Soil Structure Importance

Skip answers listeners phone calls all morning.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Katie r H. Garden Line doesnot necessarily endorse any of the products or
services advertised on this program. Welcometo kt r H Garden Line with Escape
Rictor. It's just watch him asso many crazy well good Sunday morning.

(00:33):
Welcome to Garden Line. We're gladto have you with us today. Absolutely,
what are we going to talk about? Let's talk about something related to
plants. How about that. That'swhat we're here for. We want to
help you have a beautiful garden anda bountiful garden as well as a beautiful,
gorgeous landscape, one that you enjoy. So how do we do that?
Well, we give you advice,we give you tips to have success.

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We point you in the right directionof any kind of products that can
help with that, but especially focusingon practices that are important to have success.
You know, it's really not rocketscience. It's just a matter of
doing the right kinds of things atthe right time. And I know that
sounds like, well, how doyou know? Well that you learn over
time and anytime you want, youcan call us here, send me a

(01:18):
picture via an email. We candiagnose something and figure out what's going on.
By the way, we had agreat time out at RCW Nursery yesterday.
Thanks the folks out there for Davidand Kathleen hosting us out there,
and just you guys wore me out. I kind of hit the bed last
night and I was about brain dead. I think I'd answered enough questions for

(01:40):
the day to last for the week, bring in samples of weeds and things
and pictures of things. It wasgood. I love doing that. That's
what it's all about. Gives usa chance to rub shoulders, look eye
to eye and resolve some of theissues that you have. Also gave away
a lot of good stuff out theretoo. RCWS. You know they've got

(02:01):
a credible sale on right now.I mean when I was out there,
I couldn't believe a pull a videoon Facebook. Just the color the place
just looked awesome. I mean,if you didn't see yoga, look at
it. But it is just tonsof roses still. I mean, they
still have a lot of roses available. They specialize in trying to have about

(02:23):
as wide a variety as anybody couldpossibly have when it comes to roses.
When it comes to trees and things, of course, they grow their own
up in Plantersville area. And thetree farm, and so they've got the
kind of trees that grow here,the kind that you would want to plant.
By the way, it's still okayto get a tree planted if you
hurry up and get that done.Just give it as much time as you

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can for summer. So go aheadand get it done. Now's a good
time if you're thinking about it andgoing, well, I may do it
next year. Well, every yearyou wait is a year behind that you
are on getting that thing up whereyou can hang a hammock in it,
or where it's big enough to bloom. If it's a blooming tree, they
have beautiful boom and Billie is toosome standards that kind of like they have
a single trunk or a braided trunkand and just beautiful billows of blooms up

(03:07):
on top. I was, Iwas super super impressed. I mean,
the place looks good. You knowthat that's just normal for them, but
uh, it was. It wasa showplace for sure. Absolutely. If
you'd like to give us a callthis morning, my phone number here on
the garden line is seven one threetwo one two k t r H seven

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one three two one two kt rH. By the way, RCW for
those who don't know, is thenursery that is where Beltway eight and Tomball
Parkway Highway to forty nine come togetherright there. Easy to get to get
in and out of UH. Andagain, like I said, the stock
is great. I picked up someLantannas myself while I was there. We're

(03:50):
redoing a front flower bed and Ijust needed a row of those. I
got some of the semi dwarf types. There's a number of new series of
Lantana's, by the way, thatare just outstanding, several different series by
different breeders. But you know,the old Lantanna's got about waist high or
bigger, and those are fine.Those are good. There's a native lantanas

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here in Texas, there's some,and then there's also lots of different bread
Lantanna's, but now they keep workingwith them. And there's some that only
get like a foot high. They'revery small, very compact for lantana.
There's others that get you know,maybe two feet high eighteen inches two feet
high or two or three feet high, and you kind of get to pick
what you want. The colors areoutstanding, they're just beautiful. Lantanna's a

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great plant for the heat that wehave to deal with here. I love
them, I just love them.Anyway. That's what's going on in my
house next this week, getting outthere and get those things planted. Also
working on redoing an herb bed,and that has not the process hasn't started

(04:55):
yet, just the planning part ofit. But I let some child dives
go to seed. I love chiflowers that are great for beneficials and stuff,
but I'll let them go to seed. And I know better than this.
And my herb bed became a chichiapet. It looked like wheat grass,
you know, just everywhere everywhere,little sprouts of chives coming up.
It was like grass through the wholebit. And so we tried sifting through

(05:20):
that and getting all the little bulbsout, and you know, that's an
ongoing process. But we're going toredo the soil in there, screen it
a little finer, and then replantwith some new herbs that we're wanting to
try out to If you haven't grownherbs before, you ought to. Herbs
are wonderful. You can grow herbsfor whatever purposes you want. I mean,

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there are medicinal herbs which I knowessentially nothing about I try to stay
out of that kind of field.But when it comes to culinaries, and
then just the beauty the herbs weuse for cooking, and the herbs that
I think are just they deserve aplace because they're beautiful. When Mexican met
marigold blooms in the late summer andfall, those yellow blossoms are beautiful.

(06:02):
When pineapple saved, which is atype of salvia, puts those red tubular
flowers out, the hummingbirds lineup.They love it. Plus you get the
wonderful pineapple scented foliage on the plant. And there's just a lot of great
ways you can use herbs. Oreganoawesome groundcover, marjoram, same thing.
The time spilling over the side ofa container looks really nice. Time is

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another great one. Rosemary is oneof the most drought tolerant plants you can
plant. Years ago, we hada drought. Oh, I guess this
would have been probably over ten yearsago now, and the master gardeners up
in north central Texas, I can'tremember if Denton County or which county,
they went around town looking at whatwas living and what was not, and

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they were just taking Italia plants,and rosemary is one of the top plants
for surviving during that excessive drought thatthey had up there. It's a good
one. The only way the onlyproblem with rosemary is you bring it down
here to Houston and put it ina black clay soil in a low spot
where it sits in a swamp.It will not be happy with that.
But just give a good drainage andit's an excellent plant, excellent plant to

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have. Well, it's time tobe getting our lawns in order for summer.
And nitrofoss is superturf the silver bagnineteen four ten Superturf by nitrofos.
Fifty percent of that nineteen percent nitrogenis slow released to gradually feed over time.
It's got iron about four percent ironin it, by the way,
which helps with green up. Whenyou see yellow areas in your lawn for

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one reason or another, they're usuallyconnected to iron deficiency, and so superturf
helps fix that too, gradually feedingover time, which is how we want
to fertilize when it comes to thesummer. You're going to find nitro fross
products in a lot of different places. I pretty much find them everywhere I
go, but a Fisher's Hardware downin a Baytown area has got them Lake

(07:55):
Hardware, and Angleton has got nitrofossproducts. You go up to Tombold D
and D feed store day carry nitrofossas well. Let's take a little break
here and I will be back ofa number if you'd like to give me
a call. Seven one three twoone two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome
back to garden Line. We areglad you're with us today. We're going
to talk about some things related togardening. Excuse me, that always happens

(08:18):
to me first thing in the morning. I don't know why, but when
when I see a microphone, Istart dealing with that first thing. We
are glad you're here today, andI want to talk a little bit about
as we get going here. Firstthing, vegetables. We don't talk about
them a lot here on Garden Line, not as much as perhaps i'd like
to. Your vegetable garden is anopportunity to not only enjoy growing things,

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but to produce healthy food for yourfamily. You know, I always like
to say that when you grow stuffin your garden, it's fifteen hundred miles
fresher. That's pretty true. Alot of the time. What do you
like to eat? What do youlike to grow? Tomatoes are the queen
the garden. I mean, thatis the number one vegetable. Everybody loves
it. Behind tomatoes. I thinkprobably we're looking at cucumbers. Maybe peppers

(09:11):
would be back in there too asin terms of popularity. But there's a
lot of different kinds of vegetables youcan grow, and just by following some
of the guidelines on when to plantand what to plant and how to have
good soil, you can do that. If you don't have a garden,
you can get one. You canput a box on the ground. You
can buy a box like you knowlego. I've talked about vego beds in

(09:33):
the past to put together and putthings in them. A lot of people,
i mean people even stack up theircinder blocks to make a box for
gardening. It doesn't the plants don'tcare what they're in. Whatever holes the
volume of soil they need makes thatmakes them happy. They're going to be
okay with that. It's for usthat we want attractive or easy to get

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two beds or beds that don't takeup much space. Cinder blocks. Each
block takes up eight inches. Withso two blocks, one on each side
of the bed, there's sixteen inchesof whatever space you had that's gone just
for the sides of the bed.That's kind of the negative on one of
the negatives on those, but whateveryou want to do. Also, containers,
You can garden in containers. Itis not difficult at all. Just

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make sure your containers hold as muchsoil as possible. So if you're going
to grow a tomato, can yougrow a tomato in a five gallon bucket?
Yes, the holes in the bottom. You can grow tomato, but
be ready to water it twice aday to make sure it never lacks for
moisture, doesn't go into moisture stress. I prefer to put tomatoes in at

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least ten gallons of soil and agood quality soil mix. When you have
a good quality soil mix, it'sgoing to hold water, but it's going
to drain well, and that isimportant if you want success. Here's the
thing. People grow tomatoes in containersthat are too small, and they look
out, oh it's wilting, andthey water and it bounces back and they

(10:58):
go, no harm, no foul. Well, actually, yes, there
is, because what would have setmay then abort, but maybe one will
set the next day or two orthree and so on. But you don't
know it. But you're losing productivity, or you're losing the development of the
fruit into a good sized, tastyfruit, or you're getting blossom and drot
because of that intermittent too wet,too dry kind of condition. And so

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you just want a good sized container. So there's a large volume of soil
because ever drop of water in everymolecule of nutrient has to come out of
that one container, and a plantgrown in the garden would have had much
more root zone area to draw from. So if you do that a container
that's a good size, it drainswell with a quality mix, and you

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fertilize it, you're going to havesuccess. It's not hard. Sun o
add sunlight six hours of sunlight ormore. Now. Jungle Land is a
niche frost product that is designed foroutdoor gardening, and they also have a
version for indoor gardening too with thewater saving crystals. The outdoor one is
called jungle l in flour and vegetableplanting soil, and it does the magic

(12:05):
trick of draining away excess water verywell, but also holding onto water for
the plants to be able to use. So you want moist soil, you
want soil has plenty of water,but you do not want water logged.
That's why we have drainage holes ina quality mix like jungle In. You
can buy jungle In in a lotof places. You know, nitropos products,

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they're widely, widely available. Ifyou go down to Clute Lake Jackson
Lake Hardware and Clute Well, they'vegot it there. If you go to
Gym's Hardware up in Montgomery for thoseof you listening in Montgomery or maybe over
a task Asida, the task asto Ace Hardware store also has nitroposs products
like the jungle In. But ifyou get a good container, get a

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good quality soill like that, youcan have success. I've got two pepper
plants to uh jalapanias that are init looks like little whiskey barrels, but
they're plastic and they're probably hold abouta fourth as much as a whiskey barrel
holes a half whiskey barrel holes,and they're growing in there. And a
couple of times I've let it getaway from me I'm busy, I'm doing
other things. I'm out of town, and I come back and they're kind

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of wilting. I know better.I know that should have been a little
bigger container, but it's what Ihad on hand at the time, so
we went with it. I justneed to watch. Another thing you can
do when you are struggling to keepa plant adequately hydrated is if you put
that plant where the hottest part ofthe day it gets a little bit of
shade. You know, you're stillgetting plenty of hours of sun, but

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it's not like eight or ten hours. Yeah, I mean, it's not
just like all day that thing isgetting hammered with sun. That helps a
little bit on you keeping up withthe soul moisture, and a lot of
plants appreciate that. By the way, is the weather heats up, you
want to move your some of theplants that are a little bit wimpy when

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it comes to hot summer sun intothat partial shade. I have some geraniums.
I love geraniums, some beautiful,beautiful new geraniums on the market,
and in the springtime they're great.Just put them out there in the sun,
full sun and everything. They're happy. When it gets hot, mine
move over to where they get someafternoon shade. I give them as much
sun as I can in the morningand then afternoon shade, and that helps

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them get through the hot summer.We're just a little on the hot side
for them to be real happy downhere year round. But that's an easy
plant to grow if you don't overwaterit. There's another good example. I
was visiting with the folks at theBee Supply the other day and they were
telling me about a couple of coolthings that are going on. First of

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all, they have a b rentalprogram. Do you know you could rent
a bee, Well, not abbut a bunch of bees. So if
you live within fifty miles of Dayton, Texas, which is where the Bee
Supply is, and you've got fiveto twenty acres, you can contact them.
Go to their website, thebsupply dotCom. Go there. That's where
you order your bees. By theway, we're drawn near to the toward

(15:05):
the end of the time, whereyou get all your orders in and get
your bees in. So if youwant to order bees, get that done.
But you go there the website andcheck out the bee rental program.
If you need an AG exemption onyour property. Bees are a legit way
that that can be achieved. Andwhat the rental program is is that they
come out, they set them up, and they do the work for you

(15:28):
on tending the hive. And sothat's a good deal. You just need
to read more about it on thewebsite and talk to the folks at the
Bee Supply. Another thing, andI talked about this for the first time
yesterday, is there are a lotof different kinds of bees other than honey
bees. We have many native beesand one type is a leaf cutter bee.
And you may have seen the littlebee homes where it's like a box

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and it has all these looks likestraws in it, all stacked up like
a pile of pencil or apollo straws. Rather well, the leaf cutter bee
is an excellent pollinator bee. They'resuper aggressive or anything like that. They
mostly work during the daytime and theyget their nest set up, they raise
their young in those little straws.And you can actually purchase leaf cutter bees

(16:11):
at thebe Supply. I think thatis so cool. It's another pollinator that
you can use in your gardens andit is a very good one. It's
one of the one of the nativebee pollinators that we have around the area.
They can tell you how to doit again thebesupply dot Com. You
want to add to your pollination inthe garden, have more success, more

(16:32):
productivity, and so on. Whynot contact the bee supline get some of
those leaf cutter bee boxes. Plus, it's a cool conversation piece, you
know, walk around and show peoplewhat's going on. It's a whole different
kind of bee than the regular honeybeethat you may be familiar with. Our
phone number if you would like togive us a call seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four sevenone three two one two five eight seven

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four. How do your beds lookout in the garden or do you have
good color in them? This isa season to get the color planted in
your beds. And when you're doinga bed change, you want to fertilize
the soil, mix it into thebed and then plant your plants. Every
time I do a bed change,in addition to pulling any little weeds that
have popped up in there, workin a good supply of nutrients for the

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next Think of it as a cropa crop of flowers that you're about to
grow and watered in real good afterplanting, and you're back off hitting the
ground running again, ready to gofor summer. It's time to plant heat
loving plants. I know it's nothot hot out there, certainly not today,
but we're about to get warm andso some of the things that are

(17:47):
a little wimpier that aren't going tomake it past spring, you still plant
them, but you're the amount ofmonths or weeks that you're going to get
a beauty out of them is morelimited at this point in the season.
But things that can take heat.I mentioned Lantana before. Salvias another great
plant for taking a lot of heat. If you're looking for annual em bedding
plants, Colius. It never getstoo hot for Colius. They are Colius

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now for the sun and for theshade. Angelonia is one of my favorite
summer color plants because it's just dependable. They call it summer snap dragon.
Not real crazy about that name,but it's sort of is like a snap
dragon, and that it has aspike of flowers on it comes in beautiful
colors as well. That's an excellentone. I mean, I could go
on and on and on. Allthe heat loving plants, personalane, and

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many many others. But get thosebeds done, get the soul worked up.
Add some composts to it. Alwaysa good idea to add an entrer
to a compost every time you reworka bed, and that just gets it
better and better. Now you don'tdo all that work yourself. Call Piercecapes,
you know. Piers Capes is thecompany I've talked about for years now
that is just absolutely unbelievable work whenit comes to designing a landscape, designing

(19:00):
a bed, creating an outdoor area, hardescapes, drainage problems, irrigation all
that. They also to a quarterlymaintenance of beds. You can harre them
come out every quarter. They trim, they weed, they fertilize, they
check the irrigation. They do seasonalcolor changes in the bed. You know,
hey, it's time for trading outthe pansies for something they can take
the summer heat. They do thatsort of thing, and they mulch over

(19:22):
the beds really really well. AndI think it's nice having the peace of
mind knowing that they're keeping your bedslooking really really good. It's like you're
not coming home one day going,oh my gosh, that thing's gotten weedy.
I got to get around to takingcare of it. Let them do
it for you, pierscapes dot com. Here's the phone number two eight one
three seven oh fifty sixty two eightone three seven oh five zero six zero.

(19:48):
Go to that pierscapes dot com andlook at the other kinds of work
they can do. You will seesome really inspiring things there. As a
result, they do excellent, excellentwork. Do you know that you could
rent bees? I was just talkingabout renting bees. No, I did
not want the bee supply. Well, if you have five to twenty acres
and or within fifty miles a daytonup here, they'll come out to your

(20:11):
property, put bees on it,and they come and take care of the
bees for you. It's like you'rethis big bee farmer and they're coming in
and doing the work and they turnme hives and you get to watch and
you know, be part of that. These so critical to plants, to
food to us. It is.I think Honey's involved in this deal too.

(20:32):
That's the most important part. Ohcool, I think that's cool.
All right, we're gonna turn itover Nikki here's the phone number if you
won't get me a call, sevenone three two one two k t RH.
Welcome back to the garden Line.Good to have you with us today.
Hey, what do you want totalk about? Gardening wise? If
you have a question or just coulduse some advice, I will even allow

(20:52):
you to bragger in your garden alittle bit, but not for long,
but we'll all a little bit ofthat if you'd like to give us call
seven to one three two one twofifty eight seventy four. You know,
gardeners are proud of the things theygrow and do in the garden, and
because it's an accomplishment, you know, it's kind of cool to think about
the fact that you can go outthere in the dirt, and I know,
don't lecture me about difference between dirtand soil. You can go out

(21:15):
there in the dirt and you canput something in the ground and you can
end up getting flowers and vegetables andherbs out of it. You can go
out there in the dirt, youcan plant some grass and mow it right
and fertilize the water right, andyou can end up with a beautiful outdoor
carpet that affects the actually affects thetemperatures around your house because that reflective heat.

(21:36):
You know, people that think ofrock landscape, what you see out
in Arizona, Phoenix or someplace.You see these rock landscapes, Well,
yeah, you don't have the waterthem, but oh my gosh, the
reflective heat, the effect of that, we don't need that lawn is like
an air conditioning unit. Literally,they can tell you how many BTUs of

(21:57):
cooling turf grass and plants in general, but turf grasp me in a plant
provide. That's true with trees aswell. It's not just the shade that
you get from a tree which helpscut down on the temperatures down lower,
but when plants are transpiring water,then that moisture that they're sending out that

(22:18):
actually has a cooling and effect thatthat's what happens when moisture essentially evaporates away
from a surface. I see whatwe're going to do. Let's head out
to Parland and we're gonna talk toDon. Hello, Don good, I'm
good, sir, how are youtoday? I'm doing good. I want
to ask you about my lilyes thatI have and they don't but it already

(22:41):
the flyers and they'll fall off thestem. Well, they re all bud
again this year? And also ifthey're not, should I go ahead and
cut the stem back where they buttit at? You know, I would
wait and see. There's different kindsof lilies. There's different variations of little
the you know, the what wecall lily. There's even things that aren't

(23:03):
lili's that we call lily. SoI would just wait and see on these,
give them a little more time.You may get in some more either
side sprouting or shoots that come upand do blooming, depending on which kind
you have. But are they arethey still blooming some or are they completely
done? No, they're still bloomysome. Okay, Yeah, I would

(23:23):
give them. I would give thema little more time. You may get
they get some more out of it. I wouldn't give up just quite yet.
Okay, Yeah, not cut thestems that the flowers is on dead,
not just yet. Let's wait andsee. Let's see how they do.
How long have you had these liliesdone? Oh? Maybe two three

(23:45):
weeks? Oh okay, pretty shorttime. Yeah. Another thing you could
do is send me a picture ofthe flowers so I could see specifically the
lily you're dealing with, and Icould comment on that if you would like
to go that route. I havethe type of and actually pronounced its a
is a t I c oh asiaticlily. Okay, yeah, what color

(24:11):
is it? It kind of anorange color or pink pinkish, well,
the pink and some of pink,well actually some of white, and then
the other plant is kind of reddishred. Okay. Asiatic lilies in general
are not going to rebloom. Youshouldn't see more blooms coming on those.

(24:37):
Uh there. Yeah, I wouldsay some people can get them to rebloom
with, you know, providing themwith some care and just depending on the
climate you're growing in and the andthe health and condition of that plant.
But yeah, as far as generally, I find that they're kind of a

(25:00):
one shot and the future blooming isnot that great on most of the asiatic
lilies. Now, there are exceptionsto it. And again, like I
said, there's there's so many differentkinds of lilies. There's the easter lily,
there's the foremost in lily, there'sa tiger lily, and those are
all different kinds of lilies that havedifferent like the formotion lily doesn't rebloom.

(25:23):
Okay, I know better than topick them next time. Well, but
but just wait and see maybe thatmaybe they'll they'll turn around and do good
for you. Okay, well andbrown now, so yeah, it was
some of those some of those kindof factors in there. It's it's just

(25:45):
you know, some people will tellI've talked to people that said they cut
the blooms off real carefully when they'redone, and keep the foliage intact and
fertilize them and stuff like that.They can try to get them to re
sprout and do a little bit.But I again, it's going to come
down to specifically the one that thespecific one that you have. All Right,

(26:06):
appreciate it all, thank you,thank you very much, John,
I appreciate that. Yeah, it'soh gosh, lilies are so beautiful,
tiger lilies and some of the others. If they are stunning when they bloom.
I mean, even if they bloomonce, it's it's worth it because
they're so beautiful, absolutely beautiful.Hey, if you haven't fertilized your lawn,
sweet green from nitroposs is a greatoption for a natural fertilizer to put

(26:32):
out there. It's a molasses basedmicrobes get a hold of the molasses in
the process the production of it andto create the Sweet Green on eleven percent
nitrogen, which is high for anorganic fertilizer. When you put it on
the soil, microbes, especially bacteriabeneficial bacteria love molasses type product on the

(26:52):
soil, that carbohydrate and they doreally well. It smells wonderful first of
all, and when you put itout you're going to get a release as
the microbs go back to work onit and release that nitrogen out of the
fertilizer and you will see good resultsin your lawn green up really nicely.
Sweet Green is available in a lotof different places. Being a nitrovoss product.

(27:15):
You can find it at the ArbigateArbrogate in Tombaal It carries nitrofoss products.
Kingwood Ash Hardware is another nitrofoss productretailer where you can find many of
their things. And those are justtwo good examples of places. Shades of
Texas, by the way, anotherone out on Genoa, Red Bluff.
They carry nitrofoss products out there aswell. Let's go to San Leone right

(27:37):
now and talk to Ted. Theyted Ou there, we've got a viney
weed growing through the Saint Augustine.The only picture I found is maybe close
enough, kind of look like aspotted spurge. Okay, in the yard
behind this, they didn't mow andit would grow vertical. But then when

(27:59):
they mowed, this thing grows horizontaland it's a it's a very viiny looking
and uh ted. To give youa specific idea, I'll have to see
it, and we can do thatwith this. You're sending me a picture.
I can take it well. Andthis picture I showed they finally referred
to it as a broad leaf.So I'm wondering if the weed beater ultra

(28:23):
might handle it. The weed beaterswill would all handle that pretty well,
they should would. I would usethe spray so you can get it on
the foliage and use it so itholds onto the foliage. Okay, you
put it, you said, yousaid, yeah, at a fact,
and to make sure it sticks tothe foliage. Okay, Well that's pretty
sticky as it is, isn't itthe night it is? It is?

(28:48):
But they are made to do that. But depending on the weed, some
weeds are just very resistant to towaters that it balls up. I canna
leaves, you know, you spreadand they're not they don't look slick so
much. But boy there so itjust so. So if you don't want

(29:08):
to do a photo, I cantell you if you go out and break
the stem of the weed, ifit's a spurge, milk, white milk
will come. Read that. Okay, I'm doubting that's what you have though.
Okay, yeah, it kind oflooks like it though. But a
funny thing. I was going tocall you yesterday to see if it was
too hot to use the wheed.Well, it's a lot cooler today,

(29:32):
It's yeah, it's not. Andfor I don't know how long it's going
to stay the temperate, not today'stemperature, like the temperature it was yesterday.
But on days like that, doit early in the morning so that
by the time it really heats up, it's dried. And you know,
I wouldn't worry about that. Thereare other weed beaters. There's weed better
complete. There's a weed beater forsouthern lawns and and but the ultra is

(29:56):
more effective, but it's also onethat can do more damage if you Yeah,
well I use it. I justspot treat with a pump up sprayer
because I use it. Okay,okay, I wish, I wish I
could tell you what weed it was, but it several weeds. Figure out
a description. When you said itcan come up high, but it can
also go sideways when you mow it. That sounds like the fall aster that

(30:18):
that happens like what it sounds likewhat fall aster? Or it's also called
black land aster or slender aster.Okay, okay, all right, good
luck, ted, hike you mybye. Appreciate it. Take care our
phone number seven one three two onetwo fifty eight seventy four. I'll be
right back. Welcome back to gardenLine. We're talking gardening today. What

(30:44):
are the things that are of interestto you? I know one thing that
is of interest to you is havingquality plants. Because when you get a
quality plant, that means that itbelongs here, meaning it wants to grow
here. It's not a blue sprucefrom Colorado you're trying to kill it in
Galveston tech. It is a plantthat wants to grow here. Another thing
is a plant that was grown well, intended too well. I was in

(31:07):
a place, I'll say the otherday, I wasn't there for plants.
I was there for hardware type thingsand it was one of the big,
old, giant, big box stores, I'll leave it at that. And
I was out in the area thatthey had their plants in and it wasn't
being taken care of. There awhole racks of plants that were just shriveled.
I mean they were basically dead orthey soon would be when you got

(31:32):
them home. And that's not whatyou need to take home, right You
need plants that are healthy, plantsthat look good. And that's why we
like to promote our independent garden centers. We call them the mom and pops,
if you will. And Plants forAll Seasons is that kind of place.
It's been around a long time sincewhat nineteen seventy three. Plants for
All Seasons has existed and thrived becausethey offer quality products and they have knowledgeable

(31:59):
staff that know how to help youhave success. And if you go in
there and you bring them a baggiefull of some little bug or weed or
plant or whatever, a picture orsomething, they're gonna be able to identify
it. They're gonna be able topoint you in the right direction if it's
something you need to control, ifit's something you need to fertilize. They're
gonna they're gonna put the exact productsyou need in your hand. That's what
they specialize in and people know that. That's why they go back there.

(32:22):
They get good results. They aretrue lawn and garden experts. His family
owned operation by the Flowerties has beengoing strong for a good long time and
that is one of the reasons whyif you want to turn your brown thumgreen,
that that's a good way to doit because they have the knowledge to
do just that. Plants for AllSeasons dot com. That's the website,

(32:42):
Plants for All Seasons dot com orgive them a call two eight one three
seven six sixteen forty six two eightone three seven six one six four six
and they are stocked up on colorright now. Saw some beautiful color in
there the other day, really reallynice. Another one of the secrets to
success is Ciena Mulch. If youlive down south of Houston, you need

(33:08):
to first do what what is thefirst step on garden line to success with
plants. Take care of the brownstuff, get the soil right, brown
stuff before green stuff. Cienamol specializesin everything to make that plant happy by
making its roots happy. That wouldbe composts, that would be bed mixes,

(33:29):
things like vegetable herb type mixes.You know, things for your rose
mixes, things like a what's aleaf mold compost? A fine greened leaf
mold compost, things like every fertilizerI talk about on garden line. When
you go to Sienna and bring thathome and put it in your ground,

(33:49):
make your beds, create that nutrientcontent that is so important in the bank
account of the soil. Then whenyou go buy a plant and bring it
home, it is so much muchmore likely to have success. And that
is step one. And Cienamult isstep one for all of you that live
down way south of the Houston area. They deliver within about twenty miles.

(34:10):
So if you are in Siena Plantationor Cola, Iowa Colony, Pomona Lake,
Olympia, Meridian First Colony, roadcherand Manville Riverstone, do I need
to go on? I will pairLand sun Creek Estates near the brasis Men
State Park, Sweetwater, Quail Valley. All right, I'll stop there.
Oh at one more Riverstone. Allthose communities are in the backyard of Ciena

(34:30):
Maltz. That's your local multch place. Also Multchz. Do you need native
hardwood molts, double ground malts,two inch screen malts? Do you need
rocks? Are you creating a riverbed a dry river bed, which is
a real great way to improve yourdrainage, just channel it away like that?
Or are you creating a pati andyou need some flagstone, some flat

(34:52):
stone. They've got it all atCiena Mulch Again, just go to the
website Ciena Multch dot com, SiennaMaltz dot com. They'll get you set
up. They're closed on Sunday today, but they'll be back open again Monday
through Saturday. I love going downthere too. It's just always I'm always

(35:13):
surprised at some of the blends andjust the quality of a lot of the
products that they carry. That's nice. If you haven't fertilized your lawn yet
this spring, a great option wouldbe some of the turf Star products from
Nelson's. You know Nelson has along line of turf Star products that do
very well for your turf too.I want to kind of focus on today.

(35:37):
One is Bruce's Brew. Bruce's Brewis we think of it like as
a fast release fertilizer, and itis. It provides most of it's nitrogen
in a form that's going to releasepretty quickly, so you get an immediate
result. You get that boost,that quick boost from it. But it
also has some of the fertilizer informs that are slower available, so it's

(35:58):
not just a fast release. It'sa fast release with a little bit of
gradual release going forward from there.Now the slow and easy from Nelson's that
is the completely slow release fertilizer,or almost all of it. It's got
a you'll get a little bit ofrelease initially, but for a very long
time, for three or four months, you're going to get slow and easy

(36:21):
release of nitrogen into your soil.Grass needs to be fed gradually. When
you overdo the nitrogen at any onepoint in time, you get a lot
of top growth at the expinded rootgrowth. And what does that mean when
you have drought? Well, that'snot good, right. What does that
mean when you have grubs chew anda few of the roots that are there.
Not good? So we want togradually feed it over time to develop

(36:44):
a good deep root system. Itmakes the plant more drought tolerant, just
physically just makes sense to do that. You're not going to burn your plants
with it. With that slow,gradual release, it's going to feed microbes
in the soil, and the slowand easy even the components of it helped
acidify the soil. This is nota you know, you're going to turn
a pH of eight into a pHof five overnight, but graduate over time

(37:07):
as you use it. It's it'spushing downward, which is helpful. Diseases
like take all root rot, forexample, love a high pH environment around
the runners of your Saint Augustine grassand other other species that attacks slow and
easy by Nelson's is a great choicefor that. I'm kind of amazed at

(37:29):
all the technologies now that we haveto create products that you can just kind
of custom design them to do whatyou want. And the microbes get in
there, they get involved, theybreak some of that stuff down, They
some things, you know, certainkinds of compound. I'm kind of wandering
here, but I find this ofinterest. Maybe you will. Certain kinds

(37:49):
of nitrogen forms when they hit water, they become available. Water releases them
out of the granules. Other kindwater if it's says really wet, it
actually stops release of the nutrient toa large degree. There's others that my
microbes get in. The microbes breakit down over time. There's a lot

(38:12):
of different ways that those fertilizer particlescan work, and a well designed fertilizer
can utilize that to provide the exactkind of release that you're looking for.
And I think that's that's pretty prettyinteresting stuff. You're listening to garden Line.
We're gonn take a little break herein a bit our phone number seven
one three two one two fifty eightseventy four. If you'd like to call

(38:34):
Josh and get on the board whenwe come back from the top of the
hour break, you can be thefirst up. Those of you downe in
Richmond, you know about Enchanted Gardensand Jenny Gardens has you know, it's
been there for a long time,but it's a place that people know about.
And I don't mean en Richmond,I mean around the state. People
drive from a long distance to goto in Chenny Gardens because other towns don't

(39:00):
have the garden centers we have.They just don't. And I've said this
before, North, south, eastWest, wherever you live in Houston,
you've got some awesome independent garden centersand Chenni Gardens. Richmond is that kind
of showplace. It's the kind ofplace people drive from because they don't have
one in their town. And Imean driving from Austin. I've lived in
Austin area. Some good garden centersover there, but nothing like over here

(39:23):
in the Houston area. And peopledrive to Chenne Gardens just for the plants
and for the experience of going outthere. They have a whole lot of
little gadget tree for your faery garden. Have you ever seen a ferry garden
before. It's like think of aminiature garden, but it's outside. It's
not like it can be in apot or a container, but you can

(39:45):
even do it around the base ofa tree, little figurines and you put
in some moss and stuff and itjust looks like, you know, a
little faerry family has moved in aroundthe base of the tree or in a
large container. In Chened Gardens canget you set up and some really fun
cool ferry guarding. In fact,I think that's something that you got to
get the kids involved with. They'regonna have some fun with factor. Hey,

(40:07):
by the way, in chended GardensRichmond dot com in Chennigardens Richmond dot
com. Go check them out.They're open today. Why you're there,
you can pick up those products thatI've been talking about. You hear me
talk about fertilizers. They got them, they got it. Well, here
we go. We're about to putan hour in the books. Hey,
just a reminder, and I'll mentionthis again. I'm going to be at

(40:29):
Southwest Fertilizer next Saturday at eleven am, eleven not eleven thirty. Eleven am
to one pm, Southwest Fertilizer,and I'm going to be giving away what
they call skip bucks. What isthat, Well, it's money, paper
money that you can use to buyproduct when you're there. So it's like

(40:49):
giving here some money, go buyyou some stuff. And you know they
have everything at Southwest Fertilizers. They'regoing to give away a Toro blower,
a touro string tremor, We're goingto give away some and other products.
It's gonna be a good time.I'll tell you more about that later.
Katie R. H. Garden Linedoes not necessarily endorse any of the products
or services advertised on this program.Welcome to Katie r h Garden line with

(41:14):
Skip Rict. It's so crazy gas. Just watch him as many good things
to set czy in gas. Nota sound good morning on what's gonna be

(41:43):
a great day, by the way, I mean a very great day.
It is cloudy out there now,and it's gonna be cloudy for a little
while, but those clouds are goingto push away and we are going to
get some sunshine peeking through, andit just gonna get better and better.
And the temperature is so good.Be a great afternoon to be out in
about, pick up some supplies andplants, or get out there in the
garden, do a little work ifit's not too soggy wet. You know,

(42:06):
it's always best to work soil whenit is moderately moist. You know,
when a clay soil is dry,dry, dry, it is like
concrete. You need a jackhammer toget through it. When it is soggy
wet, it is like a stickof warm butter. You try to,
you know, stick a shovel ora spade and fork or a rototiler in
it, and it's just goo.It's just a mess, and it destroys

(42:29):
the structure of a clay. Towork it. When it's wet, let
me talk about structure in just aminute here. But when it's moist that's
when it's friable. That's when itbreaks apart very easily. And even if
you have a really difficult clay,if you can catch it at that right
moisture level, that's a great timeto do the amendments to improve it.

(42:51):
Things like expanded shale. If youcan put about I know this is a
lot, but if you can putabout three inches of expanded shale down into
a heavy clay, you can dramaticallyimprove its internal drainage and oxygen levels and
everything for many, many, manyyears. Expanded shale is a type of
a clay that or well, it'sshale, but it's been expanded by putting

(43:15):
it into a super hot oven andcausing it to swell up and get all
these little poreholes in little pits andpockets and things kind of like lava rock,
sort of on a microscopic level,and it really improves the clay.
It's a good time when a clayis moist wet, not dry, to
put in organic matter like compost orbed mixes, to mix them with it

(43:37):
and take advantage of those moments whenyou can get in there and do that,
because you're always going to be wantingto have a quality soil. And
if you get it ready when youcan, then whenever you want a plant,
you just go at it and youcan get it done. Makes it
really really easible easy. I talkedabout structure and stuff. I'm gonna mention
I'm going to talk a little bitabout texture and structure of soil little bit

(44:00):
later. It's a little bit nerdy, but I think it will help to
understand it a little bit better.Well, speaking of soil in a container,
a quality potting mix like jungle Landwill do what your roots need to
provide everything they need in terms ofnutrients and water. And here's how it
works. A quality product like jungleLand is going to hold on to nutrients

(44:21):
pretty well. It's going to holdonto moisture well also so that you're not
water in it three times a daytrying to keep it going. But it
will drain away the excess when there'stoo much water. Gravity just takes it
right down through the jungle land andout the whole, and you don't have
to worry about soggy, wet conditions. It CAUs root rots. Jungle Land
is available in a number of places. Like a nitroposs product, It's going

(44:44):
to be pretty widely available through theregion. Ktieace Hardware is going to have
it. You can go out toMemorial Drive and Ace Hardware City. You're
going to find it there. Youcan go down to Stanton's Shopping Center which
is down in Alvin and they're goingto have it. Also, the the
land product. One one other quickquick thing. Well let me come back

(45:05):
to let me come back to thatin just a minute. Let's go out
to League City and we're gonna talkto Jeff if I can figure out how
to push the right button. Therewe go. Hey Jeff, Hey,
what's going on. How are youdoing this morning? I'm doing good.
It's a great day. Yeah,man, hey, yeah, So I
had this company to come out andcut my grass. I don't know,
several maybe a year ago even uhand and and the weeds have I guess

(45:32):
there are a law more must havebrought in Bermuda. I've had Saint Augustine
and then uh just weeds and Imean it's just oh man. Then I
had chinch bugs hit. I'm tryingto let that grass kind of grow in
there and put some weed and feeton about two months ago. But I

(45:52):
still have a real serious weed problem. I was reading something about atrazine.
They wouldn't harm, but I needsomething to tackle these weeds with. Yeah,
don't do the exerzine now. Soyou've got a couple of options,
and it part of it depends onwhat weeds you have. Things like bermuda.

(46:13):
You're not going to kill them inyour Saint Augustine. They just coexist.
That's a problem with that particular week. If if these were weeds that
were more annual weeds, not reallyperennials, I would say you have two
options. One is you can spraythem and kill them. Or number two,
you could just work on fertilizing,mowing, and watering properly and build

(46:35):
density through this whole growing season inyour lawn. And then next year,
with a denser lawn, you're gonnahave fewer weed problems and you just keep
focusing on good lawn care and growyourself out of it. So there's the
options spray now or take time andjust grow yourself out of the problem by
building a denser lawn. There area few weeds that can coexist in a

(46:57):
dense lawn, but the majority ofthem ant and so so spray. You
said, spray, now, whatwhat do you mean, like a contact
spray? Well, no, butyou're you're spraying a broad leaf post emergent
weed killer like Furtilan has one calledweed free zone, bon Eye has weed

(47:20):
beater. There are several forms ofweed beater like the Ultra. Uh.
With cool temperatures like this, thiswill be a great day to get out
and do the spray. And becausesome of the better products for killing weeds
when the temperatures get up in theupper eighties and above can damage your Saint
Augustine. So do it now.In fact, this afternoon be a good

(47:40):
time to do it. Uh anduh Okay, so emerge like bone Eye
weed beater, Ultra or there areother weed beaters from Bonnite or Fertilan weed
free zone or two that will killbroad leaf weed. Now, Jeff,
if you haven't been online to gardeningwith Skip, go on there and I've

(48:01):
got my two schedules, the lawncare schedule and then secondly I've got the
lawn pest disease and weed management schedule. If you go to the second one
and you go down to weeds.There's weeds prevention and weeds kill existing.
You want to kill existing. Andif you follow the bottom of the chart

(48:22):
on all the things on my charts, there's the organic and synthetic options,
but you'll find you'll find these productslisted down there. Just remember, when
we get into the upper eighties,it's you still can do it, but
you need to do it early inthe day when the temperature is probably in
the in the upper seventies maybe orlower mid seventies early on, and they

(48:45):
won't damage the turf. Okay,sounds like a plan. I appreciate it,
all right, You have a goodone, sir, all right,
you as well. Weeds are anissue, I know that. And people
vary in their tolerance to weeds.They just and that's understandable. You know.
Some people it has to be perfectand so anyweed has to die.

(49:07):
Other people it's like, hey,weed, your green grass is green.
I'll mow it all and take myglasses off and it'll look just as pretty
as it ever did. I don'tknow where you are on that spectrum,
but it's okay. Wherever you are, go for it. But I want
to take a little break here andwhen we come back, Marty, you
will be the first up if you'dlike to have a skull seven one three

(49:28):
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to Gardenline. Good have
you with us this morning? Hey? If you I was yesterday, I
was out at an RCW nursery andtalking to Mike Fodge, who is I
rep from azemite that serves the wholeTexas area really maybe more uh, And
we were just discussing the product andpeople were asking questions about using it.

(49:49):
They donated a few bags it gaveaway for them yesterday. Congratulations. I'd
by the one that if you haven'tput micro nutrient supp clement onto the lawn,
you might want to consider asimite.It is an excellent product that's mined
up in Utah and it provides thosetrace minerals. What does trace mean?
Well, the three numbers in afertilizer bag are the elephant in the room,

(50:15):
Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.Urfan needs lots of those. Then
there's things that are more secondary,like calcium for example, or magnesium that
are essential and it needs a lotof that, but not as much.
And then there are things that aretrace like manganese or zinc or iron or
all the little trace minerals. Well, the trace minerals are also essential,

(50:37):
but they're needed in tiny amounts.A forty four pound bag of asimite will
cover about six ten thousand square feetseth going a long long way, But
you don't need a lot of it, and so you can do a soil
test to see what kind of nutrientyouee you made. Just need to put
it on occasionally and do the replenishing. People that return their clippings typically are

(50:58):
recycling things like that. People thatbag their clippings are hauling away some of
the nutrient that is important for grassto survive, so supplementation is even more
important in those situations. You cango to azimite Texas dot com and learn
more about it. Don't put azimitein the same hopper as your fertilizer at
the same time because the particle sizeis different. But you can do them

(51:21):
both on the same day by fertilizingand then putting out asimite, or you
can wait put out azimite at adifferent time when you aren't fertilizing. It
doesn't matter. Timing is not importanton the asamite. It's just important that
your soil bank account has everything thatthe grass needs to grow and to thrive.
I want to head out to Martynow in Fairfield. Hello Marty,

(51:42):
good morning, Skip. I havea question. I have two different roses,
and I got to identify my problemas thrips and then on the other
one it has a little bit ofthrip, but more importantly it has a
bungle on the on the leaves seeand I've had manko zeb and I wondered

(52:07):
will that take care of both ofthose things? Not thrips? But it
is a good fungicide. Okay,now what would yeah for the throups if
you don't overuse it. Spinosaid ispretty good for throups. It's an organic
product that will kill throups. Theproblem with spinosid is people like it because

(52:29):
it's effective and it's organic, sothey just overuse it every time they turn
around their spring and spinosid spinosa spinosid, and then we start to see resistant
thrips that to this organic product spinosa. So using it occasionally that is fine,
but I would alternate spinosid with otherkinds of products just to avoid losing

(52:52):
a good product mean losing it,meaning it doesn't work anymore. It's not
the products heavy. Yeah, haveyou ever heard to Captain Jack's. Yeah,
Captain are you talking about the deadbug Brew? I don't know.
One of my guardians buddies recommended CaptainJacks and right, I don't. I

(53:15):
never really, I've never even seenit. Well, Captain Jack, there's
a dead bug brew that has spinocid. That's the Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew.
So yes, that would be one. Uh. There's also a Captain
Jacks that has soap in it withthe spinocid. So you know, it
just depends. They're bon eyed products. Bone Eyde makes Jacks line. But

(53:38):
yeah, the Captain Jack's Dead BugBrew is a spinocid product, and you
know that would go ahead and thatwould help the thrips kill him. Yes,
huh. It is effective against thropes. But like I said, just
just don't don't only use that allyear. Switch out to a different kind

(53:59):
of and say decide occasionally, youknow. And so as far as the
diseases are concerned, you know,there are a lot of products out there.
There's fungenil, which is a prettygood leaf spot type of fungicide.
That's how I think of it,so you can use it on your roses
for black rot and things like that, fungenail. There's copper based sprays that
work pretty well for both powdery mildewand black spot on your roses. So

(54:23):
you got a lot of good options. Just the mancaz ebb would be a
good one. Again, don't justfor the next two years spray nothing but
manca'z ebb. Well, I don'tuse it very often, but I have
it, and I didn't want togo out and spend more money on news
products, so well I understand.Okay, yeah, that makes sense.

(54:44):
Okay, Well, thank you verymuch, have a good one. All
right, Barty, good luck,thank you, thank you. Bye.
You live up Montgomery and you haven'tbeen to A and A Plants and Produce.
I do not know how you haveavoided that, because I mean it's
right there on the east side town. Every time you drive by you see
it. Just wonderful to wander throughthere. They've had a wonderful selection of

(55:06):
plants, of course at the gardencenter, and they have great supply of
products. And when you go toA and A you hear me talk about
a fertilizer soil. It's there.For example, they got Nature's Way leap
Mo compost, They've got airloom soils, they have fertilizers like Microlife, like
Nelson's plant Food, including all ofthe turf store line that I've been talking
about. They've got nitrofoss products aswell, so it's easy to go in

(55:30):
there and get what you need.They do work up in the Lake Conroe
area if you need to hire theirlandscape crew to come out and do some
work. Talk to the folks atA and A about that as well.
Very active in the community, alwaysdoing stuff with kids there at ANA.
If you've got kiddos, contact themand find out when's the next activity coming
up, what's going on because theydo a lot of fun stuff with kids

(55:52):
and supporting schools and things. Justa great part of the greater Montgomery area
community. So all of you upin there in the Lake Conroe area,
this is your hometown garden center andyou really need to check it out.
O pig what Let's go out toHumble, Texas and talk to SHAWNA.
Hello, shawna Arnist, you thankyou so much for tanking my call.

(56:14):
It's got to get any advice onthe type of soil that I can use
for a plotted ut, for fora what please, a pot? Oh
oh yeah? Uh. You know, there's a lot of good mixes out
there. A sega is going tobe around a while, so it's not

(56:35):
like your plant and pansies in aflower pot. So I would probably go
with something that's a little more onthe chunky side. There are some good
blends. I know people that userose mix and and all kinds of applications.
Not just a rose bed that wouldbe a good option. Any any
kind of a good bed type mixwould be fine to use because you're going

(56:59):
to need a good sized hot forthat, saygo yes, yeah, excellent.
And any storage recommends to the Humblearea. In the Humble area,
I would go probably, Well,you've got Kingwood Garden Center. You've got
Warren Southern Gardens up in Kingwood.If you get down into the Humble area
and you're you know, looking forlike let's say an ace an ace store,

(57:22):
you can head out over toward atask Asita direction. Just down the
street on timber Forest Drive there isan task Asda ace hardware. Those usually
carry a good blend of of theproducts as well, so you might you
know, call first just to besure. But task Asia Ace Hardware would
be another good one close by.Excellent, Thank you so much, all

(57:44):
right, you take care, allrighty well, let's see here. Yesterday
also when I was out at RCWNursery, we were visiting with the three
sixty tree stabilizer creator Kurt Kurt hascreated really just an ingenious product. Three

(58:04):
sixty Tree Stabilizer is a plastic bar, super reinforced, very strong. It's
got rubber straps on each end.You can get it fitted with a T
post attachment if you want, oryou can buy the one that's just for
putting around a regular round post.It grabs a post and it grabs a
tree and it holds them very verywell. Now, forget the wires,

(58:24):
buying wire steaks in the ground totrip over, you know, cutting pieces
of garden hose to go around thetree, you know, cut into the
limbs. Don't mess with that.Just put one tea post in the ground,
Put one tree stabilizer on the Tpost attached to the tree loosely so
the tree can move a little bit. That's important. You don't want to

(58:45):
make it perfectly stationary. Just aslight amount of movement and it works well
if you got a little more ofa windy area and you want to use
two stabilizers one or south, oneeast west, so no matter where the
wind row goes, it's got thattree stable. You can do that too,
tree stabilizers or widely. But ofcourse RCW has them. Buchanans Plants

(59:06):
has them, arbor Gate Plants forall seasons, Southwest Fertilizer where I'm going
to be next Saturday as tree stabilizers. Jorges Hidden Gardens down in alvin carries
the tree stabilizer as well. Makesit really easy, really easy to do
that. By the way, haveyou if you're down in the Alvian area
anywhere around that area and you haven'tbeen to Hoges Hidden Gardens, you need

(59:27):
it. You need to go.Or has a wide variety of things.
You know you're gonna seasonally, you'regonna find things like vegetables there and whatnot.
They they're always carrying, you know, citrus trees. They've got roses
in stock. Typically last few timesI've checked, they had blueberries and thornless
blackberries on hand. If you needsome color in your beds. I was
bragging on lantana while ago they gotthose. They got Mexican heather, which

(59:51):
is another great plant. By theway. By the way, Mexican heather
too should be mentioned more on beelists. Honey bees love Mexican and heather.
Hoe carries a lot of fruit treesand so on. Of course he
has that tree stabilizer. They're onElizabeth Street in Alvin, just south of
Highway six, so seventeen seven twentyone Elizabeth Street and alban It's called Jorges

(01:00:15):
Hidden Gardens. They are open onweekends, so today from eight am to
four pm. Back on Fridays eightam to four, Saturdays eight to four
and Sundays eight to four Friday,Saturday Sunday. Jorges Hiddingguards had a bunch
of beautiful Peggy Martin roses that theybrought through this year that were really really
attractive. I love I love thosethings. Let's see, We're gonna go

(01:00:38):
now to Cypress and talk to Sandy. Hello Sandy, good morning Skip.
I have a question do you birdslike blueberries? Because I have so many
flowers and blueberries, and then thenext day I go and they're vne they
do they do like blueberries? Yeah, you got to put a bird netting

(01:01:00):
over it probably if you're gonna ifyou're having that problem. And then strawberries
as well. Oh yeah, yeah, they will also eat strawberries. You
know, it's weird. I havea strawberry patchie here and I haven't had
any bird damage, but usually Ido. So I don't know what's going
on right now. Maybe they justhaven't discovered them. And then my black

(01:01:22):
beauty eggplants keep giving me flowers,but then the flowers fall off in that
Yeah, flowers don't produce anything.I need it because it didn't pollinate.
Well, yes, but I needto look into that more as to why
that is. We have that questioncome up seasonally, and I've never worried

(01:01:45):
about eggplant pollinating, but I doknow that happens. I don't know if
it's a lack of bees or something, or if it is a temperature related
thing, but that does happen.There's nothing I know of that you can
do to fix it other than justwait. And they tend to settle in
and start setting a little bit better. Sandy, I'm ten seconds away from

(01:02:05):
a break. If you want tohold, we can keep talking her.
If we're done, I'm going togo ahead and put your on hold either
way. Okay, okay, ohall right, very good. We'll be
right back phone number seven one threetwo one two kat r h. Wellcome
back to guarden line. Good haveyou with us today? We are visiting
with Sandy and Cyprus. Sandy,Where do we go from here? I

(01:02:27):
have one more question my slicer tomatoes. They're getting big, but they're still
green. Can I pick them andput them on my counter and let them
turn right? Or how does thatwork? Yes? Uh, it's hard
to fully describe the difference as atomato matures, but here's what happens.

(01:02:49):
You start off with the tomato thathas very quirky material inside. It's not
it's not like jelly. Uh.And when you slice through a tomato like
that, if you did, youwould cut right through the seas too,
with a sharp knife. Then asit hits a mature stage, the cells
inside those open spaces where the seedsare become more jelly like, and if
you slice through, the seeds areharder and they just sort of push to

(01:03:13):
the side. That's the line betweenit'll ripen inside and it won't. So
it size is definitely a factor,But you can have small tomatoes that just
aren't going to get any bigger thatmature. So you can't just go by
size. But if you pick onethat's hit the mature stage but it's still
green, you pick it and putit inside or wherever you put it,
it's going to ripen and just fineand actually turn out to be pretty good.

(01:03:37):
Oh okay, all right, well, thank you so much. Skip
had a great day, all right, Sandy, thank you for call for
the call. I appreciate that verymuch. Have you guys been to the
rosen for him? I'm telling youthis is one another one of our awesome
destinations. But this is a greatlittle trip. And by the way,
it's not that far. It's upthere in Independence, Texas, north of

(01:03:58):
Brenham. You get there about anhour to where in the area you're listening
living in. You know, it'sbluebonnet season still up there, so it's
a beautiful drive. It's just awonderful outing. When you go to the
antique rosing Porium, it's like youenter another place in time. I mean,
it's like a botanical garden set backin the historical Texas past. Maybe

(01:04:19):
that's a good way to put it. I just love going out there.
Fun fun to go walk around seethings. They've got the demonstration gardens they
call them the display gardens. Outthere the nursery is loaded with all kinds
of things. I mean, ifyou want to go out and look at
all the things they carry. Youknow they are roses, but they are
so much more than roses. They'vegot native trees, they have fruit trees,

(01:04:41):
they got house plants and herbs andperennials. Lots of beautiful plants out
there. If you are part ofa garden club, maybe a master gardener
group, a junior master gardener,group of kiddos, Native Plants Society,
Herbs Society, or just a bunchof friends hanging out looking for a place
something to do, don't go outthere alone. Take your friends with you.
In fact, if you will geta hold of them, you can

(01:05:02):
email them at events at we Arerosesdot com, events at Wearroses dot com
and say, hey, I've gota group I want to come out and
do a tour. I'd like todo a lunch and learn with you guys.
I'd like to do a gardencraft forworkshop or something during the week or
on Sunday during the spring season.They can set that up and do it

(01:05:23):
with you. You can give thema call at ninety seven nine eight,
three, six fifty five forty eight, or go to the website and boy,
you're going to love the website.It is inspirational. Antique Roseemporium dot
com. They grow their roses andtwo gallon container. It's a nice robust
amount of soil there for a goodstrong rose. Ever roses that price twenty

(01:05:45):
nine to ninety five at Antigrosenporium andlisten. They are nationally known for growing
wonderful quality, wide variety of antiqueroses. I hope you make a plan
on going out there. That's agreat outing. We call that what do
you call it, horticultural tourism.There's a word for it, horticultural tourism.
It's a great place for that.I love doing every time I go

(01:06:08):
to a big city somewhere in thecountry, I find a good garden center
or a pick your own patch orsomething and just go out and see and
learn. Botanical garden there's another goodplace to do. I hope you do
some of that. It's pretty fun. The folks at Landscaper's Pride they have
a wide variety. In fact,twenty seven different products are available in bags.

(01:06:29):
Of course, they'll sell you bulktoo. By the way, they
are always local, top quality resources. When you're talking about landscapers Pride,
they've been in business. That's twothousand and two, so now what over
twenty two years of experienced going onthere. Landscaper's Pride has the kind of
products to have plants success. Remember, the brown stuff is what makes success.
With the green stuff. They havea rose mix marketed as rose Soil.

(01:06:53):
It has in fact is good forwoody ornamentals or any especially plants that
like a little bit less hyghe.It's a little more acidic direction. It's
got fresh and composted pine bark andsphagnum and slow release fertilizer. Their gardener
Magic Soil contains humus. It containsthe pine and composted rice halls. Isn't
that interesting? Little chicken pellet fertilizertoo, takes it up to three months

(01:07:15):
of nutrient release in there for it. The pot Dirt is their organic certified
soil for those color beds where youreally want things to pop and take off
growing. It's got worm castings andsand and vermiculi and other things that's just
an example of the twenty seven differentproducts at Landscaper's Pride. Go to the
website Landscaperspride dot com. That's howyou find out where to get it.

(01:07:38):
It's widely, widely available, avery high quality product for a very reasonable
price with Landscaper's Pride. When whenyou're taking care of your lawns and your
gardens, you always want to makesure the nutrient content is up there.
Think of fertilizing not as feeding thelawn that day, like as if you

(01:08:00):
were taking a spoon and feeding yourplants each day. Think of fertilizing as
a bank account. And in thatbank account are all the nutrients that a
plant needs. And so if theplant today the roots out there and it
goes, man, I've got tohave some zinc and there's no zinc.
It's up a creek. It's introuble. But if it has adequate of

(01:08:23):
all the nutrients, in adequate supplyand in the right ratio too. By
the way, we need some nutrientsmore than others, then your plant's going
to thrive. And that's how Microlifefertilizer is designed. It's an organic fertilizer,
so it came from a plant,right, So if it was once
a living thing, it has allthe nutrients, including the micros and things

(01:08:43):
like that that required to grow thatplant, and now they're in an organic
fertilizer form. Microbes get a holdof micro life and they break it down
and they release the nutrients to yourplants. So, whether you're using the
green bag to fertilizer lawn the sixtwo four, whether you using I was
a Rcwstree we're talking about with oneof the folks that stopped in the acidifying

(01:09:05):
the pink bag of microlife fertilizer.They were going to grow some things that
needed more acidic soil, and Isaid, this is the one you need
to get. The purple bag ishumans plus, it's concentrated compost in a
bag. This and many many othermicrolife products. You can find out more
by going to Microlifefertilizer dot com MicrolifeFertilizer dot com. There you can find

(01:09:26):
out where to buy it and allthe different products and learn a lot more
about it. Let's head out now, let's see here. I'll tell you
what, Jim, I'm going tohave to hang on. I am hitting
a hard break and I always hateto have to cut somebody off for they
even get through asking the question.So, Jim, I'm going to put
you first up right when we comeback. That would be helpful. If

(01:09:47):
you haven't been at the Arburgate ina while, you need to go.
Arborgate is a show place. Italways is, it always has been.
Any kind of time of the year, you're going to find fruit, trees
and flowers and plants and shrubs andtrees and or the gift shops are unbelievable
out there, the gardens to wanderthrough or outstanding. And the best and
newest thing out there is the TrishelRoad access parking lot. You just turned

(01:10:12):
on Trisher Road, go around behindArburgate. You got an all weather parking
lot. Almost I'm gonna post apicture our video of that then I did.
I'll get it out on Facebook here. You need to see that,
and you need to go. Youneed to go to Arburgate because no matter
what you want, you're gonna findit, and you're going to have staff
that knows what they're talking on tellingthese people know what they're talking about,

(01:10:34):
they won't steer you wrong. Andthat is so important when you're buying plants
and products to get stuff that works, that works for the plant or against
the past or whatever you're dealing with. You need to be pointed in the
right direction. And Arbigate always doesthat. Knowledgeable with quality products. You're
not going to be better than that. All right, we're gonna take a

(01:10:55):
little break here our phone number sevenone three two one two ktr GIM you'll
be first up. Welcome back toGuardline. Good have you with us today?
Listen? If you have trees,you need to take care of them
for a number of reasons. Numberone, they shade your house, They
shade your patio, They provide youa break from the sun. They add

(01:11:16):
a lot hundreds, if not thousandsof dollars to the value of your house.
They make the house more sellable.You know, if you picture a
house, you're going to buy ahouse, and you drive up there and
there's not a tree in site,versus you drive up and there's a big,
beautiful tree there, right, aren'tyou going to be more attracted to
that house? Those houses move upto move quickly on the market. In

(01:11:38):
order to have a successful tree,you need to plant a variety a species
that wants to be here in thesite you have. You know, maybe
you got a soggy, wet soiland you need a species that can take
that kind of condition. Do youwant flowers, do you just want shade?
Do you need it to be evergreenor do you prefer deciduous and so
on. All of that's important,But very important is somebody that knows what

(01:12:00):
they're talking about take care of thetree. And that's why I like to
talk about Martin spoon Moore an affordabletree service. Martin's been doing this for
a long time. He's he isvery skilled at he's very knowledgeable at it.
He knows how to take care ofa tree. And you got a
lot of people that I call himthe two jerks on a chainsaw tree service.
They own a chainsaw, they owna pickup, and therefore they're a

(01:12:23):
tree person. Know they are notabsolutely not. You need somebody that knows
how to pruit tree properly. Ifdeep root feeding or something like deepruit watering
during a rescue drought, for example, we're doing that last year. If
that's needed. You need somebody knowswhat they're doing. If you're going to
do anything around an established tree,like put in a driveway or a sidewalk

(01:12:45):
or dig a trench for a utilityor something. Call Martin first, have
him come out. Martin charges onehundred and fifty bucks to come out for
a consultation. Now, I willtell you what's needed or not needed,
to be honest with you about it. But if you decide to go ahead
and okay, I'm going to hireyou to do that, whether it's pruning
or feeding or whatever, that onefifty goes on to the price of the

(01:13:05):
service you're hiring him for, soyou don't lose it. So it's worth
having him come out, and youknow he's not going to drive all over
town for everybody. It's just gota question and they're curious. Can't afford
to do that. So the onefifty is, hey, are you serious?
But I'm telling you you're you're hiringknowledge that pays off many times over
in terms of the value in thesuccess you're going to have with those plants.

(01:13:28):
That's about as simple as I canput it. A f F Tree
service dot com, A f FTree service dot Com. Martin Spoon Moore
seven one three six nine nine twentysix sixty three seven one three sixty nine
nine twenty six sixty three. Hey, this is a business. Martin and
his wife Joe or the owners.They answer their own phones. If you

(01:13:49):
don't talk to Martin or Joe whenyou call, hang up, you've called
the wrong place. Affordable Tree affTree Service dot Com seven one three six
nine nine twenty six sixty three.Let's go now out to Bracewood Place.
We're going to talk to Jim.Hello, Jim, Hey skip, thanks
for taking my call. Yes,sir, I've got a problem with some

(01:14:13):
trees. Three years ago, Ihad a professional landscape put in a couple
of Eagleston Hollies for privacy screen andthe one the first one, so one
of the two died. It gotan insect problem and I wasn't able to

(01:14:33):
catch it quick enough and it didn'tmake it. The other one is still
okay. The other one made itthough. Once I found out what the
insect was, I got the properspray at Southwest Fertilizer. Anyway, put
in another one and it lasted.It grew for a while and it died

(01:14:55):
and it had actually gotten the sameinsect infestation. Do you know what insect?
That was? No idea, butit was one where you it would
make spots on the leaves and youcould rub the spots off. That's all
I know, okay, And that'sthe guy told me that that was insect
It wasn't fung asign Okay, itwasn't fungus. And anyway, so I

(01:15:17):
put another one in, and thatone that that actually got the infestation.
I treated it and it survived andthen it went for a while and grew,
and then it just suddenly died.So uh and there one didn't seem
me much roots left when I pulledout. Anyway, I stuck another one
and I and so I did thismyself. So what ends up being the

(01:15:40):
bottom line? Then on this Ihear your plantinum and they're dying. So,
yes, where do we go from? What do I need to do?
What do I do? What doI need to do with this soil?
I've got an old yopon, I'vegot an old, mature yopon.
Holly. I could transplant over there, and I know that they're really hearty,
But is there something wrong with thiscertain location? Remember six feet over

(01:16:00):
there's another one that's doing just great. Yeah, yeah, Well, okay,
Holly's love to be in a forestsoil, which means there's lots of
organic matter, a very rich forestytype of soil. They like a raised
area if at drainage is at alla question, because they do not want
to sit on a swamp when itrains too much. At the same time,

(01:16:25):
the first three years of a holly'slife you need to pretty much handwater
it because it's important to keep itmoist. They are not resilient when they're
new. After they get established,after about three years of growing, it's
not so touch and go. Butwith a holly, we lose a lot
of hollies early on because they can'twilt and show you they need water.

(01:16:45):
They just are stressed and they lookokay, and then all of a sudden,
the leaves are turning brown, andbecause it's heading downhill, it's hard
to stop it. So quality soilmix, a good bed mix, something
like a rose soil blend would bean excellent one. Creating a raised for
drainage, and then the handwatering.If you've got an automatic system, that
can be okay. But what Ifind is things can block those sprinklers from

(01:17:08):
getting good even coverage all over thatroot zone, and that is what's very
important. That's why I say handwatering the first three years can be more
specific skip about watering and like isit every day every other day? It's
totally dependent the accurate answer. Andthis seems oversimplified, but it's just the

(01:17:28):
truth. Moist soil. You gotto keep the soil moist. So if
it's one hundred degrees outside in fullsun, you're going to water a lot
more. If you've got a sandysoil the water runs right through, you're
going to water more often. Ifyou've got a clay soil that holds the
water pretty well, you're not goingto water as often, but getting the
whole zone equally wet. Not adry spot over there, but a nice

(01:17:50):
soaking. Just you know what Ido when I'm not sure is I'll take
a trial dig down about four fiveinches and feel the and you can tell
is it sop and wet? Isit a little too? Drives it nice
and moist? You want to maintainthat moisture. And just remember that that
holly plant, which is quite largewhen you buy it, it has a

(01:18:11):
very small, confined cylinder of rootsthat came out of the pod, so
early on it's got to have waterthere because there aren't roots out in the
soil to pick it up, andso you gradually wean it out. But
there's not a schedule. If Itold you once a day, if I
told you twice a week, ifI told you, you know it.
And for how long you water.It's just water enough and often enough to

(01:18:32):
keep the soul moist. Okay,So do you think I need to like
treat the bottom of this hole withbecause I intend to do another one.
I need to do it. Ineed this priv syscuat. Yeah, do
you need to do I need totreat the bottom of this hole with bleach
or something? No, no,no, no, no, no,
nothing, nothing like that. Youmake a good bed mix and you dig

(01:18:55):
a hole and your plant and putthe soil back in that you dug out.
That's very important, all right.And if I raise it, say
say, if I raise it withlike wood sides, you know, trigger
wood sides, if I do twelveinches up, would that even help?
Yeah? That's very helpful for drainage? Sure is? Okay, Hey,
Jim, I got to run,but good luck with that. I hope
this someone turns out. Just watchfor those insects so you can jump in

(01:19:16):
early if you see them again.All right, they're nasty. Thank you
all right, thank you very much. I appreciate that. If you're looking
at fertilizing your lawn a turf Starby Nelson's. There's two versions of Turfstar,
two types of Turfstar fertilizer that Nelsonmakes several of them. Bruces Brew.
That's a faster release, but ithas some slow release. Not all

(01:19:40):
the nutrient gets released all at once. Bruces Brew is a quick way to
get in there, get those nutrientsout and get a boost to the plants.
Slow and Easy is the name tellsit. Slow and easy gradually over
three or four months, is releasingthe fertilizer. In fact, if you
do slow and Easy now, youmay not fertilize again until you're your fall

(01:20:00):
fertilization. I mean, it reallyreally goes out there a long long way,
especially if you're returning your clippings tothe lawn. Both of them work
very well with that nice. Ilike the slow and Easy's nice gradual because
it just creates a stronger, moreresilient plan. In general, Kaye A.
Nelson products, You're all quality.I always have good reports on those
people. I tell you what we'regonna take a little break. It's time

(01:20:24):
for the news, right Bob inWalker County. We're going to come to
you very first when we come back. Thanks for hanging on with us,
don't forget to Let's see on Saturdaythe twenty seventh. Next Saturday, I'll
be at Southwest Fertilizer at eleven am, not eleven thirty. Eleven am to
one pm. I'm going to begiven away, Bob at Southwest gonna be

(01:20:48):
given away a Toro blower, aToro string tremor. I'll draw for those.
I'll be giving away some Medinos productsand other products. And I'll be
giving away skip bucks. What's askip buck? I hand you a piece
of paper, you go buy stuff, and it's like giving you money to
go buy stuff. Well, prettycool stuff. Southwest Fertilizer, bess Utt
and Runwick Next Saturday. Kat RHGarden Line does not necessarily endorse any of

(01:21:13):
the products or services advertised on thisprogram. Welcome to Katie r H Garden
Line with Scamp Richard. It's socrazy, Trim just watch him as Welcome

(01:21:35):
back to guarden Line. Good tohave you with us on a Sunday that
is going to turn out to bea beautiful day. It is cloudy outside,
Do not fear. We will havethose clouds moving out, sunlight coming
in, nice fresh temperatures come inkind of nice outside today. Love it
good day to be out and about. And I hope you'll plan this afternoon
some activity with your gardener, maybegoing out and doing a little bit of

(01:21:57):
shopping for some of the things thatyou just can't live without, whether it's
vegetables or flowers or herbs or thatall important getting the soil ready. I
want to run real quick out toGalveston and talk to Bill. Hello.
Bill, Hi, got a questionfor you. I've got an avocado tree
that has a lot of green leaveson it, but keeps losing leaves.
And I don't know if it's likemy magnolia that's always lucious leaves, or

(01:22:20):
whether that's all I need to beworried about. Probably not. Avocado doesn't
drop all the time, but someleaf drop is not a big concern on
them, especially if it's the olderleaves further down. The branch of the
new growth should still have leaves onit, though, Okay, and that's
all I need to know. Thankyou, all right, You're good.

(01:22:41):
Take care appreciate that very much.Let's head out to Walker County down and
talk to Bob. Hey, Bob, Hey, good morning, appreciate your
show. Thank you. Hey.I have a whole bed full of knockout
roses and they used to be reallygreat, but the last couple of years
they've been sort of yeah so so, and I am I treat them,

(01:23:03):
treat them with uh systemic insecticides.As matter of fact, I fertilized with
a combo nitroposs for fertilizer systemic.But I got to looking at them this
year when I was trimming them,and a number of leaves don't look bad,
but the maintains the stalks are justcovered with sort of a number of

(01:23:29):
spots. I'm wondering if it's blackspot or something. It sure looks like
a fungus. And my question iswhat's the best thing to treat that with.
That's very strange, Bob. Knockoutis about his disease resistant of a
rose as you're gonna get. SoI am very uninclined to jump toward a
fungal spray. You know that I'vegot a good looking picture of it that

(01:23:54):
I can send you. That wouldbe that that would be best if you
could send me even more than onepicture, maybe the bushes as a whole,
and then a couple up close andgood sharp focus. I will put
you on hold and Josh will pickup and give you an email and if
you'll send it to me, ifI can get a good look at it
for the end of the show,I'll say it on the air. You
know, I'll diagnose it on theair, but if not, we'll find

(01:24:16):
a way to get you an answeron that. But yeah, a fungus
on knockout. I definitely need tosee this one. Yeah, okay,
all right, thank you you bet. I appreciate that a lot. One
of the most effective things you cando for a long to bring it back,
to make it look good is todo a deep aerration, a core

(01:24:41):
aeration with a compost top dressing.What does a core aeration mean. It
means that instead of just squeezing ahole into the soil by pushing something into
the soil, a core errator goesin and it pops a plug out of
the soil. It takes attle alittle round plug out of the soil and
drops it on the surface. Ilike to say, when you've core aerated
you walk around, it looks likesomeone had a very small dog convention on

(01:25:05):
your yard because there's always a littlewell. You figure it out anyway,
The core aerator opens that soil upand gets oxygen down in the root system,
which on a heavy clay, especiallywhen it's compacted, is very important.
Then the compost top dressing goes onthe top and it finds its way

(01:25:25):
down in the holes, as doesfertilizer, as does water, as does
oxygen, and it just stimulates theroot system. And especially when you've got
a long that was hammered like lastyear's lawns were hammered with the drought and
the heat. If you've got issueswith compaction, if you've got issues with
you know, bear soil and weedsand just problems, getting that back in
shape is really important. And BnBturf Pros is our go to provider of

(01:25:53):
cororating and compost top dressing down southof the Houston area. So if you
live let's let me just give yousome cities. If you live over in
Missouri City or sugar Land, that'ssouthwest. If you live down in Siena
Arcola, Fresno, an Iowa colony, for example, or Manville down south
or if you even as far east. I believe they go as far east

(01:26:14):
as pear Land as well. Now, when I was talking to the folks
at BnB turf Pros as we're bringingthem on, I always want to know
about service and their attitudes and howthey look at things. And I'm telling
you this company, BMB turf Pros, their number one goal is customer satisfaction.
Their number one aim is to achievehigh quality work, quality products.

(01:26:38):
That is what they do. Theydon't put stuff down that I don't recommend
and trust on garden line on yourSo they're going to go to a place
like Sanamulch and they're going to geta top quality leave more compost top dressing
to put down on your lawn becausethat is top quality stuff at Ciena Malt
they will you know, they'll they'llschedule you out, they'll come to the
yard. They can't go too far, like I said, because you know,

(01:27:00):
you're carrying a big, heavy machinerythat really does a job better than
anything you can rent locally. Uh, And they do it right. Bbturfpros
dot com. This is a websiteBbturfpros dot com, not BnB, but
BB turf pros dot com seven toone three two three four fifty five ninety
eight seven one three two three fourfifty five ninety eight. You go check

(01:27:25):
them out. They're very highly ratedonline because they go above they make a
personal connection with the clients and theirgoal is for you to be satisfied,
and that's what they achieve because that'show they go about it. And so
I love to recommend places that providethat kind of of customer service. Bnbturf
pros dot com for all of youdown south and little of the southwest of

(01:27:45):
the Houston area, that's your goto for aeration and compost, top dressing
both. Our phone number is sevenone three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one twofifty eight seventy four. When was the
last time you went over to Buchannons. You know Buchanans and the Height.
They're on Eleventh Street in the Heights. I hope you've been there. If

(01:28:06):
you haven't, well, it's timeto crawl out from under a rock and
go see it. This is awonderful little hideaway there. You're driving down
eleven Street and all of a suddenyou look over there, whoa there it
is. They specialize in native plants. I mean, you're not going to
find a better selection of natives.They absolutely are always well stocked in that.

(01:28:27):
They'll even tell you a native.If you say I want something that
was native right here in the Houstonarea, they can do that as well.
They had a nice little gift shop, good books available in the gift
shop, good quality gift items available. You know, Mother's Day's coming up.
You don't want to forget that,right, Very very easy to shop
for mom at Buchanan's Plants. Ilike to go online and look at all

(01:28:48):
their educational material online too. Thatalone is worth the price of admission,
as is signing up for their newsletter. Their newsletter is outstanding. Just sign
up for it and check it out. You see what I'm talking about.
Buchanans Plants dot Com on Eleventh Streetin the Heights. Go check them out.
If you haven't been there in awhile, go back. There's always

(01:29:08):
something going on there. Houseplant selectionis stunning, just absolutely stunning. Hey,
I've talked myself into another break.Time flies when you're having fun.
Well, here we are seven toone three two one two k t RH
I'll be right back. Welcome backto guardenline. Hey, good to have
you with us. Would you liketo ask a question today? Well,

(01:29:29):
here's how you do it. Youdolls seven one three two one two k
t r H seven one three twoone two k t RH and we'll discuss
whatever is of interest to you.That is for sure. Our goal is
to help you have a bountiful gardenand a beautiful landscape, and so how
can we do that starts with simpleprinciples. I was talking earlier about the

(01:29:50):
structure of the soil, I said, I had mentioned that a little bit
later. Structure is the way theparticles group together. Texture the size of
the particles. So when I saytexture, I'm talking about sand, silt,
and clay. Clay's the tiniest particlesize. Silt is just a little

(01:30:11):
bit bigger than that, and sandcan be well. Essentially, sand is
big, old, chunky particle sizesof soil. But structure is the way
it groups together. So you couldhave a clay that is just like modeling
clay. You ever played with thatbefore? You know? You make a
little bowl with your thumbs and fingersand you put water in it and just
sits there all day. Right,it holds water because it has no structure

(01:30:33):
into the clay particles. It isjust a massive solid mass of clay that
doesn't allow water through, it doesn'tallow oxygen down through. That's just ideas
when you take a clay and youadd organic matter or other things that help
humus is a good example that helpcreate a structure now instead of being a

(01:30:55):
mass. It's imagine if you lookthat under a micro scope, seeing a
bowl of popped popcorn. So youhave all these clumps of soil particles clumped
together with airspace in between them.That is structure in the clay. So
we gripe about our black clay soilsand poor drainage and whatnot. But you

(01:31:15):
can build structure to your clay withorganic matter by not working the soil when
it's wet, working it when it'swet. Just to continue my popcorn analogy,
imagine now spraying that bowl of popcornwith water and just smashing down with
your hands. I mean you turnit back into just a flattened goo.
Right, you've destroyed the structure.You haven't changed a texture, you destroyed

(01:31:38):
the structure of it. And soclay soil is not bad. You know,
sand is not bad or good.I mean they each have their pros
and cons, but the most importantthing is that we build structure and plant
roots do that. When you gointo a forest, that soil is nice
and friable because the roots of plants, the organic matter from the plants dropped

(01:31:59):
on the soil surface, earthworms movingthrough it, and on and on build
structure. When you go to ameadow, the grassroots that live and die
within a year typically are constantly looseningup that soil, opening it up and
adding structure as they decompose into thesoil. You can do that. You
can cheat and take a shortcut bybuying a quality bed mix like a roast

(01:32:21):
soil, like a vegetable and herbsoil. You know, whatever you're going
after, you can buy a bedmix of that and you instantly get that.
Or you can take the soil youhave and just keep adding compost to
it. If you got garden beds, don't walk on them. Never walk
on your garden beds if you canpossibly avoid it. What does walking do?

(01:32:41):
It smashes down the structure and itreduces the amount of oxygen and air
and water infiltration. Now that's alot of information on it, but just
understanding that principle kind of helps youunderstand. Okay, I got a heavy
clay, what can I do?Well, you know now what to do.
I've got to loosen it up,doing a little bit of loosening of
the soil, whether you use aspading fork or whatever, Putting some organic

(01:33:04):
matter in it, Putting some expandedshale in it, which holds its structure
for a long time, keeping thatclay more open. All of those things
help with the And if you havethe other extreme. We don't have as
many sandy soils in this area,but we do have many quite a few.
Just mix organic matter in it insteadof water just running right through and

(01:33:26):
nutrients just washing right through. Witha lot accomposite organic matter, that sandy
soil becomes richer, it holds moisturelonger, it holds nutrients longer. So
just a few tips there on soil, but that I think that's really an
important thing to keep in mind.I was talking earlier about finding the kinds

(01:33:49):
of products you need and making sureyou get stuff that's going to do the
job you want it to do.And ACE hardware, that's what they specialize
in. ACE is the place,is their motto, And it's a place
for whatever. I mean. Youknow, it's a hardware store. It's
a place for plumbing, it's aplace for electrical it's a place for small

(01:34:10):
appliance for in the kitchens, andI mean just a thousand different products.
But ACE is a place for youryard. It's a place for your soil
mixes that I talk about. It'sa place forever fertilizer I talk about on
garden line. It's a place toget fire in control. The bait.
Start with the bait, and thentwo weeks after you've baited, if you

(01:34:30):
got some mounds, then you canhit them with an individual mound treatment.
Those are two kinds of products.A bait is a food that's scattered far
and wide in a very low ratethat the fire ants take, they bring
back, they eat, they feedto the queen. Everybody dies. Who
ray. We love that. Theindividual mound treatment you drench over the mound,
into the mound, and it justphysically kills the fire It poisons and

(01:34:54):
kills the fire ant right there.But don't do the mound treatments. Only
that's played whackam all. You'll nevercatch up with the start with the bait.
That's the way, and ACE Hardwarehas that. Do you have mosquito
problems? Well, you know,dump out all the water that you got
sitting around the house. And Imean I mean the outdoor of the house,
the saggy gutters, the little uhdog bowls it's sitting water for too

(01:35:15):
long, or the bird bath thatsits in water for too long, or
uh just wherever you have water standingyou gotta dump that out, or maybe
you want to put some mosquito dunksin it. Well. ACE carries that
they carry that they carry foggers forthe mosquitos and other things. ACE is
the place. What do you want? I was in an ACE just the
other day. I was walking throughlooking at those little luck I call them

(01:35:39):
beer lights, little strings of lights. You hang outdoors for the early evening
ambiance. You know, summer's coming. You know. I can almost sit
out in the middle of the sunnyday from the outside. But boy,
in the evening when the sun goesdown, you get a little break from
the sun, having those lights andenjoying your patio area. Maybe you got
your barbecue pitted Ace. Boy,do they ever have quality brands? Trigger

(01:35:59):
Big Egg Weber all of that andlots of accessories to go with it.
ACE is a place, So where'sAce. Well, go to ACE Hardware
dot com and you're gonna find Ifyou put in a store locator for the
greater Houston area, you're gonna findforty ACE hardware stores. Easy, easy
to find. Let's see. Ithink we're going to go back to the

(01:36:19):
phones now. I'm going to goto who's been waiting long? Stephen and
Cyprus. Hello, Stephen, bodySkip. Hey, I just got a
question about the stickers that are inthe backyard. The dogs keep running around
out there. I'm concerned about them. You know. Well, first of
all, too fall, they notheard themselves, and plus they bring him
in the house. What's pet friendlybesides pulling it out of the ground.

(01:36:42):
Is this a grass or a broadleaf weed? That's the sticker, because
we have stickers of different kinds ofweeds. It's the broad leave okay,
uh. That would be a postemergent broadleaf we control product, and there
are a number of them in themarket. If you go to my schedule
on Garden with Skip dot com,I list by name some of the products

(01:37:03):
that you can use, both organicand synthetic on weed control. If the
stickers are already on the plants,you probably don't want to hear this,
but to get out there and pullthose plants up, get some gloves on
your hand, pull them up,gets all the stickers out. If you
spray them and kill them, youstill have dried stickers and dogs are still
bringing them in. So that's that'swhy I say pulling. But next spring,

(01:37:29):
putting out a pre emergent to preventthem from coming up would be a
good step. And that is alsoon my schedule at gardening with Skip dot
com. It tells you what productsdo you use in window apply them?
Okay, we I'll definitely do that. I appreciate you. I just I
was just concerned because they chew onthe grass a lot, and I was
worried about anything I've sprayed down onthere. But like those work. Yeah,

(01:37:51):
yeah, And well you've got grassystickers and you've got broad leaf stickers,
and so you may have a littleboth in there, Dannie, almost
like you do. You're an overachiever, Stephen. I appreciate right, take
care of Thank you, bye bye. Appreciate that. Hey, Spring Creek

(01:38:12):
Feed Center is your hometown. Feedcenter. We love our feed centers here
on Garden Line. You can goto Spring Creek Feed if you're up in
the Magnolia area. It's just rightin your backyard FM twenty nine seventy eight,
just minutes away from Grand Parkway Highwayto forty nine. The fertilizers I
talk about are there. The productsto control pests and weeds and diseases are
there. And best of all,I think friendly, courteous staff to help

(01:38:35):
you. They've expended their garden area. By the way, I got some
plants outside they've been bringing in andall kinds of these. It's always a
good time to go to Spring CreekFeed. If you are FFA or four
h or military or senior citizen.Their discounts available for you. Would you
like something special ordered, they specializein that at Spring Creek Feed. They
can absolutely do that and they evenhave a delivery service. So whether you're

(01:38:58):
looking for garden supplies or quality brandsof pet food, Spring Creek Feed on
FM twenty nine seventy eight up inMagnolia has got you covered, that's for
sure. Let's go to Dayton andtalk to Kevin. Hello, Kevin,
good morning. They tak him acall, Sir, got a couple of
questions. I'll go about two anda half acre lawn, and it's mixed

(01:39:21):
between Zoija, Saint Augustine, Bermuda, just kind of getting into the lawnchair
and during the winter time, Ireally hate the brown lawn. I was
thinking about seeding with rye grass,but I also want to kind of follow
your schedule and get out some preemergent weed and feed stuff like that.

(01:39:41):
And I was kind of kind ofwondering how the rye grass will affect the
lawn long term. I mean,is that an option or Okay, am
I just kind of throwing money away. Yeah, So you're going to do
the rye grass seeding probably October.So it isn't a good combo with the
Whedon feed because the Whedon feed keepsa rye grass from coming up. It's
a seed and that's what the preemergent products, whether they're weed and feed

(01:40:05):
pre emergence or whether you're just puttingthem down like barricade pre emergent, you
gotta you got to have a standof rye grass before you put that product
down. Uh. And and soit's not a good trying to combine those
two, I would forego the weedpre emergent weed control if you're going to

(01:40:26):
try to overseed with the rye grass. That the positive of righte grass is
you mow the lawn. You gota green lawn on winter. The negative
is it's a weed. You areliterally planting weeds in your lawn. So
they compete for water, they competefor nutrients, and they compete for sunlight.
And in the spring, rye grassis happy as a clam. It
is growing like crazy and going,going, going, and you're Saint Augustine's

(01:40:47):
trying to wake up, trying toget some sunlight, and so it can
stress. And that's true Bermuda grasstoo. A lot of times bermuda sports
areas and things are overseeded with ryegrass, and it's a stress to the
bermuda too, because it's a competitor. Of course, when the sun heats
up, the rye grass will meltaway and you're back to your warm,

(01:41:09):
seasoned turf grass. So if Idid choose to do that and plant the
rye grass, you know, obviouslyplant you know late September, first part
October. I guess if I wantedto go ahead and treat with three emergent
later probably January February. Ish,I guess will be okay because that's yes,

(01:41:29):
and go to gardening of skip dotcom get my schedule. It'll tell
you exactly when to apply and whatto apply, and it's going to be
February for your area that you're goingto want to get the pre emergent down.
But if you already have rye grassgrowing, you can put the pre
emergent on it and it'll be okay, just not before you seed the rye
grass. Hey, I am upagainst a five seconds away from break.

(01:41:49):
So thank you so much Kevin forthe call. When we get back,
Ronnie, you will be our firstup. Now it's time for Nicky in
the news. Welcome back to gardenLine. We'll get back garden Line.
Looking forward to your calls our phonenumber seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three twoone two fifty eight seventy four. Uh.

(01:42:11):
If you're looking for a quality mixof soil, I'm talking about something
where you know when you put thoseplants in, they're going to be laughing
and singing and happy because the rootshave everything they want. Soil is a
secret to success. Soil is asecret to success. Heirloom soils makes quality
soil. Do you need a veggieand herb mix? You can buy it

(01:42:32):
and buy the bag all over theplace. Airloom soils are widely available.
You can go get it bulk upin the porter location. You can have
them deliver it. You can havethem bring and dump it on your side
on your driveway, or you canbasically have them deliver what's called a supersac,
a big, old, giant,one cubic yard sack of soil to
your place. They've got the berryand fruit, the fruit berry and citrus

(01:42:57):
type mix they have that. Theyhave the roast, They've got the leaf
mold compost. What do you needHeirloom soil has it? Do you need
something for cacti and succulents, somethinggritty that drains super super well. They've
got that heirloom Soilsoftexas dot Com.I was telling somebody just yesterday out RCW
Nursery talking to people about things.I said, go to Airlom Sols of

(01:43:17):
Texas and look at the website forthe mulch calculator, the soil calculator.
Do you want to put leaf mollcompost over your yard a third of an
inch deep, over two thousand andfive hundred square feet or whatever. It'll
tell you exactly how many QB cardsyou need to do that. That's the
kind of deal it is. Itmakes it really really easy. At Airloomsource

(01:43:40):
of Texas dot Com, I'm wantto go out to Laporte. Now we're
going to talk to Ronnie. Hello, Ronnie, Hello, quick question.
Thank you for taking my call.But I was curious. I've got two
palm trees or queen palms, andthey're a little bit over a year old.
In this past winter when we hadthe freeze, I actually covered them

(01:44:04):
with some bags that we had gotfrom off Amazon. But when I took
the bags off, which was rightafter the next day, once the temperature
came back up, I took themoff, and the the limb started turning,
you know, brown, and soI've left him on there and they

(01:44:28):
there looks like there's some green comingout at the you know, the top
of it right there where they're actors. They're not really that tall, They're
only about six and a half sevenfoot tall, and but I was just
curious, should I cut the onesthat are brown more or less dead off.
Yes, if there's a little ifthere's a little green on them,

(01:44:48):
I would leave them because that isphotosynthesizing, making carbohydrates for the plants strength.
It looks ugly because it's half dead, but if it's got green on
it, leave it for now.Just give as much time as you can,
because when you take all the greenoff a palm tree, it's like
scalping your grass all the way tothe ground. I mean, it's a
real shocker for it to try tocome back out. But whatever's brown is

(01:45:11):
brown, is not doing your planany good. So you can cut that
off. The fronds can die.The key is you want that bud at
the top of the trunk to bealive. If it dies, If it
dies, that queen palm's dead.But if the bud's alive putting out new
growth, you're good, it'll befine. Right, Okay, Well that's
that's what I'll do then, andI'll just let you see what happens.

(01:45:32):
Yeah, yeah, sounds good.Well, good luck with that. Those
are beautiful palm trees. Yes,okay, appreciate it, all right,
Ronnie, thank you, thank youvery much. I appreciate that I was
talking this it was yesterday I wentby one of the Wildbirds stores done with
Rich idiot or in the Memorial store. And you know, by the way,

(01:45:53):
you know, Wilbirds has six storesin the Greater Houston area, So
it doesn't matter where you live,there's gonna be a wild Bird's near you.
There's one in Cyprus, there's onein Memorial, there's one in bel
Air, there's one in pair Landingin Kingwood. There's one in clear Lake
also. So anyway, I wastalking to him and he was describing how
this works with this cofront coming in. We have a lot of birds that

(01:46:14):
are going they're in their migratory pattern, they're heading north, and this would
be things like a Baltimore oriole forexample. He named several different birds that
fit into this category, some typeof a warbler. I can't remember the
name. I'm not a bird experts. I'm now proving live on the air.
But anyway, there are several differentkinds of birds that are flying like

(01:46:35):
that, and when a colfrint hitslike this, they just sort of stop
and go, Okay, we're notgoing to fight this one, and they
drop down and come down to ourlandscapes here. And if you'll put out.
If you'll take like an orange andyou'll cut it in half, you
know, like you just set itup with a stem end up and you
slice the horizontally through it cut inhalf like that. So there's all these

(01:46:57):
open sections that the birds can getto. And you put those out there,
yeah, I mean, you canpoke them onto a nail or something
to stick them on the side orsomething or whatever. Baltimore orioles love those
and they'll come to them. Andnormally you wouldn't see a Baltimore oriole here
right now. They're heading north.They're not messing around with Houston right now.
But when they drop down from thatcoal front, you may have some

(01:47:17):
show up in your area. Andif you do, I'd like to hear
about that. I mean, it'dbe really cool to hear. Let me
know if that works out. Otherbirds that we don't normally see. And
I mentioned to warbler, a certaintype of warbler. You're going to get
to see those from the coal front. So keep your eyes open when you're
out there. By the way,when you get a chance, go buy

(01:47:38):
a wall birds. They are stockedup for Mother's Day. And I'm telling
you, I know mothers and motherin laws can be difficult to buy for
you because what do you get them? They got everything, and then they
say things like it's okay, son, I'm just fine, I don't need
any Well, you know that's notthe case. You got to get them
something nice. Mother's Day gifts wildbirdsa high perch hummingbird feeder. I've got

(01:48:02):
one awesome, awesome feeders. Theyare a really cool book, The Joy
of Bird Feeding. It's actually writtenby the guy who founded the president and
founder of Wildbirds Unlimited across America,and it is a beautiful book with lots
of color pictures of how to bringin birds to the backyard by feeding.
What do you feed them? Whatdo they look like? All that?

(01:48:24):
Do you want one of their EcoTough Classic feeders. That is a feeder
made out of recycled plastic milk jugsand it is beautiful. When you look
at it, you say, well, that looks like smida wood. Nope,
it is a recycled material feeder thatis quality. I've got the Eliminator
squirrel proof feeder. I think it'sthe best thing since sliced bread. The
little birds hop on it, they'refine. A squirrel gets on it and

(01:48:46):
they wait too much, and itis hard to thwart a squirrel. This
one has thwarted them successfully at myhouse. The eliminator. It's the Cadillac
in my opinion, there's the flyingbistro cylinder. You see what I'm saying.
There. They even have jewelry,you know, for things like birds,
birds, seed and feeders and houses. And on Mother's Day. Don't

(01:49:08):
go through Mother's Day or mother inlaw's Day. We're gonna go ahead and
throw them in here too. Bythe way, I bought myself my mother
in law a little pole to hanga feeder outside her window where she's stand
and it is. It's really cool. She look out the window and their
birds right there. So I gother little pole. So, yes,
I am a good son in law. I know she's not listening to this,

(01:49:28):
but if you see her, tellher she has a good son and
we'll give her that for Mother's Dayas well well. Anyway, you get
the idea why Birds is a greatplace. It's fun, it's educational.
You go in there and you askthem anything you want and they will explain
exactly to you exactly what you needto know to have success with that.
What a great hobby. All right, enough about me jammering about birds.

(01:49:51):
We're gonna go to Gardend oak Oaksand we're gonna talk to Frank. Frank,
I got about forty five seconds here. We'll see if we can get
into it and hold you until afterbreak if we need to. Okay,
Skiff, I've got a crape myrtlethat the last couple of years has had
some moss like growth on it,just little clumps, not you know,

(01:50:11):
not not real big sick hanging Spanishmoss, but just small clumps, you
know, on the on the limbs. And yes, so I just just
want to know. Is that badfor the No, No, it's a
sign. It's a sign that crapeisn't real vigorous. It's a The material
is called lichens l I c he N. It's what raindery. By
the way, fun fact, lichengrows on plants as they get then the

(01:50:36):
canopy thins out the sunlight's coming through, we tend to see more lichens on
them. But you'll see lichens onrocks, on fence posts. Uh.
Lichens are not parasites, so they'rejust along for the ride. They're more
a sign that that crape isn't asvigorous as we would like it to be.
So I would focus on the fertilizingand watering and whatnot. Maybe a

(01:51:00):
little rejuvenated pruning here and there toget the crape into a little bit better
vigor but overall, don't worry aboutwhat you're seeing on there. Okay,
what kind of fertilizer would you recommend? You know, there are fertilizers for
trees and shrubs. Nitroposs makes onefor trees and shrubs. You can do
that at my house. I justuse lawn fertilizer on them. You buy
you a go quality lawn fertilizer,and then go up to that trunk on

(01:51:24):
the plant, and for every inchof trunk diameter across the tree, if
you have like three trunks, thentotal them up, give it one or
two cups of lawn fertilizer. Ifit's an organic fertilizer, double or triple
that, but one or two cupsof fertilizer for every inch of trunk diameter.
All right, okay, great,yes, sir, thank you very

(01:51:45):
much. All Right, we're goingto go to a break here, Teresa,
you will be first right when wecome back. Welcome back, to
guard Line. Good to have youwith us today. Hey, if you
live down in the Sugarland area orthe Richmond Rosenberg area in Jani Forest,
write that down enchanted Forest Infection.I'll just give you the website. How
about we just go straight to that. We can do that as well.

(01:52:05):
By the way, Chinted Forest isan enchanting garden center. You will find
everything you're looking for there. Theirselection is unbelievable. I was out there
not too long ago. Always impressed, very knowledgeable staff. Hey, if
you're looking for plants for butterflies,they not only have the plants, you
get to take home a caterpillar.Yep, that's right, they got caterpillars.

(01:52:27):
You can bring it home. Yougot your what's that the equivalent of
a sourdough starter for a butterfly garden. You're just ready to go right there
with Enchanted Forest. It's Enchanted ForestRichmond dot com. Here's one thing when
you're out there, I want youto ask to see that yesterday, today
and tomorrow is that's the name ofa shrub. It's not an abbot and
costello skit yesterday, today, andtomorrow At the same time, these blooms

(01:52:51):
change as a color show. You'regonna have a purple bloom on there,
You're gonna have a white bloom,You're gonna have a violet bloom all at
the same time. A three tosix shrub. You put it in a
little bright, bright, shady area. That's where it's happiest. It is
awesome. It's an old time plant. People used to have them all the
time. Now it's kind of notas top of the line terms of everybody's
got it on the billboard. Butit is a great plant, and they've

(01:53:14):
got them an enchanted forest out therein Richmond FM twenty seven fifty nine.
FM twenty seven fifty nine, justnorth of Richmond toward Sugarland direction. Let's
go talk to Teresa out here inthe woodlands. Hey Teresa, Hey,
Skip, how are you? I'mgood? Thank you? Okay, so
real quick, too quick questions.My yard's been recovering the last two years.

(01:53:38):
I talked to you last year aboutit. I had to resaw it
it. Blah blah blah. Ialways used micro life, okay, and
this year I got convinced to useBruce's brew. The yard's looking much better,
all that kind of thing. Butshould I did it a month ago,
the Bruces Brew. Do I needto do anything else up until June
or just kind of leave it set. If you did it a month ago,

(01:53:58):
I'd give it a little bit moretime. Let's see. Probably let's
say go sometime into May, andyou could do the Bruces Brew again.
But just remember that it is afast release, but it also has a
slow release component, so it's goingto spread itself out a little bit.
You could even wait until June todo it again, and it would be
fine. Okay. Yeah, Infact, I'm going to change my mind

(01:54:19):
on the May. I would waitand do it in June, especially if
you're going to return those clippings.Okay, yeah, I do that because
I was told do Bruce's Brew thisyear and then go back to micro Life
just to kind of give it thatrecharge from the last two years. You
know, all that. That's fine, but they're both quality fertilizers and so

(01:54:39):
it's not like you need to switchback and forth and stuff like that.
Do it however you want. There'sno problem switching. But they're both quality
fertilizers, so you don't have toswitch on stuff like that. Okay.
The other thing is real quick.You've mentioned about fire out control and you
talk about combine the I guess theandro was extinguished. And I tried to

(01:55:00):
look for extinguished yesterday at a coupleof aces and I couldn't find it.
Okay, well, that's fine.So I think if I was talking about
combining, I was talking about aleaf a concoction for leaf cutter ant control.
You do not need to combine them. For fireance. You can use
extinguish, you can use the organicone called come and get it. You

(01:55:23):
can use amdro and then there's somemore that aren't jumping them ahead at this
very moment. But there's a lotof quality baits out there for fire ants.
So don't worry if you can't findextinguished. Okay, all right,
well listen, I appreciate it,and have a great weekend. All right,
you too, Thank you very much. I appreciate that very much.
You're talking about all these different fertilizers. You know, Nitrofoss has got their

(01:55:45):
silver bag that is called super Turfbecause it gives you a super turf.
It's got half the nitrogen and aslow release forms. Let's compeede for three
or four months going out there.It's got iron to promote that good green
and it does gradually feed over time. And it's easy to find super turfs
everywhere. You know, night Fossproducts are easy to find because they're essentially

(01:56:08):
ubiquitous. You go to Ace Hardwarestore, you're going to find them.
You go out to garden centers,the speed stores we talk about here,
and you're gonna find them at SouthwestFertilizer too, which, by the way,
I'm going to be at Southwest Fertilizerthis coming Saturday from eleven am to
one pm. I will be thereand I will be giving away a number
of different kinds of products at Southwest. You know, Southwest is a place

(01:56:30):
that I like to say, ifyou don't if they don't have it,
you don't need it because they haveeverything, absolutely everything you could possibly want.
They're on the corner of bus Nuttand Runwick. I hope you'll come
out next Saturday, so really easyto get to bus Nutt and Renwick right
out there. Come by. I'mgoing to be given away a number of
different things. Bob's putting up atoro blower and touro string tremor. We're

(01:56:53):
going to be giving you skip Bucks, which means here's a piece of paper
that I'm calling money, and Bobcalls it money, and so you go
get the products you need that day, and you can use those bucks toward
buying those products. I'll also begiven away. I just got through talking
to the folks at Medina. Soit has to grow super grow plus.
That is a new hose end sprayerlawn fertilizer sixteen zero two sixteen zero two

(01:57:19):
lolo phosphorus, which is good becausemost lawns do not need much of any
phosphorus at all. Now you spraythis on your lawn. It's got a
keylated form of iron in it,it's got seaweed extract in it. It's
just all around. It's good.About a fifth of the nitrogen in it
is slow release form, so it'sjust a win when you spray it on

(01:57:42):
your gardens. I've seen people useit on vegetables. Saw some pictures of
people using it on vegetables and theresults they got. Primarily, we put
it out there for the lawnch hookit up to the hose in one quart
is going to cover about four thousandsquare feet and it will be giving samples
of that away or actually product ofthat away. That's Southwest Fertilizer because Bob
carries that out there. It's anew product by Medina, an excellent product,

(01:58:05):
and it's it is just you're gonnahave success. You're gonna see the
results because not only do you geta quick green up, but you also
get that a little bit of slowrelease in it to extend that out a
little bit further for you. Soonce you hook it up to the hose,
if you run out of yard,just hit the flower beds, hit
the shrubs, hit whatever you wantwith it. It's gonna make it.

(01:58:27):
It's gonna make it grow. That'sone thing that I like about Medina products
is they are affected, they dowork, and they're just handy. It's
just handy to use. You know, it can't get much easier. And
hooking it up to your garden hoseand going at it with that, that
is for sure. If you've beenout to Nelson Water Garden and Nursery,

(01:58:47):
that's out there in Katie, Texas. If you go to Katie, you
turn north on Katie Fort Ben Roadand it's just a hop skipping or jump
up the road on the right,just real close by there. Now they
are specializing unbelievable. They can makefountains, they come to your house,
they can teach you how to doit. They can do it for you.
I mean, do you want abig disappearing fountain. They invented those.

(01:59:10):
They know how to do that.But they're also an excellent nursery.
A wide variety of plants there.Now when you go, take people with
you, because this is another destinationgarden center. You're going to go there,
and if you've never thought about havinga backyard pond, I'm just warning
you. You're going to walk throughand go, oh my gosh, I
have got to have one of thesein the backyard, or at least one

(01:59:30):
of those fountains that disappears, sovery very cool. Nelson Watergarden Gardens with
an s dot com Nelsonwatergardens dot com. But go check out the plants too.
I mean you'll be surprised. Awide variety of fruit trees right now,
citrus, peaches, pears, pumps, all kinds of things at Nelson

(01:59:50):
Watergardens dot com. But you gottago see the water features, the koi,
the shabunkan fish, the aquatic plantsand things. It is a destination
an inspirational one. All right,there, we're putting that hour in the
books. I'll talking about all theseplaces and stuff. I just want to

(02:00:12):
jump up from the microphone, getmy car and go back out and see
them. I love visiting these places. I'm telling you. Hear me say
this all the time. But Houstonhas so many awesome destination garden centers.
North south east West? What doyou what are you into? Are you
into water gardens? Are you intotropicals? Are you into fruit? Are

(02:00:36):
you into herbs? Are you intowe just have we are? We are
rich with garden centers, I said, north south east West. I'm up
through centraland I can't forget about Buchanansdown the lights too. I mean it,
it's just great. It's a greatplace to live. This afternoon would
be a great time to get outtoo. That sun's going to come out.

(02:00:56):
Hope to get out and enjoy it. We'll be right back to put
our last hour on the air.Katie r h. Garden Line does not
necessarily endorse any of the products orservices advertised on this program. Welcome to
kat r H Garden Line with SkipRictor It's crazy gas a trim just watch

(02:01:25):
him as well. As so manypaties. Septaser not a sunda. Thank
you, welcome back to guarden Line. Good to have you with us today.

(02:01:46):
Glad you're listening in. If you'venot done your lawn fertilizing yet,
why not consider an application of microlifefertilizer. The green bag, the six
two four and microlife he makes PLAplus that is the purple bag. It's
a zero zero four. You're notputting the hum mats plus on just for
nutrients. You're putting the hum mateson because it's concentrated compost in a bag.

(02:02:11):
Humans plus. That's the final decompositionstage of organic matter as it goes
from let's say a pot of leavesand grass clippings to compost to humus.
That's how it moves the humans plus. The purple bag is going to help
with your soil. When you puthumus material, when you've been any kind
of a compost, but especially afully decomposed like humus, you're going to
improve the soil structure itself. Andyou're also adding some potassium, which is

(02:02:35):
very important for drought tolerance in thegrass. That is very helpful for that
as well. And then the greenbag, of course is a standard lown
fertilizer by Microlife. When you buya microlife fertilizer, you're not just getting
the three numbers on the bag.You're getting everything that was in the living
materials that you were used to makethe microlife. So, for example,

(02:02:56):
the trace minerals and secondary minerals andthings the numbers of which never appear on
the bag, You're going to havethose in your macrolife fertilizer. Microbes get
a hold of it. Micro Lifeis a good name because if they are
living forms in the soil that essentiallymake plants thrive, That's how nature works,
That's how microlife fertilizer works. Youcan go to microlifefertilizer dot com and

(02:03:19):
learn more about it and the manyproducts they have, and also where you
can find it here in the GreaterHouston area. I want to head out
now to Brian, Texas and talkto Barbara. Hello, Barbara, Hi,
good morning. I want to pullup my poppies. They were really

(02:03:39):
pretty, the tinkling with the bluecenters, yes, but the pods are
still kind of green and I wantto save the seeds. How long do
I have to leave them for it? And pull them up what kind of
poppy did you have? Was itlike the bread poppy? No, they
are pink. They're a large pinkwith a light blue center. Ooh,

(02:04:06):
that sounds beautiful. I will goahead. No, I got them.
Oh, I can't remember a gardencenter that had them, and they didn't
have the seed, and they askedme to send them an envelope, and

(02:04:26):
then they sent me the seeds lateron, so I don't know the name
of them. Okay, Well,on the poppy pod at the top,
it's going to pull back a littlebit where the seeds can fall out when
it turns over, So look atit, and if it's not sealed up,
if it's pulling back, you cango ahead and cut those pods off
and then just sprinkle the seeds out, you know, where they can air
dry a little bit longer, justin case, especially because you guys had

(02:04:48):
a whole bunch of rain last nightand whatnot. So go ahead and let
them dry well and then you canharvest them. I suspect if they're still
green pods, it's not quite timeto pick them yet. I doubt they've
pulled back, so okay, ifyou can't afford to leave them that's better.
You say they pulled back, theyopen. Yeah, the pod sort

(02:05:12):
of opens up, you know,because the podg is like a capsule.
Depending on the specific kind of poppy, they're different shapes. But they they
actually as they dry, they shrinkback, and that's how the seeds came
out of the poppy. It's notlike a bean type plant where the suture
pops open and it casts the seedsout. This is that's how the poppy
podgs work. Okay. My otherquestion was Manda videos. I don't know

(02:05:36):
if I'm pronounced right good enough?Can they do? They? Can they
do? Okay? Bloom and everything? Okay? In the shade or do
they need more sun? They needmore sun. If you can give them
about six hours, it would bebest. As you move them into more
and more shade, you get lessand less balloons. Okay, they are
beautiful. They are absolutely beautiful.Oh okay, thank you very much.

(02:06:00):
Thank you for the call, Barbara. Good to talk to you. Bye
bye bye. All right. Yeah, absolutely, poppies are really cool.
Hey, those of you in theKingwood area, you know you've got Warren
Southern Gardens. You know you gotKingwood Garden Center out there and those places
are always there's always something going on, there's always new products coming in.

(02:06:21):
I know, I've been a whilesince I've been. I need to get
back out there. It's been awhile since I Actually I love to go
out by the way, because whenyou go out it's inspirational. You go
out and you see things that youhadn't seen before. Maybe it's a new
plant they got in. They justhave some outstanding hibiscus in there. They
have got incredible selection of tropicals too, by the way, Plumeria, the

(02:06:44):
Hawaiian lay flower. Do you likethose? They've got those out there.
Someone had called earlier about some lilies. They have lilies out there, for
sure. Whenever you go out toWarren's in Kingwoock Garden Center, you're going
to find color. You're going tofind knowledgeable staff that can guide you and
the right way, and you're evengoing to find some really cool combos that

(02:07:04):
are already put together, where youhave a container that's mixed, planted and
absolutely gorgeous. You can do thisfor the summer. You can do them
for the shade, you can dofor the sun, all kinds of thing.
Good selection of Angelonia's so many colorsAngelonia will take you through the heat
like very few things can. Whileyou're out there, ask them to show

(02:07:27):
you the Salza dancer hibiscus. Thatis the most colorful foliage plan I've ever
seen in my life. It isgorgeous. I'm challenged. I know there
is such a thing as white,pink, and red and orange, and
when you start combining those, Irun out of the right word to describe
it. But I'm just going tosay these are very pink with burgundy and
a little bit of yellow and greenon them too. They're gorgeous. They

(02:07:50):
bloom, But even if they didn'tbloom, it is a showstopper. It's
actually gonna pink flamingo out there inyour yard. You can't not see it.
Salsa dancer hibiscus that weren't garden center. I hope you enjoy it.
Those of you who are out there, you're fortunate to have it. Take
advantage of it. Stephnoon and goby and see them. I'm going to
go now to Ben in Conrad.Hello, Ben, Hey, good morning,

(02:08:13):
Skip, good morning. I've gota forty thousand square foot property.
Thirty thousand is Saint Augustine and agood portion of weeds. Okay, that's
a lot of square footage. That'sthree quarters of an acre of Saint Augustine.
Yes, there's quite a bit.So if I do if I go
with the supertture, that's four bagstwo hundred bucks, and if I go

(02:08:35):
with the four that's fifteen bags andseven hundred and fifty dollars. What are
my options? How do I decide? You know, back when sixty four
was twenty bucks a bag, itwas a no brainer. You know.
You know with fertilizers, you canyou can choose the options you want.
You can choose it organic, youcan choose a synthetic. You can go

(02:08:56):
about the way you want to goabout it. I would say number one.
And you're looking at a lot oflawn and a lot of fertilizing.
Definitely want to return those grass clippings. That is your first fertilizing option on
that. If you mow all seasonand return the clippings, no matter which
fertilizer you choose, you will putout more nutrients with your lawn mower than

(02:09:16):
your fertilizer spreader by returning. Yeah, and then you know, choose do
as you choose on it? Ihave there are things that I like about
each of the fertilizers. There's benefitsof each of the fertilizers. I mean,
we could, you know, naildown and go through or what is
it not nail down, drill downand talk about this or that or the

(02:09:37):
other. They're high quality. Ilike using the slow releases because you get
a gradual feed and they're organic isnaturally slow release. But the synthetics also
can be even more slow release becauseof the way they're designed out there in
the landscape or in the garden,the lawn. So is there what's the
difference between the super turf and someof the other similar formulations. Is there

(02:10:03):
anything specific about the marcro life that'sdifferent from well some generic right, microlife
is an organic material. It isa fertilizer that is organic, and so
microbes break that down and release thenitrogen and the phosphorus and the potassium and
all the trace minerals that are inmicrolife because it is an organic in the
super turf. In the super turf, Yeah, hey, you know what,

(02:10:26):
Ben, I can see. We'regoing to talk about this a little
bit and I'm going to run toa break. Let me put you on
hold and I'll come right back toyou and we'll be able to have a
little more time for this. Allright, okay, sure, thank you,
we'll be right back. Welcome toGardenline. Good have you with us.
We're going to go back to Benin Conroe. Ben, we're discussing
fertilizers. You're kind of drilling downinto the slow release and some of that.
Just let me, let me summarizeit. Let me summarize it a

(02:10:50):
little bit, and then if youhave a follow up, we'll go with
that. Uh. The organic fertilizers, like a microlife for example, is
a compound that's got everything that wasin the plant or whatever the organ it
came from, that is in thatfertilizer, which means all the trace mentals
and everything else. Now it isgoing to decompose microbial lease. So as
the weather warms up it moves alittle bit faster, it is going to

(02:11:11):
have a form of nitrogen that willrelease out into the soil environment for the
roots to pick up. When yougo to a slow release, we're talking
about things like the nitrofoss silver bagthat is Superturf nineteen four ten or Nelson's
Slow and Easy. Those are twoslow release fertilizers. Now, the way

(02:11:31):
they're designed is with different forms ofnitrogen that are not all night water soluble,
so you get a rain to washthem in, and normally a salt
based fertilizer, for example, woulddissolve and go right into the ground.
Well, this is going to holdon and not solubilized, and it'll be
released over time based on either temperaturesome are not temperature affected much, or

(02:11:56):
microbial activity or other things, andsome of these can extend out is like
four or five months from now,there's still releasing nutrients out there because the
chemistry of the molecules that are inthem are designed to do that, so
you get a much longer gradual release. So while we use the term slow
release, we can mean a lotof different things with it when we say

(02:12:18):
that term. They're not all slowreleases are the same mechanism and the same
rate of release. So I don'twant to complicate it. I'm just saying
you're not going to go wrong withany of these fertilizers on your lawn.
You're going to get the performance.They all have a good ratio of nutrients
like grass needs, and you're goingto have success with them. Okay,

(02:12:39):
let me ask you about compost leafmold versus the fungal. What's better for
the yard or is there a lotof difference between the two. Well,
for the yard, you know,compost is decomposed organic matter, and whether
it comes from leaves or manure orground up tree trunks, I mean it
ultimately ends up in a composted state. Eight. The key with the lawn

(02:13:01):
is you want a very finely screenedcompost, so the particle size is small.
You don't want pieces of wood thelawnmowar's knocking all over the place,
for example. You want it tofall down in the aeration holes or move
down between the grass leaves, aroundthe runners themselves, at the plant,
at the soil surface. So leafmold is the top quality for doing that

(02:13:22):
kind of thing. But you canuse other screen types of compost if you
need to. And that's compost isgonna be good for soil and for plants
period. Well, it's just tryingto weigh the fungal friday versus well the
fine Yeah, I think it getsdone about sixty some sixty bucks a yard.

(02:13:43):
Yeah. Yeah, Nature's way iskind of long been a leader and
all of that and I would callout there and talk to John Ferguson and
ask him about particle size on thefungal products that they have. The fungal
compost just basically means, you know, but forest systems are typically fungally dominated,

(02:14:03):
Meadow systems are typically bacterially dominated.So when you get a lot of
things like wood product or leaf treeleaf products, those things are forest materials.
Fungi are going to be the primarydecomposers for those. But ask him
about the particle size, because that'sgoing to be the key. Yes,
it's a great fungal Friday at Nature'sWay Resources. As a super temper,

(02:14:24):
they're probably going to lean towards themore expensive one. You know well that
they're honest. John, I'll behonest with you or I if you talk
to him and just say, look, I'm going to do some top dressing.
Here is the particle size on yourfungal product the bag or the book.
Is it small enough to work wellfor that purpose? And they'll tell
you if it is or not.I mean, you can have a conversation.

(02:14:46):
They're not you know that, they'renot the kind of people there.
It's in Augustine and I'm mowing aboutthree three and a half inches, typically
keeping it a little bit higher.So yeah, the particle size wouldn't really
matter that to me. Every nowand then i'll hit a piece. But
but you also you also wanted tobreak down pretty quickly. You wanted to
get down there and get good coverageover the soil surface and whatnot. And

(02:15:09):
uh, I would I would talkto John and ask him these questions and
say, so, tell me aboutwhat what is the You know he's going
to understand because he made it.He may just signed it. And you
know, he understands soil. Heunderstands decomposition of organic matter better best as
well as anybody I know. Uh, here are his numbers, Yeah,

(02:15:30):
his numbers. Let me write thisas nine three six three two one sixty
nine ninety nine three six three twoone six nine nine zero. And when
you do that, you can grillhim and he'll be happy to talk to
you. He loves talking about thatkind of thing. And so he'll know
him about some of this before nexttime I see him. I'm gonna ask

(02:15:50):
him your question too, because Idon't know on that fungal product, just
how fine the ground products they haveon the fungal Friday. So that'll be
good to know. Thanks, beright, thank you, all right.
Good luck with that big lawn.You need to rent it out for parties
and stuff. Uh, it makesyou look a little better, all right,
we'll work with that. We'll workon that. Thanks. That's funny,

(02:16:13):
all right, man. You're listeningto garden Line our phone number seven
one three two one two k tr H seven one three two one two
k t r H. You knowthere's forty Ace Hardware stores. I bet
you didn't know that. If youlisten to guarden Line more than five minutes,
you knew that because I talk aboutthem all the time. Forty Ace

(02:16:35):
Hardware stores in the Greater Houston area. Go to a play at the Beaumont,
there's an ACE near you. Yougo to Ace Hardware dot com and
you look for the store locator.It may say like, hey, can
we use your location? Just sayyes, and then the map will show
you. I mean you can do. You could do the store locator if
you've got a cousin in Austin orDallas and say, hey, where's the

(02:16:56):
Ace ardors over here, they'll tellyou. But our Houston group, the
local group that's the one where Iwas talking about forty stores here in the
area. They carry whatever you need. They've got all of the firet control
products you need. If it's abait, get it first. The baits
are best. And if you misssomething. Two weeks after you've baited,
if there's still some mounds that areleft, then do a mound treatment on

(02:17:20):
those. You just drench those oversummer dusks you put on top of the
mound. Some are granules that thendrenching on. I mean, there's a
lot of ways they go about it. But Ace Harder's got all that stuff.
They've got all the fertilizers that theytalk about here. I mean we've
been talking about, you know,all these different fertilizers just a minute ago
in the air. They've got allthose. They've also got sweet green,
which is another nitroposs product. Sweetgreen is eleven percent nitrogen. It is

(02:17:43):
a natural product. It's based onmolasses that microbes have essentially gone to work
on and turned it into a fertilizer. When you put sweet green on your
lawn, it is stimulating to especiallythe beneficial bacteria, but microbe microbial activity
in general is going to be stimulatedby this smells wonderful, and yes,
you get it at ACE Hardware store. So if you're looking for any kind

(02:18:07):
of a fertilizer I talk about onGuardline, it's gonna be at Ace Hardware.
Also, while you're in there,go ahead and get ready for mosquito
season. Mosquito dunks to throw intowater areas so that that microbe is released
that kills mosquitos, doesn't hurt birds, doesn't hurt people, doesn't hurt dogs
and cats. It's specifically for that. If you need a fogger, if

(02:18:28):
you need any kind of mosquito control, they've got it at ACE Hardware stores.
Again, Ace Hardware dot Com andfind the store locator and you're in
business. We are going to gonow to pair Land and talk to Kay.
Hello. Okay, Hi, goodmorning, Skip, Thanks for taking
my call. I have a coupleof questions. I have one. I've

(02:18:50):
spoken with you before about this monsterivy that I have, Okay, and
I'm getting ready to repot it becausethe stems, the runners, whatever branches
are dying off. They're bear There'sso many of them that are bare.
Will any of those come back ifI put them in water? Make you

(02:19:11):
know, just cut sections and putthem in water. Will they regrow at
all? Yeah, if they're alive, they will root. You can root
them in water, but you canalso root them by just putting covering them
up with just a little bit ofsoil and keeping it moist, and they
will form roots along those nodes inthe stem the runner. Okay, well,
I was going to cut off thoselives, you know, the leafing

(02:19:33):
portions, and re pot them intothree or four big pots and try to
save some of them because it wasso gorgeous anyway. And I also would
like to ask you on booin Villaand mandavilla. They do so well climbing
or in hanging pots, would theydo on a flat bed as well?

(02:19:58):
Boom and Villa is going to bemore of a mouth did plant. It
has kind of a shrubby growth habitand so it's not a vine that just
lays flat. To some degree.It does, but not not like your
ivys for examples, not crawl andnot really. It wants to make more
of a mound. You see thosein tropical even go down to Mexico and
see the booga and belleos and they'rejust big, old, giant mounded bushes.

(02:20:22):
Down there. The mendavilla is avine. I've never seen it grown
along the ground that I don't seewhy it wouldn't do that. As long
as there's nothing for it to grabonto and go up. I guess it
could do that. Well, Icould encourage it to, you know,
kind of just watch the runners andjust you could you just want to watch,

(02:20:43):
you know, being down there onthe ground and so splashing up on
it and things. I just havingnot seen it done, I'm kind of
wondering if that's fully okay. ButI do know that it's a it's a
vine, and it's gonna it's gonnasprawl outward, So you probably could get
it to work like that. Mostpeople like to okay it, see because

(02:21:03):
I love both of them, andI just think they're just so beautiful.
But I don't have that much ofyou know, hanging trees that I can
you know, hang pots on,or I guess I could maybe devise a
trelliss some sort. Yeah, youshould let them crawl. Well, if
if you got nothing to do thisafternoon, or even if you do,
I got a better idea, goto Moss Nursery over there in Seabrook.

(02:21:26):
Oh yeah, they are loaded withthose things out there. Yes, okay,
great, I thank you so verymuch, and have a beautiful day.
All right, thank you you aswell. We're going to take a
little break here. It is timefor Nikki and the news, so I'm
going to take a little quick breakThomas and a Testcasita. I want to
give you plenty of time with yourquestions, so I'm going to hold you

(02:21:48):
until after we come back from break. I just want to remind you guys,
I'm going to be a Southwest Fertilizerthis next Saturday at eleven am till
one pm on corner Bisnett and Renwick. We're going to be answering gardening questions.
We'll be given away a lot ofstuff, and I hope you will
go right now. Just put thaton your calendar and come out and see
me. If you've not been toSouthwest, here's your excuse to come.

(02:22:09):
You can see what I'm talking about, all right. I hope I'm not
crazy. Hope that doesn't make mecrazy. You're listening to the guard Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter andour phone number. You want to
write this down. We actually havesome room on the boards if you'd like
to give us a call seven onethree two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fiftyeight seventy four. You know Verdant Tree

(02:22:33):
Farm. It makes tree buying easybecause first of all, there are three
locations on the southwest side on BarkerCypress in central North Houston, which is
I will say the heights, probablynot that north, but you know where
I ten and Yale Street come together, and then down in Pairland, down
in Pairland on Broadway Street. Easy. Easy to find a Verdant tree farm

(02:22:56):
near you. Verdant is an expertat matching you with the tree you need,
so you can call them up,you can send them a picture,
You can go into the place andsit down, do a free in office
design consultation. They are a turnkeyoperation. You go there, you find
out what plant you need. Youshow them what you look for. They

(02:23:16):
tell you what they got and they'vegot good stuff. Do you need a
hearty palm tree, They've got that. Do you need a particular deciduous shade
tree. Do you want a beautifulevergreen shrub a large shrub to block a
view? Then you go out andyou pick the plants. Say I want
that one. I want that oneover there too, and that one,
well, you pick them out,they tag them, they bring them,

(02:23:39):
they plant them. If they plantit, they give you one year warranty
and they tell you how to takecare of it. They've got some unique
ways. That Patrick was just showingsomething on video. They have a real
active social media presence on how theydetermined that a tree is not saying too
wet. You just have to gofind out from them how they go about
that, and then they guarantee itfor a year after the installation. Is

(02:24:03):
a result. If you happen tobe a military, if you happen to
be a first responder, ten percentdiscount for you. You're not gonna go
wrong with Vernon. Here's the websitev er da nt Tree Farm Vernant treefarm
dot com. Go there and checkit out. They have a wonderful little
website where you can click on aparticular kind of species of tree and they'll

(02:24:26):
tell you all about it and youcan learn a lot and make that good
decision, because remember, when youbuy a tree, that is a that
is a long term purchase decision,and so you want to get it right.
Don't just buy something that happens tobe for sale somewhere. Figure out
what tree you want and then gofind it, and Vernon's probably going to
have what you're looking for. Let'sgo now out to a task Asida and

(02:24:48):
we're going to talk to Thomas.Hello, Thomas, good morning, great
show today, Thank you sir.We're going to talk plant nutrition for a
second. I'm a big proponent oforganic. For my I use sweet green
and the acid might and have beenreally happy with it. Okay, good.
I have friends that use triple thirteen. It drives me nuts. One

(02:25:09):
of the negatives on that. Okay, here's the negative. To use triple
thirteen once or twice or three times, it's not going to be the end
of the world. But when youuse it over and over again through the
years. It used to be triplethirteen and ten twenty ten were the fertilizers,
and both of those have more phosphorouspercentage wise than plants take up.

(02:25:30):
If you take most plant materials outthere, you're going to find they're going
to have a lot of nitrogen,a low amount of phosphorus, and a
medium amount of potassium. The thirdnumber, and that's why we say for
fertilizers and lawns especially, we dothe three one two ratio. So when
you triple thirteen it and triple thirteenit, two things are happening. One,
you're putting out more phosphorus percentage wisein a ratio way. Then the

(02:25:54):
plant is using if you see whatI'm saying now, if you happen to
have a phosphorus soil, well thatmay actually be helpful, but a lot
of people for lawns, especially whereyou're returning clippings and you're fertilizing it year
after year, that phosphorus builds up. That's the second thing. If you
put the let's just say you puttriple thirteen on the surface of the ground

(02:26:16):
and you water it in, thenitrogen washes right through. It's very soluble.
It just goes everywhere. It volatilizesoff as a gas. Nitrogen is
always going somewhere. Potassium moves downpretty well too, not as much as
nitrogen, but pretty well, andthen phosphorus ties up to the surface.
It's as if your soil was madeof magnets and the phosphorus is iron filings.

(02:26:39):
You drop that on a pile ofmagnets and the filings don't go down
to the bottom. They tie upright at the surface. That's what phosphorus
does. So year after year afteryear, not only are you putting on
more than you need, but you'rebuilding it up. And so now you're
seeing iron chlorosis because phosphorus can makeiron unavailable, and so it starts to

(02:27:01):
create other problems by doing that.And that's why I'm taking some time to
explain this, but because this isnot understood by folks, and it needs
to be. There's a reason Isay eight three one two four one two
ratio for your lawn, because we'retrying to put the fertilizer out there and
the ratio that's going to end upin the plant tissue as best we can.

(02:27:22):
Okay, excellent. One more.I've got a neighbor. His yat
is ninety percent weeks. I've beenfighting it for years, but last summer
when it was hot, it reallygot bad. And I've been pulling weeds
like crazy this year, and I'vegot so many beer spots, okay,
and you know weeds go to beerspots. I'm having trouble and I need

(02:27:46):
to get that grass to grow withoutputting a ton of salt in there.
Okay, how can I do that, I need to go quickly. Actually,
is this Saint Augustine. It's setAugustine, and it's healthy. The
yat is healthy. Nitrogen is yourfriend, So en make Saint Augustine grow
faster and be greener. That's important. So I would do. You could
do a slow release, and that'sgoing to feed over time. I might

(02:28:09):
even do some small applications of afaster release, something like Bruce's Brew,
for example, is going to getyou a quicker response than the slow releases
might. And I would do thatin small amounts over time and just push
it along. Another good option wouldbe to get some of the Medina product.
And I was talking about it justa minute ago. It's the hose
end applicator. I don't know ifyou were listening when I was talking about

(02:28:33):
that thing. I was. I'dactually used that the Well, this is
brand new. Now, this isnot the super Grow for lawns. This
is Supergrow plus. It's a sixteenzero two so it has no phosphorus.
It's got sixteen percent nitrogen. Youhook it up to a hose end.
About a fifth of that sixteen percentis in a slow release form, but

(02:28:54):
the rest is immediate release, andit's got seaweed extracts, and it's got
a keylated form of iron to keepit greener and healthy. And I might
do that particular product by Medina,which is then a hose in sprayer.
Okay, thank you so much.I love your show. Yeah you got
the bottle itself is a hose insprayer. I should say, Okay,

(02:29:16):
okay, thanks Thomas, You've gotthanks a lot. I appreciate that.
Let's see here, we got abouta minute. We're going to go out
to Donna and Seabrook. Donna,can we do this in a minute?
If not, I'll hold you overpast break. Yes we can. I
had a new deck built you shapedaround a crate myrtle. Well, the
contractor leveled the ground and of coursethey cut the roots. I went online

(02:29:39):
to look at a sucker stopper thatyou mentioned a few weeks ago. Yes,
Boneye does one, but all thereviews say the spray clogs after it's
used. What if I spend fiftydollars on a bottle of this stuff and
the spray clogs. What if Iflush it with a detergent after I've used

(02:30:01):
it once? Will that clear outthe sprayer. It might. I don't
know why that sprayer is clogging.I don't know what is in it now.
And again I'm not here to tellyou by this or that brand of
a sucker stopper, but I knowMonterey also has a sucker stopper that's in
a ready to use paint bottle.And you don't need much of this.

(02:30:22):
You know, this is a hormone, so you're barely putting it on.
That's the rate you need, soyou're not drenching or anything like that.
It's a it's an ingredient called NAA, which is one of the plant growth
regulating hormones that occurs in nature.But sucker stopper, you just spray it
on, whether it's a sprout comingout at bottom of your crape, myrtles

(02:30:45):
or whatever you're trying to stop asucker on. It will do that by
just telling the plant with plant typecompounds, hey, don't grow, don't
stop stop elongating and growing here.Well, that also work on the gazillion
eight, so that I have sproutingin my yards opposed to using round up
on them. Oh well, Iyou know you can't use it round up

(02:31:07):
in the yard because it kills theyard unless you'd wipe it on something growing
up above. Uh. Oh boy, that's uh. I don't I don't
know. I think that would notbe That stuff's not cheap, and I
don't think that would be a goodsure. No, hang on, just
man, let me go to Brightand we'll continue this when we come back.
Our phone number is seven one threetwo one two fifty eight seventy four.

(02:31:30):
Welcome back to Guardline. Good tohave you with us today. Looking
forward to talking about what you want. This is our last segment of the
day, so here we go.Well, last call warning, uh,
if you'd like to give us acall seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. We're going togo to Donna in Seabrook again and we're
talking about sucker stopper Donna, andwe're just saying that that stuff's expensive,

(02:31:52):
so go and sprain it on everylittle laker and coming up in the yard
and probably not be very practical.I think a wiper type of applicator and
putting something that will kill a woodyplant, a brush or shrub or plant
like that. I think that's probablythe best. The only thing you need
to watch for is if those aretruly acorns, that's fine. If they

(02:32:13):
happen to be suckers off the rootscoming up, then whatever you put on
to kill them is going to godown into the tree system itself. Probably
not kill the whole tree just fromtreating a few of those, but it
wouldn't do it any good, that'sfor sure. Do we have donna there?
Yes? From here? Oh?Okay, well I have. My

(02:32:35):
backyard is not Saint Augustine. It'sa wildscape. Okay. So I have
a gazillion acorns that have fallen,then, I mean I'm just really tired
of pulling them up. Yeah,yeah, okay. Well, in that
case, I would get a productthat contains trichlope here tri clo p y

(02:32:58):
r. And when you fry it, it may be called brush be gone
or it may be called poison ivykiller or something like that. But trichlop
heres the ingredient and it kills brushywoody stuff. Now, you don't want
to spray it Saint Augustine lawn,even though it's not brushy root. It's
very damaging to Augustine too. ButI don't drench these things with it.

(02:33:22):
Just put a little spreader sticker init so that it sticks to the leaves
because live oak leaves are lost,glossy, and you want your water droplets.
You're just putting out a little bitof droplets to barely wet the leaves.
You're not drenching them. You cancause other issues with that. But
just just lightly sprayed on the leaveswith a spread er sticker and it'll go

(02:33:43):
down and it'll kill that, it'llkill hackberry. So we don't know what
to do about this clogging spray.Yeah, I don't. I don't know
what's doing that. I would probablytake the top out of it and you
know, heat up some water prettywarm, not boiling hot, and just
soak spray top in it. Seeif it'll loosen up a little bit.

(02:34:03):
If you can get it working again, that might work. I don't know,
yeah, because it amazed me thenumber of people. I mean,
I read the reviews and there weremany many complaints about the sprayer clogging up
after it was used. And forthat much money, you don't want to
clog sprayer. No, no youdon't. But I thank you very much
for your information and enjoy your program, all right, thank you very much.

(02:34:26):
I appreciate the cost Ae bye youtake care don Yeah. Interesting,
that's interesting if I had not runacross that complaint about that particular brand a
particular product before. But anyway,doesn't surprise me. Things happen, that's
for sure. Do you live inSeabrook? Do you live south east of

(02:34:46):
Houston? Do you live anywhere whereyou can hear my voice and want to
go see a place that's cool?Moss Nursery in Seabrook. That is a
place you need to go by there. I can describe it all day to
the cow come Home, but whenyou go by, you'll see what I'm
talking about. Imagine wandering through eightacres where at every turn there are plants

(02:35:09):
that are just everywhere. They getso many trucks in at Moss unloading all
the time. I mean it's onthe ground, it's on shelves, it's
hanging from the trees, and theirhou'se. That greenhouse is just amazing.
Succulents, cacti, other kinds ofhouseplants and things. They are loaded up
with it. Do you want colorColius? To the cows come home?

(02:35:31):
Pentus? Have you ever grown pentusbefore? Egyptian starflower? Oh my gosh,
the butterflies will line up down theblock to get to your pentas.
Beautiful typically in pink, lavender,white, red shades. That's kind of
that range is pentus. Lots andlots of salvias are loaded up with that.
They've got everything you can imagine.Lots of beautiful angelonias and they're cacti

(02:35:54):
blooming. It's amazing every kind.I promise you this. You go to
Seabrook and you go look at MossNursery and if you're into succulents, half
the things they have you not evenknow what they are. They're just amazing,
beautiful, beautiful elephant ears, tropicalplants like that, just stunning.

(02:36:15):
Do you like bananas? Five tosix different brides been as you can grow
at home. How about a shadyarea where you need a good greenery in
there? Ligularia. That ligularia islike a lily pad, growing out of
the soil, comes up with abig round leaf like a lily pad.
Beautiful, does well in super shapegingers and philodendrons. Listen. Moss is

(02:36:35):
not just another garden center. Mosshas been in the family. Seventy years
is how long that nursery has beenaround. It's family operated eight acres.
You wander, you enjoy. Whoknows you turn a corner, you're going
to see some ethnic mask that Jimbrought in from who knows where. I
mean, he's always bringing all kindsof crazy stuff in. You know.

(02:36:56):
Beautiful obviously racks a better name forrock than rocks geology. I can't even
say it. All kinds of likebig beautiful giant rocks that have come in
and brought in water features and containersand a little waterfall coming out of the
wall, and think just you justwander. I mean, I can sit

(02:37:16):
here and talk all day about it, but they have got all kinds of
things. Allow some time and alsoleave room in your car because you're going
to see things you just can't livewithout when you go there. The people
that help you, they're gardeners.That's who they hire there. They hire
gardeners. I've been there before,talk to a couple of different master gardeners

(02:37:37):
that work there. Other people thatthey love gardening. They knowledgeable, they've
been gardening. They didn't read itin the book, they absolutely do it
every day of their life. Andnow they go to Moss and they work
and you've got some friendly folks thatknow what they're talking about. That is
one of what did I give youabout ten twelve of the many reasons you
want to go to Moss Nursery downthere in Seabrook. Hey, the website

(02:38:01):
Moss Nursery dot com, m AasNursery dot com. Go check it out.
In fact, that'd be a greatthing to do today. You know,
the sun is going to come outand we're gonna have a really good
day here. Good day to goto Moss Nursery. You're listening to Gardenline.
If let's see, we've got justa couple of minutes left, I
believe, Josh, is that right? Just about to put this one in

(02:38:24):
the books here, I want totalk about a couple of oop got a
little phone call coming in, soI'm gonna go ahead and take that one.
We're gonna head straight out to Davidand Alvin. David, how are
we today and how can we help? I'm driving, I'm in Alvin,
Texas, but live in Conroe.Actually have a very shaded front yard.

(02:38:45):
The trees shaded in the morning,the two story house shades it in the
afternoon. Okay, I'm looking atsolutions and one of the solutions is artificial
turf. It's very realistic looking thesedays. And I've spend so much money
on water, fertilized pesticides. Theguys that come in trim and mow.

(02:39:09):
All right, the economics is reallypretty good, okay, from what I
can say. I just wondered ifyou'd ever had a call like this,
and well, you're, first ofall, you're breaking my horticultural heart.
But I'll go ahead and talk toyou about it. I'll talk to you
about it. I know people thathave used it and like it. Got

(02:39:30):
a friend here who does that withhis yard. I give him a hard
time about it whenever I can.But yes, it will accomplish that as
turf is gone. The artificial turfhas gone through the years, they keep
improving on it in different ways.You need somebody who knows what they're talking
about, how to get the drainto try before they put it down.
I am not at all an experton that because I'm into living plants and

(02:39:50):
things and living turf. But foran area, yes, you can do
that. You just need to getyour blower out because you're going to be
blowing leaves off of it all thetime. Too, since you're not much
over it. So yes, it'suh. I'll pay to have it well
in every two weeks, and Ikeep a car in the front under the
Port of Cichet and it's covered withdust every two weeks, dust everywhere the

(02:40:13):
seal. Hey David, it'll solveit'll solve several problems. Yeah, thanks
for the call. I appreciate thatvery much. I just want to remind
you, guys, if you're interestedin Bonesye the BONESI folks, The International
Boneseie Society Bonesye on the Bayou isgoing to be at the Marriotte Houston West
Chase Hotel on bra Park Drive Februarytwenty six and twenty sevens here's a phone

(02:40:35):
number eight three two four eight threesixty thirty six. Eight three two four
eight three sixty thirty six. Talkto King Casino. He can tell you
more about it. Next Saturday,I'm going to be at Southwest Fertilizer.
Come out and see me. We'regoing to be giving stuff away and answering
your gardening question starting at eleven am.