Tree talk

Skip takes your calls all morning long!

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Katie r h Garden Linewith skip rictorhoes mill crasy, gas can
trim. Just watch him as well. Bidasso many good things to seep back

(00:22):
basin way. The basses like gasand again you das glubs back tacking not
a sound glassies like gas. Thesun beamon of tweeting the gassis gas you

(00:44):
starting and treaties like gasca. Yougood morning, good Saturday morning. You've
got it tuned to the right place. You're listening to the garden line and
we're here to help you have amore beautiful garden, more bountiful garden.
Certainly a more beautiful landscape and lawn. That's what we're here for. As

(01:06):
I like to say, there's nosuch thing as brown thumbs. There are
uninformed thumbs, and we're going toinform your thumb. You just hang with
us today. We're here till tenam today. After that, by the
way, I'm going to be goingto Ace Hardware, Langham Creek, the
Langham Creek Ace Hardware that's over inthe Copperfield neighborhood. I'll give you some
more details on that, but northWest Houston, that whole quadrants. My
last appearance of the spring season,so I hope you will come on over.

(01:30):
We'll be given away products from Microlife, products from Nitroposs. I'll be
doing diagnostics on any kind of plantyou want to bring in or identifications on
those plants. So stay tuned.We'll talk about it more in a minute
a minute, but for now,I just want to kind of get a
give you a heads up on whatis coming up here. Some folks have

(01:53):
asked about insects in the lawn.I've had a number of questions about,
you know, I saw a mothin my lawn and do I need to
spray for it? And some otherquestions like that, and let me just
let me address that. But ifyou go to my schedule online at gardening
with Skip dot com, that's mywebsite, Gardening with Skip. Whenever I

(02:14):
create something new, I'll post itto there, and we're slowly but surely
getting stuff built up there. Butif you go there, there's two free
schedules. One is the lawn careschedule and one is the lawn pest,
Disease and weed management schedule. That'sa lot of words I should have just
called them. How to take careof your lawn? How to prevent the
things that want to eat your lawnor whatever. That's kind of what the

(02:35):
two schedules amount to. If youlook at the one on pest disease and
weed management, it talks about insects, and you'll see on there that in
June, July, August, September, or all months that chinchbugs and or
soid webworms could be present in yourlawn. So we're in the season where
we can begin to see those kindsof pasts. Now typically we're going to

(02:55):
see them a little bit later,especially at chinchbugs, but you know,
got to keep your eyes open.We are also in the time to treat
for grubs, and there's two differentbars on there, and you need to
check those out because the products weuse in June, which is when we
primarily begin our grub treatment, thebest time to treat for grubs. So

(03:16):
I guess you could still say we'rein June now are different than what we
would use as we look at Julyand August. Of course, it doesn't
change overnight from the end of Juneto the first of July, but those
are the two general ranges, andwe use different treatments because of the age
of the grubs and typically the depthof the grubs in the soil. But

(03:37):
it's on the schedule. I won'tread the whole schedule to you, but
you need to check that out.And when you're looking at pests in your
lawn. Nitroposs has a product calledbug out Max. It's a granular you
put it out over your lawn andit is a persistent product. In other
words, persistent meaning it's going togo through the entire summer season, so
you don't have to apply it overand over and over again at once.

(04:00):
Do it now and as we gothrough the next month July, August and
even early September. That product isthere around helping out controlling ants, fleas,
ticks, chinchbugs, sod web worms, the different insects that we have
in the lawn. It's very effectiveproduct and you're going to find bug out
Max at a lot of places,you know how it is with Nitroposs products.

(04:21):
Their ubiquitous plantation ace hardware out therein Richmond. Rosenberg Bearings hardware both
on Bissonette and on Westheimer are placesyou can get that as well as hide
and Feed on stubenor hide and endfeed on stubenor airline. We're going to
go to the phones now and talkto Don. Good morning, Don,
you're our first caller today. Hello, hey Don, I'm here. Let's

(04:48):
talk. How you doing? Youknow I am? I am doing very
well. Thank you for asking.I hope you are too. Yes I
am, sir, Yes I am. I have a quick coret. I
wanted to know when it's the besttime that I could start shaping my roses
and my plate myrtle. I wantto try to they've been going. I

(05:12):
have never trimmed them back, butshaped him. All right, well,
let's talk about those in that order. Roses. I will do my rose
prunting at the end of the winter. Typically it's easy to think of thanks
of Valentine's Day, that's the endof the that's a February event, so
we often think about planting or pruningroses, and you can print them a

(05:34):
little earlier than that. Though sometimesyou're down in Parland and you know,
we get a little warm winter andthey may already be pushing out pretty good.
So anytime when it's winter January February, you can do rose pruning.
Typically February is when we aim forthen after the spring bloom, typically April.

(05:55):
Around April is just a great monthwhere roses are blooming like crazy.
When that bloom starts to fade,we'll do a light shearing. Assuming this
is a shrub rose as opposed toa cutflower, long stem rose, we'll
do a light shearing with fertilizing andwatering to get another flush of growth.
And often I will do that lightshearing again don at the end of August,

(06:16):
because October is a big month forrose blooming too, so we want
to stimulate some fresh new growth aswe go into fall for a beautiful show
there. So I need to putsomething online about all that. But anyway,
that's the over overall look. Crpmyrtles primarily were pruning in the winter
when they're dormant before they begin togrow in the spring. But you can

(06:40):
prune a crape myrtle at any timeyou need to. I prune some just
the other day, and it isnot the ideal time to prune, but
they needed to be pruned, andI didn't want them to continue growing in
the wrong way for another few monthsuntil we get back to next winter or
this coming winter. So little pruninghere and there, if needed, can
be done at any time of theyear. Well, okay, thank you

(07:05):
sir. All right, good luckwith that. Just remember, don't look
at commercial landscapes and even some homelandscapes when it comes to how to print
a crpe myrtle, because people arejust traditionally butcher the heck out of them,
and they don't need to be butchered. They're a beautiful plant form that
we can we can train them intothat form and they just look great.

(07:26):
So all right, thank you,all right, thank you, appreciate appreciate
your call very much. Yes,sir, we do appreciate that call.
You know, now that we're insummer. Mulching is very, very important.
It is important that we cover thesurface of the soil. When you

(07:46):
cover the soil surface with mulch,it does a number of things. Number
one, it keeps the soil cooler, and that is huge. You will
not believe how hot the surface inchand even three inches down can get when
the sun is baking down on uncoveredsoil. Huge event, huge benefit for
the roots. Secondly, a huge, huge benefit for the roots is that

(08:11):
it prevents the crusting and erosion ofthe crusting of the soil surface, erosion
of the soil away exposing roots.Mulch prevents that third thing. It does
a third thing. There's the numberof things mulching does. But it also
decomposes slowly over time to release nutrientsinto the soil, and it creates thiss
perfect roots on And think about this. Think about a forest floor, leaves

(08:35):
rotting, more leaves on top,more leaves on top rotting year after year,
and that surface of the soil ina forest is just the richest stuff
on earth. You can do thatin your landscape by multching. And Landscaper's
Pride has a number of products thatyou can use for multing. For example,
the black velvet. For those ofyou who like a dark black mulch,
don't buy something dyed. I justdon't care for that. I mean,

(08:58):
I know people and stuff, butblack velvet is naturally that color,
and I really like the look ofit. I think it works super super
well. Beautiful velvety, dense excellentmolts. Hardwood multes shredded up hard hardwood
trees makes an excellent maltz that lockstogether, doesn't wash away very good.
Pine park molt is probably the mostpopular one because of the visual of it

(09:20):
in the slow decomposition rate and cedarand cypress. Those two, both cedar
and cypress a little bit slower todecay away, so you don't melt as
often, but they will in timedecay. They there's an aroma to cedar,
especially when it's fresh, it's excellent. And then the cypress as well,
it just kind of hangs it.It's heavier, when it gets wet,

(09:41):
it just sort of sticks in place. A very light colored molts to
very beautiful all from Landscaper's Pride.Landscaper's Pride dot Com is their website if
you want to learn more about theirproducts and where to get them. But
I can tell you this Landscaper's Prideis widely available. A very beautiful economical
mults that just does everything a mulchdoes for your plants. And I'm telling

(10:03):
you do not leave the soil bear. If you leave the sowl a bear,
you are inviting a number of differentproblems, including the one I haven't
already mentioned, weeds. Wherever sunlighthits a soil, nature plants a weed.
Save yourself, some work, saveyour plants, some competition, Get
your soul mulcht. That's important.We're gonna go now to Tom Ball and

(10:24):
talk to Mel. Good morning,Mel, Good morning, I Morney Skip.
I just sent you some pictures onemail of a weed that I have
and i'd kind of like to talkabout that critter. All right, well,
i'd like to do that. I'mup on a break, So what
I'm gonna do during breaks, I'mgonna look at your pictures and when we

(10:46):
come back, we'll tackle your question. Thank you, Mel, I appreciate
that. For those of you who'dlike to call in our phone number seven
one three two one two k tr H, I'll be right back,
welcome back to dark Line'm good tohave you with us. We're gonna head
back out now and talk to Mel. Mel. Thank you, thanks for
hanging on. I had I didhave a chance to look at your weeds.

(11:07):
There's a lot going on there,and actually I'm having a little trouble.
Some of it looks like a sedgeto me, like that sedge or
kalinga. It's not kalinga, butthat's also a sedge, but it looks
sort of like a sedge. Butthen I see some runners that remind me
of torpedo grass or bermuda grass.One. I think you probably know what
bermuda grass looks like, so,oh yeah, do you think it's not

(11:31):
bermuda when you look at the lawnitself and see the weed right when,
I don't think it's I don't thinkit's permuted because it's got those little stickers
on top. I know you sawthose projects. Okay, No, I
can't see that's part of the deal. I couldn't make that out in the
in the photo, thank you.If it has stickers on top, it
is definitely a sedge. The littlebird, the soft birds, I mean,

(11:52):
they're not going to get in yourfoot. Yeah, but yeah,
that's a sedge. You need todo something that contains set. That's called
sedge hammer or sedge ender. Bothof those are effective against sedge. Image
is also pretty effective against sedges.Okay, now by my next question is

(12:13):
I had already put down probably acouple of months ago, sub Spectra side
weed stop things, Okay, stopnow, I don't know if that's part
of what if that contains it,that contains it or not. Evidently not,
because that's definitely just just settled downright in the middle of all my

(12:33):
Saint Augustine. Yeah, but edgehammer or what else would the other one?
Well, sedge ender or two ended. There's also uh, just one
blank on the next one. Iwas going to tell you, gosh,
I'll think of it in a second. Just keep listening, say it when

(12:54):
it comes to mind. I'm withyou. It's uh, it just jumped
out of my mind. Oh mygosh. Well, anyway, if I
sit here, it's dead airspace.So let me let me think about it
a second. Off, I'll tellyou it's the one I normally say first,
Okay, do early in the morning. I guess my brain hadn't.
I did have two cups of coffee, so it ought to be fired up

(13:15):
pretty good. Well, I'm seventynine years old, so I know about
all those brain freezer. Yeah,that's it, brain freezer. That's a
nice way to put it. Yeah, yeah, that's a nice way.
Yeah, we're on the air.Yeah, there you go. There you
go. But the the weed stopspect fraed we'ed stop is not going to

(13:35):
control this. It's basically a broadleaf weed control. Got a whole bunch
of well real quickly. Now,since I did that, is putting this
stuff stage hammer or stage ender orimage? Is that going to put a
lot of stress on my saint Augustine. No, but you want to use

(13:56):
it. You want to use itaccording to the label. Very very careful,
Yeah, very careful to follow thelabel because if you if you don't
do that, you're going to endup you can damage with a lot of
different things, especially when the temperatureis really hot. So follow the label.
Make your application early in the morning. Early in the morning is always

(14:20):
better. It's it's the coolest timeof day, maybe eighty degrees, which
is typically where we see our days. But it's still going to be a
lot better than it's when it getsreally hot. That there's a lot of
factors that make that not not reallygood. Well, I broke into a
train of phone. I'm sorry.Have you come up with that first idea

(14:41):
you were telling you about. I'msorry, it's just not coming to mind.
It will it will here in asecond. I can't think. I
can't talk and think at the sametime. All right, Wait, yeah,
yeah, that's funny. Sedge hammer, I said, No, I
said sedgehammer. I'm sorry. Sedgehammer and sedge gender. Those are the

(15:05):
two. I guess there is oneother one, but it's just oh image,
I think I mentioned that one.So I think that covers any of
those of work. They're all widelyavailable. You're going to find them,
you know, you're up there onthe tombol area. I think you're going
to find them. Both the plansfor Seasons and the Arbigate Garden Center nursery
is going to carry those. You'regoing to find them out there at the

(15:26):
feedstore just we yes, definitely havethem out there. These products are easy
to find because a lot of peoplehave sedge issues. Very good, all
right. And if it calls sedgehammer or is that sedge hammer is a
brand name, it is a brandname. Sedge Hammer and sedge Ender are

(15:48):
both brand names, as is Image. But if you buy Image, make
sure it says image for nuts Edge. One thing these companies do that drives
me nuts is to take a famousname, whether it's round Up or Image
or whatever, and start putting differentchemicals under that name that have a very
different effect. And so make sureit says image for Nutsedge. Okay,

(16:15):
well, I want to look.I'm gonna look at such first, all
right. I'm gonna hit on overto D and D as soon as we
open up. I appreciate it.I am sure I know it well,
but be ready to stay with it. It's not easy to control, but
just stay with it. Start nextyear a little bit earlier and significantly earlier
would be even better too. Allright, all right, I appreciate you,

(16:37):
sir, Yes, sir, thankyou appreciate the call very much.
Uh. We're going to run outto Crosby now and talk to Tim.
Hey, Tim, Yes, sir. You know what I'm interested in is
what can I use to get ridof poison ivy? Okay? And also
the next question is is what Iused to I'm make sure I creer a
libelt tree for the forms that scabover. He's the wound. Where's the

(17:00):
poison ivy growing? What? What'sthe good stuff that's by the poison ivy?
Lawns or flowers or pardon flave oakand long okay? Uh, you
know tree long? Yeah. Isthere a big trunk going up the live
oak, the poison ivy trunk?Or is it just like small stuff coming

(17:22):
up all out of the ground.But the trunks are okay. So there's
an ingredient called trichlow pier t rI c l O p y R.
And when you go buy it offof a shelf at a center, a
garden center and nursery and a hardwarestore Southwest feed and fertilized all those places.

(17:42):
It's gonna it's gonna say triclo pieris the ingredient, but the actual
product may be called something like brushkiller or poison ivy killer or or something
like that. Or sometimes it saysstump uh control brush and stump control or
something tri cloap here, that's theingredient. You want to take that and

(18:03):
if you if it were a largertrunk, you could cut the trunk off
and then paint that product straight witha little foam brush like you would use
it a paint store, you know, those little foam wood handled brushes.
Yeah. Absolutely, dab it righton the fresh cut surface after you make
it. If it is coming upas leaves and you don't have a trunk

(18:25):
to work with, then you're gonnahave to spray it on the leaves.
But don't get it on any desirablebroad leaf plants. And know that areas
of the lawn where you spray iton you're probably gonna have problems with the
lawn right there. But the lawncan come back in, but would it
won't. It will not kill thetree. If it's an old tree and

(18:45):
you've got bark on the outside,you know, a brand new tender tree
with paper thin bark, no furrowedold bark, that would be a problem
on but not on an older tree. So walk around, make sure there's
root sprocks coming up from the tree. And even that, you're probably not
going to kill the whole tree,but it would it would damage it a

(19:07):
little bit. But but the tricopeer is very effective on poison ivy okay.
And it's like you're saying tralo puret r i c l o p
y r try clow p y rpure. All right, okay, all
right, And what about the whenyour trim the libel tree to where it

(19:29):
scams over. The best healing occursin spring. The second best healing occurs
in fall. So if you wantedto make a cut and then healing kicks
in quickly, that's why we pruneat the end of winter because we're entering
our spring season. You can February, yeah, February, January or February.

(19:49):
The one is fine. But whenwe get into the before the fall
season, that's a fast healing timetoo. You can make a cut here
and there any time you want.But those are the best times. If
you can wait and have a choice, that's the best time. If you
need to get it prone prone wheneveryou want to print. I so like
at the end of February or thebeginning of February, I would do it

(20:11):
at the beginning. Okay, allright, I appreciate it. All right,
thank you, appreciate the call.Well, we're gonna take a little
break mark when we come back.You're the first up our phone number seven
one three two one two kt rH and welcome back to guard Line.
Glad you're with us today. Gota lot of things we can talk about

(20:34):
today. I want to mention plantsfor all seasons. That's one of our
just stellar garden center sure in thegreater Houston area. And by the way,
if you've moved to Houston from anywhere, you welcome. But you're in
a place that has more outstanding gardencenters than any place I've ever seen.
And I've been to a lot ofcities, certainly across the state of Texas,

(20:59):
and I'm just you we are richwith garden centers, north, south,
east, west, central, whereveryou are, there are garden centers
near you, and their garden centerswere driving across town to see they're so
awesome, that is true. AndPlants for All Seasons is one of these
kinds of places. They always havecolor in stock. They always have,
you know, whether you're looking forshrubs or trees, or annuals or perennials,

(21:19):
or ornamental grasses or vegetable transplants,herbs, on and on house plants,
even they've got it all there,beautiful baskets right now, lots of
color. And listen, just becausewe're entering summer does not mean you can't
plant color. You can. Thereare a lot of outstanding plants that can
take this heat. And so don'tlet the heat stop you from getting some

(21:44):
quality plants, getting up early inthe morning when it's cooler, getting out
there and getting them established, becausewhen you do that, you're going to
have color in July and in Augustand in September. It's going to carry
you all the way into the fall. And Plants are All Seasons has excellent
options for that. For example,they have they have a plant called pirates
pearl and think of it as justa little moundy bush with white daisy like

(22:07):
flowers. All over it, andI mean all over it. It is
a beautiful plant. I don't knowwhy we don't plant that more here.
I put one in my yard andjust you can't catch it out of bloom.
It is just always looking good.And so it's a nice little medium
size plant, an annual plant forour area. It does really really well.

(22:29):
Pirates Pearl, just go ahead andask them, say I want to
see your Pirates Pearl, and theycan show you a lot of other good
color plants. At Plants for AllSeasons. Remember they are on to forty
nine Tombol Parkway, just north ofLuetta. Just north of Luetta Plants for
All Seasons dot com phone number twoeight one three seven six, sixteen forty
six. We're gonna now head toTennessee and talk to Mark. Am I

(22:52):
really in Tennessee? Mark? Yes? All right, Middle, all right?
How can we help? Yeah?Around my house, we've got some
akers and I wouldn't say it's aback forty but I have these huge crabgrass.
Now. I try to treat themwith the bone eye pre emergence.
I did it in the fall.I did it twice in the spring,

(23:15):
and they're just huge. And ifI dig them out. They're going down.
I do not believe they freeze overto. I think they just come
back. And besides using them roundup and wiping with the sponge, is
there a product with celsius or fahrenheit? Could I just spray that those would
not work on a grassy weed likethat? If it if it does,

(23:37):
truly, if the plant really surviveswinter and Tennessee and comes back, it's
not crabgrass now it could recede absolutelynew seedlings come up. Yes, but
if that plant survives, we're talkingabout a different grass. So killing a
grass in a grass? So isyour lawn like fescue or is it a
Kentucky bluegrass or what kind of looksyou fresh q And then I've sought at

(24:02):
some areas along the dry wet ordryway put in with permuted because we actually
kind of have drought kind of inthe summer here, we don't get much
rain, Okay, so I wantto permut it. Yeah, it's hard
to kill a grass, and thegrass there are a few exceptions, but
the things that will kill the grassthat's coming up won't kill or can also

(24:23):
kill you your bermuda. So thisgrass is like the type of grass when
when the seeds come out, theyget real tall and it grows faster than
the rest of it. So wouldthat be Johnson grass or something? Not
Johnson? Uh, it's you knowwhat you don't have. Do you have
some seed heads on it right now? I just mowed yesterday. But I

(24:47):
can say when you get some seeds, I'm going to put you on hold,
and I'm pretty sure I'll give youan email and we use that four
phone questions, not just you know, general back and forth. But if
you want to send me some clothphotos, pick those seedheads and lay them
on like a white piece of paperor something so you can get up close
and take a picture. Because apicture of just grass it's hard to see

(25:10):
the seedheads and a photo with grassbehind it. So let me see the
seaedheads if you if you pull itup and you see it kind of has
runners or it's a clump, showme that too in the photo and I'll
get a good idea and then we'lltry to help you with it from there.
But if it's crabgrass, then Iwould use instead. I don't know

(25:30):
that you have nitroposs products up there. Okay, Well, you're gonna need
a grass pre emergent, and Tennesseehas a really good extension service. And
whatever county you're in, you've gotan extension office. You can call and
say, what are some pre emergenceyou would recommend, and when do I
apply them? Here and explain here'smy lawn types, and you know so

(25:52):
on. But if you see methe picture, I'll I do it for
you. Okay, yes, sir, and I've been listening since the nineties,
back back when. So well,thanks for sticking around. I appreciate
that. Glad to thank you.You take care. I was talking to
somebody the other day and they werelamenting their landscape appearance, you know,

(26:15):
going, man, it just doesn'tinspire me. You know, it's not
I don't know what do I do. I don't know what to do.
I go to the nursery, Isee all these pretty plants, but I
don't know what to do with them, and so on. Well, here's
one thing you can do. Youcan call puer Scapes, which they do
landscaping, but they do a lotlot more. For example, they do
have a quarterly maintenance program where they'llcome into your beds and they'll plant the

(26:37):
plants for the seasons. You canhave them do two color changes a year
or four color changes a year.They'll do the mulching, they'll make sure
that things are trimmed and fertilized,the weeds are controlled. They'll check the
irrigation, make sure it's working.You can get on their quarterly maintenance and
do that now. If you wantto redesign, and I would say that's
a good thing, you ought tostart talking to them now. Get those

(26:59):
design planned out, drawn out andwhen fall comes. There is not a
better season of the year to plantthan fall. And you can plan any
month of the year here in ourarea, but there's not a better one
than fall. And so, butget with Pierscapes now so you can get
those designs drawn, get on theschedule to have them come in and renovate.
And if you want to see thekind of work that Peerscapes can do,

(27:22):
go to pierscapes dot com and you'regoing to see hard escaping, landscape
lighting. Uh, just on andon and on. Drainage problem, you
got drainage problems. Perscapes can fixthat. They can do anything that's amazing
two eight, one, three,seven, fifty sixty. If you want
to give them a call two eightone three seven o five zero six zero.

(27:45):
That is peerscapes. Yeah, makesit really easy when you're doing that.
Uh. I was talking with someonethe other day about the generators that
you put outside your house that comeon, and most people when they think
of a generator think, oh,it's a little gas engine. I got

(28:06):
to you know, fuel it upand pull the lever and pull the rope
and get it going and that.Well, yeah, those are generators too
if you want to run a littlepower saw out on a job site or
something. But what about your wholehouse? What about the freezers? What
about keeping the electricity on everywhere inthe house so that you've got an online
job, You've got to be onthe internet. You got to have twenty

(28:27):
four to seven covered well. QualityHome Products of Texas can come out and
set up a generator for you.Though you use a I would recommend you
get one of their Generat generators.By the way, they're three hundred and
fifty dollars off all the generators thatthey have, a quality home and a
free ten year warranty if it's anair cooled generator unit. But these once

(28:48):
they get set up and there's aprocess to that. Quality Home handles the
whole process. I mean, it'sso easy when they do it for you,
and they when that's set up up, if the power goes out,
the generator comes on. You don'thave to run around the house and look
for a gas can and you know, try to get your generator going.
It just stays on. And they'reexcellent products. But the main reason I

(29:11):
recommend them Generak is awesome generator.Absolutely when you need you know, no
problem recommending Generac at all. ButQuality Home is where you get them,
and that, I would say,is at least as important as the generator
that you buy. And here's yourreason. Twenty four to seven three sixty
five customer service. From the timeyou contact them and say, hey,

(29:33):
I'm thinking about a generator, They'rehelping you find the right one. They're
helping you get set up out,even putting a slab out at your place
outside the house so you can putthe generator on it, Handling all the
hoops you got to jump through withregulations or whatnot, if you've got hoa
or something. They handle all thisfor you. And after the sale,
their service is immaculate. That iswhy they eight times now have won the

(29:59):
Better Business Bureau's most prestigious Customer ServiceAward. Listen, that doesn't come easy.
Neither do fourteen thousand and five starreviews. Quality tx dot com.
Write that website down and just gocheck it out. You're just doing some
initial shopping Quality tx dot com orgive them a call. It's seven to

(30:19):
one to three quality I. Youknow, we when we choose our sponsors
here on garden Line, and wesometimes have companies we say no, I'm
not going to promote that. I'mjust not u. When it comes to
a place like quality home Products,it is easy, easy, no question

(30:41):
whatsoever. In my mind. Welook for people that give good quality service
and have good quality products that areproven. When you hear me do a
read, it's I'm putting my nameon it, so I believe with all
my heart it's gonna help you inwhatever way that product helps. And quality
home products. That's that's easy.Low hanging fruit. We're gonna take a

(31:02):
little break right here. When wecome back, Lee, you will be
the first up seven to one threetwo one two KTRH. Welcome back to
guarden Line. Been heavy with ustoday. If you have not done summer
fertilization, yet you need to goahead and get that done. Summer fertilization
provides the nutrients your grass needs tomaintain good health and density through the summer,
and even though it's hot outside,your grass is growing if you give

(31:26):
it water and a little bit ofnutrition to help it go in. A
Nitrofuss superturf, that's a silver bagthat is an outstanding slow release fertilizer.
That doesn't mean you don't get anythingwhen you apply it. You get some
then, but let's just say it'ssmart enough to hang on to some nutrients
and gradually release that nitrogen over thecoming three months or more. Nitrofuss Superturf

(31:48):
again, the silver bag widely,widely available. Like nitro Fuss products.
Are you going to find it outthe ace hard restauring Kingwood, You're gona
find it up at the Arborgate,You're gonna find it in shades of Texas.
Nitrofuss superturf are available in a widewide range of places. Excellent,
excellent product, and it works well. But get it down now, get
it going, and it will preventthat super fast growth that makes you Mowmomo.

(32:13):
Water water water it'll give you agradual release, and that is the
beauty of the product. Works verywell. You can find it at Ana
Plants and Produce too. By theway, if you're up there in the
Montgomery area. Ana Plants and Producethey carry every single fertilizer you hear me
talk about on Guardline. They carryevery kind of pest, weed and disease
control thing you're going to need tohave maybe a more beautiful, less pest

(32:37):
plagued or disease or weed plagued landscape. They also, of course have beautiful
plants. They've got some cigar plant, a Kufia ignia. I think firecracker
plant's a better name for it,but a Kufia ignea. My hummingbirds love
that plant, and if you justprovide a little bit of water, it
just blooms and blooms and blooms,these tiny little tubular blooms. That's why

(32:59):
they call it fire record plant thatare red and it's just beautiful. They
also have another one if you likehummingbirds. At A and A ask them
about their turk's cap and take alook at that. I mean that is
a tough plant grows in sun,grows in bright shade and just has beautiful
little red flowers again that are hummingbirdmagnets, na plants and produce that are

(33:22):
on the east side of Montgomery Andyou just need to go by there and
check that place out. And Ican tell you this for any of you
up there in the Lake Conroe area, this is your hometown garden center and
it is an outstanding place to findall kinds of things that are going to
do well here. Listen, theFloors family has been running that garden center

(33:44):
for a long time. They knowwhat works here and that is what they
buy bring in to sell to youso you can have success. Let's take
a run now out to talk toLee. Hello, Lee, good morning,
Welcome to guard Line. You mommyBob flag. Oh My question is
my question? Is I bought theShelca if you told me to. I

(34:07):
want to know if I put downa first application, can I put down
the second application before six to eightweeks? What do you recommend? What
did you say that you bought Selsiusfor button weeds? Yeah, I would
give it about six weeks. Youjust don't with any product, just kind

(34:28):
of hitting your grass over and overwith it can be a problem for the
grass. Also on celsius, ifyou look at the label, it's going
to tell you how much you canuse over the course of a year.
Even I mean, we can't justuse these things indiscriminately, So I would
give it six weeks and always makesure your button weed is healthy and in
actively growing state when you use it, because it works better. That's true

(34:52):
of many herbicide products that the weedis actively growing. So if we go
into a summer drought and you've kindof cut back on the water a lot,
you're probably not going to get aseffective of a control with any product
as you would give it a goodwater and get that grass or weed growing
and then apply it again. Well, thank you, I appreciate it,

(35:15):
all right. I don't know whatit means that I sound like Bob Flag,
but I'm assuming that may be acompliment because he was twenty compliment.
He was a gardener, just likeyou had his own show, Okay,
on your radio show that's years ago. All right, Well, Lee,
thank you for being a listener stillafter all these years. I appreciate that.

(35:36):
Right bybee bye bye. Take careif you are done in the League
City area, In fact, ifyou're anywhere around that area like Dickinson,
Lamark, Baycliffe, Clare, LakeCity. Oh, come into Reale,
maybe Santa Fe or sant Leone.I've got your hometown feed store. It's
called League City Feed and they areright there on Highway three, just a
few blocks south of Highway ninety sixin League City. League City Feed is

(36:00):
open Monday through Saturday nine to six, are closed tomorrow, closed on Sundays,
but being open till six even afterwork. You can swing by there
and grab what you need. Andthey're going to carry the fertilizers I talk
about, as well as a lotof the soil products you hear me talk
about here on garden Line. Ofcourse, you're a feed store, so
if you need pet feed, they'vegot high quality ones, a number of

(36:20):
options for you there. They alsohave things for your backyard, chicken needs
or other kinds of feed you're lookingfor. It's an old time feed store.
What does that mean, Well,that means that they take care of
you. They carry the stuff outfor you. It makes you feel like
family to go buy League City Feedtwo eight one three three two sixteen twelve
two eight one three three two sixteentwelve. You swing by there on a

(36:46):
Saturday. You might even you mighteven find Rorshack the Dalmatian. I guess
the mascot there on this so youcan you can look at the spots and
decide what you see in Rorshack.I like that name for a dalmatian leg
City Feed. That's funny. Ilike when people are creative with their pet

(37:06):
names. I knew someone one timethat named their dog dog and it was
basically spelling dog d og dog thedog. Yeah, that's that's creative.
That's good. Well, here weare, time for the music, Time
for us to take a little breakfrom the top of the hour news.
Don't forget today. Today we finallyarrived June twenty ninth. I'm going to

(37:31):
be at Langham Creek ACE Hardware.Langham Creek ACE Hardware is it's real easy
to find, you know, AceHardware. You have to do is go
to Acehardware dot com and find theirstore locator and you can find the store
that is closest to you, soit makes it really easy. Langham Creek
is out there in the Copperfield neighborhood, so if you're out, you know,

(37:53):
just just south of Cypress area,that's where we're going. To they
are where Barker's viprus and two fivetwenty nine five twenty nine which is also
called Spencer Road. That's where theycome together. I'm gonna be there.
We'll be given away microphone, microlife products are rep there, micro clost
products. I'll be answering your gardeningquestion. Come on out to sing eleven

(38:15):
thirty to one thirty. Today's advertisedon this program. Welcome to kat r
H Garden Line with Skip Rictor,It's Shoesmi Crazy, Gas can Trim just
watch him as well. Many goodthanks to seep back Basic in great season,

(38:45):
Gas Davos back taking not sad credits, Gas the Sun Beaman of between
movies. Well, welcome back tothe garden Line. Take a look outside.
Oh it's just a good day.We got sun coming out, we

(39:08):
got closcott. Always good to getout a little earlier and get the work
done. You know, you cantake your phone with you and listen to
garden Line on your iHeartMedia app.Listen to it live really on there so
you can also listen to past showson whatever kinds of apps you have for

(39:29):
doing podcasting. I Heart Media appLive garden Line, I Know Gardeners tell
me all the time they have putmy phone in my pocket and get out
there early because it's time to getthe work done for it gets hot.
And they just carry guardline with them. Who knows you may run across a
bug or a plant or a questionthat you have and you got your phone
right there. If you'd like tocall in our phone number seven to one

(39:51):
three two to one two k tRH seven one three two to one two
k t r H. Have youbeen to RCW Nursery lately? RCW is
the garden center that is right therewhere Tamball Parkway Hoyway two forty nine comes
into boat Way eight, and it'seasy to get to and when you get

(40:12):
in there, you're going to findall kinds of plants with just really quality
selections, things that do well verywell here. Now RCW they lead the
way when it comes to options forroses. They I don't know how long
the rose list is. I thinkit's four pages single space that they can
get and so they've always got roseson hand. It's a great place to

(40:35):
go. But they also grow treesand shrubs and things up at their property
up in the Plantersville area, andso when you go to RCW and have
them you purchase a plant and havethem planet for you. You're going to
get a quality species, one thatwants to grow here. Listen, they've
been doing this for decades. Ithink RCW really opened that, like nineteen
seventy nine. Williamson family still runsRCW Nurseries. Those plants, those shrubs

(41:02):
and trees, they know how toplan them. They'll come out, but
it's going to be excellent because yougot options from fifteen gallons up to two
hundred gallons. Do you want anornamental blooming tree? Do you want a
shade tree? Whatever? They canget you set up with that, and
they also have the products necessary togo along with it, including every fertilizer
I talk about here on garden Line. So stop by RCW nurses again,

(41:24):
tomball Park win beout Way eight.The website RCW Nurseries dot com. If
you want to find out more information, I would highly recommend you do that.
We're going to head now out toKatie and talk to Todd. Well,
Hello, Todd, how you doingwell? Thank you? I was

(41:45):
just trying to see like a granularinsecticide or liquid insecticide right now. Somebody
told me that the liquid insecticide.It's so hot outside, you know it
can burn all the grass. Okay, yeah, well not the right mix
right there. If you o anythingyou do from a dry granular synthetic fertilizer

(42:07):
salt based fertilizer to a pesticide product, you put it out according to the
label and you're fine, there's nota problem. But you overdo something and
you can cause problems. But Iwouldn't worry about using either way. The
granule the benefits of it. It'seasy to get out there. You just
use your fertilizer spread on a differentsetting to follow the label to put it

(42:30):
out. You need to make sureyou get good even coverage. If you
want to do the liquid spray tokill insects. There are advantages to each
one of those. The advantage youknow, to the granulars is the ease
of application, and it washes offthe granule and it's present. One of
the advantages to liquid. If you'respraying something that's up there chewing on a

(42:52):
grass blade, like a sod webworm, you can with the spray you're
coating those plant parts that the bugis and it's a little more effective that
way. On those that particular pestfor example. But they all work.
They all work well. Okay,thank you so much. All right,
Todd, take care, appreciate yourcall. Yeah, lots of lots of

(43:15):
different options out there, you know. When it comes to options for granular
liquid, you name it. SouthwestFertilizer is the place if you want the
most options, the most product options, of any place in this region.
I like to say, if Southwestdoesn't have it, you don't need it,

(43:37):
because they have it. They haveeverything. If anything is new on
the market, Bob's going to bebringing it in. He and I talk
periodically about this new product. Howdo we deal with this particular problem?
What are we what are we goingto be recommending and telling people that's going
to work and stuff, And he'sjust always on top of it. And
Bob at Southwest Fertilizer is going tohave any product that you're looking for,

(44:00):
granular liquid, you name it,any fertilizer I talk about on guardline and
then some are you do you look? Are you looking for synthetic products?
Again, he's got a wider selectionthan anybody I know. Are you looking
for organic products? Probably the widestselection of organic products that you're going to
find anywhere. And that includes forweeds, for bugs, for diseases,

(44:23):
for fertilizing your lawn, you nameit, and then the equipment you need.
Do you want a really quality fertilizerspreader? Is it time to get
one of those one of those handspreaders to put out your fire at bait
and things like that. Bob's gotit corner of Bissinet and Runwick in Southwest
Houston. Southwest Fertilizer dot Com isa website. You need to go by

(44:45):
there and check it out just tosee what is it that I talk about
when I say things like this,or when I talk about that eighty foot
wall of tools. Oh man,I love it when you can go into
a place and as like they goteverything. Thing well that that's Southwest Fertilizer.
Let's see here. You're listening toGuardline. Our phone number is seven

(45:07):
to one three two one two fiftyeight seventy four seven one three two one
two five eight seven four easy.Easy to give us a call and talk
about the things that are of interestto you. Don't forget. I'm going
to be at the Ace Hardware LanghamCreek Ace Hardware, which is where Barker
Cypress and FM five point twenty ninealso called Spencer Road where they come together

(45:30):
up in northwest Houston's my last appearanceof the spring season, so it won't
be until fall that I'll start doingthis stuff again. And so here's your
chance. Come on out, let'smeet. Let's talk about things. We
can help you identify, we canhelp you diagnose. I'm going to talk
a little bit more about taking asample of your lawn a little bit later,

(45:51):
so stay tuned for that. Rightnow, let's run out to Kingwood
and we're going to talk to Fred. Hello, Fred, good morning.
Skip. A week or two ago, you were talking about a a brew
a tea that I can make thatI can put water of my house plants
with and get rid of the gnats. Can't remember what that was, Okay,

(46:14):
it is, Well, there's acouple of ways to do it if
you There's a product called Mosquito dunksthat we talk about all the time that
I know that. There's also thesame company makes something called mosquito bits.
It's a little it looks like grapenuts if you remember that cereal little crumbles,

(46:35):
and that's what Bill Spent was talkingabout. When we had him on
the on the show the other day. His wife just takes I don't I
think what she's I'm trying to rememberwhat she said. I think is a
teaspoon and puts it in a quartof water or something, lets it soak
a while. And the disease offungus gnats. The product controls both fungus
gnats and mosquitoes the same ingredient becausethey're both in the fly family and see

(47:00):
waters or plants with that, andso those fungus gnats then are going to
pick that disease up, just likethe mosquite as well when they get in
the water with the same product.And those fungus gnats, I guess lay
their eggs deep in the soil somehowand not that's why you've got it.
They're up near the surface. Yeah, okay, okay. But another thing

(47:21):
you can do for those, Fredis just let it dry out a little
bit. Yeah, if you keepit wet, that makes fungus nats really
happy. So let's disappoint disappoint themtoday. Thank you again, all right,
Fred, thank you very much forthe call. Hey, it's time
for a quick break Mike in thewoodlands. You'll be first when we come
up. We'll be right back.The phone number, by the way is

(47:43):
seven one three two one two ktR. Welcome back, Welcome back to
Guardenline. Good to have you withus. We are gonna run right to
the phones. We've got a lotto talk about this morning. I think
we'll start up in the woodlands withMike. Hello, Mike Hello, still
call from last week. I calledbecause I put a Bonnie wheat beater on

(48:05):
some chamber bitterer right before you know, a hard rain, and you said
not to apply it, and youwere correct. It's uh, it did
its job. The call, uhtoday is what do I do now?
Because I realized that chamber bitterer waswas more than the grass there? Do
I just resawed that area or justadds in some soil or what would you
do? Well? How far apartare the sprigs of Saint Augustine that are

(48:27):
still alive? Uh? I don'tknow. A couple of inches, It's
it's okay, it's pretty thick onhere. Yeah. If if you've got
them just a few inches, likelessen the width of your hand or something
apart, they're going to fill backin. We just got to mow water
and fertilize properly to get that grassuh in full swing. So I would

(48:49):
just say continue to provide good carefor it. Uh. If you if
you wanted to do something like acompost top dressing, a leaf mold compost
top dressing over that area, thatwould be a pretty good idea actually because
it does cover the surface of thesoil, blocks a little bit of light
out, but it really benefits thatgrass trying to grow back in as well.

(49:12):
And you can get you a productlike that, I know the the
heirloom soils folks have a leaf morecompost for compost top dressing that you can
put down. Perfect. That's whatI'll do. Thank you. And you're
not you're not too far away fromoh actually you're in the woodlow job.
Yeah you're also Yeah, I've been, I've been there. I just I

(49:34):
should have looked where you were frombefore, because you're just a cross the
street from Nature's Way as well.If you want to run down to south
of Conro right there, Nature's Wayis on the right hand side and they've
got it by the bag to orby the bulk if you're going to do
a large area. So yeah,that's what I would do for right now.
I think that that's probably your beststep, and just take it a

(49:55):
step at a time. Watch howthings go. If you haven't fertilized recently,
go ahead and get them down sothat the grass that's there has a
little extra boost, and then justdon't let it dry out, just keep
it just moderately. Most silver bagor the red bag, I can't remember.
You could do the one, butI would do this silver right now
because it's a it'll carry you allthe way through summer if you've not we're

(50:17):
talking about nitrofosh products. When yousay silber bag, i'll carry all the
way through the summer. All right, I probably did it, I don't
know six weeks ago. Okay,so is the time to do it again.
If you did the silver bag sixweeks ago, don't you don't need
to do it again. It's it. If you did it six weeks ago,

(50:37):
that's going to carry you at leastinto August, if not longer.
Yeah, okay, just return yourclippings. Let them decompose this summer.
Okay, thank you you bet,Mike, thanks a lot. Appreciate your
call very much. Let's run nowout to Katie and talk to Dan.
Hello, Dan, Hey, howyou doing. I've gotta with all the

(51:00):
range that we've had lately. Ilike, you have my grandkids playing out
in the backyard, and last weekI noticed I've got a lot of mud
dobbers out there, and actually mygrandson got stoned. How best can I
get rid of those mud dobber stung? Your grandson, sir? That is

(51:22):
unusual for them to stay. Imean, if you grab one by in
your hand or step on one withthe bare foot, I can understand it.
But they are not like red waspsand other wasps that are so aggressive.
But that's interesting interesting to hear.So you're not going to be able
to just like nuke the place withan insecticide so that wherever a mud dabber
ends up, it's going to killhim. Not having mud is a is

(51:46):
a good start. Any if theyhave access to mud, that they need
that to build their homes and things, and and so just kind of minimizing
that to whatever degree you can.When you see them under the eaves building
their nests, just knock those nestsdown. I use just a flat piece
of metal. Yeah, I actuallysaw them flying. They were actually coming

(52:09):
up out of almost like crowded holesback on the back corner. Are these
really big insects compared to it likea wasp? Okay, is that now
we're making sense? That is actuallynot a mud dabber. That is called
a cicada killer, and any andespecially bear soil areas. They live individually.

(52:32):
They're one of the not social waspsand bees that we have. And
most bees and wasps, you know, live as a group. These live
individually. But you'll have a wholebunch of holes in an area where different
cicada killers have their little single nestwhere they're raising their young. You can
put an insecticide down in that nestso that they have to crawl through it.

(52:54):
There's different ways to go about it. One simple thing would be to
dust a little seven dust in intothe hole and around the hole, because
they've got to crawl in and outof there several times a day. Yes,
and that would be one way toindividually hit them. So, yes,
I'm glad we got that clarified,because yes, cicada killers are very
different again those two though, althoughthey'll buzz you, they generally aren't as

(53:15):
aggressive as other wasps are. Alrighty, well, thank you very much.
I appreciate it, you bet,Dan, thanks a lot. I appreciate
that a lot. You know,the Buchanans in the Heights, they are
an outstanding garden center for finding anykind of thing you're looking for. Really,
they specialize in natives. It's BuchanansNative Plants, that's the official name.

(53:38):
They're on Eleventh Street in the Heightsand you're just driving down Eleventh Street
through the Heights and all of asudden you look over the side and there's
this really cool garden center right there, and you need to go by there
and wander through. I mean,I can sit here and try to describe
it to you. But their nativeplant selection is second to none. It
is divide it up even to likeif, okay, there's native Texas plants,

(54:02):
but then there's native Southeast Texas plants. There's native plants to Harris County
to the Houston area, and theyhave those even a table that's like if
you want something that truly is fromright here where we live, they've got
those kind of natives as well,and it just makes it really easy to
do. When it comes to pollinatorgardens, when it comes to shade trees,

(54:23):
when it comes to any plant thatyou want to enhance your landscape with,
Buchanans Plants has got it. Theykeep an excellent selection. The gift
shops wonderful the products that they carry, wide variety of products. You know,
if you're looking for a fertilizer Italk about here on Guardline, they're
going to have it at Buchanan's PlantsAnd the website is buchanans Plants dot com.

(54:44):
Buchanans Plants dot com makes it realeasy. Buchanans Plants dot com.
Please when you go to their website, sign up for the newsletter, get
the notifications they send out. It'sexcellent, and poke around the website at
the educational material that have on there. It's outstanding. It really is outstanding.
I would encourage you to do that, and then while you're there,

(55:06):
check out the soils I talk about. The fertilizers I talk about, for
example, Microlife. They have anexcellent selection of Microlife products. If you
need the green bag, the sixtyfour for fertilizing your lawn or anything in
your yard, they've got it.If you need humates plus the Purple bag
that is concentrated compost in a bag. Do you need a liquid Microlife product.

(55:27):
There are a number of those too, you know. Microlife MICROLFE has
a wide range of things. Thingsthat are based on fish emulsion, things
that are based on seaweed, thingsthat are fertilizers, like the orange label
liquid that I like to use onindoor plants. It's a seven percent nitrogen
one percent posters. I think it'sthree or four three percent four percent potassium.
Excellent product, works really well.You can mix it up and use

(55:51):
it on your plants. Go toBuchanus Plants and find them. Microlife is
available all over. You don't haveto drive from Galveston to get to Microlife
products, but just widely available.You can go to Microlife Fertilizer dot com
check out all the different products thatthey have online. I think you'll be
very impressed. And I've tried anumber of their products. I'm still working
my way through because I have somany of them. But every time I've

(56:14):
used a micro Life product, I'vehad good results, good success. Let's
go. Now we're gonna head toelse here in Houston. Talk to Kevin.
Hello, Kevin, Hey, goodmorning. How are you doing.
I'm good sir. How can wehelp today? So my Saint Augustine grass
is started to turn like a lightgreen color and like the root runners,

(56:37):
the runners, you know, theyweren't really rooting into the grass anymore.
And I did a little research andhere's what I think they call it,
like take out root rot or takeall root rot. Okay, all right,
So any Kevin, what part ofHouston are you in? Garden Oaks

(56:57):
kind of more inside town downtown clothes? Is that right? Correct? Okay,
yeah, it's like, oh,okay, well, it'd be easy
for you to get to me today. I'm going to be at Langham Creek
Ace Hardware, which is out inthe Copperfield area just south. It's south
of Cypress on Barker, Cypress andH. Spencer five twenty nine, northwest

(57:20):
Houston. If you will take aplug of your grass about four inches wide,
maybe four by six inches. Let'ssay, go down. I use
a butcher knife, just cut outa little square and uh I use I
use my wife's butcher knife, butI clean it and get it back quickly
so she doesn't know. Just alittle tip from one guy to another.
Slip it right into a ziplock bagand zip it up. And if you'll

(57:44):
bring it to me. I'll doa free diagnosis on it and make sure
we are dealing with take a rootrot. You know, I'd hate to
say, well go spray this onit when I'm not sure what the disease
is. There are things that workon take All, but you gotta,
you know, you to know youhave it. So do you do you
think you might be able to getout eleven thirty to one thirty today to

(58:05):
do that. If not, weI've actually headed down the yeah right now,
all right, well that sounds fun. All right, Well, if
you can find a if you thinkthat's what you have, go to my
schedule online at Skiperchter dot com getthe lawn pest Disease and weed management schedule

(58:25):
and thunder diseases at take All,and there's a list of all your herbicide
or funge a side options for controllingthat disease. I would recommend that you
look at those and follow that schedule. It's not take All spray time,
but if you've got a significant amountof it, I would go ahead and
spray them anyway now and then fallis going to be the most important application

(58:49):
time for you. In October?Okay, all right, and what's the
website again? Gardening with Skip dotcom? Right, okay, thank you,
all right, Ben, you takecare. Hey, it's time take
a Break's time for the news.We'll be right back, Mike and Andy.
We'll get to you when we comeback, but today, thank you
for listening. We're always happy tohave you here as a listener. I

(59:13):
am going to head straight out tofriends Wood and talk to Andy. Hello,
Andy, Hey, Skip, howare you this morning? Well,
sir, how can we help?Thank you? Well, I'm a longtime
serial listener and a schedule follower.I got a problem with some Saint Augustine
in the front yard. Okay,I've got a patch Skip that late in

(59:35):
the winter got overtaken. Basically,this broad area got overtaken by dollar weed
and I didn't get around to treatingit. I figured, well, we're
going to mow and Saint Augustine willtake over. It's about a ten foot
diameter patch that the Saint Augustine isnot thriving. There's runners going across it.

(59:55):
Obviously, I still got dollar weedin it, which signals a problem.
I'm self medicated with leaf compost,mulch, microlife humates. I've treated
for grubs, it's been fertilized andthe water's addicted. I'm out options here
needs your advice. Okay. Sobottom line is your your lunch thin and

(01:00:21):
you need to get it to growback in. Yeah, in a particular
area. I'm certain it's soil related. Okay. Well, the first thing
I would do is do a soiltest. Just take a sample from about
five or six or more different spotsthroughout that area. Just that way.
You know, like if it wasa spot where let's say the dog stopped

(01:00:43):
and pooped last year, you'd havea very inaccurate soil test reading if you
just took one little sample from onespot. So that's why we take a
whole bunch of them and mix themtogether, and then it takes about a
pint of soil that you send tothe lab. The website is easy.
It's soil Test one word sol testingdot t A, m U, dot

(01:01:05):
E d U. So that's soiltesting dot texas A and M University dot
Educate education ed U. Uh.And if you go there, there's a
farm uh to do you want touse the urban soil test form and let's
look and see what your nutrient levelsare. Maybe something's really out of whack.
Maybe the pH is really out ofI don't know, but that the
only thing I thought about. Theonly thing I thought about is about ten

(01:01:27):
years ago we had a tree removedm hm uh, and we round the
stump and and after you know,after the it settled in. We didn't
have any problems. But that's theonly thing I can It's the exact same
area. Okay, So I thinksomething's going on with that, you know,
years later. But that's a goodidea. Tell me, tell me
again what happened years ago. Imissed that we lost a tree, okay,

(01:01:50):
and we took it out, andwe had the stump ground you know
basically blow dirt level okay uh,and new grass grew over the top of
We did have any problems, Butthis area is the exact area where that
tree was. Okay, Well youknow it could be that that was years

(01:02:10):
ago. Though there shouldn't be aproblem with the wood chips and the soil
now from years ago. But letme let me just here. Here's what
I would recommend is doing this oldtest just to check that, but getting
getting some aeration done. If it'snot a big enough area to hire somebody
to come out or rent an equipmentto do it yourself. If you're a
do it yourself, or then atleast take you know, like a spading

(01:02:34):
fork and go straight down in thesoil and then wiggle it a little bit
to kind of wiggle out a holeand then come up and go do it
again, and do that as closetogether and as much as you can through
that area, and then top dressit with some leaf more composts, which
you can buy by the bag.You're out there, you know, in
the Friends with area, So you'regoing to have a hardware stores that you

(01:02:55):
may find that carry it out inyour area. There's a lot of places
you can get those kind of products. But I would do that, and
then always if you haven't fertilized,then a little fertilization in that area just
to stimulate the growth with a goodterf fertilizer. That would kind of be
the full package, along with wateringenough to get it to stay moist so

(01:03:19):
it can fill in a little faster. All right, it's time for my
midsummer fertilization anyway. So okay,all right, that's I'm gonna try the
aeration and I'll do the soil test. That's interesting. Yeah, so maybe
it's a little compaction, maybe not. But anytime you open up oxygen into
the soil and provide some organic matter, decomposed organic matter like the fungal leaf

(01:03:43):
mold compost on top, it stimulatesthe grass, it helps, and it
makes the root system more extensive andmore effective. And that is what's going
to be, along with sunlight,the key to getting that grass to grow
back in. All right, Thankyou, sir, Good luck with that.
Thank you, Indy. I appreciate, appreciate your call very much.
You know, he's talking about takingout a tree, affordable tree service,

(01:04:05):
Martin Spoon Moore. You hear metalk about Martin all the time. Martin's
been doing lon trees around this areafor a very long time. I mean,
his experience is extensive. He knowswhat he's doing. He does a
good job, and he'll come out. It costs about one hundred and fifty
bucks have him come out and lookat the situation. He'll assess it and

(01:04:26):
then any work that needs to bedone that one fifty You've already paid one
hundred and fifty dollars towards the workthat you will actually have done. Do
you need pruning done, Do youneed trees to be trained young trees,
planting pruning? Do you have issueswith the roots on the surface. Do
you need deep root feeding or fora water There's just whatever you need,
Martin can do it. But thebig thing right now is we're in storm

(01:04:49):
season. We're in a hurricane season, and it doesn't take a hurricane,
by the way, as we learneda few weeks ago, to cause major
tree problems. Let Martin look atthose trees, make sure that they're prune
in a way that's going to givethem the best chance possible to survive through
the storms. Afftree Service dot com. AFF stands for Affordable aff Tree Service

(01:05:13):
dot com. Or call him sevenone three six nine nine twenty six sixty
three. That's seven one three sixnine nine twenty six sixty three Affordable Tree
Service. We're going to head outnow to Montgomery and talk to Clay.
Hello, Clay, Hey, how'sit going. I'm well, thanks?

(01:05:38):
How can I help? Yeah,I've got a weed. It's in my
yard for oh gosh, I don'tknow how long I've been trying to get
it out. Uh, and Ican't seem to get it out and I
sent you some pictures of it yesterday. Yes, sir, I've looked at
those, and I just want tocongratulate you that you did pick one of

(01:05:59):
the most difficult weeds to manage,so a lot of people have to do.
That's called Virginia button weed. Virginiabutton weed is a perennial weed and
it crawls through the grass. Andyou know how I always talk about create
a dense, healthy lawn to chokeout most weed problems. The reason I
happen to say most and not allis because of weeds like Virginia buttonweed and
dollar weed that are going to survivein a well dense, well mode,

(01:06:24):
well fertilized lawn. Virginia button weedloves wet areas, so it proliferates faster
when you have a lot of soilmoisture. So if you're over irrigating,
back off that you can't control rainfall. But sometimes areas are poorly drained,
and even improving the drainage in thatarea will help keep kind of suppressed the

(01:06:45):
Virginia button weed. But you're gonnahave to spray. And the best product
for Virginia button weed by far isone called Celsius like the temperature Celsius.
You can buy Celsius a lot ofdifferent places. You know you were in
the Montgomery area, so I would. I can give them a call out

(01:07:05):
there at A and A Plants andProduce. They may carry it. I
haven't looked for it in there before, but they may carry it. If
not, I bet they can getit for you. But anyway, Celsius
is also one that we don't worryas much about when it's hot. Still
spray it in the morning, buta lot of these other products will hurt

(01:07:27):
your lawn when it's hot. That'swhy I like Celsius, plus the fact
that it's the best one you canuse. Follow the label, be ready
to do it again six to eightweeks later. This is a tough weed,
but Celsius is excellent. Okay,okay, thank you all. I
appreciate it. You bet we're goingto take a little break for again here,
Hurta. When we come back,you will be our first up.

(01:07:54):
Oh my gosh, I hate tocut in on journey here. We should
just let me shut up and listento music, but we got a show
to do here, garden Line.Listen to those of you up in the
Tomboldt area. You got a hometownfeed store out on the west side of
Tomball called D and D Feed.And I don't know if you've been there
lately, you need to go.If you haven't. D and D has

(01:08:14):
an excellent supply of everything I talkabout. Of course, they're a feed
store. You're gonna get feed.You're going to get super quality pet feed
as well in there. But whenit comes to fertilizers, if I talk
about it on guarden Line, they'vegot it at D and DE Feed.
Same thing with soils. You hearme talk about soils like maybe an heirloom
blend or something. They've got thoseat D and DE Feed, for example.
On the fertilizers and nutrients, excellentselection of all the Medina products.

(01:08:39):
You know, the soil activator,the Medina plus the Medina has to grow
for lawn. There has to growfor lawn. Is the eight excuse me,
twelve four eight. It's a threeone two ratio a fertilizer, excellent
product, hooks up to garden hose, easy to use. Go buy D
and D and get it. Imean, whatever kind of fertilizer you're going
to buy that I've talked about hereneed some plants that they've got those as

(01:09:01):
well. D and D Feed isstocked up and ready easy to get to.
Twenty nine to twenty west of Tumbull. You gonna give them a call.
Two eight one three five one seventyone forty four two eight one three
five one seventy one forty four.D and D Feed your hometown feed store
out there on the west side oftumble. We're going to head up to

(01:09:24):
Spring Branch now and talk to Herta. Well, Herta, good morning.
How are you doing. I'm doingwell, man, Thank you good My
questions about my cheffalera. It waskind of injured in the big storm when
they came with their big tractors andtook my cut my trees that needed cutting.

(01:09:47):
Okay, but anyway, I putit in this structure so I could
stand the branches up again. Butuh, warm little twig of it.
It has about five leaves they turnedyellow. Okay. Now, I put
asimi on there, just a handfulsprinkled and I watered in with rainwater.

(01:10:15):
Okay, what else can I doto help it? Oh? It has
poison ivy growing at the bottom.Also, Oh my gosh, yeah,
around it big chefflearra that you've got, uh it is it's almost four feet
tall. Okay, Well, thepoison ivy around it. The way to

(01:10:39):
deal with that is not easy.But you got to get some type of
a sponge type applicator that you canput a product on and squeeze the poison
ivy leaves to put that product onthe leaves, because if you get any
let's say, I would use somethingcontaining trichlope here and I'll spell that in
just a moment, but if youget that on your chefflara, it'll kill

(01:11:02):
it. And so rather than sprayit, I use you know what I've
used before too, and this maybe doable for you is those big old
sheep like barbecue tongs but not thenice ones. Just something that's just that,
you know, metal tongues that arevery inexpensive, and you attach a

(01:11:23):
sponge to each on the inside ofeach side of that and you can wet
that sponge and then you reach underthere and with that tongue just squeeze those
leaves and do it several of theleaves, and that way it doesn't hurt
your plants, but it moves downin poison iety. Well, suppose I
put rubber gloves on and pull itout. Well, you can try.

(01:11:47):
You may not get it all,but be extra careful because you don't want
to grab it and have it geton your forearms or something. You gotta
be careful. I put it ina bag. Even dry poison ivy has
got that oil on it. Soif you want to go that route,
that's fine. I have done somethinglike that before. Just know that that

(01:12:08):
oil is now in the rubb gloves, so be careful when you take them
off that you don't you know,grab a glove, yes, yeah,
okay, I might even just throwthem. Boy. The other thing I
thought maybe I can take a longpair of channel lock friars to pull it
with. With you gloves on,you wouldn't need channel lot but yeah,

(01:12:31):
I don't know. There's different waysto get under there and do it.
Whatever works for you. Just besafe because okay, all right, Well,
thank you very much, Thank youher, thank you for being there.
I appreciate you. Hey, you'reover in the Neck of the Woods.
I'm going to be in today atthe Langham Creek Ace Hardware. If
you aren't doing anything between eleven thirtyand one thirty. Come out and see
me. Okay, Langham Creek Hardware, Langham Creek Ace Hardware. It's in

(01:12:56):
northwest Houston where Barker Cypress and FMfive twenty nine come together. They call
the neighborhood copperfield around there. Ohoh, I'm familiar with it. Just
think a copper field. But it'sif you're on Barker Cyprus, you'll you'll
go pretty close to five twenty nine. You'll find them. But anyway,
if you make it, come onout, we'll look. Look, we'll

(01:13:17):
be giving away some stuff to happen. Thank you, thank you you did
you know when it comes to successin your plants, I always say brown
stuff before green stuff. What doesthat mean? That means the foundation of
success in gardening comes by building thesoil. You wouldn't put a house on
the ground without a foundation under it. Not if you want to last well,

(01:13:42):
if you want success with plants.Cienamultch down south Houston, those of
you down in that area near RowSharon, just north of Roach Sharon,
really a highway six and two eightyeight. They're actually on FM five twenty
one. But Ciena Maultch has gotthe Mulchus. It's got the soil blends.
You know, we talk about theheirloom soils, veggie and urb mix.
They've got that. At Ciena Maltch. Everything they carry super high quality

(01:14:05):
and when you get there you'll seeit. When you take it out of
the bag, you'll see what we'retalking about here. If you have a
bulk delivery, they'll do a deliverywithin twenty miles of Ciena Maltch down there.
Just give them a call, stopby. Here's the website. This
is how you find out everything youneed to know from the phone number to
the location Sienna Multch dot com.And while you're there taking care of your

(01:14:28):
brown stuff. They have every fertilizerI talk about on garden Line everyone.
So it's the way to get everythingready so you can have success with your
plans. And the folks at CianaMaltz will treat you right to very friendly,
very helpful, just a pleasure tobe around. Speaking of pleasure,
I like going out to Nelson Watergardenand Nursery. Nelson Watergarden is out there,

(01:14:51):
and let's think of it this way, it's your West Houston Garden Center.
They're in Katie, so if yougo out ten to Katie, get
to Katie Fort Ben Road, turnnorth, they're just a hop skipping or
jump up there on the right handside. They have got unbelievable nursery.
Really, I'm always amazed at theplants that they carry because they have a

(01:15:12):
lot, a lot of stuff.And when it comes to water gardens.
Oh, I just posted something toour Gardenline Facebook page the other day,
which, by the way, youought to follow that we have a lot
of good stuff we put up there, but just the sound of water.
Take some friends go out to NelsonNursery and water Gardens. Check out the
nursery, but just allow yourself sometime to sit out there and enjoy the

(01:15:34):
sound of the water. That isso therapeutic. And they do that better
than just to put anybody I knowwhen it in fact, Nelson Water Garden
and Nursery is better than anybody Iknow here in the Texas area. They're
even nationally known. They've been aleader for a long time. Well,

(01:15:55):
the music means I quit talking.It's time for the top of the arrow
break. We will be back thoughyou're listening to garden Line. I'm your
host, Skip Richtor. Thanks forlistening. Just another reminder. I'll be
at Ace Hardware, the Langham CreekAce Hardware, Northwest Houston. I hope
you'll come out. It's over kindof where the neighborhood called Copperfield is Barker

(01:16:15):
Cypress Road, south of the BerryCenter. Am I making it easier to
get to Highway five twenty nine,which is FM Spencer Road out there,
easy to find Langham Creek. We'regoing to be given away. We got
reps from Microlife and from Nitrofoss givingaway fertilizers out there every thirty minutes.
Bring me samples in bags. Let'sidentify things. You got a turf sample.

(01:16:38):
Here's what you do. You needto take a four by four or
four by six plug of turf,slip it in a zip lock bag from
the area between healthy and dead.I can diagnose, but I can't do
autopsies. It's on this program.Welcome to kt r H garden Line with

(01:17:01):
Skip Rictor it's Trim. Just watchhim as welcome back, Welcome back to

(01:17:32):
guarden Line. Good to have youwith us. You are listening to garden
Line. I'm your host's Skip Richter, and we're here to answer gardening questions.
That's what we do. We turnbrown thumbs green at least that's our
goal. So uh, give usa call seven one three two one two
K t R H. And thatwill do the trick. We'll have you

(01:17:54):
on here. We'll answer your questions. What are you wondering about? Launch,
trees, vegetables, flowers, houseall all is fair game long as
it's plants. We don't do marriageadvice, but we do we do help
you with plants. Oh, Iguess we could say plant advice is free.
Marriage advice is three hundred dollars anhour, and you probably wouldn't want
take it anyway. But joking aside, we love to talk to you here

(01:18:17):
on garden Line and find out whatyour questions are. I guarantee you this.
I've learned this over thirty five yearsof doing this. If you have
a question, there are a lotof other people that have the same question.
It's just how things go through theseasons. Someone was asking me the
other day about various kinds of products, and it just kind of got me
thinking. There are always new productscoming on the scene. Sometimes they're good,

(01:18:42):
sometimes they're not good. Sometimes they'rejust a gimmick. But sometimes they're
very effective. Medina. They're oneof their most recent editions, if not
the most is super grow Plus.It's one of the hash to grow line
of products from Medina. Super GrowPlus. It's a sixteen ze z to
fertilizer, but it's more than thefertilizer. It hooks up to a garden

(01:19:03):
hose, covers about four thousand squarefeet, so ten minutes you can do
your whole lawn. It has,of course that sixteen percent nitrogen, about
a fifth of the sixteen percent isslow release in it. It also has
a kelated iron form in it,so that yellowing of your grass that typically
is an iron efficiency symptom, andMedina has to Grow has got you covered

(01:19:24):
on that. With the super growPlus. You're also going to find molasses
in it which stimulates microbial activity inthe soil, Humic acid in it,
which is another beneficial thing for theroots and the soil zone of the plant.
So it just makes it really easyto use. Oh, seaweed extractor,
forgot to tell you about that one. And this is quite the concoction.

(01:19:45):
Supergrow Plus from a Dina widely availablehere in the Greater Houston area,
and I would encourage you to giveit a try. Hook cap that quirt
bottle and try it out on yourlawn. By the way, it's not
just lawns. I've seen people useit on their vegetable garden and it does
pretty good for that as well.It's some awesome tomatoes as a result.

(01:20:08):
Let's go out to Jersey Village.We're going to talk to George now.
Hello, George, Hey, Skip, how're they're going with you? I'm
well, sir, how can wehelp today? My blueberry plant said the
leaves are turning brown on them,and I read work said that that.
He said more of an acidic soil. So I tried pouring some some the
rose fertilizer or some zatia fertilizer.Didn't seem to make any difference, and

(01:20:31):
so I thought I would test itwith this handheld meter that's supposed to check
the pH factor, and it doesn't. It always says seven no matter what
I do. So meters are notalways that accurate, but go ahead.
So there's eight hardware cellos where you'regoing to be today? Do you know
the meters? Yeah? You know, I haven't. I was at Lingham

(01:20:56):
Creek a while back, but Ididn't happen to look for that, so
I can't tell you for sure.I can tell you this though. If
your blueberries are turning brown, that'salmost certainly not a pH problem. If
the new growth on your blueberries isturning yellow or is coming out yellow and
not developing a good green color onthe new shoots at the ends, that's

(01:21:20):
an iron problem that could be relatedto phs as well. If they're turning
brown, something is killing roots,and it could come from temporary drought,
It could come from physical damage tothe roots. It could come from soggy
oversaturated soil. Roots can't get oxygenand they die. But the browning.

(01:21:42):
The only other thing that would causebrowning is if you put a whole lot
of as salt based fertilizer on andyou burned roots with it. But it
would take up a big over applicationto cause that. Okay, so what
should I do? Well, how'syour watering been? Are you giving it
a how often do you water?You know, tell me a little bit,

(01:22:03):
very often, once a week somethinglike that. Okay. Well,
and how long have these been inthe ground, Oh, three months something
like that. Okay, they stillhave somewhat of a limited root system.
I would water this twice a week, and I would apply it to the
entire area around the plant. Ifyou've got an autoratic sprinkler that comes on

(01:22:27):
sometimes something amat. Oh it's youhand water? Yes, okay, good,
that's that's actually better, so giveit a good soaking. What you'll
find, you know, when Ihand water, I've sat there and watered
until there was puddles and it wasrunning off. And then I come back
a little bit later and I digdown and I only wet the soil about
an inch deep because it takes timefor it to soak in. So when

(01:22:51):
you're water, depending on the soiltype you have, you may need to
water for a little bit, goto another area and water something else,
come back again. I've got someareas in my garden that I water three
times like that, just to geta good soaking down in the soil.
My guest, George is the soilis not wet enough for them. Having

(01:23:13):
said that, we don't want itsoggy wet. But when you get through
watering, you ought to be ableto dig down about three or four inches
and feel good moisture in the soilat that depth. All right, Let
me try that. I think that'smy best guess on it. You're gonna
be up there in Jersey Village.I'll be at the Langham Creek Ace Hardware
over in the Copperfield area, whichisn't far from you, right around the
corner. I'll be there from eleventhirty to one thirty. If you want

(01:23:35):
to stop by, bring me somepictures of the blueberries or anything. I'll
be happy to look at it.And also we're going to be giving away
some fertilizers and maybe I can directyou to a couple of products. You're
going to want to go acidic oneverything you do on those blueberries, and
so there are some quality products byour fertilizer folks that can help with that

(01:23:57):
as well. All Right, i'llsee you ladies, got a chance,
all right, look forward to it. Thanks, Thanks, good luck with
that. Yeah, I think thatwatering is probably gonna be the best thing
I can suggest. You know,we talk about fertilizing your lawn, and
you hear me also talk about azamite, and some people get confused. It's
like, well I fertilized, doI need to use azimite? And the
enters yes. Generally speaking, Azimiteis a trace mineral supplement that we put

(01:24:21):
in the soil to build the bankaccount of all those obscure little trace minerals
that although they're only needed in tinyamounts, they are essential for plant growth
and you can put them on yourPut azamite on your lawn. I would
say about once a year is usuallyadequate. You can do a soul test
to see if you need to doit more often or if you're good to
go with as it is, butASMI quality product. You can go to

(01:24:43):
Azmite Texas dot com. You're gonnafind azamite most of the garden centers I
talk about, if not all thefeed stores, the Southwest fertilizer ace hardware
stores. Azmite is widely available andthat is what we use it for to
get the bank account of micronutrient.It's trace minerals to a level where they're
always available in good quantity for theplants that are off from It's time for

(01:25:06):
me to take a little break.Our phone number is seven to one three
two one two k t r H. Seven one three two one two k
t r H. I'll be rightback. Welcome back to guard Line.
Good to have you with us today. We do feel life today and look
outside it is beautiful, little breeze, clear skies. Oh my goodness,

(01:25:29):
now's the time to be listening toguard Line with that phone in your pocket
while you're out in the garden.This is a good time to get that
done. By the way. Uh. We we talk about birds a lot,
and I have continued to build stuffinto my landscape for birds. I'm
planting plants for birds, things thatattract hummingbirds for example. Uh, the

(01:25:50):
feeders that I have out there.My stuff comes from all Birds Unlimited.
I love wild Birds Unlimited. They'resix stores in the Houston area. Yeah.
Just if you hear nothing else,write this down WBU dot com Forward
slash Houston, WBUS and Wilbirds Unlimiteddot Com Forward slash Houston. No matter

(01:26:13):
what you need, they've got it. You're gonna go on vacation this summer.
Get one of their seed cylinders.It's like one of those big candles
that you see. They're shape likethat. They're round and flat topped.
It's squeezed together seeds and products thatbirds love. But they're so tightly packed
the birds have to stay a littlelonger to get a bite, So you
get to enjoy watching them from thefeeder. They don't just grab a seed

(01:26:34):
and run away or fly away.These seed cylinders are excellent and if you're
gonna go on vacation, it's agreat way. They'll be seed there all
the time you're gone. The birdsare being taken care of. I just
put up a bird bath a littleactually it's a little fountain, but it's
the birds enjoy it. They getin there and do that. They love

(01:26:55):
that sound. And let me tellyou, you cannot believe the change in
I put up some new feeders andthis bird bath that has a splash of
water sound, and the number ofbirds we have in our landscape is like
fourfold what it was before. Atgrab some wildbirds. Nesting super Blend that
is an excellent product. We arestill in nesting season and birds are going

(01:27:16):
to be molting here where they shedtheir feathers and get new feathers. And
when they're in that situation, theydon't fly all over the place so much.
They kind of tend to hang outa little bit. Nesting super Blend
excellent for that as well. WabirdsUnlimited quality feeds. Quality products turn your
backyard into just a pleasureful sanctuary,the sound of water, the sound of

(01:27:40):
birds, the ant watching birds andtheir antics. And you know birds are
eating bugs for you too. Mostbirds are feeding on insects as well.
Wabirds Unlimited, WBU dot Com,Forward Slash Houston. You got to check
those out. We're going to gonow to Dickinson and talk to Karen.
Hello, Karen, Oh hey,Karen, can you hear me? All

(01:28:03):
right? I can. I've gota question with my fruit trees. They're
about three feet maybe four feet high, and we get ant cinema, and
so we've been putting ant killer aroundand trying to get to get rid of
the ants and stuff. But doesn'tI get into the fruit the poisonous stuff.
I mean, how do you dealwith fire ants and around your fruit
trees and stuff? Okay, well, if it's fire ants, you do

(01:28:26):
need to use a bait, andyou scatter it according to the label.
And the reason I like baits.You don't take a spoonful and dump it
on a mound. You put iteverywhere because antswer foraging everywhere. For example,
Andro is just one example of anumber of good fire baits. But
Andro can be applied at a rateof one pound per acre. That's a

(01:28:49):
granule here, a granule there.It's very scattered out. And when you
do that, no matter where theant colonies are, they're going to have
foragers and you're gonna suppress greatly theends on your property. If any escape
that bait treatment, you can doindividual mound treatments, But to just do

(01:29:09):
the mound treatments is to play whackammole. A mountain pops up, you
treat it, you kill it.Another mount pops up, you treat it,
and you kill it. It's playingwack a mole with fire ants.
So use the baits around your fruittrees for fireant. I got you,
I got you. I have oneother question. If you don't line,
you probably talked about it earlier,but uh, you know it's high as

(01:29:30):
to getting this stuff in your grassand stuff. You know, I've got
a real large lawn and stuff,and I worry it's going to dry on
stuff. And I don't know ifit's a time of fertilize right now or
put some on it. Now's agood time to fertilize if you've not fertilized
since, let's say earlier in thespring. Now's the time to put your

(01:29:53):
summer fertilizations down. Karen, youwant to make sure and follow the label
as to how much you apply.But if you put down a slow release,
choose a product that is slow releaseand that will feed your lawn all
the way up until it's the falltime. But you need to write down
my website because all of the instructions, the charts that take you from January

(01:30:15):
through December in your lawn are onthe website. They're free. It's gardening
with Skip dot com. Yeah,all right, I appreciate it. Yeah,
go to Gardening with Skip and I'lltell you the price. If you
want to do it synthetic, ifyou can do it organic, it's all
at Gardening Withiskip dot com. Bothoptions. Okay, all right, thank
you so much. Thank you appreciateyour call. We're going to go now

(01:30:35):
to Mike. Hello. Mike Hello, A question for you, actually two
questions. Is it possible to overapply barricade and the amami? I'm not
saying it right, but I knowI put it down following your schedules,

(01:30:59):
So is it possible to over applythose? You have a weed question.
It is possible to over apply almostanything that we use insecticide, fungicide,
herbicide, weed control, all ofthat. The thing with you ask about
azamite specifically, So those are micronutrients, you know, and if you over

(01:31:19):
applied to a point where let's sayyour iron was through the roof way too
much iron, it affects the uptakeof other positively charged nutrients. Iron is
a positively charged nutrient, and sotoo much phosphorus, which is not in
azamite. Too much phosphorus causes ironthat's in the soil to become unavailable,

(01:31:43):
and so it yes, that'll youknow, you always have to follow the
label. I recommend a soil testas the best way to know exactly what
your lawn needs. I give you, I give out you know, the
general recommendations here all the time.In specifics. It is possible that an
individual's yard would have too much ofsomething that we didn't expect. That's not

(01:32:08):
normal in a lawn, and that'swhy a soil test helps you make sure
you're fertilizing what's best for your lawn. But in the meantime, following the
schedule is the best way to go. Okay, all right, so it's
yeah, that's good. I'm eightypercent ahead on the weed game. But
I've got this one particular weed,for lack of a better term, it's

(01:32:32):
it's a it's a knot smaller thanyour fist when you dig one up.
When you dig it up, butthe blades come out like they look like
big blades of grass, but they'reskinny, and sometimes they grow a foot
two foot tall. And there's justthese little clumps coming up out of my
uh, out of my lawn.And I've put a couple of different weed

(01:32:55):
killers out there, and nothing reallyseems to work on it. I don't
even know what you can. Yeah, that's not ringing a bell, mike.
What part of Houston are you inor the area? Uh? Si
fair? Oh my gosh, couldyou dig one up and bring it today?
I'm going to be I'm going tobe in the Copperfield neighborhood today,

(01:33:15):
Yeah, Copperfield. I'll be therefrom eleven thirty to one thirty at Langham
Creek Ace Hardware, which is byCopperfield. You know that's close to you,
where it is to you. Ifyou'll if you can't dig it up,
then bring me the cutover. Youcan dig them up. I did
a bunch yesterday. Well bring italready, dug up? All right,
good, bring me let me lookat those because right now my brain is
not picturing what you're talking about.But if I look at it, I

(01:33:40):
can tell you what it is andtell you what to do. And they're
going to have the product, whatever, the whatever is needed to kill it,
They're gonna have it there at theACE Hardware stores. Okay, and
what time? What time will yoube there starting eleven thirty to one thirty
today eleven thirty, ok. Yeah, I'll get out there. And for
anybody listening, eleven thirty one thirtytoday, you can bring me samples of
whatever you got to identify or todiagnose or whatever we need. Hey,

(01:34:02):
Mike, thank you for the call. I appreciate good questions. Sure bye
bye bye bye. Yeah for sure. Listen, folks, there is an
adage out there in people's minds thatif a teaspoon's good, a tablespoon's better.
And that's true when it comes toa fungicide you bought, an insecticide,

(01:34:26):
you bought, a weed killer,you bought, a fertilizer you bought,
and it is untrue that if ateaspoon's good at tablespoons better. These
products have labels to tell you howmuch to put out there, and when
you don't follow that, you willcause problems. Weed control products that are
fairly safe to use in your lawnwill hurt your lawn if you don't apply

(01:34:50):
them at the right rate. Thinkabout this. If you're a company selling
a weed control product, or sellinga fertilizer, or selling an insect side,
wouldn't you want people to use asmuch of your product as possible because
that's going to make you more money. Right, So, if it says
on the label, use a teaspoon, don't put down a tablespoon, because

(01:35:12):
a teaspoon is enough to do whateverit is you're wanting to do with that
product. If it wasn't, theywould tell you a tablespoon because they're going
to sell more product. Follow thelabel. The label not only is the
label of the law, but thelabel is common sense. And you know
it just the call. You knowwe were just talking about with Mike.

(01:35:33):
You know, the asmid is anexample, and I use nutrients as an
example of that. Iron is agood thing. Too much iron is not
a good thing, zinc is agood thing. Too much sink is not
a good nitrogen is a good thing. You overdo the nitrogen in your lawn,
you're going to get faster growth,have to mow, mow more,
water more, and you're going toend up with a smaller root system,

(01:35:55):
believe it or not, an overfertilized with nitrogen lawn. That's why say
slow release in the summer, becauseyou can put out enough that will release
all the way out until the falland you get the right amount a little
bit at a time. It's theway to go about it. It's the
way. If a teaspoon is good, apply a teaspoon. A tablespoon is

(01:36:16):
not better. And you can getinto problems on all these products, and
it just kind of got me thinkingabout that. There. That's I guess
your tip of the day. We'regoing to take a little break here.
It is time for the news.I see a lot of folks out there
that are hanging on. Hang on. I'll get to you. Raphael,
you will be the first up whenwe come back, as well as Steve
in East Houston. All right,welcome back to Guardline. Good to have

(01:36:39):
you with us. Nike Foss hasa product called Sweet Green. I don't
know if you've encountered it before,but it is well named. Sweet Green
is a molasses base product that's actuallyeleven percent nitrogen fertilizer for your lawn.
It dissolves away, of course,the sugary substance of molasses. That reason.
Organic gardeners use molasses because stimulates biologicalactivity in the soil. Bacteria.

(01:37:01):
Beneficial bacteria really love it. SweetGreen is easy to apply, smells wonderful
you carried around. I jokingly saywhen you put sweet Green in the back
of the car, you want tomake an extra loop around town before you
go home. Just enjoy it thesmell. But it is a very effective
product. It'll give you a quickrelease, and so if you're going to

(01:37:23):
use it in summer, don't overdoit. Just apply some now and then
about six weeks later, apply again, or eight weeks later, apply it
again and get another little dose ofit out there and you can kind of
gradually feed your lawn over time.It works really well. You're gonna find
sweet Green an enchanted forest and inthe Richmond Rosenberg area if you're up in
Willis, grows out like carries it. RCW Nursery which is Tomboldt Parkway Highway

(01:37:45):
two forty nine where it comes intobeout Way eight. RCW carries Sweet Green,
as well as do many other placeseasy to find here in the Greater
Houston area. We're going to gonow to Raphael out of Montgomery. Hey.
Raphael, Hey, how are youdoing this morning? I'm well,
sir, thank you. Okay.My question is I've got a small fig

(01:38:06):
tree that I had bought here probablyabout six months ago, and we put
it in the pot, and ofcourse it was small. It's one of
these seedlings, I guess, andit was doing great. We transplanted it
about I don't know, maybe threemonths ago. It was doing great.
I had it out in the sunand the leaves were nice and green,

(01:38:28):
and even got some figs on itthat are now, you know, getting
a little bigger. But what startedhappening was that the leaves started turning yellow,
then they would turn brown, andthen they would fall off. Okay,
And I'm just wondering if there's somethingmaybe I don't know, if it's
rude bound, if it needs tobe put in the ground, or can
I put some type of maybe fertilizerthat will help it, you know,

(01:38:54):
maintain I guess the healthy fig tree. So it's still in the container,
right, yes, Okay, Sothere are two things that can do that.
There is a disease called rust thataffects figs normally. It becomes more
of a problem as we get laterinto the season, but that will cause
some spots on the leaves, someyellowing and browning of the leaves, and

(01:39:16):
loss of foliage. It doesn't killthe tree, but it certainly takes its
food production factories the leaves off ofit, which doesn't do it any good.
I think, though, Raphael,my best guess is you're probably looking
at a water problem in the soil. Figs need to have moist soil to
do their best, and in acontainer, the whole root system is confined,

(01:39:42):
and a container can dry out ina day depending on the size of
the tree and the size of thecontainer, and so you may need to
water a little more often. Alsocheck the drainage make sure if you do
a water too much that it's runningout the drainage holes, that they're not
plugged up or something. That wouldbe the other thing to watch. But
I'm thinking maybe we had a littlebit of droughty conditions due to the fact

(01:40:05):
that it's confined roots and a container. Okay, do you suggest maybe putting
it into the ground keep it inmoist or yeah, figs will be much
happier in the ground. Yes,sir, you're correct about that, because
they can spread that root system out, they can get established, and then
they are very resilient once they havehad, you know, a year or

(01:40:28):
so to spread that root system outand really get established. Well, okay,
good, I'll definitely do that.I've got another question. I want
to hit and I had two appletrees that I bought here probably about four
months ago, and I planted themand I want to hit it in water
and they're doing great, They've gotnew leaves that are coming up. But

(01:40:50):
I want to hit and put thissparked molt around it. How much mulch
do I need to keep, Iguess on top of those trees to keep
everything moist. Yeah, So theanswer is enough to effectively block out the
sunlight. So if your mulch wasreal, big, chunky woody things,

(01:41:12):
then you know you have to puta little thicker because there's a lot of
space in there for sun to shinethrough. If it's a finer textured mult
not as much. In general,about three inches should be good. And
the wider you mulch around them,the better those trees are going to do.
So if you can at least getit out as far as the branch
spread, but it is even betterif you can go a little further inches

(01:41:34):
to always keep a mulch down tokeep the weeds away, keep the sill
temperature cooner, holding extra moisture,you know, and so on. All
right, okay, well, thankyou very much for the info. Good
luck with that. You take care. I appreciate the call. We're gonna
go out to East Houston and talkto Steve. Hello, Steve, Hi,

(01:41:55):
good morning. Any suggestion on leafmold, compost, additions, additives
and such. Yeah, leaf willcompost for a lawn we're talking about,
or a garden or what. Uh? Yeah, I just I just have
exclusively leaves and then I just layeron dirt and then a layer of leaves

(01:42:16):
and so forth. Okay, okay, so you're making it yourself, is
what you're telling me, right?Yes? Okay, yes, So whenever
you decompose leaves, as they decompose, they turn chocolatey brown and they become
very crumbly. You can tell theirleaves. But they're decomposing to a point

(01:42:36):
where they just fall apart, andthat we often refer to that as like
leaf mold. It's a compost,but it's not all the way composted,
but it's it's it's well composted,but still there's you can kind of tell
it it was made from leaves.And if you can get your compost to

(01:42:57):
that level and then spread it out, that would be the true leaf mold
compost area. Now you can putwhole leaves on the ground uncompost it as
a mulch. But if you wantto get the benefits of the nutrient release,
the biological activity, increase and stuff, that would be leaf mold compost.
And you can make it yourself.Yeah, hard to make enough of

(01:43:18):
it, but you can make ityourself, okay. And would I add
anything to it other than just thedirt and then the water too for the
Yeah. So when you're putting outcompost, if you put about an inch
down and mix it into the soilas deep as is practical to do,

(01:43:41):
you know, which is probably gonnabe about four to six inches. If
you mix it in about an inchdeep, that's probably about enough. And
most soils if it's a really heavyclay. You might need a little more
than that. You don't need toadd other things to it as far as
what it needs. But the leafmold compost will vibe nutrients but also be
ready to still fertilize depending on theplant you're growing and what its fertilizer needs.

(01:44:05):
Are okay, all right, thankyou, Yeah, you bet,
Thanks for the call. Appreciate appreciateyou calling very much. We're going to
go now to the galleria and talkto Forest. Hello, Forest, Hey,
good morning to get I've got apretty serious investation of mealy bugs on

(01:44:26):
my lacey verbina okay, and I'mwondering if you could tell me the most
effective chemical to hit them with.Anything that is going to be systemic within
the plant will be helpful. There'sdifferent products that will move into the plant.
Because the meai bugs are sucking thejuices out of the plant, it's

(01:44:50):
hard to get pesticides on them.They got that melely protective coating, and
it's hard to get a pesticide onthe bug itself. But if you get
it in the and on the plantand it soaks in or in the soil
and it's taken up so something likeacephate would be a systemic that will move
into the plant, something like ohgosh, I just emit. A cloprid

(01:45:15):
is an ingredient that is used asa systemic to be taken up by the
plant. Either way, you canget in there and as the media bugs
drink the sap, they're going toget the poison. Well, it's that
simple. The only reminder is verbenaflowers and anything that likes to come to

(01:45:35):
those flowers. When you have asystemic, there's potential for that product to
be in the in the nectar aswell. So you know, getting ahead
of the meada bugs is job one. You might cut some flowers off in
the meantime just to get the plantsthrough that and then then let them flower

(01:45:56):
themselves. But media bugs are hardto control, as you probably know.
That is the approach I would taketo them. Okay, the second,
the second chemical you mentioned, amida cloak bred. Yeah, amid a
cloaprid is in a lot of productsfor grub control and lawns, for scale
control in trees and other things.It's I am I it's spilled just like

(01:46:18):
it sounds. Emid dough clo pridC l O p R. I D
A meadow CLO Prid. And ifyou go to you know, go to
an ACE hardware store in your area. You're out there and here in the
gallery area, and there's going alot of people will carry these kinds of
products. But I would try andI always thought that Southwest Fertilizer I'm assuming

(01:46:41):
they would have these products. Absolutely, they're gonna have tons of products like
that. And you can tell themyou got meelely bugs and they'll point you
to what they have. Okay,all right for us, thanks a lot,
Hey, folks, I got totake a quick break here. Norm
Montgomery, I see you're holding.Thanks for holding this long. You will
be the first up when we comeback. All right, Welcome back to

(01:47:01):
guard Line on a beautiful, beautifulSaturday morning. Great time to be out
there getting stuff done in the landscape, picking up some plants. How about
going out to Arburgate today. Haveyou been out to Arburgate in a while.
They're on twenty nine to twenty justwest of Tumbull and oh but if
you haven't been there in no goodwhile, you got to check out this

(01:47:21):
new parking lot in the back.There's no worry about parking out on the
road or anything like that. Theygot the front parking lot still, but
in back off Trashel Road, whichstarts before Arburgate, goes around behind Arburgate
and comes back into twenty nine twentyafter Arburgate, So either way you're coming
at it Trasher Road around the backparking lot. Arburgate has got that one

(01:47:45):
two three completely easy system. Whatis that. That's a fertilizer for anything
with roots, an organic fertilizer oranything with the roots. It is a
compost product that contains decomposed or excuseme expanded, which helps keep a clay
open long after the compost decomposes away. And it's got also from Arburgate the

(01:48:08):
soil complete, so the compost complete, soil complete, and then the fertilizer
complete, and again in the soilis also decomposed grantite for the same reasons.
Arborgate selection of plants. I wasout there the other day visiting with
Beverly about plants and what's new andwhat's going on and stuff, and oh
my gosh, they are loaded upand don't forget just because it's getting hot

(01:48:29):
in the summer. We got allthe way until October November, when we're
thinking about fall gardening and fall flowersand things. Get something planted now.
They have a lot of plants atArburgate that will laugh at summer weather.
That'll keep you inside in the airconditioning. Get it planted now, get
it watered in, just take goodcare of it, getting it established,

(01:48:50):
and you got color. And there'sno reason for summer to be a sea
of green in your landscape. Whenyou go to Arburgate and pick up dependable
full legion flowers for summer color.It's as simple as that. Today would
be an excellent day to get bythere and do that. We're going to
go now to Montgomery and talk toNorm. Hello. Norm, good Laura,

(01:49:13):
and Skip. Thanks for taking mycall. You easy question, easy
question. It's according to the schedule. It's time to put that fertilizer down.
I got the silver nitro fauce,but it says not to put it
down if it's ninety degrees or greater. That's kind of tough. So is
there a plan that I can use? Put it down in the morning,
and then immediately after you put itdown, water and in you'll be okay,

(01:49:34):
okay, And you mentioned sweet greenearlier. Should I alternate or rotate
that in to try and get alittle bit more of that nutrient. Because
I've only been using the nitro fossaccording to that schedule, I haven't really
been doing anything else to build upthe soil. Sweet Green is a nitrofoss
like the silver bag the super turfdoes, right. I would prefer the
silver bag super Turf because it's goingto give you three plus months of feeding

(01:49:58):
gradually through the summer. Now,if you want to do something that's more
organic type product, the Sweet Greenfrom Nitrofoss would be their product that can
do that, and it's going tobe more immediately available. So just don't
overdo it. Maybe go a littlelighter on the application, and then come
back in a couple of months anddo it again. And that's going to

(01:50:20):
give you that It's like you're turningit into a slow release by you're the
one releasing it slowly out into yourlawn. Do you see what I'm saying.
Yeah, that would just get upin the morning, get up in
the morning, and do it whenit's cooler, so it has nothing to
do with the soil temperature during themiddle of the day. So no,
no, it's you know, youget you get any kind of a salt

(01:50:40):
bay and this is going back tothe super different. Any kind of a
salt based fertilizer product out there ona leaf, and you know, it
dissolves and it's a concentration and itcan burn a leaf. But I would
not worry about doing this anytime duringthe summer. I need to go look
at what you're talking about on thebag and see if there's some other explanation.
But I can tell you this.You can apply it, and you

(01:51:01):
can water it in right away andyou'll be fine. Don't worry about that.
Thank you, SKIP appreciate your time. Have a great day, all
right, Nor thank you. Iappreciate your call very much. Let's see
here. We are going to gonow to Johnny and Sugarland. Hey Johnny,
Yes, sir, how you doingit? I'm good, sir.
How are you? Thanks for takingmy call. And have a couple of

(01:51:23):
questions. I'm putting a new slidedown today over dirt. I know water
is the best, but is thereanything else that I could do to help
it green up? And you know, take root Johnny waters number one.
I would, I would if thesoil is moist to begin with. That's
hopeful. They don't have to bewet but moist. But if you're going

(01:51:45):
to apply it today, before youfinish applying the side, start putting water
on what you've already applied, becausecrying out is the number one enemy.
That side you've got has barely gota half inch of roots on it,
and you need to keep it moist. And so I would water it in
the next week. I'd water ittwice a day. That doesn't mean you

(01:52:06):
need to put no food or nofeed or anything like that. Number one,
it's got the nutrients already in theside when it comes to you,
and it doesn't have the root systemreally, So a month from now we'll
talk about fertilizing that new lawn yougot, but for the first week,
twice a day watering, for thesecond week, once a day watering,

(01:52:26):
and by then you ought to beable to back off to twice a week
as it gets fager and better established. But water is ninety eight percent of
what it takes to have a goodlawn establishment. Okay, and I had
one other question. Okay, lastweek you mentioned about great myrtles that that
you like the concept of white purplered or pink cluster where they grow together.

(01:52:50):
You can do that. You can. Can you plant the root ball,
the the part that's in the container, all plos together or should you
separate them out? Well, Imean you could put them together, but
I would probably separate them apart soyou have a little bit bigger area so
each can make a nice little planton its own. Otherwise it's going to

(01:53:13):
be all a mix. But there'snothing wrong with that. This is up
to you. It's your yard.You're the king. You go with it.
However you want. What brand wouldyou recommend that would only grow like
twelve foot tall? Because I knowyou said there were some that go thirty
feet, but I'm looking at somethingthat will not go above the roof.
I'm gonna give you a quick Igot to give you a quick answer because
I have to stop here. Goto gardening, Go to Google and type

(01:53:39):
in skip Richter and crate myrtle andthe chart will be available that gives you
all the sizes, all the colors, everything you need to know. Okay,
sorry to have to run jot it, but yeah, crpe myrtle,
Skip Richter. That'll do it.Hey, folks, I'm going to be
at ACE Hardware. You know,ACE Hardware is all over Houston, forty
stores Ace hardware dot Com. Goto the store locator find the one near

(01:54:03):
you. When you're at ACE,you're going to find everything for summer,
from barbecue pits to those outdoor stringsof lights, to fire ink control,
to mosquito repellence, to fogging machines, to just everything to make your landscape
a place you want to enjoy andhang out. Is ACE Hardware. I'll
be at the one at Langham Creek. Langham Creek. ACE Hardware's up on

(01:54:29):
Barker Cypress really close to where fivepoint twenty nine across this Barker Cypress there
in the Copperfield area in northwest Houston. I'll either from eleven thirty to one
thirty. Bring me some samples,Let's identify things, let's diagnose things.
What kind of questions? You wantto take some pictures of things in your
lawn and landscape to have them identifiedor diagnosed. Bring me your pictures.

(01:54:53):
Just make sure they're in sharp focus, because I need to be. You
give me a fuzzy picture, I'llgive you a fuzzy answer. Neither of
us want that, so get agood picture. Come by, Just come
by and say hi, this ismy last appearance of the spring. Uh
and I'll be glad to diagnose yourlawn. Take a four inch by six
inch plug of soil, put itin a ziplock bag from the affected area.

(01:55:14):
I need to see sick turf notdead. Welcome to kzy r H
Garden Line with Skip Ricard. It'scrazy trip. Just watch him as many

(01:55:44):
things to supposing not a sid gassud Welcome to garden Line. Welcome back

(01:56:04):
to garden Line. We're about toenter our last hour of the day,
so we'll be back tomorrow morning sixam to ten am. Every Saturday and
Sunday. By the way, ifyou have friends and neighbors that own a
lawn or a house plant, tellthem about Garden Line. Get them in
as listeners as well. We continueto spread the word about the fact that

(01:56:27):
we've got advice here to turn yourbrown thumb green. And that is what
we're all about. And who knows. Every now and then we have some
fun, try to be a littlebit entertaining, maybe with some strange music
that we put on or or mejust I don't know, using a somewhat
weird sense of humor, at leastthat's what I've been told. But we

(01:56:47):
have a good time, and Ihope you do too. By the way,
you know, one of my mantrason garden line, the things you
probably hear me say over and overand over again, is brown stuff before
green stuff. And the reason is, I cannot over state the importance of
having the place prepared before you plantthe plant, whether you're putting out seeds

(01:57:12):
or transplants or whatever. Quality soilorganic matter additions into the soil. Purchasing
a soil blend, like a blendthat's designed for, for example, vegetables
and herbs if that's what you're growing, or a veget or one that's good
for flour bed, or a roastsoil, a rose blend, which,
by the way, it's got rosein the name, but any kind of

(01:57:33):
a blooming shrub or a shrub ingeneral would do well in a rose soil.
It just does. And Nature's Wayresources, by the way, that's
where roast oil was invented. That'swhere the leaf mold composts that we talk
about a lot was invented, andmany other products as well. Nature's Way
has been leading the way in soilproducts for a very long time. And

(01:57:57):
right now they have got two sales. Two things you need to know about.
One thirty percent off most plants.Thirty percent of most plants, but
it ends July first, So thisnow's the time to go ahead and make
those purchases Nature's Way. Did youknow they have a lot of native plants
their Nature's Way Now, I saymost because the native sun perennials are excluded

(01:58:23):
from that, but all the otherkinds of plants they have, that's part
of it, including a lot ofTexas natives, a lot of plants for
pollinators. They have a huge selection. Also, that's thirty percent off.
Also again it ends July first,unless they tell me otherwise. Twenty percent
off all compost, multch and soilblends. And they have anything you could

(01:58:47):
possibly need there at Nature's Way,no matter what you're growing, they've got
a blend for it. Now,you got to tell them that you heard
about it on Guardenline. So whenyou go or call Nature's Way Resources,
go ahead. You can go getbags of it. You can have you
can go pick up bulk, youcan have them deliver bulk product. Bulk's
more economical you're purchasing a larger amountof it, but either way, twenty

(01:59:12):
percent off if you tell them youheard about it on Garden Line. Nature's
Ways summer hours Monday through Friday nineto five, Monday through on Saturday eight
am. Wait a minute, letme say that again. Monday through Friday
eight to five, Saturday eight totwo. That would be to day.
You got until two o'clock to dayto get by there or give them a

(01:59:32):
call, and then they're closed onSunday. Now, Nature's Way Resources is
on the way to Conroe off fortyfive to the right, right where fourteen
eighty eight comes in from the left. You turn right and go into Nature's
Way. It's called Shrbooks Sure BrooksCircle. That's the street one on one
shore Brook Circle. Go to thewebsite Nature'sway Resources dot com. You can

(01:59:57):
find out more about it there.But here's the thing. Don't delay,
because you're gonna need to prefict.You're gonna need to prepare your soul,
to fix things up to get readyfor plants, even for fall planting.
Get those products now way you canget that kind of a deal. Thirty
percent off most of the plants,twenty percent off all compos molt and soil
blends up until July first, Sothis weekend I've sat today. Actually,

(02:00:21):
you need to make that call.You need to get that done. You're
listening to Gardenline. I'm your host, Skip Richtor. Our phone number if
you would like to give us acall is seven one three two one two
KT right seven to one three twoone two kt rh Now Dan Nelson folks

(02:00:42):
out at Nelson plant Food. They'vebeen producing quality plant food for a long
time. UH, quality products.They've got several different lines. You probably
have heard of. The color Starlines, very famous for the ability to
just take a bed full of flowersand make them fluoriferous. That's the magical
word of the day, floor rifferous. They excellent for color plants, but

(02:01:05):
they have many other kinds of fertilizers. There's products for Plumeria and other tropical
plants. There's products for bougainvillia andother vining types of plants. For your
lawn. I would recommend you goahead and get the slow and Easy now
if you haven't fertilized this summer.Slow and Easy will last four months or

(02:01:26):
more. Really out there in thelandscape, it's got the exact right blend
for what turf takes up. Soyou're you're putting a balance of nutrients out
there in the soil. Being slowrelease means you're going to gradually release those
nutrients to avoid you know, burningfrom an over application of a salt type
fertilizer. It's going to gradually I'mtalking about four months now. It's going

(02:01:50):
to feed the microbes in the soil. It's going to help push the soil
toward acidification. It's got it isan acidifying type of fertilizer. So each
time you're using it, you arebringing pH down just a little bit and
you're helping your plants out to dobetter and better and better. By gradually
releasing, you're cutting down on wateringneeds, you're cutting down on mowing needs.

(02:02:14):
Slow and Easy part of the TurfStar line by Nelson Plant Food.
You need to check it out.If you've not tried it before, summer
would be a good time to dothat. We're going to head out now
to Brenham and talk to April.How about April? Bye hie? Oh
no, hi, good morning.I have a question. I have about

(02:02:36):
three acres that we mow. I'mlive on some property, and I have
these in the yard. They're stickers. I don't know what they are.
They're kind of on a like astock amostin the top of them has a
bunch of Okay, you're really bad. You walk through the grass if it

(02:03:00):
hasn't even after mowing. They stickto your shoes, bomb of your your
socks, your bomby your pantles.Whatever they are, they're terrible. Yeah,
how do I do? You knowwhat those are and how to get
rid of them? I do,And April, I'm right on a break.
You hang on. When I comeback, I'm gonna talk about how
to prevent them and uh, youknow what to do when you're dealing with

(02:03:20):
them and why they become a problem. But just hang on a little bit.
I'll be right back. You arelistening to garden Line seven one three
two one two k t R eight. All right, here we are back
with garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're here to
answer your gardening questions. Help youhave a more bountiful gardener, more beautiful
landscape. We're gonna go right backto Let's see, I was talking to

(02:03:43):
April in Brenham and we were AprilI think the plant you were describing.
The weed you're describing called grass burr. Uh. Some type of people call
them sticker birrs, but grass birdsthe name uh, sandburr is another name
that they're called by. Uh.The best way to deal with that is
first step one, is this ina lawn or I think you said a

(02:04:04):
pasture, right, yeah, wellyeah, but it's the lawn. Okay.
We know about three acres of okay, and it's in the park where
we live and walk in. Sogot you gotcha? All right? So
the best step one is to createa good dense lawn with proper mowing,

(02:04:27):
watering, and fertilizing, especially asyou fertilize and as you you know,
provide water is needed. Grass burdsthey thrive in very poor soils where other
things are struggling, droughty soils,things like that. So getting the things
you would do to make your lawnbetter helps with suppressing somewhat the grassburg growth.

(02:04:51):
An important first step is to putdown a pre emergent product to prevent
the grasspur seeds from coming up andgrowing, and that would be something called
barricade by nitrofoss. Barricade. Ifyou're wanting barricade. If you go out
to the Ace Hardware Brenham on NorthAustin Parkway and Brenham, they're going to

(02:05:13):
have barricade there and so but nowyou've got graspers. You can't put barricade
down and kill what you have.You want to follow my schedule and if
you go to Gardening with Skip that'smy website, Gardeningwithskip dot com. I
have two schedules that are free tolook at online to download print up and

(02:05:33):
they tell you the products you needand you're going to see barricade on there,
but it'll tell you when to applythose because you have to put it
down before they germinate. So you'regoing to be putting it down in your
area in probably early to mid February. Mid February will be adequate. Actually
for grasper, mid February what itneeds to get watered in by irrigation or

(02:05:56):
rainfall. And the graspers aren't ableto terminate and make a plant because once
they're in, anything that would killthe grassber plant would kill the lawn grass
as well. Okay, so whatdo you do at this stage? There's
not a lot people do some youknow, kind of strange things trying to

(02:06:17):
pick up the burs to get thebirds the seeds themselves out of there.
But I've talked to people that haveput burr lap down and drug it across
the lawn because the birds get caughtup in it, and you can get
a bunch of the grass bur outthat way. I don't know. That's
not necessarily a practical approach, butit helps a little bit. But other

(02:06:40):
than that, just mow water,fertilize and improve that grass, improve the
soil, and then be ready todo the grassburer preventative with the barricade by
nitrofoss in again about mid February,and I would repeat that again about sixty
days later, so mid February andthen again, let's say in May,

(02:07:04):
mid to late May would be probablya target time to go for that second
application. Okay, all right,perfect, Thank you very much. You
bet, good luck, Thank you, appreciate the call. We're going to
go now to Willison. Talk toJimmy. Hey, Jimmy, how you
doing Skip, I'm doing well?How are you? Okay, I'm good.

(02:07:25):
I'm wanting to know the pros andcons the grass clippings in your flower
beds. The only con would beif you treated the lawn with broad leaf
weed control products, it would bepresent potentially on that grass clipping, and
you'd be bringing that into the flowerbed that's full of broad broad leaf desirable

(02:07:49):
plants flowers. So if you haven'tdone that, there are only other possible
would be stacking them too deep.I put grass clippings whenever I need to
collect them. I put them ina flower bed all the time. Normally
I return the clippings to the turfbecause they help the turf. But if
I put them more than about let'ssay I put them two inches deep or

(02:08:11):
so, and you come back aweek later and it's all dry on top,
and you pull them back and you'vegot still plump, decomposing clippings underneath
the surface. So you don't wantto get them too deep in there.
But if you put them out insmall amounts over time, that's just fine.
Oh that's gonna be perfect. Then, all right, I've been I've
been hauling Bartmoll. It's all ofmy big old giant flower beds. I

(02:08:33):
said, I'm gonna use grass clippings. Now. Yeah, Well, the
clippings don't last as long they do. Matt down a little more, and
so you know you want good oxygendown to the soul surface. Just don't
overdo it. But I use Iuse it in my beds all the time.
Listen, if it's organic, it'sgoing to decompose and build the soil.
So don't ever let grass clipping leaveyour property. That'd be a law.

(02:08:56):
Oh boy, here I go.There ought to be a law against
putting back grass clippings at the curbbecause there's too many good uses for them.
You paid money to go to thoseclippings buying fertilizer, So why I
send that fertilizer out to the street. That's it, brother, I appreciate,
I love you all right, thankyou for letting me round just a
tiny little bit right there. We'regonna go now to Wellis again and talk

(02:09:18):
to Walter. Hello Walter, Hi, hi, as I was tuning in
in the last hour, I thinkyou had a guy call in about ants
and his fruit trees. Yes,there used to be a product called tanglefoot.
Yes, you would paint it ina band about one to two inches

(02:09:39):
around the trunk, about a footup from the ground, and the ants
can't get past it. Yes,there still is that product. You know,
and that way you don't have totry the impossible task killing all the
ants in your yard. Yeah.Well, and his works. His question
was, you know about fire ants, and I probably should have took a

(02:10:01):
little more time to go into it. But ants themselves, other than carpenter
ants, which will eat the woodof a tree trunk if they can get
to it, ants are not apest of your trees, your fruit trees
or others now fire ants, youknow, anything that has you know,
sugar and proteins and water. Theymight be interested in getting in the fruit

(02:10:22):
a little bit like they do thatto Okrah, I know. But in
general, the only thing ants dois they carry aphits up on your plants,
and they answer the dairy farmers andthe aphids of the dairy cows.
And that's how that works. Andso the tanglefoot that you described, you're
correct about that, Walter that it'sa sticky substance you painted around the tree

(02:10:43):
and the ants can't climb it.You just have to occasionally redo it because
it gets dust on it and stufflike that. Yeah. Well, we
lived in California. We had anapricot tree, and if we didn't put
tanglefoot around the trunk there would beants and all the apricots as they got
right, Okay, well really whatkind of I wonder what kind of ants
that was? Well, there wasIt was San Francisco Bay area, so

(02:11:07):
fire ants had not made it upthere yet. It was just I don't
know, routine. Interesting Okay,interesting things, but it's annoying to be
picking fruit and they're full of ants. Yeah, I'd be curious what kind
of ant that that would be outthere? Well, anyway, the tagle
foot really worked. Yeah, itdoes on a lot of things that would
climb up the tree. That istrue. Hey, thanks for that reminder.

(02:11:30):
I appreciate the call. Appreciate thatvery much. We're going to go
now to sugar Land and talk toSusan. Susan pay skip quick question.
I work at a church and ourpreschool has a beautiful oak tree on the
on the their playground area and weput apparently pulled all we took all the

(02:11:52):
mulch out, put we block down, put rubber mulch on. We have
all these suckers coming up all overthe place. And I read where you
know sometimes that happens with some typesof live oak trees. But what is
a solution. They said, tookgroundcover underneath it to kind of and we
you know, we whack it backbecause there's really nothing you can do but

(02:12:13):
go to You got to dig downto the root and clip those Yeah,
and they're going to come right back. There's a product called sucker stopper that
if you spray it it kind ofit's a hormone type thing that naturally suppresses
sucker regrowth. But oftentimes the liveoaks are coming up, they're not coming
out of the base of the trunklike with a crpe myrtle. They're more

(02:12:35):
coming out in the soil around thetree. And so I don't know if
that would work acceptably well for youor not, but that is an Martan
sucker stopper. Yeah, putting anAsian jasmine groundcover around it. You know
when this, when the shoots comeup in it, you don't really notice
them because they Asian jasmine looks alot like the live oak suckers that are

(02:12:58):
coming up and then you see aweed eater to keep them under control.
There's just not a really good way. And you're correct that it is a
certain type of life oak that tendsto do that more than others. It's
real. It's a beautiful oak tree. It's kind of short and squatty and
wide, and I mean it's abeautiful tree. But this has just happened,
like in the last maybe spider sixyears. We've never had this problem,

(02:13:20):
and then all of a sudden,all these things are coming up.
Yeah. Well, the more themore you disturb the soil around, like
people that go in and do torototeller, which is nicking the roots,
causing wound on the roots, andthen adding all the water that a flower
bed would get. That makes oaktrees that are prone to this problem even

(02:13:41):
worse. So disturb in the soilthat sucker stopper won't damage the tree.
Not at all, correct, notat all? Okay, Okay, well
I will try a little bit ofthat. We'll just I think Asian jasmine
is the answer. Yeah. Myhesitation on the sucker stopper is, you
know, again using mertle as anexample, you see where the sucker is
attaching down there, you can cutit off and then squirt that wounded spot

(02:14:07):
with sucker stopper to prevent the rootgrowth that comes from printing any woody ornamental
bag. I don't know. Yeah, it happened when I put a root
barrier in around my crape myrtle.All of these crape myrtles started coming up
like crazy, and I assuming that'swhat it's trying to do, is stay
alive. Ah yeah, it couldbe good, well be, but good

(02:14:28):
luck with that. Thank you somuch, enjoin your show. Thank you.
I appreciate that as well. Uh. You know I mentioned uh Ace
Hardware uh, and ACE Hardware's aregonna probably have that sucker stopper. I
would call them an ass. Theyprobably have it because I care just about
everything out there. When you goto ACE, you know you're going to
get anything you need for your lawn, your landscape, in your garden.

(02:14:50):
Do you do you have vegetables?Do you have container plants? Do you
have a flower bed? Do youhave a turf? Do you have trees
or shrubs? Ace Hardware has gotthe supplies for all of that, all
of that. They've got the fertilizersthat I talk about, every fertilizer I
talk about on Guardline, a lotof the soil product you hear me talk
about fire and control, mosquito repellents, mosquito fogging machines, and its mosquito

(02:15:13):
season. Is it not out there? Ace Hardware forty stores around the Greater
Houston area. Go to Acehardware dotcom and find the store locator, find
the one near you. You geta beautiful map with all these red dots
and you'll go, oh wow,there's more than one near me. That's
Ace Hardware. Ace is the piece, as we like to say, you

(02:15:35):
fill in the blank and boy rightnow, oh my gosh. Check out
the barbecue equipment and supplies that they'vegot. Well, it's time for a
break for the news. I'll beright back our number seven one three two
one two, katrh Sandy your first. Alrighty, welcome back to Garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter,and we're here to answer your gardening

(02:15:56):
questions to hope you have a morebountiful garden and a more beautiful landscape.
I was just talking about different productsthat they carry at all these hardware stores.
Mosquito Dunks is another example of that. You know, Mosquito dunks.
I don't know if you heard theother day, but I had Bill on
from Summit Solutions, some at ResponsibleSolutions, which is a company that creates

(02:16:18):
our mosquito dunks. Now Mosquito dunksare little small donuts or about the size
of those little debbies white dusted sugarydoughnuts, you know what I'm talking about.
They're small, they're not like abig donut. We throw one out
there, covers about one hundred squarefeet of wet area like a pond or
whatever you have, and it lastsabout a month as it dissolves away slowly,

(02:16:43):
releasing a disease of mosquitos into thewater. They also have a granular
product, mosquito bits that you putout there, and you could put it's
smaller, so you can put itin the like the catch basins under a
flower pot, if you're not goingto empty those out, which you ought
to empty them out. But ifit's not a bird bath, you know,
any like a gutter that or maybeyou got a tree with a hole

(02:17:05):
in it and water collects. Oh, that is mosquito heaven, all that
decomposing organic matter in there. Youthrow a few mosquito bits up in there,
and it's diseased water for mosquitoes onlyfor mosquitos. Your pets can drink
the water, birds can drink thewater. I mean, it is not
a problem for anything other than mosquitoes, or as we talked about earlier today,

(02:17:30):
fungus, nuts and houseplants. That'sa whole different thing. But basically
it is a really really safe,organic product, natural product that does a
good job. Mosquito Dunk's widely available. I mentioned these hardware stores. You're
going to find them at feed stores. Independent nurseries. Is a very widely
available product that works very well.You should always have it on hand here

(02:17:52):
in the greater Houston area because listen, I have talked to mosquitos before,
and they are willing to take theirvacations from all over the world to come
to Houston because this is mosquito Heaven. I'm just saying, for example,
talk to a mosquito. We're leavingCalcutta, India and coming to Houston because
it's hotter and humid are there andwe live better there. Oh gosh,

(02:18:15):
all right, enough of that nonsense. We're going to go to the woodlands
and talk to Sandy. Hey,Sandy high Skip. Yesterday. I've got
this big oak tree out in frontof my house, and yesterday I noticed
that some of the bark was likecoming loose. Well, I just started
peeling it off, and it's likefive feet that it just crumbled right off.

(02:18:37):
And I see little holes in thetrunk? Do I have bores?
So you see holes in the woodthat's beneath it, right the bark.
Is that what you're saying, Yes, after I've taken the bark off,
Yeah, but the borers may nothave done that. If you have bores
that attack living tissues, go thatdrilled through the outer bark and in they

(02:19:03):
feed, and that what we callthe cambium where all the flowing is going
on the xylo right under, justunderneath the dead bark. But outside the
living wood, those bores are aproblem. But there are bors that move
into move into the interior wood ofthe tree, and that's not killing the
tree. They're just finding a placeto set up shop in there. Do

(02:19:26):
what they do certainly doesn't do thetree any good. Something kill the outer
bark. If you think about northsouth east west, can you tell me
what side of the tree you're seeingthis on? Yeah, it is,
that's a that's a tough question tospring on youtheast northeast. Okay, it

(02:19:50):
could be from an old freeze crackfrom when we had some really cool weather
a few years ago. And isthat as that tissue dies and then it
starts to get loose, and theneventually it comes off. This has been
there for a while. This didn'tjust happen in the last few months.
So if you can, if youcan just do what you need to do

(02:20:11):
to invigorate the tree, meaning properwatering during extended heat and drought and then
fertilizing periodically to provide the nutrients thattree will get the vigor it needs to
form callous from the sides of thatwound and cover back over to protect and
cover over that interior wood. Sono sarcticide treatment is necessary at this point

(02:20:35):
or would be effective at this point. It's just about getting the tree as
strong as it can be, takingall that old dead bark out so stuff
can't hide underneath the dead bark.And you'll see it. By now.
You already ought to be seeing callousforming on the edges of what was an
old wound as it begins. It'slike a lava flow, real gradually coming

(02:20:56):
back over. Just time and goodtree health. That's that's okay, because
the rest of the tree looks great. I mean, the leaves look good,
the branches look good. It's justat one spot. Okay, well
that that helps a lot. Thanksfor your assistance. Yeah. My guess
is an old freeze crack did that. But well, okay, I think

(02:21:18):
it'll it'll do just fine. Thanksfor the call, Sandy, appreciate it
great you bet Okay, bye bye, take care. Have you ever been
to Chenned Forest down in the RichmondRosenberg area. In Chanted Forest is the
garden center that if you're let's sayyou're in Richmond and you're heading up towards
sugar Land direction on fifty nine offto the right fmnine, that is the

(02:21:43):
road where you head down and that'swhere Intended Forest is. It is one
of those stellar garden centers, thosekinds of places that people will drive a
distance to get to. Number one, it's fun to shop, big old
giant shade trees. Makes it niceand comfortable even in the summer to goe
out there and do shopping. Andremember that just because it's heated up doesn't
mean we can't be planning. Now. We can and you got several months

(02:22:07):
until fall planning. Most landscapes becomea sea of green in the summer,
which is boring, not very attractive. Green grass, green ground covered green,
shrubs, green trees, right,how do we break that up with
summer color. There's a lot ofplants and in Channed Forest has got foliage
plants that have gorgeous color that takethe heat. And Chanted Forest has got

(02:22:28):
the flowering plants that would take theheat and do well. Things like angelonia
as a plant, an annual plantthat you put out excellent color, different
kinds of any it. There's justa lot of options. When you go
to in chenned Forest, you're goingto have those options, and you're going
to find everything that you're looking for, including fertilizers like hear me talk about

(02:22:50):
here on guard Line. Certainly theyhave houseplants as well. They're vegetable and
herb section is outstanding, and boyd, now is a great time to get
some herbs. If you want apollinator guard and you're not going to find
a better place and enchanted forest tofind both the things for the larva such
as milkweed for monarchs, or pipevine for pipe vine swallowtail larva, or

(02:23:11):
passion vine for golf riddillary larva.They've got all that and then the things
that have blooms that the mama's thebutterflies. I guess Mom's and dad are
coming to so Enchanted Forest on FMtwenty seven fifty nine outside of Richmond,
Richmond Rosenberg area. Easy to get. Here's the website. Write this down

(02:23:31):
and go go check out the Enchanted. Oh my gosh, I just set
it aside and I lost it.I think it's I'm going to give it
to you in just a minute.I'm sorry. I had had a piece
of paper with the written down.I didn't memorize it. I think I
know what it is, but I'mnot going to guess. Let's go ahead
and head out and let's see.Well, we're going to take a little
break here for the news and whenwe come back, i'll give you the

(02:23:52):
enchenda forst website. And also we'regoing to go to Katie and talk to
Forrest. We'll be right back.Welcome back to Guardline. Good to have
you with us today. We're goingto head straight out to Katie and talk
to Forest. Hello, Forest,Hey, Skip. What I got is

(02:24:15):
uh? I got a broad leafsec one. I think it's called the
night Bloomer, and I got somethingeating on it, leaving little piece ass
holes make it look like Swiss cheese. I sprayed meme oil on it.
That didn't seem to do anything.Okay, it seems to only happen at
night and it's outside. I broughtit in last night. It didn't seem

(02:24:39):
to It didn't seem to happen again. So the holes are like the size
of an English pea, right yeah, yeah, that is very interesting that
right. Well, it could bea caterpillar, it could be a beetle.
Both of those can be nocturnal also. Uh, but if you spray
it with a good persistent insecticide tobe present on the plant, whatever eats

(02:25:05):
it should die. So unless anew one that hasn't eaten it yet then
comes on and the next day makesa hole. I mean, you know,
it doesn't kill them in the minutetheir mouth touches the plant, but
as they eat it, it's goingto start its process. I don't know
which insect would do that. Ithink you may be talking about night blooming

(02:25:28):
cirrus. But whatever, it's asucculent. It has a hole in the
leaf. So I don't know whatinsect would be. Dood yeah, find
I would get well number one.I would play Charlock Holmes and I'd go
out there at night. A coupletimes during the night with the flashlight.

(02:25:48):
If this is an ongoing process,you ought to be able to catch something
in the act. One other thingyou might try during the day is taking
your finger and digging around the surfaceof the soil in the pot. It's
in a pot, right, yes, Okay, to digger on the surface
of the soil. See if youon earth a caterpillar that has crawled just
a little bit underneath the surface duringthe daytime to hide and then come back

(02:26:11):
out at night. There are somecaterpillars that are nocturnal like that, and
we'll do that, and that wayyou would know what it is. If
it's a caterpillar, probably I woulduse spinosid on it because it's a little
more persistent as a spray. Ifit were a beetle, you would have
to go a different route. Soeither way, if you went with a

(02:26:33):
synthetic parithroid that was a little persistent, then you're going to find that you
kill kill either type caterpillar or beetle. Okay, okay, all right,
just a little bit more investigation.We'll figure it out. Yeah, I
think so. If you need tofollow up with a call on another show

(02:26:54):
future, we can take it fromthere, depending on what you find.
But let's let's start with all right, all right, well I appreciate you,
all right, Forrest, appreciate yourcall. Thank you very much.
All righty folks, Well we gota little room here, I got a
few minutes before we go, andan open board. So now have ten
of you call it once or fiveyou call it once. I'm not gonna

(02:27:16):
be able to get to everybody,but be more than happy to answer your
question before we go here. Don'tforget today after the show, I'm going
to head out of here straight fornorthwest Houston Langham Creek Ace Hardware. Langham
Creek Ace Hardware is on Barker Cypress, south of the Berry Center. For
those of you who are up inthe Copperfield and Cypress and you know that

(02:27:39):
whole area up there, you knowabout the Berry Center. If he heads
out to fifty nine excuse me,five twenty nine, which is also called
Spencer Road, that's the east westroad that comes real close to where the
Langham Creek Ace Hardware is right there, so easy to find me either way.
You can bring me samples. Yougot a ziplock bag with some turf

(02:28:01):
in it. Here's the key.I do diagnosis. I don't do autopsies.
So if you bring me dead turf, I'm going to be able to
accurately tell you the turf is deadand nothing else. So bring me turf
that's sick. That zone between healthyand dead. I mean, if it
were a chinchbug in there, whenyou take out that four x six inch

(02:28:22):
plug of soil with some roots andplant, slip it into a ziplock,
They're not going to be able toescape, and I'll find them. If
it's a root rot, like takeall root rot, because I can see
the roots and stuff, I'm goingto find it. If it's from the
zone between healthy and dead, youcan bring samples of plants, we can
identify and we can diagnose. Dowhatever you want, or just visit and
I'm going to be given away.The reps from microlife and from nitrofoss are

(02:28:45):
going to be there giving away everythirty minutes some really nice quality products that
you need. So come on out, let's visit and Langham Creek Ace hardware.
It's going to be a fun dayout there, a good chance to
visit. I'll have a lot ofinformation on hand. In fact, I'm
going to be giving away Texas Gardenermagazines to the first oh about forty folks

(02:29:07):
that come out. We will havesome of those on hand. You can
take a look at it, andI think when you see it, you're
gonna want to subscribe because it's anawesome magazine, one that I write for
every issue. By the way,But come on out. We'll get your
free Texas Gardener in your hand aswell. Well. Let's head out to
the phones now. We're going totalk to Jeff in the Rio Grande Valley.

(02:29:28):
Hey, Jeff, Hey there,how you doing good sir? What's
up? Well? Two oak treequestions. We've got numerous oak trees in
our yard. They're probably ten totwelve years old. I mean they're two
stories tall. Okay, on oneof them, all of a sudden around

(02:29:48):
the tree, especially under the tree, it's like I've got dozens of little
oak trees coming up, okay,And it's not from acorns. It looks
like it's coming from the roots.Is that possible? Is there any way
to stop them? Yeah, there'sdepending on where they collected the seed to
grow the live oaks that you purchased. There's a certain type of oak live

(02:30:09):
oak that makes suckers really bad.The more you mess with the soil under
the oak, like putting in aflower bed and watering it or rototilling and
nicking the roots and stuff, theworse the suckers get. There's not anything
to make it completely stop. Butyou can cut them off. You can

(02:30:30):
plant something that sort of hides them, like Asian jasmine and as you you
know, weed eat the jasmine andstuff. You don't re see the oak
seedlings trying to come up in therebecause you're knocking the tops off of them.
That those are options, but there'syou can't spram with something to kill
them because that'll get into the mothertree and you don't want that. Gotcha.
Okay, okay? One other quickquestion, when do what causes some

(02:30:58):
years to have thousands of acorns andother years to have absolutely none. It
is a natural fluctuation that occurs withoak trees in general, red oaks,
live oaks, all kinds of oaks. Different ones have different cycles somewhere on
a two year cycle. But alsothe nature, you know, droughts and

(02:31:22):
good wonderful rainy years and other thingscan affect that crop of acorns. We
call that the mast that they produce, ast that they produce. There's just
a natural fluctuation, but combined withthe effects of weather and conditions. Gotcha.
I mean this year it was justlike bonds away. I understand.

(02:31:45):
Hey, Jeff, I got onemore caller in about twenty seconds to help
us. You bet. Hey,Now we're going to go to Nick in
Cyprus. Nick, let's see ifwe can get this done in about a
minute. It should be easy.The more I have some tomato plants and
the flowers bloom, they seem tobe healthy throughout the next day, and
they seem to be missing. Okay, yep. The large slice of tomatoes

(02:32:09):
are terrible about not setting fruit whenthe days are in the rainies and the
nights are in the upper seventies,even which is where we are, and
so what we Basically you just eitherkeep the plants and wait for fall when
they'll start setting again, or pullthem out and replant. The cherry tomatoes
and the grape tomatoes set better inthe heat. They still don't like it

(02:32:33):
and their skin is tough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I appreciate self
serve. That's the main thing.Just adding one thing. Thank you,
Nick, I appreciate you. Goadding one thing to Nick's question. If
you're growing tomato plants in an enclosedarea like a greenhouse or where the wind
doesn't blow, the plants don't move, they will often not set fruit because

(02:32:56):
they're not pollinated by bees carrying pollenfrom one flower to another like other flowers
may be. They're pollinated by theflowers. Shaking one can do that,
A bumblebee buzzing the bloom can dothat, but a very still air could
be another reason. Huh, gottago, We're done for today. I'll
see you and I don't know.Eleven thirty to one thirty out at Langham

(02:33:20):
Creek. Ace Hardware