For example, if a tree just bends over, like the trunk is literally
leaning over, as if you had a fishing pole pointing straight up and someone
grabbed the top and pulled it over around toward the ground. In other words,
the root systems intact, but the trunk has bent. Well, that's
due to the fact that trunk had not developed good strength yet. And with
really young trees that's often the case. They may be grown staked very tightly
to a stake to keep the trunk nice and straight, and as a result,
it doesn't bend, it doesn't get stronger, and then you put it
out in the wind, and the whole thing just basically, you know,
leans over. Sometimes splits or cracks, but just leans over. Those you've
got to pull back up into place. If you've got a smaller tree and
you have a tree stabilizer or a three sixty tree stabilizer and a iron t
post, you can hammer it in the ground and use that as your support
for it. It's going to take a while for that tree to get strong
again. What you're going to have to do is let them wind move it
around, don't you know, stake it tightly to the trunk or to the
post. That way that movement, that trunk will develop strength and in time
you won't need that support anymore. Second thing that I noticed happens is the
tree itself blows over and the roots come up out of the ground. If
it is a tree that's only a year or too old from planting, then
you can straighten it back up, get it staked into place again. Get
you a three sixty tree stabilizer and do that. It makes it really fast
and simple and effective too. By the way, and you put those roots
back down in the ground, you may have to remove a little soil from
under it that washed in with the rain that came with the wind, so
that that tree can stand straight up and not have this mound underneath it that
is going to pull up the other side as you try to straighten it.
Bottom line is it's going to need to be staked for a good while because
those roots have to redevelop and that's going to take a while. If a
tree is trying to get back after being uprooted like that, it takes a
long time to not only grow roots that reach out, but that reach a
diameter and a strength where now they are supporting the tree again. Now if
a tree is over five years old, and there's no magic in a specific
number. It could be the growing conditions of the site, it can be
the species of the tree, but in general, you get an older tree
like that that falls over and the roots go up into the air. You
know, it picks up the sod and everything, and you see all the
broken off roots that is never going to anchor back down again except under crazy
extra links of staking and waiting, and even then I have my doubt,
serious doubts for it. Just the whole process of straightening a huge tree like
that, it's not worth trying to do in my opinion, because in most
cases it's going to take so long and being able to have a support strong
enough to do all of the structural support for that tree in the meantime,
it's just not practical to do that. The last thing that I mentioned,
well actually a couple things. The split tree trunk. When you have a
branch that splits off, often at the top where it broke loose, you'll
see black which is decaying bark. If you think of two trunks that are
growing in a narrow V shape straight up, you'll picture that with me.
When those trunks are the size of golf balls. They may look pretty far
apart, and then they get bigger and now they're the size of soft balls,
and they're pushing together as it gets larger and larger, as each grow
in diameter, it's like they're pushing each other apart with that growth, and
you get included bark and it's a very weak branch angle, very likely to
split, and we saw a lot of that in this storm. When you
get a split tree, then there's not a lot to do to prune that
all off is it's going to leave a huge wound and it's going to be
very difficult for it ever to heal, and in the meantime, over the
years, you'll get interior decay that occurs under minor splits. Sometimes arborists will
use a bolt to go through to hold it back together, or go further
out on the branch and connect a cable between two branches to provide that same
structural support. That's a touch and go thing, and you need a professional
arbist to make the assessments of what should be done and secondly, where should
that be done. You know, where would you put that structural support?
Doing it yourself, while possible, I wouldn't advise it. I would have
someone who knows what they're talking about come in and fix that. The split
tree trunk. Final thing just to mention is when you're removing broken branches.
When you're removing broken branches, you want to cut the branch off back near
where it attaches to the trunk or another branch, but not flush up against
that trunk. So if you imagine a tree branch and you're following it down
toward the trunk, it's a certain diameter, and right before it attaches,
it flares out. Not every species does this, but a lot of them
flare out in that attachment. If you were to cut all the way against
the trunk, that's a huge wound. If you come out just to where
it hits its sigh the size that you had as you're following it down and
cut it off there, that's a very small wound. And you're leaving the
branch collar, which has the tissues that heal the fastest for that tree.
So basically what I'm saying is look at where it attaches, if there's any
ridge around it around the base, just outside of that is where you cut
further. You leave a stub the stub dies and now the wound cannot close
back over with kellis. So those are a few tips for taking care of
your trees. Don't be afraid to bring a professional arborist in because that is
very, very important. That's why we recommend Martin Spoonmore from a His Tree
Service. There's a how do I put it, there's a line between people
that know what they're doing and don't when you pune a tree, and when
you hire an arboris like Martin from Affordable Tree Service, you're going to get
somebody who understands what to do properly with it. U there are a lot
of people that look around at what everybody else has done and they mimic that.
And that's what gets us great murder where we think we have to chop
every crape murdle off at just above head high every year. It's not a
good practice, but it's because that's what other people do. You want an
arboris that knows what they're doing. An Affordable Tree is that kind of service.
If you like to contact them, it's afftre Service dot com. That'll
get you to Martin's website. If you want to give them a call.
It's seven one three six nine nine twenty six sixty. That's seven one three
six' nine nine two six six three. And you do want to call,
you do want to tell him? You listen to garden line. That
gets you to the front of his line and he stays busy, and so
talk to him about booking something out there to come in and get your trees
ready for the next hurricane or some other summer storm. Well, I'm going
to take a little break here and I'll be right back. Our phone number
is seven three two and two kt RHO. Welcome back to oad line.
Well, we're just talking about some common issues with the trees that we're seeing
now with the storm having passed through and done its work, there's a lot
we can do over the course of time to help our trees. I was
just talking earlier before break about some of the broken limbs, uprooted, bent
trunks, all of those kinds of things, and how to make a proper
cut. It's also important for us to talk a little bit about what do
we do to prevent problems going down the line, and not just problems from
a storm. And listen, there are storms that are going to take down
a tree no matter what you do that if everything is right, the winds
be and whatnot. I mean, it's not like we just prevent that tree
from having any damage, but we want to do everything we can to make
it as strong as we can, to provide a structure for that tree that
can take the weight of the wind, that can take the weight of branches
as the tree grows older and older. And one of that, one of
the first steps is choosing good varieties, good species of trees that want to
grow here. That's important. Remember the instinct of I want a fast growing
tree as one you need to put a little bit of a damper on.
We have some trees that grow at a very good pace if you will water
and fertilize them, get them going. But the fastest growing trees are generally
the worst choices to plant growth. I like to say, grow fast,
die young, because the bottom line is it just falls apart. Arizona ash
trees used to be the thing planted everywhere in the nineteen sixties and seventies,
and you come back maybe twenty five years after that, and you were seeing
entire neighborhoods where they're having to take them down because this tree or that tree
was broken or split or whatever. Not a good tree. Not a good
tree. But we do have some excellent trees that you can speed up considerably
and have a very good, strong, long term tree. Pick the right
species. Second thing you want to think about is you want to make sure
that when you choose your tree, you plant it properly to give it the
best chance of good long term success and fast anchorage, good strong development of
root system outward in all directions to give it a good anchorage anchoring that is
important. Just some things to be thinking about. Those of you who did
go through the storm that have been dealing from with everything from power out to
you name it. Ace Hardware Store has got you covered with everything that you
might need, especially when it comes to hurricane preparing preparation. You know,
you might be thinking, what it just went by, why are we preparing?
Was not the last one. They're predicting this to be one of the
one of the more plentiful hurricane seasons of the year in terms of number of
storms, and so we're just gonna have to watch and see on that.
But there's a lot you can do to get ready. You know, everything
from uh, you know, flashlights and batteries to a little gas power generator
just to be able to run your Maybe you got a freezer in the in
the garage. You just need to keep that thing going. So there's a
lot of possibilities. But ACE has window units that you can plug into the
generator keep those things going when the power goes out. You know how it
gets round here, gas cans, operative cooling systems for summer. For the
beautiful little systems that put out a missing that really is is nice. It
really makes a I don't know ten fifteen degree difference in the field of their
around you. Anyway, make your list and stop by ACE while you're there.
Pick up some fertilizer for your lawn. They've got everyone I talk about
on guardline. Pick up some fire ant control, and definitely all the things
you're gonna want from mosquitoes, you know, from the dunks to other types
of products at ACE Hardware. Aceharware dot COM's their website. By the way,
It's easy to find the store locator on there, and then you know
exactly what it is that you are gonna where it is that you're going to
shop. I like going to ACE Hardware's because you know they're each independently owned,
so each one has its own, its own feel, its own personality,
if you will. And you know, some owners go into some extra
additions of different kinds of products or different kinds of services, and it's just
kind of fun. I enjoy doing it. Of course I like going to
hardware, so that's that's a that's easy and fun for me. Landscaper's Pride
is a purveyor of quality products for our plants, for the brown stuff that
I talk about all the time. Get that right right, Get the soil
mixes right. Well. They have slow mixes, a number of them.
But they also have something I want to focus on now, and that's quality
mulches. They've had a pine bark molt, probably the most popular one they
have. It's locally sourced and it decomposes a little slower than some other mulches,
so people kind of like that, so you're not having to add mulch
as much. They have cedar and cypress mulches that are wonderful in their qualities.
And you know, cedar smells good initially it has a lot of time
to age out there about a beautiful red streaking in it. But it's a
quality melt. Cypress sticks down kind of a heaviness, if you will,
and a durability is it sticks down and stays in place even when it's wet.
And nice light colored molts. And there's on the other end there's black
velvet, which is they're naturally dark colored mults of very velvety, dense,
beautiful, beautiful mult and then of course hardwood bark is a great multch.
When you grind up hardwood materials and make a mulch out of them, you're
going to have well, it's kind of what nature does, right. Nature
drops things in the forest to cover the surface of the soil, and Landscaper's
Pride can help you do that. Go to Landscaperspride dot com ful and learn
more. There's there's plenty of plenty of good products that I didn't even have
time to talk about here, and you're going to find them in a lot
of places, very widely available, so it's easy, easy to get a
hold of. You were listening to garden Line. The number is seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. I had an email come in from someone who sent me
a picture of some grass that they were indicating looks kind of like a thick
crab grass, and what it is is doveweed. And for those of you
that don't know doveweed, doveweed sort of looks like Saint Augustine initially when it's
growing in it it's got a fat, wide blade like Saint Augustine, fatter
and whiter than Saint Augustine. But it produces a little tiny flower, very
tiny flower. But it also is very invasive and when you it recedes profusely,
and when you have a wet area, doveweed is going to be really
happy there. So number one avoiding extra wetness in this lawn. Being a
remunalaw it could go a little on the dryer side between waterings and that would
be helpful. But there are also some products out there that will kill doveweed
if you've got little spots of it. There is a cinnamon based powder product
that you can find at our garden centers that will you sprinkle it on wet
doveweeds. Another way, turn on the sprinkler, just wet the dove weed,
then wrinkle that summon product on it and it just turns it black.
Pretty quickly actually, and that's a natural way to do it. If you
got big areas of it, that gets a little pricey, and so you
may want to shift to something like a celsius as an herbicide that can help
with that as well as a post emergent. Just make sure and get out
and do it early in the morning when it's the coolest time of the day
so that as it dries off and everything. Celsius is less damaging in warmer
weather than some of the other broad leaf post emergent products. But I don't
just assume it can be one hundred degrees and you pray it in the middle
of the day and that's not gonna be a problem, especially Saint Augustine loss.
But anyway that should be able to get that under control. I know
a lot of you probably have that weed in your lawn and whenever I do
appearances, inevitably I'll see doveweed come in a little plastic bag as people show
up to say what's the and what do I do about it? Yeah?
That is you know, we have a handful of weeds in our lawns that
are the problem child of the lawn. We have weeds that are easy to
control. You know, things like even cribgrass, you just put a pre
emergent down and it never comes up. You get a good dunse lawn.
It can't get light, it doesn't come up. Some weeds are easier,
but when you're dealing with stuff like dollar weed and Virginia button weed and doveweed,
those you kind of got to get a little specific with what you're going
to use on them. And some like the Virginia button weed, you're maybe
going to take more than one application of something to really get ahead of it.
But on all three of those weeds, doveheat, dollar weed, Virginia
button weed, when you keep your lawn too wet, the weed proliferates.
It's like you're creating Disneyland for that weed. And don't do that. Let
it dry out well and then water a good deep soaking, let it dry
out again. That's not gonna make the weed go away. It just slows
down the spread. And it makes sense to always start with cultural controls before
we go grabbing for something to spray and kill it. Well, it is
time for another break here. I'll be right back if you'd like to call
Chris and get on the board. Seven one three two one, two fifty
eight, seventy four. There are Houston's News, Why there are traffic plus
breaking news twenty four to seven. This is News Radio seven forty kt RH
five Everywhere with more of what's happening now from the John Morris Services Studios.
Trump doing fine after shooting. I'm Jarrett Lewis, SIS six thirty on News
Radio seven forty KHRH. A quick look at traffic in weather. Good morning
too, Gary mack Hey, couple of things going on. Good Sunday to
you. Road debris on our northwest side in a right lane to ninety northwest
freeways east bound around Skinner Rag. All right, we're back back on Garden
Line. Welcome back. We are going to head straight out to the phones
right now and start off with Travis out in Schulenburg and Travis him there we
go. Welcome to garden Line. Okay, I'm gonna have to put Travis
back on hold for some reason we're not getting hold of. I'm gonna try
Kathy in Northwest Houston. Hello, Kathy, Welcome to garden Line. Hello,
Hey Keathy, good to have you with us. Hey, I thought
the gremlins had invaded our electronics again. I didn't they have already out here.
I've been going almost a week without power. Oh my gosh. Sorry,
Oh it's hard when you have septic systems, you know, you're sort
of self contained. Power is the only thing I need and I ain't getting
it. So anyway, yeah, right around the corner, I send you
to Quality Home. They sell generacs and they're excellent. Anyway. Oh really,
well, the Genera, the actual company is right around the corner,
all right, little yeah, So what I want to ask you about poison
ivy. It is prolifically political, raking, excuse me, everywhere, and
I can't get control of it. And I have a son who's highly allergic.
Okay, do you have like poison ivy trunks going up the side of
a tree something, you know, larger stands, the sides of trees,
the ground, It's going everywhere. Okay. So poison ivy is best controlled
with a product that contains trichlo peer and I'll spell that. Do you have
a pen pencil handy? Yes, I'm ready, all right, t R
I C l O E y R try clove here. It's in a lot
of products. You may say that when you go to a garden center shelf
and you look or ace hardware wherever you're getting it. You look right there
and you see it may say poison ivy killer, or it may say stump
and brush killer or something, but the ingredient is trico peer. You want
to get it just on the poison ivy, not on anything desirable, because
it kills broadly plants and it's really hard on Saint Augustine to the point of
I wouldn't. Oh, I don't have much Saint Augustine. I have a
lot of treaties and a lot of poison ivy that's just getting bigger and bigger
and bigger, and it's going on. Yeah. So where it's going up
a tree, all you have to do, and you can take a little
like a hatchet or a saw or whatever work and just cut the stem off
against the tree trunk. I'd take two cuts and make take a little section
out and to that fresh cut surface it's going down in the ground. You
paint that tricle pare right on it. Paint meaning get a little spongebrush and
just dip it in the product straight and then dip it on there. It's
probably less than a teaspoon is needed. On that fresh cover of the poison
of a poison ivy stump, and you stay with it and it will you
will win. Well, there's a patch, and I say patch, Yes,
it is a patch under some oak trees that I have, or pecan
is one of the other That's all I thought is pecan oak tree. Fortunately,
I'm not allergic to poison ivy. I can grab it, and but
I can't burn it. I know that I put in a plastic bag and
buried in a are I don't have service. So what are you asking me?
Now? What is your okay? So I'm just saying I can actually
I have to pull it out of the ground or dig it out, because
what's not going up the tree? I can rip that off. But what's
in the ground. Ah, when when it's sprung it? Yeah, and
you can. That's why I ask if it was. You know, if
there's any desirable plant and you get tricle peer on it, you're probably going
to be in trouble with that. Oh No, I don't have a no,
I'm on property. All right, You got okay, Kevin? Well,
I appreciate it. Thank you. Trickle pere is your answer, and
good luck with that. Thank you appreciate, appreciate your calling in the garden
line. We're going to go now to Travis and Schulenberg. Hey, Travis,
are you there? Yes, sir? Can you hear me? Now?
I can? I can? How can we help? Yes, sir,
I've got a pecan tree, full well established contree, great shade for
the house. It's low close to the car port. You know, I'm
wanting to put a live oak tree where I need to put the live oak
tree to wor set best and not mess with the foundation kind of thing,
or I need a planet would put it just outside basically the canopy of that
established pecan tree. Can I plan it now? Let it get it established?
Do I need to trim the limbs off of that one side where that
live oaks should go? Do I need to just completely take out that pecan
tree from the start? Okay, Well, if you wanted to work your
way into this, you could take out some limbs over there. But when
trees grow close together, they they block each other's light, and so when
you take one away after they've grown that way for a while, now you
have a tree. This looks like it was cut in half because nore inches
going out in that direction. So the sooner if you're gonna get rid of
the pecan, the sooner you do, the more the live oak can grow
into more natural shape and form. Perfect. Thank you very much, sir.
Yeah, And like I said, if you if you don't want to
do it all at once, I certainly understand that maybe you could do some
partial printing on the pecan as you're giving the live oak time to grow kind
of heading on. All right, all right, thank you. I appreciate
appreciate your call very much. The summertime is the time when our lawns need
good nutrition. Actually all year it is, but this is when they're actually
growing the fastest, and so providing good nutrition that's moderated out to feed that
lawn is important. And here's what I'm talking about. If you dump a
whole bunch of nitrogen at once, you're going to get a lot of top
growth. So you get to mow a lot and actually have a less root
growth than a wealth that early fed lawn. That that is the fact's been
determined by research. I see pictures in ages past where they grew long and
no hardly no nitrogen medium, and then excess and crocs and they pick them
up and you see the root systems, and like in decent fertilization, it's
kind of nice root system, but when you overdo it, it's a reduce.
So what happens when a chinchbug comes along or a grub comes along to
eat, or it gets dry and hot and you're trying to water enough?
Do you see what I'm saying? You want to moderate it out and Nitroflass
Superturf is a product that does that for you. You put it out now
and for the coming months up until fall. Now it will gradually feed that
long over time, and I appreciate the way that works. I think that's
a great way to go in summertime. Slow release fertilizer. You can get
it at D and D feed up in Tomball. You can get it at
Fissures Hardware, both the one South Houston on Southomore and in Laporte on Broadway
Street. That one's in Broadway Street. Easy to find those products. We're
gonna take a little break and when we come back, we got I see
Gary and Ken and a no name color. We'll be right back. Have
you with us this morning. We're gonna jump right out here and go to
let's see this is a situation where it's not giving me a name. So
welcome to garden Line. Who am I talking to? Good morning? This
is John. I didn't get to talk to anybody to give my name,
but this is John. I'man bel Air. Yeah, we got a little
glitch in the system, but we're getting through it. Welcome John and Bellair.
Thank you. So I'm building a pool. I'm building a pool.
I've got a the the link to my battery. The width in my backyard
got about twelve feet between the pool and the fence. I'm looking for some
trees to put there that don't get too big. I don't really like the
palm tropical look. I was looking more for hill country. I wanted to
know what you thought about maybe some Bradford pears or red butts. Learn about
the pears was after this storm. I see how easy they break apart,
and just kind of want to know what you thought about some trees didn't get
too big. Yeah, I'm no fan of bread for pair. I could
gripe about it for an hour, but don't do that one. The red
bud is okay if you get it in a lot of full sun. Then
if you can hunt down a red bud that is a Texas red bud.
There are three kinds of red buds we have around here. One is the
Eastern redbud. That's what ninety percent of the planets you see around town are.
It's from the eastern forests and stuff. If you're going west, there
is a Texas version of that same genus and species that has glossier leaves that
tend to be a little rounder with less of a point at the bottom of
the leaf, and it's much more tolerant in sun in our planet when you're
trying to go western from here. The third is a Mexican red Bud's another
one, but a very different kind of plant. Anyway, that that would
be an option you might want to try. When when you're saying you want
a tree, how tall do you want something to be? It's not too
tall because I've got some power lines that run the back. Yeah, and
so you know, something bigger than a bush. But I certainly can't take
a big oak tree or anything. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.
Well, Chinese let's see, probably Chinese fringe tree would be an option.
It would do well. It grows at a moderately slow rate and it doesn't
get huge over time. It has beautiful white, shaggy booms in spring.
If you want again to go back western, there's oh gosh, Desert Museum,
Colo Verde, and that is a very different kind of tree. It's
it's you see it as you go in south southeast Texas. Related versions called
retama, but the trunks are green, and it's got thorns on the leaves
and it produces very wispy leaves with yellow flowers that are attracted. But it
has a good Western kind of appearance to it if you want to go that
way. And then there's Anacaca orchid, which is a type of ahinea with
white flowers in the spring. Another very tough tree. And when you plant
those things you can kind of quit worrying about having to water them. Make
sure they do have good drainage. Though for all all of these species,
I was writing them down. What was the Chinese when you said Chinese fringe,
there is also a native fringe. Chinese fringe is showier. But whichever
way you want to go on that, go online, look up some pictures
of these and see which one fits you best. That's all. Do that
Chinese fridge. Worry about the bare feet around the pool. Don hody toward
or anything? Does it none? And even the PalaVerde that has thorns,
it doesn't drop thorns. You know what I'm saying that it's yeah, okay,
so unless a branch fell on the ground and stepp okay, we'll go
look at them. Thank you very much. There's a bunch of palp.
Yeah, okay, you take care, appreciate the call. Al Right here,
let's see, I want to just mention one thing before we go any
further. When we get wet weather and then dry weather, which is what
happens all the time. You know, this hurricane just drenched us and it's
going to dry out again. And when that happens, that move that causes
clay soils to shrink and swell, which is why you see all of the
damage that we see from foundation damage to driveway damage to sidewalk damage. Yeah,
tree roots can get under and lift up a sidewalk, but basically it's
the shrinking and swelling of the soil that cracks our foundations. Tree roots take
water away, which makes it dried even faster. And fix. My slab
is here to make sure your foundation is properly assessed. And then properly fixed.
Ty Strickland has been doing this twenty three years telling me your guardline listener
free estimates for guardenline listeners. But if you see a crack in the in
the bricks on the outside, a crack in the sheet rock inside, door
sticking, all of those are signs that you may have a foundation that's moving.
And the sooner you deal with it, the better. Don't wait,
it doesn't get better, it gets worse. So call tie two eight one
two five forty nine, or just visit fixmislab dot com. Fixmislab dot com
and you can get it taken care of. Good assessment. All right,
We're gonna go out now to Tumball and talk to Ken. Hello. Ken,
Okay, dud, good morning. Quick question for you. I'm thinking
about replacing a driveway that's over top of some roots of some oak trees,
and so I'm just wondering, is there something I can do to help protect
the trees when they pour the new concrete, because I understand that's it's a
cidic or it has some something in it that can damage the roots. Well,
the concrete just yeah, and if you're pouring it right over roots too,
that that's probably not a good idea. They're going to continue to grow
and expand and everything. You know, I would I would call Martin spoon
Moore and have him come out and do a side analysis and give you advice
on what he would recommend. I can't see what you're seeing there at the
house, so I can't just say, oh, we'll put some of this
down and so many inches and then put the driveway on top of that.
You need to be out there to take a look at it, and he
can. He can make a trip out and take a look and see that
you can put on a little bit of a base and then go ahead and
do the poor. Or it may be that some roots need to be cut
or removed, which which is unfortunate and something we don't like to do unless
we have to. Yeah, and what was that name again, Martin spoon
More And the business is Affordable Tree Service. Okay, all right, thank
you very much. Yeah, if you go to afftree Service dot com.
That's the that's his website. Would you like a full seven one three sure
six six twenty six sixty three seven one three six nine nine two six sixty
three. All right, thank you very much. Yet thanks for the call.
I appreciate that a lot. By all right. Uh, you know,
one of my favorite new products on the market is a new product by
Medina. It's part of their Hastra gro line. It's called Supergrow Plus.
This I like it for several reasons. Number one, it's a good ratio
for about ninety percent of the lawns out there. It's a sixteen zero two
fertilizer ratio. Number two, it hooks up to a garden hose, covers
about four thousand square feet for the work bottle that hooks to the hose,
and it takes what ten minutes to go over your lawn and just do this.
Plus, in addition to nutrients, it's got a kelated form of iron,
which is important. That is a nutrient by the way. It's got
molasses, it's got humic acid. It even has some seaweed in a seaweed
extract. So it just really gives a fast response and a good response,
and a little bit of that nitrogen is slow release too, so it's not
just you know, dumps it all at once and now there's nothing left.
It does provide that if you return your clippings, you can probably do the
supergol once or twice a year. If you don't return your clippings and you
bag them, well, first of all, why are you throwing away for
a fertilizer. But you're just gonna have to up them out of any fertilizer
that you use a look for We are going to take a break here at
the top of the hour. Put our first hour in the books. Today
you are listening to garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Richer. If
you would like to do on there and ask for questime seven one three two
one two KTRH seven one three two one two KIPR eight don't forget. But
if you go online to my website here, y'all always should listen to guarden
Line with a paper and a pencil or pen in hand because we're always giving
your information. Not you know right now, Well, just go to gardening
with Skip. That's me gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot
com. There's the lawn care schedule, it's free, download it, you
for it. It's there's also the lawn pest Disease and wead Manners and schedule,
same thing. Go check them out. A lot of the answers to
these questions are on. There a lot of need, a lot of folks
out there. Probably sixty of the people in the crossbing Arrette Station area are
still without power. Centerpoint estimates eighty five percent of customers will be restored by
the end of the weekend. Rangers beat the Astros two to one last nine
and ten innings. The two will play again today with the series split at
one game apiece. First pitch is set for one ten. News on demand
at krh dot com. Our next update will be at seven thirty. I'm
Jarret Lewis. Houston's news, weather and traffic station is News Radio seven forty
kh r H. Kt 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 trip. Just watch him as us. So many
good things to sup by Sun Well, welcome back to garden Line. We
are glad that you were with us this morning. Uh, what do you
want to talk about? You got questions about lawns or trees, or shrubs,
or tomatoes or house plants. We can talk about just about anything that
is of interest to you. I want to tell you that now is still
a time to be planting, and I realized for a lot of people it's
like, oh, it's hot now, I shouldn't be plan. I'm not
going to plan. And no, we've got decent weather in the morning to
get out and get some planting done. And by planting things now that are
heat tolerant, the only key thing right now for success with this is for
you to water them a little bit each day to keep them adequately moist.
That's all it takes, because that little root ball that you put in the
ground is going to dry out faster than it would have back in March when
we were doing spring planting. And so right now you can do it.
Just get out there and do it. And you know, I said the
other day, our landscape has become a sea of green in the summer,
green grass, green ground cover, green trees, green shrubs, and we
can add color to that a lot of good plants that do really well.
For example, in the shade, Terurinia, which is wishbone flower is a
nice, very nice plant. The Hedicium or white butterfly ginger will be blooming
well as we get into late summer and into the early fall, especially Another
one is kalladiums. You're familiar with those kalladiums. The wishbone flower impatients.
Impatients are another good one that does very well in hot weather and shade and
just keeps on performing. We have many many other plants, and so I
would suggest you get out and do that. You know, for example,
right now out at Plants for All Seasons that they're having a sale on a
number of different kinds of roses, knockout roses, drift roses, really a
lot of kinds, except not the Lady Banks. The Lady Banks is not
part of that. But talking about those flowers, you can get those also
at Plants for All Seasons on an incredible sale. I mean, like the
roses are like fifteen bucks. In many cases, that's more than half off
the annual flowers. You can buy the individual little flowers for a four inch
pot for a dollar, or you can get a flat of eighteen for fifteen
bucks. Why not do that and put color in your landscape that is going
to carry you all the way to frost. This is about as good a
deal as you're going to find, and I would just encourage you to think
about it. Also, Angelonia, you know. It's probably one of my
top five plants for the bedding plants for hot sunny areas. Oh by the
way, I didn't mention geraniums and colias. I believe they have those on
sale too, But yeah, Angelonia is a super super plant Plants for all
seasons. That's a garden center up there on two forty nine Tombol Parkway.
So as you're heading up toward tombaal exit Luetta crossover Luetta and just hop skipping
a jump right further down the street, the side street is there. It
is Plants for all seasons. I said that in a way, there's probably
confusing a further down the access road that you're driving on. Plansform. You'll
see it and when you pull in you will see why people love to go
there. Plants for all seasons. You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your
host, Skip Richter, and we are now going to head out to Manville
and talk to Adolf. Follow Adolf, Yes, good morning, And I
have a question for you about cherry plum seats. Is it seeds? How
do I plant those? So you have a cherry plum tree and I bought
cherry clowns at the store. I want to at the plant the seed.
Okay, well, let me first tell you why you may not want to,
and then I'll tell you how to do it, so you get to
choose. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm telling you. Uh,
whenever you take a a variety or a cultivar that has been bred and
developed of any kind of a fruit or a vegetable, especially if it's a
hybrid of vegetables or these fruit, the individual blooms were pollinated and therefore there's
two parents for that plant, so you don't get exactly that parent's fruit.
In other words, if you planted the cherry plum seed, you might have
some plums that are in it that are a different color because in the breeding
line that was there, you may have some plums that are larger, more
susceptible to disease, or there's other issues. And then you don't have the
rootstock because you're planting a seed, so you're seedling is its own rootstock.
So those are the reasons why we generally don't just buy a wonderful tasting peach
and try to grow it at home, because it doesn't end up being the
woman in the store if you want to do it, and it's fun.
It's your yard as you wish. I would take those plum seeds and I
would put them in either some moist spagmum, peat moss or a little bit
of moist sand or maybe even you know what, a moist paper towels,
put them in a closed like a zip lock in the refrigerator and leave them
there for about a month. Uh, and then take them out and put
them in the ground, and they will sprout and begin to grow. That
breaks down a dormancyed that those seeds have. Plums, peaches, apricots,
neck gerens all have that dormancy. Okay, So you're telling the seeds that
they went through winter when they didn't, right, Okay, So after a
month then I can plant in the dirk. Yeah, a month of refrigerator
temperature is usually adequate to do that. You drive a little longer if you
want. But we also have fall coming and you know you don't want to
seed the sprout and a month later have a first so okay, yeah,
okay, So I guess probably be best for me to just order the tree
on online. Yeah, you probably could. I don't know. On the
cherry plum. I don't know what the real variety is, and I'd have
to look that up. You need to make sure whatever you plant peaches,
plums, nectars, that their chilling hours is right for our area. That
would be one other tho. We are far south for a lot of kinds
of traditional fruit, apples and peaches and things. But there are varieties that
will do well here. But a lot of things, a lot of times
that's in the store has to be grown further north than us, where instead
of getting let's say you're medd mid part of Easton or something, five hundred
hours or so of chilling, they're getting probably eight hundred nine hundred hours in
some places. Okay, I get so I'm looking for. When I was
a kids, there were plum trees in the neighborhood. Would go over and
borrow some. Yeah uh, but they they were the trees were full of
those plums. They were tark. That's really what I'm looking for. And
this cherry plung is pretty close to what I was looking for. So well,
it's there a Texas variety, you know the let me let me give
you some another idea. If you go online, there is a horticulture department.
Website up at a n M called Aggie Horticulture, and if you go
to Agi Horticulture, it's Aggie Dash Horticulture. But you can just google it
too. From the front page, you'll see you can click on fruits and
nuts and when we get there, you'll have a free publication full color on
everything from avocados to I don't know what's other into the alphabet line. But
they have plums, peaches, apples, pears, just on a BlackBerry,
strawberries, blueberry. There's a lot of publications on there that are free.
You might want to print out the stone fruit when that would include peaches and
plums, Okay, which one? I'm sorry? Which one of the best.
We call them stone fruit because they have a pit inside, you know
how it is with apricots, peaches and plums and nectare stone fruit, so
they're different apples, So they have their own publication. Alady, all right,
thank you, good luck with that. Good luck. Appreciate your call.
If you're fertilizing your lawn and you want something to give a real quick
release, but to be a pleasant just in general, just a pleasant smelling
and a very effective type of fertilizer. Sweet Green from nitrofoss is one that
will give you that it's about eleven percent nitrogen, which about the highest nitrogen
analysis for any organic plant food. Sweet Green. I would take the application
of it. It's going to be at ten pounds per thousand square feet that
you apply it, and I would put five pounds down now, and then
I take the other five pounds and I'd put it down about six to eight
weeks from now and spread your feeding all the way out that way. Sweet
Green is available in many places, being a nitroposs product. So you're going
to find it at D and D Feed up in Tombole. You're going to
find it at Fisher's Hardware, both the one in South Houston on Sophomore and
in the Port on Broadway Street. We're going to take a little break right
now. If you have us a call and talk about questions that you might
have about your lawn, your garden, your landscape. Well we're here to
help you have a more bountiful garden and a more beautiful landscape. And our
phone number is seven to one three two one two k t r H seven
one three two one two kt r H. You know, Ace hardware stores
are kind of the one stop shop. Their motto thing is what ACE is
the place. ACE is a place for and you fill in the blank.
Ace is a place for storm recovery, all kinds of things from me.
You need a little air conditioning unit, you need a little gas power generator,
you need to get some gas cans. Do you need a chainsaw?
Do you see what I'm saying? And anything you might need for storm recovery,
they've got it at ACE Hardware. In fact, they're stocked up even
ACE Hardware stores. If you know lost power, they're finding ways to continue
going so you can get in and get the supplies you need. Well.
ACE is also the place for fertilizers, all the fertilizer I talk about on
guardlines at ACE Hardware store. It's as simple as that. If you need
fire at control, I encourage you to start with a bait rather than an
individual mountain treatment. Ace Hardware has got a wide variety of bait options for
you. Do you need mosquito repellent? Do you need a fogging machine?
Do you need mosquito dunks? The ones we talk about all the time.
You put in water to kill the mosquito larvae. Ace Hardware has got it
just go to Acehardware dot com, look for the store locator and you'll see
there's four stores in the Greater Houston area that you can choose from. ACE
Hardware is the place that you're going to get everything you need for a beautiful
garden, a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape. I was taking care of
some items that have been on my to do list. I you know,
we all have to do lists, right, and trying to get some things,
you know, knocked out and done. And I was in the garden
digging around in an area where I had planted okra a couple of years ago,
and I found a patch of nematodes. Now how they got there,
I don't know. Maybe they came in with some of the soil mix.
You know, when you have especially when sandy soils are mixed in, you
often bring in nema toads, not just sand, but that they love sandy
soils. They proliferate there. Maybe it came in with a transplant on some
plant that I put in. I usually checked the roots on transplant, you
know, lift them up out of the container and just make sure there's a
little knots, not any little knots on them and things. But I've got
them, and so what I do now, Well, number one, I'm
not going to plan anything that I know gets nematodes in that spot. I'm
not because then I just build their numbers up higher and you have to hunt
around Online. You can see a list of different things you can grow that
are not prone to nematodes. I'm going to do solarizing this summer, where
I put clear plastic over that bed area and I let it get as hot
as it possibly can. Just like when you walk out on a hot sunny
day and you get in your car and the steering wheel and seat buckle both
brand your hand and your lap as you're getting in blistering hot. Well,
you can do that in a garden bed, buppeting clear plastic over it.
That's called solarizing. That's another step. I've got a couple of products I'm
trying out to see if they work. They claim to work, but you
know that doesn't necessarily mean anything. But if they work, I'll tell you
more about them later we'll see. But also planting crops that trap the nematodes
in their roots. The nemotodes go in the roots, they cannot rep and
so it shuts them down that way, and in summertime, the little French
marigals are excellent. Maragals come in basically two types. One is the pom
palm type I call it. That would be something like golf ball or excuse
me, tennis ball size. And then there's the little French maragals that are
typically little single flowered daisy flower looking maragoles that are about the size I don't
know, a little bigger than a quarter maybe that is the other type,
And those seem to be the best at trapping nematodes in the roots. So
I'm gonna have a wall to wall planting of those this summer as well.
And then when the cool season comes, I'm gonna plant cereal rye. That's
not the rye you put in your bond to make it green in the winter.
It is the cereal rye, the grain type of rye. There's a
variety called Elbon Elbon, there's some others out there, and in the cool
season you plant that and it does the same thing. Also in the cool
season, you can plant a cruciferous vegetables that would be things in the coal
crop group, so broccoli, cabbage, kale, mustard, coorabie, especially
the mustard. I'll probably solid seeds some mustard in there, and then when
you chop it up and mix it into the soil, that decomposing mustard top
growth releases chemicals that are that have nomaticidal properties. They can can kill nematodes.
There's a fantas like you know, I give you the fancy word of
the day here. It is isothiocyanate. That is the name of a chemical
that comes out of a plant that fumigates the soil and kills maricle, kills
nematodes in that cool So it's an organic fuma gun. You don't usually see
those two words together in a sentence, but it works. It works pretty
well. But all these suppressed nematodes, nothing eradicates them. So once you
have them, you kind of got them. Uh. There was a time,
day and time where there were very powerful fumaguins that were put out to
kill things like that. Those are gone now and you wouldn't want to use
them anyway. So those are some strategies. Another strategy is to rototill in
the summer, bring moist soil from below the surface to the surface and let
it dry out. Do that repeatedly, and that will help reduce their numbers
and not good for the soil, but it's going after nematods. That's an
option. Those are a few things you can do. Planting nematoad resistant plants
is also important, so they're more something we manage than something we control.
But I feel your pain if you have them, because I've had them on
more than one occasion, and now I just discovered them and where I like
to plant okra, but I guess I won't be in that spot for a
while because okra. You know, if nematods go to a restaurant, they
open the menu and they say do you have any fig or any okra?
Because they love to attack those plants, but they attack a lot of other
species. All right, Well, our phone number if you'd like to give
us a call, is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four
seven to one three two one two five eight seven four. I was just
the other day outside looking at some beds that I had mulched and mult with
a really good quality mulch uh, and I put this down. I think
I think this was nature's way shredded hardwood malts that I put in these beds,
and it works great, except I see little weeds coming up here and
there, and as sure enough, when you go up to it and you
kind of move, it's like the mult is either not over that area,
there's a little beer soil exposed. That's my job operator error. Or it's
just too thin and sunlight gets through and here comes up a few little weeds.
So jump on them, pull those up, throw the mult down a
little heavier over those areas. Because mulch works, it blocks the surface of
the soil, the sun from reaching the surface of the soil, slows down,
rain, reduces erosion, decomposes over time to release nutrients. I mean,
the list of mulch's attributes is a mile long. It's very beneficial to
happen. You got to keep it out there, and you got to keep
it thick enough. So there was my little Maya kulpas story. As you
know, I thought it had. I thought I had it all mult right,
and sure enough I had missed some spots. And that's not a problem.
Just go in and throw mulch on top of it. It'll do just
fine. Star of Hope mission is one you've heard me talk about here on
Guardline before. It is something my wife and I have believed in for a
very long time. Back years ago, years ago we started we actually with
the churcher and we went and helped work at Star of Hope mission as volunteer,
and then we moved away. It spent a long time and coming back
to the Houston area now we are just all in to Star Hope having seen
the work that they do. And listen, we get a lot of requests
for will you donate to this cause or will you donate to that cause?
And I understand that and many good causes out there. When I donate,
I want to know that the money I donate is going to actually helping people
as much as possible. I want to know that. I also want to
know that it's helping them in a meaningful way to change lives. And that
is Star Hope. When you think about a woman that's on the streets with
their kids, living in a car, how on earth would that person get
a job, hold a job, where's childcare? They're with the paycheck and
Star Hope they bring people in, they give them housing, they give them
food, they give them training, and they help them get a job.
They give them both spiritual training job related training, and it's amazing the difference
that it makes. And it does make a difference. And it's not just
that you made a difference for maybe the mom in that case, you certainly
did, but you made a difference in the lives of those kids and you
gave them a future. And listen that. In my opinion, even even
if it is pocket change, anything we can do to help Starve Hope is
something we should do because you know, like I think, two dollars and
eighty cents will provide someone a meal at star Hope because they use their money
very wisely. Shmission dot org. Shmission dot org. That's how you find
out more. Take a little break, I'll be back shortly. Thanks for
being a Guardenline listener. Welcome back to the garden Line. Good to have
you with us. You'd like to give us a call and talk about plants
and gardening and anything you care to talk about, from seed starting indoors to
indoor house plants. It's nice time to be working indoors, especially during the
hot part of the day. Seven one three two one two k t r
H seven one three two one two k T r H. We're glad you're
listening today, and I love to visit with you about the things that are
of most interest to you. And I think right now kind of the elephant
in the rooms of storm that just went by. That was a bit of
a doozy right hurricane, a lot of people out of power, a lot
of extra rainfall, probably more than we would have liked to have had right
at that point in time. But it's good that we got the rainfall,
it's bad that we've got everything else that went with it. If you've got
areas of your lawn or your landscape that aren't draining well, getting that fixed
is important and making sure that you provide the type of drainage system that's going
to work. That's what I'm trying to say, is there you can either
take water and drain it away with gravity to a lower area, or if
you've got a lower area and there's nowhere to drain too, you can have
a some pump type pump put down in the ground in a container and ump
that water out and essentially pump it out up to the street or wherever you're
going to move that excess water. Piercescapes can do that kind of work and
they know how to do it. And so if you've got areas that just
aren't draining well, you know, for maybe days after a rain, there's
still standing water that is that's rough. That's rough for most plants. There
are some plants that can take it, but most plants need good drainage.
Why not let Piercecapes fix that for you? Do you need landscape lighting?
Would you like some stonework some hard scape done for walkways or a patio.
Do you want to see, you know, maybe lighting along a pathways for
example. They know it all. They also know how to fix an irrigation
system. And right now we're entering a season where once this dries out from
the hurricane, we're going to be watering again quite a bit. And union
system that is efficient and that works right where there aren't areas that aren't being
that failed to be covered by irrigation. So Pierce Scapes is the one to
do all of that, and they do more. They also have a quarterly
maintenance of the landscape beds. That's a very helpful thing. Just if they
come out and they do the color changes, they do the mulching and just
all the things you need to make spruce up a bed and make sure it's
looking its best. Piercescapes dot com is the website piercescapes dot com. The
phone number two eight one three seven oh fifty sixty two eight one three seven
zero five zero six zero. We're going to head now out to the phones
and bring someone on. I can't see the name on this, but welcome
to gardenline. Who am I talking to? May Cayrol Well, May welcome,
what's up? Thank you? Well? I live in Bay Vista,
which is real near Galbuston and Headwater. You know, brackish water all over
my yard front and back of the house. What do I need to put
on that in order to make sure that the grass doesn't die. You're talking
about your lawn, right, Yes, well, I would do a couple
of things. First of all, when you can, when it's not wet
still, a good drenching with water helps wash salt salts away. Salts dissolve
easily in water. That's how they got there to your place with the brackish
water, and so drenching it really good, not just light waterings, but
good drenching that helps move the salts out of the area, out of the
sort zone moves them down or move them off surface either way. The other
thing you can do is you could apply a fuliar spray or the hose en
spray of products that contain things like seaweed, fish emotion products like the has
to grow from me dina and those types of products very helpful in doing a
number of itself. But I would first do the drenching to try to get
as many salts as you could away, and then apply the products as a
surface application. What about gypsum. If your soil is clay, and if
the clay is very tight, it doesn't drain well at all, then gypsum
would be helpful because sodium is what causes soils, clay soils to lose their
structure and drain well and be tight, and gypsum knocks the sodium off the
soil particle. So if you don't, if it's not a sodium related issue,
gyps right, the property here in the vista was all clay sum step
to make canals. Okay, Okay, yeah, go ahead. I was
just thinking that that might be appropriate for our yards anyway. Well it might
be, but again it comes down to the sodium part. You know some
areas have high sodium in the water, so every time you irrigate, you're
adding sodium to this. Other places don't have that problem, but so practice
it's going to add some sodium. But usually, you know, one flooding
is not the end of the world. You got to do something. It's
just the repeated application and build up over time. But there's a problem with
gps. Gypsum basically is calcium sulfate, so the calcium moves the pH up,
the sulfur moves pH down, so it's kind of a PhD neutral application.
But yeah, that's that would be the difference. You're trying to get
rid of sodium the problem. Okay, right, okay, alright, thank
you very much. Thanks, I appreciate you. It's uh, yeah,
that is something that you may have heard that in going away in a minute.
I haven't heard that before. I thought gypsum fixed clay soil, and
you just heard me say why. It's the sodium that ruins the soil structure
and causes it to get very tight into hole water and not drain well and
not let oxygen in. And you know up in the College Station area,
the water is very high in sodium and it is a big problem up there,
and gypsum is a good solution. If you have a clay soil and
it's not excessively high in sodium, then gypsum is not going to change your
sol structure. It's not going to help much, if any at all.
Organic matter and air rating, core aerating, deep time core aerating, those
help with a compost stop dressing because now you're getting holes in the ground,
you're getting organic matter down into the soil, bringing oxygen down into the root
system. And coreration with compost hop dressing will help a lot for any clay
soil. And I would say that would be where I would put my money
as opposed to a gypsum application, unless you know that it is a sodium
issue and you have a soil test done to find that out. If you
go to a website and I should have mentioned this to the color when I
was just on lot, if you go to a website called It's Soil Testing
dot t, a MU, dot edu. Soil testing is one word at
dot TAMU, dot edu. It's an A and M statesoil lab. When
you get there, you want to find the urban soil test form. Now,
this is something I wish they hadn't used the term urban because really what
it should be called is the garden and landscape and lawn soil test form.
So vegetables, fruit trees, your lawn, the trees are in your house,
those kinds of plants, rose bushes, that's the soil test for all
of those. It's a horticultural soil test, not the one for pastures.
So why am I talking about it so much? Because just know when you
go there, you want the urban soil test form, and you'll see when
you look at the forum. I mean, you can check a box this
is a rose bad or this is a vegetable garden, and you get your
recommendations and everything made accordingly, which is very helpful. It's not very expensive
to have a soil test. But I'm telling you this, all our fertilizer
recommending is based on standard general principles of what plants use and take up.
But everybody's lawn could be a little different. Your lawn may be very low
in an ingredient that some other lawn is very high end. So as a
result, having a soil test gives you the best, most scientifically accurate way
of knowing how to fertilize what do you use for your particular situation. Otherwise,
our standard recommendations are just they are rules of thumb. They're not come
messing anything up. But it's always better to have a soult test. We're
gonna take a little break and I'll be right back the phone number seven one
three two one two KTRH enjoy talking about all things gardening, anything related to
plants and helping you have success and helping have more fun. You know,
gardening is a hobby, and it is. It is a wonderful hobby.
It gives you outdoor exercise, little sunshine, just fresh air. It gives
you mental health benefits that are very significant. I'm telling you, it's a
peace of mind thing. There's a reason why things like nature, what do
they call it forest bathing? You know, people going for a walk in
the forest are getting out and just being in nature. It really makes a
difference, and gardening allows us to do that. And the more you create
that outdoor scape around your property that you want to get out into that you're
proud of, the more fun it is and we can help you have success
with that. That's what we want to do. But never be afraid to
fail at gardening, because you don't fail at gardening, you just give up,
and don't give up. You see what I'm saying, Gardening is I
like to compare it to the etch of sketches that some of you remember growing
up with. You had to draw with two little knobs. One went up
and down, one went sideways. And if you tried to draw anything like
a curve or a circle, it was very hard, and inevitably you would
go left when you wanted to go right, or up when you wanted to
go down. And now you've messed up your picture. And what did you
do? You took the etch of sketch, held it over your head and
you shook it. And then when you put it down, you had a
blank slate. You got to start over in a garden. That's called a
rototiller, that's called a hoe, that's called a spading fork. You get
to start over. And it's okay, there's no problem with that at all.
Listen, the best horticulturist in the world that I know all will tell
you they've killed a lot of plants over their lifetime. And I'll tell you
that for sure. Uh. And someone once said, you can't be a
good horticulture. So if you don't kill a lot of plants, and the
point is get out there, try it, do it, learn, get
better. It's okay. All right, there's your permission to fail, but
you're not going to really fail. You're just going to get out and have
fun. That's what we hope. Well, we're glad you're listening to us
on guardline. Hey, by the way, the phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. If you've got a question and we can help you with it,
we are more than happy to do just that. Nelson Plant Food has
so many quality products on the market. They've got the color Star line,
which is a very famous line here. Lots of people use it, professionals,
you know, in the industry use it for color beds to create a
real pop of color in the landscape. Then they have the nutri Star line.
There's the hibiscus food that is also for anything that is kind of a
tropical plant that flowers, so things like for example, I can't say the
name of it, just blank. Oh some of the mallows, you know,
and the Texas sage is not tropical, but that's a good plant for
it. It does well with ex ra, with hollyhawks, alfia's any kind
of a tropical as well. They've got the indoor food. I was just
talking to one of my daughters about the indoor plant food of called nutristar indoor
plants. So whatever kind of fold that you have inside, whether it's a
fiddlely fig, a monstera philodendrons, rubber tree, schafflara, snakeplant, you
get the idea of Chinese evergreen. One of my favorite agema. The allocation
of the elephant ears that are often usually outside. It does well for them
as well. Turf Star Slow and Easy is their fertilizer. That is the
slow release, and boy is it ever. It's designed in a way where
that nutrient doesn't come off the particle until some sort of a biocological process happens
to that particle, and so just a gush of water doesn't dissolve it all
and wash it away. It is going to be there and it's going to
feed for three or four months. So you do it now if you haven't
done it already, and you're good all the way until your fall. Fertilization.
It's got a slight acidification effect, which is important for diseases like take
all root rot that do love a high pH condition. So by acidifying a
little bit the plant, the soil surface, the plant runner and root zone,
that helps a lot with that. But that's turf star slow and easy,
one of many many products. By now some plant food this coming week.
One of the projects that I have is getting some more planting done in
the vegetable garden. And when it comes to summer, a lot a lot
of Texas gardeners just sort of lose their imagination. There's a few vegetables that
get planted in summer, but not as many as should be because summer is
a great season for the garden too. So I know a lot of things
that do what it did well in spring from the summer squash, tomatoes,
pepper setting and things. A lot of that dwindles when we get into eat
cucumbers. Another one that when it gets blazing hot, it just doesn't pollinate
well and doesn't do well. But we have plants that do easy easy,
low hanging fruit would be sweet potatoes, black eyed peas, purple whole peas,
crowded peas. Those are all called southern peas. The ones you shell
out and another good product or another good plant for that. Okra of course
is a good one for summer. But there's more. I've got some melowbar
out in the garden. I found a variety called large round leaf I believe
is what it was called, and it has very large leaves that are more
rounded, and it really does well for me. I some people let malabar
climb up a fence or a structure like a tomtic age or something to grow
on. Once it starts vining, the leaves get smaller, and now you
start to get all these little seed pods produced, which turns your garden area
into a malivar wheat patch because it readily volunteers and comes back. But it's
a good vegetable to use. The malabar that I like, the large round
leaf types. I just pinch them back and so they're only about a foot
tall, and when a shoot comes out about six eight inches, it gets
cut off and I use that tender shoot to grow and now I have more
of a low growing malabar bush than a vine with the smaller leaves. Just
something you may want to think about and growing it. Another great one is
Molochia Molochia is an excellent, excellent product or an excellent vegetable for summer growing.
It's popular a lot in Mid Eastern dishes and really arrange all around the
Mid East or different kinds of culture cultural cuisine where molechia is very popular.
But that would be another very summer proof one. There are some silosia types
that can be used. They generally call those Egyptian spinach. They're not spinach,
but that's what they call it. And so the other one that I
just would say you ought to try growing is a vegetable type of person lane.
Now perslane is a weed in our gardens. By the way, you
can eat the weed. Perslaine is the colorful hanging baskets of flowers. But
percelaine also has varieties called like Mithra is a good one. In fact,
there's a number of different personalaane varieties. Gold gelber is another good one.
Red grower. Those have large freshing ds and they are high in Omega three
fatty acid's very important for our health. Has a little bit of a lemonee
tang to it, but it loves to grow in summertime, and there's others.
So we had to get out there and do a little investigating and find
somethings to do well in the garden to keep you eating very healthy. And
these plants are tough. You give them water and they're happy. That's about
what it takes not gave the disease and insect or problems at all. So
just a few things to think about. Well, you've been listening to the
Guardline. I'm your host, Skip rich Or. We're about to take a
top of the hour break. If you would like to get on the board.
The phone number. Give Chris a call, it's seven one three two
one two kat rich and get on the phone board. We'll talk to you
first up when you come back. Debra out in Montgomery, we're looking to
talk to you first. So many a. Welcome back, Welcome back to
the Garden Line. Let's get going again. We got plenty of things we
can talk about today regarding things out in the garden and the landscape. First
of all, I think we will run right out here to Deborah in Montgomery.
Hello, Deborah, welcome to garden Line. Good morning scape. How
are you. I'm well, Thank you great. I have fifty shades of
gray and green in my front yard. It is lacking. I was reaching.
I was reaching for the button. Deborah, go ahead, we'll just
have a laughing go on. Fifty shades of fifty shades of green in my
front yard, I thought. And then when I said gray, well that's
where my hair is going naturally. So there you go. I feel you.
Okay, let's get back to the exactly I attended to your Marguerite Deville
event I've been to. I've been to the plant store here in Montgomery,
Kathy Steward, and I put some weed meter down as instructed by you.
That's really working. Great, it's a great product. Now on my on
my calendar. I did the last the last time you told me to do
the weed meter, So I'm done with that for the summer. Would that
be correct? Yes? Okay, Now what can I do to get those
greens? I do have some photos of it, But if you could just
imagine, is it lacking iron? Is it? So you're getting yellowing occurring
on your learn a little bit of yellow, but mostly just different beautiful shades
of green. Okay, Well, if you're happy with the color, that's
fine. You know, Saint Augustine is not normally like emerald green. It
has a towards chartruche green kind of coloring to it naturally, and yeah,
make it beautiful, but you don't have to. I mean, you know,
if you see it losing enough color, you know that it needs definitely
use nitrogen. And even though the color may be acceptable, you may want
to have more nitrogen in order to fill in faster make a denser lawn.
So that's a possibility. Okay, has to grow. I was blessed to
be to be a winner of the weed nat Or, so we'll purchase more
of that next time I go to see Kathy has to grow. We're some
samples that you shared with me. Would that be a product to put on
the grass to give it the right amount of iron needs? And do you
do you know which has to grow product you have, because they have a
number of them that are in the has to go line. There's regular has
to grow, there's has to grow. I think it's the six six twelve
six. I was looking at this product twelve four eight liquid Lawns, which
one, Yeah, definitely the twelve four eight of That's what I was thinking.
Okay, but they also have supergrow has to grow Supergrow that's also good
for lawns. So you can go either way. Oh good, okay,
well great, well you've been a big help, all right, And what
about what about what's the name of that Azel Mike? Would that be a
product you would grow on there? Also? If you haven't or in the
past year, I would you could do that? You know how to do
it a bunch because you don't need a lot of it. If you'll notice
on the bag the rate is very low. Uh, and so a bag
goes a long way because trace mineral. It's not like the big three numbers
on the bag that we need on great where you have a great Sunday.
I appreciate you so much. You're so educated and you're just a wonderful person.
Love to spend the time. Yeah, thanks for the call, Debrah.
I appreciate that a lot. If you'd like to be on guard Line,
our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Or for those of you who like to hunt down the letters seven one
three two one two k t R H. We had to have a poll
sometime. Do you prefer dialing by letters or by numbers? And see what
people think? I know what I prefer. But anyway, Uh, you
are listening to guard line. I'm your host and we're to answer your gardening
questions. I want to remind every buddy again that if you go online to
my website Gardening with Skip dot com Gardening with Skip dot Com, you will
find on there a number of things, but I keep adding little bits and
pieces to it here and there, but you'll find my lawn care schedule and
the lawn pest Disease and weed management schedule. They're both on there. They're
both multicolored, they're both free. You can print them out, you can
just look at them on the computer if you want. But what you'll see
is, for example, on the lawn care schedule, you'll see if you're
going to fertilize with a synthetic product or if you're going to fertilize with an
organic product, exactly what you put on and when, and it has all
a list of example quality example fertilizers that you can use. Then there's a
line on aeration that talks about aerating and what to do, a line on
mowing, and believe it or not, mowing is one of the most important
things. Most people don't give it the value that it really has, but
one of the most important things you can do to have a dense, beautiful
lawn is to mow often. That is key, and as my case in
point, the golf course green being the ultimate, it's mote every day,
just barely cutting off any grasp mote every day, and boy is that ever
a dense, healthy, beautiful lawn surface. So of course your lawn ain
gonna be a golf course s green. But it just points out that the
more often you mow, the better it looks. Also on that schedule is
watering, and I give you how many historically how many inches of water a
week do you need to apply to the lawn. Now we can say apply
one inch a week. Well that's true May, June, July, and
August, but April and September is three quarters of an inch, March,
October and November are half an inch, and December and January and February or
zero inches historically because we get some natural rainfall and in those cooler months the
lawn is just not using much water at all. So that schedule helps you,
and that way. The other schedule is a lawn past disease and week
management schedule, and that particular one has a line for insects. So it'll
tell you when do we treat for chinchbugs and soid webworms, when do we
treat for grubs. If you miss that first treatment, when do you do
this second treatment? Because the products change on the second treatment, and then
diseases take all root, rot, large patch, or people call it still
brown patch, gray leaf spot. When to do those kinds of things,
as well as tips to reduce disease attack then under weeds and big red letters.
I'm going to read it out loud. The first and most important step
in weed control is to build a dense, healthy turf over time through proper
fertilizing, mowing, and watering. Remember, wherever sunlight hits a soil,
nature plants a weed. There you go and there's post emergent controls. There's
pre emergent controls on there, and every product, whether you want to do
it synthetically organically, is listed. It makes it so easy. I encourage
you to print those outs to come on the fridge or put them out in
the garage by the fertilizer spread or whatever you want to do. Just print
those out. We're going to take a break right now and I will be
back. The number is seven one three, two one two five eight seven
four about them birds. You know, I think I've told you before.
I used to not be much of a bird watcher or a bird feeder and
so on. It just wasn't part of a hobby that I ever was into.
And I got me some really good quality equipment and in terms of bird
feeders, that that type of thing, and now I just love it more
and more. We got it. We have a little bird watering fountain out
there and some other things. It is just so pleasurable to sit and watch
the different kinds of birds. I had no idea what kinds of birds we
had around here. I knew there were a thing called birds, that's about
it. And so now I'm watching the feeder, going, oh, what
is that? And there's some really cool apps out there too, one called
the Merlin like the Merlin the Magician, Merlin app. It's out of Cornell.
And if you that thing is so cool. If you hear birds singing
in your yard and you can't see the bird and you want to know what
it is, you go to the Merlin app and it will listen and it
will tell you what bird that is? Is that cool or what there's also
you know, different ways that will help you identify birds and other stuff.
But we just really enjoy the birds in our landscape and why Birds Unlimited is
an absolute just wonderland of cool things when it comes to birds. I for
example, I've told you about the squirrel proof bird feeder, the squirrel eliminator.
It's called that one is awesome and I just my favorite one that I
have. There's a lot of other super quality feeders. But remember, whenever
we're dealing with feeding birds, we have options. We have the dry of
course, granular bird seed that you put in feeders, but then there's birds
cylinders that's compacted bird seed kind of glued together, if you will, by
natural substances, and it forms this cylinder kind of like one of the larger
little candles you might buy in light. And you put that out there and
it takes the birds a while to peck it out, and so you get
to watch them for longer. They don't just grab a byte and fly away.
It takes them a little while. But also if you go on vacation,
you put a cylinder out there and there's still going to be bird seed
available when you come back from vacation because it feeds them over a period of
time. Just a really good job too. Wabird's Unlimited. Here's the website,
WBU dot com forward slash Houston. WBU dot com forward slash Houston.
While you're there, find the Warbird's Unlimited store near you. You're going to
find there's a number of options or six of them here in the greater Houston
area. Clearlake Cypress on bel Air in Memorial Drive in Houston, up in
Kingwood on Kingwood Drive, and down in Parland on Broadway Street. And just
click on their website and you can actually shop online. If you just wanted
to have them deliver something, well, you could do that. You go
to that particular store and you can shop for poles and by affles and other
hobby products, for gifts and books, bird baths, bird houses, bird
feeders, bird food, even a gift card. Maybe you know someone who
loves birds and I'm telling you a bird lover would love a gift card to
All Birds Unlimited. But get their food because it is high quality. I
don't deal with messes. Their food doesn't have you know, some foods have
up to seventy plus percent of the Little Red beeby filler type of seed that
they don't like to eat, and quality feed from wild birds. You get
what you pay for. You buy a pound of feed, the birds get
a pound of food. That's how that works. W dot Com Forward Slush
Houston. I was enjoying. We had something go wrong with a breaker and
my bird fountain that normally is working really well, I just suddenly went off
and so I'm doing some electrical Sherlock Holmes thing around. I've got several things
I've tried by time to have to hire an electrician to come in to fix
that, because that fountain is cool. By the way. You know,
with fountains, anything that moves the water surface, mosquitos will not be able
to lay their eggs and have the larva survive and then become an adult.
Mosquito aren't able to go through their life cycle and moving water as much,
and so ad a fountain that's moving water will do it. There's even little
devices or some that are solar, but you put them in your bird bath
and they just create little tiny waves moving the water around in there, and
that works well too. Of course, you can also throw mosquito dunks in
there. Those don't hurt the birds at all at all. If it's a
little shallow fountain, you can just blast it out with a water hose every
few days. Just don't get them too long, because in about a week
you can end up with mosquito larva that are becoming adults. And now we've
got a whole new situation. And that's happening right now too, by the
way. Around town. We just had all that rain. Some areas I
think got nine inches of rain. And when you have standing water, you
will have mosquitoes. There are several different species. They each of them prefers
a little bit different environment for how it it would raise its young. Some
would live in just a real stagnant, dirty water that's real common for mosquitos.
They love that decomposing leaves and organic matter and stuff. That's a mosquito
happy place. Others are more of a stormwater species and they come and go
in accordance with a schedule like a stormwater event. So a lot we can
do to control them, and especially if you have birds and bird baths and
things, it's easy to keep them out of there. Don't be a skeeter
breeder. That's how I like to put it. Well, you're listening to
Guardline. Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I have told
you about Southwest Fertilizer many times before, but if you've not been there,
you need to go, you really do, just to see the place.
Southwest has the most complete supply of everything you could want for your garden and
your landscape. If you hear me talk about a fertilizer on guard Line,
Southwest has that fertilizer they do, they carry them all. If you need
a pest control, a disease control, a weed control, Southwest has that
also and every version you need. Most importantly, they have people in the
store that know how to advise you. You bring in a bug, you
bring in a weed, you bring in a picture of something, and you
go, how do I get rid of this? And they're going to show
you here's your options, here's what you can do, here's how you do
it, and they walk you through the process. Because I can't tell you,
over my years as a County Eager Life Extension horticulture agent, how many
times someone calls up or emails me and they say, well, I use
this and this and this, and it's just like they're throwing the kitchen sink
at a problem. But they're not using the right products. And that's a
waste of money. It's unnecessary environmental degradation. We don't want that. So
get a good diagnosis so that you can get a good product. And in
Southwest you're going to get that kind of thing. And I hope you'll call
here, and if need be, we go through email to look at photos.
Because you need to buy one thing and use it once and be done.
You don't need to waste your time and money guessing at what to do
to control the problem. Southwest Fertilizers in the corner of Businett and Runwick and
Southwest Houston the website Southwest Fertilizer dot com. If you haven't been there,
I highly recommend you go check that place out. I'm going to go now
out to Katie, Texas and talk to Doug. Hello, Dougkop, Good
morning, sir. Say a quick one for you. I've got a medium
sized pot that I'm growing mint in and it's been invaded by ants. I
don't know if the answered detrimental, but I'd like to get rid of them,
but I don't want to render the mint unedible. Okay, do you
think do you think their fire? Answer is it's just ants and you don't
know what. Oh, I'm pretty sure they're fire. Inch Okay, Well,
if you're not sure, you can put a potato chip in there and
within about five or ten minutes they ought to be crawling all over that potato
chip if they find it. I got you. They love they love that
ly material. So you got a couple of options. How big is this
pot? You said, medium of like, what's the diama? Oh,
it's it's it's it's actually more of kind of a bowl shape. It's probably
about I don't know, foot and a half two foot in diameter, maybe
about eight inches deep. Okay, Well, so one option would be to
put a bay and around that pot. You could sprinkle a little bit in
the pot, but baits are super super low quantities of an insecticide that works
very slow in the end, and that would be effective. You could also
do just a drench with something that contains lemon lemonine, lemonine L I M
O N and I believe as I spell it, and it's it's a it's
a citrus oil. Product that's used as a mound drench, and you would
just drench that in and that would be another option. I would mostly try
to keep it off of the foldage of the Minnesota I've can talk. It's
going to come right back anyway. I don't think it'll burn it. But
I've never used it on that before. But that is a mound treatment that's
organic to use. Okay, well, great, well I'll certainly consider both
of those options and give them a try. Yeah good, all right,
Well thanks. Parents aren't any fun, are they? Oh? No,
they're not, especially when they get on you. I had a lady call
my office one time and she was in tears. I'm not making fun of
her. I'm just telling you how it was. She was in tears,
and she said, is there anything in Texas that doesn't bite? She had
just moved here from another state, and I think between fiants and mosquitoes and
rotten snakes, and she was pretty much getting the creepy crawly there. Get
her understood down that all right? So hey, thanks for going. We'd
appreciate your call dog very much. We're gonna take a little break right now.
You come back if you'd like to be First up, we got an
open board. Uh, you just give us a call at seven one three
two one two k t r H. The kinds of things that we need
to be doing out in the landscape, by the way, after a lot
of the things your plants have been through. Certainly the storm itself was pretty
tough for a lot of plants. For those of you who've had maybe issues
with bad water flood coming up into your area and moving out and trying to
figure out what do I do now? Well, Microlife has got a wide
range of organic products that you can use to control or to enhance your soil,
so that a lot of the problems that you would otherwise have to figure
out, how do I control it? Well? By just growing good healthy
plants, you avoid some of those issues, and that is something well need
to do. We always start cultural and then go with any kind of a
product, spray or whatever we might need to do well with organics like Microlife,
you've got heumates plus that's a purple bag. That's like cont traded compost
in the bag. Anytime use something like that, you make the soil better
over time, and good healthy soil means good healthy plant growth. They've got
the six two four that is their fertilizer. That's kind of the standard one
for the things that you might want to do like a lawn. I would
use it on a lot of other plants as well, especially something you're growing
primarily for the grainery around it. It'll work good on that, but I
even use it on things like fruit and vegetables. It's widely, widely available
and widely effective really when it comes to the range of plants that you can
have success with it on. Now, Microlife has their liquid products too,
and that's one that's something i'd like to just discuss real briefly with you here.
With Microlife liquids, you've got things like the fertilizer that I really enjoy,
the orange label Biomatrix. It's a seven to one three fertilizer works good
for anything loaded with microbes. So if you're putting in a transplant, you
can water it in with Biomatrix water from Microlife. You can get the Humans
plus as a liquid. You can get seaweed super seaweed it's called. You
can get Ocean Harvests, which is a fisher mulsion. Those kinds of combinations.
Things like additional ones like Microlife's molasses or micro microlife excuse me, humic
acid complex. It's got humic and foldic acid both in it. Those are
very helpful for the plant. And there's other products for microlife like that.
And I would encourage you if you have questions, you want to know what
can I do for it? Well, how about hooking it up to hoose
inspiring going over the lawn. How about using it in your flower beds or
your vegetable gardens or other things. These are all going to be good for
the soil and good for the plant. Microlife Fertilizer dot com. Microlife Fertilizer
dot com. That's how you find out where to buy it. It's widely
available. That's also how you find out what products are out there that I
even had time to get around to talking about from Microlife. Let's head out
to the phones now, and I'm bringing on new collar. I don't have
your name, So who am I talking to today? Missus? Kevin Fredell?
Hi, Kevin? How can I help? Well? I sent an
email yesterday regarding a spot in my front lawn that will not grow grass okay,
and sent some photos, And since since then, I've realized that my
lawn is basically just clay, and the parts that have grass growing just have
a very thin top soil. And so I'm thinking that's probably why there's no
grass growing in that spot, but I can't say for sure. I don't
know if you had a chance to look at the photos yet I have looked
at the photos. So that almost looks like where a tree was that got
dug out or something. It's so round, yeah, I know, and
it's not. Okay. Well, let me say this first. Clay is
not a problem for Saint Augustine. The sod producers along the Gulf Coast grow
it and that black clay soil that sod comes in with, right, and
so that is a soil where grass is thriving. Because if a grower didn't
have thriving grass, they couldn't make cuts and make money by selling the sod.
So clay is okay. You just need adequate soil moisture, and you
need a good nutrient content. If it were a compacted clay, then aeration
is also helpful. You can erate any clay, but that would be it.
But the fact that this is around nothing that you know, it's almost
like some product's put on the soil that is still affecting the grass being able
to grow there. I don't know, but I don't know anything that makes
a round dead spot. We got brown patch in the winter, large patch.
It's all an now caohol which makes circles. But they don't kill the
runner. They regreen, they come back. So I looked at your pictures
closely, and I don't see a sign of anything in the photos. It
looks like the grass is trying to crawl back in, and I see where
the old dead grass died out. I think I might take for a little
spot like that, Kevin. I might go ahead and just take a spading
fork and wiggle it down into the soil and then just kind of pulling it
to crack it open a little bit. You're not turning over the soil spading
it. You're just pushing it straight down and loosening it up and doing a
whole bunch of those in there. I would throw a little leaf mold composh.
You can buy that in a bag and a lot of different places.
Throw a little leaf mold compost on it and water it in really good,
and then probably get a hold of some of Medina's has to grow super grow
Plus. That's a hose end applicator, and I would apply it to the
see how it looks and what some of your photos. The lawn looks a
little I don't want to say yellow, but it's less green, and so
I'm wondering if maybe there's not some issues going on with the roots and being
able to take up iron. So I think that I would try the has
to grow super grow plus supergrow plus. It's a sixteen zero two. I
believe it's a number. The last number. Okay, hooks up to a
garden hose. But first let's get the soil structure as good as we can
in there, and hopefully that'll sod over. Now it's a huge area,
so if you wanted to buy a few blocks of sod to put in there
to speed it up, I think that'd be better because as long as you
have bear soil, you're gonna get a lot of wheat showing up in that
spot. Okay, Well, we had planned to do that, and in
my research on this thing, watching you tube, they talk about getting like
a one inch or a two inch auger bit and every six inches, you
know, hit get the the uh hit the lawn with it. Removed the
clay and then pack those with with the compost. Would you think that would
be a good idea. That's even better than the spading fork. It's just
most people aren't willing to stoop for the amount of time it takes to drill
six inch apart holes through a large area like that. But yes, I
don't mind it one. Yeah, you don't need to get bigger than one
inch, that's fine. And the augur bit just get if you can get
down even six inches, that's enough with the auger Bet and okay, buy
able mold compost. You can buy those nature Sway cells, those heirloom soils
has a super quality one as well. I don't know what part of the
area do you live in. I'm in sugar Land. Cornelius is the closest
I think that I have. But I'm soeulthless fertilizers not having a question.
Yeah, that'd be good. I you just have to see if they have
a leaf mo compost on hand. Off the top of my head, I'm
not sure seeing them all should be another good one. They're down the road,
but they're not far from your area, and they have you can get
the super quality screen leaf mold composts down there, but you're not gonna have
trouble finding it with all those options. Okay, well, I appreciate your
help. Thank you very much. Yeah, and hey, just as a
favor, if you think about it as we go on down, send me
a picture a couple of weeks and we'll take a look, and I'd like
to see if maybe four weeks from now you're seeing a benefit. I got
to run to a break, but hey, thanks for the call. I
appreciate that. Folks will be right back. You're listening to guard Line.
Good to have you back with us. How can we help you have a
more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape. That's what we're here for.
So let's dive right into it. We're going to go to Pearland and talk
to Kay. Now. Hello, okay, welcome to guard Line. Good
morning, Skip. Thank you and your crew so much for forging ahead and
then doing what you can with you know your problems. We all need you.
Yes it is now. Guess I have a simple question. I was
just wondering about ground up. I have some areas that have just gotten so
much weed. I pulled a lot of it up, but I need to
spray with round up. How long do I have to wait before I can
plant something? Let me ask a few questions. What what is the what's
growing in that area that you don't want to kill anything? Hibiscus ammirellis a
variety of what am I trying to say, guardena plant? I mean,
I have a board that I put but you know, against everything when I've
spray. But okay, Well, if as long as you can protect it
from the spray, I definitely won't do that. You can use that around
them. You just need to barely get the weeds wet, and after you've
applied it, it's gonna take it about five days to really have moved in
there where you start to see some symptoms on it really good, right,
And after that you can just you know, physically remove the weeds out of
the area if they're very big, because anyway, well I've removed a bunch
of them by hand already. I've just pulled them up physically and there's just
little things coming back, and I want to clear it out and get them
to the roots. After you do that, you put seeds in the ground.
It won't hurt them. It's okay. It's not poisoning the soil to
where you can't grow something back in that spot, but you get it on
green, that's going to kill it. There are other riptions, you know,
if your wage are all great, there are grass only killers that would
be fine with everything you got there, except maybe the ammerillis you mentioned.
I don't think that would be good to use a grass killer around, but
I'm okay, I'm just that's that's the best guess. Yeah, I think
those are some good options. Just be real careful when you use a product.
Use a coarse spray droplet so you don't have high pressure and make a
mist that drifts, right, okay, be real careful. Okay. And
if it's just weeds here and there, you can make a little wiper applicator,
so you just well, some of them are kind of bigger beds,
maybe twenty feet long, that are just dirt. You know, there's nothing
really I've just been trying to decide what to do with it. And I
have a big long one forty feet in the backyard that you know, has
one high discus on it and it got blown mostly way. Yeah, make
sure the weeds are in an actively growing state, so if they're struggling,
give them a good ring and getting them, get them actively growing, because
then the product really works if it's stressed. Okay, okay, okay,
well I'll probably hit it once and then give them a chance for the ones
that I've pulled up. Basically, make every effort to get the roots,
you know, and then go back and see if something else comes back.
Thank you so very much, and you have a blessed day, you two
k Thanks for the call. I appreciate that you've heard me talk about a
Star of Hope before. By the way, they just celebrate their one hundred
and seventeenth anniversary July first. Can you believe that that is how long they've
been part of Houston, making Houston a better place. While they change lives
one at a time through training, through guidance, through drug abuse program recovery
programs, through everything. They take someone who doesn't have a way to get
a start now and they set life up in their system so that that person
can make a life. For example, if you got kids, who's going
to take care of the kids? Star Hope when you standing there? They
have childcare in some of their facilities for that, How do I learn a
job skill, Like, how do I do an interview some people? That
is something we need help with and Star Hope does that. I need food
in the meantime when it comes time to go for a job, how about
a really nice little let's say used clothing, but almost a boutique kind of
level where you're getting some quality stuff to show up for the interview and present
yourself with. See what I'm talking about. Star Hope covers the whole thing,
and in certainly including the spiritual formation part that is the basis of what
they do Star Hope Ministries. I would recommend that you join me and being
a supporter of Star Hope, you can go to shmission dot org. Shmission
dot org. I tell you all the time that it recommend things that I
haven't tried or don't know work or whatever. I can tell you this,
I have first hand experience and have seen the results of what Star Hope does
and it is I can't think of a better way to put your compassion to
work than a donation to Star Hope Mission. We're going to now go buy
a phone. Let's see here. Yeah, we're go by a phone out
here to talk to Anna. Go hey, Anna, Welcome to garden line.
We've got about a minute, but maybe we can get it done.
Hello. Hi, Hello, Okay, I wasn't sure I was on Skip.
I have an Eagleston hally that has just had a major leaf drop,
and I've got photos of what's going on with the leaves, and I wondered
if I could send those in. I don't know if this thing has a
fungus or if it's I don't see how it could be a water problem.
Right, I'm about to put you on hold, but when Chris picks up
the phone, make sure that when you send the email, he'll give you
the address. Make sure you send me photos are a good sharp focus.
I want to see that they are. Oh, I'm sorry, I just
realized something. We're not our system issues. We're not able to do what
I normally do to fix us. Okay, Well, the leaves they're getting
little tiny yellow spots around the outer edge of the leave. And yeah,
it's just little spots now looked for mit so I've read about funguses, you
know, I cannot figure out. Uh, and then the leaves just eventually
turn brown and drop and I'm going to cut in here. Uh, Chris,
how's your phone number from calling in. He's going to call you back
and give you the email. It's okay, it's that all right, thank
you, all right, we just hang on. He'll be with you in
just a day, all right. Folks, you're listening to guard Line.
We are working our way through some of the issues that have come up with
all the storms and things we're dealing with. But the show goes on and
we're having a good time. I hope you are if you're listening to it.
I'll be back after the top of the hour in the news and we'll
continue with your questions. We've got to open board and so if you are
interested in asking a question or getting on Guardline, give Chris a call.
The phone number is seven one three two one two k t r H seven
one three two one two K two are a welcome back to the guard Line.
Good to have you with us today. Looking forward to helping you have
a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape. And how can we do
that. Maybe maybe a plant recommendation would be in order or to write,
well, I tell you what I elson water garden and nursery out there,
and Katie, don't if you haven't been. You need to go, but
it's out. You got eye town to Katie. I mean you get to
Katie four Ben Road, Katie four Ben Road, you turn right, go
north, cross over the tracks and you'll get to it real quick. It's
right there. And they're a water gardens specialist company. They have been.
They're nationally known for their water gardens. They invented the fountain, the disappearing
fountain that's like a big, tall, skinny vase that water comes down the
side and goes into pebbles and then it comes back up through the middle.
That they should know how to do that. They're the ones that created it.
And boy do they ever have beautiful ones on site. You just got
to go and walk through the peace and quiet of a nice cool shaded spot
with the sounds of water all around you. That's Nelson Water Garden. This
is your West Houston nursery and destination nursery as a matter of fact, for
all kinds of things. But they're plants, selections unbelievable. Oh, gorgeous,
hibiscus, beautiful, the tropicals they have such gorgeous ones. All the
roses right now are fifteen percent are fifteen dollars, which is half price essentially.
So you're looking time to get a rose, get it established and stuff,
you take care of it, get it in the ground water right You
can do that right now, and that would just get you set up for
a gorgeous rose display, especially this fall when they put on some of the
best displays they do of the year, all at Nelson Water Garden and Nursery.
It's not hard to find them. Ari told you how to get there.
If you want to go to the website, go to Nelson Watergarden dot
com Nelson Watergardens plural dot com. It's an excellent site and it will help
direct you to the many things that I don't even have time to mention that
they can do for you there in terms of creating a more beautiful, beautiful
setting around your home. I'm going to go now out to Missouri City and
we're going to talk to Ruben. Hello Ruben, good morning, sir.
This morning I heard you talk about the nematodes, and I found it rather
fascinating when I've planted the garden area. Before I even got started, I
did plant some of that ebon rye, and once it dried up, I
chilled it in Now just the nematod's going to the roots. Am I just
perpetuating them growing? Or what happens next? They go in and I don't
know biochemically exactly what's happening in there, but they're not able to reproduce.
Normally, a female nematod would go in create a little cyst which eventually becomes
those nots you see, and she would create a bunch of eggs that then
are released out. The little larvae released out, and the soil is those
eggs hatch. And when you do that, it's something about trapping or in
there, and you're not getting the reproduction of nematods. And so it's a
slow way, but it's a one by one at a time away each roote
captureum to help rid that soil. So if you're going to use a nematod
trap crop like the French margoles in the summer or the elbow and in the
winter, you want to plant so thick that every you know, cubic inch
of soil is just filled with roots from those plants, because you want every
nematode somewhere in the soil to have a root to try to go into and
so not just I've seen people say before a while, you put a mirragold
on each side of your tomato and it'll control nematodes, And no, it
won't. It won't at all. That's just that's just tomato wheels you got,
okay, and you got to leave it in for a period of time,
let them grow, give it some time. So you may want to
rotate and not use this bed for the first part of the summer season,
but then stay away from things they like to eat and plant things that drap
them. That's kind of what a lot of that amounted to. Okay,
And since you had so much information, do you have this on your website?
You know I don't, And I'm going to make a note. I
appreciate you bringing that up, Rooven. I need to take over about Nema
toads and put it on there and I'll try to add it and if I
do, I'll certainly announce it on the air. That would be great.
Well, thanks a lot. I appreciate your information. All right, Ruben,
I appreciate your call. Thanks a lot giving us a call. Uh,
all right, there we go. Uh, yeah, Nemo toads.
We have several things in horticulture where there's really not a you know, silver
bullet solution to it, and NMA toads are one of those. If you
were to ask me how do I manage NIMA TODs, you're going to get
about five answers and you need to do them all. They're all different things,
but you need to do them all to stay on it. But they're
not invincible, and we can keep them managed so that it's you know,
a really good NEMA toad free soil. We just have to talk to work
around it. Let's go back out to the phones now, and we're going
to talk to Anna. Hello, Anna, welcome to Garbline. Yes,
the email thing did not work. Are you not able to transfer me over
to the phone screener? Oh uh no, that's the problem with our gain.
Okay, well I'll try again next week. Did you receive an email
from him and a call from him with an email? No? I did
not get a call. Oh okay, well hang on, I think Chris
will I'm going to hang up on you. I'm sorry, I need to
hear that again. Okay, uh yeah, I think he will give you.
He will give you a callback so he can give Okay, great,
I'll just email address we were talking about, so he'll give you a call.
Just hang on. Okay, thank you, I appreciate it. All
right, we're going to go out to Noah and Lake Jackson. Hey,
Noah, how are you today? All right? Good morning, Skip.
I was calling with a question about termites and an old oak tree. Is
there a systemic control or what? Do you have any advice on a pesticide
that might treat termites and a tree. Yeah, that's a good question.
There are a lot of different products out there on the market. I am
not what we call a structural pest experts. That's what termites fall under,
is structural pest control. You probably I would think that any kind of a
persistent product like by fen Thren. By Fenthren is an ingredient that you find
in many products. It's a persistent synthetic perrethroid. And if you could get
it up in there and soak the wood, then as they try to come
back and crawl through it and do anything, you're going to get some benefit
from that. But again, I'm not I don't want to make it like
I'm an expert in that. I'm just so that that is what I would
do is try something along those lines. You're in Where are you located?
Lake Jacksons? Okay? I was going to ask you, is there a
resource I can find an arborist in Brazoria County with the Brazoria County ag website.
Have an arborist I could contact? Yeah, I would call the Brazoria
County Extension Office. You said you're in Brazoria County, Yes, sir,
okay, Yeah, I call your Brazoria County Extension Office and there's a horticulturist
and an agriculturist both on staff there, and one or the other ought to
be able to help you with directing you to a good termite control for your
area. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right, you
take care. I got to run to a break, folks. We are
going to do that right now, and I will be right back with your
questions. Got a couple of folks online on guarden Line looking forward to talking
to you about the things that are of interest to you, and I think
that is what we will do. The first thing here we're going out here.
I can't see your name, so tell me who I'm talking to,
and welcome to garden Line. Hi, Hi, Hi, Hi, Sorry,
I wasn't screening thought I didn't know. I know we're having trouble.
We're having trouble on that screen able to screen like we normally do. So
tell me who I'm talking to. I'm so excited. My name is Rebecca.
I'm insci fare okay, and my issue is this Our front lawn looks
like something out of I don't even know. It's decimated. It has large
brown areas where all you can see is dirt, and then it's interspersed with
we there's really no more grass, and it's been this way since the last
freeze that we had. And our HOA is you know, threatening action against
us unless we get this remedied. And I don't know first of all,
how long that will take to remedy, and then second of all, short
of spending a lot of money with a lawn care service, I'm not sure
what to do to fix this problem other than just you know, going through
and chilling everything up and then either laying down seat or putting in you know,
patches of new grass. I don't know what to do, so I
wanted to get your input on that. Have you tried anything already in that
area or it just your way. Yeah. No. The other thing is
my husband's been very very ill. So now we haven't really done anything as
of yet. We're now in a position where, you know, we want
to start trying to figure it out. Okay, Well, what I would
recommend first of all, is it in full sun, full shade or part
shade or what? What's it? Well? One one half of the lawn,
yeah, one half of the front lawn is in full sun. The
other half is partial because there is a tree on that side. Not a
very big tree, but you know, a tree nonetheless, all right,
but it's getting enough sunlight. Oh yes, oh yes, I would.
I would go into how big are these areas in diameter? Like how far
across? Oh gosh, I'm not the right person for this. I don't
honestly know, to be honest with you, I don't know. I mean
it's a good size. It's a good size. It's not huge, but
it's a good size. I mean we live on a Our total wat size
is just under nine thousand square feet, so and we've got a two story
housed. So okay, Well, if you if you do a aeration of
the soil, I would just do that as an extra precaution. You're not
gonna for little areas unless you just want to hire someone to do the whole
line, which wouldn't be a bad idea for little areas. You can kind
of do a hand do it. I was talking about pushing a spading park
in the ground and wiggling it and pulling back up out again. Someone talked
about a drill with a it's called an auger, but it's a soil drill.
It's about an inch across and it drills one inch holes. And you've
got a good bower, battery powered or corded drill. You can just go
in there and drill holes about every six inches if you can through those areas,
and then buy some bags of leaf mold compost. It's called leaf milk
compost. It's a fine ground up material. It can be from airloom soils
they produced that, it could be from nature Sway resources up towards Conroe area.
They produced that. Uh did you you You said you're in Lake Jackson,
so you're not, noiair. I'm sorry that was a pret call.
Sorry about that. Yeah, So you're going to have both of those kinds
of products available, you know, in the ciphair area. You've got a
number of different hardware stores are real close to you can see if they have
a leaf mold compost in hand or on stock. That would be a good
quick thing to do. And if you're not able to find it there,
then you could actually purchase it. Your garden centers and pieces will often carry
that sciphi. You're close to the arbigage, you're close to plants for all
seasons, you're close to RCW tree, You're all close difference. But I
top it off with about a half inch of leaf mold compost in those areas
and then kind of watered and really good and then lightly just kind of you
know, scratch that leaf mold into the soil just a little bit, just
a little bit, and then lay your sod down. And when you lay
your side, you will water it the first week, every day the first
week, and I would do it, in fact, every twice a day.
A little water in the morning, a little water in the afternoon,
because that sod has very little roots and you need to try to, you
know, keep it constant moist without just drownding everything. And so that takes
a late twice a day water after a week, go to once a day
for a week, and by then your grass will be rooted in enough to
back off toward and a schedule. Okay, so this is something that we
could do. We didn't necessarily have to hire someone to do it. You
could do it yourself if you choose to. If you have someone that has
a good errator, you could do that as well. Yeah, there's no
one way to do what we're talking about, and it kind of gave you
one way, like, here's something to do. Do this, But you
could also put the leaf mold out and do a light rototilling over the area
and that would work too. Typically we run into a lot of tree roots
and rototilling is not easy to do in the bond. There's trees around.
And one last question, if I could, is this something you're finding that's
common after this last breeze that we had. I mean, I've never seen
any We've lived in this house for twenty years. We've never had this problem
ever. Yeah, well, not really related to the freeze. I haven't
seen that. But there are a lot of things that can go wrong with
the lawn compacted soil to diseases, to insects. We've got disease. Take
a root rot that anytime the grass gets stressed, that disease is likely to
show up. And eight kills grass. That's emple. Yeah yeah, I'll
be able to you're not able to get that back in shape? Okay,
wonderful lot if you if you if you wanted to air out the whole lawn,
there are companies up there that can do that kind of thing. So
I don't know what your what's your long term goals in terms of l care.
What else do you hope to people to do well? I mean,
ultimately we're looking at selling in the next you know, just say two years
roughly, So obviously we want to have that lawn looking one hundred percent better
than it does now and obviously add some landscaping in, you know, to
really help it with its curve appeal. So that's going to be another goal.
So what I would suggest is, let me give you a company.
It's called green Pro and they serve your area green prow and the website is
greenpro dot net. Okay, Now, you know, having aeration and compasstop
dressing guns not cheap, but it is a very effective practice, and I
would I would do that before you plant the sod and that I think overall
your lawn is just gonna better and maybe that from the sides will even growing
faster when better health. Yeah, yeah, wonderful. I appreciate all of
this information so much. I'm so glad to be able to talk to you.
Normally you calling, you just can't get through. Well, I'm glad
you got through, Yes, sir, yes, sir, Well, thank
you so much. All right, I have good Sunday. All right,
you're listening to guard Line. We're here to help you have a beautiful garden
and a bountiful landscape, bountiful lands. A bountiful landscape includes a beautiful lawn
too, right, And turf grass is interesting. It has its detractors,
and it has its what aficionados, I don't know, there's I call them
lawn lawn rangers. They're the people that their whole life goal is to have
a beautiful green lawn and they spend the weekends making sure they do that.
And that's fine, you can do that. You know, Turf can be
a water use problem, meaning if you don't get adequate rainfall, and if
you're having to do all the rain yourself or watering yourself, if you've got
something like Saint Augustine and it's in a very sunny spot, you can't have
to water to keep it going. But over here in this region of Texas,
there's so much natural rainfall that even if we have some droughty conditions,
it's it's the exception to have to do that much supplemental watering. But it
just makes sense because turf does a number of things. Do you know it
has a BTU effect of cooling in the landscape. If you compare turf to
a hard escape, whether it's gravel or concrete, or you name it turf,
rather than heating up the air, which is why our cities have a
heat island effect all the roofs and concrete and asphalt and everything else, turf
has a very cooling effect, and so that's a nice thing out there in
the landscape. Prevents erosion. It helps build its own soil because grassroads grassroots
live about a year and then they die and the organic matter from them goes
back into the soil. The chamber they opened is a way for air to
move down into the soil better, and so it takes care of itself.
But I think overall, turf can be a wonderful thing. It certainly provides
that outdoor carpet that the family and friends enjoy to be able to gather around
on it, maybe play, let the kids kick a ball around, and
other things. So I'm not a turf detractor, but I reckon guys that
when mismanaged, there can be issues that we don't need to have. They're
unnecessary, and so we can avoid that with proper care. So anyway,
that is why I have a turf schedule online so you can look at it
and you can see the things that you might need to do and make sure
that you're doing them so that you have the best turf that you can have.
By the way, you are listening to Guardline, I'm your host,
Skip Richter. I'm not to take a little break here, but if you
would like to get on the board, that would be a good time to
call. We got an open board, and so you can give us call
it seven one three two one two KTRH. You know we're just talking to
Rebecca. I had a little trouble getting through in the past. Well now
when I say that, if a million people, I'll call it once.
I guess I was a liar because it won't be easy to get through,
but that's usually not the case. We appreciate you being a listener. We're
here to give you advice. When we come back, I want to talk
just a little bit about some things that we can be doing right now to
have more success in our gardens during a time when it's somewhat difficult to be
outside. But we'll do that when we come from come back from break in.
Just a moment for those of you tuning in recently and you didn't get
the website information I gave Gardening with Skip dot com. That's the website Gardening
with Skip dot com. Keep checking back because there's gonna be something new going
up there. Thanks a lot, We'll be right back. Plenty of stuff
to talk about here, and got a few calls on the board. We've
got to jump into those pretty quick. Here. I want to mention if
you are a person who's had to deal with side by worms or chinchbugs in
the past, or grubs. It'ses with grubs and things. Night Fuss makes
something called bug out Max, and bug Out Max is an insecticide that stays
around through the rest of the season. So you apply it now and it's
going to last you all the way through the upcoming chinchbug attacks or waves of
sid weebworm that come in. We never know each year what's going to happen
when, because it could be a bad year, it could be a not
so bad year. But we do know in general the times of the year
that these things attack, and now's the time to get ahead of that.
And night Foss bug Out Max will control ants, ticks please, and it
does control chinch bugs as well in the soil. You just have to apply
it at the right rate, and it's going to last year a good time.
Within forty eight hours. It's pretty much gonna knocked out whatever you're going
after out there. And you can get knight Foss bug Out Max at Lake
Hardware Clue which is in Lake Jackson on Dixie Drive. You can get it
Gym's Hardware up in Montgomery or Plants and Things out in Brenham Growers Outlet in
willis just another place for nitrofoss products like bug Out Max. I'm going to
head out to the phones now, and so we got mystery callers up here.
You'll have to tell me your names. Okay, Well, welcome to
Guarden Line and who am I talking to this is keing hello again. How
you doing. I'm good man, I thanks for asking. I can barely
hear you. But anyway, I uh, you know, yes, yeah,
yes, you know. I know. I noticed. I noticed a
couple of people called about the Saint Augustine grass and I talked to you about
I guess a couple of weeks ago, and right at the end of the
show we didn't get a chance to talk much. And uh, I'm having
the same problem with Saint Augustine grass. I stay in Baytown, and uh
the grass grass looked good for years, plush grass, green grass. But
this year, man, I'm getting some some root rots and you know,
yellow spots, brown spots, and Saint Augustine grass and never did that.
The only difference that I noticed is I have a big live oak tree there
and uh, I don't know. I mean for years it didn't do that.
Now or I took up all the dead grass and I put some some
good composts there and some mossad there in certain places, and it did good.
It come back good with all the rain and everything. But I see
it study coming back now. I know. At the time when I talked
to you, briefly, you said something about it could be an iron efficiency
or something. I don't know. I put some fungal side out and uh,
that don't seem doing any good. I don't know what's going on.
Okay, Well, you know, it could be a lot of things.
Grass has a number of It doesn't like compacted soil done like a tight compacted
type of clay soil. Uh, it doesn't. It has chinch bugs.
They can attack it as grubs that can eat roots. It's got three or
four different diseases that can hit it. And then there's the watering issue,
you know, getting enough water uh and enough sunlight. If it's in too
much shade, it doesn't have the energy to fill back in and so it
just sort of sits there. So when you start to get die back,
it just gets worse. And shade is one of the stressors that can lead
to call root rot also, So that may be what you're seeing as you're
describing it. But I guess the bottom line is we got to figure out
which one so you can do the right thing to fix it. Right now.
I've got plenty of sunlight because I had I got a big live uk
tree and I had it trimmed up and you have it. You know,
all the lamps cleaned up and full at the top, got plent of sunlight.
But I just don't know what it is about the grass dying like it
is, like I say, every time it does it, I know,
take all the dead grass and put some sal on there. But it keep
happening in certain places, so I don't know what's going on. Tell me
again where you're located, please, and bytowntown. So I think what I
might do if I were you, is send a sample of your lawn to
the plant clinic up in College Station and you can go online to Plant Clinic
dot t A m U dot E d U and they'll tell you how to
take a sample, uh and that way, when they get it in there,
they're gonna be able to see if you take the sample right, they're
gonna be able to see if it's chinchbugs involved, or if it's uh you
take a root rod or what they're finding on it. And I think that's
the best way I could give you. We'll go try this, then try
that, then try this. But we're just sort of you know, throwing
everything at the at the wall by doing it that way. So it's probably
more efficient for you to just have that sample analyze. Can you say that
this clinic B what do you say? Uh? Uh, it's the abbreviation
for Texas A and M University. It's t A m U clinic dot TAMU
dot E d U. And they have a form you fill out and you
send your your grass in. You're gonna wanna here's here's how you don't want
to do it. You want to take a plug of soil about four by
four or four by six inches, a plug of sod in the zone between
healthy and dead. Of course, if grass is perfectly healthy, there's nothing
to see. If it's already dead, they can't do the autopsy, but
they can't be the diagnosis on sick grass. So look at this area.
Go to the edge between healthy and dead. Take your sample or to there,
send it to them, and whatever it cost is on the sheet there,
and to have them really analyze it and give you the accurate answer rather
than guessing over the phone. Oh cool. See. I think that's a
lot of problem what people have because they kind of have the same same thing
happening. Man. I just I don't know what's going on. I mean,
but you know, you don't know. I don't put several things out,
but he can still happen, you know, So yeah, I get
you, I get you. Hey, I'm all run on to another call,
but good luck with that, and then call back if we can help
with anything else on it. All right, thank you, thank you,
sir. I appreciate the call. We're going to run out here again.
Welcome to garden line. Who am I talking to? This is Jay and
Woodland. How are you doing? I'm good Jay? How can we help?
I've got a little bit of time here for I have to go to
break okay, just very quickly. Didn't catch the brown patch last fall and
timely fashion. So now I've got Virginia button weed coming in. I've got
another type of weed that grows loads, very dense. And what do I
do about that? Well, I think your best approach would be to use
a product called Celsius. Like the temperature Celsius, it is less stressful to
grass than most other good broadleaf weed control products are during the warm season.
Most of those, once we get into the upper eighties, they're going to
start to do they can start to do damage. So with Celsius even I
would still use it first thing in the morning. I would direct it to
the weeds as best you can. Virginia button wheed is tough enough to where
you may have to do celsius again later. It's not often a one off,
but it is. It is one of the best products you can buy
over the counter for Virginia button with celsius spread early that morning, before the
before the day heats up at all, and that that's my recommendation, and
just have some on hand to be ready to do it again. Okay,
And when do I start putting out for brown patch brown patch? If you
if you look at my schedule that's online at gardening with Skip dot com,
you will notice on there that we start talking about brown patch issues on in
October. I have it from October first is to about the third week of
November to do the brown patch control. But remember you're preventing it, you're
not curing it. So I would get out there in early October, not
much later than mid October ideally, to get a head start so that when
that disease shows up, you get a cold front in here, you get
some rain, and brown patch explodes, and you don't have to wait till
after that to treat it. It's much better to get ahead of it.
And those products will last you two or three weeks outstanding. Well, hey,
I appreciate it. Thank you, you bet, thank you for the
call. We're going to run to a break right here, I say,
I got another caller, unknown caller online and we'll come to you right when
we get back power line. Good to have you with a little eagles this
morning. Enjoy them a lot. Actually, this past week we've had family
staying at the house all week, and most of them have headed out,
so we're kind of an empty nest right now. But some of our family
was from Houston because they lost their power and it was out a long time.
You know, a while back we had power out for a very long
time during some storms we had, and they came up and we're always glad
to see them. I mean, it's wonderful to see, but I'm sure
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The phone number seven one three Quality. Look. We've had two wake
up calls here, so it doesn't have to be a hurricane to put out
power. As we learned from the last one, Well, why not be
prepared. If you work from home, you've got to have power all the
time. If you, you know, have a little generator that keeps a
refrigerator going or something. That's one thing, but what about the house being
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I kind of feel strongly about that because I just see so many people going
through a lot when there are some ways to help avoid that or at least
to take When life gives you lemons and tournament of lemonade, we're going to
go back out to the phones. Now and welcome to garden line. Tell
me who I'm talking to? Hello, Hello, are you there? All
right, let's see, I'm gonna I don't have your name, so I
don't know to tell you to come to the phone. I'll check back on
you just a minute. Here. I wanted to mention a few things that
are important to me to convey to you, and I'm going to call it
four tips for success with plants in the hot summer weather. Number one,
when you water, do a deep soaking. Don't just squirt a little bit.
I've stood it with my film on the end of a garden hose and
wet so much it's like puddles and running off and then I go do something
else and I come back and I dig down and it's what a half inch
deep? You got to soak the soil deeply with a gradual deep soaking.
That is the most efficient way. That's the way to not waste water,
and it's the way to build a deep, healthy, extensive root system on
your plant. Number two, in containers plant and larger containers, don't watch
TV shows from cooler areas of the country and look at the little containers and
think that's adequate. For here, it's not we need to bump our containers
at least one size up from those kind of areas because the bigger container,
the more soil, the more root volume, the more bank account of nutrients
and water to draw from. And in our blazing hot summers, it you
know, a five gallon bucket with a tomato in it, well, you're
going to water it twice a day to try to keep that thing adequately moist
and out of stress. Make a bigger container. Number three. If you
can move your containers to where they get less mid to late day sun and
morning sun, that's even better. So for example, I like geraniums.
My life loves duriniums, and so in the springtime you put geraniums out in
full sun and they're just happy. When we get into summer, move those
geraniums to where they get some morning sun, because they do need light,
direct light. But give them some break from the sun later in the day
and it's much easier on the plants. And that's just one example. Number
four, and the final one is you need to choose quality soil mixes for
your containers, or improve the soil in your beds with decomposed compost products with
bed mixes like rose mix or veggian herb mix or fruit remix, because when
you do that again, you create a deeper effective root zone for your plant.
You get down deep in a clay soil, there's no oxygen and very
little root development down there. When you improve that soil, you have a
larger volume now that roots are thriving in, so that when summer sun says
I need this many gallons of water idea day plant, the plant has more
to draw from and it just does better. Those are four tips. I
hope that I hope that helps you. I'm going to now go back out
to the phones here. Welcome to garden Line. Who am I talking to?
You're gonna go all right, I'm gonna have to on that one and
let's see here. Well hear the music plan, folks. I appreciate you
calling in today. We'll do this again next weekend when we get back next
weekend on Saturday at six am to ten am and on Sunday from six am
to ten am. That is the next opportunity to talk live with you.
In the meantime, you can go to the kt r H website seven forty
am website and you can listen to past shows. If you've got the iHeart
media app, you just you know, follow garden line. There's two garden
lines in the country, not hard to tell apart. One is a lady
somewhere up northeast. The other is this guy down in Houston, and that's
me. That's the garden line you want to listen to. I hope you
listen to pass shows there. If you heard me say something, you a
chance to write it down. There's your chance. But I hope you have
a wonderful west rest of your Sunday and a great week this week. M