Good Ol' Ags Talking Plants and Preparing for 100 Degree Weather

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Katie r h Garden line with Skip Ricord's shoes.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
The crazy man in the bassies and gas can use
a trim.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Just watch him as well.

Speaker 4 (00:15):
Go Stassi gas.

Speaker 5 (00:18):
You are so many potas to sup bopas in the
bay bringing the bassies and gass.

Speaker 6 (00:25):
And began you date the samos.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Becos back bricking. Not a sound in the glasses and
gas and.

Speaker 6 (00:35):
The sun bemon of twee ing in the bassis and gas?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Baby, can you.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Starting in and out of dreaming in the basses?

Speaker 7 (00:47):
I guess became you did.

Speaker 6 (00:50):
Everything is so clean and see and.

Speaker 8 (00:54):
The thing is sung you.

Speaker 9 (00:59):
So well.

Speaker 6 (01:38):
Good morning gardeners. Hey, guess what. It's Sunday morning, and
you know what, it's a nice temperature outside right now.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
It is.

Speaker 6 (01:51):
Boy, this week is going to heat up. By the
time we get the end of the week, we're gonna
be bumping around one hundred degrees for almost everybody in
the listening area. It's just too hot. It's just absolutely
too hot. But we'll take seventy seven right now. You know,
if you're going to enjoy yourself in the garden when

(02:12):
we hit summertime, gardening would comes primarily early morning and
very late day kind of thing. Late day is still hot,
but at least the sun's not making down as it
starts to go down on you. But we can get
a lot done, and we do need to get a
lot done in the gardens. There's plenty of things we
can do right now. This is the time of year
when people typically will kind of ignore the garden because

(02:35):
they don't want to be out there sweating and battle
in fire ance. More on fireance later. The key to remember, though,
is if you don't take care of weeds and things
like that ahead of time, it just becomes so much
more of a problem. And I was looking at a

(02:56):
garden bed somebody had the other day, and there was
a lot of nutgrass in it and nutsedge, and I,
you know, I'm not saying I don't go to people's
yards and say things like, you know, you really ought
to do that, or wow, you sure hadn't taken care
of your No, I don't do that, But as I
looked at it, I thought, every one of those nutsedge

(03:17):
plants is going to have I don't know, maybe eight
daughters they come off of it, and then they're gonna
have granddaughters from those and so you leave a nutsedge
plant undealt with if you will, and you were just
sentencing yourself to eight hundred I don't know eight thousand
times as much nutsedge. In fact, I saw one time

(03:41):
that I guess they must have taken a nutsedge nut
and put it in some nice moist sandy soil to
keep it as happy as they could, and it produced
eight or nine thousand tubers by the end of the year.
But that's only because it had daughters who had tubers,
who had tuber daughters who had tubers, And that's just insane.
And so I guess what I'm trying to get at

(04:01):
here is if you will go ahead and just knock
that stuff out now when you not just nutsuch, but
other weeds when they're young, get rid of them. So
how does weed control start? Let me do it this way.
Here is tips for lazy weeding, lazy weeders, Okay, And
so number one, never let the weed show up in

(04:23):
the first place. So that would mean in a garden,
in a flower bed places like that, it would mean
keeping mulch on the ground all the time, a good
thick glare of mulch, and at the first signs of
weeds you stir the mulch a little bit, a little
tiny weed seedling. When you stir the malt, it essentially
kills it and covers it. And you don't even have

(04:43):
to add more mults maybe if you have some there.
But adding mulch regularly is such a good idea. It
just is a good idea. And always keep it. I
do about three inches thick. It kind of pens the
the molts, the more light gets through. You know, bigger
chunks have bigger gaps between them, and so ye add

(05:06):
a little thicker than a finer multch would need to
be added. But you just skid it down there and
don't have weeds in the first place. Don't have weeds
from seeds in the first place. In a in a yard,
it means grown a dense yard. That's why I have
my lun care schedule. It's low water, fertilized. That's how
you grow a dense yard and air eight at times

(05:27):
when you have compaction that's preventing your grasp from thriving,
the bottom line is avoided. And now in a yard too,
there's such a thing as pre emergent herbicides to prevent
the seeds from coming up it's just when you when
you put it off, you got you got to face
a situation where you either don't do anything about it
and the problem gets much worse faster, or you have

(05:51):
to jump in and you have to use some post
emergent kinds of things to get rid of them, or
hand pulling, that's legit, it legit. Just try to shut
it down, because what do they say, one year of
weating is ten years of One year of seeding is
ten years of weating, Meaning you let one plant go

(06:12):
and you just get a whole bunch more and it
just gets worse. That's the bottom line. Deal with stuff early.
We've had so many adages along those lines. But you
know one of them is a stitch in time saves
nine And that's true, It's absolutely true. All right. So
taking care of those things out in the garden, making
sure you have things malts. It's hot, you gotta mulch

(06:34):
is like the wonder medicine for all kinds of garden problems.
And here's what I'm talking about. For example, it does
block sunlight and keep weed seeds from germinating. Number two,
it cools the soil, and soil gets hot and too
hot for roots to grow up in the top inch
or two depending on a number of factors. But when

(06:58):
you put mulch on it, say school, and you have
a deeper, moist well oxygenated roots on. You know, you
may think, well, can't roots go down deep? Well, yeah,
they can, and they do. But most most root activity
and root volume is occurring up in the upper part
of the soil, the upper six to ten inches, depending
on the plants and the soil that you have, And

(07:21):
the more that you can get good use out of,
the better off you are. Now that's another thing moultch does.
Mulch also decomposes to release its nutrients and organic matter
to the soil, so you just always add fresh mulch
on top of the old that's another benefit of mulch.
And then mulch helps hold moisture in the soil so
it doesn't just wike away and desiccate from the surface.

(07:43):
The surface soil desiccates, you've got to help hold onto
that moisture. So there's a few things that mulch does
that's a good thing to do. And you know, you
get out early in the mornings, maybe maybe very late
in the day and just do it a little bit,
you know, trying to mulch everything at once, but that's
does help. And by the way, if you haven't, if

(08:03):
you weren't hearing me before, the ground Up has got
a deal on molts that is incredible, incredible. They have
premium double shredded hardwood molts and shredded twice. It's a
fine like inch and a half shred It's a sweet,
earthy scent, smells so good. It's you know, it's been,

(08:26):
it's been partially composted. If you buy just a few bags,
it's two twenty five a bag. But if you buy
like ten or more, which who needs less than ten
bags of mults? If you say, well I only need
two or three, well put in the garage. You're gonna
want it because you're not going to get this kind
of price again. Two dollars per bag for ten plus bags,

(08:48):
and it takes thirteen and a half bags, by the way,
to make a cubic yard. If it's two cubic foot bags,
thirteen and a half bags is about a cubic yard.
And it's available at all the ground Up locations. You
can go to the website the ground up dot com.
There's three locations and you can also call them two eight, one,

(09:09):
nine to seven. Oh zero zero zero three. Let's take
a little break. We'll be right back. All right, Well,
welcome back to Guardenline. I'm your host, Skip Richter. We're
to helpe you have success, more fun, and more success.
That is what gardening should be about. At least I enjoy.

(09:30):
I thoroughly enjoy getting out and messing with stuff in
the garden.

Speaker 10 (09:34):
I just do.

Speaker 6 (09:34):
I did it yesterday or the day before, just out there.
I don't know, I trying things out, trying new things.
You know, you shouldn't be afraid of failing at gardening.
That it's not like it's not like a football game
or at the end there's a score and you either
won or lost. Right, gardening is it's an ongoing process.

(09:56):
And you're gonna kill plans, You're gonna have things that
don't work. You're gonna I have to move plants because
you put them somewhere where they didn't want to grow.
That's all okay.

Speaker 11 (10:05):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (10:05):
In fact, new plants come out all the time that
are better than the ones they used to have out there.
And so we're always we're always doing things out in
the garden and I do that myself. And sometimes when
I wonder about, you know, like will something work or not.
Like the other day, I was trying out a product,
and I'm trying it out in like three different ways

(10:26):
and situations. And I even like, if it's a herbicide,
I may I may spray it on a few weeds
that I don't know if it'll work on or not,
just over somewhere on the side, just to check them
out and see does that work or not. Uh, But
just get out there and play around, enjoy it, enjoy it.
You're gonna you're gonna learn every day in a garden.
And that is one of the things that keeps us

(10:47):
young is getting out and having the joy and the
hope and just imagining, you know, the next tomato season
is going to be the best one ever. Even have
the tastiest to maybe you've ever grown and learned some
new way to grow them. It's also a lot of
problems you've done before. That is what the hope of
gardening is. So I encourage you to get out and

(11:07):
do that. Don't be afraid to fail. That's the bottom line.
You cannot fail. You can give up hope. You don't
do that but you can't fail at gardening because it
is really really simple. You just keep trying, keep trying
new things, and then no shame in that at all.
Some of the best knowledge gain that I've had has

(11:31):
come from doing something wrong. Yeah, that's right, doing it
in a way that just that doesn't work like that,
and that's okay. That's how I learned. That's how I
get better, hopefully, That's how I advise you in ways
to avoid years. Whether they say learn from the mistakes
of others, you don't have time to make them all yourself,

(11:53):
that is certainly true, and that is certainly true gardening,
of course. So anyway, I was outside doing something, taking
care of some stuff. I've got some plants. I have
an extra challenging gardening. I don't know if you if
you have this situation or not, but I've got two
golden retrievers. And I didn't know this when I got them,

(12:15):
but I thought retriever meant that, like in a sporting dog,
they would go retrieve the bird that you just shot,
you know, and bring it back to you. And of
course that is what it means, but not in my house.
Retriever means that when I plant a little four inch
pot out in the backyard or gallon I found. They

(12:38):
immediately think that I forgot it and left it in
the garden, so they go bring it back to me.
And when when Ellie was very young, Ellie's our first
and she I went out and planted, and she was
with me, just a puppy out there having a good time.
And I went inside get drink water or something. Came
back out and there was a four inch pot right
there on the on the mat at the back. Yeah,

(13:01):
she brought it back for me, she retrieved it. Anyway,
I've tried to teach her to dig holes for me
so I can plant. I've tried to teach her, you know,
those kinds of things that would be helpful maybe to
retrieve weeds and make the little pile of those hadn't worked,
hadn't worked. And then Text arrives on the scene, Golden

(13:21):
Retriever number two, and he's let's just say, Text is
enthusiastic and exuberant. I call him my affable knucklehead. But anyway,
I love those dogs. But I'll tell you what I have.
I have a little wire things that a little circles
of wire. They want to plant a new plant. I

(13:41):
just put it around them because until the plant's been
there a while and it's not something new, yeah, it
needs protection from the retrievers from retrieving it. You may
have a dog like that east. I know this is
a gardening shot. I'm talking about dogs. But I used
to have a little Malti pooh. She had three brain cells.
One was used to keep her heart beating, one was

(14:02):
used to keep her lungs breathing, and the other one
was available for every other thing going on in her world.
And so anyway, Maddie, she would go eat tomatoes. And
I didn't know dogs ate green tomatoes until one day.
I was sitting there on the patio and I looked
over and I had a potted tomato and a plant
in a pot tomato plant, and it was moving, and

(14:26):
I thought, what is in that plant? And here comes
Maddie walking around the other side with green tomatoes. She
looked and saw me, didn't know I was there, and
I thought she'd drop it and hang her head and
feel bad. No, she just ate it. It's just like, yeah,
I just sold a tomato and I'm gonna eat it
right in front of you, kind of like eat your
lunch and pop the sack in your face kind of deal. Anyway,

(14:48):
enough about dogs. You probably have some dog stories. We'll
put up with those today if you like, tell me
your stories. Bottom line, let's get back to gardening. So
I some citrus trees. And if you have a citrus,
you probably noticed the citrus leaf miner. If you have not,
you're not familiar with that, let me give you a

(15:10):
real quick of what that is. The citrus leaf miner
is a little small flylike insect that it lays an
egg in between the upper and lower leaf surfaces of
the leaf, and that egg hatches out into a little

(15:32):
larva that feeds and tunnels between the upper and lower
surfaces in a little meandering pathway in the leaf. And
at some point it finishes what it's doing, and then
it chews a hole in the leaf and it drops
out and it pupatesund on the ground underground at the

(15:56):
ground and comes back as a fly to do that again.
And it attacks our citrus during growth flushes. So whenever
your citrus is putting on fresh, new tender growth, that's
what they go after. These old, dark green, leathery citrus leaves.
They don't mess with them. They can't, but the new
growth does. And we only get a few growth spurts

(16:17):
a year. There's the spring growth spurt. We got one
in summer. Sometimes there's one late and the fall kind
of growth spur. It just depends on how you're caring
for your citrus. But you only need if you're going
to spray. You only need to spray during the growth
spurt when the leaves are tender. And there's an organic
product for it called spin No said spin No sad

(16:38):
and that's not the brand name. That is the ingredient
and you buy it in many brands. Spray the leaves.
It soaks into the tender new leaf tissues. Again, you
don't have to spray all the leaves on the tree,
just the growth spurs. And then when the pest tries
to chump on it, anything tries to jump on it,

(16:58):
Spinosa takes it out and again it's an organic product. Now,
when you are caring for this cetrus, just know that
those guys are around. They're all over the area. And
if you've got ceentrus anywhere near you, you're going to
have the centrus leaf miner. If you have a young
tree and you're trying to get it to grow produce

(17:20):
a lot of leaves, so that you grow a lot
of growth of branches so that you can hang a
lot of fruit on that tree. When bloom time comes,
you want to deal with the leaf miner and shut
it down so that you get that tree up in
a good size. Once you have an established tree. The
leaf miner looks ugly. It makes it. There's some ugliness
to it. It causes the leaves to curl and twist.

(17:42):
They almost take on a little silvery appearance where the
little larvae has chewed all the leaf. The green tissues
out of the interior of the leaf, but it's not
going to affect the production in any significant form whatsoever
of the tree. So we kind of tend to ignore
them as they get older, deal with them when they're young.

(18:02):
If you want to deal with them, just remember you
just have a few growth spurts when you're primarily wanting
to deal with them, and that's what you do. Something
to keep in mind about citrus leaf miner. So that's
one of the things that I'm dealing with on my
I've got a couple of young trees. I've got a
couple of that are getting close to where I'm gonna

(18:23):
quit worrying about the leaf miner. Not worry about those
things anymore. Remember on your citrus to always keep the
suckers removed. Suckers coming from the base of the plant,
the root stock need to be taken off. You can
look at your trunk of your citrus tree at the
bottom you can see kind of a change in the
trunk where it was budded or grafted, and that growth

(18:49):
coming from below that is the rootstock. Typically it's much
thornier than the citrus variety. We have some thorny citrus,
some that aren't thrny at all, but the rootstock are
very thorny, and another sign of the that it's a
rootstock shoot. Had someone one time told me they had
a thorny shoot right in the middle of their tree, thought, well,

(19:09):
that's weird. And what happened is it was a rootstock
that grew straight up alongside the trunk, up into the tree,
and then you saw it. Most most of our rootstocks
here are on trifoliate, orange and trefoliot try three folio
leaves instead of like regular citrus, where you have one leaf.
It has little clusters of smaller leaves in groups of three.

(19:33):
Everywhere there's a leaf, there's three leaflets. That's trifolio. That's
a rootstock. Follow it down, cut it off where it attaches.
Simple as that. All right, we're gonna have to stop here,
turn it over to Erica for the news, and we'll
be right back, maybe with your calls seven one three,
two one two five eight seven four seven one three
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Good have you

(19:56):
with us? We're going to run right out to the
phones this segment now and go to Stagecoach Texas. Talk
to Terry. Hey, Terry, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 11 (20:07):
Welcome, thank you. I'll call you a few times before
I'm I know we're heading into real hotspell next week,
but foll'll do it then. But is it is it
a good idea or a bad idea to fertilize your
long this type of year. If it's a bad idea,
when is the first window to kind of fertilize it.
If it's a good idea and I fertilize it next

(20:27):
week or so, then when should I do kind of
my fall feeding. So it's okay, series of fall ended questions,
I guess.

Speaker 6 (20:37):
Got you, well, I'm going to go backwards on the
answer here. The fall feeding is done in October period.
That's that's the best time. Now, could you do it
in late September? Yeah, you could. Could you do it
in November? You could, But October gives you the best
time for the plant to take up the potassium and
nitrogen that are most important in winter heartiness and early

(20:57):
spring growth. So that's why we schedule it for October.
As far as other fertilizing, you can do it kind
of when you want it. There is no problem with
the heat because what you're gonna do is put the
fertilizer out, and if it's an organic product, it's going
to have to break down microbialle and it typically does
not burn your plants at all. You're not gonna make

(21:18):
it burn your plants. If it's a synthetic that's especially
an immediate release. The little granules are salt based, and
so if you think about it, you know, you put
a little granular salt on a leaf and get it
wet and let it sit there. It's going to burn
a spot in that leaf. But with normal fertilization of
a lawn, you're going to water it in real good anyway,
and so that sort of isn't an issue. The sprinklers

(21:42):
knock the particles off and dissolve them and you know,
run them down in the soil, so I wouldn't worry
about fertilizing in the heat. Just make sure you do
give it a good watering to get that nutrient down
in the soil and get it off the plant foliage
in this case.

Speaker 11 (22:00):
So as long as you're I said, really, I guess
so in theory doesn't really matter. And by synthetic, I'm
assuming you mean that like the stuff you get the
big box stores, right Orthromax, No.

Speaker 6 (22:15):
It's there now. Well, I mean some of those things
are synthetic. But what I mean by synthetic is well,
of course organic is let's just do it this way.
Products that we have that are from microlife are organic.
Nelson's has a line of products that are organic. The

(22:36):
Medina Folks have things that I would call organic. They're
primarily organic. And the Medina Folks then the standard you know,
the Nitropruss standards, the Nelsons standards and things, those are
going to be more of a synthetic fertilizer. It'll tell
you if it's it's a natural base. But synthetics, they
just take the ingredients and they combine them together. It's

(22:58):
a chemical combination that whenever you take and put things
like that together, they're called a salt. I won't go
into the chemistry why, but bottom line is they're all
good fertilizers. Just keep in mind. My only question you're
talking about fertilizing in the heat is just yeah, you
drop granules of a fertilizer on a leaf and just

(23:21):
get it a little wet, and it's going to dissolve
and create a burned spot. That that's possible, but with
proper application watering in it's not a concern at all.

Speaker 11 (23:34):
All right, great, well, I appreciate the inflat.

Speaker 6 (23:38):
Yeah, now you need somebody to come out and go
do it for you so you can sit inside where
it's air conditioned, drinking iced tea watching them.

Speaker 11 (23:46):
Well, I'll definitely be doing it either at the crack
of dawn or at dash, not at two.

Speaker 6 (23:51):
In the after Okay, all right, Terry, Well you take care,
appreciate you call. Thank you.

Speaker 10 (24:00):
There we go.

Speaker 6 (24:03):
Yeah, I hope that makes sense. You know that there's
a lot of strong opinions about many things in life,
and that certainly comes with gardening as well, especially when
we start talking about chemicals and things. There's organic options,
there's synthetic options, and I could spend a week of
shows just talking about some of the factors between those

(24:27):
options and things. And the way I look at it
is everybody has an opinion on how they want to
do things. I have my way of doing things myself,
and when it comes to helping folks, I try to
help people do it as they wish to do it.
You know, So if you're gonna you want to use
a product, you use an organic product, can advise you

(24:47):
and help you do that. If you want to use
a synthetic product, advise you and help you on how
you're going to do that. With either way, we want
to make sure you are you were doing it safely
for both humans and four pets and beneficial insects additionally,
And so that is very important and part of how

(25:09):
to do it and how to do it so that
you get the results. You know, we have fast release synthetics.
They just think of them as sugar or table salt.
You throw them out there, you get them wet, they
dissolve and now they're in that liquid solution in the soil.
That's fast release. Then you have slow release synthetics, and
those the particles are there, but because of different chemistries

(25:33):
and different coatings over the particle, they may not release
right away. It may be a month or two months
or three months, or some of them will go out
to like five months or so, depending on whether and
whatnot that are releasing those nutrients out there in the soil.
But then they finally break loose and become available down

(25:53):
in the soil. And then with the organics, typically they're
kind of a somewhat slow release in that you put
them down, the granules have to get wet and microbes
have to get a hold of them and start breaking
those ingredients down, those natural ingredient. It's just like a
cowpie sitting in a pasture. Something's got to grab a

(26:14):
hold of that and turn the nutrients in it into
forms plants can use. And so that's microbes, and so
there's a little bit of a time process for doing that.
But it's not a fully slow release, like it's going
to release three months from now necessarily, But there's a
variation in all of it. You just want to understand

(26:34):
how it works and so you can do it most effectively.
All right, let's take a little break here and we
will be back in just a moment. Before I do
go to break, I just want to mention, since we're
talking about some synthetics and slow release, Superturf from Nitrofoss
is the nineteen four to ten product from night Foss.
It has a gradual release over time. It's the silver

(26:55):
bag that you see in the store. You put it
out at about five pounds per thousand square feet somewhere
in that range, and it goes a long way and
it lasts a long time, and that is beneficial, so
you don't have to get out and fertilize again and
again and again. You can find it it places like
in Chanted Gardens down on FM three fifty nine in
the Richmond Rosenberg area, or perhaps Court Hardware on South

(27:19):
Maine in Stafford. Or let's head over to the Copperfield
region FM five twenty nine Langham Creek Ace Hardware in
the Cypress area. We'll be right back. You're listening to
Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richtor. We're here to
help you have success. The way I like to say
it is, I want you to have a bountiful garden,
a beautiful landscape, and more fun in the process. That

(27:41):
is what we want to see happen here. Now, that
is not difficult to do if you can learn to
see things from a plant's point of view bottom line.
I don't remember who said that. I read that a
good long time ago. Somebody made that statement. I wish
I knew concredit him. But something about plant success is

(28:03):
learning to see things from a plant's point of view
or garden success. And it's so true. It's so true,
and that's what we try to do here on Guarden Line.
You know, we take time, we explain how things work,
try to stay out of getting too nerdy with you
on these things. But I've had more than one listener
tell me, oh, we like them when you explain some

(28:24):
of those things, so we still do that. I think
it helps to understand why you're doing things, because then
you know how to do them more correctly, and you
understand you know what might or might not work. In
other words, how does it work. Another fellow guy named
Joe Gardner who has great programs on TV and radio

(28:48):
or podcast. He refers to his program as the Why
that Why Do Behind the how to, I think, is
how he puts it words. I can tell you how
to do something, but let's tell why to do something
like that, and that does that does certainly help you
understand how it works. Like we were talking about citrus

(29:08):
leave minor earlier, and when you understand what the insect
is and what it's doing, and you know what it needs,
then you understand not only when to expect it, but
where to treat if you're going to treat for it,
and what to use when you're going to use it.
But it does help to understand that. So we spend
a little bit of time doing that here on garden

(29:29):
Line as well. It does help to understand how things work. Now.
Earlier I was talking about weeds and mults and weeds
that come from seeds. So a tiny little seedling is
a little package of an embryonic life form with food
around it. And when it gets wet. When a seed

(29:50):
gets wet, it doesn't matter if it's a tomato seed
or a crabgrass seed. When it gets wet, it takes
moisture and it gets wet. It's starts a biochemical process
and once that begins germination. The process of germination is beginning.
Then if that seed dries out, it dies. It Once

(30:13):
it's you know, it can be dry and lay in
there for eons almost and it's fine. But once it
starts the germination process, if it dries out, it dies,
and it only has a certain amount of food packed
in order to get it by until it gets a
root down and compete itself. That's what the seed is.

(30:34):
So when that process starts, when you get it moist
and it starts to germinate, if you can keep it
from getting to sunlight for a while, not too long,
but for a while it is, it's not able to
stay alive and sustain, and it dies. It's blocked out.
Molts doesn't physically keep seedlings from growing up to the sun.

(30:58):
It just blocks the sunlight out as they're trying to
get going, and they run out of energy and die. Now,
there are malt is like the fabric mults as you
put on the ground that physically block them from coming up.
Our cardboard would have the same effect of physically blocking.
But in general, that's what we're trying to do on
those seedlings, and that's why mulchworks. However, there's things that
are perennial weeds, they have stored underground energy and they

(31:22):
can wait a long time in order to find sunlight.
And that would include nutsedge nutgrass. That kernel has a
lot of stored energy, and that thing can go a
long time without dying. That Bermuda grass is another one.
Bermuda grass can crawl around underground. And you know, I've

(31:44):
moltz and molts and molts with newspapers, which bermuda grass
won't punch through newspaper. Nutgrass will. But bermuda grass crawling
around under newspaper, finding a little hole in the newspaper
and popping its head up to get sunlight.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
That works.

Speaker 6 (32:02):
So the perennials are more difficult to control with mulch,
but you can still at least deter them somewhat with
the mulches, and then you have to start looking at
other options.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Hand.

Speaker 6 (32:14):
Digging them out as whole is a good idea because
you get all those underground structures out. And a lot
of times people have told me that they try something
that they're trying to, you know, control, and it's like, yeah,
I tried it, I dug it and stuff and I
just couldn't control it. Well, here's something to remember. Some weeds.
Hand digging is just not practical to do. But every weed,

(32:39):
if every time it tries to stick its head up
you remove it's spent energy to grow that shoot to
come up in the in the light and before it
has time to capture sunlight and replace its energy. If
you remove it, then it has to use more spent
energy to grow again. And if theoretically, if you could
stay diligent on that, you could get rid of it.

(33:01):
Eat that way even difficult to control weeds, but practicality speaking,
that typically is not something we're able to fully do,
all right, Just something for you to think about. Right
there by the way. Peerscapes is an awesome landscape provider.
There are go to. It doesn't matter what you need,
from design to servicing your irrigation to creating that unbelievable

(33:23):
outdoor living space that is so nice on a summer
evening to get out and enjoy with your friends. Peerscapes
dot Com is their website. Here's a phone number two
eight one three seven oh fifty sixty. You gotta go
to the website and check them out. They've got a gallery,
a photo gallery, a video gallery. Pierscapes dot com two

(33:44):
eight one three, seven oh fifty sixty. Take a look.
Please go look at the gallery. Take a look at
what they can do. It's amazing, absolutely all right with that,
here we go little break top of the hour news.
You and I need to top off our coffee and

(34:04):
we'll meet right back here in just a moment. I
have a very special guest coming on at eight o'clock
this morning, doctor Mike Arnold, Professor Texa A and M University.
He is in charge of the gardens on campus there,
and we are going to have some conversation that I
promise you will find fascinating. So stick around make sure

(34:25):
eight o'clock this morning, We're going to have doctor Arnold
on for an hour and you will enjoy it. I
can tell you that wonderful fella. I love visiting with
the doctor Arnold, and you will love hearing him talk
about some of the things we are going to talk
about this morning. Walk back to gardening. Thanks good to

(34:50):
have you with us. Hey, if you got a gardening question,
that would be a good time to call. Seven one
three two one two five eight seven four seven one
three two one two fifty eight seventy four. For those
of you just tuning in at the eight o'clock hour.
Today we had a special guest, doctor Mike Arnold from
Texas and M University Horticulture Department. Professor Arnold is also

(35:12):
in charge of the gardens on campus, and we'll talk
a little bit about that and also some fun stuff
about some of the research going on there and some
specifics that I think you will find very very interesting.
So stay tuned for that. In the meantime. Seven one
three two one two five eight seven four is how

(35:34):
you can reach out and we can talk gardening ourselves.
I you know, I like birds, and I wasn't a
birder to begin with, but once I went into a
wild Bird's Unlimited store, I started getting really interested. You know,
they have such great equipment there. You know, for example,

(35:55):
you want a Martin house. For if you do wanted
a Martin house, they have all kinds of options, from
kind of plastic gourds that look like the old you know,
people would drill a hole in the gourd and make
a Martin house up in the air. These are much
better versions, of course, to a really nice Martin hotel.
It's a purple Martin hotel that it's put together in

(36:16):
such a way that you can drop it down to
the ground with you know, with ease, you can get
in there and pull out the panels and clean things
out and just make it really nice. And then that
includes feeders as well for various kinds of birds, and
includes seed for various kinds of birds, seed blends. There's
a lot of things in cheap bird seed that you're

(36:39):
paying for. You may be thinking you're getting a good deal,
but you're paying for it. But you know, if something
is fifty percent milow the little red bebies, that is
not a favorite of very many birds at all. In fact,
they just don't care for it, and so you're not
really getting a good deal. But with a wild bird's
unlimited blend, you're getting perfect perfectly what the birds themselves

(37:02):
are interested in eating. You can even get no mess
blends where the shells have already been taken off and
all you've got is one hundred percent in the bag
what goes into a bird's stomach. That is a good deal. Now,
right now we're recommending the feather pro because birds they
finished their their egg laying and raising new young kind

(37:23):
of season and now they're in the feather molting. The
feather development season where proteins and fatch are very important
for that. You can buy it in a bag. You
can also buy it in those compress cylinders. There's even
a compress cylinder with hot pepper oil in it to
keep the little squirrels out of your birds eat. But
when you go into a wild Bird's Unlimited store, you're

(37:45):
going to find people that know what they're talking about.
They absolutely are professionals at this. They know their stuff.
Trust me. I've tried to play stump to jump with
them and it doesn't work. They know their stuff very
very well. So where do you go to get Wildbird's
Unlimited store? There's six in the Greater Houston area, clear

(38:06):
like on Eldorado Boulevard, Cypress on Barker Cypress, down in
south and to the west of Houston on bel Air
Boulevard Southwest and then west directly out west on Memorial Drive,
in Kingwood on Kingwood Drive, and in Pairland on East Broadway.
If you want to find you and you can't remember

(38:27):
all those stores, it's fine, just go to wb U
dot com forward slash Houston find your Wildbirds and Limited store.
By the way, on that website, you're going to see
a lot of other cool information on the products and
information on every kind of bird that you might be
interested in. Let's head out now to Creedmore, Texas and

(38:48):
we'll visit with Bill this morning. Hey Bill, welcome to gardening.

Speaker 9 (38:53):
Good morning.

Speaker 10 (38:53):
How are you.

Speaker 6 (38:55):
I'm doing great. I'm going to help you.

Speaker 12 (38:57):
Good deal.

Speaker 9 (38:58):
I got a field full of miski bushes and I
was wondering what's the best way to kill those suckers?

Speaker 6 (39:05):
All right, So there's a thing that texta A and
input out years ago called brush Busters, and the website itself.
I don't know if they have the website still up,
but if you do a search and you do like
brush busters and then Mesquite, it will give you information

(39:27):
on exactly how to go about it. The bottom line
on it. Yeah, the Brushbusters website is still there, Brushbusters Mesquite.
So you go in there and it talks about controlling
all kinds of difficult to control things from prickly pair
to tallow trees, to se cedar and mesquite and whatnot.

(39:48):
And you can spray the leaves or you can do
a stem spray where you spray something on the bran
on the trunk down below. If it's a smaller trunk,
not a giant mesquite tree with thick bark, but a
smaller one. Tells you what to use, tells you how
to mix it, and that is your solution right there.
If you're looking for a spray option.

Speaker 10 (40:07):
Well I was, there's thousands of them. I was thinking, Well,
another option would be like a mechanical some kind of
a spade on the on the end of a piece
of equipment. So like, uh yeah, huh okay, yes, okay,
well that I mean.

Speaker 6 (40:24):
You know, they they do. There are different ways.

Speaker 4 (40:27):
You know.

Speaker 6 (40:28):
They have a little blade that goes under the ground
and pulls up brush and stuff like that. You just
a lot of times you have to be careful because
a lot of times you don't get it, you end
up with re sprouting and it's almost like it's almost
like it got worse than it was before. So you
want to make sure that you're able to uh get
it all out when you when you do that, let

(40:48):
me see what creed more. What is your what county
are you? Oh you're south of Austin, aren't you.

Speaker 13 (40:56):
Yep?

Speaker 9 (40:57):
Yeah, it's crevice.

Speaker 6 (41:00):
Okay, So what I would do? Travis County has an
ag agent, and Hayes County, which is south of you,
has an AG agent, And if you call either of
the extension offices and talk to the ag agent there,
they could continue on and discuss whether there is a
plowing option to get rid of the askee or not,

(41:22):
and what it what it would take to do that.
In fact, you're kind of between three counties with ANAG agent.
The luck of the Oh gosh, what's the county in
Lockhart just south of you? Just a blank on it? Anyway, Uh,
those three, the three counties around you, we'll all have
a guy who can really help you with that further
than I can.

Speaker 9 (41:44):
Okay, thank you, I was, I'm away from the from
my pen. Would you be able to transfer me back
to the call screener and I can get you in
from him. Appreciate it, Thank you.

Speaker 6 (41:55):
Let me put you on put you on hold.

Speaker 7 (41:57):
There we go.

Speaker 6 (41:57):
All right, there you go.

Speaker 11 (41:59):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (42:00):
Folks at Medina have got some awesome products. You hear
me talk about them all the time. But I want
to talk about one right now that I just think
is probably definitely underutilized by gardeners, and that's Medina fish Blend.
Now Medina fish Blend it's a natural fish spaceh fertilizer,
but it also has in it. It includes the fish

(42:23):
and mulsion, but it also has seaweed extract in it.
And it's got K molasses, apple cider vinegar, and then
it has both the humic and the fulvic acids. That's
part of the what you get out of humus, the
final decomposed stage of organic matter. And it has seven
different beneficial bacteria that are they do a number of
things in the soil.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
We know.

Speaker 6 (42:44):
Some of them are active in disease prevention, some of
them are active in helping make nutrients more available and
so on. Medina fish Blend can be used as a
folio spray. You can use it as a drench. I
would recommend that you use it. It's got two percent nitrogen,
percent phosphorus, and two percent potassium. But you're not just
doing it from a fertilization standpoint. You're doing it as

(43:07):
a way of enhancing the plant growth, improving the soil situation,
and just watching your plants do better. Medeina fish plane
comes in quartz and it comes in gallons and it
goes a long way. I think a quart will make
thirty two gallons of spray or something like that. It's
a very economical thing to use, and I like that

(43:28):
the fish in motion and seaweed has always been kind
of a combo that organic gardeners used as a folier feed,
as a liquid feed as well mediina fish pland just
remember it's a fish based product. So I wouldn't use
it inside the house. If you have any cats, they're
going to love that because it does have a little
bit of an odor to it that then dissipates a

(43:49):
way when you're outside in the environment. It doesn't not
something that will continue to smell or anything. Just don't
use it in the house, use it outside. But it
is an awesome, awesome product. Let's go now to DJ
in Cleveland. Hey DJ, welcome to garden Line. Good morning, Skip,
Thank you sir.

Speaker 14 (44:08):
How are you.

Speaker 6 (44:10):
I'm doing good?

Speaker 14 (44:11):
How are you doing excellent? I'm sure that deserved, sir,
Thank you very much. So I am fighting fire ants
all over my yard. I just started gardening in the
fall and I've probably planted. I've got I think ten trees,
a bunch of different types of fruit trees, a bunch
of pretty stuff lilies hibiscus, just kind of all over

(44:31):
my wife and I went wild this year, but I
got fire ants. I've never fought so many fire ants.

Speaker 6 (44:38):
All right, I'm gonna get you to hang on. I
have to go to break. When we come back, we're
going to tackle this fire ant. DJ, just stay tuned.
We'll be right back with you in one second. We
were visiting with DJ about fire ants and had to
go to a quick break. Hey, DJ, sorry to have
to cut your question in half there, but I had
a hard break on me. Uh So you got basically,

(45:01):
they're all over the place. Sounds like they're in places
where you're growing edible crops and places where you're not.
Is that correct, Yes, sir, And.

Speaker 14 (45:10):
I wanted to stay organic, away from any kind of
synthetic pesticides.

Speaker 8 (45:14):
Yes, sir.

Speaker 6 (45:15):
All right. In that case, there is a product out
there called Come and Get It. Come and Get It.
It's a fertilan product, and it is a bait that
has spindocid, which I was talking about earlier for citru
sleep miner. It has spinosid is the active ingredient, and
it's only organic bait I know of for fire ants.

(45:37):
There may be something else out there, but I haven't
run across it yet. But it would be an effective
bait to put out and use. Then you can also
do individual mound treatments. You know, if you do Typically
when you do the bait, you don't get everything. You
get the vast majority of it, but there may be
a few that escape, and you can do individual mound treatments.

(45:58):
There are products that have limon nan in them, which
is a citrus extract, kind of an orange oil sort
of thing.

Speaker 9 (46:06):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (46:07):
And then of course there's there's other things. I mean,
if it's not around a plant, people use boiling water
to pour on them a mound and kill an individual mount.
But generally going after individual mounds, especially as a start,
is not fruitful at all. You need to start with
a bait and be ready to periodic periodically use it
and always have fresh bait. If you've got bait and
you store it in the hot shed outside, uh, it's

(46:30):
gonna not be palatable to the fire ance and and
they're not gonna pick it up. So you always want
to have good, good fresh bait. Here's what I do.
Fiance during the heat of summer, believe it or not,
despite their name, they they go underground. They don't want
to come out when it's hot. Uh, and they feed
more in the mornings and in the afternoons evenings rather

(46:51):
not after the evening. If you get you some painpe
potato chips and you just toss them here and put
a chip here and there around the yard or around
the places, and if you see come back fifteen minutes
there will be fireants all over it. That means they're
actively feeding. That means put your bait out. That's that
would be a good time to do that. So just

(47:11):
a few tips.

Speaker 7 (47:13):
Excellent, Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (47:16):
All right, DJ, you take care, good luck with those
finance as well. I was, I was, I was just
watching a special on fire ance on TV last night.
Actually I can't remember what it was. It was fascinating.
Maybe a little time today we'll talk about that. Yeah,
but anyway, it's good. Hey, if you haven't done a
lawn fertilization in a while and you want to give

(47:38):
a quick green up to your lawn that looks really
good and smells good too. By the way, that's called
sweet green from nitrophoss. Sweet green is a molasses based product.
I was asking some questions of a soul scientist that
I know about. You know, how can you use molasses
and make eleven percent nitrogen product. And they were just
talking about microbial activity and some things, and that's this

(48:00):
kind of how sweet Green work. You put it down,
you watered in. Any organic gardener will tell you they
use molasses in the garden to stimulate mycrobial activity because
carbon chains sugars. That makes especially beneficial bacteria really happy.
And that's kind of how sweet Green is. And it
does work. I absolutely have seen it work. It's an excellent,

(48:20):
excellent product. You're going to find it like other night
foss products. It places like Chented Forests down in Richmond
Rosenberg on twenty seven fifty nine, at Ace Hardware City
on Memorial Drive, and at Headen and feed in Stupid Airline.
They all carry night Foss products as well as others
like this Sweet Green. We're going to go now to

(48:42):
Baytown and talk to Dwyane. Hello Dwayne, good morning, Skip.

Speaker 7 (48:48):
Thanks Michall. Hey, I've sent you some pictures of a
oak tree. I just emailed them to you a few
minutes ago. Okay, okay, that tree is probably approximately about
twenty years old. When it was about eight years old,
it was starting to split, so I put it all

(49:11):
rod through it with some big washers and nuts. But
anyway you can see. I sent you a picture of
a branch that just failed to hewn, and I was
concerned about the black that's inside that branch and if
that tree has a disease or if that's just normal.

Speaker 6 (49:30):
No, it's not a disease. That is normal. And you know,
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but
that tree early on needed a different pruning regimen. And
when you get two branches that are and I'm saying
this because other people listening have trees that have these situations.
So when someone is a young tree and the branch

(49:51):
angle is very narrow, you'd like the branches to come
out at a forty five or sixty degree angle from
from each other. But when they're very narrow, those two
branches look like they're far apart. But as each one
goes from being pencil sized to being golf ball sized
to being baseball sized, being basketball sized, they start pushing

(50:14):
against each other because they're both getting bigger and pushing
each other away. And that is why you see those
bulges on the side of the tree sticking out. That
kind of bulging is an indication of that and down
in that v between the two branches, there is a
lot of black, dead, rotting bark because it can't grow together.

(50:36):
It's not wood, it's bark pushing against bark. And that
is where you will likely get a split during a
storm because of that weak connection angle. That's made worse
by the fact that now they're pushing each other apart.
So that's what that's what's going on with those.

Speaker 7 (50:56):
So if that tree was in you, Jord, would you
go ahead and cut it down and make you planning
the other one?

Speaker 6 (51:02):
Boy, I tell you that is a hard question to answer.
There's no fixing it at this stage, is not going
to get better. Yeah, you know what I would do.
I would get it. I would get get you an

(51:23):
arborist out there to take a look at it, to
go around the tree, to examine it and make some
make some decisions on it.

Speaker 15 (51:30):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (51:30):
That way, I would call Martin an affordable tree. I
don't know if you if you have as a number
or not, but it's uh seven one three six nine
nine two six six three and have him come out
take a look at it and see what he would recommend.
My concern is the fact that it's going to get
worse over time. It looks like it's a live oak.

(51:52):
I can't read. Yeah, live oaks are pretty tough and
resilient and and they they have to deal with stuff
like this. So you know, after an examination, he may decide,
you know what, I think we can we can save
this tree because it's reached such a size now that
gosh to start over would as you know, would be
just really sad. So I would call Martin at Affordable

(52:15):
Tree Service and have him take a look at it.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Okay, I appreciate it, yep, all.

Speaker 6 (52:21):
Right, you bet, thank you doing thanks yep. That's a
training begins at planting folks, and when you start, when
you have bad branch angles and things, it only goes
gets worse over time. And so it's always a good
idea when you get a new tree, I have somebody

(52:41):
who knows what they're doing come in help you train it,
or go online and learn how to do it properly.
That's that's very important if you want to have good
success with that. Nelson Water Gardens in Katie, Texas is
one of my favorite garden centers, and the reason is
number one, you go out there and just the sound
of water I mean it is. It is so relaxing,

(53:02):
it is so soothing. They are the I'm talking about
nationally recognized, known, and awarded company. We're fortunate time right
here in the Houston area because they know water gardens.
They invented like the disappearing fountain where water comes out
of a container and goes back in the ground and recirculates.

Speaker 1 (53:22):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (53:22):
They've got a lot of good things going on out there.
The Ding dangt sale is still going on. The Ding
Dang sale is kind of like what scratched and dent
kind of some stories talk about scratching and dent. Well,
that that's kind of what it is. You can pick
up some really nice things. They have a really good
selection of products they got. They got Nelson Turf Star line,

(53:44):
the Nelson Turf Star products for your lawn out there
at Nelson Nursery and water Gardens.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (53:50):
So, I would recommend you go out and check the
nursery out because there's a lot still in the nursery
that you want. You need some hot weather plants like vinkas,
like pentas, like angelonia. They are stocked up on those
and they do so well here in the heat of summer.
You're looking for some milkweed. I believe they just got
swamp milk weed in the other day.

Speaker 7 (54:11):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (54:11):
They're always keeping milkweed there at the nursery Nelson Nursing
Water Gardens, Katie Fort Ben Road, just north of I ten.
Head up Katie Fort Ben Road and it's just down
the street. The main thing is just go take your friends.
Oh and I always say this, but take your kids.
They'll give them fish food and the kids can go
drop little fish pellets into the koy's mouth. Quick come

(54:32):
right up out of the water and open their mouth
for the kids to feed them. It is fun. Kids
of all ages like it. This kid does. We'll be
right back in just a moment. Folks. Stay tuned. Welcome
to garden Line, folks. Good to have you with us.
What kind of gardening question do you have? Let's talk
about it all. Yeah, I do is call seven one
three two one two five eight seven four, or if

(54:54):
you like the doll buy letters. Some people do makes
it easier for them to remember seven to one three
two one two ktr h. We can also do it
that way as well. So I was talked about a
number of things this morning, including a pess and whatnot.
I mentioned that I saw a fire ant documentary last

(55:14):
night that I watched and I can't remember as either
Netflix or Prime or something like that. Anyway, it was
really fascinating and I've I've been learning about fire ants
for decades now, you know, in my extension career, we
were continuing to get continuing education. I'd picked the brain
of entomologists who specialized in fire ants. By the way,

(55:35):
there is a website at Texas A and M and
it's fire ant dot tamu dot ed u fire fireant
one word dot tamu dot e d u And if
you go there you will find a lot of interesting stuff.
When you first look at it, it's like I don't
know where to click. Well, where you need to click

(55:57):
is on manage, manage or learn learn about fire ants.
It is just amazing. But they're like videos of a
little fly called the forehead fly p h O R
I D. And this fly is from where fire ants
are from. We used to think they're from Brazil. Now

(56:17):
we know they're from actually in part of a place
in Argentina, the original location of them. But these forard
flies are little tiny flies and this is just cool.
So imagine this. You get to watch the video if
you go to the website. When you when you when
a fire ants running around on top of the ground,
this little fly comes by and it just like it

(56:39):
just like dive bombs them like a mocking bird, you know,
chasing the cataway or something, and just real quick, and
they pop an egg into the fire ants body and
that egg hatches into larva, and the larva grows up
a little bit and it crawls through the body, through
the narrow neck area into the fire ants head. I

(57:00):
hope you're not eating breakfast right now. You might want
to put on the fork if you are, anyway, and
then it grows inside the head of the fire and
eating the fire ants brains and all the stuff in
the head of the fire ant and the head falls off,
which if you're the other fire ants, it's like, oh,
did you see what just happened to Joey this morning? Anyway,
it freaks them out. And then the fly finishes its

(57:24):
life cycle and comes out as an adult out of
the fire ant head. Is that cool or what? Yeah?
That's cool stuff anyway. Check out fire ant dot TAMU
dot eu if you want to learn some more there's
also a section for those of you with kiddo's called
Kids Ants kid Z A n t S. That's part
of the website, and there's some very helpful articles for

(57:44):
teachers and others, some good links on there for kids
that want to learn all about ants.

Speaker 9 (57:50):
So there you go.

Speaker 6 (57:53):
Uh, fire ants. I have had my own personal experiences
with fire ants, and they're very painful to remember as
our years, I'm sure remember, uh for those of you
that are old enough to remember when they really became
a problem.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
Here they they.

Speaker 6 (58:11):
We we learned when we walked through the yard. And
I grew up in a in a very small town,
not truly in the country, but in a very small town,
and I learned whether we were on our farm or
at the house. When you when you're walking along looking
up and you step in something soft, it's not okay.

(58:31):
It's never okay. It's either a cow patty where the
family dog just went, or a fireant mount and all
three of them are bad news. Fire ants are maybe
the worst news. So I was printing peaches at a
peach tree in Louisiana one time, and I swear these
fire ants. They they had little microphones and earpieces and
they crawled up my legs all the way after my waist.

(58:54):
And then one of them said, now, and I'm telling you,
I was instantly under it attack. Let's just say modesty
took a back seat to pain relief, and so I
managed to get myself. I was out in a peach
orchard pruning. Yeah, it was kind of interesting. Okay, enough
enough personal stories with shocking mental images. We are glad

(59:19):
to have you here with us on garden Line today.
We are gonna talk in a little bit here at
the top of the hour eight o'clock, we're gonna have
doctor Mike Arnold from Texas A and M. Things will
become a little more dignified than they are right now
on garden Line. Doctor Arnold is a professor at A
and M. He's also the fellow in charge of the

(59:40):
gardens on campus, and we're going to talk about some
of the research going on at A and M. We're
talk about the gardens UH and plants in general. He
is a plant expert and so wrote a book called
Landscape Plants of Texas and Environs I believe is how
it's titled something close to that, but it's got a law, long, long,

(01:00:00):
list us as a textbook in university. So there you go,
doctor Donald, stay tuned for that one. Uh if you
have some gardening questions again seven one, three, two, one, two, five,
eight seven four. I do want to mention before we
go to the phones that we talked about mulching and
the importance of that. I just want to once more

(01:00:21):
give you a little tip on watering. You know, when
we want our lawns, it's deeply and infrequently. That's the
way you use the least water to get the most
benefit with the least encouragement of disease issues. That's why
we do the lawns that way. But what about containers.
You know when a container gets dry, so it could

(01:00:43):
become hydrophobic. Have you ever seen a dry, very dry
kitchen sponge and you can put a drop of water
on the dry sponge and it just sits there on
top of the sponge, a little ball of water. U
if the sponge is slightly moist, it just soaks that
water in instantly. When it touches. Soil can be the
same way. It becomes a little hydrophobic when it gets
too dry. A lot of soils can and so you

(01:01:06):
need to keep the soil adequately moist if it gets
too wet, what I do is I have some five
gallon buckets and some of my containers. I'll just set
down in them to give a good soaking to the soil. Otherwise,
you got to water it regularly, frequently, just until you
gradually get it nice and soaked. The other thing to
keep in mind about the soil thing is that if

(01:01:27):
you are going to water, you want to thoroughly water,
but you want to keep it moist. In a hot
summer day like we're having this week, up to hitting
one hundred degrees, it pumps that root ball dry the plant.
The root. The plant can't get moisture in an adequate
supply within a day, it can be dry. And a
lot of containers a big plant and a small container,

(01:01:49):
you may have to water them twice a day. But
you got to keep it moist with regular watering. That
is so, so very important because you know, maybe I've
got some cherry tomatoes that are still producing for you,
and you let it get a little dry, and they
willed and they look horrible, and then you water it
and they pop back up again, and you think I

(01:02:11):
dodged a bullet. No you didn't. You affected a crop
of tomatoes. It was about trying to set, and now
they're aborted. You see what I'm saying. There are things
that happen. Even though the plant survives, you won't get
as much bloom from your flowers. You won't get as
much production from your fruiting vegetables or certainly your rooting vegetables.
You gotta always keep that soil adequately moist. All right,

(01:02:32):
we're gonna go to a break and when we come back,
Bob in Kingwood, you are the first up. Glad to
have you with us this morning. We are going to
head out first thing, as promised to talk to Bob
in Kingwood. Hello, Bob, welcome to garden Line. By Good morning,
Scape morning.

Speaker 5 (01:02:50):
I got a question, but before I asked my question,
I want to say I might be in trouble now
that you announced Bob and Kingwood. I might get a
letter from the homeowners association about my weeds. My question,
how can we help? I used to give it okay, uh,

(01:03:14):
I want to use celsius. I got some stubborn weeds there,
and I know there's a temperature limitation. I don't have
my paperwork in front of me, does the does the
temperature limitation mean at the peak of the day, And
I could spray it when it's cool in the morning,
like right now it's eighty So now I think that
falls under you see where I'm going with that.

Speaker 6 (01:03:34):
Yeah, I do hear what you're saying. That's a good question,
and I have asked chemical reps that question myself. You know,
is it really they they it's kind of a basically,
it's when you're spraying it. But if you know a
lot of products, most broadly weed control for summer post
emergent killing existing weeds in summer in your lawn, most

(01:03:56):
of them say don't use them when it's eighty five
or above or the upper eighties for example, or above.
And so we're upper eighties and above first thing in
the morning around this area. So it's hard to get
away from that. Now exaggerating, But if you do it
early in the morning when it's cool, it's fine.

Speaker 5 (01:04:16):
But what are the time of application or at the
time of the day.

Speaker 6 (01:04:23):
Time of application. So if you were to spray now,
for example, I'm just guessing it's probably about seventy nine
degrees out there or something. Maybe it's eighty that's fine.
But this here's the thing about celsius. Celsius itself, just celsius.
You can spray when it's in the lower nineties and

(01:04:43):
it's fine. It's one of the more less heat affected
products that we have. In fact, things like trimac and
other stuff people put out for LUNs in the spring. Well,
when we get to summer, I always switch over to
celsius because it is that way. But if you put
a surfacting in it, an additive into this celsius to

(01:05:05):
make it stick to the leaves better and so on,
that will be morphido toxic. And and so you then
have to back off that warm spray in with it
and treat it like others. Do it early in the morning,
first thing, and you should be fine.

Speaker 5 (01:05:20):
Oh so you said, don't don't put the surfactic in
under these higher heat conditions.

Speaker 6 (01:05:25):
Do not put the surfact under in higher heat with
celsius and the surfactory. We are seeing some damage to
the Saint Augustine. It recovers from it usually, but it's
not a problem. But uh, you know it, just go
without it is what I would recommend. Now, if you've
got a weed that's super slippery, leaf. You know that

(01:05:46):
the droplets are just going to run right off the leaf. Well,
then put a surfactin in. But you got to do
it early in the morning. And I would do spot
treatments as best you can'.

Speaker 7 (01:05:56):
A very product.

Speaker 5 (01:05:59):
Since you mentioned surf, is soap SuDS any better or
worse than a store bought one for ten times the
amount of money?

Speaker 6 (01:06:08):
Yeah, well there, soap sides are worse that. It's complicated
when you start mixing chemicals. Some things are compatible, some
things are not as compatible. Soap itself just a standard
true soap but about a one percent solution is often
used as an insecticidal soap, but to use it for
surfactant purposes could affect the efficacy of the chemical that

(01:06:34):
you're spraying, and so I would not do that. Surfactants
aren't terribly expensive and they go along. Yeah, it doesn't
take much at all. You're just putting a little bit.
So I would just I would bite the bullet and
not take a chance on trying to use soap as
a surfactant.

Speaker 7 (01:06:50):
Okay, thank you very much, Skip.

Speaker 6 (01:06:53):
You bet good luck with that, Bob. I appreciate your
your call. Yeah, that's that's important to remember. Folks, Hey,
your local ACE Hardware store. They are They are locked
and loaded and ready to go on whatever you're needing
for your lawn, your landscape. You know how they carry
all the fertilizers and products and tools and everything else

(01:07:15):
that you need. You know, ACE Hardware stores where you're
going to find awesome options for barbeque equipment, barbieq the
grills that are just top of the line brands, and boy,
right now they got some good specials going on. Remember
this if you hear me say nothing else about as
join the ACE program that allows you to be an

(01:07:40):
ASH Rewards member. That's what it's called ACEH Rewards. There's
so many benefits. For example, if you're an ACEH Rewards member,
you get free assembly on your grills and free delivery
within a range on your grills. You get access to
certain deals that other people won't have access to. Cost
anything to join the ASH Rewards program. I'm a member.

(01:08:04):
I have been a member since years ago when I
lived in Cypress area. It's where I first joined in
with the ASH Rewards program. But go check it out.
You need new lawn and garden equipment. They carry the
best brands that are out there. And of course it's
a hardware store. You know, you need a ladder, you
need some paint, you need all those things. They have
all that, but ACE is so much more. You've got

(01:08:24):
to go into your local ACE Hardware store and see
what it is that I'm talking about, really quality things.
Right now, there's a deal on canning jars at ACE,
for example. That's just another ACE Rewards exclusive. Maybe you
need to pop up Canopy for that outdoor area, some sprinklers,
some beautiful outdoor foldable dining furniture that you can use

(01:08:45):
whenever guests come over. I mean, see what I'm talking about.
ACE is the place. Go to ACE Hardwaretexas dot com.
Make sure and put Texas in there and you'll get
my ACE Reward or excuse me, my ACE Hardware store
that are all through this region. Uh, let's head out
to Pasadena. Now we're going to visit with Freda. Hey, Frida,

(01:09:08):
got a little short time here, but let's see if
we can help you right quick.

Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Well, the root rots back, and I think it's caused
by a trench that was left when they put in
a patio before I moved in here, because it always
starts going there. But it's water collects there, so I
was wondering if it would help if I fill that
in with some top soil.

Speaker 6 (01:09:34):
Well, if it diverts the water surface run off to
another spot, I guess that would help. But what's the
plant that the root rights on? And what are you
seeing as symptoms?

Speaker 16 (01:09:46):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:09:47):
Take all, take all? Yeah, noah, I got you. Now,
that makes sense on my website. Okay, don't don't worry
about that filling in with soil and stuff like that.
It's it's primarily going to be caused by stresses like
misuse of chemicals, drought, excessive shade, soil compaction. I would

(01:10:12):
loosen that soil up a little bit. If the area
just stays wet and you don't want it to stay wet,
well that, yeah, bring in some soil and level it
out and things. But that is wetness is one of
the least of the root rot issues. Take all root
right issues that we're dealing with. And those publications. Have
you seen the ones I have online?

Speaker 9 (01:10:32):
No?

Speaker 13 (01:10:32):
I haven't seen the publications?

Speaker 8 (01:10:33):
No?

Speaker 6 (01:10:34):
Well please, okay, good good. I got two of them
on my website, Gardening the Skip dot com. Thank you
for you to Sorry, just have run out of time.

Speaker 13 (01:10:49):
That's okay.

Speaker 6 (01:10:51):
We are looking forward to visiting with you about questions
you might have. If you want to ask a question,
go ahead and free and give me a call. At
some point here we're going to be visiting with uh
doctor Mike Arnold, and at that point we will be
taking questions related to things that that he is talking about.

Speaker 9 (01:11:11):
So just.

Speaker 6 (01:11:14):
Stay tuned. You're gonna want to not want to miss
this for sure. Uh So I've talked about a number
of things this morning. We were discussing things because of
the heat of summer we need to be doing, how
we need to be water and the importance of container watering.
Sometimes I will just put water in a very deep

(01:11:34):
tray underneath a container. You know, some trays come up
a couple of inches high, and I'll put them right
underneath a complete underneath the deeper tray, put the water
in it, and it can wick upward. Now that's not
the only way to water. That's your emergency rescue. Your
emergency rescue. So you would just you know, come in

(01:11:56):
and make sure that you've got adequate supply of water
in the tray. And then if you do get a
little late and forget to sign it back in. Well,
that's okay. You can just go right ahead and make
sure that you are getting a good soaking so that
the plants can do as well as that they can do. Anyway,

(01:12:19):
you get the idea. If you have not started your
fall tomatoes yet, now it's a good time to go
ahead and get that done. Fall tomato season is upon us,
and so what we want to do is make sure
that whatever kinds of planting and establishing gets done as

(01:12:43):
soon as possible so that you're able to be ready
when the fall season comes. That is very very important
to be able to do that. Alrighty, there you go.
It's as simple as that. Well, I tell you, if
you get a chance to try for this fall season.

(01:13:04):
A green called chi jimysi it's c h i j
i m i s ai. That is a new green
to me is it's in the brassica family, so a
lot of those in the mustard family can have a
little bit of that mustard skunkiness to them. G gemiciz

(01:13:24):
is very very delicious and it doesn't have that strong
flavor at all to it, and it's one that I
would highly recommend that you give a try to this fall.
You can start your own You're not going to find
it in garden centers as a transplant, but you can
start your own seeds. And that's a great way to
go about it. I think Johnny's Seeds carries it, and

(01:13:48):
trying to think of who else carries I'll hunt that
down for you. Well, we have doctor Mike Arnold here
with us this morning. Doctor Arnold is a professor at
Texas A and M and the head of the gardens
on campus. And we're gonna kind of pick his brain
about that, uh and plants in general. He is quite
the plantsman. And every time I get a chance to

(01:14:08):
see Mike number one, I always get love getting to
see Mike. But uh, we end up talking plants and
usually some obscure, weird thing. But Mike, welcome, Welcome to
garden Line. Good to have you with us this morning. Okay,
well that's good. Well, Uh, in order to kind of
kick things off, why don't you tell us a little

(01:14:29):
bit about yourself, what you do, how you got here
and to where you are now, you know, your background,
education kind of thing, and uh, then go ahead, and
I'd like to hear a little bit about the gardens
on campus. I think a lot of people are not
aware about aware of those.

Speaker 4 (01:14:44):
Yeah, I think we're one of the best kidden jewels.
They're on campus that. By the way, we like to
thank the gardens as being the most beautiful classroom in Texas.

Speaker 9 (01:14:56):
And uh, we.

Speaker 4 (01:14:58):
Certainly have had a wonderful season so far.

Speaker 3 (01:15:01):
Hopefully I won't jinx things, but we've had an excellent
undertaking this spring.

Speaker 4 (01:15:08):
The weather has been very cooperative.

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
And it's a great time to come on out and
visit us. Just a little background. I originally grew up
on a farm in Ohio, don't hold that against me.
And I had gone to Ohio State for degrees in
business and horticulture work. Some in the industry went to
NC State for the PhD. And then I was at

(01:15:34):
Tennessee Tech for about two and a half years. And
then the folks here at A and.

Speaker 4 (01:15:40):
M called and made an offer I couldn't refuse. And
so I've been here at A and M since December
nineteen ninety two.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
So I've been here in Texas longer than I've been
anywhere else.

Speaker 4 (01:15:56):
I guess I'm happy to say that that or they
just nobody.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):
Else give me a new job. About twenty twenty, when
COVID was in full force, they ask if I would
take on some additional responsibilities being in charge of the garden.
Prior to that, I was primarily working in research, teaching,

(01:16:23):
and outreach in landscape areas, particularly teaching plant materials for
the department and serving as an administrator in the department level.

Speaker 6 (01:16:34):
Yeah, and your book is used as a college textbook,
and I think it's is it Plants of Texas and Environs?
Am I saying that?

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:16:41):
Well, that that was the old version. Now we're Landscape
Plants for the South Central United States? Oh okay, and
we've basically gotten some help from some of the surrounding
universities and expanded to include the south central portion of
the country.

Speaker 6 (01:16:59):
Wellpeful, because you flip through it, you find your plant
and there is so much good information and a lot
of experience with these plants has gone into this booklet.
And I don't know, we need to download your brain
into hard drive because there's a lot of stuff that
I know you've experienced, you know, with plants over the

(01:17:20):
years and learned, and a lot of it is in
that in that book.

Speaker 3 (01:17:24):
Well, Texas never ceases to amaze me in terms of weather. No, No,
it doesn't. I had a meteorology friend when I first
moved here that had I'd ask him kind of about climate,
and he made the comment he says, well, Texas is
one long drought interrupted by brief periods of rain.

Speaker 6 (01:17:43):
There you go our flood. All right, Well, we got
to go to a little break here. We'll be right
back with doctor Arnold. You guys, hang on and stay tuned. Hey,
we're back with doctor Mike Arnold this morning, and we're
going to be talking plants. I want to start off,
by the way, thanks again for coming in my It's
great to have you here. I always enjoy a chance
to kind of pick your brain. Well, tell us a

(01:18:06):
little bit about the gardens on campus, and you know
what all is there now and some of what's coming
in the plans. Great.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):
Well, we're a seven acre garden located on West Campus,
just behind the Agrilife Center off kim Burro. We're open
three hundred and sixty five days a year, about twenty
four hours a day, so no excuses not getting.

Speaker 6 (01:18:34):
Out to see us.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
No admission fee, no admission fee. Yeah, probably your biggest
effort will be finding the parking spots.

Speaker 6 (01:18:41):
Yeah, that's all. It's better to come on weekends without
for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:18:45):
Definitely there are some spots along the lot ninety five
if you happen to come over and see us. Like
I said, we're seven acres of developed garden at this point.
We're part of the main greenway program for West Campus
and there are future plans down the road to expand

(01:19:07):
the garden. But let's talk about what we have available
for you right now. That'd be approximately twenty one venues.
We're legal now, at least we like to say that
in the gardens, and these are primarily set up to
illustrate different types of gardening that might be useful in

(01:19:30):
the local area and things that are set up on
a scale that the average homeowner could come in and
implement here in the Bryan College Station area. So some
of these are heritage based, such as the Mexican Heritage
or the German Czech gardens. Others are more style oriented
or a philosophy of gardenings, such as the earth Kind

(01:19:52):
Program Texas Superstar Gardens. Others are edible, traditional edible things
like herb gardens and college gardens. So these are set
up to be educational venues. That are they changed through
the seasons, but the thematic measure of them remains the same. Okay,

(01:20:14):
that's what leads us to our coolest new edition, which
is the Seed Garden after credit Cat Greer, our education
and volunteer coordinator. Okay, yeah, she came up with that name.
And so it's sustaining Exponential Education and Demonstration garden, So

(01:20:35):
seed Garden for short.

Speaker 6 (01:20:37):
Uh and uh, well so what what what does that
mean in terms of like someone's listening in their gardeners like, Okay,
I go there, what am I going to see?

Speaker 3 (01:20:45):
Or well, it's the university. We've got to make it
sound complicated.

Speaker 6 (01:20:48):
Well that's true, but you know, everything though at the
gardens is experiential and uh you know, hands on from
little kids getting to get a little bucket of water
and go over and water a plant, other kinds of things.
But tell me more about the Seed Garden.

Speaker 3 (01:21:02):
Well, absolutely, and is what makes it unique from the
current garden venues that we have is that the whole
idea of this garden. Most of our venues were somewhat
of a static nature in the sense that they've had
the same theme even though they changed. Well, this one
we're looking at short term uses. So the whole idea

(01:21:24):
of this is people getting their hands in there, digging in,
changing things out. And so we are having a number
of programs all the way from the little sprouts aimed
at preschoolers all the way up through adult programming and
current college student programming that will be in those and

(01:21:45):
these will be of a semester or less in duration,
and so they'll either be associated with a class. It
might be an educational program, it might be just a
demonstration that we want to do. Or we also will
house the state four h landscape design contests there that's

(01:22:06):
held each early summer.

Speaker 6 (01:22:08):
And I think I saw this going in. Is it
the one over toward the heart building side of the garden,
that end of the garden.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
Absolutely, we're on the north north north northwest corner of
the garden.

Speaker 6 (01:22:21):
Yeah, that's exciting, that is cool.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
It is fantastic. We are the beneficiaries of Murk and
Sarah Philpi have worked in the gardens and supported this
over a number of years and when they heard about this,
they just kind of latched on and said, hey, we
really like this, and so they were have funded that
for the garden.

Speaker 6 (01:22:44):
A lot of great donors have gone into making that
garden happen, and we'll continue to as it expends, because
the plans are to take it well down the White Creek.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
Well that's that's our long range plans that currently where
we have been doing preparatory planning for Face two, so
that whenever that opportunity exists, we're ready to jump on
it and go. Right now, we're of course in the
stages where we're waiting the official approvals and thinks. So

(01:23:15):
it'll be a while down the road, but in an
eventual addition.

Speaker 6 (01:23:19):
But that's that is so nice and I like it,
and I know the gardens are being used by departments
or by students at the campus. I saw some people
some sort of environmental studies that were out at White
Creek which runs through the gardens, and they were doing
soil sampling or water sampling and things like that. You've
got a little miniature vineyard there at the garden. That's

(01:23:41):
kind of cool, you know if you will walk through
a little vineyard and go, oh, I could I could
do a grapevine like that in my backyard. Or it's
just so much of that this isn't horticulture, but also
down toward the creek. You've got the big irrigation, you know,
the crops of the center pivot center pivot irrigation. But
it's a very minute at your one and so you
can see, you know, a crop of I don't know,

(01:24:03):
cotton or corn or whatever they plan out there. So
there's a lot of stuff for people to learn just
walking through.

Speaker 3 (01:24:10):
You have mentioned a couple of very unique components we have.
I think we're the only garden I know of that
has a functioning center pivot. It's real it it irrigates
the crop. Uh, Doctor Ronnie Snell and his colleagues over
in Soil and Crop Sciences are nice enough to come
in put in some of the latest varieties for us
and that changes it throughout the year. So right now

(01:24:34):
we're getting ready with cotton and soybeans and aggie cotton,
so color, maroon cotton.

Speaker 6 (01:24:42):
Yes, sir, Oh my gosh, I just want to grab
my heart and run outside singing. That's that's an exciting thing. Well,
that is really cool. And this new garden development, the
seed garden, is such a good idea. I enjoy just
visiting all the time. There's always something going on there.
There's always things to see and do. Plus it's just

(01:25:04):
a fun kind of place to visit. If somebody is
wanting to come out, maybe that somebody's listening done in
the Houston area and they're like, let's make a trip
up there. Sometimes it's always a good idea to come
to college station, right, And so what how would someone
go about like arranging do you are y'all set up
to do? Like if a group came out and kind

(01:25:26):
of wanted somebody to explain things to them or is
it more just a visit on your own?

Speaker 3 (01:25:31):
Excellent question, Skip, We have both options available, Okay. So
there are some self guided tours that are available on
the gardens dot t a, MU dot edu. So we're
we're easy to find on the web and there also
are linkages on there for tours that can be arranged

(01:25:51):
in educational offerings that Kat and josephar gardens manager and
my sell for are involved in. We also have many
students who are tied in with those programmings, interns, people
working in classes, volunteer student groups that come in. Uh So,

(01:26:15):
lots of opportunities to get involved in the gardens as
well as is I'm.

Speaker 6 (01:26:19):
Very good those are cool. I used to do when
I was an extension horticulturist age and I did video
filming out there because it's such a great setting for
that and I really enjoyed that. In fact, I took
a picture in the gardens. I've taken a number of
them out there, and I used it as the banner
on my on my new website. I'm sitting with a
little clay pot man or a pot man, Yeah, with

(01:26:40):
apot man over on the side. So it's a if
you only just get a glimpse of the gardens kind
of you can see the center pivot in the background
there that that that's one way you can do it.
I had gardening with Skip dot Com. Uh. Well, I
would like to shift gears a little bit because our
time I'm being kind of short here. I would like

(01:27:02):
to visit a little bit about some of your plants
that you think are some of your favorites and hot
weather and we have to go to a hard break
at eight thirty, so let's at least get started on that.
What are some plants, maybe some annuals and perennials that
would be really good for hot weather.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
Well, I will put in a plug for what I
have always thought is the solution to hot weather plants,
and that's to put in some tropicals that we treat
as annuals.

Speaker 6 (01:27:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
So there's lots of good identicals that we have available,
and of course southern part of our listening area may
be able to grow some of them as permanent landscape plants.
So a lot of things are simple things like highbiscus,
the tropical high bisinus that might be available. But what

(01:27:53):
I love are some of the variegated plants. Yes, like
variegated tapioca. Yes, a screamer, folks, this is tapioca, like
the tapioca you probably grew up eating.

Speaker 6 (01:28:04):
But it's an ornamental plant. I want you to describe
it because it has like three or four colors at
least in it.

Speaker 3 (01:28:10):
It's a tough one to describe. It has a nice
compact growth habit to start with, and then a poalmate
leave that starts in the center with a light whitish
color goes to green on the margins and some of
the new growth comes out red. So you get wonderful combinations.
And since it's not dependent on flowering, it is present

(01:28:30):
the entire time and.

Speaker 6 (01:28:31):
It is absolutely gardeous. We're going to have to wait
to hear more of this. We're going to get a
pick doctor Arnold's brain as we keep going, Folks, keep
listening in. If you've got a question about something he
is talking about, feel free to give us a call
here on garden Line. Otherwise, let's get you a cup
of coffee and we'll meet right back here in just
a minute. All right, folks, we're back with doctor Michael
Arnold and we are picking his brain about all kinds

(01:28:54):
of things. We talked about the gardens on campus at
A and M. If you heard that and didn't have
a penhandy, the website is got Gardens dot TAMU t
a m U dot edu. Gardens at t A mu
dot edu. And we just switched and we're talking about
plants that you bring them here and plant them and
they think it's great to be outside in summer in
the greater Houston area. So well, you mentioned tapioca plant, which, guys,

(01:29:19):
if you haven't seen it, you need to look. Just
do I guess to do a search for ornamental tapioca
plant or something and you'll find it and that it
is cool, but it is very cool, tender. It's one
we grow as if it were an annual, but it
makes a little bush that is quite attractive. What are
some other tropicals that you like?

Speaker 3 (01:29:35):
Doctornold, there's you're pinning me down on something here that
there does Oh, I know.

Speaker 6 (01:29:41):
I hate it when people ask me what's your favorite salvia?
I go, well, there's nine hundred? Can I have my
favorite hundred?

Speaker 3 (01:29:46):
One of them that I kind of point out there
some wonderful selections of copper plant now that are much
different from the original kind of a dull copper Now
got some really rich copper. We've got other variation patterns
that are out there, easy plant to grow, grab the
pile and picture plant is another one along those same
lines that's tropical and good. It's a little lower growing, yes, yes,

(01:30:11):
smaller plants that we might have. And then I also
think we really have some underrated vines that are out there.

Speaker 6 (01:30:21):
Okay, some annual vines. Yes, are tropical. Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:30:25):
Staying with our theme, we're gonna we're gonna talk a
few tropicals. And again, some of these southern portion of
area can be woody materials. One of my favorites for
summer color is the Mexican flame vine.

Speaker 6 (01:30:40):
Beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:30:41):
Uh, you can get in any color you want, as
long as it's orange.

Speaker 6 (01:30:43):
Yeah, it's a very bright colored that the very daisy
like flowers. Yes, bigger than a golf ball, but not huge.
So yeah, that's a good one and usually in clusters continue. Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:30:57):
And it loves the heat, so that's that. That's good
temporary vine. We were in the break talking about one
that was your one of your favorites, the Mexican flag.
For those of you like to grow from seed, that's
great when the Germany's very readily.

Speaker 6 (01:31:13):
Yeah, So don't think of it as like the colors
of the Mexican flag. This is something more like candy corn.
It's you've got yellows and you've got kind of orange
and rusty colors in them. And they're very upright, little
spikes coming up off the vine.

Speaker 3 (01:31:27):
Yes, uh, and very easy to grow from seed. Uh.
What do you watch where you put it?

Speaker 9 (01:31:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:31:33):
So oh is it an enthusiastic Yes, not as bad
as Cyprus, fine or some of those.

Speaker 13 (01:31:37):
But it's like some.

Speaker 6 (01:31:39):
Relatives when they visit, they just don't go away. Okay,
go ahead. So that's you know, and Lobata I think yes,
and then think about a couple of other ones. There's
a little bit unusual, but are are out there available.
One is calico vine and if you've grown our native
Aoristolochia or Dutchman's pipe. It's a little small flower and

(01:32:01):
it tends to have a little bit of a malodorous
scent to it. Well malodorous does that mean stinky? Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
Okay, sorry, no. What is the name comes from? Is
it has beautiful marshan pipe type shaped flower and then
that opens up and has what looks like calico cloth
purple and white on the interior. So very unique both

(01:32:29):
in bud as well as in bloom bloom throughout the
growing season. And it has a unique growth habit of
going up for instance, a trellis material and the leaves
hang down almost as if you had a curtain of
heart shaped leaves growing down. It's so very nice background
in terms of a pea green to dark green leaf

(01:32:51):
and then these wonderfully unique flowers that occur on it
and they don't have the scent. And say the name
of it again, it is calico vine, aristolo key. It's
like a Dutchman's pipe, same genus as the all the
Dutch pipes. And is it also attractive to the larva
of butterflies like the is it the swallowtail? Yes, we'll

(01:33:14):
we'll find a number of butterflies will will be attracted
to it. Uh, go right along with our passion vines.
In that group, there would be possibilities. Another one that
if you like a little bit smaller vine that is
going to cover a smaller structure. It looks really good.
Uh is the ornamental pea VINEU Tonada is the genus

(01:33:38):
on it and uh Tonado. And this is a beautiful
p shaped flower, single and double forms. They sort of
look like culk shells.

Speaker 6 (01:33:50):
Very deep blue. Just it's hard to get blue.

Speaker 3 (01:33:54):
In the garden and this is a blue, absolutely purple uh.

Speaker 6 (01:33:59):
And this is a one that's become so popular now,
a lot of influencers talking about it. Where you take
the dried flowers and you steep them in hot water
and you get a tea that can be either blue
or pink, depending on you know, you drop some lemon
juice drops in there make it more acidic and it
changes the color of it right.

Speaker 3 (01:34:17):
Excellent, Just sort of like when we look at hydrangeas
and yeah, soil pH change in flower color.

Speaker 6 (01:34:22):
These are such cool plants. I think everybody's listening in
the car now because they've all run and jumped in
their car and they're racing to the nurseries to ask
for these These are really cool plants.

Speaker 3 (01:34:32):
Though.

Speaker 6 (01:34:32):
That's exciting. Well, I'm gonna shift off vines a little,
although we could come back. My favorite summer flower is
Seislupinia pul carama, and that is the I call it
Pride of Barbados. Sometimes it's called red bird of Paradise,
but there's another plant called bird of Paradise, totally different plant.
So I decide to call it Pride of Barbados just

(01:34:54):
to make it separate. But that booger, it doesn't even
want to grow. It's like a teenage on a Saturday morning.
Don't even talk to me before eleven or twelve, right,
And so this one is, don't even talk to me
before May. When it heats up, I'm not going to
pop up in March and start growing for you. And
when it heats up, the hotter it gets and even dry.
You go to San Antonio and you see it growing

(01:35:16):
on just out on the corner of a cul de
sac where I don't even not know how it's getting water.
But they are gorgeous. I've got one here in the
corner of my house that is just gorgeous. And the
swallow the tiger swallowtails love it, I know that. And
it just keeps blooming and blooming and blooming, and it
makes seed pods. If you want to start, you some
of your own. So that's one of my favorite. Now

(01:35:37):
it dies to the ground with a little mulch in protection.
I don't know how far north it would go. You
might kind of pushing about where it's going to be
printed in a college station area. Yeah, okay, Well, anyway,
what's some others?

Speaker 3 (01:35:50):
Well, noth one to just thinking about that same time
of year, kind of the heat of summer into early fall,
when everything's scorched and dying. Basket of gold Galfimia or Thyrolys.

Speaker 6 (01:36:04):
Is another name.

Speaker 3 (01:36:05):
It's still under but I love basket of gold, blue
green foliage. It is pretty much perenny old fresh dying
to the ground, coming back here shrub south and it
has terminal panicles, yes, bright yellow flowers, and all summer
long they just keep going.

Speaker 6 (01:36:25):
And like a lot of plants that bloom on the
ends of shoots, including roses and miss salvias and others.
You share that plant back and it produces more shoots,
which means you're getting more flowers. And you know, I
have one in front of my house that hadn't gotten
around to pruning. I don't know if you saw it,
but the it's just gorgeous. Mind's it a little too

(01:36:48):
much shade so it but it's still blooming. But when
you share those things, they are stunning. And I'm told
that they're not on the favorites list of deer, which
is another nice thing about the plant. So you know
what we could do this till the cows come home.
I got to go to another break and we'll be
right back with doctor Mike Arnold. Just stick around. Hey,
we got a callar We're going to go real quick

(01:37:09):
over here to Bay Cliff and talk to Sue this morning. Hello, Sue,
welcome reguardline. What was your question?

Speaker 16 (01:37:16):
Good morning. You all were just talking about a vine
that has a blue flower on it.

Speaker 7 (01:37:24):
Yes, you can use for tea.

Speaker 16 (01:37:28):
I have what's supposed to be a blue butterfly pea
flower vine that I planted from seed, and it's got
this beautiful blue I guess sweet pea looking flower, but
it's dark dark blue with a little bit of white
on it.

Speaker 6 (01:37:47):
And it is the same one.

Speaker 16 (01:37:50):
Okay, how do I feed it to make it blue more?

Speaker 6 (01:37:56):
Well, it's a lagoon, so you don't need to push
it with a lot of nitrogen. If I had planted
them and not fertilized them at all, if you want
to give them a little bit of moderate fertilizer, that's fine,
but just don't overdo it and you're good to be well.
Way I would what I would do is probably if
you're going to do something, I would probably grab some

(01:38:17):
of Microlife six two four fertilizer comes in seven pound
jars and just the lies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll work
all right.

Speaker 16 (01:38:28):
That the green is that the green green?

Speaker 6 (01:38:32):
Yes, yes, it's green green green label. All right, man,
thank you very much. Have fun, all right, doctor Arnold.
We've got a little bit of time left here, very
very little bit of time left here. We were talking
about now's the time to be getting ready for fall,
and we want to make sure and get the soil ready.
I've been talking about that for a while. Now's a

(01:38:54):
great time to get those beds ready. Throw some malt
over them and then they're ready to go. If it
starts raining in the fall. We hope it. If it's
our training in the fall, you can get out there
and your soils already prepared. You're not waiting for it
to dry out. And so that's a good idea there.
I know you guys at the gardens are already making
your orders for You've made orders for fall, and you've
got winter in mind almost what's coming for the next one.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
We're always planning somewhere three six months ahead of time,
and of course you get your events and everything. One
thing that just made me think about when I was
listening to you there is the fall prep. We're coming
up on a wonderful time to get things ready for
wildflower plantings. You know you probably want to get in

(01:39:38):
if you're putting new ones in and get some kill
of printingal weeds it might be in those areas and things.
Make sure you're getting those prepped and and then here
in another month or two, time to be planting those wildflower.

Speaker 6 (01:39:53):
Wildflower seeds and bulbs in the fall. Well, let's shift
gears for the little bit of time we have left.
I'd like to hear a little bit about any of
the research project that you guys are are doing. I
know there's a lot and we probably don't have time
for all of that, but I know there's one that
you and I both have an interest in and it's
kind of a little aside curiosity, and that's the retiboda,

(01:40:14):
which is called Mexican hat. You probably just got through
seeing a lot of Mexican hats on the roadway, so
tell me about what you're working on there.

Speaker 3 (01:40:22):
Well, that's a wonderful plant, and you're you're right. We
both kind of looked at that and said, Wow, what's
out there from the in the native populations are fantastic.
Just a little background, We've got a grad student, Mason Marshall,
who is PhD student working on developing some of our
potential Retibida releases. We're looking at really two aspects. One

(01:40:47):
is as a garden perennial or annual f you're further north.
And the other thing is has an incredible shelf life,
so these will last. You cut them and you'd get
two weeks or more out of them. As a flower,
they do. We are fortunate to set in the middle
of an incredibly diverse population and there are five or

(01:41:11):
seven species, depending whether you're lumper or splitter in in
those and many of those overlap in Central and South
Texas in their ranges. Okay, so there's been some natural hybridization.
So in addition to the tremendous variation in color and form,
we're bringing in adaptation to a lot of different environments.

Speaker 6 (01:41:35):
That's cool. Why I enjoy those two playing with them.
They've been a booger for me without a lot of
formal plant breeding training, I've learned things. I you know,
can they pollinate themselves? You know, how do you how
do you cross something that's got flowers that are so
actual flowers? Or are these little tiny little things that

(01:41:56):
are on that cone in the middle of the Mexican hat.
But that's fine, I got if you go and I
collected seeds. I got two more sets from this year
and ready to go out there and plant them. I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:42:06):
The cool part is that, and it kind of makes
the challenge most varieties, most species of vertibut are self sterile,
so you have to have obligate out crossing occurring, which,
of course, when you're a plant breeder, drives crazy because
you're trying to fix traits and get them to breed

(01:42:26):
true to type and so what we're end up doing
is kind of using that as a tool because what
you can do then is we can actually keep isolated
plants and then manually cross them and do that over
several days. And the nice thing is you're not too

(01:42:48):
worried about them pollinating themselves, so you can actually get
the cross to make. Where the challenge comes in is
trying to get a uniform strain then to come out
after that.

Speaker 6 (01:42:59):
Yeah, oh well, it's fun. Well, any other thing research wise,
it might be worth mentioning of interest.

Speaker 3 (01:43:06):
Yeah, I just put in a plug for a lot
of my colleagues in the Department of Horticultural Sciences. It's
not all just ornamentals, although we do have rose breeding programs,
so they're looking at things like rose rosette black spot resistance,
trying to come up with solutions to some of those problems.
And we have some wonderful breeding programs in the viticulture

(01:43:28):
areas with fines and folks like Tim Hartman and others
are looking at all kinds of new edible varieties of
fruits and vegetables.

Speaker 6 (01:43:42):
Yeah, like pineapple, guava, Yeah, all kinds.

Speaker 3 (01:43:45):
Of Doctor Crosby's peppers that are coming out there.

Speaker 6 (01:43:49):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I had an Okra trial patch
out next to doctor Crosby's peppers pepper trials and melons
and stuff that he was doing.

Speaker 3 (01:43:58):
So did you get a hot Opra?

Speaker 6 (01:44:00):
No, no, but that would be that. I'm gonna have
to use that. I hope nobody heard that, because I'm
gonna have to use that. We've got a new hot
Okra for you here. Oh boy, Well, doctor Arnold's it's
so great having you. We're out of time. The music's
about to stop playing, but thank you so much for
being with us today. Well, thank you, Skip. I really
appreciate coming on and love to do it whenever you want.

(01:44:24):
There you go, Welcome back to Garden Light. I hope
you guys enjoyed that visit with doctor Mike Arnold. A
lot of cool plants that I bet ninety nine percent
of you don't have out there yet. Some of you, though,
you're going to go, yeah, I got that, I got that,
I got that. But a few cool ideas for summertime.
You know, it does make sense when it gets so

(01:44:44):
blazing hot and humid here, why not go to a
jungle on the equator to find our plants with that
kind of weather. That's exactly kind of some of that
we were talking about. With the tapioca and other plants
like that, they do very very well in our area.
So let's do this. We're going to go straight out
to the phones this hour and head to Alvin to

(01:45:07):
talk with Andy this morning. Hey, Andy, welcome to garden Line.
Oh thanks, sir.

Speaker 15 (01:45:13):
Got a couple of quick questions for you, and I'll
get out your hair. I've got a couple of avocados
that I want to plant.

Speaker 6 (01:45:21):
Is it too soon? Should I wait for the fall
to I plan them?

Speaker 9 (01:45:25):
Or no?

Speaker 6 (01:45:26):
You definitely should plan them now. Now's the time. Just
remember that you're gonna water them as if they're still
in the pot. So that means putting a little water
at the base of the planet, right where the roots are.
And if you could turn that radio down the background,
that would be helpful, if you could. Okay, all right, sorry,

(01:45:50):
there you go. Okay, Uh, just water that spot because
you know, if they were in a pot on your patio,
you'd be water theme ever, and so when it goes
in the ground, you can't go, oh what's in the ground?
I water it real good, it'll pump it dry in
a day again, and so you that's the only thing.
Just don't don't drown them, but keep them moist. That's

(01:46:11):
the trick of success in summer. And they do like
the hot weather, and you need to get them established.
And I wouldn't do much fertilizing on them. I would
just kind of let them, let them go, maybe a
little fertilizer initially, but we want them to slow down
because they are cold tender, and a young plant is
going to be more cold tender than an established plant,
and so avoid anything that pushes fall growth. I get

(01:46:36):
them to slow down and prepare a little bit for
the cold. But yeah, well, I guess that was my question.
That was my question.

Speaker 15 (01:46:45):
Should I just go ahead and leave them in the
pot until wintertime, let them kind of climatize a little
bit or even the spring.

Speaker 6 (01:46:53):
I really don't care. No, go ahead, yeah, yeah, if
you're going to keep anything in a pot, just go
ahead and keep it in until spring, I guess. But
because of those cold tender things, you know, in a
pie you can bring them indoors to garage in the ground,
you can, So if we're going to go in take
a brand new plant that's coal tender into its first winter.

(01:47:14):
That's probably not a good combo if you have other options. So, yeah,
that's it. So are you saying go ahead and leave
them in the pot? No, I would on the avocado.
We're in July still, so I would plan them now.
But as we get later then I would then, because
to take care of a plant for like eight months

(01:47:37):
until it warms up again after winter, that's a long
time to babysit a plant in the pot. So i'd
get them in the ground now. If we were having
this conversation in October or November, then I might say, eh,
just hang on to them fair enough.

Speaker 15 (01:47:54):
And the other thing is, I've got a limit and
a lime tree, and they've got a little bit of
a leaf curl.

Speaker 6 (01:48:01):
Okay, man, what do you recommend to use on that?

Speaker 1 (01:48:09):
Uh?

Speaker 6 (01:48:11):
If they're young trees, you're gonna want to spray new
flushes of growth with a product that contains spin, no said.
And the ingredient is spelled like the word spin, the
letter O and the word sad.

Speaker 1 (01:48:27):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:48:27):
Yeah, And uh, that's the new fleshes of growth. The
leaves that are all twisted up already. Just don't worry
about them, ignore them. They're done. I mean there's no
fixing that, okay. And the old leaves that are large,
larger size you don't have to worry about. But just
the new fleshes and then once it becomes a nice
established tree, that little bit of leaf twisting and stuff

(01:48:48):
is not gonna be a big factor. Sorry, fair enough,
all righty already, thank you so much. Appreciate you, Carl,
Appreciate you. You bet all right, there you go, just
like that. Microlife fertilizers, so many good products. I was
talking earlier telling somebody to use some of the sixty four.

(01:49:10):
You know, you can buy these products that are available
in the bag for Microlife, like six two four, like
the reddish bag for a cidic. It's also a six
two four in the bag. Or you can buy them
in a seven pound jugs clear plastic screw top jar.
I guess you could call it or jug And it

(01:49:32):
works so well. You sprinkle those around your plant, you
work them into the soil. Microbes, grab a hold of them.

Speaker 3 (01:49:38):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:49:38):
There's a lot of extra microbes in Microlife products, as
well as many other ingredients that are very helpful, all natural,
and just watch your plants respond to it. When you
do that slowly over time, gradually over time, continuing, whether
it's a lawn or a garden. To feed with the microlife,
you are adding not only the nutrients, but also the

(01:49:59):
organ material that's in microlife itself to the soil to
help it improve, as well as the microbes that are
present as part of that fertilizer. Microlife. Fertilizers available widely
all over the area. It's it's hard to find places
and carry microlife. And if you if you will always
have someone hand, then whatever you want to fertilize, you

(01:50:21):
can use it. I just mix. I like to mix
the granules a little down below the surface in beds
and gardens because that gets it down where it stays moist,
and you're going to get that release a little faster
and get those microbes going back down in the soil
there a little bit faster for except microlife. All right.

(01:50:43):
We were talking about trees earlier. Someone somebody reached out
to me who reached out to me about a tree
that had a problem with branches that were coming out
of the same spot and it formed a bad structure.
I think we were talking to Dwayne earlier about that.

(01:51:03):
And it is helpful to find someone who's a professional arborist.
When I was talking to Dwayne, I recommend he called
Martin Spoonmore an affordable tree And the reason I do
that is Martin has been doing this for many, many years.
He has experienced in this area. He knows what he's doing.
Another thing that is very important when you're hiring somebody

(01:51:24):
to come out and work in your trees is to
make sure they're insured. Anybody can buy a chainsaw and
a pickup and call themselves a tree service. They may
not be skilled, they may not know what they're doing.
And if they don't have insurance and something goes wrong
in the process of them caring for your tree, you
hit the truck, drive off down the street and you
got a problem on your hands. Right. An insured person

(01:51:47):
ought to be willing to show you and prove to
you that they are insured. But you can't buy the
experience that Martin spoon Moore has. Martin again, he knows
what to do. You call him now, you get on
the schedule for him.

Speaker 15 (01:52:00):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:52:01):
He is insured, he's experienced, he knows the trees. He's
a Houston night himself. He knows Houston trees and he'll
come out take a good look at your trees, assess them,
see what needs to be done, and let you know
so that you can have that work done. Now you're
gonna call seven one three six nine nine two six
sixty three. I'll give you that again seven to one
three six nine nine twenty six sixty three. Or go

(01:52:25):
to his website afftree Service dot com. Afftreeservice dot com.
There you can see the other services that he offers
as well. Let's take a break and we'll be right back.
All right, we're back with Gardenline. Good to have you
with us. It's great to have Mike Arnold, doctor Mike
Arnold here on the show today. Boy, I tell you

(01:52:48):
I could have spent about eight hours and just gotten
started so much information. Uh. The guy's a wealth of
information and it was a lot of fun to visit
with them also as well. It always is. If you
have a chance to go to the gardens at A
and M, you need to head up there and do that.
And I don't know where you know what I say
up there, you may be further north than coming down
there or something, but it's a good it's a good

(01:53:10):
time to go out. Check check in that website. Gardens
dot TIMU dot edu and look at events and programs
because periodically they have events and maybe you would want
to come in when something specific, you know, going on there. Anyway,
So let's, uh, let's do this. I've got a go

(01:53:32):
out to the phone here. I'm going to take a caller. Hello, Stanley,
I am hunting down your photos that you emailed me,
and I think, good morning, good morning. Yeah, let's start there.
That would have been I think that twenty second maybe
or third.

Speaker 12 (01:53:52):
I'd bet so middle of the week or something.

Speaker 6 (01:53:57):
Well, I don't see any.

Speaker 1 (01:53:58):
Here, Okay, because I can't verify them.

Speaker 6 (01:54:04):
Let's let's do this. Let's let's try to go ahead
with that without them, and I'll keep looking while we're
talking here.

Speaker 1 (01:54:11):
But okay, so to my knowledge, okay, thank you, skip,
I think the best I can tell you from this morning.
I know I have deer tracks in the oprah, and
I also I'm certain it's grasshoppers, and at least.

Speaker 13 (01:54:30):
I don't see any.

Speaker 1 (01:54:31):
I mean, the the original foliage gone, but the plant is,
you know, taking a second round.

Speaker 6 (01:54:42):
It's coming back again.

Speaker 16 (01:54:43):
Not the plant.

Speaker 7 (01:54:44):
It's a small row.

Speaker 1 (01:54:46):
So they're coming back there. I'm just trying to I
thought you said, Spino said, uh, And then of course
I didn't couldn't find that, so I bought DT instead,
but haven't applied anything yet.

Speaker 8 (01:55:02):
Without talking.

Speaker 6 (01:55:04):
Yeah, you might, you might want to if just for
the sake of the Okrah thing, you might want to
take the BT back. It could be a caterpillar. But
if it was, you'd see them on the plants. You know,
they can't fly away like or hop away like a
like a Yeah, grass talking beetles, beetles, grasshoppers, and caterpillars

(01:55:25):
are the three things that chump leaves most. You can
also get leaf feeding from from slugs and snails and things,
but I don't think that's what we're dealing with on
your okra. Probably a grasshopper. Now, having said that, you
got to lose a lot of leaf area for it
to affect your production. So just seeing a bunch of
leaves that have had a little damage out of the side,

(01:55:46):
you know they've lost ten percent or thirty percent of
the leaves of the leaf surface on certain leaves. I'm
not real worried about that, but if you if you
do finding this, Spino said, it comes in many brains.
There's a captain jack by Bonneye and I can't remember
which Captain Jacket is one of those has Spino said

(01:56:07):
in it, but there's several other Spino SAIDs on the market.
You can do that. It soaks in and pretty much
anything that chumps on the leaves it's going to do
a pretty good job on. But I tell you, I
wish I could see your your photos. You might. I'm
gonna when we get through talking here, I'm gonna put
you on hold, and I want my producer to talk
to you again and make sure you have the right
email address, because I'd be happy to look at the

(01:56:29):
photos and change my answer accordingly if need be.

Speaker 12 (01:56:35):
Thank you, sir, I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (01:56:38):
Yeah, no, it's it's not just a little damage. I'm
not No, I got pretty much. They're just sticks with
new growth coming out.

Speaker 6 (01:56:49):
Yeah, and you said you you didn't see deer tracks, right?

Speaker 1 (01:56:54):
I did this morning?

Speaker 6 (01:56:55):
Yes, so oh you did. I'm I guess, well, you know,
I have not had dear eat my ochre before, but
it could happen. I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:57:07):
I guess if it's dry enough and nothing else. But
you know, yeah, but typically they were leaving it alone.

Speaker 6 (01:57:16):
Yeah, I would give that okra. Give that okra a
boost to nitrogen and watered in real good and let's
get some fresh new growth on it and you'll be
right back in business. Uh They it works, It works
pretty well. Uh yeah. I don't know what your setup
is out there, so you know, fencing them out of
the garden is probably not a practical thing right now,

(01:57:36):
but there are some things that that can scare them
away that might be helpful. But hopefully, hopefully you won't
to worry about that. I'm wondering with hot pepper, the
hot pepper oil, like like you do for bird seed,
for keeping the bird. They squirrels out, deer, deer mammals,
and I would think that pepper oil would burn their mouth.

(01:57:58):
Maybe do it around the outside edge and see see
if you get any response from that. It's just a thought.

Speaker 7 (01:58:05):
Cool, all right, I'm writing that down as well.

Speaker 1 (01:58:09):
Thank you, man, I appreciate you.

Speaker 6 (01:58:10):
Have a wonderful day, you two. Thank you for the call.
Appreciate that. Let's see here, we're going to go to
Donald in Spring Brands. Hey, Donald, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 8 (01:58:22):
How are you. I've been trying to get through for
a while. How good I have Philidendra heartaches. A philadendra,
I guess without me sending you a picture, is like
a great big leaf that faces up and the stalk
is like a piece of celery. Is that the right
thing for philadendra?

Speaker 6 (01:58:43):
That is probably an allocacia allocasia. It's it's somewhat if
you know what an elephant ears look like. Yes, yes, okay,
galladium leaves hang down. Alocasia ears up and they're very
arrowhead shaped, unlike a kalladium, but they have the general

(01:59:04):
shape is similar.

Speaker 8 (01:59:05):
Yeah, anyway, very hard. You can't transplant them. If I
cut off a stalk and try to replant it, that
just dies, you, you know, And the root is a
great big thing that grows out of the ground yestalks.

Speaker 6 (01:59:19):
They started them from divisions of the bulbs at the bottom.
I don't know, maybe if somebody's breeding them that had
started from seed, but generally those are divided bulbs down
at the bottom. But that's quite a dig inshore to do.

Speaker 8 (01:59:32):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 10 (01:59:34):
Try that.

Speaker 8 (01:59:36):
And the freeze. The freeze killed one that I have off.
The freeze killed one off, and then like a genius,
I cut the big root part that would regrow it.
I cut I trimmed it down and that was actually
a big mistake, and now it won't grow. It just
grows a real small one. But right right close by
another one that tried close byes to my neighbor's house.

(01:59:56):
There it froze and he didn't do anything and it
came back you know speed, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:00:02):
They will Donald, Let's do this. I don't know that
I can help you much more on this, but would
you send me some pictures of what you say and
that way we can make sure we're talking about the
same plant. Just email. I'm gonna I'm going to put
you on hold and my producer will give you an
email if you wish to do that, and if you'll
send me the pictures, we can continue the discussion there.

Speaker 8 (02:00:23):
Well, let me give you a chance here. Also, garden
Line have had a an area in all these food
store or the German store, all these food Garden Line
was in the store for a while, you know, Yeah,
I bought I bought different seeds from you there. I
don't know if you're aware of that.

Speaker 6 (02:00:41):
We don't, don't, we don't. I don't know what garden
Line you're looking at there, but we don't have any
seeds I'm just a live radio show. That's it. Okay, Yeah,
that's it all right. I won't put you on hold, buddy,
We'll we'll continue this there, look at it time. Let's
go to Bill in West Chase. Hey, Bill, welcome to

(02:01:03):
garden Line.

Speaker 13 (02:01:05):
Hi stiff, Yeah, how can I help? A mature plum tree?

Speaker 6 (02:01:13):
And okay?

Speaker 7 (02:01:15):
And it is.

Speaker 13 (02:01:17):
Its major limbs have sap bubbles blowing out from the
bark and it seems like one of them is dying
at the end. The non concern.

Speaker 6 (02:01:37):
Yeah it should be. So here's what you need to do.
It's either a canker on the tree branch, which there's
no curing, or it's a border drilling into the tree branch,
take a little pocket knife and where you got sap,
scrape the bark back. Scrape it back as you're going
kind of downward in there. And if you see a
hole or a tunnel or a bunch of wet sawdust

(02:01:59):
or things, that's a and those can be treated for.
I think it's about eighty percent chance that you've got
some sort of a kinker in it, and that's a disease.
And there's no way to get any kind of a
disease preventative into the branch to treat that. And all
you can do is try to keep the tree as
healthy and vigorous as possible so it can close those

(02:02:20):
wounded areas off. When they're bad enough, you have to
pull the tree and replant. But you're going to find
one of those two. If it's a borer, then a
good insecticidal product that'll soak in to the tissues of
the tree and stick around a little bit would be
one option that you might try.

Speaker 13 (02:02:39):
So what might that be?

Speaker 6 (02:02:43):
Uh, the products that contain by Fenthren have some persistence
to them, but you're going to still need to spray
those branches periodically. Now there I need to go check.
I have not recommended a borer spray in a long time.
Some of the products that we used to recommend are
not on the market anymore, and so shooting from the hip,

(02:03:05):
I don't know which product to name, you know, to
send you out there to get. I do know my
friend Fnthern is somewhat persistent. You're going to have to.
If you'll do this, I'll put you on hold. Also,
if you will take a picture of what you see
when you scrape it and send it to me. And
I've got like five seconds before I have to stop.
If you send it to me, I will answer you

(02:03:27):
and we'll go from there. But thank you for the
call folks who are out of time on this bill.
Sorry to have to cut off so quick, but we
are going to a break ten o'clock, six to ten.
For those of you who just discovered us, maybe six
am to ten am on Saturdays and Sundays, you can
listen into Garden Line. You can call in and ask questions.
One thing I highly recommend and ask in fact for everybody,

(02:03:51):
especially when you have a question where I need to
see what you've got, is send me a picture ahead
of time. You can call the show, you can talk
to My producer will give you an email and you
can send the photo, and that way I can take
a look. Make sure you get the email right when
he talks to you, check it out, and then send
those photos. That way I can take a look at it,

(02:04:12):
and I'm not having to guess. You know, descriptions. You
know how it is one person describes something, the other
person's picturing something totally different, and so we won't avoid that.
But you certainly do that. Now I'm not able to
answer the emails, you know, but typing with my fingers
just too many things going on to handle the onslaught
of emails that we get here that way. But you can,

(02:04:36):
for free service send me those pictures and we'll get
you a good answer here on Guardline. Just have to
call in follow up your email with a phone call. Please.
You know now that we're it's so darn hot and
that's that's about all we're talking about these days, and
it's going to get hotter. We think about the stress
on plants, and summer is very stressful. We have plants
that make it through summer, but they are still stressed.

(02:04:57):
It's not easy for them to do that. That is
where mito grow comes in. Mito Grow it says on
the bag it's not dead yet. What does that mean?
Mitogrow can bring plants back in many cases that are
on their way south, if you will, I would recommend
mita grow as starting the plants off. You know, I

(02:05:18):
get some four inch pots in them flowers, I'm gonna
put them out. Just gets you some mitogrow. Soak it
in there real good, and then plant that root ball
and then give it a good drench in the soul
to follow that even at least give it a good
drench at planting time to wet those roots with the
ingredients that are in mitogrow. Because the ingredients and mitogrow
are things like indul butyic acid. That sounds like, Oh,

(02:05:38):
I'm putting acid on my plants. No, this isn't naturally
occurring rooting hormone. You know, we didn't think this up
this out and plants are created to have this hormone.
This is an extra boost down there in the root
system that helps those plants to develop a better, more
more healthy, and extensive root system. That's very very important. Second,

(02:06:00):
mitogro has things like B vitamins, and the B vitamins
play a big part in plant rooting and success and
stress response. Mitogro's got other things. Mighto grow has a
bacteria that's very beneficial to the plants and helping maintain
good health and survival. It's got a lot of things
like that in it. When you put all that together

(02:06:20):
in one product, Oh, I forgot to mention it's got
microhizo fungi. Those are the ones that grow into the
plant root. But it's not a bad fungus. It's a
good fungus that protects that root and reaches out and
grabs nutrients for that root. All in Mito grow. It's
not dead yet. Give your plants a good soaking with mitogrow.
You got a plant that's declining, maybe you can save it.

(02:06:43):
If it's not too far gone. Give it a good
drenching of the root system with Mito grow. It's not
dead yet. Let's head out now to Spring, Texas and
we're going to talk to Chuck this morning. Hello Chuck,
welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 7 (02:06:58):
Hello is good.

Speaker 12 (02:06:59):
Nice talk to you again. Sent a couple of pictures
in yesterday.

Speaker 6 (02:07:05):
Yes, I saw those. Okay, is this your sweet gum? Right?
You had the sweet gum?

Speaker 12 (02:07:13):
That's what it appears to me. It's actually one of
my family members. I was over there Friday and they
pointed it out to me.

Speaker 6 (02:07:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:07:21):
I thought, well, I'll take a picture and.

Speaker 6 (02:07:23):
Check in with you.

Speaker 12 (02:07:24):
It went from nice flush foliage to what you see there.

Speaker 6 (02:07:30):
You know there, there's a lot of possibilities if this planet,
If this planet, if this plant is growing in a
stress location, stress situation like being in a container or
being exposed to wide fluctuations, too much water, not enough water,
or things. Those kind of stresses open the door for

(02:07:51):
problems that a plant normally wouldn't succumb to. What I
see on the leaf, I see some disease on the leaf,
but I'm not convinced that it's the primary cause of
the problem. I think stress is the primary cause and
the disease is secondary. I also see signs of insect
fecal matter, to put it delicately, and that means that

(02:08:13):
some kind of pest has been on the plant that
has been sucking juices out of the leaves too, so
that may be a factor. Typically you find those guys
underneath the leaf, not always, but underneath the leaf.

Speaker 12 (02:08:24):
I'm sorry, huh, go ahead, I'm just going to the
underside and did not see anything. Kind of checked the
top of the soil in the pot, and again didn't
see much of anything that would have got it being
an insect.

Speaker 6 (02:08:44):
Yeah, I heard you use the term the pot there.
And so in a containous a tree is you know,
if that tree, a tree that's let's say, is as
tall as you are, is going to have roots that
go out six feet in all directions, and so in
a pot, that whole root system has wound up in
that small amount of soil with a small amount of

(02:09:07):
water and a small amount of nutrients available, And so
I think that's part of the problem there. I wouldn't
plant it now. I'd try to keep it alive for now,
but when they get to November, they should pull it
out of the pot. They should cut circling roots. I
know that it'll feel like you're killing the tree, but
you got to cut them or knock off. Yeah, and

(02:09:28):
then plant it. But wait until all the demands are
off the tree and the leaves have fallen off November
December and put it in the ground then. And in
the meantime, I'd give it some nutrients. You can sprinkle
some fertilizer around it just a little bit just to
get it growing. If you want to use something like
Mito Grow I was just talking about, that would be

(02:09:50):
a good start. That will help make those roots that
it does have more efficient in what they're doing down there.
And I would start with that, and I might even
you might even add another nutrient source to it. There's
a you know, a really good product I was talking
about earlier from the folks at Medina that is Medina

(02:10:10):
fish amulsion product that it's a blend. It has seaweed
in it and other things, and I might use that
as a liquid also to provide nutrition for the plant
and some other beneficial things. That's that's given it a shot.

Speaker 17 (02:10:29):
Okakay, and plush it give us a chance to probably
replot it. I'm sure the soil they use his math,
why you and I would prefer.

Speaker 6 (02:10:40):
Is that the is that a pot I see in
the back corner of a picture. Is that the one
that tree has grown in. It's a terracotta colored plastic probably.

Speaker 12 (02:10:49):
Or terracotta is terracotta.

Speaker 6 (02:10:52):
Yeah, so in the picture, it's that that soil is
sunken down way down in the pot. So now it
has even less sol volume than it did. I could
make a good case for pulling that thing up out
of the pot, or sliding it sideways out of the
pot and putting some fresh soil in the bottom at
least to give it some more to hold it on
until you can get that thing planted in the ground later.

(02:11:13):
That for him, all right, thank you, appreciate that. Appreciate
your call it tech.

Speaker 12 (02:11:20):
Thank you, Thank you You're always helpful. Appreciate it all right,
bye bye.

Speaker 6 (02:11:26):
Uh yep, there is that is what I see on there,
So that that's kind of the direction that we're gonna
probably do to help that plants best that we can.
ACE Hardware stores are all over the greater Houston area.
In fact, if you go to ACE Hardware Texas dot com,
you can find my ACE Hardware stores there. Ace Hardware Texas.

(02:11:47):
Do not forget the word Texas to get to my
ACE Hardware stores. Ace Hardware Texas dot Com from Orange,
Texas all through out the Houston area and even down
all the way to Portoranzas, Wharton and other places outside
of town. Uh, that's that's where you go to find
your local ACE Hardware store. Right now, there's some real
good summer deals. Don't forget to become a member of

(02:12:09):
that aceh Rewards program. It is a very very helpful program.
It's free to sign up for. You get good deals
if you want. They'll send you notifications when there's sales
going on. Maybe you're a power tool guy and you
want to know when a particular brand a power tool is, uh,
you know, being offered on some kind of a special deal.
Sign up for ACE Rewards. Make sure and do that.

(02:12:30):
Ace Hardware Texas dot Com. Let's go to a break
and we'll come back for our last segment. It looks
like we've got enough callers here to keep us going
on the last segment, so we'll be right back. Been
an interesting weekend here on Gardland. I've got I've got
a number of tasks that are on hand for this week,

(02:12:50):
and I'm actually looking forward to them. I enjoy getting out,
so I had poken around in the garden. I learned
more things playing around in the garden than I do
from going to cool. I think, just you know how
it is a personal experience, and I'm not just in
school at all. I've really gained an appreciation for science
and the importance of research and and the uh the

(02:13:10):
need to approach things in a way where you don't
get a bias and the way you look at things.
We're all biased in one way or another. We are
UH and and do something usually we don't know it
when we are, but uh, just getting out and trying plans,
trying things out, trying different things. That that is so

(02:13:33):
important in order for learning, in order for having better success.
If you haven't put your flummer fertilization out now, you
still can do that. You can get you some of
the silver bag. Can you tell me what that is?
Silver bag? That is the night tro foss silver bag
that I'm talking about.

Speaker 15 (02:13:51):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (02:13:51):
And if you if you go to an ace hardware store,
if you go to a feed store, if you go
to a garden center, a cellist, fertilizers, lots of places
that carry night foss products. So you can find them
at Lake Hardware Downe in Angleton include both of them,
the one on Angleton's on north of Alaska. The one
includes on Dixie Drive, D and D feed Up and

(02:14:12):
tom Ball carries out full line of all kinds of
quality nitrofoss products like the superturf, the silver bag that
you can find. It's still time to get it on
if you want to get it on the lawn. Now
now is the time to get it on the lawn.
It is a quality product that slowly releases those nutrients
over time so you get the even growth that we're

(02:14:33):
looking for.

Speaker 7 (02:14:33):
I was just.

Speaker 6 (02:14:36):
Looking at my lawn this past week and just noticing
I just have nice even growth and I actually I
just fertilized once it's spring and I'm not fertilized in
the summer, and it just has maintained a beautiful look
to it, and that is typical of a product. This
was a superturf part of the lawn and it just
just maintained a nice even look. So that's a good thing. Hey,

(02:15:00):
good thing. Let's go out to Meyerland now and talk
to Andrew this morning. Hello Andrew, welcome to garden. Good morning, Skip.

Speaker 8 (02:15:07):
How are you.

Speaker 6 (02:15:10):
I'm doing well? Thank you good.

Speaker 15 (02:15:12):
I've got two pecan trees in my yard and although
we got our ballooms you know earlier, the tree is
not producing any pecans this year except for about a
dozen of them overall one whimb and it's both my trees.
It's only about a dozen on both trees. I was like,

(02:15:33):
why is it doing just a little bit?

Speaker 6 (02:15:37):
Do you know how old this tree is? Bnu Choon's
how long it has been on the ground.

Speaker 15 (02:15:42):
It has been in the ground for I would venture
to say thirty five years or so. We've been in
the house for twenty five years.

Speaker 6 (02:15:51):
Did you get it? Did you get a good crop
last year?

Speaker 15 (02:15:56):
We got a pretty good crop last year, donated to
the squirrels bit, but yeah, we still got some off.

Speaker 6 (02:16:03):
Okay, well, pecans because they're a fall bearing fruit, nut
crop fruit and nut crops that bear in the spring
or summer, Actually they have plenty of time after they've
put all that energy into the fruit to then begin
to build carbohydrates to set the buds for a good

(02:16:26):
crop next year. But when something fruits in the fall season,
it's all the carbon hydrate energy and stuff is going
into ripening that and filling that crop of in the
case of pecans, that crop of kernels in the pecan
and there's not a lot left to set buds for
a crop next year. And so pecans are one of

(02:16:48):
the crops that tends to alternate bear a lot. You
get a heavy crop and then not so much of
a crop and heavy cropping not so much. So that
could be part of what you're seeing going on out there.
The trees need sunlight, if there's any tree that's over
sing and stuff that that can affect it. And then
any kind of stresses, lack of water, and you know,
in the hot, dry summertimes, they can the tree looks okay,

(02:17:10):
but it's it's stressed and it's just not going to
produce as well for you as a result maybe of that. Right,
So those are a few things, but I think the
alternate bearing may be one of the bigger factors that's
at play in what you're seeing on that tree.

Speaker 15 (02:17:25):
All right, Yeah, I was just curious as why you know,
there was only just a little handful that are on
tree right now, and they look like they're probably three
quarters of the way to ripening.

Speaker 6 (02:17:38):
Okay, well they should be a pecan will during the
months up until about August, first they're growing pecan, the
pecan nuts are growing in size. And then after about August,
first the pecan nuts starts to fill, starts off watery inside,
becomes doe inside, and finally has a nice firm kernel,

(02:17:59):
like is what we want to eating. And so if
you if if you you know, have problems with filling,
that's after August first problem mostly and if you have
problems with the size of the pecans, that's before. But
also stresses early on can cause them to abort. And
so you may have had some small pecans that just
fell off. You probably would notice that, but that could

(02:18:21):
also be a factor in the smaller crop.

Speaker 15 (02:18:25):
Okay, Oh, I guess we'll wait till next year and
see what comes comes out.

Speaker 6 (02:18:32):
That's it. Well, when you grow pecans in the city, uh,
the best way to eat. Your pecans is squirrel meat,
h squirrel dumplings, pecan pecan fed squirrel is some of
the best eating that you can have.

Speaker 15 (02:18:49):
I just don't I just don't like to eat the
city squirrels because I've been chewing all the lead roof jacks.

Speaker 6 (02:18:58):
That's right, that's they're just not They're not. All right.
I got that I would explain a lot. That would
explain a lot. All right, man, Well, thank you. I
appreciate your call this morning.

Speaker 3 (02:19:10):
You take care.

Speaker 6 (02:19:13):
Fye. All right, folks, there's another garden Line show. Hey,
if you have some time this week, go check out
my website, maybe this afternoon go check it out. Got
some new stuff up there, including something on side webworms whicheck.
You can get around to today, but I'll talk about
next weekend.