Citrus Successes

Skip Richter answers your questions all morning long!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
The crazy here in the bassa gasby can you a shrimp?
You just watch him as world googless grasses gas and
your dad.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
There are so many good thanks to super operating in
the bread bringing the glasses like gas, baby, Bain you
day almost becomes back recond not a sun, the glasses
like gas.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
And sun beaming down dream psing in the gasses like
gas baby. Can you yeah?

Speaker 4 (00:43):
First starting in dreaming in the bases like.

Speaker 5 (00:47):
Gas you did?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Everything is so clean and see and never Then.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
He is Sunday and it's day.

Speaker 6 (01:24):
All right, Good morning gardeners. Oh my gosh, the weather
outside yesterday I was outside. I have actually at a
the Houston Home and Garden Show, which is nrg uh
this yesterday and today, and I was speaking there yesterday.

(01:44):
By the way, I'll be there again today. I'll arrive
at eleven o'clock. All right. I'll start giving a talk
at eleven o'clock on the stage in the Home and
Garden Show, and then I've got a little boot there
where I have some copies of my books and I'll
be answering your gardening questions. If you've got some samples
to bring in and things diagnosed, put them in a
plastic bag and bring them on in. I hope you
can join us there. But anyway, I was out there

(02:06):
yesterday walking into the garden shows. It's like I need
to be outside, not inside on a day like this.
Oh love this weather. I tell you, this is a
This is the time of year when if there is
one drop of gardener in you, you start to you
start to feel it. Spring. What do we say it's
the number one season of the year for gardening. It's

(02:29):
when we get spring fever and all of that. Well.
I try to talk people into gardening in the fall too,
because that is an awesome season. But anyway, I digress.
So if you got a question, feel free to give
us a call day. We're gonna look forward to visiting
with you about the kinds of things that you may
wonder about, if it is a insect or a disease,

(02:50):
or you're looking forward to planning a new plant, maybe
some techniques for gardening that you heard about. I was
reading about some things this morning, actually early on is
have my cup of coffee and just looking at some
of the things that are out there on recommendations for gardening,
And well, I tell you there's a lot of good
information out there's a lot of bad information out And

(03:12):
it doesn't matter what your topic is, but it certainly
does apply to gardening. The kinds of things I was
seeing people are purporting out there, yeah, not so good.
But anyway, we'll cut through the clutter if you'd like
to give me a call. The arbor Gate is. It's
one of those nurseries that people that don't live here

(03:33):
drive great distances to come into the arbor Gate. The
arbor Gate Is it's a destination and you go in
there and the minute you get out of the parking
lot and start walking in, it's like, oh my gosh,
it's like a show place. Right, So when I go,
I always just kind of start on one side and
head across to the other, working my way through there.

(03:54):
One side there's first of all, there's two gift shops.
There's all kinds of bling for outdoors and garden. I
always get stuck in the herb area because there's so
many good herbs there and vegetables as well. But when
it comes to flowers and fruit. By the way, this
is fruit planning season. The Arborgate's got you covered on that.
You definitely need to know about that, So get on

(04:16):
out there, check them out, find out what's going on.
They've got educational programs going on all the time out
there at the arbor Gate. I one that's especially timely
right now. I'd like to tell you about Angela Chandler,
who you probably heard on a garden line a good while,

(04:36):
a good while back when we were doing the transition
after Randy's passing and I was taken over Beverly and
Angela kind of held the fort down here and I'm
sure you heard them many times. But she's going to
be out there giving a talk at the arbor Gate
and you need to, you need to, you need to

(04:57):
check it out. Angela is a wealth of knowledge when
you when you head out there, you know, you talk
to Angela and listen to the talk she gives and things.
You're going to get advice from somebody who spends time
there in the garden, getting into the dirt and learning
that way, and that that is really really important. Uh,

(05:19):
if you have not been to the Arborgate, I suggest
you go, and I suggest you go while we got
a talk going on, because you can get kind of
two things out of out of one or kill two
birds with one stone. Is that is that how they
put it, But anyway, important to spend some time learning.
The way I like to put it is sharpening the saw.

(05:40):
If you you know, if you learn a lot about
gardening and then you kind of quit your learning, it
seems like the world of gardening sort of passes you by,
And so you want to be able to stay on
the top of things. And doing that is going to
educational programs, listening to shows like garden Line, for example.

(06:01):
So you get out there and you learn. And right
now on February fourteenth at the arbor Gate coming up
real soon is rose pruning with Gay Hammond. Rose pruning
is it may seem a little like a daunting task,
like how do you do this? Gay will unpack it
and make it so easy for you, and she walks

(06:23):
you through what she calls the four d's of pruning.
When you start learning how to do it right, it
just makes it just makes for a lot better success.
And Gay is an enjoyable speaker, really really fun to
listen to the antics of a Gay. I always like
listening to her. She's always educational, always helpful and that'll

(06:46):
be at the Arbigate on the fourteenth, so you don't
want to miss that one. While you're out there, grab
some of the great soil mixes. They've got some really
really nice products in their one two three system. That's
a soil for anything with roots that is a posts.
It includes some expanded shale in it which really helps
all that soil open, a good, good oxygen down in

(07:06):
the root system. And then finally the fertilizer organic fertilizer
for anything that you would want to grow. Simple as
that out at the Arbrogate, So give them, give them
a check over. By the way, it's it's west of
Tomball on twenty nine. Easy to get to. Driver on

(07:28):
the back though, there's a little road called Trishel Road.
It makes a loop around behind the Arborgate. So when
you're coming out of tom Ball you'll see Trischel Road.
You can turn in there and go around behind Arbrogate
to a really good, safe, excellent parking space out in
the back behind it. It's easy to just walk right
in all weather path to the garden center. Now, if

(07:50):
you miss it and you see Arburgate, keep driving. You'll
come back to Trishel Road again, you can turn down
that to get into the backside. So there you go.
There you go. Yesterday at the Home and Garden Show
at NRG the Houston Home Garden Show at Energy and

(08:11):
during my talk I was giving away some products from
the folks at Nelson and I'll do that again today
when I get my talk at eleven o'clock. But Nelson
plant Food has so many outstanding products, but one that
I am really focusing on right now because it's just
an excellent time for it, actually anytimes an excellent time

(08:32):
for it. But it's Genesis. Genesis is their transplant mix
and what you do. It's got microbes in it. It's
got you know, all kinds of beneficial microbes, including beneficial
fungi that help that plant get established. So when you
put this product in the soil where you're going to plant,
and that may be in a pot that you're going

(08:52):
to you know, put a plant in a container, or
it may be out in the soil in a garden bed.
When you mix it into the soil and then plant
your plant, you're going to end up with a perfect
environment for those roots and they will respond. Recent studies
done by Texas A and m out at the Houston
in the Houston area. Here at the college, they tested

(09:17):
it on some trees and it was amazing the difference
in the growth of trees with and without the Genesis,
and they actually used on some trees they use Genesis
on on other's they used the equivalent nutrients, so just
the fertilizer part of Genesis. They sort of balanced out
by using the equivalent nutrient on the other group of trees,

(09:40):
but still because of all the microbial benefits that it provided,
they saw a significant increase in the growth on those trees.
I think that's pretty cool stuff, and it doesn't surprise
me because I've used Genesis and it really does work.
I'm gonna once we get through it this Home and
Garden show today, I'll be heading to my landscape to

(10:03):
finally get some work done on that. I was just
looking out there the other day at some of the
first cleanups and tasks. I still got plants left over
in my garden, my vegetable garden from you know, the
previous season before all the winter hit, and need to
get those cleaned out. I would recommend that anytime you

(10:23):
transition a group of plants perhaps you're transitioning from you know,
the spring garden to the fall garden, to our summer
garden to the fall and so on. You always want
to renovate the soil at that time. Well, let's take
a little break here and we will be right back
with your questions. All right, welcome back to garden Line.

(10:47):
Good to have you joining us today. We're going to
run right out of the phones. And I talked to
Robert this morning. Hello, Robert, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 7 (10:54):
Good morning, Good morning Skip. I have a I'm over
in northwest Euston. I have a free growing or volunteer
mango tree. And I of course I covered it and
put a heater on it and everything else, tried to
keep it from freezing. But it's just so big and
fat and bulky that it was kind of.

Speaker 8 (11:13):
Hard to do.

Speaker 7 (11:14):
It's in the corner up inside the corner of my
house and under a patio. It's just I guess a
seed that somebody threw in the you know, in a
potting area, and it just decided to grow on its own.
But it's about six foot tall. It's got some buds
on it, you know, some little baby mangoes. We're trying
to grow on it. But I got some pictures on

(11:34):
it of it, and I'd like to send those to
you and maybe we could talk about it in the
next hour.

Speaker 6 (11:38):
All right, that sounds good. I'm gonna we'll put you
on home. My producer will get on and provide you
a way to get those to me. All right, Bob,
thanks a lot, Thank you, sir. Let's now go to
Lisa and Seabrook. Hey, Lisa, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (11:58):
Good morning.

Speaker 10 (11:59):
I have a question about mulch cedar mons versus hardwood
munch for roses.

Speaker 6 (12:05):
Yes, do you.

Speaker 7 (12:08):
I was just on to which would be better.

Speaker 6 (12:11):
Uh, you know, you can use either one. I prefer
the hardwood mulch. It is going to decompose into the
soil and you just top it off with more hardwood
mulch periodically and that'll just keep the soil getting better
and better for you. Cedar's a little slow to decompose,
and so I prefer the hardwood.

Speaker 7 (12:32):
All right, Thank you?

Speaker 6 (12:34):
Is that it all right? Yeah? Thanks Lisa, Thank you,
appreciate your call. Good to visit with you. Yeah, there's
a lot of kind of mulches. One, you know, I
was talking earlier about reading things and online and just going,
oh my gosh, come on man. One of the things
was they were talking about putting mulch in the ground,

(12:56):
and it's like, no, the mulch is something that's said,
it's on top of the soil surface. That's what mult is.
And molts can be anything you put on the soil surface.
If you lay newspapers out there and wet them so
they stick down, it becomes a malt or cardboard. If
you throw wood chips on the surface, it's a mulch.

(13:17):
If you throw compost on the surface, it can act
as a mult as well, but most sits on top
of the soil, and typically we're putting composts down into
the soil because it's organic, better that it's already decomposed.
We get it down in the root system and the
plants just really thrive because of microbial activity and the
benefits in terms of getting oxygen down in the soil

(13:39):
by keeping that soil open. So compost is very helpful
for that. Another misconception is that if you put wood
chips on top of the soil, they will take the
nitrogen out of the soil, and that's based like so
many wrong statements about gardening. It's based on truth, but
it's not true. And here's why. It's based on the truth.

(14:03):
That raw wood chips are high high in carbon. That's
essentially what they are as carbon, and so in order
to decompose, the microbes need nitrogen also to break down
those high carbon wood chips. That's why you mix brown
stuff and green stuff and a compost pile to make
it compost more effectively. Now, if if you put the

(14:26):
woodchips down in the soil, there will be a drawback
of nitrogen for a little while as the microbes take
nitrogen up out of the soil and it's not available
to your plants. So they can break those woodchips down,
but it will be released again, so it's not a
long term problem. But on top of the soil, that's
not the case. Right in the interface where that woodchip

(14:47):
malt sits on the soil itself, yes, there'll be a
little removal of nitrogen there as it begins to decompose.
But even if you do that, if you just scattered
a little bit of nitrogen fertilizer on top of the
woodchips kind of watered it down in there, it overcomes
it easily because the wood chips aren't down in the
root zone of the plant. They're sitting up on top.

(15:08):
So don't be afraid to do that work. At the
University of Washington a number of years ago, they took
raw woodschips and used them as mult and they even
let them decompose and then plant it down into the
surface like where they were at the soil and found
that they did just fine. So woodchips aren't as attractive

(15:30):
as some of our other natural mulches that we have here,
like shredded hardwood malts, for example, but they can be used.
I mean it. Sometimes we overthink things, and if you
just think about nature, a lot of times our questions
can just be answered. Like, for example, you know, can

(15:50):
you put woodchips on top of the ground, Well, nature does.
It drops wooden branches and wooden tree trunks on the
ground and nature goes to work on them and they
just turn into good soil stuff. See what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (16:04):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (16:05):
Someone one time asking me is it okay to mulch
with oak leaves, and it's like, yes, absolutely, what is
what is an oak forest? Mulch with oak leaves? So
of course you can do that. Just think about how
nature does it and do it that way. That'll I
think that'll make it a little bit easier for you. Hey,

(16:25):
if you've got a gardening question, you can reach me
at seven one three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
We're glad to take your question and answer it. Just
another reminder today and when we get through it the show,
I'm heading over to the Energy Center for the Houston
Home and Garden Show. I will be there at eleven

(16:48):
o'clock giving a talk, giving away some products as well,
and then actually be there for two hours. I have
a little boot there where I've got cops in my
book and I'm going to be answering gardening questions. And
yesterday people were coming by. I saw samples of things
that you do in the weeds and all kinds of
other stuff. So feel free to drop in there. It's

(17:11):
a great garden show too, by the way, I think
you will definitely enjoy it. You hear me talk about
pest Pros all the time. Pest Pros is the go
to company to get whatever you need done in the
way of pest management done. This time of year, it's
still a lot of varmits. My neighbor came across the

(17:32):
yard the other day and he had a hole the
size of a grapefruit in the eaves of his house
and soft underneath there, and some varmint had found its
way into the attic. They love that up there, nice
warm up there in the wintertime, compared to the freezes
we've had. Well, the folks at pestbro know how to
come out and find out where they're going. And it

(17:52):
may just be a little mouse. A mouse can slide
into us a little slot hole just so small you'd
think no way a mouse can get through there, But
they can. They can squeeze their little body down and
get in. Maybe it's a drive in or an outside
door or something. Well, the guys pest Bros. They know
what to look for. They'll go through your house. Make
sure that it's a critter approofed if you will. We're

(18:14):
by coming up in mosquito season soon. They have solutions
for that. Fire ant seasons, they have solutions for that.
When we get into the time of where people are
concerned about their termites and their house and things, well,
they can be doing termite treatments now, but it is.
It is a company that knows how to do things
with effective controls. But they're going to do it in

(18:36):
a way that is the least dangerous that they can
do it, and they they're experts in exactly that. I'm
going to take a little break here for the news
and we'll be right back. Aha. Here are the Olympics.
I'm going to get at a competitive gardening division.

Speaker 5 (18:57):
Have you?

Speaker 6 (18:57):
Have you guys seen this on social media? I don't know,
I'll tell you how to find it, but there's a
guy that rolls a wheelbarrow down a ramp and does
a flip in the air or something. I don't know.
It's probably AI, but I saw it a long time
ago before everything became AI. But pretty cool anyway, you'd

(19:18):
have to see it. I doubt the Olympics are going
to take that in, although they did take curling in,
and I'm just looking at that going. Any sport you
can do with a beer in one hand, it's not
a sport. That's that's my opinion. Although I do like
to watch curling. I think it's fun, but come on, man,

(19:38):
are we really going to use the term athlete for that?
I probably have some curling people out in the audience
that are going, hey, stop that anyway, you get the idea. Hey,
if you got a gardening question, feel free to give
me a call. Seven to one three two one two
five eight seven four seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. Microlife fertilizers are designed to work

(20:03):
with the soil with nature's own system of feeding plants.
Every microlife product you're going to get a nice dose
of microbes. There's some products, specifically they're af product being
a good example, that have microbes put in that product
that actually fight disease or do other things to enhance

(20:25):
the plant. And microbes rule the world in our plants.
And when you use a microlife product, you're not just
putting nutrients on the ground. You're getting the nutrients for sure,
whether it's the green bag that we put on our
lawns or the pink, pinkish red bag that's used for
acid loving plants. You're getting those nutrients, but you're getting

(20:45):
so much more and over time as you do things
like that, as you add those organic components that are
there in the microlife, you are improving your soil over
time as well. You can find Microlife products all over
the place. Are easy, easy to get to, and you
just need to use them. I like to use the liquids.
I was just mixing up some Microlife the other day.

(21:07):
The I like the orange label.

Speaker 8 (21:09):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (21:09):
It is one that has an extra good boost of nitrogen.
So all my houseplants get it, just because I like
to give them that extra boost. That's primarily what houseplants
need is a good nitrogen fertilizer. But I've used it
outside to any kind of plant that needs a boost.
It's going to do well for that. Got some seaweed
I used the other day, and also some of the
Microlife fish amulsion product that does just really well. Fish.

(21:33):
By the way, is a blue label on the liquid,
so bottom lines, just use them, BOTTI label use them.
You're gonna see results over time. It just gets better
and better. That's that's one thing to keep in mind.
So you're listening to garden Line, if you'd like to
give me a call seven to one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one

(21:54):
two fifty eight seventy four. So we were talking earlier.
I was talking earlier about some things that you see
online that just aren't true. And it's not just online.
It may be your neighbor talking to you over the
fence saying some of these things. And it also could
be a something you read sometimes in magazines and books.

(22:16):
You read things and it's just not correct. So always
be skeptical about it. Be skeptical. If you listen to
me on guardline. I didn't want me at all. I
tell you that there are there's a lot of yub
butts to gardening advice, and I did one while ago.
It's like wood chips, tie up nitrogen, don't use them

(22:38):
as mulch, and you know, and so what I basically
said is, yeah, you put them in the soil and
there's a temporary nitrogen type temporary, not long term, temporary,
but you use them on top and you're not. So
the yeah butt is yes, it's just not true really
the way that it's it's being spoken of there. So anyway,
I would recommend that you take things with a grain

(22:59):
of Let's go out to the phones now and we
are going to go talk to Marty in Fairfield. Hey, Marty,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 11 (23:08):
Good morning, skip.

Speaker 12 (23:10):
Hey.

Speaker 13 (23:10):
I wanted to tell you how proud I am that
you're down at the Garden Center n RG. I think
that's just wonderful that they invited you.

Speaker 6 (23:18):
Thank you appreciate that we're having a good time out there.

Speaker 11 (23:22):
I know it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 6 (23:24):
I have a question.

Speaker 13 (23:25):
I know you told us to live with ugly for
a while, but at what point if we wanted to
just do a little bit of terming of our dead
Mushie Gushi. All we need to do basically is the
put some protection over it if it does get cold again.

Speaker 6 (23:44):
Yes, in fact, I have some Mexican heather that I
have trimmed back and the top protects it a little bit,
but I can protect it more with a little bit
of mold. So if we were to get another hard phrase,
which we might, we'll just have to see. I'll go
out and throw some compost or mulch over the top
of those the crown of the plants that have been

(24:04):
cut back, and they're definitely going to be protected that way.
So if they just we have to take it plant
by plant, Marty, you know some of the annuals and
just turn to mush Go ahead and get that out
of there. There's no sense leaving that over top of them.
But you know, people have cannas that are sticking up
and now they're brown stalks after the freeze. Well, actually,

(24:25):
you know, having something over the top like that gives
a little bit of benefit. If you can't stand to
look at it, then cut it back. That's fine. It's
just with the woody things, it's hard to know where
to cut back. You may have damage on the southwest
side of a shrub stem, but not on the northeast
side of that stem due to the way the sun

(24:46):
moves in the sky and on warming up on a
winter day. I just you can do the scratch tests,
and I do those, but it takes a while for
the scratch test to show up. So I just say wait.
But if you can't stand to wait, scratch away. Go
all the way down to green and cut it off
just above the green.

Speaker 11 (25:07):
Okay, all right.

Speaker 13 (25:09):
Well, I also wanted to make sure I knew just
barricade goes down now.

Speaker 14 (25:14):
Is that correct?

Speaker 6 (25:15):
Yes? Yes, yes, very important to cut that down now,
it sure is.

Speaker 10 (25:19):
Okay, Yeah, okay, Well that's great.

Speaker 13 (25:21):
Well, thank you very much, you have fun today.

Speaker 6 (25:24):
Will thanks a lot. Appreciate that, Marty. Okay, bye bye bye. Yeah, barricade,
You're gonna find barricade by the folks at your ACE
Hardware stores. Of course, ACE carries a wide variety of
all the things that go into having a beautiful, enjoyable
outdoor environment, from things for your patio, barbecue pits and
more lights, strings of lights and so on and so on,

(25:47):
to things for the lawn, the fertilizers and the barricade
for the weed prevention, for example, things to control weeds
that are already up and growing. Your local ACE Hardware
stores in our region. My group that we do here
on garden Line, we promote is they're ready to go,
They're stocked up, and so head to your local ACE.

(26:08):
Go to ACE Hardware Texas. Don't forget Texas. Ace Hardware
Texas dot com. That takes you to my group of
stores that is in the greater Houston area all the
way from Orange actually down to Portoransas and especially all
over this Houston area. You're gonna find good things there.
I always love going. Every time I get a chance
to i'm passing by NACE, always swing in to check

(26:29):
them out and see what they got. That is a
great company with a lot of great products to help
you and whatever you're going to do in the garden.
Marty was talking about barricade, and barricade is a product
we put down as a pre emergent. And I'm gonna
go to a call here, and when I get back,

(26:49):
I want to talk a little bit about pre emergence
and post emergence, So stay tuned for that. Let's go
to Bob and Friendswood right now. Hello Bob, and welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (27:03):
Okay, morning Skip. I have a coumcot that I dug
up yesterday because it was pretty sickly with citrus greening.
So a couple of questions for you, the one that
I dug up yesterday. Is it safe to just throw
that in the trash or should I try to destroy
it some other way like burning?

Speaker 6 (27:23):
No, it's safe to chop it up and put it
in the trash. Those pruners that you use to take
it out, you need to sterilize those, so that should
you go back to other citrus trees or something, you're
not there's no danger of spreading. Some diseases you can
spread with printing rooms, others not so much. But you
need to always be safe. So a real good strong alcohol,

(27:48):
rubbing alcohol kind of thing dipping them in that getting
all the debris. Officer, if there's some sap or you know,
stuck to them and stuff clean them clean that often.
I often will just use a liceol and spray the
printers with lyesol because it's handy and easy to do.

Speaker 9 (28:04):
But okay, the second question is I wanted to replace that.
I was going to put some fresh soil in the
whole that dug out yesterday. And is it safe to
plant another kumquat in that same spot?

Speaker 6 (28:21):
Yeah, it is. I don't know if any way the
greening would be transmitted through old roots down in the soil,
so I think you're okay there that the product. The
problems like that are typically transmitted by insects that feed

(28:42):
on a plant and bring the disease in.

Speaker 15 (28:44):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (28:45):
There is citrus canker, but the greening is I believe
it's spread by a little insect. I'm trying to think
of the name of the critter. It's it's set up
forty five degree angle on your leaf. You'll see these
little bugs that are lung get me like a school bus,
and they're sitting at a forty five degree angle on
the leaf, feeding on the sap and stuff.

Speaker 9 (29:07):
Well, no, it's a bacterial disease. I was didn't know
as they got into the soil, So that's what I.

Speaker 6 (29:13):
Was asking that. Yeah, I don't I've never heard of
that transmission through soil.

Speaker 7 (29:19):
Okay, perfect, I appreciate all the information.

Speaker 6 (29:22):
All right, you have a good morning you too, Thanks
a lot. I appreciate your call. Bye bye bye. Let's
take a little break here and we'll come back. I
want to talk about these pre and post emergent herbicides
for a little bit.

Speaker 4 (29:34):
Twist, twist and the night away.

Speaker 6 (29:37):
Welcome back to the guard Line morning.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
How you got your att over?

Speaker 6 (29:45):
Remember that anyway, A D and D feed up in
Tomball is an outstanding place to get a wide variety
of things for your landscape. I know it's a feed story,
get your lifestyle feed. You have a really good selection
of high quality pet feeds in there as well, and
all kinds of supplies. But it's also a place to

(30:08):
get your fertilizers. You hear me talk about brands a
fertilizer and things. They carry them there at D and
D Feed And when you're out and about checking them out,
you're going to find a really good selection of some
of the products that are really hard to find, you know,
some of the things that might control weeds or diseases
or insects that are just not available everywhere. Dnd feed

(30:31):
does a great job of keeping an excellent supply of
those another west of Tombul in twenty nine to twenty.
Out west of Tombule, you just drive out of town
all ways and on the left hand side you'll see
D and D feed out there. But stop in and
check them out. Periodically. They get some plants in that
are out front, and that's just part of the cycle
there D and D feed. They also are going to

(30:53):
be bringing in the baby chicks. So if you are
interested in starting some backyard chickens a fun thing to do,
you can go to D and D feed and get
a wide variety of baby chick species or no not
species of varieties or whatever I do, whatever you call
those things. But they have a huge, huge selection as well.

(31:17):
D DE feed out west to Tumble. Let's go to
the phones now we're going to head to talk to
Marianne this morning. Hello Marianne, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 16 (31:28):
Good good morning. Did you get my pictures?

Speaker 6 (31:31):
Oh, let me see, I'm gonna have to check it
was I did. I did receive them, Okay, all right.

Speaker 16 (31:42):
Okay, the question is an alvira plant put on the
long stem one year when it bloomed, and the following
year is now put on that other balloom that I
sent you in that picture, and this is like on
the same plant. It's not like two different separate plants.

Speaker 6 (32:03):
Didn't the first blooms start off down small like the
one that you're saying it's now put on?

Speaker 16 (32:10):
Well, now you know what, maybe it did and I
never noticed it.

Speaker 6 (32:13):
Yeah, I think that's going to be another bloom like
the one you have.

Speaker 16 (32:18):
Okay, So it's not like it has two different type
of blooms.

Speaker 6 (32:21):
No, it doesn't. It's a perfect flower. So yeah, all
the parts are there in those bloomstalks. But I think
that's what's going to happen. I think it's gonna talk
it off. Well, if it doesn't send me another picture,
we'll talk about it. But it looks to me.

Speaker 16 (32:36):
Okay, well okay, it sounds good. We were just curious.

Speaker 6 (32:40):
Yeah, sure, Well I'm glad you I'm glad you asked.

Speaker 12 (32:43):
Thank you, Okay, thanks, thank you very much.

Speaker 6 (32:46):
By Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Things going on there with
with that bloomstalk, let's go to Bob.

Speaker 12 (32:56):
No.

Speaker 6 (32:57):
We already talked about friends, but all right, are covered that.
If you got a question seven one three, two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two two
fifty eight seventy four, we'll be happy to answer your question.
The ground Up is a very convenient place to get
all kinds of products for projects around your house, from

(33:22):
bed mixes to composts. They have a wide variety of
different things available by the bag and also by bulk.
There's three locations West Park and which is out uh
toward Richmond direction, uh, the wind Fern location which is
up kind of toward the racetrack off Belly eight, and

(33:44):
those locations they will ship out of there. For retail sale,
you need to go to the Brent Moore location, which
is on Brent Moore about where Brett Moore and I
ten come together, pretty close to that area, and they
have all the products there and by the bag, and
they have an incredible nursery as well. Now they're open
on Saturdays for the public. Okay, so on Saturdays is

(34:06):
when you would go out and do that. Now you
can call the ground Up and they'll deliver full, but
it takes a certain quantity like three QP cards, you know,
to have it delivered out to you. But check their
products out at d ground up dot com. You're gonna
find a wide variety of bags of our vote. They
also have a real cool calculator on the website d

(34:29):
ground up dot com. So you're gonna put in the
garden bed. You don't know how much compost or bed
mix you need. Go to the website the ground up
dot Com. All the music means I gotta go for
a little while here. Don't forget. I'm gonna be back
at the Houston Home and Garden Show at NRG Park.

(34:51):
I'm gonna start at eleven o'clock giving a talk, and
then I'll move over to my booth where I'll have
copies of my books. I'll answer questions. We'll you know,
why are we kind of diagnostics and things. Bring it
with you, bring pictures on your phone. Less fun.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip rictor esmell.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
The basis the basis like gas Baby can use trim.
You just watch him as world god gas gas can
as many brings the soup hot basic in bid bringing.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
The basses like gass?

Speaker 6 (35:34):
Baby?

Speaker 3 (35:34):
Can you date sabos goobles back again? They're not a
sound the glassies and gas and.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
The sun beamon down between ding in the gasses like gas?

Speaker 4 (35:49):
Baby? Can starting in and out of treating the basses?

Speaker 2 (35:56):
I guess can you dating everything is?

Speaker 4 (36:01):
Let's see.

Speaker 6 (36:10):
Soccer back in the garden line. I'm glad to have
you with us. Let's see here. I believe we've got
open lines here, So we're gonna go ahead and give
you that phone number again seven one three two one
two five eight seven four seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Be happy to visit with

(36:31):
you about the kinds of questions that you might have. Uh,
have you guys been to Horay Jorges Hidden Gardens. Somebody
came up to me at the Houston Home and Gardens
show at Energy yesterday and they were telling me they
bought their fruit trees from Horaes Hidden Gardens down there.
That is that is really cool. I I love going there,

(36:55):
And I'm telling you, since our opened that place, he
just keeps expanding it, making it better, and there is
so much, so much cool stuff to see from there.
Hoorges Hidden Gardens is a place where you're going to
find a wide selection of all kinds of fruit trees.
Lots and lots of different kinds of fruit trees there.
He carries roses and he carries you know, bedding plants

(37:18):
from flowers and herbs and vegetables and things like that.
You're going to find all those there. But the main
thing you just need to know is you got to go.
It's between it's down south, so Alvin Santa fe right
down in that area. It's easy to find, it, easy
to get to. But Horges Hidden Gardens they are open today.

(37:38):
They're open tomorrow morning too, and if you swing by,
say hey to Ory for us. Check out his own
special line of fertilizers produced by the folks at Nelson
as high quality fertilizer. The Jorge has his own special
blend there and when it comes to trees and shrubs,
he just has an excellent selection and they will come out.

(37:59):
You can have them come out for a fee and
do the planting for you yourself. We are getting warmer
and warmer day by day overall it's time to get
trees and shrubs in. Check out the selection that he has.
It's a really good one there at Jorges Hidden Gardens.
Let's see we are I'm trying to look at three

(38:21):
things at once. Here, my I'm having a problem with
my screen. Anyway, I wanted to talk about herbicides, the
pre emergent and the post emergent types of herbicides. Some
of this is elementary, and some of you are going
you I already know that, but I want you to

(38:42):
keep listening because there are some important aspects to know.
The thing you need to know right now is now.
If you're going to use a weed control product for spring,
now is the time you need to put it down.
Pre Emergents are spread out on the lawn and they're
watered in with a little a little water because you
want to get the product off those granules and into

(39:04):
the soil surface. That's where the weed seeds are. That's
where they sprout. That's where products that prevent weed seeds
from sprouting, that's where they need to be. Because the
weed tries to sprout and it doesn't let that weed
root grow and you don't see the wheed. It never
becomes a weed plant. That's a pre emergent. Warm season

(39:24):
weeds are already starting to germinate, especially in the warmer
parts of my listening area, those who be down toward
Galveston in the coast, and you got to get the
pre emergent down before emergent pre emergent. If you wait
until you have weed plants, pre emergents are not going
to work. So you got to get it down ahead
of time. Do it now. These products are going to

(39:45):
last year about sixty days, could go a little longer
than that, depending on the weather and conditions. But go
ahead and get them down now because we are starting
to see sprouting. We will be seeing a lot more sprouting,
and you have to get ahead of time. Now. That's
pre emergent. Post Emergent kills existing weeds post after they emerge. Okay,
post emergent products, now is the time to get them done.

(40:09):
Very time sensitive on these. Now. You may not use
products to control weeds. If you know you may not
want to use those, that's fine, but you got to
get out and handpull those post emergent weeds or mow
down low with your first mowing and get as much
of the weed and the weed seeds as you can,

(40:30):
or you're sentencing yourself to a lot more weed problems,
and so you definitely want to do that. So, for example,
if you have chick weed, or if you have hendbit,
or if you have cleavers that a little sticky velcrow
weed in the grass, and any of the cool season
weeds clover, they are about to bloom, some of them

(40:51):
already blooming duns out and become what we call reproductive.
They bloom and they set seeds. If you spray them
before they do that, the products are much more effective.
If you wait until they already have seeds set that
are maturing, those products are not going to be as
effective and they won't go into that seed and prevent

(41:12):
the seed from being viable. It's too late. So now
you're going to have what was one weed plant is
going to become one hundred or more weed plants in
your yard. So timing is important, whether you're hand pulling
or spring. Timing is important. Pre emergent like barricade from nitroposs.
The pre emergence got to get down ahead of the weeds. Now,

(41:35):
if you live further north than the listening area, let's
say you're up College Station or Huntsville or someplace like that,
you can put these products down a little later. In
the month and you'll be just fine or early March,
and many years is okay. But every year is different.
And the weather we're having this week, oh boy, you
better get those things down because weed seeds don't look

(41:59):
at under They consider the temperature. That's what it's all about.
So we say, you know, my my gardening calendar of
the lawn. You know the lawn care Guide and the
lawn pestsweed and Disease Management guide that are on my
website at gardening with skip dot com free downloads for you. Uh,
they showed the time when I would recommend you put

(42:21):
these products down if you're going to use these products.
But every year is different, so I can't predict what
next year's uh, February temperatures are going to be, or
January temperatures for that matter. But that's the word of
warning or word of the wise whatever.

Speaker 8 (42:39):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (42:39):
Pre emergence a SAP, post emergence a SAP, if you're
going to use those all right, I hope that made
some sense. As far as fertilizing the lawn, you'll see
a spring fertilization. I'll talk about that as we get
a little bit a little bit further along here. Spring
fertilization that you can put down. Those products help green

(43:03):
up the grass. Grass is its growth in the spring
is totally dependent on temperature, soil temperature, air temperature, especially
soil temperature, and as it starts to wake up a
pre emergent excuse me, a fertilizer that's an immediate release,
not a slow release at that time. Immediate release will
help give you some green up. But if you're going

(43:24):
back to Randy schedule and now on my schedule, those
are considered optional. It's not like it's time you have
to do that one. The most important one to kick
off the season is there. I'm still on Herbicide is
the slow release products that you're going to put out,
typically in April, and the best way to know when

(43:48):
to put those out, Remember how I said every year
the temperature is kind of different. Maybe a coolese long spring,
maybe a warm early spring. But when you've mowed your
lawn twice, when you've mowed your turf grass, permuta grass,
Zoisier grass, in augustine grass, whichever one you have, when
you've mowed it twice, put your slow release down at

(44:12):
that time to carry you on well into summer. All right,
you can look at my calendar. I can tell you
it's going to be an April date probably, although those
of you down far south probably even a late March
date would be okay. But you're not missing anything to
wait until April to do those, even far south. But

(44:33):
you want to get those down when you've mowed the
lawn twice. That's the most important time because as those
nutrients are released, the grass is actively growing. New roots
have started forming to take up those nutrients, and you're
going to get the most out of them. All right,
I hope that makes sense. It's on the schedule. Just

(44:53):
follow the schedule. You'll see what I'm talking about. Let's
take a little break and we'll be right back with
your calls at three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Hey,
welcome back to garden Line. You got a gardening question?
Gave me called seven one three two one two seventy
four seven one three two one two five eight seven four.

(45:16):
Houston Powder Coats is the company that will turn your
outdoor metal items brand new, brand new. You know your
gardening furniture, that patio furniture, you have, any kind of
metal things like that. You got a metal railing, a
metal fence, one of those iron fences around the around
the property, or whatever's metal and it's outside, they can

(45:39):
bring it in, get rid of the rust corrosion types
of issues, put new hardware on it, you know the
rusty bolts if they have that, and so on, and
then put a coating on it that is a very
durable coating. And you get to choose from one hundred
different colors. So what can I say that You just
you just can't beat the work they do. Go check

(46:00):
come out on Facebook, Houston powder Coders, or go to
their website Houston powder Cooders dot com. There you'll find
the phone number. There you'll find the email and if
you email them pictures of your furniture, they'll email you
back an estimate of what it's gonna what's gonna cost
to get it done. They'll come pick it up, they'll
do the job, they'll bring it back, simple as that.

(46:21):
Houston Powdercoders dot Com. Houston powder coders dot com. We
are talking about different kinds of herbicides this morning, or
at least I was earlier. Uh, and it's it's because
now is the time if you're gonna do a herbicide

(46:42):
to do both the pre emergence and the post emergence
post emergence to get rid of winterweeds before they create
seeds pre emergence to prevent the summer weeds from coming on.
I did some handpulding. I don't have a lot of
post weeds that need a post emergent right now in
my landscape, so I just go and do some handpulling.
You know, if the soil is moist, it comes up

(47:03):
real easy. There's all kind of cool weating tools out there.
I need to do a post for weeding tools on
our social media. That'd be a good idea. But anyway,
I'm just doing that on mind. Getting by just fine
on them. But if you are dealing with more than
you can handle, that way, now's the time. That's time
to do it, all righty. I hope that makes good

(47:27):
sense to you. I was out in Enchanted Gardens a
while back, giving a talk out there and having a
good time out there in Chana Gardens. If you visit
the place now in Channa Gardens, they just have an
outstanding selection of all kinds of plans, and they have

(47:50):
people that are friendly that greet you, that really know
what you're talking about. What they're talking about. Sorry. I
love going out there and electing from their vegetables, their herbs,
the shrubs, the trees, the fruit, everything is in there.
Of course they got their roses in and you just
have to head out to Richmond Rosenberg. They're on the

(48:11):
Katie Fulsher side of Richmond FM. Three point fifty nine
is the road up there. Go out and check them out.
See what's going on out there at enchanted gardens. I
promise you you will love the selection. You'll love the
plants that they have. Right now, Gay Hammond is giving
a talk on springing into Spring, talking all kinds of

(48:32):
things from her experience as a professional rosarian. She's going
to cover it all. That's at ten am, all right,
right when garden Line ends Saturday, February seventh, that is
to day right, Okay, you need to head out there
and check them out. So enough of the weed control
types of things. If you haven't pruned some of your

(48:53):
plants that are going to need pruning, now is the
time to get it done. The fastest time for a
wound a heel is in the spring, So if you
were to do time lap lapse photography, like you see
maybe you watched a nature movie and or show, and
like a little flower just opens up and closes back
down again in about fifteen seconds or ten seconds. That's

(49:16):
time lapse, right. If you were to time lapse of
pruning wound done at the end of winter, which is
now for us, and then you looked at it in
the spring, it would start to close over pretty fast,
and then in summer it slows down to a crawl,
and then in fall it speeds up a little bit,
but not like spring, and then it stops again going

(49:37):
into winter. So pruning prior to that spring growth it
leads itself to fast wound coverage by the callus that
forms out there. You need to know what you're doing
when you prune your plants. They're not all prune the same.
Fruit trees are not all prone the same. If you
have here's the easy way to know how to prune

(49:58):
a fruit tree, well, at least a good start. If
inside there's a bunch of seeds around the center, like
an apple or a pear, you print it to a
central trunk with whirls of side branches coming off about
two feet apart going up the tree. Depending on if

(50:18):
it's a dwarf for a tall tree or whatever. So
it's got a central leader and then the side branches
that are coming out. If the center of the fruit
is a pit like a peach, a plum, an apricot
that cherries, those are pits, by the way. They don't
plant cherries there, but you print it to an open
bowl shape so sunlight can get into the center. So

(50:39):
those are the styles. And if you go to the
Aggi Horticulture website, it's it's egg Well Aggie hyphen Horticulture
at TAMU dot or dot tam dot edu. Just look
for Aggie Horticulture on the search there's a fruit section
and every kind of fruit tree you would possibly grow here,
even things like avocados. There's information on them, how to

(51:03):
grow them, which varieties to choose, how to prune them,
and all kinds of things. So go look at the
one for the kind of fruit you grow. Probably what
you have in the backyard, if it's deciduous, is a
peach tree and plumb. Those are one of some of
the more common deciduous trees that we have. But you'll
find out how to do it and do it right.

(51:24):
Make sure your pruners are sharp. Sharp pruners are easier
on your hand muscles or if you're using loppers on
your elbow and shoulder muscles, and they cut cleaner. They
make a nice clean cut. And do that pruning before
the sap starts to flow and the buds start to
push out, because that's when it's real easy for that

(51:46):
falling limb to strip off bark, which is a bad
thing when it comes to quick coverage of that wound.
But now's the time. Go ahead and get that done.
Grab you that those publications that are free to lo
outter print and find out how you're gonna do it
for your tree. Pruning begins at planting for fruit trees,

(52:07):
and it begins planting for our landscape trees, flowering trees,
shade trees, and so on. And I say that to
emphasize the point that you want to guide that tree
into the branch locations orientation, like is it going straight
up or is it going straight out? Or is it

(52:28):
going at a forty five degree angle? And the more
you do that properly early, the less pruning problems and
the more production, whether production is fruit or flowers you're
gonna have later on I see a lot of trees
that were planted and not pruned, and now it's, you know,
fifteen twenty years down the line, and it's going to

(52:49):
be a mess to try to get in there and
clean up the lack of early on training that that
tree receives. So make sure and take some time and
do that. Uh it is it is important now if
you're looking for a professional when it comes to pruning,
Affordable Tree Service is who I would send you to.
Uh Martin Spoon Moore and his team at Affordable Tree.

(53:12):
They take care of things the right way. They know
how to prepare uh and and get in there do
whatever that tree is gonna need. Maybe it needs pruning,
maybe it needs some some deep root feeding or whatever
you're gonna have done to it. Get the pruning done.
Now that you need to call Martin because uh, he
stays busy because he does a good job, and you

(53:33):
don't want to you don't want to wait h and
be late. Here's his phone number seven to one three
six nine nine two six sixty three seven one three
six ninety nine twenty six sixty three. Or you can
go to a fftree Service dot com give him a call,
get on the schedule. Now, every tree that Martin prunes

(53:55):
for you, he will do a free deep root feeding
on that tree, so that's another bonus and getting that done.
Have him take a look. You haven't had your trees
looked out in a while, haven't come in because you
need to stay up on the proper training and pruning
of your trees to have the best long term results.

(54:16):
All right, So I see a lot of bad pruning
jobs out there too. People that It's like, you know,
anybody who has a pickup in a chainsaw and claim
they're a tree service, and that doesn't mean they're trained
and know what they're doing. So that's why I like
to send people to Martin spoon Moore at Affordable Tree.

(54:36):
We're going to take a little break here for the
half hour news. When we come back, Carol and sugar Land,
you're going to be our first up and we'll be
happy to visit with you at that time. In the meantime,
I'm going to turn things over to Erica and see
what is happening out there in the wide world of Houston, Texas.
All right, here we go, welcome back the guard Line.

(55:00):
Oh the sun is out. They're dining through the tops
of the trees outside of our studio. Here, Kit, your nice, nice,
It's gonna be a good day. So let's run out
to the phones. First thing this We're gonna go talk
to Carol in Sugarland. Hello Carol, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 11 (55:23):
Good morning.

Speaker 10 (55:25):
About two months ago I planted a little gem magnolia,
and I wanted.

Speaker 5 (55:30):
To prune it.

Speaker 10 (55:31):
But should I give it a year to let it
be established or should I go ahead and prune.

Speaker 6 (55:36):
It this month? If there is some you know, kind
of wacky limb directions that you don't want, you don't like,
like a gangly one coming out to the side, or
something something hanging straight down that may be broke off,
or you can print those things now. But in general,
magnolias need very little pruning. They kind of assume their
own shape. So yes, you could prune it now, plant

(56:00):
that young. I think I'd give it a little more
time to get established. But in the case of a
really bad lemmon you know has to go or cut
back or something, go ahead, you can do it. Okay,
thank you, you've met Thanks a lot. I appreciate you.
Cal Nelson water gardens. You know they're out there in Katie, Texas.

(56:21):
You got to Katie turn north on Katie Fort Ben
Road and it's just up street a little bit on
the right hand side. Nelson Water Gardens is a destination
nursery really out there in the Katy area. It's worth
a trip out there, all of you folks on the
west side. If you haven't been there, you got to
go now. It's nursery and water gardens, right or water

(56:41):
gardens and nursery. When you go there, you want to
make sure and check out the beautiful pottery that they have.
Maybe you're creating a like, I don't know, disappearing fountain,
or maybe you're putting in a little bit of a
waterfall with some fish in it and everything. They've got everything.

(57:04):
They got the plants that go in the water for water,
like lilies and things. They have, the fish they go
in there, and then they for the case of a
disappearing fountain, which I love, they've got some unbelievably beautiful
pottery and all the pieces in parts you need to
put it together. You can do it yourself, you can
hire them to do it. Either way you go about it.
They're happy to help you get success and that that's

(57:26):
really what we need. We need to know that we're
doing it the right way when we create something like that.
And it's so nice to have a company that knows
what they're talking about. And that is the Nelson Nursery
and Water Gardens have fruit trees right now. They've got
all kinds of herbs and vegetables and flowers and all

(57:46):
kinds of beautiful things. All you have to do. Swing
in there and check them out. Let's go to the
phones again. We're going to talk to cr Out in
clear Spring.

Speaker 8 (57:57):
Now.

Speaker 6 (57:58):
Hello, cr welcome to yard plant.

Speaker 17 (58:01):
Yes, hello, hey, yeah, thanks for taking the call. Yeah,
cat spring.

Speaker 6 (58:05):
Days, oh, cat Spring, Okay, yes, sir.

Speaker 17 (58:09):
And so I'm calling regarding roses. So I have different
variety of roses at my place, and I see different
things I talk. I go to, you know, different nurseries,
and I'll hear one thing here.

Speaker 8 (58:21):
One thing.

Speaker 7 (58:22):
So my question is when is the time to go
ahead and.

Speaker 17 (58:27):
Cut back all the roads.

Speaker 6 (58:29):
Typically as we get toward the end of winter. Uh,
that's when we do most of our rose pruning. If
you need to do a little of snipp or snap there,
you can do that through the season, but in general
we try to do it in the winter time when
things are a little more dormant. Uh, And it's it's
just a better time to get the printing done. The
leaves are mostly off the plants, and so it's easier

(58:51):
to see what you're doing. You got a little twiggy
growth inside, you get that out. You got any branches
that are crossing or whatever, you get those out, disease branches,
those out. And so this is a good time right now.

Speaker 17 (59:04):
So I so when they say to God, you want
to do it, you know February fourteenth, Valentine's Day, that
that time frame, you know, right at Valentine's or within
that next week. I mean, so I'm asking, is that
a suitable time to do it.

Speaker 6 (59:18):
It's absolutely a suitable time. The reason they say that
is because it you know, Valentine's you think about when
somebody gets roses is given to them, and so it's
easy for people to remember it's time to plant roses,
it's time to prune roses, and so on. But there's
nothing magic about in mid February. I mean, it's a
great time, on excellent time, but you could do it

(59:41):
right now if you won.

Speaker 17 (59:43):
Okay, as far as actually doing the pruney. So I
probably on my place have you know, two hundred roses
to two hundred rose plants, and to cut those, can
you use like, uh, you know, one of the electric

(01:00:05):
or gas powered hedge trimmors to to you know, because
I have hedges of them. You know, there's a lot
of them. So can I just go across and just
cut them all with an electric hitch hitch trimmer?

Speaker 6 (01:00:17):
Well for what for the way you're describing your situation there,
yes you could, but you need to follow that up
with going in and cleaning it up because those hedge
tremmors are very rough and they're pruning.

Speaker 12 (01:00:29):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:00:29):
And so you know, you may have a branch that's
hanging part way, it didn't quite get.

Speaker 15 (01:00:35):
Cut off or right right.

Speaker 6 (01:00:37):
They don't make as nice clean cuts like we'd liked
to do on our roses.

Speaker 15 (01:00:41):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:00:42):
But you you can do that if you need to,
if you have a whole bunch of ground to cover,
and it's it's an easier way to do it, just
go clean it up.

Speaker 7 (01:00:50):
After you do that, go back and clean it up.

Speaker 17 (01:00:53):
Now, those roses, for example, I have a lot of
them that are saved from a height standpoint, they're like
three foot or four foot tall? Right now, how far
do I cut those down? I mean how low do
I go?

Speaker 6 (01:01:08):
What kind of roses of those are they knockout?

Speaker 17 (01:01:12):
I have some that are knockout, and then I forgot
the other one.

Speaker 6 (01:01:17):
Okay, So it's up to you how far you cut
them back. I'll just use knockout as an example, because
it's you bick when as rose. Everybody's planted them everywhere.
You could cut it back by half, and then as
the growth comes on in the spring, you're going to
get a real good show of blooms. You know, a

(01:01:38):
typically around April it has that group of bloom stades.
You can do a lighter sharing at that time or
pruning back, So that would be one technique. If for
some reason they've gotten just really too tall, you can
cut them back more severely. I see some that are
cut back, you know, down a lot. That's the more
shocking pruning to a plant. But you can do that

(01:02:00):
at and then as they start to grow, do an
additional sharing pruning and to reform a nice dense bush.
That that is what you're looking for in your landscape.
What you're looking at is roses that are basically a
foliage hedge with pretty flowers on it, right. Yeah, And
so that's the advice I'm giving is for that goal.

(01:02:20):
So anybody listening to me going, that's not how I
prove my roses, Like, yeah, it's probably not. But with
the goal in mind of a hedge, a beautiful hedge
with flowers, that's how you do it.

Speaker 17 (01:02:32):
If I got it in half, I just basically half
what I last year. I didn't prune them at all,
and so they're really you know up there. So this year,
if I just take and just go half, I'm safe.

Speaker 6 (01:02:43):
I'm okay, you're absolutely okay. I'm gonna have to run.
But I do appreciate your call very much. Thanks a lot,
Thank you. Yes, you take care of uh. Fix my
lab is a place. I was talking to somebody yesterday
as a matter of fact, and they were talking about
a huge that had broken right near their house and
they were seeing some cracks in the brick and stuff

(01:03:05):
that they didn't have before, those tree roots or decaying away.
And fix my slab. That's that's what I sent them to.
That's who you should go to. Ty Strickland knows what
he's doing. Ty Strickland's a professional. He's been doing this
for over twenty five years. Fixmislab dot com. That is
the website that we're looking for. Go there you find

(01:03:28):
out everything you need to know. Give Tye a call.
If you got cracks in the sheet rock, cracks in
the brick, you want to make sure that you get
this looked at early. It may be that you don't
need to do anything right now because a lot of slab.
Almost every slab has some sort of a crack in it.
Minor those aren't the ones we worry about. Ty can
assess the difference and tell you what it's going to

(01:03:49):
take to fix it right based on your slab, your location,
your soils and so on. He knows how he's doing
what he's doing. Fix myslab dot com. Tile show up
on time. He'll charge you a fair price and you'll
do the job right. Let's take a little break and
we'll be back with your calls. All right, Welcome back
to the guard Line. Every time we play that song,

(01:04:09):
I'll tell you this, but I realize people people don't
listen to every guard Line I do. It breaks my heart,
but I get that. That's the Archies. The Archies were
a band put together for that song. Basically, they did
a couple songs I think studio songs, but they weren't
really like a band, you know, they never toured or
anything like that, but they did create that figure.

Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
Sure.

Speaker 6 (01:04:33):
They had a couple of others too. Fun fact, there
you go. You thought I just talked about gardening. I didn't. Hey,
the folks at Medina have such great products to use.
A Couple of ones that I'm really big on right
now is Medina has to Grow Long two four eight.

(01:04:55):
It is a liquid you can get in a gallon
or court. The court has a hose end attachment, so
it's got that three one to two ratio that we
want on our lawns. That's kind of how grass takes
up nutrients a three one to two ratio and you
just go over your lawn with it. It's easy to
do even and I have seen people take. You know,
you got an area that's not growing as well, needs

(01:05:15):
a little boost or something, you can go over it.
Just that area kind of feathered out as you go around,
so you don't have a green circle in your lawn.
But it works well for that. Another product they have
that I really like is has to Grow Super Grow
sixteen zero two. It is a high nitrogen product that
is excellent for lawns and it's also good for your

(01:05:38):
vegetable gardens and so on. Has to grow super Grows
sixteen zero two. Again available by gallon, available also in
a court. Hook it up to the garden hose and
you just go to town. Makes it real easy to do.
From the folks at Medina. Let's see what was I
I had a Oh, we were talking about rose printing

(01:05:59):
waile Go and visiting about that. When you're growing hybrid
t roses, the kind that have the long stems for
cutting and bringing indoors, it's a different pruning system than
we were talking about for shrub type roses. I love
shrub roses. I mean, come on, a beautiful shrub and
you get rose flowers on it, that's a good deal.

(01:06:21):
But hybrid teas are a different pruning system, very different.
They cut them back very heavily to force vigorous, long,
upright growth, and you want to prune them to keep
the bush as open as you can for air circulation
that reduces diseases, something like knockout shrub roses that they're
very disease resistant, so it's not as big of a

(01:06:42):
deal there. But with hybrid tes, some of them have
good these disease resistance, some of them not so good.
But you want an open pruning system so that you
get airflow through. Don't plant these things too close together.
I know how it is. You want to have five
roses and you got a ten foot bed to put

(01:07:03):
them in, and that's going to be kind of hard
to make that work. What you gotta do is you
just have to choose your best ones or put in
another bed, give them spacing. You crowd roses in and
you're inviting disease issues. So also, roses need sunlight. If
you want blooms, you can grow a rose a bush

(01:07:24):
in quite a bit of shade, not full shade, but
quite a bit, but you're not gonna get roses out
of it. When anything is going to produce something that
takes a lot of carbohydrates in the plant, you're going
to have to have a lot of sun to do that.
So in the vegetable garden, root crops like carrots, turnips, beets,

(01:07:45):
or fruiting crops that would be tomatoes and cucumbers and
squash and so on, they need the most sun you
can give them okay. And for blooming things like roses,
almost all blooming things want pretty much full sun at
least six hours. Six hours is what we consider to
be kind of the minimum on that. So there you go,

(01:08:08):
take care of your plants, give them what they want.
League City Feed Store, League City Feed for those of
you down south of Houston, down forty five that direction,
this is your hometown feed store. And I love the
fact that they carry so many good brands. A fertilizer,
you know, the ones you hear me talk about all

(01:08:29):
the time. They're going to carry them at League City Feed.
That would be Nitroposs and Nelson, that would be Microlife,
and Medina. That's what they do at League City Feed.
So I would recommend if you are going to swing
by there. First of all, they're open till six during
the weekdays, which is really nice because you can just

(01:08:49):
swing by at anytime. But they're on Highway three, just
a few blocks south of Oh gosh, what's the cross street?
I just went blank on it. Anyway, they're in League
City on three South. Oh guys, I said it one
hundred times and it just slipped my mind. Anyway, they've
got barricade ready to go, plenty of barricade on hand

(01:09:12):
if you're going to do the pre emergent types of things.
If you were looking for a quality dog food. By
the way, they really have some good ones too. But
on that recently people were going in there and hauling
out all the supplies for protecting, freezing and whatnot. If
you got mice and rats you're trying to deal with
around the property, they got you covered on that. But
their selection of products to control pest, weeds and diseases

(01:09:35):
is excellent at League City Feed. I really appreciate the
fact that they do stay stocked up on that. By
the way, the sweet I couldn't think of as ninety six.
If you go down Highway three, just a few blocks
south of ninety six, that's where you're going to find
League City Feed and go in and say hey to
the thunderbirds, and they will help you by carrying it

(01:09:58):
out to your car. Other nice service that they offer there.
Warren Southern Gardens out in Kingwood is loaded with quality materials.
I mean, you want plants, you want pots, you want
supplies to go with them, fertilizers maybe something other composts

(01:10:19):
and materials to put in the soil. They are loaded
up and they're ready to go. And I would recommend
you know, it's spring in these garden centers. This is
a big time for them, so they don't sit around
and twiddle their thumbs. They get busy and get going
on it. So what I would recommend is stop by
Ones Southern Gardens. Look at the flowers, look at the vegetables,

(01:10:41):
look at the trees, look at the the shrubs. That
they carry excellent supply and containers, a really nice selection
of containers.

Speaker 9 (01:10:49):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:10:49):
Warren Southern Gardens is on North Park Drive. Okay, North
Park Drive out in Kingwood. Stop in, say hey to
the folks. They got some good tools inside too. By
the way, for those of you that are looking for
good tools, should we have another frost I'm sure they
still have a selection of quality frost cover products as
well ed Warren's Southern Garden. Main thing is get out there,

(01:11:12):
check them out. It's a fun place to shop and
they will treat you right. I guarantee you friendly service
from knowledgeable people. That is really important. You are listening
to garden Line phone number here seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four. You can give me

(01:11:35):
a call and we'll be happy to visit with you
about the things that you need to know. I do
want to mention that I'm going to be at the
Houston Home and Garden Show at NRG Center today. I'm
going to start by giving a presentation at eleven am,
so an hour after garden Line's over. Uh, And now

(01:11:57):
I'm going to talk about spring gardening tips. I've been
doing this for forty years now. I understand the things
that gardeners struggle with, the things that work and don't work.
And we're going to give you tips so you can
have a beautiful lawn and a beautiful garden of flower beds,
vegetable gardens, landscapes here in the spring. After that, I'll

(01:12:18):
be answering your gardening questions. I've got a little boot there,
just real close to where I'll be speaking. I have
some copies of my books on hand. If you'd like
to pick one of those up, bring me samples. I
love these things. I see people walking up and they've
got a bag of a plastic bag full of weeds,
and we'll identify those or diseases. And the other day
someone was pulling out pictures on their phone, going look

(01:12:39):
at this area over here, something's wrong in the lawn
over here. We can do all of that at NRG.
I'll be there from eleven to one eleven to watch
two hours at the Houston Home and Garden Show. I
was just there yesterday and it's a great show. Lots
of good things to see. Landscape materials and supplies, plant people. Oh,

(01:13:01):
they have a great selection of plants and all kinds
of unusual things. They are from the vendors at the
Houston Home of Garden Show. Well, grab yourself a cup
of coffee. I'm gonna do the same kind of Get
both eyes fully open here. The sun is shining. It
is going to be a great day for gardening this afternoon.

(01:13:23):
I hope to get a little bit of that done myself.
I'll be back.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with skin Rickards.

Speaker 4 (01:13:51):
Just watch him as.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
Bob brazing gas again. You again, not a sorry glass and.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
Gas Salmon.

Speaker 4 (01:14:22):
Starting is so clean and Sunday.

Speaker 6 (01:14:37):
All right, folks, welcome back to guard Line. Glad we
have you with us on a gloriously beautiful Sunday out there.
I hope that you will enjoy this afternoon getting I
don't know, just walk through the landscape and breathe the
fresh air or whatever you want to get done today.
It's a good day for doing that.

Speaker 8 (01:14:57):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:14:58):
When we get to February, everybody things roses. When we
get to Valentine's everybody thinks roses. And I don't know
anybody that has a rose selection that can hold a
candle to RCW nurseries pages and pages of single spaced roses.
I mean, they have a wide variety of roses there.
They do this every year and everybody knows that Rose Society.

(01:15:21):
People know, general gardeners know about it. I mean, it's
a beautiful, beautiful place. You're going to find lots of
other planets as well, not just roses. But let's just
talk roses. Because it's Valentine's time. You can give You
can give a dozen roses to somebody and that's a
nice thing. But when you give a rose bush, you're
giving them dozens and dozens and dozens of roses for

(01:15:44):
years and years to come. What a great gift. If
you know anybody that may and you know, maybe they're
not a gardener, that they would love to have a
rose bush in the in the landscape, go on plant
it for them, just another little addition to the gift
to make it even more special. And our has got
you covered for that. If you will swing by there
and take a look. They got tags with the you know,

(01:16:07):
of course, the colors of the blooms and things on them.
And you're gonna want all of them because they're all beautiful.
But they'll help you. I talk to them and they'll
give you guidance as to maybe what rose would fit.
Do you want a climber, do you want a shrub rose?
Do you want a low growing almost a groundcover like rose.
Here's the deal. You go to belt Way eight in
Highway two forty nine, tom Ball Parkway. That's where RCW

(01:16:29):
is r c W Nurseries dot com, RCW nursery dot com.
Check out their rosie. But listen word to the wise,
don't delay because these everybody knows. Rcw's got this incredible
selection and it will be picked over in a week
by week, more and more roses are going to be
hitting the road going home with people. If you want

(01:16:51):
a good selection, I would get that done asap. When
you have the best selection that you can have and
they're gonna have roses, you know, all year. They got
roses all year, but the best selections are early on.
So get out there and enjoy it, have a good time.
I don't know if you recall, but I used to
talk about green Pro quite a bit less time during

(01:17:12):
the growing season. Green Pro does all kinds of lawn
care and they you know, they can do the compost,
top dressing and aeration on your lawn. They do a
very good job of it. If you've got lawns that
are struggling, and especially if it's like a clay soil
or it's compacted. That's a really bad for lawns. The compaction.

(01:17:35):
When they come out in air rate, they pop little
plugs the soil out of the ground and drop them
on the surface. And then you follow that with compost
top dressing. Ideally, and that compost some of it's going
to fall down in the holes and now there's oxygen
getting deeper into the soil and your turf roots are
going to thrive. And when roots can get access to

(01:17:55):
more soil with good oxygen levels in it, the top
is going to get better. And that's what we're looking at,
is the top. You want a nice, healthy, dense lawn
compostop dressing after they've done a good job on the
aer ration with the professional equipment they have at Greenpro
lawn Care. UH. That's a way to go and it'll
make a lot of difference in your lawn. You can

(01:18:17):
give them a call at eight three two three five
one zero zero three two, or go to the website
Greenprotexas dot com Greenprotexas dot com. You got a question
on gardening we can assist you with. We'll give me
a call seven one three two one two fifty eight

(01:18:38):
seventy four seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. Just another reminder, I'm going to be out
at the NRG Center UH today at eleven to two.
I'll start off with a talk on spring gardening tips.
I'll answer your gardening questions, diagnose samples you bring in,
identify plans you bring in, you know, like lawn, weeds

(01:19:01):
and things, and then I'll be over at my book
for a good while. We got some nice handouts there
for various kinds of gardening questions that you might have,
including my schedules. I have plenty of the schedules on hand,
and also some copies of my book. If you'd like
assigned copy, we'll be happy to do that as well.
In my own landscape, I've got a peach tree that

(01:19:24):
I need to get planted. I got it a while back,
and it's sitting in the same container, of course, as
it was purchased in, and it needs to get in
the ground. Anytime you're going to plant any kind of
a woody ornamental, you own a planet at the same
level that it was growing in the pot before. Don't
plant too deep. In fact, here in Houston area, where

(01:19:46):
we have a lot of clay soils and we also
have a lot of rain compared to most of the state,
it is better to be up a little higher than
to be down a little bit lower for that plant.
One thing you might want to check. Sometimes you buy
a container plant and as that plant has been bumped
up from one pot size to another, you know some

(01:20:06):
other composter soil mix is thrown on top, and the
topmost root may not be at the soil line. But
you want when you plant it, the topmost root to
be right up the soil line. Go out in the
forest and look at trees. You can look at the
bottom of the trunk and you see the tops of
the roots right there at the base of the trunk,
going down into the soil. That's kind of how we're

(01:20:27):
planting this, not way above the soil line, but right
at or slightly below the soil line. Plant it at
that level. So scrape the soil back in the pot.
If you don't see the topmost root, find it. Maybe
there's been some extra stuff piled in on top of
the roots, and plant it at that level. Dig the
hole only as deep as the container of soil itself,

(01:20:49):
the soil in the container itself. So let's say your
container it may be a big old pot, but maybe
your soil rootball is I'm just going to throw a
number out there, like a foot deep or eight ten
inches or something eight inches. You want to dig the
hole that deep because here's why. When you dig up
soil and then you put it back in the hole,

(01:21:10):
even if you feel like you packed it down, it
will sink down in time because in the digging you're loosening,
there's a lot of air in there and it's going
to settle. And so in order for that thing to
not settle down too deep, too low, you want to
dig the hole so it sits on firm soil that
you've got. Mix in products with that soil as you're

(01:21:33):
putting it in that are slow release. An excellent product
is Nelson Plant Food. Nelson Plant Food Genesis Genesis. Okay,
that is the product that they they have that it
just it adds so much. It adds microbes, it adds
a beneficial fungi that associate with the plant root and

(01:21:56):
help the plant root be more efficient and effective, and
it will cause things to grow better. So mix that
in the soil when you plant. But remember don't dig
that hole too deep. Now, the folks at Nelson have
a lot of great products. You know that you've got
color Star. If you got any kind of color beds,
flower beds you're putting out, you got to have some
color storre on hand. You can buy Genesis in color
Star both in the little jars and many garden centers

(01:22:16):
around here. And there are a number of places that
even have refill stations for some of the Nelson products
where you just go take your old jar in and
fill it up. Very economical way to get some extra
fertilizer there and not have to throw away plastic. Let's
take a little break. We'll be right back, all right,
welcome back to the guard line.

Speaker 8 (01:22:38):
We are in.

Speaker 6 (01:22:41):
Valentine's says, Yes we are, for sure, and I'm biased,
but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. But I think you
should give flowering plants for a lolentime. If you want
to get roses, that's fine, do that too, But why
not a rosebush? Why not other things that flower? You
know something that really stands out and is gorgeous? H

(01:23:05):
there's a there is a If you go to in
Channon Forest, they've got a something called they call them
orchid cactus. That's kind of a generic name. It's it's
not an orchid or cactus really, but it's an epiphylum.
That's the fancy word epiphylum. But they have flat leaves.
You've probably seen these before, coming out of a hanging basket,

(01:23:25):
big flat leaves with kind of wavy edges, and then
they produce blooms that are just unbelievable. They are gorgeous.
Go out to in Jenny Forest and ask them to
show you their orchid cactus or the the epiphylums that
they have there. Now, when you're there, you're all going
to hit the ground when you see all the color
options that they have lots of colors come in. They

(01:23:47):
are stocked up and they have beautiful containers. You know.
One of the containers that I find really interesting that
we see around now is it's like a head, like
a maybe it looks like a concrete or a ceramic
pod or something, and the head is opening. You plant
up there so you can plan something that trails and
it's like hair hanging over the sides. They have those

(01:24:08):
er two. Of course I love those things. That's kind
of a conversation starter. Lots of other kinds of color,
whatever you're looking for, they are stocked up, and it's
just going to keep going. Every week that goes by,
they're going to get more and more and more. Now,
if you're gonna go to the enchanted Forest, you need
to know where to go right and it's it's in

(01:24:29):
the Richmond Rosenberg area. Richmond Rosenberg area. Here is the
website Enchanted Forest Richmond TX dot com. So if you're
in Richmond and you head up towards Houston of fifty nine,
it's off to the right down farm to Market FM
twenty seven fifty nine and the website is what you
really need to know. Enchented Forest Richmond, TX. Don't forget

(01:24:53):
the TX dot com go check them out. Man, spring
is here. I'm excited. I hope you are lots lots
of cool stuff going on outside. Now, when you want
to have success, you're going to start with the soil.

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:25:08):
If you listen to garden Line, you have to remember
hearing me say a thousand times, brown stuff before green stuff,
brown stuff before green stuff. And that is because the soil,
the brown stuff is so important that you get that right,
and then you put in the green stuff, and the
green stuff thrives. If you PLoP a poor plant into

(01:25:28):
an unprepared plot, it's not going to perform its best.
You may keep it alive, it may grow, it may bloom.
If it is it's a blooming plant for you a
little bit, but nothing like when it's in good soil.
All right, So what I need to do. If you're
down south of town there, cinamals is easy to get to.
I mean it's you know you basically it's on FM

(01:25:51):
five twenty one in the rows Sharin area down south
of Houston. But they have all the different products that
you need for success. The brown stuff includes not just
soils and composts and bed mixes, which of course cnimals has,
but also the nutrients that they have. They carry products
from nitrofoss and microlife, and the folks at Nelson they

(01:26:15):
have the low jars too, of the products from Nelson.
And so when you leave Ciena Mulch, you are leaving
with the foundation for success in your yard. And no
other single thing is as important as getting that right first.
And I'm going to harp on this a little bit
because i want you to understand that is the secret
to success in your landscape. All right. So when you

(01:26:38):
build the soil up, you want a bed that's raised
up so that when it rains too much, which it
does around here, sometimes the excess can drain away. You
want good organic matter content. Expanded shale is it looks
like the old gray Kitty letter you know that you
used to use and then we've gotten a wave to
all these things that have fresh smells in them and stuff.

(01:27:00):
But it's it's not kiddy. It's a shale' that's heated
like a thousand degrees plus with steam and it just
expands it and looks like a little lava rocks. If
you've got a microscope and looked at it that holds
its structure in the soil very well. It holds air,
and it holds moisture very well. And you can get

(01:27:21):
that also at cienamalk to put down in your soils.
You get the soil right and you are going to
have success with your plants. Bottom line are clay soils,
very little oxygen in the soil as you go deeper.
You don't have to go very deep at all. You know,
five inches into the soil and it's pretty limited the
oxygen down there in the microbial activity you accomposted into it,

(01:27:44):
and you change all that. That's why it's so important
to get all that right anyway. Cienamlch FM five twenty
one road Sharin, Texas, Ciena Mulch dot com. You are
listening to garden Line. If you would like to give
me a call, you can do so at this number
seven one three two one two five eight seven four

(01:28:05):
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Can me call. Let's talk about the things that interest
you in the garden. Microlife fertilizers come in so many
different options. You know, if you're growing acidic plants, get
the red bag blueberries, pirris azaleas, camellias, Virginia sweet spire

(01:28:31):
though all those plants love the act of fire. I've
even used it on roses, especially when the peach is
a little on the high side. I'll put some around roses.
It's a good one for that too.

Speaker 8 (01:28:41):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:28:41):
Then they have the green bag for your lawns. That's
the Microlife Multi Purpose, and it can be used on lawns,
but it can be used anywhere that you're building the soil.
It's a it's a three one two ratio. The numbers
are six two four on the back. They've got one
for citrus and fruit that's also a six to two
for And then the Microlife Ultimate has an extra boost

(01:29:03):
of nitrogen in it. It's an eight four six fertilizer
and it will do really really well for you. If
you are in the market for some of the liquids,
which I hope you will be, you need to try
something called micro grow liquid AF. Micro Grow liquid AF

(01:29:23):
is just like it's like you're giving a microbial boost
that fights disease, that helps plants grow, that promotes good
root systems into the salt. You can drench plants in
with that and it does very very well, and there
are many other liquids. You just got to go to
Microlife Fertilizer dot com. See all the different products that
they have up there. Good products and they do work.

(01:29:47):
And I say that because I use them. I tell
you this before. But if I'm talking about a product
on guardline, it's a product that I've used. I'm not
going to promote something just because somebody else says it's good,
but one that I've seen the results for. So there
you go. What do you be doing out in your
landscape later today or this week coming up? You know,

(01:30:07):
spring has sprung And I'm not saying we're not gonna
have another frost. Technically we possibly could have another frost.
It's just it's just kind of how things are here.
But whether you're down south, your frost is gonna final
frost gonna come about two weeks earlier than those of
you that are further north on average. Now, there's nothing

(01:30:30):
about the weather where average, you know, it can be
a predictor very well. One year the final freeze is
really early. One year the final freeze is shockingly late.
We bout on average, we come up with a mid number,
which is when you you kind of hit the fifty
to fifty line, is it going to frost again? That's

(01:30:52):
basically what the last average frostate is a fifty to
fifty line. Fifty maybe yes, maybe, maybe no. But if
you are a gardener that loves to just get out
and plant plants and you don't mind, I mean, you
don't want them to be frozen and killed. But if
they do, you know you can get more seeds or

(01:31:13):
transplants and just go again. But you want to get
a good early start in case we're done now, Well
you can do that, and if we get a freeze,
you can neither cover the plants or you can go
get some more. That's one type of gardener. Then on
the other end is the conservative gardener. They don't they
want to make sure we are done with frosts and
freezes before they put any little plant out there. Okay,

(01:31:34):
the conservative types, you can tell them because they're always
going to make extra sure, like they'll wear a belt
and suspenders just in case. Okay, that's a joke. Those
gardeners are going to wait until at or later then
the average frost date because they want to have the
percentage just go down. And if you look at weather data,

(01:31:54):
which I have done a number of times. There's going
to be a date where there's a ninety percent chance
there'll be another freeze and a ten percent chance they won't.
And then you go a little long and there's a
seventy five twenty five, a fifty to fifty, a twenty
five seventy five. You see what I'm saying. And the
further you get out once we're down, it depends on
where you live. But once we get into March and February,

(01:32:19):
for down south, late February, but especially in March, is
we go north in my listening area, that's where the
last average prostates are going to hit. So you decide
if you want to be a gambler. I'm on the
first group side. I like to get stuff out there.
I like to get it growing. And sometimes I will
actually purchase plants, like right now, you're going to find

(01:32:40):
garden centers with tomato plants, and it's a little early
for tomato plants, but I'll buy those early on because
I want to get the variety I want before they
get picked over. I'll buy those plants and then I'll
bring them home and I'll pot them up into maybe
a gallum pot and water them and fertilize them, keep
them outside during warmer days and bring them in at

(01:33:03):
night or whatever if you got lights inside. And typically
when I plant tomatoes, when I wait until it's a
little safer to plant, we're a little past the prostate.
But I've got a gallon sized plant that already has
blooms and sometimes the beginning of fruit that are already
developing on them. So if you want to go that route,
I know it's kind of over the top gardening, but

(01:33:25):
it's fun. I like to do it. So you do
what you do. You whatever appeals to you in the garden.
When you're doing your pruning, there's different kinds of pruners
that are out there, and you can find the kind
do you like best. I like the kind that are
more of a bypass pruner, like a scissor like action,
as opposed to a blade that comes down on a

(01:33:47):
flat anvil. I find that they prune better, but keep
them sharp. When you're done with pruning, clean them up,
and then oil them really well, because a quality pruner
will last a lifetime, but rust will cut that lifetime
very short, very fast. So make sure and take care
of your quality tools and you'll have the best results.
Let's take a little break here. When I come back

(01:34:08):
with your calls at seven one three, two one two
five eight seven four, I got a few more tips
to offer. All right, and jump right out here with
both feet to get going. Uh, let's go straight to
the phones. We're going to talk to Link from Rosenberg.
Hey Link, Welcome to garden lind Yes, yeah, thank you

(01:34:32):
very much.

Speaker 18 (01:34:33):
I had a question about peach trees.

Speaker 6 (01:34:35):
I've had two.

Speaker 18 (01:34:37):
One actually was in Paarland and that peach tree just
took off. It was unreal how fast it grew. And
then Rosenberg got planted one probably I don't know how
much the difference there was in the soil, but it
did nothing. I just wondering if there's a particular type

(01:34:59):
of peach tree that you would recommend for Houston.

Speaker 6 (01:35:02):
Well, there are a number of types, depending on what
part of the Houston area you live in. You're going
to first thing you want to do is check the
chilling hours of that peach. Chilling hours is the amount
of cold but not bitter cold, winter temperatures that it
requires in order to come out with buds and grow

(01:35:23):
normally in the spring and so you don't want to
buy a chilling. You don't want to buy a peach
with chilling that is above or below your area. And
you can find more information. There's a peach publication at
Aggie Horticulture website that lists of varieties they recommend in
the chilling hours and there's a low map there and

(01:35:45):
you can find the ones that are best. What part
of the area are you in the Houston area, Well, Rosenberg, Okay, yeah,
so you're gonna it depends on the winter. It varies
a lot, but you're going to be around the four
hundred hour somewhere give or take in that range. If
you go to a good nursery, you know, like in

(01:36:05):
Rosenberg you got enchented garden and you have enchanted for us,
they're gonna be able to point you to the peach
peach as options that you should plant. And that's what
I would do. They know the area, they only bring
in the ones that are gonna grow in the area,
and so I would just I would take that approach
to it.

Speaker 18 (01:36:22):
Make sure this is this similar to some citrus trees
where you need to have a second tree.

Speaker 6 (01:36:29):
No, no peaches do not. No peaches do not require
cross pollination, and really citrus it doesn't either, but apples do.
Pears are better with pollination cross pollination. Blueberries are better
with it. They don't have to have cross pollination, but
peaches don't. So one peach tree will make fruit all

(01:36:50):
by itself, but you want to make sure they have
good drainage, create a raised mound or do something so
that the soil drains well for them, keep the weeds
away so they can grow fast young. And then whenever
you're going to fertilize them, take your thumb and go
up to the trunk of the peach tree. And how
many thumb widths across is it? You know when you
buy it, it's probably a thumb with across. For every

(01:37:13):
thumb with you give it a cup or two of
like a turf fertilizer or a fruit tree fertilizer sprinkled
in a big circle around it, all through the area
nice and evenly. So if you had a peach tree,
there's the size of a soft drink can that'd be
about three inches or three thumbs across, so you'd get
three to six cups of fertilizer.

Speaker 18 (01:37:34):
So these steaks or thease just a liquid type fertilizer.

Speaker 6 (01:37:37):
I use a granular you can use you can use
your lawn fertilizer on your peach trees to get them
growing fine, or buy a fruit tree fertilizer, either way
you want to go.

Speaker 18 (01:37:49):
But yeah, is there any particular type I'm gonna fill
in with some type of soil or top soil.

Speaker 6 (01:37:58):
No, just a good well draining soil. And if you
don't have that, then bringing in a good bed mix
would be helpful. Uh, mixing a little into your soil
and piling a little bit on top of that. But
good drainage and good sunlight and consistent moisture or the
secrets to a good success with your your peach tree.

Speaker 18 (01:38:19):
Is there any like we're you used for like plant
pod soil and that it would have a lot of
ingredients or.

Speaker 6 (01:38:30):
No? I mean if you if you if you're gonna
get if you're going to create a bed for a
big peach tree, you know you need a good sized bed,
not just a little skinny bed or mound. I would
I would. Uh, let's say you're done in Rosenberg uh
SIENA mulch can deliver for a fee. I believe they
deliver as far out as Rosenberg or you can go

(01:38:51):
get it if you have the means to do that.
But uh, just get a get a good melch, tell
them what you want to grow and they'll provide the
right one for you. I'm gonna have to to run
and move along. Linked I do appreciate your call. Thank
you very much.

Speaker 18 (01:39:06):
All right, you take care.

Speaker 6 (01:39:10):
Thank you for those of you up north Willis Conroe
Lake Conroe Area Growers Outlet up in Willis. It's on
Highway seventy five, just south of Willis, you know, toward Conroe,
south of Willis, Uh, just outside of town, not too far.
They've got excellent selection of plants. Oh my gosh. They
have greenhouses there. They grow a lot of their own plants.

(01:39:31):
In the greenhouses. You can go in there and you're
gonna find bedding plants of all types, betting plant flowers,
you can find vegetables and herbs and things. You're gonna
find shrubs and trees and hanging baskets, beautiful hanging baskets
and wood ornamentals. They go outside. You just got to
go by there and see it. It is really really nice.

(01:39:53):
They keep a good supply of good quality plants on hand.
It's easy to get to. You can go to the
website Growers Outlet in Willis. That's easy, isn't it. What's
the website for Growers Outlet in Willis. Yes, Growers Outlet
in Willis dot com. There you go. Where we are
we here. Let's go to the phones and we're going

(01:40:15):
to talk now to Rich in Spring. Hey, Rich, welcome
to garden Line. Good morning.

Speaker 12 (01:40:23):
While we're talking pre emergence skip, I've read a lot
about people that do split applications. I do use the
Prodiamine sixty five WDG, and I've done i don't know,
probably just one application in the spring, another one in
the fall. But I've also read where the early spring

(01:40:43):
people split the application about two months apart. What are
your thoughts.

Speaker 6 (01:40:48):
You can do that. Follow the label very carefully. It
should guide you in that. But when you split it,
you don't put as much on at one time, and
then you come back later and do another application after
a period of time to continue that effectiveness further on,
in this case into the early summer. So the split

(01:41:10):
application is okay to go about that way. Just be
careful overall that you're not overdoing it. And so if
you split it and do them a week apart. You're
overdoing it, you know what I'm saying. So make sure
and follow the label real carefully on them.

Speaker 8 (01:41:25):
Will do.

Speaker 6 (01:41:27):
Thank you, you bet, thanks to the call. Appreciate that
very much. ACE Hardware here in our area, in your
area specifically, is going to have everything you need for
success in your outdoor gardening, lawn care, landscape care, the
fertilizer products that you need, the products and control pest

(01:41:48):
weeds and diseases and so on, and a nice selection
of tools including things like garden hoses and whatnot. Whatever
you want to do out in the lawn and garden,
you can have success at your local ACE Hardware store.
Ace Hardware Texas dot com. That's the website. Go there
and you will be able to find your store just
staring in the face right there on a map. Ace

(01:42:09):
Hardwaretexas dot Com. Let's take a break and we'll be
right back with some phone calls. Where a spring, this
is the time gardeners just run outside and rejoice and
blooms and new growth. Here it come. We're right on

(01:42:32):
the doorstep of it right now. So I'm excited. I
got a lot of plans this spring for things I'm
gonna do out in my yard and in my landscape.
If you had plans like that, you need to swing
by Plants for All Seasons. Plants for All Seasons has
got a wonderful selection every kind of plants you're gonna want, fruit, vegetables, herbs, flowers, sunplants,

(01:42:53):
shade plants, shrubs, trees, bines, and gorgeous pottery as well.

Speaker 17 (01:42:58):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:42:59):
And I just want to, by the way, if you
don't know, if you've never been therefore, they're on Highway
two forty nine, which is tom Ball Parkway and right
just north of where it crosses Luetta, So they're on
two forty nine just north of Luetta, just like a
block north of Luetta. They've got a program coming up
on February the twenty first. I'm telling you had a
time on it because you're going to want to register

(01:43:20):
for this. So it's it's Houston Cottage Garden. So basically,
you're going to learn about cottage plants for our Houston
heat and humidity. They're going to give you some design
tips and techniques for making a beautiful cottage garden. Maybe
it's not your whole garden, maybe it's just an area
and some added elements for year round interest. This is

(01:43:42):
free Houston Cottage Garden program at Plants for All Seasons
on February twenty first. By the way, it's at nine am.
So go to the Plants for All Seasons on Facebook
and you'll see there where you register to do that.
And by the way, if you want to call Plants
for All Seasons, the phone number for the nursery is

(01:44:04):
two eight one, three seven six sixteen forty six. We
are now going to go out to let's see Mike
and Bay City. Hello Mike, Welcome to garden line.

Speaker 14 (01:44:21):
Okay, but I would put a few comments on peach
tree and then maybe you can have some comments.

Speaker 6 (01:44:27):
About it too.

Speaker 14 (01:44:28):
But back before the the we had a little warm
up before all that freeze, and my peach tree bloomed
like crazy. I've never seen so many blooms. So I said, oh,
no one in the freeze game. I figure I'm not
gonna have any peaches this year, right, So talking about
the you know, the chilling hours and stuff, I don't know.

(01:44:49):
But anyway, since we had this rain since the freeze,
it's all bloomed out a second time. So maybe I
will have some peaches, and I'm just kind of just
wondering if that's a tip thing, you know, if you
know that or wanted make any comments on it. But
now maybe I'm gonna have some peaches got blooms on
it again.

Speaker 6 (01:45:08):
All right, Well, I'm gonna hang up with you and
I'm gonna comment on that on the air. Thanks. I
appreciate you. Give me a call Mic on that. Okay,
what probably happened there with Mike's We don't see this
a lot because we don't have the weather kind of
pattern that we just had in these past freeze. But

(01:45:30):
if you get a bloom, you're gonna have some blooms
that opened before the others do. And so the blooms
that were tighter didn't get frozen like the ones that
had been open. And then when it warmed up again,
the rest of the blooms then began to emerge and
come out. So the freeze probably hit it just the
right time where there was still quite a bit of

(01:45:50):
blooms that had not opened yet. But not a common thing,
but a good reminder of why we pick our peach
trees and certain other kinds of fruit trees. According to
the chilling hours we get in the area. Yep. If
you pick one with two loave of chilling, it's going
to bloom for you at a warm spell when we're
not done freezing here. If you pick one that's too high,

(01:46:11):
we're going to be done freezing here. And the thing
is still sitting there like it's dormant, sputtering a few
leaves out here and there, and that's a disaster too.
So make sure and pick your plants accordingly to buy
chilling hours. Very important to do that. Let's go back
to the phones now and we are going to talk
to enn In Wharton. Hello, Ann, Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (01:46:35):
Yes, sir, good morning. I have a question about my
mee host satsuma tree that survived the twenty twenty one
freeze and it has produced fruit. It's a six big
tree six foot by six foot, but I have some
scale on one side of the tree. I have sprayed
last year with the I'm at a cloth prit and

(01:46:57):
I want to do that now. But I meant that
battle to somebody in the label unfortunately came off.

Speaker 6 (01:47:03):
Okay, So I don't know how much of that to
put okay. Uh Well, I can't tell you off hand
because there are different products out there. You know, if
you go over to your Ace hardware store there and Wharton,
you've got a good one. Uh and and maybe they'll
let you look on the look on the on the
shelf and look at the label, take a little picture

(01:47:23):
with your phone on it. But amid a clopre you
use the word spray, I would apply it as a
drench on the soil and water it into the root system.
Then it gets in the plumbing of the plant and
the scale sucking uh a sap or juices out of
the plant get that poison because it's in the plumbing.
The nice thing about that approach is you don't have

(01:47:46):
the like a lady beetle could be crawling on your
plant and they're not going to get damaged by the
amiticlopord that's in the plumbing of the plant. You always
want to do it for I know I have a
lot of other people listening that have fruit trees. I
need to say this. You want to do it when
it's not going to be blooming, and when it's when
you've harvested your fruit and so that you have with

(01:48:07):
your citrus you have, especially that tatsuma you have months
now before it starts, it blooms and does fruit again,
depending on this season. When I would be saying that,
I guess what I'm trying to say is just try
to avoid. You don't want to damage bees that might
be coming to blooms and things like that.

Speaker 5 (01:48:27):
Okay, No, I want to spray the ametacloaver. I want
to do that today. Put it in the soil. And
another thing, it's left some of the insects have left
a black soot on the leaves and I've tried to
blast it off with water, but it's very difficult to
get off.

Speaker 6 (01:48:46):
Yeah. Yeah, it almost takes a little bit of soap
in the water to get it out, but generally it'll
crack and fall off in time. That scale will do.
That scale produces the sugary water that makes Black City
mold grow, so that that's probably will be the case.

Speaker 10 (01:49:01):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:49:01):
You may just consider a little bit more of a
pressure spray. When you do that, put a little soap,
soapy water on it. Don't mix it too strong, just
a little bit, uh, and let it sit for just
a bit, and then get your hard spray from a
garden spray hose or something and blast that soapy water
off and maybe maybe that'll help loosen up that dried

(01:49:22):
sticky material that the SUT's grown on.

Speaker 5 (01:49:26):
All right, so thank you, and I will get on
that today with the I'm gonna cloth put All right, Well.

Speaker 6 (01:49:31):
You picked a good one with that. Uh you said Miho. No,
was it Miho or Sito that you planted?

Speaker 12 (01:49:39):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:49:39):
Yeah, I think they said it was a me host
set suma And like I said it, it froze during
the big freeze, but it was above the graft and
it's it's a six foot by six foot tree now
and produce this wonderfully good.

Speaker 6 (01:49:52):
Well, good for you.

Speaker 5 (01:49:53):
Uh, that's thank you, thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (01:49:57):
Yeah, Miho and Sito. I first encountered them. They were
planted in a research planting out in Uvalde, Texas, and
it gets pretty cold out there, and they had a
wind dead in the teens. I don't remember what temperature
it went to, but it was in the teens and
those bookers survived the thing, and they're pretty cold hardy.

(01:50:18):
There's another one called arctic frost. It's pretty cold hardy.
And if you've never grown to sat zooma, you ought to.
You don't need two varieties. It's self fruitful. The this
skin is very baggy and loose, like if you've ever
gone to the grocery store and bought those little thing
called qties. They're like a little small ceterris that have
a real baggy skin. That's like a satsuma. They're a

(01:50:40):
little think of that. But anyway, good treat for those
of you listening. You know you're up in Huntsville or
College Station or even up in Conroe and stuff, and
it gets a little cold for CRUs in those areas.
But tatsuma, no, they'll make it. You may have to
help them during their first winter or two get getting
established a tree while they're so small. And after that

(01:51:01):
it's gonna have to get way down in the teams
before we start worrying about our satsumas. I want to
say way down. I mean not like twelve. I'm talking
about down below the twenties, way down upper teams. There
you go.

Speaker 1 (01:51:19):
Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Richardses.

Speaker 4 (01:51:25):
Crazy gas Trim.

Speaker 2 (01:51:32):
Just watch him as world gods.

Speaker 3 (01:51:38):
So many girl thanks to Seapot Bazin in Great bass
and gas by d Sables Back again, not a salon
Jason Gas, sun.

Speaker 4 (01:51:54):
Beam and of teens gas starting.

Speaker 6 (01:52:17):
All right, gardeners, welcome back, Good to have you with
us today. What do you want to talk about. Here's
a phone number to talk with me and we will
solve the problem or maybe get down to the bottom
of the mystery one way or another. Seven one three two,
one two five eight seven four. Maybe some advice would

(01:52:38):
be in on Hannah and I was just talking about
fruit trees and the importance of picking fruit trees that
have the right chilling, especially the main ones from the
fruit world that we grow here in the Houston area
that we need to worry about the chilling and the
main ones peaches, most people, probably the most popular deciduous
fruit in the era, uh and and h. Plums would

(01:52:59):
be the same thing. There's one plum that's self fruitful,
called methyley. The rest of them do better with a pollinator.
Peaches do not need a second variety. Peaches are self fruitful.
And then pears and apples. Apples do need a second
variety for sure. Pears, it's better if you have a
second variety, but it's not necessarily required. It just depends.

(01:53:22):
There's some variation between varieties on those but I would
get a second variety just to be sure. And you
can also buy fruit trees that have more than one
variety grafted onto them. Now those are a little bit
of a challenge to manage because the varieties don't perform
the same the growth on them and such. You may
have one variety that out grows another one. So now

(01:53:43):
your tree is a little on the lop sided side.
But with careful printing and just managing it, it's a
good thing to do. Give it a try and see
what you think, believe it or not. In the stone fruit,
there's a lot of graft compatibility. Like most plum trees
that you buy, I would say all, but I'm not
sure about all, but most are going to be grafted

(01:54:05):
on the peach rootstock. There are some plumb stocks as well,
but it just depends on where you get them and whatnot.
But that's kind of a surprise. Your pairs are typically
grafted on pair rootstocks, of course, but almost all the
fruit trees are going to be grafted or budded, actually budded,

(01:54:25):
but it's a type of grafting down near the ground
line because there's advantages to a root stock. And then
there are of course the fruit varieties or the superior
types of fruit. So you got to put those two together.
By the way, do you know one of the most
common reasons they peach trees is due to nematodes. A
lot of the good peach growing areas have a sandy

(01:54:49):
loamy soil, especially a loamy soil, and that nematodes are
especially prevalent in those kinds of soils, and so they
have a root for eyes. That's it's called niema guard
good name. They've bred some new ones now and we
have other varieties that are they can be grafted on too,
But that's one of the common reasons that be graphed.

(01:55:11):
All right, there you go. So what are we going
to talk about? Seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. You give me a call. Let's talk
about the things that are of interest to you. I
was at Southwest Fertilizer just the other day, went in
to visit with Bob and Aaron and the whole gang.

Speaker 4 (01:55:34):
There.

Speaker 6 (01:55:35):
We talked about what's going on, you know, what are
the what are the changes they are seeing, how there
are the different kinds of products that carry and whatnot.
You know, Southwest is going to have everything you need.

Speaker 15 (01:55:45):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:55:46):
If you want quality pruning tools, not the kind you
get frustrated because they were cheap cheap meaning not inexpensive cheap.
You see what I'm saying. Uh, you want a quality one,
not have to throw them away. Take care of them.
Bob's got it. He's got lots of quality tools. Ninety
foot wall of quality tools. You need a spreader to

(01:56:07):
put out your fireing bait, to put out your barricade,
to put out your fertilizers. What Bob's got those. Of course,
I'm telling you, if you need it, he's got it.
If you didn't have it, because you don't need it,
you shouldn't have it. He's not going to carry a
snake while it doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (01:56:21):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:56:21):
And so just stop by there Southwest Houston, corner of
Bissinet and Runwick. They already got some plants in out
front for those of you who like the herbs and
some vegetables and things like that. They're they're covered with that.
But boy, I tell you, the place looks good, ready
to go for spring, So let's do it. I had

(01:56:43):
a oh, I know, I wanted to make a comment
about groundcover maintenance and keeping groundcovers looking their best in
winter before the groundcover begins to grow again. And this
could be the riope, it could be could be monkey grass,
but especially loriope UH. And it could be something that's

(01:57:05):
more of a vining ground cover. You can cut those
back if you want loriope. Those leaves are around all
the time, but cold damage makes them look ugly. Spider
mites can make loriope look ugly, and just just cut
it way back, you know, just above the few inches
above the ground. And then when the fresh new growth

(01:57:27):
comes in, which starts very early on loriope, you'll have
a very bright green, beautiful patch of it that works.
Another one cast iron plant. A cast iron plant UH
is one of the toughest. It's shade tolerant. It's just
a dark green, beautiful, beautiful plant. Doesn't need pampering at all.

(01:57:47):
But those leaves coming out of the ground, just leaves
come out on a leaf stalk and they stick up,
you know, out of the ground. They can get ragged
looking and kind of ugly. And so you've got a
couple of options. You can go in there and prune
out individual leaves and leave the prettier leaves behind. Or
you can cut the whole thing to the ground, get
your head strimmers or whatever you're gonna use, and just

(01:58:09):
cut it off just above the ground and fresh new
growth will come in with the warming weather that's gonna
come and it looks really good. Don't be afraid to
do that. And your groundcovers that are looking a little ratty,
you have that option, so go for it. Also, when
you're doing that kind of pruning, I should mention ornamental grasses.

(01:58:31):
Ornamental grasses look well, they just look like they're dead
right now. You know, the leaves are kind of tawny
colored tan, and they don't look very good, and a
lot of people just leave them and then the new
growth comes in and it looks great. But now you've
got all those dead leaves among the old leaves. You
can cut your ornamental grasses back too, you know, six

(01:58:54):
eight inches above the ground. Cut them off, and when
the new growth comes in, you have one hundred percent
pretty green in your ornamental grasses. So don't be afraid
to do that. I like to leave the growth until
we get toward the end of the winter season because
that that the seed heads are beautiful. You get a
frosty day and it's really pretty.

Speaker 5 (01:59:16):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:59:17):
And birds come along and peck on them and stuff
and use the leaves and things for making nests and whatnot.
So I leave mine a while, but you got to
clean it up in the spring if you want it
to look its best. Let's take a little break here.
We'll be back to your cause. Got some open lines.
Uh seven one, three, two, two, fifty eight seventy four.

Speaker 3 (02:00:04):
It was just to love us sitting in nicar, listening
in the blonde following for each other, thinking noise guys
for Lis, super Child's no Donald Glovell.

Speaker 6 (02:00:14):
All love that like where you a Welcome back to
garden Line. Good head you with us. We are going
to go straight out to the phones now to sugar
Land and visit with Susan this morning. Hey Susan, Welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 15 (02:00:29):
Hi Stam, how are you doing well?

Speaker 5 (02:00:31):
I am.

Speaker 15 (02:00:33):
I'm looking for a good resource for a Nagami kum
quat and I've read about this Australian bloodline. Can you
tell me more about that?

Speaker 6 (02:00:45):
Well, I've never grown an Australian bloodline, so I'm not
familiar with that one.

Speaker 8 (02:00:51):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (02:00:51):
Nagami, kume quat nagami and my wam i w a
are very common varieties that you can find in the
garden centers. Since you're in Sugarland, I would start with
the two enchenteds done a Richmond, Channa forests and channed gardens.
They do a great job carrying a wide variety. If
you are not able to find them up there, I'd

(02:01:12):
get on the phone then and check with Buchanans and
the Heights Arborgate maybe plants for all seasons further north
and see I know Arburgate carries fruit year round, fruit
trees year round, and uh, all of these places, you know,
starting with the enchanteds down by you, Uh, they may
be able to find it and order it for you

(02:01:34):
if they don't normally carry it. That lime you said,
I'm gonna get you to tell me again. It was
some kind of a blood lime or what was that?

Speaker 15 (02:01:45):
Yes, it says Australian blood lime, and it grows like
a kum quat, but it's red on the INSIGHT's bigger
than a kum quat. Anyway, I saw one on the
TV and I thought, ooh.

Speaker 11 (02:01:57):
Do we have those in Texas.

Speaker 6 (02:02:00):
I've never heard of it, and so that's but that
doesn't surprise me. There's a lot of stuff out there.
But I'm gonna look into that after we talk here
at a break. That's that's very intriguing.

Speaker 15 (02:02:14):
The top kumquats. Do they grow like in pots like.

Speaker 16 (02:02:17):
My lemon trees.

Speaker 6 (02:02:18):
Yes, you need a good sized pot like you do
with your lemon trees. I always say, think of a
half whiskey barrel. Don't use a wooden whiskey barrel to
grow them because it'll rot out. But something about that
much soil is ideal if you can go with a
little less soil, but it's very confining for the roots
and it's gonna affect how big that plant can get.
But kumquats row and a big, big pot. And basically

(02:02:40):
kumquats are bushes as opposed to trees, and so do.

Speaker 15 (02:02:46):
They a fruit at the same time lemons do.

Speaker 6 (02:02:51):
Kumquats I'm trying to think. Are they're a repeat bloomer?
That is what I'm I'll find out and say it all.
But a lot of things, yeah, you know, the some
of the lemons and other things will bloom in cycles
as you go through the season, right and on the kumquat.
I want to say they do, but it has been

(02:03:12):
twenty years since I've had a kum quat in my yard.
I can't remember back that far, but I'll find out.

Speaker 15 (02:03:20):
Yeah, yeah, all right, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (02:03:23):
Hey, thanks for the call, Susan. I appreciate that.

Speaker 7 (02:03:26):
For those of yeah, take care now fight For those
of you that.

Speaker 6 (02:03:29):
Are out there listening. Cumquats are a little fruit bigger
than bigger than the end of your thumb, last section
of your thumb, but small like that, you're not very big.
Mawa and nagami are the two more common varieties. You find.
One of them is round, one of them is a
little more oval in its shape, and the skin I
think is better than the inside of the fruit. Often

(02:03:49):
they're used for marmalade, but you can peel the skin
off of those and just eat the skin and it's
really good. It's kind of unusual. And here's the big
thing on kumquats. They are as hearty as citrus as
you're gonna find. They're hardier than setsumas. They can take
real cool weather and do just fine for you. So anyway,
some fun things, another reason to have citrus. We're just

(02:04:11):
gonna make this a citrus section. I guess of the show.
The bloom fragrance is incredible. It is just I love
scented plants. I love Guardina's absolutely love Texas Mountain Laurel.
That's a gaudy fragrance. I mean, yeah, there's no chance
of there being an Este Latt or Texas Mountain Laurel.

(02:04:33):
But it is strong. But citrus. I love the smell
of citrus. And Brugmancia's angels trumpets there's another good one.
And there are many other plants that have nice fragrant blooms.
But if you've got something like a kumquat that you
can put in a big container if you want, you
could locate that around your patio in a place where

(02:04:55):
the breeze tends to blow through and you get to
enjoy the blooms on it. So I always like to
say that even if Ceterrius didn't aff for it, it's
worth it for the ballooms because they smell so good.
You're listening to Guardenline phone number seven one three two
one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two
one two five eight seven four Airloom Soils has been

(02:05:15):
making quality soil blends for a long time, and you're
gonna find heirloom products all over town by the bag.
They sell all over by the bag. They have excellent products.
They're veggie and herb mixed is just kind of a
standard in my book, excellent for raised beds. They have
a Roses and other bloomers blend that is excellent for

(02:05:36):
raised beds as well. They've got soils for container plants.
They have sols for potting, soil for indoors. They're just
good soils. The you mind by the bag, or you
can call them up. They're out there in Porter Porter Texas.
Go to the website Airloomsoils dot com. Find out everything
you need to know airloomsols dot com at Importer Texas.

(02:05:56):
You can have them deliver it by the supersacks or
by the bulk. It takes a certain quantity. They can't
take one supersac across down, but it takes certain quantity.
Are you you can go out and get it, you
have them deliver it. You choose airloomsoils dot com. Lots
of good products. Go to the website Airloomsoils dot Com.
And look at all the ones I'm talking about really good.

(02:06:18):
They even have blent bulk soil that's like for lawn
topping off. You know, if you'll want to level it
off or kind of top it off. You don't want
just one hundred percent organic matter for that. You need
something with some substance and soil itself in it. And
they had that for airlom soils. All right, Uh, you
are listening to garden Line. Got some open lines here

(02:06:40):
seven one three, two one two five eight seven four.
If you'd like to give me a call. I'm going
to be at the NRG Center for the Houston Home
and Garden Show today at eleven o'clock to one o'clock.
I hope you can come out NRG Center. I'm going
to be given a talk and on gardening tips for spring,

(02:07:00):
answering lots of your gardening questions. If you want to
bring samples for identification or diagnosis, we can do that.
Would like stop buy and get a copy of my book.
I'm going to be signing copies of that. Have that
available too as well. Houston Home and Garden Show and
RG Center. I'll start my talk at eleven o'clock sharp

(02:07:20):
and I'll be around till one o'clock today out there.
I hope you'll stop by. I have a number of
people stop by yesterday and it's just always good to
meet people that listen to garden Line. There you go.
So we talked about a number of things today, pruning
tips and whatnot. I want to make a comment about
pruning technique and you kind of follow me on this

(02:07:46):
because it's not complicated, but it just you kind of
have to picture in your mind's eye what I'm waving
my hands here in the studio trying to trying to
tell you. But when you take a shoot and you
cut it off on the end, it could be a
little trunk on a young tree. It could be a
shoot on a branch going out from the trunk or something.

(02:08:10):
When you just cut off the branch, what happens that's
called a heading cut. What happens is a bunch of
buds on the part you left behind when you cut
it off will sprout and you will get several shoots
that are growing to replace that one shoot. That's called
a crow's foot because it's I guess it's called that

(02:08:31):
because they think of it as you got a crow's leg.
And then the foot fingers go out or the toes
go out in all directions. But that's a crowsfoot growth.
The use is for heading cuts, or for shrubs that
you want to be dense. Every time you shear, every
time you cut all those shoots off. Where there was
one shoot, now there's more, and so the shrub gets

(02:08:51):
denser and denser with continual hedging. With hedge cuts, a
thinning cut is different. So for this one, I need
you to hold your hand up and have your thumb
away from your fingers, your fingers together, so it sort
of looks like a mitten. Okay, a thinning cut if
you were going to leave your thumb and remove the

(02:09:12):
part going up your hand and fingers, you cut it
off above the thumb, and it directs growth more out
that side shoot not completely. You're still going to get
some shoots coming up, but not as much as with
a heading cut. So think of it as a highway.
Here's another analogy. If this works for you, You're driving
down the highway and there's an exit ramp. If they

(02:09:34):
were to put barricades on the highway, all cars would
have to go down the exit ramp to continue, right.
That's what thinning cuts do. And thinning cuts help open
up a plant for more light to get inside, and
they also create a nice strong connection without too many shoots,
and they are typically used for pruning your fruit trees.

(02:09:57):
We try to do mostly thinning cuts when you prune
your fruit tree. When you're pruning trees that are shrub
trees or shrub trees shade trees, you're training them. Thinning
cuts are the way to go because you build a
nice strong branch structure without all the growth. What happens
to crape myrtles all over town every winter is they

(02:10:19):
get a lot of heading cuts. They just cut the
branch off and now you get all these crowsfits of growth.
So after a year or two of that, it's just
like knots on the ends of branches destroys the beauty
of a crape myrtle structure. So heading cuts thinning cuts
each have their own use. But when you prune, you
can go online learn about this. Just you know, heading

(02:10:39):
cuts versus thinning cuts whatnot. If you want more information,
you can email me and I can send you some
links to some better information on that. But become a
good educated, informed pruner on your plants because you can
damage a plant. Well, let's take a tree, someone that
doesn't know what they're doing, his turn loose with a chainsaw.

(02:11:02):
That that tree is in trouble in its structure and
its strength can be ruined for life. You can come
back into a miss prune tree and try to bring
it back in placement. It's not like printing it right
in the first place. So, uh, learn what you're doing
and go out there and have some fun. It's easy,
easy to do. Let's see here we are trying to

(02:11:26):
find my list. Here. Let's see we're going to go
to Joe from Stafford next. Hey, Joe, welcome to Guardline.

Speaker 8 (02:11:36):
Thank you for taking my call. Hey, I did some
research on some some mandarins and they take the cold
pretty well. And I love mandarins. I used to get
them in the store all the time, all right, And
I want to know where as a replicable dealer where

(02:12:00):
I can find one. Due to the fact that I've
gone to different places in the past years and I
get something, it comes to find out it's not you know,
it's like orange trees and manders age. You almost have
the same type of leef, you know, yes, yeah, So

(02:12:21):
I don't want to be sold something that's not right.

Speaker 6 (02:12:25):
Well, you know, stay away from the places that sell
everything and have a few plants as well. Uh, and
go with something someplace that's in the plant business and
that would fairly close to you. You got the two
chances down in Chenna Gardens, in Chenna Forest and Richmond Rosenberg.
If you head up eleven Street and the Heights, you're
going to be able to have the Cannon's plants. They

(02:12:46):
have a good selection of citrus there as well.

Speaker 8 (02:12:49):
I would probably I'm a little closer to Richmond and
Rosenberry area.

Speaker 6 (02:12:54):
So okay, yeah, they got them. They got the citrus
typically though a lot of times citrus comes a little
bit later than other fruit trees, which makes sense. But
just give me a call at one of those places
and they can get you one. They'll tell you the
variety and it'll be the correct plant when you take
it home. Okay.

Speaker 8 (02:13:14):
Another question is I want to get me an orange tree,
but I don't want the big old you know, the
six inch almost like a fruit, you know, I want
the one where you can peel it. You know, it's
got the more wrinkly skin on it. So what variety
would I get on that.

Speaker 6 (02:13:33):
There's a bunch of options when it comes to citrus.
You know, there's of course oranges and stuff. I would
talk to those two garden centers and say, what do
you have for you? Describe it to them, rather than
be I could send you out for a variety or something,
and then you get there and they don't happen to
carry that one variety, right, and so go there. You're
going to have good ones. If they're selling you one,

(02:13:55):
you can trust that it's a good one. The advantage
of a good, independent mom and pop garden center.

Speaker 8 (02:14:01):
Yeah, okay, sounds good. All right, Well, I do appreciate
your time and uh expertise and everything, and I hope
you have a blessed day.

Speaker 6 (02:14:10):
Thank you very much. I appreciate your call very much.
Let's now run to Roger and Tom Ball. Hey, Roger,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 11 (02:14:19):
How you doing today?

Speaker 6 (02:14:20):
You're doing good? How can we help?

Speaker 11 (02:14:22):
Okay, the question is a few years back or a
while back, I went to the ag office in Conroe
and they had a fruit tree sale. Are they going
to do that again? Do they still do that? Or
I need to go to arborgate.

Speaker 6 (02:14:36):
Well, I would recommend you go over to Arburgate because
it's right there. Uh the master gardeners in some counties
will do a spring sale and Montgomery Kenny up there,
they do one up there. You'd have to call them
to find out more about it. Uh that you know,
Arburgate's going to have your your fridgeries year round and
uh you know you got you to come back in

(02:14:58):
and ask them questions and stuff as time goes on.
So there's an advantage to that.

Speaker 11 (02:15:04):
Thank you very much, sir.

Speaker 6 (02:15:05):
All right, thank you appreciate your call very much. All right, Well,
I've got less than a minute left here, Sally in
Spring Branch. You will be the first up when we
come right back, so I'm gonna I'm gonna hold you
so I have more time to do justice to your question.
I do want to say that Piercescapes peerscapes dot com
is a company that can transform your landscape. Piercescapes dot com.

(02:15:31):
Whether you want quarterly maintenance, come out, fluff up the flowerbeds,
get the weeds out, put some new mulch on, check
the irrigation, put new plants in periodically as we go
through the seasons. They can do that. They can do
landscape lighting, they can do drainage work. They can do
just revamping a bed, making it look good, or they
can give you a brand new landscape for the whole property.

(02:15:51):
Turnkey Piercescapes dot Com. Go look at that website, look
at the work that they do, and you'll see why
I'm so big on this company. They're professionals, they know
what they're doing. All right. Time for me to take
a break and I'm going to hand the magical microphone
over to Erica to continue on with the news your
garden Line. Some inspiring Olympic music there to get us

(02:16:15):
ready to go for these Winter Olympics. Really fun watching
all the different sports and things. I know I was
kind of making fun of curling a little bit, but
I watch It's one of the ones I most often
watch anyway. It is cool Winter Olympics. Love that. I
love when the Olympics comes around every year. Let's meet.

(02:16:37):
Quit talking and we're going to go out to the
phones and talk to Sally, who's been on hoe for
a while. Here. Hey, Sally, thanks for being patient and
welcome back to Guardenline.

Speaker 10 (02:16:45):
Thank you. I have a forty foot flower bed who's
wandering jew and agapanthis have gone because of the cool weather,
but I know they'll come back. My concern is I
have them these small green weeds throughout and they're too
small to pull. Is there a weed killer to spray

(02:17:07):
on these weeds now without hurting the jew and the agapanthus.

Speaker 6 (02:17:14):
Not really?

Speaker 17 (02:17:15):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (02:17:16):
Your Your best bet would be to put a mulch
over that bed of a small particle size, not big
chunks of wood, but like a compost or a malt,
and put it on about two inches thick if it's
a compost. If it's a mulch a little thicker than that,
it'll smother the existing green weeds. If they're coming from seed,
they won't be able to take that instant shading that

(02:17:39):
you'll do when you mulch it. Uh is a agapanthos?
Does it have any green above ground yet? Or is
it composed?

Speaker 10 (02:17:50):
Yes, it's starting to show, it's starting to sprout out
just a little bit.

Speaker 6 (02:17:56):
Okay. Well, one other thing you could do is use
just a top burned spray, like a vinegar type spray.
Don't get it on the agapath that's the living parts.
But maybe put a little paper sack or bag over
a plastic bag over or something just for long enough
for you to spray and you can top burn all
those little tiny weeds that are not going to be

(02:18:16):
able to recover from that. If they have underground structures,
if they're a perennial weed, the vinegar's not going to
kill them. But if it's little weed seeds that have
sprouted up because the soil was there, then vinegar will
fry those back. But I would do the mulch because
the agapanthus and the wandering jew is not gonna have
problem coming up through that mulch.

Speaker 10 (02:18:38):
Oh I see, And what a product of that mulch
do you recommend?

Speaker 6 (02:18:46):
Yeah, something that's a little finer textured. There's a lot
of good mulches, you know, that are available. You're not
too far away from the ground up, which you want
to go to the one at Brittmore though, and they
sell by the bag there and their products if you
wanted to give them a call. Their products are going

(02:19:08):
to be available all over town and they can tell you,
but they're open on Saturdays for you to go in
and buy bags of mults. And they have a nice
plant selection too, by the way, really really good.

Speaker 10 (02:19:19):
So I don't need to do anything to the wandering
jew right now. I mean it looks dead, but I
know up until that it does come back, so I
can just put that molt on.

Speaker 7 (02:19:30):
Top of it.

Speaker 6 (02:19:31):
I'm not sure what you have is wondering. I mean,
let me ask you a question. Was it purple colored? Yes,
that's called purple heart. Purple heart, and it's like a
wandering jew exactly like if the growth habit leaves are
a little bigger. Yes, purple heart is not gone. It's
hard to get rid of. You can spray purple heart

(02:19:52):
with roundup and it won't kill it will not kill it. Yeah,
it is a tough weed or tough pretty plant. But no,
you could mult per heart like four inches deep easy
and it would. It will push up through it just fine.
But get something, yeah, I get something that is a
little finer textured. There is a they have Oh gosh,

(02:20:14):
they have a number of different mulches, and they have
the different kinds of soils there at the ground up.
You might just check on them and.

Speaker 10 (02:20:24):
Do all of this now, yes, before the weeds get taller.
And tell me about this vinegar solution.

Speaker 6 (02:20:33):
Well, that's just an organic herbicide that just burns the top.
It'd be like if you spill gasoline on your lawn,
it would just kill that spot where it landed. Vinegar
just fries the green tissues back, and you want to
do it on the warmest time, on a sunny day,
and be very careful with it, because it just fries

(02:20:54):
top growth and little weed seedlings aren't able to recover
from that. Perennial weeds are They'll they'll come, they'll come back.
You'll fry the top, but it'll come back out of
the ground, so that'll be good. I'll tell you what
another option, uh you might want to talk to you.
You've got a brand new Ace Hardware store there in
a spring branch uh near you know, up in the

(02:21:14):
Trainy Menden Hall Center area as you're going up Work
Road and I can't think of the side street anyway,
call them and see what kind of mulches they have
in because they may have some of these products that
you could just run right over there and grab grab
them by the bag if you want to go that route.

Speaker 18 (02:21:27):
All right, all right, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 6 (02:21:30):
All right, thank you appreciation by all right. Phone number
if you would like to give me a call seven
one three two one, two, five, eight seven four. I
believe I need to take a break, Is that right, Nicholas?
All right, we'll be right back. All welcome back, got
it a little bit left here and guard line today.

(02:21:51):
Thanks for joining us. By the way, hey, I don't
know if you've heard me talk about All seasons turf yet,
but All Seasons turf is a nearby just north of
actually have a number of fields of turf. North of
Brookshire is where you would go if you were going
to pick it up yourself. They deliver all over. But
you can't just buy one pallette you got I think
I think three is bout a minimum on it. But

(02:22:13):
just call them and they can give you all the
details that you're looking for that you need. All seasons
turf carries the varieties and the species that do so
well here, and they have thousands of acres of turf
literally here in the area. If you go in the
Brookshire Sea La Monavail area looking at twelve hundred acres
of turf, that's a lot of dirt. The thing I

(02:22:36):
like about All Seasons is they harvest it and get
it to you fast, like if you have them deliver
a turf for a project again, you're gonna have to
get several palets of it. You probably need several pallets
of it, but they'll cut it that morning and get
it to you that day. If turf has been sitting
in a pallette stacked up for a day or two,

(02:22:58):
like they cut it yesterday and now you're putting it
in this afternoon, it's already stressed. And by the end
of the second day, third day, it's just a mess.
You don't even want it. You want turf that's freshed.
That's what All Seasons Turf does. This family operate, owned
and operated operation has been around a long time. They're
leaders in the industry. And when you go there, you're

(02:23:19):
going to find the cultivars and the varieties that you're
looking for. Some of the ones I have in my
yard they've got here. I have a turf experiment in
my yard, a number of different things. But whether you're
looking for one of the quality Zoysia grasses, quality Saint
Augustine grasses, for sure, they've got those. And they even

(02:23:41):
have some really nice bermudas like the Celebration, which is
just a well known, basically almost an award winning type
of Bermuda grass. All seasons turf. You just need to
reach out to them. Reach out to them. Here is
what here's what you need to do. If you want
to give them a call, it's to a one three
seven five seventy seventy five two eight one three seven

(02:24:05):
five seventy seventy five, or go to all seasons turf
dot com. We are just on the doorstep of one
of the best planning seasons for turf, all year long,
all seasons surf. As you covered, you don't have to
worry about that. They got you covered. Someone was asking
me about citrus trees and fruit trees and things, and

(02:24:26):
I said, well, you may want to run up their
due b cannons. And then I just got well, I'm
gonna go check see what they got. Oh my gosh,
they got all kinds of things. They got plums, They
have pluots. You know what a pluot is. It's like
what a cavadoodle dog. It's half cavalier, half poodle. A
pluot is half plum, half apricot. Plu ot. Get the deal.

(02:24:49):
They have those there. They're kind of cool, kind of
fun to have lots of good varieties of peaches with
the chill hours we need here. And by the way,
I was saying, suggesting like a four hundred chill hour,
how would be people that are up you know, say
above I ten. Typically in that area, as you go
down toward the coast, there's varieties that are like two
hundred chilling hours that you'd want a plant because it's

(02:25:11):
suitable for way down there and you get further north
anyway that peaches, have nectarenes, They've got apricots, all kinds
of things, pears and apples. They even have an almond
variety that they carry their At Buchanans and Nata Plants,
you need to go. You know, it's a place to
go for natives. There's nobody that has as many the

(02:25:31):
selection of natives at Buchanans does. But all the other
things they've got tomatoes in. They got herbs coming in
and flowers and everything else. Eleventh Street in the Heights, Buchanans.
Let's see Buchanans Plants dot com. Buchanans Naty plant excuse
me dot com? Very very nice. I was looking at

(02:25:54):
Nature's Way resources. Nature's Way has just a a variety
of the most high quality composts that you're going to
find and you say, well, what do you mean high
quality composts. Well, you know, there are some folks out
there that just push composts through real fast, and they
don't fully compost it. They don't screen it as it

(02:26:16):
needs to be screened properly, or maybe they let it
go anaerobic and that those are all bad. You don't
want to do that. That's not what's going to happen
when you go to Nature's Way Resources. That's the place
where rose soil was born, and the veggie and herb
soils were born, and the lethal compost, for example, was
born there. Nature's Way sold all around town by the bag.

(02:26:39):
You can go and find it by the bulk, but
they will deliver it and you can go get it too.
I like to go there because they have a native
plant selection that's nice there at Nature's Way forty five
right whar fourteen eighty eight comes in from Magnolia. You
turn right across the railroad tracks and that Sherbrock Circle,
which is where Nature's Way is. Nature's Way resource is

(02:27:03):
always going to get quality there, whether it's bulk or
by the bag, and you're going to find the expertise
that you need on the staff there that can help you.
They are trained, they know their product, they know what
they're doing, and you may go, well, I'm going to
plan a Citris tree and I need a good bed
mix for that. They know that they've got it, they

(02:27:24):
carry it, and they know how to advise you on it.
All right, Well, I'm going to be putting up the
microphone here in just a bit and heading over to
the NRG Center for the Houston Home and Garden Show.
I'll be there starting my talk at eleven. I hope
you come out answering your gardening questions. After that, I'll

(02:27:46):
be there for two hours. Do diagnostics, identify plants, bring
me pictures on your phone. We can do that absolutely.
And I've brought copies of my book that I can
sign for you if you would like. Main thing is
get over. It's a great garden show. Good one to see.
So NRG Center, He's Norman Gardens. Come on out and

(02:28:07):
see me. We're gonna put the microphone up here. I'll
be back tomorrow morning at six am to ten am,
ready to answer your gardening questions and give you some
tips as well. I got a few tips in mind
that I want to pass along tomorrow, so when we
have time between calls, I like to go into all
of that stuff. Hope you have a wonderful afternoon. Come
on after the Garden Show n RG Center