Veggie and Herb Gardens

Skip Richter takes listener calls all morning long!  

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Welcome to Katie r. H.Garden Line with Skip Ricord's the crazy gas
can use a shrimp just watch him, as well as many good things to

(00:21):
seep bats in quick gas. Youdid sass backing, not a sign credit
basis and gas the sun beamon ofbetween gas. Start well, good morning,

(00:47):
Good Sunday morning. Congratulations, youare awake. Your eyes are open
at least one of them, Ihope, maybe a cup of coffee in
the hand. You're listening to gardenLine. I'm your host, Skip Rictor,
and we're going to spend the nextfour hours answering gardening questions talking about
the topics you are interested in.If you'd like to give us a call
seven to one three two one twofive eight seven four seven to one three

(01:12):
two one two fifty eight seventy four. I've got a number of things I
would like to talk about today.I'll start doing that. Uh. First
of all, with all this rainwe've had, we're seeing a number of
things going on in the landscape andour gardens and whatnot. First of all,

(01:34):
in the lawn it has just rainedand rained and rained so much that
the lawn grass is stayed wet.You know, I'm always telling you don't
overwater your lawn. Don't overwater yourlawn. Most people water too little,
too often, meaning they squirt thelawn every day with a little bit of
water. It doesn't soak into thesoil very well because it's not a volume,

(01:55):
and then the next day they getsquirkeed, it gets squirted again and
that builds up disease. Well,rain has done the little sporting today for
these last weeks, but it reallyhadn't just been squirt It's been a deluge
and the soil is very, verywet, and by it staying wet,
we're seeing an increase in gray leafspot on Saint Augustine, which is Saint

(02:17):
Augustine being the primary long grass inour area. So gray leaf spot looks
like if you're standing back just kindof looking at your lawn, you see
leaves or grass blades that is thatare very yellow. They're all yellow,
and as you get up closer andlook, you see that there are spots
on those leaves, fairly rounded,roundish type spots oval to a round that

(02:43):
are black, and that is grayleaf spot. And what it does is
that if you get enough spots ona leaf, it will cause the entire
leaf to die and turn yellow.We also are seeing a little bit of
summer rhizoctonium, which, other thanthe fancy word rhizoctonia, basically it's like
the disease that causes brown patch,which is now called large patch in the

(03:06):
fall, those big round circles you'refamiliar with. There are several versions of
that disease, strains of that fungus, and there's some that can occur in
fairly warm weather. Although we've hada nice break from the heat here,
we're seeing some of that too,and it doesn't necessarily show up as circles.
It could, but it just showsas kind of a melting away of

(03:27):
the foliage of the grass plant.And so what do we do well,
The best way to manage diseases isto treat before they appear, to prevent
them. Once you have leaf spots, once you have rotted leaves that are
shriveling up on the plant, youcan spray, but all that is going
to do is prevent additional infection.So our goal would be to whenever we

(03:52):
know we're having a lot of problems, we can do some preventative sprays.
In general, I don't like torecommend preventative sprays because it just just spray,
sprace bray all the time to preventwhat might show up. But that's
what you're seeing in your lawns.I can tell you this. If you
just keep mowing and we get somesunshine and the rain stops, which apparently

(04:13):
it is now we're going to havea nice sunny week, then those diseases
are gonna go away. Because diseasesare very connected to environmental conditions, temperature
and moisture being the two big ones. So my suggestion at this point would
be just to hold off, andit's probably going to come right back and
be fine. That's what I expect. There are some fungicides that you can

(04:38):
use, and if you're dealing withan issue and you need a recommendation,
you can give me a call.We'll talk about those. But just to
just to kind of summarize, you'reprobably seeing some of that you can spray
to stop additional infection. I don'tthink we're going to get a lot of
additional infection, so I myself probablywould hold off being the best recommendation.

(05:01):
All right, Well, let's see, we're gonna also talk this morning about
some things that we're seeing in thevegetable garden. I mean, I don't
know how many of you vegetable gardenthe you know, we can grow a
lot of wonderful, wonderful vegetables thatare helping us to have a healthier life.

(05:23):
That's the bottom line. Help them. First of all, getting out
in the garden and growing things helpsyou have a healthier life. Just being
in nature, having that relaxed enjoymentof seeing things grow, and just having
success, which you can have.That is important. But when you eat
those fresh vegetables, then you definitelyhave a healthier life, and so do

(05:44):
your kids. By the way,if you are a gunna garden, if
you're thinking about gardening, if forno other reason, do it for your
kids. When kids grow up growingvegetables, they're more likely to eat vegetables.
And when they eat vegetables instead ofa junk food that permeates our lives,
they have a much healthier life.Most of the big disease issues we

(06:04):
deal with as human beings here inAmerica are related to our diet in one
way or another. That is ahuge elephant in the room that we can
fix very easily. So anyway,grow your own vegetables. They'll be fresh,
they'll be what do we we usedto say, fifteen hundred miles fresher.
In other words, they didn't getshipped from California or Florida or wherever

(06:27):
to here. And you can dothat. There's a lot of good advice
that you can get online if yougo to the Aggie Horticulture website Aggie Horticulture,
just search for it. There isa section when you get the front
page, there's a section on vegetables, vegetable gardening, and there is a
free publication on every vegetable you mightwant to grow and then some. So

(06:50):
if you decided, well, Iwant to grow tomatoes or I want to
grow squash or whatever, you candownload or just stared at it at this
green or printed out or whatever youwant to do a free, multi page,
full color publication that will help youdo that. And I would highly
recommend that that's a good place tostart, and it's free. Can't get

(07:11):
any better than that. But vegetablegardening is not difficult if you follow a
few simple principles. First of all, we want to make sure and provide
vegetables lots of sunlight in order fora plant to grow, it needs energy
in the form of carbohydrates, andcarbohydrates come from the leaves when the sun

(07:33):
shines on them. That's the leavesof the food factory of the plant.
We talk about fertilizers is plant foodWell I even say that term, but
technically fertilizers are not plant food.Carbohydrates or plant food. Fertilizers provide the
building blocks for the leaves to createcarbohydrates. So technical point there, but

(07:57):
I think worth noting. So wheneverour vegetable gardens get good sunlight, they
are going to have plants that thrivebetter and produce better. Within all the
vegetables you'd want to grow, youcan sort of divide them up into fruit,
roots, and leaves. That's ageneral division with a few exceptions.

(08:20):
So anything that produces fruit that wouldbe tomato, a squash, a pepper,
an eggplant, a green bean,those are all fruits. Or anything
that produces roots like a carrot,a turnip, a radish, a beet,
those are all roots. A sweetpotato those need the most sunlight because

(08:41):
it takes a lot of sugars,a lot of carbohydrates to produce those fruits.
If it is just a leafy grainfor example, lettuce, spinach,
kale, and collars. Or howabout in the summertime, leafy greens would
include malabar, they would include somethingcalled molokia. Uh, there's even an

(09:03):
edible person lane that can be aleaver. Those can grow in less sunlight
because it doesn't take as much carbohydratesto produce the parts we're eating the leaves.
That doesn't mean they want to bein shade. It just means that
they will grow in less sunlight thanthe roots and fruit vegetables will. All
right, we're going to take alittle break after those comments. If you'd

(09:24):
like to give us a call.Seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. Welcome guard Line.Good to have you this morning. Glad
you're listening. And hey, ifyou've got some gardening questions you would like
to talk about. Maybe you've nevergardened before and you would like to get
going on something. We make somesuggestions for that, and just give us
a call. Seven one three twoone two fifty eight seventy four. When

(09:48):
we went to break, I wastalking about lawns. I was talking about
vegetable gards. I want to goback to the lawns. And make a
couple of comments about that. Regardingour lawns in the summertime is when we
have our main lawn insects that wehave to deal with, and that would
be things light grubs and chinch bugs, and as we get later in the

(10:09):
summer, especially the sod webworm thattends to come and go some years almost
nothing, some years really really badinfestations. You just never know what's coming.
But Night of Fuss makes a productcalled Bugout Max and it is a
granular. You put it out onyour lawn, spread it like you would
your fertilizer, and then watered inand the chemical on it goes into the

(10:35):
thatch and soil region and anything inthat region it's going to kill it.
And that would be like ants fireance crawling through it would be killed.
Fleas. Did you know there arefleas in your lawn if you have pets.
If you have pets with fleas,as your dog goes outside, the
fleas fall off. There's they layeggs, they hatch out into larvae that

(10:56):
make pupa and then become adults andthen hop back on the next train coming
by train being your pet. Andso you can control them in that stage
in the lawn. That's important.Part of controlling fleas and ticks is to
deal with them outside as well asdealing with them inside or on your dog.
But anyway, chinchbugs, we shouldbe seeing chinchbugs pretty soon here,

(11:18):
especially as it gets hot and dry, which it will at some point,
and then sideweb worms too. Nightfussbugot Max does all that. It takes
about forty eight hours and it's prettymuch done. It's work, and then
it sticks around through the summer season. It doesn't just go away fast,
and so that's going to cover you. One application now will cover you through
the rest of the summer season.So anyway, I think that is something

(11:43):
you might be aware of. NightFuss products, by the way, are
widely available. We can find thosethings at all kinds of sources throughout the
Greater Houston area. Your feed stores, your ACE hardware stores, your Southwest
Fertilizer examples, those very widely available, easy, easy to find products like

(12:05):
the bug out Max. You know, we're always rows on the lookout for
what's going on in our gardens andour landscapes. I think that there's a
saying that the best fertilizer is thefootprints of the gardener. Now what does
that mean, Well, it basicallymeans is for your plants to grow and

(12:26):
be successful. When you're out thereworking among the plants or just walking among
the plants in the garden, younotice things, you can see things to
take care of and to do,and that's what that means. I would
say the best pest control is thefootprints of the gardener too. If you
wait until pests have hit a majoroutbreak and there's fifty percent of the foliage

(12:48):
has gone on some plant that theychewed up, it's a little late to
get benefits. Even if you killedall the pests at that stage, you
still have a plant with half theleaves. It needs to do what it's
doing. So heading out and checkingthings and watching things. You know,
if you see an area of yourlawn that's looking like it needs water,
and you water it and it doesn'trespond. Back, drop down on your

(13:09):
knees there, look among the grassblades and the that's and the runners on
the ground for little black and whitebugs about maybe an eighth of an inch
long. That would be chinchbugs,And that would be one of the examples.
They typically start at a curb adriveway, a sidewalk, some other
some type of a masonry like structurethat's in the full sun too. That's

(13:31):
typically where we see the first ofthe chinchbugs when we're going to have an
invasion. But anyway, get out, check your plants, your lawn,
make sure that you are staying ontop of things so you can catch it
early. When you catch a problemearly, that allows you to be able
to use safer products, some ofthe organic products, some of the super

(13:52):
low talks products work best when pestsare in a younger stage. They have
more effectiveness at that stage than whenlet's say a stink bug, for example,
is already an adult stink bug.It has wings and it's flying all
over the place. It's harder tokill those, and so the earlier you
catch things, the better off you'regoing to be. You probably have heard

(14:15):
me talk about a product that Ireally love and that is Medina's has to
Grow Supergrow plus. I know that'sa lot of words. Medina makes a
has to grow line regular has togrow. There's has to grow for lawns,
which is an excellent product for usein fertilizing your lawn. The ratio
is ideal for lawn fertilization. Andthen there is also has to grow super

(14:37):
Grow Plus that's a newer one.It's a sixteen zero two and the zero's
okay. Most of our lawns haveall the phosphorus that they need. That's
why it's always recommended. It's avery low number on the bag. But
this one is a bottle. It'sa quart size. You hook it to
a garden hose, you spray.It takes about ten minutes to cover the

(14:58):
four thousand square feet a bottle ofsupergrow Plus will cover and it will give
you a really nice quick boost.It's got a little bit of slow release
in it as well, but ithas things like molasses and humic acid that
stimulate microbial activity. It's got akeylated form of iron which helps the yellowing
areas turn green. It's got seaweedextract in it as well. It's just

(15:22):
a good concoction to provide your lawna boost. And so if you got
a lawn that's struggling in some areas, hook up a bottle of Supergrow Plus
to your garden hose and go overthat area and see the results you get.
I'd say go over the whole lawn. But it's a great way to
get a good quick boost to yourplants. And Medina has many products in

(15:46):
the market. Of course, supergrowPlus, I would say, their newest
one, to my knowledge, isformulated to promote and to enhance the plant
growth there in your lawn. Ourphone number if you like to give us
a call and ask a question onguard Line is seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven onethree two one two fifty eight seventy four.

(16:11):
By the way, if you're lookingfor supergrow Plus, it's it's widely
available and a lot of kinds ofplaces. You're going to find it at
feed stores. You're going to findit at garden centers. You're going to
find it at ace hardware stores.You're going to find it at places like
Southwest Fertilizer. They have it there. Of course, they always have everything
there at Southwest Fertilizer. I don'tknow, if you've never been in the

(16:33):
place, you need to go justto see, because you'll go, oh,
I didn't know I could get thatright here. I didn't know that
was even on the market. SouthwestFertilizer carries every product that you could possibly
need. If you hear me.If you hear any product name come out
of my mouth on garden line,it's going to be at Southwest Fertilizer.

(16:53):
Because that is how Bob does things. He stays on top of things and
when something new comes out, hegets it. We talk pretty often actually
about new products and what was working, what we're seeing on the market,
and he just stays up the dateon it. So and also if you
need tools, eighty foot wall oftools at Southwest Fertilizer. And I always

(17:17):
am promoting this one because I talkedabout a long time ago about these folding
kneeling benches and they are cool.I mean that, first of all,
they'd make a great garden gift foranybody who's a gardener in your list,
and especially anybody north of forty whichsomewhere. Do you remember the first time
you woke up in the morning soreand you didn't know why? Sorry,

(17:41):
I started to laugh. I've beenthere, done that. Well, when
you're gardening and you go down onyour knees to do something, stand up,
walk across you and go down onyou, up and down and up
and down. You wake up thenext morning in the pre natal position,
not able to get out of bed. This folding kneeling bench is nice because
you unfold it, it clicks intoplace. You sit on it and you

(18:03):
can do work down lower real easily. And if you need to kneel down,
you just turn it upside down andthe legs become handles and you go
down on your knees do your work, and when you get ready to get
up, you just grab those handles, those legs handles, and you stand
up so easily. And I'm tellingyou it will change your gardening life.
I love that product, and Bob'sgot it there at Southwest Fertilizer, by

(18:26):
the way. They're on the cornerof the Seet and Runwick in Southwest Houston.
If you want their website, it'sSouthwest Fertilizer dot com. They're open
today. If you need to getout there and get something too, like
that kneeling bench. Check it out. That is one of the tools that
one went from I almost hadn't evenheard of them to definitely and the top

(18:48):
five tools I have of all mygardening tools, that that is in the
top five because it just is thatimportant, it helps that much. All
right, Well, we're hitting anotherheard break here for the news. I
will be right back if you'd liketo call in. We got an open
board and you could be the firstup. Seven to one three two pine
two kt rh. Good Sunday morning, So glad to have you with us

(19:14):
here on Garden Line. We arehere to answer your gardening questions, to
help you, as I like toput it, have a more bountiful garden
and a more beautiful landscape. That'swhat it's all about. You know,
a lot of people garden as theirnumber one hobby, and then there are
a lot of people who dabble ingardening here and there, and then there's
folks that think I can't do that. I tried to grow a plant once

(19:36):
and I killed it. Well,don't worry about that, because I like
to say, there is no suchthing as a brown thumb. There is
just an uninformed thumb, and weinformed thumbs here on garden Line. And
as you inform a thumb, itgets greener and greener and greener. That's
how it works. Because listen,it's not rocket science. It's biology.
It's plant life, okay. Andif you follow some simple principles Number one,

(20:00):
preparing the soil. Number two,putting a plant where it wants to
grow, the amount of sunlight itwants to grow. In making sure that's
good drainage, choosing plants that wantto do well there, and then providing
general care, you will find thatyour thumb is getting greener and greener as
you go along. The reason Grandmaseemed to have a green thumb is Grandma
just need to do the right things. That's the bottom line. There's no

(20:22):
magic in this. There's no magicin this. And listen, there is
also no failing. Stick with mehere for just a minute. You don't
fail, you give up. Thatis how gardening goes south. You give
up. Everybody loses plants. Everybodyhas seasons that don't do as well as
others. Everybody learns things the hardway here and there. But as you

(20:45):
continue to learn and to grow,it just gets better. So if you
tried before, try again. Giveus a call anytime. We are here
to help, and we absolutely Itell you this can help you have success
with what you want to grow.So a famous horticulturist once said, to

(21:06):
be a good horticulturist, she gotto kill a lot of plants. And
I have remembered that through the yearsof the decade since I heard that,
and it is so true. Itis absolutely true. Don't be afraid of
losing things. Landscapes and gardens arelike etches sketches. Remember the etch of
sketch. You had two knobs andone went up and down to draw,

(21:27):
and the other one went left andright to draw, and inevitably your brain
would not click right and you'd dothe wrong thing. And now you've messed
up your drawing. What did youdo? You took the etch a sketch,
you held it upside down over yourhead, and you shook it and
when you put it back down,it was a blank slate. We have
things called rototillers that help us geta blank slate when we need to fix

(21:49):
something. Seriously, though, wecan always go in and redo and improve
and it just gets better, itdoes. It just gets better. So
anyway, our phone number seven onethree two one two fifty eight seventy four
give us a call. We're goingto go to the phones now and talk
to James in Spring. Welcome toguarden Line. James. Yes, sir,

(22:14):
I was the leading the Jim OakTree from the roofline for insurance purposes.
Do you have somebody that can dothat absolutely Uh the Martin spoon More
at Affordable Tree Service Martin, Martin, Okay, spoon More. Let me
give you, let me just letme just give you a phone number,

(22:37):
all right, Okay, get herein front of me. Uh seven one
three six nine nine two six sixthree seven one three six nine nine two
six sixty three. If you wantto go see the website. It's a
f F Tree Service dot com.Le me, okay, guarden line listener
and get you up, you know, up in the line there towards the

(23:00):
front of the line because he staysbusy and so just make sure and let
him know your guardline is he doesput those up toward the front of the
line. Okay, Well, Isee you. Thank you, sir,
you've bet Thanks for the call,and good luck getting all that tree situation
under under control. All right.Yes, you're listening to garden line seven

(23:22):
one three two one two kt rH seven one three two one two k
t r H. That is thenumber. Have you noticed have y'all noticed
the Texas sage blooming around town?Texas h. It's a silvery green leafed
plant. Some some cultivars are greener, some are silk more silvery but has

(23:45):
these beautiful, typically pink blooms there. There's variations there, but we used
to call it, or we do, called the barometer plant. That's one
of the little slang words for it, because it tells you, you know,
whenever we get rainfall and stuff likethat, you see you see the
plant burst out in blooms, andboy is it looking good around town?

(24:10):
Is it's a beautiful pink color.I've grown those numerous times. It's a
native plant. It grows wild.You head out, you know, past
San Antonio to Uvaldi and you're goingto see it just as a wild brush
out that way. But breeders hadbrought it in and made a nice plant
out of it. And as longas you give it good drainage. It
does not want to be in aswamp. But if it has good drainage,

(24:30):
it will perform well. And Ilike the way that it just comes
into bloom. Some people share itto make it boxy, which is what,
for some reason we want to doto all these shrubs. You shouldn't
do that. You should do somejust selective pruning to keep a kind of
more natural mounded shape and it looksa lot better and it blooms a lot

(24:51):
better by the way I saw it. Plants for All Seasons. Plants for
All Seasons on High FM two fortynine Tomball Parkway. It's just north of
Luetta. If you're going north fora Tomball you exit Luetta crossover Luetta.
It's on the right hand side.But Plants for All Seasons has a bunch
of those there, and they justlook really, really good. The nice

(25:14):
thing, well, one of thenice things about Plants for All Seasons is
they're always going to carry plants thatwill grow here, that will perform here.
And they also are very knowledgeable,and so folks that have green thumbs
you probably already know about Plants forAll Seasons. It's a go to place.
If you have a brown thumb andwant to turn it green, well,
all right, go to Plants forAll Seasons and they'll help you do

(25:34):
that. They'll provide advice, they'vegot great products. They just are true
lawn and garden experts at Plants forAll Seasons. Here's a phone number two
eight one three seven six sixteen fortysix two eight one three seven six one
six four six, or just goto the website Plants for All Seasons dot

(25:56):
Com. Simple as that. Butcheck out when you go by there,
check out their Texas Sage. It'salso called snizo ce n i z o.
That's another name for it. Rememberhow remember the song from Gene Audry
Back in the Saddle Again. Infact, well let's play that for our

(26:17):
next bumper song. Back in theSaddle Again. He sings about the sage
in bloom smells light like perfume,deep in the heart of Texas. I
love that, all right there,but I digress. Well, we're here
to answer your gardening questions and helpyou have success. And we've been talking
about a number of things today,like what's going on in the lawns,

(26:37):
what you're expecting to see a diseaseand insect wise. Right now, now
is the time in the vegetable garden. Earlier trying to talk you into having
a vegetable garden. Now is thetime to be planting some of the warm
season crops for fall. So ifyou want a fall tomato planting, you
need to get it in in July. This is a time to get it

(27:00):
in. Sooner is better than later. You can plant pepper still, you
can plant eggplant still, you canplant coming up here typically I'll do this
more in August, but I'm plantingthings like cucumbers and summer squash for example,
like zucchini and yellow squash, puttingall those types of things in.

(27:21):
As we get a little further intoAugust, we're putting in potatoes for a
fall crop. The regular potatoes youcan plant for a fall crop in those
seasons. There's plenty of information.There's lots of good information online here locally
in Houston for different groups that havetheir planting schedules for vegetables. So it
makes it easy to stay up onthings. If you have thought about ground

(27:44):
vegetables, but you're thinking I don'town a rototiller and I don't have a
back forty to till up. I'vegot a yard and I don't want to
till it up. Then just there'sother ways to do it. And when
we come back from this next break, I'm going to talk about some of
the secrets of excess in growing vegetablesin containers. I'll be right back.
Welcome back to garden Line. We'reback in the saddle again and ready to

(28:08):
take your gardening questions. If youhave a question, give us a call
seven one three two one two kt r H seven one three two one
two kt r H. We'll behappy to address it. And I said
before I went to break that Iwould when we come back, I would
talk about gardening in containers, vegetablegardening specifically, But this applies to a

(28:33):
lot of types of gardening in containers. So what are we going to suggest
for that? Well, first ofall, remember when you put a plant
in a container, it's entire accessto moisture to nutrients is from the soil

(28:53):
that's in that container. In theground outside. It can send roots far
and wide and reach a huge lumea soil to get moisture and nutrients from.
So if it gets a little dry, it's not going to be as
effected in a container. If you'vegot a pretty good sized plant and the
containers a little on the small side, maybe by the end of the day
it's already in drought stress on ahot, sunny summer day. So what

(29:18):
we need to do is give theplants as big of a container as we
can practically give them. They dobetter in larger containers. Now their exceptions
to that. Certainly, with theseasons changing, the container size won't be
as big as it would need tobe in summer to supply it. But
you don't want to have to rememberto water. And I've had containers that
were small enough to where I waswatering twice during the day just to keep

(29:41):
the plants going well. So containersize is important. Quality container soil is
also very important. You want asoil blend that is going to drain well
but still hold moisture adequately to supplythe plant. Good nutrition is important.
Remember the only place that plant canget all the twenty plus nutrients it needs

(30:04):
is out of the soil in thatsmall, confined space of a container.
So providing quality fertilizer and gradual amountsover time. You can do that with
small applications of fertilizer, or youcan do that by providing a slow release
fertilizer that releases gradually over time foryou. But those are keys. The

(30:25):
last thing is sunshine. Set yourcontainers where it gets the right amount of
sun. If your plants struggle inthe blazing heat of summer, then give
a morning sun with some afternoon shade. If you can find a spot around
the property like that, that isanother tip that can help you have success.
But you can grow almost any vegetablein a container that you can grow

(30:47):
in the ground. There are veryfew exceptions, and with crazy sized containers
you can even take care of thoseexceptions. But it's not that difficult to
do. And I think it justreally an enjoyable hobby to get out to
garden to grow things you haven't grownbefore. And so there you go.
We're going to head out to thephones now and go to Spring and talk

(31:11):
to Barbara. Hello, Barbara,welcome to garden Line. Thank you.
I have a schu Mark red oak. It's thirty years old. Well,
during the storm it got beat upreally bad. It got topped and one
side got completely torn off. Sosaber tree came out and they did tell
me that it can't be saved.So I'm going to have it taken out

(31:33):
and stunt ground. Okay, nowI want to put grass back in that
area. So do I have totake all those chips away and fill that
hole with dirt? Well, firstof all, I would ask the company
to do as much of that asthey can. Some even have a little
type of vacuum type things that pullsup the loose sawdust and whatnot. But

(31:55):
as much as you can get outyou should for two reasons. Ruby One,
as that fresh wood starts to decompose, it ties up nitrogen in the
soil. You can fix that byadding extra nitrogen, so that's not the
end of the world. The otherthing is, as it decomposes away,
that soil is going to sink.Just the fact that they've loosened it up

(32:15):
by grinding down into it. It'sfluffing up the soil to do that.
And that soil is going to sinkanyway. And then if it also has
wood in it, it's going todecompose away and sink even more. So
leave it or mound it up alittle bit like a picture's mound. Leave
it mounded up a little so thatwhen it does sink, it ends up
more close to level. Right,Okay, okay, well I'll just yes,

(32:39):
yes, that helps me a lot. Thank you very much. I
appreciate it, you bet, Barbara. Thanks for the call. You take
care. Good to have you withus today. I was talking about containers
and the importance of soil, andLandscaper's Pride makes some quality soils that you
can put in containers. They aredesigned for that. The thing I like

(33:00):
to most talk about this time ofyear with Landscaper's Pride is the multous because
when the sun comes out and itis baking down, it may be ninety
five degrees outside, and the soilis way hotter than that. It's like
the sidewalk or even worse, adark hardscape like asphalt. You know,
it gets blazing hot. Well,soil is dark, it absorbs the radiation

(33:22):
from the sun and it heats uptoo much, and plant roots anywhere in
the top three inches are really strugglingto even survive in that kind of temperature.
When you put a Louisiana excuse mea Landscaper's pride, a black velvet
melts down, beautiful naturally dark multcha hardwood ultch down which is shredded hardwood.

(33:44):
A pine bark mults down, whichis a very resistant to decomposition malts.
It sticks around for longest. Mostpopular one pine bark cedar mault cybers
molts. All of those from Landscaper'sPride Landscaperspride dot com. Keep your soil
most wherever sunlight hits the soil naturepoints a week and the summer sun gets

(34:05):
the soil too hot for those rootsup near their surface, especially for shallow
rooted plants like our vegetables, ourflowers and our ears. All right,
well, enough of that, we'regonna be talking about dirt for a while.
We're gonna go to a break.Our phone number is seven one three
two one two k t r H. I'd like to be the first ones
up when we come back from break. That would be a good time to

(34:27):
call and get on the boards.I also want to remind you that if
you go online, my schedules areon my website, and that would be
gardening with Skip dot Com. Gardeningwith Skip dot Com. There you'll find
the lawn care schedule and the lawnCoast Disease and read out and skip paper
everything you need to know and they'refree. Welcome to kt RH Guarden Line

(34:52):
with Skip Rictor's just watch you asmany things to a s Sunmon. Welcome

(35:30):
back to the garden Line on anice Sunday morning. Glad to have you
with us today. We're going totalk about all kinds of things related to
gardening and if you have a question, if you can help turn your thumb
greener and greener. That's why we'rehere. I want you to have a
beautiful, bountiful gardening landscape. Thatis the goal. Well, let's start

(35:51):
by just heading straight out to thephone. So we're going to go to
Northwest Houston and talk to Malcolm.Hello, Malcolm, Hey, Skip,
how you doing this morning? Good? Very good? Thank you. Hey.
I I don't have a question,but I've got some information that may
be helpful to you and in youraudience. The iPhone has a function that

(36:12):
if you take a picture of aplant. You take the picture, then
you pull it up. There's alittle eye symbol down at the bottom that
I guess for information that you pushthat and it'll help identify it'll look up
and identify the plant. Okay,interesting fact. And so I mean a
lot of a lot of things yousee out out in the garden, you
know, weeds and plants that neighborsgardens and stuff. You don't necessarily know

(36:36):
what they are. But if youtake the picture of it and use that
function, it'll it'll it'll tell youat least you'll try to tell you what
what it thinks it is. Thatis that is interesting. You know that
there there are so many really coolnew things that we get to enjoy because
of these technologies. And I'm lookingat my my iPhone right now and seeing,

(37:00):
uh, yeah, there you go. It just works well. You
find what I used? Yeah,what what I use for plant identification.
There's a lot of apps out therethat you know, or plant identification apps.
I was, gosh, they're justa lot of them, and I've

(37:20):
tried different ones and some of themare okay. A lot of them don't
live in Texas and so they theredata set is a little bit different than
ours. But the one app thatI find very helpful is Google Chrome,
Google Lens, l E N S. And so if you have even on
an iPhone, if you have theGoogle app there, when you go to

(37:44):
it, there's a little square withthe Google colors, you know, those
primary colors, and if you clickon it, you can either use your
phone when you're looking at a plantto do the same thing, or you
can go find a photo that's inyour photos and it'll do that and it'll
get you. I found it tobe pretty accurate, especially if you if

(38:05):
the picture really shows the plant you'retalking about. You know, I keep
point it at the woods because there'sa plant in there somewhere. You want.
It's not going to know what you'relooking for. You've got to take
the picture of the plant. Gooddetail, that would be true. Also
of the function you mentioned the iPhonea little eye at the bottom of the
bottom right of the screen. Yeah, it does very healthful. Yes.

(38:30):
And it works with bugs too,So if you got a bug, a
certain bugger thing, you can identifiedbug. Yeah, it does. And
in fact I found entomologically it tobe almost better than it is with plants.
It's really really good. And ifit doesn't give you the right answer,
it puts you in the ballpark.So then you can do a search,

(38:51):
like maybe it gives you a genusand that plant looks close, but
that's not quite it. Well,then you can go search for that online
and actually find the one that itis. It's it's scarily effective. Thanks
for the good show man. Ijust want to pass up all my kids.
They know everything about phones. They'rethe one that told me about that,

(39:12):
and I appreciate. I appreciate thatbecause I guarantee you every gardener needs
these things. Often. I knowyou're you're in somebody's yard and it's like
they have a beautiful plant and youwant it, uh, and you don't
know what it is, and they'renot there to ask or whatever, and
yeah, I mean it just there'sa lot of times when we use those,

(39:32):
so that's that's a good thing.By the way, it's these aren't
just plant functions. Uh. Ifyou are in a store and you see
someone walking around with shoes you like, uh in discreete and just uh discreetly,
uh just kind of point your phonedown there and it'll tell you what
they are and where to get them. Be careful with that one. Yeah.

(39:57):
Yeah, they even do. Theyeven do bill exactly, like especially
famous areas, like you're in Europeand you see this building and you point
your phone at it and it'll tellyou, oh, that's the big Ben
clock in London, Texas or whatever. I'm London, Texas, London,
England. So yeah, all right, good, good points. Thanks man.
I appreciate that too. You thankyou you as well as well.

(40:21):
Yeah, you guys have got totry these things out. Malcolm just mentioned
the little eye at the bottom rightof the screen if with an iPhone,
but whether you have an Android oran Apple device, you can use Google
lens also, and it's just justif you do a search for it,
you see what the little emblem lookslike. But all Google emblems have those

(40:44):
primary Google colors in them. Butit's a little square almost like a little
TV set kind of thing. Uh, And it works super well. And
for those of you on Android thatdon't have the iPhone with the little eye
lower case eye on the bottom,Google lens is definitely one you need to
be using. It works very verywell. All right, you're listening to

(41:06):
garden Line. We are just enlighteningand enlightening and enlightening this morning on things
related to plants. Seven one threetwo one two KTRH. That's our number.
If you'd like to give us acall, we look forward to talking
to you. If you've not fertilizedyour lawn this summer, I would recommend
you consider the Nitrofoss Superturf product.Superturf is the silver bag from Nitrovas that

(41:30):
makes it so easy. In fact, I can't think of another fertilizer product
that I've ever seen, and I'veseen a lot of them that is in
a silver bag like that. ButI can tell you this round the Greater
Houston area, if you see asilver bag that is Nitrofus Superturf and super
Turf's designed to release the nitrogen slowlyover time, and it's going to feed

(41:51):
all the way up until it's timefor your fall fertilization of the lawn by
feeding gradually and reduces you're mowing upto twenty five percent. And it also
avoids promoting disease problems like we weretalking earlier today gray leaf spot, or
when cooler fall weather arrives, we'llbe talking about large patch or brown patch.

(42:13):
Those are promoted by flushes of nitrogen. Super turf gradual release helps avoid
that. And you can find superturf all kinds of places, a number
of places, for example, ACEHardware, a Memorial Drive, ACE Hardware
City, it's called on Memorial Drive, the Kingwood, Ace Hardware, or
perhaps there's an Oh, the onein Katie and the one in oh my

(42:38):
gosh, I just want blank outthere, Plantation, Ace, Adam Richmond
Rosenberg. They all carry nitropostproduct.In fact, ACE Hardware in general is
going to carry these nitroposs products likesuperturf. They have an excellent supply.
And while I'm talking about a ACEHardware always has everything you need to provide

(43:00):
a beautiful garden and a bountiful landscapeif you want to enjoy the outdoors,
and that includes the patio where youneed one of the nice barbecue products that
they have there at ays like Trager, like Big Green Egg, like Weber,
they have that there, a stringof lights to create that ambiance around
an outdoor sitting area. They havethat there. But all the fertilizers,

(43:22):
all the pest control, weed control, disease control products. Right now,
we just had gully washers of raincoming through and when that happens, fire
ants to escape the excessively saturated soilbuild their little mounds up. You see
the little piles of dirt showing upin the air. I say they push
them up. That's not really pushing, but you get the idea that's going

(43:45):
to happen. I've already got twothat popped up in my yard. I
did not know I had fire ants. I just I didn't know it.
I hadn't seen them. And afterthe rains, I see where they are.
Now, well, what am Igoing to do. I'm going to
put a bait product out in.Ace Hardware carries those bait products. So
go to Ace Hardware find the suppliesyou need. There's forty stores in the

(44:06):
Greater Houston area. Just go toAcehardware dot Com find the store locator and
it's as simple as that. Well, it's time for us to take a
break. If you'd like to geton the on the board seven one three
two one two KTRH And when wecome back, Elizabeth, you'll be our
first stup doctor Guardline. Good tohave you with us this morning. We
are going to head straight out tothe phones and talk to Elizabeth in Oak

(44:30):
Forest. Weokome the garden line.Elizabeth, good morning, Skith. How
are you doing. I'm well,thank you. Yes, I'm driving from
Houston to Galveston and I've driven outof the rain and it's beautiful out here.
It's dry on the roads, sothat's good. So Skip, I
have been gardening in Houston for decadesand I am battling Cat's claw, this

(44:55):
invasive, diabolical line. And Ihave a friend who feorizes it came somehow
with Hurricane Ike, because you know, decades ago, we didn't have cat's
claw. We had you know,a little bit of trumpet vine, and
you know nut grass and Johnson weedand dollar weed and all the stuff or

(45:19):
Johnson grass. But how do yousuggest we combat this stuff? Because I
moved temporarily and took my pot plantswith me, and by hockey, I
accidentally transferred some cats claw to thatyard, and I spent a lot of
time trying to kill up there.Yeah, just so to make sure we're
talking about the same plant. Thishas yellow flowers, bright yellow flowers,

(45:43):
and it's got little claws. Yeah. Kind it has leaves or like in
sets of two, like a pairof leaves right on the vine with the
little structure. Yeah, a littlefootball shaped leaves, a nice darker green,
not goloss through flat. Okay,all right, with the yellow flowers

(46:04):
is a big distinguishing thing on themfor most people. Well, okay,
it has underground storage structures. Yeah, a sweet sweet potato for example.
They're not that big, but they'relike that. I guess they might get
that big cast cloud is extremely aggressive, as you know. Uh, And
what you gotta do is you gottayou gotta cut off the top growth and

(46:28):
go ahead and just as much asyou can just get it out of the
garden. Uh. There are seedpods that will drop the seeds, and
that's probably came in with your popplant. There was a seed that comes
or something like that. But youyou are gonna then want to dig up
those tubers. Now I've never tried, you, I've never tried using a

(46:52):
brushy wheat control product on it.I think I would think that if you
put a product containing Triclo peer tR I c l O P y R,
that's the ingredient, and you'll findit in things that say like they're
a poison ivy killer or a stumpand brush killer. Those typically have Triclo

(47:14):
peer in them. If you takeTriclos straight and get you a little foam
brush from hardware store, you knowthat little the kind that have a little
wooden handle that they use for painting, but it's a piece of fuel on
the end, and dip it inthe product straight and paint that on the
green stems down near the ground.Do about a foot up and down on

(47:38):
the green stems everywhere you see it. It will soak in if they're a
little slick. Sometimes it helps toput a little bit of oil mixed in
with it. Some people will usehe drops the diesel oil, but that's
just to make it stick. Theoil is not to kill the plant.
But anyway, it works on almostevery woody thing I've ever tried, even

(48:01):
Chinese tallow, which is hard tokill with herbicides, but just painted on
so we're not spraying things everywhere andkilling other things you don't want to kill.
But I would do that and it'lltranslocate down. If this is an
established plant, it probably has enoughunderground storage tubers to where one little application
of that is not going to completelykill it. You don't have to do

(48:21):
it again. Good hand hand diggingand or painting that product onto the stems,
up and down the stems. Thoseare the two things that I would
recommend, and then just be indiligent because you're going to see it popping
up, just like the seed probablycame with that pot you took. You're
going to see it popping up.So you just have to watch for it

(48:42):
and shut it down before it hasa chance to get established. Well,
I think all my neighbors have ittoo, and everybody's yard guys are constantly
whacking it away with a weed whacker. But it's still just it's do you
do you know what? Do youknow what I'm talking about? Hit it
this in Houston before Ike, soyou know, uh, yeah, people

(49:07):
have had it here and there foryears. It's been around it's not native
here. It comes from like moretropical areas south of US, you know,
the West Indies, Mexico and downon south of Brazil and that way.
But it is it is persistent herebecause it can take cold temperatures.

(49:27):
The top parts will take it downto I think it's about an eight zone
eight a point. I'd have tocheck that to be sure, but I
know here it survives, and thenthere's no getting rid of it unless you
take these measures that I'm talking about. All right, well, I'm sure
do appreciate it. Yeah, youmight want to the things I've told you,
jot them down and share them withneighbors that are willing to listen.

(49:52):
Just because somebody has it. Thenyou're gonna the seeds have they don't have
I don't know if it's wings,but they have a way of kind of
floating and going outward. You knowhow like an maple tree, you know,
has those wings, and so they'relike a little helicopters that float around
as they drop down. There's somethingsort of like that. And so your

(50:13):
neighbor having some up in a tree, if the wind's right, you're they're
going to give it to you.Oh yeah, we it's everywhere. Well,
thank you, I really appreciate it. You have a great rest of
your weekend already, all right,bye bye, thank you for the call.
Yeah, oh gosh. You know, there are a lot of plants
out there that have nice features.I mean, if you want something that

(50:37):
can take reflected heat, blazing hottemperatures and cover a wall and grab onto
it and give this nice covering ofgreen everywhere. Plus you get a few
yellow flowers, that's catclaw. ButI wouldn't recommend planting it for reasons that
you just heard as we talked toElizabeth. We have other plants that have
wonderful features. But you know,when you put it in a blender and

(51:00):
mix it up and pour it out, the bottom line is, don't do
it because all the bad stuff thatthese plants bring. Remember Chinese tallow,
I say, remember remember when itcame in. For some of you who
have been around for a few decades, when Chinese sallow came in, it
was initially beekeepers. When they loveit because it makes some of the best

(51:23):
honey. It's an excellent plant forthat. It has one of the few
plants that has really good, dependablefall color. Another asset of Chinese tallow,
But on a balance scale, itis incredibly negative and the negatives are
just outweigh the good things. Itdoesn't live a long time, and the

(51:45):
landscape it recedes and it takes over. Entire Southeast Texas has had a problem
with the invasive woody weed called Chinesetallow for a very long time. But
just remember that check on plants beforeyou get them. Now, you go
to a reptable, reputable nursery likethe ones we talk about on Guard nine.

(52:05):
They are not going to sell youa Chinese teleplant. They're not.
But there are people that will providethem, whether sharing them with friends or
I've seen you know, a littleI don't know, homemade garden centers.
You know, they pop up andthey just sell stuff they shouldn't sell.
Anyway, Just a little warning aboutsome of the plants. They can be

(52:30):
invasive or they can have other negativenegative effects we don't want. Well,
speaking of a beautiful landscape. Piercecapespierceescapes dot com. That's their website,
and that's where you need to gobecause I'm going to tell you about Peerscapes.
But you got to see Peerscapes,okay, And the website shows you
that when you go to the website, you are going to see all the

(52:52):
things that they can do. Theycan fix irrigation systems. You got a
poorly drained area, you should knowit if you do, because it's rained
and rain So those spots where thewater just stands, it doesn't want to
drain. How many times have youread a description of a plant that said
requires good drainage? About ninety fivepercent of the plants out there need good
drainage. Well, Pierce Scapes canfix that area. Do you want hard

(53:15):
scapes? Do you want landscape lighting? Do you just have some flower beds
that you want taken care of,You want them to be beautiful. Twelve
months out of the year, PeerScapes will come out. They'll do seasonal
color changes in those beds. They'llmult them, the'll fertilize them, they'll
eat them, they'll check the irrigation. They offer that quarterly maintenance service as
well. So the bottom line ispurescapes dot com. If you prefer to

(53:37):
give people a call rather than youknow, go to websites and things,
well, here's a number two eightone three seven oh fifty sixty two eight
one three seven oh fifty sixty.All right, you are listening to Guardline
and if you would like to callin, our phone number is seven to
one three two one two fifty eightseventy four seven one three two one two

(54:02):
fifty eight seventy four, give wella call, get you on the boards
and we will answer your questions thatyou might have. I've I've talked about
a number of different things today.One thing that I have not meant well.
I talked about gardening and containers andvegetables and containers. You can also

(54:22):
grow flowers and herbs and containers.And if there are there's different ways to
go about herbs. Some people goall out. They have a they develop
a beautiful herb garden that is geometricallybalanced. It has a very nice design.
You know, there's one called anot knot design where you have these

(54:45):
it's like there's a knot of linesthat go through the garden and plants are
planted in those areas and it's soaesthetic. It's so aesthetic. You don't
have to grow a whole herb gardento have herbs. And when I come
back from break, which I'm aboutto take here. When I come back,
I will talk about growing herbs andcontainers. So stay tuned. If

(55:06):
you'd like to give us a call, you can be first up when we
come back. Seven one three twoone two KTRH. Welcome back to guard
Line. Good to have you withus this morning. We were talking before
break about, by the way,our phone number seven one three two one
two kt RH. We were talkingbefore break about growing herbs, and I

(55:28):
was saying, you don't have tohave a beautiful herb garden to grow herbs
in. If you don't do that, that's fine. They're very gorgeous.
You see some beautiful designs and whatnot. You can grow herbs and containers,
and you can grow herbs in flowerbeds. You can grow herbs and vegetable
beds. So let's start with thevegetable beds. At the end of my
vegetable rose, I will often plantsome herb. Maybe it's chives. When

(55:49):
chives bloom, they attract tons ofpollinators. The pollinators love their blooms,
and that's one reason I do it. Maybe it is a groundcover type herb
like a regano or a bush likerosemary, which also has flowers, by
the way, especially the trailing types. But those are just an addition so
when you're out there. I usedto have a row I called my tomato

(56:13):
sauce row. It was paste tomatoes, you know, the little globe or
oblong oval tomatoes. And I hada regano on one end. I had
basil on the other end. Andso basically you could just go down the
row harvesting, bring it in,and you were ready to go on making
your pizza, pizza paste or whateveryou want to create. Anyway, you

(56:36):
can also plant herbs again, likeI said, for flowers in the vegetable
garden to help support pollinators. Thatis important. One vegetable garden I had
there wasn't room for things, andI was confined, and so I wanted
to save all my space for growingstuff I could eat, because that's why
I had that garden. So Iused large buckets and hung them on posts

(57:00):
on the fence that went around thevegetable garden. And I had a little
drip line that went down the row, and each bucket had a little drip
emetter in it and it would comeon automatically. It was on a garden
hose timer. And so those buckets, which remember containers need watering more often
they would get watered every day witha small amount of water and they would

(57:21):
bloom. They would hang down there. I had herbs that could pick there,
but I also was bringing in pollinators. In fact, there wasn't just
herbs in it. I used sometrailing flowers that have that are very attractive
to pollinators and are beautiful in aornamental type bed like a flower bed for
example, or lining a path.Herbs like chives make a good product to

(57:44):
line a path. You could useit like you would use loriope. You
know how they put loriope around bedsand things. Herbs that are trailing.
I mentioned to regano time is anotherexample, and there are others would be
good as a ground cover in certainareas. Maybe you just want some groundcovers
to go around the bottom of rosebeds. You know, as long as
they get decent amount of sunlight underthere, something like a regino could grow

(58:07):
in an area like that. SoI guess what I'm trying to say is
recognize that herbs are versatile. Rosemaryis one of the most drought tolerant plants
that we have in our landscapes.So you need a little evergreen shrub and
you have good drainage. Must havegood drainage. Rosemary would be an option,
and there you go. You justgo out there and you can pick

(58:28):
your herbs right from your landscape.Herbs also do welling containers and containers.
You can grow any kind of herbthat you want to grow, as long
as a container is big enough.You can have something upright in the center,
like lemongrass that grows upward and makesa very tall plant. If it
was a large container, you couldplant something trailing around the sides of it.

(58:52):
Another good example is pineapple sage.It's a type of salvia with beautiful
tubular red blooms that attract hummingbirds,and the foliage smells like pineapples. It's
really really nice. Now I couldgo on and on giving you examples,
but I guess what I'm saying is, let's let the herbs get out of
the vegetable garden or out of theherb garden and go wherever we want them.

(59:14):
Maybe there's just two herbs that youcare about. Maybe it's basil and
rosemary. Maybe that's all you careabout. Grow those. Basil loves summer
heat, it loves containers, Ithas blooms that do attract beats and pollinators.
So wherever you want to put it, go for it. As long
as it's sunny and warm and welldrained, Basil's going to be happy,
all right. Just a few tipsthere on herbs. If you'd like to

(59:37):
give us a call here on guardline, all you have to do is doll
seven one three. That's seven onethree two one two kt r h.
Suppose that seven one three two onetwo kt r ah. Well, I'm
gonna while we're while we're discussing differentkinds of plants and different uses for different

(01:00:01):
kind of plants, I want totalk a little bit about hanging baskets.
Now, you are very familiar withbeautiful floriferous hanging baskets. For example,
when we get to summertime, boomand Villa is a wonderful plant for hanging
baskets. It's blooms last and lastand last and last. You probably provided

(01:00:22):
proper care and in a good sunnyspot, and it will do very well
for you. Another good hanging basketplant is Scavola. Scavola is also called
fan flower fan flower. Now youcan get variations on color in it,
but primarily Scavola is a blue topurplish, a purplish blue flower, uh,

(01:00:44):
and it is very heat tolerant.I was kidding with someone recently and
said you could throw scavola on abarbecue pet when you put your burgers down,
and when you opened it up,the scavola would still be thriving.
Well, that's an exaggeration, butmy point is it never gets too hot
for scabola. It can get toosoggy for scabola. If you don't have

(01:01:05):
good drainage, it will rot ina heartbeat. But if you give it
good drainage, it performs well.Scavola another one per Slaine, and I'm
going to make it two things inone per Slaine and moss rose, which
is Portulaca. Perce Lane and Portulacahave blooms that each last a day,
and they are beautiful and they comein every color under the sun. In

(01:01:27):
fact, you would want to viewthose up close, because when you get
a whole bunch of colors on oneplant, then in one basket. Rather,
it's good to view it up close. But that can take as much
heat as Houston summers can give it. It is tough. It needs good
drainage. Of course, but it'sa succulent, so if you forget to
water it, it's gonna be okay. You may not get the bloom production
you did. It would have ifyou'd given it some moisture. But it's

(01:01:52):
very tough and it can take that. And I could go on and on.
Don't forget there's foliage plants that cangrow in containers like Dichondra are silver
pony foot. It's just like thename describes. It is very silver and
it trails down and it is beautiful. We have some in one of our
vego beds where we have a bunchof flowers and it just looks beautiful coming

(01:02:13):
over the side. Well, there'sa few tips to consider. We're going
to take a break here time forthat. When we come back, Robert,
you will be our first up forthe rest of you. Seven one
three two one two kt r H. How many of your Jim welcome back
to guard Line. Glad you're listeningtoday, and look forward to visiting with
you about the questions that you mighthave. You know, we've had a

(01:02:36):
lot of storms, a lot ofstorms that have come through and just devastated
our trees. They've knocked out ourpower, and a lot of people are
interested in generators right now. Infact, later next hour, early next
hour, We're going to have afellow in here that I'm going to pick
his brain on all kinds of aspectsof how do you find it the generator
you want, what do you lookfor, what do you make sure of,

(01:03:00):
and just kind of the overall picture, because I know a lot of
people are out shopping for generators rightnow, trying to find one so that
when the next storm hits, they'reready. Quality Home Products of Texas is
a company that can provide you witha quality generaic generator. But it's not
just the fact that they provide topof the line generators. It's their service,

(01:03:22):
by the way, right now,for I forget five hundred dollars off
in zero percent interest for eighteen months, or if you have an old one
of those portable generators you drag aroundand fire up. If you want to
turn one of those in, Idon't care what condition is in fifteen hundred
dollars off for that. Now,this is a company there's that over fourteen
thousand five star reviews, seventy seventhousand homeowners. We're actually more than that

(01:03:45):
here in the Houston area are acustomers of Quality Home Products of Texas.
When you have them come, theydo everything that most companies don't do.
Most companies sub out most things.They do it all thems. They take
care of all the you know,you've got to get a permit from the
city or the state has certain regulationsyou have to They take care of all

(01:04:05):
of the things you have to do. You don't have to chase all that
down qualityt X dot com or phonenumber seven one three Quality. We're going
to go to the phones now andstart with Robert up here in North Houston.
Hello, Robert, you need moreYes, sir, could you discuss

(01:04:26):
fullier fertilization. UH. To giveyou some background, I tried using one
of those dry granular water soluble cansand UH sprayed on the leaves and I
think I've burned the plants. Youknow, I can't get it to you,
but the leaves were kind of burned. And UH, do you use
an organic uh fertilizer or do youuse a synth? Doesn't matter? In

(01:04:50):
the summertime, it was real hot. Okay, good. Those are great
questions. And let me give youa quick overview of this organic fertilizers are
typically things like fish and mulsion andseaweed. There are other organic folier products
that you can put out. Theymay have other things in them, like

(01:05:12):
certain kinds of plant hormones, orthey may have molasses, and they are
a lot of things that they canput in those products. Those typically do
not burn. I guess I don'tknow if you spray them straight without even
mixing them and water, if theywould burn, but nobody would do that.
If you come anywhere close to theright mixture, they are not going
to burn your plant. Synthetic productsare typically salt based. If they are

(01:05:35):
too strong, they will burn.And when you're watering the base of a
plant with the soluble synthetic liquid,that's one thing. When you're spraying that
same thing on the foliage, ithas to be much more diluted. And
the labels on those products, ifthey have a label for folier application,
they will give you a much dilutedrate for that. In that case,

(01:05:58):
you won't burn. But you've gotto really watch that. You want to
spray anything early in the morning whenit's cool, and that gives it more
time to absorb and it helps cutdown on the sun baking down and contributing
to burn. There's another reason wespray in the morning. Early in the
morning, there's little openings on thebottom of the leaf called stomates that are

(01:06:20):
open up, and when you spray, you want to spray upward from under
the plant, not just on thetop. A gravity will cause the spray
to fall back down on the top, but make sure you coat the undersides
of the leaves because you get moreuptake through there. Some nutrients go into
the leaves very readily. Some nutrientsdo not go into the leaves very readily,

(01:06:43):
and so it's a matter of theright concentration. Spray early in the
morning, spray upward from underneath theplant. And primarily we're using those folio
sprays for the micro nutrients that aplant needs. The plant was designed to
take up nutrients through the roots.That's the best way to fertilize a plant.
But there are reasons to use afolier spray in addition to trying to

(01:07:05):
get nutrients in Okay click, couldyou do both of them? I mean,
would it be an advantage to usingboth folier in the soil fertilization.
There are situations where you would dothat Folier is immediate, and you know,

(01:07:28):
let's say you've got iron deficiency andyou're trying to get it in a
leaf. It's immediate, and ironcan't be moved around in the plant once
it's been put into a leaf.That's why new leaves show the iron deficiency.
The plant can't take it from oleleaves and move it to new leaves.
So iron to be an example ofone that you might want to do
a folier application for to get aquick fix on the plant, but you

(01:07:50):
still want to do the soil fertilization, and that's important. Another reason I
occasionally will folier is when I'm checkingfor a deficiency. See there's a certain
pattern that magnesium deficiency makes in plants, and it's a kind of a green
Christmas tree in the middle of anot so green leaf. And so if

(01:08:11):
I think it's magnesium, I'm mixup a little EPs and salts in water
at the proper rate, spray iton the plant, and if I see
a response of greening, then Iknow, yep, that was a magnesium
deficiency because that's all magnesium self,that's all that's in epsen salt. So
you can use it as a testsaying, oh, I need to add
more magnesium to my soil too.Now, okay, well, thank you

(01:08:36):
for information. I hope that wasn'tconfusing. No, it wasn't. Thanks
a lot, all right, sir, thank you for the call. I
appreciate you very much. Good totalk to you. That's a good question
too. By the way, let'ssee here I did want to mention.
Nelson Plant Food has plant food injars. Now, you know about the

(01:08:56):
bags of fertilizer. You know wetalk about all the time, this low
and easy, it's the slow releasenutrient for summertime, last months. But
they also have these jars you needto buy, the nutri Star jars,
hibiscus and flowering tropicals, the indoorplant nutri Star, there's the color Star.
They all come in jars. Youknow. You can refill those jars

(01:09:17):
at local retailers. There's twelve thatI'm aware of. There's twelve different local
retailers that carry Nelson product jar refillstations. So you take your old plastic
jar in. Rather than buying moreplastic and putting that in the environment,
you take your old jar in.You go up there, you pull the
handle just like you're buying peanuts ata grocery store. You know how they
have those little pool handles and youcan refill things or fillip bags. You

(01:09:41):
do that and it's much more economicalway to buy fertilizer. U Plus,
it saves the issue with that plasticall brings. So just a little tip
if you love those Nelson products,they are available a jar refill stations,
and if you send us an emailhere guard Line just some information on different
places that have it'd be glad topoint you to one, because I think

(01:10:04):
that's a great, just makes sense, good way to go. Well,
we're I hear the music. Thatmeans I've got to shut up here pretty
quick. Marty and Fairfield. Sorry, we're able to get to you this
hour. If you are able tohang on, we'll get to your next
hour. If you need to hangup and call back, we'll get you
put to the front of the line. I appreciate you calling it. I

(01:10:26):
just want to remind you that itis the time of the year when we
are planning our cool season actually warmseason, butchells to fall and still warm
season flowers for the fall garden.So don't stop piming just because it's getting
hot. Welcome to kat r hGarden Line with Scamp Richards. Just watch

(01:10:57):
him as a sad welcome back,Welcome back to the Guardline. Good to

(01:11:21):
have you back with us. Weare looking forward to visiting with you for
right now, I'm gonna get awayfrom the phones just for a little bit,
and uh, I wanna talk abouta couple of different things. I
have a you know, we've noticeda little bit of a damage to our
homes and our trees during these storms, right and I say a little bit,

(01:11:42):
uh, you know, tongue incheek. It's been devastating and people
without power, family members of mine. Both of the last two storms where
they knocked out the power seemed likethey were the last one to get back
on and they went like over aweek each time. What happens when you
got a refrigerator full of food?What happens when you have a work from
home job and you got to work. You need a generator. And that's

(01:12:06):
what people are doing right now.It is unprecedented the number of people that
are looking for Okay, that's enoughof this. I've got to get a
generator to do this. And whenI look out on the market, I
see a lot of products out thereand a lot of companies out there,
and like any industry, I don'tcare what it is, carpentry, plumbing,

(01:12:29):
gardening, anything like that, yougot people that know what they're doing
or doing a good job, andthen you got people that are not.
And I would like to help youas you are considering getting a generator with
just some basic things that you needto know, basic things that you may
need to ask the person that you'regoing to purchase that from. And I've
asked I'm looking for an expert here, and I've asked Joey Davis from Quality

(01:12:53):
Home Products to come on the showfor me and let's talk about having success
with a quality generator for you.Joey, are you there? I am,
Yes, sir, I've been waitinghere and ready to talk. Well,
thanks for patiently waiting on us.I did want to have you on

(01:13:15):
because there's a lot of information anda lot of it you've made me aware
of as we've talked and had ourconversation. But I would just like to
kind of let people know some things. You know, we're not of course,
we're not here just to talk abouty'all's products. Of course, I
don't know anybody that is more knowledgeableabout the overall world of generators and what's

(01:13:36):
out there and what happens than you. Now, boy, has this ever
been? Has this ever been?Some doozy storms that we've had? Right
with the past storm and I can'tremember what they called that storm, but
it wasn't a hurricane, but thenHurricane Barrel that came through. I bet
you guys have noticed a little bitof interest in generators. Oh man,

(01:13:58):
Yeah, that is an understatement ofall understatements. It has just been crazy
and you know the outages that occurredwhen over three million people were without power,
and you know, many folks inHouston have generators these days. So
we were just completely inundated with callsMonday and really ever since then. But
the problem was is that even thoughwe have the most sophisticated phone system available,

(01:14:21):
we were literally getting thousands and thousandsof calls an hour, and there
was there's no phone system in theworld that can handle that kind of thing.
The biggest issue was it wasn't justour clients that were calling in.
You know, the majority of clientscoming in and some of them leading long
voice fails. They were what's calledgenerator orphans. In other words, after

(01:14:44):
the winter storm of twenty one,there were three hundred and ninety two new
generator companies that sprung up in Houston. Now that's say that number again new
company. That's like when a hailstormcomes through, roofers appear out of nowhere.
It is exactly like that. Andthe bad thing was these are a
post office fox companies in other words, they're oftentimes are out of state,

(01:15:06):
they have no office here even Butwhat they would do is they would contact
local electricians, local plumbers and getthem to represent them and selling and installing
generators. Well, the problem withthat is that you don't know who is
actually installing your generator. And itis imperative that the people that are installing
your generator or servicing your generator arefactory training, factory trained technicians. If

(01:15:30):
not, your warranty is null andvoid from from the get go. So
we are you're warranty. Yeah,your warranty on the equipment is not invoid.
If it's not properly according to code, that's exactly right. Any code
violation whatsoever, it's null and void. And the reality is, you know,
we've always used our own w twoemployees they're all all of our service

(01:15:53):
techts or factory trained up in Wisconsinfor either Cola or Generat, so they
know what they're doing. But unfortunately, this mass influx of you know,
carpetbaggers or everyone want to put it. They come in after every event like
this, whether it be the winterstorm of twenty one, you know,
any hurricane that we've had in thepast. You know, these these groups,

(01:16:13):
and I'm not going to cast dispersionson them, but they come in
and they you know, they justmake money and they go away. But
what happens is well that's how that'show it is. Yeah, yeah,
it really is. So those generatorsare not maintained and might they have to
be maintained A to keep your warrantyintact and b just to make sure that
they're going to be ready when wehave an event like this. Well,

(01:16:34):
I would say another thing is makingsure you get a generator that does what
you need it to do. AndI'd like you to talk a little bit.
First of all, would you mindaddressing the issue with the portable versus
the standby generators. What's the differenceand what would you use one for?
What would you use the other one? For so people can kind of think
through what it is that they mightneed. Sure, And that's a great

(01:16:56):
question. First of all, Iwant to say that, you know,
growing up in Houston in the sixties, only the hyper wealthy people had central
AC. Most people had, youknow, the window units and that was
their air conditioning. And you know, now, of course every bitt home
is being built, they all havecentral AC. It's much the same in
the generator industry. You know,people usually start out with a portable generator

(01:17:17):
that can service portionents over your homeand it's better than nothing. But the
stand by systems that we sell andother companies sell as well, those are
set up to automatically come on theevent of an outage and for you not
to have to do anything. Youdon't have to worry about there being code
violations by a portable unit is set. You know, the portable units,

(01:17:38):
they are great in a pinch,they do have pretty severe limitations and really
the biggest thing is is that they'revery dangerous unless you really follow proper protocol
on those. So they produce caroutside just like these stand by systems.
However, the standby systems are permittedprojects and they have to meet national fire

(01:17:59):
safety codes. They have to meetlocal electrical and plumbing codes as well as
national ones, so you know you'resafe with one of those. You know,
people just don't really know how touse a portable generator, and so
you know, we'd really like totalk about that that if you've got to
use a portable generator, you haveto make it where you're not going to
have an accumulation of carbon monoxide inyour garage or inside your home or anything

(01:18:20):
like that. And that's good,good, Yeah, that's really good information.
Joey, We're gonna I have tohit a little break right here before
we go to the next segment,but when we come back, I'd like
to land in the standby generators andgive people some ideas what they need to
know about a standby generator, fromchoosing one to hooking it up. I

(01:18:42):
don't know if we can do allthat that past, but we'll give it
away. All right. I'll beright back with you in just a moment.
That sounds great, Seah, thankyou very much. All right,
welcome back to Garden Line. Iwant to jump right back into our interview
with Joey Davis. Were picking hisbrain about some things regarding generators and Joey,

(01:19:03):
you know, it probably would takean hour if you hurried to try
to explain stand by generators and allthe ways that they can work and the
things they do, and how yousize them and all that. But kind
of in a nutshell, I wasreally surprised to learn that you can set
up a stand by generator. Chrisis going to come on automatically, but
you can set it up to whereit prioritizes certain things in your home that

(01:19:27):
you wanted to prioritize, or youcan set it up to just take care
of everything. So would you talkjust briefly about that? Sure, I'd
love to. So the way thesesystems are these days that you should not
always be the case, but theway they are now for the most part,
they're what's called managed load transfer andthen enables you to get into a
generator that powers your whole house andnot necessarily rated to power your whole house.

(01:19:51):
And what I mean by that withmanage so transfer, which is literally
like ninety five percent of our projectsand most other companies as well, it
acts like a full load transfer likeyou alluded to there, but specific two
twenty items like air conditioning units,dryers, ovens, could be electric water
heaters, that sort of thing.They're still on the generator and as long

(01:20:13):
as you don't use everything at thesame time, those won't be turning off.
And the way that color and generactmanages it's a little bit different.
A color just turns off the leastimportant item. If you have multiple things
managed, a generat will turn offall of the items and then start turning
them back on in thirty minutes.But literally it's the way to go.
I mean, full load transfer iscertainly still available, but oftentimes on even

(01:20:36):
a normal sized house, you're upinto what's called a liquid cool generator to
do a full load transfer. Andwhat I mean by that yea, oh
yeah, they're car range. Theymean literally they're four to twelve cylinder,
they have radiators. They literally operatejust like a car engine. So there
is some benefits for those, namelythey're a little quieter. But to your

(01:20:59):
point, the price point is significant. The jump between the air cools,
which are like motorcycle engines, upinto the liquid cools. So you know,
it's kind of a misnomer to thinkthat when you have one of these
systems, if there's one thing moreimportant than the other. However, we
do prioritize managed items because like Isaid, on color, it would only
turn off the least important item ifthere's more than one, and on GENERAC

(01:21:23):
when they after thirty minutes, theyou know, the least important, the
most important one comes back on.Now that all being said, we flat
out and never have that happen becausewe have very specific design criteria that we
employ to make sure that we don'thave what's called a management situation unfold where
things are turning off. So wedon't just design to code. You know,

(01:21:44):
everything is based on National Electric Code. There's a very specific formulatic equation
that we use to design these interms of how big of a generator you
can get or how small you cango down. We have very specific rules
about that, such as the ACrule, And I'm not trying to get
into all specifics, but it's ourchecks and balances to make sure that things
aren't turning off, so there's nothinggo ahead and there's nothing scary about these

(01:22:10):
management of transfer systems. On myhouse, the only thing that I'm managing
is the AC and I'll never evenknow that it's managed other than I designed
it. That way, and thereason for that is those other two rules
outside of code that we use.Yeah, well, I know, you
guys do a lot of things thatare above and beyond compared to the standards
for the industry. For example,you you have all your like your electricians

(01:22:32):
are in house, your plumbers arein house, so you don't have to
contract out to other people and tryto get everybody to show up at the
right time and do what the absolutelyI mean you handle Yeah, you handle
the codes and stuff like if you'vegot to get permission from the city,
which you do, you'll handle that. And so it's like the homeowner,
that's a that's a big relief toknow that that is just all being taken

(01:22:57):
care of. And I think Ilike that that load management because it allows
you to get a generator does whatyou needed to do without buying a generator
that is just humongous and expensive.Yeah. Right. And another thing that
yeah, another thing I think thatthat is important. There are a number
of questions that people may need toask when they're going about that, And

(01:23:23):
because our time is too short today, what I've done, folks is I've
posted the garden Line Facebook page.Go to the garden Line Facebook page,
and I've posted there are a lotof questions to ask, but I posted
nine questions in a helpful checklist,and just look at those, think through
them, and as you're out shoppingfor a generator, those are some of
the things you need to ask people. So we'll save the time by just

(01:23:45):
sending Guardline Facebook page. It's rightup there. It's very very helpful,
and I appreciate you know, theknowledge and stuff that you guys bring,
because I had no idea how howmuch information is really helpful in order to
make a good decision to not onlyget the most out of your dollar,
but to understand what is and what'snot included, because you guys include things

(01:24:12):
that some companies may not tell youaren't included, and then later you find
out, well, you know thatthat's not included in what we're doing.
That would be an extra charge thatmakes our generator looks cheaper, but in
the bottom line, it really isn't. Well that's still very true. I
mean, oftentimes people come to oneof our reps or myself and say,
hey, you guys are more expensivethan X y z or ZYX. But

(01:24:36):
in an apples to apples comparison toyour point, including things that they really
need, like cell based constant monitoring. Is that tell about that real briefly?
That tell about that? That isfascinating, Yeah, it really is.
So it's like having an iPhone onthe generator and even if your powers
out and the generator won't start,we can still communicate to it. We

(01:25:00):
either know what's wrong with it andwe need to come out with certain parts,
or more often than not, wecan actually get them going remotely by
doing firmware updates or clearing fault codes, things of that nature. It's huge,
it may it's made a huge forus and our failure rates which are
really really small compared to Yeah,and the next level down, which we
see in the industry a lot iswhat is below cell bas Wi Fi.

(01:25:25):
How do people say they can talkto their generator but not really? Yeah,
it's it's what's called free Wi Fiand monitoring. It actually comes on
board with all generators. And Ican't say, because I know Kohler and
generator like that. There might besome minor players that don't even include the
Wi Fi. But that's just anifty app on the homeowner's phone. They
can see how many hours their generatorhas been running. They can remotely turn

(01:25:48):
it on or off, but thatdoes nothing for us. We want to
be able to have real time conversationwith generators and the only way to do
that is with this cell based constantmonitoring. And that is monetize for other
companies. It's just part of thedeal with us. We just make sure
that our generators work. That's ourcalling cards, so to speak. Because
these are big investments. You wantto have not just to lead anchor in

(01:26:11):
your backyard. You want to havesomething that actually functions the way that we
tell people are going to function.Mm hmm. That's good. That's good.
Well, in addition to like makingsure a company is gonna well,
asking if they'll do will you contactyou know, will you contact HOA or
cities? Are you you know thatall the rags you're talking about. Will

(01:26:32):
you come out and do a pad? I know I've seen generators where the
pad is thin, likely to breakin our moving Houston soils. You guys
can build a bigger pad so ifsomeone's going by with a lawnmower, the
pat sticks out so you don't bangyour generator and do damage that way too,
And there's a lot of little smallthings like that that I think are

(01:26:53):
important. They really are, youknow, and they're important to us because
we really care about our clientele atat the end of day day. I
mean, that's why we build theoversized concrete slabs. We don't put these
on what's called the gen pad,which is just a very lightweight concrete the
same size of the generator, andthen there's no steel. It's just a

(01:27:13):
very short, lightweight pad, whichis easier. But we don't do the
things the easy way, you know. We'll form up with two by six's,
you know, an oversized pad sixinches larger than the generator all around,
and then let that cure break theforms off and then you have a
real sturdy piece of concrete that thesegenerators are anchor bolted too. So you
know, these are vibrating pieces ofequipment. They're more like motorcycles than anything

(01:27:39):
else on the air cools and thencar engines. So those vibrates, you
want them to be firmly affixed tosomething really bulky and heavy just to keep
them from vibrating. And plus itcuts down on the noise factor as well,
right, and they can some ofthem can be powered by natural gas
or whatnot. And every time youadd, you know, here we have
electricity, now ride natural gas.Uh. There's a lot of codes,

(01:28:01):
and there's a lot of permits,and there's a lot of things that have
to happen because this thing is setup to where it's set up. And
I was surprised at how fast theycome on. Uh, you know,
power goes out, and how fastwill one of these kick on when it
well? A colar A coler waitsfour seconds to determine if it's an actual

(01:28:21):
outage. A generator waits, generateGENERAC waits ten seconds. Both of them
then take seven seconds to spool upto sixty herbs, so seventeen total seconds
for generat, eleven seconds for colar. So it is a very brief period.
And then when the power comes backon the power company it absolutely doesn't

(01:28:42):
just turn the generator off. Itwaits until the power company is delivering an
exact sixty heard sign wave for tenfull seconds. Then they tell us why
that's important, tell us why that'simportant, because everybody's experienced from the power
comes back on in your house,it's on off, on, off,
on off. That is so destructiveto motherboards and all the appliances that we

(01:29:03):
have, and see our TVs.I mean everything has got a computer in
it these days, and that dirtyenergy is what it de fries so many
people's washing machines and dryers. Youknow, the electronics section this acts like
a firewall against that dirty energy.So your generator generator bay one for fifteen
or twenty minutes after everybody else's livescome on, but that whole time it's

(01:29:26):
protecting you and your electrical system andappliances. See, these are things that
I wouldn't have known. I knowa lot of people wouldn't know. And
I think, you know, kindof a bottom line deal here is call
and talk to people, get theinformation. Call around. But you guys
are from quality. Definitely include qualitybecause what you're going to find, and

(01:29:47):
this is true when you buy anything. You know, you go to buy
a Chevrolet and then you go overto the Ford dealership and you hear and
you hear things that you didn't hearat the other place. You know what
I'm saying. I think they needto get the whole package and then make
their decision which would company they wantto go with, which what generator they
want to buy and stuff, butyou don't know what you don't know.

(01:30:10):
And that's one reason, Joey,I appreciate you coming on today so that,
you know, we just get kindof an intro to some of the
things that people may not have beenaware of. And I really appreciate it.
We could talk to you for aday. I mean, there's a
lot of more information, but goto my facebook page, Guardenline facebook page,

(01:30:30):
look at the questions we had here. I've got a link to Quality
Home on it. If you wantto, you know, save that link.
I know a lot of people arebuying generators right now. It is
crazy the number of people that havesaid that's enough these last two storms.
I need a generator. And dependingon what you need, and the folks
at Quality Home they'll tell you,I mean, if you don't need one

(01:30:51):
of these standbys, if what you'rewanting to do a portable will do,
they'll tell you that. But thebottom line is get your infrom so that
your dollars are well spent and thenwhen the problem comes, you've got the
equipment and the setup that's needed todo what you needed to do. Joey,
I've run past my break here.Thank you, so much for being

(01:31:12):
on. Sorry to have to cutoff so fast now, it's very very
okay. I'm really glad you mentionedthat checklist, you know, speaking about
the fact that we don't use subcontractors. It's really not specific to us,
but that's huge. You don't wantto use a customer using contractors for obvious
reasons. Thank you very much.You bet well, Yeah, thank you.
Good to see good to talk toyou again. Hey, we're going
to be right back. Take alittle break here, and when we come

(01:31:33):
back, we'll be back with yourgardening question. So call in seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventyfour. Welcome, more, welcome,
Welcome back to garden Line. Godto have you with us. I hope
that was helpful for you. Iknow, I'm telling you the number of
generators being sold right now. AndI just like anything any business, you
get out there and you don't knowwhat you need to ask, You don't

(01:31:56):
maybe know the things that are availableor not of available, or thing you
know, it's the whole deal.I hope that was helpful for you,
guys. I certainly do. Uh. We are back now, ready to
take your calls. Seven one threetwo one two five eight seven, four,
seven, one three two one twofifty eight seventy four. Give us
a call and we'll visit with youabout the things that are of interest to

(01:32:19):
you. One of the things thathappens, you know, we talked about
all the rain we've been getting,and when that happens to a clay soil,
especially certain types of clays types wehave here, they swell up,
they actually get bigger, uh,and then when it gets dry, they
shrink down, getting smaller. That'swhy you see these cracks in the yard.

(01:32:41):
If you have you ever been outin the backyard of a certain kinds
of clay soils where when it's reallyhot and dry, their cracks big enough
to lose a small child in.I mean, that's an exaggeration, but
you know what I'm talking about.That's a shrunken soil. And what happens
when it gets bigger, smaller,bigger, smaller. It cracks sidewalk,
It cracks foundations, it cracks driveways. Fix my slab. Foundation repair is

(01:33:05):
an X. They are experts inproperly assessing and repairing a foundation. Now.
Ty Strickland has been doing this fortwenty three years. It's a local,
small, small business. They havethe experience that you want. And
the thing I like about Fix mySlab and Tie is that they make sure

(01:33:26):
when they tell you they're going tobe there, they're on time. Secondly,
they price things fair. They're goingto make sure you get a reasonable
fair price for the work that they'regoing to do. And then finally they
fix it right. You know,Tie is a native Estonian, fifth generation
Texan. He lives here, heknows this area, he knows our soils.
If you tell him you're a guardlinelistener, they'll give you a free

(01:33:49):
estimate on what it would take.Let me just say this, if you
see a crack in the brick,if you see a crack in the sheet
rock inside, or if doors aresuddenly sticking that didn't stay before something is
moved, have them come out,do that estimate, take a look at
it, see what's going on andwhat might be needed, and then you
can make your decision. But don'tput it off. It doesn't get better,

(01:34:12):
it only gets worse, and theissues become worse, in many cases
more expensive. So go ahead andgive them a call if you see those
kinds of symptoms two eight one,two five five forty nine forty nine,
two eight one two five five fortynine, forty nine, or go to
the website fix myslab dot com Fixmyslab dot com. We've talked about a

(01:34:39):
number of things today, and Iwas mentioning earlier that slowly fertilizers are important
for the summertime because they gradually releasethe nitrogen over time. So when you
apply them now, they're going tofeed all the way up into your fall
fertilization that three months, some evenfour months out there are going to do

(01:35:00):
that. That's not the only waythat you can fertilize, though. You
can take an immediate release fertilizer andyou can apply it in small doses over
a period of time and achieve asimilar result. And an example would be
sweet green. Sweet green is anitroposs product. It's a molasses based product,

(01:35:23):
and all organic gardeners know that usingmolasses stimulates by providing carbon stimulates beneficial
bacteria and microbes in the soil,and that's important. So sweet grain is
going to dissolve away by the way. The product smells wonderful. That's what
it's called sweet green, and itdissolves a way into the soil. So

(01:35:45):
what I would do is. Iwould take a bag of sweet Green,
it's eleven percent nitrogen. I wouldput about half of it on now,
let's say five pounds right now,and then I would wait six to eight
weeks and do that again. Andby doing that, you take an immediate
release fertilizer and you spread it outover time. I mean, if you
wanted to, you could put itin three applications out there. But sweet
grain, if you're looking for anatural based product, if you're looking for

(01:36:08):
something that is going to be stimulatingto the soil microbes that are in the
soil, that's a product that Ithink you need to take a good look
at. And sweet green is youknow, it's widely available at a lot
of different places. I mean,you're going to find sweet Green at Ace
Hardware stores, for example, AceHardware all over the place. It's not

(01:36:29):
hard finding one of the forty AceHardware stores here in the area. By
the way, when you're in there, if you get your sweet Green,
remember that this rain is also bringingon mosquitos, and when you go into
Ace, you're going to find everythingyou need for mosquitos too. Mosquitos it
just takes some a number of fewdays and they can go. Some types
especially, can go through their wholelife cycle from an egg to a larva,

(01:36:51):
to a pupa to an adult,and now they're flying around biting you
when you're trying to sit outside andenjoy your patio in the evening. Well
need mosquito dunks. Those are thethings we put out in water to prevent
the larvae from growing up. Doyou need a mosquito repellent? Do you
need a fogging machine? What doyou need for that? They've got it.
While you're an ace, Make suringget fire ant bait because fire ants

(01:37:15):
are also popping to the surface nowas they build up their soil nests in
order to escape soggy wet conditions downlow, and you can see where they
are with a bait. You don'thave to treat mounds. In fact,
you shouldn't just treat mounds. Youtreat all the area and your properties.
You can go a wide area aroundamound, but those workers are out there

(01:37:36):
feeding, and with a bait,the workers will bring it back, feed
at the colony, feeded the queen, and it shuts everything down. They
work a little slower than an individualmound treatment, but they work longer than
an individual mound treatment and always startwith a bait and then go to the
individual treatments for any that might haveescaped the bait application. ACE has got

(01:37:58):
both both the both the bait,both the individual mound treatment. They have
everything you need. ACE is theplace for everything you need to have a
beautiful, enjoyable garden, lawn patioarea so that you can get outside and
enjoy what you've created out in yourlandscape. Our phone number if you'd like
to give us call seven one threetwo one two fifty eight seventy four and

(01:38:23):
we're going to go to the phonesnow and talk to Marty. Marty,
welcome to Garden Line, and thanksfor being such a patient caller. I
know we've kind of done the yoyo thing with you, like hang on,
go away, hang on, goaway. Okay, No, it
was very interesting. I'm glad youbrought him on that. Yeah, it

(01:38:45):
was awesome. It was awesome tolisten to it. No, don't ever
apologize. That's okay. Hey,I have a sideyard that I really don't
go over very often except to mow, and it's been it's where the swell
is. You know. They builtthe house twenty three years ago, and
the swell where the water runs outto the street has been sinking and it

(01:39:11):
has gotten a lot of Virginia buttonweed. So celsius is not my answer,
and I've sprayed round up around thestepping stones where it comes up,
and that kills it, but italso leaves, you know, blank areas
where other weeds will grow. Sothis whole side, I'm thinking that I'd

(01:39:33):
like to build it up with sometype of soil. If you could tell
me what type to put in,like an all natural garden where you can
grow some flowers to be cut forthe house, just seeds and daffodils and

(01:39:55):
things that are pretty and bulbs andjust a lot of different plants with a
little walkway down the middle. SoI'm wondering if you could help me define
number two, number one, howto kill the large area button weed,
and number two what type of bulksoil to bring in. If you need

(01:40:16):
to put me on hold for abreak, that's okay, okay, well
I think we do, and whenwe come back, I'll give you the
answers that you've asked for. Thankyou. That's a very good question,
folks. Will be right back frombreak and with Marty's question and the answer
to Virginia button weed and proper soils. Welcome back to garden Line. Welcome

(01:40:36):
back. We are going to continueour question with Marty. Marty, you
said something about Celsius. Did yousay it didn't work? It hasn't worked
for you. No, it's justtoo expensive to put over on this side.
Okay. I just sent you anemail too to show you what I
was looking at. If you canpull that ut, see if I can
find that while we're talking here.Yeah, Celsius is the best for killing

(01:40:59):
it, but I unders that thegood new products come with big price tags.
So you're going to take that area. You want to get rid of
all everything in the area so youcan put kind of gardening stuff in there,
right, Yes, what you're saying, Okay, Yes, I want
to build it up with soil,Go ahead, Yeah, hoeing digging it

(01:41:21):
out as an option, Spraying itis probably the better option. Using a
product that kills everything would probably bethe best bet because you can have a
mix of the button we eat andI can see the Saint Augustine and other
things in that area, and thenbringing in the soil after that. You
don't want stuff to push through thenew soil you put in, so I
always like to get a clean slatebefore I start. A quality saw mix

(01:41:45):
you could use. You've got acouple of ways that you can go.
You can contact, you know aplace like let's say a Nature's Way up
in the Conro area, and Ithink that's somewhat close to you. There
probably the closest place I would Iwould send you to. They can deliver
so a mixes and just tell themI need a top soil type mix to

(01:42:08):
go in that area. If youwant more of a bed mix, you
can certainly do that. That's goingto have a lot of organic matter in
it, like a rose soil wouldjust be one example of a bad mix.
But just know that those are goingto sink down over time, just
like potting soil in a flower poteach year gets lower and lower as it
decomposes away. So you would needto come up a little extra high.

(01:42:30):
But with a top soil it wouldtend to hold its you know, it
would tend to not sink down asmuch. Either way would be fine to
go, so top soil I probablywould. How much how high do you
want to come up there? Well, it's really Louise is. He knows
me from yours gone by the groundup. So yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:42:58):
I just want to want to buildit up, and I can't.
I can do a lot of thebuilding in the middle and over to the
fence part, but I don't wantto build up too much on the house
side because of the wheakholes. Yes, but I just but okay, does

(01:43:20):
that area stand in water well?Because yes, it has gotten to that
point where it has depressed so muchthat it is sort of standing in water,
which is why the Virginia button wehas taken over. Okay, so
you do have the options. Numberone. I don't know where the downspouts

(01:43:41):
are and how that all flow works, but that'd be something to consider.
But I have an area in myyard that was kind of load towards the
back fence like that, and Iput just a treated wood two by ten
or something across there and used thatas a back bed, and then I
filled the whole thing in so thatI could raise it up a little bit
without piling soil up against the fence, which is not a good plan.

(01:44:03):
But anyway, that'd be another option, not the only way to do it,
for sure, Okay, And okay, And then you were going to
tell me how to kill the Virginiabutton weed over a large area. I
can't do the I can't do thetill Okay, I can't do type Life

(01:44:24):
of type products will do it.And I know people have their opinions about
rund up or whether they want touse it or not, that's up to
you. But Glavas type products killthe grass, They killed the broad leaf
weeds. They kill a lot ofthings. And the roundup, Yeah,
that round up is an example.There's there is a cleanup is another brand.
There's a whole bunch of brands ofglyphas now. In fact, roundup

(01:44:46):
has actually moved on past glyphasate andmost of the round up you see in
garden centers now is a different ingredientthan glyphasate. Silk all round up,
confusing is all get out. Butyeah, you'd have to. That's why
I say glifeasay because it you know, you would find it somewhere else.
There are other things. I mean, you could spray a broad leaf weed

(01:45:08):
killer in there, and then youcould spray a grass killer in there,
but then you're putting two products insteadof just one. But if you the
Virginia button weed isn't going to comeback from underground, So I don't know
if you have somebody that you knowcome in there and scrape it all off,
that's another option you could do.Saint Augustine doesn't live underground either.
You scrape off the top and it'sgone. I'm a little old for all

(01:45:33):
that. Well that's okay, that'sokay, I'll just okay, I'll yeah,
you need you need some grandkids thatare misbehaving, because you know,
when I was growing up, whenI misbehaved, I had to go pull
weeds in the garden. And I'mnot going to say anything other than we
had the most weed free garden.And you can figure out why that might

(01:45:54):
be. But anyway, all right, Mark, Okay, Well anyway,
thank you, I recommend since youhave that relationship with Louis at heirloom.
Yeah, heirloom can get you throughorange rock and molts. They can get
you the top soil. They canget you various kinds of bed mixes too,
So no heirloom heirloom soils. Louiseis at a John John and Ian

(01:46:19):
Ferguson are at Nature's Way, andI'm telling you both those companies. You
say you a good product. Allright, thank you so much. Thanks
to the calling you take care ofall right. Bye, okay, folks,
Well that was a that was agood segment, Madam Montgomery. We
weren't able to get to you thissegment, but we will put you up

(01:46:39):
first when we come back if youcan hang on a little bit longer.
Back with you as well. Appreciateyou guys listening in today the Garden Line.
We're here to help you solve problems. We're helping you to identify plants.
We're helping you diagnose disease and insectissues, whatever kind of whatever you
need, We're happy to do that. Try to point you in the right

(01:47:01):
direction because you know, gardening isthe best hobby that there is. It
just does. I may be biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
It is a great hobby. Sowe wanted to be fun and unsuccessful.
Welcome to Katie r. H.Garden Line with Skip rictor it's just watch

(01:47:33):
him as we may see a sign. Garden Line. Welcome back. Good

(01:47:56):
to have you back with us.We have got another hour to go here
to that and we're happy to takeyour call if you've got a gardening question
at seven one three two one twok t r H. We're gonna just
make haste and run straight out toMontgomery, Texas to talk to Matt this
hour. Hello Matt, and welcometo garden Line morning. Skip. How's
it going? It's going well?How can we help the good? I

(01:48:20):
got a having a tremendous amount ofmushrooms in front yard backyards. I know
with the increased rain, I meanthere there, you could be a causation
of it, but just didn't knowif there was something in the soil.
I mean, I look around.None of my neighbors have have any of

(01:48:41):
the the amount of mushrooms that I'mhaving. And you know, as I
as I as I see them,I'm pulling it up by the roots.
But anything else I can be doing, treating it or just just continue to
pull them up. Yeah. Yeah, you know, we just say on
mushrooms, just ignore because ninety ninepoint nine percent of them are not a

(01:49:02):
concern. And then the mushroom itselfis just the fruiting body. So you
know, it's not like you wouldspray the mushroom or anything. Uh,
It's part of nature. And whenwe go through these periods this last crop
is because of all the rain wehad and there was a little bit of
a dropping temperature from all the cloudyweather and rain. We'll see another big
crop of mushrooms. And we getinto fall, get a little cold front

(01:49:25):
in and cools off and get somerain with it. They'll be back.
It's just fungi that are growing undergroundthat when they when conditions are right,
they send up their fruiting structures,and that's what we see. There's not
a good spray for them anyway.Okay, aren't very good. We'll keep
pulling them up. Yeah. WhatI like to tell people is since we

(01:49:46):
can't do anything about them, getyou a golf club and have some fun.
Well, we pull them up andbring them to the chickens. Oh
really, chickens eat them. Ihad never heard that one. That's good
to know. I guess they're notboiled all right, man, Thanks Matt.
I appreciate you Yanks. Take care. Yeah, you know, the

(01:50:12):
nature is constantly a work. Whatwe see in nature is not even scratching
the surface of what's going on.Like you look at the soil and you
know, clear off all the plants. Look at this soil. You say,
well, that's dart right that youdon't see what's going on there,
But what's going on there is awhole nother world of microbes. Do you

(01:50:34):
know that? Okay? Fun factnerd alert fun fact. If you take
a pinch of quality garden soil,you know rich gardens, put a pinch
of it, a kidney bean sizedpinch in your hand, you have literally
hundreds of millions of microbes right there. If you put a little pile of

(01:50:54):
soil in your palm. Sometimes yousee these pictures and somebody's holding a big
handful of soil. We'll put apile half that size in your palm.
You have more living things in yourhand than there are people in the face
of the earth. But that's soakin. For just a minute, soil is
alive. There's bacteria. There's atype of bacteria that are that are beneficial

(01:51:16):
to plants. There's bacteria types thatfix nitrogen out of the air into a
formed plants can use. There's bacteriathat produce antibiotics. There's bacteria that produce
and by the way, we havethose as products. By the way they're
available. Have you ever used anantibiotic cream on your arm? You know
the the neomycin, neomix, andpolysporin, those those kinds of things.

(01:51:39):
Those ingredients are actually produced by soilbacteria. Now in a pharmaceutical company,
they're growing them in a big vat. They're creating them in a big vat.
They're not raising a bunch of bugsto make them. But soil bacteria
produce those antibiotics, that kind ofantibiotic. Soil bacteria produce insecticides. That's
where BT comes from. It's anaturally occurring soil bacteria. That's where the

(01:52:00):
BT for mosquitoes, the BT israeliensisform comes from. That's a soul type
of bacteria. They're bacteria that doall kinds of things like that. There
are fungi that are constantly going throughbreaking down stuff no other microbe can break
down. We're talking about bone,we're talking about fingernail, We're talking about

(01:52:24):
growing up against a rock and producingan acid to dissolve the rock and release
those minerals. They're fungi that cando that stuff. They're the heavy lifters
in the soil. They're just allkinds of beneficial organisms. Anyway, it's
alive, so well, it's alive, and it does a lot of things

(01:52:45):
to make itself better and it helpsus to decompose organic matter. What.
So, there's a lot of lifegoing on out there in the landscape and
we just don't think about it unlessyou're kind of a nerd about it like
I am, and it's something youthink about a lot. Uh, there
is just a lot going on.That's not even getting into the arthropods that
are in the soil and what theydo, the earthworms in the soil and

(01:53:08):
what they do. It's just it'sjust really really cool stuff. All right.
Well, our phone number if you'dlike to give us a call,
we got some time here seven onethree two one two kt RH seven to
one three two one two kt rH and give us a call. Be
happy to visit with you about thekinds of questions that you might have.

(01:53:31):
Uh. These storms have knocked downa lot of trees that have led to
a lot of power outages, whichis what we were talking about earlier.
We're talking about generators and how topick a generator? Want to ask about
a generator? H Martin spoon Moore. An Affordable Tree Service is our go
to guy here on garden Line formaintaining your trees. And right now,

(01:53:54):
what that might include is doing theselective pruning to help the wind pass through
the trees more efficiently, to takea little bit of the stress off the
trees, to make them safer duringheavy winds. And that's not just somebody
runn up there with chainsaw on hackingstuff off. It's knowing what you're doing
that is important. And a qualityarborist knows what they're doing. I can't

(01:54:16):
stress enough the importance of proper treecare. Maybe you have broken limbs,
maybe you have narrow branch angles.Those are the ones that typically split.
You drive around town, you seea split tree and you look at the
split, and almost always right upat the top is a black area where
a narrow branch angle has pressed barkagainst bark, and you can't It doesn't

(01:54:39):
join, It doesn't heal across there, or create tissue across there. It
just becomes a black area. Asthose branches get bigger, they push each
other apart and it's just waiting fora little push from the wind to split
open. Well, Martin can workon things like that. He can train
trees. He knows how to traintrees, He knows how to work around
trees. Are you're going to putin a slab you're a tree? Are

(01:55:00):
you going to put in a trenchnear a tree? You need to call
Martin and have him come out forall those things. I know right now,
you know, storm trimming is thebig topic of the day. But
he can do it all seven onethree, six nine nine twenty six sixty
three seven one three six nine ninetwo six six three Or go to his
website it's Afftree Service dot com.And I guarantee you he is very busy

(01:55:26):
right now with all the things thathave been going on. But tell him
your guardline listener, get up higherin the list. There takes you up
in the list and he treats hisgarden line listeners very well. And when
when you do that, have himcome out. Have its scheduled and let's
have him take a look. Hecharges to come out and take a look
at your trees. I can't justrun around looking at stuff, you know,

(01:55:49):
just because people are curious. Soit costs one hundred and fifty to
have him come out, But ifyou hire him to do work, that
one fifty goes right into the work, so you don't lose it. It's
not us for coming out. Uh, it goes into the work that you
have him do a FF tree servicedot Com seven one three six nine nine
twenty six sixty three. You arelistening to garden Line. Our phone number

(01:56:13):
is seven one three two one twofifty eight seventy four. Seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. I'll be right back. Welcome back,
Welcome back to garden Line. Goodto have you with us. Hey,
if you got a question there wehave here. We've got two more
segments, three more segments left togo, uh before we shut things down
for the weekend until next weekend onguarden Line. So give us a call

(01:56:34):
at seven one three two one twok t r H. Seven one three
two one two k t r H. This is your chance. I uh.
We talked about a lot of thingstoday. We've covered everything from lawns
to trees to UH. Certainly we'dspent that time talking about generators. And
you know how to make a goodchoice, and you know anything you purchase

(01:56:56):
I don't, I don't care whatit is. You need to do your
homework ahead of time, and Ihighly recommend that whoever you end up purchasing
something from, get the facts andit always helps. My way of doing
it is always I'll talk to twoor three people and I'll hear something from
one. Then I'll ask them,well, what do you do about that?
Or what do you think about that? And I'll hear their answer,

(01:57:17):
and you know, just get thefacts that is important. Caveat emptor anymy
know what that means Latin words,caveat emptor means let the buyer beware.
That is a good point on anythingfrom automobiles to you name it that you
purchase. Well, I wanted tospend a little bit of time today talking

(01:57:39):
about summer planting. When it getshot, the enthusiasm for gardening tends to
wane. We see it every yearand I can see a number of calls
that come into guard Line. Itvaries through the year, but the fact
is that summer is a time whenthere is still plenty that we need to

(01:58:00):
be outdoing. There's watering specifics,there's fertilizing specifics, there's planting specifics.
We have plants that grow in theheat of Southeast Texas, just fine plants
that when it comes to gardening,for example, there are a number of
greens that I like to grow inmy garden that come from areas that are

(01:58:23):
as sultry, hot and humid asHouston typically places like certain parts of Africa
or certain parts of maybe India orthat region of the world, and you
get these things like Malabar, forexample. Our black eyed peas are from
that area. They grow through thesummer just fine. There are Molechhia is
another green that does well in thatthere's edible perse langes. Anyway, there

(01:58:45):
are plants that can take that.When it comes to flowers, Angelonia loves
heat. It just blazes through theheat. I mentioned Scavola earlier that does
well. There are things like theHelianthus calls sun believable, like unbelievable,
but was sun at the beginning sunsunbelievable over a thousand blooms during the course

(01:59:09):
of a season on that plant.That just blooms and blooms and blooms and
blooms and blooms of blooms and blooms. Got some in my garden. It's
doing well. There's pirates pearl thatis a white, small, white flower,
but the little short, bushy likeplant just covers up with those unbelievable
flowers. Excuse me. Pirates pearlflowers. I see all kinds of beneficial

(01:59:30):
insects on these two as well.Zenias do good through the summer heat.
Salvias are many Salvias just bloom allthe way through summer heat. Salvia is
my favorite genus plant of flowering plants. It is because there's so many.
They're just so many. But justbecause it's hot outside and it's probably get

(01:59:51):
a little hotter. Now that weget this cloud and rain that's moving on
opening up the sunshine, it's stilltime to plant. Have to do when
you plant in the summer is rememberto pretend that that plant is still in
its pot underground. So imagine ifyou bought less about a gallon plant and
you set it in a hole inthe ground and covered it up with soil.

(02:00:14):
All the roots would be in thatpot still right, and they all
they would stay that they couldn't gobeyond that. When you take it out
of the pot and plant it thesame way, pretend that that pot is
still underground. That tells you whereto water. You water right at the
base in small amounts. Over time, as that thing begins to grow roots
out into the soil around it,you're wetting larger areas you always want to

(02:00:36):
wedd a little beyond where the rootsare always. But you can keep a
plant alive, just like if youset that pot on your patio and went
on every day and water did acouple of times. I mean you could.
You can do that. You canstill plant. And there are plants
that will bloom well in late summerand fall, and you ought to get
some of those in. Maybe I'lltalk about some of those late summer and

(02:00:56):
fall bloomers here in a little bit. Right now, I'm going to run
over the and we're going to talkto Bill and Conroe. Hello, Bill,
Welcome to garden Line. Good morning, Skip, thanks for taking my
call. And I I've taken mybackyard. I've killed all of the Sant
Augustine and Bermuda mix and all ofthe other stuff in there. I've just

(02:01:19):
letting it settle and kind of tillingit up and moving and anyway it's ready,
getting ready. I probably have tobe thinking about waiting till the end
of August before I put anything down, just being easier to manage, I
think without the heat that I expectin August. So is there a different
variety from Saint Augustine and bermuda thatis shorter that I can walk on without

(02:01:42):
hurting it. I'm not thinking ofputting green quality, but how about croquet
quality. Okay, oh boy,that's a good question. Well, first
of all, I think your ideato wait until August is not about idea
because even though you've sprayed it andkilled everything, you see, the bermuda

(02:02:03):
is not all gone. It'll besprigs that come back up, and then
you'll have to spray them again,and then maybe even a third time,
because it's just the nature of thebeasts that usually one spraying doesn't kill everything
because there's some that hadn't even maybestuck its head up yet for you to
spray, so n't gotten the nutsedge is the nuts sedge is definitely coming

(02:02:27):
back. Yeah, well, thenuts edge the forget round up on nuts
edge. That's not the way Igo about I've almost finished a publication that's
going on my website about nuts edge, and that's one of the things I'll
tell you in there. Uh,manage is a good product. If you
can find manage, there is asedge ender. It's also a good product

(02:02:48):
for nuts edge. But definitely that'sgonna take maybe even at least the August,
you're gonna spray it. It's gonnago down, and then you're gonna
see it we sprout again and you'regonna spray it and go. So you
need to stay with that particular thingto knock out as much of it as
you can. But I'll let y'allknow when when there's publications up there and

(02:03:08):
you really need to read it.I'd be great anyway. What I would
you know you could do as zoisa. There are some soisas. It can
be mowed very short as a lawngrass, and they do well here.
There's some type that have a littlewider leaf. It's only about a third
as wide as Saint Augustine, butit's it's wider than the fine textured zoysias,
which have a leaf. It's skinniersomeone skinnier than bermuda grass. It's

(02:03:30):
a very narrow little leaf. Youcan mow it low if you want to
mow regularly, can keep it downat a lower rate, and it makes
a beautiful lawn or and it wouldbe a good croquetlawn even if you moted
at a higher rate. There aresome other good groundcovers that you could use,
like uh frog frog fruit would beone, but it's not foot traffic

(02:03:55):
tolerant. So if you walk arounda lot you're going to it's not going
to do well. So I thinkyou if you want to switch out,
switch over to one of the Zoisiaspalisades. There is an example of one
with wider leaves. There are othergood ones. Those are a variety of
so idier palisades. Zoysia has awider leaf. I has developed it in

(02:04:15):
as well as some other southern uhyou know, extension services here in the
south. It's widely used about thesouth. And you drill these from seed.
No, you need to have sodand you need to solid sodom don't
don't plug them. Their spread rateis slower than Saint Augustine and Bermuda,
and so don't plug them. Justsolid sod areas of them, all right,

(02:04:45):
And that Zoysia will take care of, will handle the heat in the
sun and all that absolutely does.I've got I've got palisades in my yard
and it does very very well.A little bit shade tolerant, not quite
as much as Saint Augustine, butit's good. That's pretty good as close.
And then there's a fine texture onecalled xeon ze o n. There's

(02:05:08):
there's a bunch of cultivars of bothtypes of zoisiograss. I'm just giving you
a couple that I'm familiar with it. But the fine textured one is just
beautiful, just beautiful. Look,I'm o mind a little bit high.
I'm starting to mow it back downlower now, just to experiment and learn.
But I'm a little higher and itlooks like kind of a little mini

(02:05:30):
meadow out there. So that's kindof cool, is often but but normally
though we would we would keep itand maintain it with the regular mowing.
That's the way you get density.You start fluctuating and letting it big and
cutting it back, you lose density. Is it susceptible in a big way?
To new to from my neighbors kindof coming into it. There is

(02:05:57):
not an available over the counter optionfor controlling Bermuda grass and other turf grasses
like Zoisia or Saint Augustine grass.Uh, they're just not and then they
coexist. That's the way it is. So you either I guess there's a
commercial one, but you can't.You can't buy any Texas for I've seen

(02:06:19):
I forget what it's called. Thereis a product, well, there is
a there is something that some landscaperscan get that they use that helps kill
the bermuda out of the Saint Augustine. I don't think it's okay to use
in Zoysia. I'd have to checkthat. But anyway, with that,

(02:06:39):
I don't even want to open upthe hopes on that one. It's a
pea because everybody would love that.You got to you got to have a
professional that does it. If youbought a bottle of it, if you
could find ten neighbors who wanted todo it too, you could put the
cost and make it somewhat reasonable.But you see what I'm saying, it's
there's I like to just say there'snot an option. Although yeah, anyway,

(02:07:02):
yeah, yeah, okay, verygood, Thanks skipping, all right,
take care of Bill. Good luckwith that, and sounds like you're
off to a good start with that, making sure you get rid of all
of it before you put more in. You know, one option I didn't
think about this to tell Bill,but one option would just be to go
to the go to the bermuda grass, to go with the dwarf bermuda.

(02:07:25):
One of the semi dwarfs, notthe golf course green type, but something
like for a football field or fora golf course fire away. There are
those. You just have to permuted, be ready for it to crawl into
your flower beds. All right,we're gonna take a little quick break for
the news. Brian in Cyprus.She will be first up when we come
back. Well, Frome the gardenline. Good to have you back.
We got another half hour left today. Looking forward to talking to you about

(02:07:47):
the things that are of interest toyou. You know, I was recently
in a Wilbird's Unlimited store and I'malways just surprised at how the products that
they have and the quality of theproducts that they have. Now, I've
told you before I buy my gardenor my garden my bird seed there from
All Birds Unlimited. And I dothis for this reason. You don't get

(02:08:11):
a bunch of junk in the bagcheap bird seeds. Got a bunch of
red bebes. The birds kick itout, they don't want to eat it.
Now, you got a weed growingon the ground underneath it. Wabirds
Unlimited, they have what they putin the bag the birds want to eat.
Now, maybe if it's you know, sunflower holes are going to crack
that open to get the seed inside. And you can even buy hullless mixes

(02:08:31):
from All Birds where you don't evenhave that coming out of the feeder.
Nesting super Blend one of the bestmixes you can buy. They have several
different mixes. You go in,you tell them, look, here's the
birds I most want to attract.What is the best blend. And what
they're going to do is also considerthe season that we're in, because the
best blend depends partially on the seasonthat we're in. They've got wonderful feeders.

(02:08:54):
My favorite feeder came from All Birdsand it is the squirrel excluding feeder.
It is very effective. I tooka little video of a scuare.
I need to post that to Facebooktoo, a little video of a squirrel
climbing up and they got mad along time ago because they figured out they
couldn't get in it. But everynow and then they still climb the pole
and you know, give it atry, but it ain't gonna work.

(02:09:16):
It's a great feeder. They havebird houses. They have you know,
like a bird bath. They haveall kinds of quality books and the main
thing is you walk in there andno matter what you want to ask them,
they're going to give you good advice. There's six Wildbirds stores in the
Greater Houston area. Go to WBUdot com, forward slash Houston, WBU

(02:09:37):
dot com forward slash Houston, findthe wild Birds near you and go visit.
Today. Be a good day todo that. You know, Wilbird's
unlimited. They just it's just theplace to go. It's where you can
trust what you buy and trust whatyou hear when you walk in the door.
Let's go now to the phones.We are going to go to see

(02:10:00):
who's next. Here. We haveBrian in Cyprus, Texas. Hello Brian,
Hello skip hire you. I'm doingwell. Thanks? What's up today?
Very good? So, my SaintAugustine is still recovering from last summer's
damage. And while it's recovering nicelywith all of the wet weather that we've

(02:10:20):
been having, unfortunately the broad leavedweaves had really taken hold. And I
read on the labels the the postemergent herbicides. You can't really begin to
address it because the temperatures are toohigh, or they're alternatives other than purely
just bending down and trying to pullthem all. Yeah, there is there

(02:10:41):
is primarily one alternative. It's notcheap, but it's a very effective and
it can it can be in thelower nineties. And this product is not
going to hurt your Saint Augustine whatI would do though, even with this
product, I'm about to tell youyou want to do it early in the
morning at the coolest time the day. That way it dries up before the
sun comes baking out there. Imean, who knows, it may be

(02:11:05):
a day we're going to go toninety eight degrees, and so you just
want to be careful with it.But the product is called Celsius, which
is a good name because that's likecelsius, like the temperature, and it
works well. You buy it insmall packages and you just use it as
efficiently as you can. You gotsome neighbors that are willing to go in

(02:11:26):
with you on it, that maybe another option. But it's very effective
even against some of the hard tocontrol stuff like Virginia button weed and dollar
weed and whatnot. It's effective againsta wide range of things. Very good.
I'll give it a shot, Thankyou so much. Yeah, just
take two check books so you're readyto go when you go to buy.

(02:11:48):
I shouldn't put it that way.It's not that bad. I've purchased small
packs myself. But it works well. All right. You take care and
thanks thanks Brian for the call.Let's see here. You know that's true,
folks. The old stuff that's beenaround since dirt, those products are
not expensive. They've been around,their mass produced. It's easy to do

(02:12:09):
it when you get something that acompany has spent millions upon millions of dollars
trying to develop, even more thanthat, Well, when they finally get
into the market and try to sell, they got to recoup that. And
so those new specialty products that dothings that the old products didn't do,
they're going to be more expensive.It's just a nature of business doing that.

(02:12:31):
But I'm telling you some of themhave some features that we can't find
in other products. Let's go nowto Charlie in Friends would Hello, Charlie,
Welcome to garden Line. Good morningto you, skip. Thank you
for taking my call. My problemis that there was an orchard at the
home we bought, and of courselost it in the freeze of a couple

(02:12:54):
of years ago, and it's aboutone hundred and thirty by forty, I
would say rectangular full of weeds.But underneath the weeds all this black cloth
that folks would put in to tryto retard the weeds in that time.
Now the weeds have come through.But I suggest that that's my wife the

(02:13:18):
weed rototillate, but it's got blackpaper all underneath. There was too heavy
to a lift. So how towhat's your best idea of how to get
rid of all that stuff and prepareit for grass. You know, there
are certain times in life when Iwish I had a time capsule, like
back to the future, where Icould go back when they're about to put

(02:13:41):
that stuff down and say stop it, don't do that. That's about it.
I hate that cloth for the reasonsyou're describing. You know, rototiller
is not gonna pick it up ifit's got enough soil on it. You
Trying to pull and lift it upis not a practical way to go,
and that just creates a problem becausethat's really what we need to do,
is lift it up and get itall out of there. Y yeah,

(02:14:05):
tiller is just going to be amess. So there's really not a good
solution at this point. Uh Thatdoesn't involve a lot of work, you
know, like excavating soil to getdown where you can lift that fabric up,
and there's roots tangled in it andeverything else. So about all you
can do is just go over thetop of it, uh, you know
with your planting. Uh. Andthat's not ideal. But you just got

(02:14:28):
to suggest putting fresh soil and thenthen trying to put in our grass like
I heard. Yeah, how deepis how deep below the surface is this
fabric? Tell me about it?About an answer to oh, okay,
oh no, I wouldn't put thegrass on top of that. Oh boy,

(02:14:52):
you wouldn't put I'm sorry, Iwouldn't put the grass on top of
it. Uh huh. First ofall, my first answer is there's not
a good answer, okay, AndI'm gonna give you. I'm gonna give
you the answers that are not goodanswers. I know, to try to
pick it up with your hands isdifficult. They are different. I've used
all kinds of ingenuity to try todeal with stuff like that. I mean,

(02:15:15):
you could you could get dig outsome where you could really attach to
it, you know, twist attacha rope real tight to it where we'll
pull and then use it. Comealong to pull it out. I mean,
I don't know how to go aboutit. I don't know what to
tell you. Spading forks, comealong, whatever you can do to kind
of loosen things. But you justcan't put turf grass over it. If

(02:15:39):
unless it is a really cheap productthat tears are one that allows roots to
readily go right through it. Ifyou put three or four inches of soil
on top and plant it, youmight get by with that. That may
be okay, Well I tell youI don't like any of these other answers
other than removing it in some way, shape or form. Figure not a

(02:16:01):
way to do it. Wow,Okay, thank you, old Raggy.
Did I make your day? I'mokay. I sank you very much,
so appreciate bottom bottom line. Yeah. Bottom line answer Charlie, I hope
you heard is you could try throwingthree inches of soil over it and then
planting on top of it because youalready have an inch under it, just

(02:16:24):
to get a good start there.I think that might work. But removing
it and using ingenuity is not ahappy answer. But that's that's something else.
Thank you, Thank you. Iappreciate thank you sir. You bet
yeah, you know, I tellyou there are situations in gardening where there's

(02:16:45):
not a great solution, just nota great solution. All right, we
run a little over here. We'regoing to take a break. We'll be
right back with your calls. Sevenseventy four. Welcome back to the garden
Line. Good to heavy with us. We're in our last segment of the
day. We'll be back next Saturdayand Sunday from six am to ten am.
If you have friends and neighbors thathaven't listened to garden Line, tell

(02:17:07):
them about it so they can tunein. You know, I like to
listen to KTRH using my phone app, the iHeartMedia app, and you can
just put in your pocket and carearound while you're doing gardening work or wherever
you're going. You can have itwith you. If you're not near a
radio, you can have it thatway. It works really really well.
And thank you for being a listenertoo. By the way, hey,

(02:17:28):
I wanted to talk a little bitabout Nelson Watergarden. I've mentioned them many
times in the past and talked aboutwhat an outstanding nursery. There are lots
of plants, a great selection Bythe way, they got a really good
sale on fruit trees and on citrustrees right now, So if you've been
thinking about getting one, now's thetime to get the best dear you're going

(02:17:48):
to get. It's a really goodsale that they have going on. But
you know, they specialize in watergardens. That is kind of their forte
that's what they started with, andthey're nationally known for. And when you
go to Neilson Water Gardens and Nursery, you are going to find a unbelievable
supply of everything related to water.If you will, for example, you

(02:18:11):
want a disappearing fountain. I thinkthose are one of the coolest things that
ever was, and Nelson invented that. You see these beautiful pottery urns,
glazed pottery with water coming at thetop. The sound of water. You
need the sound of water in yourbackyard. We put a little multi tiered
fountain in in our yard and Ijust like to sit. Is so relaxing.

(02:18:33):
It is like therapy out there.To sit and enjoy the sound of
water, especially on a hot summerday, brings in birds too, and
beneficial insects a supply of water aswell. Many of them do do you
want a water garden, you knowwith lily pads or other water plants with
koi or goldfish or other fish likethat, Nelson Water Garden and Nursery is

(02:18:54):
the place to go. Here's thenumber two eight, one, three,
nine to one forty seven sixty nineor goat to water Nelsonwatergardens dot com.
Nelson Watergardens dot com. They're justnorth of I ten on Katie Fort Ben
Road out in Katie. Think ofit as your West Houston destination garden center.
That's Nelson Water Gardens. And whileyou're out there, by the way,

(02:19:16):
they have a lot of good productstoo. They have a good selection.
For example, Microlife. I knowyou have heard of Microlife unless you've
been living under a rock. Microlifehas all the granular fertilizers you know,
for your lawn, for your soil, for your plants that we've talked about.
I just want to tell you alittle bit about some of their liquid
fertilizers. One of the ones thatI use the most is Microlife Biomatrix.

(02:19:39):
It's an orange label, liquid comesin a gallon, comes into quurt It's
a seven to one three ratio fertilizer. I have good boost and nitrogen.
I use it on houseplants because thatfoliage that's leafy, green growing, and
you need a good nitrogen boost forthat. It's excellent for that. I've
had excellent results. You can puta in your garden. You can use

(02:20:01):
it watering plants in. As amatter of fact, if you were going
to water plants in, you mightwant to try Microlife Maximum Blooms. That's
a pink or reddish label that doesvery very well, Microlife Maximum Bloom.
If you want to boost for plants. I bet you never heard of this
product, Microlife Soil and Plant Energy. Microlife Soil and Plant Energy is a

(02:20:22):
superb combination of humic acid and molasses. Molasses is like rocket fuel for beneficial
soil microbes. You're going to boostthe energy and the supply by putting that
carbon in the soil. With MicrolifeSoil and Plant Energy and also that humic
acid benefiting your soil. You know, you make your soil better, you

(02:20:45):
make your plants better. And MicrolifeSoil and Plant Energy is an outstanding liquid.
You can mix it in water,you can spray it. It's not
going to burn plant. You canspray it on the foliage, plant it's
not going to burn them. Itdoes very very well. I would recommend
it, especially as something that youapply to your soil around your plants from
microlife. Well, let's see here, what are we looking at. We

(02:21:07):
might have time for a real quickcall if someone wants to call in.
Got a few minutes left before weput this one in the books. I
appreciate you listening to Guardland. We'vetalked about a lot of different things today,
and I just want to really urgeyou to not let summer stop you
from being a gardener. The earlymorning hours are cool, you can get

(02:21:28):
out, you can get some stuffdone. It just it doesn't take a
lot of work to keep things goingout in the yard, not in the
garden. And now with plant salesgoing on all over the place, this
is a great time to put someplants in. I know we talk about
spring planting and winter planting and fall, which is the best planning season of

(02:21:48):
the year, But what about puttingsome color in for the next few months.
You know, September is a summermonth, right. If you've been
in Texas more than one summer,you know September is a summer month here.
So if you put something in.Now, you got August, you
got September, you got October,sometime into November before we really get some
cooler weather arriving where we would startlooking at cool season color. Why not

(02:22:13):
establish some colorful foliage like colius,like copper plant, like persian shield,
beautiful silvery purple color. Oh,it's gorgeous, like some of the colorful
cannas, the phasion or the tropicana. Why not do some color, or
why not do some flowers like angelonia, like marigoles. You put maragoles in

(02:22:35):
still, you know, I liketo plant my fall maragoles in late summer,
and the spider maight population starts todecline as we go into the fall
season, and they just glow inthe cooler fall temperatures that I have to
fight against the fire ants that areout there. Well my fire ants,
Okay, spider mites is what Iwas trying to say. For that.

(02:22:58):
Well, let's see here, let'ssee a call coming in. We're gonna
try to do a real quick answerhere for them. If we can get
them back here on the line,be a fast one. But summer is
a season where we can still plantand there's a lot of heat tolerate.
You go to these outstanding garden centers, them Omipop, the independent nurseries that
we talk about on garden Line.You go out there and talk to them

(02:23:20):
and say, what can I plantnow that'll give me three months of color.
There's no sense in summer being asea of green, and drive around
town look at landscapes. It's asea of green, green grass, green
groundcovers, green shrubs, green trees, green vines. There's nothing wrong with
green. Green isn't the only color. It's not the only color. All

(02:23:46):
right, Well, I hear themusic. I'm just gonna keep talking about
it. Actually, I want totell you about something else. Coming up
is an event that you need toknow about. It's called OBA Palooza.
I love that name. Oba OHbA. That's the organic horticulture if it's
alliance. It's an organic group herein Houston, made up of commercial companies,
made up of individuals interested in organicgardening, made up of educators.

(02:24:09):
I love to go to OBA events. They are always always outstanding. I
can promise you top notch speakers thisevent. I take too long to name
all the speakers there. They're gonnahave two headliners. They're gonna have three
concurrent sessions going on. You canto pick where you want to go Saturday
August tenth. Saturday August tenth,that's coming up at the Greater at the

(02:24:31):
United Wates Greater Houston, My Wildwide. You go from eight am. They
put thirty three m Go to obaohbaonline dot org to get your tickets