Cleaning Up and Restoring Your Garden

Skip answers listeners' phone calls all morning.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Katie r H Garden Line does notnecessarily endorse any of the products or services
advertised on this program. Welcome tokat r H Garden Line with skip rictor
its rim. Just watch him asso many things to see again. Sure,

(00:38):
hey, welcome to Garden Line.We're glad you're with us today.
Looking forward to talking about all kindsof things. Plans. Boy, have
we had some weather. Yeah,we got to talk about that too,
and I'm sure we will probably quitea few calls about that if you would
like to give us a call.Hey, by the way, we're here
to answer gardening questions and help youI have a more bountiful garden, more

(01:00):
beautiful landscape. You can just giveus a college seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven onethree two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Yep. The elephant in the roomis the weather. Wow. Our
hearts go out to a lot offolks who just got hammered by this crazy
weather that blasted through here and justdestroyed a lot of trees. And we

(01:23):
talk a lot about pruning trees tohelp them become more sturdy in the storm,
to help do what we can tohelp control that takeout trees that are
dangerous and stuff. Well, thenthe weather comes along and just kind of
kind of proves itself on that.Of course, sometimes when you got winds
and tornadoes and stuff, don't matterhow you put in a tree. If

(01:44):
it's gonna it's gonna go, it'sgonna go. But there's a lot we
can do for that. Maybe I'lltalk about that a little bit more later,
but there's a number of homes andbuildings and people equipment property that was
damaged in this, So we're goingto talk about it from a landscape standpoint.
There's a lot of things to discussright now. It's been a wet,

(02:06):
very wet spring so far. Springto early summer. I used to
call used to call maya summer month, And I tell you this, we're
just about hitting it. With thetemperatures getting up in the nineties. When
you start to see the transition fromspring into summer, we're transitioning our landscapes
as well. For those of youwho have had you've been hanging on to

(02:30):
some of your flowers that are alittle bit on the wimpy side, They're
going to hang on and not goall the way into summer. It's time
definitely to switch those out for somevery heat tolerant flowers. Remember that when
summer comes, we do have anumber of things that will bloom and look
good in the heat. But wealso need to remember foliage. Foliage is

(02:52):
very important when it comes to summertimehere in Texas. The number of bloom
options, blooming options that we havein the spring is huge. In the
summer, we got a lot ofthem, but not like spring, But
in summer, foliage can really shine. You can take foliage that's light colored
like Aztec grass, which is justthink of it as a white and green

(03:14):
striped loiope. It sort of lookslike that, and you can put it
in shady areas to draw the eyearound a bed, to line a bed,
or along a pathway to light thatup. Other things in shade and
include one called beef steak plants,a deep, deep red colored foliage.
It's real attractive. There are certainlythe variegated types of plants. We have

(03:37):
a number of those for sun andsome for shade as well. Cannas,
the yellow and green stripe cannas,the Bengal tiger pretoria. There's a number
of different types of cannas that havethat really attractive bold foliage. One of
my favorite plants for a very bright, semi shady area is persian shield.
It has a purplish colored foliage andyou can nip back, you can prune

(04:00):
the tips out. It's in theit grows like like Salvia's do that,
and in that you can tip andprune and shear and it just produces more
branches and more foliage. But itlooks really good. It's a it's a
very attractive plant. Another canon forsun that still probably my favorite one when
it comes to foliage is one calledphasion are. The common trade name now

(04:25):
is Tropicana. Tropicana. I can'teven describe the colors. There's a coral
in there. They're just it justyou need to go online to look at
it, or go to a gardencenter. Just check it out. Tropicana
is a gorgeous foliage plane, evenif they're not blooms on top, and
these cannon's bloom, but even ifthey're not blooms on top, when you
have foliage like that, it's awesomein the sunny areas. Uh copper plant

(04:46):
is a beautiful one. Joseph's Coatis a beautiful one. And I could
just go on and on go toa local garden center and talk to and
say, what do you got that'sfoliage? It looks good because our summer
foliage plants they are out standing.When it's blazing hot, they're very happy
to be out there and they justreally light up the landscape. So you
don't have to have blooms to havecolor. I'm going to go out now.

(05:09):
We're going to start in Katie thismorning talking to Glenn. Hello,
Glenn, Hi, good morning,Thank you for taking my call. So
I have a oak for you atabout thirteen years old, and the roots
have started to come up out ofthe ground and are buckling a little bit
of the sidewalk. Okay, youknow, cut that out or what's the

(05:33):
best way to handle that? Yeah, well, you know the general super
general guideline. Every situation is unique. But as you take out a one
route a year on a tree andyou can kind of work your way through
it like that. There is probablyas many exceptions to that rule is not,

(05:56):
but that is a possibility. Iwould definitely in this last storm really
reminded us of this. I woulddefinitely talk to us a very very knowledgeable
tree person and have them come look, because depending on the setting and the
kind of tree, the kind ofthe size of the roots, and how
far away from the sidewalk it isand all of that, they're gonna have

(06:18):
an opinion on that. And soI would not do radio advice only on
that one. Somebody needs to seewho knows what they're talking about. We
talk about Martin spoon Moore an affordabletree service. You know that Martin,
He's he just has decades of experiencehere in the Greater Houston area. He

(06:39):
knows what he's doing. I wouldhighly recommend him. Okay, yeah,
well, thank you very much forthe advice, and I will take that
to heart. You have a fantasticYeah, before you go, let me
let me give you a phone numberand a website just if you decide to
make that call. It's a sevenone three six sixty three seven six nine

(07:02):
twenty six sixty three in the webseasy. It's aff Tree Service dot com.
All right, got it? Allright, sir? Thank you a
lot. Take care you bet.Yeah, I tell you that we're gonna
talk about trees a lot. Iguess today based on what just happened.

(07:23):
But Martin is out now. He'swhen I say now, I mean these
months getting trees ready into the stormseason. And this one came kind of
quick on us. You know,we have hurricane season starts in June and
goes through November. There's a lotof reasons to have somebody look at your
trees. And it's not just somebodycoming out there cutting limbs off, saying
well that helps the wind blow three. It's somebody that knows what they're doing.

(07:46):
They know what limbs to remove andhow if you got any dead trees
from last summer, that's especially getthose things down. Sometimes branch angles are
not not very strong and they needto be removed. There is a dan
of course, the property. Gosh, I just keep saying these things and
you turn on the news and you'reseeing what I'm saying. But Martin stays

(08:07):
busy. He does a good job. He charges one hundred and fifty bucks
to come out and give you aconsultation. He'll take a look at what
he sees is going on and he'lladvise you on the next steps. And
if you choose to have him dosome work that one fifty it just goes
right into the price of the workso you don't lose that one fifty at
all. I would definitely have somebodyknowledgeable come out because I'm tell you right
now, there's gonna be a lotof people running around. I call them

(08:28):
the two jerks on a chainsaw treeservice. They have a chainsaw and they
have a pickup, and therefore they'rean expert knocking on doors, putting business
cards out. You can do alot of damage to a tree, a
lot when you don't know what you'redoing. In fact, it's permanent.
I've seen pruning jobs where it's likethat tree will never be the same,
it will never recover and be agood, strong tree. So I know

(08:52):
I'm on a soapbox right now,but that is important, and so please
these are extremely valuable things in yourlands if they had a lot of value
to your home, plus the summershade, don't mess around with those.
Get a job as something knows whatthey're doing. We're all gotting out to
Katie and talk to Ralph. Hello, Ralph, Hey, skip, good

(09:13):
morning. We have a hey.I put down early part of this week
the second fertilization the super turf,and since we had all this successive rain,
did I just waste that or doyou think it's okay? Just unclear

(09:35):
you said, do you use superturf? Yes, I went through.
Yeah, you should go again.You should be fine unless you just had
water that literally was sheeting over thesurface of the lawn picking up granules and
taking them off in the flood.If it was that, well, then
you're gonna put some more fertilizer down. But as far as the fertilizer dissolving

(09:58):
and releasing the nutrient and them beingwashed away, don't worry about that.
That's why we do superterverse very slowrelease. You're gonna lose some, but
there's still gonna be some there tocarry you on. And as far as
now coming in to do the secondpre emergent and post emergent, yeah,
should we hold off a few moredays? Yeah, let it let it

(10:22):
dry out just a little bit.Let's make sure we at least have a
week before we're going to rain again, it looks like, and then you
can put that down, because you'regonna want to put a half inch of
water on it to water it in, and in order to do that,
we don't want to put a halfinch of water on the ground right now.
It's just already too wet. Allright, can you put the Hey,
Rob, I'm gonna get you tohold if you got some follow up

(10:43):
here, I have got to run. I'm way past the break. All
right, We'll be right back sevenone three two fifty eight seventy four.
That is your wake up call thismorning. Media. Come on, let's

(11:09):
go. Let's talk about gardening ourphone number seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. And we'regoing to go back to Ralph here.
Okay, Ralph, let's uh,let's go back to where we were on
the on the discussion of the fertilizeror I think that's what you're right.
No, the you address the fertilizer, and I'm good with that. I
had sent your pictures last week,and you have suggested putting down the post

(11:35):
in the preum post herbicide, andwhat I wanted to ask you, when
would you recommend, with all thisring to come in and do that on
the dollar weed and whatnot? Thepost on the dollar weed as soon as
long as we know it's not goingto rain in the next six hours or
so, I would you could goahead and do it? It would be

(11:56):
better to have it a couple ofdays where we had clearing because you wanted
to be able to soak into thetissues and do the work it's going to
do. That's a post emergent hervisideas far as the pre emergency again,
you just got it waterman with abouthalf inch a third of an inch half
inch of water just to get theminto the surface like the barricade by nitrophus
and so I just our ground isalready soggy, so you can just hold

(12:18):
off a little bit. And sinceit's the second application anyway of the year.
Got it. Thank you, Skipa good one. Thank you.
Appreciate appreciate that call. Yeah,the nitrophile superturf that Ralph was asking about,
that is a slow release. Halfof the nitrogen is available in a
very slow release form. It's thesilver bag. So it makes it easy.

(12:39):
You just walk in look for thesilver bag nineteen four ten or the
numbers on the bag. By graduallyreleasing, it's going to give the lawn
a long term green and it's alsogoing to moderate the growth rate. Rather
than dumping all the nutrient in atonce to get that nitrogen and push fast,
fast growth. It's going to moderateit out, which is what you

(13:01):
want. So walk in go toa place like Plants for All Seasons.
For example, they've got super Turf, the Silver Bag nineteen four ten.
Plants for All Seasons. For thoseof you who haven't been there, by
the way, it's on two fortynine, which is tom Ball Parkway.
A lot of you know it already, but if you haven't, you need
to go check it out. It'sa cool place. And my favorite thing,

(13:22):
Oh gosh, I can I sayone thing I would say in the
top five favorite things of plant aboutPlants for All Seasons is the knowledge of
the staff. You know, theFlowery family is there. It's been a
family operation since nineteen seventy three,and boy do they know the plants.
But they know this area and theygarden in this area, they have landscapes

(13:43):
in this area. They're extremely knowledgeable. I've gone in and talked to them
a number of times about technical thingsand they are always at top speed.
And so you're gonna get great plants, but you're also going to get great
advice, which is very important,and a lot of places cannot give you
great advice, but that's important.Two eight, one, three, seven,

(14:03):
six sixteen forty six or Plants forAll Seasons dot com. Let's go
now to Katie and talk to Malcolm. Hey, Malcolm, good morning,
Good morning. How are you appreciateyour show? Yeah, I'm doing good.
I'm doing good. What can wedo today? Yeah? You were

(14:24):
just talking about the uh you know, two guys in a pickup truck and
trim and oak tree. Yeah,and two jerks on a chainsaw tree service.
Yeah yeah, yeah, uh no, I was just you know,
in the neighborhood, if you will, everybody you know has these guys come
out and turns the oak trees.Yeh. And to me, they all

(14:45):
look like a a bouquet of roses. Okay where they start. They start
out narrow and you know, itjust kind of goes up. Yes,
and you don't and you don't seeanybody let their trees, uh and grow
to where you know, I think, you know, I look at an
oak tree and I want to seesomething that looks gnarly and nothing is symmetric.

(15:07):
Yeah, and it looks natural.Yeah. And I just want to
get your opinion on you know,out of those two is trimming your trees
to where they only go straight up? That is that better for the tree
or should you let them do morenatural? Now, each tree has a
different growth habits. All use pineas an example. Obviously that's a straight
up tree, but most trees are. When they're printed like you're describing,

(15:31):
it's not a good idea. Wedo things here in towns. One thing
is to strip out all the interiorof the of the growth, and that
tree should have growth all through thetree, not just long branches with a
poof of leaves at the end.They call that lion tailing. For obvious
reasons. It's not a good idea. It's not good for the people.

(15:52):
Do it in part for landscape lighting, so you can hang lights up in
there and have them shine down withouthitting leaves. But well that's not a
good idea. No good, goodtree tremor would would do that kind of
thing except for that one purpose,which you're having to trade off between what's
what's best for the tree and what'sbest for the assetic of the landscape.

(16:12):
I guess I don't know, Okay, okay, But the short answer is
the the more you can leave thetree looking natural is probably better. The
short answer is friends don't let friendsl in tail trees. Remember remember that
commercial. All right, one otherquestion for you. I'm trying to grow

(16:40):
some burroke. You know, I'vegerminated the acorns and there's they're sickly looking,
okay, And I did some checkingin it. I think it may
be burroke blight. Have you everheard of that? Is it? Never
heard of that? Now? Whatwhat are you seeing? Tell me what

(17:02):
you're saying? Oh, it's youknow, the leaves are look rusty and
you know it just you know,kind of yellow oranges and brown around the
edges. That that sounds like thereis a rust type disease that will attack
some some oaks. There's there's alsosome other fungal disease. Sounds like one

(17:22):
of one of those kind of things. But again you'd have to send me
a picture of the top of theleaf and the bottom of the leaf for
me to assess it. But Ican tell you this, even if it's
on there, you're not going totry to spray a giant post oak or
any oak really for that kind ofthing. It just it's just not practical,
okay, Okay, okay, allright, all right, thanks sir.

(17:45):
Appreciate it, you bet, Iappreciate, appreciate your call a lot,
Thanks a lot for that. Uh. You know, the folks at
Wilbirds Unlimited are experts when it comesto birds. And when I say experts,
I mean they're they are extremely knowledgeable. But they also have the type
of products that work best. Forexample, I've talked last week about the

(18:07):
high perch hummingbird feeder that is aunique feeder, and I have probably four
hummingbird feeders at home. This isthe best one. It just is.
I can just tell you that ithas a number of features that just make
it better for bringing in the hummingbirdsand making your work a little bit easier.
Also, they have things like qualityfeeds. They have the no waste

(18:30):
types of feeds, meaning your birdsaren't going to kick those little red bebes
out on the ground because birds don'tlike them. Most of our birds we're
trying to bring in don't like those, and then they end up sprouting on
the ground and it's a mass.They even have a hold of sunflower and
other types of hulled seed in themix if you want, so that means

(18:51):
that you absolutely have no debris onthe ground whatsoever, and that's kind of
cool. They have high quality feedfor each kind of bird you would want.
They have high quality bird houses andbird feeders and on and on.
When you go into a wild Birds, check it out, go check one
of them. We have six ofthem here, six Wildbirds unlimited here in
the Houston area. So all youhave to do is go to WBU dot

(19:12):
com forward slash Houston and Wildbirds isalways a good place for gifts. I
mean, if you're looking for agift for somebody, maybe a housewarming,
you know, we were doing thatfor Mother's Day. That's a great time
to give a gift, even justfor no reason at all, check in
at a Wildbird's and let them showyou the kinds of things they have.

(19:33):
Maybe someone is a bird lover,They've got some really cool stuff for that.
Maybe someone isn't, and they wouldjust like a beautiful feeder or house
or something on the property. Wildbirdscan get you fixed up. Let's see
here I was talking, Let's seewhen when was it? Earlier this week?
I was visiting with someone about aproblem they were having on their on

(19:59):
their property. It was a itwas some plants that were just kind of
looking yellow. They just weren't growingwell. They were struggling and they were
down in a clay heavy clay soil, which you have a lot of around
here, and a clay soil withoutadditional organic matter, it absolutely tightens up
and it would make a very goodfish pond, which is what you know.
They even put clay in farm pondsin the bottom to seal the bottom

(20:23):
so it holds water better. Abent and night clay. Well, what
do you do when you're trying togrow a garden in that, Well,
what you do is you put aquality soil mix in it. You go
to a place like Heirloom Soils,And I say, go to their heirloom
soil places all over the Houston area. If you're hearing my voice, there's
an Airloom Soil provider somewhere near you. They have things like the fruit berry

(20:45):
and citrus mix. They have theveggie and herb mix, which, by
the way, I was just usingthis past week. My wife and I
were putting together a Vego garden bedand filling it up and stuff, and
we were using that veggie and hermix, cactus and succulent mix. They
have works potting soil, but theyalso have something called expanded shale. Expanded
shale think of it as like theold gray kitty litter. That's as close

(21:08):
as I can get on a visualfor you, But imagine it fired to
a super high temperature so that itswells up and gets poorous, like a
lava rock under a microscope that's expandedshale. You put that in a clay,
It holds the clay open and internaldrainage is improved. And when you
get oxygen down into the root system, you have more of the soil volume

(21:32):
for the plant to take advantage ofand you have better growth airloom Soilsoftexas dot
Com, We'll be right back.Welcome back to the Guardline. Good to
have you with us today. Whatdo you want to talk about? I

(21:55):
bet the weather has something to dowith it, and we certainly would be
doing that. You know, thewith the rain we've had, mosquitos are
going crazy. I was outside thisweek trying to work building those beds and
things, and I'm telling you,they're eating us up, absolutely eating us
up. They like all this rain. All it takes is like a thumbleful
of water sitting there for a coupleof weeks, and you've got new mosquitos

(22:19):
that have hatched out and are goingI mean, their life cycle is fast
and it doesn't take much so asaggy gutter. The water in your bird
bath needs to be blasted out aboutonce a week. The water under the
catch basins, under your pots andon the patio that dump that out because
if it sits there for a while, mosquitos are going to breed in it,

(22:41):
reproduce, and oh boy, theysure can spoil a really good summertime.
Well, I think my suggestion rightnow, if anyone is in charge
of this, maybe we need toload crop dusters with mosquito dunks and fly
over Houston drop their granules of thedunks all over town and landing in gutters

(23:04):
and everything else. That might bea little bit of an interesting operation.
I think people may have an opinionabout it, but I'll tell you what.
What we have right now is amess. Mosquito dunks are great.
I mean, it's almost like theperfect product. Because people that are concerned
about chemicals, yes, and don'tworry about that. You don't have to
worry about it's a disease of mosquitos. Birds can drink out of the water,

(23:26):
the family cat and dog can drinkout of the water. It will
not hurt them. It won't hurtanything but a larva of the mosquito.
That's what it's designed for. It'sactually you hear me talk about BT that's
a caterpillar control. It's a typeof bacillusthern Gensis that's for mosquitoes. Isn't
that cool? Yeah, a microbe, same genus and species. A microbe

(23:48):
that's a different strain, but thisone goes after mosquito larva. Mosquito dunks
are easy, small bage doughnut.Toss them in the pond. One hundred
square one hundred square feet of waterfor each dunk lasts a whole month.
And you just can't get a better, more effective, less toxic way of
dealing with mosquitos than that. Sonumber one, empty those water standing areas

(24:10):
out. Number two, get yousome mosquito to just have them on hand
because you're gonna need them. Wealways have issues where we're having to deal
with things like that. If youwant to use small amounts of it,
you can crack up a dunk,you know, just hit it with a
hammer, break it up, throwa little bit up into a small water
area where you don't need a wholedunk. It's Okay, you can do
it that way as well. Availableat all our garden centers, our independent

(24:33):
nurseries that is, our feed stores, ace hardware stores you know, Southwest
meet and fertilizer. Everybody carries thesethings. Mosquito dunks easy to find.
Please, if all the neighbors ina whole neighborhood would consciously deal with things
like this, it would affect,it would affect significantly the quality of life

(24:55):
outdoors in that neighborhood. You don'twant mosquitos flying from your house over to
your neighbors. Certainly you don't wantthem going vice versa. Having this kind
of a weather event reminds us ofthe importance of having a generator. There
are a bazillion people without power.It's this kind of event has been devastating.

(25:15):
And now is that reminder as ifwe needed one, that you need
to standby home generator. And thefolks at Quality Home Products of Texas have
that they carry the generator Generaic generator. Generak is a very effective, very
popular brand. But I want totell you something. If you're going to
buy a Generaic generator, you needto get it from Quality Home. And

(25:37):
here's why. Number One, anygenerators purchased before May thirty first, the
end of this month get five hundredoff, zero down, zero interest for
eighteen months with approoved credit. Andof course the terms and conditions apply to
this. But when you talk aboutthe kind of loss of power that we've
had, wouldn't it be nice tohave a general automatically come on and take

(26:00):
care of it. The reason Isay Quality Home is they take care of
their customers from the very beginning andthe planning and helping you get the generator
you need, not over selling yousome generator that you don't need to work
in with your HOA or any regulationson doing this, Pour in the pad,
getting the pad there for your generatorto sit on, and then after

(26:22):
you get it, twenty four toseven three sixty five customer support. That's
why they have over fourteen thousand fivestar reviews. That's why the Better Business
Bureau has given their most prestigious customerService award, the Pinnacle Award, to
them eight times. I'm talking aboutservice before and service after the sale Quality
Home products. Here's the website Qualitytx dot com, qualitytx dot com or

(26:48):
the phone number seven to one threeQuality makes it Easy seven to one three,
quality, quality products, quality servicefor quality life. And boy is
that ever a timely thing. Westill have a lot of storm season to
go. We're going to head outto Cold Springs now and talk to Charles.
Hello, Charles, Hello, Skip, good morning morning. The reason

(27:14):
for my call is I sent asoul samp off to Texas A and M.
Wanted to get your recommendation of fertilizeror maybe one, two or three?
All right? Both the result resultswere go ahead, go go ahead
and tell me what the results inthe big three were. Nitrogen, phosphorus,

(27:37):
nitrate was one, phosphorus was eighteen, potassium seventy six. But how
did they rate those? They ratethem based on your soul type and things.
Did they say high, medium,low? Or yeah they were?
Most of them were in the mediumrange. The only one that was off

(27:57):
the chart was a sodium so extremelyhigh. Okay, okay, you must
have high sodium water, do youthere? Uh? Maybe is it hard
to get the soap off your handswhen you wash your hands? No?
No, not really. I tellyou what you know, Charles, I
can't wait. I was gonna sayI can shoot from the hip on an

(28:18):
answer, but I could give youthe best answer. If you would send
me a copy of that to myemail, I will answer you today with
a better answer that I can justgive you. Trying to imagine what you're
reading off the sheet, and I'llbe happy to do that. Well I
can. But the one one pointfour on the nitrate was recommended, a
one point nine on the phosphorus,and potassium was a two point two.

(28:44):
Well you need a little bit thatwas recommended. That's how many pounds,
right? Yeah? Okay? Andwhat are you growing a Zelia's Okay.
I would not do the potassium thathigh. I would take it down probably
about a half of that or less. But everything else sounds good. Go

(29:06):
with an acidic fertilizer. And Microlife, for example, is an organic brand.
They make a pink bag for acidloving plants and it's going to have
a six two four ratio and Ilike that. Based on your soil test
and based on the crop that you'regrowing, meaning azalias, I think that

(29:27):
would be a better mix for youfor that plant. All right, all
right, Well that's really what Iwas looking That's really what I was looking
for. I didn't want to overdo something. Phosphorus builds up. It
also ties up nitrogen and acid.Living nitrogen iron and acid living plants are

(29:48):
already prone toward iron chlorosis as apH goes up and phosphorus goes up.
So I would that's what what isironsis. It's when the newest growth on
your azaleas looks yellow and the oldleaves look decently green. And that all
right, there you go, Sowe're clairvoyan here. You can also get

(30:10):
a kelated iron product and put thatdown if you've got it right now.
Don't wait on the fertilizer to youknow, turn all that around over time.
Go ahead and do a kelated iron, but then do the fertilizer.
I just mentioned Charles, what candiron? Just wherever you buy your gardening
supplies up there in your area coldSpring, I'm trying to think where Hold

(30:36):
on just a second half. What'swhat's the next close Livingstone and new Whereverly?
Yeah, New Avery has a feedstore. I know there's Bobo's Nursery.
Uh, probably at further north thanyou. Uh, you're just going
to have to go where you goand ask for kelated iron. I'm shooting
by it online, but it thereis iron that's immediately available. And then

(30:57):
there's iron that is kelated that doesn'ttie up as fast. You probably have
enough iron in your soil, butit's not available, and that's why we
recommendklated iron. Okay, all right, Well just to let you know,
I've just over the past sixteen daysdumped out thirty seven inches run. Oh
my gosh, holy mackerel. That'samazing. Hey, Charles, thank you

(31:21):
for the call. Appreciate very muchhaving you on. The Folks at Landscaper's
Pride they have a mix of differentingredient products, like twenty seven different products
that they have. For example,they have the Gardener's Magic Soil. It's
a pine based blend. It's gothumus, it's got screened composted pine bark,
it's got composted rice holes, andeven a chicken pellet fertilizer that extends

(31:45):
the nutrient release up to three months. They've got pine bark malts. The
most popular one, very beautiful,decomposes very slowly. It's just an attractive
multch hardwood mults, and I meanreally hard wood shredded hardwood maults, not
ground up palettes. They've got thequality hardwood molts. They've got black velvet,
not dyed naturally black molds just beautifuland enriches the soil as it ages.

(32:09):
It helps insulate the roots when weget into these really high summer temperatures,
and it's just attractive all from LandscapersPride. Go to Landscaperspride dot com
find out where the local suppliers arefor it in your area, and there's
going to be some because it isvery widely available. The other day I
was out at RCW nurses a couplea couple of weeks ago, I guess,

(32:35):
and just looking at the stock theyhave of all kinds of plants,
and they are they always say,stocked up. And in fact, I
call them get It, Got ItNursery because if they don't have something,
they'll try their best to get itfor you, and they almost always can.
If it's available, if there's away to get it, they'll they'll
get it for you. They carrythe Nitrofizz, Microlife, turf Star,
Landscapers Pride, all these products youhear me talking about, they've got them

(32:59):
there at rca W Nursery. Uh, they still have a good stock of
roses. I mean that is kindof almost a specialty for them. If
you go by there. It's agood time still to plant roses. You
can you can container grown roses willgo in the ground and do just fine.
Give them a little TLC for alittle bit get them going. But
r CW Nurseries is at the cornerof Tambo Parkway to forty nine and belt

(33:22):
Way eight. It's truly easy toget down to h R Cwnurseries dot com.
And when you go by there,take a look at their hibiscus.
They have an outstanding selection. Andwhen summer comes and it's blazing hot,
if you give it a little bitof water, a hibiscus just laughs at
the summer and gives you blazing beauty, beautiful color on into the summer season.

(33:44):
We're going to take a little breakhere seven one, three, two,
two, fifty eight, seventy four. You wants to give me a
well, come back to the guardenline. Good to have you with us
today. I was looking at abag of sweet green. I got a

(34:06):
bag of sweet green at the houseI'm about to put out here on my
lawn, and it just had tolaugh. The stuff smells good, it
just does. And you know,normally we don't think of perfume and fertilizer
in the same sentence. Although Ilike the natural, earthy smells of a
lot of these products. But sweetGreen is just a it's sweet. It's
because it's made from molasses. It'sa it's a product that microbes working with

(34:30):
molasses creates this wonderful organic It's aneleven percent nitrogen fertilizer. By the way,
that's about as hi as you're goingto get with an organic nitrogen source,
and it dissolves away and the bacteriaand the soil just go nuts.
That's why organic gardeners a lot oftimes we use molasses in their gardening,
because that sugar is a stimulate,it's an energy, it's carbon, and

(34:53):
the microbes need that, and sothe sweet Green works just that way,
and it is very effective. Andyou're going to find sweet Green at a
lot of places. You know.Nitroposs products are carried by Hiding and Feed
up on Stubner Airline. They're carriedby plantation ace hardware out there in the
Richmond Rosenberg area, as well asBearings hardware. Both the Bissonette and the
Westheimer locations all carry that nitrofoss sweetgreen. A lot of ACE hardware is

(35:17):
do too. By the way,I was telling you last week that I
was going to be at the LanghamCreek ACE Hardware today, Well that event
has been canceled. I just wantto let you know that we're going to
try to reschedule it for another time. But for now, they have their
hands full. I mean, theweather has all the devastation of the weather
has them scampered to try to helpfolks out and get the things they need.

(35:42):
They've got shipments of generators, They'vegot batteries, they've got tarps,
they've got mosquito repellents, all thekinds of things that you would be thinking
about right now where there might havebeen water damage where a tree went through
a roof. You know, youneed a dehumidifier, you need fans,
you need all bleach and they've gotthat all and they are just they're stocked
up, and they're basically they're scamperingto try to get enough product in and

(36:07):
help folks, and they're doing aheck of a good job at that.
By the way, they are addingadditional stock all the time to help you
with your needs. And so youknow, when you go to an ACE
Hardware and we got a bunch ofthem forty plus over the Greater Houston area.
Here you're going to find whatever youneed. That's why they say ACE
is the place, and you justfill in the blank. After that Acehardware

(36:29):
dot Com. Go to the storelocator, find the stores plural near you,
because there will be. They're allover the Greater Houston area. And
for those of you who are dealingwith this mess, number one, our
hearts go out to you. Numbertwo. You know, when you go
there, you're going to find thesupplies you need to try to recover and
come back. And that is quitea challenge. I know we've been there.

(36:52):
I remember when the floods came througha good while back, when we
had the big floods, the majorfloods that we had. That was who
that was a mess. Well,hopefully this bad weather is done for now
and we can move on with things. If you are looking to plant a
tree, and based on the numberof trees down over the area, suspect

(37:15):
some people will be soon. Thefolks at Verdant Tree Farm have excellent trees.
They've got the cultivars, the varieties, the species in other words,
that do well here. And ifyou go to the website Verdant Treefarm dot
com. Verdant Treefarm dot com.You will find they have a list of
the trees with a lot of informationon each tree. By the way,

(37:36):
the same is true with the palmtrees. They've got a list of those
with a description. Do you needone that's very hearty, they have them.
They have very hearty palm trees theright pump really for any budget.
Just go to Verdant Treefarm dot com. The locations in West Houston on Barker,
Cyprus, there's one in Central NorthCentral where Yale and I ten come

(37:58):
together, and down in AirLand onBroadway Street there's also a Burdant tree Farm
down there. Makes it easy toget one and quality trees. They know
how to plan them and they canget you back in business. I mean,
if you want to get a quickbounce back of a tree, you
want something broomstick's I sitting out there. They go all the way up to
seven hundred gallons, I believe,and that is a They almost ought to

(38:19):
give you a hammock with that tree, because it's about ready for a hammock
at that size. You're listening tothe guardline, I'm your host skip Richter
and our phone number if you wouldlike to give us a call seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventyfour seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. I was talkingto Ian at Nature's Way Resources. Just

(38:43):
yes, let's see, Yes,it was yesterday. We're talking trying to
arrange a time for me to goout there. I always like to visit
our sponsors, check out what's goingon, find out what products they have,
and all that kind of thing.And that he made a point that
I want to remind you. Theychanged their summer hours Now. Summer hours
are from from eight am to fivepm Monday through Friday. They're closed on

(39:06):
Sunday, but on Saturday they're openfrom eight am to two pm, eight
to two, eight to five duringthe week, eight to two on Saturday.
And you know when you go toNature's Way Resources, you're going to
get quality products, absolute quality products. They were the creator of rose soil,
they were the creator of the leafmold compost that we keep saying you

(39:28):
need to top dress your lawns with. It works very well for that.
Every Friday is Fungal Friday at Nature'sWay Resources. What does that mean?
Ten percent off the bagged fungal basedproducts and twenty percent off the bulk fungal
based products. They're stocked up.They're ready for you to come by and
pick it up. They'll deliver bulk. You can go there and get it

(39:49):
bulk. You can buy bags atgarden centers. You can buy bags right
there on site up at Nature's Waywhich is on I forty five north on
the way to Conro right where fourteeneighty eight comes in. Turn right,
go across the tracks and there youare at Nature's Way Resources. I find
that you know when you've got somebodythat knows what they're doing. And John
Ferguson was doing this for years,one of the leaders in getting out there

(40:14):
and doing this kind of thing.You get quality products and they take their
time and they do it right,and that is important. You want a
quality compost mix that's done right.I see stuff that gets rushed out the
door and their issues with those kindof products, but not when you deal
with Nature's Way Resources. Simple asthat. Yeah, just a reminder again,

(40:38):
I will not be at Langham CreekAce today. Unfortunately. They right
now the focus is on the recoveryand they are hop skipping and jumping to
try to keep up with that.We'll try to do that some other time.
For those of you who have notbeen online and seeing my schedules,
I would encourage you to check themout. I've got a website. We'd

(40:59):
slowly get stuff up there. Itincludes timely things, little publications you might
be interested in, or I hopeyou will. Uh. It includes my
lawn care schedule, which is basicallythe things you do to grow on low
water and fertilized. It includes mylawn pests, disease and we'd management schedule,
which is basically the things that cango wrong with the lawn and what

(41:22):
to do about them. It takesyou January through December. It gives you
the organic options. It gives yousynthetic options as well. Very informative,
very hopeful. You need to printthem out and keep them on the hands
on them. We'll be right backseven one three, two, one two,
fifty eight seventy four. If you'vegot to get on the board.

(41:42):
Welcome to KTRH guarden Line with scampRichter's so crazy, just watch him as
the world many things to see,not a sign. Welcome back to garden

(42:17):
Line. Great to have you withus today, got all kinds of topics
to talk about. You have aquestion you would like some assistance with,
feel free to give me a call. Seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three twoone two fifty eight seventy four. This

(42:37):
past week, I just re welltook out a planter that was basically for
herbs. We were we were replacingit with a different kind of planter and
turning it into more of a flowerplanting and things. Uh, And I'm
pulling some of the different herbs outof there, the chives we had in
there, and it just reminds methat herbs are probably one of the more

(42:58):
underutilized plants in our life. Escapeyou know, if you get if you
want something that is a drought hardyshrub, then rosemary is a good option
for that. There's trailing types andupright types, trand types of bloom actually
pretty well, things like chives thatmake a nice little clumping border plant.

(43:19):
There's another excellent use of herbs.I like the Mexican met marigold. That
is the one that blooms in latesummer and fall, so you have the
blooms and beauty. By the way, another one is pineapple sage. It's
a salvia with red tubular blooms thathummingbirds like, and it blooms late in
the season too. I mean,we can just go on and on and
on on herbs. And the folksthat enchanted forest have a beautiful new stock.

(43:43):
I mean everything from one gallon andthree gallons at herbs. They it's
just it's just pretty. They're beautifulplants. A lot of them bloom,
a lot of them attract beneficials.Some of them attract the food source for
the butterfly larva, certain kinds ofbutterfly larva, for example. Attractive herbs
not an enchantede. You're gonna findeverything. You're going to find flowers.

(44:05):
I mean, do you want somethingthat can take the heat. How about
Indian blanket Firewell, they even havea yellow type out there that's kind of
cool, beautiful bling glass type mushroomsand some little curved glass. It reminds
me of some of the Chiluli artexhibit. I saw it one time out
of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Theyhave another herb that I don't talk about

(44:29):
much. It's called snake herb,and it is it's not an edible herb,
but it's one that grows along theground and it has beautiful little kind
of violet colored flowers. They're realattractive. It gets about probably four inches
to a foot and a half tall, somewhere in that range. It gets
about three feet wide, and it'sextremely drought tolerant. It can take it.

(44:50):
Just give it good drainage, giveit, you know, at least
parts son, even better, fullsun, and it'll do real well.
All that's in a channet for us. More and more and more and more.
Of course, they have plenty ofthings in stock. And if you're
looking to do bougainvillias, oh mygosh, their display is outstanding. If
you're looking to do a butterfly garden, they can get you fixed up with

(45:13):
the things that attract the adults,that is, the flowers that attract the
adults, as well as the plantsthat feed the larva, because each of
those beautiful butterflies has a larva thatfeeds on some plant that you can grow
in your garden, and therefore youjust attract them in. Now where is
enchanted forest, Well, it's inRichmond, Texas. It's actually on FM

(45:34):
twenty seven fifty nine. If you'reheading up towards sugar Land direction. It's
off to the right FM twenty sevenfifty nine. Always something going on there
on Saturdays in the springtime, andalways beautiful things that you absolutely will fall
in love with. I love itevery time I go out there. It's
just a fun place to visit.Well, let's see here talking about all

(45:54):
kinds of herbs and plants and things. I'm going to give you our phone
number if you'd like to give usa call seven one one three two one
two five eight seven four seven onethree two one two fifty eight seventy four,
and i'd be a good time tocall. If you're one of the
first few to get right on,I'll get a little opening in the boards
here. I talked about nitrophos Superturfearlier. Superturf is the silver bag,

(46:17):
the nineteen four ten fertilizer. Someone'sasking is like, did my did my
superturf wash away? Well? Theone of the things I like about slow
release fertilizers is they don't just dissolveaway immediately and release all their nutrients.
Now, they do give you somefeeding, you know, as you go
through early on, but over timehalf of the nitrogen, and Superturf is

(46:42):
slow release. It's just going togradually feed your lawn over time. That
slows the growth. That makes amore balanced grass plant. Did you know
that if you push a turf grasswith too much nitrogen at one point in
time, you just nuke it withnitrogen, Well, it's going to get
a lot of top growth. You'regoing to get to mo a lot too,
by the way, but at theexpense of root growth. The root

(47:05):
system is actually less when you dotoo much nitrogen at one time. That's
why a slow release source is important. Or if you use a fast release
you should at least split that applicationup into a couple of applications to kind
of gradually spread it out a littlebit over a longer period of time.
Nitropus Superturf excellent product. It's easyto find. I mean pretty much everybody

(47:30):
carries it. You're going to findit a lot of different ACE hardware stores.
You're going to find it at theACE down in Single Ranch, for
example. You're going to find itat the ACE Hardware store out in a
Tasca Sita, or the Lake Hardwaredown in Lake Jackson include Lake Hardware,
Clute, They all carry the Nitropussuper turf. We're going to go to
the phones now and talk to Johnand Katie. Hello John, Hey,

(47:53):
good morning, Skip, Good morning. I'm just curious. I'm looking to
plant some peach trees that are goodin this area. Found one called the
red barren that's like a mid seasonpeach. I'm looking for. Where can
I find peaches or peach trees,not the bear root ones. They're actually
good for this area that don't requiretoo many chill hours. A number of

(48:14):
our garden centers that you hear metalk about here on garden Line will carry
those. They so depending on whereyou live. I know Arburgate carries fruit
trees year round. For them,it's a it's a year round thing,
and so I would What I woulddo, though, is if you're going
to drive a distance, and youknow Houston's a big place, just call
them first and make sure they havewhat you're looking for. Red barren is

(48:37):
a nice one. It's a mediumchill and it has those beautiful red flowers
as opposed to the typical pink peachflower, and so it's both ornamental and
edible. Sounds good, all RIGHTYappreciate it. Thank you all right,
you bet, thank you. We'regoing to go now to Stephen in Houston.

(49:00):
Stephen, how are you this morning? I'm good, Harry, I'm
well, thank you. How canI help? So? I've got two
trees that were given to us toplant at our property in the country,
but I think it's too late toplant them out there because we're not going
to be there. It's the waterlike they need. So I'm going to
try to sustain them over the summerhere at our house in sugar Land in

(49:23):
pots. Okay. So right nowthey're very small, probably half inch cowiper
size tree, and they're in smallpots. I'm going to transplant them over
the summer to the next sized pot, to the next sized pot, and
try to should the pot go bewider or deeper from the next size up.

(49:47):
What kind of tree is it?One of them's a shademaster thornless honeylocust,
oh wow, okay, and theother one's an autumn blaze red oh
boy. So what I would dois, when you take them out of
the little pot they're in, anyroots that are circling cut them. I
use a box cutter knife and slicevertically down through that root cylinder in about

(50:12):
three or four places, and theywithin a couple of weeks are going to
be branching out new growth out intothe next pot size. And if you
do that maybe a couple of timesduring the summer, you're going to have
a much more robust root system unlesswound up in the pot, and the
tree will establish better. You alsowant to do that when you finally take
it out to plant it for sure. Okay, okay, all right,

(50:34):
all right, appreciate it. Iappreciate your call. Thank you very much.
Let's see here. We're going torun to a break and we will
be right back. Welcome back tothe Guardline. Good to have you with

(50:55):
us today. We are discussing alot of things, certainly to the weather,
which is the elephant in the roomafter the bizarre hammering that so many
areas took these last days. Ihope things are going okay at your house,
those of you who are crawling outof the debris. Our hearts go
out to you, certainly do wishyou, wish you very well with that.

(51:21):
There's just no there's no description orno nothing like it, and when
until you experience it, it's it'sit's just hard to imagine how shocking and
devastating that can be for for folks. So would you care about those of
you who are out there dealing withthat? The folks at Southwest Fertilizer,

(51:43):
Bob I've been. I talk abouthim a lot because Bob is he just
makes sure he keeps things in stockthat you might need when they're new products,
and he and I talk periodically,you know, about what's going on.
I always go by there to see, you know, what is new,
because Bob's going to have it.The way I would like to put
it is, if Southwest Fertilizer doesn'thave it, you don't need it,

(52:04):
because they have every single thing youcan imagine for the you know, for
example, all the fertilizers I talkabout on garden Line, everything on my
schedule, they're going to have itat Southwest. That includes the fertilizers,
that includes pest control, that includesdisease control, that includes weed control.
They're going to have all of thatand a lot lot more. They for
example, Southwest Fertilizer has got aneighty foot wall of tools. They've got

(52:28):
a shop where you can get thingssharpened up and ready to go, and
your your small equipment and things likethat. I brag about that kneeling bench.
You gotta have one. Listen.I was doing a bed on concrete
on top of concrete, putting ina bed. Uh. And if I
hadn't had my kneeling bench, Iwould not have knees today. I can
just tell you that my knees longago lost the padding I used to have

(52:51):
in the day. And so thekneeling bench is wonderful. Bob's got them.
Just go by there and say Iwant to see the kneeling bench they
talk about on guardenline. He'll showyou which one it is. He also
has Nitrofus bug Out Max. BugOut max by Nitrofos is an insecticide.
It's an insecticide that is designed tomanage the things that are messing with your
lawn. It is a product it'sgoing to last a while in the lawn,

(53:14):
so whether you're dealing with ants orfleas, or ticks, or grubs
or chinchbugs or side web worms.I mean it controls up to one hundred
and thirty different insects actually, andit lasts for a couple of days out
there. So if you got fireants, for example, and you do
right Now, Nitrofos fire ant killeris an excellent product. I'll tell you
this. The bugout Max also worksto control the fire ants as they're crawling

(53:37):
through and they encounter that particular product. But Nitrofus is just they're geared up
to manage the pests that you mighthave out there in your lawn and in
your garden. So if you're lookingto really do a good job on shutting
these things down, well, Nitrofus, bug out Max and yep, Bob's
got it Southwest Fertilizer. It's alsowidely available. Many different places carry the

(54:00):
Nitrofoss products, and so it makesit easy for you to find a quality
product and then be able to finda place close by you to be able
to pick it up. Our phonenumber is seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four seven one threetwo one two five eight seven four.

(54:21):
Feel free to give us a callto be happy to help you with the
kind of gardening questions that you mightbe dealing with. I was talking to
Jim Moss done at Moss Nursery justrecently, and we were just discussing all
kinds of things. When I visitwith Jim the conversation tends to wander over
everything under the sun. I mean, the guys like a renaissance man.

(54:42):
He's been there, done that,and got the stories to prove it.
And when you walk in the nurseryyou can kind of see that. I
mean, it's eight acres. Thisis a this is a garden center that
is seventy years old, the familyoperated garden center. You wander through eight
acres and you turn a corner andyou see this, you know, this
ethnic wooden mask carved out that youhang in your garden, or a canoe

(55:05):
hanging, or some kind of metalartwork or pottery. Oh gosh, Gem
brings all kinds of pottery and allthe time. And the stock they have
is always good. I mean theywere loaded with hanging baskets when I was
there. We're just admiring some ofthose, some of the the cacti and
succulents, always a good supply ofthat. And of course the house plan
house, that alone is worth theprice of admission. You got to go

(55:28):
in and see Moss Nursery's house planhouse. If you like succulents, or
if you like any kind of anindoor plant, they are going to get
you fixed up with that. Theyeven had some of those tree hadrangas and
what does that mean. Well,it's you trim a hadrangja to create a
single trunk that has all the foliageand flowers up on top, and they
call that a tree hydraanja. There'ssome beautiful ones that were heading out the

(55:51):
door with happy customers when I wasby there. By the way, they're
in Seabrook, Seabrook, Texas.If you've not been there before, you
really to go. I don't carewhere you're driving from. That is a
fun outing to get out with thefamily and to go see and allow time
because you're gonna need time to wanderthrough there. It's on Toddville Road in
Seabrook. Here's the website m aA S Nursery dot com m aa S

(56:16):
Nursery dot com. Check them out. We're going to go now to Paarland
and talk to Mark. Hello MarkyTiger morning. I'm just curious where the
best place for me to get thetwo year old at leave most of todd
draping that is close to me inParland. I want to air you get
that down? Uh you you probablyby the bag you can get it at

(56:42):
your Ace Hardware stores down there.I know Paarland Ace Hardware has probably got
it there on North Main Street.As far as bulk in that area,
I don't know for sure. Imay have to let me check into that
kind of look around a little bit, but I know they do have it
there at the Paarland Ace Hardware.Yeah, I definitely will need to have

(57:02):
a delivery. I've got quite abunch of square foot as you drop it.
Oh, you're gonna do a lotof it. Okay, let's let's
do this. Go to Heirloom Soilsoff Texas dot com and find a find
the contact info there and reach outto them and say, look, I
need bulk. I'm in Paarland.What can you do? Uh? And
the Heirloom Soils Texas dot JOm airlomSoils of Texas. Now, I know

(57:25):
that down at Ciena Mulch they docarry some of the leaf mold composts there.
I'm ninety nine percent sure, Andyou could give them a call.
They do about a twenty mile deliveryradius. But I don't you're you're kind
of on the line there. Butgive them, give them a call and
see if they are able to dothat, that would be and that in

(57:46):
that website one more time, pleaseHeirlooms Soils off Texas dot com. Got
it? Okay, Hi, verygood, Thank you you bet appreciate appreciate
that call very much. Okay.With this rain, needless to say,
our clay soils have swelled a lot. That is what clay does when you

(58:10):
have a lot of rain, especiallythe kinds of clay we have here.
When it gets dry, and it'sgoing to get dry summer's coming, they're
gonna shrink. And that movement,believe it or not, it is a
very powerful movement. Powerful enough tocrack a slab, a concrete slab in
your home, definitely enough to heaveyour sidewalks and your driveways and break those

(58:30):
apart. Fix my lab Foundation Repairhas been doing concrete repair for twenty three
years. Tystrickland is an expert atit. He absolutely knows what to do.
And here's what I would like youto do. Go look around the
house. Do you have crack sheetrock? Go walk around the outside of
the house. Do you have crackedbricks? Do you have any doors that

(58:51):
are sticking? Those are all signsthat something is going wrong down in the
foundation. I know we like toput our heads in the sand and go
Manyana. I'll deal with this toManya. But you don't do that,
it doesn't get better. You needto go ahead and have somebody that knows
what they're doing look at it.Ty gives free estimates for gardenline listeners,
so definitely tell him you're guardline listener. He absolutely does the job right.

(59:17):
He shows up on time, andhe fixes it right, and he has
a fair price. And those threeon time, fair price and fixed That's
all I asked for in a ina good service job. Now, if
you give them a call two eightone, two five five forty nine forty
nine, they'll get by check outwhat's going on. Or you can go

(59:38):
to the website fix myslab dot com, fixmslab dot com and take a look.
But believe me on this one,Ty knows what he's doing, he's
got the experience, and he doesit right for a fair price. That
is why I, without hesitation,would recommend you call fix my Slab Foundation
Repair. We're going to go outnow to Anna Base City. Hello,

(01:00:00):
Anna, Hi, good morning,good morning. I am I have an
acre, maybe a little over anacre, and I'm wondering, just lavender
grow down here. I wanted toplant the whole acre with it. It
doesn't I mean that now people arelistening, going, well, I've got
some in a pod. It's youknow, but lavender wants to live in

(01:00:22):
a very well drained soil in anarea that isn't prone to be in a
swamp. And so if you gaveit, if you created a bed that
was high, as we say,high and dry, meaning the water all
drains away. It's got a verygood internal drainage in the soil, you

(01:00:44):
could probably get some types of lavenderto grow for a while. But to
do an acre of it, itwould be a waste of money. Okay,
okay, well, thank you somuch. All right, Sorry,
sorry to disappoint, but I'd ratherme disappoint you than lavender break your art.
So yeah, thank you, allright, bye bye, thank you

(01:01:05):
for that call. Sweet Grain bynitrophos it is a natural fertilizer or organic
fertilizer. It's eleven percent nitrogen andit is a packed fertilizer with benefits for
the soil. And here's why.Number one eleven percent nitrogen that's going to
release into the soil. It's goingto feed your lawn. You're going to
have a beautiful lawn as a resultof it. But it's a it's a

(01:01:27):
molassic spaceed fertilizer that really stimulates thebiological activity in the soil. You know,
organic gardeners put molasses on the soilbecause they know that, especially the
beneficial bacteria just love that and theygo crazy for that. That's like feeding
them. They need a carbon Theyneed a carbon source. Only plants can

(01:01:49):
make organic carbon, right, Theytake carbon dioxide from the air and they
make a carbon product with it.Bacteria can't, and they need that,
and so what do they need.They need plant based materials, and they
need things that are high in carbon, and that is exactly what sweet green
is. You're gonna find sweet Greena lot of different places. A Gym's

(01:02:10):
Hardware up in Montgomery they carry itthere. A task to Seat of Ace
Hardware is going to have it.You're going to go out to as at
Sinco Ranch. You're gonna find itout there as well. Sweet grain,
like many nitropost products, is widelyavailable and it's also very effective, and
it moves into the soil and it'llgive you a pretty quick response with the
sweet green. Let's go now outto forest in the Galleria area. Hey

(01:02:32):
forest, Hey, good morning Skip. During the storm, I had a
branch, an oak tree branch fallon my peppermint peach tree, and it
created a kind of a scab,kind of ran down the trunk of my
peppermint peach and took off a prettygood swath of outer bark on the trunk

(01:02:54):
of the peppermint peach. Oh boy, Yeah, I know it doesn't look
good, but I'm not I don'thave high expectations, but wondering if you
had a recommendation on trying to repairit. Yeah, just cleaning out the
dead bark and keeping that tree ashealthy and vigorous as you can. Peaches,
what's a trunk diameter on that treeright now? It's probably about it's

(01:03:17):
probably about five six inches. Butit's not a it's not a fruit tree.
It's a flowering tree. Yeah.Well, it's the same with either
one, though it will close overdepending on how wide the area is and
how vigorous the tree is, andso like, if you've lost half the
tree, that's going to be alittle bit of a challenge. It's going

(01:03:38):
to take some time and you'll probablyget some internal decay in the meantime.
But hey, I got to runto a break if we want to continue
this. I'm just looking at theclock and going, hey, I'm talking
into the news. Hang on forus. We'll be right back. Well,

(01:04:06):
well, welcome back to the gardenline. Good to have you with
us. We're going to go rightback to forest in the galley. Of
course, we're talking about that strippedoff bark on your tree, And I
was just saying that if if it'snot too wide of an area, the
tree will close it over in thenext season or two. If it's wider,
it's going to take a little longer, and then the interior wood is

(01:04:28):
subject to decomposition, to rotting essentially. But if your tree is in good
health in general, and you're givingit a little bit of nutrient, little
fertilizer to keep it growing, Ithink that you're probably gonna be okay.
So no external spray, paint ora kind of wrap or anything. Just
let it right repair it. Yeah, let that be exposed. You do

(01:04:51):
not want to cover the wood becauseit decays faster underneath, because it says
moist. You'd rather have it dryout quickly after a rain and that that's
important to do that. Yeah,don't wrap it, don't paint it.
It'll it'll be all right on that. Just maybe, uh, you know,
for every inch of trunk diameter,give it one or two cups of

(01:05:14):
a quality lawn fertilizer that the scratchinto the soil surface around it if you
can. If it's got grass aroundit, you probably can't do that.
But then watered in really well,So one to two cups per inch of
trunk diameter, spread it as faras the branches go out and watered in
to that area. That'll give youa boost. Okay, I will do

(01:05:38):
that. I appreciate your help.Thank you all right, First, thanks
for having through the break. Appreciatethat. Yep, yep, yep.
Talking about trees and planting trees andthings, which I know a lot of
you will be planting trees after losingtrees in your yard or maybe having them
essentially be damaged to the point whereit's you just want to pull them out

(01:05:59):
because they're they're slightly run safe.The three sixty tree stabilizer is very important
for stabilizing your tree during the theor after the transplant process. During the
rooting end, process. You know, we get these trees in cylinder containers
and we put them in the groundand the whole root system is in that

(01:06:21):
small cylinder. That's what they weregrowing it in at the grower. Well,
when you put it in the ground, that cylinder pumps dry real quick,
and you got to keep it moistto help it get established. But
you don't want it moving around alot. You know, you get a
win like we had. Oh mygosh, I mean that game over.
With the tree stabilizer. It grabsonto the tree and grabs onto the post,

(01:06:43):
and you can use it with anykind of post. I would suggest
the iron t posts. They they'reeasy to drive in. They work well.
You put that tea post about afoot and a half from the tree
and the tree stabilizer. It's adjustablein distance, but it grabs both and
it holds that tree very well.The strap a lot. You can hook
the strap a little loose so thetree moves just a little bit. That's
also important in strengthening. It's aprocess of nature that when we stress and

(01:07:10):
stretch plant tissues, they get stronger. I'll talk about that in just a
minute, but anyway, tree stabilizersavailable at RCW Nursery, Buchanan's Nursery,
if you go down to Alvin JorgesHidden Gardens has it. Over I was
talking about Bob, a Southwest fertilizerbusiness at and Renwick. They have it.
Arborgate has it. Din I say, Buchanans Plants for all seasons has
it. It's easy to find,it's easy to find, and it's a

(01:07:32):
quality product that will last, lastand last. So you plant a tree
and then you know later you're goingto plan another one a few years from
now. Just grab your tree stabilizerout of the garage and go out there
and do it. You can buya couple of them from different angles.
Hold a tree so whether the windblows north, southeast or west, you
got good support there that way.And just remember that even with multi trunk

(01:07:56):
trees like a crape myrtle, acouple of tree stabilizers will provide this for
that overall plant that you need.Yes, talking about strengthening plants. Okay,
nerd alert, I don't do thisvery often. Somebody the other day
when I was out at Arbor Gatesthat I ought to do it more often.
But nerd alert Horticulture, nerd Alertthere is principle implants that when you

(01:08:21):
bend and stretch, that plant getsstronger. So if you're growing little seedlings,
maybe you've grown tomato seedlings in thewindow at home before, and they're
stretching toward the light, and youkeep turning them around trying to get them
to grow straight up, and they'rekind of spindling, and then you put
them outside and they snap off inthe first wind. Well, if you

(01:08:41):
will brush your hands over those seedlingsabout twice a day, just gently brush
them, just move them as ifthe wind were blowing. I know people
that have a little fan that comeson and off and goes on them just
to move them around a little bit. That actually causes a stem to get
stronger. And that's true with treetrunks. You got a tree that's been
long, skinny, tall trunks attachedto a posts, that a little steak

(01:09:04):
that they had in the pot,and you put it out there, and
it does not have the tree strength, the trunk strength, But as it
bends in the wind, the tissuesget stronger. As that tree trunk develops
and it gets very resilient where itcan take the wind. And here is
the fancy name I always listen togarden Line with a pen and paper handy.

(01:09:25):
If you want to be the CliffClaven of your neighborhood garden club,
you need to know this word.You can impress your friends. Thigmo morphogenesis
is that nerdy or what fig momorphogenesis? Basically that means you move it,
it gets stronger. That basically iswhat happened. But it's true.
But you know, aside from thenerd evert, it's important to know those

(01:09:47):
things. You're growing seedlings, nowyou know something to make them stronger.
You're putting the little tree out there. You don't want it to bend and
snap and stretch. It's got tohave a little movement in order to strengthen
that. We're the same way,right, You want your muscle stronger,
You go to the gym, youwork them out, give them time to
rest. You go to the gem, you work them out, and it
gets stronger and stronger. Plants arethat way too. It's a principle of

(01:10:11):
nature. All right, Enough ofthat nerdy. Yeah, I was out
at the arbor Gate and I hada great time out there. They always
have a good time at the arborGate. We had a lot of folks
come by. Thank you for everybodythat's stopped in and asked the questions.
You know, the Arborgate is oneof those destination garden centers that people come
from all over to go to becausenumber one, they've got unbelievable plant selection.

(01:10:34):
Yes that's important. Number Two,they have very trained staff that can
help you not only find the plantyou need, make suggestions, but also
how do you care for it?Or if you have an issue with a
plant, get a hold of them. They will help you with that.
They want you to have success.Now. They're out on twenty nine to
twenty just west of Tomball and theyhave a brand new parking lot in the

(01:10:55):
back and if you got to usethat one, it is easy, convenient,
it's close, it's safe. Godown Trischel Road, which starts basically
is a loop behind Arborgate and whetheryou you know, if you miss Trischel
the first time you pass by Arburgate, just start looking because it's going to
be real quick. You're going tosee at the other end of it.

(01:11:16):
Just go around behind back in park. When you're at Arburgate, you can
get their one two three easy system. What is a one two three easy
system? It's an organic food completefour four three plus calcium feeds anything with
roots. It's an organic soil complete, high quality soil that has expanded shale
included in it. Expanded shale holesclay soils open and helps the internal drainage

(01:11:43):
in an organic compost complete, whichagain is a high quality compost with the
expanded shail in it as well.You get those three bags when you get
a plant, and you're on yourway to success because, as I always
say on guard Line, brown stuffbefore green stuff. You make the plant
a foundation where it's going to havesuccess, good drainage, good nutrients,

(01:12:03):
et cetera. And then you puta good plan in it, and you're
on your way. And everyone thinksyou have a green thumb just because you
did things the way you're supposed todo and cooperation with the play with the
way plants want to want to grow. You're listening to garden Line and uh
if you would like to give usa call seven one three two one two

(01:12:25):
fifty eight seventy four By the wayout at the Bee Supply in Dayton,
Texas. They have a thing andI've talked about it for a little while
where it's fairly new though it's calledthe b Rental Program. So if you've
got five to twenty acres of landand you're within fifty miles of Dayton,
Texas fifty mile radius any direction Dayton, Texas, they will come out and

(01:12:45):
do all the bee work. Inother words, they bring the bees out,
they take care of the bees foryou, and harvest the honey and
do all of that. You canfind out more information on the website,
which is thebsupply dot com. Ifyou've thought about beekeeping, you know,
maybe you're not committed yet, butyou're kind of looking into it, take
one of their beginning beekeeping classes.It's a strong foundation for the first year

(01:13:09):
of beekeeping. They start at ninethirty in the morning. They go till
three thirty. You'll spend the entiretime in the classroom going over beekeeping,
and then you will go out inthe b yard weather permitting to let to
let the whole group really get ahands on experience doing hive inspections. Uh.
Even if you choose to not gointo beekeeping, you will love that

(01:13:30):
class. It will be incredibly informativeand I gotta tell you you'll get hooked.
You just are I used to havebees myself when I lived up in
the Willis, Texas area many yearsago. Uh and it's just a lot
of fun. Dbsupply dot com.We're gonna take a little break here.
We'll be right back. Our phonenumber is seven one three two one two

(01:13:53):
five eight seven four and Kenneth andTumble you'll be our first up a crackling
We got a radiate. No moretaking it slow. It's been a while,
Neil Diamond. What a voice,What a voice? Hey, welcome

(01:14:15):
back to the Garden Line. Goodto have you with us today. We're
here to answer your gardening questions.We want you to have success. It's
as simple as that. One waythat you have success is to use quality
products. A fertilizer like Microlife,for example, Microlife has a wide variety
of products. I was telling someoneearlier to get their acidic fertilizer the pink
bag, the one that is foracid loving plants. Well, the green

(01:14:40):
bag is the standard that's kind oflike the basic Microlife fertilizer, wide variety
of options. When you use Microlife'sgreen bag, it's for lawns, but
it's I use it for I usein the vegetable garden. I using the
flower I use in a lot ofdifferent places. Just a good fertilizer,
absolute good fertilizer. What people don'treally think about is the need for a

(01:15:02):
supplementation with humates plus. That's thepurple bag of microlife. Humates plus is
concentrated compost in a bag. Sowhat does that mean? Okay, well,
let's do it this way. Ifyou take grass, clippings and leaves,
that's organic matter, you pile itup and you decompose it. You
have compost. If you take thatcompost and let it decompose all the way

(01:15:25):
down to its final stage, that'scalled humus. And humates are actually a
product that's mined out of the groundancient you know what do you call them?
The little ribbons of material underground likecoal and stuff. They It is
a concentrated compost. And what happensis when you put it down, the

(01:15:45):
fulvic acids in it, the humicacids in it, they all enhance the
soil microbiology, the release of nutrientsin the soil. They improve soil structure.
Over time. As you use aproduct like humus humates plus the purple
bag in the soil, you're goingto continue to make the soil better and
better, and organic gardening is allabout making the soil better. That's the

(01:16:09):
foundation. Organic gardening didn't start withorganic pesticides. It started with soil and
that still is the foundation of successin it. And microlife helps you have
success in that way. That isreally really important. Now you're gonna find
microlife a lot of places. Youcan go to microlife furlizure dot com find
out all the different kinds of placesthat you can get it. I tell

(01:16:32):
you this, you can get atACE Hardware stores. Widely available at ACE
Hardware's and there's a whole bunch ofthose forty plus here in the Greater Houston
area. By the way, whileI'm talking about ACE, I just want
to remind you that after these storms, ACE Hardware is their trucks moving in
and out so fast, stocking up. I'm talking about generators, I'm talking

(01:16:53):
about batteries, I'm talking about tarps. You know why we need those,
covering up exposure, US, mosquitorepellence, all the things you deal with
and water damage, you know,like bleach and like dehumidiflyers and fans and
whatnot. ACE is the place,and they are stocked up to help you

(01:17:13):
have success. Just a quick reminder, since I'm talking about ACE, I'm
not going to be at Langham CreekACE today as we had planned. All
hands on deck. This is tohelp people in the area get the products
they need. We don't have timefor me to go by there and just
you know, stop and visit withgardeners. We'll do that another time.
We're putting that one off. Hopefullywe'll be able to come back and reschedule

(01:17:34):
that one. But get out toyour local ACE Hardware. Go to Acehardware
dot com, find the store locator, find the one near you. We're
now going to go to let's seeKenneth and Tomball. Hello Kenneth, Hello,
how are you doing. I'm well, sir. How can I help?
I have crapgrass in my yard andI just wonder how to get rid

(01:17:54):
of that. Well, once youhave grass and grass, it's hard to
get rid of because the things thatkill crabgrass kill long grass. You can
use a pre emergent herbicide in thespring. We would start doing that in
February. That's on my schedule atGardening with Skip dot Com gives you the
timing of it. Those can ifyou go to the schedule. They can

(01:18:16):
also be repeated, and we dothe second pre emergent applications. Kind of
right now, we're kind of atthe big time where the first application is
starting to wind down a little bit, and just to extend that we control
to the second. But the existingcrabgrass that's not going to kill it pre
emergent prevents it doesn't kill, sohandpling, mowing regularly to get the before

(01:18:41):
it gets the seed heads up thereto make the situation worse. That all
helps. Other than that, justknow that the more you build long density,
the more you grow yourself out ofthe crabgrass problem. And I don't
mean to be, you know,to make light of a weed problem,
but a friend of mine says,you make all your weeds go away by
taking off your glasses. Meaning whatcrabgrass is green, Saint Augustine is green.

(01:19:04):
You mow it and you you knowyou you be patient and in time
you get ahead of it. Thatway with the pre emergence and with building
a dense lawn. Uh So whenwe don't have a spray to kill it
in the lawn once it's up,we do have that strategy, okay,
okay, And I have your schedule, so I'll go in there and look

(01:19:26):
at it and fumble that. Damn. All right, Kenneth, good luck
with that, take care okay,thank you, you bet good to have
you. Good heavy with us today. Let's go now to Nancy in I
don't know where. Hello, Nancy, where are you as I'm in Richmond?
All right? I've got a quickquestion for you. My husband and

(01:19:47):
I have grown tomatoes for forty years. This year when I picked the beautiful
tomatoes, bring him in, putthem on the counter. They start within
two or three days they start gettinglittle brown Colca dots all over. And
we've never had that before. SoI haven't seen any bugs out there.
Can you tell me what's doing?That's a good question. Brown polka dots?

(01:20:12):
Now, I'm probably not little tiny, little tiny like pinhole five brown
dot. Okay. And if Ipeel the skin off, it does go
below the skin, okay. Whatit may be there are piercing sucking insects
called stink bugs and leaf footed bugs, and they put their mouth into your
tomato and spit and dissolve the cellsin there. And it could be that

(01:20:32):
you're just getting a little decay that'sfollowing that feeding based on them being tiny
spots and going down deeper. Thatmay be what you're seeing. It's not
a common thing to have that withstink bugs. But I don't know if
tomato disease that will cause what youjust described. Okay, well, we've

(01:20:53):
never had it. We've had we'vehad the bugs. I've seen their damage
before, but we've just never hadthis domenon and I'm having I love homegrown
tomatoes. I like to share them, but I feel like I can't share
them because don't decay before people evereat them. All right, maybe I
could avoid it by putting them inthe refrigerator, but I don't like the
taste once they're refrigerated. Well,I tell you one thing. If you

(01:21:15):
will refrigerate them and bring them outto room temperature, give them a little
time to warm up. Good,You're not going to find the taste is
affected, like when you eat acold tomato. Oh okay. I did
a trial one year with the HarrisCounty Master Gardeners and we took a bunch
of tomatoes and we cut vertically fromthe stem to the blossom end, so
the two halves are identical, andwe put celifi in or surround wrap over

(01:21:40):
each one. I left one overnighton the counter. I put the other
in refrigerator overnight. Then in themorning we took them out and we let
them warm up to room temperature,and we did a taste, a blind
taste test, and people couldn't tellthe difference. All right, that's the
secret. I will do that now. A lot of tomato growers are out
there screaming haresy. Heretic off withhis head. But I'm telling you that

(01:22:01):
was a trial we did. Allright, Thank you, Nan, Would
one of them thank you your pet? Thank you very much. Yeah,
that's kind of cool. By theway, I should have I should have
mentioned this to Nancy. You needto stick around for the first bumper song
if you like tomatoes of the nexthour, first bumper song coming up.
Nelson water Garden. Nelson Water Gardenout in Katie is a destination you need

(01:22:26):
to go to. It's actually nurseryand water garden. And boy did they
ever stock up on plants. Now. They became famous with their water gardens,
which are outstanding. I mean,do you want do you want fountains
at your house? Do you wantdisappearing fountains? Waterfalls? They had all
that. They can do it,or they can help you do it.
If you don't do a little,do it yourself or yours. They can
do that. But they have rangooncreepers in stock out there, and if

(01:22:49):
you've never seen a rangoon creeper,uh, the it comes out and has
these clusters of pink and ballooms.They change color. In fact, I
think the scientific name of it isquiz qualis, which in Latin means which
what it's like? You look atthat bloom and you go which what it's
got? Different color? You're changingeach day from pink and white. Oh,

(01:23:10):
beautiful, beautiful. Lots of differentkinds of plants, the vitex and
so on, beautiful hedranges and watergardenplants, things you've never seen before,
like the mosaic plant. All right, Nelsonwatergardens dot com. Nelson Watergardens dot
Com. Out there, and Katie, you gotta go check them out.
It is a destination. Take yourfriends too, by the way. You'll

(01:23:32):
wander through it, and I promiseyou'll be inspired. I was so impressed
first time I went there. Well, we're putting another hour in the books.
Here we go. I hope thatyou've enjoyed listening so far. If
you'd like to give us a call, be part of the part of the
show. Seven one three two onetwo five eight seven four seven one three

(01:23:53):
two one two fifty eight seventy four. I'll be right tacked. Welcome to

(01:24:18):
kt r H Garden Line with SkipRictor show Crazy just watching as many thanks

(01:24:39):
to stray. Hey, welcome backto guarden Line. Good to have you
with us today. I'm your host, Skip Rictor, and we're here to
answer your gardening questions. What kindof questions do you have? What are
you interested in? We will talkabout that our phone umber seven one three

(01:25:00):
two one two five eight seven fourseven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. Let's head out tospring and talk to Rich. Hello,
Rich, good morning, Skip,thanks for taking my call. Uh.
There's there's a product that I've usedto help neighbors that have been infested with

(01:25:20):
basket grass as well as existing crabgrass. And it's the agril On crab grass
Killer, Yes, with the activeingredients cinnamon that knocks out basket grass and
crabgrass without hurting any Saint Augustine.The issue is, yeah, the issue
is it's very expensive. You don'tget a lot of coverage. So if

(01:25:43):
you're doing spot treatments at works,if you need a whole yard, yeah,
probably cost prohibitive. Yeah, andI should I should have thought of
that one when fell a call whileago. It is it is, it's
it's some when you sprinkled on,I'm going to ask stuff turned? It
just turns black, doesn't it?Pretty quick? Yes? Very quick?
Works works very well and basket grassis not an easy one to kill with

(01:26:05):
conventional herbicides. So that's good,an amazing thing. All right, Hey,
thanks for bringing that up. Ishould have thought of that one,
but it is a good you're right, you're right. It is pricey.
They're talking about putting out, infact, they have, I think put
out a bigger container of it.That little round cylinder doesn't hold a whole
lot, and I think they're talkingabout putting out a bigger one if they

(01:26:27):
haven't already. So it's a littlemore economical for a larger area. Alrighty,
hopefully they do, because the twopounds is about twenty five bucks and
it doesn't go very far. Okay, well that would be a quick fix
though. While we do the thingswe're talking about and trying to build a
dense lawn to choke it out.So that's good. Thanks, Thanks Rich,

(01:26:50):
I appreciate that call. Always goodto be reminded of some of those
things. When it comes to dealingwith the weeds in the lawn, you
just have to remember that mow water, fertilized. Those are the three best
herbicides in town. Now, whatI mean by that, I mean when

(01:27:10):
you create a dense lawn weed seeds. Now, not talking about perennial weeds,
not talking about dollar weed or aVirginia button weed or some of these
that can survive in the grass evenwhen it's dense. We're talking about the
weeds coming from seed. They can'tget light and they can't germinate. That's
why you melt your garden beds sothat it keeps the light off the soil
and the weed seeds don't germinate.Well, we can mulch our lawns with

(01:27:35):
lawn. Do you see what I'msaying. We create density in the lawn.
We return our clippings to fall downon the surface and every little bit
helps. And when you create thatkind of environment, you choke out ninety
percent of your weed problems. Sothat should be if you're organic, if
you're synthetic, whatever you are,that should be step one in weed control.

(01:27:58):
And if you go to my scheduleonline, my lawn management schedule,
I talk about that. In fact, I think I put it in.
Yeah, it's definitely in there.But it's very very important to do that.
So the weed management schedule says theI'm going to read it to you
say this here it is horse's mouth. The first and most important step in

(01:28:20):
weed control is to build a dense, healthy turf over time through proper fertilizing,
mowing, and watering. Remember,wherever sunlight hits a soil, nature
plants a weed. Nature does notlike bear soil, and if you won't
take care of it, it's goingto throw weeds on it. To cover

(01:28:41):
that soil. Protect the soil,build the soil. Even weeds, yes,
when they decompose away, they buildthe soil. Nature does that.
So anyway, something to think about. Hey, folks at A and A
plants and produce up in Montgomery,they have an outstanding selection of plants and
I just absolutely outstanding beautiful lantanna.And if you've only had the yellow lantana,

(01:29:03):
the new gold, which is prettyIf you only had that kind,
you got to go buy Ana andcheck out some of the colors in Lantana
that they have many kinds of plants. Of course beyond Lantana. Today out
at Ana Plants and Produce May eighteenth, the less things have changed since I
last talked to them. Andy Chidester. Andy Chadester with Medina Products is going

(01:29:25):
to be out there at Ana fromtwelve noon to two pm today free gardening
workshop. Andy is extremely knowledgeable.You will thoroughly enjoy her out there.
You just go out there and checkit out. She gonna be talking about
soul remediation, getting our water logplants growing again and again. I've known

(01:29:46):
Andy since years ago and we bothwere in Austin, Texas was extension age
over there. You will not bedisappointed. Head out to Ana, and
when you're there, you're going tofind lots of plants and broadus beautiful beautiful
yard I just say yard art,but things like you know, an arbor,
a row of metal structure I'm withoutwords today, a metal structure that

(01:30:13):
goes over the top. You walkthrough those kind of things, an archway
there you go, uh, andyou're also gonna find every fertilizer I talk
about on Guardenline. They keep themall they're there, including the soil products
I talk about on guarden Line.All right, let's head out to Chapel
Hill now and we're going to talkto Rachel. Hell old, Rachel,
beautiful, beautiful, Hey, Rachel, can you hear me? Need to

(01:30:36):
turn that radio down? All right, I'm gonna put Rachel on hold and
we'll come back and check on herhair in just a second. Dandy Feed
and Tomball is your hometown feed store. Dandy Feed carries the fertilizers you hear
me talk about here on guardline,absolutely all of them. I mean they

(01:30:57):
do. And they also have soilblends like you've heard me talk about age
leaf, mole, compost, heirlooms, rose soil, or their fruit berry
and citrus mix, or they're Veggieand herbmex. All of that is at
D and D Feed. D andD Feed just a few miles west of
two forty nine in Tumble, afew miles west on twenty nine to twenty.

(01:31:18):
You also at D Anddfeed are goingto find selection of plants. They
keep plants out there in the front, always some new things coming in changing
if you'd like to give them acall two eight one three five one seventy
one forty four. When you getinside, you're going to find products for
everything you need to take care ofyour lawn, your landscape, and your
garden, from insects to diseases toweeds to just good fertilizers, D and

(01:31:42):
D feed out there in Tumble.I'm going to head back now, I'll
tell you what we are hitting upagainst, a hard break. I'm going
to come back and Rachel and Jim, you'll be my first two up.
We'll be right back in just amoment, if you'd like to give us
a call and get on the boards. Seven one three five eight seven four
seven one three two one two ktr H. Welcome back to the guard

(01:32:23):
Line. Thanks for being with ustoday. We are here to talk about
the things that interest you, soyou can whatever your question is, if
related to gardening, we'll give itour best shot and try to help with
that. Nitrophis Superturf is the silverbag. It's the nineteen four ten.
It's the slow release product that we'vebeen talking about from Nitrophos. Now half

(01:32:46):
the nitrogen is slow release, soyou put it down, you put on
NITROPHSS superturf watered in, you're goingto get a release of nitrogen. Then
over time you're going to get arelease of more and more and more nitrogen.
That's how it works, and that'show it should work. That is
a very effective way to fertilizer lawnshere in the summertime. That nineteen four
ten is a good ratio for nutrients. It's very similar to the ratio that

(01:33:10):
you would expect if you were tosend a grass clipping to the lab and
say what's in this? It's goingto be a ratio like nitrofoss superturf.
Now where do you buy it?Well, widely available and chanted forest down
in the Richmond Rosenberg area. Growersoutlet up in the Willis area RCW Nursery.
Yep, that's the one where TomboParkway comes into belt Way eight.

(01:33:31):
They're going to have NITROFOS superturf thereas well. We're going to now head
out to Rachel and Chapel Hill.Hello Rachel, Hi, how are you
doing. I'm good, I'm good. What's up? I wanted to put
down some molts around my trees.I have lots and lots of trees.
I wanted to put molts around themso we don't have to mow so close

(01:33:53):
to the base of the tree.And I was wondering, can I kill
the grass under the tree first andthen put the mulch down? You can
what kind of what would you recommend? What kind of grass is it?
Oh? Just a variety, anythingfrom bermuda. Yeah, yeah, you're
definitely gonna want to kill it first. And as far as grass killers,

(01:34:16):
there you got two options. Oneis something that just kills grass and there's
a couple of ingredients, but whenyou go to the store to buy it,
it'll say it's for grass only,just for killing grass. Uh,
there's there's two ingredients in that.If you're having to shop. One is
the that begins with the boys nameSETH s c t H, and the

(01:34:39):
other one I instead of spelling allthese out on the air, I just
give you the first few letters becauseno other product has these first few letters
s C t H for killing grassand then F l U A Z flu
ads for killing grass. Then theother alternative would be glypha say, which
is a product in Roundup and manyother brands now of it, and that

(01:35:00):
won't hurt the tree. It willnot hurt the tree if you don't over
apply it and drench it down intothe soil, which would be a waste
of product and money. Or makesure the tree doesn't have any little sprouts
coming out of the bottom because glefaskills green, green things. So if
you have some sucker sprouts out ofthe base and got that on it,
well yeah, I mean, itwouldn't kill the tree, but it would

(01:35:21):
it would make it would weaken it, it would hurt it. So be
careful with that. Okay, great, thank you very much, you met
Rachel. Good luck with that.Wish you well on that. I was
talking with Jason at Pearscapes a goodwhile back and we were just we were
just talking about the business and theindustry and and how landscapers that are good,

(01:35:44):
that are reputable, they stay busyand they I mean they book weeks
ahead of time, if not monthsin some cases for big jobs, and
it's so important to call and getset up, get on the schedule.
So in this case, so Pierscapescan come out and help you because they
are professional, they do excellent work. If you want proof of that,

(01:36:05):
go to pierscapes dot com. Pierscapesdot com. That's our website. You
will see some of the most beautifullandscape jobs you've ever seen. Their phone
number, by the way, istwo eight one three seven oh fifty sixty.
Two eight one three seven fifty sixty. Do you need hardscapes? Do
you need your irrigation system worked on? Do you need drainage? How many

(01:36:27):
people need drainage right now? Youknow you need drainage. When we get
rain like this, they can movethat water to another location. They know
how to get that done. Theyalso do quarterly maintenance, and this is
something most people don't think about.They will come out every quarter and they'll
trim, they'll weed, they'll fertilize, they'll check the irrigation, they'll do
a multch, refresh new mulch ontop of the old mault. They will

(01:36:51):
do seasonal color changes. So whetheryou do two changes a year or four
changes, they can come out andthey can do that. You just have
to go and check out the website, give them a call and get set
up again. Pierscapes dot com isa website. Two eight one three seven
oh fifty sixty. That's the phonenumber. You need. Let's go now

(01:37:13):
to Jim and New Vienna, Ohio. Hello Jim, good morning, Skip.
How are you, sir? I'mwell, thank you. I'm thinking
of bringing some tomato plants in thefive gallon buckets. What's the best type
of potting soil or guarding soil orwhat's we used for that type of book?
Well, a real good one isAirline Soils Veggie and herb Mex.

(01:37:34):
It's made for that and it woulddo really well. There are a number
of other good quality soil mixes outthere for that. But when you're talking
about vegetables and things and in abucket that would that would be a good
choice. I copy. If aplant is severely root bound with a ton

(01:37:56):
of roots at the very bottom,is it okay to cut off? It's
like the bottom quarter inch of thoselittle six Yeah, it is. When
you cut roots, the roots branchand sprout and grow back out, and
so whenever you just have a wadof roots like that, it's always good
to cut them. If the sidesof your container, you know, is
just white with a mass of roots, take a box cutter knife and just

(01:38:19):
slice downward through that cylinder of soilthat came out of the pot in about
three or four places, and itwill it will make a difference along the
side, like from top to bottomdown, Yeah, top to bottom,
slice down that way all the circlingroots you cut. Now, you know
if the if the container is likea one gallon container, well you don't

(01:38:43):
want to slice in Well, Imean you could, but those box cutter
knives are about a one inch blade. But you're just trying to get through
that outer wrapping of roots. That'swhat the goal is, right, Okay,
thank you so much. All right, Jim, thanks appreciate that call
very much. Buchanans and the Heightsis one of the garden centers here that
we call a destination. It's oneof the ones that people love to go

(01:39:08):
and shop. It's on eleven Street. Most of you probably been there.
I hope you have eleven Street inthe Heights. The website is Buchanansplants dot
com. You need to go tothe website and you need to sign up
to get their newsletter. It isoutstanding. You also need when you're on
the website to look at the educationalmaterials they have on there. There is

(01:39:29):
a lot of good stuff from writtento video do you name it? Excellent?
Excellent stuff. Now Buchanans, theytook a pretty good hit during these
storms and they've already gotten out there. They've getting things cleaned out, and
they are back open for business.I was shocked to see what they've been
able to accomplish. You need toget by there check them out. It's

(01:39:51):
one of the destinations that we loveto send people to, and we love
to go to because the quality ofproducts they have, the rain products are
having. Especially when you're looking forthings for pollinators or you're looking for native
plants, well that's the place togo. They just really shine in many
categories, but those certainly are twoof the ones. Buchanans Plants dot Com

(01:40:15):
on Eleventh Street in the Heights.Go by, say hi, I give
them some encouragement from you know,like a lot of you taking a good
storm hit the other day. ButI'm telling you they are back up and
running and going, so it'd bea good day to get out to Buchanan's
Plants. We are going to nowgo to Santa Fe and talk to Terry.
Hello, Terry, Hi, Skip, how's it going, good,

(01:40:35):
sir, good sir? Hey,I have a peach tree. It's sloaded
with peaches and they look like grapes. There's so many of them. But
there's black specks coming out from thestem and all the way around the white
side of the peach. You know. The other side is pink looking,

(01:40:56):
but the white size full of littleblack spots. Okay, it coming out
meaning it's sticking out above the skinof the peach. Yeah, from the
stem, huh. On the skinof the peach, it's a little black
looking specks on every one of them. Are they round? Yeah, they're

(01:41:17):
kind of, well, there's theother round. I'll tell you what they
run together. Yeah, it couldbe several things. There's a disease called
scab that makes round spots on thepeach skin. It's only skin deep.
If you get it bad enough,the skin can crack a little bit,
but it's only skin deep, andI wouldn't worry about it. I don't

(01:41:40):
know some of what you're describing isn'tI'm not picturing it. And so if
you'd like to send me a photo, I can put you on hold and
Produci will give you an email todo that. Make sure it's up close,
good shop focus. Just to besure that we're talking about the same
thing, all right, Okay,I mean I don't seeing war or anything

(01:42:00):
on it's curious, but the pinkside is nothing on the pink side,
just the white area. Okay,huh yeah, kind of need to see
it. So I'm gonna put youon hold and if you want to hang
up, you can. If youwant to hang around and get an email,
they'll they'll pick up and give youthat. Okay, Terry, all
right, thank you, bet byebye. Yeah. When it comes to

(01:42:24):
peaches, the common most common insectpests, we have two things big deals.
One is scale on the stems.That is a game changer, it's
serious. Another one is the plumbcurculio. Plumb curculios they're named after plums,
but all stone fruit, peaches,plumb and apricot, all of those.

(01:42:45):
They can go into the fruit andcreate the worm at the base of
the fruit. That's a base meaningI'm sorry, at the seed at the
pit inside the peach. Those twoare very significant. We have some other
things that can affect them. Stinkbugs, leaf footed bugs can affect them,
and some other pists, but that'sthe big When it comes to the
folier diseases, we've got scab whichis a low, round bb shaped spots

(01:43:11):
on the peach. There are someother foliage type diseases. Brown rot is
the number one that causes the wholefruit to rot, and you just have
to preventatively spray with that. Bythe way, that's a reminder sanitation is
important in our gardening. And whatdo I mean by sanitation, I mean
don't bring a problem in and ifit's in, get it out. So

(01:43:35):
for example, you bring a planthome as there's nematodes on the roots in
the pot, but you didn't liftit up and look at that. But
you're bringing it home. Now you'veintroduced that problem and there is not an
ematode eradicator out there. We justhave to end up living with it and
coming up with some strategies. Sodon't bring the problem in. Number two,

(01:43:56):
if you've got a problem, getit out. When you have a
fruit that dries and turns into amummy on the tree, When you have
a fruit that falls off the tree, oftentimes it may have like a plumb
curculio in it that's going to pupate. Go into the ground and guess what's
gonna happen next spring. It's goingto come out as an adult, and
you're going to have a whole lotmore fruit that are lost to that pest.

(01:44:17):
So you pick those up, youpick those off. If you have
a pear tree with far blight,that's the chocolate brown leaves that just die
on the tree and just stay there, chocolate brown. The ends of the
shoots that are tender tend to bendover into a shepherd's crook look. And
so what do you do with that? Will you print it out? You

(01:44:38):
go below the infected part and cutthose out. Every time you make a
cut, you spray your prunters withlysol to kill the bacteria that might be
on the prunter, so that whenyou make your next cut, you're not
introducing the problem to that. Andit's Lysol's it's a brand, I know.
But there's a good product. Issomething like that that's going to kill

(01:44:58):
all the the germs and things onit. That's sanitation, and that's just
a good practice that applies in manydifferent ways. We're gonna take a break
here for the news seven one,three, two, two, fifty eight
seventy four. I'll be right back. I forget all about the sweating and
digging every time I go out andpick me up the homegrown to maidos,

(01:45:19):
homegrown tomatoes. Would life be withouthomegrown tomatoes? Only two things? Money
came bye and that's true love grown. Oh yeah, homegrown tomatoes. You
cannot eat it. That's why thetomatoes or the queen of the vegetable garden

(01:45:41):
used to work in for agger lifeextensions say the three things that make our
phone ring or the three t's,and it's true on garden Line too.
Trees, turf, and tomatoes.Probably should say turf, trees, and
tomatoes, because I think turf isprobably the number one phone ringer here on
garden Line. Trees definitely also.And when it comes to the vegables,
no one calls me about their ColeRobbie. It's it's tomatoes. We obsess

(01:46:05):
over the perfect tomata and hopefully wecan have you help you have some success
with that. It's it's not thatdifficult to do. Welcome back to Gardenline.
I'm your host, Skip Richter,and we're here to help you have
success with your gardening. So justgive us a call seven one three two
one two KTRH if you have aquestion and we could help you with that.

(01:46:28):
It's summer fertilizing time, and ifyou have not fertilized your lawn this
summer, or if maybe you useda fast release product and then here come
the gully washers, well you oughtto consider something that's going to stretch it
out a little bit. And NelsonPlant Food has two products that both have
a slow release in them. Thefirst is Bruce's Brew. Now, Bruces

(01:46:49):
Brew has an immediate release, butit also has two different kinds of a
slow release nitrogen in it that's goingto gradually feed over time. So if
you want a quick yes, itcan absolutely give you that and then continue
to feed as well. The otheris slow and Easy, and this is
really a state of the art slowrelease fertilizer. It will release nutrients for

(01:47:13):
two, three, four, evenmore months down the line. It really
stretches it out. In fact,if you do that now, if you
use nitrovass slow and Easy right now, you won't have to fertilize again until
we get to fall because it'll stillbe releasing your nutrients on through all the
summer months. It's really amazing andgood for that. It's also a little

(01:47:34):
bit ofcidifying for the soil, whichis a good thing. A good thing
when it comes to diseases such astake all root rot, for example,
which prefers higher pH soil. It'sgoing to give you that gradual growth,
so you're not going to have thesame You know, you fertilize with too
much nitrogen, you get to mowa lot more. It doesn't do that,

(01:47:54):
gives you a nice gradual growth.Nelson plant food both the bruce is
Brute and the slow and Easy Holidayplant foods widely available throughout the Houston area.
Went a head over to single Ranchand talk to Charlie. Hey,
Charlie, good morning. How areyou? I'm well, thank you?
How can we help you today?Can even get my words? Well,

(01:48:15):
I'm actually actually live in Fort Worthand I'm a baby boomer and I'm responsible
for a lot of environmental damage.So I'm doing everything i can to try
to clean that up. And oneof them is replacing our high water use
Saint Augustine with something we've just beenhearing about a mixture of red and white
clover. And you don't have todig anything up. What we've been told

(01:48:36):
is you just toss it out thereand it kind of grows. It looks
very similar to a lawn and althoughyou do have pretty flowers, sometimes it's
just a really nice alternative if youcan go and shade sun any of those
kind of things. Is that.What would you think about that? I'm

(01:48:56):
very I question the success of that. I don't have hard research. I've
not dealt with it personally, soI'm not going to be too absolute in
what I say. But i cantell you this that clovers, when you
look at clovers here in Texas,when you get into the heat of summer,
they're not a lot of the clover'slooking good around and about. And

(01:49:20):
I know that when it comes tofoot traffic clover it's going to have a
problem with that as well. I'mnot saying don't try it, check it
out. I need to look intoit more. I've heard this from someone
else, but I'm a little hesitantabout that. There are some grasses that
are a little bit more resilient outthere and that help in terms of not

(01:49:42):
needing water so much, and sothat would be an option. But without
just saying no, don't do it, it won't work, I'm just saying
I'm skeptical. Okay, okay,Well, I appreciate that you're We've heard
kind of both sides, but theextra are telling us try it someplace where
it doesn't matter and let me knowhow it goes. That's exactly. That's

(01:50:04):
exactly. Yeah, and I'll letyou know. I'm really enjoying this.
I'm actually driving down the corpus andI'm just loving all of this. This
is great. Thank you so much. Well, good, good, And
yeah there's some there's some a lotof cool new options out there if you
want like a groundcover that would giveyou the heat tolerance and some drop tolerance

(01:50:27):
too. There's something called frog fruitthat is it's actually a weed, but
it makes a groundcover. People thatsell garden centers that sell native plants often
will have it, and it spreads. It has little tiny flowers that are
very popular with certain pollinators, andit makes a nice little, nice little
dense area. It can put upwith a little shade, but especially in

(01:50:49):
the sun it does very very well. So that's just another thing to consider.
That's a little more Texas Native.Thank you so much. I really
appreciate that. We will definitely,all right, Charlie, thank you appreciate
that. Yeah, that is thecase. Interestingly, Texas A and M
released a Saint Augustine just recently hand it is reported to be it's reported

(01:51:15):
to approach Bermuda grass when it comesto drought tolerance. That is, that
is saying something The turf grass breederTexas A and M has really focused on
grasses being more resource efficient, morein this case with Saint Augustine, water
efficient, and when when you create, when you do your breeding, and

(01:51:39):
when you point toward a particular goalin time, you're going to achieve that.
And I'm pretty I was pretty excitedto see this come out. I
think that I think we're going toend up being really really impressed with it.
I put some in my yard thisyear, and of course right now
everything looks good. It's raining andthe temperatures aren't that bad and stuff.

(01:52:02):
When it heats up, I'm goingto pull back the water really hard on
it and see how it does.I know right now, it's happy,
it's doing very very well. Andyeah, so we'll just see. I'll
let you know as we get alittle further into it, make some more
comments on it as well. Ifyou live done in the League City area,

(01:52:25):
your hometown feed store is League CityFeed So if you need that fertilizer
you know I've been talking about fertilizersthis morning. Well they've got it.
They carry a wide variety. Ifyou need soils, quality soil blends like
the heirloom soils we were talking about, they've got those down there as well.
League City Feed stocks up all thethings you need to control pests,

(01:52:46):
weeds and diseases. But they're feedstore and you get good service, the
old time service. We carry thesacks out for you. It's just a
good place to go. And youknow, they're open from nine am to
six pm Monday through Saturday. Closedon Sunday, but nine am to six
pm. So if you have torun by after work, they're still there
and they can help you out.Two eight one three three two sixteen twelve.

(01:53:10):
Anyone down around League City, we'retalking about Santa Fe, Dickinson,
Lamark Baycliff, Webster, Clear LakeCity, El Camino Real, San Leone,
all of you. This is yourhometown feed store. League City Feed
just a few blocks south of Highwayninety six on Highway three in League City.
Premium pet Foods two by the way. Uh you're listening to garden Line

(01:53:33):
and our phone number if you wouldlike to get on the call by the
way. We're gonna take a littlebreak here and we'll be back. You
can get on the board and youwill be first up when we come back.
Seven one three two one two fiveeight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four.I'm just handle back now your panzel say,

(01:54:02):
welcome back to guard Line. Goodto have you with us today.
We're going to head straight out tocopper Field and talk to Donna this morning.
Hello, Donna, good morning.I was going to come see you
this morning at ACE Hardware, butI don't have power since Thursday. All
right, really, thank you,but we had to cancel that. Aces

(01:54:25):
well, I understand, and Iunderstand. Yeah. I have a almost
a half acre here in Copperfield,and the last two years I have had
a weed that is very skinny leafed, like a grass type thing. It
gets about twelve inches tall when it'smature. It makes clumps everywhere. I've

(01:54:46):
got hundreds of it, seems likein the backyard, and I used to
always dig them up or pull themup. They're easy to pull up when
the ground is wet, but thatdoesn't do my hands very well. But
I have a problem of finding outwhat it is and how to treat it.
At the end of the tiny littlegrass blade, it has like a

(01:55:10):
little seed pod on the end.It almost looks like a bird, but
it's the seed pod type looking.Okay, like it's it's tiny, like
size of an English pe or somethingreal small. Right, it's even Yeah,
the seed pod is even tinier thanthat. It's very small. Yeah,
Okay, that is a sedge,and there there's a product. There's
a weed. There are a numberof sedges, nutsedge or yellow and purple

(01:55:33):
nutsedge or sedges. It's not that, but there sedges. There's also something
called kai linga. Ki linga isanother weed like that. And you're gonna
have to go with a product forsedges. So you have things like manage
is one product. Image is anotherproduct. Sedge hammer. That makes sense,

(01:55:55):
sedge hammer to hammer those sedges.Those will all work. If you
go to a ACE hardware store inyour neighborhood, you're going to be able
to find the products that are goingto work quite well actually against sedges,
and they're gonna they're gonna carry those. So the closest to you is probably
going to be the one on Highwaysix North Hamilton, hardware on Highway six

(01:56:20):
North is up there. We weretalking about, you know, you coming
over to see me at Langham Creek. ACE hardware that is very close to
you. It just kind of dependson exactly right where you are, but
Langham Creek would be a great one. On five twenty nine f five twenty
nine. Yeah. Is there arethese spray said you sprayed? Well,

(01:56:42):
they are spray's uh there, someare powder, some are liquid. Uh.
Sedge Hammer is gonna come as alittle packet of powder that you mix
into water. But there are otherbrands on there. And that's why when
you go to ACE, just justask them saying, hey, I need
sedge control. Absolutely. My landbacks up to the bayou and along that

(01:57:02):
back part of the fence. It'sjust almost solid with these things, Okay.
I mean I've just got so manyof them, so all start attacking
them. Well, if you wantto be true, if you want to
be triple Share, I'm going toput you on hold. You can either
hang up or if you want togive get my email address from the producer
and send me a close up pictureso I can be triple Share. But

(01:57:24):
I'm I'm ninety percent sure you're talkingabout Kai Linga are a very closely related
sedge. Okay, well, andwe all enjoy your show in our neighborhood.
All right, Donna, thank youvery much, appreciate those those kind
words. Kingwood Garden Center and Warren'sSouthern Gardens out in Kingwood, they're outstanding

(01:57:45):
places to go. And the reasonis when you go there, you're going
to find all the different plants,and you know that you're looking for all
the unusual varieties and cultivars and colors. Right now is a summer season coming
on. We need to get ourcolor out there, and we need to
get it established now so when thehot weather arrives, it just bounces right

(01:58:05):
in there and takes off growing anddoes very well. And you can do
that. You can do that atKingwood Gardens. There they are experts.
Do you want something kind of uniquelike plumbago, the Hawaiian lay flower,
our beautiful, beautiful perennial hibiscus,Yes, they have those as well.
I find that anytime you go toworn Southern Gardens, you're going to find

(01:58:29):
everything you need, including the fertilizers, including the heirloom soil blends and things
like that, and including every kindof plant, cacti, vegetables, herbs,
flowers, shrubs, trees. Thenew Supergrow Plus from Medina they have
that out there too. That's asixteen zero four sixteen zero four from Medina

(01:58:51):
Supergrow Plus, an excellent product andthey have it. You expect that when
you go to Warrens Garden Center forthem to have the supplies you need and
the plants that you want to have. We're going to now go to Bill
in Conro Hello, Bill high Skip. Hey. I have dug out a
bunch of my grass because it wasfrom last year. It was just not

(01:59:14):
doing well. And then also Ihad a lot of unwanted weeds and other
grass permunity in it. Anyway,my point is so and I killed it,
and I'm now pulling it up andkind of digging it in. But
I'm realizing that the soil is reallykind of obviously the rains made it kind
of it's just really i'll call ittight, but it's not very light.

(01:59:38):
I'm just trying to think of whatamendment can I use to lighten it up.
I know there's expanded sail, there'ssand, there's deconstructed granite, there's
yeah, looking through the Nature's waveresources for different kinds of soils. It
seems like they use mortar, sayinga lot. Uh you can uh,
but you have a heavy clay,right, it's not heavy clay because I

(02:00:02):
know heavy clay where it's just reallyit's just like god a cement when it
dries. This is not that Okay, Well, in general, I don't
recommend mixing sand in. It takesa lot of sand to make a significant
textural difference to use, you know, clay as an example. I realize
you're not talking about heavy but whenyou if you had modeling clay and you

(02:00:27):
put a bunch of sand in itand then mashed it around, you would
have modeling clay with sand in it. You know what I'm saying. It
would take a lot of sand toactually loosen that up. And so I
think you would do I think youwould do better. What are you going
to grow? Are you going togo back with lawn in that area or
what? Yes, okay, yeahyou could use a expanded shale product.

(02:00:49):
But I'm telling you of all theplants out there, turf our Saint Augustine
turfs and stuff, they can takea clay. I mean they're grown along
the Gulf Coast of Texas in formerrice patties where it's a heavy clay and
that's easy to slice right under it. And that's when you buy the side
you get that real sticky, heavyclay. Grass grows in that, so

(02:01:10):
I'm not you know, if youwere growing some other kind of plant,
I'd be more a litter really,am ind the soil a lot. I
don't know that you need to worryabout it so much in the clay because
it's tolerant. Now, if yougot a drainage problem, I would fix
that for sure with a French drainor whatever you need before you put the
lawn in. I am working onthat. I had done some of that

(02:01:30):
already, and I'm expanded a littlebit, and that doesn't really get it
off. Okay, all right,well, good luck with that. Wish
you all right? Well, thanksa love for that, Yeah, wish
you will. Speaking of soils andimprovement and stuff, green Pro green Pro
when it comes to aeration and compostop dressing. Green Pro is an expert

(02:01:51):
at that. They are up inthe Magnoia area and they serve kind of
the northwest quadrant of Houston. Youknow, they have wonderful equipment that does
an excellent job. You can goto their website greenpro dot net, greenpro
dot net and find exactly, youknow, the kinds of products you need,

(02:02:12):
kinds of services, where they reachand so on. For example,
they cover spring and Cyprus and woodlandsand Conro and Willis. Those are all
north. They go over to Magnoia, Montgomery. They come down to Kadie,
West Houston, Central Houston in NorthHouston area. That kind of Northwest
Cot quadrant is what they serve.They bring a top quality compost to spread
over the top. They do thataeration that is so important. Even though

(02:02:35):
it's a clay soil and the grasscan grow in a clay, They do
that aeration that gets the hole downin the ground. Compost falls into the
hole and it just creates increased oxygenlevels and increased root enhancement in those areas.
That's why Greenpro is such an importantservice to having a beautiful, beautiful
lawn. Also, earlier I wastalking about bugout Max and someone had been

(02:03:00):
asking me about, well, whatcan you what does it kill? Well?
It kills insects period, I meanlike one hundred and thirty different insects
within forty eight hours, it hasdone its job. I mean it's not
like it takes it ten days tokill something. It does its job and
it lasts. When you do aNitrofoss bug Out Max application, you're going

(02:03:21):
to kill insects for the entire summerseason. The product works well in that
way. Now what you're going tofind is ants and fleas and ticks,
and you know we're coming up onchinchbug and possibly soid webworm season. It's
going to be effective against all ofthose different kinds of pests. It's available
many places, like Nitrofoss products are. You're going to find it at Fisher's

(02:03:44):
Hardware both in South Houston on Southmoreand in Laporte on Broadway Street. They
carry it. You're going to findit at Kingwood Ace Hardware they carry it
out there as well. I wantto go now to the phones and uh,
talk to David. David, I'vegot a little bit of time,
but let's get a start on itand then I'm going to hold you over
to finish up. We might beable to finish it quickly. I've got

(02:04:09):
a Sago palm out front and it'sbeen there for years and it has these
little sprouts, these little baby sproutsthat come up from the base of it.
Yes, and for many years I'vecut them off because if I remember
correct, if somebody told me thatthat hurts the mother plant. But number
one, is it okay to cutthem off? And number two, they

(02:04:30):
are sprouting out of us cylindrical canshaped patch of stem. I guess that's
about the size of a soup can. And is it okay to cut those
and remove those as well? Yes? Now, quick answer. You can
leave them. You can cut them. If you leave them, you have
a little clump of sago palms thatdoesn't hurt the plant. That's their natural

(02:04:54):
state. If you want to cutthem off and have a single trunk,
you can do that too. Thesmaller they are you remove them, the
more likely you can root them.You can just set them on the ground.
It's gonna take them a while.They don't root fast, but in
a number of weeks they will developroots and those baby pumps can be additional
sago palm plants. Thank you verymuch, you show Oh well, thank

(02:05:16):
you. I appreciate the call.All right, by bye YouTube. All
right, here's the music that meanswe are heading to another top of the
hour break, but that also meanswe're going to be coming back. I
got another hour in me today.I hope you do too. Our phone
number seven one three two one twofifty eight seventy four. Seven one three

(02:05:38):
two one two fifty eight seventy four, or for those of you who like
to dial by letters kt r H, I should just choose that. That'd
be a lot easier for me.Seven one three two one two k t
r H. Don't forget my schedulesare online at gardening with skip dot com.
Gardening with Skip dot Com schedules arefree, they're multicolored. They'll tell

(02:05:59):
you ex exactly what to do everymonth of the year to grow a beautiful
lawn and to manage the things thatwant to chump on your lawn. We'll
be right back. Welcome to kt r H garden Line with scamp Rictor.
It's crazy just watching as many goodthings. Welcome back to guard Line.

(02:06:40):
Good to have you with us today. What are we going to talk
about? You tell me what's yourquestions? Be happy to answer those at
seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one
two k t r H. Microlifefertilizers are perhaps one of the best known
or Dane fertilizer brands in the wholestate of Texas. They widespread, many

(02:07:05):
different products and a lot of peoplejust love to use the products because they
work. That's the bottom line.Now, the green bag, the six
two four, that's the standard forour lawns and can be used for other
things as well. But you applythat, it goes into the ground surface
and that's where microbes get a holdof it and they break those nutrients out

(02:07:26):
of it down, they bring theyturn them loose. If you will release
them into the soil where the plantroots can get them, and it's a
gradual feed over a period of time. You don't have to wait for it.
It's going to give you some prettyquick results, but it's going to
gradually over time release more and moreof those nutrients and that helps your lawn
to grow at a nice, steady, even pace. It helps the soil

(02:07:48):
to remain in a healthy state oreven to get better. Whenever you put
organic matter in the soil and organicproducts by microlife they are or they are
organic man, it's going to enhancethe soil microbial activity. Plus they even
come chalk with a lot of thoseadditional microbial organisms that are helpful for plant

(02:08:11):
roots. You know, plant rootsand microbes they live together. It's a
coexisting not just getting along, buthelping each other, enhancing each other.
And we don't think about that alot, but that is a big part
of plant life is having those microbialfriends in the soil that help the plant
roots, and microlife helps enhance that. The purple bag is the humans plus

(02:08:35):
concentrated compost in a bag. Itdoes help with your soil structure as it
works its way down into the soil. It does help with microbial activity.
Humus is what nature does with organicmatter in its ultimate final form. That
is how the world is run sincethe beginning. Humus gets into the soil

(02:08:58):
and it enhances the soil that carbonthat is real high levels in humans.
That's very important for microbes and forsoil health in general. Microlife products are
widely available. You can find outwhere you can find out more about them
because there's a lot of miamuven talkedabout yet Microlife Fertilizer dot com Microlife Fertilizer

(02:09:18):
dot com. That'd be a goodplace to start if you are dealing with
a challenge in your landscape and you'rethinking, you know, I just need
color. It's it's kind of blah. I've tried some things but I haven't
had success. Why don't you justrun out to Injene Gardens Nursery en Richmond.

(02:09:39):
That is a It is a showplaceand if you've never been, when
you go, you're going to seewhy I like it so much. Angenet
Gardens has an extremely extremely wide pallidof plants. There's not gonna be things
you want that they're not going tohave there. They just they just do
knowledgeable staff to help you find theright plants that you want. But if

(02:10:03):
you walk in and you say,hey, look i've got flower beds and
I need them to look good allsummer. I need a combination of plants
that's going to do that? Whatdo you got? They're gonna be able
to tell you. If you say, I'd like to put a beautiful container
on my patio and I want tohave a bunch of different kinds of flowering
and color plants in it, whatshould I do? They can show you.
I mean, they have ones theyput together there, but they can

(02:10:24):
help you create whatever it is youwant. The color pattern or palette that
you would put together. They're expertsat this stuff. They have the fertilizers
and the soils that I talk abouthere on Garden Line and Enchanted Gardens en
Richmond. It's Enchanted Gardens Richmond dotcom. They are on the Katie fullsher

(02:10:45):
Side of Richmond on FM three fiftynine Monday through Saturday eight to five,
Sunday ten to four. Go checkthem out. Our phone number is seven
one three two one two five eightfour seven one three two one two KTRH.
If you'd like to give us acall, now would be a good
time. You can get on theline without much weight at least if you're

(02:11:09):
If you'd do all quick, thatwould be That would be what I would
recommend if you would like to aska question. Nitrofuss's bug Out Max is
an insecticide that you put down andwith thein forty eight hours it has gone
to work and it is already gettingthe job done, total control and forty
eight hours of whatever kinds of pastu'redealing with. Is it ants? Is

(02:11:31):
it flees? Is it ticks?Fleas is a big one. You know,
the dog goes out and the fleasget in the in the yard and
then when the dog goes back out, please are jumping on the dog to
come back. In Part of fleacontrol is controlling them out in the thatch
in your yard as well, ticks, chinchbugs and sod web worms. Sod
web worms and chinchbugs are going tobe kicking in here pretty soon. Hopefully

(02:11:54):
we'll not have a bad sod webworm year, but you never know.
But this product, Nitropuss bug OutMax, is going to give you control
through the whole summer season. Itlasts out there. It's easy to find.
You're going to find night to Fossbug Out Max for insect control at
the Encented Gardens down in Richmond Rosenberg. You're going to find it at Shades

(02:12:16):
of Texas up in the Woodlands area. You're going to find this also in
Kingwood Ace Hardware. You're going tofind it at the Arbor Gate. You're
going to find it at Shades ofTexas and South Houston Fisher's Hardware both in
South Houston and Laporte locations. Easyto find. Night Foster products very widely
available and in this case, veryvery effective. I was working on some

(02:12:41):
things at the house. I wastalking about putting that bed in a little
bit earlier. There are a numberof things, you know, as a
gardener you never finish. I don'tknow if you know that, but you
don't. And there's always an what'smy next task, what's my next endeavor,
what's my planting. I'm about toput in a little orchard on the

(02:13:01):
side of the house, and Igot to get that area ready. I've
got a lot of different things Iwant to do to it to get ready
to go. I've got some bedscoming in, and I've got some of
the little eleven inch veggo beds comingin to get me drainage. Fruit trees
need drainage, and peach trees andplum trees. In fact, they actually

(02:13:22):
the roots produce hydrogen cyanide in awater logged location, and that just they
can't tolerate that. So this isa heavy clay soil. I used to
have a fig tree there, andwhen it had some issues, I didn't
care for the kind of fig.I pulled it up. But when I
did, the root system was fiveinches deep. I'm not kidding. It

(02:13:46):
was like you put five inches ofsoil on top of a concrete driveway and
grew a fig tree in it.It just hit the ground and it went
sideways five inches deep and wide,and it was doing really good because it
was a clay soil old water.Figs are happy with that, but not
with the kind of fruit I'm ina plant. So I'm putting in a
little eleven inch raised bed just toget some soil there with some good drainage.

(02:14:09):
I'll be doing a constant mulch allaround those beds so that I have
an all weather pathway. But alsothat mulch is decomposing and creating a really
nice root environment for those trees.So even an area that doesn't drain well
can be improved on in this way. And so if you'd like to grow
fruit trees but you feel like youdon't have the area for it, can
you call let's talk about it.I think we can walk you through that

(02:14:31):
and help you have success. We'regoing to go now, Actually we're going
to go right now to a break. Teresa and Lauren, I've tucked my
way all the way up to break. You'll be the first two when I
come back. One that farmer Brownis taking the air locked up the barnum
with the greatest of care do thehand hold something? Stir wo's there?

(02:14:54):
This is somebody there? Nobody hereabout? Ain't nobody here at all?
Oh yeah, I got to havethat Western swind but my fix stupid.
Welcome back to Guarden Line our phonenumber seven one three two one two KTRH
if you'd like to give us acall. If you are looking for quality

(02:15:16):
soil, blends and mulches and you'redown Southeuston, Ciena malt is a place
you need to go. They're downjust north of Ruth Sharon near where Highway
six and two eighty eight are,you know down there for FM five twenty
one. That's the actual road they'reon FM five twenty one. The website
is cienamultch dot com. That's easy, easy to remember for all of you

(02:15:37):
in that area. You know,they deliver within about twenty miles. There's
a delivery fee for big bulky things, of course, but they deliver about
twenty miles. So Siena Plantation,Iowa Colony, are Coola Sandy Point like
Olympia, Pomona First Colony, Meridian, Russia and Manul Riverstone twelve Valley,
Fresno. Let's just go through allof them here. Sweetwater, Pearland sun
Creek estates aren't anywhere out near theBrazer Spen State Park. This is your

(02:16:01):
place to go. And you know, brown stuff comes before green stuff.
Get the soil right when you driveout of Cienamals. You've got a compost
or a soil blend or a finelyscreened leaf compost quality for top dressing too.
That stuff, by the way,You've got mulches to go on top

(02:16:22):
of the soil. You have thefertilizers. If I talk about a fertilizer
on Guardline, it's at Ciena Malts. You've got that, and you are
set up to set that stage,that foundation in the brown stuff the soil
so that the plants just have success. So Cienamals don't forget it. Every
fertilizer I talk about on Guardline isgoing to be down there, and a

(02:16:45):
wide variety of many products, includingsome gorgeous, very cool landscape rocks as
well. We're going to go outto bel Air now and talk to Teresa.
Hello, Teresa, I have aBranford pair in the backyard. It
is a gorgeous tree and the Ithink there's year too that there's clusters of

(02:17:07):
leaves that look dead. Okay,what can I do to help this tree
that is fire blight? Are theykind of a chocolate dark brown? And
the leaves you're hanging on the branches? Yeah, A bacteria attacks that branch
in the spring when we're having rainyweather, and it moves pretty quickly through
the branch. It cuts off allthe flow of water and nutrients, and

(02:17:28):
the whole leaf turns chocolate brown anddies. Typically the tip, which is
sort of succulent, bends over andwe call it a shepherd's crook effect.
But what you got to do?How big is this tree? It's a
gosh, it's taller than our houseand we are we have a two story
home. You have a good reeltorcould you move? Because you're not going
to want to You're not going towant hit. I'm kidding. I was

(02:17:52):
going to say, you want togo out and print all those fire blight
strikes out, but that is totallyimpractical. You just it work and I
couldn't even put it down in it. That's why I was going to go
straight to, hey, you needto move. So just Lida that anything

(02:18:13):
you do that encourages vigor in thattree is going to make it worse.
So don't do extra fertilizing around thattree. If it's a little dry,
that's okay. You don't have topush it into a lot of you know,
with extra water for the tree's sake. You gotta do what you gotta
do for your lawn. But ingeneral, just hold back. It's part

(02:18:33):
of the game with pairs, andBradford is no exception to that. For
smaller trees, you can print itout. There are some sprays you can
put on, but on a treethat size, it is completely not practical
and probably not going to be veryeffective. Okay, will it ever stop
or will it always? This isthe way it's going to be for the

(02:18:54):
rest of the duration. Kind ofthe way it's going to be each year
is different. Some years are reallybad depending on the temperatures and the rainfall
in the spring. But now thatyou have those strikes in there, the
bacteria is present. So here comesfrom rain when the tree is blooming,
and it splashes those bacteria all overthe place, and then here comes the

(02:19:15):
fire blight as a result right behindthat. Okay, all right, in
the spring next year, should Itry to cut back a little bit or
in the winter. I mean inthe winter, maybe try to cut a
little bit if I can. Oris it just fruitless? I mean that's
not I mean it's such a bigtree. It's it's impossible to get it
all. Yeah. I just don'tthink you're going to see a benefit that

(02:19:35):
warrants the effort that's going to be. Yeah, okay, thank you,
Yeah you bet all right, takecare, Thank you for the call.
Appreciate that very much. Medina hasa new product that I'm really excited about,
and this is called Supergrow Plus.It's one of their has to grow
products, you know, they havethey have a hash to grow, they

(02:19:56):
have a has to grow for lawnsand so on. The super Grow Plus
is the latest and it is asixteen zero two fertilizer, which is a
good blend, especially for lawns thathave been fertilized over the years that you're
returning the clippings to that middle numberis not very important for lawns success.
Now. Of course, you canhave levels that are so low that you
need it. But I did astudy one time where I looked at two

(02:20:20):
hundred lawns in a black clay soil, and not one lawn had a phosphorus
efficiency because they'd been fertilized for theyears and phosphorus doesn't wash away easily.
It sticks around, and so supergrilplus is an ideal thing. Now,
it's got great stuff in it.You know, it's got half about a
fifth of the nitrogen is going tobe in a slow release form. It's

(02:20:41):
going to have seaweed extract in it. It's going to have a keylated form
of iron which helps it helps itto stay green. The yellowing of your
Saint Augustine typically is due to aniron deficiency. It's got humic acid,
it's got molasses in it. It'sjust a quality product. You hook it's
a quart bottle, hook up toyour hose, takes about ten minutes to

(02:21:01):
do your whole lawn if you it'llcover about four thousand square feet too,
So I would encourage you to giveit a try. The combo of products
in this ought to be ideal forgraining up a lawn, providing a little
bit of an extended feed as well, and it's all for Medina has to
grow. Super grow Plus sixteen zerotwo again widely available like Medina products are.

(02:21:26):
We're going to go now to springand talk to Lauren. Hello,
Lauren, Hi, Yeah, goodmorning. How are you doing. I'm
will sir great. We have anissue on the front lawn by our curb.
We have a sinkhole that's been therefor over two years, ideas,
and we've done all kinds of things. We've put dirt, packed it up,

(02:21:48):
We've put rocks, small rocks,bigger rocks, and they've all gone
away and it just keeps getting bigger. Right now, it's about maybe a
little a little over two feet bytwo feet by two feet deep. And
so we've you know, I've lookedonline for solutions, and everybody has a

(02:22:13):
different opinion. Do this, No, don't do this, do this,
And I've tried to call different places, you know, around town, and
no, we don't do that orthis and that. So I thought i'd
call it. Yeah, my favoritedirt guy. I see what you have
to say. That's good. Well, I'm going to not add to the

(02:22:33):
do this is. I am nota sinkhole expert, but i do know
this. It's going somewhere, andI'm curious as to where it's going.
Hopefully it's not one of those bigold giants sinkhole kinds of things. You
hear about eventually happening, but somewherethat is washing and going. And I
tell you, I don't know whereto begin. Yeah, well, I

(02:22:58):
just really don't know where to beginto tell you, and who would be
able. I first discovered it.The I first discovered it, I was
walking out to my curb and atthe time I didn't know it was there
because it's kind of behind some bushesor whatever, you know, but close
to the and it's covered with itwas covered with glass grass, so I
didn't see it. I stepped intoit and fell over like a dead tree

(02:23:20):
and broke my hand. So yeah, so I but do you have any
idea like who I could? Iwonder if it's close enough to the curb
for you know, the city maintenanceor something to at least come out and
check it out. I don't know, is it it's not affecting the integrity
of the sidewalk or the street rightnow, it's not the sidewalk, but

(02:23:43):
there's close to it is a lightfuland so uh. I've reached out to
our homeowners and they said, well, we'll to contact our grounds keep a
guy, which I've were several times. Nobody's ever come out yeah. Yeah,
boy, I tell you, I'mlike I said, I'm not going
to add to the do this.I don't know what to tell you on

(02:24:05):
that because landscapers that typically isn't theirforte right. You know that you've already
put stuff down in the hold,You've tried rocks, you've tried other things.
Yeah, that water's going somewhere,so I'm kind of concerned about where
is all that's going and why what'sgoing on there? Who knows? Right,

(02:24:26):
My best thing that I found onthe internet was to pour, like
dig it out a little bit andthen pour about a third of the way
with the cement and then put dirtand grass on top of that. Yeah,
which sounds good. But if underneaththe cement it's being sucked out too,

(02:24:46):
yeah yeah, and as water washesover that cement around the edges,
it's going to be taking soil andjust eating away around the sides of the
cement. I mean that does makesense, but right, Yeah, I
don't know, And I don't mindsaying I don't know, And this is
a big I don't know. Sorry, I don't know what else to suggest
to you, you know this,Yeah, maybe because I haven't really called

(02:25:11):
the city. I just call itthe homemoks people. So because it's next
to a light pole, maybe they'llbe right more concerned. Well, get
somebody out possibly, So it's goingto be a while though. I can
tell you this. The city hastheir hands full for a long time after
these last few nights, and sonobody's gonna come out, nor should they
right now. But you can trylater on, uh you know, talking

(02:25:33):
to them. Maybe get somebody inthe engineering department. Uh, yeah,
don't I don't even know. Youknow, the county deals with stuff like
roads and bridges and creeks and stabilizingsoil for those kinds of things. There
may be somebody who could at leastpoint you in the right direction. They're
not going to come out extra problem, but they have expertise in things similar

(02:25:56):
to that. So you might trycalling Harris County Commissioner's office and saying,
hey, any place you can directme to here for some help and see
what they can exactly. That Iguess is the closest to an answer I
got for you, Lauren. Lauren, Okay, sorry, very good.
I appreciate it. You bet takecare. RCW Nurseries, which is the

(02:26:20):
Garden Center up there where a beltWay eight two forty nine come together.
Highway two forty nine goes to tomballon belt Way eight RCWS to get a
got it nursery. If they don'thave it, they're going to do their
best to find it. At RCW, you're going to find the fertilizers that
I talk about on garden Line.They've got them there. They're in stock.
They have In fact, they havean excellent stock of a lot of
different kinds of things. RCW hasbeen around since nineteen seventy nine when them

(02:26:43):
Williamson family opened it. They stillhave the Williamson Tree Farm, which is
where they get their trees from.At RCW quality trees, they can come
out, they can do the plantingfor you. That's what I would recommend,
especially if it's a good sized tree. But it's going to be the
species that do well here. Ifyou tell them, hey, I got
a little bit of a wet spot, what kind of oak would do best?
They know they know the answer tothat, and that way that investment

(02:27:07):
is going to be there fifty yearsfrom now looking better than ever for you
or or you know, your kidsif they end up in the house someday
that is the way to go.You don't want to mess around with cheap
trees with species that don't grow here. If someone says this is a fast
growing tree, what do they say, don't don't look a gift horse in
the mouth. Well you better lookthat one in the mouth. You want

(02:27:28):
a quality tree grows at a moderaterate. Narcyw can get you fixed up
with that. Hey, it's timefor a break in the news. Seven
one three two one two katrh mysentiments exactly. I appreciate rainfall, but

(02:27:58):
okay, uncle, enough bottle itup. I'll call you back in June
and July and August and probably askfor a little bit of it at that
time. Welcome back to Guardenline.Good to have you with us today.
Our phone number if you'd like tocall in and ask a question seven one
three two on two KTRH seven onethree two and two KTRH. We're going

(02:28:20):
to head out to Mott Bellevue nowand talk to Dwine. Hello, Duane,
Hey, Skip, thanks for takingmy call. I guess you know
with the recent weather we had,the bad weather. I have an oak
tree in the front yard. I'mfifteen years old. It's probably fifty sixty
feet tall. When the tree wasyounger, it started splitting at the bottom.

(02:28:41):
So I took a boat or atie rod and put through the trunk
about three or four feet from theground to bring it back together so it
would grow back together. Okay,And it looks like one of the branches
on top split, but I noticedit had had some black in the middle
of it. And they had anotherbrand that was about ten inches wide.

(02:29:05):
They had another one about six incheswide that split, but they didn't have
any black in it. And myquestion was, is there's something wrong with
that tree it needs to be cutdown? Or is that normal in live
oak trees? And you're talking aboutblack being inside sort of right inside the
v yeah, so in the verymiddle of it. Yeah. This is

(02:29:26):
this is an example of why whenwe're planting young trees, we want to
train them right a good branch angleof let's say forty five degrees sixty degrees
somewhere in there, those branches developwithout pushing bark together. When you have
a narrow v angle, if youcan hold up two fingers like you're saying

(02:29:50):
number two in between your two fingers, as each of those fingers gets bigger,
it presses the bark together and itcan't form a strong union. It's
dead bark in there, and sothen when that branch splits, you see
all that dead interior, black rottingouter bark, which also then leads to
black rotting interior inside the tree.And that's why it's like that. It's

(02:30:16):
the narrow branch angle. Once you'vegot a big tree and it's already happening,
it's kind of hard to do awhole lot for it. It's something
that happens in the training. Butyou need to watch those angles. And
that's why having a good quality treeperson like Martin Spoon Moore with affordable tree
as important because they can see thoseand recognize those and make the recommendations on
what might need to be done inpreparation for stormy weather like we just had.

(02:30:43):
Okay, so would you say thetree is okay or should it be
replaced? Well, I'd have tolook at it. You know, when
you when at a certain degree ofdamage, it's like it's so esthetically unacceptable
that it's never going to become abeautiful tree. Right lopsided, or maybe
if there's interior decay. Now you'vegot this big area of interior wood exposed

(02:31:07):
where it'll never close over, itwill never heal over that with callous and
in that case, it's like,well it may be okay today, but
not for long. I tell you. I did take a picture of it,
a close up with the whole tree, and you can see where one
of the branches is, you know, regular wood color, that snapping.
The other one has the black.Okay, Duane, you want to send

(02:31:30):
me those pictures? Sure, Okay, I'm gonna put you on hole right
now. Send me the pictures asmuch as you can show me in the
photos, and I'll make a commenton it and we'll go from there.
All right, Just hang on.My producer is going to give you my
email address, so we will getthat done. Let's see here. We

(02:31:52):
are now going to go to Katieand talk to Diane. Hello, Diane,
how are you? I'm well,how are you fine? Listen?
I was listening to the gentleman talkingabout filling the sink coat for two years
with every kind of imaginal thing.Yeah, And I walked my dog a

(02:32:13):
lot, and there was a neighborwho was doing this, and everyone was
watching the sink cooat grow and fillit in. It turns out there was
a manhole cover underneath, and thecity had to come out and dig down
and do some work too. Obviouslythere was a leak or something. It
was going somewhere, but you didn'tknow there was a manhole cover under it

(02:32:33):
because it had been playing it over. Wow. Wow, who to think?
Who to thunk it? Well,that's good. Good to hear that.
And I guess so going back tothe old advice of hey, call
the city or call the county andsee if you can get somebody who can
help you with that. Yeah,and I think he had the idea of
digging it out, and that's whatreally happened. I guess this sprinkler guy

(02:32:54):
said, well, maybe there's aleak with a sprinkler, and as he
was digging out, they said,oh, surprise, the manhill over there.
So then the city came in tookcaure of the issue. There you
go. Hey, thanks for lettingus know that, Diane. I appreciate
what you call you take care.If you're looking for a product that will
provide a release of nitrogen into yourplants from a natural base, that would

(02:33:18):
be sweet green. Sweet green elevenpercent really high nitrogen content for an organic
type product. Sweet Green is molassesbase does have high carbon content, which
really makes microbes happy. That's whyorganic gardeners like to put molasses out on
the soil, because it does enhancein that way. Sweet Green by nitrofoss

(02:33:39):
is widely available here in the area. For example, if you go to
all spas ace up in the woodlands, or if perhaps you would go down
to Plants for all seasons on Highwaytwo forty nine are plants and things at
in Brennam all places you can getnitrophos products like the sweet Green Sweet green

(02:34:00):
and smells good too. I cantell you that, so both you and
your microbes will be happy with that. We are going to go now to
West Houston and talk to Dave.Hello, Dave, Yeah, good morning
morning. It's nice to see thesun. Yeah, here it is finally.
I've been out reading, uh someof my flowers in the front yard

(02:34:28):
and on the ground there is aa little white thing that looks like cotton.
I mean it's some of them aresmall, some of the are a
little larger, but it's covered itup like you know, we had a
a snowshower or something. Have youany idea of what that is and how

(02:34:50):
to get rid of it. It'son the ground in the weeds, saying
it's on the ground in between theflowers. What you said. Some are
small, some are larger. Whatis small and what is larger? Size
small as a size or a pencillarge, maybe a size the dime or

(02:35:11):
maybe it's kind of hard to seeyou sometimes there are boy, Well,
I always uh, don't trust myselfwhen I'm hearing descriptions and picturing in my
mind that I'm picturing what you're tryingto describe. Uh. There are some
flowers that will follow with a cottonytype of material. Well, I take

(02:35:33):
a dandelion for example. You knowyou have this white, cottony looking thing
on top, but that it camefrom a flower. There are some other
plants that will do something similar tothat. Those tend to not be white
though, they're kind of a tantannish white color of beige color. I
think I'm just or cotton white andit's is it dry or is it wet?

(02:35:56):
Well, of course it's hard totell because thee uh, Okay,
I'll tell you what. Let's doit. Yeah, let's do this,
Dave, get your camera done inthere, your cell phone and get as
close as you can, make sureit's in sharp focus before you send it
to me, and let me justsee some pictures of this. And I
know when I see the picture,I'm probably gonna go, oh, it's

(02:36:16):
such and such, but I needI need to see it. I'm gonna
put you on hold right now.They will give you my producer, will
give you my email address. Okay, all right, well, good luck,
good luck, and we'll see ifwe can get to the bottom of
this for you. Appreciate, appreciateyour call very much. It is time
to take a little break. Herefor another break. We got one more

(02:36:37):
segment before the end of this morning. If you'd like to call in seven
to one three. Let's see hereseven one three two one two k t
R H is the number. Whenwe come back, Mark and Gid you'll
be the first ones up Page Blood, Welcome back to the guard Line.

(02:37:07):
Good heavy with us today. Wegot a little bit of time left today.
Then get a few more questions inbefore he closed things down. I'll
be back in the morning six am. I hope you get up early with
me and we'll talk gardening. Firstthing. We're right now, I'm gonna
head out to Cyprus, Texas andtalk to Judy. Hello, Judy,

(02:37:28):
Hi, how are you doing.I'm well, thank you. I ordered
a red bud online and it arrivedperfectly. It's healthy. I asked the
yard man to plan it, thinkinghe would know, make the whole big
and deeper than the base. Well, he just basically stuck it in the
ground and so it's level the themor the base of it is level with

(02:37:54):
the ground. Since it's only beenin for about two weeks. Should I
dig it up and put it inan appropriate size hole and a raised bed?
So I didn't quite follow how itwas planted. Is it you're sending
too deep or too shallow or it'sjust planted even with the You know,

(02:38:18):
the base of the trunk is evenwith the ground, and I believe it
should have a be in a raisedbed. Is that so that it can
drain? Oh? I see,if the area is poorly drained and tends
to say soggy wet, even havewater standing, you definitely need a raised
bed to make it happy. Ifthe area is well drained, it can
be at regular level. That's howred buds in the woods are at regular

(02:38:41):
level, so a level cool,but they don't naturally come up and succeed
if the area is swampy, sothe only ones you see are at soil
level, So you could go out, you know what if you I don't
know, if you probably do nothave a postal digger. If you get
if you can dig down a littleholes straight down, kind of a cylinder
hole and fill it up with waterand then see how long it takes to

(02:39:05):
drain out after all this rain,the soil is going to be wet.
But is if it drains out inlet's say, oh, probably twelve to
eighteen hours, that's going to bevery good drainage. Considering if it takes
more than two days to drain out, then that raised bed would be very
important. That just be a realquick test for me to be able to

(02:39:26):
answer your question a little bit better. But in general, yeah, they
like to be in a forest floorin decent drainage. So pulling it out
right now, getting the bed builtand then getting it right back in would
be would be worth doing if it'spoor drainage. All right, well,
I appreciate your help. Thank youso much. All right, Judy,
thank you very much, Bye byebye bye. Azemite is a product that

(02:39:50):
is mined in Utah, and it'sfull of trace minerals, and that's why
you put it down. It's nota fertilizer like regular lawn fertilizers primarily nitrogen,
phosphorus, potassium. Now, thisis the tracement, the ones,
the elements that are needed in tinyamounts, but that are essential. That's
what asumite is about. Now youcan when you've got a landscape installer,

(02:40:16):
or when you have a maintenance companycoming in, you can ask them to
do an apple an annual application ofazamite to your landscape. You can do
it in your in your color bedstoo, your flower beds. Primarily we're
putting it out in the lawn andyou don't need much though, remember that
very very low rate is what weput out. Ten pounds of azamite will
cover about a thousand square feet ofvegetable garden, so that goes a long

(02:40:39):
long way. The forty four poundsbag in your lawn is going to go
six thy twelve thousand square feet alawn. But it's something that you do
apply. You can do it whenyou fertilizer, you can do it in
between fertilizations. It doesn't matter justdon't put it in the same hopper at
the same time as your fertilizer.Particle size of those products is different,
and you want get a good evenapplication. We are now going to head

(02:41:03):
to Mark and clearly, Hey Mark, good morning, sir, and I
can promise you I won't be upas early tomorrow as you are. Oh
my gosh, you're breaking my heart. All right, Well, well one
of us is going to do it. I guess i'll show up. Well,
let me suggest that if I wereto do it, nobody would call
in. Well, that's funny,all right. I can I help you,

(02:41:24):
I know, squat about what youknow. In fact, I can't
believe that your heads not three orfour times bigger than mine. It's because
I'm making everything up. I actually, it's just making it up as I
go. Okay, let me turnoff the recorder now, thanks, that's
okay, nobody's listening. Just Jemmy. I've decided I can't do my Steven
anymore because you believe my cover.So people are going to know it's me

(02:41:46):
asking the dumb questions. Did yousee the picture of the Kaiwa blackberries?
Let's see, I'll have to go. Look, I do not see a
picture here, now, let mesee if I can find it. Anyway,
go ahead and start talking to meabout it while I go looking for
it. I've had Kayawa, Ican't tell you how many years, eight

(02:42:09):
nine or something like that. Verygood producer. This year, it's producing
more blemished fruit than it has inthe past. Yeah, yeah, I
see that. Different things can causethat. Feeding from piercing, sucking mouth
part insects like a stink bug kindof thing that can happen where you see
and for those people listening, going, what are they talking about? Instead

(02:42:31):
of all these big, plump,round little sections of the BlackBerry, there's
some that are just kind of pinkand never really got full size and develop
color. And then there's some thatare not even pink. There is tiny
If it didn't pollinate, then that'swhere you have a missing little section that's
from a lack of pollination, oractually it's incomplete pollination. The other can

(02:42:54):
happen from insect feeding. But someberries, and I don't know the full
cause of it, it's more physicallogical. With certain cultivars, you can
have that kind of thing happen aswell, but there's nothing that you can
do about that. The insect controlis something you could do. But is
this extensive or you're just finding theberries here and there more of them this

(02:43:18):
year. I wouldn't call it extensive, but it's much more of the fruit
is bummish like this though has beenin the past. It doesn't seem to
change the taste of the root exceptfor that one little one where you see
the green parts that never to develop. Yeah, but it's just ugly fruit.
Yeah, yeah, I get it. It is, and I think

(02:43:39):
it's something that you're probably just gonnaneed to live with. Other than maybe
if you get out there and you'reseeing a lot of stink bugs on than
a treatment would certainly be warranted.In general, we just don't have to
spray blackberries hardly at all. They'rejust not a not a problem crop.
It's a good one for organic gardenersbecause you're not having to control all these

(02:44:01):
different cults. Well, that's whatwe're trying to do, is we don't
put anything it's not organic on it. What what would you recommend a neme
or do you have something else inyour stink bugs? Pyretheran types of sprays
or organic they work pretty good onthat. I don't think you're going to
have success with name on stink bugs. I don't think it's going to be
the level of success you're looking for. So a Pirethern type spray that's label

(02:44:24):
for fruit, okay, well,can damage the beneficial so I should do
it super early morning or late atnight. Yeah, yeah, you can.
You're you're targeting your spray really tothe berries. There's no need to
treat the whole plant, you know, but you can. You can treat
the whole plant because it's a littletedious to try to spray just the berries.

(02:44:46):
Yeah. They because they love tohide under leaves and stuff. Yeah,
they do. Getting out early inthe morning is better for stink bugs
if you first. I just wantto stress if you find out you have
them, and that's the problem,because it may not be well out there
tending to them. I never seea stink bug on Okay. Yeah,
Well, I think this is physiologicalmark. The more we talk about it,

(02:45:07):
I just think that's probably what's goingon, and it should be.
It should be, okay. Ijust I think you're going to just suffer
some losses here and there, butoverall it should be all right. Okay,
Well, thanks very much for youradvice. You bet, thank you.
I appreciate the call very much.Have you been to the Anti Rosing
Porium? Anti Grosing Porium out therein Independence, Texas just north of where

(02:45:31):
north of Brunham, So you justswing by and get you some bluebellt ice
cream out to the antiqu Rosing Porium. They have a wide variety of roses.
Of course they're the Anti g RosingPorium. They're nationally known for the
roses that they have, but theyalso have events going on that you don't
want to mess For example, it'swhat have we got another week or so

(02:45:52):
of the seven dollars off select roses? It goes from May seventh or Mace
sixth to May twenty seventh. Therewe go May six to May twenty seven,
seven dollars off select roses such asRed Cascade, Oh Boys at Ever,
a beautiful climbing rose, Quietness,always Hope, and a few others.

(02:46:13):
Don't forget next weekend tax free weekendsMay twenty fifth and twenty sixth,
or even more savings every Friday andSaturday. Every Friday and Saturday, starting
at one pm is the Tinker GardenWorkshop, which is an outdoor play based
education curriculum for children age two toeight. Now, for all these things
and other events, you just wantto go to the website. That is

(02:46:37):
what is the website Antique Roseemporium dotcom. I was looking at the at
the email which you can also contactevents at Wereroses dot com, events at
Rio Roses dot com. That's whatyou would use if you wanted to bring
your master garden Group, Garden Club, Native Plant Society, herb Society out
there. You know, Antique Roseimportant for that. And finally, if

(02:47:01):
you haven't used your Nelson Plant Foodslow and easy, you need to get
that done. It is time.Get it down and it will fertilize your
lawn all the way up until thefirst fall fertilization. That's a long time.
It lasts that long. It's aquality product, many different kinds of
nitrogen in it to provide that gradualrelease over time. Beat your lawn like

(02:47:26):
it wants to be fed. Well, we're gonna put this one in the
books today. Greg. I seeyou out there on If you will hold,
I will come and take your call. We're gonna have to go to
a little break here, but Ijust hang on. I'll go ahead and
come back and enter your call afterwe're on the air tomorrow morning six am
to ten am. Come back seeus again here on garden Line. Thanks
for listening.