Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Good Saturday morning, and welcome tothe WGBO Lawn and Garden Show, brought
to you by Cleg's Nursery. Ifyou have a question about seasonal planting,
lon and garden concerns are questions aboutlandscaping called four nine nine WGBO. That's
four nine nine two six. Goodmorning, Baton Rouge, and welcome to
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news radio eleven to fifty wjbo's Lawnand Garden Show. First off, before
I introduced a very special guest Ihave with me today, I'd like to
thank Jeremy for something on the promothere. Thank you for taking out call
the experts, because you know theywouldn't call if I was here. It
was bothering me for years. Yeaw, my name is BUTCHERWS. I am
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with Clegg's Nursery and this is reallyI am very excited about this. What
are the people in Baton Rouge.One of the landscape architect contractors in Baton
Rouge that I have always admired hiswork and have always thought of him tremendously
respectfully with the amount of knowledge hehad. I am actually sitting with Bill
Rowntree and it is truly an honorBill. I mean that. Thank you
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very much for you were talking aboutsomeone. Where's the other guy in the
room. No, you, Iappreciate that's You've been in the business about
as long as I have. Itseems to be around the Baton Rige area.
It's Round Tree Designs. I believeRound tree design is your business.
And now my daughter's in it.Oh really, yes, she just passed
her UH licensing exam as a landscapearchitect just a couple of months ago,
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her fifth part. There's five testsyou have to take. See that leaves
me out pastor fifth one. Andnow she is a landscape a true licensed
landscape architect. Cool. Kind ofgot to know Bill inadvertently or not inadvertently,
but i'd have to call hery oncein a while ago, What the
heck did you plan at this McDonald's. Oh yes, yes, Scott does
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the same thing. He'll say,you know, someone saw something at one
of the McDonald's. They want toknow if we have it. What was
that? And I'd say, well, he described the calls, they tell
you what store it was. Actually, for a while you used to send
out a little list of what youwere planning. So I got lazy anyway,
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Bill and I like I said,call this is the time for those
people that have those real technical questions. Now's the data call, because there's
finally someone here that can answer it. You can answer any of those questions
anyway. We will be here forthe next hour, hopefully to entertain You.
Take your phone calls at FO sixthat's four nine nine WJBO. I'm
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still missed Star eleven fifty. ButI guess they're just never going to resuscitate
it and bring it back. Wewere talking right before the show, in
our hours of preparation for this aboutstared last night. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. We kept calling all nightthe moisture situation. You and I were
talking about how the heat this summerprevented a lot of rooting of material and
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how that's going to affect what Icall the pipeline of supply going forward for
a while. We all can seethe damage in Baton Rouge. I mean,
you drive around any place. Yousee dead magnolia trees, you see
espe you see dead azaleas. Yousee a lot of material that may not
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be dead, but it's definitely damaged. One of the things, in talking
to some people, one of theissues that we haven't addressed is Baton Rouge.
Water is excellent. Don't get mewrong. Everybody comes to Baton Rouge
for the water. But all right, pH is about eight point two if
I'm not mistaken. It's good.People like it. Plants don't. And
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Scott and I were talking about thatthe last time. Without those, we
have plenty. We have irrigation systemsat every one of our projects because you
have to. You have to.There's time. I know, people all
bat rooms get sixty seventy inches ofrain, we'll get it all in one
we may get that all in oneday, you know, and so and
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this year is very unique, andso if you have I mean, I'm
gonna throw in, you know,something for people who do hire landscape crewise
and such any and long cruise todo work at their house. And you
may be thinking, well, whydid this die? Why? Why or
why didn't they take care of this? If you're running your irrigation system like
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we do on our projects, doyou run them for let's see, well
this year, okay, normally,what I would do in a normal summer
where we're getting rains and I'll probablydo beds three times a week, I'll
do lawns maybe twice a week.How long If it's spray heads, you
know we're probably running and it dependson the coverage because you know, because
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there's a lot of it, butyou're not running it for three minutes.
No, But in some cases wemight run some for only eight or nine
because there's a lot of head.It's focus, it's a small zone,
but there's a lot of head coverage. But generally we're trying to run them
about fifteen minutes because I find withthe with what I call head to head
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coverage on irrigation systems, which isthe proper way of doing it so you
don't have dry spots, And uh, fifteen minutes is a pretty long time.
And what you're what you're talking abouthere is and I'm going to use
a trade name, you're talking aboutlike the Rainbird systems, the pop up
sprinklers, those types sprinklers a lotof our customers. And one of the
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things that we're we I'm gonna saypush is when people are putting in beds,
is these micro irrigation systems right right, those we need to run much
longer. Oh yes, much longer, because okay, like on a Rainbird
system, we're looking at nozzles thatare probably putting out a gallon a minute,
right, you know for well maybeless than that for the sprays,
but on some of the rotors,you know, the long sprays. We're
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looking at nozzles that we're going togoing four gallons a minute to eight gallons
a minute. But there's a big, a big area, right, but
don't pop up sprays. Is thatwhat we'll have there is uh, there's
a there's enough gallonage way more thanthan my career gate, right, and
micro is exactly what it's saying isit's a small amount of water, which
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in the long run, I feelis a good way of doing it because
you know, we always use thething if you take a glass of water
or a gallon of water and justdump it upside down, it just flows
all over the place. It doesn'tgo in where if you sit there and
slowly let it drip, it's goingto absorb in. So that's one of
the benefits. And irrigation systems seemto becoming more and more important for us
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because we I hopefully this isn't apattern where we're going to be this dry
and hot every summer. But thepoint that I was making with the water
pH is we have had to waterso much with that water that we've actually
adjusted the pH of our soil,right, and it has not washed out
because we have not got rains.That's what I was kind of start.
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Then we got off. We goton a tangent. Did never I've never
heard that happen. I never dothat in conversation, you know. Yeah,
no, but with irrigation systems andjust like what you're talking about with
the eight point three in pH andsalts, yes, it we use those
things and then the rains and ithelps to flush some of that out,
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right, especially the salts. Notthis year, Nope, there's been nothing
to flush anything out almost any rainexcept from me one day, I remember,
and that wasn't enough to it justrains and there's it's just basically coats
things and that's about it. Theother day we had more moisture from the
fog than we did from the forecastrain. That was happening. Yeah,
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but you know, and I talkedabout Azelia's in particular in a little opening.
There also blueberry plants. Anything thatrequires in a city soil, I'm
suggesting, and you please jump inhere. You know, we want to
do a SOL test. We wantto figure out where our pH has gone
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to looking at what illuminum sulfate sulfurproducts to probably bring that pH back down
now once we do start getting rain, I know, because it's it's not
there. I'm convinced there's a lotof build up in UH and beds which
have a lot of composts, youknow, and them it's really sticking there.
And and then we try to maltour beds with pine straw. It
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had the mass to be pines streit could be whatever a product, but
it could be leaves even and thatwhen we are watering with irrigation, it
allows it to kind of go ineasier. It's kind of sit there on
top of the leaves and most ofthem kind of soak in. But but
yeah, you're absolutely right if you'rehaving problems and camellias, I know it's
a lot of problems. I thinkbecause they're all acid leveries. They're just
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the same as as elias. Andthe other thing with camellias is with their
wilting coefficient, you don't you know, as elias will kind of give you
that droop and oh wow, Ineed to go out there and water.
Amelias can't do that once they startto droop their toast. Yeah, and
you can't if you have camellias thathave been damaged. Let's just say,
you know what's the most popular commillia, shear it right? Okay, So
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if you're having she shehi kashiri startingto be damaged as a chamellia, a
lot of times you can't turn themback around. You know, when they
start to get loose leaves and havedying branches, you're gonna spend a few
years trying to get this thing togo back to where it was. Well
that I'm glad you brought that up. And that's one thing that I try
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sometimes to explain to people. Youknow, they come in with a fashion
isa that's three quarters dead, that'syou know, fifty years old. Let
it go, you know, youknow it's a mercy gillan. But you
know, you reach a point andwe were we pull out plants all the
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time and change them because you know, the customers don't want to have something
that's just kind of struggling in theiryard, right and in reality, it's
probably not going to come back.It's not going to come as back as
strong even if it does no insome In some cases you might can really
cut something back in early spring.Azaia is a one. You might cut
back in early spring and they'll sproutback out better. But for the most
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part they don't, so we pullthem out. People, But what are
you doing with that? Well,we're getting ready to throw it away,
and it seems that's the worst.I can't believe you said that, Bill,
you're throwing away plants. Yes,but you reach that point. And
I kind of talk with clients thatsay, would you keep in your living
room? And I've used this analogymany times, but in your living room
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if you have an old couch inyour living room and you really love that
couch when you got it new,and now it's got, you know,
some stains. You know you're goingon maybe twenty years. If you flipped
the cushion so many times many yearsthat sagging, are you going to keep
that couch? No, You're goingto go try to find a better couch.
So, if you've got a plantthat sagging and stains, are you
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going to keep that plant? No? You want to kind of go in
there and kind of bring it becauseit's not Generally it's not getting better,
and you're gonna probably end up spendingobviously more time but probably in the long
run more money trying to revive thatplant than replacing it and be unsuccessful and
be unsuccessful. Do you do youhave container plants around your house? Are
you kind of a plant collector?To some extent? I try not to
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because because the watering and I dohave I've had some hooked up the irrigation
micro irrigation off the system. No. The reason I was asking that now
is Shirley and I, my wifeand I we often joke these people that
come in all upset about this plant. She and I probably have killed more
plants to try and stuff. OhI know, I do tattoo and I
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got this amazing plant. I meanI knew of it, but Ron gave
me this from Who's grows all y'all'sbetting plants and Ron Fennel and does it
excellent job. And if you don'tknow this, you know when you want
your point setius, plegs is theplace to go where your point says,
because they're locally grown. That's alittle and Ron does a wonderful, wonderful
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job on that. In fact,I don't mean to interrupt you. But
I had to go to Greenwell theother day to meet with Tom and walk
through the bedding plant house where thepoints they are. They are premium this
year. I don't know if it'sI don't know if it's the heat,
the more sunlight and less cloudy days, whatever, but I have never seen
them look this good. And that'sthat really helps them, you know,
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with cloudy days or not great fora points eddious until you can reach into
a certain point right when that isgood, but not now at this point.
But no Ron had this plant thatseen years ago. I was at
disney World for a I hate Disney, I say Disney World for a botanical
garden conference. And this is whyI was working New Orleans at the Potanical
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Garden there. So we went thereand so they were passing around this bowl
of fruit, these little red fruitsand uh it was called uh miracle plant
or miracle fruit, and I'd neverseen it, and they said okay,
and then they passed around another plateof lemon, sliced lemons. And so
with this, if you it's verythin skin thing and you just kind of
eat the skin and there's a largeseed inside of it. And then and
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then you go and you and youdrink some lemon, or squeeze some lemon
in your mouth straight lemon. It'ssweet and uh. And I was fascinated
with it. This is back inthe nineties, mid nineties or so,
and so I was fascinated with this. So I did at times I would
get plants from Florida up here andI got some. But Ron had some
a few years ago, and hehad about five of them, and I
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said, uh, I said,that's miracle fruit. And he goes,
yeah, that's rights. And Itold him about the experience of using it.
He had never tried. He said, you want one. I said
sure. So I have it ina pot. It's doing well. That's
my main plant to protect. Thereyou go. It's love. This heat
this summer, I can imagine.Uh. And it's produced a lot of
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fruit. So earlier this year,my satsumas in early October, they weren't
quite really right. They're a littletart. So I picked a fruit off
the miracle fruit and then started eatingthe satsoomas and they were the sweetest things
you could ever imagine. Wow.But they're a miracle fruit. An odd
little plant. I've heard of ityeah, yeah, but it's pretty neat
and it's a nice looking little shrub, but it is truly truly topical.
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You have to you have to reallybring it in, so it's being in
the pots the thing you want todo. You mentioned the satsoomas and how
you were mixing your miracle fruit withthem to sweeten them up. It's one
of the things that I am veryconcerned about with all citrus trees. Again,
we're harping on this drought, butbelieve me, anybody in this business
or anybody that has a yard inbat and Rouge understands the effect of this
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drought, the effect on the fruit. I am very concerned that once we
really start picking heavily that we're goingto I'm going to use the word dry
pockets in them where wedges will betend to be dry because we just haven't.
When you pick a lemon or asatsuma or an orange and you squeeze
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it, you get juice. Whatis that juice? Water? So if
they don't, if the water hasn'tbeen there, our fruit may have a
tendency to be sometimes it's very pulpy. Pulpy there, thank you, that's
the word I was looking for thankyou. Some of the fruit starts to
form that way early if it's realdry and it's not like for your citrus
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this year, you really need towater it right. You need to water
either their irrigation system or just asprinkler or whatever to get that fruit to
right good. And truth of thematter is that if you haven't been doing
it up to now, it maybe too late. It is. This
was something that need to be happeningduring the summer. And I have a
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friend of mine he's telling me samething that his were in an area where
he really couldn't water it without dragginga hose about three hundred feet to it.
We have one hundred and fifty foothoses. You just needed to it
just needed two of them. Butif you haven't really watered your your citrus,
it didn't take a lot. Itjust takes you know, once a
week was pretty good, and forit, your citrus could have problems.
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Not guarant saying it's a guarantee,but it could. Right. We've I've
had I've picked a couple setsas andthey've been okay. But again, I
did do like you said about oncea week, I put a sprinkler under
there for thirty to forty five minutes, so I think I was able to
mostly save mine. The other thingwith the citrus is people are coming,
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well, I don't have any fruit. I don't have any fruit. Is
that because of the drought. No, that's because of the cold. I
don't know if it was the Decembercold snap or the February cold snap.
But we lost our blooms. Welost a lot of flowers in there,
and and that if you don't haveflower, you don't have fruit, right,
you know. And and interestingly enough, I have I have a kumquat
at my backyard with some satsumas.I always think it's cum quat. And
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it's always been told this to mefrom Lsu cum quote is one of the
hardiest supposedly Supposedly mine lost all theleaves and and and I had flowers damaged
all the leaves in that late freeze, and then and that satsumas weren't touched
and then so micro climate. Yeah, but they're right next to each other.
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Oh okay, Oh, they're justlike in the backyard and fence then
and there there's like here's that summer, here's that summa, here's the you
know, before we go to Joeon the phone, I'd learned something a
couple of weeks ago that I neverknew. Bill. I did not know
that you cannot plant lemons and limesnear each other, that they will actually
cross pollinate. Really they produce sprite. Let's go to joke. Good morning,
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Joe, welcome to news radio.That's a joke. The producer just
good morning, Joe, Welcome tothe news radio eleven fifty WJBS Lawn and
Garden Show. What can we dofor you today? Can I put a
bottle of bourbon under it? Possibly? You know, that might work?
There you go. Now, mymaor lemon was in question. I did
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lose a lot of the blooms thisfall, last fall, last springing,
I guess, and uh now,I said, well, it just probably
produced a bigger, larger lemon.But then you know, we had this
drought. Most of my limens arenow smaller than the golf ball. This
tree is, you know, probablyfifteen years old, really healthy. I
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watered it throughout the summer and maybethe pH that you were over heard and
may have you know, made it. Is it in a container or is
it in the ground. No,it's in a little corner out in my
yard. Okay, and uh,I mean it's probably fifty pee tall now,
but the lemons on it that they'relike I said, they're all smaller
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than they very and I usually get, you know, a couple of crates
and lemons alf of it every year. But in any case, I was
considering just going ahead and picking allthese and tossing them away. Well,
that didn't fit the tree next year. Now, that's a great question.
You always on citrus. One ofthe things you want to do is you
want to make sure you completely removeall the fruit, because if you do
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leave fruit on the tree, itcan retard the blooming in the future.
Blooming lemons, on the other hand, are what we call ever bloomers,
where they will actually can bloom severaltimes a year, so they're not as
effect And if I'm incorrect, pleasetell you're right. It's not as important
to remove the lemons. The lemonsare probably still going to be a lemon.
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As far as the uses of them, it's just is it. Are
they large enough that you can physicallyuse them? Would be the thing.
It's just going to be there.They'll be much smaller. You may need
to use one hundred and sixty vibeto make your lemonade instead of ten or
twelve, and the greater percentage ofthee oh yeah, yeah, that they're
ripening. They're they're starting to turnnow and they're ripening. And I haven't
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cut one yet. But yeah,I say, you know, don't want
to bother with it. Just goahead and pick them all off if they're
if they're that small, If they'rethat small, I don't think it's worth
salvaging them. But I have aquestion for you now. Bush and I
were talking about, you know,the watering of them this summer. But
the other thing that I do reallyevery year, every year I do it
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is I fertilize them. I fertilizethem in late January and early February,
and I fertilize them in late Mayand in early June. I fertilize them
twice in a year. And Iuse a product that that Clegg sells.
It's a it's an organic citrus food, yeah, the spomassistant. And you
can put it on really heavy anduh, I dig it into the ground
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just a little bit, a littlejab of a shovel just so it goes
in, doesn't wash away and itcontains calcium. You were telling, yeah,
I was. I'm glad you broughtthat up. I was gonna ask
you a little bit more about it, because the calcium is important our soils
and a lot always lack calcium,and so by using the calcium, it
takes out that cycling of citrus.A lot of times citrus has a great
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crop and then it's got kind ofa small crop, or sometimes it even
has a no crop, and soit cycles. But this kind of evens
out that cycling. You'll still seea good crop and a little less of
a crop, but it's not alittle less of a crop is not so
bad. But the fertilizing citsil yoursis fifteen years old. I've got satsumas
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in my backyard that are about thatsame age or maybe a little older.
I still fertilize them, and sothat really helps your citrus, no matter
what type it is. And soI strongly suggest that because like this year,
I've got this huge crop of citruson my two satsumas and in my
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backyard and they're the oldest ones.And last year I had a really good
crop too, so it and oneof the nice things about the organics.
The Aspoma product that you're mentioning inparticular, I've always felt that there's a
lot of nutrients in our clay soils. That's one of the big benefits of
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clay is that it tends to holdon to nutrients. The Aspoma products help
release those help I don't know thechemical blah blah blah and this and that
and whatever is which, but itreally you're I always tell people when you
use organics, you're fertilizing the soil, and the soil is fertilized then fertilizing
your plant. So you're not goingto see the big you know, twenty
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five zero five. When you lookat organics, you're going to see something
more along on lines of four threefour. You're you're big three are going
to be much less. But that'son purpose because it's helping release what is
already there. You're you're really helpingthe soil, bacterias and the soil to
be healthier, and you're in forthe overall growth of the plant, which
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is really what they want. Yeah, you really want. That's the point
of a lot of the organics.I never have burned. Now, Okay,
don't dump a whole twenty five poundbag in one spot. But it's
I do see foliage results that aregood. I do see it that it
tends to I don't have as manyleaf miners. I still have some when
I say like that, but itreally seems to help the growth of plants
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better than some of the salts drivenferl lives that we normally use. We
appreciate the call, Joe, wasthere anything else again? Okay, all
right, all right, thank youso much. I am with Clegg's Nursery.
If you want to come visit withme in particular, and I wouldn't
have a clue why you would,but I will be at the Seagan Lane
store all day. Bill Rountree RoundTree Designs Well, Butcher's going to be
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there and he's going to help youshow you some citrus and talk to you
about how to if you're purchased citrusnow the best way to keep it,
you know. Yeah, and thisis a good time. It says there's
a lot of availability. Right.That's a good point because Louisiana, and
we I understand why it is.Any citrus tree that is sold in the
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state of Louisiana has got to begrown in the state of Louisiana by a
certified grower, by a certified grower, which there's only two, yep.
And so you can imagine, youknow, drive around town where all you
see citrus plants, these are allcoming from one of two growers. So
there is a limited they have limitedspace. And you know, you don't
you know a lot of people don'tunderstand you plant you can make a chair.
(24:48):
I'll just say a chair. Youcan make a chair in a day.
So if you have a if youhave a chair shortage, you get
four people and you suddenly have madefour chairs and not one in that day.
Problem with plant material is you can'tgrow it that quickly. You know,
you put a citrus tree in apot, it's going to be twelve
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to eighteen months before that plant issellable. So not only do you have
to have a crop ready to selltoday, but you've also got plants on
the ground that literally are going tosell twelve to eighteen months from now.
You have a rotation going, sothere's a limited amount of space. So
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as demand increases, it's not likehiring a few more people to make a
few more chairs. You've got limitedspace and a limited amount of area that
you can produce, and you haveto have that rotation going right now,
except for coumquats, we probably havethe best selection of citrus we've had in
probably a year and a year anda half. Is that availability going to
(25:53):
remain there? I doubt it becausewe're going to have a push, especially
like you just around the fall.Christmas time is a huge time for us
selling citrus. So if you're inthe market for something, now is a
very good time to purchase citrus.And this is where I can get somebody
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to sit here and I, infact, if Bill wants to take don't
plant now, I'll take the plantnow because it's in our business. There's
not one hundred percent true one hundredpercent false. I actually agree that Bill
and I talked during the break.If you purchase a citrus tree right now,
it's best to leave it in acontainer, do not try to plant
(26:36):
it. Bill, you mentioned kumquats. I think the hierarchy of cold heartiness
is cum quots first, satsumas,oranges, grapefruits, and your lemons,
limes, limes. You say theword cold, they might die. Twenty
eight degrees is kind of the pointof limes. Yeah, and so,
(26:56):
but that's something you're not going towant to go out and put it the
ground. I don't recommend putting themin the ground period. Yeah, unless
you're gonna build, unless you havea greenhouse and it's in the ground.
That's about it. But the thingabout that, and you mentioned your kumquot
tree that has gone I have myactually, I have a satsume tree that
my father had kept in a potfor years, and when we purchased our
(27:18):
forever home, I planted it outin our yard. So it's been through
several major friezes and it's defilated,as I say, or defoliated several times,
but it's always come back because itis one of the hardier things.
The problem is that tree is probablyliterally thirty years old. It's mature.
It's kind of like, well,it's kind of like build not me.
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I'm not mature, but it it'solder. A tree that you're buying right
now is young. It's a baby. It's not going to have the cold
tolerance. That's something that has moremature. Plus the fact that it's just
young, it's not as strong andhealthy, shrunk as the size of your
finger, right versus you know,a large citrus which might be the size
(28:03):
of your lower leg. Yeah,exactly, So it's so much easier for
that to freeze and the bark divers. Yeah, so I do suggest,
and I mean there's someone here,Like I said, we can bring some
impact. I can argue the otherside real quick. Well, you know
what, you put it in theground, it has all winter to root
out and get its roots established.So next year, if we have these
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drought conditions, it's will be strongerfor that. So there is that,
you know argument if you want tomake, and I can see the valid
points of that too. A smallcitrus tree, you can go out there.
You can put a cover over it. Okay, hand me the soapbox
over there in the corner, please, Bill. Yeah, thank you very
much. I am sitting here inthis room. I have a sweatshirt on.
(28:51):
Okay, why do I have asweatshirt on? Because I'm too lazy
to take it off because it's warminghere. The reason we put on coats
is because we are trapping our bodyheat. Think about I always think about
this, and the best way Ican explain it. When you get in,
when you get in bed first singyour sheets are cold, and then
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and then they're not, and thenthey're not. Did they suddenly warm up
all themselves? No, they trappedyour body heat. That's what the thing
about mammals is, we build ourown heat. Plants can't do that.
So if you just take a trashbag and you put it over the top
of the tree and you tie itoff around the stem the ture, the
temperature inside of that bag is justas cold as it is outside of that
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bag. You have done as billseloquently put, very nicely put. By
the way, I thought nothing,nothing, nothing, you know. Used
to be we could put Christmas treelights around there, and there was enough
warmth off the Christmas tree lights thatwe would bring the temperature up a couple
of degrees. Then what they doThey went to led lights. They don't
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give off heat. We have tohave an artificial heat source of some type.
One of the easiest ways to dothat is to take whatever you're covering
your plant with and secure it tightlyto the ground. You can trap the
arth's heat. You know, especiallyon a bright sunny day like today,
you'll warm up your soil several degreesand that heat is given off at the
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during the night and that can betrapped inside of whatever covering you have over
it. But just putting a blanketor this freeze cloth or something like that
over the top without at least securingit to the ground, putting an incandescent
light bulb in there. Something you'redoing no good. You're not doing anything
because you're not raising you're not theheat. There's no heat source, like
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just what you're saying. And alot of times when you do a bag
around it and just bring it tothe ground, the leaves that are touching
that bag are going to be frozen. Also a very good point. I
always recommend some type of a blanket, a cloth blanket first, and then
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put your plastic. That's perfect,yeah, because plastic all just it's so
then you get a frost on theoutside the plastic. Whatever foliage like you
said, it's touching that plastic,it is toast right right. So anyway,
so with that, what are youroptions for plant or purchasing citrus now,
because I think there's some very goodones excenting that, I mean,
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you can leave them out on yourpatio, water them. I right now,
I'm still recommending water daily in thecontainer if it gets cold, if
we get to a situation where we'rebelow I'm going to even say below thirty
two. You can bring it intothe house, or you can bring it
into an area that is warmer andprotect that plant. I don't really,
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I don't have the ability the timeto water something every day. Then take
it. You know, they comein three five gallon containers, you know,
about ten twelve inches across the top. Buy a nice you can buy
a nice fourteen inch pot, oryou can buy a nursery bucket fourteen to
sixteen inches. Shift it up thatway, you have more soil in there
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that can hold more moisture, andyou might be able to go a day
or two longer without watering. Asyou know, is the container that it's
in right now, And essentially you'retrying to grow it on some because so
you're gonna get something. You getthat root development, root development in that
bigger pot, so you are startingto grow, and then when it comes
to spring you can plant that rightyou get out of danger of freeze.
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Now, remember last late February Marchthis year, you always have that Eastern
we had a cold snap and typicallyby that point you're probably gonna be in
good, good shape with twenty eightdegrees. You know, at this point,
because it won't last long, sunwill come out, but the sun
will come out tomorrow. Sometimes forsome clients, because I know this is
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how they're going to want to takecare of it, we do that process.
We plant the pot in the groundwith the pot on it, and
we put the citrus in the potin the ground and then does that what
you consider a pot plant pot plant. It's more dad jokes, I know
so anyway, but we're usually servicingthese yards, so we when it becomes
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the right point, we take theplant out of the ground. We take
it out of the pot and putit back in the hole. You don't
want to leave it in the pot. That's the worst thing to do.
But what it does do it insulatesthe bottom and if we don't have hard
freezes, we're pretty good. Butwe can always just lift it out and
move it somewhere. So it's oneof the interesting things to get off of
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citrus for just a second, thatwe get a lot of phone calls,
more so in the spring than nowbecause they're not blooming. I've always thought
it really interesting that several people intown when they plant agapanthus in particular,
will take the bottom of the bucket, cut the bottom of the bucket out,
plant it in the bucket because agapanthis bloom better when they're root bound,
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when they're stressed. So kind oflike it's the plan I do.
Would think of boganvilla. Yeah,bogan villa and it wants to be stressed
and it blooms better. So anyway, there's there are a few little tricks
to the trade that you can dolike that. But another thing that you
were talking about, and I kindof mentioned one of the issues, especially
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with real large people are coming inbuying the fifteen thirty gallon forty five gallon
trees from us right now, theseroot balls are quite large. You go
out, you put it in theground, you follow all the procedures when
we water those plants. It doesn'tmatter if the clay soil on the outside
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of that root ball is wet.We have to make sure we're getting water
on the in that root ball becauseall the roots for several months, even
you know, half a year orso, are going to be pretty much
restricted to that rootball. So itdoesn't matter if you have water out side
of that root ball, but theroot ball itself is dry. So again,
when we're watering these large trees,we sell small sprinklers, space sprinklers
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that you can turn your volume down. You want to make sure you're soaking
these root balls. Very true,because I've seen so many people who have
planted like Holly's right. You know, it look like thirty gallon fifteen gallon
Hollies and they're dead because they mighthave had irrigation but it wasn't enough or
that. But the root balls themselvesare drying out and they couldn't water the
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ground enough to saturate it right,you know, during this drought, because
you know what we talked about again, we did a lot of Really it's
a shame we couldn't have brought someof our off air conversations to the radio
because it would have been much better. But no, our ground right now
is so dry. Go try toput a shovel in it and it the
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ground, the clay soil right nowis absorbing everything and isn't giving it up
to these root balls. So bevery careful with new plantings, making sure
that we're getting the root balls wateredand not just the clay soil around it.
I want to totally and completely changeour path here, if you don't
mind. Bill, you have clientsthat you probably had for many years,
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and you've probably helped these clients withwedding preparations for their yard. We're doing
one now, you know, nextweekend, next weekend? Okay. They
want they obviously want a lot ofbloomy material, a lot of pomp and
circumstance to be best suited for that. When are you going to put their
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color in? Tuesdy and the andthe party is Saturday. We will have
that far away. We would havedone it earlier. We would have liked
to have done this and maybe thethird week of October, which would be
about as soon as we would everwant to plant pansies and dianthus and such,
But because of the drought and someother reasons, we couldn't. So
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we're putting it in because a lotof the plants, even though they were
blooming still, they were kind oftired and they were a little bushy,
and they just we just need thefreshen it all up. And so and
that's my point is we so oftenget pea ladies, especially and I don't
mean to pick on ladies, butusually it's the moms that are more involved
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in the wedding or any type ofa party situation. They're coming in six,
eight, twelve weeks ahead of time, going I want to plant color,
and it needs to be for Novembereleventh or whatever. Just pick a
date. That's not the way todo it, because plants, especially bedding
plants, for the most part,cycle bloom, and if you plant too
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far ahead of an event like this, you may just hit where the cycle
is not as peak. So Itry to get people to I mean,
think about the fresh flower. Imean, I know fresh flowers are cut.
They bring those in the day up. Well, even with your betting
plants and your pomping circumstance. Idon't know why I'm using that phrase,
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that's not the right one. Butthe pizazz plants that you want, you
know, you want them as freshas possible when you put are as close
to the event as possible. Ithink, yeah, you do. And
it just so happened that we didn'tcoordinate the date that that was the date
they had, and so we said, okay, this can be. We'll
do this as part of your regularbetting plant, right, you know,
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planting. So it wasn't like anadditional money, you know there, This
is what we were going to doanyway, but we'll we'll focus on some
of the areas that people are goingto be a little heavier so that there's
more flowers there. And there's someother plantings we're doing, you know,
they were also we're trying to getthings that gave us problems during the summer
and get those things in and doneright. So we're almost done with that,
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but we'll Tuesday, we'll start,you know, with that planting and
get it in. Do you areyour thoughts in bat and Rooge for and
I'm strictly talking annual planting here.Do you feel there's two plantings or three
plantings to be really premium all thetime? There's two with one for damaged
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things that might die in the latesummer because normally a lot of times what
we'll see is if it's real rainy, we'll have some we'll have some loss
of plants. Right now, itdepends on what you're using. We like
to get these our beating plants inby the first week of December and be
fed the fall for the fall,and there's a period of time there where
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some things we plant are green andthey don't have flowers, you know,
and I'm fine with that. LikeColumbine doesn't have flowers. It's not going
to bloom until spring. Some ofthe taller dianthus they don't have flowers.
So they do have flowers, whichyou only cut them off, you know,
because it's too early form the blueand then they put on a better
show. So there's a balance betweenwhat we plant, you know, with
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color and green plants that will bloomin the sea. I've always thought to
really be pizazz I'm going to usethat word. I'd like it a little
bit better. I think there shouldbe three plantings. There can be,
you know, because there's a wholegroup of things in February or March that
you'd like to plant. The platasthat would get you into May. May,
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and then you could do your vinka. Your venka lasts till October.
Then you do your pansy snap dragons, and just keep that that. I
like, I really think if youreally and you know, you can't do
this in a mass situation, youknow, in a Disney planning, but
if you've got a couple of littlepockets of color, really think about doing
three options there you know, youknow, do your petunias the dianthus you
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mentioned for that spring bloom and thengo to the vinka for the summertime.
I just that's a plant you can'tbeat. But you got to plant once
the soil temperatures are warmed up oryou're gonna lose it. And then that
should last you till when the soiltemperatures go the other way, cool down
and up. That we can putour pansies and snapdragons and any if you're
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planting again in March, because itwould be dangerous plant in February, because
we have free March play again inMarch. The thing that it's hard for
some clients to understand or or orgardeners understand. You get into May,
you need to pull if those thingsare not that you're planning in March generally
and not going to live through summer. So in May, when these things
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are still blooming and pretty, you'regoing to need to pull them out.
You get your warm seasoned plants in, and that's hard for many gardeners to
do. Are you finding with thesupertunias, are you finding they're making it
through the heat better? Well,you're kind of stuck on. They're okay.
We had some problems last year withsome of the petunias because of the
freezes, right, you know,but I'm talking to supertunias like the bubble
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gum and well, bubble gum,it's good. Yeah, the bubble gum
is it's hard to beat bubble gum. You see it around. If you
see this petunia that's pink, right, and it's pink pink, it's Barbie
pink. You see this Barbie pinkpetunia and it's it's full, it's growing.
That's probably bubble gum. And bubblegum is a real old one that
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they've included in on this list.But it's the most durable platunia. It
takes a lot of cold, andyou know, it takes the heat to
it takes the heat. The mainthing with it is you want to keep
it pruned and fertilized because it isa teenage boy of the plant world.
That's right, that's right. Anddon't overestimate how big it's going to get,
because it will get big. Butyou can still prune a bit.
Never want to prune their betting plants. You know, you need to prune
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these betting plants. You sometimes like, okay for us in summer, in
summer, let's go to summer.Yeah, you know you need to by
the time you get into July.There's a number of things that need to
be prune back, like pentus.Penthos benefit a lot by half. They
be deadheaded. Take out of ourthird of the heights. Get them to
branch more so they don't fall over. In September. We don't have very
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much time, but I do wanthow you what are you finding or how
are you getting angelonia to rebloom.I haven't been using it because it does
cycle, you know, and andit's cycles, and I never know how
long that cycle is going to be. I want to say, cycle you
planning. It's a summer planet.It's blooming well when you put in it's
usually pretty good in July. Youcome into late July and August and and
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you can't and then I don't findit starts to bloom again until we get
to the end of September in October, So it's not liking this heat?
Is that? Is that what itis? Yeah? Because we it's it's
a it's a fabulous betting plant,gorgeous, but it does cycle very much
and we have had trouble with that, and that's why. Anyway, there
we go. Our show is over. Our show is over. We need
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a two hour show whenever Bill's on. Okay, Hey Bill, I cannot
thank you enough. I have thoroughlyenjoyed this out. It's always fun,
and I have not done a showwith you before, and you know we
ever will again. I'm sure.Well you know we've known each other for
a decade, so I was gladto be here. Well, good it
was. It was truly awesome tohave you. Anyway. We are the
Independent Garden Center in Baton Ridge.We're here every Saturday morning to hopefully entertain
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you, teach you a few things, and you definitely teach us more than
we'll ever teach you. Four locationsof Clegg's Nursery in Baton Ridge area Segan
Lane, Don More, Greenald Springs, and Denham Springs. We will see
you next Saturday morning at eight o'clock