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 rictor it's smell just
watching as wooden. So many Well, good morning. We are glad you're
listening to garden Line today. I'm glad to be here, looking forward to
visiting with you about whatever you're interested in related to gardening. Our phone number
is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. If you're looking outside, it's already still
dark outside. The sun hadn't even begun to shine over the ridges. While
you're looking out, check your neighbor's lights. If they're not on, go
bang on the door, tell them they're missing garden Line and they will rise
up and call you blessed. Maybe not today, but they will eventually help
them have a more beautiful law. In fact, look for your neighbor that
is not taking care of their yard. I don't know. We don't need
to make little things you put in the door. You know how people put
their business cards in the door. Just say hey, here's a tip.
Listen to garden Line. Just listening. I'm told some people have said that
just listening to Garden Line, they've noticed their house plants that are in the
same room are just greener and vigorous and seem to just have a better sense
of well being as a result. As a result, All right, enough
nonsense for this morning. We are going to be visiting about a lot of
things today, a number of things that are very timely and related to some
of the stuff we can be doing should be doing in our lawns and gardens
right now. First thing I'm gonna do, though, is we're gonna head
right out to the phones and we're gonna talk to Mike in Hello, Mike,
how you doing today? I'm good. What's up. I've got a
halipenal plant that they grow little peppers, maybe an is song and they grow
upwards in a cluster and they have a white flower. They turn green and
then they turn red. And I tried to look them up online and there's
like seventeen different varieties. Uh, you know, a few of them I
can cut out. But I was curious if you might know the actual name
of this thing. It's been bothering me. Actually, they're not halopenias with
that growth habit the there's a group of peppers that point upward. Then there's
most peppers hang downward, halipenias being a downward and you know as most of
the ones bell peppers, halipenas an cho peppers, all that kind of stuff.
But the ones at point up that A lot of those are ornamental,
but not all And as far as you know, just guessing at which variety
you have, I can't tell you which one, but I can't tell you
from that group, there's one called mirrorsoul m i r asol as in see
the sun in Spanish. But it has more color than you're describing you should
be seeing some Usually with peppers like that, you get an orange and are
a yellow and then an orange and then a red stage sometimes purple. But
you're saying yours just go from green to red. H I looked it up.
It was like seventeen varieties, and the closest one I could find.
They call it a Christmas pepper because it does go green and then turns red.
Okay, And they're good. They're tasty. I mean, they're not
real hot. I just call them like a dinner pepper because they're small.
You don't have a big chunk left over, and they're just they're real tasty,
I mean, not real hot, but they do have sort of a
hollow, hollow penial sort of a flavors. Okay, but they're called ornamental
then, huh. Usually, but there are some edibles that that point upward,
but in general they're they're more more of an ornamental. Well, here's
the thing. You can eat an ornamental pepper. There's nothing wrong with eating
an ornamental. They just don't tend to have as media flesh. Some of
them are very very hot and uh, you know, they tend to be
thinner walled, and so they're not ones that generally are considered great culinary peppers.
But you can eat any better. Just be better to hang up from
the Christmas tree then, huh, I guess so, or have a little,
have a little. Maybe you could shape it as it's growing and then
bring it inside during the holiday. I wish I could give you the exact
exact name of yours, but yeah, I just couldn't. There's some really
good websites out there though. For peppers. There's a lady called the pepper
gal U. There is another one, uh, it's called totally tomatoes.
And then there's another one that's tomatoes, but they have a lot of pepper
info in them. You might check some of those out. I sure will,
I sure will. Thank you very much, all right. I appreciate
you man. You do it a good job. Just keep all keeping all
all right. We'll have fun with your peppers, Mike. Thanks for the
call, sir, Thank you, bye bye. Oh boy, that's interesting.
Lots of lots of fun peppers. Peppers have been a crazy for a
while now, and for good reason. They're really cool plants, really cool
plants. I My heat tolerance is up to about a hallopeeno. That's about
as far as I go now. I you know, I can eat a
serano, but I don't enjoy it because it's so blazing hot. And some
people can go all the way, you know, they laugh at that.
They just about put a ghost pepper in their mouth. They're so tough.
But not me, not me. But interestingly, I Texas A and M
released or had a heatless haban narrow, and there's another habban narrow out on
the market that's heat let's called Habanada is in not a no way, not
heat, not hot, and it has a wonderful hobby Narrow flavor, which
I had not renoticed the flavor before because my tongue was on fire and I
was worried about putting the fire out. But when you take the heat out,
hobby narrow is a wonderful flavor. And these heatless ones like Hobba Nada
are pretty interesting. If you want heat, you can just add a little
heat by putting a hot pepper or two into the mix, and that way
you kind of can control it a little bit. Hey, you know,
I want to tell you about Quality Feed and Garden Kennon Cress. I need
to get back by there. It's been a little while since I've been back
in there, but I always love to go. I used to go all
the time when they were at their old location. Now they're on Luzon Street
l u z O m Lozon, near the intersection where equipment and a lea
should come together, kind of north central Houston area. They're open Monday through
Friday nine to six, Saturday nine to four, so there'll be a plenty
of time to get by there today and tomorrow eleven thirty to four pm.
They've been a tradition since nineteen twenty eight. And boy do they ever have
a wide variety of stuff. All the fertilizers I talk about, and then
some you know, if you need soils, they've got everything anything you need
for gardening there. They're ready to go. They've got it. They've got
a cool antique seed rack from nineteen twenty eight stocked with airloom seeds. They
have a whole nother rack just the airloom vegetables. So if you're if you're
looking for airloom vegetables, you're not gonna find a better selection then you'll get
at Quality Feed and Garden Center. Of course, they have plenty in the
way of backyard chicken supplies and they get chicks in all the time there.
Ken and Chris have really done a good job. They've owned the place for
thirty two years now and it is something you do need to check out.
It's one of those old time feed stores where you just find the service and
supplies of everything. Quality feed co dot Com. That's how you get there.
Well, boy, that first segment went kind of quick. Today we're
about to take a little break here. We will be right back with your
gardening questions. If you'd like to give Josh a call seven one two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Hey, good Saturday morning. You are listening
to Garden Line and we're here to talk about gardening. Give us a call.
Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. You know,
our lawns have come out of one heck of a tough summer. Oh my
gosh it is. It's been rough. It's been it's been really rough on
them, and we need to be taking care of them. There's a lot
of things to be doing. October is the big magic month when it comes
to lawns. It's probably the most important month of the year for your lawn
and I'll tell you why as we go through the show to dam and be
talking about different aspects of that. But basically, we just got to get
them back to health after what they've been through. And one of the things
they need is nutrients. Now we know about fertilizing, it's important to fertilize,
but there's also the trace minerals. And trace minerals are essential to the
plant, the grass plant. They're not needed in large quantity. In fact,
they're needed in very very low quantities. But when we don't have a
particular mineral that limits the ability of the grass plant to grow and thrive and
do well. And so we need to make sure that our soils have what
they need. And azamite is a product that's that's created just for that.
It's actually mined out of the ground that and it is just chock full of
all kinds of trace elements, trace elements that are essential. Asomite goes a
long way, you know, a forty four pound bag of it six twelve
thousand square feet covers a long wide area because it's needed in small amounts,
but don't let the small fool use it is still essential. And these these
minerals that we need are essential, and Asomite provides those. You can go
to asomite Texas dot com. Just remember when you're fertilizing, if you haven't
done it already this year, consider an application of azamite following your application of
what you think of as your standard fertilizers that you like to use. That
is something that's important. I was I was out at Brazoria County yesterday.
Kimberly Mayor, the hoard agent out in Brassoria, had put together a wonderful
program on strawberry growing and I don't know how she did it, but she
got our best strawberry expert in Olive out her life extension across Texas to come
down and speak. That was great. There was the folks from Froberg Farm
where they're giving a really good talk. It was just if you're interested in
strawberries, or even if you weren't, you would be by the end of
the day. It was an excellent program. But while I was there,
I was visiting with someone and Shelby from Nelson Plant Food was out there and
we were talking about fertilizers and she was asking about, well, what do
we do, not Shelby this other person, what do we do for fertilizer
in the fall time? And I just walked right over there and I said,
here it is. It's called carbo load. Carbo loads a ten ten
twenty fertilizer. It's got a pre emergent herbicide in it to stop some of
the winter weeds. So when you put something like that down, you want
to be very careful to use it at the right rate and then watered in
when you get done. And with the carbo load you've got an extra punch
of potassium and a little nitrogen. We want our nitrogen lower in the fall,
but we do want that punch of potassium because that helps number one with
drought stress and it also helps with winter heartiness. And you're not going to
do better than that. And Nelson has a lot of different products. They
have color Star, turf Star, Nutrastar, Nature Stars are organic line.
They have a lot of different products out there, but right now, the
one product you need to know about most of all is carbo Load ten twenty.
Really important for our grass. And we're talking about getting the minerals down
like azamite, the trace, we're talking about the fertilizers. Well, there
you have it. And if you go online to my schedule online, you
can go to Skip our Gardening with skip dot com and find the schedule on
there and it'll list exactly when and what you apply and be very helpful,
I hope for you. But don't forget the importance of this fall feeding.
Cannot overstress it. Fall is the most October is the magic month for lawns
when it comes to lawn health and when it comes to next spring. What
you do in October will determine what your lawn looks like in March. And
April will It's the biggest single factor as to how your lawn comes out of
winter and how it looks and grows its overall health at that point in time.
So don't think, well, I'm gonna wait until spring and I'll fertilize
my lawn and everything will look good. Well, yes, we fertilize in
spring, but fall, fall, fall, October's the magic month. Do
not forget that. Make sure you take care of your lawn this month.
We're gonna head out to Missouri sitting now, and we're gonna talk to Faye.
Hello, Faye, good morning, skit. Thank you for taking my
call. Well, thank you. How can we help? I sent you
a text and also sent you an email and your spind it to my email
yesterday. Oh yeah, and and so I did send you a photo of
what's going on in my little rose bush. It's got some muti grants.
It's growing right in the center of it. See that. Yes, yes,
it must be afraid of you, because it's really doing a good job
hiding right around the base, isn't it. Isn't it just wonderful? And
I pull it as close as I can get to the thorns, and that's
as far as I can go. All right, Well this this is an
easy one, Fay. There are good There are two ingredients out there that
are found in various products, and either one of them will kill grass without
killing your rose bush. Okay. One of them is. You'll see them
in products. They'll have names like grass killer or grassby gone kinds of names
that they kill grass. Well, one of them, and I'm not going
to say the whole name on the air. It just gets confusing spelling out
a chemical name. But if it begins with seta, like the boy's name
Seth seth okay, seth and then O x Y sethoxy, that's one of
them. The other one is begins with f l u a Z flu as.
If you see either sethoxy or flu as is the start of a name,
those are grass only killers. You don't purposefully spram all over the rosebush,
but you get down in there and spram and they're going to get on
the rose and it won't hurt it. Okay, Okay, would you would
you stat that second one for me again? I want to make sure I've
got it correct. F l U A Z. I need to put a
fact sheet on my website. About those that would be a good, good
new thing. A f L A U z u A Z flu Yeah,
like you're sick flu as a z flu as. Oh okay, yeah,
okay, And the words get longer, but nothing else starts with those those
two sethoxy and flu as and and okay, I'll make it. I'll take
it over to Southwest Fertilizer today. Well, and they'll have about eight hundred
versions of both of those. Are they have everything? I was over there
the other day and oh my gosh. In fact, I put a video
on on my Facebook page of the eighty foot wall of tools. I just
walked down the whole wall and took a video. I think it's pretty interesting.
Well, I'll tell you what I was. I had a quake myrtle
that was just right on my property line and say, the reserve of where
I live, because I live on a golf course and uh and and I
had put in some artificial turf in my and my gated and my fenced in
area right there under the anti quake Merlin and it was just I mean I
had to go out there twice a day to to rake up the trash.
So I had it. I had it. I had it cut down,
but you know, those little those little stinking little grows, you know,
started coming back up. And I went to Southwest Fertilizer and pay it about
twenty five bucks. We're a very small bottle of these to kill these little
startups, and I'm telling you it did the jobs. Jobs. Way to
do it, you get you gotta get the good stuff that works, that's
for sure, exactly exactly. Well, thank you so much, Skip for
your information. You bet I love your shows. Well, thank you,
Kay, I appreciate that, appreciate the call very much. Yeah, Southwest
Fertilizer. For those of you who have not been there, I don't know
if you've been living under a rock or not, but Southwest Fertilizer has been
around for a very long time. They're down on the corner of Bussinet and
Runwick for those of you don't know, but you can go find their website
Southwest Fertilizer dot com. You will not find a better selection of everything herbicide,
fungicide and secticite UH fertilizers for sure, and if you're organic, they've
got a wide probably the best selection and organic products in the city. In
fact, if they don't have something you don't need it that that's kind of
what that's what it comes down to. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com. Yeah,
I love going in there. That's where I went. Just Gestury. We're
gonna head out to Jim and Montgomery. Now, Hello, Jim, Hey,
good morning, good morning. It's sure he is nice and cool up
today. That guy that had the peppers he was talking about, Now,
I've grown peppers a lot, and some people call those chili pekins, but
they're not the little bird eyes, you know what I mean. There's it
seems to be two kinds. Yeah, there's the bird eye what some people
call because they look kind of like a bird's eye. But the ones that
he's talking about are also called chili pekins that they grow straight up like a
little group like that, and but they're really hot. I don't know his
is aren't really hot and that maybe they're a different kind. But I tie
peppers that grow up straight up like that too. But they're they're three inches
long when they're when they turn red. Right, Yeah, And that's a
good point. I know, the little ones you're talking about, the little
morton and set of the little oval chili pekines it's kind of a little longer,
but still. Yeah, it looks like a little uh, it looks
like a hollo opinion, but it's skinnier and and then it stands straight up.
And I'll tell you another thing about those peppers. If you get down
close and smell the blooms, it smells like fresh cut watermelon. Well,
I'm gonna have to try that. I've never tried that one before. That's
interesting. Down real low. I've had to stick my face in there a
couple of times to reach down low, and I could smell watermelon, and
I thought, what is that? You know, it's the blooms on there.
But thanks, what I was going to say, thanks for calling in.
I appreciate that extra inside. We always get good information from your or
listeners like you, thank you, thank you very Okay, you do you
take care? Yeah, that gardening is fun and it is just fun.
Speaking of gardening and being fun, they are aspects of gardening that a lot
of people just haven't gotten into yet. They don't think about it. And
one of the aspects is birds. Yeah, birds are part of gardening.
Birds collect insects, they help us in that way, and their antics,
the beauty, the song. It's just it's amazing. And that's why one
of the reasons why I like wildbirds so much is no matter what kind of
bird information, what kind of birds supplies, equipment, anything you need bird
feed, they've got it and beyond what you would you could even imagine it.
Every time I walk into I was like, oh, that is cool.
I hadn't seen one of those before. We got seven wild birds unlimited
around here. I mean they're all over the place, it's easy to find
one. But right now, the key bird is our hummingbirds. You know,
they're stock enough to get ready to fly back across the Gulf of Mexico,
and we need to be feeding them. If you're making your own nectar,
which you can do, it's parts water to one part white table sugar.
And while you're at wilbirds grab their nectar defender. That helps that sugar
water sitting out in warm weather from going bad and one to two days it
keeps it up to ten days in the heat, and that is a really
good thing. While you're there, also grab the high perch hummingbird feeder.
I've got several feeders. High perch hummingbird feeder from Wildbird's is the best one
absolutely is really cool. Now where do you find Wilbirds. We'll just go
to w b U dot com forward slash Houston WBU dot com slash Houston.
You can find the ones near you and they're all over town. Wildbird's unlimited.
You will enjoy them, I promise. And while you're there, grab
a gift for somebody. I cannot think of a better place to grab a
gift, even for non gardeners. Oh yes, and this is the time
to start shopping early for Christmas. It absolutely is. Yeah, why not
just a surprise gift? You know we always have to have these big Oh
it's your birthday, Oh it's Christmas? Yes? Have you ever got NICs
as a gift? Is the out of the blue and it's like whoa,
Well, I like you, here's the gift. Yeah, that's a good
idea. Well, good morning and welcome to garden Line. We're glad you're
listening today. Hope you give us a call. We'd love to visit about
the things that are of interest to you. Our phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. If you're shy about calling. It's time to get over that
we were. We are kind and gentle, and we will help you through
the phone call. If it's your first time, don't worry. Nobody's listening.
It's issuing me, that's all. So just go ahead and give us
a call. Let's talk about about the things that you are interested in.
I know that the vast majority of people that listen to garden Line don't call
in, and I'd like to visit with more of you, So let's do
that. Fall the October the magic month for lawns. I was just talking
about that. I mentioned the importance of trace minerals and that those are important
to have in the soil and adequate apply to supply the plant. And I
mentioned the fall fertilizing that when you put down a fertilizer that is the right
ratio of nutrients for fall, it gets your lawn ready for winter. Think
of it as putting antifreeze in your lawn, because here's what happens. You
get the right nutrients in their Potassium is very important, and when we go
into fall, we like to see the nitrogen come down a little bit,
and we like to see the potassium come up a little bit or them come
closer to a one to one ratio somewhere in that range. And the reason
is we need a little nitrogen, but we don't want to overstimulate the grass
with nitrogen because that leads to more issues with brown patch, for example,
in the lawn. So a moderate amount, it could be a gradual release,
that's fine, but generally in the fall we don't worry about that as
we do so much during the summertime. Potassium is very important and it gets
that lawn strong and ready to go because when the potassium's there, the plant
takes it up with the little bit of nitrogen and it creates carbohydrates, and
carbohydrates are essentially like antifreeze. Here, here's a simple way to think about
it. Have you ever made homemade popsicles? You know, you put the
sugary water coolate or whatever in the little containers and you put it in the
freezer. And if you ever noticed when it freezes that you have like pure
water that freezes, and then right up at the top it ends up with
this frozen but almost sticky kind of substance. That's the sugar. It's the
last to freeze. It It sugar water is slower to freeze than just pure
water would be. And so when you create carbohydrates in a plant, carbohydrates
sugar is an example of that kind of compound. It It is like an
antifreeze in the in the plant, and it helps in other ways too.
But that's an oversimplification. But I think everybody who's ever made a popsicle can
realize what I'm talking about when I say that. So that's why we utilizing
the vault. The next thing that we want to think about when we're going
into fall is the issue with weeds. If your lawn is thin, you're
going to have weed issues sooner or later. Wherever sunlight hits the soil,
nature plants of weed, and so a thin lawn is an invitation to weeds
to germinate. I had a section of my lawn this summer while I was
gone. I was talking about this earlier, but it wasn't getting watered.
It had chinch bugs come in, and it basically killed a sectional lawn.
And I am seeing weeds coming up that I never knew were in the lawn,
nuts, edge and other things that were there, but they just weren't
noticeable. Well now they are and a pre emergent. Herbicide can help prevent
that. And you know, if you're looking for all these kinds of products,
you're not going to find a better place than Ace Hardware. And it's
because it's so convenient. There's thirty nine Ace Hardware stores here in Houston.
So wherever you love, there is an Ace. You can go to Ace
Hardware dot Com, look on the store locator and find your local Aces,
because there will be more than one near you. And they're gonna have fertilizer,
they're gonna have fungicide and secticide. We control all of that and a
lot lot more for your lawn. That's what ACE does. That's what they
specialize in, is having everything that you need to have a beautiful lawn as
well as a beautiful outdoor area in general. But Ace Hardware is a place
where you can go and you know you're gonna find it all right there in
one spot. We're gonna head out now to Cyprus and talk to Sandy.
Hello, Sandy. Oh well, you know it would help if I'd made
it where you could actually talk. Thank you, good good morning. It's
okay, I don't know what I'm doing. Hope you do let's let's try
this. I hope you can tell me I had a little black They look
like little black spots, but there's probably like a hundred on a baby baby
baby just flower fell off my Ora baby okra and they's just covering the entire
ocra. I don't see any on the leaves per se, but I see
them on my actual ocra on the pods. Yeah, not on all of
them, but just the little baby ones. It seems like if it catches
it when it's a baby, because I've got some that are bigger that have
nothing that are good, and they're they're not little things sitting on the ochre
pod. There are things that it's a black that's part of the okra pod
itself, like the pod is discolored. No, no, no, it's
some kind of bug or something. Okay, you know what. I could
sit here and guess, and that would not be very fruitful. Sandy,
I'm gonna put you on hold, and will you give let Josh give you
an email, and will you take some close up pictures, make sure they're
in really good sharp focus and attach them to the email. If you attach
them, it's much easier for me to zoom in. And look, I'll
take a look at it and maybe even have an answer later today on the
show if I can, If you can get them up fast. If not,
I'll talk about him another day. Yeah. Now, I'll take them
as soon as the light, as soon as a daylight comes. Yeah,
everything's black right now. Yeah, but I have I have your email address
gifts Okay, all right, I've emailed you before. Okay, thank you
so much. I'll get that to you. It's gonna daylight them, all
right. Thank you, appreciate that, Sandy, thank you for the call.
You know, the the email thing. I am covered up with emails.
There's no way I can answer all the emails that come in. And
so what I ask of you if you'll help me here. If you want
to email me something, send me a good quality photo. That's fine,
but I'm not going to be able to reply to the email with an answer.
I just literally cannot get that done at all, not even close.
And so if you will do that and then call into the show on Saturday,
your Sunday, refer to the email and we'll talk about it. And
that way other people will gain the benefit of it too, because if you've
got a question somebody else has that same question. So that is what I
ask in order to be able to help folks with the emails as best we
can. Right now, I talked about our lawns coming out of summer.
Our trees are having a hard time coming out of summer. And we're fortunate
here in the Houston area to have Affordable tree Service. That's Martin spoonmore.
All you have to do is give him a call. It's seven one,
three, six, nine nine twenty six sixty three. Now when you do
that, you're either going to have Martin or his wife Joe answer the phone.
And isn't that amazing the owner, the owners of a company actually answer
their own phones. Yeah, well that's how it is. If you don't
hear Martin or Joe, it's some other There are other people that put affordable
in the name. We're talking about Affordable Tree Service Martin and Joe Spoonmore.
So, if it's not Martin or Joe answering, you hang up, check
the number or go online a f tree service dot com. Aff Tree Service
dot com. They've been doing this for thirty years, taking care of Houston
trees. Martin knows how to keep a tree healthy, very important time to
be doing that, So call now and get on the schedule. Listen October
November very important prune times. Do not delay because they buck up fast.
Martin Spoonmore seven one three, six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Let's
take a break. We'll be right back if you'd like to give Josh a
call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Hell, good,
good, Saturday morning. We are glad you're listening. We are going
to talk gardening all day oil until ten o'clock. That's that's when it ends
today. By the way, when it's over, I am heading up to
Nature's Way Resources today. That's up toward Conro. If you go up forty
five, get to about where fourteen eighty eight comes in to forty five,
just south of Conro, turn right, go across railroad tracks. You're at
Nature's Way. They are having one heck of ashndick. I'm pretty ex at
about this one today. It is their Fall Garden Festival. They're gonna have
Latin food, live music, local vendors, adult beverages. They'll be scavenger
hunts for the kids. Before I even get there, nine o'clock in the
morning, they're gonna have a Creating Enchanting fairy Gardens demonstration class, so you'll
you'll learn how to make those little miniature gardens. If you've never seen a
ferry garden before, they are so cool. You could live on the one
hundredth floor of some high rise building in downtown downtown Houston and have a little
ferry garden out there on your outdoor patio. It's that simple and it's cool.
By the way, you can give him a call at nine three six
three two one sixty nine ninety, but it's today. I'll be there from
eleven thirty to one thirty, so please stop by all of you up in
Montgomery County, North Harris County, all through that region. I'd love to
meet you, and it is going to just be a blast. Lots going
on there. I hope you can be part of that. I was talking
about tree Stress and you know Affordable Tree Service Martin Spoon Moore in the importance
of getting them out to get those trees pruned. I mean, this is
a this is a tough time and as we tell people, I've got a
lot of calls by our trees have taken a hit. The magnolia trees,
really lots of brown magnolias. And here's the deal. If it's brown,
take it down. It's not going to come back. And it has gone
to a point where the whole system collapsed, it could not supply. The
tree died, and you need to get it out. You don't want to
delay. And of course Martin can do that and a lot more, you
know, deep root feeding and watering, all kinds of things they take care
of trees. I've got something I put on my website that's gardening with skip
dot com called stress related Tree decline and Death. And if you go to
the website, what are they what are I call it over there? It's
something about and go back to the homepage. Yeah, helping your trees in
a drought. Well that's what it says on the web when you click on
it. It's all about stress and trees, and it's it's very helpful to
read. If you're going to be doing construction around trees going forward, or
any other things as stress trees, you need to go look at this little
free publication up there. You can download it if you want. It's got
like links to five different great websites on dealing with drought and trees as well.
So I hope you'll check that, check that out. Talking about trees,
we got to also talk about lawns. It's two ts that make the
phone ring at the Extension office and here on garden Line and the lawns.
They've kind of got a trifect of things going on when it comes to fall
and nitrophoss. Is put together a three step program called the Texas three Step
kind of like the Dance, except with an extra step involved that fixes just
that. Step one is their fall Special Winterizer fertilizer. That is a fertilizer
that is has a good concentration of phosphorus in the fertilizer, a little lower
nitrogen. It's also got some some I said, phosphorus. It's all it
has phosphorus to promote a healthy root system. But it's all it's got the
potassium. That is what I keep saying is most important going into winter.
Step two is nitrofoss barricade. That is their pre emergent weed control barricade prevents
broad leaf weeds and grassy weeds. And now that we're hitting on October,
that's the big month where the cool season weeds are starting to germinate. To
get success, you have to put it down before they germinate. So it's
time to get that product and get it down. Number three is Eagle Turf
fungicide that is to control diseases in your lawn. It's systemic product soaks into
the tissues of the turf and helps prevent diseases like brown patch going into fall,
like take all root rot, which is also going to be infecting as
well in the fall. So where do you get this Texas three step?
Well, anywhere Nitrofoss is sold, but plans for all seasons on two forty
nine has it. Enchanted Gardens out there in Enrichment has it, and Lake
Hardware in Angleton has it as well. The Nitrofoss three step. It's as
simple as that. One two three fertilizer. We control fun decided to protect
against diseases. Let's head out to Baytown now and we're going to talk to
Gilbert. Good morning, Gilbert, good morning. How you guys doing well?
We're well today? What's up out in Baytown? Well, other than
thank God for the rain and getting everything going again, I've got it persistent
problem. Okay. The wife and I decided to put a swimming pool,
and we went with salt water. And again as far as landscaping around it,
we can't seem to keep anything alive long enough to enjoy any kind of
blooms or anything. Yeah, So I didn't know there was a special line
of plants or something in particular that had some color in it that we could
either put in pots or plant around the Yeah, the pool. Our last
try was daylilies, and they lasted for a little while, but they succumb
later. Yeah. I don't know if it's salt coming off the pool of
what. Yeah, it could be. I mean, it could be a
lot of reasons. Plants don't grow but the salt. If pool water is
getting on, I'm and they're getting salty. There are plants that are more
tolerant of that. I'm off the top of my head, I cannot tell
you where to find a list. There used to be one at the Extension
office in Corpus Christy that they had on their website, and I think Galveston
County Extension may have something like that. What I'm gonna do, Gilbert,
is when I get a break here in between segments, I will take a
look and see if I can find any of that, and I will mention
it on the air. Off the top of my head, I just can't
remember where those kind of lists are, but you would want to focus on
that. You also will want to occasionally drench the heck out of those beds,
and I mean just to rent away as much of the salts as you
can. That would be very helpful. Not not regularly, but just occasionally
good drench. Now, you know, we do have grass going around it,
and it's nice, thick and green, but I do I do know
we've got different, you know, decorations hanging around, and you can see
a little bit of a salt coating around it. But as far as the
plants and stuff, it's it's not like to get the pool water. It's
almost like the evaporation coming off the pool seems to be the culprit. Well,
if it's not pool water, then then don't worry about the evaporation.
That's not it at all. That's pure water that's evaporating. It leaves the
salt behind. I would say, look at drainage in those beds. Make
sure that it's not staying too wet or staying too dry, and that is
probably where you're going to find the problem and one of those types of things
or some other thing with a bad bed mix or saw mix or something.
But that that's a lot as best as I can guess for you there.
But I'm I'm leaning now away from the salt being the problem. Okay,
okay, Well, I appreciate it. I know we've tried and where at
the point where yeah, we're gonna buyoplastic points. We got forgive it.
Don't give up on it yet. Thank hey, thanks for the call.
I appreciate and I understand that that concerned. You know, we're in the
season where we think about storms and we think about power going out. Well,
it doesn't take a storm. Our grid is unreliable. Quality Home Products
of Texas is the place where you need to buy a Generac automatic standby generator.
It sits outside, it comes on automatically even if you're not at home.
That freezer full of food, it's okay, gender X gotcha covered.
Quality Home Products. Why don't I talk about them? Ten year warranty through
October eighth. They are absolutely the best customer service supplier of Generac generators you
will find anywhere. They wont award after award afterward seven one three quality as
a call Quality tx dot com. Check them out. You will be as
impressed as I am. I mean, this is a first rate company with
a first rate genera automatic standby generator that they will put you in the right
one that you need for your house. They won't oversell, They'll tell you
what you need for your house because they have a wide variety of them as
well. Fun. You've been listening to garden Line, We're having a heck
of a good time today. Help you are too. I'm gonna be out
just another reminder. I'm going to be out at Nature's Way today up toward
con Row off Interstate forty five. We'll be doing their Fall Garden Festival,
and this is one heck of a shin digg. They're going to have Latin
food, live music, local vendors. They'll even be adult beverages and scavenger
hunt for the kids. That this is a lot of fun. I hope
you'll be there. I'll be there from eleven thirty to one thirty. Please
come on out, bring me some samples. We'll also do some diagnosis KTRH.
Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on
this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Ricord. Just watch him
as well. Good Saturday morning, there is a glow in the eastern sky.
We're about to kick off this day and it is going to be a
good one, a good one to get out and about. Hopefully a good
one for you to come up and see me at Nature's Way today eleven thirty
to one thirty. After the show, I'll be heading that way for the
Big Shindegg with their Fall Garden Festival. Really important to come out and have
a chance to visit. If you like something diagnosed or identified, bring it
with you. We'll take a look at it. Be happy to take a
look at it. See what we can do to kind of, you know,
help out on that. I've been talking about Launch today and the importance
of taking care of our launch, pro biding the things that they need,
getting them back on their feet. And our lawns are in deep, deep
stress in many cases. Even if you got a little bit of rain that
helps. Rain is important, but it goes beyond rain. You know,
they need the nutrients, they need healthy roots, and there's diseases that attack
them. There's insects, that attack them. I'm still still got a few
chinch bugs running around my yard and I need to knock those out. But
you might get out and check, get on your hands and knees and kind
of pull apart the grass where the grass is alive. Don't do it where
they're dead. They're not going to hang out there. They'll starve to death.
They move out into the living grass and keep taking it down. Figure
go online, do a little search, figure out what a chinch bug looks
like, and then get on your hands and knees and part it. And
if you see them, go ahead and deal with it. It's time to
take care of them. We're toward the end of chinch bug season, but
you know, if we continue to have warm weather for another three weeks or
so, they're gonna stick around. And they still are doing damage. And
after what our lawns went through, I don't think we can afford any more
damage. They are ready or in pretty pretty good stressed state as a result.
Hey, plants for all seasons. You know, that is the place
if you want expert advice, if you want people that know what they're talking
about. They carry the products that you need and that will point you to
the products you need, and that includes plants. You know, you walk
in and go, I got this area over here, and it's a little
shady, but I mean and you just describe it, they'll point you to
the plants that you need for that that that's the kind of expertise they have.
You know, the family has been doing this since nineteen seventy three.
I mean that is a that is a long time. And you don't stick
around that long without providing quality products, quality service with knowledgeable, friendly staff
to help people. And that's how the Flowerties are. I mean it's always
been that way. One of the plants that they have, for example,
that I think you need to go by and check out it's it's the blue
angel. Althea is a shrub in the Hibiscus family, and it has beautiful
blooms. It's an old southern shrub, been around for ages, but blue
angel is beautiful. It takes the normal althea colors toward a blue direction.
You just have to see it. You can go online and look at pictures,
but pictures do not capture the color of blue that blue angel althea has.
There's just there's this thing between pink and blue that photography just doesn't seem
to do a good job of capturing blue angel althea and fall is the time
to plant. It's the best time. So go by there, grab you
one. You've got a good sunny spot and it just blooms and blooms and
blooms all through the warm season. Plans for all seasons dot com. That's
a website. Plans for all seasons dot com. Or two eight, one,
three, seven, six, sixteen forty six. Going out to Richmond
now and talk to Kay. Hello, okay, hi, thank you for
taking my call. You bet I got a mode of new dirt Distroy And
these swedes they look like spaghetti. They're green with little white flowers, and
they're just taking over everything. They don't seem to need water. How do
I get rid of them? They have little the white flowers like four petals,
like a cross. Yeah, like a cross. That's Virginia buttonweed.
And Virginia buttonweed is a very difficult weed to control. First of all,
it loves wet soil, so if you overwater you make it a lot worse.
If you cut back to just a good soaking in frequently to keep your
long going, it is not as bad. It won't kill the Virginia buttonweed.
It just keeps it from proliferating as bad. There are products, there's
one called Celsius out there like Fahrenheit and Celsius. Celsius does a pretty good
job on Virginia buttonweed. But you need to go ahead and get that sprayed.
Now. The other thing to think about, and you're not gonna like
this, is it's got a lot of seeds. Those little pods along the
vine, those are seeds. It'll be back next year. So to get
down in hand pull it. You're not going to get the weed out,
it'll break off. But what you have in your hand is that little vine
with all the seeds on it, and throw it in a five gallon bucket
and get rid of it. If you can do the hand pulling first,
that is really probably at this point in the season, the best thing you
can do to cut down on next year. Next year it will be back,
and when it does come back, Celsius is going to be a product
that you can use. Thank you very much. All right. Remember it's
a tough weed and no product will kill it with one application, So follow
the label very carefully and you're's going to take more, maybe take two,
maybe take three to really knock it back, and you just got to keep
an eye out because it's notorious for sneaking back in. Thank you, all
right, I'm go okay. Yeah, there's probably a picture of Virginia buttonweed
hanging on the wall of a post office, you know, as public Enemy
number one or something something along those lines. If you that is just a
fact. Hey, if if your lawn is struggling, or if it's not,
now is the time to make sure and apply the products that are going
to help it not only get healthy but stay healthy. And Microlife has a
combo that I really really like, and it's their brown Patch. It's the
orange bag. It's called brown Patch. What it is though, it's a
fertilizer. It's got a good concentration of potassium in it, that's the third
number, and a little bit lower on the nitrogen, which is what we
look for going into fall. Microlife is going to gradually release that a little
over time. You're not going to get this boost of nitrogen all of a
sudden, but Microlife brown Patch just think of it as your fall fertilizer.
I put it on my schedule online as a fall fertilizer application for organic option.
It's an excellent one for that. They also have the bioinoculant. Now
that's kind of a violet colored bag. Bioinoculant is put out to add microbial
content to the surface of the grass plants when you spread it. Now,
you can use it in things other than grass, but bioinoculant is used in
a small rate because you're putting it out there and you want to populate the
surfaces of a grass plant with good microbes. It crowds out disease problems.
That's one way that good microbes help. Number two. Some good microbes just
literally fight disease directly. But that combo right now, in the fall,
coming out of what we just went through, Microlife brown Patch, Microlife Bioinoculant,
those two together, now's the time to do it. Don't delay anymore.
Right now, today or the next week will be the best time in
the world to get out there and put those two products down. You can
go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com find out more information about Microlife, about these
products and where to get them. We're going to take a break right now.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
We'll be right back. Welcome to Garden Line, and we are talking
all kinds of things you need to be doing right now today, especially with
your lawns, with your trees and things like that. You know, if
you live out in the Kingwood area, you are fortunate because you've got to
awesome garden centers just right there in your backyard. You got you've got Warren
Southern Gardens and you've got Kingwood Garden Center. Both and they're both available open,
by the way, available today. They have a stock of color that
is just outstanding. The mums really look good. I am very impressed with
the mums selection they have, and it's time to get those. Hey we're
calling it October. I know today's not October first, but it is to
me. It's time to go out there and think fall and start planting and
purchasing things for the fall. And of course moms are the traditional flowers of
fall. But while you're out there, grab some of their ask them to
show you their Dianthus, the Amazon Dianthus. They've got the Jolt series,
they've got the Amazon series, and then even the smaller types, the Amazon's
amaze me. I mean they're just like Neon and they get up, they
get up pretty tall, like knee high beautiful bloomstocks, which, by the
way, that's a good cut flower. I leave them in the yard because
I want them to keep looking good. But they are just beautiful and they'll
go all the way through winter for you. I mean they are really really
gorgeous, and they come in colors that are just showstoppers. So when you're
out at Warren's, just ask them and say, hey, show me the
show me your Amazon and the Jolt Dianthus that you have. It's really cool.
Yeah, they have a special going right now where you purchase a forty
four pound bag of azamite and I was just talking about that a minute ago,
and you get three dollars off each bag of leaf mold composts. There's
no limit on the composts that you purchase, thirty dollars off each bag leafmo
compost. It every day of the year is a good time to put out
leafmo compost. And azamite is that micro nutrient, the trace mineral that is
so important for your lawns. And I put it in my vegetable gardens because
I want the produce that I eat to be chuck full of every nutrient that
my body may need as well. And that's just one of the ways that
I accomplished that. But three bucks off each bag a leakmo compost at Warren's
and that is also true at Kingwood Garden Center. And when you purchase a
forty four pound bag of the aismite, that is a good deal. Let's
head out to Cyprus now and we're going to talk to Charlie. Hello,
Charlie Hello. I was just calling. We have lost so many of our
borrowing plants, and in the fall I always planted plants on the side of
my walk way up to the front door, and I was wondering what she
might recommend. I can't remember what I planned now, Ben, I just
don't I did not go to a recommended store, which I won't do that
again. But every man die. Yeah, Well, you know I always
tell people that some people go to these places where you think you're going to
save a buck on something, and you don't save a dollar when it dies
or when it doesn't do good or you know those kinds of things. Is
you know, are you looking for like an annual color plant for fall.
Is that is that the goal? Yeah? Yeah, just an annual plant.
Usually I plant a new one in the spring and a new one in
the fall, because you know, spring fall have different coloring plants, and
they've always just been great right there as you walk into the front door.
But this year it's just dirt there. Yeah. I like, I was
just talking about the dianthus that they had out at Warren Southern Gardens, that
the dianthus is one of my favorites. I just think that you're gonna not
go wrong with dianthus and being up in the Cypress area, I don't know,
you know, you're close to plants for all seasons on two forty nine
or Arbigade up in Tomball, that you got some of the best nurseries in
the world right up there, and they're going to carry those kind of plants
I would consider dianthus. Uh, snap dragons are pretty good. They come
in very tall cut flower types as well as short, more bedding plant types.
When it gets really cool, then we think about things like pansies and
violas. It's a little for those right now, but not for the dug
anthus and not not for the snap dragons. So pansies are for the more,
for less, for fall, for cool, for winter, for cool
season. I would yeah, I wouldn't plant pansies until the end of October
probably personally, I'm kind of looking at that's when I usually did it.
The vinca or those of the spring plants, the vincas, Yeah, vinca
can't take cold. It cannot take cold. Okay, do your dianthus,
your dianthus, your snap dragons, and your pansies and violas are gonna all
take cold. Pansies and violas are the cold heartiest. But I'm telling you
the you need to go look at some of these dianthus and see what you
think. I think you're gonna like them. Okay, And you say the
vincas then would be for spring, for for warm season, Yeah, let
it warm up, you know April may even. You know, you can
plant vinca all through the summer, but that would be the one for the
for the hot season. And Angelonia sounds like angel and alonia that's another summer
plant, like vinca. Okay, but when you go to eat, when
you go to any of these gardens centers, they are going to have a
wide variety. I'm giving you two or three ideas. They're gonna have a
lot of other great ideas too. Okay, well that sounds good and I
appreciate your help. Thank you all right, Charlie, thank you for the
call. Appreciate that very much. Talking about tom Ball a minute ago.
You know, D and D Feed is your hometown feed store up there in
Tomball. They're on FM twenty nine twenty about three miles west of two forty
nine. The Dover family has been operating it since oh, nineteen eighty nine,
I believe, and they just created that big, beautiful extra space and
they are so they were already stock full of product, but all the fertilizers
I talk about are going to be there. You know, do you need
soils, you know the quality mixes like the heirloom soil mixes. They carry
those. For example, they're gonna have some flats of vegetables, vegetable seeds
and things, quality dog food, quality livestock food. If you need to
control pests and rodents, they just have it all there. Mosquito products they
carry those as well. It's just easy. It's easy, easy to get
in, easy to get out. A D and D Feed and supply always
has everything you need. They just do. Go buy and see them.
Check it out. See what I'm talking about. Go into let's say you
check out that new area. I mean, the stock that they carry is
very impressive. You're fortunate, if you live anywhere in the Tomball area to
have DND feed as your hometown feed store. They're very, very good about
that. Talking about cool season flowers, it's kind of hard to imagine,
you know what I mean, ninety five degrees or something here this week and
we're thinking, what on earth am I talking about cool season flowers for once
we get past that. Once we have gotten now past that one hundred degree
days and just the blazing heat. If you get these things planted and you
water them, take care of them, they're gonna be okay. And don't
wait, don't wait until you know you have to put a sweater on it.
It feels like fall. You can plant then, but there's no need
to wait. Go ahead and get your fall planting done now. Broccoli,
cabbage, cauliflower in the vegetable garden. Get those planted. Your flowers,
like I mentioned, dianthus A listen the snap dragons and all you know,
those cool season things. Go ahead, and getting planted now that it's time,
and you'll just have a more beautiful setting when the fall weather does arrive
and you do want to put that sweater on, you'll be ready to go
and your plants will be okay. They we are, we're dropping down.
Our nighttimes are cooling off enough. And when you know, when we talked
about heat this summer, you may have heard me say this, but it's
not just the daytime highs. It's the nighttime lows not getting low enough.
It's just too blazing hot twenty four seven during those days for our plants to
thrive. And so now we've got cooler nights already, we've dropped that temperature
down into a good range, and the daytimes are not that not that bad,
they're okay, and it's just going to get better week after week after
week. I'm excited about fall. I mean, this is after what we
went through, here we go let's have some fun and get out there and
enjoy it in the fall. Yesterday I was coming back from that program down
in Brazoria County, the Strawberry program, and I was talking about it earlier
and I stopped in at seeing a maltch. You see in a Maltch.
I always love visiting there. They they have the supplies ever fertilizer I talk
about they it's amazing the fertilizer selection that they've put together. But what are
they about, Well, they're about malts, They're about soil mixes, bed
mixes. You can buy them bulk, have them deliver them within about twenty
miles. We're a small delivery fee. They'll they'll drop it off for you,
or you can just pick it up in bags. They have that as
well. So if you live anywhere out near the Rose Sharon area, Siena
Maltch is your place. Siena Multch dot com. They've got it all.
I just posted something to my Facebook Gardenline Facebook the other day showing their rock
products. Have you thought about doing a flagstone patio or walk away? Maybe
a dry you know, not cemented in a little walk away with some aggregate
between the walk flagstones and things. They've got it. They will set you
up. So Siena Maltz is a place you need to know about it.
You need to go there. Good products, good selection and great folks to
to help you as you get going on that. I was looking at a
sidewalk the other day, and it was it was heaving from some tree roots
that had gone up underneath it and cracked it. And I mean it's like
you went over a mountain range riding a bike down the sidewalk there. But
there are other things that move the soil around, and that is castal moisture.
When it's dry, our soul shrinks. When it's wet, it swells,
and that shrinks swell rex havoc on concrete. I don't care if it's
a driveway, a sidewalk, or the worst of all, your home slab
foundation. Do you see cracks in the brick do you see cracks in the
sheet rock inside? Those are all signs of a foundation problem. And it
doesn't get better, it only gets worse, and you need to not delay.
Fix my slab. Foundation Repair is the company that we recommend. Ty
Strickland has a excellent approach I would say to service and quality. When Ty
tells you he's going to be there, he shows up at that time.
He's on time. When he gives you a price, it's a fair price.
And when he fixes your slab or foundation, he absolutely does it right
and that is important. Fix my slab foundation repair. That's fix myslab dot
com two eight one two forty nine forty nine to eight one two five five
forty nine forty nine. Don't delay if you see any of those signs,
and by the way, tell them you're a garden Line lister and you get
a free estimate as a result of that too. So make sure and mention
that if you give McCall and have them come out. And I know it's
not good news. I know, I know we don't want to have to
deal with foundation problems, but it is what it is. And if you've
got it, don't delay get it fixed. It only gets worse. Very
important to keep that in mind. I was mentioning things about about flowers and
things to plant earlier. The fall is also a good time to plant perennial
flowers, any kind of a perennial flower that you want to put in the
ground. In fact, perennial period, perennial herbs. We're in the big
middle of the best time to get that done. Really really important to get
ready to garden. I mean, don't look at the temperature today. It's
going to be okay, it's gonna be okay. It's not too blazing hot.
We can live with this. It feels like air conditioning today compared to
what we went through. Hey, if you live up in the Grimes County
area, Grimes County Feed that's your hometown feed store, and you were fortunate
because Grimes County Feed the folks there. You know, it's a different kind
of company here. Here's what I mean. Chris and the Roy family.
They get back to the local community, whether it's Iola fa Iola schools,
the four h departments, Anderson Volunteer Fire Department. Although they support those,
the family has their Polish background in agriculture, in fire service, in the
Houston Fire Department, law enforcement, the Houston Police Department. That goes way
way back, and that is still how they live. They reinvest in the
well being of Grimes County future. That comes before profit. At Grimes County
Feeding Farm, all the fertilizers I talk about, you're going to find them
there, and everything you would expect from a feed store, you're going to
find it there. They're on State Highway thirty in Carlos, Texas, two
miles west of two forty four. Please stop by and check them out.
You'd be glad you did. Well. It's time to take a break.
Time for Nicky News seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Well, good morning, you're listening to garden line. The sun is now
shining. We got a little bit of light coming across the tops of the
trees as I look out the window, and that makes me happy. A
new day, you know, a new day is always the best day.
Right. It's a day you haven't lived yet, but it is a day
full of possibilities, full of promise. And you know, I'm not just
being philosophical here. I mean, think about it. Go out and look
at your yard, Go out and look at your landscape. What do you
want it to look like? You got a new start. I mean,
this fall is here. We are going to just get cooler, and we're
gonna get some more rain, and it's just going to get better. What
do you want it to look like? And if you know what you wanted
to look like, you can go make that happen. Do you want some
mums at the front steps? Let's go get them. They're there, they're
at the garden center. You can make it look beautiful. Do you want
to redo a landscape bed? Do you want to put in some flowers.
How about the vegetable garden. You know that you can grow your own healthy,
fresh produce. And there's no better season for planting than fall. Everything
we plant is better planted in the fall. For example, herbs. This
is herb season. Oh and I got to tell you, by the way,
the Enchanted Forest. The folks out there at Richmond Enchanted Forest Nursery,
they have an unbelievable new herb selection in. You know, they built the
new structure that is really cool. In fact, all the buildings out there
are called I always love. I feel like I've gone to an old Western
town or something, you know, with all these great rustic kinds of buildings
that it's just it's cool. I love it. But they've got their fall
herb selection in, and oh my gosh, they have a wide selection.
Now's a great time to do that. Would you like an herb garden,
maybe just a container with herbs, or maybe you want to put herbs in
your vegetable garden. I mixed mine up. Hey, I'm gonna eat herbs.
I'm gonna eat vegetables. Why can't they grow together? Well, they
sure can. Now you can go Enchanted Forest if you're in Richmond, and
you're heading toward sugar Land. They're off to the right down south of fifty
nine on FM twenty seven fifty nine, wrote FM twenty seven fifty nine out
there in Richmond, go check them out. There's all kinds of things going
on. In fact, today, let's see today. Yeah, today,
at ten am, Andy chad Ester with Medina is going to be out there.
Andy as a wealth of knowledge and organic agriculture in general, and she's
going to be sharing that information as well as fall tips and tricks with you.
So a good reason just to run out there today as well. Always
a good time to go out and visit Enchanted Forest. We're gonna head up
to Tomball now and talk to Mike. Hello, Mike, Hey, Skip,
good morning. How are you. I'm well, how are you this
morning? I'm good? Thank you. First, I just want to say
that I really love your little inspirational talks. Those are very encouraging on Saturdays.
I'm a guy that travels a lot during the week with my business,
and I just really look forward to the weekends and getting outside and getting a
little working around my yard. And I put you on and you just hate
those those little talks. Pet me up for the weekend. Well, good,
I'm glad to hear that. You know, this summer, we were
all so depressed. We'd cried every tier. Our bodies were as dry as
our lawns. People were trying to hang themselves with their garden hose and fall
on their gardening knife. And we were just trying to talk people off the
cliff at that time, for sure. And I think that's what happened to
this tree that I'm calling about. We we live in a house that we
bought about three years ago, and it's it's one of these where you get
three trees in the back in the front yard and two trees in the back,
so they're still kind of small. And this one died about a year
into us living here, just turned brown overnight and then it sp and so
I let it grow back. I encouraged it. I put a steak and
all that, and it grew back to about eight feet tall, and then
last weekend to leave this brown overnight. Yeah, and I don't know if
it's dead. I sent you a picture with an email. I don't know
if you got it. I looked at it and it does look dead to
me. Unfortunately, I don't occasionally, leaves can brown and a plant can
bown, can regrow. I would go take your fingernails and kind of scratch
the branch twigs and stuff, and look. But I would say ninety five
percent chance, maybe ninety eight percent chance that tree has gone unfortunate. Okay,
Yeah, I started bending the branch and they're already very brittle, and
you know, leaves come up, and there's a potted plant sitting next to
it. That's what I was going to cut it down this morning to stick
that pot there where where that tree was. What is that potted plan?
I'm looking at it. I don't know. My wife and I got it
last weekend. I can't remember what it was called. Uh yeah, I
can't Japanese something. Oh is it a clay era? Do you know?
Does that that? Okay? Yeah? Interesting? Well cool? Well yeah,
I mean I think it's time to pull it and call it unless you
just want shade and want to put another tree in there. But that's too
bad, because that's a beautiful little red oak. Yeah yeah, I know,
yeah, No, it's it's good. I think we're gonna we're doing
a little I've got some raised gardens just behind there and I'm gonna put that
potted plant there and kind of do a little rock skate. So all right,
there you go. I'm gonna let the tree go. But thanks for
it helps get well. Thank you for the call. I appreciate that very
much. Mike. You take care. Let's see, I want to mention
Oh, you know, I forgot to mention this when I was talking about
lawns earlier. We were talking about lawns and you know, maybe a chinch
bug. Still a few of them around. We got disease and insects and
fertilizing and things to do. One of the best things you can do for
your lawn to get them back in shape is a deep core aeration, the
kind where they pop the little plugs out of the ground and leave them on
the surface, followed by a compost top dressing, ideally leafmo compost, but
a good quality compost top dressing is really important and Greenpro does exactly that.
You can call the folks at Greenpro. Their prices start at five ninety nine
plus tax depending on the location and the size, but they bring in some
very nice, expensive equipment and they go through your lawn and they do the
right kind of aeration the kind that it really reaches down deep and gets that
plug up out of the ground, drops it down and then with that compost
stop dressing. Your lawn is going to be in great shape. You alas
want to follow after the aeration, that's when you do the top dressing.
That's, of course, the fertilizing is done after that as well, and
it just gets your long going. You can go to greenpro dot net greenpro
dot net, or you can call them two eight one three five one forty
seven thirty three. But don't delay. The time to get this done is
now. You don't wait. Don't wait until November to get this done.
You need to get it done as soon as possible. This is the time
because our lawn has about a month of great weather for recovery here and this
is the time to get it set up for success. We're gonna head out
now to Missouria and talk to Randy. Hello Randy, Thanks Kip, I've
heard you talking about fall gardens. I decided I wanted to try to grow
some garlic for the first time ever, and I looked online and most of
the information comes from on how to grow it comes from up north someplace.
You got any tricks or tricks or suggestions or no, no, it does.
It does well. Here At this point, you probably want to plant
the clothes. You buy individual clothes and put them in the ground and get
them watered in and they get going, and then just start fertilizing them plenty
of nitrogen. You're not burning them a nitrogen, You're just you're providing a
constant supply of nitrogen that is portant for him to get good growth. One
of the suggestions that was was blood meal. Is that is that a good
part of It's fine, it's an organic, it's about I believe it's about
twelve percent nitrogen and blood meal that would be fine. Just scratch it into
the soil because if you've got any pets around, they will definitely want to
come sniff around that, right. Yeah. Yeah, And also, what's
aren't you talking about er new yard? Yeah? I have armadillos that do
that for me. I hear you can eat armadilla. I've no, I
don't have any recipes, but hey, just come out and do it for
me, all right, Randy. Hey, I'm hitting a hard break here,
but thank you so much for your call. Good luck with that garlic.
I appreciate that. Our phone number is seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four, and John, you'll be first up when we come
back. Well, good morning on a great morning for gardening. We're glad
you're listening to Garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one to fifty eight seventy four.
Listen. If your lawn is looking rough coming out of the summer we
just had, or even if it's not really nitrofoss is three step. That's
the Texas three step is a package that will get your lawn in better shape.
It's just as simple as that. First step is the fertilizer. It's
a fall fertilizer design for Houston soils and designed for fall. It's got a
good component of the potassium, the third number in it a little bit lower
on the nitrogen, which is how we like it going into fall. It's
got phosphated it too to promote healthy roots systems. But that potassium for winter
heartiness and drought resilience is just really important. Secondly, Step two barricade pre
emergent herbicide. In October, the cool season weeds are going to begin germinating,
and you don't want to delay. You got to get the pre emergent
down ahead of that, So now's the time to do it. Pre embergen
herbicidebe barricade controls broad leaf and grassy weeds in your lawn by preventing them forever
getting established in the first place. Third step Eagle turf fungicide. Now that
is a systemic. It gets into the plant and it protects if you're dealing
with brown patch. If your lawn has had brown patch every year, it's
probably coming back again there. It's just part of the deal. But Eagle
turf fungicide helps prevent that. It also helps with things like take all root
rot that can get into the grass as well. It loves to in fact,
during cooler times of the year. The Texas three step from Nitrofoss is
available anywhere you buy nitrofoss products, but you can get it at all Spas
hardware, ace hardware in the woodlands, you can get it at the Plants
and Things and Brenham and Bearing's hardware on Bussinett all carry the Nitrofoss three step
as well as other nitrofost products not hard to find, locally easy to find,
and it works, absolutely works. We're going to head out now to
Belleville and we're gonna talk to John. Hello, John, Hello, Skip.
How are you doing this on? Well? I'm doing okay? What's
up with you? And Belleville? Okay? Well, listen, about four
years ago I rested my front yard, and I guess that was the year.
It was perfect timing because we had so much rain that summer and Harley
didn't even have the water. And ever since then, I've been following Randy
Lemon's fertilizer schedule. Yes, and just I mean, I don't miss a
month or whenever you know it's time to put something out, I do.
But my problem is this, I've got a bad problem with this horse herb.
Yes, and I've got I looked it up. I've got three things
here. It's called green light wipe out, fertile fertile home weed out,
and boatie or boat iron weed beater for southern lawns. Well, is there
one better than the other to treat this? You know, I'm gonna have
to. I'm gonna have to go look up the ingredients. I know,
bonid weed beater, Uh see green light wipe out. What was the middle
one that you said, fertilone wheat out. Yeah, you know, I'm
gonna have to look at that because that's a tough weed to kill. One
time I saw someone spray horse herb with round up and the horse eat.
You would think, okay, that's the end of anything green, right.
The horse got some brown spots and powdered for a while and bounced back.
I was like, oh my, we've we've got a doozy on our hands
now. So that's not an easy one to just spray with it with anything
that might be be out there. I'm trying to look at fertiloam's wheat out.
I'm trying to find the ingredient in that one. If I can get
to oh it's got trimac in it. Yeah, that any of those would
be worth a try. I would have to take some time to really research
john against that specific weed, which one would be better. But those are
all three designed to control broad leaf weeds after they've come up and grown,
and so I think you could go with any of those. It's as far
as let me go ahead. What about you know, I've got a place
in the country now, I have some stuff called Grayson. Yes, I
wonder if I had to loot that. You know, you put a little
bit of grays on in a spray er bottle. I wonder if that would
work. That stuff kills? Do you do you do you have? Do
you have Saint Augustine grass growing amidst that horseyes? I think it'd be too
hard on it. The ingredient. The ingredient and grayson would be very effective
against the weed, but I'm afraid the patient would take a too heart of
a hit. Okay, okay, all right at the end, Well,
I'll just try one of these, and now the temperature cannot be what's got
to be in mid eighties? Yeah, in mid eighties are below for the
high. You know, if we're gonna if you want to hit it in
the morning with one of those on a day that's gonna get above eighty five,
that's okay. You just get it done early in the morning so it
has time to dry up and everything before it gets warmer. But you might
wait just a little bit longer, just to be a little extra, a
little extra careful with that. Okay. Yeah, And I'll tell you one
other thing. If you want to hold on I'll have Josh get your give
you an email, and if you will forward me those three products with that
question, with mentioning the weed again, I'll pick it up and look at
it and see if I can do a little bit better. Then yeah,
those are all broadly weed control and maybe drill down a little bit better to
that particular weed if I can. Okay, well, great, all right,
well thank you, all right, mom, I'll go ahead and put
you on hold. Uh yeah, the dealable weeds that can be a problem.
And you know, the funny thing about orserb is worserb folks that like
native plants. The orserb is a great ground cover and it grows in shade.
I mean, I you know, grows in shade pretty well. Actually,
if it's a bright shade. It doesn't make the densest of ground covers,
but it will make one. And for a lot of people it's like,
well, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and that certainly
is an option. But I just it, just it. I grew up
with it in South Texas, you know, under mesquite trees and things.
It was a beautiful otle ground cover down there. But I understand when it
gets in a lawn. Its not gonna be real easy to get rid of,
that is for sure. If today is is just it's just a great
day to get out and start your fall gardening. And I keep talking about
that and fallows the best time to plant. Fallows the best time to plant
trees for sure. I mean, you've got a woody ornamental, you want
to give it every day you can before next summer arrives. So now is
it time to get it done. And Williamson Tree Farm, that is the
folks with our CW Nursery. They're growing a lot of trees right up there
in Plantersville, and they have an awesome selection, lots and lots of options,
hollies and cypress and crape myrtles and elms and just on and on and
on a long list. And you can go right to r CW Nursery and
by m it's as simple as that. They also have the products that you
need when you plant a tree. You know, the fertilizer put in as
you're planting, the roots stimulator that you're putting in to help it establish and
to grow. They'll come out and plant for you. That's RCW Nurseries dot
Com. That's the Garden Center on Tomball Parkway two forty nine where it comes
into belt Way eight. They're right there, easy to get to. They're
open to day till five o'clock tomorrow from ten am to five pm. RCW
Nurshery. Simple as that. Well, Paul, you are going to be
the first up when we come back. We are working our way through calls
today and look forward to visiting with you more about the questions that you have.
If you would also like to call in seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four seven one three, two one two five eight seven four,
Josh will get you up on the boards and we'll be ready to rock
and roll and talk whatever you're interested in when we come back. Don't forget
that. Today at eleven thirty, I'm gonna be at the Nature's Way Resources,
which is on Highway forty five North. As you head up toward conro
About where fourteen eighty eight comes in, you just turn right across the railroad
tracks in your Nature's Way. They are having one heck of a shindig.
You don't want to miss. Ball Garden Festival, food, music vendors,
beverages, scavengers for the kids, and I'll be there eleven thirty to one
thirty. Ktr H Garden Line not necessarily endorsed any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip rictor it's smell
crazy, just watching as good Saturday morning, A beautiful Saturday morning out there,
A good day to get out and do some gardening. Do good day
to go out and do some shopping too for gardening. Lots of good supplies
available, lots of things you need to purchase and get ready to go.
We need some fresh stuff going on in the lawn and garden and landscape because
this has been a tough summer and it is just it's a time of hope.
You know. That's a good thing about gardening is gardening is a hobby
of hope. It really is. I mean you, when you put a
seed in the ground this dry, I'd better to try to us that you're
sticking in the soil and in your mind's eye you see fresh tomatoes or you
see flowers or whatever you're planted, you can picture that that is hope.
That is absolute hope, and it just is rejuvenating and gardeners, gardeners in
many ways are optimists. I know, we gripe about the weather and all
kinds of stuff like that, but gardeners just have a upbeat. I just
enjoyed being around garden There's just a sense of yeah, we can do this,
Yes, this can You know, it's a good thing to be a
gardener. And I encourage more people to do it. I know that's a
hard cell. Some people just don't think they're dirt people. Well you are,
trust me, you are. It's in you. It's in you.
You know. There's no such thing as the cubicle of Eden. It was
the garden of Eden. We're supposed to be in a garden, I'm telling
you. And when you get out and start messing with plants, messing with
the soil, doing stuff and seeing the results of it. There are very
few places in life, even weed control. For example, when I go
home and if I've got a bed full of weeds or something, and I
get to work on that, and you know, get that done. I
get a lot of thinking done, and I can stand up after thirty minutes
of that and look and see the results. And there are a lot of
things in life with work where you get through the end of the day and
you go, I don't even know what I accomplished today. It was just
like I was trying to sweep water uphill or something. Now with gardening,
Hey, if you've got a little piece of property and you would like to
have a tractor to take care of that, I've got the deal for you.
It is the orange. It is the orange, the color of fall.
That's Landsdowne Moody's new Caboda tractor. Whether it's your first Caboda or if
you've had one before, you can do It's it's real simple. It's pick,
click and go Orange. You pick the Caboda you want. I'd recommend
the L twenty five O two. It's the Caboda workhorse. Excellent deal.
You can go to tractor package dot com tractor package dot com and click on
your package deal. A box blade, a rotary cutter, a front end
loader, a posthal digger. All that equipment can be put into a package
to go with your new Caboda and then you go Orange with a great finance
plan. Now they've extended again this unbelievable deal. Eighty four months, no
money down, you buy the tractor, eighty four months to pay. I
mean that for eighty four months. That is a long time. You're not
gonna find a best, a better financing deal with anything than that. Lansdowne
Moody is locally owned, They're locally operated. They're a Houston company. They
have been since nineteen thirty six. This isn't a big out of town giant
corporation owner group LM. Lansdowne Moody their hometown through and through nine locations on
the Gulf Coast. LM tractor dot Com do the pick, click and go
orange with Caboda and Lansdowne Moody twenty five oh two is the one you need
to check out. Stop, buy a Landsdowne Moody, sit on one,
just kind of get the fuel for it. You'll see what I'm talking about
when that is one sweet ride. For sure. We're gonna head out to
Magnolia now or no, to the Woodlands now and talk to Paul. Hey,
Paul, thanks for waiting. Amount of problems yip, good morning.
A quick question for you, Yes, sir, my twenty foot Magnolia is
one third green, one third excuse me, two thirds brown. Is that
gone? Well? The one third green may keep going. Generally speaking,
the when when a magnolia turns brown, you take it down, it's not
gonna come back. Now if you look at it and it's like, well,
if I could keep that one third green alive, would it be worth
having the tree? That's the decision. It may be so disfigured that it's
ruined, but if not, you could wait, give it a little time
to wait and see. But in general, this summer has literally killed magnolia's
all over the place. I was visiting with folks at RCW Nursery the other
day Williamson Tree Farm, and they were just talking about how much death and
we just haven't seen this kind of death on magnolia's in a very long time.
Yeah, okay, well I think I'm going to give it a chance.
Well, let me ask you this, Yes, is the brown port
uh huh? How white cap it? The top of the magnolia? Is
the brown porky cap it? You mean cut the top out and leave the
bottom of it's green. Yeah, you could. It's gonna be a very
It'll be the only magnolia it looks like that in the country. But other
than you know, just kind of picture. I mean, it's gonna read
if it's alive and if it survives down there, if it could be that
it just hadn't turned brown yet, it's already lost its its connection, you
know, to good healthy roots and whatnot. But if it does survive,
it's going to reach sprout and it'll become more of a magnolia bush of some
sort. So okay, you know, if you want to get if you
don't want to water here, yeah, well, if you don't want to
pull the trigger, I mean, wait, there's no harm in waiting.
The brown is gone, but the rest if you don't give a little more
time and see, you can always make a decision later. Just remember,
if you want to replace it, that falls the best time in the world
to replace it. So that would be the only reason to pay a trigger
sooner raven later. Okay, okay, thank you, you bet, thank
you. I appreciate that very much. You know, the enchanted gardens Dannil
Richmond, that nursery. When you drive up, you look at it and
you just go wow. I mean it's it's almost like, as far as
the eye can see, you have just got color, color, color,
And no matter what kind of plants you're looking for, do you want herbs?
It's talking about herbs early. Do you want annual fly hours? Do
you need vegetables? Do you want to create a little ferry garden for example?
Do you need shrubs, trees, roses, vines. Everything is there.
They carry the products. We talk about, the fertilizers, we talk
about the soil products, we talk about you know, I brag on the
oh gosh, what Vego garden beds? I saw Vego garden beds there in
Chanted Gardens the other day Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. That's the website in
Enchanted Gardens Richmond. They're on three fifty nine. So if you're in Richmond,
head up toward Katie from three fifty nine. You come to Enchanted Gardens,
You're not going to find a better selection. It's one of those places
where you love to take friends and family when they visit, because they ain't
got anything like that at home. I can tell you that there are hours
or Monday through Saturday eight to five. On Sunday Tomorrow ten am to four
pm, good time to visit in Enchanted Gardens. We are gonna now,
let's see. I gotta take a break. I was ready to go to
another call. Cheryl and Ed you were the first two up. When we
come, our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Welcome to Garden Line. You are listening in today and we are
going to talk about all kinds of things coming up. I am going to
first talk about lawns. Taking care of your lawns is important and Nitrofossis Texas
three Step is a three step package designed for our soils, for our climate,
for this season of the year. Three steps fertilizer week control, disease
control. Simple as that fertilizer Nitrofoss Fall Special Winter Riser. It's got the
high potassium levels a little lower nitrogen that help not only fight or make a
plant more resilient to drought, but especially going into this fall season, to
make it more cold hearty and to strengthen the grass plant. Going into fall,
our grass is weak. We need to get it stronger. This kind
of product does just that. Nitrofoss Fall Special is excellent for doing exactly that
and making your grass greener and healthier next spring. October is the magic month
for lawns here. It just is a lot happens now and what you do
now affects your lawn in the spring. It's as simple as that, and
I can talk about more in detail sometime, but just know that that's the
case. Secondly, nitrofuss barricade that's the weed control controls grassy weeds, broad
leaf weeds. You put it down before the weeds come up, which means
put it down now, do not delay. We get a cool front end
here. We get some days where it's only up in the mid eighties or
lower eighties, and the nights cool off. We're gonna start seeing cool season
weed germination, and we need to get down ahead of it. And nitrofuss
barricade does that. Secondly, or thirdly, nitrofuss turf eagle that's the fungi
side that fights take all root rot and large patch or now we used to
always call it brown patch. That's what everybody knows it by nitrofuss eagle.
You put it down. It's best to do it of time because it's the
stomach. It soaks in the plant and when the disease tries to hit,
it's there to protect the plant. If you wait until the big circles appear
is too late. You're gonna I mean, you may kill the disease,
but you're gonna have brown circles all winner. So you got to get ahead
with the Texas three step from nitro Foss. Where do you get the Texas
three step from Nitrofoss. I'm glad you asked. You can get it at
war in Southern Garden out in Kingwood. You can get it at Sinko Ranch.
You can get the ace hardware at Sinko Ranch. You can get it
at the Grower's Outlet in Willis. All places where you can buy this quality
combo of three products for the fall season. We are gonna now head too.
I can't remember who I talked to first, Cheryl. We're gonna have
to Cheryl and a TASCASEDA. Hey Cheryl, thanks kid. I wanted to
send you some pictures, but Josh said I need to talk to you first.
Okay. I have in the front of my house in a flower there
that's facing west. I have about eight azilia summer died about about the three
or four died in the low growing evergreens in front of that. And I
don't know whether I have a disease in the soil that's or are the azaleas
and evergreens are too old. They're all about over fifteen years old, so
well, they obviously are happy with the site. If they lived for fifteen
years, I was going to ask about is it well drained? Does it
tend to be soggy? Then that could be a problem for them, But
if they've been there fifteen years, that shouldn't be the case unless you change
something like gutters on the house, gutters taken off the house, you know,
something that would change the soil moisture levels dramatically. If it's not that,
I doubt it's a disease that's doing it. It could just be struggling
with the drought that we had that that's been hard on A lot of shrubs
have been dying back from that, and azaleas they have hair like roots,
but they don't have root hairs, So what that means is they're just not
as efficient at taking up water and nutrients and we got to keep them moist
in order for them to be happy. So that could be a factor,
you know, other than other than that, any other symptoms as to them
dying or how they died, or did you know, did start at one
end of the row and go all the way to down the road or did
it all kind of hit at once or how would you describe that. Well,
there about eight or nine adelias on one side of the porch and about
three or dead intermittently intermittent, and then then and then the low growing evergreen.
I noticed that that they're getting brown and the spreading. So yeah,
I had no idea. Okay, the low growing evergreen. This is kind
of like a juniper type thing that's flat on the ground. Though, Yes,
okay, those a couple of things. Frequent wedding of the foliage from
your sprinkler or rain or whatever it can and set things up for a disease
to move in and kill large sections of it of the plant. That's a
fungal problem brought on by the cultural issue of two wet too much. They
also get spider mites, and this summer it would be a great summer for
spider mites to be a problem that they will cause them to lose color and
turn brown and die out. And then also the two wet is another thing
that gets those. So I know, I'm giving you kind of a wide
range of things, but based on the the you know, the information I've
gotten, that is kind of the range of what I would look at if
I were you, it's going to be something in one of those things that
I just described. Okay, great, thank you, all right, thank
you sir. I appreciate I appreciate your call very much. You know,
in order to have success with your fall planting, you need to have a
quality soil to plant them in. That it's as simple as that. You
can go to the nursery and fall in love with plants all day long,
bring them all home, put them in the ground, and they may be
the best plant in the world. But if you haven't prepared the soil,
they're not going to thrive. It's as simple as that. Airloom Soils makes
a wide variety of soils, many many options available by bag, available by
bulk. You can go out to the porter location and pick it up.
You can have them deliver it, or you can just go to the many
places where airloom soils are sold, which is all over town, and you
can find your soil by bag. There. Go to Airloom Soils of Texas
dot com Airloom Soils of Texas dot Com. If you're gonna do a bed,
I would put in the rose soil. That's just a good one.
If you're gonna do vegetables and herbs. I'd use of edge and herb mix,
but that is just two of many many products that they have at Heirloom
Soils, and all of them make your plants happy by making a root zone
where the roots can thrive, and when the roots are thriving, the plants
are going to thrive. It's as simple as that. We're going to go
now to Cypress and talk to Ed. Hello, Ed, good morning,
sir morning. Been waiting around to do the aeration, et cetera, to
my lawn the cypress area. I started about two and a half three years
ago going organic and got away from the the synthetic stuff. I've done a
lot for my sail, but the one thing that still remains, that saw
at its very core or top is so hard that it's hard to get down
and bring it back to where it could have been if I started ten years
ago. Yes, aeration, I've never done, yes, never, as
in never been in the yard, been in the house thirty years, all
right, So I need the real I need the real airation this time,
right, Yeah, you do? You do some of the old arrators,
they just punch a hole in the soil, which basically squeezing the hole open.
Core narrator. Pop. It looks like you had a little dog convention
on the yard a week ago. When you get through core aerating, there's
these little little plugs of soil everywhere. Uh, and that is the fast
way to get where you're trying to go. You're trying to go organic,
you're trying to build the soil. There's ways to build a soil slowly over
time through use of humates and other things. But start off with a good
aeration and a compost top dressing and that just gets you the head start there
and then you from there you continue to improve your soil. You may aerate
again in a year or two, or you may you know, just switch
you've switched over to organic fertilizers and humates and things. You may just continue,
Yeah, just continue, But to aeration just to start is good.
And you know, we talk about green Pro that's our recommended here company around
here for doing that. They will come out and they'll do the whole nine
yards for you. You can rent aerators. It's a lot of work,
it's passy. Oftentimes the equipment you get won't do the job like Greenpro can
do it. So if they're going to do that, yeah, you can
go to green pro Texas dot com or just call them if you want to
write down the number. It's two eight one three, five one seven thirty
three. One more question, Yes, sir, when I aerate, is
there a point worth doing putting some kind of top soil or more than just
leak mold compost to try to get me some good soil up top. I
wouldn't do that. You can do it, but what ends up happening is
when you put like a quality soil over just a dense clay, you have
a transition there that sudden, okay, and that creates what we call a
perched water table. It's like the water goes down and hits that clay and
sits there. And I would avoid that. I would go with your organic
materials. Nature builds the best soil on Earth by dropping organic matter on the
ground and letting it rot. That's how nature builds soil. And that's that's
basic. You're just you're just yeah, you're aerating, and you're buying a
quality compost to get in and get it done quick. So that that's what
I would do. Man. The leaf mole composts I've been using that from
mister Ferguson up at Nature's Wait for the last three years. Yes, that
that would be what I put after the aeration, Yes, sir, that's
the best. That's the best, right. Yeah, and green Green Pro
have their own kind, Yeah, yeah, they do. They do have
a leaf mo compost. They have some they have various types of good quality
compost. But yeah, leaf mold. Leaf mold is a good one.
That's a good one to go with. Okay, And hey, if you
get a chance to come see me up at uh Nature's Way, I will
be there at eleven thirty today to one thirty. So, but good luck
with you invited me. They invited me two weeks ago when I got some
salt, but I to day is not a day. I got soccer with
two two sets of grand boys today. Oh my gosh. Well via condos,
my friend, you're good. Good luck. Thanks for the call.
Hey, I appreciate that. Yeah, Greenpro five ninety nine plus sales tax
depending on the size and location that you know, obviously you've got a huge
lawn, a small lawn. You have to drive to ten buck two or
just around the block. That all affects the price a little bit, but
they will do the job and they'll do the job right. You can go
to greenpro dot net if you want to find out more information about them.
Uh, you know, fall is the time where we plant trees, and
tree planting in fall is very very important. The folks at Verdant Tree Farm
have an excellent, excellent supply of trees. You can go to Verdant Treefarm
dot com v er da nt Verdant Treefarm dot com. There's a farm in
West Houston Ombark or Cypress down at Broadway Street in pair Land, they've got
a farm. And if you're up in the heights, there's the farm where
YO comes into I ten right there. They do turnkey service. You go
pick your tree out, they plant it, they do it right, they
take care of it. They free in the office for design consultation. They'll
recommend the plant that you need, the species that will do best. They've
got something for every budget and every size up to seven hundred gallons with a
one year warranty. You're not going to do better not Verdant Treefarm dot com.
And fall is the time to get your trees planted. If you are
going to get trees planted this fall. By the way, when you buy
a tree, or when you have someone planet tree, get a tree hugger
sprinkler. Tree hugger sprinklers are insurance for your new purchase. You just put
them around the tree, hook them to a water hose. They can water
a small area where that new root ball still is, or they can water
a very large area. If you've got tree struggling from drought, tree hugger
can go out way beyond the tree and water that nice circular area. Do
so much better than your lawn sprinkler system would do. Go to tree Hugger
sprinkler dot com. You're gonna find them all over the place. In fact,
I even saw some at Verdant Tree Farm the other day. I think
they may still have some of those on hand. So that takes care of
it. Does really well. We're gonna go to a break here and Ronda
and John, thanks for hanging on. I know you've been waiting. You
will be the first up when we come back. Right now, it's time
for the Nicki News Network and all exciting things that are happening around town.
Nikki, do you have your finger on the pulse of I do We're watching
Congress really closely. Today. It's an interesting day. It's a carnival.
Ha ha. Well, speaking of that, we've got a little Latin food
and live music and local vendors, adult beverages and all kinds of things going
on today at the Fall Garden Festival up at Nature's Way. I'll be there
from eleven thirty to one thirty, and I hope you'll stop by if you
got pictures, if you've got samples you want to bring by, We'll be
glad to look at those. I'd just like to get to meet you find
out what's going on. So all you folks in Montgomery County, North Harris,
or wherever you want to come from, head on up there. It
is going to be one heck of a shin dig. By the way,
that's the official name for what's going on today, shin dig. We are
going to headge straight out to southwest Houston now to talk to John. Hello,
John, thank you, thank you for waiting by the way. That
was a long way. Yes, hello, he hear me, Yes sir.
How are you doing this morning? I'm doing excellent. Skip thanks for
taking my call. I got it. I got two questions. One I've
been on the laws a watering schedule on my lawn. Listen to your show,
and I've had it at three times a week, fifteen minutes on each
cycle. But it wasn't the proper watering, so I dropped it to two
times a week, forty minutes for each watering. And my law, my
lawn has always looked like and it does look like a golf course. It
looks in a in the springtime. I mean it's perfect. I'm the only
one in the subdivision with a perfect lawn probably. Okay. My problem is,
as my bill jumped up over five hundred bucks last month. I was
watering it prior month, uh you know, about ten I was in gallon
and I jumped it to by doing the forty minutes twice a week, it
jumped up to almost twenty thousand gallon. And I just don't think that that's
that's highly properable. Okay, all right, so yeah, well let me
you know, I when it comes to how long you run it and all
that, it's that is not the way that I can best describe how to
water the lawn. You want to apply one half inch of water when you
water, or up to one inch, but but at least one half inch
when you water. So if forty minutes, put some straight sided containers out
there, tuna, fish cans, cat food cans, rain gauges, whatever.
Put them out there and run it for forty minutes and see how much
water you caught. If you've caught at least a half inch, that's a
good amount of time. If you've caught over an inch, that's way too
long. So just just see how long it takes to catch a half inch.
We're going to be given off here pretty quick. And usually I say
by the time October we should be putting on a half inch total for the
week, as opposed to in the summer when we're trying to get an inch
down. So do the little measurement tests that I mentioned, and then you'll
know exactly how long your laws to get watered. All right, So an
inch in the summer and a half inch in the fall. Yes, And
if you go to gardening with Skip dot com, my lawncare guide is there,
and I talk about watering schedules each month through each month of the year
gardening Skip dot com. Gardening with skip dot com Gardening, that's one question,
real quick, Okay, I've got two paprietaries and they look fan past
had them water them every day, and I'm a pride in them. But
the problem is they have not flowered, no fruit. Okay, now I'm
wondering it. Was it because of the heat, or was it because I
have a non pollinating tree, which I would be very upset about if I
paid for one and didn't get it. Did you buy the plant or did
you plant a seed? No? No, no, I bought a self
pollinating plant. Okay, So yeah, Papaya john comes in three forms.
There's a female, there's a male, and then there's both and so but
any any of those three you should be seeing flowers. It may be male
flowers, it may be female flowers. It maybe both. But the fact
that it's not blooming at all isn't because you bought the wrong kind of plant.
It just we need to get that thing blooming. Some of them take
a while. And if you purchased it, you know, way back in
the spring, it ought to be doing good. Now, if you didn't
plan until midsummer, it could still be a little too young to be.
You know, last year I planted one and I had blooms all over the
place. I had fifty fruits. It fruited twice. I wonder. I
went back to this same nursery. Everything was wonderful, and I was told
I went to uh Nature's way and they told me and I and they're great
by the way, and they told me, hey, let's get over a
little push. I think they gave me some microlife, some type of furlive
that would give a push to the bloom. I use that still no bloom?
Okay, Well, the microlife fertilizers are quality products and they will put
the nutrients out there, but they do it in a more gradual way because
they are an organics, so microbes get involved and they release the nutrients for
your plants. UF does a planet look good overall? Just the health of
the planet, The plant looks fantastic. I have got one in the pot
and one in the ground and the same the same spot that the one last
year. That was just amazing. And last year I had two sets of
fruits. I had fruits in the summer and fruits in the fall. And
I've had, you know, three sets of blooms on the tree in December,
and I went and it's the same brother of plants supposedly, but it's
just weird that it's just not none of them is blooming. Zo you know,
John, I don't know what tell you on this. Uh, it
ought to be blooming. And you know, if it looks good, if
it's healthy, obviously you're watering it, well, you've fertilized it, You've
done everything you can do. Time. I don't know. I don't know
why yours is not blooming. Full sunlight. That's important too. I would
just hold what you got and you can keep those plants through the winter if
you the one and container, but I just bring it in, give it
as much light as you can in the winter time. But but definitely don't
don't let it be out in a freeze. But John, I think that's
why. That's why I yet, and that's why I put one in a
pot this year, so I can drag that one inside and keep it.
But unfortunately, you know, I'm thinking about pulling them out because you're just
not doing what I wanted to be done. Well, I understand, I
understand. Well I hope that that turns around. But it is a kind
of a quirky thing that you're dealing with. But I appreciate you. I've
got another I've got another tree that wants to go into spots. So it's
got a producer. Get out to you there, you go there, you
will go out and tell it that. Take a chainsaw fired up, run
it and say I'm gonna be back next week to catch you down. If
I don't see some papaya is exposure to I thank you very kind for taking
a call. You got it? Yes? Or John? You take care?
Yeah? You know talking about that Microlife products, they have a lot
of quality products. In fact, they've got a combo that I think is
really good for plants in general, and that's a Microlife Ultimate. That's the
Blue bag. In fact, I'm going to talk blue plus Blue today.
The blue bag Microlife Ultimate is a quality fertilizer there will really feed anything that
you got. I mean we use it for lawns, we can use it
for for vegetables. You can use it for flowers and shrubs. It's just
it's just a good fertilizer and it works. The second thing, the other
blue is the Ocean Harvest. That's the liquid product. I've been talking about
that for a while now. But you can use it as a foldier feed.
You can drench it down on plants to get into the root system.
It is a fish based product that just does well. The Ocean Harvest boost
is a fall lere feed is a great way to take plants that are struggling
and get those nutrients right into the leaf and to help it and then just
do a little extra let it drip on the soil because the roots are gonna
take it up to the Blue plus blue for microlife, the Microlife Ultimate,
the Microlife Ocean harvest is a good combination, especially when you're talking about plants
that really needs some help and a boost, and even plants that are healthy.
It just keeps them going. We're gonna head out now to Pasadena and
talk to Ronda. Oh, Ronda, I have taken your call fifteen seconds
from when I got to take a break. I thank you for waiting.
If you will hold on just a little bit more, you will be first
up. And my apologies for doing that. Oh my gosh. Well,
let's take a break here and when we come back, we'll go straight to
Ronda. And wouldn't it be nice if it would cool off a little bit
more and start raining again and tell us that fall is here. I know
it's here, you know it's here, but it would sure be nice.
Well, we're going to add straight out Pasadena. Ronda, you get the
award for the longest suffering patient caller I think I've ever had, And they
even gave you a false hope and false alarm. My apologies. How can
we help today? Good morning, Good morning. I don't bother mind waiting
at all. Thank you for taking my call. That's gracious, thank you.
We have a weed, the mimosa weed, that has taken over our
flat lawn, and we've been fighting it for probably about a year. Yeah,
we started using the nitro false barricade at the beginning of the summer,
but we just cannot seem to get rid of it. Wondering if you had
any suggestions that we can do without actually killing our grass. There is a
mimosa weed, and there's something called chamber bidder that looks a lot like that.
Maybe seeing a good picture of it might help. I guess it's almost
like a little sleepy weed. When you touch it, it folds up and
have a couple of flowers on in our yard. Flowers all right, I
know now what you're talking about. Uh, yeah, so that one is
almost a woody weed. It right, it's a vine. It has a
little cat claws on. It does have a little clay, yes, okay.
It's it's almost like a woody weed. And if you pull it up,
it pulls up like a long vine. Yes, okay, so that's
a woody vine. It takes a it takes a pretty powerful post emergent to
kill that. Uh and post emergent uh, you know, the barricade's a
pre emergent. So that works on weed seeds that like grass and broad leaf,
and any one product doesn't control every weed that's out there. I mean
there's a range, and so sometimes you do have to switch. Even a
great product, there may be something that is not as effective on it.
But there you're dealing with the you're dealing with the basically a little woody ground
cover material and a broad leaf post emergent product would be the one to go
with. I would have to check labels to see on that particular weed what
the most effective would be. I know we have the bon Eide weed beater
Ultra is one that is used on a lot of broad leaf plants. There
is the green Light I'm not green Light fert alone. The name just went
out of my head. Let me see what I can think of it here
in a minute. Fert alone. It's got a broad leaf control product on
it. Where you look at it, you're in Pasadena. Oh, good
for you. Yeah, so, uh, if you will go to Southwest
Fertilizer, they're not too far from you, uh and talk to Bob.
Take a sample of the weed in so he knows which when you're talking about.
You know, I was heading off in the wrong direction on the description
initially, so make sure he sees it. But show him or one of
his staff there. They know what they're doing, and say, you know,
what do you have for this first? I can't think of the name
of the fertile product off the top of my head right now, but that
that kind of of product. It's wheat free zone. That's when I was
trying to think of. There's another product called Celsius that's pretty good on some
kinds of weeds. But I need to I would need to do a little
research to make sure I've got the right one. And if you I'll put
you on hold, and if you will send me a picture of the weed,
remind me we had this call. I will look it up and give
you the one I would recommend most or you could just go straight to Southwest
and they could take you too. Okay, Okay, I can go to
Southwest and ask for Bob. Yeah, Bob or actually he has staff that
that know what they're talking about. I mean, if he's not in at
the moment, that's fine. I mean he's got Okay. They they hire
and train people very well there because okay, their number one thing is to
get you the right product and not waste your money. All right, well,
thank you so much for your help. All right, Ron, and
thank you very much for that weed. It is kind of cool vote to
touch it and watch it close its sleeves up. It is. That's its
own only redeeming quality. Right and in between those, our yard does look
pretty because it's covered and purple flowers. But I'm tired of the purple flowers.
And look, yeah, I like to take all our kids and grandkids
out there because you can take a little like a little tiny stick or toothpick,
and you can touch individual leaves and just that leaf will will close the
whole. It's kind of cool. Once they see that, they'll be out
playing in the yard all day, right, all right, Ronda, all
right, well, thank you for your help, you bet, thank you
for your call. I appreciate that very much. Yeah, that's a pretty
cool, pretty cool weeat. You know, the time to deal with pests
is pretty much January through December. Welcome to Houston. I mean, if
it's not cockroaches, it's it's rats in the attic, it's mosquitoes, it's
oh my gosh, or they're termites, and on and on and on down
the line. And McGrath pest Control they know how to deal with all of
it. I don't care if it has four legs, six legs, eight
legs. They don't deal with two legged past You're you're gonna have to handle
that yourself. But anyway, McGrath Pest Control, Scott McGrath two eight one
four nine eighty two forty McGrath pest control dot Com. It's the website,
been doing this since nineteen seventy four. Family runs still. It's that old
fashioned service. What am I talking about? I mean, you don't sign
a contract. You don't hear Oh hang out, take your whole Saturday to
sit around the house in case we might may show up. No, they
tell you what time and they show up at that time, highly rated.
They serve the entire Houston area modern technology and techniques with old fashion customer service.
September through February is rodent peak season. How do you exclude them?
How do you prevent them from getting in? How do you control them?
They can do that no matter what the pest you're dealing with. It's real
easy. One place McGrath Pest Control two eight one four six nine eighty two
forty. They can take care of all of it. I remember one time
when I was in Austin, Texas at the extension office air we had rats
all through the roof and someone came in and they killed the rats and all
the rats. I don't know if they got together and decided this, but
they all went in my wall and they talked in my wall, and oh
my gosh, I think that could have been handled better. I wish I
had Scott at that time rather than the folks that we were using at that
time. I feel about in the mot Bellevue area, you are really fortunate
because you have a hometown feed store that is unique. And what do I
mean by that, Well, I'm talking about Texas feed Stop. First of
all, Texas Feedstop is the kind of feed store that you think about when
you think about the old time feed store. And I don't mean they don't
carry modern stuff. They do, But I'm talking about the service. I'm
talking about greeting you, you feeling like family. You do not get poor
customer service at Texas feed Stop. You don't sit in long lines like you
might. It's on big box store. Brian and Hope Rhodes. It's a
family deal, and your family to them. You know. They hire teams
from the mot Bellevue Commu Energy to carry their bags out for you. They
carry all the fertilizers I'll talk about on here, They carry the soils I'll
talk about on here they have seasonally, they may have citrus trees or vegetable
plants available as well. Do you need to get rid of chinch bugs?
Do you need to deal with diseases in the lawn? Do you have some
weeds to deal with? Texas Feed Stop carries all those products on Highway one
forty six in mob Bellevue, just a few minutes north of I ten.
Now, if you're out in you know, Baytown, same thing, They're
right around the corner. It's your hometown feed store. Texas feed stop.
Well, I wanna mentioned that the Arburgate, the folks at the arbor Gate
have got their new parking lot in and oh my gosh, is it glorious.
There's a loop called Trishell Road if you're whichever way you're coming. It
starts before Arburgate and it comes around and comes back into twenty nine twenty after
Arburgate and the parking lots ride in back. It's just really easy walk,
easy to get to, nice all weather thing. And you know when you're
at Arburgate that you have got to check out their one two three completely easy
system. They've got a food for anything with roots that's an organic four four
three be a great one to put on right now for your fall fertilization.
And then they have a soil that's organic complete. It's got microbes in it,
it's got the expanded shale that is so important in our soils. And
finally the organic compost complete, Organic compost complete, also chock full of expanded
shale, very important, one two three food, soil, compost, anything
with roots, They've got you covered. And oh my gosh, I could
take an hour just talking about all the plants, the new arrivals out at
Arburgate. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. It will transform your landscape, your
lawn, your garden, your flowers, your vegetables. They've got it all.
Just check them out at Arbourgate. They're just west of Tomball twenty nine
twenty. You know I've bragged on Neilson plant Food earlier, but their carbo
Load ten ten twenty is an awesome fertilizer for fall. It is designed with
the ratio of nutrients that we need for our fall fertilization. It also includes
a pre emergent herbicide, so when you put it down, you want to
water it down. That gets the nutrients in the soil, but it also
puts that pre emergent down into the soul surface where it prevents winter weeds.
But don't delay. October is when your fall weeds are germinating. Do it
now so that you prevent them. Carbo ten ten twenty. Well, putting
another hour in the books, You're got one more left today before I head
out to Nature's Way Resources for the Big Shindegg, the Fall Garden Festival.
I hope you'll come out. I'll be there eleven thirty to one thirty and
I'll answer your gardening questions. Just love to meet you. Always like meet
Garden Line listeners. Come on out and see me while you're there, Enjoy
Latin food, live music, look vendors, adult beverages. There will be
a scavenger hunt for the little kids. And if you get there before I
do nine am, which is pretty much now, they're gonna be doing a
little enchanting fairy garden creation workshop. You'll learn how to make that miniature garden.
I bet they'll still have a few of those on hand whenever you get
there for you to take a look at. Don't delay though Fall Garden Festival
today, out it Nature's Way. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line
with scarp Rictords Crazy. Just watch him as any Good morning, good Saturday
morning. Oh my gosh, it is beautiful outside. Look at that sunshine,
a little bit of a breeze. It's gonna be a great day.
It's always a good day for gardening. I don't care if it's raining,
sunshine, hail, freezing, it doesn't matter. I mean, if nothing
else, you got houseplants. If nothing else you got seed starting indoors if
nothing else right, Yeah, I mean you can read about a gardening.
Your gardening is a constant learning activity, it really is. And the more
you know, the better you grow. Oo ought to coin that one.
More you know, better you grow. I like that. It's true.
There's no such thing as a brown thumb. There's an uninformed thumb. When
you inform your thumb, your thumb gets greener. It's as simple as that.
Keep learning, and that's why we're here on garden Line to help you
make your thumb greener. If you will buy, helping, educate, helping
get success. You know, we don't want to go out, spend money
on plants, spend time planting them and not have success. And you may
have had that happen before, but let's put a stop to it right now.
You can give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four would be glad to visit with you about whatever is of interest to
you. As you're out and about running around doing some shopping and things.
This weekend, you need to check out Buchanan's plants. I don't know when
the last time you were there was, but boy, do they ever have
an unbelievable selection of really cool stuff on hand. I mean Buchanans has always
been They've always specialized in native types of plants, for example. I mean,
they really really excellent selection of natives. By the way, next weekend,
October seventh, they're having their Fall Festival. It's a big deal there.
It's a free event. They're going to have music, moon bounce,
crafts, face painting, food trucks, drinks, local vendors, hay rides.
I mean, Buchanans is on Eleventh Street in the Heights area of Houston,
and it's easy to find, easy to get in, easy to get
out, and it just their selection is like none other. I was check
picking out some of the things that they just got in and they've got like
desert mallow. If you've never seen desert mallow before. That's a really unique
plant. It's really cool. It has a little miniature hibiscus like bloom,
but the blooms are almost in pastel colors and really really beautiful fall obedient plant.
That's a good one for fall autumn sage, Turk's cap, pigeonberry,
black eyed susan. You can always count on Buchanans to have a wide variety
of plants, native plants too, and even just Houston area natives. So
you should give give McCall check them out. Drop by good place to go
shop, lots of lots of things that you're not gonna find any place else.
We're gonna head out to Spring Branch now and talk to Hurda. Hello
Hurda, good morning, Good morning, my word. Okay, I have
a question about my magnolia tree. Oh it's been there for well, it
was there when we moved to this house. I've been here fifty seven years.
But at any rate, the the seed pods they are red on it
now, have I forgotten? Is that? Okay? Oh? Yes,
that's normal. Oh okay, good, that is what you want. Okay,
good. Uh. And the other thing is I have cut two feet
off of the branches that I can reach anything I can reach for years now.
Is this a good time to do that? You're you're trimming the branches
back? Yeah, set Are you trying to keep it smaller? Well?
Yeah? In wood in woods? Yeah okay, all right, yeah,
I mean you can do that now. I generally don't prune now though,
because when you prune, it makes new growth sprout. Out and would go
a liner. We don't want a bunch of secculent growth going into winter,
so I usually wait until the end of the cool season to do that.
That would be well, I can wait. What would you say, in
winter itself? Yes, okay, I could do it. I do it.
Probably I would do it, and probably sometime in January, maybe late
January would be a good time you could prune. You could prune in the
spring, you know, but I just wouldn't prune right going into fall.
All right, thank you so much, Skied Well good, you're to helpful
to us, and you're kind hurt. I appreciate your call. Thank thank
you very much. For those of you who live down south, you know,
I'm always bragging on our feed stores because we love feed stores here on
Garden Line and League City, feed is the place to go. I mean,
if you're down in League City, of course, Santa Fe, San
Leone, Bay Cliff, Webster, El Camino, Reale, Claire, Lake
City, all those places, they're your hometown feed store. And they're just
a few blocks south of Highway ninety six on Highway three. Now, the
Thunderbergs have been running the store. I guess their grandfather built it over forty
years ago, and Wes and his sister Madison now are running the show and
they just have that great old time feed store feel. It just I like
going into feed store. I love League City Feed too. You know,
if you need do you need fertilizers, They got the ones who recommend you
need soil mixes. Do you need pesticides maybe in sex side, fungicides,
herbicide, They carry all of that stuff. And then of course they're a
feed store. They carry premium pet foods. They got everything your backyard chickens
need feeds, feeders, and so on. League City Feed easy to find,
easy to get to, Monday through Saturday nine to six, and closed
on Sunday two eight, one, three, three, two, sixteen twelve.
Please go by and check them out. We're going to go up to
the Woodlands now and talk to John. Hello John, Hello, Skip,
how are you doing this morning? I'm good, sir. What's up?
I am? I'm dealing with a fungus problem of some kind that it maybe
take all patch it. It sort of looks like that, except it doesn't
quite come up in your hand the way it's described. Anyway. The background
is that for the last three years. I've been taking care of the lawn
with Randy Lemon's program, and I use the microlight products religiously. The lawn
has been great. No more brown patch. It's a little bit of gray
spot I get I handle with Dacanell, but I generally don't use spongeicides anymore.
Just the microlight products. Good will they work. I was so I
was kind of surprised to get this, but I've got three or four good
sized patches and the lawn is melting away. I've last used the microlight acid
a fire six two four and about August, and when I saw this,
I used the Microlight innoculants at the at the maximum dose. And I'm I'm
really wondering a couple of things. Is there anything more than I'll just listen
quick seat and Helen. Is there anything more that I can do? Is
there someone I should consult? And must I go to one of these monthly
services. I sort of hate to give up control of the lawn when it's
doing so well, but I don't want to lose it and spend thousands to
try to resought. In all that point me here, what can we do?
John, I'm gonna I'm gonna have to go to a break, but
you hang on. I've got a lot to say about that, and we
can guide you down the way. Just hang on just a little bit.
We're going to take a break our number seven one three, two one,
two fifty eight seventy four. We'll be right back. Well, you're listening
to Garden Line and we are talking all kinds of things gardening today as we
enter now our last hour of the day. You know, if you're doing
fall planting, and I hope you are, because there's no better time to
plant than fall. That hands down, we get spring gardening fever. I
wish we would get fall gardening fever to the same degree we get spring gardening
fever, because fall actually is the best of all planting seasons that we have.
And when you're planting, I would suggest that you consider hast Grow six
twelve six. Here's how I like to use it. You put it in
a watering can, mix it according to the label with the right amount of
water, and when you put a transplant in the ground, you watered in
with a hast Grow six twelve six. Then a week later you watered again
with the same concoction, and then a week later again those three waterings help
that plant get off to a good start, hit the ground running. As
the way I like to put it, that is because it contains the nitron
phosphors potassium of course, as well as some micros that are going to come
with an organic product like that. You've got mednosoil activator in it to stimulate
biological activity. You've got humic acid in it, and you've got seaweed extracts
in it, and all of those things are good for plants. Now you
can use it for a fullier application a lot of other things. I just
like to use it for watering in anything that I'm planting. I don't care
if it is a broccoli plant, if it is some rosemary, or time
you're putting in the herb garden, if it's a rosebush or a tree watered
in with hastragrow six twelve six, and you're going to see better results.
It just helps the plant get started, and that is very, very important.
We're gonna go back out to John. Now, John, you gave
me a lot of good information there, and let me give you some feedback.
First of all, as far as pulling in the grass and coming up
or not coming up, take all. The root rot does not make the
grass come up easier. Uh, the grub damage will make the grass come
up like it's a throw rug. But take all it will stick down.
So you you may be dealing with. Take all the products you're using are
all good ones. And what I would do when did you put the bio
inoculant from microlife on how long ago? It's been a week? About a
week? Okay, well you're good. Then that is a good move.
I would use that. I might even use their their fall the brown patch.
It's it's the fall fertilizer on my schedule. If you go to gardening
with skip dot com, I've got my fault my fertilizer schedule on there and
a lot of other information on it. I encourage you to check it out.
But Microlife's brown patch is the one I put as the fall fertilizer,
and it works very well. It also helps between the bioinoculant and then the
brown patch itself. What you're doing is you're putting a lot of microbial activity
on the surface of those plants, so that when a disease organism tries to
land and cause trouble, it is already a very crowded surface, and there's
also the presence of things that do also help fight disease. Now, being
on the microlife system, you're building your soil slowly over time, you're making
it better and better, and I think that's good. I think you're looking
at one of two possible prot WACs. You're one of three. Either those
spots are a little drier than others. Maybe the sprinkler system coverage didn't hit
them as well, so they were struggling from some drought or was it yes
or dark chinch bugs. Chinch bugs you get on your hands and knees,
get in the area between healthy and dead part the grass. Figure out go
online first look find out what a chinch bug looks like and see if they're
there that can cause browning of the grass. And then the final thing would
be take all root rot, which also causes browning of the grass. Typically
it occurs in stressed areas, so it can be worse in shade. I
know you're not using the post emergent weak killers that can stress grass, but
those could lead to a take all root rot in certain situations, as could
drought stress as well. So it's gonna be one of those three things.
Hopefully it's just the watering because you can fix that easy. Yes, yes,
there's also a a microlife spray on that soaks into the end of the
lawn. Is that helpful to get the organisms below the surface. You mean
you're spraying them on and then they go below the surface or or are you
talking about helping the beneficients that are in the soil already. It's just trying
to get microorganisms farther down into the soil than maybe the surface. They're going
to be there. The use of those products and the grass plant itself is
making sure you have good microbes down in the soil. So but if you
wanted to do a top dressing, I would probably go to the ocean harvest
that's the blue jug uh and do and do a little I see top dressing
top application. It's a liquid and you could spray it on with a hose
in sprayer and introduce some of the compounds that are in that which would also
be beneficial for microbial activity as well as the plants, the grass plants themselves
and over no problem with overloading by applying these things all. Now, no,
you're not you're not the brown patch. I believe it's a five one
three. I want to say, I need to grab the numbers in front
of me, but it's something along those lines maybe five two three, and
so no, it's not you're not gonna you're not gonna burn plants with it,
and it's going to release a little bit more gradually, so it'd be
fine. One final thing, John, is if you want to take a
sample in the zone between healthy and dead, get about a four by four
four by six inch square of oil you take out of the ground, slip
it right into a ziploc bag and take it to the Montgomery County Extension Office.
Michael Potter is the Horde agent up there, and his master gardeners are
there. It's a free service. They'll look at it and tell you if
it's take all root ride or not. And that way at least you would
know for sure what you're dealing with. And what's his name again, Michael
Potter's the hoard agent. Montgomery County Extension Office is up on Airport Road,
across from the Lone Star Convention Center, right up there on the northeast side
of conro. Oh yes, okay, they got good gardens to go visit
to be a fun tour while you're out there. Cool all right, man,
Thanks so much, sir. All right, good luck, good luck,
good luck. Dank here. That one I've talked about Vego for a
long time. Vego is one of the companies, one of the few companies
that I actually went to the company and said, luck, I want to
talk about your products on guarden line. I believe in them. They're wonderful.
Vego's a Houston company. They're made right here. There's impostors out there.
They're the first company in a country as far as I know, this
whole USA, to make and sell the garden beds here. And what I
mean by garden bed this is a modular metal bed. It is coated with
a product or treated with a product to prevent rust and corrosion that was tested
at Texas A and M University for effectiveness and found to be very effective.
And then it's painted with the USD certified paint for a metal that is beautiful.
I mean, you can get them in different colors that are very attractive.
They're modulars, so you put them together however you want. Do you
want a long, skinny one, a short fat one and L shaped to
c shape. It's all there. If you're an organic gardener, you absolutely
have to use these because you don't want to use treated wood in your garden.
If you're an organic gardener, well, Vego does it. You can
go to vegogarden dot com. Many of our local garden centers also carry them.
But they're beautiful. Go to vegogarden dot com. Take a look.
You'll see what I'm talking about. They're easy to do, and they weigh
out last even a treated wood bed. You're not gonna do better than Vago
Garden. We're gonna let's see, We're gonna head out and out a porter
and talk to Marty. Hello, Marty or Margie. Excuse me, that's
okay, Okay, So you answered my question on the fall fertilization when you
were talking to John. Okay, because I thought I'd bought the wrong stuff
to put down, but apparently not. I'm okay. But I do have
another question. So I have a great myrtle that's in my backyard. Not
all of it, excuse me, bloomed out this year. I have a
lot of dead branches in it. Yes, Can I just cut those off?
Or do I need to cut them back? Take the tree down.
Yep, find a branch with living leave leaves, and then of course the
one you're calling dead. Follow them together, and wherever they joined together,
cut the dead one off there. In other words, you're you're you're finding
the where the dead branch starts and cutting it off there. And you can
do that. And if you got suckers coming out of the bottom, yes,
I do. Okay, if you like, if you have enough branches
that lived that are part of your original plant, cut all the suckers off
as close as you can get to where they attach. Don't leave any stub,
not even a half inch stub. And then there is a product called
sucker stopper, and you could spray it on there and it'll suppress regrowth of
suckers. It's not going to be a one time and work forever, but
it will suppress for a while those suckers because the more you cut them off,
it's like the more that come back. Right, Because I had a
great girl in my front yard and I cut it down, but they didn't
take the roots out. So I have all these suckers coming up, so
I can get the sucker spray. Yeah, but first cut them off and
again It's important because at the base of the sucker a whole bunch of buds.
They can't wait for you to cut it off and gave a little one
inch stub so they can grow. You won't cut it off as close as
you can and then immediately spray it with sucker stopper around the root of the
tree, around the base. Spray the cuts from the base of the tree.
Okay, okay, Well, all these limbs are up in the tree
itself, so I would have to get somebody to come out here and cut
them down, because no way I can do they out. So okay,
all right, Well that that ought to get you off to a good start.
Some people lost the whole top and they're they're choosing one or two or
three or four suckers to be the stems and cutting everything else off as well
as cutting the dead top out. So range there, all right, Marty,
Margie. Okay, I keep calling you Marty. I don't know.
I hope that's okay. Last week you call me Maggie and that was fine.
So what I made you were talking strikes and I'm out. Thanks for
the call, Margie, thank you. Oh my gosh, you know,
Margie's talking about losing branches and stuff on crape merles. You may have noticed
your landscapes can like, I can't finish that sentence. It looks bad.
Pier Scapes just give him a call. You know. If you're doing yourselfware,
that's fine. But do you want somebody who knows how to design coming
down and fixing things right? Do you do you need your irrigation system fixed?
A lot of people do? Do you need any kind of work done?
Do you need grass planted and replanted? Do you need new beds designed?
Pier scapes two eight one three seven zero fifty sixty two eight one three
seven zero fifty sixty or pierce scapes dot com. It's as simple as that.
Have them come out and go from oh my gosh, I can't bear
opening my eyes and looking at this too. Oh it's so beautiful. Let's
invite friends over. That's what peer scapes can do. Welcome to garden Line.
We are having a great time today talking about all kinds of things gardening
and hoping. Lee. We are hoping. We are helping to get you
off to a good start. Because fall is here. It is time to
get going on that. Hey, by the way, before I forget.
Earlier today, Sandy called and had some little black things on her okra and
sent me some pictures of it. Sandy, I want to tell you what
that is is kind of cool, pretty cool stuff. Those are aphids.
There's a black type of apid that will get on okra and it will get
on them so thick that it kind of causes the leaves to curl and and
just really loads up, sucks all the juices out of the pods, even
the blooms before they open up. We'll get them all over them. And
it tends to happen on one plant here and there, not just to attack
the whole patch. Two options. One you can spray blast of water.
You can sprays soapy soap and sex title soap on them and kill apids.
Does all work work very well. But in your case, looking at the
pictures, you've got some little tiny white insects on there. They're little white
things. And what those are is that's a type of lady beetle called a
crypt beetle or a skimness beetle, and they eat aphids. Yeah, that
is a lady beetle. That is the larva of the lady beetle. They
are on there eating your aphids. Now, those lady bids are never going
to clean this aphid mess up. There's way too many aphids for the number
of lady buidles you have. But it is a beneficial insect and it'll be
around. And so if it were mine, with all the other okre you
got, I would just leave that alone and just let them, let them
be. You're gonna you're gonna lose some okrah on those plants. But you
got a lot of ochre plants and a lot of okra, and you are
raising a nice crop of the kind of lady beetles that will help with a
lot of pests that you have. Sandy, that would be my take on
it. You do with that as you wish. We're gonna head out now
to Lakeside Estates and talk to Maureen. Hello, Maureen, good morning,
Good morning. I have two lovely flowers and I'm looking for them to bloom
sometime in November December, the Christmas and the Thanksgiving cactus. They're getting quite
lanky, and I thought, you know, I wonder if I could start
forming back. I'm sure I can, but I want it to get some
blooms for this coming season, right, What do you think? I would
not trim them now. If you want to do some trimming back later,
you can, but they will naturally branch. Is those things arch over and
stuff. You're going to see some branching occurring. But I would wait until
next spring before I do any trimming. If you're going to do any what
we need to do now is keep them in as good a light as we
can. They don't need to be in direct sun, but they need to
be in plenty of bright light and keep them adequately moist. Even though the
name says cactus, they are really something that lives in an environment where it's
kept moist, and so we don't They can tolerate drying out a little bit,
but you want them to do their best, and so don't let them
stay too dry for too long. When we get a little further and let's
say probably a little later into October, you can either let nature take its
course and they will bloom at their pointed time when the day links get short
enough. But if you wanted to speed it up a little bit at some
point in October, you can start making it be dark at about five o'clock.
And so I tell people is you know, you got one sitting out
there in the front porch where it gets good light. And when you come
home every day from work, throw an upside down bucket or box over it,
and then in the morning when you get up and go to work,
take the box off. And what you've done is you've told that plant that
it is much later in the fall than it is and it will initiate buds.
You only have to do that for about two weeks and then take the
box off, And especially as we start getting nights down in the sixties,
that bud initiation is going to happen and you'll have a beautiful bloom once they
set buds, though they cannot dry out that any kind of a stress will
cause them to abort those buds. So should I be missing this oil?
I don't want to build up like a crust or anything now that has happened.
No, I just give mine. I've got two different plants of it
here in Houston, at the place we stay at, and I just occasionally
give them a good soaking, wet it really well. When it starts to
get a little on the dry side, I'll water them again. Just that's
it, okay, And I shouldn't throw them outside in a shaded place.
Just let them stay inside as where they have been growing. I do put
mine outside. In fact, I just moved mine outside last week. And
that way, when we get the cooler night temperatures, that helps with that
bloom initiation. So that is part of the day length and the temperatures are
both part of that bloom initiation. And so you can do that. Just
don't leave them out. When the temperatures are going to drop into the you
know, like the mid fifties or something, you need to go ahead and
bring them in. That's a little too getting below the I only capt okay,
I kept them inside because a hundred was not good. Yeah, I
didn't think so. So now I'm just trying to ya. I'm just trying
to get everything equalized and let everybody live happily. Yeah, and that's fine.
You know. I put mine maybe out a little early, but I
don't know. I have trouble getting around everything, so when I think of
it, I do it through. Okay. Thank you so much, love
your knowledge. Thank you, Marine, appreciate your call very much. Uh.
You know, we're talking about products and things the ACE Hardware stores that
are here in the Greater Houston area. Everything you need right now to get
your lawn back on track. And I've been talking about it all day.
You know, the fertilizing. Do you need any weed control? Do you
need any disease control or insect control? Do you need any kind of product
for your law and your landscape? ACE is going to have it. And
ACE is all over the place, thirty nine stores. Just go to ACE
Hardware dot com, Ace Hardware dot Com, find their store locator, click
on it, put yours up, go down. Just it'll tell you all
the stores around you. And when you get there, you're going to find
all of the fertilizers, I recommend you're going to find a lot more.
Anything you need for outdoor living is going to be there, of course,
certainly indoor living. Hey, it's a hardware store. I don't have to
tell you what's in a hardware store. But you don't know everything that's in
ACE if you haven't been to one, because it will surprise you at the
wide variety of products. You know. Ea, each ACE is locally owned
and operated, each individual ACE is and so they each have their own personality,
and you know, some of them do one thing that maybe a different
one didn't do. But they all have the list of products we're talking about.
They all have quality things and everything you can imagine, from barbecueing outdoors
to making that new flower bed even prettier. Ace Hardware dot Com. No
problem there, that's a no brainer. That is a no brainer. Let's
head out to let's see what I'm really looking at. Uh, I'll tell
you what, tim I am out. I'm just about out of time for
this segment, so I'm going to hold you over so I can give you
the time needed to fully answer your question. Well, our phone number is
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. If you would like
to give us a call, would be happy to do that. If you
have not had your lawn aer rated and compost top dressed recently, you need
to go ahead and get that done, and the folks at Greenpro are the
best ones to do it now. Five ninety nine plus sales TAC depending on
the size and location or your lawn. They come out with very expensive equipment
and do a quality aeration that pulls plugs out deep puts them on the surface.
They follow that with quality composts. That's finally screened to go over the
top fall down in the holes. So when you fertilize or anything else,
you have set your lawn up for success with a root system that now can
thrive. That's green pro dot net if you would like to give to check
them out for more information or two eight one four excuse me, two eight
one three five one forty seven thirty three. We'll be right back. Wellcome
back to garden Line. We're in our last segment of the day. It
is heading toward ten when we shut things down and I will head up to
the Nature's Way Resources. I'll be there from eleven thirty to one thirty today.
That is going to be part of their big Fall Garden Festival, One
heck of a shin Dig. We got Latin food, live music, local
vendors, and no beverages, scavenger hunts for kids. I mean, it's
just gonna be a good time. I look forward to meeting lays, love
to meet folks that listen to garden Line. So all those of you up
there in Montgomery County or northern Harris County or drive from wherever you want,
we'd love to have you. And while you're there, you be able to
check out Nature's Way. You know, Nature's Way has a quality line of
products. I mean they basically invented a lot of the best products that we
have now. Things like rose soil, things like fungal composts, things like
leaf mold compost. I mean, those are all Nature's Way creations and they
are super quality, and that's what you expect. They're on their fungal Fridays.
By the way, the ten percent off their bag products, twenty percent
off their bulk products, and they got plenty of that on hand. Now.
You know, anytime you're out at Nature's Where, you've got to check
out their nursuring garden center. They just keep making it bigger and better.
They really specialize in native plants. They've got certainly fruit trees, seasonal vegetables
and other things out there. Come out today and check it out and see
what I'm talking about. While you're out there, I hope you take home
some bags of various products that fit what you're looking for. We're going to
be given away a number of different Nature's Way products today, so I hope
you'll come out. We'll be given those away periodically during the time I'm there.
From eleven thirty to one thirty. So you definitely want to get there
and sign up because that is the good stuff, and you want to be
able to take that home with you. By the way, good time to
go ahead and put an order in. Maybe you want a delivery of one
of their quality products. They can arrange it. Just show up and they'll
set you up. It's easy to do, easy to do. I always
love going out there and visiting with John and I and just the place just
keeps getting better, as you'll see today when you come out. Let's head
out to pair Land and talk to Tim. Hello, Tim, Hello,
Skip, how are you doing today? Well, I'm doing well. How
are you great? Hey? Question? I have a start out with.
It's a red oak tree, okay. I have something that's on a couple
of limbs eating what I'm gonna call the meat of the leaf. But it's
leaving the stem and the veins of the leaf. Okay. And I don't
see anything. I looked pretty thorough. I don't see any kind of worm
or anything of that nature. Do you know what this might be? Yeah,
it is a caterpillar, most likely most likely as a caterpillar, it
could be a beetle. There are leaf feeding beetles that will do that.
But here's what happens. Caterpillars, little tiny eggs. They had little tiny
caterpillars, little tiny jaws, and all they can do is chew that spongy
mesophill of the leaf away, and they can't even eat even the tiniest of
veins. And you're left with this little almost like a little window that you
can see through, with a little patchwork of veins. Then they molt,
get a bigger set of jaws, and they eat those little veins, but
they can't eat the bigger veins. Then they molt again and they can eat
the bigger veins, but not the biggest veins. And so depending on what
the damage looks like, you can tell what age, if you will,
what stage of development that caterpillars in. Now, sometimes they get started and
then things happen. They have a lot of natural enemies. They are a
bird food. Caterpillars are important bird food. Caterpillars have a number of natural
enemies that will attack them and get rid of them. And so you may
see the damage and go buy there and there are no caterpillars left. Wasps
paper wasps love. That's our number one food as caterpillars, so a lot
of things can happen. If you don't see pests. I would say the
problem probably is already gone. But even if it's not gone, these trees
are going to be losing their leaves soon. There's no need to spray.
The amount of leaf loss is not enough to threaten the health of that tree.
And again, there are so many good things that come from the fact
that the caterpillars are out there in the environment, including feeding our songbirds,
that unless it's threatening the tree, I don't worry about him. And in
this case it's not, okay, just let it run its course, think
correct. This would be an easy one. Like I always tell people,
you know, we can forget about this and go work on world peace or
some other big issue of the day. All right, all right, well
listen to thank you very much, Hey, Jim, Thanks and have a
good time out there in pair Land. Appreciate your call very much. If
you live up in the Montgomery area, just on the east side of Montgomery
is a nice little place called Ana plants and produce, And if you live
up there, you already know about it. All you folks are on the
lake, you know, April Sound, the bent Water, Walden de Lago,
all those places, but anywhere up there from Montgomery over to Conro or
the whole region. This is your this is your hometown garden center and its
family owned has been around for thirty years that Cathy took it over from her
parents, Adam and Alice Floors. And what is it now? I think
three acres filled with shade trees, fruit trees, not trees, you and
some pecans, citrus trees, berries, vegetables. Great, great selection by
the way of mums that they've gotten in out there, and an a is
just it's real easy to shop at Ana. It's easy to find stuff.
They got stuff. They got folks on hand that'll take care of you,
that'll that'll help you find the things that you need to find. And if
you're doing any kind of decorations, oh my gosh, they can load you
up on landscape bling because they really have a good supply of it. I
noticed they got some asmite in, so if you're going to do your asmite
this fall, that's a place just go grab it. They'll have it there
for you. A and a plants and produce. They are a fun garden
center to visit. They are a well stocked garden center to visit and if
you are trying to replace anything that has struggle this summer, or if you
need products like fertilizers that I talk about in others, they'll get you set
up. They've got it all there. It's a one stop, easy shop
for everybody in that area. Again, just on the east side of Montgomery
on one oh five, not hard to find, easy and easy out and
everything you need while you're there looking for something. I always love to go
by and visit Ana. I gotta tell you, as much as I love
all their plants and stuff, when I get into all the bling, it's
like wow, Wow, they have got a lot of cool stuff. Well,
we're going to head out now to League City and talk to Glenn.
Hello, Glenn, good morning, Thank you for taking my call. How
are you today? I'm well, thank you. What's happening in League City?
I had Moon Nurseries come out yesterday and I'd like to add some shrubs
and some a couple of trees in my front yard and some shrubs in the
back. And I just wanted to make sure that because it's we're going into
fall and where the Fumer's Almanac. We're supposed to have a pretty cold winter,
but it would be okay. Is it okay to plant? You're saying,
yeah, I just want to make sure that if they if they plant
plants, and you know, the plants are in the trees are establishing roots,
that if we do have a really cold winter, that they're not going
to die. Maybe I should wait until spring. No, no, no,
no. Now is the best time, hands down to plant any woody
ornamental in your landscape, tree, shrubs, woody vines, all of them
fall fall. Is it Octobers a great month? Novembers a great month.
But but go ahead and don't don't wait till spring, because you see,
if you plant in the fall, they have all winter. Whenever the soil
is about fifty degrees, which it is here all winter, the roots can
develop. They're slowly developing, but it's establishing. And so when next summer
comes and we go through what we went through this summer or anywhere close to
it, your fall plants are way ahead of anything you plant in the spring.
Oh that's great, that's really great. And one more quick question.
I'm going to airate my lawn and my lawn was hit really hard like everybody
else's. So I've got some brown patches because of the hot summer. I
have Randy Lemon's schedule, yes, and I'm going to air ate. So
if I airy the asamite and the fertilizer, should I put that down before
I corp airy or after? It doesn't make a lot of difference. I
would. I generally do it afterward, but either way is fine. On
asamite and the fertilizing. Either way I'll go. Now, if you're going
to do a compost top dressing, I do that. Definitely do that afterward,
but that'll work well. Yeah, And randy schedule is still up there
line. You know, I have my own up there now and if you
go to gardening with skip dot com, my schedules up there and it's it's
in many many ways similar to Randy's. I just have a lot of different
information that I put up on mine, little additional stuff that you might you
might be interesting. I'll pull yours down Skip. Yeah, I didn't know
that, and I'll pull yours down. Yeah. I would really appreciate your
time. I hope you have a nice weekend. I hope you have a
good weekend. Too. Thanks for that call, and have fun getting that
planting done. Yeah fall is if folks, Wow, this morning went fast.
At least it did for me. I wouldn't having to listen to myself
drawn on like you were. But I'm I'm about to jump in a car
and make a bee line for Nature's Way resources up in Conro. If you're
heading up forty five when you fourteen eighty eight comes in from the left hand
side there from the west, turn right, go across the railroad tracks and
you're a Nature's Way. Now, I'm to have an opportunity to answer your
gardening questions, to look at samples, to identify plants, to look at
pictures on your phone. So what do I do with this area? Just
come on, we'll talk about it all. They're going to have one heck
of a shindegg with food, music, vendors, beverages. There's lots and
lots of fun Nature's Way resources. Hope to see they're in just a bit