Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Scared Rictor.
It's Trim. You just watch him as well. Good morning on a
what is going to be a beautiful Saturday. I am going to be heading
out to Ciene Moltz this morning after the show. I'll tell you more about
that later, but it is going to be chamber of commerce weather and a
great day to get out and about. Great day to garden, great day
to get out and buy some supplies to get your garden ready to roll.
Well, we went through a little cold snap here and some people in the
listening area had a pretty good coal snap, others very mild. But it
just reminded me that, you know, we have a lot of things that
we can do to protect our plants when things that get cold, and I
realize, you know, there's a little bit of time between the next one
at least have to look pretty far in the future to see what a good
hard cole front's coming through. But it's always a good time as we're entering
the late fall and of course winter season to make sure that we have prepared
properly all the supplies we need, because how many times have you run to
the store to buy some I don't know, a tarp to cover a plant
or something, or maybe a heat lamp or something like that, And yeah,
they're none because everybody else had the same idea. And then you're sitting
outside, it's already turned dark and you're trying to with freezing hands cover up
a plant. I think you get the idea of what I'm talking about.
Well, there, we can avoid all of that. And I've put together
some information that I think you will find very useful. If you go to
my website, it's Gardening with Skip dot com. The newest publication on there
is I call it TISS the Season to Be Freezing, And it has a
link to a publication that I wrote with one of the TEXA and M horticulture
specialists up there, and it's called Protecting Landscapes and horticulture crops from frosts and
Freezes. And it is nine pages of info and photos and everything else.
And you know, if you're an if you're a garden winter cut protection nerd,
this will go into the science of everything that you need to know.
If you just want to know, Hey, quick, show me what to
do. Yep, there's a picture in there that shows you that. But
we go in explaining the difference between frosts and freezes and the different kinds of
freezes that you can have, even different kinds of frost. Really, and
so how do we know how to protect a plant? Well, it's all
in this publication. It's free. It's a PDF again, I believe it's
nine paid long with some really really good information. So if you've thought about
you know, what are the things that I can do? Like should I
water before a freeze or not? What kinds of cover do I use?
How do you put a cover on properly so it actually works? Do I
put lights and heat underneath the cover? By the way, I have a
picture of what happens if you do not safely protect electrical cords and things that
are sitting in dry grass underneath the cover. It ain't a pretty sight.
But anyway, there's a lot that we can do. And you know,
do I spray my plants with water? There's a good one. Does that
work? Why does it work? Or how does it work? And what
can go wrong with that? It's all in that publication. So I know
I'm talking a lot about it right now, but that's important. That is
very very important to be able to do that. And I'm going to come
back and we'll talk about frosts and freezes a little bit more as we go
through the morning. If you are thinking about putting any kind of a new
roof on, When I say any kind, I mean do you want a
composite roof? Would you like to have a standing seam metal roof? The
metal roofs are really cool. They're very very long long lived. If you
will on, you're up on top of your house. Well, the people
you need to talk to are Brinkman's. And the reason I say that is
Brinkman's been here for fifty years. Fifty years, and they warrant they warrant
either work for twenty five years. That's basically the life of some roofs right
Well, this is a full service company. They do residential, they do
commercial. And being around fifty years and winning in twenty twenty two the Better
Business Bureau Pinnacle Award. You got to be treating your customer's right to do
that, you got to be offering a quality product, and you have to
be offering customer service. That's what keeps you around. It's very different than
the guy that sticks a business card in your door because there was a hailstorm
in the community, saying hey, let me get your insurance, and now
that guy's going to fly off to the next hailstorm as soon as he's done
with your roof. Brinkman Brinkman Quality. You can go to Brinkman Quality dot
com two eight one four eight oho seven six six three learn about what they
do. Check them out on their website and you'll see why we love to
talk about Brinkman when it comes to roofing. The Uh. The garden centers
at this time of the year are having a lot of new things coming in.
There's a lot of new features. There's even some really really good deals
going on at a lot of our garden centers. Out of Kingwood Garden Center
and Warren Southern Garden, they are offering twenty five percent off all their fall
declore and accessories and if you would like, if you've been wanting to plant
bulbs but you haven't gotten around to it, there's still time. It's okay.
You can still plan them now and they have their packaged bulbs. You
know where you get a group of bulbs, you buy two of those and
you get one free. So and you don't want to just plant one bulb
or two bulbs or three bulbs. You want to create a little setting where
it makes a bigger impact. And that is exactly your opportunity right now to
do that out at Kingwoock Gardens and Warren Southern Gardens. Now that excludes Amarillis
bolts. Another thing they got going on out there is heirloom soils aged leaf
compost three bags for thirty bucks. Now. Their native plant of the month
is Texas beauty berry and beauty berry. This is kind of the season where
it shines as the leaves fall off and you're left with those beautiful berries on
the plant. Maybe you have a shady area that's got bright light but quite
a bit of shade. Beauty berried'd be fine for that area and it would
really add to the landscape. And the thing we like about the beauty berry
is it helps us remember, hey, there are four seasons here. Springs
an easy season to get blooms. Summer, Yeah, there's some blooms we
can do for summer and fall. There's things that bloom in the fall,
and then there's winter, So what are you doing for all four seasons of
your landscape? When you buy and purchase plants, think about that. And
beauty berry is just an example, but it's a plant that is going to
shine when the leaves have fallen off of everything else and all plants, including
beauty berry, and you have those beautiful berries. They're great by the way,
for cutting and bringing in for arrangements as well. Also, there is
an event on November eighteenth. It's a festive container planting with d Now.
The folks out at Warren's they absolutely know how to create a beautiful container planting
and this is a class where you can learn what they know, learn the
art of creating a stunning festive container planting. They're going to walk you through
the whole thing and you can add that burst of color that you just you
created in a container. You put it out there wherever you want, a
patio of porch, you name it, and it just shines for you.
And then when it's time to rejuvenate that, come up with maybe something for
the spring or the summer. You already know how to go about it,
and I would highly recommend you get that on your calendar on November the eighteenth.
Well, we are hitting a hard break here. If you would like
to give us a call. I think it would help if I gave out
the phone number, wouldn't it seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four, will be right back. Well, good Saturday morning. You are
listening to garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Richter. Our phone number
if you'd like to give us a call seven one three two one two KTRH
or if you'd rather do numbers fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Let's talk about the things that you are interested
in today, and here's something you ought to be interested in today. I'm
going to be out at Santa Maltz today after the show. I'm going to
be there from eleven thirty to one thirty, and we have one heck of
a shin dig going on out there. They're gonna have a little food truck
out there. There's gonna be a lot of different giveaways going on that you
can go out and visit with the folks from Microlife or Heirloom Soils or Nilson
plant Food. They're going to all be there set up, you can learn
more about their products, and in fact, I'm going to be giving away
a product from each of those companies to the first twenty six people that show
up out at cienamultch today. Twenty six people. These are great prizes,
you know. I mean the seven pound jar, a micro Life six two
four or seven pound jar, the brown Patch five to one to three airloom
soil is going to have, and there's several other Microlife products We're given away.
The court bags eight court bags of the works potting soil, as well
as the cactus and succulent potting soil. I'm going to be giving away several
of those. I'm going to be giving away twelve two pound jars of Nelson
plant food, the vegetable food, the rose food, the indoor plants,
the tree and trump. So this is your opportunity to get a really cool
gift, a really cool prize if you will. First twenty six people that
come out and see me, just bring your plant samples in a bag.
If you want me to identify or diagnose, bring photos on your phone.
Once the light comes on outside, we'll go outside. You can take some
photos. I'll take a look at those. But Ciena Maltch is down there
near Highway six and two eighty eight. They're north of Rose sharing on FM
five twenty one. You can go to their website Cienamultch dot com. And
when you're out there today, you're going to see why I'm always bragging on
them, because the supplies, whether it's mult or composts in bulk or in
bags, and all the fertilizers they offer out there, it is really really
cool. So I'm looking forward to that one today and I hope if you
live anywhere down that direction you will come by and say hi and enjoy the
festivities that they have going on. Those folks know how to how to have
fun, that is for sure. Well. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four, and I'm going to go up
to beat Diyes and talk to Lance. Lance. I actually know where beat
Eyes is, and I bet not many people do outside of beat Dies.
You're absolutely correct. Good morning, Skip, Harry, you good morning.
I'm doing well. What's up? Well? I'm doing much better than my
juniper, is it? So it's a bit one. It's probably fifty foot
and once we got rain, that's when it started turning brown, okay,
And it turned brown all up one side, and then it's spread and I've
got a couple limbs, small limbs scattered throughout it that are still green.
Yes, And my thought is that if it's dead, I want to take
it down and get something started because it shades the house. But if there's
hope for it, my wife will kill me if I take it down.
Well, when a juniper turns brown, that branch is gone. Unlike other
trees, they can only resprout from the base of living their little scaly leaves
or needle like leaves that they have, they can only re sprout from there.
So if you cut all the green off one, it's a dead plant.
That's kind of weird because any other tree you can saw it off with
a chainsaw at the base and it re sprouts from the ground. Not a
juniper. So those branches are gone. And what that's going to mean is
you have to kind of look at it and go, so, am I
esthetically okay with what that's going to look like? Assuming it doesn't die more.
The rain didn't have anything to do with it dying. It just was
coincidental. This summer was brutal and all in that area up there, you
know, out west of kind of west of College Station Brian, that whole
region up there. I just see a lot of junipers turning brown. I
see a lot of post oaks that have turned brown from the brutal summer we
had. And what happens is these plants are resilient. I mean they live
in a rough, rough climate up there where we have a lot of stresses.
But when a resilient plant gets weakened and weakened and weakened, it hits
a tipping point. When that happens, the functional systems you know from photosynthesis,
do you name it? In the plant, they start shutting down and
the plant just just dies. It's like you can't stop it. At that
point, I think there's a fifty to fifty chance that you will be left
with some green, But I also think there's a chance that you may see
additional loss on that plant. Yeah. I mean the green that's on there
is I mean it's just really really sparse. Yeah, And I mean I
think that I just need to take it down and get something planted there that
I'll get a little bit of shade from. In a year or two well,
I would do that. You know, I like the junipers. I
think they are great plants. They have a lot of great features. But
I think in this case going with something else would be the best bet.
Do you have a recommendation for an evergreen that would actually survive this harsh climate
up here? Well, that would have been my number one evergreen. The
juniper that you have actually it's an eastern red ceedar up in your area,
yes, sir, oh gosh, you can. Do you have a piece
of property or just a typical lot around the house. I've got five acres.
Okay, Well, you can buy landscape bundles of those junipers and they're
three foot long. They got roots and they got tops on them. They
ship them bundled up in a box. And the reason I'm bringing this up
is a lot of people out in that country will want to plant something like
that along the roadside, you know, to keep the noise and dust and
make a visual block. And that's very, very inexpensive. And so you
could put one over four feet and cut down the ones you don't want if
more than you want live. I mean, it's a very easy way to
get going on a plant. You would have to email me and I could
send you a list of some of the places you would do that. As
far as going out and buying one, I don't see the junipers for sale
a lot, the eastern red seedar for sale a lot, but you might
be able to find one that you could purchase. Other than that, you
know, think about your countryside in the winter. The what's green? Well,
the yopon is green, of course, the eastern red cedars green.
There's not a whole lot more that's green that's native up in that area.
So you know, if you could water it a lot, you I'm just
trying to think of one that i'd recommend. I just nothing's going to be
as resilient as that plant that you finally lost. But we've just been through
brutal times. I mean it was it was like two three weeks over one
hundred degrees over every day, and I mean we showed one sixteen on the
porch. Yeah, and it wasn't just the true three. I mean,
you know all it started in June or May actually even and boy went it
it just quit raining. It got hot many. I think College Station may
have had forty forty five to days without rain above one hundred, so you
know that's just asking too much a plant. So what you could do in
the future, you know, with hindsight, would be to go out to
the price plants and give them just a good deep soaking, you know,
water the whole area under the branch spread and with a good soaking. You're
not doing that every week, even over two weeks if that kind of temperature
continues. We're just trying to help them hold on. Believe it or not.
I did, and I wasn't trying to save the juniper. The Ridge
theater. There's a post next to see that's another one man. Yeah,
it dropped its leaves. I'm counting on it coming back. Yeah, Okay,
Well, I appreciate the call. Hey, do you ever go to
Grimes County feed up there and Carlos. Yeah, we'll say hi to him
that that is a great place and you guys are fortunate to have them in
the neighborhood. So thanks for the call, Lance, I appreciate it.
Thank you. Having a wonderful day you too, our phone number seven one
three one to fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. You know, talking about trees, reminds me of the tree
hugger sprinkler. You know that is one where let's say you go back into
the summer and you're trying to water a tree and you don't want to I
talk about giving them a good deep soaking. You don't want to waste water
doing your whole lawn with more water than the grass needs. Uh. When
you water a tree, put a tree hugger around it, hook it up
to a hose, turn it up as high as you want, and you
can water the entire area beneath the branch spread of most trees except the huge
ones, but it would be that rescue treatments that we're talking about. You
can go to tree Hugger sprinkler dot com find out more about them. They
work well. I have all three sizes seven inch, eleven inch, and
fifteen inch. I think it's a pretty cool invention that they came up with
with that tree hugger sprinkler. We were talking about the frost and freeze protection
and things, and do you know that you can have a frost when it's
above thirty two? Think about that. Okay, this is a nerd warning.
I'm gonna get a little nerdy here. Horticulturally nerdy. How can you
have ice on a plant when the temperature is above thirty two? Well,
here's how you have it. During the day, sun shines down, it
heats up the soil and warms up the plants. Then during the night,
that heat that's in the tissues of the plant or surface of the soil,
it radiates outward and it loses heat. Even though the air is not below
freezing, maybe the air is around thirty four, thirty six is about that
high, it actually drops the temperature of the leaf down below thirty two because
of that radiant loss of the heat. That's why have you ever noticed when
you look under maybe underneath a live oak on a frosty morning, where there's
frost all over the grass, underneath a live oak, there's new frost.
And it's because the leaves are literally reflecting back down, bouncing back down those
radiating heat waves that are going up in the atmosphere. Isn't that weird?
Well, it's what happens. And so you know you're typically not gonna have
a frost at forty degrees. It doesn't drop that far below freezing, but
it will happen because the tissues get cold and that's what happens in a frost
That's why we cover our plants. Very important to give your plants a good
covering. And you know, just as an example, folks out of RCW,
they've got a product called Insulate. Insulate is like the letter in and
then sealate and it's a frost blanket. It's twelve by ten. You should
pick those up. You remember how I said, don't wait until the night
of the freeze to protect your plants. We'll go ahead and pick them up.
And RCW Nurseries you can go to the website RCW Nursery dot com.
They're on Tombo Park where it comes into belt Way eight and they have a
wide variety of things. In fact, they've got some really cool sales going
on on some of the trees. And we've got an event coming up next
Sunday, next Saturday rather November eleventh, that I want to tell you about.
I'll be there from eleven thirty to one thirty. They're going to have
a barbecue sandwich lunch. They're going to have a sale and select trees and
shrubs fifteen percent off. They're going to be giving away frostcloth, Microlife fertilizer,
flowers, Nelson fertilizer, nitrophosphungicide, all that giveaway through the course of
that event, and even tree seedlings of lake spark elm Mexican white oak which
is also called montereyoak, and live oaks seedlings and there when I say a
seedling, I'm talking about something that's got some heights to it and a good
root system. But we'll talk more about that later, but just wanted you
to know about RCW. Well, I think it's time for the Nicky News
Network, and so we are going to give you our phone number and go
away seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Oh good Saturday
morning. You are listening to garden Line and we are going to have I
think one of the best days we've seen in a while today. You know,
temperatures getting up in the upper seventies I believe somewhere around there. No
rain, but gosh, it's just it's great being outside doing things in that
kind of weather. I mean, we've been through the heat, that's for
sure this summer, and we just had some real chili weather came through.
But my goodness, today, if you've got one drop of gardening blood in
you. It is time to be doing something outside as you get out and
about, and this is a time to fertilize. Now. If you look
at my lawn care schedule that's at gardeningwith Skip dot com. If you look
at the lawn care schedule, we talk about applying a fall fertilizer and if
you notice on the schedule it says do that in October. Well, you
know we're past October, so we do not fertilize. No, if you
have not fertilized yet, go ahead and do it. If you haven't done
a fall fertilization, go ahead and do it. It is still a good
time to get that done. We just like to aim for you to get
done in October, but you know how things are. You get busy,
you miss out. Don't make it like okay, it doesn't say November,
I can't fertilate now. If you miss it, just go ahead and go
ahead and get that done. And Microlife fertilizer, they've got their brown patch
fertilizer. That brown patch is a really good quality material that will help your
lawn prepare for winter. It'll help strengthen the lawn and that's what we do
in our fall fertilization. It also has a lot of microbial content in it
that helps with avoiding the brown patch. You know, as you build your
lawn and get it healthier and healthier over time, you can grow yourself out
of a plague of brown patch. Some people just every year they get it.
Other people fertilizing their lawn properly and taking good care of it, it's
just not as much of a deal. That's a five to one to three
fertilizer that Microlife has. By the way, I'm going to today when I'm
out at Siena Mulch after the show, I'm going to be giving away six
different Microlife products and including a sample of the brown Past seven pound jar of
the brown Patch, as well as the liquid fertilizers, the Ocean Harvest that
is a fish based fertilizer, and the Biomatrix, which is the one I
use on my houseplants. It's a really good, good quality fertilizer. It's
a seven to one to three so it supports that foliage growth, which is
basically what our houseplants are. But all available for Microlife go to Microlifefertilizer dot
com and that's where you can find out about these products and find out more,
or just come out today to Sienna and let me give you one of
those samples. First twenty six people in line get samples of some of our
cool products that we're going to have on hand out there today. Going back
to the frost and freezes, I keep talking about that because you know,
unfortunately the show doesn't always fall right before a frost or freeze. If it
was, well, I could talk about, hey, it's going frost tomorrow,
here's what you need to know. But I'm going to get you ready
to go so that when it does come back, you are ready and don't
forget that free publication is on my website, Gardening of skip dot com.
It's called protecting Plants from Protecting landscape and hork crops from frosts and freezes.
So whatever it is, is it a vegetable, is it a shrub,
or any kind of plant, a flower, it'll tell you how to do
it. Certainly your fruit trees and other plants. It can be a little
bit coal tender tells you the details of how to do that. But I
was just talking about the fact that you can actually have a frost when the
air temperature is above freezing and why that happens and how that works. That
advice that helps us understand that when you put a cover over a plant,
that the radiant from the plant, the radiant release will often bounce off that
cover and stay inside underneath the cover, and if a frost forms, it's
going to form on that cover on the outside above it. And so that
protects our plants in all but the coldest of freezes. And when you have
a really cold freeze, especially with a wind, you know, we have
to take other measures in hand, and that that free publication goes into what
you can do as a result of that. But just keep in mind,
get those supplies you need, and when you read the publication, you're going
to see there's a use for heat lamps that you can use or just tho
it doesn't even have to be a heat lamp. It could could just be
you know, one hundred hundred and fifty WoT bulb providing a little bit of
heat underneath the cover, and how to use those and what to avoid.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven
one three two one two KTRH. Give us a call. Let's talk about
the things that you are interested in. Now. Something you need to be
aware of right now is that our trees, we're entering the time for doing
pruning. We we can do little, minor pruning all through the year on
a tree, but we're coming into that winter season when we think about pruning.
And Martin spoon Moore and affordable tree services who you should think about when
you think about pruning. It's because they know what they're doing. And you
know, somebody driving by again, here's a business card in your door.
I own a pickup and a chainsaw. Therefore, on a tree service,
those kind of folks don't do it. It what the damage that can be
done and is done. When I drive around town, I see that,
Oh my gosh, the hat rack. You know, what was once a
beautiful tree now looks like a hat rack. That's forever. I mean,
you can work toward getting back to a decent tree, but the damage done
there will live on and that is something you want to avoid. So Martin
spoon Moore his phone number seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three.
Either Martin or his wife Joe answer the phone at seven three six twenty
six sixty three. But get on his schedule. He does a good job
and therefore he stays busy, and so make sure tell them you're a guarden
line customer gets the front of the line, or you can go to their
website afftree Service dot com and anything going on. I'm talking about pruning,
but maybe you're going to do some work, put in a concrete slab,
or have to do some trenching. Don't do it until you call him to
come out and look and advise you. He can advise you on how to
minimize the damage and make sure your tree stays healthy, because that is the
most valuable plant in your landscape to the value of your home are your trees,
and you need to take good care of them. So I always WinCE
when I drive around town and I just see these these butcher jobs. We
do it to all kinds of plants. We do it to our crpe myrtles.
We call it crape murder. But you know you got a landscape crew,
it's winter, there are not a lot of loans to mo so hand
them a pair of pruning looppers and tell them off everything above head high.
Or that's basically what's happening there as high as you can reach with the pruning
lappers, and that just effaces the plans. But that's just another example of
pruning and not knowing what you're doing. It is so important to know what
you're doing. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. Seven one three two one two five eight seven four. We're
going to take a little break here in a moment. I just wanted to
remind you that after the show today I will be out there at Ciena Multi,
and I hope you'll make plans to come out and see me. I
always like to meet folks that are part of the listening audience for garden Line.
Thank you for that. By the way, we're glad to have you
today. So we're going to take a break right now for the little bit
of information I think you've probably need, and then we'll be right back if
you want to give us a call seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. Well, good Saturday morning, and welcome to garden Line.
We're glad you're listening today and looking forward to talking with you about the kind
of questions that you might have. John Ferguson out in nature's way. I
was out there a while back visiting with John and Ian about some of the
products that they have and also give them a little bit of information on how
some of these things are made. And you know, they've been an innovator
in the compost world for a very long time. They're the first to ever
introduce a true compost back in nineteen ninety five, that's almost thirty years ago.
They introduced the original leaf mold compost. They're first to introduce the native
molts back in ninety four. They they know how to make these materials right.
And it's like, well, how do you have to know how to
meet Well, there's a lot to it. You want to get them blended
right, you want to take the time to get it done right. You
need to understand the decomposition process, and they do. They John is a
student of soil. He really is walking encyclopedia. And they also when you're
out there, they've got their native plant nursery, which has more than just
nateve plants in it, by the way, but that is an amazing thing.
They keep expanding it as they grow, and I think it's it's pretty
cool. Their phone number if you'd like to give them a call. Is
nine three six three two one sixty nine ninety nine three six six nine three
six three two one sixty nine ninety Fall is the time to get your soil
right. It's very important to do that if you're going to create a new
flower bed or renovate an old one to get better results out of it.
Now's the time, and Nature's Way is a place to call. They're up
on Interstate forty five. If you're going north toward Conroe, on the right
hand side across the railroad tracks, right where fourteen eighty eight comes in.
You can find them really easy. We're going to now head out to friends
Wood and talk to Stan. Hello. Stan, howdy. You've been talking.
You've been talking about coverings for plants this morning. And I've always had
a problem with my azaleas, which I have about one hundred square feet under
a very large maple, and they've reached a height of about seven feet seventh
feed. Yeah, and I'm trying to figure out how do I cover something
of that footage at that height. Yep, you have a recommendation that that
is a challenge because these little individual covers. I was talking about a twelve
x ten cover a while ago. You know that'll get you over a plant,
but it doesn't, like you're saying, you just have a mass of
them out there, and the best thing you can do you can shop around
and find covers or even bigger that you pull over the entire thing. But
even that is very difficult. You end up having to use like PVC pipes
to kind of lift it over to get it to go over the tops of
the plants because they're so tall. But that's going to be about your only
option if you need to cover, either that or just buying a lot of
smaller covers, and that can be an issue, as you can imagine.
Yeah, thanks, they're kind of a price possession. I don't want to
lose them. Yeah, I understand. Our weather here doesn't get cold enough
to kill azelias typically. Now, if you've got any tender new growth that
would be susceptible, you can get some leaf burn and stuff, but you
shouldn't lose the whole plant, even if you lose foliage and twigs and whatnot.
But the only other thing is if you look at that publication it's online
at gardening with skip dot com, it gives you a lot of other information
about protecting those plants, and maybe that would be helpful. You'll find some
other tips and ideas from watering before a freeze, you know, to use
of warming, arming things underneath the plants and so on. You may need
to come up with some sort of a big arched hoops of PBC pipe to
go over sections. Are creating some sort of a little frame that you can
take down and put up as needed and store it in the garage during the
off season for anything that you want to protect. That would be one other,
one other option. That'll be a bit of a feed of engineering.
That's all right. I'm an engineer. I like the idea. Thank you
there you go, well check out that publication. It just has some photos
of that as well. I appreciate the call our phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Now, if you've if you have downloaded or printed out
my lawn care schedule at gardening with Skip dot com, you will see that
we are still at the end of that fall fertilization time. And I would
say it's still time to fertilize. If you did you need to furtilize twice
in the fall, just once. But Nelson Plant Food they have a quality
product called carbel Load and it's got the right ratio of nutrients really for going
into fall for your lawn. And it also has a pre emergent herbicide.
And they give away two dollars for every bag they sell to the Randy Lemon
Memorial Scholarship. I say giveaway, there's a donation they make to that scholarship
fund for horticulture students at TEXA, A and M. And the carbol Load
is a Again, it is a quality product. And even though we're just
outside the prime time when I would suggest you do your fall fertilization, if
you didn't get it done, go ahead and do it. It's okay to
go ahead and do it now. And by the way, I'm going to
be giving away Nelson products twelve two pound jars of Nelson's vegetable rose, indoor
plant and tree and shrub foods out at Ciena Mulch today from eleven thirty to
one thirty while I'm there, and Nelson's will be there with a booth as
well, And I hope you come out meet the folks that make the stuff
that makes our gardens grow and succeed do so well. The schedules are always
a challenge for me to make a schedule because you give things a certain time
frame and you know how it is in life. It's like, for example,
the October fall fertilization, we do the organic a little earlier than the
synthetic just to give a little bit of time for the microbial activity to fully
get the things done that we want them to do. But it basically is
ending at the end of October. Well, that doesn't mean you can't fertilize
November first, but you can't October first. That's not how nature works,
right, It's a gradual slowing down of the plant growth. And so when
we create these schedules, I'm always like, oh man, when do I
say stop this or start this? It's a little bit of a challenge to
do that. But we've gone to great links to try to create the best
schedule we can possibly create for the plant that you have here. In both
both cases, let's see, I'm going to head to Sugarland now and talk
to John. Hey, John, I got about a minute left, But
let's see what we can get accomplished. Great skip. I appreciate your time.
I've put down a couple of weeks ago the fall fertilizer for Microlife,
and I'm seeing early signs of brown patch. So I'm wondering if I need
to put down a separate control for that or go to the Microlife brown patch.
But my understanding that that's a fertilizer as well, so I don't want
to put down too much nitrogen at this time. Well, now, the
brown patch is the fall fertilizer from Microlife, and or at least the one.
It's the one that I would recommend of their products in the fall.
If you're very fertilized. Of course, you don't need to do that.
Again. We like to, as I've talked before, we like to grow
our way out of so many disease and insect problems by proper plant care and
whatnot. If you've still got brown patch plaguing your lawn, consider don't water
as often, minimize as much as you can, and also you want to
avoid mowing really low. Now you could put a brown patch funge aside out
there and try to shut it down now, but if you're going to an
organic system, we're going to work your way out of that and depend more
on the plant growth development. I hear the music, I'm going to have
to run. But that is I think the most concise I can do in
answering your questions. Thank you John very much for that. Call our phone
number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four or seven one three
two one two KTRH. When we come back, we'll be taking your calls.
Just another reminder. I'm going to be at Sanamulch today from eleven thirty
to one thirty. It is going to be a gorgeous day weather up in
the high seventies. First twenty six people to come by the boot, bring
plant samples to identify, bring me photos to advise. On verse twenty six
people get a free product, a gift. I couldn't even come up with
a word. There. You're right back. Kat r H. Garden Line
does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program.
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Richter's crazy trim. Just watch
him as we please. Septasyas not a sign. Thank you, well,
good morning, and welcome to Gardenline. I'm your host, Skip Rictor We're
here to answer gardening questions and just offer a little bit of advice as you're
going about your gardening to get you off to a good start. You know,
gardening is the best hobby that there is. I know some of you
were thinking, well, my favorite hobby is such as such. Well,
let me just say it this way. Gardening contributes to your health, your
well being, and in so many many different ways. One of these days
I'm going to talk a little bit more in detail about the research that has
pointed to incredible and unexpected benefits of people that are out in nature, that
are working with plants, that are just enjoying enjoying themselves. And it really
does for all ages too. By the way, all ages well our phone
number again seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I've been
talking frost this morning because we just got through a pretty good cold snap that
came through the area, and it's time to make sure you have the supply
on hand you need to protect your plants. There is a lot that we
can do to make sure that our plants survive. You know, there's one
stage is just like I don't want the plant to have burned leaves or anything.
And the other one is I just want to at least keep the plant
alive even if it freezes it back. You know, how do I protect
it overall? And you know with citrus trees for example, Now we can
do a lot to protect a citrus tree when we have a hard, hard
freeze, but sometimes, and this is done in commercial orchards as well,
they'll just mount soil up around the trunk. I know that we keep saying,
don't create multi volcanoes, but for the short time we're doing this,
it's valuable. Here's what happens. You get the soil up above the graft,
and so you have some of the trunk of that variety of species of
fruit of citrus above the graft, and that soil protects it. So even
if the plant freezes down to the soil, at least you have buds that
can reach spread and very quickly they'll grow by the way, and you'll be
back in business with your tree. Now, of course we'd rather not have
that amount of loss, but it's better than having a total loss. And
so just that little trick of putting the soil around the base and then you
pull it away when the freeze is gone. Pull that soil away. Don't
leave soil piled up against the trunk. I was out looking at some trees
yesterday and here in the Houston area, and they had been planted down too
deep. And so how do you know a tree has been planted too deep?
Well, when it goes into the ground instead of having that natural flare.
You know, where the trunk is a certain diameter, and then as
you get close to the soil, it gets wider as it flares out.
That is natural. That's what it should look like when a tree goes in
the ground. If you look at it and it looks like a telephone pole,
same diameter all the way down to the ground, that tree has been
planted too deep. And these trees had and I don't know how deep.
I didn't have a little trial to dig out far enough to find out how.
But I talk some folks about it, and they're don't get that fixed,
because planting too deep is one of the worst things you can do when
you're planting a tree. It just trees are not made for their trunks to
be covered with soil and molts. Molts too, by the way, So
yes, I know almost every commercial moltzed site does the little volcanoes of molts.
It's a bad practice. Talk to any good certified arborist and they'll tell
you don't do that. And I don't know why people do it, but
they shouldn't. And especially with a brand new tree you plant it, you
can kill a tree that way when it's a very young tree. Another thing
that happens is that new tree has a root system that's basically the size and
shape of the pot that it came out of, right, And when you
put a multi volcano above it and it rains, it just sheds water off
or soaks water up in the one area that you most need water going into
the ground where those confined roots still are. So a lot of reasons not
to do that. You know, the ACE Hardware Group. I used to
always say they're thirty nine stores in the ACE Hardware Group, and now it's
hit the number forty. Now if you think they got Orange Texas and Bay
City, Texas are the new locations. But ACE is the place for everything
you need for your lawn and garden. It just is it. Absolutely They
carry everything that I talk about and then some here. But it's also the
place for Christmas lighting and decoration that's both indoor and outdoor. They have all
the accessories to make the installation fast and easy. They even have accustom lights
by the foot and as well as in box sets like you probably are used
to buying lights in all kinds of configurations, multiple colors and sizes. They
have wreaths and garlands to decorating inside and again outside. Do you need a
wreath for the front door? Ace is a place and how do you find
ACE near You? Go to ACE Hardware dot com store locator and just find
the aceys that are near you, because there's gonna be more than one.
They are all over the place. Our phone number is seven one three two
one two five eight seven four. You can give us a call and we
can talk to you about the things that are of most interests to you.
If you haven't had vegetable garden or vegetables and containers, and I highly recommend
you have one or the other. This is a primetime season for planting things
like lettuce and other cool season greens or regular or rocket or roquette, the
cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, co robbie, all the I call them blue
leaf vegetables because the leaf has a sort of bluish tent to the green.
Those coal crops, all of them. That would include kale and collars as
well. Now's the time to plant those spinach. Spinach likes colder weather,
cooler weather, and it's a time to plant spinach out in the garden.
There's a lot of other things that we can be planting in our cool season
gardens. So if you don't have a garden, go get a container.
I would say for vegetables in the cool season. If you can get something
that's anywhere from three to five gallons in size, you can grow vegetables in
that. You can grow carrots, and now's the time to plant carrots too,
by the way, can I one time had a I think it's about
a two and a half gallon container. I had three kale plants in it.
Now, they were a little crowded and they weren't as big as normal
kale would be. But I was harvesting kale leaves just right and left through
the cool season. It's easy to keep a container moist during the cool season
because the demands aren't so high. Yeah, you need to water and more
often than plants in the ground though, But cool season. Gardening is a
great time. Lots of good and extremely nutritious vegetables that you can grow.
Plus it's just fun. And remember that edibles can also be ornamental. I
call that orna medabals. There's there's a word for you, homemade, made
up word. But Swiss chart for example. Now it's not going to take
the coldest weather we have, but Swiss chart can come in various colors as
well. Some of the varieties have been released over recent years have beautiful coloration
to it. Salad burnette. Salad burnett is a little mounding plant that has
a cucumber like flavor to the leaves. It makes a good border around your
beds as well. Well. We're going to take a little break here our
number seven one three two one two KTRH and we'll be right back with your
calls. Welcome back to Garden Line. We're here talking gardening. That's a
surprise, right show like this. Hey, if you haven't been out to
the bee supply, you need to go and check it out. It is.
It is really cool. Now if you want to be a beekeeper or
you are a beekeeper, they've got classes out there all the time that are
very very helpful. If you want to order bees for spring, you need
to get that done. Go to the website and make sure that you get
that done because they're going to be delivering or you come out and pick up
rather from April eleventh, I believe through the end of May, and they
have two different kinds of bees to choose from, so don't delight you know
have the best options. The website is thebesupply dot com thebesupply dot com.
Ask them about their classes and sign up for some. And if you are
not a bee keeper and don't want to be, you still ought to go
to see the observation hive. Over seven feet tall. It's got bees inside
it. You can watch them come in in and out from outside the building
through this tube and just see them doing what they're doing. It is so
fascinating and absolutely something. If you've got kiddos, you need to take them
out there to see that. Super cool. We're going to head now to
the Woodlands and talk to Matt. Hello, Matt, Hey, good morning,
Skip, thanks for taking my call. I've got a quick question about
a mar lemon. I've got a marl women and it can Painter did really
well surviving summer, all right, it has it's loaded with fruit. They
are they look full size, but they've been green for about two months.
They're not yellowing up. And I wondered if I should pull them and let
them break in off of the plant, or what should I be. They
won't ripen off the plant, so I think you're just going to need to
wait and watch. Hopefully they'll they'll do the color change. Remember though,
that with citrus, you know when you go to the store, you buy
a lemon and it is bright yellow, and you buy an orange and it
is bright orange. With with our citrus here, we can pick those citrus
a little before they turn their full color. And so if you get a
little bit of a tinge of some color on those lemons, I would I
would pick one and see see what you think. Letting trying to let it
go to full yellow, you may end up with something that's a little meaalier
than you want. I know that's especially true with septsum oranges. We picked
those on still have green on the fruit. Should I just put it in
a refrigerator? Should I leave it on a window sill where it gets hitd
No, No, you're not gonna you're not gonna make it's not going to
ripen any further than the day you pick it. So do with it whatever
you would do with a store bought lemon or orange or whatever. Okay,
excellent, Hey, thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right,
Matt, thank you. I appreciate your call. Chenet Gardens in Richmond
is one of those garden centers. It's just a destination place. You can
go to their website and Chanted Gardens Richmond dot com and find out more about
it. But the Lindermann family, I believe they opened that up in nineteen
ninety five, and that independent nursery is just it's everything that we brag about
about our garden centers in the Houston area that are they just stand out and
in Chanted Gardens, the quality of the educational training of the folks that work
there is unbelievable. When you walk in and you go, you know,
I don't know plants that well, but I need something for a shady spot
and I would like it to be a bloom and they'll just take you right
to it. They know what they're doing. They carry all the products we
talk about here on Garden Line, and they always are changing. If you
went to Enchanted Gardens two weeks ago and you go back today, it's going
to be a little different. It's always evolving. There's new shipments coming in,
there's new products coming in, and they do carry everything we brag on
here, including the soils and the fertilizers. By the way, they're open
Monday through Saturday eight to five and Sunday from ten am to four pm.
It's always an enchanting visit to go to Ingented Gardens. We are going to
go out to Missouri City and we're going to talk to Kelly. Hello.
Kelly. Hey, if I met you a couple of weekends ago at the
Magnolia eighth Hardware with my husband. Great. Yeah, So I just I
was calling because I just finished, well I'm almost finished with my chicken coop
area that I have by and so I was you mentioned about that. I
don't know, it was two or three weekends ago about a place in Houston
that I could get some really good lay in hens, but I can't remember
where it is and TSB Trectors supply they don't have them. Okay, So
I'm wondering what was the name of the place, because I didn't get a
chance to write it down because I had my hands in the dirt. Not
a problem. The name of the place I was talking about was one of
two places. Actually, you're in Missouri City, right, so probably,
but yeah, I can. I don't mind traveling. All of my family
gets them from need Bill feed Supply. I don't even know that they have
them right now, like every it's kind of seasonal. Everybody buys them at
Easter. All right, I can get you closer than that, but it's
gonna be chicks that you're purchasing, and it's quality feed and garden, and
they're on They are at eighteen thirteen Luzon Street and they have ships of chicks.
I don't know what they'll lose on for me, honey, ell you,
thank you for that. L u z o n okay, I'm like,
what, here's a fild so many ways. We're in southeast Texas.
Yeah, I know, and then I probably have some sort of an accent.
But you you can also call them. Write this number down seven to
one to three, eight six two, twenty three, twenty three. Just
make sure that they haven't sold out. But they get chicks. I believe
it's like ever two weeks at least. Well, I'm kind of happened for
some actual like some semi established lay in him just because the winter's coming up.
Do you think I'll be okay as long as I put a heater in
there? Oh yeah, yeah, you still do. You Just dangle one
of those little heat lamps with an aluminum shield over at one spot, and
if they're cold, they can move over there and stay warm. And if
they don't want to be that warm, they can move a little away from
it. And yeah, quality feed. I have to I'm sorry. Go
ahead, Oh so I apologize. I have to share with you. I
got my American It's like the rotary mower in Okay. I think I was
telling you I was getting it in that Tuesday after I came to Steel and
I'm top dressed with the airlinb Fools of Texas. Yeah, and my yard
looks amazing. Like I been sick for the last two weeks, so I
haven't been able to mow, but I fired my lawn guys, and I
was actually mowing with my feet in the grass, like not wearing any shoes,
with my rotary mower. And I'm going to tell you I haven't been
able to post pictures because I've been sick. But as soon as I cut
it this time, I'm going to tag you in them. Yeah, because
I will tell you that rotary mower not only do you get your exercise in
therapeutic, but oh my gosh, my yard looks amazing. I want to
thank you, thank you for the call. Just remember to call Quality Feed
before you go. Make sure they've got in stock what you're looking for.
And if you're looking for an older chicken, they could probably direct you somewhere.
But okay, I don't know anybody that sells us. All right,
Wow, that's interesting, pretty cool stuff. You know. Nitrofis has their
three step program, and the three step program basically, what it amounts to
is a fertilizer, a weed control, and a fungicide, just like that
one two three. Now the fertilizer and again, if you didn't fertilize this
fall, it's still okay, get it done, but get it done soon.
The sooner the better. But that's their fall special. It's a winter
riser fertilizer and it just makes your lawn stronger going into winter and therefore coming
out of winter. Secondly, is a weed control that would be the barricade
product. It controls broad leaf and grassy weeds by not letting them ever get
started. When they try to sprout, it shuts them down. And if
your lawn is thin from this brutal summer we just went through and sunlight is
hitting the soil, you're going to show up. That's just how it works.
So we need to work to get our lawn thick again. But in
the meantime, an application of that barricade watered in with a half inch of
rain will do it. Now, they also have nitroposs egle fungicide, a
systemic fungicide that when you put that down it soaks into the tissue. And
we're dealing with issues like brown patch or large patch or the take all root
right in the fall. It can help you to prevent that from happening.
We'd love to grow ourselves out of these disease issues that as the grass gets
stressed or weakened in different ways, we end up with them. And I
keep reminding you of those cultural practices, But when you've got along that's plagued
with that, you just need to deal with it and then in the meantime
get your grass strong. Let's go to northwest Houston. Now we're going to
talk to Debbie. Hello, Debbie, Hi, good morning. I have
a question. I'm i to send a picture. I have a young tree.
It's probably about twelve feet tall. It's an oak, and the bark
at the bottom is falling off. Just one thing. Oh wow? How
big around is the base of the trunk? Probably about four inches in diameter?
Four inches? Okay, And let me think when you say the barks
falling off, when it falls off underneath that, are you seeing the actual
wood interior of the tree or could it be that it's outer bark falling off
and there's still an inner bark that's visible, you know, I don't know.
It just looks like about I don't know, about eight to ten inches
of the bark that is, you know, and I can pull it off
very easily. Okay, that's probably you're losing probably your whole bark there.
I don't know what did it we you know, there are different things that
could have contributed to it. But as far as what do you do now,
there's really nothing. If it is truly loose bark, you can pull
that back to expose the interior just it helps it dry out. In there
after a rain and minimizes that decay of the wood, and you'll start to
see the callous forming from around that area where the bark has been lost,
and callous looks like a lava flow coming in from the sides. You know,
just gradually the tree is trying to close over and protect that inner wood
inner wood rather so that the only thing that's in your control is to make
sure the tree stays healthy. And so if we go back into next summer
and you know, all these days of heat and no rain, just give
it a good soaking. You pretend ten to fourteen days when we're in that.
But right now, there's nothing that you need to immediately do. So
don't pull the bark off. Just let it fall off naturally. And no,
you you can if it's loose and comes off when you pull on it,
go ahead and pull it off. That's okay, okay, But you
just want to you want to find what's what you're going to find is the
edge of that area that died, and so you can pull that back.
Yeah, that's fine, Okay. Otherwise the tree looks healthy, but it's
just very worsome. Yeah, well, a young tree like that, if
it's in good health, it'll close over pretty rapidly. Okay. A little
fertilizer in the spring wouldn't hurt, you know, and so that would help
boost its growth rate just a little bit. But the main thing is water,
all right, Devin, thank you very much. I appreciate appreciate your
call. If you live up in the Magnolia area, your hometown feed store,
Spring Creek Feed. They are on FM twenty nine seventy eight, just
minutes away from Grand Parkway and Highway to forty nine. They carry the fertilizers
you hear on garden line. You hear me talk about. They carry all
kinds of lawn and garden supplies, herbicide, fungicides, pesticides, all of
that. Friendly, courteous staff. That's one of the main reasons I like
going in there. If you are in FFA or four h kiddos, raising
stock, animals, military and senior citizens, all of those get discounts and
they even will special order products and deliver for you at Spring Creek Feed.
On FM twenty nine seventy eight. The topic of the day has been frosts
and freezes, and we may wander from that a little bit here in a
bit, but just want you to be prepared, get the supplies you need,
understand what you're going after. So again, if you go to gardening
with Skip dot com, the top thing in my new added items is a
publication nine pages free, full color on everything you need to know about protecting
your plants against frosts and freezes. Well, it's time for the news and
I'm going to go away, But in the meantime right down seven one three
two one two ktrh so you can give us a call. Welcome back to
the garden Line. We are talking gardening and uh, you know, today's
topics seems to be primarily talking about cold protection. How do we take care
of our plants? How do we protect them from cold? I mentioned the
insulate a blanket just one example of a very dense, spun down polyestra product
you put over your plants and it protects them. There's another product called the
planket and that's kind of cool too. Where do you find these Well,
you can find them at Arburgate. Arbrogate is always going to have the products
that you need that fit the season that they're in. I mean, the
Arbigate is the Gardener's garden Center so what season are we in now, we're
in color season two. Oh my gosh. Their collection of the Cyclement.
I couldn't even save the plant for a minute. Their collection cyclement is just
gorgeous. And if you want to really brighten up a bright shady spot around
the garden, oh it'll do it. And they have everything else. I
mean, do you need pansies and viola's. You know, Arburgate's always going
to have everything you need at that point in the season. And let me
just say this too, when you go there and buy plants, remember brown
stuff before green stuff. So pick up their food their complete one two three
completely easy system, the organic food come that's an organic fertilizer four four three
plus calcium, their organic soil complete, and their organic compost complete. All
three of those are part of making your soil the best that it can be
so your plants can thrive. It's as simple as that. What you do
before you plant is even more important than what you do after you plant.
So stop by Arbrogate, grab some of those supplies to go along with your
plants, and also grab your cold cover protection. Very important because another one's
coming. We know that, so let's go ahead and get ready for it.
I'm going to be today out at the Ciena Multch and I'm looking forward
to visiting with some of you. I know, it's always good when people
that listen to the show come out, but yet a little extra incentives out
at there at a Sienamultch, they just have so many things going on that
you know, it's like a party, that's really what it is. There's
going to be giveaways. The folks at Siena are going to be doing the
giveaways. I'm also given away. I'm giving away a number of different products.
In fact, the first twenty six people that come up to my table
are going to get either a product from Microlife or heirloom soils, or know,
some plant food. We're just going to be given away right and left
out there. While you're out there, check out the food truck. They
have a little food truck and it is pretty cool. I think it's pretty
fun. The food truck is just a little added benefit to coming out and
having fun with the party. Meet the reps from these companies too, by
the way, they can tell you all about that kind of product. And
there's going to be a number of other people that are going to be part
of the shindig. I'll talk about that in a little bit when we come
back to it, but well, let me just do it now. In
addition to those fertilizer and soil folks that I mentioned, and in addition to
Mary had a little party food truck. That's a good name for it,
Texas Garden Guy is going to be out there. Jes Gardens is going to
be out there and gardening with Bemo some other personalities that you can also visit
with. So come out and see us. We're going to have a heck
of a good time and I look forward to visiting with you. If you
are in the market for a roof Brinkman is the company that you need to
call. And here's why they are fly by night roofers. You'll find them
all the time. But can you find a roofer who's been doing it here
in Houston for fifty years? I can. It's Brinkman Quality roofing, who
has a the highest award the Better Business bro gives way It's or Pinnacle Award
at twenty two. They want it. And you don't get stuff like that
without taking care of your customers. Let them come out. Do you want
a composite roof. Do you want a metal roof? Do you want their
new Brinkman's timberline solar shingle roof. Yeah, your roof is the solar panel,
not a panel on your roof, But your roof is a solar panel.
Warrant it for twenty five years. Go to Brinkman Quality dot com learn
more or call them two eight one four eight zero seventy six sixty three.
It is as simple as that. You know, anytime we talk about different
service type companies around the on the show here, but anytime you can find
one that takes care of their customers, isn't that worth isn't I mean,
isn't that worth the price of admission? You think about it? And have
you ever had somebody tell you, yeah, we'll be there on Saturday,
block half your day and then they may not even show up. Do you
get customer service after the sale? Do they honestly help direct you to the
product that's best for you as they listen to what your questions are? Do
they show up on time? I don't care if it's a plumber, you
know, if it's a yard care company. I mean, you want all
of those kinds of things as part of your service. And that's the kind
of folks we talk about on the show. We're going to go out now
to Cyprus and talk to Sandy. Morning Sandy, Good morning, Skip.
How are you. I'm well, thank you? So my blueberries you talk
to a lot of people, so you won't remember, but they it's like
almost a shrub. It's gotten kind of big and tall. When and how
can I prune it? Is this the time to print it? I would
wait until the end of winter to prune it. You don't have to,
but generally I do my pruning at that time. Pruning when the weather can
be a little warm will stimulate regrowth, and we don't want that because those
little new shoots are going to just get frozen. They're not hardy like the
rest of the plant, and so I would wait to the end of winter
to do the pruning. Do you happen to know the type of blueberry or
the name of the varieties that you have? I usually put the little thing
in the pot, but okay, I can't even search. Fine, that's
I just was gonna give a little more direction based on the type. There's
several types that we can grow here. You're describing it as a pretty big
plant. Have you had it for five years? No? I just planted
it rush. Oh I'm sorry, Well I just last year. If it's
If it's one year old, then then you shouldn't have to do much pruning
other than removing a lot of the little twiggy growth that's not going to have
buds on it. Another advantage as you come out into later winter is you're
going to see the little fat buds that'll be blooms versus the little tiny buds
that are just not gonna they're not a bloom bud, and that helps you
know how to prune. The bloom blooming wood is about an eighth of an
inch in diameter, and it typically has kind of a burgundy reddish color to
it, and that that's a sign that that's going to bear fruit for you.
So that also guides you in your early pruning. When you get about
five years into it, we'll tell talk about a different kind of pruning regimen
that you'll want to start. Okay, and one more quick question on my
okra. When the leaves turn all spotted with brown spots and stuff on it,
yep, is it time to pull it? It is? If you're
not getting any more oprah off of it, and at this stage Okra is
barely moving, so don't expect to bloom and then more fruit. Probably I'm
only getting what two three a day? Maybe. Yeah, there's probably time
to get it out of there. It gets so ready for your next planting.
Okay, all right, thank you, appreciate, appreciate your call.
Well, time for another quick break here. Our phone number is seven one
three two two fifty eight seventy four. We'll be right back. Well,
it's light outside. Finally we can get outside and do a little bit of
gardening activities. And boy, is this ever going to be a great day.
I mean we're going to get up in the upper seventies today, no
rain in sight, and you just can't get better weather than that for working
out in the yard and in the garden. And while you're out there,
one thing you might want to do is go ahead and get that fall fertilization
done if you haven't already, and this is something you need to do asap.
If you missed the fall fertilization from my lawn care schedule at gardening with
Skip dot com, you can still do the fall fertilization and Nelson plant food.
They make a product called carbo load that's designed for that. Why don't
they call it carbo load? Here's why. When a grass plant goes into
winter, it needs a store of carbohydrates. And in order to have carbohydrates,
the grass needs sunlight and nutrients to build those in the plant. And
this provides the mix of nutrients nitrophos or the Nelson plant food carbo load.
It provides that mix of nutrients that helps the plant because it's especially high in
potassium the third number. But it's got a little nitrogen, which is also
necessary. Not a lot of nitrogen. You just want a little bit in
the fall and forever. Bag you buy going to give way two dollars to
the Randy Memorial Scholarship Randy Lemon's Memorial Scholarship by the Texas A and M.
That is another really good cause and another good reason to purchase a bag of
the carboload. Carboload also has the pre emergent herbicide in it, and so
another reason why we don't want to delay. Go ahead and get it down
again. If you've not already used fertilizer or a pre emergent herbicide on your
lawn. Go ahead and do the carbo load now, because that will get
you set up. And I'm going to be given away twelve jars of Nelson
plant food out at the Ciena Mulch event from I'll be there from eleven thirty
to one thirty and part of my giveaways is twelve jars. That's cool stuff.
That's their vegetable rows, indoor plants, and tree and shrub foods all
together. Well. Our phone number is seven to one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight seven to four.
The season that we've entered now, I mentioned earlier the importance of getting
your vegetables planted, and the reason for that is because as cold weather arrives,
things slow down. Now we have vegetables that will go right through winter
here they can do it, but the best growth is in milder temperatures in
the cool season. Take broccoli, for example. The soon as you get
that in, the better off it's going to be, and it'll just produce
a little faster, make a bigger, more robust plant a little faster as
well. The same is true for our flowers. Now is the time to
get those flowers planted, all kinds of cool season color plants. There's no
reason for winter to be a drab season. We have lots of great color
options. And you know I mentioned the pansies and the violas earlier. Those
are about as hardy as you can get. The dusty miller is a gray
leafed foliage plant that does well here in the winter. We've got snap dragons,
we have Dianthus sweet william, the little compact types and the tall beautiful
types as well. Stock is another cool seasoned plant, has a little nice
fragrance to it as well. And then of course I'll listen that that little
mound of tiny white flowers attracts beneficial insects, certain types of beneficials, and
it even has a little bit of a honey like fragrance, which I think
is kind of cool. But if you're going to do that, let's go
ahead and do it. Let's get it done, get them growing, get
them planted, water to unfertilized, and ready to go. Last week I
talked to Felder Rushing on the air here. Felter is out at the Anti
Grozenport in this weekend part of their big shindig. They are and boy,
are they ever having a big shin dig It's called the Fall Festival of Roses.
It's going on today and it'll be going on tomorrow as well, and
Felder speaking on both days. And if you've never heard him speak, you
got to hear this guy speak. There's gonna be a lot of great information.
They've got lunch with food trucks and a social hour at the end of
the day to day. You know, antiq Rosenporium is more than just roses.
They have perennials galore out there, lots of quality plants, and they
always are having educational workshops like this, this event, the Fall Festival Roses,
and I'm talking about it's just a great place to go visit. You
can give them a call at ninety seven nine eight three six fifty five forty
eight and find out how to get up there to Independence, Texas for this
event. It's a great outing antiqu Rosenporium dot com. Simple as that.
Let's go to Mike and Lake Jackson. Hello, Mike, Skip, I
got it. I'm a my lemon trees. Just all of a sudden,
put ballooms out haul over it and you know it's been blooming sporadically during the
summer. But yeah, it is this tree. The time it suffered,
Yeah, during this last freeze and it came back really well. But I
don't know if there's a time and issue with a blooming or no, it
can they can they can bloom in phases through the year. That that's not
an unusual thing for your plant. Yeah, it's just interesting how just all
of a sudden there's blooms just all yeah, yeah, you have it in
a container, Mike, No, it's in the ground, okay. And
the it's just I don't know. It's kind of took me a surprise and
just to peru it out out of nowhere. Yeah. Yeah, plant plants
get weird. We have other plants that the summer drought sent them into,
uh summer drought induced in heat induced dormancy, that are blooming with their spring
bloom crop. Now that's not a good thing, but it happens. Uh.
And I don't know. Did you hear me talk about the publication nine
pages publication on dealing with frosts and freezes on your Plants? Yeah, no,
I haven't. I just okay, Well, my website is gardening with
skip dot com and there's a free publication up there on everything you need to
know about frosts and freezes, and certainly with this lemon tree, there's gonna
be a ton of good information to help you plan your cold protection from it.
Because we have another freeze, you know, it's just right for things
to start going and then you wiped up by another freeze. Although I do
protected with tarts and lights and that sort of thing, sometimes it gets past
that too. Yeah. Yeah, you just gotta The goal is to keep
the temperature above freezing underneath there, and sometimes you have to add a little
bit of heat to do that. Yeah, But I think your lemons,
okay, they're not going to grow very fast right now because it's so cold.
But that I wouldn't I wouldn't worry a lot about it. When's the
best time to I got fairly pecan tree, I'd say about ten years old
that I've grafted went on too. When is it time to start preening back
the old wood to give the grafts? Yeah, yeah, your pecan tree.
Yeah, I would do that kind of pruning of a deciduous trees and
shrubs. I would do that at the end of winter, and that would
that would for us. I would say if you can get to about maybe
mid to late January would be fine. You can do it anytime in January
actually, uh, And we just want to want to do it before they
leave out. But pecans are slow to leaf out in the spring. They
are very conservative about putting their growth out there when there might be another frost,
so they're a little slow to come out, right, Okay, good,
I appreciate you, bet, thank you very much for the call.
Appreciate that very much. Yeah, pecans are they're smart. They've lived in
Texas a long time and so they get it. They know how that goes.
And you know, just some of our fruit trees, uh, peaches
and plums and pears and apples, in the spring comes and they take off
blooming, especially the ones that are very low chill, they bloom a little
bit early. Uh. But when it comes to pecans, it's like,
yeah, I'm just gonna hang on a little bit here. We got plenty
of time for a growing season, and they're slow to come out. And
as a result, we typically don't see that kind of cold damage on pecans
because they're they're just careful the way that they go about it well, uh.
The uh. I'm always humored by by pecans. Uh. And and
some a story about pecans. You know, pecans set a bloom or they
actually have the little catkins that send a dust through the air. They're wind
pollinated. And then they also have the little nutlets that receive that pollen and
become a pecan nut. And that the tree tends to bear a really heavy
crop one year, and then it buries a very light crop the next year
because all those carbohydrates went into the pecans, and the next year there's no
not much of a fruit load. So they set a lot of buds.
They alternate bear like that. And an old timer one time I heard a
story that he would go when his pecans weren't bearing. He would take a
hatchet and walk around the tree, hitting the tree with a hatchet, saying,
I'm coming back to cut you down if you don't have a good crop
next year. And it always had a good crop next year, which of
course made him think that his hatchet had made the difference. That's just alternate
bearing. Now, I'm sure hitting the trunk with a hatchet was probably disrupting
the flow of carbohydrates down into the roots. So I don't know. Maybe
that helped a little bit too, But just a funny story. Correlation does
not equal causation. What does that mean. What it means is that just
because two things occur at the same time are connected to each other, doesn't
mean one cause the other one. That can just happen. Well, that
is a little bit of horticultural wisdom. I guess to end this hour,
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four is our number. Get
on the board with Josh and we'll talk to you when we come back.
Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor
It's crazy gas. Watch a trim, Just watch him as so many girl,
Thanks to Sup that crazy gas. Good Saturday morning. Look outside,
you're not going to get a better day than this one. You're not highs
in the upper seventies. Oh my gosh, that is gardening weather for sure.
For sure. Hey, when you're out and about today, why not
stop by the enchanted forest, Donna Richmond. I mean, that is a
place worth going to if you if you live downe in that area, and
haven't been there before. You really ought to check it out. It's on
FM twenty seven fifty nine. If you don't live in that area, then
you need to check it out. It's on FM twenty seven fifty nine.
Phone numbers two eight one three nine three seven ninety four forty nine, two
eight one nine three seven ninety four forty nine. Why would you go?
Well, they have everything that you need, everything you would want to grow.
They've got incredibly knowledgeable staff, and you know, it's just it's a
pleasant place to be if you want house plants, and we're entering house plants
season right and the cool season. Oh my gosh, they're loaded up.
They've got a lot of great supply and if you're looking to you know that
after the season sales well, seventy five percent off all their Halloween and Fall
de corps and even fifty percent off a pumpkin. You know, pumpkins aren't
just for Halloween, they're for Thanksgiving too, Right, Well, there's your
chance out at the Enchanted for us. But while you're out there, check
out their new rose house and the vegetable house. Oh my, you got
to go home with some of that stuff. Fall is the best season for
planting perennial herbs, and they have a great selection of that too, just
like everything else that you possibly could want it enchanted for us. Let's see,
I'm going to head out now to Bruno in Magnolia. Good morning,
Bruno, Good morning. I had called in a few months ago, and
I've got a construction site in Magnolia where most of the grass and stuff has
been scraped away and I need to get some erosion control down, and seems
to be the best thing to do is put down some rye grass in Bermuda
for a long term. But when I called in last time, you told
me that it was what at the one hundred degree plus weather and drought,
so you said, don't don't bother trying, wait until the weather moderates.
Yeah, And I didn't know if I'd missed the opportunity or if it's a
good time to plant both of those seeds. I would plant the rye grass
now, hold off on the bermuda. We needed to warm up. Bermuda's
seed is knocking to do anything until it warms up a lot more a lot,
and so in fact, you wouldn't want it to sprout and then be
killed by hard freeze rye grass. There's perennial types of rye, there's annual
types of rye. Usually a blend of those is better. The annual rise
is going to give you a little bit faster lawn, but doesn't develop the
as beautiful. I think of a green color as the perennial does. So
we usually put those on in a blend, but you could do either or
either way, and it those both like cold weather, and so if you
even planning them in early October, mid October, it's a little early,
and so you're in the prime time right now for planting them. Well,
thank you very much. All right, have fun out there protecting that soil
cover. That's a that's a good idea, A good idea, you know.
That's why. That's why we have weeds. Uh. Nature abhors a
vacuum. And when you have unprotected soil that can crust in a road away
with rainfall, you got to take care of that soil. You don't want
your top washing away. So what does nature do. It just throws weed
seeds all over the place and they sprout when the sunlight hits the soil where
I like to say, whatever wherever sunlight hits the soil. Nature plants a
weed. I know you don't like weeds, but that is their purpose.
That's why they're there. Let's head out now to Joe in Beach City.
Hello, Joe, good mornings, Bitskip. The freeze took out a lot
of my Bermuda august team, and in the meantime a rag weed has come
in and just overed it. I've put out a pre emergent herbicide and I've
put out the winner fall stuff. But I'm wondering should I go out there
and just go ahead and put out a herbicide and try to kill that ragweed.
Now, yes, there's some other plants that look like ragweed that are
perennial, and so if if we knew that it was an annual, it's
going to phraeze with the first phrase, and you don't, there's no real
gain in trying to spray it. If it's more of a perennial type weed,
then yes, absolutely, now is a good time to do it.
And you would just need a broad leaf post emergent weed control product to do
that, and there's a number of them out there on the market. Okay,
well, that would that kill off any graph that I might have growing
underneath it. No, No, it wouldn't, especially this cool time of
the year. Those are designed to kill broad leaf weeds, not grasses.
Okay. The other question is, well, let's Saint Augustine come back.
Well, if it has green runners, it could come back. If the
runners are totally brown dead, ten brown dead, then no, it's it
doesn't have an ability to come back out of the ground like bermuda grass does.
Okay, then in the in the spring, I plan on going in
there and putting bermuda down. Well, the bermuda takeover, yes, if
there's takeover from of course, if the Saint Augustine's gone, then you're then
there's no problem. But if the Saint Augustine is still alive, you're gonna
have a mix in your lawn. And if you want a bermuda lawn,
I would make sure there's nothing growing there when you plant your bermuda. That
way, you start with a clean slate. Okay. Variety of bermuda,
there's a number of different ones that that do well. If you're going to
do from seed, that's a limited list. If you're going to do from
a sod, that's a much larger list. Let me give you a quick
answer. If you go to Aggie Turf Aggie Turf dot t A m U
Texas A and M University dot e e U Aggie Turf dot TAMU dot e
du go to the bottom left when you come to that page and there's a
Texas turf grasses. Click on that the click on Bermuda. It will give
you long list of the varieties and describe them and it'll tell you how to
establish and everything else. And that's much better not I can do in a
few minutes, a few seconds on a radio show. That's fine. I'm
just some where I know if how where to look. All. I appreciate
Skip, you, bet, I appreciate your call. Thank you very much
for that. You know, we're hitting up another break, so we're gonna
go ahead and go away for a minute. But when we come back,
if you'd like to get on the board for a call, seven to one
three two one two k t r H. That's an old salt, it's
been around a long time. You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host,
Skip Richter, and our phone number is seven to one three two one
two KTRH. Now it is fall, and it is time to get your
fall fertilization down if you have not already. Microlife makes something called brown Patch
and that is a five to one three. It's an excellent blend for fall
fertilization. Just a quality fertilizer, gradually releases with microbial content. Is loaded
with microbes, by the way, and just get it down if you haven't
fertilized already, do that. I know we're getting toward the end of the
schedule, but you know, if you miss something, go ahead and get
it down as soon as you can. Microlife fertilizer is a quality product.
They also have their bioinoculant. Bioinoculant is just what it says. It's like,
you know you're going to make bread with a yeast starter dough. Well,
it's the same kind of thing. You put it out there. Loaded
with microbes helps inoculate this soil and the plant surfaces too, as the rain
splashes it up onto the plants and helps fight against a lot of the issues,
a lot of the diseases. But anytime you're enhancing the microbe content of
your soul, you're doing well. So where do you get microlife well?
Where do you get Where do you shop? I mean, they're pretty much
everywhere. I personally would suggest you consider Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizers down on
the southwest side of town, as the name implies, it's on the corner
of bisin Nutt and Runwick and they have everything you need. The websites Southwest
Fertilizer dot com. But I go in there because if I'm looking at what
are the new products that are on the market, I'm gonna know. But
just go into that one stop because they have everything. If they don't have
it, you don't need it. And that includes herbicides and s exicides,
fungicides, fertilizers, it includes organic and synthetic both. They've got every kind
of option and certainly cover all the things we talk about here on garden Line.
While you're in there, asked to see their kneeling benches, just just
folding kneeling bench. It'll change your life. Best tool I've ever purchased in
the light, well, certainly the last five years, my favorite tool.
Absolutely. Let's go to Manville and we're going to talk to Adolf. Hello,
aidof you, sir, Good morning morning. Yeah, I've been trying
to find some seed for Dial. Yes, not that I'm going to use
it, but I just love the plant itself. Oh my gosh. I
did find a couple of plants finally at one of the box stores. Huh,
they're pretty expensive. So if I was to find the seed, would
it be too late to Planet? It's a little it's a little late for
Dial Dial. It doesn't like hot hot weather, but it's not gonna take
the freezes. And you're you're probably not gonna have good results planting those seeds
right now. Okay, yeah, all right, so but but those seeds
are easy to find. You know, there are a lot a lot of
locations are going to have them. Uh you're let's see, you're pretty far
south. So any garden center you're going to shop that down there ought to
have some deal seed on it. Well, I've been looking for for the
last three weeks. And for example, Yeah, and if I can mention
the names home Depot and Walmart, they do have any seeds at all.
Okay, well, I wouldn't recommend those at all. You need to go
to a full service mom and pop that knows what they're talking about. You're
not too far away from enchanted forest. It's a little bit of a uh
you know, kind of have to figure out how to get across the river
with the highways, but that that's a fun place to go. I would
give them a call. I bet they have deal seeds and I don't know,
they may even have a few plants left over, but chenned Forest would
be the one that I would suggest that you do. U. They are
pretty close to you, and I think I think that they're going to probably
have that product in stock. Their number is two eight one nine, three
seven four forty nine to eight one seven where they locate. They are over
toward Richmond from you, so they're due they're due west of you, but
you have to take a road that will get you across the river. So
you have to go a little north or a little south to get over to
on it. It sounds like you're willing to drive a little bit for it,
but you may want to check that out. Okay, Thank you appreciate
your call very much. You know, the it's always interesting seeing the different
kinds of questions that we get, the different kinds of seeds and working plant
now and and uh, timing is everything when it comes to plants. Every
plant has its opinion about what kind of temperatures that it wants in order for
germination. So well, that's that's pretty pretty clear. The if your landscape
is looking like it was just about beat to death by this past heat and
drought in the summer, you got to call Pierscapes and just maybe take some
pictures, go in and talk to them, say what what can we do
here? What can you do? They can design beds, they can recommend
plants. They can take care of your irrigation system. That's the problem with
a lot of lawns is a poorly designed irrigation system. They can do drainage
repairs. You know when it rains at poors and then you got soggy spots
and most plants don't like that. Well, they can fix that. Pier
Scapes can fix that. You can go to pierscapes dot com and find out
more information. By the way, look at some of the work they've done
online. Ark m a call two eight one, three, seven oh fifty
sixty. Fall is an excellent time to do sail prep, to do bed
design, to do plant establishment. Best time in the world. So now
it would be a great time to call the of peerscapes and see what they
can do for you. They'll be happy to take a look at your pictures
and try to come up with something that'll do well, maybe some better drought
resilience in the plant choices that we're making. Let's go out to El Campbell
now and talk to Jim. Hey, Jim, Hey, how are you
doing today? Well, I'm doing well. I'm doing very well. How
are you. I've got a new house and it's got some very tall box
woods right in front of the front porch. They're probably a good three feet
tall. How much can I whack those back and expect them to come back
up? It's obscure in the front of the house. Well, I mean,
you could cut them way back and they're going to send out sprouts,
but it's gonna take a long time to come out. I think I would
recommend you wait to do that whacking back until the end of winter, because
that's when they're warming up and you want new growths to come on out.
And you don't want it to come out because we have a few warm days
and then get killed by a freeze onto a foot or something like that.
Well, yeah, you could, you know, if if if it were
me, I think I would try to leave some green leaves on it rather
than take out all the green growth. And if you go to a foot
there's probably nothing green left, but you can cut them back. I'm not
really worried about that, and I'll probably put some planning. I want to
put some planing in there to decorate the front instead of just as giant green
obscured hedge. I got you, you know what I mean? Yeah,
I got you. That That makes I'm not real worried about about the time
to make it green again. I wouldn't really be concerned about that. Okay,
well, uh they should do okay with that, you know, unless
the plants are weakened or some other thing is going on there with them.
But you know there are more dwarf types of box would too. If you
want that that that go ahead. This would be a good time to plan
them. Absolutely. The best time to plant them is in the late fall
and winter two or spring. I mean, you can do that, but
you know, you want to get their roots out in the bed so they're
resilient when drought and heat come. And by planting now, you have the
most time for those routes to move out and the roots will grow. It
during the wintertime a little slower, but they'll grow. And where might I
find some of those box woods? Now you're in El Campbell by the way.
I was just down there, see yesterday, day before, day before
yesterday or yesterday did well? I you know, I knew you were there,
but I didn't know where you lived, so I didn't stop. But
we were there at your nice little events center. I just don't know.
I would call my County Agrolife Extension office and talk to the YAG agent.
He's going to be able to tell you where the nearest nurseries that would be
considered a good nursery would be found. Okay, if you want to drive
over to Houston, I can tell you something over here. Oh I have
no problem driving into Houston at all. Okay, I was thinking, what
was it enchanted forest in Richmond. Yeah. In fact, if you're if
you're willing to do that, we got enchanted gardens and enchanted forest both there
in the Richmond area. And if you're willing to make the little drive,
then hey, come on up. They will definitely have a good supply of
good quality plants. Yeah. I'm not bashful about driving into Houston. Well,
plus you get to see a real cool nursery, and that's that.
They are very cool nurseries, all right, Jim, Hey, yes,
the I know enchanted gardens is let me get enchanted forest here. I'm sorry,
I should have this in the top of my head. But before I
before I tell you, I want to make sure that I'm telling you the
truth here. Come on, well, trying to find their hours on the
webs all right, I tell you what I'm going to find it and I'll
just say it on the air here in just a minute. I should know
that. Thank you, Jim, I appreciate you. Appreciate the call.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Enchended Forest,
by the way, has a really cool new website. I don't know if
you've if you've seen it or not, but oh my gosh, it is.
It is outstanding and I'm kind of learning to find my way around around
the website itself. Real cool stuff. You need to go check that out,
by the way, really really nice, you know, plants for all
seasons up on the Tambail Parkway two forty nine. They've been around for a
long time since the Since nineteen seventy three, the Flowery family has been growing
or selling and advising gardeners on the best plants in the world. And they
have an amazing supply. By the way, if you haven't purchased your Thanksgiving
and Christmas cactus, you need to go do that. And they've got them
on stock there all the color for your landscape beds. You're going to find
vegetables, shrubs, and trees. And we're just talking about the boxwoods.
Oh yeah, they got plenty of those. But you know, the main
reason to go there, and I know all those things are a reason to
go, it's it's the people that work there. It's people that own it.
They know their stuff. You bring them a plant, sample them,
bring them a question in try to stump them. You're not going to do
it. They are professionals quality advice and they will not steer you wrong,
and that is very important when you're purchasing plants. We want to have success
with our plants. We want someone to sell us a plant that grows in
the in the area. We want us to tell us we want them to
tell us how to care for those plants so we have success. Go you'll
find out what I'm talking about. The super super knowledgeable folks right there on
hand. And you just don't you just don't find a more inviting, beautiful
place. You know. The location is on to forty nine, but it's
just north of where Luetta Road comes in. Now you can go to the
website planterrellseeasons dot com or the phone number two eight one three seven six sixteen
forty six. Check it out. You know why we like to brag about
them. We're going to take a break here. Our number is seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four, and Chris and Dickinson you will
be the first up when we come back. Remember the days when you could
harmonize to the songs on the radio. Boy, that's a good one.
If you are a singer in the shower, that is a great one too.
For that love coda chrome. Oh my. You know. Ace hardware
stores are all over town. There's now forty of them. The newest stores
are in Orange and Bay City. The new locations in the Greater Houston area
and they carry everything you need. They absolutely do. They certainly have all
the fertilizers that we talk about right now, you need to think about ACE
as a place for your Christmas lighting and decoration needs. That's both inside the
house and outside the house. So for example, you want custom lights on
the outside of the house, they'll make custom lights by the foot or on
the inside of the house by the custom lights. They have wreaths and garlands.
Do you need to decorate the mantle or a Christmas tree or whatever use
you have, They've got plenty for it. A new wreath for the door,
that'd be another good one. But remember anything for your yard is going
to be there at ACE. Talking about fall and if you haven't fertilized,
you need to get that done. And a good example of that would be
Nitrovoss's three step which you can find at every ACE hardware store. Now.
The three steps are the fall fertilizer. If you haven't fertilized yet, go
ahead and do that. Do it as soon as possible, though the earlier
you do it, the better off your grass will be. And it is
designed for our soils, for our climate, to make the grass go into
winter as strong as possible. They also have the barricade. That's step two.
Now, the barricade is a pre emergent herbicide to prevent grass and broad
leaf weeds from germinating in your lawn. Now, you got to get it
down, you gotta water it in. And the sooner you do it the
better, because once the weeds are up and growing, you don't get the
effect of the pre emergent that you want to get. Finally, nitrofoss turf
eagle fungicide soaks into the grass tissues and helps prevent diseases like brown patch and
take all root rot. As a matter of fact, so where do you
get these kinds of products? Well, you can get them. I've just
talked about plants for all seasons. I'm talking about in Channey Garden and Richmond.
I'm talking about Lake Hardware and Angleton. You're going to find these at
all your ace hardwares. The nitroposs three step is just a good cover all
the issues of fall product. I want to head out to Dickinson and I
want to talk to Chris. There we go, Chris, how are you
doing this morning? There are you? We just move into a new property.
I have a fig tree that we've had in a large pot for about
three years. And I'm wondering if it's okay to plant that in the ground
now or should I wait until Spain? I would wait. Figs are margin
I must say, marginally hardy, meaning that they can suffer coal damage here
and so you know, a brand new plant just set out there. I
would wait. Let's let's let the weather warm up and all the frosts go
away, and then get it in the ground and it'll hit the ground running.
Figs are so willing to grow roots. I have before cut off a
fig branch in the winter, stuck it in the ground up against the house,
behind a shrub, kind of just stuck it in the ground, put
a quart mason jar over the top of it, like a little mini greenhouse,
but out of the sunlight, and that little bogger rooted it started growing.
Yeah, figs are easy, easy to get them established. Thanks for
the call. I appreciate that, Chris. Yeah, boy, figs Figs
are are easy. Easy as mite is designed to provide the trace minerals that
I say, it's designed. It wasn't created, it was mine. It
comes out of hole in the ground. Yep, that's right. They mine
it out of the ground. So it's a very natural product, and they
grind it into various sizes of particles just to fit whatever use you're using for
it. And we put it down on our lawns because we want to make
sure we have plenty of micro nutrients there in the lawn, and that you
should do that once a year. It will make sure. Unless you just
have a really bad micronutrient level, you may have to do it twice,
but in general that's enough to get it done. I use it in my
vegetable garden because it provides nutrients and makes the things that I am growing to
eat even more nutritious. You want to make sure that they have everything that
they need. Now, you just need a little bit of it. It's
a trace mineral, so a forty four pound bag will cover sixy twelve thousand
square feet. Go to Azamite Texas dot com. There you're going to find
out a lot more information that will help you as you try to keep your
lawn as healthy as you can, as as you try to make your garden
as healthy as you can as well. Let's go out to Magnolia now and
we're going to talk to Victor. Hello, Victor, thank skip, how's
it going. I'm doing well. What's up, hey man? Well,
I got a couple of things for you. Just recently built my first enclosed,
fenced thirty forty garden with the raised beds with the help of Beverly out
at arburgate her advice. So the question I have is, I've got the
raised beds around the interior, interior, the perimeter. It's circumforts. I've
planted grapes that I bought from Beverly and there may be a foot and a
half two foot talls. My first question is how tall do I let them
grow to where I start making them go? And right? Does that make
sense? Yeah? What I would do is I would drive either plant post
in the ground or drive a iron post into the ground beside the grape.
And what you're going to do is it's going to grow all these vines out
in all directions. You pick one the best one if in your opinion,
put it on the steak and loosely tie it to the steak. Then it
gets to a certain level, you're going to top it and start producing the
side branches that we're talking about. And there's information on the Aggi Horticulture website
about how to train grapes and that would be one option for you. Of
course, you can always do a grape arbor as well. But it sounds
like you're off to a good start. Did you get some of the arbor
gate one, two, three, completely easy system? Oh? Completely yes?
Oh yeah, And then Calvin, you're in addition to that. But
so let me ask you, because this is fince. It's seven foot fence
three foot or two feet off the ground is wood treated wood. And this
two by four fence two four wire fence going up. Would I need a
post if I got the fence or no? No, you could tie it
to the fence. You would just however you want to rig something to attach
it. You just want to, you know, keep that vine going vertical
and have it secure so that a wind or storm whatever, grapes have to
be supported. You know, in nature they would just trail along the ground
basically unless they could grab onto something to climb. But yeah, that would
would need the support, but the fence could do that. The only negative
of that is if you ever had to replace the fence, you need to
then probably add that post to support it until you got the new one in.
Gotcha, And then the next question, again, this is my first
time to do a closed garden. I got burnt out on the rabbits and
DearS, deleting everything I had. I did the raised beds. I did
some garlic, but I just bought the garlic at the grocery stores. Read
online you can do that. And it broke them up and took the skins
back and planted them six inches apart, two inches down with the heel down.
I've got a forty that I've planted. I've got two that popped up.
Nothing else is happening. What did I do wrong? I don't know.
The only thing I can think of is the garlic clove has a basal
plate from which the roots come, and sometimes when you break a clove off,
you don't get a piece of that plate, and it has to have
that, and that may have been what happened. That's the only thing I
can think of. Yeah, I just couldn't find them anywhere else. I
just want the grocery store and bought them. Okay, Well again, two
of them has popped up, look real strong, all right. The other
ones haven't done anything. But it's only been three weeks, so I just
didn't know if I did something wrong. Yeah, Well, that's what I
what I think about that. Hey, I'm gonna have to run take a
little break here seven to one three two one two k t r H to
get on the board and Lily in Spring you'll be first when we come back.
Well, welcome back to garden Line. We are looking forward to talking
to you about gardening related items. While to go, someone asked me about
Enchanted Forest and their hours, and I wanted to come back to that.
They are open Monday to Thursday eight to five and Monday to Friday actually eight
to five, Saturday eight to five, and Sunday ten am to four pm.
That's Enchanted Forest out there in Richmond. We are now going to go
talk to Lily in Spring. Hello Lily, Hello, Hi, good morning.
I have a question. I have a Chaffleer indoor schafflera that's been in
my inside for more than six years. It's quite big. It's a little
over five feet tall, and I had no problems with it whatsoever. Ever,
and just recently, about a month and a half ago, I guess
I started noticing the leaves were kind of getting translucent a little bit. So
I checked it out and I noticed that underneath the leaves it was getting like
a rash under some of the leaves, not all of them, and I
could feel it, and I thought, what in the world is that.
The only thing I could think of was this some kind of an insect in
between the leaves, in the leaves, I guess, And I thought,
what is going on? What is all this? And a lot of the
leaves are starting to get it. So I decided to take it outside.
It had never been outside in quite quite a while, so I hosed it
down real good, and then I sprayed it with liquid seven on the leaves
underneath and pretty much all over. And I waited a while, and I
thought, well, maybe this will take care of it. Well, I
waited a few hours and went back and looked at it. It didn't change
anything, but I thought, well, it's probably going to take some time.
But nothing happened. Okay, Lily, I don't think it's an insect.
But when we get through with the call here in just a bit,
I want you to hold on and Josh will give you an email address,
and if you will turn those leaves over and as close as you can,
take a picture, take a picture, make sure it is in sharp focus,
and email it to me. I'll look at it. What I think
you're dealing with is something called a edema. And when plants stay too wet,
the little stoemates under the leaves will start to get quirky. They they
swell up. And and when when you're looking at the leaf it's like you
were describing on there, I think it's go ahead. It's like it's like
a like a rash. They're real close together. Okay, may so,
Okay, h Lily, that's that's fine. Let me look at a picture
of it, because that's the way I'm going to know for sure. And
you know I've heard your description. But let's take a look at it.
One other thing, I also sprayed it with rain. I thought this is
going to kill it for sure. Okay, I want you, I want
you to put down the pesticides and back away and don't spray with anything else.
Feel the soil and if it is a little wet, a little soggy,
you're robby water in too much, and so that would be the one
thing you can do now. But let's look at the pictures and we'll take
it from there. Thank you very much. I appreciate the call. Yeah,
you know, this is wildbird season, isn't it. I mean,
don't you like to see birds out at the feeders during the cool season.
Well, as we're moving into these months, the days are getting shorter,
the nights longer. There's less daytime hours for birds to feed, to find
food and whatnot. Well, Wabirds Unlimited has created a winter super blend.
It's packed with fat and protein. You know, the animals need to have
a store of fat in protein to make it through the winter when times are
a little bit leaner for them, and Warbird's Unlimited Winter super Blend will do
just that. If you want, you can leave out your humming bird feeder.
I'd leave one, and I think you may find occasionally a rufous hummingbird
coming through. Some of those make their home here in the winter time.
Always make sure you're giving plenty of water to your birds. They always need
a source of water. I don't care what time of the year it is.
They have to drink every day, So make sure and provide that for
them now. Wilbird's Unlimited. The website is WBU dot com forward slash Houston.
When you do that, you're going to see all seven stores all across
Houston and you can click on the one that's nearest you and get a lot
more information from them. We're going to now head to Columbus and talk to
Susie. Hello, Susie, Hi. Yes, my question is we have
a lot of sticker birds this year. They're just so prolific and the dogs
get them in their fur, and you know, you can't walk out there
without getting them all over your shoes. Okay, there's a lot of kinds
of burr weeds. There's grass burr, which is a grass plant that has
the big, long thorns on the seed pods or seedheads. Is that what
you're talking about. They're not the big ones, they're the little ones.
They're very sharp, and I call them sticker birds that I've heard people call
them grassppers. They grow in the sand mostly. That's that sounds like that
sounds like the technical or the proper name would be sand burr or grasspber.
And those particular ones are going to die when it's cold in the winter,
and then they will resprout as it warms up in the spring, and so
you're going to want to use a pre emergent herbicide, like a barricade type
product that you put down I would probably put it down sometime in early March
in your area because the grasspers sprout a little bit later than some other weeds,
and that will prevent them from coming up. You have to water it
in with a half inch of water and they'll and it'll do just fine.
But in the meantime, if you've got a whole bunch and you want a
quick way to deal with it, if you got a piece of carpet,
find an old piece of carpeting, turn it where and drag it across the
lawn. Maybe puts a little bit of a weight on it, you know,
not real heavy, but just something to hold it down to the ground.
Drag that across the lawn and you get a lot of grassbur seeds in
that carpet. And then okay, then you throw it away. All right,
okay, and so do you do? You have to apply this pre
emergent like quarterly. Uh, well the world for the grasspurs You're going to
do it in early March, and then I would do it again about sixteen
to ninety days later, and that will cover your grassbur sprouting season pretty well.
All right. Hey, what's it called again? Uh? Barricade by
nitrofosst Okay, thank you, you bet, thank you for the call.
Hey, do you have a little piece of property and have been thinking about
getting a tractor. Well, there's a deal going on that you do not
need to mess and that is the pick, click and go Orange deal from
Lansdown Moody and Caboda Now Lansdown Moody. That is a Houston company. They've
been here since nineteen thirty. They are hometown through and through. I mean
there's what nine locations along the Texas golf coast. You can go to their
website lmtractor dot com and find out more. But here's the deal. The
L twenty five oh two is the Kubota Workhorse hydrostatic transmission. It is a
sweet ride. Then you go to tractor package dot com and click on the
things you want to add to your tractor. Do you need a mower,
rotary cutter? Do you need a front endloader, a postal digger, a
box blade If you're going to be hauling Moltz and sacks of feed and things
like that, that front endloader is the one you really need to have.
And then finally go Orange with the greatest finance plan. You're going to find.
Here's the deal, no money down, no interest from up to eighty
four months seven years now. You can't beat that. Lansdown Moody our local
Houston company lmtractor dot com. We're going to head now out to Sour Lake.
Hello Mary morning. I have two questions. I have a greenhouse that
is twelve by twenty and last year I lost basically everything I put in the
greenhouse, and I know it was a weird winter season, but I'm wondering
if you could suggest a heater, some type of heater that I should put
in there. I do have power, so I can plug it in.
I do not have gas, well any any kind of a little space heater
if you can keep it out of the wet wet conditions, will do it.
I would have it connected to some type of a thermostat that turns the
power on and off, just so you can moderate how warm it gets in
there, but you're not going to have to run it very high. Depending
on the size of the heater and the size of thermostat, you know,
there's gonna be some variation there, but that is probably what I would do
in a standard type greenhouse. I'm running against our end of the end of
the hour, break here. If you'd like to continue this discussion, let's
do so. Uh. You know, at the beginning of the next hour,
I'll put you on hold and if you want to go ahead and go
you you can hang up and do that. All right, there you go
seven one three two one two k T r H. That is our phone
number two day. Here here is your outdoor exciting venture for the day,
Ciena Maltz. I'll be there giving away a lot of quality products from Microlife
and Heirloom Soils and Nelson Plant for twenty six people. The first twenty six
to show up at my table with a question, we'll get one supply of
one of those quality products, one jar, one small bag. Whatever it
is that there that we have at that moment. Now, with the day
in the high seventies, what a great day to get out there. And
you know when you're when you're out at this place, you're going to find
that it just it's just a party atmosphere, food trucks and all kinds of
things going on. I hope you can make it. Katie r. H.
Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on
this program. Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with scip Rictor.
It's crazy trim. Just watch him as many things to suit cleans. Good
Saturday morning on the most beautiful day you have seen in a long long time.
Will get up in the mid seventy, upper seventies. Actually today,
it's gonna be perfect to be outside, out and about maybe getting some things
done around your garden as well. I want to go back to Mary and
Sour. Like Mary, we were talking about putting a heater in your greenhouse,
and yes I had a I forgot to tell you that I did have
a small space heater in there last winter. So I'm wondering if there is
a certain way to know what size you need or how much heat it puts
out or oh boy, yeah, that that gets kind of technical. Okay,
how big is your greenhouse? It is twelve by twenty. Oh that's
a good size for a backyard greenhouse. You probably probably need more than one
heater in there, but I okay, it just depends on you know,
does it have air leaks and stuff like that. Well, it's fairly new,
okay, so I would hope it doesn't have any big major problems like
that. Yeah, you could do that. I mean, if you wanted
to invest in more than one there you know there are from specialty companies.
You can get a little greenhouse heater that has a thermostadd on it and everything
like that. But then you're getting up in the you know, two hundred
dollar ranthing along those lines. But you can also get some type of a
thermostat to go with the one you have, or just you know, set
it on whatever level you think you need. You have to run out there
a few times, check the thermometer and say, oh, I need to
crank it up. Just remember when you put a heater on an extension cord.
H I don't do that. Oh good, good, because you go
a lot all the way with the typical extension cords we have and that's too
much of a power pool. Right, you can do I'm trying. My
question about basil is I grow a lot of basil and I didn't cover I
wasn't able to cover all of it. The leaves that have turned brown.
Is there something I can do? Can I Can I cut them up and
use them as a or is there something you can do once they turn brown?
And does the plant totally die? Does it reced Can you tell me
a little bit about basil? Okay, basils should totally die in our climate
here in the winter. I guess protected with a maltz and a protected location
and a good winter temperatures, you might might survive. But basically I would
say it's going to die. It does recede, and it receeds profusely,
and so that that comes right after the blooms, of course, But that
would be probably about all that you're going to need to know about the basil
other than you know, I don't know about a frozen leaf. I know
you can dry basil leaves and you can buy the spice like that, and
so I don't know if freezing and then drying would work. I just I've
never thought about that one before, but I have dried basil and a food
dryer before. Okay, all right, okay, all right, thank you
so much. All right, thank you. I appreciate appreciate your call.
You know, the folks at Nature's Creation wide variety products, but they have
an all natural bedding plant food that contains microhizal fungi. It's blended specifically for
your blooming plants. Inside you're going to find aw falpha, cottonseed meal,
humates, molasses, composted poultry, calmander, sulfate of potash, green sand,
granite sand, and then they add those microhizal fungi in there, so
all those cool seasoned plants like pansies and snap dragons and all lissam and on
and on cyclemens, it works really well for that. You can buy it
a quality feed on Lozon right in Central Texta where were talking about getting the
chickens earlier earlier today Moss Nursery and Seabrook RCW Nursery on two forty nine,
and all the Houston garden centers are going to carry the Nature's Creation all natural
bidding plant food with Micarayzon. Let's head now up to northwest Houston and we're
going to visit with Robert. Hello, Robert, yes, hello, I
have a question. Boy. I was eating grapefruit one day and when I
cut it open, I've seen a little seed growing. So I took in
that planet that it's about six inches long now in a pot, and I
to know what do you do over the wintertime? I mean, I guess
you can't leave it out in the freezing cold and well to have about watering
it in the winter time, well water and enough to keep the soul moist,
not suggy, wet, but just enough. And it depends on how
much sun light it's in, what the temperatures are, and so on as
to how often that would be. But I would get it out in the
sun on any days that you can you know, if it's going to be
oh, I don't know, and above forty degrees, I would get it
outside and let it have that light because that's very important. And you need
to give it as much of that as you can. And that ought to
get you through the cool season. And then once we're past all the cold
and frost, get in the ground and plant it or a container whatever you
want to do with it. Okay, And about how long is it take
for a tree to grow? Well, it takes a while. But here's
the problem. When you have a seedling that came from a seed although with
citrus they do have some clone type seeds, which is very unusual. Typically,
if it was a cross between two different plants, then that seedling is
going to be different. But a seedling has to grow up and become mature
before it can bear fruit. That's true. Bad trees, peach trees,
the trustreet. They have to hit a certain point if they're coming from a
seed, so that may take a while that I can't predict how long that
that may take a while. Oh yeah, well I'm an old man,
so I may not get a great food is in the doing it? Hey,
Robert. One other questions. Do I need to cover that to keep
it warm or something? No, I would bring it in when we're gonna
have cold weather, because it's a little tender seedling with a root system that's
above ground and a container. Yeah, don't take a chance on that.
All right, Hey, I appreciate that call. Thank you very much.
With a call. If you're up in the Montgomery area. A and A
Plants and Produce, Well, that's your hometown nursery. That's your garden center.
Family owned for over thirty years. Adam and Alice Floor started it.
Now their daughter Kathy is running the place. It's in Montgomery on the one
oh five toward Conroe direction, so as you head toward Conroad, it's on
the north side or the left side of the road going in that direction.
So all those Lake Montgomery neighborhoods, you know, Lake Conroe Waldham, bent
Water, Waterstone eight percent. All of those this is your hometown. I
mean, they have a wide stock of everything. First of all, all
the fertilizers and products I recommend are going to be there at A and A
Plants and Produce. They do deliver and they also do landscaping around the Lake
Conroe area and woodlands as well. You just have to call them and find
out. They're open seven days a week, nine am to five pm.
Lots of knowledgeable staff on hand, which is important. So whatever you need,
including various decorations for outdoors for the holidays, you're going to find it
there at A and A Plants and Produce. We are bumming right up against
a break, So our phone number is seven to one three two one two
kt RH. We will be right back. Well, welcome back to garden
Line. We are looking forward to talking to We have quite a few people
here on the board talking about all the gardening questions that you might have.
You know, I keep saying fall is the best time to plant. What
are you ornamentals in any kind of perennial Well, if you need a tree,
maybe you need a palm tree, Verdant tree farm, Verdant treefarm dot
com. That's your website. They got three locations. You can go out
to West Houston on Barker Cypress find them there. You can go down in
the Heights area and where Yale comes into the I ten that they're going to
be there as well. And then down in Paarland just a few blocks from
Killing Steakhouse on Broadway Street, they're going to be there now. They do
turnkey service. You go there, you pick your tree and they come out
and they plant it and they plant it right, which is very important.
Now, if you're looking for a palm, maybe you want to decorate a
pool type area out there. They specialize in that. But they have way
way more than palms. They have every kind of tree you can imagine.
And when you go to Verdant, you can sit down with them and say,
hey, what would you recommend for this spot. You walk through and
pick your tree and they put a tag on it. That's your tree now,
and they bring that tree to you. That's kind of fun to get
to go shopping like that. Pick the one that you want again. Verdant
treefarm dot Com. We're going to go now out all the way to the
far west part. Katie talk to Teresa. Good morning, Skip. How
are you today? I'm doing good. How are you, Katie? I'm
good. I have playing moms in our pots before when we moved here seventeen
years ago from Kansas, and I was so disappointed. They didn't seem to
live and it was like on our front porch, which we don't get a
lot of sun. Can they be planted? We have like a three by
five circular bed in front that gets mostly shade, but it gets like two
to three hours of sun later in the day. Can they be planted in
that bed? They could? But a lot of the florist moms, the
kinds you buy, just don't do well here. It's worth giving them a
try to see some do. There's a sprawling mom called country Girl, and
it has long branches that just flop on the ground. It does very well
here. A country Girl. It's got beautiful pink flowers. Is that too
big? I just don't like it if it's going to hit the ground.
I want something that will stand up. And I've emptied my bed out now.
I usually have to buy things that are shade tolerant and not so.
This past summer was tough. Even my shade tolerant plants couldn't stand the heat
that they are getting late in the day. So I was just hoping maybe
I could have a mom or two this year. But yeah, well,
you know, I haven't planned them since we moved here because they just didn't
tolerate much heat out in the front. You might ask around a garden center,
you know, you're not too far drive up to our dry town.
We usually go to Enchanted Garden at seven three, yes, exactly, Chandon
Gardens. Ask them say, do you have any kind of these florest type
moms that you know naturalized pretty well here and if there is, if they
have them, they can point you to that. Okay, great, thank
you have a great day. Thanks for the call. I appreciate that very
much. If you not fertilize your lawn yet, well nitrofoss Texas three step
we'll get you covered. The three steps are the fertilizer, which again,
if you haven't fertilized this fall, then go ahead and do it. Get
it done as soon as possible. Second step is barricade. That's a pre
emergent weed control. If you've not put down a pre emergent in the fall
yet and you've got a lawn where sunlight hits the soil, well, weeds
are going to come up there and the pre emergent prevents that. And then
finally the third step is eagle turf fungicide. Now that is a systemic fungicide
soaks into the grass tissues, but you want to get ahead of the large
patch or brown patch circles. It also works pretty well for take all root
rot, which germinates when our nighttime temperatures with germinates, which attacks when our
nighttime temperatures are around fifty five. It loves to attack at that time and
we're there now right, So you need to get ahead of all of these
things, and that is why timeliness is so important. Now you're going to
find nitrofoss Texas three step at places like Bearings Hardware and Biscinet all Spas Hardware
down or up in the woodlands, plants and things out in Brenham Warren,
Southern Gardens out in Kingwood, Ace Hardware and Sinkle Growers Outlet and Willis get
the idea all over the place. Nitrophoss Texas three step is available. We're
going to head now out to Hobby and talk to Finesse Fenise finesse. Let
me get it right. Is it finesse. It's actually pronounced like if you
were say f e n eess venus Spanish name. Well, apologize for butcher
in the name. How can we help the don I don't mind, like
the old saying, I don't care what you call me as long as you
don't call me late to dinner. There go, So even if you say
hey, I'm still all right. But I have a pecandry which is probably
somewhere twenty feet tall somewhere in there. And I got my first crop this
year, and I was sure glad when I first saw at first become here.
But what is the when is the best time to fertilize the country?
I would do it in this ring new growth begins, that's a good time.
Uh, maybe about the time you fertilize your lawn. Now, if
you if it's growing in a lawn, it's going to benefit from the turf
fertilizer because it's going that ptrans are going to move down and and it'll benefit
from that. Otherwise, you can buy a special fertilizer for trees and shrubs.
Several of our folks make those. I often will use the lawn fertilizer
that I purchased for the because I could do that. H Well, I
was really proud when I first saw the first bacon on the actually right out
side of the street. But wow, so I I think I got five
of the total bit okay, and they're they're good side too. The and
I didn't grafted, but I think God Almighty did. Yeah, I got
some decent good look at pecans. Well, it sounds like you're doing something
right. Uh hey, I appreciate. I appreciate the call, and good
luck with your pecan trees. Thank you, sir. You have a good
day. You have you thought about getting a generator, but you just put
it off. You know, someday I need to do that because you know,
our paragrid power goes off and you have valuable things like a refrigerator and
freezer full of food that you need to protect, or maybe you have other
reasons that you need the power not to go off. Well, quality Home
Products of Texas can get you set up with a generat automatic standby generator.
It sits outside and it waits for when it's needed, and when it is
you don't have to go out and turn it on. It comes on and
it takes care of the valuable things that you have. Now the reason that
I like to talk about quality home. You can buy a quality generator,
but are you getting service and with quality home you are. Let me prove
it to you. Now. I used to say seven times. Now for
the eighth time, they've won the Pinnacle Award from the Better Business Bureau.
That is the most prestigious customer service award that they offer, and it's almost
unheard of that they would give it that many times to a company. They've
got a twenty four to seven three sixty five support team, very knowledgeable.
They walk you through the process. They sit down with you and you tell
them what you're looking for. What do you want to protect the whole house
or just the freezers, and they can get you the right generator to match
with that. They do everything through the steps. You've got to get a
hold of the city or the hoa or something the power company, you know,
to make all the arrangements. They do that. They take care of
that. They even pour the slab to put the thing on, and then
afterwards they stay there. That twenty four to seven three sixty five customer service.
They continue to reach out and they come and maintain things. I think
it's about twice a year, so quality home. I would say the fact
that it's coming from them is even more important than the fact that it's a
super quality generator, because service after the sale and before the sale is very,
very important. We're going to head out now to Missouri City and talk
to Ray. Hello. Right, hey, great show up. I just
have a quick question. Okay, around my house, I have a different
mixture of shrubs, but under each window I have shrubs that have little sticky
point of needles, have like seven points on it that will stick you and
I use this kind of like a security measure. Yes, well, back
when we had the drought, all of those pointy things dry it up and
died. Have I lost them or will they come back? Probably lost them.
I think you are the leaves very stiff leaves. Yes, that's that's
a Chinese. That's a Chinese holly. And uh it's a great it's a
great security shrub because it hurts. You can't get through it without hurting.
And right, but Holly's the first two maybe three years. Getting them off
to a good start is very important because a little bit of drought will cause
what you just described, and so regular watering, making sure the soil doesn't
dry out. And sometimes with a stiff bush like that, you may have
a sprinkler spraying, but it's being blocked from reaching parts of the soil you
needed to reach. You want to wet the whole bed, so shifting over
to a drip irrigation would be a good idea, or just checking that out.
Doing some hand watering during hot summer drought weather would also be helpful.
But if you want to go back with a holly plant, okay, And
I think I heard you mentioned on a previous show someone asked about the same
problem with a magnolia tree and you said those are probably gone. Also,
yes, that's true. Yeah, just my experience has been you know,
I don't know. Maybe you could get a resprout, but that's going to
be the ugliest magnolia. If you had a sprout come out somewhere, you
know, it'd be so defaced. But I think they're pretty much gone.
Well what we say is what we say is if it's brown, cut it
down. Okay, all right, thank you for the call, right,
thank you, you bet take care. Heirloom Soils has a fall special going
on. That is it's a really big deal. The veggie and herb mix
now veggiean herb is good for all kinds of bedding, plants and things,
but especially designed for veggies and herbs. One hundred and nineteen dollars bulk or
one hundred and forty eight dollars supersack. That's a qbicyard that they drop on
your driveway. Real neat and clean way to go about it. The rose
soil is seventy dollars bulk and ninety nine for the supersack. And those two
soils are some of the best products that you can buy anywhere in this region.
And you need to take advantage of this because that is a huge,
huge sale, a very good deal going on, and Heirloom Soils knows how
to make those. Hey, by the way, Airloom Sauce is going to
be with me out there at the Ciena Mulch Fall Back in Love with your
Yard event and I'm going to be given away some eight court bags of the
works, which is a three court bags of the cactus and succulent mix that
they make, and I come on out and visit with the folks at Heirloom
Soils find out more about the many, many products that they carry, because
they really have a lot of quality products out there. But if you've been
thinking about making a bed, or rejuvenating a bed, or building it up
a little higher, with this deal on the bulk purchase, you're not going
to find better than that. So now's the time to go ahead and take
care of things. And remember, first comes the brown stuff, then comes
the green stuff, well, soil compost most that's the brown stuff. Well,
let's see, we are running a little short on time. I did
want to mention to you though, the folks at Medina have the hast Grow
product that's a six twelve six liquid and I use it for watering in anything
I plant, from a little vegetable transplant all the way up to a rosebush
or tree. Now six twelve six hast Grow contains Medina soil activator, human
acid, and seaweed extracts. I'll mix it in water, pour it on
the soil right around the plant right when I plant, do it again about
a week later, and again about a week after that, three times to
get that plant off to the best start that you can get it off too.
And it's got a lot of biological activity there. You can buy it
to mix up, or you can just have a convenient kind of hose in
spray if you want to go that route as well. We're going to take
a break seven one three two one two. We'll be right back KTRH.
Well, good morning and welcome back to garden Line. I'm your host,
Skip Richter. Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. Buchanan's Plants in the Heights is another one of those destination garden
centers. You just you just have to see it. It is. It
is a beautiful place to walk through. The selection they have is amazing.
I mean it is. They have pretty much everything you could possibly want when
it comes to plants and products like fertilizers and soils that I recommend here on
garden Line. They've got all that kind of stuff covered. Always something great
going on at Buchanan's Plants as well. Hey, write this down on your
calendar. Harvest Floral Workshop Tuesday, November twenty first, from twelve to one
now they will come in. Someone's coming in from Ponrosa Blooms to teach how
to do the floral designs and that is such a handy thing. I mean,
just in time for the holidays and decorating your home and things, and
plus it's just a lot of fun to see those kind of things. They
got a new shipment of gerber daisies, and if you've never grown a gerber
daisy, oh my gosh. The colors are amazing, from coral to red,
to yellow to pink. It just beautiful, beautiful plants that do well.
I've had some that live several years in a container on my patio and
it just I love gerber daisy And Buchanans has those. Hey, it's Buchanansplants
dot Com and it's on East eleventh Street in the Heights. It's as simple
as that. We're gonna head now, let's see, We're gonna go to
talk to Bess in Conro. Hello, Bess. Hi. I was able
to get some red clover seeds recently. I have no idea. It's just
a sack of them. When do I plant them? Do they recede?
I guess they probably need full sun. I need to know something about red
clover. You need to plant them right away. This is the time to
get it done. They're little, tiny seeds and so you know, it's
not like you're digging a hole to plant the seed down. I mean,
just scatter them and if you're able to just kind of rush over the soil
surface a little bit, just kind of rake them in just a little bit,
that is helpful. But they once you water them in, they're gonna
sprout and they're gonna they're gonna do fine. Do they reced every year?
Do you have to replant? Well, they will go to seed, and
you know as you kind of mow that down, if you will, you're
going to scatter the seed and then they should come up the next year for
you. Okay, But a lot of that depends on go ahead, okay
and there and I guess full sun, yes, absolutely full sun for clover.
Are you growing it to put nitrogen in the soil or just for the
beautiful blooms? No. I was told by an arborist that it was her
husband planted some uh that came up and uh oh, and when is it
going to come up? He planted it for it to come up on Valentine's
Day? And she said, if you could get some to spread it out,
like I have a pasture, like a small pasture where we had a
horse said, be really pretty in there. Okay, but you go ahead,
you can plan them now, that's just fine. Okay, great,
all right, well thank you so much. All right, thank you very
much. We're gonna go to Mark in Deer Park now. Hello Mark,
Hey, how you doing good? Okay? Hey, I got a question.
I have acquired an RV park and it's completely it's like a parking lot,
okay. And what I want to do I want to plant some trees.
But I gotta be careful about what I plant because at some point the
limbs are going to be falling out and hitting these RVs. Okay. And
so the question is what is the best tree to plant to shed the less
limbs? Now I know they're all going to shed, but what's the best
tree to plant to keep from losing its limbs? Well, I would I'm
gonna answer kind of flip that upside down. I would avoid like a pecan
there. They seem to be especially bad about that. The Chinese pistache sometimes
can be a little bit problematic in that way. So a good quality red
oak is what I would recommend. It makes a big tree. You're going
to get some shade for the trailers. Out there in a pretty quick time.
They grow pretty rapidly. If your area is a little soggy at times,
if it's a heavy clay and it tends to stay a little wet,
you might want to get a particular red oak called nuttall oak. N utt
Al I believe is a spelling nuttall. That would be the one I think
I would most recommend out there. Okay, is that nut tall oak?
Is that a red oak? Yeah, it's a red oak. People usually
talk about Schumart oaks and schue Marts are fine. If the soil is a
little better nut tall in heavier soil, it doesn't drain, well they do.
They can do that with the Schumart can't. Okay, okay, okay,
all right, Well that kind of answers my question. I knew something
like that that grows quick, kind of like an Arizona ash that that would
be disaster. Yeah, it would be a disaster. Just remember, grow
fast, die young when it comes to trees and so but we can take
a moderate growth rate tree and we can speed it up and accomplish what we
want to accomplish. Okay, the nut tall someone that it is the right
soil, it's going to be out toward the Annawhak area just east of Houston.
Okay, that what kind of growth rate are we looking at? If
we start out with a tree, say eight foot tall, yeah, six
to eight foot tall five years, where are we going to be at five
years? Boy? This is there are so many variables that no matter what
I tell you, it could be wrong. But I would say a good
quality red oak and good good care, meaning don't let the grass grow up
to it. Give it a big a mulched area as you can early on.
Especially, don't let it go through drought in the summer. If it
doesn't rain for two or three weeks, give it a soaking and then moderate
fertilization. You should be in five years probably up about somewhere in the fifteen
to twenty foot range. Oh really, yeah wow, but that's under that's
under ideal conditions. It's going to sit there at first when you plant it,
you know it's going to sit there because it's got to get a root
system established. So but I've seen them grow pretty darn fast. Okay,
Now, this this area that what I'm talking about, has they put this
crushed rock in there, so I know I'm going to have to clear some
of that out. How much do I need to clear out? And give
it soil around that tree? I know, I know, you can't just
dig a hole in the middle of that crush rocking planet because it's probably not
going to get the water that it needs. Yeah, get all that,
all of that out of there, and as wide of an area as you
can do it, but especially you know, at least five foot area around
the tree. And then is this a place where you're going to be able
to mulch the trees or not? Probably not? Okay? All right,
Well that's what I would do, U, And I think that gives it
its best shot. And as it's growing, for every inch of trunk diameter
each spring and summer, give it two cups of a lawn fertilizer and that'll
be the most that you can do. And Mark, I've got a got
to run for a break here, but hopefully we got you off on a
good start there. Our phone number is seven one three two one two kt
R H and Judy and Pat you'll be the first up when we come back.
Well, come back to garden line. We are going to go right
to the phones here. We've got a lot to talk about we'll go to
Spring Branch and talk to Judy. Hello, Judy, Hi, my question
is about knocked out roses. I've planned them all less March, and I
don't know should I be fertilizing them now or what do I do with them?
You don't need to fertilize now. Wait until you know, we get
into some spring growth and you can start fertilizing them again at that time.
Okay. And I've read that you proved them all like February. Is that
right? Yeah, that's a good time in general, a little bit earlier
in February because they kind of do pretty well and pretty cool temperatures, and
so I would get it done in early February. Okay, that's it.
Thank you so much. Well, that was fast and easy. Thanks for
the call. I appreciate that. All right, bye bye bye bye.
I'm going to go now to Pat in Paarland. Hello, Pat, Hey,
good morning. How are you. I'm doing well? Thank you good.
I went three weeks ago and purchase what you recommend. I went with
Microlife products in my front yard. Okay, the you know this, and
so I put it down three weeks ago. But then I realized that sometimes
I hear on the radio, people talk even two months about carbo load.
So since I've already put down the microlife recommendation, when could I maybe put
carbload in my grass? Well, if you've done the micro life, there's
no need to fertilize again with anything because you've already gotten that down. Now
are you? Are you looking for the fertilizer aspect of carbon load or weed
prevention aspect? Well, I did put down the barricade pre merchant as well.
Okay, well you're set up. Then you're good to go along.
Though that's the only thing. I don't know how long am I good for?
Now? Oh, you're good until spring. So if you go online
to gardening with skip dot com, my lawn care schedule is on there and
it tells you organic and synthetic fertilizers, It talks about trace minerals, it
talks about aeration and mowing and watering and everything like that that makes your long
grow well. And then there's another schedule for the problems of the lawn like
insects, diseases, weeds and so on. But those are free, you
can just download them. It's a real multicolor, easy to read and easy
to follow. So I'm good till February or March. Oh yeah, yeah,
I would. In fact, if you're going to do the microlife,
I would probably apply it the first of April. Okay, So forget about
the carbolode, forget about adding it to an already fertilized and already we prey
emergent treated lawn. Yes, you don't need to double up on on on
things. You know they say if a teaspoons good, a tablespoons better.
Well not when it comes to lawn care. Okay, okay, On one
last question, I've got a front flower bed area that gets a lot of
shade, especially in the winter. But on the end, I have some
some plants that are doing well, high biscuits and stuff like that because I
get afternoon sun. But I do have some i think it's called hosta hosts
that survived. What would what would be good to put in the front because
a lot of the other summer things have died and I'm starting to plumb out
that looks so beautiful as I watered this really well, that I don't know
what's good for fall and winter. Well, uh, Hostas are perennials,
but they generally aren't very happy here. In this area, I would say
probably, uh. For you said it's shady. How shady is it?
It really never gets direct sunlight? Okay, maybe a little bit in the
morning. Juga makes a beautiful groundcover. We have things like loriape that's a
clumping plant that makes a good one mass planted can make a groundcover area.
And then Aztec grass, which is just think of it as white and green
striped loriope. It's similar to that that makes a good brightening groundcover in the
shade because that white color really brings the light out underneath it what's normally a
dark, shady area. All Right, thank you so much. All Right,
I hope that gets you off to a good start. Pat We're going
to run to Paarland now and talk to Jim. Hey, Jim, Hey,
good morning. I'm talking about that Arizona ash tree. I have to
say I've got one in my front yard, been there since nipeens. It's
got about a forty eight inch base and a spread of over one hundred feet,
and Martin Spillmore has done a wonderful job keeping track of it for me.
Well, I wouldn't expect any less. That's probably why it's still alive
because the Arizona ashes they do to the grow fast and die young. I
can take you to neighborhood's planet in the sixties and seventies, and I drove
past those neighborhoods twenty thirty years later, and I'm just like ever Tree just
about was. Yeah, that's what I say. I give all the credit
to Martin on that. Well good. But I also wanted to ask you
about aerration and top dressing because I've been trying to get a hold of orglone
and they don't seem to want to answer. Do you have any other recommendations?
I'll tell you what. When we were done here, would you hold
on. I'm going to get josh to get your email or give you my
email. I need you to send me that because that is not at all
like them. I don't know if we have the wrong number, what's going
on, but we need to get that fixed. And I don't have another
recommendation really for that. Okay, okay, alrighty, Well, thank you
for the call putting you in hold and Joshua, be alrighty. I need
an email from you and with some detail on what happened. Thank you.
Yeah, it could be a lot of reasons, but that is not how
they do business. I know that. Let's go up to the Woodlands.
We're going to talk to Steve. Hello, Steve, Hi, thank you
for taking my call. Yeah, this is just real quick. I've discovered
I have a bag of ncrofoss fifteen five ten and it's been there for about
a year and a half, almost two years, and it's never been opened.
Is it still good? Absolutely, go ahead and use it. Yep,
you can still use it, okay, And can I use it now
for the fall? I haven't done my fall yet. No. No,
it's not a fall fertilizer. It's got a lot of nitrogen the first number
in it, and you just hold on to it. And when we get
to I don't know, late February or early March, if you want to
do a fast green up, you can use that for a fast greenup.
That'd be a good application of it. Perfect. Okay, you're in the
Woodlands, I would say, since you're in the Woodlands, I would say
early March as opposed to late February's gotta work, all right, sir,
Thank you. Thanks, you appreciate that call very much. We made it
through all the calls there that were hanging on. I guess if you called
in the next thirty seconds, we can take another call from you. Boy.
This was a kind of a Whirlwinday talked about a lot of things,
of course, a lot about trees. People are always concerned about their trees.
Just remember, if you're going to plant a tree, you're not going
to have a better time than right now. Yes, we can plant a
tree twelve months out of the year. Here. The hotter it gets,
the more tricky it is to get them established well. But this is a
time if you're going to do any kind of pruning. Late winters the time.
Don't prune your trees, your fruit trees, specifically fruit trees in the
fall. That affects how early species of fruit blooms in the spring, and
we don't want them to bloom earlier, So just hold off until late winter
for that. A little minor trimming on landscape trees now and then is fine.
Just remember on the pruning category that any plant that blooms only in spring,
you don't prune until after it blooms. So that would be red bud,
that would be a dog, would that would be what else? Forsythia
blooms in the spring. I'm trying to think of other examples. There are
many other spring on oh. Once blooming rose like Lady banktrose, it blooms
in the spring and never again. A lot of roses just keep blooming in
cycles. But anything that blooms in the spring, it's got its bloom buds
on it right now. And if you're prune, you're just staying away for
spring flowers, so let them go and after bloom, then prune them.
For all the other things that bloom through the year, like a rose that
blooms in the spring but keeps blooming through the year, you can do your
pruning in the wintertime. For those that is just fine to do. Don't
worry about that at all. It'll be good, good to go. Before
you go out and prune things, learn how to do it. There's a
right way and a wrong way to do it. I certainly can't explain the
whole thing on the radio. I need to put something up on my website
about that. But anyway, that is what I would recommend is learn,
learn, learn, so when you do the job, you do it right
and your plants are enhanced not harmed by the printing practices. Well, you've
been listening to Garden Line. We're going to be back tomorrow six am to
ten am tomorrow. We'll be right here where we are today, our phone
number seven one three two point two fifty eight seventy four. Write that down
sticket on a refrigerator or something, so you've got it there. I'm going
to be out at Ciena Mulch. I'm fixing to jump into the car.
We are going to be out there at a really cool shindig that they have
going out at Ciena Mulch. I'm going to be given away, in fact,
that first twenty six people that come to my booth at my table,
I'll be giving away a free product from Microlife, from Heirloom Soils or from
Nelson Plummer. We're going to have plenty of that on hand. Show up
by the way, Cienamultch FM five point twenty one Row Sharon, Texas