Speaker 1: Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with Skip Rickard's.
Speaker 2: Shoes, crazy gas you trim.
Speaker 3: You can just watch him as world.
Speaker 2: Us.
Speaker 3: So many goodies to sepotusy great.
Speaker 4: Gas against a sorry glass gas.
Speaker 3: Sun beam and.
Speaker 4: Hey, good morning, welcome to garden Line. We are glad
Speaker 4: to have you with us this morning. That a little
Speaker 4: bit of drizzle going on outside, some cloud news, but
Speaker 4: my goodness, the temperatures are great. In fact, this whole
Speaker 4: week is is pretty nice. If you just want to
Speaker 4: get outside, I not have to bundle up or not
Speaker 4: have to I don't know, carry an air conditioner with you.
Speaker 4: It's sure is a good week for that. I am
Speaker 4: going to be out in the yard today. I've got
Speaker 4: some flower bedwork to do. There's a bed that we've
Speaker 4: been preparing, and you know how I always say bronze
Speaker 4: stuff before green stuff. Well, I'm actually going to take
Speaker 4: my own advice and get out there and mix in
Speaker 4: some quality compost materials, get that bed up a little bit.
Speaker 4: The area it's not poorly drained, but it's not you know,
Speaker 4: wonderfully drained either. So I'm going to raise the bed
Speaker 4: level up a little bit just so when it rains
Speaker 4: too much, which at times it does. We're going to
Speaker 4: make sure we have good drainage. You know, plant roots
Speaker 4: do not like to be underwater. There are very few
Speaker 4: plants that survive in a swamp like environment where there
Speaker 4: just isn't good oxygen to the root system. So that's
Speaker 4: that's important to get that, get that right and make
Speaker 4: sure that we can give those plants the setting that
Speaker 4: they want. I've got a few other things to do.
Speaker 4: I've got some planting to do. I started planting alliums
Speaker 4: the other day, and I'm late getting this done. I'll
Speaker 4: just say right up front, this should have been done
Speaker 4: a couple of months ago, probably, but anyway, it's still
Speaker 4: okay to do it. The garlic is something I just
Speaker 4: got in the other day, a couple of different kinds
Speaker 4: of garlic that we're going to have going through the wintertime.
Speaker 4: It's pretty hardy, pretty cold hardy here. Unless we just
Speaker 4: have one of those absolute unusually hard freezes, we'll carry
Speaker 4: it through so harvested next year. I've got some shallots
Speaker 4: that are already growing, looking really good, and I need
Speaker 4: to plant my onions. I got a lot of different
Speaker 4: kinds of onions we're trying. I always like to try
Speaker 4: different ones. You know, there's red onions, white onions, yellow onions,
Speaker 4: and a lot of different types. And when you go
Speaker 4: to a local place that is a let's say mom
Speaker 4: and pop that is an independent garden center and you
Speaker 4: purchase your stuff there or a feed store. A lot
Speaker 4: of our feed stores carry onions as well. They're going
Speaker 4: to carry the kind that want to grow here. Same
Speaker 4: is true with potatoes. When you're planting potatoes, it's coming
Speaker 4: up in February, you want to make sure and get
Speaker 4: the cultivars that do well here, because not all onions
Speaker 4: do here do well here. I won't drone on and
Speaker 4: bore you, but there are short day onions and long
Speaker 4: day onions, and it depends on what part of the
Speaker 4: country you're in as to what kind you might want
Speaker 4: to plant. But I got to finish getting that done.
Speaker 4: For those of you who haven't tried onions, A lot
Speaker 4: of our garden centers and feed stores still have a
Speaker 4: supply out there for you. You can still put them
Speaker 4: in the ground the sooner of the batter too, by
Speaker 4: the way, but you want to make sure when you
Speaker 4: plan them, plant them about as deep as the first
Speaker 4: joint on your index finger. Okay, so look at your
Speaker 4: finger first joint with that little lesson an inch. Go
Speaker 4: ahead and plant them at that depth and then keep
Speaker 4: them going. We like to say, I haven't hit the
Speaker 4: ground running. When you put them in the ground, you'll
Speaker 4: start of course, keeping them moist. Roots will start to form,
Speaker 4: very important time. Take care of them then and then
Speaker 4: small amounts of nitrogen gradually pretty much all through from
Speaker 4: now until harvest time. And here's why. An onion is
Speaker 4: the base of the leaves of the plant. The onion
Speaker 4: bulb that we eat is the swollen base of the leaves.
Speaker 4: So you cut an onion in half, and you see
Speaker 4: the rings right. Each ring is the base of one
Speaker 4: of the leaves up on the plant. So if you
Speaker 4: have an onion that has struggled along, survived but not thrived,
Speaker 4: and it's got five leaves on it, how big of
Speaker 4: a bulb can you have? Not very big? You got
Speaker 4: about five rings. That's that's what it can do. The
Speaker 4: bigger that onion gets, the stronger it gets, the thicker
Speaker 4: and more rings that you're going to have, and they
Speaker 4: just do well.
Speaker 5: So what do we do?
Speaker 4: We make sure they never lack for nitrogen and water,
Speaker 4: we keep them growing on through the cool season as
Speaker 4: best we can, and that way we have the best
Speaker 4: crop we can. Now, I have to have a softball
Speaker 4: sized onion. A golf ball sized onion tastes like a
Speaker 4: softball sized onion. Okay, So if you feel like, well
Speaker 4: like I failed it, I know you didn't. You didn't
Speaker 4: fail at grown onions. You just grew smaller onions. And
Speaker 4: that's okay. They're still good to eat. Well. We like
Speaker 4: to have them bigger. It's less tedious to chop a
Speaker 4: bunch of them up that way. But anyway, there's a
Speaker 4: few tips there on growing onions. Now, if you'd like
Speaker 4: to give us a call, this is, by the way,
Speaker 4: a call in show, not a monologue. So let me
Speaker 4: give you a phone number. Seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two five eight seven four seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two fifty eight seventy four. For those of you that
Speaker 4: have a Christmas tree in your house, don't forget that
Speaker 4: you need to keep a good supply of water, especially
Speaker 4: when you first set that thing up. You know, they
Speaker 4: do a fresh cut on the trunk. You PLoP it
Speaker 4: down in a in some water, and it's going to
Speaker 4: drink quite a bit of water. That'll slow down a
Speaker 4: lot as time goes on, but you got to always
Speaker 4: keep water in there, don't let it dry out. That
Speaker 4: is important for maintaining as best you can nice supple
Speaker 4: needles for as long as you can into the season.
Speaker 4: There's nothing like a fresh Christmas tree. The scent of
Speaker 4: a fresh Christmas tree is so good, so take care
Speaker 4: of that. We do not have a cat in our house,
Speaker 4: but I was looking. I was looking this week at
Speaker 4: I don't know, just cats and Christmas trees. You know
Speaker 4: something somebody posted online. There were just a series of
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, it was every kind of disaster you
Speaker 4: can imagine, and some that you can't. So you might
Speaker 4: want to have a conversation with kitty if you got
Speaker 4: one around the house, and make sure that they understand
Speaker 4: what they're not to do in your Christmas tree outside
Speaker 4: in the garden. This is a time of year when
Speaker 4: we appreciate the fact that we have planted burying plants.
Speaker 4: Plants are produced in the winter, and we have some
Speaker 4: really good choices out there. Of course, Holly's that's number one.
Speaker 4: Holly's are the most common famous plant for holiday decorating.
Speaker 4: Through the cool season that there is that would include
Speaker 4: a number of different types of hollies that produce berries.
Speaker 4: Cut the little branches sections of branches often use them
Speaker 4: for decorating around perhaps a nice meal table, or creating
Speaker 4: a wreath or something along those lines. For those of
Speaker 4: you who live out in the country and you got
Speaker 4: some of the ash or not ash juniper Eastern red
Speaker 4: cedar ash juniper Central Texas, the eastern red cedar branches
Speaker 4: can be cut and they make a wonderful wreath as
Speaker 4: well have a nice fragrance to them. Also, I'm going
Speaker 4: to come back and talk a little bit about plants
Speaker 4: to put in the landscape for decorating. In a moment.
Speaker 4: Right now, we're going to go to a break. Good morning,
Speaker 4: we got sleepyheads. We got a show to do here.
Speaker 4: We are going to be talking gardening until ten am
Speaker 4: to day. Welcome to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
Speaker 4: and let's talk about the things you're interested in. You
Speaker 4: can give me a call at seven one three two
Speaker 4: one two five eight seven four seven one three two
Speaker 4: one two fifty eight seventy four. If you are looking
Speaker 4: for a show place during the holidays, Pierce Caapes is
Speaker 4: the one you need to call they you know, they
Speaker 4: absolutely can do anything pretty much that you need done outside.
Speaker 4: Do you do you need beautiful landscape lighting? Do you
Speaker 4: want to have a complete rehaul of the landscape, maybe
Speaker 4: just creation of a beautiful stone patio area with the
Speaker 4: landscape lighting. Make sure the drainage is right in those
Speaker 4: areas where you want a plant that tend to be
Speaker 4: a little bit soggy, they can fix that as well
Speaker 4: a little bit of adjustments to the irrigation system. They
Speaker 4: can take care of that. Any kind of hardscape, drainage, irrigation, construction, landscape, lighting, pathway,
Speaker 4: you name it. They've got designers in staff that can
Speaker 4: help you create beautiful, beautiful curbobile for your landscape. You
Speaker 4: go to pierscapes dot com. That's the website. I just
Speaker 4: prefer you go there first because there you can see
Speaker 4: all the kinds of work that they do. Now they're
Speaker 4: numbers two, eight, one, three, seven, fifty sixty, but you
Speaker 4: can find that on the website too, piercescapes dot com.
Speaker 4: Pierscapes dot com. You can also get on board with
Speaker 4: them to do quarterly maintenance. That's once every three months
Speaker 4: they come out they spruce up the flower beds, do
Speaker 4: any weeding, any mulching, and any trimming that needs to
Speaker 4: be done, some fertilizing, making sure irrigation is right, changing
Speaker 4: the seasonal color out. You know, as we go from
Speaker 4: season to season, we put in fresh new annuals so
Speaker 4: it always looks good. Pierscapes is good at that. In fact,
Speaker 4: they are absolute professionals when it comes to that. You
Speaker 4: are listening to Gardenline and I'm your host, Skip Richter,
Speaker 4: and we're here to talk about the things that make
Speaker 4: gardening more success. The way I like to put it is,
Speaker 4: I want to help you have a beautiful garden, a
Speaker 4: bountiful garden, and more fun in the process. That's what
Speaker 4: we're aiming for. Gardening should be fun, and it is.
Speaker 4: I was starting to set up my lens, my light
Speaker 4: on lighting, my lighting for growing plants. Yesterday. I've got
Speaker 4: the I've got a couple of racks that I set
Speaker 4: up that I do that with, and I was putting
Speaker 4: the lights in it and finishing up a publication on
Speaker 4: landscape lighting, and I wanted to I want to just
Speaker 4: talk about that. Just Oh, it's already online. My web
Speaker 4: guys already got it up online. If you go to
Speaker 4: gardening with skip dot com. I have a publication I
Speaker 4: just put up hot off the presses. You may be
Speaker 4: the first to see it if you go click right now.
Speaker 4: Quality lighting for growing transplants. A lack of good light
Speaker 4: is probably the number one mistake we gardeners make when
Speaker 4: starting our own transplants, and it's gitting to be that time.
Speaker 4: Get You need to get your supplies together. That would
Speaker 4: include trays for growing them in, and I sometimes I
Speaker 4: use the you know, the regular what they call seventy
Speaker 4: two cell trays, and I grow in those. You can
Speaker 4: get them with a little mini greenhouse clear cover over it.
Speaker 4: If you want to do that. You need to get
Speaker 4: your seed starting mix. Seed starting mix is basically potting
Speaker 4: soil that's been ground up really really fine, so it's
Speaker 4: perfect for planting seeds at just the right depth. That's
Speaker 4: not real chunky stuff, it's very finely ground stuff. That
Speaker 4: would include heating mats if you're going to start them
Speaker 4: in a cold area. I start mining a garage. It
Speaker 4: gets quite cool in there, and I use a little
Speaker 4: heating mat under them and that works well. And then
Speaker 4: of course lighting well, lighting is the mistake we make.
Speaker 4: You know, you start some seeds. You have these, You
Speaker 4: have this vision of beautiful landscape plants or transplants, and
Speaker 4: what happens is you end up with something that's lanky,
Speaker 4: stretching to ward lights, spinley. It's gonna break if you
Speaker 4: mess with it. It gets out in the gard, it's
Speaker 4: not going to perform. Well, I know, I've been there.
Speaker 4: And all you need is a little bit of knowledge
Speaker 4: plant lighting and some reasonly priced fixtures, and you can
Speaker 4: do this. You know, if you want to go on
Speaker 4: the cheap, you can basically get a fixture. I refer
Speaker 4: to them as shop lights, but I just mean it's
Speaker 4: a long, skinny fixture with a couple of tubes in it.
Speaker 4: That's basically what I'm talking about. You can get a
Speaker 4: fixture like that that has a very bluish light that
Speaker 4: would be called cool white bulb. You know, having you
Speaker 4: go in the store, you got daylight bulbs. You've got
Speaker 4: those kind of orange e fireplace glow color, red light
Speaker 4: reddish into the spectrum bulbs, and you know, you can
Speaker 4: set it for each kind of room of your house,
Speaker 4: the kind of mood and everything like that. You want
Speaker 4: to cool white and a warm white, cool white, blue,
Speaker 4: worm white I'll say yellow color lighting, and that range
Speaker 4: gets you the amount of each part of the spectrum
Speaker 4: as close as you can get without just diving in
Speaker 4: and buying a quality plant light. But it'll get you
Speaker 4: by I'm growing a tomato or a pepper seedling, because
Speaker 4: you're only going to do that for a few weeks,
Speaker 4: and you specially need the blue light on the end
Speaker 4: of it. But anyway, I've done that before. I used
Speaker 4: to when I use fluorescent tubes, I would put one
Speaker 4: fluorescent tube cool white, one fluorescent tube warm white, and
Speaker 4: I grew transplants for years that way. I had two
Speaker 4: shop fixtures, so I had four bulbs, two cool, too warm,
Speaker 4: and they were alternating. You put those things fluorescent tubes.
Speaker 4: I had to get them down about two or three
Speaker 4: inches from the plants to get the outaode amount of light.
Speaker 4: I know, read the article. I make a statement in
Speaker 4: there that in here. Let me just say it right now.
Speaker 4: This is going to be hard for you to believe.
Speaker 4: But if you put a light one foot above a plant,
Speaker 4: a bright light or a dim light or whatever kind
Speaker 4: of light you have, doesn't matter. Put it one foot
Speaker 4: away from the plant, and you measure the light intensity
Speaker 4: level on that plant, and then you move the light
Speaker 4: two feet away from the plant. Most people would say, well,
Speaker 4: it's a little dimmer, but not much. No, it's a lot.
Speaker 4: Did you know that it is one for its twenty
Speaker 4: five percent of what the light was at one foot.
Speaker 4: When you moved to two feet, you doubled that distance,
Speaker 4: and you didn't get half the light or more. You
Speaker 4: got a fourth the light. Now read the article, explain
Speaker 4: it why in there. Give you a link if you
Speaker 4: are information, if you'll learn more. But it's very important
Speaker 4: to keep your lights down where the plants need a
Speaker 4: high intensity light. Now, some lights are so bright you
Speaker 4: put them down low and you'll fright. I mean, your
Speaker 4: plants will get all weird because it is just way
Speaker 4: too bright for them. But follow the lighting quality. You
Speaker 4: can do it, like I said, on the cheap if
Speaker 4: you don't do it that way. But if you're really
Speaker 4: serious about growing transplants, and maybe you want to grow
Speaker 4: some to the point of blooming, so your tomatoes when
Speaker 4: they go out in the garden already have blooms on them.
Speaker 4: There you need quality lighting. And I talk about what
Speaker 4: quality lighting is. Uh, it's I think it's an interesting article.
Speaker 4: Personally because as I learned this material years ago, as
Speaker 4: I learned about plant lighting, I just was fascinated by
Speaker 4: what it takes, what plants use, how this works. And
Speaker 4: I can just cut, you know, kind of give you
Speaker 4: a little preview here of the article and it is
Speaker 4: or the publication. Basically, what we see with our eyes
Speaker 4: and what plants get with their leaves are different things.
Speaker 4: It's light. Light is light, but we see light in
Speaker 4: terms of it's you know, it's a white light because
Speaker 4: it has all the colors of the spectrum in it.
Speaker 4: Plants see it in the different wavelengths because those wavelengths
Speaker 4: do different things in plants. If you get them on
Speaker 4: the red end of the wavelength, that is helping them
Speaker 4: bloom and fruit, and it does some other things that's
Speaker 4: in the article. If you get on the blue end,
Speaker 4: that's the vegetative growth end of lighting. But then each
Speaker 4: of the wavelengths has the functions that it has and
Speaker 4: so your light needs to do that. So you can
Speaker 4: buy a nice quality grow light and that will help
Speaker 4: you to have success with your transplants or with growing
Speaker 4: things out more.
Speaker 6: I have.
Speaker 4: A bunch of houseplants, too many to be in the
Speaker 4: house because we leave them outside during the summer. What
Speaker 4: am I going to do with them when it's going
Speaker 4: to get thirty two degrees outside or even not even
Speaker 4: that cold. Well, I have them in the garage underneath
Speaker 4: a really decent little grow light that covers a large area,
Speaker 4: and my plants are grouped underneath it, and it's a
Speaker 4: little cool in there for them, but they'll be okay,
Speaker 4: they'll get through that and the light will help keep
Speaker 4: them strong. So go to my website gardening with skip
Speaker 4: dot com and find quality lighting for growing transplants. It's
Speaker 4: a brand new publication I just put online. If you
Speaker 4: live down in the Richmond Rosenberg area, you're fortunate to
Speaker 4: have in Jenny Gardens right there in your backyard. You know,
Speaker 4: you can go, oh, I don't know what is it
Speaker 4: FM three fifty nine just north of Richmond on the
Speaker 4: Katie fullsher side on FM three point fifty nine right
Speaker 4: where it comes in there to FM seven twenty three,
Speaker 4: And Jenny Gardens is the kind of place where it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter what month of the year you go out there,
Speaker 4: you're going to find some really cool stuff. An unmatched
Speaker 4: selection of plants, shrubs, trees, vegetables, herbs, flowers, you know,
Speaker 4: in anything you can imagine out there. They they always
Speaker 4: have a good selection of the very best plants. Of course,
Speaker 4: they also have a very helpful team about as enthusiastic
Speaker 4: as you can get. They bring in all kinds of
Speaker 4: expertise to the place so that when you go up
Speaker 4: and ask someone a question, you get expert advice. You
Speaker 4: can take them photos and samples and things if you
Speaker 4: want to get help with stuff. You can also find
Speaker 4: wonderful Christmas gifts right now, any kind of holiday gifts
Speaker 4: where I'm talking about you know, wind chimes all the
Speaker 4: way into special beautiful indoor decorations, whimsicle garden art. Oh gosh,
Speaker 4: they got a ton of that stuff. It's really really nice.
Speaker 4: They have a good selection of seeds for those of
Speaker 4: you who are going to be doing some seeds starting.
Speaker 4: And then you know, when you get there, you're going
Speaker 4: to find all the quality products I talk about on Gardenline,
Speaker 4: products from Microlife and nitrofoss and Nilsen plant food and
Speaker 4: Medina soil products and molts, Nature's Way, airloom soils and
Speaker 4: Landscaper's Pride. It's really easy to find anything you need there,
Speaker 4: including help for success. Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. That's
Speaker 4: the website, Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. Well, here we are.
Speaker 4: It feels like these breaks are coming so fast. Today
Speaker 4: it's time for another one. I'm going to quit talking
Speaker 4: here and I'll be back in a minute if you
Speaker 4: would like to give me a call in the meantime
Speaker 4: seven one three two one two k t RH seven
Speaker 4: to one three two one two k t r H.
Speaker 7: We'll be back.
Speaker 4: I'm going to continue talking about landscape plants that help
Speaker 4: us decorating indoors for the holidays. Wen, We're glad to
Speaker 4: have you with us this holiday season. It comes around
Speaker 4: every year. I don't know what your plans are. You're
Speaker 4: gonna be doing any traveling, You're gonna be having some
Speaker 4: people in, some relatives, family friends, things like that. It's
Speaker 4: time to decorate indoors, and we can decorate indoors from
Speaker 4: our landscapes and gardens. There is a lot of things
Speaker 4: we can grow here that work really well. I was
Speaker 4: mentioning earlier the fact that you can use yopon berries
Speaker 4: or holly berry in general. Yopon is a type of holly,
Speaker 4: but all kinds of holly berries are great for decorating.
Speaker 4: Yopon's great too. Just remember the scientific name, the proper
Speaker 4: botanical name of yopon is ready for this ilix, which
Speaker 4: is the genus of Holly's vomittoria. You heard it here first,
Speaker 4: maybe not first, but that means don't put it in
Speaker 4: your mouth. It is a purjective. So if you got
Speaker 4: little kids that don't understand, just because it's pretty in red,
Speaker 4: it doesn't mean it's candy to go in the mouth,
Speaker 4: don't bring the yopons in, the berries in because you
Speaker 4: know it's not poisonous in the sense of like some
Speaker 4: points like plants like an oleander or something that would be.
Speaker 4: But it is a purgative, and you don't want to
Speaker 4: do that. So Yopon's a good one. I like to
Speaker 4: use some of the holly fern. There's a holly fern
Speaker 4: that is just a real leathery leaf, real beautiful. Makes
Speaker 4: an excellent greenery and arrangements. It works really well. Holly
Speaker 4: fern's a great easy fern to grow here. Doesn't have
Speaker 4: the fern like leaf when you picture a fern that
Speaker 4: kind of frond leaf, it's not quite like that. It's
Speaker 4: dark green, glossy and a little bit broader leaf than
Speaker 4: standard ferns, but it's a great one. Beauty berry. Beauty
Speaker 4: berry is a native plant here in our area. It
Speaker 4: drops its foliage in the fall to reveal beautiful purplish colored, purple,
Speaker 4: lavender colored berries that are in clusters and they look
Speaker 4: really nice in arrangements. Depending on the time of year,
Speaker 4: you can find some nice arrangement there. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of other plants that we can bring in. I mentioned
Speaker 4: the eastern red cedar is a good one. Grows wild
Speaker 4: out in the countryside, even on a road side. You'll
Speaker 4: get some cedar branches that would be good for decorating
Speaker 4: as well. Also, it has a nice scent, So think
Speaker 4: about that when you're planting plants. Look at your landscape
Speaker 4: right now, where might you want to plant some things
Speaker 4: that could also be used for decorating and not just
Speaker 4: holiday decorating, but decorating all through the year. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, you think about this. You go to a
Speaker 4: florist and you get arrangements all year that have greenery
Speaker 4: and flowers in them. What are some things you can
Speaker 4: plant so that your landscape or your garden becomes a
Speaker 4: source of those kinds of things. I think that would
Speaker 4: work well now when we're putting in plants of any kind,
Speaker 4: and there is not a better planting season of the
Speaker 4: year than we're in right now. I know it's holidays,
Speaker 4: we're busy, and we got things going, but just know this,
Speaker 4: preparing your soil, getting ready for planting, planting as soon
Speaker 4: as you can. Just I'll leave it that way, as
Speaker 4: soon as you can get it into the ground, give
Speaker 4: it every day possible before next summer arrives. That's the
Speaker 4: goal now. Landscaper's Pride has a number of quality products
Speaker 4: of over two dozen different quality products for soil blends,
Speaker 4: for growing pretty much anything you can grow. They also
Speaker 4: have quality mulches and twelve months out of the year
Speaker 4: three hundred and sixty five days out of the year
Speaker 4: is the time to mulch. Is always it's time to molt.
Speaker 4: You want to keep a blanket malts over the surface
Speaker 4: to protect the soil, stop erosion, prevent crusting, keep the
Speaker 4: soil temperatures moderated and winter and in summer, and keep
Speaker 4: weeds down. Who loves pulling weeds well? Keep sol multed
Speaker 4: with their black velvet molts. It's a hardwood malt. It's
Speaker 4: basically an immature compost you know, hadn't really fully composted,
Speaker 4: but it's a decomposing hardwood mult naturally dark, full of life.
Speaker 4: It's screened to be bulky enough to make a really
Speaker 4: quality malt. And it's beautiful, and it's not dyed. Black
Speaker 4: velvet is not dyed malts. That's a natural black color.
Speaker 4: Cedar malts really attractive for the holidays. Got that nice
Speaker 4: cedar or aroma in it, a beautiful reddish color when
Speaker 4: you put it out fresh. And then there's topsoil from
Speaker 4: Landscaper's Pride. Now this is a sandy loam compost mix.
Speaker 4: You can use it as top dressing. If you've got
Speaker 4: some low spots in your yard. You know you're trying
Speaker 4: to repair your yard, get it back right again. Maybe
Speaker 4: next spring you're gon be doing some more sodding some
Speaker 4: areas that struggled. Landscapers Pride top soil is great for
Speaker 4: filling in those low areas, for leveling things out, or
Speaker 4: even just in part of your bedprop A quality sandy
Speaker 4: loam with compost mix is a good part of making
Speaker 4: quality bed now. You can go to Landscaperspride dot com
Speaker 4: find out more about it.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 4: It's easy, easy to find all over the Greater Houston area.
Speaker 4: A while back, I was visiting with some of the
Speaker 4: folks at Microlife. It's been a good while ago now,
Speaker 4: but we're talking about all the different products that they
Speaker 4: have and some of the ingredients and things in them.
Speaker 4: And you know, microlife is basically built on using nature's
Speaker 4: lead in turning our landscapes and gardens into beautiful, productive places.
Speaker 4: You know, in nature, think about the forests of the world.
Speaker 4: Think about the meadows of the world, who running around
Speaker 4: doing all kinds of soil prep and stuff to them.
Speaker 4: What's happened is, year after year for ages, plants and
Speaker 4: plant parts have been growing and dying and falling on
Speaker 4: the ground, creating malts, creating soil and making it richer
Speaker 4: and richer, more beautiful, more beautiful. That is how microlife
Speaker 4: helps is by shortcutting that same natural process. So when
Speaker 4: you get a microlife fertilizer, you're getting a natural, plant
Speaker 4: based organic fertilizer that is loaded with microbes of all types.
Speaker 4: You put that out on the ground and it does
Speaker 4: what organic matter does in nature. It becomes part of
Speaker 4: the soil and improves soil structure. It helps stimulate biological
Speaker 4: activity and you get one of these microlife products, and
Speaker 4: that is exactly what you're doing. You are helping move
Speaker 4: nature forward quickly if you will. We don't want to
Speaker 4: wait eighty years for the tropical rainforest to build soil.
Speaker 4: We want it now because we've got a plant. Microlife
Speaker 4: helps do that. It gives this natural source of nutrients.
Speaker 4: It decompose away as microbes chew them up. And all
Speaker 4: microlife products are loaded with quality microbes and quality nutrients
Speaker 4: from nature. That's how it works. Microlife Fertilizer dot Com
Speaker 4: is the website. It's widely available here in the Houston area.
Speaker 4: Makes it really really easy for you to have success
Speaker 4: with your gardens and landscapes. I don't care if it's
Speaker 4: a lawn, if it's a flower bed, if it's a
Speaker 4: vegetable garden. Microlife products are designed for all of those.
Speaker 4: They got. They have products for acid loving plants, they
Speaker 4: have products for fruit and fruit trees, and certainly for
Speaker 4: the lawn and flower beds. You just pick the product
Speaker 4: and it will help you to have that kind of success. Well,
Speaker 4: you're listening to garden Line our phone number, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: give you the number before I go to break here
Speaker 4: because you can give a call and be the very
Speaker 4: first up when we come back. Seven to one three
Speaker 4: two one two five eight seven four, seven to one
Speaker 4: three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Don't forget
Speaker 4: to go buy my website and check out the Quality
Speaker 4: Lighting for Growing Transplants article. It is hot off the presses,
Speaker 4: and I would say this. Everybody needs to grow some
Speaker 4: transplants for fun. And if you want to do it,
Speaker 4: don't do it until you read this article so that
Speaker 4: you can have the best chance of success possible. We'll
Speaker 4: be right back because sometimes I can just sit and
Speaker 4: listen to music and I forget I'm supposed to do
Speaker 4: it radio shows. Well here we are, welcome to Garden Line.
Speaker 4: I'm back. I'm back on tasks at last. Oh goosh yeah.
Speaker 2: The uh.
Speaker 4: The folks that plans for all seasons, the Fowerty family,
Speaker 4: they've been they have been around since what nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 4: Plans for all seasons is the Garden Center. As you're
Speaker 4: going up two forty nine Tombol Parkway twurd Tomboal, just
Speaker 4: exit Luetta and it's right across Luetta, just within a
Speaker 4: block on the right hand side right there. When you
Speaker 4: go in there, I'll tell you this, You're going to
Speaker 4: find good plants. You're going to find quality plants. You're
Speaker 4: going to find lots of quality products. You hear me
Speaker 4: talk about fertilizers and soils and things on guardline, You're
Speaker 4: going to find them there. It Plants for all seasons.
Speaker 4: But probably the most important thing that a lot of
Speaker 4: people don't think about is the quality of advice that
Speaker 4: you get, the quality of guidance that you get. You're
Speaker 4: not shopping at some big box store where people are
Speaker 4: hired to do the garden center that may not know
Speaker 4: hardly anything about gardening, or may think they do, but
Speaker 4: they don't. You're talking to people that have been gardeners
Speaker 4: in our area for a very long time. They've been
Speaker 4: helping gardeners for a very long time. And that's what
Speaker 4: you get at Plants for All Seasons. You can take
Speaker 4: them pictures, you can take them samples in a bag,
Speaker 4: you know, for diagnosis or for identification, to get a
Speaker 4: solution to help help you to have success. This is
Speaker 4: a full service retail garden center. It's located again just
Speaker 4: north of Luetta on two forty nine on the northbound
Speaker 4: feeder road Plants for all seasons. Dot com is a website.
Speaker 4: Here's a phone number two eight one, three seven six
Speaker 4: sixteen forty six. Right now. They are loaded up with
Speaker 4: some wonderful ideas for Christmas gifts for everyone on your list,
Speaker 4: So go check it out. Plans for all Seasons. I
Speaker 4: always love going in there visiting with the whole team.
Speaker 4: They are a pleasure to visit with because they know
Speaker 4: what they're talking about and they're friendly. That's important too.
Speaker 4: I wanted to tell you about something that I just
Speaker 4: put this on my website a while back. Do you, guys,
Speaker 4: I know pretty much all the listeners unless you just
Speaker 4: joined recently garden Line listening audience, you knew Randy Lemon.
Speaker 4: Randy Lemon held the chair I'm sitting in for over
Speaker 4: twenty five years. He was a legend in the greater
Speaker 4: Houston area and certainly the gardening world. Everyone knew Randy.
Speaker 4: Randy had an entertaining style, he had very helpful advice.
Speaker 4: He benefited I don't know countless people over the years
Speaker 4: his host here garden Line. You, in fact, me exactly
Speaker 4: be one of those kind of people. Randy and I
Speaker 4: go way back. We lived in a dorm at A
Speaker 4: and M together Moses Hall. And I've known Randy, knew
Speaker 4: Randy for a very very long time. You know Randy
Speaker 4: just he was he was let's just say this, he
Speaker 4: was a presidentce. You couldn't miss Randy when he was
Speaker 4: in the room, that is for sure. Well, Dean Nelson
Speaker 4: Nelson Plant Food set up a scholarship in Randy's name
Speaker 4: to honor and remember Randy's wife and his contribution to
Speaker 4: the gardening world. And that scholarship. We've talked about it
Speaker 4: a while back, but we're making another push for that now.
Speaker 4: This scholarship, by the way, goes every year to a
Speaker 4: horticulture student at Texas A and M. Now, if you
Speaker 4: knew Randy, you know how much he loved Texas A
Speaker 4: and M, and how you can just imagine how proud
Speaker 4: he would be knowing that there's a scholarship in his
Speaker 4: name going to train a new generation of horticulture folks.
Speaker 4: I think that is a really really cool thing, and
Speaker 4: I'd like to ask you if you would would you
Speaker 4: consider making a donation toward that scholarship. We are trying
Speaker 4: to raise some more money. We'll continue to build it up.
Speaker 4: The more we can produce, the more good we can
Speaker 4: do with it. This will be something that goes goes
Speaker 4: on year after year after year. And you can give
Speaker 4: a couple of ways. You can go online to the
Speaker 4: Texas A and M Foundation website and give that way
Speaker 4: online with a correct card. You can also get by
Speaker 4: check by making a checkout to Texas A and M
Speaker 4: Foundation and in the memo writing Lemon Scholarship. Now, I'm
Speaker 4: not going to read you all the address in the
Speaker 4: r L and all that kind of stuff. Go to
Speaker 4: my website Gardening with Skip dot com. It is the
Speaker 4: most recent post on the website, the Randy Lemon Scholarship.
Speaker 4: It tells you how to give online. It tells you
Speaker 4: how to get by check. If you would do that,
Speaker 4: But for those of you who enjoyed listening to Randy
Speaker 4: all those years, who benefited from Randy's advice all those years,
Speaker 4: I would just make that appeal. Would you consider doing that.
Speaker 4: I think it is a wonderful cause, and I think
Speaker 4: that the dividends of you being generous in that way
Speaker 4: really help the gardening world here in the Greater Houston area.
Speaker 4: I'm a product of the NM Horticulture program that is
Speaker 4: where I got my start in horticulture in terms of
Speaker 4: professional knowledge and learning, and I think it would be
Speaker 4: great to start preparing more generations a horticulturist, and this
Speaker 4: scholarship will do just that. That is near and dear
Speaker 4: to my heart. I think it would be a great
Speaker 4: way to remember Randy. You're listening to garden Line. The
Speaker 4: phone number here is seven one three two one two
Speaker 4: five eight seven four seven one three two one two
Speaker 4: fifty eight seventy four. You hear me talk about quality
Speaker 4: home products of Texas a lot. You know, that's where
Speaker 4: you go get your Generac automatic standby generator. And of
Speaker 4: course they have other products that they sell there, but
Speaker 4: Generac is just a just a trusted name when it
Speaker 4: comes to generators. But it's not just the product that
Speaker 4: you're buying. Yes, it's a quality product, it's this that
Speaker 4: you get. Quality home is known. They are recognized with
Speaker 4: many awards and many very happy customers lauding them interviews,
Speaker 4: UH for the kind of service they give. If you
Speaker 4: happen to be a licensed electrician or a plumbing pro
Speaker 4: and you're looking for a new career opportunity, you should
Speaker 4: can say are applying to work with Quality Home. Quality
Speaker 4: Home uses in house people for their electricity and the plumbing.
Speaker 4: They don't sub that out, and it is a job
Speaker 4: with competitive pay. They have comprehensive medical, dental, vision coverage,
Speaker 4: four O one K, retirement plans for one K matching,
Speaker 4: by the way, holiday paid time off, basically career advancement opportunities.
Speaker 4: It's a stable, reliable, reputable organization.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: Quality Home has been around our community for a long
Speaker 4: time and it's a family owned business here in the
Speaker 4: Houston area, and they make a difference in the community.
Speaker 4: They make a positive impact here and around the world.
Speaker 4: They donate locally to our food banks. For example, they
Speaker 4: help fund schools. They provide COVID relief when that was
Speaker 4: going through. They help clean water globally, helping make sure
Speaker 4: people have sources of clean They are good citizens as
Speaker 4: a company, it's good citizen. It's a great place to work.
Speaker 4: Quality Here's here's the website. This is where you go
Speaker 4: if you would like to put in an application Quality
Speaker 4: TX dot com qualitytx dot com. By the way, that's
Speaker 4: also where you go if you're interested in talking to
Speaker 4: them about getting a Generac automatic standby generator installed at
Speaker 4: your place. I don't know what it is today. Every
Speaker 4: time I look at the clock, it's like, no, that
Speaker 4: can't be right, But it is right. And I'm running
Speaker 4: out of time on this segment as well. We're going
Speaker 4: to take a break at the top of the hour.
Speaker 4: In the meantime, though, I did want to, I did
Speaker 4: want to go on a little bit more about doing
Speaker 4: some decorations indoors all through the season long there. If
Speaker 4: you've never grown cut flowers, you should right now be
Speaker 4: thinking about preparing a bed that's dedicated just to that.
Speaker 4: Now you can mix cut flowers all through the landscape.
Speaker 4: We have a couple of beds in my garden, my
Speaker 4: vegetable garden where we grow as any as and other
Speaker 4: things like that. My life. My wife loves cosmos. She's
Speaker 4: got some in her garden. Yes, we have separate gardens,
Speaker 4: not that we can't go in each other's garden, but
Speaker 4: she just kind of has her nice, pretty garden off
Speaker 4: to the side where she grows flowers. But it is
Speaker 4: so easy to grow cut flowers in the landscape or
Speaker 4: in a garden. I would say the number one simplest
Speaker 4: gardening cut flower gardening one on one is Zenias. Zennias
Speaker 4: you can buy a bunch of seeds are not very expensive.
Speaker 4: You can get all kinds. You can get tall types,
Speaker 4: you can get bedding plant types. You can get single
Speaker 4: flower types that would be more like a daisy like flower.
Speaker 4: You can get a multiple double flowers that almost look
Speaker 4: like well they do look like a mom, a chrysanthemum,
Speaker 4: a mom. Just beautiful, absolutely beautiful. It's easy, easy to do.
Speaker 4: But lots of good information online. That's another fact sheet
Speaker 4: I need to write up as on growing cut flowers.
Speaker 4: Put that on the website too. Well, you get the idea.
Speaker 4: But think about as you play your landscape, so as
Speaker 4: you do your garden plantings, as you create even shrubs
Speaker 4: down to shrubs in the landscape. What is beautiful for decorations?
Speaker 4: And there are so many really cool things out there,
Speaker 4: uh Chinese witch, hazel oil pedal on that beautiful burgundy foliage,
Speaker 4: especially with some sun on the foliage, A little lots
Speaker 4: of other things we can choose. How do you make
Speaker 4: your landscape? Source of the door? All right, can't take
Speaker 4: it break, Let me come back, Frank from Houston.
Speaker 3: Here are first up.
Speaker 1: Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with scape. Ricord's
Speaker 1: just watch him as the world.
Speaker 3: So many sea blot basic.
Speaker 4: Welcome back, Welcome back to garden Line on a nice
Speaker 4: Saturday morning. We've got a little drizzle going on out there,
Speaker 4: some cloudy today, but good night. The temperatures are wonderful
Speaker 4: and they're going to be wonderful for a good while
Speaker 4: here that let me say counter blessings. We're gonna we're
Speaker 4: gonna look at it that way. We are glad to
Speaker 4: have some nice, moderate temperatures where we can get out
Speaker 4: and about and get some things, get some things done.
Speaker 4: We're going to start this hour off by going straight
Speaker 4: to the phones to talk to Frank. Hello, Frank, welcome
Speaker 4: to garden Line.
Speaker 2: Hello, thank you, what are you doing?
Speaker 4: I'm well, sir, how can we help?
Speaker 2: All right? I will receive some uh tragicke dragging which Jim,
Speaker 2: I'm has a blank out. Have some bluves in desert
Speaker 2: rose and okay, I was trying to see what's the
Speaker 2: best in the planum and I.
Speaker 4: Well, desert rose isn't a bulb like a tulip would
Speaker 4: be a bull, but it has a swollen base to
Speaker 4: the plant. Or do you think are we talking about
Speaker 4: desert rose? For sure?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, sir, desert rose.
Speaker 4: Oh, okay, desert rose likes very well drained soil, so
Speaker 4: you need to get it in a container with kind
Speaker 4: of a cactus mix, you know, something you would grow
Speaker 4: for very very gritty, uh, just really well drained not
Speaker 4: just not just pure potting soil kind of thing, but
Speaker 4: something that drains better than that. I cannot take the cold,
Speaker 4: cold weather. But it likes sunshine. It likes to be
Speaker 4: you know, fed gradually over time. But it's not that
Speaker 4: hard to grow if you give it good light and
Speaker 4: good drainage.
Speaker 2: Okay, what's the best time to plant it?
Speaker 4: You can plan it anytime you want. You're going to
Speaker 4: grow it in a container, right, yes, sir, Yeah, you
Speaker 4: can plan it anytime. You can plan one right now
Speaker 4: if you want, just get it.
Speaker 2: If I'm plan it right now, do I keep it
Speaker 2: in the house.
Speaker 4: Well, if you can give it a light, that would
Speaker 4: be better. If you have some sort of an artificial
Speaker 4: light you can put it under to help it out.
Speaker 4: If you haven't purchased it yet, you could also wait
Speaker 4: and just do it in the spring and then you're
Speaker 4: not having to take care of it through winter through winter, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, with trying to give it adequate light and
Speaker 4: everything like that.
Speaker 2: So okay, so like received already glad you just hold
Speaker 2: them over to the spring with a naked glad to
Speaker 2: doing the thing too.
Speaker 4: No, if you've already got them in your hand, I'd
Speaker 4: get them potted up, Get them potted up and uh
Speaker 4: go go get you a uh the like airlom soils
Speaker 4: makes a cactus, uh and succulent food. Uh, it's potting soil.
Speaker 4: You buy it in small bags. Garden centers are some
Speaker 4: of the I don't.
Speaker 2: Know you Yeah, I'll ordered a bag of it on Amazon,
Speaker 2: so I have a bag there.
Speaker 8: You go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's it. Just get it potted up real
Speaker 4: good and uh make you know it's a it's a
Speaker 4: plant that is built. It's designed to be able to
Speaker 4: hold some water so that you know, if it if
Speaker 4: it doesn't get watered all the time, it's going to
Speaker 4: be okay. In fact, it's better to not keep them
Speaker 4: too wet for sure.
Speaker 2: So it's like a cactus or such a little.
Speaker 4: It's a succulent h yeah, ok, yeah it is. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Gosh they're a beautiful though. You bet good luck with that.
Speaker 4: Those are gorgeous plants. Congratulations on getting one of those.
Speaker 2: I appreciate your call.
Speaker 4: All right, there you have it, Hey, if you'd like
Speaker 4: to give us a call seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two five eight seven four seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two fifty eight seventy four. We are here to answer
Speaker 4: your gardening questions. Well, I like to put it as
Speaker 4: we're here to help you have a what is it,
Speaker 4: A bountiful garden, A beautiful landscape and more fun in
Speaker 4: the process. A bountiful garden, beautiful landscape and more fun
Speaker 4: in the process. I like to put it that way.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes we get all kind of I don't
Speaker 4: know what the word is, but kind of tied up
Speaker 4: and not about whether we're having success or how do
Speaker 4: you garden? I don't know how to do this. I
Speaker 4: don't have a green thumb. You know. People worry about
Speaker 4: that and it becomes a stress to try to have success.
Speaker 4: You know, I think that plant's going to die. Relax,
Speaker 4: just relax, listen. You have got to kill a lot
Speaker 4: of plants to become a good gardener. I'm going to
Speaker 4: put it that way. I'm giving you permission to kill
Speaker 4: some plants or to have some struggle. That's how we learn. No,
Speaker 4: we're here to help you cut down on the number
Speaker 4: you kill and the number of the struggle. But just
Speaker 4: relax and have fun. As you learn about it, it
Speaker 4: becomes more fun. And once you figure out what a
Speaker 4: plant wants, whether that plant is an azalea or a
Speaker 4: desert rose, once you figure out kind of the knack
Speaker 4: of it, the amount of light, the amount of the
Speaker 4: temperatures it takes, the soils and things. Once you figure
Speaker 4: that out, it just becomes fun and it looks easy.
Speaker 4: And people say you got a green thumb, and you
Speaker 4: just look at them, and if you want to take
Speaker 4: credit for it, you can say yes, I do. I
Speaker 4: would prefer you look at them and say no, I
Speaker 4: just have an informed thumb. Skip helped inform my moumb
Speaker 4: on garden Line. Your thumb gets smarter, your plants do better.
Speaker 4: That's kind of how it works. So let's educate that
Speaker 4: thumb and get you off to success. You can do
Speaker 4: that listening here to Gardenline. You also do that going
Speaker 4: into our quality garden centers. You know a place like
Speaker 4: RCW Nursery. RCW is the nursery that is on Tomball
Speaker 4: Parkway at Beltway eight right where those two come together.
Speaker 4: Two forty nine and belt Way eight. That is where
Speaker 4: RCW is. The website is RCW Nurseries dot com. RCW
Speaker 4: nurseries dot com. You know, with RCW you have got
Speaker 4: folks that have been doing this a long time. By
Speaker 4: the way, they grow their own trees and large shrubs
Speaker 4: up in Plantersville, and they have got as some of
Speaker 4: the best deals you're going to find anytime anywhere right now.
Speaker 4: For example, twenty percent off camellias, two kinds of committees,
Speaker 4: Japonicas and Susanquez. One blooms in the December time, one
Speaker 4: blooms in the January time. That just to may oversimplify it. Uh,
Speaker 4: they have azaleas twenty percent, all their shrubs twenty percent off.
Speaker 4: If you like metal yard art and arbors, and boy
Speaker 4: do I ever I'm talking about the you know, the
Speaker 4: metal structure and arbor as well as the hilarious uh
Speaker 4: yard art that they have there at plants at the RCW.
Speaker 4: Uh they've got thirty percent off that.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 4: Every time I go in there, it's one of the
Speaker 4: first things I do is go over and see what
Speaker 4: kind of crazy stuff have they posted to the wall
Speaker 4: with metal the yard art out there, all their trees
Speaker 4: are fifteen percent off at r CW Nurseries. If you'd
Speaker 4: like to give them a call to eight one four
Speaker 4: four zero fifty one sixty one or go to r
Speaker 4: c W Nurseries dot com. They're gonna be open today.
Speaker 4: You know you should get out there and check that out.
Speaker 4: You need to see these camelleas that are blooming. They
Speaker 4: are gorgeous. Camellias are almost like a winter rows on
Speaker 4: an evergreen plant. I guess that's one way you could
Speaker 4: look at it. I love those things. Lots of perennials
Speaker 4: at RCWS, lots of annual color. They always have what's
Speaker 4: in season. I'm sitting here checking my time again. I
Speaker 4: gotta go take a little break and we'll come back
Speaker 4: and talk to you more. If you'd like to give
Speaker 4: me a call, go ahead and get on the boards
Speaker 4: now with Jonathan seven one three two one two KTRH.
Speaker 4: We'll talk to you when we come back. Welcome back
Speaker 4: to guard Light. You know, ACE Hardware stores are the
Speaker 4: place you go when you need fill in the blank,
Speaker 4: and that's why they say ACE is the place right now.
Speaker 4: ACE is an awesome place to go for your holiday
Speaker 4: lights and your holiday decorations. That's indoor and outdoor. They
Speaker 4: have something called lights by the foot. I think that's
Speaker 4: the coolest thing. So instead of buying this light that's
Speaker 4: a given length, you know, ten foot, twenty foot whatever,
Speaker 4: maybe you need one that's seventeen feet seventeen feet long. Well,
Speaker 4: you can purchase by the foot your holiday light strings.
Speaker 4: Just go by there and ask them how on earth
Speaker 4: do you do that? And they'll tell you. ACE is
Speaker 4: a place for really cool gifts as well. Do you
Speaker 4: have a do it yourself or on your list? Maybe
Speaker 4: some tools that would work well. Do you need things
Speaker 4: for the shop? Do you need things for the kitchen?
Speaker 4: Do you need things for decorating indoors? Do you need
Speaker 4: toys for the kids? Ace Hardware has all the above?
Speaker 4: All the above. Now we have a lot of ACE
Speaker 4: Hardware stores around the listening area. For example, out there
Speaker 4: in Orange you've got Child's Building Supply on Highway six
Speaker 4: near Bear Creek. There's Hamilton Hardware just off Highway six
Speaker 4: near Bear Creek Park. There's Auspas Ace up in the Woodlands.
Speaker 4: And then you can go to either Kingwood or a
Speaker 4: task Asita and find a K and Mace Hardware two
Speaker 4: locations Kingwood and a task aseda just examples. Go to
Speaker 4: acehardware dot com, find the store locator, find the store
Speaker 4: near you. Let's go out to Fairfield. Now we're gonna
Speaker 4: head to Fairfield and talk to Marty. Hey, welcome to.
Speaker 10: Garden Line morning Skips. Thank you for taking my call, Hay. Question,
Speaker 10: since nobody really called in, I thought i'd throw this
Speaker 10: out there. It doesn't have to be answered right now.
Speaker 10: But I had a friend that retired and her husband
Speaker 10: loves to plant outside, I mean just anything and everything,
Speaker 10: and he's really good at it. She, on the other hand,
Speaker 10: doesn't like to plant. But I thought I would try
Speaker 10: to get her interested by giving her something she could
Speaker 10: keep inside, something interesting or a cool plant, or something
Speaker 10: hydro upon it. I don't know what might you think
Speaker 10: off the top of your head or you can answer
Speaker 10: later whichever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question, so you know, probably you know,
Speaker 4: hydroponics is fine. That's pretty elaborate and involved, and we
Speaker 4: don't want her to fail at it this first time,
Speaker 4: so I would, okay, I would think about like a
Speaker 4: quality house plant. I like that that if we're just
Speaker 4: if we're just wanting to, you know, get her started. Well,
Speaker 4: the two easiest plants to grow our mother in law's tongue.
Speaker 4: It's called sense of area snake plants another name for it,
Speaker 4: uh and zz plant z Z is another one that
Speaker 4: you know, highlight, low light, you water it, you forget
Speaker 4: to water it. They're pretty forgoing. They're not necessarily everybody
Speaker 4: would think is the most beautiful go.
Speaker 10: Ahead, Yeah, no, I've never heard of a zz plant.
Speaker 10: I know what a mother in law is?
Speaker 2: What is well? They have a.
Speaker 4: Well it comes out of the pot with these real thick, large,
Speaker 4: fleshy petioles that come out for they're the leaf stems
Speaker 4: and then the leaves are on the end. It's kind
Speaker 4: of a waxy leaf material. There's one type that has
Speaker 4: almost a chocolate brown lea and the standard type is
Speaker 4: just a dark green. They're easy, I mean you can
Speaker 4: find them anywhere and anyway. That's an easy one. For
Speaker 4: a more beautiful house plant, I think ugly aema or
Speaker 4: Chinese evergreen is best. Those. You can get them in
Speaker 4: standard green or green with kind of silvery color markings
Speaker 4: in the leaf. But I like the kind that have
Speaker 4: red or coral in the leaves. They are very beautiful.
Speaker 4: Now there are other beautiful houseplants, but again we're trying
Speaker 4: to help her have success. So you know, going to
Speaker 4: a prayer plant, for example, a moranta, those are a
Speaker 4: little more tricky, so I would try a Chinese evergreen.
Speaker 4: It takes lower light, not as low as some plants,
Speaker 4: not as low as a closet plant, for example, but
Speaker 4: if you just give it moderate light, it'll do okay.
Speaker 4: The orchids, the little moth orchids that you see for sale,
Speaker 4: ever wear, that's another pretty easy plant. It has some
Speaker 4: basic care that you give it. But as far as
Speaker 4: plants go, I neglect mine so much that I have
Speaker 4: to I had to take the phone out of the
Speaker 4: room because they kept calling the society cruelty to plants
Speaker 4: to turn it in. But they're they're tough, and even
Speaker 4: the neglected ones are bloom blooming again this year, and
Speaker 4: so that would be an easy one to do.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, you can go in to fancier things like
Speaker 4: a little terrarium, or if you wanted to spend a
Speaker 4: little more on it, you could do one of those
Speaker 4: little aquaponic gardens that you know, it has the light
Speaker 4: right above where the plants grow and they can play
Speaker 4: around with that. But I think that would be a
Speaker 4: little more of a challenge, but they might find it
Speaker 4: not al enough to really attract them to.
Speaker 10: When you said Chinese evergreen, you mentioned the name before that.
Speaker 10: Did you say aguilera?
Speaker 4: Yes, a A g l e o aglio nema an
Speaker 4: e m a. That's the proper name for it. Chinese
Speaker 4: evergreen is a simple name for it.
Speaker 12: Okay.
Speaker 10: And what about a Christmas cactus, Chris, This.
Speaker 4: Cactus is good, you know right now? You get them
Speaker 4: with blooms on them. It's easy mine also, or neglect
Speaker 4: that I put them outside underneath the kind of a
Speaker 4: covering area I've got kind of a gosh, can't even
Speaker 4: say the name for it. Arbor, that's the word I'm
Speaker 4: looking for. And I water them as I think about it.
Speaker 4: They do like to be watered. They're not like a
Speaker 4: true cactus. They grow in an area where it rains
Speaker 4: that I ignore them all year, turn them around a
Speaker 4: few times, pull the leaves that have fallen in them off,
Speaker 4: and then when the fall comes they bloom again. They
Speaker 4: really bloom easy. And I can tell you that's that
Speaker 4: thing blooms a neglect.
Speaker 10: Yeah, that was not an indoor plant, though I've killed
Speaker 10: on mine.
Speaker 4: But yeah, okay, I don't know.
Speaker 10: Okay, I'll find out what an easy plant is and
Speaker 10: then i'll go looking. But those are some great suggestions.
Speaker 10: I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, those would be a few I don't I just
Speaker 4: don't know what their particular interests are. You know, it's gosh,
Speaker 4: there's so many things that would be recommending.
Speaker 10: I've thought about. Yeah, I thought about an herb garden,
Speaker 10: because she does like to cook.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 10: I was thinking maybe something.
Speaker 5: Like that, but I don't.
Speaker 2: I thought maybe you.
Speaker 10: Since you like indoor plants. I am not very good
Speaker 10: at doing indoor plants.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think that a light set up with
Speaker 4: with herbs would be helpful. Indoor herbs struggle. They get
Speaker 4: spin lead because they don't get enough light. And so
Speaker 4: if you had a light set up. My wife has.
Speaker 4: We have a counter where we mounted some lights up
Speaker 4: underneath the counter and she sets herbs there underneath those
Speaker 4: lights so you don't resee the lights that are mounted up,
Speaker 4: you know, underneath the overhang of the counter. But that
Speaker 4: way you can grobs indoors. But other than that, it's
Speaker 4: a little bit more of a challenge. And like I said,
Speaker 4: we wanted to have success. That's that's the main thing.
Speaker 10: Great idea. Her husband just puts them up underneath their
Speaker 10: cabinet's perfect.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, thank you well, thanks, ok thanks Marty,
Speaker 4: appreciate the call. You take care, good luck. Uh yeah,
Speaker 4: Christmas holiday, whatever the event is. Gifts. That is a
Speaker 4: fun thing to think about when it comes time for
Speaker 4: gardening gifts because there's so many things. You know, what
Speaker 4: people on your list that you know might be interested
Speaker 4: in birds, bird houses, bird feeders, be all that, all
Speaker 4: that kind of thing that people that might be interested in.
Speaker 4: Fragrant plants. There are plants plants that have a wonderful
Speaker 4: fragrance that could be that could be planted and grown.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of things that go along with standard gardening.
Speaker 4: If you got to Moss Nursery and Seabrook, I love
Speaker 4: going there, by the way. It is a true destination.
Speaker 4: Everybody down that area, Chemon, Seabrook and everything they know.
Speaker 4: Moss Nursery been around long long time. Eight acres eight
Speaker 4: acre Gardener's paradise is what it amounts to right now.
Speaker 4: Moss has got as they always do everything that is
Speaker 4: for the seasons, and if you're looking for house plants,
Speaker 4: easy to grow houseplants, everything from like a little four
Speaker 4: inch pot, very very economical, up to a six foot
Speaker 4: tall beautiful plant. They're greenhouse for house plants is outstanding
Speaker 4: and I would even recommend you go there. You're going
Speaker 4: to be wanting to buy fruit trees soon, you're going
Speaker 4: to be putting in vegetables and flowers and things. Moss
Speaker 4: has got you covered on all that. Here's the website
Speaker 4: Maas Nursery dot com. Maas Nursery dot com. They're on
Speaker 4: Toddville Road out there in Seabrook and onf you go.
Speaker 4: First of all, allow yourself some time because there is
Speaker 4: a lot to see wandering through that eight acres A
Speaker 4: lot are really cool, aren't garden ornament? You know, statuaries
Speaker 4: and fountains and all concrete, uh, figurines and all. It's
Speaker 4: just cool. I promise this. Every time you turn the corner,
Speaker 4: it's gonna be like, oh wow, I've never seen one
Speaker 4: of those before. That's that's how it is out there
Speaker 4: at Moss Nursery. You were listening to the garden line.
Speaker 4: If you'd like to give us a call seven one
Speaker 4: three two one two fifty eight seventy four, seven to
Speaker 4: one three two one two five eight seven four. The
Speaker 4: uh as we get close to the holidays, you know,
Speaker 4: people get busy and things, and uh it gets quieter
Speaker 4: on the phones, and so if you've ever you know,
Speaker 4: I'd call in, but I don't want to wait online
Speaker 4: or anything. Well, first of all, we work at not
Speaker 4: letting people wait online, do our best at that. But
Speaker 4: right now is a good time. Days like this are
Speaker 4: a good time. If you'd like to give it, give
Speaker 4: us a call. If you want to have success with plants,
Speaker 4: you got to fix the soil first, brown stuff before
Speaker 4: green stuff. And the one stop shop for all brown
Speaker 4: stuff is CNA Malts. Cienamlch is south of Houston near
Speaker 4: Highway six and two eighty eight. They're actually on FM
Speaker 4: five twenty one now. Cienamltch has every kind of soil
Speaker 4: amendment product that you would need, certainly composts in every
Speaker 4: type and form. They carry products from Landscaper's Pride, They
Speaker 4: carry products from heirloom soils. For example. They have that
Speaker 4: if you need fertilizers that you hear me talk about.
Speaker 4: That's part of the brown stuff, part of the soil
Speaker 4: microlife Azamite, Nelson, turf Star, Nitrefoss products, and Medina products.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 4: You're going to find the Vegian Nerb mix from Airloom
Speaker 4: Soils there. You're going to find Landscaper's Pride black Velvet there.
Speaker 4: You're going to find Rose Soil blends there. They deliver
Speaker 4: within about twenty miles of their location, and it's just
Speaker 4: a place to go. When you walk into Sea Aamals,
Speaker 4: you're going to find everything you need for success. So
Speaker 4: don't start thinking about planting until you go there or
Speaker 4: have them deliver what you need. Time for us to
Speaker 4: take a break, I'll be right back. Welcome back to
Speaker 4: garden Line. We are glad you are listening today. I
Speaker 4: appreciate that. I hope you enjoy garden Line. And if
Speaker 4: we can help you have success, then I'll call that
Speaker 4: a good day, a very very good day. That is
Speaker 4: what we're here for. We want you to have success.
Speaker 4: You know that I was talking to Marty a minute
Speaker 4: ago about holiday gift plants and the folks out at
Speaker 4: Neilson water Gardens. You know, and now you think about
Speaker 4: water gardens, what's water gardens and nursery right, So anything
Speaker 4: water garden, they're the experts, just absolutely nationally recognized experts,
Speaker 4: from beautiful water gardens to those disappearing fountains, to the fish,
Speaker 4: to the plants and them to everything else. But do
Speaker 4: you know they also have a really good selection of
Speaker 4: plants in the garden center and right now inside the
Speaker 4: nursery house plants. We're talking about gift plants with Marty
Speaker 4: a minute ago, and I mentioned a number of different plants.
Speaker 4: Well they've got them all there decorating and you know
Speaker 4: the zzy plant that I was talking about, they have those.
Speaker 4: They're beautifully decorated. They also, by the way, have a
Speaker 4: great sense of humor. They say that all their plants
Speaker 4: are sugar free, calorie free, gluten free, so that's hilarious.
Speaker 4: Twenty five percent off all of those interior plants, including
Speaker 4: succulents until December twenty eighth, So get it done if
Speaker 4: you need a quality gift, a beautiful gift. By the way,
Speaker 4: their houseplant section is just awesome, awesome. They still have
Speaker 4: Christmas trees too, by the way, and with each Christmas
Speaker 4: tree you get a free point seta so that's kind
Speaker 4: of cool. If you haven't gotten your tree yet, you
Speaker 4: put it off. Maybe you like trees to stay fresh
Speaker 4: as long as possible, so you don't want to buy
Speaker 4: them too early. Whatever, Well, go get it. Now's the time.
Speaker 4: Nelson Water Garden and Nursery. They're in Katie Fort Benroad.
Speaker 4: You go out to Katie I ten turn north on
Speaker 4: Katie Fort Benroad. That would be turning right coming out
Speaker 4: of Houston and it's just a little bit up there
Speaker 4: on the right hand side. Nelsonwatergardens dot Com. Check them out.
Speaker 4: That's kind of cool. Gluten free plants, sugar free, calorie free.
Speaker 4: It seems like that's the deal. I see that put
Speaker 4: on stuff that never had gluten to begin with. Kind
Speaker 4: of like plants. Well, or at least not you're not
Speaker 4: going to eat it, but anyway, I appreciate a good
Speaker 4: sense of humor. You are listening to Garden Line and
Speaker 4: we're here to help you have a bountiful garden. We're
Speaker 4: help you have a beautiful landscape and hopefully more fun
Speaker 4: in the process. You know, We've got a lot of
Speaker 4: different things that we can talk about today. I'd like
Speaker 4: to kind of shift gears a little bit. I've been
Speaker 4: talking about some indoor decore and whatnot, and talk a
Speaker 4: little bit about planning for spring gardening, you know that
Speaker 4: once we come out of the Christmas season, sometimes in
Speaker 4: Christmas and New Year's typically I'll begin planting my spring
Speaker 4: garden transplants indoors that would be tomatoes and peppers and
Speaker 4: things like that. Now it's early, right, it is early,
Speaker 4: and you're going to think, well, the tomato is going
Speaker 4: to outgrow that little six pack, Well, yes it will,
Speaker 4: but then it goes into a four inch pot, and
Speaker 4: then it even goes into a six inch or a
Speaker 4: gallon pot before it makes it out into my garden. Now,
Speaker 4: and if you're going to plan an agro tomatoes, you
Speaker 4: don't want gallon sized plants. But that would be crazy.
Speaker 4: But if you're just putting a few into a vegetable garden,
Speaker 4: why not why not have a tomato that is already blooming,
Speaker 4: maybe even fruiting by the time it goes out super
Speaker 4: super head start that way and you can start these indoors.
Speaker 4: I have put up on my website gardening with skip
Speaker 4: dot com publications called quality Lighting for Growing Transplants, And
Speaker 4: I think this is really going to help you. I
Speaker 4: spend a lot of time working on it, just trying
Speaker 4: to get the basics down what I do on there
Speaker 4: as I talk about. First of all, poor lighting is
Speaker 4: the number one thing that goes wrong when people try
Speaker 4: to grow transplants, those spindley transplants that are not getting
Speaker 4: the light they need. Light drives everything is good quality
Speaker 4: seed starting mix important. Yes, is the right amount of
Speaker 4: moisture important? Yes. Are temperatures helpful? Yes? But lighting light
Speaker 4: shines on the leaves and makes plant food. We talk
Speaker 4: about fertilizers plant food, but really fertilizer goes in the plant,
Speaker 4: sun shines on the leaf, and the plant makes plant
Speaker 4: food ca carbohydrates. So the quality of your light, the
Speaker 4: amount of your light is very important to successful transplants. Now,
Speaker 4: if you want to keep a plant over winter, Like
Speaker 4: I mentioned earlier, a lot of my houseplants of outside
Speaker 4: during the summer, and I don't have room for them inside.
Speaker 4: The place could look like a jungle. I guess it could,
Speaker 4: but we're just not quite into that type of decorating.
Speaker 4: Of a lot of plants, but not that many, So
Speaker 4: I put them out in the garage underneath a really
Speaker 4: good quality light and keep them there for the wintertime.
Speaker 4: Cooler tempts in the garage slow them down a lot.
Speaker 4: I mean, they basically just sit there. I don't have
Speaker 4: to water them much, but it's easy. So look at
Speaker 4: that publication Quality Lighting for Growing Transplants. It is free.
Speaker 4: You can't top me down on that price. It is free.
Speaker 4: And it goes into the spectrum of light. You know, remember,
Speaker 4: did you in school, when you're in science, have a
Speaker 4: prism where you shine the light in and like the
Speaker 4: rainbow and out the other side. What we see is
Speaker 4: white is really a mix of almost all the colors. Essentially,
Speaker 4: plants see those colors individually, and they do individual things
Speaker 4: blue light, to oversimplify, blue light helps with vegetative growth.
Speaker 4: The red part of the spectrum helps with blooming and fruiting.
Speaker 4: Now they do other things as well. I go into
Speaker 4: it in the publication a little bit more. But those
Speaker 4: parts of the spectrum are important. And when you buy
Speaker 4: a light for your home, for home lighting, that is
Speaker 4: a light you're buying for your eyes, right, And it
Speaker 4: has things on the package like the number of lumens
Speaker 4: that it has and the watts that it has. That
Speaker 4: stuff's not important for plants. Plants care about the light
Speaker 4: bands that are photosynthetically active. In other words, when a
Speaker 4: blue light or a red light, or an orange spectrum
Speaker 4: or a green spectrum, yellow spectrum. When that shines on
Speaker 4: a plant leaf, does it stimulate photosynthesis or not? Now,
Speaker 4: there's other factors that are very important, and each of
Speaker 4: the bands do that. So when you buy a human light,
Speaker 4: you are getting an attractive light to our eyes, but
Speaker 4: probably not a mix of colors in the amounts that
Speaker 4: plants want. Can you get by with some human lights? Yes?
Speaker 4: I grew up with a wow. Grew up during all
Speaker 4: my early plant seeds starting time, I would use a
Speaker 4: warm white fluorescent tube and a cool white fluorescent tube
Speaker 4: in one of those shop light fixtures, And I had
Speaker 4: two shop like fixtures, two four foot fixtures, cool white,
Speaker 4: worm white, cool white, warm white in the fixtures, and
Speaker 4: I would hang them right over the plants, about three
Speaker 4: inches above them. And I would get by with growing
Speaker 4: a tomato transplant or a basal transplant whatever I was
Speaker 4: trying to grow under those. But when you start carrying
Speaker 4: plants further in, you're trying to get them to bloom,
Speaker 4: or you're wanting to care for a longer term, or
Speaker 4: you want them you grow tomatoes indoors and have them fruit.
Speaker 4: If you have the right kind of lighting to do it.
Speaker 4: That's where we got to start looking for that. So
Speaker 4: remember lumens the way they put it as lumens or
Speaker 4: for humans, par Is for plants, par is the photosynthetically
Speaker 4: active radiation. So I'm not gonna get too nerdy on you.
Speaker 4: It's all in the publication. Talks about the amount of light.
Speaker 4: How long do you run your lights when you're starting seats.
Speaker 4: It's in there talks about that are what are the
Speaker 4: concepts about distance from the light. It makes a huge
Speaker 4: difference to get that light as close as you can
Speaker 4: to the plants. And then there's some other tips. It's
Speaker 4: all free. It's all on gardening with skip dot com.
Speaker 4: So this year I would challenge you to grow some
Speaker 4: transplants if you never had before. If you have before,
Speaker 4: I would challenge you to take your game up a
Speaker 4: notch and get you a better setup to do better
Speaker 4: with it. And by the way, talking about gifts and stuff,
Speaker 4: a plant lighting system would be a great gift for
Speaker 4: the gardener in your list. All right, we're gonna take
Speaker 4: a break. I'll be right back. All right, welcome back
Speaker 4: to guard Line. Did you know that Tom Hanks wrote
Speaker 4: most of the music for that movie that it was
Speaker 4: a great movie. By the way, we set back in
Speaker 4: the nineteen fifties bands trying to get on the radio
Speaker 4: with that early rock. What's going on? Anyway, I'm impressed.
Speaker 4: He's a great, great actor, one of those actors when
Speaker 4: he's in a show, you know he's not going to disappoint.
Speaker 4: But to have the talent also to write music for
Speaker 4: it period music like that was pretty cool. Anyway, you
Speaker 4: can tell I'm impressed. So, speaking of impressed, if you
Speaker 4: love a hometown feed store, if you like that old
Speaker 4: time feed store, I feel League City feed is that,
Speaker 4: and I've been impressed when I go in there because
Speaker 4: I love that. I love the smell of a feed store.
Speaker 4: You know, you go in and it just has a
Speaker 4: I don't know, earthy. I don't have a better adjective
Speaker 4: for it, but a nice fragrance that just I just
Speaker 4: it makes me happy because I grew up going into
Speaker 4: feedstore Sloe like League City feed. Now, for those of
Speaker 4: you down in League City, of course, all the communities
Speaker 4: around it, from San Leone, Webster, El Cominarial, Santa Fe, Dickinson,
Speaker 4: all that region, this is your hometown feed store and
Speaker 4: they are open Monday through Saturday nine to six, so
Speaker 4: you can swing by after work if you need to
Speaker 4: pick up something closed on Sundays. Here's a phone number.
Speaker 4: You write this down to eight one three three two
Speaker 4: sixteen twelve to eight one three three two sixteen twelve.
Speaker 4: The Thunderbergs have been operating this store since oh gosh,
Speaker 4: over forty years now, and it's the kind of place
Speaker 4: where you go and you find the fertilizers I talk about,
Speaker 4: like products from nitrofoss or from microlife, or from Nilsen
Speaker 4: plant food or maybe azamite, that very important ingredient in
Speaker 4: taking care of our lawns, and I think vegetable gardens too.
Speaker 4: It's there you're going to find the things to control
Speaker 4: pests and weeds and diseases. You're going to find premium
Speaker 4: pet foods. And if you got backyard chickens, they have
Speaker 4: the products you need for your backyard chickens, from feed
Speaker 4: to feeders to bedding, as they like say, everything but
Speaker 4: the chickens. They've got it covered at League City Feed.
Speaker 4: Where is it now? It's on Highway three, just a
Speaker 4: few blocks south of Highway ninety six in League City,
Speaker 4: and you should swing by there. Tell them skips it
Speaker 4: high from garden line when you swing by. I was
Speaker 4: what was I talking about before? When I was talking
Speaker 4: about quality? Oh, I know, Christmas gifts are any time
Speaker 4: of the year gifts. You know, you don't have to
Speaker 4: wait for some special holiday to give a gout of
Speaker 4: lighting for plants if you know a gardener who wants
Speaker 4: to take it up a notch. Quality lighting is important
Speaker 4: most of our homes. It's hard to even grow a
Speaker 4: house plant in due to the poor light levels, lack
Speaker 4: of quality lighting in the plants. And you could buy
Speaker 4: you could buy something that's like the whole setup. You know,
Speaker 4: you buy it. It's got a rack, it's got the
Speaker 4: lights on it and everything. Those are pricey, but it's beautiful.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's something that's attractive to put in the house.
Speaker 4: You know, hanging a shop light over the kitchen counter
Speaker 4: may not be esthetically acceptable, and so you can buy
Speaker 4: a nice one. But you can also put together a
Speaker 4: package of things. My article on lighting recommends a certain
Speaker 4: kinds of light. And you can go online and buy
Speaker 4: a high quality light and someone can figure out where
Speaker 4: to put it themselves. You know, they put it in
Speaker 4: their garage like I have mine. Maybe you would just
Speaker 4: want to buy the whole package for starting seed, like
Speaker 4: a tray with the seventy two cells in it, a
Speaker 4: bag of seed starting mix. Those trays come with a
Speaker 4: little clear dome that goes over them, or real real
Speaker 4: easy to find. You can buy a more expensive version,
Speaker 4: so that same thing too, and then maybe a pack
Speaker 4: of seeds. If you know they like to grow vegetables,
Speaker 4: we'll get them a pack of tomato seeds or pack
Speaker 4: of pepper seeds, and a pack of eggplant seeds, or
Speaker 4: maybe some spinach or whatever you want to give them.
Speaker 4: Just let them have at it. But a quality light,
Speaker 4: a heating mat, there's another one that you could do.
Speaker 4: If you're going to I guard, I start my seeds
Speaker 4: in the garage. It's cold in the garage, not too cold,
Speaker 4: but it's cool in the garage. So in order to
Speaker 4: get the seeds up and going, you want that soil
Speaker 4: temperature to be about seventy eight to eighty degrees for
Speaker 4: a lot of the warm season plant seeds. And so
Speaker 4: when the garage is fifty degrees, you just put a
Speaker 4: little heating mat underneath it. It warms the soil in
Speaker 4: the little trays. And to have warm soil for the
Speaker 4: roots but cool air for the tops is a great
Speaker 4: combination for growing a good stocky houseplant. And to have
Speaker 4: a quality light and know how to use it is
Speaker 4: very important. Now when you go online to buy lights,
Speaker 4: you know you're going online, or if you even go
Speaker 4: shopping around different businesses for lights, a lot of times
Speaker 4: what you see is not very good quality. It's not
Speaker 4: going to work. They may call it a plant light,
Speaker 4: but it's not. You know, you go on a place
Speaker 4: like Amazon and you see these lights that look like
Speaker 4: spiders sticking out in all directions, and they're they're kind
Speaker 4: of that purple color which is a combination of blue
Speaker 4: and red wavelengths. First of all, that horrible looking on
Speaker 4: your eyes in the house. But you can do better
Speaker 4: than that. And so a lot of those don't tell
Speaker 4: you the specifics of the plant. I saw a plant
Speaker 4: light the other day and when the fine print it
Speaker 4: said how many how much available plant available wavelengths are there,
Speaker 4: And you'd have to stick that thing about four inches
Speaker 4: from a plant to do any good, I mean just about.
Speaker 4: And that's you know, they show pictures of it hanging
Speaker 4: from a ceiling, you know, ten feet away from a plant,
Speaker 4: it's not going to work. You need a quality light
Speaker 4: that's made for that. So go to your local garden centers,
Speaker 4: go to a place that knows what they're talking about,
Speaker 4: or if you do shop online for them, make sure
Speaker 4: you're getting a quality plant. And if you don't see
Speaker 4: letters like pa R or PPFD, those are two things
Speaker 4: to look for, then you're probably talking to a seller
Speaker 4: who really doesn't know what they're talking about. Or maybe
Speaker 4: they know, but they're not going to tell you that
Speaker 4: the light just is inadequate. So get a good quality
Speaker 4: light if you want to grow things in a longer term.
Speaker 4: There are houseplants that take a little bit more light
Speaker 4: to look good, and you can even get home fixtures.
Speaker 4: You know, a light that chines from the ceiling or
Speaker 4: hangs down from the ceiling. I use the stand up
Speaker 4: kind of a gooseneck like structure that for where you
Speaker 4: put it behind the couch so you come over your
Speaker 4: shoulder and you could read. And I just put a
Speaker 4: quality plant like bulb in that, and I've got a
Speaker 4: Norfolk Island pine that's now about four and a half
Speaker 4: feet tall and just thick and lush, and one for
Speaker 4: that light. It would be a mess, but great gift,
Speaker 4: great gift idea. Well, you're listening to garden Line. Our
Speaker 4: phone number is seven one three two one two five
Speaker 4: eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
Speaker 4: eight seventy four. You can give me a call, talk
Speaker 4: to Jonathan, have him get you on the boards. And
Speaker 4: when we come back from the break that we're about
Speaker 4: to take here, you will be the first step. What
Speaker 4: kind of gardening questions can we help you? Then that's
Speaker 4: what we're here for. I just want to remind you
Speaker 4: again that on my website is a new post, the
Speaker 4: newest thing on the website, the Randy Lemon Scholarship. Randy
Speaker 4: was a legend here in the Greater Houston area for
Speaker 4: decades as a host of garden Line. If you knew Randy,
Speaker 4: or if you heard Randy on the air, you knew
Speaker 4: he was one of a kind. For sure. He loved text,
Speaker 4: A and M and there has been a scholarship set up.
Speaker 4: I emails from Nelson Platforms and Randy you can get to.
Speaker 4: I would like you to check it out on my website, Stott.
Speaker 4: I think it's a great cause and I know Randy
Speaker 4: would be trapped.
Speaker 1: Welcome to kt R h Guarden Line with Skip Ricord.
Speaker 3: Just watch you as.
Speaker 4: All right, folks, we're gonna jump right in here. I
Speaker 4: don't know what happened, but everybody grabbed the phone at
Speaker 4: one time. So we're gonna dive dive straight into it.
Speaker 12: Uh.
Speaker 4: Today we're gonna start with going out to Hockley and
Speaker 4: talking to Scott. Hello, Scott, welcome to Guarden Line.
Speaker 13: How you doing today?
Speaker 4: I'm well, sir, Thank you good.
Speaker 13: I've got two creat myrtles. They're about fifteen feet apart,
Speaker 13: and one of them the stalks and everything look wonderful.
Speaker 12: And the other one and they're all.
Speaker 13: Like blackish, almost like it, uh huh some sort of
Speaker 13: disease or something. I'm just wondering what I could.
Speaker 8: Do to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good question. That is caused by an insect, Scott.
Speaker 4: It's called the crate myrtle bark scale. And if you
Speaker 4: look closely at those trunks, the blackish city trunks, you'll
Speaker 4: see little white things in there. That's actually the scale
Speaker 4: insects there. They're really difficult to control. You know, if
Speaker 4: it's a small crpe myrtle, you know you can you
Speaker 4: can tillow brush and brush them off and you do
Speaker 4: some oil sprays on them while they're dormant. It helps
Speaker 4: a little bit. The thing most people do is put
Speaker 4: a systemic insecticide in the ground and the roots take
Speaker 4: it up, and then the insects that are sucking juices
Speaker 4: out of your crpe myrtle stems, they pick up that
Speaker 4: poison and it kills them that way, and it doesn't
Speaker 4: That way is not killing you know, some beneficial insect
Speaker 4: that's out there on the plant. That would be after
Speaker 4: we get a little bit of warming and the crank
Speaker 4: myrtle begins to grow and it's actively taking up nutrients
Speaker 4: and things. That's when you do that trench for that.
Speaker 4: But that's basically the option. You can ignore them. They
Speaker 4: are not going to kill your creape myrtle. They make
Speaker 4: it look bad, but they do have natural enemies which
Speaker 4: build up to help keep them moderately under control.
Speaker 13: Okay, and I'll try that when it warms up a
Speaker 13: little bit. And appreciate your help.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks a lot for the call. Appreciate that. Take
Speaker 4: care all right, bye bye. I'm sitting here is cracking
Speaker 4: me up. The phones are like popcorn going off here,
Speaker 4: just popping up here. Okay, we're gonna go to David
Speaker 4: in Southwest Houston. Hey David, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 13: Good morning.
Speaker 14: Got a couple of questions for you. First of all,
Speaker 14: is this a good time to do organic fertilizing for
Speaker 14: my yard?
Speaker 4: And the reason is the your lawn grass has just
Speaker 4: almost quit taking up nutrients. It's taken up a little bit.
Speaker 4: The roach are growing a little bit, but not much.
Speaker 4: And so save your money. Or if you got the
Speaker 4: fertilizer in hand, just put it in the garage and
Speaker 4: then once we get into spring put it on. Then
Speaker 4: I have put a schedule on my website, David, David,
Speaker 4: that's free. It's gardening with Skip dot com. And the
Speaker 4: lawn care schedule tells you exactly when to fertilize through
Speaker 4: the year and what do you use?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 14: And the other question is I have a river birch
Speaker 14: tree that didn't make it last summer. It's been dead
Speaker 14: all summer until now obviously it's gone.
Speaker 5: It's about twenty feet.
Speaker 14: Tall, all the branches are off. It's like it's a
Speaker 14: skinny poole. And actually it doesn't look bad at all
Speaker 14: of me. It's in the middle of a huge garden.
Speaker 14: I'm wondering do I have to cut it down or
Speaker 14: can I leave it there for woodpeckers?
Speaker 4: Well, you can leave it. What what's the diameter of
Speaker 4: the trunk on that river bird?
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, not not real wide. I mean it's about
Speaker 5: twenty years old. But yeah, that's all okay, Well maybe
Speaker 5: maybe maybe six inches I guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, Well that's big enough for woodpeckers. But they
Speaker 4: like to be up higher, so I don't know how
Speaker 4: tall it is, but you know, down low you're not
Speaker 4: going to get the woodpecker houses. They want to get
Speaker 4: up in the air a little bit. But there's no
Speaker 4: wrong then wrong with leaving.
Speaker 14: It if you if you there's no danger to following.
Speaker 14: You don't think because there's no branches at all anymore,
Speaker 14: and it seems so solid.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, I would just say every now and then
Speaker 4: go grab it and kind of move it a little bit.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 4: See, the river birch is not a it's not a
Speaker 4: super strong wooded plant. So as it begins to get
Speaker 4: decay in the dead stem or trunk, uh, it will
Speaker 4: get weak and it will eventually fall. But you ought
Speaker 4: to be able to pull on it a little bit
Speaker 4: and and kind of tell without the leaves to catch
Speaker 4: in the wind. It's probably okay for a while.
Speaker 5: Okay, and tell me then the website again to get
Speaker 5: to the advice that you have skipped with.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, gardening with garden skip gardening skip you take care.
Speaker 4: Thanks for the call. Man. HM. We're gonna go now
Speaker 4: to Houston and talk to Ruth. Hello, Ruth, welcome to
Speaker 4: guard Line.
Speaker 15: All right, I'm looking for a recommendation for a good
Speaker 15: place to buy a plant. My daughter is wanting a
Speaker 15: house plant that maybe's three and a half four feet tall.
Speaker 7: Uh, and she lives just east of the Heights.
Speaker 4: Well, I would go to Buchanan's Native Plants in the
Speaker 4: Heights on Eleventh Street. They have a cage greenhouse full
Speaker 4: full of all kinds of plants, lots of options there.
Speaker 4: It's just down the street from your daughter.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, well, thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Merry Christmas.
Speaker 4: Merry Christmas you as well. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: We're just going through them here. Scott in Houston, Welcome
Speaker 4: to garden Line. How can we help? Good morning, good morning.
Speaker 7: I'm looking for a soil top dressing compost.
Speaker 4: That's fine.
Speaker 8: I have a.
Speaker 7: One of those roll around spreaders that spread soil and yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm looking. Yeah, they're awesome. I'm looking for something that
Speaker 7: will not only help my soil but green my grass.
Speaker 7: I used to buy one here in Houston and it's
Speaker 7: not bagged anymore. So I'm looking for something that really
Speaker 7: okay because I don't have to use normal fertilizers when
Speaker 7: I use that product.
Speaker 2: M Uh so.
Speaker 4: Is this a you just need some bags of it?
Speaker 4: Or do you need to order a amount of it
Speaker 4: or which way? Okay?
Speaker 12: Bag?
Speaker 16: Uh?
Speaker 4: Well you the uh the folks up at Nature's Way
Speaker 4: Resources in Conro almost to Conroe. Uh, they sell a
Speaker 4: leaf mold compost and they sell a fungal compost and
Speaker 4: both of them can be screened down or are screened
Speaker 4: down to a very fine texture. I would have. I
Speaker 4: haven't had those in my hands in a while, and
Speaker 4: so I'm I know the kind of uh uh spreader
Speaker 4: you're talking about. Uh, it just you just got to
Speaker 4: get it fine enough where it falls through those holes.
Speaker 4: Is this the kind that the holes in it are
Speaker 4: kind of diamond shaped?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's spanding is banded metal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, so you're going to need a
Speaker 4: very fine textured uh. But you know, if if you
Speaker 4: roll it across the yard and most if it goes
Speaker 4: out and a littles left behind, you know, we just
Speaker 4: dump it in your bed as a mult But the
Speaker 4: leaf mold compost and the fungal compost from Nature's Way
Speaker 4: Resources now they do sell that by the bag. You
Speaker 4: may have to go get it, but you're gonna want
Speaker 4: to get a bunch of it, so and they may
Speaker 4: it may be retail available also as well somewhere near you.
Speaker 4: I would try that. I know that Heirloom Soils also
Speaker 4: has a leaf mault compost that is screening Europe and Porter.
Speaker 4: But Heirloom Soils they are up in the Porter area,
Speaker 4: but they sell all over town. They have a wide
Speaker 4: number of outlets across the area, and you may find
Speaker 4: their leaf mold compost as well. Either way, you've got
Speaker 4: a quality product with the of those two.
Speaker 7: Okay, I heard you speak about Siana Malt. Do they
Speaker 7: carry anything?
Speaker 12: Yes?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah. Where are you located? It just says Houston
Speaker 4: on my board here.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm basically southwest Houston West Timer in the Beltway area,
Speaker 7: so I have access to jump on a beltway and
Speaker 7: be anywhere I want to be.
Speaker 4: So okay, well, yeah, run down, run down to Siena Molts.
Speaker 4: They are on five point twenty one. You can just
Speaker 4: go to Ciena Malts dot com the website and find
Speaker 4: them u They only deliver within twenty miles, so they
Speaker 4: probably not going to deliver to your area, but you
Speaker 4: can go down. Just give them a call, talk to
Speaker 4: Ashley or one of the folks there and tell them
Speaker 4: what you're wanting to do and they can get you
Speaker 4: fixed up too. I'm sure they carry that as well.
Speaker 7: They're going to make a or produce a fine malt.
Speaker 4: They probably carry heirloom soils, leap mold compost. But I
Speaker 4: just can't keep up with everything that everybody carries, so no.
Speaker 7: I understand.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, well I'm gonna have to run for
Speaker 4: a break, but good luck with it. And sounds like
Speaker 4: you're doing a good thing there to your long that's
Speaker 4: for sure. Thanks thanks for calling in. I'm gonna have
Speaker 4: to go to a break, Leslie and Conro you'll be
Speaker 4: our first up when we come back. Welcome back to
Speaker 4: guard Line folks.
Speaker 2: Glad to have you with us.
Speaker 4: Before before we went to break, I was talking about
Speaker 4: Nature's way resources, you know, Nature's way. They were making composts,
Speaker 4: before you know quality compost was cool. I guess you
Speaker 4: could put it that way. John Ferguson's long been a
Speaker 4: student of the soil science, and he knows how to
Speaker 4: make quality compost. And when you go to Nature's Way,
Speaker 4: whether it's compost, whether it's soil blends, whether it's mulch's,
Speaker 4: they've got it all. They still have twenty percent off
Speaker 4: their fungal compost. It's called the Fungal Friday Sale. You
Speaker 4: gotta do it on Friday, Fungal Friday. Twenty percent off
Speaker 4: fungal compost. If you're looking for veggie and herbicx. If
Speaker 4: you're looking for a top dressing leaf old compost, they
Speaker 4: have got that there. I was just talking with someone
Speaker 4: a moment ago about that. That Nature's Way. They sell
Speaker 4: it by the bag. It's available in some stores around
Speaker 4: our community, or you can just go up there and
Speaker 4: get it. They're up on the road to Tombaal Highway
Speaker 4: forty five. You get to where fourteen eighty eight comes
Speaker 4: in from the west and you turn right across the
Speaker 4: railroad tracks right there Nature's Way. They're on Sherbrook Circle.
Speaker 4: Nature's Way Resources the phone number if you'd like to
Speaker 4: give them a call, get the specifics nine three six
Speaker 4: two seven three twelve one hundred ninety three six seven
Speaker 4: three twelve hundred. You will not go wrong with products
Speaker 4: that are made right and have long been a leader
Speaker 4: in this industry and our region. We're going to go
Speaker 4: to the phones now and talk to Leslie in Conroe. Hello, Leslie,
Speaker 4: Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 6: Good morning, happy holidays.
Speaker 2: I have a question.
Speaker 6: During Burrol, we had a tree pole on our house
Speaker 6: and when they cut it down, they had to take
Speaker 6: out all the crape myrtles that we had in a
Speaker 6: small area. They were probably about twenty feet high. And
Speaker 6: now they have come back, but they've come back as
Speaker 6: a grow So should I let them continue to grow
Speaker 6: as bigar or cuff them back?
Speaker 4: So are you saying, basically you have crpe myrtle shrubs
Speaker 4: coming up everywhere?
Speaker 12: Yes, I guess that's it.
Speaker 4: They're just bushes. Okay, So you can do a couple
Speaker 4: of things. I'm assuming you want to keep the crape myrtles,
Speaker 4: and so what I would do is for each crpe myrtle,
Speaker 4: select three of the shoots coming up to be three
Speaker 4: new trunks. If you want a single trunk, you can
Speaker 4: do that, but generally crape myrtles come in about three
Speaker 4: trunks at a time. Cut everything off other than that,
Speaker 4: and cut it as close to where they attach as possible.
Speaker 4: Don't leave any stuff just I mean right up against
Speaker 4: because there's a bunch of bugs at the bottom and
Speaker 4: you don't want it to continue to sprout like that.
Speaker 4: There is a product called sucker stopper. Sucker stopper it's
Speaker 4: a plant hormone and you spray it on those cuts
Speaker 4: and it helps prevent them from re sprouting so fast.
Speaker 4: It's not going to eliminate all of it, but it helps.
Speaker 4: And then take those three that are growing and train them.
Speaker 4: Let you know, they'll come up a distance and then
Speaker 4: they'll fork into two, and then each of those will
Speaker 4: fork into two more, and you're just kind of snipping
Speaker 4: and guiding and creating this beautiful structure that's aesthetic to
Speaker 4: you as they grow. But you can wait until late
Speaker 4: winter to do that pruning. You don't have to do
Speaker 4: it now. But when you do have some of that
Speaker 4: sucker stopper around where you can spray on them.
Speaker 6: Okay, and if I left them as bushes, would it
Speaker 6: hamper anything?
Speaker 4: No, you can just let them grows bushes, but it's
Speaker 4: going to be just this thick tangle that in time,
Speaker 4: as it gets bigger and bigger, is going to be
Speaker 4: pretty crowded. So I guess you know it's your plant.
Speaker 4: You go with what aesthetically is pleasing.
Speaker 6: To you, right, Okay, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: I appreciate it, all right, you, bet Leslie, thank you
Speaker 4: very much. Appreciate the call. I was talking with Ruth
Speaker 4: a minute ago about houseplant recommendations. Or daughter lives just
Speaker 4: down street from Buchanans practically, and Buchanans is on eleven
Speaker 4: Street in the Heights, so I was telling her about
Speaker 4: that their houseplant greenhouse is just outstanding. I mean it is.
Speaker 4: It is absolutely beautiful, very beautiful now this weekend there.
Speaker 4: You know, there's always things going on out there at Buchanans.
Speaker 4: There's plants right now, the holiday gift plants, you know
Speaker 4: that things like Christmas cactus, Thanksgiving cactus, those kinds of
Speaker 4: things are there. If you're looking for gifts for kids,
Speaker 4: they're Bungalow, which is a little gift shop area. There
Speaker 4: have some wonderful little holiday books for kids and other
Speaker 4: things as well. They have gifts for the lady on
Speaker 4: the list. They've got gifts, you know, for anybody that's
Speaker 4: interested in plants. They're going to be having on December
Speaker 4: twenty second, right before the holiday. They're going to having
Speaker 4: a holiday centerpiece workshop. Now you need to do this. Now,
Speaker 4: it's a ticketed event. It's eighty five bucks. But here
Speaker 4: is the deal. You'll go in there on December that's
Speaker 4: a Sunday, by the way, December twenty second, and you
Speaker 4: will build your own holiday centerpiece and it will be
Speaker 4: epic and you get to take it home. So not
Speaker 4: only do you have fun and learn how to do it,
Speaker 4: but you make this wonderful arrangement that you can take
Speaker 4: home if you want. You can just you know, go
Speaker 4: and purchase holiday decor already ready to go. They've got uh,
Speaker 4: fall wreaths, stems, garland, outdoor decor, all kinds of stuff
Speaker 4: like that ready to go. When you go to Buchanans,
Speaker 4: you're gonna get good advice, you're gonna get quality plants
Speaker 4: and quality products, and you're gonna have a good time.
Speaker 4: I can just tell you that Buchanan's Native Plants on
Speaker 4: Eleventh Street in the Heights. I always wander the place
Speaker 4: just to see what's new. What did they have now?
Speaker 4: What new kind of thing they have? In Boy, if
Speaker 4: you're in if you're into natives, fall is for planting,
Speaker 4: so is winter. By the way, go ahead and get
Speaker 4: those things and get them in the ground. They have
Speaker 4: the best supply of native plants of anybody in the
Speaker 4: whole region. And they can point you to the one
Speaker 4: that does what you wanted to do. For example, I
Speaker 4: want one for butterflies, or I want one for pollinators,
Speaker 4: or I want one that's evergreen. You just tell them
Speaker 4: they know what they're doing. I love birds, and I
Speaker 4: got to tell you that the folks at Wallbirds they
Speaker 4: just have the best stuff that. It's the case. You
Speaker 4: take bird seed, for example, you go hying buy bird
Speaker 4: seed anywhere, Well, yes you can, but look at a
Speaker 4: bag of bird seed, cheap bird seed, and you'll see
Speaker 4: little red bebes in it. And those are not eaten
Speaker 4: much by birds. They generally kind of get kicked on
Speaker 4: the ground so they can sprout under your bird feeders.
Speaker 4: And now you got another thing to do with Wallbirds.
Speaker 4: Unlimited creates seed blends that birds will eat one hundred
Speaker 4: percent of this stuff in the seed blend, and so
Speaker 4: It's really a more economical way to go about it
Speaker 4: because instead of buying a bag of seed and half
Speaker 4: of it is unused, you get all the seed that
Speaker 4: you purchased when you buy from Wallbirds. Now, right now,
Speaker 4: I would recommend their Wilbirds Unlimited Winter super blend loaded
Speaker 4: with fat, loaded with protein, much needed by birds as
Speaker 4: we get colder and colder and their natural food supplies
Speaker 4: out in nature become more and more sparse. Very important
Speaker 4: to do that. Wildbirds is the place for gifts to
Speaker 4: someone you know. I had a call earlier about a
Speaker 4: plant recommendation for someone that wasn't a gardener. Well, an
Speaker 4: anybody on your list, gardener or not, will appreciate being
Speaker 4: able to see the birds and hear the birds that
Speaker 4: are attracted in by a quality feeder, for a bird house,
Speaker 4: for all kinds of things that Wilbirds has. And if
Speaker 4: you have a bird lover on your list, the book
Speaker 4: written by Wilbird's founder, you can find it at All Birds.
Speaker 4: Just say I want the book written by your founder.
Speaker 4: It is an outstanding book on the birds of the
Speaker 4: region and how to take care of them. Well, let's
Speaker 4: see here I mentioned what was I talking about earlier?
Speaker 4: I get going here and I sort of sidetracked myself. Oh,
Speaker 4: I think it was more about lighting and gifts and
Speaker 4: things like that. I think a gift certificate is another
Speaker 4: good way to go when it comes to people on
Speaker 4: your list. Gift certificates allowed them to get what they want.
Speaker 4: And when you get a gift certificate from one of
Speaker 4: the places we talk about here on garden Line, we're
Speaker 4: talking about places that have everything. I mean, if you
Speaker 4: can't walk into you know, we can as plants and
Speaker 4: find something that interests you. You may not even want
Speaker 4: to grow a touch of plant, go into the bungalow
Speaker 4: and you'll find really cool gifts in there. And are
Speaker 4: our folks just are good at carrying quality equipment, And
Speaker 4: so why not a gift certificate from someone that is
Speaker 4: on your list. I think that's a good idea. I
Speaker 4: would love getting a gift certificate, by the way, And
Speaker 4: for gardeners, you can never have enough tools. Maybe we'll
Speaker 4: talk about maybe I'll talk about that when I come back.
Speaker 4: What are my favorite tools that would make good gifts
Speaker 4: for the gardeners on your list? You know, if you
Speaker 4: know someone that's a wood shop guy, Oh, there's always
Speaker 4: a new tool they have to have, right, you know,
Speaker 4: do it yourself repair guy. The tools are their life.
Speaker 4: It's the same thing for gardeners. Quality quality tools make
Speaker 4: gardening more fun and they help you out better success
Speaker 4: because they just do a better job and they're less
Speaker 4: wear and tear on your joints in the process. Plus
Speaker 4: some of them are just too cool, just too cool.
Speaker 4: All right, I'm going to take a break. If you'd
Speaker 4: like to give me a call and get on the
Speaker 4: boards seven to one three two one two KTRH will
Speaker 4: be right back. A little boogie woogie. Welcome back to
Speaker 4: the garden Line. Glad you're with us today. We got
Speaker 4: a lot more things to discuss. One thing that I
Speaker 4: did want to talk to you about is a product
Speaker 4: that Nelson Plant Food created over forty years ago. It's
Speaker 4: called color Star. I'm sure you've heard of it. It's
Speaker 4: famous in the in the industry. A color Star is
Speaker 4: a fertilizer to help keep your flowering plants blooming. And
Speaker 4: in order to do that, you need to feed them.
Speaker 4: You need to give them nitrogen. Believe it or not,
Speaker 4: because when you get foliage growth, you catch carbohydrates. When
Speaker 4: you catch carbohydrates or make carbohydrates. You create blooms, and
Speaker 4: that's what color strais. It is well known. They ship
Speaker 4: I don't know how much of it to states all
Speaker 4: around the country. I mean it's a popular product because
Speaker 4: it works. Professional landscapers know and purchase color Star for
Speaker 4: doing just that. You apply it about every three to
Speaker 4: four months during the growing season. You can apply it.
Speaker 4: You should apply it now for your cool season bed,
Speaker 4: your pansies and violas and things like that. You want
Speaker 4: to keep them growing and blooming up their best. You
Speaker 4: do color straw you buy by the canister. Many places
Speaker 4: around town will do refills of your Nelson plant food products.
Speaker 4: So that just makes it an even more economical way
Speaker 4: to go. Widely available with better garden centers, feed stores,
Speaker 4: ace hardware stores, Southwest fertilizer, you can find color Star
Speaker 4: easy to find and it really does work. We're going
Speaker 4: to go now to Kingwood and talk to Bill. Hello, Bill,
Speaker 4: Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 2: Good morning.
Speaker 16: I had a couple of different things I want to discussed.
Speaker 16: One of those is we have a lot of bread
Speaker 16: pairs planted decoratively all over the place around her head.
Speaker 16: They're pluming, and I wondered if you've had a way
Speaker 16: to explain to those trees that it was the wrong season.
Speaker 16: Maybe they're doing it to avoid the fire black.
Speaker 4: Well, well, here's what happens when a bread when any
Speaker 4: pair really but a bradbird, when it goes through stress
Speaker 4: at the end of summer, could be drought, could be heat,
Speaker 4: could be a lot of things. It goes into what
Speaker 4: we call a false garmancy. Maybe the leaves drop off
Speaker 4: or something like that happens, and it stresses it and
Speaker 4: it's almost like it went through winter, and so then
Speaker 4: it comes out and it blooms. You know, it doesn't
Speaker 4: understand what month of the year we're in, but that
Speaker 4: is just a stress response and you can't do anything
Speaker 4: about it. Those ballooms enjoy them while you haven't. They'll
Speaker 4: be gone and hopefully next year we'll get back in
Speaker 4: and sink.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 16: Well, I appreciate you telling me that. The other thing
Speaker 16: I was going to tell you is one of your advertisers,
Speaker 16: Nelson's planted back in the day when he first started,
Speaker 16: and I don't know how many years, but at least
Speaker 16: forty years ago, they the people were handling that he
Speaker 16: was one of the prime people you actonite, And so
Speaker 16: I have a little place here at the Kami, and
Speaker 16: I ordered from him, and he brought it himself and
Speaker 16: unloaded in my barn himself. And so I really have
Speaker 16: always been to use Nelson stuff because I just think
Speaker 16: that he's a really hard worker and a really really
Speaker 16: bright guy.
Speaker 4: Well, and that is that is absolutely true.
Speaker 13: And you're.
Speaker 4: Well, you're not the first person to observe that. Uh
Speaker 4: and and and Dean, he cares, you know, I cared
Speaker 4: enough that when Randy passed, he set up that scholarship
Speaker 4: for Randy up at text A and M. And that's
Speaker 4: just the kind of thing Dean does. So that surprise
Speaker 4: me at all. Thanks for thanks for sharing that, Bill,
Speaker 4: I appreciate that.
Speaker 16: Well, it's a real pleasure speaking with you, and I
Speaker 16: listen to your program as much as I possibly can.
Speaker 16: You're really good information. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Glad to hear that. And you take care. We're going
Speaker 4: to go now to Patterson and talk to Leanne. Hello, Liamne, Hey,
Speaker 4: good morning, good morning.
Speaker 12: Hey Micha.
Speaker 17: I have a question for you.
Speaker 11: We have property out weekend place, and I have a
Speaker 11: lot of sand and I need to know what would
Speaker 11: be the best kind of grass to plant our grass
Speaker 11: seats put out there to get some grass growing.
Speaker 4: Okay, is this for a lawn, I assume not a pastor?
Speaker 10: Yes, well there's.
Speaker 11: Target pasture also, but mostly up by the house.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: And how irrigatable is this area? Can you can you
Speaker 4: get water to it?
Speaker 12: Yes?
Speaker 4: Okay? And so you're wanting just a quality lawn, attractive
Speaker 4: quality long grass, I assume not that's something a little okay. Well,
Speaker 4: you know, Saint augustine is fine, and it'll root down
Speaker 4: in a sand just fine. You're just gonna have to
Speaker 4: water it a little more often, and you need to
Speaker 4: fertilize it on a regular basis because sand does not
Speaker 4: hold water and nutrients. Well, there are some other grasses
Speaker 4: you could plant, like zoisia or like bermuda grass. But
Speaker 4: anything you grow that you want to look good, you
Speaker 4: got to water, fertilize, and mow it. And those three
Speaker 4: things mow, water, fertilize or the secret to success. So
Speaker 4: you could go with a drought. There is a Saint
Speaker 4: augustine called cobalt was released by A and M not
Speaker 4: too long ago, cobalt, and it is quite drought resistant
Speaker 4: because it has such a good, deep, robust roots system.
Speaker 4: And so if you're doing Saint Augustine in that spot,
Speaker 4: I think I would recommend that one for you.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: Then there are certainly Bermuda grasses are very tough. Even
Speaker 4: if they go into drought and look bad, they bounce
Speaker 4: right back, and so that would be another The problem
Speaker 4: with bermuda though, is you got to mow it regularly
Speaker 4: for it to look good. It's not forgiving when you
Speaker 4: don't mow often. And also bermuda if you got kiddos
Speaker 4: that like to roll around in the lawn Bermuda grass,
Speaker 4: tiggers love bermuda grass, and you know, if you ever
Speaker 4: grew up doing that, you know what a trigger is.
Speaker 4: And that's no fun. Makes it all scratchy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's one. Those are in it and invades flower bed.
Speaker 4: That's I'm kind of going off on bermuda here, but
Speaker 4: those are its drawbacks. Its strengths are if you mow
Speaker 4: it regularly, it's the prettiest grass on earth. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's what golf course greens are made out of.
Speaker 11: Yeah, okay, all right, great Jim, all right, Well I
Speaker 11: think I'll go with the Saint Augustine.
Speaker 10: So thank you.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, see see if you can find Cobalt.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure. I'm sure you're pretty sure it's available
Speaker 4: widely here in the Greater Houston area. Thanks again, appreciate
Speaker 4: that call. Bye bye. That is the case. Oh gosh. Well,
Speaker 4: if you are in the Tomba area, your hometown feed
Speaker 4: store is League City Feed. League City feeds about three
Speaker 4: miles west of two forty nine on twenty nine twenty
Speaker 4: and League City Feed is a traditional feed store. You're
Speaker 4: going to find everything you can imagine for livestock, for pets,
Speaker 4: you name it. If you want one of the fertilizers
Speaker 4: I talk about on Guardline, they carry it at D
Speaker 4: and D Feed. Did I say I think I crossed
Speaker 4: over there? My brain switched D and E feed outside
Speaker 4: of Tombo. Now, one thing that's really cool about D
Speaker 4: and D is that you can order online. That's a
Speaker 4: new thing. Just give them a call two eight, one
Speaker 4: three five, one seventy one forty four. You can go
Speaker 4: to their online store. Just give them a call, they'll
Speaker 4: te to do it and you can just do the
Speaker 4: ordering right there online. It makes it really really simple
Speaker 4: and easy to do if you're looking for a cool
Speaker 4: gift too. By the way, Leak City carries case knives, cases,
Speaker 4: a quality pocket knife, very high quality pocket knife, and
Speaker 4: they have a bunch of different options and so pretty much,
Speaker 4: jaybody on your list would appreciate having a quality case knife.
Speaker 4: And when you're in there at D and D, just
Speaker 4: ask them to see the knives. I think that you'll
Speaker 4: be impressed with what they have. They're also going to
Speaker 4: carry things like the heirloom soils that I talk about,
Speaker 4: the turf Star by Nelson, micro Life Products, nitrofoss Products,
Speaker 4: Medina products. You get the idea. It's it's just everything
Speaker 4: you need to have success. They're at League City feet again.
Speaker 4: If you're looking for them, go on twenty nine to
Speaker 4: twenty west from Tomball about three miles out and there
Speaker 4: on the left hand side. Two eight, one three five,
Speaker 4: one seventy one forty four. Well, it's time for me
Speaker 4: to take a break. Jim and Houston. You will be
Speaker 4: our first when we come right back. All right, we're back.
Speaker 4: Welcome by the Garden Line. Glad to have you with
Speaker 4: us today. I'm going to head straight out to the
Speaker 4: phones here and we're going to talk to Jim in Houston. Hello, Jim,
Speaker 4: good morning.
Speaker 12: Yes, I have a I have a question regarding putting
Speaker 12: a palmero plant plant to bed for the winner. It's
Speaker 12: gotten very large. Sever you know, it's that Hawaiian plant.
Speaker 12: I may be mispronouncing it.
Speaker 4: Oh plumeria.
Speaker 12: Uh huh yeah, close enough. Anyway, we brought the cutting
Speaker 12: home from Hawaiian. It has done well as far as
Speaker 12: a plant, but not many blooms this year. But I
Speaker 12: understand that in the winter time you just put it,
Speaker 12: put it in the garage and forget it or you know,
Speaker 12: just so it'll or easier. And how to promulgate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can, you can do that. You can put
Speaker 4: them in the garage. I've even known people that shook
Speaker 4: the dirt off the roots when they had one in
Speaker 4: the landscape. Shook the dirt off the roots and hung
Speaker 4: them upside down in the garage for the winter. They're
Speaker 4: they're a big, old, thick succulent stem and they go
Speaker 4: into that kind of dormancy due to the temperatures.
Speaker 14: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then you just bring them back out, pot them
Speaker 4: back up again. You you propagate it by taking sections
Speaker 4: of the stems and letting the letting the you cut
Speaker 4: cut it loose, let it kind of heel or dry
Speaker 4: over that that cut.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then they can be stuck and rooted in a
Speaker 4: potting mix. Now here, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna anyone out there who's part of the Plumeria Society,
Speaker 4: our local Plumeria Society. Would you give me a call,
Speaker 4: let's talk about this, and I'd love to visit briefly
Speaker 4: with you about it. You can kind of give them
Speaker 4: some advice on overwintering a plumeria and on propagating plumerius.
Speaker 4: We'll just have a real quick look brief talk if
Speaker 4: someone Plumerius Society will give me a call on doing that.
Speaker 4: But Jim, it's a wonderful plant. I know y'all fell
Speaker 4: in love with them out there in Hawaii, uh, and
Speaker 4: we need to help you have more blooming success this
Speaker 4: year with it. Part of that is a good quality
Speaker 4: plant food.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4: Nelson Nelson Plant Food has plume aria food. You can
Speaker 4: buy little canisters and I would recommend that that's one
Speaker 4: quality uh plant food for plumerius. Good sunlight, good drainage,
Speaker 4: adequate moisture, and good fertilizing to help that plant have
Speaker 4: the best chance of blooming. But none of that till
Speaker 4: it warms up in the spring.
Speaker 12: Well, that's good. Enjoy your show.
Speaker 4: Thanks a lot, Well, thank you, I appreciate that. Good
Speaker 4: luck with you with your plumeria. Yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 4: people love those things and they're really not that hard
Speaker 4: to grow. I mean, every plant has its challenges and
Speaker 4: some things you have to do to make sure it's happy,
Speaker 4: but in general, plumerias are not. It's not rocket science.
Speaker 4: This is any plant you can pull o the ground,
Speaker 4: hang upside down in the garage over winter, and stick
Speaker 4: back in the ground again. That's the kind of plant
Speaker 4: that I like to grow. One of my mentors, doctor
Speaker 4: Bill Welch, oh gosh, the man, is a walking encyclopedia.
Speaker 4: He is the author of Perennial Garden Color and Plants
Speaker 4: of Gardening, books on old roses and other things. He
Speaker 4: said something, and this is where I first hearted. At least,
Speaker 4: he's talking about old rose growers that go to like
Speaker 4: cemeteries and they find rose bushes just growing there among
Speaker 4: the headstones, you know, that were planted. Nobody's fufuing them
Speaker 4: and babying and spraying them with fungicides and all that.
Speaker 4: They're just living on nature out there, doctor Weltch. Bill's
Speaker 4: statement on it is if dead people can grow it,
Speaker 4: you can too. I like that Plumeria is not quite
Speaker 4: a seminary plant. It's not that hard. If dead people
Speaker 4: can grow it, you can too. Gosh, well, you're listening
Speaker 4: to garden Line, and I wanted to tell you a
Speaker 4: little bit about encented forest down there in the Richmond
Speaker 4: Rosenberg area. Chented Forest, as you know, is the place
Speaker 4: to go for pretty much any kind of plant you
Speaker 4: need at any time, but right now, right now, in
Speaker 4: addition to an outstanding gift shop full of quality items,
Speaker 4: just really beautiful, one of the kind stuff that you
Speaker 4: will love, they've got a forty discount on what's called hollaballs,
Speaker 4: inflated hollaballs, So imagine giant ornaments. I mean when I
Speaker 4: say giant, I mean up to like what two and
Speaker 4: a half three feet or something in size and down
Speaker 4: and you hang them underneath your trees. You've got a
Speaker 4: big gold live oak tree in the front yard, and
Speaker 4: you got these ornaments hanging off the tree. They're really cool.
Speaker 4: Forty percent off the inflated hollaballs for your land skate.
Speaker 4: But also they've gotten in some strawberries, new strawberries. They
Speaker 4: got Sequoia and Chandler and eversweet, and it's a really
Speaker 4: good deal. You got a whole bundle of them and
Speaker 4: get them in the ground. Now, if you get them
Speaker 4: in the ground right away, water them in, plant them
Speaker 4: at the depth that they originally grew. And here's the
Speaker 4: secret on strawberries that you know at the very base
Speaker 4: of the plant, that's where the leaves come out of,
Speaker 4: and that's where the roots come out of. Right in
Speaker 4: that line between leaves and roots, that's the depth of
Speaker 4: strawberry planting. Water them in well and then begin to
Speaker 4: give them fertilization on through the wintertime. Strawberries grow in
Speaker 4: the winter slowly, but they grow and they get stronger
Speaker 4: and stronger. And the better the plant is when we
Speaker 4: come out into spring, the better your production is going
Speaker 4: to be. So stop in at Enchanted Forest and get
Speaker 4: you some there on FM twenty seven fifty nine outside
Speaker 4: of Richmond, Texas. So if you're going towards sugar and
Speaker 4: you twenty seven to fifty nine is off to the right, uh.
Speaker 4: Enchanted for us. Here's the website that write this one down.
Speaker 4: It's a great website with lots of good information. Enchanted Forest, Richmond,
Speaker 4: TX dot com. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. You're
Speaker 4: listening to garden Line and our phone number finally got
Speaker 4: quite on the phones again here phone number seven one
Speaker 4: three two one two kt r H seven to one
Speaker 4: three two one two k t r H. You can
Speaker 4: give us a call. I don't know, We're probably going
Speaker 4: to go to a break here pretty quick, but if
Speaker 4: you want to go ahead and get on the board,
Speaker 4: you can be the first up when we come right back.
Speaker 16: Uh.
Speaker 4: The folks at Medina have been producing quality products basically forever.
Speaker 16: I know.
Speaker 4: They were on the first sponsors of garden Line back
Speaker 4: in the nineteen fifties. Four is even called garden Line.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: They have a product called humate humic acid. Now basic.
Speaker 4: This is like liquid humus, so's it's a compost concentrated
Speaker 4: in a bottle. You know, compost is decomposed organic matter.
Speaker 4: Humus is decomposed compost. It just keeps going to the
Speaker 4: form of humus and humic humate. Liquid humus has got
Speaker 4: that humic acid in it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: Humus benefits moisture retention in the soil, like if you
Speaker 4: have especially if you have sandy soil. It helps with
Speaker 4: the soil structure. The physical properties too, so even a
Speaker 4: clay is benefited by it. It provides micronutrients, provides some macronutrients.
Speaker 4: It just enhances the nutrient uptake of the plant by
Speaker 4: improving those soil qualities. Now you can buy humate humic
Speaker 4: acid from aDNA in a quart a gallon. They even
Speaker 4: have larger sizes if you want. But basically, when you're planning,
Speaker 4: just get a couple of tablespoons, put them in a
Speaker 4: gallon of water and watered in real good. I'll tell
Speaker 4: you what I'll also do is soak the root system
Speaker 4: in it. You know you've got a tree or shrub
Speaker 4: or something, just put it in a bucket. Is that
Speaker 4: the container in a bucket or a whatteb or whatever,
Speaker 4: and put some of that in the tub to soak
Speaker 4: up in that root system. And then when you get
Speaker 4: ready to plant, you're ready to go. So it makes
Speaker 4: it really easy. I will also soak seeds. If I'm
Speaker 4: going to do some seed starting in, put a tablespoon
Speaker 4: of humid humic acid in a gallon of water and
Speaker 4: soak them until the seed swells up and they're ready
Speaker 4: to go. And you will have success with that. All
Speaker 4: part of another one of the wonderful products that the
Speaker 4: folks at Medina have come up with. You are listening
Speaker 4: to garden Line and we're here to try to help
Speaker 4: you have fun in gardening. We want you to have success.
Speaker 4: We want you to get beauty and bounty out of
Speaker 4: the things that you grow, and that is exactly what
Speaker 4: we do. Going to the last break, I think music
Speaker 4: kind of cut me out a little bit, but I
Speaker 4: just wanted to say it again. The Randy Lemon Scholarship.
Speaker 4: We're rejuvenating that, bringing it back to the fore front.
Speaker 4: You know, Randy, he was a legend here in the
Speaker 4: scenario in the gardening world. I mean his entertaining style,
Speaker 4: the helpful advice he provided to people for over two
Speaker 4: decades here in the Houston area on garden Line helped
Speaker 4: a lot of people have more success. You may be
Speaker 4: one of those people. Dean Nelson set up a scholarship
Speaker 4: a while back in Randy's name at Texas A and
Speaker 4: M for a horticulture student, and that is what we're
Speaker 4: talking about. If you will go to my website Gardening
Speaker 4: with Skip dot com, the top item is Randy Lemons Scholarship.
Speaker 4: You can go online and give it tells you how
Speaker 4: you can give by check It tells you how. Just
Speaker 4: go to that website. Would you consider making a donation
Speaker 4: to the scholarship fund that lives on in remembrance of
Speaker 4: Randy benefitings horticulture students at his alma mater and Mine,
Speaker 4: Texas and M University. Well let's see here. I hear music,
Speaker 4: which means I got to quit talk to him? And
Speaker 4: what does it else? I mean it means you are
Speaker 4: one more hour left and the show today? You'd like
Speaker 4: to give us a call? Seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two k t r H.
Speaker 1: Welcome to k t r H Garden Line with Skip Ricord's.
Speaker 11: Rim.
Speaker 3: Just watch him as many give things to Susy again
Speaker 3: not a sign.
Speaker 4: Hey, welcome to garden Lines. Good to have you back. Well, well,
Speaker 4: we got some things we can be discussing today. I
Speaker 4: want to get onto those here in just a bit.
Speaker 4: If you would like to give me a call, all
Speaker 4: you gotta do is dial seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two k t r H seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two kt r H. Every time I hear the word
Speaker 4: dial come out of my mouth, it amuses me because
Speaker 4: we used to dial. Now we just punch buttons. Right,
Speaker 4: all you gotta do is punch buttons seven to one
Speaker 4: three two kt rh and we'd be glad to visit
Speaker 4: with you. How do we help you so that you
Speaker 4: can have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape,
Speaker 4: and more fun in the process. That's kind of what
Speaker 4: it's all about. Let's see, I had a few things
Speaker 4: that I wanted to go over to. I talked about
Speaker 4: wanting to encourage you to try transplants this year, growing
Speaker 4: your own translists. I don't mean all of them. You
Speaker 4: don't grow everything you're grow, but try growing some. Get
Speaker 4: your little light set up and do that. I think
Speaker 4: you will find that it is a really fun thing
Speaker 4: because listen, you know we're talking about the end of
Speaker 4: December and in January. You are inside when you don't
Speaker 4: want to be outside, probably, and you're starting little seeds
Speaker 4: under a light. You're watching them grow. You're getting the
Speaker 4: full experience. But the real reason that I like to
Speaker 4: do this is if you wanted to start things from cuttings,
Speaker 4: you can start those under your lights. I mean, you
Speaker 4: have some cuttings of different kinds of plants you'd like
Speaker 4: to propagate, or if you want a variety, you just
Speaker 4: can't find locally. And that's true. You know, they're probably
Speaker 4: a thousand tomato varieties out there. I don't know how
Speaker 4: many there are, but there are a lot of tomato varieties.
Speaker 4: And you go into the best garden centers we got,
Speaker 4: and I mean they may carry a couple dozen different
Speaker 4: ones in some places, but there's going to be things
Speaker 4: that are too new or that just aren't asked for anymore.
Speaker 4: But they are good old varieties that are fun to grow.
Speaker 4: You can grow those yourself and all you got to
Speaker 4: do is get a back of a seed, the supplies
Speaker 4: you need and go for it. And it's a lot
Speaker 4: of fun. And once you learn how to start seeds,
Speaker 4: once you learn how to start cuttings, it just adds
Speaker 4: another aspect to gardening, another fun aspect to gardening. And
Speaker 4: the best part about it is, well, take a day
Speaker 4: like today. We kind of had some misty, drizzly weather
Speaker 4: this morning. You could be inside gardening with your new setup.
Speaker 4: So I want to encourage you to give that a
Speaker 4: try this year. We'll help you have success. Just give
Speaker 4: us a call here on Guardline and we will be
Speaker 4: happy to work with you. We're going to go out
Speaker 4: now to Chapel Hill and talk to Rachel. Hello, Rachel,
Speaker 4: welcome to garden Mine.
Speaker 10: Thank you.
Speaker 18: How are you doing.
Speaker 4: I'm well, thank you.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 18: I wanted to ask if there's a way to get
Speaker 18: my orchid to bloom. Someone gave me an orchid and
Speaker 18: it bloomed beautifully, and then it stopped blooming, and I
Speaker 18: don't know if I should cut a little stem where
Speaker 18: the blooms come out, or just let it continue.
Speaker 12: To get longer.
Speaker 4: It's probably not going to bloom again on that stem.
Speaker 4: It can, but it normally doesn't. Sometimes you'll get a
Speaker 4: lot slideshoot coming out that'll bloom for you on it.
Speaker 4: I'm assuming you have a moth orchid. That's the ninety
Speaker 4: five percent of the orchids you see sold out there
Speaker 4: are moth orchids, it seems like, especially in our area.
Speaker 4: The thing you want to do is, once we get
Speaker 4: through this cool season, take a look at your orchid
Speaker 4: and you can put it up out of the pot.
Speaker 4: It's going to be growing in either moss or little
Speaker 4: wood chips, and take a look at the root system.
Speaker 4: If some of it looks kind of brown, kind of gray, brown,
Speaker 4: water soaked, rotting, kind of shriveling kind of things. You
Speaker 4: can cut all of those off and then repot it
Speaker 4: with a little fresh orchid bark or sphagnum moss in
Speaker 4: the container. And when we get into when we get
Speaker 4: past the wintertime, start to fertilize it lightly and water
Speaker 4: it periodically. Now, you don't want to keep them too wet,
Speaker 4: but if you take any fertilizer and you take it
Speaker 4: down to the lowest level on the label, you can
Speaker 4: even cut down from that a little more. And each
Speaker 4: time you water, you just give it a drench with
Speaker 4: that with that solution it could be an organic product
Speaker 4: or synthetic product, and just gradually get it in a
Speaker 4: very bright light location. I keep mine in the bathroom.
Speaker 4: We got a real bright window in there. Uh and uh,
Speaker 4: and it it's bright, but it's not direct sun. And
Speaker 4: and they do well in that location. And it's not
Speaker 4: hard keeping them going, but you just need to kind
Speaker 4: of rejuvenate them and get them going again. You may
Speaker 4: want to wait a while, though, because sometimes they'll send
Speaker 4: out a little side shoot. If it just recently finished blooming.
Speaker 18: Well, it's already got a side shoot. Actually, I don't
Speaker 18: know ge it's a side shoot it's a new shoot. Yeah,
Speaker 18: it's a new shoot basically, but.
Speaker 4: It's all coming from the bottom.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 18: And it hadn't it hadn't it hadn't bloomed yet.
Speaker 2: But it's short still.
Speaker 4: So okay, okay, well take care of it. Good light,
Speaker 4: good light is the important thing, not direct sun, but
Speaker 4: nice bright light. And you want to keep it going
Speaker 4: as well as you can. And maybe that new shoot
Speaker 4: will give you a little bit of a reward here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you very much, you bet, thanks, Rachel.
Speaker 4: I appreciate, appreciate your call. Thank you very much for that.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, Southwest Fertilizer is the place you go for
Speaker 4: any kind of supply you need to have garden success.
Speaker 4: I don't care if it's your lawn, your vegetables, your herbs,
Speaker 4: your flowers, your fruit trees, your landscape trees. They've got
Speaker 4: it all there. Fertilizers of every type you can imagine,
Speaker 4: you know, from big bags the lawn fertilizer to canisters
Speaker 4: of products, you know, like micro life products. You know
Speaker 4: that we've got Nelson plant food product. Anything that comes
Speaker 4: out of my mouth on garden line is going to
Speaker 4: be there. Southwest Fertilizer. That's just how it is. If
Speaker 4: you're an organic gardener. They have the biggest selection of
Speaker 4: organic products in the whole region. They do Southwest Fertilizer
Speaker 4: in the southwest side of Houston, corner Bus and Nutt
Speaker 4: and Renwick. When you go in there, grab your lawnmower blade,
Speaker 4: take them in and get those things sharpened because it's
Speaker 4: going to be mowing season again for you know it.
Speaker 4: Don't wait for the rush, go ahead and get them
Speaker 4: doing that.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: They have a small engine repair shop in the back
Speaker 4: as well. The website is Southwest Fertilizer dot com. The
Speaker 4: phone number seven one three sixty sixty six one seven
Speaker 4: four four. And while you're at it, it's a great
Speaker 4: place to buy quality tools for the gardeners on your
Speaker 4: list or for yourself. You're allowed to buy yourself a
Speaker 4: Christmas bread. We're going to go now to Richmond and
Speaker 4: talk to John. Hey, John, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 19: Yes, sir, I uh, I fell behind on my on
Speaker 19: my fertilization schedule, and I'm never I wasn't ready for
Speaker 19: the fall. I didn't I didn't get anything huh down
Speaker 19: as far as wind or or anything like that. Is
Speaker 19: it too late for me to do anything right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't worry about it right now. Wait until spring.
Speaker 4: Wait until spring comes, when your lawn starts to wake
Speaker 4: up and grow, do your fertilizing then I usually will
Speaker 4: do in my yard, I do my first fertilizing when
Speaker 4: I mowed the lawn twice. Now on my schedule, there's
Speaker 4: an early greenup application, and if you haven't seen my schedule,
Speaker 4: it's at the website gardening with skip dot com. You
Speaker 4: can download it there. I generally don't do the early
Speaker 4: green up, but you can't. And then there is the
Speaker 4: regular first fertilization. It's about the time you've mowed the
Speaker 4: lawn twice, but it's on the schedule, okay.
Speaker 19: And as far as weeds that I have growing right now,
Speaker 19: I just can I put something down for it? Or
Speaker 19: do I just keep on just cutting for now?
Speaker 4: It's the weeds. Like you're seeing the weeds right, they're
Speaker 4: there now, right right right? Okay. So I would what
Speaker 4: I would do is as we get into later in
Speaker 4: the winter before let's say, maybe in early February or
Speaker 4: late January something like that, late January, pray better time,
Speaker 4: get you a broad leaf post emergent weed control product
Speaker 4: and spray it on them, and it will kill them.
Speaker 4: If you wait until they start getting big and flowering
Speaker 4: and sitting seed, those products aren't going to work as well.
Speaker 4: So catch them before they start growing.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 4: And that's also the least stressful time to your lawn
Speaker 4: grass for you to be spraying the weeds. Okay, all right, okay,
Speaker 4: good luck with that. Don appreciate it. Appreciate your call.
Speaker 4: Thank you. We're going to run to break. I'll be
Speaker 4: right back. Welcome back. We are glad to have you
Speaker 4: with us. If you'd like to give me a call.
Speaker 4: Seven one three two one two KTRH seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two KTRH. I saw my Southwest fertilizer and
Speaker 4: having everything they also carry a's of mind, of course
Speaker 4: they do. They have everything, you know. Azamite is a
Speaker 4: micro nutrient or trace mineral, same thing, trace minerals supplement
Speaker 4: that we put out on our lawns, and we put
Speaker 4: it on our vegetable garden. You put in flower beds too.
Speaker 4: Asumite provides those trace minerals that are essential for plant growth,
Speaker 4: but not needed in large amounts. That's why we say trace,
Speaker 4: just a trace of them is all you need. Now
Speaker 4: you have a salt test done and see where you
Speaker 4: are on nutrients. That's the best way to fertilize, whether
Speaker 4: you're using lawn fertilizer or azmite or anything else. But
Speaker 4: as a general guide, I would recommend that you put
Speaker 4: out the asamite. You put out periodically. It's up to you.
Speaker 4: Just depends on the actual nutrient levels in your soil
Speaker 4: at the time as to how much or how often
Speaker 4: you want to use it. But it goes a long way.
Speaker 4: A forty four pound bag will cover about six to
Speaker 4: twelve thousand square feet now in the vegetable garden. I
Speaker 4: use it at ten pounds per thousand square feet. Ten
Speaker 4: pounds per thousand square feet in a vegetable garden. There's
Speaker 4: a thing in soul science called li bigs. Let's see
Speaker 4: libigs barrel. It's called the law of medicnce minimum li
Speaker 4: bigs barrel. So imagine I want you to picture this
Speaker 4: for me. You know what a a whiskey barrel wine
Speaker 4: barrel looks like, right, So imagine that you took the
Speaker 4: staves going up in that barrel and on one of
Speaker 4: them you wrote in for nitrogen, and on one p
Speaker 4: for phosphorus, and on one K for potassium, and all
Speaker 4: the way around the barrel to where you're writing, like
Speaker 4: zinc and iron and manganese and all these trace minerals.
Speaker 4: And then you cut those staves off at a certain
Speaker 4: height and let's say almost all of them were up
Speaker 4: at the top, but one stave is only halfway up
Speaker 4: the barrel. How much water could you put in the barrel?
Speaker 4: Only as much as the most limiting height stave will allow.
Speaker 4: That makes sense. Well, that's how it is with nutrients.
Speaker 4: If a nutrient, maybe you have plenty of everything in
Speaker 4: your soil, but you have a nutrient that is limited.
Speaker 4: That is how much plant production, growth, health you're going
Speaker 4: to be able to have. So you want to bring
Speaker 4: the even the trace minerals up to a good amount
Speaker 4: in the soil bank account. And think of it as
Speaker 4: that you're not feeding a plant like you know here
Speaker 4: you give it a spoonful of fertilizer and it eats it.
Speaker 4: You're building the soil when you fertilize, so that when
Speaker 4: those roots need twenty different nutrients out there sixteen primaries,
Speaker 4: but we have some others that are important too, and
Speaker 4: when it needs some of that, it's there in the
Speaker 4: soil bank account, and your grass lawn can grow, your
Speaker 4: peach tree can grow and produce well, your rosemary herb
Speaker 4: can grow and produce well. At the flowers, the vegetables,
Speaker 4: whatever you're growing. And that that is why we talk
Speaker 4: about azemiti as a trace mineral supplement, very very important.
Speaker 4: So hopefully that made a little bit of sense. People
Speaker 4: get a little confused on minerals and nutrients, like is
Speaker 4: it too late to use as might No, it's never
Speaker 4: too late. It is not something we're putting on like
Speaker 4: nitrogen we do certain times of the year to make
Speaker 4: the grass grow. It's something we're putting on to build
Speaker 4: a saw bank account. So when the grass wants that
Speaker 4: particular element, it's there, it's ready to go. Hope that helps.
Speaker 4: If you have had some trees that have had some
Speaker 4: issues this year, you probably ought to give Martin spoon
Speaker 4: Moore a call. Martin is that Affordable Tree Service. Affordable
Speaker 4: Tree Service is our go to company on garden Line
Speaker 4: when it comes to tree trimming. Now, this October through
Speaker 4: February cooler season window is when a lot of pruning
Speaker 4: gets done. It's the best time to get most types
Speaker 4: of pruning done. Although you can prune all times of
Speaker 4: the year, and the Martin stays busy. Martin does excellent work.
Speaker 4: And when you do a good job, when you have
Speaker 4: good service, good price, good job, you stay busy. And
Speaker 4: so don't delay. Tell him you're from you heard about
Speaker 4: him on guarden line. Get you up toward the front
Speaker 4: of the line. Give him a call seven one, three, six, nine, nine,
Speaker 4: twenty six sixty three. Have him come out. Take a
Speaker 4: look at your trees. Look at the overall health. How
Speaker 4: are they doing, or any branches needing to be removed.
Speaker 4: If you have young trees, do they need any training
Speaker 4: to help them get off to a good start. You know,
Speaker 4: if you don't train a tree when it's young, when
Speaker 4: it gets old, you're gonna have a mess, and you're
Speaker 4: gonna get out of chainsaw and you're gonna make big
Speaker 4: wounds trying to get things back to where they should
Speaker 4: have been trained to a long time ago. Martin can
Speaker 4: advise you on that. If you're gonna have any construction
Speaker 4: done around a tree, he can advise you on that
Speaker 4: and tell you how to do it so you don't
Speaker 4: hurt your tree. Listen, Martin knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 4: He's been doing this a long time here in the
Speaker 4: Greater Houston area. His website is a fftree Service dot com.
Speaker 4: Or you can call seven one three six nine twenty
Speaker 4: six sixty three. You're gonna need to talk to Martin
Speaker 4: or Joe. If you don't, you call the wrong place
Speaker 4: seven to one three six nine nine twenty six sixty three.
Speaker 4: Get on his schedule so he can come out and
Speaker 4: take care of your trees. They are the single most
Speaker 4: valuable plants in your landscape. They do a lot of
Speaker 4: things for us, very very important. I was talking about
Speaker 4: gifts for gardeners and ideas for gifts and items for gardeners.
Speaker 4: Gardening books are another great idea. You know, if someone
Speaker 4: is really into herb growing. Now there's a book produced
Speaker 4: a long time ago, and oh my gosh, the names
Speaker 4: escaping me now. Madeline Hill and Gwyn Barclay are the
Speaker 4: authors of it, Texas Herb Growing. Maybe the name of
Speaker 4: it my brain just went blank on it. I'll figure
Speaker 4: it out anyway. That is a good book. Doug Wells
Speaker 4: wrote a book called a Garden Almanac for Texas and
Speaker 4: it tells you what to do each month of the year.
Speaker 4: I've got one out there called Texas month by month gardening,
Speaker 4: same kind of thing. There are books that are excellent
Speaker 4: on flowers, books that are excellent on antique roses. Doctor
Speaker 4: Welch I had one called Perennial Garden Color that is
Speaker 4: the standard for Texas perennials, the old time perennials on
Speaker 4: the new ones. Perennial Garden Color a great gift book
Speaker 4: for that, And there are many other books out there.
Speaker 4: I guess I ought to put a list of recommended
Speaker 4: books on the website. That'd be a probably a good edition,
Speaker 4: but a good quality book. You know, it can be
Speaker 4: a freezing coals leading day outside and you can get
Speaker 4: open that book and you've gone back into gardening again.
Speaker 4: You're dreaming and you're learning, and you're getting better getting
Speaker 4: more information on it. So a book is a good
Speaker 4: a good gift for gardeners. Now they're they're coffee table books.
Speaker 4: I'm not a huge fan of coffee table books, but
Speaker 4: they are beautiful for looking at you know, you put
Speaker 4: them on the table and people look at them and
Speaker 4: get inspired. But I like the blue collar meat and potatoes,
Speaker 4: get down in the dirt and get it done kind
Speaker 4: of book. But we mentioned before a subscription to Texas
Speaker 4: Gardener magazine is a gift. Texas Gardener is, to my knowledge,
Speaker 4: the last remaining private gardening magazine for state, for a
Speaker 4: state in the country, Texas the last one to still
Speaker 4: have a gardening magazine for Texas. Or's not a Nebraska
Speaker 4: Gardening or a New Jersey Gardening and so on. But
Speaker 4: there's a Texas Gardener magazine written by Texas gardeners. I
Speaker 4: know almost all the authors in it, and they're excellent,
Speaker 4: and it's written for Texas gardeners. So anybody who either
Speaker 4: is a gardener or wants to be a gardener, get
Speaker 4: them a subscription to that. You can do a print subscription,
Speaker 4: you can do an online subscription where you view the
Speaker 4: magazine online. That's kind of popular now, or you can
Speaker 4: do both. You can do it either way. Anyway you
Speaker 4: go by Texas garden is the website for that if
Speaker 4: you want to be part of that good local inspiration.
Speaker 4: And by the way, if you're heard the term that
Speaker 4: all politics is local, have you ever heard that, well,
Speaker 4: I would like to say all gardening advice is local too.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 4: And I go online a lot and I see things,
Speaker 4: I listen to shows, and I hear things said, whether
Speaker 4: it's TV or radio, and I think, well, yeah, that's
Speaker 4: true in New Jersey, but not here in Texas, not
Speaker 4: in our location. Or maybe it's true in Austin but
Speaker 4: not in Houston. Yeah, we have differences even within a
Speaker 4: section of the state like that. So you need to
Speaker 4: get good local advice in Some of the books written
Speaker 4: here in Texas are helpful, very helpful for that. The
Speaker 4: magazine written in Texas helpful for that. And gardening shows.
Speaker 4: Local gardening shows like garden Line here in the Greater
Speaker 4: Houston are very helpful for getting good local advice. You
Speaker 4: can also get the kind of advice when you go
Speaker 4: visit one of our independent garden centers here in the
Speaker 4: Grider Houston area. I talk about them on garden Line
Speaker 4: all the time. You know, they are north, south, east, west,
Speaker 4: and central, no matter where they live, all directions and central.
Speaker 4: We have got quality garden centers with staff that know
Speaker 4: what they're talking about. And you know you've heard me
Speaker 4: ripe about this before, but I had been into big
Speaker 4: box stores, and here we go big box stores and
Speaker 4: stores that sell everything from pajamas to microwaves to plants,
Speaker 4: those kind of places. The likelihood of getting good advice
Speaker 4: or slim. I went into one one time, and I'd
Speaker 4: set up to train employees at it. I was saying,
Speaker 4: I'm doing a good thing here, just getting some training in.
Speaker 4: And I went to talk to the manager and he
Speaker 4: was gone. The garden center manager was gone, and the
Speaker 4: new guy was in. I said, oh, I'm supposed to
Speaker 4: be here doing her training. Okay. I said, well, so
Speaker 4: where are you from? And he goes, oh, I was
Speaker 4: at the jewelry counter and they moved me to gardening. Okay,
Speaker 4: and you're selling chemicals that people are going to use
Speaker 4: on their lawns. I've been to a big box store before.
Speaker 4: I was looking at the wall of products up there
Speaker 4: on the wall, and a young lady walked up, May
Speaker 4: I help you? And I always like to ask a
Speaker 4: question or two just to see if they are able
Speaker 4: to help, And turns out I asked, oh, what were
Speaker 4: you doing for this?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: I was cutting hair in a beauty shop, all right,
Speaker 4: not setting you up for gardening. Go to your mom
Speaker 4: and pops. That's the bottom line. Time for a break.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back, Welcome back to
Speaker 4: garden Line. We are glad you're with us today. Hey,
Speaker 4: if you'd like to give me a call, we're on
Speaker 4: open lines. It's seven one three two one two k
Speaker 4: t r H seven one three two and two kt
Speaker 4: r H. I've been talking about holiday gift ideas and
Speaker 4: and things to consider giving someone. Uh there I mentioned
Speaker 4: gift certificates and the importance of that. I mentioned that
Speaker 4: our local garden centers, of course have the quality plants
Speaker 4: and advice and many products in their gift shops that
Speaker 4: just are outstanding for gift ideas, that is for sure.
Speaker 4: Do you know Ace Hardware also has some really good
Speaker 4: gift ideas I love. I was in an ACE gosh
Speaker 4: when was this about three weeks ago? And looking at
Speaker 4: the kids toys? Do you think of Ace when you
Speaker 4: think of kid's toys? Were you should? And there were
Speaker 4: a lot of cool stuff, a lot of and some
Speaker 4: some of the retro kinds of things, you know, like
Speaker 4: Lincoln logs. How many of you remember Lincoln logs. I
Speaker 4: played with Lincoln logs to the cows came home and
Speaker 4: the dogs chewed them up. I loved those things. And
Speaker 4: you can still buy some cool ptro types of toys
Speaker 4: like that at ACE Hardware's as well. Remember every Ace
Speaker 4: Hardware stores independently owned, so each although it is an
Speaker 4: ACE and has the standard ACE things there, it's going
Speaker 4: to have the flavor, if you will, of the owner.
Speaker 4: It's going to have its own unique version of all
Speaker 4: the kinds of things that they can carry. But I
Speaker 4: can tell you this, when you walk into ACE you
Speaker 4: will find at least a dozen things that you did
Speaker 4: not know you could buy locally at your local Ace
Speaker 4: Hardware store. By the way, time to get in there,
Speaker 4: get your landscape lighting, get your decorations outdoors, get your
Speaker 4: lighting and decorations for indoors as well. They are ready
Speaker 4: to go at ACE Hardware store for this holiday season
Speaker 4: and they are stocked up. You need to get by
Speaker 4: there and check it out. All Star Ace Hardware, for example,
Speaker 4: is in Spring and in Magnolia, two different locations. You know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of ACE Hardware's in the Greater Houston area,
Speaker 4: Lake Conroe Ace Hardware another place for those of you
Speaker 4: on the side you Valdi Street Ace Hardware and up
Speaker 4: in brunn and Brunna Ace Hardware just examples of the
Speaker 4: many ACE Hardware stores in our area. You can go
Speaker 4: to Acehardware dot com find the st Or locator and
Speaker 4: find the stores. Yes that's plural, the East Hardburre stores
Speaker 4: near you. We're going to head out to Richmond now
Speaker 4: and talk to Margaret. Hello, Margaret, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 3: Thank you, good morning.
Speaker 7: So I.
Speaker 17: Was asked what the problem is, and it's my front lawn.
Speaker 17: I'm seeing the browning of the grass. A few patches
Speaker 17: are like circular in shape. Uh huh, and the grass
Speaker 17: is very brown around it. Most of it is so green,
Speaker 17: but just those particular areas. Uh, what do you recommend?
Speaker 4: Okay, good, Well, that's a disease called brown patch or
Speaker 4: large patch. It kind of has two names now, large
Speaker 4: patch in brown patch, and it's a fungus. And what
Speaker 4: it does, Margaret, is it rots the leaves off the runner.
Speaker 4: That's why you get the yellowing turning to tan, turning
Speaker 4: to brown circles and the lawn they're not all perfect circles,
Speaker 4: but they are typically circulure in their shape. And so
Speaker 4: the good news is it's not killing your grass, and
Speaker 4: those runners stay alive, and when it warms up a
Speaker 4: little bit, they'll start to grow new grass blades and
Speaker 4: it'll fill back in green again. Then bad news. While
Speaker 4: they're well, you don't have to treat. The bad news
Speaker 4: is is those bear is now sunlight is hitting the
Speaker 4: soil and you're more likely to have weed seeds start
Speaker 4: to grow. So you can put a pre emergent herbicide
Speaker 4: out to stop weed seeds, or just know that you're
Speaker 4: going to be dealing with them in those areas and
Speaker 4: be ready to do that. There are fungicides that will
Speaker 4: stop brown patch from occurring, but once you have the circles,
Speaker 4: they don't make the circle green. It's already you missed
Speaker 4: the boat on those spots. Some people, when they get
Speaker 4: a few of those circles, they'll go ahead and treat
Speaker 4: with the fungicide so that you don't get more of
Speaker 4: them to stop more from forming. And if you if
Speaker 4: you go to my website, it's an easy website to remember,
Speaker 4: I'm Skip Rickter. The website is gardening with Skip, Gardening
Speaker 4: with Skip dot com. I have lawn care schedules to
Speaker 4: tell you how to mow, water and fertilize, and then
Speaker 4: I have a schedule that's the lawn pest and disease
Speaker 4: and weed management schedule. And as you go from January
Speaker 4: through December, it's a big chart January to December, and
Speaker 4: there'll be a line for weed prevention, a line for
Speaker 4: weed control of existing weeds. There's a line for insects,
Speaker 4: a line for diseases, and it tells you when all
Speaker 4: that needs to be done so you can avoid those
Speaker 4: in the future.
Speaker 17: Okay, I appreciate it because I was thinking we'd need
Speaker 17: to take those areas out and plug in some new grass.
Speaker 17: So that's not necessary, is it.
Speaker 4: Not at all? No, don't worry about at all. There
Speaker 4: there's no no need to do that. That they will
Speaker 4: be back, all right.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 17: I appreciate it, and thanks for all of the helpful
Speaker 17: information that you impart with us.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks for listening. Glad,
Speaker 4: glad to have you around. Okay, I'm gonna had a
Speaker 4: caller call in about a question about a nursery. I'm
Speaker 4: gonna need some more information I believe on that or
Speaker 4: just speak to them directly. Either way, I'll be happy
Speaker 4: to do it. So let's see here we were talking
Speaker 4: about gifting and whatnot for the holiday season. Some ideas
Speaker 4: for people on your list. A good tool is always
Speaker 4: a good gift, it is. I mean, if someone's a woodworker.
Speaker 4: There's a bazillion woodworking tools. If someone is in a
Speaker 4: kind of home repair, do it yourself, do it yourselfers
Speaker 4: and things like that, then you know a good tool
Speaker 4: is going to be happy, happiness for them when they
Speaker 4: get it. If it is a gardener on your list
Speaker 4: or somebody who wants to be a gardener, a quality
Speaker 4: tool for them is important as well. And listen, I
Speaker 4: have owned a lot of tools over time over my time,
Speaker 4: and sometimes they are cheap, and cheap is a good
Speaker 4: word for them because they don't last. They don't last.
Speaker 4: Buy I'm a quality tool. Buy I'm a quality pruner
Speaker 4: set that is excellent idea. Pruners are saws. One of
Speaker 4: my favorite tools is a soil knife. Soil knife is
Speaker 4: like a big old booie knife with a curve cupped
Speaker 4: blade with serrated on one side. It is excellent for
Speaker 4: working in the soil. There are other ideas on tools
Speaker 4: like the kneeling bench. I always talk about Southwest Fertilizer.
Speaker 4: Bob's got the kneeling benches down there. It folds up,
Speaker 4: you store it, you bring it out. It's a seat.
Speaker 4: If you'll turn it one way, you flip it over
Speaker 4: it's a kneeling bench and the legs become handles to
Speaker 4: get back up off your knees. If you're north of
Speaker 4: forty you know what I'm talking about. Lots of good
Speaker 4: tools out there for gardeners. We're gonna take a little
Speaker 4: break here and we'll be back. Welcome back to garden Line.
Speaker 4: Good to have you with us today. Hey, we got
Speaker 4: a short amount of time here. Got a few calls
Speaker 4: to get through. I did have someone that asked about
Speaker 4: last week. Luis Tomorrow called in and we were talking
Speaker 4: about Christmas gift ideas from Warren Southern Gardens and Kingwood
Speaker 4: Garden Center, and someone asked about what were the locations
Speaker 4: for those. Warren Southern Gardens is in Kingwood, Texas and
Speaker 4: it is on North Park Drive. Kingwood Garden Center is
Speaker 4: on in Kingwood, Texas and it's on Stone Hollow Drive.
Speaker 4: Both are open seven days a week. Run Southern Gardens,
Speaker 4: North Park Drive, Kingwood Garden Center, Stonehaller Drive. It is
Speaker 4: not fair that the people in Kingwood have both of
Speaker 4: those garden centers right in the backyard right there. That
Speaker 4: is a that is a great thing. All right, We're
Speaker 4: gonna run out to the phones here and talk to
Speaker 4: Billy and Tomball. Hey Billy, welcome to garden Line. Hey, hey,
Speaker 4: I just going Thanks for taking my call.
Speaker 8: I am I've been toying with the idea of some
Speaker 8: above ground vegetable gardening.
Speaker 14: Uh.
Speaker 8: But I'm a little confused by, you know, the issue
Speaker 8: of what types of material should I use or not
Speaker 8: use in.
Speaker 4: Building the box?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 4: Treated metal? Whatever got you? Now when you say above ground,
Speaker 4: or you mean like a box that sits on top
Speaker 4: of the ground, or do you mean a box that
Speaker 4: is on legs up in the air.
Speaker 8: I'm guessing on the ground above above crowd, but on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a that's a good way to go. Well,
Speaker 4: there's you know, plants don't care what they're in, and
Speaker 4: so I have had beds that were just a mound
Speaker 4: of soil with slope sides.
Speaker 15: Uh.
Speaker 4: And then you know that you can grow in that.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 4: If you want something that it doesn't tend to wash
Speaker 4: away as much, then you can begin putting a border
Speaker 4: around that kind of thing of stone. For example, I
Speaker 4: built beds out of treated lumber before. Now there's naturally
Speaker 4: rot resistant wood like redwood is a little that way,
Speaker 4: cedars a little that way, and then there's treatments you
Speaker 4: can put on wood to paint over the wood to
Speaker 4: help seal it and slow decay. But any wood will
Speaker 4: decay in time, even pressure treated lumber. But I've made
Speaker 4: beds out like two by ten pressure treated lumber before,
Speaker 4: and you can do that. Some people don't want to
Speaker 4: do that because there's chemicals in it, and that's fine.
Speaker 4: That's fine. The other way to go probably the I
Speaker 4: think one of the best ways to go is to
Speaker 4: use a metal bed that has a treatment to the
Speaker 4: metal like galvanization. Usually they have even better stuff now
Speaker 4: to do that, and then is painted on the outside.
Speaker 4: That gives you the most life out of that bed.
Speaker 4: It doesn't rust away like a piece of tin would rust.
Speaker 4: So those I used to have a sponsor called Vego
Speaker 4: Garden Beds. They are in North Houston, located in North Houston.
Speaker 4: They produce a lot of those products. As you get
Speaker 4: to a nicer, nicer bed like that, the prices do
Speaker 4: go up, but I think they're pretty reasonably priced, and
Speaker 4: you can find some that have corrugated sides. You can
Speaker 4: get them in various colors that are earth tones, you know,
Speaker 4: like a tan or a brown or other variations on that,
Speaker 4: and they work really well. The thing I like about
Speaker 4: those is they're very The walls are thin enough to
Speaker 4: where if you've got a small area and you want
Speaker 4: to fit a bunch of beds in, it doesn't the
Speaker 4: bed itself doesn't take up as much space. I used
Speaker 4: to make beds out of cinder blocks, which you could
Speaker 4: also do by cinder blocks a couple of bucks apiece
Speaker 4: and lay them on the ground. And now you've got
Speaker 4: an eight inch tall bed that you put soil on.
Speaker 4: But there you're losing. You're losing eight inches on both
Speaker 4: sides of a bed, and so you start taking up
Speaker 4: more of your yard that way. Sure.
Speaker 8: Sure, So it sounds like it really doesn't matter from
Speaker 8: a health perspective what the material is, even treated lumber.
Speaker 4: Well, people will debate that, and I don't have time
Speaker 4: to go into the nerdy details Billy on the air.
Speaker 4: But the products that are made to treat wood are
Speaker 4: made to stick to the wood and not wash away,
Speaker 4: or they wouldn't work, and so they don't leach out
Speaker 4: into beds that much. But I understand people have concerns
Speaker 4: about things. We did a study years ago and a
Speaker 4: grife on railroad ties, and does it leach into the soil.
Speaker 4: And if it leaches into the soil, do the plants
Speaker 4: take it up so that your tomato has it in
Speaker 4: it for example? Right, And we found minimal, minimal amount
Speaker 4: of that. But some people will put plastic lining around
Speaker 4: the bed wood that they don't want to leach in.
Speaker 4: It's good to everybody, but I do know that like
Speaker 4: a Vego bed made out of that not galvanized bit.
Speaker 4: It's like galvanizing and then painting it. Those things, they'll
Speaker 4: have their food grade. There's nothing to leach or anything
Speaker 4: like that. So it's just up to you. Some people
Speaker 4: worry about fly ash put into cinder blocks as being
Speaker 4: a potential health hazard. I don't worry about that stuff myself,
Speaker 4: but I respect the fact that people do. So it's
Speaker 4: all up to you.
Speaker 7: Men.
Speaker 4: Hey, thanks a lot. I appreciate the information. You've cleared
Speaker 4: it up for me. All right, Billy, you take care. Thanks,
Speaker 4: thanks for that very much. I'm going to run now
Speaker 4: to Cyprus and we're going to talk to Donna. Hey, Donna,
Speaker 4: welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 9: Well, good morning, good morning, good morning. I want to
Speaker 9: speak to you about some plumeria putting up.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, that's good.
Speaker 9: The Plumerius Society recommends that when the weather is forty
Speaker 9: degrees or less over a consistent amount of time, that
Speaker 9: all your plumerias be brought into a warm spot. I
Speaker 9: heard the gentleman asking about bringing in his plumeria if
Speaker 9: he could.
Speaker 10: Bear root it.
Speaker 9: We do that a lot with our large plumerius. Yes, okay,
Speaker 9: was there our question?
Speaker 4: You ask you basically? Dig it? Yeah, you're digging it up,
Speaker 4: shaking the off, and.
Speaker 9: You'll find that that tree is not a huge root
Speaker 9: system under that ground. It's fairly easy to dig up.
Speaker 9: Dig it up, shake it off. Don't let it be wet.
Speaker 9: That's the problem this time of year, when the weather
Speaker 9: is maybe rain, maybe not. You don't want to put
Speaker 9: up wet plumeria roots. So dry roots bear rooted. I
Speaker 9: like to put them either in a box or in
Speaker 9: a like a cardboard big cardboard box, a bunch of
Speaker 9: them together. That way you have less area of your
Speaker 9: garage or wherever you're storing them taken up right, Okay,
Speaker 9: water them?
Speaker 4: Okay, that sounds good.
Speaker 12: Yeah, m.
Speaker 4: All right, Hey, donad real quick, how do you root
Speaker 4: a plumara? Cutting and just okay? The briefest version.
Speaker 9: Okay, you take that plumeria cutting in the spring and
Speaker 9: you put it into some good, good fresh soil. I
Speaker 9: love ocean forest. I love it, and don't water it
Speaker 9: and wait for a little leaf to show up. And
Speaker 9: when that first little leaf shows up and you get
Speaker 9: another one and another one, about three little leafs.
Speaker 6: Uh huh, start watering it.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's really all right.
Speaker 4: Hey, the music is ending my show. Thank you for
Speaker 4: calling in. I appreciate that. Very good information. Folks. Wow,
Speaker 4: time flies when you're having fun, and we did today.
Speaker 4: Talk to you tomorrow morning, six am.