Everything you need to know for the COLD

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Richard.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Trip.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Just watch him as so many good.

Speaker 4 (00:21):
Things to supp crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Again, We're not a sorry glass sun.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
Good morning, gardeners, Good morning, and welcome to garden Mine.
I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we are here to
talk gardening this morning. We get here at ten am,
so grab a cup of coffee, stick around and if
you'd like to give me a call, maybe you have
a question seven one three two one two k t

(00:58):
r H seven one three two into KTRH and we
will visit about whatever you are interested in horticulturally. Let's
just let's put that limit on it. I don't know,
we might stretch that a little bit, but whatever would
help you have a more bountiful garden, a more beautiful
landscape and more fun in the process, that's what we
want to talk about today. Well, the cold weather is coming.

(01:23):
It's definitely the elephant in the room, so you know,
we might as well visit about that. I know you've
probably been checking the weather apps on a regular basis,
trying to, you know, see what's up, what the latest
prediction is. I guess it's an exciting thing for kiddos
because they're getting to perhaps face a little bit of snow,

(01:44):
which you know, I know growing up. I grew up
South San Antonio, down a little town called Jordenton, Texas.
That is, when I lived there, both of the speed
or both of the population signs were on the same post.
It was that small. But it's got a little bit
bigger right now. Anyway, I remember like two snows in

(02:07):
my whole life, so it but one of them was
really a good one. Anyway, when you're a kid, you
love for it to snow. You know, it helps the
Christmas songs make sense, like you know, dashing through the
snow and a one horse open slate. What snow, Mama. Well, anyway,
you get to see snow over now, and then that's coming.
We got some cold weather coming too. It's going to

(02:28):
be a good week to be spending some time indoors
that I try to get as much I can get
outside because I get card kevin fever cooped up indoors,
so I like to get out and enjoy things on
the outside. And it kind of depends on, you know,
what your preferences are. But I need to be outside more,

(02:52):
but not this week. Done in the Houston forecast. From
what I can tell, we're gonna get down about thirty
nine about twenty tomorrow night and twenty one, twenty seven,
thirty two. That goes all the way through Thursday, so
it's gonna be a cold one. And then Tuesday, Tuesday
evening especially, I believe we've got a really high chance
of getting some precipitation which will be frozen because Tuesday

(03:16):
only gets up to thirty four degrees according to the
current Houston forecast that I have. So what are we
going to do about it? Well, one thing we're gonna do.
They say the three peas are pipes, people and pets
are pipes, plants, and pets. I guess we need a
people pee in there too, pipes, plants, and pets. So
I hope you've taken care of getting your pipes adequately secured.

(03:41):
There is a lot of ways we can do that. Remember,
all you got to do is keep them from freezing hard,
and so there's already some warmth in the walls of
your house, so that's helping a little bit the pipe
sticking out into the cold air. That's why you put
those little styrofoam covers over them. You can also get

(04:02):
a little electrical. It's a section of electrical coated electrical
wire that you wrap around pipes and plug it in
and it keeps them warm enough to keep them from freezing.
So that there's that. There's also wrapping pipes with styrofoam strips,
if ice familiar with seeing those. And then there's a
new little device called the freeze miser that is really cool.

(04:25):
I screwed in the faucet and you know how you
try to turn on the faucet's outdoor and let them
drip overnight or trickle overnight. That moving water stops it
from freeze water from freezing it. You always got, you know,
let's say the temperature of water inside your home that's
always coming out, so it keeps it from getting too

(04:45):
cold out there. And that freezemiser what it does when
it gets really cold, it starts to leak water out.
So imagine a little kind of a nipple like thing
you screw into the end of the pipe and then
you on your water full force and nothing comes out.
And then as a temperature drops, something inside starts to

(05:06):
shrink and now it's letting water through. So instead of
running water all night, wasting a lot of water. You
end up just using water when it's needed, when it's
cold enough for it. And so that's kind of a
cool thing. From what I can see, they work pretty well.
I'm gonna grab me a couple today. I saw a
place where I had them, finally getting around to doing that,
and I'll tell you where you can find them is.

(05:27):
You can find them at Ace Hardware stores. You know,
Ace has got everything you need if you are trying
to keep your pipes warm, your water from freezing, if
you're trying to keep your pets safe, if you're trying
to protect your plants. So those pipe, those faucet covers,
the freeze miser, the tubes of foam star foam or

(05:51):
foam material to wrap around your pipes, a duct tape
to hold it all on, Plastic sheeting to cover over
things and protect them, frost blankets to take care of
the I mean, it's all there at Ace Hardware, and
we got Ace Hardware's all over the place. There's a
lot of them. I mean they are absolutely all over

(06:11):
the Greater Houston area, from all the way out in
Beaumont to all the way down in Wharton and in
our listening area and in many places beyond that. All
you have to do is go online to acehardware dot com,
find the ones near you, and you'll be able to
get in there and get everything you need. And for
the we say the three piece for the fourth p people,

(06:31):
we've got heaters. They've got all kinds of space heaters inside.
If you need to do any kind of things for
your little generator, you got out there in case, you know,
power to go out or something, they got stuff for
that as well. Everything you need basically is there at
ACE Hardware, So don't delay, go ahead and get it done.
We're not having tonight. It's not our worst night by far,

(06:54):
but you do want to make sure that you take
care of the pipes, people, plants, and uh what did
I leave out? Pipes, people, plants, I can't tell. Pets, Yeah,
the pets as well. Oh and also those clamp on
lights where you put in either a one hundred and
fifty flood light above or you put in an actual

(07:16):
heat lamp to really warm things up. I'm going to
be putting a heat lamp in. I've got a whole
bunch of plants in my garage and they're all grouped
together in the back of the garage and it's gonna
stay reasonably warm in there. But just to be sure,
I put a little heat lamp in shine it down
on the garage floor, and that is it is. It
radiates down and then the heat rises up. We're good
to go. Just remember with the heat lamp, don't point

(07:37):
it at the plants. And if you if you don't know,
if you believe that or not, well turn on a
heat lamp and put your hand, you know, a foot
or two away from it and just hold it there
still for a while and you'll see what I'm talking about.
But anyway, I'll get one of those those are a
ACE to clamp on. I've already got those climpon lights.
So all of it's there for you. And we've got

(07:58):
Ace hardware's all over the place. You know, if you're
done in full shure, there's fulsher Ace hardware. There's an
All Star Ace hardware, one in Spring and one in Magnolia,
All Star Ace Poor levaka Ace hardware for those of
you listening way down in that direction. In Spring Ace
hardware up in Spring. So easy to find time for
me to take a break when we come back. I

(08:19):
will go straight to your calls and boil somebody. Everybody
woke up this morning. All right, we'll be right with you.
Melanie and Ann and Robert. Welcome back the Guarden Line.
Good to have you with us. We're gonna get out
to the phones here in just one second. I know
we're gonna be talking freezes all day. I just want

(08:41):
to make a few comments about freeze and freeze protection.
There are things that point toward more plant damage, and
there's things that point us toward less plant damage. If
a plant is not ready for cold, the same plant
versus a plant that's had time too as we say,
hardened off, the one that hasn't been able to prepare

(09:04):
for cold is more likely to get cold damage at
the same temperature as one that has been. It's going
fine because it was hardened off. That's one things that
how sudden the cold comes, and how fast the temperature drops,
how much wind we have when it's cold. You know,
if we say it's going to be twenty six degrees, well,

(09:24):
is that twenty six degrees of still air? Or is
that twenty six degrees with a fifteen mile an hour
wind blown from the side. You know, it's going to
cool off faster, you get more damage. Now, typically when
the wind isn't blown and you don't have clouds, the
temperature will drop lower. But I'm just saying these things
affect whether a plant will be damaged or not. Now,

(09:44):
the things that help us have plants not get damaged.
A plant that's not drought stressed, soil that has been
adequately watered. Water holes heat, and when we say heat,
we just mean temperature. You know that is above freezing.
That's heat compared to a frozen plant. So water holes heat,

(10:06):
so that doesn't mean drowned it and create a swamp.
It means just a good deep soaking, making sure there
is moisture there, pulling the mulch away. So when the
sun shines during the day, it warms up that dark
soil that can then radiate that heat up into the
plant in the evening times. Covers over the top of

(10:28):
the plant, especially when they go to the ground, and
they create a dead air space. So it may be
twenty six degrees outside, but underneath the cover, with soil
rising up in some dead air space, it's not going
to be as cold. Now, that doesn't mean, you know,
you get to nineteen degrees and you're not going to
freeze a plant that's not enough. These are all things

(10:50):
that add together to provide protection or not. So it's
not a black and white issue here. We've got a
lot of factors that are moving putting heat underneath the cover.
You know, a little bit of heat versus a lot
of heat. And you know, if you've got a small plant,
it takes less heat under the cover to protect it
at a given temperature than if you have something large,

(11:12):
like a big old orange tree, for example. So that's
a lot of airspace to provide heat into. It's gonna
take more heat. So whether you're using light bulbs to
do it or whether you're using some other way to
do it, it's going to take more heat to do that.
And so each of these things, you know, it moves
us toward you're probably going to get damage or you're
not going to get damage. And of course the plant

(11:32):
species varies a lot too. So what we have to
do is we have to do all of these things.
You know, if I had a citrus tree and it
was going to get to nineteen and I was trying
to cover it, I would also pull soil or very
fine compost up around the trunk and make a big
old giant this only time you're gonna hear me say,
make a trunk volcano. But this is it because that way,

(11:54):
if it froze back and kill the trunk back, typically
it's going to be a little warmer under eat that
big pile of soil where the trunk touches it, and
maybe you'll get a sprout from above the graft that
can grow and replace your tree. So see what I'm saying.
We're doing all these things either to move the needle,
to order away from coal damage. Nature is doing those too,

(12:18):
And so there are times when we try to cover
and protect a plant and it's not enough. It's just
not going to be enough. It's too cold, it's too windy,
the plant's too sensitive, on and on down the cold sensitive.
But those are the things that we try to do.
So I just wanted to make a mention of that
because that is really important to realize and to keep

(12:40):
that into account. So ask yourself, you know, if you're
going to put lights underneath the plant, you know how
col tender is this? How big of an area am
I trying to recover or to protect rather and make
your decisions according to that. Let's go to other phones.
Now we're going to head out to Cyprus and talk
to Melanie. Hey, Melanie, good morning, and welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
Morning gift.

Speaker 6 (13:01):
And you did enlighten me already about the heat lamps,
and you have to because I bought them at eight
yesterday and I had by cross protectors over my camellias.
But you want to put them down on the ground, right, yes.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
And when you well, yes, you want to put them
down low because heat rises, you know, so putting them
up in the air and pointing them at the plant
is not as helpful as getting them down low and
having the heat ride that. That's a minor thing, but
again it's part of what I just said. It's all
these factors combined. If you're if you're using just a floodlight,

(13:39):
which may be about one hundred and fifty wide or
something like that, that's gonna put on a little bit
of heat and in a small space. If we're talking
about just trying to keep the temperature about thirty two,
it may be enough, but if the temperature gets lower outside,
it won't be enough. Okay, if you're using you said
the word heat lamp. Those are okay, are they? Is
it a red kind of okay? Yeah, those put out

(14:03):
more heat. Those put more heat. But again, if if
you had a big, old, giant orange tree with a
cover over it, and you just had one of those
underneath it, and the temperature is going to go into
the teens, you know, that's probably not gonna be enough.
You may have to have a second woman or something.
So it's just a it's a it's just a factor.

(14:23):
Someone called in yesterday and talked about a little gadget
you hang in the plant where you're on your phone app,
you can tell what the temperature is. Boy, that would
be really helpful because then you would know exactly how
things are going out there. Not not that you would
want to walk out and tend degree weather and try
to add another heat lamp or anything, but but it
just just think of it that way that do everything

(14:45):
you can, and remember we don't have to make it
warm enough to where we'd be comfortable under the under
the cover. We need to keep it about freezing, and
so if we the main thing is if you can
create dead air space, then you've got this air that
you heat it up, and it's not like whim just
immediately blows it right up from under there, and so

(15:08):
that's also very important.

Speaker 6 (15:11):
Okay, thank you, I'll see what I can do.

Speaker 7 (15:14):
That's all I can do.

Speaker 4 (15:16):
All right, good luck, good luck, Melanie, Thank you for
the call. We're going to go now to Wharton and
talk to n. Hey n. Welcome to garden line. Yes,
good morning.

Speaker 8 (15:26):
Have about seventy seventy foot of foot of Saint excuse me,
A blue bonnet's in Saint Augustine Bermuda yard and they're
being inundated with clover. Is there anything that can be
done to get rid of the clover?

Speaker 4 (15:47):
No, there's not a selective spray that would kill clover
and not blue bonnets. The blue bonnets will probably be okay,
they'll probably I mean they've been doing that in nature
for a long time. They know how to deal with
all the weeds around them. But if you you know,
going in and doing some hand pulling, and I realized

(16:10):
that's a huge area you described that may not be practical,
but any little bit that you do helps a little bit.
But that's about the only thing you can do. Well.

Speaker 8 (16:19):
We've had them in the past, but they're getting to
be more prolific and we literally have to go out
there with the weed eater and you know, chop them down.
So I just thought there might be something new on
the on the market. Yes, we pulled and whatnot. I
just may have to forego the blue bonnets one year

(16:41):
and totally annihilate that clover and then you know, reced
make the next Would that be a good idea?

Speaker 4 (16:50):
Well, you can try that. You know, clover's throwing seeds
out there. Some may not hatch this or hatch sprout
this year, some may sprout next year, and so I
don't know that that would get ahead of it. I'll
tell you this, if you have the time and able
to any clover plant you get out, you're taking out
all the seeds that it would have produced for the

(17:11):
next year, yes, and then probably the year after that.
And there's a little device. I've not used this to
try to get clover out of blue bonnets, but I
use it on thistle weeds that come up in flower
beds in my yards, called the Grandpa's weeder. And it's
got little prongs and you don't have to bend over
and pull weeds. You step on it and imagine, you know,

(17:32):
take your two fingers and your thumb and push them
down into the ground and then pinch them together. And
all you do is pull back on the handle and
it pinches and pulls the weeds out, and you could
loosen a lot of clover out of the soil that
way without stooping. And then just go in and either
rake or pull up the weeds that the clovers that
you have pulled up, So that may be helpful for you.

Speaker 8 (17:54):
Right, they understand. There are also look like two different
types of clover, and one has a bigger leaf and
spreads more, and then there's this smaller variety. It's more
difficult to pull up.

Speaker 4 (18:05):
So work with it. Well, good luck, good luck with it,
and if it works, send me a picture of the
bluebone patcher. If it doesn't, send me a picture of
the bluebone, I'd love to see that. All right, thanks
a lot, and I appreciate that you bet you bet.
You take care as well. All Right, I'm about to
hit a break here, Robert in Spring Branch. We'll get

(18:26):
to you first when we come right back. In the meantime,
I want to remind you go to my website, Gardening
with Skip dot com. Find that publication on freeze and
frost protection. It's free, it's nine pages, it's got color pictures,
and it will help. Welcome back, Welcome back to garden Line.

(18:46):
Let's keep going this morning. I bet we talked freezes
all day. Whatever you want to talk about though, we
can even talk about the tomato agree last year. If
you want to go that route. We're going to hit
it out now to Spring Branch and talk to Robert. Hey, Robert,
Welcome to guarden Line.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Hey, Skip, how you doing this? Want and serve besides
cold between the webs.

Speaker 4 (19:07):
I'm doing good. I'm good.

Speaker 7 (19:10):
Good, glad to hear it.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
You're staying warm.

Speaker 4 (19:12):
Hey.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
On the the light bulb thing, the LED versus the
incandescent versus a true heat lamp or a halogen type bulb,
we need the people to be aware that they're not
going to get the heat off of an LED LED
light that's not transmit heat like the old incandescent or
a Halingen type of light. If they're going to put

(19:33):
the LED bulb up under to try and warm the plant,
realize that the heat from the LED bulb is in
the base.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
It's in that.

Speaker 7 (19:40):
White or colored part at the bottom.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
So so don't don't leave the bottom of the bulb
out from under the cover. Get it as close as
you can, and you don't have to worry about shooting
LED light on a plant because it's not going to
carry the light. So just the type of light bulb
they're gonna make a big difference.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
Yeah, it's important, and hopefully the place they buy it
can direct them that way too. Yeah, it's huge. LED's
you knows, be a little nerdy about it. When electricity
goes into a light, it either comes out as light
or as heat. And an incandescent bulb a little the
old incandescent you know bulbs we used, about ten percent

(20:24):
comes out as light and ninety percent of the energy
it gets converted to heat. LED is kind of flipped over,
not that efficient like ninety ten, but it's way more
efficient on light and therefore you don't get the heat.
And we talk sometimes your comment is kind of give
me a springboard to make a couple of things that

(20:45):
come to mind as you say that, And we talk
often about well, you can put a string of Christmas
lights in there, well, not LED Christmas lights and not
the little tiny, twinkly non LED Christmas lights. There's hardly
any heat comes out of those. It's the big old
what's the number C four or C something. The bulbs
that are like little miniature old time light bulbs. Uh,
those produce a little bit of heat and you can

(21:07):
put a string of those to help a little, but
it can't be a very hard freeze for them to
do a lot.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah, if I was going to use the LED bulbs
skip around my precious plants, I would put a couple
of the or three of the LEDs for every one
of a regular incandescent. They just that's part of what
makes them efficient. Yes, sir, and I am a little nerdy,
I'm a double e. Sorry, sorry to throw that at you,
but I just I want people to save there.

Speaker 7 (21:33):
There.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
There was a lady called in yesterday. She's got names
for her plants, and I think that's precious. But uh,
we just got to realize there's an amount of warmth
that we do need.

Speaker 4 (21:44):
Yeah, yeah, that is that's true myself. All right, man.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
Thanks, I don't know if you had any data about
how much work.

Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, it's it's not and you know, not all needs
or created either. I I buy the LED plant lighting
fixtures that have the right wavelengths and a cheap picture
like that will produce quite a bit of heat compared
to an LED that is higher quality and does a
better job of taking that electricity and turn it into
a light red than heat.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Are correct, There's a brand new called fight F I
E T and they're reasonably low on the efficiency scale,
and those are the ones that I would call sacrificial
for outside use. Anyway, you have a wonderful day.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
I appreciate you, all right, man, thanks for the call.
Yeah boy, there's a lot of factors here. I mean,
we could get we could get done in the in
the in the weeds, on on all the details of it.
I'll just I'll just say this, you know, basically, what
I'm suggesting people do is get a one hundred and

(22:49):
fifty white flood light for a little bit of heat,
and a heat lamb for a lot of heat. And
just make sure be careful. This has got to say
it again because I know I'll say something five times
and not everybody's listening. Don't point a heat lamp at
your plants. It just gets too hot. Don't put the
bulbs too close to your trunk or leaves or things
like that. And one other I gotta warn you again

(23:14):
consider fire hazard. I have pictures of plants where it
was a little tree, a little fruit tree, and they
had put a cover over it, and then they put
some fixture down near the ground and it in dead grass.
And the next morning it looked like you'd burned a
trash pile out there. It was all gone. It caught

(23:37):
on fire and burned it all up. So I mean,
that's just common sense. You know, you don't stick an
open plug out in rainy weather. You don't put something
that could spark done in dry grass or mulch, and
so just be careful with that. A low common sense
will do that. In the ball, I just put a
fixture underneath a trialis that I have. I just wanted

(23:59):
to try to keep it, you know, even some of
the above ground parts alive if I could. It's more
of an experiment. But I drove a steak in the ground,
and I put my clamp light on the steak, so
I'm sure the bulb will be above the soil and
pointing down. You know, if you stick it to PVC pipe,
sometime the weight of that light it'll start to sag

(24:20):
down and next thing you know, it's not pointing where
you want it to point or whatever. Anyway, more than
you want to know, more than you want to know.
But just because it's gonna get cold doesn't mean you
need to quit talking about plants and what to plant now,
and good plants and things out there like that, plants
for all seasons. Up on a highway two forty nine,

(24:41):
which is Stunball Parkway. They're just north of Luetta. If
you're going up toward Tomball, you exit Luetta and just
crossover Luetta. It's a little further up on the right
hand side, just a soone's throat from Luena. They've got
lots of great stuff in. They got some good cool
seasoned flowers, you know, pansies and violas and the diantha,
one of my favorite cool seasoned flowers. Lots of things

(25:03):
like that to choose from. They got a good selection
of vegetables, a great selection of seeds inside too. Their
indoor seed selection is awesome. So why not go out
and grab some of that today, Get you some seeds,
start to do your planning. You know, we can take
advantage of not being able to go outside to sit

(25:25):
down at the table with paper and pencil kind of
figure out, what are you gonna plant next year? Where
are you gonna put it? You got the seeds, get
them all ready? Maybe you want to start some seeds yourself.
And there is things like seed trays, a seed starting mix,
a very fine textured like a pinting soap, a very

(25:45):
fine textured that you can use. Maybe you're going to
get a light, an LED light to provide lighting for
those plants. Lighting is the single most important thing that
people seem to not get right when they try to
start to grow their own transplants. So I have a
publication on my website lighting for seed Starting. It's actually
really interesting. Uh, and you will if you read it,

(26:09):
you will go, oh, I get it. I did not
know that because there's a lot of factors about it. Uh,
you know, just having an electrical engineer call and talk
about you know, uh, plant lighting and heat. The same
is true when it comes to how plant light work.
Lights work. So check that publication out. I'm gonna take
a break. We'll be right back, And I'm your host,

(26:32):
Skip Richter, and you're listening to guard Line. We're here
to talk about the things you need to talk about.
And I suspect the cold weather and what to do
about this plant, that plant, or what works what doesn't work?
I don't know. You tell me whatever you want to
talk about, will do it? Seven one three two one
two K T R H. We want you to have success.

(26:52):
And I'll tell you this, A lot of people are
hesitant to call in, and I get it. You know,
I'm going to be on the radio and everybody's listening,
and what if I make a fool of myself or something. Well,
Number one, nobody's it's just showing me. Trust me. That's
shoeing me out there. I know who you are. You're
sitting there listening, and if you call, we'll just visit.
And I if you've listened to guard Line very long,

(27:14):
you know that we are very welcome, welcoming of callers here.
And I always like to have new folks call in.
Love to have the folks who call in at other
times as well, but it's always good to meet a
new gardener. So what do you want to talk about today?
Let's do that. I promise to be kind. The way
I used to say it, and I guess I should
still do this is don't be afraid of asking a

(27:37):
stupid question. There are no stupid questions just stupid answers. Now,
I know you're sitting there thinking, yeah, I've heard some
stupid questions amount time. Well that's not how I look
at it. Stupid answers, that's what we're worried about. So
the pressure's on me, not you. Let's talk about gardening.
And I'll tell you this, if you have a question
somebody else does, I guarantee you. I can sit here

(28:00):
in a show and answer the same question seven times
in the same morning, and that's okay. I can do that.
I wish everybody listened all the time, but I understand
how things go. You're in, you're out. Well, just ask
your question and we will answer it for you. And
I don't know if i've answered it before, I may
add something different into the answer, something additional, And so

(28:22):
somebody who's listening through the whole thing gets gets to
kind of expand on what they're learning and how they
can then go have success. I was mentioning plans for
all season before we went to break and you know,
plans for all seasons if you if you want to
get in contact with them. The website's Plans for All
Seasons dot com and their phone number is two eight

(28:43):
one three seven six sixteen forty six two eight one
three seven six sixteen forty six. Swing by there and
visit with those folks and get you some supplies to
get ready for gardening. You know this, Like I said,
this week is the week to be gardening indoors, armchair gardening,

(29:04):
if you will. It's the week to be reading seed
catalogs and getting inspired. It's the week to be reading
stuff online.

Speaker 7 (29:13):
You know.

Speaker 4 (29:13):
I put a couple of new things on my website
the other day, a couple of days ago, that are
I think helpful to you. It'd be worth reading one
of them. I mentioned the one about you know, how
to control woody weeds, you know, like poison ivy and
hackberries coming up in the fence line and stuff like that.
I put one of those up. But I also put
up a publication on pasturizing potting soil. Now, I know

(29:38):
most people are not gonna pasteurize their potting soil. I
get that go out and buy fresh. We say clean,
meaning it's not full of diseases. Potting soil or seed
starting mix. That's good. But there are people who want
to kind of make their own stuff. You know, they
make composts and they screen it down really fine, and

(29:58):
maybe they add a little bit of purli to it
or sand to it or whatever their concoction is. And
then you go start a seed and in a very humid,
moist chamber, diseases can proliferate. And so we have a
disease called damping off. And basically what it means is
your little seedling sprout and then they start to rot

(30:20):
at the base and fall over, kind of like Paul
Bunyan went through there chopping them off. They just they
just melt right over. And that's that's a fungal disease.
That is a problem because of that very moist, nice
mild temperature chamber that you've created, which is what seas want.
Seeds want moist and mild temperatures, and so how do
you avoid that. Well, if you want to make your

(30:42):
own soil, or maybe maybe you have potting soil from
a bunch of containers and you're you're done with it,
you can throw it away, you can put it on
the ground, just mix it into the soil like organic matter,
like compost. But some people want to try to reuse it,
and how do you how do you do that? Well,
the you do that is you have to pasteurize it.
You have to kill the bad stuff. And in this

(31:05):
publication that I wrote and put online, it's very simple.
You know say in a publication sounds like this big deal,
it's it's really simple. Basically, you can put that soil
in a pan with foil over the top and put
it in an oven. You need to moisten it. It's
very important to have good heat transfer, good moisture, not soggy,

(31:26):
just moist you know, Cover the pan with foil, seal
it over and put it in a oven away from
the heating element. And then the next step is to
raise it to a certain temperature and leave it for
about thirty minutes once it hits that temperature. And I
use I've used meat thermometers, I've used candy thermometers, all

(31:48):
kinds of you know, little thermometer. Just stick them, pokehole
through the soil, stick the thermometer in there and just
watch the temperature on it. Check it out, check it periodically.
Once it hits the temperature you want it, leave it
about thirty minutes just to be sure. Now here's the warning.
Don't overheat. When you overheat potting soil. It is not pleasant.

(32:11):
We'll just say earthy odor that can can fill the
house in the oven as well. So if you are
trying to heat up some soil, I realize right now
as I'm saying this, you know, like one in one
hundred people probably is going to do this. But one
hundred and forty degrees for thirty minutes is enough to
kill most fungi that are in the soil. If you

(32:34):
want to kill bacteria and insects, you're probably gonna need
to go to about one hundred and sixty degrees because
they are a little more some of them are a
little more resistant to the heat. And if you're trying
to get all the weed seeds, we say about one
hundred and eighty, but do not go above one hundred
and eighty for anything, and about thirty minutes and that'll
do it. An alternative method, and this is the one

(32:54):
I like because I don't know, it seems neat or
cleaner to me, is get you all those turkey bags.
You know that the bags that you would put around
a turkey, they're made for the oven. They're called oven bags,
is really the name for them. I call them turkey
bags because that's the size of the bag, and put
your soil in that, your moist soil, pre moistened soil

(33:16):
in that, and then put that bag on a tray
in the oven, kind of flatten it out that you
wouldn't want to go deeper than about four inches or
so because you want heat to get all the way
to the center of it effectively. And just poke a
hole in it, a little slid or a hole that
allows extra air to escape. And it works really well.

(33:36):
It's neat and clean. So those are a couple of ideas.
If you didn't catch all that, go online the publications
on my website, Gardening with Skip dot com. And it's
even there's even a PDF version that you can print
out if you want to do that. All right, Well,
there we kind of went off on a tangent and
some things that I think some gardeners will be interested in. Well,

(34:01):
there's the music. We are putting an hour in the
books this morning. Hey, we got three more to go.
Give us a call if you'd like to call it
Duram Break. You can be one of the first folks
when we come back on the air seven one three
two one two k t r H seven to one
three two one two kt r H. We're gonna be

(34:22):
talking about all kinds of things. Uh, your calls, certainly.
I have a few topics that I would like to
visit about a little bit, and uh, one of the
things is printing tools. Come back, We're and talk a
little bit about some basic printing tools things you might
be interested, especially if you're in the market to purchase
a tool, or if you're trying to take care of

(34:43):
your tools, how to keep care of the top round
the forward to talk to you in just a bit.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Welcome to kt r H guarded line with skimp rict.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Just watch him as many again signs.

Speaker 4 (35:25):
So all right, we're back in the saddle again, ready
to go for another hour of garden line. If you'd
like to give me a call. Seven one three six
two excuse me seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four seven one three two one two five
eight seven four. I mentioned that I was going to

(35:48):
talk about printing, printing tools, things like that, So let's
let's do that. When it comes to successful pruning, number one,
you need to know what you're doing when you go
out to cut what needs to be prune this. You
know how you prune various kinds of plants. That that's

(36:09):
all helpful, but having good tools is important. And there
are a lot of different pruning tools out there in
the market, a lot of different kinds. In fact, I
could spend the whole show talking just about all the
different pruning tools. And I'm just going to give a
few quick points here when it comes to pruners that
are hand pruners or that are loppers, the long ones
that you know you cut a larger limb off with.

(36:31):
There are two types of blade arrangements. One of them
is called a bypass and it works like a pair
of scissors. One blade passes by the other one and
clips off the branch or whatever you're cutting. The other
type is called an anvil type, and there you have
a flat surface and a blade comes down on it

(36:51):
as if you were hitting a hatchet on an anvil top.
You see what I'm saying, It cuts that way. I
don't care for the endvie types. They are okay in
some situations, but general I find that they often get
a little lot of whack and you try to cut
and it didn't cut all the way through. Well, So
I like the bypass types of pruners, And I realize

(37:14):
there's reasons for each type, but the bypass types work
a little bit better. When you're using a bypass pruner
the side, like if you're holding scissors, typically the bottom
part has a little bit more of a flat surface
and the top part is more of a thin blade.
And when you're using scissors that are a bypassed type pruner,

(37:38):
the bottom part may slightly crush the branch that where
it's pressing against it, and the other type slices through.
So I always put the blade against the plant, in
other words, the part that's going to be left behind,
put the blade against that, and then prune accordingly. Now

(37:59):
it is I find it a little better when you
can to prune cutting up. So imagine you got a
trunk with a branch going up the side. I'm gonna
get you. Do this, hold your hand up, stick your
thumb out to the side, and your fingers together so
it looks like mittons. Okay, if I were going to
cut the thumb off there, I would slice from the
bottom upward and cut it off. And the reason is,

(38:21):
especially if pruners start to get a little out of
adjustment if you're cutting down, sometimes the blade will drift
a little to the side and it won't cut through,
and you'll end up like with this little strip kind
of hanging down. And number one, you need to sharpen
the prunters and fix fix the adjustment if you can.
But I just find it better to cut up. It's

(38:42):
just one thing. I'll not always cut up, sometimes to
the side or whatever. Just always remember to put the
blade against the plant when you can, when the arrangement lies.
Sometimes the way the branches are angled and stuff, you
only have one way to get in there, and you
may not even fully be able to get inside there
and cut. But do that. Always keep your punters sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp, sharp,

(39:04):
very important. It's less wear and tear on your hands,
so you don't end up with joint strain and muscle
strain on your hands. The same is true with loppers
when it comes to your elbows and shoulders and things
like that. Sharp prunters are so important. Very sharp saw too,
by the way, for that matter, So keep them sharp.

(39:25):
Make your cuts. If you're printing something that may be diseased,
like you have a pear tree that had fire blight,
for example, or a pyacantha that had fire blight. Then
you want to dip your printers into alcohol and or
spray them with lysol. I like the lysol approach because
you just and I'm using a brand name there, but

(39:46):
you get the idea. I like the lysol because it's
fast and easy. You know, carrying around a thing of
alcohol is not that not that practical. Sometimes I'll buy
a little pint essentially a pint container of isopropyle alcohol,
cut the top off of it and because they are
like what a dollar for those little things, and then
just dip the prunters in it. You can use bleach

(40:08):
water ten percent bleach water, but I wouldn't bleach water.
Pits metal and it'll cause it to rust worse. Now,
if you get through pruning and you clean your pruners
well and oil them, well, it's going to be okay.
But most people don't, and so I just stay away
from the bleach water because of the fact that it
is a corrosive and causes that problem. So anyway, I

(40:31):
like lysol too. And if you that way, when you
make a cut, you're going to have sap and things
on those prunter blades. And let's say it did have
the bacteria that causes fire blade in it and you
go make another cut. Now you're just spreading it. You're
creating a wound and infecting the wound at the same time.
See what I'm saying. So anyway, life all works good.
I spurble alcohol works good. Just get a good strong one.

(40:53):
Just something to kill the bugs or the diseases it
might be on there. That's a sanitary thing. One other
t is if you're printing a plant and you got
an area that has issues, prine all the whole plant
except that area, and then prune that last. And that way.
That's another way to avoid spreading the disease as you
go from one to the other. Let's see. Those are

(41:14):
a couple of tips on prunters. A number three or
whatever number we're on. The last while give in this
quick review, is that you should buy quality prunters. There
are a lot of brands out there. You get what
you pay for when you buy prunters. You go to
a big box store and buy a cheap set of prunters,

(41:34):
and you may think you're getting a good deal. I
could fill a bucket full of all the pruners I
was given or whatever and had, and they were cheap
and they're worthless, and they after a while, I get
upset and I just throw them in the trash because
they're not working right. A good set of prunters is adjustable.
You can replace the blade on a good set of

(41:55):
prunters often and that allows you to keep them sharp,
to keep them in good adjustment. It's easier on your hand.
It cuts better. Uh, it doesn't cause you know, problems
with the way you make the cup, maybe leaving a
strip or tearing a strip off of the bark or
something that's not going to heal well. It's just a
good way to go. Examples would be like fell Co

(42:19):
and oh gosh, Corona is another good one, and there's
some others out there. I'm not sponsored by Folk or
Corona or anything. It's just those are good brands and
there's some others out there that are good quality punters.
Spend some money on a good quality printers. I got
prunters that I've owned for decades because they're good and
they last, and it's much better to do that. All right,

(42:41):
Time for me to take a break. We'll come back
with your calls at seven one three two one two KTRH.
Welcome back. To the guard line. Folks, what do you
want to talk about today? I suspect when you talk
about the cold a little bit, and that's going to
wait and let let you tell me and your questions.
We talked about the freezes yesterday. We've been talking about

(43:02):
a lot of this morning. By the way, if you're
just tuning in, you might want to go back. I
made some comments earlier on just talking about the fact
that with freezes, it's not like throw a cover over,
put a light bulb under it, and you're good. You know,
there's factors. There's things that make a plant more likely
to freeze, to suffer freeze damage, and there are things

(43:25):
that you can do or that nature does or doesn't
do that help that plant be a little better at
being resilient during a freeze and not suffering cold damage.
And certain things like plant species, of course, but the
conditions and things, and so as you're covering your plants,
just remember if I were to give you like one

(43:46):
or two things to remember, it's like number one, don't
do landscape lollipops. The amount of benefit that is is
minimal to none, minimal to none. And instead auto drape
down all the way to the ground. The cover ought
to drape all the way to the ground. And the
way I describe it is, imagine if you put an

(44:07):
umbrella over the plant that reached out over the outsides
of the plant, and then you if you throw a
cover over that umbrella and let it go straight to
the ground like rain would fall off the umbrella, that's
what we're talking about, and secure it to the soil.
Create dead air space. That is very important. That allows
you to take advantage of the warmth of the soil

(44:28):
coming up. And remember forty degrees soil is warm when
it comes to freeze protection because that's almost ten degrees
above freezing, right, and so you're looking at a warming
and we don't have to make that plant comfortable and toasty.
It's not like you're going to sit out there all night.
You'd want it really warm. You probably want eighty degrees

(44:51):
in there, but the plant, no, we just have to
keep it about freezing. So that covering it right and
creating dead air space so important. No landscape lollipops. Just
think of it that way. Number. Let me go into
that just a second. You may be thinking, well, why
is that you know you I become a couch lollipop.
When I wrap up in a blanket on a cold

(45:13):
night watching TV or something, well, my body produces heat
and the blanket holds the heat. In plants don't produce
any significant amount of heat at all. So all a
blanket around a plant does is slow the rate of cooling.
But given enough time, it's just it's going to be
just as cold inside almost as it is outside. And

(45:34):
so just a wrap is slightly helpful. If you're going
to have a temperature that drops down to thirty degrees,
then it's when the sun comes up, it's real quickly
back up above thirty five. Well yeah, okay, then a
wrap would be some helpful for that. But in general,
plants don't produce heat. That's the difference. That's why, So

(45:55):
just remembering that is helpful. Soil has a huge reserve
of warmth in it, especially if it's moist soil. The
other thing is when you apply heat, the amount of
heat you need to apply is going to be based
on how cold does it get and how big is
the space you're trying to warm. So if you have
a little space heater in your house, like you go

(46:16):
into a little closet and you put a tiny space
heater and barely turn it on. It's going to get
warm in there because that's a small amount of space
burt to heal up. Now, go out to a huge
living room with a vaulted ceiling and have that same
space heater. It's not kind to warm that room, not much.
And the same is true underneath the plant. So something
down low to the ground a little bit of heat

(46:37):
is usually good, and something larger you're going to need more.
And I can't tell you when you need to shift
from an incandescent one hundred and fifty white flood light
bulb to a incandescent heat lamp bulb underneath the plant,
and you're just going to figure that out depending on
the cold and the plant and all that. I can't

(46:57):
tell you when you need to add a second one
to it, but you can figure it out. But just
remember we don't have to make it warm under there.
We just have to keep it above thirty two. All right,
there we go. Hopefully that is helpful. One of the
things that we really need to be doing right now
is starting seeds. And if you've never grown transplants before,

(47:20):
you're missing a whole aspect of gardening. That is a
lot of fun. Now, some people grow flats and flats
of transplants, of flowers and vegetables for their garden and whatnot.
That's fine, and most people are not going to do that.
But can I talk you into at least growing one
transplant or two, maybe grow two or three, just so

(47:42):
you have one for sure that makes it and does well.
Try something what would you like to try? Right now?
It's time to plant tomatoes and peppers, and you could
start eggplant now indoors as a transplant. That light is
the most important factor in growing successful trans plants. Sitting
them by a window is generally not going to be adequate.

(48:04):
It's just not. They're going to stretch and lean and
get spindly and not do well. So it's important to
give them good quality lighting. And you can do that
with a lot of different kinds of light. There's plant
lights that are like almost perfect light. They have the
wavelengths and everything exactly like the plant wants. I do
have a publication on plant lighting on my website that

(48:26):
explains the difference in plant quantity and plant or like
quantity and like quality, and how far away do you
put a light from a plant and all those factors,
but try something like that, and I just really would
encourage you to do that. I think it's fun and
as you do it, you get more and more into it.

(48:47):
Next thing, you know, you're going to be buying some
really quality lighting. So you can grow a lot of things.
And I do that myself slowly over time. You know,
it's not only break the bank and turn a whole
room into a plant that place. Just start slow. It's
easy to do and it's fun. It's so fun to do.
And another reason why you should grow your own things

(49:09):
is you can grow things that you can't buy locally.
We got the best garden centers in the whole United
States here, I mean North, South, East, West, and Central
independent mom and pop as they say, garden centers. We
got them and they're awesome. And some of them carry
a lot of things. Some of them carry dozens of tomatoes,
for example, varieties to choose from. But maybe there's one

(49:30):
that you just want to try and grow at yourself.
You can do that. You know, we're we're not talking
about don't buy transplants. We're talking about things that you
want to grow that I've grown before. For example, if
there is a particular kind of flower, or maybe a
new cultivar of flower. There's every year there's new cultivars

(49:51):
of flower and vegetables. In fact, I'm pretty sure the
earth would stop spinning on its axis if there wasn't
eight hundred new tomato varieties every year for us to
choose from. That is just the way it goes. So
you want to try something out, you're probably initially you're
gonna have to probably experiment by going and buying seeds
and growing it yourself. Now, the things that are proven,

(50:14):
that are tried and true, especially some of the famous
heirlooms that people like and things like that. We got
garden centers are going to carry those for you, so
you can call around a lot of them put their
information online. If not, just call them if you're looking
for a particular type. But what are you going? What
are you gonna try new? Another thing that I would
encourage you to do this year, And I've been talking
since we got going here in January about what what

(50:37):
is your gardening resolution for the year. I know, I
don't like the term resolution because usually a New Year's
resolution lasts two weeks and then it's forgotten and we
go on through the year. I'm talking about just a decision. Hey,
I am going to you fell in the blank, and
I think you need to say I am going to

(50:57):
try growing a transplant this year. I think I'm going
to try rooting a cutting this year. And if you've
never rooted cuttings before, the easiest things on earth to root,
I think our basal rosemary cos colius plants. Once we
get into warm weather and the colius are out there,

(51:19):
you just basically look at the stem and say root,
and roots start popping out of the sides. I mean,
those are easy. Those are easy ones to root. There's
information online on how to root, how to have success
with rooting, So give it a try. Try something. Maybe
you have a really tall dressina, you know those strappy

(51:41):
leaf plants with a little stalk like a palm tree
stock going up, and it's too tall and you would
like to make it shorter. You know that you can
do an air layer on that stem. You put soil
around the stem, actually putting mix around the stem up high.
Let's say that just for example, let's say it's seven

(52:02):
feet tall and you need it to be bring it
down to about four feet tall. Okay, So here's what
you do. You go up to the top, and about
a foot down from the top, you do an air layer.
Just go look it up tells you how to do it.
It's not hard to do. And once roots form in that,
you cut it off below that, and now you got
a new plant that you can pot up and grow

(52:23):
or give away. And then you go down as far
down as you want that top of the trunk to
be and you cut it off there, and what's gonna happen.
Our buds are going to form on the sides are
already actually, they're already in the trunk, you just don't
see them, and they're going to sprout out. Have you
ever gone to buy a corn plant at a garden
center and you see this stalk that is stubbed off

(52:44):
and then there's shoots coming out the sides of it.
Pretty much every corn plant, that's how it's sold. Well,
that was a tall stalk they cut off, and those
shoots just popped out of the side. So you can
take a fiddlely fig that's too tall. You can take
a Drsina corn plant, or you can take the drasina
with the little strappy, thin leaves and you can turn

(53:05):
a tall, lanky plant that is just unacceptable into something
that's very attractive and make more plants in the process.
That's what I'm saying. One thing, one thing. Do you
want to try this year? If you got something around
the house and you wont know how to propagate it,
give me a call. We will help you do that.
We are let's see here. I'm gonna got about a
minute here to go. We're going to go to Paul

(53:28):
in Troy, Alabama. Paul, I've got about a minute or so.
If you need be, we can hold you over break.

Speaker 9 (53:33):
How can we help the day, No problem, Just give
me a short course on blue button seed the package.

Speaker 5 (53:39):
I should have planned them in the fall of the year.

Speaker 4 (53:44):
What you know about the best time of plant blue bonnets? Yeah,
the best times in the fall. If you're going to
do it now, I think i'd try to start them
as transplants to get ahead. Start if you've got a
place where you can grow transplants. If not, what I
would do is you've got to get that hard sea
coat broken on the outside of the seed, and you
can do that with a couple pieces of sandpaper, you know,

(54:05):
rubbing them. Maybe you got sandpaper wrapped around a little
piece of two by four of them, and you're just
you're kind of scratching around on them to wear that
seed coat down so water soaks in, because with blue
bonnets only a few of them are going to sprout
unless you break that seed coat loose, get them soaked overnight,
put them in very warm water, soak them overnight, and

(54:26):
then in the morning plant them wherever you're going to
plant them, and that's giving you the best headstart you
can and they will come up and you will probably
get some blue butty, we're really late in the season
to be doing it, but if you've already got the seed,
it's worth the try. That's great.

Speaker 5 (54:43):
We appreciate more about sunflower.

Speaker 4 (54:45):
Same thing. Sunflower. Yeah, No, sunflowers are easy. You just
put them in the ground, plant them about a half
inch deep inch deep and they will They will come
up just fine. Yeah, they need warm soil though, so
that's one that if you try to get a head start,
you can plan them before we hit our last frost date.
But otherwise you would have to start them as a

(55:07):
little transplant to get a little bit of a head start.
But most people direct seed sunflowers and zenias and things
like that.

Speaker 5 (55:15):
That's great.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
Appreciate you much. Thanks free time. I'm gonna you bet,
thanks for the call. All right, folks, time for a break.
I will be right back. All right, here we go
second for this hour. I talk a lot about the

(55:36):
importance of good quality soil, and I just I know it.
I'm a broken record on it. I'm just telling you,
I've seen so many people not have success, and it's
because of not preparing the soil. Here's the typical garden shopper. Unfortunately,
here's the typical garden shopper. They go to some place

(55:59):
that sells planned and typically maybe it's a place that
also sells hammers and other things, and they shouldn't be
buying plants there because well a lot of reasons. That's
a whole nother rant. But they go in, they look around,
they see something pretty, you know. It's a little tiny
six pack of plants with flowers big as a tennis

(56:20):
ball on top. And they bring those home and then
they walk around the yard as to where, looking, where
am I going to put these things? And they find
a little spot they scratch out the surface and put
them in the ground. Unprepared soil and the way I
like to put it, PLoP a poor plant in an
unprepared plot, and then they start to water it and

(56:42):
it tries to grow a while, and then first sing.
You know, weeds are in there and plants not doing
good and it's struggling, and then they just kind of
give up and say I have a brown thumb. No,
you don't have a brown thumb. You just did the
wrong thing. You weren't informed. Here's the important thing. Prepare
the soil. First, create a soil plants live in their roots.

(57:02):
Create a soil that has good aeration, good nutrient content,
and the qualities of that so it can hold water,
but it drains excess water away. It's got that kind
of quality to it. It's got good microbial activity in
the soil. Then you put a plant in it, and
it's just going to thrive because the roots take off,
they hit the ground running, and that plant is happy

(57:24):
as it can be and you're going to have success.
So that's why I say spend a dollar in your
soil before you spend a dollar on your plant. That's
why I say brown stuff before green stuff, just to
make the point that getting the soil right is important
and you know, if I could just convince you that
one thing, I would be very happy because that will

(57:47):
help a lot of people flip the switch from failure
to success in their gardening. Now, the folks at Microlife,
you know, they specialize in soil. Really, that's what they do.
I mean, if you think about it, yeah, it's a fertilizer. Well,
it's building the soil. Microlife products have a lot of
microbes in them. That is what they're all about. They
are all loaded with microbes. They are all loaded with

(58:09):
all kinds of minerals. This isn't just you know when
a product like they're six two four that the only
thing in it is not just six percent nitrogen, two
percent phosphorus, four percent potassium. It's a lot of other
stuff that you get other than that. And you take
a product like Microlife Humates hum Mats plus that's a
kind of a bluish purple looking bag. Maybe I don't

(58:32):
know what color that is. I'd say blue more than anything. Anyway,
Microlife Heumates plus is zero zero four, so you get
four percent potassium. But that's not why you're putting it down.
I mean that helps, but it is loaded with what
we call concentrated compost in a bag. Meaning when you
take let's do it this way. Here's the stages of decomposition.

(58:53):
You start with grass, clippings and leaves or whatever is organic.
Whatever material you have, you decompose it, and that's called compost.
You take compost and you let it fully decomposed to
its final stage, and that's called humus. And humates plus
is an organic biological soil amendment that you put down.

(59:14):
You put it in your lawns. You know, we talk
about deep time aerrating and core aerating and compost op
dressings and things. I would put microlight humates plus like
that out. It works really well. It takes about only
ten pounds per thousand square feet that you're going to
put out, but you're going to do it on a
regular basis year to year. And when you put it down,

(59:34):
what it's going to do is it's going to get
into the soil. It's going to improve soil structure. The
more humans you can put in the soil, the better
your soil structure gets. And you can do this in
flower beds, you can do it in a lot of places.
Microbes thrive in that environment and that's that's one product
for Microlife. If you want to find out more about
other products they have and where you can buy them,

(59:55):
just go to Microlifefertilizer dot com Microlifefertilizer dot com. You
can find all right there. I'll tell you one place
you can buy it, Southwest Fertilizer. I can say that
without even thinking. You know why, because because Bob at
Southwest Fertilizer carries everything. I've never had a product name
come out of my mouth that you won't find in

(01:00:16):
Southwest Fertilizer. It just they do. They're in Southwest Houston.
That hence the name corner of Byssineton Runwick, And you
just got to go by there. In fact, you know,
when you when you swing by Southwest Fertilizer and walk in,
take some time and look around. You'll see what I'm
talking about. You may you know, you may go, wow,

(01:00:36):
I'm not into chemicals. I'm an organic gardener. Okay, Then
go to Southwest Fertilizer. They have the biggest organic selection
in the region At Southwest Fertilizer. They do. They have
synthetic and organic options for fertilizing, controlling insects, spider mites,
plant diseases like fungi and bacteria, for stopping weeds, for

(01:00:58):
preventing weeds from growing, killing weeds that are already growing.
They've got it all and you get to make your
choices there. I talked earlier about how important quality pruning
tools are. That's what Bob carries. Quality printer. You didn't
say you junk. Go in there and say, I want
to know you know, what are your better brands of
pruning equipment, And it's pretty much everything they carry, and

(01:01:20):
you're going to have success with that, and that's important.
Southwest Fertilizer dot Com is the website if you want
to find out more their phone numbers on there. I
realized when I give out all these phone numbers and
websites and stuff, probably not writing them all down. But
just go to Southwest Fertilizer dot com. You can find
out everything you need. When you're in there. The Bob

(01:01:41):
has a soul probe you can check out. You have
to talk to them about the terms of it, but
you can take that out to your yard. You can
take a proper core vertical core soil sample and put
the results together and send them in for a soil
test that is very accurate as to what's going on
in your yard. Just borrow essentially their sol probe, and

(01:02:05):
then you'll know exactly what fertilizer supplements may be missing
in your yard to get things balanced back out again.
You know, we recommend good fertilizers, but the bottom line
is every yard's a little different, and there may be
your yard may need something your neighbor doesn't, and you
can get it fixed that way with a good sol tesk.
Just go by stop with or the soil probe and
fertilize intelligently that way. All right, I'm gonna run to break.

(01:02:29):
I will be right back with your calls at seven
three two one two ktr H. All right, let's jump
right back in here on garden line. Winter is the
prime time for printing almost anything. The one thing you

(01:02:52):
don't want to print in the winter is things that
bloom only in the spring. So, for example, a lot
of climbs roses or once blooming roses. And there's not
just climbers. Other roses can be once bloomers, but something
like a Lady Bank's real cool rose, love love Lady Banks,
but it only blooms in the spring. Uh, and then

(01:03:12):
it doesn't bloom again until next spring there something like
the old time azaleas were just spring bloomers. Now we
have repeat types of azalias out there. Spyriea called bridals
wreath just blooms in the spring. Texas Mountain Laurel just
blooms in the springtime. Let's see what else. The Chinese

(01:03:34):
fringe is an example of something that just blooms in
the spring. Only flowering quints, those aren't. That's an old
time plant. You don't see as much of them now
as you used to. But anyway, flowering quints is one
that just blooms in the spring. All of those are
blooming on bloom buds basically that were produced last the

(01:03:56):
end of summer and fall. Last summer, late summer and fall,
the plant was setting bloom buds for this big spring bloom.
So if you prune now in the winter, you're cutting
off what you would about to enjoy. We're about to
enjoy in the spring. You wait until after they bloom
to prune those. Now. The one exception of the spring

(01:04:17):
only bloomers that comes to mind is fruit trees. Spruit
trees or spring only bloomers. But we prune those because
we also need to thin those as well, a peach
tree produces probably about ninety percent more peaches than it
needs to carry a crop or a can, and so
we do pruning and then we also do thinning after
that on a peach tree or apple tree, pear tree,

(01:04:39):
those kinds of things. So if it needs pruning and
it's a fruit tree, you can print it like you
do our other plants. But in general, spring bloomers are
only pruned after they bloom. Spring only bloomers, excuse me,
So what about other things like trees and shrubs? In
general we prine those in the wintertime. Hedges we prune
all through the year when we're sharing a hedge. But

(01:05:02):
for your trees, you need to know what you're doing,
or you need to hire somebody that knows what they're doing.
An affordable tree Martin spoon Moore knows what he's doing.
And when you start talking about, you know, a young
tree and how do you train it right, don't just
wing it and think I think I can do this.
You need to know what you're doing to do this.
When you start looking at a bigger tree, don't climb

(01:05:26):
up a ladder and do it yourself. I mean, really,
come on, man, get somebody that is professional, that knows
what they're doing, and this is the best time to
get that done. And Martin stays busy because he does
a good job. He's got a solid following of customers,
and so you're gonna have to call him and get
on the schedule as soon as possible. You know, if

(01:05:46):
you want to get this printing done during the winter season,
you need to call him pretty quick here. Really, in fact,
they may do a little bit of printing going out
into the spring, because that's also okay. You can do that.
You can prune really month of the year. Some we
don't want to do heavy duty preeing though at sometimes
of the year. But now's the time. It's not a

(01:06:07):
long window to do it. So give him a call,
go ahead and give him a call book now. In fact,
I would I would do it asap because he does
stay busy. You can reach him at seven one three
six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Say that again,
seven one three six nine nine two six six three.
You can also go to the website aff of Tree

(01:06:30):
Service dot com a f F Tree Service dot com.
But when you call uh seven one three six ninety
nine two six sixty three. You're going to get either
Martin Or's wife Joe. The owners answer the phone, and
if somebody else answers the phone, you call the wrong place.
Hang up seven one, three, six, nine nine two six
sixty three. Give him a call. Get on the schedule.

(01:06:50):
You can do other things too. He can come out.
Martin does deep root feeding.

Speaker 9 (01:06:55):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:06:55):
Martin can provide uh, you know, advice on on plants.
Like maybe you got a tree and you're gonna put
us some trenches in for whatever reason, water or other
kinds of utilities. Maybe you're gonna throw a slab out there,
a big old concrete slab under the tree. You need
to call him because he can advise you on what
to do, how to prepare for that, or if you

(01:07:17):
shouldn't do it, or how you could change things maybe
to work around it. Because trees it this single most
valuable plant in your landscape. So don't wait until you've
butchered it already, or until you've already built this giant
slab all over the root system. To ask questions. Get
Martin out there as a consultation. He can come out

(01:07:38):
and do that. And he'll come out take a look
at your trees by the way in general and tell
you what needs to be done. And so I'm just
telling you don't put it off. Now's the time. We've
already put it off long enough to wait until now.
So let's go ahead and get a hold of him
and get that done and get it done right. You're
listening to Guardline. Our phone number is seven one three

(01:08:00):
two one two k t r H seven one three
two one two k TRH. And boy, we are talking
about all kinds of topics today. I've been told before.
I don't know. You can tell me if this is
true or not. But if I just sit here, going
deep in the woods talking about all these kinds of
topics on gardening, people just get to listening and they

(01:08:20):
don't call because it's like, no, no, no, I want
to hear this. I don't I want to talk talk
right now. I don't know if that's true, but it
does seem to be the case at times. So over
now and then I ought to shut up or threaten
to sing or read out loud war and peace on
the air. That would probably people. Okay, let's put an
end of this, especially the singing part. I won't do

(01:08:42):
that to you today, though, well you are listening to
Garden Line, and we're here to help you have a
bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape, and to have more fun
in the process. And I have been encouraging you this spring,
well this spring, this winter, to do something new, do
something new, not just for the sake of something new,
but because there's so much to gardening that you have

(01:09:05):
not experienced. H and I talked about starting seeds. Start
you one or two transplants this year. Why not let's
try it out. You don't have to do that in
the winter. I mean you could you coun wait till
we get into summer and plant something that's going to
grow in the heat of summer. You could do that
if you want it. But now's a good time to
do it. Why not trying to root a cutting, learning

(01:09:26):
how to do an air layer on a plant, or
learning how to root a cutting or whatever, And that's
a fun thing to do. Here's another one. Here's another.
How about a terrarium. If you ever built a terraum,
Those used to be popular. You know, all kinds of
gardening tend to go in and out of fads, like
haircuts and clothes. And if if you have never grown

(01:09:49):
a terrarium before. You should try that. It's kind of cool.
Now you can do it a lot of ways. You
can get an old aquarium and use that the light
in the aquarium right at the top of the thing,
and that that does a good job for the plants
that are in it. You can plant miniature plants in
there and enjoy that. You can do arrangement. You can

(01:10:10):
add little you know, things like a little rock riverbed
going through it, or a little figurines or whatever whatever
makes you excited. You can even make it one that
has that has animal life in it in the sense
of a lizard. You better have a screen top on
top of it, or even insects, certain kinds of insects

(01:10:31):
and things that crawl around in there that are kind
of cool. What do you want to do? Try something
like that. If you've never grown an African violet before,
if you've never propagated an African violet before, that is amazing.
You break a leaf off, stick the pettiole in the
ground with the bottom of the leaf barely the little
spoon on the end of the petiole that's the leaf.

(01:10:51):
Stick it down to where it touches the ground. That
sucker will root and it's so cool, yeah, baby African violet.
So then you can learn how to take care of
those are great things for ay days and days like
we're about to get into where it is so very
very cold. Try something you haven't tried before. That's all
I'm asking if there's a kind of plan, a category

(01:11:15):
of plans to never go roun before and do some learning,
you know. Of course, I'm always playing people to the website,
because when I get a bunch of questions on something,
I'll go ahead and write something up about it and
put it on the website. And so we're accumulating a lot.
I'm about to do a major revamp of it. I'm
working on it with my web designer right now. We're
gonna really redo it and it's going to change a

(01:11:37):
lot and have a lot of categories and information. So
I'm just telling you that's coming that way. If I
say it on the air, I have to do it right.
But it's gonna be kind of even more cool really,
lots of good information up there on that. So what
are you gonna do new? When you call me, by
the way, I want to hear it. What are you
going to do new this year, and I'm gonna do

(01:11:57):
right now is take a break and give a new
cup of coffee.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with skimp Richard's.

Speaker 10 (01:12:06):
Mill, crazy.

Speaker 11 (01:12:12):
Trip.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
Just watch him as many good things to see botasya.

Speaker 8 (01:12:30):
Not sign.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Sun Beamon.

Speaker 4 (01:12:39):
All right, folks, we are back and I'm just going
to go straight out to the phones right now again
the number if you'd like to call seven one three
two one two k t r H. We're gonna head
out to Conroe and talk to John. Hey, John, welcome
to garden Line. Good Morning's good.

Speaker 12 (01:12:57):
You hear me?

Speaker 4 (01:12:58):
How can we help yir?

Speaker 10 (01:13:01):
Back in November, I planted an arborquina olive tree in
the front yard and it's about seven feet tall and
about an inch and a half trunk is Should I
be worried about the frost when the weather gets below thirty.

Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
Yeah? Yeah, you can do significant damage.

Speaker 10 (01:13:26):
The trunk or the Should I be protecting the whole canopy?

Speaker 4 (01:13:31):
The whole canopy if you could? He said it's seven
feet tall? Yes, and about how wide would you say
it is?

Speaker 13 (01:13:41):
The canopy is about four four feet wide and maybe
five The trunks about a inch to inch and a
half at the base.

Speaker 4 (01:13:52):
Okay, since I don't know if it was grafted or not,
I'm going to assume that it was, So I would
start by piling up about a foot foot and a
half on the trunk. Pile up a big old pile
of soil, sand, compost, very fine compost, just not loose mulch,

(01:14:14):
to create an insulation on that bottom part in case
you lose. You were to lose the whole thing, then
you have a place for it to resprout from quickly
and you'll be back in business. So that's the stopgap measure.
If if I were you, I would go to a
hardware type store home store and get the long if

(01:14:36):
you can get them in a vehicle somehow to get
them home. Twenty foot sections of PBC pipe that are gray.
They have a belt in on one end, so one
pipe hooks into the other. But I would get two
of those and take one and go over the plant,
making a hoop over the plant let's say north south,
the other one east west, just to give you an idea,

(01:14:59):
and then when you put a cover over it, it's
like you have a little iggluo there. So those twenty
foot sections should be able to come pretty close to
going over that planet. It may have to bend some
branches down to get it to work, but that's okay.
If you lose a few leaves or twigs, that's fine.
You just don't want to lose whole thing. And then
I will typically use a zip tie up at the

(01:15:21):
top to tie those two bows together, the arches together,
and then put any kind of cover you can over
it if you can find it. You need something large.
You know, it's going to have to be a big
old tarp to go over there, or a really huge
piece of that rolled up, a thick six mil plastic,
anything you can to go over the top and create

(01:15:41):
dead air space around it. You need to get some
really good things that are heavy to weigh it down.
Now I realize this is starting to sound like a
lot of work, and it is. But that could be
cinder blocks, that could be you know, little bags of
sand that you create yourself to weigh it down. Because
when the wind blows, and it will we got some
wind coming, I doesn't just blow it right off. And

(01:16:03):
then underneath there a couple of heat lamps. I'd put
two of the red heat lamps in the clamp on
fixtures and point them down around the plant on two
different sides. Don't plump, point them against the trunk or anything.
Just point them down and that heat will rise up
from the base and it'll it'll keep it warm enough
to keep it going. You're up in Conra, you're gonna

(01:16:25):
get pretty cold up there. But that that would be
what I would do, because yes, the temperatures we're gonna
have can can kill on an urbicina olive or any
variety of olive.

Speaker 14 (01:16:33):
Back, Okay, I have a supposed to be arriving the
day an eighth eight foot bag of a cross bag.

Speaker 10 (01:16:46):
I'm hoping that will go over, yes, but yeah, I
need to get the PDC.

Speaker 4 (01:16:51):
That's good, good advice. Yeah, you would. You would end up, Yeah,
with the frost bag, you would end up kind of
creating a landscape lollipop around the trunk. And there's just
no that doesn't protect the base of the trunk or
provide heat inside, which is what's going to be needed.
Rous bags are fine for the smaller plants, but yeah,

(01:17:13):
so you know, the only other alternative, you know, this
is going to be a tree half for a while.
So I've seen people take a PVC pipe that's much
thicker the kind I was talk I was like a
half inch, because it's easy to make a bow out
of a half inch. It's easy to bend. By the way,
just if you end up doing that, you can at
those home stores you can also buy little sections of

(01:17:35):
rebar that are about twelve eighteen inches long, and you
can drive those in the ground and then slide that
PBC right over the top of it, and it makes
it real easy. Then you easy to bend it and
slide it onto a PVC I mean a rebar on
the other side. That works. That's what I do my house, Okay.
The only other alternative would be to get a thicker PVC,

(01:17:56):
like you know, let's say inch and a half two inches,
and a bunch of t's and l's and make a
giant box and put it around over the plant and
that way. Don't glue it together. That way, you just
take it apart and store it in the garage. And
if next year you need to cover it again, you
can just use the same thing, or maybe buy a

(01:18:16):
little longer pieces of PBC to expand the box size
a little bit. But it's like playing with tinker toys.
If you remember that. Yeah. I'm glad I're called alrighty, Yeah,
and I just gave you a lot of work. My
apologies for all the work. But seriously, the olives are
at risk at the temperature you're going to have on

(01:18:38):
our coldest night. So all right, sir, thank you, thank you.
You you know our advice. Our advice is free on
garden line, John. But I do ask that you bring
me half of the olive production for two years and
drop it off at the kt r H station and
we'll call it even. Does that sound fair? I hope
I can do that. I'm not going to get my

(01:19:02):
hopes up a lot. Appreciate the car. We got to
have some fun because I just sent you out to
do a lot of work. You take care of oh man,
If you'll press the olive oil, I'll take it. Take
care of man by all right, folks seven one three

(01:19:23):
two two k t r H. If you would like
to give me a call and talk about the boy,
I'm glad John call because there are other people out
there that got olive trees, and olives are not super
cold hardy, you know, and we had the hard freeze.
I don't know how many years ago it was a
number of years ago. I know, you know, parts of
the area got down in single digits. Parts of the

(01:19:44):
listening area. We lost a lot of olive branches and
tree they typically will live and reach sprout from the ground.
But oh my gosh, what a mess. Right uh, And
you got all these suckers and things coming up. But
it at least at least a polyo dirt up against
the bottom. The same thing is true with citrus. By
the way, a lot of you are out there going,

(01:20:05):
I can't do that to protect my citrus tree. Well,
if nothing else, what you can do is go buy
some bags atopsoil or a very fine compost and just
pile it up against the trunk about a foot and
a half high. Kind of press it down a little
bit because you don't want air to blow through this.
You want it to be a little packed down and

(01:20:26):
that will insulate the base of that plant. And when
we get through all this cold, you can leave it
on there a little while, but just pulled it back
out of the way. We don't like swamp aled against
the trunk. Those multiple volcanoes you see around town are nonsense.
They shouldn't do that. But when it comes to a
night or two of protecting the base of a plant.
That's important because those plants are grafted. And think about this.

(01:20:48):
Let's say you have a orange tree and it's a
Republic of Texas. That's a good orange for a run here,
I'll use that as an example, and it'sted. It's going
to be grafted almost certainly base. And let's say it's
eight feet tall, and now you get it killed. All
the way back to that one foot high base of

(01:21:10):
the trunk that you protected. You still have this huge
root system that was balanced with an eight foot tall top.
So when the new growth begins, it's going to come
out like a rocket. I mean, it's gonna have to
warm up. But my point is there's a lot of
roots to push new growth, and so you're going to
get back to your tree size fairly quickly, faster than

(01:21:32):
you would think, faster than putting a little tiny tree
out there and waiting for it to grow back up
to that size. So just something to think about. At
the very least, you can buy some bags of malts
and throw them around, or not malts, not molts, soiling
composts to put them around the base. You want density,
you want it to hold the warmth really really well.
All right, time for me to take a break. I'll

(01:21:53):
be right back. Here we go again. We've got some
more stuff to talk about today, and if you'd like,
you can call. The number is seven one three two
one two KTRH seven one three two one two k
t RH. How can we help you have success with
your plants? So we've got some cold weather we can
talk about that. We've been talking about that today, certainly

(01:22:15):
can continue to do that. I would just recommend that
whatever you do, you do it quickly. You know, as
you put this off, other people are out there getting
the things that are needed to protect their plants. And
so you may show up and you know, head to
an a store for example, and get that plus it

(01:22:37):
freeze miser screws onto faucets, or maybe you're looking for
some of their other many things that are used to
help protect our pipes and our plants and our pets
and so on, heat lamps, the heat bulbs and things.
You get there and they're all gone because somebody else
went and got them. I know aces stocked up well,
so that is not likely to happen. But good night,

(01:22:58):
don't wait. And this is coming from a person who
has I'll admit it. This is in my former days
before I change my ways. Who has been out there
at dusk where it's the dark, you can hardly see things.
The wind is blowing. It's thirty five degrees and I'm
trying to cover a plant and pull something cover over

(01:23:18):
the top of a plant and a twenty mile an
hour wind. Yeah, don't let that be. You learn from
my mistakes. Maybe it already has been you. I don't know.
If you're honest, you may have to admit that. Well.
I'm going to continue on talking about some of the
things that I think are pertinent for this time of
the season that people need to be aware of. If

(01:23:42):
you are looking to add something for blooms in your
landscape this year, and I think that'd be a great idea.
By the way, can you think back and thinking your landscape,
what blooms in spring? Where are those flowers or are
they on a shrub at the corner of house? Are
they all across the front of the house, or there's

(01:24:02):
some trees around that bloom. When do they bloom? Is
it spring, is it summer, or is it even in
fall or wintertime? There's a few things that even bloom.
Then what looks good at that time? What could you add?
Because your landscape should look good twelve months out of
the year. And that's not putting a weight on you,
it's just saying pick plants that are that way. So,

(01:24:25):
for example, in the spring, everything wants to bloom, I
mean lots of spring blooming trees and stuff. Then we
get to summer and then amount of blooms drops dramatically,
but there's still some great blooming plants that go through
the heat of summer, especially when it comes to shrubs
and perennials. And then you get to fall and there

(01:24:45):
are some fall blooming late summer and fall blooming things
like Mexican bush staeds for example, things that bloom with
the change in day length. So fall aster is an
example of that. And so what would you add to
your landscape this year? You know, now's a good time
to plant a fall blooming plant because it's it's winter

(01:25:06):
when we plan a lot of things. And the same
is true. You can do that in spring as well,
but no need to wait. Go ahead and get those
in the ground now. After we get through the freeze
this week, you can buy and bring them home and
put them in the garage and then you're ready to
go right out and spray because everybody else can want
go get one when the freeze is over. But make
your landscape a year round landscape with blooms and you

(01:25:27):
can do that. And if you want some suggestions, we can.
We can talk to you here about how to put
together ought to put together a sheet on blooms through
the year, that would be a good one to do.
Make a note of that. Let's head out to the phones.
We're going to go up to Willis, Texas and talk
to Mike. Hey, Mike, Hey, Skip, how do you doing.

Speaker 9 (01:25:48):
Well?

Speaker 4 (01:25:49):
Can you hear me? Yes, sir Skip, Yeah, okay, Yeah,
I'm yes, fruit trees mm hmm yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:26:02):
And uh should I stop, uh to wait till the
freeze is over or just keep on going? And it
includes the blueberries, black and grapes.

Speaker 4 (01:26:12):
Yeah, that the freeze isn't a big deal. Other than me,
I want to be out there, you know, when it's
so cold. But you can prine now, you can proNT
after the freeze. Either way is fine. If you want
to wait and put it off a little bit, that's fine.
There's not a problem either way. No, it's it's you know,
it's better to be one that's cold for me anyway. Yeah,

(01:26:33):
I've got generally they don't want to prune. Uh huh.
So there's a there's a delay on my broadcast. So
I don't know if you're if you're hearing a radio
or something going on in the background, but uh uh,
if you are, it's gonna throw our cadence off pretty
good here.

Speaker 11 (01:26:53):
No, no, I'm listening. I've got burlap bags about one hundred,
couple of hundred. Can I lay those down to stop
the weeds around the plants?

Speaker 4 (01:27:04):
Uh for a while? Uh huh, and then they'll they
will decompose and so uh you know, they they're not
going to be a long term thing. But you can
mult with burlap if you wish. Okay, but you're gonna
have to You're gonna have to put it mike thick
enough to where no light comes through. Burlap is kind
of uh you know, it's sort of a loosely woven fabric,

(01:27:27):
and if you hold burlap up to the sky you
can see light through it. So you're gonna need enough
of it, or put down burlap and then throw a
mulch on top. Or something. Uh but that, yeah, that
would be that you could do that.

Speaker 3 (01:27:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:27:42):
Well, these are.

Speaker 11 (01:27:44):
My daughter and some gross coffee from around the world,
and these are their coffee bags and real heavy duty
that holds a couple of hundred pounds.

Speaker 4 (01:27:52):
Oh wow, have coffee beans in them. So they're.

Speaker 11 (01:27:56):
So they I've got a couple hundred of them that
they I can get do I do have And so
I'm just curious if burlap would be Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:28:08):
It's okay, it's not you know, the best way to maltch.
But there's nothing wrong with doing it. I tell you
what I'd do with them. I'd put them on Facebook
marketplace because there are gonna be people that want to
buy burlap coffee bags. I'll guarantee you that you can
make enough money to buy some compost and mult Yeah
that's true. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm just as

(01:28:35):
curious about the pruning and stuff like that. Yeah, that's it,
you can do it. Here's the thing on pruning we
would like to avoid. If the if the temperature is
mild and you prune, it'll start a process in the
plant of trying to regrow. And then if you know
a couple of weeks later we get a hard freeze,

(01:28:57):
you could get some cold damage where other wise the
plant would have been hardened off and not subjected to
coldem it. So we generally don't prune in the fall
for that reason. But pruning a day before a freeze
is not going to cause that level of lack of heartiness.
So it doesn't matter at the time you're making this

(01:29:19):
call to me, But in general, we don't want to
prune and then have that done. That's why I usually
save most of my pruning done till a little bit
later in the winter season, before the new spring growth
takes off. But later in the season is just a
little bit better time. It's not night and day, but
it's a little better time to do your pruning.

Speaker 11 (01:29:42):
Yeah, because I've got blooms and the fact today we've
got some apples and some peaches grown, but I know
that they're going to be lost because of the freeze.
So that's the reason why I'm kind of waiting later
in the season to prune.

Speaker 4 (01:29:55):
Yeah. Yeah, all right, well, good luck with it. Yeah, okay, thanks,
you take care, Thanks for the call. Appreciate that. I
appreciate that a lot. Mike, our phone number if you're
like to get on. I'm going to take a little
break here, but if you'd like to get on and
not have to wait. Seven to one three two one
two k t r eight seven one three two one

(01:30:18):
two k t r H. I talked about adding blooms
to your landscape, and this will be a good time
to do that. It really is. I mean think about it.
Think about your landscape from January to December. When are
their blooming plants out there? And when could you add
blooming plants? Because we can suggest plants, and I don't
mean flower beds. I'm talking about shrubs and trees. Shrubs

(01:30:39):
and trees even in the summertime. Crape myrtles bloom for
three months there. They bloom for essentially almost almost one
hundred days in the summertime.

Speaker 7 (01:30:47):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:30:48):
And that's a good one to do in the summer.
Of course, everybody's got creak myrtles already. But the tech
ytex b techs agnes castis chase tree is another name
for it has the blue blossoms. And that one is good.
You just have to watch that one. That one does
recede and so in some areas it can cause a

(01:31:11):
little bit of a spreading of the plant. But in general,
you know, I have a Vitex in my yard and
I think I've pulled up three seedlings over two or
three years, so it's not really a big deal. But
I just want to mention that that it's a possibility
something you might want to be aware of. But vitext
is a great one for summertime, and if you share
it back after a series of blooms, you'll get regrowth

(01:31:33):
and some more blooms. So that's another good one. But
let's spread that all through the seasons. Let's have some
beautiful color through perennials and shrubs and trees that bloom
at all times. And now would be a great time
to do that. All right, I'm going to take a
little break. I want to remind you on my website
is the publication on protecting plants from frosts and freezes.
The website is gardening with skip dot com. That's also

(01:31:56):
where you find some of the other new publication that
I talked about, dealing with woody weeds like poison ivy
in the landscape and pasteurizing putting soil. Hey, welcome back,
let's keep going here. We got stuff to talk about.
When it comes to gardening and been challenging there this year.
I'm not challenging that sounds horny. I've been asking you

(01:32:21):
to consider doing something new this year. What are you
gonna try you never tried before? Gardening is Listen, You're
not going to live long enough to try all the
kinds of things that you ought to want to try
that are out there for gardening. And who knows, there
may be something you have never even considered before that
you really fall in love with. I mean, there are

(01:32:41):
people that get all into various kinds of plants. That's
why there are plant societies out there, Daylily Society, African
violet societies, Plumerius societies, rose, oh my gosh, definitely roses,
and so on and so on. What are you gonna try?
They haven't tried. Let's try something new. There is some
real cool and fun things that you can do with gardening,

(01:33:02):
and I suggest that you have some things you can
do indoors and some things that you can do outdoors.
It's a very rewarding hobby, it really is. What was it?
The other day? I was reading a quote by somebody, Oh,
Rooyard Kipling, the guy I believe I think either wrote
Jungle Book. Anyway, when the world's when the world wearies

(01:33:26):
and ceases to satisfy, there's always the garden. That is true. Listen.
There's a lot of fast paced entertainment we have in life,
especially nowadays, but when it comes to just really fulfillment
and stuff, it's the simple stuff that really matters. That's
why relationships and family. Oh my gosh, here I go.

(01:33:48):
I'm getting outside of my area of expertise. I'm gonna
quit talking about it a lot. But bottom line is
stuff that really matters. Really you really enjoy things like gardening.
That's the good Okay, that's the good stuff. All right.
This commercial was brought to you by nobody other than
just I think it's true. I want to visit a

(01:34:10):
little bit about our lawn care. You know, it's early,
it's too early. You're not going to be putting out
anything right now on the lawn. But it's coming, and
when it comes, it's going to come fast. Kind of
like the blue bonnets on the road side. You know,
one day there aren't any of the next day, boom,
here they come and we're we're in full swing. Well,
when it comes to our lawns, and taking care of them.

(01:34:33):
I put two schedules online. One is my lawn care schedule,
and that's basically, what do you do to make the
lawn look good? And that would be more water, fertilize,
add do core errations, add supplemental minerals as needed. That's
all on that schedule. The other schedule is what makes
your lawn not look good and what do you do

(01:34:54):
about it? And that would be diseases and insects that
would be weeds they get in the lawn. And these
schedules are free. They are online, you can download them,
you print them out, and I'd encourage you to do that.
That way, when you go shopping, when you're looking for something,
you don't have to try to remember what it was.
You can just look on the schedule or put it
in the face of the person that you're shopping from,

(01:35:15):
say Han, any one of these, and they can get
you on. But those things are coming quickly. When we
get into February, we're in the season where we need
to be preventing weeds. If we're going to prevent weeds now,
remember the best weed prevention is a dense, healthy lawn.
But I've got some areas of my lawn. Don't tell
anybody who said this. I got some areas of my

(01:35:37):
lawn that are thin. One area underneath a tree that
was a little too shady is kind of looking thin,
and I can already see I see some cool season
weeds popping up in it. Because wherever sunlight hits the soil,
nature plants a weed. So as your lawn gets thin,
it becomes weedy. It just works that way. And so
what do you do. Well, Number one thing you do

(01:35:58):
for weed control is go to the first schedule, moll water,
fertilize and do that right over the course of a
season and make your lawn dense. The next time we
go into a weed sprouting season, your lawn's going to
be shading out most of the weed seed problems that
you would run into. So that takes the bulk of
the work out of it for you. But there are

(01:36:19):
times when you need something to prevent a weed seed
from coming up, and the options are there on the schedule.
Then there's times when weeds are already up and you
need to kill an existing weed. That's called a post
emergent weed control product. And I need you to listen

(01:36:40):
to this for just a minute post emergent weed control products.
In other words, what do I spray on my lawn
to kill you? Fill in the blank weed they're growing
in my lawn there, The clover is everywhere, the the
I don't know, whatever your summer, whatever your weeds are
that you're dealing with, they're everywhere. How do I kill
them in the lawn. It's a post emergent weed control

(01:37:02):
when the weather heats up to the mid eighties, which
will be there before you know it and above. Those
products can stress your lawn, especially Saint Augustine, and so
if you wait to deal with weeds until that stage,
then you got the issue of trying to pick something

(01:37:23):
that's not quite as stressful to the lawn compared to
other things. But when we take our cool season weeds,
a chick weed right now, routing it right now potentially
in your lawn. There is annual bluegrass that's a little
grassy weed. There is chick weed, There is hendbit, There
is carpet weed. There is something called cleavers. It's our

(01:37:46):
bellcrow weed. That's the one that's kind of like belcra
It kind of sticks to you. And when you're dealing
with those kinds of things. Now's the time to get
out there and do it. And here's why they sprouted
in the fall. They sit as small plants, just like
our blue bonets to do all winter long, and then
in the spring, as it warms up a little bit,
they are gonna take off growing. They're gonna bloom, they're

(01:38:08):
gonna set seed. Once they start blooming and setting seed,
even effective products that work on those weeds are not
as effective once the weed becomes reproductive, the products are
not going to be as effective by and large, So
it's better to deal with it now. If you're gonna
have to spray those chickweed, hambit clover, all those kinds

(01:38:31):
of things that are in your lawn. Now, if you're
gonna have to spray them, you need to go and
get that done sooner rather than later. When we get
past the spreeze and the weather warms up just a
little bit, we got some warm days and those weeds
are really busy growing and taking in nutrients and things,
that's the time to hit them with the spray because
if you wait too long, it's not gonna work. And
if you wait long enough, there are already gonna be

(01:38:52):
weed seeds everywhere and now you've got two hundred thousand
times more weeds than you did before because you didn't
either handpul the weeds spray them. And listen, I'm not
here to talk you into organic or synthetic, to talk
you into spray and or not spray and all that.
That is your yard. I'll just tell you that in
my yard, I do a lot of ham pulling because
I don't like to do a lot of spray. But

(01:39:14):
if you're going to spray, do it before the weeds
start to bloom and set seed in the spring. That
is advice for the wise. All right, time for me
to take a break. I'll be right back with your calls.
Seven one three two one two KTRH. All right, folks,
we're back. We got plenty more things to talk about

(01:39:34):
this morning here on guard Line. Hey, I know right
now you're thinking about what am I going to do
this week. It's going to get so cold and all that. Well,
we've been talking about it that all day. We'll keep
talking about it. But I just want to ask you
to not forget that when this cold gets over with,
it's time to get back out there and do some
things in the garden. And one of the things we
do in order to have success with our plants is

(01:39:55):
provide small amounts of nutrient as a boost to them
as they grow week to week, month and month, and
color Star by Nelson is one of the best products
I know for doing that. It is excellent. For example,
the color Star has been around for forty years or so,
very very popular. If you're going to have a bed
that has color that could be foliage, that could be flowers,

(01:40:17):
that could be whatever you want a color bed, just
get color Star and it's going to be a good
blend to give the boost you need. Here's what's happened.
You're blooms on the plant. That takes a lot of
energy carbohydrates to make the blooms that are your flowers
that you enjoy. You got to keep that plant growing
so that it has new growth, new energy, captures more sunlight,

(01:40:38):
makes more blooms. Color Star gives it that boost. It's
fast acting, but it also has organic nutrients sources in
it that really slowly into the ground about every three
or four months is probably best with Colorstar. So coming
into this season of winter, we want to get a
fertilization down, watered in really good scratch it into the
soil and watered in and have a little push on

(01:41:01):
the vigor as we come out of the winter into
spring to get more growth. Keep those things going, and
if you pull those out and put some others in,
it's just all the better. Just start back up with
color Star again from the folks at Nelson's. Color Stars
available in many places in town. And those little refill
canister containers, so you buy a plastic canister of it,
you just take it back in and refill it. It's

(01:41:22):
a little more, a little less expensive, and it also
helps prevent a little more plastic going out there in
the environment, which is of course a good thing to stop.
We're going to go now to Cove, Texas and talk
to Rufus. Hey, Rufus, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (01:41:37):
Well, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:41:38):
Hey.

Speaker 12 (01:41:38):
A while back we talked about think that was disease
resistance more than the ones I got in my backyard
just dying on vine kind of deal. But I lost
the name.

Speaker 5 (01:41:50):
Yeah remember what that was.

Speaker 4 (01:41:52):
Uh yeah, there, there's there's two and I think one
of them may not be on the on the marketing
or there's one called Cora like the ladies name c
r A and there's one called Nirvana, and I'm not
sure Nirvana is still around, but if you see either
Cora Nirvana, that's that's the kind of vinca we're talking about. Uh.

(01:42:15):
There's a disease called uh our top aerial phytoptera that
gets on them and makes them turned chocolate brown and
just turns them to toast, and it goes to her
resistant to that disease at least until the disease figures
out how to mutate. And that's what diseases do. But uh, Cora,
nerv Cora, and Nirvana Cora is the one you're gonna find.

Speaker 12 (01:42:36):
Probably, okay, all right, Well yeah, because when we talk
about it looked like rose die back. You know, it
started at the end of them. I started working back
to the route and I got a hit. I just
cut it all and you know it's vinegar and water
on the cutters and stuff that I slowed it down
a bunch. But I'm not wanting problem next year.

Speaker 4 (01:43:00):
Uh Yeah. Vinca's real heat tolerant and another thing that
helps a little bit. This isn't gonna make night and
day difference, but if you wait until it really heats
up pretty good to plant trvinka.

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:43:11):
It the the disease isn't quite as active then as
it is if you try to get it in early
and it's it's a little milder and maybe more rain
or you're irrigating too much or something. It's worse than
those conditions. So that's another tip for it. All right, man?

Speaker 12 (01:43:28):
Well, from seed, what's the germination to planning on those plants?
Because I usually do it like, I don't know, six
weeks before put them in the ground.

Speaker 4 (01:43:40):
But is it yeah, you know, to give you a
completely accurate answer, I would need to go look that up,
but I'm gonna I'm gonna say that I think if
you can give them, if you can grow the transplants
for about two weeks, uh, then you should be able
to move them out into the garden and at some point,

(01:44:03):
depending on soul temperatures and whatnot, they will begin to bloom.
But the time from seed to first bloom is going
to vary a whole lot with the conditions that's growing in. Okay, okay,
but i'd allow yourself good good, all right, all right, well,
thanks for the call, all right, bye bye. That is

(01:44:26):
for true. You know, I talk about wallbirds because I
love wallbird stores. I'll go into wildbirds stores just to
look around because I learn something every time I go in.
I go I didn't know they had a gadget for that,
or I didn't know they've come out with this new seed,
or you know whatever. And talking to the people there,

(01:44:47):
they know so much. So I mean, if you want
to have success with your birds, go buy there. Now.
I'll tell you something. You can buy a lot of
cheap bird seed in a lot of places, and it's
going to be sometimes way half of the little red bebes,
way over half. And birds don't like those. They kick
them out. They don't eat them unless they absolutely have
to and they're starving to death. But wildbirds seeds are

(01:45:11):
made with seeds the birds eat. And you can get
different blends right now in the winter winter super Blend's
a good one. But they got a brand new thing out,
new product, and it's cool. It's called Cardinal Confetti. Cardinal
is in redbirds. Cardinal Confetti blend is exclusive to wildbirds.
And they even have a couple of feeders. There's a
cardinal tube feeder and a good evening cardinal feeder. Ask

(01:45:32):
them about that. As part of the Cardinal Confetti collection.
The Cardinal Confetti's got saft flower, it's got black all sunflower.
It's got sunflower chips, nutris, saff park, excuse me, bark
butter bits, peanut halves, striped sunflower. It makes me hungry.
Oh not this last one. It also has dried meal worms.
I can live without that. But birds love that stuff

(01:45:56):
and you can use it year round. They're gonna sell
it year round. But it is an all some awesome blend,
so you ought to go check that out. They also
have something called bark butter. You spread it and smear
it on a tree trunk or on a feeder or
where you want to spear it on your neighbor who
doesn't move around a lot, and the birds will show up,
and I mean they love that stuff. They It was

(01:46:16):
created by Jim Carpenter, who founded Wildbird Anyway. He created
it and they have documented one hundred and fifty different
species of birds that come to the bark butter. It's
available as bark butter bits little bite sized nuggets. Is
available also as bugs and bits. There we go put
and dried millworms in it. Again. They absolutely love that stuff.
It's hig in calcium it's sports, good egg development, and

(01:46:38):
birds are going to be nesting very very soon, so
get that stuff out and you're only going to get
it at Wildbird's wild Birds Unlimited. It's WBU dot Com
forward slash Houston. WBU dot Com Forward slash Houston. That
will do it. Let's see, I'm looking at the clock, Roger,

(01:46:59):
I do not have time to take your call for
we go to break. Sorry about that. I will make
you first when we come back. Roger out in Deer Park.
Look forward to talking to you. If you can hang
around a little bit longer and we'll be right back
with your calls.

Speaker 1 (01:47:11):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with skimp Rickards.

Speaker 2 (01:47:24):
Just watch him as.

Speaker 4 (01:47:31):
Hey, let's jump right in here. I listen to a
little bit of an intro. I think I was going
to get going and get talking and get to your calls.
In fact, why don't we jump right out here? We
got Roger waiting from Deer Park. Hey, Roger, welcome to
garden Line. How can we help.

Speaker 15 (01:47:47):
Uh built me a little chicken stick frame on the
south side of the house to cover with plastic and
not touch the plants, you know, the plastic and left
home one day to ten or lavish camp went way
above you know, went on up there.

Speaker 4 (01:48:03):
So I'm just trying to figure out how to.

Speaker 15 (01:48:08):
Make sure I don't burn the plant and cook them,
say yeah, and keep them above that you know, thirty degree.

Speaker 4 (01:48:18):
Yeah, that's a you know that either you just have
to go out and check it. I said a little
timer on the on the phone or watch just to
remind you to go check it every now and then.
See sunshining through clear uh makes heat for sure, and
that's why your cars are warm when you go out
on a cool day or hot day. Either way, it's
gonna be a lot warmer inside a clear windshield of

(01:48:40):
a car. Uh, So your instincts are right.

Speaker 9 (01:48:44):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:48:44):
The only other thing you could do, and that's not
for this year. But there are some gadgets. They're like
little kind of like a piston, you know, you know
the old screen door so they didn't slam. There were
that little piston that yeah, up at the top that
kind of air compros and slowed it down. There's actually
a piston like device. It's different than that that when

(01:49:06):
a temperature is reached, it pushes a door open and
it kind of lifts up a little door to allow
heat to escape out the top and go back down again.
And you can purchase those. I've never tried using them,
but I just know they're out there. People used to
use them on cold frames, which is basically like a
little box on the ground with a clear top, and

(01:49:29):
to lift those up because the same thing happens in
a cold frame. That would be a long term kind
of a potential solution. Other than that, I would just say,
you know, once the temperature gets above thirty two, I
would just crack a door open on it and you'll
be good. You just need the heat to be able
to escape a little bit. You don't have to throw
it wide open or anything like that.

Speaker 15 (01:49:50):
Okay, Yeah, it's just kind of like, ah, I was
supposed to bake them.

Speaker 4 (01:49:55):
Yeah, I know. Yeah, Oh you can cook them. You
can cook them in there, for sure, no question about that.
About what may also ask time.

Speaker 15 (01:50:08):
I have a BlackBerry bush that's about peaky put long
on the back fence and citrus. It seemed like a
couple of the plants, especially with the the blackberries in
the middle, they're turning yellow. The leaves it's getting a
yellowsh tint to it, and then there leaves on one
one plant. The leaves are turning yellow on the citrus,

(01:50:29):
just one, and I'm just kind of.

Speaker 4 (01:50:31):
Can you recall from can you? Yeah, can you recall
Roger from when you looked at them? Was was it
the new ends of shoots, the new leaves that were
losing color, or was it all up and down everywhere?
Or was it the older leaves further back down the
shoot that we're losing color.

Speaker 15 (01:50:50):
It's the older leaves from the It's basically starting from
the top, older leaves.

Speaker 4 (01:50:53):
Okay, Yeah, there are a couple of nutrients that a
lack of of that nutrient can cause that. You know,
sulfur is one of the ones we never talk about
as a fertilizer nutrient hardly, but that's one that of
a lack of sulfur can cause that. That's probably not
what the problem is with your planet is probably a
nitrogen a lack of nitrogen, but also environmental conditions can

(01:51:18):
do that. I don't know if you ever had Apothus
ivy in the house and it got too dry and
it started to wilt, and then you watered it and
all of a sudden, the old leaves start turning yellow
and falling off after you water it. That's a moisture
related response, and that can happen to plants soggy wet
soils or wide fluctuations that can happen to some plant.

(01:51:41):
So other than a soil moisture issue, I think it
probably is a lack of nitrogen, but I generally wouldn't
worry about it a lot. Usually the older leaves turning
a little yellow and a cool season of the year,
that just happens, and so it doesn't mean you necessarily
need to get out there and do any particular thing

(01:52:02):
to it. And if if we get into spring, it
starts regrowing and that situation doesn't improve. The only yellow
leaves aren't going to turn green again, but you don't
continue to have that problem progressing. If you do, then
go and go ahead and fertilize it with a nitrogen
nitrogen based fertilizer. Any good centrus foot will have enough
nitrogen in it well as usual. Thank you again, all right,

(01:52:27):
you bet, you bet, And watch those blackberries. The number
one thing we have with blackberries going on here is
some people have high pH soils in some parts, and
blackberries and a heavy clay with a higher pH they
are always going to have a bleaching out or yellowing
of the foliage out near the tip. But that's of
course not what you had. So but I just mentioned
that because there's gonna be other people going, yeah, I
got blackberries that our leaves are losing color, and they

(01:52:49):
need to know about that too. Well, you take care
out there, stay warm. Thank you much too. All right,
thank you, thank you sir. The color that isb be
another good publication to put up there. My leaves are
turning color? What's going wrong? Kind of interesting? Actually, do
you know that nutrients? Okay, here we go a little

(01:53:11):
bit of a nerd alert, but this can help you
diagnose a problem. Nutrients typically are either mobile or immobile
in a plant. Now, if a nutrient is mobile, that
means that the plant can steal it from older growth
and move it to new growth to support that growth.

(01:53:34):
A mobile element, it could be moved. If a nutrient
is immobile, then the older growth may have had enough
of it. But when it runs short on that nutrient,
the new growth starts to show the deficiency. So why
does that matter. We'll think of this like a brick wall,
that is that has mortar in between the bricks. Versus

(01:53:57):
a dry stack brick wall and a drystack brick wall.
If you're building the wall and you get the end,
you run out of bricks. Theoretically you go back and
steal bricks from the original part of the wall and
bring them forward and keep building the wall. That's a
mobile element. If it was mortared in. You can't steal
a brick from back there. It's mortared in, and that's
an immobile element. So what you see when you look

(01:54:20):
at your plants is if the older leaves are turning yellow,
that's a sign that the element that's missing is a
mobile element. The plant has stolen it to support new growth.
If it's occurring on the new growth but not the
old growth, then that's an immobile and iron is the
prime poster element for immobile element deficiency. When the new

(01:54:43):
growth has bleaching out a yellowing or even whitish on
some plants, and maybe the veins are main green, but
in between the veins it starts turning or it doesn't
develop color, that's an iron deficiency most likely because it's immobile.
And if it's the old leaves, it's going to be nitrogen,
it's going to be sulfur. If the old leaves have

(01:55:04):
like a green Christmas tree in the middle. Well, that's
a mobile element called magnesium with the green Christmas tree
in the middle. All right, that's your NERD alert. We'll
be right back. We're back. Hey, guess what. It's our
last hour of the show today. We're going to wind
us up at ten o'clock. So if you've got a call,

(01:55:24):
I can't wait until next Saturday. Where the thing? You
can give me a call. Seven thirty seven thirty seven
one three two one two. I didn't drink enough coffee
this morning kt R seven one three two one two
kt R h Oh. We've talked about a lot of
different things this morning. Just got through talking about nutrients

(01:55:45):
and mobile versus immobile nutrients. And it's kind of fun
to diagnose visually what's going on, to think through it. Uh,
you know, I give you these NERD alerts from time
to time and I'll talk about you know, Okay, this
is a little technical, but it helps to know it
for making decisions. So just the fact that you know

(01:56:05):
the difference between a mobile and an immobile element, you
can go online and say what elements are mobile, what
elements are immobile, and so you look at a plant.
It's got, you know, leaves in this place or that place.
You know, okay, it's going to be one of these
elements that I'm dealing with here, And so it helps
you to think through things, and becoming good gardeners isn't
just memorizing all the facts. It's learning how to think

(01:56:27):
about plants. And when I talk about we're going to
turn your brown thumb, grain that there's no such thing
as a brown thumb. There's an uninformed thumb. That's what
I'm talking about. Is the more you gain understanding about
how things work, the better you are at gardening, the
easier it is for you to figure things out and
kind of solve problems. You know, maybe there's some nutrient

(01:56:48):
I didn't mention in my little spiel before break, Well,
now you know at least how to think about it
and figure out what it might be. And so that's
what we try to do here. Now, if you're one
that just wants me to tell you what to get
and where to get it to apply it, I can
do that. We can certainly do that, no problem at all.
But if you're someone who wants to go a low
step further, maybe a master gardener or just an inquisitive gardener. Yeah,

(01:57:12):
there you go. We can help you with that. We're
gonna go out Tonedville now and talk to an Lisa. Hello, Analsa,
Welcome to garden line. Hi.

Speaker 16 (01:57:20):
I have some tulips that I planted a few weeks
ago that already have buds on them, and I was
wondering if this is a long enough freeze to make
it worth covering, or if they're hardy enough to last.

Speaker 4 (01:57:33):
Tulips are generally pretty heardy. How tall are they?

Speaker 16 (01:57:39):
They're about six inches?

Speaker 4 (01:57:44):
Okay, well, it wouldn't be the end of the world.
I'm assuming you don't have a giant feel fault, so
it wouldn't be the end of the world to go
out there and said a few things around to kind
of hold the cover up and then go throw I
don't know, a sheet or something over them to be
sure and safe. I think they're going to be okay.

(01:58:04):
Let's see you're in Needville. Yeah, you're I've never tested
tulips in terms of how cool can they take it,
To be honest, I just haven't. My gut is that
they're going to be okay. But if you want to
be extra careful throw something just over them. No heat
underneath them is needed. Just something to kind of hold
the soil moisture a little bit or heat a little bit.

Speaker 17 (01:58:25):
Okay, thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:58:28):
You bet you take care. Thanks for the call. If
you want a beautiful landscape, I mean I'm talking about
a gorgeous landscape, you need to call the folks at Peerscapes.
I talk about Peerscapes a lot because I am very
impressed with their work. I've sat down and met with
their designers and talked to them, and I'm telling you,

(01:58:48):
these folks know what they're doing. They really do. And
no matter what you need. Do you need the irrigation
work on because that season's coming, they can do that.
Do you want hardscape put in? Oh my gosh, you
cannot believe the gorgeous patios and walkways that they create.
Their landscape lighting services are unbelievable. And they do maintenance too.

(01:59:10):
By the way, you can have them come on for
quarterly maintenance. If you need that done, you need a
SOD installed, anything like that, they can do it at
Peer Scapes. Go to piercescapes dot com pierscapes dot com.
I want you to go there. I want you to
look at the pictures, even if you're not planning on
having anything done, I just want you to go and
see what they can do. It is amazing. And so

(01:59:33):
maybe you just need a little project done, maybe you
need the whole nine yards renovated. They can do either way.
Peer Scapes. Let's go out to the phones again and
we're gonna talk to Greg. Hey, Greg, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 7 (01:59:47):
Thank you Skip. I've got a question.

Speaker 18 (01:59:50):
I'm driving back from South Texas and I have a
friend that his place is just covered up in Mountain Laurel,
and so I thought, well, I'm gonna dig up some
individual plants.

Speaker 7 (02:00:01):
And I had no idea.

Speaker 18 (02:00:02):
They had a tap root that probably is five feet
deep and so but I was able to dig, dig
up a five or six beast wounds and cut the
tap root about two to three feet.

Speaker 7 (02:00:15):
Will I be able to transplant?

Speaker 4 (02:00:16):
Okay, they are not a species that likes transplanting. Now,
I'm not going to tell you that you can't do it,
but don't be real surprised if you have trouble with that.
Bring them back, get them in a spot where they
have moist definitely not soggy soil. They don't like that.

(02:00:39):
Get them in a spot like that planted we say,
high and dry in or raised bed or someplace that
had a heavy clay in a low lying area, and
get them in the grounds quick. Skin is the weather
worms up in the spring. Maybe a little bit of
a shade over You can even kind of drape a
little bit of a shade cloth over them a little bit,
just to give them some time to us before the

(02:01:00):
full demands are made on them, and give them the
best chance that they have.

Speaker 7 (02:01:04):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (02:01:05):
That doesn't mean leave shade on them all year. It
just it's just they're they're going to be very unhappy
and trying to recover. Did you happen to get any
of the seed pods while you're out there?

Speaker 7 (02:01:15):
Oh yeah, I've got I got a hold, you know,
old baggy full of them.

Speaker 4 (02:01:21):
Okay, good, good, Take those red seed pods and uh
nick the coat. You know, you can take a file
or you can take a little snippers and just don't
cut your fingers and nick the coat and uh they
will germinate. I would put them in moist sand and
the refrigerator for about a month or two and then

(02:01:42):
bring them out and plant them and get them to germinate.
And that's your backup in case the ones you brought
home don't work, because you can grow them. You can
grow them out. Just just have a long tail container
to diamond.

Speaker 7 (02:01:56):
What about I mean for the time being, I've got
a bunch of.

Speaker 18 (02:01:59):
Old it's like five gallon planner pots.

Speaker 7 (02:02:03):
Could I put them in that for the time being
instead of putting them in the.

Speaker 4 (02:02:07):
Ground the seeds you're talking about or the transfer Oh.

Speaker 7 (02:02:12):
No, no, the transplant plant.

Speaker 18 (02:02:15):
Instead of putting them in the ground, put them in
a pot.

Speaker 4 (02:02:19):
Yes, you could do that.

Speaker 18 (02:02:20):
You could do that, okay, because it Oh yeah, yeah,
I've got I really wanted to take them. I've got
a little place near Stevenville, Texas, and that's where I
was wanting to take them and plant them. So I'll
go get I'll go get some money. What would you
recommend rose soil with mixed. I've got some of the
native sand rose sol mixed with that sand.

Speaker 4 (02:02:42):
You could yeah, you could do that. Uh, you know,
it's rosso would be fine. A little sound is fine.
Just make sure you draw. If you use five gallon buckets,
make sure you draw whole lots of holes in the
bottom so they're doing well. And uh. The nice thing
about containers is you can set them in a spot
that gets a little morning sun but not the full
brunt of the two to four o'clock hot afternoon sun

(02:03:04):
until you get them planted and then put a little.

Speaker 2 (02:03:11):
You could.

Speaker 4 (02:03:12):
Yeah, that wouldn't hurt anything. Yeah, that wouldn't That wouldn't
standing at all. You could, you could, Hey, where did
you where did you? Where in South Texas did you
get these things from?

Speaker 18 (02:03:21):
This was in in Ata, Scotia County, near three rivers
halfway pwe Corpuses.

Speaker 4 (02:03:30):
I grew up thirty miles north of there, Jerdany.

Speaker 7 (02:03:33):
So do you know where?

Speaker 4 (02:03:38):
Oh why, I know you've been there, because nobody knows
where wits it is unless you've been there or from there.

Speaker 7 (02:03:44):
Campbell or Campbellton. Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a it's.

Speaker 4 (02:03:49):
Arm in Cambelton, YEP. It is good place, all right,
good fun plant, good plant.

Speaker 2 (02:03:55):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (02:03:56):
And by the way, when you grow up with those plants,
especially as mischievous young man, you learn that if you
take those pods and rub them on a on a
concrete sidewalk real fast, you can poke them against your
buddy's arm and burn the heck out of him. They
heat up really cool. So I'm just saying, not that
I ever.

Speaker 7 (02:04:15):
Looked at I was just a little seed. Just I
could just on the sidewalk, right.

Speaker 4 (02:04:20):
You said you could, yeah to kind of kind of
send it down a little bit if you want to
go that route. But but uh, yeah, not that I
ever did that.

Speaker 7 (02:04:30):
I'm going to do that too. That sounds like a
good idea. Thank you, sir.

Speaker 4 (02:04:36):
Take care, good luck with that. Let me know how
that turns out for you. All right, Yep, No, I
would never do that. I was as pure as the
wind driven snow, that is for sure. You can you
can take that to the bank. Just please don't talk
to any of my teachers that bless their hearts. I
think some of them have been given sainthood. I'm pretty

(02:04:58):
sure of that. Anyway, you listen to guard Line. Hey,
here's the phone number seven one three two one two
kt r H seven one three two one two. Where's Mike.
Mike from Sugarland. He grew up done in Jordan in Texas.
I don't know if he's listening today, but Mike may
know what we're talking about here. I talked earlier about

(02:05:18):
affordable tree and I'm telling you I would trust my
trees to Martin Spoon Moore. Martin's been doing this for
a long time. I mean he knows what he's doing.
When you call Affordable Tree at seven one, three, six, nine, nine,
twenty six sixty three, Martin's gonna be the one that
enters the phone. He absolutely knows his trees. And you

(02:05:41):
need to not delay you. It's time to get this done.
You got to give me a call. You got to
get this done. It's time to get any kind of
printing done. The prime time. We're in the prime season
is not gonna last a lot longer. Now. You can
get printed on any month of the year, a little
bit here and there, but you need to have right now, Martin,
come out and look at your trees, especially if you
have not had those trees cared for in a few years.

(02:06:03):
You need to come out and need to look at them.
Check the branch angles, check out things are growing. Because
it's better to guide a tree earlier in its life
than to try to change it later in its life.
And Martin knows how to do that. He does all
kinds of tree services consulting. He does the deep root feeding,
for example, he can do that. Martin's an expert at this.
He can go to afftree service dot com or give

(02:06:26):
Martin a call seven to one three six nine nine
two six sixty three. As we say, this is a
mom and pop operation. Martin and his wife Joe. They
answer the phones when you call seven to one three
six nine nine two six six three. Well, I am
up against a half hour break here. We got a

(02:06:47):
half hour left in this show. If you'd like to
give me a call seven one three two one two KTRH.
We'll be back with your calls, and we'll start with
John from Friends with Here. We welcome best pointing to
talk about there on the garden line. Not a lot
of time luck to talk about it, so let's get
down here.

Speaker 8 (02:07:06):
Lucky.

Speaker 4 (02:07:06):
You may call seven to one three two one two
ktr eight seven one three two one two ktr eighth.
The folks at Medina have a number of quality products
and some have been around for a long time. Medina
Plus is one of the earlier ones. A few years
after they developed the original, the Medina soil Activator that

(02:07:27):
people swear by and have used for decades, literally many
decades now, they came up with Medina plus. So what
they basically did is they didn't give up the old product.
They took Medina Plus and it is fortified essentially with
micro nutrients and also a seweed extract, and it kind
of took it up a level, if you will. It

(02:07:49):
has all the natural soil building advantages that the Medina
original Medina Soil Activator had, but it also has these
extra ingredients. It makes it a good folier feed for plants.
You can use it on flower, strub, trees, lawns, anything,
put in a hose, in spread and sprayer and mix
it up or not mix it up, just it mixes
it as it applies it to your lawn. Sebet extracts

(02:08:12):
helps plants get their maximum growth and you'l potential. It
enhances a lot of the natural processes in a plant
that protect against the different kinds of abiotic stresses that
there are also very efficient in nutrient uptake and use.
As a result of that, you could use it as
a root drench to stop slow down the transplant shock
to kind of alleviate that. You could use it in

(02:08:34):
flower beds, small areas. You could use a full of
your feed. It just has many many uses. It comes
in a quirk comes in a gallon size Medina plus
by the folks at Medina, And as with all Medina products,
they're widely available here in the Greater Houston area. Our
mom and pop garden centers, our feed stores, our ace
hardware stores, our Southwest Fertilizer, all of those places are

(02:08:59):
going to carry is Medina products. We're gonna We're gonna
go now out to Friendswood and talk to John. Hey, John,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (02:09:08):
Hey, good morning, Skip. Thanks for the uh all the
information about the weather we're dealing with. Listen, I've got
a question though, uh, kind of going back into the
fall each year, half of my half my front yard
I fight fungus.

Speaker 4 (02:09:28):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (02:09:29):
The sidewalk goes right down the middle up to the house.
The left side has fungus, the right side is Christine.
And I did a lot of reading back in the
fall and probably confused myself. But something I came across, uh,
it said that there that maybe in the spring I
should be putting out some fun, fun fungus side to

(02:09:54):
help prepare for the fall. Is is there any truth
in that or or are there any recommendations that you've
got for anything? I could do in the in the
spring to maybe ward off the problems I'm going to
have in the fall.

Speaker 4 (02:10:13):
Yeah, well, good question, John, And the answer is there's
absolutely no truth in that. When you apply a fungicide,
it is for either what is going on on the
plant or what is about to attack the plant, not
for months later like that. There are things. It depends
on the disease that you're looking at. Are these the

(02:10:35):
big brown circles are Does it have a different look?

Speaker 5 (02:10:40):
No, it's I'm convinced it's brown patch.

Speaker 4 (02:10:44):
Okay, all right, Well, brown patch is around all year
and when the conditions are right, which means the temperature
drops a little bit and we get a lot of
moisture around the active continual wetness of the grass and runners,
that's when brown patch attacks, which is why we primarily
see it in the fall, and also in the spring

(02:11:06):
and in the winter. If it's a very mild winter,
we can get some in the middle of the winter.
But uh that that is a moment in time, So
you would have to go just before the brown patch
of tax and do the application. Then have you ever
downloaded my lawn pest, Disease and weed management schedule from
my website by.

Speaker 5 (02:11:23):
Any chance, Yes, yes, I have that. And I'll tell
you something that I did this year that that worked
really well. In one section of the lawn I made,
I made really careful measurements, and I made sure that
I was doing the application rate properly, and I tried
to get that into the soil a little bit earlier

(02:11:46):
than I have in previous years. And that part of
the lawn did really well. It's just this one half
of the lawn just can't seem to get ahead.

Speaker 4 (02:11:56):
Of Yeah, and I'll you that that bad area probably
is either more poorly drained or tends to stay a
little wetter. I mean that could be because of a
downspout of the house. That could be because of the
irrigation system. It could be it just could be a
heavy clay or whatever that's not draining as well. But

(02:12:16):
when when you're telling me that every year this spot
has it and that spot doesn't, it's the conditions and
that spot that are predisposing it to disease. Because diseases
are very environmentally influenced for sure, So figuring out what
that is and alleviating that would also help in that area.

(02:12:40):
But yeah, you follow the schedule, and it you know,
it tells you in October that's when we're starting the
brown patch applications. And you know, each year's different. Coldfront
comes in a little sooner with rain or later with rain,
and that time can vary. But you want to get
on brown patch. You want to get on ahead of it,
because once the circles are there, it's too late. Well

(02:13:00):
it's too late to change that circle. It may prevent
an additional one from forming. I had some one little
spot in my yard got some circles on it in
this fall, and then another spot all of a sudden,
they appeared as we got on into what we would
call winter. You know, back in December, maybe early January,
I started seeing a little increase in a spot and

(02:13:21):
it's just because of the weather. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:13:23):
Right, listen, here's a real quick question. You can almost
do a yes or no on this. I'm going out
later today and do the hand pulling on some weeds
because we've been out of town for nearly a month.
But is it too cold to apply something like weed
beat or ultra to do some spot treating.

Speaker 14 (02:13:44):
No.

Speaker 4 (02:13:44):
I was just earlier today, I was talking about that
if you catch those winter weeds now. They're very visible,
they're very easy to kill now, and don't wait until
they're blooming and setting seed or they're harder to kill.
And maybe even they've got a viable seed. So even
if you killed the weed, you'd still have this need there.
So yes, yes, handpling now, spraying now is all viable stuff.

(02:14:05):
I wouldn't do it right before the freeze. It would
be nice for the weed to be happy and growing
when you spray it to have more effective kill. So
let's get past this freeze, get get a little bit
of some temperature up and then spray them.

Speaker 5 (02:14:18):
Okay, that sounds good. Thanks, thanks so much.

Speaker 4 (02:14:22):
You stay warm, take care, Thanks sir, you as well.
I have to run to a break. Nancy and Flint,
you'll be first up when we come back every time. Hey,
welcome back to the garden line. Glad to have you
with us today. Listen, Uh, the cold is coming and
if you need anything anything to protect you against the

(02:14:44):
cold issues that are going to happen to our plants
for and also on our pets, and also on our
people and also you know you name it. ACE hardware
is the place they've got it. ACE is stocked up.
Do you need frost blanket. Do you need faucet covers?
You got the freeze meser you screw into an outdoor
faucet that causes it when it gets freezing to start

(02:15:05):
leaking water. Yeah, that's cool, and then when it warms
up it quits. They have those. They have pipe insulation,
they have the pipe wrap insulating tape. They also have
anything you need for generator maintenance kits and things they
can do that they can. They can get you propane
for your propane tanks, you know, replace a tank or
something like that. Maybe you need a fitting effix on one.

(02:15:28):
They've got propane heaters out there, electric heaters, fire logs, firewood,
heat lamps, duct tape, handwarmers, gloves, d iicers, and a freeze.
I mean, what do you need? Do you need clamp
lights to heat up a little bit? Heat lights and things?
They got those. ACE is the place. Remember they say
the three piece plants, pipes and pets and I'll throw
people in. They've got gloves to keep your hands warm

(02:15:50):
and so on at ACE Hardware. ACE Hardware is all
over the place, all over the place. You can find
one near you. For example, go down to Port Levaka,
and they got an ACE Hardware there. Ace Hardware and
Sinco Ranch that's someone out there on South Mason Road
as and Senco Euvaldi As on the east side of Houston, Crosby.
Ace up in Crosby, just south the Chemo there's Bake
cliff Ace. I'm telling you they're everywhere. Ace Hardware. That's

(02:16:14):
the place to go for everything you need for this
coming freeze and certainly for caring for your plants and
things as we come out of the freeze as well.
I'm going to head out now on the phones. We're
going to go to Nancy and Flint. Hello Nancy, Welcome
to Garden Line.

Speaker 17 (02:16:29):
Jim Lloyd, Yip, I can I tell you real quick.
Last time we talked to you, asked about where Flint was,
and I explained, But have you ever heard of nongay onions.

Speaker 3 (02:16:40):
I have.

Speaker 17 (02:16:41):
I have plants up there.

Speaker 4 (02:16:48):
Yeah, you're you're up there between Tyler and Jacksonville kind
of up that direction.

Speaker 17 (02:16:55):
Right, Yeah, Palestine and Tyler. It's come on the lake Palestine,
actually late Palestine, not even really in Palestine, but anyway, Yeah,
noon day. I means they're around here and they are
so fabulous. I was going to ask you. We have
about a three year old mimosa and it's been beautif.
My husband just pointed out he didn't think that we

(02:17:16):
covered it last year and it froze and it didn't
anything happen. But you know, it's just a little any
little one trump that goes up there and it just
looks so thrill. Should we try and do that cheepy
tent that you were talking about with the heat lamp.

Speaker 4 (02:17:36):
I couldn't quite hear you sound like you said, mimosa.
Is that right?

Speaker 17 (02:17:41):
Yes, yes, three year old lamp mimosa?

Speaker 4 (02:17:43):
True?

Speaker 5 (02:17:44):
Okay, it's a true.

Speaker 4 (02:17:46):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, mossa uh huh. And it's it's
if it's small enough to cover like you described. Yeah,
i'd throw one over it.

Speaker 10 (02:17:54):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (02:17:54):
It's going to resprout from the base even if the
top got killed, and it'd come back pretty quick into
a little soil or compost around the base of it.
Make a little mound there, just to be extra sure.
But you put a good cover over it and a
little bit of heat. I don't know how you're going
how cold you're going to get up there, but I
bet it's in the teens for sure.

Speaker 17 (02:18:12):
Oh oh yeah, definitely. And we're right on the lake,
so I mean, I've already got plants. It is frozen
on my back deck and it has cut to freeze
because it's really cold.

Speaker 4 (02:18:22):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 17 (02:18:24):
I thought I heard you say that you don't have
to cover azilias.

Speaker 4 (02:18:30):
In general, we don't worry about it. Any plant that
would be hardy once it's established is going to be
less hardy if it's fairly newly planted, has an established thing.
But you may get some leaf burn on them. Yeah,
you may get a little bit of splitting of some
trunk here and there. If the azalias are not hardened

(02:18:52):
off properly. If you got some time and some extra cover,
go ahead and throw one over them, you know, just
give them a little extra protection. But in general, azos
are pretty tough, and they grow an area is colder
than us here and they do.

Speaker 17 (02:19:06):
Okay, Okay, Well, I've got tons of sheets that I've
got tons of big plants that I've been using your
dollar meth. They didn't pull them in the house, but
it's still a lot of work with the dog. You're
not But what I don't have to bring me in
I've been covering. So anyway, Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (02:19:26):
Well, that's certainly.

Speaker 17 (02:19:29):
Be here. I'm gonna I'm gonna make my garden raccoon
proof and they won't get my watermeltons this year.

Speaker 5 (02:19:36):
There you go, Okay, there you go.

Speaker 4 (02:19:38):
All right, that sounds like a good plan. Well you
take care up there. Good luck with all that. And yeah,
you can throw a cover over those as alis, especially
if you want to kind of keep the leaves from
getting burned back and some of the twig damage and stuff.
You can do that if you want. Thank you, Nancy,
appreciate the call. Thanks for listening. Tell your friends about
garden Line and that they can listen online on your
app like you do. All right, folks, Uh, running out

(02:20:01):
of time, We're gonna run up to Bill and Galveston. Hey, Bill,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 7 (02:20:05):
Nice.

Speaker 9 (02:20:06):
You've got two questions for you. One is I got
a bunch of knockout roses down here in Gallus. Do
I need to cover them?

Speaker 4 (02:20:14):
Well? If if knockouts will make it through the freeze, okay, Uh,
if you've got tender new growth roses like to start
growing when it's still kind of cool, And if you've
got real succulent tender new growth you can throw the
cover over just to keep that from getting burned back.
But even if it does, a rose bush is gonna
sprop back out and be okay. Uh So if you
got the time and are able and got new growth,

(02:20:35):
I would throw something over them just to be sure.

Speaker 9 (02:20:37):
But yeah, okay, second question, roses ay far north, I've
got I've got.

Speaker 4 (02:20:44):
An orange tree. Yeah, it's too big to cover. I get.

Speaker 9 (02:20:47):
I'm gonna, you know, wrap the trunk in a blanket,
but I've got to uh, you know, two lamps in
it with sixty what incandescent bulbs in it?

Speaker 4 (02:20:58):
Is that gonna do any good? Or shoul I just forget? Okay,
not a lot. The sixty white doesn't produce much heat,
you know. Bottom line is you've got to get all
the tissues of that tree warmer from the trunk on
up to the outer branches, and so the covers required

(02:21:19):
on that. I can suggest ways to get them covered.
You know, I don't know, we're kind of getting close
to the time right now. But if you do, the
little PVC arches over the plant from at least two directions,
if not three, you can tie a cord to a tarp.
The little gramits and a tarp, and with a little

(02:21:41):
bit of a pole, you can literally pull that tarp
all the way over a pretty good sized tree. You know,
you can guide it over there. You don't have to
get up on a ladder and literally be as high
as the tree to pull it over and then secure
it down. And anything you do like that is going
to help a little bit. So I hope that, hope
that helps. Okay, thanks so much. All right, good luck

(02:22:04):
with that. There you go. I think I'm out of time.
I think I hear music starting to play. I think
garden Line's done for today. We'll be back next week.
Good luck making it through this coldest spell of our
winter season this year. We hope all things do well.
Just remember you can garden indoors, you can garden outdoors,

(02:22:26):
but have where you garden, have fun. Gardening is for fun.
It's mental and physical healing and it's just fun. All right, folks,
Thanks for listening in today. Glad to have you. Remember
you can go to my website gardening with Skip dot com.
Gardening with Skip dot Com. Lots of publications are available

(02:22:47):
up there, and I'm adding more all the time. We're
gonna be adding some more information just shortly here, I
got a couple of publications and adopted stick up there
on the website to help you I have a more
boutiful garden, the more beautiful escape and we find in
the glass