Freeze Is Almost Gone! Be Ready!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Katie r. H. Garden Line with Skip richardses Mill.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Braasyn gas can trim. You just watch him as whom.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
So many potties to sup bopas in bags gas again
you dabbles back again not a sign gas and gas.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
The sun beamon down between.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
The gas gas starting treat.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Well.

Speaker 5 (00:50):
Good morning, Hey, welcome to garden Line. We're back. Good
to have you with us. I'm your host, Skip Rictor,
and we're here to help you have a bountiful garden,
a beautiful landscape and more fun in the process. I
got to adjust this heater around. It's cold in here
this morning. I don't know what happens, like a window
left cracked open or something. Anyway, we're doing good this

(01:13):
morning and ready to talk all kinds of things. Gardening
is a good day to be inside learning about gardening
and perhaps doing some seed starting, also doing some rooting
of cuttings. If you've never tried rooting cuttings before, you
want to try that. It is a lot of fun.
Some plants they make you look good because they want

(01:33):
to root so bad. You know, Colius is that way,
Tomato shoots or that way, and rosemary Rosemary actually is
a very easy plant to root from cuttings. Others a
little more of a challenge, but hey, you got to
get out there and try something. I think you'll find
that the more you learn about gardening, the more of

(01:53):
the gardening techniques that you become more proficient at, the
more fun it is all around. Just to enjoy being
out and doing some gardening kinds of things, indoors and outdoors.
Terrariums another good thing. You know, we're talking about looking
at some rainy weather, some drizzly actually drizzly weather. It's

(02:14):
more of a more of a constant annoying mist that
we're talking about here. Not a gully washer for sure.
But we can continue to garden. And so many of
our garden centers too, they they have such nice indoor areas,
maybe covered areas with house plants, or their indoor shops
and things. It's just a good day to get out
and you don't have to fight the crowds. That's a

(02:35):
good thing too. So maybe you want to get out
and do some of that. Tomorrow is going to be
a great day. We're going to have some excellent weather
and a good chance to in the afternoon get out
and enjoy gardening as well. You're listening to garden Line.
Our phone number is seven to one three two one
two ktr H seven one three two one two KTRH.

(02:55):
Feel free to give me a call. We'll talk about
the things that are of interest to you. You know, probably,
oh gosh, about fifty years ago, Nitrofoss introduced their red bag,
the Imperial fifteen five to ten. Imperial is a lawn
fertilizer that is a quick release. You put it down,
you watered in or rain water sit in by the way,

(03:16):
This would be great with this little missing rain we
got coming along. To put a little Nitrofoss down as
soon as you can ahead of it or just watered
in later. Fifteen five to ten is a three one
two racio fertilizer. Now, that's that is what researchers in
turf science at Texas A and M and other universities
throughout the South have proven is the best general ratio

(03:40):
for lawns. Because if you were to take grass clippings,
send them to a lab and say what's in them,
They're going to tell you there is a three one
two ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Well fifteen five
ten is a three one two ratio of those three
elements as well. Now, if you look at my schedule,

(04:00):
if they are optional, early greenup application is now. Now's
the time to be able to do that. You get
it down, it goes into the ground, it goes into
the root system, the plant takes it up, and you
get a greener grass plant earlier on. It's not going
to cause grass that's still cold to start growing actively,

(04:21):
but it can give you an early greenup, and a
lot of folks like that. Let's get that lawn looking
good as soon as we can. Our main fertilization season
is coming as we get further into spring and into
the summertime for sure. But Nitrofoss Imperial the red bag
is the one you need to look for for putting
down that early greenup. You're going to find Nitrofoss products

(04:42):
in a lot of different places. They're widely available here
in the Greater Houston area. For example, you're going to
find them at Bearings Hardware both on Bisonet and the
one on Westheimer. Head out to Rosenberg and M and
d Ace has Nitrofoss products. Ace Hardware City and Memorial
and Plants for all seasons on Highway too forty nine.
Just a few examples of the dozens of places you're

(05:03):
going to find nitrofoss here in the Greater Houston area.
I was out in I had a little bit of
a trip yesterday, went all the way out to Fredericksburg
and was talking to some folks from a few counties
out there about some different aspects of gardening. And it's
always interesting when you go out and visit with people

(05:23):
about gardening the questions that come up. There's all the
standard questions that you expect you're going to get, you know,
the things like how do I get rid of fire ants?
Or in that country out there, it's how do I
stop year from attacking my gardens because boy deer appreciate
the fact that you plant a salad bull for them.

(05:45):
But there's always unusual questions too. People, you know, they
have different things. Sometimes it's a plant that is not
a common plant that they're trying to grow. Sometimes it
is a particular thing that they heard are red online
and they're wanting to know is this really true? Does

(06:05):
that really work well? The bottom line to those kinds
of things is usually beware. I find that in fact gardeners.
Let me just put this me. Remember the ones that
friends don't like friends drive drunk, don't let friends drive drunk. Right, okay,
how about friends don't let friends garden based on social media.

(06:28):
That's a good one. Friends don't let friends garden based
on social media because there is so much nonsense out there.
I saw a picture the other day and it was
a cluster of tomatoes and they were nion primary color,
purple blue, red, of course, orange yellow, But the colors

(06:49):
were just so artificial and they were all in the
same cluster. That's insane. That doesn't happen. It doesn't happen
in nature. Don't believe it. Social media is full of
none sense. There's this one account that actually follow because
it's like what are they gonna do next? And it
is just it's just lies, absolute lies, you know, selling

(07:10):
you this plants that know it is not a plant
like that, or you know, maybe it's a it's an
apple tree that has five different colors of apples on
the same tree and it's not been grafted a bunch
of times. It's just one branch has all those colors
and you can buy them from them as seeds. You
can't plant apple seeds unless you want to wait what

(07:31):
fifteen years to see your first apple. And when you do,
it is not going to be an apple that produces
all that kind of colors. It's just a lie, just
a lie. B T. Barnum said it, right, buy or beware.
There's a sucker born every minute. All right, well, don't
be that sucker. We're going to help you by giving
you a few more tips and to help you have

(07:51):
success with your garden. Just hang around. I'll be right back, alrighty,
welcome back, Welcome to garden Line. I mean your host,
Skip Rictorum, if you'd like to give me a call
this morning and ask a gardening question. Seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four seven one three
two one two five eight seven four. Heirloom Soils is

(08:17):
one of the premiere soil making companies in the entire region.
I mean they they do quality work, they make quality mixes,
and they have pretty much everything you can imagine that
you would need. For example, do you want a soil
for roses? Do you want a soil for vegetables and herbs?

(08:38):
Do you want a soiled for your fruit trees? Do
you want a soil for acid loving plants like blueberries
and zelias. They've got all of that, and on and
on and on more. They have a cactus and succulent soil.
They have indoor potting sauce, outdoor potting sauce. You can
buy leaf mold composts there. You can gots, buy shale
and compost blends there. They sell their products by the bag.
They sell them by the bulk. You can have them

(08:58):
deliver them, or you can drive out to Porter and
bring your trailer and truck and get loaded up there.
They even have a thing called a supersack. Supersack is
a cubic yard in a big, giant strong sack that
they pick up and set in your driveway. It's neat, clean,
no mess. I've used them before. I love the supersacks.
And all you gotta do is reach out to them

(09:20):
and find out where or how to go about getting
what you need. You can go to the UH. You
can got to tell you what. Let's do it this way.
Give them a call. It's two eight one three five
four nineteen fifty two eight one three five four nineteen fifty,
or if you want to drive out there, it's on
the fifty nine access road in Porter. Here's a website.

(09:41):
This will help you know exactly where to go. Rock
in Moultch, the letter in Rock, the letter in multch
All one word dot com and if you add a
slash delivery to that, you can find out more about
getting these things delivered. Now, there is a minimum three
sacked minimum on the supersacks. You're not going to drive
all the way cross Creation for one second delivery that

(10:03):
book deliveries no matter what kind of products you're talking
about in our area, book deliveries are coming to cost
for the people that are bringing them out to you.
And so if you can get a little maybe you
and a neighbor would go together and purchase several of
those kinds of things. That would be another great idea.
But anyway, hairloom soil is a place now go go
to your local garden centers, your feed stores, your Southwest Fertilizer,

(10:27):
your Ace hardware store. You're going to find heirloom soil
products in a lot of different places by the bag,
which is very very convenient. I was talking earlier about
you know, some of the things that you read on
social media, and it just I have a combination I

(10:47):
laugh and I get mad at the same time because
I see it and I realize that they're lying to
people and they are they're basically making money off of
you not having success. And it just one of the
things that it makes me sad is Gardener's saying, I
can't grow anything everything I touch it eyes, I have
a brown thumb, all of those kinds of things. I

(11:09):
want you to look at your radio. That means, look
at me. You do not have a brown thumb. I
promise you do not have a brown thumb. You have
an uninformed thumb. And when your thumb gets smarter and
knows what plants want, it starts turning green. If you
want to talk colors, that's how that works. You do
not have a brown thumb. We can do this. Just

(11:31):
keep listening to the guard line call and ask questions. Learn, learn, Learn.
There's a lot of good opportunities to learn, and the
more you learn, the better it gets and you can
really have good success. So, for example, let me give
you a little quick tip here that I think will
help you with your plants, especially the acid loving plants,

(11:54):
but really any kinds of shrubs that you're putting into
an area that tends to be wet. If you cannot
get rid of water in an area, you can build
a bed on top of the ground to grow in.
And so someone asked me recently, you know, I want
to plant a blueberry, but I can't dig three feet
deep to make the hole. Well, you never want to
dig deeper than the root ball the root cylinder in

(12:17):
the pot to plant a plant. But yes, if you
sink a plant down in the ground and it is
soggy area, that root system is going to stay soggy,
and it's not good. But I'm going to use a
kind of a crazy example just to create a mental
picture for you as to how you have success with this,
and that is set your camellia, your blueberry, your zealia,

(12:39):
your guardena whatever, set it on top of the ground,
and then bring in the bed mix and fill in
around it. That's how you plant it. In other words, now,
what you're really going to do is you're going to
put in the bed mix and make a bed and
then plant in that hole. But the concept is my
plant is actually sitting on top of that soggy soil
situation and growing in a high quality bed mix, and

(13:01):
you will have success. You can go out to central
Texas on a limestone outcropping and put a nice acidic
mix on top of the ground and grow blueberry in
it if you got the water quality to do it,
or an azelle or something else. But fix your drainage.
One way is just set your plants on top of
the ground and put the bed around them. Again, that's

(13:22):
that's backwards of what we're doing, but that gives you
the visual concept, the cutaway vision. It works and it helps.
And don't subject plants that don't want to be in
a soggy swamp to those conditions or they'll get root
rots and they'll die. And it's easy to avoid that.
You are listening to garden Line. Our phone number is
seven one three two one two kt r H seven

(13:45):
one three two one two k t RIH. Give us
a call. Let's help you have success. I love it
when we can help somebody enjoy gardening and maybe learn
a new kind of gardening, learn a new way to
have success. That that is cool. Last year, those of
you in the Houston area who were here last year,
you know we had two heck of us storms that

(14:07):
came through and knocked out power for weeks, and you
know they're by family in Houstonaria that were out of
power for over two weeks due to the fact that
the storms blasted down trees and knock down power lines
and they're up a creek. Generators are a way around that.
But not just any generator and definitely not just any place.
A Generac automatic standby generator, Generatic Generaic automatic stand by generator.

(14:32):
They sit outside your house and when the power goes up,
they just come on. You don't have to you don't
have to get up and run outside and fire the
thing up. They just automatically come on because they're constantly
monitoring the power flow and when it senses you've lost power,
they pop right back on and the lights just take off.
They just keep going. Now, Generak is a great quality brand,

(14:55):
but quality home Products of Texas is where you need
to buy it. And it makes all the difference in
the world world where you get these because it's not
just getting a generator, it's getting people that know what
they're doing putting it in. It's getting people to completely engineer,
install and monitor the products they're selling you. That is
a rare thing in the industry. They come out they

(15:16):
even They don't just drop this cheap pad on the
ground concrete pad to set it on where it's going
to get bumped around. They build a quality pad for it.
They deal with the regulations, you know, whatever the city
is requiring or whatever. They handle all that for you.
They have their own people, I mean, they are plumbers,
they are electricians. They have their own contractors in house
to do all of this for you. That's why people

(15:37):
love them so much. That's why they have fourteen thousand
and five star reviews. That's why they've won the Better
Business Bureau's most prestigious award eight times, the Pinnacle Award.
It's because they take care of their people. That is
what they do. This is a family owned operation, been
run since nineteen eighty nine. Quality Home Products of Texas.
Call them, talk to them. They will take time. I'm

(16:00):
with you to make sure you get the generator that
works best for what you need to do. And there's
a variety of options out there. QUALITYTX dot com QUALITYTX
dot com seven one three quality. That's as simple as that.
Now seven to one three quality, and you'll find out
exactly what I'm talking about with the difference with a

(16:22):
quality company like Quality Home Products of Texas. I uh,
this coming week is my week to get out in
the lawns. I've been away. I've been traveling a lot
and just haven't had time to, you know, get out
there and take care of my lawns like I need to.
And I've got a few broad leaf weeds that have

(16:42):
popped up in some areas. I guess the grass was
then because wherever sunlight hits the soil and nature plants
a weed, and I have to get out and deal
with those. I need to have got still some the
old dead grass up on the top, and I'm not
for too long now. I could do it this week.
I may wait a little bit longer on it, but
I'm going to do a lower mowing to clean out
all the dead and let the fresh new growth come in.

(17:04):
I like to wait, really to do that until the
weather's warmed enough that the grass is going to take
off growing. And the reason is if you scop it off,
then the sunlight hits the soil and suddenly weed seeds
start coming and your grass is still cold to begin
actively rapidly growing. And so I usually wait for that

(17:27):
first mowing until you know, I know the grass is
ready to kind of get going. If you have weeds
in your lawn, you do want to capture the clippings
that first mowing, because clover and hand bit and chick
weed and all the winter weeds, if they're going to seed,
you want to get all those out of there because
you don't you do not want to let them go

(17:48):
to seed. So if you're waiting longer, you're going to
start seeing them blooming and setting seed, and don't let
them do that. Don't let them put those seeds in
your yard. Let's head out to the phones here, we're
going to talk to Pam. Pam Central Texas. Hey, Pam,
how you doing. Welcome to guard Line.

Speaker 6 (18:03):
Good morning, Good morning. I'm so glad you're on this morning. Listen.
My situation is that we moved here about four years ago,
and I was I'm a butterfly, a freak, I like them,
and I took to this Lisnia Mexican sunflower and I

(18:24):
planted it in quite a big area and I'm like,
I can't, I can't control it. It just you can't
plant anything else with it. You know, you're you know,
you're sains and you know other things that you want
to plan. And I didn't know that.

Speaker 7 (18:41):
And they're growing.

Speaker 5 (18:42):
Are you saying they're growing? But Pam, are you saying
they're growing like weeds are just too thick? When you
say you can't control it, is that what you mean?

Speaker 6 (18:49):
Oh?

Speaker 8 (18:50):
No, I mean.

Speaker 6 (18:52):
They don't habitat with other flowers at all. I mean
nothing can grow in the under you know, underneath them
or you know. It's just I just don't like them
anymore because they want okay. So I was looking online
to find out, you know, how I could get rid
of them, because I've been dealing with it for this

(19:13):
would be the third year now, and my husband and
I go out there in the early spring and we
start pulling it and pulling it and pulling it, and
it's still last year, it's still I couldn't plant a plant.
Tried to plant then this underneath it and stuff, excuse me,
and I still couldn't get anything to grow. Besides, it

(19:35):
was only in the area. So I was looking online
and even Texas A and M said had a big
write up about doing herb side the some sort, but
it didn't tell me what herbicide to use. Can you
help me with that?

Speaker 5 (19:56):
Well? Uh, so I wouldn't use a pre emergent herbicide
in that area because it'll prevent any seeds from coming
up like your zenias, for example. You can use a
post emergent that kills them, and there are a lot
of different products that would kill them. I might let
them go ahead and come up and then do the
spray and that way as much of the seeds as

(20:17):
as possible have gone ahead and sprouted, so you kill them,
and then you can go in and plant your zeneas
behind that. And there's there's a lot of different products
that work on that as far as a post emergent killer.
I'm hitting a hard break here, Pam where I've got
to go to the to the news and I will.

(20:37):
I'll put you on hold. If you want to hang around,
we can continue the discussion. We can come back. If not,
do you just need to get a post emergent out there. Yeah, okay,
thank you, take care. All right, folks, A little quick
break here and I'll be right back with your calls
if you'd like to get on the board. Seven one
three two one two ktr H. All right, folks, welcome

(21:02):
back to garden Line. A little laid back morning going
on here. I can give me a call Talk Gardening
seven one three two one two k t r H
seven one three two one two k t r H. Boy,
I tell you if Plants for All Seasons has gotten
in a bunch of things for your edible garden. Of course,

(21:22):
they've got every kind of plant you can imagine. You know, shrubs, roses,
I don't know, flowers, perennials, ornamental grasses, on and on
and on and on. They have an awesome selection of seeds,
one of the best selections of seeds I've seen in town.
And it's just just a whole wall on them in
their nice new renovated sales area. They're indoor sales area.

(21:44):
It's really cool. I'm pretty it has a lot of
good stuff in it too. You ought to go check
that out. They got in some onions. They still got
in some potatoes out there, and it's time to plant
both of those, for sure. You can choose from several
different types of white, yellow, and red onions. Little bundles
are ready to go. Don't delay get those in, start
fertilizing them. They need to hit the ground, run and

(22:06):
never look back. The faster you grow an onion, the
bigger that bulb can be. When the day length is
long enough to cause them to make bulbs. So you
can eat little bulbs, you can eat big bulbs. They
taste the same, but if you want more yield out
of it, hurry up. Get them in plants for all seasons.
Has them. They also have a nice selection of herbs,
and this is a time to get herbs planted. Really,

(22:27):
year round is the time to get herbs planted. They
have many options for you. Why not create either. If
you don't want to do a formal herb garden, why
not just plant herbs among your other plants or regano
and time make nice groundcovers in beds. I will often
put herbs at the ends of my vegetable rows in
a vegetable bed, or hanging over the sides of the bed.

(22:49):
You know, maybe you have tomatoes growing in a bed.
Why not some herbs hanging over the side, like a
regano growing right over the side. Put some basil at
the end of the road. It's a little early for
basil now, but put some basil at the end of
the row, and you got your whole garden ready to
go there, I mean, you're ready for pestos and bosta
sauces and all kinds of things. When you put all
that together, go to Plants for All Seasons. Check out

(23:11):
what they have, and you know when you go there,
you're gonna get good advice. They've been family owned and
operated since nineteen seventy three. They're right there just north
of Luetta on the Feeder Road beside Tomball Parkway, FM
two forty nine. Plants for All Seasons dot com if
you link at McCall two eight one, three seven six,
sixteen forty six and they will take care of you there. Excellent,

(23:35):
excellent service. I was visiting with somebody the other day
and they were looking for someone to do some particular
kinds of work in the yard. I was telling them
they're out there in an area that a year round
Houston services, and I said, you can go to these guys.
They definitely do good work. You know, when it comes
to things like aeration, for example, compost top dressing, those

(23:56):
are two of the best benefit options that you can
do on your lawn. It's important to water, it's important
to mo it's important to fertilize and all of that,
but compost top dressing and aeration, if you've got a
compacted soil or if you have a clay soil. Either way,
it helps get oxygen back in the soil, and year
round Houston knows how to do it. They're specialists when

(24:19):
it comes to compost, top dressing and aeration in your lawn.
Now you can do it yourself. It's cumbersome. You're running equipment,
you're cleaning up the equipment, you're hauling it back and
dumping all the compost in your driveway. Just call them
and let them come out and take care of the
whole thing. They've got equipment that does a way better
job of air rating than what you'll rent from the

(24:40):
rental store. They serve inside the Beltway around Houston, inside
the Beltway and out in the Richmond Rosenberg area. They
also work out in that area too. All you have
to do is go to the website year round Houston
dot com, year round Houston dot com, or give them
a call eight three to two eight eight four fifty

(25:01):
three thirty five eight three two eight eight four fifty
three thirty five year round Houston dot com for those
of you inside the Beltway and out in the Richmond
Rosenberg area. I saw a lawn not too long ago,
Well it was last year, actually not too many years
ago that had been air rated, and it just you know,

(25:23):
when it first is done, it's like you have all
this little pausa soil on top of the surface. That's
a good thing because that is those little plugs that
they drop on the surface as they pull them out
of the ground. When they melt in irrigation and rain
and stuff, they just sort of dissolve and spread out.
And if you have a thatch problem, that is the

(25:43):
single best way to get rid of thatch is a
good aerration and compost top dressing over the top. It
will speed the decomposition of that thatch up a lot.
And you just can't believe the difference that it makes.
It really does make a difference. You're listening to Gardenline.
I'm your host, Skip Richtor, and we're here to answer

(26:03):
your gardening questions and just give me a call. Let's
figure out how we can help you. Seven one three
two one two k t rh i UH stopped by
Houston Power Coders a little while back and was looking
at some of the jobs that they had gotten in
and boy, they they have a extensive area, a shop

(26:25):
area with many different kinds of bends where they can
bring equipment and or bring furniture in from your yard
and powder coated. Powder coating is better than painting. So
if you've got some old furniture out there that's kind
of getting rusty, maybe the bolts holding it together or resting.
Maybe it's you know, it's nice cast iron. Maybe it
is a wrought iron table, maybe it's a luminum patio furniture.

(26:47):
Whatever you've got, have them take a look at it.
You can get a quote from them. All you do
is email a picture of what you got to Sales
at Houstoncoaters dot com. Sales at Houstoncoders dot com. See
I need to quote quote on this. They'll tell you
they'll paint it. They'll put new hardware on it, you know,

(27:09):
the bolts and nuts and bolts and washers and everything
that holds everything together. And they use stainless steel for
that so it doesn't rerust. They put plastic feed and
end caps on. You know, I have you the tubular furniture
where the ends are open, so they pop a plastic
cap on there. They can do stairs, they can do
rails along and maybe a portrail. Do you have a
light pole, you know in the yard, like or a lampole,

(27:31):
a little oil gas lamp, or a light pole. They
can do anything that's mottled pretty much out there. And
if you're down at the coast and you got that
salt spray kind of issue, they have special coating techniques
that they do that help that as well. You just
got to give them a call to eight one six seven,
six thirty eight eighty eight to eight one three seven

(27:53):
six excuse me, six seven, six thirty eight eighty I'm
gonna say that one more time. Two eight one six seven,
six thirty eight eighty eight. Check out the website houstonpowdercoders
dot com. Get some new life, oh in over one
hundred colors, So whatever color you want something to be,

(28:14):
they can make it that. It's amazing kind of cool.
I think you're listening to Garden Line. I'm your host,
Skip Rictor. We're here to answer your gardening questions and
we'll be talking about a variety of different things from
edibles to beautiful flowers and lawns and whatnot as we
get through the show this morning. We're here from six
to ten on Saturdays and Sundays, so we look forward

(28:35):
to visiting with you and helping you have success with
what you're doing. For those of you up in the
Magnolia area, you've got Spring Creek Feed your hometown feed store.
They're conveniently located in Mignoya on FM twenty nine seventy eight,
so basically just minutes away from both Graham Parkway and
Highway to forty nine. And they carry a full line
of fertilizers like what you hear me talk about, the

(28:57):
turf Star from Nelson, the Microlife, the nitrophoss. They have
things to control weeds, pests, and diseases. I love to
walk in because you're greeted by friendly staff and it's
a really cool store too. You walk in, you go, wait,
wait a minute, this a feed store, because there's so
much cool stuff in here. Well, yes it is, and
much much more. They have a delivery service. They can

(29:18):
special order if you need them to. That's Spring Creek
Feed on FM twenty nine seventy eight and Magnolia. Check
them out. When you drive up, you'll know it. It's
this big, beautiful, old time feed store facade that just
looks great. Well, it looks to me like we're hitting
time for me to take another break. I'll be right back. Folks, Hey,

(29:46):
when was the last time that you took a trip
out to Anti rosing for him? If you've never been
to that place, you need to go. I love to go.
And boy, when spring comes, oh my gosh, it's just
it's incredible. But you know, spring is when the blue
bonnets are out and you get to drive through that
country out that direction. You know, they're north of Brenham
by the way up in Independence. The blue bonnets are

(30:10):
just gorgeous. And of course the roses. I mean, that
is prime time for roses and things. But it's always
a good time to go out and visit the Antique
Rose Imporium. The spring's almost here, as these days get
warmer and our gardens kind of come alive, lots of beautiful,
vibrant boobs. There's not a better time to get out
and explore the rose and Porium. Do you know they
offer both free self guided tours and paid guided tours

(30:32):
led by their owner, Jim Keater, So you can just
wander the enchanting paths through the whole place yourself, at
your own pace. Take a self guided tour, Look at
the lush gardens, look at they have some cool historic structures.
And they even have a little handy downloadable pamphlet so
you can self guide yourself across learning about everything. Or

(30:52):
you can go on a tour that Gym leads and
those are more in depth. They dive deeper into the
history and horticulture behind all these landscapes. You got a
lot of insights that Jim has it shares with you
on the decades of care and cultivation that have basically
shaped that place into the floor paradise that it is
right now. I always love to visit there. If you

(31:14):
want to find out anything else about the Anti Grosmporium,
you know the phone numbers, the how to get there,
the what roses they have. Go to Antique Roseanmporium dot com.
You need to follow them on social media because there's
always things going on. Get on their email list Antique
Roseanmporium dot com. They have events, they have workshops seasonally.

(31:36):
They got some things coming up right now. But you've
got to get out there and just check on it.
Ars Anti Grosenporum. By the way, did I have to
tell you that February is for roses. February definitely is
for roses, and it would be a good time to
get out there and to check them out. They got
something coming up called the Garden Party. It's March seventh, eighth,

(31:59):
the ninth. Is just basically we're on it right now.
You ought to give them a call see if they
still have space out there. Some of the events are
like really cool, really cool events where there's dinners and
other kinds of special things. But when you're out there,
when you're calling them, rather going to visit the website,
check out about that Spring celebration, the Garden Party, the

(32:22):
Artisan Market. It's kind of drinks, desserts, music, and a
lot lot more out there. It's a very special event
in our lawns. I was talking to somebody the other
day and they were asking about sweet Green. That's a
product that nitroposs cells. Sweet green is basically it's like

(32:45):
a molasses based product that, through microbial activity on the molasses,
is turned into an eleven zero zero fertilizer. One of
the highest analysis for an organic plant food in that
nitrogen category is really a big number for an organic product.
It smells sweet too. I mean, well, imagine open up

(33:05):
a jar of molasses and smell as kind of what
it smells like Sweet green is available all over the place.
It's easy to find, not at all difficult, and it dissolves,
you know, you put a little water on it, it
dissolves away. And microbes love sugary carbon molasses types of
materials that really stimulates their growth. And therefore the soil

(33:26):
is better and the plants are happier. And sweet green
is easy to find all over the place. For example,
you got to Enchanted Forest and Richmond they got it there.
You're going to find it down at Ace Sinkle Ranch
and the allspa ace up in the woodlands as well,
and arbigate nurseries carry nitrofoss products in general as well.
And the bottom line is just get out there and enjoy.

(33:51):
And if you I jokingly say that when you throw
sweet green in the back of your car and you
head home, it smells so good you just want to
make another trip around the loop before you go. That
must be a good smell. They want to drive Loop
six ten for another lap. Nitropiz sweet green. The stuff works,

(34:11):
It does for sure. I was talking with someone who
was heading out to Nature's Way the other day and
they were going to get some of the native plants.
I don't know if you know this, But Nature's Way,
you know, we think of them as soil because that's
where gosh, that's the grandfather of the soil places in
the Greater Houston area. It's been around a long time.

(34:32):
John Ferguson years ago started that place, and his son
Ian now runs a place. Same tradition, same quality products,
same quality care and making composts. But did you know
that they sell native plants? In fact, they sell more
than just native plants. They have a lot of different
kinds of plants. But they are excellent source for many

(34:53):
kinds of natives for here in the Greater Houston area.
For those of you haven't been there, it's up on
Interstate forty five toward Conro. If you're going north on
forty five, you exit fourteen eighty eight, which is the
road that goes off to Montgomery. But instead of turning left,
you're going to turn right across the railroad tracks and
you're there at Nature's Way. You can go to uh
you can give them a call, you can go by there.

(35:14):
I just like to tell people, Hey, go to the
website and check it out. You're gonna find a lot
of information on the many different products that they carry.
And the website is easy to remember because it's the
name of the company, Nature's Way Resources dot com. Nature's
Way Resources dot com. It is spring, it is time
to plant brown stuff before green stuff. Don't put plants

(35:38):
in until you fix the soil. Nature's Way has a
lot of different ways that you can fix the soil
that work. You are listening to garden Line phone number here.
Seven one three two one two. Kind of a quiet
day this morning on the phones here on garden Line,
but we will be happy to take your call if
you call, and maybe a little bit later, we're going

(35:59):
about to hit break here pretty quick, and you just
get on hold. We can make sure you're one of
the first ones up when we come back from our
top of the hour break that we're going to be
looking at in just a little bit here. I love
garden centers, and I keep telling you folks that listen
to garden Line that we are fortunate in the greater

(36:22):
Houston area to have so many awesome garden centers. I
don't care if you live north, south, east, West, or Central,
you have an outstanding garden center near you. And for
those of you, I would say more of the Central area,
especially although people drive there from all over. Buchanan's Native
Plants on Eleventh Street is your local garden center right there,

(36:47):
and Buchanans is just it's a wonderland of plants. They
specialize in natives. They will have the most select the
largest selection of natives in the whole region. And not
just natives like Texas Natives, but natives like they have
a table that's just say. These natives are right here
in Harris County. Natives. You know, they're Houston Natives, and
that's kind of cool. Of course, they got vegetable plants.

(37:08):
They've got great plants for shade. Their Housepoint greenhouse is
just unbelievable. It's just outstanding. On Saturdays in the spring,
the spring starts in February, by the way, here Saturdays
in the spring, they have talks out there at the event.
They have wheat, they have events out there at Buchanans

(37:28):
Native Plants. It's just a good place to go. Go
to the website. Go to the website. You really need
to do that. Buchanansplants dot com. Buchanansplants dot com. Check
it out. Sign up for the newsletter. It is awesome.
You get a lot of good information. When you go
to the website, you're not just like, Okay, what are

(37:49):
they selling me today? It's how to do stuff, how
to prepare for a freeze, the garden to do checklist
for February, for example. You know, you see what I'm saying,
lot how to stuff that is very very helpful. Buchanan's
Native plants. Go by and see them. It is a
fun place to visit. I always like going in there

(38:12):
because I always learned something. You know, I've been doing horticulture. Well,
I've been doing horticulture my whole life. I've been doing
it professionally for thirty six years now. And you would
think that I've seen every plant that there is and
heard every question that there is, and that's not the case.
There's always something new. Some native now is making it

(38:33):
to the market that we used to not have. Some
new variety of tomato is out that is the best
thing since slice bread. I don't know why they say
that to me. The slice bread isn't as cool as
a new tomato. We ought to say this is the
best thing since a new tomato. Anyway, There's always something
new out there to learn, and that's my gardening so

(38:55):
much fun, just absolutely love it. Hey, guess what is
going to be happening today. I'm going to be heading
out to All Seasons, Ace Hardware and Willis. All Seasons,
Ace Hardware and Willis. I'm going to be there from
twelve noon to two pm. So grab you an early
lunch and come on out. I'll be answering your gardening questions.

(39:18):
Bring me pictures from your property that you want to
ask questions about, bring me samples of plants. Shove a
bug and a bag and bring him in and I'll
make him confess his name and we'll figure out what
to do about him. Same with diseases. Come on out there.
I'm going to be giving away products from Nelson Plant
Food and from the good folks at Medina. We've got

(39:41):
a lot of good products to be given away out there.
I even have a few Texas Gardener magazines on hand.
If you haven't subscribed to that, that is an awesome magazine.
If you need to subscribe, let me get a copy
in your hand. Come on out again, All Seasons, Ace
Hardware and Willis.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Skip Rictor.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
It's crazy trip. Just watch him as we're going many
batas to sup bat busy gas again, not a sun

(40:31):
glass gas.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
The sun bemon down between.

Speaker 5 (40:40):
All right, folks, here we are, we're back, Welcome back
to garden line. The other day, I was sitting early
in the morning, actually in the house, and I heard
it was dark outside. I heard a bird singing. It's like, what,
you have to wait till some lights out there?

Speaker 9 (41:02):
Right?

Speaker 5 (41:02):
No, they don't. They get going early. And I love
listening to birds sing. You know, I used to not
be a bird person at all. I mean I didn't
dislike birds. I just wasn't into birds. And then I
discovered wild Birds Unlimited and began to enjoy the products
they carry. And wild Birds Unlimited carries a wide variety
bird houses, bird feeders, quality bird feed, and I say

(41:26):
quality bird feed, not filled with the little red bebes
that the birds are not interested in eating. You know,
you get some cheap bird feed, and that's what it is,
cheap bird feed. And if you lose, if the birds
don't eat half of what's in the sack, was that
cheap bird feed? No, you paid twice as much for it.
Wild Birds Unlimited has quality seed. Now they're going to

(41:47):
have things like you can buy what's called a no
mess blend, where even like the little sunflower shells are
already taken off the kernels, so there's absolutely nothing on
the ground when you get through. But when they put
something in a bag, they make sure that it's what
birds are interested in eating. For example, their new product
Cardinal Confetti Blend. It is awesome if you love redbirds,

(42:11):
if you love the cardinals and bringing them in, Oh
my gosh. They love safflower and black OL's sunflower and
sunflower chips. They love the bark butter bits that are
in it, the peanut haves, the dried mealworms, the striped sunflower,
something called nutrisaff It is a concoction that is just
rocket fuel for your cardinals and they'll love it. While

(42:32):
you're at Wilbirds Unlimited, pick up a Cardinal tube feeder.
You don't have to have that to feed the Confetti Blend,
but it's a cool feeder. Good evening Cardinal feeder is
another one that they have there, and they're going to
be carrying this year round. This isn't just a spring
thing at Wildbirds Unlimited. Now there's six Wildbirds Unlimited stores
here in the Greater Houston area. Just go to WBU

(42:53):
dot com forward slash Houston. You can find the store
near you. When you walk in there, no matter what
your bird question is, they're going to be able to
help you. They're going to be able to point you
in the right direction. And I warn you it's addictive
because it happened to me. I love my warbird feeders
from Warbirds Unlimited. They are just outstanding. I have one

(43:15):
that the squirrels can't get into. I love listening to
the squirrel's cuss about that the outside. But they have
so many cool feeders. And if you talk to my birds,
they can tell you that they like them a lot.
They like that feed a lot. They haven't started pecking
on the windows yet, going hey, it's time to fill
that thing up again, but they love that stuff. All right, folks,

(43:35):
stop by Wildbird's Unlimited. You will enjoy it just like
I have. We're going to head out now to j
D n fullsher Hey, JD. Welcome to Garden Line Hobby Skip.
How you been doing I'm good, sir. How are you.

Speaker 10 (43:52):
Good?

Speaker 5 (43:52):
Doing good?

Speaker 8 (43:53):
I've talked to you before.

Speaker 11 (43:54):
I've got some chronic black city mold on my crate.
Myrtles been battling it off and on for a couple
of years now. Since you some pictures earlier in the week,
I went ahead and I got that. I kind of
followed the trim the crape myrtles the week of Valentine's
so I trimmed them back this week. And I'm wondering

(44:17):
if now is a good time to try something different,
maybe some meam oil. I've tried some other kind of
pesticide kind of oils and stuff from a big box store.
But I want to try something a little bit different
because because I don't get any blooms about right.

Speaker 5 (44:35):
No, it's it's a it's it's not a good thing.

Speaker 11 (44:38):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (44:38):
The the probumum problem the city. Most call it caused
primarily by something called the crape murder bark scale. And
you'll see some little white flecks in there in that
in that black city bark and branches. Uh, that is
creat murder bark scale. And those scales suck juices out
of the plants plumbing system and they excrete a city

(45:01):
sugary I mean, excuse me, a sugary water that the
soot grows on. So the soot is just an after
effect of what the insects doing the systemic insecticides will
go up in the plant, and so when they drink
from the sap of the plant, they're getting the product
that way. They're not a surface sprayed product. They're drenched

(45:22):
on the soil product that works good. The only drawback
on systemics is when they're there during the time when
blooms are on the plant. You can hurt bees that way,
and so that's why we tend to avoid those when
we can. In the spring, the bark scale, tiny baby
crawlers come out from the little mother scale have produced

(45:44):
and they crawl out all all over to create new
spots you know, where they're feeding. They honker down and
feed and have that protective covering over them. During that
crawler stage. Are very susceptible, and that's going to be
sometime in your area. That's going to be sometime in
either late March or April that we typically see the crawlers,
depending on how fast the year warms up. You can

(46:06):
use a double sided sticky tape, put it around the
branches and just check it every couple days. Just look
at it and see if you see little tiny reddish
bugs that are in There's that tells you it's time,
and at that point you can treat them with oil
sprays and any kind of insects said really is going
to be effective against them. Then when they're in the

(46:27):
scale stage, it's just hard to control them. We can
use oils, but they're just not as effective as with
other scales. So that's the challenge with those particular insects.

Speaker 11 (46:40):
Okay, I tried the double sided tape trick you had
advised me on that last year, and I never could
catch any of them, so I.

Speaker 5 (46:47):
Never could cut it. Okay, I don't know. Okay, h Well,
that's interesting. Maybe maybe a little late, I don't know,
but anyway, that's the way we monitor if we're gonna spray.
Otherwise it would be drenching the soil. As the oath
begins on the crpe myrtle, that's when to put the
drench down. You can do it a little bit later,
but that's when to put the drench down. It moves
up in the plant at that time, and then when

(47:11):
the spring scale hunker down season comes, that's that's when
you'll you'll get them by putting the poison in the
plumbing of the plant.

Speaker 11 (47:20):
Okay, okay, I appreciate it. And I held off doing
the kind of the drenching in the spring and fall
last year because I didn't want to hurt the bees
or anything else.

Speaker 8 (47:31):
Yeah, but since I'm not.

Speaker 11 (47:32):
Getting I don't think I have many visits of any
insects or birds.

Speaker 9 (47:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (47:38):
Yeah, Well, you know, oil sprays are the only other option,
and you got to stay on them. And from what
I've seen in the research, it's you know, for most scale,
we just say spraying with oil in the winter and
you're good. This one's a little different. So anyway, that's
the challenge. Hey JD, good luck with that. I'm all
run to a break, but I appreciate your call very much. Folks.

(47:59):
I'll be right back and Elizabeth and Oak Chorus will
be our first up. All right, here we go. Welcome
back to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richtor, and
we're here to help you have success. Listen, there is
nothing that makes a patio more beautiful than gorgeous potted
plants just putting all around the patty. I was talking

(48:20):
to somebody the other day about how to set up
a little drip irrigation system where there's a little sprinkler
thing in each of your plant pots, and so it
is on a timer. It comes on, it just does
all the watering for you. And when you get a
lot of containers, that's a challenge. I'll tell you. One
of the secrets to success with those containers is quality soil.
It browns up before green stuff, even in a container.

(48:43):
It's true. Nothing makes a patty more more enjoyable, and
nothing is going to help you have beautiful plants more
than a quality makes it drains well. It holds moisture,
but it drains excess moisture away. I don't care if
you're growing flowers or if you're growing vegetables. And jungle
land from nitrophoss is an example of that kind of
soil mix, that kind of potting saut that kind of

(49:04):
container mix. It's specifically blended with Canadian blond peat. It's
got four different sources of a kind of an aged,
decomposed bark. It's got micro rise of fungi in it also,
and that you know, works with the plant roots to
ensure that the plants are healthy for long lasting, beautiful,
vibrant color. Now, if you want indoor plants, if you

(49:24):
want something for them, there's a jungle land with water
saving crystals, and it's called jungle land water saving potting soil.
So these low crystals soak up with water and then
when you forget, I know you don't forget, but if
you were to forget to water, you've got a little
extra reserve there of moisture to hold your plants because
they can't yell at you and go, hey, we're dying

(49:44):
in here. But the crystals hold them over until you
get back to water in them. And you're going to
find jungle land like other Microsoft Microsoft, Oh my god,
Nitrofoss products at places like Ingenda Gardens down to Richmond,
rosenber On I forty five hiding and feed up hiding
on Stupor Airline actually north. Uh, you're gonna find it

(50:06):
a Fisher's Harder. Both the one in Pasadena, the one
in the Port, the one in Bellevue, and the one
in Baytown all places to get quality products from Nitrofoss,
not Microlife. You're not gonna get any of that for Microlife.
No excuse me from Microsoft. I can't even talk this morning.

(50:26):
Got good quality products out there, Oh my gosh, oh boy,
All right, well, let's let me quit talking. I'm gonna
put a collar up here, Elizabeth and Oak Forest, can
you help make some sense. I'm having trouble today.

Speaker 12 (50:42):
Yip, good morning, and spring is coming. I can see it.
I've seen it, all right. I've seen a red butt
blooming and a couple of you know, purple magdilia's, and.

Speaker 5 (50:54):
I've just there you go, there you you know, Robin
Williams says. He says spring. His nature's a way of saying,
let's party.

Speaker 12 (51:04):
Yes, true, all right. So here's my conundrum. I have
a piece of dirt between the sidewalk and the street.
It's on a major four lane Houston City road with
a median and a park across the street, so it's
got a lot of high visibility. My mom always has

(51:24):
the prettiest yard.

Speaker 13 (51:26):
Right now it looks horrible, and after the.

Speaker 12 (51:28):
Flood, the dirt is really poor.

Speaker 7 (51:31):
Right there.

Speaker 12 (51:31):
I can't even go the grass. It's just weaves will grow.
So here's what I'm thinking. I was thinking about tilling
it up and putting some kind of border around so
the good dirt, good stuff whatever, won't wash out, and
planning at what point crown cover h Okay, yeah, what

(51:53):
what kind of dirt would I do? Would tilling it up,
be good, mixing him sand and what else? And what
would be a good order your mind? And what's creeping time?
So it's loan, but that work here in Sell nine,
what would you recommend?

Speaker 5 (52:09):
Okay, well, tilling it's fine, Adding compost. I'd put a
couple of inches of compost on the surface and mix
it in as deeply as you can. You're gonna have
to make a number of passes over it to get
deeper and deeper, to loosen that soil, water down, kind
of settle the soil in and then do your planting.
Time is okay. It doesn't spread very far or very fast.

(52:31):
So take a lot of plants and time has its
Sometimes it looks good. Sometimes you know you'll have areas
that don't, and so you're not going to have that
evenness across there that you might be looking for. There
are other plants that do super well. If you want
something that you almost can ignore and it looks pretty good.

(52:51):
There is a groundcover called a frog fruit. Frog fruit,
Oh yeah, yeah. It has little tiny white flowers on sticks,
but it's spreads, it gets thick, and it it basically
is a weed. It's a native plant that grows in
our area, and I've I've seen it making beautiful groundcovers

(53:15):
and you're not gonna have to water it a lot,
which is nicely so I was.

Speaker 12 (53:22):
I didn't want it to look too weedy, you know, weed, okay,
but I want something in the bloom. I do not
want Asian japin. Also there's that groundcover with the little yellow,
cute flowers, but that's we once that spread, that's hard
to get rid of.

Speaker 5 (53:42):
Ye. So yeah, Wadelia is a good ground cover, but
it does have aspirations of taking over the world.

Speaker 4 (53:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (53:52):
So so the compost back to the dirt, just compost,
no sand. It's already drying up.

Speaker 5 (53:57):
I guess yeah it. Do you think your soil is
a heavy clay? Did you say out there in that
medium it is?

Speaker 12 (54:04):
It is heavy clay? Yeah, and it's hard time and
dry the boat and I about six inches?

Speaker 5 (54:12):
Go ahead, How big of an area is this? How wide?

Speaker 2 (54:16):
How long?

Speaker 13 (54:18):
I would say forty.

Speaker 8 (54:22):
Five?

Speaker 5 (54:25):
Okay, Well, I was going to suggest some I was
going to suggest some expanded shale, but you're going to
have to put it down at least a couple of
inches deep and mix it in. But that's that may
be a little pricey to do that big of an
area with shale, But shale holds up longer than organic matter.
You know, organic matter twenty years is going to decompose away.

(54:46):
The shale is a hot fired. Think of it as
little miniature lava rocks that have that porous surface in them,
and it helps hold the clay open. But only if
you use enough of it. You know, just putting a
little bit of shale in doesn't accomplish much. Putting two
or three inches in makes a lot of difference on it.
But that would get that would get costly, so you

(55:07):
may want to price that out.

Speaker 12 (55:10):
So is so compost, compost those sands and just killing
back and forth and get it in a really deep Okay,
I'll do it.

Speaker 6 (55:19):
And I.

Speaker 12 (55:22):
Thought about, well anyway, I'll let you know what happens.

Speaker 5 (55:26):
All right, good luck, picture all right. I hope you
do it. I hope you do all right, Elizabeth, Thank
you very much. I appreciate that.

Speaker 13 (55:34):
Bye bye.

Speaker 5 (55:37):
All right. Well, uh yeah, that those islands, those medians,
the strip between the sidewalk and the curbs another one.
Those are a challenge to water and can be a
challenge to plant. Uh Intenna forest is one of those
places that is just a haven for all kinds of plants,
you know, vegetables and herb transplants. That place is crawling

(55:59):
with them right now. It looks so good. They have
a good array of different kinds of apples, peaches, plums
that are low chill, that are able to survive and
produce well in an area that doesn't get a whole
lot of chilling like they do further up north. So
certain varieties, but they know which ones to bring in.
So when they say you have variety down, there's a

(56:20):
variet it's going to grow well in your area. And
when you're there, you can also pick up your citrus.
They've got some really nice satsumas. Satsumas are about as
cold hearty as citrus can get. You know, there are
there's actually kum quats that are a little heartier. But
if you want a mandarin type orange and you want

(56:40):
something hardy, you're not going to do better than a
good satsuma. They've got the soils, they've got the tools,
they've got the fertilizers and everything else you need to
have success. The way I would say is to creature,
create your own garden. Of eaton, get it eat I
n all right, I know you're rolling in the all
out there, all right, but anyway, that's true. Vegetables, herbs,

(57:03):
fruit trees, and while you're out there, check out the flowers,
check out the shrubs. Grab you one of those beautiful
flowering shrubs that they carry. They have crepe myrtle types
out there. They also have my favorite spring flowering tree,
which is Chinese fringe tree. Those are just beautiful and
they don't get too big, so they fit a lot
of local lots. You're gonna find them out on FM

(57:26):
twenty seven fifty nine if you're heading from Richmond towards
sugar Land. They're off to the right on twenty seven
to fifty nine. That's Enchanted Forest. And I would recommend
also when you're wanting to find out more about them,
that you just go out to the web or go
onto the website and check them out there. It is
easy to find. Here's the web address Enchanted Forest, Richmond

(57:51):
TX dot com. Enchanted Forest, Richmond, TX dot com. Check
out their upcoming events this spring out there, and bottom
line is just go get yourself out there and enjoy it.
Tomorrow afternoon's going to be nice, perfect day. Go ahead
and plant it tomorrow afternoon. Head out there, enchanted forest
and Richmond. I get questions all the time about lawn

(58:16):
nutrients and things, and one of the things people ask
me about is trace minerals. What does that mean? Tracem
or micro nutrients? What's the difference? There is no difference.
Trace minerals or micronutrients are the same thing. Azimite is
the product that we talk about on Gardenline. I talk
about in girdline that has the trace minerals in it.
It is mined out of the ground as a supplement

(58:40):
that is ground up and made into a form that
you can spread on your lawn, just like you spread
fertilizers other fertilizers on the lawn. This has the tiny
trace nutrients that are essential for a plant to grow,
but are needed in small amounts. That's why forty four
pound bag of azimite's going to cover six to twelve
thousand square to your lawn. Now you can go to

(59:01):
ASMIT Texas and find out more about it. But I'll
tell you this pretty much the places you hear me
talk about on garden Line, from feed stores to these
hardware stores to garden centers and so on are going
to have as amite. Now's a good time to put
it out. In fact, anytime is a good time to
put out asamite because it does work very, very very well,

(59:22):
and you don't have to tie it to a growing
season like we do with our nitrogen based fertilizers. Okay,
the ones with the three numbers on the bag, those
follow my schedule. Follow my schedule. It tells you when
to put them on. And now's the early spring green
up optional application. Once we get into April mode the

(59:43):
lawns a couple of times, that's when we're going to
be putting down starting our summer series of applications on
the lawn. As amite. Anytime of the year. You can
do it now, you know, you can do it when
you fertilize. Just don't put the same product two products
in the same hopper, you know, fertile and then as
might think of it that way because a particle size
is different, and that way you get it out nice

(01:00:05):
and evenly. Something that is important to do now now.
Now asap is barricade by nitrofoss. Barricade is a pre
emergent herbicide. You gotta get it down before the warm
season weeds start germinating, and they are going to be germinating.
We get through this coal spell and they're gonna be
popping up. Get some down. I'd get it down this weekend.

(01:00:26):
Barricade pre Emergent, a ten pound bag covers five thousand
square feet. You water it in with about a half
inch of water and then you walk away and it
takes you. You'll never see the weeds because it doesn't
let them show up. You're gonna find it at Plantation
Ace out there in Richmond Rosenberg at Langham Creek Ace
on FM five twenty nine. You're gonna find it at

(01:00:47):
RCW Nurser. You're going to find it at Lake Hardware,
both the one in Angkleton and the one include All right,
time for me to take a little bit of break
here for some news and weather. And I don't know
what all they're going to tell us here in just
a minute, but I'll be back if you'd like to
give me a callby first up seven one three two
one two kt RH. All right, folks, welcome back to

(01:01:13):
garden Line. Good to have you with us today. Really
looking forward to visiting with you. About your gardening questions.
We're going to go straight out to Houston here and
talk to Mike. Good morning Mike, and welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 13 (01:01:28):
Hey are you talking to me?

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
I'm Frank, Yes, sir, yes, sir. Welcome to guard Line.
How can we help? Oh?

Speaker 13 (01:01:35):
Good to be here.

Speaker 7 (01:01:36):
Look.

Speaker 13 (01:01:36):
I bought a couple of papaya trees last April or
May or May, about a foot and a half call
and put them in containers of ceramic containers, and you know,
not knowing much about papia trees, the pots were too small.
They're definitely root bound. They're now six feet tall with
abundance of fruit on them. They're in my garage, you

(01:01:58):
can imagine, and this cold weather. So my question is
do I have to break the pots to transplant these
in a bigger pot? On one is it is a
tear drop pot where the face is bigger than the neck.
So okay, what about killing the tree if I try
to dig it out there as a post? Yeah, so

(01:02:20):
your your suggestion is helput.

Speaker 5 (01:02:23):
Yeah, you kind of up a creek there. I have
had pots like that, and when I pulled a plan out,
I had to use like a butcher NiFe and go
straight down and cut a vertical wall cylinder out of
it so I could slide it up out of there.

Speaker 10 (01:02:37):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:02:38):
You know, if the pot's not valuable, yeah, break it.
But most of those kind of pots are pretty valuable.

Speaker 9 (01:02:43):
Uh yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:02:44):
If you leave it in there, that tree is just
going to struggle. Now, if you can really frequently water
and fertilize it to keep it from going into any
drought stress, that would you probably could get by for
a little while. But I don't know. I've never tried
to cut u papaia out of a pot like that.

(01:03:06):
That's going to take a lot of roots out of it.
It probably is going to be okay. I'm sure it'll
wilt for a while.

Speaker 4 (01:03:12):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:03:12):
You definitely want to keep it out of too much
son until it get some fresh new roots on it.
But depending on the size you said, six foot tree,
how far is it across the pot from left, you know,
left to right across the pot.

Speaker 13 (01:03:25):
I'm I'm thinking that there's two of them. Obviously one
of them is in a better situation, But the tear
drop pot is probably only about eighteen inches across. Uh,
and it's I can tell buzz of the you're just
totally bound.

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
You know, if it were me, I probably wouldn't want
to break a good pot if I really like the pot,
so I might try cutting it out, But that's going
to be hard to do because you're you're trying to like, uh,
you know, saw up and down with a knife all
the way around in a circle. But if you could
get it out of there somehow, uh, it would give
it a better longer term option, and then you can

(01:04:03):
move it too a bigger pot, and and then that
way always get you know, get a pot that has
straight sides or more of a V shape than a
capital A shaped as you have, and that way you
can always bump it out if you want. All right,
good luck.

Speaker 13 (01:04:18):
These are beautiful trees. These are beautiful trees. I just
really have enjoyed growing there. Yes, so anyway, thank you, yes, yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:04:27):
Yeah, that is a great fun fruit to grow. Appreciate
that call. Thank you a lot. Uh. You know up
in Willis, Texas, there's a place called Growers Outlet. Growers
Outlet is a garden center and they serve that whole area,
you know, Willis and Conro if you're looking at you know,
down even down to the woodlands or out toward towards
some of the lake neighborhoods like bent Water and April
Sound Point Aquarius. UH Growers Outlet and Willis carries fertilizers

(01:04:51):
that you hear me talk about like microlife, like nitrofoss
like medina for example. UH and they have an excellent
stock of all kinds of plants from veggies and bedding
plants to perennials and ferns, nice shrubbery, lots of shrubbery,
lots of trees as well. They even have big baskets,
giant fern baskets that are just outstanding. Now. You can

(01:05:15):
go to their website Growers Outlet in Willis. Don't forget
the word in Growers Outlet in Willis dot com. They're
on Highway seventy one in Willis, just a few months
away from Interstate forty five, and you can go to
the website and you can see plants and you can
see what they have in stock. They update every Wednesday evening.
They update their veggie list online, so there's no guessing.

(01:05:37):
Go check them out, but do go buy there. They
have a great gift shop, locally sourced honey and pickled
food and jellies and jams and bath and beauty products.
It's kind of a cool place when you walk around
in there. Check out that greenhouse where they do grow
a lot of their own stuff in there, and it
is really nice. This is a special place Growers Outlet
in Willis for all of you up in that area.

(01:05:59):
This is really convenient Growers Outlet Willis dot Com. We're
going to go to Port Arthur now and talk to Allen. Hey, Allen,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 13 (01:06:10):
Good morning.

Speaker 11 (01:06:11):
My question is I'm trying to decide whether I want
to go in and fermize real quickly for the rains
come or should Okay, that was kind of cold outside,
or it would be more beneficial that wait to next
week with it warms up and water in myself.

Speaker 14 (01:06:26):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:06:27):
What I see in the in the weather, and you
better check it. Don't trust me on the weather, but
what I'm seeing is just kind of a little misty,
not a whole lot of rain, and that would be
great for something where you fertilized to move it down
in the soil if we get a gully washer. The
fertilizers you're using now are the fast release like nitrofoss Imperial,

(01:06:48):
the red bag uh. And if you get a you know,
two inches of rain, you're going to wash a lot
of that away. And so you'd rather not do that,
And I would wait and let my irrigation, which I'm
in control of, do it. But from what I'm seeing
in the weather, looks like maybe you could go ahead
and get it down and let that dissolve it into
the soil because it's going to start warming up a
little next week and the grass will begin taking it

(01:07:09):
up and getting greener as a result. Okay, very good.
Then I'm going to get out there right now.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
All right.

Speaker 5 (01:07:17):
That's it. Take care that fun, you bet Allen, that
is the case for sure. Listen, fix my slab foundation repair.
You hear me talk about him all the time. You
hear me talk about Tie Strickland all time. Ties in
native Ustonian, fifth generation Texan. He lives here in Houston.
He has lived here in Houston. He knows exactly our

(01:07:40):
soils and how to handle them in what they do.
And here's the deal. Our soils that are clay, especially,
they shrink and they swell, they get wet, they get bigger,
they get dry, they shrink up, and that's why you
see cracks in the ground, by the way in a
clay soil, because it shrinks up. Well, if it's a
sidewalk or driveway, it creates a mass. If it's a
foundation of your home, it can crack the whole foundation.

(01:08:02):
And you notice it because you walk around the house
and you see bricks that have cracks in them. Especially
look underneath the windows. That's one of the main places
you see this. Like the corners of the windows going
down toward the foundation, you see cracks there. Not the
only place, but that's one of the places. Go inside
you see sheet rock cracks, or maybe a door that
wasn't sticking before starts to stick after some rain and

(01:08:25):
the ground swells up, or after a dry spell and
the ground shrinks up. That door is sticking and it
used to not all signs you may have some movement.
You need to have it looked at. Tye will do it. Listen.
I recommend him without question, because he does it right.
He shows up when he says he's going to show up.
He gives you a fair price, and he fixes it right.

(01:08:46):
And if it doesn't need to be done, he'll tell you.
He goes, no, this is movement, but this isn't too
much movement. You're okay, let's just keep an eye on it.
He'll shoot straight with you on that. Tell him you're
a guarden Line listener. Get a free estimate fix my
dot com fixmislab dot com two eight one two fi
five forty nine forty nine two eight one two five

(01:09:08):
five forty nine forty nine. You are listening to garden
Line and I am your host, Skiprechtor, who at this
moment are slightly distracted by something going on in the room.
Seven one three two one two k t r h
seven one three two one two k t r h uh.

(01:09:30):
Microlife Fertilizer has It's been around for over thirty five
years and it is a favorite of landscape professionals and gardeners.
It is the number one selling organic fertilizer here in
the Houston area the Greater Houston area actually sold in
a wide wide range of areas. Microlife works. It is
a product that is a quality made product that releases

(01:09:53):
through microbial activity in the soil. Most Microlife products are
chock full of their own microbes as well, but that
activity you get those products moist and the microbes go
to work and they release the nutrients at a gradual
pace for your plants the way nature does. That's how
nature does.

Speaker 14 (01:10:12):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:10:12):
Nature takes organic matter, it decomposes it, and it enlists
the microbes to release the nutrients. That's it. So whether
it's their Biomatrix, which is a liquid with an orange label,
it's a seven to one three fertilizer. By the way,
that that higher nitrogen number means it's great for your
leafy houseplants, leafy grains outside. I mean, it's just good

(01:10:36):
fertilizer period. Or if it's a dry granular fertilizer, it's
going to do the same kinds of things and you're
going to have success with it. With Microlife products now,
Microlifefertilizer dot Com is a website. You can go there
find out where to get it. But I can tell
you this, it's about as widely available as any fertilizer
you're gonna find here in the greater use scenario. I've
been using it myself for over eight years now, and

(01:10:58):
I find I've tried a lot of different ones. I'm
working my way through their long list, extensive list of
quality products, and every time I try one, I find
that it does very, very well. Right now would be
a good time to put out their humates. Plus, also,
that's a purple bag and that has think of it
this way, concentrated compost in a bag. That's what he

(01:11:19):
makes amounts to you put that out. I would do
it on an annual basis. Get it out there, get
it and you put it on more than once a
year if you want. But as it works its way
into the soil, it's going to get better and better
and better. Time for me to take a quick break
when I come back. Kyle and Austin, you're gonna be
our first up. He remembers that. All right, folks, welcome

(01:11:44):
back to guarden Line. So glad you're with us today.
We've got a lot of things to talk about and
we're going to go right to the phone. Chare in
just a second. I did want to mention to you
that if you don't have a tree hugger sprinkler, you
need to get one. Put in the garage, have it
on hand because you're gonna need it. Treehagger sprinklers are cool.
They have a little hinge and think of it as

(01:12:06):
a circle that wraps around the tree trunk because it
has a little hinge on it and it sprinkles as
big of an area as you want. If you turn
it on a little bit, it would be good for
putting out I say tree, It would be good for
putting on a rose bush. Maybe you plant it a
rose bush this spring and you want to give it
a little bit of water right there where the root
ball is around the base. You just turn it on

(01:12:27):
a little bit. That treeharker comes in a seven inch
size diameter, an eleven inch and a fifteen inch size.
And if you really crank it up. I mean, you
may have a tree that's fifteen years old and we
get into a summer drought one hundred degrees for one
hundred days with no rain. That kind of thing. You
crank that thing up and rescue your tree. And not
only do you keep a plant from dying, but you

(01:12:48):
help it to thrive so it gets bigger faster. In
the case of a rose, you get nice, healthy rose bush,
lots of blooms. In the case of a tree, you
can hang a hammock in it sooner. You know what
I'm saying. That's what I mean Tree huggersprinklers dot com.
That's where you find a retailer near you or I
can just save you some time. You're going to find
him at the arbor Gate. You're gonna find him at
Nelson Water Gardens at RCW and Warren's Garden Center and

(01:13:10):
Kingwood Garden Center out there in Kingwood, down in Richmond,
Rosenberg and Chany Gardens and Channey Forests, D and D
Feed and Supply in Tomball Spring Creek feed Center, League
City feed down in League City, Southwest Fertilizer, and lots
of Ace hardware stores like Single Ranch and Katie Ace
and K and m Ace Hardware out in a Tascasita
and fullsher Ace Hardware as well. All some of the

(01:13:32):
many places where you can find tree hugger sprinklers. You
need one, hang it in the garage. You're gonna want
to pull it out for shrubs for trees, especially as
we start getting into hotter weather and you're wanting to
make sure that the water gets put in the right spot.
We're gonna go now to Austin and talk to Kyle. Hello, Kyle,
welcome to Garden Line.

Speaker 13 (01:13:53):
Hy there.

Speaker 5 (01:13:54):
Good talking to you this morning.

Speaker 11 (01:13:55):
How are you?

Speaker 5 (01:13:57):
I'm well, sir, Thank you? How can we help?

Speaker 4 (01:13:59):
Yes, yes, I think a few months ago. You thought
I said I was from Boston. So this is my
second time to call in. Not sure if you remember
that conversation.

Speaker 5 (01:14:09):
We I do, and that I can tell from your axent.
I can tell from your accent you're not from Boston,
so sorry for that.

Speaker 4 (01:14:17):
I'm actually born in Austin, lived in Houston a long
time and became an AM seven forty junkie. And uh,
just it's back being back ten years, I still catch
you on iHeart. I have reclaimed we claimed a lot
of overgrown property here that for the previous about thirty

(01:14:37):
years owner hadn't managed cutting back brush on trails and
a pond and chicken run and a garden. I cut
the brush out of the garden or early last fall,
I'm sorry, early last spring.

Speaker 2 (01:14:51):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:14:51):
And and what I mean brush, I mean saplings.

Speaker 4 (01:14:54):
And you know half inch one inch brush that grows
eight ten feet tall when you let it go for
thirty years. So I had to use laffers down at
dirt level and clear this all out. It's got a
great irrigation that was set up PBC that rains in
from six feet above the ground, and it's really set

(01:15:14):
up to be a nice garden. It has in the
past year grown a lot of weeds, and we had,
you know, a pretty cold winter here, some spets, and
we've had some drought. So a lot of the weeds
that are there are just really desiccated dead. There's not
a lot of green. I've followed your advice and gotten
a bag of pre emergent that I'm going to put

(01:15:34):
down after this rain passes today, and I'm curious what
your thoughts are on best ways to manage this garden
that hasn't been a garden, it's been an overgrown brush patch.

Speaker 5 (01:15:46):
It's about fifteen hundred square feet.

Speaker 4 (01:15:50):
When I cleared the brush out, I did till it,
which made for some good weed growth. My plan is
to just use a tool that I found in the here.
It's I don't know what it's called, but you swing
it back and forth at ground level it.

Speaker 15 (01:16:04):
Cuts yeah, and take all the yoyo called the yo
yo okay, bringing back and forth and cutting h I
plan on finishing with a dirt rake and putting down
my pre emergent.

Speaker 4 (01:16:17):
I think what I do is about six months from
now do that again. But I want your advice on
how long it's going to be for us. Before we
can actually use this as a garden. All right, I
don't watch all these weeks.

Speaker 5 (01:16:31):
It's first of yeah, first to quick comment on the
pre emergent. If you're gonna plant seed in the next
sixty days or ninety days, I wouldn't put the pre
emergent down in your vegetable or flower areas if you're
gonna plant seed, uh, and so just know that it's
going to last for a couple of months, and and
and you don't want to do that. If you do,

(01:16:52):
you just put it in, put it down and water
it in. If you're going to use it, I would
get any way. You can get mulch out there, and
you know, grass clippings, leaves from people's yards, spend Hey,
whatever kinds of mult you can get out over the
garden would help prevent most of your weed problems if
the brush starts to come back. There's a publication on

(01:17:12):
my website and it's called Herbicides to use with Skips
weed wiper, And basically what it amounts to. One of
the items on there is for brushy weeds, and it
tells you the product to get and all you do
is you cut the weed off, the brush off and
you dab that product directly on the fresh cut and
it moves down in the plant and kills it. That's

(01:17:34):
the best way. You don't need to spray and get
that spray all over the place where you're going to
hurt something. Just dab the fresh cut. But it's all
on my website, so I'll just refer you to that.
As far as the rest, again, multi is part of
your best bet.

Speaker 4 (01:17:48):
We're thinking a little bit of a different direction, and
our timeline is to retire and live here forever. So
we're thinking a year before we're even ready to start
using as a garden, so a six months later application
of pre emergent so that we cover both season weeds.
We're even thinking of rising beds that we bring some

(01:18:08):
dirt in malts is not a problem. Is I've cleared
brush out of the trail and pond. I've got mult
and sleeve and dirt dirt raked up well with maybe
some small twigs.

Speaker 5 (01:18:20):
All right, Well, Kyle, here's what I would do. And
I got to run here, but I would take any
kind of freemont you can get, including ground up brush
or whatever you have, and I would moult that area deep.
I mean a foot deep even and just cover it.
And what's gonna happen is it's gonna start rotting down
at the soil level, and by the time you're there
and ready to put a garden in, you're gonna have

(01:18:41):
a lot of rich material that's decomposed away. And in
the meantime, it's gonna keep those weeds down where the
number of weeds you're having a sprayer are much much less.
But whatever kind of free organic matter you can get
and get out there on the ground in a thick
layer of mulch, that is going to be your friend.
And in a long time you're gonna have a much
better soil when you get ready to garden. I'm sorry

(01:19:03):
I have to have to run, but I do against
the clock here. Good luck with that. Thank you for
the call. Call back anytime. Out in Kingwood. You got
two garden centers. You got Warren Southern Gardens and you
got Kingwood Garden Center. And they're both awesome. Warren's is
on North Park, Kingwood's on Stone Hollow. They're both open
seven days a week. They are the place to go

(01:19:24):
to get beauty for your landscape. They're the place to
go to get cool Statuary, to get gorgeous pottery, to
get advice on how to put together your own mixed planter.
You know what you want of those planters have several
different kinds of flowers and plants in it, and it's
just billowing up and spilling out and looks good. These
places know what they're talking about. They're gonna carry the
fertilizers that I talk about on Guardline, like Nitropossen and

(01:19:47):
Nelson's in Microlife, and they're gonna have things like heirloom
soils for example. They just have a wide variety of
things and they sold serve that whole Northeast squadrant up
there and that part of town. You got to go
buy and check them out though, and go online and
check them out there as well again. Warren Southern Gardens
on North Park, Kingwood Garden Center on Stone Hollow. Those

(01:20:10):
places are busting with the seams a good great plants
right now, and you need to go see them all right,
doing me for a little curve there. Hey, I'm gonna
be today out at All Seasons, Ace Hardware and Willis

(01:20:33):
All Seasons, Acehardware and Willis just go to aceharbare dot
com buy in the store locator. If you don't know
where All Seasons is, it'll take you right to it.
Make it easy to find it. I'm gonna be giving
away Nelson plant food products and Medina products as well.
I got a lot of them on hand to give away,
So if you show up, there's a good chance you're
gonna get one. We're gonna have some Texas Gardener magazines.

(01:20:56):
You got to see that if you haven't seen it before.
Bring me samples, bring me pictures, let's meet, let's talk.
Let's solve your gardening problems face to face on their air.
I don't have a lot of time, but it face
to face. We can talk on bay.

Speaker 1 (01:21:10):
Welcome to kt r H Garden Line with Scared Rict.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):
It's just watch him as alright.

Speaker 5 (01:21:31):
I've got a that's a public public service announcement, public
help request. I don't know what it is. I've been contemplating.
It's been a long time, but I've been contemplating possibly
trying some different bumper music. I know this has been
a tradition for a long time to use this song,
and I get mixed reports from different people on the

(01:21:53):
like it, don't care, want something new, whatever? What would
you suggest for Bumper music for garden Line, just kind
of curious. Can you can call and tell my producer
email me the suggestions that you have. And I'm not
in a hurry to do anything right now, but I'm
just kind of curious what do the listeners think about that.
We'll see, Well, you are listening to garden Line. I'm

(01:22:14):
your hope host, Skip Richter, and we're here to help
you have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape, and definitely
more fun in the process. Now, if you live up
in the northwest quadrant of Houston, and by that I
mean Interstate forty five is your north south line, ien
is your East west line? Okay, that northwest quadrant, that
whole area. Green Pro they are your experts for that

(01:22:37):
region in providing top quality compost top dressing and core aeration.
They only use top quality products and they know how
to do the job right. They've got some really special
equipment that does an excellent job pulling cores of soil
out of the ground and dropping them on the surface,
which is exactly the way you want to go about

(01:22:57):
doing it. That compost top dressing they put on top
feeds the soil biology and with the combination of air
rating creating holes in the ground along with the compost
top dressing. You're going to get better infiltration of water.
You're going to get better oxygen in the root system,
and your lawn whether it's been struggling from drought or
brown patch or takeoff patch or chinch bugs or whatever

(01:23:19):
you're dealing with. Certainly compaction is just going to recover
much much faster. If you've got a thatch layer, it
is going to decompose away faster than any other thing
we can do. That is compost top dressing. Corrooration is
the fastest way to get rid of thatched too. You're
going to get better rooting depth and your lawn's going
to be more resilient. So when hot weather comes it's

(01:23:40):
a little on the dry side, you're going to save
some money on those watering bills because you have a
more robust root system that doesn't have to be watered
every other day trying to keep the thing alive. Now,
about forty five miles from Magnolia is their service area,
So Spring Cyprus, Woodlands, Conroe, Willis, Magnolia, Montgomery, Katie, you know,
all the way down it ten I Interstate forty five.
That's a good way to do it. Greenprotexas dot com,

(01:24:04):
Greenprotexts dot Com eight three to two three five to
one zero zero three two. I'll give you that again
eight three two three five to one zero zero three two.
That stuff works. Now, if you've got weeds in your
lawn right now, that in other words, you see the

(01:24:25):
weeds now, that is a cool season weed. The warm
season weeds. They are little tiny seeds trying to germinate
and get going here this time of the year. Time
to stop them before they do. But if you've got
weeds growing now, turf Star Weedinator buy Nelson is a
product that works, and it works in many ways. Listen
to this kind of cool. First of all, it's got

(01:24:46):
a product in it to kill the weeds. I'm talking
about chickweed, clover, dandelion, dollarweed, grasper, purslane, ragweedspurds, whatever the
weeds are, it will kill them. You want to water
your lawn just enough to wet the weeds. You're not
trying to wet the soil. You just wet in the surface,
and immediately you take your weedinator, which is a combination
of fertilizer and a weed control, a post emergent broad

(01:25:08):
leaf weed control. You're taking it out there and you're
applying it, and those granules stick to the wet weed
surfaces and they soak in. After a couple of days,
good and watered in. Move it down in the soil.
That's fine. Get that nutrient down in there. It's going
to work. And for about the first six weeks you're
going to get a quick release a fertilizer to start

(01:25:29):
some growth. Get it going. As the soil warms up,
a different kind of nitrogen in that product gets released,
and in a late spring, a third kind of product
is going to be released. So you're looking like months
of feeding from this one application, and all the winter
weeds that are about to go to seed, you shut
them down now. Once they're blooming and setting seed, they're

(01:25:51):
hard to kill. Don't delay. Do the weed inator right now.
You can find it a lot of different places around town.
But timing is everything, so don't delay. Get that done.
Let's run out to West Houston and we're going to
talk now to Mike. Hey, Mike, welcome to garden Mine.

Speaker 7 (01:26:09):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 16 (01:26:10):
I really had a quick question for you. A lot
of plants last week for color in my yard, and
then realized that we were going to have a freeze.
But you know, that would probably kill them all before
they even started going. But I wanted a lot of color.

Speaker 13 (01:26:26):
And so I suck them in my kitchen and my
garage until after the freeze.

Speaker 16 (01:26:31):
Now I pulled them back out. Should I go ahead
and plant them now? Or should I wait a little
bit longer?

Speaker 5 (01:26:39):
You know, as I look forward about ten days out,
I don't see any bad weather. But we technically would
not be through all the possible freezes on an average
of all the years. She said. What I'm saying, the
average frost ate is what I should just put it
that way. Is not quite past us yet, but we're

(01:27:00):
on it. So you may put them out and be
just fine. You may put them out and have a
late cold in which you need to throw some sort
of a light sheet or fabric or something over them,
you know, just to protect them. Chances of us having
just one of those in the teen's cold has diminished
quite a bit. But I don't have a crystal ball,

(01:27:20):
so we have to go by the averages. And if
you want to be a little cautious, if you got
a lot of dollars, you know, in all those plants,
just hang onto a move mountain the sun, leave them
out on the ground, make sure they get watered every day,
and just give it a little bit more time. Head
your bed a little bit if you want to go
about it that way. That's perfectly okay, Thank you so much.

(01:27:42):
I appreciate it all right, Mike, you take care, appreciate,
appreciate your call. You know that that is funny that
he said that I was looking at Orgey, you know
Jorges Hidden gardens down in the Alvin area. It's just
south of Highway six on Elizabeth Street. That's out there. Well.
Horay posted to social media he had a living room

(01:28:04):
full of plants and his wife's wanting to know one
of these plants getting out of my living room because
you know, we've had cold and Horay's got so many
shipments in it is incredible. You see the place right now,
I mean he really does. He's got all kinds of
fruit trees if you're looking for apples and peaches, if
you're looking for pears and plums. And I know he
has blueberries, I know he has citrus trees. I know

(01:28:25):
he has blackberries out there. He just has everything, shrubs
and trees, plenty of things. Horace Hidden Gardens. They are
a great place. And please get Orge out of the
doghouse by helping get those plants out of the living room.
Go pick some of them up and take them home
with you. Horace Hidden Gardens. Got some good Peggy Martin

(01:28:47):
roses out there again. They're on Elizabeth Street and Alvin,
just south the highway six raz Hidden Gardens for all
of you down in the Alvin, Santa Fe, Dickinson Hillcrest,
Algoa Alta Loma, that whole region down there, Hidden Gardens.
Time for me to take a break. We'll be back already.

(01:29:11):
Welcome back to garden Line. You'd like to give me
a call talk gardening seven one three two one two
k t r H seven one three two on two
k t r A A. It's gonna be raining today,
a little bit misty, not messy rain, just eh, misty,
messy rain, that kind of stuff. All right, what are
you gonna do this afternoon? I have an idea. Grab
you some lunch and then come on out, Come on

(01:29:34):
up to Willis, come see me if you're up in
that area. Lake Conroe, Uh Conroe itself, Willis New Waverley,
that whole region up there. Come on and see me.
I'm gonna be at All Seasons, Ace Hardware and Willis,
and guess what will be indoors. It will be warm,
it will be dry, and we're gonna be having a
good time. I'm gonna be giving away Nelson plant Food
Products and Medina Plant Food Products. Have some Texas Gardener

(01:29:57):
magazines on hand for those of you who have not
subscribe to that yet. You need to, by the way,
and I'll be there answering your gardening questions. Take some
pictures of the landscape, bring them to me, Bring some
samples in if you want me to identify. And maybe
you got a weed and it's like, what's this weed?
And how do I kill it? Or can I eat it?
I'll answer those questions however you want to, however you
want to ask it. Come on out again. It is

(01:30:19):
All Seasons, Ace Hardware and Willis. And like any Ace
Hardware store, you just go to Acehardware dot Com find
the store locator and you can find all the stores
in the Greater Houston area. Just pict your zip code
in there or whatever, tell them where you live, or
just look at the whole map for Houston. There's a
lot of good ones that you can go to. But
today all season Ace and willis from twelve noon to

(01:30:42):
two pm. Looking forward to seeing you out there. Hope
you can make it. We have a new sponsor here
on Guardline called Pest Brothers. Pest Brothers is a regional
pest control company and this is some cool stuff. I
want you to listen to this. They serve the greater
Houston area and I'm talking from Texas City all the
way up inter say forty five of the woodlands we're

(01:31:02):
talking about from Baytown over on the east, all the
way across to the Kadi area. I mean, this is
the greater Houston area. And I say past control that
that includes like termites and all the other indoor pasts
that you're dealing with, and indeed, go outside, it's the
fire ants, the mosquitos. They they handle all of that.
I'm gonna come back to that mosquitos because don't go away.

(01:31:24):
This is cool. And the wall of armit's running around
the property. Those four legged creatures. I'm not talking about
your kids. I'm talking about the wall farm that's with
four legs, mice and rats, and others. They can do
animal trapping if needed to get them out of there.
They know how to treat effectively. They know how to
do it in the safest manner, so you get a

(01:31:44):
long term control without the worries of oh, what are
they doing is a safe and whatever? Just call them
for a quote two eight one two oh six forty
six seventy two eight one two o six forty six
seventy or go to the website the pest brosbros dot
com vpestbros dot com. Now check out this mosquita thing.

(01:32:07):
They have a mosquito control system that is state of
the art, and it's not like they're going blasting mosquitos
all over the place. They use these little bucket type
bait stations that are put out. It's the industry's green
standard for safe effective mosquito control. So these bait stations,
they put out an odor that attracts mosquitos to them.
The mosquitos go in and they land on this little

(01:32:30):
screen that has a fine powder. And if you want
to get really nerdy, mosquitos when they fly around get
positively charged, and this is a negatively charged particles and
so it just like sticks to them like a magnet,
and they lay eggs, and the eggs land in that water,
and the pupa never make it. The larvae and pupa
never develop because there's two types of control in these granules.

(01:32:54):
There are these tiny particles. One of them kills the
larvae and the and the pupa if they try to
reach that stage in the water. In there, so, I
mean here, all these mosquitoes are being drawn in there.
They're laying the eggs. Eggs never hatch. The adults carry
that stuff, and if they land in water, they're also
gonna be controlling the larva that land in that water.

(01:33:15):
And then here's the cooler part. The second ingredient is
a fungus that invades the body of the mosquito and
it kills it. The Ising'm gonna kill your bees. It's
not gonna kill all the good animals out there, good creatures,
insects out there. It is strict to mosquitoes. Just like
bt just attack caterpillars. This attacks these mosquitos and their
body gets infested with a fungus and the adults in

(01:33:37):
a period of time they die. Now Is that amazing?
Is that fascinating? Is that an ingenious way to control
mosquitos in a safe manner, something safe to pets, the
people in the environment. Call Pestbros. Two eight one, two
oh six forty six seventy and say I want to
hear more about this mosquito control system because summer's coming,
and if you live in Houston, I have a I

(01:33:59):
don't even need a crystal ball. You're gonna have mosquitoes,
That's all I'm saying. All Right, we're gonna run out
here on the phones to a task asita and talk
to John. Hey, John, welcome to garden line.

Speaker 7 (01:34:12):
How you do it?

Speaker 5 (01:34:13):
You I'm doing okay?

Speaker 10 (01:34:16):
What good?

Speaker 7 (01:34:18):
I just uh, we wanted us to call to see
about having a root to move from my oak trees,
the ogating a large in the ground. When the would
be a good time to have those removed.

Speaker 5 (01:34:34):
Yeah, you can. If you've got to establish tree, you
want to be real careful and not stress it too much,
not make it. You know structurally on sound where you
take to many roots off one side and it blows over. Uh,
but removing one root a year is usually okay. The
alternative to that, when your roots are sticking up above
the ground would be to bring in some fill around

(01:34:56):
them about it. You know, you can do about an
inch at a time or two inches maybe, and you
can gradually sort of raise that level up and whatever
is growing over it and you don't trip on the
roots that way. So that would be an alternative to
cutting a root off, but I would prefer to do
the phill approach. But you can remove let's say a

(01:35:16):
root a year and.

Speaker 7 (01:35:17):
You'll be all right, okay, all right, thank.

Speaker 5 (01:35:23):
You, yeah, you bet, good luck with that. Take care.
That is the case. Absolutely. Hey. I mentioned earlier some
nitrofoss products and how available they are. Well, Nitrofoss Imperial
fifteen five ten been around for oh just decades. It
is absolutely the go to on the quick release product

(01:35:48):
for early green up. If you this is an optional
on my schedule, but if you want to see your
long get green early on and now the cool weather
like this is not going to it's not going to
grow yet until it warms up, but it will green up,
and that's why we call it the early greenup. And
Nitrofoss Imperial is a quick release fertilizer gets us nutrients
right down there into the soil for that grass to
take up into Greenup and it is people have been

(01:36:11):
doing this for a very long time. Randy had heron
on his schedules as a matter of fact as well.
UH Nitrofoss Imperial fifteen five ten. And where do you
get Nitroposs Imperial fifteen five to ten? Well, anywhere? UH
Plantation Ace Hardware at Richmond Rosenberg. You're going to find
it at Langham Creek Ace Hardware in the Cypress area
on the five twenty nine RCW Nursery Lake Hardware done

(01:36:35):
in Angleton Lake Hardware done in Clute too, by the way,
is a place that carries our Nitrofoss products. You are
listening to garden Line the phone number seven one three
two one two k t r H seven one three
two one two kt r h H swinging by Arburgate
the other day. I'm just I am just so impressed

(01:36:57):
with the amount of stuff that they have gotten in it.
I mean the truckloads of all kinds of things. And
if you've been to Arburgate, you know it's always that way.
Arbrogate is one of those destination garden centers. You know,
you have family that comes in from out of town,
you got to take them to Arbrogate. They've never seen
anything like it. I mean, it is, it is just outstanding.

(01:37:18):
Now Arbigate is going to be closing today at five pm.
At five pm, just be aware of that. It's kind
of cold out there. I'm kind of messy, and you know,
people don't get enthusiastic about shopping on a day like this.
But let me tell you this, Tomorrow afternoon is going
to be awesome weather and Arburgate has got everything you need.
Do you want to grow potatoes, They've got the potatoes.

(01:37:39):
They even have a container that you can grow potatoes in.
I mean, come up with your own if you want,
plant them in the ground if you want, but go
by there. Now's the time to get it done. Do
you want beautiful color? How about some gorgeous echination? Echination
is also called cone flower. You know, the native types
are white and purple, but now there's so many colors

(01:38:00):
and butterflies love them. They make good cut flowers. I mean,
it's it's just typical of Arburgate to find everything that
you might need to have success with your garden, from
houseplants to fruit trees which they carry year round, to
the quality products for the soil. Their one two three
easy system, completely easy. It's a fertilizer for anything with

(01:38:20):
roots and organic fertilizer. As a matter of fact, it
is a compost or a soil based product. First of all,
a soil based product for putting in your ground to
create your beds, and then a compost to also mix
into the soil to improve the soil. And both the
soil and the compost have expanded shale added, which in
our clay soils is essential. Remember what I say on

(01:38:41):
garden Line, brown stuff before green stuff. When you go
home from Arbrogate, go home with those three bags or
more and your plants so that you can create the
foundation to make your plants happy. Arburgate is west of
Tombal on twenty nine to twenty easy to get to.
Make sure to take Trischel Road which swings around behind
Arburgate like a little loop. Off twenty nine to twenty.

(01:39:03):
Park in the back. Awesome all weather lot right there
behind Arburgate. We're gonna speaking of Tom Ball. We're gonna
head out now to tom Ball and talk to John.
Hey John, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 9 (01:39:15):
Good morning, Skip. Hope you're doing well. I had a
quick question like probably five thousand questions today about fertilizer.
I was just at Ace Hardware just now and I
was gonna buy the not your Falsehood triumeac, and they
said it's not good for bermuda to kill the bermuda.

(01:39:36):
They use a not your False wheeding feet instead.

Speaker 5 (01:39:42):
I think I think you were getting two products mixed,
or someone was. A nitrofiss has two products. One contains atrazine,
which you don't want to use in bermuda. The other
contains trimec, which is a broad leaf weed killer. H
The atrozine is a pre emergent. It prevents the weeds,
but the trimac kills existing weeds and it does not.

(01:40:05):
Trimac does not hurt bermuda grass. So the fifteen five
ten nitroposs with trimac will not hurt your bermuda grass.
Let me don't don't use the scene.

Speaker 9 (01:40:17):
What color is that the light blue bag?

Speaker 5 (01:40:23):
Oh my gosh, hang on just a second. Let me
let me pull one of those up here in front
of me. Uh, we're doing shopping on the air, folks.
This is good, all right, we'll do we'll do this.
Hang on just a second. I'm trying to find it.
It may take me a second to pull my sheet
up on.

Speaker 9 (01:40:44):
Yeah, it's a it's like a.

Speaker 5 (01:40:48):
Do you have any Jeopardy music, Jonathan that we could
play while I'm.

Speaker 9 (01:40:53):
Well, Hey, I love your show, Skip. I'm outside in
the coal with my crock oping just for you, so
making sure.

Speaker 5 (01:41:01):
Oh my gosh, is that a sacrificer? No, you know
what I'm not. I'm not gonna take airtime to hunt
down pictures of bags and stuff. But I it's a
it's a blue or teal, I think, but I don't
want to tell you for sure until I actually look
at it. But anyway, here's the bottom line. You can use,

(01:41:21):
you can use. You can use Trimac nitrofoss with Trimac
fifteen five timetriment. You can use that on Bermuda grass.
So let's just leave it at that. And I'm gonna
have to unfortunate, I'm gonna have to run here. But
don't worry about using that one. Don't use don't use
the actressne all right, all right, John, thank you? Yeah, yes, sir,
appreciate that. Yeah. Ace Hardware stores are all over town

(01:41:46):
with Ace Hardware. Everything you hear me talk about on Guardline.
You're gonna find it Ace Hardware. ACE Hardware stores right now.
This month. I have twenty percent off mon faucets this month.
They have buy three air filters, get one free this month.
Take advantage of that. The President's sale on all kinds
of paint and supplies has been going on at ACE
Hardware now. No matter what you need, you need to

(01:42:10):
first make sure you sign up for the ACEH Rewards
Program because you get discounts and you get special offers
only for ACE Rewards customers that are part of the
ACEH Rewards Program. If they email them directly to you.
I belong myself. It works. Ace Hardware dot Com. Find
the store locator, find the stores near you. They are
all over this listening area. ACE Hardware the place for

(01:42:33):
everything you need outside in your lawn and garden and landscape,
but also a lot of things for indoors. Time for
me to take a little quick break here. Don't forget today.
I'm going to be up at ACE Hardware in Willis
all seasons Ace from twelve noon to two pm. It
will be dry inside, it will be warm inside. Come

(01:42:57):
see me, let's talk gardening. I'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
Ride girl.

Speaker 5 (01:43:01):
Guys, you need to listen to these lyrics, memorize them,
let them come out of your mouth. Now that's my
public service announcement. You can thank me later.

Speaker 2 (01:43:12):
And every time I'm of moms around.

Speaker 3 (01:43:15):
You, I feel like the frame it gets the whole
the lias.

Speaker 5 (01:43:28):
There you go. Thank you Brad Paisley for that advice.
All right, folks, we're on you are listening to garden Line.
We're on a role here.

Speaker 10 (01:43:37):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:43:38):
Sweet Green is a nit frost product that is based
on a molasses type substance that microbes get a hold
of and basically they turn it into a high nitrogen
fertilizer for an organic product, very high nitrogen. It's eleven
zero zero eleven percent nitrogen. Now being a molasses sugary
type product, you get it wet. It is all. It

(01:44:00):
goes into the soil and it becomes available to those
plants as microbes interact with those substances that are in
sweet Green. It smells wonderful. You can find sweet green
everywhere you find your nitrofoss products. You know places for
example like Court Hardware down in Stafford, Katie Hardware, Ace
out on Pinoak plants for all seasons. Luetta the Stanton

(01:44:23):
shopping center down in Alvin, just some of the many
places that carry Sweet Green by Nitrofoss. It's absolutely wonderful.
I love the fragrance of it. I mean, it's weird
to sit here and talk and go on and on
about a fragrance of a fertilizer. But it really is good.
It really is nice. They've really done their homework, and
organic sweet Green, that plant food is a great, great

(01:44:45):
way to go now. I was talking earlier to somebody.
We were discussing the nitrofos, the one the wheat and
feed that has trimec and the wheaton feed that has
atrozine in it, And the two bag colors are so
close in my mind's eye, I couldn't picture the difference.
And I want to be real clear about this. The
blue bag, the bright blue bag, that is the one

(01:45:07):
that has trimec. The purple bag has atrozine. The call
was about Bermuda grass, Slawns. You don't use atrozine on bermuda,
but you can use trimech on bermuda. You can use
trimec on Saint Augustine, Bermuda, centipede, Bhea's zoisia, a lot
of things. But when it comes to the atrosine product.

(01:45:30):
You don't hear me talk about that much. But no, no, no,
on bermuda with that product only. But the trimeac product
kills broad leaf weeds. Aderzine prevent weeds from germinating or
kill very young seedlings too, But the trimec that is
the one for broad leaf post emergent. The blue bag,
So no matter what kind of long you have, the

(01:45:51):
blue bag will work as a post emergent. I hope
that's not too confusing. But you know, when we start
talking about products, and any product can be made used
any you know, any matter of the product, you got
to be careful and you've got to follow the label
and watch it because it matters. It matters, just like
thinking medicine for your body. Maybe medicine that's making you healthier,

(01:46:12):
but if you mistake it or if you take the
wrong ones, I mean, that's a problem. And so don't
just be indiscriminate, and please don't do the thing we
guys often do where if a teaspoons good, a tablespoons better,
you know it's a swatting a mosquito. I'm going to
get a sixteen pound sedge hammer and kill it really did. Nah,

(01:46:33):
don't take that approach. That will come back to bite you.
For those of you down in the Seabrook area, down
south and east of the Houston area, Moss Nursery is
your hometown garden center. Of course, you've lived down there,
you probabarily know about Mosh, probably been there to Moss.
They in the spring. I mean that place is like

(01:46:56):
it just lines of trucks, six to eight shipments day
coming in literally just unloading all kinds of things, and
right now they are stocked with vegetables and herbs and flowers.
Of course, always you're gonna find beautiful hanging baskets at
Moss Nursery. They always have beautiful hanging baskets. If you
need fruit, trees, if you need shrubs, if you need anything.

(01:47:19):
I think one of the most fun parts about Moss
is walking around the eight acre that's right, eight Acre Nursery,
and every time you turn a corner you see something
else cool you didn't expect to see. Maybe it's something
unusual like a carved out wooden canoe, or maybe it
is some sort of a sculpture, a garden concrete garden

(01:47:40):
sculpture out there, or a different kind of little fountain
that they've got splashing the water and creating that beautiful ambient.
This is a seventy year old family operated nursery in
Seabrook on Toddville Road. For those of you who've never
been out there, Hey, go down, get you some lunch
in Kima, and go visit Moss Nursery. Make a nice

(01:48:00):
outing of it. It's a great place. They got lots
of a small cacti and succulents and wonderful tropical house
plants in the houseplant greenhouse where I promise you it
will be dry today inside the greenhouse. It's a nursery.
It's not just another garden center. It is a destination place.
Moss Nursery dot com, Maas Nursery dot com two eight

(01:48:21):
one four seven four twenty four eighty eight two eight
one four seven four two four eight eight.

Speaker 4 (01:48:30):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:48:30):
This is the time of year where everybody's asking questions
about the lawn and fertilizers and about weed control and
when do I do this and when do I do that.
I created a schedule it's online at gardeningwith Skip dot com.
In fact, there's two schedules. One of them is what
I call the how to have a beautiful lawn schedule,
and that tells you how to mow, water and fertilize,
what products to use, when to apply them. The other

(01:48:54):
is what goes wrong with your lawn schedule, and it's
the weeds, the pests, and the diseases that attack lawns
when they occur, and what to use. Both contain organic
and synthetic options. So there's a lot of things on
these schedules that help you time what you're gonna do right.
For example, right now, if you're going to do a premergent,

(01:49:14):
now's the time to do it, because if you wait
until the weed drop too late, now's the time to
do it. Now. You get my schedules out and you
look at all those products, all the organics, all the synthetics,
and you go, where can I find everything on this
schedule and everything that comes out of Skip's mouth on
guarden line. Southwest Fertilizer. Southwest Fertilizer has been around since

(01:49:34):
nineteen fifty five. Seventieth anniversary, Happy birthday, Southwest Fertilizer. Happy
birth I will say, happy birthday, Bob. The congratulations on
the seventieth anniversary of Southwest Fertilizer. I'm going to hear
about that the next time I go in there. Anyway,
anything that comes out of my mouth's going to be

(01:49:55):
in that store. They have everything you need. And if
they don't have it, you don't need it, because they
have everything you need. It doesn't matter if it's controlling
bests controlling diseases. Do you need some tools, quality pruning tools? Well,
do you think if you walked your way down on
ninety foot wall of tools you could find something? Yes,
you can, and they're good ones. Do you need seed
like seed packets? Do you need seed like the bulk seed?

(01:50:16):
You know the old time bends used to see those
like you feed stores in places. You have a bin
and you get a little scoop and scoop out the
seed and put it in an Envelope's very economical way
to buy seed. Bob's got one of those bends there
at Southwest Fertilizer, so you can do that there too.
Take them a sample, take them a picture, let them
put their eyes on it, and they will tell you
what it is and what you need to do. If

(01:50:37):
you need to spray and they're going to have it,
they'll walk you right over to it. It's friendly service,
it's quality products, it's unbelievable selection. What else can you
ask for? Southwest Fertilizer dot Com if you'd like to
give them a call seven one three six sixty six
one seven four four seven one three one six sixty
sixty six one seven four four Now Neilson Plant Food

(01:51:02):
has a coup a number of products that are in
jars OH clear jars of the screw top lead. One
of the lines of products they have is called nutris Star,
and there's a nutri Star for all kinds of plants
from plumerias to hibiscus, to citrus fruit and avocado and
tree and shrub. Those last two I want to tell
you about. Tree and shrub has five sources of nitrogen
that feed for about three or four months, and they

(01:51:25):
have the micronutrients in them. I don't care what kind
of true or shrub you have. This stuff works. No
nutri Star tree and shrub from Nelson. Now nutri Star
citrus fruit and avocado. Anything that you're going to grow
to eat fruit off of, put citrus fruit and avocado
on it again about every three months. It's going to
provide all the nutrients that it needs. And you know,

(01:51:45):
whether you're growing fruit tree and the landscape or fruit
tree and a container, nutri Star citrus fruit and avocado
really really works. And you know a lot of these
jar products from Nelson. There's several places around town that
will give you a refill state. So just like you're
buying peanuts in the grocery store, you know, you put
a little handle and fill the bag. You can refill

(01:52:06):
your Nelson products that way there at the stations, which
is good for the environment, saves plastic and good for
your pocket book as well. Time for me to take
a break. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome to garden Line, folks.
Good to have you with us. Thank you a little
bit of pure prairie league there on this good Saturday morning.

(01:52:29):
Good Saturday morning to be inside talking about gardening, learning
about gardening. Glad you're with us today. Listen, if you
have indoor plants and you are looking for a quality
product for the soil for those indoor plants, that would
be jungle land. You know, when you have houseplants and
a container, you want a soil that drains well. You

(01:52:49):
do not want it to stay mucky, soggy, wet. Buddy,
you do want it to hold water. You don't want
to water just to run right out and not hold
any water. Jungle Land is a good quality soil like that,
and they have an outdoor version called jungle Land Flour
and Vegetable Potting Soil. I'm talking about the indoor version
which is called jungle Land water saving potting soil. It

(01:53:11):
has these little crystals in it and they get wet
and swell up. They look like a little clear jello,
a little tiny pieces of clear jello, and jungle Land
by doing that allows your soil to dry out but
still be a little bit of moisture there in case
you forgot to water. So it makes it, let's say
more forgiving of a neglectful watering schedule. Jungle Land is

(01:53:36):
just one of the many quality products you can get
from Nitrofosh. You can find it in a wide variety
of the retailers of Nitrofoss kinds of products. Places you
know that carry their products include M and D hardware
that would be on Beamer, Sagemont that MD clear Lake
out in clear Lake, of course, plants and things up
in Brennam carries Nitrofoss products and MD up in Cyprus

(01:53:59):
on Luetta. They also carry the nitrofoss types of products,
quality products that work. You were listening to Garden Line.
Our phone number is seven one three two one two
ktr H seven one three two one two KTRH Black
to give us a call and you don't delay. We
can get you on here before we take a break.

(01:54:22):
I was at it in Chanick Gardens not too long ago,
giving a talk out there on basically lazy gardening is
how to make gardening less work. And I had a
really good time with all the folks that came out,
and being out there just reminds me every time I
go out, it reminds me again. This place is an
expanse of everything you could need. This is another garden

(01:54:43):
center destination. Family comes to town, take them out there.
Tomorrow afternoon be a good time to get out too.
It's gonna be good weather tomorrow to get out there
doing Chenny Gardens. They are on the Katie fullsher Side
of Richmond on FM three point fifty nine. So uh,
I would just do it this way. I would just
go to the website because there you're gonna find out everything.
You can sign up for the newsletter it's an awesome website.

(01:55:05):
It's Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot com. Enchanted Gardens Richmond dot
com has been around since nineteen ninety five, and it
is truly an unforgettable garden center. Herbs and vegetables and
native plants and roses and shrubs and trees and fruit
and hanging baskets and just succulents and beautiful. Gosh, their

(01:55:28):
pottery selections unbelievable. Gift shops are unbelievable. I mean, it's
just you name it. It's good. You hear me talk
about fertilizers like Microlife, nitroposs, Nelson Medina, they got them.
You hear me talk about soil, Major's Way heirloom so
they carry that stuff. They just everything you need, brown
stuff and green stuff. They got you covered out there
at in Chanty Gardens, including some really nice fountains and

(01:55:51):
wim chimes and Whimsickle garden art. It's hard for me
to say Whimsickle anyway, it's a fun play. You need
to go if you haven't been, and you know, a
little bit misty today, I understand that, but I'm telling
you tomorrow afternoon, Oh gosh, you gotta get out there.
Don't delay. Hey, you want first pick? By the way,

(01:56:11):
I got a bunch of tomatoes in I saw the
other day. Don't let them get all picked over. Get
out and get your own there while you still have
a really good supply. We're going to head now up
to Nederland and talk to Randy. Hello, Randy, welcome to
garden Line.

Speaker 10 (01:56:27):
How are you this morning?

Speaker 5 (01:56:29):
I'm good, sir. How can we help?

Speaker 10 (01:56:33):
I'd just like skip to get your thoughts on to
use a blossom set on tomatoes?

Speaker 5 (01:56:40):
Okay, all right? So the products that are used for
blossom set are a hormone that is the same hormone
that seeds produce. And so what happens is when a tomato,
for whatever reason, it could be cold weather, you know
night's done in the fifties and things, the pollen doesn't

(01:57:00):
grow and fertilize the tomato developed they did. It doesn't
grow fast enough, and the flowers aboard. In the summertime,
the pollen doesn't shed right and get to where it
needs to be, and the tomatoes aboard, and so blossom
set is a way of getting the tomato to not
abort that little blossom, but to hang on to it

(01:57:20):
and to help it to establish and grow, and so
it's kind of a way around some of those issues
that can happen with tomatoes in general. If you've got
decent weather conditions and if your tomatoes are moving a
little bit in the wind, you're going to get good
Set in a greenhouse where there's no wind. They actually

(01:57:41):
go in and shake the vines in different ways of
doing that, but they shake the vines and cause that
pollen to fall into the flower right where it can
pollinate it. Tomatoes don't have to have a bee carrying
pollen from flower to flower. They just need the flower
to be moved around and shaken.

Speaker 10 (01:58:00):
Yes, sir, yes, sir. Does this change the makeup of
the tomato at all? The taste, of size, the just
make it a different.

Speaker 5 (01:58:09):
Tomato, not taste, maybe size a little bit. You know,
seeds help contribute to the size of a fruit. If
you ever see an apple that's lopsided and you cut
it in half, you're going to see the seeds on
that shrunken side are gone. They're not there. The hormone
seeds release do that, so you're gonna get a little
bit of that effect on them.

Speaker 10 (01:58:31):
Okay, all right, Skip I appreciate it. I use it
and it does well for me, and I just won't good.
And if I was changing the tomato in any way, No,
you're not.

Speaker 5 (01:58:42):
You're just taking what nature is not providing in the
case of a tomato that's not being pollinated, right, and
you're giving it that same hormone in the place what.

Speaker 10 (01:58:53):
The seed would have done, just making it, just making
it hold a little longer.

Speaker 5 (01:59:00):
Go all right, good luck with it now. You know
on garden Line. You know the policy on Guardline, Randy
is the advice is free. But I do expect any
tomatoes that you have based on this advice for you
to share half of them with me. So bring them
to the station. We'll call it even thanks, Okay, I'll
do it.

Speaker 10 (01:59:17):
I've got a few starting right now.

Speaker 5 (01:59:20):
I'm joking. Thank you a lot. I appreciate that. All right, boy,
the phone took off here. I'll see how many we
can get too before we have to go to break.
We're going to go out to Cypress now and talk
to Marsino. Hey Marsino, welcome to guard Line.

Speaker 6 (01:59:32):
Hi Skop, good morning, how are you.

Speaker 5 (01:59:35):
I'm well? Thank you?

Speaker 10 (01:59:37):
So I sent you a couple of.

Speaker 6 (01:59:39):
Pictures I had some large, two large live oak trees
in my front yard and the roots are superficial and
they're not allowing grass to grow on top of them.
And I'm also having a lot of low spots, so
they're a bit of a tripper.

Speaker 5 (01:59:53):
Okay, yeah, I got so. So bottom line on those
h I would fill in with soil slowly, you know,
maybe an inch or two at a time, just add
about an inch. The grass will come up on through
them and you'll avoid those tripper and lawnmower target roots

(02:00:14):
that are up near the surface. You do need good
light for the grass to grow. And looking at your grass,
it almost looks like maybe you have a little take
all root rod in there. I can't tell from a
picture alone, but it may be that you're needing to
do a little bit of a treatment of that lawn.
And on my schedule online at gardening with Skip dot com,

(02:00:34):
I have take all root rod on there and the
things to use and when to use them. So I
would do that just as a precaution because I'm about
eighty percent sure that you've got some take all in there.

Speaker 6 (02:00:46):
Okay, so go ahead and for the take all root
drops and then add in one to two inches. How
often do I add that inches? I did it most
of last year. I added in about an inch of
soil in those areas every one two months.

Speaker 5 (02:01:01):
Yeah, you can do that. You can do that gradually
over time. You just don't want to put three inches
over the whole root system of a tree at once.
That's too stressful tree. But what you're doing is just fine.
All right, Okay, you're good, you bet all right. Music
means time for me to quit talking. We've got top
of our news. When we come back. Patricia in Bellville,

(02:01:25):
Lisa and Houston, you two are going to be some
of our first two callers when we come right back.
If you can hang around at that time, don't forget today.
Guess what noon, Willis be there or be squared. I'm
going to be at the All Seasons Ace Hardware and
Willis All Seasons Ace Hardware and Willis. We're going to
be giving away some Nelson products. We're going to be

(02:01:47):
given away some products from the fine folks at Medina
as well. I'll have some Texas Gardener magazines on hand.
If you haven't seen it, you've got to see that.
Bring these samples, let's talk, let's meet, I'll have plenty
of time that is up there at all seasons. Ace
Hardware and.

Speaker 1 (02:02:02):
Willis welcome to Katie r. H. Garden Line with Skip Richter's.

Speaker 2 (02:02:15):
Trip. Just watch him as so many good things to
set a sad.

Speaker 5 (02:02:40):
All right, folks, we're back. You're back with Garden Line.
I'm your host, Skip Richter. We're here to help you
have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape. And maybe this
is almost the most important of all, more fun in
the process. Gardening is supposed to be fun. It is,

(02:03:00):
and it can be. All you got to do is
inform your thumb and watch it turn green. That's kind
of how it works when you use quality products. When
you give a plant what it wants, you're going to
have success. For example, you get a new transplant, it's
time to you know, people buying tomatoes and herbs and
rose bushes and all kinds of things to put in

(02:03:21):
the ground, and all that root system is sort of
wound up in that little cylinder of soil that came
with the container. That's the whole root system. You want
those roots to quickly begin to spread out, go out,
not not like a root unwinds. But I'm saying, send
out new roots into the soil around it so that
it establishes quickly because summer's coming. It's hard to believe

(02:03:43):
on a day like this, but summer's coming, and you
want to give that plant the most time it has.

Speaker 10 (02:03:47):
So what do you do?

Speaker 5 (02:03:48):
You get a quality product like Medinas has to grow
six twelve six six percent nitrogen, twelve percent phosphorus, six
percent potassium. Mix it in water. You will not burn
with this produce. It is not a salt based fertilizer
going to it cannot burn your plants. You mix it
with water. It's got Medina soil activator in it stimulates
biological activity. It's got humid humic acid which humic acids

(02:04:11):
humus all improves soil structure, making a better soil for
better nutrient uptake. That's got seaweed extracts in it. You
can follow your feed with it too. By the way,
but I'm talking about here, watering in a trenchplant with it.
Just one of the ways you can use Medina has
to grow six twelve six. That twelve percent phosphorus is
for roots. That helps the roots established. I do it

(02:04:34):
when I plant a plant, I do it again. A
week later, just get a watering can, mix it in
according to label, water and in, and then a week
later after that, So three times a week apart, I'm
putting that Medina six twelve six a hash to go
six twelve six. Plant food on the plant and getting
it the best head start. That's one of the secrets
to transplanting success. It's one of the things. You know,

(02:04:56):
Each little thing we do that makes it a little better,
a little better, a little easy for the plant, a
little more stimulating for the plant. Everything along those lines
gets you where you're trying to get. And Medina products
are always going to be an effective way to have
a better, more beautiful garden. And guess what if you
would like to try some Medina products. Show up today

(02:05:17):
at All Seasons Ace Hardware and Willis twelve pm noon,
Grab some lunch first, come up there twelve pm to two.
I have been guaranteed that it will be warm and
it will not be raining inside inside All Seasons Ace Hardware.
Bring me some samples and who knows, you might win
one of the giveaways from Medina. Also some from Nelson too.

(02:05:38):
While we're up there, looking forward to that. All right,
I'm going to run down now to Houston and talk
to Lisa. Hey, Lisa, welcome to garden Line. Oh thank you.

Speaker 6 (02:05:49):
My question is I would like to do my backyard
over in native plants that are be and vert attractors,
but I don't and I want to make beautiful. So
do you have any recommendations on who I could call
for that?

Speaker 4 (02:06:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (02:06:06):
Well there are a number of good landscapers out there.
Who who I'm sorry who where exactly in the Houston
area are you located? What part of Houston area?

Speaker 6 (02:06:19):
We live in Westbury, southwest, Houston.

Speaker 5 (02:06:22):
Area west okay, southwest, So I would I would talk
to Jorge at Jorges Hidden Gardens. He does some landscaping himself.
He possibly would be one who could come out and
help you with that. I would, and I would also.
I don't stay up to date on all the landscapers
all over, but you might want to talk to BMB

(02:06:45):
turf Pros, which is in that area just a little
southwest to be there. They do the compost top dressing
and the fertilization, they do aeration and things. If they
can't do the like that, they would tell you who could.
And they're going to be more familiar with the people
right around their area right down there that you might

(02:07:08):
want to reach out to. Those would be a couple
of good ones and and and I'm sorry, go ahead, Lisa.

Speaker 4 (02:07:16):
Could you repeat that last one?

Speaker 12 (02:07:17):
B and B Turf.

Speaker 5 (02:07:20):
Turf Pros BnB turf Pros there. We usually refer people
to them for landscape, lawn aeration and top dressing down
in that area. Okay, But any way you go, let
me give you a phone number for them. You're just
going to ask them, you know, they typically aren't a

(02:07:41):
big landscaping company to my knowledge, but the phone number
seven one three two three four fifty five ninety eight.
That would be great for your lawn, by the way,
but they can probably direct you also any good great
garden center. You know, you talk to a good garden
center and they're going to be able to point you
to good landscapers because they deal with them. And you
talked about at Southwest Fertilizer over there, and ask them

(02:08:03):
who they have found to be good for that area
of town. All right, Well, thank you so much. All right, Lisa,
thanks for the call. Appreciate that. See here all right,
speaking of good advice, Oh my gosh, at Lisa, I
should have mentioned this to you. Cienam malts for crying
out loud. That should have been the first ink in

(02:08:24):
my mind. Santa Maltch is down south and south to
a little bit southwest of Houston. They are near Highway
six and two eighty eight on FM five point twenty one.
They carry everything you need for the soil, everything composts,
bed mixes, fertilizers. I'm talking about products from Microlife and
Nilsen turf star Line, products from Medina, products from nitroposs azamite.

(02:08:48):
You hear me bragging on those earlier. Today products from
heirloom soils like the veggie and herb mix. They have mulches,
they have landscape stone, they have gravel, they have sand,
they have palettes, they have the flat rock for creating patio.
They have everything. Sienna Moltz dot com is the website
Cienamultch dot com. Now you go into Ciana Maltch, Lisa,
if you're still listening, going to Ceanamult and say, hey,

(02:09:11):
what landscapers do you recommend that might serve my area?
And Cianama's a little south and west of you, but
they may have some good ideas there too, because a
lot of landscapers know to go to Ciena Maultch for
high quality stuff. That's all they deal with in Sienna
is high quality. And if you are a homeowner and
you would like them to deliver, they deliver within about

(02:09:31):
twenty miles for a fee of that area. Or you
can just drive in, take your pickup, take your trailer,
or just buy it by the bag. They have a
lot of products buy the bag as well. All righty well,
I'm needing to take a quick break, Patricia, you'll be
first when we come back. We're working our way towards

(02:09:51):
you up the line. Hang on out there in Bellville.
We'll be right back. We are back. We're going to
be heading to your calls here and long. In a
second time, when I think about RCW Nursery, I think
about a family garden center. Has been around since nineteen
seventy nine, opened by the Williamson family, still run by
the Williamson family. They raise their own trees up there

(02:10:15):
in Plannersville. So when you go to RCW and you
buy a tree or a shrub, there's a good chance
they grew it themselves up there in the Plannersville area.
So that means they picked a species that wants to
grow here, so you're going to have success with it.
They grew it in the right way, so it's ready
to hit the ground running in your landscape. And they'll
give you advice, you know, they'll tell you how to

(02:10:36):
plant it. They'll say you the products to go along,
fee on a root stimulator whatever. They've got it all there,
or they'll come out and do it. You know, if
it's of some size, have them do it. Unless you
just enjoy putting your chiropractors kids through college. Don't try
to pick that thing up yourself, but they can come
out and professionally plant it for you. Right now, it
is rose season at RCW and that place is loaded

(02:10:59):
with rcwnurseries dot com. That's the website you can get information.
You can get the roselist and see all the varieties
they have. As I've been telling you for weeks. Now,
the sooner you go by there, the better selection you're
going to get. Because everybody knows euston rosarians know. RCW
Nurseries got them all. They got all these roses there

(02:11:21):
and they head there to get their roses. And so
don't wait too long if you want to be able
to pick all the different kinds of varieties that you
might want to grow in your landscape at RCW nurseries
dot com. That is the nursery that's located where Beltway
eight and Highway two forty nine we call Tomball Parkway
where they come together. It's easy to get to and

(02:11:43):
when you get there, you're going to find what you need.
And if they don't have it, I'll bet you they
can get it for you. We're going to go out
to Belleville now and talk to Patricia. Hello, Patricia, welcome
to garden Line. Right, thanks skip.

Speaker 6 (02:11:57):
Can you hear me? Okay?

Speaker 5 (02:11:59):
I can? Okay?

Speaker 10 (02:12:01):
Good?

Speaker 17 (02:12:02):
What I'm calling about our cutter ants. I have an
infestation here on our six acres and I've tried everything
and nothing gets rid of them. And they are, you know,
totally devastating my plants.

Speaker 5 (02:12:15):
What can I do?

Speaker 15 (02:12:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (02:12:17):
They are quite a challenge. There there used to be
there is a bait and it's one of the amro baits.
And now I'm going to have to try to remember
which one is it that you can use for the
leaf cutter ants, And that has just escaped my brain.
I have to think here a little bit. If I

(02:12:38):
don't think of it while we are talking. I will
I will think of it, and I'll say it on
the air. But the problem with leaf cutters is they
cut the leaves off, take them into their underground chamber,
and stick them to the ceiling of the chamber, and
then they eat the fungus that grows on the leaf

(02:13:00):
cutter ants. Okay, so the putting a putting a poison out,
it's not like they're it just doesn't work as well
to try to do it that way. So what I
would recommend is you can do a couple of things.
I have dusted the trails with orthene coming out of
the leaf cutter mound, and if you do that, what

(02:13:22):
you're gonna find is it cuts down on them because
they have to they have to track through that orthene,
and in tracking through the orthene, they end up grooming
themselves and getting the poison on them. That way, that
is not a way to eradicate a mound, but it
will suppress their activity so you don't lose two trees
a night as they get out there and get working,

(02:13:45):
get working on it, because they're really bad about that.
But uh, I just the actual products is just escaping me.
I'm gonna have to I'm have to hunt it down
for you, but but we can give you some advice
on that. I need to probably you know what I
need to do. I need to just go ahead and
put that on my website. I will add something like
that to the website. All right. I just found it

(02:14:07):
talk long enoughter. I found it some If you do
the andro ant block. They did some studies on Amro
ant block. It's about fifty percent effective against the leaf cutter,
not one hundred percent, but it's different than the Amro

(02:14:28):
fire ant bait. But some people will take a mixture
of Amro ant block and Extinguish fire ant bait andro
Ant block and Extinguish fire ant bait, and they'll make
them fifty to fifty. They'll put them in a bucket
and they'll let that bucket sip for several weeks, like
three or four weeks, and in doing so, the products

(02:14:51):
sort of infuse together, and when they put it out
it is pretty effective. And a lot of our local
pest control operators swear that that wre for them. So
it's Amro ant block and Extinguish fire ant bait, two
different products mixed together, set for three weeks or four
and then put them out as a bait, and it

(02:15:12):
seems to work pretty well. Just make sure I always
use fresh products with ants with any baits you choose.
If the if the bait has been sitting there and
kind of gone rancid, the inter are going to pick
it up right.

Speaker 17 (02:15:23):
And now the extinguished is that, uh a dry powder or.

Speaker 5 (02:15:28):
Something like the granular they're they're grant. It's a granular
like fire ant baits. Yeah, so these are fire ant baits.
But okay, and.

Speaker 17 (02:15:38):
I'm just mixing the two dry products. No, no water
or anything, just the two dry dry products.

Speaker 5 (02:15:44):
Yeah, yes, mixing them together. Put them. I use a
like a five gallon bucket, put a lid on a
pop a lid down on it so I can just
sit there, you know, and be kind of sealed up
a little bit. Uh, mix them real well and let
them sit and then use them. And I don't know why.
I don't know why it is, but that is what
the pcos are telling me has been effective for them.

(02:16:05):
So give that a try and then let me know,
let me know how it works for you. Of course,
the ants are going to want it to warm up
a little bit to be at their most activity. So
you got time to create this concoction. Yes, okay, all right,
I'll give it a shot.

Speaker 17 (02:16:21):
Thank you so much, thank you, good.

Speaker 5 (02:16:24):
Luck with it. Appreciate your call. Thanks a lot. Yeah,
and where do you get stuff like that? Well, I'll
tell you one place. You can go to Ace Hardware.
Ace Hardware stores carry all kinds of products for your garden, landscape, gardens,
herb beds, and tree shra everything, lawns. They got it all.
And when it comes to past control operators are products

(02:16:48):
like the fire at baits and these andro at block
and andro or extinguished extinguished plus fire bait. They've got
those there and you can you can them up. You
can do it yourself. You want to go that route.
But whatever the products is, whatever the plants you're growing,
whatever the pest or disease you're dealing with, or the weeds,
you're gonna find your products there at Ace Hardware. Now.

(02:17:10):
Ace Hardware has twenty percent off their mon faucets this month,
So if you've been thinking about replacing some faucets around
the house's kitchen or bathroom, now's the time. Twenty percent
off you can get that. Grab some of the air filters,
they got to buy three, get one free, just an
extra boost there. You know you're supposed to be replacing
those about what once a month in our area, so

(02:17:32):
make sure and keep those in good supply on hand.
And if you're redoing your deck, and they even have
stain and paint and some nice deals going on with
the presidents, they say on all kinds of painting supplies,
So stop buying and check it out yourself. ACE hardware
all over the place, easy to find ACE. You're going
to find Ace hardware City, a Memorial Drive. You're gonna

(02:17:54):
find plants for all seasons on two forty nine. Then
the Bearing Hardware on Business, the Bearing Hardware there on
West Timer. Those are all places where you are going
to find quality products, many mini quality products. But when
you go to an ACE hardware store, you know that
you're going to find everything that I just talked about.
There's going to be success. But whether it's Aspa's ACE

(02:18:18):
in the Woodlands, whether it's like Conroe, Ace Montgomery, Sinkle Ranch,
Ace Sinkle Ranch out in Sincle Ranch, k and m
Ace up in Kingwood or over in Kingwood, can m
and a Taska Sita, there's an ACE down in Bay City.
There's a Wharton Feed and Ace Hamilton's Hardware off Highway
six near Bear Creek. All kinds of ACE hardware stores
around the area. And when you go to an ACE

(02:18:39):
Hardware store, you find what you're looking for. It's as
simple as that. You can go to ACE Hardware dot Com,
find the store locator and find the ones that you're
looking for. That's another way to go about it. You
were listening to Guardenline. The phone number here is seven
one three two one two k t RH. Let's head
out to Conroe and we're going to talk to best.

(02:19:00):
Hello Bess, Hello, Yeah, you're on garden Line.

Speaker 18 (02:19:11):
I need to know how to get rid of palmetto
I actually live in.

Speaker 5 (02:19:18):
Yeah, okay, at the out feel do you have a
lot of it or is there a lot of it
about acreage?

Speaker 18 (02:19:29):
Yes, we're two acres and some of it all leads,
but some that like I have one clump that's coming
up right by an old oak tree that I wanted
to save and uh, and then it's sporadic around the yard,
but I'm wanting to get it out of where we
have to mow and all.

Speaker 5 (02:19:47):
Well, Bess, uh, you just won the game. Called stump
the chump on garden line. I have never had anybody
call me and ask me how to get rid of
an acre of palmetto. Uh, let me work on that,
and I will keep listening. I'll say something on the
air about it. Palmetto palms are grass plants. Palms are

(02:20:08):
a type of grass actually, and as opposed to being
like a tree, you know, a broad leaf tree. So
the things that would kill a tree may not kill
a palm tree because tree in the word palm is
just something we throw in there. But anyway, let me
see what I can find for that palmetta. I know
digging them up, but I don't think I'm on TALKI
into digging up an acre a palmetto.

Speaker 18 (02:20:29):
So my husband has been trying to dig some up
and then we put stump killer on it. But I
have one that's right by an old oak tree that
I don't want to kill the oak tree, so.

Speaker 12 (02:20:42):
May just have to leave it.

Speaker 18 (02:20:44):
And also my neighbor and I and Conro used demon
WP poured down the leafcutter ant mounds and that seems
to slow them.

Speaker 5 (02:20:55):
Okay, that slowed them down a little bit. Yeah, got
insecticide in there. They have to track through. That'll slow
them down. It's hard to shut down a colony. Hey,
on the on the stump treatment she did on the palms.
How long ago did you try that?

Speaker 3 (02:21:12):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (02:21:13):
That was that was probably a month and a half ago. Okay,
so it's a little early to know how well it worked.
Then they're tough. Okay, they're very tough.

Speaker 2 (02:21:27):
Yeah, them off the top?

Speaker 18 (02:21:29):
Are they gonna spread?

Speaker 5 (02:21:33):
Normally palm trees only have a living bud at the top,
and so if you take any palm tree and just
go out and saw off the top, you got a
telephone pole that will never reach sprout, you know, just
it can't. Some types of palms and palmettos this way
can kind of come out at the bottom of a
multi trunk type system. And so you I don't think

(02:21:54):
the cutting the tops off is going to be effective.
But let me look into this so that I know
what I'm talking about. Rather than guessing, I hate, I
just try not to ever guess on gardener. So I'll
find out and i'll come up. I'll come up with
something for you. All right, Thank you a lot, appreciate
your calling. Bye bye bye Stone the Jump. Hey, Microlife

(02:22:16):
fertilizers have a wide variety of products that are great.
You know, if you're looking for a liquid to not
only add nutrients for your plants, but also add microbes
for your plants, well, Microlife fertilizers of products that are
going to do that. Microlife has a Biomatrix orange label.
That's a seven to one three. That high nitrogen liquid

(02:22:38):
organic with the beneficial microbes is great for any kind
of plant you're growing, especially for foliage like ass plants.
That's what I use. Microlife has an Ocean Harvest that's
a fish based product. It's a four two three fertilizer
four to two three four percent nitrogen, two percent phosphorus,

(02:22:58):
three percent potassium. Good for all your outdoor plants. You
can use it to folder spray, not gonna burn your plant.
You can drench the soil with it. It's gonna do
just fine. Microlife Ocean Harvest it's a blue label Biomatrix Orange,
Ocean Harvests Blue. Both work. I would suggest the Biometrix
for indoors and put the Ocean Harvest outdoors. It's a

(02:23:18):
fish based product and so it has a little bit
of a fish odor to it that dissipates in time.
But I wouldn't use it on my house plants. I
would use it on the outdoors. All right, Time for
me to take a quick break. I will be right
back with your calls and don in champions. You will
be our first up when we come back. All right,

(02:23:39):
welcome back to the guarden line. Good to have you
with us. Looking forward to helping you have a bountiful garden,
beautiful landscape. By the way, if you want to you
want to have a beautiful landscape, you need to know
about beer scapes. I talk about them a lot because
I am really impressed with the work they do. Go
to the website pierscapes dot herescapes dot com. Look at it.

(02:24:02):
I mean, if you want inspiration, if you want to
see magic happen, whether it's landscape lighting around a home, hardscapes, pathways, patios,
you know all that you're creating that beautiful outdoor living environment.
Oh my gosh. They can do that. They have designers
and staff. They can design the beds and I mean
they can revamp the whole landscape. They can do you know,
a small area where you're wanting to do some things,

(02:24:24):
you got bad drainage. They can fix that. You have
irrigation that's sporadic and not well designed or not working right.
Maybe some heads need replacing. Have them come out and
do that. They can do all of that and above.
You can hire them to come out and be part
of a quarterly maintenance program at your house. So they
come out, they look, they go, Okay, this bed, we're

(02:24:44):
gonna weed it, We're gonna spruce it up. Maybe the
plants need to be pulled out and new plants put in.
Check the irrigation, make sure it's working well. You know,
any trimming that's needed. You just get on their quarterly
maintenance program and you can do that. You can give
them a call at this number seven excuse me two
eight one three seven oh fifty sixty, Pierce Scapes two

(02:25:07):
eight one three seven oh fifty sixty, or just go
to the lands. Go to the website. That's where the
phone numbers are too, piercescapes dot com. Piercescapes dot com.
You will be impressed when you see what they can do.
We're going to go now out to Champions and talk
to Don. Hey Don, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 14 (02:25:27):
Well, thank you very much appreciate you taking my call. Uh,
just a quick question here. I've got a very small
myrlemon tree and I didn't put out a whole lot
of fruit last year because bugs started eating on it.
And the best I can describe, as I recall, they

(02:25:49):
kind of looked like little miniature grasshoppers that were eating
the leaves. And so I've just tried to figure out
because I'm starting to get some fruit buds on there
now have to safeguard against those things. So what should
I spray or what should I do to send those
critters off?

Speaker 5 (02:26:10):
Yeah, when it could have been grasshoppers. Grasshoppers eat a
lot of different kinds of plants. They're not what we
think of as one of our major citrus pests, but
they do feed on a lot of different kinds of plants.
When they're hungry, especially, they'll eat about anything, it seems like.
But I would, I would, I would look closely and
watch those leaves and if you it's either going to

(02:26:31):
be a caterpillar, which the best sprays, or BT and
spinosid for caterpillars, or beetles for beetles, spinosid and oh gosh,
I just went black as a direct and a name
name products that contain as a direct and or organic,

(02:26:53):
and they control things that eat leaves, caterpillars, and beetles.
Do you may have luck those? Uh, well, there's two
types of name. There's name oil, which has very little
of that active ingredient in it. It acts like an oil.
It just smothers. But neme is then on the label.
But when you look at the ingredient, it says as

(02:27:15):
a direct and it doesn't say neme oil, So that
would be one. And then for grasshoppers, really, any kind
of insecticide is gonna pretty well kill a grasshopper. There's
a lot of products anything labeled for citrus, though you
want to make sure it's label for cetrius. I like
to stay with the organics when possible. I have not
tried as a directing on grasshoppers. It it may well work,

(02:27:39):
I need to. I would need to check on that because,
like I said, I you're the first time anyone's ever
said grasshoppers reading their ceterus to me. So, uh, if
if I believe you, I just, I just I would
have to check on that. But those are the look
at him and.

Speaker 14 (02:27:54):
Look at him and look at him. I just I
just looked out there one day I saw something was
really and you my leaves. So I've started peering down
and there was a couple of little tiny grasshopper looking
things like maybe uh yeah, maybe three eighths of an
inch long. Little things work big onn't they?

Speaker 5 (02:28:12):
Okay? Okay, Well, uh, here's the thing too. Citrus grows
a lot of leaves and can afford to lose quite
a bit of leaf area before you see a significant
reduction in production. So you know, citrus will outgrow the
citrus leaf minor issues. You know, even though they'll still
be around, the citrus has enough leaves to still do

(02:28:34):
what it needs to do. So just seeing some things
eating leaves doesn't mean you need to control them. And
so that may be another option. Is this this watch
and if you're not losing you know, forty percent of
the leaves or something crazy like that, Uh, the citrus
may just bounce back and be okay with it.

Speaker 14 (02:28:51):
So that ye was to put them from the big
freeze that we had a couple of years ago. So
I'm surprised to survive it in a large pot. It's
not in the ground, but normally I've gotten somewhere like
ten or twelve lemons off of it. This last year,
I think I got three and so so as far

(02:29:12):
as a percentage of loss of production, it was kind
of disturbing because it takes a long time for those
myra limits to come around.

Speaker 5 (02:29:21):
You bet, you bet, you bet? All right, Well, good
luck with it. I think you're off to You're off
to a good start there, and I believe you're gonna
be all right on this, all right.

Speaker 14 (02:29:29):
Appreciate your help.

Speaker 5 (02:29:30):
Have a good date, yes, sir, thank you. Don appreciate
that call very much. Hey, Nelson Water Garden and Nursery
is your garden center out there in the Katy area.
It's Houston's let's say it's West Houston's full service local nursery.
So all of you that live way out west or
to the west, Nelson Water Garden just down I ten

(02:29:51):
go to Katie, turn right to go north on Katie
Fort Ben Road and it's just a stones throw up
the street on the right hand side there. Nationally recognized
for their water garden work. Whether you want a full pond,
whether you want a waterfall, whether you want a disappearing
fountain coming out of one of those large ceramic containers.

(02:30:12):
Where the water flows out and then just recirculates around.
They invented that. They know how to do it. They
can help you do it. I mean, if you're do
it yourself, or they don't mind help telling you how
to go about doing it, or they'll come out and
just do it for you, which with their expertise, that's
the way. That's the way I would go. Do you
need koi or shabunk and fish? Do you need Let's

(02:30:34):
see what lily pads. Everybody knows about lily pads and
water gardens. What about other kinds of water plants. They
carry a wide variety of those as well. Now, don't
forget it's Nelson Nursery and Water Garden. So you're going
to find all kinds of beautiful plants, roses and fruit
and perennials. You're going to find some beautiful herbs, some

(02:30:55):
beautiful vegetables as well. Nelson Water Gardens, Nursery and Watergardens,
West Houston's full service local nursery two generations and Nelson's
are out there waiting for you with their local expertise
to get you some inspiration. Just go out and visit.
They should they should charge admission for you to go
sit there because it is therapy. It's cheaper than therapy

(02:31:17):
to go out and just sit among the water features
and listen and relax and enter another land. And I
love the sound of water in the garden. Nelsonwatergardens dot com.
Nelsonwatergardens dot com. Go get inspired. All right, Time for
me to take a little break, and when we come back,
we will be back with your calls. We'll be talking

(02:31:40):
to John and Katie and another John waiting out there
for some questions. Wait, has got to get a little
boogie here, hang one, look, there we go. That's what
we're talking about. No dancing on the bar, folks. All right,

(02:32:07):
we're back. Welcome to Guardline. Good to have you with us,
Looking forward to visiting with you. I was looking into
that information on controlling the salt palmetto uh and and
acreage and and whatnot, and ran across a couple of things.

Speaker 11 (02:32:24):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (02:32:24):
Someone actually had emailed in and indicated that they would
they just poured a little bit of diesel into the
middle of each plant.

Speaker 10 (02:32:32):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (02:32:32):
You know, gallons of it drenching down in the soil,
but just just a little bit in the middle of
each plant and kill that plant. You want to run
around the center and all the way down, and it
seemed to work for him. I haven't tried that, but
that seems to work as far as a recommendation. You know,
from a langrant research type standpoint, uh, products that contain

(02:32:53):
metsulfurn along with products that contain tricle paer put together
seeing that combo. Each one alone is not effective because
they work in different ways on the palmetto. But that
works well. So if you go to a place that
has a wide variety of products, you know, like someplace
like Southwest Spurtlizer, for example, you're gonna find products that
say MSM M s MSM on the lab. I just

(02:33:16):
tucked to bob there he can get you pointed at
it and then triclope here. That's that's the one we
use for poison ivy and brush control and things like that.
Put those together and mix it make some according to label.
Put it together and spread it on those plants and
those that seems to give you the best results. Sometimes
you have to redo it again because oftentimes with a

(02:33:37):
good tough plant like that, one application doesn't take care
of it. But it works pretty good. So anyway, give
those a try see how they work for you. Let's
go out to Katie here, we're going to talk to John. Hey, John,
welcome to garden line.

Speaker 2 (02:33:49):
Good morning, sir.

Speaker 19 (02:33:51):
So went to in Channa Gardens a few weeks ago
and I got two avocado trees, a Mexicola which looks
absolutely beautiful, has a ton of flowering buds, perfect plan.
Also got a Leila right next to it, and different story.
It looked great at the nursery. I upotted both of
them and to some miracle grow twenty five gallon pot.

(02:34:12):
And the leila one have the leaves that turn brown.
I did give it some of the medina has to
grow to to help, you know, sell it into the
ground bud. It does not look anywhere near as good
as the the other one to Mexicola, and it looked.

Speaker 5 (02:34:29):
Good when you sign in the nursery. When you brought
it home.

Speaker 19 (02:34:32):
Right correct, it looked like it was about to start
blowing up.

Speaker 5 (02:34:35):
Now both treated the browning and they weren't subjected to
too much cold.

Speaker 19 (02:34:44):
No, I bring them inside. They're in pots because I
know if they get too cold or they're they're flowering
them inside.

Speaker 5 (02:34:53):
That's unusual. Something happened in the roots. I don't know what.
Typically you know, soggy wet root conditions can cause that.
Drying out, of course is bad for plants, but I
know yours didn't dry out that much.

Speaker 10 (02:35:03):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (02:35:04):
The only other thing will be like a root injury
of some sort. I don't know what else would cause,
just that overall loss of or dark browning, darkening, blackening
or whatever of the foliage on the plant. I would
give it time. I don't think it's a lost cause.
You might try leaning it over, sliding it out of
the pot, and look and see if the roots going
around the pot are white and healthy, creamy white and healthy,

(02:35:28):
or if they look gray brown, darkened, water soaked, sunken,
kind of dead root. Look. If it's the latter, you
may need to pull it up, kind of cut away
some of the outer soil, repot it up real fresh,
and try to avoid any stresses to it while it
gets a new root system going. I'm thinking the roots

(02:35:48):
are going to be okay, but just check that in
case as far as.

Speaker 19 (02:35:56):
Oh okay, they were brown, So you break up little
bit of the roots so they can get out of
the rootbound condition.

Speaker 20 (02:36:03):
And then I said, the other one looks perfectly. You
did all that correct. Okay, hang on to it. I
think it's going to bounce back. I can't tell you
exactly why that happened. Something went wrong in the plumbing somewhere,
water from the soil making it to the top. Something
went wrong. I don't know what I can tell you that.
Then they're pretty resilient. I think it's going to bounce back,

(02:36:25):
John or.

Speaker 19 (02:36:26):
Turning out Two more quick questions. How do you deal
with fire ants in like twenty five gallon pots?

Speaker 5 (02:36:34):
I would use a bait. What's growing in the pots?

Speaker 19 (02:36:39):
Buh the ice cream banana and trying to move them
inside before the freeze. I got about sixty ant bites
all over my arm.

Speaker 5 (02:36:48):
Oh boy. Okay, Well, aside from needing to do it fast,
there's a product by fertil and it comes in a
light blue bag called come and Get It, and it's
a bait that is an organic spinosid based de bait,
and you put it all around the pots because finance,
just because they're in a pot, they've got to be
going out somewhere to get protein. You know, they eat insects,

(02:37:08):
they eat all kinds of things, and so when you
put the bait all around the pot, a little bit
in the pot, but especially around it. They'll take it
back and it'll kill the mound. If you need it fast.
That's kind of different. Then you may have to get
something like an orange oil that you drenched down through there,
or some other insecticide that you literally drench the soil

(02:37:29):
in the pot to be a quick kill on everything.
And there's a lot of products out there that are
like that. They're used for mound treatments, individual mound treatments.
Since it's an edible plant, that's why I like the fertilom.
Come and get it, because it's labeled for even vegetable
gardens things like that, whereas things like endro are not

(02:37:49):
going to be labeled for use in a vegetable garden.
But you could always put it around the pot and
let the ants find it and bring it back in
and that would be that would be an okay up
location perfect.

Speaker 19 (02:38:02):
One last question is you're talking about the incompetence of
some of the big box stores. I went to the
Orange big box store and they had some currant trees,
and currents are one of my favorite fruits. I didn't
think that they would do good over here. So is
there any way to make currents grow in this area.

Speaker 5 (02:38:23):
If they truly are currents?

Speaker 14 (02:38:25):
No.

Speaker 5 (02:38:26):
I lived in Missouri for three years, which is way
further north, and it was too hot for currents in Missouri.

Speaker 19 (02:38:32):
So it shows the incompetence of the big box stores
and having plants that are not compatible here.

Speaker 5 (02:38:39):
Yeah, I'll just let that one go. I mean I could,
I could if you want me to spend the next
I don't have an hour and a half. I could rant,
but I need to move on. Hey, thanks for the call.
Appreciate that, John, thanks a lot. I really, I really
do appreciate your call. Take care all right. I want
to tell you about night frost barricade. What do you
use it for weeds? Where do you put it all

(02:39:01):
over your lawn? Follow the label? Do it according a
little label? Watered in how much water? About a half inch?
It moves it to the soil where it does its work.
Nitro Foss barricade a ten pound bag covers five thousand
square feet. And where do you find it? Well, everywhere.
Nitrofoss products are sold everywhere. You're going to find them
at Court Hardware, you know, down in Stafford you're going

(02:39:23):
to find them in Katie Ace Hardware, Pinoak Street up
over there in Katy. You're going to find them in
a chanted forest down in the Richmond Rosenberg area on
FM twenty seven to fifty nine. And you're going to
find them at D and De Feed up in Tomboll
FM twenty nine to twenty just west of town. Barricade works.
But don't delayed. Now is the time to get it done.

Speaker 8 (02:39:43):
Now.

Speaker 5 (02:39:43):
I want to talk about a pest control company that
I'm really excited about. Told you about them earlier, and
that's Pest Brothers. It's a regional company serves a greater
Houston area. I don't care if you're in Texas City
all the way up to the Woodlands, if you're all
in East in Baytown all the way across to Katie,
they cover that area. They do termites, they do all
your household pests in the yard, fire, ants and mosquitoes,

(02:40:04):
wild varmints like rats and mice. I'm talking about wild varmits,
not the kids their varmits anyway, wild varmits. They even
have trapping services for larger things, you know, possums or
raccoons coming through there. They know how to treat effectively.
They know how to do it in the safest manner.
You get long term control without all the worries about

(02:40:25):
what kind of poison is out there? Is it going
to kill the dog? No, talk to Pest Brothers. They
know what they're doing. Call them for a quote two
eight one two oh six forty six seventy. Say that
again two eight one two o six forty six seventy.
Or go to the website the pest Bros b rosvpestbros

(02:40:46):
dot com. You gotta ask them. I spent a lot
of time talking about this earlier today, their mosquito control stations,
the bait buckets that they put out. It is the coolest, safest,
most effect active way to control mosquitos. And if you
just moved here from somewhere else, get ready, they're mosquitos
around here. There are enough of them that are big

(02:41:08):
enough to carry you across town. I mean they pick
you up, just like little little little drones coming around.
You gotta deal with mosquitos. And if you don't do
it alone, Koppes Brothers they can do it. But ask
them about that really cool mosquito bait station thing I
told you all about it earlier. I'll tell you about
it more later. Anyway, that's cool stuff. Let's head out

(02:41:30):
to the phones. We got just a little bit of
time left. We're going to go to Missouri City and
see if we can help Ray. Hey, Ray, welcome to
garden Line.

Speaker 8 (02:41:38):
Hey, thanks for taking my calls.

Speaker 5 (02:41:39):
Skip.

Speaker 8 (02:41:40):
Got a quick question. I'm beginning to see clover in
my yard. I have Saint Augustine grass. Which of these
products would you use? Nitro Foss fifteen five ten or
the weed of.

Speaker 5 (02:41:54):
Native both work. The fifteen to five to ten has
to be the one with trimech, not the one with
atrozine to do what you're trying to do. Trimec fifteen
five time with trimec. It's a blue bag. It's a
blue bag, not a purple blue bag. And someone's asking
about that. They were confused on bag colors. Nitrofis has

(02:42:16):
a blue bag that kills weeds that are already there,
and Nitrofis has a purple bag that kills that prevents
weed seeds from getting established. Don't get those confused. If
you go to a good Ace hardware store someplace you're
going to buy those, they know what to tell you
they'll sell you the right one for what you're going after. Now.
The we donator is another product that works. But whether

(02:42:36):
you use nitrofas with Trimec or Nelson's weedinator, you first
turn on water enough to wet the weeds. Maybe you
get a little of this misty rain. It'll do it
for you. Then run out there with the spreader. Put
that dry product out. It sticks to the weeds. If
it has at least a few hours, better a couple
of days, then it can be watered in real good

(02:42:57):
and go into the soil. So you get the nutrients
out of those products. But they both work.

Speaker 8 (02:43:03):
Okay, appreciate tale. That's what I needed to know.

Speaker 5 (02:43:07):
Alrighty, Well, that's it. Then good luck with that out
there in Missouri City. You bet appreciate that call. Thanks
a lot. Another day zoomed by and I'm about to
hear music and guess what's happening today? Listen? I can
tell you do you want to be warm and do
you want to be dry? Today? Here's how you do it.

(02:43:28):
You go to Willis at twelve o'clock to two o'clock.
I'm going to be at All Seasons Ace Hardware and
they guarantee me it will not be raining inside the store,
and it will be warm inside the store, warm and dry.
What can you ask for? We're going to be giving
away Nelson plant food products and products from the folks
at Medina, a lot of those give away. They've got

(02:43:50):
some Texas Gardener magazines on hand. Look, grab some weeds,
put them in a bag, bring them by. I'll identify
and tell you what to do about them. And they
got all the products there. You know that ACE Hardware
store is it's well stocked with the kinds of things
you need to have success, and that includes microlife products
and Nelson rescuing me the nitrophos with the one I'm

(02:44:11):
trying to say no, a night Fox product, Asam products
are going to be there too, Nature's Way resources. They've
got the topsoil, the potting soil, the composts, the rosemix,
the landscaper's pride, all of it's there at All Seasons.
ACE Hardware that is on I forty five North at
the Freeway service Road exit inn willis easy to find

(02:44:33):
or just go to Acehardware dot com find the store locator,
say hey, where's Ace or excuse me. All Seasons Ace
hardware you know on the radio. I have a short
time to answer your questions. Come see me face to
face today from twelve to two. They can talk and
talk and talk. It's gonna have a good time. Hope
you can make it. We'll be back on the air

(02:44:55):
again tomorrow morning, six to ten am.