseplants and different things. But anyway, it was
a new thing. Now I picked up house plants knowledge here and there all
through life, as you have. Of course, everybody's had a pathos ivy.
I guess that's kind of like house plant one oh one, the first
thing people tend to get. But now we have so many new kinds of
house plants, and some really cool ones and a group that well, a
type of houseplant that I have become very fond of, or house plants that
have color in the foliage. You know, it used to be that aglionemo,
which is also called Chinese evergreen, is was just kind of green,
maybe with some grayish in it. Well, now we have all kinds of
beautiful pinkish coral looking colors in the leaves, and there's there's some various patterns.
Now you just have all kinds of color options. There are many of
The Miranta, a prayer plant, is another one that just with one I
hadn't redalt with much before, But now with the new colors, I'm getting
really interested in all those plants Miranta and the and the mini plants, that
are related to it, and I just think it's a beautiful, a beautiful
way to really turn the inside into something interesting. You know, there is
a psychological connection to how we feel and being around plants. It's just noted.
It's It's why there's such a thing as called forest bathing. Have you
ever heard of that one? Just taking a walk in the forest, taking
a bath if you will, in just plants and the beauty of nature and
all of that, it has an effect on you. And studies that show
people that are recovering from surgery in a hospital with and without plants in the
room, they actually measure a difference in terms of hownd of pain meds they
need, in terms of how fast they heal. And it's all driven by
the mental state that plants put us in. And so having you can have
a very sterile indoor environment if you like, but why not fill it with
plants and just even subconsciously make it a very inviting place for you and for
guests that come to your house. And we'll maybe talk a little more house
plants in a moment. Right now, we're going to run out to Cypress
and talk to Ruth. Good morning, Ruth, Hello, I'm uh,
I have a question about my roses. I have about one, two,
three, four, five, six knockout roses that are doing well, getting
lots of blooms. My leaves look good. That I have one rose bush
right and it's out in the sun all the time, and I'm getting a
bunch of peak beautiful roses on it. But my leaves are are yellow and
have black spots. Okay, do you have my mock out roses just on
the peak bush, just one bush. So you're saying it's a knockout and
it's getting spots on the leaves. Well, the one, the one that
has the peak roses, is not a knockout. It's like a hybrid rose.
Okay. Well, that's the way it is with a lot of roses.
There there are several diseases that will attack our rose foliage. Black spot
is probably the most well known. Powdery mildew is right there alongside it in
terms of being well known. There's things like circosper leaf spot and whatnot.
I would but the other ones have a lot of foliage on it, all
the other roses. But it's one row's worse, which is tall given me
the beautiful roses has not got a lot of lead on the bottom. Okay,
Well, knockout is very disease resistant. You just don't see black spot
and powdery mildew hardly at all on a knockout rose. And that's one of
the reasons it's so popular is because unlike roses through the through the decades that
we've all been exposed to roses, you know, those were often prima donnas
that just you just were spraying them all the time to keep them looking good.
And you know, you go back far enough and you've got the old
antique roses that had to survive without any sprays, and the ones, the
varieties of those that manage through the years. They you know, they were
ones that were a little more resistant. But I'll tell you what, Ruth,
I want to take a break. I've got to go to a break.
But when I come, I'm gonna hold on. If you will hang
on through break and we will continue this discussion on roses. Our phone number
is seven one three two one two five eight seven four. Give Josh a
call and we'll talk to you when we come back. Good morning, Good
Sunday morning. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host. Skip Richter
and our phone number if you'd like to visit with me is seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. I was was it driving past some
palm trees yesterday and just it kind of reminded me that summertime is palm planting
prime time. I mean, it's the time when you really can have just
the best results with getting a palm tree in the ground. And Verdant Tree
Farm. When I think of palms, I think of Verdant Tree Farm.
They're like the leaders when it comes to palms here in the Houston area.
And you can go in with Verdant and they'll give you a free in office
design consultation, you know, maybe take a picture of your place. And
so I need a palm for here. I want something for their and what
will be a good choice because they have so many options that they just all
do really, really well. You can hand pick your tree too while you're
there by the way, and you can tag it and they'll bring it out
and planet for you. They know how to do it right, and you
need to plant a palm correctly in order to have good success with it.
Now, they don't just sell palms. They have all kinds of trees.
I mean things up to seven hundred gallons. If you want the instant wow,
they can do it. Verdant is now fortunately not just on the West
Side. They still have the west Side location over on Barker Cypress, but
they've got a location down in Parlin on Broadway and they have a location on
Yale Street. Why where it comes into ten Verdant Tree Farm in the Heights
location and you can pick the trees you want. They can help advise you
on it, they'll planet right and you can have good success. A tree
is a long term investment in your property and it does pay off in time
and the value of your home. Not to mention the fact that you just
get out there and you get to enjoy the shade of a tree. You
get to enjoy the beauty of a tree. But if you're looking for a
tree, now's a good time and Verdant is the place you need to go.
We're visiting with this with Rose Ruth about roses this morning, and Ruth
I wanted to make a couple more comments that because the knockout is probably one
of our most disease resistant roses. It's been planted a lot, but a
lot of the other roses that you have, they they're just prone to various
foliage diseases. And I think what you're going to have to do on that
one that is giving you trouble is you're just gonna have to get on a
schedule of spraying it pretty frequently with a fungicide to protect it against the things
that are causing the leaves to fall off. Okay, that'll make up.
Yeah, and you can well you know what I heard that if you take
oil um horticultural oil and baking powder are soda together you could spry it.
Have you ever heard of it? Well? There it is one of many
home remedies that has some validity to it. But I tell you with a
home remedy, you're not gonna usually have as good a results as you do
with a product that's been designed and labeled for dealing with the designes. Ice
Hardware is close mad that you think they would have something for the roses.
You can fill up a shopping cart with all the things for roses that ACE
hardware, So yes, it is. They have everything you look for a
good disease. Look, it'll say roses and the label too. If it's
specifically as a product that works well for without but things that There's a number
of different chemistries out there, but they're fungicides, and you want one that
moves into the rose. What I usually do if I'm having to spray roses
or ruth is, I'll have more than one product that are different because if
you just use the same thing over and over again, week after week,
year after year or whatever, you can build up some resistance to some of
there. And all my other roses are lushed, they're having beautiful leaves on
it, they're full. But this one rose that gives me the most beautiful
road. They know it's a lot. I'm having a problem with the leaves.
I know that's how it often is. And we've been working on doing
some testing, worked with Gahammon in the Eastern Rose Society a number of years
ago, doing some studies here trying to find good hybrid t roses a big
beautiful cut from our roses that we're also disease resistant, because that combination is
becoming more and more available now than it used to be. But when you
have a rose to use one brand over and over, how often do you
do there? What I'm saying is like, for example, there is let's
see, there is a product called propoconazole that's a fungicide ingredient, and if
you just spray that same ingredient all the time, the chances of building up
resistance are greater. And so what you want to do is you want to
alternate between that and between a different kind of fungicide. So when you get
into ace, they're going to be able to direct you to the ones they
carry there. But just remember, don't just pick one and it works and
I'm going to use it for the next five years. Do the alternating and
that just helps avoid the problem of resistance, because once resistance happen, then
that great fungicide is no longer of any use to you because the design one
of the question. I have two bridle reaths in my front yard underneath the
tree, and they give me the most beautiful blooms in the spring, the
gorgeous to fight. But the shots are getting really big. Can I now
trim them back? You can anything that blooms early in the spring, you
can get it trimmed, but get it done soon because you when you trim
it, it's going to regrow and those new growth branches are going to have
to reach you know, slow down reach kind of a woody, mature stage,
not a succulent stage. So they can set bloom buds in midsummer,
in late summer for next year's bridle wreaths show in the spring. It's okay
to go ahead and trim them now, not a lot, but I need
to trim on. It is okay in the future. I'd rather you do
your trimming right after the blooms fade, but if you go ahead and get
it, thank you, okay, thank you, Ruther. I appreciate all
right, thank you for the call. I appreciate that. Our phone number
is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two
one two five eight seven four. Yes, yes, with roses. There
are some good fungicides out there that work, but just do some rotating with
them. Uh. They're the folks that plepithologists and you know, the folks
that deal with the chemicals that fight fungicides or fight fungus diseases. They've divided
fungal sprays into classes, and so there may be two or three sprays that
operate the same way. They fight the disease in the same way, and
so you would only want to use one of those. You wouldn't want to
use the ones that all do the same thing because the resistance could still develop.
And so that's why we rotate them around. And you know rose rose.
Ruth mentioned using horticultural oil or using baking soda. Those are old,
old home remedies you know for fighting rose diseases. But I tell you the
oil is more especially for like a powdery mildew. If you if you do
that, it will it will do a fairly good job of killing powdery mildew.
But when you start using an oil and the weather is warming up,
there's a risk of burning a plant also, that just kills what's trying to
happen on the plant. When you spray that oil, there's not any long
term control. With some of the good fungicides you can get, they soak
into the tissue and they're help fighting the disease going forward for a period of
time. Each one lasts a different period of time. But if you have
to constantly spray something topical to just kill the powdery mildew, you're just gonna
be spray and spray and spraying, and that isn't a good treadmill to be
on with your roses. So anyway, take some time, get the kind
of products you need, and you can do really you can do a really
good job. I'll tell you about a project that I've picked up this summer,
and it is a project working on a community garden for a Dellweb community,
a new Dellweb community that's out near Fulsher. In fact, it's less
than two miles from downtown Fullsher on FM three fifty nine. Now, those
of you who are familiar with Dellweb know what Dellweb means. Dellweb means inspired
designs, and it means communities with lifestyle programs that are designed around you for
age for adults age fifty five and better. And the new community out at
Fullsher I'm working with them to develop a community garden for residents. So if
you are a gardener or want to be a gardener, what a great opportunity.
A world class community and a spot there in the community, a beautiful
spot where you can do your own gardening. Now dellweb dot com slash Houston,
you can go there and get more information or give him a call to
eight one four five nine zero six three excuse me zero six zero nine two
eight one four to five nine zero six zero nine. For more information,
check them out and find out that Dell Web difference for yourself. I was
talking about house plants a moment ago, and one of the newer house plants
that I got that I just I really like. It's a It's a variegated
type of rubber tree. Everybody knows what rubber trees are, at least I
think you do. The variegated types, though, offer the interest of something
other than just green. Now there's nothing wrong with green, but when you
can have house plants that have silvery foliage, house plants that have splashes of
color in the foliage, it just really makes a more beautiful home setting.
And while we all love to get like a house plant and we sat on
the table look at it and enjoy it, I think it's it's good to
group our house plants so when you're putting together you're a little setting. You
may have a tall plant in the background and some other plants around it,
and you just sort of create that that jungle feel, that indoor environment that
I know and research has proved really helps us even with mental health, just
in the presence of plants like that. So I hope that if you haven't
tried house plants, or if you tried them and you kill them, try
them again. There's some really good ones out there. When we come back
from break, I'll mention some of the ones that I would say are more
full proof. But speaking of full proof, here is Nick with the News.
I got a question for you. Um, natural rain is opposed to
what comes out of the hose? Yes, don't plants just love that?
They do? They absolutely do. You know what comes out of the hose
is it's got a lot of cads. You know, it's treated, it's
a bacteria don't grow in and whatnot. That's a little effect there. But
when rainfall comes, it often brings down nitrogen with it, especially during thunderstorms.
There is of nitrogen in the rain, so it's almost like fertilizer water
in a very deluted sense, coming out of the skies. So we got
happy plants, absolutely happy plants. We do that. In fact, I
heard some screaming and dancing down the street a moment ago when I was driving
in everything. Well, good morning, I'm looking outside actually seen a little
bit of blue sky. Maybe that I think a little bit of break here
through the day, and you have to get outside. You know, I'm
always telling you it's a good day to get out and see garden centers.
And it is, it really is. There's so many wonderful garden centers here
in the Greater Houston area. And every time I go to one, I'm
just amazed at them on of color that they have, the amount of the
plant options. You know, it just it doesn't. You do not have
to be into anyone kind of plant because there are so many options. Maybe
you're just a lawn ranger and you want your grass to look good, and
that is that's your extent of horticulture right there. Well, you're gonna go
to our garden centers. You're gonna find the products we talk about here to
keep your lawn looking as good as it gets. Maybe you like color flower
beds. You want just flower beds that pop good for you. You can
have that. We have a lot of great plants at the garden centers around
here. It seems like every time I go to one, well that seems
like it's true. Every time I go to one, I come home with
something else that I just can't live without. And I have discovered some really
cool plants over the years just by checking them out visiting with folks at garden
centers. It's a new one to me. Oh well, all right,
I'll try it out, and here we go. Now it's one of my
favorite plants. That's how it goes often. I've been talking about house plants
this morning and how to have success. So if you feel like you can
kill every plant there is on earth, and you're ready to just buy silk
plants for the house, let me stop you right there. First of all,
silk plants get dust mites. Okay, you may have to think about
that one a little bit, but they do. But it didn't hurt the
plant. But you know what I'm saying. I was in a I don't
know it's a doctor or Dennis's office or something. They had some silk plants
and I don't know how this was, but there were yellow areas on the
leaf, as if someone dropped something on the leaf that faded the green out.
And I just thought that that's classic right there, that even a silk
plant looks sick. So anyway, what we want is living plants. And
if you've killed everything you can think of, I've got some that are foolproof.
In fact, let's start with motherin lawst tongue. Mother in lawst tongue
is properly called sense of area and it has the long sword shaped leaves coming
up out of the ground. Typically they're green, usually with some maybe grayish
markings on them, and often with a wide yellow strip on both sides.
So do you know which one I'm talking about? They come in many forms.
Now, there's some that almost look like a starfish, and they have
rounded leaves in just a fan shape that are really different. There's some that
are very short and wide leaved, very unusual for that species of plants.
They're easy to grow. They will put up with low light, and they
will put up with highlight. They will put up with adequate water, and
they will put up with being forgotten for a while because they're almost a succulent
and that they have very fleshy leaves ability to hold moisture. So if you
can't grow a mother in lost tongue, I can't help you. I mean
because literally I have had them and just put them somewhere and forgot about them,
and then it could be weeks later and I go, oh my gosh,
I get to that plant and it still looks okay. I mean it's
not very happy with me. It will speak to me for a while,
but they survived mother and lost tongue. Is an easy one, easy one
to grow, so I would try that. Another one that I like is
the ZZ plant. ZZ is short for its long fancy name, but ZZ
that's good enough. They are a dark green plant, kind of a glossy
looking leaf, very unusual. They're easy to grow. They put up with
low light to get a little bit leggy and low light, but they put
up with it. They put up with high light, of course. And
it's another one where if you forget to water it, it's okay, it's
gonna be all right now. I mean eventually, of course, you gotta
water plants. But ZZ plant is an easy one and it's a fun one
to grow. There's one that's kind of has a chocolate e color to the
growth as it ages, and ZZ is. I would put it as number
two in the list of ones that you ought to look at if you're a
plant killer. Let's see what some others. One of the really a lot
of the philodendrons are pretty easy to grow. They just they're not that difficult
to keep them alive and keep them growing. It just depends on which one.
They vary a little bit, but a lot of philodendrons can be easy.
I like the Chinese evergreen also called Aglionema. I find that they put
up with moderately low light, and that they are also pretty easy to grow.
And now if you don't water them, they're going to pout and the
old leaves will turn yellow and fall off, but they keep going. So
I wouldn't say that they're foolproof in terms of watering, but they're an easy
one. And here we got all those beautiful colors that you can grow,
and they do so well. Now everybody's familiar with pathos, I mean,
the pathos ivy is just all over the place. My daughter has some pathos
ivy and she has these little things. You're attached to the wall and then
you hook the pathas vine on it. So it's just like this sprawling ivy
crawling all over the walls. People do that across the ceiling of their house
to the key there is can you get enough light up there? For the
plants? They put up with pretty low light and they're easy to grow.
Now when you forget to water them. And then you water them, the
old leaves turn yellow and then fall off, so that you can get these
long string of vine that don't have any leaves on them if you don't give
a moderate amount of watering to take care of them. But that's an easy
one. There's so many others. Closet plant. It's called Chinese evergreen.
It's a very dark green leaves and it has these white bloom like stalks coming
up. That's another easy one. But looking outside today, I've seen all
the moisture and stuffing. It reminds me, you know, whenever it rains,
we get mosquitoes. In fact, I've asked the folks from mosquito dunks
to be on the show here a little bit later today. We're gonna talk
to them around the eight o'clock hour. And but mosquito dunks are a product
that kills mosquitoes, and naturally, when they're in water, it doesn't kill
the adults, it kills the larva. And so you put a mosquito dunk
in stagnant water wherever it is. Maybe it's in a hollow tree that's holding
water, maybe it's in a pond where you know, you got mosquitoes that
are going to breed there, and so you want to prevent it. A
mosquito dunk will work for thirty days. It releases a natural disease of mosquitoes.
It's one organic. It will not hurt harm people that if your dogs
drink out of the pond, it won't hurt hurt them. If they're fishing
the pond, they're fine. Birds. Land and get a drink. It's
all okay. Mosquito dunks just goes after the mosquito larva and they work really
really well. You're going to find them everywhere. All the Ace hardware stores
carry them. I know that a lot of fact. Pretty much every one
of the nurseries you here is talk about here on Gardenline are going to have
them, and the feed stores we talk about as well. Mosquito dunks are
simple, they're easy and help avoid all the mosquitoes that ruin your outdoor setting
by getting a handful of mosquito dunks keeping them on hand. So when we
do have these rainy periods where we're ready to go, we are here to
talk to you about whatever is of interest to you when it comes to gardening
and plants, and I hope you'll give us a call. I talk to
Josh seven months three two one two fifty eight seventy four. He'll get you
on the board and when we come back from break, we will be happy
to visit with you about whatever your questions are. If you can listen to
that and not be tapping your foot. I check my pulse. I don't.
I don't think there is love foot links. You're listening to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter Our phone number seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Listen if you we've been talking too different kinds
of products and things today. If you're looking for a one stop shop for
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Fertilizer, their selection of the herbicides, insecticides, the fungicides, it's like
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walk down the aisles and see what's new on the market, because I find
stuff that I've been notified of this one, yet here's a new product.
What's the chemistry? Oh, that's cool. I'm glad to see that's there.
If it's out Southwest has it, I mean we're we are talking about
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going to go out. Let's head out to Brenham and we're gonna talk to
Mike this morning. Morning. Mike, what's up are you doing? I'm
good, Thank you good, good. Quick question. I have one and
I mow the whole thing. It's an easy yard, but I would like
you improve my soil structure, but I can't afford lead whole compost for the
whole thing is there an alternative you would recommend for that. Well, um,
if you if you're gonna use, are you just saying you don't want
to put it even a compost over the whole thing? Or is it just
if it's leaf willing to do a compost but the leaf bol compost for an
entire acre's fairly expective. Yeah, that that is expensive, and really to
do compost over an acre is expensive. Now if you if you go with
a different kind of composts, you at least need to make sure it's very
finely screened so that uh, it's down in you don't have wood chips at
your lawnmowers knocking all over the place for example. Finally screen compost you can
do that. It's still going to be a charge for a whole acre.
So what I would do kind of need to see your lawn to know really
for sure what to suggest to you. If you've got that much area and
you're just putting the top dressing on, it's going to be a problem.
Number One, return your grass clippings every time you mow. That is like
one oh one. Do that I would get I would get a good quality
fertilizer, and I would fertilize according to the schedule at the at the rates
that are recommended, and keep that grass growing. And as you grow grass
and you return the clippings, you are slowly adding organic matter back into the
soil. And the roots of the grass are growing and root. A grass
root lives about a year and then dies, and so all of that organic
matter that was in the grass root is going to decompose back into the soil.
Two and so I think you can do. I think you can do
at a large area like that with the compost being cost prohibited for you just
by putting quality fertilizer out, keeping that grass growing, watering it is needed
to keep it healthy when we go into dry weather, and just recycling those
clippings, and I think you're going to see a big difference. So,
for example, maybe the most afforable compost I've ever seen, it's mushroom in
the compost. I have heard that there's a lot of salt. That's the
case. There is and probably sodium and salt. I believe it's a wonderfully
rich compost, but I would just I would use it sparingly because you don't
want to move the pH up as much as it can, and once you
put it down, a good rain on it or a good irrigation can wash
a lot of the salts out. But I wouldn't make mushroom compost an annual
application for a lot. Okay, when you first time you put it down,
lawn is gonna look green and wonderful, but just realize that you can
get a build up of some things if you if you're not careful there.
I appreciate Thank you, sir. All right, I appreciate that call.
Thank you very much. For those of you who are wondering about the compost
on the soil. If if you don't have an acre, you have a
smaller area and you would like to do something like that, you need to
call the folks at Greenpro. Green Pro will use a quality leafmo compost on
your lawn. And not only will they do that, but they will first
aerate your lawn to create openings down in the soil to get oxygen down to
the roots. And that's what roots need, especially if your soil is compacted,
and if your soil is a heavy clay, that aeration is essential.
Then with a compost top dressing, they put a very fine texture compost on
it falls down in the holes and you're just building that soil over time.
And you know that's what that's what Mike, you know, was referring to,
is how do we how do we do that? So we went a
different route with such a large area. But if you've got a moderately sizedline,
Greenpro, go to Greenpro Texas dot com or give them a call to
eight one three five one forty seven thirty three and they can get you set
up and ready to go. Let's head out to Magnolia and now we're gonna
talk to Tim. Good morning, Tim, Good Marskip, how you done
him? Well? Thank you? Hey. I've got a oak tree and
it's about four foot up. It's very hollowed, you know, had just
I guess it rotted out there. It's good and green, it's beautiful.
We've had it for eighteen least week. It's probably eighteen plus years as we've
lived there, eighteen years. It keeps going and it keeps bill But is
there something I can feel? I mean, it's probably some places looks like
eight hollowed. Is there any way to help with that with some filler in
there or just the only kind of filler that you might consider is if you
put some sort of a little wall in there, like a hardware cloth or
something, and then you spray that expandable foam on it and kind of smooth
it out to create the look, you know, of of of a wall
of wood. You can paint it a little bit if you want. We're
just doing that for aesthetics. Though the rot that's in there will continue no
matter what you do. It's just you don't want a hollow that you know,
catches water, mosquitoes are going in. Well, that would have avoid
that. That's not a normal arboriculturally recommended practice, but it does visually close
up that hole for you, if you're a little careful and somewhat artistic with
the way you go about doing it. Yeah. I was really not concerned
so much, just that we've got an acre and a half, so we've
got plenty of trees for you know, in its way out there in the
back of the Okay, lose it. And I thought, was there anything
I could do preventitively to try to Yeah? Hell, but yet it looks
as healthy as and it's again it's had that hollowed deal. I'm just thinking
that, gosh, I'm surprised how much it's lived this long. Yeah,
yeah, I get it. Yeah, no, the yeah, the interior
of a tree is deadwood, and so it can rot and it's of no
threat to the light, to the health of the tree. It affects the
structural strength of the tree for sure, to lose all that wood, but
healthwise, you know, the tree's not gonna get sick because it has interior
hollowing going on. Okay, all right, all right, thanks, hey,
thanks for the call, Tim, appreciate it. If you are looking
to do your summer fertilizing on your lawn, now would be an excellent time
to put down some microlife fertilizer, you know, microlife. I think the
best combo for summer, really for most of the year is to use the
sixty four, which is the green bag, the green sixty four bag with
the purple bag. So think green plus purple purple is the humans plus and
we call that concentrated compost. And a bag you're gonna get not just the
big three numbers on a fertilizer bag, the sixty four nitrogen, phosphorus,
potassium, You're going to get a hundred different kinds of a central minerals,
micronutrients, all kinds of things like that that are in it, as well
as all the microbes that are in it to release stimulate your plant root growth,
and that is important for a successful lawn. The sixty four and the
humates, they're going to release very slowly over time, so you're gonna get
a gradual feed, but you're just not going to see better results with your
lawn than that combo. If you go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com, you
can find out where you can get your fertilizer your Microlife products around town and
by the way, Microlife is sold just about anywhere that you're going to go
looking. If it's a quality nursery, hardware store, feed store, you're
going to find the Microlife products and they will definitely turn your lawn into a
beautiful green show place. We're listening to garden Line. I am your host,
Skip Ricter, and we're here to talk to you about whatever's of interest
to your gardening. Wise give Josh you call at seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. All you need to tell them is your name,
where you live, a couple of words about your question. That's all
he needs to know who getting on the board, and we will look forward
to talking to you when we come back from break. I want to remind
you that next Saturday, June tenth, I will be at Lawbird's Unlimited out
in Kingwood. That's from eleven thirty to one thirty, So put that on
your calendar. If you live anywhere out in that northeast region, I hope
that you would come out let me meet you. I'd love to visit.
I always like to meet people that listen to the show. And if you've
got any questions, you can bring samples or maybe some photos. Let me
take a look at them. We have plenty of time to sit down and
visit about them and see if we can help you have a better lawn and
landscape. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to ktr H Garden Line with Skip Richter.
Just watch him as well. Good morning on a really really good Sunday morning.
I see some clouds, but I see some blue and that is that
is the license to get outside and garden right there. I love that you're
listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, skip Richter and if you would
like to ask a question, give Josh a call seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
You know, the rain reminds me of another thing too, and that
is that our roofs are an important part of our house. You know when
remember the song Manyana Manyana where it's like, well, I'm not gonna fix
a roof because it's not raining. And then when a training I can't fix
a roof because the training will. Now's a good time to make sure your
roofs in good shape. And Brian Roofing is the people you need. They
are the people that you need to talk to you. They are warranted for
twenty five years of service when they do a roof. Now, if you
want, if you want a solar panel roof, don't put those panels on
top of the house. Have Brinkman come in and do their timberline solar shingles.
That's not above the roof. That is the roof, the timberline solar
shingles. Now they've Brigman has been in the Houston area doing roofing for fifty
years. This year this is the anniversary for them, and you know what
it's like. When we have a storm come through, they knock. Companies
knock on your door, they leave a business card in the door because they're
trying to get you to file a claim. Instead of that, have a
professional from here, someone who's been in business, who does the kind of
service that keeps them in business, that builds a reputation. That's Brinkman.
There are twenty twenty two Better Business Bureau Pinnacle Award winner. Go to Brinkman
Quality dot com or Dial two eight one four eighty seventy six sixty three for
a quality roof. If you need a metal roof, one of those standing
seam metal roofs, They'll they'll put it together right on site for your home,
whether residential or commercial. Brinkman Roof for a full service roofing company that
you can trust. I was taking care of some plants at the house the
other day. I've got we purchased a bunch. My wife and I were
actually out at a garden center and we were purchasing some plants to put together
in combo containers. I love combo containers and they've been sitting on my porch
and I've had to put them in little like rubber made things because I'm running
all over the I'll be gone for two or three days. I'll put them
in the rubber made things, put some water in the bottom, you know,
to keep them watered while I'm gone, because containers can't wait for four
days for me to show back up again. And I finally got around to
getting those things in containers, and oh my gosh, they look so good.
Now with this rain, they are going to pop. And with a
quality mixed container of different kinds of flowers, you can really beautify whether it's
a patio or a porch or a driveway or whatever. You need to get
some inspiration like that for a color container. And you know, when it
comes to inspiration, you're not going to do better than a place like Warren's
Southern Gardens. If you're if you're out anywhere near the Kingwood, anywhere that
direction, Warren's Southern Gardens is a place for you to have that kind of
inspiration. Now, we were walking through there a while back, and oh
my gosh, the color containers they have are just beautiful. You'll see that
thriller filler Spiller design. You'll see the combinations of things that they do.
Maybe you've got a windy area where the you know, the wind is coming
in and it tends to blow over containers. They can actually choose plants that
are going to allow the wind to blow through and not be like a sail
out there that'll fall over when the wind blows on it. If you want
the combination of colors of whatever you're looking for, Warren's Southern Gardens is going
to have it. And they also have the Microlife and Nelson Plant Food filling
station, so you can go back and get you more of those fertilizers at
a very reasonable cost that way, and you're not throwing extra plastic into the
wastetring, whether Kingwood, umbled a, Taska, Ceda, anywhere. Up
that directions. Check out Warren's Southern Gardens by the way. They're on North
Park Driving, Kingwood, and their sister company is Kingwood Garden Center on Stone
Hollow Drive out in Kingwood, and both of them are open seven days a
week. We are going to head now, let's see, we're going to
go out to Edmund and talk to Steve. Good morning, Steve, Hello,
Hello, how you doing well? I'm well? Oh how can we
help Hey? I just want to ask a few questions about the spraying herbsides.
I've had roseheads problems uh for years, like a lot of people,
and I want there's any new information out about uh, you know spraying because
I've used uh ur cords fall out. It's son of you and it's been
out for a while. But you don't have to have a herbicide license to
buy it. Uh. I just keep seeing rose and the McCartney rose is
what I'm talking about, and it's blooming and whatever I read A and M
saying is you know you want to have a seventy five degree ground temperature and
you don't want But I mean, I've got to get this book. It's
about to go up to a little bit of a drought and I don't want
to get that waxy, you know, so use acting. Yes, but
do you know anything that uh? Uh? And and next sage is another
problem but us two boar deal. Yeah, you spill be on that with
maximizer sur factor. But can you tell me is anything else out there that's
come out? Anything? Okay? Yeah, Hey, Steve, what county
are you in? Victoria County? Victoria County. You've got a really good
Extension office there in Victoria County, and I am familiar. I know the
McCartney Rose. We've had landin in de Wit County that was covered up with
McCartney Rose. But the products I'm familiar with that was from a little while
back. And I could give you, you know, names of products,
remedy and different things, but I think it would be better for you to
get a very up to date answer from an agriculture agent and the Victoria County
Extension Office, folks, they're going to be up to date on it because
as you can attest, McCartney Rose is all over Victoria County too, And
so you you do want to you're right about surfactant, you're right about the
timing being very important. Uh. And so rather than me shooting from the
help I would, I'm gonna punt that time to an agriculture agent with Texas
and m Agrilife Extension. And you've got a really good one there in Victoria
County. You know where the location is, They're um, yeah, at
the airport. Yes, they're out out near the airport. So when you're
coming in from Houston direction, Uh yeah, you turn off to the right
and go back in there. That's it. Okay, okay, all right,
I know what you're talking about. I think I've been over that way
before. But you know, I've just wanted anybody to do anything besides besides,
I mean not gardening. I've got a farmer son in law and they
they got a big plant farming. My daughter's mother in laws. They have
a green thumb bigger than my fam. So yeah, okay, all right,
But well I was just warning about that. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm
gonna give you a better answer by sending you to people that have a better
answer. How about that. Okay, well, that's fine. I know
enough about I just want to think there's anything you out here. But you
know, like, well there, I used remedy, a callow trees remedy
and diesel. Yeah, turned it into court. Yeah yeah. Hey,
that's another way to get rid of it. Another another way to check it
is go online and do a search for brush Busters and then McCartney Rose put
those two together in a search. There's a brushbusters website that deals specifically with
McCartney's Rose and that's also from Agrilife Extension. Hey, I'm gonna have to
run for a break. Thank you for the calling. Good luck handling that
one that is the difficult one to do. Our phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. And when we come back, Sandy
and John, you will be the first two up the good morning and a
good Sunday morning. You're listening to Garden Line and we're here to talk about
the horticulture topics that you're interested in. You want a more bountiful garden and
a beautiful landscape, Well let's talk about it. And speaking of talking about
it, we're going to head out to Cyprus and talk to Sandy. Good
morning, Sandy, high Skip. I have a question, good morning.
I wanted to see which eggplant is the best eggplant to grow out here and
in a container? And how many gallen's should the container be for the eggplant?
And is this the right time to plant. Well, that's a lot
of good questions right there. So as far as the best eggplant, that's
kind of like saying the best tomato. You're going to get an argument out
of everybody when you start doing that. But I'll tell you what I think
is a good one. I'm not a big fan of the big giant like
black Beauty, eggplants, the big large oval ones we used to always see.
I like the smaller ones a little smaller diameter, and to the I
like for containers. One is called fairy Tale and the other one is called
Hansel, as in Hansel and grattle. So they obviously they're out of the
same breeding line. I've grown both of them, and they do really,
really well. They're very productive. Now. I've grown a lot of eggplants
and sandy. To be honest, there's a lot of good ones. I
mean, it's not like if you don't get those two, you're not gonna
have any eggplant. I mean, there's a lot of good ones out there.
So, but those are two that I kind of like. I've grown
them in containers. I grew them in something probably held about half the volume
of a half whiskey barrel. I would say eggplant would I wouldn't go under
seven gallons probably in an eggplant unless you just have an automatic system that can
water them twice a day, because you don't want them to dry out.
Now, they're not gonna want to set in the super hot weather. You
can plant them now and they will grow. You may get some eggplant,
but when it cools off a little bit, they'll start producing again really well,
so I can plant it from seedling. You could start seeds now if
you wanted to. I wouldn't put the seed out in the full brunt of
the sun just right off the bat. I'd kind of start them in a
very bright, shady spot, maybe some morning sun or something like that.
Get them up and growing. But just because they dry out so fast,
and your little seedling containers, I mean that just turns dry in a few
hours in the heat of a summer sun. And should I should I plant
them in the container that they're gonna be in for their life. You could
should start them off in something you can You can do it either way,
you know, if it's a container you can move around. I would just
plant them directly in there. In fact, that way you could put more
than you want in that container in terms of seeds, and then when they
come up, you might lose one or something could happen, and that way
then you can thin them out to the number you actually want. That's one
of the nice things about starting them directly in that container. You sort of
hedge your bat by planting extras, knowing you're gonna pull some out but you
got to you gotta promise to pull them out because it's hard to pull up
a little baby seedling you just created, right. Yeah. So the other
thing is, do are they like ochra where one might shade over the other,
so you have to pull them out in the sense that each one needs
the same amount of sunlight. Well, yes, and they do need sunlight,
but if you have a container that's large enough, they're going to lean
out a little to the sides and they'll make sure they get the sunlight.
The only thing to remember is, you know, you know we talk about
weeds, is if weeds or some bad plant that gets in our good plants,
Well, when we plant too many good plants, they are essentially weeds
to each other, you know what I'm saying. So we talk about weeds
choking out the plants. They take up the nutrients, they take up the
water, they shade out the light. Well, if you put too many
eggplant in a container or anything in a container, you've it's like they're weeds
to each other. Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
yeah, So that's why you want to absolutely. Yeah, if I had
I had a little container that was it looked like a whiskey barrel. But
it was plastic. But it was only probably about I don't know, twenty
inches eighteen inches across or something, and I had three eggplant in it and
it did okay, but it probably held about twelve twelve gallons of soil.
Oh, okay, okay, well, I appreciate it. With all the
rain that we had last night, um my three and a half weekum Oqua
seedlings are kind of leaning over. Should I fit additional soil to stand them
back up there? Like? Yeah, you could. You could straighten them
out a little bit, that would be fine. You could lean anything up
against them, just to get them to hold on for a little bit.
If they don't, what will happen is that stalk will turn upward anyway,
but it won't be as well anchored as you know as if you could get
them, get them going back up the street. A little soil around it
wouldn't hurt. Just don't pile it real deep against the seedling. Okay.
Multiple multon accomplished the same thing too, by the way, for you,
Sandy, Oh well, yes, I fertilize it right now. Oh yes,
you do want to old, absolutely, you do want to fertilize it.
Okay, thank you so much. Good you bet, thank you for
the call. All right, appreciate that very much. I'm going to be
out at Wilbirds Unlimited next Saturday, the twenty seventh, from eleven thirty to
one thirty. Now, I'll be at the one in Kingwood, the Kingwood
Wallbirds June tenth, and wild Birds. If you haven't been to one,
by the way, I hope you can come out and see me. But
there are seven wallbirds all over the Houston area. Now. That would be
Katie, Kingwood, Cyprus, Pearland, Belair, West Houston, and the
newest one is Kerr Lake where I was out recently. If you go online
to WBU dot com forward slash Houston you can find the wild birds near you,
and if you've not been to one, you need to go. It
is inspirational. It is a great place for anyone interested in birding. But
if you're not, if you don't know yet that you're interested in birding,
And that's how I was. I didn't realize that how interested I would be
until I walked into a place like Wahbirds that just has everything you need.
The houses, the feeders, the quality feed not the junk feed the birds
kick all of it on the ground, but the feed that they're gonna need
all of it. It's a better quality feed. And they can direct you
that. They can tell you each season what you need because during the spring,
when they're raising young, they need, like the dried meal worms,
a high protein, high oil content for to be able to do that.
But each bird species a little different feed, even different kinds of feeders.
Wilbirds can get you set up. If you've got anyone in your life who
at all likes birds. Wahbirds is a perfect place for a gift. I
mean, they just how about a beautiful hummingbird feeder. That's just one example
out of a hundred that you'll find it. Wilbirds Unlimited. Going to head
out now to West Houston and visit with John. Hello John, Hello,
Skip, good morning, first time listener. Well, I'm glad you're here.
Thank you. Hey, listen, A couple questions regarding Saint Augustine grass.
So a couple of issues going on. One is that during this summer
heat, how high should one cut safe from, you know, now through
the beginning of fall. How many inches? Yeah, roughly, that's a
good question. I generally aim for about three to three and a half inches
for Saint Augustine if you mow it. If you mow it lower, you're
gonna have to mow it more often to keep it at the right heights without
cutting too much off, because you want to cut about a third of the
blade off each time you mow, so you don't want to cut fifty percent
of the height of the grass every time you mow. So so the shorter
its more often you have to mow. If it's in shade, John,
I would even go up through and a half four inches as high as that.
Mostly mostly it's not in the shade, and so what happens my tradition
has been is that I end up having the yard giant cut the grass every
two weeks as opposed to weekly. And I'm guessing that weekly is a better
avenue to take versus the base twice a month. Yes, So the more
often you know, the better the density is going to be. And I
know people that mother Saint Augustine at two and a half inches. I just
am not able to get out there enough to take care of mine that often,
and so I go up to a little higher than that. But okay,
it's not an exact number that you have to set the mower blade at.
Okay, and then also areas of the lawn mainly well, I should
say in the shade end in the sunny areas, it has these open patches
where there isn't grass growing. So what I've done in the past I put
down to a peat moss beg mat peat moss, kind of a d area.
But I think it was listening this morning and you mentioned to put down
and enrich the compost. Is that was something that you would apply in those
areas that are kind of bear or vacant grass. Yeah, it's a compost
because it's a renewable resource, which pete moss in the short term is definitely
not just play it in there, I guess, just handle it in there
and let it do its thing. Yeah, and get a good quality leaf
mold compost. When you have a leaf game compost, it's very fine textured,
it's screen down and you can put it in there. It settles into
the soil surface. It helps block some of the lights, so you will
reduce somewhat your weed seed germination issues and bare areas of the lawn. And
so you're gonna have good luck with that if you do it, and if
you want to if it's a little compacted, and that's why, if it's
a heavy clay and it's not getting good aeration done in the soil, then
you can also do the core aeration where they pop the little plugs out of
the soil and you have these little, you know, five eighth inch holes
that go down about four inches and then the compost even falls into those and
that creates a very nice oxygen enriched root system, which makes a grass even
happier. So I guess one thing I do. I can hands fall and
kind of work up some of that clay soil and then just put over it,
I guess, or working with the remaining clay soil working in some of
this compost with it. Yeah, you could. There are devices you can
buy. You step on them and they punch a hole in the ground.
If you meet one that will pop out a core, that's even better because
otherwise you're just sort of squeezing the sides of the hole apart, like with
a with a spading fork time, you know, going straight down. But
anything you do that helps break up an aerate, open up the soil and
then adding the organic matter. That that's the key er, all right.
I appreciate the advice and great show. I appreciate that, Thank you very
much. Appreciate. If you live out in the Mont Bellevue area, if
you love over, maybe you know Baytown area, anywhere like that, you
need to know about Texas Feedstop. Texas Feedstop is on Highway one forty six,
just a few minutes north of it ten. Now, like we love
feed stores here and we love our feed stores, and we talk talk about
the ones that give you great customer service. You don't have to deal with
poor service at a place like Texas Feedstop. Brian and Hope Roads have made
sure you don't. They will greet you. They will make sure that someone
carries your food or your food, your pets food or whatever out to the
car for you. All the products we talk about, you know, the
night FoST, Microlife, turf Star, Nelson's, Medina, Landscaper's Pride,
heirloom soils, even the Mosquito dunks I was talking about before. You're going
to find them at Texas Feedstop. It's a one stop shop. They also
have plants out front occasionally, and I think when you go by Texas feedstop.
You're gonna love it. You're gonna find that it is a place that
becomes your hometown shop for everything, for your plants and for your animals.
Well, good Sunday morning. My goodness, it's looking like a good day.
We went through that rain last night and I was kind of wondering where
we're going because weather forecast talks about rain this week. But wow, we
got a break. It's a good day to get outside. Good day to
get outside and do some shopping too. Out in the garden centers. I
love. I love to go to our garden centers. Now, I've said
this before been in case you haven't heard me. If you live in the
greater Houston area, you are very fortunate to be rich with garden centers.
I've been. I've been all the big cities in Texas visiting garden centers,
and I've been to a lot of cities in other part of other states as
well. We're fortunate here. I mean it. You go north southeast,
West, are Central and you have got state of the art, classic garden
centers. I think the I think that the Chamber of Commerce ought to ought
to put together some sort of like a garden center tour. You know,
fly in from wherever you are in the country and we'll do the multi day
garden center tour of Houston. Because if you're a gardener, it's wonderful and
they're each unique in their own way. That's that is what is cool.
I know people that drive across town to go to a garden center because of
some uniqueness of it. And even people that live near a great garden center
and go there all the time, they go to other ones too, just
to see what's going on. And it's a it is an amazing thing to
have so much And if you grew up or you've been around here a long
time and you kind of don't know any different, I'm telling you this.
It is not like this in most cities, that is for sure. I'll
spend time in Austin, spent time in Santonio, certainly, many visits up
to the Dallas Fort Worth area and so on. This is a unique place,
really really fortunate and really cool. You're listening to garden Line and I'm
your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to answer your gardening questions.
So if you want to give Josh a call, the number is seven one
two one two five eight seven four seven one two one two ktr h.
Another way to look at it, Josh, give him your name, tell
him where you live, give him a word or two so we can get
it on the board. You don't need to explain the problem to him.
He is not going to help peop with the problem. He is just going
to make sure your call gets to me. Speaking of being rich with garden
centers, we are also fortunate to be rich with Ace hardware stores around here.
When I grew up, we had a little Ace hardware store in the
hometown and it was a great place. You know, it was fun,
but I had this image of what Ace was. Get to Houston. Time
forward, Ace has changed a lot. They still have that hometown hardware feel.
You walk in, you're greeted, The people that you talk to know
what you're asking about, and they can advise you and not sell you the
wrong products. So you go all the way home and then you come back
and have to go, well, this piece of pipe isn't the one I
needed. No. So all the hardware stuff, electrical plumbing and so on,
they've got that, of course, But the garden supplies unbelievable. When
you hear me talk about fertilizer on garden line, ACE is going to have
it. When we talk about mulchus and things like that, they're gonna have
it. If you're looking for a funicide, an insecticide, an herbicide,
or some other kind of product, they're gonna have it. They're gonna have
it, and then some but then all the other things that ACE has.
Of course, paint like hardware stores have, But what about barbecue supplies,
what about home decor, what about outdoor furniture decor, power equipment? Ace
Hardware. Go to ACE hardware dot com and find one of the thirty nine
ACE Hardware stores closest to you. It's really easy to do. And once
you go into an ACE you will have a home a home shopping place that
you will go to again and again because you will be impressed and you'll see
what I'm talking about, Well, how special it is to have an ACE
Hardware store near you. I'm going to head out to the phone right now,
and we are going to start off by going up to Hockley and talking
to Elizabeth. Good morning, Elizabeth, good morn. So I have two
apple trees. Is a dwarf pink lady and the other one is in Nanna
and the dwarf Pink Lady came out really late this year, and so they
weren't in the bombs to be able to make apples that they didn't bloom at
the same time. Okay, so I need to know what my I have
another pople in the backyard that now is ready for a tripe, and I
need to know what apple tree can I stick in it? It'll help you
both are one. Yeah, that's it. That's a good question. First
of all, let me let me make a comment. Until you, let's
say you pick the perfect trees to put in there, it's going to take
them a while to grow up and start start producing for you, right and
so right, what you want to do is, if you've got any friends,
family, neighbors, whatever that have apple trees that bloom at the same
time for the next couple of years, while you're waiting on getting a new
tree going, if they will allow you to clipt just one little branch with
some blooms on it and put it in a loan I usually use like a
coke can kind of thing, and hang it in the tree. Put some
water in the coke can, hanging in the tree that the bees will visit
that bloom and they'll visit your blooms and you can get some pollination in a
pinch that way. So that is one thing that I would recommend. Now
you're you are outside of town a little distance there, but you're not that
fall from far from Tumball. I would head over to the arbour Gate Garden
Center because Arburgate carries fruit trees. You're round and they're going to have a
variety of apple options for you, and I can suggest some that you might
try, But I would go there and see what they have on hand,
because they'll be able to match that up for you. Usually we put anna
with Dorset golden. That's kind of the traditional way we've done it. I
am not familiar with the bloom time on Pink Lady. I'm thinking it was
later than the anna. Is that correct is? And the end of the
problem is the chill hours. I think that we picked the wrong tree.
It doesn't have enough chill hours. We're down here, but it's still a
pretty tree and it still blooms. It just doesn't It's not any fruit,
which is cool. I'm okay with that, okay, but I do have
two what's crazy because it's they went in last summer and I have two apples
and I would have had three, but I have two apples on the Anta
this year, which you're just huge. And so if the Pink Lady had
a couple of blooms on it, and so a couple of bees got over
to that one, Okay, So I know it'll work. Okay, it's
just a matter of a better a better crop, and I know it's going
to take me at like two three, maybe four years before I can get
like like real substantial produce off of it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just
not sure, you know, Elizabeth on the Pink Lady, what to suggest
for a second variety on that? I would have to actually go look that
up and see. Yeah, I don't think there is none other than it's
just going to be a pretty tree, which is which is fine, well,
which is I'm cool with that too. Yeah, Dorset would be a
good combo for the for the anna. But I really would talk to the
folks up at Arburgate. They know what they're talking about. They do carry
fruit year round and so they're going to be able to match you better.
Okay, all right, cool, that's what I needed. Thank you,
bet you bet, thank you very much. I appreciate I appreciate that call.
Yeah, the Beverly and the team up there at Arburgate, they they
know what they're talking about. They have plants that do well here. They've
chosen them that way. Their staff is knowledgeable. I think of them as
kind of like a walk and talk kind of deal where you go in,
someone greets you and you ask a question and they say follow me, and
you know, they almost shop with you. If you need that, they
shop with you and help you find the kinds of things that you need.
And while you're at Arbogate, you need check out their one two three completely
easy system. That's a food that feeds anything with roots, so that would
be an organic food. It's four four three plus ten percent calcium. It's
got the microbes in it that we want to see in a fertilizer like that.
It's going to be good for vegetables. You can put it in trees
and shrubs, even lungs and groundcovers. It can be used for that.
The organic Food Complete is part of that one two three that you really need
to have when you're up there picking up products. Grab some of that as
well, we're gonna take a break right now. I see Jerry out there.
Jerry, We're going to come to you a leather apple tree question when
we get back from break. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. I celebrate the fact that those clouds are pulling away and giving us
a little bit of sunshine. This morning, you're listening to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to answer your gardening
questions. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you
would like to be on the show. I was visiting with the folks at
Dell Web. Now, if you're familiar with Dell Web, this is a
while back. Dell Web is one of those that standouts in the building industry.
I mean, they have made a name for themselves building quality communities with
inspired designs for active adults fifty five and better for over seventy years. And
the best part of Bellweb communities is they have lifestyle programs designed around you.
And so when you've become part of a Dell Web community, you're not just
buying a house or property, You're buying the whole experience that comes with it.
And visiting with them. We were talking about me helping with them designing
a community garden on site for the residents. I having community gardens are a
great thing, so to me, to have a Dell Web home in a
dell Weeb community and access to a community garden, I don't know how it
gets the better than that. Well, the new community is in Fullsher on
FM three fifty nine, about two miles from downtown Fulsher. Go to dellweb
dot com, slash Houston or give McCall two eight one four five nine six
o nine to discover the Dellweb difference for yourself. I'm gonna head out to
Huffman and we're gonna talk with Jerry this morning. Jerry, we're gonna talk
apple trees again. Yeah, and I believe. Good morning, and thank
you for taking McCall. I believe you answered my questions. I need to
call Albergate. But I planted two apple trees and two pair of trees about
five years ago. Okay, this year the only one one apple tree survived.
And don't ask me what kind it is. It's an apple tree.
Okay. In this year it gave blooms. I watched it daily it's lots
of blooms and then they all fail, okay, except for a few.
Then I had four apples that survived. Okay, they grew and they grew,
and I watched them daily, and they started disappearing. And my question
is, what in the heck is eating them my apple? So I can
take them out? Yeah, well, probably a varmint. You know,
you're not looking at a peck out of an apple like a bird, but
they're probably looking. There's a number of varmints out there that would like to
grab an apple and steal it, so that what do it? Squirrels would,
Yeah, they could chump on them. I don't know what all would
chew an apple. I don't know if the you know, rats a lot
of times at night will come out and mess with our stuff. I don't
think they they might mess with it too. You know, they were huge
and it disappeared overnight. Oh um, yeah, you need one of them
wild game camera so you can catch who knows it, Maybe a neighbor neighborhood
kid coming by that apple from no, because my backyard is fit standing and
locked. I got well, but I watched them, and this joker started
disappearing and I'm looking on the ground for a or or something. Nothing,
okay, and I'll feed squirrels and the wall dog. Yeah, so I'm
think it is probably the damn squirrels because the coons couldn't get up there the
branches or tooth. Well, brother, call a brigade and talk with them,
folks. But I appreciate your program. Well, let me and yeah,
hey Jed, let me let me make a cup of the comments about
it. You can. There's a thing called an organ's bag. It's like
it's like a little mesh bag that you can buy them online and the buy
them in bulk. They're really inexpensive. They have a little draw string on
them and you can buy them different sizes. So people that have like an
apple tree, you know, it's not like five acres of apples. If
you have an apple tree or two, you can slip a bag over each
apple and and protect the apples from a lot of dogs. Now, I
don't know if that would eliminate everything, but I think based on what you're
describing, it might work. You may want to try that and see next
year if that works on your apple just as a way I'll protect them.
Yeah, I'm hoping next year to have more apples and move some bees in
and protect them a little bit better, set that game cam like you said,
and then I'm gonna eliminate my rodents. All right, there you go
sounds like thank you, yes, sir, thank you. You take care,
appreciate the call. Yeah, I'll tell you, there's nothing more disappointing
than you know, you've got this uh, you've got this beautiful fruit.
I mean it could be a tomato or whatever, and you get ready to
go out there and get it. And oh, my gosh, it happens
to me with corn. Number of years ago, and I was living up
in Cyprus. I had a corn patch and I was watching that corn day
by day, and if finally ahead of day was like tomorrow I'm going out
and tomorrow I'm starting harvesting. I came out the next morning and raccoons had
come in and they had stripped that corn patch like you wouldn't believe. And
it's like, Dad, Gummett, did they hear me? Were they out
there on the other side of the fence and they speak English or something?
How did they know that the next day I was going to pick that cord?
I just about went Caddyshack on a bunch of raccoons. After that experience,
that's funny. Well, you know, trees are a valuable part of
your landscape. In fact, all your woody ornamentals are, you know,
the beautiful shrubs that you have rosebushes. Were talking about roses earlier. A
rose is just a showstopper in your landscape. And when you buy these woody
ornamentals, they're not inexpensive. I mean, it's not like you're spending ten
cents on one. You're you're putting out some investment money to have that decades
of beauty and pleasure. And that's why I say when you buy a woody
ornamental, go ahead and buy a tree hugger sprinkler. It's a small investment
in that thing. Surviving the first summer a woody ornamentals in the ground is
touching go because the roots have to go for that little container where in a
pot that cylinder of soil was getting watered in the hot weather, is getting
water twice a day to keep that thing healthy and alive, not just alive,
but healthy and growing. And so when you put it in the ground,
it pumps that cylinder drive Before the end of the day and you're hoping
a little water is wicking in from the sides from the soil, but that
takes time, and the tree hugger will water that area for you. You
can buy them in different sizes seven inch or eleven inch, fifteen inch so
on, but it will help that thing survive. Then as it begins to
grow and you need to water a little larger area, you just turn it
up a little bit more, and then up a little bit more until where
you could have a decent sized little tree that you're using your tree hugger to
give you that rescue watering from a fairly large area. Then if you go
up to a fifteen inch and really crank it up, you've got a large
area that you're watering, and that gets you through the summer. You know,
we can't provide every drop of water or tree needs, but we can
rescue them during summer drought and heat. So it's not just a matter of
am I gonna lose that rosebush or lose that tree? Is it gonna thrive?
Is it gonna survive and thrive and grow? So I can hang a
hammock in the tree, for example, tree hugger sprinkler. It's a small
cost that is in my eyes insurance. Tree Hugger Sprinkler dot com. If
you want to find out more, you're going to find them. You know,
all over the place. The hardware stores carry them. Our feed stores
that we talk about on garden Line, the independent nurseries, garden centers we
talk about, they're going to have them. When you buy a plant that's
a woody ornamental, for sure, get a tree hugger sprinkler. At the
same time you're listening to garden Line, we are here to answer your gardening
questions. We love visiting with you guys about what's going on in the garden
and we want you to have success. That that is our goal is for
you to have success. And we know when it comes to your lawn.
Everybody has a lawn. Everybody wants to have a beautiful lawn. And one
of the ways to ensure that is to apply a slow release fertilizer that will
carry you through summer. And Nitrofossis Summer Essentials is just that we're talking about
the nitro superturf nineteen four ten. That is the kind of fertilizer that gradually
feeds and It is going to give you the nutrients you need over time,
so you're you're going to reduce your mowing up to twenty five percent disease and
insects like brown patch that love and over fertilized lawn with eight. With the
nineteen four ten, you get a gradual release. You don't have to worry
about that. You can find nitrofoss products like the Superturf that's a silver bag
by the way, all over the play Enchanted for Us and Chanted Gardens have
them down in the Richmond Rosenberg Growers outlet and Willis or maybe Ace Hardware in
city down in Memorial that is one of many places where you're going to find
Superturf nineteen four ten in the silver bag. If you'd like to give us
a call, get on the phones and give Josh. Your call is seven
one three two one two five eight seven four. If McCall seven one,
three, two and two fifty eight seventy four, tell him your name,
tell him where you're from. We'll part of town and tell him what you
want to talk about. In a couple of words. That's all it takes.
We'll be back. We'll be answering your gardening questions. Got a special
guest that will be coming up in the next hour. We're gonna visit with
the fellow from mosquito Dunks. We've been talking about those for a long time
and we're gonna drill down and kind of get a little nerdy about, well,
how does a mosquito dunk work? What is what is the secret to
mosquito dunks? Why are they so effective? Why are they so safe?
And I think you'll enjoy it. We'll learn a lot about those little critters
that can make us measurable in the summer if we don't deal with them.
And you know, all you need is a little bit of rain. You've
got mosquitoes, and I'm pretty sure that Southeast Texas gets a little bit of
rain over the course of a summer. Well, we'll be back a short
time here. Hope to have you on the board, But in the meantime,
hang on. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products
or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Rictor
So just watch him as Nick. Good morning on a good Sunday morning.
Like I say all the time, every day, is a good day for
gardening, and so is this one. I thought we were gonna have a
lot more rain than we did during the day, right, we had plenty
at night, especially in some areas. But I expected gardening would be indorsed
to day. But it doesn't look like it, at least not for now.
Good time to get out and enjoy things. Say, if you've ever
had trouble with like healthy sleep and relaxation. Maybe you've got muscle aches and
joints and skin issues or dealing with mood well as things like that, CBD
from the Trusted Lab is something you need to check out. CBD from the
Trusted Lab. It's an organic product. It's extracted from the highest quality American
grown hemp under USDA guidelines. Now they use a CO two extraction process so
it's never touched by chemicals. It's carbon dioxide to pull the things out.
It's lab tested for all the things you don't want, like pesticides or solvents
or heavy metals or anythings, ensuring that you have the highest quality CBD product.
Now they have a wide variety of options. There's oils, there's soft
jails, there's goomies, there's creams, By the way, is it goomies
or gummies? My kids and I go back and forth on that all the
time. It's a proud Texas company. You can go to the Trusted Lab
dot com and find out a lot more. I was just using some cream
for muscle joints aches that I had the other night, kind of my upper
back, an area where I often deal with a little stiffness. I find
it to be very effective. The Trusted Lab dot com check them out.
We're gonna head out to the phones now. In fact, we're gonna start
off by going to Pinehurst and talking with Greg Well, Hello, Greg,
good morning, Thanks, good morning. Um. Just a clarification question on
some fertilization. I put down Nicer Foss Super Turf sixteen four ten, nineteen
four ten back. I think it was about the first week of April,
so call it two months ago, okay, am I okay. I bought
some of the low and Slow from Nelson's Plant Food yesterday. Can I Can
I put that down or should I wait a couple more weeks for my second
summer application. I would wait a little bit later that night. Fuss gonna
last year at least twelve weeks and so that'd be a April May June.
You could you could go into the end of June or early early July if
you wanted to do the slow and easy as a follow up on it,
just watch how your lawn is doing too. You know, if your lawn
is growing at a good clip and things are looking good, we'll hold off.
I mean, the reason we use those two kinds of products, and
those both excellent products, is they gradually release over time because we don't want
to get that flush of green growth. You know, we're having a mow
more and your issues with diseases could be increased by overdoing the nitrogen. That's
a nice thing about slow release. So the other thing about slow release is
you're not going to reapply very fast, very soon because it's gonna last a
while, right right, okay, And putting it down saying like May July
or whatever, early July, it's not too hot for it? Is it
necessarily? No, not at all. And you know your lawn is fine
in the summer. He is this is Saint Augustine. Did you say,
yes, sir? Okay, yes, your lawn is fine in the summer.
He as long as has moisture. It needs solow more to be able
to go. Because here's the deal. In the summer, Saint Augustine can
handle the heat, but it is pumping water to cool itself. Water,
it's it's it's a way of cooling itself. And so when you run out
of solm moisture, it starts to heat up too much and it goes into
drought stress. And that's the problem. But fertilizer is not an issue.
You get nutrients on the grape, don't overapply it. Follow the label.
Follow the label on how much If you were you're talking about I think you
said the slow and easy, So that'd be about five pounds of that product
per thousand square feet. Five pounds per thousand square feet in that summer application,
that would be about right. That'll give you about a pound of nitrogen
per thousand Very good, Okay, very helpful. And yeah, my yard
it looks really, really good. Thanks to the schedule and then also due
to your advice, I change my watering. I just do once a week
now for really deep heavy watering. I feel like it's really help the versus
they know every other day. So yeah, it really is. I mean,
you know, think about think about watering this way to Greg. When
you turn your sprinklers on the first drops that are going out number one,
as they fly out there evaporating that we know that's happening in the air.
Very little bit, a little bit is happening. That's why water early in
the morning. But then those drops hit your grass, and then as more
drops come, it goes down and it is wetting your thatch. And then
as more drops come, it's rolling past all that wet material and finally getting
into your soil. So theoretically, if we say apply an inch a week,
but you applied one tenth of an inch a day, you would essentially
not wet your soil at all because you would wet the thatch, you would
have bet the grass, and then it would all evaporate away. No one
squeegees off the grass blades to get it in the sam or in the grade.
So that's why we would rather put more on as fast as we can,
but in that cycle and soak style so that we get the the water
in the ground. That's that's where we need the water, not on the
grass. And that's why I liked the more we can move towards once a
week. And I'm saying this to you. Of course you already know this,
but others that are listening, and most twice a week and most twice
a week, but if you can move toward it once a week, you're
going to have a much better lawn because you get oxygen down in the soil
as it dries out. But I totally agree. It drives me crazy when
I see my neighbors watering, you know, every other day in the middle
of the day. It's like just wasting water. Well, and it's not
quite it's not quite humid enough in the Houston area, so we need to
all contribute to them, right, Yeah, exactly, all right, thanks
if I really appreciate it, Thank you, sir. I appreciate that very
much. Let's see, we're gonna go talk to Rich in Spring, Texas.
Good morning, Rich, Good morning Skip. I'm involved with the board
in a subdivision. We have a landscaper that put in marigolds and the little
at Salvia's at the end of March. Okay, and now they're saying,
is hey, we got to change that out for summer color. Okay.
Everything I know about merrigoals and Salvia's seems to think that they would make it
through the uston summer. Yes, online, I checked. It seems like
that's what they're saying that your opinion is a yes. Also right, they
take the heat. But marigoles or spider might magnets, So what can happen
in the summer If spider might show up, they're going to turn them to
toast. So that would be one reason at some point to switch them out.
But just the fact that it's summer is not a reason to not have
mirigals. They can they can take heat. There are other good summer color
plants, so maybe they just want to change the color up a little bit.
But yes, they can take the heat. No, they probably want
to make a thousand dollars. Ah okay, well, I'm just telling you.
I mean, I'm telling your horticulturally what it is, and then people
make the decision they want to make. I understand. I appreciate your opinion,
and we're going to keep the merry goals till something happens bad then we'll
change him out, all right, sir. And by the way, miracles
Miracles are a good one to come back to in late August for a beautiful
fall show. Once we get into fall, the spider might season goes down
and the miracles take off. So good luck with that. I appreciate that
call very much. Hey, our phone number seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. Give Josh a call. We'll talk to you after
break, remember, right and right, Well, good morning on a beautiful
Sunday morning outside. We are glad you're listening to garden Line and looking forward
to talking to you. By the way, if you are in the Tumball
area and haven't been by D and D feed Supply, that's about three miles
west of Tumball on Highway two forty ninths on the left there, you need
check it out. The Dover family open D and D back in nineteen eighty
nine, and this summer they expanded it got a lot more area. As
if they didn't already have enough great product, they have a lot more.
Now. They're going to carry the fertilizers that we talk about. They're going
to carry the soil type materials that we talk about here. They even have
flats of vegetables and vegetable seed and fruit trees and things like that quality dog
food Origin Diamond, Victor Star Pro. They're gonna you're gonna find the mosquito
dunks that we talk about here, pest and road and control sections, and
of course all the stuff that you would need and expect from a hardware storm.
Excuse me, a feed store that is D and D feed and Supply
on FM twenty nine, twenty three miles west of tom Ball on Highway Are
on Highway twenty nine, twenty three miles west of two forty nine. There
we go. Well, you're listening to garden Line. We have a special
gas coming up here. We have been talking about mosquito dunks today, but
we weren't talk about a little bit more. Now we are fortunate to have
Bill. Bill is from the Mosquito Dunks from Responsible Solutions, and we're going
to discuss with Bill some of the intricacies of the Mosquito dunks themselves. Hey
Bill, welcome to garden Line. Hey, good morning, it's great to
have you here. It's great to be here. Well, good I'm looking
forward to picking your brain a little bit. So it's pretty exciting to have
a product that is just a win win win without a downside to it.
And I think that's what you got when you got Mosquito Dunks. Yeah,
I mean, that's nobody likes mosquitos, so hopefully we help everybody reduce their
mosquito population make things a little more bearable outside of these humid, hot summer
days. Well, and you know, of course, we're down here in
Houston and Southeast Texas, and I'm pretty sure that this is where mosquito is
even vacation. I bet they're mosquitoes from Calcutta, India that get on the
plane to come to Houston for the summer because it's such a lovely place to
be for them. But mosquitoes can sure spoil the show. I was,
you know, noticing how many different species of mosquitoes aren't can you can you
just kind of give us a little bit of information on the foe that we're
up against and maybe how the mosquito dunks work effectively to manage them. Sure,
well, I mean you're right about Houston being one of the mosquito capitals
of the world. I mean that the conditions are just perfect there. You
have the water, you have the temperature, and mosquitos really don't need certain
species of mosquitos really don't need much more than a thimbolful of water to be
able to reproduce that female laser eggs and that little tiny capful of water,
and five or seven days later, all of a sudden, you have hundreds
more adult mosquitos that are out looking for a meal. Yeah. That's you
know, we from a gardening standpoint, we talk about the catch basins under
your plan, and I don't think people realize. You know, when you
get a lot of rain or just water a plant and someone runs out in
the catch basin, you I'll dump that out this weekend or something. Well,
by this weekend, there's going to be an egg has been laid,
a larva that's hatched out, and probably a pupa and maybe when you go
to dump it out you get bent by mosquito you didn't deal with right up
front. Yeah, and it really the warmer, It is the faster that
life cycle will go. So four to seven days from laying the eggs to
all of a sudden there's adult mosquitos. Yeah, it's easy to overlook.
You forget to empty that catch basin, and all of a sudden you have
a lot more unintended visitors. That is true. And you know I'm aware
of this, I know better, But just the other day I was out
in my garden and I walked past a wheelbarrow and I had set a glass
that I was, you know, red solo cup kind of thing that I've
been drinking out of it in there and just't forgot it. It was sitting
in among some plants, and I walk by and I look down in it
and there was standing water. And I don't know how long that water had
been there, but even you know, I know better. You gotta go
around your yard. You gotta dump out all the water that you can.
If you got a bird bath, you wanted to get it out of there.
But when you don't, when you have standing water, maybe a pond
or even a bird bath, your mosquito dunks. And then you have the
other product to the granules, right correct, Mosquito bits those little bits that
can cover a pretty big area, like you a little swampy area. You
can scatter those out and they may not last as long as a dunk,
I believe, but they will give you a real quick when you're inundated with
larva. That's a real quick way to get caught up right. Yeah,
Mosquito bits are like a quick kill. I mean we equate it to almost
using shock in a swimming pool. You know, if you have all that
algae in a pool and you need to get rid of it fast, you
throw the shock into the pool and it takes care of it. Mosquito bits.
You throw that into the standing water and all the mosquito larva in there
will be dead within twenty four hours. There you go. And the dunks,
now they think of that as a little doughnut, for example, that
you would put out. But it takes a while to fully dissolve away.
So what do you get about a month out of that? Yeah, you'll
get thirty days or maybe even a little longer depending on your weather, because
you're right, it does. It does just slowly dissolve. So great for
ponds, Great for those areas of standing water, rain barrels where you want
to keep the water but you still don't want to deal with the mosquitoes.
Stock tanks, you know, animal watering trough those are all great areas for
mosquito dunks. Because mosquito dunks won't affect the animals, won't affect the pets,
won't affect the livestock. It's only going to affect the mosquito larva well,
and and let's talk about why that is. Because we're not talking about
out like a chemical pesticide here that we're killing insects with. We're talking about
something different. So to get a little nerdy here with us on what exactly
is in a mosquito dunk, okay, mosquito dunk. The active ingredient in
a mosquito dunk is a bacteria commonly referred to as BTI. BTI stands for
the Pillus Denzi israeliensius, all right, and it's a natural, naturally occurring
soil borne bacteria that was actually discovered a number of years ago in the desert
in Israel, which is it's reliansius exactly exactly. An entomologist was doing some
research out there and happened to discover a couple of little ponds of water,
shallow water out in the desert. One of them was full of mosquito larva
and the other one wasn't. So he piqued his curiosity and he he did
some testing and some analysis and discovered this bacteria a bt and bts are fairly
common. I mean, there's another common bt that most people know about,
bt K, which is used to treat caterpillar insects. Yeah, so the
bts affect the larval stages of certain insects, and they're really specific. So
in the case of BTI, it's specific to an insect class called Diptera,
and that class includes mosquito larva, fungus nat larva, black fly larva.
Well that is that is a good description there. Yeah, we talk about
BT all the time in gardening, and most time we just say BT for
caterpillars, and you know, that's how people think of it. But as
you pointed out, the strains of it, the israeliensis for your mosquitoes and
your fungal gnats for example, the BTK, which is the caterpillar type,
and then we even have a BT San Diego that we're on some beetles,
which is a very different, different family of BT. But but your mosquito
dunks. The BTI really effective, really natural. So I mean a ladybug
could go there and drink some water and it wouldn't affect them at all.
I mean, it's very specific for this past Yeah, yeah, honey bees,
all your beneficial insects, it's it's harmless to them. That's great.
That is great. Well, I was reading in some material that there are
about two thousand, five hundred species of mosquitoes. That species. I know
I have two thousand, five hundred mosquitoes when I walk out and sit down
on my patio. So it's nice to know there's something to use to help
fight them so well. And it does. It handles every single species of
mosquito. Everyone that is yep. I mean when I said it's a win
win win. There are very few times that I can say, well,
here's a product. It absolutely works on in this case, every kind of
mosquito that you would have at this marvel state. And it's not going to
hurt anything else. Kills mosquitoes, don't kill anything else that you know that
you're out there. Of course we're not, I know, fungal nuts,
but you know, basically all the good bugs that are out there, and
the family pat drinking and the birds stopping to get a little water out of
the bird bouth, it won't hurt any of them. It's very rare to
find something that is pretty much all upside, no downside. Oh absolutely,
I mean if there's a downside that and some people don't quite understand. It
does not affect adult mosquitoes. Unfortunately, we don't. We don't have a
natural solution like the mosquito dunk for the mosquito larva that kills the adults.
So you get out there and get that adult or get that larval stage.
And we tell everybody, you know, before you treat anything, just like
you walk down and notice that that cup of water in your wheelbarrow, take
an inventory of your yard. Look around for any kind of area where there
could be any standing water whatsoever. And you don't just look around on the
ground. You know. One of the biggest culprits is rain gutters. Yes,
if you have a slightly plowed rain gutter, you have a mosquito condominium.
And they love it. They love stagnant water that's not moving, that
has decaying organic matter, and that is just like mosquito heaven right there.
Yes, absolutely, that is true. That's good. Yeah, you're just
talking about another time, looking out around and speaking to gardeners here, I
had had some putting sail, a bag of potting soil, and I'd used
about two thirds of it and I just sort of folded it over and you
know, pushed it down to come back and work later. Walking through the
yard after a rain, there was all this water that was sitting there in
the plastic, you know, caught in the plastic of that bag of potting
soil up on top, and there's another mosquito place for them to breed.
And I just pay attention to those kind of things. He's easy to easy
to miss, isn't it. They are definitely opportunities. Well, you know,
mosquitoes aren't just irritating us. I mean they're they're one of the most
deadly insects that we have in the world. Right well, there are more
deaths in the world caused by mosquitos than any other animal. Well, now,
I just want that to soak in for a minute. And you're thinking,
well, wall, non mosquito never killed me. Well, malaria,
denga fever, yellow fever, westnell virus. I mean there's probably more to
it than that. But I mean those right there alone, that's a serious
thing. Oh it is. Yeah. Yeah, We're we're fortunate in the
United States where we have most homes have air conditioning or at least windows screens,
things that we take for granted that in other areas of the world they
don't have things like that, and so they have mosquitoes in the house they
have mosquitoes everywhere it's and they don't have mosquito dunks in a lot of cases.
So yeah, well that when you think about historic the different you know,
like the when the Panama Canal was dug, the amount of desks that
occurred just in that process because of mosquitoes and the diseases they carry. It.
A product like this, I mean, it could literally change history.
And I'm not trying to say use it in your backyard and it changes history.
I'm just saying that I wish we had this. Well, it'll it'll
change the history of your patio gatherings. Friends will actually want to come over
instead. But you know, you know what I'm saying. You know.
One of the interesting things though, this is just a fun fact of mosquitoes
that that I heard the other day. Uh, it's the female mosquito that
causes us the trouble that the male actually like drinks a little bit of nectar
or something like that and is not the one that wights us. Is that
correct? Well, both both males and females are nectar feeders and um and
believe it or not, they are pollinators. You know. They go from
flower to flower just like a honeybeed. Okay, but but, but,
but the female mosquito in order to reproduce, in order to have eggs,
to be able to drop eggs, she must take a blood meal. So
a blood meal can be from you and me, or your dog or your
horse or you know, a bird. Yeah, but they need that protein
from the blood as part of the whole reproductive process of mosquitoes. So the
males don't bite, are females bite and they do that to get the blood
meal. Well, hey, Bill, thank you so much for being on.
I'm against a hard break here. I'm gonna put you on holes so
Josh can get you back on. But thank you so much. I really
appreciate you coming on. We welcome back to garden Line. You are listening
to the Gardening Show for your gardening questions, and we are visiting with Bill
from the Mosquito Dunks Company actually summit responsible solutions this morning. Bill, thanks
for coming back just a little bit. I just wanted to see if if
you had any additional thoughts or comments or anything we didn't cover that you know
that you think is worth also mentioning um. Well again, I would suggest
that your audience, you know we're talking about standing water, and you know
we talked about areas of standing water, and you know, those mosquitoes are
tricky. I mean they will find the smallest little bit of standing water.
You only need a symbolful and out of sight, out of mind rain gutters,
drainage from a house. I see it frequently where people use those corrugated
black pipes to draw water away from their house. But those cor asians are
all about a half in steep if you look on the interior of the pipe,
and that's just a great place at the end of the pipe for those
mosquitoes to breed. It is they are. They are very resourceful, unfortunately,
aren't they. Yeah, you're you're right about that. It takes an
effort to not be a mosquito breeder. Uh you know in this kind of
well if we say skeeter breeder, uh done in this is part of the
country. Well, I can tell you this, in the greater Houston area,
you would be hard pressed to throw a rock and not hit a business
that carries mosquito dunks. I mean, our our favorite feet stores that we
talk about here are Ace Hardware Stores, thirty nine up mo Runtown, all
our home and garden centers that we talk about, the mom and pops that
really know what they're doing. Everybody's got mosquito dunks in them, so people
will not have trouble finding those products, that's for sure. Well, we
appreciate that. Well, I I appreciate you coming on and being able to
visit with you a little bit about my You know, I think that we
sort of take mosquitoes for granted as is just well, they're here and you've
got to you know, you just have to put on deet or something to
keep them off of you. But really there is a lot that we can
do too to avoid that kind of problem. And you know, it would
make me really happy to know that I'm breaking a lot of mosquito hearts by
not giving them a free blood meal, for sure. Well it's it's it's
important too to get your neighbors involved, because you can, you can be
as diligent as possible in your own property, but if the selling nextor is
not doing his part, those mosquitoes will fly. They don't recognize borders.
No, that's true. And you know one thing we haven't talked about here
on the Gulf Coast heartworms, which literally are deadly for our pets. Our
dogs are very prevalent and heartworms come through mosquito bites, and so it's not
just a matter of your convenience sitting on the patio. It's it's a life
and death thing for dogs too. We have to we have to give our
dogs constant treatments for heartworms on the Gulf Coast because they're so so bad and
so deadly. And again, just another reason to have a few less mosquitoes
around. Oh absolutely, yeah. Well good, Well, hey Bill,
thanks so much. I appreciate you coming on taking time out of your day.
It's been good to talk to you and enlightening. Uh, and I
think we got a lot of folks that are ready to go out there and
make this summer a very disappointing one for the mosquitoes the greater Houston area.
Well, Skip, it's been a pleasure. And if any of your listeners
want further information, they can always email us or call us or go to
our website and pick up some more information there. Okay, and that is
uh, Summit Responsible Solutions, Am I right? Responsible solutions dot Com?
Is that that correct? Yes? Okay, Summit Responsible Solutions dot Com.
Well, thanks again, met a pleasure speaking with you and wish you the
best. Well, thanks so much, skid all right bye bye. Oh
my goodness, mosquitoes. Wow, what a topic, what an issue to
be dealing with. You know, yesterday I was visiting with Paula from the
Plumaria Society, and we were talking about plumarius, of course, and I
was looking at Buchanans newsletter. They Buchanans Native Plants, which is on East
eleven Street in the Heights. If you if you want to see their newsletter,
you can go to Buchanans Plants dot com and sign up for it.
But in their weekly newsletter they have some plumarias and they have one called jungle
Jack's Plumaria And when I look at it, it looks like you ought to
be able to eat the thing. I mean, it's like sherbet ice creams,
like pink and coral and yellow and cream colored, and it is just
gorgeous as our most plumarias. But that's one that they have on stock right
now. So if you were interested in the plume areas that we talked about,
well, Buchanan's among all the other things they carry. You know,
they're a leader in carrying native plants. That's one thing they specialize in.
They even have a table where, you know, not just Texas native plants,
they have one table or more that is just Houston slash Harris County natives.
Things that are native. Right here is that we have a lot of
other great native plants around the region. But this just shows you how committed
they are to native plants. But boy, if you need you need a
beautiful plume area, go by there and tell them you heard about the jungle
Jack's plumeria on Garden Line and you got to see that thing, and I
think you'll see what I'm talking about. Oh my gosh, it is just
absolutely beautiful. That's Buchanan's Plants dot Com. Our phone number seven one three
two one two five eight seven four. If you want to give Josh a
call, he'll get you on the board. I'm glad to visit with you
about the things that are of interest to you. You know, we're inning
that summer season, and certainly it's mosquito season, but it's also coming up
on hurricane season, and when we think about the value of a tree to
the landscape, hurricane preparedness is very important in our landscapes. Do you need
tree limbs removed, do you need the roofline cleaned, Or there's some dead
trees that just need to come down because they are going to fall apart when
the next storm hits, or their limbs over your roof or in your neighbor's
roof, or maybe you've got a power line, you know, one of
those lines coming into your property to your house where the trees are overhanging.
Affordable Tree Service Afftree Service dot com is a professional worth calling. They know
what they're talking about. You can give him a call at seven one three
six nine nine two six sixty three. Seven one three six nine nine two
six sixty three. Martin or his wife will answer. They will come out,
they'll do consultations. They'll do every kind of treecare you might need,
including preparing for hurricane season. Affordable Tree Service we'll be right back after break
mo see out there on The calls are on the on the board. Anyone
else wants to get online seven one three, two one two five eight seven
four for well, welcome back to garden Line. You are listening to Skip
Richter on garden Line and we are here to answer your gardening questions. Seven
one three, two one two fifty eight seventy four. Let's start off by
going to Missouri City and we are going to talk to Paul. Hello,
Paul, Yeah, yeah, good morning. Ask it. Hey. I've
got a question regarding a loan fertilization. I'm looking at the early summer feeding
and my concern is putting down a synthetic fertilizer where possibly we may have ninety
plus degree temperatures, strong sun, not to burn the lawn. If you
put them down at the recommended rate, you're not going to burn the lawn.
Uh. Some of those products, you know we were talking earlier about
the Nelson's products twenty two percent nitrogen. Well, that's only five pounds per
thousand square feet that you're putting out. So I mean you dump a whole
bunch of salt based fertilizer in one spot, Yes, you will burn the
lawn. But now yeah, okay, well not when you use it at
the right rate. Now, if you want to use synthetic of units organic,
that's your choice. You can. You can go either way. But
at the rate when you put out at the right rate, you're not going
to burn. All right, great, Well, and another question regarding asamite
or as amite, yes, um can I can I put that down at
any time like in August on one hundred degree day or yes you can.
It is not salt based at all. And with asamite, Uh, what
we're doing is we're adding those micros, those those things that are essential,
but they're needing very very small amounts, but they are essential to have.
And so anytime you want to supplement your soil with that, whether it's a
lawn or a vegetable garden or whatever, it's okay. I like to think
of it not as fertilizer, although yes, it's nutrients that plants take up,
but when we think of fertilizer, we're usually thinking about things with those
three numbers on the bag that you need in large amounts. This is more
of a think of it as a soil building product. Again, yes,
it is nutrients and many of which are essential for the plant, but so
you can do it at any time. With the regular quote fertilizers, we're
putting them on with plenty of nitrogen and them usually to boost growth to get
that grass growing and green and pretty. And this is more to support that
growth, to make sure that the plant is not lacking for anything that it
needs. Okay, is a natural force edic or an organic fertilize? They
sell both. They had both, they had both types of fertilizer. Yeah,
yeah, okay, okay, Well listen, thank you so much.
I really appreciate your your knowledge. Yeah, okay. Are you interested and
more of an organic? It sounds like you might be. Is that is
that where you're going? Well, you know, honestly, I tried to
go go organic a couple of years ago, and then I got hit with
a dollar spot in brown Patch, and and I guess I didn't want to
pay the fief to have the whole yard with composts, Okay, so I
just killed it with you know, a synthetic okay killer. Yeah. Well,
when it comes to fertilizers, uh, it's not whether it's synthetic organic
that's going to create a disease problem. It's how fast is it releasing?
How much are you putting out there? That's that would be the thing where
the large patch we used to call it brown patch and the winner, Yes,
extra nitrogen more than you should be applying and can contribute to that.
But a good synthetic, a good organic used at the right rate at the
right timing. You know, not too much at one time that you're not
going to have that problem. But if you're into you know, if you're
interested, like in an organic something that would give you a quicker green up,
you could go with something like a has to Grow. The has to
Grow has the twelve for eight. I use that on my lawn this spring
to get a good quick green up, and you just hook it up to
a little it's a court jar. You hook it up to your hose.
It takes about ten minutes to do the lawn, most average sized lawns,
and it gives you the medina cell activator and the nutrients in it certainly,
and then the humate liquid humus is also in there, and I found it
gave a good quick greenup. Typically when we get into the summer season,
we're starting to think about a longer term, a gradual and that's where we
go to the slow releases. So you have options out here, but I
you know that if you if you need a little quick boost on your lawn,
I would consider the has to Grow liquid also is another good option for
that, Okay, but it has to Grow is more like early spring.
It wouldn't be now, normally we use that an early spring is a quick
green up, but you can use it at any point in time that you
want a good quick response. Okay, okay, there are a lot of
quality fertilizers out there that we just have to understand how they work and with
a has to grow that's a liquid feed, and liquid feeds give you a
quick response. They're not going to go for months and months and months.
Now. Returning your clippings takes what you just put on in a liquid feed
that's now grown and become grass clippings, and it returns them and they recycle
and they'll feed over time. But that's true with any fertilizer, your clippings.
When you have grown clippings with fertilizer you purchased, you need to put
those clippings back in the lawn. Otherwise you're just renting the fertilizer you just
applied. If you even get rid of them, that's just renting fertilizer.
Yeah. I just started doing that multiing business myself. Always for years a
bad yeah, but you mentioned, you mentioned it back weeks ago, and
now I'm doing it. Well. Good glad to hear that. Well,
Hey, thank you so much for the call. I appreciate that. Paul.
Okay, thank you. Take care. We're going to head out to
Spring now and talk to Mo. Hello, Mo, Hi, how you
do? I'm well, I'm well, what can we do today? The
mosquito dunks? Can I put them around my organic beds where I have my
vegetables and stuff? Well, you can, but you're putting the mosquito dunks
where there's standing water. You're not just putting them in the soil there around
the base those big beds. Yeah, so I could do that a way
where you have standing water, you can use mosquito dunks, or you can
use the granule the form that they have, the small granules and that you
know, if that the granules we typically would use, Like if I had
some maybe a catch basin under some plants and I'm going to get able to
empty it, I might throw a few granules in there. Uh, you
know, getting a big, a big donut dunk in there might not be
practical. So the granules would work for that. But the dunksters where if
you have water standing, you know, some sort of quantity of water standing.
What but my neighbor next door is a big quality is standing. Yeah,
well, maybe you just need to chunk one over the fence at night
if you can. If you hear a splash and land in the water,
you know you've done some good. Well the way his wife changed his plants
and trees around so much, I don't know. Oh yeah, you're the
one. They're the ones that put out the free plants for you at the
curbside, right, oh fourteen the pine tree she just bought and she didn't
like them. I'm speechless, speechless, but we had fun put all right,
well, all right, well, continue didn't have fun with that.
Well, I'm just trying to make him laugh a little today, But thank
you Sam. If it's standing water, real bad standing, where I can
put the big dunks and bigger dunks. Yes, If it's just like a
little around like a party plant, ye put off. If it's yeah,
that's that's what That's how I would do it down in the in the catch
basin. If if there's going to be standing water there, Now that one
dunk covers about a ten by ten area, that's all you need is one
dunk for a ten by ten. If it's bigger than that, put another
dunk in. But spread them out a little bit because they dissolve and the
the bacteria in them is what goes out in the water and kills those mosquito
larva. Yeah, and she has her dog. It likes to sleep up
there by hers, so I'm afraid with dog getting heart worms. So there
you go. I'll put some around on her, a little dishes up there.
That sounds good. Thank you so much for that call. Good morning,
Steed, and have a good afternoon you too, and a good rest
of next week as well. I tell you, it's always fun talking to
people. I'm amazed at people that you know, like buy a plant and
don't like it and put it at the curb that I don't get that.
It seems like that there's a way to avoid that one. But anyway,
that's what happens. If you're looking at your landscape and you just are feeling
like I need to do something new, I need to do something different,
and need some advice, that's why we're here. If you're looking at your
garden and you're wondering about what would be some good vegetables for the heat,
that's why we're here. You can give us a call seven one three two
one two five eight seven, four seven one three two one two KTRH Josh,
You'll get you on the board. All you need to tell them is
your name, where you live, and a word or two about what your
questions about. Don't go into get great detail that he's not going to answer
your questions. Just tell them what you need. He'll get it on the
board. And when we come back from break, you'll be the first stop
as we begin to enter hour now last hour for the weekend. Just want
to remind you next Saturday, June tenth, I will be at the wild
Bird It's unlimited in Kingwood in Kingwood from eleven thirty to one thirty. We
got some great giveaways. They're giving away some really good quality products and I'll
be giving away some fertilizers as well out there, So I hope you can
make it out and see us. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Guarden Line
with Scarre Rictord. Just watching well, good morning, have a good Sunday
today going on today. I'm looking at the weather. I'm enjoying it out
there and I think you will too. Starting to cloud up just a little
bit more, but still nice temperatures. By the way, that's a good
thing about clouds is it kind of gives a little bit of break from the
heat as we start to enter that hot summer season. I'm going to head
out to Tumble and we're going to talk to Emily this morning. Good morning,
Emily, Good morning. How can we help? I have bermuda that
has invaded my Saint Augustine, and I'm wondering if poisoning the whole yard versus
putting a tarp over it, or what would be the best way to approach
that. You know, I think you're going to have to use something that
kills grass on the whole yard. If you do the tarp will it will
kill it back? And you can kill bermuda by keeping it tarped for a
very long time, but that's not practical for your home lawn, and the
homeowners association might not be happy with that if you have one on edition.
But the Saint Augustine will be killed, but the bermuda underground will have some
ability to reach sprout, so I think you'd probably have the opposite effect to
tarp it. But if you can target the areas where the bermuda is hopefully
it's not everywhere, but in anyway the grass killer and then give it a
couple of weeks and just kind of watch because you won't get at all in
the first treatment. You will get all the Saint Augustine, but you won't
get all the bermuda, and when it reached sprouts, you may have to
hit it again. And then once you've knocked it out, then you can
go back in with your Saint Augustine. Okay, I was wondering about the
timing of it with a hot summer coming up. In the Saint Augustine replanting,
you can replant Saint Augustine all through the summer, and so if you
want to go ahead and get it done now, that would probably be good.
The Bermuda and Saint Augustine are very actively growing, and when you're going
to use any kind of a grass killer on that lawn, it's best if
it's actively growing. Yeah. I mean, you know you've you've heard of
products like roundup to kill everything. Well, you golf courses sometimes will spray
the equivalent of Roundup on the grass in the winter time to kill the winter
weeds and the bermuda so mormant that it doesn't really kill it. And so
that's why we want to use those products when it's actively growing, if we
want to have effect. And there's there's that, and then there's the grass
only killers. There's more than one ingredient that just kills grass and didn't kill
broad leaves, and so you just have to kind of look at what you
got. I've got a bunch of broad leaf weeds. You may want something
that gets at all. Okay, what about soil remediation. After putting down
all that poises, there's no need to You can spray those things. Let
them give them at least a week or two to get in there and get
get their work going and done before you mess with anything. Like I said,
in this case, because you really want to know you got rid of
it, I would give them longer. See if you can get some re
sprouting and then hit it again. But once you've done that, it contacts
the soil. The soil breaks them down, and you can put grass and
things down and you're not going to be bothered. It's not going to be
hanging around. There are products that you know they kill vegetation and they keep
killing vegetation. You can't plant something there. Again, that's not the case
with the grass only killers. Okay, what about the use of asamite?
Would I wait until the grass is plant the new grass is planted, or
do that previous? You know it's even better to do it previous because you
get it more down in the ground. You can scratch it down to the
surface a little bit. But there's not a right or wrong on it.
You can go either way. Okay, thank you so much. All right,
good luck and have fun out there in time. All getting that all
cleaned up. I know that's a mouse. I've had to deal with that.
Now, let's see, I want to head out to Laport and we're
gonna visit with Mike a little bit. Good morning, Mike, Good morning.
Skip to to the point. I've got out some really nice tomato plants,
nice big green bushy, lots of blooms, setting lots of fruit,
and as quick as the fruit is ripening, the bottom is turning mushy and
the fruit goes south. No insect infestation that I can see. I've been
using this soap on the leaves also some knem oil. Is just can't figure
it out what to say you, Well, if a tomato is going mushy
on the bottom, we call that blossom endrot. That's the end of the
tomato where the bloom originally was. And blossom endrot is caused by a lack
of calcium to the growing tip of the tomato. Now, you may have
plenty of calcium in your soil. It may be that you need to add
calcium, but most likely you probably don't have a deficiency, although a soil
test would help you answer that for sure. What happens, though, is
even when calciums in the soil, when we go from wet to dry,
which is especially bad in containers. I don't know these are the ground or
in containers in the ground, in the ground, okay, containers are especially
prone to drying out, and then you water them and they get real wet
again. But even the soil, when you have that fluctuation, the calcium
just doesn't make it to the end of the tomato. It happens on watermelons
too, and it could happen on squash. The fruit cells die right out
there, and then when they die, then here comes the rot and it
just works its way back in toward the tomato. So I think that you're
looking at as blossom end rot. So number one, try to get an
even moisture content in the soil, not up and down, up and down
or anything like that. That would be number one. If you haven't had
a soil test in a while, you might want to have it tested just
to make sure. Maybe you do need to add a little bit of calcium
to the soil because it just didn't there to take up. And then other
than that, the only thing I would say is maybe maybe cut one of
those tomatoes open and just make extra sure that it wasn't like a little caterpillar
that chewed on it and went into the fruit and left a wound. You'll
find the larva inside if that's the case, But we just want to make
sure that it didn't start with some sort of a wound, like a like
a cat chewing in Because I've actually done that, I cut a couple of
them in half and look for little guys in there. There's been no sign
of that. I think we're dealing with blost end rot. Then, okay,
so more regular watering, I guess for more even watering is that what
I'm here, trying to keep it evenly moist try to avoid the fluctuation from
a little too dried or a little too wet and so on. All right,
thank you very much. All right, sir, thank you. I
appreciate that call. You have tomato blossom end rot. That can be a
problem something we have to deal with. If you're wanting to have your lawn
looking as good as it can look all summer, I would suggest you consider
nitrophosts and the products that they carry, like the slow and easy the nineteen
four ten that gives you that gradual feed over time. Now you're you know
nitrophost four ten. It's a silver bag. It makes it real easy to
find. Go out and find that and put it on your lawn and give
it a gradual feeding. It'll spread that nitrogen application out so you don't mow
as much. They claim a twenty five percent reduction in growth, which I
believe that just by giving a good smooth feeding over time and by not over
doing the nitrogen. When chinch bug season comes in late summer, when large
patch season comes in the fall, again, you're gonna disappoint some disease and
some insects because you're not giving them that tender over succulent grass that they like
so much, nitrofoss and the nineteen four ten excellent product for gradual feeding.
You know, over time, we're gonna take a break. Give Josh call
if you want to be online with me and the number seven one three,
two one two five eight seven four fell. All right, good morning,
on a good Sunday morning. We are here to talk to you about whatever
you're interested in regarding gardening. Phone numbers seven one three, two one two
five eight seven four. Give Josh call, he'll get you on the board
and we can visit. Hey, if you're looking at your landscape, and
you know, I'm a plant collector. I go places and I buy plants
and I put them in my landscape. But I'm not a landscape designer.
And let's just say that it shows. I think it's pretty, but you
know, sometimes my design skills aren't there. That's why we have Peerscapes.
Peerscapes knows how to design and they are a full service landscaper. I mean
they can do the rock borders, they can do the hardscapes. Put in
a new garden. Welcome to Houston. Drainage problems. You need drainage prop
fixed plants don't like to live in a swamp. Most of them don't.
They can fix that for you peerscapes dot com. Go to piercescapes dot com
or Callumn two eight one three seven zero five zero six zero. Let them
get their experience, professionally trained employees. They're designers on the job for you
and turn your place is into a showplace, beautiful from the street or wonderful
backyard entertaining area. Peerscapes can do just that. I want to head out
to the phones and we are going to talk to Caroline in self, West
Houston. Hello Caroline, good morning, Good morning. I have a question
about my eggplant. This is my first attempt to grow an eggplant. Are
you supposed to pull out the little suckers to come up from where the leaf
comes off of the stem? You know, I've never bothered with that before.
I guess if you had a whole lot of them, you could.
Maybe you do want it to branch some though, and so you know I
have most of my eggplan have three to five branches on them going out in
all directions. I guess if you were trying to no one stakes eggplant.
But if you were trying to do that, you would remove all the suckers,
so you could have one going up. But I've just kind of tended
to leave mine. But I could see a reason occasionally to take one off
here or there. That's just too many year it's not where you want it
to be. Well, we have one plant, so I think I'll just
leave them all right, sounds good. Now, with one plant, you're
not going to make a lot of barb a ganoose. So I don't know
what your plan is out there, Caroline. Well, there's nobody here but
the dog in me, and I don't think the dog likesake plan. Well
that's good. I had a dog. In fact, I need to post
this star Facebook page. I have a dog that steals cherry tomatoes. I
didn't know that, and talk caught him in the ac one time. I'll
put that video up on Facebook. Y'all keep an eye out for that.
Great wonderful thank you all right, like your little extra things? Okay,
well good, you're a little comments. We live to serve. Thank you,
Caroline. I appreciate your call. Oh gosh, hey, I was
driving through the country the other day and I saw someone who has a little
like five acre piece of property and I was just looking. It was pristine,
and it just made me remember it. We used to have a little
piece of property and a little tractor on it. Right now, I'm living
in town. I don't have a piece of problem. I wish I did,
But if I did, I'll tell you what I would do right now,
and that is go to Lansdale Moody and get their new deal with the
Caboda, the Caboda's big value tractor. This is the Texas edition Caboda el
Te Mild tractor. I ground the transmission every time I shifted gears. This
one hydrostatic transmission and trick it out with a front end loader, a landscape,
a box blade to move the soil around, or maybe even a rotary
cutter. But here's why you need to know this now until June thirtieth,
So this month only, that's all that's left now, zero down, zero
interest, eighty four months. That's seven years. I mean, where are
you going to find a deal If there's ever a time to buy that tractor
you really want? This is it Lansdown and Caboda. Go to LM tractor
dot com. You can find the Lansdown near you and check out this l
twenty five O one Texas Edition Caboda. Oh my gosh. They say that
the differenceteen men and Boys is the kind of toys that play with Right,
well, here we go. I am you know. I have graduated from
Tonka trucks to running around on my tractor, and that would be that would
be an ideal deal as far as i'm sir. Hey, let's go out
to Katie. We're gonna talk to Sydney this morning. Good morning, Sydney,
Good morning. I have a question about the breeding grounds through mosquitoes,
and unfortunately unfortunate A first of all, in my little backyard in front of
yard, I don't have any breeding grounds. I don't have any of those
situations for mosquitoes have larva. Here's my problem. I think it's a problem.
My next one of my next door neighbors last weekend put a huge above
ground swimming pool for their little grandson in their backyard which is next to mine.
And it's it's big, and it's got tons of water in it,
like right up to the top, probably five or six feet of water in
there, and they leave it in there. Okay, Now, I have
an elderly little dog and so I worry about. I don't want mosquitos,
you know, a heart woman all that. So what about that situation?
And these are not friendly neighbors. They're people who don't even speak to me.
They're not friendly at Okay, Well, yeah, I hear you.
I hear your concerned, Sydney. But I don't think you need to worry
about that. Mosquitoes like a little small, stagnant water spot, and it
may be a pond, but over by the you know, over by the
bank where it's real still and everything, there's some decomposing organic matter. That's
a mosquito heaven if the water moves. In fact, they make the little
devices you can put in a in a bird bath that just causes ripples on
the water, and that in and of itself prevents the mosquitoes from laying eggs
and raising larva in it. So I don't think you're gonna need to worry
if they do any unless that thing turns into algae. They ought to be
using some chlorine type products, you know, to keep the water clean and
fresh, That too will take care of the mosquitoes. So I don't think
that's going to be a concern for you. Well, you're bad you're bad.
You can sleep at night now, all right, thanks for the call.
I appreciate that very much. You know, the folks down in League
City, the Funderbergs, they've got that League City feed If you're anywhere down
in that area, Dickinson, Lamart, Baycliff, Webster, Clear Lake City,
Oh, come into reality, you get the idea League City Feeds.
It's on Highway three, a few blocks south of Highway ninety six, and
the Funderbergs have created of they've long time had that feedstore. Their grandfather built
it forty years ago in an Ochre patch. Now, anything that starts in
an Ochra patch, in my opinion, has kind to be a good deal.
I love patches. But now West and his sister Madison are managing the
place and they have that old time service and they carry the products we talk
about, you like the fertilizers and the soils and things you hear me talk
about here, they've got them. They also have a good selection of pesticides
and herbicides and fungicides, quality pet food. If you're into the backyard chicken
thing, that's a popular deal. Now they've got you set up there all
the things you would expect from a feed store plus a really good selection of
gardening option. You can give them a call. Two eight one three three
two sixteen twelve two eight one three two sixteen twelve. Now they're clothes on
Sunday, but Monday through Saturday nine am to six pm, so they're there
when you get off work and you're head and buy. You can stop in
and grab something. Tell Wess or Madison if she's there, Tell them hello,
you heard us on garden Line and you heard that they are the place
it's going to have everything that they need, that you need, and they
will prove that to be true. Love to go by the League City Feeds.
Been awhile since I've been out there, and you need to hit back
out that way again. But it's always always a lot of fun to get
by there and see them old time feed store. Love that. I also
like the fact that their dalmatian is named Rorshak. I think that is the
best best name for a Dalmatian. Rorshak. Stare at the dog and what
do you see? Well, I can analyze you based on what you think
you see looking at the dog. You know, the folks at Dell Webb
gave me a call and ask me about helping them with a community garden on
a new development. I was excited because number one Dell Web. You know,
they've been building communities for active adults age fifty five and better for over
seventy years. I mean, Dellweb means inspired designs, and those communities have
the lifestyle programs designed around you. That's why they've been so popular for a
long long time. I mean, people know when you live in a Dellweb
community, that is a good life. Now less than two miles away from
downtown Fulshure on FM three fifty nine is the latest Dellweb community, and if
you're a gardener, all the more reason to be in that community. I
mean, we're getting that community garden designed and set up now. If you
want to learn more about the Dellweb difference for yourself, go to dellweb dot
com, slash Houston or give McCall two eight one four five nine zero six
zero nine. I enjoy visiting with gardeners all the time, and that's one
of the things I like about being on garden Line and getting to talk to
people about things that are going on in their garden. And it's always a
challenge, you know, and you never know when the phone rings what the
question is going to be. But we're about to find out again. Here
we're gonna head out to base City and we're gonna talk to Terry. Good
morning, Terry. Oh hi, okay, Well, I have a severe
problem with my palm trees in the front yard. And I don't know what
tide these are. And I know they're not called branches, but I'll call
them branches. They're coming out three now, which is good, but they're
curling down. And also I left the trunks of them super thick when I
when I cut them off, you know, when they need to be cut
off, I cut them off not real close to the trunk, so I
had my trunk is super fat. So what's wrong with my palm trees?
I have three of them. They were beautiful and now it's like I'm I'm
so sad to look at them because I don't know what's wrong. They're just
coming out green, but they're bending over. Um. Well, Terry,
some types of palms do that some of the Now you are you talking about
the petiole which it attaches to the trunk and holds the leaf part of the
palm, or is it the pettiles that are hanging down, or when you
get out to the leaves, do the leaves curled downward themselves? No,
the whole branch, Yeah, it comes out and it curves down. And
then my trunks I've left that and I think that's one reason they didn't freeze
when we had the horrible freeze, because it had more insulation around the trunk.
But if I accidentally hit the bottom of it with the shovel, you
know, it's like it wants to come off. So if I trimmed the
trunk down, hit all the extra where you used to cut off the branches,
if I hit all that off and left the trunk skinny, would that
help the problem of the branches curving down? You know, I'm not still
convinced that the branches curving down or a problem. I'll tell you what.
I'm gonna put you on hold, and I want you, Josh, get
you some information. I want you to take some pictures. Take several,
love them, then good sharp focus and let me see what you're talking about.
There are okay, there are palms that the foliage looks like your hand.
There's palms the foliage looks like a feather. Those are two different groups
of palms. But I need to see exactly what palm you have and what
you're seeing, because I have a feeling what I'm picturing in my mind is
not what you're seeing as you're describing it to me. It's like a date
palm, you know, the long branches, so it's not a fan palm,
queen palm. Okay, feathery feather type of li Okay, still,
I want to see that picture. Let's do that, and that way i'll
give you an accurate answer and seat of my best guess. Okay, okay,
great, all right, well you hang on then, will you listening
to Garden Line? We are here to answer your gardening questions seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. We're going to take a break and
learn all about the exciting news that you can't live without from Nikki. And
when we come back, we'll talk to you. Sarah, I see you,
and Kennedy, I see you. You'll be the first step guitars.
Well, good Sunday morning, on a beautiful day outside the storms. Last
night we were kind of wondering, but oh boy, what a great day
to be gardening. Are talking about gardening. We're gonna head out to Golfgate
and talk to Kennedy. First thing this segment. How are you doing,
Kennedy? Fine morning. I'm wondering if I should put sunshades over my tomatoes
because last year it was so hot in June, and are we going to
have the same things. We'd had ninety degree temperatures in May, and that's
unusual. Well, where the sun shines directly on the fruit, you can
get sunburn. And so the number one way we fight that is with the
foliage of the tomato itself blocking the sun off of the tomato. As far
as you know them setting in the heat, the sun shades are not going
to really help much. That's not if that's what you're going after. But
if you're looking at sunburn, uh, you know, then a partial shade
can help a little bit with that. I'll often grow mine instead of using
tomadicages, I use livestock panels, those those galvanized things. You can you
can cut them with a bolt cutter into sections if you want. That's what
I have. Trellis good good. Well, I will lean them, um
like toward the east a little bit or whatever. In other words, so
the tomatoes are hanging down, but the hot western sun has to hit the
foliage. The tomatoes are hanging kind of on the back side a little bit.
And when I say lean them, I'm talking about you know, forty
five sixty degrees, not not even forty five degrees, just a little bit.
And that's how I deal with the sun scald. And it works pretty
good for me. Okay, And next up, i've heard two weekends of
rows. Let me call them about stink bugs. Yeah, well, they
don't have any natural enemies here. And I start off by using a dustbuster
and vacuuming them off. Okay, that was tough. So I stuck the
end of the role of a paper towel the inner roll. Okay, cut
it down and take it in there and stuck it right in there, and
said a little oval. And I said, I can reach right in and
just stuck them right out. And if they get that they hide, I'll
just wedge them out with my fingers. Where you go, Yeah, if
you go ahead of the pick and grab. Yeah, Well, and I
use a vacuum two on them. And by the way, it gives your
neighbors something to talk about. But they talk about you already the guy's vacuum
is tomatoes mildred. Look at that, But anyway, the vacuum works good.
But learning what a stinkbug looks like as a nymph before it's an adult,
and learning what the leaf of a bug, which probably worse than the
stink bugs in our area, does the same damage type of stink bug,
what they look like as nymps, they're a little all kind of orange and
black leg things that gather in herds. At that stage, they can't fly
away. I mean, you can vacuum them up easy. You can knock
them into pale of soapy water. Once they're adults, you almost have to
go out early in the morning at the coolest time of the day to try
to be able to sneak up on them and catch them with a vacuum cleaner.
But once they have wings, you know, pretty much nothing we're gonna
do is gonna make a big difference. Well, I usually get two or
three a day then, but that's all you can do at that point.
Well, at least it makes you feel better, and you know, I
mean, especially if you imagine hearing them scream as they go back up that
vacuum tube and land in that dusty darkness and just you know, kind of
take some sort of sick when they're in there. They can't do anywhere days
to your tomatoes. No, they can't. They can't. And it's I
mean, it's like all right, all right, all right, well thanks,
thank you, Sarah, appreciate the call very much. Let's head to
clear Lake and we're gonna talk to Sarah. Good morning, Sarah, Good
morning Skip. I have a Japanese red maple in a pot. Now this
isn't just a little a pot. This pot's four feet wide four feet tall,
so it's a big pot. But Japanese red maple starting to also get
really big. I don't think there's any way to repot it. What do
I need to do to keep it healthy in that pot? Just make sure
it doesn't ever lack for water. They are not a drought tolerant plant.
You'll get little brown tips on all the leaves of those Japanese maples, and
you don't want to do that. That's the main thing you need to do.
Adequate moisture. I wouldn't push it with fertilizer really because I mean,
it needs some nutrient, but you don't want to push extra growth because it's
already I got a limited root, useful and big. Yeah, it doesn't
need any it's it's the size it needs to be. Well, you must
be doing something right. Yeah, it's beautiful. It is. It's beautiful,
but I don't want it to die. And I was out jacking around
with it this morning because it was such a nice day to get outside,
and I went, oh my god, this things so pot bound. So
I thought i'd just call it asking. All right, did you appreciate it?
Hey, I'm glad. I'm glad you did. Thank you for the
call. Appreciate that very much, Sarah. If you were looking for a
good quality fertilizer to carry your lawn into the summer and through the summer in
fact, months and months of gradual feeding, Nelson plant Fluds, plant food,
Slow and Easy, that's the one. That Slow and easy is the
one. It's got the twenty two two ten on the label, so it's
got twenty two percent nitrites. You need about five pounds per thousand square feet
and it will gradually feed, so you're not going to have that flush of
growth. It causes you to mow more. That causes thatched development. That's
where we get thatched, not from returning clippings, but from over fertilizing and
getting a lot of runner growth, and we want to avoid that. So
Slow and Easy does that. It also avoids things that like succulent grass,
the problems like large patch in the fall and we call it used to call
it brown patch and chinch bugs in late summer. The Slow and Easy has
the main nutrients that you need, but it also has the microbes, the
been official microorganisms that are gonna it's gonna feed, those are gonna provide within
it. It's a little bit of sulfur in it, so that helps balance
a pH. Some of our soils are a little on the high end,
and that little extra sulfur is also very beneficial. Try out Nelson's plant food
Slow and Easy if you haven't tried it before, I think you will find
that it does just exactly as I described that it would. We're gonna go
now to Tiki Island and talk to s Lucas. Hello, how are you
this morning? He's good? How are you, buddy? I'm glad to
talk to you again. Yes, um, real quick, um. When
I bought my property, all my trees were shorter than I I'm sixty one
and when um, I took good care of them, and now the river
three oh boys, and I went through all the freezes with everything. Um,
thank you to Randy Lemon, you know, guiding me through everything.
And I had this date palm and um, she went through both of the
major hardcore breezers and come out looking great. I was like, well,
I'm a rock haul truck driver, and they were getting overgrown, and my
wife had somebody to come out to give them a haircut. Well ended up
giving them out out the and I when I got my mom, I kind
of was like, well, sugardeed, Um, that's how I'm quite leather
would have done. But all right, everything seemed to look good. But
now all of a sudden, it looks like my date palm died. Um
there's no green coming out the time. Now I can if I counted,
Uh, there's green in the park, but um, see any shoes coming
up now here? If I've got this huge date palm up front. And
when I left, I didn't think it was looking very good either, because
he rims everything down to like nothing. Hey, so Lucas, I'm gonna
have to jump in. We're eating a hard break for a commercial. Will
you hang on and let's continue this right after we come back. All right,
thank you very much, appreciate that phone number seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. We got one segment left. If you want
to be on this weekend, now's the time to give us a call.
Please done. Russian Russian for last No fun already, gotta do this living
die no good. Sunday morning, Look outside, What a day time to
get out in the yard. Maybe go buy and buy some beautiful plants.
Get you a container and turn your patio into something really really special. My
wife and I did that last weekend, and oh my gosh, it is
just it's exciting to put a mixture plants together. And when you go out
to our independent garden centers and the ones we talk about all the time here,
you're going to see examples of what I'm talking about. And you can
cheat, you can steal their examples. Look at the plant suit and them.
Go buy those plants, get your container, go home, make one
yourself, or buy one ready to go. If you want a turnkey deal,
they'll have that for you too. Hey, let's back, let's go
back to Tiki Island. We're going to continue with Lucas. Lucas, it
sounds like your palm tree got very very mispruned. So here's the bottom line
on those. If a palm like you're describing has one living bud at the
top of the trunk, one bud, and so if you kill that bud,
you now have a telephone pole that will never reach sprout from anywhere again.
That's it. And so if they if damage was done to that bud
and it died for whatever reason from pruning or whatever reason, then it's not
going to come back. If you get new growth coming out of the center
of the top, then there's hope for that tree. Now, that kind
of haircut you describe does not do it any good because it removes all that
foliage area that makes carbohydrates that keeps the tree growing and healthy. So it
really sets them back when we overprune a palm tree. But the key,
the real question now is is that top bud still going to be alive so
that it can keep going and come back or not? Right? Um,
I guess what, like I said, And you know that's why I felt
that when I saw it and I saw what was happening, that was my
fear. Um. My wife reached up and she touched on the top.
She said, it felt munchy, but like I said, on the Queen
palm, but there's still green in the bar. And I'm thinking, what
am I gonna do about this? And my second that is that date palm.
I can't lose that date palm. That date palm is huge, and
now it looks like I may end up losing that. Right, Well,
that's where I think on that one. You know, I can't be there,
can't see it, but just remember the green bar, the green side
of the tree does not That is not gonna help because you gotta have a
bud to grow from. So if the top bud is dead green, green,
bark or whatever as you're describing it, that doesn't that's not going to
cut it. So I would I'd probably hire a quality tree care person like
Affordable Tree, have them come out take a look at it and make an
assessment, because that way you would know and if there's something that you can
do that can be done, then they can do it to try to save
it. Otherwise, you know they're they're going to advise you or they're going
to tell you, well, here's what you need to do, or here's
what I can do for you, or I'm sorry, it's time to replace
it. And as bad as that news is, I know y'all don't want
to hear that. You just got to get the facts from somebody who's on
site and could take a look at it and give you that answer so you
can exactly what I told him. That is exactly what I told my wife.
The Tree service, And do they come out to get your card,
islander, you know you're gonna have to give him a call. I don't.
I don't know the exact range. I know you you are pretty far
out there, but it's worth its asking them. Give them a chance to
see if they can do that, and if they can, they'll tell you
they'll be right out there. Do you do you need it? You probably
need a phone number for them. Let me go ahead and give you that
seven one three six nine nine two six sixty three, or you can go
online to Afftree Service dot com. If they can't help you, maybe they
can tell you somebody who's in that area that can. But I would start
with him. I just I trust Martin and his wife Joe. They know
what they're talking about and they're not going to say something you don't need.
Yes, I'm in a nine one one right now. Okay, all right,
well here we go. Good luck with it. Let me know how
it turns out. All right, thank you for that call. We're going
to head out now to Sharon in West Chase. Hello, Sharon? How
are you hi? Skip? How is moaning listening to Lucas? Because I've
had that experience of people who claim to be tree tremors and they do a
hack job on your trees. And I did call Affordable Tree Service this time,
and they did such a good job. But I had a myrtle tree
that was dying from the top down, and so they removed it, and
now it's growing runners up because you know, down at the very base it
still looked like it had life, and so they took it down to the
ground. But now the runners are coming up. So is it possible that
I could grow a new myrtle tree from those runners? Because I've done that
before. I stuck runners in the ground in places that I just wanted a
myrtle tree because I love myrtle trees, and they grew into a tree.
And my neighbor one day came out and he was mocking me and saying,
what do you think you're doing putting those sticks in the ground. I said,
I'm growing a myrtle tree. And it grew up and now it's twenty
years old, so I know they they're very hearty. And I don't know
why that particular one died. It died after the big freeze, and so
I don't know what hit it. But it's like it was just right out
on my front curb where it's just a beautiful over arching with the other myrtle
on the other side of the sidewalk, and it arched over. It was
like entrance to my front sidewalk. It was so beautiful. Now I've lost
it. So could I Could I grow a new tree from those runners?
I suppose. So when you say myrtle, are you talking about creat myrtle
or southern wax myrtle? Great creatle? Uh? Well, yeah, apparently
you're pretty good at it. I'm a little impressed that you were able to
root one and the way you described, but hey, you are runners.
I just pulled them off of one of my giant myrtles, and and my
myrtles, some of them. Mirzld is my house which is forty seven years
old. So there, you know, I have myrtles surrounding my property.
I love turtle fis. So should I just try to grow a new tree
there? Maybe? Well, if you want to, yeah, go for
it. Or or maybe you want a different color bloom or a different sized
tree or something. I mean, so you've got a lot of options.
But apparently you know what you're doing on that, so trunk Okay. So
now it's just these runners coming up. So should I tell my yard crew
to just should the runners back or let them? I think I'm gonna let
them grow and see if I can grow a new tree. I think.
I wondered what you think? Yeah, I think you can. I would
I would narrow it down to one. But I appreciate that call sharing very
much and good luck with it. Sounds like you know what you're doing on
that, you know. I talk about ACE Hardware all the time because I
am so impressed with Ace Hardware, with the products that carry, with the
kind of folks that you get in there. I just it drives me nuts
to go into a business and the minute you ask a question of some employee,
you can look in their eyes until they're going to keep talking, but
they do not know what they're talking about. And that is not the case
with Ace. You can go to Ace Hardware dot com and find the ACE
stores near you. For crying out, lot of there's thirty nine of them
in the greater house scenario. I mean, how hard is that to find
one? The selection of products, the quality of employee and service is like
none other. If we recommend fertilizer on our products, you know here on
garden Line, they're going to have them at ACE. And that's nice.
It's a one stop shopping Go to ACE Hardware dot com, find the one
near you and see what I'm talking about when I start bragging again about Ace
Hardware. You know, garden Line has been on a long time since the
fifties and the longest running host that Gardenline has had, the guy who built
this show, is Randy Lemon. Randy, of course, is no longer
with us, but it is in his legacy. Dean Nelson has set up
a scholarship for Randy at Texas A and M for horticulture students, so future
horticulture students, the memory, the legacy of Randy Lemon will live on in
the Randy Lemon class of eighty four Memorial Scholarship. If you go online,
and I ask you to do this, go online to give dot am slash
Randy Lemon and make a donation toward that. This is a donation that lives
on and I can guarantee you this. Nothing could make Randy more proud than
to know that his legacy lives on in that kind of way at the university
that he loved. By the way, also I want to thank the folks
at RCW Nursery donating a nutall oak that's planted out at the Brookwood community.
Thanks Arburgate too, by the way, for putting out a bench out there.
This is a place where you can go a nutall What a great choice
of an oak too, by the way, where you can go, and
it's a memory that will live on there as well. That was an important
place for Randy. Randy believed in Brookwood and for good reason, and now
that memory lives on there as well. Thanks so much to those folks for
doing that. Thank you for listening to Gardenline. We look forward to visiting
with you again next week six am to ten am Saturday and Sunday,