Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip Richter. Soz trip.
Just watch him as woozy clubbed back Ricken. We're not a sign.
Well, good Sunday morning, on a good day for gardener. You are
listening to garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Richter. Hey, here's
a number. Write this down so you can give us a call this morning.
Our number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Well, this is usually
the time where I do a little bit of soap boxing or ranting or hopefully
just describing, educating. I don't know what, but yesterday's talking a lot
about turf and the things we need to be doing now to our turf and
some of the y to that. And one of the common questions that I
get in the show and working as Agrilife extension agent, I always received questions
about turf, and a common one being what's a good turf from my area?
What turf do you recommend? What's the best turf? That's the one
that the question that needs a little The question itself needs a little bit of
help there. And the reason is that there's not a best turf. There
may be a best turf for a certain situation, but overall, every turf
species has its pros and its cons, Isn't it kind of like people people,
you know, they think that about you. So anyway, so you
take a turf grash like Saint Augustine, nothing is going to do better in
when the light becomes more and more limited than Saint Augustine. It is the
most shade tolerant of our southern turf grasses, the ones that would grow here
as a perennial grass, Saint Augustine. It's one of its drawbacks or one
of the things people don't care for about it is they say it needs more
water. Well it does. It does require more irrigation, and it's because
Saint Augustine kind of lives on top of the ground. It's got a root
system in the ground, and of course, but the runners are all up
on top. They don't have the underground runners where if the top you know,
just we have blazing hot, dry weather and it just sort of fries
everything above ground with something like Bermuda as Lasia. You've got underground runners,
but we'll get to those in a minute. So that's that is that in
the genetics of Saint Augustine are such that it does require more irrigation, typically
over the course of a season, a hot season, when it comes to
you know, how much do you put on your lawn a week for your
lawn to look good? That pretty much the grasses are all the same,
in my opinion, they're they're really close to all the same. They use
and about the same amount of grass and so on. It's just that Saint
Augustine has the habit of not looking to the future, so when it gets
dry, it just uses its water until you know, there's like there's no
tomorrow. And then when it gets too dry, there's no water, it
has no reserves to speak of, and we begin to see the drought damage
to it. And I mentioned the others having the underground runners that helps them.
And then there's buffalo, which do not plant. But if you can
hear my voice, do not plant buffalo, And I'm talking all the way
over to I thirty five westward. Buffalo is an extremely drought laurent grass that
does well in further western areas where drought and typical normal dry conditions help keep
the weeds out of it. If you come over to Houston. In fact
I did when I was in Conro many years ago as county Agrilife Extension horticulturist
in the Montgomery County Office. We planted patches of all the different common turf
species, and the buffalo it was overrun with weeds. And it's because the
weeds in our climate here and the minor rainfall we get, they just proliferate.
And buffalo is not a competitor with weeds, and so, plus it
has a very fine texture and weed show up like a neon billboard and the
buffalo lawn. But you go far enough west where you can allow it to
go completely dry, everything turns tawny colored. And when that happens, and
then you get a rain, buffalo bounces back. And so that's where it
belongs. Way out well and up you know some of the some of the
planes a little further north of us and um, you know, going up
through New Mexico excuse me, Oklahoma. But so we're gonna throw a buffalo
out of the discussion. But that's the that's Saint Augustine's deal. It's very
available. Some people don't like the broad leaves. If you came from the
Midwest or someplace where you can grow blue grass and fescue and some of those
grasses, well, Saint Augustine looks like a big, fat weed, probably
to you. But it's a it's a soft grass. It's good for the
kids, you know, rolling around playing in the grass. And by the
way it's it is not particularly a host of chiggers. If anybody has never
had chiggers, go find a bermuda grass lawn, roll around in it a
while and you will know then later that day what chiggers are. But Saint
Augustine doesn't have that problem. And so that's another plus of Saint Augustine.
Also, we say it uses water, but in the shade it doesn't use
hardly anywater. I mean, any plant as you move it into shade requires
less water, and Saint Augustine can tolerate a considerable amount of shade. And
so I have a picture that I use when I give talks. But it
is a lawn in Austin under stage two water restrictions, meaning they could whatever
stage they where, they could not water their lawn, and it had been
weeks and weeks without water, and everywhere the sun shone outside, the Saint
Augustine was dead. I'm just completely brown gone. Underneath some live oak trees
it was still green. And it's not because they watered under the live oak
tree. It's because in significantly less water is required. Well, let me
see you're listening to garden Line. Our phone number is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. If you'd like to give us a call,
we can talk stuff. If not, I'm gonna keep talking about grass.
So anyway, that's some Saint Augustine pluses. So these ill conceived laws
that say we're gonna in our city not have saying Saint Augustine allow. That
doesn't quite fix the problem. I understand what they're aiming for, But there
are places where Saint Augustine is the best grass and where it takes almost no
water. And in fact, over here in Houston, you should be able
to grow it with no water just because we get so much, so much
rainfall unless we go into one of these unusually long drought periods. So that
was Saint Augustine. Now, that was a lot to talk about We're going
to talk about some of the other grass species as we go through the day.
But if you're thinking about putting in a lawn, hopefully with this discussion
you would get a little bit of ideas on what might be a good choice
for you, saying Augustine by far as the most common turf that we have.
Well, you're listening to garden Line our phone number seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. All right, good Sunday morning. We're
gonna get down to the nitty gritty here, and we're gonna start off by
going to the phones. By the way, our number is seven one three
two one two five eight seven four. We're gonna head over to Montgomery and
talk to Albert this morning. Good morning, Albert, Good morning, Skip
morning. I've kind of got two questions. Ones about pear trees. What's
one or two good variety of pear trees I can plan in my yard?
And do I gotta plant two or more so they pollinate the boy? There
there are a lot of good pear trees, and it's best if you plant
two or more. There are there is some self pollination, but in general
it's just better to have that cross pollination for them. Um, there's a
pair I like called Warren. It's it's kind of hard to find around,
but it's pretty good. It takes a little while to come into production,
but it has more of that buddy buttery quality texture. I grew up eating
Keefer, which is the old hard, gritty pairs that that maybe Grandma canned
if you go back that far. But Keefer's, you know, a good
old tough pair and good for canning and things. But if you want a
survivor, it's a survivor. Uh. There are let's see ten t E
n N is a good one for this area. Um. Some people are
really fond of airs ay rs. Uh. Let's see. There's a couple
of others. Um Acres Home. Acres Home is another one that that might
be popular. But I'll tell you what I would do. You're you're out
of Montgomery, I'd go out to a NA and see what they might have
on hand out there. Uh. And they they can certainly get you fixed
up, depending on where in the area are. You may be close to
Arburgate coming down into the Tomball area and they and they sell fruit trees,
you know, all you all year long so they get they can get you
plugged in. Maybe, you know, when I recommend varieties, I'm always
thinking, Okay, is that available here locally? And that's always the you
know, the challenges. One place may carry it, one may not,
or maybe nobody has it. So I don't want to send you out looking
for something you can't find. Okay, that's a lot of good info,
thank you. Yeah, what else? What was your other question? A
second question? I got probably a good good good Saint Augustine. It's pretty
good, uh, and a normal weather pattern. Do I set my sprinklers
to water one good time or two good times during the week? Okay,
that's a great question. I'm glad you asked that. If your lawn is
struggling, if it hasn't developed a good deep root system, if a disease
is messing with it or whatever, you might do twice a week just to
kind of help it along. But you don't water the same amount you water
a little bit less. Overall, about an inch of water a week is
needed for a lawn, but that varies, you know, in the spring
and in the fall. No, you don't need an inch. A half
inch is plenty in the summer, when it's hot in the sun. Yes,
an inch in the shade, not an inch a week is needed.
The key, you know, Albert, is when you water, you want
to soak it all into the ground. And our heavy clay soils, I
don't know what you're specifically is there, but in general there's a lot of
clay soils here that just can't take water in as fast as our sprinklers put
it out. And so if I told you I want you to soak an
inch into the ground, well you would get about a third of the way
there or less, and it starts to run off. And so what we
do is call cycle and soak, meaning you water and then you wait.
You water and then you wait. So if you put on let's say you
could water a third of an inch and before it starts to run off,
you run it for until that amount of time and then have it go off
for forty five minutes and then come back on again and do it again and
again. That way you put that bank account of water in the soil and
it is available all all season, I mean, Elsie, and all week
long. It just carries it forward. All right. That's a lot of
good information. Thank you, skip, Yeah, thank you, Albert,
I appreciate, appreciate that call. Uh we I'm going to continue on that
a little bit more because I think there's there's some more to be said there.
When I say an inch a week, I'm talking about under ideal conditions,
what a plant, what a grass plant you know, would like to
have. But it rains here. It rains here a lot. And a
number of years ago I got a hold of the ET data from the weather
stations of the region. So what is ET data. Well, the nerd
word is a vapo transpiration. So remember that. Write it down and you
can be the Cliff Clayven at the next garden party. So a vapo transporation
is how much I'm gonna just super simplified and say it's how much water it
does the grass you use? How much water is lost during a period of
time. So on a hot, sunny day, it's gonna be more than
on an overcast, cooler day. Uh you know. So there's a lot
of factors. In fact, they have computer that takes all the data from
the weather station, including windspeed, humidity, temperature, solar radiation and so
on. It crunches it all together and it tells you what and you can
go online. There is a place called watermyard dot com. You can go
online and watermyard dot com you can sign up and depending on which community you
live in. It's not all over the state, but depending on which community,
you can sign up to get a weekly email telling you when it's time
to water. And when I did this, when I when I looked at
the data for on average in Houston, how much water is used in April,
And I don't mean irrigation, I mean how much is lost to et
in April, how much in May? How much? See what I'm saying
and how? And then I overlaid that with on the average, how much
rain falls. And there was just like two or three weeks of summer where
you'd need to water. Well, we know that that's probably not true,
that just two or three weeks, but it may be true because every year
is not the same. I mean, we could go through forty days without
rain, which is not normal. And it's one hundred degrees okay, which
is a little high for normal. But we in general are way over watering
our yard. And as we water well and allow that soil to drain out,
as the soil drains out, its water. Then that would be water
taken out by the plant. That would be water evaporating from the surface.
Oxygen comes back down in the soil. So think of it this way.
If you if you take if you say you've got a glass of tea and
you a straw, and you take a sip. When you take your mouth
off the straw, what happens to the tea in the straw? It falls
down because of gravity, and air moves in behind it in the straw.
So as your water level and the soil dries out, you know from top
and down, what is filling that space that the water had, Well,
it's air, and that is a stimulating That's one of the reasons we airate
soil. Now it's on a microscopic scale, but it helps your plant's rood
system. If you constantly water, which people do, and they just keep
it wet up at the surface, then you're not going to have good oxygenation
download You're gonna have a very irrigation dependent grass plant. You're going to have
a plant where most of its root system is dependent on that little water up
top, and so when grubs come along or something else, it's not as
resilient. So watering smarter, and I'll talk about that more as we get
into the heat of summer, but that is something that I think is worth
mentioning. Our phone number is seven one three, two one two five eight
seven four seven one three two and two fifty eight seventy four. If you'd
like to give us a call, Joshua gets you up on the board and
we can we can visit with you about whatever is of interest to you.
In the meantime, I'm I'm still kind of going on a soapbox here for
turf, so let's get let's keep going on that one. I was talking
about the species of turf, and I meant I talked about Saint Augustine.
The next one I want to talk about is bermuda grass. Bermuda grass is
one of the more drought tolerant grasses that we have. So if you have
a place that you cannot water and you need it to survive, bermuda grass
would be a choice for that reason. For that reason I already mentioned that.
You know, if you've got a little lawn you want to roll around
in and the kids play in it, does you will have chiggers of the
bermuda But you don't with Saint Augustine, uh, not as much. Bermuda
needs a lot of sunlight. It is not shade tolerant, and it comes
in many sizes. So you can get the coastal bermuda that the farmer bills
Hey with. You can get the semi dwarf mudas that you see on golf
course greens on football fields and soccer fields and things like that. Or you
can get a super dwarf tommuda that you would see on a golf course green.
I said green, while ago I met fairway on a golf course green
the real super dwarf. And so you have a wide variety of options.
But with bermuda grass, the more frequently you mow the better. And that
is more so true than Saint Augustine was saying. Augustine, you forget to
moan, and you come back and back a little bit, it still looks
pretty good. With bermuda. It's almost like a forest where you know,
if you walk through the forest, it's all dead twigs and tree trunks down
there and up on top as the green. So at bermuda. If you
have an infrequent mowing schedule, when you do come in and mow then you're
going to have a twiggie looking grass until the green's back up again. Well,
you're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and
our phone number is two one two five eight seven four. Give us a
call and get on the boards when we come back from the news News with
Nikki. That's our game today. We're gonna play News with Nikki. We
will talk to you about your question. Well, good morning on a good
Sunday morning for gardening. This is gonna be a good day for gardening.
I hope this afternoon you can get out there and enjoy the garden, enjoy
the landscape. Maybe go visit a garden center at the same time. Well,
our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four seven
one three two one two ktrh And we are going to go now out to
Huffman and talk to Mike this morning. Good morning, Mike morning. How
y'all doing? Man, We're well? All right. Listen, I've got
a nightshade plant in my wallflower. Gordon, Dude, I don't know how
I got there. He just came up, and I want to know the
safest way to dispose of it. Am I gonna am I gonna have to
get a bottle suit or something or one. No, not at all.
It's just a standard nightshade weed. Um. I don't know, because a
friend of mine had the app on his phone and he took a picture of
it, you know, And then I'm telling you it was exactly like what
I had, the little white flowers and the green berries and the blackberries on
it. So it was exactly the same thing, okay, And it didn't
say what it was other than a nightshade. Oh. You shouldn't have to
do anything. Just pull it up and thought in the trash, get rid
of it along with the seeds and stuff that are on it, and don't
eat it. You know that would be the concern. No, No,
I'm gonna feed it to my neighbor and see a bad action. You know.
I've wondered that since you're talking about that. You know, you know
what polk salad is, Yes, yes, so so. Poke weed is
a weed around here and in the South. It's well known that you can
eat it. But to eat it, you got to boil it and pour
off the water. Maybe boil it again and pour off the water, and
you get all the toxins out, and I wondered, how did they figure
that out? With somebody trying to poison their son and larks something one time
and they spill the water coming from the kitchen to the dining table land is
years ago. It's guy named Ug and they say, U eat you know,
we eat that? No, like you know? All right? The
caveman taster for the king, Um, that's that's funny, you know.
The night shades fine, just they are poisonous. I don't know how terribly
toxic they are. I'm sure they'd be very unpalatable, horrible to taste,
but anyway, yeah, just you can just pull it out and get rid
of it all. Roger, thank you very much. I appreciate that.
Thanks for the call, Mike, appreciate that. Huh. All right,
let's see you. Let's go by the way the phone number seven one three
two to fifty eight seventy four, and we're going to now go out to
catch spring and talk to Ed. Good morning Ed, Good morning, Skip.
Hey, I got a quick question for you. Here. I'll purchase
all the fertilize you you can do fertilize day. But I'm reading up and
seeing all the weather for cans the next two weeks. But a bunch of
rain hitting the area, is it good to go ahead and put it down.
You're gonna hear two things on that question, two answers from people.
One is you put it down before a rain because the rain washes it in
the Other and this is what I would say, is if you know that
it's not going to rain a lot, that's fine. But if there's any
question on the amount of rain we're going to get, I would wait,
and I would you just need about an you know, half inch of irrigation
to put to walk, you know, move it down into the soil and
start getting things going with the fertilizer. And I would rather water it in
and be in control of that. That all land drains to somebody of water,
and if you dump it, you drink it, and just think of
it that way. If it's if it's an underground aquifer supply or and there's
some parts of the state where you know it's very sensitive underground water supply quality
issue. But it's also true of ponds and washes off into pond and you
get alogae bloom and fish to death and so on. So I guess what
I'm just trying to say is the most efficient thing would be the watered in
yourself. But if you're real careful about it, you can put it down
before a rain. I got some TVA on that. I heard a couple
of callars a couple of weeks ago on the habit algae problem in their pods
of having some expertise in that if they would get them some Mosambique telapia,
that they can get it any fish hancheries that will solve the problem. I
did not know that is that a fish that's you don't have to have a
license or no permit. No, no, you do not. No,
you do not have to have a permit for the Mozambiak telapia that is the
grass carp But the mosambek. Yeah, the only drawback with them is when
the wintertime hits in, if the water gets real cold, they're gonna die.
But okay, you know I've had them in my pond now for all
eight plus years and I do not have a problem by ponds about an acre
out there, and I don't have an algae problem at all. Very interesting.
Well, thanks for that tip, Ed. I appreciate that we're gonna
head now out to Silbee and salesby and talked to Sandra. Hello, Sandra,
good morning. How are you doing today? I'm well, how are
you doing? Excellent? My question is I have a friend of mine and
I've been going over there and helped her do George workers. She's been piling
up leaves around the base of all of her trees. Will those leaves kill
her tree? Oh? Absolutely not. Think about the forest. That's what
nature does, Okay. You know, first I told her I thought it
might because I know, if you can only put a certain amount of dirt
against the bottom of tree right every year, Yes, but dirt will a
tree? Well, dirt is the trunk. Basically, the trunk is not
made to have dirt piled up against it, and you end up with issues.
Without going into detail on him, you end up with issues for the
tree. They're just a bunch of leaves, is fine, now, I
wouldn't you know, she said, pile them up against I'm thinking these things
are going to settle down and be kind of pulled back and make more of
a natural mulch. But if they you know, they got like five foot
pile of leaves up against the trunk, well that's not gonna do it any
good. I'm not as worried about it as that they'd been dirt, because
they're going to decompose down to nothing. Okay, okay, And I have
another question. I have a place at the lake, and my neighbor has
cinipede grass, and that cinipede is coming over and get into my Saint August
thing. Is there anything I can do to slow that down or stop it?
All? Right? Tell you what, Sandra, I'm gonna have to
take a break for time. Let me come back and enter that yet the
entwer is gonna be Yes, Sandy and Cyprus, you're next. Right after
we get back from break, our phone number seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four, he'd have a fall in mind. Let's see.
Well, good Sunday morning, on a good day for gardening, as all
days are good for gardening. We're going to go back out to Silsby and
continue our discussion with Sandra. And Sandra, I think you were wanting to
keep the centipede from creeping in. Is that right into my say long sing?
Yes, he's already coming over. Yeah. Uh so centipede is also
quite shade tolerant, so you know, the shade doesn't set it back as
much as something like Bermuda would be. The centipede, though, doesn't really
like the US A lot of nitrogen, a lot of fertilizing. It does
better in a poorer, slow condition. So as you do the regular care
of your Saint Augustine that we talk about here on the show, it gives
it the advantage over centipede. Uh. There's not a herbicide that kills centipede
but not Saint Augustine. That does not exist. And so it's going to
be a matter of uh, you know, either doing some hand pulling,
you know, getting getting a line there between the you and the neighbor where
you kind of manage it right there. Cinipede, you know, turns twenty
colored in the in the cool season, where Saint Augustine remains a low green,
so it's easy to tell them apart at that time. But that's going
to be what your options are is just trying to culturally fertilize this and give
this the Saint Augustine the edge or hand pulling it. What color do you
say it turned tawny color when when we have really cold weather. Now,
maybe if you don't have a coal warner. It turns a kind of a
tan color compared to Saint Augustine. And when we have coal weather, especially
as you get further north up Tyler Way, I mean it just you know,
browns out in the in the cool season. Okay, well, I
appreciate so much. Thank you for your time, Thank you for your call,
Sandra. I appreciate that. Let's head out to Cyprus and we're going
to talk to Sape. Got another sandy, A sander and a sandy.
What's up hi? This get? Good morning, Good morning. I called
you last weekend and I told you about my uh my Saint Augustine. That
I've lived here twenty years and that the first fifteen I didn't take care of
it, and I started this past year and a half and we're four to
five years, and so I put out. I went to eighth and they
told me to get They told me to buy this uh weed beater complete and
because I showed him the pictures like you told me too, and I put
that down. I'd say about thirty of my Saint Augustine's coming through twenty five
to thirty. But there's still lots of wheats since I put it out last
Tuesday, just not even a week ago. When can I put it again?
Can I? When I try something new, you definitely do not want
to do it again. It is a it is a pre emergent product.
The prodiamine in it at least is a pre emergent and when you double up
on pro diamine, that is going to inhibit your root growth on your Saint
Augustine. And so I would I would definitely not redo it. I would
give it at least probably sixty days before I came back and did that again.
Okay, And um, so I should put on that nineteen for eleven
or whatever. I forgot what the weed and the fertilizer nitro both. I
think it started with nineteen and I think the number yes, the super turf,
Yes, Um, I can go ahead and put that out now,
Yes, absolutely you can. I'm gonna go back to that we beat or
complete just for a moment. I was talking about the pre emergent part of
it, and that's why especially I don't want to reuse it right now if
you've already used it. But it does have the post emergent too, which
kills existing weeds. But I'm more worried about I see problems when people double
up on prodiamine type products used according to the label. That's okay, but
you know how we are tea spoons good at tablespoon's better. I did it
last week. I'm gonna do it this week and kill it deader than dead,
you know. And so yeah, just just don't do that. Follow
the label will tell you too, don't. I always follow the label?
Okay? And also do you have somebody else? Wait? Can I ask
you another question? You can. We were heading to break in a minute,
but let's see if we can get that done. Okay, my oak
grass, that I plan it. They got pretty tall. There's the Clemson
Spinelists. But I gave some of them. Came up too close together,
so I gave them to my sister yesterday. I think they got too big,
and I they're drooping down? Is it because their stress? Should I
wait a little bit? Are they in pots or where are they? Put
them in a bright shady area. Keep them watered and they'll bounce back.
They will recover, but they need just a break, maybe a morning sun,
but afternoon shade would be good, just for a little while. Once
they get their feet under them, you know oak Rack and live in the
full blazing sun. Okay, that don't have the time to read do that
root system you bet, Sandy, Thank you for the call. Thank you.
Okay. You're listening to garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Richter,
and our phone number if you'd like to give Josh a call, get
on the board or about to take a break here seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. We've been talking about out turf species. That's morn. I'm it's
going to continue to do that through I guess today's gonna be turf Species Day.
But when we get back, I'm going to continue on with Bermuda grass
and Zoysia will be on the way. KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse
any of the products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden
Line with Skip Richter. So just watch him as so many well, good
Sunday morning, on a good day for guard Day. You were listening to
garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Richter. We are here all more
until ten am, answering your phone calls and questions seven one three, two,
one two five eight seven four if you'd like to ask a question seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Roses are a popular popular
plant around here, and I was visiting Buchanan's nursery the other day and looking
at some of the color plants. By the way, Oh my gosh,
they they have got like for Mother's Day. If your mom doesn't just want
flowers that you put in a vase and then after a week they're kind of
gone. They have these florist quality looming plants, you know, the daisies,
the beautiful multicolored daisies, the bagonias and calancho or calanchoe however you want
to put it, calla lilies and things. It's just beautiful and it'll be
flowers at last. A good while I was, I was thinking about that.
That makes a lot of sense, more than a cut to do that.
But anyway, Roses Cinco de Mayo. I saw some of those out
there, and that is one of my favorite roses. It was introduced back
in two thousand and nine. It's an all America rose selection. I can't
describe the color to you, but it is a it is in the orange
coral range, orange coral, pink range and through and not in Pink's probably
not the right word to throw into that sentence. Highly disease resistant and it
gets about maybe three feet tall a little bit more. You can keep it
smaller if you want. As an amazing rose. Anyway, I saw some
of those at Buchanans. They're they're in the Heights at leven Street. In
the Heights. You can go to Buchanans Plants dot com. You ought to
sign up for their newsletter. You just get a lot of good information on
what's going on at Buchanans Plants. I think that's pretty cool. You know
that when it comes to Mother's Day, all of our nurseries have just so
many good products. You know, these quality local independent garden centers, the
mom and pops. They don't just put plants in the nursery. I mean
they have gift shops. They've got all kinds of bling and stuff that your
mom would enjoy. And I would encourage you thinking about that maybe she's not
a gardener. It's okay. They've got stuff that's just beautiful. You know,
it's not like they have to take care of a plant. But if
she is a gardener, can you ever get it set up better than that?
And I know she would appreciate that. And you know what, I'm
just gonna give you one more idea or thought when it comes to Mother's Day,
why not take your mom with you? If she's here and you're able
to do that, take her with you to a garden center. So instead
of showing up with this wonderful gift and plant, it's time spent together,
which I know is always important to mom's And so just another little twist on
things. We've got some wonderful garden centers and some great opportunities to take mom
out and get them something nice, but also have that memorable time together.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
Let's go ahead and go to the phones. We're gonna go and now let's
see we're gonna talk to Dwayne. Good morning, Dwayne, good MORNINGSID for
taking my call. Right yesterday, I sent you a picture of a red
oak. It came from d dot Set Snyder, and I transplanted it last
week and the leaves are turning brown and I water it every day, and
I would just wandering if it's just from normal shock, or if I need
to add something else to it. I put roots stimulator when I did transplant
and let it soak in there for a while. If I filled up the
water to hold water and everything, so it's getting plenty of water, I
just don't mow. If maybe I'm putting too much water, I think you
may be. I just was getting back to my emails and trying to take
a look at that. It's a red oak, and you've got some tip
burn on the leaves, which is a sign of a root problem. It
could be physical damage to the root. It could be a root rot.
It could be a lack of water. It could be putting a bunch of
salt based fertilile as are in the planting hole and burning roots. All of
those kinds of things can cause a symptom similar to what I see on this
plant. So I would just kind of think through them. I'll tell you
it really foliage almost has a kind of a scorched look too. I would
definitely hold back on the water for now, but dig down around that plant
and feel the soil about four inches deep or three inches deep even, and
if it's not moist to the touch water, but otherwise let's hold off because
I think it has what it needs it but it looks like it's been through
quite a shock. Okay, all right, well i'll try that. I
just want to make sure I didn't kill it by overwater. Well hopefully not,
but those kind of symptoms aren't good on the top. That means something's
wrong underground, and so let's just back off. If you think you might
have overwatered, then I'm sure it's more than wet enough. So let's just
back off of the water, all right, Okay, I'll try to Thanks
a wat skip, Yeah, thanks, right, appreciate that call. Uh,
they're you know, talking about water and trees and stuff like that.
The red oak called the nut tall oak, and you I'm gonna always misspelled
this inn you t t a L I believe as a spelling. But nutall
is a type of red oak that it's native here in southeast Texas, and
you'll find it growing in kind of wet areas, you know, swampy ish
areas, and it can take that kind It doesn't want to be underwater,
but it's more tolerant of overwatering than than something like a Schumart would be.
For example, just a little bit more geared for that. It's just as
beautiful as a Schumart too. So when you're looking for a red oak,
that that is one you may want to ask about, especially if your drainage
is anywhere anywhere in the in question. I'll tell you. We are going
to go back to the phones here, talk to Lisa and League City.
Hello, Lisa, we got we got I'm sorry, Linda. We got
one minute, and if we have to hold over after break, we will.
So let's let's start. Let's start real fast. Um. I about
a year ago or two years ago, Randy Lemon diagnosed my tree is having
twigs sturdling, okay, which you know they cut a little branches. Um,
I keep seeing little tiny branches all over my yard. Do I really
need to get rid of those? Because I need to get a trombone prayer
I believe to reach up at the very top of my oak tree. Yeah.
Well, it sounds like you're kind of moving around there on your phone,
so we're kind of getting a little garble. And so what I would
do is pick up every branch that falls, burn it, bury it though
it in the trash, and do something to get it off your property.
And I would not bother with spraying, with going to the trouble to try
to spray a big tree. Just the end those branches that fall is egg
than the larva that is going to create new twig gurglers. And so if
you pick them up and faithfully do that, you'll find that we can cut
way back on them. All right, okay, perfectly, by the way,
I know we have just a little bit of time, but like I
way tell you how wonderful you are. Yeah, you have added so much
to this show, and we just appreciate your knowledge and your time. Well,
that is very kind. I appreciate that. Thank you, Linda.
You're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Rictor. Our phone
number seven one three two one two five eight seven four. We'll be right
back. Well, good morning, on a good Sunday morning. We are
here to talk gardening. You listen in the Garden Line. I am your
host, Skip Rictor, and our phone number is seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
We're going to head out now to Southwest Houston and talk to Anthony.
Good morning, Anthony, good morning, sir. I'll have Saint Augustine lawn
and it's pretty much healthy. However, this one section, I'll say about
ten by ten out of the whole backyard, I cutty's real cute. It
all lily pad looking things, but there it's in golfing my Saint Augustine.
Okay, what can I take care of that? Well, that's what they
call dollar weed and dollar weed it looks like a little umbrella. The little
stem comes up in the middle of the leaf, a little round, wavy
edge leaf on top. That's what you're dealing with. And you number one,
the weather you keep the lawn, the happier the dollar weed is gonna
be. So let that grass get a little on the thirsty side before you
rewater. That's just good for the grass any way, to not stay soggy
all the time. But yeah, just culturally cutting back, that's not going
to kill the dollar weed. It's just gonna if you don't do that.
I mean, it's like you're just given the dollar weed. The rocket fuel
at wants to take over everything. But there are products that are pretty effective
against that. One that just comes to mind would be weed free zone.
It's a Fertiloam product. Weed Free Zone has four different broad leaf weed control
post emergent products in it. You want to use it, though, follow
the label, the labels the law. Even if I tell you something that's
not on the label, follow the label. That's the law. And what
it'll tell you is when it gets up about ninety degrees, it can damage
your Saint Augustine. So get it done. Now we're about to enter a
season where you're not gonna be able to use this stuff anymore until it cools
off again. And so get that product and put it down. Do a
good job. Follow the label in how strong you make it? You don't.
You can't spray this a lot of times a year. You can do
it in the spring, you can do it in the fall. That's about
end. And so that would be the way I would get rid of it.
Well, all right, thank you, all right, thank you,
Anthony. I appreciate that call very much. You are listening to garden Line.
Our number is seven one three two one two five eight seven four.
Hey. By the way, next Saturday, that is the thirteenth, I'm
going to be out at the Arburgate Nursery for a couple hours. Actually a
little longer than that. Eleven thirty am to one thirty pm. That's a
day before Mother's Day. Bring your mom. I'd like to beat your mom
too. I'd love to meet you. If you want to come in and
ask some questions. You can bring me some samples. Please put them in
plastic bags so we don't turn everything loose over there, and I'll be glad
to diagnose or identify if you would, if you've got photos on your phone,
or if you could take photos and put them on your phone of landscape
questions you have. You know, what is this plan? How do I
what might I do in this area? Back here, I just seemed to
have trouble. I'm looking for something that's color. You get the idea,
But well focused photos. Make sure sometimes when you hold up a little like
a plan or a flower and you take a picture of it, your phone
focuses on the background rather than the foreground. Right, Just check your pictures,
make sure that that they're well focused, so we can do our best.
But that's the Arburgate. But they're gonna have a little shindy going.
I mean they're gonna have a peach Balini's I mean, wow, that's that's
cool. Uh, they know how to throw a party at the arburg Gate.
They just are stocked up on all kinds of things. I mean the
yard art, the plants, that just the gifts for mom and the and
their gift shops. You will not have trouble shopping for Mother's Day next Saturday
at the arbor Gate. Well well worth the visit. I've been talking about
turf this morning, and I got into I finished in Augustly you start talking
about bermuda bermuda grass, the three hypes or three general groupings. Is the
wild coastal bermuda, the actually I'm gonna make it for of course, that's
the pasture grass. The common bermuda is just playing cheap old common bermuda.
You can make a decent lawn out of it if you very regularly and fertilize
it very regularly. But what most people get is a semi compact type of
buna, semi dwarf type of bermuda. And that's what you'll find on a
golf course screen, that's what you'll find on a high school football field or
a soccer field or things like that. That the biggest advantage of bermuda is
its wear and terribility. Now, if you put Saint Augustine out there and
you had, you know, fifty ten year olds playing soccer four games a
week on it, I mean it would pound it to dirt and that'd be
it. Bermuda has the ability, because of its underground rhizomes, to be
able to recuperate and come back. It can take the wear and tear,
and if you're fertilizing it and narrating it, take care of it well.
It can take that wear and tear. And that's why we choose it for
athletic fields. The medium heights bermudas the semi dwarfs are a good way to
go as you get smaller and smaller, Like if you want to make a
backyard golf course green, you could Wow, that's a complicated thing to be
successful. So I'd advise against it unless you have somebody knows what they're doing.
But the shorter you keep the bermuda, the more often you're going to
have to mow, because with bermuda, you don't let it grow a long
time and then cut it way back, or it looks terrible until it regreens.
You want to look good all the time, So frequent sharing just a
light sharing frequently. Like on a golf course green, they mow it every
day. Do you know that? Every day? On a fairway they're probably
mowing it definitely more than once a week. But on your home lawns,
if you can at least get about a five day mowing schedule, seven day
mowing schedule at the most, you can have a beautiful lawn. The shorter
you cut it, the more often you have to mow, because we're only
wanting to cut off a third of the height every time we mow, And
the shorter you mow it, you need to get a real type mower,
not the big propeller blades. So if you're going to try to go down
and have a one inch high Bermuda grass, which you could, the old
propeller is just that mower goes off the bumps in the yard. I mean,
it's just gouging and cutting. The real type mowers. That's why golf
course green looks like it does. But that kind of mower is available and
you can certainly do that the Bermuda grass. I guess the other thing that
last thing that I would say about Bermuda I mentioned that it does have the
drought tolerance and so on, but you want to make sure and fertilize it
regularly. It needs. It is a heavy feeder, and especially with wear
and tear, you're going to need to add a lot to it. Now,
you want to fertilize it regularly, but you don't want to over fertilize
it because bermuda, unlike Saint august well, both can grow thatch, but
bermuda and especially grow a thick thatch when you're pushing it and over fertilizing it,
So I would avoid that. Last one we're going to talk about is
Zoysia. Zosia grass is a wonderful grass for a lawn. It is mostly
shade tolerant, not as much as Saint Augustine, but more than bermuda.
The fine textured and the course textured types, that's the distinction we should make.
The fine texture types are even more tolerant of shade than the course textured.
Not a huge difference, but a little bit. The issue as zoysia
is it is a tough grass and it grows dense and if you don't keep
it mode pretty low, it gets lumpy and your propeller blade because it's tough,
if your blade isn't sharp, it tends to kind of knock it over
and you end up with a lumpy lawn. So sharp blade mow lower.
A real type mower is good to R E E L R E L reel
as opposed to propeller blade. But the more often you mow and the sharp
blade, that's the secret to a quality zoysia because it can really really get
dense, and there's a lot of good varieties. I would recommend getting the
broad leaf types of Zoisia. There the species of Japonica Zoisia japonica, those
types, and we say broad leaf, it's you know what a third of
the width of a bermuda of a Saint augustine leaf. But anyway, those
kind some of the most beautiful lawns I've seen, or Zoisia lawns. That's
that's the trade off with some of these grasses. Zoysia does crawling underground as
well, so it can invade an area from like bermuda grass does in your
flower beds. You know, you're chopping the cutting the top off with Saint
augustine and centipede, it's all on top of the ground. With bermuda and
Zoysia, it sends the submarines in under the flower bed, and here they
pop up inside your flower bed, and that is an ongoing problem to have
to deal with. It'd be nice if these grasses knew exactly where we want
them to stop. We want them to fill in fast, but we want
them to stop where they're supposed to stop, and they tend to have a
way to not do that. You know what, I was talking about feed
stores yesterday, and I was just thinking about League City feed today this morning.
League City Feed down in League City area. If you are in Santa
Fe Dickinson all that you're you know you're in League City area. They're in
Highway three, a few blocks south of Highway ninety six, and it's the
traditional feed store. You know. They they take care of you. They
carry your stuff out to the car for you. They carry the fertilizers and
the saw products that we recommend on here, premium pet food, everything you
need for your chickens, your backyard chickens. And while you're there, maybe
you even get a chance to meet Madison's Dalmatian Rorshak, which I still think
is the best name for a Dalmatian Nikki. I think you could probably sit
there and stare at rorshak and say I in that one, I see what
a banana? Yes, there's a squirrel chasing a rabbit on the side or
something that's like looking at clouds. So instead of it, you know,
maybe I wonder I need to tell Wes and Madison they need to just offer
like a psychological service. So instead of going to see a paying one for
it, you can just go study rush act, tell them what you see
and they would tell you what your issues are. That's great. I don't
think it works that way, but it would be a good idea. Maybe
maybe someone, maybe someone should should create dogs with spots for that reason.
Okay, anyway, League City Feed here's the phone number two eight one three
three two one six one two Monday through Saturday six to nine or so nine
to six and closed on Sundays. Check out the thunderbirds down at League City
Feed. I joke about that rush a thing, but now every time I
see a dog with spots, I start looking and seeing what I'm seeing.
Hey, our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Give us a call. Well, good morning on a good morning for
gardening, which every morn is a good morning for gardening. It's gonna be
a wonderful afternoon to get out and get some stuff done, go see some
garden centers. Like I said, I gotta go pick up that that aunt
control product, because they are actually just crawling all over the place. I
uh, you know, if you if you are not from the South and
you moved down here, the first experience with fire ants is an eye opening
experience, is it not. I remember many times, you know, growing
up as a kid, if you stepped in something soft out on the farm,
you knew what had just happened, right, a cow by something along
those lines. And then fire ants, of course they come in. When
I grew up, they were already here, but fire ants come in.
And so now when you're walking through the yard and you step and something soft,
it's like, oh, we just have this natural reaction that we've learned.
I need to get my foot out of there quick and then start checking
my shoes and socks and ankles and everything else, because I probably just have
a whole bunch of mad ones. I think they sit up there at the
top of the mound, just ticked off all the angry ones. They make
them go sit at the top of the mount and wait for somebody to mess
with them, because they sure are faster reacts, especially when the weather's warm.
Well, our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Let's go take some calls here. We're going to go to Port
Natchez and talk to Jenet this morning. Good morning Janet, Good morning scamp.
How are you. I'm well, thanks, I'm only good. Thank
you for mentioning the flower angelonia. I've never heard of that before, and
when you said it was also referred to as the summers an Act dragon.
Yes, I went and I finally found them and I'm playing it the whole
bed of them, and they're absolutely gorgeous. So I wanted to thank you
for that. Well, that's wonderful to hear it. I'm gonna give you
a tip, you know, keep them adequately watered and infertilize them. If
you don't have a good slow release in the bed, get one, because
those things we'll just about bloom themselves to death. I mean, they are
beautiful blooms if they have water and fertilizer, and so you want to have
both on them. Yes, and they're beautiful. Good because I want them
to look just like this in June and July for you. Yeah. So
I'm taking good care of them. I'm doing all that to them, and
thank you so much. Well good, I'm glad you enjoyed them. They
are they are, thank you for the Okay, bye bye, happy,
all right, take care. We're gonna go to Missouri City now and talk
to Ruben. Hello Rubon, good morning, Yes, good morning. Quick
question on greenhouses. I want to build a small one, but how do
you pollinate or how do greenhouses? How the plants pollinated? So you have
it's just about growing for production in a greenhouse, not just starting some transplants
to go outside, right for production? Yeah, well, if the plant
has to be pollinated, it's not going to be pollinated in a greenhouse unless
you come up with some way to do it. The big professional growers.
There's actually some growers, and this just amazes me. You can buy bumblebees,
a little box of bumble bees and put it in a greenhouse for pollinating
a big greenhouse. Now that's not your backyard greenhouse, Rubbon, but I
just found that to be interesting. That's one way that growers with huge greenhouse
ranges deal with it. With things like tomatoes, they don't need a bee
to pollinate them, but they need to boom the bloom to shake, so
the pollen falls within the bloom and it pollinates. It's health. So what
they'll do is they'll vibrate the wires that the tomatoes are growing on. Or
if you had, let's say in your greenhouse, you're growing them in beds
on the ground, you could just kind of rattle the cage and shake them
a little bit every day, just briefly, and that would do that.
That would accomplish the pollination for you on that. Otherwise you're gonna have to
have some insects in there doing that, okay, because I know that's a
black mason bee. So they'll pollinate about thirty times more than a regular honey
bee. Yep. It just don't create money. Yeah, yeah, there's
another Maybe I don't think you can get those though for the greenhouse. Maybe
you can. I'd have to look into that, okay. And then one
more question. There was a gentleman that just to live at the Randy Lemon
show that had a organization down in Freeport that needed grounds heres. I don't
remember his name. I thought I had put it down on my own.
I don't know. Maybe some of your listeners or maybe you might know the
name of that individuality. I guess it was like a charrib type organization,
but needed volunteers and or materials. Okay, And if anyone does know,
or you know, I'll be listening. Maybe I could get a phone number
and location of it about tell me, tell me again, what kind of
what were they? What was the group doing? Well, there were one
thing, that's just I don't he seeing a moment. I don't remember what
you're doing. But he was helping out. He had a lot of food
for the community. Let's say it was not in Freeport, but I know
that he wanted volunteers, needed volumne heres here. He was building buildings and
head greenhouses for one thing. And and uh, just I just don't remember
the name of that individual. Okay, it's not occurring to me. But
if any listeners are aware, then give us a call. We'll maybe So,
yeah, I know Randy has a lot of the Oh, I know
what it is. You're talking about out Harvest for the Hungry. Go go
online and look for Harvest for the Hungry. And that's the one that's the
one you're referring to that's it all right, all right, great, thank
you. I appreciate that call, and uh, Lee, I see you
out there in Conro when we get back from break. You'll be first if
you'd like to call in. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I can't
well, good morning on a good Sunday morning. This is gonna be a
great day for gardening. We can't. I can't wait to get out and
visit a garden center this afternoon. I got I gotta get some of that
done today. There's a couple of things I was picking up yesterday, and
I forgot to get a certain kind of pop that I need for a house
plant that needs bumping up and just kind of looking at it and thinking,
you know, that needs a bigger container so I can take off and grow
some more. But anyway, I'll be getting that done a little bit later.
Let's head to the phones. By the way, the phone number is
seven one three two one two five eight seven four, and we are going
to go talk to Lee in Conro. Good morning, Lee, good morning,
Skip. Appreciate you taking my call this morning. Yes, sir.
My question of you is some feedback and guidance. We've got a potted lemon
tree and a potted mandarin orange tree that we're given to us a couple of
years ago by one of our sons, and I think both of them are
doing well. On the lemon plant, we've gotten four or five very nice
lemon's prior years, and we haven't had any sign of plant of on the
mandarin orange until this year. And this year we've got probably the lemon plant
is gone on nuts, and we've got twenty or more little lemons, and
I've pruned some of those back because I think there's too much for the lembs
to hold. We want to transplant those into a bigger pot. And my
question of you is if you have a recommendation on the type of soil and
the time of year we best we okay to make a transplant now or should
we wait till fall before winter. That's that's a good question. And the
inches now, it's fine. Now it's a good time to do it.
How big is the pot that they're in now? Is it like a five
gallon pot or is it much larger than that? Fourteen inches tall by fifteen
inches across at the top. Okay, well, definitely want to get into
a bigger container, especially that mandarin and needs a little more room. But
the lemon as well will appreciate it. So get up a bigger sol volume
and find a rose soil. There's rose soil available from uh you know,
you get it from Nature's Way, you can get it from heirloom soils.
Quality rose saw mix is going to be exactly what you need for that kind
of container. So that answers both of my questions. And I appreciate your
guidance. And I'm quite familiar with Nature's Way. I've gotten a lot of
their leak mold composts or since we're yeah, we'll be you know, being
up in Caro, you're kind of like the perfect spot. You're almost in
between the two. Uh you know. But while we're a mile north of
Spring, we got an all star race that I've gotten some stuff too,
but I didn't are the different soils I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure.
Yeah, Well that that answered what which is the royal rose soil and the
wire? And I'm I'll probably give them the Nature's way of try. Thank
you, thank you, thank you for your g You bet well, I
appreciate that. I appreciate your call. Our phone number. I got time
for one more call. If you call quick, it's seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two and two fifty eight seventy
four. You gotta have fast fingers on this when we're running out of the
hour, but even if we don't get finished, we can talk to you
the next hour seven one three two one two five eight seven four R two
on two KTR eight. That's another easy way. By the way, if
this morning I've been talking about lawns and went through each of the grass types
with the pros and cons, are some information you might need to know about
the kind of mowing and whatnot that you do for them. If you miss
stuff like that, you can go listen to us on podcast. We're available
on podcasts through an iHeart system. The podcasts, you can go back and
listen to pass shows, or you can also tell your friends about it.
They come. People that don't live here can listen a live online all the
time, and you can also listen to pass shows to the podcast. We
have folks a surprisingly far area that listen to Garden Line a lot of Houston
transplants that moved halfway across the country and they still listen, and so we
welcome that as well. It's it's enjoyable doing a garden show, and it's
enjoyable helping people with gardening, and that that's what we really want to is
we want you to have success. If you're one of the folks that says
I can't garden, I tried it. I killed a plant, killed ten
plants. I have a brown thumb. Here here's my answer. Number one.
To be a good gardener, you got to kill a lot of plants.
That that's first. You gotta kill a lot of plants. And that's
how we learn. And there is no try it once, you know,
I mean you can. You can try it again and again and we can
learn and we can do better. I still kill plants. I still try
things, right, I neglect something or I try something to see if it
works, it doesn't work, and so on. That's okay. Gardening is
fun. There's no rules. Now, I know the neighborhood Association has rules,
right, but really in guardening at your yard, what do you want
to do? Do you ent your backyard to be a big vegetable garden,
we'll do that. You want to put in a pond and have a golf
course green though the rest of the yard, you can do that. I
mean every you know. You learn how to do stuff and just enjoy doing
it. And maybe you don't have room for a big dig in the dirt
garden, you can just deal with houseplants. You can start plants inside.
You can grow plants. Now we have lighting that's such high quality. You
can grow a tomato plant all the way through fruiting indoors with not a drop
of natural light at all. And if those kinds of systems, if those
kinds of things are of interest to you, I encourage you to do that.
Expand your gardening. Learn how to propagate plants, learn how to start
seeds, learn how to root cuttings, learn how to divide your perennials.
And with each little bit of knowledge, your thumb gets greener and greener and
greener. Because there's no such thing as a brown thumb, but there are
uninformed thumbs. And our goal here on Garden Line is to inform your thumb.
If you will give us a call week and talk you walk you through
it. Just give it a shot. If you've got kids, grandkids,
kids are your own, I encourage you to get them involved in gardening.
I'm telling you, I know I'm biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
It affects mental development, it affects physical health. It changes the way
you eat when you grow healthy food and enjoy it yourself. That's our number
one health problem in this world is in this country, is the way we
eat and what it does to our body. With gardening, I mean you
can grow what you want. If you want to have a herb garden.
If you won't have hanging baskets of color, what is of interest to you?
Now is the day get out to buy some of those products, to
go home and try them and plan them. Any questions If you go to
the nurseries we're talking about, they're gonna tell you everything you need to know.
But if you got questions, give us a call here at Garden Line.
KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to KTRH Garden Line with Skip rictor just watch him
well. Good Sunday morning, the sun has come out. We get a
little bit of sunshine. Shining through the clouds here. Still kind of hazy
overhead, but hey, it's going to get better. This is a day
to get out there, get some things done in the garden. We've been
talking about lawns this morning. We can talk about trees. If you'd like,
give us a call the phone number seven one three two one two eight
seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I was
in my backyard the other day and it was I don't know, going around
looking at some things and taking care of this plan or that, and I
passed by this little pail that was full of rainwater, and it was sitting
there and I don't know I'd forgotten I guess I set it down with the
you know, opening up and the rainwater coach of rains. It just got
in it and hello, mosquito larvae, wrigglers wriggling around in there. And
it just reminded me I am breeding mosquitoes, and we don't need to breed
mosquitoes. I have a news flash for you. I have to tell Nikki
about this one for the next news flash. There are enough mosquitoes in the
Houston area that we were full. We have enough. We don't need to
breed more so, how do we not breed them? Well, we go
around and we make sure that our gutters are draining well so they don't sag
in whole water. It does not take a mosquit along to lay eggs,
go through the larval stage and be out as an adult. I mean they
are fast at that. Anywhere they're stagnant water. The catch basins underneath your
pots can breed mosquitoes. The bird bath out there, well, what do
you do. Well, one thing you can do is just dump them.
But like me, I had one I didn't even know about and it was
there. So we try to do that. But if you've got an area
that you need to it needs the water needs to stay. Maybe it's a
little pond, maybe it is a bird bath and you just you're not going
to get out there and you know, dump it out twice a week.
And to get fresh water in there. You need to know about mosquito dunks.
Mosquito dunks are a natural product. They float on the water. They're
a little donut like beige donut like things floating on the water. They slowly
dissolve and they they release a disease of mosquitoes. It is not a disease
of lady beetles, it is not a disease of afids. It's not a
going to hurt the family, cat, the dog, the birds that get
a drink out of the water. It completely safe organic product. It's a
type of BT different than the caterpillar BT. But when you do that,
you got a month of protection against mosquito larva in that spot. So anywhere
you've got water that you just can't drain out, you need a mosquito dunk.
Maybe there's some other kind of stagnant pond in the back, mosquito dunk.
Put them in there. You're going to find them everywhere there. All
the independent nurseries and feed stores we talk about carry mosquito dunks. Ace hardware
stores carry mosquito dunks. It's just it just makes sense. I mean,
there are very few problems that we deal with out in the lawn and garden
where it is such a simple solution as us. It's safe, it's naturally
organic, Throw it in walk away, it takes care of it for a
month. You can't get simpler than that. Cannot get simpler than that.
Well, you're listening to garden line, and I am your host, Skip
Richter. We are here to talk to you about whatever is of interest to
you of gardening. So give us a call at seven one three, two,
one two and five eight seven four. I just went blank there.
You know I've said that eight hundred times seven three, two and two fifty
eight seventy four would be glad to visit about the things that are of interest
to you. Kind of went through the lawns today, the different species of
long grasses and things like that that are in the soil. I want to
talk a little bit about the trees. This is a This is an important
time. If you have planted trees this past fall and winter and spring,
or if you're planting them now. When that tree goes in the ground,
all of its roots are still in the cylinder that you pulled out of the
pot. Right. So when that tree is a stabbed head, it grown
from a seed in that spot, it would have roots twice as high as
the tree in all directions that the seed would have had time to have created
that kind of a root system. But when you're taking a plant that was
bought from a nursery and putting it in the ground, the roots are not
where they will be. They're just where they still, you know, where
they were in the pot you bought them, in that pot in the nursery.
Especially when it gets the summertime. Their water in those things twice a
day to keep those trees alive at least once a day, depending on the
weather. So what happens when it goes in the ground, Well, you've
got wet soil, but it pumps that root ball dry that the foliage the
top of that tree has an abnormally small root area because that's the only way
we can grow them is you know, in a pot, we're always going
to have a restricted root system when we grow it. So when you get
it established, you're gonna in that period of time, you're gonna need to
keep that root ball moist. Now you don't drown it, you don't water
log it, you know that's deadly, but you do have to keep it
moist. And we talk about tree hugger sprinklers earlier as a way to do
that. Because it wets that area. You can build a berm of soil
around a tree you just planted and fill that berm up with water and it
all has to soak right down in there. That's fine if you wanna take
that up roach, but you have it's touching go this first summer because the
roots are slowly moving out into the soil, which is good, and so
we're gradually wetting a wider and wider area, which is good. But you
know, I can't say you need five gallons of water a day. I
mean we can give you these rules of thumb. You know, if this
mini gallon container, here's how you water it. But in general the idea
is you keep that container root ball moist all the time, and that requires
regular watering and then in time we can back off where we're not watering the
base of the tree. You know, if you've got existing trees in your
landscape, they're roots your way out of the way out in all directions.
The tech Sager life extension scientists did a study where they took pecan tree and
they washed out a route. They you know, followed it with washing out
a route to see how far away from a tree is a pecan root,
and they got out two and a half times the height of a pochondry.
You know how big a pecan tree is huge, Well, think about two
and a half times at height That tree has roots out there. So your
neighbors three or four houses down their tree roots are in your yard probably,
which is another reason why we don't use certain products that can be damaging.
We control products canna be damaging to trees because your trees roots are all through
your yard. Your neighbor's trees roots are all through your yard. So it's
just a tip on getting your planets started. By the way, if you
buy a new tree and you're gonna planet, cut the roots that are going
around the outside. You know, we don't want to do that because we
think we're gonna hurt the tree if we cut that root. But if you
cut them, trust me, they will resprout and grow out. One time,
out Arbigate, working with Beverly, I pulled a tree out, I
cut the roots, put it back in, came back two weeks later,
pulled it out in fresh, new white roots growing in all directions from that
cut. Don't be afraid to cut the roots on the outside. Circling roots
to a tree no good. That's just a little tip for the day.
We're going to take a break now. Our phone number seven one three,
two, one two five eight seven for Ruth out in spring. I see.
You'll be first up called Josh, and you can get on the board
as well. Well. Good morning. It's a good, good Sunday morning.
We're looking forward to a day this afternoon, get a little bit of
gardening done. I see some kind of clouds growing out there, but I'm
gonna go worry about those. I think that we need to get those to
blow away and not worry about them. It's always it's always good to get
out and enjoy the weather. I get the week coming up here, it's
a good time to get out and get some I would call it therapy and
health enhancing time out among the plants in the garden. Our phone number is
seven one three two one two five eight seven four. You're listening to Garden
Line and we are going to head out now to spring and talk to Ruth.
Good morning Ruth, Good morning Skip. I have a question along the
same line as what you're talking about. Um. We've I've got some new
fruit trees and I'm putting them in pots, and I'm noticing all the circular
roots grown around. Do I break those up somewhat and then put them in
the new pot or just plant them just like they are? How big is
the pot across the top. How how wide is the pot? Yeah,
I would just cut those circling roots in the container so that they branch.
You know, with fruit trees, it's not as important as it is with
large landscape trees, because a landscape tree, you know, an eight we're
going to call this an eight inch circle root going around, right, that's
an eight inch As it gets bigger and bigger, maybe it starts off the
size of a spaghetti and the next thing you know, it's the size of
your finger. And as it gets bigger and the trunk gets bigger, the
two come together and the root ends up years down the line, strangling the
trunk of the tree. And by the time you see the problems above and
the foliage of the tree, it's a little late to try to get that
embedded root out of the trunk that's strangling it. Now, in a fruit
tree, we don't end up with eight inch trunks usually, so you're probably
gonna be okay not cutting it. But I on an eight inch I still
would. I still would. Okay, just a couple on the bottom,
just no anything when you when you pull it out of the pot. Anything
going around that you see apply especially though down on the bottom it's not as
important, but I usually will cut some roots down there as well. Just
get a fresh start, and believe me that it won't set them back much.
They'll take off. Awesome, good hunt. Thank you so much.
Yep, yep, you bet, you bet. Okay, thank you for
the call. Yeah, planting, planting trees is it's a long term investment,
of course it is. So what you want is you want something that's
going to last a long time and be better with the years. When I
was living in Conrow, and actually I lived up in the Willis area,
and a friend of mine up in Willis, older gentleman at that time,
showed me a picture of his house when they first built it. And then
he showed me a picture of the house now. And they'd moved on,
gone to a different house, but showed me the house now. And in
that old picture, and it's like a forty year old picture, there was
this little scrawny tree in the front yard and it looked basically like a broom
handle sticking up out of the ground, I mean a one inch trunk or
something. And then in the second picture, this thing is I mean,
it is the home. I mean it is just beautiful spreading tree. That
just I mean, I don't know how many thousand dollars it's worth in the
value of that property, but it's worth a lot. Now. Why is
that? Well, they picked a good variety and speak or a good species
to plant for the area, a tree that was going to be happy there,
and then they took good care of it over the years. They took
good care of they planted it properly and got it started. But the other,
the other thing in that secret sauce as they did it, he didn't
wait twenty years to plant the tree. The best time to plant a tree
is the day before yesterday, right or not? Actually the best time is
forty years ago. Then the second best time is the day before yesterday.
And then we'll call today the third best time. But let's get it done,
because they add value to your home. That combination quality species, quality
grown tree, and quality planting that adds up to a long term, very
valuable investment. Before you just go out and grab whatever's for sale, let's
figure out what tree you need. Let's do a little research. Do you
want evergreen or deciduous? Would you like a tree that flowers or not?
Is it mainly for shade that you want it. Those are all factors in
deciding. And when you know, we talk about places you know like Verdant
Tree Farm for example. Vernant Tree Farm is an excellent place to purchase your
plan, your trees and things. They do a great job of growing them.
They know how to produce a quality tree. And when you go out
and you get a tree at a place like that, you're going to end
up with a quality tree, one that's gonna last. The folks at RCW
Nurseries will sell you a good quality tree as well, and you just have
to start with that because what most people say is they want a fast growing
tree. I want I want, I want to grow fast like I'm planet
today, hang a hammock tomorrow. Right, Well, go back. Remember
some of you who are old enough remember the nineteen sixties when Arizona Ash was
so popular, and then there's the nineteen seventies and eighties, and by the
nineteen nineties whole neighborhoods of Arizona Ash look like hat racks. They had fallen
apart, they'd prune limbs off, it was butchered, it was horrible,
and so thirty forty years down the line they are pulling these trees out and
starting over with the broomstick. What if seat of an Arizona ash they plant
it a quality tree, so fast is not the most important thing. There
are some species that are faster than others, and we got we got some
good quality trees. But the way you care for it has to do with
fast too. Right. Plant a quality tree that's a reasonable growth right,
take care of it right, and you will be way ahead in the long
run. Don't be duped. It's I cringe when I see these advertisements for
some tree that grows ten feet a year. You know it's it's some fast
growing tree. Put these words in your head, grow fast, die young.
That's that's pretty much the case for those kind of trash trees. They
just aren't going to give you the quality that you want. So anyway,
I'm ranting and raving, but I like to do that. I think it's
a topic worth renting and raving because if I if I talk one person into
planning a good quality tree that has been grown right from someone that knows what
they're doing, the right species at the right time, I'm the right way.
I think we have accomplished something that It's an honorable thing to plant a
tree under whose shade you will never set, but your kids and your grandkids
will, and if you ever sell the house, it's going to be a
valuable asset to your home as well well. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. You can give us a call here on garden line.
If you don't follow us on Facebook, encourage you to follow us on Facebook.
Two. We have regular postings up there where you can see things that
are going on in the community. I'm a little neglecting doing more of the
educational postings on there, and I'm going to try to get that fixed because
we need to be putting those up as well. Little tips that you can
share with your friends, things to give you success or maybe explain a problem
a little bit better so you can understand exactly what you need to do for
it. That's that's kind of the whole deal right there. So back on
the tree on the tree comments. First of all, we got some calls
coming in. I'm gonna Randy and North Houston. I'm gonna let you hold
just for a second here. We're about to go to break, and I
want to be able to have enough time to do service to your questions or
a couple of others coming on. If you'd like to get online, it's
seven one three two one two five eight seven four. If you give Josh
a call, he will get you on the board and we will be able
to visit with you when we when we come back from break. So,
uh, today's a good day to go out shopping for a tree to go
visit. Go buy one of those places, pick a tree out, get
it ordered, get it planted. If it's a little bitty, If it's
a little a small tree you can pick up and carry, that's fine,
you can do it yourself. But if it's getting bigger, I say,
even thirty gallons is kind of hard to manage. You need to get a
professional to take care of that. You know what, Randy, I think
I am going to have time to get your call. I'm gonna go ahead
and head out to North Houston and we're gonna talk to Randy. Hello,
guy, how are you doing. Hey, I'm good. Good talking to
you. Skip. Yes, Hey, I've got a question. Um,
I was planning on planting a magnolia tree out in the front part of my
yard between my drive, between my driveway and my neighbors, it's a strip
of about probably about eight feet wide, okay, and uh just wanted to
know if that's an okay place full fun to plan a magnolia tree. Well,
the sun is good. Eight foot is kind of minimal. I would
definitely go with a magnolia that's a more compact growing form. Uh. There
is little gem there is uh is it called teddy Bear? I believe is
one. There's several of them out there. And when you go to a
good tree tree place, you're gonna they're gonna tell you what selections they carry
that If it's only eight feet though, that only gives it four feet to
either sidewalk right and and that right that worries me a little bit. There
are things you can put in the ground to direct the roots downward so they
don't go right under the sidewalk, because that's how they do damage. A
little route grows bigger in time and the sidewalk lifts up, and so we
want to avoid that. So I'm I'm kind of on the fence for even
a dwarf type magnolia in that area. But it is possible, but you
might want to look into some kind of special uh you know, work to
have done to direct those roots down. How would I how would I direct
the roots down? Skift? Well, it's a barrier they put underground.
It's they don't trans and put a vertical barrier in it. It's it's a
little bit of a job to do that. But anyway, that's my thinking
for a long time. You won't have a problem. I'm just thinking twenty
years down the line, thirty years. I'm just not sure. Okay,
gotcha? Would would a cypress tree be a bed of choice? Definitely?
Not No, not not a cypress and location. Hey, I'm gonna have
to run to an ad Okay, but thank you for the question. Uh
Mario, clear Lake Mark, clear Lake City. We will be there very
soon when we come back here. First stop, don't you cry? Well,
good Sunday morning, on a good day and a great day for gardening
this afternoon. Get out there and do a little bit of the things you're
planning. Look out the window, where do you need some color? Stand
in front of the lawn or in front of the house, look around and
and just assess your your landscape. Just take a look at it. You
know, when I drive around town, I always look at landscapes and notice
things like, oh, that's an interesting way they created that bed. Or
I like the way they decorated you know the bed borders with that. Or
you know this plant that they've used that's a unique feature. Learn from that
and take it home, put it into practice in your yard. You're listening
to garden Line. I'm the host, Skip Ricter seven one three two one
two five eight seven four, and we're going to go to clear Lake City
and talk to Mark. Hello. Mark, Hello, sir. I thought
it was going to be the second one from Clearly Well, I don't know.
Somehow I grabbed you first, So that's okay. I hope it don't
offend a guy that should have been first before I ask my questions. The
caller back was talking about magnolia between driveways. Yes, and I have called
you about magnolia leaves before. I would hardly recommend that he gets one of
the best leaf vacuums he can find on the market. Okay, that's a
good point. They do have the seasonal drop, don't they. Well,
yeah, and for me, it's three hundred and sixty five days a year.
It's incredible. For years now, I've been confused by the units of
measure for pots from bags of soil, fertilizer, stuff like that. They
have, for instance, an eight inch pot. You have quartz and gallons
in bags of soil and fertilizer, and I don't know how to make the
conversion. I can take a tapered pot and I can figure out based on
the measure of the top in the bottom and if slungs it straight sides,
calculate how many cubic inches or cubic feet that pot will hold. But quartz
and gallons, you know how, I'm at a loss. Where can I
go to get a conversion table or a way of making that version. There
are some of those online, and a ball seed company used to have one
online. I'm sure there's others. Now. I would do a Google search
for container plant container conversions and see you may try putting ball seed in there.
But there there are charts like that, And yes, it is confusing,
and one at one point we're talking about how many inches and the next
point we're talking about quartz and uh, and then sometimes they throw in the
number that's a number two pot or whatever, and so if ye too,
Yeah, so that that's what I would do. You know, I don't.
I can't talk and Google at the same time, but if I could,
i'd look for one for you. But they are there. You might
if you don't have success, you might try. Well, I would just
do it that way. I would do plant plant container sizes conversions. Now,
well, I've tried. I've tried doing that, but apparently I'm used
to write keywords. I haven't found something that says if if I can find
something, I will post it to our Facebook page. How about that,
you say you'll do? What would it? If I find it, I
will post it to the garden Line Facebook page. Oh, I'm not a
Facebook user or any other place you can put it. Let's see. I
will mention it next week on the air. How about that? If I
find You're going to be in clear Lake on the twenty seventh, is that?
What time is it going to start? At? Eleven thirty to one
thirty, And I'll be at wild Birds Unlimited. It's a new wild Birds
store down there. I'm really excited to go see it. I haven't been
down to the clear Lake store yet. They haven't been opened that long.
But no, it's just not in his grand opening is the week before you
Yes, you go, he said, it's soft opening. Now. Yeah,
we'll be talking about that a lot going forward as we get a little
closer to her. Thank you very much, sir, Thank you Mark.
I appreciate the call. Thank here. All right, let's now I'll talk
to Mario and clear Lake. Hey Mario, actually Mark had called in about
a minute and a half before you did, so that's no problem on the
skip. I have really two questions. The second one occurred to me after
I spoke to your producer. First question is I have what I believe to
be mildew on some knockdown roses. And I noticed it in early April,
and I thought my garden folks had treated it, but apparently they didn't.
And I'm wondering, given the length of time, whether it's too late to
do anything about it. Is it like a white material on the leaf surface,
and are or the leaves kind of twisted and their growth has Yeah,
they kind of shriveled up and it's a knockout rose. Yeah, I did
not know knockouts had that kind of a problem with powdery mildew. Well,
I could be a mistakes. Maybe they're not knockout, but I thought they
were. Yeah, okay, well it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if
you use. If you use kneem oil, just don't do it on a
hot sunny day baking down to the leaves. But kneem oil is a very
good powdery mildew control spread spread on the plants, and you just have to
coat them because it only kills the pot of mildew if you fully coat the
leaf, otherwise the spots that remain unaffected. Also, you can use a
product containing bailaton bay L E T O N. And we are hitting a
hard, hard break here. Do you want to hang on to continue the
discussion or did that cover it? That covers it? But real quickly.
I had a Japanese maple that got hit real hard and to freeze, and
my gardener's cut it down, actually cut off the top of the thing,
well more than the top, about two thirds of it, and it's growing
up like a bush. What what can you tell me about? So when
I come back from break, I will I will answer that one for you.
Mario. We let's say you're listening to the garden line seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four, and we'll be right back from a
break. Good morning on a good day for gardening. We are going to
head back out. I believe Mario is still there from a clear lake and
go ahead. And you were saying you had a Japanese that was now a
bush right now, I said maple mistakenly. It was a blueberry. Japanese
blueberry, definitely. Yeah, it was that body feet tall. It was
beautiful, and then the freeze really hit it. Yeah, that's a problem
with that. My gardeners cut it the top off, actually two thirds of
it, and so I have a kind of like a free foot dub and
the leaves are growing now. Yeah. So and I expect you can kind
of do what you want to do. I mean you can, you can
do some sharing to try to reform it into what you want. It sounds
like you still have one trunk coming out of the ground and then there's a
lot of branching going on from where they cut it off. Yes, that's
right. Yeah, So I would just say shape it like you want.
It kind of is what it is, you know. I mean, we
wish that that hadn't happened and died back, but you could pick a branch
or two or three to go up and kind of form the center again.
But by doing some frequent sharing you can help form that shape that you're looking
for and get it back back in shape. Otherwise it's gonna be pretty rangy
going in all directions right now, Kim, Will it grow as tall as
it was when I had that trunk that went up, like I say about
eight eat or so, well, yeah, yes it will. But as
you spread the growth out over multiple trunks, it's gonna want to it's going
to be more of a wider rather than taller bush, just because you know
the top tall part has been lost and now you've got multiple branches sprouting.
But if you shaped it, you could theoretically get it back up to where
it was, as long as we don't have enough cold hard winterer. Oh
great, that's good dude. All right, Well, yep, looking forward
to seeing you over it in clear Lake when you come up on the twenty
seventh. We've been over to that store to don't like a little location.
They all are. I love I love Wahlberg. I appreciate that, and
thank you, thank you for the call. I'm looking forward Saturday to twenty
seventh. Being out there, let me ask you a question, speaking to
you everybody listening, or do you consider yourself a compassionate person? I would
think you do. I drive through Houston and I see people that are on
street corners asking for help. I know there's a significant homeless problem, in
the nearly homeless problem in a community, But I don't think that the face
of homelessness is what you may think it is. The face of homelessness may
be a mom living in a car with her kids. For whatever horrible reason,
She's found herself in that situation and she just needs to get on her
feet and get a job. The face of homelessness may be a man who
had a really well paying job, and you know, sometimes we tend to
be a paycheck or two away from broke and lose a job, a couple
of strokes of hard luck, and now you've got a person that once had
it all together, and now he's just trying to put her all back to
piece, all the pieces back in place. Star of Hope. Does that
Star of Hope mission serves Harris Fort Ben, Brazoria, Montgomery County. Do
you know they feed almost a thousand people a day They have vans. Their
Love and Action vans go out and they're reaching out to people with prayer and
shelter and recovery programs giving them a hope of a future out on the street.
People can come in to both the homeless men, women and children.
They can stay up to a year as they focus on having their life changed,
education, employment, spiritual growth, how to manage life and money,
substance abuse. This is life changing stuff. If you want to give a
dollar, don't just hand it to a person on a corner. That's a
whole new set of stories as to where that usually ends up. Give it
to a place like Star of Hope, where there's true training, true hope,
true accountability and a chance for a new a new life. Do you
know they feed more than six thousand meals a week. For two dollars and
eighty cents, you can provide a meal that's the cost of a cup of
coffee. Go to Shmission dot org Store of Hopemission, do sh mission dot
org and learn more. I urge you to support Star of Hope. I
uh you know years ago, we my wife and I with our church used
to come and work with Starvhope downtown and the last time I visited. The
new facilities are like, oh, my goodness, this makes the difference,
you know, instead of just a here's here's lunch for a day, good
luck, I feel better now. I gave something. You're part of a
partnership that is changing lives and truly giving people hope. And I think that
kind of compassion is in all of us. Uh And I just can't I
can't say enough for what I believe in, and that is a star of
hope. Mission. Well, my goodness, we've talked about all kinds of
flamp stuff today here on garden Line. I want to remind you that next
Saturday, from eleven thirty to one thirty, I will be at Arbourgate,
the day before Mother's Day. Bring your mom. I want to meet you.
I want to meet your mom too. You can find out more information
if you if you want to type in info at start at Arburgate dot com.
Info at Arburgate dot com for more information. But just go online to
Arburgate dot com. You can see the amazing stuff they have to offer.
And I promise when you go and shop with your mom, it's gonna be
the greatest Christmas gift you can imagine if she's a gardener, Oh my goodness.
In fact, there's no limit to what you can do if she doesn't
care about plants but just likes pretty things, fragrances for inside the home,
you know, some beautiful art, something to put in the yard. It
just goes on and on. And that's Arburgate that that's who they've always been
out there. It's a show place. So next Saturday, eleven thirty to
one thirty, and urge you to come out. If you've got some plant
samples, bring them in a bag. Please keep them in a bag.
If your insects and plants, I'll take a look at them. Take pictures
on your phone of things. Want to identify this. I want to diagnose
that. Here's an area of my lawn. I want to I want to
do something different in look at these garden plants are not doing good? What
can we do? Just good, sharp focused pictures and we can help.
We can provide that kind of advice. And I always love getting out and
meeting the folks. So everybody way up north, you know, conro the
over and can't even say tomball, thank you. I got the word tomball
and stuck out of my head further north. Other than that, I know
we have people drive down from Brian Collers stationery even to come down to arbigrate
the shop. I hope you'll come out and see me there. Look forward
to visiting with you. In the meantime, we got one more hour in
the books, so if you'd like to be on the air, here's your
last shot for a week seven one three, two, one two fifty eight
seventy four. Give Josh your call. All you gotta tell him your name
and basically what it is you're calling about. You know that he doesn't need
to have the whole description. He can't type all that in for me,
so just the basic one phrase, one one set of words is to what
it is that you're curious about. He'll get you on the board and when
we come back from break then you and I can visit at that time.
Ktr H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to ktr H Garden Line with Scarre Rictord. So
just watching as well. Good morning, nice Sunday morning. It's not a
little rain passing through, but I'm still gonna be able to get outside some
I enjoy enjoy days like this such balmy nice weather. Hey're let's into the
Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and our phone number if
you would like to call in is seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. We're entering our last hour for this morning. Be back again
next Saturday. By the way, we're every Saturday, every Sunday. If
you're not familiar with Garden Line from six am to ten am, so you
can tell your neighbors about it. You know that neighbor that doesn't take care
of their yard. Maybe just kind of subtle hint, just a interesting radio
show you might like. And once they start listening, we'll tell them to
straighten up and get everything going in the yard. Take care of that yard,
right so it looks good. You get the idea well, talking about
gardening and stuff that the vegetable garden. Our vegetable gardens are really zooming along
right now, tomatoes or producing and things are looking pretty good. I'm getting
quite a few emails and calls at the Agri Live Extension office. But also
you know here on Garden Line, we get these kinds of questions that where
tomato leaves are twisting up you know, the new growth up at the top
of the plant is just abnormal looking. It's not growing right, and the
question is what's doing that and what I do about it? Well, there's
two typical common causes for that. One of them is that the plant has
a virus, and a virus is incurable and a tomato, so once you
have it, you get rid of the tomato quickly, pull it up,
get rid of it, because an insect will feed on that plant, ingest
the virus and then go feed on other plants of tomatoes that don't have that
virus and inject it into them, and so it spreads that way, so
you rogue those out. The other thing is broad leaf herbicide damage. If
you use a broad leaf herbicide and get some on those plants, or in
the real warm summertime as the weather there's some of those products can volatilize and
just drift and that drift have an effect on them. But what typically happens
is people use manure from pastures that we're treated with brush killer products. Certain
ones are so persistent they go through the cow, they sit there in the
parlia maneure for months, and then you put it on your garden, and
they still affect your garden, especially sensitive plants like a tomato. Another way
we get that is through hay. The same thing a pastures treated to kill
the brush on that hay now as that ingredient, and so you multure tomatoes
and you get it that way. So those are the two common causes.
Neither one of them has a cure. Both of them. You pull it
up and you move on. Well, our phone number seven one three two
one two five eight seven four, and we're going to head right out to
Passadena and talk to Mary. Hello, Mary, good morning. How are
you this morning? Well? Thank you? How could we help? I
definitely need help. About three weeks ago I put image all in one long
weed killer on my front yard, which happens to be San Augustine with weeds,
won't harm lawns, kills one hundred plus weeds. Well, my front
yard is dying. And I look on the back in very small print,
not even under directions, and it says not for Saint Augustine grass. So
I'm just wondering what I can do. I can see that it's killed.
Part of the lawn on top it's yellow. But when we go out and
we pull we still have roots. So I'm just not sure what to do.
I don't know if there's anything I can do except just sit by and
wait. Yeah, the I think it's a Quinn Clark in that product that
is so so damaging to the Saint Augustine's. Some'm turf can take it,
but Saint Augustine kent. But you know, it takes us back to here
we go. The label, you know, you always have to check it
carefully because the right absolutely enough. I'm so sorry I call myself reading the
whole thing, um, you know, but but in very small print.
I mean, it's the last thing that you see on this Yeah, and
I can't it's so small. I can't see dis ingredient. Um. It
begins with them as it looks like sulf or something self Intrizona and Quinnclorac or
the ingredients and image all in one. Uh. And I've grapped about this
before. But these companies that have a product that's well known, then they
make other products with different ingredients and they put the same name on it.
Like not all images are these two ingredients. The standard image was a completely
different ingredient. The same thing as a roundup. There's a roundup that you
spray on your lawn for broad leaf wheat. Well, roundup kills everything,
right, Well, not this one. It's a different mix. And I
don't know why they put the same name on them. I can't believe they
don't have a lot of issues with people doing like you're describing. Can I
like a big box or something, or were tractors supply? Okay, well
you know this is I'll just give you, give me just a soapbox moment.
This is why we love those independent home garden centers because that would they
would not have sent you home with this product. They know what they're talking
about. So anyway, but what do you do now? What you do
now is rake up the dead materials best you can. I'd give it a
little bit of time, you know, a few weeks before you reside,
But go ahead, and then you're going to have to reside. Now,
if you've got living sprigs of grass every foot or so, you can coax
it back in to refill. But I suspect you got much bigger areas than
that. I think we do. In part of it, we can see
that some of it looks like it's going to survive. I didn't I didn't
get it down to the route or whatever. Okay, But I'm just wonder
if there's anything else that I should you know, as m there anything else
that I should do. None of it out, Yeah, none of the
good lawn and garden fertilizers and nutrient things are going to fix what's there now,
once it's covers what is able to recover and start to grow. Yes,
those products are helpful now. It probably wouldn't hurt if you could do
a compost top dressing if you feel like you have enough soil to be I
mean enough living grass to be worth trying to recover, well, putting all
that microbial activity up there at the surface and kind of helping that grass as
it tries to recover to be able to get going. And the compost top
dressing also would would shade the bare areas of the lawn a little bit to
cut down on weeds. Obviously weeds are already a problem. But I don't
want to say that like that top dressing is going to fix the chemical damage
to your turf gress. It's not. We're just trying to get it going,
and I suspect you're probably gonna need to do some resotting and at least
parts of it, I think so. And watering really is not going to
make the chemical bull away, No it's not. It's just going to be
a matter of time. And Mary, I appreciate that call, and I
have to take a break, but thank you for the call, and I
wish you well with the lawn. For other folks that are listening. Another
reason why we go to a quality garden center and knows what they're talking about,
so that we don't have to be the chemical expert knowing everything. They
guide us and the label guides us, and we avoid situations like this.
Well, good morning, it's gonna be a good Sunday morning, and it
is a good day to be outside once we get past this little rain.
A little cloudy right now, but it's the temperature just perfect to be out
there. Hey, you're listening to garden Line, don't you give us a
call? Seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. This is
our last hour for today. We'll be back till next Saturday, So here's
a good time to ask those questions. I just want to remind you that
on Saturday, next Saturday, I will be at Arbor Gate from eleven thirty
to one thirty. I hope you'll come out. Beverley and the folks out
at Arbourgates. They're gonna have some peach Bellini's available. That's worth the price
of admission right there. Hey, it's a day before Mother's Day, so
you want to pick out a beautiful flowering plant for your mom, or perhaps
something for an inside decoration or a garden decoration. They have an unending supply
of everything you can imagine you might need out there. Now, that's the
day before Mother's Day, May fourteenth, next Saturday, I hope you'll come
out. Bring some plants samples, put them in a plastic bag so nothing
escapes, take a look at them, identify, diagnose whatever kinds of questions
you might have. Take some pictures on your phone and make sure they're in
good sharp focus and bring them. I'd love to meet you. Bring your
mom to Hey. Why not buy your mom her Mother's Day gift when you're
out with her. I know it's not the surprise the next day, but
wouldn't that time of shopping and mom getting to pick something out be kind of
cool too? That works for you? Bring your mom out there and love
to meet her as well. We've talked about a lot of different things today.
Spend a lot of time on turf, which is always appropriate because turf
is one of the three teas that makes the phone ring. Trees, turf,
and tomatoes. No one ever calls me about their Cole Robbie. One
of these days, I'm going to get a Cole Robbie call. But I
have so far in many years of doing this, I'm mad well and yet.
But tomatoes, everybody loves to vetas. It's kind of like the obsession
of the vegetable garden. Just fresh green, quality tomatoes that you grew yourself
in the vegetable garden. By the way, now is it time to move
into those hot weather plants If you want to grow sweet potatoes, we got
to get those in because we need They need a long time to grow and
developed their roots. The secrets to success with them. One of the secrets
to success with them, by the way, in addition to a good sunny
spot, is you want good quality slips that you put in the ground.
Get them rooted quickly and get them growing quickly and keep them going and healthy.
They need to have a good start to develop the good quality storage roots.
If you go through drought stress, if you go through other kinds of
stresses, you have a little spindley slip. You don't plant it deep enough,
getting several nodes down there in the ground, you're not going to have
the full development of the kind of roots that you would like to have on
a sweet potato. Other things in the summertime, southern peas, black eyed
peas, purple whole peas, crowder peas, zephor cream peas. We use
the word peas for all of them. I wish we would use the word
beans, because that's pretty much what they are as a bean. But you
cannot get a better quality homegrown vegetable than that. There are a lot of
things, you know. I know we talk about homegrown tomatoes or better store
bought and I agree with that. I agree with that. That's you know,
green beans and so on. But when you have fresh shell peas,
if you've only eaten black eyed peas out of a can, you have not
eaten black eyed peas. I don't know what they do to those things to
make them taste so bad in the can. When fresh they are so good.
And in the South, everybody knows that you have got to have.
You got to cook some southern peas. You know, everybody's got their recipe.
A little bit of bacon, a little bit of onion put in there,
whatever, And when you're done that that juice. In the South we
call that the pot liquor. The pot liquor juice from cooking fresh black eyed
peas, southern peas. That is good for a lot of things. Some
people just like to drink it. And it's that good. So if you
don't have room in a garden to do these. When you go shopping,
go to farmer's market, support one of our local farmer's markets and buy some
fresh shelled black eyed peas. If you can find those locally, get those
and try them out. Sometimes grocery stores have frozen ones, and that's that's
good. I mean, that's a second best I guess to at least get
that fresh taste. But man, so good, so good in the vegetable
garden. Our phone number seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I was talking about
being at at Arbourgate on next Saturday. But you don't need to wait till
next Saturday. I'd encourage you to get out there today. Arburgate is that
kind of nursery that is a destination garden center. You can go online to
Arborgate dot com Arburgate dot com find out more about the place. But it's
a mile and a half west of two forty nine. On twenty nine twenty
they've got their one two three easy system. I like the way they set
that up, so it's three different products. It's a one two three step.
Number one there's a food that feeds anythings with roots. Number two is
a soil for any application that you might need. And number three as a
compost. It's going to improve any and all soil. All of this completely
organic, completely easy. When you're at at Arbogate, the folks that work
there are well trained and knowledgeable and they can help you. Like maybe you
want to put in a pollinator garden, or you would like to plant fruit
trees. They've got those. They can tell you that I need two plums
to pollinate each other. Go oheat and ask them. They'll tell you.
They'll direct you to the plants you need. They'll give you the advice you
need to have success with those plants. And that's important you know, it's
one thing just to take a plant home, but you need to have somebody
that can help. And our good quality retail independent mom and pop. There's
a lot of adjectives on there. Those garden centers are the ones that can
direct you to that kind of thing. Well, that's enough for me.
Let's go to the phones seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
We're gonna go downtown Houston and talk to Ray about crape myrtles. I
believe is that right? Ray? That is correct? Good morning? How
are you well? Well? Thank you? So I plant. I planted
a crepe myrtle a year ago and it was blooming. It was fine at
that point, Um, early spring or winter. We trimmed it back to
cut out the dead that was on it. And now it's just not blooming
at all. And unless it's too early, I don't know what. It's
a little early. Um. The The other thing is how's the sunlight ray
on that plant? Perfect? I need it gets at least six seven hours
of sun Okay, got a minimum? Good? Then then you should be
in good shape there. Yeah, I think I'd just give it a little
bit more time. Uh, you know, the crepes bloom on the new
growth, and so they've got to have the strength and energy of the plant,
plenty of foliage to you know, create the carbohydrates necessary to make the
blooms to look so good. And so I think, just do everything you
can to keep it as healthy as you can, and it should start blooming
for you pretty soon. Do you remember what variety it was? Any chance?
You know? I don't remember? Um. I know the leaves are
kind of like a oval shaped, which is probably typical of a great myrtle
anyway, but this was a pinkish color for this great myrtle. Okay it
did you know? You know, several different branches from the bottom, so
which makes sense. Yeah, Well, and you can choose, you know,
with great myrtles, you can have a one trunk tree or you can
have a multi trunk tree. That's what it is. It is a multi
trunk that is correct. That's good. Well. The main thing on those
is just when you do pruning, if you do prunting, and you don't
have to do prunting, just make sure and don't do that butcher job that
you see all over town that that just now ruins the beauty. Yeah,
now, I basically was just cutting the little bed apart from last year where
they bloomed and turned to pods. Yea, So it was just basically cutting
that stuff out. Yeah, I didn't do a hack job. Yeah,
we used to. We used to say, don't prunting anything bigger than a
pencil. Yeah, that's about what we did there. You go, well,
and you know, but there's times, there's times when you need to
train it. And that's the thing when you when you kind of have the
vision of what you want your tree to be when you buy it and plant
it, then as a branch starts to grow, it's like, yeah,
that's not the right direction, that's not what I want here. And you
take it off when it's real small and there's no no ugly there. You
know, if you wait until you got to get a saw to take it
off, now you got a big wound. And so you know, we
start to get in that that thing of detracting from the beauty of the plant.
Yeah. I've been trying to keep a lot of the bugs off.
Everything I got willows in the backyard got bugs. But buy it advanced stuff
seemed to clean that up pretty quick. So that was nice. Yeah,
but you know, other than that, I really haven't seen any kind of
bugs on the great myrtles or anything. So I was just curious if it
was just too early or just give it some time. Yeah, give it.
I'd give it some time. That we got a couple of insects that
can bug him a little bit, but I want to bug him a lot.
But I think right now, I just give it some time and call
back if you don't have good blooms going on it in another month or so,
we'll be glad to visit with you more. Thanks, thank you,
thank you. You take care. We are going to head to break here
in just a second. So John in League City, I want to give
plenty of time for you to be able to talk about your question. You
will be first when we come up in the meantime, if you will give
Josh a call at seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
All he needs to know is your name and basically what your question is.
Three or four words that just describe the question. I know, other than
all the details, he's not going to help with that. He's going to
send the call to me. So so just give him the basics and we'll
get going here. We're about to head to the news and talk to Nikki.
So I'm just going to talk to Nikki now about that. I'm doing
well. How are you doing? Any horticultural emergencies out there? I heard
that there were mosquite decided in Houston, so I didn't know if that was
breaking news or we already knew that. We kind of knew that was coming.
Just be really careful with that standing water. There you go, goodby,
good my friend up below run I'll get to well. Good morning on
a Sunday morning, it's gonna be a day to do some kind of gardening,
maybe house plant gardening when this rain goes through. And then after that
we'll get outside a little bit. Well, we're going to head out to
Plantersville, by the way. Our phone number is seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. We're gonna talk to Aaron. Good morning,
Aaron, Good morning, scop. How are you. I'm well? Thank
you? How can I help? Well? We bought a power to sob
this weekend and filled in our bare spots and had some leftover. So my
husband just laid on top of the cut grass and like some advice on how
to get it to thrive even take and if it will grow on top of
the grass it was already there. Yeah, probably not, Probably not good
to set top side on grass. You want good contact with that little thin
lera soil that comes in with your side. You wanted to contact the soil
in your yard, and that's why they do rollers. That's why you know,
if you don't want to run a big roller just stepping on it and
mashing it down, making sure get that side to soil contact. So if
you've got a whole bunch of organic material in between it, like the grass,
it's not going to root down as well. Now if you continue to
just kind of roll it and that grass underneath is going to decompose and sync
down. So you you know, you may get by if you've already laid
the whole lawn lawn out like that, but generally we try to get good
side soil contact. Okay, and any fertilizer suggestions recommendation. After a couple
of weeks, you want to get it to water, water it and get
it to root in really well. So early on we water regularly because think
about it, that grass can't have more than about a half inch of a
route, because that's about how thick that side is underneath. The soil is
underneath, and so we got to get those roots from the grass down and
once they're into the ground, then they're there they can take up the nutrients
and benefit the plant. So we wait to put our fertilizer on for a
couple of weeks just to kind of get it going a little bit, and
then do a very light fertilization. Maybe wait about six weeks and do another
light fertilization. Okay, in any soil activator you can do that. I
don't know specifically on side that's a usually pretty a large area. Probably not
essential that you do that on the side, but the adequate watering frequently.
That may mean water every day if it's sunny and warm for a few days,
and then go to every other day and you know, eventually get it
onto the once a week schedule. Okay, well that's great. I appreciate
your time. All right, Aaron, thank you for the call. I
appreciate that. Let's see, we got some time here. We're going to
go to John in League City. John, I got a minute or so,
how can we help hiriy uh? So I've got a large flower bed
that's been neglected. It's essentially starting from scratch, and so I need to
get some good um you know, I don't need the Cadillac of top soil
or anything, but just some good quality soil for a large, large area.
And I'm just gonna be putting some bushes and flowers and and you know,
no no fruits or vegetables in there. So what would you recommend for
that? How big of a bed is this, John? I mean,
is this a large large area or just a fairly small I mean it's gonna
it's probably gonna be several yards of top soil. Okay. Uh? And
what do you when you say flowers, you talk about like annuals or perennial
flowers, or we talk about rose bushes or what are you going to?
Um? Well, I'd like to do a little of both, but it'll
be annuals and perennial mostly. But probably most cost effective for you would be
to get a good quality compost it down about three inches deep and mix it
in as deeply as you can. Now, if you want just I'd already
ready to go bed mix. Then a raise saw mix or rose saw mix
is probably the way to go where you already got something blended up. But
if you just want to work with the soil you have, is it a
heavy clay? Yeah? Okay, Well you're talking about economy here, and
so I would just do the the compost if you if you could go a
little further, then I would do expanded shale. And I know Airlom Sails
makes an expanded shaw compost combination that you can put down because the expanded shale
helps that clay stay open for a longer period of time. The compost will
break down, but with the shale in there, it gives you a little
bit longer benefit in terms of keeping that clay loose. All Right, thank
you, thank you very much. I appreciate the call. We're going ahead
to break. If you'd like to be on the air next when we come
back, give Josh a call at seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. Well, good Sunday morning. I hope you're enjoying this morning
so far, it's a good one. Every morning is a good one.
You're listening to garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're
here to answer your gardening question. So if you'd like to give us a
call. We have a few minutes left in today, and so now it
would be the time to call. If you want to get on the air,
I probably could take one more call. You can dial seven one three
two one two five eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. You know, I was talking about Star Hope a little bit
earlier, and I just want to say a few more words about them,
Star of Hope. If you want to make a difference in people's lives now,
you can certainly donate. I mean absolutely donate. It takes a lot
to do all the things that they do, to provide six thousand meals a
week, to have a shelter where people can live, to have the training,
the education, the employment, all of that. It's free for them
there by the way. They mean. They have to follow the rules and
they have to participate, but it gives them a chance to make a different
life. And I've been there. I've seen the face of homelessness and almost
homelessness, nearly homeless people that are on the last string. These are folks
that want to make something out of their lives. They're not out just looking
to freeload on society. They they want a chance to turn it around.
And you know you've probably heard the raised there but for the grace of God
go I and I kind of see it that way too. I mean,
we all are in places where with the right things happening in our lives,
we can find things very different. And wouldn't you want someone who comes along
and just provide you the opportunity, not just a handout, not just you
know, I don't want to work, so here's some money. We're talking
about a change in life, a huge change and a difference in people's lives.
Star of Hope Mission sh mission dot orgh mission dot org. You can
find out information on how to donate, but you can also find out how
to volunteer. Maybe you'd like to be a volunteer at Star of Hope.
There are many a wide range of different kinds of opportunities for that. I
hope that you will give them a call, and I hope that you will
become a supporter and be part of making a really significant difference in people's lives.
We've been talking about gardening today and as we kind of draw things to
a close with the Gardening show, the calls that we've had all of this,
I just want to remind you that when you are wanting to make a
beautiful improvement in your landscape, that getting the right plants, the right soil,
the right place, that is all the difference in the world. You
know, it could be the best plant in the world, but if it's
wants sun and it's in shade, not going to do well. If you
just want instant zip, I mean, you can't beat annuals. Annuals give
you a quick color, but annuals run their course in the season, and
that's why we bring in perennials. Perennials play a part in the annual cycle.
Many perennials are just pretty for a short time of the year, but
the plants live here after year, so they kind of enter center stage when
it's their time and then they leave center stage. And that is a good
part of a mixed landscape. Some perennials last a long long time, a
gold star Esperanza, for example. They just blooms and blooms and blooms all
year long, just about. But annuals and perennials is a combination a good
way to do that. We're about to enter the warm season, when things
get really hot, and when things get hot, our blooming options are limited.
If you go to a garden center now, it is a riot of
color wall to wall, all these plants that you can plant. When summertime
comes, there's not as many options. There are some that will do good,
but not as many. So with summertime we look to foliage for our
color. We have cannas with beautiful color foliage to the leaves like I like
tropicana. I think that one's just there's a lot going on in the colors
of the leaf of tropicana. There's copper plant that has beautiful foliage. Persian
shield for bright shady areas does well. And I see we got a call
come in. I'm gonna jump over there. Hey Gary and garden Oaks.
I wanted to get you for the show's over and it's about to be over.
Jerry, Okay. Well, I had planted a cutoff from a romane
lettuce to bottom point. They said it part if. They said it would
grow if you put it in a saw. Well, a plant did come
up, but it wasn't a romaine. Oh really yeah, some weird looking
plant look with a stock on it. And I wondered if a Romaine's a
hybrid. I see what you're saying. No, No, if it was
a hybrid using a vegetative propagated piece, which is what you did, you
would still have the original plant. It would just be so I don't know
what came up. Well, what probably happened is it probably bolted. You
probably have a bloom stock kind of thing coming up because our days are getting
what now, our days are getting long enough to where those plants are kicking
into bloom. The lettuces, the spinaches, the arugula, you know those
kinds of things. Celantro, those are all bolting. So that that's what
Okay, I know it so sure was bitter. Yeah, well that's another
thing. As it gets warm, it gets bitter. Now, if you
have lettuce that hasn't bolted, if anybody's listening, you can kind of pull
it up and leave it just a few of the roots at the bottom and
put it in the fridge, in a glass of waters, a jar or
something, just to kind of keep it perky where it dudn't will And a
night or two in the refrigerator helps a little bit on that bitterness. Not
a lot, but a little bit. Okay, I'll give it a try,
all right, Thank you, Jerry, appreciate the call. Well,
here we are at the end talking about color and foliage color being so important
in the warm season. Get out there and as you're planting, don't just
plant things that are pretty now, but get ready for summer by putting in
some beautiful foliage color. I named a few of those plants in the shady
areas. We have colias and so many colors. Coalis awesome plant, awesome
plant for the shade. Beef steak plant. It's kind of got a blood
red color, which is where it gets its name. Beef steak pant plant
looks good in the shade. And remember that white is a color too.
And if you've got shady beds, to line them with something like an astac
ass that is white. It just delineates the bed. If it's a pathway,
it draws your eyes down the pathway. There are other white foliage plants
or law a lot of white in the foliots that you can put in shady
areas. So don't just think spring, but also think summer as you're getting
ready to do your landscaping. We want your place to look good all year
round. So the combination of annuals and perennials mixed together, the use of
foliage in the summertime, and then also some really well chosen shrubs and trees
that just or absolute turn your place into an absolute show place. There's a
lot of good tree options too, by the way, that are smaller.
One of my favorite trees. I know we're run out of time, but
I just gotta say one of my favorite trees is Chinese fringe tree. And
now there's a native fringe. It's fine. If you love native plants,
that's a great one. Grand Sea graybeard native fringe. Chinese fringe is much
more showy, and it just has a wonderful I don't know how to describe
it for you, kind of a honey like fragrance in the spring when the
little shaggy white blooms come out. It didn't get too big. And you
know, as it used to be in the old days, lots were like
a third of an acre or bigger. Now lots are so small you can
reach out your window and close your neighbor's blinds. And so when we pick
trees, we don't need. We don't need a live oak that's going to
cover three yards right at maturity. I don't need something a little bit smaller,
so just a few ideas for you. Hey, it's been good talking
to you and look forward to talking again next Saturday.