Speaker 1: Welcome to Katie r. H Garden line with skin Rictor.
Speaker 1: It's crazy man.
Speaker 2: A trim you just watch him as well.
Speaker 1: There are so many birthdays to super.
Speaker 2: Busy gassing not a Simon gas gas sunmon.
Speaker 1: Hey, good morning, good morning, gardeners, want to be gardeners,
Speaker 1: soon to be gardeners, and people who have gathered just
Speaker 1: to hear kind of crazy things. He gonna say next.
Speaker 1: We're glad to have you with us this morning. I've
Speaker 1: been looking forward to this morning. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: this week has been a busy one out in the
Speaker 1: garden for me, dodging rain storms. Did you guys get
Speaker 1: some rain where you live? We sure did, boy, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it rained, and it rained and it rained. It
Speaker 1: just seems like every time I just if I get
Speaker 1: soil moist or dry enough to be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: actually actually get something done, well, here comes another rainstorm.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about preparing soil.
Speaker 1: I talk all the time about how important it is.
Speaker 1: You know, we got to prepare our soil, We got
Speaker 1: to take care of our soil. And that's true, certainly true.
Speaker 1: But we have different types of soil. You have different
Speaker 1: types of soil. In your various yards and gardens. If
Speaker 1: you're dealing with soil that was there when you got there,
Speaker 1: meaning the soil from that site before even the house
Speaker 1: was built, the soil from that site, you either have
Speaker 1: a sand, a silt, or a clay type of soil.
Speaker 1: Sand is granules like sugar gran There are various sizes
Speaker 1: of sand, but basically they drain really well. They're like
Speaker 1: just imagine a shattered windshield on a car. You know,
Speaker 1: it breaks up into those little tiny squares, little chunks
Speaker 1: of glass. That's what sand amounts to. If you look
Speaker 1: at it under a microscope and it water goes through
Speaker 1: it and nutrients go through it, it gets droughty really
Speaker 1: fast after you water. It doesn't hold water very well,
Speaker 1: and you have to fertilize periodically pretty frequently actually to
Speaker 1: get the same effects. Does that means sounds bad?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Actually, the good thing about sand is it does drain well,
Speaker 1: and so it helps things that don't want to be
Speaker 1: too wet to drain well. Some of our crops that
Speaker 1: we grow, loves and strawberries and even blackberries. A soil
Speaker 1: that has a consistent amount of sand in it, or
Speaker 1: a loam for blackberries, they do well in that. Then
Speaker 1: there's silt. Silt is in between the two. Silt is
Speaker 1: a very tiny particle, it's not but it's in between
Speaker 1: sand and clay, a little closer to clay than the
Speaker 1: sand in size, and it holds moisture very well and
Speaker 1: it drains okay, but it can be a little bit tight.
Speaker 1: And then there's clay, which everybody knows what clay is,
Speaker 1: basically our Houston black clays that occur along the Texas
Speaker 1: Gulf Upper Texas Gulf Coast especially. They don't drain well
Speaker 1: and they don't take in water well. Does that make
Speaker 1: clay bad? Not necessarily. Clay soil holds a lot of
Speaker 1: moisture and if it's prepared properly, it can actually be
Speaker 1: a good soil for years. In this along the Gulf coast,
Speaker 1: this was a big fig production area and eight hundreds
Speaker 1: of acres of fig trees growing in this clay soil
Speaker 1: that then turned into rice paddies. In many cases the
Speaker 1: rice paddies a whole water very well, but it makes
Speaker 1: a good crop for having that kind of clay. There
Speaker 1: are the things that can grow in clay too, So
Speaker 1: the bottom line is the those are textures of soil okay,
Speaker 1: send silk clay and as you mix them together, and
Speaker 1: no soil typically is just one. Well I shouldn't say no.
Speaker 1: Most soils are not just one. They're a mix of
Speaker 1: the two or three. Rather and a loam. The word
Speaker 1: loam is not a I'm nerding out here on you,
Speaker 1: but just bear with me. I think it's worth knowing this.
Speaker 1: The word loam means a mix of the three. Okay,
Speaker 1: And if you get send silk clay mixed together, that's
Speaker 1: a loam. And loam would be almost the ideal soil
Speaker 1: for many, many, many different kinds of things. But you
Speaker 1: can't change your texture. You can't take sand and grind
Speaker 1: it up in smaller particles to make it a silt
Speaker 1: or a clay or whatever. If you have what you have,
Speaker 1: unless you buy and bring in something different. What you
Speaker 1: can do is you can add organic matter to it,
Speaker 1: and if it's a heavy clay, you can add expanded
Speaker 1: shale to it. Expanded shale. Remember those little la I
Speaker 1: don't see them muchymore. I'm sure they still are, but
Speaker 1: on barbecue pits. On the bottom of barbecue pits are
Speaker 1: really like Swiss cheese holes in the rock. A lava rock. Well,
Speaker 1: if you were to take expanded shell and look at
Speaker 1: it under our microscope, it kind of look like that.
Speaker 1: Lots of pits and holes all in it. And it's
Speaker 1: basically a clay that has been super fired in a
Speaker 1: very hot, steamy oven to expand and get all these
Speaker 1: little holes in it. Why does that matter, Well, all
Speaker 1: those little holes are places where moisture can attach, where
Speaker 1: nutrients can attach to. Its increases the surface area of
Speaker 1: the particles, and microbes live in on the surface of
Speaker 1: those as well. So it's a good thing, expanded jale.
Speaker 1: So what do you do. You take your soil you
Speaker 1: have and you amend it. Now, there are a few
Speaker 1: things where one product is a miracle cure for everything,
Speaker 1: but in the case of soil, composts comes pretty close
Speaker 1: to that. If you have a sandy soil and it
Speaker 1: drains too well, compost additions are like adding little tiny
Speaker 1: sponges into that broken glass of sand. You know that
Speaker 1: little tiny water runs right through. Now you got little
Speaker 1: tiny microscopic sponges everywhere in there that are holding moisture
Speaker 1: and holding nutrients. So compost helps the sand. If you're
Speaker 1: on the other end of the spectrum, and you have
Speaker 1: a clay and water won't go in the clay very fast.
Speaker 1: By the way, did you know our Houston black clay
Speaker 1: soils take in water at about an eighth of an
Speaker 1: inch an hour, all things being equally. You just take
Speaker 1: the soil, no roots, no organic matter in it, just
Speaker 1: the soil, and about an eighth of an inch an hour.
Speaker 1: That ain't very good. I mean, in other words, they
Speaker 1: just sit there. Water just sits on them pretty much.
Speaker 1: You add compost to that, and now that massive clay
Speaker 1: gets broken into little chunks are groups of clay particles.
Speaker 1: So the description you know, with sand and compost, I
Speaker 1: said it was like broken glass with any sponges in it.
Speaker 1: With clay in compost, it's like instead of a mass clay,
Speaker 1: now you have like a bowl of popcorn where the
Speaker 1: clay particles are clumped together with the compost. And now
Speaker 1: there's airspace in between them, and so that does take
Speaker 1: in water faster, and it does drain internally better. So
Speaker 1: the compost is a miracle cure for all kinds of soil, really,
Speaker 1: But when the soil is wet, you don't want to
Speaker 1: work it less with it. It would be like taking well,
Speaker 1: what would be a good example for that, Like rice
Speaker 1: crispies or something, and you wet them and then you
Speaker 1: start mashing on them. Okay, it just becomes a gou,
Speaker 1: a thick goo. It destroys the structure of clay based soils,
Speaker 1: which many, many, many of our soils have a lot
Speaker 1: of clay in them. So what do you do. Well,
Speaker 1: you wait until it's moist but not wet, but not dry.
Speaker 1: If it's dry, it's concrete, you can hardly break it up.
Speaker 1: If it's wet, got gooey, you ruin the structure. It's
Speaker 1: why we don't walk on our garden beds too. Well,
Speaker 1: there's just a soil one oh one in our first
Speaker 1: little segment here. How about I give you a phone
Speaker 1: number and we start talking. Seven one three two one
Speaker 1: two k t RHIW right back, little Zach Brown, first
Speaker 1: thing this morning. Good to have you back with us. Look,
Speaker 1: if you're looking in your lawn and you're seeing the
Speaker 1: little spots all over your Saint Augustine leaves, or if
Speaker 1: you're standing back looking at the lawn and it just
Speaker 1: like looks like parts of it are kind of yellowing
Speaker 1: and just sort of browning and going away. It may
Speaker 1: well be a gray leaf spot. That is a disease
Speaker 1: that loves moisture, and boy have we had moisture lately.
Speaker 1: It loves warm temperatures, and boy have we had warm
Speaker 1: temperatures lately. Gray leaf spot is something that tends to
Speaker 1: go away as the weather really heats up hot and
Speaker 1: gets drier in the summer. But it's with us now
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing quite a bit of it around in
Speaker 1: the area of lawns. The way to deal with it
Speaker 1: is eagle turf funderside from the folks at nitrofoss. Eagle
Speaker 1: turf fungicide contains michael butte neil. That is a systemic.
Speaker 1: It works on a lot of different diseases, not just
Speaker 1: gray leaf spot, but it's excellent for gray leaf spot.
Speaker 1: Eagle turf fungicide from Nitrophis. You're gonna find it at
Speaker 1: places like Ingented Forest down there in the Richmond Rosenberg area,
Speaker 1: the Ace Hardware, Sinkle Ranch or perhaps Ospas Ace up
Speaker 1: in the woodlands, all places that carry nitrofos products. We're
Speaker 1: gonna head out now to the phones and Terry, you
Speaker 1: are the early bird of the day. Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 4: Hey, thank you you're talking about the soil amending earlier
Speaker 4: in Tompost got a question. I guess I've got two questions.
Speaker 4: First question is, you know old timers used to talk
Speaker 4: about putting gypsum in soil. I think, particularly like play soil,
Speaker 4: that would they claim with help break it up and
Speaker 4: grain out. I mean, I've even heard tales of you know,
Speaker 4: they use like old gypsum board from construction and just
Speaker 4: throw it in the arc and it breaks park improves
Speaker 4: the soil. Is there any truth to that?
Speaker 1: This sure is And I appreciate that question. It's an
Speaker 1: excellent question, Terry, because most people misunderstand gypsum. So here's
Speaker 1: what happens if you go to areas that have a
Speaker 1: lot of sodium in the soil, the Briancotta Station area.
Speaker 1: You go up there and try to you wash your
Speaker 1: hands and you can't get the soap off because there's
Speaker 1: so much sodium in the water. It just feels like
Speaker 1: soap's not coming off your hands. That sodium in a
Speaker 1: clay soil makes that clay structure destroy. It destroys the
Speaker 1: clay structure and it just becomes a massive clay be
Speaker 1: good for building a farm pond, but not growing a yard.
Speaker 1: And gypsum knocks the sodium off the soil particles, so
Speaker 1: it can wash away and you can regain good structure.
Speaker 1: And that's why they look at gypsum as loosening a
Speaker 1: clay soil. But if it's just clay and it's not
Speaker 1: clay with a lot of sodium, gypsum doesn't really help
Speaker 1: the clay much, if any at all. So it's a
Speaker 1: good thing if the problem is clay with a lot
Speaker 1: of sodium in it, and if it's not, then then
Speaker 1: it's not probably worth messing with. I would. I would
Speaker 1: then look more toward organic matter or maybe expanded shale
Speaker 1: in a long term flower beds as a solution.
Speaker 4: So how do you know if your clay's got a
Speaker 4: lot of sodium in it or not?
Speaker 1: Is it just?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: One bay would be a soil test. Typically, our soils
Speaker 1: don't just have a lot of sodium in them here, uh,
Speaker 1: they in this area. But if your water supply has
Speaker 1: sodium in it, number one, you can taste it. Number two.
Speaker 1: The like I said that you it's like your instead
Speaker 1: of soap just washing off, it's just like your hands
Speaker 1: stay slippery and you're not able to get it feels
Speaker 1: like you're not able good soap off even though you are.
Speaker 1: People that have water softeners they use sodium to soften
Speaker 1: the water to help but clean better, wash your clothes better,
Speaker 1: and things like that. So if you have a water
Speaker 1: softener and you irrigate with that water, then you're putting
Speaker 1: sodium out in the soil. But a soil test you
Speaker 1: can go to what there's there's a website. It's real easy.
Speaker 1: It's soil Testing. Is the name of the website, soil Testing,
Speaker 1: and then the address is dot t A m U,
Speaker 1: dot E ed U text A and M Statewide Soil
Speaker 1: Testing Lab, Soil Testing dot TAMU, dot ed U, and
Speaker 1: then you can know exactly what all your nutrients, including
Speaker 1: sodium are.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that information because I do have a water
Speaker 4: software and I know it.
Speaker 5: Like you said, you use the.
Speaker 4: Salt to accomplish this purpose. So I've been using that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, water the landscaping around my house, and maybe
Speaker 4: at some point I should throw a few handfuls of
Speaker 4: sodium on my flower beds or something out.
Speaker 1: Yeah it could be. Yeah, that could be a lot
Speaker 1: of people too, will go the water softener will be
Speaker 1: for going in the house and they're out outdoor pipes
Speaker 1: and stuff will be plumbed before the water softener because
Speaker 1: you're spending money to soften that water and it didn't
Speaker 1: good for the landscape anyway, So that would be another
Speaker 1: thing to check and maybe make an adjustment to. All right.
Speaker 4: Kind of on a related note, So I had a
Speaker 4: new house built years ago, and of course they bring
Speaker 4: in clay to build a pad, and I'm on kind
Speaker 4: of a little bit of slope lands in some places
Speaker 4: it's you know, it's probably looking at three feet of clay.
Speaker 4: Makes it hard the landscape around my house. Any suggestions
Speaker 4: what I can do? I mean, I really can't bring
Speaker 4: in a bunch of topsa on poll of that because
Speaker 4: then it's it's up against my house, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: kind of eat foundation gap. So any suggestions on what
Speaker 4: to do to make that it's the real d you know,
Speaker 4: kind of snotty clay with some streaks of gree in it.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, Well they are that that typically is a
Speaker 1: poorly errated clay based on the physical or visual description
Speaker 1: you gave, So you know, if it's already up pretty high,
Speaker 1: one option would be to take some out and then
Speaker 1: bring in expanded shale organic and organic composted materials a
Speaker 1: little bit on the chunky side, you know, not like
Speaker 1: potting soil, but more like kind of a bed mix
Speaker 1: that has a little bit chunkier because it's going to
Speaker 1: last a little bit longer. That way. Expanded shale is
Speaker 1: not cheap, but if you can get it down at
Speaker 1: about three inches deep even and mix it in as
Speaker 1: deeply as you can, it'll give you a very good
Speaker 1: long term benefit to the clay. I like to use
Speaker 1: expanded shell and compost together because they each have their benefits.
Speaker 1: But they did some studies up in Dallas, which also
Speaker 1: has a black clay like we have here, and they
Speaker 1: found that putting three inches of expanded shale down just
Speaker 1: did wonders and making that clay better air rated, taking
Speaker 1: water better, drain better, and all that. So I would say,
Speaker 1: if you need to excavate a little out of the
Speaker 1: beds to be able to do that, go ahead and
Speaker 1: do that. If you can just add three inches of
Speaker 1: the shale in without bringing it up too high, then
Speaker 1: I would do that.
Speaker 4: Where do you get expanded shale at any home improvement store?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, you can buy a lot of places but
Speaker 1: I would call Heirloom Soils heirloom. Go to the website
Speaker 1: heirloomsoils dot com. They sell it by the bag. They
Speaker 1: might sell it by the bulk too, because you may
Speaker 1: be you may be buying quite a bit of it,
Speaker 1: depending on how many flower bed square footage you've got.
Speaker 1: But Heirloom Cells, I know, sells it by the bag,
Speaker 1: so it's going to be available in the stores where
Speaker 1: they that carry their products. Dope anyway, that's I think
Speaker 1: that's probably the single best investment. And if it were
Speaker 1: a veg garden or a flower If it was a
Speaker 1: vegeta garden or a flower bed, you can just add
Speaker 1: compost every time you rework the soil. If it's something
Speaker 1: that's going to have roses or shrubs where you're not
Speaker 1: going to pull up the plants and rework the soil,
Speaker 1: that's where the expanded show gives you the longer term
Speaker 1: I think is probably a better choice.
Speaker 4: All right, all right, appreciate it, Thank you, all.
Speaker 1: Right, good, thanks for the call, good questions. Good to
Speaker 1: have you with us on this Saturday morning. Folks, if
Speaker 1: you'd like to give me a call seven one three
Speaker 1: two one two kt R H seven one three two
Speaker 1: one two kt RH. For those of who done in
Speaker 1: League City area, your hometown feed store is League City
Speaker 1: Feed And when I say area, I mean area. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about all those communities down there, Baycliffe and Lamark
Speaker 1: and San Leone, Webster, el Kamin Area, League City of course,
Speaker 1: Clear Lake City, Santa Fe, Dickinson, all those places. This
Speaker 1: is your hometown feed store. It's about a few blocks
Speaker 1: south of Highway ninety six on Highway three. They're in
Speaker 1: League City. Now, when you're drive by, you'll see it there.
Speaker 1: It's on the east side of the road and it's
Speaker 1: been around since I think they built it forty years ago.
Speaker 1: Believe in fact, it was over forty years ago that
Speaker 1: their grandpa built that League City feed store. Now the
Speaker 1: third generations of Thunderbergs are running the store, and when
Speaker 1: you go to League City, they're going to carry all
Speaker 1: of the things that you need for your lawn in
Speaker 1: your garden. Now I'm talking about things like, for example,
Speaker 1: fire ant baits and fire ant individual mound treatments. They've
Speaker 1: got them there. You know you hear about nitrofoss bugout max, Well,
Speaker 1: that's a League City feed You hear about baits like
Speaker 1: extinguished for example, or mound treatments like surrender. They're all
Speaker 1: there at League City Feed. And it is fire and season.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you don't know, you hear me
Speaker 1: talk about mosquito bits and mosquito dunks all the time
Speaker 1: for getting in water to prevent those mosquitoes from breeding. There.
Speaker 1: League City Feed has got those. We're looking all these
Speaker 1: different products for fertilizer, superturb from nitrophiles, they carry them.
Speaker 1: All micro life products, they got those there. The I
Speaker 1: was just talking about heirloom soil. So they've got their
Speaker 1: roses in Bloomers blend and the veggie her mix and
Speaker 1: the berry mix. They carry all of this stuff and
Speaker 1: you just need to go buy there, and they're gonna
Speaker 1: have everything that you're looking for. Products from Nelson like
Speaker 1: they're weedin et or Azemie and other things. It's all
Speaker 1: at League City Feed, so one stop shop. It's easy.
Speaker 1: They're open till six during the week, including Saturday today,
Speaker 1: closed on Sundays. And if you're looking for premium pet foods,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find premium pet food. It's like Taste of
Speaker 1: the Wild, awesome, very high quality pet food. They've got
Speaker 1: them there at League City Feed. For example, I was
Speaker 1: talking about those mosquito dunks. Now's the time to get
Speaker 1: those things out there. If you've got standing water anywhere,
Speaker 1: put them in there, Like maybe you have a bird bath,
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe you've got a little area that just
Speaker 1: doesn't drain well and you hadn't gotten around to fixing
Speaker 1: the drainage there yet. But you've got a little puddle
Speaker 1: that lasts for a week or two after a rain,
Speaker 1: You better get some in there. You got some saggy gutters,
Speaker 1: Throw granules up in the gutters, a hollow area on
Speaker 1: a tree, you know where a limb used to be
Speaker 1: and it trotted out. Throw some mosquito granules, or take
Speaker 1: a dunk and break it up and put it in there.
Speaker 1: You'd want to not be a as we say, Skeeter Breeder.
Speaker 1: By the way, League City Feed phone number eight two
Speaker 1: eight one three three two sixteen twelve two eight one
Speaker 1: three three two sixty twelve. That's League City Feed, just
Speaker 1: a few blocks south of ninety six on Highway three
Speaker 1: there in League City. I've got to pick up some dunks.
Speaker 1: I've got a grate in my landscape in front where
Speaker 1: the water runs off the driveway and I didn't want
Speaker 1: it to just pull up in the bed there, so
Speaker 1: I put a little French strain where water can go
Speaker 1: through the rocks and go on and get out of there.
Speaker 1: But there's a grate that takes in some of it,
Speaker 1: and down at the bottom of that grate, they're standing
Speaker 1: water almost all the time because it gathers there and
Speaker 1: then the excess moves on out. Throw a few granules
Speaker 1: in there periodically, you know, that's stuff last. I know,
Speaker 1: the little donuts of mosquita dunks last about a month.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you don't have to leave it long. I
Speaker 1: mean you have to do it that often, but you
Speaker 1: do want to do it because you don't want to
Speaker 1: be a skeeter breeder. Well, we're going to take another break.
Speaker 1: Here the phone number if you'd like to give my
Speaker 1: producer a call and be ready to go when we
Speaker 1: come back. Seven one three two one two five eight
Speaker 1: seven four seven one three two one two kt r H. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome back to guard Line.
Speaker 4: You look good.
Speaker 1: We are talking gardening today. Uh. This past week with
Speaker 1: the rain, I couldn't work the soil, which I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking about. By the way, starting
Speaker 1: off the show, today, but it is going to dry
Speaker 1: out and we're going to get some beds made. I've
Speaker 1: got a number of different products that I'm wanting to
Speaker 1: work into the soil, some really nice bed mis that
Speaker 1: I picked up from the folks at a Nature's Way sources,
Speaker 1: and it it's high quality, is gonna help me get
Speaker 1: those beds up in a raised there. I do have
Speaker 1: clay soils too, by the way, and so getting that
Speaker 1: getting that soil fixed is a good thing. I mentioned that,
Speaker 1: you know, sand and clay and everything has its pros
Speaker 1: and cons. But it don't think that, you know, we
Speaker 1: gripe about clay because of the things it does. It shrinks,
Speaker 1: its swells, it breaks up our sidewalks and foundations that
Speaker 1: you know. It heaves and it dries out too much,
Speaker 1: and it gets cracks in it, and it doesn't drain well,
Speaker 1: doesn't take in water well and all that. But we
Speaker 1: fix those things. We can fix those things. And so
Speaker 1: clay has its pros too. And so when I start
Speaker 1: mending these beds, and when you do, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: soil that you can grow almost anything in it. And
Speaker 1: there again, I'm not an anti clay person because a
Speaker 1: well amended clay is a good soil for a lot
Speaker 1: of different kinds of things. So just just remember that
Speaker 1: another tip that I would throw out there just for
Speaker 1: those of you interested in getting maybe taking your gardening
Speaker 1: up to a higher level. When you plant, think about
Speaker 1: what wants to be where you're planting it now. I know,
Speaker 1: as gardeners were always wanting to create, to grow something
Speaker 1: that doesn't grow here. Right if you move from the Midwest,
Speaker 1: you're probably still trying to figure out how to grow
Speaker 1: lilacs in Forsythia because they were such a staple for
Speaker 1: your landscapes back home. But there's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: that that we can do. But we can't change can
Speaker 1: change the weather itself, right, I mean, we can't change
Speaker 1: the fact that it gets as cold as it gets
Speaker 1: or as hot as it gets, or rains as much
Speaker 1: or little than it does. But you can do a
Speaker 1: lot to amend the soil and to make a plant
Speaker 1: at home. But also there's a case to be made
Speaker 1: for planting things that just want to grow in what
Speaker 1: you have there. We have many plants, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about claysoil. While ago clay soil and things that strung
Speaker 1: go along to grow in a clay soil. Well, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of plants that can tolerate a heavy
Speaker 1: clay soil that even thrive in heavy clay type saals.
Speaker 1: Look at the native plants that we have around us.
Speaker 1: They do well because they're from here. They, if you will,
Speaker 1: they grew up here in this kind of clay. And
Speaker 1: you go to a place like Buchanans, for example, you're
Speaker 1: gonna find tons of native plants. And that's just what
Speaker 1: they do all the time. They have not just natives,
Speaker 1: So please understand this. Buchanans has every kind of plant.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about fruit trees and vegetables and herbs and
Speaker 1: house plants and tropical you know types of things. They
Speaker 1: have it all, but they focus and they make sure
Speaker 1: that they have every possible native that's on the market
Speaker 1: that will do well for you here. That's how they
Speaker 1: do it. And they it doesn't matter what you're trying
Speaker 1: to grow or do you want to support pollinators? Do
Speaker 1: you want to attract hummingbirds? Do you need something for shade?
Speaker 1: Do you want something that blooms seasonally? Do you need
Speaker 1: an evergreen? You go in there and you tell them
Speaker 1: I need this. Do you have anything like that that's native.
Speaker 1: For example, red bay. Red bay is a native tree
Speaker 1: in the area, and it's leaves or used like you
Speaker 1: would bay laurel. You know, when you use bay leaves
Speaker 1: like you're throwing a bay leaf in when you're making
Speaker 1: gumbo or something. Well, red bay is also a seasoning
Speaker 1: type of leaf. It's a little different flavor wise than
Speaker 1: bay laurel, but it is a seasoning leaf and it's
Speaker 1: a native so why not grow one of those. There
Speaker 1: are so many good native herbs people that are into
Speaker 1: flavors for cooking, like Mexican or regano. That's a different kind,
Speaker 1: very different than regular regano. It's just think of a
Speaker 1: whole completely different plant. But you can do that. I
Speaker 1: talked last week. I was talking about inland CEOs and
Speaker 1: as a groundcover and a shade loving groundcover, a wax myrtle.
Speaker 1: You know if it gets soggy and wet and stays
Speaker 1: on the wet side, well, wax martle. In fact, did
Speaker 1: you know wax myrtle is a native herb. I've never
Speaker 1: used it as a nerve, but anyway, it's leaves can
Speaker 1: be used like use bay laurel leaves. Texas Star hibiscus.
Speaker 1: That's a native that we have along the Gulf Coast.
Speaker 1: The funny thing about Texas Star is it has Texas
Speaker 1: in its name, but it's because the flowers look more
Speaker 1: like a star five petals. But it's not native to
Speaker 1: Texas specifically, but Louisiana in the Gulf Coast. It is
Speaker 1: kind of interesting anyway, whatever kind of native you're looking for,
Speaker 1: whatever you want, you're gonna find it there at Buchanans.
Speaker 1: And they do such a good job of bringing these
Speaker 1: plants in, making sure they're in top top quality, and
Speaker 1: so you get to go in and you shop and
Speaker 1: explore yourself along. How about this, How about edible natives.
Speaker 1: Edible natives in the terms of like mulberry, for example,
Speaker 1: muscadine grapes, Mayhaw's mayhaw is another one, elderberry, prickly pear.
Speaker 1: I grew up in prickly pear country down south of
Speaker 1: San Antonio. And I'm telling you, the nopalas, the nopals,
Speaker 1: the the pads, the young tender pads before they get
Speaker 1: the thorns on them so much, they're very good edible.
Speaker 1: We'd use them, slice them up and use them in
Speaker 1: scrambled eggs. That's how we used them. And then the tunas,
Speaker 1: the little fruit for paricular pair. Those are native Texas fruit.
Speaker 1: Agarita is another one. It's a native Texas fruit that
Speaker 1: grows in much of the state. Chili pekins. Boy, if
Speaker 1: you want a pepper, they'll set your mouth on fire.
Speaker 1: Chili pecin peppers. Let's see that. Barbados cherry is another
Speaker 1: one common per Simmons. There's a lot of native plants,
Speaker 1: and when you go to Buchanons you get to enjoy
Speaker 1: all of these things. So what do you do, Well,
Speaker 1: you jump in your car and you go to eleven
Speaker 1: Street in the Heights, eleven Street in the Heights or better, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just start by going to the website Buchanans Plants dot com.
Speaker 1: Bu Canoes Plants dot com been hurt serving gardeners here
Speaker 1: in the Easton area since nineteen eighty six. And I
Speaker 1: guarantee you when you go there, alle yourself some time,
Speaker 1: because you are going to really really enjoy shopping and
Speaker 1: seeing so many plants that you haven't even heard of maybe,
Speaker 1: and you're going to find some cool new things to
Speaker 1: create that beautiful landscape, to turn your landscape more native,
Speaker 1: to support songbirds and to support all of the things
Speaker 1: that you want to get out of your landscape, the enjoyment.
Speaker 1: There be canons. They carry a wide variety of fertilizers too,
Speaker 1: you know, things like Microlife. If you're looking for a
Speaker 1: quality organic fertilizer, you're not going to find anything that
Speaker 1: is better than Microlife. It's an awesome fertilizer that provides
Speaker 1: the nutrients and the right ratios that plants want. That's important.
Speaker 1: Now there's a green bag that's our lawn fertilizer. But
Speaker 1: just train you and me. It's an everything fertilizer. I
Speaker 1: use it in vegetable gardens. I've used it in herb gardens.
Speaker 1: I've even used it when I was in a pinch.
Speaker 1: I needed something I was mixing into a soil blend
Speaker 1: to plant some plants, and Microlife's not salt based, is
Speaker 1: not to burn plants. I just mixed some into the
Speaker 1: soil and plant them a plant. And because it's the nutrients,
Speaker 1: it's going to do well. That's a green bag. Then
Speaker 1: there's humates plus concentrated compost in a bag, the purple bag.
Speaker 1: You can do that anytime you want to do it
Speaker 1: and it will work. Microlife high quality products. You can
Speaker 1: go to the website Microlifefertilizer dot com. I want you
Speaker 1: to learn about all the others. I don't have time
Speaker 1: talk about many of them here on the show, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of great microlife products we need
Speaker 1: to be exploring our way through because they do work.
Speaker 1: If you haven't been a Southwest Fertilizer, you need to
Speaker 1: go because everything you need is there. That's the bottom line.
Speaker 1: Southwest Fertilizer has been run for seventy years and everything
Speaker 1: for your garden, from tools to fertilizers, to pest control,
Speaker 1: disease control, weed control, and expert advice is all there
Speaker 1: at Southwest Fertilizer. If you're an organic gardener, the biggest
Speaker 1: organ next selection anywhere in the region is it Southwest Fertilizer.
Speaker 1: Whatever you need is there, that's the bottom line. Just
Speaker 1: remember this. If they don't have it, you don't need it.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of place Southwest Fertilizer. It's a one
Speaker 1: stop shop. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com. Corner of Bissinut and Renwick.
Speaker 1: Corner of Bissinet and Renwick, Southwest Houston. Well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take a little break and we'll be back with your calls.
Speaker 1: Seven one three two one two KTRH. Good morning, Gardner's
Speaker 1: good morning on a great day to get outside and
Speaker 1: enjoy enjoy the outdoors. Uh, if you've been here for
Speaker 1: a summer, you know what summer's like here in the
Speaker 1: Greater Houston area. And so we appreciate any cool conditions
Speaker 1: we can get, or any mild conditions that we get.
Speaker 1: We're still we're still doing pretty good. I'm not gonna complain.
Speaker 1: I learned a long time ago that wherever you live,
Speaker 1: there's something about the weather you might not like. And
Speaker 1: even you know, people talk about perfect weather like I
Speaker 1: don't know, Southern California doesn't rain that much, and just
Speaker 1: temperatures are so good that gets boring for me. I
Speaker 1: like to have a little bit of change. And maybe
Speaker 1: some of you are going no, I'd rather be bored. Well,
Speaker 1: I seriously, I like a little bit of change in
Speaker 1: the weather, and boy, do we get that here, that
Speaker 1: is for sure. You're listening to garden Line and if
Speaker 1: you'd like to give me a call or ask a
Speaker 1: gardening question. Seven one three two one two k t
Speaker 1: r H seven one three two one two k t
Speaker 1: r H R c W Nurseries is right there where
Speaker 1: belt Wag eight and Tomball Parkway come together. It's really
Speaker 1: easy to get to. As a result of that, r
Speaker 1: CW is the kind of place where you go and
Speaker 1: you're going to find quality plants that were grown right.
Speaker 1: First of all, they are the plants that ought to
Speaker 1: be grown here and planted here, but they're they're done right.
Speaker 1: You know. They grow their own trees. They grow They
Speaker 1: have a tree farm up there in Plannersville area, Wimson
Speaker 1: Tree Farm where they do bring their own trees in
Speaker 1: from there. By the way, they got a sale right
Speaker 1: now going on on crate myrtles ten percent off Crpe
Speaker 1: myrtles right now now. When you buy a crp myrtle
Speaker 1: anywhere including RCW, you want to get one that of
Speaker 1: course you want the flower color you want, but you
Speaker 1: also want the size that you want. Crpe myrtles are
Speaker 1: not sold with saws, and people plant big crape myrtles.
Speaker 1: I was driving through neighborhood yesterday with my wife just
Speaker 1: pointing out the Natches crape myrtle. Natches is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite crape myrtles. It has white blooms and it
Speaker 1: has beautiful cinnamon colored exfoliating bark, and it was very popular,
Speaker 1: and they were all through this neighborhood. And I just
Speaker 1: made the point. I love that crpe myrtle. It's also
Speaker 1: powdery mildey resistant, by the way, but it gets like
Speaker 1: thirty feet tall. And so if you're going to put
Speaker 1: it at the corner of the house and you don't
Speaker 1: want it to reach the eaves, why not plant one instead?
Speaker 1: Do you know that crate myrtles will get three feet tall.
Speaker 1: Crate myrtles that get five to seven feet tall, maybe ten,
Speaker 1: ten to twelve, fifteen feet tall. You can buy the
Speaker 1: size you want, So pick a crape myrtle that gets
Speaker 1: the size you want, the color you want, the size
Speaker 1: you want. Now I've got I've got a web page
Speaker 1: out there somewhere. Somebody else put it up. But if
Speaker 1: you do a Google search or whatever you use to search,
Speaker 1: and you put in my name, Skip Richter, and then
Speaker 1: crape myrtle, Skip Richter, crpe myrtle, one of the things
Speaker 1: that pops up will be a chart and it shows
Speaker 1: you all the sizes of crape myrtles. It gives you
Speaker 1: a little picture of what the ballooms look like. It
Speaker 1: tells you whether they're powdery, mildew resistant or not, whether
Speaker 1: the bark is of interest. I think they even have
Speaker 1: on their fall color. Some crapes do a really good
Speaker 1: job of making beautiful fall color. But that is an
Speaker 1: old list and there's lots of new ones that have
Speaker 1: come out since then. I need to redo it, but
Speaker 1: that's a major undertaking with all the new ones. But anyway,
Speaker 1: go look at it and just get some ideas and
Speaker 1: you'll kind of you may find a lot of them
Speaker 1: on there. You're gonna have trouble finding now because time's change.
Speaker 1: But that will get you in the ballpark of thinking
Speaker 1: and looking and seeing what's available so that as you
Speaker 1: go hunting for a great murder, you can find a
Speaker 1: good one. And then just head over to RCW. RCW
Speaker 1: has outstanding quality plants because they grow on themselves. They
Speaker 1: really really look good when you're there. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you to try one thing this year from RCW,
Speaker 1: and that is their Cajun Hibiscus. Now, Cajun Hibiscus is
Speaker 1: a series, is not one plant. It's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different plants. The blooms are gaudy and they're gorgeous. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: they should call them the the gg hibiscus, the gaudy,
Speaker 1: gorgeous hibiscus. Try one this year. I've got some. I
Speaker 1: got a big plastic It looks like a whiskey barrel
Speaker 1: but it's about two thirds that size and made a plastic. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know what the thing is I'm talking about. I've
Speaker 1: got one in there, and last year edge I bloomed
Speaker 1: and bloomed and bloomed, and the blooms are so pretty.
Speaker 1: They're so gorgeous, and in a container. You can put
Speaker 1: it wherever you want it. Where have you got sunlight?
Speaker 1: You put an entrance to going in the front door,
Speaker 1: you're hushing, put it on the back patio, whatever, but
Speaker 1: gets you a casion. Hibiscus from r c W Nursries.
Speaker 1: Head on over there again the corner of Beltway eight
Speaker 1: and Tomball Parkway. R c W Nurseries. Check those out
Speaker 1: now for the lawns. If you would like to give
Speaker 1: your lawn a boost, something that you know gets it going,
Speaker 1: gets it a good boost of nutrients and things. I'd
Speaker 1: like to recommend a couple of things for you to consider.
Speaker 1: First of all, medina has to grow lawn. Medina has
Speaker 1: to grow lawn. It is a three one two ratio
Speaker 1: fertilizer as a liquid that hooks to a garden hose.
Speaker 1: You look it up to a garden hose and you
Speaker 1: spray your lawn with it. It's fast, it's easy, and
Speaker 1: it'll give you a quick result, but it doesn't just
Speaker 1: go away fast. It lasts a while. Medina has to
Speaker 1: grow lawn is a great way to give your lawn
Speaker 1: a boost. And the thing I like about the hose
Speaker 1: in sprayer for lawn is I've got an area in
Speaker 1: my backyard where the lawn is not doing as good,
Speaker 1: and I can go in there with my hose end
Speaker 1: and I can just do a little treatment to that
Speaker 1: area and just kind of green it up a little bit, okay,
Speaker 1: kind of feathered out, blended in really well. As opposed
Speaker 1: to a fertilizer drop spreader or or a whirlybird spreadder
Speaker 1: where it's kind of slinging the fertilizer, it's a little
Speaker 1: harder to control. The application Medina has to grow for lawn.
Speaker 1: It's a twelve four to eight. It does super super well.
Speaker 1: Medina also has a sixteen percent nitrogen fertilizer that has
Speaker 1: zero phosphorus in it, which for many of our lawns
Speaker 1: is a very good product choice because most of our
Speaker 1: lawns have more than enough phosphorus. That's a middle number,
Speaker 1: more than enough of the phosphorus. So I would recommend
Speaker 1: that you give that a try. Try one of those
Speaker 1: Medina products. They hook up to the host. They're faster
Speaker 1: or easy. You're in, you're out, You've done it, and
Speaker 1: it just looks good. I love those products. I started
Speaker 1: using some of the different Excuse me, I'm still fighting
Speaker 1: a cold that I was getting over for a while.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Hastra Grow Lawns is twelve four to eight
Speaker 1: formulated for the lawns. It does well. I started using
Speaker 1: the other one, the sixteen percent nitrogen Medina Supergrow Plus.
Speaker 1: It's got a little kind of a green label on it,
Speaker 1: but super Grow plus and sixteen zero two are the numbers.
Speaker 1: If you want to give a boost. That is a
Speaker 1: great way to give a quick boost. And I know
Speaker 1: it says lawns. Don't tell anybody, but you can use
Speaker 1: it on anything you want. You can use that. I
Speaker 1: know people that will spray it on their tomatoes to
Speaker 1: get a little boost and vigor in their vegetable garden
Speaker 1: and spread it on the tomatoes and have and on
Speaker 1: the soil too. You can fold your feet it, you
Speaker 1: can put in the soil. It works well. Medina hasht
Speaker 1: gro Lawn and Medina Supergrol Plus. Both of them hook
Speaker 1: up to a garden hose. Both of them will give
Speaker 1: your lawn a good boost. Both of them are widely
Speaker 1: available here in the Greater Houston area. So check those out,
Speaker 1: try them out. I want to hear try them out,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to hear how they do for you.
Speaker 1: And they don't call me the day after you apply them.
Speaker 1: It takes a little longer than that. But I would
Speaker 1: like to hear how those things work for you, because
Speaker 1: I can tell you my experience with them has been outstanding.
Speaker 1: I know I'm talking about this a lot, but when
Speaker 1: Andy from Medina first told me that they were coming
Speaker 1: out with this sixteen percent no phosphorus fertilizer, I was
Speaker 1: really excited because I can just tell you there isn't
Speaker 1: a lawn out there that isn't going to benefit from it.
Speaker 1: And I've done a number of soil test studies on lawns.
Speaker 1: I was in Austin for a number of years working
Speaker 1: as horticultures to with agrilife extension over there. And we
Speaker 1: did a study of two hundred lawns in northwest Austin
Speaker 1: in the Steelhouse Creek neighborhood, and we soil sampled every
Speaker 1: lawn and looked at the nutrient levels in those lawns
Speaker 1: and that area. By and large, when you look at
Speaker 1: a lawn, you're going to find the phosphorus levels or adequate,
Speaker 1: which is why we generally recommend going with the low
Speaker 1: middle number on turf, just because in general that's true.
Speaker 1: I will say this, Uh, people call it all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, what's a good fertilizer for this or what
Speaker 1: should I put on that? Well, we see fertilizers with
Speaker 1: names on them, like this is a lawn fertilizer, this
Speaker 1: is a hibiscus fertilizer, This is a plumeria fertilizer, this
Speaker 1: is a vegetable fertilizer. That's all good, that's a good start,
Speaker 1: But what any plant needs depends on what's already in
Speaker 1: the soil. So when you do a soil test, you
Speaker 1: find out what's in your soil, and it may be
Speaker 1: that you go with a different kind of fertilizer for
Speaker 1: that plant than the one with that plant's name on it,
Speaker 1: because your soil for that plant is a little bit different,
Speaker 1: so it's always good to have a soil test. You
Speaker 1: can go to Soil Testing dot t a m U,
Speaker 1: dot EDUT, dot tamudd you and there find out how
Speaker 1: to get your sol tested. You can also go to
Speaker 1: my website gardening with Skip, Gardening with skip dot com.
Speaker 1: Write that down least bookmark that website. We are adding
Speaker 1: stuff to it all the time. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: good information out there, continuing to put stuff up. I've
Speaker 1: got several projects I'm working on to get up on
Speaker 1: the web right now. And it's all free. Can't beat that,
Speaker 1: so anyway, check it out. There's a publication on testing
Speaker 1: your soil, how to do it and where to send
Speaker 1: your soil, which soil form to use when you go
Speaker 1: to soil Testing dot tamudd you. So it's trying to
Speaker 1: help you. A goal is for you to have a
Speaker 1: beautiful landscape, a bountiful garden, and more fun in the process.
Speaker 1: We'll take a break here, be right back. Good morning,
Speaker 1: Good morning, gardeners. Good to have you with us this morning. Hey,
Speaker 1: you are listening to garden Line and our whole purpose
Speaker 1: here in addition to having fun, by the way, is
Speaker 1: for you to have a more bountiful garden and a
Speaker 1: more beautiful landscape and enjoy the process. You can give
Speaker 1: me a call at seven one three two one two
Speaker 1: ktr H seven one three two one two ktr H
Speaker 1: be glad to visit with you about the things that
Speaker 1: are of most interest to you. For those of you
Speaker 1: who live down south of Houston, your hometown garden center
Speaker 1: down there is Ores Hidden Gardens or Hayes Hidden Gardens.
Speaker 1: It's an Alvin address. Actually, it's located on Elizabeth Road.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Road in Alvin. If you're in Alvin, you just
Speaker 1: head down Highway six towards Santa Fe and it's off
Speaker 1: to the right. It's kind of in between the two cities,
Speaker 1: Alvin and Santa Fe. But off to the right Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Road is the address. Now, why would I tell you
Speaker 1: to go there? Well, any of you from any of
Speaker 1: those communities like Santa Fe, hillc Us, Algoa, Arcadia, Alta Loma,
Speaker 1: you know, all Alvin, of course, all those places, you're
Speaker 1: going to find an amazing array of things at jorghesid
Speaker 1: and Gardens. Right now, right now, he has got some
Speaker 1: red buds that are amazing. There's one called Hearts of Fire.
Speaker 1: Hearts of Fire, and it's what you would think. It's
Speaker 1: got red and orange, peach colored and green tones all
Speaker 1: in the leaf. It is gorgeous even when it's not blooming.
Speaker 1: You know, red buds bloom in the spring, but all
Speaker 1: the rest of the year. What are you looking at? Green? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: with Hearts of Fire, you get all these other colors
Speaker 1: in there. There's other kinds of spectacular Eastern red buds.
Speaker 1: They have weeping red buds where the stem comes up,
Speaker 1: the trunk comes up and the branches hang pendently down
Speaker 1: from them. Very unique feature in the landscape. And then
Speaker 1: of course they have one called Merlow that's a beautiful
Speaker 1: like the wine color of the foliage, very beautiful. If
Speaker 1: you're looking for vegetables like peppers, for example, or he's
Speaker 1: got those. If you're looking for fruit trees right now,
Speaker 1: he's got avocados still that actually have fruit on them.
Speaker 1: They carry citrus, they carry blueberries, all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to shrubs and trees, Jorges got
Speaker 1: you covered on that too, great myrtles, multi stem He's
Speaker 1: got the you know, everything from small live oaks that
Speaker 1: you want to get started in your yard. You know,
Speaker 1: the best time to plant a tree is forty years ago.
Speaker 1: Second best time is today. Well there you go. Rayes
Speaker 1: got you covered on all of that rages hidden gardens,
Speaker 1: go check them out again. Elizabeth Street in Alvin, just
Speaker 1: out the Highway six. We're going to head out to
Speaker 1: the phones now and we're going to visit with Norm
Speaker 1: if I can get the right button here. Hey, Norm,
Speaker 1: welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 7: Hey Skip, thank you for taking my call. I don't
Speaker 7: want to overwhelm everybody with our compliments to your show,
Speaker 7: but we are very very happy out here in the
Speaker 7: Senior citizen land.
Speaker 1: It's what you do.
Speaker 7: It entertains us every Saturday and every Sunday. I was
Speaker 7: telling you a producer about Francis, my wife. She's listening
Speaker 7: out on the patio and I'm in the house because
Speaker 7: I don't want her to take over the phone call.
Speaker 7: But we we have a problem at our age, falling
Speaker 7: around in the garden. And what's your little invention that
Speaker 7: you talk about all the time, your weed wiper. I
Speaker 7: had a hunch that I could give you a challenge.
Speaker 7: And before we hang up today, be sure and get
Speaker 7: your three m sticky pad and make a little bit
Speaker 7: of a note a weed walker, and we'd what do
Speaker 7: you call it, wiper? Come together. We can't wipe the
Speaker 7: weeds without a weed walker.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, And talking about toppling over in the garden, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: I've got a kind of miracle stories that I've told
Speaker 7: about falling in the yard and I've managed to survive
Speaker 7: to this year. But walking in the garden, to me,
Speaker 7: has been an idea creator. I always tell my grandchildren,
Speaker 7: somebody invented that, and you take pride in the wheat wiper.
Speaker 7: And I'm thinking that when we were babies, we had
Speaker 7: a little what they called walker, and you put your
Speaker 7: legs through the holes, and then you got wheels and
Speaker 7: you learn how to walk. And I'm thinking out, But
Speaker 7: I've asked people that my contact that are in the
Speaker 7: machine shop what they call them guys that create stuff
Speaker 7: and build stuff, to.
Speaker 1: Think about it.
Speaker 7: And one of my friends up in Central Texas is
Speaker 7: a retired.
Speaker 1: Guy doing that, and I call it him.
Speaker 7: He's on the porch, of course, every morning, looking at
Speaker 7: the sunset, listening to you. But the need to not
Speaker 7: fall in the garden becomes more more necessary every day.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, well, normally you know this would be a yeah,
Speaker 1: this be no. And gardening is for all ages and
Speaker 1: it should go as long as our life goes. I
Speaker 1: mean I knew people that even toward the end of life,
Speaker 1: they were still you know that they had their house plans,
Speaker 1: that little cart came in and stuff they could do it.
Speaker 1: It is a refreshing and wonderful thing. We could talk
Speaker 1: for days on the topic. But uh, there is there
Speaker 1: are you know, regular rolling walkers that some people use.
Speaker 1: There's also a rolling seat that some people use. But
Speaker 1: your point is well taken. I think it's a matter
Speaker 1: of getting good solid pathways first of all installed that
Speaker 1: give you a little more stability. That's important. But I
Speaker 1: hear your challenge and let me think about that a
Speaker 1: little bit and see if we can figure out maybe
Speaker 1: some other tips. I know there's a lot of great
Speaker 1: tools that are ergonomic that I help. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: folks are dealing with things like an arthritis or some
Speaker 1: other limitations. But let me think about that. Uh, I've
Speaker 1: got a whole line of folks that are lined up
Speaker 1: here that I need to get to. But I appreciate
Speaker 1: your kind words and your call and I will give
Speaker 1: this some thought. I think that it is a good point,
Speaker 1: because the last thing on Earth we need to do
Speaker 1: is slow down our gardening when life's limitations come along.
Speaker 1: But I thank you, Norman. And do you have any
Speaker 1: of those sticky pads?
Speaker 7: Yes, somebody invented the glue that's on the back of that.
Speaker 1: Right right by accident. Yeah, it was uh huh. There
Speaker 1: you go. All right, Norman. Hey, thanks, call back, call back,
Speaker 1: call back, anytime. I'd be glad to a visit with
Speaker 1: you about that. Let's see here, we're going to go
Speaker 1: to Joe and spring Joe. I got about a half
Speaker 1: a minute, but if we need we'll hold you over
Speaker 1: to the next break.
Speaker 8: Okay, have one big question in two little comments. So
Speaker 8: I follow your long care program religiously for the last
Speaker 8: seven years, and I think my tree likes it better
Speaker 8: than my lawn. That thing is growing like galore. And
Speaker 8: so I'm having a problem that two branches are crossing
Speaker 8: each other and I didn't catch it earlier. And so
Speaker 8: my question is, you know it's they're they're getting closely
Speaker 8: and stuck together. Is it too late to have the
Speaker 8: tree trimmed for the summer? Do I just have a
Speaker 8: guy come in there and take out that one branch
Speaker 8: so that they're anymore.
Speaker 1: Or now you can do it just making a cut
Speaker 1: here and there is fine to do it now, go
Speaker 1: ahead and get it done. Just make sure they know
Speaker 1: how to prune and what they're doing. But no, now's fine.
Speaker 1: No need to treat the wound.
Speaker 8: Either, Okay, so just take care the one branch, don't
Speaker 8: through the whole tree trimming. It needs to thin in
Speaker 8: the whole tree.
Speaker 1: Well. I mean, you could do a moderate amount now,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to heal very fast, and so
Speaker 1: it would be better to do the majority of your
Speaker 1: printing in winter. But anything that's going to get worse
Speaker 1: between now and next the end of or next midwinter,
Speaker 1: go ahead and do it now, and you know, don't
Speaker 1: let it get worse like that. But yeah, that's the balance.
Speaker 8: And also my lawn, I'm getting some yellow h what
Speaker 8: do you call pieces of the grass all around. I
Speaker 8: haven't put my slow release fertilizer on yet. Do I
Speaker 8: pick one that has the highest iron in it? Or
Speaker 8: is it time for iron eight or something? On the yard?
Speaker 1: You know, Joe, if you are able to take some
Speaker 1: close up maybe a picture, of your lawn and then
Speaker 1: some close ups of what you see as yellow as
Speaker 1: close as you can get in sharp focus, and email
Speaker 1: them to me. I can give you a better answer.
Speaker 1: It could be a lack of nitrogen, it could be
Speaker 1: a foliage disease, and it also could be ourn deficiency.
Speaker 1: I'm leaning away from it being ourn deficiency in and
Speaker 1: of itself, unless it's related to a disease. So I'd
Speaker 1: rather give you a better answer. So if you would
Speaker 1: email me those, you can call back, we can talk
Speaker 1: about it. I'll reply to that, and we can even
Speaker 1: finish a conversation today if you'd like.
Speaker 8: Okay, well the pictures in sun Ben.
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, thank you, I appreciate the called. Look forward
Speaker 1: to helping you more with that question. I got to
Speaker 1: run to a break, folks. When we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to Forrest and in Galleria jim Idam Magnolia.
Speaker 1: All right, welcome back, folks. Good to have you back
Speaker 1: here on Garden Line. Got plenty of things we can
Speaker 1: be talking about right now. I first of all, I
Speaker 1: wanted to I was talking earlier about the clay soils
Speaker 1: and the issues of clays, our heavy clay soils here
Speaker 1: have what is called a high shrink swell potential. What
Speaker 1: does that all mean, Well, it just means us, when
Speaker 1: they get dry, this shrink, when they get wet, they
Speaker 1: swell and so in the summer, when it's hot and dry,
Speaker 1: you got cracks in the backyard so deep you could
Speaker 1: lose a toddler down the things, or a small foo
Speaker 1: foo dog. And then it rains and they swell up
Speaker 1: and that moves sidewalks, driveways, breaks water pipes underground for
Speaker 1: the city, and it causes foundation problems for your home
Speaker 1: and fix my slab. Foundation Repair is the expert company
Speaker 1: that I would suggest you give a call if you
Speaker 1: have any questions about where things are. I mean, they
Speaker 1: can do things like, you know, re level your driveway
Speaker 1: if you've got issues with cracks in the driveway. Ty
Speaker 1: Strickland's been doing this for twenty three years. And so
Speaker 1: you got to crack in the sheet rock indoors. Typically
Speaker 1: you'll see those sometimes in the ceiling, but or the
Speaker 1: walls in general, but maybe over in a corner by
Speaker 1: a window on the outside. Same thing on the brick.
Speaker 1: Cracks in the brick going down on the outside is
Speaker 1: a sign something is moving. Don't be an Ostrich, don't
Speaker 1: put your head in the sand. You need to have
Speaker 1: him look at it. This is an honest fellow, native Houstonian,
Speaker 1: fifth generation Texan. He knows what he's doing, been doing
Speaker 1: this for twenty three plus years now, and he'll come
Speaker 1: out and take a look, you know, tell you if
Speaker 1: you need work and if you do what's needed, or
Speaker 1: if I'll tell you now for right now, you're it's good.
Speaker 1: Just let's let's let's watch it. Let's see how it goes.
Speaker 1: Tell him your guardline listener Free free estimates for Guardline
Speaker 1: listeners fixmyslab dot com. Easy to Remember Fix myslab dot
Speaker 1: com com two eight one two five five forty nine
Speaker 1: two eight one two five forty nine forty nine. We're
Speaker 1: going to go now out to the galleria and talk
Speaker 1: to Forrest. Hello, Forrest, Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 9: Hey, if I wanted to ask you about this, you know,
Speaker 9: putting a filtered cloth or some filtered cloth over vegetable gardens,
Speaker 9: specifically tomatoes, to kind of create a micro underneath.
Speaker 6: If you think that's something that would work here in Houston.
Speaker 1: People use it some. It doesn't change the ambient air temperature,
Speaker 1: but it does keep the sun from heating up the
Speaker 1: plant tissues so much. The trick for us is to
Speaker 1: not lower your sunlight intensity levels so much that your
Speaker 1: plants aren't able to make enough carbohydrates, in your case
Speaker 1: to set tomatoes. So if you were to go I
Speaker 1: wouldn't definitely, I would not go past fifty percent shade.
Speaker 1: It could be a little lighter than that. And now,
Speaker 1: if you're already struggling to get enough sun, then adding
Speaker 1: the shade cloth would probably be a mistake. But in
Speaker 1: general it helps a little. It just remember it doesn't
Speaker 1: change the ambient air temperature. So when it's ninety, it's ninety.
Speaker 1: When it's you know, seventy eight degrees at night, it's
Speaker 1: seventy eight degrees at night, even at the shade cloth,
Speaker 1: and those are the things that tend to make our
Speaker 1: tomatoes slower cease production when it gets hot.
Speaker 6: I just felt like, at some level, as you said,
Speaker 6: the ambient temperature is going to get so high that
Speaker 6: it's just going to tomato season is going to be
Speaker 6: over at some point here, and I didn't think the
Speaker 6: shade cloth would yeah really change that that.
Speaker 1: That is true. It makes a little difference, but not
Speaker 1: a lot. And so what we do. What I do
Speaker 1: in my garden is you know, I may have some
Speaker 1: slicer tomatoes, and I know when the temperatures get up
Speaker 1: in the nineties and the night times are above the
Speaker 1: mid seventies, for sure, they're going to start shutting down
Speaker 1: their production. And I throw in some cherries or grape
Speaker 1: type tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes grape tomatoes because they set well
Speaker 1: even in hotter weather, and that way you at least
Speaker 1: get tomato flavor carrying you on a little further into
Speaker 1: the season. Okay, well, I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: You bet, thanks for being patient waiting on the call.
Speaker 1: I know we've had a line here, so good to
Speaker 1: talk to you. Let's now go to a task ASDA
Speaker 1: and talk to Jill. Hey, Jim, welcome to garden line.
Speaker 10: Thank you sir.
Speaker 11: Today's topic is tree planting and care and root washing
Speaker 11: and root girdle removal.
Speaker 1: Okay, good questions, any specific or just you want me
Speaker 1: to comment on all that.
Speaker 11: I would like you to comment on it because the
Speaker 11: fact is that I've been buying product lately that is
Speaker 11: so root bound. It's just it's unbelievable. I can't believe
Speaker 11: how Yeah, you think these nurseries are going to take
Speaker 11: that of care.
Speaker 1: But well, and it's not all. It's not necessarily the
Speaker 1: nursery's fault. You know, the most economical way to grow
Speaker 1: a tree is in a round pot. There are pots
Speaker 1: out there that are designed to air prune roots and
Speaker 1: to prevent girdling, but they're expensive, and nobody goes to
Speaker 1: the garden center and says, I want a tree that's
Speaker 1: in this kind of pot. They just don't. People don't
Speaker 1: know to ask for that, and so it's not worth
Speaker 1: it for the growers or for the garden centers to
Speaker 1: try to carry the higher dollar tree, And that, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: is the situation we're in. For the most part. You
Speaker 1: can get by with a circling tree if it doesn't
Speaker 1: spend too much time in the pot. Now, if you know,
Speaker 1: if it sits there for an extra year or two,
Speaker 1: well then you're going to have major problems in the
Speaker 1: You know, before you buy it, When you get them home,
Speaker 1: you slide them out and you cut the roots. I
Speaker 1: cut mine in three or four places vertically. I'll use
Speaker 1: a little box cutter knife to cut small roots, or
Speaker 1: I'll use hand prunters to cut bigger roots, but cut them.
Speaker 1: Within two weeks they will be branching out new roots.
Speaker 1: Just like if you cut a branch, you get re
Speaker 1: sprouting from behind where you cut. When you cut a root,
Speaker 1: you get re sprouting from behind where you cut. So
Speaker 1: before they go in the ground, any circling roots should
Speaker 1: be cut on a plant that is going to get
Speaker 1: big and live a long time. Not so important for
Speaker 1: a little perennial plant or you know, some small little
Speaker 1: shrub maybe, But if it if that root getting bigger
Speaker 1: over time and the trunk getting bigger over time are
Speaker 1: likely to come together, which they would on a big
Speaker 1: tree like a live oat, for example, then you need
Speaker 1: to be they need to be cut. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: term root washing. Root washing is the extra step that
Speaker 1: you can go And here this is the fastest version
Speaker 1: that I that I can give you. But if you
Speaker 1: if you were growing a tree and you had it
Speaker 1: in a gallum pot and the roots went out and
Speaker 1: made a circle, what's a gallumpot about five inches six
Speaker 1: inches across maybe the top that that'd be like, let's
Speaker 1: say a five inch circle, and then you move that
Speaker 1: tree to a five gallum pot and keep growing it out.
Speaker 1: Now that circle from the one gallon is inside and
Speaker 1: it can't be seen because you put it in a
Speaker 1: bigger pot with more soil. Root Washing is where you
Speaker 1: blast off all the growing mix so you can see
Speaker 1: inside and remove all of the different things that might
Speaker 1: be a problem. Do the surgery if you will, the
Speaker 1: root cutting all through good forestry folks from Texan and
Speaker 1: Forest Service told me about this a long time ago.
Speaker 1: We did a demonstration for some for a class I did,
Speaker 1: and it works, but it's a lot of trouble and
Speaker 1: most people are not going to want to go to that.
Speaker 1: But if you have concerns on a bigger tree that
Speaker 1: you may have some interior buried problems, root washing would
Speaker 1: be the way to get around that. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much and have a great day, all right, Thank you sir.
Speaker 1: Appreciate your call. Yep, And you're a lot of you
Speaker 1: listening are going, oh my gosh, I didn't even know
Speaker 1: I was supposed to worry about all that, will you know?
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a matter of degrees, and some trees
Speaker 1: are prone to that. Bread for pairs, they grow so
Speaker 1: fast and they can quickly get into girdling problems. I
Speaker 1: wish I could show you pictures on the radio. I
Speaker 1: can show you some pear trees in general that have
Speaker 1: come into the extension office. It just took pictures of
Speaker 1: its amazing. Also, living Christmas trees that is a problem
Speaker 1: in general. A living Christmas tree is going to be
Speaker 1: a problem. They don't like having their roots cut. Pine
Speaker 1: type species, those kinds of plants don't really care for
Speaker 1: having the roots cut. They have to grow, grow, grow
Speaker 1: them so they can sheare them so they can make
Speaker 1: a little miniature Christmas tree so you'll buy it. Well,
Speaker 1: that tree spent just by the nature of how a
Speaker 1: living Christmas trees has to be grown. It spent too
Speaker 1: much time in the pot, and so then you put
Speaker 1: it in your landscape. It grows for a while and
Speaker 1: then you start It depends on the species. But about
Speaker 1: eight years down the line is when you really see
Speaker 1: the things start to go south. Anyway. Something to think
Speaker 1: about wild Birds Unlimited is the place to go for
Speaker 1: anything you're looking for for birds, anything that you're looking
Speaker 1: for for birds. Do you need bird housing, do you
Speaker 1: need bird seed? Nothing compares to wild Birds Unlimited. Bird
Speaker 1: seed blends right now, the blend to use is Nesting
Speaker 1: Super Blend because we're still in nesting season for birds
Speaker 1: and it helps with the development of the birds. Now
Speaker 1: you can buy it loose, you buy it in seed cylinders,
Speaker 1: but just buy it nesting super blended. Wild Birds Unlimited.
Speaker 1: They're six stores in the Greater Houston area Kingwood, Clear Lake, Pearland,
Speaker 1: Houston on bel Air, Houston on Memorial and then Cypress
Speaker 1: up in Barker. Cypress is another wild Bird's Unlimited store.
Speaker 1: They carry quality seed, not the seed the bird kicks
Speaker 1: on the ground, the little red bebes that come in
Speaker 1: cheap bird seed. Birds don't like those, and you waste
Speaker 1: most of what you're buying in the bag. Wild Birds
Speaker 1: Unlimited half quality seeds of things birds want. You buy
Speaker 1: a pound a seed, you get a pound of something
Speaker 1: that goes into the bird's stomach. In the case of
Speaker 1: their no mess blends, where they're not even sunflower shells
Speaker 1: on the outside of the sunflower kernels. While birds I'm limited.
Speaker 1: I gotta take a break here, Steven der Park here first.
Speaker 1: When we come back. Hey, welcome back, Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the garden line. Good to have you with us. Hey,
Speaker 1: I just want to say some this is important that
Speaker 1: you hear this today because time is essentially up. Nature's
Speaker 1: Way Resources is having the final day of their fungal
Speaker 1: compost overstock sale fifteen dollars a yard. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't have to even produce it for fifteen dollars yarp.
Speaker 1: But anyway, fifteen dollars a yard now through the end
Speaker 1: of May, which is today. The end of May is today.
Speaker 1: Give them a call nine three six seven one three
Speaker 1: twelve hundred nine three six seven one three twelve hundred.
Speaker 1: You need to contact them on this Nature's Way resources
Speaker 1: dot com and Nature's Ways where you get all kinds
Speaker 1: of quality products. You know, that's rose, soil, leaf, mole compost,
Speaker 1: fungal based composts of course, but this fungal compost overstock sale,
Speaker 1: this is your chance to load up. And just I
Speaker 1: mean you can use fung You can use screen fungal
Speaker 1: compost even as a top dressing on your lawn if
Speaker 1: you wan't do that, you can use it in flower beds.
Speaker 1: You can use it as a surface malts even if
Speaker 1: you put it down and then mix it into the soil.
Speaker 1: It works very well. And they have a super sale
Speaker 1: going on that ends today. So nine two seven three
Speaker 1: twelve hundred Nature'sway Resources dot com. Check out that website.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. It has to go to the contact information
Speaker 1: find out how I get there. But the main thing is,
Speaker 1: don't let this deal go by. It is an awesome
Speaker 1: one you don't want to miss. We're going to head
Speaker 1: out to Steve in Deer Park. Now, Hey Steve, welcome
Speaker 1: to garden Line.
Speaker 12: Good morning, Skip. I sent you an email some tomatoes.
Speaker 12: Did you see it?
Speaker 1: Okay? I did. Let me take a look here. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: uh huh okay, go ahead, and having run with holes
Speaker 1: in them.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And I sent you a picture of it cut
Speaker 12: open to where there's some Yeah, anyway, and they're split
Speaker 12: and I'm real bad and I'm really not getting the
Speaker 12: best production this year for some reason. But anyway, to
Speaker 12: head in recommendations.
Speaker 1: You bet. So the hole is and the interior shows
Speaker 1: that a caterpillar got in there and chewed around, and
Speaker 1: once you make a wound, you start to get decay
Speaker 1: and all kinds of issues. So that's what you're looking
Speaker 1: at on that one. You know, regular applications of something
Speaker 1: to prevent caterpillars. There's a lot of options for that,
Speaker 1: but you got to do it before the caterpillar gets in.
Speaker 1: I know you use seven. I think I see some
Speaker 1: seven dust looks like on the surface of some of
Speaker 1: the tomatoes, and that'll kill the heck out of a caterpillar,
Speaker 1: But not after the caterpillars inside, you know, they it's
Speaker 1: more of a venom from getting in. So that is
Speaker 1: what it is. The cracking tomatoes crack typically in two
Speaker 1: common ways. One in addition to just splitting. When they
Speaker 1: grow real fast after a rain, you get little round
Speaker 1: cracks that go like in a circle around the stem
Speaker 1: attachment area the top of the tomato. And then you
Speaker 1: get these radio cracks, which is what you see, and
Speaker 1: it looks like you just took a little knife and
Speaker 1: just split the tomato from the stem, you know, across
Speaker 1: the shoulder a little bit. That is very variety specific.
Speaker 1: Some varieties are bad about that, others are not so bad.
Speaker 1: Anything we do that evens out the growth helps with
Speaker 1: all kinds of cracking and splitting of the tomatoes. And
Speaker 1: so sometimes what will happen is the tomato will grow
Speaker 1: and it'll be real dry, and it's not growing very much,
Speaker 1: but the cells are still dividing. Then you get this
Speaker 1: gully washer rain and the roots take up all this
Speaker 1: water and it tries to fill up all those cells
Speaker 1: and it swells faster than the skin can accommodate it,
Speaker 1: and you get the splits from that. So evening out
Speaker 1: the watering is helpful for the splitting. But this shoulder
Speaker 1: cracking like you see, is going to be more variety specific,
Speaker 1: and it just there's just not a thing to do
Speaker 1: about that other than try a different variety if you don't.
Speaker 1: If you don't like it. It's mostly catic though general, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 12: I was thinking for next year, trying to stay ahead
Speaker 12: of the caterpillars, and I was thinking that if you
Speaker 12: had a favorite that you like to use, because I
Speaker 12: don't really see you know, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's right, and there's different options, you know. I'll just start,
Speaker 1: you know, on the synthetic in things like seven dust
Speaker 1: will kill caterpillars if you keep it on the surface
Speaker 1: of the fruit and it lasts a long time. It's
Speaker 1: persistent there, which is good when it comes to pest control,
Speaker 1: bad when it comes to you eating this stuff. But
Speaker 1: that is one that is one end. On the other
Speaker 1: end would be things like using BT or spinosid as sprays,
Speaker 1: spinosid lasts longer, so it would give you b tea.
Speaker 1: After a couple of days, it's no longer killing what's
Speaker 1: out there, so you pray in it all the time,
Speaker 1: trying to get ahead of the caterpillars. The spinosid lasts longer,
Speaker 1: and then some people will actually bag their tomatoes, you know,
Speaker 1: if you just have a tomato plant or two, those
Speaker 1: little organza bags with the draw string, they'll slip them
Speaker 1: over there and just pull them, pull them over them,
Speaker 1: and you keep everything out. You keep the bird pecks out,
Speaker 1: you keep you know, the caterpillars and stink bugs away,
Speaker 1: so that that's more detailed. But those are very inexpensive
Speaker 1: little bags. Again, if you had, you know, twenty tomato plants,
Speaker 1: that would be too tedious. But just a few. It's
Speaker 1: an option.
Speaker 12: What about insect the saddle soap, it's a good option.
Speaker 1: It won't work on the caterpillars, it just doesn't. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's good for it's good for spider mates and a
Speaker 1: fits on your tomato leaves.
Speaker 12: I was concerned about the seven desks for the contamination.
Speaker 12: But anyway, thank you for all the options.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got some options, and thanks for the COSTA
Speaker 1: appreciate appreciate you call very much. When was the last
Speaker 1: time you guys were at Arbrogate. They always have new
Speaker 1: things coming in. I mean it is always cool. It's
Speaker 1: just I love going to Arbigate because of all the
Speaker 1: stuff that they have. Do you need vegetables? Dany flowers?
Speaker 1: Do you need roses? Do you need shrubs? Do you
Speaker 1: need bulbs? Oh? By the way, guess what they just
Speaker 1: got in A bunch of bulbs from Southern Bulb Company
Speaker 1: h And they've got some of the great bulbs for summer.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of awesome options for bulbs for summer,
Speaker 1: and they're starting to carry some of the gingers. And
Speaker 1: ginger is one of my favorite plants. And a Southern
Speaker 1: Bulb Company is an outstanding producer of bulbs, and Arborgate
Speaker 1: carries their bulbs. So go by there, say I want
Speaker 1: to see these ginger bulbs. Skip was talking about the hedicium,
Speaker 1: the white butterfly ginger, one of my favorite ones. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of other types that are there. When you
Speaker 1: go to Arburgate. Grab the one two three system. The
Speaker 1: food complete, the soil complete, and the compost complete. All
Speaker 1: three organic, All three work, and all three help you
Speaker 1: get the brown stuff. Right, so the green stuff you
Speaker 1: bought at Arburgate goes in and hits the ground running.
Speaker 1: You can also buy those by the bulk by the
Speaker 1: way at Arburgate, just about a mile and a half
Speaker 1: west of two forty nine on twenty nine twenty there
Speaker 1: in the Tombault area. Let's go now to Wharton and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to Angie Ajie. I got a
Speaker 1: little bit of time here. Let's see if we can
Speaker 1: squeeze a call in with you.
Speaker 10: Warning skip, Yeah, I was calling about my Peggy Martin roses.
Speaker 10: All of a sudden, they've got spots all over them
Speaker 10: and they're dropping their leaves. That's my first question. And
Speaker 10: sent you some pictures I saw it in Yeah, what
Speaker 10: do you think?
Speaker 1: That's called circaspara leaf spot. It is a fungal leaf spot.
Speaker 1: It's not like bronze spot that makes big large blotches
Speaker 1: or black spot large blotches on the leaves. It just
Speaker 1: makes a little round circleish dark spots sometimes at the
Speaker 1: gray center, a little bit of a yellow halo around them,
Speaker 1: and you would just have to use a fungicide to
Speaker 1: prevent it. So Peggy Martin's a tough rose a little
Speaker 1: sir caspara coming and going on it. You could ignore
Speaker 1: it and it would be Okay, it doesn't look good,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to kill your Peggy Martin. If
Speaker 1: you wanted to spray, then then you could use a
Speaker 1: fung aside to stop it.
Speaker 10: Okay, But the leaf drop is that that go along
Speaker 10: with this particular fungus that you're talking about.
Speaker 12: Okay, okay?
Speaker 1: Would go ahead?
Speaker 10: Would it benefit from pruning the roads back and just
Speaker 10: kind of letting it start over? Or that fungus in
Speaker 10: the soul and.
Speaker 1: It's just going to be there, it's in the air.
Speaker 1: Uh So if you pruned it back, you'd get fresh,
Speaker 1: tender new growth. And then if we got some rainy weather,
Speaker 1: when spores land on the leaf and they get a
Speaker 1: little coating of water over them, they germinate and they
Speaker 1: infect and they cause the spots. So pruning, okay, wouldn't
Speaker 1: change it. It would just I would delay a little
Speaker 1: bit and the new flesh of growth could get it
Speaker 1: too if the weather was right.
Speaker 10: Could I use the same spray sun just side that
Speaker 10: I use on my high biscuits and not my high
Speaker 10: biscuits my hydranges? Would that the same thing work for this.
Speaker 1: Do you happen to have a recommendation the name of
Speaker 1: it is if you know what's in it, I could
Speaker 1: tell you products that are contained dack o'nil would be
Speaker 1: good for the gray leaf spot. Uh. The products, let's see. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a product called immunox is another one that is
Speaker 1: pretty good on the gray leaf spot. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of what other that those would be the primary
Speaker 1: ones that you would look at. Uh, yeah, it just
Speaker 1: kind of depends. It just kind of depends.
Speaker 10: The daklo mil is what I want. I need a
Speaker 10: product with daqueo mil in it.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 1: A C it's d A c O n I L
Speaker 1: dack O'Neill jl okay nimaspraiser. Also, they're organic and they're
Speaker 1: pretty good on on the gray leaf spot as well.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and that's uh need to get that out early
Speaker 10: in the morning, right before it gets too hot.
Speaker 1: It's better, Yes, it's better. I would probably go with
Speaker 1: the immune em unox type product. All right, Well, I'm
Speaker 1: up against a hard break, but good luck with that rose.
Speaker 1: They're a beautiful one to have.
Speaker 10: Can you talk about my whole in my in my
Speaker 10: Cajun high biscus when you come back. What's eating?
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm gonna put you on hold and we'll talk
Speaker 1: when I come back. All right, folks, I'll be right back. Alright, folks,
Speaker 1: were back. Hey, we're back. Had a listener Larry sent
Speaker 1: me a product that kind of relates to a conversation
Speaker 1: that I was having a norm about, you know, overly
Speaker 1: folks walking through the garden and not falling. And it's
Speaker 1: a little walker deal. It's called a wheel ease. Well,
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of ease in it. I don't
Speaker 1: know anyway, w h E E L E easy anyway
Speaker 1: it is. It's got big old fat rubbery tires. It's
Speaker 1: for going on the beach with it, and it's like
Speaker 1: a walker for the beach kind of deal. It would
Speaker 1: be good for a garden, but runs about a loving
Speaker 1: hundred bucks. So that's some expensive tomatoes. But anyway, those
Speaker 1: of you who are injured, well and check that. I'm
Speaker 1: not recommending the product, doing anything about it, just public service.
Speaker 1: Had that conversation and caller, Thanks appreciate you sending me
Speaker 1: that information. Larry. All right, let's see here. Well, I
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you talk about ACE hardware stores just
Speaker 1: for a moment. ACE is. Every time I go into
Speaker 1: an ACE, I'm just reminded of how awesome of a
Speaker 1: place they are. And I really you gotta go in
Speaker 1: one to see. I can sit here and describe it
Speaker 1: and tell you about all this stuff. But they have everything.
Speaker 1: They have everything you need and all the fertilizers. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, all the products to control pasts and weeds
Speaker 1: and diseases, and the tools that you might need, and
Speaker 1: on and on to all the things that make outdoor living,
Speaker 1: including the barbecue pits. One of these days, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you about my barbecue pit that I got at
Speaker 1: ACE recently. Oh, we're loving thing, just turning outside into
Speaker 1: a whole new, wonderful living area for us. But ACE
Speaker 1: Hardware stores are all over the area. You can go
Speaker 1: to ACE Hardware Texas. Don't forget Texas. Acehardware Texas dot com.
Speaker 1: That's my garden line ACE Hardware Store group. Acehardware Texas
Speaker 1: dot com. There's an ACE in League City, for example,
Speaker 1: on West League City Parkway. There's an ACE in Katie
Speaker 1: on Pinoak. There's an ACE down on Mason Road in Richmond, Plantation,
Speaker 1: ACE K and m A. Tascasita is in Humble Texas, Fullshare,
Speaker 1: Ace down in Fullshore, Texas on three fifty nine, j
Speaker 1: and Our's Ace Hardware in Porter, Texas, and Bay City
Speaker 1: Ace Hardware. Those are just a few of many, many,
Speaker 1: many Ace Hardware stores here in the area. Go to
Speaker 1: Acehardware Texas dot com, find the one near you, and
Speaker 1: go check it out. You'll be glad you did. Let's see,
Speaker 1: We're going to go now to Malin in Houston. If
Speaker 1: I can find the right button.
Speaker 13: There you go.
Speaker 1: Hey, Melinda, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 14: Good morning, and kudos to ACE Hardware.
Speaker 2: I love them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 14: Can we have a problem, Well, I've had a problem.
Speaker 14: It started last year where spider mites just took over
Speaker 14: my garden that I have in my atrium and I
Speaker 14: sprayed them with a copper fungicide and I just had
Speaker 14: trouble getting under control and it really just affected my
Speaker 14: entire garden. And now they're back again this year and
Speaker 14: I just okay, I've had a recommendation of something else
Speaker 14: to spread my plants, and I just wonder what your sure.
Speaker 1: Sure? Is this an outdoor atrium type area that you're
Speaker 1: talking about? It is, yes, Okay, So the simplest safest
Speaker 1: thing to do for spider mites is to blast them
Speaker 1: with water. So I have a little, you know, one
Speaker 1: of those hose end guns that you spray with, and
Speaker 1: I'll put my hands. If the plants are reachable, like
Speaker 1: head high body hide that you can just blast them
Speaker 1: by putting your hand about the leave and blasting it
Speaker 1: off and just knocking the spider mics off of there.
Speaker 1: They get Really they have a lot of issues when
Speaker 1: they stay too wet. That's why they like hydrot dry, dusty, hot, dry,
Speaker 1: dusty surfaces. So every time you give them a bath,
Speaker 1: it's like you're causing fungal diseases of their body or
Speaker 1: other issues. So just physically knocking them off getting them
Speaker 1: wet like that once a week more than enough to
Speaker 1: keep them. You do that about three times and you've
Speaker 1: got them in check enough to get by the next
Speaker 1: step would be to put an insecticidal soap or a
Speaker 1: horticultural oil in a spray and spray upward from under
Speaker 1: the leaf. Both the blasting, the soap and the oil
Speaker 1: require you to get the mites wet in order to
Speaker 1: kill them. So if you have one leaf that is
Speaker 1: above another and the spray doesn't get on the leaf
Speaker 1: that's the spray is blocked from. They will not be
Speaker 1: controlled because soap and oil aren't poisons, they're physical killers.
Speaker 1: So coverage is critical. Do them early, early in the morning,
Speaker 1: when it's the coolest time of the day so it
Speaker 1: dries off before the hot bake, the hot baking sun
Speaker 1: would come out, because soaps and oils can both damage
Speaker 1: plants in hot weather with sun baking down on them.
Speaker 1: But I use blasts of water myself. Some plants it's
Speaker 1: just a little impractical to get a blast to work
Speaker 1: on them. You just can't get it to really blast
Speaker 1: the leaf well. And in that case, the soaps and
Speaker 1: oil sprays would be your best bet. And they're both
Speaker 1: super super low toxic. Don't don't don't use copper anymore.
Speaker 1: That won't work at all.
Speaker 8: Right, Okay, And I understand, like I can do that.
Speaker 14: I have a bunch of plants, but I can do that.
Speaker 14: But I also have an ivy that they got on
Speaker 14: last year, and it would be almost impossible to do
Speaker 14: that ivy.
Speaker 1: It would be it is absolutely impossible of doing an
Speaker 1: ivy like that. There are some mitasides out there. There
Speaker 1: used to be a product called Kelthane. I think it.
Speaker 1: I think it's still on the market, but I'm not
Speaker 1: sure of that. But you know, going into an ice
Speaker 1: hardware and saying, hey, what what do you have for
Speaker 1: spider may? Do you have anything like Kelthane? And I'd
Speaker 1: have to check to see if that one's still around.
Speaker 1: We've generally have gotten away from those because when you
Speaker 1: use those kind of things, you often kill the beneficials
Speaker 1: that are keeping the spider mites somewhat in check, and
Speaker 1: then you have worse problems. But there are i'll call
Speaker 1: them spidermight poison type products that you could also use.
Speaker 8: And how do you spell that one?
Speaker 12: Kelthane?
Speaker 1: Would well? Kelthane is k E L T h A
Speaker 1: n E. And I I probably shouldn't even have brought
Speaker 1: it up without me first going and checking and making
Speaker 1: sure that it that it actually is available.
Speaker 14: Still, okay, all right, okay, I hope this works and
Speaker 14: I appreciate your Yeah.
Speaker 1: You bet, thanks for the call. Appreciate that a lot. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's time to do your night Fass super Turf if
Speaker 1: you have them already. Nitrofass Super Turf. It's slow release,
Speaker 1: gets out there, releases for four months in your in
Speaker 1: your lawn and just makes things look good. It really
Speaker 1: really is an awesome fertilizer, widely available. You're gonna find
Speaker 1: it at places like in Jennet Gardens and Richmond Rosenberg,
Speaker 1: or maybe the M and D and Cyprus, or Katie
Speaker 1: A's Hardware on pennok all places you're going to find
Speaker 1: night foss products like that super turf. All right, well,
Speaker 1: music means I gotta quit talking, and I will. We
Speaker 1: will be back though, if you'd like to give me
Speaker 1: a call, be one of the first up seven one
Speaker 1: three two one two k t r H seven one
Speaker 1: three two one two k t r H. I want
Speaker 1: to remind you again about the website. I still talk
Speaker 1: to a lot of people that have ever been there.
Speaker 1: Gardening with skip dot com. Gardening with skip dot com.
Speaker 1: Look at what's up there. My schedules are up there,
Speaker 1: you can print them out, and there's lots more time
Speaker 1: for me to grab another cup of coffee. Talk to
Speaker 1: you in a minute. All right, folks, Hey, we're back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to guarden Line. Glad you're with us today,
Speaker 1: looking forward to hoping you have a successful and more
Speaker 1: enjoyable gardening experience. If you like to give me a
Speaker 1: call seven one three two one two k t r H.
Speaker 1: By the way, I just saw, uh, Angie, I we
Speaker 1: had somehow you slipped through the cracks on my calls
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't getting back to you. So if you
Speaker 1: like to give me a call back, be happy to
Speaker 1: visit with you a little bit more. And in fact,
Speaker 1: as I say that, there we go. All right, Hey, Angie,
Speaker 1: that's funny. Sorry about that. I just stuck you on
Speaker 1: a shelf and forgot you were there. My apologies.
Speaker 4: That's all right.
Speaker 10: I'm very patient.
Speaker 1: Good, well, I'm trying that patient. So you have some
Speaker 1: You had a hole in a bud of a hibiscus.
Speaker 10: Right, yes, my cage hibiscus.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that is a caterpillar hole. And there are
Speaker 1: various kinds of caterpillars that will chew on the leaves
Speaker 1: of hibiscus and also sometimes chew on the little buds.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It often is a little bit cosmetic and not maybe
Speaker 1: worth getting out a spray bottle and mixing up stuff
Speaker 1: and spraying if you want to spray to control them.
Speaker 1: Either BT products products that contain an ingredient b as
Speaker 1: a boy teas and Tom the proper name of the
Speaker 1: of the bacteria as basillistheringiensis. That's why we just say
Speaker 1: bt or A. Spino said products s P I N
Speaker 1: O S A D spin No sad. They are both organic.
Speaker 1: They're both caterpillar killers, and you would just have to
Speaker 1: spray ahead of time and when they chew in, they
Speaker 1: get the product and it kills them. I think Spino
Speaker 1: said would work better for this situation. To be honest,
Speaker 1: if it were mine, I probably would just tolerate a
Speaker 1: little damage unless it just got really bad.
Speaker 10: All right, I'll leave it b and then you know
Speaker 10: we were talking about that fund decide for the gray
Speaker 10: leaf spot on the Peggy Martin. The one I have
Speaker 10: is in in fues is the brand name that I have,
Speaker 10: and the chemical starts.
Speaker 15: With the P p R O p.
Speaker 1: Oh propaconaisole. Okay, yeah, that's fine, that would work to
Speaker 1: It's fine. It's another good one if you If you
Speaker 1: do that, that that is essentially well, it's the same
Speaker 1: category as the emmynox that I gave you. It's a
Speaker 1: different ingredient with the same category, So don't don't alternate
Speaker 1: between those two. But the infuse should work. And if
Speaker 1: you needed to change from the infuse. Then the dacanil
Speaker 1: is a different category and we try to switch to
Speaker 1: avoid resistance issues.
Speaker 10: Okay, okay, all right, well thank you very much.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, thanks for your pure no work.
Speaker 1: You take care. Bye bye. Plans for All Seasons on
Speaker 1: Tomball Parkway just north of Luetta Garden Center bet Arounds
Speaker 1: is nineteen seventy three. I mean, we're talking about a
Speaker 1: family owned operation of folks that know what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: They are true lawn and garden experts, they really are.
Speaker 1: You can take them pictures, you can bring in samples.
Speaker 1: They can help you. They can help solve problems that
Speaker 1: you would have. They could even make suggestions, you know,
Speaker 1: like oh, I want to do a container, but it's
Speaker 1: only going to get about a third of a day sun,
Speaker 1: and I want it this and I want that. And
Speaker 1: they'll just walk around with you, pick out some plants
Speaker 1: and say put these together. They would look really nice.
Speaker 1: You can give them a call two eight, one, three
Speaker 1: seven six sixteen forty six, or go to Plants for
Speaker 1: All Seasons dot com. Whatever you do, and if you
Speaker 1: take pride in your landscape and in your garden and
Speaker 1: in your lawn, you need to visit plants for all seasons.
Speaker 1: On two forty nine, they will help turn what you
Speaker 1: think maybe a brown thumb into something green. Let's go
Speaker 1: to Netherland now and talk to Randy. Hello, Randy, welcome
Speaker 1: to guard Line.
Speaker 11: How are you this morning.
Speaker 1: I'm doing well, Thank you, good skip.
Speaker 12: My question is about tomato seeds that are a year old.
Speaker 3: If I plant them and they germinate, is there any
Speaker 3: reason to think that that the plant would the inferior
Speaker 3: to a seed that was from this year.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 1: Now, if they were stuck out in a hundred and
Speaker 1: something degree hot, you know, storage shed outside, then that
Speaker 1: will take a toll on viability. But tomatoes will last
Speaker 1: a year easy. As a seed gets more towards the
Speaker 1: end of its viability, like where if you plant them
Speaker 1: only half the seeds have come up, They're going to
Speaker 1: be a little bit weaker as an early on seedling,
Speaker 1: but then they should hit the ground and catch up
Speaker 1: and be okay. But a year old is not a
Speaker 1: problem with tomatoes. Okay, I appreciate it all right, Renny,
Speaker 1: you take care, Thanks, thank you, appreciate appreciate that very much.
Speaker 1: Heirloom soils, when you think of heirloom soils. You think
Speaker 1: of quality products, and you think of selection. And when
Speaker 1: I say that, I mean do you need something for
Speaker 1: roses and other bloomers. Do you need some them for
Speaker 1: vegetables and herbs? Do you need something for fruit trees?
Speaker 1: Do you need a nice quality screened compost leaf mold
Speaker 1: compost to go on top of your lawn? Do you
Speaker 1: need a lawn mix just to fill in some holes,
Speaker 1: level things out a little bit, and get ready for
Speaker 1: planting that lawn? What do you need? Do you need
Speaker 1: mulches of many kinds? Heirloom soils They have it all.
Speaker 1: You can buy it by the bag at your local
Speaker 1: garden centers and feed stores and ace hardware stores in
Speaker 1: places like that. You can buy it by the bulk.
Speaker 1: You can have them deliver it and dump it on
Speaker 1: the driveway. You can have them deliver it and bring
Speaker 1: it in. A big supersac that holds a cubic yard
Speaker 1: is neat and clean and easy. It doesn't matter how
Speaker 1: you want to go about it. Just start by going
Speaker 1: to heirloomsoils dot com. Learn about the products you want,
Speaker 1: find out where to get them, and then go do
Speaker 1: the right thing, which is start with the brown stuff.
Speaker 1: The soil so that the green stuff the plants thrive.
Speaker 1: They hit the ground running. Super quality products. I use
Speaker 1: them myself, never had one that didn't work in the
Speaker 1: most outstanding way. It is really good stuff. This is
Speaker 1: not cheap hurried through low quality like you buy. You know,
Speaker 1: you go someplace and you find something that looks less expensive,
Speaker 1: Well it's cheaper or meaning it's cheap, it's junk. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work. There's see so much of that, especially in
Speaker 1: big box stores and things. Airloom soils, quality products, reasonable price,
Speaker 1: and they work. Gardening is supposed to be fun. Don't
Speaker 1: make it harder on yourself by using cheap junk. Get
Speaker 1: a quality product like airloom soil that's made right so
Speaker 1: that it does work, so you can have success. Let's
Speaker 1: go now out to let's see here, go to Fairfield
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk to Marty. Hello, Marty, welcome
Speaker 1: to garden Line.
Speaker 12: Morning morning, Skip.
Speaker 10: Thank you for the.
Speaker 16: The list, the email that you sent back to me. Hey,
Speaker 16: I just three souded the whole side of my yard
Speaker 16: and because of Virginia button weed and it's coming back.
Speaker 16: And I wondered what I could use right now because
Speaker 16: I used whatever you had on your website. I used
Speaker 16: that on the front lawne and it seemed to have
Speaker 16: weakened the grass a little bit.
Speaker 12: So in this well former.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, Virginia button we it's hard to kill and
Speaker 1: it takes a good punch to kill it. And Saint
Speaker 1: Augustine is susceptible when weather gets up in the nineties
Speaker 1: to some of those products, and so I would recommend
Speaker 1: a product called Celsius, like the temperature fahrenheit and Celsius.
Speaker 1: Celsius you can use it even into the lower to
Speaker 1: mid nineties and it'll be okay without stressing your Saint
Speaker 1: Augustine as well. And the trials I've seen across the
Speaker 1: southeast US Celsius has been as good against the Virginia
Speaker 1: button weed about anything that's over the counter in the
Speaker 1: garden centers. So I thought would be the one I
Speaker 1: would go with.
Speaker 16: Okay, I'm gonna be at the plants for all season,
Speaker 16: not until Tuesdays. There's something I can just put in
Speaker 16: this one little one by it's just like a one
Speaker 16: foot by five inch area to kind of hold it
Speaker 16: for a couple of.
Speaker 1: Days to kill the Virginia button weed. You mean, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: if It's only one foot by five and I mean
Speaker 1: you could pretty much squirt anything on it. Just do
Speaker 1: it early in the morning. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: have a product that has like trimech in it, or
Speaker 1: if you have a product like Baun eye beater, or
Speaker 1: if you have fertilan weed free zone. Just get down
Speaker 1: close and do as as best you can. Get it
Speaker 1: on the Virginia button weed rather than the grass. But
Speaker 1: that's a really small spot. And I would if you
Speaker 1: do it in the morning. Temperatures are cool, uh, and
Speaker 1: it has plenty of time to dry out before the
Speaker 1: sun gets hot. I think you'd be okay with any
Speaker 1: of those right now.
Speaker 15: Okay, you have image with turbo it.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's in image with turbo.
Speaker 16: Dister fact it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh okay, yeah, oh the turbos. Yes, let me
Speaker 1: check on that image. I'm not sure on that. I'm
Speaker 1: up against a really hard break here at Marty, but
Speaker 1: I'll see something when when I can come back to it. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, thank you, bye bye, all right, folks, I'll
Speaker 1: be right back alrighty, welcome back to Guardline. Good have
Speaker 1: you with us? Got plenty of things we canna be
Speaker 1: talking about today, and the callers are all over the
Speaker 1: board when it comes to topics, so that's good. It
Speaker 1: kind of makes it fun. Hey, D and D Feed
Speaker 1: and Tombole awesome, awesome feed store. Of course, it's a
Speaker 1: feed store. You get all the livestock feeds and things
Speaker 1: you want, but you also get some really high quality
Speaker 1: foods too. They have a number of different brands to
Speaker 1: choose from, and dnd feed is a one stop shop
Speaker 1: when it comes to things for your garden and your
Speaker 1: lawn also. For example, you're going to find fertilizers from
Speaker 1: Nitrofoss and Microlife, Nelson turf Star, and from Medina and
Speaker 1: General Nelson plant foods in the jars as well as
Speaker 1: Microlife in the jars too. You're going to find soils
Speaker 1: from heirloom soils for example. Dand Feed carries things that
Speaker 1: you can't find everywhere when it comes to certain products
Speaker 1: for treating weeds or diseases or insects in your lawns,
Speaker 1: in your gardens, shrubs, trees, whatever. You got, dand Feed's
Speaker 1: going to have the supplies that you need to have success.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with the pests and roadents outdoors. They've got
Speaker 1: you covered. You need Mosquita dunks and other Mosquita product
Speaker 1: control products. They've got you covered. D and D feed
Speaker 1: three miles west of two forty nine on FM twenty
Speaker 1: nine in Toombol two eight one three five one seven
Speaker 1: one forty four two eight one three five one seventy
Speaker 1: one forty four. We're going to run out now to
Speaker 1: cypress and talk to John. Hello, John, Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 4: Hey, thank you skip.
Speaker 9: Hey.
Speaker 17: I have a question.
Speaker 18: I've never aerrated my yard before, and I've kind of
Speaker 18: been thinking about it, and I think I'm going to
Speaker 18: try to do it this weekend, and I was curious
Speaker 18: if you could if I go rent an aerrator, can
Speaker 18: you help me understand? So once I air rate, I
Speaker 18: think the next step would be compost top dressing.
Speaker 19: But can you help walk me through.
Speaker 18: The things that would be beneficial for my yard? I
Speaker 18: have Saint Augustine grass.
Speaker 1: Okay, so number one you want A first thing you
Speaker 1: do is turn on your sprinklers and get you some
Speaker 1: little metal, little wire flags. And everywhere there's a sprinkler head,
Speaker 1: put a flag in so that you're not destroying sprinkler
Speaker 1: heads with the aeration. You don't want that Okay, I've
Speaker 1: done that extra work. Yeah. Second, you want the soil well,
Speaker 1: this may have been even first, but you want the
Speaker 1: soil to be moderately moist, not soggy, guey, wet, and
Speaker 1: definitely not hard heart dry, so that you get the
Speaker 1: most out of your aeration and then get your product.
Speaker 1: If you can find a core aerator, one that pulls
Speaker 1: cores out of the soil rather than just squeezing a
Speaker 1: hole into the soil, then do a core aerator. It's
Speaker 1: better to do that. Go over the lawn left right,
Speaker 1: north south east west. If you will do two different ways,
Speaker 1: make good aeration through the lawn, and then spread your
Speaker 1: leaf more compost roughly about a third of an inch
Speaker 1: thick something like that is plenty to put out there
Speaker 1: on it and rake it around and it'll it'll go
Speaker 1: down in the hole. So you do their. You do
Speaker 1: the aeration first, you do the leaf moll compost second.
Speaker 1: And you can buy it by the bag. You can
Speaker 1: buy it by the bulk. You can have them to
Speaker 1: deliver it. You know, if you need a whole QBICR
Speaker 1: of it. If you go to airloom Soils website airloomsoils
Speaker 1: dot com there's a calculator and you can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: my yard is this big and I want to put
Speaker 1: it this deep, and it'll tell you exactly how much
Speaker 1: you need. Then you know if a book delivery is
Speaker 1: needed or not. And you can also go pick it
Speaker 1: up if you happen to have a trailer or truck.
Speaker 1: But however you want to go.
Speaker 18: Okay, what about like fertilizers or any products that I
Speaker 18: could spray on to help my grass?
Speaker 1: Is there anything? Or should I just wait after I
Speaker 1: do the compost? Yeah, wait until the whole thing's over.
Speaker 1: If you if you wanted to, if you're gonna do fertilization,
Speaker 1: I would probably do it. I don't know. You could
Speaker 1: do it first and then do the aeration and top dressing,
Speaker 1: or you could air rate fertilize and then top dress.
Speaker 1: However you want to go about it is fine either way.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter with the fertilizer what order you
Speaker 1: put it in, but just put it out at the
Speaker 1: right rate. Follow my skin schedule in terms of the
Speaker 1: products to use for this time of the year. Sure,
Speaker 1: and you should be good to go. Water it in
Speaker 1: real good when you're done. Okay.
Speaker 18: Last question, Also, like I've heard it and read about hummates.
Speaker 18: If I put humates down, would that help?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Humates are always good. No, hum mates are like
Speaker 1: concentrated compost. I would do it after the aerration. Micro
Speaker 1: Life's purple bag called Humates plus. You can put it
Speaker 1: out now. There's going to be a rate on the bag.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to go a little higher than that rate,
Speaker 1: it is not going to hurt anything. It just is
Speaker 1: adding more humans to the soil, and so that that
Speaker 1: would be a good thing, and it would with the
Speaker 1: aerration it would get it down below the surface too,
Speaker 1: which is even better.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, okay, sounds like you're off to a
Speaker 1: good start. John, you bet, thank you. I appreciate appreciate
Speaker 1: your call. Yeah, good idea. Hey, Nelson Water Garden and
Speaker 1: Nursery out there in Katie, Texas is theur West Houston
Speaker 1: Premier Garden Center. And when I say premiere, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about a destination type garden center you take your friends to.
Speaker 1: People travel from distances to get there because it's so cool.
Speaker 1: They have been basically they have been a leader when
Speaker 1: it comes to all things water garden across the country
Speaker 1: now for years. They are awesome. But what you're gonna
Speaker 1: find when you go to Nelson is not just water
Speaker 1: garden stuff. You're going to find plants from house plants
Speaker 1: to beautiful little They have a little thing called a
Speaker 1: sand dollar cactus and you just got to go look
Speaker 1: at them. They're cute. They're a little dark, dark gray
Speaker 1: green with kind of white silvery spots on them. They
Speaker 1: have little pretty low ballooms on them. Really cool. When
Speaker 1: you're there, you're going to find plants for you know,
Speaker 1: vegetables and herbs and shrubs and trees and flowers, and
Speaker 1: certainly water garden plants do really really well. So Nelson
Speaker 1: Water Gardens and Nursery and Katie on Fort Ben Road.
Speaker 1: You just turn north on Katie Fort Benroad. It's just
Speaker 1: a little bit up on the right hand side. Nelsonwatergardens
Speaker 1: dot Com. Let's go now to Pinehurst, Texas and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk to Marcus. Hello, Marcus, Hi, thanks for
Speaker 1: taking my call.
Speaker 20: I have a question about a magnolia tree.
Speaker 10: I have.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have a.
Speaker 20: By garden area. It's mostly just a mult going around
Speaker 20: the tree. It's about a ten foot diameter circle. And
Speaker 20: my tree it wasn't taken care of by the previous owner.
Speaker 20: So now it's grown way out and it's growing down
Speaker 20: and I would really like to trim this tree, but
Speaker 20: I know magnolias are sensitive, so I didn't know if
Speaker 20: you had any.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's okay to prove them, primarily them in the winter,
Speaker 1: but you can do some printing right now. The thing
Speaker 1: with magnolias is part of their natural beauty and form
Speaker 1: is when the branches go all the way to the ground.
Speaker 1: We say the skirt goes all the way to the
Speaker 1: ground on the tree, the foldage skirt. And that's fine.
Speaker 1: If you want to train them up where they have
Speaker 1: a trunk and then the branches start at some height,
Speaker 1: you can do that. There's no problem with doing that.
Speaker 1: It's just that it's difficult to get things to grow
Speaker 1: under a magnolia, and so you know, when you train
Speaker 1: it up because of the density of shade year round,
Speaker 1: it's kind of difficult. And sometimes people just let them
Speaker 1: go all the way to the ground. That's purely aesthetic.
Speaker 1: Your choice.
Speaker 20: Yeah, I know my wife would prefer that, but I'm
Speaker 20: probably sitting the outside of the tree is, or the
Speaker 20: drip line of the tree is probably sitting about three
Speaker 20: to four feet outside of what I've got already. Okay,
Speaker 20: my front yard is not that big.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, trim them up, trim them up to a
Speaker 1: certain height. If you want to do part of it
Speaker 1: now and go up a certain height and then in
Speaker 1: the wintertime go up a little higher. You can. You
Speaker 1: can do that just kind of. Look. Sometimes it means
Speaker 1: a branch needs to come off the trunk. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: just means maybe there's a fork in the branch and
Speaker 1: one side's going down low and the other west side's
Speaker 1: coming up higher, and you can just make that cut
Speaker 1: at the fork and not have to remove the whole
Speaker 1: branch at the trunk. But you're not gonna there's not
Speaker 1: a right or wrong on this. You're gonna be okay,
Speaker 1: just go with your ascetic preferences. Let me say wife's
Speaker 1: aesthetic preferences.
Speaker 20: Okay, I have read some things that you need to
Speaker 20: keep your cutting tools as sanitary as possible.
Speaker 8: Is it.
Speaker 20: Wipe everything down with alcohol and all.
Speaker 1: That kind of all right, So it's just a if
Speaker 1: we're dealing with things that maybe does like hankers and things,
Speaker 1: we sterilize it between cuts. But in general, you don't
Speaker 1: need in pruning the landscape to always sterilize in between
Speaker 1: every cut and on a magnolia. I don't think you
Speaker 1: have a problem with that. I wouldn't worry about it.
Speaker 1: If you want to get your bottle or a spray,
Speaker 1: a spray can of Lye sool and just spray the prunters.
Speaker 1: It's fast and easy that way. Uh, if you want
Speaker 1: to do that, okay, good luck.
Speaker 20: So I appreciate it, all right.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Appreciate appreciate your call very much.
Speaker 1: All right, folks, well here we go. We are up
Speaker 1: against another break, Jay and deer Park. You are going
Speaker 1: to be first when we come back from a little
Speaker 1: quick break here for the rest of you. Seven to
Speaker 1: one three two one two kt r H. Seven to
Speaker 1: one three two one two kt r H. Take a
Speaker 1: little quick break and we'll be right back. Don't go away,
Speaker 1: all right, folks, welcome back. Good have you with us
Speaker 1: here on Guardline. Hey, I won't tell you about a
Speaker 1: new company here on Guardline, and that is Arctic Insulation Solutions. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't have to tell you. It's getting hot outside.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in your attic during the summertime?
Speaker 1: It is hot in your eye? I mean it could
Speaker 1: get up the like one hundred and fifty hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty degrees in an addict. Typically one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: is no surprise at all. And what where does that
Speaker 1: heat go? Well, it's rating in all directions and it's
Speaker 1: coming through your roof. And when you have issues that
Speaker 1: are based around lack of proper insulation and ceiling up there,
Speaker 1: you're going to be working your conditioner overtime. Now, the
Speaker 1: folks at Arctic Insulation Solutions, they know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: They know how to help you save money on your
Speaker 1: cooling costs. Say wear and tear on your AC unit,
Speaker 1: Extend the life expectancy of your unit, cut out on
Speaker 1: the maintenance cost of your AC. A lot of people's
Speaker 1: a see you know, they'll set it on seventy two,
Speaker 1: but it'll just run all day long and it only
Speaker 1: gets to seventy eight or seventy five. It never catches up.
Speaker 1: It can't keep up with the thermostat. So you want
Speaker 1: your home to be more comfortable where it's actually cooler
Speaker 1: in your house like you want it to be, Well,
Speaker 1: why not make your home more efficient? And they're a
Speaker 1: one stop shop for all customized insulation needs, all it needs.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I don't care if you live out West or Brookshire,
Speaker 1: if you're over in Baytown to the east, north and
Speaker 1: Willis South and Galveston. They service that whole area. And
Speaker 1: they've got a couple of things they can have us
Speaker 1: several things that they can do. First of all, they
Speaker 1: can put a full radiant barrier in your roof that
Speaker 1: reflects the heats like you know how we use aluminum foil.
Speaker 1: We know that that reflects the heatback the do that
Speaker 1: up on the in the attic itself, on the rafters
Speaker 1: if you will, and reflect that heat back out and
Speaker 1: allow it to escape out the top and move out
Speaker 1: of that attic space. Huge difference about thirty degree or
Speaker 1: more difference in the temperature of your attic cuts down
Speaker 1: on that HVAC strain that's going on because it's so
Speaker 1: dad gum hot up there. Reduces the transferred down into
Speaker 1: your nice living room space where you're trying to enjoy life. Second,
Speaker 1: fiberglass insulation. They can do any kind of insulation you
Speaker 1: need up there. Any kind There's a lot of different
Speaker 1: approaches to insulation. The most economical and one that works
Speaker 1: really really well is blown fiberglass with an r value
Speaker 1: of thirty eight on top of the ceiling. They get
Speaker 1: in there quick. I mean, if it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of putting some new fiberglass to make a good dense
Speaker 1: insulation and the floor of the attic, they can do
Speaker 1: that in a few hours, very minimal disruption to your day.
Speaker 1: But it lasts a very long time and its thermal
Speaker 1: properties are outstanding. It also, by the way, is fire
Speaker 1: resistant and moist sure resistant as well. Another thing they
Speaker 1: can do is put a solar attic fan in. Now,
Speaker 1: a solar attic fan. Whenever the temperatures go above eighty
Speaker 1: five or you get above seventy five percent humidity up
Speaker 1: in the attic. We don't want mold and stuff up there.
Speaker 1: That attic fan that's powered by the sun. It comes
Speaker 1: on and moves about fifteen hundred cubic feet per minute
Speaker 1: right out of that attic. Regular normal temperature outdoor airs
Speaker 1: coming in, and it's taking all that excess heat out,
Speaker 1: preventing mold and mildew in the process, lifetime orranty on
Speaker 1: those by the way, they'll go in. They can take
Speaker 1: old insulation out, that dusty, moldy insallation. They can disinfect
Speaker 1: that airspace so your air quality is improved. You know,
Speaker 1: issues like mold and whatnot that you're dealing with. And
Speaker 1: then they do air seal around your light fixtures. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever noticed this or not, but
Speaker 1: you go up in the attic. You go up in
Speaker 1: the attic when it's dark up there, turn off the
Speaker 1: light up there, and look down where your AC registers
Speaker 1: stick through the ceiling or where a light fixture is,
Speaker 1: and you'll see light. And what that means is there's
Speaker 1: air moving through there and they can help seal that
Speaker 1: off and the wall plates and so on. It's just
Speaker 1: like closing a window. And they did some studies I
Speaker 1: think it was Colorado. They did some studies where they
Speaker 1: looked at just the effect of sealing up those spaces
Speaker 1: in the ceiling and it was like it was like
Speaker 1: you had your windows open on the house and suddenly
Speaker 1: you close your windows. It makes a lot of difference.
Speaker 1: Arctic Insulations does all of that.
Speaker 17: Now.
Speaker 1: I know I'm spending some time telling you about them,
Speaker 1: but I just want you to understand the kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff they do. They're professionals. They have many options. You
Speaker 1: can say, look, come to the house, I want to
Speaker 1: do it all. I want it all top notch, or
Speaker 1: you can say, look, I got this much to spend.
Speaker 1: Is what are the things you would recommend? And they'll
Speaker 1: give you a package of things that fit your budget.
Speaker 1: These are the things we can do that are the
Speaker 1: low hanging fruit, the most important things that you should do,
Speaker 1: because they know how to do that. Arctic Insulation Solutions
Speaker 1: right down their email Arctic Houston dot com. By the way,
Speaker 1: Arctic for those of you who didn't pass spelling in school,
Speaker 1: a RC tic Arctic is how we should say it.
Speaker 1: I guess Arctic Houston eight three to two five eight
Speaker 1: six twenty eight ninety three. Eight three to two, five
Speaker 1: eight six twenty eight ninety three. We're going to head
Speaker 1: out now to Deer Park and we are going to
Speaker 1: talk to Jay. Hello Jay, and welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 21: Good morning, Skip. I've got some brown pat questions on
Speaker 21: the front yard. I sent over some pictures. I'm not
Speaker 21: sure if you've seen those, have access to them, but
Speaker 21: I did traded for it last year. It's just not
Speaker 21: recovering quite as fast as I thought, so any tips
Speaker 21: on recovery, and probably more important is prevention. This isn't
Speaker 21: the first time it's happened, so I want to try
Speaker 21: to get ahead of it this year.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me let me get that picture of pictures
Speaker 1: that chat back out in front of it. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the brown patch rots the leaves off the runner, and
Speaker 1: then the grass comes back, because it doesn't kill the grass,
Speaker 1: it just rots the leaves off. But in the meantime
Speaker 1: you're left with these spots, and then you're left also
Speaker 1: with more weed problems because the sunlight now can reach
Speaker 1: the soil. When I look at your areas, it looks
Speaker 1: like more than brown patches going on. To me, it
Speaker 1: looks almost like it might be take all root rot.
Speaker 1: As I you know, I can only get so close
Speaker 1: in the photo, but as I'm zooming in and taking
Speaker 1: a look at them, there are just some signs that
Speaker 1: more is going on. There's also some signs of a
Speaker 1: little bit of gray leaf spot and a little bit
Speaker 1: of Saint Augustine decline virus. Okay, So if you go
Speaker 1: up to those spots when you're out there in the
Speaker 1: yard and you see some grass blades, and when you
Speaker 1: pick them, the green has all these little tiny thin
Speaker 1: splotches of not green, kind of tannish yellowish looking in them.
Speaker 1: That's gray leaf that is Saint Augustine declined virus, and
Speaker 1: I think that's what you're dealing with. So the fact
Speaker 1: that there's some seed heads in there, I think it's
Speaker 1: an older type of Saint Augustine maybe, but that's what
Speaker 1: I'm seeing. So my best guess, shooting just from pictures,
Speaker 1: is that you've got an older type of Saint Augustine
Speaker 1: that is weakened by the virus. There's no cure for that.
Speaker 1: Lots of loans have had it over the decades here
Speaker 1: in the Greater Houston area. It's just a matter of
Speaker 1: plugging in, either revamping the lawn holy or just plugging
Speaker 1: in some healthier Saint Augustine's that are resistant to the
Speaker 1: virus to get away from that. The other the take
Speaker 1: all is a root killing disease, and it's showing up
Speaker 1: is some yellowing on your turf and some decline of
Speaker 1: the growth in your turf. I would say that if
Speaker 1: you go to my website and go to my lawn
Speaker 1: pest Disease and we'd management schedule there is it tells
Speaker 1: you about brown patch, it tells you about take all
Speaker 1: root rot. When you would apply things for those I
Speaker 1: would seriously consider doing a take all root rot app
Speaker 1: location this October in your lawn. And finally, the gray
Speaker 1: leaf spot is the spots on the leaves that have
Speaker 1: very ten centers and purplish borders. I see a lot
Speaker 1: of that in those areas. And there's a fungicide product
Speaker 1: by nitrofoss called Eagle a g l E and Eagle
Speaker 1: will control a number of diseases, but also that gray
Speaker 1: leaf spot. So I think I would do an Eagle application.
Speaker 1: I might consider some compost top dressing in some of
Speaker 1: those areas, uh, and then just moderate fertilization on through
Speaker 1: the summer.
Speaker 21: For now, at the beginning of that you talked about
Speaker 21: maybe replacing it. In my mind was going towards cutting
Speaker 21: out that area and putting in new side just in
Speaker 21: those those spots. Yeah, would that be I mean it
Speaker 21: seems to me that would take care of most of that,
Speaker 21: right or should I would you recommend going with them
Speaker 21: and whatnot?
Speaker 1: You you could? You could? That would be that would
Speaker 1: be some work. Just each Saint Augustine is a little different.
Speaker 1: Some are bluer than others, some are more upright than others,
Speaker 1: some that you know, and so you may end up
Speaker 1: with a little splotchiness when you try to put the
Speaker 1: new grass in among that old grass. But that that
Speaker 1: is the only drawback. But I understand certainly you don't
Speaker 1: have to redo the whole lawn just because of this.
Speaker 1: If it were my lawn, I would do I probably
Speaker 1: would do some aerration corroration. I would do a compost
Speaker 1: stop dressing, and then I would be ready this fall
Speaker 1: to do a take all root rot application and then
Speaker 1: that fungicide eagle. I think I would do that and
Speaker 1: let's see if we can bring it back before we
Speaker 1: do the more drastic thing of resotting areas perfect.
Speaker 21: I appreciate the tips. And then there was one other
Speaker 21: picture that was thrown in in there, just just a
Speaker 21: plug for the Vego garden systems.
Speaker 1: I saw that. That that's beautiful. I have a question
Speaker 1: for you, a real quick question. I'm laid on a
Speaker 1: break here, but do those little Christmas ornaments? Do you
Speaker 1: think they help with birds pecking the tomatoes? Have you
Speaker 1: noticed any difference?
Speaker 21: I did weirdly enough, I think it does. This is
Speaker 21: my second year to do them, okay, And I don't
Speaker 21: know if I heard of from Reindy or from yourself.
Speaker 21: But I thought there's a waste of time, and after
Speaker 21: battling it for years, I decided to do it, and
Speaker 21: I honestly think it did make a difference.
Speaker 1: Well, good good. I'm just curious because people have talked
Speaker 1: about that for years and usually they use red ornaments
Speaker 1: so it looks like a ripening tomato or something. But
Speaker 1: I just thought i'd ask, Hey, thanks a lot. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that, and good luck getting that long back and shape.
Speaker 1: If you do those things and can turn it around,
Speaker 1: send me a picture. I'd love to see it. Well
Speaker 1: do thank you, Thank you for the call. Appreciate that.
Speaker 1: All right, I'll be right back, all righty, ready, here
Speaker 1: we go. Love Neil Diamond. If you're listening to guard Line,
Speaker 1: the phone number seven one three two one two ktrh
Speaker 1: Enchanted Forest Garden Center out there in Richmond Rosenberg area.
Speaker 1: They are on FM twenty seven fifty nine. By the way,
Speaker 1: let me give you the website. It is an awesome
Speaker 1: website and you need to go there. You also need
Speaker 1: to follow them on social media, by the way, Enchanted
Speaker 1: Forest Richmond TX dot com. Enchanted Forest Richmond, t X
Speaker 1: dot com. They are loaded with all kinds of cool
Speaker 1: and unusual things right now, I mean beautiful beautiful things,
Speaker 1: things that bloom and vines like mendevilla and diplodinia. They
Speaker 1: have beautiful hibiscus, they have beautiful pilumerias. They've got all
Speaker 1: kinds of yard art that's just gargous. By the way,
Speaker 1: Plumeria is the Hawaiian layflower. You are the one you
Speaker 1: make a necklace out of. Looks really really good. You
Speaker 1: need a vitec street. You see those blooming around town.
Speaker 1: That beautiful purple blue blossoms just go on into summer.
Speaker 1: It's a great pollinator attractor too. Has a nice fragrance too,
Speaker 1: by the way, they've got those there. Now you need
Speaker 1: to know about this public service announcement. Today Today at
Speaker 1: Eningended Forest Gended Forest in Richmond Rosenberg area two thirty
Speaker 1: to four to thirty is the Tomato Tasting Contest. Don't
Speaker 1: miss this. You got a tomato on a haul out there?
Speaker 1: Check in is it two thirty okay? Starts at three
Speaker 1: check ins at two thirty. It's a free event, family friendly,
Speaker 1: all ages. All ages can be part of this. You
Speaker 1: can celebrate that joy that comes in growing, tasting and
Speaker 1: sharing tomatoes. Now they're going to give awards for judges choice,
Speaker 1: the best tasting tomato, the biggest tomato by weight, the
Speaker 1: People's choice, the crowd favorite one most people like, and
Speaker 1: the best tomato themed costume. So there you go. Don't
Speaker 1: know if you have time to sew one still, but
Speaker 1: the best tomata theme costume Enchedded Forest Tomato Tasting Contest today.
Speaker 1: While you're there, go what is it their herb house?
Speaker 1: Unbelievable selection in the herb house. I mean they have
Speaker 1: so many different kinds of herb. I talk about that
Speaker 1: their herb selection all the time. But try this on
Speaker 1: for size. Eighteen varieties of basil. Do you think you
Speaker 1: can find one you like out of eighteen varieties of basil? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Nine varieties of ment, eight varieties a time, five types
Speaker 1: of aregano, Mexican marigol, lemon, verbena, deal, fennel, onion, chiveed card.
Speaker 1: It just goes on and on go. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you can't go tomatoes without oregano. Right, You've got to
Speaker 1: be able to and basil. You got to be able
Speaker 1: to make pestos and things well. Intended Forest Richmond Rosenberg
Speaker 1: Intended Forest Richmond, TX dot com. We're gonna head out
Speaker 1: the phones. Now go to sugar Land and talk to Samuel.
Speaker 1: Hello Samuel, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 17: Good morning. Just have a quick question. I've been working
Speaker 17: with a company called True Green, and I am not
Speaker 17: saying they're doing a bad job, but I'm having a
Speaker 17: real problem with crabgrass and Okay, I'm torn between just
Speaker 17: you know, digging them. There's so many of them. I
Speaker 17: would say, is it a bad idea just to pull
Speaker 17: them out and put new grass or just continue with
Speaker 17: the process that they're saying it'll.
Speaker 15: Go away over time.
Speaker 1: Well, it goes away when your lawn gets so dense
Speaker 1: that light can't get to the ground and the seeds
Speaker 1: can't get started. But most lawns are gonna have some
Speaker 1: thinness to them. That's why on my schedule you'll see
Speaker 1: barricade applications in mid February because crabgrass is an early germinator,
Speaker 1: and you got to put it down before the crabgrass germinates. Now,
Speaker 1: if you get a good pull pulling of your crabgrass out,
Speaker 1: then you could do a barricade even now watered in
Speaker 1: with a half inch of water, and then future seeds
Speaker 1: that would come up, it'll stop those for about sixty
Speaker 1: days or more in your lawn, so that that would
Speaker 1: be an option for you.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I just it seems like every time I pull
Speaker 17: it out put new grass. I'm good for about six
Speaker 17: to eight months, and then inside of a year they
Speaker 17: show up in different spots.
Speaker 1: Well, two things. Number one, just what I said, follow
Speaker 1: the schedule. You can avoid crabgrass that way. Secondly, if
Speaker 1: you want to send some pictures up close, pull some up,
Speaker 1: lay it on a dark surface like a kitchen table
Speaker 1: or something, and take a picture of it in good
Speaker 1: sharp focus. If you've got seed heads on it, that's
Speaker 1: even better. Let me make sure we're talking about crabgrass,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of grasses some of them look
Speaker 1: somewhat like that. But I'll be happy to do that
Speaker 1: for you, Samuel. But my schedule is available at gardening
Speaker 1: with Skip dot com, and if you send the photos,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put you on hold. If you want
Speaker 1: to stick around, my producer will pick up and tell
Speaker 1: you how to send me some photos so we make
Speaker 1: sure we're talking about the same grass. But thank you
Speaker 1: very much, I do appreciate that call. Speaking of lawns,
Speaker 1: Nelson Plant Food has outstanding products for the lawns. We've
Speaker 1: talked about a number of different things that they carry,
Speaker 1: super quality products I won't call weedinator. Wheedenator is a
Speaker 1: herbicide that kills existing weeds. We usually talk about that
Speaker 1: in the springtime. They do have the Slow and Easy,
Speaker 1: which is a summer fertilization product that lasts for four
Speaker 1: months or more. You put Slow and Easy down from
Speaker 1: Nelson now and you're not going to fertilize again until
Speaker 1: the fall fertilization. It is that slow. It has several
Speaker 1: different kinds of nitrogen in it, and each one releases
Speaker 1: at a little different pace, and so you get this
Speaker 1: nice even feeding with Nelson Slow and Easy, Slow and easy,
Speaker 1: easy to remember, easy to apply, and you will love
Speaker 1: the way your lawn looks when you use it. It
Speaker 1: is a super quality product based on turf research science
Speaker 1: that knows exactly what grass needs, what it needs, and
Speaker 1: what ratios and how to apply it. Nelson's Plant Food,
Speaker 1: Slow and Easy. Piercecapes is who I would tell someone
Speaker 1: to call if they wanted if they're on needed professional help.
Speaker 1: If you need professional help, that's a different phone call.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Pierscapes they can come in, they can revamp
Speaker 1: They can redo your irrigation system. Maybe inefficient, they can
Speaker 1: fix that. Do you have bad drainage, they can fix that.
Speaker 1: Do you want landscape lighting, They can do that. Go
Speaker 1: to the website get the inspiration from there. Pierce Scapes
Speaker 1: dot com. Piercescapes dot com two eight one three seven
Speaker 1: oh fifty sixty. These are professional folks that know how
Speaker 1: to do it right, and they can do whether it's
Speaker 1: a big job or a small job. They can make
Speaker 1: your place a showplace, that little garden of Eden that
Speaker 1: we all want when we dream of our beautiful outdoor
Speaker 1: living environment around our homes. Pest Bros. The landscape pest
Speaker 1: and pest management company and the indoor pest management company
Speaker 1: that we talk about here on Guardline. They cover from
Speaker 1: Texas City all the way up to the Woodlands up
Speaker 1: Interstate forty five. They go from Baytown on the east
Speaker 1: all the way to Katie on the west. They can
Speaker 1: fix termit situations. They can fix fire ins and mosquitos
Speaker 1: and wild varmints and whatever you're going after. The Pestbros
Speaker 1: dot Com Dpestbros dot com two eight one, two oh
Speaker 1: six forty six seventy two eight one two oh six
Speaker 1: four six seven zero. This week I posted something about
Speaker 1: my mosquito bucket system. I reposted what the mosquito buckets
Speaker 1: are all about. And this next week I'm going to
Speaker 1: give an update from my yard on how the mosquito
Speaker 1: buckets I have from pest Bros. Have been working. So
Speaker 1: stay tuned for that. Follow us on Facebook, by the way,
Speaker 1: garden Line on Facebook, or you can follow me also
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Gardening with Skip on Instagram. Our garden Line
Speaker 1: with skip. Excuse me, garden Line with Skip on Instagram.
Speaker 1: We post things periodically say pretty regularly that will help
Speaker 1: you have a beautiful and bountiful garden. I'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to garden Line. Hey, by a hour today,
Speaker 1: No time for you to give us a call if
Speaker 1: you got a question. Seven one three two one two
Speaker 1: kt r H seven one three two one two k
Speaker 1: t r H Houston powder coders. You've heard me talk
Speaker 1: about them before. They are the biggest powder coder in
Speaker 1: this region. Six acre operation, over seventy five employees. I mean,
Speaker 1: these people are serious about powder coating. They got ben
Speaker 1: Sebiggie and drab a whole Traguzhnak trailer in there and
Speaker 1: get it powder coded. But from a home garden standpoint,
Speaker 1: what do you have outside that's metal that you would
Speaker 1: like to make beautiful and to preserve its quality. Maybe
Speaker 1: you've got some outdoor furniture that's starting to rust a
Speaker 1: little bit. Well, they can deal with the rust. They
Speaker 1: need maybe a broken well need's fixing, and need some
Speaker 1: new hardware like rusty bolts and things. I'll put stainless
Speaker 1: steel ones on there. Anything that it needs to get
Speaker 1: it back in the shape it was. That includes straps
Speaker 1: and you know, sling fabric and vinyl straps and those
Speaker 1: little plastic rubber feet that go on the bottom of
Speaker 1: some of the tubular furniture. They do all that, and
Speaker 1: then you get to pick from over one hundred colors
Speaker 1: as to what color you want it to be. From
Speaker 1: something very natural like almost a rusty color, or a
Speaker 1: tan color, a black color, to you name it. They
Speaker 1: can do it all cast iron, wrought iron, aluminum, if
Speaker 1: it's metal. If it's outside and you want it powder coated,
Speaker 1: here's what you do. You take a picture of it,
Speaker 1: you email it to them sales at Houstoncoders dot com.
Speaker 1: Sales at Houstoncoders dot com. They will give you a
Speaker 1: quick response. If you're in the greater Houston area, they'll
Speaker 1: pick it up and when they're done, they'll deliver it.
Speaker 1: Simple as that. I mean, this is a This is
Speaker 1: a company that knows what they're doing. They treat their
Speaker 1: customers right, and the work is unbelievable. Go check them
Speaker 1: out at Houstonpowdercoders dot com. Houston powder Coders dot com
Speaker 1: two eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty eight.
Speaker 1: If you're on Facebook or Instagram, look them up on
Speaker 1: social media Houston powder Coders and look at the work
Speaker 1: they do. Unbelievable. It'll make you wish you had metal
Speaker 1: furniture if you didn't, so you could take it by
Speaker 1: there because they do such unbelievably awesome work. All right,
Speaker 1: we're going to run here. Let's see here. Get my
Speaker 1: computer mouse. I always grabbed the wrong I have more
Speaker 1: than one mouse. Can you believe that I have mice?
Speaker 10: Uh?
Speaker 1: And I got to go to the right one. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go to El Campo and talk to Jim. Hello, Jim,
Speaker 1: welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
Speaker 18: Skip.
Speaker 15: My wife and I had just moved to El Campo,
Speaker 15: bought a piece of property. That's it's all active farming community,
Speaker 15: so everything is pretty much clearcut. And when I wanted
Speaker 15: to put some trees in around the house, but I
Speaker 15: just kind of wanted your recommendation. So what kinds of
Speaker 15: trees would do well in that area? And you know,
Speaker 15: seek relatively low maintenance.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, well, good, good question. Good time to ask
Speaker 1: too before you plan. So just remember that remember this phrase,
Speaker 1: live fast, die young. Okay, grow fast, die young. Typically
Speaker 1: the trees that they go, oh, this is a fast
Speaker 1: growing tree. It's not worth having weak wooded all kinds
Speaker 1: of issues. But if you get a quality tree, like
Speaker 1: an oak, for example, let's say a nuthall oak or
Speaker 1: a shoe mard oak, if you fertilize them and water
Speaker 1: them adequately, they will grow at a very good rate
Speaker 1: and they will last decades and decades and decade. Your
Speaker 1: grandkids will enjoy the tree. So that's the way you
Speaker 1: want to go. Get a good quality species and take
Speaker 1: care of it with watering and fertilizing. Watering is more
Speaker 1: important than fertilizing. Fertilizing is also important. Shoe mard would
Speaker 1: be one if your soil is good, decent, kind of
Speaker 1: a loamy type soil. If it's a clay. If it's
Speaker 1: a little bit maybe questionable drainage, definitely shift over to
Speaker 1: nuttall oak. Nuttall will grow in any kind of soil,
Speaker 1: but it's just a little more tolerant of poor drainage
Speaker 1: than the schue mart Is so nttal. Can never remember
Speaker 1: how many ls it has, but anyway, nuttall. Another good
Speaker 1: one that you see around is Chinese elm. It is
Speaker 1: this one. You probably ought to go online and do
Speaker 1: a search for it so you can see what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. But as little small leaves, it's got a
Speaker 1: very open, tall, large habit. But the bark is kind
Speaker 1: of a cinnamon and gray mix of splotchy, exfoliating bark.
Speaker 1: It's a very attractive bark, so even in winter it
Speaker 1: looks good. But that one grows pretty fast. You see
Speaker 1: it used a lot in parking lots, islands and things
Speaker 1: where the conditions are horrible for trees. It's very tolerant
Speaker 1: of a ye rows of conditions. But that would be
Speaker 1: another good one, you know. There there's just so many
Speaker 1: different kinds of trees, Jim. I like cypress trees a lot.
Speaker 1: I think they make a big, beautiful, long live tree.
Speaker 1: But if your soils a little soggy, they send the
Speaker 1: knees up. And so if you've got clay soils and
Speaker 1: it may stay a little on the wet side for
Speaker 1: periods of time, you would want to get one called
Speaker 1: a month of Zuma cypress. He doesn't want money month
Speaker 1: of Zuma and they get huge in time. They're a
Speaker 1: nice treat, a little bit less cold hearty than regular cypress.
Speaker 1: But down you're in Whartons, so you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like you're calling me from Huntsville.
Speaker 15: What size trees would you recommend we start with, I
Speaker 15: mean in terms of, you know, having the best chance
Speaker 15: for success.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you buy a tree, you pay for the
Speaker 1: size of the pot. That's basically what you're paying for.
Speaker 1: And so when you go from five gallon to fifteen gallons,
Speaker 1: it goes up. When you go from fifteen to thirty,
Speaker 1: it goes up. And so the bigger the pot, the
Speaker 1: bigger tree you start with. But if you wanted to
Speaker 1: save a little money and buy a little bit smaller tree,
Speaker 1: just make sure that any roots circling the pot or
Speaker 1: cut when it goes in the ground, and then start
Speaker 1: taking care of it. If you will do, if you
Speaker 1: will do three things for a tree. You can save
Speaker 1: a lot of money on the tree initially and get
Speaker 1: that small tree to catch up with the bigger one
Speaker 1: pretty quick. One is get rid of all grass in
Speaker 1: as large of an area around the tree as you can.
Speaker 1: For some people that they can only stand it three
Speaker 1: feet out from the trunk. But if you with that tree,
Speaker 1: you would like grass no closer than the branch spread
Speaker 1: of the tree. And the more of a mulched area,
Speaker 1: the more of a forest floor you give it, the
Speaker 1: faster it's going to grow. Plus it keeps along more
Speaker 1: and wheat eat away. Second, give it a good soaking,
Speaker 1: get you a tree hugger sprinkler, and following the recommendations
Speaker 1: on watering it, you can water a small area with
Speaker 1: a tree hugger, and when it's a fifteen year old tree,
Speaker 1: you're still rescue. Watering it in summer to keep the
Speaker 1: growth rate as fast as you can. You're not just
Speaker 1: keeping it alive, you're keeping it growing. And then finally,
Speaker 1: every spring gets you a lawn fertilizer without weed controlling it,
Speaker 1: just fertilizer, and for every intra trunk diameter give it
Speaker 1: a cup or two a synthetic fertilizer. Or three times
Speaker 1: that much for if it's organic fertilizer.
Speaker 15: Okay, excellent. Last last question, that's any any particular place
Speaker 15: you recommend?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Don know, Campbo area. Well, you're you're not too far
Speaker 1: away as you come into town A. Richmond Rosenberg. You
Speaker 1: got in Chenna forests and Channa gardens. Those are good.
Speaker 1: I don't know the other big tree cellars you know,
Speaker 1: down out that far out that far in the area.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's some good ones out there, but I
Speaker 1: would go with one of those. They're going to carry
Speaker 1: good species and good quality ones. And I'm assuming you
Speaker 1: want a big shade tree. I should ask you that
Speaker 1: up front, not a flowering. Yes, yes, yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: what i'd recommend.
Speaker 16: That was it.
Speaker 1: In a nutshell, I've kind of tucked myself into my
Speaker 1: next break here, but.
Speaker 15: I hope that thank you very much, extremely helpful.
Speaker 1: You bet, thank you. Folks. Will be right back. There
Speaker 1: we go, There you go, All right, folks, we're back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
Speaker 1: and we are here to help you have a bountiful garden,
Speaker 1: beautiful landscape and more fun in the process. If you
Speaker 1: are in Kingwood or Humble or a test Caasita or
Speaker 1: Porter anywhere out that direction. Here's a public service announcement.
Speaker 1: Today's last day for the Spring megasale at one Southern
Speaker 1: Gardens and Kingwood Garden Center. That's the one where you
Speaker 1: buy one hundred dollars worth of stuff, you get twenty
Speaker 1: percent off. You buy three thousand dollars with the stuff,
Speaker 1: you get forty percent off. Now, I know you're going
Speaker 1: who buys freaked out? People do, But if you're on
Speaker 1: a revamp your landscape, my gosh, I mean, what a
Speaker 1: deal forty percent off of a major revamp. And that
Speaker 1: includes not just plants, certainly plants, but all kinds of
Speaker 1: things like metal trellises and fertilizer products and other things.
Speaker 1: It's there at Warren's Southern Gardens in Kingwood Garden Center
Speaker 1: the last time, last morning. Today. That's it. So there's
Speaker 1: something to be doing this afternoon. Why are you there? Once?
Speaker 1: You check out something and that is their proven winners,
Speaker 1: Summerrific rose mallows. Rosemallow is a perennial hibiscus. It has
Speaker 1: big blooms, bigger than tropical a biscus. They typically are
Speaker 1: going to be white pink red or some version of
Speaker 1: the three. That's kind of what rose mallow is about. Now,
Speaker 1: those things are gorgeous. They make perennial plants come back
Speaker 1: year after year after year, and they bloom and bloom
Speaker 1: and bloom. Each bloom last day, but there's clusters of blooms.
Speaker 1: So there's bloom and bloom and bloom. And they've got
Speaker 1: him at we're in Southern Gardens, proven winners, summer terrific, Hibiscus,
Speaker 1: perennial rosemall beautiful plants. You need to check them out.
Speaker 1: They by the way, when you go out to Kingwood,
Speaker 1: Warrens is on North Park and Kingwood is Kingwood Garden
Speaker 1: Center is on Stone Hollow Drive. Let's run out to
Speaker 1: the phones. Now we're going to head to College station
Speaker 1: and talk to Jesse this morning. Hello Jesse, and welcome
Speaker 1: to garden y Well. I good to talk to you.
Speaker 13: Talk to you on your college station show in the past. Listen,
Speaker 13: I have a okay, I have a problem with yellowing
Speaker 13: of my Saint Augustine lawn in one particular area of
Speaker 13: my lawn, but no other. I follow your schedule, a
Speaker 13: fertilizing and pre emergent all everything I've downloaded your schedule.
Speaker 13: I put down the azoxystroban, I've used heat moss on
Speaker 13: the area. I've had my county extension agent come out
Speaker 13: and he actually pulled up some sprigs and brought him
Speaker 13: back to his office and looked at him with a
Speaker 13: microscope and says, I don't know what's causing this yellowing.
Speaker 13: I've noticed some other yellowing patches and other yards in
Speaker 13: my neighborhood. I was wondering if you had any idea
Speaker 13: what could be causing this. It's been going on for
Speaker 13: a year in just one particular area of my yard.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, it's a it could be a number
Speaker 1: of things. And you're fortunate to have Stephen Brugerhoff as
Speaker 1: your horticulture agent up there, and he's taken over that
Speaker 1: show that I used to do up in College station.
Speaker 1: Yeah he could when they came out to my house. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what I what I would recommend, Jesse for me
Speaker 1: to help you the best is let me we'll close
Speaker 1: here in a second. I'll put you on hold and
Speaker 1: send me photos. I want to see the whole lawn,
Speaker 1: and then I want you to get up real close
Speaker 1: and as close as you can get. Send me some photos.
Speaker 1: In good sharp focus. I'll take a look at them
Speaker 1: and we can take it from there. It still could
Speaker 1: be take a root rot. It may be that that's there.
Speaker 1: It could be that that section has a higher pH
Speaker 1: or maybe a bunch of phosphors got applied, or something
Speaker 1: that is tying up iron. It could be great leaf spot,
Speaker 1: which is going on a lot right now in the area,
Speaker 1: including College Station, and so let me just look at
Speaker 1: a photo, so we don't waste your time and money
Speaker 1: sending you out after a product that isn't the one
Speaker 1: that fixes what you have. Okay, I appreciate it. I'll
Speaker 1: say them the lot, all right, I'll put you on
Speaker 1: all one hundred pickup just second here and we'll take
Speaker 1: care of that. ACE Hardware ACE is the place. Here's
Speaker 1: what you need to know. Acehardwaretexas dot com. ACE Hardware
Speaker 1: Texas dot com. Don't forget the word Texas. Acehardware Texas
Speaker 1: dot com. That's my greater Houston area ACE Hardware Group.
Speaker 1: And there are so many stores and when you go there,
Speaker 1: you can find your store real close to you. And
Speaker 1: when you go to ACE, you're going to find everything
Speaker 1: you need for success with your lawn. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: just visiting, you know, with just seeing College station about
Speaker 1: his lawn. I'll tell you this whenever I get through
Speaker 1: looking at the pictures and come up with here's what
Speaker 1: it is, here's what you do. The answer is going
Speaker 1: to be waiting at Ace Hardware store for somebody to
Speaker 1: pick up, for them to apply and to have success.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. Guess what I'm going to
Speaker 1: be doing this afternoon. By the way, I'm heading outside.
Speaker 1: I got a brown, brand new bouncing Baby rec Tech
Speaker 1: barbecue grill from Ace Hardware, and we are going to
Speaker 1: be doing some fun stuff on it. These You know,
Speaker 1: Ace has all the top brands, you know, Traeger pillet grills,
Speaker 1: Rectech Pellet grills, the Big Green Egg. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: there's a cult following for Big Green Egg and Weber
Speaker 1: and on and on. I mean, there are many brands, quality,
Speaker 1: many kinds of accessories you need to unit. You always
Speaker 1: have to ask accessories to do your barbecue.
Speaker 6: It.
Speaker 1: It's all there at Ace Hardware. Make your outdoor a
Speaker 1: wonderful living area with Ace Hardware Stores. We're going to
Speaker 1: go now to Spring, Texas and I'm going to visit
Speaker 1: with Ann. Hello, Anne, Welcome, to garden line.
Speaker 5: Good morning, thank you. I have a lot of beds
Speaker 5: in my yard back in front.
Speaker 10: Most of them are pretty much.
Speaker 5: Sun but I pull these little wispy weeds. They grow
Speaker 5: up like overnight, and the pine els. I guess I'll
Speaker 5: never get a big enough where I can keep that out.
Speaker 5: But could I get to sprinkle in the bed.
Speaker 1: To try to deter that.
Speaker 5: I mean, they grow like crazy. If you got one,
Speaker 5: you got five, and then you got about ten, and
Speaker 5: then it rear of it all over.
Speaker 1: All, right, ann, Well, I need to know the weed
Speaker 1: before I can really recommend a product for you if
Speaker 1: it's coming from seed. There are products that are labeled
Speaker 1: for use in a garden bed that are pre emergence
Speaker 1: that you can use, but it depends on the barricade works.
Speaker 1: But barricade is not labeled for garden beds, and so
Speaker 1: I can't recommend that you use it in a garden bed. Generally,
Speaker 1: with garden beds, my approach to my beds is multch, mulch, multch,
Speaker 1: never let the sunlight hit the soil. You're right about
Speaker 1: pine needles. They make a good multch, but they don't
Speaker 1: block the light as well as other types of mulch,
Speaker 1: and I think I would consider putting a little thicker
Speaker 1: layer of mulch and something that blocks the light a
Speaker 1: little bit better. That would work in keeping weed seeds down. Now,
Speaker 1: if it's a perennial weed, you know nutsedge and bermuda
Speaker 1: grass and a lot of them. Okay, well, then go
Speaker 1: on my website gardening with Skip dot com Gardening with
Speaker 1: Skip dot com and look for a publication called an
Speaker 1: in Depth Look at Nutsedge or nuts edge an in
Speaker 1: Depth Look and read that and it'll tell you what
Speaker 1: to do for nuts edge. It's a a little more
Speaker 1: involved than I can get in on the air, but
Speaker 1: it's not hard to do, and you can do it.
Speaker 1: I have a little weed wiper that I made that
Speaker 1: makes it real easy to use. You don't have to
Speaker 1: have a weed wiper to control ntsage, but that is
Speaker 1: probably it. If you would like to send me a
Speaker 1: picture of the weed up close in good sharp focus,
Speaker 1: I'll identify it and then tell you what to do.
Speaker 1: We can also take that approach. Okay, okay, well.
Speaker 5: I'll look on your wisite.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Yeah, you do that, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put you on hold. You can hang up or if
Speaker 1: you wait, you can get an email to send some
Speaker 1: photos to to make sure we're talking about the same weed.
Speaker 1: And thank you very much and I appreciate your call.
Speaker 1: Sprint Creek Feed is up there in Magnolia off FM
Speaker 1: twenty nine seventy eight. Sprint Creek Feed is. It's beautiful
Speaker 1: by the way you drive up and it's like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, this please is gorgeous. Castle you walk in,
Speaker 1: there's all the feed that you would expect from a
Speaker 1: feed store. Of course, there's that kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: staring straight ahead, there's all kinds of beautiful things for
Speaker 1: the home, for indoors, decorations and whatnot. Really cool nice store.
Speaker 1: Spring Creek Feed Center on twenty nine seventy eight, just
Speaker 1: minutes away from Graham Parkway and Highway two forty nine,
Speaker 1: just northeast of the Tombaugh area. They carry fertilizers like
Speaker 1: Nelson's and Microlife and nitrofoss. They carry pest, weed and
Speaker 1: disease control products. If you are a military or a
Speaker 1: senior citizen, then discounts are available to you. They special
Speaker 1: order and they also will deliver upon request at Spring
Speaker 1: Creek Feed Center. I recommend you check them out by
Speaker 1: the way spring creekfeed dot com. That's the actual website
Speaker 1: if you want to go there and check out the
Speaker 1: things that they have going on there. They also have
Speaker 1: plants by the way, low plant section out front. That's
Speaker 1: really nice Spring Creek Feed. I was looking. I always
Speaker 1: check follow my own sponsors on social media and just
Speaker 1: see what's going on, what's happening, what's happening there in
Speaker 1: Chennet Gardens out in Richmond Rosenberg. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: even need really to look at social media because there's
Speaker 1: always stuff going on there and I can just tell
Speaker 1: you what is the season, well, I can tell you
Speaker 1: what they have there because they have everything you need
Speaker 1: for whatever season you're in. Now, this is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: But on Saturday, June seventh, that's next Saturday, at ten am,
Speaker 1: they are doing a little class on ferry gardens. And
Speaker 1: if you've never seen a ferry garden, just think of
Speaker 1: a miniature garden with figurines in it. So you go
Speaker 1: to the base of a tree, for example, and around
Speaker 1: that tree you have light, a little mossy like mulch
Speaker 1: area down there, and then you have all these figurines.
Speaker 1: It's all a little miniature and it's like a little
Speaker 1: miniature scene as if you walked upon a little faery
Speaker 1: neighborhood in your garden. You can do that in containers too,
Speaker 1: by the way, And in Chened Gardens Chenny Gardens, Richmond, Rosenberg.
Speaker 1: They're on FM three point fifty nine on the northeast
Speaker 1: side of Richmond, the Katie Fullsher side of Richmond F
Speaker 1: three nine. The websites in Chenni Gardens Richmond dot com.
Speaker 1: Follow them on social media, check out the things that
Speaker 1: they have. Very interesting, very cool. I saw recently they
Speaker 1: had kind of come up with a plan for a red,
Speaker 1: white and blue flag planting So imagine a planting bed
Speaker 1: that looked like the American flag. Yeah, they got they
Speaker 1: got the plants to do that with. Isn't that cool?
Speaker 1: But that's just like them to be creative like that.
Speaker 1: They carry all the products you need, they have, they
Speaker 1: have folks that greet you, that help you, that know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. And Chenny Gardens on the Katie
Speaker 1: Foster side of Richmond. I love I always love visiting,
Speaker 1: you know. We one of these days we need to
Speaker 1: do a garden line garden tour, like an All Saturday
Speaker 1: or something tour where we just go around and look
Speaker 1: at all these places. Would that be fun? Would you
Speaker 1: like that? Get a big bus go around. We'd have
Speaker 1: to pull trailers behind the bus for all your plants, though. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you get the idea. I'll take a little break here.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a moment with your calls.
Speaker 1: Seven one three two one two ktr H. Seven one
Speaker 1: three two one two k t r H. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: why not go check out my website gardening with Skip
Speaker 1: dot com. Gardening with Skip dot com. Look at what's
Speaker 1: up there, make yourself familiar with it, and get ready.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more stuff coming. We're just going to
Speaker 1: keep building it better and better. But it'd be good
Speaker 1: if you had a bookmark. That way, when you're listening
Speaker 1: to guard Line, I can just tell you, hey, go
Speaker 1: check it now. I'll be right back. Okay, you get it,
Speaker 1: You get it, Megan Trainer, Oh my gosh, Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: back to Guardline. Good to have you with us. Seven
Speaker 1: one three two one two KTRH. That's the number you
Speaker 1: need if you want to give me a call. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about what you're interested in. As long as it's
Speaker 1: gardening that you're interested in. Be glad to help. When
Speaker 1: we get rain, guess what happens in yards all over
Speaker 1: the place, including years in mind, and that is fire ants.
Speaker 1: They come boiling up out of the ground if you well,
Speaker 1: getting those little dirt mounds built up a little bit higher,
Speaker 1: and they spoiled the show. In fact, I can tell
Speaker 1: you a horror story. Years ago. I was in ruston
Speaker 1: Louisiana at a peach orchard, big peach orchard. I was
Speaker 1: doing a part of my master's work there in horticulture,
Speaker 1: and I was out pruning one day. No, it wasn't pruning,
Speaker 1: it was harvesting, actually doing some thinning of the peaches
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and all of a sudden I felt pain
Speaker 1: from my belt down everywhere. And what I was standing
Speaker 1: in a fire at mound and they had all crawled
Speaker 1: up my legs, crawled up the pants actually, I guess,
Speaker 1: and I think they all went one, two, three, go,
Speaker 1: and they all just it was like everywhere pain shot.
Speaker 1: Let me just say this modesty gave way to self preservation,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it was. I'm glad that that was before
Speaker 1: the day where they filmed everything and put it on YouTube.
Speaker 1: But there's probably still talking about that in Rust and Louisiana.
Speaker 1: I remember that time. That guy. Anyway, let's just say this,
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It was not pleasant. My relationship
Speaker 1: with fire ants is not a love hate relationship. It's
Speaker 1: well it is. I love to hate them. I just
Speaker 1: love hating fiants. The folks that nitrophass have a fire
Speaker 1: ant killer. It works well, it works fast. You know,
Speaker 1: we got baits, and I recommend you use baits. They're
Speaker 1: a good long term way to get controller on the yard.
Speaker 1: But when you need to get out there and knock
Speaker 1: a mound out, you know, let's say this afternoon, you
Speaker 1: got a party going on, and tomorrow maybe you got
Speaker 1: a gathering going on. You need to deal with those
Speaker 1: fast and so getting fast results is important. And the
Speaker 1: Nitropos fire ant killer is an excellent choice for doing
Speaker 1: just at and spoiling the show. And right before you
Speaker 1: put it on the mound, I want you to look
Speaker 1: at the fire ants and go skip sent me hahaha,
Speaker 1: and then put it on the mound. That that will
Speaker 1: make me feel better at least. Yeah, like I said,
Speaker 1: I was, I was. I was basically marred for life
Speaker 1: from that experience. Well, you are listening to the garden
Speaker 1: line if you'd like to give me a call seven
Speaker 1: one three two one two Katie r Age seven one
Speaker 1: three two one two Kati your age by the way,
Speaker 1: Sorry about that vividmental image. Affordable Tree Service. If you
Speaker 1: need your trees taken care of, Affordable Tree Service, that
Speaker 1: is the one you need to call. Martin Spoon Moore's
Speaker 1: company is a family owned operation. You've been hearing about
Speaker 1: Martin since what Randy was sitting in this chair for
Speaker 1: twenty six years doing garden Line. He talked about Affordable
Speaker 1: Tree Service as the go to place, and it still is.
Speaker 1: It still is. Uh, This family owned operation is the
Speaker 1: kind where everybody pitches in. And you give a phone
Speaker 1: call to Affordable Tree Service at seven one three sixt'
Speaker 1: nine nine two six sixty three, and probably you're going
Speaker 1: to talk to Martin's mom. She usually answers the phone
Speaker 1: there seven one three six nine nine two six six three.
Speaker 1: Tell her you're you heard about him on guarden Line,
Speaker 1: because Guardenline customers are the top priority for them, So
Speaker 1: make sure and mention that to them now when you
Speaker 1: give them a call, they certainly can come out and prune.
Speaker 1: It's storm season and your tree's being properly pruned is
Speaker 1: very important. And it's not just like you prune them
Speaker 1: now for this season. It's like you continue to maintain
Speaker 1: a healthy tree so that when storms come, you have
Speaker 1: a tree that has grown in the strongest possible way
Speaker 1: to withstand those storms. Do you see what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: And they know how to do that at Affordable Tree Service. Now,
Speaker 1: with proper pruning, over time, you build the most resilient
Speaker 1: tree you can. They do other things. They do consultations.
Speaker 1: If you're going to have any kind of construction done
Speaker 1: around a tree, please call them first to come out
Speaker 1: and advise you. By the time you put a trench
Speaker 1: in the ground, you damage the roots. It's done. You
Speaker 1: can do things to help it recover as best you can.
Speaker 1: But it's way better than to let Affordable Tree come out.
Speaker 1: It's way better two. Let Affordable Tree come out and
Speaker 1: tell you where to put that trench or what you
Speaker 1: can do to help the tree in the process, and
Speaker 1: so on. They do deep roof feeding, They do pest
Speaker 1: and disease control. You got a no stump you're tired
Speaker 1: of looking at, they can come out and do stump grinding.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna build a house, pre Construction Care. You
Speaker 1: got to call them first. Affordable Tree Service seven one
Speaker 1: three six ninety nine two six six three and somebody
Speaker 1: just left the gates open on the phone here. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna go up to Willis now and talk to
Speaker 1: Kelly this morning. Hello Kelly, Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 15: Good morning.
Speaker 1: Morning.
Speaker 19: Had a question. I'm up in Willis, Texas. Got a
Speaker 19: real problem with I guess what's called a leaf cutter ants?
Speaker 19: And you huh, yeah, and uh. I want to know
Speaker 19: if the best ways to get rid of them and
Speaker 19: control them or either you know one or the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're a challenge. Leaf cutters are because what they
Speaker 1: do is they chew the leaves off your tree, they
Speaker 1: clip them off, they take them home, they glue them
Speaker 1: to the ceiling and grow fungus on them and underground,
Speaker 1: and then they eat the fungus. So it's hard to
Speaker 1: control them. There are some baits that are made for
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ants, and you just have to go where
Speaker 1: you shop up there in the Willis area. You might
Speaker 1: talk to the folks at Growers Outlet and see if
Speaker 1: they have one. It's kind of a specialty bait. They
Speaker 1: may not, but check them, check with your ace hardware
Speaker 1: store up there right off of forty five going north
Speaker 1: and see if they carry a leaf cutter ant bait.
Speaker 1: If not, you need to search for one because it's
Speaker 1: not the same as regular fire ant bait. It's a
Speaker 1: different bait. But that's one option. I had a farm
Speaker 1: west or to study, east of Willis on County Line Road,
Speaker 1: and we had peach trees. And I came out one
Speaker 1: night and three trees that were fully leafed out were
Speaker 1: completely leafless overnight because they found them and they cleaned
Speaker 1: them out. We had a big colony. And what I
Speaker 1: did is I got some dust like ortheene dust ant
Speaker 1: must and I dusted every entrance to every mound. You know,
Speaker 1: they have a whole colony of little holes. You can
Speaker 1: see where the active holes are, so that every fire
Speaker 1: ant that I mean, every leaf cutter ant that left
Speaker 1: the mound or came back to the mound walked through
Speaker 1: the dust and it kills that ant. It does not
Speaker 1: kill the mound. But if you do that and they
Speaker 1: can't come out without dying and tracking that stuff in,
Speaker 1: you will suppress them and you won't see them for
Speaker 1: a while. They'll go away for a while and at
Speaker 1: that point that is where you you know, then it
Speaker 1: at least it's just keeping them from doing their damage
Speaker 1: as fast as you can. Now, I'm gonna do this,
Speaker 1: if you will. I'm gonna put you on hold, and
Speaker 1: I want you to give my producer your email, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to send you a concoction that pest control
Speaker 1: operators have told me works. It's a combination of different
Speaker 1: products and I can't go into it all on the air,
Speaker 1: but I will send you a copy of this for
Speaker 1: you to give a shot to if you just promised
Speaker 1: to report to me how it does for you, because
Speaker 1: I'm told that it works pretty good and it gives
Speaker 1: a good long suppression of the leaf cutter aunt. But
Speaker 1: just hang on, put you on hold, and I'll see you.
Speaker 15: Time for one other thing or not.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to hold until after break for that.
Speaker 1: But I've got to go to break. I'll pick you
Speaker 1: back up when I come back. All right, All right, folks,
Speaker 1: I'll be right back here we go. All right, we're back. Hey,
Speaker 1: when was the last time you went to Moss Nursery?
Speaker 1: You hear me talk about Moss all the time. The
Speaker 1: place is amazing. I mean, you go down to Moss
Speaker 1: and you're gonna find eight acres jam pack full of
Speaker 1: gorgeous plants, just everything you can imagine. If you want
Speaker 1: to create a tropical paradise, boy did they ever have it.
Speaker 1: If you want to maybe do cactine succulents, they can
Speaker 1: got you set up. You're not com find a better
Speaker 1: selection of containers anywhere. I mean, the place is crawling
Speaker 1: with containers and every other kind of plant you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Jim Moss has made this family operation. I've been around
Speaker 1: seventy years, by the way, eight acre family operation, seventy years.
Speaker 1: He's made it into a wonderland and it's a fun
Speaker 1: place to go, just wandering through and seeing all the things.
Speaker 1: If you cannot find a plant you like there, then
Speaker 1: you don't. You better check your pulse. You probably don't
Speaker 1: have one. Because Moss Nursery is set up with everything
Speaker 1: you need to have beauty and success. That's why people
Speaker 1: down there love it so much. That's why I have
Speaker 1: to have truckloads of plants coming in constantly, just keeping
Speaker 1: the place well stocked because people love that thing. Doesn't
Speaker 1: matter betting plants, herbs, shrubs, vines, They've got it all
Speaker 1: they've got it all there now. If you don't have
Speaker 1: some fun, how about showing up on Saturday, June fourteenth
Speaker 1: from twelve to six pm. Twelve noon to six pm Saturday,
Speaker 1: June fourteenth, a couple of saturdays from now. They're gonna
Speaker 1: have Alex Moss, the Black Angels and light in the
Speaker 1: attic and it's just it's gonna be worth to have
Speaker 1: a crawfish ball. It's all free. Crawfish boil for free.
Speaker 1: How do they do that? Anyway? It will be fun.
Speaker 1: Go check out Moss Nursery, have some fun. Look at
Speaker 1: the waters features and things that they have. Look at
Speaker 1: the beautiful oh asked to see their out There is
Speaker 1: a rows of Sharon. Some of the most gorgeous underplanted
Speaker 1: plants been around the South for a long time. Not
Speaker 1: as common as they used to be, but they should be,
Speaker 1: and they got them there at Moss Nursery on Toddville
Speaker 1: Road in Seabrook, Texas. We're gonna head now up to
Speaker 1: the Woodlands and talk to Ken. Hello, Ken, Welcome to
Speaker 1: garden Line.
Speaker 20: Morning.
Speaker 22: Skip got a couple of questions about the Weeden Eter product.
Speaker 22: I put that down almost exactly ninety days ago. March first,
Speaker 22: and it has been fantastic. I don't know about the
Speaker 22: weed killing properties of it, because I couldn't really tell
Speaker 22: if it was that effective, but the grass has just
Speaker 22: been incredible. It's you know, just a deep green, and
Speaker 22: it hasn't grown up as you know, it hasn't gotten
Speaker 22: stringy and tall as much. I haven't had to mow
Speaker 22: it as frequently, I guess, and it has really spread
Speaker 22: with runners just you know, like incredibly filled in some
Speaker 22: areas that I was concerned about. And you know, I've
Speaker 22: used other products for spring, and my question is I've
Speaker 22: still got a half a bag of it left. Can
Speaker 22: I use it now and make another application for the
Speaker 22: summer or do I need to switch to something else now?
Speaker 1: Now tell me how long ago you used it?
Speaker 22: Ninety days March first, Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can use it again, and you're dealing with
Speaker 1: Saint Augustine, yes, okay, yes, you can, just be careful,
Speaker 1: don't misuse it. It has an ingredient called a CANBA
Speaker 1: that's very effective as a post emergent broad leaf weed control.
Speaker 1: It's not going to control grassy weeds. Post emergent broad
Speaker 1: leaf is the one, but you can use it now
Speaker 1: if you'd like to. I generally don't talk about that
Speaker 1: now because we're usually switching to some other things through
Speaker 1: this time of the year. But if you wanted to
Speaker 1: get your fertilizer down and do the weed control at
Speaker 1: the same time, you could do that. I would wet
Speaker 1: the lawn and while the leaves are wet, the grass
Speaker 1: blades are wet, then I would put it out and
Speaker 1: then and then yeah, okay.
Speaker 22: And one other question about weed control. I know you're
Speaker 22: not supposed to use most of them when the temperatures
Speaker 22: get hot, But the only question is if you use them.
Speaker 22: You know, she's going to go to ninety five in
Speaker 22: the afternoon, but it's only you know, eighty in the morning.
Speaker 22: Is it okay to use those things or is it
Speaker 22: a you know, anytime in twenty four hours if it
Speaker 22: gets above ninety.
Speaker 1: No, that's a good question. Yeah, it's it's a good question.
Speaker 1: And when I've talked to the reps from the companies
Speaker 1: about that, because I had that same question, they were saying, well,
Speaker 1: as long as it's not ninety when you're using it, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, when we get into the heat of summer,
Speaker 1: it's going to be ninety by the time this comes up. Practically,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an exaggeration, but you want to be
Speaker 1: real careful, so I try to avoid it. That's why
Speaker 1: you always be talking about celsius, because it's more forgiving
Speaker 1: in terms of the temperature. Plus it works good on
Speaker 1: most weeds. But if you do it in the morning early,
Speaker 1: let it cool, well, that's cool, let it completely dry
Speaker 1: off then and then here comes the sun. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be okay on those. Just be a little careful
Speaker 1: because some of the products are Saint Augustine, especially not
Speaker 1: just saying, especially, some of the broadly weak collar products
Speaker 1: really really weaken it. They stress it. They cause it
Speaker 1: to yellow, to discolor a little bit, and and can
Speaker 1: even do more damage than that by weakening it and
Speaker 1: opening the door for some diseases. When we start pushing
Speaker 1: the edge of that of that rule.
Speaker 22: Okay, well, I appreciate it, and I'll go out and
Speaker 22: put on another application of the weed natter here in
Speaker 22: a few days.
Speaker 1: All right, sounds good, Well, good luck with it. Just
Speaker 1: remember don't, as always, don't if a teaspoons good, a
Speaker 1: tablespoons not better, follow follow the label.
Speaker 22: I understand, and that's why I've got a half a bag.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, good, good for you, Good for you? All right,
Speaker 1: you take care? Ye, yeah, that is the case. Seeing
Speaker 1: the Maltz is your one stop shop for success. And
Speaker 1: I really mean that. You know my mantra on garden line,
Speaker 1: brown stuff before green stuff, well, at least it's one
Speaker 1: of my mantras, brown stuff before green stuff means you
Speaker 1: get that soul right. It drains well, it's got good nutrition,
Speaker 1: it's got good internal oxygenation. It holds water well, but
Speaker 1: it drains away the excess. It's got everything that plants need.
Speaker 1: Is a foundation for success. See animals is a place
Speaker 1: you get that done. You go there, you get your
Speaker 1: compost products. I don't care if you're putting in a
Speaker 1: vegetable bed or a herb bed and you want the
Speaker 1: veggie nerb mix from Heirloom Soils. They've got that. Maybe
Speaker 1: you're putting in some altheas I was just talking about
Speaker 1: the Rosa sharon and the Althea moss nursery. Well that's
Speaker 1: a blooming plant. So the rose mix, the rose and
Speaker 1: bloomers mix that they carry is awesome for those kinds
Speaker 1: of plants. You get the fertilizers that you need from microlife,
Speaker 1: and from nitrofoss and from Nilsen plant fruit, and from Medina.
Speaker 1: You need some azamite, they've got it there, Ciena Moll.
Speaker 1: So basically, you drive in, you drive out, you set
Speaker 1: up success, you plant your plants and you're good to go.
Speaker 1: Don't forget Sienna when you're putting in your garden beds.
Speaker 1: They deliver within about twenty miles of their location there,
Speaker 1: so you can have them deliver for a small fee
Speaker 1: if you'd like to do that there on FM five
Speaker 1: twenty one. Just go to this website, Sienna bultch dot com.
Speaker 1: By the way, they're open today till five pm, or
Speaker 1: excuse me, till two pm. Sorry, only two pm today
Speaker 1: during the week till five on Saturdays from to you
Speaker 1: close on Sunday Sienna Mulch dot com. We'll tell you
Speaker 1: everything you need to know. We're gonna now go to Peter. Peter,
Speaker 1: are you in a town called Butcher, Texas?
Speaker 23: Brookshire, Texas, sys sir, Good morning, Skip, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: Oh? Brookshire? Okay? You know, I thought I knew every
Speaker 1: town in Texas and I'd never heard of Butcher. So
Speaker 1: all right, hey, Peter, how can we help so skip.
Speaker 23: I've got a couple of big mesquites and aliva. With
Speaker 23: the branches, you're getting so long and they're starting to
Speaker 23: hang low. Now I was wondering, I've been using like
Speaker 23: four by fours kind of pomp up the brains, but
Speaker 23: they're so heavy, I can't do that anymore. So it's
Speaker 23: wondering what's a good technique to elevate those branches. So
Speaker 23: I have to kind of it's just getting hard to
Speaker 23: mow underneath them.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, if you want to elevate them, you're either
Speaker 1: putting a prop under them, which is a long term
Speaker 1: thing and requires a good strong prop, and then you've
Speaker 1: got to move the prop in order to mow. There
Speaker 1: is something that a qualified arborist can do where they
Speaker 1: basically put an eyebolt through the branch and put an
Speaker 1: eyebolt in a branch up high on the tree the
Speaker 1: trunk or something, and they use a cable to support
Speaker 1: that limb and to keep it from sagging more. Now
Speaker 1: that's not normally a homeowner type attempt, but you can
Speaker 1: kind of picture how that would work. But a good
Speaker 1: cable with those eyebolts and good washers through the branch,
Speaker 1: so that you know it, That would be another option,
Speaker 1: and I'm not there to take a look at it
Speaker 1: and to be able to assess whether that would be
Speaker 1: suitable for the angles and the situation you got in
Speaker 1: those trees, but that would be probably the way if
Speaker 1: someone were wanting to go about not having to cut
Speaker 1: the branch off.
Speaker 24: Also cast another quick question, you bet so, I have
Speaker 24: a small orchard and I'm power of pulling weeds. Is
Speaker 24: it okay to like weed eat around that gets the
Speaker 24: grass will load to put a wheat barrier down and
Speaker 24: multiple on top. Because a lot of these trees are
Speaker 24: only about two to three years old, was that going
Speaker 24: to be a problem.
Speaker 1: Well, what I would recommend is weed eating it as
Speaker 1: to the dirt basically, and then laying down a good thick, thick,
Speaker 1: thick mulch and keep it thick. The weeds that will
Speaker 1: come through that are things like nutsedge and bermuda grass,
Speaker 1: but those you can control with products that don't hurt
Speaker 1: the tree. They don't hurt that like. There's a grass
Speaker 1: only killer several on the market. You can go my
Speaker 1: website gardening with skip dot com look for the publication
Speaker 1: herbicides for skipsweed wiper and there's a section for grass
Speaker 1: killers on there, and so the tree will love that.
Speaker 1: Trees want to live with a forest floor environment. So yes,
Speaker 1: as wide as you esthetically can stand, the tree will
Speaker 1: like that. Fantastic Thank you sir. You bet have a
Speaker 1: good day and we'll talk to you later. Appreciate your call.
Speaker 1: All right, folks, Well that was fast. They're on a show.
Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow, by the way, look forward to
Speaker 1: visiting with you then.