Fall Fertilization Frenzy

Skip Richter takes your questions all morning long!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Katie r h Garden line with Skip rict.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Crazy.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
Heres the basis gas, can you want a trim?

Speaker 4 (00:13):
You just watch him as whirling bats grassies like gas?

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Can you dasso? Maybe takes the soap boxers in the
way bringing the grassies like gas and began you date
sabosclubs back second, I'm not a sound the glasses and
gas and the son bemon of tweets in the gasses

(00:40):
like gas?

Speaker 5 (00:40):
Maybe can you jam the.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
First starting and treating the basses like gas?

Speaker 6 (00:48):
Became you date?

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Everything is something see and everything Here.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Sunday in the hand the ram. Hey, good morning, how
you guys doing on a nice little Sunday morning here?
How about that rain we had? That was good? My
trees are still singing this morning. They appreciated that. They

(01:17):
were pretty thirsty, as were a lot of lawns in
our area. For those of you who had a little
too much enthusiastic weather, I know we had some power
outages and some down lines, and who knows what other
kinds of damages occurred, as can occur when some of
these powerful storms will come through suddenly. Well, we hard

(01:37):
goes out to you. We all are glad to get water,
but sometimes we don't can't control quite how that comes along.
But anyway, it's been it's been a nice relief to
get some rain down in this area and our lawns
are ready to go for it. Now, I'll just say
that I've been talking about this this weekend all weekend,
but saying it again now it is time to get

(02:00):
down anything you're going to get down to fertilize your
lawn for fall, to prevent weeds for fall, and to
also manage brown patch or large patch. The big circles
that we get on our landscapes are in our lawns. Rather.
You know what Nightfiss has that package put together where
it's called they call it the Texas three Step. Basically,

(02:21):
it's it's all three of those activities put into three
different products that are all timely. Right now, that's just
the bottom line on it. Here is why I'm saying
that we put in a fall fertilizer to make our
lawns stronger going into winter and to make our lawns
stronger coming out in the spring. So if you wait

(02:42):
until late in November or something to put that down,
you're gonna get a little benefit from it. But not
near as much as you would getting it down. Now,
when the weather's warmer, the soil is warmer, the grass
is actually taking up nutrients at a faster rate. Now
is when you get the most out of it. Barricade
with this colfront that we have coming in, there's another
one coming too. By the way, the temperatures are dropping

(03:06):
and when you add that to some wetness it could
be rainfall or irrigation. Winter weeds are sprouting and barricadees
a pre emergent, which means before the weeds establish plants,
you got to catch them early with a barricade. Now's
the time fungicide same way. Once you see brown circles
too late, it's too late to I mean, they're not
going to get green until spring when it warms up. Fortunately,

(03:27):
brown patch doesn't kill the lawn. It just rots the
leaves off of the runners. But if you're going to
prevent that, you gotta prevent it. And now it's the
time to get eagle turf fungicide down. All three fall
special wind a riser from nitrofoss, barricade from nitrovoss, Eagle
turf fungicide from nitrofoss, and you're gonna get those products.
A number of places Bearings Hard Run on West Timer

(03:47):
and Shanny Gardens and Richmond Plants for all seasons. Two
forty nine carries night Foss products as well. But here's
the thing. You just, however you go about it, you
need to remember. Timing is everything in the fall, it
all hits at once. It's a perfect storm of activity.
I don't I can't think of another time of the
year when we do all of this, this amount of

(04:08):
activity in our lawns at one time. But now's the time.
Now's the time to do it. Or if you do
not do it, well, okay, that's your call. You can
choose that. But I'm just saying, if you're gonna do it,
don't delay because in no sense in doing it after you.
If you just delay too long, just go ahead and
get it done. Someone's asked me before about my schedule,

(04:30):
you know, what about what about like if I miss
a fertilization during the year, well almost all the during
the year, I'll just tell you what. We'll do it
when you realize you missed it. You know, it's not
like there's a certain day that grass ha have nutrients,
you know, So follow the schedule at my schedule as
best you can. It's on my website, Gardening with Skip

(04:51):
dot com. But if you miss one, just go ahead
and do it this fall one. You know, I would say,
you know, if you get into November and you haven't
done it, well go ahead and do it. But it's
much more important in terms of timeliness. We need to
get that done sooner rather than that's the best way
to go about it. Anyway you get the idea. I

(05:12):
was driving through town yesterday and looking at some landscapes,
and I like to do that. I like to drive
around and get ideas from people you never know. I mean,
sometimes you just see stuff that's funny. And believe me,
I got a lot of pictures where I kind of
need to fuzz out the address of the house because
it is a caricature of an attempt at whatever they're doing.

(05:34):
But most of the time I'm getting ideas here and there,
seeing things, maybe a plant combination I hadn't seen before,
or maybe a new plant that it just didn't in
the garden center as much. And it's kind of fun
to do that, and i'd encourage you to do that too.
Another way you can do it is go online to
pier Scapes. You know, you hear me all the time
talking about them. They are our preferred landscaper here on

(05:55):
guarden Line. And if you go to Pierscapes, what you're
going to find. And by the way, when I say
go two pier Scapes, I mean go to their website
Piercescapes dot com, Pierscapes dot com. You can accomplish the
same thing by following them on social media. Go to
their Facebook page, for example, Pierce Scapes Facebook page, and
you see examples of the work that they do. And

(06:17):
as you go through there, two things will happen. Number One,
you get ideas like, oh wow, landscape lighting looks great.
I that is something that would do good at my house,
because they they're magical in the way they design landscapes
and the way they put on hard scapes and walkways
and retaining walls, all kinds of beautiful little retaining walls.

(06:39):
And you know, Houston's kind of a flat place, right
and so it's nice to have a little bit of
relief in the landscape. And so if your whole yard
is one level, well that's okay, that's fine. But when
you bring out a bed it's just a little bit
higher with a little retaining wall or when you you know, well,
however you do that and their landscapers they know how
to do it. It just it adds interest. It's like a

(07:00):
new addition, just by changing the grade a little bit
of the place. So think about that. Piercescapes dot Com.
Give them a call two eight, one, three, seven fifty sixty.
Remember they do maintenance, and so if you want to
have them come out periodically through the year, maybe not
every week. Maybe you know, we're just going to come
out and we're going to do oh, let's say four

(07:21):
visits a year, one ever quarter to check your beds,
make sure the weeds are out of there, make sure
the mulch is good and thick, replenish it as needed.
Check the irrigation, make sure it's working. And then here
comes that fall color change. You know, where our warm
season plants are going to give it up once we
get a frost, for sure, we're starting to put in
our cool season plants. And so Pierce Scapes does all that.

(07:44):
But it's okay to steal ideas from your neighbors as
you drive around, or people that aren't your neighbors living
in another town. I'm notorious for taking the not beaten path.
What is say? What was the what is the poem?
That's like came to a you know, like a fork
in the road, and the path I took. Oh my gosh,

(08:06):
I'll figure it out. I'm butchering it right now. But
it made all the difference in the world. That's the
bottom bottom line. And so consider the ideas that are
already out there. Potentical gardens, by the way, are a
great way to do that. Also, well, let's take a
little quick break. We'll be back here. By the way.
I should give you a phone number if you choose
to call seven one three two one two five eight

(08:27):
seven four. There you go. You hey, welcome to Garden Line.
Good to have you back. A little oldies there. We'll
get you another one here in just a minute if
you want to hang around a minute. All righty, well,
here we go. Welcome to Garden Line. I'm your host,

(08:49):
Skip Richter, and we are here to help you have
success and fun doing it. There's a lot of ways
to say. This standardway is I wants you to have
a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape, and more fun than
the prossess. The bottom line is this, you want to
have success and it is available. As someone once said,
any kind of success I've had is as I've learned

(09:10):
to see things from a plant's point of view. And
that is true, and that's what we do here on
Guard Line. We spend a little bit of time not
just telling you, you know, I'll do this, but a
little bit of the why, a little bit of the why,
why this works, why we do it, and that just
kind of helps you. It helps you that think like
a plant. It helps you to understand what they want
and to do the kinds of things that do give

(09:31):
you success. Success means a beautiful landscape you're proud of
when you drive up to Success means fun, just the
gratification of being out there and a good day in
the garden. Not a day doing miserable work you don't
want to do, you know, the outdoor equivalent of housework,
but a day enjoying yourself in the garden, stay ahead
of things. Success means having more produce, healthy produce to

(09:54):
bring in. I think probably over weekend, I'm trying to
convince you to grow something to eat. And speaking of
that strawberry season, you know, we've been planting strawberries since,
so I guess probably later in the month of September,
but especially the month of October is big month for
planting strawberries, getting them in the ground ready to go.
By the way, in Channy Gardens has them, you my

(10:16):
little transplants out there. They've got some in stock and
they this is the time to plant, the best time
in the spring. Everybody's going to think about, oh, I
want to plant strawberries, and you plant some then, but
you're not going to get the yields that you do
if you plant them now, you plan them now, you
take care of them, and you will enjoy a nice,
nice harvest. And if you do this and you have

(10:37):
success and you get strawberries, what call me. We'll talk.
We will arrange a meeting place for you to deliver
the strawberry shortcake that I am so looking forward to
eating after your success. Now serious in Chanty Gardens has
the strawberries in They look really good. They also have
some fall flowers that are awesome. When we landscape, we

(10:59):
need to landscape for every part of the year. You know,
I said it yesterday. I was talking about camellias and
how they bloom December January February. You know they're giving
us a winter bloom. It's just beautiful, by the way.
In Channa Gardens has communius too, But you want to
think about the fall season. That's a big blooming season,
and we have things that only bloom in the fall.

(11:21):
One of my favorite fall blooming plants is Gregg's Gosh, Missflower,
almost went blank on the second word. Gregg's Missflower has
kind of a lavendery colored blooms, but it is a
mag It's hard to take a picture of Greg's Missflower
without monarch and queen butterflies all over the blooms because
they love it. It kind of makes a loose groundcover.

(11:41):
So if you like a more natural area maybe as
a groundcover or a perennial to use in a bed
or around the plants, it's a good one for that,
and they've got that out it in Channing Gardens. Of course,
they also have something else that you need to be
doing right now, and that is getting your indoor bulbs
for forcing. Lots of beautiful ameral bulbs. You can buy them.
You can follow the instructions on the box. They're really easy.

(12:04):
They're already ready to go. So you kind of can't
go wrong with these unless you just don't water them
at all. But you put them in, you keep them moist.
They send up a bloom and it's bright beauty indoors
in the wintertime. That's a good thing. They also make
a nice gift, so you could you could purchase one
pot it up and give it to somebody as a gift.
They would like that. When you're done with that, you
get it outside and you plan it and a lot

(12:26):
of them will naturalize here and just look good in
your landscapes too. Continue to do what they do. So anyway,
you got to go to in Jenny Gardens enchanted Gardens
Richmond dot com as the website. They're on the Katie
Folsh side what is it FM three point fifty nine,
And the main thing is remember that they're open from

(12:47):
Monday through Saturday eight to five. Today they're open from
ten am to four. So the minute I quit talking
here on garden Line, you can head over there and
find you some really cool stuff. You'll be treated right
when you're there too. So anyway, I was talking about
yesterday and getting some things done. One of the things that,

(13:09):
by the way, I had a really good time going
to the Ace Hardware Store and Brunham And thanks to
the folks Saturdays for bringing me in. That was nice.
I got to meet a whole new group of folks.
You know, we got guardenline listeners that go way out
from the Houston area and so folks come up northwest
and Brandham area, came in, got to visit, talked about
a lot of things. You know, as usual, here comes

(13:31):
the bags of weeds and stuff like that that we
identified and diagnosed. Gave away four bags on the Nelson
Carbelode their fall fertilizer and also it is the product
that has weed prevention in it as well. Okay, four
bags of those, so for fortunate people got to carry

(13:51):
one of those home. Anyway, thanks for everybody that came out.
Next Saturday, I'm going to be at r CW Nursery,
one of my favorite places to go r CW. I'll
be there from twelfth to two kind of that's pretty
much the standard time, but it has to vary depending
on the day. But I'll be there from twelfth to
two and we're gonna be doing all kinds of good things.
I'll be telling you more about some giveaways and stuff

(14:14):
like that that we'll be doing. But we will have
giveaways again as we usually do. RCW always puts on
a good show. They always have you know, it's just
a fun place to be. Plus they'll they'll have some
you typically some kind of refreshments and things like that
when you come out, So come on out check them out.
It is it is the perfect storm that is for
sure out there at RCW. And by the way, that'll

(14:37):
be November first. It's next Saturday, November first. That I
hope you will come out and see us. If you
would like to give me a call, the phone number
is seven one three two one two five eight seven
four seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
We can answer your gardening questions this morning. With all
this rain, we are going to be seeing the brown

(14:59):
pet circles of peering and our plants are finally getting
much needed rejuvenation. This always kind of catches me off guard.
And I should know this because I've only lived throughout
a hundred times, well not quite a hundred, but we
go through summer and early on into the summer it's hot,

(15:21):
but our plants are doing okay. There's a bank account
of nutrient of water in the soil. And as we
get all the way to September, you know, September still
is the summer month. You're in this part of Texas,
in fact, almost all of Texas, and it's hot, hot, hot,
and the soil reserves are just getting dry because they're
not getting the rains we need unless we have one

(15:42):
of those tropical storms that comes in and blasts rain
all over the place. But things are struggling and then
here comes some fall rains to rejuvenate them. Your plants
don't need to go into winter stressed from drought. And
if they are stressed, you may have never had take
all rot. But you got a lawn that's droughts stressed,

(16:02):
and you will see it show up. It'll infact, it
likes to infect in the mild fall in spring seasons,
that's its prime time for infecting. But we see it
in the summertime when the grass is going downhill because
it's losing roots and the temperatures are going up. But
why do we have take all root rot? Well, it's ubiquitous.
It's everywhere. Go look at a beautiful lawn down the street.

(16:25):
It has to take all in it it is. The
disease is present there. It's not like it just a
spoor is only in your yard and not in your
neighbor's yard. They're everywhere. But when the grass gets weak,
take all moves in. So why am I saying all this.
I'm saying all this because you need to keep your
grass out of stress. And when you do have stress,

(16:46):
it's even more important to do that thing on my schedule.
And that's the treatments for take all root rot, because
it will show up and I'd normally am not a
person who just says get on a schedule and spray
all the time. Spray, spray, spray. I'd rather do all
the cultural things to avoid it. So what is cultural
things to avoid? Take all root rot. Don't let the
grass get drought stressed, don't mis use herbicides that will

(17:10):
stress the grass too, and then you can't control this.
But in extreme shade, that is the stress that take
all root rot will will have an opportunity to move in.
The main thing is avoid the stress. But when you
have stress, you need to protect that plant because it
is unlike the other turf diseases we deal with here,

(17:31):
it kills turf brown patch makes big bronze circles that
green up in the spring. Gray leaf spot put spots
over the leaves, they turn yellow, they shrivel up, and
the grass just looks terrible in the summer. But it
does not kill the grass. Take all root. Rock kills
the grass. So that's why I'm spending time talking about it.
It's important now when you're looking for things to take

(17:51):
care of your lawn and you hear me talk about, well,
you know there's this or that product, go to your
local Ice Hardware store and you're most likely going to
find what you hear me talk about out there. You
can find your local ACE Hardware store by going to
ACE Hardware Texas dot com. Don't forget the Texas. That's
my group of ACE Hardware stores here, Ace Hardware Texas
dot com. We got stores all over the place. Jnr's

(18:13):
ACE Up and Porter. Great store up on thirteen fourteen,
League City ACE down in League City Parkway. I was
there not too long ago. Hardware City on Memorial Drive
in Houston. I've been to that store too, very nice store.
And then let's head out a little bit. Then we're
going to go up to Lake Conroe ACE on Highway
one oh five West, or maybe down to Rockport. There's
an Ace Hardware on on Highway thirty five North down

(18:36):
in Rockport. You're gonna find there everything you need. I
was at the Ace Hardware store in Brenham yesterday, great
great Ace hardware store, and boy, they had a lot
of wonderful things I may I took. Honestly, I made
the mistake. Maybe I shouldn't say that. I took my
wife with me, and as I was taking care of
folks visiting about things, my wife said, Oh, I found

(18:58):
a bunch of Greatchristmas ornaance that we need over here.
So I don't know, So we ended up coming home
with some Christmas Now, how many of you think, oh,
I need Christmas ornaments, I'm going to go to a
hardware store. Well, this is what I keep telling you
about Ace hardware stores. They have all kinds of things
and you will be very pleasantly surprised. These are beautiful,

(19:19):
beautiful ornaments, a lot of beautiful Christmas decorations at that
brunn of Ace Hardware store, and of course everything else
you would expect, like quality tools, you know, brands like
the Wallet and Craftsmen and Black and Decker millwalk in
all of that. So there you go. Ace Hardware Texas
dot Com. I'm gonna take a little break, just another reminder,

(19:40):
and I hope to do this several times for you.
Today we're going to be at RCW Nurseries next Saturday.
That's November first, from twelve to two, So come on
at noon. They often have a little bike to eat there.
I need to find out from them if they're if
they're planning on doing that again. They usually do and
it's a fun time. I can't wait to show you
some of the plants and things that they have in.

(20:00):
You know, they grow their own trees and a lot
of there are trees and shrubs out there in planners
Bill and bring them in so you know you're getting
something that will thrive here. Wherever you live, it'll thrive
in this area. We'll be right back. Well, good morning, gardener.
This is your happy wake up song. There we go.

(20:23):
Who can tell me who sang that?

Speaker 7 (20:25):
Now?

Speaker 2 (20:25):
This is this song I'm happy to say was before
my time. Uh, there are not many songs that are
before my time anyway, Who sang that? Somebody?

Speaker 8 (20:35):
To day?

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Let me know? Seven three two two fifty eight seventy four.
Give us a call. Let's talk about gardening. Otherwise, I
got plenty to talk about a lot of things on
my mind today, a lot of things we need to
discuss that are timely for the season, getting ready to
go on things. Uh, here's an idea. Have you ever
thought about starting plants from cuttings? Have we ever tried

(20:59):
that before? It's not that hard. You can go online
and get information learn how to do it. It's not
hard to do. I just started a bunch of cuttings
let's see about almost probably five days ago, four or
five days ago of rosemary that I have out in
the yard. And I'm going to be going down and
doing a training class on plant propagation done in Galveston County,

(21:23):
And so I'm getting those cuttings rooting and ready to
go for that. And it's not that difficult to do.
You can learn how to do it. And here why
am I bringing that up now? Well, falls a pretty
good time to do cuttings of a lot of things.
You know, roses and rosemary is actually a pretty easy
plant to propagate. But when if you started some cuttings
now and got them rooted, they would they would have
time to get rooted. Pot them up into little four

(21:46):
inch pots, maybe a pretty little decorative pot, and give
that as a gift during the holidays. It could be
it could be just a welcome to my home, thank
you for coming, you know. I mean, it doesn't have
to be like a bow on it Christmas gift, but
you get the idea. But now be a good time
to start some cuttings so that when we get into
that season of the year there's a little nice little gift.

(22:08):
You can use them as decorations two around the table
and things like that. But anyway, it's easy to propagate
if you learn the basics of how to do. It's
kind of like anything with grown plants, not that hard
to do. And listen, the more about plants that you learn,
the greater your hobby expands. I mean, there is not
a day of the year that I can't be doing

(22:29):
something with plants. I always say it's a good day
for gardening. And you know, in listeners, some listeners thinking, yeah,
what if it's you know, zero degrees outside and the
wind is blowing eighty miles an hour. Well, then you
come inside and you take your rosemary cuttings and you
propagate them, and you start seeds from for the next

(22:50):
set of plants you're going to be growing under your
plant lights, and you get at your catalogs and look
around and come up with ideas. You see what I mean.
It's always a good day for doing gardening things. And
the more you learn how to do, the more fun
it is. And a lot of people there's levels of gardeners.
And I don't mean good versus bad kind of things.
I mean there are people that just like I love
a nice place, I'm going to hire somebody to go

(23:12):
out and do it. And that's fine. You can do that.
You can get your inspirations and say, look, I would
like you to plant this plant here. I've seen this plant,
I like it, and do it. On the other end
of the spectrum is the complete do it or suffer.
I mean, they're starting their own transplants from seeds and
doors and things. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, that's
up to you. But the main thing is just know this.

(23:34):
There's no limit to the new things you learn and
to the fun you can have. Once you learn how
to do some simple things like starting a plant from cuttings,
it just is a new fun thing that you can try.
And I know gardeners that I know the gardeners that
try to do it all good luck. It's hard to do.
And I know people that are just into one thing.

(23:56):
I know folks that they are into roses and that's
the only plant that exist. Same thing with day lilies,
you know, the same thing with vegetables. You I think
I care less about of Saint Augustine lawn. Must plow
it up and put vegetable garden in there. And that's good.
That's a fun thing about it. You get to do
what you want to do. It's between you and the
in some cases the HOA because they do have an

(24:16):
opinion about that. But anyway, have fun out there and
learn how to do things. And follows a great time
for doing a lot of things, including taking some cuttings
and starting some plants. You were listening to garden Line
the phone number seven one three two one two five
eight seven four listen. I was talking to Randall from
Pestpros this past week, just saying, Okay, what's going on

(24:38):
right now? You know what kinds of things do people
need to know about? Because he's the expert when it
comes to all kinds of pests, six legged pasts, eight
legged pasts, four legged pests. I don't know if he
can help you with two legged pests, but that would
be a whole other thing. But he was telling me,
you know, right now, it's these barmots. They're wanting to
get up in your attic. They want to get in
the walls. And we were talking about that and he

(25:00):
was telling me, hey, you know, how do you how
do you know when we're rats are going on or not.
And it's not always something you would notice when you
look at it, but they can come out then look
over the whole house thing, walk around it. They check
things out, and they tell you here's here's what you
need to do. You got a problem right here, or
things look pretty good, and uh, whatever you're dealing with
in the way of varmints. They also do that in

(25:22):
addition to the termites and all the other care that
they do. You know, you don't want cockroaches running across
the turkey at the Thanksgiving table, so you get them
to come out. They can shut all that down to
dpestbros dot com. They know how to treat effectively. They
know how to treat in the safest manner. So you
get the long term control without the worries. Dpestbros. Dot

(25:45):
Com two eight one two o six four six seven zero.
We're going to go out now and take a caller
at this time. Hey, who am I talking to? And
where are you calling from?

Speaker 9 (25:57):
Houston?

Speaker 10 (25:58):
Text missus? And I believe it was the Cordetts that sang,
mister Sandman, good for you?

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Look at you? What a what a name? Right with
the Cordetts. Don't you think they might know how to harmonize?

Speaker 10 (26:15):
They probably were feel harmonizers.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
There you go, well, good for the good for that answer. Well,
how can we help you today on gardening?

Speaker 10 (26:25):
Oh? You said call if you knew who it might be.
And my grandmother who's one hundred and nine used to
sing that song.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Wow, you know that that music and gardening will keep
you young. I don't know, but I I think that's
a great, great that you knew that. I appreciate you.
I wish I wish I had a giveaway prize.

Speaker 5 (26:52):
That's okay.

Speaker 10 (26:52):
Music and gardening are both seap.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
They are.

Speaker 10 (26:58):
They play you one of them in my patio doing
the gardening.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
That's it. There you go, Well, you're gonna make it
to one hundred and nine for sure. Then congratulations on
getting that answer right. I appreciate you calling me. You
take care O.

Speaker 10 (27:14):
Think you have a safe weekend.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
You too, Bye bye? All right? You know what I
need to do the I play these songs that are
you know, from the past. I like to mix it up.
I do some modern things and mix it up. But
I guess what I need to do is start doing
stuff that's like came out yesterday, because that would that
would throw a lot of people. You know, maybe we
just start to get fifteen year olds listening to garden Line.

(27:41):
That would be a new strategy. Maybe, eh, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (27:45):
Hey.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Southwest Fertilizer is a Houston lawn and garden tradition. It's
been around since nineteen fifty five. Do you know that
I'm the fifth garden Line host? Started back in the
days of Dewey Compton. A lot of you guys have
heard of are new or listened to Dewey Compton and
went through a number of hosts over the years, including
Randy Lemon who preceded me. A Randy beloved host of

(28:08):
garden Line for over twenty five years here and so,
Southwest Fertilizer has been around. This is their seventieth year
anniversary of that store, and they carry everything. The reason
that people like to go there is because they know
they're going to be treated right with friendly service. They
know when they get a product it's quality, like the
kind of tools that they carry just to being one

(28:30):
example of quality. And they know there's going to be
great selection. And if you've got a problem in your yard,
it doesn't matter if it's insect disease or weeds or
pasts or whatever. If it doesn't matter if it is
a matter of fertilizing and you just need a certain
kind of fertilizer, They've got it all there because their
selection is great. Corner Bis and Nott and Renwick in
Southwest Houston seven to one to three, six sixty six

(28:54):
one seven four to four. And we are scheduling next
springs appearances. I'm going to be out it selfwist pertalizer
a little bit later in the spring next year, so
I hope you put that. We'll put the date out later,
but look forward to seeing those of you come out
to those. Hey, it's time for me to go to
a little quick break here. We'll be right back. Oh right,

(29:15):
We're back welcome back to the garden Line see the
last day. It is good to have you with us
this morning. What kind of gardening questions do you have?
I'd like to ask me a question. You can do
so I call in seven to one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one
two five eight seven four visiting my producer during break here.

(29:40):
We're just talking about different kinds of songs and music
and things. And you know, I've had a kids that
were born in different decades, uh, certainly over the years,
and I have this collection of music that's in my
head as certainly the stuff I grew some of the
stuff I grew up with, but I have stuff way
before me, which I like to play things that are
that are before me. But also some of the stuff

(30:01):
that they listen to. I think of it as new music,
and then I get to looking at it. No, that
was twenty years ago. It's not new music or something
even further than that. So anyway, but music is great,
whatever kind you like. We don't take We normally don't
take listening requests here on garden Line because that gardening show,
for crying out loud music is just something on the side.

(30:23):
But if you've got a particular kind of song you
think would be upbeat or fine, I don't know, maybe
tell the producer about it. Sometimes we'll see if we
can get it. No promises, no promises, but we will
give it a shot if we can do that. See
if I regret making that offer out there or not. Anyway.
Warren Southern Gardens out in Kingwood awesome garden center. And

(30:46):
if you live in Kingwood you got another one. It's
Kingwood Garden Center. And they're not too terribly far apart way.
Both in Kingwood. Warrens is on North Park Drive, Kingwood
is on Stone Hollow Drive, and both of them are
open seven days a week. So yes, you can go
out there today. You can go out there and get
you some flats a cool seasoned color. You can go
out there and get you your mom's. You can go
out there and get you some really nice houseplants. They've

(31:09):
got a nice selection of plants that do really really well.
I like the marantas also called the prayer plant. Just
I like houseplants that have color. That's about my A
lot of maranas have color. The Chinese evergreen I go
in ema has color. Those are just beautiful. The kalathea
another plant. I know you're going, Okay, what are all

(31:30):
those go to Warren Southern Gardens. I want to see
your plants skips talking about. There are houseplants that have color.
We're talking about bowld stripes, deep purples and pinks and whites,
and of course the greens and silvers in there. They're
just really really attractive and plants for whatever kind of
light levels that you might have. Warren Southern Gardens also

(31:51):
has trees and shrubs right now. In fact, last time
I checked, they still had the highly sought after Chinese
fringe trees. That's my favorite spring blooming tree, little shaggy
white blooms that have a nice little fragrance. It's a
tree that doesn't get too terribly large, which means it's
gonna fit a lot of lots that aren't terribly large
these days. You know, back in the day, third of

(32:12):
an acre was typical for just a city lot. Now
you can reach out your window and close your neighbors blinds.
Their houses are so close together. So anyway, Warren Southern Gardens,
Kingwood Gardens Center, you're gonna enjoy what they have there.
They've got the Microlife and the Nelson plant Food filling stations.
So when you buy a jar of Microlife or a
jar of Nelson plant Food, one of those products, you

(32:34):
can take the empty jar back in, pull down the
handle like you're buying peanuts in the grocery store. Just
pull down the handle, refill that jar, save you a
little money on fertilizer, and avoid throwing away plastic, which
we know we got enough plastic out there in the environment,
so that's kind of cool thing that they do. They
are stocked up on things like leaf mold compost, the
veggie and herb mix. You know, in general, they do

(32:57):
a good job carrying heirloom soils products out at Warren
and a kingwood, and then the fertilizers. You know, those
of you who love Microlife and love Nelson products, they
are very well stocked up on those two as well
as some others. I am planning on is I've got
some traveling I need to do. I'm going around in state,

(33:20):
out of state here coming up in the coming week.
And when I get back, I've got a number of
projects that are waiting on me. I'm going to put
in a fruit tree, a peach tree, this winter, and
I love things I can eat. I love things I
can look at, but I love things I can eat too,
So peaches or do. I do not have a peach
tree where I currently live, And I've always been a

(33:41):
fan of peaches, my favorite deciduous fruit that we grow here.
So what I've done is I've got a raised bed
in one of those metal beds, the painted metal sides.
Mine happened to be vago beds, but there's a lot
of different kinds out there. I've got it raised and
it's wide enough to accommodate the peach tree. But it's

(34:02):
in an area where drainage isn't super It's okay, but
it's not great, and peaches like good drainage. So I
could either say, well, I don't have any place for peachtree,
or I could put in a raised bed and plant
it not And you can do that, And I don't
mean a skinny one. I mean a wide would at
least five feet wide would be ideal. You plant it
in there and you take off, and I can't wait

(34:24):
to do it. It's in my orchard area. I made a
little orchard area on the side of the house. It
just used to be grass that I mode for no
apparent reason because we never go over there. We don't
play in that area or anything like that. And so
now it's an orchard and I'm really looking forward to that.
So anyway, I'm gonna be planting a peachtree. I'm picking
one out one of the one of the types that

(34:46):
is coming out now from the A and M fruit
breeding program that doctor David Byrne did for years and years.
He's now retired, but the program goes on and they
have released a number of excellent each If you wan't
to find more about them, you can go to the
Aggie Horticulture website. There's a number of different peaches. They
have nectarine, they have peach, they have white fleshed peach

(35:09):
for those of you who like white fleshed peaches, they've
got those as well. And they have them for every
amount of chilling that's around our region here, So if
you need something lower chilling, like for the Houston region,
they got them. If you've got someone you know. Peach.
Peach Country in Texas is kind of two places. It's
out in the Hill country, a lot of peach orchards

(35:32):
over the decades out there, and then up around Mahea.
Y'all know where Maheya is. Remember, you know, if you're
in Texas, uh and you see the letter X, it
can it can mean a lot of things. In the
word Texas, it's it's x. It sounds like X. In
the word Bayer, you don't even say the letter eight X.

(35:54):
And in Mahaya you make it an h emmy x
I A. Anyway, Mahya. That band through just south of
Waco that goes across there's some good soils and lots
of peaches are grown up that direction, and so they
have peaches that have come out that are for that
area as well. So wherever you live, they've got some
new varieties doctor Burn has created that are excellent, outstanding varieties.

(36:15):
When I had a peach orchard, I used to have
text Royal and text star. By the way, you can
tell where a lot of plants are from by the
name of the plant. So Texas bread peaches are usually
have texts in the name text Royal, text star. Florida.
Have Florida in the name of Flora in the first

(36:37):
part of the name. Florida King is an example of that.
And then peaches that originate Louisiana. I have la at
the beginning, lafaliciana. That's a Louisiana La la Louisiana lapachier,
which is French for the beach. That that's another Louisiana
bread variety, laffa liciana said that one see anyway, there's

(36:58):
a there's a bunch of them. And when it comes
to blackberries, I'm droning on here, but I'm interested in this.
When it comes to blackberries, if it sounds like the
name of a Native American tribe, well it probably was
bread in Arkansas. So Navajo, Apache, a rap or a
rap a hoe rather those a watchita, that's a Native

(37:19):
American tribe. Those are all bread in Arkansas. Now, if
it's a pecan and it has a Native American tribe name,
it was bred by the USDA in the South, either
Texas and or Georgia, places like that, and they give
us things like Pawnee pecan. All right, that's enough of that,
enough fun facts. All right, we gotta take a little

(37:41):
break here for the top of the hour. If you
would like to be first up. Well, we have not
had a call to they's that's a surprise. Well, I
tell what happens on Sundays. People don't call early, and
then at the last hour they're calling and it's hard
to get on because we're busy with other callers in line.
So where do the wives. There's a good time to dolls.

(38:04):
Dial Here I go seven one three, two one, two
fifty eight seventy four. Don't forget. I'm gonna be at
r c W Nurserries next Saturday from twelve noon to
two pm. It's come on out look forward to seeing
It is one of the last appearances of fall.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Trim.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
Just watch him as many things to Susy.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Gas Savos back again, not a sign gas Sam.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Good morning, gardeners. Good to have you with us this morning.
Let's talk gardening. We got plenty of things we can
talk about today. Hey, if you're doing any fall planting,
any fall planting, any flowers, any vegetables, roses, trees, shrubs,
get you some hash to grow six to twelve six
from Medina, mix it into a watering can and just

(39:22):
drench it over that root zone as you're filling. When
you put the plant in the hole, you can drench
it then, or you can start filling it up and
then drench it. When you finish filling it up, give
it one more drenching and then I want you to
repeat that a week apart, a week from now, and
then a week from then. Okay, three times has to
grow six twelve six that high phosphorus fertilizer for the
benefit of the root system. A new plant is coming

(39:44):
out of a container and it is entering the wild
world where it can stretch its roots, but it takes
time for it to get established. And the more you
speed that up, the hardier and more dependable that plant
will be going into next hot summer, which I know
we shouldn't talk about and we're just finishing on but
next time summer is coming, and you want to set
your plan up for success by taking care of that now.

(40:04):
Another great product for Medina is the Medina Plus. It's
the original Medina soil Activator Plus. They really beefed it
up with the micro nutrients with seaweed extracts to get
all the natural soil building advantages. You can also, by
the way, use that Medina Plus as a folier feed.
It works really really good for that as well. Let's

(40:25):
head out to the phones, and we're going to visit
with Marie and friends. Would hey, Marie, welcome to garden line.

Speaker 11 (40:35):
Hik skip, I think about the wrong fertilizer.

Speaker 5 (40:39):
I got the nitro barricade pre emergence.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 5 (40:47):
I was too late.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
No, no, do it, do it right now. In fact,
we're going to hang up the phone and run outside.
It's time to get it down before these winter weed sprouts.
So how now's a great time to do barricade. Don't
delay though.

Speaker 5 (41:03):
I'll do that one.

Speaker 7 (41:04):
I'll do it when the sun rise.

Speaker 11 (41:05):
Okay, all right, thank you about it last week and
I thought maybe I was too late, okay.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Okay, all right, well, good news. Thank you. I'm glad
I can be the bearer of good news. You bet,
Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Hey, have you
guys been to wildbirds lately? Wild birds has so much
in the way of quality bird products. I mean, you
want feeders, all kinds of feeders, from thistle feeders to

(41:33):
assuet feeders, to tray feeders to the excluder. It the
eliminator either squirrels can't get into it. That's the bottom line.
It's a great feeder. It's one of my favorite feeders
that I have. They got them all there. Now's the
time to start putting out the Wildbirds super Blend Winter
super Blend Wildbirds Unlimited Winter super Blend. That's what you

(41:54):
need to know. Winter super Blend from the folks at
Wildbirds Unlimited has plenty of fat protein. Because as we
go into shorter and shorter days, the number of hours
the birds have to be out there finding food along with,
you know, the availability of food goes down significantly. That's
why it's so important to get the Wildbirds Unlimited Winter

(42:15):
super Blend. Get it stocked up in the feeders. We
got kinglets, we got warblers of a couple of different
types that are going to be showing up soon. Have
your feeders ready. By the way, it's a little bit
of a lull right now at the feeders, so go
ahead and get them cleaned up. Get that old moldy
feed that may have gotten wet from a raine storm
or something, get it out of there. Get them clean up.
Put them fresh new feed in there from your local

(42:35):
Wildbirds Unlimited store. There's six of them. And by the way,
I'm going to be at the Wildbirds Unlimited in Kingwood
two saturdays from now, that's November eighth. That'll be my
last appearance of the year. Wildbird's Unlimited in king With
So I hope you'll come out and see me there anyway.
Wbu dot com forward slash Houston to find the six
wabirds stores near you. Let's go now to Joe N. Stafford. Hello, Joe,

(43:02):
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 8 (43:05):
Morning morning. I've got a quick question for you. Uh.
I got a BlackBerry bush and I planted, uh in
August last year, and it's about three feet tall, and
I hadn't got no berries on it. However, I looked
it up online and had something about pruning, primo caine

(43:29):
and floracanes. The how do you tell the difference?

Speaker 2 (43:36):
All right?

Speaker 8 (43:36):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Did you do you know the name of the variety?
If you said it, I missed it. Do you know
which kind of BlackBerry it is?

Speaker 8 (43:44):
No, sir, It just says I'm the I'm the tag here.
Just a sweet, select, juicy, fresh, nutrious, nutritious grown from
from this region. BlackBerry.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
All right, So here's here's that's how the standard type
of BlackBerry grows. Now. Plant breeders have kind of come
up with some new things, but the standard type, which
is what I think you have. The first year, a
shoot comes up from the ground. They call those canes,
those upright shoots, and it's called a prime ocaine, prime
meaning one meaning the first year. Then it goes through

(44:19):
winter and in the spring that primacane becomes a flora
caane as in flower flora cane, and it blooms, it fruits,
and it dies. And so you're always after harvest removing
the canes that fruited and letting the new primacanes which
will be well up coming up through those canes, leaving

(44:42):
them for the next year. So it's a two year
cycle of each cane. Each cane lives two years, and
that's what that means. So the pruning on them is
there's only two things you do on printing a BlackBerry.
The primacanees when they come up the first year, as
they get about chest high, you just pin the tip
out of them. The tip is soft, even the thorny,
when you can pinch it out with your fingers, and

(45:04):
that'll force it to form side branches, and each of
those side branches will bear fruit the following spring. After
it's fruit that's the second pruning step, and that's cutting
that whole thing off at the ground and getting it
out of there so you have a neat, clean BlackBerry patch.
That's the cycle on blackberries.

Speaker 8 (45:23):
That'll be durned easily. Back in the day on the
we used to go along the railroad tracks and you
see blackberries. Oh you know what I'm saying, right.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Oh, I do, I do. I'll pick dewberries off the
ground too, growing up.

Speaker 8 (45:40):
Yeah, exactly. So anyway, okay, we'll skip that. Thank you
very much. You have a blessed Sunday, and we'll keep listening.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
You as well. Thank you appreciate that a whole lot.
Houston Powder Coaders is the biggest powder coder in the region.
And basically, let me tell you what they do in
a nutshell. They take metal, furniture, yard art, metal rails,
metal posts. You know, we got a light post out
in front of the house with those old gas light types.

(46:08):
Whatever you got that's metal, and they make it new.
They get the rust off of it, they clean it up,
they put fresh bolts and hardware and stuff on it,
get it all ready, and they powder coat it with
one of one hundred different colors that you get to
pick out. I mean, you made any color you want.
If if you like the look of an old rusty
you know, wall hanging on the side of the house,
one of those outdoor things, you can do that. But

(46:31):
just painted that color and then you don't have rust
running down the side of the house. And I say paint,
I mean powder coat is the most efficient, the most effective,
the most durable thing you can do to renew, rejuviate, rejuviate,
Did I say that right? Rejubiate the outdoor furniture that
you have outside, from barbecue pits to outdoor furniture to

(46:54):
you name it. Houston Powdercoders dot Com two eight one
six seven six thirty eight eighty eight. Let's take a
quick break here, and oh we just went blank on
the boards. We were about to go to a caller.
But we'll catch those folks when we come back. All right, folks,
here we go.

Speaker 9 (47:11):
Oh, I love you so.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Welcome back to Guardline. Good to have you with us.
Always good to visit with you about the kinds of
questions you have. We had somebody just about to get
pulled up on the phone call that disappeared before we
went to that break, So we're open up here. If
you'd like to give us a call, we're happy to
answer your questions. Nitropos has their three step program and

(47:33):
I talk about it all the time, and I cannot
tell you how timely it is right now to get
that done now normally through the year. You know, if
you're fertilized a little earlier or a little late, it's
no big deal. You can do that. I mean there's
a better time, but then there's okay times. Well, we
get to the fall. We got three things we need
to get done, and that is the Nitrofoss Fall Special
Win a Riser. It's an eight twelve sixteen fertilizer high potassium.

(47:57):
The third numbers potassium and it's important for cold heartiness
and for coming out strong in the spring. And the
sooner you get it down, the more good it's going
to do for the grass plant because once it gets cold,
the grass is not taking up a lot, is not
growing at all, and you just don't get the benefit.
So get it done now. Second step nitropross barricade prevents weeds.
We just had a break in the weather, we got

(48:19):
some rain. The weeds will be sprouting. You need to
get it done soon because it prevents weeds, it doesn't
kill existing weeds. Weeds are much easier to prevent with
a pre emergent than they are to kill with a
post emergent. It just works better that way. There's a
lot of reasons why it gets a little complicated with
post emergents, including damage to grass and stuff like that.
You want to be careful with that. Get the barricade down,

(48:41):
get it done now, follow the label, put it out
at the right rate. Third, Eagle turf fungicide prevent the
brown circles that are come in this spring or this
fall when you get cold or cool, not cold cool.
Where any weather we see brown patch. It's also called
large cold large patch, and Eagle Turf fungicide helps to
prevent that. Now, where do you get the Texas three

(49:03):
step nitro Foss's Three steps to fall success in your lawn. Well,
you get them at the arbor Gate Tombul Texas they
carry night Foss products. You go to Fisher's Hardware and Laporte.
You go to Stanton Shopping Center and Alvin, all places
that carry one or more of the nitrofoss products that
will help you have success with your lawn. That's what

(49:25):
we're trying to do, for sure. I was checking out
some information that Plants for All Seasons had online. You know,
they have a new website. I say new, and it's redone.
They redid the website a little while ago. It's a
really excellent one and a lot of good educational information
and stuff on there. Plans for All Seasons is a

(49:46):
special kind of garden center spinner and since nineteen seventy three,
it's on Tombol Parkway, which is High we two forty nine,
just north of Luetta. So you exit Luetta, a cross
over Luetta and go just a even a block hardly
north and there you go. There you've got Plants for
All Seasons. This family owned operation is they're experts. They

(50:08):
know what they're talking about. You can bring them samples,
you bring them photos. You can ask them questions. Maybe
you want beauty, but you don't know how to do it,
you don't know what to do. Take some pictures of
the front of your place, take pictures of a flower
bed that you'd like to improve, and go in and
show them say here, look at this, this is what
I got. We're in the fall season. Here, what would
you recommend what could I do right now to improve this?

(50:30):
And then what are some longer term plans and things.
Maybe you want a container of color. They got beautiful
quality containers and plants for all seasons and the plants
that go in them to make your patio, front, porch
wherever you want to put the container look really really good.
Plants for all seasons dot com two eight, one three, seven, six,

(50:51):
one six four six two eight one three seven six
sixteen forty six. So I've talked about a number of
different things. I was talking about plant propagating a while ago.
I also started some seeds.

Speaker 8 (51:07):
Now.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Normally, a lot of things you can plant directly out
in the garden, like lettuce, for example. You can drop
lettuce on the ground out in the garden. It'll sprout
and grow and be just fine. I like to start
a lot of things from seed. One of the reasons
is a lot of things are varieties I can't get elsewhere.
They're just not mainstream. You know where they're going to
be available as transplants in most places. So that's a

(51:30):
reason to start from seed. Another reason is I've got
seed that I've collected myself, and it's a variety nobody has.
It's not even a variety. It's just I like the plant.
I keep seeds from it. Each year. I collect seeds
and keep fresh seeds on end. And if something looks
a little bit better one plant than the other, I
get the seeds off the good plant. That's how you

(51:50):
go about it. Let us it's time to get lettuce
out there planted. The many cool season gardening is all
about the greens. It's not just greens. You can grow
cool seasoned peas. You can grow broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, all
that kind of stuff, But a lot of greens in
the cool season. And a salad. You don't have to

(52:11):
slather slather a salad in ranch dressing for it to
have flavor. You put some a regular in there. For
that kind of a nutty flavor that a regular brings.
You can put ridicio in. Ridicio is a kind of
a bitter type of flavor that really adds a zip
to salads. And there's a lot of others, a lot
of other good things that go into the salad. But

(52:33):
lettuce is easy to grow. Remember this lettuce seed needs
light to germinate. Isn't that interesting? Most seed we bury
them in the ground, you bury lettuce, and you'll never
see it because it needs light to germinate. And in fact,
if you want to be a nerd at the next
garden party, you can tell them it needs the red
wavelength of light. Of all the wavelengths, the red is

(52:53):
the one that helps let us germinate. And so what
we do with lettuce is we prepare a nice seed bed,
not big, old, chunky clods where lettuce is falling two
inches deeper than another seed that lands rot beside it,
because there's all these chunkiness to the soil. A nice
smooth seed bed. Kind of temp it down just a
little bit, not press too hard, but put the lettuce seed,

(53:16):
sprinkle it over the surface of the area, and then
water press it down to the soil a little bit
and water it in and just wait. But you gotta
water regularly. You got to keep it moist. If seed
starts to germany, any kind of seed starts to germinate,
and then it dries out. It dies until it gets
a root in the ground and can take up moisture.

(53:36):
It is very susceptible once the germination process begins. So
keep a moist, to keep a moist to keep them
moist and you can have lettuce. Now. Second thing about lettuce,
I see this all the time. People plant too much.
Just because there's a packet full of lettuce seed, doesn't
mean you need to plant a packet full of lettuce

(53:57):
seed at one time. In fact, what you should do
is ask yourself this question, how much lettuce do I
eat in a week? Now? I don't recommend head lettuce
for our area here. I like the bib types and
the loose leaf types of lettuce better. But how much
do I eat in a week? You know, not much?
I mean, even if you eat a lot of salads,

(54:17):
that's not a whole lot of lettuce. Plant that amount
and then a week later plant that amount, and a
week later plant that amount. Otherwise you're gonna have a
whole bunch of lettuce that goes past what it should
and there's no need for that. Just plant it in
small amounts. It's okay. Just think about that, how much
do I eat in a week? Now? Some vegetable crops

(54:38):
like carrots, Well, you can store carrots for a very
long time. So when it's good season for carrots, I
grow a lot of carrots, so have extras they can
store in the soil for a good long while and
they can store in the crisper or refrigerator. But not
with lettuce, not with greens like that, so try some
of those. There's a lot of good information out there.
Many of your county extension offices have lists of what

(55:02):
to plant and when. Just contact your agrolife extension office
in your county. If you are listening to my voice
on the radio, you have an extension office in your
county that can provide you information. You also go to
the Aggi Horticulture website and find lots of good vegetable
information there. They have a fact sheet on every vegetable

(55:22):
you would want to grow in the vegetable section on
the front page of the Aggie Horticulture website. Heirloom Soils
has really done an awesome job of creating the perfect
soils for whatever use you've got. If you want veggies, veggies,
and irb they have a veggiean herb mix that is ideal.
By the way, you can use it for flowers too,

(55:43):
but a veggie and herb mix that is ideal for
growing vegetables and herbs in a raised garden bed or
even improving the soil that you have a little bit.
I like to just use the mixed straight in a bed.
It works really well. From that, leave moconfos for drop
dusting your lawn. So has that you can go out
to porter and pick it up by the bulk. You
can call them and have them deliver it. They'll either

(56:05):
bring a dump truck and dump it in the driveway
or they'll bring up bring it by the supersack. You
have to buy three cubicyard supersacks. That's three supersacks that
are each one cubic yard for delivery. And if you
don't drive out there, they'll set it in your truck
or trailer and you can bring it home. Uh and
then they have it by the bag everywhere you want
to go. I mean it just I see that stuff
for sale all over the place. Heirloom Soils of Texas.

(56:30):
So here's what you do. You go to airloomsoils dot com,
airloomsoils dot com, take a look at all the products,
take a look at all the information, but the main
thing is do it. Remember soil is first soil before plants,
bronze stuff before green stuff. If you hope to have
a decent garden, start by getting the soil right and
then you'll enjoy the success. That's how that works. You're

(56:53):
listening to Garden Line and I'm your host, Skip Richter.
We're here to help you have bounty and beauty in
your garden and in your landscape. If you like to
give me a call, it's seven one three two one
two five eight seven four. Now would be a good time.
Got to open lines. We can visit with you about
the things that are of interest to you. It's kind
of funny how calls come in waves. You know, you
get a whole bunch of calls in and then now

(57:14):
you're trying to get through the folks so people don't
have to wait too long, and then it goes quiet
for a little while. So I guess what we should
do is we ought to have on the website like
a callboard number. You know, we can see how many
calls are on hold or oh it's wide open, I'm
gonna call right now. But that's just the way it works.
D and D Feed up in Tomball is a great

(57:34):
feed store. It's out there on twenty nine to twenty
west of Tomball and it's been around since nineteen eighty
nine and it just keeps getting better. I was talking
about heirloom sols. They carry heirloom sold by the bag
they're at D and D Feed, But they also carry
the fertilizers that I always am telling you you need
to use this, you need to use that, nitrofoss products,

(57:56):
micro Life products, Nelson, turf Star, the Dina products at Hazemite.
You know, we're we're talking about all the things that
are the recipe, the ingredients for success. You'll find them
there at D and DE Feed. Now going inside, I
was walking in there just visiting with them the other day.

(58:16):
I always walk over to the products section where they've
got things to control pest, weed and diseases. They have
a lot of different things that you just don't find normally,
but they're available there at D and D Feed for
whatever ales your plants, your yards, your gardens and so on.
They've got you covered. High quality dog food like Star Pro, Diamond,
Victor and Origin, and of course feed for livestock, things

(58:39):
to control those rodents that are going to be looking
for a warm place this winter season. At D and
DE Feed, three miles west of two forty nine on
twenty nine twenty in Tomball, two eight one three five
one seventy one forty four two eight one three five
one seventy one forty four at D And defeed, uh,

(59:02):
like I said, I was gonna be traveling this week,
and one of the things I like to do when
I travel is go to visit garden centers. And every
town I go to, I have to check out the
garden centers because you always see some cool stuff. I
call that horticultural tourism. By let's go to the phones. Now,
we got Kevin that's come up here on League from
League City. Hey Kevin, welcome to garden line.

Speaker 12 (59:24):
Hey, good more skip. I'm out here getting an early
start and I'm pulling the weeds in my fire bag,
getting ready to plant some collar greens. But I'm wondering,
can you use a pre emergent? Can I use a
pre emergent?

Speaker 2 (59:43):
No? Because your seeds, your seeds won't come up. Uh,
so what you need to not? You just need to
get the colors planted and then moltch the area except
for right where the seeds are. The colored seeds are
mult it well, and that's the best thing. Now, once
the collars are up and growing, there are some pre
emergence labeled for the garden, but they're not that many.

(01:00:05):
I need tell you. By the way, I've got about
forty five seconds before I go to a hard break.
But if you want to stick around, we can keep
talking after the break. What other might you have on
that I'm not cutting you off rightday, We still got
a little bit.

Speaker 12 (01:00:21):
Well. I was actually planning on buying some greens, not
from seeds, some already started ones.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
Okay, once those transplants are well rooted in and watered in,
then you can do the pre emergent on them. But
that is something to keep in mind. Listen, I'm not
trying to cut you off, but I do have to go.
If you want to hang around, we can continue this discussion.
I'll be happy to do that. I'll leave that up
up to you. Right now, we are going to take

(01:00:49):
a little break here, folks. We got the bottom of
the hour news and that is a hard break that
I cannot argue with. Don't forget. I'm going to be
at RCW Nurseries next Saturday from twelve to two. I
hope come out and see me. We'll be right back
with more of garden line. All right, there we go, Sandy,
talk about where talk somebody. I'll know who Minny Pearl is.

(01:01:16):
She walked out in the Grand Old Opery and she
heard a voice coming from the stage and she said,
who is that voice? And that was as of yet
not famous Randy Travis. And the rest is history. Let's
head out back to Kevin now in League City. Hey, Kevin,
welcome back garden Line. How can we help?

Speaker 12 (01:01:39):
Well, I was wondering, do you have a suggestion on
where I might get some good starter plants?

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Let's see down in League City. You you're not too
terribly far away from Moss Nursery, which is in Seabrook.
It's a little bit of a drive over there, but
they carry a few, not a few. They carry a
lot of starter plus over at the Moss area. I
think Corges hid and Gardens over in Alvin Santa Fe
area they carry some as well. I don't know right

(01:02:08):
now what the selection level is over there, but you
can give a call and check that out. But one
of those two would be what I would recommend. I
assume you're trying about vegetables, right, yes, sir, Yeah, that's
probably it. Those are two that come to mind from
done in that area.

Speaker 12 (01:02:28):
Also, well, My business is over on the Southwest Freeway
at sugar Land Stafford area. Is there one over there
that you would recommend?

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
Maybe sugar Lan Sugarland Stafford. Bob at Southwest Fertilizer does
have veget transplants out in front of the store, and
he has a nice little selection there, So I would
try Southwest Fertilizer corner Bussinett and Runwick also and that.

Speaker 12 (01:02:54):
Okay, okay, I know I've been over there before. All right, Well,
thanks for her helps get Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Hey, Kevin, thanks a lot. Good luck with that harvest.
We appreciate your call. Oh, hold on, I got you back,
almost lost you got you Okay, go ahead.

Speaker 12 (01:03:12):
Hey, I want to send you a picture of my
garden helper nature.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Hang on, I will put you on hold and my
producer Nicholas will pick up the phone and give you
an email to do just that. Thanks a lot, All right,
there we go. Hey, Nelson Plant Food carbo load it
is the thing for this season. Now. I gave away
four bags yesterday a Brunn of Mace hardware. Congratulations, everybody
won that.

Speaker 8 (01:03:39):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Nelson Plant Food's a family owned Texas brand. They've been
in the Katy area since the late eighteen hundreds at
Nelson Family. They make their own fertilizers right there locally
out in just the north and west of the Houston area.
So this is a nice local Texas company producing some
quality food for your plants. Turf Star carbo Load Purple

(01:04:02):
bag is for this time of the year. It is
a ten ten twenty fall fertilizer with a weed pre
emergent prevention product in the bag. See two birds with
one stone. But don't delay. You know, we got to
get the weed prevention down asap. So grab you some
carbo load the purple bag today from the folks at Nelson.

(01:04:25):
Let's see here. We're going to go now to Jim
in Paarland. Hey, Jim, welcome to Guardline.

Speaker 13 (01:04:32):
Yees, sir, I sent you some pictures of what I
think are a hopeless not they call patch.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Okay, let me take a look at these. Get your pictures.
When did you start to notice this die bag?

Speaker 13 (01:04:50):
Like about a week ago, ten days? Oh wow, it
was just after I've I put down.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
The what did you put down?

Speaker 5 (01:05:05):
It was just after I put.

Speaker 13 (01:05:08):
Down the fall fertilizer, the not to foss brown and
that puts down some barricade and also, uh, okay.

Speaker 5 (01:05:20):
Something for bugs. I't forget that what it was.

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Yeah, well that didn't cause the browning. Is this a
zoysia lawn?

Speaker 5 (01:05:29):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Palisades? Maybe it looks like palisades?

Speaker 6 (01:05:34):
Correct?

Speaker 9 (01:05:34):
Correct?

Speaker 5 (01:05:35):
Correct?

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
Okay, ye good, good guess Well that is very strange.
That does not happen overnight. Now take all can attack zoysia.
We usually see the problem on on St. Augustine because
there's more Saint Augustine lawns out there. But that is
very strange. I would what I would do on that
particular situation, And anybody listening, this is me answering a

(01:05:59):
specific QUES question from a specific zois lawn down in
Pairland gym's lawn. So don't apply this everywhere, but I
think right now putting down a product containing a Zoxi
strobin in it would be very helpful, and I would
do it soon. It goes down in the ground, the
roots take it up and it shuts down disease that's

(01:06:22):
occurring in the grass plant. Usually take all didn't happen fast,
and so that's throwing me a little bit. But the
pattern of this die back, it's not an insect and
it just has to be some kind of disease in
the grass plants themselves, not just on the leaves, but

(01:06:43):
killing the grass plant. So a Zoxi strobin. It's a
z x y. And if you would like to go
to my schedule, which is online, I've got the plant
the lawn care schedule, and i got the lawn pest
disease and weed schedule. If you look in October November,
we do two treatments for take all at that time,

(01:07:05):
and there are three products on my schedule, and there's
one called disease X that is probably the most effective
ingredient for the take all root rot.

Speaker 13 (01:07:17):
Okay, I'm looking at that right now as a matter
of fact.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Yeah. And there's a third ingredient on there called propacnnaisol
and for take all that's also a top ingredient. But
you just got to get it done. I would do
the disease X probably is my first choice, but propa
connaisols almost as good. So one of those two. But
go ahead and do it soon because it's got to
go in the ground, be watered in, and be taken

(01:07:42):
up to start to go to work. So all right, okay,
all right, thank you all right, Jim, you bet, thanks
a lot, appreciate your call very much. Nature's Way Resources
quality products to make your lawn, your garden, whatever you're
planting rosebeds, you name it thrive. Nature's Way builds stuff

(01:08:05):
the way nature builds it, and that is taking advantage
of the decomposition of organic matter and the proper way,
with the proper timing, good oxygenation, so you don't get
any nasty, sour smelling stuff from Nature's Way. And then
they package it up and they have a wide range
of products, you know, things for fruit and vegetables, and

(01:08:25):
things for roses like their rosesoil leaf, more compost for
top dressing your lawn or just using as a compost
and vegetables, and then lots of kinds of mulches. I
got two different kinds of Nature's Way mulch I've been
putting out this past week, just trying about that. I
like to use different products, see what they look like,
see how they go down, see how they work. And
I've always had success with Nature's Way products. Nature's Way

(01:08:48):
Resources dot Com. They're up on Interstate forty five north
almost to Conro, but you can go to Nature's Way
Resources dot com you can find out where they are
and you also have them deliver it to you. And
then they're also sold by bulk in a couple of
places around town and by the bag in a number
of places around the Greater Houston area. Let me take

(01:09:09):
a real quick break here when we come back. Let's
see we have got Kennon clear Lake and Kevin in
League City. You're our first two up. You can't have
a garden line weekend with our low Creeden's clear Water.
Welcome back Guardenline. Good have you with us?

Speaker 14 (01:09:27):
Hey?

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Have you been to bu Cannons Native Plants in the Heights.
It's on Eleventh Street. If you haven't, you need to go.
In fact, you ought to go out there today. It's
just a great place to shop. Lots of good information,
one of the best selection, the best selection of native
plants in the whole region. And natives are not even
most of what they do. They have all kinds of

(01:09:48):
wonderful products out there. Of course, the plants are what
I am all about when I go out there, but
you're going to find quality products for soil, for fertilizers
and whatnot. One of the things I really enjoy about
Buchanan's Native Plants is the fact that they put on
some excellent educational programs and whatever this season is, there's
going to be something timely. For example, they just got

(01:10:10):
their holiday cactus in first shipment. They'll get more of
them down but if you like, you know, Thanksgivings cactus,
Christmas cactus, those types of things, they've got those there.
They got paper whites for forcing indoors. They already got
cyclement in, which are a beautiful fall color plant. You
find a nice, bright, shady area, fill it with cyclomen
and they will look really really good for you. So

(01:10:31):
get by there. Check out the sales. They got a
lot of things going on right now that are available
at an extra special price. But sign up for the
newsletter Buchanans Plants dot com. Sign up for the newsletter.
It's awesome. We're going to run now out to clear
Lake and talk to Ken this morning. Hey Ken, welcome
to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (01:10:49):
Hey Skip, Hi, listen. You know it doesn't matter how
you've been guarding, you're always learning them a new and
if forwarding bulbs and I just wanted to know when
is when's the bedtime to you know, dig the bolves

(01:11:13):
up and you know, get them ready and because you
just go through you know, just the quick quick thing
on forwarding bulbs and man flowers during the water.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Yeah, okay, so uh basically, uh, you can you can
dig them up and they will bloom for you. You
can pot them up and they will bloom. The amaryllis
go through a late summer drought period which we conveniently
have here, uh, and they kind of they dive back
a little bit and then they come out in the
in the early early spring with some beautiful stalks and

(01:11:50):
blooms if you want to. I think you were saying
you wanted to force them indoors though, and for those
typically they're dug up and dried. You can store them
in colder conditions, but not not so terribly important to
do that. But the bulbs are just then put in
you know, a tray of pebbles with some water or

(01:12:11):
sometimes just in soil too. And it's all about the bulb,
you know, It's not the you have to have special
fertilizers and soils and things. It's all the energy coming
out of the bulb that does the bloom shoot and
and everything you need and then you get it out
in the ground and fertilize it and take care of
it so it'll do it again.

Speaker 5 (01:12:28):
Okay, well, skiff, we might be talking about two different boods.
That's what I'm talking about, is Okay. When you when
you take camera's bulb and you put it in the
refrigerator and then.

Speaker 2 (01:12:42):
And then he.

Speaker 5 (01:12:42):
Takes out in like uh oh, I don't know, maybe January,
and then you put it in a window because it's
it's feeling that temperature change. It'll start to bloom in
the middle of the winter in a window.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Yeah, okay, Well, so I think you're probably also thinking,
like about what you would do with tulips or hyacinth
or something like that, right, okay, okay, well the bulbs,
but I like, so, okay, well you don't have to though.

(01:13:23):
Non chilling bulbs. Ammarillis is a non chilling one, paper
whites or a non chilling one. They're not like tulips.
You got a store in refrigerator and so I started
to plant them. So that's good. Agapanthus, chrocosmia, those are
all bulbs that you're not going to have to chill, okay,
And there's some others, but yeah, just just enjoy them,
no need for that extra step. Okay, okay, thanks you

(01:13:47):
you bet ken. Thanks good question. By the way, appreciate
that very much. Microlife Fertilizer four fall, it's simple. It's
called brown patch. It's in a brown bag. That makes sense,
doesn't it brown Patch And I'm back now. It's not
a funderside. It is a fall fertilizer with sixty three
different added microbes. Beneficial microbes, things that fight disease that

(01:14:12):
things that promote plant growth, things that fight fungi, have
anti fungal properties, things that improve the soil. It's all
there in Microlife brown Patch, the brown bag. And it's
time to get it done. Now. If you look at
my fall schedule, you notice I start that organic fertilizers
about a week early compared to the synthetics in the

(01:14:33):
fall season. And it's just to give them a little
more time because they're going to be microbilly broken down
and then they're going to release their nutrients and the
grass will benefit. But don't delay anymore. It's time to
get it done. I know it's a little late, but
it's still time to get it done. You will still
get the benefits from it, but don't delay anymore microlife

(01:14:53):
brown Patch. Let's go out now to League City and
we're going to talk to Ken this morning. Hey Ken,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (01:15:02):
Hey skip up.

Speaker 12 (01:15:04):
I was actually just holding to City a picture.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
Oh oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Uh, Nicholas will pick
it up now and get you that email. I'm sorry.
Good night. Yeah, you've been you've been hanging on a while.
Just just one more second. He'll be there with you,
all righty, Get go ahead and get his get him
the right email address so he can send that picture
as a patient. Man. Uh, you're listening to Guardline and

(01:15:29):
we're here to help you have success. The number is
seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
I tell you our trees are stressed and they need care.
I know Martin spoon more affordable tree service. He's been
out doing deep root watering prior to the rain. Most

(01:15:50):
of you just got just trying to rescue these trees
because they're in a stressed state. Martin does all kinds
of services, you know that he can. First of all,
he serves the whole kit listening area. This is thirty
four years that the family has been in the thirty
four fifty four, actually it's fifty five now. I believe
maybe fifty six that they've been in the tree servicing business.

(01:16:14):
Third generation. Martin is in the family doing that. Now
he can come out. He doesn't charge for bids. If
you want him to come out for a consultation, there's
a fief of that, but that is well worth it.
If you are going to do anything around a tree, trenches, sidewalks,
I don't know you name it. Redo the irrigation says,
have Martin come out and take a look and advise

(01:16:36):
you on that before serious damage is done to the tree.
Of course, he does deep feeding, he does pesting, the
disease control. They can do stump grinding, any pre construction care.
Absolutely every penny will be paid over many times by heavens.
I may come out and advise you, and Martin is
excellent at this. Before you go building anything around the tree.

(01:17:00):
He also does pruning. Of course, he's signing up people
right now. I think he's into November still on the booking.
I may even I'm sure he's got people in December
and januaryity on the books. Give him a call. Seven
one three six nine nine two six six three seven
one three six nine nine two six six three get

(01:17:20):
on his schedule. You know you got a Christmas tree
light you're gonna be putting up pretty soon. It'd be
nice to get that pruning done even ahead of that
makes it a little bit easier. With every tree he trims,
that tree that he trimmed will get a free deep
root feeding to help nourish your trees. Martin Spoon More
Affordable Tree Service, a Fftree Service dot Com seven one

(01:17:43):
three six nine nine two six sixty three seven win
three six nine nine two six sixty three take a
little break here for at the top of the hour news.
Remember I'm going to be at RCW Nursery next Saturday
from twelve to two. Come on out and see me.
We always have a good time at RCW there. Put
on a show out there and we will have a
good time. Bring me samples, bring me pictures like we

(01:18:04):
always do. Uh. This will be my second to last
appearance of the fall season, So come on out.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
Welcome to Katie r H. Garden Line with Scip Richard.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
It's show.

Speaker 8 (01:18:23):
Crazy.

Speaker 4 (01:18:29):
You just watch him as so many peace Septasy.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Not a sound, Hey, welcome back to the guard line. Alrighty,
let's talk gardening. If you'd like to give me a
call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one two five eight seven
four be glad to visit with you about the things
that are of interest to you, all kinds of good

(01:19:06):
gardening topics we can be talking about today. I do
want to remind you that it is the last call really.
I mean, you can you can do these things later,
but for the most benefit, you need to do them
now now. And that is fall fertilization, any weed prevention
you're gonna do, pre emergent weed prevention, and fall protection

(01:19:30):
of your lawn against bron patch.

Speaker 8 (01:19:33):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
I've driven through my neighborhood actually, uh yesterday, and I
was just seeing bron pat circles already appearing, and so
you got to get in ahead of those. We've been
We've been talking about this for a while now, but
it's just it's just a fact that when we get
cooler weather and rain or irrigation anything at wets the ground.
Doesn't matter. If it's rain or water that you put

(01:19:56):
out of your sprinklers, you're gonna get brown patch showing
up if or in an area, especially if you're went
in a lawn that's prone to brown patch problems, then
that definitely is going to happen. And some people get
by and they don't have it very often at all.
It takes a very unusual year to have it. And
the reason for that is because they're not over fertilizing

(01:20:17):
and they're not over watering, and they're not mowing the
grass too low. Saint Augustine mode short in a wet
area with extra push from nitrogen is just like there's
brown patch spores lined up down the street to show
up at your lawn because they love that. They love
that stuff. So culturally, always remember this, always, always, always

(01:20:37):
with diseases, we start with cultural That is the first
step solution.

Speaker 14 (01:20:43):
And the.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
Treatments that we do to fight those diseases, those are helpful.
There's times when we really do need to do those
if we're going to avoid a problem. But cultural is
the key, that's where we start, that's where it all begins.
You can be an organic gardener, you can not be
in organic gardner. You still no sense in making diseases worse.
So this isn't just for organic gardening. This is for

(01:21:07):
gardening period cultural always avoid doing harm to the plant.
Here it is you'll take the Hippocratic oath for gardeners,
and that is I will do no harm that kind
of thing. If you harm your plants, if you stress
your plants, if you do things that hurt them, like

(01:21:29):
using some of the broad leaf week killers when the
temperatures in the nineties, those all they weaken the grasses. Okay,
it's there. You see it. Eatn't kill it. It seems
to be okay, but you've weakened it. And when you
weaken it, you open the door for problems. There we
go a simple as that. I enjoy getting out to
garden centers to see what's going on. And in Chenny

(01:21:50):
Forest is one of my favorite ones to go to.
In Chenny Forest done in a Richmond Rosenberg area, I
guess I can put it this way. If you're going
from Richmond towards sugar Land fifty nine, it's off to
the right. It's on a road called twenty seven fifty
nine FM twenty seven fifty nine outside of Richmond. Here's
what you just need to do. Get the website. It's
an awesome website and everything's there, how to get there,

(01:22:12):
the phone numbers, what's going on, upcoming classes, and they
do stay busy with nice quality educational classes at Enchanted Forest.
Here is the website, Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com.
Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. Right now, there's a

(01:22:32):
lot going on there. Of course, you know, this is
a season when everybody's doing the fall thing, you know,
the Halloween decorations, the pumpkins, whether it's an actual pumpkin
that you're carving or whether it's one of the beautiful
pumpkins that are ceramic that they have for sale. They
just did a class on making herb breaths and that's
just one example of the kinds of things called make

(01:22:53):
and Take Her Breath class. That's kind of things that
they do there. And they're often, you know, they'll have
a food truck out there. They have other things going
on all the time. But again, right now, gosh, the
fall and Halloween and all those decorations are just awesome.
You know, I keep telling you need to plant vegetables
this fall. You need to grow some. Even if you
get your big bucket to grow them in, grow some.

(01:23:16):
You will not believe the selection of vegetables and herbs
that they have and in Chanda Forest it is awesome.
And then we got color. And we've been talking just
out a call minute ago about forcing an amarillis. You know,
they've got the amarillis bulbs and you get to see
a big picture there. What the bulb's gonna look like.
You need to do that. And it's not just for forcing.
A lot of these will grow out in the yard,

(01:23:36):
you know, get them out, plant them in the landscape
and they'll return here after year for you. In the landscape.
It is time to get fall planting done. There is
not a better time for trees and shrubs. And they
have an awesome selection at a Chanda Forest and Richmond.
I always go out there and always checked to see
do they still have the Chinese fringe tree, and yeah
they do. They carry my favorite spring blooming tree right

(01:23:58):
out there and in China for us in Richmond. All right,
Jenny Forest, Richmond t X dot com. I know I
went on and on about it, but I'm excited about
I love to go there. Great people, great service, great products.
Simple is that along with some really fun shopping. Let's
head out to Lake Conro. Now we're going to talk

(01:24:18):
to Dave this morning. Hey Dave, welcome to Garden Line.

Speaker 6 (01:24:22):
Hey, hey, yeah, So now's the time that I need
to weed and feed.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
Now? Now's that Now is the one time of year
that you'll hear me recommending a combination weed and feed
if it's a pre emergent product along with a fertilizer,
not postm premergent, because we're preventing the winter weeds. Now,
that's this is the time, ok uh. And so it's
it's this, it's this unique window in October where the

(01:24:50):
time to weed and the time to feed hit at
the same time. And so therefore, yes, uh, Normally what
I recommend is as you fertilize when it's time to fertilize,
you do weed control when it's time to do weed control.

Speaker 8 (01:25:04):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:25:04):
And I like doing a separate weed control from p
lizure because you can pick the exact product you want
for the weed you have. You know, you may have
Virginia button weed, or you may have gosh, we'll fall,
what's the winter grass, the annual bluegrass in your lawn.
You know, each of those is unique and the products
you use and the timing and everything. So I like

(01:25:26):
separating them usually, but you can do the combo if
it's a pre emerchant right now.

Speaker 6 (01:25:30):
Okay, I heard you own the letters. Yeah, I appreciate
that advice. And that's kind of like if you've were
a plan and I don't know, not now, but so
cilantro or whatever you know, planting, Yeah, you're just sprinkling
it on top and barely tapping in.

Speaker 14 (01:25:47):
You know, But what about cats.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
I pint of carrots up near the surface. Yeah, they're
very tiny. I can't swear that carrots need light to germinate.
But I barely cover my carrots, just barely cover them
because they are they're about They look a lot like
lettuce seed. They're the same kind of little flat, tiny, long,
long seeds.

Speaker 8 (01:26:11):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
And so I would I would just put them near
the surface, not too deep, not too deep at all.

Speaker 8 (01:26:16):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
And again I need check, have to have light. Yeah,
go ahead, I'm.

Speaker 6 (01:26:22):
Back on the lids.

Speaker 2 (01:26:23):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:26:24):
Let's say when it grows up and then I want
to go out there and get me some shit, I
clip it off or pull the whole thing. You'll put
some more seeds in there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
You can do either way. I yeah, I typically have
grown it to harvest the whole plant. But there's no
reason to do that. I had a friend who had
a little tray and it was probably three inches deep,
and it had potting soil in it. And it was
a big old round thing. You know, if you put
your arms out like you're going to touch your fingers,
make a big circle with your arms. It's about that size.

(01:26:52):
And he sprinkled lettuce, just mix all colors, you know, burgundy, green,
I'll speckle it all that kind sprinkle them in there.
And when it grew up, he mowed it with the
scissors and he would just he would just mow it
off and make a sound and they would resprat, spraut
back out again. Yeah, you can do it that way
if you want to. I don't like to get on
my hands and knees out in the garden. Okay, well

(01:27:14):
there you go. Now your neighbors will have something to.

Speaker 6 (01:27:19):
Hey, I got it yet.

Speaker 8 (01:27:19):
There you go.

Speaker 6 (01:27:20):
Number three wash tubs back here, and I kind of
painted them camouflage color, you know, which the leaves. I
put a leaf on their play at one color and
then play at a lighter color, you know, like hunter
green tan color. And then my wife, your neighbors with
the grass.

Speaker 2 (01:27:38):
Okay, Dave, I bet I bet your neighbors. I bet
your neighbors. I bet your neighbors talk about you, Dave
and guy's painting washtubs again. All right, good idea.

Speaker 14 (01:27:49):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:52):
You take care of you.

Speaker 8 (01:27:52):
Well.

Speaker 6 (01:27:53):
It looks better than looking at just to galvanize trawster,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
So yeah, welly this year, grow some carrot. Grow some
carrots in one of those if you make drainage hoes
in a washtub, and you can grow carrots really well,
and a nice loose pott on the washtub. So there you.

Speaker 6 (01:28:11):
Gottom and put it on top of Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
Yeah, send me a picture, Send me a picture sometime
and your let us in the washtub. I'd like to
see that.

Speaker 6 (01:28:25):
I have touch some song. Let us in the wash tub.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
There you go, There you go. There's a country and
Western song just about everything. What was the perfect country
and Western song? Ray Wiley Hubbard I think wrote it.
I believe J. J. F. Walker sang it. I was
drunk today, my mom got out of prison, she got
run over by train. He better all in one country song,
some of all remember that anyway. Uh Cimlts is a

(01:28:51):
place where you go to get success on the way.
It's where you start with success. At Ciena Maltch. There
we go. I need it. There's there's some is there.
Cinamaltch carries those quality products for the soil, composts, bed mixes.
You know only cavegian nerb mixed from maryloom soils. They
carry that, They carry mulches, they carry landscape rocks and stones.

(01:29:12):
You want to create a little dry creek bed, you know,
with the river rocks and things. It's very decorative. You
put you some plants a like kind of wet conditions
around it, like Louisiana iris or something like that. Make
a beautiful thing out of it. Sianna's got you covered
on all of it. You got to have nutrients for
your soil. That's part of the brown stuff. Well, go
to Sienna and get some Nelson products, get some nitrofoss products,

(01:29:34):
get some micro life products, get some Medina products, get
your azamite. There they have it all at Cienamalch. It's
a one stop shop Sienna Multch dot com south of
Houston FM five twenty one, cienamulch dot com. Whether you
want it delivered, whether you want to pick it up,
whether you want to buy it by the bag or
buy it by the bulk. They have got you covered

(01:29:55):
at Cienamulch. Let's see, we're going to go now to
uh let's see who were speaking to. Welcome to guard Line,
by the way, and where are you calling from?

Speaker 8 (01:30:05):
Hey, good morning, This is John Kingwood.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
Hey John, how can I help?

Speaker 8 (01:30:11):
I'm calling about.

Speaker 14 (01:30:12):
Pine beetles.

Speaker 2 (01:30:15):
Anything.

Speaker 14 (01:30:15):
I'm going on a tree and so I'm gonna have
the tree removed.

Speaker 6 (01:30:19):
But I was wondering if there's anything that I can
do in the future to keep them from coming back.

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
Well, pine beetles like stress trees drought stress. It's kind
of hard to avoid that unless you water those trees
during droughty times. The first thing you want to do
is get that tree horizontal on the ground as fast
as you can, because the beetles will fly out of
the tree and go to other trees. But they're not
good flyers, so they can't take off from the ground
and fly away up pine tree very well. So we

(01:30:49):
typically get them down in horizontal quick As far as
keeping them out, there are sprays that you can put
on the trunk, but you got to spray eighty percent
of the height of the tree, and nobody has a
sprayer that's that good, almost nobody. And you don't want
to be sitting there squirting up in the air while
the mist is drifting down on you and things like that.
So generally we don't talk about spraying for for p

(01:31:11):
pine beetle, but it can be done. But the main
thing is keep your tree out of stress, and it
won't be attractive to the beetles as attractive.

Speaker 14 (01:31:22):
Makes sense, all right, sir, All right, well, good luck
with that.

Speaker 6 (01:31:25):
Appreciate it, yes, sir, thank.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
You, thank you for ul you bet take care. I'm
gonna go to break here. We'll be right back.

Speaker 8 (01:31:32):
A little.

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):
I love it on a Sunday morning, on a beautiful
Sunday morning. By the way, I hope you have some
gardening activity in your plan for this afternoon. You know,
there are a lot of great garden centers and they
are opened and are loaded up and ready to go.
I go out there and get inspiration, go out there
and get information. Our good mom and pop garden centers

(01:31:58):
in the greater Houston area. They know what they're talking about.

Speaker 8 (01:32:01):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:32:02):
It's not some chain thing from all over the country
that ship stuff in and then hrsh people that don't
know anything about gardening to sell the stuff. We're talking about,
people that live here, people that are from here, people
that garden that have gardened for years, they know what
they're talking about. The independent garden centers very important. Now,
it's very important to support local, always right that that

(01:32:23):
is important. But for your own sake, go to an
independent garden center to get good plants that belong here,
to get good information that works here so you can
have success. You cannot afford to go buy cheap plants
from places that I know what they're talking about, because
that's what you're gonna get. Sometimes I go and I
look at plants in there and I just go, you know,

(01:32:44):
I don't know when they watered these last, but they're
going to water them. They're going to halfway perk up,
and somebody's gonna buy them, and it's going to be
a disaster because they don't know what they're doing. They
don't take care of their stuff. Independent garden centers very
very different, completely different story, completely different. So I'm telling
you these garden centers you hear me talk about on

(01:33:04):
garden Line, Nor South, East, West and Central, they're all
over the Houston area. We have more great garden centers
than any place I've ever been, much less lived. We
just have great ones around here, and you guys are fortunate,
very fortunate to be in the Greater Houston area. And
it's worth a trip into town. Sometimes I'd go to
more than one just to enjoy, just to get out,

(01:33:26):
just to see, because they're each unique in their own way.
Quality places, very quality places. For example, take Arborgate, for example,
there's one. We got people that drive from all over
the place to come to the arbor Gate because the
selection of plant it's just a fun place. You go
there and it's just like you're it's just fun. Two
different gift shops. Bring the people that don't garden with you.

(01:33:48):
We're gonna get them hooked on it. But bring the
people that don't garden with you. Let them run around
the gift shops a little bit, and then drag them
through the plants. Let them see what they got out
there at the arbor Gate. This afternoon would be a
great time to do it, because this afternoon, at one pm,
one pm today only Pam Panic, author of Gardens of
Texas Gardens of Texas, is going to be there speaking,

(01:34:12):
and Pam is awesome. I used to know Pam when
I was over in Austin area, Travis County, long time ago,
and she is She's a visionary and she gets these
landscapes that she's chosen that are just gorgeous. You'll see
the pictures in the book and you'll see how resilient
gardeners deal with change. You know our weather in Texas.

(01:34:34):
You don't get bored with Texas weather because who knows
what's going to happen next. But how do you build
a garden that is resilient, that survives that kind of thing?
How do you build a garden that has an evolving
plant palain in it of plants, things you haven't seen
before that are great, that belong here, natives and non natives.
How do you nurture wildlife? How do you find more

(01:34:55):
joy in the process of gardening? Come out and being
inspired today by Plan Panpanic, Pmpanic out at the arbor
gate one o'clock. Don't be late, get there now. You
may want to call them first, just to make sure
you've got plenty of space and stuff. But two eight, one, three, five,
one eighty eight fifty one. One of the most outstanding

(01:35:15):
garden centers you're going to find anywhere state of Texas
and beyond. Out there at the arbor Gate get two
for one today. Get here of great talk and get
to do some great shopping as well. Talked about fall
fertilizers a lot this time of the year. There's a
fertilizer you can apply any time of the year, and
that is azelmite because it's micro nutrients. Micronutrients are not

(01:35:36):
like nitrogen. They don't make the grass turn green and
take off growing. They enable the grass every day of
the year to take up essential nutrients that it needs
for doing all the things it does. And no matter
what kind of activity that grass plant is doing, whether
it's making carbohydrates or whether it is providing the molecules

(01:35:59):
necessary to capture sunlight, or whatever the grass has to do,
it needs at least seventeen different nutrients to do that.
And the micronutrients, the trace minerals are needed in tiny amounts,
but they are as essential as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium,
the three numbers on the bag of most fertilizers, as
is mind out of the ground. Utah is a natural

(01:36:20):
product mind out of the ground seventy seven known trace
elements or micronutrients, right about seventy seven different ones in there.
You put it out, you put it out the same
day you fertilize if you want, just don't mix. Don't
This just goes for everything, whether when you're looking at
you know, prevention, we control, disease control, micronutrients, macronutrients. You

(01:36:44):
don't mix those together in the same fertilizer hopper because
particle size is different and they won't distribute evenly. You
put one out, you come back and you load up,
change the settings for the other one. You go out
and do that. And that's how you do that. Asm
asmit Texas dot com. If you want to find out
more information about it, you'll you'll see the trace mineral
supplements on my schedule, my lawn care schedule at gardening

(01:37:07):
with skip dot com. All right, let's see here we
get some open phone lines if you'd like to give
me a call seven one three two one two five
eight seven four seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Now I want to talk about quality
home products of Texas. Now, a lot of you out
there just went through these storms. It doesn't take a

(01:37:29):
hurricane to knock out power, does it? We got thousands
of people in the Houston area that are without power
right now because the storms are just dead. What if
you had a generat automatic stand by generator from the
folks at Quality Home. How would that be different? But well,
you'd have power right now. In fact, if you're in
the middle of a football game and the power went out,
you didn't have to get out of the chair. Just

(01:37:49):
hang on. It'll be pop it right right back up.
It comes right back on again. Automatic standby. That's what
that's for now. You can buy generators a lot of places,
but you can't get quality service anywhere. Quality service is unique.
Quality Service has over fourteen thousand and five star reviews.
Quality Service has won the Better Business Bureau's Most Prestigious

(01:38:12):
Customer Service Award eight times. Houston Chronicles Best of the
Best in the Home Contractor division another accolade that they've
wont They take care of their customers from the time
you walk in and go I think I may need
a generator? What you got? Finding the right one for you,
getting it set up right, all their in house people
going out to do it. They don't sub out on

(01:38:34):
electrician and stuff like that. It's all in house. They
take care of you, they get it done, and when
they walk away, it's just beginning. Three hundred and sixty
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the phone too. That is why people love Quality Home
Products of Texas. Qualitytx dot com seven one three quality

(01:38:58):
makes it easy to get hold of the three quality.
It's a process to get a generator. So it's not
going to like you call them you're going to get
one tomorrow. It takes a process and by the way,
they jump through the hoops of regulations and stuff for
you too. But you got to get started. So now
be a good time to get it started. Go wait
until next year when the hurricane's in the Gulf. Do
it now call them? Now, time for a break. I'll

(01:39:19):
be right back there. You go, All right, Welcome back
to Guarden Line. Good to have you with us this morning.
Very good to have you with us this morning. Thanks
for hanging out with us. We don't take our listeners
for granted at all. I appreciate the fact that you
guys tune into Guarden Line. So it was great going

(01:39:39):
out on these appearances, you know, to meet the folks
that are coming out, I want to remind you I'm
going to be at the RCW Nursery. That's the nursery
right there where Beltway eight and Highway two forty nine
also called Tomball Parkway come together. It's easy to get
to get in and out, real simple there. And boy,
did they ever have some things planned. I was visiting

(01:40:01):
with them and they've got some citrus they're gonna be
given away. That's an opportunity right there. They're gonna give
away a shade tree and a lot of other things
as well. I'm gonna bring some Texas Gardener magazines with me.
If you haven't subscribed to Texas Garden, you've got to
get a magazine. I'll put one in your hand. Take
a look at this. It is a great magazine. They're
gonna have snacks and drinks available. It's gonna be a

(01:40:23):
good time. We always have a good time at RCW
Garden Center, RCW Nurseries. You know you hear me talk
about them all the time. If you are in the
market for any kind of tree or shrub or perennials
or whatever, now's the time to get them planted. Now's
the time. Fall is the best season, and they're gonna

(01:40:43):
carry the kinds of plants that grow really well for
you there. So I'll be there next Saturday from noon
to two, next Saturday from noon to two. If you
want to bring me samples, you're going to be pictures
to look at, or if you just want to stop
and shake hands and say how you doing. I like
the appearances because I could spend time with folks, more
time than I have on the radio with phone calls
and things. But I love doing that. Well, let's do this.

(01:41:06):
Let let us head out Tonnnesota, Texas and talk to
Richard this morning. Hey, Richard, welcome to garden Line. Well,
thank you.

Speaker 9 (01:41:15):
Skip. Just just a few things I want to ask
questions on one is h I owned.

Speaker 7 (01:41:25):
The lot behind me, which was just red clay that
they had used when they were developing the neighborhood, mixed
with orches shells, and it is hard, hard, hard, and
it gets huge cracks in it in the summer.

Speaker 9 (01:41:46):
Yeah, what would be a suggestion of something to kind
of help break up this clay?

Speaker 7 (01:41:56):
Well, very hard? Just read its roadbed materials what it
was when they had dirt roads, right, and they piled
it up exactly what.

Speaker 9 (01:42:03):
Is now an empty empty y A yard did I purchase?

Speaker 2 (01:42:08):
So what are you wanting to do there? You wanted
to grow a lawn? Do you want to put in
a garden? What do you have in mind? No?

Speaker 6 (01:42:15):
No, just along.

Speaker 9 (01:42:18):
I'd just like to be able to grow grass on it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
I would probably add two or three or four inches
of soil. If you could a quality top soil, I would.
I would just start with that, mix it a little
bit with the soil that you have below. But that's
not essential that you do it, but that that would
be good to give the grass a shot. You could
level things off a little bit that way and get

(01:42:43):
it right. As far as improving the soil for for
for turf. Initially some composts mixed into the soil would
be helpful, but remember compost breaks down, and so two
years from now the compost you put down is gonna
be gone, uh, and the lawn's gonna be growing and
what's there. That's why I starting with the soil itself.
But a little bit of compost is fine. A little bit,

(01:43:04):
a little bit top soil will be better when you
get your grass all day down and yeah, make sure
a good quid top soil, may check it out because
the word topsoil means nothing, you know, I mean, it
does have a meaning, but what you buy that's called
topsoil is usually not top soil. It's usually something much
harder and more difficult to deal with. It's just scraped

(01:43:28):
out and called it that. So watch out for that.
But get it down, smooth it out, level it out.
If you need to do a little rototelling so that
you don't have like that clay an oyster shell interface,
just directly with the better top soil sitting on top
of it. To mix them just a little bit there
will be helpful. And then next next spring, get you

(01:43:50):
some good quality turf, the type you prefer to have,
Saint Augustine's Oysier, Bermuda, whatever you like. Get it down there,
get it rooted in really good, and then begin to
take care of it with moiing water and fertilizing it properly.
Occasionally you're going to want to do some aerration, some
deep aeration, especially if you lay the turf directly on
what you already have there, But that helps get the

(01:44:13):
oxygen in the soil, and healthy turf will build its
own soil over time because those grassroots in a lawn
live about a year and then they die. So wherever
that grassroot is down in the ground, now you got
an opening and organic matter as that root dies and
rots away. So over time, a healthy lawn makes the
soil better and better.

Speaker 9 (01:44:33):
Okay, okay, back, Yeah, I got a curiosity question.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
I would do.

Speaker 9 (01:44:39):
At my rant.

Speaker 7 (01:44:41):
I had this really pretty patch about thirty yards I'm
thirty thirty feet, I'm sorry, in diameter of onions, gray onions,
and I was kind of excited watching them, waiting for.

Speaker 9 (01:44:57):
Them to get.

Speaker 7 (01:44:59):
Ripe, and went out and found every one of them
gone from the root up.

Speaker 9 (01:45:05):
What might have enjoyed my onions?

Speaker 2 (01:45:13):
Are you pretty sure? Thanks?

Speaker 5 (01:45:17):
It could well.

Speaker 9 (01:45:19):
I doubt that it could have been. It could have
been some you know, that part of the country is
fairly far south, so it might have been. But I
didn't see any.

Speaker 7 (01:45:31):
Tracks, so I thought it might have been something like
a small animal or something. But they literally in one
day pulled every one of them up and cleaned them
up one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:45:44):
So when you look look at them as a soil,
like if you grabbed one of those and yanked it
out of the soil, is that what the spot looked
like like literally it was pulled up, and so the
roots had pulled some soil up with them and things.

Speaker 7 (01:45:56):
Yeah, it was it's a pretty loam. Yeah, it's not
a hard salt. It was a pretty sandy loan, so it.

Speaker 9 (01:46:04):
Was soft soul.

Speaker 7 (01:46:05):
So they weren't you got me, were pulled up the roots.

Speaker 2 (01:46:10):
Richard, You got me stumped. I don't know anything that
I've never heard that happen into a row row of
green onions. So I'm kind of left with somebody that
was hungry. But I don't know, because, like I said,
I don't it literally was one. I don't think gophers, Yeah,
I go, you know, gophers and moles and possums and armadillos.

(01:46:32):
Nothing should do that. Nothing I'm aware of. So I
don't know. You got me on that one. You need
a game camera out there to take pictures.

Speaker 9 (01:46:40):
I mean, it would just Yeah, it was just a
curiosity thing because you know, I got.

Speaker 7 (01:46:44):
A little garden keep in my backyard, and I enjoyed
watching the birds come steal my my cherry tomatoes and
my peppers, and you know, I get a few share.

Speaker 9 (01:46:54):
But I see them.

Speaker 7 (01:46:56):
I just kind of it was kind of interesting to
just say in one day, you know, like I said,
this was about a thirty diameter foot yeah, of green
onions and to see them all disappear in one day.

Speaker 2 (01:47:11):
All right, well you got me on that, but good
luck getting that spot ready to go for the turf.
And appreciate you calling. Thanks thanks a lot, sir. You
take care. Nelson Water Gardens and Katie Nursery and water
Gardens too. By the way, they have awesome plants you
know right now color you like cycloman cycling is one

(01:47:31):
of themost underplanted, cool seasoned color plants. They're beautiful. They
come in three colors basically, I mean you've got white,
and you've got red, and you kind of got a
pink coral. Maybe that'd be four colors, but something in
that range. But gosh, they're gorgeous. And if you got
an area underneath the tree that's bright and uh, you know,

(01:47:53):
not not deep deep shade, but bright shade, they do
well in there. And they're they're quite cold hearty too.
They do pretty well on that. They've also got colendulas,
which happened to be an edible. They're called pot marigolds also,
but they got colensions which are actually an edible flower.
You got snap dragons, you have a listen, you've got
all kinds of things stock they've got you ready to go.

(01:48:14):
Oh and of course pansies and biolas and things like that.
When you're out there, you need to check out their herbs.
Really nice selection too, and this is a season to plant.
Check out their seeds. They have a wonderful selection of
seeds too, including blue bonnets. For those of you who
want to plan them, haven't gotten them in yet, You
can still do that right now out at Nilson Nursery

(01:48:35):
and Water Guns out there in Katie, Texas. You take Katie.
Take Katie Fort Ben Road north off Ien, just a
little bit up the street. Now, when you're at Nelson's,
go check out the Microlife and the Nelson Individual jar
filler stations. You can get a number of different products
from these companies. You stick your old jar under there
that you've emptied, you pull the handle, you refill it.

(01:48:58):
It's economical, you don't pull plastic makes a lot of sense,
and you knew it right there at Nelson Nursing Water Gardens.
They have a Carbalo too. From Nelson by the way,
by the big bag out there and it's time time,
time to get that done as well. All right, there
you go, Nelson Nursering Water Gardens. Go to the website
Nelsonwatergardens dot com. By the way, they're open today from

(01:49:19):
eleven am to four pm. Be a good thing to
do this afternoon. Let's see here. I think we were
just visiting. We already took to Richard. All right, if
you'd like to give me a call seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Let's take a
little break, we'll be right back.

Speaker 8 (01:49:35):
All right.

Speaker 14 (01:49:35):
Folks in the bucket and a bully outline.

Speaker 2 (01:49:44):
All right, welcome back. We're good to glad to have
you with us this morning. We're good to go on
our next segment here coming up a little short. When
we've got going here, we will be answering your gardening questions.
Got a call coming in right now. I'll take care
of Ace hardware stores. You know, I talk a on
them all the time because they are the place to go.
I'm telling you, I was at Brunn of Mace yesterday

(01:50:04):
and I went in there. I was answering gardening questions
and meeting with people. My wife comes walking up from
across the store and goes God's found a bunch of
Christmas ornaments. So guess what we went home with? Yep,
that's right because ACE Hardware. Trust me that go into
an ACE Hardware this weekend. Anytime go in, look around,
you're going to be I promise you. Unless you just

(01:50:25):
shop at ACE all the time, which I hope you do,
you're going to be surprised at the things that they have.
And I could name things, but Ace, any individual ACE
Hardware store is independently owned, so they can do whatever
they want. But you're going to get a lot of
cool stuff. Your house is going to look better, your
back patio is going to look better. You're going to
make better barbecue too. They got great brands of barbecue.

(01:50:47):
Your tools, you know, if you're a do it yourself
or with hand power tools and things, they got you
covered on all that stuff. Ace Hardware. And then when
it comes to your garden, well, fertilizer, we control, disease control,
insect control, they've got it all. Child Building supplying on
Nurse sixteenth and Orange as An that's an ACE Hardware store.
Bay Cliff south of Kema and Grand Avenue, that's an

(01:51:07):
ACE Hardware store Hamilton on Highway six in the Bear
Creek area, Fullsheer Ace out there in full Shore, Texas.
How about Wharton Feed Nace. I was there a long
time ago. That is you guys and Warton are fortunate
to have that Wharton Feed and n Ace in your
hometown because it's an awesome store. And then Brenna Mace
where I was yesterday on North Austin Park. Read just
a few of the many Ace hardware stores you'll find.

(01:51:29):
If you want to find yours, go to Ace Hardware
Texas dot com and you can. Let's go now to Cyprus.
This morning, we're going to talk to Melanie. Hello, Melanie,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 11 (01:51:39):
Good morning.

Speaker 14 (01:51:41):
How are you skipped? Enjoyed the rain last night?

Speaker 9 (01:51:46):
But I'll tell you what we did.

Speaker 11 (01:51:49):
We didn't get much at all on Friday Friday night.
So then last night, well I asked, actually about five
I put my carboload down and I'm like, oh my gosh,
I had a nice.

Speaker 14 (01:51:59):
Light rain for about thirty minutes to forty five minutes.

Speaker 11 (01:52:03):
But then a couple hours later I got just this
huge for.

Speaker 14 (01:52:08):
About thirty minutes, big hard rain.

Speaker 13 (01:52:11):
Should I reapply?

Speaker 2 (01:52:15):
How many how much rain did you do? You haven't
have a rain gauge or no many? How much out
you guys?

Speaker 11 (01:52:21):
I really don't, but I'm sure we got at least
an inch, maybe two inches.

Speaker 13 (01:52:26):
I don't think more than that.

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):
Okay, well, it's not ideal. Definitely not ideal. Here here's
what though, I would I would not I would not
reapply right now. Carblow's product that prevents weeds does a
good job of sticking into the soil surface and hanging on.
And if you double if you double up on it,
that's not good. You know, it's not. It's like I

(01:52:50):
tell people, read the label all the time, because too
much is bad, not enough isn't good. The right amount
is good. I don't want to double up on that.
So let's just leave it. I think it'll be okay.
I think you're gonna find it does all right. Let's
just just hold it at that. That's my best shot
based on the information you gave me. So uh, I
think you will be all right.

Speaker 11 (01:53:09):
Okay, okay, sounds like good advice, and I could, but
I need ask you go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:53:18):
I was going I need you to hold up your
hand like you know when they do the scout pledge,
they hold up three fingers and stuff, and I need
you to say I pledged and never fertilized before rain
again if I don't know how much it's going to rain,
and then we'll call it. How was gonna help you?

Speaker 14 (01:53:32):
Melody handled on that one?

Speaker 5 (01:53:35):
Okay?

Speaker 11 (01:53:36):
One other question, amite? So I wouldn't want to put
as amite down this fall after carbal load?

Speaker 8 (01:53:43):
Right, all right?

Speaker 2 (01:54:00):
Said okay, thanks, okay, Melanie, thank you so much. I
appreciate you being on this morning and keeping moving here. Uh,
let's see, we're going to go now to Dane uh

(01:54:23):
in beat Eyes, Texas, Oh my gosh, and Metropolis the
bead Eyes. How's it going, Dane?

Speaker 8 (01:54:29):
It's great?

Speaker 5 (01:54:30):
Howdie?

Speaker 8 (01:54:30):
How are you.

Speaker 9 (01:54:33):
Good?

Speaker 2 (01:54:33):
Good? How can we help today?

Speaker 8 (01:54:36):
Man?

Speaker 12 (01:54:37):
Well, I've got some blueberry bushes and uh, they got
all these little black and I took pictures and I
just don't know how to send them to you.

Speaker 9 (01:54:45):
That was one of my questions. And they're turning.

Speaker 7 (01:54:51):
Some of them are red, some of them are brown,
black holes in them.

Speaker 9 (01:54:58):
I don't know what's going on.

Speaker 2 (01:55:01):
You're describing leaves or berries or what all is looking
like that? It's the leaves, Okay, at this time of
the year. I wouldn't worry about it. Blueberries are gonna
be dropping their leaves and they have no sense in
worrying about it. The plants are gonna be fine. You know,
if I saw the picture, I could probably tell exactly

(01:55:21):
what's doing it, but I just wouldn't worry about it.
I think you're gonna be okay. Just to continue to
provide blueberries acidic conditions, acidic fertilizer, a good quality water.
Not you know you're in beeat eyes now. I don't
know what your water quality out there is. And over
in Brian College station, they got a lot of sodium
and blueberries hate that. So you're gonna need to provide

(01:55:43):
them a good quality water and I think they'll be okay.
But no worry about that leaf thing right now. If
you want to send me a photo, here's what I'm
gonna do. I'm gonna put you on hold and get
my producer to pick up, and he will give you
the email that you can send them to. It's not
because I think I'm gonna checkange my mind with the photos,
but I want you to have that in case you're
gonna send a photo, and then we ask people to

(01:56:05):
send photos and follow up with a call uh anytime,
and we'll be happy to help you. But in the meantime,
thanks lap Dan, appreciate your call. Thank me, take care
all right. While my producer gives Dane an email, I'm
gonna remind you, I'm gonna be at where next Saturday
at r CW Nursery right where tom Ball Parkway having

(01:56:27):
two forty nine comes at about way eight, giving away
a centristree, giving away let's see a shade tree, giving
away a lot of other things. Gonna have snacks, gonna
have drinks there, We're gonna have a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:56:40):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skin Richard.

Speaker 4 (01:56:44):
It's just watch him as wings to see.

Speaker 8 (01:57:09):
Sid.

Speaker 2 (01:57:20):
Hey, we're back.

Speaker 14 (01:57:23):
Start.

Speaker 2 (01:57:24):
I good to have you, to have you with Usk
ran out today. All right, welcome back to guard Line.
We are here to help you have a bountiful garden,
a beautiful landscape and more fun in the process. Don't
forget that last part. That is very very important because
gardening is fun. It should be fun, and we'll make
it fun. You like some help with that, give me

(01:57:45):
a call. I'll be happy to do that. How do
you reach me seven one three, two, one two fifty
eight seventy four. That'll do it, hey. Nelson Plant Foods
outstanding products like the carbel Load, the Purple Bag, Purple
carbo Load ten to twenty designed for fall created by
Nelson Plant Food. This is a company that has been

(01:58:07):
around for a very long time. It's a family owned
Texas brand new and the Nelson family has been here
in the Greater Katie area since the eighteen hundreds. They
make their own fertilizers here just outside of Houston as well.
And Carboload is a special product because it contains the
nutrients you need and the ratio you need for going
into the fall. Make your grass plant heardier, make your

(01:58:27):
grass plant come out better in the spring. The strength
of spring early spring growth comes from the fall fertilization,
not from roots at that time of the year, from
the fall fertilization. So get that done now. It also
has the pre emerging in it to knock out the
weeds that are about to sprout and buy about to sprout.
I mean they are on their way. This cool weather
and the rain here they come. Don't delay. I would

(01:58:50):
put the thing out today, Put carbolod out today. Get
it done. Even though it's rain. You got to water
it in. You got to move the fertilizer into the soil.
You got to move the weed prevention down into the
soil surface. It takes water to do that. So even
if your ground is wet, go ahead and water again
about a third of an inch. Just get it down
in the ground a little bit, uh, and then it'll

(01:59:11):
go to work for you and do what you need
it to do. Also from Nelson, don't forget their Genesis
transplant mix. I'll talk about it all the time. Anytime
you're moving from a plant, from one thing to another,
from a pot to the ground, from a small pot
to a big pot, the soil you move it in,
you need to mix some Genesis transplant mix in that soil.
From Nelson, it works, I know because they use it.

(01:59:32):
Simple as that. If you'd like to give me a
call here on guard line seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one
two five eight seven four, we'll be happy to visit
with you and to help you have success. I was
talking to somebody the other day about three sixty tree stabilizer.
In fact, I was when I was out at the Arborgate.

(01:59:53):
I was visiting with Kurt, the guy who is the
inventor of the tree stabilizer that is such a great product.
I was showing people that Brenna Ma's hardware the product
the other day or yesterday when we're out there. It
is a special design that grabs onto a post and
grabs onto your tree with a nice firm, strong grip.

(02:00:13):
But the strap that goes around your tree is a
soft rubber strap, and so you attach it loosely, so
there's a little movement. Because movement creates strength in the
tree bark or a tree trunk. There's a principle of
nature that when you stretch and move and work something,
it gets stronger. If you tie an arm behind your back,

(02:00:34):
does it get stronger, weaker weaker? If you take that
arm and you go lift weights all through the week,
does your arm get stronger or does it get weak?
It gets stronger. Bending makes it stronger. And that's true
of a little tomato seedling you're going to be growing
late winter for your spring garden. You go in there
and rub your hands over the top, bend those ceilings
every day like a wind was blowing. They will be Stockier.

(02:00:58):
It's a principle of nature, and it's true. With that
tree you're putting in your front yard, you need a
three sixty tree stabilizer to hold it firmly but loosely
so that you can have a little movement. You're gonna
find those that Jai said and gardens way down south
you can just needed plants. You go to plants for
all seasons. You go to sea in Amult, you go
to the arbor gate, or just do this. Just come
out to RCW this next Saturday from twelve to two.

(02:01:21):
I'll be there. I'll show you a tree stable. I'll
bring one with me. They have them there, they'll sell
them there.

Speaker 8 (02:01:25):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:01:26):
Three sixty tree stabilizer really really does work. So don't
plant a tree unless you're gonna put a tree stabilizer
on that thing. Don't waste your time getting the wires
and cutting hose into sections so you can put them
over the wire to not cut into the tree and
tripping over the wires and mowing around the wires and
make it simple for you. Three sixty tree stabilizer, simple

(02:01:48):
as that. All right, let's go to the late Conro
this morning. We're gonna talk to joe Anne. Hello Joe Anne,
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (02:01:56):
I have a lot of.

Speaker 11 (02:02:02):
Pots that do not have holes in the bottom, and
I cannot really put holes in the bottom.

Speaker 5 (02:02:08):
Some are ceramic. Well, what do you suggest I put
some stone, some rock? What do you suggest I put
in the bottom for drainage?

Speaker 2 (02:02:18):
Okay, Well, do not put stone or rock or star foam,
peanuts or anything in the bottom of those pots. I
can go into why, but just trust me on this.
It will not help drainage. What you got two options.
You actually can drill holes in ceramic by using water,
and you can go online and learn how to do day.

(02:02:39):
You put water in there and you get the right
kind of drill and you can drill holes. But just
assume that's too much trouble for you, and that's okay.
I would get another pot to put them in. That's
just a teapot plastic pot that fits inside the pretty
pots you've got, and you you essentially do a pot
in a pot and water and occasionally if you need

(02:03:01):
to lift it up out of there to check make
sure there's not too much standing water in the bottom,
you can do that. But that way everyone will think
it's planted. In the pretty pot, especially if you put
some attractive molts or moss or something on the surface.

Speaker 7 (02:03:14):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:03:14):
And instead you'll be growing in a good, good pot
that that drains well.

Speaker 8 (02:03:19):
Sounds good.

Speaker 5 (02:03:19):
Is there anything special get taller?

Speaker 15 (02:03:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (02:03:23):
Is there anything special that you'd recommend for color for fall?

Speaker 3 (02:03:28):
Uh?

Speaker 14 (02:03:29):
For fall?

Speaker 2 (02:03:30):
You talk it like little bedding plant sized flowers like pansies.

Speaker 14 (02:03:34):
And you put in yeah, you're put in now.

Speaker 2 (02:03:39):
Yeah, Well you could do uh, you can do snapdragons.
I would do some alessum around the side so it
can spill over the sides. You could do something called
stock sto c K. It has a nice little fragrance
to it. You can I said. Snap Dianthus is a
gorgeous plant. There's some that are little mounds of color,
and then there's some that get quite tall have neon colors.

(02:04:01):
I want to say quite tall, I mean, you know,
knee high that have neon colors to them. Violas and
panzies are good if you want to mix things up.
I like blue violas along with a plant called dusty Miller.
It's a silvery foliage plant. You grow it for the foliage,
but silvery foliage with those blue flowers. Looks really good.
There's a few ideas for you. Well, thank you very much,

(02:04:25):
all right, and thanks for the call. Appreciate that a lot,
right you bet. Let me see ste there we go
and get that done. BnB turf Pros. BnB turf Pros
are experts when it comes to making your lawn look good.
Maybe your lawn has been hammered by the summer that
we've been having, Well call BnB turf Pros seven one, three, two, three,

(02:04:49):
four fifty five ninety eight. Now they service the area
from about Sugarland and Missouri City, you know, up up
Highway six and around two eighty around the Beltway that
that direction, all the way down Highway six and across
thirty forty five. So cities like are A communities like
Sienna and Narcola and Manville and Alvin and Pairland and

(02:05:10):
Friends Withood in League City and Dickinson. That's that whole
area South Houston, that whole area. Now they charge about
five hundred dollars is the base price for coming out
and doing core aeration and compost top dressing. And that
may seem like a lot, It may hit you like
a lot, but let me tell you it's a lot
less expensive than putting in lawn, that is for sure.
And if you've got a law that still has some

(02:05:31):
decent life in it, or they're struggling a little bit,
have them come out and do a cororation followed by
a compost top dressing and you're going to see a difference.
It makes a big difference. They also do fertilization too,
by the way, so if you need somebody to come
out and do that right, they can do that. They
make sure that they have a personal connection with you
so that you are satisfied with the job they do.

(02:05:51):
That's what they specialize in. B and B turf Pros.
The website doesn't have the end. It's a BB turf
Pros dot com. BB dot com seven one three two
three four fifty five ninety eight. Let's take a little
break and we'll be right back with more calls. Hey,
up with that's it? There we go, All right, man,

(02:06:18):
let's have some fun out here. Give me a call
on garden line seven one three two one two fifty
eight seventy four. Be happy to help you find success
for what we do.

Speaker 9 (02:06:30):
Hey.

Speaker 2 (02:06:30):
The books that microlife have their brown patch, that is
the fall fertilizer that is in a brown bag. Pretty
easy to remember, right, brown patch, brown bag fall fertilizer.
It's got the nutrients for fall. It also has sixty
three different microbes that they've added. These are sixty three
not just micro microbs. These are ones that do things
that are good for plants. They may enhance plant growth.

(02:06:50):
There's microbes that do that in the soil. That's what
nature does. That's the design of nature is to take
care of the soil.

Speaker 8 (02:06:57):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:06:58):
They have microbes that fight disease like the nitro nite
excuse me, microbes that fight fungi as well, specifically anti
fungal properties in many of these microbes. There's just a
lot of good things that microbes can do in the
soil to help your plants. And this product Microlife brown
patches chock full of sixty three different species of beneficial

(02:07:22):
microbes in the soil. So put it out, water it in,
get going, don't delay. Listen, this is an organic Fertilizer's
got a breakdown by microbes in the soil to release
the nutrients for your plant, your grass plant to be
able to take advantage of. So get it done now,
sooner as sooner as possible. Microlife fertilizers available all over town.
You go to microlif fertilizer dot com find out more

(02:07:43):
about the mini products, both granular and liquid that they
offer from the folks there a Microlife. So anyway, I
was out in the flower beds that I have and
I noticed I've got some star jasmine also called Confederate
jasmine that I'm training to a cattle panel. By the way,

(02:08:05):
those of you who want to block a view and
you don't want a giant shrub that sticks out taking
up half of your yard in order to block a view,
first of all of you, blocking plant should be evergreen. Well,
star jasmin's a good one for that. And if you
take a cattle panel, the ones with the little tiny
squares about four inch squares, or you can use the
bigger ones too and get that vine to grow on it,

(02:08:26):
it'll make a very thick wall of foliage and it
grows pretty fast. And I've got one in the backyard,
so it's about the foliage of it is about a
foot deep, you know, foot thick if you will, and
it goes up. I put two cattle panels, one above
the other. In fact, I have part of a third
one up because I'm really trying to block a really
high view from behind our house that I don't want

(02:08:46):
to look at and I don't want them looking at me.
And so we've got that all set up and it's
covering over very well. But just a reminder that there
are various ways to accomplish blocking a view, and one
of the best ways is galvanized cattle panel on steaks
up high or on posts up high that can do

(02:09:07):
exactly that for you. So just something to think about.
I was out there fertilizing mine and getting it kind
of I'm training it sort of to the cattle panel
because I wanted to fill in a little thicker and
more evenly faster. But you can do that as simple
as that. Jorges Hidden Gardens. Have you been there? If
you live south of town, you need to go buy Jges.

(02:09:28):
People love Horaes, following him on social media and stuff.
People just love that place.

Speaker 8 (02:09:33):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:09:33):
He's open Tuesday through Friday nine to three, Saturday and Sunday.
That would be two day from eight to four. And
I was just telling you about that three sixty tree stabilizer.
Jorge carries those. He has his own line of fertilizers.
Produced by the folks up at Nelson Fertilizer too. Down
there at Horaez Hidden Gardens in Alvin. Actually, if you're
in Alvin and you head towards it's an Alvin address,

(02:09:56):
but as you head towards Santa Fe, it's off to
the right on Elizabeth Street. Orges Hidden Gardens. You can
give him a call. Seven one three six three two
fifty two ninety seven one three six three two fifty
two ninety. You know it started off ores was a
he purchased basically a live live oak tree nursery. Uh,

(02:10:18):
but he has taken it and expanded it. He has
all kinds of trees and shrubs, always a good selection
of fruit trees, you know, from peaches to things like citrus,
things like blueberries, for example. He's got all that. He
carries a stock of annual color and vegetable and herb
plants as well. Go by check out Jorges Orges Hidden

(02:10:39):
Garden seven one three six three two fifty two ninety
on Elizabeth Street in Alvin, Texas. We're gonna go out
to Pennington now and talk to Lloyd.

Speaker 12 (02:10:49):
Hey.

Speaker 2 (02:10:49):
Lloyd, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 5 (02:10:52):
Good mornings, Jim, Hey, this morning's gimy morning.

Speaker 14 (02:10:56):
If you must, do you know where there is any onions?

Speaker 6 (02:11:00):
It's down in that part of the country.

Speaker 2 (02:11:03):
What part of the country we're talking about down in Houston. Oh,
in Houston, Well yeah, I mean they're all over there.
It just depends on where you are in Houston. Well
what part of town?

Speaker 9 (02:11:21):
Well, I'm about.

Speaker 14 (02:11:22):
Ninety mile nor do there, but I can't find any.
Oh playint Tyler in Houston.

Speaker 2 (02:11:29):
My gosh, that's crazy.

Speaker 8 (02:11:32):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:11:33):
Well, let's see here. Let's see if we can get
something up. Because I would talk to the folks up
at Arburgate, I would see if they haven't there. In Tomball,
I bet plants for all seasons on two forty nine,
just south of Tomball has them. H Let's see. I'm
gonna leave somebody out. My brain didn't cover in the
area very well. I know I've got a couple of

(02:11:54):
garden centers, the Kingwo Garden Center and H. Warren Southern
Gardens over in Kingwood. You might find them there. Let's
see here. Who am I leaving out? I don't know.
It's a little early for onion sets, and so I
would definitely call for for a moving because most people

(02:12:14):
in the fall. In October are planting onion seeds, and
then in the January is when you typically see the
onion sets going into the ground. Now I know that
plants fall seasons had the little round marble sized onion sets,
they had those of the spring because I was in
there in a song. But the bundles of little onion transplants,

(02:12:36):
that's what I usually plant, and those typically don't show
up until January February.

Speaker 5 (02:12:42):
All right, I might be a little bit early. What
is it?

Speaker 14 (02:12:46):
Yeah, I think yeah, composed, you guess.

Speaker 2 (02:12:50):
It's typically high. It's typically on the on the well
above seven point zero. I now I've grown in straight
well not straight mushroom compos but I've just taken mushroom compost,
put it very thick and tilted in the soil, and
grown right in that. But if you were going to
grow something that is real picky about a high pH,

(02:13:11):
I would I would be careful with the mushroom compost.

Speaker 5 (02:13:17):
Okay, all right, that was my wonders.

Speaker 2 (02:13:22):
All right, sir, thank you, thank you for the call.
Definitely appreciate that League City Feed done in League City.
This place has been around over forty years now. League
City Feed is now on its third generation of Thunderbergs.
Grandpa Thunderberg built it forty over forty years ago. Now

(02:13:43):
Wes and Madison they're running the shop and it's just
the same old place. It's a feed store that takes
care of its customers. They carry the bags out for
you and they have what you need. When you go
in there and you say I need this fertilizer I
heard about on guardline, they're gonna have it. You go
in there and you say I need something to control
pests or weeds or diseases, They're going to have that

(02:14:04):
as well. Quality pet foods, you know, real quality brands.
It's just a fun place to go in. I enjoy it.
I love the old feed store experience. I grew up
going to old feed stores. I love the smell of
a feed store. It's just a nice, earthy smell. I
love the service that they give you. And it's just
non none what presumptuous or whatever kind of place you

(02:14:26):
walk in. League City feed serves that whole area down there.
So those of you who are I don't live in
Leagua City. I live in clear Lake, I live in
San Leone, or I live in El Camino or Webster,
Santa Fe, Bakleft, Lamark, you know all those, all those towns.
This is your hometown feed store. Now here's how you
get there. First of all, it's on Highway three, just
a few blocks south of Highway ninety six in League City.

(02:14:49):
They're open Monday through Saturday nine to six. Are closed today,
closed on Sunday, but every day of the week. If
you got a job and you're working till five, they're
open till six o'clock. So you can swing by there.
Two eight one three three to two, sixteen twelve. I'll
give you that again. League City Feed two eight one
three three two sixteen twelve, just a few blocks south
of Highway ninety six on Highway three in League City, Texas.

(02:15:14):
Let's head up to Conroe now, and we're going to
visit with Greg this morning. Hey Greg, welcome to garden.

Speaker 15 (02:15:21):
I can skip where he was going.

Speaker 2 (02:15:23):
I'm doing. I'm not going to help.

Speaker 15 (02:15:25):
I called last week and got cut off about the
lime tree in that uh citrus minor.

Speaker 2 (02:15:35):
Lead miner.

Speaker 15 (02:15:36):
H huh yeah, and I was uh put on and
I got cut off, So I was gonna I got.

Speaker 2 (02:15:42):
Now okay, good. Well, we were having fits with the
phones last weekend for sure. Yeah. Uh, you're wanting to
know how to control the citrus leave minor. Is that
the question?

Speaker 8 (02:15:53):
Right?

Speaker 9 (02:15:54):
Then?

Speaker 8 (02:15:54):
That's what it is.

Speaker 15 (02:15:55):
Because the lee's I didn't know if they were it's
a plant.

Speaker 8 (02:15:59):
Were was diseased.

Speaker 15 (02:16:01):
I got a line in a lemon tree and sit
side beside and I don't know if they were diseased.

Speaker 2 (02:16:05):
Did you Yeah, did you send me pictures last week?
I didn't know.

Speaker 14 (02:16:12):
Okay, put me on and I didn't get salted anybody.

Speaker 2 (02:16:17):
All right, Well, uh, I'll tell you this. If you've
got cetrus and the leaves are curling and twisting and
losing their green color, kind of turning a little bit
of a silvery whitish kind of color. Uh, that is
citrus leave minor. They attacked the tender growth on cetrus.
So those old, leathery, dark green, big centrus leaves, they

(02:16:37):
don't bother that those are too tough. They like the
succulent new growth coming out because it's easy to lay
an egg in the leaf and for the larva to
chew through the insides. So what you do is every
time you get a flush of growth, you spray them
with there's there's a two organic products that you can
use either one. You don't need both of them. One
is spin no sid and it's spin as in spin

(02:17:00):
atop oh and then sad as in I'm sad. I
have lead miners, spin no sad. The other one is
it's it's a longer one. It's as a directing. But
if you look for a product in the the active
ingredient is as a d I R azy a d

(02:17:21):
I R. That's as a directing. I'm five seconds away
from a herd break. If you want to hang on,
we'll continue this discussion. But spray those on succulent new
growth and every time it comes out, and that's how
you get ahead of the leaf miner and control it.
Don't pull the old leaves off. I'll be right back.
September is a summer month, as as part of October.

(02:17:45):
We're gonna call this the last blast of the summer
from the beach boys. Alight, let's that's the fun in
the garden today. Give me a call. We are in
our last home stretch. Two more segments, this one. Find
this thing up at ten o'clock. Well the weekend. We'd
be back for those of you who are new listening.

(02:18:06):
Welcome to guarden Line. We are here every Saturday and
Sunday from six am to ten am and answering your
gardening questions. If you have questions, you're welcome to call
me at seven one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four. We I'm not able to answer emails, you know,
typing out email responses, becoming penpals, that sort of thing. Uh,

(02:18:30):
just because time just doesn't allow with my other horticulture
endeavors and things through the week. But I am more
than happy take a look at samples and then visit
with you online on garden Line. So if you have
a question, often a sample or a photo rather works best.
And so what you do is you make sure the
photo's in good sharp focus. That's first. If you give

(02:18:51):
me a fuzzy photo, I'll give you a fuzzy answer,
and we don't want fuzzy answers. Make sure it's in
sharp focus. Show me more than one photo as close
as you can get to some things like what is
this little weed? What is this little bug? What does
this leaf spot? Get close so I can see it.
Maybe take one of the picture of the plant from
a distance, you know where I can see the whole
plant in its setting. Those are all helpful tips. And

(02:19:12):
now we got everything from live oak trees to you know,
arugulus sprouts coming out of the ground, so there's a
variation there. But send me the photo. We'll take take
a look at it, and then follow it up with
a phone call. That is what we do here. If
you need the phone number, you can call my producer
and he will excuse me the email. He'll call my producer,
he'll give it to you. The reason I don't give

(02:19:33):
it out over the air, just in general is we
have a lot of people that are listening referently and
it would just be inundated. Those of you who listen
to garden Line regularly. You know, you know the rules
how we do it here, and I'm more than happy
to help you. And that is a service we do
in order to get you the most accurate answer so
that you don't waste time and money on products and

(02:19:54):
efforts that are not going to work because it was
a wrong diagnosis. That's how we try to get to
the bottom of it. Are happy to do that, and
that's how it works. Just give us a call seven
one three two one two five eight seven four. And
now there's one other option, and that is to bring
me a sample. Now, I'm gonna be at r c
W Nurseries this coming Saturday from twelve noon to two.

(02:20:16):
They're gonna give away citrus, They're gonna give away a
shade tree. They're gonna give have a lot of other giveaways.
As always, they have their snacks and drinks there. It's
just a really enjoyable, pleasant outing and we are ordering
the best weather we can find for next Saturday. We're
working hard on that, so come on out.

Speaker 9 (02:20:32):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:20:32):
And and also if you bring a sample in, put
it in a plastic bag so nothing escapes.

Speaker 8 (02:20:39):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:20:39):
It could be a bag full of various kinds of
weeds that you want to identified. It could be a
leaf of spots whatever. Bring me photos on your phone.
That's another option there. But we get to talk to
eye to eye, and I get to hold a sample
and show you stuff, and it's just a it's a
hands on, one on one diagnosis and those people standing
around during that time get to learn the same things too,

(02:21:01):
is as I'm explaining it to you. So it's a
good thing. Now, going to be at RCW Nurseries this
Saturday from twelve to two, that is the first of November.
My last appearance of the year is going to be
out in Kingwood. Wild Birds Unlimited in Kingwood, and although
that is a bird store, people do bring samples into
those as well. Just follow the same thing.

Speaker 8 (02:21:21):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:21:21):
If your sample is of a lawn, need you to
listen to this, don't pull me up a piece of
grass especially, don't bring me a piece of dead grass.
And that's true of any sample. I can do diagnoses,
but I can't do autopsies, So make sure it's a
sick patient. That's what we're asking for. So in a lawn,

(02:21:42):
you've got this dead spot and then you have a
green looks okay, over here, find the zone between healthy
and dead. Get your a little butcher knife or whatever
you want to use, and cut a little section out
of the sod where you get a couple of inches
of soil and roots underneath it, and then you get
the side. It could be four by four were at
the minimum four by six is fine. You don't need

(02:22:03):
to bring me the whole yard. It doesn't need to
be the size of the what the match you rub
your feet on going in the front door. It just
needs to be you know, four inches six inches somewhere
in there with a little bit of soil and slip
it right into a bag and slip it up and
that way. If there's any critter involved, it doesn't escape.
But make sure you bring You got to bring me

(02:22:24):
sick patients in order for me to diagnose them, because,
like I said, dead, I can do last rites on plants,
but i'd prefer not to. So once it's dead, you
know that is it is too late for even last rites.
So bring me sick patients. Please please do all right,
and we will help you. So next Saturday is the

(02:22:45):
next one last, the second to last of two, and
I'll be at RCW Nurseries. It is easy, easy to
get to just go around belt Way, A come down
Tambo Parkway where it's right there where the two come together.
Let's got to Mount Bellevue. Now we're going to talk
to Mark this morning. Hey, Mark, welcome to guarden Line.

Speaker 14 (02:23:05):
Thank you sip.

Speaker 6 (02:23:06):
Hey, I did send you some pictures last week about
my zoosa grass.

Speaker 14 (02:23:14):
And to trim it closer. I send it to your
wrong email address. That was my fault. Okay, your Gmail address,
and I for yeah, okay, good. Good.

Speaker 2 (02:23:31):
Yeah. Uh, this this is Mark, not Mike. Is that right? Mark?

Speaker 14 (02:23:38):
Yes, Mark Baker, Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:23:39):
Okay, okay, I got it. Uh, let's see here the Zeusia. Yeah,
I see the Zeisia. I'm trying to see the photos.
Mark Baker, Mont Bellevue. I don't what's going on?

Speaker 12 (02:23:54):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (02:23:54):
There we go.

Speaker 2 (02:23:55):
I found them? All right, I got you, I got you.
We're good.

Speaker 1 (02:23:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:23:58):
First of all, that is one heck of a good lawn. Beautiful, beautiful.
What kind of noisy is that? Is that Palisades? Looks
kind of like the Palisades.

Speaker 14 (02:24:06):
It's the Empire, actually empire.

Speaker 2 (02:24:10):
You know what I think you told me about in
the text. Yeah, yeah, okay, Well beautiful flower beds and
lawn looks looks super super good. But your your question
about it. I think you were gonna talk about what
it is that you're wanting to do. You went through
a lot of efforts to get a good soil base
down there below it, and so you've been using your

(02:24:34):
ego twenty one inch, which I have one an ego
twenty one inch. They don't cut low, well, that is
very true, they do not. You're going to have to
go to a real r e e L type mower
that's the kind that has a circling blade, looks like
a candy cane, looks like the old barber shop candy
cane looking circle thing out front. And those have to

(02:24:57):
be kept sharp, but they can. They can mow down low,
and they do a very good job. When you're going
to mow something low and three quarters of an inch
is low, that's gonna be a very beautiful lawn. But
it's going to be it's going to require regular mowing
because we mow when we're cutting off a third of
the blade. So if you had a I'm going to

(02:25:18):
make it easy to do the math. If you had
a lawn that was mowed at two thirds of an
inch high, it would grow to one inch and then
so you take a third off, which brings it to
the two thirds inch mowing height. So that's only one
third of an inch that it's growing and it's time
to mow. With three quarters of an inch, it's a
little more, but not much more. So you're going to
be mowing it probably more often than once a week, well,

(02:25:40):
definitely more often than once a week to keep it sharp.
But if you can do that, you can make it
look really good and are real tight. More is the
kind you need, not the big big propeller blades like
you and I both the benues.

Speaker 14 (02:25:55):
Yes, well, I'm not sure right after listening.

Speaker 5 (02:25:59):
To this that every thing, I'm not sure if I
want to go to that extent.

Speaker 8 (02:26:03):
Uh.

Speaker 14 (02:26:04):
You know, I always read that there supposed to keep
cut very low. But it seems to be doing just fine.
That what I've got it. I've got it, set it
two inches on my uh my ego, and it seems
to do okay.

Speaker 2 (02:26:20):
Yeah, no, it absolutely will do okay.

Speaker 8 (02:26:22):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (02:26:23):
Now two inches a little on the higher side for
a zoysia that you're wanting to keep nice and tight
down there. But there's no problem with that. I uh,
I have two different kinds of sois in my lawn,
and I'm ow mine pretty high. Uh, and so that's
not a problem if it's a if it is a
home lawn with a rotary more generally we say one

(02:26:44):
to two inches. So if you if you let's say
you did it at an inch and a half, uh,
then it would grow about you could probably get away
with once a week at an inch and a half.
If you go up about double that height, and then
it doesn't get too big. We just want to avoid
it getting real big and then cutting it way back
and that just creates a problem. But it sounds like

(02:27:04):
you're on the right track and beautiful place. You obviously
take good care replace mark.

Speaker 14 (02:27:10):
Thank you very much. Thank you appreciate it, and I
can tell you all your tips have helped.

Speaker 2 (02:27:15):
So okay, good. Well when with zoisa, keep that more
blade sharp because it's a very tough I say zoize
grass is like jew twine. It's very tough. That's an exaggeration.
But you need a good sharp blade all the time
to make nice clean cuts so it looks attractive. But
thank you for the call. I'm gonna run. I do
appreciate that call very much. The folks at Nitrofoss have

(02:27:39):
done the three step I've been talking about it all weekend.
Three steps fertilizer, weed prevention, disease prevention. The fertilizer is
fall special from Nitrofoss. The weed prevention is barricade, and
the disease prevention is Eagle turf fungicide that knocks out

(02:28:00):
that brown patch before it gets starts. Prevention is the
key they need to all go down now. Three different
products night fish products are available all over. You can
find them at D and D Feed and tom Ball.
You can find them at Fisher's Hardware, my Bellevue. You
can find them at Lake Hardware in Angleton. The main
thing is don't delay. It's what you need to be
doing this afternoon. Actually, if you haven't done it yet,

(02:28:21):
I don't delay. I can't create enough of an urgency.
If you're going to prevent these things, you gotta do
it soon. Let's take a little break and we'll be
back for our last segment. Probably got room for another
call they did above. Wait a minute, I'll just move
the coffee table. I wouldn't want anybody to get hurt

(02:28:42):
listening the garden line. Hey, welcome back. We are here
for our last segment of the day. Glad to have
you with us.

Speaker 8 (02:28:51):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:28:51):
I keep telling you this is the time when it's
the busiest time in the lawn and you're ever going
to have And that's the month of October primarily, and
I mean it goes into early November two if it
needs to, but sooner rather than later. And what do
you do when you've got all these different things and
you need products, and you need tools, and I need
something to spread fertilizer. You need some put out fire

(02:29:11):
ant bait, which, by the way, I've been talking about.
But I talk somebody down in Brenham at the Ace
Hardware store there yesterday who was talking about fire ants,
and I just said, you know, anytime the temperatures are right,
fire inch are out and they're foraging, and the heat
of summer during the day they kind of away. That's
too hot, even though their names fire ant. It's too

(02:29:33):
hot for them during the middle of the day. But
they forage in the early mornings, morning hours and it's cooler.
They forage late in the day, it's a little bit cooler.
How do you know when it's time to put out
fire at bait? Here's how you know. You throw a
potato chip on the ground. Put a few of them out.
Just toss them out there, easy to find. Come back
fifteen minutes later and if fire ants are foraging, there
will be on that potato chip. Go into town. Now

(02:29:55):
another way you can do it. And this is what
I was selling there. He's kind of grinning at me.
I think he thought this was it's funny, which it is.
If you take a hot dog and slice it into
a little oh, I don't know, half inch, quarter inch slices.
And then you get you those those wire flags. You
know how when they do a pipeline, they put those
flags down at the little skinny wires that have a
flag on top, and you stick that flag through the

(02:30:19):
wire through the hot dog slice and stick it in
the yard. They like hot dogs too. The flag is there.
See you and find that little hot dog slice and
come back in fifteen minutes and you will see fire
ants on it if they are out foraging. If they're foraging,
put out the bait. Do it now. It's always better
to start with a bait. If you don't start with

(02:30:39):
a bait, you're playing whack a mole with fire ants.
And that's what we talked about. They're at brunn of
Mace because here's how this works. Fiant mounds that you
see have created their little dirt mound up above the
ground surface in the lawn or wherever they're growing in
the flower bed. There are fireant mounds you don't see
that are developing underground. But they just hadn't developed to

(02:31:02):
the point of doing that. But they have foragers. The
mounds you can't see. You have foragers that are out foraging.
When you bait, you attack all the kinds of fire
ant mounds, the ones you see and the ones you
don't see. If you only use an individual mound treatment
only you're playing wackam mole because you killed and that
he told me that he goes, you know, I treat

(02:31:23):
this mound and I get it, and then one pops
up over there, and that's the game of whackamole because
those invisible mounds. Individual mound treatments on the mounds you
can see don't kill the mounds you can't see that
are somewhere else. So baits are number one. Texas A
and m Agrid Life Extension created a program called the
Texas two Step that's nefferent than the nine fist three step.

(02:31:45):
There's a different thing. We're not about fire ants. Texas
two step perferance, and what that is. Step one is
bait and then the ones you missed, the ones that
they didn't find the bait and didn't kill the mound,
you can do the individual mound treatments to them. That's
step two. Now, if you got a party coming up
in two days, you don't have time for a bait
to work. Use an individual mound treatment and knock that

(02:32:05):
mound out, go for it, so you don't have people
standing in environance screaming and running around the yard, although
that would be somewhat entertaining. But individual or do the
baits first, then individual mound treatments. Now where do you
get all that all that stuff, the baits, the spreaders,
the individual mound treatments. Where do you have the biggest
choice of all the options that are out there, Southwest Fertilizer.

(02:32:28):
Where do you find the biggest choice of all the
fertilizer options that are out there. Southwest Fertilizer. They are
the place to go for whatever you need, and that
includes tools. That includes the spreading equipment for fertilizers and
for fire ants and things. You're going to put a
fall garden in, I hope. So I've been trying to
talk into it all day. They've got a bulk seed

(02:32:49):
bentd where you can buy very inexpensive seed by the bulk.
You take a little scoop, scoop them out of there,
put them in an envelope and you're good. They have
seed by the packet already pre packed, ready to go,
and they have transplants out front you got to walk
past them to get in the store. If you're coming
in from the from the street side. Uh, it's it's
just the place to go. Everything you need is a
Southwest Fertilizer corner of Bestnett and Runwick Southwest Fertilizer dot

(02:33:13):
Com seven to one three six sixty six seventeen forty four.
If you want to give them a call seven one
three sixty sixty six one seven four to four. So
if you've got fire ince, which I do. By the way,
I was walking through the yard a couple days ago.
It's like, Oh, there's fireance here. How dare they? I'm
going to get out there and I'm going to do
the bait before it gets cold. When it gets cold,
it's got to be a really warm day for fiance

(02:33:35):
to be out foraging. So milder weather, it's kind of
like everything in the fall, you know, Getting the one fertilized,
get it done, don't wait, Getting the pre emergent, get
it done, don't wait. Getting a protection against the large patch,
if you're going to do that, get it done, don't wait.
And by the way, I'm not saying every yard needs

(02:33:55):
to be protected against large patch. Are necessarily weeds. If
you've got a night dense, healthy turf grass and you
never had the brown circles in the winter or hardly ever,
you don't have to do that every year. You don't
have to treat just because you have a lawn. But
a lawn that's a little on the thin side will
have weeds because wherever sunlight hits the sole nature plants
of weed. So getting ahead of them with the pre

(02:34:15):
emergent makes sense. But just because you have a lawn
doesn't mean you have to put that out. And if
you overfertilize the lawn, if you watered a lot or
we get a lot of rain, can't control the rain,
and when the temperature breaks, you're going to see the
brown patch. But if you don't have that issue and
you're taking good care of your lawn, you're not mowing
it too low. Saint Augustine does not need to be

(02:34:37):
mowed low. You never see a golf course made out
of Saint Augustine. Then in that case, if you're taking
care of it, you may not have an issue. So
just think about that. Remember here on guard line number one.
Number one number one is cultural practices. Pick a plant
that doesn't get sick. You can buy roses that get

(02:34:57):
brown spot, brown spot or powdery mildew a black spot,
excuse me, black spot and powdery mildew, and you're sitting
there squirting them with a fungeside every day, holding a
number all over them every time it rains, trying to
keep the thing from getting sick. Or you can buy
a rose that is naturally resistant. That's what I mean.
You can plant plants that are resistant. You can take

(02:35:20):
care of them in ways that build health, that build
density in a lawn and cut way back on having
to fight against everything that comes after your lawn. Or
you can mistreat your plants, keep them weak, and keep
them sick, and then you get to be the doctor
running out there every day. All right, there's something to
think about. Hey, have a great time out in your

(02:35:40):
lawn and garden this afternoon and all through the week.
We'll talk to you again next Saturday.