9 Pruning Mistakes

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Kati r H Garden Line with skip rictor.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Essy gas can trim.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
You just watch him as well, go.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Gasso many both things to seep back passes a gasp
and again you dass backing. They're not a salmon glasses
a gas. The sun beamon of teases the gas.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Starting out treating.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
Well, good morning, good morning, and welcome to garden Line.
We are glad to have you with us this morning,
and we're here to talk about gardening. What do you
want to talk about. We've got a four hours ahead
of us. We can pretty much cover anything that is
of interest to you, and we're going to Here's how
you do it, you doll seven one three two one

(01:09):
two KTRH and we talk and hopefully give you some ideas,
some inspiration, solve a few gardening types of problems that
you might have. That's the way it works here on
garden Line. I'm going to start off with a few
thoughts that I've been pondering here these last couple of
days regarding common questions that I get when people give

(01:30):
me a call on garden Line. Anytime someone.

Speaker 5 (01:34):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:35):
For forty years, forty years I worked with the Agrolife
Extension Office as a County Extension agent, And for those
of you who aren't familiar, County Extension is a program
through Texas and University. Actually it's in all of the states.
Each state has a lang Grant College, LSU, Oklahoma State, Cornell,

(01:59):
those are all Lange Grant colleges. Each state has one,
and the Extension service reaches out and takes the university
to the people. That's kind of how they put it. Well,
it's horticultures to My job was to bring research based
information to folks, and so through emails or questions, through programs,
all kinds of ways people would ask gardening questions, kind
of like here on guarden Line. And so over the years,

(02:21):
I think I've heard just about all the questions that
are out there. We have a lot of different things
to wonder about when it comes to, you know, success
with gardening, and so having heard all those questions over
the years, I'm kind of familiar with the kind of
things that people tend to wonder about and ask about.
And I basically there's more question possibilities and you can

(02:47):
imagine when you think about horticulture and gardening, covering everything
from your lawn to the house plants in your house,
to what's a good kind of orchid? To why does
my plum tree not bear fruit? See how do you
properly prune a crape myrtle? To what's a good tree
to provide shade on the west side of the house.

(03:09):
It just goes on and on. What's the best to
mate at a plant? You know? Why do my radishes
not produce bulbs just tops and all our roots? It's
that kind of thing. Lots of different kinds of questions.
So what I would like to start off with this
morning is pruning mistakes that I see people make, questions

(03:31):
that I get about pruning and things along those lines,
And I'm going to talk about nine pruning mistakes that
I see people make that you certainly can avoid. It
is pruning season. Mid to late winter is probably the
prime time to do pruning, but we can do pruning.
You know, right now is a great time to get

(03:51):
it done. And when you make pruning cuts on a tree,
pruning is a invigorous process. And so one of the
things we want to keep in mind is whenever we're
doing printing, the tree is going to respond with growth
in that area and depending on the kind of cuts

(04:13):
we make, the growth will either be desirable types of
growth or it may be undesirable types of growth. Pruning
is something that starts when you put the plant in
the ground, the tree in the ground, and we call
it training. During that time, you know, the first I
don't know, five to ten years, you're doing training on
the tree, especially the first five years, and then after

(04:36):
that there is more of a maintenance printing that we
do to keep things in order. But just like a
lot of things in life, the sooner you get on
something and get it going in the right direction, the
better off things are. If you ignore training during the
first two or three or four years, you're going to

(04:57):
have a problem tree or plant. You're going to have
to do more serious pruning to get back in bounds.
I like to tell people that to pull out a
saw is an admission of guilt. Here's what I mean
by that. If you were to take a tree and
you have your ham pruners and your loppers, and from

(05:18):
the time you plant it print it correctly day by
day by day, the need for a saw goes down
to very very little, very very little, because you're making
these decisions and cuts early in that tree's life, and
it's small wounds that you make with ham pruners and loppers.
But when you don't do the things you should do.

(05:41):
Now you're looking at a branch that you know, maybe
you know the size of I don't know, your arm
or a leg or something else, and you're basically pulling
out the saw to make those cuts. Nay, you got
a big wound that has to heal over there's the
exposed inner wood where the cake can get in and
on and on down the line. So if you think
about it that way, it is not one hundred percent

(06:02):
true to say I saw pulling out a saw's admission
to guilt. But it's a true, true concept that I
think it's worth thinking about before you go out to prune.
Get some education on the best way to prune the
kind of plant that you're pruning. Don't look at what
other people do. And primary point number one is crepe myrtles.

(06:23):
The way crape myrtles get pruned is ninety five percent wrong.
Around the Greater Houston area, a lot of it happens
with landscape crews, and you know, you got guys that
mowlawns and do all the summer cares of carrying of
landscapes and stuff, and here comes winter time. Is not
much of that to do.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
So what do you do.

Speaker 4 (06:44):
You hand them a saw and you say, cut off
everything about as high as you can reach with those
are lappers. Cut off everything that you can reach with
those lappers, you know. And so there we get these
these topped off crape myrtles that then put out crows
feed type of growth that are just not They're not
structurally strong, they're unsightful. That ruins the beautiful structure of

(07:06):
a crape myrtle, And so everybody else thinks that's how
you prun. That's also, by the way, how we get
landscape volcanoes. Those mounds of malts, you know what I'm
talking about, giant mounds of malts that are piled up
against the base of a tree. There is horticulturally botanically
in nature. There is no reason for that. That is

(07:27):
not done. We shouldn't do that, but that's how things are.
We did it because somebody else did it. So mature ornamentals,
when they're established, need very little printing if they were
prinned well through their life. You remove broken limbs, if
you've got a disease limb, If you've got some rubbing
limbs and things, you can do that. But in general,
our goal is to get the printing done earlier in

(07:47):
the tree's life and create the strongest, most beautiful structure
that you can. All Right, that kind of sets us
up for these nine printing mistakes we're going to avoid.
I'm going to be going through them through the course
of the show this day, and in the meantime you
can give us a call at seven one three two
one two k t r H and we'll talk about

(08:08):
your questions. I'm gonna take a little break here and
i'll be right back with the pruning mistake number one. Well,
good morning, welcome back, Welcome back to Guardline. Good to
have you with us today. We are going through nine
pruning mistakes to avoid. Now I suspect there's probably more
than nine, but well, we're just going to pick on
nine today, things that I see often made and that

(08:31):
we can definitely definitely avoid. So here we go. Pruning
mistake numero number one, not necessarily the biggest one, just
the one we're starting with dull, poorly adjusted tools. If
you want to make a really clean cut and you
want to make a cut that, let's say, causes less

(08:51):
wear and tear on your joints, your hands, your elbows,
your shoulders, spinning on whether using hand punters or loppers
or whatever. A nice sharp pair of prunters is important.
That is very important. That kind of cut will heal
the fastest. Poorly adjusted pruners that are the blade doesn't

(09:11):
like scissor slide right past the other side of the
pruners nice and smooth and tight. It ends up stripping
away wood. And when you strip away wood, when you
make a cut, that causes the area that heals the
best to be sort of torn through and it ends

(09:34):
up being a much lower healing wound where you run
into all kinds of problems. You want to sharpen your prunters,
keep them sharp. It's easier to make that cut. And
you know, if you're done quite a bit of pruning,
it does take a wear and tear on your hands.
It does take aware and tearing also in your elbows.
I used to have a peach orchard and we were
through that orchard all the time pruning and lopping, and
I'm telling you you'd be surprised your elbows and shoulders

(09:56):
get pretty tired on that. I'm a sort of biased
toward by pass type pruners as opposed to the anvil types.
So the bypass types again, that's the scissor types where
the two blades pass by right up against each other.
The anvil types is where a blade comes down on
a flat surface on the other side of the prunter.
It's almost like you're taking a hatchet and chopping down

(10:19):
on a wood block. That kind of pruning. Those kind
I find often are more difficult to do a good
job on pruning with. So keep them sharp, keep them adjusted,
and certainly you're going to do a better job. Number Two,
pruning plants that only bloom in the spring in the wintertime.

(10:41):
So here's what I'm saying. If you have a plant
that only blooms in the spring, you know, for those
of you who used to live further north, that would
be like Forsythia. Down here, we got the azaleas, a spyrieas,
a flowering quints what we call once blooming roses like
lady By that blooms in the spring, but it doesn't

(11:01):
bloom again all year until next spring. You don't want
to prune those in the winter. Because you're cutting away
the bloom buds that they have, and they've already set
their bloom buds. They do that in late summer and
fall for next year, and so pruning them now means
you're cutting away your bloom buds. So wait until after
they bloom and then prune them. Wait until after they

(11:25):
bloom and then prune them.

Speaker 5 (11:27):
Now.

Speaker 4 (11:27):
Someone may say, well, wait a minute, Like a peach
tree only blooms in the string spring, but we bloom
it and we prune it in the winter. Yes, on
fruit trees, we are not worried about cutting away some
of the bloom buds. We're most concerned about bringing light
in because there's going to be plenty of blooms all
over and we're going to have to thin it anyway.
So doing winter pruning for those is fine because we're

(11:50):
trying to have a select number of fruit that get
large and tasty. Whereas with the ornamental plant, our goal
is just to have as many blooms as we can
over it. So if it only blooms in the spring
aside from fruit, if it only blooms in the spring
and not through the year, don't proNT it in the winter.
Wait until after it blooms. Let's see another one, shearing

(12:15):
or hedging plants that don't necessarily need to be shared
or hedged. I have seen a number of different kinds
of plants that are beautiful in a natural shape but
look ridiculous when they're hedged. One would be the sage

(12:38):
Soniso Texas sage silver leaf, usually a silver leafed kind
of plant that blooms the colored a barometer bush because
it blooms in conjunction with rainstorms that come through. That
one looks better in a natural form. If you hedge it,
it just doesn't look right. It just doesn't look right

(13:00):
at all. A glossy abelia another one that blooms in
a natural form and looks so much better that way
than when you hedge it. Now there are plants that
we hedge. We want to create a hedge a wall
of shrub. I understand that, But think about the plant
and how it looks the best, Especially things that have

(13:20):
arching branches that kind of arch over and weep down
to the sides, like a spurrea, for example, That would
look ridiculous hedge. So make that decision. There is a
there is a difference between a head a heading cut
and a thinning cut. And here's what I mean by that.

(13:41):
If you go out and you cut a branch off
and just lop it off, that's a heading cut. When
you're through prining, it looks like the top of a
broom handle. You just chopped it right off there. What
the plant does in response is it grows a bunch
of shoots up just below that cut. And you've seen
this before. This is what happens to craigles all the time.

(14:01):
Heading cuts. They just lop them off, and so here
comes this crows foot of growth. Like if you were
to hold your arm upward and take your fingers and
then just kind of spread them outward. That kind of
crows foot of growth going up and out in all directions.
That's what a heading cut does. If you're making a hedge,
you want that because where there was one shoot, now

(14:21):
you got several shoots, and then you hedge those. And
where you had several shoots, now you have a whole
bunch of shoots and you create a nice wall of foliage.
That's for hedges, But when you want to make a
natural form, you use something called a thinning cut. A
thinning cut, I'm going to keep using the hand as
The analogy here is if you hold your hand up
and your fingers are together, but your thumb is going

(14:44):
out to the side, and you wanted to remove your
hand with the part of the fingers, you cut it
right above where your thumb attaches, and what would be
left is your arm coming up and then your thumb
going out. Think of it like a highway with an
exit ramp. If you put a block, a blockade, a

(15:04):
barrier on the highway just past the exit ramp, all
the traffic coming down the highway would have to exit
that exit ramp. That's a thinning cut. And that's how
a thinning cut works. You don't get as much stimulation
of all this brushy new crowsfoot growth there unless the
sizes of the two are dramatically different. But you direct

(15:27):
the traffic outward. Now, when you use thinning cuts, let's
go back to that Texas stage that I was talking about.
When you use thinning cuts, you may have a couple
of wild hairs. This is what happened on Azelia too.
By the way, you get this gangly shoot, this wild
hair coming out, it's like I want to get rid
of that. Follow it down to where it joined where
it has a side shoot and cut it off right there.

(15:48):
And when you do thinning cuts and you finish pruning,
you step back and you look at the plant, and
had you not known that it was just prune, someone
walking up to it wouldn't hardly notice that had been pruned.
It would still have that natural form to it. By
thinning cuts, And that is important. That's what we should
be doing. If we have to prune a great myrtle,

(16:09):
that's what we should be doing for that. All right,
that's certainly true with fruit trees and bushes. Heading cuts
are almost never a good idea. We do thinning cuts
on our peaches and apples and pears and fruit in general.
All right. Number four, where are we on time? I
got to watch my time here. Number four is letting

(16:32):
hedges get top heavy. This happens all the time. Hedges
tend to grow outward at the top. So instead of
that you know, straight walled hedge that you're making, what
it ends up doing is becoming a capital V. The
top gets wider and wider, and when that happens, the

(16:56):
light can't reach down into the lower sections of the hedge,
so that hedge that you put up to block a
view to create a landscape. Wall suddenly becomes see through
and your neighbor who likes to uh somebaye than his speedo's.
Now unfortunately we have that unsightly view well because we've

(17:16):
lost the foliage in the hedge. So what you want
to do is keep the tops of hedges, at least
the walls vertical. But it's better to go a little
narrower at the top. So I'll use I use the
letter capital V as what happens as it goes wrong.
Now i'll just say capital A. But of course you're

(17:38):
not going to make it, you know, like a Christmas
tree shape. But you want the top being a little
more narrow. That's what we're aiming for, and that way
light shines on the top. The top's always going to
be fine, and the top's always going to be where
moot growth occurs. But all the lower parts of the
hedge now get light and they maintain foliage, and you
have the nice wall that you were looking for. And

(17:59):
when I use the term capital A, I don't mean
that slanted narrow at the top, but just a little
more narrow at the top. That is one of the
most common mistakes I make. I see it everywhere, and
plants are going to fight you on this. They you know,
you cut narrower at the top, and you come back
when it's time to prune again, and the bottom hadn't

(18:20):
grown out much at all, and the top is just
pushing out, and so people keep letting it do that,
and it just gets worse and worse and worse. This
happens to boxwoods, this happens to yo pine hedges, happens
to a lot of different things. You got to keep
those hedges more narrow at the top. And remember, pruning
is a stimulating process, so when you cut, it stimulates

(18:42):
new growth to occur, and you're guiding and controlling how
that growth occurs, so that whatever kind of plants you're pruning,
all we've talked about a bunch of different kinds of plants,
whatever kind of plant your punting, you achieve the goal
that you're trying to achieve by doing that kind of
pruning to it. We are about here, time for another

(19:04):
quick break. I will be back in just a moment.
We're going to give you continue on with our nine
common pruning mistakes. As we get to pruning mistake number five,
I want to remind you that my website, Gardening with
Skip dot com contains a new publication on growing transplants,

(19:25):
the lighting that you need to grow transplants. I'll be
adding to it one about how to grow transplants. This
one is just about the lighting. We'll be right back
all right, folks, welcome back to Guardline. We're going to
jump right back into our list of nine common pruning
mistakes the people make, and we are hopping back in

(19:47):
here at number five. Number five is leaving stubs. What
is a stub? A stub is when you cut a
branch off, and when you don't cut it off at
the proper spot, pretty close to where it joins the
trunk or another branch, and so you leave this little

(20:08):
stub maybe an inch long, two inches long, sometimes longer.
But those stubs tend to die back. They don't heal over,
and now you've got this dead little piece of wood
that prevents the branch from being able to close that
wound over. I use the term I used the term heal.
Trees don't heal, They close over the wound, that's what happens.
But the stub is in the way and it will

(20:29):
not close over right, and now decayb comes gets in
that branch and it then enters the interior of the tree.
And so now eventually you end up with a hollow
trunk tree if it goes that far. But don't leave stubs.
You don't want it'll just die and be a place
for problems. There are proper ways to prune where you

(20:50):
don't leave shrubs are stubs. There's inproper ways to prune,
and so let's just talk about that. In fact, this
is sort of a it's number five is leaving stubs.
We're going to make it a little longer than just
leaving stubs and stretch into a little bit the proper
way to make that cut when a branch comes into

(21:14):
a tree. And by the way, I posted something to
the garden line facebook page, a little video clip where
I marked on a plant and then showed you exactly
with the marks on the planet where to print. And
we're not to print. You don't want to leave a stub,
But on the other hand, you don't want to flush
cut right up against the trunk. So if you were
to look at a cross section of a branch, it's

(21:37):
a certain size. Whatever size the branch is going toward
the trunk, and all of a sudden, when it gets
to the trunk, it flares out where it attaches to
the trunk. So once it starts to flare, the further
the closer to the trunk you prune, the bigger that
wound is getting. So what might let's say it's a
small branch what might have been like an inch size wound,

(22:00):
Then as you go closer, may end up becoming a
two and a half inch size wound. And that's a
lot larger wound, And of course on bigger plants it's
even more exaggerated. That larger wound is going to have
to go further closing over, and we wanted to close fast,
So that's not good. Also, where a branch attaches to
the trunk on many types of trees, there is called

(22:22):
a branch collar, and the tissues in that branch collar
are the best for healing or for closing over the
wound callousen closing over that wound quickly. So when you
cut too close to the trunk, you remove the branch collar.
So not only do you have a bigger wound, but

(22:42):
it's going to now heal slower or close over slower.
In the meantime, So the goal is to follow that.
In general, every species grows differently. You know, pines are
different than maples, and maples are different than oaks and
the way they attach things. But follow the branch toward
the trunk and right where it begins to fly out.

(23:06):
That's about where you make the cut. Now, I know
that's you know, go online look it up. You can
kind of see there's some good information online on where
to make that cut. But in general, just a quick
way is just follow it down and where it's where
the branch diameter starts to get bigger as it attaches.
Right about there is where you make that cut that
leaves the branch collar on. It still is a very

(23:27):
small wound and it's going to close over much much faster.
So don't leave stubs, don't flush cut, leave the leave
the branch collar. Make that cut at the right place.
That is important. Number six is waiting too long to
decide which of two vigorous upright shoots to leave is

(23:50):
the main trunk. Have you ever had a little tree
and it sort of has two trunks or two branches
coming up, and it's like either of those could be
the main trunk and they are in competition, and it
is a competition on the plant between those And if
you think that it's hard to decide which one to
take off, that's why people leave them. It's like I
don't know which one to leave. I'll come back think

(24:12):
about it later. Well, it'll be harder later when you
make that decision. And if you keep leaving it and
you go a couple of years into the process, now
you've got When you make that cut, you're gonna have
a lopsided tree because all the branches from one trunk
are going one direction and all the branches from the
other trunk are going the other direction. So when you

(24:33):
take one of those trunks out, now you have this
tree looks like it was split cut in half. What
you need to do is do it sooner. Always, always
do it sooner.

Speaker 5 (24:43):
Even.

Speaker 4 (24:44):
Let me put it this way, don't worry about picking
the right one. Pick one, Pick one that you think
is the right one, and you'll be fine. You'll be fine.
Just don't leave it. The longer you leave it, the
bigger the wound will be when you cut it, the
more malformed the tree will be after you remove the
one that needs to be removing and the kind of

(25:07):
wound you make, there's not a branch collar on that
kind of cut, and it's going to be very slow
to heal. Make that decision, and if you have to
use a saw to make the decision, you've waited too long.
But go ahead and saw it now, don't wait. I
hope I pressed that hard enough, because that is a
common mistake people may. Here's what happens if you don't

(25:29):
remove them. These two branches are growing close to each
other and in a narrow angle, a narrow V shaped
branch angle. As each branch gets bigger, it grows in diameter,
and at some point they start pressing together. And they're
continuing to grow in diameter. So it's like you know

(25:50):
two kids in the back seat that are sitting too
close together and they can keep their hands on it.
They pushing on each other and fighting. They're just pressing apart,
and that is pressing, causing a split pressure to form
there in the branch. Now, when you get a storm,
it's gonna split. And when it splits, you'll see all
this black rotting bark on the one that's left upright.

(26:13):
The other one split off and fell off to the
side that's that included bark that it can't heal across there,
it cannot join across there. And so that's what happens
when you have competing narrow branch angles and you let
it go and go and go, and if you don't
make the decision, a storm will make it for you later.

(26:34):
Think of it that way. I think that probably makes
some sense there, right, storm will make that decision for
you later. So that was number six. Waiting too long
to do that. We're going to come back in a
while here with some other tips for these nine printing mistakes,
starting with let's see number seven. But for right now,

(26:58):
I just want to say, you're talking about printing.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
Martin spoon Moore at Affordable Tree, he is an expert
in knowing how to prunt and when to print and
when not to print. Martin can come out and he
can take a look at your trees and see what
is and what is not needed. A lot of folks
come out and just because they're there, they're gonna cut something,
you know, I mean, they're gonna they're gonna do some

(27:21):
sort of butcher job. I drive down the streets all
the time and see people that a bad printing service
if you will, has has done damage to the tree
that is not it's not going to recover from. You know,
they look like hat racks sometimes when they get through
with them. Martin didn't do that kind of work. He
does proper work. That's why he is very busy because

(27:41):
he does a good job and people have him come back.
You can get Martin to call at seven one three
six ninety nine twenty six sixty three. That's seven one
three six nine nine two six sixty three and have
him come out and take a look at your plants
when you do that call, or your trees. When you
do that call, you're going to talk to Martin or Joe.

(28:02):
And uh. If you don't hear Martin or Joe, hang up,
you call the wrong place. Dallas seven to one three
six ninety nine two six six three. We are in
the Christmas season and it is time to find that
gift for that hard to buy for person on your list,
and I would suggest Warbirds Unlimited. Warbirds Unlimited has all

(28:24):
kinds of beautiful bird feeders and bird houses. They have
birds seed, they have you know, maybe you just get
one of the little suit cakes with the little cage
they go in and you put that out there on
the tree. Maybe you need a hummingbird feeder. There are
a lot of cool, beautiful gifts that Wallbird's Unlimited. For
people that are really into birds. There is a book
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(28:49):
going to Walbirds. I want the book about birds by
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while you're in there for yourself, grab some of the
Wallbirds Unlimited Winter super blows and it is the feed
that is best to be feeding. Right now, I'm gonna
take a little break and we'll be back with more
of the nine priunting mistakes. Welcome back to garden Line.

(29:11):
Thanks for joining us today. By the way, this is
a call in show. Don't you don't have to just
listen to me dron on here. You can give me
a call if you got a question. Seven to one
three two one two k t r H seven one
three two one two kt r H. We are going
through nine common pruning mistakes that I see people make,
taking them one at a time here as we go through.

Speaker 6 (29:33):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (29:33):
I wanted to mention something first though, and that is
if you are looking for a quality product to take
care of your soil, to prepare for planting, to uh
cover the surface of your soil, to make sure that
it is well malt so the weeds are kept down,
so that rain and erosion and temperature fluctuations and all

(29:54):
the things that the weather can give us don't affect
your plants. Well, do what nature does. Nature puts some
molts of organic material on the ground, and Landscaper's Pride
has got you covered on that. They've got a black
velvet multch. It's naturally black, not dyed. It is a
really beautiful and as you put it down, it is
bulky enough to cover properly and just make a nice

(30:17):
covering on the surface, and the plants thrive from it.
Look at nature. Nature does not like bear soil. Nature
is either going to drop dead leaves on it like
it does in the forest, or it's going to cover
it with weeds, which we don't want it to do
in our flower beds and our gardens and things. Black
velvet molts does it. Cedar malts very. I love the
fragrance of fresh cedar mults going out and the color

(30:39):
of it too. Landscaper's Pride has that They also have
a topsoil material. And I've talked to a lot of
people this year that have had problems with their lawn
areas dying out. They're talking about re sotting some things.
This is a good time go in there with their
top soil. It's a sandy loam mixed with some compost
fill in those low spots. Level it out. If you've
got a garden bed your building up. You know, organic

(31:01):
matters that decomposes kind of shrinks back down again, and
that's why the pots on your patio that you put
you filled two years ago now are about half full
of soil because it's oxidized away. But this topsoil material,
with the sandy loam and compost, you've got a good
solid sandy loam in there. So it'd be good for
building up into a bed, for refreshing that bed, for

(31:23):
mixing into the soil, and also, like I said, for
repairing those areas. Landscapers Pride products are widely available in
our area. You can go to Landscaperspride dot com and
find out exactly where to buy them in your area.
But they are very widely available and they work. I
was looking at some of the products and things that

(31:46):
they have at Plants for all seasons, and you know
they always have whatever is well, look at the name
Plants for all seasons. They always have whatever you need
for the season you're in. You know, right now you
want winter color, they've got it. Blanch for all seasons.
Maybe you want some bulbs for forcing or for planting
outdoors for spring, they've got it. Maybe you are looking

(32:08):
for some decorations for the holiday, well, of course they
got that, plenty of it. They're seed drag a whole
wall full of seeds, and it is time to be
starting seeds. Remember my publication on lighting for growing plants
plant transplants is on the website. It's free. You can
go download it and take a look at it and
grab you some seed plant for all seasons and go
after it. They also have other supplies that you need

(32:30):
for seed starting. You know, they've been around since nineteen
seventy three. They're located just north of Lueta on FM
two forty nine to forty nine. That is the Tomball Parkway,
just north of Lueta. You can call them up at
two eight one, three seven six sixteen forty six or
go to the website Plants for All seasons dot com.

(32:53):
When you go in there, you're gonna get good advice,
You're gonna get good plants, You're gonna get things that
want to grow here and help solving some of the
plant problems that may arise down the line with your
lawns and your gardens and trees and shrubs, plants for
all seasons. They're experts at that, true lawn and garden experts. Well,

(33:13):
let's go back into our nine pruning mistakes that people
tend to make, and we are going to go to
number seven, and that is not using what we call
the three cut method when we remove a large limb.
So I don't know if this has ever happened to you,
but it happens a lot to people. People are going

(33:35):
to cut a large branch off and they try to
do it with one cut, and they go right to
where you should cut, or wherever they make the cut.
They start cutting down, and then the weight of that
branch causes it to fall, and as it falls, it
strips the bark off the trunk or the branch that
it's attached to. And now you've got this long strip

(33:57):
where the bark's been removed that is going to heal
extremely slow because you've torn through the branch collar and
torn down the side of the trunk, and it's a
bad wound that takes a very long time to close
back over. Instead of doing that, you can use what's
called the three cut method. Okay, And here's what you do.

(34:20):
And there are lots of diagrams out there online if
you just do three cut method pruning to just type
something like that into your search three cut method printing.
But basically here it is. Now you know from listening
to what I said earlier, that you want to prune
the branch off right outside the branch collar, almost to

(34:42):
the trunk, but not quite. Okay, Now that's going to
be the last cut that you make. The first cut.
You go out from there, and it depends on the branch.
And the branch may be as big as your wrist,
it may be as big as your leg, I mean,
you know, So just go out maybe I would say,
probably about about a foot somewhere between six inches and

(35:04):
a foot out, probably more closer to a foot, and
prune upward from underneath the branch only a third of
the way through. If you go too far, it's going
to sag down and pinch your saw and you're not
gonna be able to get your saw out of there.
So about a third of the way cut upward, then
go further out and from the top prune downward. When

(35:27):
I say further out, I mean like, oh, it could
be you know, four inches or six inches further out.
Prune down and what's going to happen? At some point
that branch is going to fall and break. But by
making that first cut you prevent it from stripping down.
It just snaps off there, and now you're left with
this big stub which you can hold to one hand

(35:49):
and cut down in the final cut, which is right
at the outside the branch collar. So one, two three.
If that didn't make sense, go online. There's plenty of pictures.
But if this brand is too heavy for you to
hold with one hand, don't overestimate your ability there. Uh,
then it needs to be removed with a three cut

(36:10):
method or you will be sorry. All right, Well, that
was seven of our nine printing mistakes people make. We're
gonna come back with number eight and nine here in
just a moment. I appreciate you listening to the Garden
Line our phone number if you'd like to get on
the line with with Jonathan seven one three two one
two k t R SO and we'll talk to you

(36:32):
when we come back.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Welcome to k t r H Garden Line with Skin Rictor.

Speaker 7 (36:40):
It's just watch as.

Speaker 5 (37:14):
Hey.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
Welcome back, Welcome back to the guard Line. We are
glad to have you with us.

Speaker 5 (37:19):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
If you uh had issues with the storms that we
had this year that took out trees and knocked out
power and all of that, you you probably have been
thinking about, uh, maybe I ought to get a generator
for the house. And you know there's the kind you
have to put gas in and pull out, pull out
and fire up in order to get them to work.

(37:40):
And you know, they generally cover a small amount of
the different things that you would need power for in
the house. But then there's the whole house generators. Whole
home generators, a generat automatic standby generator is one of
those kinds of things. You can get those from Quality
Home Products. They are the placed to get them. As
a matter of fact, you know, it's not just the
generator that you need to be concerned about in your purchase,

(38:02):
it's the service that you get. And Quality Home they
rule the roost when it comes to quality service. For example,
over seventy seven thousand satisfied customers, fourteen thousand and five
star reviews eight times. They've won the Better Business Bureau's
most prestigious Customer Service Award, the Pinnacle Award. Twenty twenty four.

(38:24):
Next Door gave them the Neighborhood Fave Award for outstanding
service and Products. You can go to qualitytx dot com
to find out more Quality tx dot com or dial
seven one three Quality, give them a call, talk to
them about it. They will come out and they will.
First of all, they'll help you find the generator that

(38:45):
works best for what you need. They'll ask you questions
and you know, figure out what kind of generator, what
size and all of that, how do you want to
what do you want it to be able to do?
And then they'll walk through every stage of the process
from getting the proper permits and regulations to getting it
set up. And then of course, as I have already said,

(39:05):
uh service after the sale. That is the most important
thing when you were making a purchase, and Quality Home
Products excels at that you were listening to Guardline, We're
gonna go out to the phones here. First thing right now,
and talk to Earl up in or out in Bay Cliff, Texas. Hey, Earl,

(39:25):
welcome to garden Line. Early there. Yes, I am all right,
Welcome to garden Line. How can we help today.

Speaker 8 (39:35):
I've got a problem with jungle rice in my Saint
Augustine Gres. I've had that problem three or four years ago.
I went to Moss Nursery and they gave me a
couple of products, but they said at that time there
was no cure for jungle rice. And I'm just check
it back two or three years later with you guys
to see if there is any cure for it now.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
Well, the problem is when you try to kill a
grass in a grass, grass killers kill the lawn and
the grassy weed right right, And yeah, I think what
I would do first is I would consider a pre
emergent a pre emergent, excuse me. The what what we

(40:25):
have found is if you can just stop it from
even coming up from seed, that is probably the easiest
way to be able to control it. And and once
it comes up, the next step would be to consider
doing a wiper type application to the jungle rice. It

(40:45):
comes up vertically above your lawn, right, and so you
can you can use a wiper to get the herbicide
on jungle rice that translocates down and kills it without
getting it on your lawn grass, So that that would
be a wiper. A wiper is just a sponge or

(41:06):
a sponge or some some thing that soaks up the
herbicide and and then when you brush it against the planet,
wipes it on there. If you go, if you go
to my website Gardening with Skip dot com, there is
a thing on there called Skips Herbicide weed wiper or
Skip's weed wiper, and it tells you how to build one.

(41:29):
They're very simple and expensive to build. Yeah, it's just
it works, and you know, it's a little tedious to
use on something that's all over the lawn, but the
bottom line is it will work, and so I use
it on for a lot of different kinds of things

(41:50):
that we have to deal with, So that that would
be Yeah, So that that is what I would try.

Speaker 8 (41:59):
Okay, I appreciate it enough, Thank you very much.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Yeah, you bet, take care alrighty, you bet? Thanks? All right,
there we go. Uh yeah, jungle riding. I first, I
first found jungle rice in Austin, Texas when I was
a horticulturist over there and uh, you know, we looked
at it and what is that? I mean? And it
was coming up like crazy and somebody's lawn. We don't

(42:26):
see it everywhere, but it is across the country. And
you know, there's even been uh uh glyfhasate resistant glaf
states the ingredient and round up. There's even been now
glyphasate resistant types of jungle rice popping up where people
are just using glaphasate on it over and over again,
and you have one that sprouts and it's resistant, and

(42:46):
the next thing you know, you've got a a lot
of these weeds that a product that used to work
does not work anymore. That's true with insecticides, that's true
with fungicides, that's true with the weeds as well. Another
reason not to misuse products for sure. All right, Well,
where were we we were in the process. I'm talking

(43:07):
about nine pruning mistakes. Nine pruning mistakes that I see
made a lot and we are now on number eight
and that is leaving too many branches on fruit trees. Now,
I know you can overdo pruning, but many people just
hate to remove branches even that need to be removed,

(43:28):
Unlike ornamental plants. The goal with your fruit trees is
to produce a really nice yield, and so in order
to do that, you gotta do quite a bit of pruning.
You know, on grapes you may remove ninety percent of
the growth that occurred that year and go back to
just some little stubs with buds on them. If you
look at how vineyards get pruned, even peach trees need

(43:51):
quite a bit of pruning. Now, your trees are going
to produce many times more blooms than they need to
set a full load of fruit, and you got to
get light into the tree. As light moves down in
that fruit tree, it will cause bloom buds to set
all the way down. If you don't let light. It's
kind of like that shrub I was talking about before.
If you don't let light in. Now you've got all

(44:13):
your fruit up on the top of the branch and
a bunch of dead sticks down in the bottom. You
open those up. We prune peaches and plums in a
bowl type or chalice type shape to let light get
into the bottom. And you're picking peaches from your knees
all the way up as high as you can reach,
rather than getting on a ladder to get to the verse.
Peaches that are on the tree, you got to remove those.

(44:34):
You got to take out the water sprouts, the tall
shoots that come from the interior of the tree, the
suckers that come from the base of the tree, you
clean those out. You clean those out, and just follow
the instructions. If you look at a publication on Aggie Horticulture,
Let's say you want to prune a peach. On Aggie
Horticulture website, there's a fruit section and a particular publication

(44:56):
just on all about grown peaches, including pruningum and that
and guide you on that. But just know this, with
fruit trees, we do quite a bit of pruning, more
than most people think that they would want to do.
All right, it was time for me to take another break.
I'll be back with our final of the nine pruning mistakes.
All right, welcome back to garden line. Well, shoot tops, Hey,

(45:19):
I'm going to continue talking about some pruning things. But
if you would like to get us call, maybe you
get a question. All you gotta do is doll seven
one three two one two k t R eight seven
to one three two one two k t R eight.
Simple as that be Canni's Plants and the Heights. Boy there,
it's so festive there at the holiday season. The decorations

(45:42):
and things that they have, it's just fun. It's always
a fun place. They always have great events and stuff.
Speaking of decorations and things, right now, you can get
thirty percent off all the wreaths and stems and garland
and outdoor holiday decor that they have. You know, the
are the faux wreaths that just they look so real.

(46:04):
They're gorgeous and if you haven't done all your holiday
decorating yet, you got to get over there. I mean,
they have a ton of really nice cool stuff. Really,
I'm serious. It's the gift shop is unbelievable in there.
I think those little nutcracker figurines or statues whatever you
call them, are so cool and they have some of

(46:24):
the most unique attractive ones that I've seen. They just
I have a spot on my fireplace mantle I need
to put something like that, I think, right next to
the Christmas gnomes that are sitting up there hanging their
feet off the side of the mantle. Buchanans can get
you fixed up on then. Of course, Buchanans is all
about Native plants and all kinds of plants as a

(46:44):
matter of fact. But there's some great natives for winter.

Speaker 9 (46:47):
You know.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
I was talking yesterday about planting a landscape to bring
in for holiday decoration. I mentioned the yopon. Well, they
have the Pride to Houston, which is one of the
best cultivars of yopon. It up really really well, looks gorgeous.
It's a nice plant, does well. I mentioned American Beauty Barrier.
They've got those there, but they have a lot of

(47:08):
things there. You can get your coral honeysuckle there. The
Gulf Coast mulely one of the best grasses for our area.
It does super well there. And even things like inland
sea oats that have sort of like a their seedhead
looks sort of like oats, and that's where it gets
its name, but a lot bigger than oats seedheads. But
it's a great groundcover, does good in shade. The plant

(47:32):
seed heads are excellent for indoor decorating anyway. Just some examples.
Buchanans plants. That's where you go. You ask the question,
they give you the answer, and you go home and
have a more beautiful garden landscape and indoors as a
result of that. By the way, they're located on Eleventh
Street in the heights here in the Greater Houston area

(47:53):
or in Central Houston area. Let's see, I was on
number was I number nine. The final pruning mistake that
I'm going to talk about right now is over pruning
a plant. Now, some people get busy cutting and they
don't know when to stop, and the end result is

(48:13):
some pretty bizarre landscape plants. It would seem more at
home in a doctor Seuss book about that. I've seen
some printing jobs where it's like, Okay, I don't know
what to say about that. Only prune as much as
is needed to accomplish a gol of training. Really, maybe

(48:34):
you need to do some shaping, maybe you need to
correct some things. Then put down the printers and step
away so no one gets hurt, including the plant that
you're pruning. That that is really true. Common examples of
over pruning and miss pruning are prime example are lovely
southern crepe myrtles their hack backed every year. I'll advise

(48:57):
practice that. That is a good example. People don't know
when to stop. Do you know that you cannot prune
a great myrtle? Now? During its development and growth. I
would recommend training. It don't go untrained, because then that
makes a mess. It grows into a mess. But a
little training, but then after that you kind of don't

(49:17):
really prune them. I mean just a little bit here
and there when something's not quite right, but they don't
have to be pruned every year like you see people doing.
Another example is pollarding trees. If you're not familiar with
the pollarding, pollarding is where you take a nice tree
and you cut it back to look like a hat rack.
You got these big giant branches that are just cut

(49:39):
off on the end, and then you get that crows
foot of growth that comes out, and then they hack
them back like that again. And this is done in Europe.
You can go online to a search for pollarding p
O L L A r D. It's done as an
ornamental practice actually, but it is horrible in terms of
branch structure, the the structural integrity of a tree, and

(50:02):
I just think it looks ridiculous. So that's my opinion.
But seriously, you can do some serious self education on
puning before you head outside with the tools in hand.
Your landscape plants, your orchard plants will be much more beautiful,
much more productive for years to come with just doing

(50:23):
a little bit of education. There's good books out there
on printing. There's good websites out there on printing, and
learn about the plant you're going to grow and how
to take care of that plant. And I you know,
I could take a whole show just talking about how
to prine this, how to print that. There are some
things like, okay, here's an example Nandina. Nandina sometimes called

(50:48):
heavenly bamboo. The old type got really tall, over six
feet high, and had berries on it, and it had
underground little suckers that came out, and it's sort of
the clump got bigger and bigger. The modern types are
more compact. They don't tend to spread as fast as
the other. I see people prune Inndina like a shrub.

(51:08):
They share it. It looks ridiculous. It does look ridiculous
if you cut it back then it just looks like
you chop the top off of it. The way to
print an indena is to remove the entire shoot at
the ground. Now in Indina, think of it. It's kind
of like bamboo and that you've got all these shoots
coming out of the ground and growing straight up. You

(51:29):
cut an old shoot that's not attractive, not productive, or
maybe too tall for where you want it, cut it
off at the ground, and new shoots will come up.
So you could prone one fifth of the shoots out
each year. You could go a couple of years and
do no printing and then come in and do something.
But the way to print inn Adena is just to
cut the whole trunk, whole trunk shoot down off at

(51:50):
the ground and pull it out of there. And that's
real simple. But that's very unique to prune. I bet
we prune bamboo that way too, by the way, But anyway,
learn not each plant needs to be pruned, and then
go out and do the pruning. Once you have done
the work of pruning, you can't put things back. And

(52:12):
this happens a lot on trees, but bad pruning practices
or forever that when you truly ruin the structural integrity
of a tree like that pollarding kind of thing, you're
never going to get back to a nice, beautiful, well shaped, strong,
good branch attachment tree. It's just not going to happen again. Well,

(52:32):
I'm talking about pruning some things. We can also be
pruning some of our groundcovers. And now what I mean
by that, well, at the end of winter, before the
new growth occurs, I recommend with loriope and with cast
iron plant, for example, that you cut those back to
near the ground. Over the course of a summer season.

(52:56):
With some leaf diseases, maybe spider mites in the case
of the loriiopy, and just the rag and tag of
summer droughts and heat, they get to looking kind of
shaggy and not so good. And if you cut it
all back to the ground in early spring, it's gonna
start popping up new growth out of that clump. And
either you're gonna have a mix of old growth and
new growth, or if you cut off all the old growth,

(53:18):
now you have a fresh new lariope plant or plants
or solid groundcover. Some people do and it looks good.
Cast iron plants the same way. That is a tough plant.
It can take shade, it can take sun, it can
take drought. It is just a tough plant. But it
starts looking ragged and each leaf is a big petiole

(53:41):
coming out of the ground with a big fat leaf
on the top. And you can just get on your
hands and knees down there and cut all those off.
I know some people that will cut the whole thing
off and just rake it all out of there, so
it's like they mot it off at the ground like
your lawn, and then the fresh growth comes out. I
know some people that just go in and cut the
ugliest ones out and keep it fresh looking. It will

(54:02):
come back and it will look good, and that is pruning.
For those kind of groundcovers. Some people will mow things
like an English ivy back or some other types of groundcovers.
Mow it back to get fresh new growth coming out.
And the other item that I want to mention in
along the same lines, or ornamental grasses. Ornamental grasses are

(54:26):
pruned back to just a kind of a stump. So
perhaps you have what's called maiden grass or one of
the mules. You can cut it back to just I
don't know, maybe four inches six inches depending on the
size of the plant high above the ground. Take all
that growth out and fresh new growth comes out. Otherwise

(54:47):
you got the mix and it doesn't look good. If
you're going to do that, there's some techniques that work
a little bit better. I like to take some twine
and tie the ornamental grass that's spreading all out in
all directions, tie it up. So you make a column
out of that grass by tying it in a couple
of places with twine, and then you just cut the

(55:09):
grass off at the bottom and you pick the whole
thing up and it's clean, nice, easy, all tidy. You
carry it off, do what you're gonna do with it,
and it looks good. If you go pruning, then now
you're having to, you know, try to cut through it,
and you got grass ling and everywhere. It's just a
messier process. But if you bind it up first, you
can use a bungee cord or twine or whatever you

(55:30):
want to do, it really makes it a lot easier
to do that. And that's just a tip for pruning
the ornamental grasses. But whether you're pruning a loriapi or
cast iron or ornamental grasses, get it done before the
new growth comes. Like with the loriope, if you wait
until new growth starts, I'll say you do it in
mid February, you probably already got new growth. Then you're
gonna have all these stubbed off new growth leaves that

(55:51):
don't look right. So make that kind of pruning decision
and get that done sooner rather than later. We could
go on go on talking about how to prune this,
how to prune that. There is if you want one
resource that I can give you as a tip for pruning,
the University of Georgia Extension Service. University of Georgia Extension Service.

(56:16):
Do a search on there. I'm not going to read
the whole urlt you, but do a search on there
for pruning landscape plants or I think the title of
it now is Basic Principles of Pruning woody plants or
Pruning ornamental plants in the landscape those kinds of things.
Is a really good publication. It explains heading cuts and

(56:38):
pruning cuts. It explains the proper way to prune to
you know, successfully cut these things off and end up
with good results. And it helps you understand how plants
respond to pruning, so you can make you can prune
in a more educated way. Well, I'm going to take
a break now and we'll come back with other types

(57:00):
of topics as well as a conversation with Leon. You'll
be our first up Leon when we come back. Welcome
back to the garden line. I'm going to head straight
to the phones and talk to Leon. Hello, Leon, welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (57:13):
Thank you. How are you doing today?

Speaker 4 (57:17):
I'm doing well. I'm doing well.

Speaker 5 (57:19):
How can help well? I have a Myers lemon bush
about it? They said it was a tree. We planted
it and kept getting shorter and shorter till it turned
into a bush. But this thing is about ten years
old and it's got The leaves are black, and you know,

(57:44):
when it's dry, I tried rubbing them and nothing comes off.
But after a rain or something, you go out there
and you can rub the leaves and this black stuff, yeah,
starts coming off. And I checked with the local nursery.
I said that probably would use some copper fung aside

(58:05):
and what you know, water the bush real good and
then put mix up a gallon of it and pour
around the base. Well I did that and it really
didn't help. And it said you might have to do
it every seven to ten days till it's time to
get the fruit off. Now, well that's back in February.

Speaker 4 (58:27):
First of all, do not do that anymore. Do not
get copper around the base of the plant. That didn't
accomplish it will not accomplish that. It's not systemic product.
And you can cause issues and the soil by overloading
it with copper. So what's happening on your lemon what's

(58:48):
happening in your lemon tree? Leon is there are some
small insects that are sucking the juices, the sugary sap
out of the leaves or the stem and then they
basically get the nutrients out of it and essentially just
pee out a bunch of sugar water. They don't use
the sugar part of it, and so that falls on

(59:09):
the leaves is a mist, and the city mold grows
on that. That's where the black is. The black is
just a fungus growing on sugary substances on the leaf.
So the black secondary it does shade out the leaves
a little and so you have less of little synthesis
and stuff. So you do want to get rid of it, right,

(59:29):
So what insect is it? There's a bunch of insects
that can do that. Aphids can do that, white flies,
mealy bugs, and scale most likely your on your tree.
You're looking at white flies or scale insects and they
could be on the stems or they could be underneath
the leaves. If you turn some leaves over you should

(59:52):
see some really flat little things on there. White flies
look like little fish scales. Now I know I use
the word scale with white scale. Insects and white flies
are two separate things. But the white fly pupa look
like little flat fish scales, very small, like a lowercase
typed o letter O on the bottom of a leaf.

(01:00:13):
And so what you do with those is probably I
would get a horticultural oil spray, and I would spray
it upward from beneath the plant and make sure you
coat all the undersides of all the leaves, and that
smothers the scale and kills them. It smothers the white
fly pupa also that are under the leaf, if they're

(01:00:35):
part of what's causing it. I don't think you have
aphids on your citrus, so I will eliminate aphids, which
also produce or create city mole. But so it's going
to be one of those two, most likely white flies
and scale. I don't think it's mealy bugs. Those would
look as like little puffy, cottony things typically like where

(01:00:57):
a leaf comes off the stem some product.

Speaker 5 (01:01:01):
But yeah, I've kind of looked it over, and you know,
I really don't see any insects or anything like that
on there. This doesn't affect the fruit at all, does it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:15):
No, it doesn't. But the only way that it would
affect is by cutting down on It's like you shaded
your your tree with a shade over it, so you
get less carbohydrate production, therefore less fruit set and the
sugar and fruit is carbohydrates too. So yeah, yeah, that's
what I There are systemics that you can put on

(01:01:36):
the ground and the roots take it up and they
get in the plumbing of the plant and they kill
the insects that are sucking those juices out of the plant.
I don't know if I'm going to eat the fruit.
I just prefer not to use a systemic insecticide. There's
some that are labeled for that, but I have to
mention that they're there. But I think you're going to

(01:01:58):
do okay with horticultural oil. You're gonna have to do
it repeatedly, and remember it's only going to work as
good as your spray coverage was. So if one leaf
birks your spray from hitting another leaf, then you're not
going to get control in those areas where you didn't
get oil.

Speaker 5 (01:02:14):
Okay, what I had a buddy of mine down at
the local hardware store. He said, maybe use nimzol on
it oil.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
Nim oil is it is a plant based type of oil,
and you may have some results from that. You may
have decent results from that too, depends on what you're
going after. Check also the branches of the plant for
little bumps or structures that might be scale insects, just
to make sure out in the twigs and out there

(01:02:46):
that there's not that that is another possibility. But again,
a good oil spray will smother those as well.

Speaker 5 (01:02:53):
Yeah, have you ever heard of anybody using pine old
pine of not?

Speaker 4 (01:03:01):
Well, I've heard of a lot of household cleaning kinds
of products being used on plants for various things. Sometimes
they work and sometimes they don't. They're definitely not labeled
for that. But now I don't I don't think that
is gonna it'll make it smell nice.

Speaker 5 (01:03:18):
Oh yeah, I've got a buddy that that's what he says.
It's a natural plant or you know, and it's not
going to hurt anything. We use that, uh back when
the raspberry and for running rampant. You know, you can
spray that on them and it would suffocate him you
know you had to get spray it on them. You

(01:03:41):
know it didn't do any good. Spray it out somewhere
and let them walk through it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
Right, got you? Okay, Well, I'm going to leave the
home remedies on the shelf. On just stick with the
being labeled for those purposes, Haleon. I appreciate your call.

Speaker 5 (01:03:58):
Where's a good place to get to his own or
cultureal all.

Speaker 4 (01:04:02):
Where do you live? Seabrook, Seabrook your a software stores
done in that area are going to have it. You
probably can get it at Moss Nursery too, Moss nurseres
just you're real close to you if you're in Seabrook.
Some products. Yeah, all right, Hey, I've got to run

(01:04:25):
for a break. Good luck with that, and if it works,
I just ask you to bring half the lemons that
you grow to the station and we'll call it even
take care, Bye bye, all right, folks, I'll be right back.
All right, welcome, welcome back to the Garden Line. I'm
your host, skip Ricktor and we're here to help you
have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape and more fun

(01:04:47):
in the process. That's what it's all about, you know,
gardening has so many benefits. I know, you know that
if you eat healthy food, you're going to have a
healthy life, right, that's important. We can grow fresh food.
We also know that beautiful esthetics have mental benefits for us.
Beautiful flowers, beautiful gardens, those kinds of things. We know

(01:05:10):
the physical benefits of gardening. You get out, you do
some exercise, you walk around, you get up, you get down,
you do things. Gardening is great for that. And you
know exercise doesn't mean going to the gym only and
pumping a bunch of weights until you barely can lift.
When we look at health benefits, have you ever heard that,
you know you're sitting at a desk all day, just

(01:05:31):
getting up, walking around every a little bit is beneficial
for your health. Well, gardening is walking around a little
bit and then some very very good And then of
course the cognitive benefits, everything from fighting depression, dealing with dementia's,
children with ADHD struggles. There are many benefits that the
research has shown gardening does provide us when it comes

(01:05:55):
to cognitive benefits too, and we could go on and on.
Plus the social benefits, you know, getting together with gardeners,
visiting with people sharing things, cuttings and seeds and stories.
It's just a fun thing. Ask anybody in a garden
club or master gardener group. They can tell you all
about the benefits like that. So I think we've got

(01:06:16):
one of the best hobbies in the whole world. And
I would even say best professions too, for those of
us that have had horticulture as profession our whole life.
That's what it's about. So let's have some fun here
on garden line. Give me a call. Seven one three
two one two kt r H seven one three two
one two k t r H. Ace Hardware stores are

(01:06:40):
always stocked with whatever you need to have success in
your garden and in your landscape. You know, from fertilizers
to pest control, to insects, disease and weed management, to
pruning tools, watering tools. Whatever you need, it's there at
the ACE Hardware store. But this is the season, the
holiday season when ACE loads up on really cool holiday lights,

(01:07:03):
like there lights by the Foot, where you can purchase
a string of lights by the foot exactly as long
as you want it to be. Holiday lights, indoor and outdoor,
holiday decorations, indoor and outdoor holiday gifts from toys, for kids,
to tools for the do it yourselfers on your list,
to gadgets for the kitchen and the home, decorating the home.

(01:07:28):
It's all there at ACE Hardware makes it really easy.
You know, you can find ACE Hardware's all over the place.
Go to Acehardware dot com and there you will see
a list in the store locator of the Ace Hardware
stores near you. Now. For example, you're going to have
an ACE Hardware Chalmers Ace out there on Galveston Island

(01:07:49):
if your way up in Porter JY and R's in
Porter Jnr's. ACE Importer is another one. Been to that store.
It's a pretty cool one. Out in the Crosby area.
There's Cross in the Bay City area. There's a Base
City ACE. There's ACE all over the place. Wherever you live.
ACE is the place I was visiting conversation via text

(01:08:13):
and email. We need Nelson the other day, and you know,
Nelson's plant Food just has so many good products, so
many different lines. They've got a plant food called Nutristar
indoor plants now the Nutri Star line of fertilizers. There's
a lot of different specific types of plant food in

(01:08:34):
the Nutri Star line. Nutristar indoor plants is everything that
you need for your houseplants, your indoor plants. You know,
you think about this, that house plant out in nature
would have roots going everywhere, drawing from water and nutrients
and things like that. In a house everything comes out
of the small amount of soil in that container. That
putting soil in the container, so supplementing it with nutristar

(01:08:57):
indoor plants provides both slow and fast release nutrient sources
to help maintain vitality, some healthy growth, some good beautiful
leaf growth. Most of our houseplants we grow for the
foliage itself. You can apply it once or twice during
the winter season and then more often during the growing season.
You know that even though the temperature inside is pretty

(01:09:19):
consistent through the year, not fully, but the day length changes.
In our indoor plants, they grow less in the wintertime
it's a little cooler, and it also the day length
is different. So once or twice during the winter and
more often during the growing season for Nelson's plant food
nutri Star for the indoor plants. I also wanted to

(01:09:40):
mention that Dane Nelson set up a scholarship in memory
of Randy Lemon. Randy was a legendary Greater Houston area
gardening guru for many many years here over twenty five
years here on garden Line. He had that those of
you who've heard Randy, I'm not telling anything you don't
know here, but was so entertaining and he provided helpful

(01:10:03):
advice that really benefited a lot of people over the years,
and you may be one of those people. This scholarship
was set up in Randy's name to honor his life
and his contribution to the gardening world here in the
Houston area. And each year a scholarship will be given
to a horticulture student at Texas A and M. I
know Randy. He and I both love our alma mater,

(01:10:26):
and he would be so proud to know that his
legacy lives on at his alma mater in the horticulture
department there at Texas A and M. Would you consider
making a donation to that scholarship fund. Small amounts, large amounts,
everything is helpful. We are trying to increase that fund
because it is an ongoing scholarship that each year is

(01:10:50):
going to be given. So the more that we put
in there, the more it can be provided for students
to help raise up the next generation of horticulturists. I'm
a product of that program off and so I'm always
thinking about, well, who is coming along that is learning
and being trained and ready to help people have more

(01:11:11):
success in their gardening. So I see it as a
good cause on many different fronts. Now you can go
online and give, you can send in a check to give.
And I'm not gonna give you all the details right
now online because it's confusing to hear all that on
the radio. Just go to my website, Gardening with Skip

(01:11:31):
dot com, and the newest updated publication right there on
that list, right on the front page of the website,
is the Randy Lemon Scholarship. Click on that and it'll
tell you how to give online and how to give
if you want to write a check and mail it in.
But please consider that this holiday season, those of you
who have enjoyed Randy's advice over the years, I think

(01:11:55):
it is a wonderful way to continue to or his
memory and also to do a lot of good for
some folks that are going through school to get their
degree in horticulture so they can help other people. Alrighty,
there you have it. Boy, this morning is flying you
know time flies. Well, they say time flies when you're

(01:12:19):
having fun. I'm having fun now, kurnit the frog says
time is fun when you're having flies. But that's just
another way to look at it. Well, I have talked
about a number of different things this morning. I did
want to before we go here, mention that Star of

(01:12:40):
Hope is a ministry here in the Houston area that
makes a difference in people's lives. It's the holiday season,
you know, we're trying to figure out what what is
the next gift we're getting for somebody or the next
you know, gathering we're preparing for. Many homeless people are
just looking forward to their next meal. And you can
provide a meal for two dollars and eighty five cents

(01:13:02):
and Star Hope gives over six thousand meals a week.
That's a lot of meals. How many will you provide? Billy?
You can join me in my wife in giving the
Star of Hope. Just go to s o H Mission
dot Org, s o H Mission dot Art and put
your compassion to work for a very good cob. I'll

(01:13:26):
be back after the top of the hour and the
weeks and we'll continue discussions about.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Gardening Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with skimp Rickard's.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):
Just watch him as so many give.

Speaker 3 (01:13:52):
These to Supt Basic in.

Speaker 4 (01:14:02):
Welcome back to garden Line, folks. We got more garden
talk to go. Got two hours more gardening talk to
go this morning. If you would like to give me
a call discuss whatever's on your mind regarding your gardening.
That includes housepens, house plants too, by the way, just
give me a call it seven one three two one

(01:14:23):
two kt r H seven to one three two one
two kt r H. I mentioned uh the website a
little bit earlier. I did want to also let you
know today that I have put up a publication called
Quality Lighting for growing Transplants. We are about to start

(01:14:44):
the transplant growing season. I begin uh in after the
Christmas before New Year's. Typically try to get my transplants
started at that time. Uh wait a little bit later
if you want to, but I like to get get
them going earlier so I have a bigger transplant when
it's time to put them out in the garden. Now,
that requires some space. You know, if you're just growing

(01:15:07):
one of those little six pack four pack trays of transplants,
you can get seventy two of them in about a
nine by I don't know what are those things nine
by twenty I believe something like that anyway, tray. But
when you bump them to four inch pots now it
takes a lot more time, and then I end up

(01:15:28):
bumping some tomatoes up to gallum pots by the time
I'm done, So I have tomatoes with blims and freight
on them, and I put them out after the last
frost danger on average is passed. So that can take
some space to do that. If you don't have the space,
then you might want to wait a little bit later
to start. It takes about six weeks to grow a

(01:15:48):
tomato transplant or pepper transplant. Eight weeks is a little
bit better, but you can do it in about six weeks.
Many other things are in the six week range if
you're talking about warm seasoned vegetables like that are in
the cucurbits like squash, for example. In cucumbers, normally we
direct seed those right out into the garden, but if

(01:16:08):
you want a little bit of a headstart, you can
do that. But you're only going to give them about
two or three weeks at the most to grow inside,
because if they get pop bound, they don't transplant out
very well. So whatever you're going to grow, count back
in time and start them at the proper time for that.
This publication on lighting, I put it up first because

(01:16:29):
it is the number one thing I see people do
wrong when they try to grow their own transplants is
not give them enough quality light. And when we start
thinking about lighting, the quantity of light is important. If
light is too dim, the plants are going to get

(01:16:50):
stretchy and lanky and not perform well at all. The
Quantity of light, the quality of light is important. The
lighting you buy for your home is a wavelength, or
there are various wavelengths that are more for our eyes

(01:17:10):
and that create I guess mood is a way to
put it. You know, we have cool white that's kind
of a bluish light, a very bright bluish light. And
then we have warm white, like you know, you go
into a restaurant and you're there in the boot at
a restaurant and you got that kind of yellowy light
that's shining. That's a warm white, and it is an

(01:17:30):
ambience kind of light too. There's times and places for that,
but those are visuals for us and lighting for plants
is different. Now you can use human lighting for plants,
but you're going to have less performance, and in some
cases the very poor performance when it comes to the spectrum.

(01:17:53):
The quality of the light, and certainly the quantity as well.
And then finally the duration. That's a third thing, quality duration.
Those three things, how long do you leave the lights
on when I'm growing transplants, I, once the seedlings are up,
I go to about fourteen hours a day, about twelve
to fourteen hours a day, and that gives them enough

(01:18:15):
light to do well. In my publication that I put online,
Quality Lighting for Growing Houseplants, by the way, you need
to look at it's really cool. You even have a
little gift in there that shows how light comes out
of a light fixture and spreads out as it gets
to the plant. So the further you get from the fixture,
the dimmer the light is. And it is dramatic the

(01:18:37):
difference it makes as you move from like let's say
one foot away to two feet away or something. But anyway,
that publication is there to help you have success with lighting,
because lighting is so important, and if you've never tried
grown your own transplants, you gotta try it. I do
a lot of things with lights gardening wise. For example,

(01:18:59):
my house plants that have been outside, I've got too
many now, they're too big, too many to put in
my house. It would be a jungle, and I just
don't want quite that ambiance in the house. So I
have something that I put in the garage in the
wintertime underneath a nice light that provides a moderate amount
of light to keep them going. And so that's one

(01:19:20):
way I'm used lighting. I'm using it to grow transplants.
I'm also using it to start cuttings. When I'm trying
to root some cuttings and I want to get them
going good. It doesn't take much light to do that.
By the way, that's the lowest light level thing that
we do gardening wises, is just starting the cuttings. They
they need light, but they don't need bright light shining
on them like a ceiling does. And I also use

(01:19:43):
it This year, I'm going to try to produce some
things indoors under light. Still, like tomatoes. I grow tomato transplants,
but what about keeping that tomato and going all the
way to growing tomatoes indoors? That takes a lot more light,
a lot higher quality light and I'm going to be
doing some of that as well this year. But it's

(01:20:04):
a lot of fun to do that. It also makes
good Christmas gifts, good quality lighting heating mat to go
underneath the tray of seedlings, the potting soil and the tray.
Some of the trays have little domes over them that
help hold in the moisture and allow the light to
go through. Those are helpful. I use those. So however
you want to go about it, there's a way to

(01:20:25):
do it.

Speaker 6 (01:20:25):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:20:25):
I have gardened and started transplants and everything from like
this official transplant growing tray, to dishes that you get
from restaurants to take your food home. You know, you
go to Salata and you get this little yellow bottom
dish with a clear top on it that clicks down

(01:20:46):
you go to the grocery store. You can even buy
dishes or plastics for carrying food around that have a
clear top. I've started a lot of things and a
lot of things like that, and you can do it
and do it and dig cops if you want to.
But however you go about it, just have fun doing it.
And I'm going to also be putting up an article

(01:21:07):
on how to grow transplants, not just lighting, but everything
about growing successful transplants. That's the next one to go
up on the website at Gardening with Skip dot com
Gardening with Skip dot com. Well, it is time for
us to go to our first break this hour. When
we come back, I'll be entering your calls if you
would like to give us a call seven one three

(01:21:28):
two one two kt RH. Welcome back to garden Line.
I'm glad you're with us. Hey, anything you need for
your garden. I'm talking about products to fertilize, products to
control pests and diseases and weeds. I'm talking about tools.
I'm talking about fertilizer spreaders. I'm talking about everything, including

(01:21:49):
even getting your lawnmower blade sharpened, which, by the way,
now would be a good time to get that done.
Is it Southwest Fertilizer Southwest Fertilizers on the corner of
Bisinett and Renwick in southwest Houston around since nineteen fifty five,
and boy, I'm telling you they have it. If they
don't have it, you don't need it. That I just
like to put it that way because that is the truth.

(01:22:10):
If you're looking for a Christmas gift, even go by there,
talk to them, ask Bob, say, hey, I want to
see that kneeling bench Skip keeps talking about on garden line,
the one where you it folds up and then unfolds.
You flip it one way and it's a seat to
sit on. You flip it the other way and you
kneel down on it. And the cool part about it is,
and anyone over forty needs to hear this. You grab

(01:22:30):
what was the legs of it and it's a handle
to get back up off your knees. Now do you
go to your knees and back up again? Gardening about
eight thousand times on a Saturday, and you wake up
the next day in the prenatal position because you used
muscles that don't get used enough. Well, kneeling bench fix
is at It works really well for that. Also, cool

(01:22:52):
tools like a soil knife on one of my favorite tools,
is it soil Myebob's got those there at Southwest fern Lager,
corner of Bestinett and Redwick phone number seven one three
six six six one seven four four. We're going to
go back to the phones now and head out to
Conroe and talk to Richard. Hello, Richard, Welcome to garden mine.

Speaker 5 (01:23:11):
Thank you.

Speaker 10 (01:23:14):
Grandy Lemon says in his book that I was pulling
out the other day that for my brown patch used
two year old leaf mold mult twice a year.

Speaker 5 (01:23:24):
Is it too late to do it this year?

Speaker 4 (01:23:27):
No, it's never too late. That you can do leapmomulta
anytime you want to put it down.

Speaker 10 (01:23:34):
Marley did a fantastic job, But the.

Speaker 5 (01:23:38):
Fungus got to me.

Speaker 4 (01:23:42):
When you use the leaf mold, it got to you.

Speaker 10 (01:23:45):
No, I say it did a fantastic job because it
was a new yard. Oh we had a perfect wawn
until till it's fall.

Speaker 4 (01:23:54):
Yeah. Well, this has been a bad year for brown patch.
I was just driving to the neighborhood the other day
and just like almost ever long had it in it
and normally we don't see that. It's kind of here
and there. But the key on brown patch is number one.
We can make it worse by continuing to water late
into the season when our plants don't need as much
water as they needed during the summer. That more often

(01:24:17):
you keep it wet, the more brown patch you're going
to have. By fertilizing too much with nitrogen going late
into the season, and we can aggravate it that way too,
So all.

Speaker 10 (01:24:30):
Righty, yeah, one, can I ask you one other thing,
cutting back, uh like abescus and three sisters things like that.
Once should you cut them back so that they can
climatize before the freeze?

Speaker 4 (01:24:47):
Are you bringing them indoors? No, in the garage or something.

Speaker 5 (01:24:53):
No, they're in the They're in the ground.

Speaker 10 (01:24:54):
I just wondered how early I should cut them back
so they're beautiful right now?

Speaker 4 (01:25:00):
Yeah? Is this hibiscus the kind that dies to the
ground and comes back out of the ground, or is
this the tropical type that has the really beautiful flowers
of all kinds of different colors and things.

Speaker 10 (01:25:13):
It dies back to the ground.

Speaker 4 (01:25:16):
Okay, the perennial hibiscus. I would let the frieze kill
it back to the ground and then cut off all
the old dead stalks, maults the base of it, and
it'll come back out in the spring down. If it's
that type of hibiscus, the perennial hibiscus. The perennial hibiscus,
the flowers are almost dinner plate size, and they're either red, pink, white,

(01:25:38):
or some version of those three colors.

Speaker 10 (01:25:44):
Yeah, we get nice blooms now and we had a
three sisters that does real well that. I didn't know
whether we should cut that back prematurely or let it
die back.

Speaker 4 (01:25:55):
Which can you think of another name for that plant
or a description of it what you're calling because sisters.

Speaker 10 (01:26:03):
It has a fushi color to it.

Speaker 4 (01:26:07):
Okay, Mwaian well Hawaiian Hawaiian. Oh, okay, okay, yes, okay,
all right, well that one. Yeah, I let's see where
are you. You're up in Conros. You're going to get
a little bit colder up there. In the past, have

(01:26:32):
you cut it back?

Speaker 5 (01:26:36):
Yes, we just moved here. We used to be up
on the lake Conrod and we cut them back in.

Speaker 10 (01:26:43):
But I didn't know that whether assume we should cut
them back because they look so beautiful right now.

Speaker 4 (01:26:51):
Yeah, there. I would most the base of those really
well too. I mean I would leave them and then
when you get cold, that's kind of ruined the than
if you wanted to cut him back and whatnot, you could.

Speaker 10 (01:27:07):
Okay, thank you very much.

Speaker 5 (01:27:09):
Enjoy your program.

Speaker 4 (01:27:10):
Yeah good well, uh and enjoy your new uh new
place up there. I don't know how long you've been
in the new place, but uh, that Conroy area is
really beautiful. And I love the love it out at
the lake too. By the way, I know you did too, probably, all.

Speaker 5 (01:27:26):
Right, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:27:28):
Yeah, just remember that Hawaiian tie Okay, yeah, I don't.
Just remember that Hawaiian tie is not a not a
real cold hearty plant. So it's more of a tropical Yeah,
I know. Okay, So it takes a lot of mulch
at the base to protect it. Okay, all right, Well,
thank you Richard, take care, Thank you. We're going to

(01:27:51):
go now to Tim. Hey, Tim, welcome to garden Line.
How can we help.

Speaker 11 (01:27:56):
I have a question about to get a soil sample.

Speaker 12 (01:28:01):
What's the best way to do a soil sample for so.

Speaker 9 (01:28:04):
I know what my garden needs or my yard needs
or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:28:08):
Yeah, good question, glad you ask. I should talk about
soil sampling more.

Speaker 5 (01:28:14):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:28:14):
If you go to the website soil testing, one word
dot t a m U dot e d u. So
it's soil Testing dot TAMU Texas and m University t
A m U dot e d u on. There is
the pub the soil sampling forms, so you can get instructions.

(01:28:38):
On the front page. There's a thing that says sampling
and shipping instructions okay. And so when you click on that,
it will it will, it will take you to where
you ship it, and uh, it's going to have There's
several soil forms. There is one that says it's just
the standard soil form that's more for pastures and cattle

(01:28:58):
in farms and places like that. There's one called urban soil. Now,
urban soil just means it's a garden, and it tells
you where to take the samples, how to collect the samples.
But the urban soil sample form is the one that
you want. But basically to make to really simplify it,
you're going to probably take oh about in maybe eight

(01:29:21):
different places around the yard or around a garden. You're
going to take a vertical core of soil out of
the ground. So you have the same amount of soil
from one inch deep as you do from about six
inches deep, okay, And so you you mix that all
up and you send that in. About a pint of
soil out of that send that in for your sample,

(01:29:41):
and that gives them a nice blend of soil to sample.
If you just take a sample in one place, maybe
it was a place where the neighborhood dog stopped and
went to the bathroom last fall, and you know so
that that would be a sample that's not accurate and
representative of your lawn. So that soil testing dot TAMU
did et You do the urban Soil Sampling form and

(01:30:04):
send it into the lab. The results will come back
and if you have questions about the results, you can
either go to your county extension office and talk to
your county agg or horticulture agent about it, or if
you want, you can give me a call here on
Guarden Line. What I'll what I'll end up doing is
having you send me the form and then then we
can we can talk about it on the air about
you know, because I like to answer things where other

(01:30:28):
people can hear the answers too. I think they'll right.
That will be very helpful. Okay, I appreciate it all right, sir,
Thank you very much. Appreciate your call. You take you
take care. Uh. Microlife fertilizers are high quality products that
are designed with nature and mind. You know what how

(01:30:52):
does nature? How did the redwood forests become giant trees?
Who was running through there?

Speaker 5 (01:30:58):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:30:59):
Rototillings, oil and fertilizing and watering and do all the
things we do well. Nature has a way of taking
care of plants. You know the Great Plains with grass
as deep as the horse's belly. When the settlers came across,
how is the grass growing that well? Well, nature was
taking care of the soil. And nature can do that,
and microlife helps you give nature a boost a natural way.

(01:31:22):
So you take organic materials, you put them in a
product that can be microbially broken down and to release
those nutrients in the ratios that plants need. Microlife has
products like the green bag, the lawn fertilizer. It can
be used for anything but lawn fertilizer. That's the green bag.
That's sixty four. They've got one for acidic plants. If

(01:31:43):
you got blueberries or camellias or azaleas or you know,
Virginia sweet spire, those kinds of things, the acidic product
works well for. They got ones for fruit trees. They
got a lot of different products out there on the market,
but they're all designed with the same thing in mind,
and that is providing natural substances for microbe activity. And

(01:32:05):
by the way, they also these products by Microlife are
chock full of microbes. You can find more from Microlife
Fertilizer dot com website. They're widely available. They'll tell you
where you can get them on there too, But I
can just tell you this. Garden centers, Ace hardware stores,
feed stores, and Southwest Fertilized. All these places carry Microlife products.

(01:32:27):
That is important. I'm gonna have to go to a
break here and when we come back, let's see David
and John will be our first two up. Welcome back
to garden Line. We are glad you are with us today.
We've got lots of things to talk about regarding garden
as we always do. What I'm gonna do right now
is head out to the phone. Suddenly, I think a

(01:32:49):
bunch of people woke up and started calling garden Lines,
So let's do this. David in Crosby, Welcome to garden Line.
How can we help today?

Speaker 11 (01:32:57):
Thank you, Skiff, thank you for taking my call morning.
I like your comments and uh stuff on your your
betting plants, especially grown from seas. I like the use
of a warming pad. I hadn't tried that before. But
I've got a problem in my guard with nuts edge,
and I've tried the the betting fabric. I've tried Hay

(01:33:20):
straw un till once a week, and and that nuts
edge is just a just a bear to get rid of.

Speaker 4 (01:33:28):
And control. Well, yeah, so what I've done that that's
the answer to that is a little bit involved. And
so what I've done is online on my website Gardening
with Skip dot com. I have a publication and it's
called nuts Edge an in depth Look, and it's three pages, uh,

(01:33:53):
but it goes into the two kinds of nuts edge,
purple and yellow.

Speaker 9 (01:33:56):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:33:57):
There's some differences and and changes the way we go
about controlling it, and it tells you how to go
about getting in control of it. And if you look
at that and kind of understand this creature called nuts edge,
it helps you better to control it successfully. A lot
of things people try, they say don't work. And the
main reason things don't work is because either number one,

(01:34:19):
they're not effective or they don't consistently stick with it.
And so whether you're hand digging it, whether you're spraying
it with a herd aside, whether you're shading it out
with there's a lot of things you can do to
nuts edge, but you have to stay with it one
year just to kind of learn about this. I had

(01:34:40):
one nutsedge plant, and I let it come up in
the spring and didn't do anything about it. And about
May I carefully dug it up and it had eight
daughter plants tubers. You didn't see the plant chet. They
were underground. The nuts were underground. The tubers eight of
them that were viable. So by waiting until May, I

(01:35:00):
had eight hundred percent increase in nutsedge in that bed.
One plant becomes eight plants, right, and so that's lesson
number one, start early. Less than number two is once
the nutsedge comes up and gets three to five leaves,
it is already or it is about to start producing
the daughter plants to the sides, and so you need

(01:35:23):
to do whatever you're going to do to it then,
or you've already gone backwards in time. There's like you're
killing one, but you're you've already got more coming. So
there are products that are very effective. There's one called
sedge hammer that's labeled for lawn use that is very effective.
One called sedge ender that's very effective. And these are
all in that publication so you can you can go

(01:35:45):
look at them. I also have a thing called a
weed wiper. How to build one on there? And if
you look at how to build a weed wiper. That's
what I use for nutsedge in all my beds. So
if nutsedge is coming up underneath your rose bushes or
in your land hannah or whatever, you with the weed wiper.
You reach it on, you grab the nuts edge, and
you wipe product right on the nuts edge. So if

(01:36:07):
it were a product that we're going to hurt another planet,
it won't because you're not getting it on the other planet.
You're not spraying it. But the combination of nutsedge and
in depth look and the weed wiper will walk you
through it. Bottom line is start early. When a plant
has three to five leaves, you need to be doing
something to it because it's about to increase your woes
if you don't.

Speaker 5 (01:36:28):
Very good.

Speaker 4 (01:36:28):
So what was the website again, Gardening with Skip that's
me gardening with Skip dot com. Gardening with Skip dot com. Yeah,
and there's a lot of good good stuff on there,
all right.

Speaker 11 (01:36:45):
And the article about the nutsedge was called.

Speaker 4 (01:36:51):
Uh well, there's two of them on there about nutsedge.
The longer one that explains it better is called nutsedge
and in depth look.

Speaker 11 (01:37:01):
Very good. It's a lot of help. I will look
that up.

Speaker 5 (01:37:04):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:37:04):
Sir, all right, David, thank you for the call. Appreciate
you being a listener to Garden Line. We're going to
go now to John and Katie. Hey, John, welcome to Garth.

Speaker 13 (01:37:13):
Good Moire, Skip, good Morse, Skip, appreciate your program. A
couple of questions about peach trees. So I've got.

Speaker 3 (01:37:19):
Four of them.

Speaker 13 (01:37:20):
It's my first year growing them, and some of them
still have leaves and other ones they're dropping leaves. Does
it make sense to continue to feed them right now?
Because I mean, okay, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:37:34):
Now I wouldn't. I don't fertilize my fruit trees after
about August. Really you can do it in September. But
the bottom line is as we go to at the
end of the year, those trees are they are slow
in growth, they're getting ready for winter, They're developing the
heartiness that they will need to go into winter. Part

(01:37:55):
of that is losing their leaves and going dormant and whatnot,
and pushing them with fertilize are kind of goes in
the other direction. You know, it's saying, hey, put out
some fresh new growth and that's not going to survive
a freeze. So we wane down on those at the
end of summer or early fall at the latest.

Speaker 5 (01:38:13):
Gotcha.

Speaker 13 (01:38:14):
It just seems weird because we're almost January and it
seems like we're in spring.

Speaker 3 (01:38:19):
Eighty degrees.

Speaker 4 (01:38:21):
I know. Welcome to Texas, Welcome to Houston area at least.

Speaker 13 (01:38:25):
Another question is about big trees. So you've described before
peaches as the queen of the garden. How would you
describe fig trees?

Speaker 4 (01:38:36):
That's a good question. I've ever thought about that. I like,
I grew up eating figs. I love figs. My mom
would take strawberry jello and make fig jam with not strawberries,
strawberry jello and figs. So I love figs. What would
I call figs?

Speaker 5 (01:38:53):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:38:53):
I need to think about that one. I don't have
a name for them. They are easy to grow. They
are almost dizy and pest free almost, and so yeah,
if you want to grow something organically, figs are a
good one to do.

Speaker 5 (01:39:08):
Yeah, I plan on.

Speaker 13 (01:39:09):
I just ordered some cuttings online and I'm about to
start to try to root fourteen different varieties and hopefully,
oh my backyard.

Speaker 4 (01:39:18):
Have fun, have fun. That's good. That's good. I'd like
to hear as those begin to grow, how you like.

Speaker 13 (01:39:24):
Them, fair enough. Another question is tomatoes. When do they
normally start dying back in the in the grounds.

Speaker 4 (01:39:34):
Well, with the first frost. Basically they slow grow some
stuff they're not growing and producing and developing very fast
right now. At some point we picked the green tomatoes
up before the first frost and hopefully some of those
will ripen indoors.

Speaker 13 (01:39:48):
Yeah, fair enough, because I have I've used the Medina
hast to grow and that stuff's phenomenal. I still have
one plant on my backyard. It's got probably over one
hundred and twenty tomatoes still on it with flowers.

Speaker 4 (01:40:00):
I still grow good. Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm gonna
have to run to a break here, but thank you
very much. I really appreciate that call. You know, the
folks that Nelson Water Gardens have put together a wonderful
garden center and nursery in addition to all the water
garden stuff. Right now, if you buy a Christmas tree,

(01:40:20):
you get a free point seta from them. They've got
some wonderful already wrapped up and decorated houseplants as Christmas
gifts that are just gorgeous. You need to go see
those things, of course, they're all about watergardens, but they
all they also are a nursery and they have all
kinds of wonderful plants all through the year. Go to
Nelson Watergardens dot com or drive out there. Just head

(01:40:42):
out to Katie. When you get to Katie Fort Benrod,
turn right, it's just a little bit, uh, just a
little bit north of iten on the right hand side,
and you that are there at a very very special place.
I'm gonna take a break, folks, and we will be
right back with your calls. Uh when we get back,
we'll be talking to Daniel and Paula and Bill. Welcome back, folks,

(01:41:06):
Glad to have you with us. Have you ever noticed
that all these Christmas songs are about snow and sleigh rides?
And I don't know, I've seen pictures of snow before. Okay,
here we go. Let's see. We are going to head
out to Cypress, Texas and talk to Daniel. Hey, Daniel,

(01:41:28):
how can we help Hey?

Speaker 6 (01:41:30):
Yeah, I'm trying to get a Christmas tree and I've
been looking for Douglas fur and I can't find them anywhere.

Speaker 4 (01:41:43):
Douglas fur. I am not sure what trees everybody is
carrying specifically, there's a variation out there. You're in the
Cypress area, and I have you tried, like Plants for
All Seasons and Arborgate they're pretty close to you.

Speaker 5 (01:42:02):
What was the first one you said?

Speaker 4 (01:42:06):
Plants for All Seasons is on Highway two forty nine.
Arborgate is on twenty nine to twenty just a little
west of Tombull, the west side of Tumbull. They both
carry a lot of Christmas trees, and I would call
them before you make the trip, although both places are
fun to visit and just see if they have the
kind you're looking for, and if they don't, they might

(01:42:28):
be able to suggest something for you. But those two
garden centers do really carry some really nice trees up
in your area. If you're not successful there, I know
that Buchanans Native Plants on Eleventh Street and the Heights
has a lot of really good quality Christmas trees as well,
not too terribly far from you, but a little further.

Speaker 5 (01:42:52):
Okay, so arbor Gate and what was the other one.

Speaker 4 (01:42:56):
Plants for All Seasons? Highway two forty nine and Louetta.

Speaker 5 (01:43:04):
Okay, they all right, yes, sir? Thanks all right?

Speaker 4 (01:43:14):
Good luck with that, yes, sir, Thank you. Bye. Let's
see who's next here. We got Paula in Richmond. Hey, Paula,
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 14 (01:43:26):
Hi, Hi, thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 15 (01:43:29):
I have.

Speaker 14 (01:43:31):
Four quick questions.

Speaker 15 (01:43:33):
Well one is not quick, so I'm going to go
to that one first, if that's okay. I live in
a master planned community and I'm right next door to
one of the neighborhood playgrounds where there are six very
large live oak trees, and I noticed there's a very
big route growing from one of them straight under my house.

(01:43:56):
So I imagine if I can see that one, there
was probably a lot more. So okay, one, what do
I do about it too? I had to have a
new floor put in my second bathroom, and when the
handyman took the toilet off, roots are growing up in
the toilet pipe. But he said he needed to go

(01:44:21):
on and put the toilet back and finish the floor,
which I understand. And I got a product called root
killer from one of the big box stores and put
it in, but I'm not sure if it's working or
how you know, how often I need to use it. Also,
I can't find the drain clean out anywhere in the

(01:44:45):
front yard where it would be I know where the
kitchen one.

Speaker 4 (01:44:48):
Is ring thinking tub.

Speaker 15 (01:44:52):
We're draining slow, and he used a product that was
he said, the best drain cleaner. But first he cleaned
out the hair and there wasn't very much. Or three
months later, it still smells very bad, like burning hair.
I have to run water and the stink every day
to try to reduce the odor.

Speaker 4 (01:45:11):
And that's all right, I'm gonna I'm gonna cut to
the chase on this one. I'm good at horticulture, but
plumbing is not my strong suit. But I can tell
you this, if you get a plumber in there that
knows what he's doing, he can find that clean out.
And I think you're gonna need a rotarutor out some
physically rotor utter out some of the roots that have
invaded your sewer line, apparently, and then products that contain

(01:45:31):
copper are often flushed down into the system and that
burns the root tips. It doesn't kill the whole root.
It just basically kills the tips and ends of the roots,
and you got to do them periodically. But a plumber
could also tell you on that what were your other
I'm running short on time, so let's go to the
questions that you had real quick.

Speaker 15 (01:45:52):
Okay, my crate myrtles.

Speaker 14 (01:45:56):
When to cut them? Because my lawnmen always up them
back in January. And I know.

Speaker 15 (01:46:03):
Randy used to always say, don't do crape murder. And
also they have holes, big holes under the roots and
big galls or something growing on the branches.

Speaker 4 (01:46:16):
Okay, I'm not quite picturing the gall on the branch.
You'd have to send me a photo on that. But
the crape murder pruning, I was discussing that earlier. And
you can listen to this show as a podcast. After
the show, they'll post it to the ktr each website.
Of the podcast, you can listen to some comments I
made about.

Speaker 15 (01:46:35):
I have it pulled up.

Speaker 14 (01:46:35):
I'm going to do that, okay.

Speaker 4 (01:46:38):
And the bottom line is you're just you're not butchering
them back like Ebye does. You're just removing some of
the shoots that are growing in the wrong directions back
to where they join another shoot. And you can you
can go online and there's some really good information if
you do a search online for crape myrtle pruning. And

(01:47:01):
after the search, do you have a pen or pencil handy?

Speaker 14 (01:47:04):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (01:47:05):
Okay, right down? S I t e colon dot e
d u so crate myrtal pruning, and then s I
t e colon dot e d u. It will give
you results from extension services around the country on how

(01:47:27):
to prune crepe myrtles, and they will guide you in
the right way. They'll be diagrams, pictures and other things
to help you do it the right way. That's there's
no way I could describe it on the air effectively
in the short time.

Speaker 5 (01:47:38):
That we have.

Speaker 14 (01:47:39):
Okay, did you have another follow.

Speaker 4 (01:47:41):
Up question before we before we go?

Speaker 14 (01:47:43):
Yeah, my last one. So my flower beds. My house
is a model at one time.

Speaker 15 (01:47:49):
It's twenty years old now, and they stuffed all the
flower beds front and back, including the crate myrtles.

Speaker 14 (01:47:56):
Too close together, too close to the fences. And I
have two I think the soil in those beds is totally.

Speaker 15 (01:48:04):
Depleted because the shrubs and all are now growing so puny.
And the lawn seems okay because I use the neutripross
so schedule all.

Speaker 4 (01:48:16):
Right, So before I run out of time to answer you,
I'm gonna I would pull out some of the ones
that are too thick in there, take out every other
one or something make give yourself something in there. Get
you a lawn fertilizer, a lawn fertilizer and sprinkle it
in those beds. Scratch it into the surface with a
rake or you know, a hoe, just kind of get

(01:48:36):
it underneath the surface and watered in really good. You
if it's trees and shrubs and things, you can give
it one or two cups per inch of trunk diameter,
one to two cups per inch of trunk diameter, spread
evenly all through the bed and watered in really good,
and that will get your I would wait to do

(01:48:56):
that until spring because the plants aren't going to be
growing much until then. Uh, and then watered in real good.
I'm hearing the music, so I am going to.

Speaker 14 (01:49:05):
Have to run all of it.

Speaker 4 (01:49:06):
Good luck with all of that, I wish you will. Thanks, thanks,
thank you for here. Call Bill and Kingwood. We just
weren't able to get to you this hour. You will
be first up if you want to hang around until
we come back after the top of the hour. News, folks,
you're listening to guard Line. I'm your host. Skip Richter
keep referring to the website gardening Whip skip dot com

(01:49:27):
with a lot of information on there and more being
at it all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:49:32):
Welcome to Katie r H. Guarden Line with Skip Richter's.

Speaker 2 (01:49:44):
Just watching as many.

Speaker 3 (01:49:52):
Thanks to set.

Speaker 8 (01:49:59):
Us.

Speaker 4 (01:50:16):
All right, welcome back. We are back in the saddle again,
ready to do our last hour of garden Line this morning.
If you'd like to give us a call seven one
three two one two k t r H. And we're
gonna have a straight out to Kingwood and talk to Bill. Hello, Bill,
Welcome to garden.

Speaker 16 (01:50:32):
Line, Thank Jim.

Speaker 12 (01:50:36):
This is about the pigs. Whenever I was a child,
which is about sixty five years ago, we used to
go to the Devil's River. Every year there was a
gigantic fig ticket right there on the Devil's River, and
my family went down there voluntarily, even though it seemed
like slave labor at this point, because we would pick
five gallon buckets of pigs, and my mother in camp

(01:50:57):
would make big jam unbelievable. So I know your love
of figs and I love it too.

Speaker 17 (01:51:03):
It just bound.

Speaker 12 (01:51:04):
The name I would give now is Nematod victim. Nematod victims.
That's true victories in my because Nemo Toad just kill them.

Speaker 4 (01:51:17):
Yeah, yeah, they they are figs and okra nematod's will
walk them all to find figs or okra in your
in your U, in your place. That's it's true. But
you know, I mean, there's there's things we can do
to sort of minimize, you know, the the the problem.

(01:51:39):
But it doesn't doesn't totally get rid of it, that's
for sure.

Speaker 12 (01:51:43):
Maybe from A and M would be the answer. We
need to check that would and tell them get moving.

Speaker 4 (01:51:53):
That's it, and get them get them going here. You know,
the the nematod if we had a rootstock that that's
what we do in peaches. We have a rootstock called
Nina guard that we graft our peaches here on. We
need a nematode resistant fig. I don't know that one exists.

(01:52:13):
I did a This is off topic, but I breed
Okra and Okra is also hammered by Nema toades. And
there are a few strains around the world that claim
some resistance to nematodes, and so I have been trying
to collect those and test them out. And my thought
is if I could cross good Okrah with these old
things from all over the world that are resistant, maybe

(01:52:35):
we come up with a nematode resistant. Okra, I'll probably
be long gone before that happens, but at least it's
fun trying.

Speaker 5 (01:52:42):
Well, we should.

Speaker 12 (01:52:43):
Work that out on pigs too, I mean, that would
be just a godsendis are so great you just can't
raise them in certain areas.

Speaker 4 (01:52:51):
Yeah, well that's true, that is true. Well, sure, thanks
a lot for your time. Thanks and thanks for that memory.
Back over near Amistad Reservoir in the Del Rio area,
right Devils.

Speaker 12 (01:53:07):
River, probably about fifty miles north on the Devil's River,
just out kind of in the middle, Well, Dolan's Creek
comes out of the comes out of the eastern side
down into the uh down the river there and that's
right there at that junction where the gigantic thing think
it probably still is.

Speaker 4 (01:53:24):
All right, very good, Well, hey, thanks appreciate that.

Speaker 5 (01:53:28):
Bill.

Speaker 4 (01:53:28):
You take care all right. If you got a question
on guard line WUL you'd like to ask me on
guardline seven one three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Star of Hope makes a difference in people's lives. They
literally make a huge difference, not just for people that

(01:53:53):
are homeless, uh, but people that are struggling in many ways.
You know, how about their kids? You know, maybe there's
a mom it for no fault of her own, has
lost everything and she's living in a car with her children.
How about where's she going to get a meal? Where's
she going to get job training? Where is she going
to get childcare to be able to have a job.
Starve Hope handles all of that. They change the family's future,

(01:54:17):
the future of the children, and benefit our community as
a whole in that very way. Do you know? Over
six thousand meals a week are served by Star of
Hope Starve Hope Mission here in the Houston area. For
two dollars and eighty five cents. You can provide a
meal two dollars and eighty five cents. My wife and
I are supporters and have been of Star of Hope

(01:54:38):
as we've gone through the years, a volunteer and supporting.
I believe in it. I see it as money that
is well managed, well spent, and it makes a difference.
Would you join me, join me and my wife in
providing help for people in our community through Star of Hope.
You can go to shmission dot org, Mission dot org

(01:55:01):
and give there two dollars and eighty five cents buys
a meal. And there are many other ways to provide
help for the folks that Star of Hope is helping
here in our community. I was talking to someone about
some Medina products. Someone was called earlier and talking about
how wonderful the products were, and they're really right. There

(01:55:22):
are a lot of great Medina products out there. One
of the ones that I like to use that I
find to be very very effective is Medina Plus. Medina
Plus is Medina soil activators. That's a long time famous,
well loved product by Medina. It's Medina soil activator fortified
with the central micronutrients and growth hormones. Get them from

(01:55:44):
seaweed extract. So those are all kinds of substances that
are apart. You know, plants need more than just nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium,
for example, they need trace minerals, and Medina Plus has
got the trace minerals in it. It's got things like
iron and zinc. It's got things like vitamin rival, flavent, diamond, biotin,

(01:56:06):
nicotinic acid, and others. It's got sight of kind and
a natural growth hormone that I was talking about from
sebeed extract. It helps with bloom set, it helps with growth,
it helps with establishment. I would soak seed in it.
Soak seed in Medina plus, dilute it down. Follow the instructions,
dilute it down, soak your seed in it. When the
seeds swell up, then take them out and plant them,

(01:56:27):
and you will see fast germination and good results. I
would use it when I'm transplanting to soak the root
ball of materials that are going to be transplanted, like
a tree or shrub in the Medina Plus, or to
just plant and then drench over it very well and
repeat that drench about twice more about a week apart,
and you will see a very good early response on

(01:56:50):
those plants that you're putting in the ground. One of
the many good products from the folks at Medina. Let's
see here, where are we on our top. I believe
that I'm about out of time, so we're going to
take a quick break here, and when I come back,
Mike and Spring and Rachel out in Chapel Hill, you're
gonna be our first two up. All right, welcome back

(01:57:10):
to the garden line. We're gonna go straight out to
the phones, and let's see where were starting. We're going
to head to spring and talk to Mike. Hello, Mike,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 16 (01:57:21):
Hey, Skip, how you doing.

Speaker 9 (01:57:24):
Well?

Speaker 4 (01:57:24):
Thank you? Oh hey, sir, I'm here.

Speaker 16 (01:57:28):
I've planted some asparagus a few months ago that I
ordered online, and I'm just curious. It's real spinley and
has some really thin like I guess you call them
leaves that they're Yes, I don't know what, dude. If
there's something I can do to it, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:57:47):
It's normal. And so what you're going to do is
continue to fertilize and care for it. The big thing
with asparagus is keep the weeds away their competition. So
a good thick molt is very helpful, and then fertilizing
it through the season. And as you build that up,
what the asparagus does is it stores down in its
storage roots system. We call that the crown of the plant.

(01:58:10):
That's what you planted, was an asparagus crown. Those roots
get really thick and they store all the carbohydrates. So
when you come out of winter, you want to cut
that asparagus back to the ground and then the new
spears that come up will have some size to them
like you're looking for. And then as you harvest them,
the crown gets weaker and weaker because it's spending energy

(01:58:30):
to grow spears, and then you're cutting them off and
it's never getting them up in the sunlight because you're
cutting them off to eat. At some point when they're
about pencil size, you stop harvesting it and then let
it replenish and go through the season. And that's kind
of a cycle for asparagus. But the key is to
get a good strong plant established that can send up

(01:58:52):
some better spears than what you're seeing right now.

Speaker 16 (01:58:55):
Well, they're in a raised mego bed, and so I
cut them back in the spring.

Speaker 4 (01:59:03):
Yeah, you can cut that back in the spring. People
experiment with different things about it. You know, asparagus is
mostly grown further north than here, mostly and there you
have a hard winter that kills it back to the
ground and so when it comes out in the spring
it's all fresh. Sometime down here, our winters are so mild.
Asparagus never never gets killed back fully and it continues

(01:59:25):
to you know, use energy and stuff in the cool season,
and we just don't get the volume of harvest that
you would. You know, if you went up to Kansas
or Missouri or someplace, okay from the asparagus. So I've
talked to people who've tried cutting it back at different times,
you know, to get some fresh growth out. Maybe a

(01:59:47):
little bit earlier in the winter, but in general that
what I told you before is that's kind of the
process that we do for asparagus.

Speaker 5 (01:59:55):
All right, I appreciate it, all right, sir, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:59:59):
And if you do have success, you know, all I
ask is that you bring half your sparagus crop to
the station. That's all I asked, just to thank you, Mike.
Appreciate that. All right, We're going to run out to
Chapel Hill and talk to Rachel.

Speaker 18 (02:00:12):
Hey, Rachel, Hi, Stith, how are you doing.

Speaker 4 (02:00:16):
I'm welcome, good, thank you.

Speaker 18 (02:00:19):
So we got some we planted some seat potatoes, the
red ones, and they produced quite nicely. But the skin
is really really tough, like we have to peel them,
as opposed to the ones we buy in the store.
We don't have to peel those. We can just cook
those with the skins on. So I was looking for
a way to eat her.

Speaker 4 (02:00:43):
Go ahead.

Speaker 18 (02:00:45):
I was looking for a way to basically plant the
ones that we get from the store with the thinner skin.

Speaker 4 (02:00:53):
Okay, So where did you get the potatoes that you
planted at?

Speaker 18 (02:00:59):
A yeah, or a local I think like a roadside
you know where they were selling seet potatoes.

Speaker 14 (02:01:09):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (02:01:11):
So that kind of potato does have a very thin skin.
And what can happen is there's things that happen underground.
There's a disease called skurf, and there's some other things.
They can cause the skin to become thickened and rough. Uh.
And so it's not what I would do is I

(02:01:33):
would buy them from a low I wouldn't go to
the grocery store. Sometimes those are treated with a sprout
inhibitor and they don't want to the eyes don't want
to push out buds because they don't want them doing
that in storage, so they treat them with that. I
would just go to a local garden center, local feed store,
you know the places where you get that locally and
buy your new potatoes from them. There's red kennebec. Red

(02:01:54):
kennebec is a common red pontiac is another one that
you can get locally. Those will be at your local
places and if you plant those, you should have good results. Now,
if it keeps happening. We need to get a good
look at exactly what that potato looks like when it's
as you describe, and maybe figure out is it a

(02:02:15):
disease in the soil or is it something else going on?
But I think trying fresh next spring. You know, February
is when you're going to be planting seed potatoes, and
so just go ahead and get some fresh ones locally,
and that's what I would do.

Speaker 18 (02:02:31):
Okay, great, thank.

Speaker 14 (02:02:32):
You so much.

Speaker 4 (02:02:34):
All right, Rachel, good luck, and you know when you
if this all works and you have a good crop,
then just bring half the potatoes to the station. We'll
call it even there you go. That's all I ask.
It's not too much, all right, bye bye, We're going
to go to Friends with and talk to Alan. Hey Allen,
welcome to garden Line. Hey skipping, thanks for all you do.

(02:02:55):
Got a question about Peggy Martin roses. I currently have
three growing in pots and I'd like to put them
in the yard as a hedge row. I just wondering
what the proper spacing on that would.

Speaker 9 (02:03:07):
Be, because as you know, they get a little they
get the long runners on them, and I just don't
know how close to do.

Speaker 4 (02:03:12):
They sure do. Yeah, they'll they'll cover a large area.
I would say probably I would do ten feet apart
just to make a thicker row. They'll go way more
than five feet in all the options. But but you
could you could put them further than that a part

(02:03:33):
if you want. I would get them something to grow on.
Now you could do. You could do like a livestock
panel that's on posts that's up a little higher in
the air, if you want to do that, and and
just tie them to it or weave them through it
as they grow. That would make a wall of foliage.
That hedged term you used, it would be more like

(02:03:54):
a hedge like growth to it. Okay, Yeah, that's the thing.
They just need to support. Some people just have a
single rail like a rail fence, and they tie them
to that and then they send out their new shoots
sprawling in all directions from that, and you just keep
them trimmed back.

Speaker 9 (02:04:10):
And I've also seen a hedge of those out of
Nature's way resources and it was free standing. It was
out in the middle of their garden. It was just beautiful.
They just without any support, and I just didn't I
would that would be my preference versus you know the support.
You know there is a fence behind it, but I
was hoping to get far enough away from the fence
that it didn't train on the fence.

Speaker 4 (02:04:33):
Okay, well you can do that. I would think that
would be a pretty thick hedge, right that you saw.

Speaker 3 (02:04:38):
Yes, it was.

Speaker 9 (02:04:39):
It was wo pretty thick, probably three four foot yeah wide,
But it looked like they trimmed it and kept it
as it was kind of a squarish hedge, but it
was beautiful when it was.

Speaker 4 (02:04:50):
Okay, well, you could do that. You could certainly do
that as well. Just just trim the things that are
growing in directions you don't want it to grow and
leave everything else. That would be another approach to it.
I've never tried that. I've never tried it that way.

Speaker 9 (02:05:07):
Okay, Well, I appreciate your help. And I was a
little surprised by the ten foot spacing. I would have
thought it had been closer to three or four.

Speaker 4 (02:05:14):
But if if well, I mean you can put them closer. Well,
what I'm telling you is my way would be taking
all the growth and training those long gangly shoots down
that fence. Uh. And so I've got one. I have
a peggy Martin on one corner of an arbor in
my backyard, and it is already going probably ten feet

(02:05:39):
across the arbor and spreading everywhere. And that's just that's
just that one. And that's after the dogs chooted for
the ground twice. But that's another story. But anyway, you know.

Speaker 9 (02:05:50):
Yeah, they just don't they don't seem to do as
well in pots. So I wanted to get these in
the ground.

Speaker 4 (02:05:55):
Okay, Yeah, that's true. No, they do, they do, and
they will grow vigorously. And if you line them closer,
you know, than ten feet, you can do that, it's
just gonna it's gonna fill in faster. So there's there's
not a magical certain distance that you would plant based
on what you're trying to achieve.

Speaker 9 (02:06:12):
Okay, I might try to bring those together where, like
you said, get a quicker fill.

Speaker 4 (02:06:17):
The yes, that that would give you quicker fill for sure. Hey,
thanks for the call. I appreciate it. All right, you
take take care, bye bye bye. All right, we're gonna
where we know Okay, I got time. We're gonna go
to Westbury and talk to Anthony. Hey, Anthony, good morning.

Speaker 17 (02:06:37):
My rose Bush is doing something really awkward. I have
one stem from the trunk. It's really shot up. It's
about five feet tall. I was looking to prune it. However,
the upper half has very healthy pedals. In fact, there's
a bloom coming up and there's nothing on the lower half.

Speaker 4 (02:06:56):
No, no petals, no stems or anything.

Speaker 14 (02:06:59):
If five pruning.

Speaker 17 (02:07:00):
It too down, will the pedals start coming up from
the lower half?

Speaker 4 (02:07:07):
Is this a climbing rose?

Speaker 8 (02:07:10):
No?

Speaker 4 (02:07:12):
Do you know the variety?

Speaker 17 (02:07:16):
Yes, I've got the car here his works. We're giveaways
from where I work, and I didn't realize. Uh they okay,
from one of those box stores. And it's called let
me see here, Uh for bunda angel face that mean anything?

Speaker 4 (02:07:41):
Okay, angel face. It's a flora flora flora bunder rose. Okay. So, uh,
Roses bloom at the end of shoots. So if you
have one shoot coming up, it's gonna have a rose
up at the top. That's how that works. Or a
cluster of roses Flora bundas will produce you They get
a cluster of roses on it. But if you prune

(02:08:03):
that shoot and now three shoots sprout out as a
result of cutting the shoot back a little bit, then
you can have three terminals with blooms on them. And
so as you develop a more bushy rose instead of
a long lanky shoot, you have a fuller amount of shoots,
you're going to have more and more blooms produced as

(02:08:23):
a result, and they'll be down lower as well. You know,
as you described this one went way up and out
of bloom at the top, So you can bring that
down a little bit. But that's the pruning process. You
prune it as it regrows, it blooms, and then you
print it back again. If it's a shrub type rose,
you just prune it back again. And the more shoots
that break out and grow from that pruning, the more

(02:08:46):
blooming you're going to have on it.

Speaker 17 (02:08:49):
Okay, so then I should feel comfortable that the stems
will start to come out where there is it's bear
stem right now. Absolutely, there's nothing, yes, except on the
upper half.

Speaker 4 (02:09:04):
Okay. Yes, you can print it back and think about
like hybrid te roses in a formal herb gard or
rose garden. They cut those things back to like two
feet high, you know, I mean they and they just
look like a bunch of sticks when they get through.
But all the fresh new growth comes out and they
bloom beautifully, so don't be afraid to cut those things
back to the height that you want. Cut them a

(02:09:25):
little shorter than you want, because they're going to grow
back up a little bit from where you cut them. Right,
very well. Thank you all right, sir, Thank you appreciate
the call. Good luck with that. Send me a picture
whenever you get the whene of you get some blooms
on that, I'd love to see how they look. That
would be fun. Well, it is time for me to
take a break. I will be right back with more

(02:09:47):
of your calls. Seven one three two one two kat
r H. Welcome back, Welcome back to garden Line. Hey,
if you'd like to give us a call, we have
got thirty minutes in the show today. I'd be happy
to help you before. If not, we can wait till
next week and do it on Saturday or Sunday next week.
We're here every Saturday and Sunday from six am to

(02:10:09):
ten am. Thanks for being a guarden Line listener. And
tell your family and friends and neighbors, especially the neighbor
that won't you take care of his landscape, tell them
about garden Line so they can listen in too. You
can hear us live on KTRH seven forty am. You
can listen to us on your computer if you'd aluck
to do that, or you can download the iHeart Media

(02:10:30):
app and listen live on the iHeartMedia app. Oh my gosh,
I got music going here. I'm trying to shut it
down and I do not know how to do that.
Let me there we go, coming in off the side.
The iHeartMedia app will allow you to listen live. So
you can take your phone, go out in the garden,
turn the phone upside down, turn the speaker on loud,

(02:10:51):
and listen to Guarden Line while your garden, and who knows,
maybe you'll take a picture and email it to me
and call in and we can talk about it. There.
Other other you know, podcasting types of apps carry Guardline
as well, of course, but for the live listen, the
iHeart Media apps the way to go. So just some
different ways to do that. I've talked about the folks

(02:11:12):
that fix my slab foundation repair, specifically Ty Strickland, the owner,
many many times. You know, I don't know anyone who
has got the experience and the business perspective that I
find so helpful. And what I mean by that is
TI's been doing this for twenty three years. You know
he's a native Heystonian, fifth generation Texan. Tye knows what

(02:11:34):
he's doing. He understands our soils, the way they shrink
and swell and move and cause problems in your sidewalk,
problems in your driveway, and worst of all, problems in
your home foundation. The thing I like about Tye's approach
to business is he looks at it this way. When
he shows up for a job, Number one, he's going
to show up on time. That is important. Had a

(02:11:55):
plumber come out to the house when was this just
a few days a week ago? And he said, I'll
be there Saturday morning. Well, Saturday morning canan mo went
Finally late in the day. I call him, Hey, what's
going on? And he shows up at the end of
the day. I was lucky even came the same day.
Ty shows up on time. Tye prices his work fairly.

(02:12:18):
That is important fair pricing. And also very important is
when ty fixes it, he fixes it right. It's not
like halfway. It's not like he fixed it but it
broke again kind of thing. He knows what he's doing.
You can give him a call at two eight one
two five, five forty nine forty nine two eight one
two five forty nine forty nine. Tell him you reguard

(02:12:38):
one listener free estimates for garden line listeners. So when
you see cracks in the brick on the outside, when
you see cracks in the sheet rock on the inside,
when you got doors that are sticking, that is just
something's moving. You need to give him a call. Go
to the website fix myslab dot com. Fix myslab dot

(02:12:58):
com to eight one two five five forty nine forty nine.
Nobody wants foundation problems. I mean, it's like, oh my gosh,
kind of like me with my plumbing. It's like, oh man,
I don't want to deal with this. But don't be
an ostrich and put your head in the sand. Go
ahead and get it taken care of. What you'll find
a lot of times too is you may be surprised

(02:13:20):
at Tie's assessment. I talked to him a long while
back about a situation one of my daughters had at
their house and what we were looking at and all
the information and stuff, and you know, he said, you
know what, that is not worth fixing right now. It's
it's within the range of what is acceptable you know,
and I wouldn't. I wouldn't go into the time, money

(02:13:40):
and expensive fixing it. I was surprised. I thought if
there was any kind of an issue, you had to
do something right away on it. Well, not necessarily. Each
situation is different, and Tyle shoot straight with you on that.
You were listening to garden Line. We've been talking about
a lot of folks to a lot of folks today.

(02:14:00):
It's kind of quiet right now on the phones if
you'd like to get through on a call, and that
would be a good time. This is our second to
last segment that we're winding up here. It is important
when you are going to have success in the garden
to just understand some basic things. Plants need. Plants need
good drainage, plants need good light, plants need good soil.

(02:14:22):
That's first, first of all, soil quality, and need to
plant things that are adapted to here. Sometimes that means
it's a species that grows here. That are species that
doesn't grow here that you don't want to plant. Sometimes
it's a cult of our variety that grows here. And
sometimes it just understanding which ones will do best. Sometimes

(02:14:45):
it means going, hey, you know what I need to
have a second variety to pollinate the first briety. Like,
how about this, If you're going to plant a peach tree,
do you need two trees so they can pollinate each other?
There's no a self pollinating If you're going to plant
a plum tree, do you need two to pollinate each other?

(02:15:06):
In most cases, but there are some that are self
pollinating with beaches. They are all self pollinating with plums some,
but it never hurts the plant a second variety. Take blueberries,
for example, a blueberry can produce berries itself without a
partner plant, but you will get more and bigger berries
if you put a second variety with your first variety.

(02:15:29):
Now why is that? Well, have you ever been into
a blueberry and seen the little, tiny soft seeds inside?
You know, there can be dozens of seeds in a blueberry,
and everyone that gets pollinated makes that berry bigger. Seeds
give off hormones that make fruit bigger, and so a
well pollinated blueberry will be larger than a poorly pollinated blueberry.

(02:15:55):
That's why we do two varieties for that. Apples generally
are going to require pollination pairs kind of a mixed
bag there, but they it's generally good to have a
second variety, but they can self pollinate. It's not a problem.
So what do you do when you've got a fruit
tree that is a lonely Hearts club fruit tree. Let's

(02:16:15):
say it is an apple and it needed a variety,
but you only have one. It needs another one. Well,
you could go find a neighbor with a different variety,
cut a little branch off, put it in a little
pail of water, stick it underneath the tree, or hang it.
Put in a coke can hang it from the branches
and let the bees visit that trimmed off branch from

(02:16:36):
your neighbors and yours and pollinate itself while you plant
and get another one up to speed so you can
have the cross pollination. Right there, Just an idea, a
way to deal with things when you need a pollinator
and you ain't got one. Well, it'll get you through.
But in the meantime, find some that's going to be
a good pollinator and add it to your planting so

(02:16:57):
you can have success. All right, we're going to take
a little break. We'll be back for our last segment.
The phone number if you'd like to call seven one
three two one two kt RH. Hey, we're gonna jump
right in here on Guardline. We've got a couple of
calls we're gonna finish up with today. I did want
to remind you again that if you're looking for some
holiday shopping, ACE Hardware has got you covered, from kids

(02:17:19):
toys to adult toy. You know, the tools for the
do it yourself, the tools for the in the kitchen,
for the cooker, the cooking, the chef, the whatever you
got in there. They just have a lot of things.
You walk in there and you look at the decorations
that they have, it is amazing. You're going to find
so many cool things when you go into an ACE
Hardware store. Each is independently, open owned, so each has

(02:17:44):
its own flavor. They're all Ace. They have the standard
A stuff, but each has its own flavor, and you
be really surprised. You know, you can find ACE Hardware
stores all over the place. For example, there is Wharton
Feed and Ace down in Wharton, Texas. I was there
given a talk earlier this year. Plantation out there in
Richmond and Rosenberg. There's the Sinko ranch Ase in Katie.

(02:18:05):
I was at that one as well this year. You
can go all the way up to Lake Conroe. ACE
for all seasons. Ace and willis forty of them around
the area. Just go to Acehardware dot com and look
for the store locator and find the ones near you.
While you're there, pick up your holiday lights for indoors
and outdoors. Pick up your holiday decorations for indoors and outdoors. Because,

(02:18:28):
as they like to say, ACE is the place. We're
going to go. Now to the phones, and I'm gonna
go to Southwest Houston. We're gonna talk to Sandy. Hello, Sandy,
Welcome to garden line.

Speaker 19 (02:18:38):
Oh hi, I have two questions. My peach tree didn't
get enough water when I was out of town, and
then when I watered it when I came back, it bloomed.
Does that mean I want to shake peaches next year?

Speaker 4 (02:18:55):
Probably? That is a stress response. When they go into
a late season drought and then they're perked up again,
they will It's almost like they went through winter and
they come back out with blooms in the fall. And
so it's possible that there were a few blooms that
didn't open that will open in spring, but I would
I would not expect that, Okay.

Speaker 19 (02:19:15):
And then I have a very large oak tree is
probably you know, like sixty seventy years old, and if
I cut it down, you know it's getting old. Do
I and I have the stump ground? How long until
I can plant a contry in that area?

Speaker 4 (02:19:35):
You can plant one a little off to the side
at any time you want. When you grind a plant,
they try to get all the wood chips out, but
they don't. They get mixed in the soil and all
that wood initially ties up a lot of nitrogen as
it begins to decompose. And then that area that you
thought was level sinks down because as the soil settles
and as the wood rots away, it just drops the

(02:19:58):
level down. So how the mounded up when you're when
you're done, and that way, when it sinks down, it'll
end up more on the level. Get as much of
the woodchips out as you can. Once it is sunken down,
then you can go ahead and plant in it. It's
just you don't want to plant a pecan and then
suddenly now it's too deep because it's it's sunken down
a little bit. Okay, So the best time of year

(02:20:26):
to plant up a country, all right, is well you
now fall is good winter is good. Spring is Okay.
You can plant them in the summer, but it's a
lot more stressful time. It's more touch and go and
difficult to have success compared to planting in the fall
or winter.

Speaker 19 (02:20:47):
Okay, thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (02:20:50):
All right now, I would say bring me half the
pecans you get, but I can't wait that long, Sandy,
So we're gonna let you have this one for free.

Speaker 5 (02:20:57):
Take care.

Speaker 19 (02:20:58):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (02:20:59):
Fight By, We're gonna go out to Hockley now and
talk to Rob. Hey, Rob, welcome to garden Line, Thanks sir,
Thank you.

Speaker 8 (02:21:08):
Hey.

Speaker 20 (02:21:08):
I've got a little a little tree issue.

Speaker 4 (02:21:11):
Uh.

Speaker 20 (02:21:12):
I bought an Eagleston holly uh about a year ago
and I've planted in my side yard over there and
it's about I guess six seven feet tall and it's
grown a little bit. But over the over the year
it's looks it looks.

Speaker 4 (02:21:25):
Kind of puney. It.

Speaker 20 (02:21:26):
We went through the heat and I said, well, I'm
not watering enough and then you go over water. So
so so I took my auger out there the other
day and just around the outside, I just kind of
drilled it along where the dirt edge was where it
was planted and it went down and it's and it's
it's mostly clay down there. But anyhow, when I got

(02:21:48):
to the bottom, it was just it was just soaking wet,
and and then so I'll pulled up all this mud
and got and so I said, well to make it,
I went all the way around it with that and
I actually pulled it out of the ground. And so
is that savablele Can I clean it up? And it's
still has leaves and it's still green.

Speaker 4 (02:22:08):
It's just yeah, it was just yeah, it is, yeah. Absolutely.
You know, Rob, when you used your augur, how deep
did you have to go to get to soggy?

Speaker 5 (02:22:19):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (02:22:20):
I guess about a flip? Okay, all right, good, well
that's sunning decent. Yeah, that's some decent depth. Now, Hollys
don't want to grow in a swamp, so you need
to set your irrigation to avoid overwatering. But the first
two or three years of a holly's life it needs

(02:22:42):
to be kind of pampered along. I usually tell people
to hand water them as much as you can because
they have stiff leaves. And let's say you had a
sprink order that was in the bed and it was
spraying water one way, and anything that blocks that spray
prevents a section of soil from getting the water it
was supposed to get on it. And with hollyes, you

(02:23:04):
want to wet all the way around them with a
good soaking on a frequent basis to keep them moist.
And that's why I like canned watering because there you're
in charge. You know everything's getting watered properly at a
good depth, and your ideal with the auger is a
good one. By the way, you can you know how
we do aeration in our lawns and compost top dressing.
When you auger out, you could throw a compost down

(02:23:26):
in those holes too and let that decompose hollies or
love a forest floor environment. So adding composts down in
there just creates more of a rich soil over time
as you do auguring and compost top dressing and stuff.
And that's not something everybody the plants a holly needs
to do, but since you got the auger, I would
take advantage of that, but mainly keep them moist and

(02:23:48):
just remember the first three years until it gets a
good strong root system established, it's more touching go because
the roots are confined. The demands are high, especially in
summer heat this time of year. It's shouldn't need nearly
as much water. In fact, probably no supplemental water. But
just kind of watch it and see.

Speaker 20 (02:24:05):
So can I take around the outside? I didn't go
out far enough when I made it, But can I
take a tiller and kind of just go down and
just till that and make the dirt a little bit
better for root?

Speaker 4 (02:24:18):
What I would do? And yeah, instead of that, what
I would do is get a spading fork and put
some compost on top of the soil and push that
fork down. You may kind of wiggle it back and
forth with your foot on it to get it to
go straight down in the soil, and then pull back
on the handle and sort of crack open the soil.
We're not going to lift it and turn it over

(02:24:38):
and bend over and harder back, and we're just cracking
it open, and the compost will fall into those fissures
and things. It'll loosen the soil plenty for that, Holly,
you do not need to do a rototail. And I
think the way I'm describing it as better even than
trying to roll.

Speaker 20 (02:24:53):
It towards that area. Yeah, excellent, excellent, Thanks sir.

Speaker 4 (02:24:58):
You bet, thanks for the call, Lob. All right, there's
another guardenline in the books. Folks, the music is playing,
they say, it's not over until the fat Lady sings.
I don't have anyone to sing like that for you,
and you would not want me to, I promise you.
So we'll just say see you next weekend. In the meantime,
don't forget the Randy Lemon Scholarship on my website, Gardening

(02:25:22):
with Skip dot com.