Speaker 1: Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Richard.
Speaker 2: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: Trip.
Speaker 2: Just watch him as so many good.
Speaker 4: Things to supp crazy.
Speaker 2: Again, We're not a sorry glass sun.
Speaker 4: Good morning, gardeners, Good morning, and welcome to garden Mine.
Speaker 4: I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to
Speaker 4: talk gardening this morning. We get here at ten am,
Speaker 4: so grab a cup of coffee, stick around and if
Speaker 4: you'd like to give me a call, maybe you have
Speaker 4: a question seven one three two one two k t
Speaker 4: r H seven one three two into KTRH and we
Speaker 4: will visit about whatever you are interested in horticulturally. Let's
Speaker 4: just let's put that limit on it. I don't know,
Speaker 4: we might stretch that a little bit, but whatever would
Speaker 4: help you have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful
Speaker 4: landscape and more fun in the process, that's what we
Speaker 4: want to talk about today. Well, the cold weather is coming.
Speaker 4: It's definitely the elephant in the room, so you know,
Speaker 4: we might as well visit about that. I know you've
Speaker 4: probably been checking the weather apps on a regular basis,
Speaker 4: trying to, you know, see what's up, what the latest
Speaker 4: prediction is. I guess it's an exciting thing for kiddos
Speaker 4: because they're getting to perhaps face a little bit of snow,
Speaker 4: which you know, I know growing up. I grew up
Speaker 4: South San Antonio, down a little town called Jordenton, Texas.
Speaker 4: That is, when I lived there, both of the speed
Speaker 4: or both of the population signs were on the same post.
Speaker 4: It was that small. But it's got a little bit
Speaker 4: bigger right now. Anyway, I remember like two snows in
Speaker 4: my whole life, so it but one of them was
Speaker 4: really a good one. Anyway, when you're a kid, you
Speaker 4: love for it to snow. You know, it helps the
Speaker 4: Christmas songs make sense, like you know, dashing through the
Speaker 4: snow and a one horse open slate. What snow, Mama. Well, anyway,
Speaker 4: you get to see snow over now, and then that's coming.
Speaker 4: We got some cold weather coming too. It's going to
Speaker 4: be a good week to be spending some time indoors
Speaker 4: that I try to get as much I can get
Speaker 4: outside because I get card kevin fever cooped up indoors,
Speaker 4: so I like to get out and enjoy things on
Speaker 4: the outside. And it kind of depends on, you know,
Speaker 4: what your preferences are. But I need to be outside more,
Speaker 4: but not this week. Done in the Houston forecast. From
Speaker 4: what I can tell, we're gonna get down about thirty
Speaker 4: nine about twenty tomorrow night and twenty one, twenty seven,
Speaker 4: thirty two. That goes all the way through Thursday, so
Speaker 4: it's gonna be a cold one. And then Tuesday, Tuesday
Speaker 4: evening especially, I believe we've got a really high chance
Speaker 4: of getting some precipitation which will be frozen because Tuesday
Speaker 4: only gets up to thirty four degrees according to the
Speaker 4: current Houston forecast that I have. So what are we
Speaker 4: going to do about it? Well, one thing we're gonna do.
Speaker 4: They say the three peas are pipes, people and pets
Speaker 4: are pipes, plants, and pets. I guess we need a
Speaker 4: people pee in there too, pipes, plants, and pets. So
Speaker 4: I hope you've taken care of getting your pipes adequately secured.
Speaker 4: There is a lot of ways we can do that. Remember,
Speaker 4: all you got to do is keep them from freezing hard,
Speaker 4: and so there's already some warmth in the walls of
Speaker 4: your house, so that's helping a little bit the pipe
Speaker 4: sticking out into the cold air. That's why you put
Speaker 4: those little styrofoam covers over them. You can also get
Speaker 4: a little electrical. It's a section of electrical coated electrical
Speaker 4: wire that you wrap around pipes and plug it in
Speaker 4: and it keeps them warm enough to keep them from freezing.
Speaker 4: So that there's that. There's also wrapping pipes with styrofoam strips,
Speaker 4: if ice familiar with seeing those. And then there's a
Speaker 4: new little device called the freeze miser that is really cool.
Speaker 4: I screwed in the faucet and you know how you
Speaker 4: try to turn on the faucet's outdoor and let them
Speaker 4: drip overnight or trickle overnight. That moving water stops it
Speaker 4: from freeze water from freezing it. You always got, you know,
Speaker 4: let's say the temperature of water inside your home that's
Speaker 4: always coming out, so it keeps it from getting too
Speaker 4: cold out there. And that freezemiser what it does when
Speaker 4: it gets really cold, it starts to leak water out.
Speaker 4: So imagine a little kind of a nipple like thing
Speaker 4: you screw into the end of the pipe and then
Speaker 4: you on your water full force and nothing comes out.
Speaker 4: And then as a temperature drops, something inside starts to
Speaker 4: shrink and now it's letting water through. So instead of
Speaker 4: running water all night, wasting a lot of water. You
Speaker 4: end up just using water when it's needed, when it's
Speaker 4: cold enough for it. And so that's kind of a
Speaker 4: cool thing. From what I can see, they work pretty well.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna grab me a couple today. I saw a
Speaker 4: place where I had them, finally getting around to doing that,
Speaker 4: and I'll tell you where you can find them is.
Speaker 4: You can find them at Ace Hardware stores. You know,
Speaker 4: Ace has got everything you need if you are trying
Speaker 4: to keep your pipes warm, your water from freezing, if
Speaker 4: you're trying to keep your pets safe, if you're trying
Speaker 4: to protect your plants. So those pipe, those faucet covers,
Speaker 4: the freeze miser, the tubes of foam star foam or
Speaker 4: foam material to wrap around your pipes, a duct tape
Speaker 4: to hold it all on, Plastic sheeting to cover over
Speaker 4: things and protect them, frost blankets to take care of
Speaker 4: the I mean, it's all there at Ace Hardware, and
Speaker 4: we got Ace Hardware's all over the place. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of them. I mean they are absolutely all over
Speaker 4: the Greater Houston area, from all the way out in
Speaker 4: Beaumont to all the way down in Wharton and in
Speaker 4: our listening area and in many places beyond that. All
Speaker 4: you have to do is go online to acehardware dot com,
Speaker 4: find the ones near you, and you'll be able to
Speaker 4: get in there and get everything you need. And for
Speaker 4: the we say the three piece for the fourth p people,
Speaker 4: we've got heaters. They've got all kinds of space heaters inside.
Speaker 4: If you need to do any kind of things for
Speaker 4: your little generator, you got out there in case, you know,
Speaker 4: power to go out or something, they got stuff for
Speaker 4: that as well. Everything you need basically is there at
Speaker 4: ACE Hardware, So don't delay, go ahead and get it done.
Speaker 4: We're not having tonight. It's not our worst night by far,
Speaker 4: but you do want to make sure that you take
Speaker 4: care of the pipes, people, plants, and uh what did
Speaker 4: I leave out? Pipes, people, plants, I can't tell. Pets, Yeah,
Speaker 4: the pets as well. Oh and also those clamp on
Speaker 4: lights where you put in either a one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty flood light above or you put in an actual
Speaker 4: heat lamp to really warm things up. I'm going to
Speaker 4: be putting a heat lamp in. I've got a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of plants in my garage and they're all grouped
Speaker 4: together in the back of the garage and it's gonna
Speaker 4: stay reasonably warm in there. But just to be sure,
Speaker 4: I put a little heat lamp in shine it down
Speaker 4: on the garage floor, and that is it is. It
Speaker 4: radiates down and then the heat rises up. We're good
Speaker 4: to go. Just remember with the heat lamp, don't point
Speaker 4: it at the plants. And if you if you don't know,
Speaker 4: if you believe that or not, well turn on a
Speaker 4: heat lamp and put your hand, you know, a foot
Speaker 4: or two away from it and just hold it there
Speaker 4: still for a while and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: But anyway, I'll get one of those those are a
Speaker 4: ACE to clamp on. I've already got those climpon lights.
Speaker 4: So all of it's there for you. And we've got
Speaker 4: Ace hardware's all over the place. You know, if you're
Speaker 4: done in full shure, there's fulsher Ace hardware. There's an
Speaker 4: All Star Ace hardware, one in Spring and one in Magnolia,
Speaker 4: All Star Ace Poor levaka Ace hardware for those of
Speaker 4: you listening way down in that direction. In Spring Ace
Speaker 4: hardware up in Spring. So easy to find time for
Speaker 4: me to take a break when we come back. I
Speaker 4: will go straight to your calls and boil somebody. Everybody
Speaker 4: woke up this morning. All right, we'll be right with you.
Speaker 4: Melanie and Ann and Robert. Welcome back the Guarden Line.
Speaker 4: Good to have you with us. We're gonna get out
Speaker 4: to the phones here in just one second. I know
Speaker 4: we're gonna be talking freezes all day. I just want
Speaker 4: to make a few comments about freeze and freeze protection.
Speaker 4: There are things that point toward more plant damage, and
Speaker 4: there's things that point us toward less plant damage. If
Speaker 4: a plant is not ready for cold, the same plant
Speaker 4: versus a plant that's had time too as we say,
Speaker 4: hardened off, the one that hasn't been able to prepare
Speaker 4: for cold is more likely to get cold damage at
Speaker 4: the same temperature as one that has been. It's going
Speaker 4: fine because it was hardened off. That's one things that
Speaker 4: how sudden the cold comes, and how fast the temperature drops,
Speaker 4: how much wind we have when it's cold. You know,
Speaker 4: if we say it's going to be twenty six degrees, well,
Speaker 4: is that twenty six degrees of still air? Or is
Speaker 4: that twenty six degrees with a fifteen mile an hour
Speaker 4: wind blown from the side. You know, it's going to
Speaker 4: cool off faster, you get more damage. Now, typically when
Speaker 4: the wind isn't blown and you don't have clouds, the
Speaker 4: temperature will drop lower. But I'm just saying these things
Speaker 4: affect whether a plant will be damaged or not. Now,
Speaker 4: the things that help us have plants not get damaged.
Speaker 4: A plant that's not drought stressed, soil that has been
Speaker 4: adequately watered. Water holes heat, and when we say heat,
Speaker 4: we just mean temperature. You know that is above freezing.
Speaker 4: That's heat compared to a frozen plant. So water holes heat,
Speaker 4: so that doesn't mean drowned it and create a swamp.
Speaker 4: It means just a good deep soaking, making sure there
Speaker 4: is moisture there, pulling the mulch away. So when the
Speaker 4: sun shines during the day, it warms up that dark
Speaker 4: soil that can then radiate that heat up into the
Speaker 4: plant in the evening times. Covers over the top of
Speaker 4: the plant, especially when they go to the ground, and
Speaker 4: they create a dead air space. So it may be
Speaker 4: twenty six degrees outside, but underneath the cover, with soil
Speaker 4: rising up in some dead air space, it's not going
Speaker 4: to be as cold. Now, that doesn't mean, you know,
Speaker 4: you get to nineteen degrees and you're not going to
Speaker 4: freeze a plant that's not enough. These are all things
Speaker 4: that add together to provide protection or not. So it's
Speaker 4: not a black and white issue here. We've got a
Speaker 4: lot of factors that are moving putting heat underneath the cover.
Speaker 4: You know, a little bit of heat versus a lot
Speaker 4: of heat. And you know, if you've got a small plant,
Speaker 4: it takes less heat under the cover to protect it
Speaker 4: at a given temperature than if you have something large,
Speaker 4: like a big old orange tree, for example. So that's
Speaker 4: a lot of airspace to provide heat into. It's gonna
Speaker 4: take more heat. So whether you're using light bulbs to
Speaker 4: do it or whether you're using some other way to
Speaker 4: do it, it's going to take more heat to do that.
Speaker 4: And so each of these things, you know, it moves
Speaker 4: us toward you're probably going to get damage or you're
Speaker 4: not going to get damage. And of course the plant
Speaker 4: species varies a lot too. So what we have to
Speaker 4: do is we have to do all of these things.
Speaker 4: You know, if I had a citrus tree and it
Speaker 4: was going to get to nineteen and I was trying
Speaker 4: to cover it, I would also pull soil or very
Speaker 4: fine compost up around the trunk and make a big
Speaker 4: old giant this only time you're gonna hear me say,
Speaker 4: make a trunk volcano. But this is it because that way,
Speaker 4: if it froze back and kill the trunk back, typically
Speaker 4: it's going to be a little warmer under eat that
Speaker 4: big pile of soil where the trunk touches it, and
Speaker 4: maybe you'll get a sprout from above the graft that
Speaker 4: can grow and replace your tree. So see what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: We're doing all these things either to move the needle,
Speaker 4: to order away from coal damage. Nature is doing those too,
Speaker 4: And so there are times when we try to cover
Speaker 4: and protect a plant and it's not enough. It's just
Speaker 4: not going to be enough. It's too cold, it's too windy,
Speaker 4: the plant's too sensitive, on and on down the cold sensitive.
Speaker 4: But those are the things that we try to do.
Speaker 4: So I just wanted to make a mention of that
Speaker 4: because that is really important to realize and to keep
Speaker 4: that into account. So ask yourself, you know, if you're
Speaker 4: going to put lights underneath the plant, you know how
Speaker 4: col tender is this? How big of an area am
Speaker 4: I trying to recover or to protect rather and make
Speaker 4: your decisions according to that. Let's go to other phones.
Speaker 4: Now we're going to head out to Cyprus and talk
Speaker 4: to Melanie. Hey, Melanie, good morning, and welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 5: Morning gift.
Speaker 6: And you did enlighten me already about the heat lamps,
Speaker 6: and you have to because I bought them at eight
Speaker 6: yesterday and I had by cross protectors over my camellias.
Speaker 6: But you want to put them down on the ground, right, yes.
Speaker 4: And when you well, yes, you want to put them
Speaker 4: down low because heat rises, you know, so putting them
Speaker 4: up in the air and pointing them at the plant
Speaker 4: is not as helpful as getting them down low and
Speaker 4: having the heat ride that. That's a minor thing, but
Speaker 4: again it's part of what I just said. It's all
Speaker 4: these factors combined. If you're if you're using just a floodlight,
Speaker 4: which may be about one hundred and fifty wide or
Speaker 4: something like that, that's gonna put on a little bit
Speaker 4: of heat and in a small space. If we're talking
Speaker 4: about just trying to keep the temperature about thirty two,
Speaker 4: it may be enough, but if the temperature gets lower outside,
Speaker 4: it won't be enough. Okay, if you're using you said
Speaker 4: the word heat lamp. Those are okay, are they? Is
Speaker 4: it a red kind of okay? Yeah, those put out
Speaker 4: more heat. Those put more heat. But again, if if
Speaker 4: you had a big, old, giant orange tree with a
Speaker 4: cover over it, and you just had one of those
Speaker 4: underneath it, and the temperature is going to go into
Speaker 4: the teens, you know, that's probably not gonna be enough.
Speaker 4: You may have to have a second woman or something.
Speaker 4: So it's just a it's a it's just a factor.
Speaker 4: Someone called in yesterday and talked about a little gadget
Speaker 4: you hang in the plant where you're on your phone app,
Speaker 4: you can tell what the temperature is. Boy, that would
Speaker 4: be really helpful because then you would know exactly how
Speaker 4: things are going out there. Not not that you would
Speaker 4: want to walk out and tend degree weather and try
Speaker 4: to add another heat lamp or anything, but but it
Speaker 4: just just think of it that way that do everything
Speaker 4: you can, and remember we don't have to make it
Speaker 4: warm enough to where we'd be comfortable under the under
Speaker 4: the cover. We need to keep it about freezing, and
Speaker 4: so if we the main thing is if you can
Speaker 4: create dead air space, then you've got this air that
Speaker 4: you heat it up, and it's not like whim just
Speaker 4: immediately blows it right up from under there, and so
Speaker 4: that's also very important.
Speaker 6: Okay, thank you, I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 7: That's all I can do.
Speaker 4: All right, good luck, good luck, Melanie, Thank you for
Speaker 4: the call. We're going to go now to Wharton and
Speaker 4: talk to n. Hey n. Welcome to garden line. Yes,
Speaker 4: good morning.
Speaker 8: Have about seventy seventy foot of foot of Saint excuse me,
Speaker 8: A blue bonnet's in Saint Augustine Bermuda yard and they're
Speaker 8: being inundated with clover. Is there anything that can be
Speaker 8: done to get rid of the clover?
Speaker 4: No, there's not a selective spray that would kill clover
Speaker 4: and not blue bonnets. The blue bonnets will probably be okay,
Speaker 4: they'll probably I mean they've been doing that in nature
Speaker 4: for a long time. They know how to deal with
Speaker 4: all the weeds around them. But if you you know,
Speaker 4: going in and doing some hand pulling, and I realized
Speaker 4: that's a huge area you described that may not be practical,
Speaker 4: but any little bit that you do helps a little bit.
Speaker 4: But that's about the only thing you can do. Well.
Speaker 8: We've had them in the past, but they're getting to
Speaker 8: be more prolific and we literally have to go out
Speaker 8: there with the weed eater and you know, chop them down.
Speaker 8: So I just thought there might be something new on
Speaker 8: the on the market. Yes, we pulled and whatnot. I
Speaker 8: just may have to forego the blue bonnets one year
Speaker 8: and totally annihilate that clover and then you know, reced
Speaker 8: make the next Would that be a good idea?
Speaker 4: Well, you can try that. You know, clover's throwing seeds
Speaker 4: out there. Some may not hatch this or hatch sprout
Speaker 4: this year, some may sprout next year, and so I
Speaker 4: don't know that that would get ahead of it. I'll
Speaker 4: tell you this, if you have the time and able
Speaker 4: to any clover plant you get out, you're taking out
Speaker 4: all the seeds that it would have produced for the
Speaker 4: next year, yes, and then probably the year after that.
Speaker 4: And there's a little device. I've not used this to
Speaker 4: try to get clover out of blue bonnets, but I
Speaker 4: use it on thistle weeds that come up in flower
Speaker 4: beds in my yards, called the Grandpa's weeder. And it's
Speaker 4: got little prongs and you don't have to bend over
Speaker 4: and pull weeds. You step on it and imagine, you know,
Speaker 4: take your two fingers and your thumb and push them
Speaker 4: down into the ground and then pinch them together. And
Speaker 4: all you do is pull back on the handle and
Speaker 4: it pinches and pulls the weeds out, and you could
Speaker 4: loosen a lot of clover out of the soil that
Speaker 4: way without stooping. And then just go in and either
Speaker 4: rake or pull up the weeds that the clovers that
Speaker 4: you have pulled up, So that may be helpful for you.
Speaker 8: Right, they understand. There are also look like two different
Speaker 8: types of clover, and one has a bigger leaf and
Speaker 8: spreads more, and then there's this smaller variety. It's more
Speaker 8: difficult to pull up.
Speaker 4: So work with it. Well, good luck, good luck with it,
Speaker 4: and if it works, send me a picture of the
Speaker 4: bluebone patcher. If it doesn't, send me a picture of
Speaker 4: the bluebone, I'd love to see that. All right, thanks
Speaker 4: a lot, and I appreciate that you bet you bet.
Speaker 4: You take care as well. All Right, I'm about to
Speaker 4: hit a break here, Robert in Spring Branch. We'll get
Speaker 4: to you first when we come right back. In the meantime,
Speaker 4: I want to remind you go to my website, Gardening
Speaker 4: with Skip dot com. Find that publication on freeze and
Speaker 4: frost protection. It's free, it's nine pages, it's got color pictures,
Speaker 4: and it will help. Welcome back, Welcome back to garden Line.
Speaker 4: Let's keep going this morning. I bet we talked freezes
Speaker 4: all day. Whatever you want to talk about though, we
Speaker 4: can even talk about the tomato agree last year. If
Speaker 4: you want to go that route. We're going to hit
Speaker 4: it out now to Spring Branch and talk to Robert. Hey, Robert,
Speaker 4: Welcome to guarden Line.
Speaker 3: Hey, Skip, how you doing this? Want and serve besides
Speaker 3: cold between the webs.
Speaker 4: I'm doing good. I'm good.
Speaker 7: Good, glad to hear it.
Speaker 3: You're staying warm.
Speaker 4: Hey.
Speaker 3: On the the light bulb thing, the LED versus the
Speaker 3: incandescent versus a true heat lamp or a halogen type bulb,
Speaker 3: we need the people to be aware that they're not
Speaker 3: going to get the heat off of an LED LED
Speaker 3: light that's not transmit heat like the old incandescent or
Speaker 3: a Halingen type of light. If they're going to put
Speaker 3: the LED bulb up under to try and warm the plant,
Speaker 3: realize that the heat from the LED bulb is in
Speaker 3: the base.
Speaker 4: It's in that.
Speaker 7: White or colored part at the bottom.
Speaker 3: So so don't don't leave the bottom of the bulb
Speaker 3: out from under the cover. Get it as close as
Speaker 3: you can, and you don't have to worry about shooting
Speaker 3: LED light on a plant because it's not going to
Speaker 3: carry the light. So just the type of light bulb
Speaker 3: they're gonna make a big difference.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's important, and hopefully the place they buy it
Speaker 4: can direct them that way too. Yeah, it's huge. LED's
Speaker 4: you knows, be a little nerdy about it. When electricity
Speaker 4: goes into a light, it either comes out as light
Speaker 4: or as heat. And an incandescent bulb a little the
Speaker 4: old incandescent you know bulbs we used, about ten percent
Speaker 4: comes out as light and ninety percent of the energy
Speaker 4: it gets converted to heat. LED is kind of flipped over,
Speaker 4: not that efficient like ninety ten, but it's way more
Speaker 4: efficient on light and therefore you don't get the heat.
Speaker 4: And we talk sometimes your comment is kind of give
Speaker 4: me a springboard to make a couple of things that
Speaker 4: come to mind as you say that, And we talk
Speaker 4: often about well, you can put a string of Christmas
Speaker 4: lights in there, well, not LED Christmas lights and not
Speaker 4: the little tiny, twinkly non LED Christmas lights. There's hardly
Speaker 4: any heat comes out of those. It's the big old
Speaker 4: what's the number C four or C something. The bulbs
Speaker 4: that are like little miniature old time light bulbs. Uh,
Speaker 4: those produce a little bit of heat and you can
Speaker 4: put a string of those to help a little, but
Speaker 4: it can't be a very hard freeze for them to
Speaker 4: do a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if I was going to use the LED bulbs
Speaker 3: skip around my precious plants, I would put a couple
Speaker 3: of the or three of the LEDs for every one
Speaker 3: of a regular incandescent. They just that's part of what
Speaker 3: makes them efficient. Yes, sir, and I am a little nerdy,
Speaker 3: I'm a double e. Sorry, sorry to throw that at you,
Speaker 3: but I just I want people to save there.
Speaker 7: There.
Speaker 3: There was a lady called in yesterday. She's got names
Speaker 3: for her plants, and I think that's precious. But uh,
Speaker 3: we just got to realize there's an amount of warmth
Speaker 3: that we do need.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that is that's true myself. All right, man.
Speaker 3: Thanks, I don't know if you had any data about
Speaker 3: how much work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's not and you know, not all needs
Speaker 4: or created either. I I buy the LED plant lighting
Speaker 4: fixtures that have the right wavelengths and a cheap picture
Speaker 4: like that will produce quite a bit of heat compared
Speaker 4: to an LED that is higher quality and does a
Speaker 4: better job of taking that electricity and turn it into
Speaker 4: a light red than heat.
Speaker 3: Are correct, There's a brand new called fight F I
Speaker 3: E T and they're reasonably low on the efficiency scale,
Speaker 3: and those are the ones that I would call sacrificial
Speaker 3: for outside use. Anyway, you have a wonderful day.
Speaker 4: I appreciate you, all right, man, thanks for the call.
Speaker 4: Yeah boy, there's a lot of factors here. I mean,
Speaker 4: we could get we could get done in the in
Speaker 4: the in the weeds, on on all the details of it.
Speaker 4: I'll just I'll just say this, you know, basically, what
Speaker 4: I'm suggesting people do is get a one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty white flood light for a little bit of heat,
Speaker 4: and a heat lamb for a lot of heat. And
Speaker 4: just make sure be careful. This has got to say
Speaker 4: it again because I know I'll say something five times
Speaker 4: and not everybody's listening. Don't point a heat lamp at
Speaker 4: your plants. It just gets too hot. Don't put the
Speaker 4: bulbs too close to your trunk or leaves or things
Speaker 4: like that. And one other I gotta warn you again
Speaker 4: consider fire hazard. I have pictures of plants where it
Speaker 4: was a little tree, a little fruit tree, and they
Speaker 4: had put a cover over it, and then they put
Speaker 4: some fixture down near the ground and it in dead grass.
Speaker 4: And the next morning it looked like you'd burned a
Speaker 4: trash pile out there. It was all gone. It caught
Speaker 4: on fire and burned it all up. So I mean,
Speaker 4: that's just common sense. You know, you don't stick an
Speaker 4: open plug out in rainy weather. You don't put something
Speaker 4: that could spark done in dry grass or mulch, and
Speaker 4: so just be careful with that. A low common sense
Speaker 4: will do that. In the ball, I just put a
Speaker 4: fixture underneath a trialis that I have. I just wanted
Speaker 4: to try to keep it, you know, even some of
Speaker 4: the above ground parts alive if I could. It's more
Speaker 4: of an experiment. But I drove a steak in the ground,
Speaker 4: and I put my clamp light on the steak, so
Speaker 4: I'm sure the bulb will be above the soil and
Speaker 4: pointing down. You know, if you stick it to PVC pipe,
Speaker 4: sometime the weight of that light it'll start to sag
Speaker 4: down and next thing you know, it's not pointing where
Speaker 4: you want it to point or whatever. Anyway, more than
Speaker 4: you want to know, more than you want to know.
Speaker 4: But just because it's gonna get cold doesn't mean you
Speaker 4: need to quit talking about plants and what to plant now,
Speaker 4: and good plants and things out there like that, plants
Speaker 4: for all seasons. Up on a highway two forty nine,
Speaker 4: which is Stunball Parkway. They're just north of Luetta. If
Speaker 4: you're going up toward Tomball, you exit Luetta and just
Speaker 4: crossover Luetta. It's a little further up on the right
Speaker 4: hand side, just a soone's throat from Luena. They've got
Speaker 4: lots of great stuff in. They got some good cool
Speaker 4: seasoned flowers, you know, pansies and violas and the diantha,
Speaker 4: one of my favorite cool seasoned flowers. Lots of things
Speaker 4: like that to choose from. They got a good selection
Speaker 4: of vegetables, a great selection of seeds inside too. Their
Speaker 4: indoor seed selection is awesome. So why not go out
Speaker 4: and grab some of that today, Get you some seeds,
Speaker 4: start to do your planning. You know, we can take
Speaker 4: advantage of not being able to go outside to sit
Speaker 4: down at the table with paper and pencil kind of
Speaker 4: figure out, what are you gonna plant next year? Where
Speaker 4: are you gonna put it? You got the seeds, get
Speaker 4: them all ready? Maybe you want to start some seeds yourself.
Speaker 4: And there is things like seed trays, a seed starting mix,
Speaker 4: a very fine textured like a pinting soap, a very
Speaker 4: fine textured that you can use. Maybe you're going to
Speaker 4: get a light, an LED light to provide lighting for
Speaker 4: those plants. Lighting is the single most important thing that
Speaker 4: people seem to not get right when they try to
Speaker 4: start to grow their own transplants. So I have a
Speaker 4: publication on my website lighting for seed Starting. It's actually
Speaker 4: really interesting. Uh, and you will if you read it,
Speaker 4: you will go, oh, I get it. I did not
Speaker 4: know that because there's a lot of factors about it. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, just having an electrical engineer call and talk
Speaker 4: about you know, uh, plant lighting and heat. The same
Speaker 4: is true when it comes to how plant light work.
Speaker 4: Lights work. So check that publication out. I'm gonna take
Speaker 4: a break. We'll be right back, And I'm your host,
Speaker 4: Skip Richter, and you're listening to guard Line. We're here
Speaker 4: to talk about the things you need to talk about.
Speaker 4: And I suspect the cold weather and what to do
Speaker 4: about this plant, that plant, or what works what doesn't work?
Speaker 4: I don't know. You tell me whatever you want to
Speaker 4: talk about, will do it? Seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two K T R H. We want you to have success.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you this, A lot of people are
Speaker 4: hesitant to call in, and I get it. You know,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be on the radio and everybody's listening,
Speaker 4: and what if I make a fool of myself or something. Well,
Speaker 4: Number one, nobody's it's just showing me. Trust me. That's
Speaker 4: shoeing me out there. I know who you are. You're
Speaker 4: sitting there listening, and if you call, we'll just visit.
Speaker 4: And I if you've listened to guard Line very long,
Speaker 4: you know that we are very welcome, welcoming of callers here.
Speaker 4: And I always like to have new folks call in.
Speaker 4: Love to have the folks who call in at other
Speaker 4: times as well, but it's always good to meet a
Speaker 4: new gardener. So what do you want to talk about today?
Speaker 4: Let's do that. I promise to be kind. The way
Speaker 4: I used to say it, and I guess I should
Speaker 4: still do this is don't be afraid of asking a
Speaker 4: stupid question. There are no stupid questions just stupid answers. Now,
Speaker 4: I know you're sitting there thinking, yeah, I've heard some
Speaker 4: stupid questions amount time. Well that's not how I look
Speaker 4: at it. Stupid answers, that's what we're worried about. So
Speaker 4: the pressure's on me, not you. Let's talk about gardening.
Speaker 4: And I'll tell you this, if you have a question
Speaker 4: somebody else does, I guarantee you. I can sit here
Speaker 4: in a show and answer the same question seven times
Speaker 4: in the same morning, and that's okay. I can do that.
Speaker 4: I wish everybody listened all the time, but I understand
Speaker 4: how things go. You're in, you're out. Well, just ask
Speaker 4: your question and we will answer it for you. And
Speaker 4: I don't know if i've answered it before, I may
Speaker 4: add something different into the answer, something additional, And so
Speaker 4: somebody who's listening through the whole thing gets gets to
Speaker 4: kind of expand on what they're learning and how they
Speaker 4: can then go have success. I was mentioning plans for
Speaker 4: all season before we went to break and you know,
Speaker 4: plans for all seasons if you if you want to
Speaker 4: get in contact with them. The website's Plans for All
Speaker 4: Seasons dot com and their phone number is two eight
Speaker 4: one three seven six sixteen forty six two eight one
Speaker 4: three seven six sixteen forty six. Swing by there and
Speaker 4: visit with those folks and get you some supplies to
Speaker 4: get ready for gardening. You know this, Like I said,
Speaker 4: this week is the week to be gardening indoors, armchair gardening,
Speaker 4: if you will. It's the week to be reading seed
Speaker 4: catalogs and getting inspired. It's the week to be reading
Speaker 4: stuff online.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: I put a couple of new things on my website
Speaker 4: the other day, a couple of days ago, that are
Speaker 4: I think helpful to you. It'd be worth reading one
Speaker 4: of them. I mentioned the one about you know, how
Speaker 4: to control woody weeds, you know, like poison ivy and
Speaker 4: hackberries coming up in the fence line and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: I put one of those up. But I also put
Speaker 4: up a publication on pasturizing potting soil. Now, I know
Speaker 4: most people are not gonna pasteurize their potting soil. I
Speaker 4: get that go out and buy fresh. We say clean,
Speaker 4: meaning it's not full of diseases. Potting soil or seed
Speaker 4: starting mix. That's good. But there are people who want
Speaker 4: to kind of make their own stuff. You know, they
Speaker 4: make composts and they screen it down really fine, and
Speaker 4: maybe they add a little bit of purli to it
Speaker 4: or sand to it or whatever their concoction is. And
Speaker 4: then you go start a seed and in a very humid,
Speaker 4: moist chamber, diseases can proliferate. And so we have a
Speaker 4: disease called damping off. And basically what it means is
Speaker 4: your little seedling sprout and then they start to rot
Speaker 4: at the base and fall over, kind of like Paul
Speaker 4: Bunyan went through there chopping them off. They just they
Speaker 4: just melt right over. And that's that's a fungal disease.
Speaker 4: That is a problem because of that very moist, nice
Speaker 4: mild temperature chamber that you've created, which is what seas want.
Speaker 4: Seeds want moist and mild temperatures, and so how do
Speaker 4: you avoid that. Well, if you want to make your
Speaker 4: own soil, or maybe maybe you have potting soil from
Speaker 4: a bunch of containers and you're you're done with it,
Speaker 4: you can throw it away, you can put it on
Speaker 4: the ground, just mix it into the soil like organic matter,
Speaker 4: like compost. But some people want to try to reuse it,
Speaker 4: and how do you how do you do that? Well,
Speaker 4: the you do that is you have to pasteurize it.
Speaker 4: You have to kill the bad stuff. And in this
Speaker 4: publication that I wrote and put online, it's very simple.
Speaker 4: You know say in a publication sounds like this big deal,
Speaker 4: it's it's really simple. Basically, you can put that soil
Speaker 4: in a pan with foil over the top and put
Speaker 4: it in an oven. You need to moisten it. It's
Speaker 4: very important to have good heat transfer, good moisture, not soggy,
Speaker 4: just moist you know, Cover the pan with foil, seal
Speaker 4: it over and put it in a oven away from
Speaker 4: the heating element. And then the next step is to
Speaker 4: raise it to a certain temperature and leave it for
Speaker 4: about thirty minutes once it hits that temperature. And I
Speaker 4: use I've used meat thermometers, I've used candy thermometers, all
Speaker 4: kinds of you know, little thermometer. Just stick them, pokehole
Speaker 4: through the soil, stick the thermometer in there and just
Speaker 4: watch the temperature on it. Check it out, check it periodically.
Speaker 4: Once it hits the temperature you want it, leave it
Speaker 4: about thirty minutes just to be sure. Now here's the warning.
Speaker 4: Don't overheat. When you overheat potting soil. It is not pleasant.
Speaker 4: We'll just say earthy odor that can can fill the
Speaker 4: house in the oven as well. So if you are
Speaker 4: trying to heat up some soil, I realize right now
Speaker 4: as I'm saying this, you know, like one in one
Speaker 4: hundred people probably is going to do this. But one
Speaker 4: hundred and forty degrees for thirty minutes is enough to
Speaker 4: kill most fungi that are in the soil. If you
Speaker 4: want to kill bacteria and insects, you're probably gonna need
Speaker 4: to go to about one hundred and sixty degrees because
Speaker 4: they are a little more some of them are a
Speaker 4: little more resistant to the heat. And if you're trying
Speaker 4: to get all the weed seeds, we say about one
Speaker 4: hundred and eighty, but do not go above one hundred
Speaker 4: and eighty for anything, and about thirty minutes and that'll
Speaker 4: do it. An alternative method, and this is the one
Speaker 4: I like because I don't know, it seems neat or
Speaker 4: cleaner to me, is get you all those turkey bags.
Speaker 4: You know that the bags that you would put around
Speaker 4: a turkey, they're made for the oven. They're called oven bags,
Speaker 4: is really the name for them. I call them turkey
Speaker 4: bags because that's the size of the bag, and put
Speaker 4: your soil in that, your moist soil, pre moistened soil
Speaker 4: in that, and then put that bag on a tray
Speaker 4: in the oven, kind of flatten it out that you
Speaker 4: wouldn't want to go deeper than about four inches or
Speaker 4: so because you want heat to get all the way
Speaker 4: to the center of it effectively. And just poke a
Speaker 4: hole in it, a little slid or a hole that
Speaker 4: allows extra air to escape. And it works really well.
Speaker 4: It's neat and clean. So those are a couple of ideas.
Speaker 4: If you didn't catch all that, go online the publications
Speaker 4: on my website, Gardening with Skip dot com. And it's
Speaker 4: even there's even a PDF version that you can print
Speaker 4: out if you want to do that. All right, Well,
Speaker 4: there we kind of went off on a tangent and
Speaker 4: some things that I think some gardeners will be interested in. Well,
Speaker 4: there's the music. We are putting an hour in the
Speaker 4: books this morning. Hey, we got three more to go.
Speaker 4: Give us a call if you'd like to call it
Speaker 4: Duram Break. You can be one of the first folks
Speaker 4: when we come back on the air seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two k t r H seven to one
Speaker 4: three two one two kt r H. We're gonna be
Speaker 4: talking about all kinds of things. Uh, your calls, certainly.
Speaker 4: I have a few topics that I would like to
Speaker 4: visit about a little bit, and uh, one of the
Speaker 4: things is printing tools. Come back, We're and talk a
Speaker 4: little bit about some basic printing tools things you might
Speaker 4: be interested, especially if you're in the market to purchase
Speaker 4: a tool, or if you're trying to take care of
Speaker 4: your tools, how to keep care of the top round
Speaker 4: the forward to talk to you in just a bit.
Speaker 1: Welcome to kt r H guarded line with skimp rict.
Speaker 2: Just watch him as many again signs.
Speaker 4: So all right, we're back in the saddle again, ready
Speaker 4: to go for another hour of garden line. If you'd
Speaker 4: like to give me a call. Seven one three six
Speaker 4: two excuse me seven one three two one two fifty
Speaker 4: eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
Speaker 4: eight seven four. I mentioned that I was going to
Speaker 4: talk about printing, printing tools, things like that, So let's
Speaker 4: let's do that. When it comes to successful pruning, number one,
Speaker 4: you need to know what you're doing when you go
Speaker 4: out to cut what needs to be prune this. You
Speaker 4: know how you prune various kinds of plants. That that's
Speaker 4: all helpful, but having good tools is important. And there
Speaker 4: are a lot of different pruning tools out there in
Speaker 4: the market, a lot of different kinds. In fact, I
Speaker 4: could spend the whole show talking just about all the
Speaker 4: different pruning tools. And I'm just going to give a
Speaker 4: few quick points here when it comes to pruners that
Speaker 4: are hand pruners or that are loppers, the long ones
Speaker 4: that you know you cut a larger limb off with.
Speaker 4: There are two types of blade arrangements. One of them
Speaker 4: is called a bypass and it works like a pair
Speaker 4: of scissors. One blade passes by the other one and
Speaker 4: clips off the branch or whatever you're cutting. The other
Speaker 4: type is called an anvil type, and there you have
Speaker 4: a flat surface and a blade comes down on it
Speaker 4: as if you were hitting a hatchet on an anvil top.
Speaker 4: You see what I'm saying, It cuts that way. I
Speaker 4: don't care for the endvie types. They are okay in
Speaker 4: some situations, but general I find that they often get
Speaker 4: a little lot of whack and you try to cut
Speaker 4: and it didn't cut all the way through. Well, So
Speaker 4: I like the bypass types of pruners, And I realize
Speaker 4: there's reasons for each type, but the bypass types work
Speaker 4: a little bit better. When you're using a bypass pruner
Speaker 4: the side, like if you're holding scissors, typically the bottom
Speaker 4: part has a little bit more of a flat surface
Speaker 4: and the top part is more of a thin blade.
Speaker 4: And when you're using scissors that are a bypassed type pruner,
Speaker 4: the bottom part may slightly crush the branch that where
Speaker 4: it's pressing against it, and the other type slices through.
Speaker 4: So I always put the blade against the plant, in
Speaker 4: other words, the part that's going to be left behind,
Speaker 4: put the blade against that, and then prune accordingly. Now
Speaker 4: it is I find it a little better when you
Speaker 4: can to prune cutting up. So imagine you got a
Speaker 4: trunk with a branch going up the side. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: get you. Do this, hold your hand up, stick your
Speaker 4: thumb out to the side, and your fingers together so
Speaker 4: it looks like mittons. Okay, if I were going to
Speaker 4: cut the thumb off there, I would slice from the
Speaker 4: bottom upward and cut it off. And the reason is,
Speaker 4: especially if pruners start to get a little out of
Speaker 4: adjustment if you're cutting down, sometimes the blade will drift
Speaker 4: a little to the side and it won't cut through,
Speaker 4: and you'll end up like with this little strip kind
Speaker 4: of hanging down. And number one, you need to sharpen
Speaker 4: the prunters and fix fix the adjustment if you can.
Speaker 4: But I just find it better to cut up. It's
Speaker 4: just one thing. I'll not always cut up, sometimes to
Speaker 4: the side or whatever. Just always remember to put the
Speaker 4: blade against the plant when you can, when the arrangement lies.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the way the branches are angled and stuff, you
Speaker 4: only have one way to get in there, and you
Speaker 4: may not even fully be able to get inside there
Speaker 4: and cut. But do that. Always keep your punters sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp,
Speaker 4: very important. It's less wear and tear on your hands,
Speaker 4: so you don't end up with joint strain and muscle
Speaker 4: strain on your hands. The same is true with loppers
Speaker 4: when it comes to your elbows and shoulders and things
Speaker 4: like that. Sharp prunters are so important. Very sharp saw too,
Speaker 4: by the way, for that matter, So keep them sharp.
Speaker 4: Make your cuts. If you're printing something that may be diseased,
Speaker 4: like you have a pear tree that had fire blight,
Speaker 4: for example, or a pyacantha that had fire blight. Then
Speaker 4: you want to dip your printers into alcohol and or
Speaker 4: spray them with lysol. I like the lysol approach because
Speaker 4: you just and I'm using a brand name there, but
Speaker 4: you get the idea. I like the lysol because it's
Speaker 4: fast and easy. You know, carrying around a thing of
Speaker 4: alcohol is not that not that practical. Sometimes I'll buy
Speaker 4: a little pint essentially a pint container of isopropyle alcohol,
Speaker 4: cut the top off of it and because they are
Speaker 4: like what a dollar for those little things, and then
Speaker 4: just dip the prunters in it. You can use bleach
Speaker 4: water ten percent bleach water, but I wouldn't bleach water.
Speaker 4: Pits metal and it'll cause it to rust worse. Now,
Speaker 4: if you get through pruning and you clean your pruners
Speaker 4: well and oil them, well, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 4: But most people don't, and so I just stay away
Speaker 4: from the bleach water because of the fact that it
Speaker 4: is a corrosive and causes that problem. So anyway, I
Speaker 4: like lysol too. And if you that way, when you
Speaker 4: make a cut, you're going to have sap and things
Speaker 4: on those prunter blades. And let's say it did have
Speaker 4: the bacteria that causes fire blade in it and you
Speaker 4: go make another cut. Now you're just spreading it. You're
Speaker 4: creating a wound and infecting the wound at the same time.
Speaker 4: See what I'm saying. So anyway, life all works good.
Speaker 4: I spurble alcohol works good. Just get a good strong one.
Speaker 4: Just something to kill the bugs or the diseases it
Speaker 4: might be on there. That's a sanitary thing. One other
Speaker 4: t is if you're printing a plant and you got
Speaker 4: an area that has issues, prine all the whole plant
Speaker 4: except that area, and then prune that last. And that way.
Speaker 4: That's another way to avoid spreading the disease as you
Speaker 4: go from one to the other. Let's see. Those are
Speaker 4: a couple of tips on prunters. A number three or
Speaker 4: whatever number we're on. The last while give in this
Speaker 4: quick review, is that you should buy quality prunters. There
Speaker 4: are a lot of brands out there. You get what
Speaker 4: you pay for when you buy prunters. You go to
Speaker 4: a big box store and buy a cheap set of prunters,
Speaker 4: and you may think you're getting a good deal. I
Speaker 4: could fill a bucket full of all the pruners I
Speaker 4: was given or whatever and had, and they were cheap
Speaker 4: and they're worthless, and they after a while, I get
Speaker 4: upset and I just throw them in the trash because
Speaker 4: they're not working right. A good set of prunters is adjustable.
Speaker 4: You can replace the blade on a good set of
Speaker 4: prunters often and that allows you to keep them sharp,
Speaker 4: to keep them in good adjustment. It's easier on your hand.
Speaker 4: It cuts better. Uh, it doesn't cause you know, problems
Speaker 4: with the way you make the cup, maybe leaving a
Speaker 4: strip or tearing a strip off of the bark or
Speaker 4: something that's not going to heal well. It's just a
Speaker 4: good way to go. Examples would be like fell Co
Speaker 4: and oh gosh, Corona is another good one, and there's
Speaker 4: some others out there. I'm not sponsored by Folk or
Speaker 4: Corona or anything. It's just those are good brands and
Speaker 4: there's some others out there that are good quality punters.
Speaker 4: Spend some money on a good quality printers. I got
Speaker 4: prunters that I've owned for decades because they're good and
Speaker 4: they last, and it's much better to do that. All right,
Speaker 4: Time for me to take a break. We'll come back
Speaker 4: with your calls at seven one three two one two KTRH.
Speaker 4: Welcome back. To the guard line. Folks, what do you
Speaker 4: want to talk about today? I suspect when you talk
Speaker 4: about the cold a little bit, and that's going to
Speaker 4: wait and let let you tell me and your questions.
Speaker 4: We talked about the freezes yesterday. We've been talking about
Speaker 4: a lot of this morning. By the way, if you're
Speaker 4: just tuning in, you might want to go back. I
Speaker 4: made some comments earlier on just talking about the fact
Speaker 4: that with freezes, it's not like throw a cover over,
Speaker 4: put a light bulb under it, and you're good. You know,
Speaker 4: there's factors. There's things that make a plant more likely
Speaker 4: to freeze, to suffer freeze damage, and there are things
Speaker 4: that you can do or that nature does or doesn't
Speaker 4: do that help that plant be a little better at
Speaker 4: being resilient during a freeze and not suffering cold damage.
Speaker 4: And certain things like plant species, of course, but the
Speaker 4: conditions and things, and so as you're covering your plants,
Speaker 4: just remember if I were to give you like one
Speaker 4: or two things to remember, it's like number one, don't
Speaker 4: do landscape lollipops. The amount of benefit that is is
Speaker 4: minimal to none, minimal to none. And instead auto drape
Speaker 4: down all the way to the ground. The cover ought
Speaker 4: to drape all the way to the ground. And the
Speaker 4: way I describe it is, imagine if you put an
Speaker 4: umbrella over the plant that reached out over the outsides
Speaker 4: of the plant, and then you if you throw a
Speaker 4: cover over that umbrella and let it go straight to
Speaker 4: the ground like rain would fall off the umbrella, that's
Speaker 4: what we're talking about, and secure it to the soil.
Speaker 4: Create dead air space. That is very important. That allows
Speaker 4: you to take advantage of the warmth of the soil
Speaker 4: coming up. And remember forty degrees soil is warm when
Speaker 4: it comes to freeze protection because that's almost ten degrees
Speaker 4: above freezing, right, and so you're looking at a warming
Speaker 4: and we don't have to make that plant comfortable and toasty.
Speaker 4: It's not like you're going to sit out there all night.
Speaker 4: You'd want it really warm. You probably want eighty degrees
Speaker 4: in there, but the plant, no, we just have to
Speaker 4: keep it about freezing. So that covering it right and
Speaker 4: creating dead air space so important. No landscape lollipops. Just
Speaker 4: think of it that way. Number. Let me go into
Speaker 4: that just a second. You may be thinking, well, why
Speaker 4: is that you know you I become a couch lollipop.
Speaker 4: When I wrap up in a blanket on a cold
Speaker 4: night watching TV or something, well, my body produces heat
Speaker 4: and the blanket holds the heat. In plants don't produce
Speaker 4: any significant amount of heat at all. So all a
Speaker 4: blanket around a plant does is slow the rate of cooling.
Speaker 4: But given enough time, it's just it's going to be
Speaker 4: just as cold inside almost as it is outside. And
Speaker 4: so just a wrap is slightly helpful. If you're going
Speaker 4: to have a temperature that drops down to thirty degrees,
Speaker 4: then it's when the sun comes up, it's real quickly
Speaker 4: back up above thirty five. Well yeah, okay, then a
Speaker 4: wrap would be some helpful for that. But in general,
Speaker 4: plants don't produce heat. That's the difference. That's why, So
Speaker 4: just remembering that is helpful. Soil has a huge reserve
Speaker 4: of warmth in it, especially if it's moist soil. The
Speaker 4: other thing is when you apply heat, the amount of
Speaker 4: heat you need to apply is going to be based
Speaker 4: on how cold does it get and how big is
Speaker 4: the space you're trying to warm. So if you have
Speaker 4: a little space heater in your house, like you go
Speaker 4: into a little closet and you put a tiny space
Speaker 4: heater and barely turn it on. It's going to get
Speaker 4: warm in there because that's a small amount of space
Speaker 4: burt to heal up. Now, go out to a huge
Speaker 4: living room with a vaulted ceiling and have that same
Speaker 4: space heater. It's not kind to warm that room, not much.
Speaker 4: And the same is true underneath the plant. So something
Speaker 4: down low to the ground a little bit of heat
Speaker 4: is usually good, and something larger you're going to need more.
Speaker 4: And I can't tell you when you need to shift
Speaker 4: from an incandescent one hundred and fifty white flood light
Speaker 4: bulb to a incandescent heat lamp bulb underneath the plant,
Speaker 4: and you're just going to figure that out depending on
Speaker 4: the cold and the plant and all that. I can't
Speaker 4: tell you when you need to add a second one
Speaker 4: to it, but you can figure it out. But just
Speaker 4: remember we don't have to make it warm under there.
Speaker 4: We just have to keep it above thirty two. All right,
Speaker 4: there we go. Hopefully that is helpful. One of the
Speaker 4: things that we really need to be doing right now
Speaker 4: is starting seeds. And if you've never grown transplants before,
Speaker 4: you're missing a whole aspect of gardening. That is a
Speaker 4: lot of fun. Now, some people grow flats and flats
Speaker 4: of transplants, of flowers and vegetables for their garden and whatnot.
Speaker 4: That's fine, and most people are not going to do that.
Speaker 4: But can I talk you into at least growing one
Speaker 4: transplant or two, maybe grow two or three, just so
Speaker 4: you have one for sure that makes it and does well.
Speaker 4: Try something what would you like to try? Right now?
Speaker 4: It's time to plant tomatoes and peppers, and you could
Speaker 4: start eggplant now indoors as a transplant. That light is
Speaker 4: the most important factor in growing successful trans plants. Sitting
Speaker 4: them by a window is generally not going to be adequate.
Speaker 4: It's just not. They're going to stretch and lean and
Speaker 4: get spindly and not do well. So it's important to
Speaker 4: give them good quality lighting. And you can do that
Speaker 4: with a lot of different kinds of light. There's plant
Speaker 4: lights that are like almost perfect light. They have the
Speaker 4: wavelengths and everything exactly like the plant wants. I do
Speaker 4: have a publication on plant lighting on my website that
Speaker 4: explains the difference in plant quantity and plant or like
Speaker 4: quantity and like quality, and how far away do you
Speaker 4: put a light from a plant and all those factors,
Speaker 4: but try something like that, and I just really would
Speaker 4: encourage you to do that. I think it's fun and
Speaker 4: as you do it, you get more and more into it.
Speaker 4: Next thing, you know, you're going to be buying some
Speaker 4: really quality lighting. So you can grow a lot of things.
Speaker 4: And I do that myself slowly over time. You know,
Speaker 4: it's not only break the bank and turn a whole
Speaker 4: room into a plant that place. Just start slow. It's
Speaker 4: easy to do and it's fun. It's so fun to do.
Speaker 4: And another reason why you should grow your own things
Speaker 4: is you can grow things that you can't buy locally.
Speaker 4: We got the best garden centers in the whole United
Speaker 4: States here, I mean North, South, East, West, and Central
Speaker 4: independent mom and pop as they say, garden centers. We
Speaker 4: got them and they're awesome. And some of them carry
Speaker 4: a lot of things. Some of them carry dozens of tomatoes,
Speaker 4: for example, varieties to choose from. But maybe there's one
Speaker 4: that you just want to try and grow at yourself.
Speaker 4: You can do that. You know, we're we're not talking
Speaker 4: about don't buy transplants. We're talking about things that you
Speaker 4: want to grow that I've grown before. For example, if
Speaker 4: there is a particular kind of flower, or maybe a
Speaker 4: new cultivar of flower. There's every year there's new cultivars
Speaker 4: of flower and vegetables. In fact, I'm pretty sure the
Speaker 4: earth would stop spinning on its axis if there wasn't
Speaker 4: eight hundred new tomato varieties every year for us to
Speaker 4: choose from. That is just the way it goes. So
Speaker 4: you want to try something out, you're probably initially you're
Speaker 4: gonna have to probably experiment by going and buying seeds
Speaker 4: and growing it yourself. Now, the things that are proven,
Speaker 4: that are tried and true, especially some of the famous
Speaker 4: heirlooms that people like and things like that. We got
Speaker 4: garden centers are going to carry those for you, so
Speaker 4: you can call around a lot of them put their
Speaker 4: information online. If not, just call them if you're looking
Speaker 4: for a particular type. But what are you going? What
Speaker 4: are you gonna try new? Another thing that I would
Speaker 4: encourage you to do this year, And I've been talking
Speaker 4: since we got going here in January about what what
Speaker 4: is your gardening resolution for the year. I know, I
Speaker 4: don't like the term resolution because usually a New Year's
Speaker 4: resolution lasts two weeks and then it's forgotten and we
Speaker 4: go on through the year. I'm talking about just a decision. Hey,
Speaker 4: I am going to you fell in the blank, and
Speaker 4: I think you need to say I am going to
Speaker 4: try growing a transplant this year. I think I'm going
Speaker 4: to try rooting a cutting this year. And if you've
Speaker 4: never rooted cuttings before, the easiest things on earth to root,
Speaker 4: I think our basal rosemary cos colius plants. Once we
Speaker 4: get into warm weather and the colius are out there,
Speaker 4: you just basically look at the stem and say root,
Speaker 4: and roots start popping out of the sides. I mean,
Speaker 4: those are easy. Those are easy ones to root. There's
Speaker 4: information online on how to root, how to have success
Speaker 4: with rooting, So give it a try. Try something. Maybe
Speaker 4: you have a really tall dressina, you know those strappy
Speaker 4: leaf plants with a little stalk like a palm tree
Speaker 4: stock going up, and it's too tall and you would
Speaker 4: like to make it shorter. You know that you can
Speaker 4: do an air layer on that stem. You put soil
Speaker 4: around the stem, actually putting mix around the stem up high.
Speaker 4: Let's say that just for example, let's say it's seven
Speaker 4: feet tall and you need it to be bring it
Speaker 4: down to about four feet tall. Okay, So here's what
Speaker 4: you do. You go up to the top, and about
Speaker 4: a foot down from the top, you do an air layer.
Speaker 4: Just go look it up tells you how to do it.
Speaker 4: It's not hard to do. And once roots form in that,
Speaker 4: you cut it off below that, and now you got
Speaker 4: a new plant that you can pot up and grow
Speaker 4: or give away. And then you go down as far
Speaker 4: down as you want that top of the trunk to
Speaker 4: be and you cut it off there, and what's gonna happen.
Speaker 4: Our buds are going to form on the sides are
Speaker 4: already actually, they're already in the trunk, you just don't
Speaker 4: see them, and they're going to sprout out. Have you
Speaker 4: ever gone to buy a corn plant at a garden
Speaker 4: center and you see this stalk that is stubbed off
Speaker 4: and then there's shoots coming out the sides of it.
Speaker 4: Pretty much every corn plant, that's how it's sold. Well,
Speaker 4: that was a tall stalk they cut off, and those
Speaker 4: shoots just popped out of the side. So you can
Speaker 4: take a fiddlely fig that's too tall. You can take
Speaker 4: a Drsina corn plant, or you can take the drasina
Speaker 4: with the little strappy, thin leaves and you can turn
Speaker 4: a tall, lanky plant that is just unacceptable into something
Speaker 4: that's very attractive and make more plants in the process.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying. One thing, one thing. Do you
Speaker 4: want to try this year? If you got something around
Speaker 4: the house and you wont know how to propagate it,
Speaker 4: give me a call. We will help you do that.
Speaker 4: We are let's see here. I'm gonna got about a
Speaker 4: minute here to go. We're going to go to Paul
Speaker 4: in Troy, Alabama. Paul, I've got about a minute or so.
Speaker 4: If you need be, we can hold you over break.
Speaker 9: How can we help the day, No problem, Just give
Speaker 9: me a short course on blue button seed the package.
Speaker 5: I should have planned them in the fall of the year.
Speaker 4: What you know about the best time of plant blue bonnets? Yeah,
Speaker 4: the best times in the fall. If you're going to
Speaker 4: do it now, I think i'd try to start them
Speaker 4: as transplants to get ahead. Start if you've got a
Speaker 4: place where you can grow transplants. If not, what I
Speaker 4: would do is you've got to get that hard sea
Speaker 4: coat broken on the outside of the seed, and you
Speaker 4: can do that with a couple pieces of sandpaper, you know,
Speaker 4: rubbing them. Maybe you got sandpaper wrapped around a little
Speaker 4: piece of two by four of them, and you're just
Speaker 4: you're kind of scratching around on them to wear that
Speaker 4: seed coat down so water soaks in, because with blue
Speaker 4: bonnets only a few of them are going to sprout
Speaker 4: unless you break that seed coat loose, get them soaked overnight,
Speaker 4: put them in very warm water, soak them overnight, and
Speaker 4: then in the morning plant them wherever you're going to
Speaker 4: plant them, and that's giving you the best headstart you
Speaker 4: can and they will come up and you will probably
Speaker 4: get some blue butty, we're really late in the season
Speaker 4: to be doing it, but if you've already got the seed,
Speaker 4: it's worth the try. That's great.
Speaker 5: We appreciate more about sunflower.
Speaker 4: Same thing. Sunflower. Yeah, No, sunflowers are easy. You just
Speaker 4: put them in the ground, plant them about a half
Speaker 4: inch deep inch deep and they will They will come
Speaker 4: up just fine. Yeah, they need warm soil though, so
Speaker 4: that's one that if you try to get a head start,
Speaker 4: you can plan them before we hit our last frost date.
Speaker 4: But otherwise you would have to start them as a
Speaker 4: little transplant to get a little bit of a head start.
Speaker 4: But most people direct seed sunflowers and zenias and things
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 5: That's great.
Speaker 4: Appreciate you much. Thanks free time. I'm gonna you bet,
Speaker 4: thanks for the call. All right, folks, time for a break.
Speaker 4: I will be right back. All right, here we go
Speaker 4: second for this hour. I talk a lot about the
Speaker 4: importance of good quality soil, and I just I know it.
Speaker 4: I'm a broken record on it. I'm just telling you,
Speaker 4: I've seen so many people not have success, and it's
Speaker 4: because of not preparing the soil. Here's the typical garden shopper. Unfortunately,
Speaker 4: here's the typical garden shopper. They go to some place
Speaker 4: that sells planned and typically maybe it's a place that
Speaker 4: also sells hammers and other things, and they shouldn't be
Speaker 4: buying plants there because well a lot of reasons. That's
Speaker 4: a whole nother rant. But they go in, they look around,
Speaker 4: they see something pretty, you know. It's a little tiny
Speaker 4: six pack of plants with flowers big as a tennis
Speaker 4: ball on top. And they bring those home and then
Speaker 4: they walk around the yard as to where, looking, where
Speaker 4: am I going to put these things? And they find
Speaker 4: a little spot they scratch out the surface and put
Speaker 4: them in the ground. Unprepared soil and the way I
Speaker 4: like to put it, PLoP a poor plant in an
Speaker 4: unprepared plot, and then they start to water it and
Speaker 4: it tries to grow a while, and then first sing.
Speaker 4: You know, weeds are in there and plants not doing
Speaker 4: good and it's struggling, and then they just kind of
Speaker 4: give up and say I have a brown thumb. No,
Speaker 4: you don't have a brown thumb. You just did the
Speaker 4: wrong thing. You weren't informed. Here's the important thing. Prepare
Speaker 4: the soil. First, create a soil plants live in their roots.
Speaker 4: Create a soil that has good aeration, good nutrient content,
Speaker 4: and the qualities of that so it can hold water,
Speaker 4: but it drains excess water away. It's got that kind
Speaker 4: of quality to it. It's got good microbial activity in
Speaker 4: the soil. Then you put a plant in it, and
Speaker 4: it's just going to thrive because the roots take off,
Speaker 4: they hit the ground running, and that plant is happy
Speaker 4: as it can be and you're going to have success.
Speaker 4: So that's why I say spend a dollar in your
Speaker 4: soil before you spend a dollar on your plant. That's
Speaker 4: why I say brown stuff before green stuff, just to
Speaker 4: make the point that getting the soil right is important
Speaker 4: and you know, if I could just convince you that
Speaker 4: one thing, I would be very happy because that will
Speaker 4: help a lot of people flip the switch from failure
Speaker 4: to success in their gardening. Now, the folks at Microlife,
Speaker 4: you know, they specialize in soil. Really, that's what they do.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you think about it, yeah, it's a fertilizer. Well,
Speaker 4: it's building the soil. Microlife products have a lot of
Speaker 4: microbes in them. That is what they're all about. They
Speaker 4: are all loaded with microbes. They are all loaded with
Speaker 4: all kinds of minerals. This isn't just you know when
Speaker 4: a product like they're six two four that the only
Speaker 4: thing in it is not just six percent nitrogen, two
Speaker 4: percent phosphorus, four percent potassium. It's a lot of other
Speaker 4: stuff that you get other than that. And you take
Speaker 4: a product like Microlife Humates hum Mats plus that's a
Speaker 4: kind of a bluish purple looking bag. Maybe I don't
Speaker 4: know what color that is. I'd say blue more than anything. Anyway,
Speaker 4: Microlife Heumates plus is zero zero four, so you get
Speaker 4: four percent potassium. But that's not why you're putting it down.
Speaker 4: I mean that helps, but it is loaded with what
Speaker 4: we call concentrated compost in a bag. Meaning when you
Speaker 4: take let's do it this way. Here's the stages of decomposition.
Speaker 4: You start with grass, clippings and leaves or whatever is organic.
Speaker 4: Whatever material you have, you decompose it, and that's called compost.
Speaker 4: You take compost and you let it fully decomposed to
Speaker 4: its final stage, and that's called humus. And humates plus
Speaker 4: is an organic biological soil amendment that you put down.
Speaker 4: You put it in your lawns. You know, we talk
Speaker 4: about deep time aerrating and core aerating and compost op
Speaker 4: dressings and things. I would put microlight humates plus like
Speaker 4: that out. It works really well. It takes about only
Speaker 4: ten pounds per thousand square feet that you're going to
Speaker 4: put out, but you're going to do it on a
Speaker 4: regular basis year to year. And when you put it down,
Speaker 4: what it's going to do is it's going to get
Speaker 4: into the soil. It's going to improve soil structure. The
Speaker 4: more humans you can put in the soil, the better
Speaker 4: your soil structure gets. And you can do this in
Speaker 4: flower beds, you can do it in a lot of places.
Speaker 4: Microbes thrive in that environment and that's that's one product
Speaker 4: for Microlife. If you want to find out more about
Speaker 4: other products they have and where you can buy them,
Speaker 4: just go to Microlifefertilizer dot com Microlifefertilizer dot com. You
Speaker 4: can find all right there. I'll tell you one place
Speaker 4: you can buy it, Southwest Fertilizer. I can say that
Speaker 4: without even thinking. You know why, because because Bob at
Speaker 4: Southwest Fertilizer carries everything. I've never had a product name
Speaker 4: come out of my mouth that you won't find in
Speaker 4: Southwest Fertilizer. It just they do. They're in Southwest Houston.
Speaker 4: That hence the name corner of Byssineton Runwick, And you
Speaker 4: just got to go by there. In fact, you know,
Speaker 4: when you when you swing by Southwest Fertilizer and walk in,
Speaker 4: take some time and look around. You'll see what I'm
Speaker 4: talking about. You may you know, you may go, wow,
Speaker 4: I'm not into chemicals. I'm an organic gardener. Okay, Then
Speaker 4: go to Southwest Fertilizer. They have the biggest organic selection
Speaker 4: in the region At Southwest Fertilizer. They do. They have
Speaker 4: synthetic and organic options for fertilizing, controlling insects, spider mites,
Speaker 4: plant diseases like fungi and bacteria, for stopping weeds, for
Speaker 4: preventing weeds from growing, killing weeds that are already growing.
Speaker 4: They've got it all and you get to make your
Speaker 4: choices there. I talked earlier about how important quality pruning
Speaker 4: tools are. That's what Bob carries. Quality printer. You didn't
Speaker 4: say you junk. Go in there and say, I want
Speaker 4: to know you know, what are your better brands of
Speaker 4: pruning equipment, And it's pretty much everything they carry, and
Speaker 4: you're going to have success with that, and that's important.
Speaker 4: Southwest Fertilizer dot Com is the website if you want
Speaker 4: to find out more their phone numbers on there. I
Speaker 4: realized when I give out all these phone numbers and
Speaker 4: websites and stuff, probably not writing them all down. But
Speaker 4: just go to Southwest Fertilizer dot com. You can find
Speaker 4: out everything you need. When you're in there. The Bob
Speaker 4: has a soul probe you can check out. You have
Speaker 4: to talk to them about the terms of it, but
Speaker 4: you can take that out to your yard. You can
Speaker 4: take a proper core vertical core soil sample and put
Speaker 4: the results together and send them in for a soil
Speaker 4: test that is very accurate as to what's going on
Speaker 4: in your yard. Just borrow essentially their sol probe, and
Speaker 4: then you'll know exactly what fertilizer supplements may be missing
Speaker 4: in your yard to get things balanced back out again.
Speaker 4: You know, we recommend good fertilizers, but the bottom line
Speaker 4: is every yard's a little different, and there may be
Speaker 4: your yard may need something your neighbor doesn't, and you
Speaker 4: can get it fixed that way with a good sol tesk.
Speaker 4: Just go by stop with or the soil probe and
Speaker 4: fertilize intelligently that way. All right, I'm gonna run to break.
Speaker 4: I will be right back with your calls at seven
Speaker 4: three two one two ktr H. All right, let's jump
Speaker 4: right back in here on garden line. Winter is the
Speaker 4: prime time for printing almost anything. The one thing you
Speaker 4: don't want to print in the winter is things that
Speaker 4: bloom only in the spring. So, for example, a lot
Speaker 4: of climbs roses or once blooming roses. And there's not
Speaker 4: just climbers. Other roses can be once bloomers, but something
Speaker 4: like a Lady Bank's real cool rose, love love Lady Banks,
Speaker 4: but it only blooms in the spring. Uh, and then
Speaker 4: it doesn't bloom again until next spring there something like
Speaker 4: the old time azaleas were just spring bloomers. Now we
Speaker 4: have repeat types of azalias out there. Spyriea called bridals
Speaker 4: wreath just blooms in the spring. Texas Mountain Laurel just
Speaker 4: blooms in the springtime. Let's see what else. The Chinese
Speaker 4: fringe is an example of something that just blooms in
Speaker 4: the spring. Only flowering quints, those aren't. That's an old
Speaker 4: time plant. You don't see as much of them now
Speaker 4: as you used to. But anyway, flowering quints is one
Speaker 4: that just blooms in the spring. All of those are
Speaker 4: blooming on bloom buds basically that were produced last the
Speaker 4: end of summer and fall. Last summer, late summer and fall,
Speaker 4: the plant was setting bloom buds for this big spring bloom.
Speaker 4: So if you prune now in the winter, you're cutting
Speaker 4: off what you would about to enjoy. We're about to
Speaker 4: enjoy in the spring. You wait until after they bloom
Speaker 4: to prune those. Now. The one exception of the spring
Speaker 4: only bloomers that comes to mind is fruit trees. Spruit
Speaker 4: trees or spring only bloomers. But we prune those because
Speaker 4: we also need to thin those as well, a peach
Speaker 4: tree produces probably about ninety percent more peaches than it
Speaker 4: needs to carry a crop or a can, and so
Speaker 4: we do pruning and then we also do thinning after
Speaker 4: that on a peach tree or apple tree, pear tree,
Speaker 4: those kinds of things. So if it needs pruning and
Speaker 4: it's a fruit tree, you can print it like you
Speaker 4: do our other plants. But in general, spring bloomers are
Speaker 4: only pruned after they bloom. Spring only bloomers, excuse me,
Speaker 4: So what about other things like trees and shrubs? In
Speaker 4: general we prine those in the wintertime. Hedges we prune
Speaker 4: all through the year when we're sharing a hedge. But
Speaker 4: for your trees, you need to know what you're doing,
Speaker 4: or you need to hire somebody that knows what they're doing.
Speaker 4: An affordable tree Martin spoon Moore knows what he's doing.
Speaker 4: And when you start talking about, you know, a young
Speaker 4: tree and how do you train it right, don't just
Speaker 4: wing it and think I think I can do this.
Speaker 4: You need to know what you're doing to do this.
Speaker 4: When you start looking at a bigger tree, don't climb
Speaker 4: up a ladder and do it yourself. I mean, really,
Speaker 4: come on, man, get somebody that is professional, that knows
Speaker 4: what they're doing, and this is the best time to
Speaker 4: get that done. And Martin stays busy because he does
Speaker 4: a good job. He's got a solid following of customers,
Speaker 4: and so you're gonna have to call him and get
Speaker 4: on the schedule as soon as possible. You know, if
Speaker 4: you want to get this printing done during the winter season,
Speaker 4: you need to call him pretty quick here. Really, in fact,
Speaker 4: they may do a little bit of printing going out
Speaker 4: into the spring, because that's also okay. You can do that.
Speaker 4: You can prune really month of the year. Some we
Speaker 4: don't want to do heavy duty preeing though at sometimes
Speaker 4: of the year. But now's the time. It's not a
Speaker 4: long window to do it. So give him a call,
Speaker 4: go ahead and give him a call book now. In fact,
Speaker 4: I would I would do it asap because he does
Speaker 4: stay busy. You can reach him at seven one three
Speaker 4: six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Say that again,
Speaker 4: seven one three six nine nine two six six three.
Speaker 4: You can also go to the website aff of Tree
Speaker 4: Service dot com a f F Tree Service dot com.
Speaker 4: But when you call uh seven one three six ninety
Speaker 4: nine two six sixty three. You're going to get either
Speaker 4: Martin Or's wife Joe. The owners answer the phone, and
Speaker 4: if somebody else answers the phone, you call the wrong place.
Speaker 4: Hang up seven one, three, six, nine nine two six
Speaker 4: sixty three. Give him a call. Get on the schedule.
Speaker 4: You can do other things too. He can come out.
Speaker 4: Martin does deep root feeding.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 4: Martin can provide uh, you know, advice on on plants.
Speaker 4: Like maybe you got a tree and you're gonna put
Speaker 4: us some trenches in for whatever reason, water or other
Speaker 4: kinds of utilities. Maybe you're gonna throw a slab out there,
Speaker 4: a big old concrete slab under the tree. You need
Speaker 4: to call him because he can advise you on what
Speaker 4: to do, how to prepare for that, or if you
Speaker 4: shouldn't do it, or how you could change things maybe
Speaker 4: to work around it. Because trees it this single most
Speaker 4: valuable plant in your landscape. So don't wait until you've
Speaker 4: butchered it already, or until you've already built this giant
Speaker 4: slab all over the root system. To ask questions. Get
Speaker 4: Martin out there as a consultation. He can come out
Speaker 4: and do that. And he'll come out take a look
Speaker 4: at your trees by the way in general and tell
Speaker 4: you what needs to be done. And so I'm just
Speaker 4: telling you don't put it off. Now's the time. We've
Speaker 4: already put it off long enough to wait until now.
Speaker 4: So let's go ahead and get a hold of him
Speaker 4: and get that done and get it done right. You're
Speaker 4: listening to Guardline. Our phone number is seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two k t r H seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two k TRH. And boy, we are talking
Speaker 4: about all kinds of topics today. I've been told before.
Speaker 4: I don't know. You can tell me if this is
Speaker 4: true or not. But if I just sit here, going
Speaker 4: deep in the woods talking about all these kinds of
Speaker 4: topics on gardening, people just get to listening and they
Speaker 4: don't call because it's like, no, no, no, I want
Speaker 4: to hear this. I don't I want to talk talk
Speaker 4: right now. I don't know if that's true, but it
Speaker 4: does seem to be the case at times. So over
Speaker 4: now and then I ought to shut up or threaten
Speaker 4: to sing or read out loud war and peace on
Speaker 4: the air. That would probably people. Okay, let's put an
Speaker 4: end of this, especially the singing part. I won't do
Speaker 4: that to you today, though, well you are listening to
Speaker 4: Garden Line, and we're here to help you have a
Speaker 4: bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape, and to have more fun
Speaker 4: in the process. And I have been encouraging you this spring,
Speaker 4: well this spring, this winter, to do something new, do
Speaker 4: something new, not just for the sake of something new,
Speaker 4: but because there's so much to gardening that you have
Speaker 4: not experienced. H and I talked about starting seeds. Start
Speaker 4: you one or two transplants this year. Why not let's
Speaker 4: try it out. You don't have to do that in
Speaker 4: the winter. I mean you could you coun wait till
Speaker 4: we get into summer and plant something that's going to
Speaker 4: grow in the heat of summer. You could do that
Speaker 4: if you want it. But now's a good time to
Speaker 4: do it. Why not trying to root a cutting, learning
Speaker 4: how to do an air layer on a plant, or
Speaker 4: learning how to root a cutting or whatever, And that's
Speaker 4: a fun thing to do. Here's another one. Here's another.
Speaker 4: How about a terrarium. If you ever built a terraum,
Speaker 4: Those used to be popular. You know, all kinds of
Speaker 4: gardening tend to go in and out of fads, like
Speaker 4: haircuts and clothes. And if if you have never grown
Speaker 4: a terrarium before. You should try that. It's kind of cool.
Speaker 4: Now you can do it a lot of ways. You
Speaker 4: can get an old aquarium and use that the light
Speaker 4: in the aquarium right at the top of the thing,
Speaker 4: and that that does a good job for the plants
Speaker 4: that are in it. You can plant miniature plants in
Speaker 4: there and enjoy that. You can do arrangement. You can
Speaker 4: add little you know, things like a little rock riverbed
Speaker 4: going through it, or a little figurines or whatever whatever
Speaker 4: makes you excited. You can even make it one that
Speaker 4: has that has animal life in it in the sense
Speaker 4: of a lizard. You better have a screen top on
Speaker 4: top of it, or even insects, certain kinds of insects
Speaker 4: and things that crawl around in there that are kind
Speaker 4: of cool. What do you want to do? Try something
Speaker 4: like that. If you've never grown an African violet before,
Speaker 4: if you've never propagated an African violet before, that is amazing.
Speaker 4: You break a leaf off, stick the pettiole in the
Speaker 4: ground with the bottom of the leaf barely the little
Speaker 4: spoon on the end of the petiole that's the leaf.
Speaker 4: Stick it down to where it touches the ground. That
Speaker 4: sucker will root and it's so cool, yeah, baby African violet.
Speaker 4: So then you can learn how to take care of
Speaker 4: those are great things for ay days and days like
Speaker 4: we're about to get into where it is so very
Speaker 4: very cold. Try something you haven't tried before. That's all
Speaker 4: I'm asking if there's a kind of plan, a category
Speaker 4: of plans to never go roun before and do some learning,
Speaker 4: you know. Of course, I'm always playing people to the website,
Speaker 4: because when I get a bunch of questions on something,
Speaker 4: I'll go ahead and write something up about it and
Speaker 4: put it on the website. And so we're accumulating a lot.
Speaker 4: I'm about to do a major revamp of it. I'm
Speaker 4: working on it with my web designer right now. We're
Speaker 4: gonna really redo it and it's going to change a
Speaker 4: lot and have a lot of categories and information. So
Speaker 4: I'm just telling you that's coming that way. If I
Speaker 4: say it on the air, I have to do it right.
Speaker 4: But it's gonna be kind of even more cool really,
Speaker 4: lots of good information up there on that. So what
Speaker 4: are you gonna do new? When you call me, by
Speaker 4: the way, I want to hear it. What are you
Speaker 4: going to do new this year, and I'm gonna do
Speaker 4: right now is take a break and give a new
Speaker 4: cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with skimp Richard's.
Speaker 10: Mill, crazy.
Speaker 11: Trip.
Speaker 2: Just watch him as many good things to see botasya.
Speaker 8: Not sign.
Speaker 2: Sun Beamon.
Speaker 4: All right, folks, we are back and I'm just going
Speaker 4: to go straight out to the phones right now again
Speaker 4: the number if you'd like to call seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two k t r H. We're gonna head
Speaker 4: out to Conroe and talk to John. Hey, John, welcome
Speaker 4: to garden Line. Good Morning's good.
Speaker 12: You hear me?
Speaker 4: How can we help yir?
Speaker 10: Back in November, I planted an arborquina olive tree in
Speaker 10: the front yard and it's about seven feet tall and
Speaker 10: about an inch and a half trunk is Should I
Speaker 10: be worried about the frost when the weather gets below thirty.
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, you can do significant damage.
Speaker 10: The trunk or the Should I be protecting the whole canopy?
Speaker 4: The whole canopy if you could? He said it's seven
Speaker 4: feet tall? Yes, and about how wide would you say
Speaker 4: it is?
Speaker 13: The canopy is about four four feet wide and maybe
Speaker 13: five The trunks about a inch to inch and a
Speaker 13: half at the base.
Speaker 4: Okay, since I don't know if it was grafted or not,
Speaker 4: I'm going to assume that it was, So I would
Speaker 4: start by piling up about a foot foot and a
Speaker 4: half on the trunk. Pile up a big old pile
Speaker 4: of soil, sand, compost, very fine compost, just not loose mulch,
Speaker 4: to create an insulation on that bottom part in case
Speaker 4: you lose. You were to lose the whole thing, then
Speaker 4: you have a place for it to resprout from quickly
Speaker 4: and you'll be back in business. So that's the stopgap measure.
Speaker 4: If if I were you, I would go to a
Speaker 4: hardware type store home store and get the long if
Speaker 4: you can get them in a vehicle somehow to get
Speaker 4: them home. Twenty foot sections of PBC pipe that are gray.
Speaker 4: They have a belt in on one end, so one
Speaker 4: pipe hooks into the other. But I would get two
Speaker 4: of those and take one and go over the plant,
Speaker 4: making a hoop over the plant let's say north south,
Speaker 4: the other one east west, just to give you an idea,
Speaker 4: and then when you put a cover over it, it's
Speaker 4: like you have a little iggluo there. So those twenty
Speaker 4: foot sections should be able to come pretty close to
Speaker 4: going over that planet. It may have to bend some
Speaker 4: branches down to get it to work, but that's okay.
Speaker 4: If you lose a few leaves or twigs, that's fine.
Speaker 4: You just don't want to lose whole thing. And then
Speaker 4: I will typically use a zip tie up at the
Speaker 4: top to tie those two bows together, the arches together,
Speaker 4: and then put any kind of cover you can over
Speaker 4: it if you can find it. You need something large.
Speaker 4: You know, it's going to have to be a big
Speaker 4: old tarp to go over there, or a really huge
Speaker 4: piece of that rolled up, a thick six mil plastic,
Speaker 4: anything you can to go over the top and create
Speaker 4: dead air space around it. You need to get some
Speaker 4: really good things that are heavy to weigh it down.
Speaker 4: Now I realize this is starting to sound like a
Speaker 4: lot of work, and it is. But that could be
Speaker 4: cinder blocks, that could be you know, little bags of
Speaker 4: sand that you create yourself to weigh it down. Because
Speaker 4: when the wind blows, and it will we got some
Speaker 4: wind coming, I doesn't just blow it right off. And
Speaker 4: then underneath there a couple of heat lamps. I'd put
Speaker 4: two of the red heat lamps in the clamp on
Speaker 4: fixtures and point them down around the plant on two
Speaker 4: different sides. Don't plump, point them against the trunk or anything.
Speaker 4: Just point them down and that heat will rise up
Speaker 4: from the base and it'll it'll keep it warm enough
Speaker 4: to keep it going. You're up in Conra, you're gonna
Speaker 4: get pretty cold up there. But that that would be
Speaker 4: what I would do, because yes, the temperatures we're gonna
Speaker 4: have can can kill on an urbicina olive or any
Speaker 4: variety of olive.
Speaker 14: Back, Okay, I have a supposed to be arriving the
Speaker 14: day an eighth eight foot bag of a cross bag.
Speaker 10: I'm hoping that will go over, yes, but yeah, I
Speaker 10: need to get the PDC.
Speaker 4: That's good, good advice. Yeah, you would. You would end up, Yeah,
Speaker 4: with the frost bag, you would end up kind of
Speaker 4: creating a landscape lollipop around the trunk. And there's just
Speaker 4: no that doesn't protect the base of the trunk or
Speaker 4: provide heat inside, which is what's going to be needed.
Speaker 4: Rous bags are fine for the smaller plants, but yeah,
Speaker 4: so you know, the only other alternative, you know, this
Speaker 4: is going to be a tree half for a while.
Speaker 4: So I've seen people take a PVC pipe that's much
Speaker 4: thicker the kind I was talk I was like a
Speaker 4: half inch, because it's easy to make a bow out
Speaker 4: of a half inch. It's easy to bend. By the way,
Speaker 4: just if you end up doing that, you can at
Speaker 4: those home stores you can also buy little sections of
Speaker 4: rebar that are about twelve eighteen inches long, and you
Speaker 4: can drive those in the ground and then slide that
Speaker 4: PBC right over the top of it, and it makes
Speaker 4: it real easy. Then you easy to bend it and
Speaker 4: slide it onto a PVC I mean a rebar on
Speaker 4: the other side. That works. That's what I do my house, Okay.
Speaker 4: The only other alternative would be to get a thicker PVC,
Speaker 4: like you know, let's say inch and a half two inches,
Speaker 4: and a bunch of t's and l's and make a
Speaker 4: giant box and put it around over the plant and
Speaker 4: that way. Don't glue it together. That way, you just
Speaker 4: take it apart and store it in the garage. And
Speaker 4: if next year you need to cover it again, you
Speaker 4: can just use the same thing, or maybe buy a
Speaker 4: little longer pieces of PBC to expand the box size
Speaker 4: a little bit. But it's like playing with tinker toys.
Speaker 4: If you remember that. Yeah. I'm glad I're called alrighty, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I just gave you a lot of work. My
Speaker 4: apologies for all the work. But seriously, the olives are
Speaker 4: at risk at the temperature you're going to have on
Speaker 4: our coldest night. So all right, sir, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: You you know our advice. Our advice is free on
Speaker 4: garden line, John. But I do ask that you bring
Speaker 4: me half of the olive production for two years and
Speaker 4: drop it off at the kt r H station and
Speaker 4: we'll call it even. Does that sound fair? I hope
Speaker 4: I can do that. I'm not going to get my
Speaker 4: hopes up a lot. Appreciate the car. We got to
Speaker 4: have some fun because I just sent you out to
Speaker 4: do a lot of work. You take care of oh man,
Speaker 4: If you'll press the olive oil, I'll take it. Take
Speaker 4: care of man by all right, folks seven one three
Speaker 4: two two k t r H. If you would like
Speaker 4: to give me a call and talk about the boy,
Speaker 4: I'm glad John call because there are other people out
Speaker 4: there that got olive trees, and olives are not super
Speaker 4: cold hardy, you know, and we had the hard freeze.
Speaker 4: I don't know how many years ago it was a
Speaker 4: number of years ago. I know, you know, parts of
Speaker 4: the area got down in single digits. Parts of the
Speaker 4: listening area. We lost a lot of olive branches and
Speaker 4: tree they typically will live and reach sprout from the ground.
Speaker 4: But oh my gosh, what a mess. Right uh, And
Speaker 4: you got all these suckers and things coming up. But
Speaker 4: it at least at least a polyo dirt up against
Speaker 4: the bottom. The same thing is true with citrus. By
Speaker 4: the way, a lot of you are out there going,
Speaker 4: I can't do that to protect my citrus tree. Well,
Speaker 4: if nothing else, what you can do is go buy
Speaker 4: some bags atopsoil or a very fine compost and just
Speaker 4: pile it up against the trunk about a foot and
Speaker 4: a half high. Kind of press it down a little
Speaker 4: bit because you don't want air to blow through this.
Speaker 4: You want it to be a little packed down and
Speaker 4: that will insulate the base of that plant. And when
Speaker 4: we get through all this cold, you can leave it
Speaker 4: on there a little while, but just pulled it back
Speaker 4: out of the way. We don't like swamp aled against
Speaker 4: the trunk. Those multiple volcanoes you see around town are nonsense.
Speaker 4: They shouldn't do that. But when it comes to a
Speaker 4: night or two of protecting the base of a plant.
Speaker 4: That's important because those plants are grafted. And think about this.
Speaker 4: Let's say you have a orange tree and it's a
Speaker 4: Republic of Texas. That's a good orange for a run here,
Speaker 4: I'll use that as an example, and it'sted. It's going
Speaker 4: to be grafted almost certainly base. And let's say it's
Speaker 4: eight feet tall, and now you get it killed. All
Speaker 4: the way back to that one foot high base of
Speaker 4: the trunk that you protected. You still have this huge
Speaker 4: root system that was balanced with an eight foot tall top.
Speaker 4: So when the new growth begins, it's going to come
Speaker 4: out like a rocket. I mean, it's gonna have to
Speaker 4: warm up. But my point is there's a lot of
Speaker 4: roots to push new growth, and so you're going to
Speaker 4: get back to your tree size fairly quickly, faster than
Speaker 4: you would think, faster than putting a little tiny tree
Speaker 4: out there and waiting for it to grow back up
Speaker 4: to that size. So just something to think about. At
Speaker 4: the very least, you can buy some bags of malts
Speaker 4: and throw them around, or not malts, not molts, soiling
Speaker 4: composts to put them around the base. You want density,
Speaker 4: you want it to hold the warmth really really well.
Speaker 4: All right, time for me to take a break. I'll
Speaker 4: be right back. Here we go again. We've got some
Speaker 4: more stuff to talk about today, and if you'd like,
Speaker 4: you can call. The number is seven one three two
Speaker 4: one two KTRH seven one three two one two k
Speaker 4: t RH. How can we help you have success with
Speaker 4: your plants? So we've got some cold weather we can
Speaker 4: talk about that. We've been talking about that today, certainly
Speaker 4: can continue to do that. I would just recommend that
Speaker 4: whatever you do, you do it quickly. You know, as
Speaker 4: you put this off, other people are out there getting
Speaker 4: the things that are needed to protect their plants. And
Speaker 4: so you may show up and you know, head to
Speaker 4: an a store for example, and get that plus it
Speaker 4: freeze miser screws onto faucets, or maybe you're looking for
Speaker 4: some of their other many things that are used to
Speaker 4: help protect our pipes and our plants and our pets
Speaker 4: and so on, heat lamps, the heat bulbs and things.
Speaker 4: You get there and they're all gone because somebody else
Speaker 4: went and got them. I know aces stocked up well,
Speaker 4: so that is not likely to happen. But good night,
Speaker 4: don't wait. And this is coming from a person who
Speaker 4: has I'll admit it. This is in my former days
Speaker 4: before I change my ways. Who has been out there
Speaker 4: at dusk where it's the dark, you can hardly see things.
Speaker 4: The wind is blowing. It's thirty five degrees and I'm
Speaker 4: trying to cover a plant and pull something cover over
Speaker 4: the top of a plant and a twenty mile an
Speaker 4: hour wind. Yeah, don't let that be. You learn from
Speaker 4: my mistakes. Maybe it already has been you. I don't know.
Speaker 4: If you're honest, you may have to admit that. Well.
Speaker 4: I'm going to continue on talking about some of the
Speaker 4: things that I think are pertinent for this time of
Speaker 4: the season that people need to be aware of. If
Speaker 4: you are looking to add something for blooms in your
Speaker 4: landscape this year, and I think that'd be a great idea.
Speaker 4: By the way, can you think back and thinking your landscape,
Speaker 4: what blooms in spring? Where are those flowers or are
Speaker 4: they on a shrub at the corner of house? Are
Speaker 4: they all across the front of the house, or there's
Speaker 4: some trees around that bloom. When do they bloom? Is
Speaker 4: it spring, is it summer, or is it even in
Speaker 4: fall or wintertime? There's a few things that even bloom.
Speaker 4: Then what looks good at that time? What could you add?
Speaker 4: Because your landscape should look good twelve months out of
Speaker 4: the year. And that's not putting a weight on you,
Speaker 4: it's just saying pick plants that are that way. So,
Speaker 4: for example, in the spring, everything wants to bloom, I
Speaker 4: mean lots of spring blooming trees and stuff. Then we
Speaker 4: get to summer and then amount of blooms drops dramatically,
Speaker 4: but there's still some great blooming plants that go through
Speaker 4: the heat of summer, especially when it comes to shrubs
Speaker 4: and perennials. And then you get to fall and there
Speaker 4: are some fall blooming late summer and fall blooming things
Speaker 4: like Mexican bush staeds for example, things that bloom with
Speaker 4: the change in day length. So fall aster is an
Speaker 4: example of that. And so what would you add to
Speaker 4: your landscape this year? You know, now's a good time
Speaker 4: to plant a fall blooming plant because it's it's winter
Speaker 4: when we plan a lot of things. And the same
Speaker 4: is true. You can do that in spring as well,
Speaker 4: but no need to wait. Go ahead and get those
Speaker 4: in the ground now. After we get through the freeze
Speaker 4: this week, you can buy and bring them home and
Speaker 4: put them in the garage and then you're ready to
Speaker 4: go right out and spray because everybody else can want
Speaker 4: go get one when the freeze is over. But make
Speaker 4: your landscape a year round landscape with blooms and you
Speaker 4: can do that. And if you want some suggestions, we can.
Speaker 4: We can talk to you here about how to put
Speaker 4: together ought to put together a sheet on blooms through
Speaker 4: the year, that would be a good one to do.
Speaker 4: Make a note of that. Let's head out to the phones.
Speaker 4: We're going to go up to Willis, Texas and talk
Speaker 4: to Mike. Hey, Mike, Hey, Skip, how do you doing.
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 4: Can you hear me? Yes, sir Skip, Yeah, okay, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm yes, fruit trees mm hmm yeah.
Speaker 11: And uh should I stop, uh to wait till the
Speaker 11: freeze is over or just keep on going? And it
Speaker 11: includes the blueberries, black and grapes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that the freeze isn't a big deal. Other than me,
Speaker 4: I want to be out there, you know, when it's
Speaker 4: so cold. But you can prine now, you can proNT
Speaker 4: after the freeze. Either way is fine. If you want
Speaker 4: to wait and put it off a little bit, that's fine.
Speaker 4: There's not a problem either way. No, it's it's you know,
Speaker 4: it's better to be one that's cold for me anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I've got generally they don't want to prune. Uh huh.
Speaker 4: So there's a there's a delay on my broadcast. So
Speaker 4: I don't know if you're if you're hearing a radio
Speaker 4: or something going on in the background, but uh uh,
Speaker 4: if you are, it's gonna throw our cadence off pretty
Speaker 4: good here.
Speaker 11: No, no, I'm listening. I've got burlap bags about one hundred,
Speaker 11: couple of hundred. Can I lay those down to stop
Speaker 11: the weeds around the plants?
Speaker 4: Uh for a while? Uh huh, and then they'll they
Speaker 4: will decompose and so uh you know, they they're not
Speaker 4: going to be a long term thing. But you can
Speaker 4: mult with burlap if you wish. Okay, but you're gonna
Speaker 4: have to You're gonna have to put it mike thick
Speaker 4: enough to where no light comes through. Burlap is kind
Speaker 4: of uh you know, it's sort of a loosely woven fabric,
Speaker 4: and if you hold burlap up to the sky you
Speaker 4: can see light through it. So you're gonna need enough
Speaker 4: of it, or put down burlap and then throw a
Speaker 4: mulch on top. Or something. Uh but that, yeah, that
Speaker 4: would be that you could do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, these are.
Speaker 11: My daughter and some gross coffee from around the world,
Speaker 11: and these are their coffee bags and real heavy duty
Speaker 11: that holds a couple of hundred pounds.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, have coffee beans in them. So they're.
Speaker 11: So they I've got a couple hundred of them that
Speaker 11: they I can get do I do have And so
Speaker 11: I'm just curious if burlap would be Okay.
Speaker 4: It's okay, it's not you know, the best way to maltch.
Speaker 4: But there's nothing wrong with doing it. I tell you
Speaker 4: what I'd do with them. I'd put them on Facebook
Speaker 4: marketplace because there are gonna be people that want to
Speaker 4: buy burlap coffee bags. I'll guarantee you that you can
Speaker 4: make enough money to buy some compost and mult Yeah
Speaker 4: that's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm just as
Speaker 4: curious about the pruning and stuff like that. Yeah, that's it,
Speaker 4: you can do it. Here's the thing on pruning we
Speaker 4: would like to avoid. If the if the temperature is
Speaker 4: mild and you prune, it'll start a process in the
Speaker 4: plant of trying to regrow. And then if you know
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks later we get a hard freeze,
Speaker 4: you could get some cold damage where other wise the
Speaker 4: plant would have been hardened off and not subjected to
Speaker 4: coldem it. So we generally don't prune in the fall
Speaker 4: for that reason. But pruning a day before a freeze
Speaker 4: is not going to cause that level of lack of heartiness.
Speaker 4: So it doesn't matter at the time you're making this
Speaker 4: call to me, But in general, we don't want to
Speaker 4: prune and then have that done. That's why I usually
Speaker 4: save most of my pruning done till a little bit
Speaker 4: later in the winter season, before the new spring growth
Speaker 4: takes off. But later in the season is just a
Speaker 4: little bit better time. It's not night and day, but
Speaker 4: it's a little better time to do your pruning.
Speaker 11: Yeah, because I've got blooms and the fact today we've
Speaker 11: got some apples and some peaches grown, but I know
Speaker 11: that they're going to be lost because of the freeze.
Speaker 11: So that's the reason why I'm kind of waiting later
Speaker 11: in the season to prune.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, all right, well, good luck with it. Yeah, okay, thanks,
Speaker 4: you take care, Thanks for the call. Appreciate that. I
Speaker 4: appreciate that a lot. Mike, our phone number if you're
Speaker 4: like to get on. I'm going to take a little
Speaker 4: break here, but if you'd like to get on and
Speaker 4: not have to wait. Seven to one three two one
Speaker 4: two k t r eight seven one three two one
Speaker 4: two k t r H. I talked about adding blooms
Speaker 4: to your landscape, and this will be a good time
Speaker 4: to do that. It really is. I mean think about it.
Speaker 4: Think about your landscape from January to December. When are
Speaker 4: their blooming plants out there? And when could you add
Speaker 4: blooming plants? Because we can suggest plants, and I don't
Speaker 4: mean flower beds. I'm talking about shrubs and trees. Shrubs
Speaker 4: and trees even in the summertime. Crape myrtles bloom for
Speaker 4: three months there. They bloom for essentially almost almost one
Speaker 4: hundred days in the summertime.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 4: And that's a good one to do in the summer.
Speaker 4: Of course, everybody's got creak myrtles already. But the tech
Speaker 4: ytex b techs agnes castis chase tree is another name
Speaker 4: for it has the blue blossoms. And that one is good.
Speaker 4: You just have to watch that one. That one does
Speaker 4: recede and so in some areas it can cause a
Speaker 4: little bit of a spreading of the plant. But in general,
Speaker 4: you know, I have a Vitex in my yard and
Speaker 4: I think I've pulled up three seedlings over two or
Speaker 4: three years, so it's not really a big deal. But
Speaker 4: I just want to mention that that it's a possibility
Speaker 4: something you might want to be aware of. But vitext
Speaker 4: is a great one for summertime, and if you share
Speaker 4: it back after a series of blooms, you'll get regrowth
Speaker 4: and some more blooms. So that's another good one. But
Speaker 4: let's spread that all through the seasons. Let's have some
Speaker 4: beautiful color through perennials and shrubs and trees that bloom
Speaker 4: at all times. And now would be a great time
Speaker 4: to do that. All right, I'm going to take a
Speaker 4: little break. I want to remind you on my website
Speaker 4: is the publication on protecting plants from frosts and freezes.
Speaker 4: The website is gardening with skip dot com. That's also
Speaker 4: where you find some of the other new publication that
Speaker 4: I talked about, dealing with woody weeds like poison ivy
Speaker 4: in the landscape and pasteurizing putting soil. Hey, welcome back,
Speaker 4: let's keep going here. We got stuff to talk about.
Speaker 4: When it comes to gardening and been challenging there this year.
Speaker 4: I'm not challenging that sounds horny. I've been asking you
Speaker 4: to consider doing something new this year. What are you
Speaker 4: gonna try you never tried before? Gardening is Listen, You're
Speaker 4: not going to live long enough to try all the
Speaker 4: kinds of things that you ought to want to try
Speaker 4: that are out there for gardening. And who knows, there
Speaker 4: may be something you have never even considered before that
Speaker 4: you really fall in love with. I mean, there are
Speaker 4: people that get all into various kinds of plants. That's
Speaker 4: why there are plant societies out there, Daylily Society, African
Speaker 4: violet societies, Plumerius societies, rose, oh my gosh, definitely roses,
Speaker 4: and so on and so on. What are you gonna try?
Speaker 4: They haven't tried. Let's try something new. There is some
Speaker 4: real cool and fun things that you can do with gardening,
Speaker 4: and I suggest that you have some things you can
Speaker 4: do indoors and some things that you can do outdoors.
Speaker 4: It's a very rewarding hobby, it really is. What was it?
Speaker 4: The other day? I was reading a quote by somebody, Oh,
Speaker 4: Rooyard Kipling, the guy I believe I think either wrote
Speaker 4: Jungle Book. Anyway, when the world's when the world wearies
Speaker 4: and ceases to satisfy, there's always the garden. That is true. Listen.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of fast paced entertainment we have in life,
Speaker 4: especially nowadays, but when it comes to just really fulfillment
Speaker 4: and stuff, it's the simple stuff that really matters. That's
Speaker 4: why relationships and family. Oh my gosh, here I go.
Speaker 4: I'm getting outside of my area of expertise. I'm gonna
Speaker 4: quit talking about it a lot. But bottom line is
Speaker 4: stuff that really matters. Really you really enjoy things like gardening.
Speaker 4: That's the good Okay, that's the good stuff. All right.
Speaker 4: This commercial was brought to you by nobody other than
Speaker 4: just I think it's true. I want to visit a
Speaker 4: little bit about our lawn care. You know, it's early,
Speaker 4: it's too early. You're not going to be putting out
Speaker 4: anything right now on the lawn. But it's coming, and
Speaker 4: when it comes, it's going to come fast. Kind of
Speaker 4: like the blue bonnets on the road side. You know,
Speaker 4: one day there aren't any of the next day, boom,
Speaker 4: here they come and we're we're in full swing. Well,
Speaker 4: when it comes to our lawns, and taking care of them.
Speaker 4: I put two schedules online. One is my lawn care schedule,
Speaker 4: and that's basically, what do you do to make the
Speaker 4: lawn look good? And that would be more water, fertilize,
Speaker 4: add do core errations, add supplemental minerals as needed. That's
Speaker 4: all on that schedule. The other schedule is what makes
Speaker 4: your lawn not look good and what do you do
Speaker 4: about it? And that would be diseases and insects that
Speaker 4: would be weeds they get in the lawn. And these
Speaker 4: schedules are free. They are online, you can download them,
Speaker 4: you print them out, and I'd encourage you to do that.
Speaker 4: That way, when you go shopping, when you're looking for something,
Speaker 4: you don't have to try to remember what it was.
Speaker 4: You can just look on the schedule or put it
Speaker 4: in the face of the person that you're shopping from,
Speaker 4: say Han, any one of these, and they can get
Speaker 4: you on. But those things are coming quickly. When we
Speaker 4: get into February, we're in the season where we need
Speaker 4: to be preventing weeds. If we're going to prevent weeds now,
Speaker 4: remember the best weed prevention is a dense, healthy lawn.
Speaker 4: But I've got some areas of my lawn. Don't tell
Speaker 4: anybody who said this. I got some areas of my
Speaker 4: lawn that are thin. One area underneath a tree that
Speaker 4: was a little too shady is kind of looking thin,
Speaker 4: and I can already see I see some cool season
Speaker 4: weeds popping up in it. Because wherever sunlight hits the soil,
Speaker 4: nature plants a weed. So as your lawn gets thin,
Speaker 4: it becomes weedy. It just works that way. And so
Speaker 4: what do you do. Well, Number one thing you do
Speaker 4: for weed control is go to the first schedule, moll water,
Speaker 4: fertilize and do that right over the course of a
Speaker 4: season and make your lawn dense. The next time we
Speaker 4: go into a weed sprouting season, your lawn's going to
Speaker 4: be shading out most of the weed seed problems that
Speaker 4: you would run into. So that takes the bulk of
Speaker 4: the work out of it for you. But there are
Speaker 4: times when you need something to prevent a weed seed
Speaker 4: from coming up, and the options are there on the schedule.
Speaker 4: Then there's times when weeds are already up and you
Speaker 4: need to kill an existing weed. That's called a post
Speaker 4: emergent weed control product. And I need you to listen
Speaker 4: to this for just a minute post emergent weed control products.
Speaker 4: In other words, what do I spray on my lawn
Speaker 4: to kill you? Fill in the blank weed they're growing
Speaker 4: in my lawn there, The clover is everywhere, the the
Speaker 4: I don't know, whatever your summer, whatever your weeds are
Speaker 4: that you're dealing with, they're everywhere. How do I kill
Speaker 4: them in the lawn. It's a post emergent weed control
Speaker 4: when the weather heats up to the mid eighties, which
Speaker 4: will be there before you know it and above. Those
Speaker 4: products can stress your lawn, especially Saint Augustine, and so
Speaker 4: if you wait to deal with weeds until that stage,
Speaker 4: then you got the issue of trying to pick something
Speaker 4: that's not quite as stressful to the lawn compared to
Speaker 4: other things. But when we take our cool season weeds,
Speaker 4: a chick weed right now, routing it right now potentially
Speaker 4: in your lawn. There is annual bluegrass that's a little
Speaker 4: grassy weed. There is chick weed, There is hendbit, There
Speaker 4: is carpet weed. There is something called cleavers. It's our
Speaker 4: bellcrow weed. That's the one that's kind of like belcra
Speaker 4: It kind of sticks to you. And when you're dealing
Speaker 4: with those kinds of things. Now's the time to get
Speaker 4: out there and do it. And here's why they sprouted
Speaker 4: in the fall. They sit as small plants, just like
Speaker 4: our blue bonets to do all winter long, and then
Speaker 4: in the spring, as it warms up a little bit,
Speaker 4: they are gonna take off growing. They're gonna bloom, they're
Speaker 4: gonna set seed. Once they start blooming and setting seed,
Speaker 4: even effective products that work on those weeds are not
Speaker 4: as effective once the weed becomes reproductive, the products are
Speaker 4: not going to be as effective by and large, So
Speaker 4: it's better to deal with it now. If you're gonna
Speaker 4: have to spray those chickweed, hambit clover, all those kinds
Speaker 4: of things that are in your lawn. Now, if you're
Speaker 4: gonna have to spray them, you need to go and
Speaker 4: get that done sooner rather than later. When we get
Speaker 4: past the spreeze and the weather warms up just a
Speaker 4: little bit, we got some warm days and those weeds
Speaker 4: are really busy growing and taking in nutrients and things,
Speaker 4: that's the time to hit them with the spray because
Speaker 4: if you wait too long, it's not gonna work. And
Speaker 4: if you wait long enough, there are already gonna be
Speaker 4: weed seeds everywhere and now you've got two hundred thousand
Speaker 4: times more weeds than you did before because you didn't
Speaker 4: either handpul the weeds spray them. And listen, I'm not
Speaker 4: here to talk you into organic or synthetic, to talk
Speaker 4: you into spray and or not spray and all that.
Speaker 4: That is your yard. I'll just tell you that in
Speaker 4: my yard, I do a lot of ham pulling because
Speaker 4: I don't like to do a lot of spray. But
Speaker 4: if you're going to spray, do it before the weeds
Speaker 4: start to bloom and set seed in the spring. That
Speaker 4: is advice for the wise. All right, time for me
Speaker 4: to take a break. I'll be right back with your calls.
Speaker 4: Seven one three two one two KTRH. All right, folks,
Speaker 4: we're back. We got plenty more things to talk about
Speaker 4: this morning here on guard Line. Hey, I know right
Speaker 4: now you're thinking about what am I going to do
Speaker 4: this week. It's going to get so cold and all that. Well,
Speaker 4: we've been talking about it that all day. We'll keep
Speaker 4: talking about it. But I just want to ask you
Speaker 4: to not forget that when this cold gets over with,
Speaker 4: it's time to get back out there and do some
Speaker 4: things in the garden. And one of the things we
Speaker 4: do in order to have success with our plants is
Speaker 4: provide small amounts of nutrient as a boost to them
Speaker 4: as they grow week to week, month and month, and
Speaker 4: color Star by Nelson is one of the best products
Speaker 4: I know for doing that. It is excellent. For example,
Speaker 4: the color Star has been around for forty years or so,
Speaker 4: very very popular. If you're going to have a bed
Speaker 4: that has color that could be foliage, that could be flowers,
Speaker 4: that could be whatever you want a color bed, just
Speaker 4: get color Star and it's going to be a good
Speaker 4: blend to give the boost you need. Here's what's happened.
Speaker 4: You're blooms on the plant. That takes a lot of
Speaker 4: energy carbohydrates to make the blooms that are your flowers
Speaker 4: that you enjoy. You got to keep that plant growing
Speaker 4: so that it has new growth, new energy, captures more sunlight,
Speaker 4: makes more blooms. Color Star gives it that boost. It's
Speaker 4: fast acting, but it also has organic nutrients sources in
Speaker 4: it that really slowly into the ground about every three
Speaker 4: or four months is probably best with Colorstar. So coming
Speaker 4: into this season of winter, we want to get a
Speaker 4: fertilization down, watered in really good scratch it into the
Speaker 4: soil and watered in and have a little push on
Speaker 4: the vigor as we come out of the winter into
Speaker 4: spring to get more growth. Keep those things going, and
Speaker 4: if you pull those out and put some others in,
Speaker 4: it's just all the better. Just start back up with
Speaker 4: color Star again from the folks at Nelson's. Color Stars
Speaker 4: available in many places in town. And those little refill
Speaker 4: canister containers, so you buy a plastic canister of it,
Speaker 4: you just take it back in and refill it. It's
Speaker 4: a little more, a little less expensive, and it also
Speaker 4: helps prevent a little more plastic going out there in
Speaker 4: the environment, which is of course a good thing to stop.
Speaker 4: We're going to go now to Cove, Texas and talk
Speaker 4: to Rufus. Hey, Rufus, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you.
Speaker 4: Hey.
Speaker 12: A while back we talked about think that was disease
Speaker 12: resistance more than the ones I got in my backyard
Speaker 12: just dying on vine kind of deal. But I lost
Speaker 12: the name.
Speaker 5: Yeah remember what that was.
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, there, there's there's two and I think one
Speaker 4: of them may not be on the on the marketing
Speaker 4: or there's one called Cora like the ladies name c
Speaker 4: r A and there's one called Nirvana, and I'm not
Speaker 4: sure Nirvana is still around, but if you see either
Speaker 4: Cora Nirvana, that's that's the kind of vinca we're talking about. Uh.
Speaker 4: There's a disease called uh our top aerial phytoptera that
Speaker 4: gets on them and makes them turned chocolate brown and
Speaker 4: just turns them to toast, and it goes to her
Speaker 4: resistant to that disease at least until the disease figures
Speaker 4: out how to mutate. And that's what diseases do. But uh, Cora,
Speaker 4: nerv Cora, and Nirvana Cora is the one you're gonna find.
Speaker 12: Probably, okay, all right, Well yeah, because when we talk
Speaker 12: about it looked like rose die back. You know, it
Speaker 12: started at the end of them. I started working back
Speaker 12: to the route and I got a hit. I just
Speaker 12: cut it all and you know it's vinegar and water
Speaker 12: on the cutters and stuff that I slowed it down
Speaker 12: a bunch. But I'm not wanting problem next year.
Speaker 4: Uh Yeah. Vinca's real heat tolerant and another thing that
Speaker 4: helps a little bit. This isn't gonna make night and
Speaker 4: day difference, but if you wait until it really heats
Speaker 4: up pretty good to plant trvinka.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: It the the disease isn't quite as active then as
Speaker 4: it is if you try to get it in early
Speaker 4: and it's it's a little milder and maybe more rain
Speaker 4: or you're irrigating too much or something. It's worse than
Speaker 4: those conditions. So that's another tip for it. All right, man?
Speaker 12: Well, from seed, what's the germination to planning on those plants?
Speaker 12: Because I usually do it like, I don't know, six
Speaker 12: weeks before put them in the ground.
Speaker 4: But is it yeah, you know, to give you a
Speaker 4: completely accurate answer, I would need to go look that up,
Speaker 4: but I'm gonna I'm gonna say that I think if
Speaker 4: you can give them, if you can grow the transplants
Speaker 4: for about two weeks, uh, then you should be able
Speaker 4: to move them out into the garden and at some point,
Speaker 4: depending on soul temperatures and whatnot, they will begin to bloom.
Speaker 4: But the time from seed to first bloom is going
Speaker 4: to vary a whole lot with the conditions that's growing in. Okay, okay,
Speaker 4: but i'd allow yourself good good, all right, all right, well,
Speaker 4: thanks for the call, all right, bye bye. That is
Speaker 4: for true. You know, I talk about wallbirds because I
Speaker 4: love wallbird stores. I'll go into wildbirds stores just to
Speaker 4: look around because I learn something every time I go in.
Speaker 4: I go I didn't know they had a gadget for that,
Speaker 4: or I didn't know they've come out with this new seed,
Speaker 4: or you know whatever. And talking to the people there,
Speaker 4: they know so much. So I mean, if you want
Speaker 4: to have success with your birds, go buy there. Now.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you something. You can buy a lot of
Speaker 4: cheap bird seed in a lot of places, and it's
Speaker 4: going to be sometimes way half of the little red bebes,
Speaker 4: way over half. And birds don't like those. They kick
Speaker 4: them out. They don't eat them unless they absolutely have
Speaker 4: to and they're starving to death. But wildbirds seeds are
Speaker 4: made with seeds the birds eat. And you can get
Speaker 4: different blends right now in the winter winter super Blend's
Speaker 4: a good one. But they got a brand new thing out,
Speaker 4: new product, and it's cool. It's called Cardinal Confetti. Cardinal
Speaker 4: is in redbirds. Cardinal Confetti blend is exclusive to wildbirds.
Speaker 4: And they even have a couple of feeders. There's a
Speaker 4: cardinal tube feeder and a good evening cardinal feeder. Ask
Speaker 4: them about that. As part of the Cardinal Confetti collection.
Speaker 4: The Cardinal Confetti's got saft flower, it's got black all sunflower.
Speaker 4: It's got sunflower chips, nutris, saff park, excuse me, bark
Speaker 4: butter bits, peanut halves, striped sunflower. It makes me hungry.
Speaker 4: Oh not this last one. It also has dried meal worms.
Speaker 4: I can live without that. But birds love that stuff
Speaker 4: and you can use it year round. They're gonna sell
Speaker 4: it year round. But it is an all some awesome blend,
Speaker 4: so you ought to go check that out. They also
Speaker 4: have something called bark butter. You spread it and smear
Speaker 4: it on a tree trunk or on a feeder or
Speaker 4: where you want to spear it on your neighbor who
Speaker 4: doesn't move around a lot, and the birds will show up,
Speaker 4: and I mean they love that stuff. They It was
Speaker 4: created by Jim Carpenter, who founded Wildbird Anyway. He created
Speaker 4: it and they have documented one hundred and fifty different
Speaker 4: species of birds that come to the bark butter. It's
Speaker 4: available as bark butter bits little bite sized nuggets. Is
Speaker 4: available also as bugs and bits. There we go put
Speaker 4: and dried millworms in it. Again. They absolutely love that stuff.
Speaker 4: It's hig in calcium it's sports, good egg development, and
Speaker 4: birds are going to be nesting very very soon, so
Speaker 4: get that stuff out and you're only going to get
Speaker 4: it at Wildbird's wild Birds Unlimited. It's WBU dot Com
Speaker 4: forward slash Houston. WBU dot Com Forward slash Houston. That
Speaker 4: will do it. Let's see, I'm looking at the clock, Roger,
Speaker 4: I do not have time to take your call for
Speaker 4: we go to break. Sorry about that. I will make
Speaker 4: you first when we come back. Roger out in Deer Park.
Speaker 4: Look forward to talking to you. If you can hang
Speaker 4: around a little bit longer and we'll be right back
Speaker 4: with your calls.
Speaker 1: Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with skimp Rickards.
Speaker 2: Just watch him as.
Speaker 4: Hey, let's jump right in here. I listen to a
Speaker 4: little bit of an intro. I think I was going
Speaker 4: to get going and get talking and get to your calls.
Speaker 4: In fact, why don't we jump right out here? We
Speaker 4: got Roger waiting from Deer Park. Hey, Roger, welcome to
Speaker 4: garden Line. How can we help.
Speaker 15: Uh built me a little chicken stick frame on the
Speaker 15: south side of the house to cover with plastic and
Speaker 15: not touch the plants, you know, the plastic and left
Speaker 15: home one day to ten or lavish camp went way
Speaker 15: above you know, went on up there.
Speaker 4: So I'm just trying to figure out how to.
Speaker 15: Make sure I don't burn the plant and cook them,
Speaker 15: say yeah, and keep them above that you know, thirty degree.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a you know that either you just have
Speaker 4: to go out and check it. I said a little
Speaker 4: timer on the on the phone or watch just to
Speaker 4: remind you to go check it every now and then.
Speaker 4: See sunshining through clear uh makes heat for sure, and
Speaker 4: that's why your cars are warm when you go out
Speaker 4: on a cool day or hot day. Either way, it's
Speaker 4: gonna be a lot warmer inside a clear windshield of
Speaker 4: a car. Uh, So your instincts are right.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 4: The only other thing you could do, and that's not
Speaker 4: for this year. But there are some gadgets. They're like
Speaker 4: little kind of like a piston, you know, you know
Speaker 4: the old screen door so they didn't slam. There were
Speaker 4: that little piston that yeah, up at the top that
Speaker 4: kind of air compros and slowed it down. There's actually
Speaker 4: a piston like device. It's different than that that when
Speaker 4: a temperature is reached, it pushes a door open and
Speaker 4: it kind of lifts up a little door to allow
Speaker 4: heat to escape out the top and go back down again.
Speaker 4: And you can purchase those. I've never tried using them,
Speaker 4: but I just know they're out there. People used to
Speaker 4: use them on cold frames, which is basically like a
Speaker 4: little box on the ground with a clear top, and
Speaker 4: to lift those up because the same thing happens in
Speaker 4: a cold frame. That would be a long term kind
Speaker 4: of a potential solution. Other than that, I would just say,
Speaker 4: you know, once the temperature gets above thirty two, I
Speaker 4: would just crack a door open on it and you'll
Speaker 4: be good. You just need the heat to be able
Speaker 4: to escape a little bit. You don't have to throw
Speaker 4: it wide open or anything like that.
Speaker 15: Okay, Yeah, it's just kind of like, ah, I was
Speaker 15: supposed to bake them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know. Yeah, Oh you can cook them. You
Speaker 4: can cook them in there, for sure, no question about that.
Speaker 4: About what may also ask time.
Speaker 15: I have a BlackBerry bush that's about peaky put long
Speaker 15: on the back fence and citrus. It seemed like a
Speaker 15: couple of the plants, especially with the the blackberries in
Speaker 15: the middle, they're turning yellow. The leaves it's getting a
Speaker 15: yellowsh tint to it, and then there leaves on one
Speaker 15: one plant. The leaves are turning yellow on the citrus,
Speaker 15: just one, and I'm just kind of.
Speaker 4: Can you recall from can you? Yeah, can you recall
Speaker 4: Roger from when you looked at them? Was was it
Speaker 4: the new ends of shoots, the new leaves that were
Speaker 4: losing color, or was it all up and down everywhere?
Speaker 4: Or was it the older leaves further back down the
Speaker 4: shoot that we're losing color.
Speaker 15: It's the older leaves from the It's basically starting from
Speaker 15: the top, older leaves.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, there are a couple of nutrients that a
Speaker 4: lack of of that nutrient can cause that. You know,
Speaker 4: sulfur is one of the ones we never talk about
Speaker 4: as a fertilizer nutrient hardly, but that's one that of
Speaker 4: a lack of sulfur can cause that. That's probably not
Speaker 4: what the problem is with your planet is probably a
Speaker 4: nitrogen a lack of nitrogen, but also environmental conditions can
Speaker 4: do that. I don't know if you ever had Apothus
Speaker 4: ivy in the house and it got too dry and
Speaker 4: it started to wilt, and then you watered it and
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, the old leaves start turning yellow
Speaker 4: and falling off after you water it. That's a moisture
Speaker 4: related response, and that can happen to plants soggy wet
Speaker 4: soils or wide fluctuations that can happen to some plant.
Speaker 4: So other than a soil moisture issue, I think it
Speaker 4: probably is a lack of nitrogen, but I generally wouldn't
Speaker 4: worry about it a lot. Usually the older leaves turning
Speaker 4: a little yellow and a cool season of the year,
Speaker 4: that just happens, and so it doesn't mean you necessarily
Speaker 4: need to get out there and do any particular thing
Speaker 4: to it. And if if we get into spring, it
Speaker 4: starts regrowing and that situation doesn't improve. The only yellow
Speaker 4: leaves aren't going to turn green again, but you don't
Speaker 4: continue to have that problem progressing. If you do, then
Speaker 4: go and go ahead and fertilize it with a nitrogen
Speaker 4: nitrogen based fertilizer. Any good centrus foot will have enough
Speaker 4: nitrogen in it well as usual. Thank you again, all right,
Speaker 4: you bet, you bet, And watch those blackberries. The number
Speaker 4: one thing we have with blackberries going on here is
Speaker 4: some people have high pH soils in some parts, and
Speaker 4: blackberries and a heavy clay with a higher pH they
Speaker 4: are always going to have a bleaching out or yellowing
Speaker 4: of the foliage out near the tip. But that's of
Speaker 4: course not what you had. So but I just mentioned
Speaker 4: that because there's gonna be other people going, yeah, I
Speaker 4: got blackberries that our leaves are losing color, and they
Speaker 4: need to know about that too. Well, you take care
Speaker 4: out there, stay warm. Thank you much too. All right,
Speaker 4: thank you, thank you sir. The color that isb be
Speaker 4: another good publication to put up there. My leaves are
Speaker 4: turning color? What's going wrong? Kind of interesting? Actually, do
Speaker 4: you know that nutrients? Okay, here we go a little
Speaker 4: bit of a nerd alert, but this can help you
Speaker 4: diagnose a problem. Nutrients typically are either mobile or immobile
Speaker 4: in a plant. Now, if a nutrient is mobile, that
Speaker 4: means that the plant can steal it from older growth
Speaker 4: and move it to new growth to support that growth.
Speaker 4: A mobile element, it could be moved. If a nutrient
Speaker 4: is immobile, then the older growth may have had enough
Speaker 4: of it. But when it runs short on that nutrient,
Speaker 4: the new growth starts to show the deficiency. So why
Speaker 4: does that matter. We'll think of this like a brick wall,
Speaker 4: that is that has mortar in between the bricks. Versus
Speaker 4: a dry stack brick wall and a drystack brick wall.
Speaker 4: If you're building the wall and you get the end,
Speaker 4: you run out of bricks. Theoretically you go back and
Speaker 4: steal bricks from the original part of the wall and
Speaker 4: bring them forward and keep building the wall. That's a
Speaker 4: mobile element. If it was mortared in. You can't steal
Speaker 4: a brick from back there. It's mortared in, and that's
Speaker 4: an immobile element. So what you see when you look
Speaker 4: at your plants is if the older leaves are turning yellow,
Speaker 4: that's a sign that the element that's missing is a
Speaker 4: mobile element. The plant has stolen it to support new growth.
Speaker 4: If it's occurring on the new growth but not the
Speaker 4: old growth, then that's an immobile and iron is the
Speaker 4: prime poster element for immobile element deficiency. When the new
Speaker 4: growth has bleaching out a yellowing or even whitish on
Speaker 4: some plants, and maybe the veins are main green, but
Speaker 4: in between the veins it starts turning or it doesn't
Speaker 4: develop color, that's an iron deficiency most likely because it's immobile.
Speaker 4: And if it's the old leaves, it's going to be nitrogen,
Speaker 4: it's going to be sulfur. If the old leaves have
Speaker 4: like a green Christmas tree in the middle. Well, that's
Speaker 4: a mobile element called magnesium with the green Christmas tree
Speaker 4: in the middle. All right, that's your NERD alert. We'll
Speaker 4: be right back. We're back. Hey, guess what. It's our
Speaker 4: last hour of the show today. We're going to wind
Speaker 4: us up at ten o'clock. So if you've got a call,
Speaker 4: I can't wait until next Saturday. Where the thing? You
Speaker 4: can give me a call. Seven thirty seven thirty seven
Speaker 4: one three two one two. I didn't drink enough coffee
Speaker 4: this morning kt R seven one three two one two
Speaker 4: kt R h Oh. We've talked about a lot of
Speaker 4: different things this morning. Just got through talking about nutrients
Speaker 4: and mobile versus immobile nutrients. And it's kind of fun
Speaker 4: to diagnose visually what's going on, to think through it. Uh,
Speaker 4: you know, I give you these NERD alerts from time
Speaker 4: to time and I'll talk about you know, Okay, this
Speaker 4: is a little technical, but it helps to know it
Speaker 4: for making decisions. So just the fact that you know
Speaker 4: the difference between a mobile and an immobile element, you
Speaker 4: can go online and say what elements are mobile, what
Speaker 4: elements are immobile, and so you look at a plant.
Speaker 4: It's got, you know, leaves in this place or that place.
Speaker 4: You know, okay, it's going to be one of these
Speaker 4: elements that I'm dealing with here, And so it helps
Speaker 4: you to think through things, and becoming good gardeners isn't
Speaker 4: just memorizing all the facts. It's learning how to think
Speaker 4: about plants. And when I talk about we're going to
Speaker 4: turn your brown thumb, grain that there's no such thing
Speaker 4: as a brown thumb. There's an uninformed thumb. That's what
Speaker 4: I'm talking about. Is the more you gain understanding about
Speaker 4: how things work, the better you are at gardening, the
Speaker 4: easier it is for you to figure things out and
Speaker 4: kind of solve problems. You know, maybe there's some nutrient
Speaker 4: I didn't mention in my little spiel before break, Well,
Speaker 4: now you know at least how to think about it
Speaker 4: and figure out what it might be. And so that's
Speaker 4: what we try to do here. Now, if you're one
Speaker 4: that just wants me to tell you what to get
Speaker 4: and where to get it to apply it, I can
Speaker 4: do that. We can certainly do that, no problem at all.
Speaker 4: But if you're someone who wants to go a low
Speaker 4: step further, maybe a master gardener or just an inquisitive gardener. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there you go. We can help you with that. We're
Speaker 4: gonna go out Tonedville now and talk to an Lisa. Hello, Analsa,
Speaker 4: Welcome to garden line. Hi.
Speaker 16: I have some tulips that I planted a few weeks
Speaker 16: ago that already have buds on them, and I was
Speaker 16: wondering if this is a long enough freeze to make
Speaker 16: it worth covering, or if they're hardy enough to last.
Speaker 4: Tulips are generally pretty heardy. How tall are they?
Speaker 16: They're about six inches?
Speaker 4: Okay, well, it wouldn't be the end of the world.
Speaker 4: I'm assuming you don't have a giant feel fault, so
Speaker 4: it wouldn't be the end of the world to go
Speaker 4: out there and said a few things around to kind
Speaker 4: of hold the cover up and then go throw I
Speaker 4: don't know, a sheet or something over them to be
Speaker 4: sure and safe. I think they're going to be okay.
Speaker 4: Let's see you're in Needville. Yeah, you're I've never tested
Speaker 4: tulips in terms of how cool can they take it,
Speaker 4: To be honest, I just haven't. My gut is that
Speaker 4: they're going to be okay. But if you want to
Speaker 4: be extra careful throw something just over them. No heat
Speaker 4: underneath them is needed. Just something to kind of hold
Speaker 4: the soil moisture a little bit or heat a little bit.
Speaker 17: Okay, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: You bet you take care. Thanks for the call. If
Speaker 4: you want a beautiful landscape, I mean I'm talking about
Speaker 4: a gorgeous landscape, you need to call the folks at Peerscapes.
Speaker 4: I talk about Peerscapes a lot because I am very
Speaker 4: impressed with their work. I've sat down and met with
Speaker 4: their designers and talked to them, and I'm telling you,
Speaker 4: these folks know what they're doing. They really do. And
Speaker 4: no matter what you need. Do you need the irrigation
Speaker 4: work on because that season's coming, they can do that.
Speaker 4: Do you want hardscape put in? Oh my gosh, you
Speaker 4: cannot believe the gorgeous patios and walkways that they create.
Speaker 4: Their landscape lighting services are unbelievable. And they do maintenance too.
Speaker 4: By the way, you can have them come on for
Speaker 4: quarterly maintenance. If you need that done, you need a
Speaker 4: SOD installed, anything like that, they can do it at
Speaker 4: Peer Scapes. Go to piercescapes dot com pierscapes dot com.
Speaker 4: I want you to go there. I want you to
Speaker 4: look at the pictures, even if you're not planning on
Speaker 4: having anything done, I just want you to go and
Speaker 4: see what they can do. It is amazing. And so
Speaker 4: maybe you just need a little project done, maybe you
Speaker 4: need the whole nine yards renovated. They can do either way.
Speaker 4: Peer Scapes. Let's go out to the phones again and
Speaker 4: we're gonna talk to Greg. Hey, Greg, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 7: Thank you Skip. I've got a question.
Speaker 18: I'm driving back from South Texas and I have a
Speaker 18: friend that his place is just covered up in Mountain Laurel,
Speaker 18: and so I thought, well, I'm gonna dig up some
Speaker 18: individual plants.
Speaker 7: And I had no idea.
Speaker 18: They had a tap root that probably is five feet
Speaker 18: deep and so but I was able to dig, dig
Speaker 18: up a five or six beast wounds and cut the
Speaker 18: tap root about two to three feet.
Speaker 7: Will I be able to transplant?
Speaker 4: Okay, they are not a species that likes transplanting. Now,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to tell you that you can't do it,
Speaker 4: but don't be real surprised if you have trouble with that.
Speaker 4: Bring them back, get them in a spot where they
Speaker 4: have moist definitely not soggy soil. They don't like that.
Speaker 4: Get them in a spot like that planted we say,
Speaker 4: high and dry in or raised bed or someplace that
Speaker 4: had a heavy clay in a low lying area, and
Speaker 4: get them in the grounds quick. Skin is the weather
Speaker 4: worms up in the spring. Maybe a little bit of
Speaker 4: a shade over You can even kind of drape a
Speaker 4: little bit of a shade cloth over them a little bit,
Speaker 4: just to give them some time to us before the
Speaker 4: full demands are made on them, and give them the
Speaker 4: best chance that they have.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean leave shade on them all year. It
Speaker 4: just it's just they're they're going to be very unhappy
Speaker 4: and trying to recover. Did you happen to get any
Speaker 4: of the seed pods while you're out there?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, I've got I got a hold, you know,
Speaker 7: old baggy full of them.
Speaker 4: Okay, good, good, Take those red seed pods and uh
Speaker 4: nick the coat. You know, you can take a file
Speaker 4: or you can take a little snippers and just don't
Speaker 4: cut your fingers and nick the coat and uh they
Speaker 4: will germinate. I would put them in moist sand and
Speaker 4: the refrigerator for about a month or two and then
Speaker 4: bring them out and plant them and get them to germinate.
Speaker 4: And that's your backup in case the ones you brought
Speaker 4: home don't work, because you can grow them. You can
Speaker 4: grow them out. Just just have a long tail container
Speaker 4: to diamond.
Speaker 7: What about I mean for the time being, I've got
Speaker 7: a bunch of.
Speaker 18: Old it's like five gallon planner pots.
Speaker 7: Could I put them in that for the time being
Speaker 7: instead of putting them in the.
Speaker 4: Ground the seeds you're talking about or the transfer Oh.
Speaker 7: No, no, the transplant plant.
Speaker 18: Instead of putting them in the ground, put them in
Speaker 18: a pot.
Speaker 4: Yes, you could do that.
Speaker 18: You could do that, okay, because it Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 18: I've got I really wanted to take them. I've got
Speaker 18: a little place near Stevenville, Texas, and that's where I
Speaker 18: was wanting to take them and plant them. So I'll
Speaker 18: go get I'll go get some money. What would you
Speaker 18: recommend rose soil with mixed. I've got some of the
Speaker 18: native sand rose sol mixed with that sand.
Speaker 4: You could yeah, you could do that. Uh, you know,
Speaker 4: it's rosso would be fine. A little sound is fine.
Speaker 4: Just make sure you draw. If you use five gallon buckets,
Speaker 4: make sure you draw whole lots of holes in the
Speaker 4: bottom so they're doing well. And uh. The nice thing
Speaker 4: about containers is you can set them in a spot
Speaker 4: that gets a little morning sun but not the full
Speaker 4: brunt of the two to four o'clock hot afternoon sun
Speaker 4: until you get them planted and then put a little.
Speaker 2: You could.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that wouldn't hurt anything. Yeah, that wouldn't That wouldn't
Speaker 4: standing at all. You could, you could, Hey, where did
Speaker 4: you where did you? Where in South Texas did you
Speaker 4: get these things from?
Speaker 18: This was in in Ata, Scotia County, near three rivers
Speaker 18: halfway pwe Corpuses.
Speaker 4: I grew up thirty miles north of there, Jerdany.
Speaker 7: So do you know where?
Speaker 4: Oh why, I know you've been there, because nobody knows
Speaker 4: where wits it is unless you've been there or from there.
Speaker 7: Campbell or Campbellton. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's.
Speaker 4: Arm in Cambelton, YEP. It is good place, all right,
Speaker 4: good fun plant, good plant.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: And by the way, when you grow up with those plants,
Speaker 4: especially as mischievous young man, you learn that if you
Speaker 4: take those pods and rub them on a on a
Speaker 4: concrete sidewalk real fast, you can poke them against your
Speaker 4: buddy's arm and burn the heck out of him. They
Speaker 4: heat up really cool. So I'm just saying, not that
Speaker 4: I ever.
Speaker 7: Looked at I was just a little seed. Just I
Speaker 7: could just on the sidewalk, right.
Speaker 4: You said you could, yeah to kind of kind of
Speaker 4: send it down a little bit if you want to
Speaker 4: go that route. But but uh, yeah, not that I
Speaker 4: ever did that.
Speaker 7: I'm going to do that too. That sounds like a
Speaker 7: good idea. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 4: Take care, good luck with that. Let me know how
Speaker 4: that turns out for you. All right, Yep, No, I
Speaker 4: would never do that. I was as pure as the
Speaker 4: wind driven snow, that is for sure. You can you
Speaker 4: can take that to the bank. Just please don't talk
Speaker 4: to any of my teachers that bless their hearts. I
Speaker 4: think some of them have been given sainthood. I'm pretty
Speaker 4: sure of that. Anyway, you listen to guard Line. Hey,
Speaker 4: here's the phone number seven one three two one two
Speaker 4: kt r H seven one three two one two. Where's Mike.
Speaker 4: Mike from Sugarland. He grew up done in Jordan in Texas.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he's listening today, but Mike may
Speaker 4: know what we're talking about here. I talked earlier about
Speaker 4: affordable tree and I'm telling you I would trust my
Speaker 4: trees to Martin Spoon Moore. Martin's been doing this for
Speaker 4: a long time. I mean he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 4: When you call Affordable Tree at seven one, three, six, nine, nine,
Speaker 4: twenty six sixty three, Martin's gonna be the one that
Speaker 4: enters the phone. He absolutely knows his trees. And you
Speaker 4: need to not delay you. It's time to get this done.
Speaker 4: You got to give me a call. You got to
Speaker 4: get this done. It's time to get any kind of
Speaker 4: printing done. The prime time. We're in the prime season
Speaker 4: is not gonna last a lot longer. Now. You can
Speaker 4: get printed on any month of the year, a little
Speaker 4: bit here and there, but you need to have right now, Martin,
Speaker 4: come out and look at your trees, especially if you
Speaker 4: have not had those trees cared for in a few years.
Speaker 4: You need to come out and need to look at them.
Speaker 4: Check the branch angles, check out things are growing. Because
Speaker 4: it's better to guide a tree earlier in its life
Speaker 4: than to try to change it later in its life.
Speaker 4: And Martin knows how to do that. He does all
Speaker 4: kinds of tree services consulting. He does the deep root feeding,
Speaker 4: for example, he can do that. Martin's an expert at this.
Speaker 4: He can go to afftree service dot com or give
Speaker 4: Martin a call seven to one three six nine nine
Speaker 4: two six sixty three. As we say, this is a
Speaker 4: mom and pop operation. Martin and his wife Joe. They
Speaker 4: answer the phones when you call seven to one three
Speaker 4: six nine nine two six six three. Well, I am
Speaker 4: up against a half hour break here. We got a
Speaker 4: half hour left in this show. If you'd like to
Speaker 4: give me a call seven one three two one two KTRH.
Speaker 4: We'll be back with your calls, and we'll start with
Speaker 4: John from Friends with Here. We welcome best pointing to
Speaker 4: talk about there on the garden line. Not a lot
Speaker 4: of time luck to talk about it, so let's get
Speaker 4: down here.
Speaker 8: Lucky.
Speaker 4: You may call seven to one three two one two
Speaker 4: ktr eight seven one three two one two ktr eighth.
Speaker 4: The folks at Medina have a number of quality products
Speaker 4: and some have been around for a long time. Medina
Speaker 4: Plus is one of the earlier ones. A few years
Speaker 4: after they developed the original, the Medina soil Activator that
Speaker 4: people swear by and have used for decades, literally many
Speaker 4: decades now, they came up with Medina plus. So what
Speaker 4: they basically did is they didn't give up the old product.
Speaker 4: They took Medina Plus and it is fortified essentially with
Speaker 4: micro nutrients and also a seweed extract, and it kind
Speaker 4: of took it up a level, if you will. It
Speaker 4: has all the natural soil building advantages that the Medina
Speaker 4: original Medina Soil Activator had, but it also has these
Speaker 4: extra ingredients. It makes it a good folier feed for plants.
Speaker 4: You can use it on flower, strub, trees, lawns, anything,
Speaker 4: put in a hose, in spread and sprayer and mix
Speaker 4: it up or not mix it up, just it mixes
Speaker 4: it as it applies it to your lawn. Sebet extracts
Speaker 4: helps plants get their maximum growth and you'l potential. It
Speaker 4: enhances a lot of the natural processes in a plant
Speaker 4: that protect against the different kinds of abiotic stresses that
Speaker 4: there are also very efficient in nutrient uptake and use.
Speaker 4: As a result of that, you could use it as
Speaker 4: a root drench to stop slow down the transplant shock
Speaker 4: to kind of alleviate that. You could use it in
Speaker 4: flower beds, small areas. You could use a full of
Speaker 4: your feed. It just has many many uses. It comes
Speaker 4: in a quirk comes in a gallon size Medina plus
Speaker 4: by the folks at Medina, And as with all Medina products,
Speaker 4: they're widely available here in the Greater Houston area. Our
Speaker 4: mom and pop garden centers, our feed stores, our ace
Speaker 4: hardware stores, our Southwest Fertilizer, all of those places are
Speaker 4: going to carry is Medina products. We're gonna We're gonna
Speaker 4: go now out to Friendswood and talk to John. Hey, John,
Speaker 4: welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 5: Hey, good morning, Skip. Thanks for the uh all the
Speaker 5: information about the weather we're dealing with. Listen, I've got
Speaker 5: a question though, uh, kind of going back into the
Speaker 5: fall each year, half of my half my front yard
Speaker 5: I fight fungus.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: The sidewalk goes right down the middle up to the house.
Speaker 5: The left side has fungus, the right side is Christine.
Speaker 5: And I did a lot of reading back in the
Speaker 5: fall and probably confused myself. But something I came across, uh,
Speaker 5: it said that there that maybe in the spring I
Speaker 5: should be putting out some fun, fun fungus side to
Speaker 5: help prepare for the fall. Is is there any truth
Speaker 5: in that or or are there any recommendations that you've
Speaker 5: got for anything? I could do in the in the
Speaker 5: spring to maybe ward off the problems I'm going to
Speaker 5: have in the fall.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, good question, John, And the answer is there's
Speaker 4: absolutely no truth in that. When you apply a fungicide,
Speaker 4: it is for either what is going on on the
Speaker 4: plant or what is about to attack the plant, not
Speaker 4: for months later like that. There are things. It depends
Speaker 4: on the disease that you're looking at. Are these the
Speaker 4: big brown circles are Does it have a different look?
Speaker 5: No, it's I'm convinced it's brown patch.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, Well, brown patch is around all year
Speaker 4: and when the conditions are right, which means the temperature
Speaker 4: drops a little bit and we get a lot of
Speaker 4: moisture around the active continual wetness of the grass and runners,
Speaker 4: that's when brown patch attacks, which is why we primarily
Speaker 4: see it in the fall, and also in the spring
Speaker 4: and in the winter. If it's a very mild winter,
Speaker 4: we can get some in the middle of the winter.
Speaker 4: But uh that that is a moment in time, So
Speaker 4: you would have to go just before the brown patch
Speaker 4: of tax and do the application. Then have you ever
Speaker 4: downloaded my lawn pest, Disease and weed management schedule from
Speaker 4: my website by.
Speaker 5: Any chance, Yes, yes, I have that. And I'll tell
Speaker 5: you something that I did this year that that worked
Speaker 5: really well. In one section of the lawn I made,
Speaker 5: I made really careful measurements, and I made sure that
Speaker 5: I was doing the application rate properly, and I tried
Speaker 5: to get that into the soil a little bit earlier
Speaker 5: than I have in previous years. And that part of
Speaker 5: the lawn did really well. It's just this one half
Speaker 5: of the lawn just can't seem to get ahead.
Speaker 4: Of Yeah, and I'll you that that bad area probably
Speaker 4: is either more poorly drained or tends to stay a
Speaker 4: little wetter. I mean that could be because of a
Speaker 4: downspout of the house. That could be because of the
Speaker 4: irrigation system. It could be it just could be a
Speaker 4: heavy clay or whatever that's not draining as well. But
Speaker 4: when when you're telling me that every year this spot
Speaker 4: has it and that spot doesn't, it's the conditions and
Speaker 4: that spot that are predisposing it to disease. Because diseases
Speaker 4: are very environmentally influenced for sure, So figuring out what
Speaker 4: that is and alleviating that would also help in that area.
Speaker 4: But yeah, you follow the schedule, and it you know,
Speaker 4: it tells you in October that's when we're starting the
Speaker 4: brown patch applications. And you know, each year's different. Coldfront
Speaker 4: comes in a little sooner with rain or later with rain,
Speaker 4: and that time can vary. But you want to get
Speaker 4: on brown patch. You want to get on ahead of it,
Speaker 4: because once the circles are there, it's too late. Well
Speaker 4: it's too late to change that circle. It may prevent
Speaker 4: an additional one from forming. I had some one little
Speaker 4: spot in my yard got some circles on it in
Speaker 4: this fall, and then another spot all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: they appeared as we got on into what we would
Speaker 4: call winter. You know, back in December, maybe early January,
Speaker 4: I started seeing a little increase in a spot and
Speaker 4: it's just because of the weather. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Right, listen, here's a real quick question. You can almost
Speaker 5: do a yes or no on this. I'm going out
Speaker 5: later today and do the hand pulling on some weeds
Speaker 5: because we've been out of town for nearly a month.
Speaker 5: But is it too cold to apply something like weed
Speaker 5: beat or ultra to do some spot treating.
Speaker 14: No.
Speaker 4: I was just earlier today, I was talking about that
Speaker 4: if you catch those winter weeds now. They're very visible,
Speaker 4: they're very easy to kill now, and don't wait until
Speaker 4: they're blooming and setting seed or they're harder to kill.
Speaker 4: And maybe even they've got a viable seed. So even
Speaker 4: if you killed the weed, you'd still have this need there.
Speaker 4: So yes, yes, handpling now, spraying now is all viable stuff.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't do it right before the freeze. It would
Speaker 4: be nice for the weed to be happy and growing
Speaker 4: when you spray it to have more effective kill. So
Speaker 4: let's get past this freeze, get get a little bit
Speaker 4: of some temperature up and then spray them.
Speaker 5: Okay, that sounds good. Thanks, thanks so much.
Speaker 4: You stay warm, take care, Thanks sir, you as well.
Speaker 4: I have to run to a break. Nancy and Flint,
Speaker 4: you'll be first up when we come back every time. Hey,
Speaker 4: welcome back to the garden line. Glad to have you
Speaker 4: with us today. Listen, Uh, the cold is coming and
Speaker 4: if you need anything anything to protect you against the
Speaker 4: cold issues that are going to happen to our plants
Speaker 4: for and also on our pets, and also on our
Speaker 4: people and also you know you name it. ACE hardware
Speaker 4: is the place they've got it. ACE is stocked up.
Speaker 4: Do you need frost blanket. Do you need faucet covers?
Speaker 4: You got the freeze meser you screw into an outdoor
Speaker 4: faucet that causes it when it gets freezing to start
Speaker 4: leaking water. Yeah, that's cool, and then when it warms
Speaker 4: up it quits. They have those. They have pipe insulation,
Speaker 4: they have the pipe wrap insulating tape. They also have
Speaker 4: anything you need for generator maintenance kits and things they
Speaker 4: can do that they can. They can get you propane
Speaker 4: for your propane tanks, you know, replace a tank or
Speaker 4: something like that. Maybe you need a fitting effix on one.
Speaker 4: They've got propane heaters out there, electric heaters, fire logs, firewood,
Speaker 4: heat lamps, duct tape, handwarmers, gloves, d iicers, and a freeze.
Speaker 4: I mean, what do you need? Do you need clamp
Speaker 4: lights to heat up a little bit? Heat lights and things?
Speaker 4: They got those. ACE is the place. Remember they say
Speaker 4: the three piece plants, pipes and pets and I'll throw
Speaker 4: people in. They've got gloves to keep your hands warm
Speaker 4: and so on at ACE Hardware. ACE Hardware is all
Speaker 4: over the place, all over the place. You can find
Speaker 4: one near you. For example, go down to Port Levaka,
Speaker 4: and they got an ACE Hardware there. Ace Hardware and
Speaker 4: Sinco Ranch that's someone out there on South Mason Road
Speaker 4: as and Senco Euvaldi As on the east side of Houston, Crosby.
Speaker 4: Ace up in Crosby, just south the Chemo there's Bake
Speaker 4: cliff Ace. I'm telling you they're everywhere. Ace Hardware. That's
Speaker 4: the place to go for everything you need for this
Speaker 4: coming freeze and certainly for caring for your plants and
Speaker 4: things as we come out of the freeze as well.
Speaker 4: I'm going to head out now on the phones. We're
Speaker 4: going to go to Nancy and Flint. Hello Nancy, Welcome
Speaker 4: to Garden Line.
Speaker 17: Jim Lloyd, Yip, I can I tell you real quick.
Speaker 17: Last time we talked to you, asked about where Flint was,
Speaker 17: and I explained, But have you ever heard of nongay onions.
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 17: I have plants up there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're you're up there between Tyler and Jacksonville kind
Speaker 4: of up that direction.
Speaker 17: Right, Yeah, Palestine and Tyler. It's come on the lake Palestine,
Speaker 17: actually late Palestine, not even really in Palestine, but anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 17: noon day. I means they're around here and they are
Speaker 17: so fabulous. I was going to ask you. We have
Speaker 17: about a three year old mimosa and it's been beautif.
Speaker 17: My husband just pointed out he didn't think that we
Speaker 17: covered it last year and it froze and it didn't
Speaker 17: anything happen. But you know, it's just a little any
Speaker 17: little one trump that goes up there and it just
Speaker 17: looks so thrill. Should we try and do that cheepy
Speaker 17: tent that you were talking about with the heat lamp.
Speaker 4: I couldn't quite hear you sound like you said, mimosa.
Speaker 4: Is that right?
Speaker 17: Yes, yes, three year old lamp mimosa?
Speaker 4: True?
Speaker 5: Okay, it's a true.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, mossa uh huh. And it's it's
Speaker 4: if it's small enough to cover like you described. Yeah,
Speaker 4: i'd throw one over it.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 4: It's going to resprout from the base even if the
Speaker 4: top got killed, and it'd come back pretty quick into
Speaker 4: a little soil or compost around the base of it.
Speaker 4: Make a little mound there, just to be extra sure.
Speaker 4: But you put a good cover over it and a
Speaker 4: little bit of heat. I don't know how you're going
Speaker 4: how cold you're going to get up there, but I
Speaker 4: bet it's in the teens for sure.
Speaker 17: Oh oh yeah, definitely. And we're right on the lake,
Speaker 17: so I mean, I've already got plants. It is frozen
Speaker 17: on my back deck and it has cut to freeze
Speaker 17: because it's really cold.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and.
Speaker 17: I thought I heard you say that you don't have
Speaker 17: to cover azilias.
Speaker 4: In general, we don't worry about it. Any plant that
Speaker 4: would be hardy once it's established is going to be
Speaker 4: less hardy if it's fairly newly planted, has an established thing.
Speaker 4: But you may get some leaf burn on them. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you may get a little bit of splitting of some
Speaker 4: trunk here and there. If the azalias are not hardened
Speaker 4: off properly. If you got some time and some extra cover,
Speaker 4: go ahead and throw one over them, you know, just
Speaker 4: give them a little extra protection. But in general, azos
Speaker 4: are pretty tough, and they grow an area is colder
Speaker 4: than us here and they do.
Speaker 17: Okay, Okay, Well, I've got tons of sheets that I've
Speaker 17: got tons of big plants that I've been using your
Speaker 17: dollar meth. They didn't pull them in the house, but
Speaker 17: it's still a lot of work with the dog. You're
Speaker 17: not But what I don't have to bring me in
Speaker 17: I've been covering. So anyway, Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Well, that's certainly.
Speaker 17: Be here. I'm gonna I'm gonna make my garden raccoon
Speaker 17: proof and they won't get my watermeltons this year.
Speaker 5: There you go, Okay, there you go.
Speaker 4: All right, that sounds like a good plan. Well you
Speaker 4: take care up there. Good luck with all that. And yeah,
Speaker 4: you can throw a cover over those as alis, especially
Speaker 4: if you want to kind of keep the leaves from
Speaker 4: getting burned back and some of the twig damage and stuff.
Speaker 4: You can do that if you want. Thank you, Nancy,
Speaker 4: appreciate the call. Thanks for listening. Tell your friends about
Speaker 4: garden Line and that they can listen online on your
Speaker 4: app like you do. All right, folks, Uh, running out
Speaker 4: of time, We're gonna run up to Bill and Galveston. Hey, Bill,
Speaker 4: welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 7: Nice.
Speaker 9: You've got two questions for you. One is I got
Speaker 9: a bunch of knockout roses down here in Gallus. Do
Speaker 9: I need to cover them?
Speaker 4: Well? If if knockouts will make it through the freeze, okay, Uh,
Speaker 4: if you've got tender new growth roses like to start
Speaker 4: growing when it's still kind of cool, And if you've
Speaker 4: got real succulent tender new growth you can throw the
Speaker 4: cover over just to keep that from getting burned back.
Speaker 4: But even if it does, a rose bush is gonna
Speaker 4: sprop back out and be okay. Uh So if you
Speaker 4: got the time and are able and got new growth,
Speaker 4: I would throw something over them just to be sure.
Speaker 9: But yeah, okay, second question, roses ay far north, I've
Speaker 9: got I've got.
Speaker 4: An orange tree. Yeah, it's too big to cover. I get.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna, you know, wrap the trunk in a blanket,
Speaker 9: but I've got to uh, you know, two lamps in
Speaker 9: it with sixty what incandescent bulbs in it?
Speaker 4: Is that gonna do any good? Or shoul I just forget? Okay,
Speaker 4: not a lot. The sixty white doesn't produce much heat,
Speaker 4: you know. Bottom line is you've got to get all
Speaker 4: the tissues of that tree warmer from the trunk on
Speaker 4: up to the outer branches, and so the covers required
Speaker 4: on that. I can suggest ways to get them covered.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know, we're kind of getting close
Speaker 4: to the time right now. But if you do, the
Speaker 4: little PVC arches over the plant from at least two directions,
Speaker 4: if not three, you can tie a cord to a tarp.
Speaker 4: The little gramits and a tarp, and with a little
Speaker 4: bit of a pole, you can literally pull that tarp
Speaker 4: all the way over a pretty good sized tree. You know,
Speaker 4: you can guide it over there. You don't have to
Speaker 4: get up on a ladder and literally be as high
Speaker 4: as the tree to pull it over and then secure
Speaker 4: it down. And anything you do like that is going
Speaker 4: to help a little bit. So I hope that, hope
Speaker 4: that helps. Okay, thanks so much. All right, good luck
Speaker 4: with that. There you go. I think I'm out of time.
Speaker 4: I think I hear music starting to play. I think
Speaker 4: garden Line's done for today. We'll be back next week.
Speaker 4: Good luck making it through this coldest spell of our
Speaker 4: winter season this year. We hope all things do well.
Speaker 4: Just remember you can garden indoors, you can garden outdoors,
Speaker 4: but have where you garden, have fun. Gardening is for fun.
Speaker 4: It's mental and physical healing and it's just fun. All right, folks,
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening in today. Glad to have you. Remember
Speaker 4: you can go to my website gardening with Skip dot com.
Speaker 4: Gardening with Skip dot Com. Lots of publications are available
Speaker 4: up there, and I'm adding more all the time. We're
Speaker 4: gonna be adding some more information just shortly here, I
Speaker 4: got a couple of publications and adopted stick up there
Speaker 4: on the website to help you I have a more
Speaker 4: boutiful garden, the more beautiful escape and we find in
Speaker 4: the glass