Fall to Future: Plant Now, Enjoy Later

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kat r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
of the products or services advertised on this program.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
It's crazy the basis gas can you shrim Just watch
him as wol.

Speaker 4 (00:22):
Gas can you.

Speaker 5 (00:25):
Many thanks to Sup brazy in bases like gas, Baby
can you dates back?

Speaker 6 (00:35):
Not a sun bases gas and the sun bemons of treat.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Csit in the gasses and gas baby.

Speaker 6 (00:46):
Can starting treatments the gases like gas you did?

Speaker 7 (00:55):
Everything is so clean and see and never.

Speaker 8 (00:59):
Do have you ever listened to this song all the
way through and look it up sometime? You know, I
heard for so many years I heard you know, the
bumper music with Randy and it was like I didn't
know the whole song is kind of interesting anyway, fun

(01:21):
fact our curiosity maybe well, good morning, Welcome to garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richer, and we're here to help
you have a bountiful garden and a beautiful landscape and
more fun in the process. So if you'd like to
give me a call, if you got a question, we'll
be happy to help with that. Seven one three two
one two five eight seven four seven one three two

(01:42):
one two fifty eight seventy four and give us a call.
We'll talk gardening. Uh So, it's been an interesting weekend.
I have been out of my garden all weekend. We
were out yesterday at the Home and Outboor Living show
in Conroe, and thanks to people that stopped by yesterday,
we had a good time. Lots of questions. The question
of the day yesterday out at the garden show was

(02:06):
pretty much I would say dove weed that I think
that was a number one thing I keep getting asked
about and on the show yesterday too as well. You
probably some of you are probably going yeah, yeah, I know,
or maybe you don't know what you have, but that's
what you have. We'll send me a picture. We'll find
out that's a that's a problem weed. And we have
several weeds that are problem weeds. Dove weed is, basket

(02:29):
grass can be very challenging to deal with. Virginia button weed, boy,
there's another one. Virginia button weed is just it's just
a nuisance and it's hard to get rid of. And
you know one thing that I will say a lot
of times, maybe you think in terms of I have
this weed, how do I kill it with a spray,

(02:51):
and I get that that's and that's legit. I mean people,
we do spray for weeds. Even if you're in an
organic gardener, you probably spray vinegar for weeds. And so yeah,
that that's a thing. But I want you to back
up a step and think about why is that weed there?
And in other words, what is making my spot so

(03:15):
acceptable to that weed, so favorable to that weed that
it's proliferating. And now that doesn't mean the weed all
goes away when we start adjusting that. It just means
we're not encouraging the enemy. If we're going to look
at this from a war standpoint, because sometimes weed wars
are a thing we deal with in Virginia, button weed
and kai linga and yellow nuts edge and doveweed, and

(03:41):
they love wet conditions. And if you've got if you're
water in too much, which a lot of people do,
it's a waste of water. But it's what we do.
It's what some people do. You're going to have more
problems with, oh, another one dollar weed that loves wet conditions.
And so if you've got a low spot, maybe it's
not you that's watering it's the rainfall and the fact

(04:03):
that the area doesn't drain well. Low spots in soggy soil.
There aren't a lot of plants that like that. Most
plants prefer well drained soil, but these weeds love it.
And so just getting the internal drainage of the soil
effixed something called a French drain, where the water goes
down in the soil, enters a pipe and drains off
to another location. All of those kinds of steps will

(04:27):
help a lot in controlling those weeds. It doesn't kill
the weeds, it makes them not proliferate as bad, and
so you have a chance. You know, some of these conditions,
you're encouraging the weed at the same time you're trying
to spray it it up, and that just doesn't make sense.
You're fighting against yourself when you do that. So let's
start with cultural That's true of a lot of problems,

(04:49):
a lot of problems, and even if you're not an
organic gardener, it doesn't make sense to do things that
cause problems that then you have to deal with. Right,
So let's say we're okay, here's an example. Aphids love tender,
succulent new growth and lots of extra fertilizer nitrogen specifically

(05:11):
on plants that get aphids, encourages more problems with aphids. Now,
a good amount of fertilizer means a good plant, a
good production of flowers or vegetables or whatever you're growing.
But when you overdo it, you're not helping your produce
any your production, but you are helping those particular pests.
There's many other examples. How about watering plants. It's better

(05:36):
to put water on the ground where it soaks into
the soil and the roots take it up than it
is to put it on the leaves. So if you've
got a rose bush and you've got those solid state
or pop up spray heads to water your rose bed,
and you three times a week they're coming on and
they're wetting the foliage, you're going to see a lot

(05:56):
of black spot, and you're going to see more in
the humidity that that it's more powdery mildew as well,
and you're promoting those diseases. And then you're wanting to know, well,
how do I spray and kill the what's a good
fungicide to kill black spot or to kill powdery mildew?
And I'm not saying if you don't do that, you
don't have any disease. I'm saying you're making it worse

(06:17):
and then you're having to fight it. So don't fight
against yourself. Let's do the cultural things that help a
plant to thrive. And that's just a principle. We could
go into a lot of other things, including weeds and
insects and diseases and whatnot, and just the plant health itself.
All right, Well, there there was your tip of the day.
I guess we'll just start off without this morning. If

(06:38):
you'd like to give me a call this Sunday morning.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Sweet Green is a fertilizer from Nitroposs. It's based on
kind of a molasses base, and what they do is
through microbial activity, it's created into a fertilizer that's about

(06:58):
eleven percent nitrogen. And what you'll do is you spread
it out, you water it in, and it just dissolves away. Now,
an organic gardener knows that molasses can be a good
thing to stimulate microbial activity in the soil. I mean,
they love those carbon chains. Same thing with sweet green,
It fires them up. They turn the nitrogen loose for

(07:20):
you to your grass plants. They are stimulated, so the
root zone itself is a more vibrant, healthy place for
the roots of the grass. And you see a quick
green up. If you have not fertilized your lawn in
the last few months, it wouldn't hurt. If it's looking
a little on the you know, on the side, give

(07:40):
it a little sweet green now, and I would say
a moderate amount, you know, not a lot, but a
moderate amount. And then the next fertilization for you is
going to be probably in about if you do sweet
green now about mid October, you would put some fertilizer down.
That is your winter riser. That would be the thing
that has a little more potassium in it. We'll talk
about those and we get to them. But you would

(08:02):
do that and sweet green gets you by. And I've
seen a lot of lawns that are kind of they've
been struggling with drought or maybe chinch bugs took a toll.
Maybe take all root right took a toll. Maybe just
a lack of water took a toll. Let's get them
water to get them a little boost with Sweet Green
and you'll be good to go. And you're gonna find
sweet Green in a lot of places. You know, night
Fast products, they're easy to find. Basically, hang on this one.

(08:27):
My coffee got out of arm's reach and that is
a dangerous thing to happen to me at six fifteen
or six thirteen in the morning. You're going to find
it places like Plantation Ace Hardware on three fifty nine
down there in Richmond, Rosenberg, Langham Creek Ase Hardware, that's
the one over by Copperfield on five twenty nine. In
northwest Houston RCW Nursery in our swith Houston Tomball Parkway,

(08:49):
and then Lake Hardware. You know there's Lake Hardware is
in Angleton and Clute, and I believe there's a few
others lakes around the area. But anyway, Sweet Green's easily
easily found in the area. And any place that sells
night Foster products ask for sweet Green. Why don't we
do this. Let's take a little break here and we
will come back, perhaps with your questions or maybe some

(09:12):
of the other things I'm dying to talk about today.
Speaking a wake up we s you look outside and
see if your neighbor's lights are wrong. If they're not,
go over there and bang on the door and tell
them to wake up, they're missing Garden Line. They will
be so appreciative. Maybe not this morning they will rise
up and called you you blessed. Well, not this morning,

(09:34):
they'll call you something else this morning, but eventually they
will be very grateful. Good luck with that one. By
the way, you're listening to Garden Line, I'm your host,
Kip Richter, and we are here to help you have
success and what you do. So how can we do that?
Give me a call, let's talk about it. I was
talking yesterday about Houston powder Coders, and I got to

(09:55):
tell you something. Ever since I discovered Houston powder Coders,
now when I drive around town, and I like to
drive through neighborhoods because that way I get to see
yards and plants and things. You know, I'd rather do
that to me on a big street or highway. But anyway,
when I drive through now, I kind of have one
eye out for someone who's thrown away their own metal furniture.
You know, they got some and it got all rusty
and stuff, and let's just throw it away, because if

(10:17):
it's halfway decent stuff. You can pick that up, take
it into Houston powder Coats and they will make it
brand new. And if you got furniture, especially that metal
furniture made before two thousand. Lately, a lot of stuff
they make is kind of junk. But the old metal
furniture was solid. I mean, it lasts forever, and I
don't care if it's rusty. Powder Coats can fix that.

(10:39):
If the bolts are all rusty, they put brand new
stainless steel bolts in and when they put a powder
coating on it, it is truly solid and brand new.
I mean, if you live down by the coast and
you got that salt spray, that stuff is wicked. When
it comes to our metal, cast iron, wrought iron, you know,
all that kind of stuff, they can put a special
coating on to deal with that as well. And they

(11:00):
have over one hundred colors. So I mean, seriously, I
do look around for old furniture because I don't have
a lot of metal furniture myself. I got some and
I got a barbecue pit too. That's another thing. If
you got an old barbecue pit that's resting, they can
come in. And you know how when you buy a
new barbecue pit. It just has that nice shiny typically

(11:20):
black coating on it. They can do that, I mean,
and it can take temperatures higher than any barbecue pit'll
ever go by far. I mean, this isn't like the
paint's going to run off, you know when it gets hot.
This is professional stuff. Now, what you do is you
take a picture of your metal, you email it to
sales at Houstoncoders dot com and they'll give you a

(11:41):
quick turnaround and if you hear my voice, they will
come get it and pick it up. Meaning they don't
just do Houston. They go way out, way out from Houston,
and they'll come pick it up and they'll bring it
back and deliver it. They'll quote you the price when
you send the email. You can also call them to
eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty eight to
eight one six seven, six thirty eight eighty eight Houston

(12:02):
Powder Coders Cool Stuff. Go check out their website Houston
Powder Cooders dot com. Okay, we're gonna head up to
Northwest Houston and talk to Ed this morning. Hey, Ed,
you're our early bird today. Welcome to Garden Line.

Speaker 4 (12:17):
Well I didn't knock on his door, but his alone
went off about ten minutes. My wife up, so I
got up.

Speaker 8 (12:25):
Or the police on their way. Sorry about that, No wonderful.

Speaker 9 (12:30):
I'm not responsible for what I say. I know I'm
not responsible for what I say. I tell my wife
that all the time. All right, ed, how can we
help today?

Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yes, I've been organic for about four years. Yesterday I've
break down some a's of mike around some roughly thirty
year old box woods that look at peak it About
six months ago I put the a's of mike down
and I believe brought them back pretty decent. So I
put them mold down yesterday. I'm gonna I'm gonna cover

(13:06):
that because it's along the roots system more or less
with some lethold composts. Today, then water all that in Okay.

Speaker 10 (13:17):
On my grass, my Saint Augustine.

Speaker 4 (13:20):
I put down some dry molasses, which I've been wanting
to do and tried for two years. I hadn't done it,
so I put some down yesterday. I put some. I'm
gonna put some you mates thus down today and some
six two four. Do I need to worry about anything

(13:41):
like the uh the uh brown patch microlife stuff?

Speaker 11 (13:47):
That?

Speaker 10 (13:48):
Do I not worry about that putting that down.

Speaker 8 (13:51):
Now, Yeah, so do you happen to have a copy
of my my schedule for fertilizing or not?

Speaker 10 (13:59):
I have not printed it out.

Speaker 8 (14:01):
No sooner okay, now, okay, well you ought to You
ought to check one out if you look on there.
In the late September is when when you put down
Microlife brown patch, and it's it's a higher potassium a
little compared to nitrogen and as a result, it helps
that long go into winter better, so it comes out

(14:22):
into spring better. But that's a late September application. It
could be could be in October too. It didn't have
to be late, but that's what that's the earliest you
would do it. So since you put down six to
two four, I would wait in about probably early October. Uh,
go ahead and do that Microlife brown patch. And that's
a brown bag from Microlife. Yeah, and it will it

(14:43):
will do. Yeah, it will take you. You'll be done
with fertilizing then for this year. And you've already done
a lot of good stuff the humates plus that's very important.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (14:53):
And you know Microlife's got a lot of good products
and and so yeah, the only thing I would say
in what you have been talking about there is uh,
watch that you don't overdo the a's of mite as
MTE is a good thing. Every nutrient that a plant
needs is a good thing, but you don't want to
overdo them. You know, when you when you put too

(15:13):
much of one thing, things get out of balance. So
if you've done it twice an hour, hold off. You
can do it again sometime next year. But don't don't
do a third one. Uh, you know, just one right
after the other.

Speaker 11 (15:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:26):
The other one was about three months ago because I've
been advised nursery to uh that I had uh some
kind of disease that I was going to lose a
box woods and I just wasn't ready for that, so
I just held off.

Speaker 12 (15:41):
Yeah, and uh and I did as of mite and
watered it in and getting over water uh yeah, the
box woods, because I think that is not.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
Good for him. If I realized, I got that right.

Speaker 10 (15:57):
But anyway, I was worried about that, uh that brown patch.

Speaker 13 (16:01):
I'll do that later.

Speaker 10 (16:02):
That's why I didn't put any down. Appreciate you so much.

Speaker 8 (16:06):
All right, Well there you are. You know one other
thing you might want to try is a Microlife has
a product called micro grow. It's kind of a reddish
maroon colored liquid bottle that that's the labels reddish maroon
colored and it's got like eight different beneficial microbes in it.

(16:27):
These are things that fight disease. And I don't know
if you have a hose insprayer, but if you do,
you can go over your lawn with that, uh, and
you can do it periodically. It's not a fertilizer, it's
a it is a biological uh. And you get that
down in the thatch and things. And you were concerned
about the brown patch. That would be another thing that

(16:48):
I would do, just since you're doing this organically to
try to get that lawn as resilient as you can.
So that's micro grow liquid af all right.

Speaker 13 (16:58):
So I do have some of it, Yeah, you have some.

Speaker 4 (17:00):
So what about that alone with days of mic when
I water in today? Uh, because I didn't water it
last night, because I want to put that.

Speaker 10 (17:10):
Uh tempos down on top of it and around those roofs.

Speaker 14 (17:15):
Uh.

Speaker 10 (17:15):
Is that micro grow for those box woods too?

Speaker 8 (17:20):
Yeah? It would it would be fine for that. I
just you know, it's you were talking about the brown
patch in the lawn and that's when I thought about it.
It depends on what's attacking the box woods as whether
micro grow af is what you need to do or not.
But I would water first, get everything watered in, and
then apply this because you're not putting gallons of this
stuff on a spot, you know, you're you're spraying it

(17:42):
over the surfaces. And so I would get the watering
done and then do this after the watering. All right,
good luck, all right? Uh huh bye bye, all right, folks,
you were listening to guard line. We're here to help.
How can we help you? Tell me we'll be happy
to join in and help you turn that landscape around.

(18:06):
You know, gardening is not rocket science. I'm told if
you're if you are a rocket scientist, that rocket science
is not rocket science either, because it's just simple math
to you. All right, So enough of that, seriously, Gardening
a few simple principles. Plants want sunlight, plants want drainage,
plants want nutrition. Plants want to be in a zone
and climate they like. So don't bring a blue spruce

(18:27):
back from Colorado to Houston. That's good. That is cruel
and unusual punishment to that poor blue spruce.

Speaker 13 (18:34):
Don't do it.

Speaker 8 (18:35):
But the plants. What they need is simple. So if
you move from another area, give me a call. Let's
talk about the plant before you bring it in here.
You know, if you're going to call me about, oh gosh,
what's Midwest for scythia? They love for beautiful early, early
yellow blooms, so pretty up there, up there, not here
up there. Yeah, And the same is true, you know

(18:58):
with lilacs, wonderful fragrant plant. I had a lilac when
I lived in Missouri for a few years. It is
a nice plant. I love the fragrance of it. It
doesn't grow, it doesn't serve, it hates our climate here. Okay,
it's not going to do well. So if you like lilacs,
find a lilac perfume, get you a crape myrtle, and
spray the crape myrtle with lilac perfume, and you got

(19:19):
a lilac. That's as good as we can do for
lilac lovers. All right, Seriously, you just got a plant
things that want to be here. It's not that difficult.
That's why we're here every Saturday and Sunday six am
ten am to talk about how to have success with
your plants.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
You know, the.

Speaker 8 (19:39):
Whole issue of pest control around the home and in
the home too, is one that mystifies a lot of folks.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
You know.

Speaker 8 (19:46):
It's like, well, I don't want to poison the house
and all this kind of stuff, and I don't. I tried,
I spray stuff and it doesn't work, and the cockroaches
come back, and the pantry pests, you know, the weavils
and the flower and all that kind of thing, and
then outside the fire ants are biting me and whatnot.
You need to call pest pros. They know how to
do things, They know how to treat effectively, but they

(20:08):
also know how to treat in the safest manner and
that way you get long term results with less worries.
And that's what it's all about. You can trust them
with your best control activities. And something like termites. You know,
nobody wants to talk about termites, but when termites get
in your house, that's serious. I mean, that's worse. You know,
cockroaches and pantry pests are nothing compared to something that's

(20:31):
eating your house. Pest pros can give you a ten
year termite treatment. They do a little trench outside and
put something in the trench. And when termites try to
come across there, they can't do it. And you know
it's not stuff. They're spraying all over creation. So your
dogs and your kids are rolling around and it's simple.
Call Pestbros. Two eight one two oh six forty six

(20:52):
seventy pestpros dot com. Alrighty, welcome back to guarden Line, folks.
Good to have you with us. Did have you with us?
I was out, gosh a couple of days ago, doing
some barbecuing out in the back on making some ribs,
some baby back ribs. Oh my gosh, I'm getting hungry

(21:13):
just thinking about this now again. But anyway, I got
a nice rectech that's a pellet grill, and there's several
brands of Pellett grills, but I got mine from Ace Hardware.
I bought it, oh gosh, several months ago from Ace Hardware,
and I just love the thing and Ace Hardware, I'm
telling you, I've been so many Aces and they just

(21:33):
have a great selection of all kinds of things barbecue,
if you like. Trager was kind of like the original
famous one, I think for the pellet grills, and I
never had a pellet grill before, but I sure like it.
Nobody has their opinions, that's for sure, on barbecue, barbecue, music, politics,
so we all have our opinions, right. But the Aces

(21:55):
also carries the big Green egg. Now that's a cult.
I'm sorry, but green egg is just a cult. I
had a friend that is like there there was nothing
you could cook on other than big Green Eggs. I
guess you know. We've been We've been barbecuing ever since.
We made a fire and a cave and through some
something we chased down and threw a spear out at it.

(22:16):
But barbecue is such a good way to go. And
now we're going into the fall season. We got football season.
Oh my gosh, you gotta do cookouts for that. The
weather's gonna be cooling off here. You need to get
you some you need to get set up. Maybe you
already got a good pit that you like.

Speaker 11 (22:29):
I like.

Speaker 8 (22:29):
I cooked on Weber my whole life. That was a
good one too. But ACE has all that, and then
they have everything you need to go with it, you know,
whether you're using briquettes or whether you're you know, using
gas grills. Lots of good gas grills that ACE carries
as well ACE hardware. You know my stores. You can
find all my ACE Hardware stores at ACE Hardware Texas

(22:50):
dot com. Don't forget the Texas ACE Hardware Texas dot com.
You just click on the one go look where you are.
It's a little map will pop up and you can
find your local ACE Hardware doors. And I put an
S on the end because there's a bunch of them
around here, you know. Let me just give you a few.
If you are up in the Woodlands area on Kirkandaal,
there's an Auspas ACE up there. If you were up

(23:13):
in Willis on I forty five North, All Seasons Ace,
I was there a good while back for an appearance.
On the east side of Houston, we got Euvaldy ACE
on Uvalde Road. Not in New Valdi, Texas. There may
be one in New Valdi, Texas, but Euvaldi ACE on
neu Valdy Road in Houston, Southeast Chambers down in Galveston
on Broadway Street, and then southwest there's a Base City
ACE on Seventh Street. And that's just a few. There's

(23:36):
a bunch of them out there. And it's not just
for the you know, the typical hardware stuff. It's for
all kinds of things. You know, East hardware stores are
all independently owned, so you never know when you go
into one. My wife and I went into one the
other day just to check it out and see what
it looked like. And you know, she's wandering over there
looking at some of that farmhouse stuff that you know

(23:56):
that decorates the home, in the kitchen and all of
that is an ACE Hardware store. I've been at Ace
Hardware stores that just had things I never expected, you know.
So I'm I'm sitting here just thinking about a thousand
different possibilities. You just need to go into one. That's
the bottom line. Go into one. And certainly when it
comes to you got to get fertilizer, you need something

(24:17):
to kill pass, you need some tools for the garden.
ACE has got you covered. Ace Hardware dot Com. Go
check those out. I can talk about as the cows
come home, love the love those stores.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Uh uh.

Speaker 8 (24:34):
The season that we're in now is hurricane season. You say,
what season of the year is, It's hurricane season. It is,
and this is when storms appear and we're just watching them.
We haven't had one yet. Maybe we'll dodge them this year,
maybe not. We'll just see. But It doesn't have to
be a hurricane to knock out your power. Remember last
summer we had a hurricane that knocked it out for

(24:55):
a couple of weeks, and then we had another storm
wood and a hurricane knocked it out for a couple
of weeks. You need to generator to do that. And
there are a lot of generators in the market, a
lot of generators on the market, and they're not all equal.
There are some good ones and there are some not
so good ones. Genera automatic stand by generators is an

(25:15):
excellent product because it gets set up, it gets hooked
into your power supply so that when the power goes off,
that generator is constantly checking is everything okay? Is everything okay?
Is everything okay? And then when the power goes off,
it pops on and takes off, and you know, you're
watching a football game and you go oh in lots
power and boom it comes right back up again. That

(25:37):
is nice. You go away on a trip, the power
goes off, and now you come back to rotting food
in that freezer because you're gone for two weeks on it.
That didn't happen when you've got a quality generator. But
by generators a lot of places, but Quality Home Products
is the only place that I would buy a generator,
and I really mean that, and it's because you look

(25:58):
at their ratings. Go to go to their website qualitytx
dot com and look look at the ratings that they've received.
I would just give them a call seven to one
to three quality and talk to them about it. Getting
a generator as a process. But these people take care
of their customers. They'll tell you all about what they do.

(26:18):
You know, from the time you first call and you
need to find the right generator, which they'll make sure
you get the right one for what you need, and
then they take care of everything. You know you have
to get permits to set up on these generators, Well
you don't have to do that. They do that and
they understand each step of the way. And that's why
their customers are so happy. That's why they're so highly

(26:40):
rated Pinnacle Award over and over and over again from
the Better Business Bureau because reports on them by their
customers are just These folks are wonderful. That's how they
look at and that's why I say that it's a
family owned operation here in the Houston area. Been aroundsince
nineteen eighty nine. Quality tx dot Com seven to one
to three Quality don't wait until the storm in the
gulf before you call. It takes a while. Is a

(27:03):
process of getting a generator chosen, picked out and set up.
So call them now, start that conversation now, Quality Home Products.
This afternoon, I've got a couple of things that I
need to do, and with my house plants. You know
how we're talking about plants, and typically we're talking about

(27:24):
gardening being outside, a lot of gardenings inside. And there
are people that don't have any They live in an
apartment on the eighteenth floor downtown Houston or something. They
don't have a garden, but they got a lot of
plants inside. You grow things by the window and whatnot. Well,
this afternoon, I've got to do some repotting of some houseplants.
I've got some orchids that need repotting. I've got some

(27:44):
other houseplants that have just outgrown their container, and we're
putting them all together and getting them all set up,
putting a quality mix in there and getting them ready
to go. I'll talk a little bit more about that later,
but that's going to be my gardening activity this afternoon.
I'll be right back. You need to take a little
break here. If you'd like to give me a call,
you can be first up. We'll come back from break

(28:05):
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four. Hey,
welcome back to Guardline, folks. Good to have you with us.
I mentioned earlier that I like to drive through neighborhoods
as opposed to taking you know, the highways around as
much as I can, and it's because I can look

(28:27):
at landscapes and look at plants and see things, and
you never know what you're going to see. But it's
a great way to get ideas. I'll tell you that.
You know, you'll maybe maybe you just see a plant
it's like, wow, I gotta have one of those and
take a picture of it, knock on the door, whatever,
find out what it is. But you can get good ideas.
Or maybe it's a way that they did a bed,

(28:47):
you know. I like the way they you know, curve
that bed around here, or the way that they've mixed
the shrubs and the flowers in and stuff, and that
just looks good. I should go home and change my
beds or something like that. Well, it is a great
way to get ideas. Another way is to go to
Peerscapes dot com. Peerscapes is our preferred landscaper here on
guard Line. And I'm telling you these guys work magic.

(29:09):
They're professionals. I mean, they have designers. If you have
a brand new house and you want to start from
scratch and design a landscape, oh my gosh, call them.
Let them show you what they can do. If you've
already got a landscape and you want to revamp the
whole thing, call them. If you just have a couple
of beds in front and you drive every time you
drive up the house is like, Okay, that's blah. I

(29:31):
don't like that. Want I want it to look nicer
than that. Call them and I'll tell you something else
about Peerscapes. If they can do a quarterly maintenance program.
So here's how that works. Once a quarter they come out,
they go through all your beds, They spruce up the mults,
get rid of any weeds, you know, fresh mulch in there,
make sure the irrigation is working properly. And then according

(29:52):
to how you and they decide to do the color
change out. They can do one or more color changeouts
a year in other words, you know when the pansies
start melting in summer heat, right, you got to put
another flour in. Well, they'll do that, and they can
do that several times or just what. That's part of
the arrangement you set up with them. But they do
quarterly maintenance in your beds and in your landscape general.

(30:14):
It's a very nice, nice service. Look at the work
they do at piercescapes dot com and there you'll see
all the other stuff, you know, fixing drainage areas, landscape lighting,
hard scapes, and on and on down the line piercescapes
dot com. Here's a phone number. Please write this down.
Two eight one three seventy fifty sixty two eight one

(30:37):
three seventy five zero six zero. So I was talking
about earlier that I need to revent my houseplants. They
just need to be bumped up and things. I've also
got some plants that the soil it's been there for
a long time and it's kind of decomposing a way.
You know, you get like a potting soil or something

(30:59):
for your house plants and it's nice and loose and
airy and it's just a wonderful thing. But all that
organic matter in there continues to decompose, you know, compost
turns to humus, and that starts happening in those pots,
and so you see the levels sink down. That's what's happening,
and it becomes kind of mucky. So when you water,

(31:21):
it gets a little gooey wet for too long, and
that's not good for the plants. And so sometimes I'll
pull plants out and I'll you know, scrape away the
outer soil with my fingers, you know, loosen it all
off there and put some fresh soil in and reset
those plants. And that's also a good idea for that
kind of maintenance. But whenever you do that, you just

(31:42):
always want to make sure and provide the kind of
nutrition those plants want, and that that's what I do.
One of the things I like to do is to
use a product by Nelson's called Genesis. Nelson Fertilizer has
a product called Genesis and that has got all kinds
of my chrobial life in the product and you mix

(32:03):
it in the soil. I was given out free samples
yesterday at the Home and Garden Show or Home and
Outdoor Living Show up in Conro and next time I
go somewhere, which I'll be doing a lot this fall,
I'm gonna always take samples of various things with me.
But I like this because you mix it in the
soil that you're going to plant in. So for a
house plant, I'll do that, just follow the label. I

(32:25):
put some in the soil, mix it up. It's not
the kind of thing that's going to burn your plants, okay,
because it's a more natural product than that. And you
mix it in and then there's a plant starts to grow.
It's got not only a boost of the microbial life,
but it also has those nutrients for it. Now you
may be planning a rosebush outside and the soil you're

(32:46):
going to plant it in, mix in a little bit
of the Genesis from Nelson's. It's an outstanding product and
it really really does work, and so I use it
all the time. I think I've said this before and
the air, But last year I had some made of
plants that I started from seeds and little containers, and
then I wanted to bump them up to a little
bigger than a four inch pot, and I mixed Genesis

(33:07):
and a half of the plants soil, so half the
plants with genesis, half the plants not. And I'm telling you,
I don't know how long it was, but a week
or so or later when I looked at those plants,
it was literally like a probably a one third taller
the ones that I'd put the Genesis in, and then
they just kept going faster like that. It's a good

(33:30):
product and it really works, and it is all the
places you find Nelson products sold, which is all over
the place you're going to find that genesis. So just
a tip kind of thought about because I'll be doing
that later today. Let's see, Oh have you been to
Nelson Water Gardens out in Katie. I was there the

(33:52):
other day visiting with Ralph and we were walking around
talking about stuff, and I told him, as Ralph, this,
you know, you should charge to come in here because
the therapy I for me when I go outside and
I hear the sound of running water and I'm just
sitting having morning coffee or reading a book or just
enjoying watching the birds, you know it's coming to the

(34:14):
feeders and things. The sound of running water is so soothing.
Your gardening itself is a soothing thing for our peace
of mind and everything. But the sound of water is awesome,
and they excel at that at Nelson's Nursery and water gardens.
That is their specialty. That's what they're real famous for that.

(34:34):
I mean literally they invented did you know that. They
invented the disappearing fountain where the water comes out of
a container and it spills over the side and goes
into the ground, but it's truly just recirculating. They invented those.
And by the way, birds love those, and even beneficial
insects they can land and get some of that water.
We'll enjoy that too. They invented that. But what about

(34:56):
the nursery part. All kinds of good plants. He's cut
in a bunch. When I was there, they just had
gotten in a whole bunch of citrus and other fruit trees,
you know, pears and peaches and plums and things. They
have an excellent supply. I was just walking around looking
at all the things. Nice selection of herbs and vegetables
and flowers. And then when it comes to water plants,
they've got water lilies and it is just it's amazing

(35:21):
the kinds of water lilies that they have, the tropical
types and then the kind that are said to be hearty.
I'm told that even the tropicals go through the winter
here in our area. Excuse me, but just beauty and
the sound. The sound is the part that it just
amazes me. You can take your kiddos out there and

(35:43):
ask the folks in the store, say, hey, could my
kids feed the fish, and they'll give you a little
handful of little pellets and the kids can go out
and back and these giant koi swimming around in the
pond and they've learned. These koi have learned. They come
up to you on the side and they bring their
head up out of the water a little and open
their mouth and the kids can drop food in it.

(36:03):
They your kids will love that, uh, and they'll give
you more time to shop. You do that anyway. Nelson
Nursery and Water Gardens. You got to Katie Go up
Katie fortmun Road North and it's just up the street
a little bit. If you want to go to the
website Nelsenwatergardens dot com. Well music means it's the end

(36:24):
of the hour and take a little break. Here's been
a quiet day to day. If you have a gardening
question and want to call during this break before I
come back after the top of the hour. You can
be the first stop. Seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. That's no waiting. Good thing. All right, folks,

(36:44):
I'm gonna go grab some coffee and talking a bit.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Welcome to Katie r. H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
It's jes crazy gas Trim. Just watch him as we
go gas maybe bas to sup Bot crazy gas again?

(37:24):
You again? Not a sun glass and.

Speaker 6 (37:33):
The sun beamon of tweets.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Start.

Speaker 8 (37:43):
All right, folks, welcome back to the Garden Line. What
do you want to talk about today? You know this
show is about you, your garden and your questions and
helping you have success and helping you have more fun.
That's important.

Speaker 4 (37:59):
You know what.

Speaker 8 (37:59):
It is no fun when gardening goes south. I mean
it really if you have this dream of let's say
you want fruit, you can just taste the peaches right now,
imagining them. You buy a tree and you take it
home and you plant it and you don't have success,
and I mean, it's no fun at all, and we
can help you avoid that. I would encourage you to
call when you are about to do something out in

(38:21):
the garden. I want to plant fruit trees. Let's let's
talk about it first. I've had calls before where someone said,
you know, I planted this apple and it just year
after year and it blooms and I don't get any apples.
It's like, well, you need a second variety for cross pollination.
So all that time was lost. Now you got to
plant a new variety with it and then wait for

(38:41):
it to grow out and start blooming before you get apples.
That's not necessary. Let's not do that. Let's talk first.
And if you already have done it and got questions,
happy to talk with you. I think if you've listened
to Gardline very long, you know I'm patient and basically
I'm here to help you have success. So let's do that.
But boy, I love it when someone calls ahead of time.

(39:03):
You know, I'm about to plant the grass and I'm
kind of wondering what type of scene Augustine might be
best for my situation, or something like that, those kinds
of questions, because there's often some really good advice we
can give early on. Let's head out now to Cyprus
and we're going to visit with Ruth this morning. Hello, Ruth,
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 14 (39:24):
Well, thank you. I love your show.

Speaker 13 (39:28):
What I have is.

Speaker 14 (39:31):
About three anti went to the antique roath Emporium and
about three climbing pinky roads is plants a planet of
the outside my driveway. And this was late middle summer,
and I got some morosies that have made a special

(39:54):
bed for them, good dirt. But now they give me
a lawfull yad. A lot of branches. But now at
the end of the branches are red leaves, are maroon leaves,
and I have no roses.

Speaker 8 (40:11):
Okay, okay, well maroon. That maroon color is primarily due
to it's an anthesianin pigment, and it sometimes, like in
cooler weather, you do get some pinkish reddish maroon in
that that range as new growth comes out, and so

(40:32):
that that's not too unusual. But it could be that
they're less stressed.

Speaker 14 (40:38):
It's not a disease.

Speaker 8 (40:41):
No, it's not a disease. But what else do you
see on the roses? Does everything look normal?

Speaker 14 (40:48):
Do the fact that it's not a lot of leaves
that you believe a kind of sparks, but that's there
looks good?

Speaker 8 (41:00):
But okay, well, if everything else looks good, yeah, if
everything else looks good. I wouldn't worry about it.

Speaker 14 (41:09):
Okay, Well, I've always had I think they're beautiful. They
give me lots of roses. But yeah, three roses bushes.
I'm having a problem with that. I have no roses
on it.

Speaker 8 (41:22):
Yeah. Well, let's do this. I'm gonna as we wind
up here, I'm gonna put you on hold, and I
want you to send me some close up pictures of
what you're seeing, just so I can be extra sure
that there's nothing wrong. I think it's probably okay, But
let me take a look, take picture of the overall
rose and take something up close and email them to me.

Speaker 14 (41:45):
I shouldn't even bother them. I shouldn't cut those red
leaves off.

Speaker 8 (41:49):
Huh no, no, the red leaves off. Okay, but send
me the pictures, because you know, sometimes what what you're
describing and what I'm picturing may not be the same thing.
So I want to make sure we got this one right.

Speaker 14 (42:03):
Okay, Okay, thank you, all right.

Speaker 8 (42:07):
Thanks, thank you, Ruth. I appreciate that. Let's see here.
Let's go now to Bay City and talk to Mike. Hey, Mike,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 15 (42:15):
Hey you don't skip? Uh yeah, I was wanting to
call you about myas Uh they're not producing or I've
had them all seasoned long. The plants are tall as
my shoulder. I've had thousands of blooms. Not a single tomatilla.
Is there something? Okay, they're not such a thing as

(42:36):
male and female tomatia plants are.

Speaker 8 (42:38):
There, there's not but uh, tomy TIA's set fruit better
when you have two genetically uh not identical plants, in
other words, too different. Not that tomatillas aren't necessarily varieties.
They can be, but not necessarily. But I found if

(43:00):
you plant several different ones that are unrelated, that they
set fruit better. So that that's one day. That seems
to be the case for tebdia. Stresses can can cause
them to abort, and they do have to be pollinated,
so you know there does You do have to have
some pollination, and there are a few insects that will

(43:22):
get in there sometimes in clip a bloom or something,
but I wouldn't go spray in them just yet. I
think the issue is going to be more. I find
when you have more than one plant of just a
standard type tomatilla that mindset a lot better, and then
they are a little bit seasonal and how they set well.

Speaker 15 (43:40):
They have been like this the whole season, I mean
from way back early spring, and they I've had I've
produced pretty well in the past, but this year.

Speaker 13 (43:48):
I don't.

Speaker 15 (43:49):
I have two plants, okay, and so I do have
you do a couple of plants, yeah, And and they're
both the same. And I even took cuttings off to
reroot for the fall. I don't know if I even
want to plan them, you know, because it's just and
I have a neighbor by the way that he's saying
the same thing, you know that his arn't produced. I'll

(44:10):
go out there and shake the thing. Earlier in the season,
we didn't have any bees, okay, and so I was
having to pollinate my cucumbers and everything, you know, And
I'd shake the plant and I tried cutting it back
a little bit to see if that would stimulate something.
And you know, it's just I didn't understand it because
I've produced them very well in the past, and I

(44:32):
just couldn't understand if there was something but maybe the
stress or of some sort.

Speaker 8 (44:36):
But I just just environmental conditions, Yeah, it is. And
gardens throw us a curve like that sometimes something always works,
one year doesn't, and that that count a poor pollination
is is kind of now what I'm I'm leaning toward
a little bit, but I just don't know you've got

(44:59):
more than one plant. That is the first step that
I would recommend too, tone me if you if different
cultivars are better to do that. And then making sure
that the bees are there doing their job. That's required
getting enough sunlight, which I'm sure you've got yours in
sun Yeah, when the plants are were young, they don't produce,

(45:20):
but fertilizing properly kind of overdoing it if they if
they have you mentioned early on them being really big
when we have fruiting planting. This can happen with tomatoes too,
when you overdo the fertilizer and you push them into
vegetative growth at the expense of setting fruit. That can
that can limit the success. You are getting plenty of blooms.

Speaker 15 (45:42):
Though, right, oh, thousands, though you know I just none
of them sit. I mean, yeah, you know, recently later
in the season, I have a carl running back here,
and of course that's bringing the bees all in now.
They weren't there in the spring.

Speaker 11 (45:57):
For some reason.

Speaker 15 (45:59):
But anyway, I thought, well, maybe that'll trigger maybe they'll
come over. But I don't see bees other and around
this anyway. It's still got booms on it, on this,
but just not making I just didn't understand it.

Speaker 16 (46:10):
Okay.

Speaker 15 (46:11):
Well, and my two plants are not close together though,
so I don't know if that makes a difference, so
you know, they're way apart.

Speaker 8 (46:18):
It shouldn't have to, you know, Okay, it shouldn't unless
there are three houses down or something. You know that
bees know how to get from one. They know how
to get from one. Plan.

Speaker 15 (46:29):
Yeah, sure, okay, Well better luck next year, right, Or
maybe I'll go ahead and try to plant these the settings,
you know, these clippings that I got rooted, and and
maybe the fall will produce something in the cooler weather.

Speaker 8 (46:43):
Maybe, Yeah, you gotta go ahead and get them, get
them going, because uh, you know, they falls a short
season for tomatoes and tomataras and things. But here i'd
like to I'd like to do this if you see,
if you have different results and you've you've taken these
and planting them in the fall, I'd like to hear
about that. I like to hear a little bit more
about that. So just if you don't mind. That would

(47:03):
be very helpful.

Speaker 17 (47:05):
Yeah, okay, well, hey, I appreciate your show up.

Speaker 4 (47:07):
You have.

Speaker 8 (47:09):
All right, Well, thanks a lot, appreciate appreciate your call,
thanks for calling it. Okay, alrighty, Hey a Southwest Fertilizer
corner of Missinett and Renwick, Southwest Eastern. That's the place
where you get what you need. The bottom line is
they have everything that you need. Not stuff that doesn't
work here, not stuff that is not going to help plans,

(47:34):
not help your gardening, but stuff that works. I like
to say that Southwest Fertilizer, if they don't have it,
you don't need it. And that's true. There's no fertilizer,
there is no pest control, there's no weed control, there's
no disease control that I would recommend that I haven't
seen that and more at Southwest Fertilizer. These folks know
what they're doing. You know, the store's been around for

(47:55):
seventy years. This is our seventieth anniversary, since nineteen fifty five.
But Bob and his whole team there, uh, they're excellent.
They know plant problems, they know how to diagnose. They
you bring them a sample, you bring them a picture,
you tell them I've got this problem, what can I do?
And they'll walk you through it. They'll talk about the
product options that you have and help you find the

(48:16):
one that's going to work for you.

Speaker 7 (48:18):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (48:18):
Southwest Fertilizer corner a bisinet and Runwick Listen. It's friendly service.
They have excellent products, unbelievable selection, and you know when
you go there, you're going to go home with what
you went what you went out to get. It's not
a we don't have it, it's they got it. Southwest
Fertilizer dot Com seven one three six sixty six one

(48:39):
seven four four. Give them a call. Just take a
little break here. I'll be right back. All right, folks,
we're back. Welcome back to the garden Line on a
nice Sunday morning. Glad to have you here. Listen. I
want to tell you about some classes coming up at
the Arbor Gate. Arburgate has a number of classes coming

(48:59):
up this far and the first one is called fire
Sider and fire spelled Phyra. So what is that, Well,
what it is is basically it's an herbal remedy for
all kinds of things for flus cold viruses. For a
long long time, it's it's a class you're going to
take basically, and this class you'll learn the base formula

(49:22):
of how to make it and how to customize it
for each rendition for various needs and your taste requirements.
They're going to have excuse me, information on other te's
and tinctures and toddies and everything else. It will be introduced. Now,
all of these Arbrogate classes cost ten dollars a person,
but you got to call ahead to reserve your spot,
and you got to prepay. And the reason for that
and I know this because I've done a lot of

(49:43):
programs over the years. You know, people they fill up
the class and then people sometimes get busy and they
don't show up, and having prepaid, and you know, at
least at least there's a little incentive there. So called
two eight one three five one eighty eight fifty one
two eight one three five one eighty eight fifty one.
This class is on Wednesday, September seventeenth. I'll be telling

(50:05):
you about more. Angela Chandler, who was on the show
a little while back, is going to be doing a
fall gardening class that you don't want to miss on
September twenty seventh. So Mark September twenty seventh, you definitely
want to be at that one. But for this upcoming one,
September seventeenth at ten am firesider at the arbor Gate,
forty people. You know, when you go to the arbor Gate,

(50:27):
you're always going to find anything that you're looking for.
I was out there just the other day visiting with
Beverly and Kennon and just walking around looking at their plans.
Outstanding selection right now, so beautiful out there. There's never
a day you go to the arbor Gate that you
don't see a whole bunch of things you can't live about.
Remember to parking back by the way anytime, but especially
for these classes, it's really safe, easy in and out parking.

(50:51):
Don't try to go into the front because a lot
of people will be there and it's just it's better
for you to have good access in that wonderful back
parking line that they've now built out there at the
arbor Gate. For those of you who just arrived in
Houston and never been to the arbor Gate, first of all, welcome.
I'm gonna assume anyone who's been here has already been
out there. They are out to the west of Tomball

(51:15):
on twenty nine to twenty just a little bit out
of town there on the left hand side. If you'd
like to give me a call. The number here for
a garden line is seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four seven one three two one two
five eight seven four. I talk about Ciena Maltch all
the time, and one of the things, well, I'm always

(51:38):
talking about the quality mixes that they have. If you
just want a good, straight, quality compost, they've got good
options for you there. If you're looking for a bed
mix and maybe like a heirlomselves veggie an herb mix,
you know you can buy it there at cnamlts. They
carry good stuff there. The website is what you need
to write down, and that is cnmals dot com. They're
south of Houston on FM five, but just go to

(52:00):
Cienamultch dot com. You can find out everything you want
to know right there. When I was out there, I
was looking and they had their new supersack machine set up.
I say new, it's been there a lot while, but
they put a big giant sack under it that holds
a cubic yard and you can go pick up a
cubic yard or whatever mix you want. They'll put it
in the sack and you can take it home with you,
and that's really handy. If you want them to deliver,

(52:23):
they will deliver. It's a three sack minimum. They deliver
within about twenty miles of the Cinamos location. They also
have some nice metal yard art, some really cool stuff.
I love that stuff. It really adds just interest in
fun and whimsy to a garden. And they also have
the Vego beds. You used to hear me talk about

(52:44):
Vego all the time, those metal beds. Well, you can
go to Siena. They sell them there and you can
see them already set up and growing things right in front,
so that's kind of cool.

Speaker 11 (52:53):
I like that.

Speaker 8 (52:54):
And then go inside. They've really expanded the store. Lots
of pottery, leather goods, the little art pots, local honey,
the shrooms which are the little colorful mushrooms, ceramic that
you put out in the garden, soap scandals, lotions, and
even harvest baskets, a little wire things with wood that
you they have a handle and you go out there
to take your harvest. You can squirt it off and

(53:16):
wash all the dirt off. There outside kind of cool
things you need to get by Cienamalt. You haven't been
there in a while, cinemals dot com, cienemlch dot com.
Set out now to Southwest Houston and we're going to
talk to Wayne this morning. Hey, Wayne, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 13 (53:33):
Thank you, how you.

Speaker 8 (53:35):
Can I'm good, thank you?

Speaker 18 (53:38):
Yeah, yes, sir, I'm trying to pick a tree from
my front yard, but I have a problem with algie,
so I don't even know where to start picking a
good tree that.

Speaker 11 (53:52):
Shade, but not too much shade, because I want some
sun to get through to my yard and something that
doesn't grow too too fast.

Speaker 8 (54:01):
Of where do I how big? How big do you
want that tree to be? Like how wide across? You know,
we're talking about twenty foot or thirty foot or bigger.

Speaker 11 (54:14):
Mimmo, I want to t ten feet off the drive,
ten feet off the sidewalk something like that.

Speaker 8 (54:24):
Okay, all right, here's what I would plant. And first
of all, when they're you know, it's kind of like
I tell people when they ask me to tell them
what the plant. It's like giving me a credit card,
your credit card and saying, go to the mall and
buy me some clothes. I don't know what you like.
I don't know what colors or styles you like, so
it's kind of hard, right, And and plants are the

(54:45):
same way. I'll tell you the tree that I would
plant first in that spot, and that is a Chinese
fringe tree. And they you can They're not hard to find.
H I don't know how far out in southwest Houston,
y ad, but if you go out to Enchanted Forest,
I know that they carry them there. I just saw

(55:06):
some there the other day. I'm sure they haven't met
other places too, But Chinese fringe it's gonna be about
a twenty foot tree, about twenty feet and it doesn't
grow fast you mentioned a little bit, not too fast growing.
And it has shaggy pink or excuse me, shaggy white
flowers in the spring that have a very nice light

(55:27):
fragrance to them, not overpowering at all, just a light fragrance.
It is very pretty. And then the rest of the
year it's a nice little tree, not too big, but
that's one I would consider.

Speaker 11 (55:41):
Okay, well that's a good start. Let me start Evan
and see what will come up with.

Speaker 8 (55:47):
All right, Yeah, and if you're more south then north,
excuse me, more south than west. Then Jorges Hidden Gardens
down in al Then on Elizabeth Street also has Chinese fringe.
They carry those down there.

Speaker 11 (56:05):
Okay, well right, I'll check both of those out. Thank
you so much.

Speaker 8 (56:12):
Thank you, Wayne, appreciate that call. Thanks for calling ahead
of time. That's a good question because you're buying a
tree that's a long term investment in your landscape, and
you want to make a good, wise investment. So I
wish you investment.

Speaker 13 (56:22):
And they're not cheap.

Speaker 11 (56:23):
Yeah, they're not cheap either.

Speaker 8 (56:25):
No, no, they're not. But the value that a good
tree adds to your property is significant, so they will
definitely pay for themselves. All right, appreciate that. I was,
you know, since we're talking about trees, I was speaking
to somebody the other day and the head of yard
and a nice big tree in the yard and it

(56:47):
had a really narrow branch angle and looking at the tree,
it's like, that is the branch it's going to break
in the next storm. If one's going to break the
right kind of storm, something goes, that's going to be
the one that goes. Martin Spoon Moore from Affordable Tree,
they know how to take care of this, and you
need to call him. You need to get He is
scheduling pruning by the way, all the way now into November.

(57:10):
So seven one three six nine nine two six sixty
three seven one three six nine nine two six sixty
three you get a free deep root feeding on that
tree that you have him prune now, So go ahead
and get scheduled. Don't delay. Seven to one three six
nine nine two six sixty three. Affordable tree. I hope

(57:30):
you got some tomatoes in the garden for a fall crop.
By the way, while I'm thinking about it, when the
first frost comes, you got to pick those tomatoes and
they will ripen inside. And I'm telling you you will
not believe how good a non vine ripin' tomato is.
I'm serious that there. We have a number of different

(57:52):
fruit that don't ripen after you pick them, like a cantalope,
for example, doesn't ripen after you pick it, peach doesn't
ripen after you pick it, but a tomato will, and
you can bring it inside as long as it's horticulturally mature,
which basically means it's reached the stage where it can
continue to ripen. Uh And without getting too technical, on it.

(58:16):
Let me just put this way. If you slice through
a tomato, and when you slice through, your knife, a
good sharp knife cuts through the seeds and you don't
have all that jelly stuff around the seeds inside, that
is not a tomato that will continue to ripen inside.
But once they hit the stage where there's a little
bit jelly in there and your knife pushes that seed
to the side as you slice through, that is one

(58:38):
even green that will go ahead and ripen inside. So
so there's your there's your tip. I don't know how
you know. You know, if you pick one and slice it, well,
it's not like you can put it back. You've already
you've already committed to it. But homegrown tomatoes and fall
just remember pick them, pick them before it gets frosty.
Warren Southern Gardens down in Kingwood is such a wonderful

(59:01):
place to go. I love I love getting out there
because they always have a new selection of plants that
are coming in. They've got a lot of nice things right,
and they've got some vegetables in, some beautiful flowers in.
If you're looking to do shrubs, you know, as we
get toward the end of the season here, it just
gets to be a better and better and better time
to plant shrubs. And whether you're going to do adranges

(59:24):
or whether you're going to do you know, trees and shrubs,
any kind of thing like that roses. This is a
great time fall. It's a great time to get those
things in the ground. And when you go out to
Warren Joy is going to find a nice selection of things,
you know, and you know how I always say brown
stuff before green stuff. Well, if you need some quality
age leap more compost from herlom sauce, they've got that

(59:45):
at Warrens by the bag. If you need veggie and
herbicx heirloom sauce product, also, they've got that by the
bag out there. Now would be a good time to
plant you one of the new beautiful lest bronzes that
are you know, used to be the only one you
saw around was the yellow one, still a good one,
by the way, But now that you have beautiful orange
and coral colors of Esperanza that are just excellent. So

(01:00:06):
get out there to Warrens Kingwood Garden Center as well.
And by the way, speaking of Kingwood Garden Center is
on Stone Hollow Drive. Warrens is on North Park Drive,
both in Kingwood. Both of them are open seven days
a week, seven days. All right, go out there and
check them out. If you'd like to give me a

(01:00:27):
call here on garden Line. Got an open line right
now seven to one three two one two fifty eight
seventy four seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. I. Uh, I was talking to somebody the
other day, UH that was worried about bugs in their yard.
They're thinking maybe they had chinchbugs because the grass was dying,

(01:00:49):
and we're kind of going through the Okay, here's what
you look for if you have chinch bugs, this is
what you're going to see, here's how you find them,
here's how you know you check for them, and everything
like that, and uh, it just kind of reminded me.
We used to have a place where the backyard was
pretty much a flea nursery, I think, because our pets

(01:01:11):
will go outside and they would pick up fleas and
then they would come inside and we'd have LEAs in
the house. So we kill all the fleas in the
house and think we got them all off the pets,
and they go back outside again and here's fleas and
ticks will do the same thing. Night Fuss has a
product called bug Out Max and it's granules you'd put
out there in the yard, follow the label as always

(01:01:33):
watered in as always according to the label, and it
goes down in that thatch area at the surface, and
that's where fleas and ticks are, that's where chinchbugs are
crawling around. That's where sod webworms are feeding as well.
And it's not just those insects. It kills up to
one hundred and thirty different kinds of insects out there
in the yard. Night Fuss bug Out Max, and you'll

(01:01:53):
be in a night Fuss product. It's easy to find.
They're all over the place.

Speaker 11 (01:01:56):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:01:56):
You go to the Ace Hardware at Sinco Ranch on
Mason Road. There you go to Ospa's Ace up in
the woodlands. You're going to find night FoST products there.
And shed at Forest and Chenny Gardens carry night Foss products,
and you can find them also at places like the
Arborgate they also carry night Foss products. So easy to
find night Foss round like that bug Out Max. I

(01:02:21):
was working on some garden beds the other day. I've
got a vegetable garden and this summer, I just was
busy with a lot of things, and I really didn't
keep up with the vegetable garden like I normally like to,
and so I had some things in. It's some okra.
Of course, I have to have okra. I'm obsessed with okra.

(01:02:42):
And then I checked there's not a wing of the
Betty Ford Clinic for people that are obsessed with okra,
but if there was, I would need to be put
in there pretty quick, seriously. But looking in the garden,
I noticed that my organic matter levels just seemed to
be normally. You know, I can scoop my hand down
in there and you just pick up the soil. You

(01:03:03):
can feel it, and you can tell that this is
a nice, rich soil. And it's been a while since
I worked on it. So what I'm going to be
doing is putting a couple of inches of a good
quality compost out there in the garden. Probably use veggie
nerd mix. And also, by the way, the folks at
at a Nature's Way to have a really nice vegetable soil,
and I'll be swinging by there as well. But put

(01:03:26):
an inch or two of that on and mix it
in really good, and then you're just good to go again.
So occasionally, Remember, we burn up organic matter. Someone was
showing me their soil test and how much organic matter
they had and it was kind of low, and I
just said, well, you can put a lot of it in,
but we say burn it up. What that means is
it scientifically, it oxidizes. Technically, it composts away from a

(01:03:51):
gardener standpoint, but we say burn it up because we
live in a warm, moist climate. If you go up
into Canada, I mean you have peat bogs that just
grow in organic matter every year. Not down here. You
put a bunch of stuff in there, get your organic
matter up to let's say five percent, and don't do
anything for a couple of years, it's going to be

(01:04:13):
down around two percent and maybe even get lower. That's
just because it's the climate we live in. So you
always need to be improving your beds, improving your soil
when you get the chance, and in between plantings is
a good time to do that. So I'll be doing
that out in my veggie garden needs a little bit.
Oh another thing about that is the soil sinks down

(01:04:35):
as it oxidizes away. Have you ever had a pot
on the patio full of soil and a plant, and
two years later you look and the soils like dropped
by a third or a half in the pot. That's
what's happened. It's oxidized away. And you just when you replant,
just freshen it up, put some new soil in there,
and you're good to go again. Let's go out to

(01:04:56):
Lake Conrad. We're going to talk to Dave this morning. Hey,
Dave the garden.

Speaker 13 (01:05:01):
Hey, thanks a lot. Yeah, you know, uh, my mom
and my dad and my grandpa and all them, my grandma,
and they taught us a lot about you know. Uh,
don't you know you put dried cowpoop out there around something,
don't put it too close, you know, and uh, it's
just fertilized. But uh but no, uh. And on the tomatoes,
my mom always said, put them in the in the

(01:05:24):
kitchen window, you know, above the saint and then with
that sunlight coming in, they ripen up, you know a
whole lot better. So but uh uh a pear tree, Okay,
we had one pear tree over there, but we always
get pears off over every here. And uh, is that
maybe from a cross craft or something.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
Like that, or.

Speaker 8 (01:05:48):
Well, pears can be partially self fruitful.

Speaker 4 (01:05:52):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:05:52):
It could be that there was another pear tree in
the neighborhood and the bees were just finding it and
doing the back and forth, uh for you.

Speaker 13 (01:06:02):
But I say, do you know what, okay, do you
know what apples? The green apples? I mean, yeah, the
green pears. I'm sorry, green pears, okay, And then my mind, there.

Speaker 8 (01:06:19):
Are yeah, there are some, you know, some of the
old country pairs that you see out in the countryside,
like Keefer and there's one called orient it's not an
Oriental pair, but and there's some others familiar.

Speaker 13 (01:06:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:06:36):
Keefer's pairs have a lot of grit, and them Gret
Gret sells, So when you chew on them, they're not
buttery like a store bought pair. They're kind of chunky.
They make better canning pairs though, because of that, because
they stay firm, they don't just melt away when you
try to try to can them. So anyway, what was your.

Speaker 13 (01:06:52):
Question if I got one, if I got one to
put here, like let's say, in my backyard, or you know,
uh what what kind would you think I should did?

Speaker 8 (01:07:04):
Oh gosh, there are a lot of good pairs here
in this area. And uh, some people like those old
type pears, and that's fine to use those. I mean,
they do fine, But I that would be like a
keifer or an orient or something. There's one called Lecant
that's a pretty good pair. Let's see, there's one called Airs.

(01:07:26):
It's a little further north than here. Let me, uh,
I just I just drew a blank.

Speaker 13 (01:07:31):
Here on on pair of Hey, let me ask you
another question real quick and you can report to it
a little later. Hey, what about yesterday I noticed a
stack of red bark mulch or mulch. You know, what's
what's the difference between that and dark the dark mold?

Speaker 8 (01:07:50):
The red is the red is stained color like that.
It's dyed that color, and I don't I don't care
for dyed mulch.

Speaker 13 (01:07:58):
That's what I thought. I thought it was on a
red wood tree or something, you know. And then one
more thing, I really will looking around for that guy,
know you tree and okay, playing it in the front yard.
So I'm gonna keep searching around for this.

Speaker 8 (01:08:13):
Okay.

Speaker 13 (01:08:15):
Yeah, that's about all right.

Speaker 8 (01:08:17):
Moonlak, Yeah, yeah, I am. I'm overdue for a break here.
Moon Glow is another good pair.

Speaker 13 (01:08:25):
I'll be listening. If you got something toad or anything
out really good.

Speaker 8 (01:08:29):
Thank you, Thank you, all right, you take care of
go go to break, folks. I'll be right back. Welcome back.
Good to have you with us, Sun Garden Line. I'm
your host, Skip Rictor if you've got a question, you
can call this number seven one, three, two fifty eight
to seventy four. Rc W is having a incredible sale

(01:08:49):
and you need to take advantage of this one. I mean,
this is I'm serious. This is an opportunity to get
a very some very high quality plants for a very
reasonable price. You know, fall this planting season, and even
if you're not ready right now, maybe it's like yeah,
but you always say prepare the soul first, Skip, I do, yes,
I do. But you can you can get a plant.

(01:09:11):
You can bring it home eating water and while you
get the soil ready and then plant it, planet it
in the next few weeks or next couple months if
you want to do that. September sale at RCW here
it is fifteen percent off all trees and they grow there.
They most of their trees they grow themselves up in Plannersville.
So these are species and varieties that do well here.

(01:09:31):
And they're grown right, they're grown in a way that
they're going to have success. They can plant them for you.
They'll come out and plant them for you. I'm sure
they have a feef for that. But or you can
plant them yourself. If it's bigger than about a five
gallon tree, I'd have them come out and do it,
because unless you just want to put your chiropractor's kids
through college, I would have them come out and do it.

(01:09:52):
They also have fifteen percent off Cajun hibiscus, thirty percent
off crape myrtles, thirty percent off citrus trees, thirty percent
off select roses, and thirty percent off all metal yard
art benches and arbors. And they've got some nice stuff
out there. I was when I go to RCWI. I
just walk around and read all the yard art signs

(01:10:12):
that they have. They got some pretty funny stuff. But anyway,
RCW Garden Center, Nurseries, it's the place to go. It's
easy to get to. It's the corner where Beltway eight
and Tomball Parkway having two forty nine where they come together,
so a tr really easy access in and out. And
they got good stuff. And I'm telling you September sale
now you it's it's going on all September. But why wait?

(01:10:35):
You know there may be that one rose that they have.
Not every rose is on sale, but the ones they
have on sale that you really want, and some of
them come buy it, so sooner rather than later. But
just get out there and do it. RCW Nurseries dot
Com again corner of Tomball Parkway and Beltway eight. I
love going the nice folks too when and when you

(01:10:56):
go in, they you know, if they don't have something,
they'll do everything they can to bring it in. That's
why we call them to get it, got it nursery
because if they don't, if they don't have it, they'll
get it for you if it's at all available out there,
and they usually have it themselves. Anyway, you are listening
to garden Line and we're going to go to a
break here in a few more minutes. But got time

(01:11:18):
for a quick call if you wish to do that.
Seven one three, two one two five eight seven four.
You've heard me talk about azmite before a number of times,
right as Mite is an amazing product. It is mind
out of a soil up in Utah uh and it
comes in various grades the typical grade we use for

(01:11:38):
our home gardens, you know, for our home gardens, is
just the perfect size to put in fertilizer spreader and
spread it out on your lawn and you can. The
question I've getten many times is when do you put
on as mite? Because you know we have times to
put on fertilizers. It doesn't matter when you put on
as mite. You put on any time you want. It's
a micronutrient supplement. These are nutrients that the plant just

(01:12:02):
needs a little bit of, a very little bit. That's
whether they called micronutrients or trace elements, but they are essential.
And so let me explain that this way. Plants need
lots of nitrogen, the first number on the bag. You
got to just add it and add it and add it,
because it goes away and its cycles and stuff, and
it's not there anymore. Plants need a lot of phosphorus

(01:12:23):
and potassium the second and third number on the bag,
and then there's a lot in between. But on the
trace minerals, they need tiny amounts. But need is the word.
If you could go into your soil and take every
zinc molecule out of the soil, or every boron molecule
out of the soil, or every manganese molecule a lot

(01:12:44):
of the soil. See, those are things you never think
about when you're fertilizing. Right, Well, if you could take
them out of the soil, a plant could not grow
because they're essential. Even though they need a tiny amount,
they're essential. Our bodies are the same way. You know,
you don't need to eat tons of vitamin D every day,
but if you have no vitamin D, you're up a creek. Okay,

(01:13:05):
asmite anytime you want to put it down, put it
down now would be a good time. A lot of
people do it when they fertilize, and that's fine because
it helps you remember, but remember this, don't mix fertilizers
in the same hopper because there are different particle sizes
and they won't get spread evenly. Use your lawn fertilizer
and then come back load up with your asmite nutrients

(01:13:29):
and do them. Do them separately. You can do them
same day, watermend the same all. That's just fine. Just
a tip to remember that there is a There is
a concept called the lie Bigs barrel li Bigs barrel,
so it goes way back in time, but long ago,
scientists realized that nutrients when they were limited, limited plant growth.

(01:13:55):
And so what they discovered through research was that if
you think think of a barrel, think of a wine barrel,
a whiskey barrel, and it's got those staves, wooden staves
that go to the top. If you took a barrel
and you cut one stave off about a third of
the way down, and another one halfway down, and another
one that was only a fourth of its way to
the top, and then you cut the staves off at

(01:14:17):
different heights and you try to put water or wine
or whiskey in that barrel, how much could you put
in You could only put in as much up to
the first cut off stave, right. I mean, you can't
fill a barrel above where it just runs out. So
that concept is the lowest, most limiting nutrient is all
you can get out of a plant, and it will

(01:14:39):
be limited. And whether it's a rosebush producing roses, a
tomato producing tomatoes, or a front lawn producing nice beautiful
green colored carpet, you always want your nutrient levels up
there at the top. You want them all up to
where they need to be. That's why we do things
like aim to make sure that there's no limiting because
you may be going, I'm per in my lawn scip

(01:15:01):
and there's something wrong. Well if it lacked boron, which
probably doesn't, but if it did, that would be what's wrong?
You will why fertilize? Well, yeah, but when we fertilize,
we're typically using the big three nutrients nitristian, phosphorus, and
potassium because they're needed in the most amount. All right,
soul science lesson of the day. Take a little break here.

(01:15:23):
We'll be back with your questions after the break. Got
an open board, so if you want to not have
to wait, we'll come back. Seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Richard.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
It's so crazy just watch him as the world things
the sept they're not a sign.

Speaker 14 (01:16:20):
S.

Speaker 8 (01:16:26):
Hey folks, welcome back. We got a couple more hours
of garden Line today. Looking forward to that. We got
things to talk about. You know today is it's a
wonderful Sunday morning. I am enjoying it. I hope you
are too. What are your plans for this coming week
when it comes to the garden are you going to

(01:16:46):
be doing any fertilizing out in the yard. What what
about planting? You know, someone asked me the other day
about planting, and I could tell by the question that
they were. What they're basic saying is I can't plant
right now, and I want to clarify that you can
plant right now. The best time to plant woody shrubs, trees,

(01:17:09):
fruit trees, perennials, and things like that is the fall.
That's the best time. Spring is a good time too,
But you can plan all summer. Probably, I bet it
was the end of July. No, it was early August.
I planted a shrub in my front yard. It's like,
why would you plant a shrub in August, because you

(01:17:30):
just take care of it. If that shrubs in a
garden center in a pot, it's living through the year. Right,
It's not dying because it's August. It's because they're watering
it regularly to make sure it's okay. So I put
the shrub in the ground. I watered it in. You
hear me talk about all these products I used to
water things in and stuff. I had some some of
the microlife product that I was actually using to water

(01:17:52):
it in. Microlife I like the AF product microlife AF.
It's got the ingredients that are basically microbes that are
good microbes that fight disease. That's the bottom line. It's
called liquid EF. It's got I think eight different beneficial
microbes in it. So I was putting that in the
root system because that's very important to help it. Putting

(01:18:13):
some nutrients down in the ground, make sure and that
it gets what it wants there. I think I try
to remember which one I was using, probably the Medina
hash to grow six to twelve six. I like that
product a lot for water and things. And then after
that of water in it regularly, because remember when a
plant's put in the ground, its root system is still

(01:18:35):
in the shape that it was in the pot. So
if the soil six inches from the plant is moist,
that doesn't mean the soil in the root cylinder of
that plant is moist because it hadn't sent roots out
there that soil to take it up water and nutrients.
So you got to take care of it early on
and water regularly. Don't over water. You put a plant

(01:18:55):
in a clay hole and overwater, and you might as
well stick it in the bathtub and fill the bathtub
full of water. I mean, it's the same thing. It
can get oxygen to the roots. So a little bit
at a time is required. But over watering is bad.
But yes, you can plant every month of the year.
And there's reasons why you need to right maybe you're

(01:19:16):
going on a trip and you can't do anything this
fall or whatever reason. But you can plant today. If
you want to plant something today, you can absolutely plant
it today. It's just still warm outside, so we're taking
care of it. But follows the best season of all
for doing the major stuff. But don't just buy a plant,
put it in the ground. Fix the soil first. The

(01:19:38):
soil is a foundation for success. The soil may be
the single most important thing that is part of the
recipe for success for a plant. Yes they need sunlight,
Yes they need water, Yes they need nutrients. Those are
all important across the nutrients are part of the soil.
But getting the soil right for they need drainage and

(01:20:01):
the soil of if a raised bed is needed, a
raised bed is part of the soil prep and you
can do that. But just take care of them and
make your plants, but always start, always start with the soil.
And uh I like that microlife af put that in
the soil all the time. I will use Microlife's other
products and the soil as well. You're not going to
burn a plant with a microlife fertilizer. They're natural. They

(01:20:23):
got to be broken down by the microbes and stuff.
I mean, I guess if you stuck it in a
bag a straight fertilizer, but I it wouldn't burn it
even then wouldn't be a good idea. But microlife mixed
into the soil. Microlife put on top of the soil
afterwards to water it in. If it's an azalure and
acid loving plant, get that pink bag. That's the Microlife
for acid living plants, for almost any plant. The green

(01:20:46):
bag the lawn fertilizer of the six two four is
good for doing those things. But there's there's Microlife products
for all kinds of plants.

Speaker 13 (01:20:54):
Just just do it.

Speaker 8 (01:20:55):
Go go to Microlife Fertille microlifefertilizer dot com and find
out more about exactly the particular products that you want
to learn about, including where to get them. And Microlife
is easy to find because it's everwhere. All right, Microlife
Fertilizer dot Com. Alrighty, well, you are listening to garden

(01:21:18):
line the number seven to one three two one two.
Let's see seven one three two one two five eight
seven four. I had to stop and remember how many
times have I said that number? And yeah, I still
have to stop and pause to remember it.

Speaker 10 (01:21:32):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:21:32):
Have you been out to in jened Forest lately? It's
one of my favorite garden centers to go to. It's
out there on the north side, on the north side
of Rosenberg. So, uh, Jenet Forest, excuse me, I'm sorry, southside,
I'm turned around. I don't know which way I'm going. Uh,
southside of Rosenberg on FM twenty seven fifty nine. So
if you're on fifty nine sixty nine, you know, going

(01:21:55):
from Sugarland toward Richmond, you would turn south to get there.
And there's so many things I like about I like
the fact that big, beautiful shade trees and shopping is
even in a hot day. It's just pleasant to go
out there and do that. I love the when I
drive up, just the whole look of it makes me
want to go running in because I'm a plant person

(01:22:15):
and I look and it looks like Disneyland to me.
I'm ready to head in there and get all those
kinds of things that they have, and they do have
a very good supply right now. They are so stocked
up on vegetables and herbs and things that you got
to get that done. And you know I was talking
about falls a good time to plant, Well, fall is
a great time to plant vegetables, it's a great time

(01:22:37):
to plant herbs. Just really really a good time for
all of that. How about fall color. You know they've
already gotten in some snapdragons. Got a really nice tray
of snapdragons. Those are so cool. If you don't know
why they're called snapdragons, look at a flower real close
and you can pull on it and the jaw opens
up like people say, well that looks like a dragon's jaw. Okay,

(01:22:58):
there you go. That's why they're calling dragons. And no
matter what you're looking for there, including the soil products
you need to have success, you're gonna find them at
enchanted Forest. Lots of cute bling too for the garden,
you know, the little colorful mushrooms and all kinds of
talibara and other kinds of pottery. Excellent, excellent place. You're

(01:23:18):
gonna find good advice there too. The whole crew they're friendly,
they're trained, they know what they're doing, and they can
point you to the kinds of plants you need. By
the way, this fall, I suggest you make a point
to plant three new salvia plants, maybe two or three varieties,
three new plants that you never planted before. They got
ninety different kinds of salvia from time to time through

(01:23:40):
the year. They're at enchanted forest, and that'd be a
good place to get started. Salva is one of the
best genius genera of plants that there is. Let's take
a little break. We'll be right back with your calls. Hey,
welcome back to guard Line. Good to have you with
us in this eight o'clock hour ago garden Line. By

(01:24:00):
the way, you can listen to garden Line on ktright
seven forty am on the radio. That's the old fashioned
way we've always done it and still do it. You
can listen to garden Line on your computer by going
to the ktr H website. You listen to it live
and you can listen to past shows there. And I'll
tell you how I listen to radio. Now, I'm trying

(01:24:21):
to tune in to KRH or one of the stations
I get my iHeartMedia app and I get on my
phone and I turn it on and everwhere I go,
walking outside, walking inside, getting in the car or whatever,
I've got it right there. And I just don't spend
as much time driving around in a car these days,
and so you know, I need other ways. And KTRH

(01:24:43):
the website and the iHeartMedia app. Fine, garden Line it's
on there. There's only two garden lines in the country,
one some lady, I think somewhere in the northeast.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
I don't know.

Speaker 8 (01:24:52):
I never listen, but garden Line is there on the
iHeartMedia app. And if you do that, you can also
listen to past shows on the app. And if you're
not gardening this morning and you've got garden Line on
the iHeartMedia, you're listening to. I know people listen on
their phones as they go around their gardening doing it.

(01:25:12):
If you up running into a bug or something, you
send me a picture, we'll talk about it. Like I
like to put it, it's live from your garden on
garden Line. We can do it that way too. So
how do you want to go about it. I'm going
to be heading over to Nature's Way Resources. I've got
some things to do tomorrow, and I'm going to be
heading over there to Nature's Way. I like to stop

(01:25:33):
in and talk to Ian every now and then. Ian
and his whole team there, Leo and the whole group.
They're just a They're a good group to talk to
and to help narrow down exactly what product you need
for what you want to do. Because Nature's Way has
so many different kinds of products. You know, They've got
the things that were born at Nature's Way, like roast

(01:25:55):
soil and leaf moll compost super high quality. They have
blends for growing trees, for growing vegetables, for all kinds
of things. And then they have all the different mulches,
many different types of mulches. They don't sell dyed multch,
thank goodness, I hate that stuff. They don't, but they
have some beautiful mulches. They have various types, from course
mults to fine multch. Whatever you need, you can get

(01:26:17):
it from them there now. They will deliver, or you
can go pick it up, or you can buy many
of their products by the bag around the Greater Houston area.
Their website they redid It this year, looks real good too.
By the Way Nature'sway Resources dot Com that's what you
need to know about Nature's Way Resources dot Com. Ask
them about any deals on fungal based composts they might

(01:26:39):
have going from time time. They do that and that
is an excellent product, basically one that I've used myself
many times. So while you're there, one last thing you
need to know. Two acres of garden plants. It's a nursery,
fruit trees, native plants. They even have house plants and vegetables.

(01:27:00):
One of the largest selections in eighty plants you're going
to find in this area at Nature's Way Resources. Now,
I'm going to be out there this October. In fact,
when am I going to be out there. I'm going
to be at Nature's Way on October eleventh, that's a Saturday,
from twelve to to I'll tell you more about that.
They have their annual fall shindy. I call it a
shindig because it is. I mean, they got all kinds

(01:27:21):
of stuff going on there. It's a regular shindig. They
don't have a barn dance, but they need to add
that to it, but so far they don't have a
barn dance. Nature's Way Resources it's a great place and
I'm going to be going by and grabbing some products
myself tomorrow to try out. You know, I always test
stuff before I talk about stuff, and I do that,

(01:27:42):
and you know, you get places like Nature's Way. They
have eight hundred different things. Well it takes a while
to get through all the products. But I'm trying out
some new things that they have there, and I've never
tried one yet that didn't give me good success. There
you go, Oh where are they go? North on forty
five toward Conra right where fourteen eighty eight, fourteen eighty

(01:28:03):
eight comes in from the left, you turn right across
over the railroad tracks and you're there Sherbrock Circle. That's
where Nature's Way is. Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm probably
a little weird in this way. My wife is here,
she would say a little. I like dirt, I like soil.

Speaker 13 (01:28:28):
I just do.

Speaker 8 (01:28:30):
And for me getting out there and turning over the
soil and lifting up a handful of soil and smelling
that fresh earthy smell and just mixing things in and
making it better. And that's as much fun for me
as guarding in general.

Speaker 11 (01:28:44):
Is.

Speaker 8 (01:28:44):
I just really like that.

Speaker 6 (01:28:45):
Now.

Speaker 8 (01:28:45):
Part of it's because you know, in my years of
training I know why that's important and how important that is.
But part of it is just soil. Do you know that. Well,
you go to the build story of the Garden of Eden,
and it talks about God making man out of the earth.

(01:29:07):
So we're made of dirt. That's thou art to dost
return it. This is how Shakespeare or some one of
those guys put it. But also the word humans is
connected in its root to the word humus, which is
of course a soil word. So yep, basically, you're made
of dirt. Okay, that's that's what we're gonna That's it
we're going to put it. But I do enjoy that,

(01:29:28):
and I enjoy the smell. Oh and if I don't
want to spoil the smell of soil for you, because
you probably enjoy the fresh, earthy smell as well. But
what you're smelling is basically microbe flatulence because actinom seats
and other microbes they as they're doing their work to

(01:29:49):
make that soil so good and to make our plant
roots so happy, they're giving off gases and that is
part of what you smell. I'm getting dirty here, but hey,
I'm going to roll. Also, have you ever noticed the
smell when it starts to rain. You know that fresh
rain is hitting the ground smell. That's a volatile called

(01:30:11):
geosman that is also connected to microbes in the soil
that is releasing that smell that we identify as that
wonderful it's just starting to rain smell. Isn't that cool?
All right? There you go. That is your old factory
gardening tips of the day or maybe an fyi. But
natural stuff. It's all about nature and it's all about

(01:30:34):
getting things right.

Speaker 18 (01:30:35):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:30:35):
Medina products are based on the same thing. Medina has
so many good products. Started off, you know, they had
the Medina Soil Activator, awesome products. Still it has been
a favorite for gardeners for many years. Then they added
some trace elements and many other kind of natural plant
growth hormones like from seaweed extract for example, to it,

(01:30:56):
and they came up with Medina Plus. That's an awesome product.
Well Medina. I talk about those all the time. Medina
also has a product called humate humic acid, and that
is humus is the final stage of organic matter. It's
like taking a big old pile of leaves turning them
into composts. That's step one, so it's a smaller pile
when it's compost, much smaller. And then you take the

(01:31:19):
compost and you let it fully decompose down into humus,
and now it's just a very small so it's like
concentrated compost. But when you do it with the humate
humic acid from Medina, it's a liquid and they have
instructions on how to handle it. You mix it in water.
It's another one of the many products from Heudena medina
that you can use for new plants when you're transplanting

(01:31:41):
them and watering them in uh. It's a plant something
that you can use anywhere in your gardens and in
your lawns and whatnot. Humus improves moisture retention in the soil,
It enhances some of the micro macro nutrients in their
release into the plants, and it improves the soil physical proper.
You know, over time, nature builds soil by dropping organic

(01:32:06):
matter on the soil and by decaying it into the soil,
and the soil gets richer and richer and richer. Tropical
rainforest full of rich soil because you know, hundreds of
years of dropping leaves, decaying dropped branches, well parrot poop.

(01:32:27):
We'll throw some of that in there too, and it
just builds the soil over and over and day after day,
and it gets richer and richer. When the settlers, man,
I am, I am, just on these rolls here. I
hope you're enjoying this, enjoyed saying it. Uh, when the
settlers are coming across the country, and you know, they
they had their kind of stogas and they're going across

(01:32:49):
the big the big great plains and what they say,
grass as deep as the horse's belly, you know across there.
Who fertilized that grass? Where did that come from? That
came from nature? Building the soil year after year after year,
and the soil getting richer and richer, and then they
hit it with the plow and start planting and get
all kinds of good stuff. And if you don't take

(01:33:11):
care of the soil, you start to lose productivity in it.
So it's important to continue to build the soil. All right,
I'm gonna stop there. Let's go to Austin County now
and we're going to talk to Doris this morning. Hey, Doris,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 19 (01:33:29):
Good morning.

Speaker 15 (01:33:29):
How are you.

Speaker 8 (01:33:32):
I'm doing well, how could we help.

Speaker 19 (01:33:39):
I had talked to you some time ago about my
English ivy tree. Well, I'm ready to transplant it down.
So I'm going to a two inch wider part from
a six to an eight. But my leaves are starting
to turn yellow, and it's very top of.

Speaker 17 (01:34:02):
The Now you have you m is brown?

Speaker 8 (01:34:07):
Okay? Have you already transplanted it or you're about.

Speaker 19 (01:34:10):
To I'm going to transplant it, okay.

Speaker 8 (01:34:15):
The yellowing on the leaves on that plant is typically
due to a water issue. It could be that it
got a little too dry for a while and then
you watered it. You if you've ever had a pothus
ivy in your house that you let get a little
dry and then you watered it, you notice off suddenly leaves,
the whole leaves turn yellow, starting to fall off. That's

(01:34:37):
just part of the cycle. That's not the end of
the world. But if you overwater a plant and the
roots are drowning, you can get some issues with the
leaves as well. I think it's probably just that it
got a little dry for a while. On the brown part.

Speaker 16 (01:34:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 8 (01:34:49):
There's a lot of things that can kill a branch
or a leaf and make it brown. I would go
ahead and transplant it. When you do any leaves, any
roots going around the outside of the old pot, the
six inch pot, uh, kind of take your fingers or
something and sort of tease them out of there, loosen
them up a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:35:07):
If they're really circling a lot, just quite and cut them.
It'll be okay to cut those roots and then put
it on the new pot, and make sure you keep
it moist, but don't keep it too wet. Moist but
not too wet. If you wanted to put a little
bit of Nelson's genesis in the potting soil that you're
going to use to repot it, that would be even better.

(01:35:28):
Nelson's Genesis comes in little jars and it's really good stuff.
But you mix it into the potting soil that you're
going to plant them, and do it.

Speaker 19 (01:35:38):
Skill that nelson g.

Speaker 8 (01:35:42):
Genesis like the first book of the Bible G. E.

Speaker 4 (01:35:46):
N A. S.

Speaker 19 (01:35:47):
I S all right, all right, got it, all.

Speaker 8 (01:35:53):
Right, right, Thank you, Doris. Good luck with that. Send
me a picture, Send me a picture of that sometime.
All righty, we're coming up on a hard break here,
so we will be back with your calls for the
second half of this eight o'clock hour seven one three, two,
one two five eight seven four. Hang around. We got
plenty more to talk about. Hey, we're back, Welcome back

(01:36:16):
to the Guardline. Good to have you with us. Uh,
if if you have, I wanted to open up in
kind of a discussion on certain kinds of difficult to
control weeds and if you've got some specific weeds that
have been giving your trouble. I've had a few questions
to come in by email that people probably could call

(01:36:36):
them back on. Uh, but give me a call on that.
We we are dealing with a number of different problem
weeds right now, and I'd be happy to visit with
you about some specific controls. Right now, We're going to
head out to Sweeney, Texas and talk to Erin this morning.
Hello Eron, Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 17 (01:36:56):
Good morning, Skip Heydon.

Speaker 8 (01:37:00):
And good thank you.

Speaker 17 (01:37:01):
Okay, very good.

Speaker 8 (01:37:02):
Did you get sir? How can I help?

Speaker 17 (01:37:06):
I emailed you a couple of pictures yesterday about my
oak tree. Did you get a chance to take a
look at those?

Speaker 8 (01:37:13):
I sure have, Yes, tell me your question.

Speaker 20 (01:37:15):
So I got it, yes, sir.

Speaker 17 (01:37:18):
So the main question is I have a couple of
smaller oak trees growing right next to the main one,
and my preference would be to keep them just so
that I can, you know, ultimately have a couple more
trees there. But my fear is that would I be
hurting the larger tree by letting these smaller ones grow
that close to it.

Speaker 8 (01:37:40):
There's a slim chance that those are separate sprouted acorns
that are coming up, meaning they're their own tree. I
think more likely they're coming off the roots at the
base of that tree you have, and so there's no
way to transplant those because they don't have their own
root system. If they do, I don't know how you

(01:38:01):
would get them out of there without damaging both them
and the other tree. But I would pull the soil
away and do you get your a little shovel or
spay trial and get down there and pull that soil
away and see where they attach. And I think that
you're going to find the attach right at the tree.
I would go ahead and print them off just right

(01:38:22):
up against wherever they attach it as best you can,
because that's going to end up being a problem for
the main tree that you have if you don't get
them out of there. But that's my opinion on that.
If you find they're not attached there their own root system,
I suppose you could try really wet in the soil
a lot and then maybe trying to kind of pull

(01:38:44):
them back out of there. You can't dig them out
of there, and they're really too big probably to pull.
But just when we're in a dormant season, you know,
like November, sometime in November, try to get them out
of there. I think they're attached, and.

Speaker 17 (01:39:00):
I'm afraid that they probably are. And you basically kind
of said what I was afraid was going to have
to happen. But it always it feels better to get
a second opinion.

Speaker 13 (01:39:11):
Yeah, okay, well I appreciate that.

Speaker 17 (01:39:13):
And then what about could you see the green moss
that's growing on the bark in the picture? I had
five of these oak trees that plant it all about
the same time. I think it was March of last year,
so we're about a year and a half old, and
I'm seeing this a little bit on all of them
and just trying to haven't been able to find very

(01:39:33):
much researching it to figure out if it's an issue
or if it's normal.

Speaker 8 (01:39:40):
That is called like in l I C H E N.

Speaker 4 (01:39:44):
And what it is.

Speaker 8 (01:39:45):
It's something that grows on the dead outer bark. It
is not a parasite like mistletoe would be of the tree,
and so it is harmless. It's an indication probably that
you know, it's a nice humid area they like that,
but not really a concern. I mean, there are things
you could spray that kill it, but it'll just be

(01:40:06):
right back. It's kind of like algae growing in a
wet spot, you know, except this doesn't need a real
wet spot. Something else that I see, I think I
see in the photos you've got some webbing on the
side of the tree. That may just be due to
you know, kind of a blur in the photo, but
it looks like there's a very fine web on the side,

(01:40:26):
on the left hand side in the picture, and that
would be something called bark lice. If that truly is
a web, I'm pretty sure it is. Bark lice are
also no concern at all. They are like vacuum cleaners,
and they're just feeding on debris and detritus there on
the surface of the bark, so you can ignore that
webbing also on them. The one thing I wouldn't ignore

(01:40:49):
is the weeds at the bottom. You got some johnsongrass
coming in there, and that is the more weeds that
are around a tree, the slower that tree is going
to grow. And I saw a a picture one time
of a field they planted pecans in, and half the
field they kept weed free, and the other half they
let the weeds grow. And after five years the pecans

(01:41:11):
with weeds were half the size of the pecans that
had been kept weed free. So I would get out there,
I wouldn't spray them with like round up right now,
or a glyphosate rather right now, because you've got all
those sprouts at the bottom, and if it gets on
the sprouts, it'll move down and you'll be partially killing,
if not fully killing, that live oak. So be careful

(01:41:34):
with that. Once you get the shoots out of there,
then you can dig them or spray them or whatever.
But the wider you can make a nice big area,
put throw mulch on it. If you've got some old
hay or things like that, just pile them up on there.
Create a little forest floor environment for the tree. The
faster that tree is going to grow for you.

Speaker 17 (01:41:53):
Well, well, very good, I've taken the approach. I was
trying just to keep all the family members on lawnlower
away from the tree.

Speaker 16 (01:42:02):
That was the main goal.

Speaker 13 (01:42:03):
But yes, you're right with that.

Speaker 8 (01:42:05):
I guess it.

Speaker 17 (01:42:06):
We end up with some weeds, so I can definitely
do something about that. I sure appreciate it, and you
are right, there is a little bit of webbing there.
I noticed that yesterday for the first time, and I
didn't even realize that the picture actually picked it up.
So hey, I sure appreciate the advice.

Speaker 8 (01:42:21):
Yeah, you bet, Ma and Eron. I'm gonna give you
one more tip, and that is get you some good
lawn fertilizer, no matter what it is. I mean, you know,
three one to two ratio fertilizer, and for every inch
of trunk diameter, you know, go up to that tree
a couple of feet off the ground and just stick
your thumb up there. And how many thumbwits across that
tree do you got? Give it one or two cups

(01:42:42):
of lawn fertilizer. You could do that now. It's not
as important, but you could do it now, and then
I do it in the spring, and I do it
in midsummer again, and that will speed it up a lot.

Speaker 17 (01:42:55):
Okay, okay, so two to three times a year. A
cup branch.

Speaker 8 (01:43:00):
Yeah, a cup branch in the young life of the tree.
This isn't this isn't going on, you know when it's
got a trunk size of a coffee can this this
one that's very young? All right, good luck, Thank you, Carrie,
Thank you for you, Bet, thank you very much. Let's
see where are we. I've lost track of my clock.
I got to get it here in front of me.

(01:43:21):
I'm probably overtime. Yeah, it's time for me to take No,
not quite, I got a little bit of time here. Okay,
let's go to Matt in the Woodlands. Hey, Matt, welcome
to garden Line. All right, I got Matt. I'm gonna
put Matt back on hold, get my producer to check

(01:43:42):
into that a little bit.

Speaker 6 (01:43:42):
Here.

Speaker 8 (01:43:44):
We'll come back to Matt in just a moment. If
you have a lawn that's struggling, the single best thing
you can do to a lawn to get it rejuvenated
is to do a core aeration and a compost top dressing. Now,
core aeration doesn't mean just sticking a spike in the
ground that pushes a hole in the ground. It means

(01:44:06):
a machine that has hollow times that sticks in the
ground and pops a plug of soil out of the
ground and drops it on the surface. That's core aeration.
It breathes life into the soil when you do that,
because oxygen can get down there in the root system.
Then you do the compost top dressing. Well, number one,
you're adding compost, so you know that's good for plants,

(01:44:27):
but it's also falling down in those holes to some degree,
and it's putting that organic matter down in the soil.
Microbial activity increases. You're basically feeding the soil biology when
you do that. And this is great for alleviating compaction.
But when a lawn is struggling and trying to come back,
a good aeration compost top dressing is going to do

(01:44:49):
a lot to rejuvenate it. Maybe drought maybe take all
root rot, maybe chinchbugs, maybe whatever lack of water that's
the biggest one has hit your lawn. You need to
do this and green pro They serve the area in
kind of the northwest quadrant of Houston. So think of
forty five and I ten and the northwest quadrant. So

(01:45:09):
we're talking about spring and Cyprus and the Woodlands and
Conroe and Willis. We're talking about Magnolia and Montgomery and
on down to Katie, you know, in the west side,
down to ten and across to forty five. That's the
general area that they serve. Here's the website, Greenprotexas dot com.
Greenpro Texas dot com. Here's the phone number. Please write

(01:45:31):
this down eight three two three five to one zero
zero three two eight three two three five to one
zero zero three two. There's still time if you do
it now to get a good benefit before we go
into winter from a core aeration and accompost top dressing.
And the pros at Greenpro know exactly what they're doing

(01:45:51):
and how to do it right. I'll be right back.
All right, We're back, folks. Hey, have you been to
Plantsville Seasons lately? That is a great place.

Speaker 3 (01:46:03):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:46:03):
You go in there and first of all, you're going
to find the plants you need. Of course, they know
what they're doing. They've been doing this is nineteen seventy three.
And their gardeners themselves, they got the plants. They got
beautiful pottery. I have some of the potteries very nice.
I love that they also have excellent product inside, so
whether it's you know, I talk about soil all the time,

(01:46:25):
green stuff or brund stuff before green stuff, and they've
got it. You drive up and there's soil outside and bags,
and you know when you go to check out, you're
going past the fertilizers and so it is a common
knowledge there that you got to get the soil right
before you put the plants in. But they also have expertise.
Whether you bring in a sample or a question or

(01:46:47):
a photo of something that you want to ask them about,
they'll take the time with you. They are a full
service retail garden center. This family owned operation Aaron again
since nineteen seventy three. If you are heading up two
forty nine Parkway toward Tomball, are coming down toward Tumbole,
you take the Lueta exit and it's just north of
Luetta right beside Highway to forty nine Tombo Parkway. It's

(01:47:10):
easy to get to. You see it right there, and
whatever you do, make sure and check out the beautiful
color combo planters that they have, really beautiful. They know
how to put things together and if you want to
build one yourself, they'll tell you how to do it.
You know you can pick the plot, the pot, you
like the container, and they'll help you select plants that

(01:47:31):
you like that go well together. Plants for all seasons
dot com two eight, one, three, seven, six one six
for six. Let's go now to the woodlands and talk
to Matt. Hello, Matt, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 20 (01:47:45):
Hey, good morning, Ski, thanks for taking my call. Two
real quick questions. Let's got a real red grape free
that was absolutely hammered on the new growth part by
weak miners. Seem to have that under control person on
your previous advice. But on the older growth leaves, I've
got what looks like a black kind of mold. It's

(01:48:09):
it's on almost the entire tree.

Speaker 8 (01:48:14):
Okay, So that mold is coming from an insect. Their
insects it suck the sap out of the tree and
then they basically they get the minerals out of it,
and they pee out the sugar water basically, and it
falls on the leaves and then any you know, if
you were to mix up sugar water and spread on
your grapefruit tree, you'd see black mold growing on it.
On that sugar water. That's what's happening. So got to

(01:48:37):
figure out which one it is nine inzes out of ten.
You're dealing with scale on the tree. Could be white flies,
could be mealy bugs. Aphids do the same thing, but
I think you're dealing with scale, and those will appear
underneath the leaves as little tiny flecks. They are little
flat things, like if you were to shrink a fish
scale down to the size of a lowercase typed o

(01:48:58):
or smaller. That's what That's what the look like on
your leaves. It be kind of a sharp s truce,
yellowish green color, a tan, or kind of clear looking.
Depends on the age and stuff and the type of scale.
So you've got a couple of options. The more organic
option would be to get a horticultural oil and spray
upward from underneath the tree and coat every lower leaf

(01:49:21):
surface that you can. Oil isn't a poison. It's a
smotherer of the scale, So if you miss a scale
with the oil, they won't die. It's not a poison.
So good coverage is critical. That's why we spray upward
because most of the scale are under the leaves. There
are some types of scale on citrus that attack the

(01:49:42):
tender little stems, the little twigs and shoots, so you
can get those as well. Beyond that, you're looking at
doing a systemic product into the plant, and there are some,
but we're getting kind of close to harvest season and
I just prefer to not have a systemic in there
when I'm harvesting. Even though they're label for that, I

(01:50:04):
generally avoid it. So I would wait until spring to
do a systemic. If you're going to do that after
the bloom season is over, then you could go that route.
So I would just do oil myself. That I think
is the best approach.

Speaker 20 (01:50:20):
Okay, thanks, I appreciate that I've got from somewhere. So
the sad question is good. Okay, my wife and I
are going to do let us cabbage, broccoli, and coliflower
for a winter garden. Is it too early to plant
in your all those?

Speaker 8 (01:50:38):
You can start planting broccoli and cauliflower now. I generally
will get mine a little bit of shade, especially if
you're in a really hot spell that they're having to
deal with for the first week or two, you know,
just kind of help them get acclimated. But you can
start doing that. September is a good time to get
those things in the ground. I'd probably hold off a
little bit on the lettuce. It grows fast anyway, but

(01:51:02):
let's cool off just a tiny bit more. I generally
put my lettuce in in October, maybe some in.

Speaker 20 (01:51:07):
November too, All right, excellent, Hey, thanks right for your time.
That is always appreciated.

Speaker 8 (01:51:14):
It good, well, thank you, And as always I don't
charge for my advice. But you do need to send
me half the grapefruit and half of all those other
vegetables and we'll call it even, all right.

Speaker 20 (01:51:25):
Yes, sir, yes, sir, I've got your studio plugged in
my phone. You're gonna be set up.

Speaker 8 (01:51:31):
There you go. Thanks, thanks a lot. Hey, uh, have
you have you been to check out the various Nelson
products at your local nursery? You know, there are a
lot of them. They're sold all over the place. You
can buy bags of the turf Star types of products.
There's a lot of good Nelson products available for your lawn.
But you can also buy jars of products. And they

(01:51:53):
have a they have a line of plant food called
nutri Star. That's the line. That's not a product, that's
a group of products, and one of them is nutra
Star Vegetable Garden. That product is designed to give vegetables
exactly what they need to grow and produce well. And
it is fall gardening season, and you know what, I
would put it on the herbs too. Herbs will also

(01:52:15):
do well with this. But whatever kind of vegetables you're
going to grow except beans and peas, Beans and peas
don't need extra nitrogen in general unless you just have
really nitrogen poor soil. So every other vegetable you would
grow other than beans and peas, Nelson Vegetable Garden excellent
product works well available in the jar. And you know

(01:52:36):
a lot of the Nelson jar products. There's about a
dozen places around town where you can go and you
can refill those jars. You know, I was just talking
about Plants for All Seasons a minute ago. That's one
of the places that has those Nelson jar refilling stations.
They have that for micro life too, by the way,
at the Plants for All Seasons. So when you buy
a jar of this Nelson Vegetable Garden, go back in

(01:52:58):
there and there's gonna be a variety of different news
products available that you can refill that jar with far
more economical refill and you don't throw the plastic away.
So that's kind of nice, all right, let's head out
to Kingwood and talk to Bill. Now, Hey, Bill, welcome
to garden Line. Good morning.

Speaker 16 (01:53:17):
We are plagued here in Kingwood with the brown plague.
I know that may be a mystery to you since
you're familiar with the black plague. But the brown plague
is killing all the boxwoods, and so I'm wondering if
there's a systemic fungicide or something like that that we
could use to try to slow that down or to

(01:53:39):
cure it.

Speaker 8 (01:53:41):
Not to my knowledge, Uh, there are several things that
will brown a boxwood. Boxwood light is the one you're
probably referring to, but on nematodes, they work slower and
it loses its color slower, but it's still heads south.
And then there's a fungal disease that plugs up a
plumbing of the stems and roots and trunk that will

(01:54:03):
round them as well. So you know, without seeing a sample,
it's hard to know for sure which when you have,
but I suspect it's blight and I know of no
good treatment for that.

Speaker 16 (01:54:13):
Sounds like you need a microscope to figure out what's wrong.

Speaker 8 (01:54:18):
Yeah, you know, I uh, I was just gonna say
you can you could bring pull one up that's alive
but half dead. I'm going to be at the Wildbirds
in Kingwood on November eighth, November eight the wild Birds
Unlimited in Kingwood. So if you got one that's half dead,

(01:54:38):
you know you're gonna lose anyway, pull it up, slip
it into a big old trash bag and bring it in.
Let me look at it. I can tell you exactly
what it is from that. Okay, if you just want
to be.

Speaker 16 (01:54:47):
There's a bunch of them all around, seem like in
the neighborhood. It's here and there, hitting in a mentally.

Speaker 8 (01:54:52):
But yeah, all right, Hey, the music is about to
end here. Thanks Bill.

Speaker 1 (01:54:58):
Kt r H Garden Line does not necessarily endorse any
of the products or services advertised on this program.

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
Welcome to kat r H Garden Line with Skip Rict.

Speaker 6 (01:55:09):
Shoes, the crazy man in the BASSI gas baby, can
you a shrimp?

Speaker 3 (01:55:17):
Just watch him as well? Go gas gas?

Speaker 4 (01:55:22):
Can you.

Speaker 5 (01:55:24):
So many good things to sup bass?

Speaker 3 (01:55:28):
The basses like gas again?

Speaker 6 (01:55:30):
You did smost double back ticking, not a sun bases.

Speaker 17 (01:55:36):
Gas and.

Speaker 3 (01:55:39):
Sun themon of praising in the gases? Gas baby?

Speaker 4 (01:55:45):
Can you.

Speaker 7 (01:55:48):
Starting in.

Speaker 3 (01:55:51):
The basses?

Speaker 7 (01:55:51):
I guess you did everything is so clean see and
never thing he is sun You.

Speaker 8 (01:56:03):
Have you ever listened to this song all the way through?
Look it up sometimes, you know I heard for so
many years I heard you know, the bumper music with
Randy and it was like I didn't know the whole song.
Is kind of interesting anyway, fun fact our curiosity maybe. Well,
good morning, Welcome to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richer,

(01:56:26):
and we're here to help you have a bountiful garden
and a beautiful landscape and more fun in the process.
So if you'd like to give me a call, if
you got a question, we'll be happy to help with that.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four
and give us a call. We'll talk gardening.

Speaker 4 (01:56:45):
Uh.

Speaker 8 (01:56:46):
So, it's been an interesting weekend. I have been out
of my garden all weekend. We were out yesterday at
the Home and Outboor Living show in Conroe and thanks
to people that stopped by yesterday, we had a good time,
lots of questions. The question of the day yesterday out
at the garden show was pretty much I would say

(01:57:06):
dove weed that I think that was a number one
thing I keep getting asked about, and on the show
yesterday too as well. You probably some of you are
probably going, yeah, yeah, I know, or maybe you don't
know what you have, but that's what you have. We'll
send me a picture. We'll find out that's a that's
a problem weed. And we have several weeds that are
problem weeds. Dove weed is, basket grass can be very

(01:57:29):
challenging to deal with. Virginia button weed. Boy, there's another one.
Virginia button weed is just it's just a nuisance and
it's hard to get rid of. And you know, one
thing that I will say a lot of times, maybe
you think in terms of I have this weed, how
do I kill it with a spray? And I get

(01:57:51):
that that's and that's legit. I mean people, we do
spray for weeds. Even if you're an organic gardener, you
probably spray vinegar for weeds. And so yeah, that's that's
a thing. But I want you to back up a
step and think about why is that weed there? And
in other words, what is making my spot so acceptable

(01:58:14):
to that weed, so favorable to that weed that it's proliferating.
And now that doesn't mean the weed all goes away.
When we start adjusting that, it just means we're not
encouraging the enemy if we're going to look at this
from a war standpoint, because sometimes weed wars are the
thing we deal with in Virginia, button weed and kai
linga and yellow nuts edge and doveweed, and they love

(01:58:40):
wet conditions. And if you've got if you're water in
too much, which a lot of people do, it's a
waste of water. But it's what we do. It's what
some people do. You're going to have more problems with, oh,
another one dollar weed that loves wet conditions. And so
if you've got a low spot, maybe it's not you
that watering, it's the rainfall and the fact that the

(01:59:02):
area doesn't drain well. Low spots in soggy soil. There
aren't a lot of plants that like that. Most plants
prefer well drained soil, but these weeds love it. And
so just getting the internal drainage of the soil fixed
something called a French drain, where the water goes down
in the soil, enters a pipe and drains off to
another location. All of those kinds of steps will help

(01:59:26):
a lot in controlling those weeds. It doesn't kill the weeds,
it makes them not proliferate as bad, and so you
have a chance. You know, some of these conditions, you're
encouraging the weed at the same time you're trying to
spray it it up, and that just doesn't make sense.
You're fighting against yourself when you do that. So let's
start with cultural. That's true of a lot of problems,

(01:59:48):
a lot of problems, and even if you're not an
organic gardener, it doesn't make sense to do things that
cause problems that then you have to deal with. Right,
So let's say we're okay. Here's an example. Aphids love tender,
succulent new growth, and lots of extra fertilizer nitrogen specifically

(02:00:10):
on plants that get aphids, encourages more problems with aphids. Now,
a good amount of fertilizer means a good plant, a
good production of flowers or vegetables or whatever you're growing.
But when you overdo it, you're not helping your produce
any your production, but you are helping those particular pests.
There's many other examples. How about watering plants. It's better

(02:00:34):
to put water on the ground where it soaks into
the soil and the roots take it up than it
is to put it on the leaves. So if you've
got a rose bush and you've got those solid state
or pop up spray heads to water your rose bed
and you three times a week, they're coming on and
they're wetting the foliage, you're going to see a lot

(02:00:55):
of black spot, and you're going to see more in
the humidity that that creates more powdery mildew as well,
and you're promoting those diseases. And then you're wanting to know, well,
how do I spray and kill the what's a good
fungicide to kill black spot or to coll powdery mildew?
And I'm not saying if you don't do that, you
don't have any disease. I'm saying you're making it worse

(02:01:15):
and then you're having to fight it. So don't fight
against yourself. Let's do the cultural things that help a
plant to thrive. And that's just a principle. We could
go into a lot of other things, including weeds and
insects and diseases and whatnot, and just the plant health itself.
All right, Well, there there was your tip of the day.
I guess we'll just start off without this morning, if

(02:01:37):
you'd like to give me a call this Sunday morning.
Seven one three two one two five eight seven four
seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy four.
Sweet Green is a fertilizer from nitrophoss. It's based on
kind of a molasses base, and what they do is
through microbial activity, it's created into a fertilizer that's about

(02:01:57):
eleven percent nitrogen. And what you'll do is you write
it out, you water it in, and it just dissolves away. Now,
an organic gardener knows that molasses can be a good
thing to stimulate microbial activity in the soil. I mean,
they love those carbon chains. Same thing with sweet green.
It fires them up. They turn the nitrogen loose for

(02:02:18):
you to your grass plants. They are stimulated, so the
root zone itself is a more vibrant, healthy place for
the roots of the grass. And you see a quick
green up. If you have not fertilized your lawn in
the last few months, it wouldn't hurt if it's looking
a little on the you know, on the side, give

(02:02:39):
it a little sweet green now, and I would say
a moderate amount, you know, not a lot, but a
moderate amount and then the next fertilization for you is
going to be probably in about if you do sweet
green now about mid October, you would put some fertilizer
down that is your winter riser. That would be the
thing that has a little more potassium in it. We'll
talk about those when we get to them. But you

(02:03:01):
would do that, and sweet green gets you by. And
I've seen a lot of lawns that are kind of
they've been struggling with drought or maybe chinch bugs took
a toll. Maybe take all root right took a toll.
Maybe just a lack of water took a toll. Let's
get them watered, get them a little boost with sweet green,
and you'll be good to go. And you're gonna find
sweet green in a lot of places. You know, night
fast products, they're easy to find. Basically, hang on just

(02:03:23):
one my coffee got out of arm's reach and that
is a dangerous thing to happen to me at six
fifteen or six thirteen in the morning. You're gonna find
it places like Plantation Ace Hardware on three fifty nine
down there in Richmond, Rosenberg Langham Creek Ase Hardware, that's
the one over by Copperfield on five point twenty nine
in northwest Houston RCW Nursery oursewith Houston Tomball Parkway. And

(02:03:48):
then Lake Hardware. You know there's Lake Hardware is in
Angleton and Clute, and I believe there's a few others
Lakes around the area. But anyway, Sweet Green's easily easily
found in the air and any place that sells night
Foster products ask for Sweet Green. Why do we do this?
Let's take a little break here and we will come back,

(02:04:08):
perhaps with your questions or maybe some of the other
things I'm dying to talk about today. Speaking a wake up.
Once you look outside and see if your neighbor's lights
are wrong. If they're not, go over there and bang
on the door and tell them to wake up. They're
missing Garden Line. They will be so appreciative. Maybe not
this morning they will rise up and called you you blessed. Well,

(02:04:33):
not this morning, they'll call you something else this morning,
but eventually they will be very grateful. Good luck with
that one. By the way, you're listening to Garden Line,
I'm your host, Kip Richter, and we are here to
help you have success and what you do. So how
can we do that give me a call, let's talk
about it. I was talking yesterday about Houston powder Coders,

(02:04:53):
and I got to tell you something. Ever since I
discovered Houston powder Coders, now, when I drive around town,
and I like to drive throughihborhoods because that way I
get to see yards and plants and things. You know,
I'd rather do that to me on a big street
or highway. But anyway, when I drive through now, I
kind of have one eye out for someone who's thrown
away their own metal furniture. You know, they got some
and they got all rusty and stuff, and let's just

(02:05:14):
throw it away. Because if it's halfway decent stuff, you
can pick that up, take it into Houston powder Coats
and they will make it brand new. And if you
got furniture, especially that metal furniture made before two thousand, Lately,
a lot of stuff they make is kind of junk.
But the old metal furniture was solid. I mean, it
last forever, and I don't care if it's rusty. Powder

(02:05:37):
coats can fix that. If the bolts are all rusty,
they put brand new stainless steel bolts in and when
they put a powder coating on it, it is truly
solid and brand new. I mean, if you live down
by the coast and you got that salt spray, that
stuff is wicked. When it comes to our metal, cast iron,
wrought iron, you know, all that kind of stuff, they
can put a special coating on to deal with that

(02:05:58):
as well. And they have over one hundred collar so
I mean, seriously, I do look around for old furniture
because I don't have a lot of metal furniture myself.
I got some and I got a barbecue pit too.
That's another thing. If you got an old barbecue pit
that's resting, they can come in and you know how
when you buy a new barbecue pit it just has
that nice shiny, typically black coating on it. They can

(02:06:22):
do that, I mean, and it can take temperatures higher
than any barbecue pit'll ever go by far. I mean,
this isn't like the paint's going to run off, you
know when it gets hot. This is professional stuff. Now,
what you do is you take a picture of your metal,
you email it to sales at Houstoncoders dot com and
they'll give you a quick turnaround and if you hear
my voice, they will come get it and pick it up,

(02:06:44):
meaning they don't just do Houston. They go way out,
way out from Houston and they'll come pick it up
and they'll bring it back and deliver it. They'll quote
you the price when you send the email. You can
also call them to eight one six seven six thirty
eight eighty eight to eight one sixty seven six eighty
eight Houston Powder Coders Cool Stuff. Go check out their
website Houston powder Cooders dot Com. Okay, we're gonna head

(02:07:08):
up to northwest Houston and talk to Ed this morning. Hey, Ed,
you're our early bird today. Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 4 (02:07:15):
Well, I didn't knock on his door, but his alone
went off about ten minutes. My wife up, so I got.

Speaker 8 (02:07:21):
Up, heard the police on their way. Sorry about that,
No wonderful.

Speaker 9 (02:07:29):
I'm not responsible for what I say. I know I'm
not responsible for what I say. I tell my wife
that all the time. All right, Ed, how can we
help today?

Speaker 4 (02:07:43):
Yes, I've been organic for about four years. Yesterday I've
break down some a's of Mike around some roughly thirty
year old box woods that look at peak it. About
six months ago I put the a's of.

Speaker 10 (02:07:57):
Mike down and I believe brought him back pretty decent.
I put them all down yesterday. I'm gonna I'm gonna.

Speaker 4 (02:08:05):
Cover that because it's along the roots system more or
less with some lethold compost today.

Speaker 10 (02:08:12):
Then water all that in. Okay on my grass, my
Saint Augustine.

Speaker 4 (02:08:19):
I put down some dry molasses, which I've been wanting
to do and try for two years.

Speaker 10 (02:08:25):
I haven't done it. So I put some down yesterday.

Speaker 4 (02:08:30):
I put some. I'm gonna put some you mates thus
down today and some six two four. Do I need
to worry about anything like the uh the uh brown
patch microlife stuff that do? I not worry about that?

Speaker 10 (02:08:49):
Putting that down?

Speaker 19 (02:08:50):
Now?

Speaker 8 (02:08:51):
Yeah? So do you happen to have a copy of
my my schedule for fertilizing or not?

Speaker 10 (02:08:58):
I have not printed it out, knows it?

Speaker 8 (02:09:01):
Okay? Now, okay, well you ought to. You ought to
check one out if you look on there. In the
late September is when when you put down microlife brown
patch and it's it's a higher potassium a little compared
to nitrogen, and as a result, it helps that long
go into winter better, so it comes out into spring better.

(02:09:22):
But that's a late September application. It could be could
be in October too. It didn't have to be late,
but that's what that's the earliest you would do it.
So since you put down six to two four, I
would wait in about probably early October. Uh, go ahead
and do that Microlife brown patch and that's a brown
bag from Microlife. Yeah, and it will it will do. Yeah,

(02:09:43):
it will take you. You'll be done with fertilizing then
for this year. And you've already done a lot of
good stuff the humates plus that's very important. Uh, and
you know Microlife's got a lot of good products and
and so yeah. The only thing I would say in
what you have been talking about out there is, uh,
watch that you don't overdo the a's of mite. A

(02:10:04):
mite is a good thing. Every nutrient that a plant
needs is a good thing. But you don't want to
overdo them. You know, when you when you put too
much of one thing, things get out of balance. So
if you've done it twice an hour, hold off. You
can do it again sometime next year. But uh, don't
don't do a third one. Uh, you know, just one
right after the other.

Speaker 11 (02:10:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:10:25):
The other one was about three months ago because I've
been advised nursery to.

Speaker 10 (02:10:31):
Uh that I had, uh some kind of disease that
I was going to lose the box woods. And I
just wasn't ready for that, so I just held off
and uh and I.

Speaker 12 (02:10:42):
Did as of mite and watered it in and getting
over water.

Speaker 10 (02:10:48):
Uh yeah, the box woods, because I think that is
not good for him. If I realized, I got that right.

Speaker 4 (02:10:56):
But anyway, I was worried about that. Uh that brown
past I'll I'll do that later. That's why I didn't
put any down.

Speaker 10 (02:11:03):
Appreciate you so much.

Speaker 8 (02:11:05):
All right, Well there you are. You know one other
thing you might want to try is a Microlife has
a product called micro grow. It's kind of a or
reddish maroon colored liquid bottle that that's the labels reddish
maroon color and it's got like eight different beneficial microbes

(02:11:26):
in it. These are things that fight disease. And I
don't know if you have a hose insprayer, but if
you do, you can go over your lawn with that, uh,
and you can do it periodically. It's not a fertilizer,
it's a it is a biological and you get that
down in the thatch and things. And you were concerned
about the brown patch. That would be another thing that

(02:11:46):
I would do, just since you're doing this organically to
try to get that lawn as resilient as you can.
So that's micro grow liquid AF all right.

Speaker 13 (02:11:57):
So I do have some of it, Yeah, I do
have some.

Speaker 4 (02:11:59):
So what about that alone with days of mic when
I water in today? Uh, because I didn't water it
last night, because I want to.

Speaker 10 (02:12:08):
Put that uh tumpos down on top of it and
around those roofs.

Speaker 14 (02:12:14):
Uh?

Speaker 10 (02:12:14):
Is that micro grow for those box woods too?

Speaker 8 (02:12:19):
Yeah? It would, It would be fine for that. I
just you know, it's you were talking about the brown
patch in the lawn and that's when I thought about it.
It depends on what's attacking the box woods as whether
micro grow AF is what you need to do or not.
But I would water first, get everything watered in, and
then apply this because you're not putting gallons of this
stuff on a spot, you know, You're you're spraying it

(02:12:41):
over the surfaces. And so I would get the watering
done and then do this after the watering. All right,
Good luck, appreciate all right, uh huh bye bye. All right, folks,
you were listening to the guard line. We're here to help.
How can we help you tell me, we'll be happy
to join in and help you turn that landscape around.

(02:13:04):
You know, gardening is not rocket science. I'm told if
you're if you are a rocket scientist, that rocket science
is not rocket science either, because it's just simple math
to you. All right, So enough of that, seriously, gardening
a few simple principles. Plants want sunlight, plants want drainage,
plants want nutrition. Plants want to be in a zone
and climate they like. So don't bring a blue spruce

(02:13:26):
back from Colorado to Houston. That's good. That is cruel
and unusual punishment to that poor blue spruce. Don't do it.
But the plants, what they need is simple. So if
you move from another area, give me a call. Let's
talk about the plant before you bring it in here,
you know, if you're gonna call me about oh gosh,
what's Midwest Forsythia? They love for beautiful early early yellow blooms,

(02:13:50):
so pretty up there, up there, not here, up there. Yeah,
And the same is true you know with lilacs, wonderful
fragrant plant. I had a lilac when I lived in
Missouri for a few years. Is a nice plant. I
love the fragrance of it. It doesn't grow, it doesn't serve,
it hates our climate here. Okay, it's not going to

(02:14:11):
do well. So if you like lilacs, find a lilac perfume,
get you a crape myrtle, and spray the crape myrtle
with lilac perfume and you got a lilac. That's as
good as we can do for lilac lovers. All right, Seriously,
you just got a plant things that want to be here.
It's not that difficult. That's why we're here every Saturday
and Sunday six am ten am to talk about how

(02:14:32):
to have success with your plants.

Speaker 4 (02:14:35):
You know.

Speaker 8 (02:14:36):
The whole issue of pest control around the home and
in the home too, is one that mystifies a lot
of folks.

Speaker 18 (02:14:44):
You know.

Speaker 8 (02:14:44):
It's like, well, I don't want to poison the house
and all this kind of stuff, and I don't. I tried.
I spray stuff and it doesn't work, and the cockroaches
come back, and the pantry pasts, you know, the weavils
and the flower and all that kind of thing, and
then outside the fire ants are biting me and whatnot.
You need to call pest pros. They know how to
do things. They know how to treat effectively, but they

(02:15:07):
also know how to treat in the safest manner, and
that way you get long term results with less worries.
And that's what it's all about. You can trust them
with your best control activities and something like termites. You know,
nobody wants to talk about termites, but when termites get
in your house, that's serious. I mean, that's worse. You know,
cockroaches and pantry pests are nothing compared to something that's

(02:15:30):
eating your house. Pest Pros can give you a ten
year termite treatment. They do a little trench outside and
put something in the trench and when termites try to
come across there, they can't do it. And you know
it's not stuff. They're spraying all over creation. So your
dogs and your kids are rolling around and it's simple.
Call Pestbros. Two eight one two oh six forty six

(02:15:51):
seventy pestpros dot Com. Alrighty, welcome back to guarden Line, folks.
Good to have you with us, Good to have you
with us. I was out gosh a couple of days ago,
doing some barbecuing out in the back on making some ribs,
some baby back ribs. Oh my gosh, I'm getting hungry

(02:16:12):
just thinking about this now again. But anyway, I got
a nice rectech that's a pellet grill. And there's several
brands of pellet grills, but I got mine from Ace Hardware.
I bought it, oh gosh, several months ago from Ace Hardware.
I just love the thing and Ace Hardware. I'm telling you.
I've been so many Aces and they just have a

(02:16:32):
great selection of all kinds of things barbecue, if you like.
Tragger was kind of like the original famous one, I
think for the pellet grills. And I've never had a
pellet grill before, but I sure like it. Nobody has
their opinions, that's for sure, on barbecue, barbecue, music, politics,
so we all have our opinions, right. But the Aces

(02:16:53):
also carries the Big Green Egg. Now that's a cult. No,
I'm sorry, but Big Green egg is just a cult.
I had a friend that is like there there was
nothing you could cook on other than Big Green Eggs.
I guess you know. We've been we've been barbecuing ever since.
We made a fire and a cave and through some
something we chased down and threw a spear out at it,

(02:17:14):
But barbecue is such a good way to go. And
now we're going into the fall season. We got football season.
Oh my gosh, you gotta do cookouts for that. The
weather's gonna be cool off here. You need to get
you some you need to get set up. Maybe you
already got a good pit that you like.

Speaker 11 (02:17:28):
I like.

Speaker 8 (02:17:28):
I cooked on Weber my whole life. That was a
good one too. But Ace has all that, and then
they have everything you need to go with it, you know,
whether you're using briquettes or whether you're you know, using
gas grills. Lots of good gas grills that Ace carries
as well. Ace Hardware. You know my stores. You can
find all my Ace Hardware stores at Ace Hardware Texas

(02:17:49):
dot com. Don't forget the Texas Ace Hardware Texas dot com.
You just click on the one go look where you are.
It's a little map will pop up and you can
find your local Ace Hardware stores. And I put s
on the end because there's a bunch of them around here,
you know. Let me just give you a few. If
you are up in the Woodlands area on Kirkandall, there's
an Auspase Ace up there. If you were up in

(02:18:11):
Willis on my forty five North All Seasons Ace. I
was there a good while back for an appearance. On
the east side of Houston, we got Euvaldy ACE on
Uvalde Road. Not in New Valdi, Texas. There may be
one in New Valdi, Texas, but Euvaldi ACE on New
Valdy Road. In Houston, Southeast Chambers, dun and Galveston on
Broadway Street, and then southwest there's a Base City ACE

(02:18:32):
on Seventh Street. And that's just a few. There's a
bunch of them out there. And it's not just for
the you know, the typical hardware stuff. It's for all
kinds of things.

Speaker 4 (02:18:42):
You know.

Speaker 8 (02:18:42):
East hardware stores are all independently owned, so you never
know when you go into one. My wife and I
went into one the other day just to check it
out and see what it looked like. And you know,
she's wandering over there looking at some of that farmhouse
stuff that you know that decorates the home in the
kitchen and all of that. That's an a'st hardware store.
I've been at ACE hardware stores that just had things

(02:19:03):
I never expected, you know. So I'm sitting here just
thinking about a thousand different possibilities. You just need to
go into one. That's the bottom line. Go into one.
And certainly when it comes to you got to get fertilizer.
You need something to kill pass. You need some tools
for the garden. As has got you covered, Acehardware dot Com,
go check those out. I can talk about as the

(02:19:25):
cows come home. Love those stores. The season that we're
in now is hurricane season. You say, what season of
the year is. It's hurricane season. It is, and this
is when storms appear and we're just watching them. We
haven't had one yet. Maybe we'll dodge them this year,

(02:19:46):
maybe not. We'll just see. But it doesn't have to
be a hurricane to knock out your power. Remember last summer,
we had a hurricane that knocked it out for a
couple of weeks, and then we had another storm wood
and a hurricane knocked it out for a couple of weeks.
You need a good generator to do that, and there
are a lot of generators in the market, a lot
of generators on the market, and they're not all equal.

(02:20:08):
There are some good ones and there are some not
so good ones. Genera automatic stand by generators is an
excellent product because it gets set up, it gets hooked
into your power supply, so that when the power goes off,
that generator is constantly checking is everything okay? Is everything okay?
Is everything okay? And then when the power goes off,
it pops on and takes off and you know, you're

(02:20:30):
watching a football game and you go, oh, well, lots
of power and boom it comes right back up again.
That is nice. You go away on a trip, the
power goes off, and now you come back to rotting
food in that freezer because you're gone for two weeks
on it. That didn't happen when you've got a quality generator.
But you buy generators a lot of places, but Quality

(02:20:50):
Home Products is the only place that I would buy
a generator, and I really mean that, and it's because
you look at their ratings. Go to go to their
website quality tx dot com and look look at the
ratings that they've received. I would just give them a
call seven to one to three Quality and talk to
them about it. Getting a generator as a process. But

(02:21:11):
these people take care of their customers. They'll tell you
all about what they do. You know from the time
you first call, and you need to find the right generator,
which they'll make sure you get the right one for
what you need. And then they they take care of everything.
You know you have to get permits to set up
on these generators, Well you don't have to do that.
They do that and they understand each step of the way.

(02:21:35):
And that's why their customers are so happy. That's why
they're so highly rated Pinnacle Award over and over and
over again from the Better Business Bureau because reports on
them by their customers are just These folks are wonderful.
That's how they look at and that's why I say
that it's a family owned operation here in the Houston area.
Been arounds this nineteen eighty nine Quality TX dot com

(02:21:55):
seven to one to three Quality don't wait until the
storm in the Gulf before. What you call it takes
a while, is a process of getting a generator chosen,
picked out and set up. So call them now, start
that conversation now, Quality Home Products. This afternoon. I've got

(02:22:16):
a couple of things that I need to do with
my house. Plants. You know how we're talking about plants,
and typically we're talking about gardening being outside. A lot
of gardenings inside. And there are people that don't have
any They live in an apartment on the eighteenth floor
downtown Houston or something. They don't have a garden, but
they got a lot of plants inside. You grow things
by the window and whatnot. Well, this afternoon, I've got

(02:22:38):
to do some repotting some houseplants. I've got some orchids
that need repotting. I've got some other houseplants that have
just outgrown their container, and we're putting them all together
and getting them all set up, putting a quality mix
in there and getting them ready to go. I'll talk
a little bit more about that later, but that's going
to be my gardening activity this afternoon. Hey, I'll be

(02:22:59):
right back. Take a little break here. If you'd like
to give me a call, you can be first up.
We'll come back from break seven one three two one
two fifty eight seventy four. Hey, welcome back to Guardline, folks.
Good to have you with us. I mentioned earlier that
I like to drive through neighborhoods as opposed to taking

(02:23:21):
the highways around as much as I can, and it's
because I can look at landscapes and look at plants
and see things, and you never know what you're going
to see uh. But it's a great way to get ideas.
I'll tell you that. You know you maybe maybe you
just see a plant it's like wow, I gotta have
one of those and take a picture of it, knock
on the door, whatever, find out what it is. But

(02:23:42):
you can get good ideas. Or maybe it's a way
that they did a bed. You know, I like the
way they you know, curve that bed around here, or
the way that they've mixed the shrubs and the flowers
in and stuff, and that just looks good. I should
go home and change my beds or something like that. Well,
it is a great way to get ideas. Another way
is to go to pierscapes dot com. Peerscapes is our

(02:24:04):
preferred landscaper here on guard Line. And I'm telling you,
these guys work magic. They're professionals. I mean, they have designers.
If you have a brand new house and you want
to start from scratch and design a landscape, oh my gosh,
call them. Let them show you what they can do.
If you've already got a landscape and you want to
revamp the whole thing, call them. If you just have
a couple of beds in front and you drive. Every

(02:24:26):
time you drive up the house is like, Okay, that's blah.
I don't like that. Want I want it to look
nicer than that. Call them and I'll tell you something
else about Peerscapes. If they can do a quarterly maintenance program.
So here's how that works. Once a quarter they come out,
they go through all your beds, They spruce up the mults,
get rid of any weeds, you know, fresh mult in there,

(02:24:47):
make sure the irrigation is working properly. And then according
to how you and they decide to do the color
change out, they can do one or more color changeouts
a year. In other words, you know when the pansies
start melting in summer heat, right, you got to put
another flour in. Well, they'll do that, and they can
do that several times or just what. That's part of
the arrangement you set up with them. But they do

(02:25:09):
quarterly maintenance in your beds and in your landscape general.
It's a it's a very nice, nice service. Look at
the work they do at piercescapes dot com and there
you'll see all the other stuff, you know, fixing drainage areas,
landscape lighting, hard escapes and on and on down the
line piercescapes dot com. Here's a phone number, please write

(02:25:30):
this down. Two eight one three seventy fifty sixty two
eight one three seventy five zero six zero. So I
was talking about earlier that I need to revent my houseplants.
They just need to be bumped up and things. I've
also got some plants that the soil it's been there

(02:25:52):
for a long time and it's kind of decomposing the
way you know, you get like a potting soil or
something for your houseplants, and it's nice and loose and
airy and it's just a wonderful thing. But all that
organic matter in there continues to decompose, you know, Compost
turns to humus, and that starts happening in those pots,

(02:26:14):
and so you see the levels sink down, that's what's happening,
and it becomes kind of mucky. So when you water,
it gets a little gooey wet for too long, and
that's not good for the plants. And so sometimes I'll
pull plants out and I'll scrape away the outer soil
with my fingers, you know, loosen it all off there
and put some fresh soil in and reset those plants,

(02:26:34):
and that's also a good idea for that kind of maintenance.
But whenever you do that, you just always want to
make sure and provide the kind of nutrition those plants want.
And that's what I do. One of the things I
like to do is to use a product by Nelson's
called Genesis. Nelson Fertilizer has a product called Genesis and

(02:26:57):
that has got all kinds of microbial life in the product,
and you mix it in the soil. I was given
out free samples yesterday at the Home and Garden Show
or Home and Outdoor Living Show up in Conro And
next time I go somewhere, which I'll be doing a
lot this fall, I'm gonna always take samples of various
things with me. But I like this because you mix

(02:27:18):
it in the soil that you're gonna plant in. So
for a house plant, I'll do that. Just follow the label.
I put some in the soil, mix it up. It's
not the kind of thing that's going to burn your plants, okay,
because it's a more natural product than that. And you
mix it in and then there's a plant starts to grow.
It's gotten not only a boost of the microbial life,
but it also has those nutrients for it. Now you

(02:27:41):
may be planning a rose bush outside and the soil
you're going to plant it in, mix in a little
bit of the Genesis from Nelson's. It's an outstanding product
and it really really does work, and so I use
it all the time. I think I've said this before
and the air, But last year I had some tomato
plants that I started for seeds and little containers, and

(02:28:01):
then I wanted to bump them up to a little
bigger than a four inch pot, and I mixed Genesis
and a half of the plants soil. So half the
plants with Genesis, half the plants not. And I'm telling you,
I don't know how long it was, but a week
or so or later, when I looked at those plants,
it was literally like a probably a one third taller

(02:28:24):
the ones that I'd put the Genesis in, and then
they just kept going faster like that. It's a good
product and it really works, and it is all the
places you find Nelson products sold, which is all over
the place, you're going to find that Genesis. So just
a tip kind of thought about because I'll be doing
that later today. Let's see Oh, have you been to

(02:28:46):
Nelson Water Gardens out in Katie. I was there the
other day visiting with Ralph and we were walking around
talking about stuff, and I told him as that, Ralph, this,
you know, you should charge people to come in here,
because the therapy for me when I go outside and
I hear the sound of running water and I'm just

(02:29:07):
sitting having morning coffee or reading a book or just
enjoying watching the birds, you know, it's coming to the
feeders and things. The sound of running water is so soothing.

Speaker 18 (02:29:18):
You know.

Speaker 8 (02:29:18):
Gardening itself is a soothing thing for our peace of
mind and everything. But the sound of water is awesome.
And they excel at that at Nelson's Nursery and Water Gardens.
That is their specialty. That's what they're worll famous for that.
I mean literally they invented did you know that? They
invented the disappearing fountain where the water comes out of

(02:29:40):
a container and it spills over the side and goes
into the ground, but it's truly just recirculating. They invented
those and by the way, birds love those, and even
beneficial insects they can land and get some of that water.
We'll enjoy that too. They invented that. But what about
the nursery part. All kinds of good plants. He's cut
in a bunch. When I was there, they just had

(02:30:01):
gotten in a whole bunch of citrus and other fruit trees,
you know, pears and peaches and plums and things. They
have an excellent supply. I was just walking around looking
at all the things. Nice selection of herbs and vegetables
and flowers. And then when it comes to water plants,
they've got water lilies, and it is just it's amazing
the kinds of water lilies that they have, the tropical

(02:30:22):
types and then the kind that are said to be hearty.
I'm told that even the tropicals go through the winter
here in our area. Excuse me, but just beauty and
the sound. The sound is the part that it just
amazes me. You can take your kiddos out there and
ask the folks in the store, say, hey, could my

(02:30:44):
kids feed the fish, and they'll give you a little
handful of little pellets, and the kids can go out
and back, and these giant koi swimming around in the pond,
and they've learned. These koi have learned. They come up
to you on the side and they bring their head
up out of the water a little and open their
mouth and the kids can drop food in it. Your
kids will love that, uh, and they'll give you more

(02:31:06):
time to shop. Let you do that anyway. Nelson Nursery
and Water Gardens. You've got to Katie. Go up Katie
fortmun Road North and it's just up the street a
little bit. If you want to go to the website
and Milswatergardens dot com. Well music means it's the end
of the hour and take a little break. Here's been
a quiet day to day. If you have a gardening

(02:31:28):
question and want to call during this break before I
come back after the top of the hour, you can
be the first stop seven one three two one two
fifty eight seventy four. That's no waiting, good thing, all right, folks.
I'm gonna go grab some coffee down Coppin a bit.