Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip rictor
It's crazy Trim just watch him as well that so many got supt Basic gas
Club back again, not a salad glass. So hey, good morning,
welcome to garden Line. We're glad to have you with us today. Got
a early early Saturday. Congratulations for those of you who are up and at
him, maybe with a cup of coffee or tea or whatever wakes you up
in the morning. I always enjoy the first thing being able to visit with
people that are interested in gardening, talk about gardening, maybe kind of quiet
first thing in the morning sometimes, so it gives me a chance to talk
about a few things that I am interested in specifically. For example, I'd
like to be the first to acknowledge that yesterday we didn't have a show.
Yesterday, so here one day late was a National ag Day celebrating our bountiful
food supply. You know, over the decades here in America, the development
of agriculture has really changed the face of society in so many ways. In
fact, including around the world because of the innovations that were developed here.
Beginning years ago, our leaders in Congress President had the wisdom to set up
a system of research, evaluation, and education to get the information from the
university to the people. That was basically it. Things like hybrid corn,
things like how to prepare and protect the soil. Certainly after the dust bolt,
we learned one there, but so many innovations. Abraham Lincoln was one
of the ones that signed in to practice or to law, the act that
created the Agrolife Extension Service and every other extension service. First of all,
every university has a lang Grant institution. I mean every state has a lang
Grant university, a Lagrant institution, and that created a university. Then they
created research and extension to reach out from those universities. The eighteen seventy institutions
as well were created during as that time evolved through the years. So for
example, a place like here in Texas is Texas and m Oklahoma State,
New Mexico State, Louisiana, LSU all through the country. Every eight has
one up in New York it's Cornell University and Rutgers in New Jersey, and
a lot of places you heard of, of course, are those lang grane
universities. The extension service is in every state. It's a little different in
every state, but there's research and extension. What does research do well?
It finds out the newest, the latest, how to protect the environment,
how to increase yields for farmers, but for those of us gardeners, things
that are useful to us as well. I was just visiting with someone about
some turf grass research this past week and what are turf researchers working on.
They're working on grasses that do better with less water. That is a huge
thing, right, We certainly know that after last summer, and new varieties
are coming out all the time, new ways. I remember when I was
fairly young in my extension career, the Don't Bag It program was created and
that basically was an educational outreach of extension to teach people, hey, you
don't have to beg clippings and put them at the curbside and have them end
up in a landfill somewhere, and why that's important to return the clippings and
how that helps your grain. It's a win win, It helps your grass
and it also avoids just adding more garbage trucks around town to get everything to
the hole in the ground somewhere. And those kind of innovations have changed America
when it comes to food supply. Though. Back in the day where a
farmer could support eight people with what he was able to grow, now we're
looking at farmers supporting way over forty people with what they're able to grow.
The innovations and things, and I think that's something to be grateful for because
food supply affects everything. Certainly it affects our health, our well being.
We don't have to deal with issues like famine here in the US and in
countries that have there's constantly work being done. Why you can't control weather,
you can control a lot of other things that help avoid famine. And I'll
tell you this, one of the biggest things to cause peace to happen is
to provide food for people when people are starving. Trouble naturally and logically follows.
And the innovations that have occurred not just in America but here beginning with
our lan Grant universities, the research and then the extension taking the university of
the people. That's what we call Agrolfe extension. And in every state that
same thing happening that has changed the world. In fact, the first extension
agent was here in Texas, a guy named seman Nap. He would take
and load up his information and wagons and go out to the farmers, gather
all the farmers in a whole region together. They he would pass out some
new type of corn, for example, there's more productive, or say hey,
why don't you do to row cotton out in West Texas because that'll absorb
more of the be able to take up more soul and moistue. You don't
have to irrigate it. All kinds of innovations. If farmers try it,
and when you try it and you see it, it changes how you think.
You know. A lot of us are skeptical. But siemen Napp says,
what a man hears, he may or may not believe. What he
sees, he may or may not believe. But what he does himself,
he cannot help but believe. And that's a little adjusted quote from him there.
But what a concept, what a simple idea that changed the world.
So happy, bountiful and beautiful food supply day as of yesterday. So we're
just wishing it to you a daylight you know in our lawns our summer weeds,
our warm season weeds are germinating, and if you are going to prevent
those, product like barricade from nitrofoss is a good way to do it because
when you put barricade down and get it in the soil, it forms a
barricade over the soil surface, so that thin lon you got everywhere sunlight hits
the soil your plants of weed, and barricade shuts it down. I don't
care if it's a grassy weed or broadleaf weed. If you get it down
before the weed is up and established, barricade prevents that. And that's why
timely application is important. And barricade is sold a lot of different places.
You know, night fass is widely available here in the Greater Houst scen Aarreia.
You can find barricade in places like Enchanted Forest down in the Richmond Rosenberg
area, Growers Outlet up in Willis, for example, or RCW Nursery which
is where Highway two forty nine Tomball Parkway comes into belt Way eight. Barricade
is widely available. But remember when you put it down, you need about
a half inch of rain. Now be careful, you say, well,
it's going to rain later. Well, if it rains too much, that's
not a good thing. You don't want to wash any kind of product off
the ground into the drainage areas. You don't want to wash it just way
down in the roots. That the goal is to just moisten it enough to
get it in the sole surface. But that is very important, and barricade
will provide that kind of help for your lawn as a result. Let's take
a little break here. I've kind of done a little monologue to kick things
off. If you'd like to give us a call, our phone number is
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. I'll be right back.
Welcome back to garden Line. It is early, it is dark outside,
and we got some rain forecasts for the weekend. We know that,
but that is no reason not to get out and get those plants and supply.
So you're ready to go when this is over with, I hope you'll
get out. One great place to do that would be plants for all seasons.
You know, they're located so easy to get to. They're located right
there on two forty nine Tombo Parkway, just north of Luetta, So they're
right on two forty nine. And Plants for All Seasons been around since nineteen
seventy three, and the Flowery family has really prided themselves in providing the best
plants that are very well adapted to here and the kind of products you need
to have success. And then on top of all of that, and this
may be one of the most important things to have educated staff that know how
to help you and how to direct you. It's not just like, here's
a plant, and you know there's some places you go and you don't want
to go back and ask them for advice. At least you shouldn't because they
don't know what they're talking about. Plants for All Seasons does, and they
can guide you to products, they can help diagnose things, bring them a
sample or a picture, they can do that. But you know, when
you go in there, you're always going to get the plants that you need.
Do you want a container full of color? Yeah, they can set
you up on that. You still looking at some transplants for your vegetables,
it's time. Absolutely, tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and all kinds of other
things. They've got all of that. They've got the fertilizers that I talk
about on garden Line. They got the soils that we talk about, and
you know how important it is to get the brown stuff fixed before you put
in the green stuff. They can do that plants for all seasons dot Com
two eight, one, three, seven, six, sixteen forty six.
And today it would be a good day to go buy there and pick up
those kind of supplies so that you can have success enjoy that success with your
plants. You know. For example, a good example of a product to
always have on hand would be Medina's has to Grow six twelve six. Now,
there are a lot of Medina products out there, and I could sit
and talk about every single one of them and why they're helpful for your your
plants, for your success in gardening, whether it's vegetables or flowers or herbs
or whatever. I like. The has to Grow six twelve six as a
watering end product. Now you can use it as a foliar spray. You
can use a lot of things. But for me, you get it,
you put it, follow the label, put it in a little watering can
mix it up with water, and when you put that plant in the ground,
whether it's a tomato or a petunia or herb, or a rose bush
or a shrub or anything. You just water it in with that and I'll
come back about a week later and that again, and about a week later
and do that again. And those three watering. I mean, you can
do more. You can keep going, but I usually do about three that
By then that's three weeks and the plant has established roots. It's got everything
those new roots need to grow, things like seaweed extracts, things like humic
acid, things like Medina so ele activator, and it's ready to go.
And Medina products are widely available. You're going to find them, but look
for has to grow six twelve six. If you're going to do any planting,
and my gosh, it's spring, you've got to be doing some planting.
This is the gardening season everybody gets excited about. Of course, I
add faull to it. I think falls are a great great season. Two.
But you know here in Houston, you can grow things any month out
of the year. Well, do you have some questions about some things going
on in your landscape or some things you're planning on doing. Give me a
call seven to one three two one two five eight seven four seven one three
to fifty eight seventy four. It's always a little quiet first thing in the
morning. I think some of you wake up like I do. And that
she got one eye at half open and then the other about an hour later,
the other eye hits half masked as she slowly crawl into consciousness. I
know I did that this morning. I have to get up early so I'm
ready to go when it's time for the show. But it's one of my
favorite things to do is talk with gardeners and help gardeners to have success.
Now you've heard me say this before, but if you think you have a
brown thumb, you don't. And if you want to say you have a
brown thumb, then I'll just come back and say, well, what you
have is an uninformed thumb. Because the reason Grandma could plan everything and it
just seemed to grow wasn't because she had magic. It's Grandma just knew how
to do things. And the more you learn, the more you the more
your plants become beautiful and bountiful. How about that your knowledge makes your thumb
green? That that is really really true when you look at six I hear
people all the time talk about I did this, I did that to my
plants, And as I'm hearing it, I'm going, Okay, well you
may have gotten buy with it, but that is not good for the plants.
You know, they like fertilizing the triple thirteen all the time, year
after year in your lawns. Don't do that. I can tell you why.
Probably don't want to listen to me drone on about the chemistry of the
soil. But grass does not take up roots in a one one one ratio.
It just doesn't. It's not how it takes it up. So you
know, yeah, use it once or twice or three times or whatever,
but it's not the best way to go. And we help you understand things
like that. That is important. And always I talk about the soil because
it is the so We get excited about flowers and foliage and fruit and vegetables
and all of that. It's all about the soil. If you want bountiful
tomatoes, make the soil right before you plant. You on a beautiful lawn
e month after month, continue to work toward improving that so well. The
folks at Ciena Molts they absolutely can help you do that. I mean,
the quality of products they have is second to none. Whether it's just compost,
or whether it is a bed mix like a rose soil for example,
whether it is Moltz to go on the top so you're not pulling weeds when
the temperatures one hundred degrees outside and that's coming someday. Cienamlts dot com.
They're down in just north of Road Sharon, near where Highway six and two
eighty eight come together on FM five twenty one. So if you live in
Meridian or Riverstone or Sandy Point, Pomona Fresno, Iowa Colony, all of
those areas out near Bresspin State Park, this is your local place and they'll
deliver within twenty miles of the location. If you need a bulk order,
they can get you fixed uff on that. If you're going to do some
landscaping and need some rock, maybe Riverstone for a drainway, or maybe some
flat stones for creating a patio, Siena Moltz can get you fixed up.
They have the products. Oh let's see, here's time for the phones.
How about that. Let's go to southwest Houstern. We're going to talk to
Jeff. Hello Jeff, good morning, Skip. You're not alone out there.
We're up it's it's a great day. I'm glad you brought up has
to grow. But I wanted to mention first that, you know, the
older I get, the smarter Grandma was. I've come to realize, okay,
and it's it's more and more true every day I have some hass to
grow that I've had for over a year. Is it's still good. Yes,
it's been sitting in the you know, in the garage. It's not
it's overly heated. They're overly cool. It's good. Go for it.
You shake it up, hurt, I will. I just planted a bunch
of stuff. So I'm going to take your three week advice. Yeah,
yeah, I wouldn't recommend, you know, keeping products like that for years
and years, but there's no problem using that at all. Very good,
thank you, and so all I had. All right, Jeff, thanks
man south West Houston. All right, take care, appreciate your call.
Yep, that is true. It does does very very well. It does
well. Let's see, we're going to go now out to the Cypress area
and talk to Jay. Hello Jay, Hello, good morning. So I
have two distinct questions for you. The first one relates to garden beds and
bring vegetables for spring summer. I recently received a Facebook closet of a friend
which stated tomatoes hate cucumbers and the purpose of the post was to say that
certain vegetables enjoy going next to each other and certain do not. And I
was skeptical of it, but I was curious to know if you had the
advice on that particular topics. That's a good question. There is something to
different kinds of vegetable grouping, But a lot of stuff you hear out there
is just hearsay that's been being spread around without any research to back it up
at all. So if you don't do it, do it. But as
far as me saying yeah, that works, I can't. But there are
examples of where it can work. It can work in different ways too.
It may be that one plant helps repel pests off another plant, or draws
pests away from the other plant. It can be that the interactions the volatiles
that go up in the air affect what insects are drawn in or not.
And it can have that kind of effect as well, like maybe drawing in
some beneficial insects or some predators. But in general it's broad I've looked and
looked for research and I found a lot of stuff, but it's really here
and there and the whole idea of all these combinations. I would look at
that skeptically, not to say nothing, there's no truth in it, would
just be very skeptical about that. For example, one time we were looking
at how to control squash vine borne We read that if you plant tansy around
the squash plants, the vine bors will be repelled. We tried a trial
where we actually replicated it, and we found there we had plants where the
tansy had so overgrown the squash you had to pull the tansy apart to find
the squash plant. And the squash plant had a vine boor in it,
so the vine borer was doing a better job finding the squash than I was
among the tansy. So that's just an example one that didn't work. But
a lot of things get spread around and so be skeptical, but don't just
assume there's no truth to any of it. All right, Yeah, that
makes sense. I had one more question, if you have time, sure,
completely unrelated. I'm interested in growing a pineapple, and I've seen the
number of videos on how to buy a pineapple in the store, pull off
the crown, it out just right, and then plant it and grow a
pineapple plant from it. And I was curious to all these videos that I've
seen are from people in Florida, like zone ten, and I believe that
there's a possibility that one could grow a fruiting pineapple plant here where we are,
and which I believe is still nine. But I was curious to know
if you've heard of any success stories. Yeah, there is. So what
you do is you take the top out, get all the fleshy stuff.
When you cut the top off, you're left with a little pineapple and stuff
right there around the base of Yeah, shut off. Get that off.
You don't have to let it dry much. Just go ahead and put it
down into potting mix and get it started. It will root pretty quickly,
and once it's established, I would keep it in a container for a while
because if you're going to enter the cool season, you're going to have to
protect it here. It gets a little too cold for it here. But
after it's established a decent sized plant, you can take an apple, set
it in the top of the pineapple, and cover the whole thing with a
like a dry cleaner bag. And what that does is it traps the ethylene
the apple is giving off, and it initiates the bloom process in the pineapple.
I don't know how long it is. I'd have to go back and
look, but maybe you leave it there a week or two and then take
it out and then after a period of time it will start to send up
a bloomstalk. And again you want to have a nice, good sized plant.
And then it just it takes a while. I don't know how many
months. It's like a year to get a good pineapple to develop. Maybe
a little longer. Yeah, and just follow that, follow the stuff you're
reading online. But that's how you do it. The key is to initiate
bloom with that apple. Okay, hey, Jay, I'm gonna have But
I hope that is helpful. Thank you very much, it sure is,
Thank you so much. Yeah, I appreciate your call a lot. You
know, while while you're out there taking care of your lawns and gardens and
things, this is a time to be doing fertilizing, and Microlife has some
outstanding products for that. The green Bag the six two four is an outstanding
lawn fertilizer. Works very very well of us in my lawn. They also
have the humates plus. That's the purple bag, and it has a little
bit of nutrient in it. It's got four percent potassium. But you're not
putting it on for that. You're putting it on for the microbes that are
in it, and for the fact that humus is basically concentrated compost in a
bag. So the whole process that nature goes through drops leaves on the ground,
rotsham into composts, keeps decaying and decomposing away into humus. That's microlife,
humantes plus humus in a bag. You just do it when you're doing
your fertilize. Also do an application of the microlife and you'll see results.
It'll build your soil over time. It was time to turn the microphone over
to Nikki for the news, and here we go. Give us a call
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to garden
Line. Glad to have you listening this morning. And hey, all those
folks up around Carlos, Texas, who knows where that is? Well,
I'll tell you this, Carlos, Texas, I call it God's Country.
Is beautiful up there. That's where Grin's County Feed and Farm is. So
if you are in Brian College Station, Navasota, or if you're out and
all the little small communities out east of there like Iola and beat Eyes and
Rones, Perrie, Shiro, Richards Anderson, maybe the subdivisions King Oak and
mere Wood. Well there you go. You've got a hometown feed store right
in your backyard. They carry the products that I talk about, the fertilizers,
night foss and microlife and Nelson's for example, They've got Medina products there.
You can get your tree huger, sprinkler there, you can get your
landscape pride souls there. They just have a wide variety of all kinds of
thanks plus all the things you need for your pet food, for your ag
supplies. Do you need pond supplies, They've got them. They even bring
in fish periodically in fish stocking. Just give them a call, check them
out, go buy and visit. It's on State Highway thirty and Carlos,
Texas, Grimes County Feet Grimes County Feed and Farm. The roy family has
been just the place. First of all, the family's been in the community
for a long time and they live lives of service there. They support their
community, but they have just really created a nice feed so I enjoy going
in all the time. I enjoy visiting with them, and I'm tell you
this, they will treat their customers right. That is absolutely the case.
You see, We're going to go out and now to Mike and Nevisota.
Mike, thanks for waiting. Good to have you on garden Line. How
can we help, Yes, sir, appreciate, appreciate the show and appreciate
you. Just get a quick thing the I have a small vineyard, uh,
basically just a little bit over a quarter acre, about forty vines that
are down on the ground for about three years now. But I have some
of the vines that don't throw, and I was just wondering why that might
be. Are these blocked dubas vines or what kind of grade for you growing
up Cabernier sau Migno. It's a challenging one to deal with. Here.
Let me do this. I'm going to refer you if you will talk to
the folks in the horticulture department at A and M. They have a specialist,
a couple of folks that that may be able to help you there.
Fran Uh and Justin Fran and Justin uh Co and talk to either one of
those. That is their specialty. And I've been to field days they've done
out there in Grimes County, uh for for rapes out there, and they
can probably guide you on it better them. Not fruiting could be due to
several different things, but I would I will refer you to them if you
go to the if you do a search for Aggie Horticulture for that website,
you can get the phone number and find out about those those folks. I
would ask them that question because they're going to walk in through a series of
questions, you know, like what is your disease control program? What is
the bigger like on the vines, and a lot of things like that.
Okay, sure, sure, yeah right, I'll give you a much better
answer by referring you to them on that they specialize in its commercial rape.
All right, excellent, Well, I do appreciate it, appreciate you,
Thank you. I appreciate your call very much, much appreciated. Let's see,
we're going to go now to pair Land and talk to Pat. Hello,
Pat, A, good morning. My question My question is is I
buy them every year and it doesn't matter if I get a hanging basket or
if I plant it, it dies. And I was raised in Corpus where
they were just everywhere, and I would like to know. I do see
some people able to have just really gorgeous spoken villas. Yes, I'd like
to know if you have advice on that. Well, they don't have that
many problems. You know, certainly when we have winter cold, especially in
a container plant, you're going to have trouble there. You got to protect
and bring them in or whatever. They also don't like soggy conditions. And
although they're dropping tolerant in a container, it can go too dry too too
fast, and so you do need a moisture to have health and vigor in
the vines. And I okay, it's going to be one of those things,
either too wet or to dry. Most likely they like lots of sun,
but that's not going to kill the plant. It'll make it weak and
spin lee to not get enough light. Uh yeah, I think I would
look at also fertilizing. There are some really nice Boogainvillia foods, for example,
out there on the market, and probably we didn't have to say Boogainvillia
food on it. Uh, to be fine to use on booga and villias,
just a good you know, a good quality fertilizer. We'll provide them,
but I would, I would look at some of those kinds of things.
Have you When you say they die, is there any pattern to them
dying? I mean, in other words, do the leaves turn yellow?
Did they just dry up? Yeah? I've had both of those situations.
Yeah, final, but I try every year because they're so gorgeous. Okay,
Well, when you're out, when you're out chopping around, look for
nitrocass makes something called Boogainvillia fertilizer. It's a twenty six ten. Those are
the Cree numbers, twenty six twenty six ten, and that'll give you like
four months of release. Just follow the label and how much to put on
there, and that will make sure you have a vigor from a nutrient standpoint,
and then just watch the soul moisture a little bit. Other than that,
I don't know what else would just black kill them? All righty,
I'll try again, thank you. Oh yeah, you gotta try again right
now. Vegas are loaded up. I was at checking out RCW NURSIP.
My gosh, they have a loaded amount of Boogo and villias out there,
and it just all our garden centers really are loading up on those days.
This is the time they are, aren't they. Thanks for the call,
Brenda or Pat, thank you. That's okay, bye, all right,
bye bye. Oh gosh, listen, it's time to make sure your trees
are taking care of. Summer is coming. If you planted a tree in
the last year, it's still in those first few years that are touching go
and you need to provide good care. If you have an established tree,
training them right is very important. I've look at my wife was talking to
me about a tree the other day and it's like we were talking about the
branching on it, and it was just my comment was, yes, people
plan them and they don't train them early, and now they're old and you've
got these structural issues because they weren't taken care of from the beginning. Affordable
tree service they can do that Martin. Martin can come out and do a
consultation cost one hundred fifty bucks, but if you hire him to then do
the work, that one hundred and fifty goes into the cost of what you're
getting done, so you're not out the one fifty, but have him take
a look. If you're going to do anything around trees, you have to
have a good, knowledgeable person out there to guide you. And we have
way too many people that have a pickup and a chainsaw and think they're a
tree service and not. You drive around town, you see the results of
that kind of damage and it's for life on a tree. Seven three,
six, nine nine twenty six sixty three is how you reach Martin Either here
Joe will answered, the owners answer the phone. There afftree service dot com.
He stays busy. Tell him your garden line listener. That moves you
up in the list and call now because he books out a little bit of
a distance because he does good work. And that's what happens. When you
do a good job, people call you and ask for help. I'm gonna
have to take a little quick break here, but we will be back,
Brenda. You will be first up when we come back. The number is
seven one three two one two kt R H. Yes, indeed, hey,
I was I mentioned Narcy W. Wallerger. You know. RCW Nurseries
is at Beltway eight uh and Tamball Parkway. RCW Nursery dot com. That's
a website. Boy are they ever stocked up. They have some beautiful Peggy
Martin roses on Trellis's right now, so you kind of have a little instant
display right there. It looks really good ornamental peaches like the flowering peppermint peach.
Have you ever seen peppermint peach. It looks like peppermint candy with the
pink and the white all mixed up in it. They got beautiful spireas.
That's the one of the things that announces spring. It's beautiful spyrias with the
white blooms, cascading blooms. I mentioned that they had the booga bee as.
Boy do they ever. It's easy easy at RCW, easy to get
to right there, Tamba Park right two forty nine and belt Way eight,
easy to find, easy to get to RCW nurseries dot com. Go check
them out. It is loaded with color there. We're going to head to
Woodville now and talk to Brenda. Hello, Brenda, good morning, good
morning. We moved here a few years ago and our yard is basically just
wheat. Well it's sandy soil and it's basically just weeds. We have not
been able to get any grass to grow at all because we do have moles,
but anyhead, we don't know really where to start anymore. Okay,
Well, look at your grass and look for grass in and among the weeds.
If you've got grass about, let's say there's a living grass about a
foot apart, it'll cover back over when we get the weeds under control and
start taking care of it again, you can get it to cover back.
If it's bigger areas than that, you probably need to either look at putting
some sad pieces in here and there, or residing sections, or if not,
the whole thing. Those are kind of the options to start. After
that, I want you to go online and look at my lawn care schedule.
It's at gardening with Skip dot com and it tells you gardening with Skip,
Gardening with Skip, that's me dot com. Okay, And I've got
a schedule for lawn care which is proper fertilizing, mowing, aerting, watering,
those things. It tells you what to do when, what the products
are organic and synthetic. And then I have the lawn pest, disease and
weed management schedule. These are free for downloading. They are multicolored, real
easy to follow. And that second one tells you, of course, what
goes wrong with the lawn, how do you kill weeds? What do you
use when? How do you prevent the seeds from establishing? And when?
How do you kill weeds that are already growing? And when? And so
your question is, you know, one hundred questions in one because there's one
hundred different things going on there. But with those schedules, I think you
can take care of it. And if you have any other questions, just
call me back and I would be happy to go into detail on any specifics
that you might have. Okay, thank you very much, Thank you,
Brenda. Good luck getting that back in shape again. Do you need a
feed store up there in the Magnolia area. I'm talking about FM twenty nine
seventy eight those of you who live up in that region. Just they're really
just close to Grand Parkway in Highway to forty nine. Well that's Spring Creek
Feed Center. Spring Creek Feed is a wonderful store a visit, beautiful inside,
great people, the way they treat you there, friendly and they carry
all the fertilizers I talk about. If you have weeds, diseases or past
they've got the products that work on them. They have a nice little garden
center on the outside of the store that they've really expanded this year. I
was very impressed with all the changes that they'd brought on. Hey, if
you're for h r FFA raising livestock, if you for a former military or
senior citizen, there's discounts for that, and they'll even special order too,
by the way, so if they don't have it, they probably can get
it at Spring Creek Feet Again. They're on in Magnolia on twenty nine seventy
eight. Real easy to find, easy to get to, and just a
pleasant place to shop. Always like going by and visiting them there. I've
been talking about the different kinds of fertilizers and whatnot that you might be needing
to put on your lawn. Nitropos Imperial is their immediate release fertilizer that we
use for spring green up, and I talked about earlier my schedule. If
you look at my schedule, it has the spring green up time as going
from maybe late February up until toward the end of March. Mid March to
late March is a good time to be doing still the spring greenup. What
that does is it gives immediate nutrients out there so the grass can take it
up and get greener. And that's what Imperial does. It's a fifteen to
five to ten And here's the easy one. It's in a red bag,
red bag nitrofoss red bag fifteen five to ten Imperial for quick greenup. That
will provide that greenup as the temperature warms and grass begins growing faster and it's
slowly waken up. We still got, in Saint Augustine's opinion, it's still
a little on the cool side out there. So when that happens, we'll
be talking about things like slow and release fertilizers, which you can use them,
but it just takes the longer to release the nutrients. Right now,
the spring greenup is fine or the slow release, either the way you want
to go. Red bag Imperial spring greenup from nitrofoss. Where do you get
nitrofoss? Everywhere? I mean night foss products are available in places like all
spas, ace hardware up in the Woodlands area, plants for all seasons,
just talking about them earlier on Highway to forty nine, or plants and things
up in Brenham all have those nitrofoss products. I wanted to been meaning to
kind of give a shout out for a Joge down in Jorges Hidden Gardens.
He's down in Alvin is one of our newer sponsors on garden Line. I
was like going down visiting with Jorge He. I think they have a some
sort of a spring meetup going on down there. He and dest I believe
have one going on today down there. But Joorges Hidden Gardens is a place
that just every time you go, it's expanding and there's more that's going on.
They've got lots of vegetables right now. They have perennials like salvi and
lantana, for example, and Mexican heather. Mexican heather. I use it
to line my driveway between the driveway and whatever else is growing in the bed
right beside it. Mexican Heather's excellent for that. Honey Bees love it.
Speaking of pollinators and things, milkweed, he's got milkweed on it. He's
got fruit trees that are really at an age where you're going to see in
the next year to fruit on those on those plants. He's got grapes if
you ever thought about putting grapes out, and lots of different kinds of berries
all at Jorges Hidden Gardens. And again if you haven't been there before,
JORGEE is down there in Alvin on Elizabeth Street, just south the Highway six
in Alvin on Elizabeth Street. That is how you find it. And he's
going to have things like the three sixty tree stabilizer that we talk about here.
He's got that as well. He got plenty of good stock of that
and fertilizers and other things. Those of you done in that area, you
really need to swing by there and check it out. I think you,
I think you'd be very impressed. You're listening to garden Line. Our phone
number is seven two to one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two
one two five eight seven four if you'd like to give us a call.
I was visiting with someone, actually exchanging email with someone from ACE Hardware the
other day and just talking about what's going on there? What are you guys
doing right now? And he reminded me, well, it's raining outside,
so we've got we've got all kinds of supplies for that. You know,
ACE is a place for everything that you need, and I mean that especially
your lawn, your garden, but your patio, your home, They've got
that as well. Do you need a pair of goloshes today, or rubber
boots, rain boots, They've got those. Do you need a poncho a
rain gear, They've got that. See that's what I'm talking about when I
talk about ACE. I just spend the whole show naming all the stuff that
they have, you know, from small engine type things to indoor plumbing and
wiring and everything you would expect from a hardware store. But then you get
into the indoor decorating, the outdoor ring of lights to make that ambiance in
your patio, they've got it. And right now, the fertilizers you need,
if you hear me talk about them on garden Line, they're going to
be at your ACE Hardware store and you need to go by there and pick
them up because they have an excellent supply. They're always getting a bunch in
an ACE Hardware. So where's your store, Acehardware dot Com. Go there,
Acehardware dot Com. When you go there, what you're going to find
is a store locator. You may scroll down to the bottom to find it,
but store locator will tell you where all the forty stores are, and
you're going to find some that are really really close to you. I always
love going in and shopping. It. It is because you never know.
Everyone's independently owned. They're each different, so they're no too, they're exactly
alike. But they all are going to have the basic supplies you would expect
because they are the place to go, and they all are going to have
everything you need for your lawn and your garden. You need a wilburrow,
do you need garden hoses? Do you need sprinklers? Go there. In
fact, if you go outside and say out loud, I'm going to ace
hardware, and all your plants will start greening up because they know you're going
to bring them some good things. Okay, maybe that's a stretch, just
a little bit, but I like you, by the way, too,
I have heard I'm not saying. I'm just saying that if you play garden
line on the radio or on your phone with a speaker on around plants,
they start turning greener. I'm just hadn't been tested with research, but that's
what people tell me. I'll leave it at that. That is funny.
I tell a good thing to do on a rainy days go to the be
Supply. Be Supply out in Dayton has got every kind of supply you would
need for taking your honey bees. But they also have a couple of things
that you really need to think about, and one is if you've even thought
about keeping bees, the be Supply has classes. They have class that are
going on all through the spring. The next one is March twenty third.
Couple weeks later on April thirteenth, there's one. On April twenty seventh,
there's one. They also had b tours for those of you who maybe aren't
wanting to keep bees but just want to learn about bees or simple honey.
Wow. I sampled their honey one time. It was unbelievable. And by
the way, the website is thebsupply dot com vbsupply dot com. I love
going by and simpling honey. Did you know that like orange honey and wildflower
honey and BlackBerry honey are all unique in their flavor. Have you ever tried
cream honey? Oh my gosh, I got to I can't talk about this
in the studio. It makes me on a run home, heat up a
morning biscuit with some butter and cream honey. Oh my, gosh, that's
like crack. I mean that is good stuff, not responsible for addictions to
cream, honey, to supply. Gonna be taking a break here. Our
phone number is seven one three seventy four. Hey, I'm going to be
a Buchanan's Native Plants today. I'm going to tell you more about that when
I come back, but plan on after the show. Coming by Katie r
H. Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised
on this program. Welcome to Katie r H. Garden Line with Skip Rictor.
Its crazy here Trim. Just watch him as well. Man. It
takes the sea blotzy gas closing not a sign gas sun. Welcome back to
Garden Line. Good to have you with us today. Still dark outside.
It's a good time to plotting and planning your activities this week. I'm replanting
grass. I've talked about that for a couple of weeks now. That is
what's coming up for me this coming week. Get past this low rainfall here.
Good time to get that in the ground and get it taken care of.
That is an important thing to make sure that we get done. Now.
If you already got a lawn and you're struggling with weed problems, and
if you got a lawn, weeds tend to go along with it, especially
when the lawn gets thin. What you're seeing right now in your lawn,
that's broad leaf weeds. Broad leaf weeds. They're winter weeds from the cool
season. Okay, the clover, the hembit, the chickweed, the cleavers
or a velcrow plant some people call. All of those weeds are from cool
season. You can shut them down with a post emergent product that contains trimac
and nelson or nitroposs rather nitrous fertilizers. Has put together a fifteen to five
ten. Now there, Imperial is the red bag fifteen five ten. This
is something different. It's a bluish bag and it has a trimech ingredient that
kills broadly weeds. So when the weeds are damp, let this rain get
over it. Don't put it on now, you don't want it to wash
off. Don't let the rain wash it off. When it stops raining,
go out and dampen the weed. Just dampen them and spread it like a
fertilizer, and the granule stick to the moist weeds and then give it a
day or two to kind of fully move into that weed and then go ahead
and a little just enough to wash it to the sill surface, just a
little bit of irrigation on that. And what that does is it soaks in
and it kills the broadleaf weeds. It doesn't hurt your vawn, especially in
the temperatures we're having right now. It's got that fifteen five to ten quick
release analysis. This would be in place of your spring green up. This
is in itself a spring green up product. It just has that broadlyaf weed
control in it as well, and it worked very very well on that and
can shut those down. And you can get it everywhere you get nitropuss products,
and as I always say, they're super super widely of it. It's
not hard to find nitropuss anywhere. Go to Katie Hardware, for example,
Katie Ace Hardware. They've got it there, Ace Hardware up in Memorial or
in the Memorial Driver. Yes, they have it. They have it also
Stanton Shopping Center in Alvin they've also got Nitropuss products like this Nitrofuss fifteen five
to ten with the trimec as a post emergent in it. Let's head out
to the heights and we're gonna talk to Ray. Hello, Ray, hie
yip. How are you doing, Todick? I'm good, sir. How
can we help? I just want to know if third laser gets old.
My yard's not very big, and I got a big bag of furd lasser
and it's you know, just getting older and older. Yeah, just use
it, Go ahead and use it. It'll be fine. You hadn't gotten
all wet or anything, right, it's still dry fur leisure. No,
it's been in the road yep. Other thing, I got a little area
between my driveway and the street. It's about about two foot wide. It's
real hot and sometime can't can't keep the grass growing there. So what else
can I put there beside the grass? Well, you could go with a
you could go with a groundcover that is drought resistant. That would be in
one option. There's things like seedom, for example, that are very drought
resistant. Are you not able to water it at all? Is that?
Well? Well, it got tortured last couple of summers. Yeah, even
with water, and you know it just and and it's so hot, the
sidewalk so hot, in the streets so hot. Yeah, and then between
it's just every year. It makes th most of the summer, but it
seems like every summer he gets it. Yeah, but but it you don't
have to walk on this area, right, No, okay, no,
yeah. So there's there's a lot of different groundcovers that will will take that.
There's something called frog fruit that's a groundcover that's a native and it spreads
on the ground horizontally. You're gonna have to edge it to keep it off
the sidewalking things. It's it's a very low growing native plant that's very tough.
It would like some moisture if you want to look its best. It
needs a little bit of moisture. But it's a it's a pretty tough plant.
It grows out in nature where you know, nature here doesn't know is
water it as often as most plants would want. So that'd be an example
of that. I mean, there's there's just a lot of different low growing
plants that you could put in there, but I'd quit trying the lawn in
that area and go with a low growing groundcolor. Well, a good deal,
all right, day, Thanks for the call. I appreciate that you.
I appreciate that very much. I'm going to be at Buchanan's Plants today.
By the way, a Buchanan plant is in the Heights, I say
Cannon's plants, Bukenan's native plants. That's the proper name for it, because
that's what they specialize in, is native plants. Now I said specialized.
While they're going to have every kind of native you can imagine. I mean
they even specify them down to this is one that's native in the Houston area
or just native to this part of Texas or Texas itself. They're gonna have
all of those kinds of things. But they also are going to have every
other kind of plants you need. You got a shady area that you are
trying to, you know, get some color or some beauty in b Cannan's
plants as a whole section just for that whatever kind of plant, fruits,
vegetables, herbs, flowers, annual flowers, perennial flowers, ornamental grasses,
houseplants, you name it. They're on East Eleventh Street in the Heights,
and it's always a fun time to go out to Buchanans. Even on a
rainy day like today. You're going to have you know, they got their
house plant area and the selection of houseplants is unbelievable out there, and that's
a completely covered greenhouse area, just really easy to get in and get out.
Buchanansplants dot Com. That's the website. I hope you'll come see me.
I'm going to be there from eleven am to one pm today, So
after the radio show I'm on head over there, make a beeline for Buchanans.
Come out and see me. Hey, you got some problems, Bring
me pictures, bring me samples, put them in a zip bag and bring
them in. Let's take a look at them. I always like to meet
folks that are listening to garden Line, and I would love to meet you
today. We'll find a nice dry spot out there in the greenhouse where we
can hang out and really really happy to help you find success by pointing you
to the right product or the right plants, or even making just some suggestions
for those areas. Like we were just talking a moment ago about you know
what do we do in this area where it's dry and grass won't grow.
I'll tell you, and I can tell you this. Buchanans is going to
have four or five different good options for every kind of area, just like
that, so make a note today after the show, come on over during
the hour before and after lunch. I'll be right there for two hours answering
gardening questions. We're going to head out now. Let's see. I tell
you what, no inn in League City. You're gonna be the first up
when we come back. I'm up against a break and we'll be right back.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Welcome back the guard Line. Hey, good to have you with us
today. We are talking about things to do this time of the year,
and there is plenty to get done this time of the year. Now it's
a little wet outside, I know that, but you need to write down
some information. And if you live down in the south and a little bit
to the west area and you need compost top dressing done, you need air
ration done, and you need somebody, need somebody that's going to do it
right, B and B turf Pros, that's the one. That's the one
you need to call. The phone number. Always listen to guard Line with
a pen in your hand. Here it comes seven to one to three two
three four fifty five ninety eight seven one three two t two, three,
four, fifty five ninety eight B and B Turfpros dot com. So where
do they serve, Well, they serve sugar Land, they serve Missouri City.
Uh. They go as far east as Pearland, down Fresno and along
Highway six like Ciena and our Cola and Iowa Colony and Menville, all those
communities are served by B and B turf Pros. BnB does it right.
They've got the equipment to spread the compost. They've got the equipment to do
a good job aerating your soil. And when you are dealing with clay soil,
especially with the compaction and the fact that you don't get oxygen on the
root system as well, aeration with compost top dressing is one of the best
things you can do to improve your sod, to improve your lawn, to
make the grass plant healthy. BnB turf prosbnbturf pros dot com or seven to
one three two, three, four, five, five nine eight For all
of you down in that region, you need to give them a call.
We're gonna head out now to Robert in Jersey Village. Hello, Robert,
Hello there, how you doing this morning? I'm good, sir, How
are you today, I'm doing fantastic. I got a quick question for you,
Hm. I got this product called bio Advance and it's a three and
one weeding feed. Is that a good Is that? Is that a good
product? You know? Uh? To put down right now? Do you
have it in front of you? You haven't had it? Uh? I
do not, sir? Okay, let me let me see I can find
what's in bio advant I think is that a well, let's see, I
think that it used to be called wortho uh uh, let's see. I'm
I'm gonna have to look. I'm gonna have to look look that up again.
It would not be First of all, I'll tell you that it would
not be one of the ones that in general I recommend. Okay, now
are you are you talking about does it have a fertilizer in it or is
it just the insect disease and Mike, No, it does have the fertilizer
in there too. Okay, Yeah, it's a weighting feed. Yeah.
Oh gosh, I'm trying to find there's BioAdvance. Everything I'm finding is just
the insect trying to find. Yeah, it's a Bioadvanced three and one weeding
feed. Okay, it's always hard to find there we go. I found
it for Southern lawns. So that is going to not tell me what's in
it? Isn't that nice of them to not tell me what I need to
know? I okay here, First of all, the fertilizer wise, it's
it's okay. The the ratio and everything is okay. It's got a lot
of nitrogen in it and a little bit of potassium, so that that part
is okay. It's just not one of the ones that I generally recommend,
and so I'm not finding the ingredient and I'm still looking for it. That
would be the way I could tell you if it's a control your weeds or
not. And it looks like I find it, okay, clicked my way
into the answer I'm looking for. Uh, I came up an oxygen.
Yeah, it'll it'll control some weeds in a post emergent way, some weeds
in a post emergent way. If I were you, though I would I
would probably at this point in time, I would just use the UH Nitrofoss's
the one that has fifteen five to ten with the trimac in it. I
think you're going to probably be more pleased with that. Okay, okay,
one other question. I'm going to make it quick and easy. I have
some you know, cause I know last year we had the drought and my
backyard, you know, Saint Augustine grass and it was nice and thick,
and of course the drought kind of killed a lot of grass and I got
patches. I got patches. You know. Is there any way that I
can I know they don't make a Saint Augustine's seed. What is the best
way for me to you know, to uh get those patches back together?
Uh your lawn iss Saint august team, now, just I want to be
sure I'm right about that? Is that correct? Yes, sir, Yes,
sir. So I would say that I would just plug in with some
Saint Augustine. And if you've got living grass, it's within a foot of
another patch of a little spot of living grass, it'll close over with good
long care through the summer. Areas longer than a foot apart, further than
a foot apart, that's where I would put in a little You could put
a whole side piece. You could cut it up and the strips and put
them in to make it golo further or you could just resawd sections. But
that's probably your best way to go about it, Okay. And when I
do that, I go ahead and put dirt over that, and you know,
for the lines correct put the patches. You don't put it over it,
but you you just set those patches down in the scratch up this so
a little bit. Set the patches down in there, and then make sure
and water it regularly a couple of times a day when it's not raining,
uh, for the right week, and then about about once a day for
another week. All right it sir, hey, thank you for the information.
All right, Robert, thank you. I appreciate appreciate your call.
I have a good day you as well. Take care. Those of you
down in the Richmond Rosenberg area who haven't been to in Channey Forest need to
go. In fact, if you are anywhere in the general listening area,
you need to go check out in Channet Forest. It is an amazing,
amazing gardens. They just got some foliage color in that is outstanding, and
that includes colius and it also includes the koaladiums, which you know, we
used to think of colius and kladiums as shade plants. And they are great
color in the shade. You know, blooms are hard to come by,
but these two plants will give you color in the shade. But both of
them, kalladiums and colius have some forms that are just outstanding for the sun.
Is why they take the full brun of the sun. What else do
you need? Blue days of Obulus, they got it. Wishbone flower,
the bloomer in bright shade, Pentas, butterfly, magnet, Angelonius. I'm
gonna talk about those later today. Impatience for the shade. I'm saving Angeloonia
because I want to talk about that for a little bit this Saturday today,
March sixteenth, ten am. Right after the show ends, John Panzarella,
the Citrus Expert, is gonna be talking about citrus and avocado ad Enchanted Forest,
Where is it? FM twenty seven fifty nine If you're in If you're
in Richmond, heading to our sugar Land way off to the right, FM
twenty seven fifty nine, just go to Enchanted Forest Richmond dot or excuse me,
TX dot com. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. It's
always a good day to be out there. Love going there. Let's go
to League City. Now we're going to talk to Annie. Hello, Ann,
how are you great? To talk to you? I have actually a
segue on your last call. I do have frog fruit as a little turn.
It's to a lawn. I have had plants though that are growing,
and I measured it about ten to fourteen inches tall, So I'm thinking it's
a weed interspersed with the fruit. So what can I put down to kill
that without killing the frog fruit? And then I have one second question that
you're right that is not frog fruit. Frog fruit stays I would say about
four inches or so at the most high. What you would need to do
is have a wiper type applicator like a sponge, with a product that would
kill whatever kind of weed you're dealing with. It could be a general product
like a glyphosate round up being an example of that, but whatever will kill
weeds in general. Post emergent wiped on the taller weed without getting it on
the frog fruit. That's the approach you would use. You know what I've
done, And as I've gotten those little tools you used to grab a jar
office shelf, they've got a little pistol grip and on the other end they're
about three feet long and they squeeze and grab a jar or something. You
know what I'm talking about, Yes, I do. I'll put two sponges
on there. Take a kitchen sponge, a little small kitchen sponge, standard
sponge, cut it in half and you can glue them on. Bolt them
on. However, you don't get them on, and then you squirt the
sponge with the product and you just reach down and wipe. Just squeeze it
on the bad plant and it moves down and kills it without getting it on
your frog fruit. That's about the only way I can suggest, once the
two are intertwined. Okay, Then the second question, again, it's a
pretty quick one. I'm recovering a garden bit that's well a produce bid.
It's going to be edible fruit, and I've dug it out and dug it
out, and I'm still getting grass grown in there. It's foul on now
I don't have food in there yet, So any suggestions on what I can
do? Do you know what kind of grass? Off hand, it looks
like some nutgrass which I've been pulling out, but it also looks like it
might be Sant augustine growing through well Saint Augustine, And when you cover it
up, it dies. It can't punch through something, it can't crawl out
of the ground like bermuda. Bermuda is the worst. Are you pretty sure
it's not bermuda? Well, it may be bermuda then, because it's definitely
coming up. That's one where again you have to get a post emergent product.
There's two approaches to the bermuda. One is to use a grass only
weed killer. And there's a number of brands out there. If you go
to an ACE hardware store and tell them I need a grass only weed killer,
they can point you to one. You know, it may have a
name like grass be Gone or getter. I mean, there's all these names,
but they just go grass. You can use that, or you can
use the Glyphos Saint product. That's the round, right, Yeah, go
ahead. It's going to be for food though, So that's what I'm wondering
about. That it's label for use. It's label for use in the garden
food gardens. In fact, you if you sprayed it and got it on
the soil, I'm within like a week, you can plant seeds and it
won't hurt them. They'll come right up. They'll be fine. But one
of those two approaches. So other than that, you're doing the hand digging,
and whether it's nuts edge or bermuda, you got to get ever sprig
of it. And once you get things planted, it's hard to dig it
all out without killing the plant you got. Thank you, Thank you so
much. Ski. Yeah, you're wise to get deal with it while it's
still follow Make sure I got rid of some this past week, and I'll
wait about a week or two after I think I got it all. Maybe
water the ground if it's dry, and then watch for re sprouts because there'll
be some you missed, and then you can go back out and get those.
Okay, thank you, all right, Dan, thank you very much.
Sorry you're in that situation. But I can feel your pain. I
guarantee you I've been there. Do you love birds? I do. Birds
add color, they add movement, they add songs. I love sitting out
early in the morning and listening to birds sing. First thing. They I
don't know what it is, but they wake up talking. I'm not a
morning person. I've lived with mourning people before, and I'm telling you birds
are mourning people. They wake up singing and going crazy. While birds unlimited
is your store for everything that you need for birds. Do you need bird
feeders? Do you need bird seed? By the way, listen, there's
a lot of cheap bird seed out there. And by cheap I mean not
quality. I don't mean inexpensive, because when you buy a bird seed that
is fifty to seventy percent, the little red bebes at birds are basically not
going to want to eat that is not even money. The way, what
the bird gets to eat out of that bag is not much, so you're
paying more for it. Wibirds has quality feed. This is nesting season.
Birds need something like Walbird's Superblend. It's got sunflower chips, peanuts, dried
meal worms, all and on and on, all the things they need to
raise high protein is high protein, high fat food for raising a nest full
of young Go to WBU dot com, forward slash Houston, WBU dot com
forward slash Houston and you can find the six stores from Waldbirds here in the
Houston area. It's time for Nicki and the news. I'll be right back
at seven one three two one two kt RH. Welcome back to the garden
Line. We're glad to have you with us this morning. On a day's
got a little bit of rain forecast for us today, but we're not worried
about that. Heck, we live in southeast Texas. It rains. That's
a good thing. People somewhere else are wishing they had rain. I was
talking to some of the the turf on the turf growers down in the Gulf
Coast and just talking about you know, when it rains a lot, it's
hard to get a machine in the fields to do the harvesting. But at
the same time, when you got hundreds of acres of turf and you're trying
to keep it alive and you're watering and watering and watering it, that's expensive
too. So it is good to get a little bit of rain in to
keep everything going and moving. And boy, the turf is just really waking
up well right now. Lots of good, good, healthy growth coming on
it. And that is important because I'm going to be I'll be planting some
this next week, hopefully if the rain allows me to. For those of
you that are struggling with the lawn, consider patching some in. I you
know, as a general guide, I usually say, well, if you
got living grass about ever foot and you take care of it right this summer.
By midsummer, you can get that to close over pretty good for most
grasses. However, if it's struggling with diseases, if you're not watering it
and all kinds of too many weeds that are choking it out, well,
then no it's not going to cover in time. Bigger areas than that,
you ought to consider either plugging some in, which is a lot of labor,
but it makes the turf go further. You can do a little plugging
here and there all through the season if you want, or you just come
in and your reside sections. That's the faster, easier way to make it
have success. And we can talk more about how to do that sometimes,
but yeah, faster, easier, easier way to go about it. By
the way, for your lawns, we talk about the spring green up that
is that is the optional fertilization. We have each spring on our on my
lawn Care scheduled at gardening with Skip dot com. There as we get into
April, we start talking about slow release fertilizers and so you know, plants
don't have this hard black and white line about today you can use this tomorrow
you can't. I mean, it's a it's a gradual thing. If you
did an early spring greenup, then you're good for about three or four weeks,
I'll say four weeks to get you on into the slow release time when
we would apply the summer slow releases. They gradually feed over time because by
then the grass is growing fast. You can also put a slow release on
now you can do that if you want. You're not going to get the
immediate greenup from it, but it will feed your lawn over several months.
And Nitrofoss makes one of those. It is called Superturf. That's a good
name for it, Superturf. It's in a silver bag. The Superturf is
a nineteen four to ten fertilizer, so it's basically essentially a four to one
two ratio of nutrients, a four to one two ratio, and it releases
that nitrogen because half the nitrogen in Superturf is slow release. It also has
iron that really promotes nice, good green color. In the spring season.
When this was a little cooler and we get a lot of rains and stuff,
you'll see some yellowing in your grass and that's a temporary iron deficiency.
And super Turf nineteen four ten. The silver bag from nitrofoss can help fix
that. That can help remedy that specific situation. Now, where do you
get it? Well, how about going to Shades of Texas in the Woodlands.
They have it there, Enchanted Gardens down in Richmond Rosenberg, Yep,
they have it down there as well. And you can find it at Fisheryardware
both the Southmore location in South Euston and the Laporte location which is on Broadway
Street down in Laporte. We're going to go back to the phones now and
we're going to talk with Carolyn. Hello, Carolyn, good morning, Good
morning. I have a question about my Swiss yard. It's one that I
have had a whole winter. It's still producing. But will it continue throughout
the summer? I would do I need to replace it? It will,
it will keep going. Charred is amazing. It can't take the coldest of
cold, but a little protection you get it through a winter and yours obviously
made it. And then in the summer I have I've done different things that
I thought would have killed the charred with the heat, and it kept going.
One year I had so much. Don't tell anybody, it's just hearing
me. Talking right now. I hope no one's listening. I had so
much crabgrass in my vegetable garden that I took a weed eater to take charred
and crabgrass to the ground so that I could mulch it and kill the crab
grass. Those old charred stumps re sprouted in May and kept growing all through
the summer. That's stump. I mean. So I don't recommend that as
a practice, but I'm telling you charred is tougher than you think. It
has to have water though, but it'll keep going for you. Oh well,
that's wonderful that I won't have to replace it. There you go,
yeah, great, Thank you you bet Carolyn, and enjoy that charge.
That's a good vegetable that's not grown enough. You take care of it.
It's very helpful. It is all sorts of good nutrients. It is very
good. That's all kinds of fresh greens are. Hey, thanks to the
call. I appreciate that. I appreciate you calling. Yep, you can.
It's amazing how resilient charred can be. But with anything, you know,
when we talk about things surviving through summer, it is always with the
caveat that you're going to keep it adequately moist, because that's important. Those
of you up in Montgomery, your hometown garden center is an A Plant and
Produce. They're on the east side of Montgomery on Highway one oh five.
And now I say those of you in Montgomery, I mean Lake Conroe,
even Conroe, that whole region up there. You've got ana plant and produce
and they always have things coming in their supply of plants. Is It's just
it's always being renewed, always something fresh, always something coming in. Do
you need color, They've got it. Do you want vegetables, They've got
it. Do you need maybe a flowering tree, Yeah, they have it.
They have it today. They got someone that is coming out today to
talk about raising worms to make castings. Isn't that amazing? Yes you can
do. I've done that before too, by the way, But out of
A and A you just know that you're going to get good quality materials.
If I talk about a fertilizer, A and A is going to have it.
They have my schedule there at the counter. They told me they were
printing some of those up to have on hand. A and A Plants and
Produce just on the east side of Montgomery on Highway one oh five. So,
by the way, their landscape crews will go out there and do some
early cleanup of the homes around the Lake Conroy area. Do you want somebody
to come out and kind of spruce it up and get things looking good.
Give a NA a call, have one of their landscape crews come out and
do that. We are now going to go to League and talk to GD
Hello, gd Hi, good morning. Yeah. I have a question about
what is the best soil preparation to replant Saint Augustine's sod and should the soil
be tilled. We have a lot of clay soil here and I'm also trying
to build up certain areas to support better drainage. Okay, so what I
would do, this is what I am doing at my yard. I've got
a heavy clay soil and it's sticky as all get out. I'm putting a
couple inches of a sandy loam soil, high quality soil, not just sand,
but a sandy loam soil, something that if you can get something that's
close to a top soil, a couple inches of that down and then rototilling
it end of the surface. Now, when the clay is gouey wet Rototilling
is not a good practice. But if it just drives out a little bit,
rototil it into the surface couple of inches, just to mix those two
so you don't have heart just a heavy clay going right from something like sand,
sitting on top of it. Little rototilling in and then lay your side
down. And when you lay the side, you want to press it into
contact with the soil so there's no air gap underneath it. And you need
to water it in right away, not thirty minutes later. Just go ahead
once it gets laid. What I'm gonna do in my yard is I'll lay
a section, I'll turn on the turn on the water a little, move
a sprinkler around on it, and then lay another section and move that sprinkler
and move it, and then eventually you can turn on your home system.
But home systems often are very inefficient, and new sod is going to especially
when the temperature rises up, it's going to need water a couple times a
day, or morning and the afternoon, and then after a few days of
that, a week or maybe less of that, you can go to once
a day. The same thing. You're not trying to create a swamp.
But you're trying to that sad gud has a one half inch thin layer of
soil on it and that's all the roots that it has when it comes in.
So you need to keep that alive until it can get roots in the
ground. That's why the light, frequent watering. Okay, I've got to
run, got to run for a break. If i'm If you need to
hang on, you're welcome to do that, but I appreciate your call.
Our phone number is seven one three two two fifty eight seventy four Man Raindy
day in Texas. Welcome to garden line. Good to have you back right
now. So you hear me say the same thing over and over again,
and it's because it's important if I repeat it, it's important. And what's
important. Fix the soil before you plant the plants, and after you plant
the plants, continue to make the soil better. Brown stuff makes green stuff
better. Brown stuff comes first Nature's way resources. They have long term been
a leader when it comes to compost. When it comes to soil blends.
Do you need rose soil, do you need you know of kind of a
mix for vegetables or herbs or fruit trees or whatever. Talk to John,
talk to Ian Nature's Way, ask him what's the best situation for this,
and they can guide it. They custom they customize the blends they have specifically
for certain types of plant success. You can give them a call at nine
three six three two one sixty nine to ninety. They're on forty Intertate forty
five up toward Conro right where fourteen eighty eight comes in. Just cross over
the railroad tracks and you're there. While you're there, they've got native plants,
they have fruit trees. They've got a lot of different things in their
garden center as well. But they are known for quality products like roast soil
and leathmo composts, which they invented, by the Way, and fungal Friday's
every Friday ten percent off bagged fungal composts and twenty percent off fungal compost at
Nature's Way Resources. When you start right like that, you're gonna have success.
When you PLoP a plant into an unprepared plot, you're gonna have trouble.
Don't do that. Make success easy with Nature's Way Resources. We're going
to go now out to talk to Forest and the Galley of Hello Forest,
Good morning Skip. I am scheduled to get my lawn air rated and top
dressed, but that's not going to happen for a couple of weeks. And
I'm real tempted to put down some Weednator or some other you know, spring
fertilizer because I haven't done that yet. Should I hold off or could I
go ahead and do it? Do you have current weeds that you're seeing everywhere?
Do you have a problem with weeds right now? Well? Yes,
I put down the barricade a couple of weeks ago, and I actually spot
treated weeds, but I mean I've got them, so okay. Well,
if you were saying you mentioned the weed Nator and Nelson Weedenator is an excellent
product to kill weeds are existing in your lung already. What you need to
do, though, is you need to apply it when the weeds are wet.
The surface is wet. The soil doesn't have to be wet. The
leaf surface of the weeds needs to be wet. So if we know we're
done with rain right at the end, you can go in there and put
a little weedenator down. It'll stick to the weeds and it'll soak in.
After about a couple a day or two, go ahead and water it into
the ground to get the fertilizer down in the ground. After that, it's
a slow release. It works very very well, and it's going to give
you like a couple of several two or three months probably of release of nutrients.
It's it's very slow, but it gives you some early and then as
the soil warms up, it unlocks more and more of that nutrient that's in
the product. But don't worry about doing it before aeration. No, I
wouldn't. I would. You could do it before, but don't do it
like the day before. You need to let it undisturbed for about a day.
Then you could do your aeration and follow with a little bit of water
to kind of wash it down. Yeah, gotcha, perfect, Good luck
with that. Appreciate that very much. Glad to have your call. If
you are looking to have a beautiful, just a gorgeous flower pot on the
patio, maybe you're going to grow vegetables, maybe you're gonna grow flowers.
Jungle Land distributed by Nitroposs. Jungle Land is a quality soil mix for containers.
It's designed for that it's called jungle Land flour and vegetable planting soil.
Now there's also an indoor version called jungle Land water saving potting Salt's got the
little crystals at whole moisture and release it to roots as the soil begins to
get dry. These products are available everywhere you get nitrofoss products is all over
the place. For example, King of Ace Hardware has got those. The
arbor Gate up in Tomball, the shades of Green or shades of Texas excuse
me, Shades of Texas on Genoa Red Bluff down in South Houston. Those
are all places you can get jungle and other nitroph nitrofoss product. I'm having
trouble talking today. Other night fross products available there as well. Let's run
out to Jersey Village now we're going to talk to George. Hey, George,
h good morning Skip. I have a few questions for you. I
remember you talking about instead of watering on a specific schedule, just to go
about four inches down and look at the soil and grab a handfle see what
it feels like. Oh, I avoid going down on my knees. Is
any chance I get so? How about a moisture meter? Those things any
good? Are there one that you could recommend? The second thing is my
wife, as was agent. You see wonders hopping. They don't get any
bigger, beautiful flowers, but they're only about go two to three feet in
diameter. And the other question, as tomatoes, she says, if you
pinch off the flowers, the first flower just better. And any place where
a where a brass come out of the main stems, she says, there
are suckers that grow it right when those two come together, to pinch those
out too. So all right, what do you think, George? I'm
gonna answer half that, and after we come back from the hour break,
which is coming pretty quick here, I'll try to Well, maybe i'll get
them all answered. We'll just see see how far I can get. Let's
start with the meters. I'm sorry, say it again, the meter.
Yeah, the meters. Those are moderately accurate for moisture. They're okay,
they're not great. If you don't want to get down and feel the soil,
you can use one. But by the time you've been over to do
the meter, you can almost be down. Hey, you need to get
one of those kneeling benches. That's what I use because if I go up
and down a lot, I'll pay for it the next day. So I
have one of those kneeling folding kneeling benches are excellent. Yeah, and they
got little handles. It makes it easy to get back up again. Anyway.
The meters are okay, they're not the best. I usually say go
down, dig down four inches and feel the soil because that's deep enough to
where if there's moisture, you ought to feel it. You know, if
you feel the top inch, well it could dry out. But they're still
moisture done in the root zone. But anyway, you could go either way.
Just know the meters aren't fully accurate usually unless you spend quite a bit.
Okay, as far as let's see what was the azaleas, Yeah,
azalea's. Part of that is due to the genetics of the plant. Not
all azaleas reach the same mature size, but a lot of it is due
to growing conditions. Azalias want moist soil consistently. They want highly organic soil.
They preferred a little on the acidic side. They need moisture, but
they need good drainage too, so if the soil is compacted, if it
gets on the dry side. That's all going to stunt them and slow down
growth. So i'd get a big can get bigger. Pardon they can get
bigger? Then, yeah, they can unless it's just a variety that you
know is just reaching the size that you have, but you ought to want
to consider. Get you The Microlife makes a fertilizer for acid loving plants.
It's in a kind of a pinkish red bag. Uh, and it will
be good. It's good for azaleas, blueberries, camellias, gardens, all
those plants. It's a naturally slow release organic product that is a good blend
of nutrients. And i'd recommend you grab you some of that, all right,
some of that and do it. Do it now, do it again
in midsummer, and do it again towards the end of summer. Okay,
okay, all right now. Tomatoes, yes, tomatoes, taste the flowers
off, the first growth flowers too. Tomatoes come in three types. Determinant
they reach a certain size, set fruit and that's it. Indeterminant which is
vine and vine and grow and gross and then semi determine, which is of
course in between. If you are going to steak your tomatoes, you want
to remove all the suckers that come out where a leaf comes out, like
you were referring to H and you that way you get larger, earlier fruit
on your tomatoes. If you want to cage them, I still remove a
couple of the early suckers to get them up and growing, and then maybe
let them go to about three or four vines inside the cage, removing the
other suckers because it just gets so wadded up with foliage if you don't remove
any suckers that, yeah, it's a problem. I wouldn't remove fruit though,
you never need to remove fruit. Okay, all right, well,
thank you, all right much, all right, good luck with that.
Hey we got them all done. That's good. I appreciate that. Thanks
a lot for that. Hey, we you're listening to garden Line, and
I'm going to be here answering gardening Uessians all morning. In fact, i'll
be here tomorrow as well. Today's a good day to get out, but
I'm going to get out. I'm going to be at Buchanan's Plants. Bugannon's
is providing some cool stuff for giveaways. I don't know. I have about
almost seven or eight different kinds of things. I'm going to be given away
all kinds of things that you will find to be a real cool gift.
If you would like, we will answer any gardening questions you have. Just
show up there, bring me a sample, bring me a plant in a
ziplock bag, or bring me photos. Get up close, make sure they're
in sharp focus. Let's figure it out together. You got a Problemary,
you have trouble with plants just not performing. I promise you the Buchanans is
going to have a plant or two, or three or six to that area
that will do just well, and we can point you to those. But
it made me come out. Let's do some of the giveaways. Let's have
some fun with Q and A together. I'll even walk around a little bit
and do some shopping with you. You've got time. Buchanan's Plants right after
the show today at eleven am to one pm. Kat r H Garden Line
does not necessarily endorse any of the products or services advertised on this program.
Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Richter's Shoes, Crazy Gas Can
Trim just watch him as many good things to seept Crazy INASMS Club not a
Sundays Gas Sun Beam and welcome back to the Garden Line. Hey, it's
good to have you with us. Glad you're listening today. Good morning to
be inside listening to the radio. Right now, we're starting to get a
little glow in the sky, meaning the day is is coming. We're ready
to get out and do things. I'm going to be out in the battle
b it b Canna's Nursery today. I hope you'll come by and see me
from eleven to one pm eleven am to one pm, answering your gardening questions
and I don't know, just talking gardening in general. We'll even put up
with a little bit of bragging. I know you grew the biggest tomato in
the neighborhood last year. I'm a skeptic. Show me some pictures. We'll
take a look at that. Anyway, I love getting out and visiting with
people that listen to Garden Line. It's always good to visit with the listeners
out there. For those you got in Kingwood, you've got Warren's Garden Center
out there. You've also got Kingwood Garden Center, right, both of those
are out in that area, so it's real easy to go to Warren's Southern
gardens and pick up whatever you need. Our Kingwood Garden Center just so darn
handy. A lot of people are jealous because you got two great nurseries just
side by side right out there, and boy are they ever loaded. Color.
Warren's got some fashion azalias in that are outstanding. In fact, you
look at them and it's like does the plant have leaves or is it just
solid blooms. I mean they're literally that thick. Do you want gaudy in
your landscape? Go check out the beautiful hibiscus, the tropical hibiscus that they
have. The colors, I can't describe them, you just have to go
see them there. Beautiful I mentioned earlier, Colius of her sun and shade.
They've got that out there. It's just easy to find everything that you're
looking for. And anytime you go to a garden center, you got to
pick up salvia's and they have one called Rocking Deep Purple. It's a Salvia
gar nittica type. Salvia attracts hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, you name it.
I mean they are a magnet. And last thing, I mean,
I could go all day here. They have some ten gallon bougainvillias that are
on a little trellis. It is just a wall of color. You have
to go look at them. They're unbelievable. They also haven't trained as standards.
What's that mean? That means we take a bunch of trunks of the
boogavilia, put them all together like a little miniature tree, prune everything off,
and then they have this beautiful rounded head full of blooms. All at
Warren Garden Center, Kingwoo Garden Center Warren's Garden Center, two great places to
shop and find everything you need. We're going to go now to sugar Land.
We're gonna talk to Greg. Hello, Greg, Hi, Skip.
I have questions on azaleas and boogain beas. Okay, are those good summer
plants as far as uh being able to survive the heat or hollows those plants
do. Yeah, they both can take the heat. Azelias for the most
part, wants shade. Bougainvillia's definitely want full sun. Azalea's bloom in the
spring some repeat bloom, okay, but boogin mainly spring for azalias uh,
and then Bougainvillia's boog and villas they bloom on in through the season. Though.
If you can keep them going. They may do it in waves,
but you can you can have an extended bloom on those. And yeah,
I'm thinking about pulling some shrubs that died during the freeze that I was thinking
about just putting those plants, those flowers in that in that soil that after
I pulled the shrubs out, just go back and I could do that suner
shade. Are you talking about suner shade? I'm talking about mostly sun.
Okay, mostly son h Yeah, you could, you could do that.
They're just a lot of good blooming shrubs for sun. I wouldn't put the
azaleas in the sun. They are somewhat cold tender. I know you're down
in Sugarland, so you you know you're not far up north. I don't
know that I would plant them as just a general shrub, but unless you
can look, unless it's okay for everything to be barren in the winter time
when the leaves fall off, but there are probably I would consider some of
the good shrub roses for sun for blooms that go all through the season.
Mm hmm, okay, well I have the knockout roses in the front,
and so uh, the boog and vans will be okay. They're okay in
Sun. They're okay in Sun. Yeah. But you know, you're just
down the street down there, you're just down the street from in Chenna Gardens.
You ought to just run by there. H. They are going to
have a wide variety of roses, and they're going to have a lot of
other good blooming plants. And they're very knowledgeable there to China Gardens. They'll
they'll be able to tell you, Okay, here's another example plant option,
here's another one that they carry. They're going to have everything. So there,
have you been to in Chenna Gardens before? No, that's what that's
right down south Rosenberg. Yeah, you had to head down south. It's
it's if you're in Rosenberg going up toward fullsher north toward Katie that direction.
They're on FN three point fifty nine. Just it's what you need to do.
The website's easy. It's Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com and you can get
a map to it and all that kind of stuff. They got all the
fertile pass that I recommend, and more plants there I can imagine. By
the way, they're open. They're open till five o'clock and tomorrow from ten
to four if you if you can get out and that's in charge an enchanted
garden, Jenny Gardens, and they're going to have a lot. They have
antique roses, hybrid roses, and then Bougainville is everything else. They're going
to have it all right there. Okay, thank you so much, Thank
you appreciate appreciate that call a lot. We're going to go now, let's
see. I'll tell you what I want to I want to mention. I
mentioned this earlier, but if you've got existing weeds, that's cool season weeds.
Warm season weeds have not had a chance yet to take off and grow
and become big visible problems. Those are cool season weeds that you're seeing.
Night Fuss makes a product that's a fifteen five to ten, which is your
early greenup. It's the early greenup that is an optional application to do an
early greenup. If you're going to do that, if you use a n
Foss fifteen five to ten with trimec. It's a broadly post emergent weed control.
So here's what we need. We need to wet the leaves of the
weeds in the grass just with a just a squirt of water just enough to
get them wet. Don't do it before a gully washer rain. You need
to wait till the rains through and then just wet the leak. Get them
wet, put down the trimeac with the fifty five to ten. It's a
nitrofoss product. Again, it's easy. It's easy to find. Night foss
products are available just pretty much everywhere. I mean, and this bag is
easy. I like the color coding, but it's a bluish colored bag that
is going to Just make sure it says trimec as the ingredient and then leave
it about a day, let it soak into the leaf tissue of the weed,
and then water it in to get the fertilizer into the ground. Just
a tiny bit of water will do it. That product itself will kill those
weeds that are existing and then provide the nutrients for your yard. And where
do you get nitrofosh products. Well, here's a few places. You can
get them at Fisher's Hardware in Baytown. Down in Baytown, you can get
them at Lake Hardware down in Angleton. You can get them at D and
D Feed up in Tomball. We're going to take a little break. We'll
be right back our phone number seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four. Welcome back to the Garden Line. Good to have you with us
today. Got a lot to talk about. This is spring, as spring
has sprung, as they say, and boy are we ever in the big
middle of it with plants and all kinds of things. It's time to fertilize
your lawn. I've been talking about that. Get down your earth spring green
up if you want to do that. One the slower release products that we
use through the summer that time is we're kind of up on the edge of
it. We've sort of got one foot in spring green up what foot and
slowerly is going on with some of these products now, But either way you
want to go, it's a good time to be doing that. Also,
azamite azmite is a trace mineral element. What does that mean. It means
there are nutrients that the plant doesn't need a lot of, but that are
essential for plant living growth development, and so you may not need much of
them, but you absolutely have to have them. They're essential. Asamite is
full of those trace minerals, those micro nutrients. You can go to Azamite
Texas Dot com and find out more. It goes a long way because you're
just using a little you're not putting it out at the quantity you would put
out fertilizers. Now, this is something that like a forty four pound bag
will cover six to twelve thousand square feet, So you want to make sure
you're setting on your spreader is crank really down to not put very much out
and you can find out more about that. But azimite is an excellent product
for doing that. You can do it anytime of the year. You won't
do it now, be just as fine as any So get you some asmite
and get out there and get going. Where do you get it, Well,
it's widely available, as mite is widely available in fact, Southwest Fertilizer.
Of course that's cheating. Southwest Fertilizer has everything, So saying it's available
at Southwest is like, okay, what's new. I mean that everybody knows
that Southwest has all the fertilizers. I recommend you know, when we talk
about nitropost when we talk about Nelson's, when we talk about the microlife fertilizers,
when we talk about the Medina products, they got all of that and
then some. They have everything you need. If you've got a pest,
disease or weed, they can fix it. Bring a sample, walk in
with a photo, show them what you got. Make sure it's a good
crisp photo. Train staff very knowledgeable, you know, and Aaron for a
right hand man. Aaron knows exactly where to point you, and so do
other folks working there at Southwest Fertilizer. It's good to walk in be treated
right with knowledgeable answers. You know, you've been to these places where you
ask a question. As you start asking it, you watch the eyes glaze
over and you realize they have no idea. They're going to make something up.
But they have no idea. That's not Southwest Fertilizer. You go in
there, you get what you need. They've got it all. They got
the A'SM. I. They also, by the way, have the Nitrofuss
super Turf. That's the nineteen four to ten. That is the silver bag.
The silver bag very very important. The silver bag is what you need
for slow release. Now, if you just did the fast release the Nitropuss
Imperial, go ahead and get the silver bag. Hold off though, give
it, you know, give that night Fuss Imperial about three or four weeks
and then put the silver bag down. If you didn't do it, go
ahead and do the silver bag now. Tterfost super Turf is an excellent slowly
products give you your nutrients over time. It's going to provide them gradually over
time. And when you do that, you just put it down and you
forget about it. It's going to feed your LNG gradually like you want.
Knight Foss products are easy to find. They're available ever where. I keep
telling you that where are some places. Well, let me give you a
few examples. You can get them at Kingwood Ace Hardware. You can get
them up at the Arbor Gate. You can get them down in South Houston
on Genoa Redblock at Shades of Texas. Lots of places to get the Knight
Foss products. Let's now go out to West and we're going to talk to
Jonas. Hello Jonas, Good morning, Skipp, Thanks for a gee my
call. I have a couple of questions about my highbiscus plants. They're potted,
have about eight of them, and I took care of them in the
winter and put them inside and they're fine, but they're very lanky. They
have all these stems in them, many from the base, and they're not
very bushy, and I don't know whether that's just a part of their genetics
or not. And even though they're doing well, sometimes some of the leaves,
even little ones after in yellow. Other leaves that are more mature have
furled and have developed a brownish look to them with little holes in them.
Okay, And I basically don't know. How can I make them bush here
if that is possible? And what fertilizer should I use? Yeah, good
questions, Paul. You can with the with a hibiscus, that's not unusual
coming out of wintertime, so I wouldn't I wouldn't worry about that at all.
You're gonna I am yellow. The yellowing, Yeah, that could be
a water too much, too little. That's kind of normal for them.
They wanted to warm up before they're really going to get going. I would
get you some Nitrofoss makes a liquid, I mean not a liquid, a
dry product. It's called Hibiscus fertilizer. It is a twelve three sixteen product
and Nitrofoss sold all over the place, but their Hibiscus fertilizer, the twelve
three sixteen I would fertilize them with that and watered in really well. And
when you watered in, you're going to get a response as those nutrients are
released and as they pick up and they go with it. Now, if
you want the water soluble version that you mix you know, the fertilizers you
mix up in water and you water your plants with them, that would be
their space city hibiscus, and it's an eighteen ten twenty eight. Wherever nitrophossis
sold. Either of those Hibiscus work. One is for mixing up and using
the solution to water your plants. The other is a dry fertilizer you do
just like any other dry fertilizer. You put down as you water, it
releases. It's a twelve three sixteen, right, The one that is water
soluble. Well, the one that's dry first of all is twelve three sixteen.
The one that is water soluble is an eighteen ten twenty eight. It's
a little higher in the potassium levels there. But both of those are going
to work just fine. As far as pruning them, yeah, you can.
You can trim them back. Don't let them put on too much growth
before you trim them back. You don't waste that energy. But if you
trim them back, they'll sprout out just fine. Okay. And the fertilization
should be a time of year or at any time. I would do it
now, and then I would continue to do it. As the weather warms
up. Growth is going to speed up, and you could if you do
the dry version, you could do it every couple of months on it.
If you want to use the soluble one, and just whenever you water once
a week, apply a good application of that. That would be fine too,
Okay, all right, Now, once in a while, I do
add coffee grounds to them. That's fine, that's fine. It's a little
bit of cidifying. But that's okay. But I'm gonna have to not have
to run Jonas. But thank you for that question. Good luck with those.
Yeah, they're beautiful plants. You're you're fortunate to have some of those
on hand. I wan't tell you about a garden center that some of you
not been to. A lot of you have. It's well, really well
known about folks that if you've ever been there, you know it's a destination.
So that's kind of a mystery. What am I talking about? Nelson
Water Garden it's your West Houston garden center. Now what Nelson water Garden,
I should say the nursery, Nelson Nursery, because really it is a full
fledged nursery. Do you need tomatoes and herbs and flowers and the whole thing.
It's a garden center, right, but water Gardens is where they got
their start and they are a specialty I mean, I'm telling you, do
you need specialty fish like koi and shabukin? Do you need beautiful lilies?
Do you know that they have got a bunch of tropical lilies. Those are
the kinds that aren't winter hardy, and they've got a whole bunch of the
hardy varieties too. The colors of the flowers are excellent. In fact,
they're already starting to bloom out there. And the little containers that they have
for water garden you can get them in a seven court pots just beautiful.
They know what they're talking about. Do you need fish? Do you need
to feed your fish? Do you need I said they were a garden center.
They got micro life six two four plenty of that and other products as
well on hand. Now Nelson Water Gardens out in Katie. You head to
Katie you just go north, just north of Iten, turn right about a
Stone's throw up there on Katie Fort Ben Road, Katie Fort Ben Road,
and you need to go, and you need to take friends because the way
that place is set up, it's like you're walking through a water wonderland.
You will see fountains, waterfalls, just you just need to go. Take
my word for this one. Nelson Water Gardens out there in Katie. It
is definitely definitely a destination, one of a kind place. You're listening to
garden Line and we're here to answer gardening questions. Would you like to give
us a call? Seven to one three two one two kt R eight seven
to one three two one two kt R H Landscaper's Pride has one of the
widest selections of stuff to make your plants thrive that you're going to find.
We're talking about a company that bags and also sells by bulk by the way
too, but twenty seven different bagged products. Just go to write this down,
go to the website Landscaperspride dot com Landscaperspride dot com. There you're going
to find out what they have and you're going to find out where to get
it because it's available widely, and so let me give you some examples.
That premium pot dirt. It's an OMRI certified, that's the official organic certification.
It's a soil. It's proven for really short term high potency growth on
flowering plants like I want to. It's packed with nutrients. How do I
get these things going? Stuff like worm castings and sand and vermiculide and more
so, if you've got an annual bed you're doing a seasonal color change,
you know, those and violas and whatnot need to come out and we're going
to put in some petunias and angeloni and all kinds of things. This is
an excellent product for that. They have a landscaper's mix that's good. The
drainage is outstanding on the product. Or do you need to make a bed
or do you need to renovate a bit, do you need a rose mix?
Yeah, they have those as well. Like I said, twenty seven
different products Landscaperspride dot com. You're going to find everything there including where to
get them, and they are very very widely available. The landscapes around town
I know, and I've looked at my own at times time to redo the
garden they need us, They need us to fertilize them, they need us
to replant some things, they need us to help them look better. And
I hope you're planning on doing that. I know we got a rainy day.
I know we've got a couple of rain days here. That's okay.
That yes, And if you want to get out to a garden center and
have the staff yourself, you know, not quite like that. Today's a
good day. Yeah, the products are there, and listen, when the
sun comes out, you're going to want to get going, So why not
have the supplies and products already ready to go. Today is a good day
to get out and do that. It's also a good time to listen to
Nikky and the news, which I'm going to pass the baton over to her.
Seven one three two one two k t r H. If you'd like
to get on the boards with Josh, we'll be right back. Welcome back
to guard Line. We're looking forward to visiting with you butt your gardening questions.
What what do you wonder about? What are you struggling with? Do
you need some ideas? Give us a call seven one three two one two
five eight seven four seven one three two fifty eight seventy four. I was
at Anti Grozenporium just not too long ago when they had their big shin dig
out there in the spring, and I'm telling the place looks good and it
just the blue bonnets, and right now they even better. It got to
be better today because they're on their way up out there. Wonderful drive in
the country, a great place to be. You know, they've got their
nurtiery and display gardens and they are roses, but they are so much more.
I mean they the place began as an antique rose place and it is
the go to place for that. Foreshore people get roses shipped all over the
country from the antiq rosen Porium. And you can go because it's in your
backyard and you can see the place the display gardens. But when you get
there, you're going to find houseplants and herbs and flowers and fruit trees and
flowering trees and all kinds of native species there. On twenty third of March,
just next weekend, ten am, they're going to have a beneficial insect
presentation. Same day will be a children's activity at four pm and it'll be
all about ladybugs. I'll even the kids will get to do a Ladybug release,
so that'll be kind of fun and cool. March thirtieth is their Easter
egg hunt coming up. They'll be posting a lot more stuff to social media,
so follow them on social media. The Antique rosen Phum. If you
would like to accommodate or have them accommodate a tour, maybe even a presentation
to your group. They can do lunch and learns. They can do gardencraft
workshops during the week and on Sundays too during the spring. Go just email
them events at Wereroses dot com, Events at real we are Roses dot com.
That's the email now if you want to call them nine seven nine eight
three six fifty five forty eight nine seven nine eight three six five five four
eight Our best of all, just go to Antique Roseemporium dot com. Antique
Roseanmporium dot com. Love that place, so excited to see it continuing on
under new ownership and it just keeps getting better and better. I want to
head out now to Comstead in Texas and we're going to talk to Jerry.
Hello, Jerry Yellow Jip. Actually I live in Belbo and that's where I'm
calling you from day with a hailstorm. And I don't know if you've talked
about it yet this morning, but I have a few trees in my yard
and there are trees in town that literally have no leaves left on them.
Okay, the hail took everything off the trees and just left the branches.
Wow. Wow, is that going to cause an issue this summer because those
trees no longer have leaves with producing energy? Uh no, Well, it's
gonna weaken the tree, but the tree will be fine if it was in
good health going into the winter. In that hailstorm, the tree has plenty
of carbohydrates to put on a new set of leaves. We just need you
to not let any more hailstorms come through. That would be helpful, but
it'll put out new leaves. What you're gonna see, though, is on
some of the branches on the up facing side, those hailstones, if they
were that many, that much, they're gonna have damaged some of the barks.
You're gonna have some wounds on the tree, but there's no action that
you can take about that. Now. Again, with the tree having good
health, it will quickly close over those undes. Spring is the best time
for wound healing, so you should be okay, Well, I'll tell you
how much hell we had. I had literally a foot and a half of
hal in my ditch. Good not what size? What size were half inch
to one inch diameter? Man, that'll that'll do it. Yeah. And
it looks like a tornado may have come through because some of the damage that's
here. I don't they haven't confirmed that yet, but I mean we've got
there's some mobile homes around here that are destroyed. Wow. Yeah, so
it uh, it was pretty bad and it was only for I'll send you
a video if you want. It was only about two minutes. Yeah,
but it just take down. Yeah, go ahead, if you don't mind
me keeping it and using it, I'd be happy to. I'm gonna put
you on hole when we're done here. And Josh, we'll give you an
email you can you can send it to. Okay. Yeah, I need
to call Dean Nilson because Nelson Fertilizers out there and see how they fared through
that. That's uh okay up in front of town. It looked like it
came from the southwest to the northeast. Is what the path looks like now.
Okay, So it would have missed him. But all right, yeah,
all right, Jay, I'm gonna I'm gonna put you on hold and
we'll please send or have Josh give you the the email. I'm sorry to
hear about that. That is a mess, and I've been through those things
before, and boy, can that ever do a lot of damage? Uh?
You know, our landscapes is like every time you turn around, there's
something else. Last summer's drought and heat was brutal and a lot of people
are struggling. I'm replacing a lawn because of it. When I left for
two weeks, took two weeks in the heat of summer, full stress.
My water didn't come on, and I don't know word got out to the
insects and diseases because chinchbugs, for the first time ever, showed up like
I had been invaded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers marching across the lawn.
Uh take all root right, hammered it as well, Peerscapes can fix out.
So right now, look out the window. Do you see standing water
by the end of the day, By the end of Sunday, maybe you
will. What do you do about that? Plants don't like swamps, very
few plants can live with suburged roots. Peer Scapes can fix that. They
can come in and fix the drainage. Is your irrigation system on the blink
when you turn it on, does it apply water evenly over the whole area?
They can fix that. Do you want to turn the backyard into a
showplace? They specialize in that. It's easy, easy to get hold of
them. Just go to their website piercescapes dot com, piercescapes dot com,
or call them two eight one, three, seven oh fifty sixty. Whatever
you need to fix what's broken or to turn what you got into a showplace,
Peerscapes can do exactly that. And right now is a good time to
talk about that drainage issue because it's real clear where you have problem. Take
pictures of it, by the way, take pictures right now when you see
the problem, so you can show it to them and say this is where
it is, this is what we need to fix, and they can do
that. They're very good at that. By the way, We're gonna go
to Missouri now and talk to Josh. Is this Missouri city or Missouri state,
No, sir, it's Missouri state. I've been bringing garden line up
here for about twenty years. Now, go way to go? Hey,
where are you in Missouri? South central? More on the kind of more
on the west side though, I'm just north of Springfield. North of Springfield?
Is that Ralla? No? Not Ralla? What? Actually? Strangely,
I'm just outside of Houston, Missouri. Oh yes, I know.
Isn't that amazing? I used to live in Mountain Grove, just an hour
east of Springfield, and I went all through that region Neo Show and Springfield.
But anyway, enough talk about old times, Josh, how can I
help? I'm trying to figure out a way to get it. Is some
greenbrier, it seems to if anything I use on it, what have you
tried? Uh? Fertile oam kills all. I've even tried the round up
type products. No matter what I do, it just comes right back.
I've used a really sticky stuff that's just four vines even you know, that
suck down in the winter, but they just come back. Okay. Is
this a more of a farm like size or is this a backyard or what
are we talking about? Either? I've got them in my yard, in
my gardens and all around the poem too. I just can't seem to get
a handle on it anywhere. So if you got big old vines coming out
of the ground size of your thumb, those are going to be storage roots.
You probably need to try to dig up because there are products that work,
but when you have that much storage power in the ground, it's hard
to knock them. It'll take several applications. But here's what you need to
get. You need to get a product that contains trimech TRII mec trimechr.
That's the ingredient. Now it's put in lawn and garden stuff, but you
want to get a good strong It may be called brush be gone, it
may be called poison ivy killer, but the ingredient is trimech. Second,
you need to get a little bit of diesel oil. Just a little bit
of diesel oil. And then you need to go to a website that's a
Texas A and M website called brush Busters. And if you do a Google
search for brush Busters and Greenbrier, you'll get a page that tells you how
to mix it up and use it. The diesel is there to help it
stick, and you have to get it on the new stems. You just
get spray it or painted on the new stems and growth. It translocates down
and it works pretty good. I got to run for a break here,
but that's the solution, digging and or using that combo of a product,
and that that'll get done for you. Thank you for the call. I
appreciate et that. For those of you who'll like to call seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four, I'll be right back. Welcome back
to garden Line. Glad to have you today, boy Josh, great job
on all these rain songs. It's a good day for rain songs, for
sure, and there are a lot of them. You get to thinking about
it. The first thing comes to my mind is bj Thomas, rain drops
keep falling on my head. By the way, that's one of the few
times you hear me sing on the radio. There are a bunch of rain
songs out there. That's it. Man. Hey, Uh, Soil Soil
is first, right, Soil is important. How do we say it?
I can say it ten different ways. Brown stuff before green stuff. Brown
Stuff makes the green stuff happy. Start with the brown stuff, then do
the green stuff. The success of the green stuff depends on the brown stuff.
Airlom Soils. They specialize in the brown stuff. Do you need a
roset soil blend, They got it. Do you need a veggie and herb
mix, They got it. Do you need a top quality leaf more compost,
they have it. They have everything that I mean, a wide variety
of product. Just go to the website. Go to the website, it's
easy. You can go to Heirlooms Soils of Texas dot com Airloomsols off Texas
dot com. Find out everything you need. They got it in bulk,
they got it in bags, And depending on where you live, you may
not have to get your soul from the porter location. There is, for
example, up in the Tumble area they have a place where you can get
bulk there as well. But bags are widely available all over. But remember
this, before you put the green stuff in the ground, make sure that
you've already created a bed that is going to make it. Make the plant
happy and help it to thrive, help it to produce, help it to
be beautiful. That's what airloomsl is all about. Simple as that. We're
going to go out Tonederland and talk to Dora. Now, Hello, Dora,
Hello, that can we help today I'm leading to find out how far
to cut back the roots on live oak trees. We have three large live
oak trees twenty four feet from our driveway that's in our neighbor's yard. And
I don't want to kill the trees, but I need to cut the boots
back. We just had the driveway replaced twenty three thousand dollars and I can't
afford to do that again. I need to cut those trees. Those mac
half far do I need to cut up half posts and I cut them without
killing the trees. Well, it's a percentage game. You know, a
tree that's strong versus a tree that's weak. That's different. I'm sorry.
It's a percentage game, meaning that if the tree were strong, it could
take more of that than a tree that's already struggling weak. The percentage of
roots that you remove, Like if you remove thirty percent of the roots from
a tree, then you got big problems. But a root here and there.
What I would do is I would do this over the next three or
four years. We would over the next three or four years, I would
cut the roots. I would cut one right now, just completely remove it,
and I would do it about two feet away from that that driveway two
feet away from the tree of the driveway, or or within at least within
a foot of the driver go ahead and cut it back there. You can
then next year cut another root, or this fall cut another route, and
then just let's gradually take them off just to keep from totally shocking the tree.
It sounds like you're gonna have to remove quite a bit of root,
So that what I was thinking about, just taking doing a trench down the
driveway, say two feet away from the driveway, to find out where the
roots off. How far away the tree tree from the driveway. How far
is the tree from the driveway twenty four feet? Oh, that's pretty far
out. Good. You could probably get away with that trend then and do
that. You really need to cut them all as I go down the trench,
just cut all the down. If you can get out about a foot
deep with a trench, that that will do. You might want to have
an arborist come out and look at it, because I'm not picking. I'm
not seeing it on site, so I may have a different opinion if I
was there looking at it, me saying you, probably that's fine to go
ahead, get it done soon. But an arborist might need to come out
there. I don't think that affordable tree goes out that far, but they
might. You might consider giving him a call. I think that's probably so
far that just his travel time is probably so if I trench that tree,
I can go down that trench and cut those cut those branches, say half
far away from my driveway? Can I do that? I would do it
about a foot or two from the driveway. Okay, yeah, okay,
that's what I'm needing to know they're going to. When they did the driveway,
they covered all of that stuff up just with dirt, and so I
can't see the roots. We saw some of the roots because my husband kind
of dug around to find some, gotcha. But they're all all right,
So fifty eight feet of them. Yeah, oh my gosh. So Dora,
I'm saying, I think you can do that, but I think you
need to get an arborist to look and be sure that that's not too much
of a root removal. Based on the dots from the tree, I think
it's okay, but it is going to be a heck of a shock.
That's a lot more roots than i'd like to cut. So you may want
to do. Well, there's three trees. Okay, there's three of them.
Okay, well, same same answer, same answer on those, okay,
okay, So do you have a number for that that fight for a
four three tree? Yeah, I'll give you the number. I think you're
too far out for them, but they can tell you that, and they
can refer you to somebody. It's seven to one three six nine twenty six
sixty three seven one three six nine nine two six six three talk to martiners
like Joe. Okay, thank you for the call. Good luck with that.
Yeah, that's a you know, it is a percentage game, and
so it's kind of hard to know for sure if you're doing any transplanting.
And I have been doing transplanting of house plants for example. Uh. And
I've been transplanting where I started some vegetables inside and moving them up to bigger
pot. I'm about to be doing all my outdoor color planting. I've been
trying to get around to it with this yard project. What I use is
Nutristar Genesis Transplant Mix that's by Nilsen Nelson Fertilizer nutri Star Genesis Transplant Mix.
It's a six' one three fertilizer. It's got humates in it, it's
got lots of endo and ectomycorrhizol fungi that helped the roots survive that process and
thrive. And it has other nutrients in courage ensomatic production there in the plant.
Basically, it's enhancing the biology of the soil. So here's what you
do. You get your soil that you're about to use to pot up the
plant into bigger container. You mix in the nutri star genesis in that soil,
and then you do your transplanting and so the material, the potting soil,
the material, the growing mix that you're using already has the genesis in
it. Then and you just go to town and you will find good success.
I had great results when I was doing some peppers this spring, and
I'm about to use it again for some flowers that were about to go put
out. It works really well. And where do you get products like that?
Well. Ace Hardware Store carries a wide variety of products. You're going
to find the fertilizers I recommend for your lawn at Ace Hardware. You're going
to find everything you need for pest control, disease control, and weed control.
Do you need Azamite. They're going to have it at Ace Hardware as
well. There's forty of them in the Greater Houston area. So yeah,
even down there toward needer Land Way, you got head up around Beaumint.
You got you in Ace Hardware store that is going to have everything you need
for your lawn in your garden. Do you need a wheelbarrow? Do you
need shovels? Do you need rakes right now? Do you need goloshes or
rubber boots? Do you need a ponchoed? Are you out in these rainy
weather? Hey, we like the garden and the rain. Right, neighbors
talk about you, but they talk about you anyway. Ace Hardware even has
that they are the place to go. Ace is the place, and go
to Ace Hardware dot com, find the store locator. You can find the
ones nearest you, and there will be some nearest you, with forty of
them in the Greater Houston area. Well, here we are. It's about
time for a little break. I believe should be hearing some music here coming
pretty quick here, we're ending the hour. I'm going to be at Buchanan's
Native Plants, Buchanans Native Plants, and I will be there today. After
the show, I'm going to head that way and from eleven o'clock till one
o'clock albeit at Buchnnans. You're going to find me at Buchanans where I can
answer your gardening questions, where I can identify plants, where I can identify
weeds, where I can recommend what do you do for that? Bring me
some stuff and ziplock bags, bring me some photos to look at. Let's
talk about it. I always like to meet garden line listeners and today's a
great day to do it. I mean, even if it starts raining,
you can go into this huge greenhouse that they have full of house plants and
it is just let me tell you this, ibrim is. You you go
to Buchanans today, You're going to find a half dozen, a dozen or
more houseplants that you don't have that you need to have. There's so many
cool ones. They always have something new coming in there. Of course,
Ukenan's Native Plants is the place with the awesome native selection as well as the
selection of tomatoes and peppers and earths and flowers and everything else you want up
that kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the products or
services advertised on this program. Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip
rictor it's weel crazy gaz Trim. Just watch you as so many good things
to sup botzy gas back again, not a sad welcome back to the garden
Line. Hey, it's good to have you today. Good morning to be
sitting inside listening to the radio talking about gardening, because this afternoon. I
know some folks melt if they get wet with a low rain, but I
don't, and I love getting out. And I know when you go to
a garden center all day like this, that's not gonna be as crowded as
it normally would be. And it gives you a chance to do shopping on
your own, have a better selection actually, and kind of get staff to
yourself in a sense, and that you can ask lots of questions, get
some help. Our quality home mom and pop independent garden centers. They have
staff that knows what they're talking about. They carry stuff that grows in Houston.
They're not a chain. They get stuff shipped all over the country and
kind of cookie cutter, one size almost fits all. No, they don't
do that. They hire people that are gardeners that no gardening, that are
experts in the field. And without dissing any specific companies and names and stuff.
I've been into plenty of places where I walked in and decide to cure.
I always like to do this, ask somebody a question, just to
see how they enter it in these places, and you come to find out
that, yeah, they've been in a garden center for about a week.
They were doing something totally unrelated to gardening before that. And I'm happy to
have a job. But that's not who you go to for advice. That
is not who you go to for advice. You got to know what you're
talking about. And RCWI is an example of the kind of place that mom
and pop that knows what they're talking about. They've been growing stuff here for
a long time. They even grow their own trees right up up in Plantersville
at the farm. And so if they grow, if they sell you a
tree, they know that it belongs here, that it grows here, that
it thrives here. You can walk in and say, hey, I've got
this situation, what would be a good tree for this spot, and they
can tell you that. They can point you to the right plants, they
come out and plant them for you. The trees, they can come out
and do that service, which you don't need to be breaking your back trying
to do that. RCW, though, is way more than that. I
mean, they have roses, they have boogainvillias, they have hibiscus. Go
by and just ask them, say show me your Cajun hibiscus. And I
don't know that I've seen a more beautiful tropical hibiscus than the Cajun groups of
hibiscus that they have, just absolutely beautiful. RCW Nursery is one that I
often go to just to see what's going on in the trade right now,
what is going on in fact at RCW right now today. As a matter
of fact, they're going to have somebody from the Houston ROAs Society out there
answering questions about growing roses because RCW is a place that specializes in roses.
They'll be there from twelve to two pm today and the over two hundred rose
varieties to choose from. They're gonna have refreshments and snacks and all kinds of
things. So even drawing for gifts and stuff. It's just a good place
to go. And when you go there. You know you're getting good advice,
accurate advice. Let's go out now to West Houston and we're going to
talk to Carol this morning. Hello Carol, Oh, good morning Skip.
I actually live in West University. Then, okay, anyway, I have
two tulip trees. One is doing very poorly and the other one is almost
completely dead anyhow, And they've been here a long time, used to make
just tons of tulips or Japanese magnolia. And so I need to cut one
down and I'm gonna try to save the other one. But do you have
a recommendation for saving the one that has a little bit of life? And
then maybe what should I plant to replace the one that's almost completely dead?
Can you think of anything, Carol, that's changed around this plant? Like
was it shady somewhat before now it's sunny or vice versa. Did you did
you did the drainage change in the yard? You know, you know what
I'm saying, what's different? Why did it used to do good? Now
it's not. It's when I'm trying to figure out I don't. I don't
know. It's very puzzling because I haven't changed anything. Okay, I've lived
your twelve years and I have and I inherited that they were here, so
I don't know. Okay, well it's okay. Uh. You know,
without any additional info or seeing the site, I'm having to give a best
guess. So last summer, the heat was unusually brutal for unusually long and
the drought was brutal, and it could be that the plant, just with
the way its root system was set up, just wasn't able to get enough
moisture to keep it going and it weakened it. Now, drought can kill
a plant, but it can also weaken it that leads to other problems.
Those plants don't have, just real common problems that I would sayd this disease
or that insect that's attacking them. I think I'm going to say that it's
we need to improve the soil and we need to keep that soul moist going
into the summer, and so using a fertilizer for acidic plants would be fine.
If you want to use. Microlife has a nice one and a reddish
pink bag that is for acid loving plants. It's an organic product. You
can spread it out, mix it in a little bit to just the soil
surface around it multually well, pushing a spading fork into the ground around the
plant in a lot of places and just pulling back on the handle and wiggling
it a little bit. You know what I'm saying. You're sort of opening
a hole. You're not spading the ground up. You're just going vertically down
in and cracking the soil open a little bit and then covering it with a
good quality leaf mold compost as well as you've already put then the fertilizer down
to move down into those holes and wash in. I think we can improve
the soil a little bit. I think that we can ned that nutrient and
then as we go into summer, just making sure a good soaking on an
infrequent basis is what's in your control to try to save that plant. It's
not looking good, okay. And that microlife product is that the one that
you applied as Zalea's Is it that one? Yeah? It's it's a pinkish,
reddish, pinkish bag. Yeah. Uh. And and that would be
that'd be the one that I would use, And I would look at the
the plant and with for every inch of trunk diameter, I don't know,
how bigger bigger cross it is? Uh? You know, is the trunk
the size of a Coca cola can? Is it the size of a golf
ball? What size is it? Uh? For every inch across, give
it about four cups of that acidifying microlife spread out all around underneath the branch
out as far as the branches go. Okay, and then uh for the
one that I mean there's just literally one branch living and it was massive.
What replacement would you recommend? And it is close to the house, that's
the other thing. So something that won't damage the foundation. Yeah, well
you could go back with that same plant. I'm actually I'm coming up against
I'm at a break. Actually, I need to stop here, but I
would do that. You could do an English dog wood, looks pretty good
in those areas. Another one that you would do the same kind of soul
treatments and stuff for that's a shrub. If it's in lots of sun.
You could do a very dwarf crepe myrtle. There are some that only get
about seven feet high you could do. So those would be some options that
I would think about. But I'm sorry I have to cut short here,
but I do need to run, but thank you for the Thank you very
much for the question. Our number is seven one three two one two kt
RH and I'll be right back. Welcome back to garden Line. Good to
have you with us today. Good day to be talking about gardening and planning
for gardening and getting all those kinds of things done. Hey, if you
are wanting to pot up some plants and you want a quality mix to grow
them, end jungle Land, write that down jungle Land. Jungle Land is
a product extremeuted by Nitrofoss that is an excellent blend for your indoor and outdoor
plants. But it's two different products. One is jungle and flour and vegetable
that is for outside flower and vegetable planting soil outdoors. Super drainage holds water
adequately, holds nutrients well, and just really and ignites a really solid growth
and beautiful blooms for your container plants indoors. Jungle Land water saving potting soil.
It's got the crystals, the little crystals that swell up with water and
then that water's available even as the soil begins to dry out. That'll do
it. It makes it easy to have success. I like to say it
makes the soil more forgiving. Should the person in charge of caring for the
plants forget to water. That's one way to look at it. Where do
you find it? Go to Kingwood, Go to the Ace Hardware there.
Go to the Arbigate up in Tombol, they've got it. Go to Shades
of Texas out on Genoa Red Bluff Road. They've got that jungle land as
well as other nitropost products. Also. Let's go now out to the heights
and we're gonna talk to Maria. Hello, Maria, Good morning Skip.
I have some box with shrubs that are just kind of overgrown, and I
really want to cut them down. Is that okay to do that? To
Punam you bring them down shorder so they grow fuller. Yeah, it's okay.
When you cut them back enough, you're gonna end up cutting off all
the green and they will re sprout, but they're gonna look horrible for a
while. But sometimes when you got way too big, you need to go
below where you want them to be to make your cuts, because as they
re sprout and they get about six eight inches of growth, you're gonna cut
the tips out of those and cause them to branch more and then they six
eight inches of growth. You're gonna cut the tips out and get it to
branch more so you build that density back. It won't come back dense,
it'll come back lanky, and with shearing you can rebuild them at the size
you want. But to do that you got to start a little shorter.
Okay, perfect, Thank you, Good luck with that. Thank you,
you bet, you bet. If you have planted a tree, or if
you're a gunna plant a tree, you need the three sixty Tree Stabilizer.
What that is is think of it as a stiff arm that grabs onto a
post on one end and grabs onto the tree on the other. But on
the tree end you've got a very flexible rubbery strap and you want to make
it loose. Trees need to move a little bit. We're trying to keep
them from blowing over right with the steak and strap. They need to move
a little bit to develop trunk strength, and it's designed for that. It's
an excellent design really for a product. The other end can grab anything from
a fence post to one of those little metal t posts. It's designed to
hold onto all that really well. You can put two of them in at
right angles to hold the wind from north, south, east, and west.
The nice thing I like about them is those posts are really close to
the trunk when you hammer a t post in and you don't have this long
guywire going out there to trip over in all directions around the tree. And
they last forever. And where do you get them well, or is hidden
gardens. I was talking about Jorge Don and Alvin earlier. He's got them
Southwest fertilizer. Well, of course they got them. They carry everything plants
for all seasons, Arborgate Buchanans where I'll be later today, RCW nurses.
They all have three sixty tree stabilizers and I would not plant a tree without
one. Since I got one, it's like okay, and I'm going to
have it for years. They last forever, So it is an investment,
and you spend some money on the tree. Right, they're not cheap.
Trees are not cheap, so why not make sure that it gets off to
the best start. And that's the best way I know to do that when
it comes to securing that tree early in its life when it's going to need
that. Our phone number is seven to one three two one two five eight
seven four seven, one, three, two, two, fifty eight seventy
four. Give us a call and let's talk to you about what you need.
Nature's Way resources. Hey, jo, have fun at the shindig.
They head out there a weekend or two ago. I hear it was.
I hear it was a great time. It always is out there. I
went last year to one and just really had a good time out it.
Nature's Way. You know, Nature's Way is. They're kind of like the
the grandfather of the Houston area soil yards in terms of they were doing composts
before compost was cool and so widely available, before roast soil and leaf mold
compost were household names. They were inventing the things. Okay, Nature's Way.
John his experience in soul science and microbes and how to make compost right,
take your time, make it right, screen it down to the right
size product. That's what they do. They have fungal Fridays. We're ten
dollars off bag fungo products, twenty dollars off bulk. They do bulk deliveries.
Also, they've got a nice little native nursery out there where you can
pick up plants when you're out and about. Here's the number. Write the
phone number down nine three six three two one sixty nine ninety nine three six
three two one sixty nine ninety They're on Sherbrooke Circle, south of Conroe on
forty five. For more information, go to the website Nature'sway Resources dot com
Nature's Way Resources dot com. Let's go to Beaumont. Now we're going to
talk to jam Hello, Jen, Hi, how are you? I'm good?
How are you today? Oh? Not good. I have a lot
of weeds in my yard. I put down on microfossia. It was a
weed and feed and it didn't kill all of them. I have something that
looks like a geranium. Leaves look like a deramum I'm trying to kill now,
okay, you already put the weed and feed down. I would get
a product. There are several out there on the market. Bonnyd makes one
called weed Beater, Ultra uh Fertilan makes one called weed free Zone. And
you want to just mix them up in a little spray tank and don't spray
the whole yard. Just squirt the weeds that you have. You don't have
to drench them, just have to barely get them wet and that will shut
them down. Pretty quick. Weeds. Broad leaf weeds are now entering a
reproductive phase where they're a little harder to kill, and so those products would
be the best thing you could do in terms of getting rid of them right
now. They're probably going to be going away on their own in time.
Most of those are setting seeds, do blooming, setting seeds, and heading
out for summer. But that would be what I do, all right.
One quick question. Can I move a Vye Techs tree right now? Yeah?
Us, but do it immediately, cut the top back by about a
third, get as much of the roots as you can. Have the whole
already dug where you're moving it to so you can put it in, get
soiled in water as you're filling the soil back end to settle the soil around
the roots. And if you want to be a little extra careful, if
you have any kind of a shading material, you can throw it over the
tree for a little while just to help it as it gets started, because
you're entering about to enter a hot season and you need to get as much
root growth as you can before then. I would use any kind of a
root stimulator you want on it, putting some slow release fertilizers around the tree
and watering them in really well too. I got to run to another call,
but thank you very much. I appreciate your question. Good luck with
that move. My text is pretty tough. By the way, it is
pretty tough. It's kind of hard to kill. Arbigate Nursery is always a
fun place to go. It's another one of those destinations and you would not
believe how far people drive to get to Arburgate just because it's the kind of
place that is a showplace. People love to go there. Arborgate, for
example, is going to be the place to get every kind of plant that
you would need. Do you need tomatoes, peppers, other vegetables, do
you need herbs? Their selection is outstanding. Color shrubs, trees, spring
blooming shrubs, spring blooming trees, fruit trees. I could just go on
and on. Do you have shady areas that you need to figure out?
What am I going to do in this area? They can help you with
that. They Beverdy always keeps stocked up on everything that you would need for
your garden, the things to support your garden. The thing you need to
know about Arburgate right now is they got a brand new parking lot and back.
You just turn either before or after the nursery. As you're going down
twenty nine to twenty turn down Trisher Road. It'll take you around the back
of Arburgate and the parking is all weather. You will not get your feet
wet today. Parking in the back of Arburgate and walking right in. It's
a good heartscape path and man, it makes it so easy, so easy.
Let's go out to Katie now and we're going to talk to Dennis.
Hello, Dennis, Hello, good morning to you question. I've got a
couple of pineapple oranges and a grapefruit that got broomed back by the freeze and
they're starting to grow back out above the graft. My question is at the
top of the trees, they're brown, and I think that the wood is
dead. Should I prune it back now or should I just wait to see
if I get eventual growth from that browner wood. Yeah, if it's not
sprouting new growth, it probably isn't. But if you take your thumbnail or
a little pocket knife and scrape the bark, if it's paper sacked brown underneath,
it's dead. If it's cream to light light green, it's alive.
And you may still get a sprout from it, but I think if you're
not seeing sprouts now, it's probably not alive. Okay. And I know
the important part is it's above the graph, correct, Oh, absolutely,
yes, yes, And the shoots below the graph will tend to be very
thorny compared to the above growth, although there are some types of citrus that
are a bit thorny. But yeah, look at the graph line. And
if it's coming from below that, just when they're small, you can take
your thumb and rub them right off. They just break right off real easily.
Okay, all right, thank you, you bet, good luck with
that citrusism wonderful, wonderful plan. I've had some people telling me this past
season, you know, they're just tired of struggling with citrus and stuff.
Don't do that. Citrus is good to eat the blue. It's worth growing
of citrus just for the blooms. I mean, they are so fragrant,
so heavenly and wonderful. I love those things. Love it. If you
have got weeds in your lawn and you have not done a fertilization, turf
star weed needer by Nelson's is one you need to think about. Turfstar Weedinator
has a very unique broad leaf post emergent weed control product. Inside of it.
You get the weeds. Leaves need to be wet, so look,
turn on the sprinkler. Not enough to wet the soil, just enough to
wet the leaves. Get your spreader for fertilizer. Get some turf Star weedinator
and sprinkle it out there. It'll stick to the leaves because that's why we
wet them first. Then give it a day or two and then water it
into the ground. And now you've got a slow release fertilizer. It's gonna
last you for weeks and weeks and weeks, two or three months. Even
excellent excellent product Turftar Weedenator from Nelson's as all Nelson's products, quality products that
work. I'm going to take a break. It's time for the news and
Nikki. Our number is seven one three two fifty eight seventy four. I'll
be right back. Welcome back to Guardline. Good to have you with us
today. What do you wanna talk about? You tell me give me a
call seven to one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one
three two two fifty eight seventy four I just want to remind you I'm going
to be at Buchanan's Nursery today and we've got some giveaways. Buchannans provide some
really cool stuff. We can give you a number of things about ever fifteen
minutes while I'm there. I will be there from eleven to one, eleven
to one. Good time to get out, grab you some lunch before or
after. Come on by, bring me a sample, bring me a photo.
Let's talk about what you want to do. Let's identify things that need
to be managed. Let's identify some of the plants it might do well in
a particular area. And Buchanan's gonna have plenty of on hand. They got
a nice little greenhouse area there that is all covered up. It's a huge
area, and I'll have a table in there. We'll be answering questions.
I may even, you know, not too long of line. I may
even help walk you over to someplace and show you some plants that would work
well for you. Or perhaps one of the very helpful staff at Buchanans would
be available to do that, of course, as well as they always are.
That's why we love to go to that place. Good good information,
good assistance, if you have not put a premergent nervous side out and you
are wanting to get one done this year, you need to get done right
away, right away. Barricade by nitrofoss is a product that prevents seeds of
broad leaf weeds and grasses both from germinating and establishing a plant when they try
to sprout and grow. Barricade is a barricade on the soil surface. It
shuts them down. You apply it at the proper rate. Don't do it
before a gully washer rain, don't do it twice as much as it says
on the label. Follow the label. And part of following the label is
we move it into the soil surface with about a half inch of water when
you turn on the sprinter and get about a half inch to get it down
in the soil surface. That way, when a weed tries to sprout,
it's there ready for it, and it takes off and it does its job
up some down they cannot they cannot survive, They cannot grow with that kind
of product, the barricade product itself, and they're preventing the growth. It's
much easier to prevent a weed than to kill one that's already existing and barricade
will do that. So where do you get nitrofoss barricade? Well, how
about going to a Tasca see to Ace Hardware. Yep, they've got it
there Lake Hardware in Lake Jackson. It's called Lake Hardware Clute. They've got
the barricade products for you to use there as well. You know it's easy
to find nitroposs product. How about Ace at Sincle Ranch. That's another one
they even thought about at a Kadie direction Ace Hardware Sinkle Ranch, Katie Ace
Hardware. They barricade is widely available, as are all the nitrofoss products.
We're going to head now to let's see where are we going. We're going
to Clear Lake and talking to Mario. Hello, Mario, good job.
I got I've got a question about the best way to fertilize my shrubs which
were hit pretty hard in the freeze and then the drought. So what what's
the best formula compy, well, the combination of things, you know what
I'm trying to say that with best Yeah, you got options, You've got
options. Or Nitropos makes a tree and shrub fertilizer. It's a sixteen four
eight fertilizer works really well. It's their green bag from Nitroposs, so that
works well. I'll tell you I use just regular turf fertilizer. Trees and
shrubs were primarily growing them for the greenery, right the leaves and those most
of them were not getting fruit and flowers from and so just a good lawn
fertilizer will work as well on your shrubs. So if you put out,
are these in flower beds or are these like growing in the lawn or what?
Yeah, they're they're they're hedge that I have across the front of my
flower beds. Okay, all right, well you can go either way and
both ways will work. You know, the Mitroposs products are easy to find,
the green bag, tree and trup fertilizer. That'd probably be the first
choice on those. But again they you know, the fertilizers we've been talking
about for lawn care will work good on your shrubs as well. Okay,
my wife purchased some Vigoro I believe it was thirteen thirteen thirteen. What do
you think good? Is that gonna help? You think? If you got
it already on hand, you can use it once, but get away from
the triple thirteen's and the twelve twenty four twelves and stuff. As an ongoing
fertilizer. The middle number is higher than it needs to be on those.
It's not going a hurting thing to use one or two or three times here
and there, but over time it's going in the wrong direction. And so
go ahead and here's what you got. It's fine, go ahead and use
it. But in general, then let's go toward the kinds of things I'm
talking about here on guarden line. If you go to my website, Gardening
with Skip dot com and look at the lawn care sheet, the fertilizers on
there will work good for your trees and shrubs. Just don't use anything that
has weed control in it on trees and trucks. Right, Okay, yeah,
it's not all right, Well, thank you and lawn Weeds for fertilizing
shrubs and trees. All right, well, thank you so much. You've
always have been very helpful. Appreciate you all right, Mario, thanks for
the call. Appreciate that very much. When was the last time you were
down at Moss Nursery. Moss Nurseries and Seabrook For those of you who haven't
been down there, and that place it's a wonderland. I mean we're talking
about you've never been, you need to go. And people drive a long
way to get to Moss Nursery because it's worth it. It is that kind
of a destination place. Uh. The trucks line up down the block.
I mean they are constantly getting deliveries. They are loaded with vegetables right now.
They just got a shipment of some cactie in that is outstanding. I
mean such a wide, nice variety of things. They've got one hundred and
fifty Chinese fringe trees that are in bloom. Listen. That is my favorite
spring blooming tree is Chinese fringe. It doesn't get huge like a big shade
tree, so it fits a lot of modern lots. Moss is loaded up
with some stunning hanging baskets. They've got fruit trees. They've got I think
they have in the last three, no, last five days, they've gotten
three loads of tropical plants, and three loads of tropical plants, over one
hundred staghorn ferns. Listen, go in the houseplant greenhouse and just you'll be
stunned at what they have. But especially if you're interested in cacti. They
have a heck of a selection. So where's Moss Nursery. It's done in
Seabrook on Toddville Road. Here's the website. Are you ready Mossmaas Nursery dot
com. Moss Nursery dot com. Trust me, allow yourself some time because
it takes time to see this unbelievably expensive place. We are going to head
now to Jersey Village to talk to Courtney. I love Courtney. Good morning.
This is Courtney and David on the phone. Hey, Courtney and David.
We have loved our front yard too much. In the last two years.
With the drought and everything has killed our Saint Augustine. Right now we
have mostly weeds and we don't know what to do to start over with Saint
Augustine or pick another a species of grass, and we're just looking for some
advice. Well, that's a good question. Any kind of grass needs water
to stay alive and look good. You know, things like bermuda grass.
They'll they'll go brown and look horrible and then they come back from their underground
rhizomes and they look okay. But if you want grass to look good,
you gotta water it. That's the bottom line, Bermuda is very drought tolerant.
He's okay on drought tolerant. Saint Augustine not as much, although when
you get into shade, Saint Augustine's the best, and Zoysia is right there
with it, real close to it. There's broadly types of Oisia and narrow
leaf types of Louisia. I'm going to give you a short cut because I
can't talk for an hour on this one, and there's over an hour worth
of talking to do. If you go to a website called Aggie Turf aggieturf
dot com that is the website for the turf Department, and you click on
turf grasses in the bottom left and it will explain every type of turf grass,
what the pros and the cons are, and you can even see pictures
of it. And that's what I would recommend that you do. Then just
follow my schedule at Gardening with Skip dot com. It's a free download schedule
Gardening with Skip dot com, and that'll tell you how to take care of
it. There's another schedule on the same website for dealing with the weeds and
problems that are on there. But is your area mostly sunny or shady.
We have a mixture of both, Okay, I would say Zeuyzier, Saint
Augustine or probably the two to choose from. And I got to run to
a break, right If you want to hang on around, I'll talk to
you after break a little more about it. But I'm gonna have to run
to a break. I'm gonna put you on hold for right now. Okay,
thank you? All right? You bet our phone number seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to guard line. What
are we going to talk about today? You tell me our phone number seven
one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Seven one three two one
two five eight seven four if you have. We talk about spring fertilizing in
two different ways. One is you can do an early spring greenup, and
that is an immediately available product by the time we get to about April.
First we start talking about the summer fertilizers, which are the slow release fertilizers
over time. Now, if you did a spring greenup, let's say since
the first of March, you're going to hold off a little bit on the
summer fertilizer spring green up. It gives you about a month worth of fertilizing.
But the slow release that is what we begin applying about the first of
March or first of April. And if you're not going to do a spring
green up, you can actually start it now if you like. And Nitrophoss
has one called Superturf. It's a silver bag. Think of it as your
warm season gradual release fertilizer. It's a nineteen four to ten fertilizer that's a
nitrogen low phosphorus, which is good for turf to have it lower, and
then a medium amounto phosphorus. It's about half the nitrogen is in a slow
release form. It even has a little bit of iron to promote good color,
good green color because early in the spring sometimes you get a little yellowing
on our Saint Augustine. You may have noticed that in the past and it
bounces back. Well. Super Turf can help with that. Now. Super
Turf is a night Fross product, so it's available in a wide variety of
places. It's easy to find super Turf. If you can go to Katie
Ace Hardware, for example, they're gonna have Supertf fertilizer. You can go
to in Chenne Gardens or Enchented Forest down in Richmond Rosenberger. They'll both carry
the super Turf fertilizers. You can go to Stanton Shopping Center down in Alvin.
They're gonna have super turf. Maybe Kingwood Ace Hardware another place to get
super turf as well as other nitrofoss products. I want to go now to
Katie and we're gonna talk to Don. Hello, Don, Hey, good
morning. I'm doing good today. How are you doing? I'm doing all
right. I had a question about my magnolia tree. Okay, is this
yeah, you know, is this your evergreen magnolia or like the tulip magnolia
that just blooms in the spring. You know, I thought it was it's
it's I thought it was both. But it does have the it does have
the bloom. Oh oh, I guess that's the big white blooms. Yes,
that's okay, that's the other magnolia. All right, what's happening?
Well, you know, we've had we've had them. They're probably uh twenty
thirty feet tall. They're really have been, you know, good good for
our backyard. But they the last year or so they've just not been real
full. Okay, like they had before, and they just look a little
puny. All right, well, here's what you do. They like acidic
soil fertilized with an acidic fertilizer. Microlife has one that is a pink bag.
That's for azis and communes and it does good for those. Make sure
the soil is loosened up a little bit and has good organic matter content.
Lots of composter over the top will be very helpful for that. And then
adequately water with a good deep soaking drink. Drought. We lost magnolias and
sections of magnolias last year due to the lack of water. So those those
are the three steps that are in your control. Watering, fertilizing, adequate
soil moisture, and that's everything you can do to try to give that tree
its best chance to get back in vigor again. They are slow growing,
but they are easy to keep going that way. All right, sir,
Hey, that sounds great. I'm going to ACE hardware. I'll get on
it. Can't go wrong with ACE. Got some good ACE and the katy
area too. Say hi for us at a garden line when you're out there.
Appreciate it. We'll do yeah. Thank you so much. You take
care. You take care. You're talking about trees. What do you do
when trees die? Well? You replace them with another tree, a good
tree that's going to do well. Sometimes people plant trash trees. That is
just a problem waiting to happen. You need a quality tree. Verdant Tree
Farm gross quality trees. Not only is the species one that belongs here,
but it's grown in a way that you've got a good, strong, healthy
tree, and they grow them huge. Do you want to like the instant
tree kind of thing? Seven hundred gallon containers they have those. They have
a wide selection of palms, including very cold hearty palms too. The right
palm for really any budget that you might have. They you go there,
you pick it out, they bring it, they plant it, they do
it right, guide you on how to take care of it, and if
they planted it, they give you a one year warranty. Verdant Treefarm dot
com is a website. There's one out on Barker Cypress and West Houston,
one in Central Town where Yale and Ten come together, and down in Pairland
there's also a Verdant Tree Farm. Verdanttreefarm dot com. Don't delay the scenery.
Plant a tree now, the better it is and the better it'll do
when summer comes around. I want to talk one more time about jungle land
for containers. I talked about it earlier, and you when you put a
plant and a container, all the water nutrients it gets have to come out
of that container. So you need a top quality soil that doesn't stay too
boggy, soggy wet, but it drains well. But it also holds moisture.
Jungle land flour and vegetable planting soil for your outdoor planting. We'll do
that indoors. Go with jungle land water saving potting soils. Got the little
crystals that whole water well. And it's distributed by nitroposs So where do you
get it all over the place? Where do you get nitrofas, It's everywhere.
Allspasees in the woodlands has nitropass products, plants for all seasons on two
forty nine plants and things up in Brenham all good places to get that.
Well. Let's head out now to Richmond and we're going to talk to Ruth.
Hello, Ruth, good morning morning. I'm so happy to get through
to you. I have a rural setting on several acres, and I've been
here for thirty years, but just let normal kind of take place. We
have had areas near the house where we had Saint Augustine in small amounts,
but my role is too on the back acres, especially to start some native
grasses. And I know that occasionally you've talked about buying native plants and possibly
native grasses, but I want to know how to get started and can I
do seed? And I want something specific for our area. Yeah, do
you have a do you have a real sunny spot where you're wanting to grow
it? Well? I have I have an area near the house that is
near a large oak tree that I need to put something in because we previously
had some flagstone that's been taken up and I do want to have something there.
But in general, yes, it is going to be in sunny spots.
Okay, most of the native grasses are going to need it. There's
a there's a mix that some local folks that put together called the Southeast Texas
Native Seed Mix, and it's going to have Florida paspalam. It's going to
have something called little blue stem not root bristle grass, and I I mean
a dozen plus over a dozen different grasses in it, and so overall it
does good. But it's going to be more of a meadow than a lawn.
So you just need to know when you're going with native grasses in this
area, almost everything's going to get up pretty tall. Okay, okay,
now when does this the larger area I'm talking about, would we normally use
a shredder on attractor and shredder. Yeah, when I when you go with
native grasses, do they need they need an occasional shredding or do you just
let them go or you can go either way. They don't need shredding,
but you can shred some that's fine. But just do a search. Go
do a search online and put in to your search Southeast Texas Native Seed mix
and it'll be one of the ones that comes up. There's a company in
Junction called Native American Seed and they sell mixes for each region of the state.
You go to a Native American Seed and Junction, Texas, they can
also sell you a mix for this region. And they have knowledgeable people on
staff that will tell how to plan on how to care for them and stuff.
Hey, Ruth, I hear the music I'm gonna have to run,
but I hope that works well for you to get it done this spring when
they establish fastest, so don't delay much longer. All right, Thank you
appreciate that call. Then, a busy day, about to head out to
Buchanan's Native Plants and the Heights. We'll be given away all kinds of things
there. They got a whole selection of cool stuff to give away. I'll
be there from eleven to one and answering your guarding questions. Come on and
see me. Let's a visit. Love to meet the listeners. This funny
ruth said, have trouble getting it through. My mom used to say that
out all the time too, but I think she knows something different.