Blackberries and myrtles

skip answers your questions!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
A g r H Garden Line withSkip Rickard's crazy trip. Just watch him
as many things, the suprasy doubleback again, not a sound, the

(00:33):
sun beam and down stop morning,good Saturday morning. Thanks for joining us.
Congratulations you're one of the early birdstoday. Good to have you with
us here on Garden Line. I'myour host, Skip Ricker, and we're

(00:55):
here to answer your gardening questions.That's what it's all about. Or the
way I like to put it is, we want to help you turn your
brown thumb green, or how aboutanother way. We want to help you
have a beautiful, bountiful garden andlandscape. That's why we're here. We
look forward to visiting with you.If you got some questions you'd like to
give us a call, feel freeto give us a call. Seven to
one three two one two k tr H seven one three two one two

(01:21):
k t r H. And uh, I tell you if you've been outside
lately, you know that summer hasarrived. It doesn't take a rocket scientist
to know, although we have afew in the Houston area. It doesn't
take a rocket scientist to know thatit is blazing hot outside during the day.
But we can get a lot ofthings done in the morning, and

(01:41):
I encourage you to take your cellphone to get your little kt r H
app or your iHeartMedia app rather tuneinto ktr H garden line, carry it
with you as you're out and aboutand come up get a little sunshine here
in a bit, head out inthe garden. Let's talk about what's going
on in your garden that we can. That way, you can get things
done and still enjoy listening to guardline. Who knows, maybe you'll even run

(02:04):
across a bug you need to takea picture of and send me for ID
or however you want to go aboutit. I was in my yard this
week, just doing regular kind ofmaintenance. I still had a little bit
of pruning to do, and someoneasked me the day can you prune in
the summertime? And the answer is, well, you can. You can
prune any month of the year.There's months that are better. There's certainly

(02:24):
months that are better for certain typesof pruning. Like you're going to do
a lot of heavy duty pruning toyour trees, then I would try to
get that done at the end ofwinter. That's the best time because spring
is the fastest time for wounds toheal, and that followed by fall,
by the way, and then summer. So getting that all done early on

(02:46):
is a good idea. Plus,you don't have the leaves on the tree
at the late winter season, andyou can look up and see what needs
to be done. It's a lota lot clearer and easier to get the
job done right. But anyway,I've got some crape myrtles that it's been
a while, let's just say,since they had any kind of work done.
And so I had some branches thatoriginally when they were planted and started

(03:07):
off, they weren't trained or provedproperly. When we bought the place and
moved in, I just kind ofhave to make some decisions as to Okay,
that's not how it should be,but what's the best thing for me
to do now to fix it?And in general, with crape myrtles,
we want to follow the flow ofthe branches. So I'm going to explain
what I mean by that. Thisis true of a lot of plants,

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by the way, with crape,Let's say you have three trunks coming out
of the ground, just as anexample, and you go up one of
the trunks and at some point youwant a branch to fork and make two,
and then at some point each ofthose can fork and make two more,
and on and on. And whenyou end up with branches that need
to come off, you never stubthem off. That's what people do in
the winter. We call it crepemurder. They reach up and about seven

(03:52):
eight feet high, they are sixfeet high. They cut everything off and
just in nubs. That's called headingcuts, and that's bad, bad for
the great myrtle structure and beauty.Instead, look at as a branch goes
out, and let's say you've gota branch that's going way over rubbing on
your house or sticking out where youhave to walk by, which is what
mine we're doing. You just followthem back to where they attach to another

(04:15):
branch and cut it off right there, so we redirect that growth. So
you picture a y in the road, like what did Yogi Bear say,
when you come to a fork inthe road, take it? Well,
when you come to a fork inthe branch, take one or the other
off, Take the long one offand leave a shorter one, or take

(04:35):
one going the wrong way off andleave one going the right way. And
so it basically just imagine you're avehicle driving down that branch, and if
there's a road that is not agood road, then that's where you take
it off where it joins the otherone. There's a branch that's in the
wrong anyway. I was doing someof that kind of printing this week and

(04:56):
just getting things shaped up, becauseyou know they're in one case, my
some of my crapes were shading thelawn so much I couldn't get light through
to go grass, and so Ihad to do a little thinning out of
the canopy for that here and there. But when I got through pruning,
when you looked at the plant,you couldn't tell it was pruned if you
hadn't seen what it looked like before. There's not a bunch of stubbed off

(05:18):
branches. It's all a very smoothand natural form and a good pruning job.
It's hard to tell that it waspruned. It doesn't just you don't
just walk up and go who butcheredthat? You just see that it looks
a lot better in that case,I tell what we are gonna. Let
me run here to the phones andor, by the way, our phone

(05:41):
number if you'd like to give mea call today seven one three two one
two k t Arch. We're goingto go to Houston and talk to Renee.
Hello, Renee, Hell are you? I'm well? I'm well how
can we help today? Well,you know, we just planted a new
new grass in our in our frontyard. We din about three three to
four pallets. And the reason thatI had to replet was because we had

(06:05):
a lot of shade and we proveour trees, and now we planted the
grass and I wanted to it seemslike it's struggling a little bit to kind
of thrive, and I wanted tosee what I can do so that we
can make sure that it's you know, plantic. You know, it builds
up the roots it and it kindof thrives. Okay, so you opened

(06:28):
up the canopy of the tree.So the grass is doing better, is
what you're telling me, right,Yes, okay, So the thing that
grass most needs is sunlight, andafter that, of course, it needs
moisture and it needs nutrients, soand then finally regular mowing. So you've
provided the sunlight, assuming you've gotit enough light for it to be able

(06:51):
to build up its reserves and actuallygrow, meaning get thicker, meaning fill
in areas and stuff like that.It's got enough light that then it's just
up to you to water it moderatelyperiodically, not often, not every other
day, but once or twice aweek with a good soaking. And then

(07:11):
if you haven't fertilized, fertilizing forsummer is a good idea. And if
you do any kind of nutrient additionsthat you haven't done yet, go ahead
and get them done. But finally, the mowing is so important, Renee,
because the more often you mow,the denser the grass gets. Okay,

(07:32):
now, what kind of so goodI was gonna say, I'm gonna
assume that the light is not outstandingbecause you had to do a little pruning
to improve on it. So ifyou're not, you're probably not getting eight
hours of sunlight a day, soyou might if it's the more shady it
is, the taller you want tomow to lead more grass blade. Grass

(07:53):
blades are solar panels, and yougot to capture as much light as you
can, so don't cut the solarpanels off. Real short, Okay,
what type of what type of summersummer fertilizer should I use? You know,
I would suggest you just get someof the silver Bag from Nitrofoss that
is Superturf. Superturf is an excellentproduct. It gradually releases. In fact,

(08:16):
if you fertilize now with the silverBag super Turf, you won't have
to fertilize again until fall. Haveyou downloaded my schedule? Spend any chants
from online? I have not?Okay, that's fine. You go to
Gardening with Skip dot com. That'sthe website Gardening with Skip that's me dot

(08:37):
com. And the schedules are there. They tell you what to apply and
when all through the year, andso that'll make it real easy for you.
But on there you'll see Nitrofoss Superturf. Uh and you can find it
at a lot of places. Wherein the Houston General area are you Cypress?
Cypress area? Okay, yeah,well you can go up to the

(09:00):
Ace Hardware there on Jones Road.You can go to M and D Ace,
which is much further north than that. You can go to really a
number of different places in the Cypressarea. Plant twelve Seasons is not too
far away from you, and theycarry the super Turf as well. All
right, perfect, we'll we'll makeour way to say today. All right,

(09:20):
well, thank you sir, Iappreciate the call. Folks. We're
going to take a little break hereand I'll be right back. Welcome back
to the garden line. Good ahead. You let us what are we going
to talk about today? You know, I can talk about the things that
I'm interested in. I can talkabout the things that I know people have
questions about now because I've been doingthis for thirty five years, listening to

(09:41):
gardening questions and being a gardener myself, so I know what the things to
talk about this time a year.But what are you interested in? Do
you have an issue at your lawnor your landscape? Are you wanting to
try a new plan, want toknow if it'll grow here? Do you
need something identified you get the idea? Feel free to give us a cough.
We can help. That is whywe're here to help you have a

(10:03):
more bountiful garden, a more beautifullandscape. Our phone number seven one three
two one two k t r Hseven one three two one two k t
r H. Wile ago, Iwas talking about the Nitrofis silver bag,
the excuse me, super turf,and I mentioned that you can get that

(10:24):
at plants for all seasons. Youknow, if if you go up and
down two forty nine, you passby plants for all seasons all the all
the time, as you go backand forth from Tomball to down into the
Houston area. They're right there,just north of Luetta on the east side
of the road. Uh So,as you're heading out, you just exit
Luetta if you're heading toward Tomball,and then just north of Luetta is plants

(10:46):
for all seasons. I am alwaysamazed when I go in there at the
amount of color that they have andat the variety of plants from shrubs to
trees to house plants to I gota venus fly trap there one time.
Yeah, you have, and it'skind of cool. By the way,
if you don't have a venus flytrap, you need one for your house.
You need a little light to keepit under and make it happy.
But I tell you that is sofun. You know, flies in the

(11:11):
house and all you have to dois get one to Sometimes you have ways
of capturing them and turning them loosein there, or just wound them seriously
and they wiggle around that thing closesdown. Oh my gosh, it's fun
to watch and the kids love ittoo. They can't believe that a plant
actually eats living things. So anyway, the Plants for All Seasons has got

(11:31):
that. They've got beautiful pottery,gorgeous, gorgeous pottery that looks so good.
And right now the color baskets areoutstanding. And you know you've walk
outside and look around your landscape.What you're going to see, in many
cases is a sea of green.That means green grass, green shrubs,

(11:52):
green ground covers, green trees.How do we get color in our landscape?
One quick way is to go getyour hanging baskets, such just some
of the those coumbo planters that theyhave there at Plants for All Seasons.
You hang it up, it looksgood. So you got a little thing
going on this weekend, you knowyou want to beautify the patio or whatever.
That's a way to do it instantlyand it looks awesome when you know

(12:15):
when you go in there, you'regoing to get good advice and you take
pictures and samples and other things fordiagnosis, for solutions to plant problems.
You're having Plants for All Seasons dotCom, Plants for All Seasons dot Com,
or just give them a call attwo eight, one, three,
seven, six one six for six. I was talking a moment ago about

(12:37):
pruning and the fact that you cando some limb removal anytime of the year
that you need to get it done. Just know this, when you're going
to do any kind of pruning,you want to learn what to do before
you do it. A lot ofpeople go out with a saw, pruning
shears, loppers, whatever, andthey just begin cutting. It seems appropriate.

(13:00):
I think you need to step backa little bit and I'm gonna I'm
gonna be I'm gonna overstate this,but just to make a point. But
if they say that a sculptor canlook at a giant rock and see the
figure inside. In other words,they look at this massive stone, but

(13:20):
they know if you're Michelangelo, theyknow that you're gonna chip away and leave
the David Famous David statue because theythey they know what they want to accomplish.
And when when you look at aplant, you ought to look at
it a while and just kind ofthink about what do I want to accomplish.
If it's a hedge, you wantthe top to be narrow, uh

(13:43):
and the base to be a littlewider, and that's so that light can
reach all levels of that hedge.If you let the shrub do what it
wants, it will go top heavy. It will be instead of being shaped
like the capital A, it'll beshaped like a capital V. And you
don't when that happens, the lowerlevels don't get light, the leaves don't

(14:03):
grow there, and you end upseeing through what you wanted to be something
to block a view. And soyou keep the top a little narrower,
not like a capital A shape,more just a little narrower on the top,
at least at least exactly vertical sides, but maybe a little narrower on
the top. And that's how youdo it. If you're going to do
a blooming plant, you prune itin the way that you want that plant

(14:26):
to be shaped. If you're goingto whatever you're going to prune, imagine
what you want it to look like. And crpe myrtles are a good example.
You do need to train a crpmyrtle. You don't need to butcher
them, but you do need totrain them. And so you look at
that little scrawny stick you just putin the ground out of the pot from
the garden center, and you thinkabout, Okay, when that thing is
fifteen feet tall, what do Iwant the shape to be? How many

(14:50):
trunks? Where do I want themto start branching? And I want to
choose things that are kind of goingoutward a little bit, because I want
to form that beautiful shrub. Andso that that is kind of how you
go about it, and you picturewhat you wanted to eventually become. And
then as you begin to prune,each cut is made with a purpose.
And so we'll just call this littlesegment prune with a purpose. That is

(15:15):
very important. Prune with a purpose. We're going to go now out to
the phones and talk to Clark inMagnolia. Hello Clark, welly, good
morning. I guess I'm guilty ofthis. Craig mertling as well. I
was always under the impression that ifyou didn't print them back in, you
know, on February or March,then they wouldn't bloom. Well, no,

(15:39):
they'll bloom. What happens is ifyou've never prune to crate myrtle,
it would be a big old bushand then the blooms would be smaller,
but they'd be more numerous all overthe planet. As you prune it,
and then it gets this vigorous newgrowth. You tend to get bigger blooms,
but fewer of them that you havethese long, long lanky shoots,

(16:00):
because if it was an excessive pruning, long lanky shoots that end up breaking
off in a rainstorm or sort offlopping out in all directions. But I
think the main thing, Clark isthat I'm trying to say is you want
the beautiful shape of a crape myrtle'sform to be maintained and not to be
marked by just hacking the top off. So you don't prune them back in

(16:26):
February or March for the spring growth. You would leave one loan other than
the branches that you walk out ofthe way. Yeah, you prune it
for shape in February and March ifneeded. And I'll tell you this,
if you from the time you plana crape myrtle, you begin to do
your training in printing. There's reallyvery little printing that needs to be done

(16:48):
that just a little guiding, alittle removal here and there. You know,
if you have a branch it's isay, growing out in the walkway
where you can't walk by, andyou leave it three years down the line.
You cut it off. Now youmake this big old wound to remove
it, whereas it could have beenremoved with hand pruners if you were doing
that, I'm envisioning what I wanttype of pruning. I was just talking

(17:10):
about. Okay, all right,I appreciate it, thank you, Yeah,
you bet. Yeah. You knowthis whole thing about great murder and
whatnot. And I realized here wewere talking about crepe myrtle pruning and it's
the middle of summer. But it'swhat I've been doing this week, and
I know some of you are probablyout doing a little bit of pruning too
on some things. The whole thingabout it is designing and creating this natural

(17:36):
form. And the further the longeryou allow a pruning decision to be put
off, the more of a pruningcut you make. The more of a
pruning cut you make, the longerit takes to heal, and the more
it mars the natural beauty of theplant. I'm going to go one last
time, hopefully last time, backto crapes for just a moment. If

(17:57):
you used hand pruners your crapes andwhenever you said up these branches don't have
a long term future. I'm gonnasnip that little thing off. Snip that
little thing off. You would neverneed to use a saw, and you
could create a beautiful structure to acrape myrtle. The more you let it
go past that to where now yougot to get a chainsaw out there to

(18:17):
cut something up, you've got it. It's just a it's just a not
a good thing for the form.The way I like to put it is
this, when you pull out asaw, it's an emission of guilt.
Let that sink in a little bit. When you pull out a saw,
it's an emission of guilt. Nowthat's overstated. But if you've owned a
plant for years and you haven't pruned, you haven't done what you should do

(18:42):
to that plant, and it finallycomes to a spot where you're having to
saw limb off, you're admitting thatyou know, I should have prined this
a long time ago, when Icould have taken handprinters or loppers and got
it done. Now, I knowthere's always situations where you do have to
saw, But if you just thinkof it that way, when I get
out of saw, it's an amission of guilt that helps you think in

(19:02):
terms of looking at things earlier beforethey are obviously an overcrowded problem, and
making those decisions as you go alongmakes it real easy. I I think
that it's just something to think about. Works pretty good. I was visiting
a good while back with ty Strickland, who is the owner of Fixing My

(19:25):
Slab Foundation Repair T He's been doingit for twenty three years with them,
and he was explaining to me abouthow foundation work gets done, what has
to be done when you're fixing afoundation and whatnot, and how the problems
for them. And we're talking aboutplants and different things, trees and their
effect on foundations and whatnot, andI just was so impressed. Tye is

(19:47):
very knowledgeable and he's got that thosetype of business practices that approach to taking
care of his customers that we usedto think of as the old fashioned good
customer service kind of approach. Whatdo I mean by that? I mean,
if he tells you he's going toshow up at a certain time,
he shows up on time, thatwhen he fixes it, his pricing is

(20:08):
fair, and when he fixes it, he fixes it right. And if
you see cracks in your brick outsideand the sheet rock inside. If you've
got doors sticking, don't mess around. Call TI. Tell him you're a
guardenline listener. You get free estimatesfor guardenline listeners and have him come out
and take a look at it.Because it only gets worse, it doesn't
get better. And so do yourselfa favor. Fix myslab dot com.

(20:32):
That's a website. Fix myslab dotcom and the phone number two eight one
two five five forty nine forty nine. We're gonna take a little break here.
I'll be right back. Don't forgetour number. If you'd like to
give us a call seven one threetwo one two kt r H bottoms its
line. Good to have you withus this morning. What are we going

(20:53):
to talk about? You tell me, hey, do you want to talk
about vegetables or herbs or flowers.We can switch into any of those topics
that you would like. I've beentalking about trees and pruning, summer pruning,
which is kind of weird, LikeI thought we in the winter.
What we do. The best timeto prune is the winter, but just
remember that there are exceptions to that, and there are reasons we need to

(21:14):
prune at other times. And speakingof all this pruning makes me think about
affordable tree service Martin spoon More.You know, Martin's been doing this for
a very long time and he isan expert at it. And that's why
we suggest that you give Martin acall when you have any kind of pruning
that you need to do. Martinknows how to come out. He can
do things from deep watering, deepdeep feeding. He can do minor pruning

(21:37):
you do planting. He can dotraining of trees. He can advise you
on things. Maybe you've got someissues in the landscape. Listen, if
you are going to do anything arounda tree. When I say anything,
I mean digging away soil, addingsoil, putting in a trench to run
a power line or water line orsomething like that. Definitely call him first,

(21:57):
have him come out and look,because by the time the damage is
done, it's too late to fixmuch. And that's true with bad pruning
too. Don't hire a guy justbecause he owns to pick up a chainsaw
and drives down the roadsticking cards inyour door, business cards in your door
that you need to hire Martin.You need to go with him. He
knows what he's talking about. I'veseen and talked to a lot of customers

(22:18):
that are very very happy and withstorm season here, I mean there's already
a hurricane in the Gulf here comein our direction. Unfortunately doesn't appear to
be landing on Houston this time.But you need to have your trees ready
and Martin can come out and dothat kind of pruning to prepare your trees
to minimize the amount of storm damageto make them the most storm resilient that

(22:41):
you can. Phone number seven onethree six nine nine twenty six sixty three.
Here's Martin's phone number again, sevento one three six nine twenty six
sixty three. The website is afftreeService dot com. Aff tree Service dot
com. Whatever you do, don'twait because you know once the storm hits,

(23:03):
it's a little late. And trustme, you don't like the kind
of pruning storms due to your trees. I give part and the call having
come on out, you're listening toGuarden Line. I'm your host, Skip
Richter, and it is right nowthe time to discuss with you the things
that are of interest to you.So what kind of questions have you had?
Maybe you're wanting to here's an idea. This is a you know,

(23:25):
it's always interesting. I know,when the phone rings, it's probably trees,
turf for tomatoes, the three t's, that's what makes a phone ring.
But there are a lot of othertopics out there that we can talk
about. And sometimes there's things thatI wish people would ask about, especially
ahead of time, like how doI go about pruning a tree? How
do I properly plant a plant?Or here's a good one. I would

(23:48):
like to give a gift to afriend or family member and just to say
thanks, And what would you suggestis a good gift plant for people?
There's a good idea, you know, plan are there's just a way to
say thank you in an ongoing fashion. A fellow I used to know up
in Conro, Texas, and misterAlden Colston. He was ninety something years

(24:14):
old, gardener and still going strong. He was quite the character too,
But anyway, he used to saythat flowers leave part of their fragrance and
a hand that bestows them. AndI always thought that was beautiful. Flowers
leave part of their fragrance in thehand that bestows them. When you give
a gift, let's just say it'sa rose, which by the way,
is a great gift for people.You give a rose bush. Then every

(24:38):
year when that thing blooms or somebodycomes in there walking around the yard and
saying, yeah, look at this, and so and so gave me the
it's a memory of you and ofyour kindness to them. And I just
think plants are an excellent gift.You know, sometimes we look at our
landscapes like, you know, wethrow this in there, pull this out,

(24:59):
and it's just like a plug andplay, which it can be.
But you think about historically people thatwould even move and take plants with them.
There is a rose in Tucson,Arizona, and it is a Ladybank's
rose, which is a thornless,very vigorously climbing rose that blooms in the

(25:19):
spring. Only a bride took itthere in a buckboard wagon in the eighteen
hundreds and it's still there. Atone point it covered a quarter of an
acre. They built this like arborcanopy, going out in all directions for
the rose canes to grow on aquarter of an acre. That is that's
a big rose. That's a verybig rose eighteen hundreds and it is still

(25:42):
still going strong out there. That'swhat I'm talking about. Those kind of
memories are a wonderful way to connectwith family, with friends. And so
if you've been thinking about a giftfor somebody, why not a quality plant,
one that will live for years andyears that they can enjoy. If
you'd like to give us, callour phone number here is seven to one

(26:03):
three two one two kt r Hseven to one three two one two kt
RH. If you look at yourlandscape when you drive up, just think
about that today or this week.Drive out and look at your landscape from
the front, from the street andjust say what what would I like to
be different? What would be missing? Uh? For example, maybe it

(26:26):
does lack the color. It's thatsea of green that so many landscapes become
in summer when we don't have tojust be green. Green's a pretty color,
but it's not the only color.Uh. Well, call up perscapes,
have them come out, take themsome pictures in sit doun. Say
hey, look, I want torenovate this bed. I want to create
a new bed here. What wouldyou do with this landscape? They can

(26:48):
do anything from the full bloode createeverything from scratch to renovating and redoing and
making something better, more beautiful.If you need hard scapes, if you
need, uh, perhaps your irrigationsystem looked at. They do all of
that. They do landscape lighting ifit means the outside gets more beautiful,

(27:08):
pierscapes, they're your people. Theydo that. That is what they specialize
in. They also do quarterly bedmaintenance. Now'd be a great time to
call them up. Quarterly bed maintenanceevery three months. They come out.
They fertilize weed, they trim,they check your irrigation. They do seasonal
color changes as needed, They molt. It's all at Peerscapes. Peerscapes dot

(27:30):
Com is their website. You needto go look at it. It's amazing.
And two eight one three seven ohfifty sixty two eight one three seven
o five zero six zero. We'regoing to take a break if you'd like
to get on the board with Chrissix seven to one three two one two
KTRH. And when we come backRon in Cleveland, you'll be our first

(27:52):
stop. When you ask someone intheir name, welcome back to the garden
line. May be with us thismorning, looking forward to visiting with you
about the things that are of interestto you. The other day I was
dealing with some issues I have aneighbor that has some issues in the lawn
where various primarily take off patch,but there's some other things going on in

(28:17):
the lawn. I was just kindof helping them with it and talking about
it, and we were talking aboutdifferent things you can do the lawn.
You know, one of the thingsyou can do when you want to get
out there and give your lawn aboost. I mean, it could be
the complete fertilization, but it alsocould just be let's give a little boost
to some areas here that need it. That. Medina has a product part
of the has to Grow line calledSupergrow Plus. Super Grow Plus is a

(28:42):
sixteen zero two fertilizer. It's aliquid. It hooks up to a garden
hose. It covers about four thousandsquare feet. It takes you about ten
minutes to do that area with yourlawn, so I mean it's about the
fastest way you can get out thereand get some fertilizing done. Just walk
through spraying the grass with Medina superGrow Plus sixteen zero two. A good

(29:04):
portion of that nitrogen is slow release. It's got seaweed extracts, it's got
humic acid, it's got molasses allthe things to stimulate microbial activity and growth
plus iron in a kelated form.And this past week I looked at three
different email situations. I've been helpingsomebody with on yellowing grass and iron,

(29:29):
and this would be a way toget out there put a little boost to
it. Supergrol Plus is easy.You hook it up, you go out,
you spray, You're done. Andit's not just for launch. I
mean you can put on anything youwant to do. I mean I know
people that use them their vegetable gardens. Medina has to grow supergrow plus sixteen
zero two. Get some try itout. I think you'll see what I'm
talking about. We're going to headout now to Cleveland, Texas, and

(29:49):
we are going to go talk toRon. If I can get a hold
of here we go. Hey,Ron, welcome to guard Line. Well,
good Morris. Skip a few thingsif you don't mind. You're talking
about trim and I've got three prettygood sized by texts that have bloomed this
year, and they got those seedpods on them. If I trim those
seed pods off, well that pushthat tree, those trees to bloom again.

(30:12):
It can so Ron, here's thetwo things that help a vi text
rebloom. When you prum back alittle bit, not just the seed pod,
but you cut the branch back justa little bit and you stimulate new
growth. It will tend to produceblooms on the ends of those new shoots.
Vitext blooms at the ends of itsshoots. If you catch it right

(30:33):
after bloom, there's the blooms fadeand cut the pods off. Then all
the energy that we've gone into buildingthose seeds. You know, seeds are
very oily protein. There's a lotof what the plant's producing that's going in
to make those seeds. If youdo it before they make the seeds,
that energy can go into new growthand blooms better. If you wait until

(30:56):
it already has seeds, it's stillworth taking them off, but they've already
put the energy into doing that.So if you could do it a little
earlier, that would be even better. Okay, I'll be ready to make
sense. Yeah, yeah, that'sfine. Well. By Text is a
tough That was a very very toughplants. I put in those crape myrtles

(31:17):
I was talking to you about,and I don't remember should I be watering
them like? And I did theMedina Hamster grill for plants, you know,
smoking them in? Uh? DoI need to be watering them every
day for a while because I gotthem right out here in the full sun
of course? Or is that like, you know, just stick your finger
in there, do like you say, you know, see if it's wet.

(31:40):
We're talking about creant myrtle plants.Yeah, right, yeah, I
got five of them. I putin some pink and like say, we
talked, I remember talking about,you know, checking if they're wet or
do I need to keep them wetevery day? You know, I don't.
I don't really remember. Yeah,no, just a good soaking periodically.

(32:01):
How long ago did you actually putthe containers in last Sunday? Okay,
so yes, I'm Here's the thing. That root system looks just like
it did when it came out ofthe pot. It is not established at
all. And over the next weeksand months and even a couple of years,

(32:22):
it's getting bigger and bigger and moreextensive, and the plant's getting more
resilient as a result. Right now, imagine that you just set the whole
pot. You didn't even take theplant out of the pote. You just
set the whole pot in the ground. That's what your root system still is
like. So you still have totreat it like it was in a pot,
meaning you're not drowning it watering everyday. You're just you're just giving

(32:45):
it enough water to keep that rootball in the area right around at moist.
And so if it's in full sun, that may mean every other day
probably is going to be adequate.It may in some situations the every day,
but not just be careful that youdon't overdo it and drown the root
system. But keep it that waterlog. Yeah, all it needs moist,

(33:07):
but remember that in the course ofa ninety degree day, it's pumping
that little cylinder that went in theground, that cylinder of soil. It's
pumping that dry and the soil aroundit may be moist. So that's why
I say pretend it's still in thepot, because for a while, that's
where the roots are still going tobe. Yeah. I had a lot

(33:28):
of work putting those five things inbreak from my bag doing it. I
don't want to lose them, youknow, I'm telling you, like no
kidding. I get home at nightand it's like, man, those leaves
look like they're wilting. So I'vebeen watering, but I don't want to
overwater, so I've just didn't knowif I should be doing every day.
If you're seeing wilting, you needto give it a little bit of water,
assuming that it wasn't just grossly overgrownin the pot. That plant,

(33:52):
if you can just keep that moist, should be just fine. And uh,
just a little drinking and they'll beon there. You know, you
planted them at a tough time,and we can plant be a month of
the year here, it's just whenwe do it now. We just have
to water a little differently than ifyou had planted them in November or January.
I'm going to put down some nitrofosssilver bag today. Uh some gets

(34:17):
around these, uh crate myrtles.That's gonna be okay, wouldn't it?
Or would I should I shy awayfrom keep them away from that? It'd
be okay, It'd be okay.Just don't overdo it right at the base
of them. I would just kindof fertilize like you're fertilizing. And usually
when I plan a plant like this, I'm going to want to use some

(34:37):
sort of a liquid as a drench. A watering in drench periodically just to
kind of feed those roots right there, because again they're all confined, uh
and then dead. Yeah, goahead. I bought the Madina hastroll for
plants and I have been doing itevery other day with that, you know.
All right, Well, I appreciateyour time, and I uh,

(34:59):
you know, I listening. Iwas listening to Randy for years. I
believe you've taken the show to thenext level. I appreciate you. That's
kind. Thank you, appreciate that. Welcome, Take care, take care.
I I was the other day,I was looking at some some stuff

(35:21):
from je Jjes Hidden Gardens down inAlvin, and uh, just looking at
the things that they're up to,things that are doing. Of course it's
it's summer and they're they're very busydown there, you know, Jorges Hidden
Gardens. That that is the gardencenter down in Alvin, due South.
So for those of you live nearAlvin, Santa Fe, Dickinson Hillcrest,
maybe Alta Loma, al Goa,Arcadia, all of those communities, Uh,

(35:45):
this is your local garden center andthey're down there in Alvin. They're
open, by the way on Friday. You need to consider these times.
It's primarily weekends right now Friday fromnine to three and Saturday and Sunday that
will be today eight am to fourpm. So eight am to four today
and tomorrow ninety three on Fridays,and just go down there. It's seventeen

(36:09):
seven twenty one Elizabeth Street in Alvin, just south of Highway six. Horayes
always got things on lots of excellentselection of little trees and shrubs that he's
growing. But he has other youknow Peggy Martin roses and krepe myrtle.
Course during the various vegetable planting seasons, they're going to have that with some
herbs and other things. It's alwaysa good time to go visit. But

(36:30):
check them out one weekend, especiallywith those of you down in that area.
This is just a hop, skippingor jump away from where you live.
At Horages Hidden Gardens, I thinkyou will be very pleased with what
you see. By the way,he also carries that three sixty tree stabilizer
in stock there, so that's whenyou get a tree from him. You

(36:50):
definitely need to get a tree stabilizerfrom him to keep that tree in place.
Well, you are listening to gardenline, and it is time for
us to with this hour in thebooks. If you would like to give
us a call and get on theboards, just give Chris a call seven
one three two one two k tR seven to one three two one two

(37:12):
K two our h. I'm beingback here in a little bit after we
get some news taken care of totalk about your gardening questions. What is
of interesting? They have questions abouthow can we help you? Know,
my goal is to help you havea more bountiful garden and a more beautiful
landscape. But also my goal isto help you have fun. The gardening

(37:35):
is not supposed to be stressful.It's not like I'm afraid I'm gonna fail.
It's not like I don't know howto do that. We can help
you have success because it should befun. It is an outstanding, relaxing,
health promoting hobby without a dom nyany ways, all right, you're
right, Ben, crazy gas shrimp. Just watch him as gas man.

(38:15):
It takes the soup hot crazy gasagain. You did us back again?
Not a sound and credit gases gassound beam and down between a gas starting

(38:39):
out treat. All right, let'sget going again here. Welcome back to
garden line. We are glad tohave you with us this morning, ready
to talk about how to have abeautiful, beautiful landscape, how to have
a bountiful garden, how to havefun with gardening. You know, gardening
should be fun. And even thoughwe live in a very warm climate and

(39:01):
in summertime it is hot, westill can grow anything we want to grow
just about here in the Greater Houstonarea. When it comes to being able
to take the heat, we haveflowers that do better in the heat.
We have vegetables that do better inthe heat. And I want to talk
about that just a little bit.What do you do when the mercury busts

(39:21):
the top out of the thermometer.What are some things that you can grow
when it's just so blazing hot.I know a lot of plants that look
good in spring don't look good insummer, especially when it comes to flowers.
You know, Petunias are a beautifulflower, calibri CoA is a beautiful
flower. But when it gets justalmost one hundred degrees, I mean,

(39:43):
they are struggling out there. Butthere are things that don't struggle. So
here's a few ideas for some thingsyou might want to consider. We're going
to do it first in the flowergarden. The first thing we'll talk about
is in the flower garden, andthat would be things like angelonia. Angelonia's
also call some or snapdragon, nota name I like because if people look

(40:04):
at them, go that I don'tlook like a snap dragon. Well they're
not snap dragons. But anyway,Angelonia summer snap dragon laughs at the heat.
It does well. Zenias do verywell. Whether it's a cut flower
types, the little mounding bedding planttypes of zenias, or there's actually a
zenia with strappy leaves that grows almostlike a little groundcover. It's an annual,

(40:27):
but it spreads outward. It'll goover the sides of a container.
I've got some in the backyard comingover the sides of a bed, and
it's called Zenia lanaris or zenia andgustafolia. The common name would be narrow
leaf zenia. It comes in yellow, comes in white, it comes into
kind of an orangey color. Thoseare the three options. The blooms are
about size of a quarter and theyjust sort of shrink up and disappear after

(40:51):
they bloom, so you don't haveto dead head it. It loves summer
weather as well. There are manyplants that are just that that heat tolerant
that we can choose from. Remember, in summer, we look to foliage
also. We have some outstanding foliageplants that can live in the sauna that
is a Southeast Texas summer. Forexample, cannas. Cannas have beautiful blooms,

(41:15):
but they can also have very beautifulfoliage. And there are some outstanding
types of cannas that if you givethem adequate water, they can absolutely shine
in the summer. One of themI love is tropicana. It has I
don't even know how to describe thecolors. It's of course it's got green,
but it also has kind of acoral color, a bronzy color in

(41:36):
it. It's just really beautiful,beautiful, beautiful leaves. There are some
types that have purple leaves that dovery very well here. They're just a
bold purple, dark dark purple color. Cannas are an excellent choice. Copper
plant is another one in the summerheat that does well. There're one called
Joseph Coat that does well in theshade. We got kalladiums that do very

(41:59):
well in the summer heat and Bythe way, speaking of blooms, wishbone
flour and the Impatients are both goodblooming plants for shady types of areas.
So we have a lot of differentthings. I mean, I could do
the whole show just talking about plantsthat will bloom or produce beautiful foliage in
summer when you get to the vegetablegarden. Now we're talking about things that

(42:20):
are warm season sweet potatoes, forexample, black eyed peas, purple whole
peas, crowder peas, those areall called summer peas. Zipper cream pieas
is another one. Summer peas.They actually are a bean, but hey,
they're called you know, like wesay black eyed peas instead of black
eyed beans. They do well inthe summer. Okra, oh my gosh,

(42:40):
okra begs for summer. It lovesheat, it loves the humidity that
we're in right now. Very veryhappy. I got some okra outside my
house that I just I'm kind ofan ochre nut. That will save that
discussion for another day, But thatis just doing super well. Melons like
watermelon, canalopes, they can takethe heat and do very well for us

(43:02):
here. I think I don't knowif I mentioned sweet potatoes already poor I
think I did, but that's anothergood summer crop. And then we have
summer greens. So when we saythe word green to a Texas gardener,
you're probably going to picture lettuce andspinach, maybe kale. You're going to

(43:23):
picture the cool season greens, maybea regular some others like that. Well,
we have warm season greens from placesin the world where it is as
hot and sultry as it is herein Histon, and they do well here.
Malabar is an excellent green, veryvigorous, very plump, very succulent
leaves does super well here. Thereis something called Egyptian spinach. It's a

(43:45):
type of slosha that has grown here. There are probably my favorite summer green
is perslane. Perce lane is aweed. Person lane is also a flowering
hanging basket. But then there arevegetables types of person lane. They're very
very big leaves and very fleshy,high bita high content of omega three fatty

(44:07):
acids, a little bit of alemonee zip to the taste really good.
Personally is an excellent, excellent greenfor summertime. So there are many others.
There's molokia, which is popular,especially in Middle Eastern cultures, but
not just there, other areas.It just loves summer. It grows very

(44:28):
well. And I could go onand on. My point is that we
have vegetables and flowers that do superwell here in our summer season, and
we should take advantage of that justbecause it's summer. Get out there when
it's early in the morning, cool, pleasant, get the planning done,
get your irrigation system set up,and most the beds well and you don't
have to work in the heat,and you could still enjoy some really healthy

(44:52):
and flavorful vegetables and beautiful flowers asa result. Well, just a few
thoughts or tips for you to considerright there. If you haven't fertilized your
lawn yet, you got to considerNelson's Plant Foods turf Star Slow and Easy.
Now. Turf Star is a lineof turf fertilizers by Nelson's and they

(45:15):
just perform well because they in thecase of the Slow and Easy, they
gradually release those nitrogen molecules out tothe plant into the soil so it gets
a gradual feeding on through the summeron through the summer season. In fact,
if you do turf Star right now, you will not have to fertilize

(45:37):
again until we get into the fallfertilization. You get my schedule, look
at it and you'll see the nextfertilizations coming in the fall. So easy,
easy to know exactly. You knowwhen to do it when you just
look at the schedule. But thebottom line is turf Star carry right through.
It acidifies the soil a little bit. It's got a little bit of
acidifying effect, which is always agood idea, especially as we do with

(46:00):
things like take our root rot thatlike highph soils, anything we do to
help out with that. It graduallyfeeds the microbes that are in the soil
and of course microbes and feed theplants. That's how that works. Turch
Star is just just very very qualitytechnology. It's a fertilizer that is designed
to do super well here and it'sfrom Nelson Plant Food. The same folks

(46:22):
that give us nutra Star nutri Starfor indoor plants, nutri Star for hibiscus,
Nutra Star for Plumeria and whatever youwant to grow. The same folks
that give us color Star from Nelson, easy easy to find all over the
place, are available and they reallydo work. We're going to take a
little break here. We'll be rightback. Our phone number if you'd like

(46:43):
to give Chrystal Coon, get onthe board seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. With thesnap of your fingers, all right,
we're back. Welcome back to theGarden Line. I'm your host, Skip
Richter. What do we want totalk about today? You tell me our

(47:05):
phone number seven one three two onetwo k t R H. And I'm
going to go straight out to theheights and we're going to talk to Mike
this morning. Hello Mike. Hey, thanks Skip. I'm just too mature.
Two story type magnolia tree in separateareas, and one has I found
an exposed route that is rotting.The second one has a fracture if you

(47:34):
wish or that is very small,and but there it goes all the way
up to the tree. The lea, the leaves are looking great on both
trees. But it's like a littlefissure on this second one that is split.
And I'm wondering what I should beconcerned about. Okay, it's on
the trunk you're talking about the fissure, Yes, trunk, the bark,

(47:57):
the bark is separating, but it'sa very small separation at this point going
up to the top of the tree. Yeah, it could have been a
freeze crack from one of the freezeswe had over the past few years.
Sometimes that can happen. There aredifferent things that can cause that kind of
thing, but usually it's going tobe like a freeze crack related or some

(48:19):
of the kind of physical injury ona magnolia because it's evergreen. Probably not
sun damage to the trunk, whichcan occur, but not on an evergreen
magnolia. So as far as whatyou can do, there's not really anything
to do about it. The thingthe tree needs is to be healthy and
to be able to create callous toclose that gap over, to reseal over

(48:43):
the wood on the inside. Andthe same is true in the roots that
you know, where you may seesome wood exposure, some decay kind of
things. It just has to closeit over. It's part of nature.
It happens out there. But especiallyin our landscapes, we got things like
lawnmowers and weed eaters and foot trafficand erosion across the surface and things that
expose roots and wound roots and whatnot. But the bottom line for you is

(49:06):
just keep it happy. Like lastsummer was so brutally hot and so brutally
dry for so brutally long that welost magnolia's, which is a rare thing
around here to see magnolias just flatdye. But we did last summer,
and some of them were partially killed, some of them were completely killed.
So this summer, if we gowithout rain and it's hot, you don't

(49:30):
have to do it often. Butlet's just say once every week or two,
a good soaking of a wide areaaround the plant in the absence of
rainfall. Had and rain for twoweeks, and it's one hundred degrees,
and go ahead and just put ourirrigation out there. And what a large
area. There's a little gadget calledthe tree hugger sprinkler that goes around the
tree, hooks up to your gardenhose, and that old water a very

(49:52):
large area in a circular fashion rightaround the tree. So it's really good
for targeting that water. Okay,thank very much. Yeah, yep,
all right, good luck, allright, yeah, you bet take care
now that that is definitely the casethat can happen. I was in the

(50:12):
backyard yesterday and noticed one of mybird feeders had gotten empty. And I
tell you our birds, you Ishould let the birds come in and talk
to you about war Birds Unlimited becausethey could be a better spokesman than I
am. But they love the mix. I've got a nesting super blend that
is a good thing to be puttingon right now because birds are still newt

(50:35):
nesting. There's still some of thatgoing on. And then there's also the
molting season, which birds go throughmolts once two or three times the here.
It depends on the bird. Butthey shed their old feathers, they
generate new ones, and so theykind of take cover, hang out,
don't fly around as much, andit's nice to have a good source,
dependable source of food for him duringthat time. Nesting super Blend does all

(50:58):
that, and that's what I usein my landscape this summer, and boy,
they love it. And then I'llthrow in a little bit of some
of the other excellent feeds from WabirdsUnlimited, perhaps something with some sunflower or
whatever. Wabird feeds are very highquality, and when something goes into a
wild bird sack of feed for birds, you know it's something birds want to

(51:21):
eat. They don't put the littlered bebies that cheap bird seed has,
so you end up spending more oncheap bird seed because you have less to
go into a bird less percentage wisethat the birds are going to eat.
Wabirds Unlimited is easy to find.You just go to WBU dot com forward
slash Houston, WBU dot Com forwardslash Houston and you can find one of

(51:42):
the six Wallbirds Unlimited stores near you. It's always a good time to go
in for a gift for a friend, a feeder, a bird house.
Just go in and check them out. You'd be very very impressed, and
trust me on this and your birdsyou're gonna love it too. My goodness,
our yard, I would say probablyright now, since I started the

(52:02):
feeding this summertime, I'd gone awayfor a while, didn't redo the feed
Since I started, I think Iprobably have five times as many birds that
are in the yard, and it'sjust going to get more and more.
A little water, a little birdfood. By the way, they need
water. Make sure your birds havewater and you can have great success.
Let's go now, we're gonna headback to the phone. We're going about
to Spring, Texas and talk toMark. Hello, Mark hello today.

(52:30):
Yeah, I got two questions.What's the best mulched good around centris tree
in a container? In a container, you know, the mulching is helpful
to keep the soil a little cooler, but Centrius tends to shade it's soil

(52:52):
and a container pretty well. Soyou could really use kind of any type
of mult you would like. Iwould use something a little smaller in terms
of particle size. You know,if you had big old chunks of pine
bark or something in a container.You can't mulch three inches deep in a
container, So maybe something a littlefiner textured in a malt that way,

(53:15):
if you even got it an inchinch and a half deep, that would
be enough to provide what you wantmultch to do. Okay, excellent.
Oh my second question is I gota hearty high biscus and it's just not
growing. It's not big like theother ones mother too. Okay, it's

(53:37):
tall, and their leaves seem wrinkled, they're not big. H that's very
interesting. I'm probably gonna use apicture of that one to know for sure.
Is this the kind that makes thebig old giant red pink or white
blooms? Yeah, there's sort oflike a light pink with a red center.
Okay, yeah, okay, II just want to make sure we're

(53:59):
talking about the same plant. Uh, they need water, they don't go
into drought. Well, Uh,they're not Prima Donna's that you got to
water every day. It's just thatdon't let the soul dry out. That's
important. Be careful using any kindof a broad leaf weed control product around
them, even in the lawn rightnext to them. Broadleaf we control products,

(54:20):
especially when the weather's hot, theycan cause some problems. Yeah,
I haven't used any of that.Okay, start drop it. Yeah,
okay, well, Mark, Ineed to turn that radio in the background
down. It's kind of feeding backon us. So let's do this.

(54:42):
I think the best way to helpyou is I'm going to put you on
hold and have uh, the producerChris give you my email so that you
can uh send me some pictures ofthe bush overall and some up close pictures
and let me see if I cantell what's going on. On. If
it's not drought, if it's nota chemical injury, it's possible that nematodes

(55:07):
could be working on the root systemand have hit a point where it's just
so inefficient that the plan is struggling. But let me look at let me
see some pictures of it. Okay, okay, that's sound good. Yeah,
okay, I want to put youon put you on hold here and
we will get uh. We willget right to you, hick. Just

(55:30):
hang on just a second. We'llbe right back with you to give give
you that email that you need.You're listening to garden Line. I'm your
host, Skiprector, and we're hereto answer your gardening questions. We love
to visit with gardeners. I thinkone of my favorite thing to do.
I guess I'm doing the right jobright now because my favorite thing to do
is to talk to gardeners. Andwhen when you just have a chance to

(55:52):
hang out with gardeners, you findout some of the best people in the
world. They're just fun. Weare eternal optimists. We absolutely have to
be uh. And you know,it's it's a healthy activity, it's a
mind healing activity, it really is. It's just just a lot of enjoyment

(56:14):
in gardening. So I guess that'sone of the reasons why gardeners are so
much fun to be around. Butanyway, our phone number if you'd like
to give us a call seven onethree two one two k t r H.
Seven to one three two one twok t r H. I did
my final appearance of the season theother day, and we got a little

(56:37):
summertime off here now before we startthose things up again in the fall.
But one of my appearances toward theend of the season this year was the
one at Langham Creek. ACE Hardware. Uh. You know. ACE Hardware's
are all over the Greater Houston areaand it's always fun going into an ACE
because people walk up during these appearances. They ask me questions like, well,

(56:59):
I've got this we they pull itout of a bag, or they
ask some other kind of question.And when when I'm in an ACE hardware
store, I just say, yeah, you just go right over there and
there's such and such and you canget it. They carry it all.
Do you need the fertilizers I talkabout on Guardenline Ace Hardware as simple as
that. Do you need fire antcontrol, preferably starting with a bait,

(57:19):
that's the best way to start.They have it. Do you need mosquito
dunks? You hear me talk aboutthose. We put them in the water
and they control mosquitoes, mosquito larvae. Do you need a fogger for mosquitos
on the patio or any other kindof gadget. Do you want to beautify
your outdoor setting? Do you needbarbecue equipment? Ace is the place for
your summer landscape and your summer outdoorliving. Acehardware dot Com and find the

(57:45):
store locator and you'll find a storenear you. Take a little break here
for the news. I'll be rightback. Houston's News, Why they're traffic
plus breaking news twenty four to seven. This is News Radio forty KTRHEL Everywhere.
More of what's happening now from theJohn Morris Services Studios, Beryl coming

(58:09):
for Texas. I'm Cloff Saunders.It's seven thirty on KTRH and with traffic
and weather together, here's Gary Mack. Welcome back to guard Line. Glad
to have you with us today.Thanks for tuning in. It's always good
to visit about gardening with friends.Right, Let's get that. Let's get

(58:31):
that done today by answering your gardeningquestions. All you got to do is
give us a call seven to one, three two one two k t r
H. We'll talk about the topicsthat are most of interest to you.
That sounds fair enough, doesn't it. Night Fuss has a really cool product
called sweet Green. Sweet Green.Why sweet well sweet, because it's actually

(58:51):
from a basis in horticultural molasses.You know molasses. Organic gardeners know that
you put molasses on the soil andit stimulus. It's microbial activity, specifically
beneficial bacteria that help your plant rootsto thrive. And sweet Green's eleven percent
nitrogen product. It increases the healthof the soil as it increases that population

(59:12):
of all those beneficial microbes. Andwhen you create that kind of a rich
environment to promote health of your plants, they're going to do well. That's
how nature does it, and thatis why I think that you will find
sweet green to be a very effectiveand pretty quick available product as well.
You just put it down, Iwould say, at this time in the
season, if are we using sweetgreen, what I would do is I

(59:35):
would take the application and maybe splitit in half and do some of it
now and then about six eight weeksfrom now do it again. And that
way you give a more extended feedand a small dose, which is a
good thing. You know, weeat small amounts every day over time in
order to have health. And thesame is true with your lawn with sweet
grain. A split application like thatin the summer would work very very well.

(01:00:00):
Now you're gonna find sweet green allover the place. If you're up
in Montgomery, Jim's Hardbur's got itthere on fourteen ninety seven. In Brenham,
Plants and things have it down inAngleton, Lake Hardware, Angleton on
Velasco. Are all places where youcan get sweet Green by Nitroposs. I'm
gonna head now to the phones.We're gonna go all the way to Dickinson

(01:00:22):
and talk to Charles. Hello,Charles, Hello, Hey Charles, what
regard line? Can you hear me? Yeah? I can't. Yeah,
I hear you on my phone,I mean on the TV. I mean
I'm already. I'm sorry. Okay, So I just asked a question about
fertilization. But I've got some Ijust started growing BlackBerry's and I want over

(01:00:47):
the last couple of years. I'vegot a really three faint varieties. I've
got some Navajos and we can't thinkof the other one. But the main
one I have right now is myPrimark Freedoms. And these things are.
I've got stalks on them because mymiddle finger and I've got and I have

(01:01:07):
I have got berries all over rightnow and it's but the size of my
thumb, and uh, I'm justkind of surprised there's still producing. But
I'm just trying to figure out doI need. It's kind of like a
fertilization on the thing. You know, I go to I go to the
YouTube and there's so many different peoplearound the country that and I can't find

(01:01:28):
anybody in this where we live outhere for fertilization. Uh, you know,
some some answers on what I needto do to fertilize in this area.
But those Primarchs, I just can'tbelieve it's still growing and producing fruit.
That's just beautiful they are. SoI'm kind of if I if I
need to, you know, ifI need to need to fertilize them,

(01:01:49):
but you know, anytime soon oranything. But the other one all all
all kind of everything's just kind oflike dying back on them and you know,
no no fly or anything. Butthey're just beautiful. Yeah, well
good, Yeah, that Primark Freedomand there's another Primark Travelers and the other
and they're both excellent berries out ofthe University of Arkansas, thornless berries that

(01:02:13):
do very very well here. SoI would you know as far as fertilizing,
First of all, we don't haveto sweat it a lot on blackberries.
Yes, you own to fertilize them, but they're pretty tough. I
mean you think about like you seedewberries while blackberries growing all over the place
and they just kind of live outtheir nature they do. Okay. The
most important element for your blackberries isnitrogen, and it's better to apply it

(01:02:36):
in small applications. Typically we'll doa little fertilizing in the spring as the
buds begin to push out, andthen after the fruit harvest is completed in
summer. And this is standard typesof blackberries. Your freedom is an ever
bearing or repeat bearing. It's wecall it a primal cane bearing BlackBerry.
You get some the first year onthe canes, and you get some of

(01:02:58):
the second year too, in thesame cane. Get there, So I
pardon, no, Dad, I'msorry, I'm going to be interrupting.
Good okay, Yeah, So Iwould just primarily focus on nitrogen. If
you want to have a soil testdone to see maybe your magnesium is low,
maybe potassium is low. Who knows, but a soul test would tell

(01:03:22):
you what else you might want toput down. I use lawn fertilizer on
my blackberries. Uh. When I'vehad that to fertilize, I think it
works fine. You could also justuse a little bit of nitrogen source on
them, but again not a lot. You don't want to push them into
supergrowth because as you are have alreadypointed out, those are vigorous enough as

(01:03:43):
it is. Uh So yeah,and and Charles, if you if your
new shoots coming out are a littleyellow, or maybe the veins are green,
but they're yellow in between the veins, then that is an iron chlorosis.
And in our soils would Thu're oftenhigh higher pH here than we want
them to be. In Southeast Texas, you can see some ironclerosis and you

(01:04:06):
would just supplement with a keylated ironproduct if that happens. Alrighty, I
appreciate it. All right, youtake care now, you know, aeron
Guardline, our advice advice is free. But all we ask is that you
bring half of your BlackBerry harvest tothe station when it comes in and we'll
call it even okay, all right, sir, thank you a great show.

(01:04:30):
Thank you, thank you. Iappreciate that. Enjoy having fun.
You boy. Blackberries. We gotto grow more blackberries along the Gulf coast
really throughout the state, but EastTexas. When I say East Texas,
I mean kind of north south thedirection the eastern third of the state that
is prime place for grown BlackBerry.You can grow further further west as well.
But blackberries are so easy to growin these new varieties. He was

(01:04:54):
talking about the prime arc prime arcfun. In fact, blackberries are typically
a primacane and floracane producing plant,which means in year one, a shoot
comes out of the ground. It'scalled a primacine prime primo one first year,

(01:05:15):
that's what that means, primacaine.It goes through winter after it has
set buds, and in the springit blooms since sets fruit year two floracane
as in flowers. Primacine first yearturns into a floraicane, blooms and then
dies after you harvest it. Well, that's the two year cycle of normal

(01:05:36):
BlackBerry plants. For years now,people have been working on blackberries that can
produce on the first year that thecane grows. A primacane has fruit and
it can go through winter, andas a floricane it can have fruit.
Those are the primary breeder of thosewas Jim Moore, now John, a

(01:05:59):
guy named John, last name escapesme at the University of Arkansas, and
they produce some wonderful varieties, PrimarkFreedom and Primark Traveler, or two of
the best. We're gonna take alittle break. We'll be right back our
phone number seven one three two onetwo fifty eight seventy four Socialism. Welcome
back to garden Line. Thanks forjoining us this morning. We got a

(01:06:23):
lot of gardening stuff to talk about, got some folks online here. In
fact, we're gonna run straight outto the phones and let's see, we're
gonna head to Lake City and talkto John. Good morning, John,
Hello, good morning. I havesome Yeah, I have some azelias that
the leaves they're real healthy, they'vebeen there for years. They leaves,

(01:06:45):
though, are starting to drop off. It's weird. I'm seeing more leaves
dead underneath. It's kind of sendingout. It doesn't look like iron chloruss
or anything. It's the leaves arekind of yellow and green, kind of
almost like a black yellow and green. And then they and then they turn
brown and drop. And I didn'tknow if you had any idea what you

(01:07:08):
think that might be. Well,usually it's due to a sole moisture problem.
The whenever you get wide fluctuations andmoisture, it's not unusual for an
as elia to have the old leavesbasically get cast off the plant. They
turn yellow, and then of coursethey turn brown and fall off, so
that that is one likely cause forit. If anything causes the sole moisture

(01:07:35):
availability to change, then you're alsogoing to get that that same kind of
a symptom. For example, aroot rot would kill roots, and it
would be the same things as havingdrought where you can't take water up because
you don't have roots to take itup. That's kind of what I'm talking
about. Physical damage to the root. You know, someone take a should
cut roots, or any of thosekinds of things. It sounds to me

(01:07:59):
more like a water problem. Itcould be related to a sore moisture issue.
Uh, And it could also berelated to a root rot, in
which case you would need to treat. But how fast did this come on?
Uh? Probably you know they theybloomed really well in the spring and
then I started my fertilizer cycle,and I would say for the last two

(01:08:25):
months probably you know, somewhere inMay and maybe mart mid May to June.
I started noticing this and I kindof watched it kind of like it
was I have like maybe six ofthem big, cause Ellia is like four
feet high five feet high. Andthen I started noticing it's kind of getting
worse, spreading throughout, and Iwas like, well, what's going on
here? And they get you know, they only get excessive water. You

(01:08:47):
know, we've had heavy rains,but it's just kind of odd they've been
They've been sitting there in the sameplace. So it's not like the you
know, the soil's changed or anythingthat I'm aware of. Yeah, okay,
have we done anything like was atree limb taken out? For example?
We did have some Yeah, wedid have some maintenance springing done with

(01:09:09):
some oak trees that were above them. Well, you know, that opens
it up and now suddenly the landsgo up a lot. So keeping a
mulch, keeping a moist, thatwould be what I suggest. If you
end up losing entire bushes, itmay be time to jump in with a
drench of a root rot fung justside. But I'm not inclined to go
there. I don't think that's what'sneeded. Based on our conversation so far

(01:09:32):
here, you wouldn't recommend I likedrench them with a fungus side now and
sprain or anything. I was wonderingif it could be a fungus, but
I don't know. Well, itcould be a root rot. But again,
as we talk about this, I'mnot hearing some things that I would
think root rot shot. So Ihate to send people out to spend money

(01:09:56):
and time applying products when they're notneed did so, Yeah that that.
Yeah, it's weird. I don'tever hardly see that many leaves, you
know, this time of year.They don't usually drop their league. Yeah,
it's like they're sitting out. Imean you still look green by the
way, you know, But Isee these dead leaves all in different areas.
So it's weird. Yeah, wellthat you know, it's not unusual

(01:10:17):
with any kind of a stress forthat to happen on on Azila's anything that
limits up. Hey, you're inLake City, is that right? Leak
City? League City? Oh?League City? Okay city? All right?
Good good? That would have beena long distance call Lake City.
Yeah, well, thanks a lot. Good luck with that. I hope
that, hope that turns around.If it doesn't, give us a callback

(01:10:41):
and we can suggest some type ofa root roight drench, but again I
think that's a long shot. Okay, thank you, John. Alrighty,
let's see here. We are nowgoing to go to Ron in West Houston.
Hello, Ron, good morning.How can we help? What I'd

(01:11:03):
like to do is I'd like toplant a blueberry patch. But I'd like
to know when is the best timeto plant the blueberries prior to, of
course their season. Yes, Iwould plant them at anytime from mid to

(01:11:23):
late fall on into through the wintertime. That would be ideal. So
while it's cool, the demands arelowest it's possible on the plant, it's
easy to keep them moist and everythingthat gives them the most time possible to
get some roots going before the nextsummer hits. And what kind of fertilizer

(01:11:45):
or what kind of preparation do Ineed to do to make sure that they
have the best chance for survival?Good question? Is your soil a clay
or a sand or what kind ofsoil are we dealing with here? It's
had died mulge for a couple ofyears. So does it hold water?

(01:12:15):
Does the soil whole water well?Or does it drain really well? Or
is it kind of a sticky heavyclay when you dig down into the soil
itself, do you notice any canyou describe anything for me? Is this?
It is a sticky excuse me,sticky soil and it is a heavy
clay, and I want to remediatethat. And I wanted to remove that

(01:12:43):
clay area down to what I needto for the blueberries to survive. You
can do that, I'm sorry,not blueberries, blackberries, oh, blackberries.
Okay, thank you for clarifying thatI was about to leave you in
the wrong direction. Blackberries are notreal happy with a heavy clay. They

(01:13:03):
like sandy loam soils. But Idon't know that removing the soil is the
best way to go about it.I would say bringing a good quality mix
in and building up the soil witha good sandy loam mix with some compost
and things would be best. Whenyou dig a pit like I think of
it as digging a grave to removethe soil out, and then you put

(01:13:24):
good soil in it and plant yourplant. Now they're in an underground flower
pot where that it's like the clayhole's water and so you didn't improve the
drainage any if instead you put stuffon top of the ground and build it
up. Now the excess water drainsaway, but they're still growing in good
quality stuff. I think that's probablyyour best best approach. So what I

(01:13:46):
would be what I would do runis I would get a good quality mix
like a rose soil or like aairlimb soils makes a blend for or fruit
plants, and that would be agood choice. You can buy it by
the bag. You can have thebook delivered end uh. If you you're
probably not too far away from Welcometo Katie r. H Garden Line with

(01:14:15):
skip Richard's trim. You just watchhim as so many birthings to seepots not

(01:14:41):
a sign sun Beamon of Welcome backto guarden Lines. Hey, thanks for
listening, Thanks for tuning in today. We are looking forward to talking to
you about the things that interest you. How do we help you have a
more bountiful garden and a more beautifullandscape. That's what this is about.

(01:15:04):
And if you'd like to give usa call, you're welcome to do that
well. Happy to tackle the questionsfor diagnosis and identification and suggestions or whatever
you want to do to have success. Make your place a more enjoyable,
enjoyable place to be, because youknow, gardening is about having a really
good time. It's about relaxing,it's about having fun. It's about having

(01:15:26):
the just the joy of being ableto create something. Beauty, productivity,
fresh fruits and vegetables. You grewyourself, we can help you do that.
Here's the number seven one three twoone two fifty eight seventy four seven
to one three two one two fiveeight seven four. And we're going to
start by going out to Alvin andtalking to Wayne. Hello, Wayne,

(01:15:47):
good morning, Skip. Hey.We got a got a good producing Mustang
great wild great, and this yearit was doing good. It starts setting
fruit real well. Then we gotall that rain and then all of a
sudden, all the leaves just turnedbrown, dried up, And this thing

(01:16:10):
is loaded, it's ready to bepicked. The new growth has come back
in. It has small green leaveson it. But I'm not skinning any
of the wildlife touch these grapes.What's your opinion on it? The grapes
look like they're ripe. You're saying, yes, sir, Yes, sir.
They look this thing is loaded tothe hill. So are you pretty

(01:16:33):
sure that nothing got sprayed on oraround that plant? Yes, sir,
I've looked all around it. Assoon as it started happening. There's no
dead grass. I can't see anybodyjust spraying the plant without it getting on
the grass. It's on the chainlinked. Then it's probably about four foot
high, so it would have killedsomething around it. I'm seeing other grape

(01:16:58):
vines in the area that has donethis same thing. They're not produced,
and they're they're young, but theleaves dad and now they've come back looking
better. All right, Look,Williams, you know it could be a
number of things. We have nothad the drought that would explain defoliating or
anything there is. There are somediseases, fungal diseases that can really wreck

(01:17:24):
havoc on vines. Normally, Mustang'sare pretty tough grape. We don't have
as many problems with that with alot of the other grapes that we have,
but black spot is one. Itcan cause foliage spots. There's other
fungi that can do it, andwhenever we get a lot of rainy weather,
it's splashing spores around and it's helpingthose disease sports to germinate and infect

(01:17:45):
the leaf. And I would saythat's probably what happened right now. The
fact that it's pushing out new growthagain means the vine's healthy. You just
got a leaf disease that defoliated itand so it'll come back. Doesn't do
it any good. And as faras those apes that are on it,
they got to have sugar, andsugar comes from leaves, and so I
don't know what the crop quality wouldbe like with that, but if they

(01:18:10):
can hang on any longer, givethem a little more time, it'd probably
be good to do that, justto give them the best shot they can
do. Y'all typically harvest those yes, sure, yes, sure, okay,
all right, well that would bemy suggestions. The only thing in
your control right now. Certainly shouldn'tbe necessary to spray a mustang grape,
but you always could. But again, most people that have a wild grape

(01:18:36):
like that, they're not going towant to have to get out and spray
it. Correct, all right,Skip. I appreciate cam Poe and love
the show all right, So inguardenline, all our advice is free.
But I do ask that half ofwhatever you grow and produce as a result,
you drop by the station. Sothat could be mustang wine, it
could be mustang jelly. However youwant to do it, I'll call it

(01:18:58):
even better. Go build you abigger pantry. All right. You know,
my family grew up kind of alongthe Gulf coast of Texas, not
my dad, as that family grewup my dad, and they used to
harvest mustangs every year, and they, you know, they made everything that

(01:19:19):
you would expect you would make outof grapes. Oh yeah, yeah.
The wife put up forty eight jarsof jelly. And there's two gallons of
wine going now off of my cow. There you go, There you go.
There's also a greed, sir,do what I said. We'll see.

(01:19:42):
Yes, you'll leave with a smile. Hey, yeah, there you
go. That's good. Thanks alot, man. Hey, good to
talk to you. Appreciate appreciate thecollege. Bye bye. Oh man.
Hey, if you lived down inthe League City area, just south a
little bit to the east of Houstonthe way to Galveston, well your hometown
feed store is League City Feed.And when I say hometown, I mean

(01:20:04):
your hometown feedstore. If you're inSanta Fe or Dickinson, or Lamark or
Baycliffe for Elkamina, Reale, ClearLake City, all that whole region down
there. League City Feed. Thisstore has been around since forty years ago
when the grandfather Thunderberger's grandfather first gotthat thing rolling, and Wes and Madison

(01:20:25):
his sister, are still running theplace. If you go in there,
you're gonna find ever fertilizer I talkabout on Guardline. You're gonna find soil
blend, like the heirloom soil bagswe talk about. Uh, they're going
to be there as am I.You're going to find that their quality pet
feeds, very high quality pet feed. They're gonna have pesticide, herbicide fundside,
whatever you need to make your lawnand garden look its best. That's

(01:20:47):
League City Feed. They're open Mondaythrough Saturday and today nine am to six
pms again six pm today to runby there. Closed on Sunday. Here's
the number two eight one, three, three two sixteen twelve. Now it's
just a few blocks south of ninetysix on Highway three in League City,
just a few blocks south of Highwayninety six. Easy to find, easy

(01:21:10):
to get to, and when youget there, you're going to find what
you're looking for. League City.Let's head now out to WESTU and we're
going to talk to Charlie. Hello, Charlie, we have a Charlie.
Did I push the right button?Charlie? Hey Charlie, you got you

(01:21:32):
all right? Good? Welcome toGuardline. How can I help nice Skip?
I have a Saint Augustine lawn whichis not doing well, and I
was wondering if I need to takeplugs all along. I think I've heard
the advertised of maybe a Randy shipBrandy shall m androgate arrogates. So are

(01:22:00):
you are you saying the lawn isdying back slowly or what are you seeing?
Just to agress is not doing well? It's got some some weeds in
it, Okay? Yeah? Youknow the schedule that I put online at
Gardening with Skip dot com. That'smy website, Gardening with Skip dot com.

(01:22:21):
The schedule there talks about how tomake your lawn party basically, and
it talks about mowing, watering andfertilizing to talking about frequency of watering,
uh, the amount of water youput on. It talks about the fertilizers.
Have you done any fertilizing this springor summer? Uh? You know,
we have just done some fertilizing.Us also put on some weed prevent

(01:22:45):
just recently. Okay, good,yeah, good, Well I would I
would just kind of watch it.Whenever you use any kind of a weed
control product, be be cautious tofollow the label very carefully because overdosing can
be a problem on those. ButI would say sounds like just a matter
of giving it adequate water that ifyou, let's see you're in the West

(01:23:11):
View area, if you got acouple of options. You could send a
sample of the turf up to thestate Plant Clinic at A and M and
have them analyze it. Maybe there'sa disease on it, like take all
root rot that they would find.That would be an option. But other
than that, making sure it hasadequate fertilizer and moderate amounts feeding through the

(01:23:32):
season and adequate sunlight and then ofcourse adequate watering would be the most important
things. Let's do this, Charlie, I want you to hold on.
I'm gonna have Chris pick up theline here and give you my email.
Could you send me some photos ofyour lawn from a distance and close up
and make sure they're in really goodsharp focus and I'll see if I see

(01:23:53):
anything else that is not coming tomind as we talk. All right,
okay, but on the subs,just taking plugs out of the lawn,
do you generally recommend that or not? Irri out? You can. You
can put plugs in to help itfill in. You can do that,

(01:24:14):
but you need to so they makea little little holes, a little holes
and pull some of the old toilout to let the air in. No,
no, no, don't worry aboutthat. Oh oh, air rating,
Yes, absolutely, I'm sure.Yes. Air rating is always a
good thing. Do it as assoon as you can put some leaf,
more compost on top and watered inreally good that I'm gonna have to run.

(01:24:38):
I'm late for a break here,but good luck with that. And
if you want to hang on holduh josh, we'll give you an email.
All right, folks, we gotto take a break. We'll be
right. Welcome back to the guardenline. Good to have you man, Good
to have you listening today. Wegot a lot to talk about it.
Hey, it is summer, butour plants are out there. They are
hanging on through the hot weather andwhatnot, and we can do a lot

(01:25:00):
of things to help them out.One of the things that you can do
for your lawn to help it outis to do a aeration and compost top
dressing. I was just kind ofbusiting with that a little bit with Charlie,
and so basically, what is this. What this means is we're punching
a hole in the ground and pullinga plug of soil out. That last
part is important. There are machinesthat will push a probe in the ground

(01:25:24):
and sort of squeeze an opening downinto the soil. That's okay, but
it's better to have a core aeratorthat reaches into the soil with a hollow
tube and pops that plug out andleaves it on top of the soil.
Professional turf aerated all the time,golf courses and things very important. It
helps with compaction, It helps witha lot of root issues for your grass,

(01:25:46):
and grass needs a good healthy rootsystem, which requires a good soil
profile. So when you do acororation and then you do the compost top
dressing, you've done that. Andif you live south and west the Houston
area, BnB turf Pros is yourgo to company for this Listen B and
B. They know what they're doing. I've seen the work that they do.

(01:26:11):
I'm amazed by it. In fact, if you want to see the
kind of work they do, goto BB Turfpros dot com, bb turf
Pros dot com or you can givethem a call seven one, three,
two, three, four, five, five, nine to eight. Here's
the thing about BnB, Here's whyI am excited and am happy to recommend
them to you, is they areall about customer satisfaction. They do high

(01:26:34):
quality work. Look at the ratings. They receive, high quality work,
and they only use quality products.For example, good quality compost from Cnamlts
just down the road from them.There absolutely top quality. I saw something
the other day. They were doinga Microlife edition with the compost top dressing.

(01:26:54):
What a great idea. What agreat idea? Again, what are
they doing? Top quality work withtop quality products. They go above and
beyond and make a personal connection.So if you live as far west as
sugar Land, maybe up to MissouriCity, all the way across to Pearland,
or down in the general area ofFresno, Sienna Arcola Iowa Colony,

(01:27:15):
Manvil. This is this is theirbackyard. This is where they do their
work. BB Turfpros dot com.Help your lawn survive through the heat and
through the drought. If you've gota lawn that's struggling, this is like
step A and bringing it back,give them a call at Bbturfpros dot com.
Seven one, three, two,three four five five ninety eight.

(01:27:40):
We're now going to go to let'ssee where are we going now We're going
to Pearland to talk to Carol.Hello, Carol, Hey, Caril Caryl.
How are you doing? Sir?Well, excuse me, welcome the
garden line. Thank you. Quickquestion. I have Molly Holly tree sorry,
Holly trees a lined in my backyard. Yeah, kind of like,

(01:28:02):
you know, to help just aprivate or you know, just natural private
pen team. I guess I wantto change my if it's a good idea,
I think I've seen it once tochange my mulch and use crush granite.
I feel like the mult, it'sa it's a small backyard, and
I feel like the mult runs reallyquick whenever there's my sprinters are on or

(01:28:24):
where it rains. So I seencrust granite around holly trees before. I
don't know if it's a good ideaof what type of if it has to
be a special quality to use thattrust grind it around. That's kind of
like a decorative mult system situation.Yeah, I'm not real big on on
granite as a mulch. There aresituations like if you're trying to grow something

(01:28:47):
that wants to be in West Texasin Houston, putting crush granite on the
surface gives it a quick drying,uh, you know, a little bit,
a little bit better environment, uhfor those kind of plants. But
with a holly, I would usean organic mult. I would use shredded
bark, shredded hardwood bark. Youcould use, uh the pine bark mult

(01:29:13):
that's one that I know Louisiana Pacific. The shredded hardwood excuse me, the
shredded hardwood and pine bark mults.Both would be two of the top choices
that you could make for that landscaper'spride, is what I was trying to
say. They have a quality exampleof both of those are available by bags

(01:29:34):
everywhere. You could you could tryhollies for the health of the hollies,
it wouldn't be a good idea touse granite, No, it would not.
That would cut down on aeration inthe soil a little bit. But
we mainly use the granite and pathwaysand stuff where ye pathway and a holly

(01:29:55):
tree is from a southeastern US foreststhat's are a asia in the same kind
of place, and so they areused to having lots of decomposing organic matter
in the soil. That's what helpsthem thrive. So a good organic most
that will gradually over time decompose,that's the long time, long term benefit.
Perfect, Okay, so that wasthe question. That really appreciate you

(01:30:19):
til good, good, well,good luck with those. They are an
excellent plant for creating a privacy screen, that is for sure. Thanks for
the call, Carol. Correct,yes, sir, bye bye. That
is true. Let's see here.We are going to now run out to
Sweeney, Texas and talk to Mark. Hello, Mark, or I got

(01:30:43):
a question. Oak tree in mybackyard probably pushing two hundred years over better.
I had a huge branch come downa couple of weeks ago and then
dropped another branch here not two daysago. Just fell out tree, no
wind, no nut, that justsnapped off and come down. Is there
some way am I supposed to befertilizing that or what can I give it

(01:31:06):
to make it more healthier? BecauseI don't want to lose that tree.
Yeah. That's a condition called suddenlimb drop, and it happens a lot.
We really see a lot in pecandtrees. I saw some the other
day on an elm tree. It'slike everything looks good and is normal,
and suddenly there's not even a stormand a wind just cracks and pops falls
out of the tree. It's kindof a scary deal, but that can

(01:31:30):
happen, and it typically happens onyou. In the summertime. We see
a lot of it, and thereare various contributing factors to it, but
nothing that you can do anything aboutother than make sure the tree has adequate
soul moisture. But it's just afactor of summers. It's weird. We
have no wind at all and youcome out in the morning and there's a

(01:31:53):
limb lane on the ground big enoughto have hurt somebody. Oh yeah,
yeah, because up one branch,I can it. I think it just
off. The branch itself had onehundred and twenty rings on it holy cow.
Yeah, well you may want tohave Martin from Affordable Tree come out

(01:32:16):
and take a look at it andjust make sure. Maybe there's some narrow
branch angles that are contributing to that. There could be something else going on,
but uh, you know that suddenlind drop is it happens unfortunately.
But if you wanted to have aMartin from Affordable Tree he could he could
take a look at it and tellyou for sure is it needing anything or

(01:32:39):
does it need some pruning, becauseif it's doing that, then when we
have storms, that's even an increasedrisk. Yeah. I just said,
no, you know, if thereis a fertilizer or speed or something,
I need to be given it ormake it healthier or what. No,
I mean unless the tree is justlooking struggling, it doesn't have good green
color in the foe and other things. Fertilizer is fine, but that's not

(01:33:02):
the solution here. The only thingI would say would be most important is
during periods of extended heat and lackof rainfall, a good deep soaking on
an infrequent basis, you know,apply over an inch inch and a half
of water and one good deep irrigationsoaking every few weeks in the absence of

(01:33:23):
rainfall when it's so blazing hot.Okay, all right, so get one
of those tree hugger thing up.Yeah, that'd be fine. If it's
not too big of a tree,Yeah, that would work fine. The
tree huggers will the biggest ones willreach out pretty far. Yeah, it's
it's pretty big. Yeah. Soyou may want to just get a regular

(01:33:44):
sprinkler and move it all around ina big circle like you're watering a doughnut
shape on the ground, you know, underneath that tree. All right,
all right, sure, appreciate you. All right, sir, thank you,
Mark, appreciate your call very much. We're gonna take a little break
here and I will be right back. The number is seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four.When we come back, John, you'll

(01:34:05):
be our first up. Welcome backto the garden line. Hey, good
to have you with us. Thanksfor joining us today. By the way,
we really really appreciate that. Ijust enjoy the chance to get to
talk with gardeners. That that's kindof the bottom line. I think it's

(01:34:26):
fun. I think gardening is agreat hobby. Listening to me, you
are never going to learn at all. As someone once said, probably sounds
like something Mark Twain or Oh,I don't know one of those folks would
have said. But the older Ithe smarter I get, the more I
know how much I'm dumb at orsomething along those lines. And boy,

(01:34:46):
is that ever true? You know, every year I learned about new plants
I've never heard of before. Canyou believe that we're doing this thirty five
years? Studying and talking about plantsfor thirty five years? And I still
run across things. It's like,Okay, that's new new to me and
learning something else. Or maybe wehave new diseases, new insects, we
have new opportunities for growing things inways we didn't know we could grow them

(01:35:11):
before. It's fun to do thewhole gardening thing. If you live up
in the Tombol area and you arelooking for a feed store that out west
to Tombole on twenty nine to twentyD and D Feed, D and D
Feed on twenty nine to twenty Westto Tombole is an outstanding place to get
all kinds of supplies for your lawnand for your garden. They carry the
fertilizers, all of them that Italk about here on garden Line. You

(01:35:34):
can find them there. You canfind quality soil blends like Heirloom Soils,
Rose Soil, or their fruit berryand citrus mix. I was talking about
while ago with someone about using asoil mix for BlackBerry plants. This would
be a great one for that.They have a veggie and herb mix.
They've got the aged leaf mold compost, D and D feed now they bring

(01:35:59):
plants into I mean you can goand always find something going on outside there
in the area where they keep theirplants out on twenty nine to twenty.
You can also go inside and findevery product you might need for inside control,
past control, disease control for allof you at West to Tomball.
This is your backyard right here.And DND feed that hometown feed store that
you're going to find the things youhear me talk about on garden Line.

(01:36:23):
I always like to visit there,me talking with Jeff and the team there.
It's just it's always fun to getto go out and enjoy and the
way they treat you there is theway you should be treated when you go
to a good quality feed store.We're going to go now to the phones.
Let's see here who we got comingup. I believe I've got John
and friends with Hello John, Hi, Skip, how are you today?

(01:36:47):
Hey? Listens Tom oh no,no, no problem. I put in
a good bit of new Saint Augustineturf back in February. In March,
I was out of town almost allof June, and I came back.
I had a company do my lawnmowingwhile I was gone, so it wasn't

(01:37:09):
a jungle. That Saint Augustine issolid, it's thriving. But when I
came back after a few days ago, I had a ton of sedges growing
in all of that. I haveused sedge hammer before in small spot treatment

(01:37:30):
necessities, but I wanted to findout if the heat right now is too
too hot for me to go outthere and do big swathes swaths of the
grass with that sedge hammer product.I think it's okay. Still, I
just would go out early in themorning as well. I say early,

(01:37:50):
you know, before it even beginsto really heat up, and do the
application at that time. I letit okay, come dry off. If
you can spot treat as opposed tojust treating everything, that's fine. If
not, just do it however youneed to do it to make sure that
the sedge shimmer gets on sedges andnutgrass or cutlinger or any kind of sedges

(01:38:12):
that you have. Yeah, yeah, I got a little bit of each.
So okay, real quick question.I've got some flax liies. I
put in about four pots of thosea few years ago, and they are
they're just there're too many of themright now. How can I go in
and sind those out? Well?Are you wanting to just get rid of

(01:38:39):
them, or are you wanting tokeep them where they'll growing, or you
can share them with somebody. Iwouldn't mind getting rid of them, but
they're just they've gotten bigger, Imean height wide, and they've just completely
filled up a little bit more ofan area than I want. Okay,

(01:39:00):
So you could use a shovel andgo in there, and a good sharp
shovel. You need to actually sharpenthe edge because we're not just digging dirt
here, we're cutting through plant materials. But you will if you use a
shovel and cut down. You couldbasically go around the clump and take out
sections to leave what you want toleave, or you could dig the whole

(01:39:21):
clump up. It's a little bithot weather to do the whole thing right
now. But if you want todig the whole thing up and then split
it into sections to repot, replant, share with friends, you could also
do that. I would try todo that in a little bit milder time
of the year. But as faras just taking a shovel and cutting into
the clump, you can do thatnow. Okay, all right, great,

(01:39:44):
that would get me going. Thanksa lot to get good luck.
Appreciate the call. Thanks a lot. I appreciate that very much. Let's
see here. We are going tonow go to Brenham, Texas and talk
to Mike. Hello, Mike Skip, how you doing. I'm actually friends
with But my problem my problems inBrenham. Oh, I got a place

(01:40:09):
up there. It's loaded with liveoaks. They're doing beautifully, but it's
had some huge seedars. I'm talkingtwo foot diameter trucks in the last four
or five months they have. I'vegot ten or twelve that are actually did
and no one seems to know what'shitting them. I mean not, you

(01:40:30):
know, I don't mind losing themtoo much, but they're offully large.
Yeah, well, what what hitthem was last summer? This has happened.
We've had widespread reports of it allthe way up as you go through
the Belt through Texas, where yousee a lot of the eastern red seedars.
Uh, depending on how much rainfallingarea got, I know, up

(01:40:53):
in the Brian College Station area upthat direction north of you on down into
Huntsville and whatnot. It's been reallybad. And it basically what happened is
the plants. It was too hotand too dry for too long. And
cedars are very tough, resilient plants. I mean they well, that's the
last time I was worried to beoak tree. I was worried about the
oak trees. Not yeah. Wellbut no, we've seen a lot of

(01:41:15):
it. I mean they just turnedbronze. It looks like overnight, it's
not and four months they're gone.Yeah, I mean it's just yeah,
they started the top and go down. And so the only thing to do,
if you could go back in time, would be this good deep soaking
very infrequently, like every two andthree weeks, a good soaking, drink

(01:41:36):
the heat. No, there's nota practical way to do that. No,
No, it's exactly exactly it.And and so that's that's why I
think it's just something we live withothers. But I'm just curious what was
getting him now. I'd love tofind someone that would like some some red

(01:42:00):
cedar to make furniture with. Ohyeah, yeah, but I do.
I do have a problem in friendswith it is. I just had a
section my yard resided because okay,Mike, can you hear me, I'm
gonna have to put you on holdand go to a break. I'm late
for a break. Fine, Okay, you take care. Folks. If

(01:42:25):
you'd like to give us a callphone number seven one three two one two
K t R H. I'll beright back. Welcome. What kinds of
things do you want to talk about? That's what we're going to be doing
today and we have been will continueto do that. You know, you've
heard me talk about Southwest Fertilizer before. Southwest Fertilizer is the place where if
they don't have something, you don'tneed it. And that sounds facetious,

(01:42:49):
but I literally mean that Southwest Fertilizerhas every kind of insecticide funge aside.
We control fertilize tool products to spreadfertilizer, you know, like a push
spreader, a handheld Fredder. Everythingyou would need is there at Southwest Fertilizer.

(01:43:11):
That is what they specialize in.They're on the corner of Bissinet and
Runwick in Southwest Houston, so it'seasy to get to them. But I'm
just telling you when if you're lookingfor a place that has everything that you
would need, that's Southwest Fertilizer.They pride themselves in that, and they
also have knowledgeable staff. You goin there, you talk to Bob,
you talk to Aaron, any ofthe folks. They know what they're talking

(01:43:32):
about. They can look at abug, or look at a leaf,
or look at a photo that youbring in and help you diagnose it and
help you find the product that's needed. If indeed a product is needed,
for example, Microlife fertilizers, you'regoing to have those there. In fact,
anything organic. Nobody has as gooda selection of organics as Southwest Fertilizer

(01:43:53):
does. That includes Microlife's humates plusthat's a purple bag, the concentrated compost
in a bag. It includes thegreen bag, the one we think of
as the lawn fertilizer, the sixtwo four in the green bag. It
includes everyone that Microlife is going tocarry both their liquid products, which they
have some outstanding liquid products at Itincludes also, certainly the dry granular fertilizers.

(01:44:16):
Microlife has been a purveyor of qualityorganic materials for a very very long
time. So do you need someOcean Harvest liquid to drench over your plants
so that they do well? Imean, that's a fish based fertilizer.
It does really really good job.Microlife also has the seven to one to
three. It's an orange label bag. I use it for houseplants, but

(01:44:40):
ease for outdoor plants too. Wateringthings in when you're getting them going in
this heat, A good quality drenchlike the fisher mulsion, like the Ocean
harvest, like a seaweed type productlike the seven to win three product from
Microlife helps those plants get off toa good start. Do it when you
water them in, when you planthem, do it a week later,
do it again a week later,going to help that plant get established.

(01:45:01):
That's as simple as that. We'regoing to now run out to let's see
where were we were? We innorthwest Houston. No, we were in
Brenham, about to go somewhere else. Hey, Mike, go back,
Yeah, thank you, I'll bereal quick. Last year, I had
no sage take over a little courtyardarea and I followed Randy's hill. We

(01:45:21):
killed, tilled, and filled,and I had I got it completely sodded,
but the sod came in with whatappears to be Johnson grants and some
sort of weed that looks like amimosa leaf. Okay, coming up all
over it. As any way youcan kill that out. The mimosa leaf

(01:45:42):
weed is you're going to need touse something probably containing celsius, like the
temperature celsius, and it's a postemergent broad leaf weed killer. You could
do things to prevent the seeds fromcoming out, but we're a little late
for that. Now spring those existingweeds with a product containing with the product

(01:46:03):
called celsius. Doing it early inthe morning when it's as coolest, the
coolest time you could possibly spray itthe day is best. Follow the label
carefully, don't mix it too strong, and it'll knock those out. As
far as the Johnson grass type ofweeds, uh, there's not a way
to kill a grass in grass mostof the in most situations, so you

(01:46:23):
would just have to let it getup above the grass and then wipe a
product on it that would kill it. But instead of spraying it and getting
dead spots in your grass, justwipe round up on a brush or on
a sponge type applicator. Yeah,if you can do that, if you
can do a lot of it,if you got a lot of it,

(01:46:47):
that that's a challenge. Yeah,it's it's it. They came in and
fully soiled it, and it's poppingup everywhere. Uh. I mean,
of course it grows a lot fasterthan st August. And that's I guess
the advantage of trying it because Ipulled some of them dug it up.
Yeah, so let's do let's doone other thing here, Mike, if

(01:47:10):
you want, I'm gonna I'm gonnaabout to go to break here a little
bit. Put you on hold,and if you want to send me some
close up pictures of that Johnson grasslooking weed. Let me take a look
at it and see if I seeanything, I may go oh no,
no, no, that's something else. And here's what you do for that.
Okay, covered our bases with you, all right, Okay, thanks

(01:47:32):
you all right, I'll put youon hold here and Crystal picked up the
phones, pick up and give youmy email address. Appreciate that very much.
We're going to now go to NorthwestHouston and talk to Dick. Hello,
Dick, good morning, Good morning. I'm help. I am inundated

(01:47:55):
with goose grass. How do Iget rid of it? Well, I
was just saying, you know,killing a grass and a grass is very
difficult to do because what kills goosegrasskills Saint Augustine or Bermuda. By the
way, what kind of grass doyou do you have in your lawn?

(01:48:15):
What your law? I have St. Augustine and a little permute it.
Okay, Well, goosegrass is anannual so even if you don't get it
out this year, it's going tobe coming back from seed. So if
you next year will use the barricadeproduct, a pre emergent herbicide by nitroposs
follow my schedule on when to useit, you can prevent the goosegrass from

(01:48:40):
next year. As far as thisyear. You would have to dab something
to kill goose grass. That wouldalso kill your lawn, but dab it
straight on the goosegrass instead of sprayingit where it gets on your lawn.
That's the option at this point inthe season where you already have the grass
growing it is. You got alot. I have a lot of it.

(01:49:02):
Okay. You know it produces alittle crow's foot like seedhead and the
more if you mow you I mightthrow a bagger on it just to keep
from spreading those seeds if it getsto the seeding stage. Okay, but
yeah, you're you're just caught.It's pre emergence. The best way to
go prevent it so you never haveit. Once you have it, then

(01:49:25):
then we have to go to greatlinks to try to get stuff on it
without hurting your saint artisteine. Okay, thank you, all right, sir,
you bet, thanks, you appreciatethat a lot. Well, you
guys, hear the music. Tryingto work my way through some calls here.
When we come back from break,I'll Luis, you'll be our first

(01:49:46):
up. Susan in Lake City andenjoy and Lockhart, Texas. I can't
wait to talk that and I usedto live in Lockhart, Texas. We'll
look forward to that when we comeback. Just remember you're listening to the
guard Line and we're here every Saturdayand Sunday morning from six a m.
To ten am. You can listento garden Line on your iHeartMedia app.

(01:50:06):
Download that app. You can listento us on there. Listen I Panish
Ball website and see us live onthem. Just glad you're listening and we'll
be right back. Welcome to Katier. H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.

(01:50:29):
It's trip. Just watch him aswell. Tell us so many things
to set in. We are back. We are back to take your gardening

(01:50:56):
questions to basically help you have amore bountiful garden, a more beautifull landscape.
That's what we're here to do.Let's just jump straight on and here.
We're going to go talk to Louiseout on the phone. Hey Louise,
welcome to guard Line. All right, there to be going to hold
Louise, put him back on hold. We'll come back to Louise shortly.

(01:51:21):
We're going to go now to LakeCity and talk to Susan. Hello,
Susan Hight there. So I wantedto chat about composting. If you don't
mind, I get about two wellbarrowfuls of wilted produce weekly from a grocer.
It's been such a blessing. Well, I learned that. I learned

(01:51:45):
that open air composting was a reallybad idea. So I ended up getting
a bunch of bags of soil andcovered everything. But I'm still like kind
of dealing with fly. So Idid a little bit more research and learned
about black soldier fly. I havechickens, so that'll be a win win
for me. So I was wonderingtwo questions. Number one, is,

(01:52:09):
other than the rain that we're goingto be having, if there's any other
way of getting rid of all thestupid flies that I gathered. I don't
know if you notice you had lessflies in your yard for about a week
though we're here. And then secondlythe black soldier fly worm casting and then
the leech eight that comes from that. Can I use those directly in my

(01:52:30):
gardens? Or do I need todelete the leech eight? I've heard something
about it's pretty strong. Yeah,I would delute it. So we've got
a lot going on here. Firstof all, something that I don't think
you mentioned that is worma composting orworm earthworm composting with red wrigglers, or
are what's called a brown noseworm?Those yeah, done in boxes. You

(01:52:53):
shred up newspaper and then you putyour food scraps in there and they do
the whole thing there. That's onethe black solver fly. For those that
are listening that are of familiar withit, that's a really unique creature.
It If you saw it, itwould look like a little tiny wasp sitting
with its wings laid back over itsbody. And they're very effective at decomposing

(01:53:15):
a lot of different kinds of organicmaterials. And as far as I don't
know that there would be a leecheate though out of those, because what
they're gonna do is they're going tofeed on the materials and there, yes,
they'll they defecate and whatnot from allthat feeding. But then the soldier

(01:53:35):
flies themselves go off somewhere to pewpeat. And I don't know what you've gotten
into black soldier flies, but Idon't have time on the air to explain
the whole thing. But basically,people create systems for those fly larva when
they try to crawl out of thebox to pewpeat, for them to be
used to chicken feed and what.It's pretty cool stuff, but either one

(01:53:57):
would work. You could use eitherone. Basically, what we're doing is
we're using creatures to eat up organicmatter and turn it back into a rich
material for the soil. Yeah,because of the volume of produce that I'm
getting. I mean, some ofthe produce I use for the chickens,
but you know, like potatoes andonions, they don't eat. So yeah,
I went to I have the littlebox started and set up, so

(01:54:20):
we'll see if I'm successful if that, But do you have any other suggestions
about the flies? Like this promithnework against those. I keep spraying the
coupe and spraying the yard. Butyeah, I just attracted like half of
the flies at the scenia. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well Promethans is

(01:54:41):
a synthetic perithra and it's somewhat persistent, but not as much as some I
don't know if I want to sprayit all over the chicken yard and stuff
where they're pecking and eating and whatnot. Since you're yeah, I get something
to eat from those chickens, right, I would probably instead use a fly
bait. And there are there's severalways to fly control. That Number one.

(01:55:03):
You're in clear Lake City, isthat? Yeah, I'm over in
League City and I've put a bunchof those little fly Yeah, those fly
bait things, and and it almostfeels like it's attracting more again, So
I didn't know if there was somethingelse attracted to the bait, but they
feed on it. You don't wantthe bait where your chickens pegget, don't

(01:55:25):
hang it up right chicken house,put it else. But I would have
a lot of small bait stations andthey eat it and it will poison them,
and that works pretty well. Thereare also bags you can hang up
that attract them in and they goin the bag and then they die in
the bag and kind of a liquidgoo and it's it's nasty, but it's
all enclosed, so you can justthrow it away when you're done. Yeah,

(01:55:47):
that's what I have. Yeah,League City Feed is going to have
a lot of supplies for you whenit comes to that stuff. Go talk
to the folks at Leak City Feedand they can they can get you set
up on the bait et and onthe bags and anything else like that.
So you think the word castings though, those could be used just straight into
the garden. They won't be toostrong. The castings can be mixed straight

(01:56:11):
into the soil. I wouldn't putour changes deep. You're not going to
have them any right, But youcan sprinkle them out, and that's just
fine. If you were going tomake a liquid out of some of the
materials, that's where I would cutit, because with liquids, we typically
are sprinkling them on foliage and whatnot, and so you don't want something too
strong when you do that. Okay, well, thank you. And I

(01:56:34):
hadn't heard people talk about composting,so other people wanting to chat about it
would be really interesting for me aswell. But thank you. I appreciate
you. Yeah, all right,thank you. We're going to now go
to lock our Texas and talk tojoy. Hello, Joy, are you

(01:56:57):
there? I'm Joyce? And dealoh rod Dale. Okay, I have
mimosa tree was cut down and it'scoming up out of the ground. I
think at first it was cut offwhere it wasn't always the ground. I
think someone has cut it off tothe ground. The limbs coming out on

(01:57:19):
the ground and up higher. Someof the limbs are ten feet long.
It's right by my car port andI need to get rid of this mimosa
growth. You want do you wantthe whole thing? Dad? Is that
what you're wanting to do? Idon't care if I have a tree there
but I can't have all of thismany many shoots, really big ones that

(01:57:41):
have come up. Okay, Soyou can either cut off the branches that
are going toward the driveway or sidewalkor whatever, uh and leave the other
or you if you want to killthe whole thing when you yes, cut
it off a few inches above theground. In fact, I cut it
off about a foot above the ground. And the reason is after it dies,

(01:58:02):
you want something that you can geta hold of to help grub that
or pull that out. So ifyou cut it off at the ground there,
that's another option. But either way, when you cut it off,
joy, I want you to geta product that contains triclop here. Uh

(01:58:24):
pardon what was that actually here?Okay, I'm going to spell it out.
I'm going to spell it out.It makes it's easier. T R
I C L O P y R. Now did you say you were in
Rockdale? Right? Are you listeningon radio or on the phone on the

(01:58:47):
phone? Okay? Good h Well, first of all, welcome, Well
I was on the radio. NowI'm on the phone. Okay. So,
uh, the triclop peer is goingto be sold products with names like
brush Control or brush and stump killeror poison ivy killer, those are all

(01:59:09):
there's all kinds of things for killingthat type of plant that contained trilope here.
So what you do is you cutthe tree off and right away,
not an hour later, but rightaway, you take a little foam paintbrush
and dab the straight product right ontothe cut surface. So you've cut the
try off and then you just dabthis product right on that wound, that

(01:59:31):
fresh wound, especially around the outsidepart of the of the stump that you've
cut off, and it will movedown in the soil and it will kill
it. Now, if it's avery strong plant, you may have to
do it a second time. Ifit doesn't get it all, but it's
very effective at controlling brush and poisonivy and anything like that. You just
want to create that wound to applythe straight product, not diluted right too.

(01:59:58):
Thank you so much. All right, good luck with that, Take
care having you as a listener.It just come on, come on,
turn a radio on, is rightin, I a won'to gotta do my
hair, my man, gumma isright and I won't Welcome back to the

(02:00:18):
guard Line's good to have you withus. Today, looking forward to talking
to you about the things that areof interest to you. You know,
ACE Hardware Stores they pride themselves incarrying the products that you need to have
a bountiful garden and a beautiful landscape. Do you need things to control weeds

(02:00:39):
or diseases or pests. Do youneed things that will help enhance plant growth,
like fertilizers. If you hear metalk about a fertilizer on guardline,
they're going to have it at ACEHardware that. That's what they do.
Fire at control, mosquito control products, everything to make your outdoor area a
little more pleasant. We have theseinvaders here in Texas, these fire ants

(02:01:03):
and things that just can make itunpleasant to be outside. Ace Harder can
fix that. They can help youfix that. They've got all kinds of
products. Perhaps you're dealing with someinsects in the lawn and you need some
of the nitrofoss bug out Max.They've got that at ACE Hardware Stores.
Nitrofoss bug out Max is an insecticide. It's a granule. You put it

(02:01:24):
down, you apply it a littlebit of water to soak it in to
the surface of the soil, soakit into the thatch and when ants and
fleas and ticks and chinchbugs things likethat begin to feed in the lawn,
they're going to encounter it. Andwhen you put it out, it's going
to last you all the way throughthis summer season. So you don't apply
it over and over and over again, but it'll go to work within two

(02:01:45):
days. It's already done the jobthat it's going to do on the insects
that are there. It works prettyquickly. Now. Nitrofoss bug Out Max
is available at all kinds of ACEhardware stores. You're going to find it
at places like the asen Sinco Ranch, the ACE hard City on Memorial Drive
in the Houston area Kingwood as atask Asta as you get the idea.

(02:02:05):
Nitrovis Bugout Max from Nitropos widely available. I'm very effective for pests that are
in your turf. And if you'rewondering about that, go to the website
Gardening with Skip dot com. Downloadmy lawn care schedule which tells you how
to grow a good lawn O waterfertilized and also the past disease and wheat

(02:02:28):
management schedule. Two schedules on thewebsite Gardening with skip dot com. The
second one deals with diseases, insectsand weeds and how to manage those all
the way through the season. Bothschedules offer both synthetic and organic options for
managing pests. We're going to nowgo to sugar Land and talk to Don
Hello, Doc Skip. I havea big question. I've got two different

(02:02:55):
pigs and their well, it's justtwo different plants. No one is getting
The figs are really the good size, but they have brown spots on them.
Is that anthracnose? And what's youto do with it? And then
also I have another tree. Thefigs are small. The thing goes straight
up or is real tall. Cutit back earlier in the year, but

(02:03:19):
the thing is still shot back up, and the figs are just diminutive in
size. And I don't know ifsome of it is a fertilizing we kind
of, you know, to fertilizeit more or what's the issue with it.
Yeah, Well, generally speaking,figs don't need a lot of fertilizer.

(02:03:41):
They're very well, very willing togrow. It is possible that you
have, you know, the lackof nutrient in the soil, but generally
we don't have to add a wholelot when it comes to managing figs.
In fact, they they're very eagerto grow, and sometimes so eager we
just say hold back if you havedroughty conditions, if you have nematodes in

(02:04:04):
the soil, that definitely will affectthe figs and detrimentally, and they can
get some leaf diseases. One theprimary one we see is rust. Figs
otherwise are pretty resilient as far asspots on the fruit. It could be
something that's just skin deep and isnot really hurting the fruit. I see

(02:04:26):
those kinds of spots on figs fromtime to time. If it's actually causing
a decay of the fruit, Ithink we need to see a simple photo
of it to try to assess specificallywhat it is. But generally speaking,
we do not spray figs for fruitproblems. Right, it's not affecting the
fruit. It just they look kindof weird, you know, like when

(02:04:47):
a banana turns colored sorts the spotson them, and also like papaya they
say that's anthracnose or something when theystart getting spots. One, yeah,
I think the fig you're probably seeingit like a large, dark blotch right
on the Yeah, but they're they'reover there over a lot of the surface,

(02:05:11):
and when they ripe and more,of course they have more. Okay,
smaller ones. Yeah, that couldbe a little bacterial spot or something
like that. My way of dealingwith them is to ignore them. I
guess it could be bad enough towhere you would want to do something,
But in general, I've never sprayeda fig for that, that kind of
that kind of thing. Okay,what do you think the other one that

(02:05:34):
grows real tall and the fruit isreal small and maybe not as many figs
on it growing tall could be aresult of just having a really good vigor,
maybe being a little lower light,so it's stretching to get sunlight.
I'm not you can always cut themback in the branch so that that would

(02:05:56):
be fine. I wouldn't do itright now. I'd wait until any fig
you have you've harvested off of it. As far as the small figs here,
okay, Okay, the small figs, some varieties are just smaller than
others, so that that could bea varietal thing. Some get huge,
some stay very small. Celeste,there's a smaller type of fig, but

(02:06:17):
it's a good one. Yeah,okay, yeah, So the only other
thing, yeah yeah, the onlyother thing thing, don would be if
you had nematodes in the soil,you could what you could do is take
a shovel and kind of go outmaybe a foot from the plant and just
sort of lift the soil up andthen with a strong blast of water,

(02:06:41):
blast the soil away and look atthe roots and look for little knots on
the roots. Because it's going totake a significant nematode infestation to see problems
in the tree and figs or nematodemagnets. So if you see that,
that's a different thing. Now ourfigs are struggling because of a lack of
water and true and availability brought onby the nematode infestation. And had you

(02:07:03):
kill nematods, there's not a goodway that the you can uh clear everything
out there's there, there's cover cropsyou grow to trap them. There used
to be people use the Fuma gunto fumigate the soil and truly kill them.
Otherwise we're basically moving the fig We'renot moving it. We're taking a

(02:07:27):
cutting, reading that cutting and plantingit somewhere else where. There aren't nematods
somewhere in your yard where there's nota nematod product. But there is not
a chemical cure for nematodes, notof an effective one. Okay, we'll
let them fight it out. Well, you know, I've been dealing with
nematodes. I've got them in twospots in my yard. I just discovered

(02:07:49):
another one this week, and uhso I just uh yeah, you just
have to plant them in a differentarea. Some people grow them in a
very large container. That's an option. That's a little more effort to try
to do that. Mm hmm.Okay, enjoy your show, thank you.

(02:08:09):
Yeah, yeah, but don dondo do the washing up of the
roots and look for the mots becauseit may not be nematodes at all.
You don't want to want to giveit up until you've determined that's for sure
what it is. Okay, Soyou're looking for a little feeder root,
that's all you're looking for. Yeah, just small roots, and there'll be
little bumps on them. As theyget bigger, the roots become swollen and

(02:08:30):
look like the mischiline man, youknow, a lumpy him on the tomato
plants. Before. Yes, youprobably have thanks. Thank you. All
right, well let's see here,let's go ahead and run out to the
heights and we're going to talk toMaria. Hello, Maria, Hello,

(02:08:50):
good morning. Yes, I havescale on my great myrtles, although I
did spring them in the spring.So what can I do without defoliating the
whole tree? Ah? Boy,Well, here's the problem with killing scale
on crp myrtles. The products thatwill do it also end up in the

(02:09:11):
nectar of the blooms and our pollinatorsin summer. They go to crate myrtles
quite a bit because it's one ofthe dependable blooming plants that carries us through
three months of summer. So I'mvery slow to say we'll drench a systemic
insecticide around that tree, although itwill be taken up by the roots and

(02:09:33):
kill the scale. You got thatsecondary damage, and if it's not too
big of a crape myrtle, youcan just cut the blooms off to get
past that. And let's go aheadand knock the scale out first, and
then they can bloom next year orlater in the season. Maybe that would
be one thing, but yeah,that's the big challenge with the crepe myrtle.

(02:09:54):
Bark scale. The other thing youcan do, and this is going
to be trouble, but if youwant to go to the trouble, you
can put a double sticky, doublesided sticky tape around the branches that have
the little white scale you see thelittle white scale spots on the on the
plant, and do that in March, and then replace the tape if you

(02:10:18):
need to as it gets dusty andis no longer sticky. But keep watching
it. And when you see littletiny red crawlers with your scale in stuck
in that tape, that means now'sthe time, and you spray the whole
plant, every surface of that youcan see, with an oil or an
insecticide in order to shut that scaledown before it honkers down and becomes resistant

(02:10:43):
to pesticide applications to the surface ofthe plant. Okay, okay, I
know that that's a little more trouble, but that's the best way to time
it so that you can use somethingthat's not going to hurt your pollinators.
Yeah, okay, sounds good.Thank you. I ready to talk to
you about the things that are ofinterest to you. Seven to one three

(02:11:05):
two one two k t R Hseven one three two one two K t
R H. We're gonna run outright now and head let's see Santa Fe.
We're going to talk to Raphael.Hey, Raffael, welcome to Guardline.
Hey Skip, how you doing.I'm well, thank you. How
can we help? Yes, Ihave some browning in my Saint Augustine grass.

(02:11:26):
It appears just to be thatch,probably at the end of the stolen
you know, as it dies off, but it's actually causing my lawn not
to be as green as I wantit. I did use about eight weeks
ago Nitrofoss slow release silver bag.Okay good, And I wanted to know

(02:11:48):
your opinion on the spray defchers totry to kind of make that thatch go
away quicker. I'm not sure whichproducts you're specifically refer to there, but
basically that occurs when we're overwatering andover fertilizing and creating a lot of fast
runner growth. Uh And as aresult, one runner climbs over the next

(02:12:11):
one, and they don't touch thesoil as well as they should, and
so as a result we get weget a thatchy build up that doesn't decompose
away. You can put down acompost top dressing over them to help break
down the runner. That helps alot. Returning your clippings helps with that
because those those little pieces of clipping, they decompose faster than the runners do,

(02:12:35):
but they help keep it moist sothat the runners decompose a little bit
better. And then core aeration poppingthe plugs out of the soil, dropping
them up on top of the ground. All of those things work toward reducing
thatch in your in your Saint Augustinelawn. That helps a lot, Thank
you very much. Yeah, andyou mentioned you said something earlier and I

(02:12:58):
didn't quite catch it, but itsounds like you said like the ends of
the runners are dying. Did yousay it that way or am I misunderstanding?
Yeah, yes I did. Iwas watching some videos on YouTube mom
in Novice. But these what I'mcalling thatch is that that's still like attached.
In other words, it's not justloose thatch. This is still attached.

(02:13:22):
Yes. With Saint Augustine. It'svery different than northern turf grasses,
where we do something called de thatching. With Saint Augustine, we don't do
de thatching because it's an on topof the ground running grass and so if
you tried to use a de thatcher, it would be ripping up and wounding
all the runners, which is thelife of the plant. Northern turf grasses

(02:13:45):
are more clumping and de thatching isa process that they use up there but
not down here. So what wedo is the correoration and the compasstop dressings
and things like that, as wellas getting back to a more moderate amount
of fertilizer to avoid growing ourself intoa thatch problem. All right, yeah,

(02:14:07):
the deftch I guess spray that wasadvertised. I think it said that
they would help with the decomposition,it would make it quicker. Well,
I could see that that could help, But my again not knowing the specific
spray or what's in it, mygut response on that is going to be

(02:14:28):
Look, anything organic laying on theground in nature is going to rot if
it's kept moist, if it driesout, it's not That's why the forest
floor is covered with dry leaves thatare not decomposing, But underneath those where
they've covered up other leaves, thoseold leaves are decomposing because they stay moist.
Your runners on your grass plant arethe slowest to decompose. Part of

(02:14:52):
the grass plant, the runners andthe roots actually too, and so it
takes longer. If they're kept moist. There's already enough microbes in nature to
decompose them. So the spray maybeadding some sort of a microbe to speed
that up. But if it doesn'tstay moist, it's not gonna work.

(02:15:13):
So I don't know that you needthe spray. I would probably myself.
I mean, it wouldn't hurt touse them. I'm not saying don't use
them. I'm just saying I wouldjust keep it moist out there. And
if you could do a little compostscreened compost top dressing, I think that's
going to help your line and speedthe decomposition too. Got it. Thank
you very much, all right,good luck with that. Good luck with

(02:15:37):
that. I appreciate that. Yeah, the whole idea of thatch is something
we should talk about because whenever youhave a southern turf grass that would be
Zeuisia, Saint Augustine, and Bermudagrass. All three of those are running
turf grass is not clumping further northwhere you're dealing with Kentucky bluegrass fescues of

(02:16:01):
various types of fescue. Those areclumping grasses, so you run a little
think of it. A de thatcheris like a rake with fingers that are
ripping the thatch up out near thesoil surface. Well, that's fine with
a clumping grass, but when youhave runners, they rip the runners up.
You're left with these strands on top. You're pulling them up out of
the ground, and it's just wedon't do that. There is something called

(02:16:24):
vertict cutting, which is like verticallyslicing blades. So think of it as
like an edger that goes around theedge of your patio or down the sidewalk,
and you're edging vertically cutting down into cut the grass from running across.
Vertical cutters have cutting blades like thatthat are spaced out probably about four
inches apart for Saint Augustine, andthey literally cut through the grass like that.

(02:16:50):
But even that I there, letme just say, at this weight,
most of the time, I wouldnot recommend doing that for reasons that
our grass is often struggling with diseases, with drought, with heat, with
a lot of things, and sostresses don't need to be added to it.
I would put in a compost oopdressing so that those runners sitting on

(02:17:11):
top of the ground that are alreadynaturally slow in their decomposition. They would
decompose faster as you water and keepit moist as you return your clippings and
put those wet high nitrogen clippings downon the surface of the soil. That
all helps speed the thatch, alongwith following my schedule, not overdoing the
nitrogen applications. Because we grow ourselfinto a thatched problem. People think clippings

(02:17:35):
contribute to thatch. Clippings decompose rapidly. They're like let us leaves out there.
They rot fast on the ground.On the surface. Runners are very
high in lignins, the tissues thatdon't decompose very fast, and that takes
a longer time. So the moreyou create a lot of runner growth,
the more you create that so yougrow yourself into thatch, you grow yourself

(02:17:58):
out of thatch. In my pin, by following those practices I was just
talking about, that is important.In fact, I need jake that low
like say low clip. We won'tput that on social media with just a
little explanation if folks would like torefer back to it. In time.
You're listening to Guardline our phone numberis seven one three two one two k

(02:18:20):
t r H. I am gettingreally close here to a break time,
so Elmer and Laporte, I'm goingto hang on and take you right after
we come back from break. Ifyou'd like to give Chris a call seven
one three two one two KT alright, you'll put you on the boards
and we will come to your callas well. We appreciate you listening to

(02:18:41):
guard Line. Just really enjoy helpingyou to have more success in your garden,
and that's why we're here. Ihope you enjoy listening as well,
and tell your friends about Guardline.We uh, we always would like to
have more folks listening and being awareof the kind of help that is available.
And believe it or not, Ican't running into you know, guarden

(02:19:01):
Line's been on the air for decadesnow back do he comptem, I wouldn't
call garden Line back then. Butback in the fifth nineteen fifties, this
show started and it's just been goingfor all those decades and still are runded
a lot of people that aren't awareof it, that are gardeners. I
don't know how that happens, butlet's stop it. Let's let them know
about garden line and so they canhave success with their garden in their landscap,

(02:19:24):
hopefully a little bit of fun alongthe way. We'll be right back,
Brandon. Just speak to them daydo I've got plenty to talk about
this morning as we enter our lastsegment of the day. If you've not
been out at the arbor gate recently, you need to go now. I
just I want you to hear thisfor a minute. Just listen to me

(02:19:46):
for a second. When it getsto be summertime, people are like,
oh, it's hot, I can'tplan anymore. You know, it's my
plants are going to die out there. That is not true. If you
take care of your plan and pickplants that want to be here in the
summer, and Arbigate has got anunbelievable selection of those. You can go

(02:20:07):
to Arbigate and you can find thingslike Thrialis tryalis Is Showers of gold is
another term for it. It's aperennial slash shrub type plant and it blooms
more months of the year than justabout anything I know, beautiful yellow blooms.
If you shear it back, it'lljust come back denser and more beautiful.

(02:20:28):
It is an excellent plant. Bythe way, deer are not fond
of thrialis. Either things likevillia.We know those like hot weather. Duranta
likes hot weather. Roses can stillbloom in hot weather if you give them
some water, prune them back periodically, fertilize them, keep them vigorous.
Arburgate's got lantanas that are just outstanding, just great repeat bloomers through the summertime

(02:20:52):
in shade. Do you need somethinglike kalladiums or impatience for example, They've
got that. Now there's a plantout there that I think you really need
to Actually, I can't limit myselfto one. Excuse me. I've already
mentioned a bunch of them. Butthere's Vinka, which is a summer blooming
annual. It is wonderful. There'sa little dwarf type of vinka because sorie

(02:21:13):
that one. The blooms are small. It makes a little bit of a
mound that spreads outward a little bitwider. Beautiful plant and one that you
got to go buy an ask for. And it's called sun believable Helianthus.
Unbelievable Helianthus that is a shrub's beenaround for several years now in the market,
and it just blooms and blooms andblooms, and it can take the

(02:21:35):
heat. Salvia's like the nemerosa typesof salvias. Those are excellent for the
summer. All kinds of salvias areexcellent for the summer, and they're all
at Arburgate. Go by there.Now is a great time to get these
things planted. It is still agood season for that. Listen, think
about it this way. It isthe beginning of July. It is going

(02:21:56):
to be October before things start tocool off around here a little bit.
Well, look at all those monthsof color that you can have if you
get those things in the landscape andturn that sea of green into something beautiful.
From Arburgate, they're on twenty nineto twenty west of Tomball. Just
take Trishel Road around behind the arborGate and see that wonderful new parking lot

(02:22:16):
where it's really easy to get inand get out safely. You got to
go to Arburgate. Don't let summerthwart you. There's a lot that needs
to be planted right now, andArburgate's got you set up for just that.
We are going to now head backto look at the calls here I've
got my computer screen is deciding whetherit wants to play with me or not.

(02:22:37):
There we go. We're going togo to Laporte and talk to Elmer.
Hello, Elmer, Hey, goodmorning. I've got three questions for
you. I'll make them real quick. The first one is, I just
want to confirm my ceatrus trees thatI've got our twenty fifteen foot tall.
One is a grapefruit, one isa lemon tree, and one is an
orange tree. I can want ofthose every day, once a day,

(02:23:00):
twice a week, three times aweek, or just once. Yeah,
I'm not sure a well established citrusplant like yours the one size you're describing,
those are well established in the absenceof any rainfall at all. If
you watered them once, maybe twicea week at the most, is all
you would need to do. Probablya good soaking. Now, now,

(02:23:24):
when we say water, I don'tmean it like, you know, a
half inch of water or something thatjust barely wets the surface of the mulch.
But I'm talking about soaking the soilgood. Once a week would be
plenty for your citrus. Okay.Secondly, I want to buy a tree
where I can take my trailer andgive my back on big a hole and
just buy a big old tree.And I don't know where to go to.

(02:23:46):
What would you recommend me to go? Buy a tree where I can
just plant it in my yarn andget my back on big a hole.
And then I'll go to the lastquestion here And then you're in Laporte.
So if you just go up thestreet a little bit there, you can
go to Moss Nursery, which isout there in Seabrook, not very far
away from you, down the roadyou want to, you know, head
a little bit. We got alot of great nurseries and garden centers and

(02:24:11):
whatnot, but Seabrook Moss Nursery isprobably about the closest one to you.
If you go down to. Theyhave full grown trees. I mean,
I'm not full verdent, you knowwhat I mean, something that's pretty big
already. Yeah they got oh yeah, they got pretty good sized ones too.
You can ask them depends on thecounter tree you want as to what
size they may have it in,but they're gonna have large sizes out there.

(02:24:33):
If you head over to the Justgive me one second, just Vergant
v e r d a n T. Verdant Tree Farm is in Paarland,
So that's a little bit of adrive for you, but still not too
far, that's what they say.And they have Verdant Tree Farm v e
r d A n T. TheVerdant v E r D and Tea.

(02:25:01):
Verdant has a lot of different kindsof trees. They have palm trees,
they've got standard types of trees forshade and blooms and whatnot. That where
you go, those two pretty closeto you and one is more of you
know, kind of like the littleretail source of Seabrook a garden center.
Great plants there Paarland, the VerdenTree Farm, that's what they specialize in.
They come out and do the plantingthemselves. It sounds like you want

(02:25:22):
to do a do it yourself forthough. Oh yeah yeah. And lastly,
and this was this was a complicatedone. So I've got an area
about fifteen feet about five feet areawhere my wife wants me to plant some
you know, four or five footevergreens and live with this way make it
like a landry type scenario restaurant.When you see the do I need to

(02:25:43):
actually dig the ground up. Orcan I go buy like a dump truck
of dirt, dump it down,separated and then plant those plants. What
do I need to do in thatcase to plant and make it look like
that landryes types you know when yousee that jounery when you go to the
restaurants, right, So what youwant to do digging a hole and putting

(02:26:03):
good soil in it just creates anunderground bathtub. Think if the clay soil
as something that holds water, allright, you dig a hole and do
that. I would put the mixon top. Buy a good quality bed
mix. If you don't know whichone to get, something called roast soil
would be a good one. Iknow airline soils creates roast soil. The

(02:26:24):
nature's way up toward conradirection delivers allthrough the area too. They do that.
And if you put that down,I would put it down about three
or four inches deep, and thenI would mix it with the soil you
have, and then I would addmore on top of the good soil.

(02:26:46):
Because the area that I want todo, the area that I want to
do is probably about fifteen foot longand about six foot wide. So I
thought in my mind. The easything is go get a freaking dumb cruck
of just top soil, dump itout, and then plant the plants on
top of that. Yeah, andI didn't know that makes sense. No,

(02:27:07):
No, you could do that.I just rather than having like your
standard soil, think of it asyour driveway with concrete, and then you
put a good mix on top.You have this interface where it goes from
wonderful soil to crummy soil. Iwould put four inches three or four inches
down, mix them together, andthen put the good stuff more of it
on top. And that way youhave a trus from good stuff down into

(02:27:30):
not so good stuff that's a littlebit better. Otherwise, sometimes you end
up with what's called a perch watertable, where the water goes down and
hits that bad soil and doesn't goany further. If you would lock to
hold on, I'm gonna have torun take a little break here. Well,
gosh,'re at the end ofthe day. Sorry about that,
Elmer. I would That's what Iwould do. I would mix it in.

(02:27:52):
I would add the good stuff ontop. If you want to drive
over to Sienna, Texas, that'sjust south and a little to the west.
Of Houston off Highway six near IowaColony in Arcola. That area that's
where seeing a multius. They onlydeliver about twenty miles. But if you
can go get it, they're goingto have those excellent soils. And that's
gonna be about the closest source thatI would recommend to you for all of

(02:28:16):
They makes us like a rose soilor a yeah much all right, you
got it. I appreciate you,man. You stay safe, all right.
Hey, once you get that inthen all you need to do is
turn the house into a restaurant andI'll come visit. Wonderful week. Dam
I won't go Landrys, I'll cometo your place. Thanks a lot,

(02:28:39):
you guys. Will be back tomorrow