Speaker 1: Welcome to Katie r h Guarden line with Skip Richards, watch.
Speaker 2: Trim, just watch him as so many.
Speaker 3: Good things up brasy not a sign.
Speaker 4: Well, good morning, good Sunday morning. Glad to have you
Speaker 4: joined me first thing in the morning. You get the
Speaker 4: ardy bird award? Who'll be the early bird award on Colin?
Speaker 4: By the way, I always wonder who did first person
Speaker 4: to call in on today? By the way, while I'm
Speaker 4: thinking about it, our phone number is seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two five eight seven For I was looking
Speaker 4: outside yesterday and I have got some work to do
Speaker 4: in my garden. I made a joke that it's an
Speaker 4: old saying it's the cobblers. Kids go barefoot. In other words,
Speaker 4: a guy who makes shoes his kids don't have me
Speaker 4: shoes on. And that's true of a horticulturist garden at
Speaker 4: times as well. I've got to get out there and
Speaker 4: do some basic cleanup. I use my walkways as compost
Speaker 4: producing sites. What am I talking about? Well, in my garden,
Speaker 4: I have beds, beds of course, the walkways in between
Speaker 4: the beds, and in those walkways I put leaves you know,
Speaker 4: my neighbors put their leaves out at the curb for me.
Speaker 4: They don't know they're doing it for me, but that's
Speaker 4: what they're doing. And by the way, you pretty good
Speaker 4: driving down the street looking at bags on the side,
Speaker 4: and you can tell one that's full of sticks. You
Speaker 4: can tell one that they throw a little trash in
Speaker 4: or something. And then you can tell those nice leaf bags.
Speaker 4: You can just you learn how to do it. After
Speaker 4: you grab a few bags you wish you hadn't picked up.
Speaker 4: But anyway, I bring those home, put them in the garden,
Speaker 4: and I put a lot in the garden. I mean
Speaker 4: just a lot. Several when I was in Conroe at
Speaker 4: the Montgomery County Extension Office, we had a little garden
Speaker 4: that was about a thirty about thirty garden, and we
Speaker 4: put in one season, I'm not making this up, three
Speaker 4: hundred bags of leaves. Not at one time it'd have
Speaker 4: been ten feet deep. But you put them down the
Speaker 4: walkways and you walk on them, and what may have
Speaker 4: been I don't know. Eighteen inches of leaves sinks down
Speaker 4: to just a few inches. You add more leaves sinks down.
Speaker 4: Add more leaves thinks down. By the time you get through.
Speaker 4: You have about a foot deep compacted solid leaf material
Speaker 4: in those walkways. Every time it rains, it gets wet.
Speaker 4: When they get wet, they start to decay. My crubs
Speaker 4: are out there in nature. I mean, you don't have
Speaker 4: to add them to your leaves. But you can't. I mean,
Speaker 4: you can throw some composts on it if you want
Speaker 4: to beat it up a little bit, but that's not necessary.
Speaker 4: And those walkways sit there and then about It depends
Speaker 4: on just you know what the life schedule is doing
Speaker 4: at the moment. But I could do it. Probably harvests
Speaker 4: those walkways a couple of times a year. I generally
Speaker 4: do it about once a year, just because I don't
Speaker 4: get to it. I've had times where I went in
Speaker 4: a year and a half. I mean, there's no hurry,
Speaker 4: But those leaves break down at the top of the
Speaker 4: walkway always looks like a bunch of dead, dried leaves,
Speaker 4: not like compost. But the same is true of the
Speaker 4: forest floor. You walk in the forest and you see
Speaker 4: leaves everywhere. You're walking on these leaves, but underneath that,
Speaker 4: if you dig down, as you go down a few inches,
Speaker 4: you start to get into those chocoldly brown leaves. The
Speaker 4: English garden writers called that leaf mold, well whatever, not
Speaker 4: like bread mold, but basically what it means it's a
Speaker 4: leaf that is so crumbly if you touch it, it'll
Speaker 4: fall apart. But it looks sort of like a leaf,
Speaker 4: but it's chocolavy brown. That's kind of a leaf mold
Speaker 4: type stage. And then they just continue from there into
Speaker 4: where it just looks like coffee grounds, very very nicely
Speaker 4: decomposed compost. So pull the top leaves back and then
Speaker 4: provide a little bit of well, I have a little
Speaker 4: tiny rototailer, little Mannus type tiller that I'll run through
Speaker 4: there occasionally, just to mix things up. If you want
Speaker 4: to speed up your compost making in the walkways, you
Speaker 4: can throw a little fertilizer on the top, especially nitrogen.
Speaker 4: That's primarily what you needing to add, and then you know,
Speaker 4: rototill it in and then keep it moist and it
Speaker 4: will decompose. You know, when organic matter touches the soil
Speaker 4: and microbes get a shot at it. With some moisture,
Speaker 4: it will decompose. And so at the you know, at
Speaker 4: the end of this process, I'll pull those leaves at
Speaker 4: the top back and because they're dry, they just they're
Speaker 4: just they look like molts, not like composts. And underneath there,
Speaker 4: oh my god, it's good stuff. And you can just
Speaker 4: harvest it and put it right up in your beds,
Speaker 4: and you can make a lot of compost and walkways
Speaker 4: in a compost pile. Let's say had a four x
Speaker 4: four compost pile. Fill it up, and by the time
Speaker 4: you get through, you probably get about four to six
Speaker 4: cent mail maybe not even six, maybe four inches a
Speaker 4: compost down to the bottom. Well, that's good stop, but
Speaker 4: then you got to haul it off to the garden
Speaker 4: and start making it again. Every walkway I have in
Speaker 4: my garden's always a compost pile. And it can rain.
Speaker 4: We can get eight inches of rain, and I can
Speaker 4: walk in my garden because I'm walking on a compressed
Speaker 4: pile of about a foot deep of leaves unless I
Speaker 4: just put the pile together or just started adding leaves again,
Speaker 4: and I'll harvest a walkway and then another, and you
Speaker 4: know what a nothing you can do if you don't
Speaker 4: bring your wheelbarrow in there or a bucket, you can
Speaker 4: harvest some and take it to mix into some of
Speaker 4: your container beds. If you want a nice mixed compost.
Speaker 4: I've got a little screen that I created to go
Speaker 4: on top of the wheelbar So imagine a two by
Speaker 4: four box that sits on top of the wheelbarrow. I
Speaker 4: made mine so it looks so A couple of the
Speaker 4: sides are longer, so that holds it on top of
Speaker 4: the wheelbarrow. It doesn't sit down in there, and I
Speaker 4: just shovel compost on it, shake it and the fine
Speaker 4: stuff falls through the rest of it. Just throw it
Speaker 4: back in the walkway and I can make some fun
Speaker 4: composts that way, and it really works. It's easy. You
Speaker 4: don't turn it, you don't stick out thermometer in it.
Speaker 4: You don't have to worry about browns and greens and everything.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know you can if you want to,
Speaker 4: But if you just want who worries about browns and
Speaker 4: greens in the forest. It takes longer to make composts
Speaker 4: that way, But who's in a hurry? I mean cuts
Speaker 4: some me walkways. I don't know what to do with
Speaker 4: all the composts. Feel that wheelbarrow up. Take it out
Speaker 4: of the flower bed in front of the house where
Speaker 4: the hoa does not want you to do. What I'm
Speaker 4: describing in front out a bank sea driving by. But
Speaker 4: I make that compost now it's available for other areas.
Speaker 4: So this is the easiest way I know to compost.
Speaker 4: I'll put all kinds of things in the walkways. And
Speaker 4: one time when I was in Montgomery County at the
Speaker 4: extension office, I what do we do. I went and
Speaker 4: got some shredded newspaper, not newspaper, but bank papers, you
Speaker 4: know where They shred them up so you can't see
Speaker 4: what they are. And we put those in the walkways
Speaker 4: out at the extension office there, and you mix them in.
Speaker 4: You want to mix those in with a lot of leaves,
Speaker 4: because otherwise the wet paper turns into like oatmeal. It's
Speaker 4: kind of a mess. But if it's organic, it'll ride
Speaker 4: again dust Thou art to dust returneth I think that's
Speaker 4: how Shakespeare put it. Well, I'm gonna take a little
Speaker 4: break here. The number if you'd like to ask me
Speaker 4: a question seven one three two one two k t
Speaker 4: r H seven one three two one two k t
Speaker 4: RH will be right back. I'm gonna finish up this
Speaker 4: little discussion about walkway composting, and then we'll get on
Speaker 4: to your calls. Angelo Kingwood you're the first up. Hey,
Speaker 4: welcome back. Good to have you back on the garden line.
Speaker 4: Let's go on out to the phones here this morning.
Speaker 4: First thing, we're going to go to Angelo in Kingwood.
Speaker 5: Hey, Angelo doing today?
Speaker 4: I'm doing good? Thanks.
Speaker 6: Okay, Well, tell me about the first or second week
Speaker 6: of December. I put in some I went to the
Speaker 6: grocery store and got some raw garlic bulbs or raw garlic,
Speaker 6: and then I took the clothes apart and planted them. Okay,
Speaker 6: they have sprouted now, or they will they form into
Speaker 6: a bulb head, they.
Speaker 4: Will, will they? I didn't read what's going to happen?
Speaker 4: Go ahead.
Speaker 6: I was just going to say I did read some
Speaker 6: of the planning or the ball books that oh, no,
Speaker 6: you can't do that because they're spray. But these were raw.
Speaker 6: These weren't packaged or anything. So I'm thinking that that
Speaker 6: would be fine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that stuff you read is not accurate. That happens
Speaker 4: a lot. People get a little bit of fact and
Speaker 4: then they apply it in a way that makes it untrue.
Speaker 4: Garlic is not sprayed to make garlic is not sprayed
Speaker 4: to make it not sprout. What you have is a
Speaker 4: softnet garlic. Most likely if you bought it in the
Speaker 4: grocery store. Yeah, not, it doesn't have to be. But
Speaker 4: soft neck, they're they're mild. And what's going to happen
Speaker 4: is you want to get that garlic to grow as
Speaker 4: much as you can. So I would do small doses
Speaker 4: of nitrogen primarily and get it growing because garlic and
Speaker 4: onions both are basically you're eating leaves. The base of
Speaker 4: the leaf is the is the onion ring. The base
Speaker 4: of the leaf is the garlic bulb itself. And so
Speaker 4: the more you get that thing to grow and make
Speaker 4: a big plant, the better clothes you're going to have
Speaker 4: on your garlic. And of course there's types of garlic
Speaker 4: that have giant clothes and types that have smaller cloths
Speaker 4: and so on. But the key thing now, especially because
Speaker 4: you're kind of getting a late start, generally we plant
Speaker 4: it in the fall. Late fall is our mid fall.
Speaker 4: You can. You just want to get it growing fast
Speaker 4: to get as much out of it as you can.
Speaker 6: What do you suggest when you say nitrogen, just a
Speaker 6: mall just spray peste.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, you can go a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: There's organic, there's synthetic, there's liquid, there's salt, there's granular
Speaker 4: that is not as important. In the end, nitrogen is
Speaker 4: going to go into a form that the plants take up.
Speaker 4: Whether it has to go through microbial breakdown or whether
Speaker 4: it is a salt base that dissolves in into the soil,
Speaker 4: it's going to go into a form that the plants
Speaker 4: take up. I would just I would just give small
Speaker 4: doses of it. So when you look at the label
Speaker 4: of a fertilizer, you know you got three numbers. The
Speaker 4: first number is the one you mont the most of.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you what. I use lawn fertilizer on my
Speaker 4: leafy greens and onion in garlic, those called those alliums.
Speaker 4: I use that a lot because you know, you take
Speaker 4: a lawn fertilizer and it may have a three one
Speaker 4: two ratio like well, for example, microlife has a six
Speaker 4: two four uh. And then you know when you look
Speaker 4: at my lawn care schedule, we've got stuff from Nelson's,
Speaker 4: We've got stuff from Medina on the oil. What's the
Speaker 4: nitrophile couldn't even say nitrophis, so you get their red
Speaker 4: bag of the nitrophiles is a fifteen five ten. Those
Speaker 4: are both three one two ratios and they're mostly nitrogen,
Speaker 4: and so those would be fine. I mean, there's not
Speaker 4: a garlic fertilizer. You may see somebody. I've never seen
Speaker 4: them sold, but no.
Speaker 6: Neither of I. We used to grow up north all
Speaker 6: the time. Here's my main question. These are all in
Speaker 6: container pots. Okay, I just went around for about six
Speaker 6: per container plot. Now I haven't a red ant hill
Speaker 6: that's coming over the top of the container. Now my
Speaker 6: question to you is I'm going to try and knock that.
Speaker 6: I also wanted to put some of those red you know.
Speaker 6: I think it's called bayer where you sprinkle it over
Speaker 6: the ant hill and they disappear. Can I do that
Speaker 6: into that container? Will that affect the garlic? The spreading
Speaker 6: of the ant killer.
Speaker 4: Well, it shouldn't affect the garlic. It depends on what
Speaker 4: ant killer are These fire ants?
Speaker 6: Yes, they're the mounting kind. And I have the bayer
Speaker 6: fuck an killer ind a little sack where you just
Speaker 6: shake it and it does a great job. But I
Speaker 6: don't want it to penetrate the soil and to the garlic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I don't. Off the top of my head,
Speaker 4: I don't know what ingredient is in that product. The
Speaker 4: bear product you're talking about. I suspect it's not labeled
Speaker 4: for vegetable gardens. All most things aren't labeled for vegetable
Speaker 4: gardens that control fire ants. There is one called Come
Speaker 4: and Get It that is an organic product, spinosid based
Speaker 4: Come and Get It. It's by fertile O and that
Speaker 4: one is labeled for you some vegetable garden. So if
Speaker 4: you're worried about you know, getting something down that's going
Speaker 4: to get in your vegetables and stuff, that would be
Speaker 4: the safe way to go. And also the labeled way
Speaker 4: to go is get some come and get it, and
Speaker 4: it's a bait, so you don't have to put it
Speaker 4: just in that pot. You can sprinkle a little around
Speaker 4: the pot. They're going to find it and bring it
Speaker 4: back and it will work. Another option would be to,
Speaker 4: you know, just try to run them out, and I've
Speaker 4: done that in different ways. How big are these pots?
Speaker 6: I want to say about fifteen twenty gallon. They're just
Speaker 6: you know, your regular run of the meals pit on
Speaker 6: the patio. You know, I used to grow tomatoes. Okay,
Speaker 6: so they're not very you know, they're fine, But I
Speaker 6: just was going to sprinkle that stuff it's very popular,
Speaker 6: it's everywhere, but I just didn't want it to ruin
Speaker 6: my garlic. You know, I try it this year, see
Speaker 6: what happens. And it started to work already, the growing
Speaker 6: of the garlic, not the spring of the ant heliot.
Speaker 6: I'm going to wait until you see what I said.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, I'm pulling it up right here to see
Speaker 4: what's in that bear stuff. If I can't, it's got.
Speaker 6: A little satchel in there with perforated holes where you
Speaker 6: just you know, it'san hell and you just go over.
Speaker 6: I mean, the there ran an answer gone instantly. I
Speaker 6: usually put like a pencil, I dig a little hole
Speaker 6: into the middle of the mound and then spray it
Speaker 6: in the air. So and then I sprayed on the outside.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's not a big deal because it's really
Speaker 6: only close to like two cloves.
Speaker 7: Hmm.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, well anyway, just keep that garlic moist
Speaker 4: and continue to push it along in a container. Those
Speaker 4: are big containers you have, so I'm not as worried
Speaker 4: about it. But in smaller containers especially, you got to
Speaker 4: really watch it. They don't dry out, because anything that
Speaker 4: slows the garlic down. At this point, and planting. It
Speaker 4: is going to affect the amount of production that you
Speaker 4: get for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I got about a six inch sprig right now,
Speaker 6: maybe maybe eight or ten inches. They just came up
Speaker 6: out of the crowd. So I'm going to try, said
Speaker 6: a couple weeks, try something new. So I did. That's
Speaker 6: see what happens there.
Speaker 7: You go.
Speaker 4: Hey, that's a good idea. Let me know what that does.
Speaker 4: I'd be curious, and if you don't mind, you can
Speaker 4: even send me a picture of it. I'd like to
Speaker 4: see that. I always like to see how people are
Speaker 4: doing with various things and it works for you. Hey,
Speaker 4: thanks a lot, Tim or Angelo. Sorry, I'm getting back
Speaker 4: my next car. All right, Now, let's go to Tim
Speaker 4: and Magnolia. Hey, Tim, welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 8: Hey Skip, Hey, I had a pine tree. We had
Speaker 8: a ton of pine trees in our front yard and
Speaker 8: one of them had the pine bark beetles, and I
Speaker 8: had a tree company coming in. They cut it down
Speaker 8: and had them hauld it completely off. I could tell
Speaker 8: there's a few pine trees on the perimeter of it
Speaker 8: that just had a branch or two that I could
Speaker 8: tell was was brown, but not many, just like just
Speaker 8: a few deals. Now that they've hauled it off and
Speaker 8: I've got that, is there anything I need or can
Speaker 8: do to spray any of the remainder trees that would
Speaker 8: help in case some of those wanted to get off
Speaker 8: get onto the other trees, or just now that I've
Speaker 8: removed that, do I need to do anything else?
Speaker 4: You know, there are sprays that we've used. Some of
Speaker 4: the sprays that used to be used or off the
Speaker 4: market now for good reason. But there are sprays you
Speaker 4: can do. Here's the problem. Pine bark beetles. First of all,
Speaker 4: they like stress trees. That's what attracts them in so
Speaker 4: keeping your trees not stressed where it's within your power
Speaker 4: is number one. If you spray, the spray's got to
Speaker 4: get down in the cracks and crevices between the bark,
Speaker 4: and you need to cover. For pine most pinebert beetles,
Speaker 4: you're gonna need to go about eighty percent of the
Speaker 4: height of the tree to get make sure you got
Speaker 4: really good coverage on it. And that's just not practical.
Speaker 4: You might want to give Martin spoon Moore a call
Speaker 4: an affordable tree talk to him and ask him what
Speaker 4: he has and what he does for that if he's
Speaker 4: able to do that, or he feels like he's got
Speaker 4: some product that that's going to be effective in that Uh,
Speaker 4: that's the approach I think that I would take. In general.
Speaker 4: You know, just spraying all the time in case pine
Speaker 4: bark beetle shows up is not real practical. But in
Speaker 4: your case, where you've you know, you kind of got
Speaker 4: an active infestation nearby, I think that that might have
Speaker 4: might be worth at least looking into.
Speaker 8: Okay, all right, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: All right, you bet hey. Let me ask you a question.
Speaker 4: When when the tree got it? And when the tree
Speaker 4: got it and died? We we're up to a hard break,
Speaker 4: I got I'm sorry, I got a no, not quite yet.
Speaker 4: When the tree, when the tree uh died, Before it died,
Speaker 4: where did you see the globs of sap? Were they
Speaker 4: in the bottom ten feet? Were they all the way
Speaker 4: up the tree?
Speaker 7: Or what?
Speaker 8: They were? Pretty much all the way up? It was
Speaker 8: it was unusual. We had a tree company coming through
Speaker 8: the neighborhood and they're the one that spotted it. We
Speaker 8: have so many trees that didn't spot.
Speaker 9: But yeah, it went.
Speaker 8: It went pretty good.
Speaker 6: Show.
Speaker 8: Look at all those globs, those are pine barked beetles
Speaker 8: that's killed killed your jury. Yeah, I didn't really notice
Speaker 8: it since we have so many trees out there, but they.
Speaker 4: Were pretty much well the whole way. Yeah, okay, well
Speaker 4: there we actually have about five different beetles that bore
Speaker 4: in pine trees, and a lot of times people just
Speaker 4: call them all pine bark beetle, but there are several
Speaker 4: different ones. But uh, anyway, I'm just curious, just curious
Speaker 4: on that one. Yeah, I don't know appreciate.
Speaker 8: It, but he did show me the little things that
Speaker 8: they were in.
Speaker 4: So okay, all right, sounds good. Thanks Herbett, Thanks Tim,
Speaker 4: appreciate that call very much. Well, we're coming up here
Speaker 4: on a break if you'd like to give me a
Speaker 4: call seven one three two one two five eight seven
Speaker 4: four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Speaker 8: Owner.
Speaker 4: Remind you that we are about to enter time the
Speaker 4: lawn care season. I know it's January. Grass didn't grow
Speaker 4: in yet, but it will by the time we get
Speaker 4: into February. We're looking at any kind of a preventative
Speaker 4: for warm season weeds. You gotta get that done in February,
Speaker 4: so you don't want to delay. I would recommend that
Speaker 4: you download my lawn care schedules. One is lawn Care Schedule,
Speaker 4: the other is Lawn Pest Disease and Weed Management Schedule.
Speaker 4: Both are free and you get both of them at
Speaker 4: Gardening with Skip dot Com. All right, folks, we'll be
Speaker 4: right back. Hey, welcome back to guarden Line. Good to
Speaker 4: have you with us. How many of you remember Abba?
Speaker 10: Right?
Speaker 4: I guess most people now learn around when Abba was singing.
Speaker 4: They probably know Mama Mia from the movie. Right, that's
Speaker 4: probably the closest we get to Abba. Well, go check
Speaker 4: it out. Some interesting stuff, very different sound. But this
Speaker 4: isn't a show about music, gets a about gardening. So
Speaker 4: let's talk gardening. Hey. I was talking about taking your
Speaker 4: walkways in a garden, and this is a traditional garden,
Speaker 4: you know, where you got beds and rows and walkways
Speaker 4: between the rows and using that as your area to
Speaker 4: compost leaves and certain other kinds of organic material like
Speaker 4: grass clippings. As long as you have not sprayed the
Speaker 4: grass with a herbicide or something like that, or applied
Speaker 4: to herbicide to it, you can do that in the walkways.
Speaker 4: I would not put food scraps and things like that
Speaker 4: or otherwise the barmuts will thank you and you will
Speaker 4: not be happy with that. But anyway you can do that.
Speaker 4: The thing I want to talk about about all this
Speaker 4: is the fact that microbes are the part of the
Speaker 4: process that makes everything happen. The way I like to
Speaker 4: put its, microbes rule the world, and we are just
Speaker 4: scratching the surface of knowing some of the things that
Speaker 4: microbes do. I subscribe to certain research publications and things
Speaker 4: that always give me notification. Every day in my email box,
Speaker 4: I get some new research fact that talks about and
Speaker 4: just microbes interacting with plants, like a certain microbe makes
Speaker 4: a tomato plant more resistant to a certain disease, for example,
Speaker 4: a research on that I'm literally every day that's coming in,
Speaker 4: and that's just this tiny sliver of the microbe world
Speaker 4: and what they do. Microbes turn organic matter back into soil.
Speaker 4: We're not walking around with a mile deep stack of
Speaker 4: tree trunks everywhere from all the trees that have ever
Speaker 4: grown on that particular site over the ages, because microbes
Speaker 4: took care of that. From fungi to bacteria into my seats,
Speaker 4: you know, just all kinds of microbes and that's what
Speaker 4: happens in there. And all you're doing is enlisting them.
Speaker 4: And we enlist microbes for a lot of things in life.
Speaker 4: Do you know that you wouldn't have steak if it
Speaker 4: wasn't for microbes. I think about that. Here's why we
Speaker 4: can't digest grass. You cannot eat grass and digest it.
Speaker 4: Neither can a cow. There are complex cellulose type and
Speaker 4: well other kinds of compounds in a grass that the
Speaker 4: cow just can't digest well, but microbes can. So in
Speaker 4: a cow's series of stomachs, there's all these microbes, and
Speaker 4: the grass that goes in the front end ends up
Speaker 4: turning into cow food in the process, and so we
Speaker 4: get milk and steak and leather and all those kind
Speaker 4: of things. Thank a microbe. Beer wine would not happen
Speaker 4: if it weren't for yeasts, which are a type of
Speaker 4: microbe that is actually making that process happen. And I
Speaker 4: could go on and on and on and on and on.
Speaker 4: But even just with the plants, you have microbes working
Speaker 4: on the roots provide beneficial services that are amazing. Microbes
Speaker 4: will fungi soi microbiologies. Fungi connect roots to roots from
Speaker 4: other plants, so plants can communicate with each other. There's microbes.
Speaker 4: In fact, there's a product that contains a type of
Speaker 4: Basillis you know, you know b T. That's what we
Speaker 4: spray on leaves so that when a caterpillar eats the leaves,
Speaker 4: it kills them b T Basillis thuringiensis. Well, there is
Speaker 4: a bacillus And I'm not sneezing, I'm actually saying a word.
Speaker 4: Bacillis amala lico fecions. That's the name of it. Yep,
Speaker 4: you can be the nerd at the next garden party
Speaker 4: with that word. Bacillis amelia lico fecians connects with the
Speaker 4: root and tells the plant to do things up on
Speaker 4: top that make it more resistant to certain disease problems.
Speaker 4: That's cool. There's a lot of micro there's microbes that
Speaker 4: live in the leaves too. But anyway, my point is
Speaker 4: just it's a wonderful, amazing world out there, and the
Speaker 4: more we can enlist it, the better off we are
Speaker 4: and having success with our plants. And as research goes forward,
Speaker 4: I see our horticultural practices more and more turning toward
Speaker 4: enlisting and enhancing microbes. Just like we discovered BT, now
Speaker 4: we know what to do about caterpillars, right, that is organic.
Speaker 4: We're going to find more and more of that and
Speaker 4: less and less of here's a problem, how do I
Speaker 4: kill it? Kind of approach, the spray and kill approach.
Speaker 4: That is the direction that a lot of things are
Speaker 4: going in. And also the sprays become safer and more
Speaker 4: in some cases more effective when we use microbes. A
Speaker 4: BT is an example of that. There there is a
Speaker 4: Bacillus subtlest that is a fungle protectant that we can
Speaker 4: use out there. It's a type of bacillus that stops
Speaker 4: diseases on plants, some of the disease issues that happen
Speaker 4: on plants, and we're going to see more of that
Speaker 4: as time goes on. Well, we don't have to wait
Speaker 4: until time goes on to you know, take the benefits
Speaker 4: of microbes and put them to work for us. The
Speaker 4: folks that microlife have put together a wide range of
Speaker 4: price a wide range that basically they add microbes to
Speaker 4: the soil and they enhance microbial activity in the soil.
Speaker 4: And for example, one of the products that the folks
Speaker 4: that microlife have put together is called micro grow bioinoculant
Speaker 4: or bioinoculant. It is a granular that you put down
Speaker 4: and it has a buzzillion different kinds of microbes, just
Speaker 4: lots of different strain, sixty three different strains and bazillions
Speaker 4: of individual microbes. And they do things like that. You know,
Speaker 4: I mentioned that, Well, I didn't mention Trichoderma, that is
Speaker 4: an amazing one. I mentioned Bacillus amelo lico fashions as
Speaker 4: being a beneficial one. There's four strains of that, Bacillus
Speaker 4: amla licofasions in micro grow bioinoculant, four different strains. I'm
Speaker 4: mentioned Bysillus subtless there's ten strains of that, but I'm
Speaker 4: talking about sixty three different microbe strains in microgrow bianoculant.
Speaker 4: And you can put it in your soil. Well, it's granular,
Speaker 4: put in your soil, you mix it in, you use
Speaker 4: it in containers, anything where you want to enhance some
Speaker 4: microbial growth. That is the beneficial way to go about
Speaker 4: and doing that. And they also have micro grow liquid
Speaker 4: AF and liquid AF has eight different strains of beneficial
Speaker 4: microbes and you can spray it on the foliage. You
Speaker 4: can drench it in the soil too. You spray it
Speaker 4: on the foliage. And now you've got all these good
Speaker 4: guys on the leaves that when a bad spore lands,
Speaker 4: it's a very hostile environment and you help defend. It's
Speaker 4: not a fungicite, but it defends against fungaled attack by
Speaker 4: putting natural antagonistic organisms on the leaf. Is that cool stuff? Well,
Speaker 4: microlife is cool stuff. There's lots of different types of microlife.
Speaker 4: You can go to microlifefertilizer dot com for a full
Speaker 4: list of all the places where you can get it,
Speaker 4: as well as the products that they have. Time for
Speaker 4: me to take a break and when we get back,
Speaker 4: if you'd like to give me a call. In fact,
Speaker 4: you can call now and be ready to go. Seven
Speaker 4: one three two one two KTRH. Welcome back to guarden Line. Hey,
Speaker 4: we're having fun today talking about all kinds of things.
Speaker 4: Composting in your garden beds. Easiest way to compost that
Speaker 4: there is pim marked beetles. Talking about that and microbes
Speaker 4: are my favorite topic. By the way, what I didn't
Speaker 4: mention when I was talking about microbes, I usually this
Speaker 4: is one of the first things I say. Yeah, microbes
Speaker 4: live in us too. We have like it or not.
Speaker 4: You have a lot of microbes that are living in you.
Speaker 4: And do you know that the feel good chemical serotonin,
Speaker 4: the things that hits our brain and we feel good
Speaker 4: about that, Well, serotonin, most serotonin produced in your body
Speaker 4: is not done by you. It's done by the microbes
Speaker 4: in your intestinal tract. Yeah, that's right, So you can
Speaker 4: thank microbes when you're happy. That makes me happy to
Speaker 4: think about that. All right, enough of them, I'll stop
Speaker 4: the microbe thing. I just I can really nerd out
Speaker 4: about some of this stuff because it is amazing and cool.
Speaker 4: It is absolutely stunning. I'm saying about fungi. Well, on
Speaker 4: one little tag on, I'm taking about fungal strands that
Speaker 4: connect two plants together so that they can communicate. They've
Speaker 4: done studies where let's say you have two tomato I'm
Speaker 4: just gonna I don't know this study specifically, it is
Speaker 4: about tomatoes. Let's have two tomato plants, and you separate
Speaker 4: them so air can't move from one to the other.
Speaker 4: They're completely separated, but underground microhizel fungi can connect the
Speaker 4: two roots of the two plants. Okay, there's your telegraph
Speaker 4: line that goes from one to the other. If you
Speaker 4: want telephone line uh and insect choose on the leaf
Speaker 4: of one plant. That plant is a response to the
Speaker 4: In some cases, the saliva in like a caterpillar caterpillar's mouth,
Speaker 4: if you will, the equivalent of saliva that signals a
Speaker 4: plant to hay start making some changes to make it
Speaker 4: where caterpillars can't eat you so easily. Okay, that make
Speaker 4: it more difficult for them, or maybe maybe it's produced
Speaker 4: a toxin to the caterpillar or maybe something else. Well,
Speaker 4: in that study, the plant on the other side that
Speaker 4: had no air communicating, no other way of communicating with
Speaker 4: that plant started making the same kinds of leaf changes.
Speaker 4: So the telegraph cable between the roots, which is a
Speaker 4: fungal strand a microaizal fungal strand sent the message from
Speaker 4: one plant to another who knew before recently that that
Speaker 4: kind of thing was going on. And we just keep
Speaker 4: learning more and more. All right now, I will officially
Speaker 4: stop for now, if you'd like to give me a
Speaker 4: call and talk about something else. Seven to one three
Speaker 4: two one two five eight seven four seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two ktrh. I we're talking about garlic. Earlier,
Speaker 4: I planted some garlic In fact, I've kind of got
Speaker 4: a little allien patch in the garden. You know, I
Speaker 4: always grow onions every year. That's that's one of my
Speaker 4: favorite things to grow. I have some some multipliers like
Speaker 4: chives and shalots and things like that that will actually
Speaker 4: multiply into clumps. You plant one clove and at the
Speaker 4: end you got a bunch of green onions that you
Speaker 4: can go with. And I also put in some garlic,
Speaker 4: a couple kinds of garlic that I'm trying out to
Speaker 4: see how they do. I just love we use a
Speaker 4: lot of that in cooking, and so got a lot
Speaker 4: of it going in the garden. And every year I
Speaker 4: try to grow. And you know how I said yesterday
Speaker 4: I was talking if those of you who are listening yesterday,
Speaker 4: I talk a lot about talked a lot about what
Speaker 4: are you going to do new this year? What do
Speaker 4: you do you've never done before? Not that we always
Speaker 4: have to change things, but gardening is way bigger than
Speaker 4: what either of us, you or me are doing. There
Speaker 4: are types of gardening I've never done before. There are
Speaker 4: I have, I guess a long time ago I did
Speaker 4: a terrarium, but it's been ages since I made a terrarium.
Speaker 4: But that's a really cool kind of gardening, fun kind
Speaker 4: of indoor gardening. So even a shut in can have
Speaker 4: a nice little terrarium. And so there's types you've never
Speaker 4: done before. And I was asking, what are you gonna
Speaker 4: do different this year? What are you gonna try that's
Speaker 4: different this year? And every year I do that, and
Speaker 4: also every year I try something that maybe I try
Speaker 4: a variety that I haven't tried before. So when it
Speaker 4: comes to tomatoes, Celebrity is my old dependable variety of
Speaker 4: tomatoess been around long time. It's one of the smaller
Speaker 4: group of very few tomatoes are nematode resistant. Celebrity is
Speaker 4: and it's just an old gold standby Contender. Green bean
Speaker 4: is the green bean that I've done for years. I
Speaker 4: was talking with Joey out at a shanty gardens this
Speaker 4: past year and he was telling me about how good
Speaker 4: that Valentino green bean is. So this next spring it's
Speaker 4: going in my garden. I'm gonna try Valentino because you know,
Speaker 4: if he says it, I'm sure the case, and I'm
Speaker 4: gonna find out and see how it does. But I'll
Speaker 4: have Contender there, but also grow some Valentinos. In this case,
Speaker 4: the same thing. I'll grow celebrity, but oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: there's nine hundred different tomatoes. I could also grow what
Speaker 4: am I going to grow with the celebrities, And by
Speaker 4: doing that, I always find things that I like a
Speaker 4: little bit better. Over time, There'll be some I grow
Speaker 4: and it's like, yeah, okay, well that's fine, but nothing
Speaker 4: to write home about. And then there'll be others it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: that's cool. Maybe the look of the plant or of
Speaker 4: the fruit right now, tomatoes that are striped and weird
Speaker 4: colors and all of that, or the rave, So maybe
Speaker 4: that's it. Maybe it is the disease resistance that's good.
Speaker 4: Maybe it is, well, there's other categories of it. Right now,
Speaker 4: I'm in search of a good paste tomato. I've grown
Speaker 4: roma forever, I've grown San Marzano. I've grown a lot
Speaker 4: of different paste tomatoes. I love those because they're good
Speaker 4: for making paste and making tomato sauces, and also I
Speaker 4: like them for drying. I dry use those for drying
Speaker 4: and seasoning tomatoes, which are delicious anyway. Paste tomatoes buy
Speaker 4: and large take a long time to reach. Harvest that
Speaker 4: you can't find just like a fifty day to harvest
Speaker 4: paste tomato very easily, and so I'm always looking for
Speaker 4: faster paste tomatoes. So every year the garden gets some experimenting,
Speaker 4: and I would suggest you do that too. You probably
Speaker 4: have your favorites of different kinds of things. I'll give
Speaker 4: you one more example. Squash. There's crook neck and straight neck,
Speaker 4: and a lot of places they'll just sell you they
Speaker 4: tell you what it is. It just says this is
Speaker 4: straight next squash, this is crook neck squash, and that's
Speaker 4: all you know about it. But then they're squash varieties,
Speaker 4: and there are constant improvements being made to squash varieties,
Speaker 4: maybe diseases, maybe productivity, and really excellent options there when
Speaker 4: it comes to what are the best varieties, And I've
Speaker 4: discovered some really new well over the years, I've discovered
Speaker 4: as they became a new option, squash varieties that were
Speaker 4: just absolutely beyond anything that I had tried growing before.
Speaker 4: Same thing with broccoli and other things. And the same
Speaker 4: thing would be true with flowers. You know, there's new
Speaker 4: species coming along, there's improvements on species. Maybe you know zenias.
Speaker 4: Zenias get all waist high and we'd use them as
Speaker 4: cut flowers. Right then they began breeding zenias and now
Speaker 4: they're a little mounded bedding plants. So it looked like
Speaker 4: a little meatballs covered with zenia flowers out there all
Speaker 4: in the garden. We have a lot of options on
Speaker 4: these things, and continue to try, continue to experiment, try
Speaker 4: something new. If you like some suggestions on things, oh,
Speaker 4: we can talk about some of that, but anyway, try
Speaker 4: something new. I think you find something that you really love.
Speaker 4: I really want to encourage you to do that. It
Speaker 4: doesn't just have to be vegetables. It doesn't have to
Speaker 4: be vegetables flowers. How about herbs. Have you ever thought
Speaker 4: about growing some herbs that you don't currently grow? All right, well,
Speaker 4: I'll tell you this. Chives are super super easy. Just
Speaker 4: don't let them go to seed or your whole garden
Speaker 4: bed will turned into a chia pet. Chives are easy,
Speaker 4: easy to grow. Rosemary very drought tolerant. Rosemary is easy
Speaker 4: to grow as long as you don't put in a
Speaker 4: spot that is soggy wet black clay soil. Soggy wet,
Speaker 4: wet rosemary didn't like that, but it's very very easy
Speaker 4: to grow. That'd be another example. A regano for a groundcot.
Speaker 4: Why not try that, Hi, folks, I'll be right about.
Speaker 1: Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with skin grict.
Speaker 3: It's just watch him as the world golden. Yea, the
Speaker 3: sea botts double again, not a sign.
Speaker 4: All right, all right, let's do this. Let's do some
Speaker 4: gardening today. We're going to garden from inside. In other words,
Speaker 4: I'm a garden from this chair I'm sitting in right now.
Speaker 4: If you are indoors, relaxing, enjoying a cup of coffee,
Speaker 4: trying to get that first eye open, Welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 4: We're glad to have you with us. If you'd like
Speaker 4: to give me a call with some gardening questions. Seven
Speaker 4: one three two one two k t r H seven
Speaker 4: one three two one two k t r H. You know,
Speaker 4: spring fever hits like a load of bricks when it
Speaker 4: comes to us gardeners. All of a sudden, as you know,
Speaker 4: the weather begins to break a little bit, we just
Speaker 4: start getting the itch to go outside and do something cool.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 4: The garden centers start to load up with all kinds
Speaker 4: of beautiful plants, and it's just my favorite time of
Speaker 4: the year. I wish I could take spring fever and
Speaker 4: put it in the fall, because that equally, if not better,
Speaker 4: is a time to be doing planting and improvements and
Speaker 4: things to the garden. But boy, here we go. Spring
Speaker 4: is here. And I was looking around. You know, I
Speaker 4: drive through town a lot of times. I will actually
Speaker 4: take a root where I just go downside streets just
Speaker 4: because I like to see people's yards and houses and
Speaker 4: things and what they do. You run into some pretty
Speaker 4: interesting stuff that way. And landscapes are buying large a
Speaker 4: little on the bleak side right now. You know, it's winter.
Speaker 4: The grass is not that great looking. Some people don't
Speaker 4: even rake the leaves off yet, and it's just kind
Speaker 4: of bleak. And I think about what could be done,
Speaker 4: you know, what would it look like. And when you
Speaker 4: think about things like a well manicured lawn that is beautiful,
Speaker 4: when you think about beautiful shrubs, think about landscapes that
Speaker 4: bloom throughout the year. You know, you've got your spring
Speaker 4: bloomers like azalea's primarily, or spring bloomers or some ever
Speaker 4: repeat blooming types now, and then you got your fall bloomers,
Speaker 4: things that bloom just in the fall. And then there's
Speaker 4: things that bloom just in summer and you're designing those
Speaker 4: landscapes and you're creating that beauty. And then there's the
Speaker 4: hard scapes. And hard scapes is one of the things
Speaker 4: that I think are underutilized in our landscapes. I love grass,
Speaker 4: I love walking through the grass and every other type
Speaker 4: of plant out there in the landscape. But boy, when
Speaker 4: you create a gorgeous patio that it takes Basically what
Speaker 4: it does is it extends your home outdoors. You just
Speaker 4: now you have a new room that's outside in the
Speaker 4: fresh air, in the sunshine, where you can smell fragrances
Speaker 4: of plants and all kinds of things like that. Go
Speaker 4: out and sit in the evenings and maybe have a
Speaker 4: fire table something along those lines. Well, I tell you
Speaker 4: Purece Scapes is they are the best I know at
Speaker 4: doing that. It is outstanding. And I would ask you this.
Speaker 4: I can sit here and describe stuff to you, but
Speaker 4: that just doesn't cut it. Go to their website. It's
Speaker 4: Peerscapes dot com. Puerscapes dot com and when you go there,
Speaker 4: you are going to see amazing things. And one of
Speaker 4: the amazing things that most landscapes don't have is quality
Speaker 4: landscape lighting. It may be shining up on your home.
Speaker 4: It may be shining up on a pergola. It may
Speaker 4: be along steps so people can see as they walk,
Speaker 4: or you know that you don't stumble and things do that.
Speaker 4: Water features like a little waterfall or a fountain of
Speaker 4: some type, and a landscape. Peerscapes can do all of
Speaker 4: that and really they basically just do it all. Do
Speaker 4: you need it done? Yeah, they probably do that. You know,
Speaker 4: they do quarterly maintenance if you want them to come
Speaker 4: in and just ever quarter, come in. Spruce up your flowerbeds,
Speaker 4: get them looking good, put new flowers in every quarter
Speaker 4: if you want them that often. Uh, you know, pull
Speaker 4: any weeds, molts, make sure everything's in good shape. Checks
Speaker 4: the irrigation. They do irrigation work. They do landscape drainage.
Speaker 4: I've got an area that is poorly drained and that's
Speaker 4: one of the next projects coming up is to get
Speaker 4: that taken care of. Pirescapes dot com is a website.
Speaker 4: Go there, look at the pictures, check out what they
Speaker 4: can do. Give them a call, let them come out
Speaker 4: and do a bid for you. Bring them some pictures in,
Speaker 4: sit down, talk to the designers. You can do anything
Speaker 4: from a small job to a complete revamp of the
Speaker 4: whole place and make it look like the taj Mahal.
Speaker 4: Although I don't know what the landscape looks like around
Speaker 4: the taj Mahll, you just always see the building. Anyway,
Speaker 4: they can make your place look good. Prescapes dot Com
Speaker 4: go check it out just for fun. Check that out.
Speaker 4: You are listening to Gardenline. I'm your host, Skip Richter,
Speaker 4: and we're here to answer your gardening questions. And the
Speaker 4: way I like to put it is, we are here.
Speaker 4: We are here to help you have a more bountiful garden,
Speaker 4: a more beautiful landscape, and more fun in the process.
Speaker 4: That's what we want to happen. If we can give
Speaker 4: you some tips, if you can help you diagnose, we
Speaker 4: can help you identify something. We love to do, all
Speaker 4: of those kinds of things. I have been in gardening
Speaker 4: and horticulture my whole life. When I was a kid,
Speaker 4: we had a garden and worked in the garden mode,
Speaker 4: the yard, all that kind of thing. And then I
Speaker 4: entered a m in the horticulture department back in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy eight and got my degree. Actually the horticulture started
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty three, got my degree and began to
Speaker 4: work for Agrolife Extension. I worked in Missouri for three
Speaker 4: years prior to coming back to Texas and working Extension
Speaker 4: for thirty five more years. And anyway, I love this
Speaker 4: stuff and it is fun. I loved learning, and gardening
Speaker 4: gives you a chance to learn every single day. You know,
Speaker 4: after hearing I don't know how many questions I feelded
Speaker 4: over thirty five years now in horticalulture, a bazillion, and
Speaker 4: it never fails. I get new questions. I've never heard
Speaker 4: that one before. And that's just how broad and wonderful.
Speaker 4: The world of gardening is never a dull moment. At
Speaker 4: least there generally isn't. I've talked to you before about
Speaker 4: ACE Hardware Stores, and you know ACE is everywhere. There's
Speaker 4: dozens of stores here in the Greater Houston area, and
Speaker 4: ACE is a place where you get whatever you need.
Speaker 4: Right now, we just got through putting up our Christmas stuff,
Speaker 4: getting it all stored. Do you need boxes for things
Speaker 4: like that, organize it, make it a little neater and whatnot.
Speaker 4: When you get ready to do this again next year
Speaker 4: or in twenty twenty five at the end of the year,
Speaker 4: they've got that do you want to get your garage
Speaker 4: in order. Maybe you need shelving units. I've been that
Speaker 4: is a project I've been working on for a long time.
Speaker 4: Shelving is ACE has got that for you as well.
Speaker 4: Do you need perhaps a fire pit from Brio or
Speaker 4: solo stove, They've got those. Do you need some fire
Speaker 4: you know I'm gonna have some cool weather coming up.
Speaker 4: We got a little break here, but it's coming back.
Speaker 4: Get your firewood, get stocked up. Maybe you need your
Speaker 4: propane tank refilled. We almost went outside and grilled last night,
Speaker 4: thought real seriously about it. Well, they've got exchangeable propane
Speaker 4: canisters as well. If you'd like to do that. You
Speaker 4: want to sign up for the ACE Rewards program. That
Speaker 4: is a great way to receive discounts. I'll tell you
Speaker 4: about special offers. I've been an ACE Rewards member for
Speaker 4: a long time and the only ACE Rewards customers receiving
Speaker 4: these email directly to you. And you got to do that.
Speaker 4: You get more bang for your buck that way. Stocking
Speaker 4: up on all kinds of things from light bulbs to
Speaker 4: batteries to whatever you need. ACE has got it now.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of ACE stores around. You got into Rockport, Texas.
Speaker 4: By the way, anybody listening downe in Rockport, welcome to
Speaker 4: garden Line, Wharton Feed and Ace Wharton Feed and Ace
Speaker 4: Base City Ace Hardware. And then we got a couple
Speaker 4: of K and m Ace hardwares won in Kingwood, winning
Speaker 4: a Tesca seen it. Those are just examples are the many,
Speaker 4: many Ace hardware stores in the Greater Houston area. Time
Speaker 4: for me to take a break and we will be
Speaker 4: right back with your calls. All right, welcome back, Welcome
Speaker 4: back to Guardline. Hey, if you'd like to give me
Speaker 4: a call, we got open lines. Happy to visit with
Speaker 4: you about the things that you're interested in. Seven one
Speaker 4: three two one two kt r H seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two k t RH. I want to talk
Speaker 4: a little bit about fruit, trees, vines and bushes. Fruit trees,
Speaker 4: vines and bushes. There are a lot of different kinds
Speaker 4: of fruit that you can grow down here in the
Speaker 4: Greater Houston area. You know, wherever you live in the country,
Speaker 4: there are types of fruits you can grow and types
Speaker 4: you can't grow. And we're fortunate here to have a
Speaker 4: wide range of types of fruit. We can grow. The
Speaker 4: deciduous fruit like apples, and pears and peaches and plums
Speaker 4: for example, that we can grow those here. We can
Speaker 4: grow things like upon gran It's actually they're a little
Speaker 4: bit of a challenge in the rainy seasoned fruit. Rots
Speaker 4: can be a little bit of a challenge, but that
Speaker 4: you know, we can grow them here. We can grow
Speaker 4: for summons here. That's another deciduous fruit, beautiful ornamental fruit
Speaker 4: that you can grow. And then there's the tropicals, the
Speaker 4: things like well, let's just do the citrus. For example,
Speaker 4: among the most hardy citrus that we have are satsuma oranges,
Speaker 4: which is a mandarin type orange or baggy loose skin.
Speaker 4: And the cumquats and cumquats have extreme ability to withstand
Speaker 4: cold weather, I mean down into the upper teens and
Speaker 4: established kumquat can that those we're eating primmorphous skin, you know,
Speaker 4: marmalade and whatnot. But they also have wonderful fragrance, as
Speaker 4: do mini citrus when they bloom. It is heavenly just
Speaker 4: to smell the fragrance of the blooms. Then we have
Speaker 4: many other kinds of citrus, you know, there's oranges of course,
Speaker 4: and lemons and limes and whatnot, and we can grow
Speaker 4: those here. Some require a little bit of protection. Some
Speaker 4: are more cold tender than others. But we can grow
Speaker 4: all of that kind of thing here. There's things like blueberries.
Speaker 4: Blueberries like acidic soil and high quality water. They do
Speaker 4: not put up with water with a lot of sodium
Speaker 4: in it. So those of you in areas you know,
Speaker 4: like Brian colors station high sodium levels in the soil
Speaker 4: in the water, it's hard to It's hard to grow blueberries.
Speaker 4: In fact, if not almost impossible to grow blueberries unless
Speaker 4: you use rain water. There but a lot of East Texas,
Speaker 4: Southeast Texas, parts of Southeast Texas are naturally acidic and
Speaker 4: have good quality water, and you can grow blueberries. There's
Speaker 4: rabbit eye blueberries and Southern high bush blueberries. The Southern
Speaker 4: high bush is a little bit bigger berry. The rabbit
Speaker 4: eye starts off kind of a pink color, like a
Speaker 4: albino rabbit's eye. That's where it gets its name and
Speaker 4: then turns to blue. Both of those are good quality
Speaker 4: berries that you can grow in our area. There are
Speaker 4: things like blackberries and strawberries that do well here. Raspberries
Speaker 4: not so much. There's some that you can get by
Speaker 4: with get a few berries off of, but not in
Speaker 4: the level of production that you might if you're further north.
Speaker 4: In general with the raspberries, but people are always trying
Speaker 4: to grow things that are hard to grow here. I
Speaker 4: know people that grow dragon fruit and that that is
Speaker 4: a cool tropical fruit. I know somebody that grows mangoes
Speaker 4: and yet to go to Great Links because they will
Speaker 4: not tolerate a good hard freeze, and so you've got
Speaker 4: to be ready to protect those. But anyway, avocados there's
Speaker 4: another one, and we have some pretty hardy avocados. Actually,
Speaker 4: for those of you, especially in the southern part of
Speaker 4: the listening area, avocados are a viable option. You just
Speaker 4: tolerate the fact that occasionally we're gonna have one of
Speaker 4: those freezes that knock some way back and they'll regrow.
Speaker 4: But that's just part of the deal. I think that
Speaker 4: we ought to grow more grapes, and you know we have.
Speaker 4: We have different kinds of grapes here in southeast in fact,
Speaker 4: most of the south east Stern portion of Texas. I
Speaker 4: don't mean just Southeast Texas. I mean, you know, all
Speaker 4: the way over to San Antonio and in southeast from there,
Speaker 4: we have a disease called East and southeast. From there,
Speaker 4: we have a disease called Pierce's disease that flat kills grapes.
Speaker 4: It kills them outright, and so you have to choose
Speaker 4: certain grapes that are resistant to Pierce's disease. So there
Speaker 4: is a white grape called Blanc du bois the L
Speaker 4: A N C du and then bois is boi s yep,
Speaker 4: Welcome to caden Land. Blanc dubois is a white grape
Speaker 4: that makes a nice little wine. It's a small grape,
Speaker 4: not a fresh eating grape, particularly CD. Then we have
Speaker 4: one called Southern Sensation and another one called Victoria Red.
Speaker 4: Victoria Red is a nice long cluster grape got its
Speaker 4: name from Victoria Tech. It didn't originate there, but I
Speaker 4: believe it's an Arkansas breeding line. But it's a good one,
Speaker 4: a good one. But a Southern Sensation seedless is seedless,
Speaker 4: and it is probably If someone says I want one
Speaker 4: table grape, I would probably point them at Southern Sensation
Speaker 4: seedless or Victoria Red. Either those or good options. Amazing grapes.
Speaker 4: Can you imagine putting an arbor out in the yard,
Speaker 4: maybe over a patio, and having grapes overhead that hang
Speaker 4: down that you can harvest from. Now, keep in mind
Speaker 4: that anytime you have a fruiting, deciduous and deciduous plant,
Speaker 4: you're gonna have a mess. The leaves are gonna fall
Speaker 4: on the patio, of course, and you're gonna have to
Speaker 4: With grapes, you do need to spray them. The disease
Speaker 4: pressures here are significant, and so you can try to
Speaker 4: use some organic options, but not quite adequate to really
Speaker 4: give you full protection and protect the crop. But I
Speaker 4: think that's a really cool thing to do. There's old
Speaker 4: time grapes. There's one called Champannel. There's one called black
Speaker 4: Spanish also called then. Why it looks like it's spelled
Speaker 4: lean or l E n R E, I believe is
Speaker 4: how they spell it. Anyway, those are old time grapes.
Speaker 4: They're tough, they survive despite the issues I've been talking about,
Speaker 4: but they're not the highest quality. And then there's muscadines,
Speaker 4: and muscadines are super cool. Muscadine is a Southern grape.
Speaker 4: It's a I guess I would say it's not a
Speaker 4: true grape, but it is a grape. But it's different
Speaker 4: than the vanifera grapes. The kind that every grape you
Speaker 4: buy in the supermarket, just about every grape juice you buy,
Speaker 4: every wine you buy. Those are typically the vanifera grapes
Speaker 4: or hybrids, but the muscadine is a little different structurally.
Speaker 4: It's a little different too, make small clusters of very
Speaker 4: big berries and they may not ripen the whole cluster
Speaker 4: at a time. But there are some new ones. Well,
Speaker 4: there's a new program that a new research project going
Speaker 4: on Texas and am Agrolife is involved in it. As
Speaker 4: is the University of Arkansas, the University of Georgia, and
Speaker 4: several other institutions. And here is the goal of it,
Speaker 4: improving the muscadine grape. You know, muscadines are one of
Speaker 4: thirteen species of grapes that are native to Texas. Did
Speaker 4: you know that Texas has more native grapes than any place,
Speaker 4: the more species of native different species of native grapes
Speaker 4: in any place, thirteen to be specific, and excuse me. Muscadines.
Speaker 4: The native muscadine has been improved through breeding and selection.
Speaker 4: And you know, over one hundred years of breeding, they
Speaker 4: now have even developed a seedless muscadine, which is amazing.
Speaker 4: They have a very tough, leathery skin. But the flavor
Speaker 4: is unique, but it's great. It's different than the typical
Speaker 4: grape flavor. They throw in hot, humid areas. Welcome to
Speaker 4: Houston muscadine. And they also are pretty tolerant of a
Speaker 4: lot of disease and pest issues, so as well as
Speaker 4: some decent drought tolerance too. Now they grow rampantly and
Speaker 4: they require some pretty judicious and regular attention to the pruning,
Speaker 4: but they are really amazing. Now this project is developing
Speaker 4: varieties of muscadines for both the fresh market eating that's
Speaker 4: seedless muscadine, and the wine market as well. There's gonna
Speaker 4: be like thirty different viticulturists, which is grape specialists. There's
Speaker 4: gonna be great breeders and even food scientists that are
Speaker 4: involved in this project. And the goal is to support
Speaker 4: grape growers in propagating new seedless muscadine selections for trials
Speaker 4: all the way across the southeastern US. They'll seek to
Speaker 4: cross breed muscadines with Vitis vinifera, the common grape. When
Speaker 4: you say grapes and you picture grapes, unless you grew
Speaker 4: up East Texas, you know eating grapes off the trees,
Speaker 4: the travines on the trees grapes is Vias benifita. They're
Speaker 4: going to cross these two and come up with additional options,
Speaker 4: and future generations are going to really enjoy the benefits
Speaker 4: of this program. I mean, high quality, climate resilient cultivars
Speaker 4: for fresh market and wine production. And that's all part
Speaker 4: of the Muscadine improvement projects funded by USDA, and I'm
Speaker 4: excited about it. These things take time, you know, it'd
Speaker 4: be a while before we see the benefits of it.
Speaker 4: But what a great idea, you know, as we look
Speaker 4: for more resilient plants, plants that can survive, plants that
Speaker 4: do well with less sprays and so on, that's a
Speaker 4: great kind of project that we need to do well.
Speaker 4: I've talked to you before about Medina products, and Medina's
Speaker 4: been around for a very long time. In fact, when
Speaker 4: Garden Line wasn't even garden Mine, back in the Dewey
Speaker 4: Compton days, Medina was a sponsor of the show and
Speaker 4: has been ever since. And gardeners have long learned about
Speaker 4: Medina and love Medina products and use Medina products. Medina
Speaker 4: excuse me, Medina soil activator is one of the originals
Speaker 4: and it is a very popular product. Well, the folks
Speaker 4: at Medina while back, they took Medina sool activator. They
Speaker 4: took their humic and fulvic acids. Those are natural acids
Speaker 4: from the final stage of a compost decomposition that are
Speaker 4: incredibly beneficial in the soil. And they also took seaweed
Speaker 4: and combined it with a fertilizer that is six twelve
Speaker 4: six six percent nitrogen, twelve percent phosphorus, six percent potassium.
Speaker 4: So you got all that combined in one product to
Speaker 4: stimulate biological activity in the soil and to promote blooming
Speaker 4: and fruiting in the plant. And so with Medina has
Speaker 4: to grow plant six twelve six, there's other has to
Speaker 4: grows has to grow plant six twelve six. You are
Speaker 4: going to get the ability to use it as a
Speaker 4: folier feed. It will not burn you and I get
Speaker 4: salt built up, chemical build up, It'll add to the
Speaker 4: biological activity and the soil. Increase the biological activity in
Speaker 4: the soil, and you can use this as a drench
Speaker 4: for new transplants. It's got that higher percent phosphorus the
Speaker 4: middle number which is important for root development. So you
Speaker 4: use has to grow six twelve six. Anytime you're going
Speaker 4: to plan a plant and you're going to see better success,
Speaker 4: what you do is you I do it. Sometimes I'll
Speaker 4: just take a container of it, you know, make a
Speaker 4: gallon more, set the plants in the container and let
Speaker 4: the root ball soak it up, and then plan them.
Speaker 4: Sometimes I'll just plan them and before I fully fill
Speaker 4: the hole with soil, I'll just drench. I'm really good
Speaker 4: with it. You can do that a couple more times
Speaker 4: after planning, about a week apart, just to give it
Speaker 4: the best chance it can to get started. With medinas,
Speaker 4: it's a has to grow six twelve six. Medina has
Speaker 4: to grow six twelve six. I was talking about fruit.
Speaker 4: It is important when you're going to grow fruit to
Speaker 4: learn about that fruit and get the information you need.
Speaker 4: And if you go to the Aggie Horticulture website, it's
Speaker 4: Aggie dash Horticulture dot TAMU dot edu. I know you
Speaker 4: wrote that down. I know you didn't, So just go
Speaker 4: to Aggie Horticulture search for that on there. There's a
Speaker 4: fruit and not section on the front page. Click on
Speaker 4: that and you will get publications on everything from avocados
Speaker 4: to you name it that's there, and it tells you
Speaker 4: do you need two varieties for cross pollination? Some fruit
Speaker 4: do some fruit don't. Does it need acidic soil? How
Speaker 4: do you prune it? How do you plant it? What
Speaker 4: are some varieties to grow in my part of Texas?
Speaker 4: It's all there and it's free. So before you plant
Speaker 4: any fruit, grab some of those free publications and just
Speaker 4: peruse them and get up to speed on it, and
Speaker 4: you'll be glad you did that. Way, you won't call
Speaker 4: me in three years going why is my fruit not
Speaker 4: fruiting because I needed a pollinator? All right, we're going
Speaker 4: to take a break. I'll be right back. Hey, welcome
Speaker 4: back to garden Line. Glad to have you with us
Speaker 4: this morning. Let's talk gardening. Of questions you have, give
Speaker 4: me a call. Seven one three two one two k
Speaker 4: t r H seven one three two one two k
Speaker 4: t RH Southwest Fertilizer is a place that I talk
Speaker 4: about all the time because I love to go there.
Speaker 4: Number One, when you walk in, they treat you right
Speaker 4: the everybody you know, they greet you, they ask how
Speaker 4: they can help, and when you ask a question, they
Speaker 4: know the answer to it. I mean, they take you
Speaker 4: right to the product. They explain it toay how to
Speaker 4: do it. You could walk in and just you know,
Speaker 4: say hey, I've got here's a bug in a jar.
Speaker 4: You know what is this and how do I get
Speaker 4: rid of it? Or maybe you've got a weed that
Speaker 4: you're bringing in and you want know what to do
Speaker 4: about that, or or print out my schedules, both of them,
Speaker 4: the law care schedule, print out the pest disease and
Speaker 4: weed management schedule, and walk in there and say I
Speaker 4: need this thing, and they're going to have it. There
Speaker 4: is nothing I talk about on the garden line that
Speaker 4: Bob doesn't carry, and he carries a lot more. In
Speaker 4: addition to all of that, they kind of pride themselves
Speaker 4: in having everything that you need for your garden and
Speaker 4: your lawn and your landscape and your house plants for
Speaker 4: that matter. You find tools there. You're going to find
Speaker 4: fertilizers there, things to control weeds, things to control pests
Speaker 4: and diseases, anything you need. If you're looking at enhancing
Speaker 4: the growth of a plant, they are going to have
Speaker 4: a wide range of products. If you're looking organic, they've
Speaker 4: got it. They've got the best selection of organic products,
Speaker 4: the widest selection of any place in town. That's just
Speaker 4: what they do. The way I like to put it
Speaker 4: is if Southwest doesn't have it, you don't need it.
Speaker 4: And that's true, it really is. That's why I like
Speaker 4: going in there because every time I go in, you know,
Speaker 4: see Bob, hey, what's up, what's new? You know what
Speaker 4: we got here? And just seeing all the things on
Speaker 4: the market because there's always new stuff coming out and
Speaker 4: we talk about them. You can take samples in, you
Speaker 4: can have them put a pair of eyes on it,
Speaker 4: as they like to say, see what it is and
Speaker 4: see how they can help you. That is the reason
Speaker 4: that it is such a helpful place. The one stop
Speaker 4: shop in Southwest Houston, corner of Bisnett and Renwick. Southwest
Speaker 4: Fertilizer dot com. That's the website, Southwest Fertilizer dot com.
Speaker 4: Corner of Byssinet and Renwick. I don't care where you
Speaker 4: live in this whole region, it's worth the drive in
Speaker 4: when you're looking for a place where you can get
Speaker 4: anything that you need and everything that you need. You
Speaker 4: are listening to Garden Line and our phone number here
Speaker 4: if you'd like to give us call a seven to
Speaker 4: one three two one two k t R H seven
Speaker 4: one three two one two K T R. H. I
Speaker 4: was talking about fruit trees and the importance of getting
Speaker 4: good information before you plan. Remember this that with the
Speaker 4: exception I guess of Mayhaw's, which is a native apple
Speaker 4: like fruit that grows out in the woods in East Texas.
Speaker 4: With the exception of that, fruit trees want really good drainage.
Speaker 4: Mayhaws can put up with some swampy stuff, but in general,
Speaker 4: you want good drainage. Probably the most important thing when
Speaker 4: it comes to fruit tree success is sunlight. And it's
Speaker 4: because why do you grow fruit? Because you get you
Speaker 4: want to eat the fruit right, and the fruit is sweet.
Speaker 4: And what is sweet? That's a carbohydrate. Sugar is a carbohydrate.
Speaker 4: And how do you get carbohydrates Sunshine on the leaves.
Speaker 4: So if you grow a peach tree in half the
Speaker 4: sun that it really would like to have, you're going
Speaker 4: to have much less production. And the production you have
Speaker 4: is going to be let's use a big word, insipid.
Speaker 4: You put it in your mouth, not that great to eat. Well,
Speaker 4: why not put it in the sun and have success.
Speaker 4: That's why you're growing fruit. So find the sunniest spots
Speaker 4: you have for your fruit trees. Fruit trees, vines, and bushes.
Speaker 4: SAME's true with grapes, same is true blueberries, SAME's true
Speaker 4: with strawberries, and you can have success and so good
Speaker 4: sunlight and good drainage are like. That's first. Good soil
Speaker 4: quality is especially important as we get into things like blueberries.
Speaker 4: That have a very good opinion about that. So do blackberries.
Speaker 4: By the way, you take blackberries and put them in
Speaker 4: a high pH sticky black clay soil, well like we
Speaker 4: have predominantly in this region, and they are not going
Speaker 4: to perform well. They're going to get chlorotic, which means
Speaker 4: the new growth is kind of yellowy white instead of
Speaker 4: nice green as it comes out. If you have to,
Speaker 4: and I've done this before, you can make a raised bedbox.
Speaker 4: You can put some good sandy loam soils in it.
Speaker 4: You add compost into the soil and whatnot, and plant
Speaker 4: your strawberries and plant your blackberries in that. If you've
Speaker 4: got crimy soil that's boggy and whatever, black clay, gouey,
Speaker 4: do that before you plant blackberries and strawberries. For sure.
Speaker 4: Figs can put up with that. Figs can. We used
Speaker 4: to have a huge fig industry here on the Gulf
Speaker 4: coast years ago. They can put up with these rice
Speaker 4: paddy soils that we have in some parts, but for
Speaker 4: the rest of them, take care of those, I mean,
Speaker 4: and then look and see if you need another variety
Speaker 4: for cross pollination. That's very important. And you know what,
Speaker 4: just go to a good quality nursery. I talk about
Speaker 4: our independent garden centers all the time and how fortunate
Speaker 4: we are have so many good ones here in the
Speaker 4: Houston area. If you live north, south, east, west, or central,
Speaker 4: there is a good garden center near you, and go
Speaker 4: to those. Because a lot of places that sell hammers
Speaker 4: and plants, lumber and plants, jewelry and plants, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, the jewelry counter at Walmart or someplace
Speaker 4: like that. The folks in the garden center, they just
Speaker 4: likely don't know. It would be an exception to find
Speaker 4: somebody that knows what they're doing there. And typically the
Speaker 4: things that are shipped in are done kind of on
Speaker 4: a national basis or regional basis, and they may not
Speaker 4: be the best things to grow here. Drives me nuts.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to say that specific name of the place,
Speaker 4: but you can kind of figure out based on what
Speaker 4: I've already said. Was in one of those kind of stores,
Speaker 4: and they had black cap raspberries, and they had concord grapes,
Speaker 4: the kind that they make Welch's Grape juice out of
Speaker 4: and Mogan David wine out of. Well, they won't grow here,
Speaker 4: they shouldn't be sold here. But you go to an
Speaker 4: independent garden center and not only are they going to
Speaker 4: carry the things that should be sold, but when you
Speaker 4: go up and go, well, does this plumb tree need
Speaker 4: a pollinator? Or they would just told you in the
Speaker 4: first place, and here's a good one, but you're going
Speaker 4: to need this one over here to pollinate it, for example,
Speaker 4: or no, you don't need a pollinator for that one.
Speaker 4: Get that good information that is worth something. And then
Speaker 4: when you have any issues or questions from the time
Speaker 4: you plan it, like how do I do this to
Speaker 4: something's going wrong or I have a question about this,
Speaker 4: you can go back in there and they'll help you.
Speaker 4: I'm telling you that is worth it. It is well
Speaker 4: worth it to restrict your shopping to places that know
Speaker 4: what they're talking about. All right, that's a soapbox complaining
Speaker 4: about it, But you know what I'm talking about. A
Speaker 4: time for me to take another little break here. When
Speaker 4: we come back, if you would like to give us
Speaker 4: a call, be first up on the board seven one
Speaker 4: three two one two kat R eight seven one three
Speaker 4: two into kt R H. All right, welcome back to
Speaker 4: the garden line. We are today is a day where
Speaker 4: I'm getting an opportunity to talk a lot about some
Speaker 4: specific things, you know, kind of go more in depth.
Speaker 4: And when the when the spring flood hits, I got
Speaker 4: to move fast, but I have a little more time.
Speaker 4: I actually enjoy this, so good to visit. I hope
Speaker 4: you're enjoying it, by the way, hopefully you are.
Speaker 10: Uh.
Speaker 4: Just the more we learn about gardening, the better we
Speaker 4: get it to be as gardener as the more success
Speaker 4: that we have. I like to say there's no such
Speaker 4: thing as a brown thumb, And what I mean is
Speaker 4: we have not brown thumbs. We have an uninformed thumb.
Speaker 4: And when your thumb gets informed, you suddenly start to
Speaker 4: grow things, and that thumb starts looking a little greener.
Speaker 4: If you know what I'm talking about. Think about it
Speaker 4: that way. Do not feel like you cannot grow stuff.
Speaker 4: Don't stop it. Don't do that. You give me a call.
Speaker 4: You go to the website, check out the I put
Speaker 4: up there to help you have success. You go to
Speaker 4: places like the Aggy Horticulture website and learn and learn
Speaker 4: and learn, become part of a garden club, or go
Speaker 4: through a master gardening program. You know, we have master
Speaker 4: gardening programs all through the Greater Houston area. They have
Speaker 4: them in Harris County, They're in Montgomery County. There's some
Speaker 4: up in Brass County con College Station Bryan there down
Speaker 4: in Fort Ben County. There's one in Brazoria County. There's
Speaker 4: one named Galveston County. There's one out in Orange too.
Speaker 4: I believe I think they still have one going on
Speaker 4: out there, and I'm probably forgetting one. Who am I forgetting?
Speaker 4: You know, you start making a list, you forget somebody.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of master gardening programs. Let me just
Speaker 4: tell you about that for just a little bit. Master
Speaker 4: Gardening is an intense gardening course. It is not for
Speaker 4: the faint of heart. In other words, if you're just
Speaker 4: kind of curious about seeing pretty pictures and whatnot. Not
Speaker 4: only that, Master Gardening is a volunteer training program done
Speaker 4: by Agra Life Extension Service out of Texa and im University.
Speaker 4: Agerlife Extension is put together the Master Guarding program in
Speaker 4: order to train volunteers to help the folks, and I
Speaker 4: used to. I've run master gardening programs in Conrod, Montgomery County,
Speaker 4: in Travis County, in Austin, Harris County, and in Brass
Speaker 4: County over the course of my career. And I can
Speaker 4: tell you this, master gardner's some of the finest people
Speaker 4: you'll ever meet. They just love what they're doing and
Speaker 4: it's a good group, a good group to be a
Speaker 4: part of. But it is for volunteer service, and so
Speaker 4: you don't go just to learn. You go to learn
Speaker 4: and then to put your learning into action to help
Speaker 4: other people. And it's one of the ways that Extension
Speaker 4: takes the public investment in agrolife extension and it multiplies
Speaker 4: it many times over. When I was running Master Gardening,
Speaker 4: I'll use myself because I've got that firsthand knowledge, but
Speaker 4: it's true of all these programs, I was one agent
Speaker 4: in the office that was handling gardening questions and commercial
Speaker 4: horticulture questions and everything all the other duties that the
Speaker 4: agent has, and with volunteers, it was not unusual to
Speaker 4: have ten thousand volunteer hours in the course of a year.
Speaker 4: That's a lot. That's what we call full time equivalents.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of full time equivalents that are to
Speaker 4: be had when you build a volunteer program. So with
Speaker 4: the investment of one horticulture agent, or in many counties
Speaker 4: it's an agriculture agent that's doing it, there's not a
Speaker 4: hoard agent, then you get all this additional benefit. Talks
Speaker 4: for groups, other kinds of educational activities, and master gardening
Speaker 4: is a fun thing, but just know that you're doing
Speaker 4: it not just to learn and go home. You're doing
Speaker 4: it to learn and go home and then come back
Speaker 4: and in whatever way is most appropriate for you to
Speaker 4: take what you've learned and apply it. Our master gardeners
Speaker 4: would help with our trials, our plant trials that we
Speaker 4: were doing. We had master gardeners that work just with
Speaker 4: youth programs that would create programs for kiddos and learning
Speaker 4: about gardening and helping with school gardening programs and things,
Speaker 4: and it's a really good organization. I've kind of gone
Speaker 4: off what I was originally talking about to talk about
Speaker 4: master gardening, but that is just another way that you
Speaker 4: can grow in your horticultural knowledge, and I think that
Speaker 4: is important. They say when you're cutting trees in the forest,
Speaker 4: you got to stop every now and then and sharpen
Speaker 4: the saw. If you've ever tried to cut a tree
Speaker 4: with a dull saw, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: It's time to stop and sharpen the saw as well
Speaker 4: worth it. The same is true with gardening. If you
Speaker 4: never sharpen the saw, if you never grow as a gardener,
Speaker 4: learn and expand what you know, you're gonna become obsolete.
Speaker 4: And things that you think are true are you find
Speaker 4: out later are not true. I don't know who it was.
Speaker 4: It probably I don't know, Mark Twain or Will Rogers
Speaker 4: or something like that. I made a statement. They said,
Speaker 4: it's not what I let's see, it's not what I
Speaker 4: don't know that concerns me. It's what I know that
Speaker 4: ain't so. And that is true. A lot of times
Speaker 4: we think we know something when in fact that's not true.
Speaker 4: And times change and research brings new information to light
Speaker 4: and whatnot, and you got to keep improving on it.
Speaker 4: Plus it's fun. That's part of the thing about gardening
Speaker 4: that makes it so rejuvenating is that you you it's
Speaker 4: it's it is a renewing thing to constantly be learning
Speaker 4: new things, interesting new things. It's it's a hobby that
Speaker 4: just keeps growing. I've mentioned this before. You know, you
Speaker 4: start off as the typical bottom line of gardening is
Speaker 4: you get on the phone, call somebody and say, come
Speaker 4: mo and take care of my yard. Know that you
Speaker 4: have the garden, you have the landscape, but somebody's taking
Speaker 4: care of it. But you got You're out there, you're
Speaker 4: enjoying it, and you may say, hey, I'd like this
Speaker 4: plant put in it or something. You take it up
Speaker 4: to where you're more of a do it yourselfer uh
Speaker 4: and it and then you you begin to learn. Maybe
Speaker 4: you decide I want to grow herbs, I want to
Speaker 4: grow vegetables, I want to grow flowers. I want to
Speaker 4: grow fruit of some fruit trees in the yart or
Speaker 4: a fruit tree in the art. And you expand in
Speaker 4: that way, and then you begin indoor things. Like I
Speaker 4: mentioned earlier, I hadn't done a terrarium in ages. Well,
Speaker 4: terrariums are cool. Why not do one of those? How
Speaker 4: about house plants? And then you grow some more and
Speaker 4: you decide, you know what, I'm going to save my
Speaker 4: own seed and improve my plants. So each year I
Speaker 4: look at all these plants I planted that are open pollinated,
Speaker 4: and I'm going to pick the ones that are doing
Speaker 4: the best, and I'm going to save seed from those.
Speaker 4: And you do that year after year after year, and
Speaker 4: you improve the strain of what you're growing. Maybe you
Speaker 4: then become someone who starts your own seed, grows transplants,
Speaker 4: and you get into that. Boy, is that ever fund
Speaker 4: some one of my favorite parts of gardening, because I
Speaker 4: do a lot of gardening in the winter by taking
Speaker 4: care of my plants that I have inside under lights.
Speaker 4: Maybe you want to learn how to propagate plants, root cuttings,
Speaker 4: how to do air layering. I talked about that yesterday.
Speaker 4: Gardening just keeps expanding as much as you want it to,
Speaker 4: and there are many other things. How about a cut
Speaker 4: flower garden if you've ever done that, have you ever
Speaker 4: looked at your landscape and ask questions like what does
Speaker 4: my landscape smell like? And how could it be better?
Speaker 4: What are some fragrant plants that would be wonderful to
Speaker 4: enjoy the fragrance of? And I'm going to tell you
Speaker 4: what if I can remember this next segment next hour,
Speaker 4: I'm going to talk about that fragrant plant Have you
Speaker 4: ever looked at your landscape and see and ask, what
Speaker 4: does this look like? Spring, summer, fall, and winter? Or
Speaker 4: their flowers or their color? Maybe it's foliage that's all
Speaker 4: twelve months of the year. Where are the evergreens that
Speaker 4: give you extra foundational plants through the dormant season? And
Speaker 4: looked at it that way? Have you ever looked at
Speaker 4: your landscape and said, what am I able to? I'm
Speaker 4: going to use the word eat, but it could be
Speaker 4: every thing from eat to season your food, to create
Speaker 4: all kinds of different herbal tinctures and things. And you
Speaker 4: looked at it from that standpoint? Have you ever looked
Speaker 4: at your landscape and said, what attracts butterflies? What at
Speaker 4: track's hummingbirds? What attracts birds? How can I add to
Speaker 4: the movement? Butterflies are basically flying flowers? How can I
Speaker 4: add flying flowers to my landscape by planting? Do you
Speaker 4: see what I'm saying? There's always some new fun things
Speaker 4: to do. And you go visit a place, you go
Speaker 4: to a botanical garden, you go visit family and friends.
Speaker 4: You do like I do, and drive up and down
Speaker 4: the street when you're going places and just notice what
Speaker 4: you like take a picture of you, go find out
Speaker 4: what it is, and get you one for your house.
Speaker 4: That's kind of how that works. So it's a constant
Speaker 4: process that allows us to just grow and grow and
Speaker 4: have so much fun in the process. And I don't
Speaker 4: you know, I don't look at this show like it's
Speaker 4: all mechanics. You know, it's like, Okay, you gotta furlize
Speaker 4: your lawn with this at this time and that time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we talked about all that, but how can you have
Speaker 4: more fun? How can this be more enjoyable for you?
Speaker 4: That's what we want you to do. Juer yard, your landscape,
Speaker 4: do what you want with it. It's gene you in
Speaker 4: the in the first of the front yard especially, it's
Speaker 4: gene you and the hoa. But have fun. Get out
Speaker 4: there and enjoy it. If you want to talk rules
Speaker 4: of gardening, I can talk that, But at your gardener
Speaker 4: are no rules. The rule is you got out there
Speaker 4: and do what you want and have fun a bunch
Speaker 4: of whole garden to be a Zenian fall doesn't go
Speaker 4: fall yours? All right, folks, here's a number you can
Speaker 4: give us a call and be first up when we
Speaker 4: come back. Seven one three two one two kt R h.
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Speaker 1: now the latest news weather.
Speaker 5: It's more of what matters to you. From the John
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Speaker 11: House Freedom calling this meeting with Trump. I'm Jarre at
Speaker 11: Lewis at eight o'clock on news Radio seven forty h
Speaker 11: age time for looking at traffic, caing weather. Hello, Gary Mack.
Speaker 12: Sixty nine Southwest Freeway south bound at University Boulevard that
Speaker 12: remains closed this one due to a major accident. You
Speaker 12: can use New Territory as an alternate others and we
Speaker 12: have plenty off the way, wild and welly. Start this Sunday.
Speaker 12: South SAM east bound on the entrance ramp to South
Speaker 12: Post Oaks. South SAM southbound on the exit to sixty
Speaker 12: ninth to Southwest Freeway. Clear a couple two I ten
Speaker 12: to Katie Freeway eastbound at the sixth hid West. It
Speaker 12: was on the left shoulder, then was on a right
Speaker 12: forty five Goal Freeway northbound at Monroe Harry Mack the
Speaker 12: Generator Supercenter dot Com Traffic Center.
Speaker 13: Expect some clowns, some cool conditions, and a few scattered
Speaker 13: showers ahead of a front on this Sunday with the
Speaker 13: high fifty three and he rang will move out this
Speaker 13: evening to the party. Cloudy and windy overnight with the load
Speaker 13: dropping down to forty one heading through the afternoon. Monday
Speaker 13: sunny and wendy with the high of fifty five and
Speaker 13: a little bit cooler under clouds. Tuesday is the highits
Speaker 13: fifty three. I can meteorle just Jeff Maher from the
Speaker 13: Weather Channel.
Speaker 11: Cloudy with some drizzlin sponse forty seven at the k
Speaker 11: Cherry Top Tax Defenders twenty four hour Weather Center, it's
Speaker 11: eight h one our top story. Some top Republican lawmakers,
Speaker 11: including Texas Representative Chip Roy, meeting President ELEC. Donald Trump
Speaker 11: at mar A Lago to discuss his legislative agenda and
Speaker 11: policy goals. Members indicated that the discussions focused on advancing
Speaker 11: Trump's agenda, particularly with border security, energy policies, and government spending.
Speaker 11: Starting this week, President elect Donald Trump's cabinet nominees are
Speaker 11: set to begin their confirmation hearings.
Speaker 14: The long awaited confirmation hearing for Department of Defense nominee
Speaker 14: Pete Hegsath will take place before the Senate Armed Services Committee,
Speaker 14: as Hexath will have a chance to convince senators and
Speaker 14: the public that he's fit to lead the nation's military.
Speaker 14: Hexath is one of several President elect Trump's nominees set
Speaker 14: to testify before senators this week. CIA Director nominee John
Speaker 14: Radcliffe will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Other closely
Speaker 14: watched noees, like Tulci Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence,
Speaker 14: have not had their hearings scheduled yet.
Speaker 11: Fox's Ryan Schmeltz reporting a final speech upcoming from the President.
Speaker 11: Joe Biden says he will deliver his farewell address from
Speaker 11: the Oval Office on Wednesday. President Biden was adamant that
Speaker 11: had he stayed in he would have beaten Trump in
Speaker 11: the presidential race. The man tasked with investigating claims that
Speaker 11: President elect Trump was involved in twenty twenty election interference
Speaker 11: has resigned Special counsel Jack Smith, and his report on
Speaker 11: his investigation is expected soon as. His resignation comes as
Speaker 11: no surprise, since Trump has indicated Smith would be fired
Speaker 11: once he takes office. Smith was employed as special counsel
Speaker 11: by the US Justice Department Texas firefighters heading to Los Angeles.
Speaker 11: A group of Houston firefighters included in that trip to
Speaker 11: LA Governor Greg Abbott says the state is assist in
Speaker 11: California and their wildfire response. Firefighting resources have been deployed,
Speaker 11: including fire engines and equipment following a request from cal Fire.
Speaker 11: Sixteen people are dead now and nearly forty thousand acres
Speaker 11: of land burned due to the LA wildfires.
Speaker 15: We drove up into Mandevil Canyon Road. We saw the
Speaker 15: firefighters still battling little areas, but they're worried that if
Speaker 15: it moves a little closer to the four five, it
Speaker 15: could get into the Brentwood area and threaten things. We
Speaker 15: hear the helicopters overhead, and the other thing we're seeing
Speaker 15: out here is a lot of police going through looking
Speaker 15: into all of the destroyed homes and businesses looking for looters.
Speaker 15: Twenty two was the latest count that we have seen
Speaker 15: from officials have been arrested in the area out there looting.
Speaker 11: Fox's Griff Jenkins. With the latest in LA, effects of
Speaker 11: the wildfires are starting to mount up. Although the five
Speaker 11: oil refineries in the area are not threatened by the fires,
Speaker 11: several pipelines are and those lines could be shut down.
Speaker 11: California's Governor Gavin Newsom calling for an investigation also into
Speaker 11: a loss of water pressure to local fire hydrants, placing
Speaker 11: the blame on LA local authorities. A man is taken
Speaker 11: into custody this week charge with intoxication manslaughter in the
Speaker 11: death of his wife. The Harris Kind Of Sheriff's Office
Speaker 11: says the man was banking his car out of their
Speaker 11: driveway and ran her over. The car then hit a
Speaker 11: tree at the home along Spring Cypress near Grant. Another
Speaker 11: man is in the hospital following a high speed chase
Speaker 11: and crash in Cyprus. Investigators say a man was speeding
Speaker 11: on Barker Cypress Road when he lost control of his
Speaker 11: car and crashed at around eleven pm last night. The
Speaker 11: Texans pulling away from the Chargers in the wild card
Speaker 11: round Saturday, Houston defending home Turf, winning thirty two to
Speaker 11: twelve and moving on to the divisional round. News on
Speaker 11: demand at KTERH dot com. Our next update is at
Speaker 11: eight thirty. Back to Garden Line with Skip Richter. I'm
Speaker 11: Jerret Lewis News Radio seven forty k TRH.
Speaker 16: KTRH Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any of the
Speaker 16: products or services advertised on this program. Welcome to KTRH
Speaker 16: Garden Line with Skip Richter.
Speaker 2: Just watch him as.
Speaker 4: All right, let's jump in here. We're gonna get going
Speaker 4: on this next hour of Garden Line with your gardening questions.
Speaker 4: The phone number seven one three two one two fifty
Speaker 4: eight seventy four, and we're going to start by heading
Speaker 4: out to Houston area for Michael. Hello, Michael, welcome to
Speaker 4: garden Line.
Speaker 7: Hey, hey, Skip, thanks for taking the call. I was
Speaker 7: listening to see you talking about our clay soil and
Speaker 7: awkward drainage earlier, and I was thinking about my backyard.
Speaker 7: It is so lumpy and bumpy, it's horrible. What kind
Speaker 7: of options would you suggest for maybe kind of trying
Speaker 7: to level that off? And do they all involve using
Speaker 7: a shovel and a pickaxe and a lot of elbow grease?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: Not really, not in the grass, not in the grass lawn.
Speaker 4: Is it lumpy primarily because the soil level is lumpy?
Speaker 4: Like if there weren't any grass there, the soil would
Speaker 4: be lumpy. Or do you think you're getting lumps because
Speaker 4: grass is doing better in some places and not as
Speaker 4: well in others, or what do you think is going on?
Speaker 7: It's actually combinational. I have some points where the dirt
Speaker 7: is like built up and then drops off and then
Speaker 7: also I have that weird kind of grass where the
Speaker 7: grass itself just builds up this little tought and I
Speaker 7: can't hardly hit it with the lawn mower anymore. Wow.
Speaker 4: Okay, well that makes sense. So what I would do
Speaker 4: is I would start with kind of a loamy type
Speaker 4: of soil mix to fill in the areas. You don't
Speaker 4: have to shovel and pickaxe down. You just spread it
Speaker 4: around to kind of level it out a little bit.
Speaker 4: And I wouldn't do more than about maybe an inch
Speaker 4: or so in each area. I mean, you could do
Speaker 4: it deeper. You could do two or three inches if
Speaker 4: you need to, but the grass is going to then
Speaker 4: have to come back in it. Is this a Saint
Speaker 4: Augustine lawn?
Speaker 7: You know, I'm not quite sure. I'm wanting to say
Speaker 7: crab grass. It's that one that grows and then it
Speaker 7: puts potensils out all over the place.
Speaker 4: Okay, probably you're dealing with Saint Augustine. So basically I
Speaker 4: would I would, Yeah, I would. I would spread some
Speaker 4: of that out there. Is the folks that heirloom soils
Speaker 4: have a product called a lawn mix, and you can
Speaker 4: buy they can deliver what's called a supersack. It's a
Speaker 4: cubic yard sack of it to your driveway. It's about
Speaker 4: seventy four bucks per yard, and then that priced me
Speaker 4: a change. That's what it was last time I checked it.
Speaker 7: Right on it.
Speaker 4: Or you can go out to porter and get it.
Speaker 4: I don't know where are you going from, but anyway
Speaker 4: porter you can go get it. If you've got to
Speaker 4: pick a trailer or something, but anyway you bring it in.
Speaker 4: And then you would just put it in a wheelbarrow
Speaker 4: and go around your lawn and just spread it out
Speaker 4: and try to smooth it out a little bit. You're
Speaker 4: not going to get it the first time. Yeah, just
Speaker 4: sprinkle it over and you may have some areas that
Speaker 4: you don't see anything but dirt because you had to
Speaker 4: put quite a bit out. Or you could gradually add
Speaker 4: it over time, small amounts to bring it up. But
Speaker 4: either way you go about it. If you can get
Speaker 4: that lawn in good growing shape, it'll cover over quickly
Speaker 4: once we get the warm weather. Then then go online
Speaker 4: to my website gardening with Skip dot com and there
Speaker 4: is a free lawn care schedule and it tells you
Speaker 4: when to fertilize and what do you use the options
Speaker 4: that you have.
Speaker 7: Because right now I figure with the weather it's probably
Speaker 7: not the best time to do any gardening, but the
Speaker 7: time will be here upon us pretty quick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that the lawn mix is good, it's actually
Speaker 4: it's got mason sand and compost and some of the
Speaker 4: bed mix in there that you can use. You could
Speaker 4: also get out just with a sandy loam type material
Speaker 4: if you can find it, uh, and use that either
Speaker 4: way you want to go. It's just a top dressing
Speaker 4: you're putting over those areas. But we don't just use
Speaker 4: straight compost because that is going to decompose a way
Speaker 4: over time. So what it may look like the holes
Speaker 4: are filled and then two years from now their holes
Speaker 4: again because they've sunk them back. So you need some
Speaker 4: kind of a you need some kind of a sand
Speaker 4: or sandy loam kind of material in there to fill
Speaker 4: those areas. So all right, that's that's what I would.
Speaker 7: Do, just as a general sense on clay soil. Would
Speaker 7: you think bermuda grass would be okay for most parts
Speaker 7: of Houston?
Speaker 4: It is. Every grass has its pros and cons. The
Speaker 4: pros of bermuda is it's very wear and tear resistant.
Speaker 4: That's why they use it on football fields and baseball
Speaker 4: fields here in this area. He even pound it to
Speaker 4: death and it comes right back. A golf courses are
Speaker 4: almost all bermuda. Then the negatives of it are it
Speaker 4: invades all your flower beds and you're dealing with it
Speaker 4: in flower beds, and if you got little kids like
Speaker 4: can roll around in the grass. If you've ever experienced
Speaker 4: siggers before, you come inside and it's like you're itching
Speaker 4: all over because there's a little tiny things are chewing
Speaker 4: on you. Bermudas sugars really well, so that's kind of
Speaker 4: one of the negatives of it. One final thing about
Speaker 4: bermuda is the more often you know it, the better
Speaker 4: it looks. So if you can't mow often, Saint Augustine
Speaker 4: is a better choice because it's more forgiving of an
Speaker 4: irregular mowing schedule than bermuda.
Speaker 7: Is Okay, good stuff, all right, all right, well, thank
Speaker 7: you so much for the help this morning. I'm gonna
Speaker 7: look to find me the loam. The loan filler.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, it's actually if you do the heirloom soils
Speaker 4: product that's sand based, it's got some of the bedms
Speaker 4: and things in it. But if you're just looking for
Speaker 4: sandy loam. You may just have to look around for
Speaker 4: some place to sell soil and get some of that.
Speaker 4: Just be careful because a lot of you bring weeds
Speaker 4: in with that because they just go out and scoops
Speaker 4: scoop soil out of someplace and load it up. That varies.
Speaker 4: But if you have weeging, deal with them and there's
Speaker 4: a way to deal with that too.
Speaker 7: Cool. All right, Well, thank you so much for your home.
Speaker 7: I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: All right, man, thanks a lot. Take care. We're going
Speaker 4: to go down to League City and talk to Rick. Hello. Rick,
Speaker 4: welcome to guarden Line.
Speaker 10: Hey, thank you very much. I've got a couple of questions.
Speaker 10: I've been living in the south for since two thousand.
Speaker 10: Got two great big oak trees in the front. I've
Speaker 10: had him trimmed back to try to get more sunlight
Speaker 10: down to the grass. And even with that being done,
Speaker 10: it's very very patchy. And I hear you talk about
Speaker 10: all right, put the brown down before the green, right.
Speaker 4: Take care of the soil before you plant the plants.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I've tried your uh, your your schedule once or
Speaker 17: plus I just got retired so I can work on it.
Speaker 10: Now because I spent a lot of time working out
Speaker 10: of town.
Speaker 18: M H.
Speaker 10: Where can I stand by soul be tested?
Speaker 4: All right? Uh, the fasting I got about twenty seconds
Speaker 4: before break and then we'll pick you up after break.
Speaker 4: But the fast answer is you go to a website.
Speaker 4: It's Soil Testing dot t A m U dot edu.
Speaker 4: If you go to my website, there's a link to
Speaker 4: it on there. There's an article on soil testing and
Speaker 4: that'll tell you more. Just hang on them. We'll put
Speaker 4: you on hold. We're going to go to break and
Speaker 4: I will be right back to continue with your question.
Speaker 4: All right, folks, welcome back. Good to have you. We're
Speaker 4: going to continue our conversation with Rick out in League City. So, Rick,
Speaker 4: we're talking about turning that yard around and getting more
Speaker 4: out of it. And I think you've done pruning on
Speaker 4: your trees and still not quite seeing the results. Is that?
Speaker 4: Am I right? Is that what you said?
Speaker 10: Yes?
Speaker 7: Sure?
Speaker 4: Okay. First of all, you know I'm not there standing
Speaker 4: in your yard on a sunny day looking around. But
Speaker 4: make sure you're getting at least six hours of sun
Speaker 4: if you can. If it's less than that, you can
Speaker 4: grow grass, but it is weaker and it's harder to
Speaker 4: get it dense, and it's less tolerant of foot traffic
Speaker 4: and things like that, So do what you can to
Speaker 4: get the light as good as you can, and then
Speaker 4: I would just go to you mentioned my schedule. It's
Speaker 4: on my website Gardening with Skip dot com. That's also
Speaker 4: where there's the free publication. It's just a very short
Speaker 4: one telling you about soil sampling, how to do it
Speaker 4: and where to send it and all of that. But
Speaker 4: on that lun care schedule it tells you exactly when
Speaker 4: to apply it and then it gives you a list
Speaker 4: of options organic and synthetic that you can put down
Speaker 4: and if you'll follow that. Also on the schedule it
Speaker 4: talks about mowing. Believe it or not, mowing is one
Speaker 4: of the single most important things you do to have
Speaker 4: a nice dense lawn. Mowing on a regular schedule creates
Speaker 4: good density. Mowing on an irregular schedule stresses the grass
Speaker 4: and it works against good density. And then watering is
Speaker 4: on there too, mow, water, fertilize. Those are the three
Speaker 4: air rating. If you go out in the in the
Speaker 4: soil and it's very dense clay that when it's dry
Speaker 4: it's very very hard. You know, if you had a
Speaker 4: spading for it, you pushed it down, it wouldn't eyveone
Speaker 4: go in the ground. Then air rating is going to
Speaker 4: be very important to have that done. But some people
Speaker 4: will do compost top dressing also, and when they're trying
Speaker 4: to rejuvenate a yard. You can hire this done if
Speaker 4: you got the time and the inclination. You can do
Speaker 4: it as you do it yourself, or it's a lot
Speaker 4: of messy work, but you can do it, or you
Speaker 4: can just hire somebody to come out and do it.
Speaker 4: But air rating opens up that tight so oil and
Speaker 4: it gets oxygen down in the roots and composts then
Speaker 4: falls down in there as you top dress with compost,
Speaker 4: and by top dressing I just mean spreading it very
Speaker 4: thin and raking it around evenly.
Speaker 10: Okay, how deep would you to get started on it?
Speaker 10: How deep do you go with air rating inch to itch?
Speaker 4: Well, well, if you deeper as deep as you can realistically,
Speaker 4: if the soil is moderately moist and an errating machine
Speaker 4: can get down there. If you hire somebody, they have
Speaker 4: machines that do a better job, but they'll get down
Speaker 4: about two or three inches on the air rating possibly
Speaker 4: a little further, but not much. There are do it
Speaker 4: yourself for tools where you can go out and it
Speaker 4: takes a long time because you're basically walking around punching
Speaker 4: holes in the ground, which if you've got a big
Speaker 4: area that is not practical to do. There are if
Speaker 4: you do rent an errator, get one that is called
Speaker 4: a core. So there's two kinds of aer rators. One
Speaker 4: just think of it as a rolling spike cylinder that
Speaker 4: pushes holes into the ground, just like you took a
Speaker 4: spading fork and pushed it in the ground. It squeezes
Speaker 4: the hole open and compacts the sides of the hole
Speaker 4: in the process. A core aerator is a hollow tube
Speaker 4: that goes down and pops a plug out of the
Speaker 4: ground and leaves it on the surface. So when you
Speaker 4: get through core aerrating, it looks like they had a
Speaker 4: small dog convention on your yard, if you know what
Speaker 4: I'm talking about, All these little droppings everywhere, right, that's
Speaker 4: the better way to aerrate as a core aerator, and
Speaker 4: getting your lawn soil not soggy, wet, but moist is
Speaker 4: important in order to have a better effect of core aerating. Also,
Speaker 4: if you have an automatic system. Make sure and get
Speaker 4: those little wire flags and turn it on the system
Speaker 4: and flag every sprinkler head or else you'll get to
Speaker 4: play a sprinkler repair after you air rate by damaging
Speaker 4: those heads.
Speaker 10: Okay, what about the tree roots? Does my trees are
Speaker 10: very well established, they're over twenty years old. Do you
Speaker 10: work around that or do I gotta.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it'll well, it'll be it'll hit them. Yeah, it'll
Speaker 4: hit them and either cut through them at their tiny
Speaker 4: or or bounce off of them. Basically not not puncture there.
Speaker 4: If you're getting really close to a tree, you're probably
Speaker 4: not air rating in an area you don't need to
Speaker 4: be going anyway. So I would just do that accordingly.
Speaker 4: But in general, these are all practices. It's not like
Speaker 4: everyone has to be done, but everyone helps. Watering properly helps,
Speaker 4: mowing regularly helps. Fertilizing on a regular basis to get
Speaker 4: the nutrient content like you want it with the right
Speaker 4: kinds of fertilizer. That's important. Air Rating would be another
Speaker 4: factor in a compacted soil, And if you had a
Speaker 4: big sandy soil out there, air rating isn't gonna help much.
Speaker 4: But if you if you've got some compaction and tight
Speaker 4: clay type things. Air Rating is very helpful, and then
Speaker 4: compost top dressing is the last one, and that just
Speaker 4: puts composted organic matter around the runners of the plant,
Speaker 4: because you're only putting about a about a half inch
Speaker 4: of compost out maybe a third of an in, I mean,
Speaker 4: not much at all, and then it falls down in
Speaker 4: those aerration holes. You won't do that after you airrate,
Speaker 4: and that again you're you're creating a root system that thrives,
Speaker 4: and therefore your lawn thrives.
Speaker 10: Okay, So all right, short term, short term is okay.
Speaker 10: Air rate at the top dressing on didn't fertilize would
Speaker 10: be bad.
Speaker 4: Actually, I'm going to change that because of where we
Speaker 4: are in the season. I would say you're going to
Speaker 4: start fertilizing your lawn when it's grown enough to mow it.
Speaker 4: A couple of times. You can fertilize a little earlier
Speaker 4: for green up, but as far as just you know,
Speaker 4: really taking getting the most out of your fertilizer, by
Speaker 4: the time you've mowed the lawn twice so done in
Speaker 4: League City, you know that's probably going to be early
Speaker 4: April that you're fertilizing, maybe even late March, you're putting
Speaker 4: the first fertilizer down, and then once we get into
Speaker 4: some time in April, the lawn is growing enough where
Speaker 4: you can do the core aeration. We try not to
Speaker 4: air rate while the lawn is dormant. It can be done,
Speaker 4: but it's a little better if you let the lawn
Speaker 4: get growing because air rating can be somewhat damaging to turf.
Speaker 4: You know, those times are going to hit turf runners
Speaker 4: and things. There's going to be some amount of damage
Speaker 4: that occurs, which during a good growing period time is
Speaker 4: not a factor to worry about. So that we try
Speaker 4: to let the grass get growing good before we start
Speaker 4: the aer rating.
Speaker 10: Okay, I appreciate this.
Speaker 4: That's everything you need to know except somebody to come
Speaker 4: out there and help you do it. Have fun taking
Speaker 4: care of that rick. Thank you. All right, don't forget
Speaker 4: to go sold testing dot soeld testing dot tamo, dot
Speaker 4: ed you. But just go to gardening with skip dot com.
Speaker 4: It's up there, plus a lot of other things you
Speaker 4: might have an interest in, uh, but it'll link you direct.
Speaker 4: It'll also tell you which test on the website, tells
Speaker 4: you which tests to use, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: That's important. So thanks for the call man. Good luck
Speaker 4: down there in League City getting that long back in shape.
Speaker 4: All right, you're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host,
Speaker 4: Skip Richter, and the phone number here seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two five eight seven four. Uh Nelson's has
Speaker 4: several fertilizer lines that are really excellent for plants. They've
Speaker 4: got their Color Star line, which is probably their most
Speaker 4: famous of all, been around forty years, the Color Star
Speaker 4: for anything with color. I mean, that makes it real easy.
Speaker 4: They've got their Turf Star line, and we're going to
Speaker 4: start talking about that a lot as we get into
Speaker 4: turf fertilizing season here. But they have a number of
Speaker 4: different products in Turf Star. Then they have a nutri
Speaker 4: Star line. That's not the only lines they have, but
Speaker 4: that's the next one. Nutristar has a number of different products,
Speaker 4: typically designed for specific plants, you know, like for hibiscus
Speaker 4: or for plumeria or something like that. But there's one
Speaker 4: I want to tell it and that's Nutristar Genesis, and
Speaker 4: it's a transplant mix. Now it's got six percent nitrogen,
Speaker 4: one percent phosphate, and three percent potassium in it. But
Speaker 4: it also has in it a lot of other good things.
Speaker 4: It's got two different categories of microhizal fungi that associate
Speaker 4: with the roots and make the plants better. It's got
Speaker 4: bacteria that are beneficial. It's got other fungi that help
Speaker 4: benefit that soul microbiome. It has humates in it. It's
Speaker 4: designed to be mixed into the soil and a lot
Speaker 4: of fertilizer. You should throw them on the top, water
Speaker 4: them in, or scratch them in with a rake or whatever.
Speaker 4: This one. When you're gonna transplant something, you dig a hole,
Speaker 4: you put the plant in it, and as you refill it,
Speaker 4: mix some of the nutristar genesis into the soil that
Speaker 4: goes in around that plant. If you're gonna bump up plants,
Speaker 4: maybe you're growing a little six pack of tomatoes. You're
Speaker 4: gonna bump them up to a four inch pots each one.
Speaker 4: That soil you use the potting mix, you use mix
Speaker 4: nutristar genesis in that. Think of it as a transplant mix,
Speaker 4: because that's what is designed for. And you will see
Speaker 4: amazing early growth and response to that. After you do
Speaker 4: the transplanting. After you do the planting out in the
Speaker 4: yard whatever. You're gonna see fast growth as a result.
Speaker 4: That's just how it works. Then afterwards you can use
Speaker 4: other fertilizers, you know, like their color Star, their nature Star,
Speaker 4: their nutri Star. You can use those on the surface later,
Speaker 4: just like you do all the time when you fertilize.
Speaker 4: But get hold. Some of that comes in low cans,
Speaker 4: really easy to use and it works really really well.
Speaker 4: That's Nutristar Genesis transplant Mix from the folks at Nelson. Okay,
Speaker 4: I talking about there was something I was going to
Speaker 4: tell you. Oh, I know what it was. I said
Speaker 4: that I would talk about plants that are fragrant. There
Speaker 4: are a lot of plants that are wonderfully fragrant, and
Speaker 4: why not make that the thing you do this year
Speaker 4: that's new or that's different. Maybe you got one fragrant
Speaker 4: plant and you want to have more. How about that.
Speaker 4: The nose knows what a good landscape smells like, and
Speaker 4: a good landscape would have things. And here's a few
Speaker 4: almond verbina. Oh my gosh, that makes a big old bush.
Speaker 4: It's got white, spiky blooms that are pretty pretty, but
Speaker 4: nothing to write home about. I mean, they're cool, but
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, the fragrance. The vanilla fragrance is like,
Speaker 4: you know, you stuck a bottle of vanilla extract under
Speaker 4: your nose and it just has that wonderful fragrance. Texas
Speaker 4: Mountain barrel grape clusters. Grape cluster looking bloom clusters that
Speaker 4: are they smell like grape bubblegum, the strong grape smell.
Speaker 4: Chinese fringe one of my favorite small to medium sized trees.
Speaker 4: Chinese fringe has a pleasant little fragrance. It's a spring
Speaker 4: bloomer confederate jasmine. Oh gosh, that vine is intoxicating. Here's
Speaker 4: another one, white butterfly ginger. It's but probably one of
Speaker 4: the most easy gingers to grow, easiest gingers to grow,
Speaker 4: big old tall stalks. It puts up with more sun
Speaker 4: than a lot of gingers do, and it blooms typically
Speaker 4: at the end of the year. Remember were going to
Speaker 4: spread these things out ballooms of the India. It's a
Speaker 4: wonderful one. You want fragrant foliage, Mexican marigolds smells like
Speaker 4: black jelly beans, copper canyon daisies, citrus and pine smelling,
Speaker 4: and then all kinds of different herbs rosemary smells good. Okay,
Speaker 4: there's a start. Go out there and have fun. Plant
Speaker 4: some of those. I'll be right back.
Speaker 8: Back.
Speaker 4: Hey, thanks for listening into garden Line today. I hope
Speaker 4: you are enjoying it. I'm certainly having fun. We are
Speaker 4: talking about all kinds of different tips and things. Just
Speaker 4: got through telling you a whole bunch of plants. Squeeze
Speaker 4: those in right at the end of the last hour
Speaker 4: or last segment that are fragrant that you can plant.
Speaker 4: I'm just continuing to basically the theme I started yesterday,
Speaker 4: I guess, and that is what are you going to
Speaker 4: do different this year? What are you gonna do new
Speaker 4: this year? What are you going to try that you've
Speaker 4: never tried? And looking at gardening is way more than
Speaker 4: just the standard picture people get when they picture a
Speaker 4: landscape or they picture a garden or a lawn. Try
Speaker 4: some new things, Try some things you haven't grown, and anyway,
Speaker 4: I hope you will do that. Hopefully you will, because
Speaker 4: it is a lot of fun. You're missing out on
Speaker 4: a lot when you don't try a few new things.
Speaker 4: Who knows, maybe it'll become your favorite thing. I can
Speaker 4: kind of get boring when it comes to food. You know,
Speaker 4: I basically if I'm going to go out to eat,
Speaker 4: it's like, uh, inchiladas, what else? Chicken? Enchiladas? It's I'm
Speaker 4: kind of a one trick pony when it comes to
Speaker 4: gunna dat. But you got to try new things. And
Speaker 4: my kids they come back and give me all these
Speaker 4: strange things. In fact, my wife made a thing It's
Speaker 4: a Greek called Greek bowls, and I don't know what
Speaker 4: all was in it. It was good, it was good.
Speaker 4: It had keen wah, which I used to not know
Speaker 4: how to say and what it was, and now I do.
Speaker 4: It was actually pretty good Greek balls, real healthy stuff
Speaker 4: like that. See, I would never discover that on myself.
Speaker 4: It would just be like, what do you want to
Speaker 4: eat chiladas? I need a shirt that says something like that.
Speaker 4: Maybe we'll try that. One of the main food groups
Speaker 4: is enchiladas. All right, Well, if you like to give
Speaker 4: us a call and talk gardening seven one three two
Speaker 4: one two kt r H seven one three two into
Speaker 4: kt r AH, we'll talk about the things that you
Speaker 4: are interested in. If you have not had your soil testing.
Speaker 4: We were just visiting with Rick and Michael talking about
Speaker 4: getting your lawn in good shape, and you know, having
Speaker 4: success with those kinds of things. It is important if
Speaker 4: you're going to do that, to make sure that you
Speaker 4: know what your soil nutrients are before you're fertilized. Now
Speaker 4: Here on guard Line, I talk all the time about
Speaker 4: use this fertilizer, use that fertilizer, and those are good
Speaker 4: general blends. For most people, that's going to be just fine.
Speaker 4: But if you really want to drill down, really get
Speaker 4: into it and go to the bottom of all this.
Speaker 4: Having a soil test tells you what you need to
Speaker 4: fertilize with. So for example, there's your yard in your
Speaker 4: neighbor's yard, and we're both we're gonna put the same
Speaker 4: fertilizer on both yards. But what if your neighbor had
Speaker 4: a phosphorus content that was through the roof. Therefore they're
Speaker 4: getting a lot of iron, iron, chleurosis, and some other
Speaker 4: issues caused by too much phosphorus. What if your yard
Speaker 4: had almost no potassium in it in your soil, well,
Speaker 4: would you use the same fertilizer. Well, no, A soil
Speaker 4: test would tell you, yeah, I get your standard fertilizer,
Speaker 4: but you need to supplement with this or you see
Speaker 4: what I'm saying. In other words, you would guide your
Speaker 4: fertilizing based on your soil test. Now that doesn't mean
Speaker 4: in every place you garden every year you're doing a
Speaker 4: soil test, not at all, even on the lawn. Once
Speaker 4: every three years or so is probably enough. I haven't
Speaker 4: sold tested my garden in a good while because I
Speaker 4: just keep adding composted organic matter, and every time I
Speaker 4: test it, all the levels are good. They're all high
Speaker 4: because I just add a little bit of nitrogen, especially
Speaker 4: for things like corn that need extra nitrogen. But soil
Speaker 4: testing is the simplest way to find out where you are.
Speaker 4: It's like the starting point. At least do a soil
Speaker 4: test once to find out where you are, and if
Speaker 4: you're way off, then plan on making the amendments you
Speaker 4: need and coming back in a year or two and
Speaker 4: checking it again and seeing where you are, if you've
Speaker 4: fixed it, if you've improved it, or if you need
Speaker 4: to do some more additions. If you go to my
Speaker 4: website gardeningoskip dot com, there is a bar across it
Speaker 4: that says all publications. The new publications are on the
Speaker 4: front page, but there's a lot more publication. If you
Speaker 4: go to all publications, you'll see one called Soil Testing
Speaker 4: made Simple, and it just gives you the basics of
Speaker 4: how to take a soil test and where to send
Speaker 4: it and stuff. And you want your soil test, this
Speaker 4: is important to be representative of the soil in the
Speaker 4: area where you're growing that particular kind of plant, whether
Speaker 4: it's a lawn or a tomato patch. And so that
Speaker 4: doesn't mean you got in your lawn and you just
Speaker 4: scoop some soil off the surface, throw it in a
Speaker 4: bag and send it to the lab. The lab will
Speaker 4: tell you what's in the soil you put in that bag.
Speaker 4: But the soil in that bag is not accurately representing
Speaker 4: the soil in your yard. You know, if the neighbors
Speaker 4: stop buy and let their dog go to the bathroom
Speaker 4: in your yard in that spot last fall, I suspect
Speaker 4: the nutrient levels will be a little different there than
Speaker 4: they are in general through your yard. So by taking
Speaker 4: a variety of samples and putting them in a bucket
Speaker 4: and mixing them up, then you can take a composite
Speaker 4: out of there and now you've got on average, this
Speaker 4: is what my lawn is like. And then you fertilize accordingly. Secondly,
Speaker 4: it's important when you do a soil test in an
Speaker 4: area that's not rototilled, it's not mixed up or spaded
Speaker 4: a lot to do a core that's vertical of soil
Speaker 4: in your sample. Phosphorus. When you put phosphorus on the ground,
Speaker 4: you're putting your fertilizer spruder and going back and forth
Speaker 4: over your lawn every time you put some phosphorus out
Speaker 4: typically and when you do, basically goes down to the
Speaker 4: surface and doesn't go very deep at all. An inch
Speaker 4: maybe two is about how far phosphorus is going to
Speaker 4: naturally move down. It ties up. So if you scooped
Speaker 4: the top inch or two out of your lawn and
Speaker 4: that was your sample, the phosphorus would be higher than
Speaker 4: it really is in the plant's root zone. If you
Speaker 4: dug a hole and took soil out of the bottom
Speaker 4: of the hole, the phosphorus would be lower. It would
Speaker 4: not be representative. You want a vertical core of soil
Speaker 4: from top to bottom and just follow those simple guidelines.
Speaker 4: Go to Soil Testing dot tmu U and it'll tell
Speaker 4: you exactly what you need to do. Send your soil
Speaker 4: in and get it tested. And then you know exactly
Speaker 4: how to fertilize. Well, I'm pressing up against a break here.
Speaker 4: We'll come back with more tips and your calls, and
Speaker 4: John and Katie, you will be our first up when
Speaker 4: we come back. For the rest of you. If you'd
Speaker 4: like to get on board, be ready to go. Seven
Speaker 4: to one three two one two. K t r H
Speaker 4: seven one three two went to KTRH that it's been
Speaker 4: a while since you heard this one. All right, both,
Speaker 4: we're back with guard line and your calls. We're gonna
Speaker 4: start this segment by heading straight out to Katie to
Speaker 4: talk to John. Hello, John, what kind of guard line?
Speaker 5: Good mornings. I appreciate you taking my call.
Speaker 19: Uh so you said take advantage of new opportunities, and
Speaker 19: that's what exactly I'm planning on doing.
Speaker 5: But feel a bit overwhelmed. Good avocados. Me and my
Speaker 5: wife both love them.
Speaker 19: We have space for a couple of trees, and then
Speaker 19: you have the A types, B types, California types, Florida
Speaker 19: types cold heartiness. So just curious if you had room
Speaker 19: for two avocado trees, you want them to increase the yield,
Speaker 19: and then which two varieties would you picked? I'd be
Speaker 19: able to give you the most avocados during the year.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a good question, and avocados are a wonderful
Speaker 4: plan that is marginally col hardy for us. We got
Speaker 4: to kind of watch it and take care of it.
Speaker 4: Just remember, and I'll just say this up front, as
Speaker 4: you go through the seasons with your avocado, you always
Speaker 4: want to be ready to mound up some soil around
Speaker 4: the base. So if we go back into one of
Speaker 4: those seven degree cold cold spells or something like that,
Speaker 4: you're going to be able to at least protect it
Speaker 4: down to that and it'll re sprout and grow real fast.
Speaker 4: As far as varieties, there's a lot of good ones.
Speaker 4: There is one called Joey. There's one called Brazos Bell.
Speaker 4: There's one called Mexicola. There's also a Mexicola Grande. There's
Speaker 4: one called Laila l I l A. There's one I've
Speaker 4: not grown it called Fantastic that other people have told
Speaker 4: me it does well. Then Don Juan I mentioned Don Juan.
Speaker 4: That's another good one. Yeah, Poncho is another good one.
Speaker 4: Oo La la. Those are all ones that are grown here.
Speaker 4: The standard type of avocado that you grow that you
Speaker 4: get in the supermarket the dark, dark skin with bumps.
Speaker 4: That's a different kind of avocado than we grow in
Speaker 4: our yards here we grow a smooth skin type of
Speaker 4: avocado because those are much more cold hearty. So when
Speaker 4: you see has in the grocery store, you don't grow
Speaker 4: hass here. Oh, I mean if you do, you won't
Speaker 4: have success. Uh that's what I'm That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: But you go to a good quality garden center and
Speaker 4: you're going to find the kind of avocados that want
Speaker 4: to grow here, you know, and from you, you know
Speaker 4: down there in the Kati area. I mean you I
Speaker 4: don't know where you normally like shop, but they're they're
Speaker 4: probably going to have a good quality avocado. If it's
Speaker 4: a mom and pop home and independent garden center, youn
Speaker 4: go down from you and go direct south down to
Speaker 4: let's see, Antenna Gardens is probably the closest one to
Speaker 4: where you are.
Speaker 5: Right there sair enough. I've been there before. In Channet Forrest.
Speaker 19: The Arborgates, all of them are.
Speaker 4: All three of these, all three of them are outstanding.
Speaker 4: I know, I know Arborgate's got probably they probably have
Speaker 4: eight or nine different avocados that they that they sell
Speaker 4: and they're all going to be ones that would be
Speaker 4: recommended in this area.
Speaker 5: Look, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all three of those, both of the Enchanted's and
Speaker 4: Arborgator outstanding. You're not going to go wrong. You're not
Speaker 4: going to go wrong. Uh planet to think about when
Speaker 4: you plant it. You know, it does want sunlight. And
Speaker 4: avocado tree is huge. They get huge in time. Here,
Speaker 4: they tend to get frozen back, so they make more
Speaker 4: like a giant bush a small tree kind of thing.
Speaker 4: But if you have it in a place, especially early
Speaker 4: in its life, where you can try to do some
Speaker 4: kind of covering of it, whether it's you know, giant
Speaker 4: PVC structure or something, just to get it going and
Speaker 4: get it better established. I would do that if possible.
Speaker 5: Or just put it in a pod and bring it
Speaker 5: in like a citrus plant.
Speaker 4: Well you could, I mean, you know, but that'd be like,
Speaker 4: you know, taking a tree that wants to be real big,
Speaker 4: you put it in a pot. It's going to confine
Speaker 4: it a lot. And when you do that, you end
Speaker 4: up with the roots filling the pot and then some
Speaker 4: so you're watering very frequently. You know, every day in
Speaker 4: the summertime, you're having to secure it so it doesn't
Speaker 4: blow over and whatnot. That is not a bad strategy
Speaker 4: for at least the first year or so, but also
Speaker 4: typically they get planted out in the ground. It was
Speaker 4: a huge pot. Is a huge pot. You might be
Speaker 4: able to manage it in a way where you get
Speaker 4: some meals out of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, fair enough, appreciate it.
Speaker 4: You know what we need to do. I just this
Speaker 4: just occurred to me. I'm thinking out loud here. So
Speaker 4: uh oh, if you were to take an avocado and
Speaker 4: plant it in a pot, a giant pot that you
Speaker 4: could lay over. I'm talking of a pot that's five
Speaker 4: or six feet across, and then you just get a
Speaker 4: crane and lay it over flat, and then you could
Speaker 4: throw a tarp over it when we're having freezes, and
Speaker 4: then the next year bring the crane and bring it
Speaker 4: back up again. That's insane.
Speaker 5: They went by RCW yesterday.
Speaker 7: That is huge.
Speaker 19: I don't know where they get to two hundred gallon
Speaker 19: huge plastic plot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well yeah, RCW. David Walliamson owns RTW. He
Speaker 4: also is part of the Williamson Tree Farm up there
Speaker 4: in Plannersville, and that's where they grow all their big
Speaker 4: containers and stuff. So when you go there, yeah, they'll
Speaker 4: they can get you a big tree. Uh, and they'll
Speaker 4: they'll plant it for you too, so you don't have
Speaker 4: to put your chiropractors kids through college, if you know
Speaker 4: what I'm saying. Yes, sir, all right, we'll have fun
Speaker 4: with those. By the way, go to the Haggi horticulture
Speaker 4: website that I was talking about before, uh, and there
Speaker 4: is a publication just on avocados. Now it's going to
Speaker 4: have a limited number of variety that it lists, but
Speaker 4: it'll tell you about growing an avocado successfully. And it's free.
Speaker 4: You just look at it online or download and print
Speaker 4: it out if you want. It's multicolor.
Speaker 5: No, I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thanky horticulture. All right, sir, take care of John. Good luck.
Speaker 4: Now all we ask on guarden Line. We don't charge
Speaker 4: for advice, but we do ask you to bring half
Speaker 4: the avocados you grow and drop them off at KTRH
Speaker 4: and we'll call it.
Speaker 5: Even fair enough.
Speaker 4: Thank you. That sounds thank you. Thanks for the call man,
Speaker 4: have a good day. One of these days will show
Speaker 4: up with some groceries at the state. That is a joke.
Speaker 4: By the way, though, don't start feeling like you're gonna
Speaker 4: bring me your vegetables, all right, you're listening to Garden
Speaker 4: line seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
Speaker 4: four or if you like to just dial by letters
Speaker 4: seven one three two one two KTRH ktr that's what
Speaker 4: we're on here. You know, you can listen to KTRH.
Speaker 4: Of course, you can listen to seven forty am live
Speaker 4: on the radio. We go all the way up to
Speaker 4: Huntsville area, all the way to Louisiana, and I have
Speaker 4: listened to KTRH on the other side of New Bronfuls,
Speaker 4: on the other side of thirty five. It doesn't quite
Speaker 4: go into San Antonio. They have their own station there,
Speaker 4: but it goes a wide area apup. But a lot
Speaker 4: of people listen on the computer or even yet better yet,
Speaker 4: on the app. If you haven't downloaded the iHeart Media app,
Speaker 4: that one allows you to listen to the show live.
Speaker 4: There's other ways, other apps you can listen to pass
Speaker 4: shows as a podcast. But if you do iHeartMedia, you
Speaker 4: can listen to KTRH live no matter where you are.
Speaker 4: You know, cousin Millie up in timbuck To, Canada can
Speaker 4: listen to Garden line on the iHeart Media app live
Speaker 4: or listen to pass shows. A lot of gardeners I've
Speaker 4: talked to like to put on their phone. Just put
Speaker 4: on the phone and turn it on, and you know
Speaker 4: it's daylight outside. Now you can be outside getting some
Speaker 4: stuff done, listening in the garden and who knows, maybe
Speaker 4: you find a little bit and you will know what
Speaker 4: it is. Take a picture of it with the phone
Speaker 4: you got in your hand, give my producer a call.
Speaker 4: He'll tell you how to send it to me and
Speaker 4: we can do a live answer to what's going on.
Speaker 4: Just another way to listen to guardenline. I think that's
Speaker 4: pretty cool. I spend a lot of time listening to
Speaker 4: podcasts because I'm in the road. I'm staring at a windshield,
Speaker 4: and podcasts are a great way to do that. So
Speaker 4: you can go back and listen to past shows as
Speaker 4: well if you'd like to. Earlier, I gave a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of different fragrant plants, and I bet you couldn't
Speaker 4: write those down that fast. You want to go back,
Speaker 4: listen to the Today Show. It'll be posted online and
Speaker 4: you can get that list of fragrant plants or the
Speaker 4: comments that I made about soil testing or all the
Speaker 4: other things we've talked about today. Well, it is the
Speaker 4: top of the hour and the music which means I
Speaker 4: need to quit talking. We will be back for our
Speaker 4: last hour of the weekend here in just a little bit.
Speaker 4: If you'd like to get on the board to be
Speaker 4: first up when we come back. Seven to one three
Speaker 4: two one two k t R.
Speaker 16: Kt r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
Speaker 16: of the products or services advertised on this program.
Speaker 1: Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Richard's.
Speaker 3: Trim.
Speaker 2: Just watch him as so many.
Speaker 3: Good things to set.
Speaker 4: All right, let's do this. We got an hour of
Speaker 4: garden Line left in US today. Well, can we cover
Speaker 4: I'll tell you what you tell me what to cover?
Speaker 4: A call with your questions. Things you're interested in, uh things,
Speaker 4: Maybe there's plant you want to identify. Do you know
Speaker 4: you can send me photos of things if you will
Speaker 4: follow that up with a call in the garden Line
Speaker 4: so we can talk about it. It is kind of
Speaker 4: hard to diagnose and identify certain things just based on
Speaker 4: a verbal description of them. You know, sometimes we get
Speaker 4: lucky we can get that done, but in general it's
Speaker 4: better if you can just send me a photo. Let's
Speaker 4: take a look at those and we'll get to the
Speaker 4: bottom of it. Try to help you with what you're doing.
Speaker 4: We are on the doorstep of spring, and so things
Speaker 4: are about to really break out here and not too
Speaker 4: long for those of you down south, you know spring
Speaker 4: begins and definitely in February. We're already in the big
Speaker 4: middle of spring. And you want to be ready for that,
Speaker 4: and you get ready for it by getting your soil ready.
Speaker 4: My mantra on here is brown stuff before green stuff
Speaker 4: with it, which is just a simple way I say
Speaker 4: it to say, hey, get the soil right before you
Speaker 4: put the plants in. That's what that means. Brown stuff
Speaker 4: before green stuff. And if you will take care of
Speaker 4: your soil, if you will get it right, you will
Speaker 4: find that you have much better chances of success. Soil
Speaker 4: as a foundation. I think about this. This is kind
Speaker 4: of a corny analogy. But are you going to build
Speaker 4: a house, you know, on sand where you don't have
Speaker 4: a good solid foundation, or are you going to take
Speaker 4: the tu bat fours that are the base frame of
Speaker 4: your walls and things. Are you just going to set
Speaker 4: them on the dirt, or are you going to put
Speaker 4: a concrete foundation underneath them, or pure and beam or
Speaker 4: something to hold them up. Foundation is everything, and when
Speaker 4: it comes to soil and plants success, foundation is also everything.
Speaker 4: And so getting that soil right and right is not
Speaker 4: the same for all plants. You know, it's pretty much
Speaker 4: the case that and I even tend to do this
Speaker 4: is every time someone's going to plant a plant, I go, oh,
Speaker 4: we'll mix some composts in the soil, and that, by
Speaker 4: and large it's a good idea. But there are plants
Speaker 4: like cactus that grow out in soils that are rocky
Speaker 4: and clayey and don't have any compost in them at all,
Speaker 4: and it's a dry, aired environment and so so obviously
Speaker 4: they don't need that to grow right. But then most
Speaker 4: plants are going to benefit from that. And if you
Speaker 4: buy plants in the store, if you buy cactus in store,
Speaker 4: it doesn't come in a container full of gravel, comes
Speaker 4: with some organic materials in it. You can do that,
Speaker 4: but just know this that whether you're planting blueberries and azaleas,
Speaker 4: which love acid, acidic high organic matter soils and sands,
Speaker 4: or if you're going to put in something like a
Speaker 4: fig tree that can tolerate a very heavy clay. There's
Speaker 4: a range there, and so getting the soil right, however
Speaker 4: you do that is important. And just knowing that soil
Speaker 4: structure and texture and all of that plays a part
Speaker 4: in the success that you have with your plants. I
Speaker 4: have become a big fan of backyard birding. I am
Speaker 4: not the guy who puts on the safari hat and
Speaker 4: the cargo shorts and runs around with binoculars stomping through
Speaker 4: the wood saying that sounds like a black, black striped
Speaker 4: orange warbly whatever bird to me. Obviously, I don't know
Speaker 4: what I'm talking about. And people love that, and that's fine.
Speaker 4: That's a great hobby, awesome hobby, a bird watching. But
Speaker 4: I'm the backyard bird guy. I want them to come
Speaker 4: to see me. I will feed them, I will provide
Speaker 4: them water and will have success. And by the way,
Speaker 4: do you know that birds need water even in the winter,
Speaker 4: if there's no water around, birds drink every day, just
Speaker 4: like you do every day, even though it's winter, even
Speaker 4: that it's cold, you drink less, but you drink. You
Speaker 4: need that and birds need water too, So always have
Speaker 4: fresh water available to them. And when we have a
Speaker 4: freezing night, that water's gonna be frozen over. Go out
Speaker 4: there and break it loose, put some warm water in
Speaker 4: it or something to thaw that ice, and give the
Speaker 4: bird something that they are able to get to and drink.
Speaker 4: That's important. Bird needs shelter too. And by the way,
Speaker 4: Wibirds Unlimited has awesome selection of bird nest boxes. Now's
Speaker 4: the time to get your nest boxes ready because it
Speaker 4: won't be long. Very soon the birds will start many
Speaker 4: types of birds will start nesting. And while Birds has
Speaker 4: got bluebird boxes that's a specific kind of box, a
Speaker 4: certain size hole. They have boxes for Carolina wrens and chickadees,
Speaker 4: a big old owl boxes, giant holes and big boxes.
Speaker 4: Bat boxes are not a bird, but they fly. And
Speaker 4: Purple Martins and Purple Martin houses are amazing. And they
Speaker 4: got the big giant gord types, but it's a plastic
Speaker 4: gord that's easier to clean. It's just designed better than
Speaker 4: just hanging up a gourd. And they also have the
Speaker 4: ones that look like little condos that are on a
Speaker 4: pole that you know you can bring it up the
Speaker 4: whole house down, so they dissemble in a way that
Speaker 4: allows you to get in there and clean them really well.
Speaker 4: They're all designed for the best results, and they're at
Speaker 4: Wildbirds and now's the time to get started. Don't wait.
Speaker 4: You want when the Purple Mountain Martin Scouts come looking
Speaker 4: for a place, you want them to see your house
Speaker 4: and you want to go tell us about, Hey, come on,
Speaker 4: we're going to live here. This's a great place. They've
Speaker 4: got houses that are designed right. They have proper ventilation
Speaker 4: that's very important, especially in our Texas heat. They have
Speaker 4: proper drainage so that it rains that the house strains
Speaker 4: was not mucky and soggy and roddy and everything in there.
Speaker 4: They've got the entrance hole size that's right for the
Speaker 4: kind of birds you want. That's very important. And they
Speaker 4: can help you protect your boxes from predator. Do you
Speaker 4: know that a snake can climb a pole and get
Speaker 4: into a birdhouse. There's stories about that getting up into
Speaker 4: a birdhouse, up on a pole and there's a snake
Speaker 4: inside for crying out loud. Well, wild birds can put
Speaker 4: baffles and other things on poles to keep any kind
Speaker 4: of predator, whether it's a snake or something else, crawling
Speaker 4: up there to try to get to the eggs and things.
Speaker 4: They can take care of that. It's all at Wildbirds,
Speaker 4: and while you're there, check out their new product. It's
Speaker 4: called Cardinal Confetti Blend. They also have a cardinal tube
Speaker 4: feeder and a Good Evening Cardinal feeder, two new cardinal
Speaker 4: feeders that go with that Cardinal Confetti Blend. And the
Speaker 4: Cardinal Confetti Blend is really cool. It's got just this
Speaker 4: makes me hungry. Most of it safflowers, black all sunflowers,
Speaker 4: sunflower chips, nutrius, safflower bark, butter bits, peanut halves, and
Speaker 4: here we go. Not so much on dried meal worms,
Speaker 4: although that may be good. I may try them sometimes.
Speaker 4: And striped sunflower all in there in that blend. It
Speaker 4: is really cool. You just put in loose feeder. You
Speaker 4: can get their cardinal tube feeder, you can get the
Speaker 4: Good Evening Cardinal feeder. That are really cool cool, but
Speaker 4: this blend is it's just awesome far bringing cardinals and
Speaker 4: by the way, a lot of other birds will like
Speaker 4: it too. It's brand new from Wildbird's gonna have it
Speaker 4: all year. It's not just gonna be a spring thing.
Speaker 4: They're gonna have it all year. Go to WBU dot
Speaker 4: com forward slash Houston and find the Wildbird's store nearest
Speaker 4: to you. They're six of them in the Greater Houston area.
Speaker 4: Time for a break, I'll be right back with your calls.
Speaker 4: All right, we're hopping. Let's do it. We got another
Speaker 4: segment coming up here with your calls seven one three
Speaker 4: two one two KT Right, what do you want to
Speaker 4: ask about? How can we help you have a more
Speaker 4: bountiful garden, a more beautiful landscape, and more fun in
Speaker 4: the process. That's what we'd like to do. I uh
Speaker 4: was excuse me. I was out in the yard the
Speaker 4: other day. We have a couple of a couple. We
Speaker 4: have about three cypress trees in our yard which were
Speaker 4: here before I got here. And uh, I have always
Speaker 4: thought it was a beautiful tree. And now I have
Speaker 4: a love hate relationship with cypress trees because mine producing knees.
Speaker 4: There are types that don't have knees. If you're going
Speaker 4: to plant a cypress, get one that doesn't produce knees.
Speaker 4: A good tree grower, we'll be able to tell you
Speaker 4: what that is.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 4: Anyway, I got knees all over the place. I dug
Speaker 4: them all out with the I think three wheelbarrow loads
Speaker 4: of cypress knees when I put in my new lawn
Speaker 4: this past April, and now all the cypress needles drop. Now.
Speaker 4: Cypress needles are attractive, they nice little. I use them
Speaker 4: in my gardens as I was talking about earlier, for
Speaker 4: walkways to step on, for mulches and things like that.
Speaker 4: But when you have a golden retriever with big long
Speaker 4: feathers and they go out in the yard and wrestle.
Speaker 4: We have two of them and they come in and
Speaker 4: they bring in about nine hundred thousand cypress needles to
Speaker 4: drop on our floors, and we clean them up. And
Speaker 4: I go outside and I try to get all the
Speaker 4: needles up. I have to do that about ten times
Speaker 4: during the fall, rather than rake once or twice like
Speaker 4: most people, because of those dark, darn cypress needles being
Speaker 4: out everywhere. So anyway, I was out there taking a
Speaker 4: look at all the needles are officially off the tree.
Speaker 4: Now some cold weather and some good rain and some
Speaker 4: wind has taken them out, so at last I can
Speaker 4: do a final cleanup and be good to go. I
Speaker 4: still like those trees a lot. They have so many
Speaker 4: good attributes. They can grow in areas where the drainage
Speaker 4: is poor. They can also grow in areas you know
Speaker 4: that aren't boggy at all. Just need to give them
Speaker 4: a little bit of water in late summer if they
Speaker 4: get a little bit dry, but other than that they're
Speaker 4: really good tree. But I go out and do some
Speaker 4: cleanup on those as well. And now my dogs can
Speaker 4: run out and do what they want to do without
Speaker 4: me having to go through the clean up stage as
Speaker 4: they come through the door. So anyway that is happening
Speaker 4: out there, I pretty much moved everything into the garden walkways,
Speaker 4: all the organic materials, and I haven't been out gathering
Speaker 4: neighbors leaves, but I usually do that. Try to beat
Speaker 4: the bulk garbage trucks on that day, swing up, pick
Speaker 4: up some good ones and their high quality. Got a
Speaker 4: little grinder to grind it up, so that speeds the decomposition.
Speaker 4: But the main reason I like the grinder is because
Speaker 4: it makes it a better mulch leaves. I know the
Speaker 4: forest is mulched with unground leaves, of course, but I
Speaker 4: want it to be attractive and I want it to
Speaker 4: not blow away. And so you get a big old
Speaker 4: leaf like a red oak leaf or a sycamore leaf,
Speaker 4: and you get a little breeze and pew takes off
Speaker 4: to the neighbor's house, so you gotta run them through
Speaker 4: the Some people use a lawn more And if you
Speaker 4: want to recycle your leaves, you can do that. You
Speaker 4: kind of make a window of leaves and mow over
Speaker 4: it and add more leaves and over it, and then
Speaker 4: rake that up and you got a ground up leaf.
Speaker 4: You can use a bagging attachment on your mower after
Speaker 4: you've run over them a couple of times and bag
Speaker 4: them up and then just take them right to wherever
Speaker 4: you want a mulch and put them in the garden beds.
Speaker 4: Someone called me one time and they said, can you
Speaker 4: use oak leaves as mulch? And I said, well, God,
Speaker 4: does that means? Really? Think about it? An oak forest?
Speaker 4: What does it get molched with oak leaves? A mixed
Speaker 4: hardwood forest mulched with oak and a lot of other
Speaker 4: kinds of leaves. Yes, you can use any kind of
Speaker 4: leaves for malt. It's okay. Somewhere along the line, way
Speaker 4: back when we decided we had to do things different
Speaker 4: than nature does, used to be that you had to
Speaker 4: bag your lawn. I gotta bag those clippings, bag those clippings,
Speaker 4: and then someone named doctor Bill Canoop from Texas A
Speaker 4: and M Turf Department created something called Don't Bag It,
Speaker 4: the Don't Bag It program, which talked about recycling the leaves. Actually,
Speaker 4: actually I wrote the Don't Bag it leaf management section.
Speaker 4: It was don't Bag it for lawn clippings, and the
Speaker 4: dope bag it leaf management and don't bag it compost.
Speaker 4: I did the don't bag it leaf management anyway, Yes,
Speaker 4: you can return. Do you know that? And this is
Speaker 4: I know it's not mowing season, but while I'm talking
Speaker 4: about it, do you know that your lawnmower puts out
Speaker 4: more nutrients than your fertilizer spreader. If you get my
Speaker 4: schedule and you fertilize every time. I say to fertilize,
Speaker 4: I mean every time, even the spring green up time,
Speaker 4: which is optional. If you do all of that, and
Speaker 4: you look at how many pounds of nitrogen phosphors tasking
Speaker 4: you put out, and then you take grass clippings and
Speaker 4: you count all the mowings you do through the season,
Speaker 4: you send those some clippings to the lab and say
Speaker 4: what's the nutrient content? Your lawn mower puts out more
Speaker 4: nutrients and your fertilizer spreader. So what's the take on
Speaker 4: If you bag your clippings and throw them away, you're
Speaker 4: renting fertilizer. You're not buying it. You buy it, put
Speaker 4: it on the ground, grow grass clippings with it, and
Speaker 4: haul away the nutrients. That's called renting fertilizer. You just
Speaker 4: have it for a little while. I'm gonna let that
Speaker 4: sink in for a second, because for a lot of
Speaker 4: folks that's kind of like, whooh, never thought about it
Speaker 4: that way, Well you should. It's a good way to
Speaker 4: think about because it's the truth. That's how nature works.
Speaker 4: But anyway, putting those leaves and stuff into the gardens,
Speaker 4: running over them, using them as maults, letting them decompose naturally,
Speaker 4: they moderate soil temperature. And you need mults in the winter, summer,
Speaker 4: all through the year. There's not a month of the
Speaker 4: year you don't need maltch. And the spring warm season
Speaker 4: weeds are germinating early spring, late winter, and you got
Speaker 4: to have malts to prevent them from getting started. In
Speaker 4: the fall cool season weed you're germinating. That's when we're
Speaker 4: talking about October, November, and even some in December. You
Speaker 4: got to have multch down to prevent those from getting
Speaker 4: established When the weather is hot and dry. Moultch helps
Speaker 4: reduce water loss from the soil when the weather is cold.
Speaker 4: Malt protects soil temperature, moderates salt temperature so that a
Speaker 4: semi tender perennial you might lose in a hard phrase
Speaker 4: is protected and you don't lose it. So leaves, leave
Speaker 4: the leaves, leave the leaves, let them be. I know
Speaker 4: you want to make it look pretty. That's okay, that's good,
Speaker 4: of course, but just know that it's not a mistake.
Speaker 4: It's a design that leaves drop off the trees, drop
Speaker 4: off the grass plants and become part of building the soil.
Speaker 4: That was your public service announcement for today. See I
Speaker 4: wanted to spend a little bit of time today talking
Speaker 4: about color and color changes in the spring. We are
Speaker 4: still in the winter season and we have a number
Speaker 4: of plants that do good for sprucing up our landscapes
Speaker 4: and creating a bedding plant color That means a flower bed,
Speaker 4: an annual plant that you put in, or a perennial plant.
Speaker 4: The number one color plants in the cool season are
Speaker 4: pansies and violas. That's number one lots of those that
Speaker 4: we use. They are the hardiest flowering plants of the
Speaker 4: winter time for our area. Then we have plants that
Speaker 4: are hardy but not quite as hardy. That would be
Speaker 4: things like, for example, a Lissum is a really nice plant.
Speaker 4: Snap dragons are really nice plants. Dianthus that's probably maybe
Speaker 4: number two. I don't know. I'd have to line them
Speaker 4: all up that decide if that's number two. Dianthus is
Speaker 4: a beautiful kind of a mini carnation looking little plant
Speaker 4: that is really attractive. There are compact types that make little,
Speaker 4: small amounts of color flowers, and then there's tall, upright
Speaker 4: types like the Amazon series that just have neon colors
Speaker 4: instead of you know, standard red. They just have this
Speaker 4: neon I don't know what it is, some version of
Speaker 4: a beautiful, beautiful red colors that are just kind of well,
Speaker 4: they're neon. They're beautiful, and they're more upright taller stem
Speaker 4: that can be used for cut flowers too, by the way.
Speaker 4: And then we have other things. Colondula is a good
Speaker 4: cool season plant that you can grow and have flowers here.
Speaker 4: Nasturtiums pretty much as another good one that will bloom
Speaker 4: some in the cooler times of the year, lots of
Speaker 4: good options out there. Then we have cool season foliage
Speaker 4: is probably the main one is Dusty Miller. It's a
Speaker 4: silvery gray looking foliage. It looks really good with flowers
Speaker 4: that are kind of in the blue range of colors.
Speaker 4: It makes a good combo to have blue and silver,
Speaker 4: kind of silver foliage along with the blue flowers that
Speaker 4: looks really good. We have other plants that we can
Speaker 4: plant in the cool season for color. We get into
Speaker 4: the spring season and the freezes and frosts are behind us.
Speaker 4: That's when the petunias are just outstanding, and you really
Speaker 4: need to have petunias somewhere. We have so many new
Speaker 4: types now that have been bred to be more floriferous.
Speaker 4: They bloom and bloom and bloom. You get a petunia
Speaker 4: like oh one that came out a few years ago,
Speaker 4: bubblegum yellow, I mean, excuse me, pink flowers like pink
Speaker 4: bubble gum. And there's so many blooms on that plant
Speaker 4: you can't see the foliage. I don't know how the
Speaker 4: plant survives catching sunlight, but I mean it is all
Speaker 4: blooms over the top of it. And there are many
Speaker 4: other kinds of attractive petunias. Now they have some called
Speaker 4: supertunias that are a little smaller blooms, but they bloom blue,
Speaker 4: bloom and just cover up with blossoms. That's a good one. Zenias.
Speaker 4: I mentioned those earlier. That's a good warm season plant
Speaker 4: for color. So if you want to start some plants
Speaker 4: yourself for color later, you can begin to plant some
Speaker 4: of the things you're going to plant later on. A
Speaker 4: lot of people like Maragoles, put those out in the spring.
Speaker 4: They cannot take any frost or anything close to frost.
Speaker 4: Just wait, start a little transplant, plant them out when
Speaker 4: it's time to go, or go to the garden center
Speaker 4: and buy you some. Those are good ones. I sunflowers
Speaker 4: like the warm weather as well. There's many other great
Speaker 4: plants we can put out there. Caliber coas another good one.
Speaker 4: I mean I can said they're just naming flowers all
Speaker 4: the time. Your garden centers have the ones you need.
Speaker 4: But in that transition, you want to improve your bed
Speaker 4: for planting. And that's where I would get pull all
Speaker 4: the old flowers out. When you're going to make that
Speaker 4: transition from cool season to warm season, and it's coming
Speaker 4: up not too far from now, pull the old ones out,
Speaker 4: work about an inch of compost into the soil. That
Speaker 4: would be good, and then you're ready to go and
Speaker 4: plant your new plants. If there's going to be a
Speaker 4: little break between the two, make sure and put a
Speaker 4: mulch over the soil because otherwise every weed on earth
Speaker 4: will pop up in there, and so you want to
Speaker 4: make sure and keep that all covered with that, you
Speaker 4: can pull the malts back when you want to go
Speaker 4: and do your flowering. Then number one, well, number one,
Speaker 4: one of the main mistakes people make when it comes
Speaker 4: to color in their beds is they don't fertilize enough.
Speaker 4: If you fertilize on a regular basis, you can produce
Speaker 4: good color. You produce vigor. Vigor is important to make carbohydrates,
Speaker 4: which make bloom buds, which make blooms, which makes beauty.
Speaker 4: And so you always want to make sure and on
Speaker 4: a regular basis provide small amounts of color or use
Speaker 4: a product that is a slow release that's going to
Speaker 4: give you a release over time in order to have
Speaker 4: success with that. So when you're getting ready for the transition,
Speaker 4: or if you're putting in a new flower bed this year,
Speaker 4: make sure either buy a quality bed mix from one
Speaker 4: of our local purveyors we talk about here on garden
Speaker 4: Line and create a bed that is outstanding soil. Or
Speaker 4: if you've got an existing bed, you can use the
Speaker 4: same bed mix to spruce it up a little bit.
Speaker 4: Or you can just mix in some composts as well
Speaker 4: to get things right. Set yourself up for success, because
Speaker 4: I'm telling you there is nothing like a gorgeous color
Speaker 4: bed around your home. If you want to follow all
Speaker 4: the rules of color, you can do that. You know,
Speaker 4: you got to go to the opposite sides of the
Speaker 4: color wheel and whatnot and all that stuff. Or you
Speaker 4: can just plant what you like. Just remember all things
Speaker 4: in the back short of things in the front, so
Speaker 4: one beautiful plant doesn't hide another.
Speaker 7: One.
Speaker 4: Time for me to take a break the phone number
Speaker 4: seven one three two one two kt r H. I'll
Speaker 4: be right back, and feel free to grab a helium
Speaker 4: balloon and sing along. All right, that's not of that.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to garden Line, the show where we give
Speaker 4: gardening advice and occasionally play weird stuff as music bumper music.
Speaker 4: Our phone number seven one three two one two kt
Speaker 4: r H. Let's head out to humble and we're gonna
Speaker 4: talk to Rick. Hello, Rick, welcome to guard Line. Are
Speaker 4: you there?
Speaker 3: Rick?
Speaker 4: All right? I don't know. Hope we lost him? Okay,
Speaker 4: maybe Rock'll call back. Sound like he's on the road. Well.
Speaker 4: I was talking about color in beds and things a
Speaker 4: while ago and the importance of getting the soil right
Speaker 4: round suftware green stuff. Part of the brown stuff is
Speaker 4: also the nutrient levels, and mixing some stuff in the
Speaker 4: soil is helpful. And you're gonna transplant plants, you could
Speaker 4: sprinkle a little of the nutris tar genesis in there
Speaker 4: by the way, that would be good. Just kind of
Speaker 4: do it around the plants as you're mixing up the
Speaker 4: soil and planting the transplants in there, give them a
Speaker 4: good dose of it, and then get you some of
Speaker 4: their color Star from Nelson and sprinkle that in to
Speaker 4: provide the ongoing not sprinkle it into the soil, but
Speaker 4: add it later as a top dressing and scratch it in,
Speaker 4: water it in to continue about every three months. You
Speaker 4: want to add some color story in to provide that
Speaker 4: extra boost that's going on. Those are just two great
Speaker 4: products again from the folks at Nelson. Plant food and
Speaker 4: that extra nutrients extra nutrients. That is the key to
Speaker 4: success with flowering plants. You know a lot of times
Speaker 4: you look at fertilizers and a flowering furtlizer is going
Speaker 4: to have higher phosphorus the middle number in it. And
Speaker 4: that's true, that phosphorus. Each we oversimplify. We say, well,
Speaker 4: like nitrogen makes more growth. Well, yes it does, but
Speaker 4: nitrogen also does things inside the plants, the stems and
Speaker 4: the roots that help with nutrient and water uptake as well.
Speaker 4: So nutrients do a lot of things. And phosphorus, yes,
Speaker 4: it does help root development, it does help bloom development.
Speaker 4: But if you want a flowering plant to keep going,
Speaker 4: it's got to keep growing. You've got to have new growth.
Speaker 4: And those petunias I was talking about, they will flower
Speaker 4: themselves into almost a stunted stage of growth. They will
Speaker 4: overdo it. I'll take my petunias as getting way ahead
Speaker 4: of the season, but just an FYI, I'll take my
Speaker 4: petunias and after they've done their good bloom and they're
Speaker 4: kind of waning a little bit, I will sheare mine
Speaker 4: back and then I'll fertilize them and water it in
Speaker 4: and get a new boost of growth. Because that boost
Speaker 4: of new growth is going to have a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of new growth on it, a new bloom's on it.
Speaker 4: Same thing with Salvia greggy I. That's a perennial for summertime.
Speaker 4: Wonderful salvia, wonderful native of the Southwest salvia. Your Salvia
Speaker 4: gregye will become a sparse, woody subshrub if you never
Speaker 4: fertilize it. If you will print it back by a bout.
Speaker 4: I'd cut it back by about two thirds, maybe half,
Speaker 4: at the end of winter. Put some fertilizer down, watered in.
Speaker 4: You're going to get fresh new growth. By the time
Speaker 4: we get to May, it's going to be still blooming.
Speaker 4: It never quits blooming. It's always blooming. Gouind and shear
Speaker 4: it again, this time only by about a third. Fertilize
Speaker 4: it in water and watch what happens. The roses are
Speaker 4: that way. You know, they have a big spring bloom.
Speaker 4: April is beautiful and they kind of wane. Cheer them
Speaker 4: back a little bit, fertilize them water and get some
Speaker 4: new growth again. We do the same thing in August
Speaker 4: for our roses. At the end of August, and also
Speaker 4: for some of the other plants like Salvia grege you
Speaker 4: can do it again. Just cheer it back, fertilize it.
Speaker 4: You need growth to have good bloom production. And a
Speaker 4: lot of times our plants bloom great at first, everything's
Speaker 4: pretty in the spring, and then it's like, yeah, they're
Speaker 4: not doing so good for a lot of plants. That
Speaker 4: is a strategy to help solve that. We're going to
Speaker 4: go now out to talk to k in Pearland. Hello, Kay,
Speaker 4: welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 18: Well, hi, thank you. I forgot to ask you yesterday.
Speaker 18: Can you grow mayhaws here?
Speaker 4: You can? You can mayhaws like a slightly acidic soil.
Speaker 4: They can tolerate wet conditions. They're not. That doesn't mean
Speaker 4: they have to be constantly soggy wet. It just means
Speaker 4: they tolerate that. And there are a few varieties out
Speaker 4: there that you can find. They're not easy to find.
Speaker 4: Mayhaws are not a common fruit, but they are one
Speaker 4: of the few Texas native fruits that we have. You know,
Speaker 4: we don't have a lot of native fruits. So did
Speaker 4: you grow up excuse me, did you grow up eating mayhaws?
Speaker 4: Now you're growing up, did you have there?
Speaker 18: I worked for of someone who did craft shows and
Speaker 18: he made his own jams and jellies and sauces and
Speaker 18: all that thing, and had a lot of people asking
Speaker 18: for Mayhaw jelly and he didn't have a Mayhaw tree
Speaker 18: and he couldn't find it anywhere. So I just I
Speaker 18: was just curious if it, you know, if if they're
Speaker 18: they are not prominent.
Speaker 4: I know, so yeah, they're not. And I was recently
Speaker 4: recently looking over the Arbigate list of fruits. I mean,
Speaker 4: they have bazillion kind of fruit plants to get sent
Speaker 4: up at Urbigate, and mayhous is not on that list either.
Speaker 4: I don't know if they could get them, but there's
Speaker 4: going to be a way to get a hold of them.
Speaker 4: They're just they're just not in the trade. People don't
Speaker 4: ask for them. People don't even know what they are.
Speaker 4: But they're like a little miniature apples. If you look
Speaker 4: at one growing looks like a little tiny apple.
Speaker 18: I've never really even seen one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 18: I was just curious because they are people love the jelly,
Speaker 18: and that just happened, you know, more than one year
Speaker 18: that he's been doing this, So I was just curious.
Speaker 18: But thank you so much.
Speaker 4: There you go, Thank you, take care of you. Back,
Speaker 4: appreciate the call. Take care. All right, we got Rick back.
Speaker 4: Let's go to Humble and we're going to talk to Rick. Hey, Rick,
Speaker 4: welcome to garden Line.
Speaker 9: Hey, Skip, I got a question for you about by
Speaker 9: high grass, like the various varieties. I've got a property
Speaker 9: in San Ju Sano County and it's mostly sandy home
Speaker 9: and it's acidic because it's mostly forested. As curious as
Speaker 9: it is behind the proper choice for that, uh scenario?
Speaker 9: Or is there better options? And tip that there is
Speaker 9: anything available that's made him. I would I'd love to
Speaker 9: have a you know, use that as well.
Speaker 6: So I'll go ahead and yeah, let's go.
Speaker 4: Well that's a that's a great question, Rick. And what
Speaker 4: we what we uh refer to it as behea grass
Speaker 4: b A h I A like the Labajea Mexican Texas.
Speaker 4: What mission mission site? The hair grass is very good
Speaker 4: in acidic areas, rainy area is a very tough grass,
Speaker 4: very tough. I knew a guy that had a Christmas
Speaker 4: tree farm in East Texas and he used the hair
Speaker 4: grass as his parking lot.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 4: And it I mean it can take the wear and
Speaker 4: tear and it was is good as a lawn grass.
Speaker 4: It has a problem number one. It's a very coarse
Speaker 4: textured grass. It's not pleasant to walk on. But in
Speaker 4: Florida and other places they do have Behey lawns and
Speaker 4: they manage them, they take care of them, and they
Speaker 4: make a decent lawn out of it. The thing I
Speaker 4: don't like about Behea is it sends up a seedhead
Speaker 4: the day after you mow, and those seaedheads will be
Speaker 4: on like one foot stalk sticking up. It's like you
Speaker 4: mowed it and within no time, here's these seedheads coming
Speaker 4: back up. And that that's kind of not such a
Speaker 4: conducive to a pretty lawn. But it is a very tough,
Speaker 4: easy to grow grass, not a problem at all to grow.
Speaker 4: You just don't see it from sod farms and things.
Speaker 9: Typically this is a property good no homeowners association, So
Speaker 9: I don't know that.
Speaker 10: That's kind of okay, there you go.
Speaker 9: I gotta make mama happy. And other than that, I mean,
Speaker 9: is there any like spring grass or anything else that's
Speaker 9: like a native grass that would be good for a
Speaker 9: place that gets about sixty inches a round a here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are a number of different ones. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 4: if you want to hang on, let me run to
Speaker 4: a break. I gotta go and let me come back
Speaker 4: and try to answer this a little bit more for you.
Speaker 4: If not, thank you for the call. All right, folks,
Speaker 4: I'll be right back. All right, Welcome back to Garden Line.
Speaker 4: We're gonna run back to the phones here in our
Speaker 4: last segment of the day. By the way, we're gonna
Speaker 4: go to Houston and talk to David. Hello, David, Welcome
Speaker 4: to Garden Line.
Speaker 5: Yes, sir, how are you this morning?
Speaker 4: Good morning, I'm good, I'm good.
Speaker 20: My daughter and Russy have got a Christmas President's a
Speaker 20: garden light, and we just wanted to get something like,
Speaker 20: something different, something special, And I don't know, I just
Speaker 20: I just want to see what what you what would
Speaker 20: you suggest that we get to put to start our
Speaker 20: little growing venture together.
Speaker 4: Okay, So is this one of the gadgets that is
Speaker 4: hydroponic that has water in it? Or is it just
Speaker 4: the light itself.
Speaker 20: It's a it's a whole little kid, I guess.
Speaker 2: Uh, yes, a.
Speaker 20: Light and everything and a little containers. So I didn't know.
Speaker 4: Okay, So it's probably sold to grow flowers and vegetables
Speaker 4: and herbs and things. Do you think, yes, sir, yes, sir, yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 4: all right, I just want to make sure we're on
Speaker 4: the same page. Well, you know, it kind of depends
Speaker 4: on what she wants to grow. If you have a
Speaker 4: garden and you would like to start some tomato plants
Speaker 4: or some pepper plants or or something like that, she
Speaker 4: could start those under it for transplanting outside into pots
Speaker 4: or into the soil later. If you're looking for, you know,
Speaker 4: something that's kind of small and and uh, you can manage, uh,
Speaker 4: whether it's you know, a little pat on the pot
Speaker 4: on the patio or something. Basil is an excellent little
Speaker 4: one that comes in a lot of different types, shoot
Speaker 4: and grow like a lemon basil. You can grow a
Speaker 4: tie basil. It's called thie basil does really well if
Speaker 4: you want to put a plant in the garden to
Speaker 4: attract bees and pollinators. There's one called African blue basil
Speaker 4: that that's usually rooted from cuttings, but the basil would
Speaker 4: be an option for that. If you're looking for flowers
Speaker 4: that you can plant outside, starting some zenias inside would
Speaker 4: be really good. They grow fast and pretty easy to grow.
Speaker 4: As it warms up a little bit, you could start
Speaker 4: a cucumber or a squash to plant it outside. If
Speaker 4: you only just grow something underneath that, then maybe a
Speaker 4: houseplant that's going to be a little more compact would
Speaker 4: be a way to go. But I don't I don't
Speaker 4: know what kind of plants she's interested in.
Speaker 20: Yeah, this is our first time to do anything like this,
Speaker 20: so we're just trying to do something to start off,
Speaker 20: something special and just someone can do together.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, yeah, that's a great idea. Congratulations on that
Speaker 4: you're doing. You're doing a good thing there. I gardened
Speaker 4: with all my kids and a lot of them still garden.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 4: It's a good it's a good thing. Uh So yeah,
Speaker 4: I kind of to find the things that you are
Speaker 4: interested in growing. You know, I mentioned food, I mentioned
Speaker 4: some flowers, I mentioned some herbs. You could even start
Speaker 4: a little plant like like a time or a regano
Speaker 4: or a rosemary underneath there, uh that later than could
Speaker 4: be moved out. Most of those the light is so
Speaker 4: close to the plants that you can't grow something really tall. Now,
Speaker 4: if yours is different than that, you have to let
Speaker 4: me know, like how how far is it from the
Speaker 4: light to where your plants would be on that kit?
Speaker 20: It's uh, it's really not not that big at all.
Speaker 20: My uh uh hold on, let me, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 20: it's just a little miniature one, just something that's going
Speaker 20: to go on the hall kind of. It's really uh okay,
Speaker 20: I mean, you know, it's a smaller one. It's nothing big,
Speaker 20: you know at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, you might want to go to a to
Speaker 4: a garden center. I don't know what part of the
Speaker 4: area you're in, but we've got a lot of good
Speaker 4: garden centers that have some really small options with types
Speaker 4: of houseplants that are very interesting that you might be
Speaker 4: able to start in there. Of course, those garden centers
Speaker 4: would also have seed. If you wanted to grow something
Speaker 4: from seed, I would suggest starting with something that's easy
Speaker 4: so you can have good success, you know, some of
Speaker 4: the challenging things. Yeah, you don't want to probably dive
Speaker 4: into that first, and that that was the nature of
Speaker 4: your call anyway, So I would I would go with
Speaker 4: the you know, zenias are easy, but you're not going
Speaker 4: to grow the whole zenny out underneath that light. It
Speaker 4: would be as starting it as a transplant for things. Yeah,
Speaker 4: regano maybe time a regano would be pretty easy to
Speaker 4: grow as an herb. If you had some chives and
Speaker 4: you wanted to grow those, you could take scissors and
Speaker 4: harvest them to put into like scrambled eggs as a seasoning.
Speaker 4: Chop chives up in little quarter inch strips and or
Speaker 4: sections and put them into scrambled eggs. So then you
Speaker 4: get to kind of eat the thing that you're growing.
Speaker 4: So those would be a few ideas well.
Speaker 20: Thank you very much, sir.
Speaker 4: We'll have fun with that. Good luck. And then she's welcome.
Speaker 4: I've had kids call in the guardlane before, so she's
Speaker 4: welcome as we go along, if she has questions, I'm
Speaker 4: not too shy to do it. She's welcome to call
Speaker 4: in and ask questions about it. As you get going
Speaker 4: and run into things you want to visit about.
Speaker 20: Okay, yes, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Have a great day you too, Thanks for the call, David.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that. Yeah, get kids started early, you know.
Speaker 4: The if you've got kids and you've you've not gardened,
Speaker 4: you know, or anything, you ought to consider getting them
Speaker 4: involved in gardening, and you know, goes someplace where you
Speaker 4: can get all kinds of things that you might need
Speaker 4: and get all set up for it. You know, you
Speaker 4: go into an ACE Hardware store, for example, and you're
Speaker 4: going to find the little soluble fertilizers that you would
Speaker 4: use in uh an indoor garden. Of course it's outdoor
Speaker 4: gardening as well also, but they're gonna have a wide
Speaker 4: range of fertilizer and products like that do well. We
Speaker 4: were talking about gardening in this I think it's probably
Speaker 4: not a hydroponic system that David was talking about. But
Speaker 4: if it's not, Ace Hardware is going to have the
Speaker 4: putting mixes and things of the seed starting mixes that
Speaker 4: you would want to have. Now you know when you
Speaker 4: go to ACE, you're going to find everything you need.
Speaker 4: This time of the year, we're looking at getting our
Speaker 4: garages in order spring cleaning. You need shelving, you need
Speaker 4: containers and storage, toats and things like that. They've got
Speaker 4: all of that as well. Little tools for are you
Speaker 4: in your gardening outdoor tools for things in the gardening.
Speaker 4: Ace has got it anywhere you go. You can go
Speaker 4: to acehardware dot Com, find the store locator. When you
Speaker 4: find the store locator, you're going to be able to
Speaker 4: find the stores more than one that are near you.
Speaker 4: Acehardware dot Com stores near you. For example, Aspa ACE
Speaker 4: up in the Woodlands, Lake Conroe, ACE up there, Montgomery,
Speaker 4: Katie Ace Hardware is just another example of many dozens
Speaker 4: of Ace Heart of stores in our region. Well that's
Speaker 4: the skiptop. Stop talking music, and that means we are
Speaker 4: done with the show for today. Thanks for listening, appreciate it.
Speaker 4: I hope you've enjoyed it. I talked about a lot
Speaker 4: of things today. Hopefully that was something along the lines
Speaker 4: that was of interest to you. Thanks for being listener.
Speaker 4: Remember our shows are available in this podcast at the
Speaker 4: ktr H website if you go to my website Gardening
Speaker 4: with Skip dot com. Right when you go to the website,
Speaker 4: on that bar across below my picture is listen to
Speaker 4: garden line. Listen line and listen to passion. Have a
Speaker 4: fun week out there in the garden. We'll see you
Speaker 4: next Saturday.