How Long Should My Sprinklers Be On?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Katie r H. Garden Line with Skip Richard.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Show crazy here Trim just watch him as many.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Good pace to sup botas quick.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Gas not a sound class gas the sun beamon of between.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
All right, let's do this show. Welcome to Garden Line, folks.
I'm on my second cup of coffee, so I'm gonna
be slightly coherent, slightly I want to overdo it. We're
to answer gardening questions today or just to talk about gardening,
whichever you prefer. All you gotta do is me call

(01:00):
seven to one three two and two k t r
H seven one three two and two kt ore h,
and we will visit with you about the things that
are most of interest to you. Let's see what was
I Oh, I had a few things I wanted to
discuss this morning. One of them is herbs. There are

(01:22):
a lot of people that really are into growing herbs.
I mean that is like, well, any kind of plant
has its little group that are crazy about that group.
You know, there's people that are all into orchids, or
people that are all into plumerias or all into vegetables
or whatever. Herbs are a good group to grow that.
I think more people ought to grow. And the reason
I say that is they're easy, really easy to grow.

(01:43):
Most of the herbs that we would plant here just
do super super well. Or rosemary about as drought tolerant
as any shrub you're going to get. It grows very
well here. It looks good in a container. It looks
good in the ground if you got it spilling over
the side of a pot, or or maybe you have
a landscape structure where you've got like a rock wall

(02:04):
or something and the rosemary can kind of tumble down
that the trailing tops of rosemary do good with that.
Basil is easy to grow. Good Night basil? Who doesn't
like pesto? Right, So there's lots of kind of basils,
Lemon basil and the standard Genobeese, the standard type we
would make the pesto out of. There's a holy basil.
There is a tie basil. I like the African blue

(02:28):
basil because I don't use it as much culinarily you can,
but I prefer the standard pesto types of basil. But
the African blue is unbelievable for pollinators. If you want
to see what pollinators are around, I don't mean just
honey bees and bumble bees. There's a lot of kinds
of pollinators. They love that plant. They do really well.

(02:50):
Chives are easy to grow, and chives are cool. You
just take your scissors out there, you're making some scrambled eggs,
cut a few chive leaves off, chop them up, drop
them in there, and you're on your way. Herbs are
just easy, and you don't have to have an herb garden.
You can make one of those beautiful you know, Louis
the fourteenth all geometrically pretty circular, looks like a wagon wheel.

(03:11):
Whatever design you want of an herb garden, or you
can just include herbs around the landscape. So I think
we got to grow more herbs. We got some great
independent garden centers that have selections of herbs that are
outstanding around the Greater Houston area. And again, herbs are easy,
and I just enjoy some of the herbs. I just

(03:32):
enjoy smelling them.

Speaker 4 (03:33):
We have.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
I think my wife has three types of time in
her in her flower beds. In the times just spilling
over the side, as is the oregano, and just every
time I walk by, I've got to rub it and
smell it because it smells so good. But anyway, think
about that. I just put in some here. I guess
I hope this would fall in the herb category, at
least for me. Pineapple sage. It's a type of salvia.

(03:58):
It has red tubular blooms typically late in the season,
late summer early fall, because it's triggered by the shortening
day length to bloom. So hummingbirds like it when they're
passing through. But the leaves smell like pineapple. It's really nice.
There's lemon scented herbs, all kinds. So anyway, think about that.

(04:18):
Maybe add an herber to your landscape and use your imagination.
Like I said, in a flower beds, we've got three
different kinds of herbs just growing because they're pretty and
they're nice and they cascade over the sides. You're listening
to Garden Line. I'm your host, Skip Richter, and we're
here to help you have success in your garden. Gardening

(04:38):
is a lot of fun, and or at least it
should be, and we can find ways to make it
more fun. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of
a mental reset, but usually it just takes a little
bit of good information so that you plant plants that
want to grow at your place, and you have the
soil prepared so they're happy to grow at your place.
And after that it's just set back and enjoy in

(05:02):
the lawns. Boy, I got some pictures yesterday of gray
leaf spot. Gray leaf spot is it's here. This is
its favorite time of the year, early summer. When things
begin to cool off, excuse me, begin to heat up.
Let's put it correctly, gray leaf spot starts to show up.
It loves moisture, so getting a lot of rain has

(05:24):
helped it in some areas this summer. Also, that sprinkler
system that comes on and what's the ground every other
year I was talking to about yesterday that there's sprinkler's
coming on three times a week. There's no reason you
need to water your lawn three times a week unless
it's a brand new lawn. You know, you're just kind
of getting into about the third week of establishing a
brand new lawn. Our lawns can do fine with much

(05:47):
less than that. If you look up my lawn care schedule,
it's actually the lawn pest, Disease and Weed Management schedule.
It is on my website Gardening with Skip dot com.
That schedule says that starting about mid aprilish and going
through mid to late July is big time gray leaf
spot season. That's when we watch for it, and it

(06:08):
can occur at other times, but this is when we
see it at its worst. And the pictures I saw yesterday,
I think it was about the worst gray leaf spot
I've ever seen. It was. It was to a point
where if you stood at the street, you could look
at the lawn and go, wow, what's wrong there? It
was significant. Usually gray leaf spots kind of cosmetic and
we don't we generally, I don't generally spray for it,

(06:30):
but you can and if you're going to do that,
night Foss has a product called Eagle fung a side.
Eagle Fungicide is good for a number of different things.
If you've got you know you're dealing with large patch
or take all root rot or gray leaf spot and
some other rizac Tonia summer patches, it's a good one
for that. You can find night Foss products in many
places Bearings Hardware on Bissinet and as well as the

(06:52):
one on West Timer we'll carry night Foss products and
Jennie Forest down there in the Richmond Rosenberg area. We'll
also carry the nitrofoss products. So you might just just
check out that if you feel like you want to
do a spray to control things like the leaf spot,
it's an excellent choice for doing that very much. So

(07:16):
I'll tell you what, let's take a break. I'm gonna
go just a bit early to break here, and I
will be right back with your calls. All right, folks,
welcome back, Welcome back to the garden line. Good to
have you with us. Boy, yesterday I was talking about
something going on at Warren Southern Gardens and I actually
had to bring in somebody from Warrens to clarify and
make sure that it was true. And here's what it is.

(07:38):
It is a mega sale out there Warren Southern Garden
in Kingwood, Texas. Twenty percent off purchases of one hundred
dollars or more. So you buy one hundred dollars, you
pay eighty get the idea. Now here's the deal for
those of you who want to do a major renovation
around your property. I'm talking about. Maybe you want metal art,

(08:00):
Maybe you want a bunch of really nice pottery of
all kinds. You know, the beautiful, gorgeous glaze pottery you're
looking for trees, you're looking for shrubs, you're wanting to
put in roses and all other kinds of perennials and plants,
and you need some fertilizers and soil products. And you
get the idea. I mean, I'm talking about a big
deal for purchases of three thousand or more. That's forty

(08:20):
percent off. So think about this. You ring up three
thousand dollars, you pay eighteen hundred, you get the idea.
That's the minimum level there, that's right at three thousand.
And now, I know three thousands a lot, but if
you're going to be doing a big renovation, is not
a lot, in fact, But you're not going to find
a better chance to do it then right now. And

(08:42):
it's at Warns. It's this month for the rest of
the month. Started yesterday, you go through the end of
the month May thirty first. But for those of you
that are considering it, here's a chance to really get
a good deal. And if you've been to Warrens before,
in fact, just go out there and check it out.
But walk around and look at it. It's a gorgeous,
gorgeous place, stock with all kinds of things. And I'm

(09:02):
telling you, well, you. This is your public service announcement.
Go check it out. It's good. Say hey to miss
d if she's out there when you're there. She does
custom potting jobs where you know, they put together different
kinds of combo containers for businesses, for homes or you know,
hanging baskets and all kinds of things. Really nice. I
didn't war in southern guarden. Anyway, there was your There

(09:23):
was your official announcement for those of you who are
looking to do something major. All right, let's head out
to southwest Houston. Now we're going to go and talk
to Wayne. Hello, Wayne, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Well, thank you so much. Skip.

Speaker 5 (09:42):
First of all, I won't say I am slowly now
at your level of knowledge of gardening, it's just amazing.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Well, Wayne, I make everything up. So I'm glad I
convinced you.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Just kid, very good. I have something for you.

Speaker 5 (10:00):
Not long ago, I planted a rose, and I also
put a row of landscape bricks around it, maybe about
fourteen inches out from the base of the rolls. And
then I went back to resetting the bricks, and as
I moved them, I noticed a colony of ants right

(10:20):
up under the bricks.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
So do you know if they were fire ants or
just don't know for sure what kind?

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Well, tiny ants.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
Okay, well, most answer are not a problem. There's a
couple of ants that we don't want to have around.
One of them is the carpenter ant that choose into
wood and does structural damage to wood. The other is
fire ants did bite us. But all the other ants
are out there just contributing kind of the balance and
things of nature. They're not eating our plants, they're not

(10:53):
biting us, and so you know, if it's not fire ants,
I wouldn't worry about it. I just know that they're
they're doing what they do.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Now.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
A lot of insecticides will kill ants. I mean, you
can use all kinds. If it were fire ants, I
would suggest you get a bait and just sprinkle it
all around. There are organic baits and they're synthetic baits,
and you can take care of them best that way.
But any kind of an insecticide will kill ants. We
just when we have colonies sometimes you know, you kill

(11:22):
a bunch of them that you see you're not actually
getting to the queen and the rest of the colony.

Speaker 5 (11:28):
Okay, But overall, they're not anything to be openly concerned. Okay,
Now there are hundreds of species of ants running and
running around there.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (11:40):
What about also just yesterday plant, I mean you put
a row of landscape uh bricks close to the house.
So do I need to be concerned about ant allonis
in there?

Speaker 4 (11:57):
Now?

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Ant? So you know, they they usually live or living
underground and are near the surface and the mulch and
in other things, and so don't worry about that. It's
just not not anything you need to worry about that.
That's that one is no sweat.

Speaker 5 (12:13):
Okay, one more thing about ants opting in this house
there some years and every year they want to migrate
into the kitchen and I have to you know, hot.

Speaker 1 (12:27):
Stuff to tear from them, but.

Speaker 5 (12:29):
They go away, but then they will come back. I
happen to leave something out from time to time, you know,
on a regular basis.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Any comment on that.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Yeah, yeah, there's a there. There's some different kinds of
ants that that we see a lot inside, you know,
farroh ants and others can come inside. And like I said,
literally there are like hundreds of species and you look
at them and they all look like ants. But there's
there's a lot of different kinds, so different ants want
to eat different things. Some go after sugary substances, some

(12:59):
go after oils and proteins. So fire ants are after
oils and proteins, that's what they like. So the baits
for fire ants are put on an oil or a
protein base, those little granules. There are little stations you
can buy. The ones I've seen look like little black
squares that ants can go in the holes and inside
there is the bait for them. Depending on the kind

(13:19):
of ant you have, you would get a different bait,
so you may have to kind of try one and
then try another and see. But they work pretty good,
and you just set them on the counter wherever the
ants are coming from. Typically, you know, if you got
a little tiny crack in the let's say you had
tile on the backsplash of your counter and there's a
little piece where the crowd is out of it, and
the ants are coming in and out of there. Maybe

(13:40):
they're coming up from under the cabinet, or if you
can put it kind of close to where you think
they're coming from, that does a little better job. But
they'll find it, and that's the best way. Other than
that you're ending up spraying, and then you're putting the
pesticides on indoor surfaces and things which you generally would
try to avoid.

Speaker 5 (13:58):
Yeah, that's exactly what was happening. There was a crack
in the grout and they were just and right on
the other side of the well, outside their little planner
and they were just coming up right through the what happened.
They are pretty amazing, and they find.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
They are pretty amazing. Yeah, they are. And you know,
if it's just one little spot they're coming in, we
can take a little cock and just dab it right
on there and close the door. But they'll probably find
another way in.

Speaker 5 (14:24):
So exactly exactly, okay, all right, I'll just have to
deal with it, okay, skip.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Thanks all right, Yeah, thanks for the call. Appreciate that.
Good to talk to you. All Right, there we go,
we are. Let's see here. Let me give you a
phone number seven one three two one two k t
r H seven one three two one two k t
R h uh. Microlife fertilizers have been around for a
long time. In fact, they've been around over thirty five

(14:51):
years here in the Greater Houston area. The number one
selling organic fertilizer in Houston is Microlife six two six
six two four. It is a green bag, easy to
see green bag Microlife sixty four. It's not going to
burn your lawn or other plants. It's not a salt
based fertilizer. It's an organic fertilizer. Put it on the soil.
Microbes get a hold of it. They take all the

(15:12):
nutrients and are in it, and turn it loose into
the soil, which is what microbes do every day, and
they then release it to the plants. That's how that works.
It's good for anything on a floor you're going to
put it on, I mean turf grass, as alias, flowers, vegetables,
tree shrubs, roses, you know, use it in containers if
you want. Now Microlife has products for other things. You know,

(15:32):
there is a product for acid loving plants. I was
just looking at some the other day yesterday as a
matter of fact, that an ace hardware store Langham Creek
Case over there on Barker Cypress by Copperfield, and we
were talking about some of the fertilizers and they have
the azalea the kind of a it's kind of a

(15:53):
reddish bag, a reddish pink if I'm describing that right.
Bag for the acid living plant. You can use this specifics,
no problem with that. But the green bag can be
used for anything. Really, it's a very good fertilizer. Typically
we use it for our lawn. It's got more minerals
than you can imagine, over one hundred different minerals in it.

(16:14):
Doesn't contain any manures, lots of beneficial microbes in it.
Microbes rule the world. Microbes are what makes plant, what
make plants happy out there in nature. They do it all.
I should drone on for an hour sometime on microbes
because there it is unbelievable what all they do for
our plants and for us too. By the way, now
you're going to find Microlife sixty four by bags, you

(16:37):
know for lawn fertilizing, or you can find it in
the jugs, a large clear plastic jug with a big
fat lid on top. I had many independent garden centers,
speed stores, Southwest Fertilizer, ace hardware stores. These are, you know,
Microlife's easy to find. You can go to microlifefertilizer dot
com find the fullest of retailers. And while you're there, though,
look at the other products. You know, I could spend

(16:59):
a whole show just talking about each of the micro
life products. There's that many of them and they work.
I know that because I've used them and I still do.
You're listening to Gardenline. Our phone number is seven one
three two one two k t r H. Seven one
three two one two k t r H. So we're

(17:20):
entering summer, which means we're coming up into hurricane season here.
And those of you who've been here very long, no,
you know, it's a roll of the dice. You never
know what kind of year it's going to be. But
when hurricane comes through their issues, we lose power typically,
uh And when that happens, you need to be ready
for it. And you know, there's a lot of different

(17:42):
ways to do that. You can buy a little gas
power generator to sit outside and you have to go outside,
but gas in it and fire it up and get
it running and it'll it'll run a few things. You
can run your freezer off a one or something like that.
But Quality Home Products they sell a Generak automatic stand
by generator that absolutely it takes care of everything for you. Now,

(18:05):
the folks at Quality Home you can buy generators from
a lot of places. Folks at Quality home. It's all
about service, and I really mean that. You talk to
them and you go, look, I need a generator, and
they start asking questions. You know, well, do you just
need to you know, get your freezer from going bad
if you're gone when the power goes out, or do
you want something that you can run your home as

(18:27):
off of? And you know, they understand, They try to
understand what do you need and then they fit you
to the right generator and from there it's just beginning.
That's when they begin to look at things like, okay,
we've got the regulations, the permits and things. They handle
all that for you. You got to get a slab. They
don't bring a little cheap slab and drop it on

(18:48):
the ground. They pour a slab that is thick and
your lawnmower is kno going to knock out of the way.
I'm telling you, they do everything right. And after you
have the generator and they walk away, I'll say it again,
it's just beginning. Three hundred and sixty five days a year,
twenty four hours a day, their customer service never stops.

(19:11):
You can go to QUALITYTX dot com or give them
a call seven one three Quality talk to them find
out that find out about these just look into this.
It takes a while for the whole process of getting
a generator, so don't delay. But I'll tell you this,
I would never consider buying a generator from a different
place because I've seen the service. I've looked at the reviews,

(19:34):
I've looked at the awards that they win, and I've
talked to people, and this is the company. It's not
just the product you're buying. Although Generatic Automats and by
Generator is a good generator, it's the service. It's the
company that's what this is about. With quality home. Alrighty,
where are we here, I'm gonna take a little break.

(19:56):
I'm flying this morning. I'm gonna take a little break
here in a minute. When when I come back from break,
Jim in a task, Asida and Terry out there in Splendora.
We're gonna come to you first. For the rest of you,
if you'd like to give me a call seven one
three two one two kat r H seven one three
two one two kt r H. I will let's see here.

(20:20):
Also as we get back, I want to discuss a
little bit about some fruit trees that don't need spraying,
So much. Uh, don't let me forget that. Somebody may
have to call and remind me of We'll be right back,
all right, Welcome back to garden Line folks. Good to
have you with us. I wanted to say a few

(20:41):
things about in Channa Gardens. I talk about them all
the time, but in Chenna Gardens is out there in
Richmond Rosenberg. In fact, it's on the Katie Fullsher side
of Richmond. You just get out there to FM three
fifty nine and that's where it's located. It's been around
since nineteen ninety five. You know, the Lenderman family has
been part of that community for a long time, taking

(21:01):
care of people with really quality plants and quality service.
That's the bottom line. Now. I like going out there
because it's just an unforgettable experience. You pull up, you
get out of the car, and you look around and
you go where do I again? Because it's a very
nice expanse of all kinds of cool things. Anyone can
find stuff they're interested in out there, from little Ferry

(21:23):
gardens all the way out to beautiful rose bushes and
fruit trees and certainly hanging baskets and containers and you
name it. It's an unmatched selection of plants and the
knowledge that they have their team as enthusiastic as they come.
Really you can bring photos and samples in to get
some help with that find out what you need to do.
Or you can just walk out and ask questions about

(21:44):
you know, I got this area, and you describe it
and they'll show you a whole bunch of plant ideas
that would do really really well here. They know what
they're talking about. That's important. While you're there, you can
grab the fertilizers you hear me talk about from Microlife
and nitrofoss and Nelson plant Food and Mendina. You can
get soils from Nature's way in airloom soils out there
at in Chenna Gardens FM three fifty nine. Katie fullsher Cider, Richmond,

(22:08):
Enchented Gardens, Richmond dot com, Enchenda Gardens, Richmond dot com.
Let's go out now to a test asita and we're
going to talk to Jim. Morning.

Speaker 6 (22:17):
Jim, good morning, sir, and thank you so much for
taking my call the question this morning. I actually have
two questions. One, you talk about watering and you have
mentioned it's better to deep water than just lightwater several times.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Correct, yes, correct?

Speaker 6 (22:37):
Okay. Now when you say deep water, now, once you
do that, that means you do it less time.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
Correct, right, okay, correct, Okay.

Speaker 6 (22:48):
So let's go to the sprinkler system. So on your
lawn do you recommend Now, this is Saint Augustine. I'm
over here in a task Gasita. You know kind of
dirt we've got. Basically, how long do you want us
to run the water for and how many times a week?

Speaker 3 (23:08):
What you need to do, Jim, is you need to
put something out there to measure irrigation. It could be
a rain gauge set in the lawn. It could be
a straight sided container like an empty into being can
or something. And you need to turn your system on
for about twenty minutes and then look at how much
water you catch. So if you multiply that times three,

(23:28):
that's how much you put out in an hour, and
you want to apply about it at least a half
inch of water and better an inch of water when
you water. That's what I so deeply and thoroughly, and
then you don't need a water for a long time,
a good while, many days before you have to come
back and do it again. So that's how you go
about knowing how long to run it. Now you may

(23:50):
have to run it for a while, have it go
off and set for forty five minutes, and come back
on again. Because generally you cannot put an inch of
water on the ground at one time in many of
the soil types we have here.

Speaker 6 (24:03):
So you do want us to put at least one
inch of water on the ground. Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (24:09):
Yeah? Yeah, And I would I would just say a
half inch to an inch, not don't go over it,
that's unnecessary, okay, half all right?

Speaker 6 (24:18):
Now the second part is, I don't know if you remember.
I just did all my beds in the front of
the house and I put organic molts down. Okay, Now
I want to put bark on top of that. A
lot of people put bark just for a decorative color,
but I want a useful bark. I want to bark

(24:39):
that's going to hold the moisture in. What do you
recommend I get that's a functional bark.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
For functional bark, I like just a shredded hardwood bark,
double ground. It could be a bark that's been partially
composted h and it locks together. It's kind of it's
got a curvy, jagged way that it just sort of
holds together really well, unlike like a pine bark, which
is more rounded and smoother. But anyway, any bark, any bark,

(25:08):
will do whichever kind you like the looks.

Speaker 6 (25:11):
Of well, I'm trying to get functionality on it, not
just look. Yeah, thank you sir.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
Okay, yeah, no, I would do a good shredded bark,
and then I think you'll do well with that. Hey,
thanks for the call though, Jim appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (25:25):
You take care, thank you, sir.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
All righty well, Southwest Fertilizer has been around since nineteen
fifty five. I'm the fifth garden Line host, the fifth
garden Line host. This goes back to before garden Line
was garden Line to talk about Southwest Fertilizer. Because listen,
when you last for seventy years, you're doing things right.
You're taking care of people. They want to come back

(25:48):
because they don't go in and you go, well, we
ain't got that, and what about this, Well we don't
have any of that either, or maybe it'll come next week.
They carry everything they If they don't have it, you
don't need it. That's way I like to put it.
So whether it's fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, organic synthetic tools, everything
and expert advice. You can bring a sample in there,

(26:09):
let them, as we say, get the pair of eyes
on it. Bob Patterson and his team will look at
it and they'll make sure you get the right products.
You're not wasting your time and money. You're going to
get friendly service, quality products and unbelievable unmatched selection. Corner
of Bissinet and Runwick. Southwest Fertilizer, for example, they carry
the Sweet Green, which is Nitroposs's organic type product. It

(26:32):
is a eleven percent nitrogen. Bob carries it there at Southwest.
The Sweet Green is really a unique product. Number one,
it smells good. Number two, it's got a high level
of nitrogen in it. You only need about ten pounds
per thousand square feet when you're using Sweet Green, and
it works well. It dissolves into the soil. Microbes gets

(26:55):
really excited because it's high carbon product, and that's what
microbes want is carbon. Can you find Sweet Green a
lot of places like night FoST products, but the Sweet
Green could be used repeatedly through the summer and small doses.
It's not a slow release, but It is an excellent
product for getting a pretty good quick green up and
for doing so in a way that it just makes sense.

(27:19):
I have found it to be excellent. In fact, I
got a bag right now that I'm about to put
out in a second fertilization that I'm doing this summer,
and Sweet Green is the product. I'll set out to
Splendora and talk to Terry. Hey, Terry, welcome to Guardline.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Thank you, good morning. I have a couple of questions.

Speaker 7 (27:38):
We purchased a property right behind our house and we've
cleared out all the underbrush and it has quite a
few mature trees where it creates a pretty good canopy
with minimal sunlight, honestly, and I would like to keep
those trees, but I would also like to get some
groundcover of some sort going particularly right around the tree.

(28:00):
He's kind of as like dressing around him, like shrub
type things.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
I was wondering what would be best in like low light.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
That Okay, this is is this a large, large area
where you're gonna be planting a lot of it or
is just not.

Speaker 7 (28:15):
Well, it's about two and a half acres and there's
groups of trees that I would like to decorate around
several of them.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
You know. Usually for something like that, we would look
to some different kinds of native plants. But when you
get into a lot of shade, there's nothing that's real,
really dense and beautiful, like something like a yopone, which
would beautiful lot in the sun. When you get it
in a lot of shade, it's it's not very dense,
and so that wouldn't be as good of a choice.

(28:45):
If it's an area you can water. There are a
number of things that will put up with that kind
of shade. I like a plant called leopard plant. It's
also called tractor seed plant because it has big round leaves.
It sort of looks like a tractor seat. Not quite
that big, but very pretty. But you're gonna have to
water it, and it'll put up with very deep shade.
Uh if you give it some water to help sustain it. Otherwise,

(29:09):
we probably ought to go back and look at some
of the natives and just realize you're going to not
quite have the density.

Speaker 7 (29:16):
Yes, sir, I like some of my neighbors they have
I believe it's oleander planted around. Some of their trees
are pretty big, like they encompass the whole trunk of.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
The tree area there as well.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
Or oh, now, I don't know what that is that
your neighbors, but only ander needs sun, lots of sun,
and so I wouldn't I wouldn't put it in too
much shade. Uh that that would. But it's a good
tough plant as far as you know, standing drought and whatnot,
so that may be a benefit of it.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
There.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
There are some other Leopard plant is a plant that
you can put out and it does pretty good. Uh.
And and there's a bunch of natives, you know, the you're
out in Splendora. If you were to Buchanna's native plants
down in the heights, they specialize in natives and they

(30:13):
would have a few ideas for some things that might
do well there. There is a native plant called beauty
berry American beauty berry. It's deciduous, but it grows in
dry shade. And I mean you can water it too,
but it's a good one to consider. I might talk
to the folks of Buchanans and see what else they
might have there. And then in Splendora, you're close to

(30:34):
Nature's way resources and they have native plants and their
nursery there. There where fourteen eighty eight comes into forty five,
just south of Conro. You might try those places and
get some more ideas of things that they carry. Okay, okay,
thank you sir. You bet good luck with that. Appreciate
that if you haven't been to Plants for all seasons.

(30:56):
They're up on Tomboi Parkway high Way to forty nine.
They've been around a long time since the nineteen seventies,
and they are excellent because when you go in there,
you find plants that want to grow here, and you
find advice for people that have grown plants here for
a very long time from people that have grown plants
here for a very long time. They know what they're

(31:17):
talking about, they absolutely do. And they just have excellent
selection wonderful plants, beautiful plants for indoors, plants for outdoors,
beautiful salvias. Right now, I got some gorgeous salvias in
awesome succulents. Just their succulent collection is really really nice.
And then of course flowers color, all kinds of perennials,

(31:37):
all kinds of annuals, whatever you're looking for. They just
got some sweet potatoes in. Recently, it is time to
begin to get some sweet potatoes going very easy to grow,
and you know, you get to enjoy the fruits of
your labor as a result. I'm going to take a
quick break here and I'll be back with your questions.
All right, welcome back to Garden Lines. Glad to have

(31:58):
you with us this morning. If you'd like to give
me a call seven to one three two one two
ktr H seven one three two un two kt r H.
I talked earlier about storms and how they knock our
power out. Affordable Tree Service is our go to here
on guard Line for taking care of your trees, and
that means a lot of things. That means making sure

(32:21):
they're prune properly. That could be deep root feeding, it
could be disease and pest control on your trees. Maybe
you've got a beautiful tree and you're going to put
in a sidewalk or driveway or an underground utility typeline
you know, gas or electric or something or water rather
u A. The Affordable Tree Service can come out and

(32:43):
they can advise you on that so you don't make
a mistake that does major damage to the most important plant,
the most expensive plant in your landscape, and that is
your tree. Now affordable tree Service Martin spoon More's company.
This is a family business, so when you call them
at seven one three six six sixty three, you're going
to talk probably to Martin's mom. She's usually the one

(33:04):
that answers a phone there. Tell her you heard about
us on Guardline. Gardenline customers are their priority, so make
sure and tell them that, uh seven one three six
nine nine two six six three. They also are can
do things like stump grinding. They can also come out
and do consultations and things take care of your trees.

(33:26):
They've been in the tree businesses family for over fifty
four years. They know what they're doing and it's always
a good time. If you have not had your trees
trimmed or pruned or looked at in recent history, you
definitely need to get somebody out there to do that.
So when a storm comes there, as strong as they
can be, no storm is going to take you know,
two hundred and fifty mile an hour win or no

(33:47):
tree turn fifty mile an hour wind just hammering it.
But there's a lot you can do to minimize damage
or to avoid damage in most cases, and it starts
with proper pruning and proper pruning isn't just something you
do to an old tree. It's something you do through
the life of the tree. And so being trained properly,
being guided into a long, strong structure, long living, strong

(34:10):
structure is important and affordable tree service folks can do
that for you. Seven to one three six ninety nine
two six six three Spinking of trees. I have a
couple of citrus trees that I planted this year out
in the orchard. I call it the orchard. It's a
little strip alongside the house. Got three fruit trees in it.

(34:31):
But anyway, uh, in the orchard. The citrus trees I
planted and then came out the next day and they
were leaning at forty five degree angles because the wind
blew through there. And you know, they are a little
skinny trees, and the little steaks they came with weren't
worth anything. So what did I do. I got a
three sixty tree stabilizer and put one on each tree.

(34:52):
Now that's a little device. It's a it's a plastic
arm that is extremely strong and reinforced. One side goes
onto a post. I had the little attachment so you
can put it on t posts. They come with that
and the other side has a loose strap that attaches
to the tree. When you stake a tree, you don't
need to go out and get wires and stake it

(35:12):
down and have stuff to trip over. And you're putting
like a piece of what garden hose over the wire
so it doesn't cut into the branch of the tree.
What you need is just a tree stabilizer. Now, have
you got a lot of wind and a little bit
you know, larger than my little citrus trees, Well, you
could put two of them in kind of one north south,
one east west, and then no matter which way the

(35:32):
wind blows, you're covered on that. They really really work.
And the one thing I like about them, in addition
to the fact that they hold onto your tree well,
is that the strap allows you to strap it in
loosely so it can move. When plant tissues move, they
get stronger. And here's an example. If you've got tomato

(35:54):
seedlings that you're growing, you grow them inside and still
air because you're starting them in the late winter for
your spring crop, and they just get spindley. They have
no strength to the stem. But if you'll take your
hand and rub them over, those seedlings, I say pets.
Your tomato plants, just rub your hand over them loosely
to move them around. They get stronger. If you do

(36:15):
that once or twice a day, you will have a
much stronger plant because that movement creates strength in the tissues.
Same thing for a steak tree. Movement makes the trunk stronger,
and movement makes those roots at the base that are
anchoring the trunk to provide stability stronger. So you want

(36:35):
to set your tree stabilizers to allow a little bit
of movement. That's very important. And of course tree stabilizers
are perfect for that three sixty tree stabilizer. You're going
to get them at Arborgate and find them a bit
at a cenamultch down south of Buchan as Native plants
in the Heights jorgesid and Gardens down in Alvin. Plants
for all seasons on two forty nine and RCW Nursery

(36:56):
where two forty nine comes into belt Wag eight easy
to find. They are well built and they last a
very long time. Have some on hand. You can even
use them for those multi trunked crpe myrtles. They put
one on one trunk, put one on another, maybe just
to hold the overall plant in a good spot. I

(37:17):
like it when people use their noggin. My dad used
to say, use your head for something other than to
hang your hat on. Thanks Dad. But when you use
your noggin to come up with a device that's new
that works, that's just a great win wind. That's a
three sixty tree stabilizer is Nelson plant Food has a

(37:39):
product called Hibiscus and Flowering Tropicals. It's in the nutri
Star line. So if I can just kind of the
real quick version over Nelson. Nelson's got the turf Star line,
bags of stuff for your lawn. They have the color
Star plant food, which is a wonderful plant food for
all kinds of things that bloom. And then they have
the nutri Star line and Nutristar has there's a Nutril

(38:02):
Star for plumerias, the nutri Star for vegetables, and you
know for everything. Hibiscus and flowering tropicals. I don't care
what kind of flowering tropical you have, what kind of
flowering plant like that Nutral Star Hibiscus and Flowering Tropicals
from Nelson. You need to try it. It works. The
fertilizer last, you just put small amounts around the plants

(38:24):
keep them blooming, and that's true of all the nutri
star products from those All right, well, I hear music,
which means I got to quit talking, and we're going
to go to a little break. When we come back,
you can be the first up this Sunday morning seven
one three two one two k t R seven one
three two one two kt r H. When I come back,

(38:46):
I'll be discussing a few things that I think are
timely for those of you who have lawns and gardens
and trees. I still want to have that conversation about
fruit trees that are less prone to disease issues. But
we'll get that and when we come back. All right, folks,

(39:12):
we're back. Welcome back to garden Line. I'm your host,
Skip Richter. And what are we doing here, Well, we're
here to help you have a bountiful garden, a beautiful landscape,
and more fun in the process. That's what we would
love to happen, because gardening's supposed to be fun. You
want to beautify your place just so you appreciate the

(39:33):
look of it. You want to make your gardens more
bountiful so you have more flowers. Maybe you want to
cut flower garden. That's something we don't talk about much
here that we can help you with that as well.
Maybe you want vegetables and herbs, and you like things
you can eat, like fruit trees for example. That's another
good idea. We certainly can do that. Regarding fruit trees

(39:53):
i mentioned, I want to talk about some that you
don't spray so much. First of all, blueberries. Blueberries do
not require a lot of sprays. That does not mean
that there's no insects or diseases it can attack of blueberry.
It just means that, unlike some plants probably on the
spray end of the spectrum, or grapes and apples and
peaches for example, those are three that you're gonna have

(40:14):
hard time raising them without significant losses if you don't
do some spray in here in our climate an area.
But blueberries is not so much. Figs another one. Yes,
they get some rust on the leaves and things, but
in general figs don't require a lot of spraying. Per Simmons.
Per Simmons is the Rodney Dangerfield of all the fruit.

(40:34):
Y'all remember Rodney Dangerfield, the guy that couldn't get any respect,
can't get any respect. Well, that's per simmons. It's a
wonderful fruit. It tastes grayes like a bag full of
yummy jelly or good ripe soft percentmon. They grow wild.
We have wild per simmons here in the southeastern United States,
including that's part of Texas, and you you just don't

(40:57):
have to spray them. You just don't. You can raise
those without sprays. Jujubis they have their own issues, but
jujubis are not one that you're going to have to
do a lot of spraying on. Another good one that
you could grow. And there's some others. So if you're
looking to have fruit but you don't want to have
to do a lot of spraying, those are some ideas
to kind of help you get off to a good start.

(41:20):
Ace Hardware stores are the place to get everything you
need for your lawn garden care, everything from houseplants to
outdoor lawns, to trees, shrubs and vegetables and so on,
rose bushes. Ace Hardware's got all the products for that,
from fertilizers to pest control and disease control to weed control.

(41:41):
We'd prevention, we'd killing existing weeds and then making outdoor
areas so beautiful, so beautiful I was in an ACE
story yesterday and looking at some of the different product lines,
and I'm telling you that I was very impressed with
the breadth of products that they had for covering a
lot of different kinds of issues, including fertilizers and things

(42:04):
that you hear me talk about. Here on guard Line,
you can go to Acehardwaretexas dot com. Don't forget the
Texas ACE Hardware Texas dot com that gives you the
list of my area ACE Hardware stores here on guard line,
and you can find one near you where you will
go and see some really cool stuff. And I'll promise
you this, when you go into ACE, You're going to
see a number of things where you go, oh, I

(42:26):
didn't expect that to be here, really cool stuff. We
walked into the one yesterday. We're over at Langham Creek,
and when we first walked in, just look off to
the right and there's all these things for indoors, beautifying
inside the home kitchen and all just lots of cool stuff.
You look to the right and oh, there's the barbecue pits,

(42:46):
and boy they're barbecue pits at ICE. You know they've
got some specials going on still right now, in barbecue pits.
And we're talking about name brands, you know, things like
Big Green Egg and Trager and Rectech and Weber for
Ale and all of the bling you need to go
with them, all of the accessories and everything else. You're
going to find it at your local ACE Hardware store.

(43:08):
Just go to ACE Hardware Texas dot com and find
your stores and there's gonna be more than one within
a reasonable distance to you. That's what I love about ACE.
It's all the options. All right, Let's go out to
sugar Land now and we are going to visit with
Debbie this morning. Hello Debbie, Hi.

Speaker 8 (43:30):
Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Can you
tell me what to do with the tree stump that
has I think it's funcus little white things growing out
of it. They're not mushrooms, but they're all over the base.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Okay, what do you want out of that tree stump?
Do you want it gone? Do you want to decorate it?
You know? What? What are you? What is your desires? Well?

Speaker 8 (43:56):
Gone would be good, but I have plants on top
of it. Now that decorative.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
Okay, okay, well gone would mean having somebody come out
with a stump grinder. Affordable treat gets that as do others,
and grinding the whole thing out. If you want to
leave it for now as a place to set plants
and maybe try to you know, do some decorating around it.
You can put plants on the top that cascade over
the sides. You can you can plant an ivy that

(44:25):
mounds up over the top of it. I mean, there's
different ways. If you want it to rot away faster,
drilling holes down in it, big old half inch drill.
Just go straight down as deep as you can with
the drill and drill a whole bunch of holes in it.
And you can put things like even just piling compost
over it and then keeping it moist will really speed

(44:46):
the Decay'd be like if you took a little piece
of two by four and you put it underneath all
your mulch against the soil where it was wet all
the time, and you know, moist that tube before is
going to rot pretty quick. You can make the stump
rot faster that way. If you want to make the
slower approach to getting rid of it, and all the
major roots that come out at the surface, you know

(45:07):
that flare out and go in all directions getting all
that decayed. The more you cover it up with wet
organic matter and soil, the faster it'll decompose.

Speaker 8 (45:17):
Oh okay, so are these things growing out of it fungus?

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Yes. The number one thing to decay wood is our fungi.
You know, we got things like bacteria and actinomycets and
all kinds of microbes that decay stuff in the soil.
When it gets to wood, all that lignant. It's hard
to Bacteria have trouble breaking that down. But fungi it's
not a problem at all. So whenever you see white

(45:47):
stuff in the mulch in your yard, or white stuff
growing underneath a piece of wood land on the ground,
that just means fungi or on the job and they're
turning it back into soil.

Speaker 9 (45:58):
Oh okay, thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
All right, all right, all right, bye bye. The folks
at Medina have a lot of great products, and you know,
I always kind of think, well, what is the product
to tell you I talk about has to grow six
twelve six plant food. I use it like as a
transplant solution, but that's just one way you can use it.

(46:23):
But I want to tell you about Medina Plus today
Medina Plus is basically Medina Soil Activator plus over forty
different trace elements. Lots of growth hormones are in there,
and those nutrients, you know, the things like magnesium and
iron and zinc, and then even vitamins and stuff are
in that concoction. You're going to see benefits in many

(46:44):
ways to your plants. You can use it as a drench,
but I would use it as a fold of your
feet as well. You can just pour it over or
spray it on the foliage of plants, let it go
down in the soil as well, doesn't matter what kind
of planet it is. Medina Plus works and people that
have used it and know that Medina Soil Activator has
been around a long time and now they've just taken
it up another level with the essential micronutrients and the

(47:07):
hormones from seaweed extract to the Medina pross product that
is outstanding. I need to take a little break here.
We will be back with your calls in just a moment.
Welcome back to garden Line. Good to be with you today.
What do you want to talk about? You want to
talk about vegetables or fruit or flowers or growing a
cut flower garden. Maybe making sure your trees are the

(47:30):
ones that want to grow here, you know, planting. What
are the varieties of trees and the types of trees
that do well here. We have a lot of options.
I mean, we're fortunate in this area to have a
lot of different options for trees. Just something to think
about is back in the day, as we say, I
don't know when the day was, but people say, back
in the day, back in the day, our lots in

(47:52):
the in towns were huge, you know, a third of
an acre lot. I mean, there are big lots back
in those time. There still are, but it was common
and you could plant this giant, beautiful big tree and
live oaks and all kinds of things that just spread
out and it's all good. Now lots just keep getting

(48:13):
smaller and smaller. You drive by neighborhoods where it looks like,
you know what, I think he could reach out his
window and close his neighbor's blinds from the house because
they're so close together. And that kind of a lot.
You need a smaller tree, and we have medium sized trees.
We have small sized trees too, some that are very small.
One of my favorite trees I've been saying that this
spring is the Chinese fringe tree is at It grows

(48:37):
at a moderate rate and it gets to a medium
size medium to small, depending on what you call medium
and what you call small. But we had one at
the Bear Creek Extension Office before some floods took that away.
At the tree I think is still there, it was
probably twenty twenty five feet even tall it had gotten.

(49:00):
It's pretty large for a Chinese fringe. But in blooms
in the spring, with shaggy white blooms that are fragrant,
honey fragrant, it is just nice. We've got crape myrtles
like natches, which is a white blooming crpe myrtle with
gorgeous cinnamon colored bark, exfoliating bark that like crape myrtles have,
and that would be a nice So you can train

(49:22):
it to a single trunk make a really nice little
tree out of that. There are many other examples. Those
are just two of what I'm talking about. But if
you're picking a tree for your place, think about things
like what do I want it for? Do I want
it to shade the roof of my house or a
western wall or a back patio, So in the summer,
I can go out there and enjoy it, enjoy the
break from the sun. Do I want something with blooms

(49:45):
that I can look at? Remember this, when you plant
a tree like that thirty foot tall soon to be natches, well,
you can see blooms, but you got to look straight
up to see them. Because they're way up there in
the air, you don't notice them as much. If you
want something that looms and people driving by can appreciate,
or when you drive up to your home you can
appreciate the blooms, maybe one of the shrub slash trees,

(50:08):
and there are plants that in a sense. Crape myrtle
can almost be that, but it can either be like
a large shrub or it can be a small tree.
A good example you know of things that are like
a shrub slash tree would be something like yopan can
make a very small tree or a shrub. Southern wax

(50:30):
myrtle can make a very small tree or a shrub.
You can train it to a single trunk and nice
like out beside a patio or something like that. I
mentioned crape myrtles. There are other examples, though, of things
that fit that Bill Vitex is one of my favorite
trees slash shrubs. Vitex doesn't want to be a tree,
it wants to be a multi stem shrub. I'm working

(50:53):
on a pruning system right now to see if it
works to turn my Vitex into a small tree with
a single trunk. Don't try this at home, by text
will fight you. But if I figured it out, I'll
tell you if I figure out something that works, I'm
in the middle. I think I'm gonna win, but we'll see.
Vy text gets the last word on that. But anyway,

(51:14):
texts beautiful blue purple blooms all through summer. There is
a white blooming form as well. Hummingbirds, beneficial insects that
like flower pollinators love it, butterflies even And it's just
a good tree. And it blooms in the summer for
crying out loud. If you shear it back, you can
even get it to bloom again. It blooms on the terminals.

(51:36):
So that's a really good tree to plant. So think
about that. How big is your place? Where do you
want to view the tree from? You know, are you
gonna are you going to sit under it for shade
or are you going to get some flowers. There are
even trees that produce fruit of course that could be used.
So anyway, consider that gets you a nice tree that
does well. I tell you a good place to get
tree period is RCW Nursery. They grow their own trees

(51:59):
up there and Plantsville. RCW is located where Tomball Parkway
and belt Way eight come together, and they absolutely have
the best that you're going to see. It could be
down you know, small shrubs, yopon, dorfiopon, different things like that,
azaleas and whatnot. Certainly roses got one of the best
selection of roses anywhere. But when it comes to trees,

(52:20):
they bring them in, you know, from fifteen gallons on
up the two hundred gallons ornamental tree shade trees. Their
species and varieties that want to grow here, that's what
they raise. As they grow these, they grow them right,
so you get a well anchored, nice trained plant when
you buy it. You can plant it yourself. You can
have RCW plant for you either way you want to go.

(52:42):
But check out our CW Nurseries RCW Nurseries dot com.
Tombo Parkway in Beltway eight easy access, and I'll promise
you this you will get a quality tree. It is
the place to get your trees just they just do
an outstanding job. And of course I'm not even talking
about all the other cool stuff from color and flowers
and vegetables and herbs that they have there at RCW.

(53:06):
I love it. If you have not done an azamite
application to your lawn recently, you gota go ahead and
get that done. We have our fertilizing seasons and if
you go online to Gardening with Skip dot com, that's
my website, Gardening with Skip. That's what we're doing here
on guard line. There is a lawn care schedule on

(53:27):
there and it tells you when to fertilize. It tells
you what products to two sprum for that fertilization. Typically
we're fertilizing in the spring and we're fertilizing in the
fall as the two primaries. Then we have a midsummer
fertilization we can do where if your lawn needs a
little extra boost or maybe used a product that doesn't

(53:48):
last a long time, you could come back and do
that third in the summer. But azamite is nutrients, but
it's nutrients that aren't the kind in a fertilizer with
three nombers on the bag that really push fast growth
and greenness. Azamite is a nutrient for all the things
that plants need that they have to have, that are essential,

(54:09):
that are needed in small amounts, and so you can
do azmite at any time. Most people will do as mite
when they fertilize, you know, they go out and spread
fertilizer and bring the hopper back, put azmite in it,
and go out and spread asmite. That's how you would
go about and do it. It could do it in either order,
so you could do it now. It's easy to remember
that way. But there's nine a month of the year

(54:31):
where you can't put azmite down and it doesn't take much.
Just you know, a forty four pound bag is going
to cover six to twelve thousand square feet, and so
the main thing is just make sure and get that
done periodically because that helps build that sole bank account
of nutrients. Very important. Hey, it's got a lot quiet
on the phone, sore. If anybody's got a call, be

(54:53):
happy to visit with you at seven one three two
one two ktrh. Otherwise I'm just gonna keep talking about things.
I'm interested in things that are important. You know, when
I worked with the AGR Life Extension Service as a
horticulturist for thirty five years here in Texas, we used
to say that the three things that make the phone

(55:13):
ring are trees, turf, and tomatoes, the three teas. The
way I like to put it is, everybody cares about
what's wrong with my lawn? How do I grow lawn?
All the long questions, and trees, what's wrong with my tree?
What's a good tree? How do I pert tree? All
that kind of tree questions. Those are the two big ones.
And then tomatoes. Tomatoes rule the garden. As I always say,

(55:33):
no one ever calls me about their Cole Robbie, it's all.
It's typically a tomato call, and other vegetables as well.
But the three tea's make the phone ring. And so
the turf, that's probably the biggest one. Lots of questions
about turf. And you know, people, well, my lawn is thin,
my lawn is it's getting weedy because the sunlight's hitting

(55:56):
the soil. The lawn is not thick. Trench bugs hit
last year, take all root ride has been affecting it.
It's compacted, and so the grass just isn't thriving a drought.
You know, it got kind of dry and died back
a little bit. What do I do Well, One of
the most important things if you want to have a
beautiful green lawn is to do a core aeration and

(56:17):
a compost top dressing. Now, why didn't I just say
aer ration. Well, it's because a core aerration pops plugs
of soil out of the ground and drops them on
the surface. It doesn't just push a hole in the ground.
And by opening it up that way, any fats that
you have, those dissolving plugs of soil get in around

(56:39):
the thatch and speed the decomposition of it. You open
up holes in the soil. You breathe life into your lawn.
You throw compost top dressing over it, just a thin
layer like a third of an inch compost top dressing
over the top of that. After you air rate and
you really have set your line up to bounce back
and look good, water infiltrates faster in those hole. Nutrients

(57:01):
can move down in there like your fertilizers and things.
It works. The folks at year round Houston serve inside
the Beltway inside belt Wait eight year round Houston Dot com.
That's the website year round, Houston dot com. You can
also give Cliff a call eight three to two eight
eight four fifty three thirty five. And if he's out

(57:22):
on a job, which he often is, uh, then just
leave a message and he will call you back very fast.
Eight three to two eight eight four fifty three thirty five.
Talk to them if you're inside the beltway, talk to
them about coming out and doing a core aeration and
compost top dressing on your lawn. Let's head to West
Houston now and we're going to visit with Gary. Hey, Gary,

(57:44):
welcome to garden line.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
Yeah, good morning, Skip. Yeah, I wanted to call in
and talk.

Speaker 10 (57:50):
I've got a small little I've got I think come
down from four plants, tomato plants in five gallon containers.
All right, I've got some what I thought was some
good soil. I couldn't find jungle land. They didn't have
it at Memorial City when I needed it.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
But okay, so but I got some.

Speaker 10 (58:09):
Good stuff put it in there and put them in
about March first, and every every year, I've got some
kind of problem just the way it is, and I'm.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
Happy to hang out through the break.

Speaker 10 (58:19):
If nobody wants to call, but I want to talk
about the uh, the stress that I you know, it
drains through. It drains very very well, right, almost too good,
and I wanted to talk about and I'm not setting up,
at least not right now. I'm not setting up drip irrigation,
but wanted to talk about a way to keep it

(58:40):
from you know, it gets moist it drains quickly, dries
up quickly, and you know how it is. Maybe I
got to do two times a day, et cetera. But
I'm but I'm getting blossom and rot pretty bad on
a couple of them, and I've lost ten ten tomatoes.
I'm kind of used to that early in season, but
now I'm dealing with it now and I shouldn't be.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
Okay, So here here's the deal. First of that. Yeah, yeah, So,
blossom endrite is primarily a fluctuation and soil moisture issue.
It's it's caused by lack of calcium to the tip
of the tomato, but it's there could be enough calcium
in your soil, so generally adding castium to the soil
doesn't fix it, but working on the fluctuation does. In

(59:28):
a real chunky mix it drains extra well, maybe almost
too well. Your tomato is more likely to go through
that too dry, too wet, or very wet to too dry. More. Also,
five gallons is really a minimum for growing a tomato,
unless it's just a little tiny dwarf tomato. Now when
when if you can give them more soil next next

(59:50):
time you do this, that would be helpful. Getting the
soil that holds moisture a little bit better but still
drains well would be important. Uh, And so that that's
what I would recommend. H blossom enrat tends to be
worse on the earlier tomatoes of the season, and not
as bad as time goes on. But you can have
it anytime if he goes see that moisture fluctuation, So

(01:00:10):
I would I would get a bigger a bigger plot
next time, and just do everything you can to keep
it moighty. It may mean water and twice a day. Yeah,
all right, I got about ten seconds here, Gary.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Okay, that's all right, that's good enough. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
Skip all right, Well, good luck with that. Give me
a call back sometime. We'll glad to continue this or
another conversation. All right, Uh, let's see here Chris in spring.
You'll be our first when we come back from this break.
Thank you all for listening to the Guarden Line. We
love to visit with you about planet that's not happy
place sitting and talking to gardeners about plants. I'll be

(01:00:48):
right back, all right, welcome back. Good have you with
us here on Garden Line. Listen. I keep telling you
that you need to go to Moss Nursery and see this.
I know everybody down there knows it. It must have
been around for a good night seventy years. So everybody
in the Seabrook area certainly knows it in that whole region.

(01:01:10):
But for the rest of you, it is worth a
trip down. You go down to Chema the boardwalk, get
your buy to eat, and run over to Moss Nursery
and Seabrook and enjoy yourself. Eight acres crammed with gorgeous plants.
There are flowering things everywhere. I've been talking about bluemin trees.
I'm talking about shrubs and about flowers. Hanging baskets, Oh
my gosh, Jim has nice selection of hanging baskets there

(01:01:32):
at Moss. You know, every time I go, I just wander,
which is how you need to shop at Moss. Just
wander around, look at everything, and every time you turn
a corner, you're going to see something that's like what
is that? And it typically is some kind of piece
of artwork that's very unusual. But there are if you know,

(01:01:52):
it doesn't matter what kind of plant or interesting, Jim
is going to have really cool ones. Now. For example,
the birds and us were fern look like a fern.
It looks different, but it's with big, old, wide, strappy leaves.
He's got plenty of those. He has a new there's
a new kind of porch of laca that I've never seen.
This porch of laka molo kenniensis, I believe, is how

(01:02:13):
they say that heat and drought tolerant, very unusual looking plant.
You go into his greenhouses and who knows what you're
gonna find in there. Lots of things for the sun,
you know, things when it gets hot and it's humid
and it's blazing and you're like dying outside during the
middle of the day. Must have got the plants you
need to have out there in the garden. A mendavilla
is beautiful plant. There's one called sun parasol blueforia. That

(01:02:37):
if you've seen men of bell as before, you know
you're typically looking at some pinks and colors like that. Well,
men to be a sun blue blue foria. It's I
say that is a beautiful vine with just kind of
a purplish lavender bloom that is just gorgeous and all
kinds of tropical kinds of things. You know, if you
like for indoors or something like and in theoryum, those

(01:03:01):
are gorgeous plants with the colorful little bloom and leaf
structures on them. It doesn't matter what you're looking for.
Moss has it. But listen, you gotta go down, you
gotta walk around, you gotta see this place. It is
really really nice. And that includes containers. You're gonna find
a lot of containers there you don't see anywhere else.
But that's typical moss. They carry things as well as

(01:03:22):
the common things. They carry things that you don't see
just anywhere else. All you gotta do is go to
Toddville Road and Seabrook that's where they're located. Or go
to the website Moss Nursery dot com m aas by
the way, that's how we spell it. Let's go out
to spring. Now, let's Visabeth Chris. Hey Chris, welcome to
guard Line. Hey skop, good morning.

Speaker 11 (01:03:43):
I was calling about excuse me, gray leafs, gray leaf spot.
I've had it, treated it the last four years and
it comes back almost every late March early April.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
I treat it with dak.

Speaker 11 (01:03:57):
Nel four ounces to one gallon of water.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
I put some.

Speaker 11 (01:04:01):
Turbo spreader so it sticks to the blades. So I
got it again. I treated it a month ago. It's
back now it's spread into my neighbors adjoining yard in
my backyard.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
What am I doing wrong? And is this ever going
to stop?

Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
Am I treating it right? Yeah? Well that's a good product.
Dknil is a good product for it. So is Eagle.
It is an Eagles a nitopas product that contains micaelobutan
nill and it's a systemic. It moves in and it
does a good job on a number of different turf
type diseases. So you might want to consider that one.

(01:04:40):
Great leaf spot is very environmentally related. So when we
go from the cooler spring and it warms up a
little bit going into summer and then you get a
lot of leaf wetness. It could be rain it could
be irrigation, but just keeping those grass blades a little
on the wet side and also in shade. It's even worse.

(01:05:04):
Gray leaf spot takes off and does its thing. It's
primarily early late fall or excuse me, late spring to
about midsummer. A problem that we have here. So you
can treat it chemically, but the more you back off
on frequency of watering and the backing off a little

(01:05:25):
bit on nitrogen. Sometimes if you push it with too
much nitrogen, you make it prone to certain problems like
gray leaf spot. So those would be my tips for it,
other than that, you know, using the fungicides, but trying
to get in ahead of it. You know, but when
it's going to occur, and if you forget when it's
gonna occur, you can go to my schedule on at
gardening with skip dot com my lawn pest disease, and

(01:05:47):
we'd manage the schedule. I got a little bar in
there across the chart that shows when to look for
gray leaf spot and try to get ahead of rather
than reacting to it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Okay, what should I do after I treat it?

Speaker 11 (01:05:58):
Should I do some dinus soil exervators should do more
composts because I've already erated composts. You know, like your
schedule said, is there anything to do after post treatment?

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Well, yeah, any kind of things like that are good
for the lawn, But as far as if you've treated
for the grey leaf spot, those other things aren't going
to make the grey leaf spot go away. And they're
just good for lawn grass, lawn grass growth and health
and strength and all that kind of thing. They're not
a they don't go after grey leaf spot. And how
is it that it's been a year where I've seen

(01:06:29):
a lot of pictures uh spores, uh spores from those spots.
There's little tiny black dots in the spots that are
you can't hardly see them with a naked eye. They
release spores that float around the yard and then they
land on a grass blade and they don't infect until
that grass blade stays wet for a certain period of time,

(01:06:51):
and then the spore, just like a wheat seed, sprouts
and it infects the leaf. And that's how you get
more of it.

Speaker 11 (01:06:58):
Okay, because this in my backyard too. My backyard's pretty
big and it's it's pretty hard to treat with the
pump spray it'd be be back there for several hours.
I don't know, this is going to leave the backyard
alone and see what happens.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Well, the the eagle is a granule, and so you
could put it out with your fertilizer spreader. That would
be another option.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
Okay, it's a spreader.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Okay, good deal. Nitrofoss Eagle, Yeah, nitropos egle.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
All right, thank you sir.

Speaker 3 (01:07:30):
All right, you bet, you bet appreciate the call. Yeah.
Nit Frous Eagle is one of the many products from
Nitrofoss that works really well on problems like that gray
leaf spot. The Michaelo butte to nil is a systemic
fungicide moves into the plant tissues and it lasts a while.
So Dacani is a great product for leaf spots. You

(01:07:51):
get it on the leaf and it stops the spots there.
But the michael buttee goes into the plant tissue and
it's going to be around for longer. You know. I
ain't could wash the daconel off, but that microbutiny, being
locally systemic, is going to give you a little bit
better length of time. By the way, you can find
it places like M and D and Rosenberg on Avenue I.

(01:08:12):
If you go to Court Hardware in Stafford, they carry
products from Nitravas. That's on South Maine and then up
in Cyprus. The M and D and Cypress on Loveetta
Road carries Nitavas products as well. All right here, boy,
time is flying today. I'm telling you speaking of Nitrovass products.
The super turf, the nineteen four to ten silver bag

(01:08:35):
for summer. It will carry you if you put superturf
out now, if you haven't fertilized in let's say six
weeks with a slow release or anything. You've put superturf
out now and it'll carry all the way up to
your fall fertilization if you return your clippings and have
them recycle those nutrients back into the turf. Nitrovas Superturf
silver bag easy to spot from anywhere. You go to

(01:08:57):
Langham Creek Case Hardware on FM five to you go
up to the Woodlands to Auspa Ace or maybe down
down in the Kadi area to the Ace on Mason Road.
A single ranch all carry nit Foss products like that
super turf, so make sure and have it on hand
for the next time you're going to want to fertilize
because it works. I was visiting with the folks up

(01:09:22):
at D and D Feed the other asked up by
there and just checking out what they have in stock,
and as always it's a lot, boy, they have tons
of things. You know, of course, all the fertilizers I
talk about from nitrofoss and Microlife and turf Star from
Nelson and Medina, and they carry heirloom soils products there,
the Nelson plant food for the turf typeline and for

(01:09:44):
the little jars. They have both of those, and it
is just a good place to shop. You're going to
find a lot of things that you need for your
lawn and for your garden to have success. And some
really high quality pet foods too, in addition to the
feeds for livestock other things. D and D Feed's located
three miles west of two forty nine. It's three miles

(01:10:04):
west of two forty nine on Highway twenty nine to
twenty so, just west of tom Ball. Go by and
say hated the Dover family, Jeff and the whole crew
really there at D and D Feed and Supply. Let
me take a little break and we'll come back with
our last short segment. Here of this hour. All right,
thanks for hopping hopping here on Guardenline. Good to have

(01:10:26):
you back with us. You'd like to give me a
call seven one three two one two fifty eight seventy
four seven one three two one two fifty eight to
seventy four. Earlier today, I was visiting with someone and
they were asking me about managing mosquitoes and uh and
ants and other things like that. Well, well, Pest Brothers
is our go to pest control company in the Greater

(01:10:50):
Houston area. And when I say Greater Houston, I'm talking
about from the Woodlands, all the way down to Texas City,
from over in Katie, all the way across the Baytown.
They cover those areas and they deal with whatever pest
you have indoor pass cockroaches in the house, oh my gosh, uh,
fire ants outside, oh my goodness. And termites. Boy, you
talk about the one pass I can do the most

(01:11:11):
monetary damage to your home. That's termites. They have special
ways of dealing with them that are very effective but
also the safest possible manner. That's how Pest Brothers does
their business. You can go to the website Vpestbros dot
Com Thepestbros dot Com or give them a call seven

(01:11:32):
or two eight one two o six forty six seventy
two eight one two o six forty six seventy. I
don't know. Lots of people have been asking me about
their bucket system for mosquitoes because I talk about it.
I got some calls from college station and other places
the other day because I heard about it on guarden Line. Well,
ask them to tell you about their mosquito management system.

(01:11:54):
I call it the bucket system, but it is really
cool stuff. If you don't like mosquitos, you'll of this system,
that's for sure. We're going to go up now to
Northwest Houston and talk to Marcie. Hey, Marcy, welcome to garden.

Speaker 6 (01:12:06):
Line High Skip. Good morning. My question is.

Speaker 8 (01:12:11):
What is what is a female tree in.

Speaker 6 (01:12:13):
A male tree?

Speaker 8 (01:12:16):
Is that true that we are planting more male trees?

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
That's why we're.

Speaker 9 (01:12:20):
Suffering from allergies.

Speaker 8 (01:12:23):
I was reading something about Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
That is a great question. That is a great question.
Here's the deal. Uh huh, okay.

Speaker 12 (01:12:34):
Sounds you because I have allergies right now, and I mean,
what's going on out there that they said that? Because
I'll tell you Okay, let me tell.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Me, let me, let me talk, and I'm going to
tell you Marcia. So here's the deal with male and female.
Here's the deal with male and female trees. Most trees,
Most plants are both male and female, like peach blossom
has male and female parts. Per simons have separate can
have separate male and female flowers on the same tree.

(01:13:08):
But some plants have separate male and female trees. Papayas
are an example of a tree that's male or female.
And when you're talking about allergies, the eastern red cedar,
the ash juniper in Central Texas, those are separate male
and female trees. And so there, if you plant the

(01:13:29):
female tree, you don't get pollen. But if you plant
a male tree, you do. And if you look at
a site at an ash juniper or a cedar, you
can't look at it and go, oh, that's a male
or female. It just you end up finding out that
it is. But in some plants that is separated. But
in general, we have a lot of allergies. We have
allergies to grass pollen, we have allergies to like elm

(01:13:51):
tree pollen. There's not male and female elm trees there's
there's not. But with the with the ash juniper in
the cedar, there are male and female trees, and it
would be nice if we could distinguish between the two
to avoid that kind of problem. And that is it
in a nutshell. Let's let's see here. Let's go to

(01:14:12):
Mike and Conroe. Hello, Mike, welcome to garden Line. How
you doing, Steve, I'm doing good. How are you today?

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
I'm great.

Speaker 13 (01:14:24):
I'm building a house up in Conroe, not too far
from like the dam. Most of the properties kind of
a sandy loam on the property line. There's a My
neighbor has a shop that's relatively close, and I have
a section that I can see through. So I'm trying

(01:14:47):
to find something that will be in evergreen and totally
block out that view. I have some I don't know
if there's a little small seeds or some got a
little evergreen, but if they won't get much over seven
eight feet tall. I was just wanting to see what
your recommendation was. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
Okay, Well, what the first thing is to consider your
eye line of sight? You know, like, for example, if
someone is sitting down on a patio and a chair
You look at the line of sight to what you
want to block, and then consider how far it is
from you. The closer you put a bush to where

(01:15:29):
you were viewing from, the less tall that bush needs
to be in order to block the view. As you
get closer and closer to let's say the shop or
something you're wanting to block, you need a bigger and
bigger plant to fully block that view, so that that's
part of the decision in which plant to plant. Good
screening plants include things like there is a cherry laurel

(01:15:54):
that does very well. It's an evergreen. There's a several
cultivars of it. One's called brighton tight, and it makes
a taller screen in time. There are many hollies that
do a good job of that. In the native plant range,
we've got things like the southern wax myrtle. It's not
going to get super tall, but it will achieve some
height in time, maybe six feet or so in a

(01:16:15):
reasonable amount of time. And then there is a yopon
and any shrub, the more you share it, the denser
it becomes, and the better of a screen it becomes.
Yopon is also an evergreen plant that you could put in.
So those are a few plants that you might want
to consider. I don't think i'd do the mere lemon

(01:16:37):
there for various reasons. Number one, it's cold tender, and
so if you ended up getting a bad bed freeze,
then you've lost your screen and you're starting over. So
I'd rather go with something that's a little better. There's
also a plant called oh gosh, I just don't mind
on the name of it. I'm going to think of
it in a minute here. But Japanese You the Japanese

(01:17:00):
u gets quite tall and with a little shearing, makes
a really nice dense screen. Japanese u. You see these
around town, just with making a wall of foliage. So
those are a few options. All right, did I lose
I guess I lost them there. Okay, Well, let's see
I was talking about yesterday about Airloom soils and all

(01:17:22):
the different products they offer and the leaf mall compost.
They will bring leaf moll compost to your house in
a cubic yard supersack, drop it on the ground right
there in the driveway wherever you want it. But when
you do delivery on the supersacks, I believe they have
a three sack minimum for delivery, and there is spees
for delivery. Of course, anytime you're hauling bulky stuff around town,

(01:17:44):
there's an extra charge for sure on that. You can
get m a call if you don't go out to porter.
That's where the soil yard is located at Warren's Rock
and multch out there two eight, one, three five four
nineteen fifty scheduling things like that. Or you can just
go online to the Heirloom Soils website airloomsoils dot com.

(01:18:05):
You'll find there all of the products they offer, many
many things available by the bag at area garden centers
and feed stores and ace hardware stores and I mean
just all kinds of places. Southwest Fertilizer Course has them.
But either way you want to go about it, you're
going to find the product you need. Do you want
to grow veggies and herbs, get their veggie and herb mix.
It's outstanding. Do you want to fill in an area

(01:18:27):
of la lawn you're about to plant, get the lawn
mix that is outstanding. Whatever you're getting from Heirloom Soils
is going to be quality made and it's going to
be something that causes your plants to thrive in I
always say brown stuff before green stuff. Set the foundation
before you put in the plants. Heirloom soils awesome place

(01:18:47):
to get a very very solid foundation so you can
have success. Everybody's going to think you have a green
thumb and all you have is the phone number for
heirloom soils. That's it. That's how you do it. All right,
I am almost out of time here. Let's go ahead.
I'm gonna go to Huntsville here and talk to Charles. Charles,
I'll see if we can get it done. If not,
we'll hold you over and finish the after the top

(01:19:10):
of the hour.

Speaker 14 (01:19:11):
I'm up here forty miles north of Huntsville, Alabama, in Tennessee.
My wife just bought a beautiful little Meyer lemon at
the nursery. It's in a pot about eighteen inches tall,
and it's about a foot and a half tall. When
is the best time to transplant that into a larger container,
which ultimately maybe its final container because we're gonna have

(01:19:33):
to wheel it inside in the winter.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
Okay, okay, you're talking about a redbud.

Speaker 14 (01:19:41):
Did you say, no, a Meyer?

Speaker 3 (01:19:44):
What was the plant? Oh? Meyer lemon? I'm sorry, I'm
looking at another call Meyer lemon. Now do it now, get
it as much time as you can. They don't want
to grow in the cool season. They just want to
try to get by, and so I would do it asap.
It in the new spot. Put some good quality fertilizer

(01:20:04):
around it, watered in real good and keep it moist.
The most important thing on the containerized citrus like that
is don't let it dry out too much. I'm gonna
the music is about to cut me off. If you
want to hang around, we can continue this. If not,
I do wish you well. All right, folks, welcome back
to your guardline. Good to have you with us this morning.

(01:20:24):
Got some callers on hold here. We're about to get
to I wanted to make a statement about some liquid
products from Microlife. I use the Biomatrix. That is a
orange label liquid. It comes in quartz, comes in gallons.
I use it for a lot of things. It is
it's got primarily nitrogen in it, not much phosphorus, which

(01:20:44):
is okay for a lot of uses, and a moderate
amount of potassium. I use it for houseplants, anything, foliage,
indoors especially. It's very good for that. Now you can
go outdoors and you can provide the same boost to
whatever kind of plants that you're trying to get a
little bigger. And a lot of times, let me just
say something, a lot of times you'll see fertilizers for
blooming plants that had a lot of phosphorus in them,

(01:21:05):
and that's because phosphorus is very important for blooming. But
it's also important for blooming to have vigor in the plants.
If let's say you planted some trailing petunias this spring
and they're kind of dwindling a little bit, and you
know at some point here they're not going to bloom
as well. You when it starts to go downhill a
little bit, don't wait until it's not blooming at all,

(01:21:27):
cut it back, share it back, and then get you
a nitrogen type product to apply, like the biomatrix the
orange label, and apply to that plant to boost fresh
new foliage growth new leaves, and the leaves capture sunlight
and the sunlight in the plant is utilized to make
growth and to make blooms to make carbohydrates. So nitrogen

(01:21:51):
is important for blooming. Not overdoing nitrogen, but don't forget
that is also important. So that biometrix is just a
good product to use on a lot of different things,
a lot of situations. It's available from the folks at Microlife.
We're going to go back out to Huntsville, Alabama and
continue our conversation with Charles. Hey, Charles, welcome to guard lineback.

(01:22:12):
Good to have you back.

Speaker 14 (01:22:15):
Said, to get that Meyer lemon into the large container
that's going to be its home the rest of its life,
which is on wheels, and we can pull it into
the garage. But what should I what fertilizer should I
use on that after we transplant it into the larger one.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
You know, at this point I would probably use and
there are some good fruit tree fertilizers. You know you're
out there in Huntsville. I don't know what kind of
brands and stuff you have access to out there, but
fertilizers for fruit trees will be fine. You don't, okay.
I would just get a good lawn fertilizer with a
three one two ratio of nutrients. So an example would

(01:22:57):
be fifteen five ten are twenty one seven fourteen or
do you see what I'm saying. The I'm just giving
you that's the ratio. It doesn't those numbers aren't what's important.
It's the ratio. The bigger the numbers, the less you use.
But follow the label on it. And I've used lawn

(01:23:18):
fertilizers on my fruit trees for a number of years
and they do just fine with that.

Speaker 14 (01:23:23):
Okay, you helped me out.

Speaker 1 (01:23:25):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (01:23:27):
All right, take care out there. Good good to have
you on Gardenline. Thanks for calling in. Appreciate that Nelson
Water Garden and Nursery is out there in Katie. And
if you have not been to Nelson, you need to go.
This is our West Houston destination garden center. It really
is Nelson Water Gardens. You head out ten and when

(01:23:49):
you get to Katie, you just turn north on Katie
Fort Ben Road. When you get up to Nelson's it's
on the right hand side's not very far up the street.
You're going to find some interesting things. Number one, you're
going to find the water gardens. They're nationally known for
their water gardens. You've seen those big, beautiful ceramic containers

(01:24:09):
that have water spilling over the sides and then it
recirculates back through the container. It's called a disappearing fountain.
They invented that and they've got tons of containers. I
just go see. I can't even just adequately describe to
you the beauty and the variety of all those beautiful
water containers because they do waterfalls and stuff as well.

(01:24:30):
But it's water gardens and nursery. Nelson Water Gardens and Nursery.
The nursery is also outstanding beautiful plants. When you walk in.
I always go through the shop the store to get
that back to the plants and back because I love
looking at the houseplants that are in the store. They're beautiful.
If you need a quick gift for somebody, go in
there and grab on those houseplants. It looks good from

(01:24:52):
the time you bought it, it just looks good. And
then when you get to the back, so many different
options from cacti to succulents, to beautiful vines, to herbs
and vegetables and tropical hibiscus and everything else. Nelson Water
Garden and Nursery. They are on Katy Fort Ben Road
again just north of the KD Freeway. Enterstate ten. Nelson

(01:25:14):
Watergardens dot Com. Nelson Watergardens dot Com. We're gonna head
out now to Bay City and talk to Terry this morning. Hello, Terry,
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 15 (01:25:24):
Hi Skip, Okay, I have two questions for you. First,
First of all, my Peggy Martin roses they bloomed. They
were gorgeous. Now it's a miss. It's like, oh my gosh,
they're sending out new growth. However, underneath I see all
this like where the where the roses had bloomed there,

(01:25:47):
like if you could dead head them, which you can't,
you would need to. But all these blooms now they
turned brown and it seems like it had some mass
of vines that h I wish I could cut them out,
but they they're old, and they grew and they made
a hedge, a higher hedge about three feet tall. And

(01:26:07):
the problem is they're on a structure that I made.
It's a lattice work structure and I had it zip
tied to t posts and I guess during the winter
the zip tize they dry rotted, the froze or something,
and now my lattice work is coming down. It's like
I need to redo my structure. But to do that,

(01:26:27):
I would have to like pretty much cut my Peggy
Martin's way low. So I could just redo my structure,
but I don't want to kill my Peggy Martins. So
what's your suggestion?

Speaker 3 (01:26:38):
All right, So what you want to do? Roses bloom
on new growth, so you can cut of rose back
as much as you want and it'll come back. Now
I would unhook that lattice if that's kind of what's
already happening with the zip tize. Get your new structure
put on there, and then take the rose and begin

(01:26:58):
to tie it back to the new structure, and you
can prune back as much as you want. It will regrow.
And so as it begins to regrow, if you can
orient the vines more horizontal than vertical, that helps it
fill in faster and you'll have a really good bloom
on it. That's also true with your winter pruning on
your Peggy Martin. But you can just guide it as

(01:27:22):
you want, and it's a very vigorous plant. I had
a Peggy Martin. Here's an example of what Peggy can take, Terry.
I had a Peggy Martin that got up about six
feet tall after I planted it, and my two Golden
retrievers chewed it off at a foot high. It came back,
it got up again. It was about eight feet tall.
They chewed it off at knee high. I put a

(01:27:45):
wire cage around it, and it grew and now it's
filling the trellis and just beautiful. Peggy Martin is tough.
Don't be afraid to cut on it, even if it's
a dog chewing it off for you. It's gonna survive
it and it'll come back. Okay. So get that structure
built strong. Yeah, yeah, get it Bill strong for long
term holding that Peggy Martin because she's a vigorous one.

Speaker 15 (01:28:07):
Yeah, well too. There's no one winding anything, you know,
there's no one winding on that. It's gonna have to
be cut down. I just wanted to hello because I
can't unwind it from the structure, So that answers that question.
Now I have a question.

Speaker 3 (01:28:20):
About Hey, hey, well, Terry, hang on, I got to
go to a break right quick. Just hang on. We'll
take your next question right when we come back. Thanks
a lot. We'll put you on hold for a second here,
all right, Well, I got to catch you off guard
with some word music every now and then. So there
we go. Some of you are out there dancing in
your later hose, and I know that I ca can

(01:28:40):
see you from here. Wild Birds Unlimited those three words.
That's what you need to know when it comes to
anything birds. I don't care what it is. They know
their stuff. You can go in with any kind of questions.
You walk in there, you're gonna find any kind of product.
And the seed selections they have. The collection that they
have are outstanding. Right now, we're in nesting season, so

(01:29:04):
they have an exclusive product only available at Wilbirds Unlimited
called Nesting Superblend. That's the one to be using right now.
It's got everything birds need when they're laying eggs or
hatching out checks and raising checks and everything like that.
It is an awesome product. The feeders that you put
it in it can be. You can buy it by
loose bags. You can put it in any feeder are

(01:29:25):
You can buy the little cylinders that are compacted. The
birds peck the seeds out. Nesting super Blend is available
that way as well at Wildbirds Unlimited. By the way,
we have six Wildbirds and Limited stores here in the
Greater Houston area. There's one on Cypress on Barker Cypress.
There's one in Houston on bel Air, another one in
Houston out Western Memorial Drive. Pearland has the store on

(01:29:46):
East Broadway. Clear Lake has one on El Dorado, and
if you got in Kingwood, you got a Wildbird's Unlimited
store on Kingwood Drive. While are you there, make sure
and pick up my favorite hummingbird feeder. That is the
hy Perch hummingbird, a lot flat hummingbird feeder, so when
the birds get to it, you can kind of see them.
It's not like a bird is hiding on the other
side of the feeder. I love it. It works really well.

(01:30:08):
I just reloaded it. I had some hummingbirds come into it,
reloaded it and put it out yesterday for another round.
I love while Birds Unlimited and you will too, but
I got to warn you it's addictive. It is addictive.
We're gonna go back to Bay City and Terry, you
were gonna follow up with another question. I think, how
can we help?

Speaker 15 (01:30:29):
Okay, it's about redbud trees I bought. I'm obsessed with them.
I have one that's huge and it's under pine trees
and it's gorgeous. So I had the opportunity to buy
four more and they're on they're in pots and I
haven't decided we're on a plant them. And I want
to know. I always thought they were kind of meant

(01:30:49):
to be like an undergrowth tree, like a dogwood or something,
and that's where my big one is. But could I
have these new ones in full sun or it's an
aren't a good idea?

Speaker 3 (01:31:01):
The Eastern red bud, the standard red bud you see
around here, is not as happy in full sun as
it is and as an understory tree. There is a
red bud called Texas red bud. Now, the difference is
the Eastern the leaf is not shiny. It is a
little thinner compared to the Texas, which has a shiny,

(01:31:25):
leathery Yeah, okay, so yeah, the Texas could go in
the sun, just fine. The Eastern you're gonna you can
put it in sun, but you just need to keep
it adequately watered. And you know it, it would be
happier if it was a little more shade. But i'd
give it. You got the plants already, I'd give it
a try.

Speaker 15 (01:31:44):
Okay, Well, thank you so much. I'm going to do that,
all right, Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:31:50):
I appreciate the call, Terary. You take care. So yeah,
let's uh, let's talk about a red budge just for
a moment. They're actually the three types of red buds
that you can find in our area. There is the
standard type, which is the Eastern red bud. Eastern redbud

(01:32:10):
that the leaves are very heart shaped, they are thinner,
and they are not shiny in their appearance. Okay, the
Texas red bud is native out in this direction out west.
It has a leathery leaf, thicker meaning it's what I
mean by that, and it's shinier and instead of being
a long pointed tip on the heart shaped leaf, it's

(01:32:34):
more rounded. It's got a little tip on it, but
not as much Texas red bud much more sun tolerant,
very tough, very tough plant. It's hard to find them,
and they red buds are promiscuous. They cross, and so
if you have a Texas red bud and you save
seed off of it, and there's probably Eastern red buds
all around the neighborhood somewhere, and they're gonna end up

(01:32:54):
being a mix between the two, which is just how
they are. But Texas redbud if you can find. And
then there's a Mexican red bud that has smaller leaves
that are very rounded and they are wavy on the
edges like kind of like a wavy as you go
around the edge, kind of like maybe the edges of
some types of a cray paper or something. Anyway, that's

(01:33:14):
another good tolerant heat tolerant ones intolerant one, but it
forms more of a bushy looking small tree than the
types that you would think of when you think of
red buds. Anyway, those three are all available, they all
have their place in our area, but just something to
be aware of it, Chris. Redbuds come also in trailing types.
There's one called Traveler that it's it's like it the

(01:33:36):
branches hanging down at like pendant direction. That is kind
of cool. There's red buds that are white. That's another one.
There's red buds that have beautiful foliage. Some have burgundy foliage,
some have kind of an orange and yellow, almost like
a sunrise coming up kind of foliage. So if you're
gonna buy a red bud, do a little shopping around,

(01:33:58):
find the one that fits what you want, and you
can find it here locally at our great independent garden centers.
You're listening to garden Line. Our phone number if you'd
like to give me a call seven one three two
to one two KTR eight seven one three two, one, two, five,
eight seven four. League City Feed done in League City.

(01:34:19):
It's right there. It's easy to get to you. Just
if you're coming across Highway ninety six into League City.
You turn south on Highway three and a few blocks
south of ninety six on the east side, if you're
going south, on the left hand, left hand side is
League City Feed. It's been around since what forty years ago?
I believe, actually it was over forty years ago that

(01:34:40):
the Thunderberg family first built it. The third generation now
runs it with that same old fashioned good feed store approach,
and that means we're going to carry your feed sacks
out for you. We're going to carry the products that
you need here. You know, do you want to have
a beautiful yard and garden. You want to get the
fertilizers I recommend on garden Line, night foss ASMI, microlife

(01:35:03):
soils like Airloom soils, and Nelson plant Food. There's another
one that they carry, they're League City Feed. They're open
Monday through Saturday, nine to six, closed on Sunday, but
nine to six means you're on the way home from work,
you can swing by there get you some quality dog food.
Gets the products that you need to control pests, weeds
and diseases and get you your fertilizers right there at
League City Feed again a few blocks south of ninety

(01:35:26):
six on Highway three. We've covered a lot of ground
today on different things. I was talking about fruit trees
and disease issues and things like that. Diseases are more
prominent in areas where it rains than they are in
arid areas, and that is a significant factor. There are

(01:35:46):
Let's take up a con tree for example. It's kind
of interesting. Pecans get several different kinds of leaf diseases,
and the more it rains, the more the disease problems occur.
There's a disease called scab that causes the leaves to
get big black areas on them and really messes up production.
It gets on the shucks as well, and there are

(01:36:07):
other diseases on pecans. If you were to look at
a map of Texas and you took Interstate thirty five
as the north south dividing line. East of that line,
we have to plant varieties that are scab resistant in
order to have success. Unless you want to run a
sprayer every weekend. The spray or pecan trees, which nobody

(01:36:30):
wants to do. West of that line, they can plant
other varieties that are gray varieties, but they just don't
have the scab resistance. If you go to the Aggie
Horticulture website Aggie Horticulture, up, tax and m there is
a fruit and nuts section on the front page. You
click on that and you will get a publication on
every kind of fruit and that you would want to grow.

(01:36:52):
I mean, avocados are on there all the way down
to I don't know what a ze fruit, but they've
got it's all on there. And when you open the
pecan publication, what you'll see is that map I'm describing,
and it'll have a list of the varieties for both
sides of the line. So if you're gonna plant a pecan,
you need to plant one that is resistant to scab

(01:37:13):
so you have a hope of at least having it
produced pecans. Now, as far as getting pecans, you're gonna
have to talk to your neighborhood squirrels about that because
they have first shot and they are there are vandals,
they are thieves, and I understand that with dumplings they
make good food. Other than that pecan fed squirrel. Here's
pretty good deed. Other than that, you don't end up

(01:37:36):
getting a lot of pecans. You get shade underneath the
pecan tree, though. But if you're gonna chose a variety,
choose one that's gab resistant. You need two varieties of
pecans to give you a good crop with cross pollination. Now,
earlier I was talking about male and female trees. This
is not a male and female issue with pecans. All

(01:37:56):
pecans have both male and female. Right, The nuts are
the female. The catkins the little pipe cleaner little things
that drop on the ground after pollination. That's the male park.
But some pecan trees the catkins come out before the
nutlets are receptive to pollen, and on others the nutlets

(01:38:17):
are receptive to pollen before the catkins come out. All right,
So when you plant one of each type, both types
benefit and you get a good crop on both types.
This publication explains, it's way too much to explain that
on the air. But before you plant a pecan tree,
pick a variety it's scab resistant. If there's other pecans
in the area, don't worry about plant and two trees.

(01:38:40):
There's gonna be pollen. It's wind blown pollen. It's gonna
be everwhere You're gonna be good. No need to worry
about that, but that is something at least to be
aware of if you have not done your summer on
fertilization yet. Nitrofoss Super Turf the silver Bag nineteen four
ten is the product that will carry you all the
way at this point in the sea, all the way

(01:39:00):
in the fall. Now, if you already did a slow
release earlier in the late spring or early summer, well
it's not early summer yet. Sometime in the spring, don't
do super turf again. Now, Okay, you wait a little
while and then a few months later do super Dirk.
But bottom line is it will carry you for four
months sixteen weeks and so with the return of clippings,

(01:39:22):
that basically takes you into the fall fertilization season as
your next fertilization. It's a nice slow release product works
very well designed for our types of grass we grow here,
which is Lleisier Bermuda in Saint Augustine, and for the
soils and climate that we're in right here. You're going
to find super Turf at places like m and d
up in Cyperson and Luetta Katie Ace Hardware on pen Oak.

(01:39:46):
If you go up I forty five North Hiden and
feed that area Hiden and feed on Stubner Airline carries
night Frost products. Also, it's time for me to take
a little break here in just a moment. When we
come back and in North Houston, you will be our
first up uh and we will also come back to
your questions. All you got to do is call me

(01:40:07):
it seven one three two one two k t R
H and we'll be happy to help you have a
more bountiful garden, a more beautiful garden, and definitely more
fun in the process. That's the most important part of gardening.
We have fun on guarden line. I mean, why would
I play yodling music if I wasn't trying to have fun.
Maybe maybe you run out of the room and hold

(01:40:27):
your ears, But I think it's fun. All right, Enough
of all that, take a little break here, we'll be
right back within. Oh boy, culinary bum I forget. Oh
that's a fun. You gotta grow tomatoes down. If you
got a pulse, get you a big container at least
five down all put your good tomato in it. Now

(01:40:50):
we're here in the summertime, little lake plant tomatoes. But
anyway you'll enjoy them. Hey, I tell you what you
could do though. On Saturday, May thirty first, you can
go to Enchended Forests from two thirty to four thirty
is their tomato tasting contest. Whether you're a home gardener
or you know tomato super fan or just love a

(01:41:12):
juicy after noon tomato, this event is for you, all right.
Tomato Tasting Contest and Chendi Forest Saturday May thirty first,
two thirty to four thirty pm. Now, when you're out
in an Enchended forest, you're going to find every kind
of plant you might possibly want. When you when you
walk up, just look at all the color that's out front.
Oh my gosh, it's gorgeous. I was out there the

(01:41:32):
other day. But they have a lot of pollinator favorites,
a beautiful selection of nectar rich plants that support those
pollinators like bees and butterflies. They also attrack hummingbirds, things
like native milkweed. They have several varieties of that. Akin
a share a coneflower beautiful. I love that plant. Lentanas
another good one. And then there's some plants that are
not so easy to find that provide larval food for

(01:41:55):
the butterflies. You know, if you want butterflies, you got
to feed the babies well. Dutchman's pipeline attracts a type
of a swallowtail type butterfly, Texas elbow bush and a
good navy plant there that attracts things in ninety different
types of salvia. That's my favorite genera of plants at
almost ninety. Yes, there are ninety different types, and they

(01:42:16):
got them there at Enchanted Forest. So don't forget to
put that on your calendar. Seid he May thirty. First,
get out there and get some tomato taste and done.
Watch that contest and you will have a good time.
They are located on FM twenty seven fifty nine. Here's
the website. This has everything you want to know. Please
write this down Enchanted Forest, Richmond TX dot com. Entended

(01:42:40):
Forest Richmond, TX dot com. Let's it out to North
Houston and we are gonna if I can find my mouse,
we're gonna talk to Ann. Hello, Ann, Welcome to Garden Law.

Speaker 12 (01:42:53):
Thank you. I have one question for you this morning.
I'm at the point where I'm ready to put in
some mulch and a new flower bed, and I was
wondering if it should be the black mulch or the
brown hardwood mulch.

Speaker 3 (01:43:09):
Either one's fine. I don't like dyed mulches, but there
are some mulches that are normally dark colored. But the
dyed mulches those artificial eyes natural brown. Yeah, a lot
of times dyed mulch is too for other people that
are listening. They grind up palettes and then they turn
them black or red or whatever color, and that is

(01:43:29):
not a good mulch material.

Speaker 12 (01:43:31):
Yeah, so black is not a good multch to use.

Speaker 3 (01:43:35):
Dyed mulch is not a good There's some naturally dark mulches,
so just be and dark isn't the problem. But the
dyed ones, the ones that truly just look artificially black.

Speaker 12 (01:43:47):
Okay, all right, thank you very much, have a great day.

Speaker 3 (01:43:51):
Yeah, thank you, Anne. I appreciate you hanging around and
get a chance to visit with you. If you are
doing containers, and I hope you are on your pa
jungle land and it's an outdoor version and an indoor version.
I'm gonna talk about the outdoor right now. Jungle land
flour and vegetable planting soil. You get you a good
pot that has good drainage holes. You put jungle land

(01:44:12):
in it, and you put your plants in it. Add
a little bit of fertilizer to it, and you are
on your way to success. Jungle Land is made of
several sources of decomposed organic matter and the micorize of
fungi that work with plant roots to help the plant
be more successful, helps fi disease, It helps with drought, resilience,
and other things those micorhizal fungi do. I like jungle

(01:44:34):
land because it drains, it doesn't get too sop and
soggy wet, but it also holds adequate amount of moisture
so you're not under water it every day. Okay, get
your good sized container, find some jungle land. You can
go to places all over town carry nitrofoss types of products.
You know, you go to the Plants for All Seasons
high Way two forty nine. You'll find many night foss

(01:44:56):
products there. D ANDD feed and Tomball carries night foss products.
Fisher's Hardware down in Pasadena on Sophomore another place where
you'll find nino FoST products. Let's end up to the
woodlands now and we're gonna be with visit a little
bit with Edward this morning. Hey, Edward, are you there?

Speaker 9 (01:45:15):
Yes, I'm here? HOI? How are you today?

Speaker 16 (01:45:18):
All right?

Speaker 3 (01:45:18):
How can we help?

Speaker 9 (01:45:21):
I've been told and Emperor's tree is super beautiful. I've
seen a few pictures. Do they grow well in the
Houston area? And where can I get one? We ordered
one online but ran it over with the lawnmower, and
that was when I was leaving in Caan Antonio. But
I'm backed now and was wondering. You know, I think
about interest trees.

Speaker 3 (01:45:43):
I wouldn't admit that I ran over it with a lawnmower, Edward.
I would just say I pruned it a little too low.
Maybe that would be the way to put it. No, Yeah, seriously,
they grow fast, but fast fast growing trees typically are
not strong in their wood structure, and sometimes they're not

(01:46:03):
long lived. And impest tree is not a very strong
wood structure. I believe I need to check on the
cold you're in the woodlands. I need to check on
the cold heartiness on that to be sure. I think
it's probably okay. But the I generally don't recommend them,
and they're hard to find because they're not a recommended

(01:46:23):
tree for the air. Did they produce? They are? They
are absolutely super beautiful. I mean, you know, if you
wanted to use it as a short term thing for
an area to but get it away from the house
and everything like that can look, we can see it.
But in general, we just don't recommend them. And there
are a lot of good fast there's a lot of

(01:46:45):
fast growing trees that we don't recommend. I like that.

Speaker 9 (01:46:48):
Okay, Well, I'm out trying to make ANX living door
dashing today, so make sure you take your door dasher.
Have a great day.

Speaker 3 (01:46:55):
Oh, we always do. We always do. We appreciate that.
And uh and as far as uh, as far as
the rest of your gardening activities, you just remember pruning
shears and lappers are different than lawnmower blades, so uh,
don't use your pu in your trees anymore. Edward By,

(01:47:16):
that's a good one. I like that. That's fun. Yeah,
it happens. So today, what if we talked about we
talked about pruning your tree with the lawn, but we
also talked about me and my dogs, my my Golden
Retrievers that pruned Peggy Martin down to the almost the
ground twice she out outlasted them thanks to a little
help for me with some hardware cloth wrapped around the trunk.

(01:47:40):
If you've got metal items outdoors, you can paint them,
but that's not the best way to go and it
doesn't last. Houston powder coats. Powder coating is a magical process.
They put them in this big room and there's there
there is a uh, the release of almost a dust
like substance into the air that just sticks to the

(01:48:03):
metal and it gives a beautiful coating on this metal.
And Houston powder coders can do over one hundred colors. Okay.
So I was in their shop one day looking at
some of the work that was out there, and I
saw something over the corner and it was kind of rusty,
and I go, you're all about to get to that one,
because they can take rusty metal and clean it up
and get it ready for powder coating. They said, no,

(01:48:23):
that's finished, and I walked over to it and someone
had picked a really rust looking color for the color
of that metal because they wanted it to look rusty.
But now it's hanging on the side of a house
and it's not running rust stains down the bricks of
the house because it's powder coated. That's what I'm talking about.
Outdoor furniture, aluminum, patio furniture, wrought iron, cast iron, whatever

(01:48:44):
you got. Here's what you do. You take a picture
and you send that picture to sales at Houstoncoders dot com.
They'll give you a quock quote on it and they
will pick it up. They'll do the job, they'll deliver it.
If you're in the greater Houston area, send that picture
to get your quote on it. You can call them
up two eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty

(01:49:06):
eight two eight one six seven six thirty eight eighty eight,
or just go to the website Houston Powdercoders dot com.
Check them out on social media too. There on on
like Facebook, for example, you can see beautiful examples of
the kind of works that they do. If it's metal,
if it's outside. Houston powder Coders is the place you
need to know about. Gon'll take a quick break and

(01:49:29):
we'll be back with your calls. If you'd like to
be one of the first s up, now'd be a
good time to call seven one three two one two
kt r H seven one three two one two five
eight seven four Give Alejandro call. He'll get you on
the board and we'll be talking to you in just
a bit. All right, welcome back. Good to be back

(01:49:50):
with you here on Guardenline. By the way, I was
talking about that Enchanted for Us Tomato tasting contest that
is Saturday, May thirty. First. I know that's a little
bit ahead, but you know you got to get your
schedule down two thirty to four thirty pm. I have
had some questions about it, and I just want to
tell you here's here's what's going on. That you can
bring a tomato to enter there in the contest. Okay, Uh,

(01:50:12):
there are you know, there's limits to two entries per
category and there's several categories.

Speaker 6 (01:50:17):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:50:17):
You got to get them there by two thirty to
check in and display, and they'll start judging at three o'clock.
Uh they will. They're going to have categories for the
best the best tasting tomato by the judges, and then
the People's choice, the crowd favorite tomato. Uh, the biggest
tomato by weight. And are you ready for this? All

(01:50:39):
you seamstresses need to hear this. The best tomato themed
costumed creativity encouraged. So whatever that means. You figured out
have fun. That is going to be going on. They're
going to be judging on taste and appearance and you know, sweetless, acidity, complexity,
all that. This is like, this is for the tomato
nuts out there. In fact, even if you're not a
tomato nut, this gonna be a lot of fun. Go

(01:51:01):
out there and take the kids with you. All Right,
We're going to run to Dayton, Texas right now and
talk to Marshall. Hey Marshall, welcome to guard Line.

Speaker 1 (01:51:08):
Hey, Skip, how you doing today?

Speaker 3 (01:51:11):
I'm doing well, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:51:13):
Hey. Yes, I'm question about a plum tree.

Speaker 4 (01:51:17):
It's it's doing real good, but it's got a little
bit of sap coming out of the trunk near the bottom,
and I want to know what's causing that and what
I need to do to fix that.

Speaker 3 (01:51:30):
Okay, So it could be a borer in the base
of the trunk there, or is actually it's called a
peach tree board, but it attacks plums because they're closely related.
That drills into the base of the trunk and then
the tree itself bleed sap because it's a wound that's created.
What I would do is take my knife and just

(01:51:51):
scrape the bark back right there. First of all, look
for any sawdust in the sap that you might see
and scrape the bark back, and if there's a hole,
a tunnel or the bug went in, then that's the bore.
If there's not, it's just let's say you see some
disccolored bark instead of being a kind of a creamy
light green color, it's brown streaked or darker. Then that

(01:52:14):
is a kinker, which can occur on plumb trees. There's
a number of cankers. There's no spray for the cankers
at all. For the plumb borer or for the peach
tree borer, you can put some sprays on them, but
that's a whole nother thing. I would suggest probably you're
not dealing with the borer right now, but if you
check and find the whole, you can email me and

(01:52:35):
I can send you information on what to do about it.
If you do indeed find the bore, it's going to
be a longer term process. Then just you squirt something
on it and the boar dies because it's hidden inside
the tree. If it's a bore, but I'm going to
put you on hold a marshall and let Alejandro give
you an email address if you run into that problem.

(01:52:58):
But I do like folks when they send emails with pictures.
Go ahead and give me a call on the show
to follow up and we can enter it there. I
think it's probably a kinker, and I don't think there's
a solution other than some fertilizer some water to get
your tree as strong and healthy as you can where
it can wall off and fight off that problem.

Speaker 4 (01:53:18):
Okay, I sure appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:53:21):
All right, I'll put you on hope for a second.
If you want to get that email, that is important. Hey,
CNA Moltz Ciena Molts down south of Houston near Sienna,
your highway six and two eighty eight. What you need
to know is the website. Write it down Sienna Maltz
dot com, cienamlts dot com. Tell you how to get there,
tell you things they carry. You know you're going to

(01:53:42):
find anything. You know I talk about all the time,
bronze up before green stuff. The soil is a foundation.
You get the soil right, then you plant the good
plants and you are on your way to success. Don't
grab a plant and PLoP it into an unprepared plot.
Get the soil right with Ciena Malts now they deliver

(01:54:02):
within about twenty miles of their location down there for
a fee, of course. But whether you want a rose
type soil, a vegetable and herb type soil, or whatever
you're looking for, whether you're looking for nutrients, microlife fertilizers,
Nelson fertilizers, Medina fertilizers, nitrophoss fertilizers, asamite and airloom source
products as well. Down at Sienna Malts siennamaltz dot com.

(01:54:27):
That's what you need to know. We're going to head
now to Freeport and talk to Margaret. Hello, Margaret, Hello,
how are you? Huh? I'm good. How can we help today?

Speaker 17 (01:54:41):
I wanted to know what the best thing to do
for scale on a sega palm.

Speaker 3 (01:54:49):
Oh boy. Uh So that's a problem. That are your
sago palms turning white, especially underneath the fronds.

Speaker 17 (01:54:59):
Well, it's all on top of it, it's all over.

Speaker 3 (01:55:03):
Okay, Well, horticultural oil is probably your best bet at
this point. So what you're gonna do is get a
horticultural oil product, mix it up, and then early in
the morning for the sun really heats up a lot,
or very very late in the day after the sun
is going down spray those surfaces, and oil is not
a poison. Oil smothers scale, So you you need to

(01:55:28):
have good coverage. If there's a little patch of scale
that your oil spray doesn't hit, it will not be killed.
So that thorough coverage is important. And on a sago
that can be a little bit of a challenge trying
to get that oil to it, but that's what you
need to do. That will smother h and it does.
It does a pretty good job of shutting down the
issues with scale. And boy, does does scale ever have

(01:55:49):
have a difficult or is it ever difficult to control
the sago scale?

Speaker 17 (01:55:57):
Do you cut the proms off before you I mean,
treat it and then cut them off or what because
they're dying?

Speaker 3 (01:56:09):
Well, once they're once you're losing them. Yeah, once you're
losing them, they might as well come off as long
as they're still green. I would leave them because those
leaves are making sunlight and so you get a little
bit of a benefit from that if you if you're
gonna spray, remove the leaves, you're gonna remove first so

(01:56:30):
you can get in there with that horticultural oil. And
there's a lot of brands of it out there, but
not Yeah, it's not Dorman oil, it's horticultural oil. I mean,
I could name a brand or two. But wherever you
go shop there, if it's a good independent garden center,
well you know there's brands like Ultrafine and Organocide and

(01:56:50):
sun Spray, but there are many others. Don't don't worry
about writing down the brand. Go to a place and
that's what they're talking about, like an independent garden center,
and tell them you need a horticleture oil. You're gonna
need to spray the entire plant once a week for
one month because you never get it all the first time.

Speaker 12 (01:57:09):
It won't hurt new growth, right.

Speaker 3 (01:57:10):
Say it again, it won't hurt new but no, it doesn't.
But yeah, but that new growth probably doesn't have scale
on it yet, and so you can spray it. But
I like to spray in the morning when it's cool. Sometimes,
when you got an oil spray and you put it

(01:57:31):
on a plant and the sun is baking down and
it's one hundred degrees, you're going to get some burn
from the oil. But in general I like to go
up early in the morning and do that, and you
know it's gonna take a while. The scale doesn't scream
and jump off. I mean, it's gonna sit there and
it'll die and it'll still be on there for a while.
But four times once a week apart should get that

(01:57:51):
under control for you. Okay, great, okay, Now do you
have more than do you have more than one oil spray?

Speaker 17 (01:58:07):
What do you mean more than one old spray?

Speaker 1 (01:58:09):
We hadn't got anything.

Speaker 3 (01:58:10):
Yet, I'm sorry, more than one? More than one sago palm?

Speaker 17 (01:58:13):
My b right, No, I think we just we just
have the one.

Speaker 3 (01:58:20):
It Uh No, it's specific to those. But there is
a product that is systemic that goes you drench it
on the roots, you don't spray it on the scale,
and it goes up in the plant and kills the
scale that are sucking juices out of the plant.

Speaker 6 (01:58:40):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:58:41):
And it's called a safari s a f A R
I like an African safari. Uh. And if you can
find that, it's not cheap, but it's it's been pretty good.
And by putting that poison in the plumbing of the plant,
only the things sucking juices out of the plant are killed.
And it's not like a flowering plant where you're gonna

(01:59:02):
have pollinators there and you're worried about that. So for
a sego that would be another option.

Speaker 8 (01:59:09):
Okay, so that would that would kill the scale?

Speaker 17 (01:59:13):
What's out spray at the whole place?

Speaker 3 (01:59:14):
Yes, okay, you bet it would. I'm sorry I got
to run, but good luck with that. I appreciate that
buchanan NATed Plants in the Heights. I talk about it
all the time. Buchanans Plants dot Com is the website.
You gotta go there. You gotta look at what they
have to offer. It is amazing, in fact, what I
like to do. I'm gonna come back a little bit.

(01:59:34):
I want to tell you more about Buchanans because it
is a place you really need to visit. And you
got to go to the website because it is so helpful.
Sign up for their newsletter. I'll come back to you
a little more about them in the meantime. Enjoy this
little break. I need to get a fresh cup of coffee,
and we'll be right back with your questions. If you'd
like to be one of the first up, go ahead

(01:59:55):
and get on the board with all one hundred now
seven one three two, one two fifty eight seventy four
seven one three two one two kt r H. All right, folks,
welcome back. Guess what we got more? One more hour

(02:00:17):
of garden Line today. We got one more hour of
guard Line this whole weekend. I'll be back next Saturday.
We're here every Saturday and Sunday from six am to
ten am, so you can call in at anytime. You
can listen to us, of course on kt r H
seven forty am on your radio. People listen on their
computers and even leave it. Listen on the app, the

(02:00:39):
iHeartMedia app. You download that on your phone and take
a phone with you. You can go and do some gardening
and who knows, maybe you see a bug, take a picture,
email it to me. We'll talk about it live from
your garden. Here on garden Line. We can do that too.
Works well. I was talking about Buchanans for I went
in to break Buchanansplas dot com is the website and
you need to and here's the reason. It is outstanding

(02:01:03):
when it comes to information about gardening. You should sign
up for their newsletter. Their newsletter it's educational, it just
really is. I mean, when you go there, you will
see why I get so excited about Beginn's plants. They
know what they're talking about. They carry things that other
people don't. Someone was asking me earlier about some plants

(02:01:25):
for shade that would do well in shade and stuff,
and I just was noticing this past week with Buchanan's
inland seots. Inland Seots is a clumping grass that has
these nodding seedheads that sort of look like oat seed heads,
and it does well in the shade. It's spread slowly
by rhizomes around and when they dry. I think they're

(02:01:47):
beautiful in arrangements when they dry as well. But it's
a good native plant that we can use here. And
they have so many options for nice native plants that
do well. You want to you want to have a
butterfly garden, well, Buchanans has got tons of flowers and
things at Butterflies love both the adults, feeding the adults

(02:02:07):
and the larva taking care of the larva. In fact,
if you got your pen and pencil out, you know
you always should listen to guarden line with a paper
and a pen or pencil handy. Because here's one thing
I'm not about to tell you. Butterfly host gardening at
Buchanan's Plants Saturday, June seventh, ten am to eleven am,
right after guard Line's over ten to eleven Saturday June seventh,

(02:02:31):
Butterfly host gardening. It's a free class, so go and
enjoy it. Will you will enjoy it. They have excellent
programs there as well, lots of other things going on.
If you got kids, Oh my gosh, you got to
get your kids involved in their summer program. You know,
with school out starting in May going all the way
through September, there's something to do regularly on a regular basis.

(02:02:54):
On Saturdays, they're at Buchanan's Native Plants for the kids.
But if you were on the website or if you
were on receiving their newsletter, you would know about that.
All right, there you go. That's a public service announcement.
Let's head out to Lamark and we're gonna be visit
with Sean. Hey, Sean, welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 1 (02:03:15):
Good morning, Skip. My sister wants to put some nitrofos out.
I told her to use the green bag or the
gray bag. She wants to use the nitrofoss Whedon feed.

Speaker 5 (02:03:27):
I told her that that Whedon feed was probably with
the Actressine would probably kill the small trees and plants
she's planted.

Speaker 3 (02:03:36):
If she puts out that night asine either sure, yeah, no,
need to do that now. Don't do the wheat and
feed now atresine, candemnic shrubs and trees. That's why I
don't generally recommend it here on garden line. But you
don't need a weed and feed now. Yeah, you said gray.
I think you meant like the silver gray bag. Yeah,

(02:03:57):
that's the one around now. And if she's worried about weed,
get barricade from night to foss and put it out.
If you haven't done barricade in the let's say within
the last sixty days, you can do another application to
extend the weed seed prevention program on into the summer further.

(02:04:17):
So that's an option. If she feels like she needs
a pre emergent, I would do barricade, and I would
do it now. Not everybody needs to do that, but
it you know, some types of weeds will continue to
germinate on through the summer, and so that's the way
to extend it. But silver bag and stay away from
the weed and feed right now, we don't need to
be doing that.

Speaker 1 (02:04:37):
Okay, I'll tell her that information.

Speaker 3 (02:04:38):
Thank you, all right, thank you. Now she's your sister,
so she listens to everything you say. Right, My sister
listens to everything I tell her and believes everything and
does everything I tell her to do. I get it,

(02:05:00):
I get it. I'm just playing around with you. You
know how it is the families. Okay, well you take
care good to visit with you, sir. I appreciate that
for sure. Speaking of that Nightropas Superturf, the silver bag
we were talking about there, silver or gray, whichever you
call it, nineteen four town. It's going to last for
sixteen weeks and you can get it down now. If

(02:05:23):
you haven't done a primer, excuse me, good night, if
you have not done a slow release fertilizer this summer
yet or this spring, go ahead and do that. Get
that down now. You're going to find Nitopas Superturf at
RCW Nursery. I know they carry it up there. If
you go to Laporte. If you're done in the Port
South Broadway's got Fisher's hardware. If you're in Sagemont, M

(02:05:44):
and D. Beamer on Beamer is an excellent, excellent place
to get night foss products like this super turf. I'm
going to head now to a task Asita and we're
going to talk to Jim. Hey, Jim, welcome back.

Speaker 6 (02:05:58):
Oh, thank you sir.

Speaker 1 (02:06:00):
Morning.

Speaker 6 (02:06:00):
Okay. The place is the front yard okay, in the
new flower bed, in the whole front yard okay, close
to the house. And it is a red star corraline
plant tree.

Speaker 3 (02:06:17):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (02:06:19):
I bought it in a small container and it's such
a pretty plant. What do you think of this plant?

Speaker 3 (02:06:27):
It's a good one. It's it's one of the foliage plants.
And in summer, we have a lot of the blooming
options we have in spring don't bloom well in the summer,
and so when we use foliage plants in our plantings,
we maintain color for a long period of time, whether
it's brown or not. And cordline has a beautiful dark

(02:06:48):
dark color, reddish purple, whichever kind of you get. Uh.
And that's a good one.

Speaker 6 (02:06:55):
Thank you, sir.

Speaker 3 (02:06:56):
I have a great day, all right, Thanks Jim, appreciate
the call. You take care all right? There you have
it so talking about different things regarding products in the
yard and whatnot. I just think that people need to
call Pierscapes just to see what they do. Maybe you're

(02:07:18):
not in the market right now for landscape ork, but
go call them because I think you find you may
find you are. They do design and installation on the
big scale, or they can do you know, smaller scale things.
But when it comes to the accessories of the landscape,
and by that I mean like you know, a rock walkway, hardescape.

(02:07:38):
In other words, need to improve the lighting around your house,
they can do that, a rock border or lots of
options like that. They can add those little things that
make you want to extend your living area outside because
they make it so special. If you've got drainage issues,
you've got irrigation issues, they can fix all of that.
And don't forget they have that quarterly maintenance where they

(02:08:00):
come out once a quarter. They take care of your beds,
They replace color plants as needed. They can do the mulching,
improving the mult sprucing it up, making sure the irrigation
is working, doing trimming that needs to be done. It's
all gonna happen by you going to the website piercescapes
dot com are giving them a call. Two eight one
three seventy fifty sixty two eight one three seven oh

(02:08:23):
five zero six zero. I will be right back with
your calls already, we're back. Welcome back to Guardline. Good
to have you with us. Uh listen, if you have
not been to Arburgate recently, you need to go. I
was out there the other day and I'm telling you
the place looks awesome. Of course that's not news. It's
always awesome out there, and they have selection like you

(02:08:46):
cannot imagine. Allow yourself some time, go around, drive around
to the back the parking lot off Traisher Road behind
Arbrogates the way you need to go in, and then
take some people with you. First of all, it's a
fun outing to get together, walk around, look at plants
and talk about. When you find an Arbrogate person there,
whether it's Beverly or Kennan or any of the people
that are out there walking around, they will take time

(02:09:08):
and they will help you have success. It's not like
you know, I'm looking for a what I'm looking for,
I'm looking for, uh, maybe a hibiscus, and they go, well,
they're right over there behind. No, they walk you over there,
they take you to them, they show you, they answer
your questions, and because they want you to have success.
That's why they're so popular, the selection that they have

(02:09:30):
quality plants that belong here, the fact that they carry
things you're not going to find other places, and then
the service. The service that they give you is outstanding. Now,
Arbrogate is a true gardener's garden center. I mean people
drive from all over they Arborgate is well known way
outside our area. So while you're there, though, remember the rule.

(02:09:50):
Brown stuff before green stuff. Grab a bag of the
organic food Complete. That's an Arburgate product. It's a fertilizer,
the organic soil Complete, and the Organic compass Complete. Those
three bags help you set the foundation the bronze stuff
for success. Now, if you want bulk of the soil
or the compost, ask them about it and they can

(02:10:11):
set you up to get a bulk delivery to wherever
you live. They'll drop it off for you there. And
that way, if you're doing a whole big bed, you
don't have to buy eight hundred bags. You can just
get a good bulk delivery and do that. Whatever kind
of garden you're interested in, from pollinator gardens to hummingbird
gardens to just beautiful heat tolerant summer color. They've got

(02:10:32):
you covered at Arburgate. I'm going to head now up
to Hempstead and we're going to talk to Jerry. Hey, Jerry,
welcome to garden lind.

Speaker 11 (02:10:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 18 (02:10:43):
I have San Augustine for grass, and I've got my Conjr.
Growing in one section and I can't figure out how
to get rid of it. I allowed the stand to
grow to about four and a half inches sticking that
I would basically had it out.

Speaker 9 (02:10:58):
Didn't work, Okay, Yeah, dichondra.

Speaker 3 (02:11:05):
And and you're a are we sure that you're talking
about dichondra and not dollar weed? I just want to
be sure.

Speaker 1 (02:11:11):
Yeah, I believe it's.

Speaker 18 (02:11:13):
Not what was completely It's got looks like a clover
leaf at the end. It's it's split on one part
of the leaf.

Speaker 3 (02:11:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you. Okay, Yeah, that's it.
That is dichondra.

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

Speaker 3 (02:11:24):
Dichondra is a challenging weed because it grows way down
in the grass. It can coexist even with pretty dense
Saint Augustine. You'll normally I say, uh, you know, if
you've got a good dense lawn, it chokes out most
weed problems. Well, the chondra can survive in a good
dense lawn U, so in order to control it, you
can use a broad leaf U post emergent weed control product. Uh.

(02:11:49):
There are things like the TRIMEC type products that are
put out. You just want to be careful with those
that you don't have a a lot of. Like if
it's real hot weather and you're trying to control it,
uh and you get spray on your Saint Augustine and
the temperatures are in the upper eighties or nineties, you
can do some damage on it. So you want to

(02:12:11):
avoid that. But otherwise spray in the morning.

Speaker 18 (02:12:17):
Most of what I've read that will kill him Augustine,
and that's what I'm trying to avoid. So I used
to h fertile Uh the wet wet eater or something like.

Speaker 16 (02:12:30):
That didn't do anything.

Speaker 3 (02:12:33):
Well, there's fur yeah, there there is Bone Eyed has
a weed beater that is effective on it. And Fernlom
has a weed result called fur loan. Gosh, I just
want blank on the Fertilom product name. Anyway, those are
their multi ingredient products. And like I said, if it's

(02:12:53):
hot weather and you spray them on Saint Augustine, it's
very stressful and can be damaging to Saint Augustine. But
if you get out like tomorrow morning when it's cooler
and you spray them, it's still okay to use those
on on your Saint Augustine lawn. You can also use
a product called celsius that's a little less of a
temperature concern, uh than the the multi products you know,

(02:13:14):
the trimech We call them three way herbicides. They put
three different ingredients in because that way they cover more
than one of the different weeds that you know you
typically have to deal with. So any either way you
want to go about it, you can. You can control it.
You just have to just have to make sure you
get your apply to.

Speaker 18 (02:13:36):
The Celsius isn't gonna be as bad on the grass
in higher temperatures?

Speaker 3 (02:13:41):
Is that what you're telling me it? Yes, yes, you
can go up in temperatures with celsius. Now, any one
ingredient doesn't control all weeds, so that that's what you wanna,
that's what you want to be careful with. Uh. But
with the dichondra, you're gonna you're gonna find goods excess
managing it. You know, a number of a number of

(02:14:04):
different ways. There's not just like one product that you
can use that will control.

Speaker 1 (02:14:07):
Okay, I'll try that makes sense, it makes.

Speaker 3 (02:14:12):
Some sense, okay, all right? Uh oh. One last thing.
Put a spreader sticker in there. It's also called a surfactant, uh.
That is mixed in with it and it helps it
stick to those leaves. Okay, all right, I will good luck,
Thanks Jerry, appreciate your call. All right. That that will

(02:14:37):
do it. Hey, if you're dealing with fire ants in
your lawn uh and anywhere around outside. Uh, night Fass
has a product called fire ant Killer, and it basically
is a product that will do a quick kill on
your fireant. You can put her on mounds and it'll
knock them out. You've spread it out in a wider
area if you like. But night Fast fire Ant Killer works.

(02:14:58):
It's good to have a bag on hand if you
want to go out there. Some mountains pop up. You
need to shut them down so you can have a
garden party in the next couple of days. Go ahead
and get that the Fiant Killer from Nitropos. Like other
Nitofoss products, You're going to find it at places like
Mott Bellevue Fisher's Hardware. On three FM thirty one eighty
they've got it out there. If you go down to

(02:15:18):
Stanton Shopping Center and Alvin, you're going to find it.
Lots of places carry Nito foss products, but the Fiant
Killer works. And boy are we ever in firence season,
that's for sure. By the way, I did a video
on Facebook a good while back, is a couple of
weeks ago. I think that talks about how to know
when to put baits out for fire ants, and baits

(02:15:39):
are also very effective, and it tells you how to
know when to apply bait. There's times of the day
when it gets hot the fire ants aren't as active
out and feeding. So anyway, check that out. Let's go
to friends with now and we're going to visit with Bill. Hey, Bill,
Welcome to garden line. Lloyes Kip.

Speaker 19 (02:15:58):
I've got a couple of four year old, uh, Texas
pink pomegranate trees. They're about say, eight to nine feet tall.
They look really good.

Speaker 1 (02:16:09):
Uh.

Speaker 19 (02:16:10):
They put out these kind of reddish orange flowers that
look like kind of a carnation.

Speaker 3 (02:16:17):
And none of them sat.

Speaker 4 (02:16:18):
Uh.

Speaker 19 (02:16:19):
I can't see any stamen on the flowers. I'm wondering
what's going on here?

Speaker 3 (02:16:27):
Not getting pollination on them? Maybe that's interesting. I mean,
why would they not set.

Speaker 19 (02:16:35):
Yeah, they just kind of turn around and fall off.

Speaker 3 (02:16:39):
And uh, is it after rainy periods? Are you seeing it?
You know, after we've had a go ahead.

Speaker 19 (02:16:50):
We no, I mean it's uh, you know, this has
been going on for pretty much their whole life. Uh.
They put out the flowers. I've even gone over and
kind of you know, rubbed them, trying to see if
there's anything I could do to help, and they just
turn brown and tall off.

Speaker 3 (02:17:08):
I don't know if what's going on. Yeah, well, I
don't know what to tell you on that one. There
is a publication on palm granite on the Aggie Horticulture
website right now, the site is down. I was checking
it earlier today, but it's Aggie Horticulture and it's just
being maintained right now. They're doing some stuff. But when

(02:17:30):
you go back to it, the fruit and nut section
has a whole publication on palm grant it that you
can download free or just look out on the screen
and it goes into a lot of details about those
And I don't have it in front of me. I
can't pull it up or anything to see what else
we might be looking at. But you should be getting
some fruit on those things. Palm grants we run into

(02:17:50):
problems even when they have fruit, and we get rainy
weather that's kind of hard on fruit, rots and things
like that. But no, we haven't.

Speaker 19 (02:17:57):
I mean it's been pretty drawn. Got an irrigation system
that you know, I'm running here, and so they're getting water.
I use a thirteen actually fourteen fourteen fourteen fertilizer. I
don't don't really know. And the other question I had
pertains to a pecan tree I have that volunteered from

(02:18:20):
one of my other pecan trees. Not sure what it is,
but it's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (02:18:25):
It's like twenty feet.

Speaker 19 (02:18:26):
Tall, good spread and all that, and it's about nine
years old and has not tried to produce any pecans yet.
I was wondering whether they just take a lot longer.

Speaker 3 (02:18:41):
A seedling tree you mean when you say they.

Speaker 19 (02:18:45):
Well, yeah, it was a seedling tree was in my
flower bed and I transplanted it, and gosh, it's got
to be about eight inches maybe seven eight inches in
diameter at the bottom and just beautiful, but it hadn't
put out any pecan.

Speaker 3 (02:19:04):
So real quick as pecans grow, they mature and just
like animals and people and things, they hit a reproductive
stage where they're able to have fruit, and so that
can be twelve fourteen years down the line on a
pecan tree, and it depends on groin conditions and a
lot of other things, the genetics of the tree. But

(02:19:25):
seedlings are starting off as an immature tree, and so
they have to go through this aging process that takes
a good while. That's why people like to buy grafted
trees because they can go straight to you know, having
fruit pretty soon, as opposed to a seedling type tree.

Speaker 19 (02:19:43):
Okay, so I should just expect maybe five years or
so and maybe it'll start producing.

Speaker 3 (02:19:49):
Maybe if I more Yeah, and with good conditions, it
ought to begin to do that. But yeah, the seedlings
are meaniful. They have a central lead or trunk and
very very different look than than a grafted pecan.

Speaker 19 (02:20:01):
It's actually the best looking of a lot of countries.
It's grown up straight. You got a nice little spread
to provide some good shade in the afternoon.

Speaker 3 (02:20:10):
So yeah, so let me Yeah, so I was just
thinking about your pomegrantited thing too. They don't require pollination.
I think I suggested maybe that was a problem that
they don't require that they are self fruitful. So I
don't know. I do know that when they're younger they
don't set fruit. But yours is old enough to where

(02:20:30):
it should be. I've got a run. I'm against some
second heartbreak here, but good luck with that. And thank
you for the call. Bill. I appreciate that when we
come back, Bob and Kingwood, you'll be our first up. Alrighty,
welcome back to the Guardline, folks. Good to have you
with us. Got so many things we can talk about.
If you have someone asked earlier about using a pre

(02:20:52):
emergent and we were talking about you know, well you
can do the second application of that now. That is
one thing we can be doing. It is also a
time to be looking at the gray leaf spot. If
you've got a bad situation coming from it, there are
ways we can manage that and prevent it. It's time
to do your summer fertilizations in the lawn with a
good slow release. Need take care of that. Well, I'll

(02:21:13):
tell you where you can go and get all that
Ace Hardware Ace Hardware. If you go to the website
for my local ACE Hardware group, it's Acehardware Texas. Dot Com.
That's this whole region ACE Hardware Tech. I say region
because all the way down to Rockport, all the way
over to Beaumont, and so on. ACE Hardware Texas dot Com.
Find your store and go in there and find what

(02:21:33):
you need to have a beautiful lawn, a beautiful landscape,
a bountiful garden, and make it easier on yourself. Get
some of their quality tools. You can take care of
things and make gardening even more fun than it already is.
Acehardware Texas dot Com. Let's go out to Kingwood. Now
we're going to talk to Bob. Hey, Bob, welcome to

(02:21:54):
garden Line.

Speaker 20 (02:21:55):
Hey, Skip, give me a minute to give you what
I'm trying to get to A nine. You could straighten
me out what I use something besides glyco phosphate and
round up around my pebble beds around the house where
a bunch of weeds come back. While I was waiting,
I just did a quick Google search, and sure enough,
I guess if I'm thinking about want to get rid

(02:22:16):
of using the glycophosphate, there's a bunch of products out there.
So I was just going to use the vinegar salt
and so give me some ideas on why not to
waste time on doing which ones.

Speaker 3 (02:22:30):
Okay, vinegar, salt, soap and oils and other things that
are sold as herbicides burn the top of the plant off,
and if it's an annual plant, that kills it so
it does a fine job. If it's a perennial plant,
it pops back up out of the ground because they
don't translocate down and kill the whole plant. Like glyphosate,
which was the original round up dead Now yeah, there

(02:22:52):
is now the over the counter round up is now
not glyphis. It is other things. It's three different things combined.
They put three in there because each works differently. You know,
want to do better on woody kinds of things and
so on. But if you want to get off to
something else, if you want to get off of roundup

(02:23:13):
onto something else, well, another thing that you can do
is get a product with glue phoscinate g l U
p h O s I n at E glue fascinate.
And here's what I want you to do. If you
go to my website gardening with Skip dot com, Gardening
with skip dot Com on there there's a number of

(02:23:36):
very hopeful publications. Look at the publication list, you can
click on it. There there's a product called Herticide Products
for application with skipsweed wiper. If you go to that list,
no matter what kind of weed you have, it lists
the ingredients that will most effectively control that weed. If

(02:23:57):
it's a woodyweed, if it's a grass, if it's a
broad leaf weed, if it's wild onions, if it's nuts edge.
Each of those there's different products that I would suggest
you would have better success with. So if you look
at something that controls grasses and bro leaves like glaphisat
or round up did. By the way, there's there's new
there's still glavaste on the market. It's just not called
round up anymore. But there's one called Gluefascinate, and you

(02:24:21):
can find it in a product called Finale. You can
find it in a product called Bioadvanced Weed and Grass Killer.
But it isn't quite as effective as the old roundup was,
but it does a very good job and it works faster,
and so if you had to do it a second
time later, you could do that. But that would be
an alternative that translocates down and kills the whole plant.

Speaker 20 (02:24:48):
Is Celsius any safer than round.

Speaker 3 (02:24:50):
Up Celsius is, yes, but it it is only going
to control broad leaf weeds, and you can use in
the lawn that's where it has its label for, not
flower beds or vegetable gardens. And it won't control grassy
weeds or woody, witty kinds of weeds you know, coming
up more difficult. There are weeds that are more difficult

(02:25:13):
control and it won't control those. So it's not an
equivalent of using roundup, but it does control some of
the broad leaf weeds in the lawn.

Speaker 20 (02:25:26):
Okay, thank you, skip.

Speaker 3 (02:25:28):
Yeah you bet check that. Check that list out though.
I think that'll be that'll be helpful for you. All righty,
Nature's Way resources. You know, when I think about bronze stuff,
when I think about the foundation for success with your plants,
you can't you can't think about that much without Nature's
Way popping right up into your head. Because they've been

(02:25:49):
doing this for a long time. Many of the products
we talk about in generic ways now started in Nature's Way.
You know, things like leaf, molk, compost and wrote saw
being two prime examples. Ian Ferguson and the whole team
there at Nature's Way are doing a heck of a
job maintaining the quality products that they that you would
expect from Nature's Way, and the nice diversity of products too.

(02:26:12):
They have products for all kinds of things. Do you
want to double ground mult or a rose soil, or
a garden and flowerbed mix, or something for acid loving
plants like blueberries, or something to grow your citrus trees in.
How about a leaf mole compost for top dressing. They've
had all of that and way way more. Go to
the website and find out everything you need to know,
how to get there, how to reach them, how to

(02:26:33):
call them. Nature's Way Resources dot com. Remember every Friday
is Fungo Friday. There's a sale ten percent off bags
of fungo based compass and twenty percent off bulk fungal
based compost. That's a good that's a good savings. So
they will also deliver bulk to where you live. We're

(02:26:54):
going to go now to Spring and talk to Charles. Hey, Charles,
welcome to Garden Line.

Speaker 20 (02:27:00):
High Skip.

Speaker 6 (02:27:01):
Uh.

Speaker 21 (02:27:02):
So, I've got four bottle brush plants that I planted.
I redid the the yard with compost and and and calminure,
and I planted them and they're all, they're all dying.
And I went online and I tried the I put

(02:27:22):
on some that iron cholly because I thought that might
be the problem. But it's not from lack of water
or sunlight. They get all full sun and it looks
as if they're not getting enough water. But I know
that's not the problem. And I thought you might have
some advice to help me.

Speaker 3 (02:27:45):
Yeah, you can have chlorosis on bottle brush and iron
will will help with that. They like they need so
moisture to do their best, but they don't want soggy
wet feet. So if you dig down with a little hand,
trowel around them, maybe go down about four inches or
so and feel the soil. If it's starting to be

(02:28:07):
dry to the touch, it's time to water them. If
it's still wet, hold off and do well. If you
wanted to send me a picture of the plants and
what you're seeing, I could take a look. Maybe I'll
see something else going on on the picture. But a
moderate amount of fertilizer. Don't fertilize them too late in
the season, by the way, don't I wouldn't fertilize them
past August for sure. They're somewhat cold tender, and so

(02:28:30):
when you push something into late fall growth, you're more
susceptible to cold injury when winter hits. So hold off
on that. But right now, some fertilizer would probably be helpful.
But I'm going to picture on hold, Charles, and if
you would like to send me some pictures, I'd be
glad to take a look at them. And maybe there's
something I'm not picturing that I see in the photo.

Speaker 21 (02:28:51):
Okay, we'll do all right, all right.

Speaker 3 (02:28:55):
We'll just hang on one second. Aleandro pick up here. Well, yeah,
bottle brush. I love bottle brush. Boy. You talk about
a pollinator plant. The honey bees line up down the
block to get to your bottle brush trees. They love it. Uh,
some are more hearty than others. But we've had a
couple of doozy winners in the last five or six

(02:29:17):
or seven that have hit bottle brush pretty hard. And
there one of the plants we grow that. I still
think we got to grow u. But just be aware
that that that can happen here, especially those of you
who are listening to me up north. I ten, you know,
I know people in Huntsville and college station listening and stuff.
It's a little more of a challenge to grow them
up there than it would be down you know, I

(02:29:39):
don't know, down toward the coast in Galveston and all
out that way. All right, well, let me take a
little break here, it's time for that. I'll come back
with your calls in just a moment at seven one three,
two one two fifty eight seventy four. Welcome back to
guard Line. We had a little bit of a glitch.

(02:30:01):
The Gremlins got in for the end of the show today.
So we're gonna do We're going to continue to show.
I believe that I'm gonna have to hold off on
maybe one call we can take. For this last segment,
I want to talk a little bit about some of
the Nelson plant food products that are available by the jar.
That would be the nutri Star products, the color Star products.

(02:30:23):
I've talked about Nutstar of the flour. The color Star
comes in two forms. And if you have a plant
that flowers an annual flower, perennial flower, shrubs, trees, any
flowers and containers are in your landscape. Color Star is
a product that has been around for over forty years
and it really works. Now. The Colorstar Plus has added

(02:30:44):
fungicide in it, a systemic fungicide to help protect your
plants for those fungus susceptible types of plants.

Speaker 6 (02:30:52):
Either way you.

Speaker 3 (02:30:53):
Go, you're gonna have beautiful success. It's got slurlease ingredients
can give you about three or four months of feeding
and they perform and I'm telling you you don't have
to day my work for it. They have people all
over the country that ordered this stuff to be shipped
out of Texas to these other places because they tried
to sample. They liked it. They can't get anything like

(02:31:14):
it in their area, and so they called Ian at
Nelson Blent Food and say, I need you to ship
me colors are And it's that popular of the product
because it works. You need to have someone hand because
you always got an opportunity to feed something with that
quality product. It does work well. All right, Yeah, we're

(02:31:35):
still chasing gremlins, but we I think we got it.
We're going to go to Larry and Spring Branch. Larry,
Welcome to garden Line.

Speaker 16 (02:31:43):
Sarah, Good mornings. Get I have good morning, and I
believe it might be called spur weed. It's got a
small yellow flower on it, but it's got these spurs
on when you grab all of it, try to pull
it out in your fingers. That's for sure.

Speaker 3 (02:32:01):
It stings it. Okay, got So what you what you're
gonna what you're gonna want to do, Larry is, get
you a product that has a three way broad leaf
post emergent weed control. So that could be things like
fertil and weed free zone. It could be boon eyed
weed beater. Uh. But there are a number of products

(02:32:24):
that are like that. ACE has one called lawn weed Killer.
Those products are hard on Saint Augustine when the weather
is warm. But you need to hit it as soon
as possible to get control of that spur weed because
it's not easy to control what what you're describing. Rather
uh and so go early in the morning when it's
the coolest time of the day and apply it as

(02:32:45):
a spot treat on those weeds then uh, and and
get ahead of them. And see I've not tried celsius
on that weed, but uh it may work as well. Uh.
But uh, we're kind of entering the time now where
those broad leaf herbs can be damaging to Saint Augustine.
So early in the morning, cool time of day spot
treat and I think that gives you the best chance

(02:33:07):
of success.

Speaker 16 (02:33:09):
All right, very good. Would it be best to put
you apply that to my weed wiper and hit those
things individually?

Speaker 3 (02:33:17):
Yeah, if the weed's up enough where you can grab
it with the weed wiper, that would be fine. That
minimizes otherwise, just a very low pressure spray so it's
not creating a foggy miss that's drifting everywhere. With a
spray NOZZLEO. You can also spot treat them that way too,
So I've got a lot about the weed wiper. Yeah,

(02:33:39):
if you have a lot of the weed wiperud be
a little bit tedious to do for that, but anyway,
all right, thanks Larry, I do appreciate your call. Listen,
if you've got indoor plants and you haven't potted them
up in a recent period of time, meaning you haven't
bumped them up to a larger sized pot. Jungle land
indoor plant soil is a good one. It's actually called

(02:34:00):
jungle l and water saving potting soil. You just take
your old plant out, look around the outside of that
root ball, kind of use your fingers or a knife
or something to cut away some outdoor roots outdoor outside
the perimeter roots that are circling around and then repot
it up and it would be good to go. Jungle
Land water saving potting soil is excellent if you got

(02:34:22):
anytime you're bumping a plant up from one size to
another in your house, that would be a good time
to use it. Just remember that his plants get really
large for the container. You have to water more often
and they're a little more stressed because their root system
is just too confined to support the top that they
have to support. So it doesn't hurt to bump them
up every now and then just to help give them

(02:34:44):
a little bit more room to grow and jungle Land
from Nitrofossil do that. You're going to find it at
M and D in Clare Lake on barry A Boulevard.
You'll find it at Stanton Shopping Center and North Taylor
down an Alvin area and up in Brenham at Plants
and Things on Highway three sixty five. All of this
is carry nitrofoss products and so that's where you would
begin your search. Well, it's been an interesting day, kind

(02:35:08):
of wound up today with the gremlins and the system,
but we survived it. Thanks for listening to Guardline this weekend.
It's been good to talk to you and enjoyed that.
We'll be back again next Saturday six am to ten
am on Sunday as well. In the meantime, don't forget
my website. Skip. My website is gardening with Skip dot

(02:35:29):
com and when you get there, you're gonna find all
kinds of helpful things. And so I haven't talked about
the updates we've done to the page recently, but for example,
there is a publication called Great Gardens Begin with Great Soil.
It you know, browns up before greenstop. It tells you
all about that. There's one on herbicide products for specific weeds.

(02:35:50):
So if you're looking to kill wild onions in your
yard and you can't get them killed, well look at
my publication. It talks about what to use for each
type of week. Then there's one on lawn Caro one
on one on one that is everything you need to
know for the basics of a dense, beautiful green lawn.